The phrase "the present King of France" comes from an example by Bertrand Russell, an apparent paradox raising some interesting questions about the law of the excluded middle, denotation, and so on.
Consider the statement "The present King of France is bald." Is this statement true? Is it false? It is meaningless?
It surely can't be true, for there is no present King of France. But if it is false, then one would suppose that the negation of the statement is true, that is, "The present King of France has hair (is not bald)." But that doesn't seem any more true than the original statement.
Is it meaningless, then? One might suppose so, because it certainly does fail to denote in a sense, but on the other hand it sure seems to mean something that we can quite clearly understand.
If only Wikipedia had a professional philosopher as editor in chief, we could get a full explanation of these mysteries.
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