Talk:J. L. Austin

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Could use something about his philosophy of mind... Banno 20:32, 16 Sep 2003 (UTC)

- it might also be useful to have something about or to direct readers to some of the responses & critiques of Austin's theories.

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• acts performed in saying something, for example stating a fact, asking a question, and so on, and
• acts performed by saying something, for example informing someone of a state of affairs or eliciting a response.

He called these ... illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts, respectively.

I'm not clear on the difference between asking a question, and eliciting a response - I can elicit responses non-verbally, but the definition explicitly states "by saying something". I'm confused. Dduck 15:58, 15 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I looked it up and edited the text. I hope it's clear now. Dduck 10:06, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hope the changes make the distinctions a bit clearer. Yes, you can elicit a response non-verbally, but this is a theory about eliciting them verbally. Thanks for the comment. Banno 10:25, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How would you describe the following? "How are you?"

Is this asking a question or eliciting an answer? I find that the new text is no closer to making this matter clear. Perhaps, you could explain. Dduck 11:30, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Firstly, this is Austin’s, not my, arrangement.

Secondly, you appear to think that illocutions and perlocutions are mutually exclusive. They are not. In saying “How are you” one performs a locution (pronounces an English sentence), and illocution (asking a question), and if one elicits an answer, a perlocution. The point of Austin’s categorization is to distinguish the different acts. Banno 20:20, 18 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I like your answer, especially that you've changed to using substantives instead of adjectives for "locutions". Am I correct in thinking that a perlocution originates from the recipient but illocution from the originator of the locution? Dduck 14:03, 19 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by “originates”. Donald Davidson might have a different opinion.Banno 20:38, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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There's a problem. I was referred to this page from a page on law. John Austin can refer to:

A philosopher of language; see J. L. Austin An 18th century legal and political theorist who wrote 'An Essay on Sovereignity', considered the standard for discussions about sovereignity A warrant officer in the United States Navy; see John Arnold Austin A British politician; see John Austin (politician) A 19th century Texan who helped lead the Battle of Velasco

this page is on the first person while a correct link would be to a page on the second (which as far as I can tell doesn't exist yet)

I don't know how to fix this hopefully now that it has been brought to attention some wiki pro can fix it up.

ps here's a link to COPRYWRITTEN material on the real John Austin (please stand up). Not intended for copy but to facillitate clarifaction of any potentially created page on th 17th century Austin. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/austin-john/.

The page you came here from should link to the disambiguation page. What page was it? Banno 20:35, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

request

That editors who contribute to and watch this article check out this Article for Deletion nomination and comment. Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk 19:31, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

How did he die?

48 is a rather young age at which to perish --124.19.0.118 (talk) 08:57, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

This has been answered, but it may be worth mentioning that he went to a "mass radiography" session, held to detect people with TB, and was told, accurately, that he had some six weeks to live. My informant was RGM Nisbet, a close friend of mine who was also a fellow of Corpus. NB that Austin is caricatured with a pipe. Seadowns (talk) 09:12, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

That's very interesting, thanks, but we can't use it in the article without a source. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:16, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Alas, there won't be a source, so this poignant fact will eventually perish. Seadowns (talk) 00:25, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Maybe you could find a philosophy noticeboard/ blogsite somewhere to share that fact? Who knows, I might be more permanent than this encyclopedia. Meanwhile, for the article, we could search for a source for his cause of death, and perhaps for that fact that he was an habitual pipe-smoker? Martinevans123 (talk) 08:50, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

See under "Images of JL Austin" for a photo of him lighting a pipe, and also a cartoon of him smoking one.Seadowns (talk) 12:39, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I found a photo here and a cartoon here. But I don't see how either of these support the notion of "habitual". That's going to be WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:45, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Cartoonists usually put in details that are characteristic, e.g. Churchill with cigar, Eden with umbrella. I think the cartoon is pretty good evidence that he smoked a lot. People would recognise his pipe. Seadowns (talk) 19:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

What you say is certainly true. One might deduce, quite reasonably, from those images that Austin was a pipe-smoker. But a single photograph, or a single cartoon, is not sufficiently strong evidence on which to base an unequivocal encyclopedic claim. We'd really need a textual source, ideally something like a personal letter, in which a close friend , or even Austin himself, mentions his "habitual pipe-smoking." If any of his many students or colleagues ever considered it a notable aspect of his personality, then there ought to be something out there. Even if there is, however, and we decide to use it here, it can't really usefully inform any explanation of why he died at the age of 48. We'd need his doctor's opinion for that. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:29, 13 January 2017 (UTC) p.s. of course, if you have a good picture, it can say all that needs to be said.

It is known he died from lung cancer, presumably from the death certificate. Even if it could be shown that he was a heavy smoker, that would only establish a statistical connection with the disease, but people will draw their own conclusions from the photo and cartoon that the habit may well have contributed. I don't see that any more is needed. I just add that if proper publicity had been given to research that had already been done and published by the end of WWII, people then comparatively young might have been put off smoking and spared smoking-related deaths. Bu this is hardly relevant to this article, I suppose. Seadowns (talk) 14:47, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

That's not establishing any kind of a "statistical connection." And you're right, that is certainly not relevant to this article. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:52, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

The statistical connection would be that if Austin were established as a heavy smoker he would be established as a member of a group with a higher probability of contracting lung cancer. The irrelevance was about a different point altogether. Actually, from what precedes, I think you have difficulty in seeing fine, precise points! I shall leave this topic for good. Seadowns (talk) 20:32, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

It might suggest a connection, but a sample of one can't give you any statistics. And to state such a connection in the article would still be WP:OR. Yes, the irrelevance is about a wholly different point - post war publicity for studies into the relationship between smoking and disease. I was agreeing with you that it's irrelevant here. If you think Austin's smoking was a key aspect of his personality, and you can find a good source which covers it, then I'm sure you could legitimately add it. Perhaps we ought first to concentrate efforts on finding a WP:RS source that supports his alleged cause of death? I'm very sorry if you have made any "fine, precise points" that I have missed. Any other editor who has an interest in this article is very welcome to make any further suggestions that they see fit. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Sense and Sensibilia - reference to Aristotle's work of the same name?

The section on Sense and Sensibilia mentions that "the title is an allusion to the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen". I am not an expert by any means, but shouldn't this sentence (if it should be present at all) make reference to the influence of Aristotle's work of the same name? --Swiftcoder (talk) 02:05, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Derrida

There should be a section for the criticism, by Derrida, on the distinction between parasitic and non-parasitic performatives (How to do things with words). Although it can be found (it is actually rather dissapointing) under the section of "Quarrell with John Searle" (of which there should also be a link), that quarrell was the consecuence of an interesting critique, found in "Signature, Event and Context", as well as "Limited Inc.". It is also an interesting point of conflict between analytic and continental philosophy. Philipsy (talk) 22:44, 29 June 2011 (UTC)Philipsy

Is Derrida worth the space? I leave the spellings here uncorrected, since I do not think they are slips of the pen. Seadowns (talk) 14:51, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:184.61.60.61

Further Austin was not trained as a linguist-- which (at least now) means trained in linguistics.

I listened to Geoffrey Warnock talk for countless hours about Austin and his views (Warnock was my D.Phil supervisor and friend, and he was an intimate of Austin's), and never heard such a thing as that he regarded W. as a charlatan. Even if I am wrong and Austin did once call W a charlatan, philosophers habitually make savage (and reckless) remarks about one another all the time, and none more than Oxford dons, in my experience. (Austin is credited with some very clever such remarks about his colleagues.) But loose talk is not for attribution in an encyclopedia.

Again, Austin may have regarded certain of W's followers as charlatans, and he certainly took a dim view of the posturing air of profundity that some of them affected. But no philosopher of that period would regard Wittgenstein roundly and summarily as a charlatan. It is true that Austin liked to read lines from the Investigations and dispute them, and that he admired Moore, and as it were declared for Moore over Wittgenstein as being to more to taste. ("Moore is my man", he's supposed to have said.) But even this should not be represented as his sober assessment of the place of Wittgenstein in philosophy generally or philosophy of language in particular.

The author of the article is right to suggest that ordinary language philosophy in Oxford was largely home grown. But who can say what it meant to Oxford philosophers to know that a giant of philosophy, over in Cambridge --whom Ryle called a "genius'--was advocating similar methods of investigation. It might build confidence, at least.

D W Stampe

Dr Stampe. It is indeed very encouraging to have a published philosopher making a contribution to this article. You are quite right that any statements which cannot be attributable to a reliable source (WP:RS) are generally very unwelcome at Wikipedia. But do remember that nearly all articles here are the product of a number of contributing editors, not just one. Personal knowledge, however, can never be a substitute for what has been printed in a reputable publication (even if it is wrong!) At Wikipedia "verifiability" counts for more than truth (a profound philosophical paradox in itself, perhaps). Are you in fact saying that what is printed on page 114 of Grayling's book is a mistake? an untruth? both?

Also, I wonder did you fully intend to remove in their entirety the sentences: "His main influence, he said, was the exact and exacting common-sense philosophy of G. E. Moore. His training as a classicist and linguist influenced his later work"? Would not some adjustment or replacement be better?

By the way, the best place for your observations/ reasoning here would be on the Talk Page of the article itself, especially as you are not using a registered account here at this ip address. Would you object if I copied the contents of this page over there, where any discussion could then continue, if appropriate?

Many thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:14, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

I notice that Austin, in his Sense and Sensibilia, mentions Wittgenstein only once, where he says: "When something is seen, there may not only be different ways of saying what is seen; it may also be seen in different ways, seen differently. This possibility, which brings in the important formula "see... as...", has been taken very seriously by psychologists, and also by Wittgenstein, but most philosophers who write about perception have scarcely noticed it. The clearest cases, no doubt, are those in which (as for instance in Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit) a picture or diagram is specially so devised as to be capable of being seen in different ways ..." (pp. 100-101) Martinevans123 (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Austin's denial of Wittgenstein influence is not in the source

"Unlike many ordinary language philosophers, however, Austin disavowed any overt indebtedness to Wittgenstein's later philosophy."

this claim is not supported by the source which makes no mention of support or non-support, " Hacker, P. M. S. 'Austin, John Langshaw (1911–1960)', in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 online (Archived 7 June 2021)"

would be good either delete or get a good source 65.29.166.232 (talk) 18:36, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I have found good sourcing for this claim in M.W. Rowe's recent biography of Austin; I'll add it. RowanElder (talk) 14:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

(possibly of help) John Searle: 'I often read how much Austin was influenced by Wittgenstein. Nothing could be further from the truth. Austin had no sympathy whatever for Wittgenstein, and I think he was incapable of learning from someone whose style was so “loose.” He typically referred to Wittgenstein in the style of English schoolboy slang of the time as, “Witters,” pronounced “Vitters.” He thought there were no original ideas in Wittgenstein.' -Searle, John R. (2001), "J. L. Austin (1911–1960)", in Martinich, A. P.; Sosa, David (eds.), A Companion to Analytic Philosophy, p.227 Jy Houston (talk) 20:43, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, yes -- another part of exactly this quote from Searle is on p. 145 of Rowe's biography together with other information from Berlin and other contemporaries about the Blue Book's circulation before the war. Unfortunately, another footnote indicates that Berlin may not have been reliable and I want to double check that before I edit. It seems Berlin could be a devious antagonist of his political enemies, as in his treatment of Arendt per Hiruta's recent pair biography of the two, and Rowe seems to be tactfully talking around this in the footnotes of the Austin biography. It's tricky to avoid accidentally becoming complicit in reproducing the abuses of academic authority that some of these cliques perpetrated. RowanElder (talk) 20:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

"we think it relatively clear that Austin’s philosophy of language was infused, at each crucial stage in its development, with Wittgenstein’s thought" -Harris, D. W., & Unnsteinsson, E. (2017). Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 26(2), 371–395. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2017.1396958 (just happens I was looking at it when you replied - I'm quite sure you don't need pointers!) good luck with it anyway Jy Houston (talk) 21:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

No harm done and thanks! This is also cited in Rowe's book, happily, but if it weren't then you'd have saved me time. RowanElder (talk) 21:25, 10 October 2024 (UTC)