Definite Descriptions
Definite Descriptions by Paul Elbourne, published by OUP Oxford on June 27, 2013, is a scholarly work comprising 251 pages in English. This book presents a detailed argument that definite descriptions, such as “the table” and “the King of France,” refer to individuals, aligning with Gottlob Frege’s perspective. Elbourne challenges the prevailing philosophical view that these descriptions serve merely as devices of quantification, offering a robust defense of the Fregean approach.
Readers will find a comprehensive exploration of the semantics surrounding definite descriptions, as Elbourne constructs an explicit fragment of English through a version of situation semantics. The book delves into various linguistic and philosophical discussions, addressing presupposition projection behavior, modal properties, and issues of incompleteness. Additionally, it incorporates insights from a broad spectrum of literature, ranging from early philosophical contributions to contemporary findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics, culminating in a chapter that reexamines the semantics of pronouns as Fregean definite descriptions.
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This book argues that definite descriptions (‘the table’, ‘the King of France’) refer to individuals, as Gottlob Frege claimed. This apparently simple conclusion flies in the face of philosophical orthodoxy, which incorporates Bertrand Russell’s theory that definite descriptions are devices of quantification. Paul Elbourne presents the first fully-argued defence of the Fregean view. He builds an explicit fragment of English using a version of situation semantics. He uses intrinsic aspects of his system to account for the presupposition projection behaviour of definite descriptions, a range of modal properties, and the problem of incompleteness. At the same time, he draws on an unusually wide range of linguistic and philosophical literature, from early work by Frege, Peano, and Russell to the latest findings in linguistics, philosophy of language, and psycholinguistics. His penultimate chapter addresses the semantics of pronouns and offers a new and more radical version of his earlier thesis that they too are Fregean definite descriptions.
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