P. F. Strawson Quotes on Knowledge
P. F. Strawson (1919–2006), the leading Oxford philosopher of the postwar generation after Ryle and Austin, gave Anglophone analytic philosophy one of its most influential alternatives to the logically reformist tendencies of Russell and the early Quine in works such as Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (1959) and The Bounds of Sense (1966). The framework defends descriptive metaphysics — the patient analytical articulation of the conceptual structure already at work in ordinary thought and talk — against the revisionist ambition to replace that structure with a more logically transparent successor, and the corresponding analyses of persons as basic particulars and of the framework of objective experience supply some of the most discussed results in the analytic tradition.
Quotes
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Attributed to P. F. Strawson:
“Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe the actual structure of our thought about the world.”
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Attributed to P. F. Strawson:
“It is no use looking for a transcendental deduction in the form of a knock-down argument.”
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“Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic.”
Strawson (1950) On Referring p. 27. -
“Strawson (1950) On Referring p. 27.”
Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic. -
“[A] man who contradicts himself may have succeeded in exercising his vocal chords. But from the point of view of imparting information, of communicating facts (or falsehoods) it is as if he had never opened his mouth. He utters words, but does not say anything.”
p. 2. -
“Part of my aim is to exhibit some general and structural features of the conceptual scheme in terms of which we think about particular things.”
p. 2.