"Irony" being a pet topic for Griceans (old and neo-) and RT-theorists
alike...
Irony theorist and Grice's discussant dies.
Readers (or hearers) of Grice's third William James Lecture at Harvard,
'Further Notes on Logic & Conversation', will remember the passage:
"[Another] example of an element in, or aspect of,
some utterances, with regard to which there might be
some doubt whether or not it has a conventional
meaning, emerges from my (too) brief discussion of
irony in [the previous lecture].
Discussion with Rogers Albritton showed me
that something is missing in this account.
It seems very dubious whether A's knowledge
that B has been cheated by C, that B knows that
A knows that this is so, that B's remark
_He is a fine friend_ is to be presumed to
be related to this episode, and that the remark
is seemingly false (even obviously false), is enough
to ensure, with reasonable certainty, that A will
suppose B to mean the negation of what he has
made as if to say."
(In WOW -- Studies in the Way of Words --, p.53).
Grice had had occasion to acknowledge Albritton in a previous essay, 'Some
remarks about the senses' -- in R. J. Butler, _Analytic Philosophy_,
Blackwell. Now also repr. in WOW -- indexed: pp. 248, 257).
It strikes me as interesting, and a good sign of an open intellect, that
here is Grice ready to modify his account from lecture II to lecture III of
his appointed series on 'Logic and Conversation', but then, Albritton was
the very Chair of the Department that had organised the Lectures.
Albritton died on May 21 2002.
JL
====
"Los Angeles -- Rogers Albritton, a charismatic philosopher who rarely
published his work yet dazzled colleagues of diverse persuasions with his
lucid analyses [...], has died. The former UCLA and Harvard University
professor died May 21 of pneumonia at UCLA Medical Center. [H]e had
emphysema. Called a philosopher's philosopher, he was considered one of the
most formidable intellects in his field. His respected stature, however,
stemmed not from his writings but from what [...S.] Cavell called "the
charisma of conversation alone." He was famous for marathon conversations
about philosophy. A discussion lasting six or eight hours was not unusual.
A former graduate student once reported talking with Mr. Albritton for 11
hours. In such encounters, the lean and stylish Princeton-trained thinker
loved nothing more than to explore such vexing matters as the nature of
evil, free will or reality. [and the nature of irony or the causal theory
of perception. JLS]. Conversing with him was not like sitting downstream of
a flood; he did not lecture. Rather, he probed gently, asking many
questions in Socratic fashion to illuminate hidden dimensions of a
philosophical problem. He could argue that a person had no way of knowing
whether he was asleep or awake, then conclude the opposite after more hours
of laughter-filled discussion.
"He was a kind of philosophical conscience," said [...T] Nagel, an
Albritton student [...]. "[...] Rogers was a reminder that you can never
dispense with the obligation to actively think whatever you're thinking.
[...]" [Brought up in] Bangkok, where the father founded a medical school
with a Rockefeller foundation grant. [...] After two years with the Army
Air Corp in Hawaii after the attack on Pearl Harbour, he earned his [...]
doctorate from Princeton [and] joined the Harvard faculty. He chaired
Harvard's philosophy department from 1963 to 1970."
Cf.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/10/obituaries/10ALBR.html
An Albritton bibliography:
Present truth & future contingency.
Philosophical Review vol. 66.
Forms of particular substances in Aristotle's Metaphysics.
Journal of Philosophy vol. 54
On Wittgenstein's use of the term 'criterion'.
Journal of Philosophy vol. 56.
Repr. with a postscript in G. Pitcher,
_Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations_. Macmillan.
Freedom of will & freedom of action.
Proceedings/Addresses American Philosophical Association. vol. 58.
==
J L Speranza, Esq
Country Town
St Michael's Hall Suite 5/8
Calle 58, No 611 Calle Arenales 2021
La Plata CP 1900 Recoleta CP 1124
Tel 00541148241050 Tel 00542214257817
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
Telefax 00542214259205
http://www.netverk.com.ar/~jls/
jls@netverk.com.ar
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