Definite Descriptions: A Reader (review)

Introductory courses in model-theoretic semantics usually benefit from the discussion of concepts of core interest to the philosophers of language. A typical first encounter to extensional semantics will surely touch upon anaphora, quantification, and even truth-value gaps in connection with the use vs. grammar distinction. A reflection on the semantics of definite descriptions serves as a perfect introduction to these matters. This reader provides, by and large, such an introduction.

A preface by the editor draws the basic issues. The selections orbit around three main topics. First, starting from Bertrand Russell’s ‘On denoting’, the reader is introduced to the quantificational analysis of definite descriptions: A sentence of the type The F is G means that there is a unique F and that all Fs are Gs. The formalization of the theory in Principia mathematica (Whitehead and Russell) brings in the central notion of scope ambiguity: The king of France is not bald means that either it is not the case that there is a unique king of France that is bald (in case negation has scope over the definite description) or that there is a unique king of France that is not bald (in case the definite description has scope over negation). Stephen Neale’s ‘Grammatical form, logical form and incomplete symbols’ proposes a compositional implementation of the theory. Since it makes central use of a language with restricted quantification, it will also be a useful introduction to natural language quantification and the notion of an interpretable syntactic level: logical form.

An excerpt from Rudolph Carnap’s Meaning and necessity succinctly states the second topic: the evaluation of sentences containing the F in scenarios with more than one F. A Russellian will have to admit that either the sentence is false or that the F is elliptical for the F such that so-and-so. Determining what property the so-and-so stands for constitutes the problem of incomplete descriptions. P. F. Strawson’s ‘On referring’ introduces a second perspective: Somehow along the lines of Gottlob Frege, such a sentence is not felicitously used in such a scenario and lacks a truth value. Finally, Karel Lambert formalizes existential implications (‘if the cat came in, then there is a cat [that came in]’) in the context of developing a free logic that quantifies over existing objects. This group of papers will serve as an introduction to the notion of presupposition.

Keith Donnellan’s distinction between attributive (Smith’s murderer, whoever he is, is insane) and referential uses of definite descriptions (Smith’s murderer, that individual over there that may not be a murderer, is insane) constitutes a third area of interest. Are definite descriptions both quantifiers and referential expressions? Contributions by Christopher Peacocke and Howard Wettstein associate referential uses of definite descriptions with demonstratives. Are they rather quantificational expressions sometimes used as referential expressions? H. P. Grice and Saul Kripke’s contributions bring the phenomenon into the pragmatic arena.

The reader covers well beyond the basics and will suit the needs of more advanced courses on topics ranging from quantification to indexicality and context-sensitiveness.