Avashai Margalit, "Open Texture"

The intension of a sentence should be a function only from those worlds that are compatible with our "hard core" beliefs to truth values, not from all possible worlds. Open texture is the fact that the set of hard core beliefs is "fuzzy", so it won't be obvious whether certain worlds are compatible with them or not, and so there will be situations where we can grasp the meaning of a sentence and still not know whether or not it applies in a particular world.

Mark Lance and Margaret Little, "Defeasibility and the Normative Grasp of Context"

Defeasible generalizations like "normally, the appearance that p justifies that p" should not be understood as merely statistical generalizations, or as enthymemes (with a supressed exceptionless premise). They are genuinely explanatory, even though exception-laden.

G.A. Cohen, "Deeper into Bullshit"

Frankfurt's account of bullshit is only a partial account; he characterizes the essence of bullshit that comes from an intentional indifference to truth, whereas there is another kind of bullshit that needn't be intentionally produced. This other kind of bullshit is that which is unclarifiable. A rough test for this kind of bullshit is if affixing (or removing) a negation sign to the text under scrutiny does not affect "its level of plausibility".

Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense"

Truth, when not tautological, is an illusion. We pursue truth not for its own sake, but for its "agreeable, life-preserving consequences".

Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit

The essence of bullshit is indifference to the truth.

Friedrich Waismann, "How I See Philosophy"

Philosophy doesn't provide answers to questions, it finds sense for the questions to have, or shows how they lack sense. Philosophers don't explain anything, because to try to explain something would only push the demand for further explanation back a step. Figures of speech present in ordinary language (like "the flow of time") contribute to philosophical perplexity.

Stanley Cavell, "The Ordinary as the Uneventful"

The Annales historians oppose a traditional history focused on great events, focusing instead on long term social change. Paul Ricoeur claims that the Annales historians think they can do history without reference to events, but that they are mistaken, because all forms of narrative presuppose some conception of events. But a better way to understand what the Annales historians are up to is to see them as not trying to avoid events altogether, but as interested in the uneventful, the ordinary.

Sören Stenlund, Language and Philosophical Problems, Chapter 2: "Notions of Language and Theories of Meaning"

There are two approaches to the study of meaning: an a priori approach, concerned with the "conceptual" conditions for the possibility of meaning (exemplified by Frege and the early Wittgenstein), and an empirical, naturalistic, approach, which dominates contemporary discussions of meaning. The naturalistic approach, while suitable for certain kinds of limited clarifications, when applied to fundamental questions about the nature of language and meaning, produces confusions. The basic mistake of the empirical approach is to assume that expressions of ordinary language have sense independently of the practices in which they are used. And the practices in which expressions are used are fundamental; they can't be explained in more basic terms. Any attempted explanation will presuppose what it tries to explain.

Sören Stenlund, Language and Philosophical Problems, Chapter 1: "Language, Mind and Machines"

There are a number of conceptual confusions involved in standard formal approaches to the study of mind and language, including a tendency to assume that a formal calculus is actually present (in some sense) in ordinary practice, or somehow explains that practice. Formal calculi are valuable for particular activities, but they are no help in understanding language or mind as a whole.

Rush Rhees, "Wittgenstein's Builders"

Speaking a language involves more than participating in language games; speaking a language involves having something to say, which requires an ability to see connections between language games.

Pär Segerdahl, Language Use, Chapter 16, "Presuppositions and Methods of Linguistics"

Explaining failures of use by way of presupposition failure is to mistake a linguistic form of description for actual use. Talk of presuppositions makes sense only against a background of normal use. We should aim for a careful description of linguistic practice, not an explanation of it.

Pär Segerdahl, Language Use, Chapter 14, "The Semantic Reading and Indirect Speech"

The notion of the "literal meaning" of a sentence is dependent on applying a particular semantic theory of language to language use. It is a mistake to think that the system of representation that we have for language (a semantic theory, e.g.) is actually in the language itself.

Pär Segerdahl, Language Use, Chapter 13, "Intentions and Beliefs as Conditions for Use"

The picture of language according to which external, lifeless signs need to be supplemented by inner processes, like belief or intention, is a misleading picture. Words have significance in use, and the need for a theory of speaker intentions is occasioned by nothing more than the misleading picture of external, lifeless marks and sounds.

Pär Segerdahl, Language Use, Chapter 12, "Language vs. Languages and Philosophy vs. Linguistics"

The activity of language use cannot be reconstructed using the formal techniques of linguistics and philosophy of language; words only have significance in that they are used in particular activities.

Charles Travis, Thought's Footing, Chapter 1

The truth conditional content of a sentence is determined by the role of the sentence in a language game (this can be put as the slogan: "content is inseparable from point").