Editing Stuart Brown's charming entry for Grice

From an online source:

"Grice, Herbert Paul -- British-American, b: 15 March 1913, Birmingham, England"

Harborne, to be more precise. "We're Harborne, not Brum," he'd say.

"d: 28 August 1990, Berkeley, California."

Actually, it was 1988. This misdating may be the cause of Stuart Brown's saying (or writing, literally) that Grice was a visiting professor at Seattle in 1990. Visiting ghost?

"Cat: Linguistic philosopher."

Oddly, I prefer "Mungojerry".

"Ints: Metaphysics; philosophy of language; ethics; history of philosophy."

Too true.

"Educ: Corpus Christi College, Oxford."

Too true. Hardie the tutor. Actually, he had been educated before at Clifton ("only the poor get an education at Oxford"). And before that, as it should, by his kind mama, the aristocrat Mabel Fenton, who ran a beautiful preppy school on the Main Street of the affluent Harborne.

"Infls: Austin, Quine and Kripke."

ESPECIALLY Kripke. Just joking!

"Appts: 1939–67, Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford; 1967, presented William James Lectures at Harvard; 1967–80, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley; 1980–84, Visiting Professor, University of Washington at Seattle; 1980–90, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Berkeley."

Oops. I see that he is not claimed to have been visiting at Seattle in 1990. Only becoming emeritus. Oddly, I know a female professor at a London uni who is now professor emeritus. Shouldn't she be 'emerita'?

On the other hand, Tommy Atkins was professor, but he never became emeritus. Is that fair?

----

"Main publications:
(1941) ‘Personal identity’, Mind 50."

Repr. in Perry, --- and one to add to Grice, "Philosophical Papers". I forgot about it the other day!


"(1956) (with Strawson) ‘In defense of a dogma’, Philosophical Review 65."

repr. in WoW!

"(1957) ‘Meaning’, Philosophical Review 66."

repr. in WoW!

"(1961) ‘The causal theory of perception’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume."

NOT repr. in WoW, but rather 'murdered' in WoW (Grice omitted the best section, Section II -- on "Have you stopped beating your wife?")

"(1968) ‘Utterer’s meaning, sentence-meaning and word-meaning’, in Foundations of Language 4 (Dordrecht); reprinted in John Searle (ed.), The Philosophy of Language, London: Oxford University Press."

and more importantly (forget Searle!) in WoW!

"(1969) ‘Vacuous names’, in Donald Davidson and Jaaco Hintikka (eds), Words and Objections: Essays on the Work of W.V.Quine, Dordrecht: Reidel."

repr. or rather murdered by Ostertage in "Definite descriptions: a reader", MIT.

"(1969) ‘Utterer’s meaning and intentions’, Philosophical Review 78."

repr. in WoW.

"(1975) ‘Logic and conversation’, in P.Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Speech Acts."

repr. in WoW -- Grice would only quote from the Davidson/Harman reprint -- never the Cole and Morgan.

"(1981) ‘Presuppositions and conversational implicature’, in P.Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics, New York: Academic."

repr. in WoW

"(1989) Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (includes 1967 William James Lectures and most of the articles that Grice had previously had published)."

"(1991) The Conception of Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press (the Carus Lectures for 1983; posthumous)."

Secondary literature:

"Armstrong, D.M. (1971) ‘Meaning and communication’, Philosophical Review."

"Black, Max (1973) ‘Meaning and intention: an examination of Grice’s views’, New Literary History 4." I like Martinich's answer to that, which I have reviewed elsewhere. It appeared in Dialectica. Black, like Martinich, is Russian-born.

Cole, P. and Morgan, J.L.
(eds) Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3, Speech Acts.

Davidson, D. and Harman, G. (1975) The Logic of Grammar.

"Grandy, Richard E. and Warner, Richard (eds) (1986) Philosophical Grounds of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends, Oxford: Clarendon Press (includes a list of Grice’s ‘unpublications’ as well as works by then published under his name)."

--- rather than under other peoples' names --. It also includes a more boring "list of Grice's PUBLICATIONS." Apparently, the noun 'unpublication' is (c) Grice. Horn discusses this in his analysis of un- nouns. It's a back formation from 'unpubished', of course. Apparently, Grandy/Warner went, "And how should we call these?". "Why, unpublications, of course", was Grice's reply.


"MacKay, A.F. (1972) ‘Professor Grice’s theory of meaning’, Mind 81."

When they say 'professor' they mean pretentious!

"Ziff, P. (1967) ‘On H.P.Grice’s theory of meaning’, Analysis."



BROWN writes:

"After the death of Austin in 1960, Grice came to the fore as a defender of the notion of a ‘speech-act’ and, in the decades following, he became a significant figure in controversies in the philosophy of language."

Too true. By 1967, Grice got tired of Oxford and moved to sunny California!

"His William James Lectures, published in schematic form in his ‘Utterer’s meaning’ paper (1967), received much attention in America."

-- and in China!

"Grice stressed the importance of the utterer’s intention and, in particular, the intended response of the auditor. When someone calls out ‘Fire!’ he intends others to try to do certain things as a result of recognizing his intention through his utterance."

Mutatis mutandi, "Woolf! Woolf!"

---

"A language consists of a repertoire of communicative devices that are available to agents. In one of the Lectures, ‘Logic and conversation’ (separately published in 1975), Grice developed the idea of conversational implication."

Or implicature, rather. Now recognised, thanks to yours truly, in the OED3. Not credited to Sidonius, alas.

"Conversation, he maintained, is subject to rational principles and implications may correctly be drawn from what someone has said which are quite different from those that appear to be licensed by the rules of formal logic."

Even if informally dressed under such devices as 'not', 'and', 'or', 'if', 'all', 'some (at least one)', and 'the'.

-- to stick to the seven locutions -- eight really counting 'at least one' -- listed by Grice in "Logic and Conversation", for fun.

Brown:

"This idea was developed by Strawson. Although he published little when he was at Oxford, he had a considerable influence as a teacher;"

Mostly because he taught!

"and through his seminars. Strawson was among his pupils, and through his seminars, which were attended by sabbatical visitors in Oxford, he influenced many others, including Searle."

Searle is always there when one blissfully needs him!

"Although Grice was most influential as a philosopher of language, his interests were wide-ranging. Late in life he returned to a study of ethics"

mainly because his graduate student assigned by the Dept. of Philosophy at Berkeley was this bright Canadian female student: Judy Baker, who later married to I. M. Hacking.

"and was engaged, with Judith Baker, on producing a book on Kant’s ethics."

--- which is very good -- when written.

"When he died his many unpublished manuscripts were deposited as the Paul Grice Archives at the University of California at Berkeley."

and for a time he was referred as having been a member of the "American Pscyhological Association", and to have written stuff on 'implicative'. The collection claimed to contain items dated 1989.


"Sources: Obituary, Independent, 31 Aug 1990. STUART BROWN". That obituary is by J. O. Urmson. Others include my favourite: Geo Richardson, a poor Glasgwegian, they say, at the prestigious "St. John's College Records". The Times obituary was typically anonymous and read, "Professional crick... -- no, professional philosopher and amateur cricketer".

The New York Times, which publishes tons of otiose obituaries, did not publish one, I would think.

The official obit. at Berkeley written by a bunch of authors, and there are obituary notes in the British Academy (written by Wiggins and Strawson) and in the Dictionary of National Biography (co-written by Stroud).

Another book is "Aspects of Reason", 2001, but Brown would not know that, since this thing was published before Grice's book.