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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
One of the most characteristic (and certainly most original) claims of the dominant movement in contemporary British philosophy, to which we shall refer as the philosophy of ordinary language, is that traditional philosophical discourse has usually been logically improper because it has depended upon systematic misuses of certain expressions in ordinary language and that philosophy is a legitimate cognitive discipline only if it is concerned with the description of the actual use of language. To substantiate this claim, the philosopher of ordinary language has had to establish at least the following two general philosophical theses, which together seem to constitute the hard core of original doctrine in the philosophy of ordinary language. First, that the meaning of an expression is its use and not its referent or what it corresponds to. Second, that the description of the uses of certain expressions in language is not merely a study of words but genuinely solves the same problems which traditional philosophy had tried to solve through other methods.
page 146 note 1 ‘Meaning-as-Use and Meaning-as-Correspondence’, Philosophy, Oct., 1960.Google Scholar
page 146 note 2 Compare Wittgenstein's, Philosophical Investigations, 370, 371, 373; also 109.Google Scholar
page 147 note 1 Urmson, J. O., ‘Some Questions Concerning Validity’, Essays in Conceptual Analysis, edited by Antony, Flew (London, 1956), p. 120.Google Scholar
page 147 note 2 Watkins, J. W. N., ‘Farewell to the Paradigm-Case Argument’ and ‘A Reply to Professor Flew's Comment’;Google Scholar and Flew, A. G. N., ‘Farewell to the Paradigm-Case Argument: A Comment’, Analysis, December 1957.Google Scholar
page 148 note 1 Ibid., p. 26.
page 152 note 1 Austin, J. L., ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. 57, p. 8.Google Scholar
page 154 note 1 Hence the importance of the distinction between the meaning-as-correspondence and the use of an expression. Only expressions which are not only elements of our language whose use is regulated by certain rules but also names or referends of parts of the world can have the cognitive significance described above. For knowledge, whatever else it may be, is knowledge of the world.Google Scholar
page 157 note 1 e.g. Norman, Malcolm, in ‘Moore and Ordinary Language’, The Philosophy of G. E. Moore.Google Scholar
page 157 note 2 cf. Norman, Malcolm, ‘Moore and Ordinary Language’, The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, p. 364.Google Scholar
page 158 note 1 e.g. Norman, Malcolm, ‘Philosophy for Philosophers’, Philosophical Review, 1951, p. 337.Google Scholar
page 159 note 1 The distinction between the actuality of the uses of words in science and everyday affairs and the vacuity of the uses of words in philosophy is drawn especially clearly by Professor Gilbert Ryle in ‘Ordinary Language’, The Philosophical Review, 1953, pp. 182–183.Google Scholar
page 159 note 2 e.g. in fiction. Cf. H. L. A. Hart, ‘A Logician's Fairy Tale’, The Philosophical Review, 1951.Google Scholar
page 160 note 1 Austin, J. L., ‘A Plea for Excuses’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, N.S. 57, p. 1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
