Classics
June 22, 2014
This week I had cause to look again at Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, a book from which I used to teach but had not read for around 20 years. Wanting to lay hands on a copy in the middle of town, I went along to the book shop in the near certain knowledge that …
Immersion and Self-Consciousness
June 15, 2014
Schopenhauer claimed that the function of art was to release the individual from their constant restless striving. We have selfish desires that we look to satisfy, desires which seem beyond our control and not always admirable. But in aesthetic contemplation we can lose our sense of self if we become immersed in the object and …
The Pain and Pleasure of Learning
May 18, 2014
There is a rather simplistic thought that every single action you perform, you do because it brings you pleasure. Even when you give to charity, the claim goes, it is purely because it gives you a personal thrill. No act is genuinely altruistic; all are ultimately selfish. It’s a simple, reductionist thesis of psychological egoism …
Being Sensible
April 13, 2014
Some recent Arts Matters posts might have perpetuated the myth of the five bodily senses. Of course there are many more even if we restrict ourselves to human beings. And if we include animals, we find others besides. Bats make their way around using echolocation, as every philosopher knows because of Thomas Nagel’s paper ‘What …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Prospective
December 30, 2013
A new year is to begin in the Western calendar. It marks the opportunity for new beginnings, new resolutions, a virtual rebirth. Many believe the date of the new year to be an arbitrary point. But what matters is the prospect of an annual renewal, reinvigoration and reinvention. New Year’s Day presents us with an …
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