Strands Off One Fabric

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Grice speaks of "strands" of his own thought:

A strand is "any one of the threads, fibers, wires, etc. that are twisted together to form a length of string, rope, or cable". So the idea is that you just don't see strands. You unweave strands, out of a fabric. Unless you are the knitter, and you weave them.

It's also any of the individual bundles of thread or fiber so twisted together. Why this differs from the above, I can't see.

It's also a ropelike length of anything -- a strand of pearls, a strand of hair. It can't be this 'use', because 'strand of hair' sounds totally otiose. Why not just say 'hair'. In Italian, strand is 'filo', which is just hair -- we don't have strands of one hair.

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It's also any of the parts that are bound together to form a whole -- the strands of one's life. This is figurative and we don't want to go there.

Plus, the etymology is Middle English, only -- "stronde" "< ?", i.e. origin unknown.

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I'm considering that strands are unnecessary in the history of philosophy. When I studied Plato, or St. Bonaventura, or whoever, in any history of philosophy, there is always a standard order of exposition:

1. metaphysics.

2. epistemology

3. ethics.

Ethics is always last.

So, in fact, to tread on the threads of Grice's thought, would be to do just that. Start with ontology and proceed to ethics. This is fact the approach ('boring', my cousin calls it) by Grandy/Warner -- Grice's "Richards" -- in Grice's Reply to Richards.

Richards revise all the 'strands' in whom they see as a 'systematic philosopher'.

Still different is to go Chapman's way, in her bio of Grice. She is NOT critical, but summarises one by one (almost) all the things that Grice wrote.

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So, in what ways does Grice differ?

Well, for one, the Grandy/Warner thing came out in 1986, and Grice would NEVER read anything he had published or written. Everything had to be starting afresh. So he could not have referred to "Reply to Richards" when Harvard University Press was expecting stuff from him (at 74 years old).

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And Grice could not have read Chapman's book because it came out in 2006, and Grice died in 1988.

Etc.