Quantifiers And Context-Dependence

Let DDQ be the thesis that definite descriptions are quantifiers. Philoso-phers often deny DDQ because they believe that quantifiers do not depend on context in certain ways, ways in which definite descriptions do depend on context. In this paper, we examine one such argument, which, if sound, would entail the negation of DDQ. 1 We show that this argument fails, and draw some consequences from its failure. As is familiar, the truth of an utterance of a sentence containing a quan-tified expression must be evaluated with respect to a contextually determined domain.