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Tag: meaning
Can We Understand Meaning Without Language?
Is language fundamental to our understanding and interpretation of experiences? Can something be experienced as meaningful without our participation in a language-world and its structures of meaning? Would we even consider something an experience if we couldn't make sense (i.e., create a meaningful unity relying on meaning structures we inhabit) of that "something" we encountered? …
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Spreading the Word: Art, Understanding, Meaning
Can art be a channel of understanding? Does it have a claim to truth, to knowledge? What comes first, understanding or knowing? Does art have a part to play in our processes of meaning-making? These are just some of the fascinating and stimulating questions explored in the video I share with you today. It is …
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Spreading the Word: Connecting Art and Science
What connects art, science, education, and nature? Watch this video where a visual artist, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, and an educator discuss what I would call the human experience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, communication in its various forms is at the heart of our meaning-making. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R11FofCPoQ4 Keeping up the "Spreading the Word" tradition, I hope to …
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Quote About Understanding As Meaning-Creation
A quote on understanding as a way of creating meaning, from German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer's book, Truth and Method.
Revisiting Existentialism in Disney
This is an article I wrote precisely one year ago. It explores existentialist themes I discovered in Disney's Lion King story of Timon and Pumba. Today, while researching 13th-century theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas's thoughts on individuality and subjectivity, I felt it can be useful to revisit this post. I hope it inspires you to …
Spreading the Word: Different Worlds We Experience
When we experience the world and interpret its meaning, it is not so much "I'll believe it when I see it", it is rather "I will see it if I believe it". And - in the way that I believe it to be. Curious? Then you might be interested in this short BBC Ideas video: …
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Spreading the Word: Importance of Meaning-Making
Why is it much more important to understand than to know? Why are all the 'why' questions significant, and how an understanding of reasons shapes our actions? I found these two articles that I would like to share with you today: on understanding and on 'why'. In each article, the authors offer their take on …
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Spreading the Word: How AI Interprets Art?
Have you ever felt bewildered when looking at contemporary art? I know I have. Sometimes it is even difficult to understand what is art anymore. Maybe such musings are part of art's genius. So imagine what it is like for an AI to 'interpret' contemporary art. How would an algorithm go about recognising art and …
Disrupting and Creating Meaning
We, humans, are remarkably flexible beings. Sometimes, we surprise even ourselves if we pay attention. For example, take Jacques Derrida's idea of deconstruction. As a way of thinking, it takes a settled meaning we accept as true and dismantles it to show how inherently arbitrary any one such interpretation is. In other words, its opposite …
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