Philosophy and Ordinary Language

What is philosophy about and what are its methods? Philosophy and Ordinary Language is a defence of the view that philosophy is largely about questions of language, which to a large extent means ordinary language. Some people argue that if philosophy is about ordinary language, then it is necessarily less deep and difficult than it is usually taken to be but Oswald Hanfling shows us that this isn't true. Hanfling, a leading expert in the development of analytic philosophy, covers a wide range of topics, including scepticism and the definition of knowledge, free will, empiricism, folk psychology, ordinary versus artificial logic, and philosophy versus science. Drawing on philosophers such as Austin, Wittgenstein, and Quine, this book explores the nature of ordinary language in philosophy.

Oswald Hanfling is Visiting Research Professor of Philosophy at the Open University. He is the author of several books including Logical Positivism, The Quest for Meaning, Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy, and Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life (Routledge 2002).

Introduction; Part 1 The philosophy of 'what we say'; Chapter 1 Socrates and the quest for definitions; Chapter 2 Austin; Chapter 3 Wittgenstein; Chapter 4 'What we say'; Chapter 5 What is wrong with the paradigm case argument?; Chapter 6 Knowledge and the uses of 'knowledge'; Chapter 7 The paradox of scepticism; Part 2 The philosophy of 'what we say'; Chapter 8 Drawing the curtain of words; Chapter 9 Language remade; Chapter 10 Grice; Chapter 11 Quine and the unity of science; Chapter 12 Scientific realism; Chapter 13 'Folk psychology' and the language of science;