[lit-ideas] Re: Michael Dummett
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 22:42:34 -0500 (EST)
For the record, while the obituaries are not too explicit about this,
Dummett had various tutors. Being a PPE (philosophy, politics, economics) he
had
tutors in each of the three areas. In the area that matters (philosophy)
he had three of them:
--- Urmson
--- Foster (M. B.), and
--- Flew (Grice's tutee, actually).
I wouldn't know if there are many connections between Dummett and Popper.
I know there are a few between Dummett and Grice, which I have discussed
elsewhere.
Further to the Guardian links that R. P. supplied, the Oxford Univ. site
provides links to the NYT, which contains 'memoirs' by a few philosophers.
One comments that Dummett was surprised that an 'answering machine' was thus
called ("It does not really answer the questions you may care to pose
it").
The Daily Telegraph obit has links to letters from readers. One was
wondering about the etymology of Dummett qua surname, which he found otiose
for a
logic teacher (or something).
Urmson was a member of Grice's (indeed Austin's "Play Group"). Apparently,
Dummett belonged, rather, not to these "Saturday Mornings". He rather
attended the "Tuesday [evening] club", aka as the Freddie Ayer group, after
his
founder.
While Foster, Urmson and Flew were Dummett's _official_ tutors at Christ
Church, Dummett liked to say he perhaps learned more from Anscombe (during
his forming years).
Further to the wiki entry that D. McEvoy refers to, there's the entry in
the Stanford Encyclopedia, online, which makes for some interesting read, if
you are into this sort of thing of "Oxonian lingo philosophy" and stuff.
R. Paul is incidentally right, in his reply to McC, that all roads lead
somewhere. "A road to nowhere" is possibly a misnomer. It may be argued that
more than Fregean, the argument for 'all roads leading somewhere' is
_analytic_ alla Kant ("What _is_ a road, if not a road to somewhere?").
The NYT links include a recollection by J. Stanley, the infamous
contextualist. He recalls his discussion with Dummett on this. Stanley was
arguing
that it would be odd to think that 'if' changes its meaning on each occasion
of use. E.g.
"If it rains, it pours"
"If Plato had been Roman, Greek would not have been his mother tongue."
Dummett commented: "I wonder IF you think that". (Implicature: the use of
'if' in "wonder if" is yet different from the horseshoe, allegedly).
And so on.
Speranza
In a message dated 1/8/2012 9:57:20 P.M. UTC-02, rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
Donal wrote
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Dummett
>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/8981654/Professor-Sir-Michael-Dummett.html
There's also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/28/sir-michael-dummett?intcmp=239
and I'm sure some other obituaries of Dummett.
The Guardian page has links to readers' comments on the original article.
Robert Paul
Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
