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Words and Things

by Ernest Gellner

RbJ's preface to notes
My purpose My purpose in reading this book is, generally, to help me in the development of my own position on the nature of analytic philosophy, and also to see whether I can glean anything from Gellner for my discussion of rationality. Gellners Perspective Gellner approaches this subject as a philosophical sociologist well read in "linguistic" philosophy but antagonistic to it. His critique shows little sign of interest in sifting out the good from the bad to make a future for philosophical analysis. His critique is wide ranging, covering not only the later work of Wittgenstein and the Oxford "revolution" which was so profoundly influenced by it, but the earlier work on logical atomism and logical positivism. It is hard to see where this critique might end, and tempting to suppose that most of the other philosophers posthumously co-opted into analytic philosophy (e.g. Hume) might also have been condemned if they had not lived too early to be within the scope of the book. My Interest My own interest, by contrast, is constructive. It comes from a transition which I am now engaged in, from sidestep to confrontation. I have hitherto largely ignored those aspects of philosophical analysis which seem to me irrelevant to my enterprise, but I am now seeking to confront the recent history of philosophical analysis. I aim to use this as a lever for articulating my own developing view of what can be achieved by the right kind of analytic philosophy. These notes are intended simply to help me with this purpose.

Gellner v. Hacker
reading them together Since Words and Things is out of print I had to request a copy from the local library, which arrived when I was half way through reading [Hacker96b]. Because of the limited loan period I read it right away and then finished off Hacker. These two perspectives on essentially the same phenomenon are about as dissimilar as one can imagine, and neither makes much concession to the other viewpoint. cause célèbre Hacker describes Words and Things as "a very bad book" which became a cause célèbre as a result of Ryle's refusal to publish a review of it in Mind. He says it had little impact on professional philosophers but did some damage to the public perception of their work. And that's all the comment it gets from Hacker, though some of the criticisms made by Gellner are answered later without specific reference to Gellner (possibly only the ones which weren't unique to Gellner).

cynical evasion Gellner's book exudes through its every pore the sense that "linguistic philosophers" are engaged in intellectual dishonesty on a grand scale and that attempts to confront them are met by an extremely sophisticated kind of cynical evasion. It is impossible to believe that these philosophers thought of their work in this way. The book would have been more credible and more valuable if Gellner had tried a bit harder to understand the merits of the case from the philosopher's standpoint. Even if I believed Gellner's viewpoint absolutely correct then I would still doubt that the linguistic philosophers concurred, and I would be left with a "puzzlement" about what these philosophers were really trying to do and how they could be so mistaken about the merits of their endeavours. dismissing neither book I find myself able to dismiss neither of the books, facing the vexatious problem of how to reconcile the two viewpoints. On the whole I am more sympathetic to Gellner's stance, believing with Russell that Wittgenstein's later work catalysed the diversion of an entire profession down an intellectual cul-de-sac. However, they did some nice work down this cul-de-sac, and going down cul-de-sacs might be thought the norm rather than the exception so far as philosophical movements are concerned. I find it impossible to believe that these philosophers consciously employed the kind of cynical evasiveness portrayed by Gellner, but I do believe that their possibly sincere belief in their methods may have had similar consequences.

See also:
The Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy,
a critique of Gellner's attack on "ordinary language philosophy"
by T. P. Uschanov,
Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki.

**RbJ's preface to notes**
My purpose My purpose in reading this book is, generally, to help me in the development of my own position on the nature of analytic philosophy, and also to see whether I can glean anything from Gellner for my discussion of rationality.	Gellners Perspective Gellner approaches this subject as a philosophical sociologist well read in "linguistic" philosophy but antagonistic to it. His critique shows little sign of interest in sifting out the good from the bad to make a future for philosophical analysis. His critique is wide ranging, covering not only the later work of Wittgenstein and the Oxford "revolution" which was so profoundly influenced by it, but the earlier work on logical atomism and logical positivism. It is hard to see where this critique might end, and tempting to suppose that most of the other philosophers posthumously co-opted into analytic philosophy (e.g. Hume) might also have been condemned if they had not lived too early to be within the scope of the book.	My Interest My own interest, by contrast, is constructive. It comes from a transition which I am now engaged in, from sidestep to confrontation. I have hitherto largely ignored those aspects of philosophical analysis which seem to me irrelevant to my enterprise, but I am now seeking to confront the recent history of philosophical analysis. I aim to use this as a lever for articulating my own developing view of what can be achieved by the right kind of analytic philosophy. These notes are intended simply to help me with this purpose.

**Gellner v. Hacker**
reading them together Since Words and Things is out of print I had to request a copy from the local library, which arrived when I was half way through reading [Hacker96b]. Because of the limited loan period I read it right away and then finished off Hacker. These two perspectives on essentially the same phenomenon are about as dissimilar as one can imagine, and neither makes much concession to the other viewpoint.	cause célèbre Hacker describes Words and Things as "a very bad book" which became a cause célèbre as a result of Ryle's refusal to publish a review of it in Mind. He says it had little impact on professional philosophers but did some damage to the public perception of their work. And that's all the comment it gets from Hacker, though some of the criticisms made by Gellner are answered later without specific reference to Gellner (possibly only the ones which weren't unique to Gellner).

CONTENTS
Chap. Title Sections

Forward by Bertrand Russell

Introduction: The Saltmines of Salzburg

I Of Linguistic Philosophy

1 Introductory

2 First Approaches

3 A Theory of Philosophy

4 A Theory of the World and of Language

5 A Theory of Mind

II Of Language

1 The Theory of Language Expanded

2 Language Games

3 The Four Pillars

4 The Argument from Paradigm Cases

5 From Fact to Norm

6 The Contrast Theory of Meaning

7 General Comments on the Three Fallacies

8 The Cult of the Fox

9 Everything is Unlike Everything Else

10 The Best of all Possible Languages

III Of Philosophy

1 Activity not Doctrine

2 The Impeturbable Universe

3 Flashback

4 Logical Atomism

5 Logical Positivism

6 Logical Constructions

7 Common Sense

8 Transition

9 Appearance and Reality, or Monsieur Jourdain's Revolt

IV Of the World

1 The Secret of the Universe

2 Naturalism

3 A Special Kind of Naturalism

4 The Bait and the Trap

5 The Turn of the Screw

6 Triple Star

7 De Luxe

V Of Knowledge

1 The Circle of Knowledge

2 Multiplication beyond Necessity

3 Some Constrasts

4 Realism and Idealism

5 What One Looks Like when not Looking

6 "Seeing the World Rightly"

7 The Sages of Lagado

8 Not to Ask the Reason Why

9 The Proselytising Solipsist

10 The Elusive but Comforting Doctrine

11 The Delphic Insight

12 The Argument from Impotence

13 Conclusion

VI Structure and Strategy

D Diagram, Explanation and Instructions for Use

1 The Structure of Linguistic Philosophy

2 The Spectrum

3 The Prayer Wheel

4 The Needle in the Haystack

5 Philosophy by Filibuster

6 The Reluctant Centipede

7 The Withering away of Philosophy

8 The Spurious Fox

9 Two-tier Doctrine and Invertebrate Philosophy

10 The Full Circle

11 Solvitur Ambulando

12 Differential Realism

13 The New Koran

14 Saladin's Fork

15 The Indian Rope Trick

16 Philosophy by Frisson

17 Keep them Guessing

18 Insinuation and Taboo

19 Whoever said this?

20 Offensive and Defensive Positions

21 A Sense of Decorum

22 Collective Security

VII Assessment

1 What remains?

2 The Circularity

3 Travesty of Thought

4 Failure of Normativeness

5 The Paradox of Passivity

6 The Dimensions of Caution

7 The Dimensions of Empiricism

8 Linguistic Philosophy as an Orientation and a Style of Thought

9 A Collector's Piece

10 Originality

11 The Corruption of Youth

VIII Implications

1 Religion

2 Politics

3 The Three Stages of Weltanschauung

IX Sociology

1 Philosophy and Sociology

2 An Ideology

3 Some Comparisons

4 The Narodnicks of North Oxford

5 Science, Power, Ideas

6 Internal Organisation

7 Conspicuous Triviality

8 Philosophy as an Institution

9 A Secularised Established Religion

10 Rival Styles

11 Existence Precedes Essence

X Conclusion

Index

I. Of Linguistic Philosophy

2. First Approaches

Traditional philosophical problems are pseudo problems which arise from certain kinds of misuse of language. To dissolve these pseudo problems a careful study of the ordinary usage of our language is necessary, recognising the great diversity of usage.

3. A Theory of Philosophy

"The theory of philosophy runs: past philosophy has been mainly abuse of language, future good philosophy will be the diagnosis and elimination of such abuse."

4. A Theory of the World and of Language

"As a theory about the world, Linguistic Philosophy runs like this: The world is what it is, and not another thing. Everything in the world is what it is, and not another thing. (these statements are not as tautological as they seem...)"

5. A Theory of Mind

"The doctrine is, roughly, that the human mind is not an entity or process or class of events or receptacle radically distinct from corporeal events or things, but on the contrary that, very generally speaking, mind is the way we do things."

II. Of Language

2. Language Games

Gellner identifies the four "important features" of language games:

If you break the rules, you are not playing the game.
It makes no sense to question the rules.
You must have a choice of moves, otherwise it isn't a game, its a ritual, charade or farce.
All but the simplest games have categories which govern its conduct, and even govern the statement of the rules. Making a category error is even worse than breaking the rules.

3. The Four Pillars

Corresponding to the four "important features" of language games there are "four pillars" of linguistic philosophy:

The Argument from the Paradigm Case (APC). (in its paradigm actual usages a concept must be correctly applied, for what else could it mean?)
The Generalised version of the Naturalistic Fallacy. (inferring linguistic norms from usage)
The contrast theory of meaning. (any meaningful term must have a possible example and a possible counterexample)
Polymorphism. (Family resemblance and other aspects of the diversity of language)

The first three of these are later called the Three Fallacies.

created 1998-10-31 modified 2006-3-12