In this article, I argue that the later Wittgenstein’s related conclusions regarding the importance of a non-theoretical understanding of human behaviour and the essentially therapeutic function of philosophy can be arrived at without subscribing either to the position that description and explanation are necessarily distinct activities or the idea that language is an inherently rule-based activity operating within determinate conceptual-cultural regimes. I aim to do so by bringing together two figures, A.R. Louch and Roy Harris, both of whom stand within (...) a post-Wittgensteinian tradition, but whose kindred yet hitherto unconnected departures from the orthodoxy of that tradition render their work not only distinctive but all the more compelling for it. I shall try to exhibit the affinity between Louch and Harris by means of an expository discussion of the former’s thesis regarding the role and form of explanation in the social and behavioural sciences, followed by an account of explanation in linguistic inquiry consistent with the latter’s ‘integrationist’ philosophy of language and communication. I will also claim that the thought of both Louch and Harris points towards a form of atheoretical empiricism in the investigation of human action, as well as a broadly therapeutic conception of philosophical and linguistic inquiry respectively. However, I will suggest that such a conception is not necessarily best served by the adoption of an overtly therapeutic rhetoric. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the later Wittgenstein’s related conclusions regarding the importance of a non-theoretical understanding of human behaviour and the essentially therapeutic function of philosophy can be arrived at without subscribing either to the position that description and explanation are necessarily distinct activities or the idea that language is an inherently rule-based activity operating within determinate conceptual-cultural regimes. I aim to do so by bringing together two figures, A.R. Louch and Roy Harris, both of whom stand within (...) a post-Wittgensteinian tradition, but whose kindred yet hitherto unconnected departures from the orthodoxy of that tradition render their work not only distinctive but all the more compelling for it. I shall try to exhibit the affinity between Louch and Harris by means of an expository discussion of the former’s thesis regarding the role and form of explanation in the social and behavioural sciences, followed by an account of explanation in linguistic inquiry consistent with the latter’s ‘integrationist’ philosophy of language and communication. I will also claim that the thought of both Louch and Harris points towards a form of atheoretical empiricism in the investigation of human action, as well as a broadly therapeutic conception of philosophical and linguistic inquiry respectively. However, I will suggest that such a conception is not necessarily best served by the adoption of an overtly therapeutic rhetoric. (shrink)

Theoretical questions concerning language and communication figure prominently throughout the work of the Czech-British social philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner. The article traces the development of Gellner’s linguistic thought from his early, controversial engagements with Ordinary Language Philosophy to his responses to Chomsky’s work in linguistics and his late-career assessments of Wittgenstein and particularly Malinowski whose – subsequently repudiated – view of the fundamental difference between the alleged “primitive” and “scientific” functions of language turns out to play a central explanatory (...) role in Gellner’s renowned theory of nationalism. The key to understanding Gellner’s thinking on language is to grasp both his adherence to a “telementational” model of communication and his scientism. This leads him to embrace the view that modern national cultures are predicated upon an industrial-scientific mode of cognition which both requires and entails a radically distinctive metaphysics of communication, namely one which allows for the conveyance of culture-transcending, “context-free” conceptual content. This, I claim, is a serious error which stems in large part from a misdiagnosis of the cognitive and communicative consequences of literacy and in particular a failure to correctly apprehend what linguist Roy Harris has termed the “autoglottic space” engendered by the availability of writing. (shrink)

Collected papers on philosophy of linguistics, sociolinguistics and language planning, including papers on the languages of African immigrants, language policy and planning in post-apartheid South Africa.