RUSSELL: On Denoting | Theory of Definite Descriptions Explained
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- Опубліковано 19 чер 2024
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One of Russell's major contributions to modern logic is his theory of descriptions as outlined in his landmark article: On Denoting. Russell argues that descriptions do not denote objects directly, but instead apply to a generic 'something' that fits the description. This allows him, he claims, to solve some puzzles that had plagued philosophy for centuries. His approach has become standard practice in classical logic since.
This video is an introduction to a reasonably advanced, but highly interesting topic. It should be helpful for both those that find philosophy interesting and philosophy students alike. It provides a potential reply to arguments such as the ontological argument for the existence of God, and also helps to shed light on some conventions of modern logic.
#Russell #OnDenoting #TheoryOfDescriptions
---------Video Contents---------
00:00 - Introduction
01:03 - The Theories of Meinong and Frege
02:20 - Problems with Meinong's view
04:26 - Problems with Frege's view
08:00 - Russell's Theory of Descriptions
09:30 - Indefinite Descriptions
10:32 - Definite Descriptions
11:58 - Logical Notation
14:01 - Solving the Identity Puzzle
15:39 - Solving the Negation Puzzle
19:09 - Solving the Non-Existence Puzzle
21:57 - Ending
---------Channel Details---------
This channel features videos about big ideas in philosophy, explained as simply as I can. The focus is on late 19th and early 20th century thought, with a particular emphasis on the British Idealists (e.g. F. H. Bradley, J. M. E. McTaggart) and early analytic philosophers (Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Frank Ramsey). Welcome to the channel!
---------My Details---------
I am a PhD student and Gates Scholar at Cambridge near the end of a thesis on Frege's views on Truth. I have lectured at Cambridge on Frank Ramsey and Bertrand Russell, regularly taught undergraduate logic classes, and have also supervised students in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and early analytic philosophy. But I have a keen interest in the British Idealists that I hope to pursue by making videos about what I'm reading, so much of the content of this channel will be an outlet for that interest.
---------References---------
Frege, G. (1984). Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy. (B. McGuinness, Ed., M. Black, V. H. Dudman, P. Geach, H. Kaal, E. H. W. Kluge, B. McGuinness, & R. H. Stoothoff, Trans.). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
Geach, P. (1959). Russell on Meaning and Denoting. Analysis, 19(3), 27-31.
Hawkins, N. (2021). Frege’s Equivalence Thesis and Reference Failure. Organon F, 28(1), 198-222. DOI: doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28109
Marek, J. (2021). Alexius Meinong. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Edward N. Zalta ed.).
Russell, B. (1905). On Denoting. Mind, 14(56), 479-93.
Searle, J. R. (1958). Russell's Objections to Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference. Analysis, 18(6), 137-43.
I am an undergraduate philosophy student in one of the most elite US universities and I found your videos to be more illuminating than most, if not all, of my classes and professors.
Thank you Jerry, that is a very generous compliment. I'm happy to help spread good ideas and make them accessible. There will be more to come and I would value your input as the channel grows.
I’ve found this to be the case when non-philosophers of language attempt to explicate such topics.
I was fortunate enough to study phil of language as an undergrad with Searle, David Kaplan, A. Hsu (20th century analytic stuff), Terence Parsons, and Normore (medieval semantics & logic).
Which elite university?
It’s incredible to think that people put the time out of their day to think of such complexities. Much respect to Russel and his contemporaries!
This is such an impressively clear and concise explanation. Thank you so much.
Thanks for the compliment. Glad you found it helpful! 😊
A superb explanation of Russel's theory!
Thank you, great summary and very helpful!
such an incredible video ! thank you !
Thank you so much for your video! It is very very clear and helpful.
Thank god you mentioned Russell was mischaracterizing Frege in that argument around a third of the way through the paper. I had no idea what was happening until I looked at the Russell's Objections to Frege paper that you linked. It's nice to see even the greats like Russell flounder, but good lord is it annoying to try to read through it (reminds me of typos in math papers).
Also, it was an awkward day to see sentences with the queen as a reference.
Yes, sorry about The Queen.
Russell actually has a habit of misrepresenting his opponents. Best to make sure you read them directly and not take his word for it. But, there is a genuine problem for Frege in the vicinity of what Russell argues, one that is explained very well in "Metaphysicians of Meaning" by Gideon Makin. If you are following up references you could have a look at this too. Happy studying!
The perfect explanation. Thankyou for doing the job of my professor.
What a wonderful explanation. Thank you!!
Looking for more of such insights.
Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Best there is on UA-cam about Russell’s “On Deboting” making it sensible! Thank you!
Thanks!
I just found your channel and just wanted to thank you for putting the time and effort. Analitic philosophy is kind of forgotten in the wider genre of philosophy videos on UA-cam and most people don't really deal with it's beauty and complexity, which is a shame. Hopefuly more people will find your channel.
Much apreciation from Ecuador!
Thanks for the generous comment. I hope to be back making these videos when my thesis is done. Nice to have you around.
I cannot wait for your video on Wittgenstein. He has easily become my favorite philosopher. Wittgenstein's concept of language-games has set my amateur mind on fire. Great videos bro.
Thanks a lot for the compliment! I might get to Investigations, but as I don't know it well it would probably come later. I was thinking of doing a couple of videos on Tractatus. His Logical Atomism and his 'argument for solipsism'. But they are great too so I'm sure you'll enjoy them. Nice to have you around.
Thank you so much
THIS IS A GREAT VIDEO I GOTTA SAY, very clear and informative, I find it helpful, please keep uploading! Analytical philosophy needs such explanation!
Thanks! I'm trying to get more time for this. Just gotta earn somehow too :).
This was an excellent explanation of this paper. Now reading this paper it is easy to follow. I would love to see you do a video on Kripke's response to the Russell-Frege view!
You aren't the first to request this. Maybe I will.
Thank you so much for this video and the Frege one. Passed my mid-terms thanks to these and a lot of reading.
You're welcome. And congratulations!
You be saving me ass on the impossible assignment of comparing frege and Russell in 600 words
this video was honestly game-changing, so thank you
You are most welcome!
Incredible. Well done and thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent stuff - "Absolute Philosophy - Simplified"!
Thanks! That's what I try to do.
Dude I am going to pass my paper based on your video.
Thank you so much
Currently studying for my philosophy exam and this has been extremely helpful!!
Glad to hear it. I hope you ace it!
I enjoyed. Thanks. I think I have always preferred Alexius Meinong's beautifully austere theory over Russell's. I think similar debates go on a century and half later in film theory. For instance take Meinong's theory of objects and couple it with philosopher Robert M Adams actualist theory of possible worlds and then apply these to films then one can see why Meinong's ideas have their real application in film studies and the analysis of animated documentaries. Meinong's ontology includes nonexistent, pseudo, homeless and many other unique objects... which work well with fictional and factual worlds. See Dr Paul Sellors at Napier University if you want to know more, on this. His paper is called: "drawing a clear line between fact and fiction in the animated documentary" or "A realist account of fiction"
I certainly agree that Meinong's view is not absurd. And it does have a certain elegance.
Absolutely marvelous 👏👏👏
Thank you, Sir!
really well explained.... thanks!
You're welcome!
Best video on the topic!
Thank :)
Thanks for explanation
You're welcome!
excellent video. would have been great if you had mentioned some problems for Russell's theory though, e.g. that the Russellian analysis seems to imply that "No student did the homework they had" would be true even if they didn't have any homework at all (because according to Russell the sentence basically means "No student had exactly one homework and did it"), which is surely ridiculous - clearly that sentence should only be true if each student had a homework and every student didn't do it.
btw, thanks for including all the references in the description, very helpful
Interesting. I've not heard that critique. I wonder though, could Russell simply construct a conditional parsing to avoid the result? By parsing 'no student did the homework' not as 'NOT some x some y such that x is a student and x did y and y is a homework had by x and for all z if z is a homework had by x then z=y' (which comes out true, as you say) but as 'NOT some x such that x is a student and if (some y such that y is a homework had by x and for all z if z is a homework had by x then z=y) then x did y' (which comes out false as the absence of the homework makes the conditionals all true). This kind of trick is very Russellian, and conceivably plays on the ambiguity in the natural phrase, one clarified by the choice of logical parsing.
Thanks for the video. Although my comment here does not really about the definite description, I just want to express my reflection that may be related to this video. This last part of the video recalls me that why I am so confused when I stared in some of the the elementary logic books that always ask the readers to translate the English sentences into the logical sentences. At that time, I was not sure about where my confusion came from regarding the translation exercises. Now I think that the confusion may be addressed in the article from Montague, or at least will give me some hints once I finish the reading. At that time, I was thinking whether the suggested symbolic expression in the solution guide is actually translating the same proposition that the English sentences expressed (and that the readers and the author may have different senses to the same English sentence). Of course, the elementary books are not intend to discuss such topic, and the rules of designation from one expression to another expression often missing. This just comes up with my mind after I watched the video and bear with me if my reflection goes too far apart from the idea of this video.
There can often be debates about translation. That can be the case between natural languages as well as between natural language and formal language. The idea of a formal language is to make it clear what the truth conditions are for a sentence, i.e. what must things be like if the sentence were true. There can of course be many ways to translate a natural language sentence into formal notation for there will often be logically equivalent formal sentences that could equally suffice. For example, 'no cats are fish' could be translated formally as either 'all things that are cats are not fish' or 'there is no thing that is a cat and a fish'. These are logically equivalent, so both are acceptable translations. But sometimes translations might not be logically equivalent but both seem reasonable. In those cases, the point of logical translation is to try to clarify under what conditions the natural language claim would be true as a means to disambiguate it.
18:26 Thanks for the video! Could you clarify 'secondary way'? I don't actually understand how the 2nd meaning relates.
Sometimes the secondary meaning is put in slightly odd English... 'it is not the case that (or not a fact that) the king of France is bald'. Since there is no bald king of France, this is meant to be true, because this is not the case. Whereas the primary way 'the king of France is not bald' is meant to come out false, because there is no fact (a hirsute French King) to make it true. Since one meaning is true while the other is false they cannot be the same meaning. So Russell thinks the sentence is ambiguous and should be clarified in a formal notation.
grazie mille. Thank you so much.
You're welcome 😊
There is something beautiful and elegant about this kind of problem .
Another excellent video. Reminds me so much of my undergraduate logic classes.
My first impression is that this is not a complete dismissal of Frege but a refinement of his approach and if I remember correctly even with Russels notation and approach to logic there are failures in addressing some of the vagueries of natural language.
Of course it has been a long time since I delved into this and I may be talking out my arse.😀
Thanks for the comment. I hope they are happy memories for you. I teach a (compulsory) logic class to Cambridge undergraduates and not all of them are excited by it, haha! But some, like me, get hooked.
Russell in no way dismissed Frege's logic, and he was a huge fan of Frege in general. For my money, Frege is the better thinker, and certainly the more consistent in his views. But having studied Frege's philosophy of language for several years now I think his weakest point is his belief in the referents of names and concepts. It may be because he was primarily interested in proving logicism and only secondarily interested in philosophy of natural language. Russell's theory here is an improvement I think. But you are right that Russell's logic is still lacking in many ways. I will probably do some videos on Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism and Frank Ramsey's criticisms of Russell's logic, such as his conception of identity and the object/universal distinction. So stick around :). I'm curious to see how popular the more technical stuff is before I do too much of it because it takes a heck of a lot of time to write, record and edit this stuff! So I might take a break and do some basic metaphysics first.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I was at York in the late 90s and logic classes were a revelation. I still have a fascination for language, mind and epistemology however I am nowhere near a serious thinker.
From what I can remember of Wittgenstein I think he was definitely on the right track, I have the feeling that I really admired Philosophical Investigations in places but again it's been a long time and I haven't looked at any of my philosophy books for the best part of 20 years.
Will stick around for the metaphysics but I think it's the technical stuff I enjoy more. I always thought unless you get your basis of understanding right then metaphysics is just a talking shop. I may just be a wee bit pragmatic and cynical though.
Anyway, thanks for the content.
@@saulbee York has a great philosophy faculty. I was hoping to go there as a postdoc at one point. Was Tom Baldwin around when you were there? He does good work on Frege and on another of my favourites: FH Bradley.
There are a lot of Wittgenstein connections at Cambridge. I know a guy who is sleeping in his old dorm room. But his Philosophical Investigations is taken less seriously here than his earlier work. Our resident Witt expert Professor has said in his lectures that everything good Witt had to say, he said in Tractatus. But I remember enjoying Investigations when looking at it as an undergraduate.
Don't write off metaphysics though. Good metaphysics is done thoroughly. And is often connected with logical modelling. For me, logic, philosophy of language, and metaphysics all swing together. And maybe epistemology and phil of mind a bit too.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Yes Tom Baldwin was head of department during my time and I remember getting into an enthusiastic conversation with him regarding visual perception at one point. I enjoyed my time there immensely but it did put me off studying philosophy in a more academic way. I think I had an idealised notion of what it would be like and the reality didn't live up to expectations. Still I have always had an interest but for me I definitely lean more towards language, mind and epistemology.
Maybe I just need a good solid introduction to metaphysics eh? 😉
@@saulbee Tom is a good ol' Cambridge boy, and his interests overlap with mine a lot. I've had some email back and forth with him and reference his work a fair bit in my thesis. I think academic philosophy is rarely what people expect of it, well, analytic philosophy at least. Far more scientific than people expect and often more concerned with details than the big ideas. I have sympathy for that feeling, and that's partly why I gravitated to 19th century disputes, which is when analytic philosophy was being birthed. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy studying the likes of David Lewis and think philosophy of maths is interesting etc. but what brought me to philosophy was a desire to get a grip on the way view the world more broadly. And that's what I hope to continue looking at after I (finally!) graduate. Let's see if I can get you inspired by some big thinking metaphysics with a grounding in logic, semantics, and epistemology :).
Plz make a video on strawson refering article
Thanks for the suggestion Pinki. I'm focusing on philosophical ideas from the late 19th and early 20th century, especially the clash between the Idealism in the UK at the time and those that are considered the originators of analytic philosophy. But I'll keep your suggestion in mind as I'll occasionally do more general undergraduate topics.
Your video is much better of an clearer explanation compared to the textbooks from Oxford. Thank you so much for making this video… 🎉
Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad it was helpful!
Hi, to which Oxford texts are you referring?
absolute gold mine! Thank you so much for existing. I was struggling with semantics for a while.
Thank you Sir! Glad I could help 🙂
These videos have been really helpful, thank you! Between Frege and Russell who would you say solves the puzzle of identity better?
Russell's approach is pretty standard now. Logical languages tend only to use what are called 'individual constants' for proper names and not for definite descriptions. That doesn't mean it is better from a philosophical point of view, just that it keeps the logic neater. Also, not many want to go down Frege's route of having it possible for a sentence to be neither true nor false. That said, I think there is a lot to be said for Frege's notion of sense. And Frege was working in an older logical paradigm when the issue wasn't simply what propositions are true or false within a logical model (as is now standard) but what we can *know* by judging it to be so. If that is what you think logic should be about, then the level of sense is important, and identity does seem to be something to do with identifying an object through two 'routes of sense'.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I agree that the Russellian theory is standard, but recently presuppositional theories have become a lot more popular again, it seems
@@AbsolutePhilosophyI fully agree with you; nonetheless, Frege’s theory of composionality is just so damn elegant that it’s as aesthetically pleasing as, say, Bach or Arvo Pärt
i get help from this video .. actually my optional paper is russell i am doing master degree .. much love from assam thanks 🙏
I'm glad it was helpful to you. And best of luck with your Masters.
I have always thought that "Round squares" is a metaphor for paradoxes where two seemingly contradictory ideas exist at the same time. For example - as we are living and growing we are also dying; each day that we exist (living) we are one day closer to our non existence (dying). Also the case of impossible art - for example the pictures of the artist Escher, do in fact exist in two dimensions, but would be impossible to construct in three dimensions - a kind of artistic example of a 'round square'.
I'm sure it can be used metaphorically for a paradoxical situation, but the issue here is about its potential use (without metaphor) to pick out some supposed object. If there were a round square that would seem, not to be a paradox, but an existing impossibility like a married bachelor. The puzzle is how to account for the apparent meaningfulness of the description alongside the equally apparent non-existence of the described object.
Without in any way wishing to become a thorn in your side, there's an issue in this video.
First, let me be clear, the videos are excellent and it's a wonderful project.
Ok, the issue is that for Russell NONE of the names of ordinary language count as genuine names.
So, for Russell, neither 'Scott' nor 'Frodo' count as genuine names. They are both disguised descriptions.
This is very important and, despite its probable incoherence, had profound ramifications in the development of Analytic Philosophy.
Agreed. But that is not the view he puts forwards in _On Denoting_ , which is the subject of this video.
Thank you. Your excellent explanatory skills as commented on by others has helped consolidate my understanding after reading the article.
Do you think Russell’s comments such as ‘it seems we are at an impasse’ and ‘there is nothing more to discuss’ are a polite way of agreeing to disagree or is it his default neutral ‘argument-stopping’ statement when his vast theories and ideas are challenged in a way he can’t yet undermine? What’s your Opinion?
Have you made progress on videos on the Tractatus yet?
Thank you!
Glad the video helped you! Is this what Russell says about Meinong's replies? (I can't remember his exact wording). If so, I think Russell saw it as a clash of intuitions, in that he thought it made no sense to think an existing thing might not exist, or that there could be things that do not exist and are contradictory. When philosophers clash on such basic differences as this it can be hard to discuss things further as its not clear what further evidence could be used to settle the issue.
As for Russell's general approach to disagreement, that's a tricky one. On the one hand, he changed his views a lot, and often because his position was criticised by those he trusted and he saw its faults. On the other hand, he had a habit of mischaracterising views he was attacking, and so wasn't always the most charitable to his philosophical opponents.
RE Tractatus. I intend to do a video on Wittgenstein's argument for Solipsism at some point. But I have a few other videos to make first. The first is coming soon!
@@AbsolutePhilosophy thank you for your reply, and looking forward to the Tractatus Solipsism video!
Oh thank you, I'm studying philosophy in Spain and if i pass the exams I'll let you know ❤️❤️❤️
Best of luck!
Love from Kashmir sir .This helped me ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
I'm glad you found it helpful!
Please explain how Russell solved the problem of co referring.
The video explains it as well as I can I think. If you watch it closely you might be able to pick it up. Otherwise try reading around the topic. You could start with the references in the description.
18:30 another useful way to understand Russell’s idea of Primary and Secondary denotations is:
If we take the proposition ‘a R b’ to mean a has some relation R to b,
Then if ‘a R b’ is a true proposition, the relation R is an entity that exists and is denoted. (Primary)
But it ‘a R b’ is false, then there is no such entity R which it refers too. (Secondary)
The distinction isn't about whether things have a denotation or not, or whether the proposition is true or false. It is about the nature of the predicate, based on the scope of the negation.
Regarding your example, there seems to be a problem with assuming denotation fails if a proposition is false. Consider this: '2 is greater than 5' (which is of the form aRb, where R is the relation of being greater than). The proposition is false, as 2 is not greater than 5. But that doesn't mean there is no relation of being greater than, and Russell would think the relational predicate would still denote in this case.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thank you for clearing this up. However now I am confused for I agree with you wholly, but for in this version of ‘On Denoting’
www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Russell(1905).pdf
If you go to page 13, last paragraph, Russel himself states R isn’t an entity if the proposition is false. (This document is where I got the idea from.
Perhaps this is a previous, now amended, version. Or perhaps I am confusing myself with the text and mixing the terms ‘is and entity’ or not, with ‘is existing’ or not.
Could you solve this?!
@@MV-vv7sg Yes I can solve this for you. In that paragraph, Russell is discussing the way propositions that contain relational terms, which denote relations, can be transferred into definite descriptions, which denote objects (or entities). In the sentence '2 is greater than 5', the relational term 'is greater than' denotes the relation of being greater than. But if you then try to turn this proposition into a definite description, i.e. 'the number by which 2 is greater than 5', you fail to denote, because there is no number by which 2 is greater than 5.
Borrowing from Russell's example, start with 'x differs from y'. All terms in this relational proposition denote, and the proposition can be either true or false. Also, the proposition can be used to form a definite description: 'the difference between x and y' (which is an object or entity). As long as x does differ from y, the relational proposition will be true and there will be an entity that is denoted by 'the difference between x and y'. But if x and y are identical, i.e. do not differ, the proposition will be false and there will not be an entity that fits the description 'the difference between x and y' because there is no difference between them and so the definite description fails to denote anything.
Make sense?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Brilliant, thank you! Intelligo.
I end this argument with "Fallacies Exist". end of chat. Then walk out.
Love the idea for the channel! Can’t wait for you to get to FRANK RAMSEY, who was in my mind, the most impressive of these intellectual giants.
Yes Ramsey is rather intimidating. The range and depth of what he wrote and all before he turned 27! I gave a series of lectures on his Foundations of Mathematics, but honestly I didn't think there would be much of an audience on UA-cam for it...
@@AbsolutePhilosophyright?! He’s truly unique. Well you’ve got at least one UA-cam audience member right here.
@@mychaeltrammell7337 well I've written the material for it already so maybe it would be a low cost experiment. If I do make a video on Ramsey make sure you tell your friends 🤣
Would love some stuff on F Ramsey.
You gotta compare it with Kripke's one
Do you mean his view on names from Naming and Necessity?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy yeah
@@akuilaopo3231 Hmm, I might get to that at some point. Thanks for the suggestion. But I have a list of other topics I'm planning first.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy ok im always waiting 🤛🤛
Who will finally link the behaviour of on object with the notorious technical term 'property' D or F, as substantiated extension of a verb... If you are drunk you are not sober, and if you are sick you are not healthy. In each of these cases you have a specific behaviour, and nobody can be two different versions of himself, because the behaviour is a time related factor, unlike the predicate in a formal proposition where the verb 'to be' takes over the function of a trivial verb in an informal proposition. I assume that if the king of France where bold he wouldn't behave as a pipe smoking atheist, regardless of the validity of Bertrand Russell's theory of denotation, or ideological indoctrination.
If I understand you correctly, this is indeed what can be done in logic. A predicate can be verb-like such as in the example I give of a horse that is said to have "ran past me".
How is the statement 'I met a man' semantically problematic for Russell? How does he account for the meaningfulness of this statement?
This is a question from my exam. For the first part, it is semantically problematic because it contains an indefinite description. Would that be the answer?
For the second part, how does he convert it to a logical statement? Would it be - 'Something is such that it is a man and I met him' ?
I don't really think this would be the logical version. In 'I met a man', the object of the sentence is an indefinite description. In the logical statement I mentioned, 'I' should still be the subject, right?
Please help...
You are close. The problem is that 'a man' has no clear referent, as it could be any man. (Because it is an indefinite description).
Your logical phrasing of Russell's solution is correct, just make sure you get the symbolism right! There is no problem here as in logical notation there is no subject as such. That is a feature of natural language grammar but not logical notation.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Okay... Thank you so much! Your videos have been very helpful! :)
Nevertheless, the schema of the quantifier, the variable Y, the conditional and the identity =, is extensionality, and it is possible to violate the identity principle by using the extensionality schema. For instance, For all x, if x is a mind and y is a brain, x=y On this reading, if x shares all its properties with y, then we have the extensionality satisfied: its truth-conditions are the same. But it is indeed possible to imagine a situation where the truth-conditions don't hold for x=y, (i.e., where a mind is not equal to its brain; there's not a seemingly patent contradiction in imagining a mind that is separated from its brain. It's just physically weird). So as much as I have respect for the extensionality schema, I cannot accept it as a definition of identity, although it does much of the work we want to do when dealing with identity claims.
I'm not sure I completely follow you here. Leibniz law (or the law of the indiscernibility of identicals) says that if two objects are identical, then they each have the same properties. This is, as far as I know, a universally accepted logical law. But then there is the opposite idea, which is that if two objects have the same properties, then they are identical. This principle is called the law of the identity of indiscernibles. Russell used this principle to define identity in Principia, but it is a highly disputed law. For it seems possible to imagine there could be two indistinguishable objects that were nevertheless not identical, e.g. two alike spheres rotating around each other in empty space, or perhaps, the two complex answers to the square root of -1.
der tiefste Punkt der Erde = Eigenname "Mariannengraben"
_"Something is such that it is a horse and it ran past me."_
10:01: _"Note that in this new sentence, the subject is not a horse..."_
Every subject that is not a horse is a non-horse. If, by Russell's word "something" (and by his two "it" pronouns), he is neither referring to a horse, nor to a non-horse, then he has no subject, and is thus failing to predicate. If by his word "something", he is denoting a subject, then, whether he likes it or not, by saying that the subject is not a horse, Russell will be saying that the subject is a non-horse: _"[A non-horse] is such that [a non-horse] is a horse and [a non-horse] ran past me."_ Which, of course, will be an asinine thing for him to say.
The phrase, _"indefinite description",_ is oxymoronic; and the phrase, _"definite description", is redundant. To define is to describe/to describe is to define. The phrase, "something", is being used to define, whenever it is being used to refer.
Thanks for the comment. I think there is a bit of confusion here. I mean the subject _term_ of the sentence is not 'a horse' but 'something'. The term 'something', in Russell's formalisation, is an existential quantifier that binds a variable, say, ' _x_ ' which ranges over the domain of objects.
The phrase 'indefinite description' refers to a standard grammatical category. It is a descriptor that does not definitively isolate its subject, e.g. 'a man once said...', which doesn't specify which man said it, only that _some man_ said it.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy "I mean the subject _term_ of the sentence is not 'a horse' but 'something'."
But, when Russell says _"Something is such that it is a horse and it ran past me,"_ by his word "something," either 1) he is referring to a horse, or 2) he is referring to a non-horse, or 3) he is not referring at all/has no referent. To have no referent would be to have no subject; and for him to be referring to no subject by his word "something" would be to exclude his word "something" from being a subject _term._ I mean, I can't see why anyone would choose to call a word or phrase not being used to refer to any subject, a "subject term".
*****
"The phrase 'indefinite description' refers..."
Well, really, no word or phrase _refers._ Rather, _persons_ refer, and they do so by means of words/phrases they choose to speak/write.
*****
"It is a descriptor that does not definitively isolate its subject, e.g. 'a man once said...', which doesn't specify which man said it, only that some man said it."
What (if anything) do you mean by "definitively isolate [a subject]" that you would not mean by "describe [a subject]"?
To say "a man once said 'XYZ'" is to _specify_ that (among other things) the subject being referred to by means of the phrase, "a man", is not the man who never said "XYZ", and is not a woman, and is not an elephant, and is not a gumball machine, etc.
@@alltimeislikethepresent Well, it's going to depend on how you understand variables, and how coherent you think it is to have them as subjects of a sentence. Different people interpret variables in different ways. Wittgenstein in the Tractatus would say they are disguised infinite disjunctions over all objects, e.g. this object is a man that said xyz or that object is a man that said xyz or ... . So perhaps you could say that Russell treats indefinite description as having everything as its subject, and I think there is something to say for that interpretation. But all I'm trying to do with this video is present Russell's view in _On Denoting_ in as understandable a way as I can. I do think variables are in a class of their own, so they don't obey the usual reference rules.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy _"I do think variables are in a class of their own, so they don't obey the usual reference rules."_
When Russell says _"Something is such that it is a horse, etc.,"_ either he, by his word "something", 1) is referring to a horse, or 2) is referring to a non-horse, or 3) is not referring at all. So, if he can't even tell me which one of these three things is the case about his own use of the words he has chosen to speak and/or write, I've certainly no obligation to assume that he nevertheless must be speaking in a cognitively meaningful way therein, just because he is speaking; I'm perfectly fine with assuming he is just stringing his words together meaninglessly. I do not see how he could gain anything, or hide his inability to tell me which of those three things is the case concerning his word "something", by calling his word "something" a "variable".
_"So perhaps you could say that Russell treats indefinite description as having everything as its subject"_
The question is: When Russell says _"Something is such that it is a horse, etc.,"_ does Russell treat his word "something" as standing for a subject, or, instead, as not standing for any subject? Surely, if he is using his word "something" to refer to a subject, then he is not using it to refer to _every_ thing, but rather, he is only using it to refer to the thing that is the subject to which he is referring by it, no?
_"But all I'm trying to do with this video..."_
Forgive me for coming along and seeming, perhaps, as though I'm trying to pester you or get under your skin with my comments. I mean no ill will toward you by any of it, and you seem like a nice, mild-mannered, down-to-earth fellow. Thank you, by the way, for actually taking some time to respond to my posts.
Russell would reject your trilemma as he thinks there are quantificational claims which work differently. Rather than reiterate what I have said, perhaps you can tell me what the subject of sentences like "2 of the fruit in the bowl are apples", "nothing lasts forever" or "everything is physical" are.
but the Queen of England does not exist anymore
I know :(. I miss her!
Russell as always is sneaking in his metaphysics to make his theory work. I am suspicious of the term existence.
Thanks for the comment. I agree that Russell is a bit slippery! Mainly in representing other's views. Regarding existence, he does not think existence is ultimately a predicate. It is expressed via quantification. The reason is that if there were a predicate 'exists', it would always be true of any x, and its negation would always be false of any x. (Since quantification ranges over that which exists.) So a phrase like 'the Golden Mountain does not exist' has the logical form of: Not some x such that x is a Golden Mountain. Note that this translation does not deploy an existence predicate. Of course we could add a redundant extra 'exists' predicate: Not some x such that x is a Golden Mountain and x exists (which is what I do because he hints at it at one point). But the only reason to do this would be to make the translation conform to the generalised translation of all statements of the form 'the F is G', which is why I include it. But it is not the redundant predicate that does the 'heavy lifting' of expressing existence.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy But dont we need a theory of existence before we start talking about what there is and isn't? Isnt there a hidden metaphysical pressuposstion when we say "there is no x"?
@@AlainRobertyellow88 Well, there are two questions here that need to be kept separate. One is what is expressed in existence (or non-existence) claims. Russell's theory presents an interpretation of that, i.e. a semantics for existence talk. Then there is the question of what exists. This is a matter of the truth or falsity of what is expressed in existence talk. For example, I could agree with Russell on, say, the semantics of the claim "UFOs exist", but disagree on whether or not they exist. What you call a theory of existence, I assume, comes in at this point. I.e. a theory about what is in the (in Russell's terms) domain of quantification. For example, some philosophers think past, future, and possible objects must be in the domain (and so exist in that sense), because we can say true things about them, e.g. "my late grandfather is remembered". But others try to avoid this by restricting the domain of quantification and reinterpreting the semantic models. (Not sure if this is getting too technical or not.)
@@AbsolutePhilosophy No it was great. I need to do more study on logic and language. Thank you for your fantstic videos
@@AbsolutePhilosophy But there is one final thing that I guess I am struggling with; can we really separate what exits from what it means to say something exists?