The availability of what we say

Abstract

In two recent articles, ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’ and ‘The Availability of Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’² (to which we shall refer as M and A, respectively), Professor Stanley Cavell has set forth his position on the relation between the claims Oxford philosophers make about ordinary-language and the methods and results of empirical investigations of ordinary language. These articles are important because they represent a viewpoint that is widely held by current philosophers—widely held but rarely made explicit. Cavell is surely right when he says that the conflict about the nature of our knowledge of ordinary language ‘is not a side issue in the general conflict between Wittgenstein (together with, at this point “ordinary language philosophy”) and traditional philosophy; it is itself an instance, an expression of that conflict’ (A, p. 184 above). The position Cavell advocates in M and A seems to us, however, to be mistaken in every significant respect and to be pernicious both for an adequate understanding of ordinary-language philosophy and for an adequate understanding of ordinary language. In the present paper, we seek to establish that this is in fact the case.

But now, as we conclude, methinks I hear some objector, demanding with an air of pleasantry, and ridicule — ‘Is there no speaking then without all this trouble? Do we not talk, everyone of us, as well unlearned as learned; as well poor Peasants, as Profound Philosophers?’ We may answer by interrogating on our own part — Do not those same poor Peasants use the Lever and the Wedge, and many other Instruments, with much habitual readiness? And yet have they any conception of those Geometrical Principles, from which those Machines derive their Efficacy and Force? And is the Ignorance of these Peasants a reason for others to remain ignorant; or to render the Subject a less becoming Inquiry? Think of Animals, and Vegetables, that occur every day — of Time, of Place, and of Motion — of Light, of Colours, and of Gravitation — of our very Senses and Intellect, by which we perceive everything else — That they are, we all know, and are perfectly satisfied — What they are, is a Subject of much obscurity and doubt. Were we to reject this last Question, because we are certain of the first, we should banish all Philosophy at once out of the world.

James Harris

This work was supported in part by the U.S. Army (Signal Corps), the U.S. Navy (Office of Naval Research), and the U.S. Air Force (Office of Scientific Research, Air Research and Development Command), and in part by the National Science Foundation (Grant G-13903).