Page 251 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

nearest in English speakers can get to logically proper names are the indexicals this and that, as used in a limited range of contexts (e.g., to refer to individual sense data).
5. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions
Russell severely restricts the list of potential 'logically proper names' partly in recognition of the kinds of problems that were identified for Mill's theory in Sect. 2. In particular, he produced strong reasons for denying the status of 'genuine' names to definite descriptions. The conclusion is important for it shows, among other things, that there are significantly differ- ent ways in which objects can be 'denoted' linguis- tically. The fact that proper names and definite descriptions both perform the role of 'standing for' a unique object turns out to be less important, if Russell and Mill are right, than the fact that they do so in logically different ways. The point relates more gen- erally to one of the insights from logical analysis, namely that syntactic form is not always a good guide to logical form. The prime example of this, for the purposes of this article, is the distinction between sub- ject and predicate as applied in grammar and in logic.
There is a long tradition within philosophy which takes the syntactic division of sentences into subjects and predicates to reflect a fundamental division in the world between particular things and their properties (sometimes called universals). Thus in the sentence Socrates is wise the grammatical subject-term 'Soc- rates' stands for a particular man, Socrates, while the predicative expression 'is wise' picks out a property, wisdom, which is ascribed to the subject. The sentence is true just in case the man possesses that property. Russell believed the principle itself to be sound—sub-
jects denote individuals, predicates characterize those individuals—but thought that very often the gram- matical subject of a sentence was not its true, or logi- cal, subject; and furthermore that not all sentences, after logical analysis, would prove to be of the sub- ject/predicate form. In this he disagreed, for example, with Alexius Meinong who was prepared to let gram- mar determine denotation and was led to postulate different 'realms' of objects corresponding to different subject terms.
In his famous Theory of Descriptions, Russell (1905,1919) argued that sentences containing definite descriptions have a different logical form from sen- tences containing (logically) proper names. He gives the example:
Scott is Scotch. (3a)
The author of Waverley is Scotch. (3b)
While grammar suggests that these are similar in form, logic dictates, according to Russell, that the latter is not a subject/predicate proposition and should be
analyzed as a complex conjunction of three prop- ositions:
At least one person wrote Waverley. (3c) At most one person wrote Waverley.
Whoever wrote Waverley was Scotch.
Taken together this conjunction yields anexistentially quantified statement There is one and only one person who wrote Waverley and that person is Scotch; the apparentnamingexpression'theauthorof Waverley' has been replaced, contextually paraphrased into a predicative expression. Thesharpest distinction isnow evident between logically proper names and definite descriptions, on Russell's analysis: the latter are 'incomplete symbols,' which get their meaning only in the context of a complete proposition; they do not correspond to any component of a fact, they are com- plex symbols and can have a meaning whether or not they denote anything.
Several benefits flow from this analysis, some of which recall the problems for Mill's pure denotation view of proper names. The first is that sentences con- taining definite descriptions which fail to denote any- thing—the present King of France, the golden mountain, etc.—can be shown to be meaningful, albeit false. If taken to express a genuine subject/predicate proposition, the statement:
The present King of France is bald. (4)
invites a gratuitous search for something for it to be 'about.' For Russell, the sentence, properly analyzed, loses the misleading grammatical subject and can be seen to advance the false but meaningful claim There is a unique person who is currently King of France and is bald. Russell went on to argue that there are two ways of negating this sentence, depending on the scope of the negation: either, on the narrow scope, There is a unique person who is currently King of France and is not bald, which like the sentence it negates is also false, given the falsity of the existential content, or It is not the case that there is a unique person who is currently King of France and is bald, which turns out true. Thus on the latter, wide-scope, construal of the negation, bivalence is preserved.
Suppose someone wants to deny the existence of the present King of France. For those who hold that subject terms must denote, there is a troubling para- dox in any sentence of the form:
The present King of France does not exist. (5a)
Yet Russell's analysis entirely removes any apparent contradiction. For the content of the sentence is equi- valent to:
It is not the case that there is some unique person (5b) currently King of France.
This in turn yields a formula which allows Russell to cope with existential statements involving all ordinary
Names and Descriptions
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