Terence Rajivan Edward

Preliminary remark: my title quotes a brief poem by Mykyta Ryzhykh, published in the journal Password (1.2). Another preliminary remark: you know how, you are planning to go one above the level of someone sent to you by an organization or country and you do so, but then you find yourself in competition with someone or something and the only rational move is to give up and just promote them? For example, you surpassed Italo Calvino and instead of the next person up, as you sensibly imagined, it is instead Italy, Italy itself, you versus ITALY! Preliminary remarks over! This is an explanation of a bit of Timothy Williamson's paper "The Content of Legal Evidence," which interestingly appeared in the new manuscripts section today, or just a guess and not an explanation, for some Italian political philosophers etc. Do you know this experiment (by Tversky and Kahneman I believe; taught to me by Catharine Abell)? I astutely cannot remember the details, but it is something like this. The researcher presents people with the story of Linda. As a student, she protested against the Vietnam war and she was a staunch feminist. Does she now: (i) work in a bank; or (ii) work in a bank and contribute money to campaigns against human rights violations? Which is more likely? Many people, including some maths students, choose (ii) but that is irrational, given school probability theory. The probability of two things is less likely than the probability of just one of these. But when do we say two and when do we say one? Consider a comparison of probabilities with these two descriptions: (i) John's being a bachelor; (ii) John's being a bachelor and being an unmarried male? Assuming "bachelor" means unmarried male, it seems mistaken to speak of two things having to obtain for the second option to be realized and so we want to accord the same probability to (i) and (ii). However, what do we say in the following case? Which is more likely to be true (assuming the comic book fictions are real): (i) Batman is Batman or (ii) Batman is Batman and Batman is Bruce Wayne? When we assess probability, we do not treat (i) and (ii) alike. But what if we say that the meaning of a name, or what a name contributes to the meaning of a sentence, is determined solely by what it stands for. Then it seems we have to treat (ii) as no less likely than (i), as with the John-bachelor-unmarried-male case. Call this the Millian treatment, after John Stuart Mill's theory of name meaning. The other approach, which seems sensible, is that of anti-Semite Frege. BUT Williamson, I believe, says that there are strong mathematical considerations in favour of the Millian treatment. There are philosophers who will say, "Rewrite the mathematics." Williamson disagrees. I suspect the rewrite-the-mathematics-approach is crazy: in 9 out of 10 cases of maths-philosophy clashes, it is philosophy that has to concede and so deferentialism is of value as a practical heuristic. I kindly recommend getting someone else to explain the mathematical detail. (The term "deferentialism" comes from David Liggins and Chris Daly.)

In book 1, chapter 4 of The Social Contract, Rousseau argues against slavery contracts. One of his arguments is that a mad person cannot enter into a contract and a person who agrees by contract to become the slave of another is mad. We who are not psychiatrists would probably judge such a person to be mad, in a country where the contract stands. To give up one's liberty and voluntarily choose slavery! "Here is your signature on the contract; you must wash up the dishes this morning and then..." But libertarians, or right libertarians as they are called, want to allow for such contracts: it is up to an individual whether they want to enter into a slavery contract. But (or however): what are we to make of Rousseau's argument then? The libertarian is probably going to work with a narrower conception of what counts as madness. Agreeing to become a slave and thereby becoming bound to a life of slavery: this is not madness for them. It seems to me that various liberal philosophies require a narrow conception of madness compared to other philosophies and certainly compared to some psychiatrists, if they can be at all taken seriously: "We found your apartment is very cluttered with books, which seems to reveal a disordered mind." (My title quotes a poem by Bob Rosenbloom, published on haikuniverse: "Half the poems are written/ about the moon. Jupiter has/ twelve. Poets must go crazy." Not sure why these line breaks: surely a kind of madness!)

The rules in a liberal society should be justifiable to all citizens, or all citizens apart from some extreme cases; or so liberal political philosophers often say, with their usual examples of extreme cases being fascists and religious fundamentalists. But how do you then justify the teaching of poetry in state institutions, such as schools, because there is someone within range for liberal justification who will say this: "There is no objective reason to say that the poetry being taught is better; it is just the curriculum-maker's opinions being forced upon students"? In my paper "Poetry smuggling in a liberal society," I have proposed a solution. This is (a) to NOT have compulsory courses officially teaching poetry, but (b) still teach poetry by having textbooks in other fields which quote poets at the openings of textbook chapters, or even sections within a chapter. (I am not concerned here with teaching poetry composition, by the way; rather with teaching students about already existing poetry.) But I have realized a problem with my proposal. The poetry which most merits textbook quotation may not often be the kind we currently call classics. The Oxfordy canon of poetry in English literature may not be taught, even if other poems of some merit are. To illustrate the problem: consider Andrei Marmor's Philosophy of Law introductory book, which is perhaps only suitable for undergraduates and above but can hopefully illustrate the problem anyway. (The book is flawed in its premise-by-premise reconstruction of Ronald Dworkin and its presentation of Joseph Raz's service conception of authority, as I have observed elsewhere, but I find it the most readable and use it for information and wonder why it is not used at nearby universities. "How are you managing to learn jurisprudence?" "I found a better textbook!" I unsuccessfully proposed Marmor for political theory courses too.) It opens with information about a Californian law requiring that drivers do not use mobile phones while driving. It does not have an opening poem, but I suggest the best for it is this one by Edward Ferri Junior, published on Haikuniverse: Texting driver/ Tarantula fingers/ Flirting with death. Also, from the same publisher, there is Ciarán Parkes: mobile phone/ vibrating on my pillow/ your name in lights. “Who are these poets? Where's Wordsworth and the gang?” ( My volume 1 of best haiku on the Internet does not show up on the Internet searches I have done, by the way. My title quotes a line from poet Laura Riding.)

There is a well-known paradox of fiction, which is about how, if at all, we can have emotional reactions to fictional occurrences when we do not believe that these occurrences are real. Fear is the oft used example. How can one fear what one does not believe exists, for example have a fear reaction in response to zombies in a movie? (I am not fearing zombies literally, but people who resemble zombies???) Anyway, I have thought of a Chris-Dalyesque response. Can we not treat this paradox as a version of Moore's paradox? An assertion is an instance of Moore's paradox if it has this form: p and I don't believe that p. For example, "It is raining and I don't believe that it is raining." Similarly, "These zombies are frightening, but I don't believe that these zombies are frightening, because I don't believe they exist." Or perhaps, "These zombies are frightening, but I don't believe they exist." One might protest that emotional reactions are different from property attributions, attributing a set of zombies with the property of being frightening in our example. But is there any relevant difference for solving the paradox? The paradox appears to arise because the emotional reaction involves, or is assumed to involve, a representation of the world which one does not believe in.

This piece is of paradoxically low innovation, but it is perhaps of use in establishing sanity. The UK is famous for its comedy sketch shows, such as Monty Python's Flying Circus, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and That Mitchell and Webb Look. Also there have been comedy sketch shows written and starring Asians or black people, but they are all about being Asian or black in the UK, or at least that is how they imprint themselves on my memory. I have also watched young British Asian stand-up comedians and they mainly do sketches about being Asian, and young black stand-up comedians who do sketches which make frequent reference to famous black pop stars. What about the "universal conceptual comedy" of the white man? Is it not doable by them? Is it doable but there is no incentive to do it? The white man will think, "Hey that is reserved for us" and the coloured man will say, "Why are you not addressing our issues?" Is it doable in some possible world but our comedians, being characters quite sensitive to audience responses, lose their comedic muscles for this quickly? I have been watching a comedian on Instagram, a Cameroonian I assume. He has some sketches which interest me, some of them all too realistic for me. You know how: when you have heated up some oil in the frying pan and you put some food in and it really fries, how it is frightening, the sizzling-spluttering made by the food in the frying pan, the oil that splashes onto you even? There is a very funny sketch in which Tricago extremely cautiously puts a tiny bit of food into the frying pan and you see him next in the ceiling corner of the kitchen, as if he has become fearful spider! (“Anyone can do a one off.” “How much of a leap was it from previous sketches?”...)

Sometimes one notices that a certain person is very much on the skinny side. Are they naturally so slim? I was once told by a flatmate that if he consumed as much as I did, then he would be very large. With some people, one worries that they have an eating disorder. But why do they have an eating disorder? ("I don't know / All I know is that this should be written as an imitation of Susan Bordo!") Perhaps Robert Nozick can help. When evaluating John Rawls's philosophy, Nozick imagines isolated individuals who produce some goods which they themselves consume: each individual produces goods for just that individual. They want to know whether they will get a better deal by entering into Rawls’s proposed cooperative system. How much more of the desired goods will they get under the cooperative system. Here is speculation inspired by this. Some people with eating disorders are communicating to the world: I have entered into a cooperative system but the improvement over what I would get by myself, growing food or gathering it or catching prey etc., is negligible. Is this worth it? I have put this in Reduction in Cognitive Science; I hope it can fit in there.

Frege: the greatest logician since Aristotle. His first book was reviewed in the English journal mind by John Venn, maker of Venn diagrams. The review was very critical: nothing new, cumbersome notation. What was Frege's response? Well, we all know Frege's puzzle, don't we? Assume that the contribution that a name makes to the meaning of a sentence is determined solely what it stands for. But Batman is Batman is not informative, whereas Bruce Wayne is Batman is informative. (Assume further that the names here have an actual referent.) How can that be, since the two names refer to the same thing and so the information content should be the same as saying, "Batman is Batman" given our assumption? Frege is not just attacking the Millian assumption surely. He is conveying that Venn diagrams are supposed to be useful for depicting relationships between sets - when they overlap, when they are mutually exclusive - but can they depict identity, even informative identity (H20 is water, etc.)? Of course, then Russell destroyed Frege's project to reduce mathematics to logic. Was it Frege versus Venn or Frege versus Cambridge or Frege versus liberals?

...But here I want to talk about the myth of a genius neglected in their lifetime and much admired afterwards. Perhaps there are some actual cases that fit with the myth (which sort-of has a Biblical counterpart in the saying "The prophet is a strange in his own land"). I wonder whether some cases are close to being manufactured: senior figures put someone in charge of evaluating the novel figure who is unsuited to the task, while they quietly retire. In other cases, the academic world is like a village and the supposedly neglected figure is not so neglected. In analytic philosophy, Frege is described in a way that approximates to the myth. The greatest logician since Aristotle, who founded modern symbolic logic, was ignored until finally engaged with by Russell and then Wittgenstein. But Risto Vikko (1998) says that Frege's first book, Begriffsschrift, got 6 reviews and one of them was by John Venn of the Venn diagram, in the English philosophy journal Mind. "We are tracking Frege from the beginning!"; "Frege's logic versus Venn diagrams!"??? Leaving mathematics and philosophy, the Japanese writer Natsume Soseki was the first Japanese visiting scholar of English literature, a poor dog amongst a pack of wolves he said. There is no trace of any impact on the local scene. I am not sure about that though; is it not that “we” are unable to detect the impact? Let me speak from my own experience, though I am not of the level of the two above. In addition to writing on PhilPapers so often, I have an Instagram page where I follow other Instagram users and occasionally upload efforts at comedy. In one upload, I describe a sketch I conceived. The superhero Batman and his sidekick Robin converse. Batman asks Robin why he became his sidekick. Robin says that he was the leading student in sidekick school, so he could have become sidekick to any superhero, but he chose Batman because Batman has no superpowers. Batman replies that he does but he does not use them and then laser beams come out of his eyes and he kills Robin! Sketch over. Now there is a girl called Bulgogi, I suppose, who uploads videos on Instagram a lot and she has one where she says in a frightening voice, "I'm Batman. I am vengeance," before saying "Type shi type shi type shi" in her normal voice. She is wearing a cap. I interpret this to be an imitation of me. She mysteriously has 1.7 million followers and I have 93 or something - I might well not notice new followers, by the way - and I am suspected of paranoia; NEVERTHELESS I interpret her video in that way. "Type shi" is meant to convey, after this Batman sketch, go back to typing stuff, putting it online, and narrowly avoid typing shit (i.e. typing stuff which is nonsense or worthless). How are you going to "get" a comparable English response to Soseki?

I shall respond once again to the authorised biography of Diane Abbott - Britain's first black member of parliament - by Dr. Robin Bruce and Dr. Samara Linton. Early on, page 9, they refer to the Notting Hill race riots of 1958. The following sentences in the biography much awakened my interest: "One peculiar initiative set up in the aftermath of the Notting Hill race riots gives an insight into the way 'race relations' were perceived by well-meaning white people at the time. James MacColl, Paddington's Labour MP, co-ordinated efforts to remove phrases such as 'Europeans only' and ' no coloureds' from housing adverts in newspapers. The result was a very British compromise. On the basis that British people valued freedom of speech, and that landlords were paying for the adverts, there was no prohibition. Rather, newspaper staff would advise that phrases such as 'no coloureds' could be perceived as offensive and offer the opportunity to rephrase." (pp.9-10) There is a well-known saying or expression: to have your cake and eat it. Many British practices (or middle class ones, to be more precise) strike me as this: an attempt to combine what initially seem to be incompatible. So I agree with the authors' description of the result as "very British." But then they face a problem of suspected inconsistency: “on the one hand, you are portraying the eventual combination as manifesting the essence of Britain; on the other hand, you are saying this is what things were like at the time and not now.” I guess the authors' reaction will be to say, "We do not want to quite say or imply essence." Let's assume that can work as a response to the charge of inconsistency, with some fleshing out. Still, I puzzle over why this solution was abandoned and, unlike the authors, I am disposed to think it will return: the explicit rule system we have now does not seem a very British approach. Various liberals, particularly mainstream liberals in contemporary political philosophy, want the socially unjust stuff in the legal framework: you put it in the legal rules and give people freedom to do as they please within these rules. Such liberals are of course aware of cultural obstacles to realizing this vision, but they seem to think of these as affecting faraway religious states. They do not pay attention to how their recommendations collide with a local liberal tradition, which does not solve problems as they would (given their official presentation of their project - what they actually are is another puzzle): by simply prohibiting racist adverts, etc.

This paper presents how Carrie Jenkins' account of the currently popular ideology of romance is a challenge for John Rawls's theory of justice, or one way in which it is. The paper is written as an imitation of the philosopher, sociologist and psychoanalytic theorist Renata Salecl. (Some anticipated reactions (more pleasant ones): "This is not Salecl, but we cannot explain why, we just feel it"; "This is not Salecl, but we have no incentive to enter into details in order to explain why"; "This is Salecl enough if it were by various academics or freelance writers, but this role is not available for you." “We in continental Europe are holists not atomists, so you cannot be Salecl in this way without being so in a number of other ways.”) NOTE: you need to download the PDF for the paper probably; this is the abstract.

Analysis is a journal renowned in philosophy for publishing short papers. When I was a PhD student in the first decade of this century, I characterized Analysis to another PhD student as follows: it is the journal Zeno would publish in if he were alive today. But what did I mean by that? There was agreement without this question (or question’s, Telegraph) being raised. Zeno of Elea is famous in philosophy, and well beyond it, for paradoxes, such as a paradox claiming that one cannot get from A to B. In order to do so, one must cross half the distance between A and B. That takes some time. Then one must cross half the remaining distance. That takes some more time. Then half the remaining distance. Yet more time. There are actually infinite half distances to cross, each taking some time, so Zeno concluded that one can never get to B. A physics student told me that this paradox can be solved by calculus, but I don't really know calculus (yet and perhaps never will). I am attracted to the commonsense solution that within a specified amount of time, one can find time for crossing each half-distance. If the time allocated for the journey is 10 minutes, for example, and one is travelling at a steady pace, the first half distance takes 5 minutes, the second 2 and a half minutes, and for each shrinking half-distance there is time available within the 10 minutes allocated. My thought was that if Zeno were alive today, he would produce a mathematico-philosophical paradox of wide renown which is of interest for 1000s of years. But would this be published in Analysis, if submitted there? Nowadays I wonder whether Analysis has a kind of blind spot, if it is not intentional. They will publish various Zeno-like things, but NOT Zeno himself as conceived above. What do Havard think? Analysis published Gettier's problem for the theory that you know X if you believe X, X is true, and your belief is justified and various responses; but Robert Nozick did not send his famous tracking conditions definition of knowledge to Analysis (I assume). Maybe Nozick would have said, "Someone at Harvard keeps a record of every paper sent to Analysis and the response, since its inception in the 1930s. And we know what they don't accept. No Quine on de re and de dicto, etc." (Why don’t Analysis annoy local comedy and just publish what the paradigmatic Mum/Mom would like? The journal dies in a month? It is even whiter than it is?)

FIRST HALF. Women's football, by which I mean soccer, has been increasingly claiming attention in European countries where football is a popular sport. But what do audiences think of it? What, for example, do I think of it? I have a puzzle, or paradox even, which is perhaps widespread amongst football observers in this country, or else it is entailed by their own views without being consciously experienced. Do you remember the Spanish men's football of the late 2000s and early to mid 2010s, if not beyond? To the casual viewer in this country (UK) it consisted mainly of neat passes on the ground carried out by players who were physically slight, like David Silva: small players who did not look physically strong. It is perceived as a feminine style and here mockingly called tippy tappy football. The puzzle is "Why don't women's teams play like that?" They could even dominate men's football, or do very well if tactics have recently been developed by the best teams to overcome this style of play. A solution to the puzzle comes from psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen. Women's brains are on average less oriented towards systematization than men's brains (the brain being the mind, in his view) and this kind of football is actually highly systematic. SECOND HALF. Bourdieu, Pierre Bourdieu, is renowned in sociology for his four concepts of kinds of capital: economic capital (financial resources), social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital. Also he is renowned for his concept of habitus, which I tend to simplistically explain as follows: a set of dispositions which one brings to a field and which cannot adequately be put into words. But why does one need this concept if one has the concept of cultural capital? Cultural capital is or notably includes the knowhow to produce an attractive style, which gets one rewards. Bourdieu conceives the knowhow as difficult or impossible to capture by a set of rules. Attractive styles can include styles of conversation, styles of dress, styles of writing, and more. (Is my two half structure here an example? “SO VULGAR!”) If a sociologist is using the concept of cultural capital to explain why some people get ahead in a field and others do not (you are competent but you lack that stylistic touch), why do they need the concept of habitus?

I have read a 2019 essay by Professor Miriam Ronzoni entitled "Who Will Sustain Sustainable Prosperity?" In it she introduces an idea: "the idea that agents will use their freedom—sometimes deliberately, but often not—to undermine the preconditions of one another’s freedom over time—and that this must be countered." She then says, "There is an invisible hand, but one which does harm rather than good." I would not use the concept of an invisible hand here, but originally it is a metaphor and perhaps one cannot restrict how a metaphor is used in line with my preferred usage. Anyway, this is a first attempt to capture my usage: there is an invisible hand if and only if there is some effect which appears to be caused by a certain intention but it is actually the consequence of a set of individual actions none of which involve that intention. We talk of an invisible hand in relation to market solutions to societal needs. Societies have needs, or the people within them have needs, such as for food, medicine, and more. How does a society ensure that these needs are met? To people with our stupid brains, the obvious solution is for the government to instruct, "You people make food, because we need food," and "You people make medicines, because we need medicines," based on skills. But this is mostly not what happens in Western capitalist societies. Instead (according to the official story from Adam Smith), someone wants to make a living and so they spot a gap in the market - something that people want but is not currently supplied - and they fill the gap and by this means the needs of the society are met: someone does this for food production, someone does this for medicine production, and more. It may seem as if by design, government design, that a person suited to farming farms and a person suited to pharmacy makes medicines, but it is just by individuals pursuing their self-interest, specifically the interest of making a living. (If you are not suited to it, you probably won't get far in that line.) There is no government hand guiding them, but the result is as if there were such a hand, hence one metaphorically speaks of an invisible hand. Now a set of individuals losing their freedom by selfish decisions (for example, their freedom to go by the river, because they dump litter there) does not seem to be an invisible hand phenomenon, because one does not observe the effect of lost freedom and think, “This seems as if it arose by intentional design,” before overcoming that perspective. (Perhaps some very peculiar observers do though: "These people surely collectively intended to reduce their freedom, finding it all too much for themselves! They want more structure.") By the way, I personally tend to be cautious with using tools from another discipline, such as the concept of an invisible hand, though I sometimes boldly risk doing so. I am (unwisely?) wondering whether Ronzoni and her entire social class, or subclass etc., is disposed to just try things and, if there is risk of serious wrong/harm, someone should stop them - including even just try neurosurgery say. "That is how we get the hang of things new to us." (But the concept of an invisible hand explanation is part of political philosophy too, for example in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) I recommend coding, because the computer does not (usually) do what you want when you make a mistake.

Through Professor Miriam Ronzoni's essay "Who will sustain sustainable prosperity?" I learnt of the problem of sustainable prosperity. What is this problem? It takes some comprehension skills to extract it from her essay, it seems to me. This is the formulation that first occurred to me. Let us assume there is a way of measuring a country's prosperity: the prosperity scale, let us call it. Let us suppose that it is from 0 to 100, though you can use other ranges if you so wish. ("I want to use 0 to 99!") And let us suppose that a country is prosperous if and only if its level of prosperity is 70 or above. But let us further suppose that one can only reach 70 or above within a year by doing a certain problematic thing in that year, which we can call doing X (e.g. massively polluting the environment). And a country cannot keep doing X for more than 20 years, let us also suppose. But in order to sustain prosperity, one has to have a level of prosperity which is 70 or above for more than 20 years in a row, let us finally suppose. Given our suppositions, a country cannot sustain prosperity, it seems. But a solution has occurred to me, given the formulation above, which will perhaps count as a version of the third solution Ronzoni identifies: make sacrifices. Just reach 69 on the scale and stay there. One does not count as prosperous, but one is so close to being prosperous that it is not such a big problem. It seems this approach can address Ronzoni's concern that there isn't political will for making the needed sacrifices: citizens will not vote for it, etc. If a small sacrifice in prosperity moves us to sustainable, then perhaps the political will can be found. Some might say, "The sacrifice needed is generally large." If so, there needs to be a different formulation of the problem to the one above. I suspect more work needs to go into this matter.

Pierre Bourdieu is renowned in sociology for his four concepts of types of capital: economic capital (financial assets), social capital (one's network of connections), cultural capital (notably know-how regarding how to achieve an attractive style), and symbolic capital (symbols of prestige: qualifications, awards, titles). These concepts can be used to explain why a certain group are underrepresented in a field or an institution. For example, these people are not in philosophy because they are not wealthy and cannot risk a lack of job by studying for something as non-vocational as philosophy (lack of economic capital); these other people have the money but lack the network of friends to inform them about how to navigate the field (lack of social capital); and so on. Bourdieu's theoretical framework, including these concepts and also that of habitus (the set of dispositions one brings to a field, impossible to fully specify in words), seems good for explaining under-representation in a field and puzzling distributions (why these people and not those?). But are there not situations in which one appeals to job selector's beliefs about human nature? Imagine, if you somehow can, a large organization with many departments. Across these departments, there are certain kinds of job (receptionists, administrators, etc. - all departments have these at least). But in one department, there are predominantly people of East Asian background. In another department, people of Pakistani background. In a third department, local white English people. The job requirements and advertisements and application forms look the same for the jobs that turn up in different departments, so how is this distribution occurring? Here it makes sense to appeal to a belief of job selectors, operating against the official liberal norms: "People with the same ethnic identity work better together, such is human nature." Bourdieu's theoretical framework does not seem to incorporate this simple explanation. (If it somehow does, the incorporation is probably too complicated.)

If you studied history in school, you probably learnt to evaluate a source of information for reliability by who (or whom) the author is. Is this a source that we can rely on? Well, who wrote it and what are their interests? I have thought of another way of coming to doubt the reliability of a source. One develops a rational actor model which conflicts with what the source says. Even if one cannot see any interest in deception, given the source's author and their background, it is still rational to doubt the reliability of a source owing to conflict with the model. I shall illustrate this other pathway to doubt by reference to the authorised biography of politician Diane Abbott (even if this biography does not yet count as history): the first black woman to be elected to the UK parliament. The biography is by Dr. Robin Bunce, a historian of the University of Cambridge, and Dr. Samara Linton, an award winning researcher who graduated from Cambridge too and University College London, worked as a junior doctor, and is a fellow black woman. I don't actually experience much doubt about the biography or Abbott. But I read this quotation from Abbott, quoted with approval I believe: "If you are a thinking working-class person, and you go to Cambridge and you are surrounded by white people who, left or right, have that massive sense of entitlement, it will turn you into a socialist." (p.57) My model of what happens is the following - I don't know if it qualifies as a proper rational actor model, by the standards of economists, but it will do to illustrate my point. Abbott is interested in history as a Cambridge undergraduate, but she is introduced to some entitled white people whose family members are historians and who are at least as good as her in history and she concludes that they are likely to be preferred over her as a historian, in any sensible historical research project, owing to their skill and their network. She then thinks about law as a career, but low-down law firms will not employ her, because she is too clever for them (they don't want to be run by her, etc.), and regarding high up ones, she is introduced to people whose family members are lawyers and who are at least as good as her in law and she concludes that they are likely to be preferred to her as a lawyer, in any sensible lawyer role. Where can she go - I mean which career field? There is clearly a need for ethnic minorities to be political representatives, so that ethnic minorities feel represented in parliament. With her skills and ambition, politics is the only rational option. This model is quite different to the story in the biography: of someone who became a passionate socialist and went into politics. Abbott has few attractive options, with her skills and ambition, so she chooses politics, as do various other ethnic minorities, and for some reason she goes left-wing. Others go right-wing. (The reason is perhaps inexplicable. I would not get involved in character judgment here, unlike local tradition.) My model is significantly different to what Abbott and the biography portray, but it seems sensible to me, leading me to reasonable doubt about these sources. (The model was first introduced in my “Why do talented ethnic minorities become politicians?”)

What happens if you start off in one discipline and then you do research in another? From a quotation from her book Nonmonogamy and Happiness, Carrie Jenkins seems to think this: many people will "feel" that you can only love one of these disciplines and you should find the discipline that you love and stick to that. Perhaps some people will react in this way, but she refers to economics and sociology as example disciplines. I think the economist is going to have an assessment of the shifting researcher's marginal utility. Marginal utility is the utility one gets from another instance of a good. Utility we can here take to be satisfaction, though the economist today and for some decades has a technical definition. Let's imagine that you are Carrie Jenkins writing on a priori knowledge. Publication 1 gives you lots of utility, lots of satisfaction. Publication 2 gives you less utility. Publication 3 gives you even less. Also the utility is diminishing at a faster rate than Professor Laurence BonJour. Soon enough you are working on another topic in philosophy: romance. Then you are writing poetry. Then you are writing a novel. The economist will regard you as having problematic marginal utility, I suspect. (I suspect! Why do I even know this?) How is the organization you are part of going to keep you motivated? Maybe it is just easier to employ individuals with a normal marginal utility relationship, such as Laurence BonJour, rather than work out how to keep you motivated. Of course, Carrie Jenkins is a white person, not a brown person like me, and she has undergraduate, masters, and PhD degrees from the prestigious University of Cambridge, unlike me. But does it help against a foundational economic problem?

What is this Undisciplined project, at the University of British Columbia? (What is this Burnt Out Again artwork?) According to the origin story, the project was inspired by a quotation from Carrie Jenkins' 2023 book Nonmonogamy and Happiness. I confess that I have not read the book. But I want to respond to this quotation, the first sentence not being her view: 'You surely can’t be a “real” sociologist if you’re also an economist, or (god forbid) a physicist. It all feels eerily similar to the social policing of compulsory monogamy, to be honest: you can’t “really” love one discipline if you also love another.' I have various responses, one of which I would expect this network of researchers to detect by themselves - the third response. (A) Various economists, like various practitioners of other social sciences and also of philosophy, define their discipline not by questions, such as “Is trickle-down economics correct?”, but by the distinctive method which has arisen within the field: the use of rational actor models. Prisoner's dilemma, for example, is not about monetary gain but it is a rational actor model and so part of economics. What then is sociology? First definition from such an economist's perspective: it studies social occurrences or trends which cannot be explained or predicted by the method which defines economics. (Perhaps changes in fashion cannot be so understood, for example.) Second definition: same as the first definition but for industrialized societies, whereas the social anthropologist does some of this for other societies. The overall direction of definition does not allow for an overlap between economics and sociology. This is not about denying the possibility of loving two disciplines! (The methodological definition of economics “famously” leads to problems with accepting behavioural economics as economics at all, by the way.) (B) Many mainstream economists are probably in favour of a minimal capitalist state as the most efficient economic system and they are correspondingly not in favour of government promotion of monogamy (marriage only for two, etc.), let alone each academic specializing BECAUSE this “suitably parallels” the requirement for monogamy. (C) Specialization has been recommended since Adam Smith. The contemporary economist often uses an island scenario, involving two persons: Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. Specialization and division of labour is argued for even if one member can do both tasks under consideration better. On the basis of this model, it might be argued that one should stick to one's specialism. This is different from feeling “A change of discipline is a violation of morality, like non-monogamy.” (To repeat: I would expect this research group to detect this point without being told it by me, or anyone else for that matter. Why do I even know it myself though?!) (D) An economist, or economics student, and I once discussed physicists. The economist told me that physicists always think they can do better, but they never do so in economics. And we laughed! (E) In my experience, there are people who would experience not sticking to one discipline as a kind of immorality, comparable to non-monogamy. Good luck with them, Napoleons!

Some courses are assessed by means of an essay or a set of essays, but a question that is often asked about assessment by this means is whether it is subjective: mere opinion. I work with a clarification of what objective assessment means in this context: there is one and only one correct answer and the examiner knows it and checks for it. I introduce a concept which applies to some essay topics: there is a textbook answer (or there would be if there were a good-enough textbook, even if there is no such thing as the correct answer - the one correct answer). I illustrate the concept by reference to an objection to the political philosophy of John Rawls. One might reasonably expect competent members of a field to realize the textbook answer, making essay assessment more like objective assessment. NOTE: you need to download the essay; it is not in the abstract.

I am on a WhatsApp group for stand-up comedians in Manchester and I was on a related one for idle chat and spam earlier this year, but left. There I was involved in and observed many interactions. There is a symbol people used (an emoji) which seems to mean "I find this comment funny": a face crying with laughter. But is it used by people when and only when they experience laughter? Or is it used in other situations, for example “The maker of a comment is my friend so I shall support them by putting a laughter symbol beneath the comment”? It is reasonable to wonder whether it is used strategically. And someone who does may even wish that their face could be used as a strategic object too: laughing when it serves their ends and not laughing when it does not do so; and likewise for other facial "actions." The face, the face as a perfect mask - yes, who does not dream of this? Now there is a scene from the 1989 film Batman directed by Tim Burton. The main villain of the film is The Joker, a character originally created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger, and Jerry Robinson for DC Comics, and played in the film by Jack Nicholson. In one scene, which casually interests me, a television crew is producing a news report. Two fashion models have died, audiences are told. Suddenly urgent news comes in that there have been further deaths, but the newscaster trying to present the news is interrupted by the laughter of his fellow newscaster. She seems to be genuinely laughing, despite the grave news, and even falls off her chair laughing. Then the Joker interrupts the broadcast and we observe his advertisement for his personal care products, guaranteed to produce a smile. They are meant to be better than brand X. What is brand X though? This is my interpretation: brand X genuinely makes you happy and makes you laugh, even if it does not fit with your ends (e.g. the end of being a newscaster). WHO WANTS THAT? Joker products produce a smile regarding which your actual emotional state is unclear. Today we can compare it to using an emoji. The face becomes something one can use as a signifying system governed by conventions. Or something like that...

I remember it was coming close to the time of examinations and I was teaching a political theory class (political philosophy). After introducing some normal essay structures that students could use, I thought it would be most amusing to introduce a structure along these lines: (i) introduction - I am rejecting this stupid question the examiner has set; (ii) the question depends on this assumption…; (iii) the assumption is false; (iv) here is the closest to a sensible attempt to reinterpret the question; (v) it doesn't yield a worthwhile question; (vi) conclusion - hire a competent examiner. Then I thought that I should share the information with all classes including the ones taught by people who probably don't know much about essay structures (unlike Diane Abbott, whose essays were forced upon her school peers, according to her authorised biography). Upon doing so, I unsurprisingly received an email from a student asking, "WHAT IS THIS REJECT THE QUESTION STRUCTURE? I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT." Anyway, I do and I am thinking to reject the title question: what do psychiatrists want? Do they even have compatible wants? My first psychiatrist seems to evaluate me in terms of economic rationality, broadly understood. This is not specifically about how rational you are in the pursuit of financial gain, as some readers probably guess, rather how rational you are in the pursuit of your ends (financial or not). By the way, economists don't seem to attribute some ends to people, such as "I want to invade Russia so as to finally die by means of invasion." My ends, for the first psychiatrist, are to have academic achievements and avoid hospital. Now my fourth psychiatrist expects me to be honest with her. But what does that have to do with economic rationality? Economists expect people to lie a lot more. By my own assessment, I generally don't have hallucinatory experiences, but I told her about how I was in the university main library in June and I bent down to inspect a book on the bottom shelf and I heard footsteps but when I "bolted upright" there was no one but five minutes later there were actual footsteps. Is it economically rational to say that?

I have been reading the authorised biography of the politician Diane Abbott. It is by Robin Bunce and Samara Linton. In the preface, we are told, "Abbott's politics may be complex, but her essential beliefs can be expressed simply." (p. xii) )So what are they? Maybe you are not so different from me. You are expecting a list: "Essential belief 1.... Essential belief 2.... Essential belief 3..." If it is not quite presented like that, it is easy enough to represent the beliefs like that from what Bunce and Linton say, or at least that is my expectation, and maybe yours too. ("Sure.") But these are the next sentences: "Speaking to a group of young people in Parliament in December 2013, she linked her politics to her background. 'I came down from Cambridge with my degree,' she recalls, 'and I really felt the world was my oyster. As a young undergraduate, I didn't have the debt, buying a home was perfectly in reach, and getting a decent job was perfectly within reach.' Abbot regards herself as being a beneficiary of the 'enabling state'. She received the best education money could buy for free. 'My education was completely free. From start to finish. There were no tuition fees, I got a maintenance grant, and it was very easy to get jobs in the holidays.' Having left university, she bought a house in central London, with the help of a loan from her local council.' (p.xii) I imagine a comprehension question: WHAT ARE ABBOTT'S ESSENTIAL BELIEFS? (Or what are they as depicted by the authorised biography, to be precise?) I don't know. A fail for me on this exam, and maybe you too. ("Sure.") But perhaps someone is able to extract the information from the quoted sentences and beyond. (If you want, you can write a computer program which asks the name of a politician, and then asks the user to input an essential belief of that politician, and then asks if the user wants to input another essential belief, and if so asks the user to input another essential belief of that politician, and so on, before - this is very fancy, I suppose - listing all the essential beliefs inputted.)

Batman is a 1989 film directed by Tim Burton. The character of Batman, a hero against crime dressed to signify a bat, comes from DC Comics and was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger. In the 1989 film, much of the attention is on The Joker, a villain in the fictional city of Gotham, played by Jack Nicholson. In one scene, we observe a television crew producing a news report. The deaths of two fashion models are reported and then one of the newscasters tries to report further deaths, but the other newscaster bursts into (seemingly) inappropriate laughter and then falls off her chair. Suddenly the Joker appears within the show, against the director's wishes, and advertises his new and improved products, containing Smylex: guaranteed to achieve a smile. The advertisement has a paradoxical quality to my eye (and whole sensory system): on the one hand, he is advertising personal care products; on the other hand, advertised like this they are obviously not products the average viewer would trust to improve beauty or health or produce happiness. Here are two different responses to the paradox. (a) He does NOT need the trust of any viewer as a consumer, so the "on the other hand" part of the paradox is irrelevant. The Joker anticipates a question from viewers (which I doubt most viewers would have): where can I find these products? And he replies with words to the effect: the chances are that you have already tried them. (Imagine that the government starts making advertisements for anti-tooth-decay products which are already in the water!) (b) In various fields, one encounters someone, or an institution, who pursues the same goal as you, or seems to, but in a way that makes little sense to you. "Surely you need to do..." you think, but they don't do any of the things you have in mind and YET they are more successful by formal criteria (more promotions or more sales or more views/likes on social media or more votes, etc). The Joker in business is this kind of businessman! People are indeed going to buy his products over yours, though why is a mystery to you. (He scores highly on emotional intelligence?!) So the "on the other hand" part of the paradox is actually false.

Some philosophers and some others use the term "a priori knowledge" to describe the knowledge achieved within some disciplines, notably mathematics, and by means of some arguments. For example, how do you know that one above each number is another number (or one above each positive whole number; I have not thought about other numbers)? You do not examine all the numbers, because there are too many. Do you generalize from a sample? Above 1 is 2, above 2 is 3, above 3 is 4, and probably so on? But will not the sample always be too small and isn't the knowledge that there is always another higher number not the kind regarding which we say, "Probably"? This is a priori knowledge (assuming it is knowledge, fictionalists), but what is a priori knowledge? Here is a starting point: if you grasp the concepts involved in the conclusion (our example conclusion being that there is always one number above) and you can by reasoning and no further sensory observation prove the conclusion, then you have a priori knowledge of the conclusion. Now some arguments are not strictly a priori, but they have an a priori feel to me (and maybe to you too): I call them a priori-ish. I want to discuss an a priori-ish type of argument about technology. Instances of this type take this form. (Premise 1) If technology X is available and it is possible for this technology to do a task which is currently done by humans, then technology X will soon replace humans for that task. (Premise 2) Technology X is available and it is possible for this technology to do a task which is currently done by humans. Therefore (Conclusion) Technology X will soon replace humans for that task. A question about this kind of argument is: how soon is soon? Let's say within 2 years. Now a worry I have about such an argument is that it pays no attention to actual information we have about the introduction of technology and its impact. True, premise 2 is an empirical premise: there is a sensory observation that technology X is available. But where is the attention to actual observations about technological impact? I want to add to my worry by appealing to some experience. I started teaching at the University of Manchester in 2005. I collected paper registers from an administrator and filled them in and handed them back to her. At some point (in 2007?), I used a computer provided to fill in which students attended class and which students did not. But it is not difficult to write registration software. This computerized replacement could have been achieved in the 1980s, if not before. I wonder whether I could have written the code myself in the 1980s, before I was 10 years old. You can try yourself, writing a simple program which has data about the names of students in a class, reads some data, prints the student's name on the screen, asks the user to input whether the student is there or not, and then moves to the next student. (By the way, lecturers are mostly not from the north of England, it seems, but admin are mostly local. A conspiracy theory: you cannot code away admin employees and rid the institution of them; there is a deal to give local people jobs.)

Are you familiar with this advice? At work, do not talk about politics or religion or money. But who follows this advice and who does not, and if not, why not? In September, October and November 2023, I was sectioned in North Manchester General Hospital, unfortunately. I rarely heard political views expressed there, or what are ordinarily called political views. (For some people, every view is political.) I was repeatedly asked by a fellow patient what I thought of the conflict in Gaza and told that it was my duty as an intellectual to respond: I did not myself describe myself as an intellectual, by the way; it was a description considered beyond reasonable doubt by the patient and also used by the French care coordinator assigned to me towards my departure time. (No longer available for me as a care coordinator for me, it seems. Did they get rid of all foreign nurses from this team? The manager told me that nurses in her team often wrongly refer to one of my psychiatrists as Dr. Kilmach, because it is an unfamiliar name in England. It is like something from a Buchi Emecheta novel. Have they passed GCSE English, by the way???) In the ward I was in, within North Manchester General, there is a large living/dining room with a large television and a number of chairs and some tables. I recall: I was in this room with hardly any others and there was news on the television about the politician Suella Braverman. A black nurse (born in UK probably), whom I did not often see on the ward, entered the room and loudly said, "I HATE THIS WOMAN," or words very like those. There was someone with her, I believe. I am not sure if there were any other patients apart from me in the room. Why did she say that? (This is a psychiatry ward, by the way. Hey, is that Suella Braverman? Is that not a dragon?!) Does the nurse’s loud statement even cohere with nursing ethics? Various possible motivations for it have occurred to me, of which I shall present four. (i) She simply hates Suella Braverman. (ii) She wants to check what my ethnic loyalties are. Will I feel the need to defend Braverman, being a fellow Asian? (iii) She thinks that it is important for people to have "structure" in the workplace, as children are often thought to benefit from structure, and by saying what she did loudly, she was reinforcing a public social norm to be anti-Conservative in Manchester. (Braverman is a Conservative politician, if it is worth distinguishing politicians by party.) In the privacy of the voting booth, or when voting, one can vote as one pleases, but there need to be "unnecessary social norms" (by my standards) to provide structure. (iv) She has found herself in a position in which people loudly express political views contrary to her own and wonders how best to deal with this, looking to observe my reaction. That’s my possible motivations over! Regarding (iii), probably the advice not to talk about politics, religion, and money would not have got going if incompatible with human nature, or in tension with it: if the average worker really does need more social norms, including ones regarding which political views are acceptable in a given workplace. Regarding (iv), I suppose you can try this: go up to the person loudly expressing a political view and timidly say, "I was advised by my family not to talk about religion, politics, and money in the workplace. Do you think the advice mistaken?"

Why do talented ethnic minorities become politicians? I shall focus on Euro-American countries, to borrow a term from Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern. I have been reading an authorised biography of Diane Abbott by Dr. Robin Bunce and Dr. Samara Linton (a medical doctor, interestingly). In it, they quote an interview in which Abbott says: "If you are a thinking working class person, and you go to Cambridge and you are surrounded by white people who, left or right, have that massive sense of entitlement, it will turn you into a socialist." (p.57) I presume she is referring to the University of Cambridge. It seems to me that if you end up in the situation described as a student in your teens or early twenties, what you will find is that, regarding most attractive careers for you, the privileged will already have someone who can do what you can do. For example, Abbott studied history and if she were interested in becoming a historian, even a black historian, she would be introduced to a posh white person who is of a comparable level, if not better. It is unsurprising that a person with her talents goes into politics, because there was and is a need for ethnic minority politicians, so that ethnic minorities feel represented. These entitled people cannot so easily block your progress there, given the need (or rational end within political parties). If I went to Cambridge, as some people have thought would be best, I suppose what would have happened to me is very like what Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins describes in her disturbing novel Victoria Sees It; but if luckily not, how about politics? I can do some public speaking, I am not so risk averse, and I am good with words and concepts! With most other attractive fields, it is only crazy stuff which the privileged don't do. (I don't consider myself the working class though.)

The 1989 film Batman, directed by Tim Burton and starring Jack Nicholson as the Joker: there is a scene within it which interests me. The Joker is talking to the mafia of Gotham City. Will they do business with him or not? A leading figure, called Tony, raises the question: what if we say, "No"? The Joker replies that nobody wants a war and that if we cannot do business, then we will just shake hands and that will be it. They shake hands. But is the shaking of hands done because they cannot do business? Consider this argument. (P1) If we cannot do business, then we will just shake hands and that will be it. (P2) We will just shake hands and that will be it. Therefore (C) We cannot do business. This argument appears to be of the form: if P, then Q; Q; therefore P. But that is a fallacious argument form: affirming the consequent. ("If P, then Q" is neutral on whether Q can arise from other conditions than P.) The Joker shakes Tony's hand with a gloved hand and an electric device attached to the glove palm, which kills Tony through a prolonged handshake. Perhaps this murder was because Tony did not realize the fallacy!

On October 10th 2024, a two-line poem of mine was selected for publication on Haikuniverse. They publish a brief poem everyday, normally three lines long. But I feel they have not beaten mine yet. However, a few minutes ago I saw a poem there and changed a single word, or misperceived it actually ("Hey, what is going there?" What a surprise, to be chased by you, for economic irrationality), and the altered poem is better, in my eyes at least. The poem is by Kathleen (Kat) Mulvihill. And these are its lines, with "/" signalling a line break (press enter in your word processor): "Solitary grain/ Seep into my oyster bed/ And father my pearl". I changed the opening line to "Solitary gain", if you have not already noticed this from my title. We speak (or write) of solitary gain in the context of elections, when a single seat in parliament has been gained by a party compared to the previous election: there was the solitary gain of one seat. Also we speak or write of solitary gain, in a different sense I assume, when describing a selfish character: he is motivated only by solitary gain. My altered version of the poem will appear paradoxical to some people, maybe to all competent users of English: "Assume solitary gain is an apt description of a person who is not the poem's narrator; it will no longer be should the narrator's wish or instruction be fulfilled." Philosophers: you can devise solutions.

The language of the people, their stock expressions - so difficult to understand in depth. In England or the UK, we all know the expression to defy the odds. Sometimes we also speak of beating the odds. As usually interpreted, the two expressions mean the same. They mean that a person has achieved something unlikely and this is significantly down to their own intentional actions (or the right version does - can you sort out the details?). But another interpretation has occurred to me, which is perhaps the outcome of my own imagination, but perhaps not. Let's suppose that there is someone you propose as a public figure: as a public intellectual or as a politician or a famous stand up comedian, etc. What is the level of this public figure in their field, from 1 to 10 say? It is a question. How will you answer? You input a number, let us literally or metaphorically say. But is this number even? (In other words, is it divisible by two, in a way that results in a whole number. an integer. Or is the result of such division 0.5 or 1.5 or 2.5 or 3.5 or 4.5?) If it is an even number less than 10, competitors with a higher rating from you which is an odd number will probably say, "Not good enough." For example, 9/10ers will probably say this of 8/10ers. But the "general public" is strangely different. The general public in UK, let us suppose, will not accept public figures who have odd number ratings, given your pointed evaluation system. Now consider 8/10 opposed by 9/10 but still embraced by the people (or the local people, anyway - we live in globalized world, by the way). In this situation, it is appropriate to say, "He beat the odds." And if various figures rated more highly by your evaluation system, but with odd number ratings, denied that the proposed public figure was good enough, then we can also say, "He defied the odds." Whom should I thank for providing somewhat faint inspiration for this? A much imitated local Victorianesque manager?