The Position of Grice in the Curriculum

Grice grew to be very big. So, the placement (or his placement) in the curriculum is a big issue, too.

There was a philosopher, from Spain, I think, who suggested something as Berlioz had suggested re: Italian opera in Paris. Berlioz had suggested about the Italian opera house in Paris, "Bomb it". This Spanish professor held that the departments of philosophy in each university should be closed, since they are usually otiose. Instead, he proposed to have a 'philosopher' attached to all the different departments. Thus, if "Linguistics" is recognised as a science, there would be a philosopher attached there. Similarly for Physics, Statistics, Journalism, Art, Population Studies, Psychology, ... and the rest of them.

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Grice said that there are TWO dimensions of philosophy: in time (longitudinal -- as when we say, "that was a LONG time gone!") and in 'branches' (latitudinal) -- as when we say, "I first got an interest in metaphysics but was soon enough engaged in a discussion of Feyerabend's "Anything Goes" -- philosophy of science at its worst").

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Grice is never clear what the 'conceptual' map of philosophy should go. At bits he suggests that it all falls within rationality.

He speaks of 'rational psychology' for example (as had been used by Kant and his predecessors, 'psychologia rationalis'). Then psychology (rationalis) he sees as a branch of 'metaphysics' (via ontologia specialis).

He was so into taxonomies that some students start to get very bored by Grice and most forget about all the taxonomies soon after they pass the course!

It's odd that the 'implicature' topic is NOT taught in philosophy courses --. Trust your average "language sciences" chap to know more about Grice than most. They may have the odd inconsistency. Most thought, for ages, that Grice was a chainsmoker (which he was) who taught English in California. "The linguist Paul Grice" -- e.g. The blame here is Cole & Morgan who included "Logic and Conversation" in their series, "Speech acts", volume 3.

Then, it's very natural that the 'language science' chap who learned of the "Gricean maxims" won't give a damn about Ziff on the counterexamples to Grice's theory of "meaning" of 1948. It's very HARD to integrate all that Grice had published on meaning and his reasonably perspicuous notion of 'implicature'.

When it comes to "Conception of Value" and "Aspects of Reason" -- it's like they say: "Not the Grice I'm interested". And maybe they are right! They use "Grice" to mean 'the chap about the implicature' at the time of saying those things in the 1967 second William James lecture. Anything else said by Grice BEFORE or AFTER that is claimed to be, mainly, irrelevant.

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I suppose an analogy would be to follow Christ by the Gospel according to St. Matthew, but only ch. 4, verses 12 to 19, and declare the rest apocryphal!