Introduction

Summary

In one way or another the nine chapters of this book all have to do with free logic. Most are updated revisions in and adaptations of previously published papers. The exceptions are Chapters 4 and 5, though Chapter 4 contains a revised segment from a recently published paper.

Chapter 1 began as an invited address to the Western Division of the American Philosophical Association Meetings in 1991, and at the request of the organizers of those meetings was subsequently published in slightly revised form in Philosophical Studies, 65 (1992), pp. 153–167. It is a critical analysis of Russell's famous theory of definite descriptions of which there are two quite distinct versions. The defining feature of either version is that definite descriptions are not singular terms. That the essence of Russell's theory has to do with logical grammar was stressed in my ‘Explaining away singular existence statements’, Dialogue, 1 (1963), pp. 381–389, and later, independently, by David Kaplan in ‘What is Russell's theory of descriptions?’ Physics, History and Logic (eds. W. Yourgrau and A. Breck), Plenum Press, New York (1970), pp. 277–288.