Author Description

These new essays mark the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Bertrand Russell’s article "On Denoting" in the journal Mind. The contributors are an international collection of scholars of Russell and the topics that he discussed. Starting with a reprint of the original article, the essays include historical studies of the antecedents of "On Denoting" in Russell’s earlier manuscript writings, the details of Russell’s arguments in the paper, including the notorious "Gray’s Elegy Argument", Russell’s rejection of alternative theories of Gottlob Frege and Alexius Meinong, as well as various ideas about logical form and natural language that arise from the essay. Russell’s theory of definite descriptions still remains the "paradigm of philosophy" that Frank Ramsey called it, a model of analytic philosophy that has remained current from 1905 to 2005 and promises to continue to inspire philosophers.