Ordinary language philosophy

By Martinich, A.P.

Ordinary language philosophy is a method of doing philosophy, rather than a set of doctrines. It is diverse in its methods and attitudes. It belongs to the general ...

Ordinary language philosophy, school of

By Warnock, Geoffrey

The label ‘ordinary language philosophy’ was more often used by the enemies than by the alleged practitioners of what it was intended to designate. It was supposed to ...

Language, philosophy of

By Crimmins, Mark

Philosophical interest in language, while ancient and enduring (see Language, ancient philosophy of; Language, medieval theories of; Language, Renaissance philosophy of; Language, early modern philosophy of), has blossomed ...

Linguistic turn

By Glock, Hans-Johann; Kalhat, Javier

The term ‘the linguistic turn’ refers to a radical reconception of the nature of philosophy and its methods, according to which philosophy is neither an empirical science nor ...

Pragmatics

By Recanati, Francois

Analytic philosophers have made lasting contributions to the scientific study of language. Semantics (the study of meaning) and pragmatics (the study of language in use) are two important ...

Armstrong, David Malet (1926–2014)

By Jackson, Frank

David Armstrong was born in Melbourne, and studied philosophy at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford. He returned to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne and ...

Free will

‘Free will’ is the conventional name of a topic that is best discussed without reference to the will. Its central questions are ‘What is it to act (or ...

Russell, Bertrand Arthur William (1872–1970)

By Griffin, Nicholas

Bertrand Russell divided his efforts between philosophy and political advocacy on behalf of a variety of radical causes. He did his most important philosophical work in logic and ...

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

By Mulhall, Stephen

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell has held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University since 1963. The range, ...

Cavell, Stanley (1926–)

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanley Cavell held the Walter M. Cabot Chair in Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement ...

Grice, Herbert Paul (1913–88)

By Baker, Judith

Grice was a leading member of the post-war Oxford group of analytic philosophers. His small body of published work, together with an oral tradition, has been deeply influential ...

Twentieth-century philosophy

By Livingston, Paul M.

Although it is difficult to generalize, twentieth-century philosophy has a number of broadly characteristic and widely shared concerns. These include the ambition to clarify the nature and foundations ...

Truth, deflationary theories of

By Kirkham, Richard L.

So-called deflationary theories of truth, of which the best known are the redundancy, performative and prosentential theories, are really theories of truth ascriptions. This is because they ...

Bioethics

By Frey, R.G.

While bioethics, a part of applied ethics, is usually identified with medical ethics, in its broadest sense it is the study of the moral, social and political problems ...

Speech acts

By Bach, Kent

Making a statement may be the paradigmatic use of language, but there are all sorts of other things we can do with words. We can make requests, ask ...

Modernism

By Ross, Stephen

The term modernism denotes an explosion of aesthetic innovation in Europe, Britain, Ireland and America from roughly 1880 to 1950. It embraces a hugely diverse group of works ...

Hart, Herbert Lionel Adolphus (1907–93)

By MacCormick, Neil

H.L.A. Hart, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University, 1952–1968, is an outstanding representative of the analytical approach in jurisprudence and philosophy of law. He restated ‘legal positivism’ in ...

Legal positivism

By Jori, Mario

Legal positivism is the approach in the philosophy of law which treats ‘positive law’ – law laid down in human societies through human decisions – as a distinct ...

Analytical philosophy in Latin America

By Martí, Oscar R.

In Latin America, philosophical analysis has been portrayed as an intellectual revolution. Its avowed goal has been to replace the abstruseness and obscurantism of scholastic and metaphysical jargon ...

Education, philosophy of

By Curren, Randall R.

The philosophy of education is primarily concerned with the nature, aims and means of education, and also with the character and structure of educational theory, and its own ...

Ethics and Literature

By Mulhall, Stephen

Moral philosophers typically assume that literary texts have no significance for ethical reflection beyond providing one possible source of examples of moral problems. This is in line with ...

Searle, John (1932–)

By Lepore, Ernie

John Searle was a pupil of J.L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s. He is the Mills Professor of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley, ...

Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76)

By Lyons, William

Alongside Wittgenstein and Austin, Ryle was one of the dominant figures in that middle period of twentieth-century English language philosophy which became known as ‘Linguistic Analysis’. His views ...

Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76)

Alongside Wittgenstein and Austin, Ryle was one of the dominant figures in the movement of twentieth-century English language philosophy which became known as ‘Linguistic Analysis’. His views in ...

Aesthetics and the philosophy of language

By Green, Mitchell

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