This is philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel War Burton.

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If I say unicorns have horns I seem to refer to things that don't exist

since there are no unicorns how can I make statements about them? How can I refer to them? The Austrian logician Alexius Meinong had a simple

solution. Unicorns he thought must in some sense in some logical realm exist. Many philosophers have discussed the issue of how language relates to the world,

including the 20th century British thinkers G. Moore, Frank Ramsey, and Peter Storsen.

But the framework for the debate was set by another British philosopher Burton Russell.

Russell was a mathematician, a political campaigner and the ultimate public intellectual,

but when he was asked what was his greatest contribution to philosophy,

he would invariably say, the theory of descriptions.

He illustrated the theory with an example involving a non-existent hairless monarch.

The sentence he analysed was this, the King of France is bald.

Professor Anthony Graling is a huge fan of Burton Russell's and is famous for having a magnificent main of hair.

Anthony Grayling, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

It's a great pleasure to be on it again.

Today we're going to focus on Burton Russell's theory of design. It's

theory of descriptions.

Today we're going to focus on Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions.

Just before we launch into a description of the theory of descriptions,

could you say just a little bit about who Bertrand Russell was

for somebody who's never heard of him.

...