J. L. Austin on Language

266 Pages·2014·0.638 MB·

by  Brian Garvey

Philosophers in Depth
Series Editor: Constantine Sandis
Philosophers in Depth is a series of themed edited collections focusing on partic-
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Titles include :
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PLATO ON ART AND BEAUTY
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ARISTOTLE ON METHOD AND METAPHYSICS
Brian Garvey ( editor )
J.L. AUSTIN ON LANGUAGE
Philip Goff (e ditor )
SPINOZA ON MONISM
Leonard Kahn (e ditor )
MILL ON JUSTICE
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HEGEL ON ACTION
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THE LATER WITTGENSTEIN ON LANGUAGE
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Also by Brian Garvey
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J.L. Austin on Language
Edited by
Brian Garvey
Lancaster University, UK
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Brian Garvey 2014
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Contributors v iii
Introduction ix
Brian Garvey
Remembering J.L. Austin xxi
Ann Lendrum
1 Recollections of J.L. Austin 1
John R. Searle
Part I Speech-Act Theory
2 Austin on Language and Action 13
Marina Sbisà
3 When Words Do Things: Perlocutions and Social Affordances 32
Charles Lassiter
4 Etiolations 50
Joe Friggieri
5 How to Do Things without Words 70
Tom Grimwood and Paul K. Miller
Part II Ordinary Language and
Philosophical Method
6 Austin’s Method 89
Hanno Birken-Bertsch
7 Getting the Philosopher Out of the Armchair:
J.L. Austin’s Response to Logical Positivism in
Comparison to That of Arne Naess 108
Siobhan Chapman
8 Verbal Fallacies and Philosophical Intuitions:
The Continuing Relevance of Ordinary Language Analysis 124
Eugen Fischer
v
vi Contents
9 Sense and Sensibilia and the Significance of Linguistic
Phenomenology 141
Roberta Locatelli
Part III Language, Perception and Mind
10 Austin on the Philosophy of Perception 161
Paul F. Snowdon
11 Austin on Conceptual Polarity and Sensation Deception
Metaphors 177
Dale Jacquette
12 The Importance of Intentions in Introspection 197
Kevin Reuter
13 Ordinary Language and the Nature of Emotions and Motives 212
Harry Lesser
References 227
Index 239
Acknowledgements
This book grew out of the J.L. Austin Centenary Conference that was
held at Lancaster University in April 2011. That conference would not
have been possible without the generous support of the Department of
Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster, and without the help of
John O’Neill and Sarah Hitchen. Sarah also transcribed the talk by John
R. Searle to make the chapter in the present volume and helped me with
the Austin quotations in the Introduction. I thank Constantine Sandis
for help and advice in preparing the initial book proposal for submission
to Palgrave Macmillan, and Brendan George for helping to see the manu-
script through to final submission. Austin’s sister Ann Lendrum and his
daughters Fanny Mitchell and Lucy Nusseibeh have been supportive of
the project from the beginning. I also thank Mark Rowe and Tim Austin
for carefully fact-checking the biographical details in Ann Lendrum’s
contribution.

vii
List of Contributors

Hanno B irken-Bertsch is an independent scholar, previously at the
Universities of Jena and Magdeburg.
Siobhan C hapman is Professor of English at the University of
Liverpool.
Eugen F ischer is a senior lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East
Anglia.
Joe Friggieri is Professor of Philosophy and Pro-Rector at the University
of Malta.
Brian Garvey is a lecturer in Philosophy at Lancaster University.
Tom Grimwood is a senior lecturer in the faculty of Health and Science
at the University of Cumbria.
Dale J acquette is Senior Professorial Chair in Logic and Theoretical
Philosophy at Universität Bern, Switzerland.
Charles Lassiter is a visiting lecturer at Gonzaga University in Spokane,
Washington, USA.
Harry L esser is an honorary research fellow and former Senior Lecturer
in Philosophy at the University of Manchester.
Roberta L ocatelli is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University
of Warwick and the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (joint
supervision).
Paul Miller is a senior lecturer in Social Psychology, and executive
consultant for the Health and Social Care Evaluation Unit, within the
faculty of Health and Science at the University of Cumbria.
Kevin Reuter is a postdoctoral fellow in the Philosophy Department of
the Ruhr University in Bochum.
Marina Sbisà is Professor of Philosophy of Language at the Department
of Humanities of the University of Trieste.
John R. Searle is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of
California, Berkeley.
Paul F. Snowdon is Grote Professor of Mind and Logic at University
College London.
viii
Introduction
Brian Garvey
Language is at the heart of all of J.L. Austin’s philosophical work, being
both a subject of inquiry for him, and a methodological tool of central
importance. He was one of the leading figures of the Oxford school of
philosophers of the mid-twentieth century, who put the investigation
of language in all its various uses at the centre of their philosophical
inquiries. Like his contemporary Wittgenstein at Cambridge, Austin
challenged the widespread assumption that asserting propositions was
the core function of language, and investigated in depth the many other
things that people are doing when they use words. In the P hilosophical
Investigations , Wittgenstein argued that superficial similarities in the
form of sentences make philosophers blind to the variety of different
things that sentences are used to do:
It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all
looking more or less alike. (Naturally, since they are all supposed to
be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank which can be moved
continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the
handle of a switch, which has only two effective positions, it is either
off or on; a third is the handle of a brake-lever, the harder one pulls on
it, the harder it brakes; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect
only so long as it is moved to and fro. (Wittgenstein 1953: §12)
Austin, though wary of Wittgenstein – as John R. Searle tells us in his
contribution to the present volume – had a similar insight, which he
developed in How to Do Things with Words and elsewhere. What they
both emphasized was the sheer variety of ways that words are used
and how that boded ill for any prospect of a unitary account of those
properties of sentences, ‘truth’, ‘meaning’, and so forth. For both, it
makes no sense to ask what – for example – ‘meanings’ are i n general .
Wittgenstein’s lever-metaphor makes clear his aversion to this kind of
quest for general accounts, and Austin expresses a similar aversion in his
paper ‘The Meaning of a Word’:
Suppose that I ask: ‘What is the point of doing so-and-so?’ For
example, I ask Old Father William ‘What is the point of standing on
ix