Terence Rajivan Edward

I open with a contrast between the Searle-Derrida debate and British social anthropology’s opposition to cultural studies. My paper features an attempt at synthesis between the rival camps in the latter debate, which will be its most important material for some readers. Then I turn to someone much studied by Cultural Studies, it seems. Madonna has done stand-up comedy on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. I have done some stand-up comedy myself. I think Madonna has used a rational strategy: around 2 minutes in she says, “Please don’t pull me off, I have jokes.” In a gong show, a type of comedy show, audience members have the power to get rid of a comedian before their maximum allocated time is up, e.g. 5 minutes. Audiences at some gong shows are told to give comedians a minute or two to settle in, rather than making an instant assessment. So she takes risks earlier and around 2 minutes Madonna goes for heavy-hitting moves to keep the audience on side: in her case, discussion of the paintings she owns. I have never used this strategy myself, although I asked a fellow comedian and he told me “Just do your best stuff from the start.” That is good advice for me.

This paper responds to Doctor David Builes’s paper which appeared in the PhilPapers new manuscripts section today: “A Dilemma for Plenitude.” I find what is called the scene setting of the paper puzzling. Consider the view (or claim or thesis) that if a lump has been sculpted into a statue, there are now two things in one place: a lump and a statue. Builes describes this view as narrow (presumably because it is only about a lump and a statue, amongst the many things in this world), so it is rational to generalize if we can, but he aims to argue that the only rational generalization is a view of reality which is too objectionable. I make what seems to me to be an obvious point: I argue that the view is significant even if narrow from a certain perspective, because it challenges the assumption that two physical objects do not occupy the same physical space. (For convenience of exposition, the paper contains an imitation of Laura Riding, which may also be of literary interest.)

As analytic philosophers or social scientists, we try to avoid merely suggestive evidence. Ideally we seek something stronger, such as proof. This is true even if we think of ourselves as not arguing against the sceptic, rather to convince someone who shares more of our premises. But to avoid suggestive evidence altogether in life would seem to leave us in the position of a person with autism. In this paper, I examine a book cover which suggested to me that Bernard Williams has the brains of Madonna: her intellectual abilities are similar - high general intelligence, high common sense - but she works in a different field, perhaps or probably because of a less privileged background. I speculatively propose that Madonna’s brains have been affected by epistemic injustice and her brains are now more similar to mine.

I opened my new book “Any Donkey Could: amusing essays on Western culture before the 20th century” with an essay on how the arts originated. In this paper, I respond to a “criticism”: this is mere common sense. I am not sure that I agree with this assessment. But I present two criticisms of it: it is unlikely that many people can give the answers I give, people who can give other commonsense reactions to other questions; and various people who seem capable of giving both answers would dismiss as unanswerable the question, because of lack of historical records. I then present a third answer, not in my book: that an artistic touch provided a way of giving evidence of surplus energy, beyond what a task strictly requires.

PhilPapers lists a number of varieties of feminism, each of which has papers under its heading. Some of these varieties are associated with familiar political philosophies: there is liberal feminism, for example, and also socialist and Marxist feminism. But what about conservative feminism? Is the very idea contradictory? I present a conservative project, which probably attracted some women in the nineteenth century and probably attracts some women hence. According to this conservative project, any institution or discipline must solve problems of strategy and men should do this. Women should focus on being or becoming workers within the project, e.g. "At the moment you are employing males in that role but we can be good workers too." I call this patriarchal feminism.

Ever since the Jacques Derrida Cambridge degree scandal, in which several prominent analytic philosophers wrote in protest against Derrida’s receiving an honorary degree from the University of Cambridge, elite philosophy departments in the English-speaking world have been known the world over for their fraught relations with literature departments. In this paper, I propose that the literary style of senior figures in analytic philosophy is as if nineteenth century literature did not end. I quote a number of analytic philosophers throughout its history: Professor C.D. Broad, Professor Bernard Williams, Professor H.L.A. Hart, Professor Crispin Wright, and Professor Helen Beebee.

What was Oedipus’s relationship to the Sphinx? He was prophesized to have sexual relations with his mother, so he left to Thebes. It was guarded by a Sphinx, who would devour anyone who failed to solve her riddle. Do you think Oedipus thought this: I am willing to risk an attempt, because if I solve her riddle I can surely have sexual relations with her as a further reward and she is surely not my mother? The paper contains other material, concerning whether he did not check his adoptive parents’ palms for corresponding lines and more.

As professional philosophers, when we are presented with a book such as On What Matters (or set of books), we are disposed to respond to its arguments and set aside the inner psychology of the person: why they write what they do. Do they write it because they believe that this is the approach that best contributes to knowledge, or some other official aim of the academic discipline, or do they write it for some other reason? I observed pencil jottings on the University of Manchester's volume 2 of On What Matters, which criticized Parfit's attempt at metaethics: questions of whether there can be objective ethics, questions of what we can know of moral truth, questions of the nature of moral discourse. "Shame," it patronizingly said. But I have other questions, leaving aside how well he does as a skilled philosopher slightly outside of his home territory: "can he match the specialist here?" the scribbler presumably wonders. One of my questions is why he does not offer paradox after paradox, instead counterexample after counterexample. I consider four solutions. (i) He cannot do that. I doubt that. (ii) He is responsive to a history of paradox deletion. The paradoxes just before the French revolution and the paradoxes made by the bright young things of the early 20th century were deleted. (iii) The counterexamples are valued more by literature departments. These little hypothetical fictions are accorded higher literary value. (iv) There are paradoxes but they are hidden.

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

Do you know any literary essayists from the 20th century? George Orwell: who does not know Orwell? Bertrand Russell: everyone knows Russell. Virginia Woolf. But there were so many others. Some you might know because they belong to a community you identify with (or study?). But these are the big three "everyone" knows, in the English language anyway. But there were so many others. I presented a comedy sketch idea on Instagram in which they are all locked up and Orwell is the prison warden. Orwell is the favourite of our mayor Andy Burnham, it seems: he specified The Road to Wigan Pier as his favourite. What to make Orwell? He reviews Dali and tells us about Dali's quality as a painter and says nothing about his level of literary skill: can the legendary painter write? If I want to know whether he has good draftsmanship, I probably won't ask Orwell. (Spender said Orwell's great strength is his honesty: he reports his impressions.) Anyway, I am wondering whether the Internet is going to change the situation. At the moment, I can't seem to find an online copy of Orwell's essay The English People, which was a model for Doris Lessing I recall reading. I am worried there is going to be a hole. There are all these much earlier essayists, such as Bradley, Collingwood, the Edwardian rivals Beerbohm and Belloc and Bernard Shaw and Chesterton and more, freely available; and there are recent people like us, freely available: me and, um, er, Helen Beebee (keep going with her somehow), and, um, er, Tim Crane; Tim Ingold in social anthropology - oh no, I am so academic (Madonna probably)! Anyway, the space in between, which is not freely available, is going to have a mark against it. A fellow such as myself thinks, "I don't have much. I am going to favour the people who made their works available to me." Why are you not out there for people to read?!

I have released a book, a new book, and the fair Englishman is sure to enter it into a league with similar books: the logical insight league. You know how there were once books of aphorisms, expressing the author’s insights, such as regarding life, love, and more. Some people with some experience of life agree with them but others say, “Insufficient evidence,” either from their own experience or a demand for proper method. But sufficient evidence would slow everything down so much, it seems: far fewer insights and long chapters in defence of them. Can you meet rational standards and provide quicker insights? I tried in my new book Any donkey could: amusing essays on Western culture before the 20th century. Who else has tried? Dame Marilyn Strathern in After Nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century, one of my favourite books. And Henry Sidgwick in The Methods of Ethics? I would rank myself the best against these competitors, who are hard-going indeed. But I anticipate problems, given their high status when others rank. “I have got the knowledge to rank in this league,” says one but can he resist a certain title-loving team? “I have got the knowledge to rank in this league,” says another but he is so patriotic. And you…

Are there laws of economics? Economics assumes people are rational when making its predictions (or mainstream economics does). But are they? Once I was talking to a girl on the telephone. She studied law and politics and we met in a literature class. She liked Rousseau and Nietzsche and she told people are irrational. "But I call you every week and isn't that rational?" I must have said. This was in 1999. After the 2008 economic crash, the question of whether people are too irrational for mainstream economics to predict became a big issue. Well, it periodically does, like the irruption of irritation against Jews, Asians, and Asians, and probably some black communities soon, as Pnina Werbner observes. ("Your case is not analogous to Asif Qureshi's case. These people do aggressive stuff to you just before a predictable a mass racist period, when your complaints simply won't register.") My worry is that economics has a better track record with predicting the behaviour of people with a reputation for rationality, such as the government and the philosophy department. There are laws of economics for these people. And affluence may make a wider population predictable: the whole of Denmark or Singapore?

People are not entirely nice, apparently. Now imagine that someone tries to teach you some rational strategy, because they think you have not learnt enough of this. "You don't seem to realize a person might lie to achieve their ends, that with social status you can get away with stuff you cannot otherwise get away with, and more." You are learning now. What is rational strategy with dealing with another human? "Question: is this person important for my ends or not? If not, then ignore them. Well, act respectfully because you don't want to tarnish your reputation." But then you might live in an illusion that you have certain skills when you are well below average in these matters, but you have never talked to people. You are in the logic-business, through your use of strategy, but you would be surprised how many people are better at ABCs of logic than you. Or you want to get rid of an Asian in your social circle, so you say, "Can you share some stories about what your grandpa did in the war?" You invoke a stereotype of Asians as cowardly feeble races by nature, but how come they have independent countries at all then? The question never occurs to you, though almost everyone else realizes this point. (By the way, have you notice all these English literary figures who went to war and came back, went to war and came back. "Those are our flowers: we protect them." Rex Whistler on the front line. "If you try to capture my point of view, I will simply misquote you as if it is yours.")

Rawlsian reflective equilibrium involves taking our intuitions about what one ought and ought not to do in specific situations, such as you ought not to steal that chicken. One then tries to develop a system composed of a few general principles which entail that chicken, more generally entail one’s intuitions about what one ought and ought not to do. But there is room for sacrificing an intuition if one has a mostly successful system: if it entails most of one’s intuitions, though not all. (Outcome: the boundaries of African countries?) But did Rawlsian reflective equilibrium arise from nowhere, or in a flash of inspiration, my good men? I speculate that something like reflective equilibrium existed with the development of sporting rules long before. In England: one does not simply dream up a sport with its rules, rather one takes a set of players or player types and devises rules which favour those players.

I read a translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's prize winning essay on the arts and the sciences, in which he tells us about some idle clever spongers off the state who come up with paradoxes. The translation I read refers to these people as men of letters, but I recall an earlier translation which refers to them as littérateurs (or litérateurs). Is there any difference? Here I would like to propose a contrast between what the two terms refer to. A man of letters has an official status as a contributor to literature, in a distinguished sense. He or she features in an encyclopedia of writers of the age, say. He or she is a listed member of the literature club. A littérateur has literary talent, which they display, but they may not have official recognition, for whatever reason, for example they would be a bad influence on younger writers or their works belong to a foreign tradition. There is surely an overlap between the set of men of letters and the set of littérateurs, but it is doubtful that the two sets are identical. (Boy: I want to play with the littérateurs. Mom: you are not allowed too. You stay with me or you will get hurt. Here are some men of letters for you to read... Maybe it is a problem across sexes.)

A politician in a democracy, or even an authoritarian state, may well try to represent the views of a group of people regardless of whether he (or she) believes these views. Similarly, one can take people’s intuitive assessments of what is mad and try to develop a psychiatric system which is in line with these, or largely in line. Many people would think that a human being who does not have social aims, such as being friends with others or achieving status, is mad. They say, “Humans are social,” but mean humans without severe mental disorders. However, what people intuitively count as beyond the social human beings can vary considerably: you pursue a social aim rationally but in a way that differs from the norms of your community (“mad”), you do not seek to become a member of group which clearly demarcates members from non-members by style or skill (“mad”); you do not walk away when it seems unlikely you will get status for your work (“mad”).

Have you ever lived with flatmates who loved the popular music singer Madonna? But why do they love Madonna so? Why not Prince or Michael Jackson? (Or Taylor Swift, in more recent years? The heavy amount of caricature in Taylor Swift perhaps discounts her: “Do you sing along with this ironic liberal intellectual if you have actually had a break up and are feeling sad?”) If we confine ourselves to the 1980s leading figures in popular music, I suspect numerous people are struck by the fact that Madonna lacks the “raw” dancing skill of Jackson, the instrumental skills of Prince, the voice of Whitney Houston. “The best explanation for why she is preferred, given her limitations, is she is astute, she’s savvy: this material girl is no fool” and this immensely appeals. But various people don’t like their popular arts too technical, for example the horror film so blatantly well-crafted that your abiding response is inner applause for the makers’ skill. So are Madonna’s slight weaknesses actually strengths, rather than deficiencies shrewdly overcome? This puzzle is material for a Madonna essay, Hilary Mantel admirers!

This is a speculative history. To begin with, there was W.D. Ross. He recommended ethics and political philosophy based on a educated man sensibly balancing different relevant values: it is impossible to turn ethics into a formula, one must use intuition. But a critic said, "He is all about using common sense intuition but I would like to see the fellow address this specific topic and that specific topic using his educated intuition, rather than this general portrait of its value. More essays, more reviews please. And some cultured wit too." Then came Bernard Williams. He seemed to answer the demand, with his essays on this, that, and the other. But a critic said, "He is a sensible astute man who knows his field well and broader culture, but there are many such people. Every social class, every region, every field has such people. Something rarer please." Then came Derek Parfit, with his strange counterexamples and his whole athletic regime for producing voluminous works. But does Parfit have any common sense? In the puzzling preface to On What Matters, he writes, "Oxford University once had a useful marking grade: Alpha Gamma. As everyone should agree, Kant's books are pure Alpha Gamma, containing nothing that is Beta, or mediocre." Does Parfit not realize that a normal question about Kant's ethics is "Is this not the same as the familiar question: what if everyone did that?"? I guess we are looking for something between the strange fecundity of Parfit and the well-put sensibleness of Williams. (You know, like, the footballer Iniesta: he passes but he also dribbles. "How dare thee compare our fellows to footballers?" It is an analogy: something based on partial resemblance. Can we not produce this kind of footballer / can we not produce this kind of ethicist? Jack Wilshire problems?! They actually seem like a sequence of husbands for a powerful woman, perhaps in a society unlike our own.)

Why is there lack of progress in philosophy? From the average natural scientist's perspective, the answer is basically this: philosophers do not have adequate constraints on their theorizing to come to agreement on anything - you cannot test out a genuinely philosophical theory. There is nothing worth adding to this perspective, I think. From the perspective of professional philosophers, there is progress of a less dramatic sort than proving an answer to a question, such as introducing distinctions. I suspect there is lack of progress because what is known about philosophy in various gentlemen's clubs (and beyond?) is not public knowledge. Various philosophers were famously members of secret societies, such as the Cambridge Apostles. There are points which are probably discussed amongst the clever members of such a club which are not known to us, most of whom are not as clever. ("Well, would you let these people into your club, Dr. Terence?" I quite like fun though.) For example, here is a paradox which I presume is known: why does any philosopher recommend utilitarianism, because this policy of doing what produces the most happiness would probably require shutting down philosophy departments and investing resources elsewhere? A solution that has recently occurred to me is that the "probably" here is wrong from a more knowledgeable perspective: some seemingly useless philosophers are actually useful for stimulating the thoughts of physicists. Anyway, it seems to me that most professional philosophers in philosophy departments write for the club: they often argue for things which I strongly doubt are known already by old clubs, arriving at these things often by applying the method of examining fine details. Perhaps that would have to stop and stuff we suspect is known would have to be shared and discussed. (I once knew a girl who said, "I try to make everything I say in my thesis in new" and I wonder whether we should have a reward for saying what is not in our literature but which we suspect is known.)

A paper for Michael Rush, or whoever the jury is. This paper begins with some history of paradoxes from Rousseau to H.M. Tomlinson. It then contrasts my advice for detecting paradoxes with the advice given by an extremely popular search engine of our day, namely Google. My advice focuses on paradoxes of society, it reduces the reliance on observational talent (e.g. simply being struck by two seemingly contradictory qualities), and it encourages the discovery of paradoxes less likely to come to light.

I watched a lot of stand up comedy in Manchester around 2018 and I have also watched a lot since late 2024, performing as well. My impression is that comedians in general are clever. But I feel this is paradoxical. On the one hand, they are so clever. On the other hand, they do not have the achievements of clever people to boast of. Is there any degree in comedy studies at the University of Manchester, the favourite university of our local comedians? (A reference to Hatty Preston. See my previous works.) Also if my parents asked for some teaching to do comedy, or Jeanette Edwards, I suspect they would regard them as simply too stupid. Surely such clever people would work out how to turn these people into comedians. I say also, but I suspect these two points are closely related: if you cannot do anything with this level of brains, then there is no degree in your field. A solution to this paradox of so clever but lacking the achievements of clever people is "We don't attract these types. They only come with more institutional backing than we have and the feeling that this line of work suits them, given their nature. What we attract are other people, who are even less suited to the task but will give it a go, or give it a go if advised." Oh yes, this type who mostly turn into the school bully when they see me! (Here is another one, more or less using my method: if they are so clever, why did they get all bullied at school?)

I think I raised the question "Is this a great philosopher?" concerning someone or other (maybe David Lewis) and someone turned the question back at me, ("Are you?"), to which I laughed. Was it Doctor Michael Rush? If we take a much admired figure in contemporary philosophy, David Lewis, I feel my methodical system for detecting social science paradoxes is above anything he has done. The system is presented in the paper "What is a formidable mediocrity? Is this a useful concept, Nabokovs?" and earlier in the contribution "How to find social science paradoxes? A simple method." I have looked into a lot of paradoxes already, in my burst of public writing from February 2022 to September 2023, and in the second "burst" from 2025. How did I find them before the method? I just kept a metaphorical eye out for them; I sometimes concentrated my mind I search of a paradox - it's like staring into space and waiting for inspiration to come. My system was developed after engaging with Tim Crane's statement “the paradox is that the more analytic philosophy became dominant in the universities, the more it became removed from the concerns of the average person with philosophical interests.” I looked for other paradoxes, to undermine his talk of "the paradox" and then I devised a system and used it to find more. I believe a Joel Smith, a Helen Beebee, an Anthony Hatzimoysis, etc., armed with my system would probably detect around the same number of paradoxes on this topic and get the ones which would make it into the textbook. My system is, I feel, a big improvement over what I was doing before and for anyone who works on the boundary between philosophy and social science or simply social science: you can look for paradoxes all over the place with it, such as concerning the development of the Internet. And examining paradoxes increases our understanding. What has David Lewis done compared to this? But there is a problem. There are famously secret societies which prominent philosophers join at elite universities - the Cambridge Apostles, etc. - and there is a question of to what extent this method is known already: it is surely is known. Also most philosophers are friends with other philosophers and have private discussions concerning their subject. (I don't have friends in academic philosophy or maybe any friends whatsoever. I have colleagues where I volunteer!) What credit can I expect from people who already know the system? "Our club figured this out around the time of the French revolution, so we value David Lewis more." (I read that the first thousand years of the history of mathematics was largely developing the number counting system and I tend to be impressed by these founding mathematicians who have no name, but to what extent was the problem secret societies.? "We do not privately count like that.")

I tried reading Derek Parfit: reading Derek Parfit's Reasons and Persons straight, that is to say, starting at page one and proceedings. I found it very hard going and abandoned the project. On What Matters is easier reading, I think, prior to volume 3 anyway. Parfit is beloved across various elite departments. When the book appeared, I saw a photograph of two Princeton girls doing something peculiar with the book, or volume 1 of it I suppose. But has it been written for philosophically-minded students or lecturers in the provincial university? Regarding lecturers, whatever they start out as, their way of evaluating will probably be influenced by the perspective of the average postgraduate, whom they would I guess rate as 6 or 7 out of 10 (six-seven) and certainly wonder whether they have the brains for this line of work (the general intelligence mostly). I myself was employed at the University of Manchester from 2005 to 2019 and also did undergraduate and postgraduate degrees here. The first book I recall reading from its main library was an early work of James Joyce, enchanted between the narrowly spaced shelves. Maybe others who came through the provincial system are not so different in detail, but that is not how you regard a Parfit now. (I saw an Instagram sketch in which a comedian approaches two young women, Chinese I assume, and asks them to take his picture. They suppose he means make a photograph of him with some device or other, but he literally means take from him a photographic representation of himself. One of the two responds to his effort at humour with her own evaluative effort and then says, "It's okay." See my Instagram profile, comedy sketches, a familiar type.) Poem. Magician show / In urinated over town / Clever and cleverer skeptic for audience

Why be skeptical about inductive reasoning (i.e., generalizing from a sample)? Unstylish argument: because it does not yield certainty. Dog 1 has the feature of having a tail, dog 2 has feature of having a tail, dog 3 has feature of having a tail, case 4 has feature X as well... So you generalize that all cases of this type have feature X. But you cannot be certain. It is consistent with accepting all your premises that there is an exception. Marginally stylish argument: inductive reasoning let's you down on one occasion, on another occasion, on a third occasion, on a fourth occasion... by inductive reasoning inductive reasoning is itself unreliable. This piece of bread was healthy, this next piece was healthy, this third piece was healthy, but the whole load is not healthy. This morning was raining, the next morning was raining, the third morning was raining, but then came a sunny morning. This politician was evil, this next politician was evil, this third politician was evil, but then came an exception??? Surely one of the previously people to attempt faux Hume came up with this! ("She was upon the soil ground of French soil and yet erased from history"???)

This paper presents a paradox of inductive reasoning which occurred to me. You find that people in a certain profession, call it profession 1, do not do things in the way that you would expect. Likewise profession 2, profession 3, profession 4 ,and more. For some of these professions, you figure out why they might well depart from what you regard as the obvious or natural approach: why this actress intent on fame has only one memorable quote, say? Then you suddenly find that people in a certain other profession, or one person at least, does things as you would expect. Given all your past experiences, this very doing of things as you would expect is paradoxical. Is this really what is going on? This football manager simply uses big strong mature reliable expensive players of some skill? This dramatist has produced a moving and superbly crafted tragedy featuring a legendary character?

This paper contests the humanist interpretation of Bertrand Russell’s brief 1912 review of Henri Bergson’s book Laughter, an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, an interpretation which is offered by Andreas Vrahimis. Vrahimis takes Russell to be offering counterexamples to Bergson, against the claim that he has identified a necessary condition for something’s being funny or a sufficient condition. Vrahimis reads Russell as objecting that Bergson’s formula would require regarding a man falling from a scaffolding as funny. Vrahimis’s Russell is the typical work of a humanist philosophy professor who has added some literary panache. I offer a reason for doubting this depiction of Russell’s text: instead I interpret Russell’s review as a modernist or even postmodernist text. It is a sequence of pastiches: a comedy skit and schoolmaster’s exercise, an imitation of Charles Lamb responding to chimney sweepers, a Bradleyan nationalist final paragraph, until the Cambridge philosopher’s reflexive touch.

I was reading Helen Beebee’s paper “The Non-Governing Conception of Laws of Nature” and it is a work with plenty of useful information for me and for many others. We all learn about two conceptions of what laws of nature are, in their initial and sophisticated contemporary versions, and more. I imagine the author wrote it to reach wider audiences: philosophers, physicists, and other scientists. (I found it on a course guide too.) But why does she not reduce her papers to one liners too: brief quotable lines? It is a paradox: she is aiming for wider audiences and she does not produce a one liner, even though that seems a rational and obvious way of pursuing this aim. I consider various solutions: you cannot reduce it to a one liner (reject); I have misunderstood her aim (reject); she does not do this because it is an abnormal way of pursuing this aim within the community she is in (perhaps); and she has some knowledge that it is actually not a good idea to do this (perhaps).