No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Often Bertrand Russell defends his view that names differ from descriptions in that names have meaning but descriptions do not by using a “proof.” Recently in this journal it has been debated whether Russell's “proof” fails or not. The familiar objection to Russell's argument is that it is circular or it involves a sense/reference equivocation. Avrum Stroll suggests a novel criticism by making use of a “mirror argument“ which attempts to show that Russell's argument can be used to conclude that "Scott" has no meaning, and that thus the argument proves too much or nothing. Robert Fahrnkopf defends Russell's argument, but, I believe, he does not go far enough in his defense. So it will be useful to carry this debate a few steps further.
1 Stroll, Avrum “Russell's ‘Proof',” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 4 (1974-5), 653-62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fahrnkopf, Robert “Stroll on Russell's ‘Proof',” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 6 (1976), 569-78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Stroll, Avrum “Four Comments on Russell's Theory of Description,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 8 (1978), 147-56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Perkins, R. K. Jr., “On Russell's Alleged Confusion of Sense and Reference,” Analysis, 32 (1971-2), 45–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See Kripke, Saul “Naming and Necessity,” Semantics of Natural Language, ed. Davidson and Harman (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1972), 253-355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 How Russell“s intensional ontology explains Frege's puzzle is discussed in Carney, J. D. and Fitch, G. W. “Can Russell Avoid Frege's Sense,” Mind, 35 (1979), pp. 384–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Kaplan's, David “How to Russell A Frege-Church,” The Journal of Philosophy, 72 (1975), pp. 701-20,CrossRefGoogle Scholar where Kaplan concludes that Russell's intensional ontology can do the work of Frege's intensional ontology.