A Dispute Between Russell And Strawson About Descriptions

On the beginning of the 20th century, Russell's theory of descriptions was put forth in his 1905 essay On Denoting. It is based on but an improvement of Meinong and Frege's theories of meaning. Different from Meinong and Frege, Russell declared sentences in ordinary language disguised their logical forms instead of exhibiting it. And he claimed that he had made it explicit by the correct analysis of language. For the first time the logical analysis method was used by Russell in the study of philosophy of language. His theory did accelerate the development of philosophy of language and it was practically immune from criticism for nearly half a century until the publication of Strawson's On Referring. In this essay, Strawson explained his theory of referring by criticizing the defects of Russell's theory. Strawson believed Russell ignores the distinction between the use of an expression and the expression itself. He argued that it is speakers who refer, not expressions. Strawson thus introduced the context, speaker's intention, social cultural and historical factors to analysis of the meaning of words and sentences. It was the beginning of the pragmatics.Although Russell refuted Strawson's criticisms, personally I don't think the two theories are opposite to each other. Through reflections of the dispute between Russell and Strawson, this paper shows that Russell's theory of descriptions and Strawson's theory of referring were put forth in different stages of development of both logic and philosophy. They solved the problems in philosophy of language in different approaches. Scholars have developed their theories by criticizing the dispute between them and absorbing its achievements. So the dispute between Russell and Strawson is a very important event in the development of the philosophy of language and has had a profound influence on it.