H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA

 

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). On the way of conversation – presented to The Congress of Philosophy. Speranza would have never thought of designing the piece. The title, ‘on the way of conversation’ was his spontaneous response to seeing Grice titling his thing ‘Studies in the way of words’ Wasn’t he the man for ‘conversation’. – So the Lockean triple pun – the way of words, the way of ideas, the way of things – is dissected by Speranza, taking ‘way’ do double duty – alla Heidegger – and reclaiming conversation to word – any day! The piece has a subtitle which by far exceeds its title: a memorial, a retrospective, a prospective – but all done in good spirit, and using one of Grice’s examples: A: How is Smith getting on at this new job at the bank? B: Oh, quite well, I think. He likes his colleagues and he hasn’t been to prison yet. Speranza is taking Grice’s point about OPTIMALITY regarding expression meaning seriously: “He hasn’t been to prison yet” – whatever the implicature – is NOT the optimal way to – in Gice’s gloss – communicate the disjunction: Smith is potentially dishonest or his colleagues are known to be treacherous. The optimal way to communicate such thing is “Smith is potentially dishonest OR his colleagues are notoriously treacherous.” “Smith has not been to prison yet” is LESS OPTIMAL in that, being cancellable, and vacuous on the face of it – what does a negative prove? – you can keep for your amusing conversations with friends but not for Carnap and his Circle for the Unified Science.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Rational face to rational face: a study in Griceian conversational pragatics. In this elongated study, properly deposited somewhere, Speranza managed to combine most requirements from seminars into a unified piece. It is structured in chatpers and takes a game-theoretical approach, with one chapter for the players, the moves, the goals, and the ‘reason’ behind the game – the last chapter provides a Hegel-type answer to the challenge to a Kant-type of universalizability of the conversational canon.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Post-modernist Grice – presented to a Seminar in the Philosophy of Logic. A shortened version of this becomes the trigger for the previous item on conversational pragmatics. It was motivated by a careful lecture of material such as Haack’s hasty treatment of Grice in Philosophy of Logics, plus a sequitur to Grice’s point that he is neither a neo-tradtionalist like Strawson, nor a modernist like Russell – so Speranza thought: he must be a closet poMo.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Grice’s meaning-liberalism. Presented to a seminar in the History of Modern Philosophy. Speranza’s inspiration is Bennett in his ‘Meaning-nominalist strategy’ in foundations of language. The apt ‘colonial’, who noted that Locke does not mean a word to stand for an idea unless the utterer MEANS so, speaks of one such meaning-nominalism. The grammar of ‘meaning-nomianlsim’ charmed Speranza. If there is meaning-nominalism, surely there is meaning-NATURALISM (‘those dark cloudes mean rain, and I mean it’) and meaning-LIBERALISM (every utterer has an inalienable liberty to make his ideas stand for what he pleases – Locke).

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Conversational strategies? Presented to a seminar on J. Habermas. Speranza would have never engaged with this – and follows Kemmerling’s apt judgement that Habermas is too wishy washy to care, but responsibilities are responsibilities – Speranza considers the disparate treatments of other German scholars who Speranza judges have dealt with grice in a more apt way, not only Kemmerling (who wrote Grice’s obituary for Eknessntnis) but Meggle, and even Apel. The piece was reviewed in a study on Habermas and pragmatics, published by the Masschsutes Intsitue of Technology Press.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Humpty-Dumpty’s conversational impenetrability. Presented to Jabberwocky. A friend of Speranza – and co-founder of Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice, A. M. Ghersi, happened to be a member of the Lewis Carroll Soceity. Speranza was at the time in deep engagement with Dodgson so why note? A trigger was Davidson’s apt response in ‘A nice derangement of epitaphs’: Humpty Dumpty CANNOT mean ‘a knockdown argument by glory if he allows that she won’t know that ‘until I tell you.’ The intention requires a doxasdtic component that Dumpty lacks – the egg is, in Flew’s words, an anarchist.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.) A brief history of negation. A chapter of “Face to face” is on truth-functional connectives – not even quantifiers, and not even ‘negation.’ When the piece was commissioned, Speranza focused mainly on what the Wykeham professor of logic should say about that – and not ask Grice, for whom logicians wear blue collars. So Wiggins is the fare.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Mise-en-abyme: Grice and literary criticism. Proceedings of a Congress – published. French literary crticis were speaking of speculation in meta-narratives and meta-drama – Mise-en-abyme, as per GIDE is the term, and Speranza argues that a self-referential recursive move is just a BLATANT breach to the canon of perspicuity: you just cannot understand it – it becomes unprocessable and thus discartabe by rationalist conversationalists, never mind authors.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Brooding over conversational brooding over: abstract in Proceedings of a Congress – published. The conference was aimed at Occam’s sermo mentalis –and Speranza felt like Grice was not stressing the conversational side to reasoning. Speranza distinguishes five or six types of reasons, all instantiated in ‘First time in Timbuctoo?’ where the the conference was held – with 25 answers to that (“No, first time was in Leeds” – “First time in South Asia”) – the reasoning pattern in terms of the utterer is goal-directed, and so is that of the addressee – goal-directed now towards the optimal understanding – rather than sub-understanding or over-understanding of a given conversational move in context.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.) The feast of reason. Presented and published in Congress. A more elaborated version of the final chapter in”Face to Face”. Speranza takes more seriously than Grice ever did the ‘fundamental question’ – and its anaswe? Quasi-contractualist dull, no way? Empiricist --. Rationalist? In what way? Speranza elaborates on the very apt transcendental justification – later called ‘metaphysical argument – offered by Grice in terms of ‘influencing and being influenced by others.’ Thrown for good measure is a pirotological sequence – where the acceptability of the conversational canon is reached in an interative form. The paper was published in the proceedings. The quote is from Pope, the feast of reason, that makes a passing reference to Grice’s St. John’s.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.) Verbali del Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice. Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Review of Grice, Studies in the Way of Words.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.). Revew of Grice, The Conception of Value.

Speranza, J. L. (n. d.) Reflectiveness in philosophy and literary criticism. Published. Some of the material considered by Scruton in terms of reflexiveness as it involves a sort of regress that depends on the non-objectisation  of the other.

The list is only partial. The full ‘verbali’ are deposited in Il Gruppo di Gioco di H. P. Grice, Speranza tells us.