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Descriptions, Indexicals, and Speaker Meaning

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Concepts of Meaning

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 92))

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Abstract

Perhaps a philosopher’s worst nightmare is discovering that his or her view on a certain topic leads to a dilemma. The dilemma that will be the focus of this paper is directed against a philosopher who holds the following three claims. First, Bertrand Russell’s Theory of Descriptions, or some modified version thereof, explains what is literally stated for all uses of definite descriptions, including complete and incomplete definite descriptions.’ According to this theory, no literal utterance of a sentence of the form, “The F is G”, is semantically ambiguous, regardless of how the speaker uses “the F”. The distinction between a referential use and an attributive use of a definite description is therefore not semantically significant; it is at best a pragmatic distinction. Second, when a speaker utters a sentence of the form, “The F is G”,and uses “the F” literally and referentially, she means an object-dependent proposition involving the object she referred to (if any), and she also stated some description-theoretic proposition. A Gricean-type of account can be given for how speakers are able to use definite descriptions, which have semantic quantificational structure, to mean certain object-dependent propositions. Third, indexical expressions are directly referential linguistic devices; they are not semantically equivalent to descriptions.3 I will call anyone who holds all three claims a “Russellian”.4

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Authors
  1. Reinaldo Elugardo
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. FB: Gesellschafts- wissenschaften, Projekt: Protosociology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, 60054, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Gerhard Preyer

  2. Projekt: Protosociology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Brunnenstraße 5, 35708, Haiger, Germany

    Georg Peter

  3. Spessartstr. 17a, 93057, Regensburg, Germany

    Maria Ulkan

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Elugardo, R. (2003). Descriptions, Indexicals, and Speaker Meaning. In: Preyer, G., Peter, G., Ulkan, M. (eds) Concepts of Meaning. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0197-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0197-6_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-6300-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-0197-6

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