Terence Rajivan Edward

Come, all prize-winning Dylans, and look at what I have found! Maria Popova is a high-profile essayist based in America. She has written on Milan Kundera's book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, including one piece on what he has to say there on chance. The essay of hers that I have in mind is entitled "Milan Kundera on the Power of Coincidences and the Musicality of How Chance Composes Our Lives." A striking feature of this essay is that it is dated September 11th 2023. "9/11" it says within the website address. The numbers are highly significant to Americans: a day of a month when their country was spectacularly attacked, often used to refer to this attack. Is Popova trying to convey something by this choice of posting date, or is it just a coincidence? If I may risk getting involved with such matters, I believe she is trying to convey something. It will take a few sentences to justify this belief (if justification be possible). Her essay deals with the significance for human beings of coincidences. She summarizes Kundera thus: "It is important, Kundera argues, to be awake to serendipity — for letting coincidences go unnoticed deprives our lives of 'a dimension of beauty.' " Kundera writes: "it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he deprives his life of a dimension of beauty." (Part 2, section 11) But you can notice mysterious coincidences and interpret them (or explain them) but in a way that makes you experience unpleasantness rather than beauty. (Why did your son stand under the granary at the precise time at which termites caused it to fall? Evans-Pritchard's Azande attribute witchcraft here, instead of saying that it is just a coincidence.) Kundera overlooks the possibility of chiding a man in a way that merely causes experiences of unpleasantness in response to coincidences thenceforth noticed. Popova does not say anything about this in her essay, but her choice of posting date suggests to me that she is aware of the problem. I think this: she is indicating that she is aware of the overlooked possibility, by causing readers to get involved with interpreting her posting date without thereby experiencing beauty. Very clever! (But it could be that she is merely aware of the possibility of interpreting SOME coincidences one notices without experiencing beauty, rather than all of them. If so, she does not realize 'my' objection to Kundera above. If aware, I suppose I prefer her to just say it. Is it taboo?)

Everything we do is merely human, but what is it to be human? That is a question for we far-sighted birds, we anthropologists. But of course today there is another seeker who calls themselves by the name of anthropologist. How these Englishmen pervert the use of words! The question of what is man has receded; they are fieldworkers, stiff English fieldworkers, seeking out the views of this individual and that, as if these individuals were not entirely creatures of the herd - as if distinguishing them were not as pointless an endeavour as identifying the heroic sheep. If the question figures at all, it figures only to prompt the views expressed, views which the anthropologist-fieldworker dare not himself evaluate, lest they ring hollow. Once the English anthropologist would enter the remotest of tribes, now he is confined to his own villages. But what picture can he paint of these villages and their individuals with their views, their views even of man? In a neat little book, one such fieldworker tells us of a farmer: “Doris feels that women are as different from men as Jersey cows are from Fiesians. Indeed, rather like Jerseys, women are anxious and unpredictable creatures. They are emotional and weak, nervous and prone to worry: they need patient handling. Meanwhile, like Friesians, men are large, predictable beasts. Also, they are independent ‘loners’ who do not show their true feelings, and they do everything to extremes, from working to drinking to fighting.” (Nigel Rapport 1993: 88) Who in our day shares their views of man and woman, if they are even so brave as to suppose that these two exist? Yes, who offers up this juicy vein from which the fieldworker draws blood? Farmer Doris and friends! Only they are suitable for this English anthropology, this characteristic product of a scientific age, preoccupied with the facts of who said what, that it can observe and record; but what of those who will not talk with the fieldworker, or only talk after years? And what too of the speech which hides itself in mumblings or whisperings? The portrait is of these ready talkers, available for observation at any English pub, these garrulous types.

The Golgi apparatus is a little thing in a cell, an organelle, which processes proteins. Some of the terminology concerning this apparatus will sound amusingly familiar to philosophers of gender. The Golgi has a cis side, from which proteins enter, and a trans side, from which proteins exit. ("How did you even find this?" Nevermind, and let's ignore the convergence; it is not an acceptable topic of investigation!) Now there are two models of protein movement through the Golgi. I will introduce them through a history taken from Pamela L. Connerly's 2010 Nature article "How do proteins move through the Golgi apparatus?" Once upon a time, the cisternal maturation model was dominant. In 1998, a rival model called the vesicular transport model was developed and advocated by George Palade and Marilyn Farquhar. The Rothman group, named after James Rothman, supported the model and it became dominant: Rothman and Randy Schekman, a researcher whose results converged with those of Rothman, won a prize in 2002. ("I have never won a prize.") The vesicular transport model became dominant. But research on the Golgi apparatus across a variety of species led to the return of the cisternal maturation model as a contender. Today (that is 2010 in the history) most researchers support this model, because of tests by Benjamin Glick and Akihiko Nakano in which the two models make different predictions and the evidence supports the predictions of the cisternal maturation model. When you read the section of Connerly's article entitled "Which model is more accurate?" it seems you have to accept that a rational change has occurred, based on compelling evidence. But when you read the article again, you realize that the evidence that led to the vesicular transport model becoming dominant is just different. Assume that the earlier change was rational too. But then would it not be a tie? The two models have different predictions regarding earlier test T1 and the vesicular transport model predicted accurately here, leading rationally to its dominance, but they also have different predictions regarding later test T2, which focuses on something different to T1, and what happened in this later test was predicted accurately by the cisternal maturation model. A tie, it seems to us casual observers! (Instead what happens is that there is wide acceptance of the cisternal maturation model and an attempt to explain, while assuming it, the earlier evidence which led to the dominance of the rival model.) I find this article by Connerly useful, but when you look at it carefully, I think the level of explanation is not the level in philosophy (done quite well), and the initial appearance of rational development in response to evidence is not transparently correct - not to us anyway!

I have lived in the city of Manchester since 1998, with about 9 months in London during 2001-2. And I suspect there is a contradiction in the culture. On the one hand, the people of Manchester like flashy/iconic stuff to boast about: rock'n'roll music (or whatever!), football trophies, etc. "We're Manchester. We've got..." (I have asked what is iconic about Berlin since the removal of the wall and have yet to hear an answer.) On the other hand, it is a broadly left-wing city. Now how can you reasonably expect left-wing sympathies from a person who achieves a lot in their career but doesn't have a family or neglects them, and works all day and much of the night? It is rational for such an achiever to think, "I work hard and make these sacrifices, and you need to as well if you share my aims or similar ones." Hey, what about worker rights? But how to realize this combination: we want achievements to boast about AND we don't want the achievements to be at the cost of rational left-wing sympathies? The latter requirement seems to favour mainly a person whose family is already in a field, or else in a closely related field. Because if you are new to a field (or maybe to just a field which brings a greater likelihood of producing people/achievements for boasting about), to achieve beyond average you are probably going to have to work day and night, and might well have to neglect family; and then what left-wing sympathies are rational for you? "I work so hard, and you should too!" But it does not fit with left-wing sympathies to mainly have people from these families governing, these families as writers, etc. (To simplify, what they would seem to require is people who can provide the achievements within reasonable hours and that is just going to reproduce hierarchy.)

It must have been after 2008 and before 2013. I was talking to one of the new lecturers in philosophy at the University of Manchester - well, he is not new now. And he said, disapprovingly, that Joseph Raz was nowadays writing lots and in a rush and he was making mistakes. I think the lecturer did not have in mind mistakes which are valuable for philosophy, or any other field, but careless and unfruitful mistakes. The new lecturers seemed to me more open-minded than the old lecturers, but the old lecturers don't see much difference and maybe that should be my perspective. (2002: "He used to write good philosophy; I don't know what he is writing now," about another philosopher.) I have these two objections to the lecturer's disapproval, if they can be called objections even. (A) Raz was doing well at Oxford - the University of Oxford - and maybe someone there worked out that this writing lots is a good idea for Raz and we just don't realize why. However, I don't want to exclude that Raz came up with the idea of doing so himself. It does not seem unlikely to me. (B) There are some people regarding whom I want to know what they think about a lot of stuff. Or if "regarding whom" sounds too fancy: I want to know what some people think about a lot of stuff! (But maybe not all people, not directly anyway - maybe there can instead be a representative who manages to present the views of lots of people.) Joseph Raz: I would like to know what he thinks about this, that, and the other: the cultural differences between Oxford and Columbia, the scoring system in tennis, what he as a liberal Jew thinks of Islam, etc. It is a bit undignified to tell us all this I suppose; but hey, I'm interested. (This book of reviews by Bernard Williams is not enough!) Of course he'll make silly mistakes proceeding at the pace of demand. Maybe he will ALSO look less novel. Anyway, I'm still interested.

Philosophers sometimes write nonsense, it is true, and some of it, I am afraid to say (!), is probably on purpose. But have you ever read other disciplines? I was reading Deborah E. Aronson and Erik L. Snapp's engaging chapter "Translocon Organization in Cells" in Robert Zimmermann's 2009 edited collection entitled Protein Transport into the Endoplasmic Reticulum. In the abstract, they write, "A protein's function is a product of its inherent structural and biochemical characteristics. Equally critical to protein function are elements of its cellular environment..." I am disposed to make this argument. "(1) If a protein's function is a product of its inherent structural and biochemical characteristics, then elements of its cellular environment are less critical than these two to its function. (2) A protein's function is a product of its inherent structural and biochemical characteristics. Therefore (3) Elements of its cellular environment are less critical than these two to its function." (3) is the conclusion of this modus ponens argument, but conflicts with the second sentence quoted. Since modus ponens arguments generally involve valid reasoning, to agree with the text we must get rid of a premise. Getting rid of premise (2) would conflict with the first sentence quoted. Should I reject premise (1) then? Should I open myself up to the enigmatic possibility that a factor C can be equally critical for a protein's function even if its function is a product of factors A and B? ("The function of an institution studied by an anthropologist is determined by inherent-to-the-society factors A and B, but equally critical for its function is whether the society studied has entered into relations with an imperialist society. Sure its function is determined by A and B, but whether it can actually carry out the function is determined by whether it is in this relationship or not!" This is such a tricky position.)

Many people make observations contrasting societies or parts of a single society or what a single society has been like over time. A caricature of an old person, such as a grandfather, is that his conversation often involves telling us how things were in his youth compared to now: “In my day…” Social scientists also make such contrasts: in some cases it is their job even to do so. But they do so in highly restricted ways. For social anthropologists, some themes are much more prominent than others, as if they were in a game with more points for writing on one of those themes, such as kinship and gift exchange. For economists, it is as if there were more points for devising a rational actor model. This raises an important but neglected question in philosophy of social science: whether it is better to submit to some such framework, to play such a narrow-minded game, than simply observe? In this paper, I draw attention to how comedians on the Internet, specifically on Instagram, also use restrictive frameworks for social observation. I focus on three who make a set of contrasts between “how we talk with how they talk”: to suggest differences of character or skepticism about certain concepts used in another society. A question arises of whether this is better for getting viewings or likes.

In liberal democracies, there is supposed to be freedom of belief and freedom of speech. But at the same time, diagnosis of certain mental disorders is currently based on what beliefs the patient (or person) expresses. "Don't worry," I anticipate a health specialist saying, "because diagnosis is based on a number of criteria and not belief alone." But there is a problem, I think, when you score quite highly on some of the other criteria. Let's suppose you need to score 15 out of 20 on an evaluation system to count as a schizophrenic and imagine that you are at 13 out of 20 before we examine the beliefs you express. Now what freedom of belief, or at least freedom of speech, do you have? You express your beliefs and you are at high risk of being counted as a schizophrenic and being treated accordingly: forced medication or hospitalization too. In my experience (if I may introduce it) and from my reading , there are a number of restrictions on what you can do if you score higher on a diagnostic system. (i) During lockdown, I became interested in how good famous rappers are as rhymers and I tried writing some rhymes like theirs. I pinned one up on my apartment wall, which featured a demon. It is slightly lewd. The assistant to the psychiatrist strongly proposed that I had been having dark thoughts prior to hospital admission (in September 2023, the proposal's being made in October; freedom of speech includes freedom of writing too). (ii) I met my care coordinator last week and he told me that when he was a student he lived in an old house with fellow-nurses, and some nurses reported seeing a ghost. I joked (to an amused reaction): what if I report such an experience? An assessment question I am asked every two weeks is if I have had strange perceptual experiences. (By the way, the answer is genuinely NO. It is always no and I find this question tiresome.) (iii) Social withdrawal is not taken as evidence of mental disorder if it is culturally sanctioned, e.g. following the death of a loved one. This just seems overly conservative to me.

I have read Professor John Cottingham's article for iai news entitled "Wittgenstein vs Dawkins: Is God a scientific hypothesis?" twice, and I cannot resist responding to it. (A) Many people profess belief in God or make assertions which assume the existence of God, but they often don't do just that: they also participate in a whole religious way of life, notably involving rituals. As I understand Wittgenstein on the basis of Cottingham, the words "I believe in..." followed by "God" do not mean the same thing as the words "I believe in..." followed by "atoms." It is not just the last word in the sentence which has a different meaning, but the words before. The meaning of "I believe in" is different when it is bound up (not sure how to clarify "bound up") with a different set of practices. Cottingham writes, "Much contemporary philosophy of religion in the anglophone 'analytic' tradition has become a highly technical and theoretical business, largely conducted at the level of abstract intellectual debate. But the lesson to be drawn from Wittgenstein is that philosophers of religion need to be more sensitive to how religion actually operates in the life of its adherents. And this means, amongst other things, a greater attention to religious praxis, including, for example, the forms of worship, and the spiritual disciplines and practices that structure the religious life." But - believe believe believe - many religious believers also believe that belief in God is open to someone outside the specific religious practices they engage in (and would probably rank coming to belief and changing one's ways accordingly, if one is not a very good person, above partaking in the same rituals). Cottingham's Wittgenstein cannot seem to integrate this openness, or belief in openness. (B) Cottingham identifies a path to religious belief through suffering, endorsed by Wittgenstein, but this path just seems different to entry into a whole interwoven set of practices and beliefs, which his earlier references to Wittgenstein imply is the only way in. (C) The contemporary Western (or Euro-American) system for dealing with significant suffering, as it affects mind or soul, is, if you accept it (and how can you not?!), likely to convince you that the mind is just the brain. (Warning: messy transition!) What kind of experiences precede religious conversion? Depression and feeling of the meaningless of life, a desire to take a break from the superficial rewards of society, trauma: these are not unusual, are they? And they make one a candidate for medication. (Soon there will probably be early diagnosis by biomarker. "But I feel okay"! By the way, there are no sub-categories in the Wittgenstein category, but there are sub-categories for Derrida and Žižek. KRISTEVA: Hey, I don't have sub-categories!)

In book 1, chapter 4 of The Social Contract, Rousseau denies that an individual can form a valid contract with another individual to become the latter's slave. Such a person must be mad and madness creates no contract, he asserts. He uses this point to also argue that a people cannot enslave themselves to an individual. Now a philosopher might well argue that a people consists of individuals and each of these individuals can agree to become the slave of some other individual and the contracts stand; but this does not bind future generations, because they did not give their consent to their slavery. In a now almost entirely forgotten work entitled An Essay on the First Principles of Government (1771, second edition, section 2), Joseph Priestley agrees with this conclusion but for a different reason. He writes, "And though it may be supposed, that a body of people may be bound by a voluntary resignation of all their interests to a single person, or to a few, it can never be supposed that the resignation is obligatory on their posterity; because it is manifestly contrary to the good of the whole that it should be so." But if future generations cannot be bound by the voluntary resignation because it is bad for the whole, is it not bad for the whole to allow for the earlier generation to be bound, even if it is voluntary? If what is good for the whole is the absence of a slave-master relation, then that surely applies at the time of the initial agreement, raising a question of how Priestley can consistently maintain (a) the initial generation are bound but (b) future generations are not and (c) this is because it would be bad for the whole.

This is a further response to the paper by Clifford T. Morgan of Johns Hopkins entitled "The Hoarding Instinct." To repeat: in the opening paragraph of the section "What causes hoarding?" he writes, "When we speak of causes, of course, we must always make a distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, that is, between factors which must be present for something to occur at all and factors which help it occur or augment the size of its occurrence. Thus, we must ask two questions. What is essential to bringing out the pattern of hoarding behaviour? And, secondly, what facilitates hoarding, or determines the form and amount of hoarding, once it has been elicited?" Apart from not realizing that something which is sufficient to cause X simply will cause X (rather than helping or augmenting the occurrence of X), Morgan also does not realize this: talk of necessary and sufficient conditions is usually not talk of causal conditions, rather conditions/requirements for being a certain type of thing, for example a water molecule. A necessary condition for being a water molecule is having two hydrogen atoms as constituents. But this is not a sufficient condition because a molecule can have two hydrogen atoms as constituents and not be a water molecule. Sometimes we say that each member of a set of conditions is necessary for being a type of thing and together they are sufficient. (By the way, provisionally ignoring Hume, one can consistently talk of a certain factor as sufficient to cause X, but not necessary to cause X, because there is another way of causing X, and ALSO assert that there is a necessary connection between the factor and X. The usual thinking behind the assertion is that there must be something more to the causal link between the factor and X apart from just that the presence of the factor is always followed by the occurrence of X and this something more is a necessary connection: the presence of the factor is necessarily followed by X.)

Hobbes famously asserts that life without government - life in the state of a nature - would be nasty, brutish, and short. There is also a high risk of a war of all against all, he thinks. I assume the common man (if we can use this term) agrees that it would be violent, though perhaps disagrees with Hobbes's emphasis on individuals against individuals (supported today by a prisoner's dilemma model): rather there would be gang warfare. Anyway, Hobbes thinks that the self-interest of individuals justifies the creation and submission to government. John Locke thinks that life in the state of nature can be not-so-bad, but when an injustice occurs there is a risk of disproportionate retribution. For the sake of justice, we should create and submit to government. Adam Smith does not address the question of justifying government, to my knowledge, but he does say that in a primitive condition there is little or no specialization. Civilization involves the division of labour: you specialize in this and I specialize in that and we trade and this is better for all. Now a philosopher reading Smith may glimpse at a way of justifying government, in broad outline: we shall say that in the state of nature there is no specialization and government is required to gain the benefits of division of labour. But how to coherently fill in the details? Can't self-interested people realize (in every sense) the benefits of division of labour and corresponding specialization without government, as contemporary economists argue with their Robinson Crusoe-Man Friday island scenarios? One imagines an eighteenth century philosopher entertaining the justification and then giving up. But an interpretation of scientist Joseph Priestley's little-known book on political philosophy An Essay on the First Principles of Government (second edition 1771) is that it hopelessly attempts to fill in the details. He writes, "In a state of nature the powers of any individual are dissipated by an attention to a multiplicity of objects. The employments of all are similar. From generation to generation every man does the same that every other does, or has done, and no person begins where another ends; at least, general improvements are exceedingly slow, and uncertain. This we see exemplified in all barbarous nations..." Priestley focuses on lack of specialization and of division of labour in the state of nature, trying to argue for government in that way. He does not consider that self-interest without government can make it rational to specialize and trade.

In his Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the readable Robert Nozick recommends a minimal state: a government which only protects individuals rights of self-ownership and rights to the fruits of their labour. Nozick also argues against John Rawls's recommendation of an economy that is best for the worst off. Nozick asks, why should the talented accept this recommendation? He considers Rawls's proposal that it is not rational for the less talented to cooperate with the more talented in its absence (or absence of realization of the recommendation, to be precise). One of Nozick's responses is that the less talented already stand to gain from innovations by the more talented, so we should be suspicious of this demand for further gain from cooperation. But here Joseph Priestley suggests a problem in his An Essay on the First Principles of Government (1771, second edition). The best system for ensuring gain for everyone from scientific innovations involves more than the minimal state that Nozick recommends. There will probably be tax-driven funding for scientific research and for ensuring the availability of innovations to all. It seems Nozick cannot consistently respond to Rawls as he does and maintain his preference for a minimal state.

I must be catching up with the legendary H.L.A. Hart as a commentator on Rawls's liberty principle, but my contributions unfortunately are not in one convenient document and even if they were, I am not sure that will help citation. Anyway, here is one more. In John Rawls's original position model, self-interested individuals are choosing principles to be implemented by their society. Rawls famously prohibits reference to the specifics of an individual's case when arguing for a principle: wealth, talents, etc. A much less famous restriction he adds is that the original position should only feature heads of families. This restriction is so that individuals take into account future generations when choosing principles: the principles should be in the interests of future generations as well. Now Rawls recommends a liberty principle which gives each adult citizen - or each sane adult citizen (that qualification could be a problem for me) - a set of liberty rights which cannot be compromised for economic or other gain. The rights include the political liberty to run for public office. But a person in public office has a significant chance of making decisions which affect future generations. There are two points I wish to make, the first of which seems more important. (i) Given his introduction of the heads of families restriction into his original position method to ensure an interest in future generations, does consistency not require Rawls to restrict the right to run for public office to heads of families, since only they can be rationally expected to take into account future generations in their decision-making? (ii) How can Rawls consistently block a variation on his liberty principle which restricts the right to run for public office to heads of families, because the individuals who choose principles would not see anything wrong with this restriction?

Today in philosophy of science we remember Joseph Priestley for his defence of phlogiston, if we remember him at all. But what about in political philosophy? I was reading his 1771 (second edition) An Essay on the First Principles of Government, which is easy to read compared to the established British classics - such works seem often left to "fend for themselves." Here are some responses I have, mainly to sections 1 and 2. (A) Like various contributors to multiple fields (Priestley being quite an extreme case), he recommends specialization! (By the way, this is different from my paradox of the specialist on specialization but perhaps related.) (B) He does not follow the British tradition of political philosophy of appealing only to the interests of self-interested individuals, the atoms of society, rather he appeals to the good of the whole: e.g. getting out of the state of nature (a condition of no government) is good for the progress of the whole over generations (scientific and artistic progress preserved by government benefits future generations; this is different from the Hobbesian justification of government to reduce the threat of violence to oneself and ignores "Why should I care about future generations?"); the voluntary subjection by a people to an individual does not create an obligation that lasts over generations because it is bad for the whole (this is different from Rousseau's claim that such subjection is mad and so an invalid contract). (C) The most famous liberal philosopher of our times, John Rawls, recommends the protection of basic liberties (including the right to run for public office) above principles ensuring better distribution of wealth. This allows us to conceive of a Rawlsian situation in which a poor person becomes a member of parliament. Priestley's objection is that without a lot of property, you don't have sufficient interest in the good of the country. ("What does it matter, another war? I am not going to lose much!" By the way, my title is partly taken from a song by Bob Dylan, whom readers of the future probably do not know of. He was interestingly given the Nobel Prize for literature.) (D) Wikipedia says that Priestley's text rearticulates Locke's arguments from Two Treatises of Government, to defend Dissenters, who had restricted rights - "No Oxford or Cambridge for you!" A point I have sort-of made elsewhere: in these debates you may well find that little has effect and if something does, you do it again! There is an incentive against novelty. (See my "On Kirkus Reviews' review of Martha C. Nussbaum's Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life." It seems to me that there is more valuable novelty in Priestley than Wikipedia suggests. See response B above.)

I imagine a reader interested in the Rawls-G.A. Cohen debate who now takes an interest in Professor Miriam Ronzoni's contribution to it, in "Two Concepts Of The Basic Structure, And Their Relevance To Global Justice," a reader who perhaps has little background in analytic philosophy. She poses this question: G.A. Cohen already says that there are two concepts of the basic structure of society in Rawls, and Miriam Ronzoni says that there are two concepts of the basic structure of society in her article, so what is the difference? ("Should Ronzoni say that there are three concepts or does she think G.A. Cohen fails to distinguish two whereas she succeeds or what?!") This is, I think, a failed attempt at an answer on Ronzoni's behalf. "Ronzoni's G.A. Cohen provisionally distinguishes two concepts of the basic structure in Rawls's writings but says that one of these concepts, although it initially appears to be intelligible is actually not, and an unintelligible concept is no concept at all. So Ronzoni's G.A. Cohen, after discarding initial appearances, says that there is only one concept of the basic structure. Then Ronzoni says that there are two, but the two she has in mind are not the two that G.A. Cohen specifies. She is taking the one her G.A. Cohen declares intelligible and presenting one more, different to anything he presents." I think this answer fails LARGELY because G.A. Cohen's two concepts are "The basic structure of society consists of the legally coercive institutions" and "The basic structure of society consists of the major social institutions" and Ronzoni's G.A. Cohen declares the second one unintelligible BUT both of Ronzoni's concepts are meant to apply only to legally coercive institutions. The conceptual contrast she has in mind is not the set of legally coercive institutions versus something else. The following is what she is ULTIMATELY trying to show: there is a concept of the basic structure which retains this legal focus but nevertheless, and contrary to Cohen, enables countering unjust social norms outside the basic structure. (As my talk of Ronzoni's G.A. Cohen suggests, I don't think her Cohen corresponds to G.A. Cohen. Also I suspect there is a highly skilled analytic philosopher who says, "I can write nonsense and get published, like a political philosopher." (a) It is very different, what you are writing. (b) The obvious explanations for why you get in are the compensatory value of other material in the article OR the reviewer is too scared to object to what they don't understand.)

In the introduction to the fourth chapter of Taking Rights Seriously, Ronald Dworkin discusses hard cases in the law. He writes, "Some readers may object that, if no procedure exists, even in principle, for demonstrating what legal rights the parties have in hard cases, it follows that they have none. That objection presupposes a controversial thesis of general philosophy, which is that no proposition can be true unless it can, at least in principle, be demonstrated to be true. There is no reason to accept that thesis as part of the general theory of truth, and good reason to reject its application to propositions about legal rights." I cannot see that there is the presupposition Dworkin identifies. I might think this. "There is no such thing as a legal right unless it can function. And a legal right can only function if it can be taken into account by rational decision-making (e.g. You decide that you won't hit me without my consent because you reason that this would violate my right). And a legal right can only enter into rational decision-making if there is a procedure for demonstrating that it exists." This specific line of thought about legal rights might lead me to make the objection, not the controversial thesis of general philosophy that Dworkin identifies.

I was reading the 1947 volume of Psychological Review and there is a paper by Clifford T. Morgan of Johns Hopkins entitled "The Hoarding Instinct." In the opening paragraph of the section "What causes hoarding?" he writes, "When we speak of causes, of course, we must always make a distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions, that is, between factors which must be present for something to occur at all and factors which help it occur or augment the size of its occurrence. Thus, we must ask two questions. What is essential to bringing out the pattern of hoarding behaviour? And, secondly, what facilitates hoarding, or determines the form and amount of hoarding, once it has been elicited?" A sufficient factor for causing X is not something best described as helping X occur. If a factor F1 is sufficient for causing X, then whenever factor F1 is present X is caused. F1 is SUFFICIENT! "Why don't you call F1 necessary/essential then?" Some factors can be described as both necessary and sufficient, but we will not describe F1 as necessary if there is another way of causing X and we know this. We cannot (rightly) say that F1 is NECESSARY because there is this other way. For example, a certain amount of a certain poison in the human body is sufficient to cause death; but it is not necessary to cause death, because it can also be caused by a suitable gunshot, by strangling, etc. (By the way, there are other reasons for why we might not call F1 necessary, for example we wish to remain neutral on whether there is another way of causing X.) Morgan assumes that there cannot be such a thing as a factor which is sufficient to cause instinctive hoarding but not necessary, given my usage of these terms. He assumes that whatever factor (or combination of factors) elicits hoarding is necessary. But why cannot it be that inheriting disease 1 causes instinctive hoarding and also inheriting disease 2? Probably medics and psychologists can understand all this, but maybe some people cannot. I wonder whether it is they who will be incorporated into political philosophy!

In the distinguished journal Analysis, Professor Michael Otsuka presents his reconstruction of the Kamm-Scanlon argument for saving the greater number. This is part of the reconstructed argument. "(1) The claims of A, B, and C should be accorded equal and positive weight. (2) We accord them equal and positive weight if and only if we add C's claim to B's. Therefore (3) We should add C's claim to B's." Does (3) follow from (1) and (2), as the reconstruction maintains? My worry is that (1) does not say "We should accord the claims of A, B, and C equal and positive weight." As stated it expresses what I believe is called an unowned should (or unowned ought). I suspect some philosophers will argue that there can be unowned shoulds which do not impose any requirement on any individual or set of individuals. I would not use this reconstruction, owing to this conceivable gap. I suppose you could try this: "(1) "We should accord the claims of A, B, and C equal and positive weight." But I am thinking to begin with a metaphysical premise about value: "The claims of A, B, and C are of equal and positive weight" and make other changes as a consequence.

Some political philosophers talk of steps in an argument, but should they? For example, Professor Michael Otsuka talks of step two in his reconstruction of the Kamm-Scanlon argument for saving the greater number, in the distinguished journal Analysis. But should he? The usual way of thinking of an argument is as composed of premises (or just one) and inferences from premises (or just one) and a conclusion. Here is an example of an argument: "(Premise 1) If your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat, then she is a witch. (Premise 2) Your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat. Therefore (Conclusion) She is a witch." The argument takes the valid modus ponens form. By valid I mean that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be as well - that is what we mean by "valid" in logic; we are not saying that the premises are true by calling it valid - on this we are neutral. But the argument is not sound: premise 1 is surely false. Anyway, should we refer to premise 1 as step 1? Perhaps, but a reason I have for not doing so is that a step makes it sound as if you must do this first, but you can reverse the order of the premises and it is the same argument. Watch: "(Premise 1) Your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat. (Premise 2) If your neighbour in apartment 13 has a cat, then she is a witch. Therefore (Conclusion) She is a witch." Of course the labels for the premises are different with this representation and that will make a difference to how you refer to components of the argument, when using this representation of it; but it is the same argument. Anyway, it seems to me that this reason for not calling premise 1 "step 1" and likewise not calling premise 2 "step 2" applies to Otsuka's use of step. This may seem like fussing but I am really not sure if political philosophers know the difference between a premise in an argument and a requirement specified in instructions, one which must come where it is and not later or before.

Once upon a time (and maybe still), mind-brain type identity theory was accepted by some philosophers. This theory identifies types of mental state with types of brain state (or types of state in the nervous system), for example pain is a type of mental state which is identical to C-fibres firing. An objection to this theory is that there could be a creature that displays pain behaviour and experiences pain, but does not have our kind of brain or anything sufficiently like it for the theory to work. Mental states are multiply-realizable, says the objector: pain can be realized in beings with our brains but can also possibly be realized in an alien with a very different biology. The objector favours functionalism. Now imagine some excellent scientists who examine the brains of various animals and develop a theory of mind which allows for multiple-realizability to some extent, unlike the old type identity theory; but this allowance is to a very limited extent compared to functionalism. Like functionalism, there an input (e.g. harmful stimuli) and an output (e.g. aversion) and there is something that causes the aversion (the mental state), but the range of things that can possibly go in-between is quite limited: outside of the quite limited set, it does not count as a mental state. The mental state in this creature is brain state H1 and the same mental state in that creature is brain state R!, but the scientists have quite a detailed conception of what goes on in between input and output for this type of mental state and it requires cerebellum, say. (Hope this talk of cerebellum is okay!) How should philosophers react? Here are three different reactions I anticipate. (i) "The conception may be good for these scientists but it is no good for philosophy. It just makes an arbitrary limitation on multiple-realizability, based on the animals these scientists are acquainted with." (ii) "Our best science says that this is what the mind is and so we philosophers should accept with that." (David Liggins and Chris Daly will charge this with being overly deferential.) (iii) "We need some way of constraining the thought experiments of philosophers, rather than being moved to functionalism by thoughts of Martians in pain with insufficient details given about Martian biology." (I assume Williamson-Parfit-Helen Beebee etc. think this is sure to fail. I suspect it is good to divide the philosophical community over this. Half develop and abide by constraints; and half reject them.)

I was reading "The Pathways to the First Contact with Mental Health Services among Patients with Schizophrenia in Lagos, Nigeria" by Increase Ibukun Adeosun, Abosede Adekeji Adegbohun, Tomilola Adejoke Adewumi, and Oyetayo O. Jeje. They write of how Nigeria has not many psychiatrists: "There are 0.028 mental health outpatient facilities per 100,000 population and less than 200 psychiatrists." Regarding a lot of people with schizophrenia in the country, their first contact with treatment is with traditional or spiritual healers rather than medics. The authors draw attention to how this is true of many Asian and African countries. I am interested in how they write of "pathways" to first contact with mental health services. Talk of pathways in schizophrenia research is often talk of brain pathways. Dopamine pathways are apparently overactive in schizophrenic patients (or a significant proportion of them - the details do not matter here). Now a good analytic philosopher will surely distinguish between brain pathways and social pathways, the latter being the object of research in the article. But doing so perhaps puts one at risk of not noticing something exciting (or speculating that there is this exciting thing). Do these schizophrenia researchers, presumably very familiar with talk of brain pathways, treat society as if it were a giant brain? Is this the paradigm even? "This traditional healer pathway is overactive in our society, unlike in developed countries." (I am putting this in "Brain Imaging and Localization.")

Thomas Kuhn's account of the development of science famously divides the history of a scientific community into revolutionary and normal periods. During normal periods, a scientific community has a paradigm. A paradigm can be understood in at least two senses: (i) a set of assumptions made by all community members, typically highly general; or (ii) an example of problem-solving accepted by all community members as ideal and looked to as a guide for future problem-solving. Now during the normal period, novel data of relevance for the scientific community, given its official object of research, is largely ignored. Scientists concentrate on a few problems, a few puzzles, trying to solve them, and ignore data which pose other puzzles. But there is a build up of puzzling data and the community eventually loses shared confidence in the paradigm. Then a revolutionary period is initiated, during which there is a search for a new paradigm. The establishment of a new paradigm marks the end of this period and the beginning of a new period of normal science. Kuhn seems to assume that the level of "novelty-suppression" in one period of normal science and another is the same. A doubt occurred to me about this assumption, but I was led to it by reflecting on a discipline outside the disciplines that Kuhn focuses on, the natural sciences. (The doubt seems quite important to me; please cite if you substantiate it one day!) The discipline is philosophy. Imagine a community of philosophers whose paradigm is a kind of conceptual analysis: the defining of concepts. Community members accept that definition should not go on forever and so that there must be some undefined concepts (atomic concepts). For example, one defines the concept of a bachelor using the concepts of being unmarried and of being a human male, then one defines these concepts, and so on; at some point there must be some undefined concepts, to avoid circularity. The aim is to produce analyses of concepts which define a given concept purely in terms of atomic concepts. What community members accept about definition can be called a paradigm, in sense (i). Now given their aim and the size of the community, it is rational to mainly attempt definitions where the aim of producing a totally atomic analysis is within closer reach. (This will, I assume, often involve focusing on concepts for which an analysis can borrow from clarificatory work by others.) Otherwise the task of definition is too demanding. This leads to novelty-suppression: community members just ignore some interesting concepts and even attempts at definition. In this situation, novelty-suppression is caused by the paradigm (and what is a rational research strategy given it) but there is no reason to assume that every paradigm available to this community would cause novelty-suppression; or the same level of novelty-suppression. (By the way, I adapted this term "novelty-suppression" from the experiments of psychiatrists on novelty-suppressed feeding of rodents.)

In the opening paragraph of Alice Munro's story Voices, we are told, "The square dancing had complicated patterns or steps, which a person known for a special facility would call out at the top of his voice (it was always a man) and in a strange desperate sort of haste which was of no use at all unless you knew the dance already. As everybody did, having learned them all by the time they were ten or twelve years old." What is the point of this man calling out the steps if everyone knows them? One (Frazerian) answer is that this role is a relic. Once upon a time, the dance was new and there needed to be someone calling out the steps. That role is still preserved after it has no practical function. Although I have called this an answer, it rejects the question: there is no point at present. At the moment I prefer another answer instead, though how to explain why? The dance is an imitation of liberal England. Having an instructor makes the dance appear available to newcomers/outsiders - listen to the instructions and they too can do this dance - but it is actually not.

"Half-baked" is an insult used in academic contexts to refer to work which is not properly done. When the metaphor is used by philosophers in the analytic tradition, it usually refers to insufficient clarification of a position or insufficient attention to objections. In different contributions, in different databases, I have defended half-baking. (After all, can one ever get from half-baking to full-baking? "Are you appealing to ought-implies-can?" That's not the reply I most expected.) But maybe the emphasis on full-baking is the best approach. Anyway, for the sake of approaching completeness, let me raise two further concerns about demanding fully-baked work. The first concern is that it leads to conservativism, or a kind of conservativism - nothing to do with voting preferences, I assume. Given the demand, some topics are not touched, because it is just easier to work on topics where considerable clarificatory work has already been done. One can then borrow from those earlier clarifications. (I used to think "If your main interest is not philosophy, you should only get involved with analytic philosophy if your research is at grade A and you are looking to move to A+. The journey from C to A is not of interest here. This kind of philosophy is for very developed countries of the research world, metaphorically speaking.") The second concern is less obvious. Even if you are open to full-baking on some topics (the ones I am concerned with are chiefly ones which are less treated), there is a problem. No matter how much you try, no matter how many precautions you take, errors get in and ones you would expect yourself to avoid. It is like some kind of magic, to further allude to the Azande! Perhaps the psychiatrist will ask, "Are you paranoid?" But surely the problem has been noticed before by others under less suspicion of paranoia.

This paper contrasts how fashionable French intellectuals of the twentieth century are rejected by British analytic philosophers and British social anthropologists. I propose that the main way (or ways) in which French intellectuals are rejected in a given academic community in the English speaking-world is determined by the main research method of that community: British analytic philosophers reject French intellectuals on the grounds that their claims are obscure: if one tries to analyse them, one does not produce an acceptable analysis; British social anthropologists reject French intellectuals for ignoring fieldwork, for making claims contradictory to fieldwork findings, and for achieving no more than ordinary people.

This paper contrasts how fashionable French intellectuals of the twentieth century are rejected by British analytic philosophers and British social anthropologists. I propose that the main way (or ways) in which French intellectuals are rejected in a given academic community in the English speaking-world is determined by the main research method of that community: British analytic philosophers reject French intellectuals on the grounds that their claims are obscure: if one tries to analyse them, one does not produce an acceptable analysis; British social anthropologists reject French intellectuals for ignoring fieldwork, for making claims contradictory to fieldwork findings, and for achieving no more than ordinary people.

Professor Nigel Rapport and Professor Raymond Firth both engage in worldview description, but Rapport presents a diversity of worldviews in a village whereas Firth does not. Is that because Firth ignored diversity, or because of the liberal character of Rapport’s village, which enables diversity? Both fieldworkers are interested in conceptions to do with sex, but I propose that if Rapport had Firth’s precise focus, he would have engaged in group worldview description. (Warning: this paper may not be of wider interest!)

The interestingly named American economic journalist Robert J Samuelson died on December 13th of this year. He said that economists were a small group who write for each other, whereas he wrote accessibly on economic issues for the wider public. He sounds to me like a polite version of student protestors against economics. Here I propose that the rational actor model tradition of economics, which still dominates, blocks rational protest within universities themselves: it is to the advantage of academically gifted young men and women, because of the demands of imagination that it makes upon you, if you want to conceive such a model. If you protest against the curriculum, then there is a question of what are you doing in a university? A university is surely for the academically gifted!

In his 1938 book The Mysterious Mr Bull, the disgraceful Wyndham Lewis writes, "Nothing can be got in England by direct action. Some day things may change, but at present there is no exception to that rule. In politics, art, business, law, or whatever it may be, if you do not recognize that you are engaging in a game - and a game with very elaborate rules, to break one of which is tantamount to moral misdemeanour, involving social disgrace - you can make no headway. Such an eminent politician as Mr. Churchill has discovered that to his cost. And he has committed the further sin - a mortal one in England - of making a disgusting exhibition of "brains." " (1938: 92) Wyndham Lewis sounds like just a straight-talking guy giving a frank description of English culture or a part of it (at least as it struck him). But if what he says is true and he managed to publish this book from which the quotation comes (or get published), should we not regard him as a player in an elaborate game, at least metaphorically? The moment you take him as speaking truly you should lose confidence in him as a speaker of truth! (I have put this in "Liar Paradox" as the closest category.)