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Philosophy of Language: Ordinary Language Philosophy
PHIL 5480/6480 -- Fall 2022

Required textbooks:

Optional textbooks:

Additional readings will be made available through the Marriott Library web site. (For best results with JSTOR, either click on a JSTOR link while you're on-campus or click through to the journal from the Marriott catalog, log in, and search JSTOR for the item.)

Reading Assignments:

  1. Aug. 24: Introduction: Optional prereading: Austin, Sense and Sensibility, para bridging pp. 70-71, under the heading (2): "Next, 'real' is what we may call... ".

  2. Aug. 31: Early Wittgenstein: A Foil for Ordinary-Language Philosophy:
    1. Truth Functions and the Emptiness of the Logical Must.
      Reading: Tractatus (TLP) 4.2-5.132, 5.14-5.143, 6.1-6.1202, 6.121. (If you haven't managed to buy or print off a paper copy yet, here's an online version.)

      Optional reading: Fogelin, Wittgenstein, ch. 4.

    2. Pictures: The Possibility of Correlation is the Correlation of Possibility.
      Reading: TLP 2.1-3.144, 3.4-3.42, 4.01-4.024.

      Optional reading: Fogelin, Wittgenstein, ch. 2.

    3. It's All Simple, Really.
      Reading: TLP 1.13-2.063, 3.2-3.261, 4.2-4.23. Anthony Kenny, "The Metaphysics of Logical Atomism" (excerpt from his Wittgenstein; handout).

      Optional reading: Bertrand Russell, "On Denoting"; Fogelin, ch. 1.

    Happy Labor Day! Labor Day weekend would be a good time to do a first cover-to-cover readthrough of the Tractatus, starting with the Preface (but you can probably leave Russell's Introduction for another time).

  3. Sept. 7: It's Really Hard to Say What Someone Thinks:
    1. There's No Business Like Show Business.
      Reading: TLP 4.1-4.1212, 4.123-4.124, 4.1271-4.1272, 5.5562-5.641. Cora Diamond, "Throwing Away the Ladder" (also reprinted in her The Realistic Spirit).

      Optional reading: Roger White, "Throwing the Baby out with the Ladder" (ask me for a copy); Thomas Ricketts, "Pictures, Logic, and the Limits of Sense in Wittgenstein's Tractatus (on reserve in the Philosophy Department)

    2. The General Form of the Proposition.
      Reading: TLP 5.451-5.452, 5.4541-5.5352, 6-6.002. Optional reading: Fogelin, pp. 54-57, 78-85.

  4. Sept. 14: Even Though Everything I'm Saying Is Literally Nonsense, I'm Still Right:
    1. Philosophy by Snapchat.
      TLP Preface, 1-1.12, 3.262-3.311, 6.121-6.13, 6.3-7. Review Cora Diamond, "Throwing Away the Ladder" (also reprinted in her The Realistic Spirit).

      Optional reading: Anscombe, "'Mysticism' and Solipsism" (available shortly)

    2. How to Write a Paper about the Tractatus (I).
      Reading: TLP 2.0211-2; White, "Can Whether One Proposition Makes Sense Depend on the Truth of Another?" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department; this reading doesn't have the citation information you need, so: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures 7 (1973): 14-29).
    3. How to Write a Paper about the Tractatus (II).
      Reading: TLP 1-1.21, 4.121-4.1212; Eddy Zemach, "Wittgenstein's Philosophy of the Mystical".

  5. Sept. 21: Going After Presuppositions of the TLP:
    1. Names and Referents.
      Reading: PI 1-24. Warren Goldfarb, "I Want You to Bring Me a Slab: Remarks on the Opening Sections of the Philosophical Investigations".

      Optional reading: Ian Proops, "The New Wittgenstein: A Critique"; Jaako Hintikka, "What Does the Wittgensteinian Inexpressible Express?" (available shortly).

    2. There Is Exactly One Thing that Is a Theory of Descriptions, and It's Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!
      Reading: PI 25-80, 87, 89.

    3. What Do Our Kinds of Arguments Miss?
      Reading: PI 29-32, 41-43. Optional reading: Retrospectivly TBA!

  6. Sept. 28: Is It Old-School Theory, Slightly Improved, or a New Philosophical Methodology?:
    1. Family Resemblances, Cluster Concepts, and Other Things... Like That.
      Reading: Review PI 65-71, 79-80, 87, 108.

      Optional reading: Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper, pp. 54-55; Fogelin, Wittgenstein, ch. 9; Goldfarb, "Wittgenstein on Fixity of Meaning" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department).

    2. Surveyability.
      Reading: PI through 136, esp. 109, 115-116, 118-119, 122-123, 126-130, 133.

      Optional reading: Hacker, "Metaphysics as the Shadow of Grammar"; Baker and Hacker, "The Surveyability of Grammar".

  7. Oct. 5: Form of Life Rules!:
    1. Following a Rule, First Pass.
      Reading: PI 137-184.

      Optional reading: Fogelin, Wittgenstein, ch. 10.

    2. PI 144, 185-188, 193, 198, 201-02, 217-219, 242.

    3. Following a Rule, Second Pass.
      Reading: PI 185-242, 323-325; Preface.

      Optional reading: Hilary Putnam, "Rules, Attunement, and 'Applying Words to the World'" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department). Cora Diamond, "Rules: Looking in the Right Place" (on reserve in the Philosophy Department); John McDowell, "Virtue and Reason".

      4. Have a great Fall Break! For fun, why not take Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, to Cancun? (If you do, you can skip the Postscript, starting on p. 114, but you'll want to get the "Note Added in Proof," on p. 146.) But for real, take Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, and read that, for sure.

  8. Oct. 19: If There's No Reality Check, There's Nothing.
    1. Have You Ever Actually Seen a Sense-Datum? Even Just One?
      Reading: Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (yup, the whole thing -- it's a short book).

      Optional reading: Cavell, "Austin and Examples," in Claim of Reason (ch. 3). And further reading, for the very ambitious: Mi-Kyoung Lee, Epistemology after Protagoras.

    2. PI 258, 260, 270, 293, 295, 298, 303, 304-05, 344, 351.

    3. The Private Language Argument.
      Reading: PI 243-279. Cavell, "Excursus on Wittgenstein's Vision of Language," in Claim of Reason, 168-190.

      Optional reading: Fogelin, Wittgenstein, chs. 11-12; Rogers Albritton, "On Wittgenstein's use of the Term 'Criterion'"; David Stern, "The Uses of Wittgenstein's Beetle" (available shortly); Cavell, Claim of Reason, pp. 343-354.

  9. Oct. 26: Losing Your Moore-ings. Reading: Wittgenstein, On Certainty (please pay special attention to OC 84, 11-13, 18, 32, 42, 67-69, 70-72, 93-94, 55, 96-97, 80-81); PI II 312-314 (if you have an earlier edition, in which the Part II sections aren't numbered, this is on pp. 221-22, 3 paras starting with "It is possible to imagine a case...").

    Optional reading: G. E. Moore, "A Defence of Common Sense", in G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (New York: Collier, 1966): 32-59; "Proof of an External World (excerpts)" (originally in Proceedings of the British Academy 25 [1939]; also in Selected Writings, available in Marriott); Conant, "Wittgenstein on Meaning and Use," Philosophical Investigations 21(3), July 1998: 222-250 (available shortly). Followup reading, for the curious: Craig, Knowledge and the State of Nature.

  10. Nov. 2: Propositions -- There Never Were Any of Those.
    Reading: Austin, How to Do Things with Words.

    Optional reading: Alice Crary, "The Happy Truth".

  11. Nov. 9: Category Mistakes and the sub-Cartesian View.
    Reading: Ryle, The Concept of Mind, chs. 1-2; ch. 3 up thru sec. 2 (i.e, to top p. 69).

    Optional reading: Dorothy Grover, A Prosentential Theory of Truth (with presentation); Lewis Carroll, "What the Tortoise said to Achilles", for the ur-argument; Matthew Mosdell, "An Intellectualist Dilemma," APQ 59(2): 139-147, for the up-to-the-minute state of play; Jerry Fodor, The Language of Thought, pp. 1-9, for an influential objection (available from Marriott).

  12. Nov. 16: Getting Really Ryled Up.
    Reading: Ryle, The Concept of Mind, chs. 5-7.

    Optional reading: Ernest Gellner, Words and Things (with presentation). Alan Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"; Victoria McGeer, "Is "Self-Knowledge" An Empirical Problem? Renegotiating the Space of Philosophical Explanation", "The Moral Development of First-Person Authority".

  13. Nov. 23: The Claims of The Claim of Reason.
    Reading: Cavell, The Claim of Reason, pp. 6 (from "But I was supposed to...") to 21 (through Bertram Lewin cite at bottom); pp. 28-48 -- in this stretch, please pay special attention to p. 30, para. starting "At the moment...", p. 31, para. starting "The appeal to criteria...", p. 36, last para., pp. 44-45, from "It will help..." to "...(or of other minds)", pp. 46f, 2 paras. starting "What remains here...", and p. 48, last 8 lines, from "Put otherwise...";
    pp. 86-94 (bottom, thru "...a response to (the other's) desire") -- in this stretch, please pay special attention to p. 90, para. starting "Like what?", pp. 92f, from "For the moment..." to "...aren't going to teach you," and 93-94, from the bottom of 93, "Something further wants expression..." to the middle of 94, "...rather than the other way around";
    pp. 111-125 -- in this stretch, please pay special attention to pp. 118, from "Wittgenstein's view of necessity..." to 121, "...within one human breast," and the para. bridging 122f;
    pp. 147 (from "To help account for...") to 159 -- in this stretch, please pay special attention to pp. 147, from "To help account for..." to 148 ("...I would have thousands"), the first full para. on 151, and p. 154, from the Bates and Cohen cite to the end of the section;
    pp. 191-243 (pay special attention to 205 [from "Perhaps one feels..."]-207 ["...may be thought about"]; 210 [para. starting "It is on the ground..."]; 215 [from "I could express this..."]-225; 226 [first full para.]; 227 [first para.].
    Wittgenstein, PI 244, 283-84, 286-89, 296, 302-304, 307, 384, 420.

    Optional reading: Thompson Clarke, "The Legacy of Skepticism"; Cavell, The Claim of Reason, 329-343.

  14. Nov. 30: What Motivates the Turn to Skepticism? The Turn to Ordinary-Language Ethics.
    Reading: Cavell, The Claim of Reason, pp. 259 (from "But a distant view...") to 268 ("...relationship to one another"), 313-326; and Part IV ("Skepticism and the Problem of Others"): 351 (from "So the fantasy...") to 353 ("...refrain from confessing it"); then start with p. 354 (I recommend speed reading until 398, then slowing down from "The idea we have..." to 416, top; slow down again at 420-430, up to "...our everyday knowledge of the other?"). After p. 430, continuing to the end is optional, but take a look at pp. 468 and 472.

    Optional reading: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book III, Part i, sec. 1, last para., starting "I cannot forbear adding..."; in the Selby-Bigge edition, pp. 469f.

  15. Dec. 7: Seeing As: Seeing Ordinary-Language Moves as Arguments.
    Reading: PI Part II, xi, up through sec. 199 (in the Schulte trans., that is, 4th ed.); if you have an earlier edition, up to p. 205. Rogers Albritton, "Freedom of Will and Freedom of Action".

    Optional reading: Avner Baz, When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy; The Crisis of Method in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy.