Ordinary Language Philosophy Research Articles

Manufacturing the placebo effect

AbstractIn the context of modern medicine, the placebo effect is a troublesome and controversial phrase. In this paper, I use investigative ordinary language philosophy to try to get clear on what it means. In so doing, I uncover three points. (i) The placebo effect makes sense in research but not clinical practice. (ii) To make the phrase make sense in clinical practice, we must manufacture a situation in which we can change linguistic habits. (iii) Such action is not necessary because in clinical practice we do better with other, more settled words and phrases.

Analytical Anthropology of Peter Hacker

Purpose. The article is an explication of the features of the anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the context of analytical philosophy with consideration to the context of European philosophy within the framework of the Oxford School of ordinary language philosophy. The theoretical basis of the research is determined by the latest research in the English-language analytical philosophical tradition, rethinking the place of anthropological problems in the system of philosophical knowledge. Originality. Referring to primary sources, we reconstructed the philosophical and anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the unity of its basic principles and theoretical and practical results. We determined philosophical origins of the key ideas of his philosophical anthropology and substantiated their originality, systematicity and logical argumentation. His philosophical position is defined as anthropological holism, synthesizing the reinterpreted ideas of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Conclusions. Peter Hacker is the creator of the original version of Analytic Philosophical Anthropology. His anthropology is based on criticism of Cartesian dualism and physicalism, which underlie modern neurosciences and which he tries to overcome on the basis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical "logotherapy". The conceptual framework of his holistic anthropology is a rethought conceptual scheme of the Ordinary language philosophy. Hacker considers consciousness not as a separate mental reality, but one of the powers of human nature – an intellectual ability, which, along with emotional (passionate) and moral, belongs to a person as an integral socio-biological being. Asserting the free will of man, the Oxford thinker criticizes various forms of determinism, especially its most common form in modern science – neurobiological determinism, which is built on false philosophical foundations. This criticism allows the modern British philosopher to build an original, systematic and logically consistent anthropological concept that asserts the immutability of the highest human values – goodness, love and happiness.

“MY TONGUE SWORE BUT MY HEART DID NOT”: VINDICATING ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY AGAINST THE PROCUSTEAN BED OF SCIENTISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Often vilified, if not outright rejected, ordinary language philosophy has been sustained, from its very beginnings, due to the farne of authors such as Austin and the later Wittgenstein; but not, however, on its own merits. These, w hen recognized, are branded as either constituting a bad philosophy of language, or simply a bad philosophy altogether. Thus, same charitable interpretations have tried to domesticate its methods to make it compatible with a mare orthodox philosophy of language. Very gradually, however, this situation is changing, largely thanks to the influence that Stanley Cavell's philosophy is having on several generations of philosophers. The main thing is to convince ourselves that ordinary language philosophy is not strictly speaking a philosophy of language. It is a philosophy that proceeds from the ordinary and pays attention to the importance that the ordinary has for philosophy. We will, in the course of this article, analyze the criticisms and attempts to domesticate ordinary language philosophy and will anticipate Cavell's defense of the ordinary language philosophy as practiced by Austin and Ryle in Cavell's inheritance of the farmer.

Rifkin’s misreadings of the zero-marginal cost of production of information technology

In this paper, I address contemporary attacks on rationalism thanks to Rifkin’s concepts of “extreme productivity” and “zero marginal cost of production” as examples of an ideological twist on genuine economic expressions. The main issue dealt with epistemological issues in the context of the contemporary communication age. It consists to clarify the relation between economic ideas and their relation to reality. To proceed accordingly, I implement a hermeneutic method applied to Rifkin’s discourse. That method is grounded in the scholarly tradition of “the ordinary language philosophy”. Its results proceed to show 2 distinct language games at work: 1- the neoclassical definition of marginal cost and its own logic is distinct from Rifkin’s use of it. 2- Rifkin uses the expression “marginal cost” under the auspices of an ideological discourse on the demise of capitalism. 3- The confusion is based on a systematically deceptive use of scholarly referencing. I conclude by drawing some lessons for the role of a multidisciplinary defense of economic rationality in contemporary discourse.

Вітґенштайн та феноменологія: контроверзи французької інтерпретації

The author of the article focuses on the matter of Wittgenstein's philosophy reception in France. The reception of Wittgenstein's philosophy was quite late and led to different, sometimes opposite interpretations of his thought, even among French analytical philosophers. Applying a sociological approach to the problem of reception, the author identifies factors that hindered the penetration of the ideas of analytical philosophy in France, including the powerful institutionalization of philosophy in France with its inherent traditionalism and conservatism, fully expressed national character of French philosophy, as well as the extremely polemical character of French analytical philosophy, the transformation of the choice of this tradition of philosophizing into an ethical and political choice. These factors are illustrated by an analysis of Wittgenstein's conflicting interpretation of Jacques Bouveresse and Sandra Laugier. If the first creates an image of Wittgenstein as Anti-Husserl, blaming the phenomenologist for ignoring ordinary language, the second proposes a phenomenological reading of Wittgenstein's ideas using the philosophy of ordinary language. The article shows how opposing interpretations of Wittgenstein's philosophy reproduce the internal conflicts of the French philosophical field.

Meaning and Other Problems of the Semantics of Ordinary Language (Foreword to the Ukrainian Translation of H.P. Grice’s Article “Meaning”).

The foreword to the very first Ukrainian translation of H. P. Grice’s article “Meaning” deals with the personality of the famous British-American philosopher, a representative of analytical philosophy, and the importance of his work in the field of semantics and ordinary language philosophy. Translators of this article focus on the features and subtleties of translation into Ukrainian. They drive attention to some concepts, for instance “belief”, “intention”, that cannot be unambiguously translated into Ukrainian, therefore a contextual translation of such concepts is methodologically justified.

Ordinary Language Philosophy as an Extension of Ideal Language Philosophy. Comparing the Methods of the Later Wittgenstein and P.F. Strawson

AbstractThe idea that thought and language can be clarified through logical methods seems problematic because, while thought and language are not always exact, logic (by its very nature) must be. According to Kuusela, ideal (ILP, represented by Frege and Russell) and ordinary language philosophy (OLP, represented by Strawson) offer opposed solutions to this problem, and Wittgenstein combines the advantages of both. I argue that, given Kuusela’s characterisation of OLP, Strawson was not an OLP’er. I suggest that, instead of seeing ILP and OLP as opposed to one another, it is better to regard OLP as an extension of ILP.

Logic and Voice

In this paper, I aim to reconstruct and discuss Stanley Cavell’s interpretation and critique of analytic philosophy. Cavell objects to the tradition of analytic philosophy that, in its eagerness to provide abstract, theoretical reconstructions, it has failed to understand the importance of “the human voice” for philosophy. First, I outline Cavell’s retelling of the history of analytic philosophy from Frege and Russell to ordinary language philosophy. Second, I turn to Cavell’s reading of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein in order to show what the suppression of the human voice is supposed to mean and entail. Central to Cavell’s account is a particular view of language according to which no structure can explain our capacity for sense-making. Third, I exemplify Cavell’s approach by analyzing his debate with Kripke. Kripke sees the absence of “rails” determining meaning as a skeptical problem and calls for a communal solution. Cavell, by contrast, accepts the absence of rails while highlighting the need for individual responsiveness. In the conclusion I contrast the analytic interest in theory, structure, and abstraction with what I see as Cavell’s humanism. While respectful of key aspects of the analytic tradition such as its commitment to rigor and transparency, Cavell wished to bring the human subject back into philosophy.

Cavell’s Method

It may be time to question analytic philosophy’s structural ignorance of the methods of ordinary language philosophy. Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? upsets the analytic tradition to this end, pursuing a “linguistic phenomenology” that focuses on ordinary language use as a resource for describing the world. Cavell thereby entrusts the tradition with a more ambitious and concrete philosophical task.

Stanley Cavell on What We Say

In his early essay, “Must We Mean What We Say”, Cavell argues that the claims of ordinary language philosophers regarding “what we say when” are not empirical generalizations about a given group of speakers but are rather to be understood as measuring the limits of what counts as a coherent act of thinking and speaking. Cavell’s charge against the skeptic about the external world is that he seeks to think and speak beyond these limits. In this paper I compare Cavell’s response to the skeptic to Davidson’s. Both base their responses on a broadly Kantian approach that appeals to the conditions under which thinking or speaking about objects is possible. On this approach the skeptic isn’t giving a false answer to an intelligible question, but rather, the question to which the skeptic is giving an answer is shown to be in some way unintelligible. But while Davidson’s critique of the skeptic is based on the conditions of ascribing meaning to one’s words, and contents to one’s beliefs, Cavell’s critique is based on the failure of the skeptic to mean the words he uses in the way that he needs. This difference expresses an underlying disagreement about the meaning of “meaning”: for Davidson the world comes into view through the meaning of our words and concepts, through the contents of our beliefs; for Cavell, the world comes into view through the agreement in “criteria” that are a condition of applying words and concepts to the world. This difference illuminates what Cavell calls “the truth of skepticism”: the idea that “my relation to the world and to others in general is not one of knowing”.

Ordinary language philosophy, explanation, and the historical turn in philosophy of science

Taking a cue from remarks Thomas Kuhn makes in 1990 about the historical turn in philosophy of science, I examine the history of history and philosophy of science within parts of the British philosophical context in the 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, ordinary language philosophy's influence was at its peak. I argue that the ordinary language philosophers' methodological recommendation to analyze actual linguistic practice influences several prominent criticisms of the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation and that these criticisms relate to the historical turn in philosophy of science. To show these connections, I primarily examine the work of Stephen Toulmin, who taught at Oxford from 1949 to 1954, and Michael Scriven, who completed a dissertation on explanation under Gilbert Ryle and R.B. Braithwaite in 1956. I also consider Mary Hesse's appeal to an ordinary language-influenced account of meaning in her account of the role of models and analogies in scientific reasoning, and W.H. Watson's Wittgensteinian philosophy of science, an early influence on Toulmin. I think there are two upshots to my historical sketch. First, it fills out details of the move away from logical positivism to more historical- and practice-focused philosophies of science. Second, questions about linguistic meaning and the proper targets and aims of philosophical analysis are part and parcel of the historical turn, as well as its reception. Looking at the philosophical background during which so-called linguistic philosophers also had a hand in bringing these questions to prominence helps us understand why.

'Do You Believe in God, Doctor?' The Atheism of Fiction and the Fiction of Atheism.

This paper is an enquiry into some commonalities between fiction and atheism. It suggests that ‘disbelief’ may be a state of mind shared by both and asks how a meaningful semantics might be derived from the mental stance of disbelief. Albert Camus’ The Plague, published in 1947 post the trauma of two successive world wars, is a key ‘existentialist’ text that focuses on this dilemma. Not only is this work of fiction especially relevant to our current times of natural, political, economic and psychological distress gone ‘viral’, it is also one in which a blunt question is posed to the atheist hero of the novel, Doctor Rieux, in Oran, a small French Algerian town fighting a terrible pandemic: ‘Do you believe in God, doctor?’. Rieux’s answer is telling: ‘No, but what does that really mean? I’m fumbling in the dark, struggling to make something out.’ It is this human ‘struggle’ to discern the contours of the invisible ‘in the dark’ that could animate the thought worlds of fiction as well as of atheism. The paper seeks to draw out some of these putative similarities through the lens of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ and J.L, Austin and John Searle’s classification of basic speech-acts. It also considers the evolutionary, affective and cross-cultural appeal of the parallel narratives of science and religion. Oran’s most remarkable aspect, Camus insists, is its ‘ordinariness’; yet, it is here that the ‘extraordinariness’ of the plague strikes. Quotidian local circumstances thus paradoxically set in motion the sorts of ‘universal’ inquiries into ‘what it means to be human’ that, my paper argues, alike motivate the fiction of atheism and the atheism of fiction.

Unintentional investigations: Truth in drama and “all that ‘ordinary’ in the phrase ‘ordinary language philosophy’ means”

This paper explores the notion of truth in relation to literature. It opens with a critical exposition of some dominant tendencies in contemporary aesthetics, in which narrow views of truth and reference guide the aesthetic investigations in harmful ways. One of the problems with such as view is not merely that it becomes difficult to talk about truth in art, but that it also makes the idea that we can learn something from literature problematic. The effort of this paper is thus to open up for a variety of notions of truth, that are not immediately tied to the notion of representation or correspondence. We need a way of talking about truth in art. The effort to explore a notion of truth in art that is not tied to narrow views about reference, and which broadens our sense of “aboutness” goes, in this paper, via a reading of Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture from 2005, together with some reflections inspired by some of Stanely Cavell’s reflections about the relevance of reflecting upon ordinary language. It is argued that literature engages in a form of conceptual reflection, by means of making the sense of our concepts clear and by challenging philosophical preconceptions about what our concepts must mean. What we can learn from art is thus not necessarily toed to either representation or authorial intent, but comes into view by means of the literary exercises that often (but certainly not always) require a conceptual sensitivity; that is, by means of careful attention to what words mean and what follows from them in specific contexts of use.

Character: Three Inquiries in Literary StudiesCharacter as Form

Character: Three Inquiries in Literary StudiesCharacter as Form

Ordinary Language Philosophy as Phenomenological Research: Reading Austin with Merleau‐Ponty

AbstractIn his late ‘A Plea for Excuses’, John L. Austin suggests labelling his philosophy ‘linguistic phenomenology’. This article examines which idea of phenomenology Austin had in mind when he coined this term and what light this sheds on his method. It is argued that the key to answering this question can be found in Merleau‐Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, which Austin must have been familiar with. Merleau‐Ponty presents phenomenology in a way Austin could embrace: it is a method, it aims at description and uses reduction, it is a non‐idealistic study of essence and interprets intentionality as ‘operative’. In this light, Austin’s method can be appreciated more fully.

Margaret MacDonald’s scientific common-sense philosophy

ABSTRACT Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other.

Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method by Mark Kaplan

Reviewed by: Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method by Mark Kaplan Jason Bridges KAPLAN, Mark. Austin’s Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 192 pp. Cloth, $66.00 John Austin encouraged philosophers to pay attention to how language is ordinarily used. If we seek philosophical insight into such topics as knowledge, truth, and possibility, then, he thought, we would do well to examine how speakers use words like “know,” “true,” and “can” as they go about the business of everyday life. This advice sounds refreshingly down to earth. But how is it to work? What is the nature of the path Austin envisions from observations about ordinary use to philosophical understanding? No doubt his own essays are meant to illustrate the advice’s merits. But it turns out to be difficult to distill from the variegated arguments, examples, and aperçus contained in these essays straightforward answers to our questions. Mark Kaplan’s Austin’s Way with Skepticism is one of a recent flurry of monographs seeking to do what Austin himself apparently did not: to tell us what, in general, is the method of “ordinary-language philosophy.” Kaplan’s book is a fine work. It is thought-provoking and elegantly written. It patiently examines objections and carefully disposes of competing interpretations. There is much to be learned here, and anyone interested in Austin and his legacy should give it careful study. Although the discussion of particulars can get complex, Kaplan’s master thought is simple. What Austin demands of the philosopher is that “she must not be willing to espouse any philosophical doctrine that she would be unwilling to take to heart and act on in ordinary life.” This, says Kaplan, is the “requirement” of “fidelity to ordinary language.” We might just as well think of it as a requirement of fidelity to one’s espoused philosophical doctrines. Either way, the demand is: Live your philosophical truth—and if you find you cannot, then admit it was not your truth after all. It is not hard to see how to bring this “fidelity requirement” to bear against epistemological skepticism. Consider the initial reflections of Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy, which purport to show that we are incapable of acquiring knowledge of the world around us. This result is manifestly at odds with our perennial readiness in everyday contexts to ascribe instances of such knowledge to ourselves and others. The fidelity requirement directs a philosopher who professes to accept the skeptical result to give up making such ascriptions. Presumably no one would be willing to do this. Indeed, it seems plausible that no one could do this, willing or not. So the only way to honor the fidelity requirement is to renounce any commitment to the skeptical result. If this is indeed the substance of Austin’s “way with skepticism,” it seems to me to fall short of providing an adequate reckoning with the problem. It is a familiar point that philosophical arguments can have implications that look outrageous from the perspective of ordinary thought and talk. Certainly, this would not be news to skeptics themselves. Hume, to take a familiar example, is painfully aware that his skeptical conclusions will look absurd to him the moment he leaves his [End Page 410] study and ventures into the world outside. He is tempted on this account to throw his writings into the fire. Why doesn’t he? His problem is that, so far as he can see, his philosophical arguments are solid. To convince him he is wrong about this, it would hardly do to point out that there is an incongruity between the conclusions of these arguments and what he is inclined to think and say when immersed in the commerce of everyday life. Rather, we would need to take the actual measure of the arguments. We would need to examine the reasons Hume gives for his conclusions and endeavor to explain why they lack the force they at first seem to have. It is just this that Kant and other serious critics of Hume sought to do. It leaves us with the falsity of Hume’s conclusions...

No Picnic: Cavell on Rule‐Descriptions

AbstractIn his first paper, ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’, Stanley Cavell defended the methods of ordinary language philosophy against various charges made by his senior colleague, Benson Mates, under the influence of the empirical semantics of Arne Naess.1 Cavell’s argument hinges on the claim that native speakers are a source of evidence for 'what is said' in language and, accordingly, need not base their claims about ordinary language upon evidence. In what follows, I maintain that this defence against empirical semantics applies equally well to experimental philosophy's attack on doing philosophy from the armchair. In so doing, I attempt to clarify – and adjust – Cavell's claim that statements about ordinary language are rule‐descriptions that are neither analytic nor synthetic.

Philosophical Basis of Herbert L. A. Hart’s Theory of Law

This article shows H. L. A. Hart as a leading representative of the analytic orientation in legal philosophy. Hart proved that the methods of analytic philosophy yield generous implications to law, where they may promote new ideas and innovative solutions. The text emphasizes the linguistic aspect of Hart’s works; his achievements in legal theory are discussed in the context of the principles of ordinary language philosophy.

Subject and subjectivity: V. Descombes VS S. Laugier

Despite the general applicability of philosophical concepts of the subject and subjectivity among philosophers, there is no unanimity in their understanding, even if we are talking about representatives of one philosophical trend. The subject of this article is the different understandings of subjectivity by two well-known French authors of analytical inspiration, V. Descombes and S. Laugier, which are united by the critique of the reflexive subject of the philosophy of mind, defending the idea of social mental nature, as well as appeal to the methodological resources of later Wittgenstein’s philosophy to develop the idea of a social subject. Despite their common attitudes, Descombes and Laugier are inspired by different traditions — Descombes, in general, develops the ideas of the French School of Sociology, while Laugier works in line of linguistic phenomenology, defined by the ordinary language philosophy and skeptical interpretations of Wittgenstein’s thought. Descombes builds the conception of the subject as an actor, formed not by his inside world, but by his action, the model of which is the institution of social life. Descombes’s practical subjectivity grows out of his critique of the reflexive paradigm of the philosophy of mind (consciousness) and is the actor’s ability to take the responsibility for his own actions. Instead, Laugier’s concept of «depsychologized subjectivity » focuses on the other side of the actor’s ability to act following some rule within the institutional paradigm of practice, namely the fragility and vulnerability of any human action, its defeats and difficulties, and the subject’s reluctance to be an actor and take the responsibility for his actions. Laugier defends the skeptical understanding of subjectivity as a property of the action of the delocalized subject of language and knowledge, his ability even by his inability to express the social naturalness of the human way of life.