McEvoy was referring to a revolutionary footballer. When Grice arrived at
"The House" as a Midlands scholarship boy, he became the captain of the
football team. Ain't that a cute connection.
But the point of this post is that the term 'revolution' (that compares to
'revolutionary' as applied to the Dutch footballer McEvoy was referring to,
as used by The Guardian) is used by Grice himself in "Prejudices and
predilections, which become the life and opinions of Paul Grice," by Paul
Grice.
The interesting bit is that Grice credits the 'minor' revolution not to
himself but to RYLE, of all people. Grice notes that Ryle changed the way
Oxonians looked at philosophy and Ryle belonged to the pre-linguistic turn.
This was followed by Austin's first playgroup (which consisted of Urmson,
Hampshire, Berlin, and Hart, and met at All Souls) and by Austin' second
playgroup (that welcomed Grice, even though "he had been born on the wrong
side of the tracks.")
Why was Grice more revolutionary?
By sticking to 'implicature', Grice revolutionised philosophy because his
focus was not _the world_ but how philosophers described the world. Take
'know'. Grice is interested in how philosophers 'define' "know" (provide a
conceptual analysis of 'know'). His hobby was to collect (via linguistic
botanising) all these philosophical analyses of 'know' and conclude that MOST
err for not taking into account the 'implicature': the _sense_ of "know" thus
becomes restricted and narrow, and conditions that some philosohers
include in their conceptual analysis of 'know' become spurious if shown to
derive
from 'the general circumstances of conversation as a whole' -- and as a
rational activity.
Grice also pointed out that a revolution needed a few reactionaries: his
favourites were Bergmann ("I'll rather die than spend a Saturday morning
with Austin's second playgroup of English futilitarians" -- Grice included) and
Gellner. Neither of them were English. Because Grice's philosophy was
Oxonian and English, _ceteris paribus_. Hey, Bergmann and Gellner were not
even
Brits (if European!).
Cheers,
Speranza
