To further evaluate Donnellan’s position, we will now bring in some points made in an excerpt from Stephen Neale’s book Descriptions.3 In this excerpt, Neale makes use of some ideas developed by Paul Grice. Since these ideas are independently important, we will spend a little time explaining them.
Perhaps the most well-known idea covered in his article is that of “conver-sational implicature.” To explain the notion of conver“conver-sational implicature, we can use the example of a professor who is asked to write a reference let-ter for one of his graduate students:
To whom it may concern,
John Smith has very good handwriting.
Sincerely,
Professor Horatio Handwavy, PhD
The committee reviewing John Smith’s application would not infer that he has outstanding philosophical ability from this recommendation letter.
They would infer that Professor Handwavy thinks poorly of Smith. Suppose that after reviewing Smith’s entire application and interviewing him the committee decides that Smith is an excellent candidate. Then one of the committee members asks the letter writer why he said that John was a poor student. Handwavy indignantly replies, “I did not say that he was a poor student, I just said that he has good handwriting. In fact I think Smith is a brilliant student.” And it is true that he never said anything false about Smith’s philosophical ability. In fact, he said something quite true, because John is also an excellent calligrapher. But he certainly implied something false, irresponsibly so. He didn’t straightforwardly lie, but he certainly gave
an extremely false impression. He is morally at fault, even if not factually at fault.
This example illustrates conversational implicature, which relates to what a statement suggests given its context. Nothing said in the letter as written logically implies that John Smith is a bad philosophy student.
However, given the context of the recommendation letter, the professor did conversationally imply it. We could reasonably paraphrase the original sentence into its conversational implicature: in that context, saying “John Smith has good handwriting” is tantamount to saying “John Smith is a bad philosophy student.” The notion of conversational implicature reveals the distinction between what a speaker strictly says when uttering a sentence and what he or she implies in uttering it. What the speaker means, and can be reasonably taken to mean, can depart quite dramatically from the literal meaning of the sentence that is uttered. When a speaker utters a sentence, therefore, there is the proposition conversationally meant and the proposi-tion literally expressed. These may coincide, but they may not.
Neale outlines this distinction in his book. The proposition expressed is closely connected to the meaning of that sentence in a particular lan-guage, whereas the proposition meant depends on the context and expecta-tions about the speech act. The proposition expressed and the proposition meant can be completely different propositions that are not logically related to each other. Therefore, in conversational implicature, proposi-tions are implied conversationally that are not directly expressed by words.
The point is very important philosophically because it undermines various philosophical claims made about various subjects. It is really important to distinguish between whether an utterance of a sentence is strictly speaking false and whether it is misleading to say it in a certain context. The fact that something is misleading to say in a certain context does not show that it is false. It is misleading to say, “It looks to me as if there is a dog in the doorway” if you are not in any doubt about there being a dog there, but it might still be true that this is just how things look to you.
Neale’s main problem with Donnellan is that he disregards this distinc-tion. Donnellan is suggesting that Russell’s analysis of definite descriptions is inadequate because it does not handle his cases of referential use. Neale rejects that form of argument, because he does not see Donnellan’s prag-matic points as having any implications for semantics. Although Neale never mentions it, we have discussed a passage from Donnellan’s original
article that admits this very distinction. In that passage, Donnellan clearly states that there is no syntactic or semantic ambiguity in sentences contain-ing definite descriptions. Nevertheless, he still thinks there is somethcontain-ing wrong with Russell’s account of the meaning of definite descriptions. The question is how he can make the admission and persist with the argument.
He thinks that his two pragmatic uses somehow show that something is wrong with Russell’s semantic analysis, but he himself accepts that his con-siderations do not bear on semantics.
Let us suppose that Russell’s account is correct for attributive uses, so that descriptions are quantifier expressions when used attributively. Accord-ing to Donnellan, there is no semantic ambiguity in definite descriptions.
Therefore, when definite descriptions are used referentially, they have exactly the same meaning as when they are used attributively. If that is the case, then we must suppose that Russell’s theory gives the correct meaning in both cases. We have seen how the misuse of words cannot undermine an analysis of their semantics. So Donnellan has not pointed to anything that could threaten Russell’s semantic theory. If Russell is correct about the attributive use, then he must be correct about the referential use as well.
The curious thing is that Donnellan already admits the point that Neale is urging against him—that there is no semantic ambiguity. Yet he doesn’t seem to appreciate the significance of this admission.
Neale believes that Donnellan’s arguments show the necessity of bring-ing to bear Grice’s distinction between the proposition expressed and the proposition meant. To understand why this distinction matters, we shall return to Donnellan’s examples. Let us consider again the “Smith’s mur-derer” case where Jones is the man in the dock. The juror sees Jones’s erratic behavior and wants to express his belief that Jones is insane, so he says,
“Smith’s murderer is insane!” The proposition meant is that Jones, the man in the dock, is insane, even though Jones did not in objective fact murder Smith. The proposition meant is in line with Donnellan’s referential use.
However, the proposition expressed by the sentence itself (“Smith’s murder is insane!”) is that Smith’s murderer is insane, which may or may not be true. In the case that Jones is insane, the proposition meant (that Jones is insane) would be true, but the proposition expressed would be false, assum-ing the real murderer (Brown) is not insane. The analysis of Donnellan’s examples with this Gricean distinction allows us to see that there are two different propositions “associated with” the utterance of the sentence in
this instance. These propositions are about different individuals and can differ in truth-value.
The handwriting case also illustrates the distinction between proposition expressed and proposition meant. In that case, the proposition expressed is that John Smith has good handwriting and the proposition meant (or apparently meant) is that John Smith is not a good philosopher. One prop-osition is entirely different from the other. Although the words can be used by a speaker to convey a particular proposition, the actual words spoken may not mean that proposition. What Donnellan really showed was that sentences can be used by speakers to mean propositions that those sen-tences do not express—and hence to convey information that the words do not themselves contain.
Thinking about this idea in a more general way, we can see many uses of language have much the same character. Take irony, for example. If a speaker says something ironically, the proposition expressed is the opposite of the proposition meant—for example, “You are so smart,” said sarcasti-cally. However, it would be strange to claim that the possibility of irony somehow changes the semantic analysis of the sentence. Irony depends on the fact that the proposition expressed is not the same thing as the proposition meant. Irony, then, is another example of this type of distinc-tion working itself out, where the reladistinc-tionship between literal meaning and speaker meaning is complex. In this case, one proposition is actually the negation of the other.
Hyperbole and exaggeration also illustrate these distinctions. Hyperbole uses exaggeration to convey a particular point. It would be misguided for someone to interpret a hyperbolic statement as literal. If you were to describe someone as extremely tall by saying, “That guy is like twenty feet tall,” most listeners would not think that the man is actually twenty feet tall. There is a difference between what a sentence means and what the speaker means by using that sentence in a particular way. Metaphors also demonstrate this point. If Romeo says, “Juliet is the sun,” it would be strange for someone to claim he has discovered a hidden semantic ambiguity in the word “sun.” We must not conflate the message conveyed in using language with what the words themselves literally mean. It is indeed of the essence of language that we can sometimes use words to mean what they do not in fact mean.
This concludes our discussion of Donnellan, but not of Russell’s the-ory. Even though Donnellan’s critique of Russell seems misguided for the
reasons given, other objections to Russell’s theory persist. Let us quickly survey these objections.