Six Theses about Language and Philosophy

The format is a little goofy, because I pasted it from an email. I've changed nothing from the email text which means it was written on the fly, but reading over it I think I endorse it in essentials (as clarified in such a manner as to be clearly true of course). :-)~

1. 
   There is a fact of the matter
   as to the “rules” governing the application of terms. This is “logical”
   fact. It uses the same basic ramseyfication maneuver Lewis and other Humeans
   use for natural laws.


2. 
   Based on this fact I make an
   inference to the best explanation, that the generally consistent pattern is
   not the result of chance, but language users (not necessarily) conscious grasp
   of those “rules” not unlike a realist about laws.


3. 
   That people break from the
   pattern when they are asked to think about the rules I take to be evidence
   that they are not good at consciously representing those rules. Since the
   rules are simply generalizations over instances—pretty much exactly like a
   humean supervenience view of natural laws—to diverge from them *just is*
   to mistake what it was that was guiding them.


4. 
   What is guiding them, in my
   view, is the possession of concepts that words express. It is not the case
   that we can consciously think well about concepts we possess. We acquire the
   concepts by linguistic socialization. We are taught how to use words by our
   community. We are almost never told rules of application. We are just
   observers of applications, initially paradigm instances and then later fringe
   cases.


5. 
   Since language skill is a
   kind of know-how, there is no expectation of ability to articulate the rules.
   This is a general feature of know-how. I couldn’t begin to tell you how I
   throw a Frisbee so damn well. In fact, when I try to pay attention to what it
   is the ability vanishes. Every time I formulate a theory about the rules of
   Frisbee throwing and test them I find I’ve failed. I’m not much more sanguine
   about terms (for non-scientists). There are of course exceptions, I’m an
   expert bike rider and though much of it is ineffable, some things I think I’ve
   figured out and have justified beliefs about what the rules are.


6. 
   I think ordinary language
   terms are often ultimately incoherent. I think this is the lesson of many
   logical, semantic, and metaphysical paradoxes. I think this is not surprising
   because of how I think language is acquired, by application to paradigm
   instances and then further and further extensions therefrom. As a result, my
   philosophical methodology is closest to Carnap’s “explication.” See Maher’s
   “Defense of Explication” and his lecture notes on line for a good defense of
   explication.