A heretical re-reading of the theory of descriptions

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.