ABSTRACT
So-called linguistic philosophy is now commonly identified with a doctrine about the primacy of ordinary language. It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language, and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. The implied comparison between the complexity of language and the artificial simplicity of logic was echoed by many later linguistic philosophers. Something has been said already of the appeal to ordinary language in certain sceptical arguments. Despite the fact that arguments like Malcolm’s, with his background assumptions, are inadequate the appeal to ordinary language and the paradigm case argument have some value. The device of talking about language in a notation-free way does not provide access to a totally new, exclusively philosophical, non-factual realm.
