H. P. Grice cites O. P. Wood

O. P. Wood,

The force of linguistic rules.

Wood on the implicatum of 'or' -- Mind, review of Connor. 

Or” was a big thing in Oxford philosophy. The only known published work of Oscar Wood, our philosophy tutor at Christ Church, was an essay in Mind, the philosophers’ journal, entitled “Alternative Uses of “Or” ”, a work which was every bit as indeterminate as its title. Several years later he published another paper, this time for the Aristotelian Society, entitled “On Being Forced to a Conclusion”. Oscar looked like a cherub who had been spoiled by claret. He was simultaneously charming and miserable. To many of his pupils he became a lifelong friend. He and I never quite clicked. My kind of laziness wasn’t his. Besides, I found the linguistic brand of philosophy then in vogue as dry and sterile as those who taught it… My breaking point came in a New College lecture room where Professor A.J. Ayer, the legendary seducer and wit, was lecturing on the problems of induction. In his quick, dessicated voice, he invited us to consider an imaginary universe in which time was split up into an infinity of separate instants, none of which had any connection to the next. In such a universe how could we induce anything? It was intolerably stuffy in the room. The leaded windows were all shut, perhaps were already rusted up in Matthew Arnold’s day, and flies were buzzing against the panes as desperate to get out as I was. If this was philosophy, I could do without it and it could do without me…

When I switched to modern languages, I thought, or persuaded myself, that those four terms doing PPE had been a complete waste of time. What a farrago of nit-picking and logic-chopping I had been wading through, or most of the time not wading through. The curious thing is that, looking back today, I realise that during that brief period of intermittent attention I picked up, almost unwittingly, half the mental furniture that, scratched and battered no doubt, I still use.

Ferdinand Mount: Cold Cream.