Philosophy and ordinary language

Philosophy and Ordinary Language is a defence of the view that philosophy is largely about questions of language, which to a large extent means ordinary language. Oswald Hanfling shows that this view does not entail that philosophy is less deep and difficult than it is usually taken to be. Special chapters are devoted to Austin, Wittgenstein, Quine and Grice; and among the other thinkers discussed are Plato, Frege, Ryle, Russell, Strawson, and Putnam and Kripke.
Contents: Introduction: The Philosophy of What We Say: Its Practice and Justification 1. Socrates and the quest for definitions. 2. Austin: ´at least one philosophical method´. 3. Wittgenstein: bringing words back to their everyday use. 4. ´What we say´: who says? 5. What is wrong with the Paradigm Case Argument? 6. Knowledge and the use of ´knowledge´. 7. Philosophical sceptism and ´what we say´. 2.The Philosophy of What We Say: Challenge and Rejection 8. Drawing the curtain of words. 9. Language remade: ancient cities and orderly towns. 10. Grice: ´true even if misleading´ 11. Quine and the unity of science. 12. Scientific realism: discovering what we really mean. 13. ´Folk psychology´ and the language of science.