Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions (Philosophy of Language)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ต.ค. 2024
- An explication of Bertrand Russell's solutions to the puzzles of the bald king of France and the problem of negative existentials through the use of his theory of definite descriptions.
Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!
Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and more!
thanks man for making such puzzling puzzles to be accessible to be simple minded people like me ..great help
I'm glad to help! Thanks.
I suspect that this has more to do with the semantics of the word "exist" than with anything else.
Acchileus, for instance, exists within the frame of reference that is the Illiad. Abraham and God exist within reference systems such as the Bible, the Torah or the Quran. Although I understand very little physics, the idea of model-dependent realism seems to me to express a somewhat similar idea: Existence is in relation to a particular reference system. North and South exist on Earth, time exists within space-time, and Abraham exists within the biblical story.
Just a thought, though. Thank you for your videos.
Couldn't agree more. Things exist in relation - and only in relation - to some given context (although where that context is unspecified, it is assumed to be the world/planet earth, etc.).
I believe they are truth in this sense:
When B.Russel (or anyone) refers to "The king of France", he is refering to the real (non fictional) world, as France is a country, and for many years it had monarchy.
But, when "Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker" is stated, it is true whether they exist or not, whether is real or fictional.
Furthermore in his article "On Denoting" pg 485 he says the following: "I am" is taken to assert subsistemce or being, not existence.
For that, when we say "Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker" "is" is not questioning reality or fictionality but stating a relationship between Darth Vader and Anakin. Therefor as Russel explains in his first puzzle (On denoting pg 485), if Anakin is in fact Darth Vader, the sentence could substitute Anakin for Darth Vader (and vice versa) and say (and prove) that Darth vader is Darth Vader, or Anakin Skywalker is Anakin Skywalker.
For fictitious characters, its seems sufficient to simply begin every proposition with a stated or implied qualifier such as, "In the movie cycle Star Wars, it is the case that...," or "In the novel Crime And Punishment, it is the case that..."
For the extra credit problem, it's probably helpful to define a "domain of reference". Even if something doesn't exist in our realm, relative to a different "universe", there are different logical connections to be made as if it were reality. Not sure about unicorns though, since "unicorns" is a definite description and not a proper name.
But for some philosophers, there are no other domains of reference. If we say, for example, that Yoda exists in the Star Wars Universe, what is actually true is that the Star Wars Universe is a fictitious world that exists in OUR universe. The realm of Dreams, Imagination, etc all exist in our domain of reference and are not separate
'Unicorns' is a (plural) general term, not a definite description.
So for the extra credit problems could we treat the entire proposition as representing an empty set but with specific/defined contextual elements? So, for "Dionysus is the son of Zeus" we could define it as 'there exists some x such that that x is Dionysus that x is the son of zeus". This proposition could be true, insofar as we have a concept/definition of Dionysus, but it would still be the case that the proposition "there exists some x such that that x is the son of zeus" is false.
We can say truth is the term we use to denote a state in which our intellectual description ( how we represent the world) match the independant reality.
And the term mruth is the term we use in the state in which our intellectual description maps with our other intellectual description or some other individual's intellectual description or some other individuals intellectual description.
For example :
1-It's true camus wrote the stranger.
2- it's mrue that mersault killed the arab man.
Mruth is a matter of whether representation x fits ( describes correctly) some representation y.
Is it possible to add a new categorical grouping for these statements? A category that helps explain true statements of fictional true statements?
What does this imply for mathematics, and any of the like abstractions of reality, or value or currency? Or have I misunderstood this? I don't see what is so controversial about Meinong's notion of subsistence either, like it doesn't imply some kind of epistemological crisis the way Russell seems to think it does... does it? Again, hit me up if this is misguided.
just a question here...What is Russell's strongest argument or consideration against admitting the reality of unreal objects (like unicorns or round circles).
I don't know off the top of my head. Quine's taste for desert landscapes is what springs to mind, I'll have to look through Russell's ontology, I think there's something about being drawn to simplicity, Occam's Razor, and not wanting too much in one's ontology, but a particular argument does not come to mind. He has a famous one about the teapot, but that is more for belief and epistemology than existence and ontology. For an argument that they do exist, check out Meinong: th-cam.com/video/8CkFyvQmYdc/w-d-xo.html
I think it's like above - he didn't want to allow for any ambiguity in what should be a scientific language. Unicorns are a bad example, as we all have something of an idea of what a unicorn is, but even that is subjective as there is nothing physical with which we can compare. If meaning could be subjective, it could not be used for science.
But surely this line of reasoning is flawed in a number of possible ways: (1) a statement in the present tense about the king of France may be a quotation from a contemporary of, say, Louis the Bald, in which case it was true at one time. Surely a statement doesn't cease to be logical/meaningful simply because it was uttered in the past (or, for that matter, might even be uttered in the future); (2) even if it is accepted that we are referring to the present age (the 21st century), the existence or otherwise of the king of France may be a matter of opinion, or of privileged/restricted knowledge (i.e. perhaps some descendant of the Bourbons is still alive somewhere in the world and actually considers himself to be the rightful king of France, and if that person happened to be bald, the statement - at least as far as he or perhaps some of his close friends or acquaintances were concerned - would be perfectly true); (3) the term 'king' can be used metaphorically to denote, not a crowned monarch, but simply someone who excels in his chosen field of endeavour (cf. the King of Pop/Rock'n'Roll, etc.): it is surely not impossible that someone who excels in some field among French people might be considered, at least by some, to be the 'King of France'. I could go on...:-)
With sentences like "all unicorns have one horn", we just have to frame it as a conditional. If unicorns exist, then unicorns have one horn". I think we can all agree that this is a true premise, since that's part of the definition of unicorns. On the other hand "If Dionysus exists, he is the son of Poseidon" is false, since our understanding of Dionysus is that he's the son of Zeus". However, at no point are we committed to the statement that unicorns exist or that Dionysus exists.
Shouldn't we say these propositions are consistent but false? They are true only if we have no knowledge of their actual references so we could always stay skeptic when we are expressing terms with universal references or meanings such as truth or false.
A couple of things. First off, any proposition which is not self contradictory is consistent, and that is still given that you accept particular laws of logic. And even if we don't know whether something is referencing an object which exists or not, the statement should be true or false independent of our knowledge aout it (at least for most folks that ahve a bit of a correspondence thoery of truth intuition). We can stay skeptical regarding our own belief, but that does not affect whehter or not the proposition is true, unless you are a coherentist of sorts about truth.
yes, of course. Consistency is not the right term to use here, my mistake. You're reffering to the logic restrictions of Karnap I suppose and consistency is very clear by the definition you used. But what I meant is that even true propositions may not be (I can't find a term that is suitable here, my english is not so good) ... truthful? or not true in an analysis by someone who knows that the meaning of the proposition doesn't refer to something that is fact. (I will search about the coherentist's view, thank you).
The slightly more compelling problem would be those like negative existence statements about statements covering all time, such as unicorn statements, or better, the round square problem. But if you are comfortable quantifying over objects (or persons), properties, and space-time points, it just comes down to asserting that roundness and squareness are never co-instantiated. Or, "King-of-France-hood is not instantiated contemporarily with this utterance, or at the calendar date 8/3/2018," or whatever. I guess if you want to state that a particular person no longer lives, Napoleon, e.g., you might be stuck with using a property that looks indiscernible from haecceity, but a suppose you could appeal to a set of uniquely properties which collectively give a unique description of him.
I would say that for example 'Anakin' and 'Darth Vader' have different senses, but both refer to the villain in the Star Wars movies. I don't think the reference of a term has to be an actual person but can also be a arrangement of pixels on a screen or a character described in a book. If this is the case then we can say that 'Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker' is true and 'Darth Vader is Yoda' is false because they reference a different arrangement of pixels, despite none of them referencing a real life person.
As for a Russelian approach I would propose (∀x)(Dx>(x=y)&Ax)&(∃y)(Dy), if we don't limit existence to real life persons. Other than that I have no clue since 'Anakin' is a name and not a description.
Fkkize If you think that the reference is an arrangement of pixels on the screen, what makes those pixels the same over time? Clearly those pixels chance drastically, what makes them the same to each other over time? Because clearly you want Anakin and Darth Vadar to refer to the same person. And you seem to be wandering close to Meinong's jungle (th-cam.com/video/8CkFyvQmYdc/w-d-xo.html) when you assert that characters in stories actually exist. And I don't know how we could even apply pixels to unicorns or Greek Gods. Furthermore this raises the question of when stories about the same kinds of things differ (this especially applies to mythical beasts) which is true? Is there any truth to be had? How much disagreement is needed to make a story not true? Who decides the truth of a character? The author? The audience?
Carneades.org surely we should take the non-vauity principle - i.e. that in any given context we should interpret any predicate so that both its positive and negative extension are non empty - and stretch the positive extension of truth/existence here to satisfy the fictional context? So we can say that the above statements are in fact true within their respective fictional contexts
Carneades.org I completely missed your comment, because of a vacation and I only stumbled upon this because of Harryetto's comment. First of all, thank you for responding. Recently I realized how much I learned due to your videos and I very much appreciate every correction.
I think I have two responses:
1. (∀x) ((Dx > (x=y)) & Ax) & ~(∃y) (Dy)
I think the only real mistake I made was to exclude the '~' (and the parentheses). Now I can distinguish between true and false claims about Darth Vader without being commited to the existence of Darth Vader.
2. Similar to Harryetto, I think a form of fictionalism (/instrumentalism?) could be appropriate, too. Just as Richard Joyce did with ethics, I belief developing a fictionalist account of Star Wars characters should not be hard to do. By that I mean not believing in the existence of the entities in question while participating in a discourse not aimed at literal truth.
What do you think? The latter part will probably not impress the skeptic, since defining the exact boundaries of the fictional/ critical contexts might be too vague.
Theory of possible worlds?
To solve the extra credit problem? I'm not so sure couldn't we just as easily have a possible world where all Unicorns have three horns, or where Dionysus is the sun of Poseidon.
I have only to thank you.
No problem, thanks for watching!
Thank you!
I think that Anakin and Darth Vader are actually properties, or a set of properties essential to our idea of Anakin, or Darth Vader, that may inhere within some individual. Star Wars could be remade, where Anakin has darker hair or blue eyes. These characteristics are not essential to an Anakin, so we would still call it 'Anakin', as it is not an individual, but a bunch of essential characteristics that may inhere within some individual with more specific characteristics.
All of these are characteristics of some individual in a possible world. Any possible world where an individual has the essential characteristics of Anakin would be an Anakin. It would be _an_ Anakin Skywalker, and it would be indentical to something that is _a_ Darth Vader, in this possible world. When we think of fantasy, we are thinking of possible ways in which the world could be.
◇∃x∃y[(Ax ^ Dy) ^ x = y]
It is possible that something that is an Anakin Skywalker is something that is a Darth Vader.
Saying that there is an individual, Anakin, that is Darth Vader and then transcribing that into logic, closely to the English, would simply be an incorrect transcription, and a false statement.
Or, instead of Ax and Dx, it could be a list of essential properties that we would only consider to be this fictitious character. I'm also thinking Ax if and only if Dx, or something like that, as another idea in principle.
The version of Joker in the Dark Knight, The Joker, Suicide Squad, Jack Nicholson, etc. are totally different, but they are all instantiations of the Joker in some possible world. We say they are Joker, but they are really _a_ Joker.
I have no Idea is this is correct. It's just some fun, and I'm throwing that out there.
Obviously they don't have any physical references to say that they are "true." They are only "true" in the sense what they reference in the stories that they are in. In addition I would say also that "a unicorn has one horn" is also definitionally true.
TheAtheistPaladin But if we use Russell's solution, then he would say that A unicorn has one horn must be false. If you think that it would be true, how can you deal with the puzzles that Russell solved without the theory of definite descriptions?
Carneades.org
I thought I just did? I guess I don't understand the issue. A unicorn has one horn is obviously true while unicorns aren't (at least currently) something that "exists."
Carneades.org The statement is meaningful but it doesn't bear any truth value. It would elicit a response in someone hearing the utterance like, "I'm not following you; unicorns are not real (actual)."
Perhaps if the proposition has a stipulation built into it involving a "possible worlds" theory of some type like, "I can imagine such a world in which unicorns exist, blah blah blah..." then, metaphysically speaking, the statement is true. (I *_guessss_*)
TheAtheistPaladin Quine gets around this by redefining the existential predicate to be "there is a"
a few years late, but this is my try: [(∀x)(Dx⊃Ax)]&[¬(∃x)(Dx)]&[¬(∃x)(Ax)] if someone is Darth Vader then he is Anakin Skywalker and there is not at least one person that is Darth Vader and there is not at least one person that is Anakin Skywalker.
yah that is what I was thinking, we could treat it conditionally. "if there is some x such that that x is Dionysus then that x is the son of zeus" but x does not exist, therefore any claims regarding the existence of x are false, but the prior conditional still holds as true.
Fiction quantifierss, duh.
+3DMint How would your version of fictional quantifiers work? I have yet to see one that sufficiently avoids the myriad of problems.
+Carneades.org Well technically I guess they are not true in the way they were written in the video but I think most people's brains tend to fill in the missing words such as "in the fictional movie star wars..." so the assumed statement is true but the actual one is false
I'm minute in and as somebody trained in linguistics (thus semantics), this is a terrible start
whats would Russell/Frege's answer be to the notion of empty terms? Im very confused and i'd appreciate the help