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Austin's ‘Sense and Sensibilia’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Morris Lazerowitz
Affiliation:
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.

Extract

This book was reconstructed by G. J. Warnock from notes Professor J. L. Austin prepared for a course of lectures he first gave in Oxford in Trinity Term, 1947, under the title ‘Problems of Philosophy’. The title was changed to ‘Sense and Sensibilia’ the following year. Mr Warnock deserves to be commended for a piece of work which must have been as difficult as its result is excellent. It is a considerable feat of sympathetic identification to have achieved the kind of continuity and order of thought as well as the stylistic continuity found in the book from the sketchy lecture notes a practised lecturer like Austin would need. Mr Warnock assures the reader in his Foreword that ‘…in all points of substance (and in many points of phraseology) his argument was the argument which this book contains’, and there can be no doubt whatever that Austin's thoughts have been recorded meticulously and with admirable clarity.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1963

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References

page 242 note 1 Sense and Sensibilia. By Austin, J. L.. Reconstructed from the Manuscript Notes by Warnock, G. J.. (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press. 1962. Pp. 144. Price 18s.Google Scholar

page 242 note 2 Austin wishes it to be understood at the outset that he is not going to come out for realism, which he describes as ‘the doctrine that we do perceive material things (or objects)’ (p. 3). Later he states that ‘…few philosophers if any are so brazen as to deny that material things are ever perceived in any “sense” at all…’ (p. 103).Google Scholar

page 244 note 1 Philosophical Papers, p. 180.Google Scholar

page 250 note 1 ‘Phenomenalism’, Philosophical Essays, p. 143.Google Scholar

page 250 note 2 Ibid., p. 141.

page 250 note 3 Ibid., p. 141.

page 251 note 1 Ibid., p. 141.

page 251 note 2 Ibid.