Terence Rajivan Edward

An old paradox surely. Is it in the closet somewhere? Consider a business, a mundane business, a hammer-making business let us say. Enormous amounts of mental energy and intelligence go into developing a successful business of this kind. The business must learn lots about the hammer, the materials that one uses to make the hammer, the hammer customer and their mysterious preferences, and more. It's crazy when you think about it: all that effort and intelligence into a dull subject like gloves, sorry I mean sponges, sorry I mean hammers. These people must be hammer mad! Here is the paradox. (1) There are people in the hammer business who devote a lot of energy and intelligence into hammers. (2) A person would only devote this much energy and intelligence into hammers if they were mad. (2, sorry I mean 3) The people in this business are not mad. Which proposition, if any, must go? "Reject (1): it is for the money." Q. Why do you need the money? You can get enough money to live happily without setting up such a business, or any business. (A. "There people have to set up their own business or the alternative is work for Jeremy Corbyn.") Also a person of this intelligence can work on satisfying topics like poetry instead of hammers. (Austrian author: "Not sure about that.") "Reject (1): an individual can get into the academic system or the literary system or the medical system, etc., but a family cannot long-term, and the individuals in this business care about their family." Does anyone care about their family that much? "What they did will not be remembered." Some people learn to. "Reject (1): the business gets going by specialization, which reduces the labour involved." Perhaps. (I want to put this in the category capitalism, but there is only anarcho-capitalism.)

A common man philosopher looking in at Western literary theory might regard it as a set of cults, in which reason plays little role. There are changes in literary theory, such as regarding which cult is dominant (the Derrida cult and then the Lacan cult) but these changes cannot be explained rationally. However, observing Western literary theory after some of John Searle's interventions, I think he has brought about a change in a way that involves receptivity to (epistemic) reason. That is how I see things anyway. ("What is the point of the previous sentence?") Searle and Derrida disagree over how to make sense of borderline cases. For example, between the categories of fiction and non-fiction is a grey area - semi-autobiographical work, etc. Derrida thinks that if the categories are legitimate, then either something is a work of fiction or it is not. Perhaps we don't know whether it is or not, but it either is or it isn't. Searle, influenced by Wittgenstein and Austin and more recent developments and maybe just his body, rejects this either-or position. I think there are a number of literary theorist who have read Searle and agree with his point, or are sympathetic to it, and they have decided to form a cult around Wittgenstein-lover Stanley Cavell. Searle argues that literary critics should not fear psychological attributions (e.g. the author intends such and such...) and that Derrida's argument for avoiding these is based on a logical positivist assumption: we need a mechanical way of verifying such attributions. Searle also interestingly argues less well in short-lived fashionable journal Glyph and then performs extremely well for the neutral in the famous The New York Review of Books; Searle has surely found a problem: Derrida cannot go out there with his style and his disciple is insufficient there against Searle. Literary theorists, or people on the fringes of it, moved by one or both of these turn to the Lacan-Žižek-and-friends system. I suspect the relationship of Western literary theory to reason is different from the relationship of analytic philosophy to reason, but it seems to me that developments in it occur in virtue of receptivity to reasons. (This material is important for evaluating Marilyn Strathern's 1987 paper on feminism and social anthropology, otherwise - Charisma Closet - why would I risk it? "Are you paranoid?" I am pro-Derrida, like Strathern.)

I anticipate one of my readers having this inquiry: "Since your letter to Hatty Preston, I have started watching her Instagram videos, but I have difficulty understanding the jokes. Can you explain?" I shall explain one from her video entitled Due Date on Instagram. She says that she only cares that the baby she is soon to have is ginger - presumably she means has ginger hair. In the UK, there is a prejudice against people with ginger hair. So her joke is paradoxical. We can specify the paradox as these propositions: "(1) Nobody wants a child with ginger hair. (2) I want a child with ginger hair. (3) I am not nobody." (Which proposition must go?) That is the main joke which I comprehend in her video. The reader replies, "Thanks for explaining that to me. I have never actually met a white man before, but I do know all the colloquial language in James Joyce's Ulysses"? I have the impression that various northern comedians (northern within UK) make videos on the Internet and more or less get the audiences they get anyway. Its global potential is totally underused. Maybe they don't understand the difficulties of being a northern comedian properly; maybe global audiences do not want them to change though. (There is no comedy section on here, so I have put it in Hegel:comedy.)

This essay actually focuses on a kind of madness, where one perceives a lot of “hidden” messages (or interprets the world so that there are a lot of these messages). Perhaps there are other kinds of madness. Anyway, I describe my experiences of this kind and I make three philosophical proposals for combatting madness: a Cartesian one, a Wittgensteinian one, and my own one, which I call “particularist.” My own one seems the riskiest of the three. (You need to download this one if you want to read it - this is just an abstract!)

Rawlsians and Schmittians share this common ground: they believe in the normative priority of political values over other values, when the two come into conflict. Political values ought to be prioritized. But in actual conflict of values, is the political always prioritized? Or does the political sometimes lose? From your political values, you can infer DO X, but other values lead you to infer DO NOT DO X. Probably it does sometimes lose, on the Schmittian understanding of political values: as requiring opposition to an enemy (to unreasonable citizens, for Rawlsians). In 1937, E. E. Evans-Pritchard wrote, "A political boundary now intervenes between the Azande of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and the forests of the Belgian Congo wherein grows the poison creeper. However, it is rather for medical than for political reasons that the British authorities frown upon those who cross the border, because sleeping sickness having been entirely, or almost entirely eliminated in the Sudan, every effort is made to avoid reinfection by compelling Azande to live away from streams and by closing the border. It is therefore expressly forbidden for any Zande to cross into the Belgian Congo, and a man found to have broken this rule suffers a long period of detention." (1937: 278) Probably it is politically better from a Schmittian-Rawlsian-British perspective for the Azande to die - they keep crossing anyway to get their oracle poison, so they reject British law. But still the Azande are not allowed to cross the border, for medical reasons.

One of E.E. Evans-Pritchard's most quoted passages on Azande witchcraft says, "To our minds it appears evident that if a man is proven a witch the whole clan are ipso facto witches, since the Zande clan is a group of persons related biologically to one another through the male line. Azande see the sense of this argument but they do not accept its conclusions, and it would involve the whole notion of witchcraft in contradiction were they to do so. In practice they regard only close paternal kinsman of a known witch as witches. It is only in theory that they extend the imputation to all a witch's clansman." It is difficult for us not to imagine a Euthypro-like Azande telling Evans-Pritchard that he (!) must be going. Anyway, various responses have been given to Evans-Pritchard's passage, including proposing a Freudian censor preventing consistency, that the Azande use non-classical logic, and that a Sorites paradox is involved (Roy Sorensen). The famous anthropologist Victor Turner does not directly criticize Evans-Pritchard, but he strongly suggests a criticism. Evans-Pritchard writes simply of the Azande in the quoted passage. Turner, doing research amongst the Ndembu, distinguishes different characters. There is Muchona the Hornet and the jealous man who giggles when Muchona offers his interpretations, the worldly Kasonda: "Between these men lay the gap that has at all times divided the true philosopher from the politician." (1967: 132) Of Muchona, Turner soon tells us, "He would take a symbol, say the mudyi tree which is the pivotal symbol of the girl's puberty ritual, and give me a whole spectrum of meanings for it." It means mother's milk; it means learning; etc. Turner suggests that once you find the philosopher in the Azande tribe, he (or she) will offer a better solution to the problem Evans-Pritchard is posing. But I doubt Evans-Pritchard can be beaten like this!

Future readers: what you are reading is almost a sequel. Yesterday on PhilPapers, in my "On Professor Timothy Williamson against the claim that philosophy can only be history of philosophy," I responded to this quotation from Timothy Williamson: "If it is to act as a proper reality check on philosophers' theorizing, rather than just fuel to their prejudices, there will need to be a culture of using history written by serious historians, rather than whatever happens to suit one." (2020: 102) I expressed the view that the kind of history of most interest to analytic philosophers will have to be written by analytic philosophers. Probably some people are interested in elaboration of this opinion - some argument for it especially. In earlier papers, I have noticed that, regarding some of our leading philosophers, their minds wake up intensely when writing certain material and go to sleep when writing other material: there they are not thinking carefully and make elementary errors. I anticipate someone's saying that a philosopher has a limited amount of mental energy and if we make them wake up there, then their level in the areas we really value will decline. (Even I might be told, "You are a threat to the quality of philosophy.") From my experience of social anthropology, the anthropologist's mind also wakes up and sleeps but the pattern is different to what would be good for philosophy. 'We really want you to wake up there: go into detail and be precise!" To illustrate, here is a quotation from early on in Raymond Firth's We, The Tikopia: "It is hard for anyone who has not actually lived on the island to realize its isolation from the rest of the world. It is so small that one is rarely out of sight or sound of the sea. The native concept of space bears a distinct relation to this. They find it almost impossible to conceive of any really large land mass... I was once asked seriously by a group of them, "Friend, is there any land where the sound of the sea is not heard?" ' Almost impossible? Wake up Professor Firth: a lot more detail here please. But Firth's functionalist framework does not invite further attention here. Now if we work with the assumption that each discipline is doing its best, then we are going to be reluctant to change when the anthropologist (or the historian, by risky analogy) wakes up and sleeps. Thus you arrive at the conclusion that the history the analytic philosopher is after has to be done by an analytic philosopher: the earlier history is useful promptings. Now I want to register some objections and respond to one. (O1) "We are more talented than analytic philosophers, but we don't have the excellent management system these posh philosophers have - can you tell us what to do actually?" I am ignoring this objection. (O2) There is a kind of worker in another discipline who will think, "Now that I know what you are after, I can actually provide it." Problem (i): you will probably just get a response from me at best, because the point at which other analytic philosophers will say, "This is properly done," is high. Problem (ii): your complicated realistic work might just get replaced by a hypothetical or local example which raises the same issue with less distractions. Consider Thomas Nagel's 9 year old Davidson or John Searle's preference for Hilary Putnam's Polish logician example regarding how we count objects in The Construction of Social Reality: 3 objects (common sense) or 7 (Polish logician). Problem (iii): will this kind of worker come across as serious to Professor Timothy Williamson? (Letter to Kristeva island: only males today?)

In his introductory book Philosophical Method, Timothy Williamson writes, "The idea that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy is self-defeating, for it is itself a controversial philosophical option, which we are under no obligation to accept." (2020: 91) I interpret Williamson as making an argument which begins with two premises and infers a conclusion. (It has a clear beginning and an end to me, Julia Kristeva!) (1) If it is a philosophical position that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy, then it is not true that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy. (2) It is a philosophical position that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy. Therefore by modus ponens (3) It is not true that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy. END OF ARGUMENT. Against (1), could not someone say this: there is a bit of philosophy within the history of philosophy and the philosophical position described is part of that bit? "In taking up this philosophical position, one does NOT exit the history of philosophy and so one can consistently maintain that philosophy can only be the history of philosophy." ARGUMENT DISCUSSION OVER. Also regarding history and philosophy, Williamson writes, "If it is to act as a proper reality check on philosophers' theorizing, rather than just fuel to their prejudices, there will need to be a culture of using history written by serious historians, rather than whatever happens to suit one." (2020: 102) My view is that the kind of history of most interest to analytic philosophers will have to be written by analytic philosophers. (Also Williamson presents this cloud of flies, smoke, fire example from Dharmottara: there is a fire but it is yet to smoke; what looks like smoke is a cloud of flies (2020: 45). Gettier: "Interesting, but how about this: Jones does not own a Ford but Brown is in Barcelona." Owns a what? Gettier is either not entering this competition of making the most enduring example or he plays counter-intuitively.)

Yes, how could anything originate from its opposite? It cannot. And absurdity of absurdities: how can a great philosopher secure his reputation from the support of ones who know nothing of great philosophy? In his "Justice Beyond Equality," a Rawlsian (misleadingly) writes of a book, "It is certainly the most powerful critique of Rawlsian political philosophy ever written." But what about the most powerful critiques that are not written, that cannot be written even, or since we live in an age of universal inscription, are written but not published? Should we not look for the truly powerful critiques by their effects - by what they do to the behaviour; after all, what is a professional political philosopher but an animal, an animal with instincts like any other?! Rawlsians who encounter G.A. Cohen's book have not given up their Rawlsianism. Instead a literature has flowered defending Rawls against Cohen, a spectacle of progress on a single topic. What feeble power this is. Let's assume that all political philosophers are genuinely interested in a good set of basic rules for society, at the ridiculous level of their conscious minds. Rawls addresses this interest - this is undeniable. But we seekers of powerful critiques, we searchers, we must consider why so-and-so is not a Rawlsian, and even why so-and-so is one. Undoubtedly the bulk of Rawlsians reason as follows: "I value liberty, and socialism does not give enough of this - its track record is terrible; I value greater wealth equality, or a welfare state, and minimal state capitalism does not realize this value; Rawls is the most worked-out position in-between; one has to support the most worked-out position and raise it to dominance in order for our research community to have public impact." But what of his original position thought experiment? Who is moved by it? Only the strangest of creatures would conclude, "I favour Rawls's principles because they would be chosen in the OP." Yes, a scientific economist! Now let us turn to people who are not Rawlsian. Why, for example, is Carl Knight not a Rawlsian, or Martha Nussbaum? Something powerful has moved them away from support for Rawls, something we can only dimly perceive at best, we lovers of light. These people don't ever say, "Hey guys, this Rawls guy, he seems pretty good, guys, but there's a problem guys, a big problem, guys, which is..." Or anything neatened up which corresponds to their thinking! You would have to "torture" them somewhat to get their thinking, probably. They don't approach professional communication as we free spirits do; it is something they intend to win at, or not lose. The conversation function barely exists.

In my "Davidson, Evans-Pritchard, and how I found Rose Macaulay's Told by an Idiot," I wrote that "John Rawls's curiosity levels seem low to me for a great philosopher, if he doesn't have enough problems in that league already." However, I have conceived of a challenging reply which I think it is best to share. ("You" are unlikely to think of it, I think, because you are not analytic, like me, or because...) When does a philosopher display curiosity? Here is a preliminary analysis. A philosopher displays curiosity if and only if: (i) they have a main project; (ii) a piece of information, call it "IIII," is not of use for this main project. (iii) they present information III in their philosophical work. And here is the challenging reply, based on the analysis: "The philosophers who appear to display a lot of curiosity just do not have a main project, so they do not meet condition (i). They appear to be curious because, lacking a main project, a lot of information (maybe everything) cannot be excluded by them as irrelevant."

Thomas Nagel contributed to The Cambridge Companion to John Rawls with a chapter entitled "Rawls and Liberalism." He opens his chapter with these sentences: ' “Liberalism” means different things to different people. The term is currently used in Europe by the left to castigate the right for blind faith in the value of an unfettered market economy and insufficient attention to the importance of state action in realizing the values of equality and social justice.' Here are some responses to Nagel. (A) Given Nagel's opening sentence, we are expecting some specifications of meanings. But in the second sentence he writes of how the term is currently used. Is that current use a meaning specification? The reader is left to guess. (B) Taken as a meaning specification, it does not look adequate. Nagel refers to blind faith, but why? There is a left-wing European who castigates the right-wing for valuing an unfettered market economy and insufficient attention to the importance of state action in realizing the values of equality and social justice, but they think that the right-wing valuation is based on argument and would not characterize the right-wing valuation as based on faith, as intuitively understood: faith as belief not based on argument. (I wonder if Nagel has an essay on blind faith somewhere!) (C) Also is "liberalism" a descriptive term or an evaluative term or a mixture? It sounds like an insult, as Nagel presents it in its European use but we normally think it is a label for a position or family of them, which does not in itself imply an evaluation. (D) Nagel's third sentence neatly contrasts the European use of "liberalism," directed at the right wing, with the American use, directed at the left wing: 'In the United States, on the other hand, the term is used by the right to castigate the left for unrealistic attachment to the values of social and economic equality and the too ready use of government power to pursue those ends at the cost of individual freedom and initiative.' There is a problem for his neat contrast of European left bashing right with the term "liberalism" and American right bashing left with the term, however: the right-wing European intellectual who (by any normal standard) rejects liberalism and gives voice to "common" concerns. Liberalism does not take into account the nature of human beings, which makes multiculturalism not doable, says this right wing fellow; and has no way of restricting its military interventions because of its doctrine of universal rights. (I knew a Polish administrator in law and she made the objection to multiculturalism; then I learnt that she is married to an Asian!) (E) In my "Davidson, Evans-Pritchard, and how I found Rose Macaulay's Told by an Idiot," I suggested that Rawls has a number of problems in the league of great philosophers. One such problem (which I cannot prove) is: although he has stellar figures who write secondary literature for him, they mostly don't do their work properly for him! They are probably planning to do better than him in the long run, despite how far behind they seem to the common man, sorry, I mean the common contemporary political philosopher/theorist.

I read your paper today with interest, Jinze Liu. (Doctor, professor?) RESPONSE 1: I enjoyed your claim that psychological egoism and moral realism are compatible. RESPONSE 2: there is a divide in analytic philosophy between those who think the standards of analytic philosophy are simply good academic standards (I recall reading Professor M.G.F. Martin expressing this view) and those who think that "analytic philosophy, with its standards, is a very peculiar enterprise." It seems to me that you lean towards the former view. RESPONSE 3: This response will take a while and involves two sub-responses. You identify the following as a structure you recurrently encounter in mainland Chinese philosophy papers: “[...] (Author presents their own theory). As XXX (cited scholar) states, ‘...’[...] (Author continues their argument).” (A) There is someone in analytic philosophy who will probably say, "I don't understand the structure you are trying to present," and this is not a knavish strategic move by them to frustrate you, etc. The following is a structure that the someone will probably understand: "(i) Author presents conclusion of their argument. (ii) Author cites scholar XXX as agreeing with their conclusion. (iii) Author presents their argument for their conclusion." With the structure you identify, it is obscure how the material before (presentation of theory) and the material after (continuation of argument) relate to one another. Is the theory the conclusion of the argument or is it something else? (It could be the conclusion, it could be a premise...?) (B) Also the structure you identify is intended to be problematic, but it does not look transparently problematic, given our dim understanding of it. What is the problem if an author presents their theory, quotes, and then continues their argument for it well enough? RESPONSE 4: I have quite a bit of experience with Chinese legal studies postgraduates here, mostly female, all having some interest in philosophy (how could they not, speaking with me?!), and some of them are quite good at argument. They fall somewhere in between offering strong and weak arguments, by my intuitive assessment. (I have also taught "lots" of Chinese undergraduates!) RESPONSE 5: I suspect if I engaged with the mainland Chinese philosophical community more, my position there would be identical to what it is in Western analytic philosophy! RESPONSE 6: I recommend reading Helen Beebee next on your journey in analytic philosophy. But I wonder if there is even much difference between her writing and mine from a Chinese point of view. ("A BIT!")

Which principles should a society implement, or the basic structure of a society to be more precise? John Rawls's famous original position thought experiment involves rational actors choosing principles for a society whilst being behind a veil of ignorance: they do not know features of themselves which would lead them to prefer principles tailored to their own specific circumstances, such as their talents and income. (An example of such tailoring is that you must have £5000 in the bank to run for public office, preferred by someone with £5001.) Rawls's thought experiment, as he develops it, has some peculiar features. Here I wish to focus on one: the principles are chosen for a self-sufficient society. We assume it is not in interaction with other societies. A problem, which I think moves Professor Miriam Ronzoni greatly, is that in our world there are influential transnational businesses: the company is founded in one country but develops bases in other countries and exerts an influence in your country. She worries that the original position is too unrealistic given our actual circumstances. I anticipate that someone will try to put in transnational businesses into a one society model. "How? They are transnational!" Try to work that out yourself. "I never will." Well then: you are going to have serious problems with how far you can rightly progress. ("So you think you want liberal political philosophy?" to adapt local comedy, from Creatures Comedy Club.) Here is my guess at the solution. (Can your great leader, Professor Christian List, not better enlighten you?) The principles chosen are meant to apply to the basic structure, which we can here take to be a set of institutions (the government, schools, your Mom, etc.). One introduces an institution which is within the society but outside the basic structure and so the chosen principles of justice do not apply to it but it is gaining influence in areas covered by the basic structure, e.g. it provides some education but it is not a school. Then you consider what to do about this institution as it gains influence. You say that a transnational actor is sufficiently similar to this institution for the one society model to still be useful when contemplating our actual circumstances.

PROFESSOR TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON (ADAPTED): Dualism says that the human mind is something entirely distinct from the human body. But then there is a problem of explaining how the mind can causally interact with the body - move an arm for example - because they are so very different: they are radically different. (See 2020: 67) C.D. BROAD (OR ANY COMMON MAN+): The problem of interaction is not best described as arising because the mind and the body are so very different. It does not arise like this: "Human body and dog body - quite different; human body and table - even more different; human body and human mind (for the dualist) extremely different; at some point as the differences become greater a problem of interaction arises." (Find reference to Broad later!) ME: The dualist conceives of the human mind as non-material and therefore not located in space. How can something not located in space affect something located in space? ELIZABETH GASKELL: Something can be located in space but not material. What about a point, a mere point? FRENCHMAN?: I shall make a device by which we can measure how different something is from the human body. And the device will probably establish that at a certain degree of difference a problem of interaction arises: how can a thing that different causally interact with the body. KRISTEVA (HYPOTHETICAL): Yes, I am interested in this device.

I learnt a set of hypotheses about why females are under-represented in analytic philosophy from an article by Helen Beebee and Anne-Marie McCallion. (The list was not first presented by them.) Here is an addition which covers under-representation for various groups, not just females. Let's assume that everyone has the same amount of mental energy. But by the time you are an undergraduate, if you are from an under-represented group you have learnt to devote significant mental energy to more things which are not useful for doing contemporary philosophy, such as considering what does the common man think of me? (Even if you are autistic this may be true.) To illustrate: if you doubt that anyone thinks the mind is the brain, like David Lewis (see my faux Analysis paper today), the common man of today will regard you as a fool: of course some people think this! But maybe it is of no use blocking this doubt for becoming a notable philosopher. To ensure that you devote sufficient mental energy in philosophically valuable directions, you probably need to be a white posh male, protected from certain pressures, pressures which inevitably lead to you devoting precious resources of mental energy in other directions. ("You probably even need someone to wipe your arse," the common man says, or some instances of this type say. Not everyone is nice.)

David K. Lewis asserts that a credible theory of mind must cope with both mad pain and Martian pain. Mad pain is when a human person experiences pain and is in the characteristic human physical state of being in pain (C-fibers firing) but does not react as we do, e.g. avoiding painful stimuli, rather the person's mind turns to mathematics. (Lewis thinks we would find such a person to be mad. Why? Because we would cause them pain and notice that they do not react in the normal way and we would assume that they are naturally disposed to this reaction but are insanely suppressing it in favour of doing mathematics?) Martian pain is when a Martian has another physical system to ours and C-fibers do not fire when the Martian is in pain (they don't have these) but they react to what causes them pain in the same way as we normally do, avoiding painful stimuli. Lewis writes, "A simple identity theory straightforwardly solves the problem of mad pain. It goes just as straightforwardly wrong about Martian pain. A simple behaviourism or functionalism goes the other way: right about the Martian, wrong about the madman. The theories that fail our twofold test so decisively are altogether too simple. (Perhaps they are too simple ever to have had adherents.)" What is Lewis's social intuition like? Of course simple identity theories according to which the mind is just the brain (or the brain and the nervous system) have had adherents! (Did his friends not tell him this? "We allow a person to be super-awake in some areas and go to sleep in others"? Well, change the areas or he will be in for terrible bullying in school!)

This question comes from a friend of mine, an economist. (And also the wife of a Caltech philosopher. We were introduced through a school friend of mine, in the 20th century.) By e-mail, I asserted that the average graduate at a certain elite university must be 20 years ahead of me, prompting the question of why think that. Maybe the thought is inaccurate in some ways. But here is some evidence from experience. (A) I was taught that when you are writing a philosophy paper, you should take one point and cover it thoroughly (clarify it, consider a number of the best objections, etc.). You should not, to use a familiar metaphor, do half-baked work. In my "Cross-disciplinary communication and in defence of half-baked academic work," I drew attention to how presenting a number of half-baked points is a rational strategy when communicating to another discipline as well (or even another subdiscipline within philosophy). It is difficult to tell what they will value and if you do a number of these, the chances increase of one of your points being valued. I was taught to fully-bake in 2003, if not before, while this alternative strategy occurred to me in 2025. After it occurred to me, I remembered H.L.A. Hart's 1973 response to Rawls's liberty principle and P.M.S. Hacker's 1996 response to Davidson on conceptual schemes. They write in line with my half-baking strategy: so many points, most of which are forgotten by almost all readers! Do they already know about the strategy? Maybe not. Maybe someone does and it is already part of the tradition these Oxford philosophers are educated in to incorporate or be open to the half-baked approach, as a good idea in some contexts. The education they get equips them to overcome problems we would struggle to solve: solutions go against the education we provide. ("What are you doing that for? That can't work." No reply for decades.) (B) I shall give one other example. In 1997, Martha C. Nussbaum had published what she describes as an ill-mannered polemic against Nietzsche, in an academic journal. If you tell just about any philosophy or social science postgraduate here that you are writing such a thing, they will think, "How are you going to get published?" ("Are you insane?" even.) The academic journals they know do not publish ill-mannered polemics, to their knowledge! Maybe she figured out a solution to achieve the aim of ill-mannered polemic in academic journal largely by herself and against her background education, much like how I figured out the half-baking solution, but I suspect her education provides her with solutions. "You Martha C. Nussbaum are made for polemics and here is how you can succeed."

I met my care coordinator yesterday - I must meet him roughly once every 2 weeks. He told me that he is a nurse and that because he likes his job (and vocation - he did not use this word), he has stuck to it for 15 years. I think he wished to convey that he does not change from vocation to vocation and also that he does not move jobs much as a nurse. He told me that there are nurses who move to new jobs every year (e.g. to new hospitals). He thinks they do not like the job of being a nurse much. I told him that I had another explanation for the moves, but I would just trust his one in light of his experience. (He also told me he lived with nurses as a student.) However, I cannot seem to let go of my own explanation even if it only works in 1 out of 10 cases of nurses who move jobs every year. There is a nurse who gets employment. She is regarded as reliable and talented by those in charge, but she is also experienced as a threat. If you let this person stay, she will take over. She is given signals to leave after a year. She stays on until she is soon driven out. She moves to another nursing job. When she receives the signals in that job, she just leaves. She moves to a third nursing job and again receives the signals. She likes her vocation but she has decided that it is sensible to move. I cannot let go of this other explanation of why some nurses move from job to job, because I think the problem arises in various fields, and why would nursing be any different? (Because nurses are not clever?) "I am not letting you be in charge, but if you stay, that is what will surely happen." (Of course it requires some filling in of detail: who are the authorities and what is involved in being in charge exactly? Please cite if you fill them in.)

(A) Here is a simplified version of Martha C. Nussbaum's 1997 argument against Nietzsche's being a political thinker: if Nietzsche does not contribute to all seven of these categories of political thought, then he is not a political thinker; Nietzsche does not contribute to all seven of these categories of political thought; therefore (by modus ponens) Nietzsche is not a political thinker. I will not list the seven categories at this point, but I will remind readers that according to Nussbaum, Nietzsche only makes a contribution worthy of the name to one of these categories: moral psychology. Now here is a problem. Are these categories equally easy to contribute to? That is unlikely. So which should you start with, given the aim of being a political thinker. Here is a sensible strategy: start with one which is most difficult, because otherwise you might end up doing six (i.e. contributing to six categories) and then failing on the seventh, and then you fail in your aim (given the requirement to do all seven). Then move to the second most difficult. But here is a problem with this strategy: suppose you start with the most difficult but you find that once you start, you cannot seem to leave this category (or even communicate easily to those who do not specialize on it). That is a speculative explanation for why Nietzsche only contributed to one of Nussbaum's categories. It is speculative, but I think moral psychology is a weak point in the political thinkers she admires and there is a risk of even someone who agrees with all seven failing as Nietzsche did. Also, analogous failures arise in other areas, I believe. (Someone plans to lead the school of social sciences and they start by learning economics with all its maths, aiming to master the other disciplines later. But I have been told by an economics postgraduate that after a while doing economics you can only talk to economists.) Nussbaum herself does not quite make the modus ponens argument above. She plans to apply her categories to various persons, not just Nietzsche, but (here is the "not quite"!) she allows that we might have to excuse no contributions to one category given the circumstances of a person. Once you make this concession, I suspect one category will be perpetually avoided. "I am going to look sufficiently impressive if I do 6 out of 7 and I want to avoid getting stuck by doing that difficult category." That is the concern I wanted to flag about Nussbaum's actual argument, with its concession. (These are the categories she proposes from her abstract by the way: understanding of material need; procedural justification; liberty and its worth; racial, ethnic and religious difference; gender and family; justice between nations; and moral psychology.) (B) Nussbaum tells us that she once took Nietzsche seriously as a political thinker. I find this hard to imagine. Some biography please. (C) I comically imagine both myself and Nussbaum as servants in the political room of the house of philosophical aristocrat Nietzsche. I am of course the higher ranking servant. The house is visited by near incomprehensible characters to us, who value him as a political thinker. She will probably get fired, because you really have to hate Nietzsche to be a servant here. Also her decision-making is very strange to me, though it gets results, e.g. a response by Dr. Donovan Miyasaki.

(A) So, computer (or software, e.g. ChatGPT), you have read Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life by Martha C. Nussbaum. Along with just about everyone who has both read it and progressed in the academic system (to postgraduate level and beyond), you have noticed the shortage of references to secondary literature on the authors or topics she focuses on. What happens now? You can ignore the absence, but is that perverse? You can draw attention to the absence somehow. But how are you going to do that? You will be entering a competition, a sporting league even. We all notice the absence and the competition is about who can deal with it best. You are often presented as a threat to someone like me, someone who is often busy writing essays, but I don't know how you are going to beat my response in "The rationality of Martha Nussbaum's University." Maybe dig up all the relevant but missing references! Maybe just write a poem. These are my best advice proposals, unfortunately. (B) I suspect my response is regarded as that of a clever adolescent. But I did not notice the shortage of references to secondary literature when I read the book at age 19. To notice it is natural, I think, once you progress in the academic system. I am worried that our age-psychology intuitions are not very reliable: Nietzsche is a perpetual adolescent, Poe is, etc. (C) Dr. Joseph Sery says that Nussbaum's book recommendations are academic, elitist, and unsuitable for the casual reader. But not long after her Poetic Justice book, in 1997, she does endorse Nietzsche to some extent and so she has someone on her recommended reading list for the casual reader.

In his much-cited paper "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme," Donald Davidson argues for the claim that a necessary condition for something's being a language is that it is translatable into our language. He says it is a claim one has to argue for. I wonder whether Davidson took some inspiration from E. Evans-Pritchard. In his essay on Lucian Lévy-Bruhl, in his book on primitive religions, the ever-popular Evans-Pritchard criticizes Lévy-Bruhl for drawing an excessive contrast between primitive and civilized mentality. He asserts that the very fact that we can communicate in and translate primitive languages (or so-called primitive languages) establishes that this contrast is excessive. This will sound very Davidsonian to (all?) philosophers. It suggests a perspective on Davidson as NOT best described as the philosopher objecting to anthropologists, rather the philosopher siding with some anthropologists versus others: Evans-Pritchard implies a similar response to Benjamin Lee Whorf as the one he gives to Lévy-Bruhl. (I did not find the Evans-Pritchard by "magic," by the way, neo-Kantians, or I don't count it as magic. Even Rose Macaulay's Told by an Idiot was not found by magic - "A bit of magic?" I found Macaulay by going through the 20th century and beyond English novel section of the University of Manchester's library - the largest university library here. I examined the older books which have not been taken away to the store and I took especial interest in those where the author has only book. One Rose Macaulay has survived. Why is that? What is in this book? John Rawls's curiosity levels seem low to me for a great philosopher, if he doesn't have enough problems in that league already.)

In 2022 I had a paper published entitled "Traditional literary interpretation versus subversive interpretation" (a classic paper? or written at the height of insanity? non-exclusive or? - if you cut this parenthetical remark out, you cut out so much learning! By the way autistics, not all my brackets are parenthetical remarks.) I treated John Searle as a defender of traditional literary interpretation: a way of interpreting which relies on intuition when doing literary interpretation. But I think this is not quite right. As I pointed out yesterday in "Searle and Derrida order a hamburger," Searle leads to an important perspective on American literature's most famous problem case - Searle is something new in this respect. Since his lifetime, venerated figures of American literature have been complaining about Edgar Allan Poe, e.g. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, and T.S. Eliot. Searlean literary theory suggests that it is pointless to keep spelling out what Poe is doing wrong to his many admirers and to the ghost of Poe himself. To understand what you want and deliver it requires more than just a decent specification, according to Searle: it requires a background of shared capacities, which cannot be made articulate (put into words, if you don't like "articulate"). If you try to specify without this shared background, you will never succeed in adequately doing so. But there is an important challenge to this important perspective on American literature's most important problem case. The challenge is this: Poe is appreciated by so many important writers, artists, and critics across the world, most famously in France, Russia, and Japan, that the problem is probably with the American opponents of Poe: the focus should not be on how the admirers lack the appropriate background. If you have a choice between preserving Poe and preserving Henry James, it is Henry James who has to go - do the venerated not understand this?! The American critic's reaction to Poe - "I just don't accept this type" - has to be redirected at civil and responsible Henry James! Well, that's the challenging alternative perspective. Over to you, Martha C. Nussbaum or whoever: "What to make of Poe?" is surely a compulsory question on the examination for being a serious American literary critic thinker. (To Sebastian Gardner: if philosophy of mind and philosophy of science have a common question regarding Freud, it is a question that does not call for your stylish style, like "What to make of him?")

Martha C. Nussbaum's "Is Nietzsche a political thinker?" puzzles me in various ways. Nevertheless, I have some sympathy with her overall conclusion. Her paper is so puzzling to me that I wonder whether I should just treat Nussbaum as a person from a very different philosophical culture. (REEXAMINE?) She writes that Nietzsche in effect claims that his good news can rescue Europe from the crisis produced by Enlightenment liberalism. She plans to reexamine this claim by asking, "What has Nietzsche to offer us, as we try to do political thought in the 1990s?" She does not tell us who examined the claim first, what their conclusion was, and especially why this question she advances is a good way of examining his 19th century claim? (ILL-MANNERED POLEMIC) Nussbaum says that her text is polemical - (how does she even get this published in an academic journal? she must be an expert!) - and writes: "My justification for behaving in an ill-mannered way is that Nietzsche himself greatly favoured such polemics against venerated idols who, tested with a tuning fork, gave a hollow sound." This is her argument it seems. "(Premise 1) If Nietzsche greatly favoured such polemics against venerated idols who, tested with a tuning fork, gave a hollow sound and Nietzsche himself is a venerated idol of this kind, then my ill-mannered polemic against him is justified. (Premise 2) Nietzsche greatly favoured such polemics against venerated idols who, tested with a tuning fork, gave a hollow sound and Nietzsche himself is a venerated idol of this kind. Therefore (Conclusion) My ill-mannered polemic against him is justified." (ARISTOCRACY OBJECTION) Nussbaum says that Nietzsche favours aristocratic political systems. So a contemporary Nietzschean will probably say, "Nietzsche, being an aristocrat of philosophy, gets to engage in ill-mannered polemics, but you - Martha Nussbaum, a mere servant - cannot." This contemporary Nietzchean targets premise 1. (Who is this argument of Nussbaum even addressed to?) (VENERATION OBJECTION) Nietzsche is of course very famous but when you read him, it is difficult to get past the intuitive characterization of him as a memorable perpetual adolescent, despite the ages when he wrote. Perhaps what NIetzsche has in mind by veneration is excluded by this impression. For veneration, you have to be a solemn figure who produces a reaction of "I deeply respect him as an adult character." This objection rejects premise 2. (BY DEFINITION) Nussbaum finds an interesting inconsistency in Nietzsche. He seems to think that the will to power of a dominant group is realized by the political regime of a society and that is all you can say: more precisely you cannot engage in justifying a political regime. But he also rails against socialist and egalitarian societies, as if they are not justified. Nussbaum says that their institutions realize the dominant will to power by definition. Is this by definition, or by an empirical premise of Nietzsche? It seems the latter. (SPECIALIZATION) Nussbaum expects contributions in seven seemingly different areas from any serious political thinker. Does she not accept contemporary specialization?

John Searle continues his debate with Jacques Derrida in his 1994 article "Literary Theory and its Discontents." (I don't have access to it at present; I am writing from my memory but I believe my memory is good - the supposedly overactive hippocampus has not taken this away! "You don't understand this part properly." Put me in a giant maze and I will become mouse and you can foolishly test my spatial memory.) Searle considers the loosely (or exactly) Derridean view that every interpretation is a misinterpretation, that communication is always miscommunication. He disagrees. He memorably asks us to imagine someone's entering a restaurant and ordering a hamburger. The waiter, or crew member, brings an ancient petrified hamburger. The someone says, "I don't want an ancient petrified hamburger. I want a fresh one." The waiter brings a fresh hamburger but encased in concrete. The someone says, "I don't want a hamburger encased in concrete. I want a fresh hamburger not encased." How long will this delivery and further specification go on for? Searle thinks that it is impossible for the someone to fully specify what they want. But he does not think that we should infer that successful communication is impossible, for example where A specifies what they want and B understands. He thinks success here requires a background of shared cultural understanding, but this background cannot be fully articulated. Searle's contribution is important not just for philosophy but also for American literary criticism: probably do not keep telling Edgar Allan Poe and fans, this is the literary hamburger we want! Unless you are McDowell, Searle implies that the desired transformation cannot occur by specification/rational argument. But Derrida's perspective is important too. From a bourgeois economic perspective, if you believe that every interpretation is a misinterpretation then you will miss fewer opportunities. Instead of being fanatically focused on the goal of getting your desired hamburger, which requires successful communication (I assume), you will take the petrified hamburger to a museum and make a lot of money. Hey, a misinterpretation resulted in the delivery of this hamburger but that's life: it's best to make use of it. Also Derrida's approach makes you listen more carefully. You hear things you would not otherwise hear, or if you surely hear them, then you also remember them. Otherwise what you remember is largely determined by the aim or subaim of successful communication (stupidly pursued?), or the broader aim. (An anthropology lecturer - was it Raminder Kaur? - once told me that she did not find Derrida useful for fieldwork. This seems useful.)

Dr. Mihaela Georgieva opens her abstract thus: "This article focuses on the perceived inadequacy of political liberalism to account for the normative priority of political values over non-political ones in cases of conflict between the two. I address this challenge by developing a revised account of congruence built on a public and shared rationale for endorsing the deliberative priority of political values." The first sentence seems acceptable, but here is how I would write (if I believed the obvious hey-wait-a-minute assumption): "Political values have normative priority over non-political ones when there is a conflict between the two: one ought to prioritize political values. This article focuses on the objection to political liberalism that it cannot account for this priority." Georgieva's second sentence does not fit well with Georgieva's first sentence, in my eyes. Here is a proposal for a better second sentence: "I address this challenge by developing a public and shared rationale for endorsing the deliberative priority of political values." Why do you need "I address this challenge by developing A built on B," when B (as intended) seems enough to address the challenge? (As indicated by my replacement for the first sentence, I would call it an objection, not a challenge.) Here is a second proposal for a better second sentence: "I address this objection by developing a public and shared rationale for the normative priority of political values." What is "endorsing" adding? More importantly (I assume), why write of normative priority in the first sentence and deliberative priority in the second? It just raises the question of whether deliberative priority is the same as normative priority. (Some people might not deliberate in case of conflicting values between political and non-political values, because they just don't notice the conflict - they are always focused on one or the other.) What Georgieva surely (!) wants to say is "The objection says that political liberalism cannot account for the normative priority of political values and I am going to provide an explanation of how it can do." For centuries, it has been asserted that you cannot be a competent language user without having logical competence, for example in The Spectator June 8th 1711. (You can find it online and in a literary house I work at.) When I read many Rawlsians and accept this assertion, I wonder: is there some incentive NOT to write so logically? If I accept the assertion, must I accept a conspiracy theory and look paranoid?! Georgieva probably spent ages on her article, yet all these problems are there (and even larger ones in the premise-by-premise reconstruction). To category-error Julia Kristeva: I may have sounded disrespectful previously (sorry, but could even a person of your temperament resist?), but do you know what is going on?

In her 1999 book Property, Substance, and Effect, the distinguished British social anthropologist Dame Marilyn Strathern repeatedly draws attention to this quality of anthropological fieldwork: the fieldworker has a blank page on which they can write down anything of interest. It is clear that she wants to argue that this method of research is better than others when faced with societies that do not fit one's preconceptions, e.g. one assumed one would be writing about theme A, but the big issue in the society one is doing fieldwork in is theme B! She famously values anthropological research over the more structured inquiries pursued by auditors: how well does the institution score on this specific measure and on that specific measure? Now Strathern has been in the business, as they say, for a long time. Back in 1987, she published her much-cited paper, "An Awkward Relationship: the Case of Feminism and Anthropology." There, amongst other things, she presents a hypothetical dialogue between a literary anthropologist and a radical feminist. (A predecessor to the dialogue we now loudly hear between trans-rights activist and radical feminist, I think!) The literary anthropologist aims to better incorporate the perspective of those studied by producing a collaborative text. The radical feminist argues that the literary anthropologist overlooks the problem of different interests: the interests of those studied are very different from the interests of the anthropologist researcher themselves, preventing the production of a text which serves both sets of interests. Strathern does not elaborate on this point, but here is an elaboration. (See my 'On Max Gluckman's everyday life objection to Frazer and my "fieldwork" experience,' for how I arrived at it.) The anthropologist's interests are dictated by which themes are much discussed in the community of professional anthropologists. They are going to write their fieldwork monograph so that it focuses on one or more of these themes. The inconsistency (or at least tension) between 1987 and 1999 should be apparent (the transition from above is slight): 1999 Strathern boasts that the anthropologist fieldworker's blank notepad (or sheet of paper within the notepad) allows them to be more receptive to societies which don't fit preconceptions, i.e. different themes dominate there; but her 1987 paper, when elaborated, says that when writing up anthropologists focus on the themes they have learnt about before going to the field - that is where their interest in gaining recognition lies.

I was reading Bram Vaassen's "On Absence and Abnormality" in the journal Analysis. He writes, "Absences pose a dilemma for theories of causation. Allowing them to be causes seems to make theories too permissive (Lewis 2000). Banning them from being causes seems to make theories too restrictive (Schaffer 2000, 2004)." Commonsense intuitions are being used to assess what is too permissive and too restrictive (the sort captured by the unacknowledged H.L.A. Hart and Tony Honoré). According to our common sense, one can cause the flowers to die by not watering them - by that omission, that absence. But "someone" will argue that banning them from being causes - or not counting them as causes, to be less dramatic - is just a good move even if it violates common sense: it is a good move because of the metaphysics of causation. The "someone" doesn't think causation is human-norm-dependent. (They do not accept the following: you caused the flowers to die because you ought to have watered them and you did not. The ought specifies a human norm.) Even if you achieve an analysis of when there is causation which fits with commonsense intuitions perfectly - after immense effort no doubt - you would just run into this massive metaphysical problem. How does Vaassen motivate the broad project he is contributing to - of providing a commonsense analysis of causation - given the metaphysical problem? Why should we even struggle with his diagrams? Probably he has to defend idealism about causation. Probably a European idealist has got into Analysis in the name of commonsense! But then is it even Analysis? What an abnormality, I assume!

Max Gluckman makes this objection to Frazer: he refers to highly striking material, such as striking rituals, but he omits dull and mundane everyday life, for example he presents a striking marriage ritual but there is no report in Frazer of dull day-to-day married life and its routines. From December to April, I spent a lot of time with stand up comedians in Manchester, attending open mic events and later interacting daily on WhatsApp. It was not dull. Perhaps the comedians themselves intuited that my appetite for amusement is higher than the average person's. But even if it were dull, the material I communicate to anthropologist is very much based on what the dominant themes of anthropology are and this means that a lot of day-to-day interaction becomes marginalized and things which hardly anyone seems to notice become magnified. In particular, what are the criteria for being a community member and did you become a community member before performing? Gluckman's objection seems correct but there is no reason to assume that the themes that preoccupy a community of anthropologists and the day-to-day experience of a fieldworker will converge. And once we abandon the assumption, we have to open ourselves up to the rational omission of large chunks of mundane interaction, when communicating research.

In 1999, I attended a very large conference to celebrate 50 years of University of Manchester social anthropology. I remember that an old anthropologist from the LSE (I believe - maybe not old by the standards of anthropologists, who live so long) stood up and said, "If we do this, then we will have finally become cultural studies," conveying by tone that this was an awful thing to become. The British functionalist anthropology she had been trained in was being replaced by the invader - cultural studies: in her eyes, a mix of fashionable French philosophy and reference points and half-baked social science - the anthropologist is especially concerned about superficial fieldwork, of course. Later as an undergraduate, I told an anthropologist that I had read another anthropologist's book and she said, "Is it cultural studies?" I don't see it as that. It is interested in whether the concept of community is acceptable in anthropology research and so can be interpreted as in dialogue with older functionalist anthropology, which relies on the concept of a bounded society. Society was conceived as like an organism, each of whose parts has a function, the parts forming a coherent whole. I propose that the success of British functionalist anthropology and the length of time in which it dominated (1920s-1960s) and the respect it gained mean that all British anthropologists I met as an undergraduate are engaging with it. (What does Dr. Cultural Studies, David Mills, write about these days?) This particular anthropologist, Sarah Green, started off as a Popperian and Popperian anthropologists were very much influenced by British functionalism. When I said in a seminar that it is obvious that society is not a coherent system, she loudly said, "Why?"

My philosophico-poetical system has at its foundation Paul Valéry’s claim, “To write regular verses… destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and unexpected thoughts.” Now someone might say, "Regular verses is a very old-fashioned kind of poetry. A lot of poetry today and for decades is free verse." But my system can lead to an appreciation of some contemporary poetic projects and even undermine this dichotomy of old-fashioned rhyme versus contemporary poetry. First let me share some experience. I read some poetry at Manchester Central Library in late November 2024. It was free verse. After me, a woman performed some one vowel poetry: poetry in which you only use one vowel (and as many consonants as you like; you can use the vowel again and again by the way) - this poet used "u"! Hers significantly eclipsed my effort, I felt. I told a young comedian and poet about what happened and he said, "This one vowel poetry is a mere technical achievement," or words to that effect. My starting point for defining a technical achievement is that persons A and B have the same basic idea (or emotion) but A shows high craftsmanship skill in achieving the goal of expressing or communicating or realizing the idea - then you say that this is a technical achievement by A. I am not sure how to apply this starting point to one vowel poetry, but this is how I see it (I didn't tell the comedian-poet at the time): one vowel poetry is like rhyme. The rhyming poet writes a line and then they may want to say one thing in the next line, but that doesn't rhyme, so other thoughts occur to them in search of a rhyme. Similarly, the univocalic poet is forced by the demand to use only one vowel in strange directions. And these new directions of thought (or emotion) are of value.