Terence Rajivan Edward

In my "On lack of progress in economics," I introduced an example where I find an "error" in Kimberley Brownlee, then much the same error in the famous Martha Nussbaum, and then I decide to write a paper about the latter. Now I anticipate a philosopher saying, "We are a democratic egalitarian people and you could just have written it on Kimberley Brownlee and sent it to Analysis." Some insiders will just laugh at this. The philosopher might point to less famous figures who are responded to. What happens next in the debate? Let's simplify and overlook the option of referring to both Brownlee and Nussbaum. If I were powerful enough, I could get an econometrics person to do an analysis. There would be tables, there would be a variable called STARPOWER. It would very likely lead to the conclusion that there is an advantage for me in switching to Martha Nussbaum as my focus, a global and medium-term advantage even.. By the way, I was reading Nussbaum's book Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life once again. Of course she is opposed to Gradgrindian statistical analysis. But I started making a count of who (or whom, sorry) she refers to. The contemporary figures are all or almost all stellar characters of her level, such as Richard Posner, Garry Becker, and Amartya Sen. Where are all the slaves who address your themes, Miss Euripides? Nussbaum criticizes various people for being cliquey, like from school: the statistical analysis will unflatteringly suggest she is a kind of character from school.

Auntie is away. Shall we take out our philosophical dolls and restage old debates, but this time with the philosophers at their very best? (Do you even get this joke?) Timothy Williamson doll says this: "Continental philosophy is just a series of undemocratic cults. There is a cult around Derrida. There is a cult around Foucault. There is a cult around Lacan. You join one of these cults, then you abandon all critical thinking and accept what the obscure cult leader says, straining to make some sense of nonsense." Continental philosophy scholar says this: "No, analytic philosophy is cults. How come you make all these errors, pointed out by the excellent philosopher Terence Rajivan Edward. You are the leader of a cult. If you existed in a democratic egalitarian system, people would point out your elementary errors. There is the Williamson cult, the David Lewis cult (David Lewis trivia on pictures gets published in Analysis), the John Rawls cult, etc. Enjoy genuine equality - I doubt you were cut out for it though." ("Stop depicting play in our household!" Okay, why is Julia Kristeva a category on here and not Nozick?)

Inductive reasoning occurs when we examine a set of cases (a sample) and generalize on the basis of them. Hume's problem of inductive reasoning is legendary: inductive reasoning depends on an assumption of a regular world (future cases are like past cases etc.), the assumption is not self-evident and cannot be established by deduction nor (on pain of circularity) by inductive reasoning itself. (Note: Hume's problem is NOT best specified as: induction does not yield absolutely certain knowledge.) In the 20th century, Nelson Goodman added his new problem of inductive reasoning. Unwisely perhaps, I want to join the club. This is my moral problem of induction. A person is brought up in a very strict moral household and he learns to accept in his childhood numerous moral rules, 400 let us say. One day as an adult he lists the 400. He examines number 400 and finds that he rejects it. The next day he examines number 399 and finds that he rejects it. The third day he examines number 398 and finds that he rejects it. When he gets to about number 50, he infers, "Probably all moral rules are wrong." He decides to become an amoralist. If you are a really moral person, I presume you think this: "You should not be able to exit morality like this. You have to keep going, in case one of the remaining moral rules turns out to withstand examination." But how can you argue for this perspective, if you accept the legitimacy of inductive reasoning? (Can you believe they rejected this from Analysis? What goes on in the evaluator's mind when he reads this?)

"Why is there lack of progress in the social sciences compared to in the natural sciences?" It is a question that is asked. If we focus on economics, one problem is this: if I conceive a model which gives me an advantage in competitive situations, then I just act on the model rather than share it (because sharing it would reduce the advantage). "Can you give an example?" What a question! I will give an example which might not qualify as an economic model. (If it half-does, then give me credit.) Let's suppose that I am reading Kimberley Brownlee on a human right against social deprivation in The Philosophical Quarterly. She claims that the proposition "Human beings are social beings" is a conceptual truth. I wonder how, because if it is true in virtue of the very concepts involved (like "A bachelor is unmarried" is), then there would presumably not be disagreement about it: anyone who grasps the concepts involved would agree. But there is disagreement. Then I find that Martha Nussbaum makes a similar error about certain freedoms. She says that they are bad by definition but strangely also acknowledges that there is much disagreement about whether they are bad. Then I develop this "model." If you find an error in a less famous philosopher, then look for the same error in a much more famous philosopher and write about the latter. Why? Assuming standard aims, there is more reward in doing that. If you send your paper identifying an error off to the journal Analysis, then they will publish it. End of example: if this model occurs to you, then are you going to tell people it? (By the way, I got a paper of very long term interest rejected from Analysis. I can't believe I troubled myself to get a password and an Orchid ID!)

A lot of people are struck by the distribution of TERFs: trans-exclusionary radical feminists. There are many in some countries, such as Britain, and few in others. Why is that? Here I propose a philosophical explanation. Consider this distinction. Some truths are conceptual truths (or analytic truths). They are true in virtue of the very concepts involved (or the very words). They are true by definition, some people say. For example, "A bachelor is an unmarried man." For another example, "A triangle has three sides." Thus if you grasp the concepts involved - the word meanings - you can know the truth without doing any research. Other truths are not like this. Now there is a famous attack on this distinction, by W.V. Quine. "But the distinction seems to be the soundest common sense. Why would anyone reject it? There is obviously a difference between the truth that a bachelor is unmarried and the truth, assuming it is one, that bachelors are more likely to shop late at night." My explanation for TERF distribution is that when a field or institution largely accepts Quine's attack, then you do not get TERFs. The field just becomes too weird from the TERF point of view. A lot of named TERFs get degrees from the University of Oxford or pass through it, an institution where this attack is most resisted. My explanation interestingly predicts that cognitive science, which seems closer to common sense, is so influenced by Fodor, who is so influenced by Quine, that it does not and will not produce TERFs. Assuming TERFs are feminists, they are really worthy of the name "analytic feminists." (Probably the more elegant explanation is that TERFs do not arise where Quine's attack is influential because they want to maintain that it is an analytic truth that a woman is an adult human female.)

I was reading a chapter from Judith Butler's 2024 book Who's afraid of gender? It was entitled "TERFs and British matters of sex." I was reading it and the first TERF she names and deals with in any detail is Holly Lawford-Smith. Lawford-Smith is not British! Why is she focusing on an Australian TERF? (New Zealand-Australian, says Google.) Do we not have our own TERFs? Britain is famous for TERFs. I have not found the explanation yet for this focus. Perhaps Butler will say, "Lawford-Smith was in Britain." But what if her lived experience is that she is Australian? Is it not a crime from Butler's perspective to treat Lawford-Smith as British when her lived experience is that of being Australian, like misgendering someone given their feelings about what gender they are? Maybe I am taking the title too rigidly - it says "TERFs and British matters of sex", not "British TERFS and matters of sex" - but it sounds very much like she plans to focus on Britain and I would like some explanation for why an Australian is discussed in detail first, and also at the time when this discussion begins. "I know she is Australian but..." Butler goes into more detail about Lawford-Smith than about the best known and probably most influential British TERF philosopher, namely Kathleen Stock. (I in contrast have written plentifully on Stock.) I fear that someone will say, "Various people you respond to are good at getting rewards from universities and newspapers and beyond, but they are not good at the traditional school system, being good at which they would regard as a kind of slavery. They won't do well on a test of capital cities of the world; or sorting out questions into those which are purely interpretative, taken literally, and those which ask for evaluation as well; or filling in the second premise when left blank in a modus ponens argument; or using 'systematizing' in line with grammar." Well, if they are not good at school, how do they get so far? Don't you need to be good at school first?

How to understand the philosophical text (including the oral text, the lecture, etc.)? A significant amount of interpretation happens in the following way, I believe: the philosopher specifies a topic, one encounters a premise and then intuits what the philosopher is trying to argue about the topic. Given the premise, it is likely that the philosopher is making the argument one has intuited (or guessed). But the rhyming philosophical poet resists this technique of interpretation. The philosophical poet specifies the topic in the title, say, and introduces a premise into their poem. What will they do with their premise?If they were not a rhyming poet, you could make a reliable guess. But what if they are unable to achieve a rhyme by making an argument that confirms your guess? The demand to rhyme leads them to do something else with their premise, something that is hard for readers to anticipate. Strange arguments are much more likely in rhyming philosophical poetry. The rhyming philosophical poet is not a predictable character. (I am glad I made this point from my system first. See also my "Derrida, Marilyn Strathern, and honorary degrees," "How to read Davidson: an introduction for professionals" and "Presentation of my philosophico-poetical system, McDowellian!")

My philosophico-poetical system is a highly unlikely creation, given the tradition of philosophy I was educated in and the country I live in and a lot else probably. I would like to say that it is totally my own, but actually it has at its foundation Paul Valéry’s claim, “To write regular verses… destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and unexpected thoughts.” From this, I infer an objection to Locke on language, an objection to specialization, an explanation of how the poet can escape his (or her etc.) time, and an argument for the translatability of true poetry. (I have added an appendix which specifies some extensions to my system: on the unpredictability of the philosophical poet, against Freudian interpretation of rhyming poetry, and on the value of univocalic poetry.)

Philosophy as a discipline is famous for its system-builders: they start from a few principles (or just one) and infer various conclusions on various topics, the principles and the conclusions forming a system. "Is this done in recent times: the twentieth century and onwards?" Yes. Now sometimes system-builders build their systems slowly over years. But why does this not happen: someone thinks, "I can see which principles you are relying on and I am going to build a bit of 'your system' first and it will be mine"? To illustrate, Donald Davidson used the premise that beliefs come as a whole (you cannot have one belief without having several rationally related ones) to argue for a variety of conclusions. He was just left to do this for decades, as far as I can see. Nobody thought to make a holist argument before Davidson gets there (except on delusions?). "Why should they?" One incentive is this: if Davidson is getting recognition for such arguments, you can get some recognition from producing one as well. Similarly, Rawls developed his system over years. Why did something like the following not happen: he presents his cake cutting maximin model at a seminar and someone else develops a similar model regarding something else? One reaction is to say, "This never happens." Another reaction is to say, "This would not happen to a Davidson or a Rawls, but it might well happen to someone else if they tried system-building." There is a kind of character - Kathleen Stock?! so sorry to join in the criticism - whom I suspect would be subservient if they met one of these distinguished figures, but are aggressive and highly defensive when they encounter certain others. (I don't think they are motivated by the desire to get recognition for research like yours. No idea what motivates them: a bizarre drive to maintain hierarchy?)

The economist Kenneth Arrow's "Some Ordinalist-Utilitarian Notes on Rawls's Theory of Justice by John Rawls" was published in May 1973 in The Journal of Philosophy. At one point, Arrow discusses the priority Rawls gives to his liberty principle. He tells us that the definitive argument for this priority is given late in Rawls's book. He quotes the argument, describes it as clearly empirical, and says, "the reader can decide for himself how much weight it will bear." Now the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart's "Rawls on Liberty and Its Priority" was published in 1973: issue 3 of The University of Chicago Law Review, a Spring issue. It focuses heavily on the liberty principle, claiming it has not received the detailed attention it merits, and explains in some detail why Rawls's prioritization of it is inadequately argued for. What are we to make of this large contrast in approach to Rawls's argument for the priority of liberty? Before checking the dates, I supposed what happened was this: Hart read Arrow and thought, "I am going to go for exactly what you think is not worth going for." Despite the proximity in publication date, I find it a bit difficult to give up on this amusing supposition. Whether the supposition is true or not, Arrow should be careful of what he expects from the reader. Remember that The Journal of Philosophy is not chiefly for the empirically-minded. (Arrow himself complains early on in his article about the elementary errors about the economy made by philosophers, raising a question of consistency when he expects the reader to decide on the empirical matter. By the way, as I understand the world, such a complaint is likely to result in a much more erroneous figure as the philosopher whom economists must interact with.)

Forgive forgive, a terrible day, a day of father figures. As I understand it, Frege's puzzle is this. A=A is uninformative. A=B is informative. But how can we account for this informativeness if we maintain (as Mill did) that the contribution a name makes to the meaning of a sentence is determined solely by what it refers to? GIven that A and B mean the same thing, the information value should be the same as rightly saying, "A=A." Let's take Phosphorus (the morning star) and Hesperus (the evening star) as our example. Astronomers discovered that they are the same, i.e. Phosphorus is Hesperus. (Also it is not a star; it is the planet Venus. Venus, named after the goddess of beauty, was once thought to be a star.) Now imagine a pictorial writing language. The symbol for Phosphorus is a morning scene, with the "star." The symbol for Hesperus is an evening scene (with the "star"). We can maintain what Mill did. (We can be Millian-heirs, as they say.) The contribution of these symbols to the meaning of the identity sentence is determined solely by what they refer to. Now the same proposition can be expressed in different languages (at least for some propositions). For simplicity, the meaning of a sentence is the proposition expressed. But owing to the pictorial symbols used in this writing language, one can extract some information which is not within the proposition expressed. One thinks: the best explanation for these symbols in the sentence is that one and the same body - one and the same object of reference - has two very different appearances, the one conveyed by the morning scene symbol and the one conveyed by the evening scene symbol.

According to Thomas Kuhn, new natural scientists undergo a process of initiation where they learn to perceive the world differently. Does Kuhn’s claim or something analogous apply beyond natural science? I propose that Davidson has written his much-cited response to Kuhn as a test. What will philosophers latch onto, in this busy paper? Is there a training one undergoes where one learns to ignore some material and focus on other material? That is how it seemed to me at the University of Manchester. I propose at University College London the focus is elsewhere.

Donald Davidson argues against the claim that two radically different belief systems both cope with the data of experience. First, he asserts that "coping with the data" is another way of saying being true. Then he argues that we cannot make sense of two radically different belief systems both being true. Here I shall dispute the first part of his response. Let us simplify and say that there are five pieces of data. A belief system counts as coping with the data if there is only one challenging piece of data for it, or else if there are no challenges whatsoever. Why allow for one? Well, the standard we set for coping would be too high otherwise: all belief systems have some recalcitrant data. But then one cannot say that "coping with the data" is another way of saying being true. For all we know, extreme revisions are required to move from 4 out of 5 to 5 out of 5.

There is a distinction in psychiatry between legitimate and illegitimate paranoia. Illegitimate paranoia is unjustified. (You may have good evidence that your phone is hacked and then you are legitimately paranoid.) This definition makes use of the concept of justification. This a murky concept. You can try to clarify it. A well-known alternative approach (maybe not the best but by many lights the most beautiful) is to use Nozick's tracking conditions. These are Nozick's conditions for knowing a proposition: (1) the proposition believed is true; (2) the subject believes the proposition; (3) if the proposition were false, the subject would not believe it; and (4) if the proposition were true, the subject would believe it. The third and fourth conditions specify tracking conditions. Using (3), you can try this: illegitimate paranoia is "robust." Let's grant that the paranoid proposition is true (e.g. your phone has indeed been hacked). But even if the proposition were false, the subject would believe it.

I was in a dormitory in North Manchester General Hospital in October 2023, if dormitory be the right term. I had one bed and a curtain to cover my space. A man also in the dormitory had another bed. I had my light on late in the night. The light shines into his space. He told me to turn it off. I did not. He told me again. I did not. He could not sleep. How is Rawls going to resolve a dispute like this? There is my right to light (in this case artificial light) and the other's right to have sufficient darkness to sleep. We can adapt Rawls's original position thought experiment. There are two options. Right to light has priority or right to sufficient darkness for nighttime slumber has priority. You do not know what your preferences are. How are you going to make a decision between the options. "No, the Rawlsian is sure to find a way to prioritize the right to sufficient darkness to sleep." How? Is he going to assume that a human being prefers to sleep at night? He does not include a natural sleep pattern (!) amongst the primary goods which all individuals are assumed to want. "He can add it in this adapted version." Hart is right that Rawls cannot get results without appealing to a specific temperament. Robert Paul Wolff is right that Rawls has a bias towards the typically middle-aged. "If your light affects enough individuals in the dormitory, your right is overridden." That is utilitarianism! (By the way, there seems to be just too much going on in Rawls's thought experiment. You need to work with a simpler situation, like the hospital one. "We will come up with our own one and evade plagiarism rules and get back to you"? Am I illegitimately paranoid psychiatrists or does it happen? You would have know the field well and what happens between fields as well.)

Here is a question: "When Jacques Derrida was proposed for an honorary degree by the University of Cambridge, a scandal resulted. There were protests, a letter was sent to The Times. He was charged with writing unintelligibly. The anthropologist Marilyn Strathern is based in that university and has received several honorary degrees, such as from Harvard. But sometimes pages and pages of what she writes cannot be made sense of by intelligent and dedicated readers. Why the difference in reception? Is it merely because he is French?" I can think of another explanation, based on my experiences of reading Strathern. When she has something she thinks is very valuable for readers (or a wider readership), she signals it. In After Nature, she puts her facts of English kinship in italics. She effectively tells readers when to wake up! Also she does not make unusual use of her main premises, making it easy to reliably guess her argument. I have not read Property, Substance, and Effect carefully. I could not make much sense of the material I read. But it is clear she wishes to draw a contrast between an anthropologist fieldworker with a blank notebook who can write down all kinds of information (anything interesting), and a more structured inquiry with a set of questions and even specified possible answers. Unless you have autism or are from a very different background, you can work out an unsurprising use for this contrast: to argue that the anthropologist is better equipped to deal with societies which don't fit with one's preconceptions. "What I read about before doing fieldwork is theme B and I expected to pursue that here but the big issue here is theme A." (I guess my value for the psychiatrist is basically not over whether I have had hallucinations!) I presume Derrida's later texts are just not like Strathern's in having these two qualities: at least one is lacking. So even if Strathern has pages which few if any understand and so does Derrida, it is just very different.

I have already responded to the following quotation from Sebastian Gardner's paper "Splitting the Subject: An Overview of Sartre, Lacan and Derrida": 'The orthodox way of "taking" Freud, in analytic philosophy of mind and in philosophy of science, is something like this: we argue over whether or not a concept of selfhood that has its basis in consciousness can be stretched to cover the unconscious as Freud describes it, and we attempt to see how much mentality can survive the loss of the property "potential object of consciousness." ' I have rejected his account of philosophy of science. Here I want to challenge his account of analytic philosophy of mind. Freud is taken in a variety of ways by a variety of analytic philosophers (I think). One philosopher focuses on one theme, another philosopher on another. For example, Stuart Hampshire engages with the view that in light of Freud on the nature of our minds, we should say that we are not free; Donald Davidson considers whether we can defend asserting that there are two mental systems in one person (more broadly, whether the mind is divisible); Ståle Gundersen (2023) considers what sort of mind-brain identity theory Freud is committed to. One might protest that Gundersen wrote after Gardner, but if Gardner is somehow right about his time and discussion of Freud's mind-brain identity theory is outside the orthodoxy of that time, it is such a fragile orthodoxy! Is it even worth describing as such or is it just a pattern of response?

There are two videos I have seen for this song. In the video which I have in mind (described as an official video reworked on Youtube), the Latino singer Gloria Estefan is invited home by a wholesome blonde white man (or boy). She refuses, saying that she wants to go for a walk. She then goes for a walk by herself in a shady part of the city (are you even allowed to do this?) and meets some "cat people." She takes an especial liking to a grey cat boy. He puts his arm around her. He seems dangerous, but she describes herself as feeling safe in her song, when he drives her home at night. The police whistle blows and all the cat people leave. Why does she say that he makes her feel safe? I think I know what is going on. Here is a subversive interpretation of the video which accounts for the strangeness. The white man appears to have left Gloria Estefan to walk alone, but he has actually then dressed up as the grey cat boy and got his friends to dress up as fellow cat people and encountered her in the alley. If the white man is not dangerous, then the grey cat boy and his friends are not dangerous. Gloria Estefan was looking for real danger, not this simulacrum.

A problem which is discussed in economics is why people don't tell lies more. Economic models predict that it is rational for them to tell lies more than they actually do. The problem is discussed all the way up to the distinguished journal Econometrica. Now mainstream economics is what we call behaviourist in its definition of preference and other terms. ("Behaviourist" is different from behavioural economics, by the way, very different even). Mainstream economics does not define what it is to prefer A over B in terms of inner states of the mind, rather in terms of behavioural dispositions: to prefer A over B at a given point in time means that if you are given a choice of only A or B at that time, then you would choose A. (Or that is the main definition.) Given the behaviourism in economics, it makes to sense to combine economics with a behaviourist approach to language: probably this is required. Your sentence means "There is a rabbit" if and only if the best explanation for your behaviour involves attributing this meaning. (Or an adequate explanation does, if there is no best.) But a behaviourist approach to language limits the amount of possible lies. Let's suppose we are trying to understand the behaviour of a tribe. We propose that a certain native word means the same as "I promise." But if the word is often used without being followed by promise keeping, we do not have sufficient evidence for our interpretation. Why say that the native word means "I promise" if it is so often not followed by doing what was said? The economist is going to find it difficult to integrate his (or her) models and his behavourism. Put simply: his behaviourism requires a behaviourist approach to sentence meaning, a behaviourist approach to sentence meaning will not allow for so many lies, and his models say that rationality requires so many lies.

According to Donald Davidson, in order to count as a language speaker, you must be radically interpretable. What does that mean? An interpreter who is scientifically learning your language from previously being unacquainted with it - a radical interpreter - must be able to learn it, given adequate evidence. They frame hypotheses about your sentence meanings and test them. Now when learning a language in this way, there are privileged entry points: my term for something already familiar in the literature. The radical interpreter should attend more to some sentences to get going, for example simple observational reports ("There is a rabbit", "The cell contains..."). Now there can be a person who is the subject of interpretation but is very careless (or knavish) when providing these entry points. They make inexplicable errors, they are unnecessarily ambiguous, or they omit vital information. There is a significant chance that they will not count as a language speaker by Davidson's criterion, because the radical interpreter cannot get going from the entry points for language learning. I suppose Derrida would have said, "There is an unjustified privileging of these entry points over others. Abandon the privileging." Davidson and also Quine - who famously recommended the privileging and provided us with the rabbit example - are going to say, "NO." (Or they would if they were alive!) A worry that occurred to me is that there is no explanation of how one can get going in learning a language while changing the entry points. It would defeat the project of radical interpretation if one has to appeal to a magic process.

Williamson writes, "Soames's account is based on the old idea that borderline cases involve truth-value gaps. He says rather little in justification of this idea, merely that it seems arbitrary where to locate the cut-off point for a vague term and that it is unclear what semantic mechanism could determine that point. The book shows no awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative that borderline cases involve irremediable ignorance of truth-values. Since I have defended that alternative at length elsewhere, I will not labour the point here." The point here is that Soames's book shows no awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative. Labouring the point is presumably drawing attention to places in Soames's book where awareness would have been helpful. So Williamson is arguing: "(1) If I have defended the epistemicist alternative at length, it is reasonable not to draw attention to places in Soames's book where awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative would have been helpful. (2) I have defended the epistemicist alternative at length. Therefore (3) It is reasonable not to draw attention to places in Soames's book where awareness of work on the epistemicist alternative would have been helpful." (Is there any incentive to reconstruct this argument, as I have just done, and to assess to it, as I will now do?) I am not convinced by (1). I only have access at present to the first page of the review, but it just seems a good idea to provide more detail, e.g. "Look here, Soames assumes X but work on the epistemicist alternative casts doubt on this assumption." (I am also not convinced that Soames was ignorant of Williamson's work, but Williamson is rather careful not to say that Soames himself is.)

In the first volume of his On What Matters, Derek Parfit quotes C.D. Broad on Henry Sidgwick's style of writing and doing philosophy (in a broad sense). Sidgwick "incessantly refines, qualifies, raises objections, answers them, and then finds further objections to the answer. Each of these objections, rebuttals, rejoinders, and surrejoinders is in itself admirable, and does infinite credit to the acuteness and candour of the author. But the reader is apt to become impatient; to lose the thread of the argument; and to rise from his desk finding that he has read a great deal with constant admiration and now remembers little or nothing." I do not think this is a wholly accurate description of Sidgwick's style. I find that on some topics he proceeds at great speed. Anyway, let us grant that it is wholly accurate. Sidgwick is often referred to as a predecessor to the analytic tradition in philosophy and students of it who read Broad's description will probably think: yes, I have encountered quite a few texts like that in this tradition. Now it is possible that Sidgwick was largely responsible for developing this style, but I think that is very unlikely. Even if he made stylistic leaps from what was done previously, it seems likely that something like this existed before Sidgwick. Such a style evolved. (For example, "I am going to consider three objections," says one writer. "Three. That's nothing. I will consider seven!" replies another.) Why the great man history (or second tier man history)? Tell us who the predecessors are! Also how did this style come to develop a near dominant position? One answer is that good philosophy simply requires it. But I am attracted to another answer: that it has been introduced for strategic reasons. One likely strategic reason for it is that this style protects you from plagiarism. (See my "Are individuals a problem for British structural-functionalist anthropology?") I think another reason is that you make it the dominant style to deter "the enemy": someone of philosophical skill whom you don't want in your department and maybe beyond. Owing to temperament, or other factors, they cannot do this style. (See my "Dialogue with O on requirements, the histories of analytic philosophy and psychiatry".)

In his very short introductory book Philosophical Method, Timothy Williamson writes, "There is no law that only humans can think that 5 + 7 = 12. Even if humans are the only creatures on earth to have thought it so far, one day members of future species or sophisticated robots may think it." (p.69) Williamson is referring to scientific laws, like the law of gravity, not legal laws. There is no scientific law that only humans can think that 5 + 7 = 12. Without argument, Williamson asserts that it is possible for sophisticated robots to think this. But the philosopher John Searle argues that computers cannot think. The simple version of his position on robots is that they cannot think (but his qualified position may be that they need to be made of flesh: biorobots?). Searle has a bad reputation as a character, but I find his philosophical work valuable. Williamson actually refers to Searle on pragmatics (p.105).

In his very short introduction to Philosophical Method, Timothy Williamson writes, ***'There is a story of a traveller who asks the way to somewhere and is told, "If I were going there, I wouldn't start from here." The advice is useless because one has no choice but to start from where one is.'*** End of quotation. I do not think that this advice is useless in all possible contexts. It can be taken as a recommendation to the traveller to change their plan: if you are here, then abandon any plan to go there. Can that not be good advice? I think it can be in some contexts. However, some travellers may detect the recommendation and respond, "I must go there."

When I was in hospital, the psychiatrist said words to me which suggested the following argument (the conclusion seems to have since been sensibly abandoned). (1) If you have a divided mind, then you have schizophrenia. (2) You have a divided mind. Therefore (3) You have schizophrenia. The argument interestingly appeals to the original meaning of schizophrenia - to split the mind - rather than to contemporary medical criteria. Davidson's paper "Paradoxes of Irrationality" commits itself to a rejection of (1). I reject (2) for sure.

A University of Manchester building has appeared next to my apartment block and it is violating my right to light. My lawyers are engaged in a legal battle with the University's lawyers. Yesterday I did some research on the right to light, but I am finding the information difficult to understand. According to Google AI today, "The right to light focuses on maintaining a minimum level of natural illumination needed for a property's comfortable use, not necessarily guaranteeing direct sunlight." So the right to light in a building is not a right necessarily guaranteeing direct sunlight? Why not? Surely the point is not this: the Sun does not always shine and if you had such right, then you could get into a legal battle with the sky and so forth. (The clouds must clear, I have a right to direct sunlight!) What is it though? I can grasp a conceptual distinction between natural illumination and direct sunlight. I can at least conceive a reality in which another star is sufficiently close to our Sun to also provide natural illumination. Natural illumination is conceivably provided by some other source than direct sunlight. Whether this is genuinely possible or not, I don't know. Is this a relevant line of thought for understanding the right to light, or merely something an autistic person would get preoccupied with? Now if the University's lawyers somehow beat my lawyers, I will have reason to fear their legal prowess. Nevertheless and despite my struggles, I must beat them: the University's lawyers. Readers might think this is the ravings of an insane person. "How can you beat them?!" But consider the evidence more carefully. I am a leading scholar of one article by H.L.A. Hart. Okay, I have not covered everything, but I have presented three responses to one of his objections to the liberty principle: the reflective equilibrium response, the Foucaultian response, and the situationalist response. I have compared Hart with his predecessor Sidgwick and assessed what later figures had to say on Hart: Amartya Sen and Scott Soames. I have contrasted Hart with Parfit and Raz. I have examined Hart's methods of interpretation. I have addressed his writing style. And more. All this is not nothing. Therefore it has to be something. If a big cat, a jaguar say, fights a large water snake, an anaconda, most experts say that the jaguar will win. But is that always true? The big cat makes one mistake and the anaconda will drag it into the water and do unspeakable things to it.

O: I see you have tried to defend reading short stories. But you need to provide a defence which others cannot easily think of. This is Cambridge who set the question. ME: How about "I like reading about casual sex, not about love, so I like short stories"? O: Don't make fun of me. I'm all about love. ME: How about "I like all stories. Some stories are short stories. So I like short stories"? O: Please don't make fun of me. ME: How about "I like novellas. Some short stories are one word off a novella. One word less does not make any difference. So I like some short stories"? O: Please let me out. RIGHTTOLIGHT: Enough. ME: This is fun. RIGHTTOLIGHT: Enough!

The 1946 film Gilda, from the golden age of Hollywood: is it a feminist film? In one scene, Mundson introduces Johnny Farrell to his wife Gilda. Afterwards, Mundson says to Johnny Farrell, "My wife does not appear to like you, Johnny Farrell," or words to that effect. The viewer can understand why Mundson says that. She behaves rudely. But the viewer does not share Mundson's perspective (or I intuit that a lot of viewers don't and am leaving aside the ones who do). The viewer thinks, "This woman is in love!" The viewer is quite close to an anti-feminist position: "No," from this woman means, "Yes." (By the way, to my eyes, Gilda looks better in all the other scenes. Is that acceptable for me to share? An interpretation based on the perception: when Johnny Farrell is around, Gilda takes care of herself.) "We know all this." My apologies, but it might be useful for my audiences to know it.