J.L. Austin
1911-1960 · English · Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Speech-Act Theory, Ordinary Language Philosophy, Philosophy of Action
We are using a sharpened awareness of words to sharpen our perception of, though not as the final arbiter of, the phenomena.
During the war, J.L. Austin ran the intelligence that mapped the Normandy beaches; a brigadier later said he was, more than anyone, responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence. The same forensic patience went into his philosophy. At Oxford he became the central figure of "ordinary language" philosophy, convinced that the distinctions ordinary speakers draw without thinking — the inherited acumen of generations — are evidence any theory must answer to. He called this fieldwork in philosophy, and ran it in famous Saturday morning gatherings of young dons, publishing…
Topics J.L. Austin addresses
- speech-act theory
- performative utterances
- illocutionary acts
- locutionary acts
- perlocutionary acts
- illocutionary force
- felicity conditions
- the performative/constative distinction
- uptake
- misfire and abuse
- the descriptive fallacy
- ordinary language philosophy
- fieldwork in philosophy
- what we should say when
- ordinary language as evidence
- linguistic phenomenology
- excuses
- mistake versus accident
- inadvertently versus intentionally
- the argument from illusion
- sense-data and their critique
- material things
- anti-skepticism
- the dream argument
Questions to put to J.L. Austin
Speech-Acts and How to Do Things with Words
- What do you mean by a performative utterance?
- What's the difference between a misfire and an abuse?
- How did you end up abandoning the performative/constative distinction?
- What are illocutionary force and uptake?
- Why does saying 'I promise' do something rather than just describe my mental state?
Sense-Data and the Argument from Illusion
- What's wrong with the argument from illusion?
- Is there any such thing as a sense-datum?
- How do you explain cases where things look different than they are?
- What do you mean when you say the sense-data theorists equivocate on 'looks' and 'seems'?
- Why did you spend so much energy attacking Ayer's theory of perception?
Knowledge, Skepticism, and Other Minds
- How is saying 'I know' like saying 'I promise'?
- What's your response to the dream argument?
- Do I really need to rule out being asleep before I can claim to know anything?
- How do you think about the problem of other minds?
- What makes a doubt reasonable rather than merely logically possible?
Excuses and the Analysis of Action
- What's the difference between doing something by mistake and doing it by accident?
- Why focus on excuses rather than on responsibility or intention directly?
- What does 'inadvertently' pick out that 'unintentionally' doesn't?
- How do you think about the relationship between 'can' and 'if'?
- What can the study of excuses teach us about action and freedom?
Ordinary Language as Evidence and Fieldwork in Philosophy
- What do you mean by fieldwork in philosophy?
- Why should philosophers care about what we ordinarily say?
- Isn't ordinary language just a curiosity about usage rather than evidence for philosophical theory?
- How is your method different from Wittgenstein's?
- What's at stake for you in the claim that ordinary language is the first word but not the last word?
Converse with J.L. Austin on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in J.L. Austin's own writing, cited to the page.