Theory of descriptions
The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language. It is also known as Russell's theory of descriptions (commonly abbreviated as RTD). In short, Russell argued that the syntactic form of descriptions (phrases that took the form of "The aardvark" and "An aardvark") is misleading, as it does not correlate their logical and/or semantic architecture. While descriptions may seem like fairly uncontroversial phrases, Russell argued that providing a satisfactory analysis of the linguistic and logical properties of a description is vital to clarity in important philosophical debates, particularly in semantic arguments, epistemology and metaphysical elements.
Since the first development of the theory in Russell's 1905 paper "On Denoting", RTD has been hugely influential and well-received within the philosophy of language. However, it has not been without its critics. In particular, the philosophers P. F. Strawson and Keith Donnellan have given notable, well known criticisms of the theory. Most recently, RTD has been defended by various philosophers and even developed in promising ways to bring it into harmony with generative grammar in Noam Chomsky's sense, particularly by Stephen Neale. Such developments have themselves been criticised, and debate continues.
Russell viewed his theory of descriptions as a kind of analysis that is now called propositional analysis[1][2] (not to be confused with propositional calculus).
Take as an example of an indefinite description the sentence "some dog is annoying". Russell analyses this phrase into the following component parts (with 'x' and 'y' representing variables):
Thus, an indefinite description (of the general form 'a D is A') becomes the following existentially quantified phrase in classic symbolic logic (where 'x' and 'y' are variables and 'D' and 'A' are predicates):
Informally, this reads as follows: there is something such that it is D and A.
This analysis, according to Russell, solves the second problem noted above as related to indefinite descriptions. Since the phrase "some dog is annoying" is not a referring expression, according to Russell's theory, it need not refer to a mysterious non-existent entity. Furthermore, the law of excluded middle need not be violated (i.e. it remains a law), because "some dog is annoying" comes out true: there is a thing that is both a dog and annoying. Thus, Russell's theory seems to be a better analysis insofar as it solves several problems.
Criticism of Russell's analysis[edit]
P. F. Strawson[edit]
P. F. Strawson argued that Russell had failed to correctly represent what one means when one says a sentence in the form of "the current Emperor of Kentucky is gray." According to Strawson, this sentence is not contradicted by "No one is the current Emperor of Kentucky", for the former sentence contains not an existential assertion, but attempts to use "the current Emperor of Kentucky" as a referring (or denoting) phrase. Since there is no current Emperor of Kentucky, the phrase fails to refer to anything, and so the sentence is neither true nor false.
Another kind of counter-example that Strawson and philosophers since have raised concerns that of "incomplete" definite descriptions, that is sentences which have the form of a definite description but which do not uniquely denote an object. Strawson gives the example "the table is covered with books". Under Russell's theory, for such a sentence to be true there would have to be only one table in all of existence. But by uttering a phrase such as "the table is covered with books", the speaker is referring to a particular table: for instance, one that is in the vicinity of the speaker. Two broad responses have been constructed to this failure: a semantic and a pragmatic approach. The semantic approach of philosophers like Stephen Neale[3] suggests that the sentence does in fact have the appropriate meaning as to make it true. Such meaning is added to the sentence by the particular context of the speaker—that, say, the context of standing next to a table "completes" the sentence. Ernie Lepore suggests that this approach treats "definite descriptions as harboring hidden indexical expressions, so that whatever descriptive meaning alone leaves unfinished its context of use can complete".[4]
Pragmatist responses deny this intuition and say instead that the sentence itself, following Russell's analysis, is not true but that the act of uttering the false sentence communicated true information to the listener.
Keith Donnellan[edit]
According to Keith Donnellan, there are two distinct ways we may use a definite description such as "the current Emperor of Kentucky is gray", and thus makes his distinction between the referential and the attributive use of a definite description. He argues that both Russell and Strawson make the mistake of attempting to analyse sentences removed from their context. We can mean different and distinct things while using the same sentence in different situations.
For example, suppose Smith has been brutally murdered. When the person who discovers Smith's body says, "Smith's murderer is insane", we may understand this as the attributive use of the definite description "Smith's murderer", and analyse the sentence according to Russell. This is because the discoverer might equivalently have worded the assertion, "Whoever killed Smith is insane." Now consider another speaker: suppose Jones, though innocent, has been arrested for the murder of Smith, and is now on trial. When a reporter sees Jones talking to himself outside the courtroom, and describes what she sees by saying, "Smith's murderer is insane", we may understand this as the referring use of the definite description, for we may equivalently reword the reporter's assertion thus: "That person who I see talking to himself, and who I believe murdered Smith, is insane." In this case, we should not accept Russell's analysis as correctly representing the reporter's assertion. On Russell's analysis, the sentence is to be understood as an existential quantification of the conjunction of three components: