Full-text resources of CEJSH and other databases are now available in the new Library of Science.
Visit https://bibliotekanauki.pl

Results found: 2

first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last

Search results

Search:
in the keywords:  DEFINITE DESCRIPTIONS
help Sort By:

help Limit search:
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
EN
In “Descriptive indexicals and indexical descriptions” Nunberg claimed that only indexicals among singular terms may have descriptive uses, i.e. have non-singular contributions to the propositions they are used to express. In this respect they differ from proper names or definite descriptions. In “Lessons from Descriptive Indexicals”, Sæbø shows that this conjecture is untenable, providing examples of the descriptive uses of both proper names and definite descriptions. This paper offers an account of the descriptive uses of all of the singular terms and provides an alternative to Saebø’s account. Sæbø’s analysis rests on the assumption that the propositional contribution of all singular terms used descriptively is a singular concept. The author will argue against this assumption and her proposal will offer a uniform analysis of the descriptive uses of singular terms that is not constrained by it.
EN
In 1905 Bertrand Russell took on the problem of definite descriptions, and his analysis became the standard until 1950 when Peter Strawson criticised Russell's solution as inadequate. Since then many opponents as well as proponents of the Russellian solution have been involved in a long-term debate on definite descriptions. In this paper the authoress shows that both sides of the contention are partly right and partly wrong, because sentences of the form 'The F is a G' are ambiguous. However, the ambiguity does not concern reference shift of the description 'the F'. Rather, the ambiguity consists in different topic-focus articulations of a given sentence involving occurrences of 'the F'. The authoress demonstrates that when 'the F' is used as a part of the topic of such a sentence the existence of the object denoted by 'the F' is not only entailed by but also presupposed by the sentence. On the other hand 'the F' used in the focus of a sentence triggers merely existential entailment. Thus sentences differing only in their topic-focus articulation should have assigned different logical forms. In order to make such hidden features explicit, she applies the procedural semantics of Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL), furnishing sentences with hyper-propositions that are precisely defined in terms of TIL constructions. These are procedures assigned to sentences as their context-invariant structured meanings. Moreover, the authoress generalises the phenomenon of the topic-focus distinction to sentences of any form, proposing an adequate analytic schema of sentences that come with a presupposition.
first rewind previous Page / 1 next fast forward last
JavaScript is turned off in your web browser. Turn it on to take full advantage of this site, then refresh the page.