Terence Rajivan Edward

O: In recent papers, you have identified three requirements that have been presented to you while working in the philosophy discipline area. Earlier you wrote about underrepresentation. Do you think there is also a requirement to be of a certain race? ME: There may be quasi-racism: we can get all the benefits to us of a racist system without any racial requirement. You have to go back to the nineteenth century to comprehend why this is a plausible proposal. I believe many philosophers, psychologists, and psychiatrists at that time accepted that there was such a thing as the English temperament, the French temperament, the Scottish temperament, and so on. Each temperament (supposedly) correlated with different type of body: a different brain and different nervous system. You can read about it in George Eliot's essay "Women in France." The Victorian philosopher Sidgwick says that the Scot Bradley does not have the temperament for ethics and readers of his time would surely have inferred that this is because he is a Scot. Sidgwick is considered a predecessor to analytic philosophy. In the twentieth century, in his essay on inferences in politics, C.D. Broad describes the English temperament as phlegmatic. The rules of analytic philosophy, which have hardly changed, may have been set up to select for a certain temperament: one designed to exclude philosophers of various nations (or many of them anyway). In theory, anyone can meet the requirements. In practice, others cannot get in. I was looking into underrepresentation in analytic philosophy and probably you cannot look into this topic without taking the old nineteenth century temperament system seriously. (I wonder whether the objection some analytic philosophers have to Foucault is not obscurity, rather "There is nothing wrong with old lunatic asylums, based on the temperament system.") O: A psychiatrist working in the old system would say that you cannot do analytic philosophy and stay sane.

O: In your second letter to Thomas H. Smith and Joel Smith, you talk about the requirement not to laugh at the seminar giver in the research seminar. You ask whether if you meet this requirement, there will be another requirement, and a third, and a fourth, etc. Do you have any examples of other requirements or is this just a thought you entertained? You are not trusted and you are sure to be asked this. ME: Yes, two come to mind. I was told in the early 2010s to publish in better journals. My worry is that doing so would have prevented me from writing my paper "On the citation of John Rawls." In that paper I compare my citations with that of Rawls and ask, is Rawls properly global? That must be one of the most satisfying papers ever, more satisfying than anything you have experienced O. I think the better journals requirement is insane. O: In Europe, we have to take a proportion of European people as sane. You have a reason for thinking that the European man who asserted this requirement is insane, but it has to be ignored in Europe. If you build a system of psychiatry in which the person who asserted this requirement is insane, you would produce a non-European system. It would be considered a danger to European civilization. ME: I think the requirement has been withdrawn now. O: What is the other requirement? ME: Specialization!

I presume there are men who approach attracting a woman as if it were, or significantly resembles, applying for a job: you meet the requirements and you are competent for this job; otherwise you are not. But then these lines from a song sung by the popular singer Sabrina Carpenter are a paradox: “And I like my men all incompetent.” To be competent for the job of being this person’s man one has to be incompetent. I present a solution which I have presented before - “incompetent” means more fully “incompetent by normal standards” - and also raise the problem of how a society in which Carpenter’s preference is pervasive among women can survive. Won’t competent men leave, jeopardizing the long-term stability of the society? Perhaps the problem can be overcome by some revision: there is a scale of competence and the women there prefer borderline males, maybe just below the line of competence. But I identify two risks: risk of mistakes; risk of take over by a neighbouring society. And I consider how to avoid the second risk at least.

As I understand him, Bergson thinks that we laugh at human beings when they behave in a mechanical way. I find this perspective strange. I am tempted to offer many counterexamples. But here is an attempt to appreciate Bergson, apart from that this giving of counterexamples is so mechanical. "If you were to abandon various kinds of laughter, this would be the last kind left." He might be right. For example, I would give various courses at a nearby university to much the same standard as the lecturer but for only 20 pence (maybe pretend you don't know which university): the ethics course, the political theory courses, the philosophy mind course, even the jurisprudence course, etc. The university management either knows this or assumes that I would do it for free. Yet they continue to pay lecturers thousands of pounds to give these courses. They behave mechanically. And that is the ultimate in funny.

Hildred Geertz, wife of Clifford Geertz, is little known compared to her husband Clifford Geertz, standard reading on probably every undergraduate anthropology curriculum and several social science courses. I present a paradox concerning Hildred Geertz: surely anthropologists get titles, climb up the ranks in their departments, and publish books because they are ambitious, and pay the price of doing fieldwork because it is better for realizing their ambitions long-term - “you studied this disappearing people or people whose lives were about to undergo dramatic transformation through contact with Western societies”; but Hildred Geertz ended up more or less “hidden” compared to her husband, or ex-husband. A solution is that she is probably the subject of intense attention but it is not very public: amongst feminists academics and female academics in general. I consider this and another solution.

Why read post-colonial literature? An obvious answer is because you are interested in the former colonies. But what if you are not? In my experience, post-colonial literature contains a variety of characters who are a problem for development, such as Rose and Amaka from Flora Nwapa's novels. (I am very impressed.) You can find similar characters in the UK and from other backgrounds, I intuit. They don't feature in prestigious British literature, to my knowledge. "Why not?" I propose this: because prestigious British literature is written by experts in getting rewards from prize committees and elite universities, and the people giving out the rewards just don't have to deal with these characters. They are not of much interest to them. To assume the developed and developing distinction: the rewarders are already in developed institutions! (I recall an author describing large parts of the UK as like the third world: Irvine Welsh. I seem to be converging with him!)

Mainstream economics failed to predict the 2008 financial crash. It has been under strong pressure to change because of that. What is its future? Maybe other social sciences provide a clue. This paper presents two very different lessons one might take from British social anthropology. (A) The structural-functionalist school which dominated British anthropology from the 1930s (if not before) to the 1960s came in for severe criticism in the late 40s and 50s: for ignoring the histories of the peoples studied and colonial relations. That memorable criticism(s) does not appear to have ended its dominance. A late stage structural-functionalism developed. (It is unclear what ended the dominance. Parties interested in the question might have to just try structural-functionalism again.) The mainstream economics will continue, despite not predicting the crash. (B) Economics might be revolutionized, but that won't mark the end of the mainstream models. Some of these models (and other things) that economists have made can float out into other disciplines and become the centre of a research literature. For example, Adam Smith on the origins of money is at the centre of a literature in social anthropology. Anthropologists don't accept the account but they continuously engage with it. (Adam Smith is not a contemporary mainstream economist, but there are models based on his account.)

O: I read your "Serial killers and social structure". Why did you even write this? You write of how some peculiar liberal societies prefer to incorporate a known serial killer over a Chairman Mao. You are going to be asked, "How can a liberal society incorporate a serial killer and be liberal?" Or someone is going to have this question. And then you will have to define all your terms: liberal society, incorporate, serial killer, known, even can. And you will have to consider the answers that different clarifications lead to. That's one long task. It will tire you out. ME: You are getting stressed by this conversation, it seems to me, and its length is not why I am avoiding the task! Anyway, I am thinking to tell them this: a liberal society is usually defined by certain legal rights, such as freedom of speech and movement, but in the definition itself there is no specification of the punishments if you violate someone's rights; so a society can count as liberal and release a serial killer. O: You just cannot resist making that point, can you? Anyway, this will be fun for you: cannot any professional liberal political philosopher detect the point by themselves? ME: They are selected by 1500 word essays and longer. To be confident that they can detect the point by themselves, you would need some other kind of assessment, to check their problem-solving skills, I think. There is a risk anyone will get in who scores well on the other assessment. That might produce protests.

Imagine some children in a field. Two children are the captains of two football teams and they are picking players for their respective teams. Captain 1: I choose John. Captain 2: I choose James. And so on. Towards the end there are two players left. Neither wants to be picked last, of course. Strangely, they are talented players. Is there are some problem with them? They are too selfish perhaps. Now imagine a variation on this familiar scene. The people of a nation are picking individuals to be part of it. The last one left will not be part of the nation. The final pair are a dictatorial figure, such as Chairman Mao (or the current president of China?) and a known serial killer, such as Ted Bundy. The sensible choice is the dictatorial figure, it seems. To get that far, he must actually be a reasonable fellow in many respects, smart, and a good PTA member even. But some liberal nations (or towns, to vary the thought experiment further) just pick Ted Bundy. They are not racist. They just prefer that kind of person. That is how their social structure works even: it incorporates this kind of person over that kind! A disturbing but liberal social system. (A lot of people seem to love Bundy and this is an explanation, I suppose.)

The Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt believes that legal systems are unsuited to dealing with some political problems. Notably, one should suspend the law (partly or wholly?) to better combat an enemy: a threat to the shared way of life in a nation. I have a worry about implementing Schmitt's legal and political philosophy. I am not sure how major the worry is. Probably major. Some legal specialists, I presume, are experts in patching up a legal system. It did not look as if it could cope with a certain problem, but once patched up it can keep going. (They are like the trainers in the Balinese cockfight?) These people will not feel valued if you implement Schmitt's legal and political philosophy. There is not enough value on rule of law. And they will leave the nation for one which values rule of law to a greater extent. Then, in their former nation, these suspensions of the law Schmitt recommends will happen too frequently. They are meant to be infrequent, I suppose. But the intelligence is now just lacking to deal with various problems within a legal system. "Once again, we have to suspend the law to deal with this problem we are facing." (All the other nations laugh at it for that even.)

ME: In a paper uploaded yesterday, I presented an objection to Carl Schmitt which I believe is already known in some circles. I cannot find it in the literature though. The objection is that if a government suspends the law to better combat an enemy, but with the aim of returning to a period with rule of law, there is a reasonable chance that they will not return to this. Instead a dictatorship with poor rule of law is established. Surely people who study political regimes have thought of this. O: Your objection sounds obvious once you say it. You only need to watch the news to have this objection, it seems. But it is possible that it was not known already by anyone before and the possibility is not extremely unlikely. When reading Carl Schmitt (or a presentation of him), there are a lot of things which might distract a person from making the objection, such as vagueness in Schmitt's claims, for example is the law wholly or partly suspended? (The former option seems unrealistic and the latter requires us to withdraw from the histrionic claim that the legal system has been suspended.) Now there is indeed a person who can get past all these distractions and make your objection to Schmitt, if they only knew his work. You are not special! But they are unlikely to engage with Schmitt. The research world is not full of free spirits. We direct students here and there. "Why don't you write on the law of the excluded middle?" "Why don't you write on Carl Schmitt?" "Why don't you write a psychiatric literary case study?" Etc. And we just don't direct the kind of person who can get past all the distractions to work on Carl Schmitt. There is a kind of streaming even. If you continue to work on Carl Schmitt, you will just have a long party of making objections until his philosophy is completely dead! Just leave him be. There is better stuff for you to work on. ME: I am not convinced. The objection I made is surely known! Maybe in Germany.

I am surprised by the large amount of interest in the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Schmitt is not a contemporary. Are there not a number of known objections to Schmitt? Is there not a big list somewhere? Perhaps the objections are only known in narrow circles and not in wider circulation. I wish to present one objection, which I believe is known to some people, even if it is not in the Schmitt literature. Schmitt divides the life of a nation into normal periods and extraordinary periods. In normal periods, there is rule of law. In extraordinary periods, there is not. Schmitt is especially interested in extraordinary periods in which the law is (partly or wholly?) suspended to better combat an enemy to the nation, to the shared way of life in that nation. Schmitt recommends such suspensions but the aim should be to return to a new normal period. The objection is from political science. There are just lots of cases where rule of law is suspended and the nation does not get back to a normal period (assuming Schmitt's distinction), so by induction this political and legal philosophy is a bad idea to implement. A group of politicians decides to suspend the law and what you get is an evil dictatorship rather than a return to a normal period. "Can you give examples?" I am not a political scientist, but I suppose there are lots of national histories which suggest this objection. Maybe Chile! "If you don't have examples, why did you write this?" I have read the Schmitt literature and there does not seem to be awareness of the objection, even though some people surely know it. If I don't tell the participants, maybe no one will. Upon reading this, they can ask others or find examples themselves. My apologies for a half-baked objection. Please still cite, if I am the first to put it in writing.

O: Why are you writing for the psychiatrist? You're going to tire yourself out. Just imagine you and the psychiatrist in school. You get much the same grades. Maybe they are slightly better, maybe you are. The difference is negligible. But the psychiatrist decides to become a doctor. Why don't they become a historian or an artist? Some of them can draw, many of them like history. Why don't they? Because they want a job and are afraid of not getting one! So they are very risk averse compared to you. (And you are very risk averse compared to me!) How are you going to communicate across such a large difference in temperaments? They will give you advice. And you will have to explain ABCs of why this is not good advice for someone such as yourself. (Why you don't take your phone to the phone shop, etc. It's an experiment in finding out what the advantages are of not doing so.) Their whole discipline is affected by high risk aversion. ME: The difference between us is not negligible in school! The psychiatrist doesn't even know what the cell membrane is. I may be rusty but I am good at the school game. One hour a day work and I can beat these people at that! Anyway, why shouldn't I interact with them and they can write a literary psychiatric case study on me? O: Two problems, Golden Stockings! They only know famous literature, like VIrgin Woolf. They are very unsuited to dealing with a person who has published just 5 lines of poetry. And if the psychiatrist is sensible, they need to find out what happened to someone like them in the past or they will just repeat the same mistakes. (And that's very difficult for them to find out.)

Simon Baron-Cohen says that the extreme female brain is very good at empathizing and very bad at systematizing. Why pervert Baron-Cohen and say that the extreme female brain is very good at systematizing and very bad at empathizing? The answer lies in my previous paper "Disgust and the gender of the brain." Females on average are more prone to disgust reactions than males. Disgust reactions are systematic, as we know from Mary Douglas. The extreme female brain overrides all empathy in destroying what disgusts it!

I have been contemplating the topic of "What is Cornell?" for a while and gathered various responses from friends, insofar as I have friends. This is my hypothesis. Assume you are in Cornell. If you ask for anything from another person there and it is logically and naturally possible for them to provide it, they will do so. "Shall we..." "Yes!" (Don't query this example please.) You only have to ask! But their system of student and staff selection is so good that no one asks for various things. It is a university for the well-bred.

In The Story of O, O is subject to beatings in France before moving to England and being subject to even more severe beatings. She is beaten by Sir Stephen. It is natural for most readers to assume that Sir Stephen is a sadist and a specialist in beating. I wish to offer a different interpretation, by elaborating the novel slightly. (I have been "inspired" by a paper uploaded yesterday.) Sir Stephen and O are locked in a room together. O says, "I would like to talk about logic." Sir Stephen says, "So would I. I am an expert logician. I am also a peaceful feminist. I think women can do logic as well. You seem to be a clever woman. I would like to talk about logic with you." O begins to offer her point of view on conditionals. Sir Stephen listens and becomes increasingly angry. He becomes violent and gives O the worst beating of her life. During the beating, she coquetishiy says, "Feminist you?" He keeps beating her.

John Searle is interested in extending his influence into social anthropology. (He has written for the journal Anthropological Theory.) But how to extend his influence? Despite probably having one of the best advisory networks ever, he doesn't appear to know how. I will tell him how! There is an old debate in British social anthropology (a debate which some American anthropologists are also interested in). The debate is over whether social structures are real or not. Founding father Radcliffe-Brown takes them to be real. Later anthropologist Edmund Leach takes the social structures anthropologists describe to be useful models: social structures are not real. Searle should start by referring to this "old" debate. Then he can say, "What you need is my distinction between ontologically subjective and epistemically objective. Social structures are ontologically subjective: they are dependent on human agreement, e.g. we agree that this organization has a head. They are brought into existence and maintained by performative language, e.g. we hereby declare that Nancy Rothwell is the vice-chancellor. But they are epistemically objective: there can be right and wrong descriptions of the social structure." I don't accept that social structures are real. I accept Leach's position. Earlier today (before the vague answer!), I wrote of actual social structure, because it was too complicated there to introduce anti-realism about social structure. Anyway, above is my recommendation to Searle.

Some people believe that the premises that mainstream British psychiatry relies on are severely faulty. Lacanians believe this and so do I. But (unlike Lacanians) I suspect British psychiatry achieves a passable level with their conclusions. How can that be? The answer I vaguely propose is this. The British psychiatrist learns a system, which is useful for them to get going at an early stage and for communicating to outsiders with little knowledge of psychiatry, such as law courts. But they don't mechanically apply the system. As they progress, they are heavily reliant on knowledge of past cases (and also unteachable diagnostic talent). "This case is similar to that case, we saw." My worry is this. Someone is going to say, "Talent?! Is this a good system then? We will send you a student. They are not the most talented but if your system is good, they will turn into a good psychiatrist and if it is bad, they will not. A good system reduces the reliance on cleverness, on individual talent." The psychiatrist is going to face severe problems with teaching this student. They don't class cases as similar and different in the way the psychiatrist does. Some psychiatrists leave because the student's judgments of similarly and difference are only slightly off and there is no way to block this dangerous new psychiatrist. (No Asians psychiatrists left?)

In my journal publication "Are individuals a problem for British structural-functionalist anthropology?" I introduce an important idea. An organization has an official structure of roles and duties, for example this is the head of the organization, that is the cleaner, etc. But sometimes one encounters a person who officially occupies a certain role but does not fit with the expectations of that role: for example, they cannot do various things which the role requires. They seem out of place. In this situation, I proposed that the anthropologist can make a radical move: they can look into whether the actual structure of the organization is different from the official structure and whether in the actual structure, the seemingly out of place individual fits. In September 2023, I was forced into the psychiatric unit of a Manchester hospital and I ended up trying my idea out. When I met the consultant psychiatrist, I asked him whether he was a doctor and, to check, I asked him to tell me what is inside a cell. He listed some items, including the cell membrane. I didn't think the cell membrane is inside the cell. So I decided to contemplate alternative organizational structures to the official structure, according to which he is a consultant doctor. I gave up after about a month and just accepted the official structure. I came to three conclusions. (i) The anthropologist in a new setting has no practical option but to accept the official structure presented to them. It just takes too long to get going otherwise and you risk looking very mad. My idea is for later at best. (ii) It took me so long to accept the official structure that I must be having a mental difficulty. I was weekly asked to accept that I had one by the medical team and I eventually did, for this reason (which is very different from their reason). (iii) The premises the psychiatrist appeals to in diagnosis are faulty in my eyes, but it is best to assume they have some way of achieving a passable level of reliability regarding their conclusions. (There is no adequate basis for me to interact with them if I don't assume this. A Lacanian psychiatrist is going to say, "The premises of British psychiatry are faulty and, consequently, the system is dangerous regarding its conclusions. And Lacan was a great doctor. He knows something." My worry is Lacan has a tantrum upon encountering other systems.)

Let's take "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" as an example. I guess it is not written for someone like you, despite how good at philosophy you are, all your family are, etc. It is written for two kinds of reader. One is highly sensitive to the text's structure and wording (and even literary value), and likely has a degree from Oxford University, such as P.M.S. Hacker or H.J. Glock. The other is not very sensitive at all. They read some of the paper and register that Davidson is attacking an anthropologist claiming that others have an alien conceptual system, and then they take such claims as Davidson's main target. They read on for pages until they encounter talk of radical interpretation. "Finally, Davidson is going to apply his system to attack his target," they think. They register Davidson's claim that the radical interpreter cannot interpret others as having an alien conceptual system. Then, having noticed these things, they make a reasonable guess at his argument. "He is saying that if we cannot verify that others have such a system, then they don't!" (The specific location of the radical interpreter material in the structure of the paper is ignored.)

The playwright Tom Stoppard died last Saturday, 29th November 2025. I found out from the website of the British newspaper The Guardian, which apart from articles also featured a large photograph. In the photograph, Stoppard looked like the distinguished philosopher Crispin Wright and I doubt this was an accident: he makes heavy reference to British philosophy in his plays. I myself have taken Wright as a model for imitation when trying to participate in the dominant kind of comedy here in the North of England: character comedy. I wonder whether this comedy has its roots in the empiricist philosophy dominant in England. I consider what rationalist comedy, as an alternative, would be like, and I propose that it involves inferences which lead to conclusions remote from one’s experiences and are somehow amusing.

There is an article by Mary Beard on the University of Manchester which I cannot find. I also searched for it three years ago extensively and could not find it. It was published not long after the merger between the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST, 2007 perhaps. I remember it clearly though. It said that the University of Manchester is a nouveau riche university which buys up stellar academics, whereas we at Cambridge produce them. I anticipate someone (or someone's) reading my "Why become Simone de Beauvoir?" and wondering what is the difference between my position and Beard's? There I imply that the University of Manchester is heavily influenced by the fame system. Well, there are a number of differences! One difference is I take Beard to be trying to direct the University of Manchester: she aims to change its behaviour. It should focus on producing leading academics, in her eyes. I was not trying to direct the university by my implication. Probably the best thing for it to do is buy up famous academics, and tolerate any mockery. They bring much needed experience and they produce a buzz around the place! And what else to do with the money? Pay teaching assistants more? There are probably people who want the pay to be low, to deter some people from trying to become academics, and you would not want a protest. (See George Bernard Shaw.)

I have lived in my apartment since 2015 and on a couple of occasions have complained about noise in the street at night, to the non-emergency police number. The police don't do anything! But I have probably lost my right to consistently complain. In September 2023, I was in the street late at night pretending to be the French intellectual Simone de Beauvoir. It was meant to be comedy. At worst, I expected to be told firmly to go indoors. I saw the police and ran away, but they apprehended me and forced me into hospital. My mind was clouded from writing a lot, but I certainly did not believe I was Simone de Beauvoir! This is a good portion of what happened. The fame system is different from the quality system, in various fields, probably all fields. If you know a field well, you know this. For example, if you follow football (soccer), you know that there are many players better than David Beckham at his peak but far less famous. I take the neighbouring university to be heavily influenced by the fame system. I suspect there are academics who would even pretend that certain figures don't exist because they are outside the fame system. Whatever I write, I think I am not suitable for the fame system. So I pretended to be Simone de Beauvoir to mock them - here: is this more to your tastes?

John Rawls has tens of thousands more citations than Donald Davidson, according to Google Scholar. Is Rawls therefore more influential? There is a problem. Rawls is mainly cited in politics, law, economics (his home discipline?), and philosophy. That's hardly anything! My current psychiatrist (the fourth one assigned to me) has not even heard of Rawls, except through my references to him. From my experience, there are lecturers interested in Davidson in every department (or discipline area) in my university. In philosophy, in politics, in economics, in anthropology, very probably in computer science. I forgot to ask the current psychiatrist, but I presume she knows of Davidson (and rejects him severely). The main Davidsonian argument in psychiatry (an attempt to extend his system) is this: (1) beliefs come as a whole (you cannot have one belief without having a number of rationally related beliefs); (2) there is no whole set of rationally-related beliefs that come with a delusion (e.g. the delusion that one is dead); therefore (3) delusions are not beliefs.

In my youth, I had discussions with various PhD students in social anthropology at the University of Manchester. And both foreign and native students tell me that they have trouble learning old British functionalist anthropology. They can get value from Foucault, but they can't get value from these works and find them difficult to read. My hypothesis is that these students think: there must be some high value in these old British monographs but (now that the time has past?) I am not clever enough to access this value. Here is a different explanation for why "you" cannot access the value and some others can, a guess I suppose. The others don't use the books that you do. To get going, they use philosopher I.C. Jarvie's fun 1964 book The Revolution in Anthropology (or another Popperian book). It is flippant. It more or less opens by charging Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski with the murder of the great Cambridge don Frazer, with no adequate evidence. It has sections like "The Prophet Dun It", when explaining cargo cults. Despite this unprofessional surface, it is a very useful introduction to British functionalist anthropology. (Sarah Green told me she started off as a Popperian.)

I did some comedy for a few months, between December 2024 and April 2025, and I will probably do some more soon. But I find that some comedic material is better incorporated here, from my perspective. I can go into more detail and I have more reliable (or transparent) systems of feedback, citation, and protection against plagiarism. I used to do a section about the concept of mansplaining. A man is mansplaining (!) when he explains something to a woman in simple language and a number of words, when she just needs a few words to grasp what he aims to convey. He is treating her as less intelligent than she is. It is meant to be an insult, by the way! My criticism of this insult was "I only have two speeds of explanation: too fast for you and too slow for you. So the responsible thing to do is go too slow." (I have this other worry. When you are explaining to a whole group of people, there is someone who wants the explanation speed to be slow enough that they "get it" but also fast enough that a slower-witted competitor in the group does not. The preferred speed is bound up with rational strategy.) Anyway, if my criticism is not enough to kill this insult, one must confront Hal Varian's approach in Intermediate Microeconomics (as I interpret it). His first chapter is difficult and after that you don't complain about any slowness.

One of the criticisms of mainstream economics is that it relies on unrealistic assumptions, for example (an example I am able to give from spending time in economics) that people want as much leisure time as possible. Many people would rather have some work than none. The usual response is that unrealistic assumptions don't matter if the models still predict. But under pressure, the economist is likely to give greater space to behavioural economics. The assumptions there seem more realistic and there is still some maths: they cannot get rid of the maths without devaluing their degrees, because you expect an economics degree holder to be comfortable with some maths. But the mainstream economist sometimes asks, of behavioural economics, is this economics or psychology? A social anthropologist looking in can relate. The fieldwork studies by cognitive scientists are good with conceptual clarity, but they just lack the richness of detail of people's lives that certain other frameworks "produce," leaving aside a few distinguished exceptions. (A question I have: can Susan Carey even do that twice?!) But fieldwork is what anthropology is all about, to most anthropologists. Thus, is this anthropology? The anthropologist can relate to the economist somewhat. But they have a problem with relating further (apart from their communism). They don't know the mathematics to follow the debate in economics and verify that there is an analogous problem. I think the anthropologist can learn it. The anthropologist may think, "I am closer to literature," but I think if you have reached lecturer level in a social science, learning another social science is always easier than going outside: they form a kind. Warning though: most economic textbooks are of no use to get started. I use Hal Varian's Intermediate Microeconomics, which was recommended to me. I read chapters in 2022. The first chapter is hard, but after that it is much easier, though you might have to go slowly and even do the exercises. Reading it will make you better at anthropology as well.

One of Jacques Lacan's most famous and controversial contributions to psychoanalysis is his introduction of variable length sessions. A patient has a session with their psychoanalyst each week, say, but the analyst varies the length of the session. The main reason that is given for this is that with a fixed length, the patient plans the session so that they talk about all kinds of other stuff and they only present the material useful for analysis at the end (or many patients do). A session with a surprise termination gets them saying useful material sooner (with some exceptions of course). If you are a functionalist anthropologist looking at Lacanian psychoanalysis, you will probably set aside this reason altogether and look at the social function that variable sessions have. There is a whole set of people who won't go in for Lacanian psychoanalysis, because they don't want to pay and then get some very short sessions. The people who still go are probably very committed to the Lacanian project: variable sessions guarantees devotees. (By the way, an excitement-craving faux-aristocrat like Lacan probably cannot stand the people attracted by regular length sessions: begone dullards!)