• Log In

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

Subscribe on Android Spotify Google Podcasts audible patreon
  • Home
  • Podcast
    • PEL Network Episodes
    • Publicly Available PEL Episodes
    • Paywalled and Ad-Free Episodes
    • PEL Episodes by Topic
    • Nightcap
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Pretty Much Pop
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • (sub)Text
    • Phi Fic Podcast
    • Combat & Classics
    • Constellary Tales
  • Blog
  • About
    • PEL FAQ
    • Meet PEL
    • About Pretty Much Pop
    • Philosophy vs. Improv
    • Nakedly Examined Music
    • Meet Phi Fic
    • Listener Feedback
    • Links
  • Join
    • Become a Citizen
    • Join Our Mailing List
    • Log In
  • Donate
  • Store
    • Episodes
    • Swag
    • Everything Else
    • Cart
    • Checkout
    • My Account
  • Contact
  • Mailing List

Correction re. Episode 34’s Account of Russell on Denoting

April 1, 2011 by Matt Teichman 5 Comments

At one point in Episode 34 (around 79:10), I made a mistake.  Oops. Might as well set it right on the blog!

We were talking about Bertrand Russell's classic 1905 article, 'On Denoting.'  Russell is trying to do many different things in that article.  But for now, we only need to concern ourselves with one in particular, which is that he wants to give an accurate account of what sentences with words that fail to refer mean.

OK; so what's all this stuff about referring and failing to refer?  The basic idea here is that words typically stand for things.  The name 'Matt' refers to me, and the noun phrase 'the Grand Canyon' refers to the grand canyon, and the phrase 'Rowan Atkinson's favorite car' stands for Rowan Atkinson's favorite car.

Now, you might think that words always referred to things.  And in most ordinary situations, they do.  But upon further reflection, it turns out that sometimes, when we make mistakes, a word can fail to refer to anything.  For instance, imagine that I see two people walk into a party: a friend of mine, and someone who I mistakenly take to be her sister.  Furthermore, imagine that this friend of mine doesn't even have a sister.  In that scenario, if I said 'Can I get your sister anything to drink?' then my friend would be quite confused.  Why?  Well, because one of the noun phrases I was trying to use was messed up.  Specifically, the noun phrase 'your sister' would fail to refer to anything.

Russell was interested in whether sentences with noun phrases that failed to refer could be true or false.  Suppose this time that instead of asking my friend whether I could get her sister anything to drink I made a statement.  Something like: 'Your sister must be tired.'  Now, is that statement true or is it false?  It obviously isn't true.  But whether it's false is kind of a trickier question.

There was actually a big debate about this.  Here's a reason for thinking that 'Your sister looks lovely tonight' isn't false either.  If I asked my friend whether her sister was tired, she wouldn't say 'yes,' because that would imply that she had a sister.  But she wouldn't say 'no,' because that would also imply that she had a sister.  Denying that her sister is tired suggests that she has a sister, only that that sister of hers isn't tired.  So it seems as though the correct answer to 'Is your sister tired?' is neither yes nor no.  This is what led certain philosophers (such as Frege) to conclude that sentences like 'Your sister must be tired' (said to someone who doesn't have a sister) are neither true nor false.

Russell disagrees with Frege here.   He thinks that sentences like 'Your sister must be tired' (said to someone who doesn't have a sister) must be false.  One reason he gives for thinking they're false is that Frege's theory makes incorrect predictions about what atheists are saying.  If the atheists were correct that God didn't exist, and Frege was correct that sentences with noun phrases that failed to refer were neither true nor false, then 'God is all powerful' would have to be neither true nor false.  But an atheist would never claim that statements like 'God is all powerful' were neither true nor false.  The whole point of atheism is to say that they're false.  Or so Russell argues.

Anyway, let's get back to the correction.  At this point in the discussion, the four of us were talking about Russell's view to the effect that sentences with non-referring expressions in them are false (rather than neither true nor false).  And I momentarily mixed up what Russell has to say about 'Your sister is tired' and what Russell has to say about 'Your sister isn't tired.'  In the podcast, I said that he thinks the former sentence is ambiguous.  But actually, he thinks the former sentence is just false, for the reasons given above.  It's the latter sentence that he thinks is ambiguous.  We don't really have to get into why right now, since there may be an episode on Russell in the future.  But basically, Russell's semantic theory commits him to thinking that whenever you have a sentence that contains both the word 'not' and a noun phrase (like 'your sister), then it can have two possible interpretations:

i) There is a person who is your sister and who is not tired.
ii) There is no person who is your sister and who is tired.

But since 'Your sister is tired' doesn't have the word 'not' in it, it only has one possible interpretation.  And on that interpretation (when it's said to someone who doesn't have a sister), Russell thinks it is false.

-Matt Teichman

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailby feather

Filed Under: PEL's Notes Tagged With: Gottlob Frege, philosophy blog, philosophy podcast

Comments

  1. Burl says

    April 3, 2011 at 12:55 pm

    Matt

    Had I noticed your post, I would have posted the following comment here instead of Seth’s Frege PPT blog post.

    I would like to know what you think of the paper on ANW’s theory of propostions.

    For a process interpretation of the ontology of propositions that completely leaves Frege’s linguistic turn behind, I once again urge fans to read “Whitehead’s Theory of Propositions” http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2770

    Remember, he and Bertie Russel did Principia Mathematica, so if anyone has a warrant to criticize the positivist’s use of propositions as linguistic structures in epistemology vs ontological lures for deciding among appetitive feelings, Alfie is certainly an expert.

    Sample: “Moreover, propositions are not reducible to linguistic entities because the verbal expression, as hopelessly ambiguous, can never exhaustively express a proposition. As Kraus cogently remarks, it is the ontological state of affairs that constitutes the proposition, not the verbal form”

    Not a rant, but a theory I have recently come upon. Deleuze is said to have overheard a roomful of Anglo-positivists castigating Whitehead, and I recall Wittgenstein did too. Likewise, Bertie Russell made his career tearing Henri Bergson apart for his process views at an international philosophic gathering. As a former colleague of ANW, I suppose Bertie showed some class by sending as his proxy, Ludwig, his student, to kick Alfie in the groin.

    I firmly hold to my hunch that, just as the linguistic turn has proven a failure, we will see the phoenix-style ascendance in the coming decades of the thwarted efforts at the turn of the 20th century when process and pragmatism were in organic bloom.

    Reply
    • Matt Teichman says

      April 3, 2011 at 10:57 pm

      I’ve never seen that paper before, but I am a big fan of Whitehead (and an even bigger fan of Bergson). It’s difficult to say exactly how or whether Whitehead’s critique of substance metaphysics has traction with Frege, since Frege’s notion of an object is pretty austere: basically, an object is anything that a proper name can refer to. So in principle he isn’t really saying anything one way or the other about whether he thinks that objects are substances or processes. Also, Frege’s name/predicate distinction is quite different from the Aristotelian subject/predicate distinction, which I’m pretty sure is what Whitehead is reacting against in _Process and Reality_.

      Nonetheless, I would encourage anyone who wants to draw connections between Frege and Whitehead to do so. Lots of potential for interesting philosophical exploration there.

      Reply
  2. Anh-vu Doan says

    April 3, 2011 at 5:24 pm

    Oooh! That clarifies things a lot — though it’s kind of amusing how much was said, about logic and Frege’s ideas, in the aftermath of the Frege episode.

    I wonder if there will ever be an episode on Russell? I do hope there will be someday, I love Russell’s philosophical notions and would greatly enjoy hearing an expert expound upon them.

    Reply
  3. Burl says

    April 4, 2011 at 3:27 am

    The paper shows how propositions are not sterile instruments whose only value is to see where its author’s finger is pointed. Rather, the role of propositions in the philosophy of organism is to draw out the wonder as a finger points at the moon. (Too much Whitehead causes people to say things like that.)

    Whitehead takes Plato’s metaphysical emphasis on mathematics in _Timaeus_ seriously. Reality processes via the structure of propositions.

    Reply
  4. Tom McDonald says

    April 4, 2011 at 3:31 pm

    Episodes 7 & 8 on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and (a little bit of) Carnap deals with this too. W’s theory of atomic propositions in that book is his attempt to work out the implications of Russell’s logical atomism, i.e., the idea of a logically refined propositional language that could accurately represent any true state of affairs. I thought Mark, Wes, and Seth did a good job in those episodes illuminating the Tractatus and also demonstrating how this theory runs into problems when you try to go beyond empirical data, i.e., when you ask what an ultimate atomic fact would be.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

PEL Live Show 2023

Brothers K Live Show

Citizenship has its Benefits

Become a PEL Citizen
Become a PEL Citizen, and get access to all paywalled episodes, early and ad-free, including exclusive Part 2's for episodes starting September 2020; our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more causally; a community of fellow learners, and more.

Rate and Review

Nightcap

Listen to Nightcap
On Nightcap, listen to the guys respond to listener email and chat more casually about their lives, the making of the show, current events and politics, and anything else that happens to come up.

Subscribe to Email Updates

Select list(s):

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Support PEL

Buy stuff through Amazon and send a few shekels our way at no extra cost to you.

Tweets by PartiallyExLife

Recent Comments

  • Bibliophile on Pretty Much Pop #143: Pinocchio the Unfilmable (Yet Frequently Filmed)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 302: Erasmus Praises Foolishness (Part Two)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 308: Moore’s Proof of Mind-Independent Reality (Part Two for Supporters)
  • Mark Linsenmayer on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)
  • MartinK on Ep. 201: Marcus Aurelius’s Stoicism with Ryan Holiday (Citizen Edition)

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

Become a PEL Citizen!

As a PEL Citizen, you’ll have access to a private social community of philosophers, thinkers, and other partial examiners where you can join or initiate discussion groups dedicated to particular readings, participate in lively forums, arrange online meet-ups for impromptu seminars, and more. PEL Citizens also have free access to podcast transcripts, guided readings, episode guides, PEL music, and other citizen-exclusive material. Click here to join.

Blog Post Categories

  • (sub)Text
  • Aftershow
  • Announcements
  • Audiobook
  • Book Excerpts
  • Citizen Content
  • Citizen Document
  • Citizen News
  • Close Reading
  • Combat and Classics
  • Constellary Tales
  • Exclude from Newsletter
  • Featured Ad-Free
  • Featured Article
  • General Announcements
  • Interview
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Misc. Philosophical Musings
  • Nakedly Examined Music Podcast
  • Nakedly Self-Examined Music
  • NEM Bonus
  • Not School Recording
  • Not School Report
  • Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts
  • PEL Music
  • PEL Nightcap
  • PEL's Notes
  • Personal Philosophies
  • Phi Fic Podcast
  • Philosophy vs. Improv
  • Podcast Episode (Citizen)
  • Podcast Episodes
  • Pretty Much Pop
  • Reviewage
  • Song Self-Exam
  • Supporter Exclusive
  • Things to Watch
  • Vintage Episode (Citizen)
  • Web Detritus

Follow:

Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | Apple Podcasts

Copyright © 2009 - 2023 · The Partially Examined Life, LLC. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy · Terms of Use · Copyright Policy

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in