The "Gricean" School

---- by JLS
-------- for the GC

--- I MUST PLEAD AN APOLOGY FOR THE rather unimaginative title, but hey. Grice writes that there was no school of Ordinary Language Philosophy: ("Prejudices, predilections, and peccadilloes, which become the life and opinions of H. P. Grice", by H. P. Grice). Grice is contesting furriners who should have known better: Gustav Bergmann had said that they (the 'Griceans') were a bunch of 'futilitarians' -- "and English, at that". The Paris-born author Gellner had said that there was a 'school' which was NOT a 'school of sirens'.

But SCHOOL it was!

You see, Tapper reminded me of the grandiosity of 'otium' ("Albritton would utter the word 'otiose' every two other" -- he means 'words'). And 'skhole' for the Greeks, was 'otium'.

Thus, when people say:

"His views are just scholastic.", what people (vague) mean is that his views spring from his otiosity. Cfr. J. K. Jerome, "Idle thoughts of an idle fellow".

----

Then there's 'academic'. I would distinguish between:

--- His views are just scholastic

and

--- His views are academic.

It says something about the present status of academia when we say:

"Einstein's special theory of relativity is academic", i.e. it has no value outside the classroom of Princeton. But it has: Hiroshima was destroyed by Einstein, indirectly!

---

Anyway:

a. How otiose was Grice?
b. How scholastic was Grice?
c. How academic was Grice?

Re (c): Oxford IS NOT an Academia! Grice indeed 'grew' from a tutor at St. John's -- a private institution -- to 'varsity lecturer' in the royal-chartered institution ('the University of Oxford'). So perhaps he was 'academic' in parts. But when you visit Oxford, it's all about the status, the prestige, and the sports! Only the poor learn at Oxford! So, he was not academic.

Re (a): He was very otiose. How can you NOT call otiose a man whose obit reads: "He championed in auction bridge"?

Re (b): Vide (a)

"Otiose" and 'scholastic' are thus strict synonyms. Only that such things ('strict synonyms') don't exist:

--- The Grecian idea of 'otium' and the Gricean one. When the Romans (ever utilitarian) translated Greek 'skhole' they were at an odd end (if that's the expression): they could NOT conceive of 'otium'. But eventually, they did. (Recall that behind a Great Roman, there is a good 'provincial' and the Roman will leave Rome in haste and just spend his idle days in the villa). Grice was otiose in parts.

As Warnock comments in "Saturday Mornings", the Griceans 'never felt the pressure to 'publish or perish', for at least two reasons:

a. Why should they?

b. They were ENGLISH!

If you've met an Englishman, they are _reserved_. They don't like to disclose things! Less so, or least so, their philosophical views! In this, they contrast with the Americans (or some of them -- some old Bostonians of the old American school WERE pretty reserved: NOT Santayana! But then he had hot Iberian blood in his veins!).

For an Englishman, you have to disclose your views if you must. "And must I?".

Thus,

Grice disclosed all he had to disclose when he submitted his first essay to Mind in 1941, "Personal Identity".

In 1948, he presented "Meaning" to the Oxford Philosophical Society. This was the time of NON-multicultural Oxford! This was when you wouldn't BELIEVE the types that gathered at that Society! Charmers! Total ones! (Of course Strawson, who was a bit of an over-achiever, could NOT have that and had to submit Grice's paper to Philosophical Review on Grice's behalf (of sorts -- Grice never knew).

In 1961, Grice was invited by the Aristotelian Society to disclose his views in, of all places, Cambridge! He dedicated the session to "The pillar box seems red". Surely a partial disclosure, and as English as you can get, at that!

In 1967, Albritton, who knew Grice well, invited him to disclose his views in Harvard. Grice was hardly nervous, and dedicated the sessions to show the 'evolution' of his views from the vintage 1948 "Meaning". He wanted to show that even if Oxonian and English, he could manage the odd symbolism, too -- and his new definition of meaning is so formal that it even bored Putnam ("You are too formal", he commented. Grice confesses that he was then so oversensitive that he decided to throw logic with the tub water and he was never again seen to use a formalism).

--- By 1967, Grice had ceased to be, officially, English. He will become American, complete with passport. But this Grice Club celebrates the Englishness that remained!

American academia, I would hold, works along slightly dissimilar lines from the Oxonian lines that Grice would have been accustomed from his Oxford days --. On one front: many of the now top American philosophers had acquired the right Oxonian credentials: this was the time when not just Clinton was getting an Oxford education: Searle, Schiffer, Nagel, Stampe, Loar, you name them, were ALL Oxonian educated. The one to 'blame' for this metropolitan (or cosmopolitan) Oxford was perhaps Ryle, who Grice describes in "Peccadillos" as 'having instituted Oxford as a world centre'. In the old days, Oxford catered not even for Occam, who was inceptor at Oxford but got his degree appropriately from the Sorbonne. In the slighter not so old days, it started to cater for Colonials, including Indians (rather than Anglo-Indians who belonged rather to the civil-servant set). It was with Rhodes that, while himself a South African -- visit Rhodesia in the Spring -- Oxford became the American Mecca, if you must.

Etc.