Descriptions: Points of Reference

Abstract

Abstract Russell (1905) made a compelling case that descriptions, de finite as well as indefinite, are devices of quantification, not referring phrases. Strawson (1950) and Donnellan (1966) pointed out that de finite descriptions can be used to refer. And even indefinite descriptions can be used to refer. All this is old hat. If ‘On Denoting’, ‘On Referring’, and ‘Reference and De finite Descriptions’ had not provoked decades of debate, philosophers might have just thought it obvious that the mere fact that an expression can be used to refer does not show that it is inherently a referring expression, an expression that itself refers.