ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to show how Austin articulates the philosophical relevance of a reference to our ordinary ways of speaking negatively as a way to dismantle a typical philosophical impulse to replace our ordinary ways of talking. A return to the debate between Austin and A. J. Ayer is highly instructive, not merely with regard to Austin’s criticism of positivism and sense-data theory and not merely because Austin’s text contains several neglected thoughts of great relevance for the philosophy of perception, but because Austin’s arguments so clearly aim to destabilize the idea that the ordinary sense of our perception talk is something that we already have clearly in view. Austin’s criticism is not so much directed at Ayer’s theory itself as it is aimed at making clear that Ayer’s whole project relies on Ayer assuming that he already has framed what our ordinary words really mean. Austin’s aim here is not to make us feel content with that assumed primary sense, but to make us see that our ordinary language contains more, much more, and is much more complicated and multifarious than philosophers (like Ayer) are prone to assume.
