reflections in a philosophical strain
‘See better, Lear!’ is the admonition Kent gives his King after he has petulantly banished his youngest daughter, Cordelia, because she ‘lacks that glib and oily art’ to flatter him as her false sisters have done. Sight and blindness is a central theme in King Lear, as is its corollary, deception, both of others and … Continue reading Seeing Better
If you read this page aloud it will strike you that there is nothing in your speech corresponding to the white spaces on the page that separate the words. Word separation is not a feature of every script - some Asiatic ones do not use it even now - and it has been accomplished in … Continue reading Stone-sucking, or what matters
When I was young and studying philosophy at Edinburgh University I remember becoming excited about the figurative use of prepositions; they seemed to crop up everywhere, openly and in disguise as Latin prefixes, in uses that clearly were not literal. Reasoning from the fact that the meaning of any preposition could be demonstrated using objects … Continue reading Heart-thought
One of the main ideas I pursue here is that the invention of writing has radically altered the way we think, not immediately, but eventually, through its impact on speech, which it transforms from one mode of expression among many into our main instrument of thought, which we call Language, in which the spoken form … Continue reading ‘These great concurrences of things’
What do gorillas think about? Or hens? ‘A hen stares at nothing with one eye, then picks it up.’ (in looking up McCaig’s line (from ‘Summer Farm’) just now I came across two curious comments on it: ‘Could refer to a weathervane as an inanimate hen only has one eye. “Nothing” refers to the … Continue reading It’s not what you think
Reflecting on the origin of words leads us into interesting territory. I do not mean the origin of particular words, though that can be interesting too; I mean the notion of words as units, as building blocks into which sentences can be divided. How long have we had words? The temptation is to say ‘as … Continue reading In the beginning was the word… or was it?
‘The present king of France is bald’ seems to present a logical problem that ‘the cat is on the table’ does not - there is no present king of France, so how can we assert that he is bald? and is the sentence true or false? But I am much more interested in the second … Continue reading The Lords of Convention
Something I have been struggling to pin down is a clear expression of my thoughts on the oft-quoted dictum of Coleridge, shown in its original context here: ‘it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a … Continue reading Where to Find Talking Bears, or The Needless Suspension of Disbelief
The memorable Eadweard Muybridge invented a number of things, including his own name - he was born Edward Muggeridge in London in 1830. He literally got away with murder in 1872 when he travelled some seventy-five miles to shoot dead his wife’s lover (prefacing the act with ‘here's the answer to the letter you sent … Continue reading The Muybridge Moment
Meaning matters. It is bound up with so many things: understanding and misunderstanding, doubt and certainty, to say nothing of philosophy, poetry, music and art; so it is worth considering the mechanism by which it operates. 'Mechanism' is a useful image here: when mechanisms are hidden - as they generally are - their effects can … Continue reading The Mechanism of Meaning (it’s all in the mind)
COMPLEAT TROWZER 