School
Ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy is the approach that treats close attention to how words are ordinarily used as a key to solving philosophical problems.
It flourished at Oxford from the 1940s to the 1960s, influenced by the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, with Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Peter Strawson and Paul Grice. Ryle attacked the picture of the mind as a ghost in the machine, Austin developed the theory of speech acts, and Strawson challenged Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptions. Grice's work on implicature both drew on the method and corrected it. Stanley Cavell carried it into American philosophy and criticism. On this site it answers questions on speech acts (6.10.2), language, mind, perception and meta-metaphysics.
Thinkers of this school
- J. L. Austin1911 – 1960
- Gilbert Ryle1900 – 1976
- Paul Grice1913 – 1988
- Peter Strawson1919 – 2006
- Stanley Cavell1926 – 2018
Guide: Schools of Philosophy: The Main -isms and the Questions They Answer
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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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Is it dishonest to let an assistant answer your messages in your own voice?
Many email and messaging apps now offer to draft your replies, and some promise to learn the way you write. So here is an everyday case. Your cousin congratulates you on a new job. You send back a warm, specific reply that…
Started by The Editors4 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 -
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 -
Every word in the quote was hers. Can an accurate quotation still be a lie?
A case from a courtroom in Karachi, details changed. Defence counsel said, in two sentences: "My client is not denying that he was at the house. He is denying that he did anything there." A colleague at another paper quoted only the…
Started by Sana Rizvi2 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…