So, before I lived in Iowa City, I lived in Bloomington, Indiana. I wandered that way from rural southern Indiana, and it became a very important six years of my life (from age 18 to 24). It’s where I, in some sense, grew up, decided on philosophy as a major and life focus, and first learned how to be an adult. It’s where I did all sorts of new things.
In college, when I took philosophy as a major, I also got very interested in the work of ordinary language philosophy, especially that of J.L. Austin. I recently had the chance to return to some of these topics.
Bloomington and Philosophy
I graduated from Indiana University in 2005. While at IU, my interest in OLP sprang from its basic method, especially as J. L. Austin laid it out. Here’s the basis of the appeal to ordinary language, at least for me: one needs to appreciate one’s starting point – one’s grounding – before heading off to the races on theorizing. The concepts philosophers use – their tools, as we might have it – are things our everyday practices already hone and develop.
While everyday practice isn’t the last word – nor should it be – it is, however, the first word. It gives us a point of departure, a standard by which to judge our philosophical theorizing. Can a theory – or even just a new concept or use of some word – offer something better than our starting point?
As an undergrad, I applied this to work in epistemology. I wrote a thesis at IU on the application of some of J. L. Austin’s ideas to knowledge, specifically to shaping and defining our concept of ‘knowledge.’ I approached the topic by considering Austin’s response to philosophical skepticism. And while at Indiana, I worked with Mark Kaplan and Adam Leite, two professors who worked on these topics.
Austin’s Way with Skepticism
And so, I was happy to see the short book Austin’s Way With Skepticism, a book Kaplan wrote (and had been working on, I believe, even 15+ years prior). Kaplan wants to rehabilitate Austin as an epistemologist. He does this in a couple of ways. First, he lays out the bit about ordinary language as the ‘first word’ that I discussed above. Kaplan does this admirably in his book, and he gives us good reasons to put ordinary language in that position.
He also presents Austin as an epistemological fallibilist, situating Austin within certain contemporary debates. Kaplan explains – convincingly – how Austin’s treatment of knowledge allows for us to know something without attaining full ‘certainty’ (note: there’s more to it than that. Kaplan points to Austin’s treatment of the phrase ‘if you know you can’t be wrong’ and his discussion of ‘special reasons’ and relevant alternatives. But I’ll set all this aside for the purposes of this post).
And so, in much of the book Kaplan takes up this line of thought. He does so by laying out – carefully and successfully – Austin’s discussion of philosophical skepticism. That’s all familiar terrain for me. I won’t say a great deal here, except that I think this all works well and forms a valuable contribution to epistemology. Kaplan does a great job laying out how Austin refuted the skeptic. Austin did so by showing that the skeptic cannot move us from our starting position – ordinary uses of our concept of knowledge – to skepticism.
Points of Trouble
I find very little in the book I object to. Kaplan’s discussion of Austin on skepticism goes particularly well. But I do think Kaplan runs into a bit of trouble when he tries to read Austin as a epistemological fallibilist. I doubt Austin would place himself in that tradition.
It’s not that Austin isn’t a fallibilist. I mean, he’s clearly not an infallibilist. Nor is he a skeptic or an anti-philosopher (more on that below). Rather, I think Austin was probably up to something else in his brief treatment of knowledge.
This especially comes to light when one reads Austin’s (very) brief treatment of knowledge in the final lecture of How to Do Things with Words. In that work, he (tentatively) classifies ‘I know’ as an expositive. More broadly, I suspect Austin concerned himself with the communicative function(s) of knowledge claims. Rather than, say, its contributions to the theory of knowledge.
So, I think this tension creates trouble for Kaplan when, for example, he brings Austin to bear on certain epistemological topics, such as pragmatic encroachment (the idea that we set a higher bar for knowledge when the stakes are higher). Kaplan recognizes that Austin says some things that don’t square with the work of good epistemologists, but Kaplan wants to say that a careful evaluation of ordinary language would lead us to change our practices in response.
The Function of Knowledge Claims
But the raising of stakes might be key to a communicative function of ‘I know.’ And, if so, perhaps we wouldn’t re-evaluate our practices. Perhaps, instead, we would incorporate the stakes into our concept of knowledge. Perhaps whether we know depends, in some part, on the stakes.
Kaplan obviously doesn’t want to go there. He’s concerned that if we do go there, we simply won’t be doing good epistemology any longer. And we might have to read Austin as an anti-philosopher of some kind.
And Austin clearly isn’t an anti-philosopher in the sense that Wittgenstein was. Austin was no quietist. At the same time, Austin doesn’t really seem like a philosopher in any normal sense, either. He doesn’t seem to want to do the kind of thing contemporary epistemologists do.
My inclination is to just embrace that tension rather than try to resolve it. This is perhaps the central mystery of Austin. It’s why he inspired thinkers as diverse as Cavell, Derrida, and Searle. Compare, in particular, How to Do Things with Words to Searle’s speech-act theory and Derrida and Wittgenstein’s therapeutic and/or anti-philosophical treatments of language. There’s philosophy (Searle), anti-philosophy (Derrida/Wittgenstein), and then there’s just Austin.
Philosophy and Life
In some sense, these are topics I put away some time ago. But those old canards about how philosophy is useful to daily life aren’t wrong, after all. In fact, I think the work of Austin still has daily relevance. Even if I’m not thinking about it often, I still use it.
The basic approach to Austin that Kaplan sketches out in his book, in particular, I think sets up a great way to think about discussion and debate in just about any context: activism, politics, work, and anywhere else.
