RT list: Grice, HP cited by Pears, DF

I used to collect (after writing) zillions of these 'fiches': Grice cited
by... this or that philosopher. This one today is on David Francis Pears (of
 "Pears' Encyclopaedia" fame) who died in July 2009.
 
When I mentioned L. Horn (I forget why, do I?) that there was a 'gap' in
the OED, he immediately reported it -- and crediting his "Argentine
colleague, J. L. Speranza" for it -- in a post in ADS-L: the gap being 'implicature'
in the OED! (Although I _had_ corresponded with OED folk Mrs. Julie Fields
at OUP, I would never have dared the obvious gap. More likely, our
conversations with Mrs. Field were along the lines, "Mr. Speranza, your idea that
we should include 'pirot' in the OED3 would require some generalisation of
its use outside Griceans, I'm afraid").
 
Anyway, once the 'implicature' entry was instituted in OED3 (if such a
thing exist -- so far it's online), I found myself corresponding with the OED
editor, J. S., and I should say that IF the name of Pears is credited now,
it's by courtesy of yours truly! For I had found that Pears, in his
beautiful "Ifs and cans" (Canadian Journal of Philosophy -- but the OED editor J.
S. preferred to quote from the Isaiah Berlin et al compilation, Essays on
Austin), credited, and at an early stage too, Grice's "theory" of
"conversational implicature".
 
(In connection with something Horn calls 'strengthening' of 'if' to
conversationally implicate, if you excuse me the split infinitive, 'iff').
 
---

But there's more to the Grice/Pears interface than that!
 
2) When Grice reminisces his joint work at Oxford, there is Pears, and
their joint work in the 'philosophy of action'. Indeed when one reads (as one
should, more often) Grice's brilliant, "Intention and uncertainty" in the
Proceedings of the British Academy, one is amused how he dispatches good old
Prichard, and turns, instead, to the more contemporary work of Pears for
the account of 'predictability' of intentional reports.
 
3) My personal affiliation with Pears was actually through J. D'Alessio,
who had been a student of Pears at Oxford. And it was via discussions with
D'Alessio and his wife, a philosopher too, that I had been familiar with
Pears's considerations into 'intending'. This moved me to get hold of Pears'
Duckworth, Questions in the philosophy of mind, which to me by far supersedes
his more exegetical work on Witters ("Some like Witters, but Moore's my
man"). In many of the papers repr. in those "Questions" we get the occasional
ref. to Grice.
 
4) Then, was _I_ disappointed when reading the aptly acrostic-ed (to use
Strawson/Wiggins idiom in their memoir of Grice for the Brit. Ac.) P. G. R.
I. C. E., ed. by Grandy/Warner, when they list the "Publications" of H. P.
Grice but FAIL to include:
 
    Grice/Strawson/Pears,
    "Metaphysics"
    In Pears, The Nature of Metaphysics
    London: Macmillan, 1957.
 
True, just a transcript of a talk, 1955, for the highbrow "Third
Programme", but a publication nonetheless. And it's not that I grasped it at
D'Alessio's library -- that slim volume -- but had seen the reference in P.
Edwards' Encylclopedia entry for "Metaphysics".
 
5) As a member of The Society for Philosophical Analysis, I was able to
consult other books by Pears. His "Motivated Irrationality" fascinated me. For
 there, he is quoting from his 'colleague' Grice -- they both attended 'the
class for all those whose classes have no members", as Grice called the
Saturday Mornings Play Group -- in his typical idiom,
 
          "too social to be true"
 
Pears is reporting the colloquium that had Grice replying to Davidson, "On
Intending" -- still unpublished. Davidson, trying to be witty and urbanite,
was quoting from Grice's idea that there may be a conversational
implicature to the effect of
 
   "I shall, but I won't"
   or
   "I will, but I shan't"
 
-- or similar. But Grice objected. As when people would have him ACCEPT
(but he wouldn't) that Moore's paradox is a trivial implicature -- and not, as
 he thought, something that _breaches_ the nature of the indicative mode
--, Grice would react, sonorously -- to the effect that the theory of
conversational implicature, as applied to serious matters in the conceptual
analysis of the entailments involved in 'intending' was, to put it blandly, "too
social to be true".
 
6) A full checklist of publications by this genial of man, David Francis
(Pears), born in Middlesex, but educated, as he should, in Devon -- hence his
 love for butterflies -- will show many other facets of one of the greatest
 English philosophers who made it for Grice (oh so much) enjoyable to
engage in the philosophical enterprise.
 
7) When pigeonholed as an 'ordinary language philoosopher' -- or 'of the
school of ordinary language philosophy', Grice would protest, words to the
perlocutionary effect, "Surely you are not suggesting that there would be
UNIFORMITY of thought, alla school, in a group that included Pears, Strawson,
Urmson, Warnock, Austin, Hare, Hart -- _and me_."
 
8) Thinking that peripathetic-ing in the Meadows _was_ my ultimate Oxon
experience, I can think that was for Pears too. O. T. O. H., Grice preferred
the rooms of ... The Lamb and Flag (if not when in "The Bird and the Baby").
 
9) Etc.
 
J. L. Speranza
    Historian of the Play Group, etc.
Received on Fri Dec 25 04:38:11 2009