Keith Donnellan wrote his paper on definite descriptions in 1966 at Cornell University, an environment where nearly everybody was discussing Wittgenstein’s ideas of meaning as use. However, his idea of different uses of definite descriptions became one of the fundamental tenets against descriptivism, which was considered one of the main legacies of the Frege–Russell– Wittgenstein view; and I wonder whether a more Wittgensteinian interpretation of Donnellan’s work is possible.

Straipsnyje keliamas klausimas: kokios sąlygos turi būti patenkintos, kad, ištarę sakinį su apibrėžiamąja deskripcija kaip sakinio subjektu, mes išreikštume singuliarinį teiginį. Autorius teigia, kad Wettsteino įsitikinimas, jog teiginio singuliariškumas nustatomas ištarimo metu nurodant apibrėžiamosios deskripcijos referentą, yra nenuoseklus. Straipsnyje siūlomas kitas singuliariškumo kriterijus: teiginys yra singuliarinis, jeigu jame dalyvaujanti apibrėžiamoji deskripcija įvertinama vieninteliame galimame pasaulyje, o jeigu apibrėžiamoji deskripcija turi būti įvertinta daugiau nei vieno galimo pasaulio atžvilgiu, tai teiginys yra bendrasis. Šis kriterijus veiksmingas aiškinant kontroversiškus atvejus – kai išreiškiame (...) teisingą singuliarinį teiginį, kurio subjekto dėmuo nedera su apibrėžiamąja deskripcija, pavartota ištartame sakinyje. (shrink)

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle imposes some requirements on scientific propositions: (i) they must be susceptible of syllogistic articulation, (ii) they must have universal terms as subjects of predication and (iii) their subjects must be primary, i.e. they cannot “be said of a distinct underlying subject”. However, it is problematic to meet those three requirements together. If associated with the theory of predication in Categories, the requirement (iii) shall prescribe names or descriptions of individuals within the category of substance as (...) subjects of predication, which are primary insofar as they cannot play the logical role of predicate. Nevertheless, if the requirement (i) is satisfied, then the terms of scientific proposition would be able to perform the function of subject as well as of predicate since the rules of conversion and syllogistic moods presuppose the interchangeability among terms of predication. The requirement (ii), by its turn, withdraws all particular subjects from scientific propositions and a fortiori individual substances. We offer as a solution for the aforementioned dilemma the association of theses from the Posterior Analytics, not with the treatise Categories, but with the new ontology of predication emerged in the Metaphysics, which, by introducing the hylomorphic analysis of compound substances, admits primary and notwithstanding universal subjects of predication: the specific forms. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel semantic analysis of unit names and gradable adjectives, inspired by measurement theory (Krantz et al 1971). Based on measurement theory's typology of measures, I claim that different predicates are associated with different types of measures whose special characteristics, together with features of the relations denoted by unit names, explain the puzzling limited distribution of measure phrases.