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386I observe common ground and differences between the first page of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and Christina Rossetti’s Commonplace.
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558I make a proposal for how one can continue to teach poetry through official channels in a liberal society, conceived as a set of rules for citizens who disagree on a lot of things, including the value of poetry. The proposal is to quote inspiring or relevant poems in textbooks for other disciplines.
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470I anticipate someone who dismisses Sophocles as mere literary craftsperson of high skill, arguing that such craftspeople turn up generationally and that the credit should go to the mythmakers.
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412This is my response to a premise-by-premise argument in Anca Gheaus’s “Biological Parenthood: Gestational, Not Genetic.”
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2169This is a two page handout summarizing a number of objections made against Robert Graves's book of Greek myths.
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385Various tribes deny that pregnancy is caused by sexual relations. Is this irrational? I present a puzzle involving testimony which some tribes might once have faced.
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679This paper presents an obvious explanation for why Oedipus even attempted to solve the Sphinx’s riddle, given the high cost of failure.
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621This paper reflects on an article that appeared after the death of A.J. Ayer, which complains about what British philosophers focus on. I propose that the content of the philosophy curriculum can be predicted from a rational actor model.
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708This paper proposes that before the opening of Sophocles’ play Oedipus the King, the “hero” had to solve a lot of riddles.
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443This is a dialogue based on three distinct essays I earlier wrote. The three essays present four speculative theories of the origins of art altogether. One is the group demarcation account, according to which the arts originated from the desire of a group of humans to demarcate themselves from outsiders. Another is the "scientific" account, according to which the arts originated from experiments on what effects can be made upon the mind, upon human minds, such as what scares. A third is the surp…Read more
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406By means of a brief Socratic dialogue, I consider the question of whether organizing involves destruction, prefaced by a poem of course.
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493I distinguish two senses of the word “offer.” I do so within a brief pastiche, which I put down to the influence of the European Union.
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571This paper presents an objection to the theory of names according to which what a name refers to is determined by a description that the speaker or writer associates with that name. Some names are associated with paradoxical descriptions. I use the reputations of Henry Sidgwick and J.M.E. McTaggart to illustrate this problem.
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604In this paper, I propose that there are or will be examples where the principle of charity recommends an interpretation which makes a text more true than another interpretation, whereas the rival interpretation improves on making sense of its form.
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630I propose a solution to the paradox of the kalela dance, as presented by Richard Werbner, based on a variety of liberalism I once identified.
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159This paper rejects an attempt to define what an idiot is for when Henry Sidgwick tries to clarify the doctrine that each individual should be given as much freedom from interference as possible.
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494I respond to Dan Lowe’s charge that libertarianism, or the most defensible version, involves an unacceptable “asymmetry of value.” I argue that there is an inconsistency between Lowe’s approach to counterexamples and his eventual objection.
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400I consider the question of whether Annie Saumont is simply a disciple of Descartes in her fiction “You Should Have Changed at Dol.” Other interpretations are available according to which her commitments are more qualified.
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503In this paper, I present some obstacles I envisage analytic philosophy facing as it spreads abroad. I use a paradox to illustrate these obstacles.
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586This paper makes a comparison between Milan Kundera and Annie Saumont. I assume there is a message being sent by Saumont in her highly recommended short story “You Should Have Changed at Dol,” regarding history in Kundera, but what is the message? I offer two interpretations.
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481When Pierre Bourdieu addresses the problem of why people from certain discriminated groups are hardly present in some fields, he emphasizes the role of stylistic factors that cannot be captured in terms of rules. An alternative explanation refers to split systems, both of which can be captured by means of rules.
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986This is a one page handout, which draws attention to subtle adaptations that H.L.A. Hart makes regarding material from Henry Sidgwick, when he debates with Rawls and appeals to Sidgwick's objections to the priority of liberty. These adaptations challenge the impression that Rawls should have known better.
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638This is a two page handout, briefly summarizing late nineteenth and early twentieth century philosopher Henry Sidgwick's objections to giving all citizens a right to as much equal freedom as possible. H.L.A. Hart, who uses the material in a notable paper, also figures.
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508I consider Timothy Williamson’s objection that we do not have any reason to regard reflective equilibrium as a philosophical method. I present what I think a Rawlsian advocate of the method would say, or could say.
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1347This paper responds to material from Scott Soames’s wide ranging book The World Philosophy Made, material which I am actually tempted to overlook. Soames adds a detail to a criticism H.L.A. Hart makes of John Rawls, but I argue that Soames cannot consistently endorse this criticism, given his acceptance of trickle-down economics and his aspiration to cohere with a dominant strand of right-wing American philosophy.
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680Timothy Williamson objects that we do not have any reason to regard reflective equilibrium as a philosophical method, whether good or bad. For Williamson, a proposed method of inquiry, whether good or bad, must meet these conditions: it should identity a source of evidence (e.g. the stream of sensory experience or the faculty of sensory experience); it should answer the question of what kind of evidence this source provides (e.g. information about the external world, information that is not nec…Read more
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499One way of trying to justify the thesis of the underdetermination of scientific theories is by actual examples. In this paper, I present a paradox which arises from trying to justify the thesis in this way.
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452I make some proposals regarding which paradoxes Dr. Johnson was referring to in a preface.
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453I present an argument against the very idea that anthropology can contribute to the study of specialization. But an obvious reply is “Actually anthropologists at home can study specialization.” I provide some details concerning this reply, focusing on incentives to specialize directed at sensitive souls.
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655In this paper, I draw attention to an obstacle to determining to what extent the portrait of normal science as a problem-solving activity applies outside the natural sciences. I give two examples from social anthropology, one from the heyday of British structural-functionalism and one from recent British anthropology, “responding” to Marilyn Strathern’s problem of the feminist fieldworker. (NOTE: there is a duplicate of this but neither may be showing on my profile. A proverb: the guest hates th…Read more
Manchester, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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