A Gricean Dissolver

by JLS
for the GC

GRICE WAS NOT ONE to talk of a philosophical problem being 'dissolved' yet that is the irratating phrase he uses in the last passage in "Actions and Events".

It relates to Hare's point about 'pseudo-problems', so miscalled.

And with Williams in Pears 1963:

--- the one to blame is typically, whom Grice calls 'the enfant terrible of Oxford philosophy' as he knew it: Ayer.

Williams:

"Some have claimed, radically, that when the notions involved are properly understood, the alleged opposition dissolves, and the supposed dilemma can be shown to be a set of muddles and misunderstandings. Hobbes, Hume, and in our own time A. J. Ayer and others have taken this view."

Actually, it was Schlick -- as R. O. Doyle has it in his entry on 'pseudo-problems' -- back in the early 1930s. Perhaps this should interst R. B. Jones, who has studied Positivism, etc.

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