H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: PRIORE

 G.: Priore begins, I suppose, where Quine ended the peace. S.: Or where Quine began the disturbance. G.: Better. One does not publish Two Dogmas of Empiricism in order to improve table manners. S.: In The Philosophical Review, no less. G.: Fittingly American. S.: And 1951. G.: Yes, 1951. Two Dogmas of Empiricism in The Philosophical Review, volume 60, pages 20 to 43. [pdcnet.org], [philpapers.org] S.: One dogma being the analytic-synthetic distinction. G.: The very distinction Priore had been using happily under the august shelter of istituzione sintetico-analitica. S.: Which is rather good. The schoolmaster in Naples and the logician in America quarrelling over the same pair of adjectives. G.: Yes. Priore sounds as if he had institutionalised the distinction before Quine had abolished it. S.: Priore istituzione sintetico-analitica, Quine anti-analytic synthetic. G.: Exactly. One constructs a school method on it; the other announces it a dogma. Philosophy advances by attacking pedagogues only after living off them. S.: And Quine had the proper venue for the attack. G.: Indeed. The Philosophical Review, which sounds universal enough until one remembers that it is a very American journal with a New-World confidence in its title. [pdcnet.org], [jstor.org] S.: Published by Cornell. G.: Which is the point. A parochial institution with an imperial journal-title. S.: Quine, meanwhile, at Oxford as Eastman. G.: Or Eastman Visiting Professor, if one insists on dignity. S.: He was there in the mid-fifties, certainly in your anecdotal weather. G.: Yes, though Two Dogmas itself was already out in 1951 before the Oxford visit. Two Dogmas of Empiricism predates the Eastman arrival, which only made the dogma audible over tea. [pdcnet.org], [philpapers.org] S.: And because Two Dogmas of Empiricism had been published in The Philosophical Review, Grice and Strawson sent In Defense of a Dogma to the same place. G.: Naturally. One does not send a reply to Quine to a provincial outlet of one’s own choosing. One sends it back into the same American trumpet. S.: So In Defense of a Dogma appears in 1956, again in The Philosophical Review. G.: Exactly. Volume 65, number 2, pages 141 to 158. H. P. Grice and P. F. Strawson, behaving as if a dogma might still deserve a legal defence. [sites.ualberta.ca], [philpapers.org] S.: Which is already delicious. A dogma defended in America by two Oxford men. G.: Yes. One would have expected them to defend it in Mind, among the safer clergy. S.: Or perhaps in Analysis, if brevity had suited them. G.: But no. The dogma had been attacked in Ithaca, so it was defended in Ithaca. S.: A critical response in the proper amphitheatre. G.: Precisely. The journal becomes the battlefield, which is very tidy and very un-English. S.: Then later, when I thought of submitting your Meaning, I did not choose Mind, though you had already published Personal Identity there. G.: Nor Analysis, nor anything tidily local. S.: No. I sent it to The Philosophical Review. G.: Which was almost indecently American. S.: But logical. G.: Very logical. If Two Dogmas of Empiricism had made the venue philosophically hot, and In Defense of a Dogma had made it part of Oxford’s quarrel with America, then Meaning could enter there as if that were where the serious weather now happened. [pdcnet.org], [sites.ualberta.ca], [pdcnet.org] S.: And Meaning did appear there in 1957. G.: Yes. H. P. Grice, Meaning, The Philosophical Review, volume 66, number 3, July 1957, pages 377 to 388. A small English paper walking into an American house as if it belonged there. [pdcnet.org], [philpapers.org] S.: Which, for a don of your vintage, was untypical. G.: Entirely. Oxford men of my generation were not bred to think of their destiny as Ithacan. S.: Yet the paper went there. G.: Because the route had been prepared by dogma. S.: Exactly. And then, years later, Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions goes to the same journal. G.: In 1969. Again The Philosophical Review, volume 78, number 2, April, pages 147 to 177. One begins to suspect a habit. [wstarr.org], [philpapers.org] S.: A habit that would have seemed unthinkable for an Oxford don of your stamp if the earlier story had not happened. G.: Precisely. It is the sort of thing one can only do after one has already half-emigrated in print. S.: So from Two Dogmas of Empiricism to In Defense of a Dogma, then to Meaning, and thence to Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions, one gets half the history of Oxford philosophy in the pages of a Cornell journal. G.: Exactly. A local quarrel exported to a New-World review and thereby made canonical. S.: Which is very Priorean in its own way. G.: How so. S.: Priore had his sintetico-analitico before Quine turned analytic-synthetic into an American dogfight. G.: Ah yes. Priore as innocent precursor of the dogma. S.: Innocent perhaps, but structurally impudent. G.: Indeed. He takes the very pair Quine wishes to blur and turns it into an educational method. S.: Istituzione sintetico-analitica as though the distinction were not only real but useful. G.: Which is exactly what Grice and Strawson said to Quine in more refined clothes. S.: That Quine had criticised the distinction, perhaps, but not justified its abolition. G.: Yes. In Defense of a Dogma is, after all, less a metaphysical hymn than a plea against impatient demolition. [sites.ualberta.ca], [philpapers.org] S.: Then perhaps Priore was defending a dogma before it was attacked. G.: Excellent. The schoolmaster as pre-emptive dogmatist. S.: Which raises the larger question. Can one defend a dogma. G.: Of course one can defend a dogma. S.: But should one. G.: That depends on whether one is defending it as dogma or as distinction. S.: We were being ironic, of course. G.: Naturally. The charm of a dogma is that, in principle, one need not defend it at all. One merely inherits it with a straight face. S.: It arrives under the sign of faith rather than argument. G.: Exactly. A dogma is what saves one the trouble of reasons, which is why philosophers are forever trying to smuggle reasons back into it. S.: Hence In Defense of a Dogma, where the whole joke is that what is called a dogma turns out to require meticulous distinctions. [sites.ualberta.ca], [philpapers.org] G.: Yes. We call it a dogma in order to deny that it is merely that. S.: So the title is part irony, part challenge. G.: Entirely. One says dogma and then behaves argumentatively, which is philosophy’s oldest hypocrisy and one of its better ones. S.: Then what of Priore. Is his sintetico-analitico a dogma. G.: Perhaps pedagogically. The schoolmaster must dogmatise where the metaphysician can still hesitate. S.: Because pupils cannot be raised on Quine. G.: No one should be raised on Quine. One can be corrected by him, but not formed. S.: Priore forms. G.: Exactly. He gives one synthesis first, then analysis, or perhaps the other way round depending on how sternly one reads the method. S.: In any case he institutionalises the pair. G.: And thereby makes Quine look like an intruder in a classroom that had already made up its mind. S.: Which is part of the joke. Quine attacks a distinction that schoolmasters had found practical for decades. G.: A healthy reminder that philosophy often denounces as dogma what pedagogy had merely been using to get boys through Livy. S.: Then Oxford philosophy in the fifties sits oddly between the American journal and the Napoleonic schoolbook. G.: Very oddly. Priore in Naples, Quine in Ithaca, Grice in Oxford, all entangled by a pair of adjectives. S.: And all finding themselves, somehow, in The Philosophical Review, except Priore, who had the decency to remain nineteenth-century. [pdcnet.org], [pdcnet.org] G.: Priore would have found Cornell climatically unsettling. S.: But perhaps bibliographically flattering. G.: Yes. Nothing pleases a schoolmaster more than being retrospectively made relevant to a metaphysical panic. S.: Then we should fix the dates again, because dogmas thrive on vagueness. G.: Very well. Two Dogmas of Empiricism, 1951, The Philosophical Review. In Defense of a Dogma, 1956, same venue. Meaning, 1957, same venue. Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions, 1969, same venue. There is your Ithacan thread. [pdcnet.org], [sites.ualberta.ca], [pdcnet.org], [wstarr.org] S.: And that thread is enough to make The Philosophical Review a sort of transatlantic clearing-house for Oxford disputes. G.: Exactly. A New-World customs office through which analytic philosophy passed with only partial inspection. [pdcnet.org], [jstor.org] S.: One should also note the absurdity of the title. G.: The Philosophical Review as though philosophy required one. [pdcnet.org], [jstor.org] S.: Whereas Oxford preferred not to review itself, only to gossip. G.: Precisely. Americans review; Englishmen imply. S.: And Grice, by publishing in The Philosophical Review, made his implications visible to a reviewing nation. [pdcnet.org], [wstarr.org] G.: Which was risky but useful. S.: Then perhaps the whole story is this. Quine attacks the analytic-synthetic distinction in Two Dogmas of Empiricism; Grice and Strawson reply with In Defense of a Dogma; that same venue then becomes the natural home for your Meaning; later still it houses Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions; and all the while Priore sits in the background having long ago turned sintetico-analitico into a classroom institution. [pdcnet.org], [sites.ualberta.ca], [pdcnet.org], [wstarr.org] G.: That is very nearly it. S.: Very nearly. G.: Add only that Quine’s presence at Oxford as Eastman made the quarrel socially immediate, even if the original essay had already appeared. One thing is to read Two Dogmas of Empiricism; another is to have its author at lunch looking unconvinced. [pdcnet.org], [en.wikipedia.org] S.: Which made the venue itself part of the drama. G.: Exactly. The Philosophical Review was no longer just an American journal. It had become the printed extension of a quarrel that had entered Oxford rooms. [pdcnet.org], [pdcnet.org] S.: And because of that, sending Meaning there was not random at all. G.: No. It was almost a continuation of the conversation by other means. S.: The conversation being transatlantic and faintly comic. G.: Entirely comic. Imagine it. Half of Oxford philosophy, published in a Cornell journal because Quine had the indecency to attack a distinction there first. S.: That is the real joke. G.: Yes. Not that the New World produced the dogma’s enemy, but that the Old World had to cross the Atlantic to defend its distinctions. S.: Which sounds almost imperial in reverse. G.: Colonial, perhaps. Oxford sending its thoughts to Ithaca for recognition. S.: And Priore, meanwhile, declines rosa. G.: Better than Quine, who never declined it at all. S.: There is a punchline here. G.: I think so. S.: That the analytic-synthetic distinction was called a dogma only after it had already become a syllabus. G.: Excellent. And once something is on a syllabus, no philosopher can kill it entirely. He can only make it harder for schoolmasters.