Terence Rajivan Edward

This paper examines the paradox of the insecurity sharer: a person who shares with strangers what they are worried about (insecure about). Doing so, violates what Francis Bacon says about friendship: that one only shares such stuff with a friend. In 2014, Guardian journalist Emma Brockes wrote of actress Diane Keaton (who recently passed away), “The irony of all this is that writing about her insecurities to this degree requires her, at some level, to be profoundly secure.” I present three solutions to the paradox: the insecurity sharer is mad; the insecurity sharer is acting; and, a clever solution maybe - what is rational for some famous people to share is simply different from what we (and Bacon) think rational. If you find that you strangely cannot get a good therapist, it is rational to seek help from anyone.

I introduce a hypothesis: that at present some anthologies of best short stories feature a short story by an author which is not their best, to any reader or almost any reader, but if you investigate the author’s short fiction further, you find a story which merits inclusion. I developed this hypothesis after observing inclusion in an anthology, edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. If it is true, titles such as The Best Short Stories 2021 are misleading. "Clues as to who wrote the best short stories of 2021" is perhaps a more accurate title! And does not social justice require accuracy? (There is a paradox in here that refers to THE PHILOSOPHER'S ANNUAL.)

The distinguished anthropologist Dame Professor Marilyn Strathern, now in her eighties, has been writing on Newton for about a decade. Presumably, her long association with the University of Cambridge influenced this choice. My response to this choice of subject does not concern the detail of her writing, rather social structure, a traditional theme of British social anthropology. I pose the question: should geniusesfor-everyman such as Newton and Darwin be at Cambridge? Should not the lecturers at a Cambridge college be all experts who fall short of greatness? But why? I consider some explanations.

I watched a government debate on first cousin marriage, in which one participant argued for a ban on the grounds of health risk whereas another argued for sensitivity to entrenched community ways and genetic screening for couples at risk. The first participant’s recommendation was described as scientific by the video commentary, the second’s as empathetic. I “naturally” thought of Hume’s is-ought gap in response to the first description. But how would I respond if I had not heard of Hume and somehow he sat down, while I was having my typical conversation with some conversational partner or other (sharing lots of “microideas), and he introduced his idea of a gap to me. I would not recognize its significance, I think.

This paper responds to an interesting government news video which begins with British politician Lucy Powell but then considers a debate about whether to ban first cousin marriage, which a community or set of communities in the United Kingdom show a preference for: there is a suggestion that the preference spread through migration from rural Pakistan. The video contrasts the scientific recommendation of Richard Holden (ban it on grounds of health risk) with the empathetic recommendation of Iqbal Mohammed (be sensitive to entrenched community practice and perspectives and introduce genetic screening for couples at risk). I contest the adequacy of this contrast, because of values involved in justifying Holden’s approach (valuing health risk reduction above giving greater free choice of partner) and the scientific research involved in justifying Mohammed’s approach, including social science (learn their perspectives, use genetic screening). I suspect utilitarianism allows for Mohammed’s approach. Mohammed’s approach seems closer to social anthropology, but I introduce structural-functionalist social anthropology, which does not depend on community explanations for why there is the preference. It is not empathetic. A structural-functionalist would raise the puzzle of how a society which implements this preference can maintain a coherent social structure given the health risk, and address it: obvious options being deny that there is such a health risk or identify a compensatory value for maintaining the social structure (e.g. binding an extended family together, ensuring they do better as an economic unit).

The initial idea of fair equality of opportunity is that if two people are both capable of doing a job and would be equally good at it, then they should stand an equal chance of getting it, whereas if one is less capable then they should stand a less chance. Fair equality is recommended (mostly famously by John Rawls) with the hope of overcoming situations in which certain jobs are dominated by people of a certain social class. But it faces what I call the problem of generational jobs: for a member of your family (or social network) to get one of these jobs normally requires adaptation by them for that end over generations: a clever child cannot do it without this preparatory work from previous generations, modifying the background of assumptions say. With this in mind, I discuss Diane Keaton, who recently died. Diane Keaton was known as an actress at the core of the world-famous American film industry and a stylish dresser, but she also directed films, for which she has no impressive reputation. She has a surprising image of herself in the role, looking to me like a military man’s housewife, and I think she is suggesting that this is a generational job and while she has built impressively upon the background of her ancestors as actress and style icon, she is no better than them here. I also comment on the relationship between the newspapers and the academic world.

I identify the central puzzle of the film Annie Hall as "Why should we keep watching after the animation in which Annie Hall is depicted as an evil queen?" We watch a highbrow film like this for its complex characters (rounded, three-dimensional) and the complex situations they are involved in, which require subtle emotional and intellectual sensitivity to understand and great talent to depict, or that is a traditional account of why anyway. But as their relationship fades, the Woody Allen character shows us a children's cartoon as a more accurate portrait of his relations with Annie Hall, in which she is an evil fairytale queen. I consider three solutions to the puzzle: that Woody Allen is not being honest here in order to achieve comic effect; that he is being honest but his neurotic nature prevents him from perceiving the situation accurately; and a third solution is that it is not actually a children's cartoon. I am not convinced by any of these solutions and actually stopped watching on the last occasion.

Hume on causation is one big topic, on which a lot of research has been done at a nearby university. Rawls on social justice is another big topic, on which a lot of research has been done as well, at a nearby university. But what is the relationship between these two? A saying which goes back to The Bible is “The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.” I propose that these two bodies of philosophical research are incompatible. The Rawlsian is searching for not merely a reliable judge - each judgement is a fair one, a just one - but also a judge where there is a necessary connection between the judge’s judgements and social justice. And Hume, as traditionally interpreted, denies that there are necessary connections. There are only relationships of regularity so far.

This paper considers the relationship between literary theory and film theory. It introduces Terry Eagleton’s view that literary theory developed in the 1960s to cater for students from uncultivated backgrounds and extends it to introduce an answer: the literary theories developed then can be applied to other things and that is how contemporary film theory arose. But what happens if we take earlier literary theory, even if it is not literary theory in Eagleton’s precise but unclarified sense, such as E.M. Forster’s theory that highbrow literary works feature rounded characters (complex, changing, capable of surprising readers) as their main characters, not flat ones (one defining quality). I interpret Annie Hall as preventing the application of this theory. It is a highbrow film but also an attack on the impression of Annie as revealed by anything but the children’s cartoon. The actress who played her, Diane Keaton, died yesterday. This is not my first essay in response, if it prickles some readers. Analytic philosophy is lightly brought to bear on Forster’s distinction, but it seems Kathleen Stock’s job to me.

My philosophico-poetrical system is not all my own. I built upon Valéry's remark: "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." The problem with pursuing the project and allowing for metaphor is that one starts with a line and searches for a line that rhymes and chooses a line with a metaphor in it which expresses common thoughts. By banning metaphor, one increases the chances of distant and unexpected thoughts figuring the rhyme. (I think the AI has cut my remark "That's not how I interpret the lyrics.")

This paper tries to present Donald Davidson on metaphor in a way which appears more systematic than his own celebrated essay. On this interpretation, he uses his principle of charity to make sense of metaphors: taken literally, a metaphor is patently false or trivially true, but because there is normally no reason to utter such a statement and because we must assume fellow speakers to have largely true beliefs, we take it as a metaphor. I consider the concern that Davidson’s principle is much better for processing metaphors which are patently false, when taken literally, rather than trivially true. We must interpret charitably and charitable interpretation requires us to treat speakers as having largely true beliefs by our lights and the best way to meet this requirement when faced with some patently false statements is treat them as not intended to be taken literally. But what is the situation with metaphors which, when taken literally, are trivially true? I give an example where Davidson’s system can cope with this. The interpreter must consider why a trivially true statement was uttered and charity requires preferring some other explanation to: the uttered falsely believed that you did not know this. (This is also material before my own system on metaphor!)

Professor Timothy Gowers, in his very short introduction to mathematics, tells us that he encounters young maths students with raw mathematical powers, brains that seem to work simply differently to normal. “Have they got autism?” we are sure to ask. Anyway, he stresses that this is not crucial for success in mathematics and numerous mathematicians achieve without it. Meanwhile, Professor Jeanette Edward remembers a youth of dry kinship diagrams and prefers a different kind of kinship. I suspect she is privately keen on anthropologists with a raw power for anthropology, i.e. no kinship-algebra-loving autistics. I argue that she is making a (slight) mistake. Interaction with other disciplines today requires having some “formal skills”: you go to economics and the economist says, “You have worked in a formal language. We can talk,” even to someone such as myself. The average logician, the average computer scientist: they share this view. It is a scientific age!

In earlier contributions, I have drawn attention to how some people teach their children: do your best in the sport competition and if you lose, that’s life. But other people teach their children something else: if the opponent is overwhelmingly likely to win, do the minimum. I think this is a different social class perhaps, sometimes anyway. I have come upon a R.K. Narayan story in which a boy is being encouraged to complain not necessarily when a person merits complaint but whenever complaining best serves one’s ends: rational actor complaints; economics as rational strategy. I present a discussion of the story as a dialogue, with a character called JKURT. Apologies PhilPapers, I have been doing well and I feel this material is IMPORTANT.

What is a computer? I define a computer as a machine which follows an arbitrary sequence of instructions: the nature of the machine is such that one does not have to give it these instructions, if one instructs it; but that might include some washing machines. What is a dead programming language: a language which is only of interest for scholarly or nostalgic reasons. Is BASIC a dead coding language? I don’t know, but I give some reasons to think not: by learning it you can converse with other parents about coding, if you are one; and the computer industry might well have a way of supporting families who supported it during its 1980s expansion; if you missed out, you have to learn BASIC. This paper is written as an imitation of P.F. Strawson

The Guardian’s John Searle obituary, although it will probably be preferred to my own summary by some reviewers today - maybe all - suffers from some problems. The history of philosophy which accords Searle such a founding place is a bit questionable. And there are doubts over whether Jane O’Grady understands the Chinese room thought experiment and also performative language. I confess I use this article as an opportunity to write a Guardian style introduction to myself, in case the newspaper ever one day needs it: in an appendix.

Professor Joseph Raz died in 2022. He was cast as a big thinker and in more practical disciplines compared to pure metaphysics, such as legal philosophy, so people in the social sciences are sure to ask, “Does he have anything to contribute to my field?” I focus on social anthropology and presented a third contribution. Raz argues against analysing political and legal concepts by examining how they are used by ordinary speakers, rather he focuses on how they are used in specialist discourses. I am not sure if this is useful for social anthropology in its typical contexts, but it is useful for anthropology at home when focusing on the culture of a profession. I use economics as an example. Warning (for University of Cambridge only?): not yet a clever paper but my cleverish gist example reappears when discussing economics!

The paradox of free computer software is that people provide software which takes a lot of effort to make for free. If it takes a lot of effort, surely they want money. I present two solutions to this paradox. One solution is that the computer industry faced and continues to face competitors who will provide free rival goods. The only way to prevent these competitions from eating away at one’s business profits is to provide free goods as well and enhance your company’s reputation, so that people later buy goods from your company (or companies pay to advertise with you). Another solution is that the free goods are there to maintain national identity. For example, one’s national identity is that our work is either 7/10, below or 10/10 given a certain system of assessment. One then provides a free word processor but any work in-between is deleted.

According to Guardian journalist Lucy Mangan, a documentary about global fashion and music superstar Victoria Beckham is extremely boring. It is three hours of platitudes. (Here A platitude is an obvious truth not worth saying in conversation.) Why does she not make sparkling quotes like Marilyn Monroe? She could say, “I always look moody because then people will never know when I’m actually moody.” I consider three solutions: (a) Earlier celebrities did not have sufficient evidence of the robustness of non-literary work, whereas now they do. (b) Any quotable lines would be credited to someone else – a Jan Narvesonlike problem. (c) It would cause a counter-reaction without quote misattribution.

Should philosophers have something to say to others or should they converse amongst themselves? It is a more difficult question than it may seem: “Obviously they should…” This is the second installment in my Joseph Raz and anthropology series. I examine Raz’s support for a classical doctrine about value and rationality: that a rational action is one which aims at something objectively valuable. The Enlightenment doctrine of rationality, from Hobbes and Hume, seems much better for doing social anthropology. This is not a clever paper, by the way.

Professor Joseph Raz, one of the leading political philosophers of our time and its uncrowned jurist even, died in 2022. I am a specialist in philosophical issues from social anthropology, but I have long admired Raz. Here I focus on The Morality of Freedom. Raz’s conception of human nature and his conception of human flourishing inform his political vision, which seems a maximally difficult update of fellow Balliol man F.H. Bradley’s 1876 Ethical Studies. His conception is for a society that has experienced industrialization but it quite naturally (for us anyway) leads to an old-fashioned kind of social anthropology, if not strictly entails it: one will be describing roles in a society and how they fit together. (“That is basically structural-functionalism again.” Yes, I suppose so.)

What should we do as artificial intelligence improves in its essay writing skills. Write all the solid competent essays audiences hope from it now, before it can? Forgive me people opposed to this approach. (I fear I shall be left alone with the toughest of Anglo-Saxon men, I who have never actually met men-men? "Be you man or wall? How did you even come into existence?”) This paper responds to Karl Krauss's remark about journalists "No ideas and the ability to express them" conveyed on Leiter Reports. Aside from the response "I want news not clever reflection," I observe that frameworks for writing an article which involve no new ideas are useful for conveying information (clarifying “new idea” for people who cannot understand this sentence). I refer to a Rachel Aroesti article as an example. But why not just present information without the trite opinions, upload lecture notes say? In response to this puzzle, I draw attention to what I call Monica goods, an important category for understanding the world I believe.

Helen Beebee and Nigel Sabbarton-Leary clarify the question “Are Psychiatric Kinds Real?” as “Do psychiatric concepts refer to natural kinds?” our preliminary understanding of a natural kind being a set of things which form a kind regardless of human belief or interest. I propose that they need to distinguish between these two questions: “Are psychiatric kinds real?” and “Could psychiatric kinds be real? Is it possible for them to be real?” They start with the former question but sometimes sound as if they are addressing the latter question. Also I think they need to distinguish between a person who addresses the question while accepting that physics, chemistry, and biology identify natural kinds and a person who does not: one of their arguments against what I call “a natural account of natural kinds” is that it is incompatible with recent accounts of what a species is, but categories like schizophrenia show a long-term robustness and seem to merit a less fashionable defence (put crudely). They use an account which emphasizes explanatory value and predictive success as indicators of a concept which picks out a natural kind but they ignore the existence of multiple psychiatric diagnostic systems, even within Western culture. They want to support the DSM system, it seems. But an explanation for why the National Health Service does not use psychoanalysis, say, is that it is simply too expensive, not that something epistemically-compelling favours the current DSM. The diagnostic system recommended by the UK government is probably the outcome of considerations which do not guarantee its being better than other systems as “pure science.” Put snobbishly, it is for the poor.

This letter challenges a common image (I believe) of life long ago as featuring small groups, each with a strong man leader and followers. It points out that in various intellectual projects, what seems closest to that type is introduced late. The material may be relevant for those evaluating Hobbes. It then wonders whether a whole social class has as an ideal object someone like John Searle (we want a child like that), who is produced by mysterious means actually, and then connects online comedy sketches to propose relativism about who is an a**hole. This Korean young woman seems as if she has mastered the craft of being one, until she is contrasted with this French one: alongside which she seems quiet and introverted, in line with our stereotype of the far Eastern woman.

This paper responds to a problem which Professor Veronique Munoz-Dardé extracted from John Rawls. The family causes unequal life chances so we should abolish it. It is natural to imagine a person making the argument from the perspective of someone who wants to realize certain ambitions but cannot. However, we should consider the perspective of people who, over generations, turned a project into something successful. Should they give an equal chance to people who would not look twice at them in the painful development period?

There are the social sciences, such as economics and social anthropology, and philosophy of social science has questions such as “Can this discipline predict?” and “Is it actually a science?” But there are other matters which one addresses at a high level of generality and involve much reflection probably and philosophical talent, so some people will probably count addressing these as doing philosophy: for example - an issue philosophers have some familiarity with from W.V. Quine - "Will I be too nervous working with your preferred assumptions, philosopher?" Beyond social science, consider psychiatric diagnostic systems. The Lacanian system is simple and elegant, but maybe reality is messier than that; but too many categories and the average psychiatrist will find it too stressful to use. There is probably a battle over swing-voter-like figures: a psychiatrist who thinks, “I want to help people but I have some ordinary aims in life too. Relax at the end of the day. Have a family perhaps. Be a consultant with some authority, not having to politely answer every annoying person.”