GRICE'S PLAY GROUP

  It would be fastidious to list the members of what Grice called with pride 'The Play Group.' 

They met under the leadership of Austin, well into after Austin's death ('a couple of years') so this 'leadership' thing has to be taken 'loosely' and not as an article of faith as Austin biographer M. Rowe does in his self-appointed 'first biography of J. L. and all the Austins'!

Grice of course played before the War.

After the War, the routine was to meet on Saturday mornings -- something unthinkable today when most dons are drunk at Covent Garden rather!

One regulation, that Grice kept, was that everybody had to be YOUNGER than Austin -- the old one.

The list is best arranged alphabetically. It seems this is Rowe's intention, but it fails, since it lists Strawson after Mary Warnock!

Also, Mary Warnock is OUT, since she belongs in Somerville.

The Play Group

Partial alphabetical list of full-time philosophy dons: 

J. L. Austin

So, this is

AUSTIN, J. L. -- born in Lancashire, educated at a public school. Nobody could be older than HE was!

M. Dick

So this is

DICK, M.

Yes, it is a funny English surname, but there's nothing you can do about it. His claim to fame was his lesbian daughter!

P. N. Gardiner

GARDINER, P. N. GRICE happens to quote an anecdote involving Gardiner with Nowell-Smith in the role of the straight man. This involved Gardiner being bribed by a Greek student. 'I wasn't sure what to say!' -- 'No, thanks, of course -- a Balkanic pupil requires no more! Simopoulos took note but kept shut, since he was on the outskirts of it all. Austin surely ignored his judgement on English usage from a first-generation resident!

H. P. Grice (St. John’s) 

SO this is

GRICE, H. P. -- MY CLAIM is that it was Grice's role that mattered. Austin was too full of himself. Warnock mentions that Austin liked best St. John's as a meeting place, since the room that Grice procured made them look like executives -- or 'Martians,' in Austin's parlance.

GRICE MORE THAN ANYBODY and surely more than Austin, ELABORATED ON THIS. Alas, Rowe is too busy finding the ancestors of Austen and Austin to care, and he is no philosopher either but a teacher of English from Yorkshire.

ROWE DOESN'T EVEN care to cite the profuse bibiography by Grice himself on this, part in The Grice Collection, part in his 'Prejudices and predilections' published by the Clarendon Press well before Rowe was even thinking of a biography of Austin.

S. N. Hampshire

So this is

HAMPSHIRE, S. N. -- Hampshire had belonged to Austin's little play group that met on Thursday evenings at All All Souls so by the time the Hun were killed, he was DONE with Austin and his little perverse games. Grice notes that the first meetings of the PLAY GROUP were ex professo NOT about philosophy, but, say, 'rule.' "It was only later that we directed our attention to philosophy." BY THAT TIME, HAMPSHIRE WAS GONE AND LOST!

R. M. Hare

So this is

HARE, R. M. He has the courtesy of citing Grice in his 'Mind' paper with regard to 'conversational implicature,' as Oxford well knows! But Hare knew that the more he got into deontic logic the more he was going to suffer! Eventually he retired to Florida!

Grice cites the 'neustic'/phrastic thing, but doesn't even care to mention it is Hare's!

H. L. A. Hart

So this is 

HART, H. L. A. -- A Jew, and as such, not really part of the Oxford Establishment. Hart was terrorised by Grice, but he has the courtesy of citing him in his revew of Holloway for the Philosophical Quarterly. Hart never felt he was either English or a philosopher, but more of a laywer -- as a lot of Jews are -- having practised at London before coming back to Oxford. He lacked a sense of humour.

A. M. Honoré

So this is 

Honoré, A. M. ANOTHER JEW -- and thus no part of the Oxford Establishment. Oddly, he had been like Grice to Clifton, but slept in the Jewish House. Like Hart, he knew he wasn't a philosopher or English, but more of a laywer, as most Jews are.

J. R. Lucas

So this is

LUCAS, J. R. He lacked a sense of humour. And this is an interesting figure to consider since neither Grice nor Austin quote him, so how are we setting the criteria to say that LUCAS belonged to the GROUP?

There are affinities, and the only way is to survey his publications and see in what way what he says touches on things that would have interested Grice (A figure to compare is O. P. Wood: in a review for Mind he dwells on the implicatures of 'or,' but Wood belonged to RYLE'S GROUP, or as Grice would have it, 'gravitated' towards Ryle. Grice has the courtesy of citing him in Remarks about the Senses, and Wood discussed the Play Group with Grice on occasions which Wood finds very entertaining. -- but not a play group member, by any means!

B. F. McGuinness

So this is 

McGuinness -- a Celt, and as such not really part o the English establishment.

B. G. Mitchell

So this is 

MITCHELL, B. G. -- a monk, almost, and thus not really part of the English establishment.

P. H. Nowell- Smith

So this is

NOWELL-SMITH, P. H.

The Nowell is a poetic license. He is just 

SMITH

He adopted his father's first name for status. He was, like Hart, and Hare, terrorised by Grice, and Austin, and soon left for the girlie establisment that was Canterbury.

WHAT IS INTERESTING is that the contribution of Grice to all this is his bunch of 'principles of discourse,' and Nowell-Smith, albeit artificially, plays with them in his Ethics. An Italian wrote a whole essay on the comparison between the implicature and the implication!

G. A. Paul

So this is 

PAUL, G. A. -- A Scot, and thus not really part of English philosophy. A failed yachtsman too, he would have contributed more, but he died after catching pneumonia after a stupid expedition onto the North Sea.

D. F. Pears

So this is

PEARS, D. F. -- possibly a homosexual, but charming. THIS IS ONE OF THE FEW WITH WHOM GRICE COLLABORATED: the others being of course STRAWSON (the first in Grice's mention), AUSTIN, and THOMPSON, and Warnock. GRICE notes that with Pears and Thomson he collaborated on work on the philosophy of action. 

This had to do with 'seminars,' which are silly things don undertake for the diversion of pupils, but which have no grading system, and no contribution. Grice was interested in Pears's recollections of predicting and deciding, and Pears has the decency to refer to Grice's work on the conversational implicature of 'if' as 'iff' in a paper written for a colonial journal -- of Canada.

J. Simopoulos

So this is

SIMOPOULOS. Grice once said 'Hi' to him.

P. F. Strawson

So this is 

STRAWSON, P. F. -- Grice was VERY LUCKY to have a P. P. E. pupil render him so many honours after being constantly abused by Grice. Strawson wrote the obituary for Grice for the TIMES (with the stupid title, 'Professional philosopher and amateur cricketer') but more importantly, with Wiggins, gave the entry for Grice for the British Academy. Also important is his contribution to P. G. R. I. C. E., the Grice festschrift, were Strawson does not even care to retype the thing and thus keeps referring, to the mockery of Bennett, as the 'unpublished' work on implicature. In a way he is right, since it is only the FOURTH lecture at Harvard that deals with 'if', and Grice kept working on that till 1987.

With Grice he gave seminars on Meaning at Oxford ('The Banbury seminars') and they collaborated in "in Defense of a dogma.' -- and in 'Metaphysics,' in Pears, The nature of metaphysics -- along with Pears himself. 

J. F. Thomson

SO this is

THOMSON, J. F. His claim to fame being an alcoholic who married an American Jewess -- Judith Jarvis, but he was very intelligent, and gave seminars with Grice on the philosophy of action, and defended the horse shoe for the a colonial publication (Journal of Philosophy). A genius, plain and simple.

J. O. Urmson

So this is 

URMSON, J. O. -- a gem. From Harrogate, aristocratic Harrogate. Grice quotes him in "Meaning and Intentions" -- Urmson had proposed a case of bribery as a counterexample, so Grice amended his necessity clause to deal with 'reason' and not just 'cause' -- he provokes Urmson by setting his example of bribery in terms of thumbscrews. Urmson will write the obituary for Grice for THE INDEPENDENT, but rarely saw Grice even when he was brain-drained to Stanford. 

As with Nowell Smith and Strawson ("Identifying reference" with his principle of ignorance, knowledge, and relevance), Urmson plays with the idea of a scale ('know' as stronger than 'believe') and more importantly with the principles of apositeness ('Intensionality,' Aristotelian Society: Julia's wife just delivered the mail -- you mean the mail or post man), and relevance, and maxims of carefulness, etc. 

G. J. Warnock

So this is

WARNOCK, G. J. -- a gem, if Irish. Grice loved him, and the Irishness about him -- "He doesn't look Irish, like his brother so rudely does!". WARNOCK understood that he shared with Grice this LOVE for minutiae, and his 'Saturday mornings' is a tribute to Grice rather than Austin. Warnock felt, like Urmson did, the burden of having to BE the Austin specialists -- perhaps more than Urmson did. But Warnock wanted to play, and found it difficult. His seminars with Grice on 'I just saw a visum of a cow' were attended by Austin. And using transference, Warnock notes what a FLINCHING experience the Austin presence in a PUBLIC occasion (unlike the play group meetings) could be!

And so on.