Austin's "Play" Group -- And their Illegal Activities

----

Grice said that he would never, he thought, have used 'play group' in front of Austin.

"The mere idea that we were just playing with things he would have found 'vulgar'"

-----

The group hardly played. But they were paid. Grice has it correct when he speaks of the members of the play group as 'hackers' -- in "Prejudices and Predilections, which become the Life and Opinions of Paul Grice" by Paul Grice, and in WoW:180, in "Conceptual Analysis and the Province of Philosophy" which he wrote on the year (but one) of his death:

When in the late nineteen-forties
the Play-Group was instituted, its
official rationale, as given by
Austin, was:

---- "All of us are local
---- philosophical hacks,
---- spending our weekdays
---- wrestling
---- with the
---- [BLATANT] philosophical
---- inabilities of
---- our pupils"

----

which included at the time, Strawson and Flew. [in Grice's case].


---- "We deserve
---- to be able to
---- spend at least
---- our Saturday mornings
---- in restorative
---- activities."

There was a further requirement:

"Those activities, to be fully restorative,
need to be enjoyable."

----

"I recall approaching Austin
at this point as to whether
we could not play somehwat more seriously."

"More seriously?"

"Yes. Are we engaged in important
activites?"

"As I recall, Austin's response was:"

"You came to the wrong man. I am myself
not the right man to ask to distinguish
between what is important from what is
not" (WoW:182).


-- Warnock emphasises the 'full-time' status. "The meetings were restricted."

"First, to Austin's juniors. Surely it is stupid
to institute a group where someone is going
to shine more than you do."

(Austin could have a bit of an attitude).

"Second, you needed to be a full-time tutor. Pupils were certainly not allowed. As it happens, I don't recall one single student who wanted to join, anwyay."

--- he said with characterisitc smug.

Chapman, under contract with Palgrave, went to Bancroft, from Liverpool, to study this.

(Words):

"I found that Grice used
'play group' on 83 different
occasions, which I have numbered."

---

"The first occasion is in
the third cardbox."

---

Chapman concludes:

"By the mere word count"

of the expression,

"[Grice] seems to have
been INORDINATELY
pleased with [the expression
'The Play Group']." (Chapman, p. 42).


---

"He would use the expression,
The Play Group, with some of
the members,"

"But not, it seems,
with Austin himself."

[He: Austin] "was not the
sort of man with whom to share
such a joke"

---

For it wasn't one.

At this point Chapman refers to the occurrence No. 72 of "the Play Group", now safely deposited at Bancroft:

It's actually also publicly accessible as it's "Reply to Richards", p. 49.