John Langshaw Austin

Western Philosophy 20th-century philosophy
200px
Name: John Langshaw Austin
Birth: March 28, 1911
Death: February 8, 1960
School/tradition: Linguistic philosophy, Analytic philosophy
Main interests
Philosophy of language, Philosophy of mind, Ethics, Ordinary language philosophy
Notable ideas
Speech acts, Intentionality
Influences	Influenced
G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Gilbert Ryle	John Searle, R.M. Hare

John Langshaw Austin — more commonly known as J.L Austin — (March 28, 1911 – February 8, 1960) was a philosopher of language and the main figure in the development of what is known as ordinary language philosophy in analytic philosophy. Among other things, he developed much of the current theory of "speech acts", and demonstrated with penetrating and subtle analysis that language is used for much more than making statements.

Life and Work

Austin was born in Lancaster and educated at Balliol College, Oxford. After serving in MI6 during World War II, in which service he won numerous accolades for his work in and leadership of intelligence services and his success in solving intelligence problems, Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. He occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside Wittgenstein in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are used in order to elucidate meaning. Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any considerable indebtedness to Wittgenstein's later philosophy. His main influence, he said, was the exact, exacting, and common-sense philosophy of G. E. Moore; he was also much influenced by H.A. Prichard, even if mostly to disagree.

Austin married Jean Coutts in 1941, and they had two daughters and two sons. G.J.Warnock wrote, of this:

For the rest of his life he found in his home and family a satisfaction and happiness which he found nowhere else, and I have no doubt that this devotion explains in large measure the impression of detachment, of remoteness even, which he sometimes made in other settings. (G.J. Warnock, "John Langshaw Austin, A Biographical Memoir," in Fann, ed., Symposium on Austin, p. 8)

Austin was greatly admired as a teacher; in fact, he put most of his efforts into teaching and thus published little of his philosophical work during his brief lifetime. After his death, his students gathered his papers and lectures in books that were published posthumously, including Philosophical Papers (1961) and Sense and Sensibilia (1962).

Austin fits within the school of British-American analytic philosophy of the 20th Century (to some extent that tradition is also Austrian-German). But that school has two main sub-branches: The first was the logical positivist or logical empiricist branch that stretches back to Russell and beyond that to Gottlob Frege (for logic) and Ernst Mach (for positivism), and that was embodied to a great extent in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It was more fully developed by the Vienna Circle and its members. Its gospel tract was A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic, and its greatest exponents were probably Rudolf Carnap and Carl Hempel.

Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote that weekly discussions began sometime in 1936-37 at Oxford; they were suggested by Austin who remained their leading spirit until war brought them to an end. They can be seen as beginning a second branch of analytic philosophy, usually known as ordinary language philosophy. This movement was taken up especially after the end of WWII, centering most fully in Oxford; in fact it has sometimes been known as "Oxford philosophy." Although he was at Cambridge, Wittgenstein's later work, especially the Blue and Brown Books and his Philosophical Investigations, can be seen as seminal for this form of post-positivist analytic philosophy (but not for Austin himself). Austin was likely the leading exponent of that form of analytic philosophy, a movement that can be traced at least partly back to G. E. Moore. For those philosophers who were attracted to analytic philosophy but who deplored what they saw as being the mistakes and narrowness of logical positivism or logical empiricism, the work of Austin and his fellows was often seen as a breath of new and invigorating air. Berlin wrote that Austin:

had a passion for accurate, factual information, rigorous analysis, testable conclusions, ability to put things together and to take them to pieces again, and deststed vagueness, obscurity, abstraction, evasion of issues by escape into metaphor or rhetoric or jargon or metaphysical fantasy. He was from the beginning determined to try to reduce whatever could be so reduced to plain prose. (From "Austin and the Early Beginnings of Oxford Philosophy," in Essays on J.L. Austin, pp. 1-2.)

A few pages later Berlin wrote:

Of course, he had a very clear, acute, and original intellect, and because, when he spoke, there appeared to be nothing between him and the subject of his criticism or exposition — no accumulation of traditional commentary, no spectacles provided by a particular doctrine — he often produced the feeling that the question was being posed clearly for the first time: that what had seemed blurred, or trite, or a play of convential formulae in the books had suddenly been washed away: the problems stood out in sharp relief, clear, unanswered, and important, and the methods used to analyse it had a surgical sharpness, and were used with fascinating assurance and apparently effortless skill. (Ibid., 5)

G.J. Warnock has given an account of Austin's philosophical opinions:

Austin's very general opinions about philosophy had not changed since before the war, nor did they change thereafter. He believed that what had descended to our time under the name of philosophy was the tangled residue of a formerly even vaster tangle; there had been...an original...mass of undifferentiated problems from which, as certain kinds of questions and methods became clear, planets broke away in the form of independent disciplines — mathematics, the physical sciences, formal logic, psychology, and so on. ...what remained in the domain and under the title of philosophy was at least highly unlikely to consist of any one kind of problem, and no single method was likely to be, quite generally, the key to progress. Problems, then, ought simply to be approached with no preconceptions, set out in the clearest possible light, and discussed in any way that might seem to be relevant and effective; the needed virtues were truthfulness, and above all industry and patience; the typically fatal philosophical failings were inaccuracy and over-simplification, and above all the impetuous proliferation of bogus 'solutions.' (op. cit., 11-12)

Warnock went on to give what he thought were two views held by Austin about philosophical procedure.

The first and most notorious of these was that 'ordinary language' should not only, in the interests of clarity and common understanding, usually be employed by philosophers; it should also be, thoroughly and in detail, studied by them.

The other view, which has been rarely discussed ... may be guessed to have arisen directly from his war experience: it was that philosophy could be, and should be, a co-operative pursuit. ... [Austin] had been faced in the war... by vast and complicated problems, problems which might well, at first glance, have looked simply insoluble. However they had been solved; and they had been solved by the patient, minutely detailed labour of scores, even hundreds, of trained investigators, and by the persistent systematic co-ordination of their inquiries and their findings. The problems of philosophy are comparably vast and complicated; why then should they not be similarly attacked? ... Austin would have liked to have in philosophy an organized 'section', a disciplined team of investigators, very much on the model of his Theater Intelligence Section [of his wartime service]. ... No doubt Austin saw himself as such a section's director.... (Ibid., 12-13)

How to Do Things With Words

How to Do Things With Words is perhaps Austin's most influential work. In it he points out that philosophers of language gave most of their attention to those sentences which state some fact, but that these form only a small part of the range of tasks that can be performed by saying something. Indeed, there is an important class of utterances – Austin calls them performative utterances – that do not report a fact, but instead are themselves the performance of some action ("speech act"). For example, in the appropriate circumstances to say “I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth” is to do nothing less than to name the ship. Other examples include: "I take this man as my lawfully wedded husband," or "I bequeath this watch to my brother." All three examples demonstrate that the sentence is not used to describe or state that one is 'doing' something, but to actually 'do' it.

In the second half of the book, Austin produces a useful way of analysing utterances.

Consider what happens when John Smith turns to Sue Snub and says "Is Jeff’s shirt red?", to which Sue replies "Yes." Firstly, John has produced a series of bodily movements which result in the production of a certain sound. Austin called such a performance a phonetic act, and called the act a phone. John’s utterance also conforms to the lexical and grammatical conventions of English – that is, John has produced an English sentence. Austin called this a phatic act, and labels such utterances phemes. John also referred to Jeff’s shirt, and to the color red. To use a pheme with a more or less definite sense and reference is to utter a rheme, and to perform a rhetic act. Note that rhemes are a sub-class of phemes, which in turn are a sub-class of phones. One cannot perform a rheme without also performing a pheme and a phone. The performance of these three acts is the performance of a locution – it is the act of saying something.

John has therefore performed a locutionary act. He has also done at least two other things. He has asked a question, and he has elicited an answer from Sue. Asking a question is an example of what Austin called an illocutionary act, the performance of an illocution. Other examples would be making an assertion, giving an order, and promising to do something. An illocutionary act is to use a locution with a certain force. It is an act performed in saying something, in contrast with a locution, the act of saying something. Eliciting an answer is an example of what Austin calls a perlocutionary act, an act performed by saying something. Notice that if one successfully performs a perlocution, one also succeeds in performing both an illocution and a locution.

In the theory of speech acts, attention has focused on the locution, illocution and perlocution, rather than the phone, pheme and rheme.

Sense and sensibilia

In the posthumously published Sense and sensibilia, Austin famously criticises sense-data theories of perception, particularly that of Alfred Jules Ayer in The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge. Austin argues that Ayer fails to understand the proper function of words such as "illusion," "hallucination," "looks," "appears," and "seems". He argues that these words allow us to express reservations about our commitment to the truth of what we are saying, and that the introduction of sense-data adds nothing to our understanding or ability to talk about what we see. Ayer responded to this critique in the essay "Has Austin refuted the sense-data theory?", which can be found in Metaphysics and Common Sense (1969).

Philosophical Papers

Austin's papers were collected and published posthumously as Philosophical Papers by J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. The book originally contained ten papers, two more being added in the second edition and one in the third.

Are there A Priori Concepts

This early paper contains a broad criticism of Idealism. The question set, the existence of a priori concepts, is treated only indirectly, by dismissing the concept of concept that underpins it.

The first part of this paper takes the form of a reply to an argument for the existence of Universals. The argument he is criticising proceeds from the observation that we do use words such as "grey" or "circular"; and that since we use a single term in each case, there must be a something that is named by such terms - a universal. Furthermore, since each case of "grey" or "circular" is different, it follows that universals themselves cannot be sensed.

Austin carefully dismantles this argument, and in the process other transcendental arguments. He points out first that universals are not "something we stumble across," and that that they are defined by their relation to particulars. He continues by pointing out that, from the observation that we use "grey" and "circular" as if they were the names of things, it simply does not follow that there is something that is named. In the process he dismisses the notion that "words are essentially proper names," asking "...why, if 'one identical' word is used, must there be 'one identical object' present which it denotes."

In the second part of the article he generalises this argument against universals to concepts as a whole. He points out that it is "facile" to treat concepts as if they were "an article of property." Such questions as "Do we possess such-and-such a concept" and "how do we come to possess such-and-such a concept" are meaningless, because concepts are not the sort of thing that one possesses.

In the final part of the paper, Austin further extends the discussion to relations, presenting a series of arguments to reject the idea that there is some thing that is a relation.

The Meaning of a Word

His paper The Meaning of a Word is a polemic against doing philosophy by attempting to pin down the meaning of the words used; for 'there is no simple and handy appendage of a word called "the meaning of the word (x)"'. Austin warns us to take care when removing words from their ordinary usage, giving numerous examples of how this can lead one down a philosophical garden path.

A Plea For Excuses

A Plea For Excuses is both a demonstration by example, and a defence of, linguistic philosophy:

...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth marking, in the lifetime of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonable practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchair of an afternoon – the most favorite alternative method. (p. 182)

He proposes some curious philosophical tools. For instance, he uses a sort of word game for developing an understanding of a key concept. This involves taking up a dictionary and finding a selection of terms relating to the key concept, then looking up each of the words in the explanation of their meaning. Then, iterating this process until the list of words begins to repeat, closing in a “family circle” of words relating to the key concept.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Primary Sources

• Philosophical Papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1st ed., 1961; 2nd ed., 1970.
• Sense and sensibilia. 1962. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• How to do things with Words: The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Ed. J. O. Urmson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962. 2nd Ed., Ed. by J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975.

• "Performative Utterances," Ii Austin, Philosophical Papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford, 1961.
• "A Plea for Excuses". in Austin, Philosophical Papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford, 1961.
• "Performative-Constative," in The Philosophy of Language. Ed. John R. Searle. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971. 13-22.

Secondary Sources

There are numerous studies of Austin and his work. Here are two books of essays about him:

• K.T. Fann, ed., Symposium on J.L. Austin. New York: Humanities Press, Inc., 1969. (This contains, among other essays by other writers, G.J. Warnock's biographical sketch of Austin.)
• Kirkham, Richard (Reprint edition: March 2, 1995). Theories of Truth. The MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61108-2. Originally published 1992. Chapter 4 contains a detailed discussion of Austin's theory of truth.
• Sir Isaiah Berlin and others, Essays on J.L. Austin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.

External links

• John Austin, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

General Philosophy Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Philosophy Sources on Internet EpistemeLinks
• Guide to Philosophy on the Internet
• Paideia Project Online
• Project Gutenberg

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• John Langshaw Austin  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "John Langshaw Austin"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.