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Full Idea
Russell assumes that it is expressions which refer if anything does, but strictly speaking it is WE who refer with the use of expressions.
Gist of Idea
Russell assumes that expressions refer, but actually speakers refer by using expressions
Source
comment on Bertrand Russell (On Denoting [1905]) by David E. Cooper - Philosophy and the Nature of Language §4.1
Book Ref
Cooper,David E.: 'Philosophy and the Nature of Language' [Longman 1979], p.78
A Reaction
This sounds right. Russell is part of the overemphasis on language which plagued philosophy after Frege. Words are tools, like searchlights or pointing fingers.
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| 4570 | Russell assumes that expressions refer, but actually speakers refer by using expressions [Cooper,DE on Russell] |
| 8355 | Expressions don't refer; people use expressions to refer [Strawson,P] |
| 8357 | If an utterance fails to refer then it is a pseudo-use, though a speaker may think they assert something [Strawson,P] |
| 5815 | Whether a definite description is referential or attributive depends on the speaker's intention [Donnellan] |
| 10459 | Context does not create reference; it is just something speakers can exploit [Bach] |
| 10460 | 'That duck' may not refer to the most obvious one in the group [Bach] |
| 10461 | What a pronoun like 'he' refers back to is usually a matter of speaker's intentions [Bach] |
| 10462 | Information comes from knowing who is speaking, not just from interpretation of the utterance [Bach] |
| 10434 | Even a quantifier like 'someone' can be used referentially [Sainsbury] |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| 21650 | No language is semantically referential; it all occurs at the level of thought or utterance [Pietroski, by Hofweber] |