{"id":758,"date":"2022-05-31T07:21:04","date_gmt":"2022-05-31T07:21:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/?p=758"},"modified":"2022-05-31T07:45:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-31T07:45:26","slug":"memorial-william-grey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/31\/memorial-william-grey\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial: William Grey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hugh supervised my PhD at Cambridge in the early 1970s. In my thesis (on the metaphysics of time) I defended an anti-realist conception of the future, and the arguments which I advanced were ones with which Hugh was (to put it no more strongly) unsympathetic. He was nevertheless personally supportive, and always a generous, engaging and witty companion. Hugh was rigorous and sternly uncompromising in his supervisory role, about which he quoted his own PhD supervisor, Mary Hesse, who said that the role of an academic supervisor in philosophy is &#8220;to test a student&#8217;s arguments to destruction&#8221;. This he did on numerous occasions and I spent many hours contemplating the wreckage after supervisory sessions with Hugh.<sup>1<\/sup> He was a powerful formative force and an indelible influence on my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just before returning to Australia in late 1974 I shared a farewell lunch with Hugh (at which Cambridge pub I forget). At the end of the lunch I presented Hugh with a gift, which consisted of a collection of clock parts embedded in a clear acrylic matrix.<sup>2<\/sup> The underlying suggestion (which Hugh immediately grasped) was that here was a clock\u2014Hugh\u2019s sort of clock\u2014which could be exhaustively described with his preferred tenseless lexicon, but which was incapable of telling the time. Hugh gazed intently at the object, an eyebrow quizzically raised, and said nothing for at least twenty seconds. It\u2019s the only time that I ever saw Hugh speechless for such a protracted period. He may have been endeavouring to think of some withering riposte, but on this occasion (and in my experience it was the only occasion) nothing came. I\u2019m sure that he would have had something ready if anyone tried that stunt on him again. After a long pause he just expressed his thanks. This was the only time that I slowed Hugh down (a bit) and it wasn\u2019t the result of anything I wrote, or said, but the result of me taking something out of my pocket. Hugh had been \u201cmoored\u201d.<sup>3<\/sup> It\u2019s the only time that I\u2019ve ever moored anyone. It was a very satisfying moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>William Grey<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>June 27, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>wgrey@uq.edu.au<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"557\" height=\"837\" src=\"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Real-Time-Mellor-Book-Cover.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-766\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Real-Time-Mellor-Book-Cover.jpg 557w, https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Real-Time-Mellor-Book-Cover-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/Real-Time-Mellor-Book-Cover-40x60.jpg 40w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 557px) 100vw, 557px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:100px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>1. The term \u201chughmellorating\u201d is an apt descriptor for encounters with Hugh. See Dan Dennett, The Philosophical Lexicon 2008 edn. . At this stage of his career (to deploy his other entry in the Lexicon) Hugh showed no sign of \u201cmelloring\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2. Hugh used an image of this gift for the dust jacket of the first edition of Real Time (reproduced below).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3. Another term from Dennett\u2019s Philosophical Lexicon, op cit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hugh supervised my PhD at Cambridge in the early 1970s. In my thesis (on the metaphysics of time) I defended an anti-realist conception of the &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/758\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hughmellor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}