Month: December 2021

• What do you mean?

  What do we mean by meaning? Whoaa. I love questions like that: an autological wrestling match, perhaps, and yet an important one, I think. Does everything have meaning, or does that happen only when there is an intention that it should? Meaning, after all, is not necessarily inherent in everything -a rock lying on the […]

  gozzter

  December 29, 2021

  Uncategorized

  archaeology, artifacts, communicative intention, history, HP Grice, information, intention, Marilynn Johnson, meaning, midden, natural meaning, non-natural meaning, philosophy of archaeology, philosophy of language, Psyche.co, relationships, stratigraphy, University of San Diego

• Your friend is your needs answered

  I don’t know where I’ve been all these years; I’d never heard of Ubuntu. I suppose none of us can know everything, of course, but Ubuntu is important -how could I have missed it? It’s message is as simple as it is profound: ‘I am, because you are’. In other words, I have become who […]

  gozzter

  December 22, 2021

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  Abeba Birhane, Aeon.co, African philosophy, being, ena, Jack and the Beanstalk, James Ugude, John Donne, Mikhail Bakhtin, René Descartes, self/other, selfhood, solitary confinement, Ubuntu, University College Dublin, University of Pretoria, Western Philosophy

• I do desire we may be better strangers

  I have a friend who is wary of talking to strangers. I suppose it is common enough -depending on circumstance and location, it might very well be a prudent thing to feel- and yet it seems to expose a gap in our society. A hole in an awkward area of our clothing we would rather […]

  gozzter

  December 15, 2021

  Uncategorized

  anti-social paradox, BBC Future, BBC World Service, commuters, Covid 19, Emily Kasriel, Loneliness, Nick Epley, strangers, TED Talk, Theory of Mind, University of Chicago

• Does light, seeking light, the light of light beguile?

  Is the sense of control of one’s life, of one’s surroundings, of oneself, merely an addendum tacked on to the accumulating years that follow maturity? A garb one wraps around oneself to adapt more successfully to the role assigned -a costume meant only for the play? Or is it really the emperor’s clothes, borrowed and […]

  gozzter

  December 8, 2021

  Uncategorized

  Aeon.co, agency, Daniel Dennett, identity, intelligence, Kahlil Gibran, Michael Levin, persona, personalities, taxonomic levels, teleology, Theory of Mind, Tufts University

• Opinion crowns with an imperial voice

  I suspect that most of us, at one time or another, have been tempted to paste our own views over those with which we disagree. Sometimes we might even feel it is not only our duty to correct the opinions but also the  people spreading their mistaken beliefs and set them straight. Religious zealots might […]

  gozzter

  December 1, 2021

  Uncategorized

  arguments, conclusions, Gay culture, gender fluid, opinion, sex chromosomes, the Emperor’s New Clothes, Truth