Russell Dale

Russell Dale has left a message in this blog. Thanks! I will comment!

"Hi J. L. I am very happy that you and others have found my work useful. I appreciate your critical comments as well. I have continued my research."

That's good to learn!

"John Constable had corresponded to me back when he was preparing the Richards papers. I was very pleased, also, that he enjoyed my work."

---- I must have my own correspondence with Constable -- somewhere! He is the typical British type, which I admire! He let me know all the details about his _oeuvre_ that, as I recall, Routledge had commissioned him. I was especially moved that Constable is working in the very same environs (back in Cambridge) as I. A. Richards did.

---- And it's great to have a Grice reference in the distinguished reprint of "Meaning of Meaning" -- thanks to Russell Dale and the interest that J. Constable showed on that!

---

Dale continues:

"I do consider Peirce, whom I greatly admire, in my historical chapter (Chapter 2). I hear the idea that Peirce could have been discussed more, but my sense was that Welby was the real source of the intention-basing (if I may) idea, not the other way around, even though Peirce, in fact, DID have a similar conception."

That was lovely to hear. Of course, I was obsessed with notes I would come across -- from the Peirce Society -- about how Griceian it all sounded, or vice versa ("How Peirceian Grice sounds") till... S. R. Chapman cared to comment in a more or less thorough way (there's always room for further thoroughness) -- on these notes by Grice, -- I think the way to quote them is:

"Notes on Peirce's theory of signs", by H. P. Grice.
The Grice Collection, Bancroft Library, UC/Berkeley.

Chapman dates them prior to 1948 "Meaning". It was through reading through them that I formed this belief that it was Peirce who was at the centre of Grice's attention then, as he taught his tutees at Oxford.

----

It is odd that Grice never cared to quote Peirce in print, but then 1948 "Meaning" has its own little history. I think it was Strawson who did mention that the thing (Grice, "Meaning" 1948) was first presented for the Philosophical Society, or something, at Oxford. We know the story that it was Anne Strawson (later Lady Strawson) who typed Grice's thing and delivered it to "Philosophical Review" (Grice only granted publication upon he being told that the 'thing' (as coming from Grice!) had been accepted).

I am also fascinated by H. L. A. Hart having cited Grice (1948) complete as it then was, by 1952, in "Words and signs".

(My interest has been Oxonian, hence my obsession with these notes by Grice on Peirce; even if, as R. Dale says, it's Lady Welby who we should turn our attention to -- cfr. R. B. Jones remarks on this, too -- in his post bringing Dale closer to the picture).

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Russell Dale notes:

"I wanted to trace the ACTUAL path of the idea back from Grice and the textual path went through Stevenson, to Ogden and Richards, to Gardiner at Oxford, and then to Welby."

That's very good. So good to hear of GARDINER! (again).

A quote I enjoy in THAT area is by Cameron and Taylor in a little book on "Conversation", for Oxford Pergmanon. They have a chapter, I think, on Gardiner. I recently posted a blog post (thinking of other authors) which I entitled

"Enough of an empiricist"

punning on Grice's "enough of a rationalist" in "Logic and Conversation". Cameron and Taylor want to say that while Gardiner is the avowed rationalist we all know, Gardiner was a die-hard unreedemable 'empiricist'! But I love him!

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(From what I recall, Gardiner taught at Oxford, but specific linguistic stuff, rather than philosophical, and I think Brigitte Nehrlich-Clark, who studied at Oxford, has done some research, using J. L. Austin's documents at the Bodleian, on the Austin-Gardiner interface. Great author, Gardiner).

Russell Dale goes on:

"Although Peirce had the connection to Welby after 1903, Welby had these ideas before she knew of Peirce's work."

Wasn't she _genial_?

"I couldn't find very convincing evidence of Peirce's influence in that chain from Grice back to Welby. Perhaps I have missed something. I will be happy to be corrected."

I wouldn't know. I had one tutor who lectured us on Peirce, and Morris ("Signs, language, and behaviour"). It's strange how some philosophy types think (as I don't, on a bad day) that Peirce's work is so illuminating for the philosophy student! But Grice must have thought so, because his lectures on Peirce were directed to the philosophy student!

In those days, he was "University Lecturer" I would think, or just plain don at St. John's (where he was dubbed "Godot" because he would be late for tutorials -- Richardson's obit. of Grice for "St. John's College Records"), and the lectures on Grice are pretty patronising.

But the show his 'linguistic botanising' vein. He is into replacing all of Peirce's crypto-technical stuff, I think Grice calls it, into the more basic:

---- ... means ... ----

Oddly, I was recently re-reading Grice's "Meaning Revisited", WoW and it's fascinating how he reverted to some of those 'techno-cryptical' remarks, as when he mentions 'indices', 'signaled', 'symptom' -- and in sum a wide range of 'vocabulary' for the talk of the phenomena other than plain '... mean ...'. It would be good to dwell a bit on 'signify' since this was Lady Welby's obsession.

I was never wedded to the -fy in signify. It seems to me that 'sign' just does. Why do we have to add 'make sign'? -- In other words, recent work in semiotics (by a student of Eco) has shown that the Greeks and the Romans were pretty advanced on theories of 'semeia' and 'signa'. While 'signify' (significare) in Latin, must point to an earlier Greek construction, I can't say I'm familiar with it. "poein" seems to be the '-fy'. To "make" a sign.

It seems odd to think that a black cloud _makes_ a sign, "Rain". Yet, in most Latinate languages, you cannot keep the talk simple, as Grice wants, however misguidedly ("Dark clouds mean rain") and they must introduce the 'making' of the sign on the part of the cloud. Odd, that.

Russell Dale notes:

"Concerning the writing of the dissertation. It was originally going to be ONLY philosophical analysis of meaning and a critical review of contemporary theories, and--as I hoped--an offering of my own. But, as things turned out, for various reasons, I simply started hunting down what Grice meant by the comment in "Meaning" (1957) that basing meaning on intention is "controversial". Who was discussing it?"

--- Egsactly! And a genial thing your decision was!

Incidentally, it was very sane of Grice to have in 1989 (he died of course in 1988) in WoW (Harvard) the actual date, 1948, in brackets, after "Meaning". THAT should teach Strawson a lesson!

Chapman is very observant regarding the cryptic way Grice had of keeping his manuscripts. Some are still in handwritten form, some are even in tape form, only (no transcription). Pity the average philosopher at Berkeley turns to go on the narcissitic side. If *I* were a prof at Berkeley I would have ALL MY STUDENTS (regardless of gender! just teasing) providing a term paper on THAT, i.e. on that bit of a lovely mess that the 67 (are they?) folders that the Grice Collection comprise!

--- If they do that with Kant and Wittgenstein in the continent, surely Griceians should not be deprived of THEIR sense of history.

Russell Dale notes:

"I was certain he couldn't have said this out of the blue. So, I started digging and found the story so interesting that I wrote it up and included it in the dissertation. But, the bulk of the dissertation was already finished by that time."

That was good to hear. One day I will expand on the bulk of my dissertation -- which was finished, my mother says, by the time I entered Kindergarten! (Just kidding).

--- Yes. I'll re-read that 'controversial'. Oddly, I saw "The King's Speech" the other day and was surprised at the way Helena Bonham-Carter pronounces the word. But then she is aping Queen Mary.

It's clearly

/kontroversial/

where I would think a /sh/ sound may also be possible. Should check that out!

--- and it should merit a blog post -- and more:

"Grice -- 'controversial'?"

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Russell Dale notes:

"I am curious why you think that deep down Grice is a causal theorist. I make the point in my dissertation that Grice's theory can be construed as a causal theory itself. But, I take it you don't mean your comment in that way. I am curious how you see things in this regard."

I think I must have my correspondence -- The Speranza Collection -- somehwere, with Stampe on that. One day, feeling bored, I contacted both Patton and Stampe, who had written on "Rudiments of meaning" -- defending Grice contra Ziff. A nice correspondence ensued. Patton let me have some early work criticising Kripke (that hateful example after "Meaning" -- "The cops are round the corner" implying, "let's fly").

Stampe, on the other hand, we discussed stuff relating to 'causalism'. It was the time I was concerned with reprints of Grice, and had noted that his "Causal theory of perception" had been reprinted in Mouton/Gruyter, "Casual theories of the mind". Stampe let me have some views of Dretske, and basically we agreed that causalism is never anathema.

I was amused that when Parkinson, who didn't really know much, edited a reference to Grice's "Meaning" in "Theories of meaning" (Oxford readings in philosophy, ed. Warnock) he cared to mention that Grice's theory is a causalist one. In the reference section, not that Parkinson cared to reprint Grice (It was left to Strawson to do that in his "Philosophical Logic", same series).

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With Stampe, I discussed the many and varied (5 or 6 I think) references by Grice to 'causal' aspects. I should revise that correspondence.

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Stevenson, as used by Grice, is a bit of a caricature. The other day I was reading, again, Chapman, who did much of the homework for us, and I was delighted by this quote direct from that volume that I have overlooked so often: Stevenson's "Ethics and language" as cited by Grice 1948. It makes sense to cite this if you are writing in 1948, rather than 1957.

The example by Stevenson NOTICEABLY includes scare quotes:

As in:

"Dark clouds mean 'rain'"

---

Or

"The barometer 'means' that ..."

etc.

I.e. Stevenson is claiming that it's only a transferred, metaphorical sense of '... means ..." that Grice will concentrate his analysis on.

I.e. it would be as if "... means ..." is first and foremost, 'nonnatural'; and that 'natural' meaning (of the 'causal' sort that Stevenson discusses) is an 'anthropomorphic' derivation. I had come to similar conclusion by checking with some critical remarks on Grice on the whole being misguided in his account of so-called "natural" 'meaning'.

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But the problem of 'causation' is subtle and complex.

Note that, as if by magic, almost, Grice notes that

"means to"

should be treated as a type of "natural" 'meaning'

"He meant to seduce her".

---- Since no emission (to use Grice's lexical choice in "Meaning Revisited") is made explicit there, one wonders.

But in any case, 'mean-to' sounds VERY much like 'intend'. So it's a bit of a full circle.

On another day, I was equally bored, and so, after a boring day I had spent with Philosopher's Index -- and writing down, Facione, Facione, Facione -- he wrote quite a bit, I decided to write Facione. He replied with some charm.

"You recall me of me writing to Grice; only that he never replied". He regretted.

---- (Chapman notes that Grice would keep most of the correspondence sent to him unopened).

Facione in various papers, had cited from Hart, and an American philosopher, too. I was so interested in seeing if Hart could have been said to be a proto-Grice, that I checked all the references.

Of course Hart is just citing Grice. Hart was never too deep a philosophical spirit, as the recent biography of the man testifies. He was better positioned socially at Oxford than Grice, though. So, Hart is just citing from

Grice

"those spots mean measles"
"dark clouds mean rain"

--- "I owe all this to Grice", he says in a footnote.

-- and that is that. He (Hart) is concerned with Holloway, which I think should prove interesting in a Gardiner-sort of way. Holloway I think I came across two pieces: this book on "Language and Intelligence" that Hart is reviewing, and a note on 'philosophy of language in England'.

But back to 'causalism'.

Since Grice's analyses of m-intentions get so complicated, one is often oblivious, if that's the word, of the causal source of it all. But I love to see Grice as a causalist and his remarks as concordant with "Causal theory of meaning".

---- As R. Dale notes in his dissertation, it will do to consider Grice's cursory 'remarks' on 'causal theories' of the type Stevenson (Grice thinks) endorsed. The paper, "Meaning", is so brief, that one is led to think: "OK -- so this is bidding farewell to causal approaches" and providing a different intentionalist approach.

On top of things, Suppes complicates things, if you read his contribution to PGRICE ed. Grandy/Warner. Suppes dismisses Biro (a delight of a man, with whom I have talked loads on Grice) and Chomsky as misjudging Grice a 'behaviourist' (read: causalist?). Instead, Suppes suggest Grice be best seen as an 'intentionalist'. In recent work unburied by Chapman, notably an essay by the Early Grice on "Intention and Disposition" which I have elaborated on in S. Bayen's list for the history-of-analytic-philosophy , it is clear where Grice's 'ideology' stood.

He saw himself as an 'intentionalist'. His position is no different from the sort of phenomenological outlook of things that Ogden/Richards briefly consider when they discuss "Continental" approaches to meaning. In the Oxford of Grice's day, it meant to find a niche which would separate him from the truly 'empiricists' like Ayer, and Berlin, and even Ryle.

Oddly, when D. Wilson, who Grice cites ("authors like Sperber and Wilson"), was recently visiting Norway and being interviewed, she confesses that she herself thought of Grice as a 'behaviourist'. At the time, Wilson was changing 'loyalties', if that's not too strong, and becoming a student not of Grice as she had been at Oxford, but of Chomsky at MIT (her PhD she submitted to the Foreign-Language Department there). So, it was critical for Wilson to disassociate what she was doing with any ideology of 'behaviourism' that she detected in Grice.

Similarly, Searle makes the point, "Grice the behaviourist" in his critical remarks on his including Grice WoW:VI in "Philosophy of Language" (Oxford Warnock series).

It may be argued that no behaviourist can fail to be a causalist. Grice was interested in many and varied things. He wanted to distinguish himself from "Wittgensteinians" (I'm just re-reading his "Remarks about the senses" where this is made explicit). And 'causalism' was not yet totally in vogue, but I should defer discussion to a longer day... Or something.