The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language.
While descriptions may seem like fairly uncontroversial phrases, Russell argued that providing a satisfactory analysis of the linguistic and logical properties of a description is vital to clarity in important philosophical debates, particularly in semantic arguments, epistemology and metaphysical elements.
Since the first development of the theory in Russell's 1905 paper "On Denoting", RTD has been hugely influential and well-received within the philosophy of language.
Most recently, RTD has been defended by various philosophers and even developed in promising ways to bring it into harmony with generative grammar in Noam Chomsky's sense, particularly by Stephen Neale.
Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions was initially put forth in his 1905 essay "On Denoting", published in the journal of philosophy Mind.
Russell put forward his theory of descriptions to solve a number of problems in the philosophy of language.
Russell analyses this phrase into the following component parts (with 'x' and 'y' representing variables): Thus, a definite description (of the general form 'the F is G') becomes the following existentially quantified phrase in classic symbolic logic (where 'x' and 'y' are variables and 'F' and 'G' are predicates – in the example above, F would be "is an emperor of Kentucky", and G would be "is gray"): Informally, this reads as follows: something exists with the property F, there is only one such thing, and this unique thing also has the property G. This analysis, according to Russell, solves the two problems noted above as related to definite descriptions: Russell says that all propositions in which the Emperor of Kentucky has a primary occurrence are false.
P. F. Strawson argued that Russell had failed to correctly represent what one means when one says a sentence in the form of "the current Emperor of Kentucky is gray."
The semantic approach of philosophers like Stephen Neale[3] suggests that the sentence does in fact have the appropriate meaning as to make it true.
He argues that both Russell and Strawson make the mistake of attempting to analyse sentences removed from their context.
On Russell's analysis, the sentence is to be understood as an existential quantification of the conjunction of three components: If this analysis of the reporter's assertion were correct, then since Jones is innocent, we should take her to mean what the discoverer of Smith's body meant, that whoever murdered Smith is insane.
Furthermore, Honcques Laus[10] contends that Russell's analysis involves an error in the truth value that all sentences can be either true or false.
Russell's nonacceptance of multiple-valued logic makes himself unable to assign a proper truth value to unverifiable and unfalsifiable sentences and causes the puzzle of the laws of thought.
William G. Lycan[11] argues that Russell's theory intrinsically applies solely to one extraordinary subclass of singular terms but an adequate solution to the puzzles must be generalized.
His theory merely addresses the principal use of the definite article "the", but fails to deal with plural uses or the generic use.
Arthur Pap[12] argues that the theory of descriptions must be rejected because according to the theory of descriptions, 'the present king of France is bald' and 'the present king of France is not bald' are both false and not contradictories otherwise the law of excluded middle would be violated.