Our identities are shaped and exist in relation to others. The way others relate to me and the way I can relate to them is fundamental to my sense of self, of who I am. When relationships play such a crucial role, some amount of drama is inevitable. However, we can become the prisoners of …
Category: On Philosophy
Knowing Yourself As The Colonised
How does one become ‘the colonised’? Not in terms of a historical fact or political status, although they are certainly important elements, but in terms of an experience. If we think of being ‘the colonised’ as a way of experiencing one’s life, how does one become it? In his book, “Black Skin, White Masks”, Frantz Fanon explores …
Avicenna’s Flying Man and Disembodied Artificial Intelligence
Latest advancements in artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, naturally lead many of us to wonder - can AI think? Not merely compute in increasingly complex ways and astounding volumes but actually understand what it is doing. Can AI have an experience? And how can a thought experiment devised by Avicenna, an 11th-century philosopher, help us here? These …
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John Stuart Mill on Truth and Meaning in Philosophy
What do we want to know when we ask why someone does something? For example, if you asked me, ‘Why are you writing this article?’ what answer would satisfy your expectations? I can respond in at least two ways. One would describe my writing as an act of the body, a certain physiological functionality manifesting …
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Heraclitus Meets Derrida and Saunders: Misunderstanding and Oversimplification
Misunderstandings are one of the typical features of being human. We can be confident in declaring that every person who has ever lived has misunderstood others and was misunderstood by others at least once in life. This reveals the interpretive structure of our thinking and the fundamental role understanding plays in our lives. Understanding is …
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Measuring and Living an Experience
What's the weather like where you are now? How would you check it - glance out the window, open it to get a feel, step outside, consult your preferred weather app? From this follows a more intriguing question - which would you trust more, your lived experience or a measurement? I'm from a generation that …
To Speak A Language Is To Participate In A World
In his book, "Black Skin, White Masks", Frantz Fanon argues that language, far from just a tool for conveying information, expresses a world implied by it. In other words, words matter in shaping who I am in your eyes, as does my tone of voice, accent, dialect, and so on. If I am a foreigner speaking your …
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What Is A Good Book? Philosophical Response
What do we mean when we evaluate a book as good or bad? Let's take a philosophical look at it.
Spreading the Word: No Such Thing as Absolute Clarity
Many of us are taught at school that we should know the right answers, that that is a sign of knowledge. As children grow, they learn that society expects certain things of them and that those are the right things. Right answers, right behaviour, right thoughts. And the opposite is, of course, wrong. This approach …
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How to Understand Human Sociality?
Humans are social beings. We all have experienced the importance of feeling part of a group, relating to others, being with others, not just next to each other. But how should we go about understanding our own sociality? Where does it begin, and what is its foundation? What is more fundamental - recognising the individual differences between …
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