Terence Rajivan Edward

In the distinguished journal Analysis, Professor Michael Otsuka presents his reconstruction of the Kamm-Scanlon argument for saving the greater number. This is part of the reconstructed argument. "(1) The claims of A, B, and C should be accorded equal and positive weight. (2) We accord them equal and positive weight if and only if we add C's claim to B's. Therefore (3) We should add C's claim to B's." Does (3) follow from (1) and (2), as the reconstruction maintains? My worry is that (1) does not say "We should accord the claims of A, B, and C equal and positive weight." As stated it expresses what I believe is called an unowned should (or unowned ought). I suspect some philosophers will argue that there can be unowned shoulds which do not impose any requirement on any individual or set of individuals. I would not use this reconstruction, owing to this conceivable gap. I suppose you could try this: "(1) "We should accord the claims of A, B, and C equal and positive weight." But I am thinking to begin with a metaphysical premise about value: "The claims of A, B, and C are of equal and positive weight" and make other changes as a consequence.

Some political philosophers talk of steps in an argument, but should they? For example, Professor Michael Otsuka talks of step two in his reconstruction of the Kamm-Scanlon argument for saving the greater number, in the distinguished journal Analysis. But should he? The usual way of thinking of an argument is as composed of premises (or just one) and inferences from premises (or just one) and a conclusion. Here is an example of an argument: "(Premise 1) If your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat, then she is a witch. (Premise 2) Your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat. Therefore (Conclusion) She is a witch." The argument takes the valid modus ponens form. By valid I mean that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be as well - that is what we mean by "valid" in logic; we are not saying that the premises are true by calling it valid - on this we are neutral. But the argument is not sound: premise 1 is surely false. Anyway, should we refer to premise 1 as step 1? Perhaps, but a reason I have for not doing so is that a step makes it sound as if you must do this first, but you can reverse the order of the premises and it is the same argument. Watch: "(Premise 1) Your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat. (Premise 2) If your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat, then she is a witch. Therefore (Conclusion) She is a witch." Of course the labels for the premises are different with this representation and that will make a difference to how you refer to components of the argument, when using this representation of it; but it is the same argument. Anyway, it seems to me that this reason for not calling premise 1 "step 1" and likewise not calling premise 2 "step 2" applies to Otsuka's use of step. This may seem like fussing but I am really not sure if political philosophers know the difference between a premise in an argument and a requirement specified in instructions, one which must come where it is and not later or before.

Once upon a time (and maybe still), mind-brain type identity theory was accepted by some philosophers. This theory identifies types of mental state with types of brain state (or types of state in the nervous system), for example pain is a type of mental state which is identical to C-fibres firing. An objection to this theory is that there could be a creature that displays pain behaviour and experiences pain, but does not have our kind of brain or anything sufficiently like it for the theory to work. Mental states are multiply-realizable, says the objector: pain can be realized in beings with our brains but can also possibly be realized in an alien with a very different biology. The objector favours functionalism. Now imagine some excellent scientists who examine the brains of various animals and develop a theory of mind which allows for multiple-realizability to some extent, unlike the old type identity theory; but this allowance is to a very limited extent compared to functionalism. Like functionalism, there an input (e.g. harmful stimuli) and an output (e.g. aversion) and there is something that causes the aversion (the mental state), but the range of things that can possibly go in-between is quite limited: outside of the quite limited set, it does not count as a mental state. The mental state in this creature is brain state H1 and the same mental state in that creature is brain state R!, but the scientists have quite a detailed conception of what goes on in between input and output for this type of mental state and it requires cerebellum, say. (Hope this talk of cerebellum is okay!) How should philosophers react? Here are three different reactions I anticipate. (i) "The conception may be good for these scientists but it is no good for philosophy. It just makes an arbitrary limitation on multiple-realizability, based on the animals these scientists are acquainted with." (ii) "Our best science says that this is what the mind is and so we philosophers should accept with that." (David Liggins and Chris Daly will charge this with being overly deferential.) (iii) "We need some way of constraining the thought experiments of philosophers, rather than being moved to functionalism by thoughts of Martians in pain with insufficient details given about Martian biology." (I assume Williamson-Parfit-Helen Beebee etc. think this is sure to fail. I suspect it is good to divide the philosophical community over this. Half develop and abide by constraints; and half reject them.)

I was reading "The Pathways to the First Contact with Mental Health Services among Patients with Schizophrenia in Lagos, Nigeria" by Increase Ibukun Adeosun, Abosede Adekeji Adegbohun, Tomilola Adejoke Adewumi, and Oyetayo O. Jeje. They write of how Nigeria has not many psychiatrists: "There are 0.028 mental health outpatient facilities per 100,000 population and less than 200 psychiatrists." Regarding a lot of people with schizophrenia in the country, their first contact with treatment is with traditional or spiritual healers rather than medics. The authors draw attention to how this is true of many Asian and African countries. I am interested in how they write of "pathways" to first contact with mental health services. Talk of pathways in schizophrenia research is often talk of brain pathways. Dopamine pathways are apparently overactive in schizophrenic patients (or a significant proportion of them - the details do not matter here). Now a good analytic philosopher will surely distinguish between brain pathways and social pathways, the latter being the object of research in the article. But doing so perhaps puts one at risk of not noticing something exciting (or speculating that there is this exciting thing). Do these schizophrenia researchers, presumably very familiar with talk of brain pathways, treat society as if it were a giant brain? Is this the paradigm even? "This traditional healer pathway is overactive in our society, unlike in developed countries." (I am putting this in "Brain Imaging and Localization.")

Thomas Kuhn's account of the development of science famously divides the history of a scientific community into revolutionary and normal periods. During normal periods, a scientific community has a paradigm. A paradigm can be understood in at least two senses: (i) a set of assumptions made by all community members, typically highly general; or (ii) an example of problem-solving accepted by all community members as ideal and looked to as a guide for future problem-solving. Now during the normal period, novel data of relevance for the scientific community, given its official object of research, is largely ignored. Scientists concentrate on a few problems, a few puzzles, trying to solve them, and ignore data which pose other puzzles. But there is a build up of puzzling data and the community eventually loses shared confidence in the paradigm. Then a revolutionary period is initiated, during which there is a search for a new paradigm. The establishment of a new paradigm marks the end of this period and the beginning of a new period of normal science. Kuhn seems to assume that the level of "novelty-suppression" in one period of normal science and another is the same. A doubt occurred to me about this assumption, but I was led to it by reflecting on a discipline outside the disciplines that Kuhn focuses on, the natural sciences. (The doubt seems quite important to me; please cite if you substantiate it one day!) The discipline is philosophy. Imagine a community of philosophers whose paradigm is a kind of conceptual analysis: the defining of concepts. Community members accept that definition should not go on forever and so that there must be some undefined concepts (atomic concepts). For example, one defines the concept of a bachelor using the concepts of being unmarried and of being a human male, then one defines these concepts, and so on; at some point there must be some undefined concepts, to avoid circularity. The aim is to produce analyses of concepts which define a given concept purely in terms of atomic concepts. What community members accept about definition can be called a paradigm, in sense (i). Now given their aim and the size of the community, it is rational to mainly attempt definitions where the aim of producing a totally atomic analysis is within closer reach. (This will, I assume, often involve focusing on concepts for which an analysis can borrow from clarificatory work by others.) Otherwise the task of definition is too demanding. This leads to novelty-suppression: community members just ignore some interesting concepts and even attempts at definition. In this situation, novelty-suppression is caused by the paradigm (and what is a rational research strategy given it) but there is no reason to assume that every paradigm available to this community would cause novelty-suppression; or the same level of novelty-suppression. (By the way, I adapted this term "novelty-suppression" from the experiments of psychiatrists on novelty-suppressed feeding of rodents.)

In the opening paragraph of Alice Munro's story Voices, we are told, "The square dancing had complicated patterns or steps, which a person known for a special facility would call out at the top of his voice (it was always a man) and in a strange desperate sort of haste which was of no use at all unless you knew the dance already. As everybody did, having learned them all by the time they were ten or twelve years old." What is the point of this man calling out the steps if everyone knows them? One (Frazerian) answer is that this role is a relic. Once upon a time, the dance was new and there needed to be someone calling out the steps. That role is still preserved after it has no practical function. Although I have called this an answer, it rejects the question: there is no point at present. At the moment I prefer another answer instead, though how to explain why? The dance is an imitation of liberal England. Having an instructor makes the dance appear available to newcomers/outsiders - listen to the instructions and they too can do this dance - but it is actually not.

"Half-baked" is an insult used in academic contexts to refer to work which is not properly done. When the metaphor is used by philosophers in the analytic tradition, it usually refers to insufficient clarification of a position or insufficient attention to objections. In different contributions, in different databases, I have defended half-baking. (After all, can one ever get from half-baking to full-baking? "Are you appealing to ought-implies-can?" That's not the reply I most expected.) But maybe the emphasis on full-baking is the best approach. Anyway, for the sake of approaching completeness, let me raise two further concerns about demanding fully-baked work. The first concern is that it leads to conservativism, or a kind of conservativism - nothing to do with voting preferences, I assume. Given the demand, some topics are not touched, because it is just easier to work on topics where considerable clarificatory work has already been done. One can then borrow from those earlier clarifications. (I used to think "If your main interest is not philosophy, you should only get involved with analytic philosophy if your research is at grade A and you are looking to move to A+. The journey from C to A is not of interest here. This kind of philosophy is for very developed countries of the research world, metaphorically speaking.") The second concern is less obvious. Even if you are open to full-baking on some topics (the ones I am concerned with are chiefly ones which are less treated), there is a problem. No matter how much you try, no matter how many precautions you take, errors get in and ones you would expect yourself to avoid. It is like some kind of magic, to further allude to the Azande! Perhaps the psychiatrist will ask, "Are you paranoid?" But surely the problem has been noticed before by others under less suspicion of paranoia.

This paper contrasts how fashionable French intellectuals of the twentieth century are rejected by British analytic philosophers and British social anthropologists. I propose that the main way (or ways) in which French intellectuals are rejected in a given academic community in the English speaking-world is determined by the main research method of that community: British analytic philosophers reject French intellectuals on the grounds that their claims are obscure: if one tries to analyse them, one does not produce an acceptable analysis; British social anthropologists reject French intellectuals for ignoring fieldwork, for making claims contradictory to fieldwork findings, and for achieving no more than ordinary people.

This paper contrasts how fashionable French intellectuals of the twentieth century are rejected by British analytic philosophers and British social anthropologists. I propose that the main way (or ways) in which French intellectuals are rejected in a given academic community in the English speaking-world is determined by the main research method of that community: British analytic philosophers reject French intellectuals on the grounds that their claims are obscure: if one tries to analyse them, one does not produce an acceptable analysis; British social anthropologists reject French intellectuals for ignoring fieldwork, for making claims contradictory to fieldwork findings, and for achieving no more than ordinary people.

Professor Nigel Rapport and Professor Raymond Firth both engage in worldview description, but Rapport presents a diversity of worldviews in a village whereas Firth does not. Is that because Firth ignored diversity, or because of the liberal character of Rapport’s village, which enables diversity? Both fieldworkers are interested in conceptions to do with sex, but I propose that if Rapport had Firth’s precise focus, he would have engaged in group worldview description. (Warning: this paper may not be of wider interest!)

The interestingly named American economic journalist Robert J Samuelson died on December 13th of this year. He said that economists were a small group who write for each other, whereas he wrote accessibly on economic issues for the wider public. He sounds to me like a polite version of student protestors against economics. Here I propose that the rational actor model tradition of economics, which still dominates, blocks rational protest within universities themselves: it is to the advantage of academically gifted young men and women, because of the demands of imagination that it makes upon you, if you want to conceive such a model. If you protest against the curriculum, then there is a question of what are you doing in a university? A university is surely for the academically gifted!

In his 1938 book The Mysterious Mr Bull, the disgraceful Wyndham Lewis writes, "Nothing can be got in England by direct action. Some day things may change, but at present there is no exception to that rule. In politics, art, business, law, or whatever it may be, if you do not recognize that you are engaging in a game - and a game with very elaborate rules, to break one of which is tantamount to moral misdemeanour, involving social disgrace - you can make no headway. Such an eminent politician as Mr. Churchill has discovered that to his cost. And he has committed the further sin - a mortal one in England - of making a disgusting exhibition of "brains." " (1938: 92) Wyndham Lewis sounds like just a straight-talking guy giving a frank description of English culture or a part of it (at least as it struck him). But if what he says is true and he managed to publish this book from which the quotation comes (or get published), should we not regard him as a player in an elaborate game, at least metaphorically? The moment you take him as speaking truly you should lose confidence in him as a speaker of truth! (I have put this in "Liar Paradox" as the closest category.)

I draw attention to four differences between Carl Schmitt and Wyndham Lewis: (A) Schmitt characterizes certain war-mongering liberals as naive and Lewis characterizes them as wicked; (B) Schmit is not aware of the thought of running an authoritarian regime with a liberal surface, but Lewis is; (C) Schmitt, unlike Lewis, allocates no role to divinity in protecting the ways of a nation; and (D) Lewis is prepared to resign himself to the end of a nation’s way of life but Schmitt is not. (There is no fascism category, so I have placed this in the closest one to that.)

“ Is there any point in reading British philosophy? What is Professor Crispin Wright arguing for in his paper ‘(Anti-)Sceptics Simple and Subtle: G.E. Moore and John McDowell?’ ” Here I offer a light substitute, which is only dreamily like the original perhaps: as if someone skimmed the paper, understood little, and made a guess. I argue that Moore’s “Here is a hand” argument against the skeptic fails, because the skeptic will not accept the premise and Moore said nothing about our having a default position which is different from the skeptic’s starting point. And McDowell’s disjunctivism about sensory experience does not in itself undermine skepticism, because we cannot internally distinguish hallucination from normal perception, or it does not tell how we can, even if one should not posit sense data as the object of direct perception in both. McDowell too must appeal to a default position and then it is unclear what his disjunctivism adds to opposition to skepticism.

I have written quite a bit on British structural-functionalist anthropology, an old-fashioned kind of anthropology which interests various (mainly American) analytic philosophers today, preoccupied with defining social structures. I take my main contribution to be in my 2023 journal publication "Are individuals a problem for British structural-functionalist anthropology?" There I consider the problem of what to make of an individual who does not appear to fit in their role, given the official role structure of an institution. The traditional approach of British structural-functionalist anthropology is to assume that individuals fit into their official roles; one does not get involved with what does not fit! Contrary to this approach, I introduce the option of specifying an alternative social structure of roles to the official social structure. (That is my innovation!) In the alternative structure (hopefully), the individual is not out of place: given this alternative understanding of the roles, they play their role well. Recently I started rereading Alice Munro's famous story Voices and I think this story is encouraging for my departure from tradition (though it is a dangerous departure - see "My dangerous social anthropology (and Lacanian psychiatry)"). Munro writes, "The square dancing had complicated patterns or steps, which a person known for a special facility would call out at the top of his voice (it was always a man) and in a strange desperate sort of haste which was of no use at all unless you knew the dance already. As everybody did, having learned them all by the time they were ten or twelve years old." He is the instructor, given the official roles, but he is no good for this purpose: you need to know the steps already, which everyone but the anthropologist does. I think the anthropologist should wake up now. If he is no good at this, maybe his role is not best described as dance instructor (or whatever the term is in the small town Canadian setting)? But if you ask about this, you might just be told: of course he is the instructor, he calls out the steps!

John Rawls's proposed principles of social justice apply only to the basic structure of society, not to institutions or other entities beyond it. But what is the basic structure of society? In the abstract to "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," Professor Miriam Ronzoni writes, "I argue that two understandings of the notion of basic structure seem to be present in the literature, either in implicit or in explicit terms. (1) According to the first, the basic structure is to be equated with a given set of institutions: if they endorse the right principles of justice, the basic structure of society is just; (2) According to the second, a society has a just basic structure if and only if its institutional web manages to realize the relevant principles of justice as well it can. In (2), the institutional structure is not a given: different social circumstances call for different institutional solutions in order to achieve a just basic structure overall." (2007: 68) The second concept seems unclear from this quotation, but I interpret Ronzoni as making this contrast. The first concept defines the basic structure of society in terms of a list of institutions, regardless of the society (e.g. the government, schools...); the second allows for one society to have a different basic structure to another. Now let's suppose you start listing institutions which are part of the basic structure of a society: the government, schools, hospitals, and law courts. Someone asks you, why these? Then you give a criterion for inclusion (or criteria - must I say this?). But won't the criterion allow for some variation from society to society? For example, you might give the criterion (in need of vagueness reduction) "The major social institutions," or, alternatively, "The legally coercive institutions." (These are proposals from G.A. Cohen, more or less.) Both of these will allow for societal variation, e.g. schools are counted as part of the basic structure in society A but not in society B, where everyone is home schooled. If there is a difference between Ronzoni and opponents, her presentation of the contrast is overdrawn: they have a universal list and I don't.

In his "A Critical Examination of Mainland China’s Scholarship in the History of Philosophy," Jinze Liu objecting to Gongqing Wu says that psychological egoism and moral realism are consistent. Psychological egoism is, um... er... um... er..., the view that all of our actions are motivated by our individual self-interest; or maybe the view that any individual's actions are motivated by what they believe to be their self-interest. Moral realism is the view that, um... er.... um... er...., (i) some moral discourse consists of sentences expressing propositions and (ii) some moral propositions are true and (iii) this is because they correctly represent reality as featuring moral properties that are there whether we believe in them or not. For example the sentence "The Holocaust was bad" expresses the proposition that the Holocaust was bad and this proposition is true because the Holocaust had the property of being morally bad, whether we believe it had this property or not. I cannot see any logical inconsistency between psychological egoisim, understood in either of the ways specified, and moral realism. But one of the arguments against moral realism is that the best explanation for disagreements over which moral propositions are true is that there are no moral properties. Now if you accept psychological egoism, you are going to think that the parties to the disagreement just assert the propositions that are, or seem to them, to be in their self-interest. Even if psychological egoism is logically consistent with moral realism, a psychological egoist might well find it difficult to resist arguments such as this against moral realism.Once you adopt this perspective, there is a question of why you would believe that there nevertheless are moral properties. Why do you need to posit them?

John Rawls is famous (in some circles) for two methods he proposes concerning how to decide between proposed principles of social justice, namely the original position and reflective equilibrium. I shall focus on the former method. The basic structure restriction, let us say at this stage, is that proposed principles of social justice are only being recommended for institutions that are part of the basic structure of a society. A question I have is whether the restriction is supposed to be agreed upon before using Rawls's proposed method or after. Two reasons for saying after. First, there are people who will not agree to the restriction beforehand, including one of the two main opponents Rawls has in mind, namely the utilitarian (as understood in social justice debates). The utilitarian recommends that all institutions realize their principle. How are you going to get the utilitarian to care about the result from using the original position method? Perhaps say, "Just work with the restriction provisionally and the outcome of the original position method will reveal a problem with your unrestricted recommendation as well." (I think the extent to which the utilitarian differs from the Rawlsian is insufficiently appreciated.) Second, it is conceivable that we can enter principles into the original position which are recommended for all institutions and individuals in that model will reject the recommendation in favour of principles restricted to the basic structure, providing an argument for the restriction suitably understood. (You will have to say that these selected principles of social justice are only being recommended for the basic structure, rather than saying that this "only" is true of all proposed principles. By the way, Rawls's writings on the basic structure are very difficult to decipher, I find.)

A philosopher (or political theorist or economist) proposes a principle of social justice (or set of them). They say that the principle applies to the basic structure of a society. What is that? They present a list of institutions which together form this structure: the government, schools, law courts, hospitals, and more. For each institution, we can ask a specialist what they think of implementing this principle. They will tell us things like "Our research indicates that this is how a hospital can realize it" or "Our research entails that it cannot be realized in a hospital." Regarding the latter example reaction, we are to reject proposed principles of social justice which cannot be implemented by the basic structure of a society. But what if the social justice philosopher does not give a list of institutions which are part of this structure? Instead they say that they are recommending their principle for a variety of societies BUT what counts as the basic structure in one society and in another may be different. That is Professor Miriam Ronzoni's position, as I understand her, in her paper "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice." The important objection I wish to make is that with her relativization of what counts as the basic structure to a society, we have insufficient information about which institutions principles of social justice are being proposed for, preventing us from empirically evaluating the principles: answering can they be realized for the societies they are being proposed for or not? To avoid this problem, I suspect Ronzoni is going to need multiple lists of institutions, three say, each list capturing the basic structure of a type of society; then you ask whether the principles can be realized for the institutions in list 1, list 2, and list 3.

In "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," Miriam Ronzoni claims that there is ambiguity in the term "the basic structure of society." There are two concepts associated with this term. I am not convinced that what she has in mind are concepts at all. (I prefer the term "the basic structure of a society.") These are three different concepts, I suppose! (A) The basic structure of a society is the set of institutions in a society to which Rawls's principles of justice apply. (B) The basic structure of a society is the set of institutions in a society to which principles of social justice apply. (C) The basic structure of a society is the set of institutions in a society to which requirements of social justice apply. (This is neutral on whether we can specify these requirements in principles.) A utilitarian would reject a distinction between the basic structure of a society, to which their utilitarian principle applies, and non-basic institutions, to which their principle does not apply. All institutions should be "governed" by utilitarianism! So I presume a utilitarian would favour associating the use of the term "the basic structure of society" in the Rawls literature with the concept specified by (A). If all three definitions are legitimate, then there is ambiguity - maybe I will have to withdraw my earlier proposal for avoiding ambiguity, so sorry.

In "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," Miriam Ronzoni introduces four numbered propositions (or sentences, if they are not propositions). The propositions are meant to approximately specify the structure of Rawls's theory of justice. (I am going to leave aside what "approximately specifying the structure" means.) This is (2): "The subject of social justice is the basic structure of society." This is (3): "The basic structure of society should be regulated by the principles of justice delivered by the theory according to (1)." Ronzoni asserts that (3) is ambiguous and distinguishes two interpretations of it. But given her title, the reader is anticipating that she will say that every numbered sentence in which the term "the basic structure" features is ambiguous, because there are two different concepts associated with this term. Why does she focus on (3) rather than (2)? No idea. As I understand her (I have not read the paper 100 times), she is basically saying that there are two concepts of the basic structure and you get different results in political philosophy depending on which one you work with. As I understand her further, the first concept is defined by a list of institutions. To specify the basic structure of a given society when using this concept, you repeat the list, e.g. the government, schools, law courts. The second concept is defined "relativistically." It is possible (at least logically possible) that one set of institutions form the basic structure in one society and another set form it in another society.

Some cut and paste. In "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," Miriam Ronzoni introduces four numbered propositions (or sentences, if they are not propositions). This is (3): "The basic structure of society should be regulated by the principles of justice delivered by the theory according to (1)." Ronzoni asserts that this is ambiguous and distinguishes two interpretations of it, which she refers to as X and Y. Interpretation X is composed of two propositions: 3i(X) First, we determine what the basic structure is and which institutions are part of it; 3ii(X) Then, we should design these institutions (and these institutions only) in a way that respects Rawls’s two principles of justice. Interpretation Y is also composed of two propositions: 3i(Y) First, we should understand which conditions have to be in place for us to be able to say that in a given society S such principles are satisfied; 3ii(Y) then, we have to ask which institutional structure needs to be set up in order to allow the principles of justice to be realised in the sense specified by 3i(Y), in the specific context in which we are operating. Cut and paste over. Why not say this: the concept of the basic structure of society is, more fully, the concept of the set of institutions in a society to which Rawls's principles apply? Then you can say that there is no ambiguity in (3), but there are different conceptions of what the set of institutions which form the basic structure are in a given society and also different conceptions of how you work out the list of such institutions for a given society. Regarding the latter, one method is to just have a list that applies to all societies and then repeat list for the society in question, whereas the method I take Ronzoni to recommend involves the possibility of different correct lists for different societies. ("I am going to the bank" is a renowned example of an ambiguous sentence, because there are two concepts of a bank, namely river bank and money bank. For each concept, there are probably different conceptions.)

In "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," Miriam Ronzoni introduces four numbered propositions (or sentences, if they are not propositions). This is (3): "The basic structure of society should be regulated by the principles of justice delivered by the theory according to (1)." Ronzoni asserts that this is ambiguous and distinguishes two interpretations of it, which she refers to as X and Y. Interpretation X is composed of two propositions: 3i(X) First, we determine what the basic structure is and which institutions are part of it; 3ii(X) Then, we should design these institutions (and these institutions only) in a way that respects Rawls’s two principles of justice. Interpretation Y is also composed of two propositions: 3i(Y) First, we should understand which conditions have to be in place for us to be able to say that in a given society S such principles are satisfied; 3ii(Y) then, we have to ask which institutional structure needs to be set up in order to allow the principles of justice to be realised in the sense specified by 3i(Y), in the specific context in which we are operating. One question I have is: why does interpretation Y count as an interpretation of (3) because it does not use the term "the basic structure of society" which figures in (3)? (Isn't an interpretation here something which specifies the meanings of terms involved?) Maybe 3ii(Y) just needs slight amendment to cope with this; I don't know. If you are a very nice very analytic philosopher, your reaction might well be this: Ronzoni is insufficiently clear here; at best it is rational for her to gamble on her point surviving a process of clarification, i.e. once we clarify it, nothing much changes in the big picture. Not sure. It seems to me that the contrast she wishes to portray is between defining the basic structure of a society (which Rawls's principles apply to; they are not for beyond) in terms of a fixed list of institutions regardless of which society we are in (the list presumably includes the government, law courts, schools); or, alternatively and relativistically, there is a way in which a given society can satisfy Rawls's principles and we call the set of institutions required by this way the basic structure of the society (another society might require another set).

Some counterexamples in philosophy do not require a tradition of making clever counterexamples in order to occur to someone, nor are they unlikely in the absence of such a tradition. For example, a Canadian political philosopher asserts, "Human beings are social beings." You say, "What about hermits? They are human beings too." That is your counterexample to their claim. You could be a total novice in philosophy and raise this question. It is just a common-sense reaction. But other counterexamples are different. Although it is possible for someone to just come up with one of these, it is more likely that they have become acquainted with some philosophical texts (or spoken discourses) in which people develop clever counterexamples and they have decided that it is a good idea to do this as well. Now in Professor Timothy WIlliamsons's introductory book Philosophical Method, he presents this counterexample: "Imagine someone seeing what looks just like smoke in the distance. He thinks: "There's a fire over there." He's right. There is a fire over there. But there's a catch. The fire hasn't yet started to smoke. It's just been lit to cook some meat. What he sees is really a cloud of flies, which have gathered because they smell the meat. Does he know there's a fire over there?" (2020: 45) This might become known as Williamson's fire example amongst some political philosophers, but Williamson says that it comes from Dharmottara (740-800), who worked in Kashmir. Counterexamples became important in 20th century analytic philosophy, a lot of energy went into producing them and a number were produced (e.g. by Wittgenstein and Derek Parfit), but it is reasonable to suspect that centuries before they were big in the world of Dharmottara. He learnt about some clever counterexamples and decided to make his own one. What to do with this suspicion? One response is: from now on I am doing advanced mathematical philosophy - anything else carries too high a risk of repeating the past. I am not overridingly disposed to this reaction myself - I don't think every clever counterexample I can think up already exists - but I do wonder whether Williamson's book consciously or unconsciously aims at producing this reaction!

It is tempting for us to imagine John Searle as a lone figure at literary theory conferences. There he is sitting seriously in the audience, amongst a set of fashionable clowns, as he probably thinks of them himself, listening to a clown give a lecture or seminar. Then comes question time. "Barbara, you have question." "Yes..." "Giyathri, you have a question." "Yes..." "Joseph Hillis, you have a question." "Yes..." Finally, having ignored Searle's persistently raised hand, they turn to him. "And you, I can't quite remember your name, but do you have a question?" After the conference, at the dinner, they are all eating together and talking in their jargon and then there is Searle at a table alone. Sure this could and probably would happen to you, but I doubt it happened to John Searle! One reason for doubt is available to us as analytic philosophers. We care about arguments. But the deconstruction trend Searle opposed implies the question: when does an argument begin and when does it end, are there unambiguous signifiers regarding these matters? Once they convince you that there are not, you are going to become stressed. "How am I going to function now as an analytic philosopher? I need another system of text interpretation. This is not for me," you will probably think. But literary theorists and literary critics also depend on making arguments and being able to detect their beginnings and end points. I suspect from the beginning there were prominent literary critics and theorists of the opinion that deconstruction is not a good idea or not a good idea for the average critic - for this reason or some other - and they were very happy that Searle appeared amongst them. (There is no John Searle category to put this in, but there is Searle's biological naturalism.)

The British anthropologist Dame Marilyn Strathern has a well-known argument about artefacts. According to this argument, anthropologists aim to describe the worldviews of the people studied; any artefacts they encounter are treated as exemplifying a worldview; thus (!) in the final fieldwork report, there is no need to refer to any artefacts because one just presents the propositions of the worldview (Strathern assumes these are highly general propositions). One can refer to an artefact as a helpful illustration, but it is not necessary to. I anticipate a challenge to the significance of Strathern's argument on these lines: okay, maybe it is not necessary for the fieldworker to refer to a certain artefact or set of artefacts or type of artefact, but some artefacts are so interesting that the fieldworker will not be able to resist referring to them. To illustrate (!): I have been working at the heritage house of a 19th century Victorian writer for over a year and in the dining room there is some fancy cutlery. Yesterday I noticed that beyond the dining table, there were some giant forks in the same style. In "On the origins of large forks," I wondered whether the giant forks were produced because the fork-producing business planned to sell forks to the colonies, to Britons on a civilizing mission, and the business was not sure about the proportions of some of the natives there. Let's suppose this speculation is true. Am I just going to say that people in Victorian times had different beliefs about the human to us BUT not refer to the giant forks? Of course I will refer to them: they are just too interesting not to, too much fun not to. But Strathern could reply that there are kinds of fieldworkers who will not refer to the giant forks, for example a snobbish kind who thinks, "This is the most interesting thing I have seen, therefore I will not refer to it," and turns their head away, literally or metaphorically. But should such a person be a fieldworker at all? (A political philosopher asked me, "Isn't anthropology just taking down notes about some people? Anyone can do it.")

I recall reading John Searle (John Rogers Searle) saying this: he has been to conferences with mainly literary theorists and it is like the circus; and he has been to conferences with neuroscientists and these people, in contrast, are serious about research. I cannot find the article now. But I still want to reflect on the remarks, which probably fit many people's casual impressions! Is such reflection permissible? I hope so. (A) Searle still keeps going to conferences with literary theorists. There is something about the clowns, etc., and their work which draws him back. (B) Searle himself is aware of the distinction between literary theorists, who work mainly on the philosophical foundations of literary interpretation, and specialist literary critics. It is not difficult to find literary critics who fit the stereotype of serious researchers. I work at a literary heritage house and I read skilled academic craftspeople in literary criticism. (C) But when they all become serious according to our stereotype, you get a problem I think. "Empty vessels make the loudest noise": they don't usually talk about their specialism to people who are not fellow specialists in that area, apart from a few smatterings. Then a clown gets in! They know some of what is going on in your specialism and some of what is going on in your friend's specialism and they do stuff with this information which is relevant to both. How long can neuroscientists avoid clowns? (D) You can try to meet the stereotype of a serious researcher yourself (or I can), but some people will still regard you as a clown. It doesn't much matter what you do really. In 2009, a serious paper of mine was published (my first publication), namely "Nagel on conceivability," and some philosophers came up to me and said words to the effect, "I see you have written on Nagel," nodded and then went their way, but not everyone took me as a non-clown I think!

Sainsbury's is a supermarket chain in the UK. At present, it uses the advertising slogan "Taste the difference." Presumably, the slogan is meant to convey that if you taste food from other supermarkets and then taste Sainsbury's food, you will find the food from Sainsbury's to be better. But there is another interpretation of the slogan, loosely inspired by Derrida (more specifically, the Derrida on auditory experience presented by Simon Glendinning in "Preface: Arguing with Derrida," Ratio vol. 13, 2000). According to this interpretation, the slogan is an instruction that cannot be followed. One can taste some food and one can taste some other food and one can reflect on the difference, but one cannot actually taste the difference itself: a difference between two meals is not itself a piece of food, available for tasting. But why would Sainsbury's use an instruction that cannot be followed as an advertising slogan. Maybe to convey, "Setting up our business was difficult. One of the problems we had to encounter was people who seemed to us to be friends and also experts, but they gave us instructions that we could not actually follow. We are letting you know about this problem." This will seem a very far-fetched interpretation in isolation, but what if one encounters a number of business slogans from a variety of businesses which are more sensibly interpreted as conveying problems faced? In light of these other slogans, the strange interpretation is more plausible. See my "Can philosophy cure madness? Three approaches" and then "Delivering what you needed "yesterday": extract from a faux French philosophical novel." (The psychiatrist wants me to return to normal perception, but maybe it is better that their perceptions are expanded instead! Anyway, it is 4-0 to me at the moment. You need to find some business slogans like these yourself.)

Jean-Marc retired to his chamber, planning to slumber. But somnolence did not immediately come. Instead he recollected conversations from the day and went over their contents. Was this the persistence of habit, undermining his plan? It is difficult to say. Jean-Marc derived a pleasure at the day's close from going through what had been said to him , responding not just to the openly asserted but also forming beliefs about all that was suggested. He found it difficult to forgo this pleasure. (Moving out of faux novel mode, my title is a variation on the slogan of the Amazon company's vans: "Delivering what you need tomorrow. Today." It can be interpreted in at least two ways: as meaning we helpfully deliver what you need a day early; but also (roughly) as we force things on you before you are ready. Or someone did this to Amazon! See: "Can philosophy cure madness? Three approaches.")