I bring these up because questions in fields can provide philosophical insights or impinge upon philosophical questions; "do special and general relativity impact the A-theory of time?", "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?". Questions in metaphysics and political economy do not seem to require linguistic analysis to play a central role in order to pose them or attempt to answer them.

But this is hardly the "home turf" of linguistic analysis. — fdrake

The answer to "are more people starving now and why?" doesn't depend much on how you define starving, it depends on how many people don't have enough food or sufficiently limited access to it.

There is much here to agree with, but on the other hand, there are philosophies that grow out of some of the analyses done that need (I believe), in order to be more precise, a Wittgensteinian analysis. — Sam26

That a round coin should 'look elliptical' (in one sense) from some points of view is exactly what we expect and what we normally find; indeed, we should be badly put out if we ever found this not to be so. Refraction again-the stick that looks bent in water-is far too familiar a case to be properly called a case of illusion. We may perhaps be prepared to agree that the stick looks bent; but then we can see that it's partly submerged in water, so that is exactly how we should expect it to look.

Next, 'real' is what we may call a trouser-word. It is usually thought, and I dare say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic-that, to understand 'x', we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with 'real' (as we briefly noted earlier) it is the negative use that wears the trousers. That is, a definite sense attaches to the assertion that something is real, a real such-and-such, only in the light of a specific way in which it might be, or might have been, not real.

For instance, your example, "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?" This, it seems, is a classic example of where a linguistic analysis might be needed. What does it mean to be morally right? What theories of moral right and wrong are we talking about (utilitarian, deontological, or relativistic theories, to name a few)? This would bring up the different uses we have for these words in our culture. That said, much of the time when using these words, we take it for granted that people are referring to the same things, until you press them on the specifics.

We've had a brief discussion about it being useful for clarity; and we've conducted the discussion in pragmatic terms in general. It's a truism that clarity is certainly desirable when writing on a topic, but it does not seem a sufficient reason to render linguistic analysis necessary for discussing that topic; even if such a topic would benefit from it, that does not establish that it is required to discuss the topic at all. — fdrake

Given that, what seems a more interesting discussion topic is are three related issues:

(B1) What circumstances necessitate adopting linguistic analysis as a philosophical methodology? — fdrake

(B2) What does it mean that linguistic analysis is necessary for analysing a topic?

(B3) Does the necessity of linguistic analysis for a topic say anything about the topic's nature?

Seeing as you reacted to the question "were the banker bailouts in 2008 (morally) right?" strongly, affirming that it is a classic example for linguistic analysis, what was it about the question that made you believe it was necessary (if you believed it was necessary) to approach it through that lens?

And moreover, to what extent are these features generalisable? Can you use them more abstractly as indicators that linguistic analysis is necessary (or profitable) in a circumstance? And moreover, if that is true, how can you transfer those indicators to philosophical discussion more generally? — fdrake

I think in all these cases, to put a Wittgensteinian spin on it, the background is sufficiently well known and the language games supported within it are sufficiently well travelled that analysing how people use words isn't required to clarify the domain studied; people know what the sense of touch is and universities are. Moreover, inventing concepts to explain things here is important (like, say, Lakatos' "research program" or Foucault's "episteme", or Clark's "extended mind" and Gibson's "affordance"); analysing how things work usually requires some new vocabulary, which stands or falls upon the accuracy and perspicacity it describes its target and the utility it provides in its analysis, — fdrake

whether such understanding is sufficient to allow one to infer, based also upon the associated environment of usage, the object of reference — Vessuvius

As I understand it, in this context, it would mean that a clarification of meaning is required that would help resolve an argument, or at least clarify a philosophical problem. These kinds of issues arise all the time, especially in a philosophical forum. Rarely are there threads where such clarifications would not benefit the discussion. — Sam26

Insofar as linguistic analysis can be understood to be an autonomous practice, its remit is entirely negative: it acts like rails at the bowling alley, making sure that what counts as the object of analysis remains unequivocal. — StreetlightX

the exception being when we lose track of the motivations and purposes behind the uses of concepts and start reifying them (to take an example from the PI: when 'stand roughly here' becomes decoupled from the purpose of 'being able to find you again when I come back' and we engage in the fool's errand of trying to delimit the scope of 'here' in precise terms in order to understand what it means). — StreetlightX

Can we doubt most of this information? No. Why? Because the very tools for understanding the world around us, our words and concepts, come from others. If we doubted most of it, we would be reduced to silence. Our culture and other cultures succeed because of the truthfulness of most of what is conveyed to us. This is not to say that we should trust everything we read or hear, because sometimes there are good reasons to doubt what is said or written. — Sam26

as if language existed in pristine isolation as a system of meaning unto itself. — StreetlightX

As an example, Austin's analysis of the argument from illusion (for perceptual anti-realism, specifically used to argue for sense-datum theories). The original argument goes like: we see a stick half submerged in water, it appears bent. The stick has not really bent as immersion in the water does not bend it. The bending of the stick in the water is equivalent, insofar as it generates a perception, to seeing a stick really bent in that manner. Since a perception of the stick appearing to bend in water is sensorially equivalent to a perception of the stick bending outside water in precisely the same way, we do not see reality as it is; we see appearances, construable as sense data.

Austin intervenes in the argument by, among other things, pointing out that it is fully consistent to say "Yes, we see a stick which appears bent", undermining the equivocation of appearance and perception used to establish the equivalence of the "really bent stick" perception from the "bent stick in water" appearance (there's more to the argument of course).

The internal tension highlighted is the elision of perception and appearance through a shifting of vocabulary, which when criticised dispels the force of the argument by revealing unstated, implausible premises. — fdrake

The internal tension highlighted is the elision of perception and appearance through a shifting of vocabulary, which when criticised dispels the force of the argument by revealing unstated, implausible premises. — fdrake

So relying upon such a connection by virtue of seeing it as relevant alone construes language and world as something which is given and self interpreting; it is some way or the other, and if this is not seen in the case being analysed, that is a problem of someone's understanding rather than a problem of the methodology. In broad terms, the applicability of connections like Wittgenstein's knowledge-doubt one rests upon a privileged domain in which terms are imbued their meaning, and a connection to this domain is only ensured if you follow the pattern of argument in the knowledge-doubt (or like) analysis. It stops being a methodology using language, and reifies a particular interpretation of language as language, without the mechanisms of contextualisation that it espouses. Linguistic analysis comes (or can come) to police sense rather than clarify it. — fdrake

So it's entirely the case that when "the background is sufficiently well known and the language games supported within it are sufficiently well travelled ... analysing how people use words isn't required to clarify the domain studied" - the exception being when we lose track of the motivations and purposes behind the uses of concepts and start reifying them (to take an example from the PI: when 'stand roughly here' becomes decoupled from the purpose of 'being able to find you again when I come back' and we engage in the fool's errand of trying to delimit the scope of 'here' in precise terms in order to understand what it means). — StreetlightX

have in mind an analogy between Kant's critique of metaphysics and the doctrine of transcendental illusion. Roughly, a transcendental illusion is an error of reasoning where a confusion occurs between necessary relations between concepts and necessary relations between things. What is particularly interesting here is that transcendental illusions are internal to the concept of reason; reasoning generates transcendental illusions through a tendency to take the objects as they are analysed as the objects themselves. The content of the transcendental illusion; what it concerns; is irrelevant to the character of the formal error of reasoning. — fdrake

For this reason, when it happens that there exists only a single word to express a certain conception, and this word, in its usual acceptation, is thoroughly adequate to the conception, the accurate distinction of which from related conceptions is of great importance, we ought not to employ the expression improvidently, or, for the sake of variety and elegance of style, use it as a synonym for other cognate words. — Mww

objects and concepts are the same type of thing — Metaphysician Undercover

don’t think concepts are shared. Concepts are mental stuff, yes, but the source of all immanent conceptions, the only ones to which words properly belong, because they relate to possible experience, is understanding, and, just as in consciousness, understanding is never shared; — Mww

Concepts, in and of themselves, have a purpose and thereby a use, but not a description. If we find words where there should be concepts, we’re doing something very wrong; — Mww

Rational evidence would seem to be necessary, nonetheless; — Mww

Why would you say that? How are they the same type of thing? — Mww

both concepts and objects are created by the application of boundaries. — Metaphysician Undercover

symbols or words have no necessary referent — Metaphysician Undercover

both concepts and objects are created by the application of boundaries. — Metaphysician Undercover

Descriptions and definitions are propositions composed of words; words represent concepts; therefore concepts describe and define concepts, which is impossible. A concept cannot define itself. If a concept cannot define itself, and if the reality of it is given, it must represent that which can be defined, but only as the means to facilitate the possibility of communication. We have no need of definitions in pure thought. — Mww

Without using words (representations of concepts), can you distinguish cats from dogs? — Harry Hindu

Apples and oranges come from trees not horticulture. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm all too happy to maintain that philosophers have long known that this is exactly what what happens in their discourse, and that Witty was simply making explicit what every competent philosopher has known implicitly since time immemorial (Wittgenstein projected, as it were, his own naivety onto the philosophers whom he never read). — StreetlightX

Honestly now, when you see a dog, do you really use words to tell yourself what you just saw wasn’t a cat? — Mww

In your mind, you have a description of a cat that isn't composed of representations, but of the actual physical characteristics that make a cat different than a dog, and anything else. — Harry Hindu

You know......people talk so damn much, they think that’s all they ever do. And because when they talk, they use words, so they think words are all there are. If, as you say, the source of the thing is distinct from the thing itself, it follows necessarily that the source of a word is distinct from the word itself, which grants that the concept is presented in the word or represented by the word, which either way immediately subsumes the word under the antecedent concept. — Mww

Descriptions and definitions are propositions composed of words; words represent concepts; therefore concepts describe and define concepts, which is impossible — Mww

We have no need of definitions in pure thought. You know...pure thought....that thing we do when we’re not so busy talking. — Mww

The only way I see this working, is if the boundaries applied are the categories, specifically the category of quantity and modality. — Mww

Still, I’d hesitate to grant application of the categories creates anything, — Mww

.I’m going to reject the assertion that we create objects, — Mww

You've said that "the concept and the object are one and the same thing" and that "both...are created by the application of boundaries". Apples and oranges are not the same thing, despite both being created by trees (the object, not the concept). — Luke