Terence Rajivan Edward

How to understand the philosophical text (including the oral text, the lecture, etc.)? A significant amount of interpretation happens in the following way, I believe: the philosopher specifies a topic, one encounters a premise and then intuits what the philosopher is trying to argue about the topic. Given the premise, it is likely that the philosopher is making the argument one has intuited (or guessed). But the rhyming philosophical poet resists this technique of interpretation. The philosophical poet specifies the topic in the title, say, and introduces a premise into their poem. What will they do with their premise?If they were not a rhyming poet, you could make a reliable guess. But what if they are unable to achieve a rhyme by making an argument that confirms your guess? The demand to rhyme leads them to do something else with their premise, something that is hard for readers to anticipate. Strange arguments are much more likely in rhyming philosophical poetry. The rhyming philosophical poet is not a predictable character. (I am glad I made this point from my system first. See also my "Derrida, Marilyn Strathern, and honorary degrees," "How to read Davidson: an introduction for professionals" and "Presentation of my philosophico-poetical system, McDowellian!")

My philosophico-poetical system is a highly unlikely creation, given the tradition of philosophy I was educated in and the country I live in and a lot else probably. I would like to say that it is totally my own, but actually it 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.” From this, I infer an objection to Locke on language, an objection to specialization, an explanation of how the poet can escape his (or her etc.) time, and an argument for the translatability of true poetry. (I have added an appendix which specifies some extensions to my system: on the unpredictability of the philosophical poet, against Freudian interpretation of rhyming poetry, and on the value of univocalic poetry.)

Philosophy as a discipline is famous for its system-builders: they start from a few principles (or just one) and infer various conclusions on various topics, the principles and the conclusions forming a system. "Is this done in recent times: the twentieth century and onwards?" Yes. Now sometimes system-builders build their systems slowly over years. But why does this not happen: someone thinks, "I can see which principles you are relying on and I am going to build a bit of 'your system' first and it will be mine"? To illustrate, Donald Davidson used the premise that beliefs come as a whole (you cannot have one belief without having several rationally related ones) to argue for a variety of conclusions. He was just left to do this for decades, as far as I can see. Nobody thought to make a holist argument before Davidson gets there (except on delusions?). "Why should they?" One incentive is this: if Davidson is getting recognition for such arguments, you can get some recognition from producing one as well. Similarly, Rawls developed his system over years. Why did something like the following not happen: he presents his cake cutting maximin model at a seminar and someone else develops a similar model regarding something else? One reaction is to say, "This never happens." Another reaction is to say, "This would not happen to a Davidson or a Rawls, but it might well happen to someone else if they tried system-building." There is a kind of character - Kathleen Stock?! so sorry to join in the criticism - whom I suspect would be subservient if they met one of these distinguished figures, but are aggressive and highly defensive when they encounter certain others. (I don't think they are motivated by the desire to get recognition for research like yours. No idea what motivates them: a bizarre drive to maintain hierarchy?)

The economist Kenneth Arrow's "Some Ordinalist-Utilitarian Notes on Rawls's Theory of Justice by John Rawls" was published in May 1973 in The Journal of Philosophy. At one point, Arrow discusses the priority Rawls gives to his liberty principle. He tells us that the definitive argument for this priority is given late in Rawls's book. He quotes the argument, describes it as clearly empirical, and says, "the reader can decide for himself how much weight it will bear." Now the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart's "Rawls on Liberty and Its Priority" was published in 1973: issue 3 of The University of Chicago Law Review, a Spring issue. It focuses heavily on the liberty principle, claiming it has not received the detailed attention it merits, and explains in some detail why Rawls's prioritization of it is inadequately argued for. What are we to make of this large contrast in approach to Rawls's argument for the priority of liberty? Before checking the dates, I supposed what happened was this: Hart read Arrow and thought, "I am going to go for exactly what you think is not worth going for." Despite the proximity in publication date, I find it a bit difficult to give up on this amusing supposition. Whether the supposition is true or not, Arrow should be careful of what he expects from the reader. Remember that The Journal of Philosophy is not chiefly for the empirically-minded. (Arrow himself complains early on in his article about the elementary errors about the economy made by philosophers, raising a question of consistency when he expects the reader to decide on the empirical matter. By the way, as I understand the world, such a complaint is likely to result in a much more erroneous figure as the philosopher whom economists must interact with.)

Forgive forgive, a terrible day, a day of father figures. As I understand it, Frege's puzzle is this. A=A is uninformative. A=B is informative. But how can we account for this informativeness if we maintain (as Mill did) that the contribution a name makes to the meaning of a sentence is determined solely by what it refers to? GIven that A and B mean the same thing, the information value should be the same as rightly saying, "A=A." Let's take Phosphorus (the morning star) and Hesperus (the evening star) as our example. Astronomers discovered that they are the same, i.e. Phosphorus is Hesperus. (Also it is not a star; it is the planet Venus. Venus, named after the goddess of beauty, was once thought to be a star.) Now imagine a pictorial writing language. The symbol for Phosphorus is a morning scene, with the "star." The symbol for Hesperus is an evening scene (with the "star"). We can maintain what Mill did. (We can be Millian-heirs, as they say.) The contribution of these symbols to the meaning of the identity sentence is determined solely by what they refer to. Now the same proposition can be expressed in different languages (at least for some propositions). For simplicity, the meaning of a sentence is the proposition expressed. But owing to the pictorial symbols used in this writing language, one can extract some information which is not within the proposition expressed. One thinks: the best explanation for these symbols in the sentence is that one and the same body - one and the same object of reference - has two very different appearances, the one conveyed by the morning scene symbol and the one conveyed by the evening scene symbol.

According to Thomas Kuhn, new natural scientists undergo a process of initiation where they learn to perceive the world differently. Does Kuhn’s claim or something analogous apply beyond natural science? I propose that Davidson has written his much-cited response to Kuhn as a test. What will philosophers latch onto, in this busy paper? Is there a training one undergoes where one learns to ignore some material and focus on other material? That is how it seemed to me at the University of Manchester. I propose at University College London the focus is elsewhere.

Donald Davidson argues against the claim that two radically different belief systems both cope with the data of experience. First, he asserts that "coping with the data" is another way of saying being true. Then he argues that we cannot make sense of two radically different belief systems both being true. Here I shall dispute the first part of his response. Let us simplify and say that there are five pieces of data. A belief system counts as coping with the data if there is only one challenging piece of data for it, or else if there are no challenges whatsoever. Why allow for one? Well, the standard we set for coping would be too high otherwise: all belief systems have some recalcitrant data. But then one cannot say that "coping with the data" is another way of saying being true. For all we know, extreme revisions are required to move from 4 out of 5 to 5 out of 5.

There is a distinction in psychiatry between legitimate and illegitimate paranoia. Illegitimate paranoia is unjustified. (You may have good evidence that your phone is hacked and then you are legitimately paranoid.) This definition makes use of the concept of justification. This a murky concept. You can try to clarify it. A well-known alternative approach (maybe not the best but by many lights the most beautiful) is to use Nozick's tracking conditions. These are Nozick's conditions for knowing a proposition: (1) the proposition believed is true; (2) the subject believes the proposition; (3) if the proposition were false, the subject would not believe it; and (4) if the proposition were true, the subject would believe it. The third and fourth conditions specify tracking conditions. Using (3), you can try this: illegitimate paranoia is "robust." Let's grant that the paranoid proposition is true (e.g. your phone has indeed been hacked). But even if the proposition were false, the subject would believe it.

I was in a dormitory in North Manchester General Hospital in October 2023, if dormitory be the right term. I had one bed and a curtain to cover my space. A man also in the dormitory had another bed. I had my light on late in the night. The light shines into his space. He told me to turn it off. I did not. He told me again. I did not. He could not sleep. How is Rawls going to resolve a dispute like this? There is my right to light (in this case artificial light) and the other's right to have sufficient darkness to sleep. We can adapt Rawls's original position thought experiment. There are two options. Right to light has priority or right to sufficient darkness for nighttime slumber has priority. You do not know what your preferences are. How are you going to make a decision between the options. "No, the Rawlsian is sure to find a way to prioritize the right to sufficient darkness to sleep." How? Is he going to assume that a human being prefers to sleep at night? He does not include a natural sleep pattern (!) amongst the primary goods which all individuals are assumed to want. "He can add it in this adapted version." Hart is right that Rawls cannot get results without appealing to a specific temperament. Robert Paul Wolff is right that Rawls has a bias towards the typically middle-aged. "If your light affects enough individuals in the dormitory, your right is overridden." That is utilitarianism! (By the way, there seems to be just too much going on in Rawls's thought experiment. You need to work with a simpler situation, like the hospital one. "We will come up with our own one and evade plagiarism rules and get back to you"? Am I illegitimately paranoid psychiatrists or does it happen? You would have know the field well and what happens between fields as well.)

Here is a question: "When Jacques Derrida was proposed for an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge, a scandal resulted. There were protests, a letter was sent to The Times. He was charged with writing unintelligibly. The anthropologist Marilyn Strathern is based in that university and has received several honorary degrees, such as from Harvard. But sometimes pages and pages of what she writes cannot be made sense of by intelligent and dedicated readers. Why the difference in reception? Is it merely because he is French?" I can think of another explanation, based on my experiences of reading Strathern. When she has something she thinks is very valuable for readers (or a wider readership), she signals it. In After Nature, she puts her facts of English kinship in italics. She effectively tells readers when to wake up! Also she does not make unusual use of her main premises, making it easy to reliably guess her argument. I have not read Property, Substance, and Effect carefully. I could not make much sense of the material I read. But it is clear she wishes to draw a contrast between an anthropologist fieldworker with a blank notebook who can write down all kinds of information (anything interesting), and a more structured inquiry with a set of questions and even specified possible answers. Unless you have autism or are from a very different background, you can work out an unsurprising use for this contrast: to argue that the anthropologist is better equipped to deal with societies which don't fit with one's preconceptions. "What I read about before doing fieldwork is theme B and I expected to pursue that here but the big issue here is theme A." (I guess my value for the psychiatrist is basically not over whether I have had hallucinations!) I presume Derrida's later texts are just not like Strathern's in having these two qualities: at least one is lacking. So even if Strathern has pages which few if any understand and so does Derrida, it is just very different.

I have already responded to the following quotation from Sebastian Gardner's paper "Splitting the Subject: An Overview of Sartre, Lacan and Derrida": 'The orthodox way of "taking" Freud, in analytic philosophy of mind and in philosophy of science, is something like this: we argue over whether or not a concept of selfhood that has its basis in consciousness can be stretched to cover the unconscious as Freud describes it, and we attempt to see how much mentality can survive the loss of the property "potential object of consciousness." ' I have rejected his account of philosophy of science. Here I want to challenge his account of analytic philosophy of mind. Freud is taken in a variety of ways by a variety of analytic philosophers (I think). One philosopher focuses on one theme, another philosopher on another. For example, Stuart Hampshire engages with the view that in light of Freud on the nature of our minds, we should say that we are not free; Donald Davidson considers whether we can defend asserting that there are two mental systems in one person (more broadly, whether the mind is divisible); Ståle Gundersen (2023) considers what sort of mind-brain identity theory Freud is committed to. One might protest that Gundersen wrote after Gardner, but if Gardner is somehow right about his time and discussion of Freud's mind-brain identity theory is outside the orthodoxy of that time, it is such a fragile orthodoxy! Is it even worth describing as such or is it just a pattern of response?

There are two videos I have seen for this song. In the video which I have in mind (described as an official video reworked on Youtube), the Latino singer Gloria Estefan is invited home by a wholesome blonde white man (or boy). She refuses, saying that she wants to go for a walk. She then goes for a walk by herself in a shady part of the city (are you even allowed to do this?) and meets some "cat people." She takes an especial liking to a grey cat boy. He puts his arm around her. He seems dangerous, but she describes herself as feeling safe in her song, when he drives her home at night. The police whistle blows and all the cat people leave. Why does she say that he makes her feel safe? I think I know what is going on. Here is a subversive interpretation of the video which accounts for the strangeness. The white man appears to have left Gloria Estefan to walk alone, but he has actually then dressed up as the grey cat boy and got his friends to dress up as fellow cat people and encountered her in the alley. If the white man is not dangerous, then the grey cat boy and his friends are not dangerous. Gloria Estefan was looking for real danger, not this simulacrum.

A problem which is discussed in economics is why people don't tell lies more. Economic models predict that it is rational for them to tell lies more than they actually do. The problem is discussed all the way up to the distinguished journal Econometrica. Now mainstream economics is what we call behaviourist in its definition of preference and other terms. ("Behaviourist" is different from behavioural economics, by the way, very different even). Mainstream economics does not define what it is to prefer A over B in terms of inner states of the mind, rather in terms of behavioural dispositions: to prefer A over B at a given point in time means that if you are given a choice of only A or B at that time, then you would choose A. (Or that is the main definition.) Given the behaviourism in economics, it makes to sense to combine economics with a behaviourist approach to language: probably this is required. Your sentence means "There is a rabbit" if and only if the best explanation for your behaviour involves attributing this meaning. (Or an adequate explanation does, if there is no best.) But a behaviourist approach to language limits the amount of possible lies. Let's suppose we are trying to understand the behaviour of a tribe. We propose that a certain native word means the same as "I promise." But if the word is often used without being followed by promise keeping, we do not have sufficient evidence for our interpretation. Why say that the native word means "I promise" if it is so often not followed by doing what was said? The economist is going to find it difficult to integrate his (or her) models and his behavourism. Put simply: his behaviourism requires a behaviourist approach to sentence meaning, a behaviourist approach to sentence meaning will not allow for so many lies, and his models say that rationality requires so many lies.

According to Donald Davidson, in order to count as a language speaker, you must be radically interpretable. What does that mean? An interpreter who is scientifically learning your language from previously being unacquainted with it - a radical interpreter - must be able to learn it, given adequate evidence. They frame hypotheses about your sentence meanings and test them. Now when learning a language in this way, there are privileged entry points: my term for something already familiar in the literature. The radical interpreter should attend more to some sentences to get going, for example simple observational reports ("There is a rabbit", "The cell contains..."). Now there can be a person who is the subject of interpretation but is very careless (or knavish) when providing these entry points. They make inexplicable errors, they are unnecessarily ambiguous, or they omit vital information. There is a significant chance that they will not count as a language speaker by Davidson's criterion, because the radical interpreter cannot get going from the entry points for language learning. I suppose Derrida would have said, "There is an unjustified privileging of these entry points over others. Abandon the privileging." Davidson and also Quine - who famously recommended the privileging and provided us with the rabbit example - are going to say, "NO." (Or they would if they were alive!) A worry that occurred to me is that there is no explanation of how one can get going in learning a language while changing the entry points. It would defeat the project of radical interpretation if one has to appeal to a magic process.

Williamson writes, "Soames's account is based on the old idea that borderline cases involve truth-value gaps. He says rather little in justification of this idea, merely that it seems arbitrary where to locate the cut-off point for a vague term and that it is unclear what semantic mechanism could determine that point. The book shows no awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative that borderline cases involve irremediable ignorance of truth-values. Since I have defended that alternative at length elsewhere, I will not labour the point here." The point here is that Soames's book shows no awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative. Labouring the point is presumably drawing attention to places in Soames's book where awareness would have been helpful. So Williamson is arguing: "(1) If I have defended the epistemicist alternative at length, it is reasonable not to draw attention to places in Soames's book where awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative would have been helpful. (2) I have defended the epistemicist alternative at length. Therefore (3) It is reasonable not to draw attention to places in Soames's book where awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative would have been helpful." (Is there any incentive to reconstruct this argument, as I have just done, and to assess to it, as I will now do?) I am not convinced by (1). I only have access at present to the first page of the review, but it just seems a good idea to provide more detail, e.g. "Look here, Soames assumes X but work on the epistemicist alternative casts doubt on this assumption." (I am also not convinced that Soames was ignorant of Williamson's work, but Williamson is rather careful not to say that Soames himself is.)

In the first volume of his On What Matters, Derek Parfit quotes C.D. Broad on Henry Sidgwick's style of writing and doing philosophy (in a broad sense). Sidgwick "incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answer. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument; and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing." I do not think this is a wholly accurate description of Sidgwick's style. I find that on some topics he proceeds at great speed. Anyway, let us grant that it is wholly accurate. Sidgwick is often referred to as a predecessor to the analytic tradition in philosophy and students of it who read Broad's description will probably think: yes, I have encountered quite a few texts like that in this tradition. Now it is possible that Sidgwick was largely responsible for developing this style, but I think that is very unlikely. Even if he made stylistic leaps from what was done previously, it seems likely that something like this existed before Sidgwick. Such a style evolved. (For example, "I am going to consider three objections," says one writer. "Three. That's nothing. I will consider seven!" replies another.) Why the great man history (or second tier man history)? Tell us who the predecessors are! Also how did this style come to develop a near dominant position? One answer is that good philosophy simply requires it. But I am attracted to another answer: that it has been introduced for strategic reasons. One likely strategic reason for it is that this style protects you from plagiarism. (See my "Are individuals a problem for British structural-functionalist anthropology?") I think another reason is that you make it the dominant style to deter "the enemy": someone of philosophical skill whom you don't want in your department and maybe beyond. Owing to temperament, or other factors, they cannot do this style. (See my "Dialogue with O on requirements, the histories of analytic philosophy and psychiatry".)

In his very short introductory book Philosophical Method, Timothy Williamson writes, "There is no law that only humans can think that 5 + 7 = 12. Even if humans are the only creatures on earth to have thought it so far, one day members of future species or sophisticated robots may think it." (p.69) Williamson is referring to scientific laws, like the law of gravity, not legal laws. There is no scientific law that only humans can think that 5 + 7 = 12. Without argument, Williamson asserts that it is possible for sophisticated robots to think this. But the philosopher John Searle argues that computers cannot think. The simple version of his position on robots is that they cannot think (but his qualified position may be that they need to be made of flesh: biorobots?). Searle has a bad reputation as a character, but I find his philosophical work valuable. Williamson actually refers to Searle on pragmatics (p.105).

In his very short introduction to Philosophical Method, Timothy Williamson writes, ***'There is a story of a traveller who asks the way to somewhere and is told, "If I were going there, I wouldn't start from here." The advice is useless because one has no choice but to start from where one is.'*** End of quotation. I do not think that this advice is useless in all possible contexts. It can be taken as a recommendation to the traveller to change their plan: if you are here, then abandon any plan to go there. Can that not be good advice? I think it can be in some contexts. However, some travellers may detect the recommendation and respond, "I must go there."

When I was in hospital, the psychiatrist said words to me which suggested the following argument (the conclusion seems to have since been sensibly abandoned). (1) If you have a divided mind, then you have schizophrenia. (2) You have a divided mind. Therefore (3) You have schizophrenia. The argument interestingly appeals to the original meaning of schizophrenia - to split the mind - rather than to contemporary medical criteria. Davidson's paper "Paradoxes of Irrationality" commits itself to a rejection of (1). I reject (2) for sure.

A University of Manchester building has appeared next to my apartment block and it is violating my right to light. My lawyers are engaged in a legal battle with the University's lawyers. Yesterday I did some research on the right to light, but I am finding the information difficult to understand. According to Google AI today, "The right to light focuses on maintaining a minimum level of natural illumination needed for a property's comfortable use, not necessarily guaranteeing direct sunlight." So the right to light in a building is not a right necessarily guaranteeing direct sunlight? Why not? Surely the point is not this: the Sun does not always shine and if you had such right, then you could get into a legal battle with the sky and so forth. (The clouds must clear, I have a right to direct sunlight!) What is it though? I can grasp a conceptual distinction between natural illumination and direct sunlight. I can at least conceive a reality in which another star is sufficiently close to our Sun to also provide natural illumination. Natural illumination is conceivably provided by some other source than direct sunlight. Whether this is genuinely possible or not, I don't know. Is this a relevant line of thought for understanding the right to light, or merely something an autistic person would get preoccupied with? Now if the University's lawyers somehow beat my lawyers, I will have reason to fear their legal prowess. Nevertheless and despite my struggles, I must beat them: the University's lawyers. Readers might think this is the ravings of an insane person. "How can you beat them?!" But consider the evidence more carefully. I am a leading scholar of one article by H.L.A. Hart. Okay, I have not covered everything, but I have presented three responses to one of his objections to the liberty principle: the reflective equilibrium response, the Foucaultian response, and the situationalist response. I have compared Hart with his predecessor Sidgwick and assessed what later figures had to say on Hart: Amartya Sen and Scott Soames. I have contrasted Hart with Parfit and Raz. I have examined Hart's methods of interpretation. I have addressed his writing style. And more. All this is not nothing. Therefore it has to be something. If a big cat, a jaguar say, fights a large water snake, an anaconda, most experts say that the jaguar will win. But is that always true? The big cat makes one mistake and the anaconda will drag it into the water and do unspeakable things to it.

O: I see you have tried to defend reading short stories. But you need to provide a defence which others cannot easily think of. This is Cambridge who set the question. ME: How about "I like reading about casual sex, not about love, so I like short stories"? O: Don't make fun of me. I'm all about love. ME: How about "I like all stories. Some stories are short stories. So I like short stories"? O: Please don't make fun of me. ME: How about "I like novellas. Some short stories are one word off a novella. One word less does not make any difference. So I like some short stories"? O: Please let me out. RIGHTTOLIGHT: Enough. ME: This is fun. RIGHTTOLIGHT: Enough!

The 1946 film Gilda, from the golden age of Hollywood: is it a feminist film? In one scene, Mundson introduces Johnny Farrell to his wife Gilda. Afterwards, Mundson says to Johnny Farrell, "My wife does not appear to like you, Johnny Farrell," or words to that effect. The viewer can understand why Mundson says that. She behaves rudely. But the viewer does not share Mundson's perspective (or I intuit that a lot of viewers don't and am leaving aside the ones who do). The viewer thinks, "This woman is in love!" The viewer is quite close to an anti-feminist position: "No," from this woman means, "Yes." (By the way, to my eyes, Gilda looks better in all the other scenes. Is that acceptable for me to share? An interpretation based on the perception: when Johnny Farrell is around, Gilda takes care of herself.) "We know all this." My apologies, but it might be useful for my audiences to know it.

There is someone I used to work with, who has gone to Germany to study a PhD on Thomas Mann. He asked me, "Why do you like short stories? Defend yourself." He likes novels. I spent a bit of time coming up with defences. And this is a good one, I believe. "I am interested in realistic characters (by my intuitive standards anyway). And there are some such characters who are in short stories but not in novels. So I am interested in short stories." Well, I should be more careful actually, because I have not read all novels. I would not depend on the assumption that every realistic character in a short story is also in some novel.

I doubt you would like to receive a communication from me. I too would rather not communicate to you. But I wonder if it is imperative that I do. There was, and probably still is, widespread opposition to Nancy Rothwell within the student body: the set of students that is. What to do about this? I just walked through the University of Manchester. By Brunswick Park, I noticed a set of hexagons, each having a distinguished name within it. At the centre was a hexagon with the name Nancy Rothwell. (I am not even sure if the hexagon is a good shape, but my inquiries are at a very preliminary stage on this matter.) Also there is The Nancy Rothwell Building (for engineering!). If I were a discontent student, I would interpret these items as trying to prompt an argument in me: "If Nancy Rothwell is so bad, why do the authorities here value her so much? The best explanation is that there must be something really impressive about her work!" I am writing because I am not convinced that this is a good way of communicating to the student body. In my experience, they regard themselves as the adults in the place, however childish their behaviour seems. For example, when I was teaching, some of them seemed to have the impression "This class is run by a child." This was despite my qualifications and the fact that I was regularly paid for this job. The discontent student may well dare a modus tollens: "If Nancy Rothwell is great, her greatness would be evident from my point of view as it is. This is not evident. Therefore she is not great." (Wyndham Lewis in his contribution to Beginnings said, if a great poet painted, something would come through.) I am not sure if the problem of getting the student to appreciate Nancy Rothwell can be overcome. I regard it as belonging to philosophy of science. But you have lost your best philosopher of science, haven't you?

Listen T. Parent, I do whatever I want, whenever I want! But I read your paper "Ontology and Acceptance" and because I am feeling extremely kind, I will let you know this information. Quite late on in Rose Macaulay's essayistic 1923 novel Told by an Idiot, the character Rome Garden says, "One must make a million unwarrantable assumptions, such as that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the attraction of the earth for our feet will for a time persist, and that if we do certain things to our bodies they will cease to function, and that if we get into a train it will probably carry us along, and so forth. One must assume these things just enough to take action on them, or, as you say, we couldn't get through life at all. But those are hypothetical, pragmatical assumptions, for the purposes of action; there is no call actually to believe them, intellectually. And still less call to increase their number, and carry assumption into spheres where it doesn't help us to action at all. For my part, I assume practically a great deal, intellectually nothing." A few years ago, 2021 it must have been, I was thinking about whether this position is even coherent. I doubt I am the first. It seems you need to dig up your predecessors and find out what happened to them. But it is obvious. They ran into people such as myself, who put them out of business!

I was planning to take a break from writing today, as advised. I decided to read Timothy Williamson's "Is Logic about Validity?" Reading it, I came across a baffling passage. At the beginning of it, Williamson writes: "Anyway, no logical truth is too simple to be denied by a sufficiently perverse metaphysician." He then appears to give an example in which some people deny that everything is self-identical. He uses his intuition to interestingly guess their argument. He soon says, "They did not mean something different from the rest of us by ‘identical’. They were just not very good at logic." Are they actually perverse then? Prima facie, there is a difference between arriving at an erroneous conclusion against a simple logical truth because one is not good at logic and arriving at such a conclusion because one is a perverse metaphysician. A starting point for defining the case of the perverse metaphysician attacking a simple logical truth is one who is good at logic and presents an attack on a simple logical truth which they themselves do not accept, because they believe there is an error in the attack.

I read some analytic philosophy of art and it sometimes includes commentary on art works. My intuition, if I may share it, is that the professional art critic will, rightly or wrongly, react like this: "I already have someone who can state local commonsense responses to artworks; maybe you do so in a more polished way but the difference is negligible in my eyes. I am looking for very 'out of the box' thinking which is worth pursuing: zany, crazy even." I am not sure if the philosophers of art that I know are suited to meeting this demand. To illustrate what would meet it: in my "Joseph Conrad and Kundera's taxi driver: amusing perspectives" I introduce the view that Milan Kundera can be reduced to Conrad. A detailed fleshing out of this view, drawing on the resources of the analytic tradition on reduction, is the sort of thing that literary critics would be interested in (I intuit).

The title is a bit misleading. Imagine that a leading figure in the English analytic tradition of philosophy tells "his people" the following: you do not need to trouble yourself with trying to achieve a style with literary value. He might have one of two very different rationales for saying this, the second of which is not so apparent. (A) If you want to try and achieve a style with literary value, you can, but it is up to you. It is not a requirement for being an analytic philosopher. (B) Writing good analytic philosophy is so demanding that you have to focus on that and not try to achieve a style with literary value. If what you produce has literary value, all well and good; but don't pursue this goal intentionally. When you write, you need to focus entirely on meeting the requirements of analytic philosophy: being clear and suitably precise and responding to relevant objections, etc. Did you get that? You need to concentrate your energies fully on fulfilling your philosophical duties. Now let me say that one more time, just in case...

H.L.A. Hart argues that Rawls's liberty principle does not account for why we restrict freedom of speech during debates. Hart is debating with Rawls, but is he moving too fast, given this point of his? If Rawls accepts the liberty principle and the principle does not account for why we restrict freedom of speech during debates, then it is rational to ask this question: does Rawls even accept the rules of debate that Hart accepts? (Observe how Rawls debates with Habermas, by the way.) Once again progress on the Hart-Rawls debate made by the supposedly insane!

Early on in the first volume of On What Matters, Derek Parfit praises the little-known utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick: a distant third behind Bentham and Mill. He quotes Sidgwick's criticism of F.H. Bradley: "really penetrating criticism, especially in ethics, requires a patient effort of sympathy which Mr Bradley has never learned to make, and a tranquillity of temper which he seems incapable of maintaining." Given the high praise he gives Sidgwick, it is difficult not to take Parfit as approving. But I saw Parfit speak, in what was perhaps the last lecture before he died. And he did not seem tranquil at all. To my intuitive assessment, he is the most excitable person I have ever met. (I was at the back of the lecturer and I was shuffling a bit. I had decided not to go to the toilet before the lecture. After the lecture, during the question and answer session, he looked at me very aggressively. If he does that, I leave. I could not shake the intuition that he already knew me - or knew of me or whatever. I suspect Parfit kept large league tables of ethics, scoured all the journals himself, and even I figured on his table. To psychiatrists: if I don't write, I will fall back in the league table. I am surely struggling already.)