Such a sentence does not designate an object and describe it, rather the sentence affirms the presence of a feature.
Of course, even normal phase sortal might, contingently, in a given instance, designate an object through the whole of its existence.
Present-day nominalists, however, are aware, if earlier nominalists were not, that if the phrase 'the name "horse" ' designated an object, the object it designated would itself be a universal or something very like one.
By the expression 'ad hoc phase sortal' I mean a sortal that can be used sometimes as a phase sortal, designating an object only through part of its existence, and sometimes as an ultimate sortal, designating an object through the whole of its existence.
According to Strawson, Russell infers from that to the conclusion that the semantic role of the apparent subject expression in such sentences (i.e. 'the F') cannot be to refer to or designate an object, and must, rather, function as a quantifier.
More precisely, the meaning of the word would be something like So the sentence "The cow is in the garden" does not just mean the list <cow, being in the garden>, as it would if each word simply designated an object, but rather the connected proposition <cow-which-is in-the-garden>.
Some philosophers have proposed that 'Apis mellifera' rigidly designates an abstract object, a kind or property.
That an intensional variable \(f\) designates an existent object is expressed by an abstract, \([\lambda x\,E x)](f)\).
In the present state, \([\lambda x\,\Diamond E x)](\atoi xK x))\) is false, because the definite description has no designation, but \ \Diamond [\lambda x\,E x)](\atoi xK x))\) is true, because there is an alternative (earlier) state in which the definite description designates an existent object.
