[Serious Phil] facts of linguistic usage (was names)

[seanwilsonorg]

Unfortunately, this one is taking a long time to arrive:

http://undergroundwiki.org/pipermail/philscimind_undergroundwiki.org/2012-June/002450.html

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "larry_tapper" <Philscimind at ...> wrote:
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> PDJ> ...You *still* haven't explained why you think "which any competent
> language speaker might be brought to see for him or herself but which would seem to be beyond research and testing". Are you not in fact suggesting forms of research above.
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> SWM> Because linguistic analysis isn't about ascertaining the facts of usage but exploring the implications of the usages.
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> Ordinary language philosophers' apparent disdain for linguistic field methods has been a subject of controversy since day one, pretty much. A classic and well written example of that criticism is the following article by Benson Mates:
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> http://collins.philo.columbia.edu/olp/mates-1958-vsol.pdf
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> Note that this was written in 1958.
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> A defense of the typical OL approach is that it often involves facts of usage that are not really in dispute --- you just have to think of them.
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> For example, there was a celebrated discussion in phil of lang circles about the ordinary sense of 'voluntary', with contributions by Ryle, Austin, Searle, Grice, etc. 
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> A constant in this discussion was the observation that we don't ordinarily speak of an action as 'voluntary' unless something is fishy about it. For example, it would be very peculiar if I told you that I am posting this message "voluntarily" in the absence of any reason to think otherwise. That's one of those linguistic observations that are fairly obvious when you think about them. Yet you usually don't find that sort of information in a dictionary.
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> Another example, from Wittgenstein's On Certainty: "I know that is a tree", says LW, is the sort of thing only a madman or a philosopher would say, under ordinary circumstances. The idea is, that says something about the ordinary use of "I know" --- that it is a case of language on holiday unless there is some contextual basis for doubt. A similar point to the 'voluntary' observation. 
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> There are a lot of examples in the OL literature which are more or less like that, and in those cases it seems to me reasonable to excuse philosophers for ascertaining linguistic facts by introspection rather than honest field work.
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> On the other hand, I'm very skeptical about expounding some general theory of meaning while ignoring the work of empirically minded linguists, and in that respect I tend to agree with PDJ. 
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> A case in point is the problem of polysemy, also known as "words have many meanings". It is actually not entirely obvious that this is really the case, from a linguist's point of view. It depends on a lot of factors like the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics, one's definitions of 'word' and 'meaning', one's theory of metaphorical extension, the distinction between an alternative sense and a homonym, etc. This territory has been explored thoroughly by linguists as well as philosophers, and it seems to me that the philosopher who ignores the linguist is attacking the problem with a blunt instrument.
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> I could go into more detail about that if anyone is interested, but maybe that would be too far into the weeds for our present purposes.
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> Larry
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