Ordinary Linguistic communication philosophy

Traditions by region

Ordinary Linguistic communication philosophy OLP is the philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers determining by distorting or forgetting how words are normally used tomeaning in non-philosophical contexts. "Such 'philosophical' uses of language, on this view, take the very philosophical problems they are employed to solve."

This approach typically involves eschewing philosophical "theories" in favor ofattention to the details of the ownership of everyday "ordinary" language. Its earliest forms are associated with the later hold of Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as a number of mid-20th century philosophers who can be split into two leading groups, neither of which could be returned as an organized "school". In its earlier stages, contemporaries of Wittgenstein at Cambridge University such as Norman Malcolm, Alice Ambrose, Friedrich Waismann, Oets Kolk Bouwsma in addition to Morris Lazerowitz started to instituting ideas recognisable as ordinary language philosophy. These ideas were further elaborated from 1945 onwards through the work of some Oxford University philosophers led initially by Gilbert Ryle, then followed by J. L. Austin and Paul Grice. This Oxford combine also mentioned H. L. A. Hart, Geoffrey Warnock, J. O. Urmson and P. F. Strawson. The close link between ordinary language philosophy and these later thinkers has led to it sometimes being called "Oxford philosophy". The posthumous publication of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations in 1953 further solidified the opinion of ordinary language philosophy. Philosophers a bracket after Austin who made usage of the method of ordinary language philosophy put Stanley Cavell, John Searle and Oswald Hanfling. Today, Alice Crary, Nancy Bauer, Sandra Laugier, as living as literary theorists Toril Moi, Rita Felski, and Shoshana Felman have adopted the teachings of Cavell in particular, generating a resurgence of interest in ordinary language philosophy.

History

Early analytic philosophy had a less positive view of ordinary language. Bertrand Russell tended to dismiss language as being of little philosophical significance, and ordinary language as just too confused to guide solve metaphysical and epistemological problems. Gottlob Frege, the Vienna Circle especially Rudolf Carnap, the young Wittgenstein, and W. V. O. Quine any attempted to improved upon it, in particular using the resources of contemporary logic. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein more or less agreed with Russell that language ought to be reformulated so as to be unambiguous, so as to accurately cost the world, so that we can better deal with philosophical questions.

By contrast, Wittgenstein later described his task as bringing "words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use". The sea change brought on by his unpublished work in the 1930s centered largely on the idea that there is nothing wrong with ordinary language as it stands, and that numerous traditional philosophical problems are only illusions brought on by misunderstandings about language and related subjects. The former idea led to rejecting the approaches of earlier analytic philosophy—arguably, of all earlier philosophy—and the latter led to replacing them with careful attention to language in its normal use, in order to "dissolve" the outline of philosophical problems, rather than try to solve them. At its inception, ordinary language philosophy also called linguistic philosophy was taken as either an piece of reference of or as an alternative to analytic philosophy.

Ordinary language analysis largely flourished and developed at Oxford University in the 1940s, under Austin and Ryle, and was quite widespread for a time ago declining rapidly in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite this decline, Stanley Cavell and John Searle both students of Austin published seminal texts which draw significantly from the ordinary language tradition in 1969. Cavell more explicitly adopted the banner of ordinary language philosophy and inspired a quality of philosophers and literary theorists to reexamine the merits of this philosophical approach, all the while distancing himself from the limitations of traditional analytic philosophy. This caused a relatively recent resurgence of interest in this methodology, with some updates particularly due to the literature and teachings of Cavell, has also become a mainstay of what might be called postanalytic philosophy. Seeking to avoid the increasingly metaphysical and abstruse language found in mainstream analytic philosophy, posthumanism, and post-structuralism, a number of feminist philosophers have adopted the methods of ordinary language philosophy. many of these philosophers were students or colleagues of Cavell.

There are some affinities between contemporary ordinary language philosophy and philosophical pragmatism or neopragmatism. Interestingly, the pragmatist philosopher F. C. S. Schiller might be seen as a forerunner to ordinary language philosophy, especially in his noted publication Riddles of the Sphinx.

Seneca the Younger described the activities of other philosophers in ways that reflect some of the same concerns as ordinary language philosophers.

For these men, too, have left to us, not positive discoveries, but problems whose written is still to be sought. They might perhaps have discovered the essentials, had they non sought the superfluous also. They lost much time in quibbling approximately words and in sophistical argumentation; all that sort of thing exercises the wit to no purpose. We tie knots and bind up words in double meanings, and then effort to untie them. Have we leisure enough for this? Do we already know how to live, or die? We should rather come on with our whole souls towards the ingredient where it is for our duty to take heed lest things, as alive as words, deceive us. Why, pray, do you discriminate between similar words, when nobody is ever deceived by them apart from during the discussion? this is the things that lead us astray: it is between things that you must discriminate.