Again have a problem with quote. I think I may be in error in quoting GK Chesterton, the belletrist and essayist, the English writer, who said, 'I thought to go into philosophy but cheerfulness kept breaking in.' I'm not sure; I can't find that one either. But in any event the idea's amusing. And it is true that at one time in Italy, where for some reason or other there was a kind of burst of interest in my work, I was privileged to have two historians and one philosopher of science who were going to comment on my lecture. Italians, distinguished scholars, and you know every once in a while you lose control or something; I got up and I said... with genuine gratitude, I said I was very gratified that they would spend the effort and think about what I have been working on and comment on it, but I had to say that, you know, all my life I was always interested in bookstores, and when I was 16 I would go straight for the pornography section, but when I was 40 I would go straight for the philosophy section, and in neither case did I get very much satisfaction. And what happened was: one of these Italians actually changed the title of his lecture to Edelman, Pornography and Neuroscience, and that takes me more seriously than I should be taken.

So, you know, it actually happened, and here is my point about philosophy. If you consider that philosophy really doesn't have a subject matter per se, in the face of what science has, but that it is an effort to refine thinking and clarify your thoughts, well and good. Unfortunately it's had a history of... how shall I say it, at least in the Western world, which has forced it, too, to become parochialized in a way because great systematic philosophers like Kant and Hegel not have fallen so much into disrepute but something happened in the business. And I quote, I guess, Wittgenstein: 'Philosophy is when language goes on holiday.' Because he believed, as you remember, that there were no philosophical problems – only puzzles which were occasioned by a misprision and the use of the language game.

Now, I don't know if I'd go that far but, in effect, there is a frustration involved in philosophy because ... and that's the one that's made up in science – namely in philosophy you can generate an idea but the question is can you ever test it and find out, you know, besides self-consistency can you find out how it refers? And science has filled that gap and there is an uneasy, I guess, interaction now in neuroscience between philosophers and neuroscientists and I guess that's where I stumbled in. So I don't think that... although my colleagues disagree, I don't think you can dismiss philosophy but you have to be a little ironic, perhaps. And what Wittgenstein said is worth quoting too, about... he said, 'The whole point is to let the fly out of the fly bottle.'