Ordinary Language Philosophy

Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy

Now in paperback, Sandra Laugier's reconsideration of analytic philosophy and ordinary language. Sandra Laugier has long been a key liaison between American and European philosophical thought, responsible for bringing American philosophers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Stanley Cavell to French readers—but until now her books have never been published in English. Why We Need Ordinary Language Philosophy rights that wrong with a topic perfect for English-language readers: the idea of analytic philosophy. Focused on clarity and logical argument, analytic philosophy has dominated the discipline in the United States, Australia, and Britain over the past one hundred years, and it is often seen as a unified, coherent, and inevitable advancement. Laugier questions this assumption, rethinking the very grounds that drove analytic philosophy to develop and uncovering its inherent tensions and confusions. Drawing on J. L. Austin and the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she argues for the solution provided by ordinary language philosophy—a philosophy that trusts and utilizes the everyday use of language and the clarity of meaning it provides—and in doing so offers a major contribution to the philosophy of language and twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy as a whole.

Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy, Wittgenstein and the Concept of Mind

Taking their departure from a careful consideration of how we use ordinary words in everyday life, the Oxford philosophers Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, and their followers spearheaded an anti-cognitivist revolution in the philosophy of mind by arguing that psychological expressions do not describe internal mental states, acts, processes, or objects but instead play a purely logical role. They soon encountered sophisticated resistance from Peter Geach, Paul Grice, Susan Haack, and other philosophers sympathetic to cognitivism. This historically informed and analytically rigorous study provides a detailed overview of the Oxford anti-cognitivist critique, reconstructs the cognitivist objections to it, and shows how interaction between Oxford ordinary language philosophy and Wittgenstein’s later writings overcomes these objections while clarifying obscure aspects of Wittgenstein’s perspective. The book will appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, historians interested in the development of 20th-century thought, and anyone fascinated by the relation between language and the mind.

A METHODOLOGICAL STUDY OF ORDINARY-LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY.