When philosophers talk about descriptions, usually they have in mind singular definite descriptions such as ‘the finest Greek poet’ or ‘the positive square root of nine’, phrases formed with the definite article ‘the’. English also contains indefinite descriptions such as ‘a fine Greek poet’ or ‘a square root of nine’, phrases formed with the indefinite article ‘a’ (or ‘an’); and demonstrative descriptions (also known as complex demonstratives) such as ‘this Greek poet’ and ‘that tall woman’, formed with the demonstrative articles (...) ‘this’ and ‘that’. Following the custom in philosophy, in this chapter often we use ‘description’ as short for ‘definite description’; and following the custom in linguistics, often we use ‘definite’, ‘indefinite’, and ‘demonstrative’ as shorthand nouns. For the most part we focus on definite and indefinites, although a few words about demonstratives are called for. At the centre of debates about descriptions is the matter of whether they are devices of reference or of predication (simple or higher-order), and much discussion focuses on how various proposals are to be incorporated into broader theories of the semantics of natural language. But philosophical interest goes beyond the confines of linguistics, logic, and the philosophy of language because choices made about the semantics of descriptions have repercussions elsewhere, particularly in epistemology and metaphysics. A simple match of form and meaning appears to fail.1 First, many occurrences of expressions of both forms ‘the φ’ and ‘a φ’ appear to be used to talk about particular individuals. Consider (1). (shrink)

The work of the late Paul Grice (1913–1988) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication. With respect to a particular sentence φ and an “utterer” U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion. Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by (...) providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer’s meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the “genuinely semantic” and “merely pragmatic” implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of “implicature” to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of “Ordinary Language Philosophy,” without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of “presupposition.” Today, Grice’s work lies at the center of research on the semantics-pragmatics distinction and shapes much discussion of the relationship between language and mind. In a nutshell, Grice has forced philosophers and linguists to think very carefully about the sorts of facts a semantic theory is supposed to account for and to reflect upon the most central theoretical notions, notions that otherwise might be taken for granted or employed without due care and attention. To be sure, Grice’s own positive proposals have their weaknesses; but in the light of his work any theory of meaning that is to be taken at all seriously must now draw a sharp line between genuinely semantic facts and facts pertaining to the nature of human interaction.. (shrink)

This book is an original examination of attempts to dislodge a cornerstone of modern philosophy: the idea that our thoughts and utterances are representations ...

The idea that an utterance of a basic (nondeviant) declarative sentence expresses a single true-or-false proposition has dominated philosophical discussions of meaning in this century. Refinements aside, this idea is less of a substantive theses than it is a background assumption against which particular theories of meaning are evaluated. But there are phenomena (noted by Frege, Strawson, and Grice) that threaten at least the completeness of classical theories of meaning, which associate with an utterance of a simple sentence a truth-condition, (...) a Russellian proposition, or a Fregean thought. And it may well be the case that a framework within which utterances express sequences of propositions provides much of what is needed to account for the relevant phenomena, a better overall picture of the way language works, and an enticingly uniform perspective on a variety of semantic problems. I do not myself take to theories that multiply propositions by appealing to propositions “presupposed” or to pairs of Fregean and Russellian propositions, or theories that show no respect for a distinction between semantics and pragmatics— where the former is the study of propositions whose general form and character is determined by word meaning and syntax—or for theories that blithely abandon general principles of composition and semantic innocence. I would like to sketch a package based on four interconnected ideas: (i) the meaning of an individual word is a sequence of instructions for generating a sequence of propositions (in conjunction with compositional instructions (syntax) and elements of context); (ii) utterances themselves are not bearers of truth or falsity; (iii) judgements of truth, falsity, commitment, and conflict are shaped, in part, by the weights attached to individual 1 propositions that occur in sequences expressed by utterances, weights that may be set (and reset) by contextual considerations; (iv) Fregean senses are superfluous; propositions might as well be Russellian (Mont Blanc and all its snow fields will do as well as any mode of presentation).. (shrink)

Names, descriptions, and demonstratives raise well-known logical, ontological, and epistemological problems. Perhaps less well known, amongst philosophers at least, are the ways in which some of these problems not only recur with pronouns but also cross-cut further problems exposed by the study in generative linguistics of morpho-syntactic constraints on interpretation. These problems will be my primary concern here, but I want to address them within a general picture of interpretation that is required if wires are not to be crossed. That (...) picture will be sketched in sections 3 and 4; subsequent sections will focus on pronouns and binding, drawing heavily on what has preceded. (shrink)

This is the introductory essay to a collection commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication in Mind of Bertrand Russell’s paper ‘On Denoting’.

This is one of a series of articles in which I examine errors that philosophers of language may be led to make if already prone to exaggerating the rôle compositional semantics can play in explaining how we communicate, whether by expressing propositions with our words or by merely implying them. In the present article, I am concerned less with “pragmatic contributions” to the propositions we express—contributions some philosophers seem rather desperate to deny the existence or ubiquity of—than I am with (...) certain types of traps that those who exaggerate the rôle of semantic convention and underestimate the rôle of pragmatic inference are apt to fall into. (shrink)

A “slingshot” proof suggested by Kurt Gödel (1944) has been recast by Stephen Neale (1995) as a deductive argument showing that no non-truthfunctional sentence connective can permit the combined use, within its scope, of two truth-functionally valid inference principles involving defi- nite descriptions. According to Neale, this result provides indirect support for Russell’s Theory of Descriptions and has broader philosophical repercussions because descriptions occur in non-truth-functional constructions used to motivate talk about (e.g.) necessity, time, probability, causation, obligation, facts, states of (...) affairs, and propositions. (shrink)

Names, descriptions, and demonstratives raise well-known logical, ontological, and epistemological problems. Perhaps less well known, amongst philosophers at least, are the ways in which some of these problems not only recur with pronouns but also cross-cut further problems exposed by the study in generative linguistics of morpho-syntactic constraints on interpretation. These problems will be my primary concern here, but I want to address them within a general picture of interpretation that is required if wires are not to be crossed. That (...) picture will be sketched in sections 3 and 4; subsequent sections will focus on pronouns and binding, drawing heavily on what has preceded. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Pronouns and Variables Anaphoric Pronouns in Generative Grammar Phonetic Form and Logical Form Binding and Scope The Binding Theory Aphonic Pronouns Pronouns as Determiners A Unified Account of Binding Bound and Free Discourse Anaphora Unselective Binding and Donkey Problems Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Theory of Descriptions Motivating the Theory of Descriptions Attributive and Referential Three Ambiguity Arguments Synthesis Three More Ambiguity Arguments Indefinite Descriptions Indefinites as Logically Basic? Conclusion.

This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.

Michael Morris, Stephen Neale; Papers from the 1993 Joint Session: The Place of Language, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 94, Issue 1, 1 June 19.

This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.

This paper attempts to raise a question for the everyday view that language is a means of communication, a system of marks or sounds which we use to convey thoughts and describe the world. It first isolates the assumptions behind this everyday view before raising questions about them.

Revolves around the matter of whether the stronger results that W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson were attempting to derive from slingshot arguments over facts might be forthcoming if other theories of descriptions were assumed. This also provides an opportunity to evaluate various theories as potential competitors to Bertrand Russell's theory. The four sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; Hilbert and Bernays ; Fregean Theories ; and Strawsonian Theories.

Discusses the philosophy of Donald Davidson, who appears to have brought the slingshot argument to the current prominence within philosophical discussions. It examines Davidson's semantic programme, the relation between semantics and ontology that he champions, his arguments against facts and the scheme–content distinction, and the ways in which he and Richard Rorty assail the notion of representation. The chapter is arranged in nine parts: Introductory Remarks; Meaning and Truth; Reference and Ontology; Content and Other Complications; Facts and Correspondence; The Great (...) Fact; Scheme and Content; Realism and Objectivity; and Representation. (shrink)

Chs. 6 and 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. Clarifies what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and the next separates various inference principles. The four sections of the chapter are: Extensions and Sentence Connectives; Scope; Extensional and Non‐Extensional (...) Connectives; and Intensional Connectives. (shrink)

With the Descriptive Constraint discussed in Ch. 9 at hand, Ch. 11 examines diverse theories of facts with a view to establishing how viable they are, and then turns to claims about the semantics of causal statements that have been used to motivate ontologies of facts and events. Neale makes the point that there is considerable confusion in the literature on the matter of whether causal statements are extensional, but shows that once the clarifications effected in earlier chapters are brought (...) to bear, almost all of the confusion can be eradicated and decisive results obtained. There are still some extensional causal statements, and these can be delimited on the basis of their superficial grammatical forms, but there are other causal statements for which it is, as far as Neale can ascertain, still an open question whether extensional or non‐extensional treatments are to be preferred, much turning on the position taken on the overall shape of a semantic theory. If non‐extensional treatments prove appealing, the resulting theories will have to satisfy the strictures imposed by the Descriptive Constraint. The six sections of the chapter are: Identity Connectives; Fact Identity; Events; Events and Causes; Facts and Causes; and Fact Identity Again. (shrink)

Looks at the work of Gottlob Frege on truth and composition. It investigates Frege's idea that a sentence refers to a truth‐value, his Principle of Composition, and his abandonment of what Donald Davidson calls ‘semantic innocence’. Neale explains what kinds of slingshotian considerations prevented Frege from accepting facts as denotations of sentences and made him see sentences rather as names of truth‐values. The three sections of the chapter are: Reference and Composition; Innocence Abandoned; and The Reference of a Sentence.

lt is widely held that entertaining a belief or forming a judgement involves the exercise of conceptual capacities; and to this extent the representational content of a belief or judgement is said to be "con— ceptual". According to Gareth Evans (1980), not all psychological states have conceptual content in this sense. In particular, perceptual states have non—conceptual content; it is not until one forms a judgement on the basis of a perceptual experience that one touches the realm of conceptual content.

Chs. 9 convert the two basic forms of slingshot argument—one used by Alonzo Church, W. V. Quine, and Donald Davidson, the other by Kurt Gödel—into knock‐down deductive proofs that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The proofs are agnostic on key semantic issues; in particular, they assume no particular account of reference and do not even assume that sentences have references. (...) Using the same procedure as in Chs. 8 and 9 shows that a slingshot argument engendered by Gödel's suggestions can be converted into a proof that delivers an exacting constraint on non‐extensional discourse—the Descriptive Constraint—and that is more general than anything Gödel appears to have had in mind. The proof of this constraint is constructed without appeal to logical equivalences, without assuming that a semantic theory must treat sentences as having references, without presupposing anything contentious about the semantics of singular terms, and without commitment to any particular semantics for definite descriptions. A constraint on facts, situations, states of affairs, and propositions—indeed on anything that is expressed or represented sententially—drops out as a trivial consequence of a constraint on non‐extensional discourse. The three sections of the chapter are: Principles of Conversion for Descriptions; Gödel's Proof in Quinean Format; and A Stronger Slingshot? (shrink)

Sets out Kurt Gödel's slingshot argument. The original argument—or, at least, the premisses of the argument that Neale attributes to Gödel—can be found in a fleeting footnote to a discussion of the relationship between Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions and Theory of Facts. Usually each theory is viewed as quite independent of the other, but Gödel argues otherwise: that the viability of the latter depends upon the viability of the former. Neale summarizes Gödel's standpoint as follows: ‘if a true sentence (...) stands for a fact, then in order to avoid the collapse of all facts into one, the friend of facts must give up either an intuitive and straightforward Fregean Principle of Composition or the idea that definite descriptions are expressions that purport to stand for things.’ The sections of the chapter are: Elimination ; Facts and Descriptions; Identities in the Matrix; and The Eleatic One. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Life Meaning, use, and ordinary language The theory of conversation Philosophical psychology The logic of natural language The theory of meaning Utterer's meaning Sentence meaning and saying.

Chs. 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The previous chapter clarified what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and this one separates various inference principles common in extensional logic. The six sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; A (...) Principle of Substitutivity for Material Equivalents; A Principle of Substitutivity for Singular Terms; A Principle of Substitutivity for Logical Equivalents; An Inference Principle Involving ‘Exportation’; and A Principle of Substitutivity for Definite Descriptions. (shrink)

Chs. 8 and 9 convert the two basic forms of slingshot argument—one used by Alonzo Church, W. V. Quine, and Donald Davidson, the other by Kurt Gödel—into knock‐down deductive proofs that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The proofs are agnostic on key semantic issues; in particular, they assume no particular account of reference and do not even assume that sentences (...) have references. Using this procedure, Ch. 8 shows that cleaned‐up versions of the slingshot arguments used by Davidson, Church, and Quine demonstrate theses weaker than those their authors were seeking—the impossibility of facts and non‐truth‐functional connectives. This is primarily because the arguments depend upon logical equivalences and theories of definite descriptions that must satisfy certain semantic conditions if the aforementioned logical equivalences are to obtain. The four sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; The Quinean Strategy; An Incomplete Connective Proof; and A Complete Connective Proof. (shrink)

SummaryIt is a mistake to think that Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation reduces to the claim that théories are under‐determined by evidence. The theory of meaning is subject to an indeterminacy that is qualitatively different from the under‐determination of scientific théories. However, there is no reason to believe that the indeterminacy thesis extends beyond translation and meaning, and hence no construal of the thesis prevents one from being a realist about grammars, construed as partial théories of mind.