Austin's papers were collected and published posthumously as
Philosophical Papers by J. O. Urmson and Geoffrey Warnock. The book originally contained ten papers, two more being added in the second edition and one in the third. His paper Excuses has had a massive impact on criminal law theory.
"Are there A Priori Concepts?"
This early paper contains a broad criticism of Idealism. The question set dealing with the existence of
a priori concepts is treated only indirectly, by dismissing the concept of
concept that underpins it.
The first part of this paper takes the form of a reply to an argument for the existence of Universals: from observing that we do use words such as "grey" or "circular" and that we use a single term in each case, it follows that there must be a
something that is named by such terms - a universal. Furthermore, since each case of "grey" or "circular" is different, it follows that universals
themselves cannot be sensed.
Austin carefully dismantles this argument, and in the process other transcendental arguments. He points out first that universals are not "something we stumble across", and that they are
defined by their relation to particulars. He continues by pointing out that, from the observation that we use "grey" and "circular" as if they were the names of things, it simply
does not follow that there is something that is named. In the process he dismisses the notion that "words are essentially proper names", asking "...why, if 'one identical' word is used,
must there be 'one identical object' present which it denotes".
In the second part of the article, he generalizes this argument against universals to address concepts as a whole. He points out that it is "facile" to treat concepts as if they were "an article of property". Such questions as "Do we possess such-and-such a concept" and "how do we come to possess such-and-such a concept" are meaningless, because concepts are not the sort of thing that one possesses.
In the final part of the paper, Austin further extends the discussion to relations, presenting a series of arguments to reject the idea that there is some
thing that is a relation. His argument likely follows from the conjecture of his colleague, S. V. Tezlaf, who questioned what makes "this" "that".
"The Meaning of a Word"
The Meaning of a Word is a polemic against doing philosophy by attempting to pin down the
meaning of the words used; for 'there is
no simple and handy appendage of a word called "the meaning of the word (x)"'. Austin warns us to take care when removing words from their ordinary usage, giving numerous examples of how this can lead to error.
"Other Minds"
One of Austin's most highly acclaimed pieces. In it he criticizes the method which philosophers have used since Descartes to analyze and verify statements of the form “That person S feels X.” This method works from the following three assumptions:
(1) We can know only if we intuit and directly feel what he feels.(2) It is impossible to do so.(3) It may be possible to find strong evidence for belief in our impressions.
Although Austin agrees with (2), quipping that “we should be in a pretty predicament if I did”, he found (1) to be false and (3) to be therefore unnecessary. The background assumption to (1), Austin claims, is that if I say that I know X and later find out that X is false, I did not know it. Austin believes that this is not in line with the way we actually use language. He claims that if I was in a position where I would normally say that I know X, if X should turn out to be false, I would be speechless rather than self-corrective. He gives an argument that this is so by suggesting that believing is to knowing as intending is to promising... knowing and promising are the speech-act versions of believing and intending respectively.
"A Plea For Excuses"
"A Plea For Excuses" is both a demonstration by example, and a defense of the methods of ordinary language philosophy, which proceeds on the conviction that:
An example of such a distinction Austin describes in a footnote is that between the phrases "by mistake" and "by accident". Although their uses are similar, Austin argues that with the right examples we can see that a distinction exists in when one or the other phrase is appropriate.
Austin proposes some curious philosophical tools. For instance, he uses a sort of word game for developing an understanding of a key concept. This involves taking up a dictionary and finding a selection of terms relating to the key concept, then looking up each of the words in the explanation of their meaning. This process is iterated until the list of words begins to repeat, closing in a “family circle” of words relating to the key concept.