The Main Theories And Basic Characteristics Of Modern Researches On Descriptions

In contemporary philosophy, logic and each branch of philosophy interact with each other is prevalent. Some outstanding philosophers of logic mounted a platform. Betrand Russell is a typical representative, at the beginning of last century, he put forward the theory of description which constitutes the important contents of the philosophy of language, the main spirit of this theories is to take modern logic as the tool, to analyze this kind of special language expression of the definite description to express the type finely, to clarify and solve a variety of problems of logic and philosophy in using this kind of expression. This theory hereafter, was subjected to a very high evaluation. This theory was widely accepted as a model of philosophy analysis by the academic circles. However, since 1950's , his theory was criticized by some philosophers. It is these critics that make theories about descriptions more perfect.This body of this dissertation consists of the following three parts:Firstly, Russell's theory of descriptions. This paper analyzes the reason why Russell put forward the theory. There are two motives: one is to criticize the object theory of Meinong; the other is to research how to solve the three difficult problems. Russell removed the unnecessary entity with a sharp"Occam's razor", reducing the redundant commitment of ontology, and making clear the confusions by using the word"existence"in the history of philosophy. Then this dissertation elaborates the basic content of Russell's theory of descriptions: Russell made use of the results and analytical method of modern mathematics logic , and made clear the fallacy which was caused by the ambiguity of the scope of definite descriptions by distinguishing primary and secondary occurrences; besides, he distinguished the proper name and definite descriptions and made an inquiry into their different logical functions, then he transformed"subject-predicate sentences"in natural language which includes definite descriptions into quantified sentences,thus the three difficulties were solved semantically.Secondly, modern researches on descriptions. The discussion will be about descriptions after Russell, which will involve some representative figures, among them, mainly P. F. Strawson, K. Donnellan, S. Kripke.Thirdly, the main thread of modern researches about descriptions. In the process of tidying up the achievements of modern researches, this paper will clarify its development thread. Especially, it will try to collect and tidy up the modern results of descriptions after Kripke.