Terence Rajivan Edward

An undergraduate who studies various humanities-faculty disciplines is likely to find the preoccupations of analytic philosophy to be strange and isolated. “We study Foucault in politics, we study Foucault in social anthropology, we study Foucault in literature, but in analytic philosophy we study what is a proposition and how can we informatively say that Hesperus is Phosphorus.” The paradox is that these isolated academics do not bond with other isolated disciplines in the humanities faculty, such as economics. “Surely the loners have to band together in this hostile world, but actually there is little bonding.” I present a quick solution and then three explanations of why there is little bonding, two of which are these: the analytic philosopher’s appetite for exploring “little holes” - positions that probably only a very careful and slow reasoner would detect - prevents bonding with other isolated projects; and the academics between these projects (e.g. political philosophers) are not able to channel information adequately, so leading figures don’t know enough about each other’s discipline. This paradox seems very similar to Tim Crane’s though. Anxious about this, I give one reason to think it is different though.

Today I read a paradox, which I believe was first conceived by Stuart Hampshire: Hume is influential in contemporary philosophy, but he does not meet the rules of contemporary British philosophy, which are oriented towards proof. Like a lawyer, one must check every sentence one writes for its truth and what objections may be raised against it, we are told. I try to formulate the paradox precisely and offer three proposal as to why Hume is influential, three attempted solutions to the paradox: various claims of his can be reformulated in precise and even provable terms; the rules are not insisted upon for cherished members of “our broad tradition”; the description of contemporary philosophy is mistaken. Strangely all three solutions offered seem correct to me!

A foreign author of some significance appears upon your shores. ("What shores?") What happens? There are sure to be imitations of him and indeed various foreign authors are much imitated. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid thinking that there is a question being posed: what is so special about this foreigner, for an ordinary skilled fellow such as myself can do that too? Often these imitations are largely forgotten with the passing of time. But what about in philosophy? Do people not think "I can do something like that too" and even pose the question? "It would be plagiarism," you might think. But you can do things broadly like a philosophy without strictly copying them and also the work would presumably be harder to marginalize, because of the contribution to knowledge. One might look at Hume's contributions and say, "Okay, Hume has a problem of inductive reasoning, but here is another problem of inductive reasoning. Okay, Hume has a type of inferential error he points out, inferring what we ought to do purely from what is, but here is another type of inferential error." In philosophy, we know people who have other problems of inductive reasoning but we do not know people who have really gone far with this kind of project. (I also have identified a type of inferential error now.) Surely such projects have been pursued before. But we don't know about them, or at least people who are not extreme experts don't know, or they are not part of our public knowledge. Why not? "Those who pursue them usually go mad, before they can get much further and the greatness of Hume dawns upon their social circle." "It is a typical reaction of patriotic people to an imported product, so we don't even try, but people sufficiently clever in another land may be directed towards better tasks." "The incentive to do it is too low: there is never going to be The Cambridge Companion to Faux Hume."

The much-loved British actress Prunella Scales died yesterday. This paper takes the form of a dialogue between myself and a foreign friend. The description of her most famous role does not sound promising: it seems a stock role, the gossip-loving sensible wife of a bumbling ambitious man. To resolve the puzzle of why her acting work is much appreciated, I make a comparison between Scales’ work and Terence Horgan and Mark Balaguer on the paradox of analysis. It is an obvious response they offer in outline, but superbly crafted. This is a casual perspective on Scales, not that of an expert! I hope it is not too soon: it is not meant to be critical.

Tim Crane reviewing a Marxist history of analytic philosophy writes, “the paradox is that the more analytic philosophy became dominant in the universities, the more it became removed from the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests.” It is like an examination. It is at least two actually: the first examination question is “What is the solution to this paradox?”; the second examination question is “Can you knock out the ‘the’: present a paradox so that it is merely a paradox, even given the whole context in which Crane writes?”! I am not sure. I shall present three other paradoxes in response, and one beforehand concerning a Joseph Conrad imitator.

A problem that was raised to me by various female lecturers more than a decade ago or longer is “Although there are plenty of women in my field, there are few women professors.” The explanation would seem to be sexism. But actually there is an alternative explanation (though from my own experience as a member of an under-represented group, I am not quite convinced by it). The explanation is that a number of academics, including women, subscribe to the ideology of specialization. They specialize heavily, limit the range of their reading consequently and tend to associate mainly with people they can talk to about their research. But at the level of professor (or a higher level these days), that turns out to be a problem: one is expected to address a wider range of audiences. This paper is written as an imitation of Milan Kundera, although it seems far less misogynist overall.

I respond to Tim Crane’s paradox of analytic philosophy’s success: “the paradox is that the more analytic philosophy became dominant in the universities, the more it became removed from the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests.” Is it actually paradox, because we have analytic political philosophy, analytic ethics, and applied ethics? I argue that the same or a similar paradox can be posed once these areas of research are drawn attention to. “What about all this other stuff?!” I also argue for distinguishing between the question of whether philosophers ought to address the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests and the question of how analytic philosophy could have expanded without doing so.

Some people introduce a new term for something and it proves popular and they become known as the introducer of that term. Other people introduce a new term for something and it proves popular but their name is not known. Is this not an issue of social justice? I raised this question of what credit we should give before, in an essay, and here I imagine someone’s producing a system of accreditation which addresses the question and aims at social justice. My poor essay will be a footnote at best. But maybe lonely people cannot motivate themselves to read the complicated system but lonely people can read my essay. I wonder whether a certain philosophical couple is irrational, a couple politely unnamed here, because one member seems suited to producing the system and the other member seems suited to writing for lonely people, but she sounds opposed to the task.

I wonder whether the introduction of the word “thick” was influenced by an essay by George Bernard Shaw, in which he presents a difficulty with conveying a new idea to some people: head solid like a billiard ball. But an objection to introducing a term for what he describes is that we already have the word “stupid.” The objection can be overcome by appealing to the value of the metaphor for anyone who experiences the difficulty. But if it was actually overcome like this, that seems an extremely foxy term introduction: shrewd, cunning. I would probably not bother myself, given the objection.

Since the Enlightenment, most famously in the writings of Adam Smith, we have been advised to specialize. And specialization is recommended within a field too. One “man” deals with metaphysics, another with the foundations of political constitutions, etc. But it is predictable that with the rise of essay writing machines (or software), that there will be human versus essay writing machine competitions, and it is a disadvantage for the human competitor to be specialized by our standards. Also fields in which specialization is strictly imposed, or whole universities, will shamefully have no competitor to put forward. Who will the University of Myopia’s person be?

This paper responds to an Instagram comedy sketch which strikes me as paradoxical. A girl asks another girl whether she studied for the exam later. The other says that she did not really study. After the exam, they are discussing their results. The girl who claimed to not really study got 99, whereas the girl who asked got only 10. I assume 100 is the highest possible score. But isn’t friendship between people of comparable intelligence? They are friends, friendship is between people of comparable intelligence, and their exam results are wildly divergent: how? I consider these solutions: an exception to the friendship generalization; they are not actually friends; and my favoured solution of course: the examination system has a problem.

The Internet provides a wealth of comedy videos for us to enjoy and a site called Instagram has an algorithm which presents me with many. But some of these videos, unlike my own, appear to be the product of a team effort (discounting whoever built my apartment as a member of my team, etc.). There are actors in the sketch and I suspect others are writers and people who do graphics for the video. But these others get no accreditation. But surely they want accreditation and some may even think it is an injustice that they are not accredited. Why do they do the work then? One explanation is that someone pays them and the money compensates for the lack of accreditation. Another explanation is that they cannot get creative jobs which give them accreditation, on reasonable terms anyway: you only get them if you are a part of a social network and they are not. A third explanation is that some of these comedy videos copy their main idea from other videos and a process of accreditation would require crediting the original source, which they don’t want to do. There are probably other explanations.

This document does my best to turn various papers and contributions of mine into one-liners (or two-liners, if the term is taken literally; there are a few three-liners too). Also there are some totally "underived" ones! Perhaps you ought to do this too, whatever the conventions you are accustomed to. SAMPLE. 1. Yes, some people can change the path they are on, but it takes two world wars for that to happen. 10. If you think anarchism is so bad, then when you have evidence the government is so bad you will probably dismiss it. 11. O Prophet, you are 9 out of 10 but you can be 8.5 out of 10 and the same people will receive your message; and you need to be 9.5 for anyone else to. (A response to Foucault on psychiatry.) 31.If you are trying to beat a lot of competition by having the bonus of a fine writing style, you probably need to add a little poem too.

PhilPapers, if you are at risk of deletion, it makes sense to do some not fully baked work. I have reduced some of my papers and other contributions to one line quotes. Also one of Helen Beebee's - well, my reaction to it anyway. A SAMPLE. 1. I know that someone is following me, but I have not seen them; it is simply rational for someone to; 2. A warning surely: the University of Manchester has books on Sri Lankan fiction but no books by the authors who wrote the fictions; 6. They say “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” but those who literally spare the rod usually have a metaphorical one; 8. The science of economics does not progress much because if you come up with a clever model, you keep it to yourself and make money with its predictions; 36. When you tell an atheist to accept an explanation because the alternative is an incredible fluke, they say, “A lot of things are incredible flukes, like that we exist.”

This paper responds to a remark I found in Tim Crane’s review of a Marxist history of analytic philosophy by Christoph Schuringa. The remark is by Frankfurt School theorist Max Horkheimer: logical positivism is “only a miserable rearguard action of the formalistic epistemology of liberalism, which also in this area turns into open servility to fascism.” In earlier years, I would have dismissed Horkheimer. But I have made a speculative proposal which converges with Horkheimer’s thinking. Even though it is a speculation, it probably makes more sense to people than Horkheimer. Even if the leading figures of analytic philosophy are liberal, they need people to teach for them and run departments, etc. I speculated that they face a choice between highly tactical liberals and racist xenophobic nationalists and prefer the latter, because these people maintain craft excellence or lapse only slightly from it. An R.K. Narayan short story, “Father’s Help,” although set in South India, presents the development of the tactical type.

I feel you don’t like this kind of stuff, PhilPapers Editors, and seemingly one of my friends does not, but some of my other friends do I suspect: they love it even! I present a paper which on the one hand shows considerable evidence of social intelligence. The author is able to realize why jokes cause offence and the various motives for telling jokes which potentially cause offence and even unconscious attitudes. On the other hand, taking the author’s writing at face value, he does not appear to understand that his abstract will trigger certain expectations and furthermore that the order of discussion he specifies, in combination with the abstract, will. Paradoxically, on the one hand he is able to mind read so well; on the other hand so poorly! My apologies to all concerned.

Analytic philosophers nowadays also write histories of their discipline, or some do, but do they do this as one might expect? Much as they sit around discussing some paradox, which they think involves a false conclusion but has premises we find attractive, so you might expect them to start with a mythical history and then explain what is wrong with it. Do they do this? I am not convinced they do. In this paper, I introduce a mythical history of analytic philosophy and journalism relations, in which this happened: era 1, analytic philosophers sought to distinguish themselves from journalists by having short papers requiring LITTLE RESEARCH, which presented clever responses to clever puzzles; era 2, analytic philosophers decided that certain topics could safely be treated more journalistically, because the newspapers do not cover such abstract topics. The paper is written as an imitation of modernist poet, essayist, and fiction writer Laura Riding. I use discussion of the is-ought gap to illustrate my mythical history, but end up unfortunately devaluing Professor Charles Pigden.

I recently wrote a paper in which I imagined having a conversation with a friend (or conversational partner), in which I cast doubt on a description of a government policy recommendation: it is described as scientific but the argument for it is based on a value and a controversial one furthermore. I imagined not knowing Hume and him/his sitting down and explaining his is-ought gap: that you cannot validly derive a conclusion about what you ought to do purely from factual statements. I imagined finding it interesting, but soon moving on to other points I wish to make, not recognizing its wider significance. Well, is that better than what you would do? Here I replace the conversational partner I imagined with a lady philosopher. Doing so led me to an is-ought gap counterexample. “Everything we do is determined by the initial state of the universe, so it is not true that we ought to keep our promises. We are only morally responsible agents if there is free will.”

Tom Stoppard, the most famous playwright of recent years within the British theatre scene, died yesterday. His work and responses to it give rise to a number of puzzles, for me, some of which I address here, though meaning no disrespect to the recently deceased. One is why his Czech birthplace is emphasized so much: he left the country before age two. Another is why The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard was published in 2001? Surely the time for publishing such a work is after the author ceases output. I note the more influential Milan Kundera has no such thing to his name. I address these puzzles, but the puzzle I focus more on here is: why become a playwright? Writers, we stereotypically imagine, are sensitive, introverted characters, while a play is a production in which those involved are part of a big team. I consider three answers: Stoppard became interested in writing plays after being a journalist critic on theatre; his father was a major in the British army and writing plays is what duty to, or a felt duty to, some group required him to do - it is a militarylike project of dominating and defending a field; and being a playwright is a rational solution to the problem of wanting control over the artwork and wanting to share it with others, who will hopefully value it. To be realistic, the hope requires relinquishing control to such an extent, one might as well become a playwright, rather than novelist or poet or short story writer.

Tim Crane writes: "Anyone with the slightest familiarity with recent AI will know that AI machines are already smarter than us. AI machines have for some time been far better than humans at chess, they have beaten the world champion of Go, they are much better than most of us at remembering phone numbers, searching documents for information, finding the best route to your destination on public transport, and (of course) at mathematical calculations. They are computers, after all, and that’s what computers do — compute. But of course, this is not what people mean when they talk about the machines becoming smarter. They mean that an AI might become ‘smart’ in the way that we are smart, but perhaps to an even higher degree. It might be able to think, to reason, to make decisions, to be creative, inventive, witty, reasonable, sensitive to other creatures and… whatever else it is that we are talking about when we say that someone is smart or intelligent." I suspect it is quite to easy to write code which produces the effect of wit. A word processor has a dictionary which divides words into common and uncommon. Every other use of an uncommon word, it changes into another similar word in spelling or sound. Maybe this is enough to produce the effect of a witty editor up to mischief. "Oh gosh, that is a meaningful change."

This paper examines the paradox of the insecurity sharer: a person who shares with strangers what they are worried about (insecure about). Doing so, violates what Francis Bacon says about friendship: that one only shares such stuff with a friend. In 2014, Guardian journalist Emma Brockes wrote of actress Diane Keaton (who recently passed away), “The irony of all this is that writing about her insecurities to this degree requires her, at some level, to be profoundly secure.” I present three solutions to the paradox: the insecurity sharer is mad; the insecurity sharer is acting; and, a clever solution maybe - what is rational for some famous people to share is simply different from what we (and Bacon) think rational. If you find that you strangely cannot get a good therapist, it is rational to seek help from anyone.

I introduce a hypothesis: that at present some anthologies of best short stories feature a short story by an author which is not their best, to any reader or almost any reader, but if you investigate the author’s short fiction further, you find a story which merits inclusion. I developed this hypothesis after observing inclusion in an anthology, edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If it is true, titles such as The Best Short Stories 2021 are misleading. "Clues as to who wrote the best short stories of 2021" is perhaps a more accurate title! And does not social justice require accuracy? (There is a paradox in here that refers to THE PHILOSOPHER'S ANNUAL.)

The distinguished anthropologist Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern, now in her eighties, has been writing on Newton for about a decade. Presumably, her long association with the University of Cambridge influenced this choice. My response to this choice of subject does not concern the detail of her writing, rather social structure, a traditional theme of British social anthropology. I pose the question: should geniusesfor-everyman such as Newton and Darwin be at Cambridge? Should not the lecturers at a Cambridge college be all experts who fall short of greatness? But why? I consider some explanations.

I watched a government debate on first cousin marriage, in which one participant argued for a ban on the grounds of health risk whereas another argued for sensitivity to entrenched community ways and genetic screening for couples at risk. The first participant’s recommendation was described as scientific by the video commentary, the second’s as empathetic. I “naturally” thought of Hume’s is-ought gap in response to the first description. But how would I respond if I had not heard of Hume and somehow he sat down, while I was having my typical conversation with some conversational partner or other (sharing lots of “microideas), and he introduced his idea of a gap to me. I would not recognize its significance, I think.

This paper responds to an interesting government news video which begins with British politician Lucy Powell but then considers a debate about whether to ban first cousin marriage, which a community or set of communities in the United Kingdom show a preference for: there is a suggestion that the preference spread through migration from rural Pakistan. The video contrasts the scientific recommendation of Richard Holden (ban it on grounds of health risk) with the empathetic recommendation of Iqbal Mohammed (be sensitive to entrenched community practice and perspectives and introduce genetic screening for couples at risk). I contest the adequacy of this contrast, because of values involved in justifying Holden’s approach (valuing health risk reduction above giving greater free choice of partner) and the scientific research involved in justifying Mohammed’s approach, including social science (learn their perspectives, use genetic screening). I suspect utilitarianism allows for Mohammed’s approach. Mohammed’s approach seems closer to social anthropology, but I introduce structural-functionalist social anthropology, which does not depend on community explanations for why there is the preference. It is not empathetic. A structural-functionalist would raise the puzzle of how a society which implements this preference can maintain a coherent social structure given the health risk, and address it: obvious options being deny that there is such a health risk or identify a compensatory value for maintaining the social structure (e.g. binding an extended family together, ensuring they do better as an economic unit).

The initial idea of fair equality of opportunity is that if two people are both capable of doing a job and would be equally good at it, then they should stand an equal chance of getting it, whereas if one is less capable then they should stand a less chance. Fair equality is recommended (mostly famously by John Rawls) with the hope of overcoming situations in which certain jobs are dominated by people of a certain social class. But it faces what I call the problem of generational jobs: for a member of your family (or social network) to get one of these jobs normally requires adaptation by them for that end over generations: a clever child cannot do it without this preparatory work from previous generations, modifying the background of assumptions say. With this in mind, I discuss Diane Keaton, who recently died. Diane Keaton was known as an actress at the core of the world-famous American film industry and a stylish dresser, but she also directed films, for which she has no impressive reputation. She has a surprising image of herself in the role, looking to me like a military man’s housewife, and I think she is suggesting that this is a generational job and while she has built impressively upon the background of her ancestors as actress and style icon, she is no better than them here. I also comment on the relationship between the newspapers and the academic world.

I identify the central puzzle of the film Annie Hall as "Why should we keep watching after the animation in which Annie Hall is depicted as an evil queen?" We watch a highbrow film like this for its complex characters (rounded, three-dimensional) and the complex situations they are involved in, which require subtle emotional and intellectual sensitivity to understand and great talent to depict, or that is a traditional account of why anyway. But as their relationship fades, the Woody Allen character shows us a children's cartoon as a more accurate portrait of his relations with Annie Hall, in which she is an evil fairytale queen. I consider three solutions to the puzzle: that Woody Allen is not being honest here in order to achieve comic effect; that he is being honest but his neurotic nature prevents him from perceiving the situation accurately; and a third solution is that it is not actually a children's cartoon. I am not convinced by any of these solutions and actually stopped watching on the last occasion.