Terence Rajivan Edward

This is an issue raised by various newspaper reviewers of the return of brilliant Cambridge comedians Mitchell and Webb to our national television screens: why can’t the television comedy sketch show survive because it conveniently supplies you with sketches whereas with the competitor, the Internet, you have to scour the Internet for sketches? The obvious answer is that it is not difficult to set up a convenient place for sketches on the Internet. Also, perhaps, um, er, there is a social justice problem if what you are basically about is convenience (all in one place): “I have got some good sketches; let me in too please, Mitchell and Webb.”

Kenneth Arrow: he must be really good. But what is his impossibility theorem in simple terms? Anyway, this is a simple paradox of politics, which may be erased soon enough. (Why preserve what every democratic generation will discover anew?) The sensible position on the political spectrum seems to be the centre. Surely political left and right cannot be entirely stupid, or they would not exist and be well-supported and powerful. It is sensible to accept the left (the socialists) regarding some points and the right regarding other points (the capitalists... and custom-loving conservatives???). But caught between these two intense forces, left and right, it is sensible to simply take a side. Otherwise you will be like these weak unstable referees faced with big strong wrestlers. So it is sensible to take from both, rather than simply agreeing with one, and also it is sensible to simply take a side, insensible not to. How can that be? Perhaps the answer is to distinguish two kinds of goal when assessing the political situation: the goal of determining which policies are best for the country (some mixture) and the goal of determining which reaction to political debate is best for me (taking a side). Of course, regarding the former goal, some will deny that mixture can function in non-ideal circumstances.

This paper is a response to academic Miriam Ronzoni and newspaper pop culture writer Rachel Aroesti. In response to Ronzoni, I introduce the concept of supervenience from analytic philosophy and use it to identify a more mysterious relationship between social justice and the basic structure of society. I then use it to propose an explanation to Rachel Aroesti for why comedy sketches provided by an algorithm are unsatisfying, but I am not sure how true it is. Supervenience, in its simple form, is when a property X is dependent on a set of other properties in the following way: the thing with property X cannot lose this property without some change in the other properties. One can suppose there is this relationship without being able to justifiably say, “Property X arises if and only if the other properties are…”

This paper introduces a paradox: global audiences are larger in recent decades, so we predict more accessible texts; but the more recent entries in a literary theory anthology are often more difficult to understand, more obscure really. How much easier Hume is to understand than Derrida, Foucault, and Lacan: merely slightly old-fashioned language! I consider some solutions to the paradox. After drafting the paper, I rewrote it as an imitation of P.F. Strawson. Some readers may prefer this more elegant presentation; otherwise will value information in the earlier draft.

This paper responds to Anderson Woods’ famous paper against Jeremy Bentham’s use of the formula: the greatest happiness for the greatest number. (Or of the greatest number: no distinction made here.) I reject two objections that Woods makes: that the formula, taken literally, specifies two final ends when it is intended to specify one; and that these ends are inconsistent. Both fail because the ends extracted are incorrect and a correct extraction does not fail to specify a final and consistent end. Then I make my own objection: that the formula is misleading at best, because utility monsters, as they are today called, count for more when the aim is maximizing the happiness in the world.

This paper is an attempt at P.F. Strawson's style. It raises the question of whether philosophers should write for the gratification of outsiders with little knowledge of philosophy. I distinguish between readers seeking literary pleasures, even if the ideas expressed are not new, and readers seeking new ideas. I point out the advantages of being able to communicate to people in neighbouring specialisms at the same time and hopefully being able to better achieve fair evaluation because one will be valued by a reader who is excited by one’s ideas regardless of social hierarchy and fashion. But I also point out disadvantages: obviously it makes the communication of complicated or subtle or nuanced points difficult; the uninitiated reader may not be able to distinguish a small step from what was before and an ingenious leap; and it usually does not help enhance one’s long-term prospects of staying in the philosophy curriculum.

The thought of a machine that writes essays goes back to the nineteenth century at least and in recent years the thought has finally been realized: there are machines which write essays, software which does. Can a machine write good essays though? This paper responds to the sample essay recently provided on Leiter Reports entitled “Contractualism and the Moral Significance of Others: A Critical Appraisal.” The machine’s essay suffers from a major problem and a number of minor weaknesses. The problem and the weaknesses give rise to a paradox: the machine is not good at mechanical tasks. I offer two solutions to the paradox, including that it was simply not written by a machine.

In numerous works, Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern has written of the concept of a relation in her discipline, social anthropology. This paper was prompted by Strathern’s 2025 description of how, as a student, she needed to be told by Esther Goody that societies in conflict are in a relationship: a relationship of enmity. I present an attractive thesis on the Victorian debate between evolutionism versus diffusionism, according to which only the latter always requires the concept of a relation in all its explanations of shared features. I then introduce how relations are normally understood in contemporary analytic philosophy. If we work with this normal understanding, the thesis must be rejected.

There is demand but little supply. I have some desire to read a book of the type The World As I See It, which addresses enduring social questions or prominent social questions of our day, of the sort that are discussed at intellectual dinner parties (or so one imagines). I desire this from various academics, impressive in their specialisms, but they do not produce the desired matter. Others probably desire this too. In this paper, I identify three reasons for why it is not met: “I only give the views of the side I compete for, not my private views,” “My own beliefs on such matters are complicated and it is a mental drain to present them; on such topics I prefer to present a simple view eloquently expressed,” and “I have experienced the gains of a professional social science framework and I apply that, suppressing my private views which are beyond the scope of the framework.”

This paper assesses the famous saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.” It considers an older person who says this and aims to convey: (i) there are generations and I am a member of an older generation; (ii) all members of younger generations have advantages that members of my generation (and any older) do not have; (iii) these advantages are the advantages of youth in general; (iv) it is possible for at least some youths to make good use of these advantages; (v) it is rational for at least some youths to make good use of these advantages; (vi) the possibility is never realized. I introduce the objection that (iv) and (vi) are contradictory: if all youth do not make good use of the advantages of youth, then the best explanation would seem to be that it is impossible for them to. Nevertheless, I continue the evaluation, by examining the Humean thought that youth are irrational given their desires, because of their beliefs, and the thought that aging involves an evidence-based dislodging of a shared set of beliefs, a paradigm. I cannot at present see any reason to think that only the old would have the evidence.

This paper presents an example of a topic inviting amateur psychology in response and introduces some characters: some who try to shut down the topic and some who will allow for it but with greatly reduced amateur psychology. It raises the question of why these characters hate amateur psychology so. Also it introduces a rational actor model in relation to the topic: a model which explains why people in a field look similar. People in a job want to be regarded as competent, so it is rational for them to develop a distinctive look.

Philosophy news sites have recently drawn attention to how there are an increasing number of females being awarded PhD degrees, more than one third. The information is based on United States degrees. Why were there so few female philosophers in the past and why are they increasing now, in philosophy in the English-speaking world? This paper registers difficulties with understanding what is going on, such as there are problems with running a philosophy department which we are unaware of. Without being aware of the problems even, let alone solutions, how can we explain anything? All we can say, it seems, is that we are confronted with a puzzle: an area with famously liberal philosophers strangely has not historically done well with gender equality (and also with various other underrepresented groups). Nevertheless, I consider three guesses for the recent increase, of which I favour one: many are attracted by the increasing heritage-orientation of English-speaking analytic philosophy. (Perhaps some people of the future are interested in some simply-worded reflections of a reasonably intelligent person of our time, on such matters of enduring discussion as the state of philosophy.)

It must be interesting to some people to read the simply-worded reflections of a reasonably intelligent person of his/her time on a topic of enduring discussion, or chatter. For example, which field or profession or specialism has the cleverest people? I present an answer that occurred to me after years of observation but it might be arrived at much sooner by rational actor model. Then I consider challenges to this answer. (I would be careful writing an essay like this, though. “Because it is timeless?” Um, er, um. “Because it is precisely what others would cut in a decision-making process: your essay versus a Hume specialist’s essay say?” Perhaps, but the people who have troubled themselves to converse a lot with me: this is the sort of thing worth reading for them, given how they come across, taken at face value. This is a democratic essay!)

The Telegraph newspaper draws attention to female Labour politicians who have a similar appearance. Why do they all look so similar? One explanation is that this is what voters associate with Labour competence, in woman anyway: if you are a female and have this look, then you are believed to be a competent labour politician. This paper introduces a paradox, which involves the explanation; surely all (or most voters) also believe that it is possible to achieve the look without the competence. I consider three solutions to the paradox.

This paper presents a different objection to the "neo-Kantian" idea of alternative systems of concepts for organizing the same sensory content. In any actual case that is plausibly this, the content (the experience or the pre-experiential sensory input) received by others with an alternative system is actually significantly different. I refer to social anthropology as a source of the objection but the objection as developed there is rejected by British anthropologists. I also appeal to my supposedly psychotic experience to support the objection, but the support is still insufficient.

In February or March 2023, I went shopping for a mother's day card. I could not find any at a local shop and made an inquiry at the counter. The till worked said there were none. I picked up a card which said, "To my wife," brought it to the counter and said, "This might work for someone," alluding to the Oedipus myth. Pleased with my joke, I bought the card. I put it on a mattress next to mine and also another curious card I found. In April 2023, I found they were missing and contacted the police. I asked them if an ELECTRONIC bug could be sent under the door of my apartment and remove the card. In September 2023, I was admitted to North Manchester General Hospital with mental health difficulties and my question was used as evidence of severe mental disorder. I said (a) that the bug question expressed a hypothesis, not a belief; and (b) I abandoned the hypothesis after talking to the police. (From my earlier reading on philosophy of psychiatry, delusions are supposed to be robust: the delusional subject does not abandon them. By the way, Sean Crawford, alarmed, said: you are working on that now!) I was troubled by the fact that my hypothesis was taken as evidence of paranoia and repeatedly asserted its status as hypothesis, but the consultant psychiatrist said that most people don't consider such a hypothesis. (Through my sister in October 2023, I learnt of another psychiatric response: "you acted on the hypothesis - you called the police." But the cards have never been found: it was entirely reasonable for me to call the police and I had other hypotheses, such as ordinary theft. By the way, it is not as if I am married and the to-my-wife card is normal in my home. NONE of these people asked about what was lost and whether it was found.) In a previous contribution, I have raised a concern about the NMGH consultant psychiatrist's appeal to what is normal versus my hypothesis (entitled "Hypotheses as evidence for madness, Humeans"). Here I will raise much the same concern with different detail: if you work in various areas of philosophy, you may well entertain hypotheses that are NOT normally considered in this situation going by statistics. Consider epistemology and philosophy of science, the second area being one I regularly write in. And you might naively introduce one of the less statistically normal hypotheses to a police officer, but certainly not one out-there by the standards of philosophy (evil demons manipulating your perceptual experience, brains-in-vats, etc.). This is especially likely if you believe your work to be of practical relevance, contrary to the common image of philosophy. (By the way, various philosophers would argue that it is rational, given our commonsense starting point, to ignore demons and brains-in-vats hypotheses, BUT do any think it is rational to ignore the electronic bug hypothesis in my 2023 position? The extent to which these people incentivize conformity to an extremely narrow standard of normality, by light or heavy means! "No, it's just for you in that situation." Really? I believe pastoral-lover Elizabeth Gaskell kept a cow in her garden in industrial Manchester!)

What is the female mind? The female mind: what is it like? (Though maybe some females have male minds and some males have female minds; so says Simon Baron-Cohen.) Our stereotypes seem contradictory to me. On the one hand, the female mind is socially intelligent: receptive to the less obvious emotions and thoughts of others, able to detect hints; and to perceive the subtler requirements of complex social situations; etc. (Dear David Liggins and Chris Daly, I should probably look up a definition.) On the other hand, woman is risk averse. She does not take risks, unlike man. But all this receptivity involves risk surely and indeed the stereotypical male mind perceives risks in woman's assessments. Are you not reading too much into that situation? And is that not a coincidence? Maybe when the young psychiatrist who visited yesterday said that your blood sugar levels are at sub-diabetic level, he was not using a metaphor: to express a preference for another Los Angeles rock'n'roll band, more mainstream, or even comment on how far you have reduced your sugary writing compared to what was promised, etc. And maybe it was a just coincidence that the new care coordinator nurse was wearing a Levi's t-shirt and the psychiatrist carried a Levi's bag. And that he looked like a slimmer Michael Rush. (Question: by Western stereotypes, women's receptivity spills over into more metaphysical matters - she is more disposed to superstition, etc. Is the female psychiatric ward much more populated? Or is there a sex-based baseline which is used in diagnosis? "It is nothing abnormal for a woman in your situation to believe... but a man on the other hand"???)

In my experience, a paranoid person can also be suspected of autism. But how to respond to the diagnostic tests if one is famous, or somewhat famous even? In 2023, I asked a nurse if any celebrities ended up in here - North Manchester General Hospital - and he asked me, "Are you not a celebrity, Terence?" If you say, "No", you are autistic, working with overly rigid criteria for celebrityhood and missing various hints. If you say, "Yes", you are paranoid, imagining various powerful institutions are interested in you, academic with a few journal publications and citations number 3000343 or whatever. Perhaps there was no such fork in this context, but my starting worry is that a little bit of fame and medical questions often produce this kind of fork, since one of the standard questions for if you are paranoid (illegitimately paranoid) concerns whether you think messages are being sent to you, including (especially?) by means of various forms national media (e.g. newspapers and television). A further worry is that given the aim of no diagnosis, one feels a pressure to get answers exactly right: never failing to detect a hint but also never overperceiving hints, when the hint detecting business is by its nature risky. But probably biggest of all is this worry: if you are likely to end up with a diagnosis, it is rational to prefer autism. Autism these days is perceived as a disorder with a wide spectrum of instances (overly wide, I believe) and at the milder end of this spectrum, there is just a diagnosis which gives one certain disability benefits, whereas with paranoia it does not take much before one is regarded as a danger to the general public. BUT autism is the boring option. Which of these Instagram videos is responding to me???

I evaluate Professor Nancy Munn’s criticism in her 1994 review of Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern’s 1991 book Partial Connections that Strathern does not refer to “classic sources.” For one end (getting included in collections of important articles on a topic), I suppose that the material would be better presented with reference to classic sources. More specifically, it would be better for Strathern to refer to the rationale presented by E. Evans-Pritchard for focusing on primitive societies: that it is best to start with simple and move towards more complex. Strathern implies a rejection of this rationale, but it seems her work would benefit from being recast in a more traditional academic format.

We Germans, we have always been the best scholars, when all is said and done we are but a race of hardworking homework doers. Yet who amongst us must now not be English, can avoid the Anglo-Saxon path? Even we students of man must tread upon it, when if there is one thing the English intellect does not understand, in its lower and its higher forms, it is man, man with all his animal instincts. Imagine yourself then in an English seminar room, ready to clap the dullard gentleman at the front. He is talking about the evolution of societies, the stages a society must go through, the societies still stuck at earlier stages, and how he can explain the common feature of a society 1 and a society 2 by their being in the same stage. We applaud, as we must, but this being England there is opposition and there is debate and there is discussion: the diffusionist who declares that societies share the same feature because there is a society from which the others learn, the Greeks in ancient times, the Italians during the Renaissance, and who, who in our modern times but the English? He imagines an alpha society in any age, a truly great society, from which the others humbly borrow; but does he not know the ways of the herd, this naive diffusionist? It is that which is a cut above the rest which is most borrowed from: the A- society. “Is this really better than I can do? I am not sure,” thinks the neighbour, and quietly produces his own variation on the idea, the object. “If this were truly great, I would acknowledge it, but this: this I shall make my own version of.” And so there is indeed diffusion, a quiet trickling down a gentle slope.

Have you seen the television sitcom Friends? "No, what is that?" It is a fiction about six friends in swanky New York apartments. One of them is really competitive. Her name is Monica. "Monica?" She does not seem an academic type, but perhaps it is easy enough to turn her into an employed and valuable researcher. You present the academic world as a competitive game with rules and a score. "But how do you score in the academic game?" Well, the obvious answer is that you score by getting a citation. Every citation is a goal or a point or whatever. However, there are obvious concerns about using this citational metric, such as some people's high citation scores are just a matter of having more friends. Also there is this concern, which is less obvious I suppose, and occurred to me only recently. Analytic philosophy is famous for prizing logical skills. But sometimes papers are published in analytic philosophy journals which strangely feature flawed premise-by-premise reconstructions of arguments: often invalid, using the language of logicians, when they could easily be valid. A Monica somehow publishes one of these and it is cited by a researcher on this strange phenomenon, who points out the problems and wonders why it was not blocked. Despite knowing the flaws of citation count as a measure of quality, who amongst us is not affected by noticing the citation count? Yet citation could be for this reason. (Anyway, a lot of Monica-types and there will be problems for your university, I suspect. What research projects is Monica University engaged in, etc?)

I cannot recall where I read that managing lecturers is like herding cats. It might have been in a newspaper article pinned up in the head of school administration’s office, school of social sciences, University of Manchester. Anyway, I disagree with this description. (Well, a lot of things are like other things in some respect or other and if one operates with a very slack standard resemblance, yes there is a resemblance.) Herding cats, as I interpret it, is not a doable project because cats are independent creatures who rarely follow instructions. To understand why I disagree with the management description I read, it will be useful to reflect on the life of Bill Gates. He dropped out of Harvard after his first year there, I believe. Imagine if you proposed doing that. You imagine your parents would force you back for another year. (“No, they wouldn’t. Our parents are liberal.”) Imagine Bill Gates as one of the Cosby children, the ones on the famous television show. (Massive boost in ratings!) Claire Huxtable says, "You talk to him Cliff, because he is certainly not leaving Harvard." Are ethnic minority parents illiberal compared to white parents? Instead I propose that Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford and other elite universities: they have ways of detaching students from parental advisory systems, showing them that their parents are clueless and it is time to largely stop listening to them. At the University of Manchester, we have no such system, I assume! FURTHERMORE, we do not have a way of convincing lecturers to listen more to our advisory systems. But they listen to some people. For example, look at all these solid lecturers, some of them based in other provincial universities, who suddenly began work on trans-rights: Doctor Kathleen Stock gave up her polished work on aesthetics to focus on this; Doctor Rebecca Reilly-Cooper gave up her Rawls research to focus on this, etc. There is probably an old fox at Oxford, to use Isaiah Berlin's misleading metaphor, who advised them all: does not do fully-baked work probably, but makes shrewd proposals. The lecturers (who seem so cat-like to us) are very herdable for this person. (Maybe I should be more subtle and say, "Managing lecturers is like herding cats FOR US." But the description I read is meant to identify a general problem.)

I first started teaching for the politics department - or discipline area - in the University of Manchester school of social sciences in 2011. I was a teaching assistant on a large course, with Qi Zheng: Introduction to Political Theory. We were the only ethnic minority teaching assistants, the other eight or nine being white Englishmen or English women, all PhD students or just finished. The course giver was Canadian. Later in that decade the staff composition of undergraduate political theory courses began to change significantly, with lecturers from the European Union and teaching assistants too. Also I lost teaching in this area. I am not racist, but I FEEL the introduction of European Union lecturers is introducing a different psychology to the traditional kind applied in the Anglo-Saxon world: rational actor models. I have drawn attention to one difference in an imitation of mine of Renata Salecl: “we” use a prisoner's dilemma model to predict violence in the state of nature as the rational option given the risk to property and chance of gaining new property, whereas Lacanians predict violence by neurotic subjects in order provoke the law to existence, for this kind of subject cannot bear too thin an authoritative structure of rules. But differences in psychology probably have more transparent practical relevance: I propose adding "The main way you can improve..." to essay feedback to prevent a student from latching onto a minor criticism as the source of their problems (assuming a rational actor intent on getting the highest marks they can), whereas the Lacanian says, "Give the student more room for misinterpretation, or they will become aggressive." Miriam Ronzoni at various points expresses sympathy with the works of Slavoj Žižek. But why are the Anglo-Saxon countries successful in the way that they are? An answer is that they lock up this kind of supposedly emotionally intelligent psychology. (Perhaps human nature is different in these countries, or perhaps they don't care about human nature that much.)

Essay writing feedback: it has a history of being a source of discontent. In the first decade of this century it was: "We are not getting enough essay writing feedback." In the next decade it was: "We are paying £9000 and we are not getting enough essay writing feedback." How do your improve your essay writing feedback? Here is a problem you might face. You give three pieces of essay writing feedback, one of which is referencing related. 10% can be deducted for referencing errors, such as no page numbers on Harvard-style references when the text has page numbers. (By the way, I saw someone in Waterstones Deansgate with a Yale University sweater and I asked him, "Are you to teach referencing?" I thought that was a good joke. "Oh my, telling that joke to a stranger, what ECCENTRIC behaviour!" Imagine if these people actually met an English eccentric.) What you find is that the student says to her friend, "I didn't get a first because I forgot to put a page number for my Tolstoy reference." A solution, from now on do this for below a first class: say "The MAIN WAY that you can improve, given where you are, is as follows:..." But the Lacanian school, with their expertise in the human soul, think that the student does not want their space for misinterpretation to be reduced, so that they have to confront where their main weakness is. And maybe no one gives out below first class now.

FIRST HALF. I was looking through the psychiatry faculty of Penn Medicine, wondering of course do they have a better "system" there than at the University of Manchester, which gets the average doctor ahead? (Probably because the University of Manchester gets rid of people, such as myself, who work out or detect better systems, such as a better template for your description of research. STUPID! “But why keep you when we have a clever old fox in Oxford who provides us solid workers with ideas?”) What do these Pennsylvanian shrinks do research on? This one does research on insomnia and being bipolar (are you not sleeping at night? you must be suicidal?); this one does research on mitochondria and Alzheimer's disease; this one does research on autism in mouse models; this one does research on adolescent therapy and ideas of suicide... Hey, wait a minute: are they all even psychiatrists? Ian Frank does research on antibodies and HIV and HIV vaccines. I didn't even know there were antibodies against HIV. Anyway, what is he doing in this faculty? A puzzle, a puzzle! A solution: HIV affects mental health. A solution: "We started putting one in out-of-context person and we haven't worked out why this is a good idea yet." An even better solution: none of the others know much medicine or biology, apart from some psychiatry and perhaps mouse brains, and Frank is there in case anyone expects them to know stuff. What is a vaccine? "Not sure, but my colleague Dr. Frank can help!" SECOND HALF. Look at all the co-authors on these articles. One sometimes reads of how scientists collaborate in teams and philosophy should be more like that. I recall the distinguished popular scientist Steve Jones telling us about how science is done in teams, who trust each other's knowledge, whereas philosophy disgustingly has individual thinkers. BUT consider this. I was taken to North Manchester General Hospital in September 2023 and when I first met the consultant psychiatrist, I asked him, "Are you really a doctor? What is in the cell?" and he included amongst the items the cell membrane! More than a month later he told me that every time you have a psychotic break, it is harder for your brain to get back to normal, so you must avoid letting this happen to you again. To Steve Jones or whoever: how can I trust the psychiatrist after his cell membrane answer? Anything he tells me I now have to double-check. (Anyway, in the various fields/arenas/etc. I write in, I am probably not good enough to compete without taking risks to my mental health. What about you? Soon "Submit" is replaced with "Dopamine hit".)

Yesterday I read a Guardian review of a recent television comedy sketch show. The review was by Rachel Aroesti and it writes of the almost total eradication of this type of show. But it does not consider why it has been almost eradicated. The obvious answer is competition from sketches which are only available by a newer kind of technology: the Internet. Aroesti fascinatingly says that such sketch shows are valuable not just because of the comedic joy they bring, but also because they are an important mechanism for digesting the world. I would like to add to the big issue of why there is near extinction by saying that I use Internet sketches for such digestion. Some of them are local and done by friends. Others are not. I watch these Chinese Instagram shows wenjiang_caihuaxiaoyuan. It features mainly a team of four female comedians; usually one of them is teaching the others or some of the others. They regularly misinterpret her, in a way that seems on purpose. She may be the same age as them (young women; Chinesettes I "unwisely" call them) but she is looking tired to me. I really relate to these sketches. Some local students are like this too, but also I have officially or unofficially taught a variety of Chinese students, more than half of them women, and a few of them are very like the ones depicted on the show. In the age of China dominance, I suspect many people all over the world have similar experiences, because young attractive Chinese women are sent to "unlock" male dominated overseas systems. The Instagram comedy is all Chinese so far, but maybe overseas comedians are in a better position to digest some of our experiences than the usual posh British TV folk. You should have seen me before and after helping some Chinese postgraduates! For analytic philosophers in general, the Instagram sketches are paradoxically interesting because we are used to reading about this: a distinguished Western analytic philosopher goes to China and the Chinese say to him, "We in China respect our teachers; you criticize your teachers," and the Timothy Williamson figure says, "We respect our teachers by criticizing them," each in their tribal costume, metaphorically speaking.