"But this lack of particularity is absent from the referential use of definite descriptions precisely because the description is here merely a device for getting one's audience to pick out or think of the thing to be spoken about, a device which may serve its function even if the description is incorrect. More importantly perhaps, in the referential use as opposed to the attributive, there is a right thing to be picked out by the audience and its being the right thing is not simply a function of its fitting the description."(Donnellan, 1966, p. 303-4)
The main point of the article was that Donnellan believed there to be two uses of definite descriptions, the referential use and the attributive use, and that Russell and Strawson had a slightly mistaken idea of what definite descriptions are doing and are therefore slightly mistaken about the gulfs and fallacies their views cannot explain. Donnellan views the uses of definite descriptions as tools used for a purpose, and so as long as the tool can complete its function there is no problems with it.
The quote states that even though definite descriptions can introduce an element of generality the referential use of definite descriptions because it is merely a tool used to direct someone's attention to the person/thing/object in question. In this way, even if the description is incorrect, the definite description can still fulfill its function. This is one of the fallacies of language that Russell and Strawson couldn't seem to figure out. In this way, even if someone does not have the correct information, they are not speaking nonsense or falsely when they state that information.
While this idea does solve some problems, it seems far too loose to me. This view can pardon almost any speech act so long as it fulfills its function. The speakers intention decides whether a definite description is used referentially or attributively. But does this mean that a lie is equivalent to the truth, so long as the speech acts fulfill the same purpose?
In my semantics class, we discussed how certain statements may have multiple truth values. One example went similar to as follows: Sally sees a man in a brown hat and tells her friend Mary that she thinks this may is a spy. Later, Mary sees this man on the beach with her friend Steve. Mary tells Steve,"Sally believes that the man at the beach is a spy." This statement is both true and false, depending on whether we interpret the "the man at the beach" referentially or attributively. With an attributive interpretation, the sentence is a lie. Sally does not know that Mary and Steve saw the man she had seen in the brown hat, at the beach. Thus, she does not think that the man with the attribute of being at the beach is a spy. Therefore the statement is false. However, if we focus on the reference (perhaps it was Jim who both wore a brown hat and went to the beach) the statement is true, as it is Jim that Sally saw in the brown hat and that Steve saw at the beach. So in short, what is a lie "attributively" may be true on a referential level, and possibly vice versa.
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