God Talk via Russell

As we have seen Russell wants to show that denoting phrases can be reduced to non-denoting phrases. Doing so allows us, in a sense, to stop worrying about whether such phrases really refer to objects (of course, we will still be interested in such things, but for different reasons). Russell's analysis allows us to say the exact same thing about all propositions that have denoting phrases as parts. The denoting phrase is really functioning like a predicate--it refers to some feature that is either had by something or not.

Example: the evening star is a planet

          Is analyzed as: there is something that evening stars; at most one x evening stars; x is a planet.

If something satisfies those conditions, then our original statement is true; if not, then not.

As we have also seen (well, I just told you), Russell thinks that pretty every ordinary proper name is really a disguised description. So, 'Aristotle' is really short for 'the student of Plato' or 'the teacher of Alexander the Great', or ... So, proper names get the same analysis as above. Either something in the world (and only one thing given the definite article) has those features or nothing does.

What about 'God'? In many contexts, statements with the term 'God' in them use that term as a proper name. If Russell is right about the above stuff, then 'God' is actually a disguised definite description. This has some interesting implications for all sorts of things but one that quickly comes to mind is the issue regarding whether Muslims, Jews, and Christians are talking about the same God when they talk about God.

Question: What are some ways that Russell's analysis might help us think through the issue just mentioned? Are Muslims, Jews, and Christians talking about the same being?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kaplan and Lewis

Let's see if we can make sense of the differences between Kaplan and Lewis.  Here is one way to see what Lewis is up to: Kaplan-to-Lewis Translation Method S is true relative to context C iff the character of S determines in C some content CON and CON is true relative to C It is important to see that what the above says is that Kaplan’s two levels of meaning are reducible to one level of meaning (remember my remark that Lewis is the arch-reductionist). The left side (the stuff before the ‘iff’) is equivalent to the right side (the stuff after the ‘iff’). So, if the above is correct, Kaplan’s two levels of meaning can be reduced to one level of meaning. It is not as though character and content are gone. They are just combined in one stage. The context C gets all of the stuff relevant to the character stage AND all of the stuff relevant to the content stage. So, C gets bloated in order to handle everything that is relevant for determining a truth-value of S. We just...
Read more

Grice's First Try

1 st Try : “x meantNN that p” iff x was intended by S to induce a belief in H First, let’s get clear on what this 1 st Try is saying: ‘x’ refers to an utterance of some sort, where even gestures and various other kinds of conventional signals count as utterances (e.g. three rings of the bell…). ‘MeantNN’ stands for ‘conventionally means’ or ‘has a meaning that is not determined by some natural law or whatever.’ ‘p’ refers to the proposition that the utterance expresses. For example, the proposition that my utterance of “Snow is white” and your utterance of “La nieve es blanca” both express the same exact proposition.  So, on the left side we have: an utterance of x conventionally means that p The right side should be fairly clear. It is saying that the utterance is intended to bring about a belief in someone. Putting this all together we get: an utterance of x conventionally means that p iff the utterance of x is intended by S (the utterer) to bring about a belief in someo...
Read more

Donnellan on Russell

Attributive “A speaker who uses a definite description attributively in an assertion states something about whoever or whatever is the so-and-so”  Referential “A speaker who uses a definite description referentially in an assertion ... uses the description to enable his audience to pick out whom or what he is talking about and states something about that person or thing” “Smith’s murderer is insane.”  Russell : definite descriptions only apply to attributive uses (if it applies to anything) Donnellan : it is possible for someone to say something true even though nothing satisfies the description ‘the F’ in ‘the F is G.’ Semantics or Pragmatics              “Smith’s murderer is insane.”              Does the meaning of this sentence change on different occasions of use?          ...
Read more