Griceiana, Donnellaniana

Speranza

Further on Grice and Donnellan: Donnellan lived among good horses and fine wines.

His alma mater was College Park, Maryland, but was soon transferred to Cornell. MA dissertation on The Platonic theory of negation, PhD dissertation on the foundations of necessary truth (in the work of C. I. Lewis). While at Cornell, Grice visited and gave a seminar with the material that would become his implicature theory. Grice's stalking horse there was, not surprisingly, Malcolm! -- and of course, Strawson. During the same semester, Donnellan taught logic, using two textbooks: Quine's Method of Logic and Strawson's "Introduction to Logical Theory". This is interesting because when Strawson wrote the 'Introduction' to his "Philosophy of Logic" volume for G. J. Warnock's series of Oxford readings in philosophy, he only cared to quote from that "Methods of Logic" _and_ Grice.

 

When Grice went back to Oxford, Donnellan started to criticise Strawson's "On referring". Not long after, Grice would credit Donnellan, but instead of 'referential' vs. 'attributive', Grice preferred to speak of the identificatory/non-identificatory distinction. Grice proposes an informal notation for this:

 

THE Psi is Phi -- identificatory

_the_ Psi is Phi ---- non-identificatory 

 

Grice had further doubts about the conclusions that Donnellan drew from the existence of such distinction. Interestingly Donnellan's "Reference and Definite Descriptions", like Grice's "Meaning", was submitted to "The Philosophical Review". Grice's "Meaning" was submitted by Strawson (as typed by Anne Strawson). Donnellan's "Reference and Definite Descriptions" was submitted by himself (Donnellan) in 1964, but rejected, and only published in 1966 -- but he also gave 1964 as the date of the thing (Similarly Grice always gave 1948 as the date of 'Meaning', since it was only in 1956 -- after co-authoring "In defense of a dogma" with him (Grice) that Strawson submitted "Meaning" to PR -- coming out in 1957.

 

Interestingly, Donnellan's MA work was on the theory of negation; similarly, Grice's very first essay was on negation -- with a nod to Plato, too.

 

Donnellan's work was compiled in a volume with Oxford, along with a sort of tribute, with essays by different philosophers. Donnellan's compilation manages to quote Grice three times. The references are to "Putting Humpty Dumpty together again". So, we can say that his account of implicature theory was _first hand_ (dating from the Grice Cornell seminar).

 

Both Grice and Donnellan lived in 'northern' California, as we may call it. And both have both first and middle interesting names: Herbert Paul Grice (but he preferred to go by H. Paul Grice -- the "Herbert" he inherited from his father), and Keith Sedgwick Donnellan. (Grice's mother's maiden: [Mabel] Fulton; Donnellan's mother's maiden name: [Louise] Nucholls). One hailed from the heart of England (so-called); the other from Washington, DC. Both have solid philosophical intuitions and an eye for examples.

 

Both Grice and Donnellan smoked -- as someone said, it seemed to have been almost mandatory to make "Philosophers smoke" a necessary truth alla C. I. Lewis (on whom Donnellan wrote his PhD dissertation).

 

When a colloquium was organised for Donnellan after he had retired, and to which he drove from his paradise of good horses and fine wines, he was surprised that the 'audience' was using high-tech terminology (like 'rigid designation' -- vide Donnellan's polemic with Kripke), while he remained faithful to ordinary usage, much alla Grice!