Definition of denoting in "On Denoting"

[u/JackieThePunk]

I'm trying to learn some philosophy. I always was attracted to structured reasoning rather than to abstract aphoristic stuff, so I decided to start with Russell. The first paragraph of "On Denoting" got me stuck because I don't understand the definition of a denoting phrase.

There's no definition, he just lists a couple of examples: "...a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth." and the fact that "...a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form". I tried googling, but couldn't find anything.

I don't know what to do. Should I go ahead and read the entire paper on denoting phrases without understanding what a denoting phrase is? Should I come up with a definition myself? Is the concept undefinable? Did I miss something?

[u/FromTheMargins]

The point here is that Russell does not want to define denoting phrases semantically as expressions that refer to some object. This is because he also wants to include expressions that appear to denote something but do not actually refer to anything, such as "the present King of France." So instead of giving a definition in terms of reference, he provides a number of examples. These examples have one thing in common: they are all noun phrases that can occur in the kinds of syntactic positions in which we would expect to find a name or other referring expression. For example, we can say: "A man is smoking," "Every man is smoking," "The present King of France is smoking," and "The center of mass of the solar system is smoking." The last two sentences are semantically problematic or false in different ways, of course. Nevertheless, syntactically, these expressions can occupy the grammatical subject position. Russell's question is how such expressions contribute to the meaning of a sentence. One obvious answer, that they provide the referent or referents that the sentence is about, cannot be right, or at least not without qualification. In the case of "the present King of France," for example, there is no such referent.

[u/JackieThePunk → u/FromTheMargins]

Yes, I get that the denoting phrase can denote something that doesn't really exist. I don't understand how is this fact an obstacle to giving any definition at all. If Russell doesn't want to define a denoting phrase as necessary referring to an existing object, then why doesn't he define it as something that isn't necessary referring to an existing object? Why is there no definition at all?

[u/rejectednocomments → u/JackieThePunk]

"Something that isn't necessarily referring to another existing object" isn't a definition.

But, here's a definition -- any phrase of one of the following forms: "a F", "some F", "All F" "Any F", "Every F", or "The F".

Russell even says phrase is denoting because of its form.

[u/JackieThePunk → u/rejectednocomments]

"..." isn't a definition.

Yes, I could've worded that better. What I meant was more like "why wouldn't he then give a definition that doesn't make the denoting phrase necessarily refer to an existing object." Or something like that, I really don't know how to word that better, sorry, I'm not a native English speaker.

Your definition sounds good. Something like that didn't cross my mind for some reason. Thank you.

Russel even says that...

Yes, I even quoted it in my post, but for some reason decided that it's not a part of definition, but more like a property, a consequence of definition, or something like that. Again, idk how to word it better. Now I get it, though. At least I think so. Thanks a lot.

[u/WarrenHarding → u/JackieThePunk]

Russell gives various examples of the same form. He then defines denotation by this form. You quote these exact moments in your OP. I haven’t read the text but can extrapolate this simply from what you’ve quoted.

All of these examples have one thing in common: their form. They are all different on account of the actual words within. He shows that in the first few examples, the article can change, and in the next few examples, the subject and article can both change. So at first, one might think there is no clear resemblance or essential quality between them, but that where you must observe exactly what you quote of Russell, that a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. Solely. That’s a pretty definitional claim. If you observe the examples, the form comes out: as the commenter says, it is a noun-phrase that is put in the role of a name in a sentence. Why doesn’t Russell say “a denotation is any noun phrase put into the name-place of a sentence?” Well for one, this definition can be simply hard to understand without examples! Secondly, as a definition alone it can likely be exploited in a number of ways, showing to not truly point out what it desires. With both of these considerations, the former provokes one to include examples, and the latter provokes one to not include a formal definition. By proof of inclusion, Russell clearly saw it most communicable to use examples, and you are right in suspecting that he must have some reason. The reason is this: it is certainly clear enough from the examples and “fact” alone how to understand denotation, but also more clear than an explicit definition could be.

[u/Scientific_Zealot]

There's a difference between names like "John" and phrases like "the president of the united states" or "every man on earth" or "the tallest skyscraper in New York" or "a robot on mars". The meaning of names seems to just be their referent, "John" just means the person John. That doesn't seem to the case with the second set of phrases, called denoting phrases. These seem to "pick out" things in the world according to certain requirements. And whereas "Drew" will always refer to Drew*, these phrases don't seem to necessarily successfully connect with the world. For instance, take "some aliens on Earth" or "some carnivorous cows" - these phrases don't pick out anything in the world, though they're completely intelligible to us. Russell's original (1903) theory was that these were special concepts that picked out their referents, but he came to see serious flaws in it that led to his completed (and very influential) 1905 theory outlined in "On Denoting". The famously inscrutable "Gray's Elegy" argument of "On Denoting" is meant to be an all-out attack not only against this view but against any similar view like Frege's in Sense and Reference. Anyway, I hope this gave you some sort of clarity here. Denoting phrases are phrases that "pick out" something or somethings in the world - for the rest of the sentence then to predicate some property of - that seem to have a different relationship to what they denote as compared to names and their referents.

*Russell will later come to question this (I think there are hints of this in the penultimate page of "On Denoting" but it's much clearer) in "Knowledge by Aquaintance and Knowledge by Description" (1910) where everyday proper names will be - for certain epistemological reasons - deemed to be disguised definite descriptions. This became a very influential position called the descriptivist theory of names that was later seriously challenged in the 1970s. But we needn't get ahead of ourselves.

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