Knowledge of Language as Self-Knowledge

Abstract:

What kind of thing are philosophers doing when we reflect on "what we say"? My talk will address this question, beginning with consideration of several early essays of Stanley Cavell's that appeared in the collection Must We Mean What We Say? In scrutinizing Cavell's argument I advance three claims. First, that a philosopher's claims about "what we say" are profitably understood as expressing, or attempting to express, a kind of self-knowledge, and that in this they are different from the claims about ordinary usage that are made, for example, by a linguist. Second, that evidence from linguistics is nevertheless not irrelevant to the philosopher's concern with ordinary language, since even if the knowledge of language is self-knowledge this does not mean that what it is knowledge of is guaranteed to be in our grasp just from the philosopher's armchair. And third, that even when linguistic evidence is relevant to the philosopher of ordinary language this is not because it provides any evidence in support of her claims, since the philosopher's claims about "what we say" are not, in the end, claims that are principally about language at all.