PHIL 415 Lecture Notes - Definite Description
22 Dec 2012
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Wants to discuss language as it is and how we use it. Not just trying to explain ordinary language, but believes that the philosophical explanation for how language works is to be sought in our intuition about how language works. Frege held that all names must be tied to descriptions (it is the description that gives the sense of the name). Hence, the name is implicitly associated with the description. Russell doesn"t hold this for logically proper names, but he does hold this for most of what we call names. He thought those should be replaced by descriptions. On the other hand, russell held that proper names always have a denotation, and their only function is to denote. Names really act as a form of labelling, something that is glued onto an object. Hence, both frege and russell believed that names are to be tied to descriptions. Frege doesn"t think that any names only denote.
