Strawson On Referring
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ShaughanLavine - 11 Sep 2005
What is Russell's goal in giving an analysis? Solving puzzles. What goes wrong in the puzzles? In each case, we get incorrect truth values. So, it may be fair to say that Russell is looking for the truth conditions of the sentences he is analyzing.
If that is correct, Strawson has no complaint: he nearly grants that Russell gets the truth conditions correct. (They are at least necessary conditions. 43 And he doesn't dispute that they are sufficient.)
So what is Strawson complaining about? Strawson starts "we very commonly use..." Russell starts by defining "denoting phrase" and then says "the subject of denoting is of very great importance..."
Russell writes about propositions. Strawson about sentences and their use. Russell takes a name to refer to a single object; Strawson points out that there are a lot of Johns.
Strawson's complaint is legitimate because Russell's analysis "is still widely accepted among logicians as giving a correct account of the use of such expressions in ordinary language." 41
So, Strawson is concerned with getting English right, with all of its vagaries.
Again, Russell gives a list of denoting phrases, and "the present King of France" is on it. Strawson notes that in the sentence "George Bush is the present King of France," "the present King of France" is obviously not a denoting phrase in the sense Russell intends.
Strawson distinguishes
- sentence
- use of sentence
- utterance of sentence
He makes a similar distinction for uniquely referring expressions, but it is pretty clear that the distinction is far more general, and that he intends it to be.
He is interested in sentences, not propositions. One sentence can be
used to say many things. For example, I am here, said by me, now, ... . The same for "The present King of France is wise" said during the reign of Louis XIV and that of Louis XV. It is possible to use a sentence in the same way more than once. Thus, two different utterances of "The present King of France is wise" said during the reign of Louis XIV are used in the same way.
What a sentence is used to express depends not only on the sentence but on the context of use. David Kaplan actually works out a detailed semantic theory along the lines suggested.
Sentences are what have meanings. Thus, the meaning cannot change between uses. Thus, "the present King of France" said during the reign of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and now does
not change meaning. Uses as described, of course, mention or refer to different things, but that is a separate issue.
Thus, whether an expression is meaningful is quite independent of whether the expression can be used to refer in some context.
An expression can only be used in its primary way when, in that use, it refers. Thus, when someone uses an expression in its primary way, the user must take the use of the expression to refer. Nonetheless, the use of the expression does not assert that the use refers. It, in a peculiar sense, "implies" that.