McEvoy was mentioning Strawson (that’s Galen), which reminds me of Strawson
(that’s Sir Peter). Sir Peter was H. P. Gr-.’s fifth tutee, or something (Gr-‘s
first tutee was, of all people, A. G. N. Flew). That was at St. John’s. But I
disgress.
It may do to revisit Strawson’s (that’s Galen’s) “e,” as the “Who’s Who” has
it. It (“e” stands for ‘educated’).
Strawson’s (that’s Galen) was educated at the Dragon, Oxford, from where he won
a scholarship to Winchester, Oxford. Strawson (that’s Galen) left Winchester,
Oxford, after winning a place at Cambridge, before moving to Oxford, where he
received his BPhil in philosophy and his DPhil in philosophy. Strawson (that’s
Galen) taught at the University of Oxford, first as a Stipendiary Lecturer at
several different colleges, and then, as Fellow and Tutor of Jesus.
A very good about Strawson’s (that’s Galen) father (that’s Sir Peter) is that
he contributed, like Popper did, an “Intellectual Autobiography” to the Schlipp
series, where he expands of, shall we call him Grunebaum quite a bit. Matter of
fact, with D. G. P. Wiggins, Strawson (that’s Sir Peter) managed to write a
pretty complete bio of his tutor at Oxford for the British Academy.
Perhaps my favourite reference by the tutor to the tutee (that’s Sir Peter)
comes from a footnote to “Presupposition and Conversational Implicature,”
where, shall we say, Grunebaum dedicates the piece to his ‘former pupil,
colleague, and friend,’ implicating Strawson (that’s Sir Peter).
It might be argued that the main polemic between Grunebaum and Strawson (that’s
Sir Peter) is metaphysical (that’s the way, er, Grunebaum puts it when he
refers to Strawson’s truth-value gap theory as being ‘metaphysical’ in nature.
Of course, Sir Peter had occasion to refer to “Mr. H. P. Gr-’ in the ‘Foreword’
to his “Introduction to Logical Theory,” and I very much doubted Gr- would have
expanded on his theory of implicature had it not been for Sir Peter’s tidy
listing of what he called ‘divergences’ between the logical operators (of
Whitehead’s and Russell’s Principia Mathematica) and their ‘vernacular
counterparts’ (‘not,’ ‘and,’ ‘or,’ ‘if’, ‘all,’ ‘some (at least one),’ and
‘the’). Sir Peter was slightly obsessed with ‘the’ (which got him a reply from
Strawson, “Mr. Strawson on referring” (the knighthood came later). Gr- took
rather Strawson’s take on ‘if’ as crucial – dedicating to the issue one passage
in the Prolegomena and a full William James lecture (“Indicative
Conditionals”). It is interesting that Sir Peter always found Gr- illuminating,
caring to quote from Gr- in his (that’s Sir Peter’s) ‘Intro’ to “Philosophical
Logic” and more importantly, contributing a full piece to the ‘festschrift’
that R. Grandy and R. Warner compiled to honour Sir Peter’s tutor.
Oddly, Sir Peter was also tutored by J. D. Mabbott who also has a few things to
say about Sir Peter in his (that’s Mabbott’s) “Oxford memories”.
Gr- and Sir Peter went on to co-write “In defence of dogma” and it is an
exercise among Oxonians to identify which sentence was written by whom.
Consider:
i. Whitehead and Russell wrote “Principia Mathematica.”
ii. Whitehead wrote “Principia Mathematica.”
Gr- would wonder: is (ii) true? In terms of implicature, it _is_ (McEvoy was
wondering elsewhere about the critical issue of what implicatures are
‘correct’). It might be argued that “and he did so on his own” is ONLY
IMPLICATED by (ii). The fact that Russell collaborated is NOT DENIED by (ii).
Similarly, we can say that the Japanese flag is red. Without implicature,
Oxonian philosophy would be a different thing.
When Strawson (that’s Galen) moved to Reading, he moved to Scarlet Town (note
the clever pun, “red” “read-ing,” where Barbary Allen dwelled, before she moved
to the Appalachia). What a lovely melody. My favourite version must be as
arranged by Roger Quilter (One member of the English Folksong Society says that
to allow that “In Scarlet Town, where I was born” is equivalent to “In Reading,
where I was born” is to give implicature too much credit. But implicature can
never get too much credit – unless it can?).
According to J. F. Bennett (in “Linguistic Behaviour”), the reason why Strawson
(that’s Sir Peter) was ‘active’ in getting Gr’s “Meaning” published is that it
allowed a way out of the vicious circle that Quine had identified, and Bennett
finds it no coincidence that Gr’s ‘Meaning’ (though written in 1948) got
published in 1957, just one year AFTER the joint Gr/Strawson’s piece in defence
of one of the two dogmas of empiricism identified by Quine. And stuff.
If people sometime refer to neo-Gr-ceianism, it should be pointed out that
there is neo-Strawsonianism, too, as represented by Burton-Roberts, of
Newcastle, who defends truth-value gaps as no one else does!
Cheers,
Speranza
REFERENCES:
Gr- and Strawson, “In defence of a dogma.”
Strawson, P. F. “Intention and convention in speech acts”
