Concept

Definite description

In formal semantics and philosophy of language, a definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of "the X" where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: "the first person in space" and "the 42nd President of the United States of America", are proper. The definite descriptions "the person in space" and "the Senator from Ohio" are improper because the noun phrase X applies to more than one thing, and the definite descriptions "the first man on Mars" and "the Senator from some Country" are improper because X applies to nothing. Improper descriptions raise some difficult questions about the law of excluded middle, denotation, modality, and mental content. Theory of descriptions As France is currently a republic, it has no king. Bertrand Russell pointed out that this raises a puzzle about the truth value of the sentence "The present King of France is bald." The sentence does not seem to be true: if we consider all the bald things, the present King of France is not among them, since there is no present King of France. But if it is false, then one would expect that the negation of this statement, that is, "It is not the case that the present King of France is bald", or its logical equivalent, "The present King of France is not bald", is true. But this sentence does not seem to be true either: the present King of France is no more among the things that fail to be bald than among the things that are bald. We therefore seem to have a violation of the law of excluded middle. Is it meaningless, then? One might suppose so (and some philosophers have) since "the present King of France" certainly does fail to refer. But on the other hand, the sentence "The present King of France is bald" (as well as its negation) seem perfectly intelligible, suggesting that "the present King of France" cannot be meaningless. Russell proposed to resolve this puzzle via his theory of descriptions.

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Philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, the constitution of sentences, concepts, learning, and thought. Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell were pivotal figures in analytic philosophy's "linguistic turn". These writers were followed by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus), the Vienna Circle, logical positivists, and Willard Van Orman Quine.
Theory of descriptions
The theory of descriptions is the philosopher Bertrand Russell's most significant contribution to the philosophy of language. It is also known as Russell's theory of descriptions (commonly abbreviated as RTD). In short, Russell argued that the syntactic form of descriptions (phrases that took the form of "The aardvark" and "An aardvark") is misleading, as it does not correlate their logical and/or semantic architecture.
Sense and reference
In the philosophy of language, the distinction between sense and reference was an idea of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in 1892 (in his paper "On Sense and Reference"; German: "Über Sinn und Bedeutung"), reflecting the two ways he believed a singular term may have meaning. The reference (or "referent"; Bedeutung) of a proper name is the object it means or indicates (bedeuten), whereas its sense (Sinn) is what the name expresses. The reference of a sentence is its truth value, whereas its sense is the thought that it expresses.
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