Understanding & Evaluating Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions
Understanding and Evaluating Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions
- Tom Stringer
Russell's theory attempts, using systematic formal logic, to pin down conditions by which we ascribe significance and meaning to descriptive nouns or definite description' (DD) phrases in idiomatic natural language (NL). Russell's theory covers the functions of these phrases in NL and outlines his ideas on their nature. From this, he goes on to delineate implications that their transposition into a schema of propositional logic has for NL through examining them within the scope of three "puzzles".
DD's are linguistic devices used in assertions to denote common singular noun's prefaced by a definite article, usually "the." i.e. "the grey monkey" or "the PM of the United Kingdom." Donnellan surmises that DD's have two distinct linguistic functions, attributive and referential . This is to say they can attribute a certain quality to their subject "John's girlfriend is attractive", and secondly to refer or draw attention to a particular subject, "John's girlfriend is Sarah." As shown in this case, DD' s like "John's girlfriend" can be used in both senses in one and the same phrase. Our definition excludes plural descriptions and noun phrases such as "brown monkeys", as well as non compositional noun phrases where the meaning isn't implicit in the words but requires outside reference to make sense; "The average Ghanaian citizen has 3.6 children" is an ambiguous denotative term with no particular object and only has meaning in relation to a mathematically derived average.
Russell's project attempts to ascribe meaning to DD's, at its most simply level his theory runs; a sentence of the form "The X is Y" contains a DD and its truth conditions (when this phrase can be said to be both inductively significant and true) can be cached out;
i) there is at least one X ii) " " most one X iii) All X's are Y's
Or putting iii) another way; "there is exactly one X and it
- Tom Stringer
Russell's theory attempts, using systematic formal logic, to pin down conditions by which we ascribe significance and meaning to descriptive nouns or definite description' (DD) phrases in idiomatic natural language (NL). Russell's theory covers the functions of these phrases in NL and outlines his ideas on their nature. From this, he goes on to delineate implications that their transposition into a schema of propositional logic has for NL through examining them within the scope of three "puzzles".
DD's are linguistic devices used in assertions to denote common singular noun's prefaced by a definite article, usually "the." i.e. "the grey monkey" or "the PM of the United Kingdom." Donnellan surmises that DD's have two distinct linguistic functions, attributive and referential . This is to say they can attribute a certain quality to their subject "John's girlfriend is attractive", and secondly to refer or draw attention to a particular subject, "John's girlfriend is Sarah." As shown in this case, DD' s like "John's girlfriend" can be used in both senses in one and the same phrase. Our definition excludes plural descriptions and noun phrases such as "brown monkeys", as well as non compositional noun phrases where the meaning isn't implicit in the words but requires outside reference to make sense; "The average Ghanaian citizen has 3.6 children" is an ambiguous denotative term with no particular object and only has meaning in relation to a mathematically derived average.
Russell's project attempts to ascribe meaning to DD's, at its most simply level his theory runs; a sentence of the form "The X is Y" contains a DD and its truth conditions (when this phrase can be said to be both inductively significant and true) can be cached out;
i) there is at least one X ii) " " most one X iii) All X's are Y's
Or putting iii) another way; "there is exactly one X and it