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22Book Review: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Metazoa: Animal minds and the birth of consciousness (review)Newtown Review of Books 2022. 2022.In this book, the author investigates if animals have consciousness. Two salient issues covered in it are the nature of subjectivity and how a sense of self (and awareness of the other) evolves from its biological underpinnings.
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182Not all art is beautiful (and that’s good)Blue Labyrinths 1. 2022.Is aesthetics only about art that is beautiful as conventionally understood? If not, what purpose does art that may not be so serve?
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13Views of Reality from Stagecraft, Science, and ‘Nowhere’Epoche Magazine 1. 2021.There are numerous ways in which the fourth wall can be transgressed. Then what is the role of the fourth wall as an inviolable boundary between fiction and reality? Secondly, is evidence of such infringements today a sign that society is becoming more self-reflexive in a quest to redefine the borders between fiction and the “real” world?
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37Can Pascal’s rationality rescue the pandemic vaccine?Blue Labyrinths. 2021.How do you convine someone to take the coronavirus vaccine? This essay argues that we an do so by presenting to them a reasoned argument from theology, namely, Pascal's wager.
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31Art, temporality and "motions of the mind"Https://Bluelabyrinths.Com/. 2020.It is a commonplace to claim that art imitates life. If so, art, in performing this mimesis, should respond also to our obsession and concern with temporality (time as experienced, not as measured, or human time as opposed to what the metaphysicians claim). How does art participate in this alchemy of smelting clock time into felt time?
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1699Time and the observer in Jorge Luis BorgesLiterature & Aesthetics 30 (1): 209-227. 2020.Jorge Luis Borges displays an ambivalence in his writings towards the reality of time’s flow. On the one hand, he seems to accept arguments from various thinkers refuting the reality of time. “And yet, and yet…” Borges appears unable to feel completely reconciled to such a view of time. I argue that this is because a view that refutes time denies the observer too along with it. I conclude with demonstrating how Borges, by trying to identify a reconciliation between a refutation of time and ackno…Read more
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140A Disdain for the Discrete: How Art Transcends Logic and LanguageEpoche Magazine 1 (3). 2018.In this essay I argue that art is able to open a new window on to reality only when art can transcend reason and the confines of language. Moreover, both logic and language have their limitations when used as tools for the creation of meaning and that art helps us overcome these inadequacies in the way it transcends — or even transgresses — the absolutes that underpin our “rational” view of the world. Lastly, the violation of the strictures of logic by art is also emblematic of art’s heightened …Read more
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137The Exile of Pessoa & CamusThe Punch Magazine 1. 2019.Poet and philosopher Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) described himself as someone who is an “exile from the country of which he had always considered himself a citizen…” Is it apposite to associate exile with someone who — apart from spending nine years in South Africa during his youth — essentially never stirred out of his native Portugal? This essay examines this question by comparing Pessoa to another famous exile, Albert Camus.
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23‘Vivaldi for gorillas”: Seeking Aesthetics in adversityAesthetics Research Lab 1. 2020.Why does someone reach for beauty in circumstances of adversity when it is usually presumed that staying alive presupposes all else?
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10Vasily Grossman, Graham Greene and the nature of doubtThe Punch Magazine. 2020.What’s more important: having faith or being human? This essay examines this question by juxtaposing the work of the Russian writer Vasily Grossman against that of the English novelist Graham Greene.
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15Aesthetic ineffability and the rebirth of the readerAesthetics Research Lab 1. 2020.The ineffable experience in literature may be a product of both the author and the reader. There is similarly a need for a confluence between the artist and viewer in other art forms too for ineffability to arise.
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621Literature and the construction of realityLiterature & Aesthetics 28 (1): 67-86. 2018.In this article I consider the idea that Glasersfeld’s “radical constructivism” offers an ideal framework for putting in place such a reality of the best fit for us. Along with this, I examine also the fundamental biological and epistemological limitations that we are faced with when trying to fathom objective reality and, secondly, the inescapable gap between language – which we use as a primary cognitive tool in our attempt to comprehend the world. The paper then show that literature – especia…Read more
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2686Jorge Luis Borges and the Nothingness of the SelfLiterature & Aesthetics 26 105-126. 2016.In this paper I discuss how Borges uses his ideas on selfhood to explore the “central problem of literature” that Andre Maurois highlighted and how in the process projects to the reader his idea of reality. I argue also that the self that Borges tries to present in his work may nevertheless not be always congruent with the self he may have wanted to convey. This is because his quest is influenced by a number of factors, not least the fact that the self-creation process is affected by our interpl…Read more
Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Areas of Specialization
Literature |
Aesthetics |
Philosophy, Miscellaneous |