Keith Donnellan
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Donnellan argues that Russell and Strawson's theories of definite descriptions fail to account for the dual functions that definite descriptions can serve. Descriptions can be used attributively, to state something about whoever or whatever fits the description, or referentially, to enable the audience to pick out a specific person or thing that the speaker wants to talk about. Russell's theory only accounts for the attributive use, while Strawson's theory accommodates the referential use but fails when nothing fits the description. The key difference is that in a referential use, the speaker can successfully refer to something even if the description does not correctly apply, while Russell and Strawson assume the truth is affected if nothing fits the description. According to
Keith Donnellan
- 1. REFERENCE AND DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS KEITH DONNELLAN DENMARK HUGO
- 2. INTRODUCTION Definite descriptions, I shall argue, have two possible functions. They are used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about, but they are also used quite differently. Moreover, a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way. The failure to deal with this duality of function obscures the genuine referring use of definite descriptions. The best- known theories of definite descriptions, those of Russell and Strawson, I shall suggest are both guilty of this. Before discussing this distinction in use, I will mention some features of these to which it is especially relevant.
- 3. ASSUMPTIONS OF DONNELLAN Donnellan thinks that both Russell and Strawson make two false assumptions, and that by rejecting these assumptions we can solve a number of problems with both theories which emerge in the course of the paper. The first assumption is that… “We can ask how a definite description functions in a sentence independently of a particular occasion on which it is used.”
- 4. ASSUMPTIONS OF DONNELLAN Donnellan thinks that there is a very basic problem with the way that Russell and Strawson attempt to give an account of the meanings of descriptions; both of them – and we’ve seen this with Russell - attempt to show how descriptions contribute to the meanings of sentences. But he does not focus on how descriptions contribute to the meanings of sentences on particular occasions of the use of those sentences.
- 5. ASSUMPTIONS OF DONNELLAN The second assumption Donnellan wants to call into question is that… “In many cases a person who uses a definite description can be said (in some sense) to presuppose or imply that something fits the description. . . . Both Russell and Strawson assume that where the presupposition or implication is false, the truth value of what the speaker said is affected.”
- 6. ASSUMPTIONS OF DONNELLAN That is, both Russell and Strawson assume that whenever a speaker utters a sentence of the form ‘The F is G’, what they say is not true if there is no thing which is F. As we’ll see, these two assumptions are related in Donnellan’s mind. For, he thinks, if Russell and Strawson had paid more attention to the interpretation of sentences containing definite descriptions on particular occasions of use, they would have seen that there are two distinct uses of definite descriptions, and that on one of these uses, there is no such requirement for the truth of the sentence that anything satisfy the description ‘the F.’
- 7. TWO USES OF DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS Donnellan argues that neither Russell nor Strawson I right. Each is partly right, because each focuses on just of two different uses of definite descriptions. And spite of their opposition, they share some false assumptions in common. ATTRIBUTIVE USE AND REFERENTIAL USE
- 8. ATTRIBUTIVE USE A speaker who uses a definite description attributively in an assertion states something about whoever or whatever is the so- and- so. An illustration of the difference: “Smith’s murderer is insane.” Attributive: the speaker says this without having any particular person in mind, basing his claim solely on the particularly brutal manner in which Smith has been murdered.
- 9. REFERENTIAL USE “A speaker who uses a definite description referentially in an assertion … uses the description to enable his audience to pick out whom or what he is talking about and states something about that person or thing” An illustration of the difference: “Smith’s murderer is insane.” Referential: Jones has been charged with the murder and has been put on trial, where his behavior is distinctly odd. The speaker (having Jones in mind) utters the same sentence.
- 10. CRITICISM OF RUSSELL AND STRAWSON Against Russell: Russell’s theory applies at most to the attributive use of descriptions. He fails to account for the referential use. So Russell gets one of the two uses (the attributive), but misses the other. Against Strawson: Strawson’s theory accommodates the referential use, but “it goes too far in this direction”. For it fails to allow for the referential use to occur successfully even though nothing satisfies the description. So Strawson gets the referential use only partly right.
- 11. THEIR COMMON ERROR… Both Russell and Strawson agree that when nothing fits the description, truth- value is affected. That is, if there is no ϕ, the truth- value of an utterance of a sentence of the form ‘the ϕ is ψ’ will be affected. For Russell, the sentence is false; for Strawson, it is neither true nor false. Donnellan counters that Russell and Strawson are both wrong about the referential use. That is, a speaker may use ‘the ϕ is ψ’ to say something true even though nothing satisfies the description ‘the ϕ’ (i.e., there is no ϕ).
- 12. THE KEY IDEA… The key idea: one may succeed in referring to something by using a description that does not correctly describe the thing one is referring to. Example: consider again the referential use of “Smith’s murderer is insane” considered above. If it turns out that Jones is not guilty — indeed, that Smith was not actually murdered at all — then the description ‘Smith’s murderer’ does not apply to anyone. Neither Jones nor anyone else fits the description. Nevertheless, Donnellan claims, the speaker has used the sentence to say something true: he has said of Jones, the man he referred to by means of the (inappropriate, as it turns out) description ‘Smith’s murderer’, that he is insane. And if Jones is, indeed, insane, the speaker has said something true.
- 13. FURTHER ANALYSIS… Attributive use. We come across Smith, foully murdered. From the manner of killing and Smith’s good character, we might claim “The murderer of Smith is insane.” This might be paraphrased as the claim that whoever killed Smith must have been insane. Referential use. We are at the trial of Jones, who has been accused of murdering Smith. One the basis of his behavior, we might claim “The murderer of Smith is insane.” In this case it is the speaker’s intention not to use the description to refer to whoever satisfies some condition, but to pick out that one individual: Jones.
- 14. FURTHER ANALYSIS… How are these uses supposed to be different? Donnellan isolates a number of points of difference; here I want to focus on two. Difference 1. In attributive uses of ‘The F is G’, if nothing is F, then nothing has been said to be G: nothing is referred to. But in referential uses of ‘The F is G’, something will still have been said to be G, even if that thing is not Difference 2. In both uses of ‘The F is G’, it is in some sense presupposed or implied that something is F. But in referential uses, it is implied that some particular object o is F, whereas in attributive uses it is implied that something or other is F without this being implied of any particular object.
- 16. WHAT MAKES A USE ATTRIBUTIVE OR REFERENTIAL? We already know that the referential/attributive distinction cannot be explained in terms of a distinction between two different kinds of descriptions: after all, as Donnellan has argued, one and the same description may be used referentially in one context and attributively in another.
- 17. WHAT MAKES A USE ATTRIBUTIVE OR REFERENTIAL? A natural suggestion is that what makes the difference is whether the speaker has any beliefs about whether a particular individual satisfies the description. This seems to fit the Smith’s murderer cases; in the attributive use, the speaker does not have any beliefs that a particular individual is the murderer of Smith, whereas in the attributive use (in the courtroom) he does. But, as Donnellan points out (in §IV), this is not quite right. The person standing by Smith’s body could have had beliefs about who the murderer was, and still used the description attributively; and someone might even believe that someone other than Jones murdered Smith, while still using the description referentially to pick Jones out.
- 18. WHAT MAKES A USE ATTRIBUTIVE OR REFERENTIAL? Rather, it seems clear that, as Donnellan suggests, it is the intentions of a speaker which make the difference between referential and attributive uses of a definite description. After all, the intuitive way to explain the distinction in the first place is that referential uses are characterized by speakers intending to use the description to single out a particular individual about whom they wish to say something. “In general, whether or not a definite description is used referentially or attributively is a function of the speaker’s intentions in a particular case.” As Donnellan puts the matter,