Reference and descriptions

Andrea Bianchi
Table of contents

I am Andrea Bianchi, the author of the article you are reading. If I am telling the truth, as I invite you to believe, I am related in a peculiar way to two different expressions, a proper name (“Andrea”) and a definite description (“the author of the article you are reading”). Let us say that the name refers to, and the description, as used in this context, describes, or denotes, myself. But what exactly do the relations of referring and describing (denoting) consist in? The issue was, and still is, at the center of an intense debate in contemporary philosophy of language. As we shall see, different answers to this question reveal different understandings of how natural languages work.

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