Ordinary Language Philosophy

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here are the Central Ideas of Ordinary Language Philosophy; note its bloated arrogance in viewing other philosophies as inferior, thus must be rejected.

A rough first approximation of the central ideas of Linguistic Philosophy is this:

Philosophic problems are intimately connected with language and somehow emanate from it.
They "arise from" the use of words: and especially "from the ordinary use of words", or from deviations from it.

The fact that language exists, plus some facts about language, are central for Philosophy: they are the condition of solving or "dissolving" those fundamental problems which men have called "Philosophy".
Ordinary language, as actually employed, rather than some general features of language which might best be conveyed by a simplified model language, is what is relevant.
The diversity of ordinary language is essential for the understanding of it and of philosophic problems.

(Old) Philosophy is somehow the pathology of language: philosophical problems arise from a misunderstanding of language; philosophical theories are misuses of language.

In as far as this is true, it follows that the philosophical (in the old sense) view is always wrong or at least misleading, and that the unphilosophical view which can also be called "Common Sense" is right.
Common sense is either identical with, or at least closely related to, what is asserted or implied in the common use of language, briefly referred to as "Usage".

What follows further is that the proper job of the philosopher is to be the diagnostician and therapist of a certain type of error, namely error arising from misunderstanding of language. He has no positive function.
Positive views can be left to common sense or some other source.

These ideas can be summed up roughly either as ideas about Philosophy, or about language, or about the world, or about mind.

WORDS AND THINGS
A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology
by Ernest Gellner

Discuss??
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[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
Ordinary Language Philosophy has the following vision and mission:

A THEORY OF PHILOSOPHY
The theory of Ordinary Language Philosophy runs: past Philosophy has been mainly abuse of language, future good [Ordinary Language] Philosophy will be the diagnosis and elimination of such abuse.

(It is admitted that some past philosophers did good work without understanding what they were doing.)
This lends itself to various conceptions of the good work left for philosophers to do in the future:

Euthanasia of Philosophy.
Or autopsy.
Or endlessly protracted prophylaxis.
Or others still, including l'art pour l'art.

These possibilities must be explained more fully:
Linguistic Philosophy can conceive of its own activities as the euthanasia of Philosophy.
There is, in its view, no room on the map of knowledge for the kind of special insights that past Philosophy claimed, or indeed for the kind of special, strange questions with which it was preoccupied.
But those alleged questions and putative insights are not to be simply outlawed, but gently, so to speak comprehendingly, eliminated.
Only such understanding, "therapeutic" elimination is truly effective, and as a by-product of it we get some understanding of how we use language.
Simple proscription was ineffective.

This disagreeable possibility is countered in a number of ways: Linguistic Philosophy is conceived not merely as a therapy or euthanasia, but also as prophylaxis, and as a prophylaxis against a necessarily ever-present danger.
The disease it wards off is inherent in language: all language users will ever be tempted to misinterpret the various uses of their language in terms of each other
This is the Night Watchman theory of Philosophy: it has no positive contribution of its own to make, but must ever be on guard against possible abuses that would interfere with, confuse, genuine knowledge.

Even more sophisticated theories guaranteeing continued employment of Linguistic philosophers exist: what one might call the Dialectical Theory envisages illness and therapy feeding on each other, each cure itself calling for another cure, perhaps in a pendulum-like pattern.

Finally, there is the idea that usage may be investigated for its own sake, even if no problems are illuminated on the way. 20
Naturally, once this is allowed as a legitimate exercise, Linguistic Philosophy is safe (from criticism, anyway, if not from extinction by boredom).
The promise of therapeutic effects constituted some check on its claims (even if not a sharp one, for no deadline was set for the therapeutic efficacy, which might always be just round the corner); without it, no checks on its claims are left at all, for it has then dropped its claims.

There are also watered-down versions which fuse these ideas with less novel and controversial ones.
Linguistic Philosophy has a watering-down mechanism built into its ideas and practices, so that every characterisation could be qualified by pointing out that some Linguistic philosophers have chosen readymade evasions.
This makes all criticism complex in formulation, but not less effective, for in general the following fork holds:
either the Linguistic philosopher holds the strong variant, in which case he is saying something interesting, but open to criticism,
or he is holding the watered-down version, in which case he is beyond the reach of criticism, but saying something which is too feeble to be controversial.

Evasiveness is implicit in the ideas and in the practice of Linguistic Philosophy.

This kind of evasiveness is not uncommon among philosophies.
The remarkable thing about Linguistic Philosophy is the thoroughness with which it is built into its key ideas and the way it is essentially connected with them, as will emerge.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
A THEORY OF THE WORLD AND OF LANGUAGE
As a theory about the world, Linguistic Philosophy runs like this: The world is what it is, and not another thing.
Everything in the world is what it is, and not another thing.
(These statements are not as tautological as they seem, as will emerge.)
Inside the world, there are men, and men use language.
Language is a set of events, activities, dispositions.
It has its uses.
The uses of expressions have to do with human purposes in the world in which men find themselves, with the contexts in which those purposes operate.
Language is an activity, a form of life.
(Goethe's Faust pondered on whether "in the beginning there was the word", or the deed.
Linguistic Philosophy has solved that dilemma for him: the word is a deed.)-21-
The general purposes of language are, for instance, the communication of information, the issuing of orders, the assessment of characters, the assessment of aesthetic satisfactoriness, the assessment of probabilities, preaching, edifying, justifying authority, etc., etc.
To each of these purposes and activities there correspond some expressions, some linguistic acts.
(Of course, an expression may serve a number of them, or many kinds of expression may serve one purpose.)

But what sense could there be in asking, as old-fashioned Philosophy did, whether the world has such general properties as being made up of facts or containing universals, values, beauty, relations, what not?
The world is what it is: general terms of this kind, corresponding to kinds of uses of language, can never be misapplied, unless perhaps by one ignorant of the language.
The force of "the world is what it is" is really: general, "categorial" terms (Beauty, Rightness, Fact, Inference, Abstractness, etc.) are not misapplied.
It does not make sense to speculate what the world would be like without them, for the world neither contains them--nor fails to contain them.
They are kinds of uses of language.
Metaphorically speaking, categories like Beauty, etc., are shadows which the uses of language cast on the world.

This leads us back to the diagnosis of (past) Philosophy: it was the attempt to do about these concepts what we can only do with them; to do with categories as a whole what is only legitimate inside each of them: to ask questions about them.

What Linguistic Philosophy says about language, positively, has already been sketched in describing the place of language in the world.
There remains to sketch roughly the negative theory of language--what language is not--and to give some specific doctrines about meaning.

What language is not: It is not something opposed to, vis-à-vis, the world, mirroring it.
It is from the rejection of this doctrine, amongst others, that Linguistic Philosophy sprang.
The Mirror Theory of Meaning, the idea that when a term or an expression means something there must be something somewhere, has led in the past, it is claimed, to all kinds of Mysterious-Universe theories, and to the Mysterious-Mind theories.
It is these theories that are being opposed, and their denial gives a non-vacuous sense to saying that the world is what it is.
Or, what it seems. -22-

It is important to note how the view of the world and the view of language support each other.
One can argue either way: Because the world is just what it seems (and as it seems to an unimaginative man at about mid-morning), therefore, naturally, language is but a set of activities in it.
What else could it be?

But equally well one can argue: Because language is found on examination to be but a set of tools for mundane--or at any rate, intramundane--purposes therefore the world is only what it seems.
For old Philosophy argued from features of language to strange realms: from adjectives to Universals, from substantives to Substances, from hypothetical expressions to a Realm of Possibilities, etc., etc.

But once one sees all kinds of expressions as tools, one also sees all such inferences to strange entities or realms to be misguided.
Hence, the world is as it seems, before we started to philosophise.
(Let us not ask when that was.)
For "tools" are, ex hypothesi, used in the ordinary world.

There is really only one idea here.
But it seems to be two or many, and the multiplicity of its manifestations all seem to lend each other support.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
A THEORY OF MIND
Linguistic Philosophy is also a theory of mind.
Or one might say it "implies" a theory of mind.
But whilst indeed the characteristic doctrine of mind is a corollary and application of the central doctrine, it is equally possible to reach that central doctrine as a corollary or implication of the theory of mind.

The most famous statement of that theory is to be found in Professor Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind.
The doctrine is, roughly, that
the human mind is not an entity or process or class of events or receptacle radically distinct from corporeal events or things,
but on the contrary that, very generally speaking, mind is the way we do things.
This may be called Behaviourism, and indeed it is, but it differs from other forms of Behaviourism in important ways: it maintains that its discoveries are simply the making explicit of what is in fact contained in our concepts, in our ways of using words which refer to thought, etc.
-23-
So the account claims not really to be denying the existence of something, but merely to give a correct interpretation of what its existence amounts to, of how the expressions referring to it are related to others (notably those referring to bodies and their behaviour).
So Ryle's Behaviourism is intended to be an explication, which leaves everything as it is, excluding only philosophical misinterpretations of the situation.

This Behaviourism, if valid, would have very important consequences--it would show the unreality of the puzzle about how we can know what other people think, and the even more important one about how mind and body can interact.
The "dissolution" of these two problems was indeed claimed.

For the allegedly mistaken traditional Philosophy of mind supposed the existence of two sets of odd entities:
what I call "cold" entities, such as propositions, universals, etc., envisaged as "objects" of thought, and
what I call "warm" entities, such as inner sensations and states.

The linguo-philosophical approach reduces both these kinds to aspects of doing.
By eliminating or playing-down the warm entities it destroys the doctrine of a private world composed of them:
from this the other aspect of Linguistic Philosophy follows,
namely the naturalistic view of language (it cannot then refer to the private world, or to a Platonic world of the cold entities, and so it must be an activity, a "know-how", in the public world).

The existence of "cold" mental entities (abstractions such as Ideas, Concepts, Universals, Propositions) is denied outright.
This is well in keeping with the nominalistic temper of the age, and does not constitute a distinctive feature of Linguistic Philosophy, at any rate not in opposition to its immediate philosophical predecessors.

The denial of "warm" entities, such as "sense-data", introspectible states and so forth is a more difficult and controversial matter.
Most people who reflect on the matter are convinced that they experience these entities, and it is difficult to convince them that they do not.
Moreover, recent philosophies have often operated with these notions, and the supposition of their existence in no way offends the spirit of the age.

In its more sensible and moderated formulation, the Linguistic Philosophy of mind does not deny the existence of warm mental entities.
-24-
It merely argues that they are irrelevant, in as far as their presence is not essential to the use--and hence, the meaning--of those expressions which were once held to designate them.
For instance, an angry man may or may not be experiencing an inner feeling of anger: what is essential to his anger is only that he be disposed to act in an angry way.

It must be noted how this Philosophy of mind depends on the theory of language: if the meaning of terms is their use, as tools in the public world, then, naturally, the use of the tool can only be specified in terms of what is necessary to its employment.
(If inner states may sometimes be absent and yet a "mental" term be applicable, then those states are not necessary for its use and cannot be a part of its meaning.)

Given the "use" or "tool" theory of language, the Philosophy of mind necessarily follows.
If words are tools used in the public world, then their meaning cannot, naturally, depend on something in a private or a transcendent realm.
(And the denial of these realms is precisely what that Philosophy of mind is concerned to achieve.)
But this theory of language is the very basis of one main method of argument used: the examining of the employment of "mental words".
In the light of this it is concluded, not surprisingly, that a behaviourist theory of mind is valid . . .

So, in a sense, all the protracted and detailed argument is redundant.
The conclusion could have been demonstrated briefly, had the tacit presupposition of the method been made an explicit premiss.

But whilst the Philosophy of mind is deducible from the Philosophy of language, the reverse also holds.
The main difficulty of the "use" or "tool-in-the-world" theory of mind is that it appears to reduce communication to a kind of blind ritual.
It seems plausible enough to apply it to situations in which we behave "mechanically"; a man who orders his habitual menu in his usual restaurant does not "mean" anything--he does what he does, and his use of language can most plausibly be described as a doing-in-the-world. (He might as well have just nodded to the head-waiter.) -25-

But when the same theory is applied to, say, a man composing a poem or solving a difficult problem, it becomes far less plausible: there appears to be no pre-established system of rules or habits within which such a man's verbal or symbolic activity is a "move".

When facing this difficulty, the "use" theory of language invokes the activity theory of mind: it is then claimed that of course the original and creative use of words or symbols still is not evidence for one of the old, "mirror" theories of language-it merely shows, as the theory of mind insists, that thinking is a kind of activity. *
There is no breaking out of this circle.
But the various moves within it are treated by Linguistic philosophers as independent confirmations of the circle as a whole.

Be it stressed: Linguistic Philosophy is not
a theory of the world and
a theory of language and
a theory of Philosophy and
a theory of mind.
These four are but aspects of each other; they mutually entail or insinuate each other.
The doctrine can be conveyed in many ways: in terms of any one of the above or in terms of the specific ideas about meaning: or, most characteristically, in terms of none of these but by application, by exemplification.

Here the theory of language is invoked again.
One of its tenets, as will emerge later, is that connections, series, are not simple, but manifold and "open", and chosen, not given.
Choosing is a kind of doing.
Something is done, nothing is mirrored.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes: KIV

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes: KIV

[Iwannaplato]

who wrote the text in the 2nd post?

[Veritas Aequitas]

who wrote the text in the 2nd post?

All the above post 1-4 are from
WORDS AND THINGS
A Critical Account of Linguistic Philosophy and a Study in Ideology
by Ernest Gellner

[Iwannaplato]

Here are the Central Ideas of Ordinary Language Philosophy; note its bloated arrogance in viewing other philosophies as inferior, thus must be rejected.

So, if someone thinks their philosophy as superior to other philosophies it must be rejected? Does this include someone thinking that transcendental idealism is superior to other philosophies, their philosophy should be rejected?

Which philosophers view all positions equally?

Also wouldn't it be best to see what they say, rather than the parts of their positions that focus on ranking philosophies?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Here are the Central Ideas of Ordinary Language Philosophy; note its bloated arrogance in viewing other philosophies as inferior, thus must be rejected.

So, if someone thinks their philosophy as superior to other philosophies it must be rejected? Does this include someone thinking that transcendental idealism is superior to other philosophies, their philosophy should be rejected?

Which philosophers view all positions equally?

Also wouldn't it be best to see what they say, rather than the parts of their positions that focus on ranking philosophies?

I think you misread my point.
It is Ordinary Language Philosophy which think all other philosophies should be rejected.
OLP accuse other philosophies of not using language to their expectations.

"The theory of Ordinary Language Philosophy runs: past Philosophy has been mainly abuse of language, future good [Ordinary Language] Philosophy will be the diagnosis and elimination of such abuse."

"This lends itself to various conceptions of the good work left for [ordinary language] philosophers to do in the future:
Euthanasia of Philosophy.
Or autopsy.
Or endlessly protracted prophylaxis.
Or others still, including l'art pour l'art."

By contrast, even when Kant thought Transcendental Idealism is 'superior' when he critiqued p-realists as grasping to illusions, he nevertheless did not insist they should discard their illusory beliefs but one can continue to believe however one need to be mindful it is merely a useful illusion.
Kant understood, being humans it is very difficult for believers to change their beliefs immediately.

[Skepdick]

Also wouldn't it be best to see what they say, rather than the parts of their positions that focus on ranking philosophies?

Would it be best? Lets not focus on ranking possible courses of action now...

Which philosophers view all positions equally?

No such philosopher exists! For as long as you are in the game you are always biased towards your own philosophical views.
That's the fucking problem. And the very reason why one must reject ALL philosophy including your own.

Of course, some wise-ass philosopher will tell you that you are still holding a philosophical view.
And the response to that idiocy is straight out of the atheist playbook: If the rejection of ALL philosophy is itself a philosophy then celibacy is a sexual position.

[Agent Smith]

Although the excerpt quoted didn't match the title of the post, I'd still give it a thumbs up for an interesting description of the problem at hand. At a minimum, given philosophy is aimed at solving real problems, it should be accessible to the l'homme moyen, which in its present form isn't. I'd say the thread invites answers to the question "how may the man on the Clapham omnibus philosophize?" It's worth noting that science has folks like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye and Brian Cox, pushing the agenda of science awareness but philosophy doesn't.

Furthermore, specialized jargon doesn't seem to aid in the overall philosophical quest for eudaimonia and, truth be told, is a turn-off to most people you meet on the streets. On this score, eastern meditations are better than western meditations; apart from necessary neologisms, the language is the kind you'd hear in a tea stall or bar. Cogito that is, cum grano salis.

[FlashDangerpants]

Here are the Central Ideas of Ordinary Language Philosophy; note its bloated arrogance in viewing other philosophies as inferior, thus must be rejected.

OLP doesn't insist on rejecting other philosophies, but it can be used to reject particular questions of philosophy. At this point, to save you a lot of hassle, I would point out that when I make use of it, I only describe certain large questions of philosophy as the ones I am rejecting. That's because I am much more aware of these arguments than you are and I know an awful lot more about philosophy of language than you do and I can anticipate future problems better than you can.

The criticism that between 1940 something and 1970 something British philosophy, in particular at Oxford and somewhat at Cambridge (but not so much at the LSE where Popper reigned) got carried away with the new linguistic ideas of philosophy and took matters too far is fairly commonplace and widely accepted. It is said that such philosophers took the role of philosophy to be nothing more than the ordrely sorting of concepts, although I don't know if that was constructed by one of the proponents of this linguistic turn or is a nasty slur created by their enemies. I have cetainly seen efforts to push the PLA into territory where the big W guy wouldn't approve (and when I am in the mood, I may decide that is a fun game and play it myself).

Either way, the criticisms levelled in your OP were out of date by the 80s. But also out of date by the 60s, this hangup on Ryle and behaviourism (which I mentioned in a negative light myself just the other day) really ages the work you are relying on for this thread. You should probably find something more up to date if you really want to pursue this line of reason.

But I'm not saying not to read the book and make use of hte arguments you find therein, it's almost certainly got some good stuff. I note for instance the mention of "These ideas can be summed up roughly either as ideas about Philosophy, or about language, or about the world, or about mind." which is very much what I accused you of trying to use your KFC buckets for very recently, the coincidence is not accidental. In fact you probably ought to take Gellner's arguments into account when rethinking your whole KFC thing as you have performed similar reductions to those he criticises Ryle for in that project and you may expose yourself to new criticisms this way.

Not that you are actually going to read the book or take account of actual arguments anyway. All you are going to do is namecheck a philosopher to say you agree with [with reservations] as is your natural limit.

If you want to get a more rounded introduction to the philosophy of language, your good buddy Simon Blackburn wrote one called Spreading the Word which I can thoroughly recommed. It's not exactly new either, it's from the 80 I think, but it's up to date enough to have a bit about Grice so that should help you out immensely.

[Skepdick]

Here are the Central Ideas of Ordinary Language Philosophy; note its bloated arrogance in viewing other philosophies as inferior, thus must be rejected.

OLP doesn't insist on rejecting other philosophies

Contradiction. OLP (by definition) rejects non-Ordinary Language Philosophies.

It presupposes linguistic norms on the proper and improper ways of communicating meaning between interlocutors.
This is a pretty confused stance for people who reject the objectivity of morality since meaning and morality coincide in the limit.

There's a proper and improper way of using language, but morality is relative ?!? ROFL

but it can be used to reject particular questions of philosophy

What? Like the question "Should we reject OLP?". Since "Yes" is a self-defeating answer from an OLP point of view - then you must be thinking "Lets reject that question!"