Philosophy and Ordinary Language: The Bent and Genius of our Tongue (review)

This volume is about ordinary language philosophy, the philosophical study of everyday language, and about the place that ordinary language occupies in philosophy. By considering in turn arguments in favor of and against ordinary language philosophy, Oswald Hanfling demonstrates the importance of ordinary language for philosophical inquiries and proves that ordinary language is not to be rejected or substituted by a better scientific language, as maintained by opponents of this philosophical movement.

The volume is divided into two parts presenting pro and con arguments on ordinary language philosophy and consisting of seven and six chapters respectively. The book starts with the analysis of Socrates’ quest for definitions (Ch. 1). By showing that this quest is essentially carried out by referring to ordinary language, H proves that this quest is linguistic in nature. In Ch. 2 H examines John L. Austin’s conception of philosophy and establishes that his justification of ordinary language philosophy is largely open to criticism. Wittgenstein’s thoughts about language and its relationship with reality, most notably his ideas about ‘bring[ing] words back ... to their everyday use’, the ‘bewitchment of our understanding’ by language itself and ‘the arbitrariness of grammar’ are described in Ch. 3. Ch. 4 addresses questions of the basis and status of statements about the uses of words. H argues that given that the same concepts exist in different languages, philosophical statements are language neutral, although made in a specific language. Chs. 5–7 deal with the practice of linguistic philosophy. The paradigm case argument is discussed in Ch. 5. The subject of Ch. 6 is the treatment of justification based, according to H, on the false assumption that concepts can be defined in general terms without referring to the variety of situations in which they are used. Ch. 7 examines the concept of knowledge by analyzing some skeptic arguments tending to show that knowledge is impossible.

Ch. 8 considers and challenges the view that ideas are more fundamental than words. In this chapter H also discusses the recent attempts to introduce ontology into ethics and argues for the separation of philosophy from empirical science. In Ch. 9 H examines various efforts to improve an ordinary language by introducing ‘more accurate’ alternatives. Ch. 10 is devoted to the linguistic philosophy of Grice, which has been a powerful influence in the extensive refutation of ordinary language philosophy. Quine’s arguments against the separation of philosophy from science are considered in Ch. 11. The ‘scientific realism’ of Putnam and Kripke is discussed in Ch. 12. In Ch. 13 H argues that the concepts of ‘belief’, ‘desire’, etc. used to explain human behavior and referred to as ‘folk psychology’ are not to be replaced by a science-based vocabulary.

The book gives a comprehensive overview of the main practitioners of ordinary language philosophy and their methods. Supplied with a large number of examples, the book allows its reader to follow the line of the argumentation easily. Even though the problems tackled in the volume are more philosophical than linguistic, the book touches upon the fundamental issues concerning the nature of language and would be thus of interest to anybody involved in language studies.