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Russell's “Proof”, Again

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

James D. Carney
James D. Carney*
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
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Extract

Often Bertrand Russell defends his view that names differ from descriptions in that names have meaning but descriptions do not by using a “proof.” Recently in this journal it has been debated whether Russell's “proof” fails or not. The familiar objection to Russell's argument is that it is circular or it involves a sense/reference equivocation. Avrum Stroll suggests a novel criticism by making use of a “mirror argument“ which attempts to show that Russell's argument can be used to conclude that "Scott" has no meaning, and that thus the argument proves too much or nothing. Robert Fahrnkopf defends Russell's argument, but, I believe, he does not go far enough in his defense. So it will be useful to carry this debate a few steps further.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 587 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1980

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References

1 Stroll, Avrum “Russell's ‘Proof',” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 4 (1974-5), 653-62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fahrnkopf, Robert “Stroll on Russell's ‘Proof',” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1976), 569-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Stroll, Avrum “Four Comments on Russell's Theory of Description,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8 (1978), 147-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Perkins, R. K. Jr., “On Russell's Alleged Confusion of Sense and Reference,” Analysis, 32 (1971-2), 45–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 See Kripke, Saul “Naming and Necessity,” Semantics of Natural Language, ed. Davidson and Harman (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972), 253-355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 How Russell“s intensional ontology explains Frege's puzzle is discussed in Carney, J. D. and Fitch, G. W. “Can Russell Avoid Frege's Sense,” Mind, 35 (1979), pp. 384–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Kaplan's, David “How to Russell A Frege-Church,” The Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), pp. 701-20,CrossRefGoogle Scholar where Kaplan concludes that Russell's intensional ontology can do the work of Frege's intensional ontology.