Emotions
March 16, 2014
They get in the way of wise action, drive you to reckless decisions, have you in tears over small matters, or lead you to sacrifice everything in pursuit of a dream. The emotions are one of the most distinctive elements brought to the world by humanity (and a few other animals). At times they seem …
Making Sense 1
February 22, 2014
Images hit the retina whenever our eyes are open. Mostly we let those images pass by, ignoring them in favour of more pressing thoughts. Sometimes an image deserves our attention and we take a perception, an action that makes sense of the visual manifold. There is a special kind of perception that we can take: …
Perfection
February 16, 2014
Knowing when to stop is one of the most difficult decisions of the creative process. It is not always easy to judge when a work is finished. Perhaps a painting needs one or two more brush strokes in a few places, a poem could do with an extra word added and a couple of them …
Apology for Narcissus
February 12, 2014
Valentine’s Day on February 14th is a supposed day of love. But then it’s not for all. Not everyone is in a relationship on that day, and not all of those in a relationship are truly in love. Nevertheless, we can make Valentine’s Day a day for everyone if we broaden it to include self-love …
The Past is in the Present; and the Present is in the Past
February 9, 2014
It’s not just writings, data and bytes of memory that can contain information. I’ve always loved the way that a plain old object, dug up from the ground, can tell a story about the past. The object and the information are in the present, yet they relate to some distant age and give us a …
Character and Plot
February 2, 2014
A recent film left me a little mystified. What was it about? What was the meaning? How did it all make sense? The story seemed to end inconclusively and many of the events depicted had led nowhere. What were we to make of it? My theatre companion suggested it was best seen as a character …
An Unknowable Truth
February 1, 2014
We have to be humble sometimes and admit we are not capable of knowing everything that is true. This should be uncontroversial for surely there are many truths about the past all evidence of which is now erased. It is either true or false that a dinosaur sneezed on this exact spot 100 million years …
What Science Cannot Teach Us
January 17, 2014
If I had a hammer, there’s lots I could do with it. I could crush a walnut, for one thing. But I might hang a picture on the wall, knock a bulge out of my car’s wheel arch, break some toffee, start a carpentry project. I could also use it to bash someone’s brains in. …
Losing our Minds
January 12, 2014
A further sadness about death is the loss of mind. A mind collects memories, experiences and learning. All those skills of intellect, painstakingly acquired, all those beliefs and values, all those habits and affections. They once made a person: an entirely unique individual shaped by their experiences and education; now gone into the past. They …
Censored
January 4, 2014
John Stuart Mill’s view of liberty was largely right, especially where it concerned freedom of speech and expression. We ought to have nothing to fear from the public airing of views with which we disagree, for instance, for that exposes their stupidity. Besides, suppression of opposing views is rightly taken to be a mark of …
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