Aune's affectionate remembrance of Grice

by JLS
for the GC

From Aune's engaging Autobiography in Bayne's "History of analytic philosophy".

Aune writes:

"I eventually sent it to Max Black of Cornell University, who had
solicited papers from younger American philosophers for a volume Allen and
Unwin would publish as Philosophy in America."

"Black chose fourteen papers
from the ones submitted, and my paper, “On the Complexity of Avowals,” was
one of the papers he selected. The target of that paper was a group of arguments
by Wittgenstein and Norman Malcolm that were widely discussed at the time.
They concerned the supposed “criteria” for being in pain, for understanding talk
about pain, and for using the word “pain” correctly in first- and other-person
uses."

"In the course of developing my criticism of some of these arguments I drew
a distinction between what a statement implies and what this or that person
might imply in making that statement."

"This distinction was similar to one that
... Grice was then making in his work on what he called conversational implicatures,
and perhaps because of this, Grice was quite pleased by my talk."

"At any
rate, after my talk or shortly after it, Grice invited me to take part in his “Saturday
mornings,” the discussions he held on Saturday mornings at Corpus Christi
College."

------

"The Saturday discussions that Grice led when I was there were a continuation
of the Saturday morning discussions previously led by J.L. Austin."

"The
meetings I attended generally had five or six discussants."

"I can no longer remember
all the people who attended."

"R.M. Hare was nearly always there, but he
never, as I recall, addressed a single word to me."

"He was not superior or rude."

"I
think he was simply reticent or shy."

"I think J.O. Urmson sometimes attended."

"He
was then a don at Corpus."

"And Robert Nozick, the other young American visitor,
was always there."

"Nozick was younger than I."

"He had finished his Ph.D. earlier in
the year at Princeton."

"His sponsor at Oxford, as it were, was Grice."

"He was attached
to St. John’s College as I was attached to Corpus."

--------------------------- to reconsider! --- Nozick's career.

Aune continues:

"I was greatly impressed by Grice’s ideas, his intelligence, and his critical
ability."

"But I gradually came to the conclusion that his way of doing philosophy
was not mine."

"After a couple months, I gradually stopped attending the meetings."

"There were really two reasons for this."

(A) REASON A -- Aune's dropping from the Play Group.


"One was that Grice’s procedure in
the meetings left me seriously dissatisfied."

"We generally discussed recent journal
articles (one was Rawls’ “Justice as Fairness”)."

---- Rawls ended up quoting from Grice's earliest "Personal identity" (1941) in "Philosophy and public affairs."

"But the room lacked a blackboard."

"And, instead of attempting to formulate clear and definite assertions about the
arguments used, we discussed

numerous examples

in what seemed to me an indefinite
and inconclusive way."

----

"We seemed, in fact, to make very generous use of
the case-by-case method that John Wisdom employed in the seminar I described
earlier."

"I found it dissatisfying."

"I had no justifiable philosophical objection to the
procedure."

"I could not reasonably claim that it would not or could not bring solutions
to significant problems or result in a greater understanding of significant
issues."

"But I didn’t find the procedure satisfying."

"I didn’t enjoy it."

(B) REASON B: Aune dropping from the Play Group.

"The other reason
was that I wanted to be working at my own task."

"I wanted to be writing."

"At
that time of my philosophical life, I worked out my ideas on my typewriter, not
in talk."

"Grice’s rambling, leisurely, and seemingly inclusive discussions took too
much time away from the work I wanted to be doing myself."

-----

"Philosophy is a
highly personal pursuit, at least for me, and admirable as I thought he was, Grice
pursued philosophical issues in a way I simply did not find congenial."

So "I eventually dropped out of Grice’s discussion group."

---- What an excellent remembrance!