Grice's Play Group

by JLS
for the GC

INDEED, when Owens wrote his Ryle obituary in the Aristotelian Society, it is all about Grice. Grice had a mystifying thing about him. Owens recalls how Austin's Play Group had a bit of an icon status, back in the day. Ryle loved to have joined (he amused himself saying) but he was older than Austin, and that was a no-no. Austin had to be the _boss_.

Upon Austin's demise (of cancer, in 1960 -- the strongest blow on Oxonian ordinary language philosophy), Grice who coined "Play Group" would still reorganise the thing. -- vide Warnock, "Saturday mornings with Grice." But perhaps fings ain't what they used t'be."

Now our brilliant Club member, Bruce Aune, reminisces Grice's

"Saturday mornings at Corpus Christi
College.""

--- indeed, it was, as with Austin, 'by invitation only.'

I should provide a good photo of Corpus Christi -- Oxford's best college. Of couse Grice's alma mater (he played football for Corpus).

------

Aune tells us:

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

--- at various places. Warnock tells us that, with Austin alive, Austin would rather fancy the posh conference room at Grice's own college, St John's.

Personally, being quite familiar with the atmosphere, I would NEVER have allowed for indoor meetings. The Meadows are TOO GOOD to be missed. And what's the use of being a peripatetic if you are not gonna walk?!

---- Plus, Oxford is HEKADEMIA: the grove where Plato philosophised. Not the hussle and bussle of the City that Aristotle's Lykaion knew.

Aune continues:

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

--- a far cry from Grice's remembrance of vintage Play Group. Grice lists (alphabetically):

Austin
Nowell-Smith
Gardiner
Grice
Hampshire
Hare
Hart
Strawson
Paul
Pears
Thomson
Urmson
Warnock

-- vide Speranza, "Join the Play Group".

Aune continues:

"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."

--- Some of the groupers belonged to the earlier Thursday evening group (Urmson did). Vide Berlin, "Austin and the early beginnings of linguistic philosophy").

"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."

----- Urmson ended up writing the obit for Grice for the "Independent", which has a typo or two (regarding Grice's dates). It is sad that when Urmson later moved to Stanford, he would rarely see Grice. Fings ain't indeed.

----------- NOZICK, pre-anarchic days:

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

--------------------- but he never reminisced so charmingly!

"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."

---- But note that Grice kept using Corpus, rather than St. John's. Perhaps he wanted a change of airs. Knowing the geography, I can testify!

But St. John's was a world of its own, and perhaps Nozick then suffered from the 'rigours' of Mabbott -- good ol' Mabb, as Grice called him. The OTHER tutor (or 'don') of philosophy at St. John's. (Similarly, Strawson, and Flew, and Unger, and Nagel, had been official 'pupils' of Grice at St. John's. Richardson tells us in his obit. for Grice in the St. John's College Records that Grice was often referred to as "Godot" as people kept waiting for him as they collected up that very narrow stair overlooking the backyard (NOT the glorious college garden).

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

Aune continues, as he focuses on Grice's method proper:

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

--------- Recall that these were the days of pre-fame. What Passmore has in "Hundred years of philosophy" when referring to this 'ingenious clever fellow' behind much of what is going on in Oxford. (footnote to Grice).


"But..."

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

------ This is of course Grice's way of doing philosophy SATURDAY MORNINGS. Having been to Oxford, and London, I *know* that Grice would never have gotten ME in one single morning. I kant think on mornings. Less so on Oxford _Saturday_ mornings, which often found me in London.

(And what's the good of calling a late Tuesday seminar a "Saturday morning"?)

Aune continues:

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

"There were really two reasons for this."

To consider:

(A) REASON A -- Aune's dropping from the Play Group, i.e. Grice's attempt to continue an Austinian tradition in the face of circumstances.

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

---- This was Grice post-British Council. During the fifties, Grice had belonged to the British council for the organisation of 'Commonwealth' seminars for the promotion of Brit philosophy. There was something of 'too much of a tutor' in him, somedays.

Aune goes on:

"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."

Indeed, Grice's idea of an Oxford tutorial, was:

to combine

33% linguistic botanising
33% an article from a recent journal
33% Kantotle.

---

Aune adds:

"But the room lacked a blackboard."

--- and, consequently, chalks (I disimplicate). I lay the blame on Urmson, who being the 'don' should have produced it. Plus, I would rather have stayed in the gardens of Corpus even, which, admittedly, tend towards the noisy side on a Saturday morning.

Aune goes on:

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

--- Grice notes that with Austin he saw the Saturday mornings as RELAXING experiences by, back in the day, full-time dons, to liberate theirselves (sic) from the rigours of the profession (to 'educate').

Aune continues:

"... we discussed

numerous examples

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

----- I wonder how Nozick feared in botanising. Personally, I would NEVER have attended a Saturday morning without my pocket "Roget's".

----

Aune goes on:

"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."

--- Botany, or as I prefer, cartography.

"I found it dissatisfying."

---- This may have to do with what topics covered. When analysing 'freedom of the will', that Grice and Aune tackled, Grice starts with

free
alcohol free
free wheeling
free for lunch
liberal
frank in conversation

and so on...

Can give you a headache if you are heading for Kant. (Kant Wait).

Aune:

"I had no justifiable philosophical objection to the
procedure." that is, "I could NOT reasonably claim that it would not or could not bring solutions to significant problems", or, at least, "result in a greater understanding of significant issues."

such as 'freedom'.

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

Perhaps a cup of coffee would have helped. I never organise a Saturday morning without ample refreshments of various types.

"I didn’t enjoy it."

--- Too bad. Sad. Aune is being hyperbolic. Of course he enjoyed it! Look back on those contributions by Nozick, and the repostes by Grice, and the general atmosphere of genial conviviality about it all! (And report!)

---

(B) REASON B: Aune dropping from Grice's attempt at reviving the Play Group. ("Play Group Redivivus").

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

---- as I say, age matters. Because the Play group was originally intended for middle-aged, as it were, full-time dons, to socialise with theirselves. On the other hand, there's the TUTORIAL. One wonders, indeed, WHEN Oxford provides room for philosophy proper: solitary thinking. Grice will eventually find the place: his old Wolkswagen as he parked it outside his Spanish house up in the Berkeley hills. In ALL OTHER times, it was always 'getting together as to do music'. Grice's 'at-homes' up in the hills of Berkeley were similarly legendary -- with some Oxonian names dropping by: Myro, Searle, Sluga, ...).

Aune:

"I wanted to be writing."

Implicature: he wasn't. Cancelled: "And that was what I was doing."

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

Oddly (?) Grice never learned to type (but learned to smoke from his aristocratic mother, Mabel Fenton). He uses 'typewriter' as an example of useless thing (for him, "who don't type" (Reply to Richards, -- "Prejudices and predilections, which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice", by Paul Grice).

Aune gets at his reminiscing best:

"Grice’s

(a) rambling,
(b) leisurely, and
(c) seemingly inclusive discussions"

... "took too
much time away from the work I wanted to be doing myself."

Hey! It was just a couple of hours post-breakfast and pre-lunch! Just kidding!

But we would need to elaborate on the three features:

(a)

-- 'ramble' being the best. Cfr. peripatetic. Rambles with Grice on the Meadows, as it were.

(b)

'leisure'. Albritton's favourite word: 'otium'. Otiose. Business being lack of otium (nec-otium, negozio). Also, it rhymes with 'pleasure', almost.

-----

(c) 'seemingly inconclusive'.

"If philosophy generated no new problems it would be dead." (Grice).

Aune continues:

"Philosophy is a highly PERSONAL [rather than convivial -- but we know what he means] 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."

Still, we are ever so grateful to Aune for having cared to reminisce them all so charmingly!

Cheers!