"In general, whether or not a definite descriptions is used referentially or attributively is a function of the speaker's intentions in a particular case." (Donnellan, 1966, p. 297)
This quote refers to Donnellen's arguments against Russell's lack of referential use by definite descriptions, as well as his critique that Strawson fails to make an adequate distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions. (Donnellan, 1966, p. 297) Referential use constitutes describing someone or something in order to have the audience pick out what is being referred to and say something about that person or thing, while attributive use constitutes ascribing something to some person or thing (Donnellan, 1966, p. 285). According to Donnellen, definite descriptions can be used for either purpose and that whether or not they are used referentially or attributively relies on his view that in order to understand definite descriptions, we must understand the context that comes with them and that a key portion of that context is the "speaker's intentions". This is an improvement on both Strawson and Russell because both focus too hard on individual sentences and underestimate the importance of context in shaping the meaning of a sentence, and Donnellan puts forward a case that the individual circumstances of particular sentences has a great impact on what they mean. In order to fully understand and effectively communicate with each other, we must be able to connect the context and intentions of the speaker with the meaning of their statements, something Strawson and Russell fail to account for.
One possible objection to this quote may be that we hit an epistemic barrier when trying to understand the intentions of another person because we can never really know what someone's intentions are.
I would argue that the "speaker's intentions are irrelevant to the language itself, instead relating to how one uses the language, meaning that Donnellen's definition is far too broad over both Russell and Strawson. My thinking here is that we might want to say of someone that they have misspoke or misused the language if they use an incorrect definite description to refer to someone or something (Ex, "who is that drinking the martini when no one is). To me, Donnellen's argument seems to allow for this in language itself, meaning we could not say that person misspoke.
ReplyDelete--André Robert
I considered this same problem when reading Donnellan's perspective on language. When a speaker makes a statement, there's no certainty that any of the listener's within the room have the context necessary to determine whether the speaker has issued an attributive or referential statement. It seems as if Donellan's interpretation relies heavily on context and the expectation that all listener's are knowledgeable and can both interpret, and if necessary, correct the speaker. However, it seems like this is not always that case, and if we are truly unable to know what the speaker's intentions are without the speaker giving a more in-depth description of their intentions, then Donellan's perspective on language doesn't really have much use. I would be interested in knowing if anyone can resolve the concern of the epistemic barrier in Donellan's account of definitive descriptions.
ReplyDelete-- Rigo Acevedo