Abstract
‘Why does language matter to philosophy?’ is the name of a minor classic by Ian
Hacking published in 1975. It’s a good question. Among the many charges laid
against academic philosophy, one of the more familiar is that it concerns itself
excessively with verbal or ‘merely semantic’ questions, at the expense of the real
questions of philosophy. And yet those who have made a serious attempt to engage
with philosophical problems quite soon finds themselves grappling with the very
words they use to formulate the problems.