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Reference and incomplete descriptions

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Abstract

In “On Referring” Peter Strawson pointed out that incomplete descriptions pose a problem for Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions. Howard Wettstein and Michael Devitt appealed to incomplete descriptions to argue, first, that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions fails, and second, that Donnellan’s referential/attributive distinction has semantic bite. Stephen Neale has defended Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions against Wettstein’s and Devitt’s objections. In this paper, my aim is twofold. First, I rebut Neale’s objections to Wettstein’s and Devitt’s argument and argue that Neale’s attempt to provide an account of referential descriptions within a Russellian framework fails. Second, contra Devitt and Wettstein, I argue that the problem posed by incomplete descriptions shows that Donnellan was right in believing that referential descriptions refer even if the definite description fits nothing.

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Notes

  1. Kripke speaks of “indefinite definite descriptions.” Today’s preferred term is “incomplete definite descriptions.” In the paper, I follow the current practice.

  2. See Strawson (1950: 332–333).

  3. Donnellan (1968: 46 fn. 5).

  4. Recently Donnellan wrote that “Wettstein was correct: Indefinite definite descriptions provide reason to doubt the application of Russell’s analysis to referential uses, and my treatment of the cases yields a somewhat satisfactory solution to the problem such descriptions may seem to present” (2012: xix).

  5. First, briefly, in Devitt (1974: 195) and then in Devitt (1981a: 46–56, 1981b).

  6. See Devitt (2004: 297–303).

  7. Early replies to Wettstein’s paper are Salmon (1982) and Blackburn (1988). See Wettstein (1983) for a reply to Salmon. I am aware of no place where Wettstein addressed Neale’s defense of Russell.

  8. Kripke (2013: 138 fn. 5).

  9. In the literature on reference, semantic reference is often distinguished from speaker’s reference. The distinction in its current form is due to Kripke (1977). In this paper, when I use “refer” and its cognates, I mean “semantic reference.” I use “denotes” and its cognates to indicate that the definite description designates the object that it designates in virtue of the fact that the description uniquely fits one object.

  10. As Kripke (1977) first pointed out, in “Reference and Definite Descriptions,” Donnellan was rather equivocal about the nature of the referential/attributive distinction. At the same time, as Kripke himself stressed, to count as a refutation of Russell’s analysis, Donnellan’s distinction must be considered semantic. In this paper, I read Donnellan as introducing or attempting to introduce a semantic distinction.

  11. Martí (2008) holds a similar view, except for the fact that she does not assign to having in mind the role of determining the referent of a referential description. See also Almog (2012).

  12. Russell was aware that ordinary speakers at times use phrases like “‘the son of So-and-so’ even when So-and-so has several sons” (1905: 44). It is unclear whether Russell would consider the use of “the table” in “The table is covered with books” as a strict use of a definite description. Whether Russell would or not, it is undeniable that ordinary speakers use “the table” in “The table is covered with books” in the way Strawson described. If Russell’s theory cannot account for such uses then it cannot account for a large portion of standard uses that speakers make of definite descriptions. There is no doubt that anyone interested in defending a Russellian point of view on definite descriptions in natural language must account for such uses.

  13. See Kaplan (1970: 285).

  14. Kripke (1977: 113–114). For an anticipation see Burge (1974: 314).

  15. One should also keep in mind that “if by quantifier we just mean a word that takes as arguments two expressions denoting sets and contributes a relation between them, there is no difficulty in writing an entry for the Fregean definite article that is a quantifier” (Elbourne 2005: 208 fn. 7).

  16. The example is from Lewis (1979). Lewis attributed the example to James McCawley.

  17. Wettstein made a related point against the explicit approach: “When one says, e.g., ‘The table is covered with books’, the table the speaker has in mind can be more fully described in any number of ways, by the use of any number of non-synonymous, uniquely denoting descriptions (for example, ‘the table in room 209 of Camden Hall at t1’, ‘the table at which the author of The Persistence of Objects is sitting at t1’, etc.) … The question now arises, which of these more complete … descriptions (or conjunction of such descriptions) is the correct one, the one that actually captures what the speaker intended by his use of the indefinite definite description ‘the table’” (1981: 246). According to Wettstein, “none of these … descriptions is the correct one … [I]t might be supposed that we could decide on one of these … descriptions as the correct one by reference to the intentions of the speaker. In many cases, however, the speaker will have no such determinate intention. If the speaker is asked which Russellian description(s) was implicit in his utterance of ‘the table’ he will not ordinarily be able to answer … Surely it is implausible in the extreme to suppose in fact one of these descriptions captures what the speaker intended but that we cannot, even with the help of the speaker himself, come to know which description that is” (247). Devitt and Kim Sterelny called this the Principled Basis problem (1999: 48). By contrast, Devitt’s is an error and ignorance argument. Here I am indebted to an anonymous referee for stressing the difference between Wettstein’s and Devitt’s arguments. See also Schiffer (1995).

  18. Kripke (1979: 134) considers this the clearest objection against descriptivism about proper names.

  19. See Reimer (1998) for more elaborated examples of ignorance.

  20. Marga Reimer has pressed the same point as Devitt.

  21. Schoubye (2012) challenged the argument from convention. For a reply, see Pupa (2018).

  22. One should not forget that Gödelian completions can be used to defend a Fregean point of view on referential descriptions rather than a Russellian approach. As Paul Elbourne wrote “[t]he first time that something like Neale’s (2004) suggestion was proposed as an account of referential usage was perhaps when I myself briefly considered it in a 2001 conference paper. In Elbourne (2001) my main concern was to explain the phenomenon of bound definite descriptions, which I did by proposing that definite descriptions had an extra argument slot for an index, with indices being interpreted as predicates like ‘= x’, with ‘x’ bound by a higher operator, or ‘= a’, with a a logically proper name … I did endorse giving a separate semantics to referentially used descriptions in this way in my first book … My concern, however, was never to rescue the Russellian theory of definite descriptions … my concern was to give a rendering of the referential/attributive distinction in a Fregean theory of descriptions” (2013: 110 fn. 6).

  23. Thanks to Andrea Bianchi for pressing me on this point.

  24. Kripke reported that the late Gareth Evans once mentioned to him “in conversation that Russell’s theory predicts more ambiguities than actually occur, and this remark was meant to be an objection to Russell” (2005: 243). My objection to Neale’s proposal is in the same spirit as Evans’ objection to Russell. Kripke pointed out that “any defender of Russell must concede that in ordinary language the predicted scope ambiguities don’t all occur and are subject to restrictive conditions. There are various restrictions, expressions such as ‘a certain’ that often call for a wider scope, and perhaps ‘scope islands.’ Already in Principia Russell mentions that in ‘the King of France is not bald’, the wide scope interpretation is to be preferred … If we wish to be charitable, we must commit him to the view that not all scopes are allowed in English” (2005: 244). If we wish to be charitable to Neale, we must commit him to the same view. However, if we commit Neale to the view that with referential descriptions negation never takes wide scope then it becomes even less clear what advantage his proposal has over Devitt’s.

  25. Thanks to an anonymous referee for mentioning this possibility.

  26. See Devitt (1974: 191–192).

  27. I agree that the causal link determines the semantics of referential descriptions. I do not believe, however, that the link is part of the meaning of definite descriptions used referentially. In fact, in giving the semantics of definite descriptions I avoid talking of their meaning altogether. For such an approach to the semantics of definite descriptions and other linguistic expressions, see Almog (2004).

  28. Martí (2008) defends the first claim and rejects the second. I defend both claims in Capuano 2012 and Capuano 2016  respectively.

  29. Whether Kripke captured Geach’s point of view on proper names is beside the point of this paper.

  30. Thanks to Bianchi for stressing this last point.

  31. My claim does not depend on chromosome XY being the sole factor that determines whether someone is a male or a female. Let biologists tell us what the underlying biology of sex is. I have no doubt that it is more complex than simply having chromosome XY or XX. I used chromosome simply because for a long time it was believed that having chromosome XY or XX determined one’s biological sex. One can modify the example according to the latest biology. The point is simply that one might appear to be of one sex and be of another, without people ever realizing it and use a descriptive phrase to refer to that individual despite the fact that the individual referred to does not possess the property corresponding to the nominal in the definite description.

  32. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82awa_Walasiewicz.

  33. Bianchi raised the following concern: Moby Dick is a novel and one might argue that, because of this, “the dead fish” does not refer to anything. This is true but one can easily imagine the passage to appear in a newspaper reporting some true events. After all, although Moby Dick is a fictional work Melville took inspiration from real-life whaling horror-stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick#Whaling_sources.

  34. Claiming that at the time of Melville’s writing whales were indeed considered fish and the sentence “whales are fish” was true makes it very hard to explain that it was an empirical discovery that whales are mammals and not fish.

  35. For a detailed discussion of Devitt’s understanding of the distinction and its differences with Kripke’s see Bianchi (2019).

  36. I am inclined to believe that something along the lines of what Devitt says must be right about linguistic conventions. However, I am not committed on this point. For his view on conventions, see Devitt (forthcoming).

  37. See Devitt (2015: 115–116).

  38. “I think … that most uses of definites are of ‘incomplete’ ones … I think also that almost all those uses are referential. All in all, setting aside superlatives and anaphoric uses, I’d guess that the vast majority of uses of definites are referential” (Devitt 2007: 10). “[T]he preponderant use of definite descriptions is referential” (Kaplan 2012: 152).

  39. I'd like to thank Andrea Bianchi and Michael Devitt for their comments to previous drafts of this paper.

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    Antonio Capuano

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Capuano, A. Reference and incomplete descriptions. Philos Stud 178, 1669–1687 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01506-y

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