Donnellan’s recently published Essays on Reference, Language, and Mind collect his seminal papers from 1960s and 1970s. In most of them, he introduces and defends two major, related views in the theory of reference. The first one concerns the functioning of definite descriptions, and the second one the nature of singular reference. Donnellan argues that definite descriptions are ambiguous between their referential and their attributive use, and that descriptions used referentially function more or less as other referring expressions, proper names (...) and indexicals. All referential expressions, Donnellan further argues, do not function according to the principle of identifying descriptions, as most philosophers from Frege onward thought, but rather on the ground of being appropriately historically connected to a thing, which is their referent. Such a referent, Donnellan thinks, does not have to fit the descriptive content or identifying descriptions associated with these expressions. As such, the referential expressions are directly referring, contributing its referent, not the descriptive material, to the propositional content of sentences they occur within. In my paper I reflect on some important, but controversial points in Donnellan’s papers, having to do with his understanding of the functioning of definite descriptions and proper names, and I relate these points to some subsequent discussions about the matters. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider several issues related to the concept of identity—the concept that is in many ways related to Heda Festini’s early philosophical interests. I specifically focus on discussion of the issues in Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein. I contrast two competing conceptions of identity—the objectual (according to which identity is a relation in which every object stands only to itself) and the metalinguistic (according to which identity is a relation between coreferential names)—and consider reasons these authors had for (...) accepting or discarding one or the other. In addition, I consider how issues concerning identity relate to issues concerning identity statements. (shrink)

In 1919, when his Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (Tractatus Logico-Phi-losophicus), was finished but still unpublished, Wittgenstein sent the manuscript to Frege, and, as a consequence of that, they exchanged several fairly polemic letters in 1919 – 1920. Only Frege’s letters were preserved. The letters are highly compressed in content, and offer an interesting insight in how, mostly critically, one of the authors of whom Wittgenstein held highest esteem, thought about the content, style, and organisation of the manuscript. At the same time, we (...) can get some impression from Frege’s letters how Wittgenstein reacted to his initial letter addressing the Tractatus, and how the subsequent exchange went. In this paper, I offer several observations concerning their exchange, and I compare it to the parallel exchange on the same matter between Wittgenstein and Russell. (shrink)