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Keith Donnellan, a man most well known amongst most philosophers for his work on reference and definite descriptions, illustrates on attribution and referential idiolects. He begins by explaining that there are two uses of definite descriptio ....

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... “the definite description to refer to something, and call this use the referential use of a definite description.”2 Donnellan asserts that there are two uses of definite descriptions that he will call the attributive use and the referential use. A speaker exercising the attributive use of definite descriptions asserts something about “whoever or whatever is the so-and-so”, whereas a speaker using a definite description referentially enables his audience to choose or decide whom or whatever he is talking about and asserts something in lieu of that person or thing. ...To assert something about whatever or whoever fits that description; but ...