Taking as a point of departure a recently published collection of representative contributions from various philosophers who claim to ?proceed from ordinary language?, this article examines ordinary language philosophy in the light of some of the claims made by these philosophers. The claims are criticized mainly for failing to account for the variability of the use of terms in respect both of depth of intention and special contexts. These factors are such as to render the claims in question false when (...) interpreted as significant assertions about language, but trivial when they are interpreted as reasonable and true. (shrink)

Preliminary summaries of a few empirio?semantical investigations1 concerning such sentences as: can we say x, should we ever (ordinarily) say x, x is self?evident (tautological, contradictory, nonsensical), P does not know what be is talking about, x is voluntary (involuntary) and: that is no excuse.

It is commonplace that whenever a metahistorian attempts to rule out some more or less general approaches to history, or certain methods, procedures as being impossible in history: “it just can’t be done!”—then, invariably, there is another metahistorian who will point to some historians who did just that, which allegedly could not be done. Equally predictable are the objections to such “contrary cases,” viz.: “That isn’t history!” What is it then? It may be religion, metaphysics, Spengler-ism, Toynbeeism,—or worse: social science, (...) sociology, and even: psychology! (shrink)

Our biological survival is often taken as an argument in favour of the validity of our present conceptual scheme and cognitive frame of reference. A twofold counterargument is offered: (1) Given any notion of ?knowledge?, ?insight?, etc. within our present scheme, it is possible, even plausible, that such ?knowledge? and ?insight? be extended and perfected beyond what is beneficial to the survival of mankind; (2) The alleged link between survival and veridicality is not logical but contingent and tenuously tangential. Since (...) the prevailing scheme may prove to serve ends not just other than, but opposed to survival, e.g. the end of unmasking the world and man's lot therein, survivalism may require a radical reconsideration of that scheme, including its prejudice in favour of survival. From the point of view of all current schemes or frames of reference, such a project appears inherently paradoxical. (shrink)

Otto Neurath's everyday "cabby"-language would only have preserved its appearance of a conceptual (etc.) system-neutrality to the extent at which it were to retain its semantic amorphousness as well as its user's shallow pragmatic mtentions. This (pseudo) neutrality would be irretrievably lost the moment the constituent parts of the everyday "cabby"-language were to be precised to a degree which transcended all conceivable pragmatic mtentions reasonably attributable to a cabman or to any other everyday speaker-. Dilemma: Either we settle for a (...) semantically and pragmatically unambitious, superficial chatter, typical of a cabman, whereby we shall gam conceptual (philosophical, theoretical etc....) neutrality, or we relinquish all aspirations towards system neutrality in favor of a higher level of preciseness, which might in turn open the possibüities for some sort of meaningful, even philosophically relevant, discourse. (shrink)