Language and Truth

Abstract

In earlier chapters we spoke about some of the major ways in which a close study and analysis of ordinary language can be philosophically fruitful. There is one major philosophical use of ordinary language, however, which we left out of our discussion; though what we said there is related to it and to some extent implies it. I am referring to what seems to me to be the fact that ordinary language provides us with a criterion of truth: that it enables us to discover the truth or falsity of certain classes of statements that are, or may be, philosophically important. The discussion and analysis of this use of ordinary language — in particular the discovery of the kinds of statements whose truth or falsity it enables us to know, and the exact manner in which it can do so — constitutes the subject-matter of the present chapter.