Villa Speranza: Grice e Speranza

Grice e Speranza

J. L. Speranza

His name was Hope, and he named his villa “Villa Speranza,” not realising that ‘speranza’ is hardly a cognate of the English surname ‘Hope,’ which is a misspelling of ‘hop’!

inplicatura: entanglement. Sid. Ep. Lewis and Short, A Latin dictionary

Aristoteles brachio exerto Xenocrates crure collecto, Heraclitus fletu oculis clausis Democritus risu labris apertis, Chrysippus digitis propter numerorum indicia constrictis, Euclides propter mensurarum spatia laxatis, Cleanthes propter utrumque corrosis quin potius experietur, quisque conflixerit, Stoicos Cynicos Peripateticos haeresiarchas propriis armis, propriis quoque concuti machinamentis. nam sectatores eorum, Christiano dogmati ac sensui si repugnaverint, mox te magistro ligati vernaculis implicaturis in retia sua precipites implagabuntur […]. Sidonius, Epistulae.

Abstract. Some of us have been engaged in the philosophy of H. P. Grice for some time. There’s something about implicatue, you know! In these notes, the avowed intention – never likely to be fulfilled, as Grice well knew -- is to place Grice, his implicature, and his significance – in both ways the expression ca be used -- within the broader philosophical context, with special emphasis in the philosophy of language. In short: a move from St. John’s!

Keywords: implicature, meaning, signification.

A note about the title. Some time ago, I started a series of notes systematically titled ‘Grice e …’ where the dots were filled by this or that Italian philosopher. It was my attempt at following Grice’s respect for the longitudinal unity of philosophy! But the phrase stuck. I wouldn’t be vernacular enough to explore ‘Grice e Austin,’ where that should surely read ‘Grice AND Austin’, but when it comes to Benedetto Croce, ‘e’ sounded, er, so much, er, euphonic!

When H. P. Grice, the Englishman from Harborne – in what was originally Staffordshire, but Warwickshire by the time he had been born there -- started his serious study of philosophy, as he put it – Speranza never did! – Grice mentions his good fortune in having that Scot tutor, Hardie -- to teach him how to argue. Speranza didn’t!

It was however early in his studies in philosophy that Speranza came across Grice.

It was early in my philosophical studies that I came across Grice – or rather, I should say, Austin. In the standard histories of philosophy – and such is a requirement in any philosophical curriculum for any philosopher worth his name – it is -isms that fascinate the historian of philosophy. So Hartnack, for example, goes on to subdivide ‘ordinary-language philosophy’ – as a method rather than a body of doctrine -- as comprising Ryle’s senior group, and the junior group led by Austin.

So I knew what I was going for!

In the syllabus of most ‘philosophy of language’ – when it comes to the body of doctrines, rather than the method -- courses there will be a unit or two on ‘meaning and intention’ – I came to regard this as ‘significatio,’ rather – followed perhaps by one on ‘implication versus implicature.’

But the systematic treatment of Grice is hardly necessary in any philosophy curriculum outside Oxford – or even especially WITHIN Oxford, since it was anathema, in Grice’s generation, to quote OTHER Oxford philosophers! What they NEEDED to quote was ‘ordinary language’!

Grice went from Scholar at Corpus – four years – under Hardie – having gotten the scholarship from Clifton.

Grice had the greatest respect for those who preceded in philosophy at Oxford. Years later he would enjoin any serious student of philosophy to pay due respect to the ancestral greats. No Englishman is cited. Except two, actually. “Never mind paying respects to one who is NOT one of these ‘greats’ and I’m speaking of Bosanquet!”

Grice is slightly more respectful towards Bradley – since, well, he had acquired an international reputation since that American, T. S. Eliot, had cared to write a doctoral dissertation about him. So Bradley gets a mention in the ‘Prolegomena’ to Logic and Conversation, regarding a joke on ‘not,’ and again in The Conception of Value, where Grice is treading very Bradleian, Hegelian, and Schellingian waters, with the non-relativised Absolute!

To become Senior Scholar at Merton – no tutor required! – and to accept, finally, a lectureship at St. John’s – before becoming a fellow. The lectureship went well, and Grice went on to be offered a fellowship soon after. This was, of course, “Tutorial Fellow.” No such title would apply, say, to Grice’s later collaboration, D. F. Pears, since they only have fellows at Christ Church – only Students!

While the association to St. John’s is adamant – it is perhaps a little source of stress for Grice that what came with the bargain a few years later is that he became ‘University Lecturer.’ This relates to Austin.

Soon after the war, Austin instituted his New Play Group for games on Saturday morning, ‘by invitation only’ – “Sat. mrng.” the little card Austin would handle read – only for full-time, or whole-time (as Warnock rather more archaically put it) tutorial fellows in philosophy – and a few students, since Pears was there, if not Wood (who remained a faithful Ryleian). And the point is for these full-time (or whole-time as Warnock’s old fashioned prose has it) tutorial fellows (and students) to be able to get away from the labours of having to see their scholars – their pupils, that is – in Grice’s case, at St. John’s, and having to, well, TUTOR them! Grice’s bread and butter.

The best way to approach the Play Group is via the alphabet. There was Paul (that Grice cared to mention both in his “Prejudices and predilections” and in “Retrospective Epilogue – his obsession with sense data. G. A. Paul he went by – and his career had prospered had he not decided to go sailing on the North Sea – on a Sunday!

There was Nowell-Smith, whom Grice describes as the straight man to Austin’s mockeries. In fact, Austin and Grice were the main reason why Nowell-Smith LEFT Oxford. It was too much for him. As Grice notes, the “Nowell” was decorative – Smith’s father. So the full name here would be P. H. N. Smith.

There was Dick – whose daughter became a famous lesbian. He didn’t go by “M.” – as Ryle didn’t go by “G.” – but by Marcus, which made him more of a charming character.

There was Hamsphire, whom Grice loved. This should go as S. N. Hampshire. He had known Austin before the war and attended what Hampshire calls the ‘old’ Play Group, which met at All Souls, in the middle of the week – Thursday nights!

There was an Anglo-Jewish by the name of H. L. A. Hart, that Grice adored – Hart reviewed ‘Dark clouds mean a storm but there won’t be one’ for The Philosophical Quarterly, BEFORE Strawson had cared to type the draft on ‘Meaning’ --.

There were Grice’s collaborators Warnock, Pears, Thomson, Hare.

Or I should say.

There was Warnock. Anglo-Irish. He goes by “G. J. Warnock.” He became especially associated with Austin – after Austin’s death – when, along with Urmson, they edited his Philosophical Papers, and distributed the other stuff – with Urmson taking care of Austin’s How to do things with words notes, and Warnock with the Sense and Sensibilia. If Grice would meet with Warnock, it would be to discuss sense data – especially red pillar boxes – and their visa!

If there was Warnock, there was Urmson. Grice recalled many a memorable anecdote with Urmson. Grice took Urmson as THE representative of the paradigm-case argument. Perhaps more crucially, the ONLY English author Grice cared to mention in his “Utterer’s meaning and intentions” is Urmson and his thumbscrews. The alleged counterexample is particularly interesting since it revolves about the recognition of the role of REASON in the account of ‘significatio’ – non-natural if you wish. The dark clouds that mean rain behave CAUSALLY – in the realm of nature – but if an utterer utters that ‘I can’t get by without my trouble and strife’ (meaning he found his wife indispensable), there must be a REASON, even if mechanistically-substitutable in the air – and if the Utterer IS a person, that reason is even NOT mechanistically substitutable!

There was Pears. The perpetual Student. Grice loved him, and Pears loved Grice. When years later Grice refers to Witters as a minor philosopher, he was possibly aware that by that time Pears had become THE man to talk about Witters. Not in Grice’s time. If they met, it was to talk about INTENTIO. When Clarendon published a tribute to Grice, whose acronym goes G. R. I. C. E. – the I is for Intention (the G for Ground, the R for Ratio, the C for Category, and the E for End – as in Howard’s End – “That’s rude!” Rita exclaims in “Educating Rita.”

There was Thomson. Whereas Grice titles the subject of his research with Pears as being on the philophy of action, it was more on philosophical psychology – since ACTION ACTION Grice would discuss with Thomson. Until Thomson left Christ Church for a post in an institute of technology!

There was Hare. In his Retrospective Epilogue, Grice refers to those philosophers who go for the neustic and the phrastic, and we know who he means. R. M. Hare, the man is – from Somerset. He would give seminars on the ethics of Aristotle with both Austin and Grice. And Hare was one of the few members of Austin’s Play Group who cared to attend to GRICE’s Play Group – same place, same date – upon Austin’s death. But he would hardly talk. Not the communicative type, -- his shyness. But he had a great respect for the idea of conversational implicature, especially since it was a way to stick with ordinary language and linguistic botany and avoid the sorry story of deontic logic!

And more.

There’s Strawson. P. F. Strawson, like Flew, and a few others, was among the first pupils assigned by Grice at St. John’s before the war. Strawson was taught for the Logic paper by Grice – while the rest went to the other St. John’s tutor, Mabb – as Grice called him. Strawson got a second in his P. P. E. examination, but he would later acknowledge that he never ‘ceased to learn logic’ from Grice – The implicature perhaps that he never started learning it! In any case, the association was very close, and they gave joint seminars on “Categories” – but which also dealt with ‘meaning and logical form.’ One who attended a session was surprised he could understand NO WORD of what Grice had proferred. Upon request, he emitted: “I don’t know the rules of the game, mate, but Grice seems to be winning!” Quinton liked that. Wood did not!

There was Woozley.

So now for the alphabetical order then: Austin, Dick, Grice, Hampshire, Hare, Hart, Paul, Pears, Smith, Strawson, Thomson, Urmson, Warnock, Woozley.

If that’s not an -ism, I don’t know what is! By comparison, Ryle’s group was a MESS! On the other hand, Grice confides that of at least these three groups engaged at Oxford with the philosophy of language –as both method and doctrine – it was the third group of Wittgensteinians – by which he means Anscombe, but not by name – ‘who were the most disciplined of the lot’!

Being a University Lecturer meant – non-naturally, of course -- that Grice’s lectures (the title is rather ironic at Oxford, since ‘to lecture’ is a term of abuse) could be attended by ANY member of the university, including a physicist, or perhaps a maid!

It would be interesting to review his career in terms of what he genially called his ‘unpublications’ – ‘with a few publications thrown in for good measure.’

There is an early draft on “Negation and privation” which is an interesting choice. His affiliation with St. John’s was pretty minimal at that point, and the draft features his home address at Harborne!

Grice’s idea however is to produce a logical construction of ‘not’ – i. e. an analysis (‘philosophical analysis’ was in anyone’s lips, Grice says – of an utterance (or sentence – Grice wasn’t that fastidious then) involving ‘not’. He has two. One involving sensorial experiences, which he deems secondary, since they are what Broad called psycho-somatic – a purely introspective one. The one Grice choses is “Someone is NOT hearing a noise.” In Grice’s construction, the sentence becomes equivalent to the REJECTION of a related sentence, without the ‘not’: “Someone is hearing a noise.” It is to THIS sentence that Grice’s ‘person’ projects an attitude of rejection – not just ANY rejection, but the rejection that he KNOWS it!

“Negation and privation” was followed by “Personal identity.” It is listed in Edwards’s Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, but Perry would no know that! When the now defunct University of California Press – an Americanism – accepted Perry’s proposal, Grice’s “Personal identity” was reprinted some decades since its first appearance in the pages of “Mind.” And if Grice chose “Mind” as the journal to which he submitted “Personal identity” the reason is out there to see. It may count as one of those ‘Critical Studies’ thing, since the first reference is to Ian Gallie’s previous, and recent, essay on selves and substances in the annals of analytic philosophy. “Mind” was still subtitled “a journal of PSYCHOLOGY and philosophy,” and under Moore’s editorship.

Grice will go back to the topic at various stages. It was clear that, like “Negation and privation,” we have Grice the constructivist here, since, again, he is proposing a ‘logical construction’—the phrase is Broad’s – of sentences (or utterances, but he wasn’t so fastidious then) involving three types of “I” – or ‘someone’, as Grice prefers – “I’m not an ego-ist!” – somatic: “I was hit by a cricket bat”; psycho-somatic: “I am thinking of Hitler” and purely psychic: “Someone IS hearing a noise.” The interesting bit is that he spends a few paragraphs on Locke, on the identity of HUMAN and PERSON, which will become the topic of his speculation decades later – the transubstantiation, indeed, of a human into a person!

Drafted to the Navy, Grice did his best, and came out alive – and kicking – and with a title of ‘Captain, Royal Navy.” And then it was back to Oxford.

Having married, he was not allowed to sleep at St. John’s, but St. John’s was generous enough to offer him a flat on Woodcock Road.

So it was pupils, pupils, and more pupils. Instead, he had a lot of respect for them, and came to be known as “Godot” – as pupils would pile up up the stairs. There was another tutor in philosophy at St. John’s, which helped, with things like Strawson – who ‘had’ both!

The other tutor, like Grice’s own tutor, was a Scot – good old Mabb, as Grice called it – or Mabbot for long! Like Hardie, he was more of a Ryleian, if anything at all!

One thing that may fascinate the scholar at Oxford is that in those days attending a seminar may well mean attending a JOINT seminar. This is a trick. Isn’t it difficult enough to have to deal with ONE lecturer?

However, Grice was happy to list all the other English philosophers with whom he shared a ‘seminar,’ as those things were called. It is mandatory for a scholar to attend at least three a week!

So let us see if we can be more ‘official’ about the seminars – solo and joint, sometimes menage a trois – with which Grice engaged!

The first collaborator Grice will mention is Strawson – “my former pupil” – so that’s fine and dany. Quine attended one of these, and was surprised at how little room they allotted to open session. “That IS an interesting point, about which I suppose I shall have an answer in two weeks – since next week’s is Strawson’s week!”

Grice makes a point about the COMPOSITION here – He always said that monologue is implicature-free. Not so concerted interaction. COMPOSING a piece of writing with Strawson meant that they had to SHARE belief and validation of EACH sentence. ‘This surely led to the demise of our collaboration’!

Come Grice and Thomson, we realise the best way to classify these joint seminars would be by surname of collaborator – but hey! So he also gave a joint seminar or two with THOMSON. Grice here cares to specify the topic: philosophy of action. THOMSON was the epitome of the hot-bed of Ordinary Language Philosophy until he married Judith Jarvis and left for a technological institute overseas!

Grice and Warnock shared a visum. Then there was the joint seminars with G. J. Warnock – on which Grice kept all the notes. Warnock was a sort of a genius in an Anglo-Irish sort of way. Their seminars, of course, were on ‘The philosophy of perception’. Sayers attended one. “Grice mumbled and did his best to drive his audience away. For the most part, he succeeded, including myself.” “The philosophy of perception” is such an Oxonian sub-discipline. They don’t have it at Cambridge! At Oxford it is meant to implicate: we still revere the English empiricists – as they do not in France – witness Merleau-Ponty!

Pears, Grice, and Apples. Then there were the joint seminars, on “The philosophy of action”, again, with D. F. Pears. But Pears and Grice, unlike Thomson, were more into what Grice will later call ‘philosophical psychology,’ so expect those seminars to be full of references to Grice’s description of Pears’s introspective accounts of Grice’s intendings and willings – not in that order! Pears made it to Grice’s ‘publication’ if an annual lecture at the British Academy counts as one. In the final paragraph, he acknowledges that this is all very fragmentary but truly in the spirit of what Pears has been saying AGAINST prediction!

There were seminars with Austin. One on ‘De Interpretatione,’ that Ackrill attended. “Greek to me,” he would later say. The result was that Clarendon accepted Ackrill’s proposal to translate Peri Hermeneias into Anglo-Saxon murdering Plato’s and Aristotle’s parlance into talk of ‘making a statement’ or failing to make one! If you think about it, it was extraordinary that a man with whom you are giving a joint seminar you may still want to see on a Saturday morning! But that was Grice. What weakens the claim, though, is that of ALL the venues for the Play Group meetings, the one that Austin liked best was Grice’s St. John’s – not his rooms, rather backward – but a lovely lecture room ‘which made Austin felt like the C. E. O. of the Linguistic Botany Co. Ltd.’!

With Austin Grice had a menage a trois, as we call them, since the two joined R. M. Hare to give a seminar on Aristotle’s Ethics. The fact is usually mentioned to prove that Linguistic Botany was NOT they did! Those seminars were meant for PUPILS who frankly needed instruction on the Greek mannerisms of Plato and Aristotle, and perhaps this or that archaic English philosopher – the Lit. Hum. programme did not include the name of any LIVING philosopher until they did! Austin, Grice, and Hare shared this classical education that Strawson lacked, having earned a mere P. P. E. rather – and Strawson could just NOT read, never mind, ‘read’ or ‘lecture’ on anything written in a lingo other than his own. Witness his own seminars on Abbott, er, Kant! Strawson’s idea was that Greek – and Latin – and German – got on the way of his lingo. But for Grice, an old Cliftonian, Greek (if not Latin) were second nature! You don’t feel Greek is a ‘foreign’ language, even if Thales of Miletus a foreigner was!

There was a joint seminar with Woozley of the old school, if ever there was one – a member of Austin’s OLD play group. Woozley gave joint seminars with Grice on ‘scepticism.’

And so on.

When it came to publishing – it was all Strawson’s fault. The least thing Grice wanted to do with his draft on ‘Meaning’ – a mere exercise in dialectic meant to impress the Philosophical Society (Oxford philosophical society, that is) into Grice’s taking care of the recent title published by Yale University Press – of all University Presses – by Stevenson on Ethics and language. A cursory examination of the 1948 draft shows Grice’s style, as it then was. He starts his three essays so far in the same manner.

Grice starts the three essays – “Negation and privation,” “Personal identity,” and “Meaning” – in the same fashion. By considering ‘sentences’ – he wasn’t then fastidious enough to care about utterance. In the case of “Meaning” it is not clear what the sentences grouped under what he calls a ‘natural’ significatio – harking to Plato’s Cratylus – phusei – have in common. And he is not too careful about the sentences under this OTHER type of ‘significatio’ with respect to their syntactic format. But in the ends he has found a DEFINIENDUM: “By uttering x, U utters that p” iff – It’s the DEFINENS that matter, and Grice of course does not wish nor care to settle in a mere talk to the Oxford Philosophical Society. Remember: anyone else MAY, but an Oxonian philosopher does NOT want to be lectured! But 9 years later, Strawson asked Grice for the draft, had his wife typed it, and submitted it to an AMERICAN journal: the Philosophical Review!

Grice’s Philosophical Review experiment collected a lot of criticism. But he never cared. Why should he? He learned from Austin: once you publish, forget about bringing the issue to your Saturday morning – you don’t need to discuss ‘no more’! Some of the criticism he did care to publish in his revision of the analysis in The Philosophical Review – a sort of critical notice, sort of thing. If one checks the list of names he gives, one notices only one Englishman: J. O. Urmson. Grice loved Urmson, and Urmson loved Grice. There are various cross-references among them. Grice would keep using Urmson as a defendant of paradigm-case arguments – and Urmson would play with the principle of appositeness, and the rules of evidence, and so forth. But by this time, he had encountered Implicature.

Grice was proud of having presented Miss Implicature at Cambridge, of all places, in “The causal theory of perception.” However, American publishing being what it is – stingy! – he had to elapsed that long excursus on implicature – “So what the reader gets is the idea of IMPLICATURE as applied to ‘it seems to me as if that pillar box is red” – in the Harvard University Press reprint of the Aristotelian Society contribution.

Warnock was a bit more careful, when reprinting the WHOLE symposium in his The Philosophy of Perception – only that A. R. White never quite knew what to do with Miss Implicature!

It was Butler, fresh from Oxford, who thought of having a collection by Blackwell on Analytic Philosophy, and Grice contributed with “Some remarks about the senses.” However, this remained pretty local, since nobody other than an Oxonian would read a Blackwell title!

Hot-bed of ordinary language philosophy Grice calls it – due to not just Austin, but Pears. Pears, an aristocrat, wanted to reach the masses, and had Grice and Strawson record a lecture on “Metaphysics” and publish it with Macmillan. The “Radio Days” notice has two typos: it states that it is a discussion BETWEEN Grice, Strawson, and Pears – only that ‘among’ is Austin’s choice! Pears, Fellow of Corpus, the “Radio Days” note goes on.

If the revision of “Meaning” – “Utterer’s meaning” was published in The Philosophical Review, another continuation of that research he published for “Foundation of Language”: “Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning” – “an essay whose title I almost always get it wrong in recollection,” he would say.

By that time, while Oxford made him – Oxford left him – and the rest is history.

Of course, not every Englishman who was a philosopher and a junior to Austin would fit in Grice’s social circle. Michael Wrigley recollects that upon introducing himself to Grice, and confessing he hailed from Trinity, just across the wall, was perhaps sillily going for advice to Grice in matters Dummettian. “Have you read Frege: Philosophy of language”. “I have not – and I hope I won’t!” – Grice liked Wrigley because he was from Leeds and no body who is perverse can come from Leeds – but Dummett was a Catholic, and a perversely convert one at that!

While still part of the scene, Grice found out – upon the death of Austin – that a whole generation lacked a leader, so he offered himself. They would meet at Corpus. But of course, we can distinguish a few features between Austin’s new play group and Grice’s own. They games were not restricted to full-time or whole-time tutorial fellows. Grice’s own ‘scholars’ if we can use that name to mean someone from ANYWHERE who is at Oxford to pursue a degree ABOVE that of the B. A. – and more!

When he came back to Oxford to deliver the John Locke lectures, the format was un-Oxonian. The lectures are open to members of non-the university, or non-members of the university. Grice was an exception in that he was a honorary fellow – but he cared to mention in the Proemium, that he always had a thing AGAINST Locke, having Grice been refused the really valuable John Locke Scholarship – TWICE!

It is not easy to summarise Grice’s advancements to what we my call the critique of conversational reason. In his lectures on ‘conversation’, he would speak of ‘the conversational game,’ its ‘conversational rules,’ its ‘conversational moves,’ and so on. The Kantian references are mainly taken in jest. Notably with Grice’s introduction of the phrase, ‘conversational category.’ He was never sure how many categories there were, nor did he care. But the the idea of a ‘conversational category’ allowed him to have this or that ‘conversational maxim’ as hanging from a ‘principle of conversational helpfulness’, which was his bet at ‘conversation’ as ‘rational cooperation. He was well aware that the cooperation thesis was independent from the more general, and indeed, pretty dull idea, that conversation is a ‘rational activity.’ As it sometimes isn’t – but don’t go to Grice for having underestimated the aesthetics, or the moral, or this or other point of conversational activity – not his field!

His identified a ‘fundamental question’ when it comes to this principle of conversational helpfulness. To wit: its basis. And he proceeds by offering a transcendental argument that had felt slightly circular to Graham and others. The idea is that given this or that ‘conversational goal’, which is now shared, the principle of conversational helpfulness and the set of this or that conversational maxim will follow.

Grice was aware that the universality or alleged universality of his programme – strictly, the universalisability of the principle of conversational helpfulness from this or that conversational maxim – was bound to be trick, as it was for Kant. Hegel would speak of the ‘cunning of reason.’ Similarly, Grice had a response for anyone who’d care to attack the cunning of conversational reason.

The idea is of the universal in the concrete. Rather than go to Malasia, the idea is to check the universalisability among Oxford pupils who ARE BOUND by this or that conversational maxim.

It may safely be said that upon Austin’s demise – and after a short period of grieving – Grice was ready to take on Austin. So the key concept of conversational implicature springs from Grice’s attempts to make it very obvious that Austin – but also Strawson, and people who SHOULD know – kept ignoring or confusing different category shifts.

The idea is that of an utterer who conveys that p. Centrally convey that p. Grice hastens to add ‘centrally’ since ‘He has beautiful handwriting’ hardly centrally conveys that ‘He is hopeless at philosophy’ as uttered by a philosophy don at Collections. What Grice conveys by uttering ‘He has beautiful handwring’ is that he has beautiful handwriting. So there follows a Platonic dichotomy here: what the utterer conveyed – never mind naturally, as by blushing, etc – gets subdivided into centrally and non-centrally. Within the non-centrally (implicitly conveyed) Grice’s focus, qua philosopher, is on what is CONVERSATIONALLY implicated, because it connects nicely with his idea of an overall Conversational Imperative and this or that conversational maxim.

What Austin would be ignoring – if not Strawson – would be the category shift, from ascribing this ‘conveying’ not to the uttererer, but to his utterance – or even worse, to a TYPE of this utterance or that!

But ouside Oxford, few really cared. Philosophers kept ignoring those fine distinctions. And they still do – especially those pupils who get accepted at St. John’s!

Or shall I say, beyond St. John’s: ANY philosophy scholar is bound to find H. P. Grice’s portrait in the Philosophy Room at Merton – where he belonged!

Philosophy, Grice said, like virtue, is entire. Yet he found that philosophical divergence was his fare of the day. It may do to review his polemic with his peers – and then perhaps with whom he called ‘the greats’ – anyone on which he cared to trust his attention.

The list of polemics does not follow a particular order. Just this one.

Consider Strawson. Grice would mock Quine and Chomsky – ‘two such intelligent people – never able to share ONE thought!” – the case with Strawson was similar. Although less dramatic. Their main inconsistency is on the status of the conversational implicature. With Grice infamously claiming that when HE uttered ‘if p, q’ HE conversationally implicates that there is non-truth-functional evidence for it. By reverse, Strawson mocked Grice’s use of the ‘conventional’ implicature – Frege’s Farbung --. Strawson was especially irritated that when it came to ‘so’ – or ‘therefore’ – Grice would have no qualm about saying that anything other than p and q is IMPLICATED, but conventionally, by an utterance of ‘p, so q’ or ‘p; therefore, q.’ Strawson felt like if there w room for conventional implicature in ASSERTED p’s and q’s and you do mind your p’s and q’s, then why not adopt a CONVENTIONAL, rather than ‘conversational’ implicature approach to ‘if p, q’. The matter would have rest as minimal had it not been Strawson’s idea, in his piece with Wiggins, to deal on this and deal on this in his tribute to Grice for the British Academy!

With Austin, the differences are subtle, since Austin died too soon! Some have however attempted ‘a reconciliation of Austin and Grice.’ And it is true that, when still grieving the early demise of Austin, Grice felt like the ‘successor,’ rather than the critique of botany and philosophy of language. But soon afterwards he was extracting passages from the essays collected by Urmson and Warnock in Philosophical Papers, and making fun of them, in a charming way. Notably the use of ‘adverbs.’ Grice would also criticize Austin for almost always ignoring the ‘significatio’ as applied to an utterer, versus as applied to the ‘expression. One infamous case by Austin: When I see a goldfinch, and I say it – That’s a goldfinch – I don’t imply that I BELIEVE that that is a goldfinch. I imply that I KNOW it!”

With Smith, o Nowell-Smith, Grice would get irritated if one pointed to the similarities between Smith’s treatment of a rule of relevance, a rule of sincerity, and so on in his Ethics. “Mine are NOT rules!”

With Urmson, Grice would possibly object to the rather free use by Urmson of a rule of ‘scalar’ implication, based on some rule of maximal informativeness. And perhaps on Urmson’s appeal to the principle of appositeness.

Many of Grice’s ideas were in the air – they were NOT Grice’s conceptions – and other ordinary-language philosophers were BOUND to find them! It was only rarely that they HAD to credit Grice.

As when Hart does credit Grice in The Philosophical Quarterly (in a footnote, typically).

It is very telling that when writing his Prolegomena to Logic and Conversation, Grice seems to be more interested than any to criticize his fellow Oxonians. Only one senior to Austin, and that’s Ryle. Grice spends quite some time on Ryle on adverbs.

Then there’s Grice’s criticism of Austin – modification and aberration. It is interesting that the only Englishmen who were philosophers that Grice cites in his Conception of Value are Austin and Hare. Austin for his ‘artless sexism’ in the label, ‘trouser word’ and Hare for destroying universal value!

The criticism to Hare in The Conception of Value is an interesting one – it echoes the spirit Grice knew well at Oxford. He does not care to quote Hare directly, but only via a popularization of his views by Mackie in a Penguin!

There is this intriguing criticism of Hart – on ‘trying’. The view, as ascribed to Hart, is pretty ridiculous, and although Grice knew that his audience WAS familiar with Hart’s ramblings on this and that – he cares to mention that this view on ‘trying’ held by Hart was ‘shared’ with Grice ‘in conversation.’ So now you know!

Then there’s the extended criticism in those ‘Prolegomena’ to his own pupil! Grice spends some time on what he surely found Strawson’s ridiculous – metaphysical excrescent – views on ‘if’. While in the Prolegomena he provides a direct quote on the topic from Strawson’s Introduction to Logical Theory. Grice has the dignity NOT to quote Strawson when he resumes the topic in a lecture which went untitled at the time but which by 1987 Grice had decided to title ‘Indicative conditionals.’ There is an interim reference to Strawson in the two previous lectures. One implicit, when Grice adds ‘if’ and the horseshoe as having a bit of an alleged divergence, and more infamously in the next lecture, where he even cares to quote from Strawson’s published views on ‘Truth’ from the infamous Bristol symposium, only to refute him. The performative view of ‘true’ – and indeed Hare’s performative view of ‘good’ are referred to in passing in the Prolegomena, too – but no proper name identified!

And talking of credits, Grice was notoriously hurt when browsing through Strawson’s Individuals and not finding ONE single mention to Grice – although it is SO EVIDENT that ‘a reflection or two’ from their joint endeavours in ‘Categories’ is visible to the sharper eye. Why does Strawson care to quote in the acknowledgment Ryle but not Grice. It must be because he had paid enough respects to Grice in the Acknowledgment to Introduction to Logical Theory! And to what avail! (Robbing Peter to pay Paul – indeed!).

Perhaps the greatest affrent from Strawson when in an essay in Theoria he cares to call Grice’s principle of relevance and the principle of the presumption of ignorance and the principle of presumption of knowledge – mere ‘platitudes.’ Surely a transcendental justification alla Kant for this or that ‘platitude’ is more than an Oxonian ear could bear!

Warnock Grice would not criticize in print. But he always regarded a gem of botany Warmock’s amazement at Austin’s pretty clear question: “What would you say is the difference between ‘He played golf properly’ and ‘He played golf correctly.’ Grice seems to be amused by Warnock’s lack of a response. Grice’s response: “Playing cricket properly” means “playing cricket” – whereas “playing cricket correctly” – “is only something that someone like my aunt Matilda would say!”

Or Pears in “Ifs and cans” – ‘This relates to what H. P. Grice calls a conversational implicature – in a bracket, typically. Or Hare on Practical Inferences. “Surely ‘Post the letter’ entails ‘Or burn it’ – but this is more of a case of what H. P. Grice has called a conversational implicature. In none of these cases, the idea is to DEVELOP a full theory of language as a rational activity, that would make Kantian room for the idea of conversation as rational cooperation.

It seems curious than early enough, in his "Causal Theory of Perception," Grice never seemed to have been interested in providing a systematic theory of conversation as rational co-operation.

Rather, he lists a couple of 'philosophical theses, or dicta' -- with an eye to improv them! No names of English Oxonian philosophers dropped.

When he gave the 'Prolegomena' to 'Logic and Conversation', Englishmen who were Oxonian philosophers -- and their names -- started to drop. The oldest of course Ryle. Followed by Austin. And then by other members of the Play Group, notably Strawson and Hart.

In these 'Prolegomena', Grice is conscious that he cannot provide a good case with an eye to correct their fellow philosophers -- well, he includes his own 'Causal Theory of Perception' as a suspect example, too! -- unless he totters into a theory of conversation as rational cooperation.

Let's see if we can reformulate the former in the term of the latter.

For each case, Grice would say that the philosopher has to failed to focus on what a CONVERSATIONALIST 'signifies'. And when we rephrase the thesis in THOSE terms, the philosopher may still have misidentified the 'shade' of meaning -- the 'nuance' as Grice calls it in "Causal Theory of Perception." Notably, between what the conversationalist 'signifies' by EXPLICITLY conveying -- centrally 'signifying' -- or 'dicta,' proper -- AND what the conversationalist 'signifies' by some other, weaker, defeasible, implicit, uncentral kind of way.

Let's consider the cases in terms of the Oxonian philosophers Grice mentions.

RYLE -- Grice makes fun of him when Ryle in his book, no less, on "The Concept of Mind", which had philosophers at Oxford, such as O. P. Wood REVERING him -- goes on to lecture other philosophers on some 'unwittingly extension' of the 'sense' of 'VOLUNTARY" by this or that philosopher.

Grice's reply: Surely it is perfectly find to use 'voluntary' even if the agent was NOT at fault!

Second case: Austin. Grice loved Austin because he could mock him twice. Not so much for the specifics, but for the generalities -- no aberration without modification, or vice versa. The adverb is the same 'voluntarily' now. Austin claims that the 'significance' is no significance!

Grice's reply:

It is perfectly fine to add 'voluntarily' to any verb you please -- the monkey was voluntarily tossing off. Austin's mistake is to distinguish between what a conversationalist signifies centrally -- by using an utterance of an expression that features 'voluntarily' -- and what he implicates -- 'signifies implicitly' in a conversational cancellable way. Austin is focusing on THIS nuance of conversational meaning when he shouldn't!

At this point Grice needs the theory of conversation as rational cooperation. Because his idea is not just that the conversationalist's significance is BASIC, but that the 'significance' of an EXPRESSION is to be analysed ultimately in terms of the 'conversationalist's significance' -- Not a cup of tea that Austin would be willing to swallo -- he revering His Mother Tongue to the point of exhaustion!

As for Hart, it's all a joke -- since Hart only SAID in conversation that one has to be 'carefully' about 'carefully.' By the same token, Grice might have reported a conversation he had with the green-grocer's. 'The greengrocer keeps misuing the plural form and the scare quotes!"

The third member of the Play Group would be Grice himself -- he WAS happy with the result in "Causal Theory of Perception." So the fact that he gives the reference to the supplementary volume of the Aristotelian Society is just for the show -- or easy reference, if you wish!

So we come to the FOURTH member: not a colleague, like Austin, but his own PUPIL: Strawson. And not a member of the Establishment pre-Austin, like Ryle.

Grice manages to find his pupil at FAULT twice. The first is about 'if' -- which Grice correlates to 'and' and 'or' -- Interestingly, 'She is in the kitchen or in the bedroom' is one of the four examples in that interlude on implication in 'Causal Theory.' But at this point he manages to quote verbatim from Introduction to Logical Theory.

The other fault is Strawson's Analysis essay on 'Truth', where he says some ridiculous things 'which obviously pertain to the realm of what a conversationalist implicitly signifies!

Grice is again setting the record, by relying on published sources -- except Hart (in conversation), "The Concept of Mind," the reprint of Austin's essay in Philosophical Papers, ed. by Urmson and Warnock, Strawson's book Introduction, and Strawson's essay in Analysis.

Note incidentally, that by stating, ‘ed. Urmson and Warnock,’ Grice is implicating: how do THESE two – members of the play group – feel about this? Urmson and Warnock remained at Oxford forever associated with Austin, due mainly to their curatorial nuances with How to do things with words (Urmson) and Sense and Sensibilia (Warnock). But the volume to which Grice refers is the set of “Philosophical Papers” – never essays, pompous! – by both four hands! Neither Urmson nor Warnock would care to provide an answer to the criticism by Grice on Austin’s piece on the lack of theoretical recognition for the idea of a conversationalist’s significance!

Little wonder Grice stopped lecturing at Oxford for a while until he came back as a foreigner to give the Locke Lectures!

But if Grice felt that way, it was his moral duty! As a University Lecturer, and examiner at Oxford, he had to deal with the whole population of philosophy pupils at Oxford – never mind those who had other alma mater! In other words, Oxford being what it was, although there was independence of mind as to on what a university lecturer could lecture – even if his lectures were mainly joint – Grice was possibly tired of having to hear the recitation of the Oxonian canon: ‘meaning is use’ ‘this is inappropriate’ – and having let the OTHER examiners – Strawson, Urmson, Warnock – ALLOWING the pupil to stick to such a dogma or mistake, when the PUPIL should be made pretty well aware that there is AN ALTERNATIVE account – which relies on conversation as rational cooperation!

Nobody was such a constructivist at Oxford at that time, expect our Grice!

References

Ackrill, J. L. Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione.

Austin, J. L. (1960). Philosophical papers, edited by J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Austin, J. L. (1962). Sense and sensibilia, reconstructed from the notes by G. J. Warnock. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

Austin, J. L. (1960). How to do things with words, edited by J. O. Urmson. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.

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Golding, William. The Inheritors.

Grice, H. P. (1938). Negation and privation.

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Grice, H. P. (1961). The causal theory of perception. Symposium with A. R. White, chaired by Braithwaite – held at Cambridge. Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume.

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Grice, H. P. (1967). Further notes on logic and conversation.

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Grice, H. P. (1967). Utterer’s meaning and intentions.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning, and word-meaning.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Some models of implicature.

Grice, H. P. (1967). Ill-will

Grice, H. P. (1967). Other

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Grice, H. P. (1977). Alethic reasons.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Some remarks about ends and happiness.

Grice, H. P. (1977). Presupposition and conversational implicature.

Grice, H. P. (1982). Meaning revisited.

Grice, H. P. (1983). The conception of value.

Grice, H. P. (1983). Objective value.

Grice, H. P. (1983). Objective and relative value.

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Grice, H. P. (1986). Actions and events. The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

Grice, H. P. (1987). Retrospective epilogue.

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Grice, H. P. (1987). Philosophical eschatology and Plato’s Republic.

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Speranza, J. L. Conversational impenetrability.

Speranza, J. L. The critique of conversational reason.

Speranza, J. L. The Conversational Immanuel.

Speranza, J. L. Robbing Peter to pay Paul: H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson.

Speranza, J. L. Way of Things, Way of Ideas, Way of Words, Way of Conversations!

Speranza, J. L. Grice italo!

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Speranza, J. L. This and That – Join H. P. Grice’s Play-Group!

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Strawson, P. F. (1952). Introduction to logical theory. London: Methuen.

Strawson, P. F. (1986). If and >. In G. R. I. C. E. Grounds Ratio Intentio Categoria End. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stout, G. F. Voluntary action. Mind.

Urmson, J. O. Philosophical analysis between the two wars.

Warner, M. M. Church of England.

Warnock, G. J. Language and morality. Oxford: Blackwell.

Whitehead, A. N. and B. A. W. Russell, Principia mathematica. Cambridge

Wilson, J. C. Statement and inference, posthumously published from the lectures by Willoughby. Oxford: Clarendon.

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Wollaston

Name index

Ackrill, J. L.

Austin, J. L.

Bradley, F.

Cooper, D. E.

Flew, A. G. N.

Grice, H. P.

Hampshire, S. N.

Hart, H. L. A.

Holdcroft, D

Keynes, N. Theory of Probability

Kneale, W. Theory of Probability

Nowell-Smith, P. H. – see under Smith

Over, D. E.

Peacocke, C. A. B.

Pears, D. F.

Potts, T. C.

Quinton, A. M.

Sainsbury, R. M.

Smith, P. H. Nowell

Speranza, J. L.

Strawson, P. F.

Thomson, J. F.

Urmson, J. O.

Warner, M. M.

Warnock, G. J.

Wiggins, D. G. P.

Wilson, J. C.

Winch, Peter

Wood, O. P.

Woozley, D.

Subject index

Subject – used by H. P. Grice as a better rendition of ‘substance’ – “I am a subject, and I engage in inter-subjective activity with Strawson – but I’m not really a substance: coffee is!