Linguistic philosophy takes the view that philosophical problems are problems that may be solved or shown as no problem at all either by reforming the language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use. According to this position the logical structure of our thought is concealed or misrepresented in language. Peculiarities of linguistic form such as analogies, metaphors and similes may misrepresent or conceal the logical structure. Once we appreciate this possibility and once we make the meaning of our words clear and the way they are combined in language explicit, most of the questions would be found as non-questions. Most of the unsolved problems are due to confusions in the way the language is used – the way the questions are asked. The problems must be considered as linguistic confusions, which can be cleared up. This is so because language does not consist only of rules of words, their derivation and use, and their combination according to syntactic constraints but also an enormous number of conventions not expressly formulated but always presupposed in understanding every day language. Formulating and bringing these tacit conventions to consciousness form the process of the clarification of ideas – the basis upon which new ideas are brought out. As we already stated, linguistic philosophy takes the view that philosophical problems are problems that may be solved or shown as no problem at all either by reforming the language, or by understanding more about the language we presently use. This may be done by analysing the meanings of words and the logical relations between them in language. Such an inquiry is pursued to solve many problems related to determinism, scepticism and causation. Linguistic philosophy approach is important for the study of language use in science because it emphasizes, focuses and is based upon the pivotal role of language in the development, analysis, categorization and so on of knowledge. Secondly it is important because it insists upon looking at sentences and their structures as used for the expression of ideas. Linguistic philosophy is not a single, unified school of philosophy, although it has its own characteristics, which mark it different from other schools of thought in philosophy. It is an analytical philosophy. Generally speaking, the approaches of linguistic philosophy can be divided into two, viz., the Ordinary Language Philosophy and the Ideal Language Philosophy. Though these two approaches differ from each other in many respects, they agree in the view that language plays a crucial role in the solution of philosophical problems and that new knowledge is nothing but the clarification of the linguistic usage leading to pertinent questions in the processes of theory construction and experimentation and validation of hypotheses.
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