RT list: "There was once an Oxonian called Grice"

A friend of mine, Donal McEvoy wrote for me the following limerick:
 
There once was a philosopher Grice
Who when asked did he think "H.P." (*) nice?
Replied, "I'm not sure
Of your saucy implicature --
I'll get back to you when I've thought twice.
 
(*) The original recipe for HP Sauce was invented and developed by
Frederick Gibson Garton, a grocer from Nottingham. He registered the name H.P.
Sauce in 1896. Garton called the sauce HP because he had heard that a
restaurant in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it. For many years the
bottle labels have carried a picture of the Houses of Parliament. Garton sold
the recipe and HP brand for the sum of £150 and the settlement of some
unpaid bills to Edwin Samson Moore. Moore, the founder of the Midlands Vinegar
Company (the forerunner of HP Foods) subsequently launched HP Sauce in 1903.
Some stories suggest that the name HP was derived from the name Harry
Palmer. Palmer was said to have invented the recipe and sold the product as
"Harry Palmer's Famous Epsom Sauce". The story then goes that Palmer, an avid
gambler at the Epsom Races, was forced to sell the recipe to Garton to
cover his debts. However, there is no evidence in the official history of the
brand to show Palmer existed, or had any claim to the development of the
recipe. It also seems unlikely that Garton, a grocer from the Midlands would
have come in contact with a gambler from the South of England.
 
Thank you, G. Sharma, for your words.

In a message dated 1/14/2010 3:46:55 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
sharmave@unive.it writes:
"I don't think that one has to have many publications to participate in
a discussion, be it on any aspect of relevance or Peirce or whatever."
 
Perhaps a good point. Note please that when I did say "I apologise Capone"
I did not mean a thing. I thought, "Your reply was disproportionate" was
meant for me! (my listing my meager publications, but all of them cherished
by me).
 
Anyway, back to 'publications'. I once read a bit from "Reply to Richards"
to my Harvard-educated friend, L. M. Tapper (student of Albritton).
 
   Grice: "The fact that my unpublications supersede
     my publications entails there's a crying need
     for exegesis of my work" -- or words to that perlocutionary effect.
 
To have Tapper exclaim,
 
    "He did have quite some ego, this Grice, right?"
 
Apparently, he did!

G. Sharma:
 
"The so-called "scattered remarks" by Speranza ARE very often thought
provoking. ... You cannot
just ridicule someone by asking him/her to submit to YOU a list of
publication."
 
Oh but I love Capone and the least thing he wanted was ridicule me. Indeed,
 I've been meaning to send him offlist some of my work, but it's good he
puts me on the board now. If I retrieve the publication data for whatever I
wrote, I'll supply. I recall when submitting MANY critical reviews to my
Local institute of philosophy, because the Head, M. Costa, had asked me, too,
I submitted, too my review of Grice WOW, which I declared to be "the book
of the decade" -- in which it appeared, that is, 1980s. Costa found my
review too long, and thus had it published instead in a more prestigious
publication she ran as well, which I still treasure. I refer to the "Lockean
reminiscences" of the title of Grice's book, et al. All fun.
 
But back to Capone. I follow all he says. He finds that sometimes he does
not share my humour, but he is always respectful. And recall he send us
graces for the New Year, which I reciprocated as grices.
 
I follow his career. His PhD advisor was none other than Sir Peter F.
Strawson: my second-best philosopher, after you know who. Indeed, most Griceans
had Strawson as tutor, for Grice was, well, ... not for 'nothing', as my
American friend say, called "Godot". Schiffer, for example, an online blog --
 specialising in 'genealogies' of philosophers, has Schiffer as tutee of
Grice. But I spoke to Schiffer about this, in Brazil, and he said,
 
   "No way; Strawson was my tutor".
 
Strawson also tutored Anita Avramides who has this book on Grice with MIT,
which is _pretty_ technical. 50 dollars to find out that Davidson can be
symmetricist like Grice. But she can be fun, too, and she is the main bastion
of Gricean studies in good ol Oxford, for what it's worth.
 
 
"If you would like to delete Speranza from the list, then, I'm afraid
to say, there will remain very little on the list. I have seen no
discussion at all on any topics on the list for many years now."
 
Now -- _that_ is hyperbolic. First,
 
   you should NOT be afraid.
     Let alone "to say".
 
    You _may_ be afraid to 'implicate',
       but you should be forthright -- Allott's our
         negotiator --
 
     when _saying_ things, so I'll re-edit:
 
"If Speranza's gone -- as he will, one day --
     for isn't mutability all we have in this
     world? -- ..."
 
The 'then' I would drop out. It turns your horseshoe implication
(if p, q) into a biscuit conditional alla Austin ("if you are hungry,
then there are biscuits in the cupboard") which becomes
plagated with 'metaphysical excrescences' to echo Grice, WoW, ii.
 
G. Sharma:
 
"If you kill Speranza from the list, there will remain very little on the
list."
 
Backing, in Toulmin's parlance:

"I have seen no
discussion at all on any topics on the list for many years now."
 
Have you seen enough? I think that Gutt asked about
Peirce and people other than me replied and he replied
to the other people's comments, and Sperber said
that if he finds Peirce a bore it 'tells about' him, not
Peirce.
 
And there have been various discussions which involved
people other than me.
 
I'm happy enough with a few additions of Grice to
standard biblio. Who would have said that because I'm
on this list, and so is J. C., the editor of Richards,
The Meaning of Meaning, is Grice now properly
credit in the name index of that formidable
publication?
 
Etc.
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
 
   There was once an Oxonian called Grice
    Who believed that all words had their price;
    "For if it's not the explicature,
    bet your life it's the implicature!"
    Said this clever Oxonian called Grice.
 
 
Received on Thu Jan 14 17:07:01 2010