WEEKLY

journal
INTRODUCTION & DEFINITE
DESCRIPTION

RAEHANUN FADHILLAH (2200253001110)

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Introduction: meaning and reference
Not many people know that, in 1931, Adolf Hitler made a visit to the United States, in
the course of which he did some sightseeing, had a brief affair with a lady named Maxine
in Keokuk, Iowa, tried peyote (which caused him to hallucinate hordes of frogs and toads
wearing little boots and singing the Horst Wessel Lied), infiltrated a munitions plant near
Detroit, met secretly with Vice-President Curtis regarding sealskin futures, and invented
the electric can opener

You know? None of it is true

But as you read the sentence, you understood it perfectly

Suggestively, it's because you understand one by one the words placed in
the sentence.
Whereas naturally it is due to the human ability to produce and understand
speech.

How do we understand it as a linguistic expression?

We called the idea as Referential Theory, that is linguistic expressions have the
meanings they do because they stand for things; what they mean is what they stand for.
On this view, words are like labels; they are symbols that represent, designate, name,
denote or refer to items in the world

This principle the same as how a series

of words or sentences should represent
objects, activities, and properties
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Introduction: meaning and reference
Objections or Problems

Problem/Objection 1 : Words of imaginary objects

Some words don’t refer to anything that exists. “Pegasus” does
not denote anything real, because there is no winged horse
after all. Also, consider the sentence “I saw nobody.” But to
what does “nobody” refer?

Problem/Objection 2 : Semantic Intension

The phrase “morning star” and “evening star” have the same referent, but different
meanings. In case, put the phrase into a sentence.

The morning star is the morning star

The morning star is the evening star.

The first of these sentences does not tell us anything new, while the second
sentence does. A referential theory of meaning does not predict the difference.
There is a role of semantic extension and its semantic intention

Problem/Objection 3 : Referential Change

The things that the words refer to seem to be changing constantly. For example : An
individual buildings in the town are constantly changing shape and color, or the
entity denoted as “our friend” is not the same from one day to the next.
A strict interpretation of a referential theory of meaning would predict that the
meanings of most names is constantly changing.

Problem 4 : Semantic Expertise

Many people cannot pick out the referents for many words. E.g:
My cousin cannot tell the difference between my twin sister Nana and Nunu even thought
she has called the name for most of his life.
A referential theory of meaning suggest that anyone would know the difference if they
new the specific characteristic
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Part I Reference and Reffering
Definite Description

In English or other natural languages, a paradigmatic referent device is a singular term, an

expression intended to denote or designate a particular person, place, or other object for more
than one thing. The singular terms include proper names, definite descriptions, singular
pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, and several others

Russell initially posed the four puzzles in terms of definite descriptions rather than proper
names, because he was interested in the logic of the word “the.”

A definite description is a description of something that uses the word ‘the’.

Like ‘The X is Y’‘
The’ is called the definite article by linguists, because it refers to one thing.‘
e.g
The current Prime Minister is a Tory’
‘The person who murdered Abraham Lincoln is John Wilkes Booth’
Etc.
Russell argues that sentences containing definite descriptions should be analyzed as
triples of general statements.

The general formula :

Take an claim ‘The X is Y’That means:
There is at least one thing that is X.
There is at most one thing that is X.
The thing that is X is Y.

You can think of Russell as giving three conditions for ‘the F is G’ to be true: there must exist at least
one thing which is F, there must exist at most one thing which is F, and whatever is F must be G. Thus
we define ‘the’ in terms of ‘every’ and ‘some.’

Logical notation:
‘The F is G’ means:
∃ ∀
x (F x & y (F y → y = x) & Gx)
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Part I Reference and Reffering
Definite Description

Russell’s approach: sentences containing the word ‘the’ have a kind of ‘hidden
structure'. 'The author of Waverley is Scotch’ is far more complex than it at first
looks. In fact, it has three claims ‘packed into it’

Important: all three claims need to be true in order for the overall sentence to
be true. If just one of them is false, then the sentence itself is false.

The author of Waverley was Scotch’ in fact means:

1)There is at least one person who is the author of Waverley.
2)There is at most one person who is the author of Waverley.
3)That person was Scotch.
Or: there was one and only one person who wrote Waverley, and s/he was Scotch.

Russell defends this Description Theory both directly and by using his
empathetic solutions to 4 logical puzzles.

Apparent Reference to Nonexistents

Taking this problem deeper: Russell believes in the law of excluded
middle.That is a law of logic that states (roughly) that any well formed claim
must be either true or false (it can’t be ‘in between’ or be neither).
“By the law of the excluded middle, either ‘A is B’ or ‘A is not B’ must be true.

Hence either ‘The present King of France is bald’ or ‘The present King of
France is not bald’ must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are
bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present
King of France in either list.” (‘On Denoting,’ 485)
Journal
Part I Reference and Reffering
Definite Description

Negative Existentials
Just a fancy term for saying certain things don’t exist. Like ‘The current King of
France doesn’t exist’Is that true or false? And what makes it true or false?
When we say ‘The Queen of the UK is called Elizabeth’ we can see what makes
that true or false.It’s true just in case the woman who really is the Queen is, in
fact, called Elizabeth. It’s false if she’s not really called Elizabeth.But when it
comes to a claim like ‘The present King of France doesn’t exist’ that doesn’t
work.It can’t be true just in case the man who actually is the King of France
doesn’t exist, because the whole point is that there is no man who actually is
the present King of France!

Frege’s Puzzle
Explaining the identity in an intuitive content.
An Example :

The present Queen of England is [one and the same individual as] Elizabeth Windsor
At least one person is presently Queen of England [presently queens England], and
at most one person is presently Queen of England, and
whoever is presently Queen of England is [one and the same as] Elizabeth Windsor

The identity statement is contingent, since someone else might have been
Queen (there might even have been no Queen at all), Elizabeth might have run
away from home and formed a rock band rather than be crowned, or whatever.
The Theory of Descriptions of Russel seems to give a correct account of the
identity statement’s intuitive content.
Journal
Part I Reference and Reffering
Definite Description

Substitutivity

The important :
“If a is identical with b, whatever is true of the one is true of the other, and
either may be substituted for the other without altering the truth or falsehood
of that proposition”
"Albert believed that the author of Nothing and Beingness was a deep thinker"
Unaware that the author of Nothing and Beingness is part-time writing
disgusting cheesy pornography, Albert believes the following:

(At least one person wrote Nothing and Beingness, and

at most one person wrote Nothing and Beingness, and
whoever wrote Nothing and Beingness is a deep thinker).
 Journal
Part I Reference and Reffering
Objection to Russel's Theory

Incomplete definite descriptions

Consider what Russell’s view says about the truth conditions for:
The book is on the table.
Can this sentence be true even if there is more than one book in existence? How might
you modify Russell’s theory to avoid these problematic consequences for our uses of
incomplete descriptions?

Referential uses of definite descriptions

Suppose I see a very interesting looking man in the corner drinking a transparent
beverage with an olive in it out of a shallow cone-shaped glass, and say to you:
The man in the corner drinking a martini looks interesting
As it turns out, he is interesting, but also rather eccentric in his tastes; he’s actually
drinking water with an olive in it. Given this, what does my use of “the man in the
corner drinking a martini” refer to? What does it take for the above sentence to be
true?

Other uses of ‘the’: generics

How would you apply Russell’s theory to ‘The whale is a mammal.’?

The contrast between descriptions and names

Implicit in Russell’s exposition of his theory is a contrast between names, which are
expressions whose function is just to stand for an object, and denoting phrases,
which at first sight seem to work just like names, but really do not. The problem: it
looks like each of the logical puzzles discussed above can arise for names, as well as
for denoting phrases.