Abstract
Summary Ordinary language philosophers frequently draw on the fact that an appropriately selected sentential combination of the form p but not q can, or cannot, be uttered without absurdity; however, they do so without sufficient reflection on the methodology of such combination tests, which results in considerable shortcomings even in practical application. To improve things, I shall discuss two criteria for distinguishing âpragmaticâ from ânon-pragmaticâ implications and for separating the latter into âlinguisticâ (âsemanticâ and âsyntacticalâ) and ânon-linguisticâ ones (2â3); consider the bearing of the principle of âsense-constancyâ on the applicability of combination tests (4); and call attention to the important, though merely heuristic, function of investigating pragmatic, as opposed to semantic, implications (5.1â5.2). Finally, I shall hint at a striking analogy between the linguistic (yet non-empirical) method of combination tests, the phenomenological method of âfictional variationâ, and the empirical method of âconjectures and refutationsâ (5.3)