Austin's Way with Skepticism: An Essay on Philosophical Method
Mark Kaplan
Abstract
J. L. Austin is famous for the extent to which he wrote as if it is a condition, on the adequacy of what we say while doing epistemology, that it accord faithfully with what we would say in ordinary circumstances. Most would use the term “infamous”. Not long after Austin’s death, there formed a durable consensus: Austin’s commitment to pursuing an epistemology that is faithful to “ordinary language” was fundamentally misguided—born of a failure properly to understand the nature of the epistemologist’s project. This book argues, however, that the consensus is mistaken—that both the condition of ... More
J. L. Austin is famous for the extent to which he wrote as if it is a condition, on the adequacy of what we say while doing epistemology, that it accord faithfully with what we would say in ordinary circumstances. Most would use the term “infamous”. Not long after Austin’s death, there formed a durable consensus: Austin’s commitment to pursuing an epistemology that is faithful to “ordinary language” was fundamentally misguided—born of a failure properly to understand the nature of the epistemologist’s project. This book argues, however, that the consensus is mistaken—that both the condition of adequacy to which Austin was committed, and his reason for being committed to it, have been misunderstood by his critics. By looking carefully at the things Austin said about knowledge in “Other Minds,” examining the response to skeptical argument that these things provide, and taking seriously the methodological remarks Austin scattered in his corpus, the book shows that Austin’s way of pursuing epistemology was not born of a misunderstanding of the project of epistemology. It was born, rather, of a powerful critique of how that project has been conceived. But, as the book also shows, Austin was not against epistemological theorizing itself. On the contrary, Austin understood himself to be offering—and was, in fact, defending a way of doing epistemology that is fully capable of offering—substantive answers to important epistemological questions.
Keywords:
J. L. Austin,
knowledge,
ordinary language philosophy,
the principle of total evidence,
skepticism,
Barry Stroud
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780198824855 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: August 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198824855.001.0001 |
