Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Assistant professor of philosophy department, University of Isfahan
Abstract
According to Russell’s (1905) definite description theory, the content of a sentence such as ‘the present king of France is bald’ can be presented by the logical form of the sentence, that is, ‘there is exactly one thing which is the king of France and the thing is bald’. This paper has a modest aim to consider specific evidence against Russell’s theory. In order to challenge this theory, we will first argue that if one in a situation in which France does not have king asserts that ‘the present king of France is bald’ and in another situation one asserts the logical form of the sentence, our judgment will be different about their truth values (call it ‘the disparity problem’). We will then consider the question that whether proponent of Russell’s definite description can explain the disparity problem or not. On behalf of proponent of Russell’s definite description, and on the basis of Grice's (1970) distinction between speaker meaning and sentence meaning, we will propose an explanation for the disparity problem; it also should be mentioned that the explanation is already endorsed by some proponents of Russell’s definite description (e.g. Sainsbury (1979, 1991); Morris (2003)). I will however argue that the explanation is not plausible. My argument will leave Russell’s theory in an un-defensible position in the sense that it shows Gricean defense against disparity problem is not plausible.
Keywords
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