ABSTRACT
Anthony Kenny's attack on private ostensive definition removed the verificationist label from Ashgate Wittgenstein's argument. The verificationism originating in Rudolf Carnap's philosophy was one of Kenny's targets. Hence the positivist framework was not one in which the verificationist version of the private language argument would readily be replaced with a verificationism-free argument against private ostensive definitions. From the perspective of the ordinary language philosopher, however, it was possible to accommodate Kenny's results more readily. Part of the reason for this decline was the conception of language that was inherent in ordinary language philosophy and so crucial a part of its methodology. In the Vienna Circle the focus on language was motivated by a recognition that knowledge claims in science had to be intersubjectively communicable and thus expressible in language. Philosophers representing both the Vienna Circle and ordinary language philosophy had pronounced that investigating language would be a cardinal task of philosophy.
