Abstract
This paper revisits Donnellan’s distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions and argues that it is not exhaustive. Donnellan characterizes the distinction in terms of two criteria: the speaker’s intentions and the type of content the speaker aims to express. I argue that contrary to the common view, these two criteria are independent and that the distinctive features may be coinstantiated in more than two ways. This leaves room for nonattributive and nonreferential uses of definite descriptions. Kripke’s notions of general and specific intentions provide a framework that accommodates such cases. Additionally, it proves useful for the analysis of the use of proper names with specific nonsingular intentions. The paper also discusses how the interpretation of the use of definite descriptions as attributive or referential (or neither) is sensitive to which theory of singular thoughts one adopts.
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Notes
One could argue that the description is essential or inessential in yet another sense: that in the case of attributive use, the descriptive condition is part of the proposition expressed, while in the case of referential use, it is not. This, however, prejudges the semantic nature of the distinction, and the description of the phenomenon should be free from any such assumption.
For the sake of simplicity, here and later, I do not discuss cases of vacuous referential uses of definite description. Suppose I say “That man drinking a Martini is a spy” but I hallucinate, that there is nobody there. According to some views, the speaker fails to entertain a singular thought or entertains an incomplete thought (gappy proposition) (see, for example, Evans, 1982, Adams & Stecker, 1994). I shall leave these details aside, as we still describe the situation as an attempted singular thought.
Kripke points out that Donnellan (1966) is unclear whether the distinction is semantic or pragmatic. In his later paper “Speaker’s Reference, Descriptions and Anaphora” (1978/2012), Donnellan poses the following question: “Are there two uses of definite descriptions in the sense of two semantic functions in one of which the description conveys speaker reference and in the other not? Or is it rather that definite descriptions are used in two kinds of circumstances, in one of which there is an accompanying phenomenon of speaker reference though it has no effect on the semantic reference of the description?” (Donnellan 1978/2012: 115–116). He espouses the former possibility: in cases of a referential use of definite descriptions, the speaker’s reference cannot be separated from the semantic reference, whether we call it ambiguity or not.
Donnellan (1966) gives an example of a situation when this condition is not fulfilled: the speaker uses the expression “the king” to refer to someone whom she believes to be the usurper. Such cases, however – as Kripke points out – should be explained in terms of nonliteral discourse.
One may question whether the speaker may use the first-person pronoun with a specific intention that picks out a different object than the general intention. Consider the following example: While looking at an old photograph you ask: “Is Ann in the picture?” I reply: “She is sitting next to me.” I use the pronoun “me” with the specific intention to talk about the girl whom I mistake for myself.
One may object that the locution “to have the intention to refer to a certain object” requires that the intention be singular. However, Kripke himself uses the locution to define the notion of a general intention: “In a given idiolect, the semantic referent of a designator (without indexicals) is given by a general intention of the speaker to refer to a certain object whenever the designator is used” (Kripke, 1977: 264).
I wish to thank the Reviewer for drawing my attention to this footnote.
Here is another possible objection: According to Kripk’s definition for something to be the speaker’s referent, the object must be taken to satisfy the conditions for being the referent of the designator. Hence, my proposal implies that being the satisfier of the description “the author of the paper” is a condition one must satisfy to be the referent of the name “Jack Jones”. I think this is wrong. The professor believes that the author of the paper is called “Jack Jones”, so he thinks that he satisfies the condition of being the referent of the designator and that is enough for him to use the name “Jack Jones” to speaker-refer to the author of the paper.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tadeusz Ciecierski, Piotr Grabarczyk, Kepa Korta, Genoveva Marti, Jakub Rudnicki, Mieszko Tałasiewicz and two Anonymous Reviewers for their helpful comments on this paper.
Funding
The work on this paper was funded by Narodowe Centrum Nauki grant under award number 2016/23/N/HS1/02180.
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Matuszkiewicz, M. Nonattributive and Nonreferential Uses of Definite Descriptions. Philosophia (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00727-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-024-00727-3