Grice and American Philosophy: Quine and Schiffer

--- In WoW:364, after dismissing the work of what Grice regarded as his mentor (along Otto Jesperson (sic) and Chomsky), i.e. Quine, he goes on to quote his junior: Atlantic-City born Rhodes scholar, Stephen R. Schiffer.

Grice writes:

"These remarks" -- as he has just made -- "are intended
to raise, but NOT to settle,"

--- for if philosophy generated no bread and butter, what would we eat?

"the question whether our
adoption"

of

TRUTH BY CONVENTION

i.e.

of "linguistic conventions
is to be explained by appeal
to a general capacity for the
adoption of 'conventions'
simpliciter."

Grice has a mysteriously unmysteric bracket here:

"(the sort of explanation ..."

--- directly borrowed from Lewis, but never returned --

"offered by Stephen Schiffer in Meaning)"

-- This was Schiffer's DPhil Oxon -- under Strawson, later published -- NOW in paperback with a new intro! It always struck me as commercial on the part of the Clarendon Press that they would care to reprint Schiffer's "Meaning" when the man (Schiffer) had presented his allegedly 'devastating' criticisms to Batsford for his "Remnants of Meaning").