[lit-ideas] "Mr Strawson" and "Mr Grice"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 19:11:51 EDT
In a message dated 4/6/2009 6:33:12 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
There was a required format: Black, on first mention, was to be referred
to as Professor Black; from then on he was to be referred to as Mr.
Black. Students, on first mention, were to be referred to as Mr. (Miss,
Mrs.) Watson (e.g.) and thereafter in this case simply as Watson.
----
Interesting.
Well, something similar I read from S. Chapman's book ('Is it offensive to
call him a linguist?'), "Paul Grice: philosopher and linguist" ("Is it
offensive to call him Paul Grice?").
She notes that Quine was especially amused (in a bad way) by that formality.
The cardboxes now deposited at UC/Berkeley (Bancroft) contain those
handwritten notes from the joint seminars at Oxford --.
Quine, and the passage is cited in Chapman, explicitly recalls them in his
"Memoir". Words to the effect:
"They met once a week on Mondays. I was intrigued by the formality
of it all. First Grice would read his reply to "Mr. Strawson". "As Mr.
Strawson wrote on page 3, 'sense-datum' is _presupposed_ in the
'qualia'". To this, Strawson would reply along similar lines, reading
from
notes, "Last week, when Mr. Grice objected to my use of 'presupposes'";
"On page 5, Mr. Grice calls my view 'transcendentalist'""
Quine was intrigued that students even _care_ to listen; but I guess those
joint seminars were mandatory. The formality was hard to digest, although not
for Grice and Strawson one expects.
Grice must have found those notes worth keeping, as he did keep them and are
_now_ kept. It is another thing when or if someone is going to transcribe
them for posterity.
Black was born in Russia of a diplomat father; he may have inherited some of
the bureaucratic view on things.
----
Later in life, Grice would just alow people to _tape_ his things, and
audio-cassettes are deposited at UC/Berkeley, too. At one time he asked the Uni
for
extra money to transcribe the lectures, but I don't think his wish was
granted.
Cheers,
JL
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