This is the first full-length biography of John Langshaw Austin (1911–60). The opening four chapters outline his origins, childhood, schooling, and time as an undergraduate, while the next four examine his early career in professional philosophy, looking at the influence of Oxford Realism, Logical Positivism, Pragmatism, and the later Wittgenstein. The central twelve chapters then explore Austin’s wartime career in British Intelligence. The first three examine the contributions he made to the campaigns in North Africa; the next seven the seminal (...) role he played in ensuring the outstanding accuracy of the D-Day Intelligence; while the final two explore his contributions to Arnhem, the Ardennes, and the post-war administration of Germany. The last main section of the book then outlines and assesses Austin’s contributions to post-war Oxford Ordinary Language Philosophy. The first three chapters discuss the impact on Oxford philosophy of the cultural atmosphere of post-war Britain and the later Wittgenstein’s ideas. The next four look at Austin’s influence on post-war Oxford, particularly his Saturday morning discussion group and his perception lectures. The next five chapters concentrate on America’s influence on Austin and vice versa, paying particular attention to Austin’s work on speech-acts and his semesters in Harvard and Berkeley. The final two chapters examine Austin’s declining influence in Oxford, and his tragically premature death. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is the organized expression of a growing intent among philosophers and scientists to clarify, perhaps unify, the programs, methods and results of the disciplines of philosophy and of science. The examination of fundamental concepts and presuppositions in the light of the positive results of science, systematic doubt of the positive results, and a thorough-going analysis and critique of logic and of language, are typical projects for this joint effort. It is not necessary to be committed to a (...) belief that science and philosophy are or should be one, or else that “never the twain shall meet.” If anything, there is to be expected a wholesome regard for the value of established science in furnishing a foil for philosophy and a check on its old extravagances. This does not mean that even the best-established science may not be subject to most devastating criticism by analysis of its foundations. In fact, despairing of the philosophy of the schools, science has done it largely for itself. The theories of gravitation, atomicity, electro-magnetism, evolution, relativity and quanta have all arisen through drastic revisions of complacent fundamental “truths.”. (shrink)

After presenting a variety of arguments in support of the idea that ordinary names are indexical, I respond to John Perry's recent arguments against the indexicality of names. I conclude by indicating some connections between the theory of names defended here and Wittgenstein's observations on naming, and suggest that the latter may have been misconstrued in the literature.

In Fiction, Truth and Literature, Lamarque and Olsen argue that if a critic claims or attempts to prove that the outlook of a work of literature is true or false, he is not engaging in literary or aesthetic appreciation. This paper argues against this position by adducing cases where literary critics discuss the truth or falsity of a work’s view, when their opinions are obviously relevant to the work’s aesthetic assessment. The paper considers in detail the way factual errors damage (...) a work’s aesthetic standing, and shows that Lamarque and Olsen’s alternative account of the role of propositional truths in literature only looks plausible because it considers a restricted range of examples. Finally, it considers the role intention, date and genre play in discussions of the aesthetic damage done by literal falsehood. (shrink)

The concept of supererogation is an act that it is right to do but not wrong not to do. The moral trinity of the deontic logic excludes such acts from moral theory. A moral theory that is based on duty or obligation unqualified seems inevitably to make all good acts obligations, whether construed from a teleological or deontological point of view. If supererogation is a moral fact, no moral theory can survive without acknowledging it. One way to distinguish supererogation from (...) obligation that is not arbitrary is to draw the line of obligation at death and dismemberment. Such a limit to obligation is often implicit in moral theory. Inclusive obligation requires us all to be heroes all of the time. The moral limit to obligation is one of Hobbes's teachings. Though it is seldom noted in contemporary political and moral theory, it is, for example, implied in Rawls's definition of ‘supererogation.’ In this definition it is said that heroic supererogation would be a duty but for the high cost associated with it. This cost is the risk of life and limb;.it distinguishes supererogation from both benevolence and obligation.A supererogation is a good act with a high cost. The goodness of the act, however determined, must be proportionate to the cost to the agent. If life is risked, life or something deemed no less valuable must be gained. The intention to effect such important goods for others is sufficient for an act to be supererogatory even if it fails.If moral reality is inevitably vague, complex, and incomplete, then it is no surprise that moral theory is that way, too. The challenge is that moral theory be no more vague, complex, and incomplete than necessary and in ways justified by the nature of moral reality. A science, Aristotle advised, can be no more precise than its subject matter permits. (shrink)

Among bioethicists and members of the public, genetics is often regarded as unique in its ethical challenges. As medical researchers and clinicians increasingly combine genetic information with a range of non-genetic information in the study and clinical management of patients with common diseases, the unique ethical challenges attributed to genetics must be re-examined. A process of genetic routinisation that will have implications for research and clinical ethics, as well as for public conceptions of genetic information, is constituted by the emergence (...) of new forms of genetic medicine, in which genetic information is interpreted in a multifactorial frame of reference. Although the integration of genetics in medical research and treatment may be a helpful corrective to the mistaken assumptions of genetic essentialism or determinism, the routinisation of genetics may have unintended consequences for the protection of genetic information, perceptions of non-genetic information and the loss of genetic research as a laboratory for exploring issues in research and clinical ethics. Consequently, new ethical challenges are presented by the increasing routinisation of genetic information in both biomedical and public spheres. (shrink)

An attitude which hopes to derive aesthetic pleasure from an object is often thought to be in tension with an attitude which hopes to derive knowledge from it. The current article argues that this alleged conflict only makes sense when the aesthetic attitude and knowledge are construed unnaturally narrowly, and that when both are correctly understood there is no tension between them. To do this, the article first proposes a broad and satisfying account of the aesthetic attitude, and then considers (...) and rejects twelve reasons for thinking that deriving knowledge from something is incompatible with maintaining an aesthetic attitude towards it. Two main conclusions are drawn. 1) That the representational arts are often in a good position to communicate non-propositional knowledge about human beings. 2) That while our desire to obtain pleasure from a work's manifest properties, and our desire to obtain knowledge from it, are not the same motive, the formal similarities between them are sufficiently impressive to warrant both being seen as elements of the aesthetic attitude. (shrink)

The first half of this article argues that, like judgments as to whether something smells or tastes good, judgments about works of art ultimately depend on an element of subjective response. However, it shows that, unlike gustatory or olfactory judgments, we can argue meaningfully about our experience of works of art because they have _parts<D>. Because works of art have parts these can be patterned by the imagination, and this patterning can be influenced by what is said to us. The (...) second half considers five conditions that must be met before someone is entitled to assert, 'This is a good poem,' rather than simply, 'I like this poem now.' Finally, the last section considers why a report of an ultimately subjective response is disguised in everyday usage as an objective judgment. (shrink)