The Puzzle of Empty Descriptions
On the naive view, a phrase like "the golden mountain" gets its meaning by referring to some entity — the golden mountain. But there is no golden mountain. So what does the phrase refer to? One option, adopted by Meinong, is to posit a realm of non-existent objects: the golden mountain "subsists" even though it does not exist. This seems ontologically profligate — it populates the universe with ghosts. Another option is to say that "the golden mountain" is meaningless, since it has no referent. But this seems wrong too: "The golden mountain does not exist" is a perfectly meaningful and true sentence.
The Analysis
Russell's solution is to show that definite descriptions are not referring expressions at all. "The present King of France is bald" does not predicate baldness of some entity picked out by the description; instead, it makes three claims simultaneously: (1) there is at least one present King of France; (2) there is at most one present King of France; (3) whoever is the present King of France is bald. On this analysis, the sentence is false — because claim (1) fails — but perfectly meaningful. The description "the present King of France" disappears on analysis: it is an "incomplete symbol" that contributes to the meaning of sentences in which it appears without standing for any entity by itself.
Scope and Identity
The theory also resolves puzzles about identity and substitution. "George IV wished to know whether Scott was the author of Waverley" cannot be transformed into "George IV wished to know whether Scott was Scott" by substituting "Scott" for "the author of Waverley" — the identity is an empirical discovery, not a logical truth. Russell's theory explains why: within the scope of a propositional attitude verb, descriptions must be analysed differently from names, because they contribute existential and uniqueness claims that names do not. The scope of the description relative to the attitude verb determines which reading is intended — a subtlety that later philosophers of language developed into the distinction between de re and de dicto readings.
On Denoting was published in Mind in 1905. Frank Ramsey called it "that paradigm of philosophy". The Meinongian position Russell attacks is developed in Meinong's "Über Gegenstandstheorie" (1904). Frege's earlier distinction between sense and reference is an alternative approach that Russell's theory is designed to supersede.
Related Concepts
