Ordinary language philosophy
Explanation
In the first half of the twentieth century, Oxford became the epicentre of a philosophical current distinct from Viennese logical positivism: ordinary language philosophy, with figures such as Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin and John Wisdom. Their methodological proposal: many traditional philosophical problems are not real problems about the world, but confusions produced by the misuse of words. Philosophical therapy consists in attending carefully to the everyday use of language.
The greatest inspirer was Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially in his Philosophical Investigations (1953, posthumous). In contrast to the early Wittgenstein (of the Tractatus) who sought an ideal logical structure of language, the later Wittgenstein sees language as a multiplicity of language games each with its rules, purposes and contexts. Problems arise when we mix the rules of one game with another.
Applied to the philosophy of mind, this produced brilliant criticisms of Cartesianism. When Wittgenstein analyses the concept of pain, he shows that its use in ordinary language does not fit the private internal object model: we learn to say something hurts in public contexts (adults interpret our gestures, teach us the words), and the pain of others is not an insurmountable problem but part of the intersubjective fabric of language.
The famous private language argument states that there cannot be a purely private conceptual language, intelligible only to its speaker. To use words meaningfully one needs criteria of correctness, and these require public verifiability. If I try to give a proper name to a secret sensation, I have no way of knowing whether tomorrow I am using the word correctly or not.
Ryle, in The Concept of Mind (1949), applied this approach systematically, showing that concepts such as intelligence, will, imagination do not name internal entities but dispositional patterns of behaviour. Cartesian dualism would then be a category mistake: it treats dispositional terms as if they were names of hidden internal things.
Ordinary language philosophy profoundly influenced functionalism, logical behaviourism and various contemporary currents in philosophy of mind. Its enduring legacy is a sensitivity to how language shapes our philosophical problems, and an epistemic modesty: sometimes the cure for puzzles is to recall how we speak in everyday life, not to posit new metaphysical entities.
Strengths
- Effective critique of Cartesian internalism.
- Lucid articulation of the public character of mental meaning.
- Influence on analytic and social philosophy.
- Coherent with situated cognition and enactivism.
Main critiques
- Underestimates the subjective qualitative dimension of experience.
- The private language argument has been challenged (Kripke).
- Difficult to apply to the empirical study of internal processes.
- Aphoristic style that hampers systematisation.