School
Ordinary language philosophy
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Why is saying “I promise” not true or false, like other sentences?
I found an idea I don't fully understand. The book says that when I tell my mother "I promise I'll be home by ten", I am not describing anything. I am not reporting a promise that exists somewhere else. Saying it is…
Started by Fajar Nugroho3 replies -
My daughter asked where her mind is kept. Is Ryle’s ‘category mistake’ the answer?
My daughter is seven. Last week, while I was plaiting her hair, she asked me where her mind is kept. "Is it in my head, like my brain? Or is it behind my eyes?" I said it was in her brain, and…
Started by Thamarai Raman4 replies -
Reading group: J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words
Austin gave these as the William James Lectures at Harvard in 1955, and they were published after his death, in 1962, from his notes. Twelve short lectures. It is one of the most readable classics in philosophy of language, and it has…
Started by Sam Ellery5 replies -
The recommendation letter that says nothing bad: Grice and the art of faint praise
Every autumn I write about forty college recommendation letters. This year a colleague showed me a letter she'd received for a student teacher. It said, in full, that the candidate was always punctual, that her handwriting on the board was very clear,…
Started by Keisha Monroe5 replies -
Twenty years of translating have convinced me that meaning is use
Every day at work I meet words that the dictionary claims to define and that my clients use in ways the definition doesn't cover. Heimat is the famous German case, but the ordinary words are worse. “Fair” in English. Geist. The French…
Started by Claire Dubois6 replies -
Austin answered the argument from illusion, but the argument from hallucination survives him
Lately I have been rereading J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia (1962), the lectures reconstructed after his death in which he takes apart A. J. Ayer's sense-datum theory. Austin's treatment of the stick in water is brilliant. The argument from illusion says:…
Started by Pieter van Dijkhuizen5 replies -
For ordinary speech, Aristotle was right: “All S are P” presupposes there are some S
Modern logic reads "All S are P" as "for anything, if it is S, it is P". If nothing is S, the statement comes out true automatically. So "All the unicorns in my garden are pink" is true, and so is "All…
Started by Oskar Nyberg6 replies -
Wittgenstein said philosophy “leaves everything as it is”. Is quietism a position, or a refusal to have one?
I translate for a living, and this year I have been rereading a book about the Philosophical Investigations. I keep returning to §124: philosophy may not interfere with the actual use of language; it can only describe it; it "leaves everything as…
Started by Claire Dubois5 replies -
Stanley Cavell
Stanley Cavell was an American philosopher who taught at the University of California, Berkeley and for most of his career at Harvard. Drawing on…
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Peter Strawson
Peter Strawson was a British philosopher who spent almost all of his career at Oxford, where he was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy. He…
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Paul Grice
Paul Grice was a British philosopher of language who taught at St John's College, Oxford, and later at the University of California, Berkeley. In…
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J. L. Austin
J. L. Austin was a British philosopher at Oxford, where he was White's Professor of Moral Philosophy and a leading figure of ordinary language…
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Gilbert Ryle
Gilbert Ryle was an English philosopher who spent his career at Oxford, where he was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and long-time editor of…