Dummett: "When you are in Oxford, do you dine in college?" --- Grammar and Style (reviewed by J. Winder, for the Independent). ---- "[Dummett]", Winder writes, "does himself few favours by proposing, as a model of a compound question, the sentence: 'When you are in Oxford, do you dine in college?' Good manners can, in the wrong company, appear merely snooty and disdainful. Dummett counters this line of criticism in his conclusion. The language has not, he insists, irrevocably renounced its rules. 'On the contrary, many people, reading prose written in conformity to them, find it exceptionally clear or pleasing, without being able to analyse why it makes this impression on them.' Probably he is right that not many people will be able to analyse exactly what is so clear and pleasing about this stiff, repetitive sentence. But the truly unsatisfying thing about this argument is: that's it. The sentence stands alone, begging about a thousand questio ns and casting doubt on the otherwise sensible advice with which [Dummett] is full." Three passages from the Guardian obituary, by Moore, online: "Dummett's many non-philosophical publications included books on immigration, Catholicism, tarot cards, and voting procedures (he devised the Quota Borda system of voting), as well as Grammar and Style for Examination Candidates and Others (1993), the culmination of his relentless fight against low standards of literacy." "That fight occasionally found amusing expression in his other work. His last book on Frege included a delicious footnote in which, having forestalled a possible misunderstanding of one of the sentences in the main text, he went on to lament the fact that the only reason for the note was that few writers or publishers nowadays [----->] "evince a grasp of the distinction between a gerund and a participle". He continued, with characteristic tetchiness: "People frequently remark that they see no point in observing grammatical rules, so long as they convey their meaning. This is like saying that there is nothing wrong with using a razor blade to cut string, so long as the string is cut. By violating the rules, they make it difficult for others to express their meaning without ambiguity."" "Some readers of Dummett would say that it was ironic that he was so preoccupied with style, since his own prose left much to be desired. It is true that his sentences often displayed a rather unwieldy complexity. But they also displayed an acute sensitivity to the structure of the thoughts that they were intended to convey; and that fact, combined with the precision with which Dummett chose his words, meant that there was a real clarity about his writing, however lacking it might have been in facility. The writing was in some respects like the man – marked by honesty and integrity, though it could at times be difficult." ----- Re: Moore's "it was ironic that..." cfr.: Peacoke's memoir of Dummett in the NYT, online: "The gap between Michael’s theory and his practical life was a reliable source of pleasure to his friends. He published original contributions to the theory of voting; yet he designed a system for a Wardenship election in Oxford that permitted — and produced — massive tactical voting. He published a book on writing style in philosophy, an enterprise described by one philosopher as comparable to Attila the Hun producing a book on etiquette." Finally, Stanley's anecdote therein, too. He was "sitting in the New College Senior Common Room after lunch discussing the meaning of the word “if” with another philosopher. Dummett was huddled over a newspaper elsewhere in the room. I remarked how odd it was to think that the word “if” could have radically different meanings on different occasions of use, for example one meaning in a sentence like “If Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy, someone else did,” and another meaning in a sentence like “If Oswald hadn’t of killed Kennedy, someone else would have.” From a cloud of tobacco smoke halfway across the room, Dummett piped up, “I wonder if you really think that.”" Cheers. Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html