In a message dated 4/2/10 7:04:05 PM, [email protected] writes:
> At any rate, I don't think you are being fair when you accuse > philosophers of not defining their terms. > But I don't quite do that. Their problem is they regularly assume a word "refers" to something, and they then labor to "define" what it is to "refer to". In "On denoting" by Bertrand Russell, Russell labors to state what 'denoting', the action, "means", but it never occurs to him that "words" don't do anything, only people do. Strawson saw this, and, in "On Referring", made his name with his reponse to Russell. He said words don't denote or refer, only people do. (But then Strawson slips in that words "signify". Not good.) Russell worked to convey what "denoting" IS. But, since NOTHING denotes, the alleged action of denoting by a word or phrase never occurs, he was wrong from the get-go.
