Grice -- maxims and places of birth and death

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

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


We were discussing the Cockney: when Grice writes:

"That remark, 'Smith couldn't get on without his trouble and strife' meant that Smith found his wife indispensable."

---

As one would expect, it's much more logical to go:

"Smith couldn't GET ON *WITH* his trouble and strife."

Why go into the rigmarole of that silly Cockney if one is going to "detach" or distance from the 'offending' tone -- as L. J. Kramer aptly puts it -- this blog, "On Grice's Longer Day" -- if one is then going to try and be cute with the slangy, 'get on'?

The answer, I suspect, is that the one who made the remark was an idiot.

N. E. Allott, who uses the example online -- for his classes at Oslo -- (there is a malaprop where he has the wife as beng indispEnsable) -- is clear about this. The fact is that the remark is NOT factive. Continuation:

"But of course, HE didn't know what he was
remarking: Smith did divorce his wife and
is doing pretty well, thank you".

So how could he have found his wife 'indispensable'? The point that Grice wants to make is that we shouldn't care for what remarks mean. Remarks don't mean. People mean -- and smoke, of course, if you are pathetic.

----

("Smoke means smoked salmon").


--- (Or, "Where there is smoke, there is smoked salmon").


---

I said, "Perhaps the Cockneys are idiotic because they live in a city? I'm not suggesting ALL are: only those that use rhyming slang and get it WRONG." J. Kennedy remarked: ("In any case, Marx is buried in Highgate").

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Now, I want to know if Edward Lear was born in Highgate. Apparently, not. Apparently he was born in HOLLOWAY, as per this link in wiki:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holloway,_London

"Holloway is an inner-city district in the London Borough of Islington located 3.8 miles north of Charing Cross and follows for the most part, the line of the Holloway Road (A1 road). At the centre of Holloway is the Nag's Head area."

Versus Highgate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate

"Highgate is an area of North London on the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath. Highgate rises to an altitude of 330 feet (101 m) at Highgate Wood[1] and 430 feet (131 m) at North Hill."

They seem to be close enough. Let's check google. How many hits for ""Edward Lear" born Highgate" and how many for ""Edward Learn born Holloway".

For the Holloway: 1, 140


For the Highgate: 398.


So -- how do I decide? I suppose the only evidence I'll count is a reference to his HOUSE -- or place birth.

I used to know ALL about birth places -- In England, there's the typical blue-placque, and it was very appropriate that in the days that mattered people were born in Houses. I would hate to have to go to Rye in Sussex, and spend the afternoon looking for blue placques in a hospital. Ah well.

I wonder how they did it. I'm not female -- but If I WERE I would possibly would like to deliver in a hospital. I'm sure my husband would not allow me to deliver in the kitchen or stuff. Plus, how many paramedic, nurses, etc., or the occasional male mid-wife, are necessary for the job.

There is an essay on Socrates and the mid-wife. In Greek, or English, for that matter, the midwife is neuter-gender. You just happen to be WITH the wife ('mid-wife'). Socrates uses the phrase IDIOTICALLY in the wrong metaphorical use:

"If a midwife helps the delivery of a baby from the sexual organ of a pregant female, the philosopher, instead, helps the delivery of a baby 'idea' from the THINKING of a pregnant male."

"Your simile disgusts me," Theaetetus remarked, casually.

--- but It has made the rounds -- under 'maieutic'. Etc.

I remember when I was in Yale.

"Where was Bush born?"

"In the Yale-New Haven hospital".

"I know THAT. I want to know what room".

In general, people omit important information when displaying information about hospitals.

----

The main difference between a place of birth and a place of death is that, take Lear. He died in a house, but he was buried in a cemetery (in San Remo). Strictly, the moment he died (in the house), he ceased to be "Edward Lear", so what is buried in the cemetery is "the ashes of the person that used to be Edward Lear".

--- People make too much of pilgrimates to cemetery sites, and I am one of them. But one should ALSO consider where People DID DIE. Perhaps the most colourful is that hotel in Milano where Verdi died, and gathered multitudes, and then the coffin was transported to the place where it lies today -- quite a walk.

---

My favourite cemetery is LaChaise. Bellini died of dioarreha outside Paris, and the other day I had to publish in the newspaper a little note about that. And I got the thing slightly wrong. I wrote that Rubini had sung the funeral 'requiem' in the LaChaise, but, strictly, he had sung it in the Musee des Invalides. Only LATER was the coffin transported to LaChaise ("under heavy rain" -- and Rubini did not attend -- "I guess I did not have an umbrella", he remarks offensively). Ah well.

---

Grice was obsessed with maxims and how to abide with them in answers to questions:

"Where was Shakespeare born?"

"Somewhere in the Heart of England"

---

cfr.

"Where does Brigitte Bardot live?"
"Somewhere in the South of France".


---- It may be argued that since Shakespeare IS England, where he was born IS the 'Heart of England' and we don't need to go into details. Grice TOO was born "in the heart of England" or skirts thereof, in Harborne.

But with some other philosophers it's less easy to say.

People in general don't care where philosophers are born, and some don't care where philosophers are buried. The cemetery in Oxford is a good one to study. It's called Hollywell, and while people just pilgrimage to it to see the ashes of a man born in South Africa (Tolkien -- and who is buried in Wolvercote, so those people have to take a bus or taxi or something from THERE) and another born in Ireland (Lewis -- but who is buried in Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry -- so you need to take a bus or taxi from Hollywell) there are a few philosophers buried there, I expect. Or not (I tend to assume that the right thing to do is get buried where you LIVED rather than were you tutored?)

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Appendix:

From wiki

A number of well-known people are buried in the cemetery, including:

Henry Wentworth Acland,[2] physician and educator, and Sarah Acland,[2] after whom the Acland Home is named
James Blish, the American expatriate author
Maurice Bowra, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University[2]
John William Burgon, Dean of Chichester Cathedral[2]
Theophilus Carter, said to be the model for the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
George Claridge Druce, botanist and Mayor of Oxford
Hugo Dyson, member of the Inklings[2]
Francis Edgeworth, statistician and economist
Austin Farrer, Warden of Keble College, Oxford
Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind in the Willows[2]
Charles Buller Heberden, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University
William West Jones, Archbishop of Cape Town
Sir Richard Lodge, historian
Walter Pater, essayist and critic[2]
Ronald Poulton-Palmer, England Rugby captain[2]
Bartholomew Price, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford
Lord Redcliffe-Maud, civil servant and Master of University College, Oxford, and his wife Jean Redcliffe-Maud
John Rhys, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford
George Rolleston, physician and zoologist
John Stainer, composer and organist[2]
Kenneth Tynan, theatre critic and author[2]
Thomas Herbert Warren, President of Magdalen College, Oxford[2]
Charles Williams, novelist, poet and member of the Inklings[2]
William Wallace, Scottish philosopher