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[to appear in On Descriptions: Semantic and Pragmatic Perspectives, Anne Bezuidenhout & Marga Reimer, eds., Oxford University Press]

Descriptions: Points of Reference

KENT BACH

kbach@sfsu.edu

CONTENTS

Introduction

I. Referring and Describing

Point 1. Names and descriptions can both be used merely to indicate what we are

speaking about.

Point 2. We generally choose the least informative sort of expression whose use

will still enable the hearer to identify the individual we wish to refer to.

Point 3. In many cases, using a description may be the only way to refer to

something.

Point 4. Using a description to refer identifies by implicitly conveying an identity.

Point 5. The distinctive quantificational character of definite descriptions helps

explain how and why they can readily be used to refer, because it plays a

key role in their referential use.

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II. Referring by Describing

Point 6. With a specific use of an indefinite description, one is not referring but

merely alluding to something.

Point 7. One can describe a (singular) proposition without being in a position to

grasp it.

Point 8. One can describe (single out) an individual without actually referring to it.

Point 9. Descriptive 'reference' is not genuine reference.

Point 10. Various kinds of pseudo-reference are not to be confused for the real

thing.

III. The Pragmatic Status of the Referential-Attributive Distinction

Point 11. Various contrasts may seem to capture the referential-attributive

distinction, but only one really does.

Point 12. Incomplete definite descriptions pose no real threat to Russell's theory.

Point 13. Definite descriptions do not have referential meanings.

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Introduction

Russell (1905) made a compelling case that descriptions, definite as well as indefinite,

are devices of quantification, not referring phrases. Strawson (1950) and Donnellan

(1966) pointed out that definite descriptions can be used to refer. And even indefinite

descriptions can be used to refer. All this is old hat. If 'On Denoting', 'On Referring',

and 'Reference and Definite Descriptions' had not provoked decades of debate,

philosophers might have just thought it obvious that the mere fact that an expression

can be used to refer does not show that it is inherently a referring expression, an

expression that itself refers. After all, there is an obvious need for a distinction

between linguistic meaning and speaker's meaning, and the distinction between

linguistic reference and speaker's reference is just a special case of that (Kripke 1977,

263). Invoking this distinction does not, of course, tell us which sorts of expressions

are inherently referring expressions and which are merely capable of being used to

refer, but it is enough to suggest that a special reason is needed to support the claim

that descriptions, which obviously can be used in nonreferring ways and which have

the syntactic earmarks of quantifier phrases, nevertheless have referential readings.

Consider the sentence, 'The discoverer of X-rays was bald'. It is one thing for a

speaker to be able to use the sentence to convey the singular proposition that R–ntgen

was bald and quite another for the sentence itself to express that proposition. The mere

fact that descriptions can be used to refer does not provide much support for the claim

that when so used they are semantically referential. After all, there are many things

expressions can be used to do that have non-semantic explanations. For example, so-

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called rhetorical questions ('Why are you so lazy?') are statements made using

interrogative sentences. No one would seriously suggest that the interrogative form has

an additional declarative meaning. Indeed, it is because a rhetorical question involves

the utterance of an interrogative sentence whose semantics accounts for its literal use

to ask a genuine question that it has its force: it is taken as a statement and is intended

by the speaker to be taken as such, precisely because the answer to the question is

obvious. Various strong pragmatic arguments have challenged the claim that definite

and even indefinite descriptions sometimes function semantically as referring

expressions.i[1] Indeed, Jeff King (2001) has recently made a compelling case that the

best candidate for referential descriptions, namely demonstrative descriptions (of the

form 'that F'), are quantificational, even in their paradigmatic referential use. The key

points of Part I combine to provide new reason for supposing that definite descriptions

are not semantically referential. The main point is that they can readily be used to refer

precisely because they are quantifier phrases of a certain sort.

Part II addresses the question of what it takes to use a description to refer. One can

use a description to refer to something one believes to satisfy the description, but what

if one is not in a position to think of that individual, if, as Russell would say, one

'knows it only by description'? Can one refer to it anyway? If descriptions are

quantificational and propositions expressed by sentences containing them are general,

how can one use such a sentence to convey a singular proposition involving whichever

individual satisfies the description in question? Also, there is the intermediate case

(between referential and merely quantificational uses) of the so-called specific use of

indefinite descriptions. It illustrates one way to fall short of referring to an object

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(others will be discussed too): one indicates that one has a certain individual in mind

without indicating which individual it is. In short, one merely alludes to it.

Part III revisits Donnellan's referential-attributive distinction in light of the

preceding points. I will review various ways in which it has been characterized, by

Donnellan himself and by others, and try to pin down what the distinction amounts to.

Also, I will take up the apparent problem for Russell's theory posed by incomplete

definite descriptions, whether used referentially or attributively. These are

descriptions, such as 'the table', that are not uniquely satisfied. There are too many

tables (more than one is enough) for a sentence like 'the table is covered with books' to

be made true in the way that Russell's theory requires. Finally, I will rebut Michael

Devitt's new arguments (this volume) that descriptions have referential meanings.

Addressing these many issues requires taking a position on what it involves to

refer to a particular thing (our discussion will be limited to reference to spatio-

temporal things) and on what it takes to think of one. I will assume a certain

conception of singular reference, either by a linguistic expression or by a speaker.ii[2]

When reference is made by the noun phrase itself, indicative sentences in which it

occurs express singular propositions, at least when they express a proposition at

all.iii[3] The referent of the expression is a constituent of that proposition. When a

speaker refers, he uses a noun phrase to indicate which thing he is trying to convey a

singular proposition about. He can use a noun phrase to refer his audience to

something even if the noun phrase does not itself refer.

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I also assume a certain conception of singular thought. In my view, we can have

singular thoughts about objects we are perceiving, have perceived, or have been

informed of (Bach 1987/1994, ch. 1). We do so by means of non-descriptive, 'de re

modes of presentation', which connect us, whether immediately or remotely, to an

object. The connection is causal-historical, but the connection involves a chain of

representations originating with a perception of the object. Which object one is

thinking of is determined relationally, not satisfactionally. That is, the object one's

thought is about is determined not by satisfying a certain description but by being in a

certain relation to that very thought (token). We cannot form a singular thought about

an individual we can 'think of' only under a description. So, for example, we cannot

think of the first child born in the 22nd century because we are not suitably connected

to that individual. Strictly speaking, we cannot think of it but merely that there will

exist a unique individual of a certain sort. Our thought 'about' that child is general in

character, not singular. Similarly, we cannot think of the first child born in the fourth

century BC either. However, we can think of Aristotle, because we are connected to

him through a long chain of communication. We can think of him even though we

could not have recognized him, just as I can think of the masked man I recently saw

rob my bank. Nor does being able to think of an individual require being able to

identify that individual by means of a uniquely characterizing description.iv[4]

So on my conception of singular thought, there must be a representational

connection, however remote and many-linked, between thought and object. A more

restrictive view, though not nearly as restrictive as Russell's, would limit this

connection to personal acquaintance (via perception and perception-based memory),

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and would disallow singular thoughts about unfamiliar objects. A more liberal view,

though one I would contest, would allow singular thought via uniquely identifying

descriptions. In any case, although I am assuming the above conception of singular

thought, the questions to be asked and the distinctions to be drawn, such as the

distinction between referring to something and merely alluding to or merely singling

out something, do not essentially depend on that conception (of course, how one uses

these distinctions to divide cases does depend on one's conception). All that is required

is the assumption that one can have singular thoughts about at least some objects one

has not perceived and that only certain sorts of relations one can bear to an object put

one in a position to have singular thoughts about it. What is essential to our questions

is the above conception of singular reference: speaker's reference and the hearer's full

understanding of it can be achieved only by way of a singular thought of the object.

I. Referring and Describing

Descriptions can be used to refer. What does that involve? Quite a bit. What does it

show the semantics of descriptions? Not much.

Point 1. Names and descriptions can both be used merely to indicate what we are

speaking about.

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We commonly talk about particular persons, places, or things.v[5] We refer to them

and ascribe properties to them. In so doing, we are able to accommodate the fact that

an individual can change over time, that our conception of it can also change over

time, that we can be mistaken in our conception of it, and that different people's

conceptions of the same individual can differ. All this is possible if in thinking of and

in referring to an individual we are not constrained to represent it as having certain

properties.

It has long been thought that proper names, along with pronouns, are the linguistic

devices best suited for doing this.vi[6] As Mill wrote, the function of proper names is

not to convey general information but rather 'to enable individuals to be made the

subject of discourse'; names are 'attached to the objects themselves, and are not

dependent on ... any attribute of the object' (1872, 20). According to Russell, a proper

name, at least when 'used directly', serves 'merely to indicate what we are speaking

about; [the name] is no part of the fact asserted ... : it is merely part of the symbolism

by which we express our thought' (1919, 175).vii[7] Russell treated definite

descriptions differently, of course, since the object a description describes 'is not part

of the proposition [expressed by the sentence] in which [the description] occurs' (170).

Whereas a (genuine) name introduces its referent into the proposition, a description

introduces a certain quantificational structure, not its denotation. The denotation of a

description is thus semantically inert -- the semantic role of a description does not

depend on what, if anything, it denotes. In contrast, a proper name 'directly

designat[es] an individual which is its meaning' (174).viii[8] Nevertheless, Russell

allowed that proper names can not only be 'used as names' but also 'as descriptions',

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adding that 'there is nothing in the phraseology to show whether they are being used in

this way or as names' (175).

Interestingly, Russell's distinction regarding uses of names is much the same as

Donnellan's famous distinction regarding uses of definite descriptions (see Part III). If

the property expressed by the description's matrix (the 'F' in 'the F') enters 'essentially'

into the statement made, the description is used attributively;ix[9] when a speaker uses

a description referentially, the speaker uses it 'to enable his audience to pick out whom

or what he is talking about and states something about that person or thing' (1966,

285). Donnellan's distinction clearly corresponds to Russell's. Whereas an attributive

use of a definite description involves stating a general proposition, as with the use of a

proper name 'as a description', a referential use involves stating a singular proposition,

just as when a proper name is used 'as a name'. And just as Russell comments that

'there is nothing in the phraseology' to indicate in which way a name is being used, so

Donnellan observes that 'a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence

may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way' (281).

If Russell and Donnellan are right, respectively, about proper names and definite

descriptions, then expressions of both sorts can be used referentially (as a name, to

indicate what we are speaking about) or attributively (as a description). This leaves

open whether either sort of expression is semantically ambiguous or whether, in each

case, one use corresponds to the semantics of the expression and the other use is

accountable pragmatically from that use.x[10] For Russell a definite description,

whichever way it is used, is inherently a quantifier phrase, whereas a 'logically proper'

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name is a referring term.xi[11] Donnellan was evidently unsure whether to regard the

referential-attributive distinction as indicating a semantic ambiguity or merely a

pragmatic one.xii[12] But at least this much is clear: regardless of the semantic status

of the distinction between using a description referentially (as a name) or attributively

(as a description), there is a definite difference between asserting a singular

proposition and asserting a general one.xiii [13]

Point 2. We generally choose the least informative sort of expression whose use

will still enable the hearer to identify the individual we wish to refer to.

Suppose you want to refer to your mother-in-law. In some circumstances, it may be

enough to use the pronoun 'she'. The only semantic constraint on what 'she' can be

used to refer to is that the referent be female (ships and countries excepted). So its use

provides only the information that the intended referent is female. If it is to be used

successfully to refer the hearer to a certain female, there must be some female that the

hearer can reasonably suppose the speaker intends to be referring to. If out of the blue

you said, 'She is unforgettable', intending with 'she' to refer to your beloved mother-in-

law, you could not reasonably expect to be taken to be referring to her. However, if

she were already salient, by being visually present and prominent or by having just

been mentioned, or you made her salient in some way, say by pointing to a picture of

her, then using 'she' would suffice. In other circumstances, you would have to use

some more elaborate expression. For example, to distinguish her from other women in

a group you could use 'that woman', with stress on 'that' and an accompanying

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demonstration. Or, assuming the hearer knows her by name, you could refer to her by

name. Otherwise, you would have to use a definite description, say 'my beloved

mother-in-law'.

This example suggests that a speaker, in choosing an expression to use to refer the

hearer to the individual he has in mind, is in effect answering the following question:

given the circumstances of utterance, the history and direction of the conversation, and

the mutual knowledge between me and my audience, how informative an expression

do I need to use to enable them to identify the individual I have in mind? Note that

informativeness here can depend not only the semantic information encoded by the

expression but on the information carried by the fact that it is being used.

Some linguists have suggested that which sort of expression one must use depends

on the degree of 'givenness' (or 'familiarity' or 'accessibility') of the intended referent.

Giving my own gloss (in parentheses) on the well-known scale proposed by Gundel,

Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993), we can distinguish being:

+ in focus (being the unique item under discussion or current center of mutual

attention)

+ activated (being an item under discussion or being an object of mutual

awareness)

+ familiar (being mutually known)

+ uniquely identifiable (satisfying a definite description)xiv[14]

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Notice that in the first two cases the referent is already an object of mutual awareness,

that in the third case it is at least mutually known, and that only in the last case may it

be something unfamiliar to the hearer. So we should keep in mind the distinction

between keeping the hearer's attention on something he is already attending to, calling

his attention to something he is already familiar with, and bringing to his attention

something unfamiliar to him.

Gundel et al. plausibly claim that correlated with each status is a type of expression

most appropriately used to refer to items with that status:

+ in focus: unstressed pronominals (and, in some languages, zero pronominals)

+ activated: stressed third-person pronouns and simple demonstratives

+ familiar: demonstrative phrases

+ uniquely identifiable: definite descriptions

For some reason Gundel et al. do not discuss first- and second-person pronouns and

proper names. The reference of singular first- and second-person pronouns is

determined by linguistic role (the speaker, the hearer), but with 'we' and plural 'you'

there must be a contextually identifiable constraint on the relevant group. As for

proper names, generally it is appropriate to use them only if one's audience is familiar

with the name and knows its bearer by name. Otherwise an introduction is in order.

Now Gundel et al. suggest that different degrees of givenness are not merely

associated with but, as a matter of linguistic convention, are encoded by different types

of referring expressions. Perhaps they suggest this because, taking their scale to

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concern the cognitive status of representations in the mind of the hearer, they think this

status has to be linguistically marked if it is to play a cognitive role. As I see it,

however, this scale concerns the mutual (between speaker and hearer) cognitive status

of the intended referent. After all, in using an expression to refer the speaker aims to

ensure that the hearer thinks of the very object the speaker is thinking of, and what

matters is that the expression used to refer, and the fact that the speaker is using it,

provide the hearer with enough information to figure out what he is intended to take

the speaker to be thinking of, hence to think of it himself. This is why there is a

parsimonious alternative to Gundel et al.'s conventionalist view: the different degrees

of givenness associated with different types of referring expressions are not encoded at

all; rather, the correlation is a by-product of the interaction between semantic

information that is encoded by these expressions and general facts about rational

communication.xv[15] On this, the null hypothesis, it is because different expressions

are more or less informative that the things they can be used to refer to are less or

more given or accessible. That is, the more accessible the referent is, the less

information needs to be carried by the expression used to refer to it to enable the

hearer to identify it.

Notice that not only is it enough to use the least informative sort of expression

needed to enable your audience to identify the individual you have in mind, it is

misleading to use a more informative one. For example, in telling a story about a

particular individual, it is always sufficient, once the individual is introduced, to use a

personal pronoun -- provided, of course, that no other individual of the same gender

has been introduced in the meantime. There are stylistic or other literary reasons to use

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their name or a definite description every so often, but unless it is obvious that this is

the name or a description of the individual in question, it would be inferred that

reference is being made to some other individual. This inference would be made on the

charitable assumption that one is not being needlessly informative (and violating

Grice's (1989, 26) second maxim of quantity).

Point 3. In many cases, using a description may be the only way to refer to

something.

Suppose you want to refer to some thing (or someone). Suppose it is not perceptually

present, has not just come up in the conversation, and is not otherwise salient. Suppose

that it does not have a name or that you are unaware of its name or think your audience

is unaware. Then you cannot use an indexical, a demonstrative (pronoun or phrase), or

a proper name to refer to it. If you want to refer to it, what are you going to do? Unless

you can find it or a picture of it to point to, you need to use a linguistic expression,

some sort of singular noun phrase (what else?), to call it to your audience's attention.

You must choose one that will provide your audience with enough information to

figure out, partly on the supposition that you intend them to figure this out, which

object you're talking about. Your only recourse is to use a description.

This raises the question, when you use a description, how does your audience

know that you are referring to something and expressing a singular proposition, rather

than making a general statement and expressing an existential or a uniqueness

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proposition? Although the presence of a description does not signal that you are

referring -- semantically, descriptions are not referring expressions -- what you are

saying might not be the sort of thing that you could assert on general grounds, that is,

as not based on knowledge of some particular individual (see Ludlow and Neale

1991). This will certainly be true whenever it is mutually evident which individual

satisfies the description in question and what is being said regarding the individual that

satisfies the description can only be supposed to be based on evidence about that

individual. For example, if my wife says to me, 'The DVD player is broken', I can't not

take her to be talking about the actual DVD player of ours. On the other hand, if before

we decided on a DVD player she said, 'The DVD player had better not cost more than

$500', clearly she would be making a general statement pertaining to whichever DVD

player we buy (notice that the corresponding demonstrative description, 'that DVD

player', is usable only in the latter, non-referential case). Also, its being mutually

evident which individual satisfies a description will generally be sufficient for a

referential use, since there will usually be no reason for the hearer not to be taken as

making a singular statement about that individual. This applies especially to

descriptions of occupiers of social positions or practical roles, such as 'the boss' or 'the

freezer'. Moreover, if the description is incomplete, as in these cases, and there is no

mutually salient or obviously distinctive completion in sight, then the hearer, at least if

he is mutually familiar with the boss or freezer in question, can only take the

description as being used referentially.xvi[16] But if 'the F' is incomplete and it is

obvious that the hearer is unfamiliar with the relevant F, then a (referential) use of 'the

F' must be preceded by an introduction of the relevant F.

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Point 4. Using a description to refer identifies by implicitly conveying an identity.

In using a noun phrase to refer to a certain individual, you aim to do two things: to get

your audience to think of that individual and to take that individual to be the one you

are thinking of, hence the one you are referring to. As per Point 3, if you do not have a

name at your disposal for what you wish to refer to, and an indexical or a

demonstrative pronoun or phrase won't do the trick, the only available sort of noun

phrase left is a description. You must describe what you have in mind if you are to get

your audience to think of it too and to take you to be referring to it. You do this by

exploiting a presumed identity between the individual you wish to refer to (thought of

by means of the mental counterpart of a singular term) and that which satisfies the

description (perhaps as contextually restricted -- see Point 12). To appreciate how this

works, let's take the perspective of the audience and ask what is involved in

recognizing the intention behind a referential use. We should keep in mind that

recognizing a referential intention is part of recognizing a communicative intention

and that this involves looking for a plausible explanation for the fact that speaker said

what he said, partly on the Gricean basis that he intends one to do so (see Bach &

Harnish 1979, esp. 4-8, 12-15, and 89-93).

According to Russell's theory, a sentence of the form 'The F is G' expresses a

general (uniqueness) proposition. Then if you utter such a sentence but use the

description referentially, what you say is a general proposition but what you mean is a

singular one.xvii[17] But how and why does the hearer takes you to be doing that? So,

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for example, if you uttered, 'The mailman is dangerous', I would take you to be

asserting not a general proposition but a singular one (about the mailman, i.e., the

neighborhood mailman, our mailman). Why would I do that? Well, I am acquainted

with the mailman and presumably so are you. Besides, that a certain individual is the

mailman has nothing to do with his being dangerous. To suppose that it does would be

to take you to be stating something for which you have no evidence (you would be

violating Grice's (1989, 27) second maxim of quality). So I have no reason to suppose,

as if you were unfamiliar with the mailman, that you are making a general statement,

the content of which is independent of which man is the mailman. It is unreasonable

for me to suppose that you do not have in mind the particular man who delivers mail in

our area and that you are not basing the belief you are expressing on information or

evidence derived from him. So I have positive reason to think that you have in mind,

and intend me to think you have in mind, a certain individual who satisfies the

description you are using. Now for me to think you intend this requires my

understanding what you are saying, namely, that the mailman is dangerous, but that is

a general proposition. So in attributing to you the intention to be making a singular

statement, I am in effect explaining why you said what you said, and thereby able to

infer what you meant.

If you are using the description to refer and I am taking you to be doing so, we

must have ways of thinking of the individual in question, the mailman, in some other

way than as the mailman. Presumably we both remember him by way of a memory

image derived from seeing him. In thinking of him via that image, you take him to be

the mailman and use the description 'the mailman' to identify him for me, which

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triggers my memory of him. We both think of him, via our respective memories of

him, as being the mailman. This fits with how Mill describes the functioning of a

proper name in thought as an 'unmeaning mark which we connect in our minds with

the idea of the object, in order that whenever the mark meets our eyes or occurs to our

thoughts, we may think of that individual object' (1972, 22). Though not 'unmeaning',

a definite description can play a similar role.

In using a description referentially, you are using it in lieu of a sign for the object.

You are not making a general statement about whatever satisfies the description but a

singular statement about some unnamed, undemonstrated, and otherwise unsalient

individual. You are thinking of a certain individual by means of the mental counterpart

of a singular term but there is no suitable linguistic singular term for you to use. In

using 'the F' (in 'the F is G') you are implicitly indicating that this individual is the F

and that it is this individual that you are stating to be G. What matters to your assertion

is that this individual is G, not that it is (the) F. So the content of the description is

inessential to what you are stating (though not to what you are saying). In effect, you

are using 'the F' to instruct the hearer to think of, and take you to be talking about the

individual that is the F.

Point 5. The distinctive quantificational character of definite descriptions helps

explain how and why they can readily be used to refer, because it plays a key role

in their referential use.

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So far as I know, no one has ever argued that the mere fact that a quantifier phrase can

be used to refer shows that it semantically refers, hence that it has a referential as well

as a quantificational meaning. No one has ever argued that because, say, 'three thugs'

might to used (say in 'Three thugs are outside') to refer to the three thugs that the

speaker knows the hearer is expecting, this phrase has a referential reading. So why

suppose that descriptions have such readings? Why isn't it enough simply to appeal the

distinction between what a speaker says and what a speaker means and, in particular,

that between linguistic reference and speaker's reference are taken into account? For

one thing, as Devitt (this volume) points out, unlike other sorts of quantifier phrases

that can be used to refer, definite descriptions are regularly are so used. This is one of

his reasons, to be rebutted in Point 13, for attributing referential meanings to definite

descriptions. However, as I will now suggest, the distinctive quantificational character

of singular definite descriptions actually helps account for the fact that, despite being

quantifier phrases, they can readily be used to refer. They are quantifier phrases of a

distinctive kind and, moreover, they imply uniqueness (besides, as Point 3 indicated,

sometimes there is no singular noun phrase of any other sort suitable or even available

to use to refer to the intended object).

Definite descriptions are quantifier phrases of a special sort. In general, sentences

of the form 'Q F is G' or 'Q Fs are G' say how many Fs are G. That is, they express

propositions whose truth requires that the set of Gs include a set of Fs of the size

specified (precisely or vaguely), by 'Q' ('one F', 'ten Fs', 'a few Fs'), and in some cases

a set of no greater size ('exactly one F', 'exactly ten Fs,' 'few Fs'). Any set of Fs of the

right size will do (universal quantifiers are a degenerate case, because there is only one

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such set). The quantifier phrase 'Q F(s)' indicates how many Fs have to be G for the

sentence to be true. Definite quantifier phrases do more than that: they indicate how

many Fs there are. In 'The nine planets have elliptical orbits', 'the nine planets'

indicates how many planets there are (nine) as well as how many must have elliptical

orbits for the sentence to be true. In 'Both authors of Principia Mathematica were

English', 'both authors of Principia Mathematica' indicates how many authors of

Principia Mathematica there were (two), in 'the inventor of television died in poverty',

'the inventor of television' indicates how many inventors of television there were

(one), etc. Even the vague 'the few surviving condors' and 'the many Enron employees'

fall, in a vague way, into this category.xviii [18]

When using a definite quantifier phrase, one is not just saying how many Fs are G,

one is effectively saying (or at least implying) how many Fs there are. When a

sentence of the form 'Q F is G' or 'Q Fs are G' contains such a quantifier phrase, there

is one particular individual or set of individuals to which the predicate ascribes a

property. This individual or set of individuals does not enter into the proposition

expressed by the sentence -- the proposition is general, not singular -- but this

proposition is made true or false by facts involving this individual or set of individuals.

Accordingly, the question can arise of which individual(s) this is. The speaker may or

may not have any idea which one(s) this is, but there is a determinate one (or set) to be

thought of. In this way the possibility of referring can arise without any special stage

setting.

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Now singular definite descriptions are a special case, for they imply

uniqueness.xix[19] Notice, however, that this uniqueness is not encoded in the

meaning of 'the'. As Richard Sharvy observed, recognizing that singular definite

descriptions have something in common with plural ones, 'the primary use of 'the' is ...

to indicate totality, implication of uniqueness is a side effect' (1980, 623). That is, it is

a kind of universal quantifier, and the side effect is the result of combining 'the' with a

nominal in the singular. Sometimes the nominal itself implies uniqueness, as with

descriptions containing superlatives ('the shortest spy') or indicative of unique

positions ('the queen of England') or accomplishments ('the inventor of the Segway').

When it does not, you may need to use 'the one F', 'the only F', or even, to forestall any

suspicion that there is more than one F, 'the one and only F'. Nevertheless, 'one' and

'only' are redundant in these phrases, since uniqueness is already implied by the

combination of singularity and totality. Just as 'both Fs' is equivalent to (the

ungrammatical) 'all two Fs', so 'the F' is equivalent to (the ungrammatical) 'all one

F'.xx[20]

Uniqueness is implied even if 'the F' is incomplete, that is, even if there is more

than one F. This does not show that the description contains some hidden modifier that

would make it complete or some phantom variable of domain restriction. The situation

is much simpler. As Point 12 explains, in using an incomplete definite description, one

is not using the description is a strictly literal way, even though one is using 'F'

literally. What one means is distinct from what one says -- it goes beyond the semantic

content of the sentence one is uttering -- since one is not making fully explicit what

one means. If one is using the description attributively, what one means is expressible

22

by some more elaborate description, e.g., of the form 'the F that is G'. If one is using it

referentially, one is referring to a certain F, an F that is salient or contextually relevant.

One is not using 'the F' to mean 'the salient F', 'the contextually relevant F', 'the F I

have in mind', or anything of the sort. Rather, it is as if there is only one F, at least for

the present purposes of the conversation. In effect, one is pretending that there is only

one F, namely the F one intends the listener to think of and to take one to have in

mind.

That an object is the unique F (or the only salient or contextually relevant F) does

not alone explain how 'the F' can be used to refer to it. There is also the fact that any

connection between the properties being the unique F and being G is irrelevant to what

you are trying to convey. Consider cases in which there is a connection, e.g., 'The next

pet I get will be a cat', said long before you have decided on a pet, or 'The next

president will be a Democrat', said before anyone has any idea which Democrats will

even be running. In cases like these you could also have included 'whatever it is' or

'whoever he is' to indicate that you don't know which individual satisfies the

description. In such cases, your audience does not have to identify some individual as

the F. In using a description referentially, however, you intend your audience to rely

on the fact that you uttered the description as a basis for figuring out which thing you

are talking about, by way of identifying what satisfies that description. To recognize

that you are doing this, the audience has to realize that the property of being F has in

itself no direct bearing on what you are trying to convey. They have to recognize that

you are using 'the F' to enable them to think of a certain individual and to instruct them

to take you to be talking about a certain individual that is the F.

23

In sum, the quantificational character of a definite description plays a role in its

referential use. The speaker thinks of a certain object, takes that object to be the F, and

uses 'the F' to refer to it. The speaker, on hearing 'the F', thinks of a certain object that

he takes to be the F, and takes that to be what the speaker is referring him to. His

thinking of that object may depend in part on the fact that it is the only plausible

candidate for what the speaker has in mind in using 'the F'. Moreover, the property of

being F plays an essential role in this process. Indeed, if the speaker uses 'the F' refers

to a certain object that isn't F, he is speaking falsely or not literally. Or he could be

exploiting the hearer's false belief that the object is F. In any case, if he uses 'the F' to

refer to an object that isn't F, then even if what he means is true, what he says is false -

- unless the actual F has the ascribed property. So consider this dialogue between two

people who watched TV one morning in May of 2002, one of whom has confused two

different gesticulating curly-haired guests:

A: The inventor the Segway, that young guy we saw on the

Today Show this morning, is very clever.

B: No, that was Jason Stanley. Dean Kamen is the inventor the

Segway, he's older, and he was on Good Morning America.

A: Oh yeah, Dean Kamen. Well, like I said, the inventor the Segway

is very clever.

24

Both of A's uses of 'the inventor of the Segway' are referential, first to Stanley and

then to Kamen. He meant two different things, even if both are true, but what he said

was the same each time, a general proposition made true or false, but not about, Dean

Kamen. In both cases he conveyed an identity (Point 4), first a false one, which B

recognized as such, and then a true one. In both cases the quantificational character of

the description was operative.

II. Referring by Describing

So far I have just assumed that to refer to something one must be in a position to have

singular thoughts about it and that the propositions one attempts to communicate in the

course of referring to it are singular with respect to it (I have assumed also that being

in a position to have a thought about a particular (spatio-temporal) thing requires being

connected to that thing, via perception, memory, or communication). The question to

be taken up now concerns whether it is necessary to be in such a position in order to

refer to something. Put it this way: can one communicate a singular proposition about

something one is not in a position to have singular thoughts about?

The following points address different aspects of this question and certain issues

underlying it. They illustrate various ways in which uses of descriptions, indefinite as

well as definite, can come close to being referential but fall short. As we have seen, in

using a description 'the F' referentially (in uttering a sentence of the form 'The F is G'),

one is trying to convey that a certain thing, to be identified as the F, is G. One is

25

communicating the singular proposition that this thing is G, so that understanding

one's utterance requires grasping that proposition. In order to appreciate how

seemingly referential uses of definite descriptions can fall short of actually being

referential, we will first take up the case of specific uses of indefinite descriptions, a

phenomenon of interest in its own right.

Point 6. With a specific use of an indefinite description, one is not referring but

merely alluding to something.

Indefinite descriptions can be used nonspecifically, referentially, or

specifically.xxi[21] In the very common nonspecific (or purely quantificational) use,

there is no indication that the speaker has any particular thing in mind, as with a likely

utterance of (1),

(1) A martini will cheer you up.

This is a clearly quantificational use of an indefinite description. No singular

proposition is being conveyed or even in the offing.

As for the referential use, it is relatively rare, as it is with quantificational phrases

generally. Consider an utterance of (2), for example, made while watching a well-

known philosopher on TV discussing how the Fed should control inflation.

(2) A philosopher thinks he's an economist.

26

It is obvious that the speaker is not making a general statement, about no philosopher

in particular. He is clearly talking about the philosopher he is seeing on TV. Perhaps

he is implicating that there is something incongruous about a philosopher pontificating

on the economy, but it is clear that he is talking about this particular philosopher.

What is distinctive about the specific use of an indefinite description is that the

speaker communicates that he has a certain individual in mind, but he is not

communicating which individual that is -- he doesn't intend you to identify it. Suppose

someone says,

(3) A famous actress will be visiting us today.

Unless he thinks this is the sort of day for a visit by a famous actress, presumably he

has a particular one in mind (he could have made this clear by including the word

'certain' (or 'particular'), as in:

(3') A certain famous actress will be visiting us today.

He could even explain why he is not specifying which actress it is:

(3a) A famous actress will be visiting us today, but I won't tell you who.

(3b) A famous actress will be visiting us today, but I want her to be a surprise.

In a specific use, the speaker indicates that he is in a position to refer to a certain

individual, but is not actually doing so. He is not identifying or trying to enable the

hearer to identify that individual -- he is merely alluding to her. He has a certain a

27

singular proposition in mind but is not trying to convey it. So what must the hearer do

in order to understand the utterance? It would seem that she must merely recognize

that the speaker has some singular proposition in mind, about a certain individual of

the mentioned sort, in this case a famous actress.xxii[22]

It might be objected that a specific use of an indefinite description is a limiting

case of a referential use, not mere allusion but what might be called 'unspecified'

reference. After all, can't the hearer, recognizing that the speaker has some individual

in mind, at least think of that individual under the description 'the individual the

speaker has in mind'? But, as Point 9 will say, descriptive 'reference' is not genuine

reference. Besides, the speaker is not really referring the hearer to that individual and,

in particular, does not intend her to think of the individual he has in mind under the

description 'the individual you (the speaker) have in mind' or in any similar way. He is

merely indicating that he has a certain unspecified individual in mind. That is, he is not

referring but merely alluding to that individual.

To appreciate why this is, consider a situation in which the speaker has one F in

mind among many and proceeds to say something not true of that individual. Suppose

a teacher has a particular student in mind when she utters (4),

(4) A student in my ethics class threatened me yesterday.

but does not specify which student (and does not expect that to be evident). Obviously

the words 'a student in my ethics class' do not refer to the student she had in mind, for

if some student threatened her but she is mistaken about which one, (4) would still be

28

true. So (4) expresses a general proposition. Even so, since she does have a certain

student in mind, could she be using this indefinite description be refer to that student?

Even if what she said is a general proposition, is what she meant a singular

proposition, about the student she had in mind? No, because the audience could

understand her perfectly well without having any idea which student she has in mind.

They understand merely that she has a certain student in mind, the one she is alluding

to. Indicating that one has a certain unspecified individual in mind does not suffice for

referring to that individual. If it did, then any way of coming to know that someone

else has some individual in mind would be enough to put one in a position to think of

and to refer to that individual oneself.

Point 7. One can describe a (singular) proposition without being in a position to

grasp it.

Our discussion of understanding a specific use of an indefinite description illustrates

that it is one thing to entertain a singular proposition and another thing merely to know

that there exists a certain such proposition. Russell's famous discussion of Bismarck

illustrates how this can be. He operates with a notoriously restrictive notion of

acquaintance, but this is not really essential to the distinction he is drawing. I agree

with Russell that we cannot have singular thoughts about individuals we 'know' only

'by description', but I will not assume that these individuals are limited to those with

which we are acquainted in Russell's highly restrictive sense. They include individuals

we are perceiving, have perceived, or have been informed of and remember. So

29

although Russell's choice of example (Bismarck) would have to be changed to be

made consistent with a much more liberal notion of acquaintance, I will use it to

illustrate his distinction.

Russell contrasts the situation of Bismarck himself, who 'might have used the

name ['Bismarck'] directly to designate [himself] ... to ma[k]e a judgment about

himself' having himself as a constituent (1917, 209), with our situation in respect to

him:

when we make a statement about something known only by description, we often

intend to make our statement, not in the form involving the description, but about

the actual thing described. That is, when we say anything about Bismarck, we

should like, if we could, to make the judgment which Bismarck alone can make,

namely, the judgment of which he himself is a constituent. [But] in this we are

necessarily defeated. ...What enables us to communicate in spite of the varying

descriptions we employ is that we know there is a true proposition concerning the

actual Bismarck and that, however we may vary the description (as long as the

description is correct), the proposition described is still the same. This proposition,

which is described and is known to be true, is what interests us; but we are not

acquainted with the proposition itself, and do not know it, though we know it is

true. (1917, 210-11)

The proposition that 'interests us' is a singular proposition, but we cannot actually

entertain it -- we can know it only by description, that is, by entertaining a general

(uniqueness) proposition which, if true, is made true by a fact involving Bismarck. But

30

this general proposition does not itself involve Bismarck, and would be thinkable even

if Bismarck never existed.

The difference in type of proposition is clear from Russell's observations about the

statement 'I met a man':

What do I really assert when I assert 'I met a man'? Let us assume, for the

moment, that my assertion is true, and that in fact I met Jones. It is clear that

what I assert is not 'I met Jones'. I may say 'I met a man, but it was not Jones'; in

that case, though I lie, I do not contradict myself, as I should do if when I say I

met a man I really mean that I met Jones. It is clear also that the person to whom

I am speaking can understand what I say, even if he is a foreigner and has never

heard of Jones.

But we may go further: not only Jones, but no actual man, enters into my

statement. This becomes obvious when the statement is false, since there is no

more reason why Jones should be supposed to enter into the statement than why

anyone else should. Indeed, the statement would remain significant, though it

could not possibly be true, even if there were no man at all. (Russell, 1918, 167-

8)

The same points apply when a definite description is being used. Imagine that Russell

met Whitcomb Judson, the man who invented the zipper. Then if Russell had said, 'I

met the inventor of the zipper, but it was not Whitcomb Judson', he would have spoken

falsely but would not have contradicted himself. And, although what Russell said in

uttering 'I met the inventor of the zipper' would have been made true only in the event

31

that he had met Judson, someone could have understood what Russell said without

ever having heard of Judson. For no actual man, Whitcomb Judson or anyone else,

entered into Russell's statement. His statement would have been the same even if

Sigismond Zipschitz had instead invented the zipper.

Point 8. One can describe (single out) an individual without actually referring to

it.

Kaplan suggests that one can use a description to refer to something even if one is not

in a position to have a singular thought about it or, as he would say, even if one is not

'en rapport' with it. He asks rhetorically, 'If pointing can be taken as a form of

describing, why not take describing as a form of pointing?' (1979, 392). I will explain

why not.

First consider the following example of Kaplan's 'liberality with respect to the

introduction of directly referring terms by means of "dthat",' which 'allow[s] an

arbitrary definite description to give us the object' (1989a, 560).xxiii [23]

(5) Dthat [the first child to be born in the 22nd century] will be bald.

'Dthat' is a directly referential term and, as Kaplan explains in his 'Afterthoughts', 'the

content of the associated description is no part of the content of the dthat-term' (1989b,

579); it is 'off the record (i.e., off the content record)' (1989b, 581). So 'dthat' is not

merely a rigidifier (like 'actual') but a device of direct reference.xxiv[24] It is the

32

actual object (if there is one) uniquely satisfying the description, and not the

description itself (i.e., the property expressed by its matrix), that gets into the

proposition.xxv[25]

Not only does Kaplan's 'liberality' impose no constraint on the definite description

to which 'dthat' can be applied to yield a directly referring term, it imposes no

epistemological constraint on what one can 'directly refer' to.xxvi[26] However, even

if we concede that any definite description can be turned into a directly referring term,

so that a sentence containing the 'dthat' phrase expresses a singular proposition about

the actual object (if there is one) that uniquely satisfies the description, it is far from

obvious that the user of such a phrase can thereby refer to, and form singular thoughts

about, that object. Kaplan seems to think this ability can be created with the stroke of a

pen.

Consider, for example, whether one can refer to the first child born in the 22nd

century. Assume that nearly one hundred years from now, this description will be

satisfied (uniquely). Then there is a singular proposition involving that individual, as

expressed by (5).xxvii[27] Without 'dthat' (and the brackets), (5) would express a

general (uniqueness) proposition, the one expressed by (5'),

(5') The first child to be born in the 22nd century will be bald.

Now can one use the description 'the first child to be born in the 22nd century'

referentially, to refer to that child? Kaplan thinks there is nothing to prevent this, that it

is a perfectly good example of pointing by means of describing. However, what

33

enables one to form an intention to refer to the individual who happens to satisfy that

description? If one is prepared to utter (5') assertively, surely one is prepared to do so

without regard to who the actual such child will be -- one's grounds are general, not

singular. For example, one might believe that the first child born in the 22nd century is

likely to be born in China and that Chinese children born around then will all be bald,

thanks to China's unrestrained use of nuclear power. But this only goes to show that

one's use of the description is likely to be taken to be attributive. Unless one were

known to be a powerful clairvoyant, one could not plausibly be supposed to have

singular grounds for making the statement. Nevertheless, Kaplan thinks that one could

intend to use the description referentially anyway, as if putting the description in

brackets and preceding it with 'dthat' could not only yield a term that refers to whoever

actually will be the first child born in the 22nd century but could enable a speaker to

refer to that child. However, it seems that one is in the same predicament as the one

Russell thought anyone other than Bismarck would be in if he wanted to refer to

Bismarck.

Would it help to have the tacit modal intention of using the description rigidly, or

even to insert the word 'actual' in the description?xxviii [28] Referring to something

involves expressing a singular proposition about it, but rigidifying the description or

including the word 'actual' would not make its use referential. Even though the only

individual whose properties are relevant to the truth or falsity of the proposition being

expressed (even if that proposition is modal) is the actual F (if it exists), still that

proposition is general, not singular. This proposition may in some sense be object-

34

dependent, but it is not object-involving. The property of being the actual may enter

into the proposition, but the actual F does not.

The upshot of these observations is that one can use a description to describe or, as

I will say, single out something without actually referring to it. The fact that there is

something that satisfies a certain definite description does not mean that one can refer

to it. If a different individual satisfied the description or you are describing a

hypothetical situation in which that would be the case, you would have singled out that

individual instead (see Point 9). Nevertheless, you can use the description just as

though you were introducing the thing that satisfies it into the discourse. You could,

for example, use pronouns to 'refer' back to it. You could say, 'The first child to be

born in the 22nd century will be bald. It will be too poor to use Rogaine'. Giving it a

name won't help. You could dub this child 'Newman 2' (just as Kaplan dubbed the first

child to be born in the twenty-first century 'Newman 1'), but this would not enable you

to refer to it or to entertain singular propositions involving it. In this, as Russell might

have said, 'we are necessarily defeated'. Even though (5') does not express a singular

proposition, the proposition which 'interests us' but which we cannot entertain, one can

still use the sentence to describe that proposition.

It might be objected that in calling this 'singling out' rather than 'referring' to an

object, I am not making a substantive claim but am merely engaging in terminological

legislation. I would reply that anyone who insists on calling this 'reference' should

either show that a singular proposition is expressed or explain why expressing a

general, object-independent proposition should be thought to involve reference. One

35

possible reason is taxonomic: if we are to maintain that indexicals and demonstratives

are inherently referring expressions and not merely expressions that are often used to

refer, allowances must be made for the fact that we sometimes use them to do what I

would describe as merely singling out an object, that is, an object that the speaker is

not in a position to have singular thoughts about. For example, one could use 'he' or

'that child' to single out the first child born in the 22nd century. But the question is

whether this counts as genuine reference. Indeed, one can use such expressions

without even singling out an individual, as in, 'If a child eats a radioactive Mars bar,

he/that child will be bald'. The mere fact that philosophers are in the habit of calling

indexicals and demonstratives 'referring expressions' does not justify doing this.

Point 9. Descriptive 'reference', or singling out, is not genuine reference.

In summing up his account of the referential-attributive distinction, Donnellan

concedes that there is a kind of reference, reference in a 'very weak sense', associated

with the attributive use of a definite description (1966, 304). Since he is contrasting

that use with the referential use, this is something of a token concession. Reference in

this very weak sense is too weak to count as genuine reference, for one is 'referring' to

whatever happens to satisfy the description, and one would be 'referring' to something

else were it to have satisfied the description instead. This is clear in modal contexts,

such as in (6):

(6) The next president, though probably a man, could be a woman.

36

The speaker is not asserting of some one possible president that he or she will

probably be a man but could be a woman, say if he had a sex-change operation before

her inauguration. In this context, the description is understood to fall within the scope

of 'could'. The speaker is allowing for different possible presidents, some male, some

female, only one of whom will actually be the next president. Surely this is not

reference, not even in a very weak sense. Even so, we might wonder whether there is a

weak sort of reference that still counts as genuine reference.

Let's call this 'reference under a description' or simply 'descriptive reference'. Can

one use a description to refer to an individual without having some independent, non-

descriptional way of thinking of and intending to refer to a certain object? That is, can

one intend to convey a singular proposition about a certain individual that one is not in

a position to have singular thoughts about? As we saw in Point 8, it won't help to use a

rigidified description, say of the form 'the actual F'. This guarantees that no object

other than the actual F could be the one on whose properties the truth or falsity of one's

statement depends, but it does not yield reference. One may be singling out the object

that satisfies the description, hence describing the relevant singular proposition about

that object, but one is not referring to that object or expressing that proposition.

Here is a possible but dubious route toward counting descriptive reference as

genuine reference. Philosophers have often referred to singular thoughts as de re

thoughts or attitudes. However, they have also used the term 'de re' for a type of

attitude ascription (contrasted with 'de dicto' ascriptions). Moreover, de re attitude

ascriptions can be true even when no de re (i.e. singular) attitude is being ascribed. So,

37

for example, suppose that even though there is no suspect in the case, the mayor has

claimed that Smith's murderer is insane. Smith's murderer, on hearing this, could say,

'The mayor that I am insane', without imputing to the mayor any de re attitudes about

him. It is easy to overlook the fact that not all de re attitude ascriptions are ascriptions

of de re attitudes because of the structural ambiguity of the phrase 'de re attitude

ascription', in which 'de re' can modify either 'attitude' or 'ascription'. Just as there is a

difference between 'Tibetan history-teacher' and 'Tibetan-history teacher', so there is a

difference between 'de re-attitude ascription' and 'de re attitude-ascription'.xxix[29] A

de re attitude-ascription can refer to a certain object without implying that there is a

certain object the ascribee has an attitude about. The point carries over to indirect

quotation. Having read that the police have said, 'Smith's murderer is insane', Smith's

murderer could say to a confidante, 'The police say that I am insane'. In reporting this,

Smith is referring to himself. It may seem that he is reporting that the police are

referring to him too (with their use of 'Smith's murderer'), but they are not.

It is sometimes suggested that giving a 'descriptive name' (Evans 1982, 31) to an

individual whose identity is in question enables one to refer to that individual. Suppose

that Smith's murderer left some vitriolic hip-hop lyrics under a rock at the scene of the

crime and the media came to call him 'Rock the Rapper'. Would using this name put

people in a better position to refer to Smith's murderer? It would not, not even if

sentences containing that name expressed singular propositions. Using such sentences

would not enable one to have singular thoughts about Smith's murderer and thereby be

in a position to refer to him. Again, propositions cannot be put within one's grasp with

just the stroke of a pen.xxx[30]

38

Point 10. Various kinds of pseudo-reference can be confused for the real thing.

We have already seen several examples of this. Point 6 denied that specific uses of

indefinite descriptions are referential. And Points 9 and 10 denied that singling out

(descriptively 'referring' to) something count as genuine reference. Singling out

whatever uniquely satisfies a certain definite description is not to refer to it. Here I will

discuss discourse reference and briefly comment on fictional reference and failed

reference, recognizing that each deserves much more extensive discussion.

Reference and discourse 'referents'

It is well-known that unbound pronouns, as well as definite descriptions, can be used

anaphorically on indefinite descriptions, as in these examples:

(7) Mary met a man today. He/The man was bald.

(8) A girl went to yesterday's Giants game, and she/the girl caught a foul ball.

(9) If there were a unicorn there, Macdonald would have seen it/the unicorn.

(10) Every farmer owns a donkey. He rides it on Sundays.

39

In (7) and (8), the pronoun (and the definite description) can be used to refer. If the

speaker is using 'a man' specifically in uttering (7), he could use 'he' (or 'the man') to

refer to the man he thinks Mary met that day. If, on the other hand, the speaker is not

in a position to refer to such a man, he could only use 'a man' nonspecifically and

could not use 'he' (or 'the man') referringly; the most he could intend to convey is the

general proposition that Mary met a man that day who was bald. Similarly, if the

speaker of (8) is using 'a girl' specifically, he could use the pronoun 'she' (or 'the girl')

to refer to the girl he thought went to the game, but not if he were using 'a girl'

nonspecifically. However, it seems that the pronouns (and the definite descriptions) in

(9) and (10) cannot be used to refer at all. In (9) 'it' is not being used to refer to an

unspecified (and presumably nonexistent) unicorn, and in (10) 'it' functions

quantificationally, ranging over the different donkeys owned by the different farmers.

Despite the fact that the pronouns and the definite descriptions in cases like (7) and

(8) need not, and in cases like (9) and (10) cannot, be used to refer, many semanticists

have attributed 'discourse referents' to them. I am not suggesting that they seriously

believe that discourse referents are real referents, but this only makes it puzzling why

they use this locution. Here is how Karttunen (1976) introduced the phrase:

Let us say that the appearance of an indefinite noun phrase establishes a

discourse referent just in case it justifies the occurrence of a coreferential

pronoun or a definite noun phrase later in the text. ... We maintain that the

problem of coreference within a discourse is a linguistic problem and can be

40

studied independently of any general theory of extra-linguistic reference.

(Karttunen 1976, 366; my emphasis)

He explains further,

In simple sentences that do not contain certain quantifier-like

expressions,xxxi[31] an indefinite NP establishes a discourse referent just in case

the sentence is an affirmative assertion. By 'establishes a discourse referent' we

meant that there may be a coreferential pronoun or definite noun phrase later in

the discourse.xxxii [32] Indefinite NPs in Yes-No questions and commands do

not establish referents. (383)

So the 'coreferential pronoun or definite noun phrase later in the discourse' can, thanks

to the discourse referent 'established' by the indefinite NP, have a discourse referent

even if, as in our examples, it is not used to refer.

The notion of discourse referent has inspired a great deal of theorizing in

semantics, including discourse representation theory (DRT), dynamic semantics, and

the study of reference accessibility. However, as is implicitly conceded by Karttunen's

definition ('[it] can be studied independently of any general theory of extra-linguistic

reference'), discourse reference is no more reference than our relation to our perceptual

experiences (as opposed to objects perceived) is perception. The basic problem is

simply this: a chain of 'reference' isn't a chain of reference unless it is anchored in an

actual ('extra-linguistic') referent.

41

Despite the widespread use of the phrase 'discourse referent' in some semantic

circles, so-called discourse referents are not literally referents. The pronouns in the

examples like those we've just considered are not used referringly and, as King (1987)

suggested, must be viewed quantificationally. They are used as surrogates for definite

descriptions, descriptions which if present in place of the pronouns would not be

referential. These pronouns are what Neale (1990, ch. 5) calls 'D-type pronouns'. The

basic idea is that the pronoun is used elliptically for a definite description recoverable

from the matrix of the antecedent indefinite description (Bach 1987/1994, 258-61).

Neale develops a detailed account of how D-type pronouns work in a wide variety of

cases. It is essential to this account that the descriptions implicit in the use of D-type

pronouns are not construed as referential, even when they are used referentially.

To see the significance of looking at such pronouns in this way, let us return to two

of our examples. Consider (8) again:

(8) A girl went to yesterday's Giants game, and she caught a foul ball.

Suppose that the speaker merely heard that a girl had caught a foul ball at yesterday's

game. Then he does not have any particular girl in mind and is not using 'a girl'

specifically. Even so, it might be thought that 'she' refers to a certain unspecified girl

(the 'discourse referent') who went to the Giants game the day before. But how could

this be? The first clause of (8) expresses a general proposition, but what about the

second clause? Does it express a singular proposition about a certain girl who went to

yesterday's Giants game? Suppose this clause is not true, hence that no girl who went

to yesterday's Giants game caught a foul ball. Then which girl would the second clause

42

of (8) be about, and what singular proposition would it express? Answer: no girl, and

no proposition. On the view that 'she' is referential in the second sentence of (8), that

sentence would express a singular proposition if and only if it is true! Surely which

proposition a sentence expresses, or that it expresses any, cannot depend on whether or

not it is true.

The situation is similar with a quantified sentence, as in (10),

(10) Every farmer owns a donkey. He rides it on Sundays.

Suppose there are farmers who own more than one donkey. In that case, what does it

take for the second sentence in (10) to be true? Its truth does not require every farmer

to ride on Sundays every donkey that he owns, but also it doesn't require merely that

every farmer ride on Sundays one donkey that he owns. So it is not clear what it would

take for the second sentence in (10) to be true when there are farmers who own more

than one donkey. However, DRT and dynamic semantics have been motivated by the

thought that this is clear, and they have tried to make sense of sentences like the

second one in (10) in terms of the notion of discourse referent.

Fictional reference

This is far too big a topic to take up in any detail here. Any serious discussion has to

distinguish fictional reference (reference in a fiction) and reference (outside the

fiction) to fictional entities. Reference in a fiction does not count as genuine reference,

43

at least if it is to fictional persons, places, and things (in a fiction, there can be genuine

reference to real persons, places, and things). If Salmon (1998) is right in claiming that

fictional entities are real, albeit abstract entities, then we can genuinely refer to them.

Otherwise, we can only pretend to. In my view, both fictional reference and reference

to fictional entities involve special sorts of speech acts, but there is nothing special

about fictional language itself (Bach 1987/1994, 214-18).

Failed reference

A speaker can intend to refer but fail in the (communicative) sense that his listener

does not identify the individual he intends her to identify. This is of no special interest

here. More interesting is the case in which the speaker intends to refer to a certain

individual but there is no such individual. This does not affect any claim being made

here, so long as it is understood that in this case there is no singular proposition about

that individual and no such proposition for the speaker to convey.

In such a case the speaker can use an expression to refer but not successfully, since

there is no individual being referred to. In such a situation, even if the speaker

sincerely utters 'a is F' and means it literally, there is nothing he believes to be the F.

Similarly, if he sincerely utters 'the F is G' and is using 'the F' referentially but he fails

to have anything in mind, there is nothing he is referring to. In this case, his referential

intention cannot be fulfilled, and full communication cannot be achieved. There is

nothing for the hearer to identify, and no singular proposition for her to entertain. The

44

best the hearer can do is recognize that the speaker intends to convey a singular

proposition of a certain sort. The speaker has the right sort of intention, to be speaking

of some particular thing, but there is no thing for him to succeed in referring to.

A different situation would arise if the speaker merely made as if to refer to

something, perhaps to deceive the hearer or perhaps to play along with the hearer's

mistaken belief in the existence of something. In this case, although the speaker does

not intend to refer to something, he does intend to be taken to be. He can succeed in

communicating if he is taken to be referring to the individual the hearer mistakenly

believes in. But since there is no such thing, there is no singular proposition to be

grasped.

III. The Pragmatic Status of the Referential-Attributive Distinction

We have seen that descriptions can be used to refer not in spite of but partly because

they are devices of quantification (of a certain sort) and that there are restrictions on

what counts as using them to refer. Various uses of descriptions that may seem to pass

as referential fall short of that. Now I will apply certain of the observations made so

far in order to clarify the referential-attributive distinction and bolster the case for the

pragmatic status of referential uses. In what follows, we should keep in mind Point 3,

that frequently one uses a description to refer because no other sort of expression is

suitable to refer to what one wishes to talk about. And, as Points 4 and 5 suggested, in

using a description to refer one expects the hearer to take one to be relying on

45

information derived from and specific to the particular object that in fact satisfies the

description. On the other hand, in using a definite description attributively, one does

not purport to have (or at least to be relying on) any information specific to the actual

satisfier of the description One is in the same epistemic position that one would be in

if something else uniquely satisfied the description.

Point 11. Various contrasts may seem to capture the referential-attributive

distinction, but only one really does.

When he introduced the referential-attributive distinction, Donnellan (1966) tried to

explicate it in various ways, in each case drawing an apt contrast that intuitively seems

to mark the difference. These and a couple of other contrasts are worth reviewing. As

we will see, suggestive as these various contrasts are, only one does the job.

A. Being what the speaker has in mind vs. being whatever fits the description

Donnellan suggests that in using a description referentially, your statement is about

whatever or whoever you have in mind, whereas with an attributive use your statement

is (weakly) about whatever or whoever satisfies the description. This test seems

plausible, but it is not as reliable as it sounds.xxxiii [33] First, it suggests that the

speaker can't know who satisfies the description, when of course he can, as Donnellan

himself points out. So, for example, you could utter 'Schmidt's editor is insane' and be

46

using 'Schmidt's editor' attributively even though you could know who Schmidt's

editor is. For your statement might not depend on this knowledge, say if you made it

on the basis of the many strange scrawls on Smith's manuscript. Then what you are

stating would not be affected if it turns out that you're mistaken about who Schmidt's

editor is.

Donnellan sometimes describes the relevant contrast as between believing

something about 'someone in particular' and about 'someone or other'. However, as he

notes, it is possible to think de re of the satisfier of a description even if one is using

the description attributively. For example, you might be personally acquainted with

Andrew Wiles and yet, in uttering 'The man who proved Fermat's Last Theorem must

be a genius', use the description attributively. It is irrelevant to what you mean that you

believe Andrew Wiles to be man who proved Fermat's Last Theorem or even that he

actually did.

Also, it is possible to use a description referentially without in a certain sense

knowing who satisfies it. In fact, we can distinguish two sorts of knowing who, only

one of which is relevant here. There is the context- or interest-relative sort of knowing

who, whose slipperiness has been well documented by Boer and Lycan (1986). Not

knowing who someone is in this way is compatible knowing who they are for the

purpose of referential identification. You can use 'the masked man over there' to refer

to a certain masked man, and your listener can know who you are referring to, without

either of you knowing who (of the other sort) that man is. Suppose that neither of you

could recognize him without his mask or know any distinguishing characteristics of

47

his. Even so, you can refer to him then and there and your listener can know who you

are referring to. Although neither of you have any way of identifying him beyond the

circumstances of utterance, you both can identify him for purposes of reference.

B. Description inessential vs. description essential

Donnellan suggests that a description used referentially is inessential to what is said,

i.e., that the referent's satisfying the description is not necessary for the truth of what is

said. Presumably he suggests this because there is a particular individual in question,

and because which one it is fixed independently of the property expressed by the

matrix of the description. I would agree that the description (i.e., this property) is

inessential to what is asserted, but I would insist that it is essential to what is said.

In the referential case there is something that the speaker intends to refer to even if

it doesn't in fact satisfy the description he is using (or, if the description is incomplete,

some intended completion of it) and even if some other individual does. But this does

not show that the description is inessential to what the speaker says. It shows only that

the speaker, in uttering something of the form 'the F is G', could have ascribed the

same property (being G) to the same object (the one he takes to be the F) even if that

object did not satisfy the description. The description is essential to what he says,

because clearly he would have said something different if he had used a different, non-

synonymous description. For example, if he utters, 'The man drinking a martini is

inane', and the man he is referring to is holding a martini but not drinking it, then what

48

he is saying is true only if some other man is the one drinking a martini and he is

inane. If advised that the man he intend to refer to hasn't touched a drop, he might even

revise his utterance and say, 'The man holding a martini is inane'.

The situation is different if the speaker uses a description he knows not to be true

of the intended referent but believes that the hearer thinks it is. For example, suppose

you say 'The man holding a martini is inane' when you believe that his glass is filled

with tequila but assume your audience is unaware of this. In this case, in which you

are exploiting your audience's ignorance, you do not mean what you say. However,

you intend your audience, in order to identify the referent, to take you to mean what

you say.

C. Speaker's referent vs. semantic referent

Kripke (1977) invokes this contrast in the course of arguing against the semantic

significance of the referential-attributive distinction. If a description is being used

referentially, the speaker's referent may be distinct from the semantic referent (what

satisfies the description), whereas with an attributive use they cannot be distinct, since

the semantics of the description determines the relevant individual.

This may seem right, but Kripke's distinction is both misleading and inadequate. It

is misleading because definite descriptions, being quantificational phrases, do not have

semantic referents at all, at least not in the way in which genuine singular terms do

(see note 8). In Russell's jargon, they merely denote (where denoting is a semantically

49

inert property, so that what is denoted does not enter into the proposition expressed).

More importantly, as we saw above, definite descriptions can be used attributively

even if they are used in a nonliteral way. When so used, the speaker's 'referent' is not

the semantic referent.

D. Primary aspect vs. secondary aspect

Searle (1979) suggests that the difference between the referential and the attributive

use boils down to whether some description other than the one actually used is

primarily relevant to the speaker's utterance. If some other one is primary, then the one

actually used expresses merely a 'secondary' aspect under which the speaker is

referring. In that case, he has some 'fallback' description in mind, under which the

hearer is to think of the referent.

There are two problems here. First, Searle assumes that one can think of an object

only under an description and not in some de re way. He does not seriously consider

the possibility that attitudes can be de re. Rather, he insists that only attitude reports

can be de re and thinks that the view that attitudes themselves can be de re is based on

a confusion. Perhaps he thinks this confusion arises from the structural ambiguity of

the phrase 'de re belief report' (see Point 9), but he fails to show that there are no de re

attitudes (singular thoughts).

The second problem is that even if one uses a certain description with a fallback

description in mind, one that expresses the primary aspect, one could still be using the

50

former description attributively. One might use 'the F', believing that the F is the H and

being prepared to fall back on 'the H'. However, this does not mean that if one had

used 'the H' instead, one would have used it referentially. For example, looking at the

way a certain car is parked you might utter, 'The owner of this car must have been

drunk'. You have no idea who the owner is but you have assumed that the owner of

that car was the driver who parked it. Although you're prepared to fall back on the

description 'the driver who parked this car here', surely you were not using the original

description referentially.

E. 'right' thing' vs. no 'right' thing

Donnellan suggests that 'in the referential use as opposed to the attributive, there is a

right thing to be picked out by the audience and its being the right thing is not simply a

function of its fitting the description' (1966, 304). Obviously the description could not

be merely a device for getting one's audience to pick out the referent unless there were

a right thing for them to pick out, something which one wishes to speak about

independently of how one is referring to it. That's indisputable, assuming that there is

something the speaker intends to refer to, for obviously the reference can succeed only

if there is some such thing and only if the hearer identifies it. But there is a sense in

which an attributive use also involves a 'right' thing, namely the thing that satisfies the

description, though of course this is not what Donnellan means. The point of his

contrast here is really that the speaker has some independent way of thinking of, and

of intending the hearer to think of, the referent, as something other than the (unique)

51

satisfier of the description being used. This seems right so far as it goes but as it

stands, the contrast between there being a 'right' thing and there not being one boils

down to the difference between using and not using the description referentially.

F. Particularity vs. generality

This contrast gets to the heart of the referential-attributive distinction. Taking Russell's

theory of descriptions to apply only to attributive uses, Donnellan observes that with

them 'we introduce an element of generality which ought to be absent if what we are

doing is referring to some particular thing'. But

this lack of particularity is absent from the referential use of definite descriptions

precisely because the description is here merely a device for getting one's

audience to pick out or think of the thing to be spoken about, a device which may

serve its function even if the description is incorrect. (1966, 304).

This seems right. After all, in using a description referentially one is using it to refer to

something, and that involves conveying a singular proposition. In using a descriptive

attributively, one is not referring -- one is conveying a general proposition. Not

surprisingly, the referential-attributive distinction is just an instance of the distinction

between using a noun phrase to refer and using it quantificationally. The essential

difference between a referential and an attributive use of a definite description is that

with a referential use one is expressing a singular proposition about a certain object

(unless there is no actual referent), whereas with an attributive use one is expressing a

52

general proposition. This is old news, but it is important not to confuse this with any of

the other ways we have considered of trying to capture the referential-attributive

distinction.

To sum up. With a referential use, one must be thinking of the F in some de re

way, hence in some other way than as the F. In using 'the F' referentially, one is, in

effect, instructing the hearer to think of the F, and that requires him also to think of the

F in some other (de re) way than as the F. With the attributive use, one need not be in

a position to think of the F in any de re way, and even if one does, it is irrelevant. One

is simply saying something about whatever is the F, which one need not be in a

position to think of in any way at all (or least in any other way than as the F, insofar as

that counts as thinking of it at all). In the referential case, it is this other way of

thinking of the F that matters. That way of thinking determines the object being

referred to, the object that is a constituent of the singular proposition the speaker is

trying to convey.

Notice that most referential uses involve incomplete definite descriptions,

descriptions that are insufficiently restrictive to identify a unique individual. The

property expressed by the matrix of the description serves merely to distinguish one's

intended referent from anything else that, under the circumstances, one might be

talking about. So if you say, 'The table is covered with books', using 'the table' is

enough to distinguish the one table in the vicinity (or within the attention of you and

your audience) from other objects in your presence. If there were more than one table

there and it didn't stand out in some blatantly obvious way, using 'the table' would not

53

enable your audience to figure out which individual you are talking about and would

be inappropriate -- you'd have to point to the relevant table and use 'that table'.

Point 12. Incomplete definite descriptions pose no real threat to Russell's theory.

Some singular definite descriptions, either by necessity or as a matter of fact, are

uniquely satisfied. Most of the ones that we ever have occasion to use are not. Even so,

they imply uniqueness. As mentioned earlier, this uniqueness is not encoded in the

meaning of 'the' -- 'the' indicates totality, as in plural definite descriptions. The

implication of uniqueness is a side effect of combining 'the' with a nominal 'F' in the

singular, to yield 'the F'. So what happens when, as is typical, we use a description that

is incomplete and we believe it to be? Even if we are using 'the' literally and 'F'

literally, we do not mean that there is exactly one F. Rather, we are in effect making a

pretense of uniqueness, at least for current conversational purposes. This is a perfectly

ordinary phenomenon and no different in kind from various other simplifying

pretenses we implicitly make in everyday conversation. For example, we often pretend

that the immediate environment or situation is all that is relevant to statements we

make. We utter sentences like 'It's not raining now', 'I guess nobody's home', and 'I

haven't eaten' as if they expressed much more restricted propositions than the much

more far-reaching propositions they literally express. Similarly, we use incomplete

definite descriptions, like 'the book' and 'the table', as if there is no other book and no

other table than the ones we're talking about. So if, in order to tell someone where to

find a certain book, you say 'The book is on the table', for the immediate purpose of

54

the conversation the book and the table in question are the only ones that come into

consideration.

The incompleteness of ordinary definite descriptions poses no real problem for

Russell's theory.xxxiv[34] That a description 'the F' is incomplete does not affect the

proposition expressed by any sentence in which it occurs and does not affect what a

speaker says in uttering such a sentence; it can only affect what the speaker means.

Russell's theory does not have to treat uses of incomplete descriptions as either

elliptical for complete ones or as containing implicit but semantically relevant

restrictions on their domains. In particular, if a speaker uses an incomplete description

referentially, he is attempting to convey a singular proposition involving an individual

that is F (assuming he is using 'F' literally). It does not matter that the description is

incomplete, because the speaker does not intend the description by itself to provide the

hearer with the full basis for identifying the referent. But Russell's theory, being silent

about referential uses anyway, does not say that it does. Nor must Russell's theory say

that 'the F' is somehow elliptical for 'the salient F', 'the aforementioned F', 'the F under

discussion', 'the relevant F', 'the F I have in mind', or anything of the sort, just because

it is used to refer to some such F.

The attributive case may seem to pose more of a problem for Russell's theory. If a

speaker is using an incomplete definite description attributively, he intends to convey a

uniqueness proposition, just as Russell's theory would predict, but this is not the

uniqueness proposition expressed by the sentence he is uttering; it is the one that

would be expressed if the description were made complete by being expanded in a

55

suitable way. One apparent problem is that different verbal means of doing this may

yield the very same proposition. However, this is not a genuine problem, since what

matters is which proposition the speaker intends to convey, not which words he would

use to convey it (were he to do so in a fully explicit way).

A more serious objection, made by Kripke (1977) and by Wettstein (1981), is that

there are cases in which the speaker does not have a determinate uniqueness

proposition in mind but nevertheless communicates successfully. For this reason, and

despite treating the referential-attributive distinction pragmatically, Kripke questions

whether a Russellian approach can accommodate the case of incomplete descriptions.

Whereas Grice supposed that all this approach needs in order to handle a description

like 'the table' is 'suitable provision for unexpressed restrictions', such as 'the table in

this room' (1969, 142), Kripke 'doubt[s] that such descriptions can always be regarded

as elliptical with some uniquely specifying conditions added' (1977, 255), and finds it

'somewhat tempting to assimilate such descriptions to the corresponding

demonstratives (for example, "that table")' (1977, 271). However, this is a temptation

to be resisted. Even if definite descriptions can sometimes be used like demonstrative

descriptions, they are semantically and syntactically different. And obviously Grice's

example of an incomplete description used referentially is not a demonstrative just

because it contains one. But the main point is that Russell's theory does not (falsely)

entail that if an incomplete description is used referentially, there must be some

intended restriction on the description. What matters is the speaker's intention to use

the description to refer to a certain particular individual, in the way discussed above, to

some salient or contextually relevant F.

56

Whereas Kripke's worry concerns referential uses of incomplete definite

descriptions, Wettstein's concerns the attributive. The worry is that Russell's theory

predicts that if no determinate restriction on the description is intended, the speaker's

utterance has no determinate content. But it may well have determinate content,

although this content is not, according to Wettstein, of the sort required by Russell's

theory.xxxv[35] Now Wettstein's examples all involve complex descriptions

containing expressions used referentially: 'his murderer', 'the murderer of Smith', and

'the murderer of the man on the couch'. But such examples show merely that a definite

description can be relativized, and this, as Neale has pointed out (1990, 99-100), is

perfectly compatible with Russell's theory. It does not apply only to 'purely qualitative'

descriptions but is equally applicable to descriptions containing referential elements or

even variables.

Finally, there is a common objection, registered for example by Devitt (this

volume, note 36), that it is 'implausible' that sentences containing incomplete definite

descriptions do not literally express truths. This is not accurate, because for any

sentence with a truth value, either it or its negation is true (besides, Devitt should not

appeal, as he sometimes does, to 'intuitions about truth conditions' without saying truth

conditions of what -- what speakers mean have truth conditions too). The point,

presumably, is that the proposition, true or false, expressed by the sentence (according

to Russell's theory) is not the one that intuitively is expressed. The Russellian should

reply by saying that such sentences, because their propositional contents (or truth

conditions) are what Russell's theory says they are, are typically not used in a strictly

literal way (even when all their constituent words are being used literally). This view

57

may initially seem counterintuitive, but that is only because of a misunderstanding of

the kind of nonliterality at work here.xxxvi[36]

In any case, there is a psychological reply to this common objection. Yes, it seems

problematic for Russell's theory to predict that a sentence like 'The table is covered

with books' is false when the sentence can straightforwardly be used to make a true

statement -- intuitively, one has no sense that there is any false proposition in the air.

But there is an explanation for this: as soon as one hears (or reads) 'the table', because

of its obvious incompleteness one immediately takes it either to be used referentially

or with an implicit completion. One never actually computes the proposition expressed

by the sentence in which it occurs.

Moreover, it is a misconception to suppose, as for example Stanley and Szabo do

(2000, 235-6), that the literal falsity of a sentence like 'The table is covered with

books' has anything to do with how it manages to be used to make a true statement.

This is not a case of Gricean quality implicature. It is not like an utterance of the

obviously false 'Ken Lay cried all the way to the bank', used to convey how happy Lay

was with his ill-gotten gains. What triggers the hearer's search for something other

than what is said is not its obvious falsity but its lack of relevant specificity.

To sum up, there are two basic cases. In the referential case there is an implicit

narrowing of things under consideration or relevant to the conversation, and 'the F' is

used to refer to the only F among them. In the attributive case there is an implicit,

contextually relevant narrowing of the property expressed by 'F'; 'the F' is used to

single out whichever individual uniquely has that narrowed property. In both cases the

58

speaker intends the hearer to take such a narrowing into account in figuring out what

he means. If no such narrowing is evident to the hearer, she will not figure out what

the speaker means. If she recognizes the use as referential, she will wonder which F

the speaker is talking about; if she recognizes the use as attributive, she will wonder

what unique case of an F is in question.

Point 13. Definite descriptions do not have referential meanings.

Various reasons have been given for supposing that descriptions have referential

readings, but they are commonly, though not universally, thought to have been

adequately rebutted. Michael Devitt (this volume) revisits several of these reasons and

offers some new ones. He is perfectly aware of the distinction between what a speaker

says and what a speaker means and, in particular, of that between linguistic reference

and speaker's reference. Even so, he is not convinced that special conventions or

referential meanings are not needed to enable descriptions to be used referentially.

Why am I convinced? Not because such conventions or meanings do not help

explain how or why a given use of a description is taken referentially rather than

attributively. After all, no ambiguity thesis has to explain how hearers manage to

disambiguate the allegedly ambiguous expression. Still, it is important to appreciate

what goes on in the case of definite descriptions. Whether or not there are referential

conventions or meanings for them, how does a hearer figure out which way,

59

referentially or attributively, a description is being used? Compare situations in which

the following sentences might be uttered:

(11) The man drinking a martini is in the corner nearest the bar.

(12) The man in the corner nearest the bar is drinking a martini.

Regarding the first situation, imagine that you are talking by cell phone to a fellow spy

who is at a party and you're helping him find an informant at a party, whose identity

neither of you knows. You and he mutually know that the informant is there and will

be drinking a martini. You have been advised where the informant is supposed to be,

and you pass on this information by uttering (11). You are using the subject

description attributively, merely enabling your cohort to identify the individual who

satisfies it (i.e., its obvious completion). In the second situation, you are both at the

party, you see a man in the corner nearest the bar and, since you and your cohort

mutually know that the informant is at the party and is to be drinking a martini, you

utter (12). In this case, you are using the subject description referentially. You are

asserting a singular proposition about the man in the corner nearest the bar, and are

enabling your cohort to identify the individual you have in mind by identifying him as

the man in the corner nearest the bar.

Notice, however, that this identification involves the quantificational meaning of

the description. So if definite descriptions are ambiguous, their ambiguity is most

extraordinary: one of their senses (the quantificational) plays a role when the other (the

referential) is operative. An alternative account was presented in Part I: the distinctive

60

quantificational character of definite descriptions, together with their implication of

uniqueness, helps explain how, without any special stage setting, they can readily be

used to refer (Point 5), in part because there may be good reason to suppose that the

speaker is implicitly conveying an identity between something he is thinking of and

what satisfies the description (Point 4). In effect, he is instructing the hearer to think of

and take him to be talking about whichever individual is the F. Besides, even though

descriptions are devices of quantification, they are often the only sort of singular noun

phrase available to use to refer to what one wishes to refer to (Point 3).

Now Devitt offers some interesting arguments in defense of the thesis that

descriptions have referential meanings, operative when they are used referentially. In

his view, 'the core of the referential meaning of a description token is its reference-

determining relation to the particular object that the speaker has in mind in using the

description'.xxxvii [37] Devitt does not offer a complete account of referential

meanings and, in particular, maintains 'neutrality' about the precise role of 'F' in 'the F'.

In this regard it is not clear that his discussion precludes an account on which 'the F'

(on its alleged referential reading) means the same as 'the particular F I am talking

about/thinking of', a description that is uniquely satisfied by the unique object the

speaker has in mind. If this, or anything like it, counted as a referential meaning, then

Devitt's account would be vulnerable to an objection based on Neale's point

(mentioned in Point 12) that a definite description containing a referring term, in this

case the indexical 'I', is nevertheless amenable to Russellian treatment as a quantifier

phrase.

61

At any rate, I will address only those of Devitt's arguments that might adversely

affect my pragmatic approach to referential uses of definite descriptions.xxxviii [38] In

particular, I will not be rebutting his arguments II, IV, and V.xxxix[39] His main

argument for referential descriptions is Argument I, from regularity, according to

which regularized uses of expressions, even if not their original uses, correspond to

conventional meanings of those expressions. He bolsters this one with Argument III,

which likens referential uses of definite descriptions to deictic uses of demonstrative

pronouns and phrases. And he rests his case with Argument VI, which purports to

show that when descriptions are exportable from opaque contexts they are referential.

Since space limitations preclude giving Devitt's arguments the detailed attention they

deserve, I will focus on the main one, Argument I, and respond briefly to III and VI.

Argument I aims to rebut Kripke's (1977) and Neale's (1990, ch. 3) implicit

assumption that because referential uses could be explained pragmatically, they should

be so explained. In rebutting this assumption, Devitt takes his opponents to be likening

referential uses to particularized conversational implicatures, whose understanding

requires a fancy inference on the part of the hearer. It is not clear to me that this is

Kripke's or Neale's view, but it is definitely not mine, as Devitt acknowledges (see his

notes 9 and 12). In any case, Argument I does indeed challenge the analogy with

particularized implicatures. It exploits the fact that not only can we use definite

descriptions referentially, we regularly do so (hence no need for special stage-setting).

This is not true of other sorts of quantifier phrases that can also be used to refer, but

generally only in special circumstances. I agree with Devitt that this is an important

difference, but why he take this as strong evidence that descriptions have referential

62

meanings? His main point is that even if there is an historical explanation for how

definite descriptions, considered as quantifier phrases, came to be used referentially,

this does not show that they have not thus acquired a separate referential meaning. He

likens this situation to the case of dead metaphors, such as 'kick the bucket' and 'spill

the beans', which have acquired an idiomatic phrasal meaning distinct from their

compositionally determined meaning. He suggests that even in cases where the phrasal

meaning is inferable from the compositional meaning, this is still a distinct,

conventional meaning.

Devitt's dead metaphor analogy is dubious. To endorse the Russellian claim that

definite descriptions are quantifier phrases, not referring terms, and that their

attributive use is their only strictly literal use, does not commit one to the view that

their attributive use came first and their referential use somehow developed later. It

does not require the supposition that there was a time when definite descriptions were

not used referentially. Howver, Devitt is correct to argue that the mere derivability of

one use from another does not show that the second use is not a conventional use in its

own right. Even so, he does not consider the possibility that the quantificational

meaning of descriptions plays a role in referential uses and in how hearers recognize

uses as referential.

Moreover, if their quantificational meaning does play such a role, then Devitt's

view implies that definite descriptions are semantically ambiguous in a most peculiar

way: one of their meanings, the quantificational one, would be operative whenever the

other meaning is. No other semantic ambiguity is like this, not even when formerly

63

figurative uses of certain locutions become conventionalized in their own right. For

example, if you hear an utterance of 'Kirk kicked the bucket', you can understand the

idiom 'kick the bucket' to mean to die without having a clue about the once living

metaphor (whatever that was) from which it derived. In contrast to these examples,

one can't understand a referential use of a definite description without grasping its

literal, quantificational meaning. At least so I have claimed. To address this claim,

Devitt would need to show either that the quantificational meaning does not play a role

in referential uses or, granting that it does, that this does not render his ambiguity

claim problematic.

Argument I is also vulnerable to a familiar objection. The claim that descriptions

have referential as well as quantificational meanings seems committed to a massive

cross-linguistic coincidence. For what could be the source of descriptions' 'systematic

duplicity of meaning' (Grice 1969, 143) but the semantic ambiguity of the definite

article? But if that's the source of their double use, then the thesis that definite

descriptions have referential meanings misses the cross-linguistic generalization that in

any language that has a definite article, definite descriptions have double uses. It

would be a remarkable fact that an ambiguous word ('the' in this case) in one language

should have translations in numerous other languages that are ambiguous in precisely

the same way.

In any case, Argument I is directed only to the analogy of referential uses with

particularized conversational implicatures. I take referential uses to be akin to

generalized implicatures. Both are cases of standardization, pragmatic regularities that

64

obviate the need for full-blown inferences on the part of the hearer (of course Grice

would insist that the complete inference be 'capable of being worked out' (1989, 31),

of being calculable, even if it doesn't need to be calculated). As Grice explains, in the

case of a generalized conversational implicature, 'the use of a certain form of words in

an utterance would normally (in the absence of special circumstances) carry such-and-

such an implicature' (1989, 37; my emphasis). The audience still has to infer what the

speaker means from what he says, but the inference is attenuated, not requiring the

more elaborate reasoning needed for recognizing particularized implicatures.

Acknowledging the difference, Devitt laments that 'the absence of a [full-blown]

Gricean derivation is, sadly, not sufficient to make a use semantic' (note 12). In this

way, he concedes that Argument I does not undercut the analogy of referential uses

with generalized implicatures.

It is important to see that if Argument I were effective against this analogy, it

would prove too much.xl[40] This regularity argument would lead to the conclusion

that in sentences (13), (14), and (15), the words 'and', 'believe', and 'some' have special

conventional meanings.

(13) It's worse to go the hospital and get sick than to get sick and go

to the hospital.

(14) I don't believe astrology is bogus, I know it is.

(15) Michael drank some of my wine if not all of it.

65

In (13) 'and' indicates a causal relation in its first occurrence and a temporal relation in

its second. These uses of 'and' are quite regular, but there are (well-known) Gricean

explanations for them. Yet Devitt's argument implies that these uses, being

regularized, are conventionalized, hence that 'and' is ambiguous in at least three ways.

Similarly, it implies that the sense of 'believe' in (15) entails 'does not know', contrary

to the popular philosophical opinion that knowledge implies belief, and that the sense

of 'some' in (14) entails 'not all', contrary to elementary logic. As I have long stressed

(see, e.g., Bach and Harnish 1979, ch. 9, and Bach 1995), we need to observe the

distinction between conventionalization and mere standardization or pragmatic

regularity, as illustrated by these and numerous other examples (see Levinson 2000).

Whereas conventionalization makes possible a certain sort of use, standardization

merely facilitates a certain use. By turning a speaker meaning not determined solely by

the linguistic meaning of the words being used into what Levinson calls a 'default

meaning', it streamlines the hearer's inference to what the speaker means. A pragmatic

regularity is not a matter of convention.

In arguing that referential uses of definite descriptions are like literal deictic uses

of demonstrative phrases (Argument III), Devitt simply assumes that the latter have

referential meanings. A recent book by Jeff King (2001) suggests otherwise, arguing

that such demonstrative phrases are quantificational. Even if he is wrong about that,

King provides compelling linguistic data to show that definite descriptions are

fundamentally different from demonstrative phrases in that speakers' intentions do not

contribute to determining the semantic contents of uses of definite descriptions.xli[41]

Also, there are clear pragmatic differences between definite and demonstrative

66

phrases. For example, compare the following uses of 'that' and 'the'. In the case of (16)

suppose that there are many books on the table and the speaker points to one of them.

(16) a. I haven't read that book.

b. #I haven't read the book.

Clearly the utterance of (16b) is pragmatically anomalous. As for (17), suppose that

several physicists have been mentioned successively in the conversation.

(17) a. That physicist is a genius.

b. #The physicist is a genius.

In uttering (17a) the speaker is referring to the last physicist mentioned. It is not clear

what he would be doing if he uttered (17b). These examples show that the conditions

for using an incomplete definite description to refer are not the same as those for using

a demonstrative phrase. For example, in contexts when one would use 'that F', with

stress on 'that', along with a demonstration to pick out one F from others, it would be

not only odd but ineffective to use 'the F'. This is not surprising, considering that

singular definite descriptions imply uniqueness and demonstrative descriptions do not.

Devitt's Argument VI is based on the claim that 'exportation works when the

exported term is referential because then the opaque ascription requires that the

believer be, like the speaker, en rapport with [have a singular thought about] the

object of belief'. The short Russellian response to this argument is that it is analogous

to the following dubious argument for an exclusive as well as an inclusive sense of

67

'or': whereas 'Michael drinks wine or Michael drinks beer' and 'Michael drinks wine'

do not entail 'Michael does not drink beer', 'Michael is New York or Michael is in

Sydney' and 'Michael is New York' does entail 'Michael is not in Sydney'. The trouble

with this argument, of course, is that the second inference is just as invalid as the first,

even though inferences of that sort do not lead from truth to falsity (people can't be in

two places at once). Similarly, what Argument VI shows is that when a description is

used referentially (and there is actually something to which the speaker is referring),

exporting a description from an opaque context cannot turn a truth into a falsehood. It

does not show that the description has a referential as well as a quantificational

meaning. The fact that exportation sometimes works and sometimes doesn't does not

show that descriptions have different meanings in the two cases, with an inference rule

operative in one case and not in the other. It is just a symptomatic by-product of the

difference between the two uses.xlii[42]

Devitt is well aware of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics and of

the correlative distinction between what a speaker says and what a speaker means. He

is not attributing referential meanings to definite descriptions arbitrarily, and he is

right to insist that the possibility of a pragmatic explanation does not establish its

correctness. Even so, it does not seem that his arguments succeed in undercutting the

claim that referential uses are a matter of pragmatic regularity, not semantic

convention. Moreover, there is a presumption in favor of pragmatic explanations.

There is good methodological reason to appeal to independently motivated principles

of rational communication, rather than to special features of particular expressions and

constructions, in order to explain linguistic phenomena in as general a way as possible.

68

In the present case, the fact that the referential use of definite descriptions is a cross-

linguistic phenomenon suggests that it demands a pragmatic explanation, not a

semantic one. Moreover, the denial that descriptions have referential meanings does

not require crudely wielding Grice's semantic model of Occam's Razor and baldly

appealing to parsimony. Rather, as I have suggested, the fact that descriptions are

quantificational phrases of a certain sort helps explain their referential use. That is

because their quantificational meaning plays a key role in their referential use. xliii [43]

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Notes

73

i[1] Regarding definite descriptions, see Kripke 1977, Bach 1987/1994, ch. 6, Neale 1990, ch. 3, and

forthcoming, and Salmon 1991; as to indefinite descriptions, see King 1988 and Ludlow and Neale 1991.

The general strategy has been to seek a pragmatic explanation for referential uses. Kripke was the first to

develop such an account, arguing that the distinction between linguistic reference and speaker's reference is

just a 'special case' of the distinction stressed by Grice between linguistic meaning and speaker's meaning

(Kripke 1977, 263). And Grice himself had insisted that despite having both an 'identificatory' and a 'non-

identificatory' use, 'descriptive phrases have no relevant systematic duplicity of meaning; their meaning is

given by a Russellian account' (1969, 143). However, Kripke doubted that Russell's account can

accommodate the case of incomplete descriptions, such as 'the table'. And Devitt (this volume) has

suggested some new reasons for supposing that descriptions have referential as well as quantificational

meanings. Kripke's worries are addressed in Point 12, and Devitt's arguments in Point 13.

ii[2] Some observations on the term 'singular':

Singular' is contrasted with 'plural', of course, but the singular/plural distinction has various

applications. In the first instance it is the linguistic distinction as to number, and applies to nouns and noun

phrases, as well as, in some languages, such as French and German, to adjectives (including predicate

adjectives), which are also marked for gender. Subject-verb agreement is sensitive to the number of the

subject. And pronouns anaphoric on noun phrases agree with them as to number. However, certain

quantifier phrases, namely 'some F', 'each F', and 'every F', are grammatically singular (so are quantified

mass terms, like 'some water' and 'much money') but semantically plural, and pronouns anaphoric on them

are singular as well, at least in the King's English (in contemporary American English it is common to use

plural pronouns, perhaps because they are gender-neutral).

A singular/plural distinction may also be drawn as to reference. Philosophical discussions of reference

to individuals generally concentrate on singular reference, but, even though there may be nothing in

principle different about it, we should not overlook the case of plural reference, reference to more than one

individual at a time. Plural reference can be made not only with a plural pronoun ('they') and with a

conjunction of noun phrases, e.g., proper names ('Dick and Jane') or pronouns ('he and she') or combination

thereof ('Jane and he') but even, on occasion, with quantifier phrases ('the nine justices', 'both authors').

74

It should be mentioned that in philosophy the phrase 'singular term' is often used in contrast to 'general

term', corresponding to the notational distinction in logic between individual constants or variables and

predicate letters. Individual constants or variables are used to represent singular proper names and

indexicals, not plural ones. Also, singular definite and even indefinite descriptions are sometimes labeled

'singular terms', even though they are usually represented by quantifiers.

As for the phrase 'singular proposition', as introduced by Kaplan (1977), it applies to propositions

having individuals as constituents. General propositions are quantificational. This distinction is not

exclusive, however, since a proposition may be particular with respect to one argument slot and general

with respect to another, as in the case of the proposition expressed by 'She has seven children'. It is

interesting to note that Russell had occasion (e.g., 1918, 235) to use the phrase 'particular proposition' for

propositions that have individuals as constituents. Ideally, it would be better to use Russell's phrase, not

only because outside of philosophy 'singular' ordinarily contrasts not with 'general' but with 'plural' (as

above), but also, and more importantly, because so-called singular propositions can involve more than one

individual, as in the case of propositions expressed by 'I love you' and 'They're both angry'. Even so, I

follow standard usage and stick to the usual 'singular proposition'.

iii[3] This qualification is meant to allow for cases in which the sentence occurs fails to express a

proposition, either because the referring expression, though referring in character, does not have a referent

or because the sentence is semantically incomplete. Regarding the first sort of case, I have in mind the view

that if an expression lacks a semantic value, then sentences in which it occurs fail to express propositions.

Examples of the second sort include sentences like 'John hasn't finished' and 'She is late', where an

additional constituent is needed to yield a complete proposition (for discussion see Bach 1994, 126-33).

iv[4] There is the further question of whether a singular proposition comprises the complete content of a

singular thought. Schiffer (1978) argued that this is not possible. In my view, de re modes of presentation

are also involved (Bach 1987/1994, ch. 1). Moreover, I have argued that a belief ascription whose 'that'-

clause expresses a singular proposition does not fully individuate the belief being ascribed (Bach 1997,

2000). I point out, for example, that the one 'that'-clause in the two ascriptions, 'Peter believes that

Paderewski had musical talent' and 'Peter disbelieves that Paderewski had musical talent', does not fully

characterize something that Peter both believes and disbelieves. And, as I say, every case is potentially a

Paderewski case.

v[5] I will generally use the words 'individual', 'object', and 'thing' as neutral terms for persons, places,

things, and other concrete objects.

75

vi[6] For the sake of discussion and contrary to my own view, I am going along with the widespread view

that proper names are referring terms (and that sentences in which they occur express singular

propositions). However, elsewhere I have defended an alternative, a version of metalinguistic descriptivism

I call the Nominal Description Theory of names, and offer an explanation of why it seems that proper

names are referring terms (Bach 1987/1994, chs. 7 and 8, and 2002b). I am assuming also that there are

singular propositions, which have particulars among their constituents. Anyone who has qualms about them

can make do with object-dependent truth-conditions.

vii[7] Notoriously, Russell supposed that one has to be in a special, uniquely intimate relation with an

object in order to think of or to refer to it, a relation which, he maintained, one cannot bear to ordinary

things. Mill did not suppose this, and neither do I. My view of what it takes to be in a position to think of or

refer to something is far more liberal than Russell's.

viii [8] Thus the relation of a description to what it denotes is fundamentally different from the relation of

a name to what it refers to. This is suggested by the fact that we speak of individuals satisfying descriptions

but not of them satisfying names. In Russell's terminology, descriptions 'denote' what they describe but do

not refer to them. And notice Russell's use of the adverb 'directly' in characterizing how names designate

their objects, just as Kaplan (1989) characterizes indexicals and demonstratives as 'directly referential'.

However, given the distinction between denotation and reference, the occurrence of 'directly' in Kaplan's

(1989) 'directly referential' is redundant, and 'indirectly referential' is an oxymoron. Also, when Kripke

(1977) speaks of the 'semantic reference' of a definite description, he can only mean its denotation. So if we

distinguish reference from denotation as two different species of what Kripke calls 'designation', then all

referring expressions are rigid designators and all denoting expressions are nonrigid designators, except

those that are rigid de facto, like 'the smallest prime' (Kripke 1980, 21). None of these terminological points

addresses the question of which expressions are referring (as opposed to which ones, though not referring,

can be used to refer).

ix[9] Assume here and in general that the description occurs in a simple sentence of the form 'the F is G'.

x[10] If it is, then it is arguably nonliteral, though in an innocuous sort of way (see Bach 1987/1994, 69-

74). For my take on the semantic-pragmatic distinction, see Bach 1999.

xi[11] Of course Russell held that ordinary proper names are 'disguised' or 'truncated' descriptions, in

which case they too, contrary to appearances, are quantificational.

76

xii[12] Recanati (1993, ch. 15) and Bezuidenhout (1997), deny that definite descriptions are semantically

ambiguous. However, they are disinclined to treat one use as literal and to explain the other pragmatically,

because intuitively they find referential uses to be no less literal than attributive ones. Accordingly, they

suggest that the existence of both uses is symptomatic of semantic underdetermination (or what Recanati

calls, borrowing a phrase from Donnellan, 'pragmatic ambiguity'). From this it follows, implausibly, that a

sentence like 'The discoverer of X-rays was bald' does not express a determinate proposition (Recanati

allows that the meaning of such a sentence determines an 'external' proposition, which he distinguishes

from any proposition that the sentence expresses in context, but it turns out that this is the same uniqueness

proposition that is expressed on an attributive use of the description). If we wish to maintain that such a

sentence does express a determinate proposition, and does so univocally, the obvious choice is a general

proposition, in which case the description functions as a quantifier phrase and only its attributive use is the

strictly literal one. And, as Point 5 below suggests, the referential use, though requiring a pragmatic

explanation, is partly explained by the distinctive quantificational character of descriptions.

xiii [13] The type of general proposition is what Strawson (1950) called a 'uniquely existential' proposition.

I'll call it a simply 'uniqueness' proposition (once we opt, as below, for restricted quantification notation

rather than that of standard first-order logic, Strawson's label no longer applies). Russell analyzed a

uniqueness proposition of this sort into a complex logical form, expressible in the notation of modern first-

order logic as:

(LF-dd) (∃x)(Fx & (∀y)(Fy −> y=x) & Gx)

The key point is that the object that is the F does not appear in this proposition. So, for example, 'The queen

of England loves roses' does not express a proposition about Elizabeth II. It means what it means whether

or not she is queen of England and, indeed, whether or not England has a queen. As a quantifier phrase, 'the

queen of England' does not refer to Elizabeth II (Russell would say it 'denotes' her, but for him denotation

was a semantically inert relation), though of course it can be used to refer to her.

It is commonly and justly complained that this form (LF-dd), although it captures the truth conditions

of description sentences with its three conjuncts (or even the equivalent '(∃x)((∀y)(Fy <−> y=x) & Gx)'

with its two), distorts syntax beyond recognition. However, as Neale has stressed (first in his 1990), such

syntactic complexity is not essential to Russell's theory of descriptions, in particular to his view that

definite descriptions are 'incomplete symbols'. What makes them incomplete is not that they 'disappear

upon logical analysis', making grammatical form misleading as to logical form, but that they introduce

quantificational, variable-binding structure, rather than individuals, into the propositions expressed by

sentences in which they occur.

77

Besides, the repugnant complexity of (LF-dd) is an artifact of the notation used in first-order logic. As

is often observed, even by beginning logic students, the usual symbolizations of English sentences with

'every' or 'some' also make a hash of syntax:

(LF-un) (∀x)(Fx −> Gx)

(LF-ex) (∃x)(Fx & Gx)

(LF-un) introduces a conditional and (LF-ex) a conjunction that are absent in the English. These distortions

of syntax are also artifacts of the notation of first-order logic. And that notation suffers from severe

expressive limitations anyway. It is well-known that quantifier phrases in general are not amenable to first-

order treatment (Barwise and Cooper 1981), and Neale, following Barwise and Cooper, urges the use of

restricted quantification as a uniform device for representing sentences containing any sort of quantifier

phrase. In the simplest case it takes the form '[Qx: Fx] Gx'. Phrases containing standard quantifiers ('every',

'some', 'the') or non-standard ones ('few', 'most', 'three', etc.) can be rendered in like fashion: '[every x: Fx]',

'[some x: Fx]', '[the x: Fx]', '[few x: Fx]', '[most x: Fx]', '[three x: Fx]', etc. Graff (2001, 32) suggests

simplifying the notation with '[Q: F]x Gx', where the subscript indicates the variable bound by the

quantifier. Presumably this simplified notation can perspicuously handle the case of one quantifier phrase

containing another.

xiv[14] Gundel, Hedberg, and Zacharski (1993) also include the statuses of being referential and being

type-identifiable, but both are problematic. Being referential is a property of expressions, not objects of

reference (strangely, at one point (p. 277) they speak of 'expressions which are referential but not uniquely

identifiable'), and it emerges that the intended difference between being uniquely identifiable and merely

referential turns on whether the expression being used to refer, without consideration of the rest of the

sentence, suffices to enable the hearer to identify the reference. Being type-identifiable is the weakest

category in Gundel et al.'s hierarachy. It does not distinguish one member of a type from another and is

even a weak way of being able to be referred to. So it really doesn't belong on the list.

xv[15] There is an obvious problem with the view that degree of reference accessibility is encoded in

expressions used to refer: most expressions that can be used to refer can also be used descriptively, in

utterances made to convey not singular but general propositions. Unfortunately, the linguistic literature on

accessibility and givenness tends to ignore the difference between referential and non-referential uses. If

this difference were taken into account, it would be realized that unless the expressions in question were

systematically ambiguous, which there is no reason to believe, it is incoherent to hold that they can encode

degrees of accessibility just for when they are used to refer.

78

Linguists have devoted considerable attention to the question of when it is appropriate to use a definite

description and when to use an indefinite one. As they often observe (see Abbott forthcoming), when

introducing something into a conversation, ordinarily one uses an indefinite description, not a definite one.

There is no need to suppose, as many linguists do, that familiarity is somehow encoded by definite

descriptions (that can't be right anyway, if only because definite descriptions can be used attributively, in

which case the speaker need not be familiar with what satisfies the description). Rather, the requirement of

familiarity, such as it is, is a simple consequence of the fact that the descriptive material in most

descriptions does not apply (and is presumed not to apply) to exactly one individual. Most definite

descriptions are not like 'the inventor of the zipper' or 'the queen of England'. However, once an individual

is introduced as, say, 'a banker', he can subsequently be referred to as 'the banker'. For even though there

are many bankers, once the introduction is made one can use 'the banker' implicitly to mean the banker

being discussed or the contextually relevant banker.

xvi[16] Why mutually salient or familiar? Obviously it is not enough for the intended referent to be

salient or familiar merely to the speaker, if it is not salient or familiar to the audience and if this is not

evident to the speaker (etc.). A speaker presumes that it is when using an expression that requires it to be; if

his presumption is mistaken, the referent won't be evident to his audience. So, in general, when I say that

something is salient or familiar, I will mean that it is mutually so. Similarly, when I speak of something's

being obvious in a conversational situation, I will mean mutually obvious.

xvii[17] Here and throughout I am assuming a distinction between saying and meaning or stating, a

distinction which I have tried elsewhere to vindicate (Bach 2001). It corresponds to Austin's distinction

between locutionary and illocutionary acts. This distinction is often blurred, e.g., by Donnellan (1966),

whenever he suggests that in using a description referentially rather than attributively, one is saying

something different, allegedly because the content of the description does not enter into what is said. See

Point 11 below.

xviii [18] Notice only definite quantifier phrases can be complete or incomplete. A definite 'Q F' is

complete iff the number of Fs is in fact the number (however vaguely specified) indicated by 'Q'. So 'the ten

Fs', 'both Fs', and even 'the few Fs' can be complete or incomplete. Of course, any quantifier phrase can be

used with some implicit restriction intended by the speaker, but that doesn't make it incomplete. For

example, you could say, 'Some students flunked', and mean that some students in your current logic class

flunked (that class). But 'some students' is not incomplete, and 'some students in my current logic class' is

not complete in the above sense, for it does not indicate how many students are in the class.

xix[19] It is commonly supposed that singular possessive descriptions also imply uniqueness, but this is

far from clear. I can refer to one of my brothers as 'my brother', introduce one of my friends as 'my friend',

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and complain that I sprained 'my ankle', even though I have two ankles. Can these descriptions be included

in the category of incomplete definite descriptions, as Neale (forthcoming) would insist, or are they genuine

instances of what Abbott (forthcoming) calls the 'uniqueness problem'? Szabo (2000) and Ludlow and

Segal (this volume) offer a various examples intended to show that even singular descriptions introduced

by 'the' do not imply uniqueness. However, such examples have been explained away by Abbott (1999) and

by Birner and Ward (1994), who also point out that such non-unique uses tend not be productive and seem

to have a kind of generic character. Compare, for example, 'John went to the hospital' with 'John went to the

hospital near his house' or with 'A fire truck went to the hospital'.

xx[20] It seems to me, contrary to Szabo (2000), that there is nothing linguistically odd about the fact that

the simplex quantifiers 'both Fs' and 'the F' have complex semantic specifications. It is predictable that they

are special cases, because of the unavailability of 'all two Fs' or 'all one F'.

xxi[21] They can also be used predicatively, as when one refers to an object in one way and then

describes it as a such-and-such, as when you say of the thing in your hand, 'This is a pomegranate'. It is

arguable that this is not really a quantificational use but a distinctively predicative use, no different in kind

from saying, 'This is red'. It is merely because that phrases containing singular common nouns require (in

English) an article that one cannot say, 'This is pomegranate' (one could say the equivalent of this in

Russian). Graff (2001) has argued that all uses of indefinite descriptions are fundamentally predicates and

even extends her arguments to definite descriptions. Her account also covers generic uses of both definite

and indefinite descriptions, as in 'The tiger has stripes' and 'A philosopher is not in it for the money'.

xxii[22] I do not mean to suggest that 'a certain F' is always used to indicate that the speaker has a

particular unspecified individual in mind. He might merely have in mind some unexpressed restriction on

'F'. For example, one might say, 'A certain contestant will go home happy', without specifying that whoever

wins the contest in question will go home happy. Similarly, an utterance of the quantified 'Every author

loves a certain book' could be made true if every author loves, say, the first book he wrote.

xxiii [23] Since I am discussing Kaplan, I will here use his term 'direct' to modify 'reference', although, as

observed earlier (note 8), it is redundant. An expression, like a definite description, that merely denotes an

object does not refer to that object, in the sense that the object is not a constituent of propositions expressed

by sentences in which the expression occurs.

xxiv[24] As Kaplan explains (1989b, 579-82), certain things he had previously said, and even his formal

system (in Kaplan 1989a), could have suggested that 'dthat' is an operator on definite descriptions, with the

content of the associated description included in the content of the whole phrase. This would make 'dthat' a

'rigidifier' rather than a device of direct reference.

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xxv[25] To stipulate that any phrase of the form 'dthat [the F]' refers 'directly' does not, of course, mean

that it is guaranteed a referent. It means only that the referent, if there is one, is a constituent of the singular

proposition (if there is one) expressed by a sentence in which the phrase occurs.

xxvi[26] For example, Kaplan writes, 'Ignorance of the referent does not defeat the directly referential

character of indexicals', from which he infers, 'a special form of knowledge of an object is neither required

nor presupposed in order that a person may entertain as object of thought a singular proposition involving

that object' (1989a, 536). He goes on to explain that he is objecting to what he calls 'Direct Acquaintance

Theories of direct reference'. Here he seems to be conflating thinking of an object with referring to one, but

he soon explains that he has 'only denied the relevance of these epistemological claims to the semantics of

direct reference' (1989, 537).

xxvii[27] A singular proposition is not only object-involving but object-dependent, in that it would not

exist if its object-constituent did not exist (at some time or other). So a singular proposition exists

contingently. This does not imply that it exists only when its object-constituent exists. Singular

propositions are not temporal just because they are contingent.

xxviii [28] This is related to Hintikka's suggestion, as quoted by Kaplan (1979, 384), that the referential-

attributive distinction 'is only operative in contexts governed by propositional attitudes or other modal

terms'. Evidently, Hintikka's idea was that if there is no modal or other operator whose scope interacts with

that of the description, the distinction between what actually satisfies the description and any possible

satisfier of it does not come into play.

xxix[29] Some would deny the difference. In Searle's view, for example, the very idea of de re belief is

an illusion 'arising from a confusion between reports of beliefs and features of the beliefs being reported'

(1979, 157). But Searle maintains that belief about an object is always under a description, hence not really

singular. He does not recognize the category of singular thoughts and the possibility of de re ways of

thinking of things.

xxx[30] It has even been suggested that giving a (descriptive) name to something whose existence is in

question enables us to refer to it if it does exist. Suppose it is speculated that the perturbations in the orbit

of Pluto are caused by a small but very dense planet beyond Pluto whose entire surface is very dark,

making this planet invisible even to the largest telescope. Nobody knows whether there is such a planet, but

astronomers take this speculation seriously and decide to call this planet 'Goofy'. Accordingly, they believe

that Goofy, if it exists, affects the orbit of Pluto. Even so, it does not follow that they can have de re

(singular) thoughts about it and use the name 'Goofy' to refer to it. Of course, they can single it out and

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describe singular propositions about it, provided it exists. Otherwise, they are just going through the

motions.

xxxi[31] Karttunen is excluding negative quantificational phrases like 'no donkey' and negative cases like

'Bill didn't see a unicorn. *It/The unicorn had a gold mane'.

xxxii[32] In other words, each link in an 'anaphoric chain' (Chastain 1975) is treated as having a

discourse referent, even if intuitively it does not refer. It should not be supposed, as Chastain (1975) and

many others have, that when the links in the chain, the expressions anaphoric on the indefinite description,

are used to refer, the indefinite description itself refers. In most such cases the indefinite will be used

specifically, merely to allude to something.

xxxiii [33] The difference may seem to be captured by the contrasting effects of inserting 'whoever he is'

and a 'namely' phrase after the description, as in 'Schmidt's editor is insane':

(i) Schmidt's editor, whoever he is, is insane.

(ii) Schmidt's editor, namely Ross, is insane.

However, as the following considerations in the text suggest, this test is far from airtight.

xxxiv[34] For more thorough defense of this point see Bach 1987/1994, 103-8, 124-6, and Neale 1990,

93-102, and forthcoming.

xxxv[35] In some cases of attributively used incomplete descriptions, there may be no intended expansion

of the description at all. But what these cases illustrate is not a problem for Russell's theory but a common

problem in communication. When it is indeterminate what the speaker's intention is, communication cannot

really succeed, since nothing counts, strictly speaking, as understanding the speaker correctly. Practically

speaking, though, this may not matter. In the case of attributively using a description without a determinate

restriction, there is no problem as long as one and the same individual satisfies all the plausible candidates

for the completion of the description. Then it makes no practical difference precisely which uniqueness

proposition the speaker wishes to convey or which one the hearer takes him to convey.

xxxvi[36] As I have previously argued, seemingly semantic intuitions confuse what speakers mean with

the semantic contents of expressions (Bach 2002a), and, in particular, there is a kind of nonliterality that is

compatible with each of the words in a sentence being used literally (Bach 2001b). Sentence nonliterality,

as I call it, is not like metaphor, metonymy, and other figurative uses of words. Even though we may not

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intuitively think of this phenomenon as nonliterality, because no specific words are being used figuratively,

it is a way of not being literal. For the speaker says one thing but intends to convey something distinct from

that.

xxxvii [37] Presumably Devitt is not equating the reference of an expression token with what a speaker

refers to in using the expression, for there would be no point in calling speaker reference 'token reference'

and in regarding that as semantic. Here I will not address Devitt's view that expression tokens have

semantic properties of their own, and not just ones inherited from their types. However, I do think this view

is problematic. Indeed, I regard token semantics as, well, token semantics (Bach 1987/1994, 85-88, and

1999). It is odd that he singles me out for 'restrict[ing] semantics to the study of types' (n. 4), for it is he

who departs from the now common practice, endorsed by such prominent semanticists as Kaplan, Salmon,

Soames, Richard, and Braun, of treating semantic reference as a property of types. This practice allows for

referring expressions, notably 'pure' indexicals, to have references relative to contexts. I do not deny this,

but only that definite descriptions, even when used to refer, have (semantic) references. Note that on this

view, as Kaplan (1989a, 522-3) points out, an expression type can refer relative to a context even if not

uttered/used in that context. As Kaplan argues, strange consequences result from attributing acts of

utterance (or tokens) semantic properties of their own. For example, an utterance (or token) of the sentence

'I say nothing' cannot express a truth, but the sentence (type) is true relative to any context in which it is not

uttered (1989b, 584). In any case, my discussion of Devitt's arguments will not rely on my doubts about

token semantics.

xxxviii [38] Also, I will not take up Devitt's arguments as applied to indefinite descriptions. For one thing,

at least in my opinion, most of his examples of referential uses of them are really cases of specific uses (see

Point 6). In these cases, the listener can't engage in 'reference-borrowing' in order himself to refer to the

individual in question, for there is no reference to borrow. And once these sorts of cases are disallowed, it

turns out that referential uses of indefinite descriptions are not regular but relatively rare, like referential

uses of other quantifier phrases, and these, Devitt grants, do not have referential meanings.

xxxix[39] Argument II aims to neutralize Kripke's (1977) well-known pragmatic argument from Russell

English (as opposed to Donnellan English), where it is stipulated that definite descriptions are strictly

quantificational. But just as he insists that Kripke's argument is "unlikely to seem persuasive to someone

who has not already accepted the case against referential definites." Devitt concedes that his own argument

is "unlikely to seem persuasive to someone who has not already accepted the case [for referential

definites]." As for his weak rigidity argument (IV), Devitt acknowledges that it does not provide

independent support for the referential meaning thesis, since his opponent will treat referentially used

descriptions as involved merely in the speaker's expression of weakly rigid thoughts. And his argument

from incomplete descriptions (V) assumes that his opponent treats uses of incomplete descriptions as either

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elliptical for complete ones or as containing implicit but semantically relevant restrictions on their domains.

It should be clear from Point 12 above that I do neither.

xl[40] Devitt also offers a clever argument that to deny that certain regularities of use involve semantic

conventions is to slide down a slippery slope to the conclusion that 'there are no conventional meanings at

all: it is pragmatics all the way down'. Such 'Gricean Fundamentalism' is, of course, absurd. However, the

fact that Devitt has not identified where the Gricean draws the line between semantics and pragmatics does

not show that there is no line to be drawn (see Bach 1999 for how I draw it). I do not deny that there are

problem cases (see Bach 2001a, sec. 5, for examples), but Devitt's reductio, as well as Argument I (as I

explain in the text), conflates the distinction between conventionalization and mere standardization or

pragmatic regularity. Moreover, this 'Gricean fundamentalist' reductio is based on a bad analogy. In a given

communication situation the hearer's job is figure out how the speaker is using a certain expression, not

how it could have come to be used in that way. Whenever there is a pragmatic regularity of using that

expression in a certain way and similar expressions in relevantly similar ways, this job is virtually

effortless. For further discussion see the references in the following paragraph.

xli[41] For details see King 2001 (67-78 and 133-139). As King explains and illustrates with various

examples, this contrast between definite descriptions and demonstrative phrases applies not only to their

referential uses but also to their non-referential and even to their bound or what he calls 'quantification in'

uses. King uses the existence of these other uses and various facts about them to support his contention that

demonstrative phrases have a unified, quantificational semantics.

xlii [42] If I were to respond to the details of Argument VI, I would argue, as I have previously (Bach

1987/1994, 195-202), that one can referentially use a description embedded in the that'-clause of a belief

report without ascribing a singular thought, and one can ascribe a singular thought without using the

description referentially. But I think it suffices to point out that Argument VI can be neutralized, as in the

text, in a way consistent with Russellian pragmatics.

xliii [43] For their very helpful comments, suggestions, and corrections, I would like to thank, and refer to

not by description but by name, Barbara Abbott, Michael Devitt, Robin Jeshion, Jeff King, David Sosa, and

Zoltan Szabo.