A layman examines the Lewis-Anscombe controversy

I am redating this post for the benefit of BDK, who asked about the texts on which the Lewis-Anscombe exchange is based.

This is a philosophical layperson, obviously well-disposed toward Lewis, who has attempted to analyze and reconstruct the Lewis-Anscombe controversy. Please see "notes" and "appendices."

He is not a fan of mine, as can be seen by these comments from "notes."

Reppert, 59-60. This book is certainly not the “gem” perceived by one reviewer who was perhaps describing what he and I hoped to see rather than what actually lay before him. The title is clever and the opening chapter is inviting; and I guess there is an important truth in the assertion that Lewis is not a provider of finished philosophical products but, rather, of ideas which deserve further devel­op­ment in view of his “outstanding philosophical instincts”. The book contains a couple of useful ideas and distinctions; and it is my abiding impression that the author has the kind of brains and training required for the job and which I lack. Yet I cannot doubt that this book will for most of its readers turn out to be an exercise in “finding out what the author says in spite of all the author does to prevent you” – as C. S. Lewis once described another book whose author had “no order, no power of exposition, no care for the reader”. At any rate, the chapter about the Anscombe affair is a botched job; it was in fact what made me decide to make an attempt myself.

Ouch!

The appendices are very valuable, since they include the original Anscombe critique, and the first edition chapter 3 argument, which are not the easiest things in the world to get a hold of.