Terence Rajivan Edward

The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is not, I believe, a respected figure amongst English analytic philosophers, even amongst those with some sympathy for continental strands of thought. I once heard such a philosopher express distaste for Bourdieu. I would like to think of myself as a fair-minded person, but I am perhaps little better and maybe even worse. (He seems to have more experience of philosophy than I do, while being of a comparable ability - a point he often reminds me of, by some means or other - which for some years has left me wondering whether, with experience, I will just end up with the same tastes and distastes.) Anyway, let us stick to my approach of trying to be fair to Bourdieu. One of Bourdieu's most famous concepts is that of a habitus. How to clarify this concept? His tortuous statements look difficult for me to be faithful to: I often think of a habitus, quite crudely, as a set of dispositions an individual brings to a field, such as philosophy or stand-up comedy or football management or computer programming (coding). (The dispositions are also meant to be something one cannot adequately specify in words, a quality I shall leave aside here.) I would like to make use of the concept, as I understand it, to distinguish between The epistemic habitus that we have and the political habitus that people in the politics department have, or discipline area - is it, more fully, called political science? And by making this distinction I shall imply that the concept is of use. THE EPISTEMIC HABITUS that “we” have assesses theories, concepts, objections, paradoxes, solutions to paradoxes, and more by how they contribute to knowledge. A person with what I call THE POLITICAL HABITUS assesses the very same things, sometimes, by how they contribute to a political project which this individual is committed to (or to which this individual is committed; forgive me, I am terrible with avoiding ending with a preposition). For example, the person with the political habitus reacts to an objection as if within a game of strategy: often “how best can the project I am committed to be realized despite the objection?” If a loudmouthed bald denial of the objection’s conclusion will help, because the objector is shy say, then do that. If non-publication will help, then do that. Etc. By the way, I imagine a political theorist sitting in your epistemic-habitus-dominated class (teaching class, not social class) and thinking, "These people know nothing of life"; but you are more or less the ruling class (social class), aren't you? Do they ever look into your histories?

In philosophy, we sometimes start with an annoying-to-some-people paradox and then consider various solutions to it. I want to introduce some amateur film theory, which will probably annoy some film theorists, but I think it valuable to respond to. (It is not itself a paradox though, but there may be paradoxes "orbiting" around it.) On the one hand, the theory feels inevitable, I suppose - it feels inevitable that someone should theorize film as I do below - but, on the other hand, maybe no one in film theory is clueless enough to theorize as I do. (Apologies if the word "idiot" in my title is politically incorrect nevertheless.) Okay, that is the prefatory material over.... "There were black-and-white films and then colour films were made, such as The Wizard of Oz. (Of course, black and white are colours, but there are other colours in these films, and not just or simply not grey: red, blue, green, or others.) And film technology has developed and developed since then, or movie technology if we don't even use film these days. But do we need all these developments? There are TWO KINDS of film director, I propose. The one kind has enough technology with the advent of colour film, decades and decades ago. They are all about the human soul: human relationships, human characters, human emotions. They do not need more technology to make films which are all about that. (Maybe they get involved with animal emotions too, or non-human animal emotions, if you prefer that description.) The second kind are always keen to use the latest technology. The newest cameras, cutting edge computer graphics, etc. But they don't understand the human soul at all. They are just technical whizzes. And they try to produce effects in the viewer, as if the viewer is an input-output system: this input will produce this output." Now what is wrong with this perspective, professional film theorists? "Interesting, but what do I care of film? I want some code," I anticipate someone saying (or someone's saying). Here is some code which works in QBASIC, and GWBASIC I presume: replace semicolons with line breaks (i.e. press enter instead when entering the code). 10 PRINT "More software for political philosophers."; 20 INPUT "Anarchism, consent theory, benefit theory... How many topics on this course? ", NT; 30 INPUT "How many topics have essay coursework questions for them? ", NES; 40 NEX = NT - NES; 50 PRINT "You need this many exam questions (one for each remaining topic):", NEX;

John Rawls's original position thought experiment, or informal economic model even, is a method for selecting principles of justice. We are to imagine a set of rational individuals choosing which principles to implement for the society they are about to form. We are to imagine them as lacking some knowledge of themselves: of their talents, their social class position, their sex, their ambitions in life, and more. If they know this information, each will just prefer principles tailored to their own case, e.g. special exceptions for anyone with my talents. Rawls memorably describes them as behind a veil of ignorance. Now Rawls is taught year in and year out in universities across the world, for example at the University of Manchester, at University College London, and (I believe) in a university in Shanghai - East China Normal University. An objection one often hears in Manchester, in my 7 or so years of experience, is: we cannot imagine individuals without this knowledge. In the academic literature, the objection is at least suggested by Michael Sandel and made by Susan Okin. I would expect any Rawlsian who thinks carefully about the objection to respond as I did in my paper "Doing history in the original position": to distinguish between the what-it's-like interpretation of the task of imagining the original position (we imagine what it is like to be such an individual, as a novelist might) and the premise-by-premise interpretation (we construct arguments for principles of justice which do not include any references to the prohibited information) and support the latter. I guess that is what Samuel Freeman wishes to convey in his Routledge guidebook to Rawls, but he does not succeed in presenting the response really. Anyway, I once heard a discussion of the response amongst political theorists (political philosophers based in the politics discipline area of the School of Social Sciences, UoM - it was around 2012). The response proposed was this: "I CAN IMAGINE BEING BEHIND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE." I would not think of such a response myself and find it peculiar even. What is the point, if you say you can and someone else says that they cannot? It seems a stalemate (as sometimes occurs in phenomenology). Maybe it is merely intended as a short-term tactic against a quiet student. Say the capitalized response above a little louder in class and thereby shut the student challenging "our Rawlsian project" up. I don't know. Anyway, I have thought of a way of breaking the stalemate, I hope, overlooking the expected response (my response in "Doing history in the original position"). If a few people say that they can imagine being behind the veil and many say that they cannot, then proceeding with Rawls's project is elitist, which is of no use for the project, its being liberal. If many say that they can and a few say that they cannot, then it seems one is engaging in a kind-of utilitarian way to responses to the thought experiment: we favour what the many say and discount what the few say. But Rawls is about building an alternative to utilitarianism. "Very interesting, but I just want some code," I imagine someone's saying. Here is some BASIC code, with a semicolon for line breaks - press enter instead within GWBASIC or QBASIC. 10 PRINT "Exam setting software for political philosophy lecturers."; 20 INPUT "Who is the political theorist? ", P$; 30 INPUT "What is their conclusion? ", C$; 40 PRINT "Exam essay task."; 50 PRINT "Why does", P$, "think", C$, "?"; 60 PRINT "Do they have a good argument?"; 70 PRINT “(Don’t forget the second question above.)”

I am at the Alan Gilbert Learning Commons, University of Manchester. I struck up a conversation with a person two chairs away from me, and obtained his consent to report it. In between, there is an empty chair. He asked me if I was a student. I said I used to teach here. He asked me what subject, and I told him three of the subjects: philosophy, anthropology, and politics. He told me he is a medical student. I asked him if he expected more epidemics. He said, "I hope not." Maybe I should have said, "Epidemics or pandemics?" I told him that we now live in a national health state, according to think tanks or news outlets, who say this since June: half the government's budget or so is spent (or soon will be spent) on health. I asked him what the reason is. He said he did not know, but it is expensive to run a free health service. I said, maybe there are major problems that need to be fixed. I asked him what his specialism was. He said that he had no specialism. I asked him which year of his medical degree he was in. He said third year. I asked him what is inside the cell. He said mitochondria, ribosomes, the nucleus, cytoplasm. I asked him, "What about the cell membrane?" He said that the cell membrane is not inside the cell the cell. Is this a mad way of conversing? Does it violate various social norms? Nevertheless, a rational end was achieved by means of it. Look at this information psychiatrists: the cell membrane is not inside the cell. In September 2023, I was admitted to North Manchester General Hospital and I met a psychiatrist and to check that he was a real doctor I asked: what is inside the cell? And he included the cell membrane!!!!!! I, who was supposed to be mad, doubted at that very time that this was so. But if I ever make a comparable mistake, do not plague me with it like this. (My title quotes a 1943 poem by Howard Nemerov, entitled "Sigmund Freud." Is this paper philosophy? It is philosophy of rational but socially-out-of-bounds conversation perhaps. I have put this in "Conversational Implicature" since that is closest to the topic of conversation.)

From the 1930s to the 1960s, structuralism-functionalism dominated British social anthropology. The anthropologist would go to a remote society and describe the social structure of that society and how its institutions function to maintain that structure. Functionalism, in its different varieties, came in for severe criticism towards the end of the 1940s, for ignoring history - a criticism forcefully made by E.E. Evans-Pritchard. But social anthropology as a humanistic discipline with close relations to history, which is what he envisioned, never seemed to be realized. Instead a late structural-functionalism was developed at the University of Manchester, Max Gluckman's being the leader of the pack - it sought to answer the main criticisms directed at the approach. In the 1980s, Marilyn Strathern and Tim Ingold moved to Manchester and, for us today, that seemed to be the end of Manchester's structural-functionalism (though how transformations were brought about is mysterious). Strathern promoted a kind of worldview description, involving dramatic conceptual contrasts, and Ingold a phenomenological anthropology. Ingold's influence seems weak today (it was much stronger when I was a teenager); Strathern's continues. But I have this strong suspicion that structural-functionalism will just regrow at Manchester. The suspicion was especially strong at the time of the Brexit vote to leave the European Union: surely what the structural-functionalists had to say about maintaining social structure under tensions, in their now largely unread texts, was immensely relevant to a profoundly politically divided society. I doubt I am the only one who felt this suspicion. How to deal with the prospect of recovery? One solution, which I further suspect quite a few Manchester anthropologists are prepared for, is to be ready to switch to structural-functionalism if it should re-establish itself. Another solution, which I feel is difficult to put into practice, is to look for the space, metaphorically speaking, in which Strathernism and structural-functionalism overlap and try to occupy it. These new anthropology lecturers: what are they up to? (This is chat, I suppose, because I have not worked out the details of how you occupy the in-between space - need to learn more astrophysics? But it is a bit important chat, no? My contribution title quotes lines from Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan's song Blowin' in the Wind.)

Specialization and the division of labour: you do this and I do that and thereby we more efficiently achieve our individual ends, rather than by one person doing it all. It is a mark of greater civilization according to the great Scottish Enlightenment philosopher-economist Adam Smith (or civilisation, if you prefer that spelling). (What does Smith think of marriage, as traditionally pursued? In 2005, an economist told me that economists generally get married and quite early, but they must be aware of the challenges raised by Smith's recommendation to specialize, which is their recommendation too, or SOME of them must be.) In the early days of specialization, relying on Smith's just-so history, there must have been individuals who were told words to this effect: "I have trained you and you are now better than me in our specialism. But are you better than that person?" So they went to enter into competition with that person, but many diverse specialists were directed to that one person as the one to "beat." Have you seen this zombie film Night of the Living Dead (1968, directed by George A Romero)? I don't recall it well, but are there lots of zombies heading towards one house? It must have been like that! (I just watched the barricading of the house again.)

In a 2021 paper entitled "Please Like This Paper," available at Cambridge Core, Doctor Lucy McDonald writes, "When making small talk with someone about the weather, for example, we likely do not really care about the weather, nor our interlocutor’s preferences about the weather, and we may already know everything they tell us about the weather. Yet we exchange these pleasantries because doing so facilitates camaraderie." A couple of responses. (A) I can think of another reason for talking about the weather. Your psychiatrist (or your nurse actually) recommends that you have more social interaction. You do not want to, because, being paranoid, you don't want to say anything about yourself to other people. By talking about the weather, you get to have your cake and eat it, as people say. You can claim to be having more social interaction (as the nurse believes is good for mental health) but you don't say anything about yourself (as your paranoia requires). No camaraderie is produced, by the way. (B) I have seen a video on Youtube in which Timothy Williamson and a philosopher of Asian background, I believe, are having a heavy mathematico-philosophical conversation. But it starts something like this: "Let's skip the small talk and get down to business," "Yes, let's skip the small talk." Is this a kind of camaraderie-producing small talk though? (Was this intended as a paradox to consider? On the one hand, it is not small talk. On the other hand, it is. Who knows if it was intended or not? Williamson's errors in his introduction to Philosophical Method are strange to me.) (By the way, if you are interested in code, I have attached as a PDF some code for a mischievous little game. It works in QBASIC and presumably GWBASIC. Some chat: in 2022, I used a random topic generator to select which paper topic to write on - and after a while I tried to have my cake and eat it: write on the chosen topic and also on my preferred topic, e.g. Friends and John Rawls, deleted now. But is there just a set of not-rational-to-avoid topics which should use up all my sensible energy: contemporary social anthropology, because it is the rare island I found; medical stuff because people of my level would be expected to help the medical system anyway, given forthcoming circumstances; John Rawls or I will seem insane to future readers - in the age of Rawls he does not write on Rawls;...)

Bruce Fink, in his A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (which I found helpful and pleasantly written), and Slavoj Žižek have concerns about the liberal parent. When the liberal parent’s child asks why an instruction should be followed, the liberal parent does not with authority assert, "BECAUSE I SAID SO." The liberal parent provides the child with an explanation, e.g. “It is good to go to your grandmother’s because family members should spend time together.” Fink’s worry seems to be that the liberal parent is not installing le nom-du-père, whatever that means! But how many parents are actually like this even in liberal Britain or UK or England? In September 2023, I was transported to North Manchester General Hospital with a mental health problem, after writing a lot. The nurses instructed me to take medication. I refused. A few hours later the nurses instructed me to take medication again. I refused. For the first week, I was in a room by myself rather than a shared dormitory. All these refusals happened on day 1 or 2 of being in this hospital. In the evening, a number of nurses came into my small room - about 15, I think. The nurse whom I had previously refused said, "You have to take these tablets or we will forcibly inject you with medication." There was no explanation of what the medication is, what its side-effects are, and what exactly my rights are in this situation - despite that I had, upon admission, claimed to be a figure of considerable intelligence and some biological knowledge, namely Simone de Beauvoir. I was troubled by the crowd in my room and their threat. I said, "Okay then, I shall take the medication," and duly swallowed the tablets and drank the water provided, in a transparent plastic cup. Do you think these nurses go home and parent as Fink and Žižek imagine? If I remember correctly, they were mostly white people. ("I just don't do what the white man proper does - I don't understand this country"???)

"The pen is mightier than the sword" is a proverb in English, which is usually interpreted as saying that the person who publicly writes wields more power, or can wield more power by that means, than the person who does not publicly write but uses the sword. Batman is a character created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger for DC Comics. As usually portrayed in film and television, he protects the fictional city of Gotham from villains. The 1989 Batman film stars Jack Nicholson as the villain The Joker. It is directed by Tim Burton. There is a scene I especially like from the film. In this scene, a prominent authority figure is being interviewed (outside a town hall?) and the Joker appears, expresses some agreement with the authority figure's words and then kills the authority figure with a feathered pen. The pen is one which, the Joker earlier says, has been used to make an important signature. After the public murder, the Joker declares, "The pen is truly mightier than the sword." How to make sense of this scene (which you can watch on Youtube)? I have an interpretation, according to which it is rooted in an experience. You know how, as an essayist or writer of some other kind, you are advised to avoid stock sayings. They are well-worn. They fail to offer a new perspective on the world. They are clichés. But you somehow find one of these very difficult to avoid. What do you do, given the advice? You use it but you use it with (or also with) some other interpretation conveyed. For example (hopefully not this extreme in real life), you kill someone with a feathered pen and declare that the pen is mightier than the sword, meaning literally a better killing instrument! "I am not interested in this; I am interested in computer code," I imagine someone’s saying. Okay, this is some BASIC code for a modus ponens testing system, with semicolons for line breaks (press enter instead, within QBASIC or GWBASIC). 10 PRINT "Modus ponens task."; 20 INPUT "What is proposition P? ", P$; 30 INPUT "What is proposition Q? ", Q$; 40 P$ = LCASE$(P$); 50 Q$ = LCASE$(Q$); 60 PRINT "IF", P$, "THEN", Q$; 70 PRINT "__________"; 80 PRINT "THEREFORE:"; 90 PRINT Q$; 100 PRINT; 110 INPUT "What goes in the blank for a valid argument? ", B$; 120 B$ = LCASE$(B$); 130 IF B$ = P$ THEN END; 140 PRINT "Try again."; 150 GOTO 110;

Rawls's difference principle tells us to prefer the economy which is better for the worst off, or the simple version does. Now we are supposed to implement more basic principles before implementing the difference principle: to ensure a set of liberties for each citizen, or each law-abiding adult citizen, and also to ensure fair equality of opportunity. But there is a problem when assessing two economies, or possible economies, in terms of the difference principle. Should we assess them straight after introducing policies to realize the more basic principles or should we give a bedding in period? It seems reasonable to give a bedding-in period. But then one encounters this possible problem. In economy 1, there are ten people (or hundred or million - I shall work with ten) after the bedding-in period (one month, let us suppose), as there were before. The lowest level of wealth is $10, let us imagine. In economy 2, there were ten people when Rawls's more basic principles were introduced but after the bedding-in period, there are only three. The lowest level of wealth is $11. We should prefer the second economy, given the simple version of the difference principle and assessment after the bedding-in period. But 7 ghosts, if there are such things, are unhappy with this approach: "Liberties do not require attention to vulnerable folk." (My title quotes a line from a song by the band Oasis, whose merchandise is all over Manchester city centre, it seems - well, that is hyperbole! The song is Don't Look Back in Anger and these are lines within it: "I’m gonna start a revolution from my bed ‘Cos you said the brains I had went to my head".)

The saying "To have your cake and eat it" can be used with different meanings, I assume. I use it to describe social practices which combine qualities that, intuitively or by plausible argument, cannot be combined: the intuition or the argument is a bad one therefore. For example, various people the world over have the social intuition that one must beat one's children or the outcome will be a spoilt child (spare the rod, spoil the child, as Samuel Butler wrote). But to have your cake and eat it here is to have a way not to beat your child (as required by good liberalism) and also avoid a spoilt child - a way or a whole set of things which serve as a substitute for beating. I think that have-your-cake-and-eat-it practices are characteristic of the English middle class, the British middle class even: we don't fire you but you will leave; we don't say, "No," but you will realize that we are conveying, "No," etc. They probably exist in some other societies too. In England, even the aristocracy and the working class have to probably make concessions to this approach and associated innovations. One does not want to be just another culture after all. Now there is an infamous German philosopher called Carl Schmitt, who proposes that sometimes the law has to be suspended, to better deal with an enemy: an enemy to the way of life of the nation. One will then do unspeakable things to the enemy, to drive them out or just eradicate them from within the nation’s boundaries. But what if the way of life of a nation consists of have-your-cake-and-eat-it practices? Suspending the law to defend against the enemy, as Schmitt recommends, would then itself be against the way of life in a nation: one should not take this vulgarly direct approach. Now there is probably a person in Germany whose view is: if you had the minorities we had, you would have committed genocide too. And there is probably a person in England who thinks, "No, we are ethical." What to say about this? I am not sure. (Maybe, in some rare cases, a nation will think: for this enemy, have-your-cake-and-eat-it is not doable. Probably not in the German holocaust case though.) By the way, there is an infamous working class English comedian called Roy Chubby Brown. In a Youtube video, he says that this island we live on, or I live on and some others, is full up. He is railing against government immigration policy but does not seem to entertain the following combination, let alone recommend it: anyone can come here but we have techniques such that hardly anyone does. (Surely he knows England better than I do though!)

Psychiatry has its categories of disorder which it uses in diagnosis, such as autism, schizophrenia, and folie à deux. But such categories are also used by the lay person, without the training and the exposure to cases that the professional psychiatrist typically has. One might assume that the people who use these categories are just amateur psychiatrists, with the same aim (or aims) but without the training. Perhaps that is true regarding some people. One takes one's child to a doctor, for example, suspecting that they suffer from a psychiatric problem, which one has diagnosed oneself after reading up. But if we assume that the aim of psychiatry is to help the patient, it is questionable whether this is the usual aim of amateur diagnosis (or the causal function, regardless of the aim). Why does a non-expert describe someone as autistic or someone as schizophrenic, etc.? One reason is simply to change their behaviour so that it is in line with the narrow boundaries of acceptability within the social group of which they are both part. The person diagnosed often reacts by thinking, "I do not have that disorder actually," but how to show it except by changing their behaviour: the goal of the amateur diagnosis is thereby achieved! (For example, you try to show that you are not autistic by greater sensitivity to social norms.) One can be considerably sceptical about psychiatry even and NEVERTHELESS maintain that the aim of psychiatry is not about producing the level of conformity that various cliquey social groups prefer. (I have become acquainted with diagnoses by various people; forgive me for doubting that all these people have the ends of psychiatry in mind.)

In childhood in some societies, perhaps all, there are badges of achievement. You completed swimming level 1: there is a badge to signify that. You completed swimming level 2: there is another badge, to signify that achievement. Now let's move to the adult world. Let's imagine that you are a literary figure, in a prestigious sense of "literary." Someone starts conversing with you. She says, "I am a literary figure too." Your expression conveys to her scepticism about this claim, or outright rejection. (Does she read you right? Let's leave this matter aside.) "You are no literary figure," your eyes (or your whole face) seem to say. She then gets a manuscript accepted for publication by a literary publisher. She has a badge of literariness, or whatever the right term is. You must now accept her as a fellow literary figure. Let's imagine that you are furthermore a theorist (whatever that means, political theorist let us suppose). Someone else starts conversing with you. She says, "I am a theorist too." Your expression conveys to her scepticism about this claim, or outright rejection. She is awarded a PhD in theory of some kind, political theory let us say. She has a badge of theoryhood, or whatever the right term is. You must now accept her as a fellow theorist. (My main point is not the following: everyone makes mistakes, but these badge people are going to be very unhappy with certain elite universities if they come to the conclusion that these universities are not sufficiently reliable with awarding their badges, first class degrees being a kind of badge, perhaps not even metaphorically. They are going to want some kind of sanction on institutions giving out these unreliable badges.) Let's finally imagine that you are an intellectual. And people take one look at you, moving on the street say, and think, "There goes an intellectual." But it does not make sense to give out badges to people to establish that they are intellectuals. That whole approach is anti-intellectual. Isn't the whole badge system an anti-intellectual pursuit of status? So someone who thinks they belong in the intellectual club but encounters scepticism from you, if not outright rejection, has a problem, it seems. Coming back with a badge from an authority is not going to help. I don't know if there is any solution but to engage in parody. “Look, I am just like you.”

My title quotes from memory the opening stanza of a poem by Laura Riding, entitled Dimensions, from her early poetry, 1920-26. It is in First Awakenings, edited by Elizabeth Friedmann, Alan J. Clark and Robert Nye. (The “assistant psychiatrist” in North Manchester General Hospital, September to mid-November 2023, was referred to as Nye. I tried to figure out which literary figure each staff member corresponded to, and he was worried about that. I did genuinely wonder whether there is a code and if I figure it out, they would let me out of here. Is it even insane to try everything, under such restricted liberty and not much to do? By the way, I asked a madman if he knew Wyndham Lewis and he nodded.) Anyway, do you know John Rawls's famous cake cutting thought experiment, or model or outline of a model? All individuals at the party want as much cake as possible. You give the knife to the person who gets the last piece left and he/she cuts the cake equally, says Rawls, so as to prevent getting a smaller piece. I was thinking to code this, but I was lazy (unsurprisingly). Here is some BASIC code: works on GWBASIC I believe and QBASIC. I have used semicolon for a line break in the code; just press enter instead within the BASIC interpreter. (I use Rufus to put DOS on a memory stick, by the way.) 10 PRINT "It's a 2 dimensional cake, okay." 20 PRINT "One pixel vertically." 30 INPUT "How many people want some cake (whole number only)? ", NE; 40 IF NE > 1 THEN GOTO 70; 50 PRINT "Enter 1 or above"; 60 GOTO 30; 70 INPUT "What is the cake horizontally? How many pixels (whole number only)? ", H; 80 IF H > 0 THEN GOTO 110; 90 PRINT "Enter 1 or above"; 100 GOTO 70; 110 X1 = H/NE; 120 X2 = INT (H/NE); 130 IF X1 = X2 THEN GOTO 160; 140 PRINT "Cake size is not a good idea."; 150 GOTO 70; 160 PRINT "Each cake piece is this number of pixels horizontally: ", X1

In three contributions, I have been discussing a remark made by the distinguished social anthropologist Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern, in her 2005 book Kinship, Law and the Unexpected: Relatives Are Always a Surprise. Strathern refers to Australian media coverage of the thirteenth IVF baby. Then she writes, "Indeed, the media constantly draw attention to the circumstances under which people choose reproductive interventions, for these appear test cases for the validity of not just this technology but sometimes (it seems) of all technology." (p.17) A test of the validity of all technology? Is that even a coherent concept? For will not the test itself use technology, observational technology (a writing pad to note down results, etc.)?Assume it will. Thus if the test reveals that all technology is invalid, then the test itself is invalid, because it relies on technology too, and so it does not reveal that all technology is invalid. (A test that we can know a priori cannot coherently deliver one of two epistemically possible results - epistemically possible before we think carefully about the test - does not seem a test at all.) I am not saying as the final word that the concept of such a test is incoherent, because I depend above on an assumption that the test itself uses observational technology. But then again how to avoid this assumption? Over to you experts.

"To have your cake and eat it" is a British expression. What does it mean exactly? Probably there are multiple interpretations. On the interpretation I work with, a person or group manages to do this if they combine qualities which intuitively or by plausible argument are incompatible. Intuitively, you cannot have A and B, yet they manage to have A and B, contrary to intuition. I believe British society, as well as various other liberal societies, is pervaded by have-your-cake-and-eat-it practices. There are proposed examples in my previous papers or online contributions and I refer to these to illustrate the expression. An appendix includes my attempt at a coding task. (I have placed this paper in "Contradictions in conception and the will," unsure where to place it.)

In the country where I live, the United Kingdom (the UK), there are universities. And these universities award degrees, which are certificates of achievement I suppose. There is a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science, or other degrees awarded upon completion of an undergraduate course. Then there are postgraduate degrees, such as Master of Arts (MA) and Master of Science (MSc). Also there is a PhD, which goes with the title of Doctor without one's necessarily being a medical doctor. (Or anti-medical doctor!) At present, it normally takes three to four years in the UK to obtain a PhD, and one must make a significant research contribution to a field (a discipline, an area of research, a body of academic literature...). You perhaps have to double-check the information above, because I do not take an immense interest in the degree system. That brings me to my topic. I suspect that various people (e.g. administrators) operate with a binary classification scheme when it comes to PhD holders. How does one react upon achieving such distinction? One type reacts like this, it is supposed: joy, celebration, clenching their fist to express the fruits of determination, and calling loved ones to tell them of the proud achievement. The other type reacts like this: "Okay, that's that chore over; what's next?" The type who are actually good at academic research react in the latter way, it is supposed. This is not my system of classification, but various conversations suggest that others work with it and the associated suppositions. For example, I asked an administrator if she would sign a document for me to purchase my current apartment and she replied, "I don't need a PhD for this, do I?" or very similar words. She was, I suspect, predicting this reaction from me: "what exactly does a PhD indicate competence in?" rather than, say, a defence of the proper value of a PhD. I just said, "No," I hope. I don't think about this stuff too much. I hope the degree-awarding system can sort out competent from not competent, but I am puzzled by less than first class degrees I have been awarded prior to the PhD. I have marked a lot now! (The title of this contribution quotes lyrics from a song by Lady Gaga.)

In 2011, Thomas H. Smith published a paper entitled "Romantic Love," or had a paper published with that title. "We" all read it, some of us only once, some us more than once. What is he trying to do here exactly? Specify what romantic love is, or what sort of thing it is? Let's focus on the former task, I suppose, whether it is Smith's task or not. Romantic love: it is a big theme in popular culture, is it not? It is addressed on so many occasions that one might turn to popular culture as a guide, or the local popular culture probably. Let's suppose one then lists a set of features associated with romantic love in popular culture: being a couple, being set on going through life together (Smith is not happy with this), being destined for each other, loving each other, having an exclusive sexual relationship, and perhaps more. One then looks at this list and goes a bit Julian Dodd (or whoever pioneered the reaction): I don't think we are going to be able to keep all this. But what should one keep when trying to say what romantic love is and what should one sacrifice? I suspect this will vary across societies and popular cultures. Some Chinese women in their late 20s or so, all doctoral students, told me a saying of their culture, "A woman's heart is like a cloud," conveying (to my ears) that it is not a good idea to expect it to remain fixed, probably to remain romantically fixed. (Were they conveying, "Your heart is also like a cloud"?! Did they just invent this saying?) Have you seen this Instagram comedy with four Chinese young women (- well one of them is slightly older perhaps; see my Instagram site following section to find them; it is not the ones teaching Cantonese)? In one sketch, involving just two, one of the women says English words translated as "I shall be constant" and a number of Chinese letters appear. What is the best explanation for the crowd of letters? (a) This is difficult to say in Chinese (or Mandarin - is it Mandarin?) (b) This is difficult for this speaker to say in Chinese? (c) Some other explanation... Setting aside romantic love, today's coding task is of use in various contexts. Write a computer program which asks the user if they wish to join a list and, if so, gets their name and poses the question again (for the next in the queue), and, if not, presents all the names of people who have joined. I wrote QBASIC code for this in the morning.

Terry Pratchett was a popular fantasy author, especially with young adult readers. He sets his fictions on a strange world called the Discworld. There is actual magic on the Discworld. Is there magic in our world? Even if there is not, there are various resemblances between the Discworld and our world and one might take lessons from Pratchett as a consequence. In his book Lords and Ladies (probably my favourite, of the ones I have read), he has a footnote in which he tells us about a new theory. The theory is enabling researchers to deduce books not yet written: "...all books, everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past. But the General Theory of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence." (p.55) One might certainly look at a book, or more generally a text, and notice how that relates to past texts in a way that is, or merely feels like, an inferential relationship, but can one actually deduce future texts from past texts? I am not confident of this, because the deductive systems I am familiar with (e.g. Euclidean geometry) start from a small foundation of propositions (the axioms) and deduce conclusions from this base. If one starts with all past and present books, and their contents, as one's foundation - one's deductive base - and then tries to deduce what books will be written, will not the base be too large for a deductive system? I shall give an illustration, but not from books exactly. The famous rock'n'roll band Oasis have a song called Live Forever (written by Noel Gallagher). In it, they sing "Maybe I don't really wanna know how your garden grows, 'cause I just wanna fly." One can imagine a comical response: "It is not an either-or situation. You can listen to me, with my feet firmly on the ground, telling you about how my garden grows while flying. It is just that you probably have to fly at a low level." Then one can imagine a response, which is to set up a band called High Flying Birds. Noel Gallagher is or was involved with such a band. But the chances of you deducing this beforehand, from Live Forever, are incredibly low; it is more likely you will hear or read the name and work backwards towards this account of how it originated, or a very similar one. Now consider a researcher with many publications who is worried that their next paper will be anticipated. How does one counter the worry? People will probably present counters which work on the emotions: encouraging you to trust in God and to let go of the goal of always beating the competition. But there is also a response which addresses the intellect (in some cases): how are they going to anticipate this, given such a large base from which to start deductions? I don't myself panic over this matter because of this question, or I rarely do. Pratchett creates problems for writers' mental health; I have a solution! (This solution is probably useful for people writing one-liner jokes.)

What does the expression "The tyranny of transparency" mean? It was introduced by the distinguished British anthropologist Professor Dame Marilyn Strathern and she is (unfortunately) renowned for obscurity. ("What kind of obscurity?" Well, Sarah Green says: an elliptical sentence style which omits information, which suitably placed readers can infer or else bring to the text. Pete Wade says: I cannot understand her for pages. Comments gathered in the late 90s or 2000.) This is my (unparanoid) interpretation of what attracted Strathern to the expression: she wants to say to auditors of the University of Cambridge, the university functions really well as a research and teaching institution even if they do not understand how and meeting their requirement of transparency would reduce its functionality and it would even defeat their democratic agenda. My own reaction to this, at present, is that transparency suits the University of Pennsylvania level and Voltaire, Rousseau, Adam Smith level, but there is a strange level in-between, at least when one does pairwise comparisons (you are not better than Smith, also you are not, nor you): Harvard, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, etc. They are not suited to transparency - don't ask them to explain this, that, and the other. All that will happen probably is that one of their supporters will ask you to explain and explain and explain, well beyond what these elite do (E.g. "Why are you writing now? A mad imperative?" I need to go to the shop and thought I would: "See, you don't like it when we ask about stuff, so don't ask them." By the way, there is chemistry, metaphorically speaking. I suspect there is good chemistry between elite university "wizards" and nurses, admin, etc., because if these wizards have to drop down a level, they drop straight to nurses or admin. No mundane doctorhood/lectureship/... for them! But my evidence is insufficient.) Okay, it is time for me to argue for MORE TRANSPARENCY. In her 2005 book, Kinship, Law and the Unexpected: Relatives Are Always a Surprise, Strathern discusses Australian media coverage of the thirteenth IVF baby. She writes, "Indeed, the media constantly draw attention to the circumstances under which people choose reproductive interventions, for these appear test cases for the validity of not just this technology but sometimes (it seems) of all technology." (p.17) I find the latter impression strange, profoundly strange. “This is a test not just of the validity of this piece of technology but the validity of all technology”? “A failure in this case would mean all technology is invalid”? From my standpoint, that is a bizarre impression, psychotic even. (I have heard various people rail against scientific achievement, but a test of all technology?) Can we have an explanation please of why you had this impression, or why one had it? (My contribution title quotes lines from a song called Live Forever. "Maybe you're the same as me/ We see things they'll never see." I am not sure if the band or the lyricist wish to be named here.)

You know this perhaps: in early September 2023, I was forcibly taken into hospital with a mental health problem. I conveniently live opposite the hospital, yet I recall being injected to pacify me after running away from police on the road in-between and put into an ambulance and brought to hospital (1 minute away), accompanied by police officers and ambulance staff. It was absurdly dramatic. After more strangeness, I was soon moved to North Manchester General Hospital, by ambulance - it is two buses away. I was kept there on a policy which allowed them to keep me for 4 weeks, in a psychiatric ward. I escaped after about 3, as soon as I was allowed to walk out of the compound by myself, was brought back and an appeal was made to get a 6 month extension, which was granted. 6 month extension: that was scary, but I was out in mid-November. In the psychiatric ward, there were some books to read. There was Dickens - I read some of that. There was E.M. Forster - I read some of that. There was Martha Nussbaum - I am joking about this one. There was Ernest Hemingway. I read that. I have heard various people express discontent with Hemingway: I don't like that stuff, an university administrator conveyed to me; the assistant psychiatrist - that is what I call him anyway - said that it is all macho stuff. But I found Hemingway useful, inspiring even, in the unfortunate circumstances I was in. Consider what is happening in this realist novel: now the main character - the protagonist, in fancy talk (protagonist syndrome?) - has lost sensation in his leg, after a wartime attack. Does he even have a leg now? But he still goes on. I must go on! (By the way, there is this famous Hemingway imitation: "Baby shoes. Never worn. For sale." In 2021 I believe, I sent a reply to a poetry magazine entitled One Sentence Poetry, now out of business, but they rejected it: "Baby shoes. Size nought. Just bought." I have been involved with Hemingway for a while.)

Pierre Bourdieu: a sophisticated French theorist, in some people's eyes - not everyone's. Let's work with a simplified Bourdieu perhaps. He says that you have a set of behavioural dispositions, a set of habits more or less, a habitus in his jargon, and this habitus is largely the outcome of your upbringing in a certain social class. But I have a concern about Bourdieu, my main concern. I presented it in my important paper "Letter to Le Monde on Pierre Bourdieu, miracles, and rational actor models." The concern is that an individual can develop (or devise or conceive or realize or figure out) an economic model and then change their behaviour in light of the model, and (CRUCIAL) the behavioural change is just different from what the sociologist observer was expecting (or out of the expected range). If the sociologist does not know the model, the sociologist will be lost as to what is going on. "He was doing this before and now he is doing that. It is not behaviour from his social class. Why is he doing that?" the sociologist wonders. I gave an example in my important paper/letter. Here is another one. Suppose I develop this model, if it can even be called that. An established 10/10 literary author attracts critics of level 8/10. 10/10 in literary criticism is so rare and 9/10 is needed on less established projects, which require greater skill to progress with - the foundations need to be laid, one lacks previous commentary to build on, etc. And resistant 9/10 is inevitably pushed into these less established projects. Once I have the model, I start buying books I did not buy before. I start buying books on rock'n'roll stars and rappers. The books look a little bit tacky, to my slightly snobby tastes. But my model predicts that some very skilled critics will be involved with these less prestigious figures. I want to read these skilled critics and learn what they have to say. ("We want some coding stuff, not this; we don't care about sociology," you say. Okay, write code which gets the user to input a number and it checks whether the number involves a decimal or not, e.g. 1.1111 involves a decimal but the number 2 does not. You can focus on positive numbers only, if you want, but don't use the INT function or equivalent. "Will this help us with our overall aims?" Hopefully. See the appendix to my " "We don't like community, play well with others": the rising English middle class and Four Weddings and a Funeral" on Researchgate for my attempt at the task.)

"Why is there no progress in philosophy?" natural scientists sometimes ask, or their dogged admirers do. (Also there is the subtle scientist: "Why is there so little progress in philosophy?") Behold science, with its towering achievements and its consensus regarding various debates. What is the cause of the problem, or what are the causes? I have not read scientists attacking philosophy in a while, but by a social-intuition-quite-unmysterious I suspect these are the identified causes: (i) questions the answers to which are untestable; (ii) poorly defined terms (vague terms); (iii) lack of knowledge of the natural sciences; (iv) insufficient incorporation of formal methods (mathematics, computer coding); and (v) reliance on individual publications rather than team efforts. But when scientists observe some of the computer programs I have written, I wonder whether they will start revising their account. Here is one, in old-fashioned BASIC, with a full stop (a period, Americans) after it: 10 GOTO 10. Here is another (with semicolons instead of line breaks, press enter please): 10 GOTO 20; 20 GOTO 30; 30 GOTO 40... And here is a third: 10 REM This is the first line; 20 REM This is the second line; 30 REM This is the third line... The natural scientist probably thinks, "We have coded before, including in this dead language, but we just don't come up with code like this. There is some fundamental difference in temperament, which is probably likely to prevent progress or produce progress of a very alien kind amongst those who have it." But is there not anyone in science disposed to code like this? "Maybe persons concerned with the very foundations of mathematics, but I am a natural scientist"? This is chat, by the way, but it may be important too.

What are delusions? Here is a start: a delusion is a false belief; furthermore, it is obviously false; but the person with the delusion holds onto the belief in the face of compelling evidence. Surely the last thing someone who starts with this sensible proposal is expecting is a debating opponent who says that delusions are not beliefs. But that is precisely what the philosophers say! No, this statement is not quite right. The debate between philosophers is over whether delusions are beliefs, some denying this. If this were not bad enough for the working psychiatrist, things get even worse when they inquire into why there is this interest in the view that delusions are not beliefs. (This belief that delusions are not beliefs: is it not itself a sign of madness? "Don't ask me how, but I knew you would pose that question"?!) There is this Davidsonian argument which is producing a lot of the agitation: beliefs do not come in isolation, rather any one belief is part of a whole rationally-related set of beliefs; but what rational whole is there for supposed beliefs such as that I am dead? "So, no empirical research, just an A PRIORI argument." But I think there has been empirical research, of some kind, into whether denying that delusions are beliefs is workable. Was it not Stanley Cavell's wife, the psychoanalyst philosopher Marcia Cavell, who abandoned the legendary Cavell for Donald Davidson? "Yes, but is this not a sexist introduction?" Sorry. I suspect Davidson was interested in psychoanalysis for some time before his relationship with Cavell. "It wasn't Davidson who devised the argument." I am not sure that helps, if it be true. Anyway, parallel time! Kimberley Brownlee joins a long line of critics of mainstream liberalism, arguing that it pays insufficient attention to the social nature of human beings. There is Rawls's original position argument with all these rational individuals who do not care for each other. And Robert Nozick's individuals who contact each other by radio. "These are useful hypothetical scenarios, even if they are not realistic," we are told, or likely to be told. But I think Brownlee needs to consider the question: is it like with delusions - there is probably some empirical research backing up these thought experiments? If you comb through the university library enough, you may find it. "I can see this attack coming from long distance off, but I have not shown you all my defences against it" - does Brownlee wonder whether this could be the situation? I certainly do! It is a challenge even, to the ordinary folk of political philosophy.

In September 2023 (as some of you possibly know), I was taken into Manchester Royal Infirmary with a mental health problem (or a whole set of them) and soon moved to North Manchester General Hospital. Every week I met with a team there, comprising the consultant psychiatrist (was he absent one week?) and some others. I was asked all sorts of questions, most or all of which I found annoying. "Do I have to explain ABCs of everything I do?" I wondered. I remember saying words to the effect, "I had a hunch this was a good idea. I didn't harm anyone, or break the law. Sometimes one acts on a hunch. An investor, for example, might have a hunch that a product is worth investing in and act on the hunch." They nodded. Today I remembered this, but I don't remember what exactly I was explaining. Then I came up with an explanation: for why they ask such questions, I mean. They are preparing me. "If you ever end up in here again, from causing commotion, you will be faced with a set of adults going by the law whom you will regard as unable to work out anything for themselves, like little children. And you will have to explain various elementary things. ABCs of this, that and the other. You don't want that, so learn to behave properly and stay out of trouble." Good friends, these psychiatric people are. I also remembered a 3 dimensional game idea of mine, presented on another database: the suggestion game - you can reduce or increase receptivity to merely suggestive evidence, with corresponding changes to appearance (sorry, British empiricists). I suppose the point of the game is teach the psychiatrists that there is no adequate strategy here: you reduced suggestive evidence and trusted those people with good reputations, despite their initial appearance to you - you died early; you increased suggestive evidence, but then you failed to trust the one person you should - you died early. (More chat. I think this Thomas Edward Yorke is a satirist, like myself when I am not in an entirely good mood, and sometimes even when I am!!! What happens if you satire people and they are 1% better than you think? It could well be that this is just not enough to avoid the disaster your satire predicts, in which case satire away. This is not a duplicate, by the way, PhilPapers editors.)

I just coded a scrambler for a three letter word. Download the PDF to see the code. The code includes an REM statement. In QBASIC, an REM statement is something to remember, not proper code I suppose. Well, thinking about the matter more carefully, it is a paradox really. A person who uses an REM statement has clearly learnt some BASIC code. But a person who knows only this statement cannot make a program in BASIC which does anything, in which case there is good reason to say that they do not know how to code in BASIC. Is this competent BASIC code? 10 REM This is line 10. 20 REM This is line 20. 30 REM This is line 30.

Various sources treat the terms “erotomania” and “de Clérambault’s syndrome” as referring to the same thing, for example Google AI and Wikipedia. But the latter term is often presented as referring specifically to a syndrome in which a subject has a delusion that a person of higher status is in love with them. The former syndrome in contrast is defined without mention of the higher status requirement. The obvious solution to this difference in presentation is to say that they are not actually the same, rather de Clérambault’s syndrome is a subtype within the broader type Erotomania. But an alternative solution occurred to me. Various delusions involve the false impression that powerful persons are sending messages to the patient, for example through newspapers, television, or social media. Erotomania and de Clérambault’s syndrome “both” involve a patient who has the impression of a powerful person in love with them sending them messages in ways only the powerful can. But that is incorporated into the very definition with de Clérambault’s syndrome, to emphasize the common ground with other types of delusion. The two terms refer to the same syndrome, but one uses the latter term to emphasize this common ground. This, of course, is very speculative, because I know so little. But it may interest philosophers of sense and reference.