1. Philosophy of Language Seminar 3: Definite Descriptions (2)
Henry Taylor

2. Recap We’ve looked at Frege’s theory of sense and reference.
We’ve also looked at Russell’s theory of definite descriptions.

3. The plan
Today:
We’ll look at Strawson’s criticisms of Russell’s theory.
Think about the distinction between what a sentence itself means, and what the speaker uses it to mean.
This touches on the difference between semantics (what words mean) and pragmatics (what words are used to mean).
We will then have a clearer idea of how language users fit into the picture.

4. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Peter Strawson ( ).
Remember Russell’s theory was put forward in 1905.
It wasn’t until 1950 that it was criticized by Strawson.
Then Russell wrote a reply to this, so it’s a goldmine for an essay.

5. Russell.
Remember that Russell takes ‘The current King of France is bald’ to have a three part structure.
1) There is at least one thing that is the current King of France
2) There is at most one thing that is the current King of France
3) That thing is bald.

6. Russell. Try to think about the background of this theory.
It makes use of the ideas of truth (when are definite descriptions true?)
It talks about reference (what do definite descriptions refer to?)
It thinks about language in terms of puzzles (like ‘the current King of France is bald’).
This kind of approach is very strongly inspired by Frege (remember from seminar 1, Frege likes truth, reference and puzzles).
One of the most important developments in the history of analytic philosophy.

7. Strawson Strawson’s approach is very different.
He likes to emphasise how language is actually used in normal conversational contexts.
How language is actually used, and how we grasp sentences, and what work they do in actual conversation.
This approach is sometimes called ‘natural language philosophy’.
This is a clash of traditions: Russell is coming from Frege, Strawson is coming from a tradition that includes Wittgenstein.

8. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
To Strawson, it’s not sentences (or words) that refer, it’s people who refer, and they do it by using words and sentences.
“To give the meaning of an expression (in the sense in which I am using the word) is to give general directions for its use to refer to or mention particular objects or persons; to give the meaning of a sentence is to give general directions for its use in making true or false assertions....The meaning of an expression cannot be identified with the object it is used, on a particular occasion, to refer to” Strawson.

9. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Some terminology:
The utterance: a particular use of a sentence (typically spoken)

10. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Imagine someone said ‘The Present King of France is bald’
Russell’s view spits out the conclusion that that is false.
To Strawson, that’s wrong: it’s not true or false, it’s something else.
It’s a presupposition failure (it presupposes something that is false, which is that there exists a present King of France).

11. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Notice that on Russell’s theory, ‘there exists a present King of France’ is part of the meaning of ‘The present King of France is bald’ and that’s why the sentence is false.
To Strawson, this is a presupposition of the utterance ‘The King of France is bald’
The presupposition is wrong, so the utterance isn’t true or false: it’s a mistake.

12. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Questions/comments?

13. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Strawson imagines someone walking into a room and looking at a table that is covered with books, and saying ‘the table is covered with books’.
What would Russell say that means?
1) There is at least one table.
2) There is at most one table.
3) That very table is covered with books.
Is that true or false?
It’s false, because (2) is false. Strawson thinks that’s ridiculous.

14. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
To Strawson, the meaning of a definite description is context bound (you can’t grab the meaning unless you know about the context of utterance).
‘If I ask “what object is that sentence about?” I am asking an absurd question. A question which cannot be asked about a sentence, but only about some use of the sentence… In knowing what [the sentence] means, you are knowing how it could correctly be used to talk about things’ Strawson (my emphasis)

15. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Here we’re picking up on an extremely important piece of language: pragmatics.
Pragmatics are how sentences/words are used to convey things, dependent on various contextual factors.
So, imagine someone says ‘what do you think of this philosopher?’
And someone says ‘I think he has lovely handwriting’
What they actually said was a good thing, but really, we know that what they convey is that they are a rubbish philosopher.
Strawson is very minded by pragmatics.

16. Strawson’s criticisms of Russell.
Questions/comments?
What do we think of these two traditions of thinking about the nature of language?

17. Keith Donnellan
Had a habit of producing very very few papers.
But every one of them was extremely important and influential.

18. Donnellan’s distinction
Donnellan’s basic idea: Strawson and Russell are both kind of right.
Definite descriptions have at least two different kinds of meaning.
Russell was right about one of them, Strawson was right about another.

19. Donnellan’s distinction
Imagine you’re walking along and you find some horribly mangled body of a man called Smith.
You see one trail of footprints leading away from the body.
Looking at the body, you see how mangled it is and say ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’
You have no idea who the murderer is.

20. Donnellan’s distinction
This doesn’t look like a Strawson-style ‘the table is covered with books’ case (there’s nothing in the immediate vicinity that you could be referring to by ‘Smith’s murderer’)
What you’re actually saying is something like ‘whoever murdered Smith is insane’
And that can plausibly be analysed Russell-style:
There is at least one murderer of Smith
There is at most one murderer of Smith
That person is insane.
This is the attributive use

21. Donnellan’s distinction
But imagine you’re in a courtroom, where someone is being tried for the murder of Smith.
The person in the dock is behaving erratically and crying out randomly.
You nudge your friend and say ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’.

22. Donnellan’s distinction
In that case, you’re using the phrase to talk about that person in the dock.
In a way, it doesn’t matter whether they’re really the murderer of Smith, it just matters that your utterance allows your friend to direct their attention to the person in the dock, and understand that you think they’re insane.
This is like Strawson’s meaning.
This is the referential meaning.

23. Donnellan’s distinction
Sometimes, a definite description can be true under one reading and false under another.
Imagine that it turns out that Smith never was murdered, and it was all a horrible accident.
So the attributive use is false (there is no murderer)

24. Donnellan’s distinction
But in the court, it doesn’t matter whether the person in the dock is really the murderer, what matters is that you can successfully refer to them with your utterance.
So if that person really is insane, then the utterance ‘Smith’s murderer is insane’ would be true, even if no one actually was the murderer of Smith.
So the referential use of the definite description is true, and the attributive use is false.

25. Donnellan’s distinction
Think of it like this:
On the Russellian attributive use, for the definite description to be true, a set of three claims all have to be true.
On the Strawsonian referential use, all you need is to succeed in directing the attention of the person you’re talking to to the thing that you yourself want to talk about.
In the courtroom, you just wanted to talk about the person in the dock (whether she really is the murderer or not), and so if you succeed in getting your interlocutor to grasp that, then your utterance has succeeded.

26. Donnellan’s distinction
Notice how these two readings reflect the two traditions we’ve been looking at.
On the attributive use, it’s all about making a collection of true claims.
On the referential use, it’s all about getting on in a real-life conversational context.

27. Donnellan’s distinction
Questions/comments?

28. Donnellan’s distinction
Discussion: Donnellan ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions’