Contextually incomplete descriptions – a new counterexample to Russell?
to have assumed that an utterance will be unintelligible if it does not (or could not, in the circumstances, be expected to) convey a proposition. I have argued that this assumption is false I put forward (la) as a counterexample. I propose a related assumption in its place: that an utterance will be unintelligible if it neither expresses nor conveys a proposition. Not only is this assumption more plausible, in my view, it also underwrites my objection against RTD. I may not have shown, as Bach invites me to, that the difference in intelligibility between utterances involving CIDs and their Russellian paraphrases reflects a difference at the semantic level. In a sense, I have just assumed it! But I trust readers will find this assumption has more going for it than alternatives Russellians may resort to.1