Verbal Fallacies and Philosophical Intuitions: The Continuing Relevance of Ordinary Language Analysis

In his brilliant if enigmatic lectures Sense and Sensibilia , J.L. Austin sought to ‘dissolve philosophical worries’ including what is now (since Smith 2002) known as ‘the problem of perception’. His treatment of this problem affords one of the finest examples of ordinary language philosophy: It attempts to ‘dissolve’ a major philosophical problem through an analysis of what we would say and infer when, designed to ‘unpick’ or expose, ‘one by one, a mass of seductive (mainly verbal) fallacies’ in the ‘arguments’ that engender the problem (Austin 1962: 4–5). Partly due to intriguing points of contact with the currently much-discussed movement of experimental philosophy, this work is currently attracting again significant attention (see Gustafsson 2011).