RT list: Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate

In a message dated 1/13/2010 3:35:56 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
alessandro.capone@istruzione.it writes:
Speranza,
we would love to read some paper of yours - do send us one or a reference,
instead of sending us scattered remarks.

----
 
Sure, thanks, and for the majestic 'we'. In any case, You should learn to  
love my scattered remarks! I _am_ scattered remarks.
 
But must say that for my most recent publication, an ISBN edited by the  
University of Southern Connecticut, of all presses, I had to revise my  
publications and unpublications, and I notice that, ha ha, like Grice, I never  
published but just TALKED and only got published when people ASKED me too!
 
In any case, I managed to publish my first paper in an OLD volume of the  
proceedings of an international congress of philosophy, in, of all places, 
the  Fascist building of the Faculty of Philosophy in the University of Buenos 
 Aires, overlooking the River Plate. Great experience, sharing the podium 
as we  call it, with J. R. Searle, who was staying in a hotel on Calle 
Libertad, and  signed my copy of P.G.R.I.C.E., with a memorable, "To Mr. Hope, in 
memory of Mr.  Grace", J. I. Biro, D. Davidson, R. Rorty, etc. Those were 
the days of big  congresses. Anyway, I presented my thing in English, which I 
called, and got  published in the proceedings as
 
   "On the way of conversation"
 
--- my idea was to echo Grice's "way of words", with a vengeance. In that  
essay, which is published as "Estudios and Investigaciones" I manage to 
discuss  various things. I even managed to add a postcript with results from the 
actual  discussion following my presentation. I recall, and I cite him in 
my paper, p.  51, I think, C. A. Alchourron. The example I chose, horribly, 
was:
 
   Overheard at the Congress
 
   A: How did you find Buenos Aires?
   B: I haven't been mugged yet.
 
Alchourron, an Argentine aristocrat, got so offended, and would shout  
aloud, "You _ARE_ mugged in Stockholm, and nobody gives diddly". Anyway, the  
thing got published.
 
The next thing is something cost me years. I was attending this PhD seminar 
 with Guariglia, and Habermas was visiting, of all places, Buenos Aires.  
Guariglia told me, "You have to meet him", and I did. The thing was published 
 and only years later I found out that Habermas quoted me in  his  
"Pragmatics of Communication", MIT. The thing I called, to echo Horn, which is  
cited in The Philosopher's Index abstract for it, "Greek Grice". I titled it,  
horribly, "German Grice", only to learn much later that, rather, Grice was an 
 English Kant. So there. My epigraph in that paper is from Lewis Carroll,
 
    I said it in Hebrew, but I forgot that English is what  you speak.
 
Or something. 
 
Then a friend of mine, Anne Ghersi, had become a member -- the only South  
American one -- of the London, indeed Luton-based Lewis Carroll Society. She 
 sent on my behalf this impenetrable paper, which I called,
 
    Impenetrability
 
It got published, as I later found out in the pages of the journal of the  
Lewis Carroll Society, called, appropriately, Jabberwocky. I was surprised 
that  I got cited by a German lady who wrote her MA on that, or something. I 
managed  to quote a lot from Christ Church authors there, seeing that 
Carroll was one,  and Pears. On the whole it was too impenetrable, but the 
argument was a good  one, if you can find it.
 
The next thing, my PhD advisor, E. A. Rabossi, was giving this conference  
in Salta, out of the way from any human place you could ever be, and he 
said,  "You should come to think and teach them some Grice". I did, and years 
later I  got a letter from The Philosopher's Index asking me for the abstract, 
as the  thing had been published in the Proceedings. I called it 
"Conversational  Immanuel", and the plot is pretty Gricean in parts.
 
By the time, I swore that I would never write anything BUT with the words  
"conversation", "pragmatic" and "Grice" in the title, but there you are.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
    for the Grice Circle