When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy

Avner Baz

Published by Harvard University Press 2012

When Words Are Called For

A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy

Avner Baz

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674064775

Overview
Contents

About this book

A new form of philosophizing known as ordinary language philosophy took root in England after the Second World War, promising a fresh start and a way out of long-standing dead-end philosophical debates. Pioneered by Wittgenstein, Austin, and others, OLP is now widely rumored, within mainstream analytic philosophy, to have been seriously discredited, and consequently its perspective is ignored.

Avner Baz begs to differ. In When Words Are Called For, he shows how the prevailing arguments against OLP collapse under close scrutiny. All of them, he claims, presuppose one version or another of the very conception of word-meaning that OLP calls into question and takes to be responsible for many traditional philosophical difficulties. Worse, analytic philosophy itself has suffered as a result of its failure to take OLP’s perspective seriously. Baz blames a neglect of OLP’s insights for seemingly irresolvable disputes over the methodological relevance of “intuitions” in philosophy and for misunderstandings between contextualists and anti-contextualists (or “invariantists”) in epistemology. Baz goes on to explore the deep affinities between Kant’s work and OLP and suggests ways that OLP could be applied to other philosophically troublesome concepts.

When Words Are Called For defends OLP not as a doctrine but as a form of practice that might provide a viable alternative to work currently carried out within mainstream analytic philosophy. Accordingly, Baz does not merely argue for OLP but, all the more convincingly, practices it in this eye-opening book.

Author / Editor information

Baz Avner :

Avner Baz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has written about ethics, aesthetics, perception, judgment, and about the question of philosophical method in the works of Kant, Wittgenstein, Cavell, and John McDowell

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. The Basic Conflict – An Initial Characterization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
Chapter 2. The Main Arguments against Ordinary Language Philosophy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	46
Chapter 3. Must Philosophers Rely on Intuitions? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	87
Chapter 4. Contextualism and the Burden of Knowledge Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	134
Chapter 5. Contextualism, Anti-Contextualism, and Knowing as Being in a Position to Give Assurance Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Conclusion: Skepticism and the Dialectic of (Semantically Pure) ‘Knowledge’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	188
Epilogue: Ordinary Language Philosophy, Kant, and the Roots of Antinomial Thinking Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	201
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 256

eBook

Published: March 12, 2012
ISBN: 9780674064775