Pragmatics and Philosophy: Three Notes in Search of a Footing

Abstract

In this chapter I turn to a seminal essay by Gilbert Ryle. Here Ryle explores the possible distinctions between ordinary everyday knowledge and recondite philosophical knowledge. He uses a number of metaphors in order to achieve this including those of “morning” vs “afternoon” types of questions, and the distinction between the villager’s and the cartographer’s knowledge of the locale. I extend these metaphors by drawing on Thomas Kasulis’s distinction between the potter’s and the geologist’s knowledge of clay and use this to reflect on lay as against professional knowledges of language. The idea of a “socio-logic” of ordinary talk, from Harvey Sacks, is alluded to as a way of seeing how such ordinary talk is grounded.