logicandlanguage.net

I think that your suggestion for a philosophical heuristic is not specific to philosophy of language and, indeed, is not a heuristic only for philosophy. Only learning about stuff that fits into whatever the modern, narrowly defined view of what your subject is, vastly limits what you can do. I quite like learning about subjects that some may consider vastly different from my own, since people in that area often have radically different perspectives on what is important and can provide a useful new angle on whatever problem I am working on.

I've certainly noticed that last thing from time to time - it's a nice cop out to be able to claim not even to understand what one's critic is trying to say (and thus implying that the critic doesn't really have a point).

And I think I generally sympathize with you on the use of philosophy of language. That's why I may be sitting in on a semantics class or two in the linguistics department this semester.

I came to Words and Things in part by way of this extremely engaging critique of it by T.P. Uschanov. Good companion reading, I'd say. Oswald Hanfling's book defending ordinary language philosophy (Philosophy and Ordinary Language: The Bent and Genius of our Tongue) is also worth reading.

Thanks for the link!

A small clarification: when I said that the linguistic revolution made philosophy seem pedantic and dull, I didn't mean that it seems/seemed that way to ME, but to the masses.
One piece of mildly confirming evidence: it is still routine to hear analytic philosophy identified with logical positivism or the ordinary language approach, which suggests that it stopped being absorbed into the general consciousness roughly at the point that Gellner attacks. Later developments were never noticed. I don't know if this is true; but it would explain a lot. Even if its effect on the intellectual quality of philosophy was positive, there might still be reason to regret the linguistic turn.

Hi Kieran! Point taken about the correct way to interpret you - sorry for the misrepresentation.

I think you're right that there's a portion of the academy that identifies philosophy with logical positivism. I still run into undergraduates who have been taking courses in literary theory and and expect philosophers to be facists.

I also think there's a portion of the academy (and the rest of the world) that associates something like logical positivism with either common sense, or science very broadly construed, and sees philosophy as a kind of air-headed attempt to abuse it. Check out the Guardian's Bad Science column here. That week's entry includes the following:

Last week I asked: what's the most stupid thing anyone has said to you about science at a party? And it would seem that the great British sport of moron-baiting is more popular than ever. Lots of you encountered philosophers. Guy Davidson was told that "science doesn't tell you about the real world, only an ideal version of it". Yup. Well, light still travels faster than sound no matter how you look at it. Balthazar Florentin-Lee met someone who told him his discussion was flawed because it was "based only on logic" and someone whose email I lost got: "Logic isn't real, you can prove anything you want with logic. It's meaningless." Edwin Whiting was told that "science is how the devil perverts God's will" (bravo!), and the popular idea that "science is a way of life you choose just like religion" (via Yaniv Chen) perhaps explains why party philosophers then moved on to "not everything is scientific" (via Heather Bayley) and "science can't tell us everything" (via Conor McGeown). We never said it could.

Man, as if we didn't know it after the recent Silly Talk about Philosophy thread on TAR, we have a huge image problem.

As you might have expected though, despite his distain of philosophers in general, the author of Bad Science has a fondness for Popper anyway, and writes:

If you are a purveyor of bad science, be afraid. If you are on the side, of light and good, be vigilant: and for the love of Karl Popper, email me every last instance you find of this evil.

For the love of Hans Havlorson, more light and good all round please!