Keith Donnellan

Keith Donnellan is a prominent American philosopher and a key figure in the philosophy of language and philosophical logic. He is best known for his work on reference, descriptions, and the nature of meaning. Donnellan is particularly recognized for introducing the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions in his influential paper "Reference and Definite Descriptions," published in 1966. In this paper, Donnellan argued that when a speaker uses a definite description (e.g.