6 ideas
21960 | Ordinary language is the beginning of philosophy, but there is much more to it [Austin,JL] |
Full Idea: Ordinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded. Only remember, it is the first word. | |
From: J.L. Austin (A Plea for Excuses [1956], p.185), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics Intro | |
A reaction: To claim anything more would be absurd. The point is that this remark comes from the high priest of ordinary language philosophy. |
10835 | True sentences says the appropriate descriptive thing on the appropriate demonstrative occasion [Austin,JL] |
Full Idea: A sentence is said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the demonstrative conventions (the one to which it 'refers') is of a type with which the sentence used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions. | |
From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], §3) | |
A reaction: This is correspondence by convention rather than correspondence by mapping. Personally I prefer some sort of mapping account, despite all the difficulty and vagueness of specifying what maps onto what. |
10836 | Correspondence theorists shouldn't think that a country has just one accurate map [Austin,JL] |
Full Idea: Correspondence theorists too often talk as one would who held that every map is either accurate or inaccurate; that every country can have but one accurate map. | |
From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], n 24) | |
A reaction: A well-made point, for those who intuitively hang on to correspondence as not only good common sense, but also some sort of salvation for a realist view of the world which might give us certainty in epistemology. |
21598 | Austin revealed many meanings for 'vague': rough, ambiguous, general, incomplete... [Austin,JL, by Williamson] |
Full Idea: Austin's account brought out the variety of features covered by 'vague' in different contexts: roughness, ambiguity, imprecision, lack of detail, generality, inaccuracy, incompleteness. Even 'vague' is vague. | |
From: report of J.L. Austin (Sense and Sensibilia [1962], p.125-8) by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 3.1 | |
A reaction: Some of these sound the same. Maybe Austin distinguishes them. |
16714 | The state should kill blasphemous heretics [Erasmus] |
Full Idea: It is necessary for the preservation of the state to kill heretics that are blasphemous and seditious. | |
From: Desiderius Erasmus (works [1506]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 | |
A reaction: He was much more tolerant of heretics who kept quiet. |
1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |