Vintage Flew -- most definitely Griceian

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

Flew, "Selves", in Mind 1949 LVIII(231):355-358.

--- Recall Grice, "Personal Identity" (1941). In "Selves" Flew is growing a strong exponent of ordinary-language philosophy and deals with 'logical-constructtion' of selves as 'absurd'. Very good read.

Some people refer to Grice, etc., as philosophers of "the second part of the twentieth-century". Yet, most of it was thought out in the first part.

The essay features the expression, 'ordinary language' that only later will become 'THE' expression to use.

It considers arguments about the wrong uses of 'self' by some philosophers. Here Flew proves less of a Fowlerian than Grice.

Flew would say: "If "I" declines in English, that's something for Fowler, not the philosopher".

Similarly, here in "Selves", he considers, alla Kramer, "myself" as just a logical device, a 'suffix', and NOT to be understood as "my self". "We regret ourselves, but we never find occasion to regret our selves" and so on. Funny to read.