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Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Grice and the history of 20th century analytic philosophy

Speranza

Re: the Oxford handbook of the history of analytic philosophy


Introduction: Analytic Philosophy and its Historiography

--- exactly. This is the main point: historiography. Grice was not so much a historian as a historiographer. Note the plethora of authors he quotes in "Prolegomena" to "Logic and Conversation": obscure philosophers too, like Benjamin -- Ryle, Strawson, Urmson, Hart, Austin, Wittgenstein, Searle, -- he was interested in a 'methodological maneouvre' he saw in a couple of them, mainly HIMSELF. It is not unfair to say that his "Logic and Conversation" (1967) is a methodological reply to his earlier "Causal theory of perception" (1967) -- which he found, by then, outdated.

1: Michael Beaney: What is analytic philosophy?

-- exactly. For we need to ask ourselves: is there a thing as 'pre-analytic' philosophy? Never mind post-analytic and post-post analytic.

2: Michael Beaney: The historiography of analytic philosophy

--- and the ideologies behind them. You have to be English to do English history of English analytic historiography, and Beaney is! (Gellner wasn't, as wasn't Bergmann).

3: Michael Beaney: Chronology of analytic philosophy and its historiography

--- Exactly. Revising the Grice Papers, one sees he cared to keep copies of his 1938 paper on "Negation". Plus his "Personal Identity" (1941) for "Mind", and the prolific post-war period. And then the "American" phase, to conclude with his plethora of 'retrospective' views on things.



4: Michael Beaney: Bibliography of analytic philosophy and its historiography

--- exactly. For the forum here is the British Journal for the History of Philosophy -- or something.

Part One: The Origins of Analytic Philosophy

5: Mark Textor:

Bolzano's anti-Kantianism: from a priori cognitions to conceptual truths


6: David Hyder:

Time, norms, and structure in nineteenth-century German philosophy of science


7: Gottfried Gabriel:

Frege and the German background to analytic philosophy

----


8: John Skorupski:

Analytic philosophy, the Analytic school, and British philosophy

where we should distinguish between "British" and "English" and English and Oxbridge, and Oxonian. As G. Mikes says in "How to become a Brit", "When the English say Brit they mean English, and vice versa".

9: Jamie Tappenden:

The mathematical and logical background to analytic philosophy


10: Tyler Burge:

Gottlob Frege: some forms of influence

--- here the work of Harnish is the most Griceian of all -- but cfr. Horn's F-implicatures.

11: Nicholas Griffin:

Russell and Moore's revolt against British idealism


12: Bernard Linsky:

Russell's theory of descriptions and the idea of logical construction

--- cfr. Grice, "Definite descriptions in Russell and in the vernacular"

13: Thomas Baldwin:

G. E. Moore and the Cambridge School of Analysis

"Cambridge? Where is that?"

---

Oddly, Grice's "Causal theory of perception" was first delivered in CAMBRIDGE, for a meeting with the Aristotelian Society.

-- Cambridge is in East Anglia and Grice is an East Anglian philosopher. Not H. P. Grice, but Geoffrey Russell Grice, I mean -- author of a book on the foundations of morality.

14: Michael Kremer:

The whole meaning of a book of nonsense: reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus


Part Two: The Development of Analytic Philosophy

15: Charles Travis and Mark Kalderon:

Oxford realism

---- as perceived when you 'see' Oxford -- see Oxford and die.

16: Thomas Uebel:

Early logical empiricism and its reception: the case of the Vienna Circle


17: Erich H. Reck:

Developments in logic: Carnap, Gödel and Tarski

-- cfr. R. B. Jones, "The Carnap Corner".

18: Hans-Johann Glock:

Wittgenstein's later philosophy


19: Maria Baghramian and Andrew Jorgensen:

Quine, Kripke, and Putnam


20: Sean Crawford:

The myth of logical behaviourism and the origins of the identity theory


21: Alex Miller:

The development of theories of meaning: from Frege to McDowell and beyond


---- with Grice in the interim. I loved Harrison's description of Grice's theory: the theory most attacked by counter-examples, besides Act-Utilitarianism!

There are BOOKS written on this: Avramides, and "Conversational Implicature" (in the Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

22: Stewart Candlish and Nic Damnjanovic:

Reason, action and the will: the fall and rise of causalism

Grice was of course a causalist. I loved the way he deals with this in "Meaning" (1948). "Of course you don't have a REASON to be amused" (or offended) -- a 'cause' will do!


23: Peter Simons:

Metaphysics in analytic philosophy

24: Jonathan Dancy:

Meta-ethics in the twentieth century

Refreshing that Dancy, who concentrated on Grice's Causal Theory of Perception in his early books in epistemology is now dealing with 'ought' questions. (His son is an actor).

25: Julia Driver:

Normative ethical theory in the twentieth century

26: Peter Lamarque:

Analytic aesthetics

--- I love Lamarque and his collection on analytic aesthetics is a memorial to F. N. Sibley, formerly of Oxford, and quite good at quoting Grice!

27: Jonathan Wolff:

Analytic political philosophy

-- conservatism! becoming Liberalism, in Grice's case.

Part Three: Themes in the History of Analytic Philosophy

28: Richard G. Heck, Jr., and Robert May:

The function is unsaturated


29: Richard Gaskin:

When logical atomism met the Theaetetus: Ryle on Naming and Saying

The "Fido"-Fido theory. Oddly, Grice had a couple of cats: Sausalito, Moraga, and Oakland. Note that "Sausalito"-Sausalito theory of meaning does as well. (He named the cats after the places where he found them)

30: Cora Diamond:

Reading the Tractatus with G. E. M. Anscombe

31: Peter Hylton:

Ideas of a logically perfect language in analytic philosophy

---

32: P. M. S. Hacker:

The linguistic turn in analytic philosophy

turn of the scre that is. Hacker of course succeeded (with the late G. P. Baker) Grice as tutorial fellow in philosophy at the best college in Oxford: St. John's.

33: Gary Hatfield:

Perception and sense data

--- which is Grice's specialty. "Causal theory of perception" Grice viewed as his locus classicus, as he was motivated to work on the empiricist tradition alla G. A. Paul and, Grice's junior, G. J. Warnock.

34: Annalisa Coliva:

Scepticism and knowledge: Moore's proof of an external world

35: Juliet Floyd:

The varieties of rigorous experience

--- "I can commit myself to the 39 articles of the C. of E. without knowing what they are" -- Grice would say. He would often reminisce his father as the best nonconformist he ever met! (And he played the violin, too!)

36: Sanford Shieh:

Modality

37: Jaroslav Peregrin:

Inferentialism and normativity

38: Cheryl Misak:

Pragmatism and analytic philosophy
39: David Woodruff Smith:

The role of phenomenology in analytic philosophy

Etc.

Cfr. "The Grice Club".

Cheers.

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