Philo of language

College of Education Graduate Studies
Dasmarinas City 4115 Philippines

Descriptive
and
Casual Theories
of Referring
Focus: Proper names

Question:
How is it that words refer?
Answer:
Descriptive Theory of Referring
(obsolete)
Causal/Historical Theory of Referring
(new theory)

Descriptive Theory of
Referring
• Expressions are simply disguised or
abbreviated descriptions
• Linguistic terms refer to things by
expressing descriptive features or
characteristics of the things to which
they refer

Referring
Example:
• The name Aristotle refers to the Aristotle,
one who does not know to whom I am
referring, cannot understand what a speaker
is saying unless the speaker uses some
description such as ‘the ancient Greek
philosopher who was the pupil of the
philosopher Plato and the teacher of
Alexander the Great’.

Referring
• A general term (like lion, for instance)
is said to abbreviate that set or cluster
of characteristics commonly associate
with lions.
• Reason: Properties, characteristics, or
communal designations which objects
have, or are thought of as having that
objects can be referred to

Issues on Proper names
Frege’s viewpoint
• Proper names have both a sense and
a referent
• Unless we make such a distinction we
cannot resolve certain paradoxes and
puzzles such as the one about George
IV
• [He] Utilizes the notions of customary
and indirect senses to avoid the puzzle

• Frege states that actual linking that
description which does the work, must
be connected to the intentions of the
speaker – though in most cases the
characteristic/s intended will
correspond to a commonly occurring
one.

• According to him, one is guilty of
psychologistic reasoning – confusing
propositions, universals, numbers,
relations, and meanings with mental
stages or processes – unless the
mode of referring is commonly shared
with other speakers of the language.

• Unless, we recognize the importance
of this distinction and focus upon or
define the intentions of speakers in
terms of what is commonly understood,
logic cannot be objectively founded.

• Frege exemplifies the distinction by
considering the proper name
‘Bucephalus’. As he explains, a
painter, an equestrian, and a zoologist
will imagine or think of Bucephalus
differently, though all understand the
same sense.

• The sense of the expression is “the
common property of many.” It is ‘the
warhorse of Alexander the Great.’
Thus, the name ‘Bucephalus’
abbreviates ‘the warhorse of Alexander
the Great.’

Russell’s viewpoint
• [He] refuses to take seriously the idea that
proper names have sense
• Proper names do not have sense
• Does not utilize the notions of customary
and indirect senses
• [He] holds the thesis that what are ordinarily
considered to be proper names can be
“eliminated” by suitable descriptions

Frege & Russel on the Same
Ground
• They do not believe that specific
proper name stood in an identity
relation to a particular description, such
that whenever that name appeared in a
sentence, and one wished to explain or
understand it, one would have be able
to dredge up that description.

Defining General terms &
Proper names
General Terms Proper names
•All general terms
have meaning in the
ordinary sense of word
‘meaning,’ and their
meanings can
generally be found in
dictionaries.
•E.g ‘cow’ and
‘cannon’ have
meaning
•Have meaning in the
ordinary sense of the
word ‘meaning’
•Meaningless symbols
(John Stuart Mill)

Defining General terms &
Proper names
General Terms Proper names
•General names
cannot be defined
ostensively.
•One can consult
dictionaries to
determine what kinds
of things are labeled
•Behave like labels
•They identify certain
persons, places, and
things.
•They can be defined
ostensively (by
pointing).
•One cannot consult
dictionaries to
determine what kinds
of things are labeled

On the discussion of Proper
names
• The idea that proper names are meaningless
is mistaken
• Further, etymological meaning is different
from word meaning.
• Example:
• ‘Lionel’ is etymological derived from the
French diminutive for ‘lion’ is a little if any
importance to the question of whether or not
proper names have meanings.

• Thus, there is no implication of
meaning of the proper name when
someone refers to ‘Lionel Atwill, the
actor who played an inspector in all
those thirties horror movie, was
somehow of diminutive stature, worth,
importance, etc.

• Some ordinary proper names have
meaning other than etymological
sense.
• They may have a descriptive relation to
what they designate. It can be: literal,
metaphorical or figurative.

Literal descriptive
Example:
• ‘Round Hill, Virginia’ (a round hill in
Virginia)
• ‘Black Hills’ (hills are black

• Others are descriptive of events that
do/did occur on/at the place they name
Example:
• ‘Accident, Maryland’
• ‘Council Bluffs, Iowa’

• Some examples are descriptive of
posession or are honorific:
Example:
• ‘Georgia’
• ‘Maryland’
• ‘Kennedy Airport’
• ‘Prince Albert, Canada’
• ‘Mark Twain High School’

• Henceforth, Odell (XX) refers to names
that have meaning as descriptive
designators
Example: ‘Robert Odell
• and nondescriptive designators
Example: ‘Sarigotha’

How important is
differentiating proper names
and general names?
• Answer:
• The meaning of some words can only
be attributed to them when they appear
in sentential contexts.
• Example:
• Are the kinds of dogs (p.122-3)
• The word caught (p.123)
• And the word bank (p.124)

• In those cases dictionaries can be
misleading because they give
impression that words have meaning in
isolation

Frege vs. Mill
• Frege disagrees to Mill’s contention
that names do not have sense nor
proper names do not have sense.
• He maintains that all proper names
(including full declarative sentences,
which are for him names) have sense,
even though some of them do not have
reference.

Frege vs. Mill
• For Frege, we must focus on objective
senses of an expression when explaining
meaning.
• These objective senses are descriptions
commonly attached to objects, as opposed
to the varied and numerous sets of possible
personal descriptions (e.g. is the sense:
amber in Rimes’) that can or could be
intended.

Frege vs. Mill
• He is not concerned with the fluctuation or
ambiguities that result from variations in the
personal and even communal uses of
names.
• As long as the referent of an expression
remains the same, fluctuations in sense can
be tolerated.
• However, it is different for science and
philosophical discourse, since they require
ideal or formal language for specific
description for each name.

Strawson’s view on Proper
name
• “One cannot use a name to refer to
someone or something unless one knows
who or what it is one is referring to by that
name.”
Conclusion:
• “One must be prepared to substitute a
description for that name”
• Such description refers to an identifying
description. The uniquely identifying
description cannot be what the speaker
would describe as ‘the one I have in mind.’

name
Example:
• Consider the situation in which a reference is
made, by name, to Socrates… both speaker
and hearer, in this situation, satisfy the
conditions for successful term-introduction if
each knows some distinguishing fact or
facts, not necessarily the same one, about
Socrates, facts which each is prepared to
cited to indicate whom he now means, or
understands, by ‘Socrates.’

name
Question:
• What is the relation between [these]
facts and the name?
• What are the conditions of correctly
describing them as ‘facts about
Socrates,’ where one uses and not
mention the name?

name
Answer:
• Strawson enlarges his notion of
presupposition by speaking of a
“presupposition-set,” – set of
propositions that constitute a “complete
description” of the referent.

name
Answer:
• A correct use of singularly referring
expression like ‘Socrates’ depends
upon its being used in such a way that
a reasonable proportion of the
descriptions contained in the
presupposition set apply, and that they
apply to one and only one individual.

name
• He introduces the concept of reference
borrowing.
• It explains how one can succeed in
referring to someone or something
when one does not have an identifying
description with which to describe that
thing

name
Example:
• If Joey learns that Aristotle was a
philosopher from Professor Besa, and this is
all he knows about Aristotle, how could he
meet the requirement of the descriptive
theorist: that one who uses a proper name
must be prepared to substitute an identifying
description for the proper name of the object
referred to?

name
• Would we not have to say of Joey did
not know whom he was talking about?
• Not according to Strawson.
• Joey can use the description ‘the
person professor Besa referred to as
“Aristotle.”

name
• Strawson views that meaning or sense
of a proper name is a uniquely
identifying description, which is a
member of a set of commonly
recognized descriptions, true of the
referent of that name.

name
• If I mean by the name ‘Aristole,’ ‘the
philosopher who invented logic,’ and
you mean by that name, ‘the
philosopher who taught both Plato and
Alexander the great,’ each of us would
be using a uniquely identifying
description, both of which are member
of the presupposition set regarding the
name ‘Aristotle.’

Concerns of the Philosophers
• Strawson is focused on providing an
account of the way proper names are
used in natural languages.
• Frege and Russel are focused upon
the development of formal languages
that do not suffer from the lack of
specificity inherent in natural
languages.

• Strawson’s views of natural language
usage of proper names mirror to some
extent Frege’s attempts to construct an
ideal language.
• Frege, Russel and Strawson consider
a statement that has as a subject a
reference to a non-existent object, as
neither true nor false.

• Frege, however, rejects the idea that
natural languages contain descriptions
that uniquely identify the referents of
proper names.
• Russel would not agree with
Strawson’s approach either. For him,
there are no genuine proper names in
natural languages, only descriptions
masquerading as names.

Searle’s version of the
descriptive theory
• He refines SDDTR (_Descriptions,
Disguised Theory of Referring) by a
procedure for determing membership
in the presupposition set, which he
refers to as the set of intentional
content.

descriptive theory
• According to him, what is understood
as the meaning of proper name is that
set of intentional contents, that is
comprised of uniquely referring
descriptions – a set determined by
asking members of the community of
language users what they would
consider to be “certain essential and
established facts” regarding the bearer
of a given name.

descriptive theory
• Searle claims that the answer provided
by the community of speakers – the set
of uniquely referring descriptive
statements – could be used to
establish the sense or meaning of a
proper name.

descriptive theory
• For instance, the “descriptive force” of
the sentence ‘This is Aristotle’ is
equivalent to asserting that a sufficient
but unspecified number of these
uniquely referring descriptive
statements are true of Aristotle.

descriptive theory
• Searle makes use of Strawson’s
concept of an identifying description, to
claim that whenever a speaker uses a
proper name, he must be prepared to
substitute an identifying description of
the referent, or have credentials
borrowed from someone who is
prepared to do so.

Causal or Historical
Theory of Referring

Causal/Historical Theory of
Referring
• American philosophers Keith
Donnelllan, Saul Kripke, and Hilary
Putnam answers the question:
How words designate things?
• by claiming that a linguistic expression
denotes what it denotes because of its
particular causal history.

• According to them, an expression’s
referent is fixed by an initial act of
referring which links the expression to
some object or group of objects
• An historical or causal chain is said to
lead backwards in time to the initial
acts of referring.

• If I say “Aristotle was an important
Greek philosopher,” I a referring to
someone who was at some specific
time in the past given the name
‘Aristotle.’ I do so by virtue of being in
the relevant causal or historical chain
of referring.

Kripke’s views
• He explains his distinction between
rigid and non-rigid designators (the
foundational platform for the
causal/historical theory of referring

Kripke’s views
Rigid designators
• Is an expression which necessarily
designates a specific object in every
possible world
Example:
Benjamin Franklin & Richard Nixon
• (Benjamin Franklin is Benjamin Franklin
before and after
• Richard Nixon is Richard Nixon is now and
then)

Kripke’s views
Non-rigid designators
• most descriptions and do not designate
the same object in all possible worlds
Example:
‘the inventor of bifocals’

Kripke’s views
• However, exception to the rule are
descriptions that logically imply that
their referents are what they are and
that they could not be anything else in
any possible world
Example:
• the description ‘the square root of 81’

Kripke’s views
• Further, Kripke criticizes descriptivism,
by pointing that on SDDTR account,
the speaker would have to know from
whom he got his reference; otherwise,
he could not offer an identifying
description; however, for him there is
no such requirement.
• Name is spread “from link to link as if
by a chain.”

• Searle answers Kripke’s critique of
descriptivism.
• He says speakers often have in much
more significant descriptive content
than they provide.
• Further “it is the speaker’s Intentional
content that determines reference.

• It is not enough to look at just what a
speaker says in response to a
particular question, one has to look at
his total Intentional content, as well as
Background capacities associated with
a name and at what he would say if
informed that different parts of that
content were satisfied by different
objects.”

• Searle also added that even if the
speaker could not remember from
whom he got his reference, he could
be viewed as making a secondary kind
of reference.
• The description in question is
determined by what best fits the
Intentional content in the mind of the
speaker.

Discussion on General terms
• Question:
• How would a causal theorist explain
general terms?

• Hilary Putnam argues that the
referents of natural kind terms, e.g.
‘human’ and ‘water’ are determined by
the actual nature of the world.
• Natural kind terms refer to entities
conceived of as having modal
implications, which are implications
regarding necessity and possibility.

• If some object x is a member of the
natural kind human, then x is
necessarily human. But being a
member of the non-natural kind tall, is
only a possibility.

• According to Putnam natural kind
terms are rigid designators (like proper
names).
• For example, what ‘water’ means is
fixed by its referent.
• It meant H2O in 1750 even though we
were unaware of it.

• However, Peter Hacker has argued
against Putnam’s account of meaning,
which he refers to as “scientific
realism.”
• He believes that its claim that scientific
discoveries can reveal the real
meanings of natural language
expressions would, “spell ruin” for
Wittgenstein’s later philosophy.

• It challenges Wittegenstein’s view that the
meaning of an expression is given by the
rules governing its use.
• These rules are for Wittgenstein neither true
nor false, and do not depend upon a
correspondence with reality.
• They are not challenged by scientific
discoveries, like the discovery that water is
H20. Wittgenstein referred to this as the
autonomy of language.

• In Putnam’s defense, he does not deny
that society, via practices and rules, is
an essential component in the
determination of meaning.
• He believes that an adequate account
of semantics must consider both the
contributions of society and those of
science.

Conclusion
• The descriptive theorists and the
causal theorists are both right and both
wrong.
• The mistake they both make is that
looking for an account of referring that
explains and justifies our use of proper
names and general description which
can be stated in terms of necessary
and sufficient conditions.

Conclusion
• They are both right to explain a word or
expression is sometimes simply being
able to provide a descriptive
paraphrase that removes the
misunderstanding, while at other times
it is simply to point to something which
is the paradigm (in the case of proper
names) or a paradigm (in the case of a
natural kind term) of what needs to be
explained.

Conclusion
• We should talk about enabling
conditions and not necessary and
sufficient conditions.
• By an enabling condition, it means
anything that makes it possible for a
speaker to mean something by an
expression or to explain to another
what an expression means.

Conclusion
• If a Weimaraner is present when one
wishes to explain what the term
‘Weimaraner’ means, there is no need
for any description.
• The presence of the Weimaraner
enables one to accomplish his
explanation.

Conclusion
• But if the word in question is
‘werewolf’, it is not possible for such a
thing to be present, and so one must
resort to description because no
historical link could ever be established
back to such a referent.

Conclusion
• One’s knowledge of what a werewolf is
consists in nothing more that his
knowledge that a werewolf is a human
who, because he has bitten by another
werewolf, is transformed into a wolf
when the moon is full.

Conclusion
• The description ‘a werewolf is a human
who, because he has bitten by another
werewolf, is transformed into a wolf
when the moon is full,’ is based as it is
on ones knowledge of what a werewolf
is, enables one to understand and
explain what the term ‘werewolf’
means.

Conclusion
• The one thing that all linguistic symbols have
in common is that their usefulness
presupposes semantic practices – practices
that correlate symbols with their referents
• What we need is an account of meaning that
recognizes the importance of practices in the
determination of meaning, and which
recognizes that many of our linguistic
practices are family resemblance in
character.

Conclusion
• All empirical terms are governed by
practices that are not and cannot be
fixed. They are instead capable of
significant change.
• ‘Bad’ has come to mean good!

Philo of language

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