TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0001
[analytic philosophy, european immigration, postanalytic philosophy]
This book attempts to show the tensions inherent in the very definition of analytic philosophy. For some time now, numerous essays published in English have brought out the difficulties of determining the nature and origins of what is called analytic philosophy, which mainly developed in the United States after the European immigration of the 1930s and 1940s. Because of these difficulties, it is appropriate to examine analytic philosophy's starting point before thinking about any “postanalytic” philosophy. However, such a historical procedure would seem to be incompatible with some of the established rules of what analytic philosophy became during a certain period. Analytic philosophy has long claimed to be ahistoric, which amounts to the illusion of constant timeliness or newness. (pages 1 - 14)
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From Empiricism to Realism - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0002
[language, radical translation, wittgenstein, augustine, austin, institutional context, meaning]
This chapter begins by comparing three different “stagings” of language. The first is well known: Quine's scene of radical translation. The second is the scene invented by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations based on Augustine's description in the Confessions of learning language, a description Wittgenstein cites at the beginning of the Investigations. The third scene, which will be addressed in the later sections of this chapter, is from Austin, and with it begins How to Do Things with Words. The last scene differs from the first two in that it takes place within a social and institutional context. The three points of view presented here share in common a criticism, stated in different ways, of the myth of meaning. (pages 15 - 22)
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Relativity, Conceptual Schemes, and Theories - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0003
[experience, quine, translation, indeterminacy, ontological relativity, science]
This chapter makes the distinction between Quine's thesis of indeterminacy and his affirmation of the underdetermination of theories by experience. This distinction, however, is attenuated by certain consequences of indeterminacy and ontological relativity. The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation also bears, unexpectedly, on the ontology of science and thus on epistemology. Thus, the simple underdetermination of theories by experience becomes in Quine a radical thesis, a relativization of science's object and the very notion of “fact of the matter.” In fact, it would have been enough to adhere to the letter of Quine's first texts in order to realize this and to see in his mature works not a renunciation of but an addition to these first arguments. (pages 23 - 31)
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Truth, Language, and Immanence - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0004
[robust realism, ontological question, quine, radical translation, language]
This chapter explores Quine's “robust realism.” For Quine, the ontological question can be attested within the framework of our language. Ontological discussions come to an end on their own through “uncritical acceptance” of the uses of words we have learned. As Quine always said, translation begins at home, and my neighbor's ontology is as inscrutable to me as that of the most distant indigene; it is just that the learning we share with our neighbors does not ordinarily result in asking the ontological question. That question emerges only in situations of radical translation. Such is the anthropological sense of radical translation and of the question of language. (pages 32 - 41)
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Language, Facts, and Experience - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0005
[immanent truth, austin, truth, putnam, realism, relativism]
This chapter studies Austin's criticisms and how they can be perceived as a radicalization of Quine's arguments on truth and meaning. They, however, call into question the thesis of immanent truth, or rather, the argument that immanent truth is a convincing answer to the question of truth. Putnam has insisted on the curious convergence of “robust” realism and relativism once truth is conceived in terms of “disquotation.” He is skeptical about the frequent and even obligatory proclamation of the will to reestablish “unmediated contact” between language and the world; in short, the proclamation of “direct realism.” (pages 42 - 53)
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Empiricism Again - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0006
[empiricism, perception, metaphysical presupposition, language]
This chapter addresses the question of empiricism through discussing Austin's theory of perception. A superficial reading of Sense and Sensibilia, Austin's least understood work, might lead one to believe that Austin defends a linguistic or language-based theory of perception. However, quite the opposite is true. Austin rejects the idea that our perception is dependent on language, but he does not say that perception is independent of language. On the contrary, these two opposing arguments share the same defect. First, they are typically philosophical arguments that not only neglect the ordinary use of language but even pervert it, and next, they rest on the same metaphysical presupposition that the relation between language and perception can be examined, evaluated, or discussed. (pages 54 - 63)
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Language as Given - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0007
[language, words, objects, general appellations, austin]
This chapter presents Austin's way of resolving the question of language's “relation” to the real. Words, says Austin, are typically “medium sized dry goods”—our typical ordinary objects. This formulation resembles Quine's, but there is nothing physicalist about Austin's affirmation here. Words are not objects like others—in fact, no object is “an object like others” for Austin, who is distrustful of general appellations. We use words, and what makes words useful objects is their complexity, their refinement as tools—which makes studying them important so that one may also examine the things of this world. It is precisely the closeness in size between words and ordinary objects that makes this claim possible, and the concept of “size” is important for Austin. (pages 64 - 74)
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The Ordinary as Heritage - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0008
[phenomenology, austin, philosophy of language, incorrigible statements, pure experience]
This chapter discusses Austin's radical rejection of a certain form of phenomenology. When Austin speaks of “linguistic phenomenology,” he is thinking less of what the philosophy of language should or could be than of what phenomenology should be—the description of what is there, at our disposal, and the differences this makes. What is given, and is all that we have, is our common language, our ordinary utterances. This is the point of Austin's arguments against the idea of primitive or “incorrigible” statements, or statements of “pure experience.” The objection is not that there is always some theory or some language within experience, rather, the objection is that if there are “primary” statements, or in any case statements that we do not doubt, these are not statements of experience or perception or even of observation, but ordinary statements. (pages 75 - 84)
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The Myth of Inexpressiveness - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0009
[ordinary language, cavell, wittgenstein, criteria, agreements, conversation]
This chapter discusses the philosophical problem raised by ordinary language philosophy, which raises two questions. First, by what right do we base ourselves on what we ordinarily say? Second, on what, or on whom, do we base ourselves in order to determine what we ordinarily say? According to Cavell, however, these two questions are but one. This is a question of the relationship between me (my words) and the real (our world); for Cavell as for Wittgenstein, that is the question of our criteria. In discussing this, the chapter goes back to the examination of agreements in language. These agreements determine and are determined by criteria; we share criteria by means of which we regulate our application of concepts and through which we establish the conditions of conversation. (pages 85 - 96)
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To Speak, To Say Nothing, To Mean to Say - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0010
[realism, austin, wittgenstein, ordinary language philosophy, cavell, emotivism]
This chapter is concerned with the commonalities between Austin and Wittgenstein. Both philosophers subscribe to a form of realism that one hardly dares call realism, since it is precisely what is forgotten or rejected by philosophy today and in the debates over realism. The difficulties in ordinary language philosophy's reception are not new, and Cavell's first texts showed particularly well the accumulated misunderstandings of Wittgenstein's work and, to a lesser degree, of Austin's. Cavell, in Must We Mean What We Say?, goes against the dominant theory of the time, emotivism— a doctrine that still plays a determining role in thought today. This doctrine derives from the idea that only cognitive statements, which represent “states of affairs,” are veritable statements endowed with “meaning,” and other statements therefore cannot express anything except an emotive attitude regarding such statements. (pages 97 - 109)
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Conclusion - Sandra Laugier, Daniela Ginsburg
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226037554.003.0011
[philosophy of language, logical analysis, ordinary language, philosophical radicalness, traditional empiricism, austin, science of language]
This book concludes by reaffirming the opposition between two kinds of philosophy of language. The logical analysis of language on the one hand and the philosophy of ordinary language on the other seem, ultimately, to come together in their shared criticism of well-anchored conceptions and in a certain philosophical radicalness. This radicalness might be defined in terms of a rejection of traditional empiricism, but it might also be defined as the invention of a new sort of empiricism. Austin's goal is indeed to redefine the given and the data of experience in order to pave the way for “a true and comprehensive science of language.” . (pages 110 - 122)
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Notes
Bibliography
Index
