H. P. Grice points to a difficulty in P. F. Strawson's account of 'particular' and 'general' -- The Aristotelian Society

 It might be objected to the conditions given that expressions like " The third tallest man who ever lived or „ lives or will live " answer to the specifications for a generalthing designation. If they did, it would perhaps not be difficult to legislate them out, by suitable amendments of those specifications. But in fact they do not. For their meaning does not suffice to determine for them a unique object of reference. It is, if true, contingently true that there is a single thing answering to such a description. This case, however, does raise a problem about how the words " expression a unique reference for which is determined solely by the meaning " are to be construed. If we construe them as " expression the existence of just one object of reference for which is guaranteed by the meaning," we may find outselves in (possibly circumventable) trouble over, e.g., " phlogiston " and " the unicorn." Yet this is the construction at first suggested by the present case.12 It will This difficulty was pointed out to me by Mr. H. P. Grice. 2G Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/aristotelian/article-abstract/54/1/233/1857771 by guest on 20 April 2020 2 5 8 P. F. STRAWSON. be better, therefore, to construe them as follows : " expression the (or a) meaning of which is such that it is both logically impossible for it to refer to more than one thing (in that meaning)18 and logically impossible for the expression to fail to have reference because of the existence of competing candidates for the title". And the sense of " competing candidates" can be explained as follows : x, y and z are competing candidates (and the only competing candidates) for the title D if, if any two of them had not existed, D would apply to the third.