Month: September 2023
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How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another’s eyes
Something I read a while ago started me thinking again about how we perceive things[i]. Some conditions, like hot and cold, lie at opposite ends of a spectrum I suppose, but is it necessarily the same with happy and sad? Binaries tend to mark edges -boundaries, by and large- but they don’t really define the…
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What is it like to be a…?
When I first read the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ essay, I was intrigued by his idea that ‘an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism’. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Empathy -the ability…
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Who are you?
I suppose I should admit that over the steadily increasing pace of years, I’ve had a grandstand view of reproduction -albeit not in the front row seats; as an obstetrician for over forty years I was involved in ‘l’accouchement‘, rather than in the arguably more exciting ‘fécondation’. Still, I came to think of reproduction as…
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Believe me
What is it about religions which endorse beliefs that often seem so… well, irrational? And for that matter, why do those beliefs seem so compelling? Is it merely the other-worldly components that capture our attention: the mysterious and inexplicable outshining the everyday unpolished world? Or is it more than just magic? Does it instill in…
musingsonwomenshealth.com 