Bertrand Russell, “Existence and Description”
§1 General Propositions and Existence
“Now when you come to ask what really is asserted in a
general proposition, such as ‘All Greeks are men’ for instance,
you find that what is asserted is the truth of all values of what I
call a propositional function. A propositional function is
simply any expression containing an undetermined
constituent, or several undetermined constituents, and
becoming a proposition as soon as the undetermined
constituents are determined.” (24a)
“Much false philosophy has arisen out of confusing
propositional functions and propositions.” (24b)
A propositional function can be necessary (when it is always
true), possible (when it is sometimes true), and impossible
(when it is never true).
“Propositions can only be true or false, but propositional
functions have these three possibilities.” (24b)
“When you take any propositional function and assert of it that
it is possible, that it is sometimes true, that gives you the
fundamental meaning ‘existence’…. Existence is essentially a
property of a propositional function. It means that the
propositional function is true in at least one instance.” (25a)
A propositional function is merely a schema.
Russell’s Question: “What is there really in the world that
corresponds with [propositional functions]?” Russell’s
Answer: Facts.
My question: What does it mean to admit facts into one’s
ontology?
The beginning of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1918)
1
1.1
1.11
1.12
1.13
1.2
1.21
2
2.01
The world is all that is the case.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
The world is determined by the facts, and by their
being all the facts.
For the totality of facts determines what is the case,
and also whatever is not the case.
The facts in logical space are the world.
The world divides into facts.
Each item can be the case or not the case while
everything else remains the same.
What is the case--a fact--is the existence of states of
affairs.
A state of affairs (a state of things) is a combination
of objects (things).
§2 Description and Incomplete Symbols
Names and definite description.
Names
Brandon Look
Sir Walter Scott
George W. Bush
Definite Descriptions
The professor of Philosophy 550
The author of Waverly
The 43rd President of the USA
But, for Russell, names are not truncated definite descriptions.
At least, this is not the case for names that really refer. Some
names, e.g. ‘Romulus’, are merely truncated descriptions.
These things – definite descriptions or incomplete symbols –
“are things that have absolutely no meaning whatsoever in
isolation, but merely acquire a meaning in a context. ‘Scott’
taken as a name has a meaning all by itself. It stands for a
certain person, and there it is. But ‘the author of Waverly’ is
not a name, and does not all by itself mean anything at all,
because when it is rightly used in propositions, those
propositions do not contain any constituent corresponding to
it.” (35a-b)
Logically Proper Name: A logically proper name is a term the
meaning of which is its referent.
Is a term a proper name? Two questions:
(1) Can you understand the meaning of α is F without
knowing which thing a refers to? If so, then a is not a
logically proper name, but must be analyzed as a
description.
(2) Would α is F be meaningful even if a had no referent? If
so, then a is not a logically proper name but must be
analyzed as a description.
Terence Parsons, “Referring to Nonexistent Objects”
Part 1. Referring to Nonexistent Objects isn’t Failing to Refer.
Parsons presents two dialogues that are supposed to
demonstrate that we have different intuitions about terms that
fail to refer and those that refer to nonexistent objects.
Russell, the early Wittgenstein, Carnap, Quine, et alia have
argued that we need to paraphrase those utterances that seem
to refer to nonexistent objects. But, Parsons claims, those
paraphrases have yet to be produced.
Part Two: A Quasi-Meinongian View
Real Objects
Sets of Properties
O1
{p: O1 has p}
O2
{p: O2 has p}
.
.
.
.
Oa
{p: Oa has p}
So, the left-hand list seems to exhaust the ontology that we all
agree on. But, we can continue, by adding properties and sets
of properties in the right-hand column.
{goldenness, mountainhood, …}
According to Parsons, “the theory under discussion says that for
any such set in the right-hand list, there is correlated with it
exactly one object.” (38a) Therefore,
Oa+1
{goldenness, mountainhood, …}
There are two principles at work in Parsons account – both
of which depend upon the notion of nuclear properties.
(1) No two objects (real or unreal) have exactly the same
nuclear properties.
(2) For any set of nuclear properties, some object has all of
the properties in that set and no other nuclear properties.
But not all predicates can stand for nuclear properties (39a)
My gloss on this:
Think of the nature of some thing, e.g. a unicorn or George W.
Bush. What set of properties allows you to distinguish a
unicorn from a non-unicorn? George W. Bush from someone
else. Those properties belong to its essence. Non-nuclear
properties are not involved in that process of individuation.
Part 3. Singular Terms
Parsons’s Language:
Nuclear Predicates: PN, QN, RN,…
Extranuclear Predicates: PE, QE, RE,…
Object names and variables: a, b, c,…, x, y, z,…
DNs “Holmes is a detective” (which is true)
EEs “Holmes exists” (which is false)
“There are no winged-horses”  ~(x)(EEx & WNx & HNx)
Definite descriptions: (ix)q i.e. “the thing such that…”
“The man in the doorway is clever”  (ix)(MNx & INx & EEx)
CN
Parsons’s Conclusions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Names like Pegasus and Sherlock Holmes do refer, but to
non-existent objects.
Reference of a name doesn’t have to do with causal history.
Names may manifest de re/de dicto ambiguities.
Names have sense (meaning).
Quine’s “Ontological Relativity”
One of the main themes/ideas of this piece is naturalism.
What is naturalism? How does Quine understand it?
“I hold that knowledge, mind, and meaning are part of the
same world that they have to do with, and that they are to be
studied in the same empirical spirit that animates natural
science.” (45a)
“When a naturalistic philosopher addresses himself to
philosophy of mind, he is apt to talk of language. Meanings
are, first and foremost, meanings of language. Language is a
social art which we all acquire on the evidence solely of other
people’s over behavior under publicly recognizable
circumstances. Meanings, therefore, those very models of
mental entities, end up as grist for the behaviorist’s mill.”
(45a)
Myth of the museum:
“Uncritical semantics is the myth of the museum in which the
exhibits are meanings and the words are labels.” (45b)
We ought to give up this myth. But, in doing so, we give up
the assurance of determinacy. (46a)
Why?
Indeterminacy of translation
Inscrutability of reference
Radical Translation
Gavagai!
Inscrutability of reference  there is no fact of the matter.
(52b-53a)
Reference is non-sense except relative to a co-ordinate system.
Principle of relativity.
Ontology is relative to a theory and background theory (54-55)
“We cannot know what something is without knowing how it
is marked off from other things. Identity is thus of a piece
with ontology.” (55b)