In a message dated 7/28/2015 1:34:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx writes: "I'm between books. Charles Sanders Peirce is
mentioned in the play, so I spent some time trying to make sense of his work.
Very little joy, I'm afraid."
Of course, the American philosopher C. S. Peirce should not be confused
with the Oxford philosopher D. F. Pears (they are pronounced similarly, but
their pronouncements differed).
Matter of fact, Pears was H. P. Grice's tutee (as it were), and a "student"
as they call'em, of Christ Church. Peirce's Oxonian associations are more
tenuous.
However, as it happens, H. P. Grice, Pears's tutor (as it were) lectured
(in his capacity of University Lecturer) on Peirce. He did this well before
he even hand-wrote his seminal "Meaning" in 1948. Grice's "Lectures on
Peirce" are deposited at Bancroft, UC/Berkeley, although they are Oxonian
vintage.
Readers of "Logic and Conversation" smelled of Peirce in things like
Grice's references to the 'interpretant'. In general, Grice's cursory
evaluation
of Peirce in those lectures (he only lectured on Peirce's theory of signs)
is that Peirce could hardly be called an "ordinary language philosopher"
when "ordinary language philosophy" was the ONLY one accepted at Oxford at
that time!
Grice calls Peirce's vocabulary technocryptical, and if Peirce never uses
short Anglo-Saxon terms (like "mean"), Grice does. Peirce would rather talk,
any time, on symbol, sign, and index. The idea of 'factivity' Grice
learned from Peirce. If the weathercock points to the north-east this 'means'
something about the direction of the wind is blowing. "Mean" may sound too
anthropomorphic, and Peirce avoided it ("mean" is cognate with "mind", and can
smoke "mean" rain?), but Grice surely didn't.
Grice still found Peirce's theory incomplete, since it never covered his
pet topic: the implicature!
Cheers,
Speranza
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