Online research in philosophy

This is a welcome opportunity to clarify my approach to referential uses of definite descriptions, as well as to highlight what I take to be the main shortcomings of the view that definite descriptions have referential meanings. Michael Devitt and I have previously debated referential uses in the course of stating our respective views (see our 2004 articles), but here in this issue we both aim to dispel certain misunderstandings and to sharpen our criticisms of the other’s views.1 Devitt recognizes that it was not enough to target the view that referential uses are akin to particularized conversational implicatures. So now he focuses on the view that they are akin to generalized conversational implicatures (GCIs). He argues that although in principle the GGI model could explain referential uses, it does not in fact provide the best explanation of them. He insists that the fact that definite descriptions are standardized for being used referentially is best explained on the supposition that, as a matter of semantic convention, they have referential meanings, in addition to the quantificational meanings given by Russell’s theory of descriptions. He acknowledges that this commits him to the view that the word ‘the’ is semantically ambiguous. Accordingly, recognizing a use as referential (or as attributive, for that matter) is not like recognizing a GCI but is more akin to, indeed is a case of, disambiguation. Devitt devotes a good part of his article to rebutting my account of referential uses. He challenges the GCI model and identifies a number of difficulties with my view, which he construes as based on that model. However, my account does not rely on that model. I do say that referential uses are “akin” to GCIs, but I did not mean that they are, or involve, GCI. All I meant was that they too are cases of standardized uses, as opposed to..

Specificity has been defined in the linguistic literature according to two different criteria: one corresponding to Quine's opaque and transparent contexts, and the other to criteria closely related to Donellan's referential/attributive distinction. The paper argues that only the former definition is a semantic one since it alone manifests linguistic correlates. The meaning changes involving referential/attributive factors are pragmatic in nature. In the concluding section is is argued that the semantics of specificity is completely independent of the relative scope interpretation of an indefinite noun phrase in relation to other quantified nouns in the sentence. This is demonstrated using sentences which contain an indefinite interacting with both an opaque operator and a second quantifier. It is shown that such sentences can be four ways ambiguous.

It has long ben recognised that there are referential uses of definite descriptions. It is not as widely recognised that there are atttributives uses of idexicals and other such paradigmatically singular terms. I offer an account of the referential/attributive distinction which is intended to give a unified treatment of both sorts of cases. I argue that the best way to account for the referential/attributive distinction is to treat is as semantically underdetermined which sort of propositions is expressed in a context. In certain contexts the proposition expressed will be a descriptive one, and in others it will be an object-dependent one. I appeal to Sperer and Wilson's (1986) idea that the recovery of the content of an utterance involves pragmatic processes of enrichment of a representation of the logical form of utterance. According to the account I offer, the first-level descriptive meaning associated with an expression (whether this is an indexical or a definite description) is pragmatically enriched and then used either to track an individual in the context, or is taken to lay down a condition of satisfaction for an individual. The proposition that the listener takes the speaker to have expressed is recovered on the basis of considerations of relevance and contextually available information about the speaker's directive intentions. Although my account has affinities with those of Recanati (1993) and Nunberg (1993), it also differs from theirs in crucial ways. Each of these authors sees asymmetries where I see none. I give reasons for preferring my symmetrical account.

Taking a Russellian approach to descriptions, this paper aims to explain the nature of referring, the rationale for using definite descriptions referentially, the difference between referring to something and merely alluding to it or just describing it, specific uses of indefinite descriptions, and the pragmatic character of the referential-attributive distinction. Among the points defended are that definite descriptions do not have referential meanings, that using a description to refer identifies by implicitly conveying an identity, that one can describe a (singular) proposition without being in a position to grasp it, and that incomplete definite descriptions do not threaten Russell’s theory.

The principal question asked in this paper is: in the case of attributive usage, is the definite description to be analyzed as Russell said or is it to be treated as a referring expression, functioning semantically as a proper name? It answers by defending the former alternative.

This paper enters the continuing fray over the semantic significance of Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction. Some holdthat the distinction is at bottom a pragmatic one: i.e., that the difference between the referential use and the attributive use arises at the level of speaker’s meaning rather the level of sentence-or utterance-meaning. This view has recently been challenged byMarga Reimer andMichael Devitt, both of whom argue that the fact that descriptions are regularly, that is standardly, usedto refer defeats the pragmatic approach. The present paper examines a variety of issues bearing on the regularity in question: whether the regularity would arise in a Russellian language, whether the regularity is similar to the standard use ofcomplex demonstratives, and whether the pragmatic approach founders on the problem of dead metaphors. I argue that the pragmatic approach can readily explain all of these facets ofthe referential use of descriptions.

There is a core to the referential/attributive distinction that reveals a propositional ambiguity that is scope-related and rooted in syntax.