A heretical re-reading of the theory of descriptions

Abstract The standard history states: Bertrand Russell provided us with the basis for a systematic semantics for definite descriptions. Some have sought to develop this semantics; others have criticized it. A new emerging orthodoxy says otherwise. Russell’s theory of propositions, and their logical form, really had no connection to the philosophy of language at all. In this paper, I propose a compromise position. Russell wasn’t interested in providing a systematic semantics that led from sentences of a language to their semantic values, but that isn’t to say that he had no interest in meaning . He was interested not in what we would today call formal semantics, or even in pragmatics, but in the metaphysics of meaning.