Contextualism is the circumstance in which language occurs and it's relation to the complete complex of compresence and given lexicon. It would be a neat trick to say that language and concepts depend on the language meanings and that meanings and language depend on the occassion of use circumstantially as if word meanings popped up from the ground itself to put words in the mouths of speakers. Contextualism probably should not be transmografied into empirical realism (an oxymoron).
Words ought to be used for pragmatic purposes rather than for theoretical juxtapositions and relationships as if they were mathematical entities in Platonic realist states as lexical quanta in orbits. Skepticism is great. Vanishing temporal phenomenalism. Everyone in the 20th century offered refutations of Descartes it seemed, for one reason or another. Descartes' method was a correct tool for the day to get people thinking about the nature of things and it worked quite well. It still is useful. Verification of propositional knowledge between words, objects, events and ideas is conditional.
Questions of deontic, alethic and epistemic modality may be formalized yet remain subjectively considered and the context is constructed too. Maybe existential-dialectical power could be quantified and contextualized in unified utilitarian-pragmatism.
Words have an Occam's razor origin about them. If the tiger running one's way at full speed needs to be confirmed to be a tiger with salient contextual relevance and proven through elimination of alternative explanations that are relevant that could take some time. Nature early in the history of mankind may have filtered out souls from the world of physical being that spent too much time eliminating the posibility of error in their naming objects. A woman was consumed by a 21 foot snake recently, and another women by an alligator in Florida. Reality tends to act heterodoxically with namimg and necessaity. For a philosophical lexicon one must develop contexts for the use of philosophical language. One may do that, yet physics and metaphysics seem to be a large measure of the content. Words are like paint that may be used to form an accurate picture or not as the artist's capacity and will allows.
Austin wrote on page 159 of Other Minds : "The wile of the metaphysician consists in asking "Is it a real table ?" (a kind of object which has no obvious way of being phoney) and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that I feel at a loss" how to prove" it is a real one.* It is the use of the word"real" in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that "real" has a single meaning ("the real world" "material objects"), and that a highly profound and puzzling one."
I believe Austin was referring to Bertrand Russel's Essay on Metaphysics where Russell went at some length considering the meaning of table and examing the reality of a table as well as what the word real means. In 'Other Minds' Austin in effect goes on about verifying language in word and object relationship, and states of affairs in order to test the truth or falsity of proposition. Maybe its because people know more about quantum theory these days that it's harder to take Austin's paradigm for objects and attributes of objects naively. It is a very old philosophical line of inquiry.
People know what an object is and the way words are applied to describe it, or even work with it. I believe it was W.V.O. Quine that wrote about words as addresses of meanings in a lexicon (Ontological Relativity). Force or energy exists Universally and is in quanta in various relationships of motion. Wave function collapse and quantum decoherence lock quanta from all possible positions into a steady state of entaglement with like particles. Quanta in the steady state comprise matter in various forms that may be perceived as objects by rational beings and others able to interpret that data in such configuration. One can know as much about the unified field as one can and that is the object of philosophical and physical interest. The art of reasoning, the art of naming accurately and the art of knowing mechanics like chess are played better by some than others.
One knows that substance exists such as quarks or strings and that in a steady state of entanglement after the Schrodinger and wavefunction collapse and quantum decoherence matter exist in forms of various kinds that people can perceive or not depending on the context of their faculties. What a forest is like unto itself when no reasoning being is in it, no one knows except God. It is possible to construct words and understand and express relations about the forms within the steady state field as well as one can. The value is live.
Skepticism vs Certainty in language and the correspondence to word and objects brings a hazy uncetainty that may be part of the nature of things, so one chooses to use probabilities. With Pierce one might use language trielectically to attempt to discover new things and it potentially could be productive; at least for an A.I. constructing with tremendous power a vast number of theoretical propositions about the unknown.
I have been influenced quite a lot by the linguistic philosophy of W.V.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, P.F. Strawson and others. Word and Object by Quine and Individuals by Strawson consider subjective epistemology vs empiricism. Quine wrote The Two Dogmas of Empiricism that invalidated the empiricist outlook convincingly. The boundary between intentional and extensional thought and words are never concisely delineated as empiricists prefer. Words and knowledge about 'external objects' are made from thought too. One cannot just speak about external objects as if were not also defined with the mind. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle regarding the observer effect on quantum states is consistent with the ambiguous linguistic paradigm for epistemology.
Quine's 'Ontological Relativity and Other Essays' describe language lexicon-Universes existing each within their own ontology. Each lexicon or ontology is self-standing and the terms are not imbued with an element of Platonic realism about them. To a certain extent words and word phrases in some epistemological debates chase around lexical meanings and agreements. A goldfinch or any other perceptible bird-as-an-object is what it is regardless of what it is perceived One may use Sartre's terms well here about objects in-themselves, for-themselves and for-others. Two philosophers perceiving an elephant each might believe it either a goldfinch or a woodpecker variously, and be wrong about the object in-itself though in agreement that they are correct..
Language truth values in corresponding words to objects have functional accuracy value rather than truth for-itself. A truth theory such as correspondence theory wherein accurate and commonly associated word relations to objects determine the truth of propositions about actual objects perceived, has pragmatic communication value instead of transcendent accuracy. Who wants to name an iceberg the Rub al Khali desert? That is only right considering the paradigm of humanity existing within a quantum Higgs field wherein Adam was given to assign names to everything for-himself.
Austin's excerpt from Other Minds pages 147-187 seems to be more about the way language is used and they way certain terms such as 'to know' are meant in the context of their use rather than an investigation into the nature of mass, energy, physics, metaphysics or the mind and its place in nature or existence.
