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121This paper raises a worry that it is difficult to reconcile Adam Smith’s claims about the relationship of specialization to talent and character with his account of the origins of money. Specialization makes one stupid outside of one’s specialism yet money arises by specialists also providing what everyone wants.
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164I interpret George Eliot as objecting to John Locke in Middlemarch – more specifically, his theory of ideas – by means of her account of Dorothea’s experiences of Edward Casaubon at dinner.
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94The all-or-nothing problem, formulated by Joe Horton, presents us with a situation in which you can do nothing or save one child or save two. It is dangerous to save any, making doing nothing morally permissible, but there is no extra danger in saving two, so it seems wrong to just save one. But then doing nothing is morally better than saving one. I present a solution in response to this problematic result, which is that doing nothing is not an accurate description of a permissible option.
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125In Britain and also in France, arguments have been put forward against the claim that there are or have been paradigms in British social anthropology. But historian of anthropology Henrika Kuklicka supposes that there was a paradigm from the late 1920s to just before the 1960s. I raise an objection to her portrait of this research community and observe that her text implies two quite different replies.
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118This paper examines what is said about a craze for essay writing in Rose Macauley’s 1923 essayistic novel Told by an Idiot, comparing the material with Milan Kundera on graphomania. In the appendix, I note a passage on crowds which is reminiscent of the widely read European author.
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217Are John Rawls’s most noticeable methodological contributions, reflective equilibrium and the original position, consistent with each other? I draw attention to a worry that they stand in inconsistent relationships to the claim that ought implies can: it can only be the case that we ought to do something if we can do it.
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166This is a one page handout presenting some objections A.R. Radcliffe-Brown makes to Frazer on rites and Frazer's evolutionism.
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147This is a one page handout, which specifies four uses of the social organism analogy in British structural-functionalist anthropology and contrasts these uses with uses in analytic political philosophy.
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98In this paper, I present a way in which John Rawls’s original position thought experiment can be brought closer to nationalism. The social science laws can be taken from a nation’s heritage.
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106Joseph Raz claims that the fundamental principles of morality and politics are satiable: there is a point at which one has fulfilled them. I argue that Raz cannot consistently endorse this claim, given his approach to saving lives.
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105Milan Kundera is now perhaps the greatest living philosopher, but he suffers from logical problems. One might propose that since he is a person who works primarily in the medium of fiction, one should not be too harsh on him, rather find ways to make him more logical. The result may be rather chaste.
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93This paper considers a paradox which the historian of anthropology George Stocking draws attention to: from the point of view of parts of the Victorian middle class, Victorian society was highly evolved yet also contained savage components. I clarify the paradox and propose a solution.
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121I compare Rosamond’s relationship with her husband in Middlemarch with Rosamond’s marital relationship in L.A.G. Strong’s short story “The Seal.” I interpret the latter fiction as addressing the unpleasant question: what sort of decent man can suppress Rosamond?
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92This paper inquires further into how reliable Milan Kundera’s assessment of the taxi driver is. It seems to me that Kundera, though probably from a highly privileged background, approaches fiction writing like a member of an oppressed group: as soon as there is some problem, such as a difficult to digest sentence or a boring passage, the mainstream reader is shutting this book. Possibly the taxi driver would not be on this last chance saloon system.
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150Regarding the argument by Marilyn Strathern which Victoria Loblay focuses on, I present two differences between my response and Loblay’s response. Also I raise a concern about Loblay’s response.
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114Which moral judgments should one pay attention to in building a moral philosophy? Thomas Kelly and Sarah McGrath object to John Rawls’s suggestion to not rely on judgments heavily bound up with one’s own interests. I propose a solution in response to the objection.
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122This paper presents a puzzle that occurred to me while reading Milan Kundera defining graphomania: a mania for writing books for an unknown public. I also present a solution.
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103Max Gluckman introduces us to if-I-were-a-horse arguments, but what is wrong with them? In this paper, I draw attention to an objection built-in to the terminology.
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172This is a one-page handout presenting some objections nationalists might or do make to John Rawls's original position method.
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114Why is there a norm of reciprocity in certain societies – the recipient of a gift should give a gift in return? Or what is its function? Sir James Frazer provides an unobvious answer to the function of such a norm in one society: it serves to establish who is alive.
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131This paper considers the debate between teams of skilled contributors versus a genius by focusing on a specific case: a team project to overturn some remarks by Wittgenstein on Frazer’s The Golden Bough. In theory, there can be a team which does this, but in actual practice, such a team seems unlikely to arise.
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85This paper begins with Adam Smith’s advice to specialize and draws attention to an advantage from a misleading appearance of fixed specialization, identified in Flora Nwapa’s novel Efuru.
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115This paper responds to Theron Pummer’s distinction between Sorites arguments and repugnant conclusion arguments by presenting a Sorites overpopulation argument. Also I present a Sorites argument in favour of myths of genius.
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112I present anthropologist Max Gluckman’s explanation of what “if-I-were-a-horse” arguments are and introduce three questions. How do we define this kind of argument? Are earlier anthropologists “guilty” of them? And is it a bad idea to make them? I address the first two questions, proposing that Frazer is not much guilty of precisely these, though his project calls for them.
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226This paper presents two objections to Milan Kundera’s definition of graphomania.
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85Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough presents a puzzle regarding how primitive peoples believe they can control something which civilized people regard as beyond their control: the weather. I clarify the puzzle and consider Frazer’s solution to it, as well as other solutions.
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86This paper draws attention to a worry concerning what the book The econocracy says about multiple-choice questions versus essays. They face a problem reminiscent of the problems facing various kinds of relativism.
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96This is a one page handout, presenting a puzzle from J.G. Frazer regarding why, to become the priest of Diana at Nemi, one had to first break a bough in the sacred grove.
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102Why does Derek Parfit, a philosopher very much associated with the University of Oxford, use pictures of St. Petersburg on the covers of volumes of On What Matters? Perhaps it is because he regards his agony argument as like something from Russian literature. But I can envisage a response to the argument from such literature.
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94Martha Kuhlman criticizes Milan Kundera for repeatedly depicting crowds in a negative light, contrasting his impressions with that of another novelist and observer of crowds. But how do we define the concept of a crowd? In this slightly light-hearted paper, I propose a definition and then note a problem with it and then propose another definition.
Manchester, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
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