(1) The institutionalisation of poets. The fact is that many poets now have stable incomes from either teaching poetry in schools/universities or else from administrative jobs in the arts. How does this affect the kind of poetry that is being written? Does it in any way imply a loss of freedom or autonomy in what …
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Many people believe in horoscopes. The reason for this is that they tend to confuse a true belief with knowledge proper. Horoscope claims are sometimes true. If my horoscope says that I will meet a dark and handsome stranger, and I actually do meet a dark and handsome stranger, my horoscope claim is true. And …
If I point to an object and say ‘table’, I can be said to be denoting the table. Now, how is it possible to denote objects that do not exist? It might be said that unicorns do not exist. This could be construed as inconsistent, since it effectively says that there are unicorns, but they …
If art does represent something, does art represent physical reality, or does art represent the mind’s eye, or some other thing? Physical reality. It might be thought that art represents physical reality, since it is often depicting objects or scenes from the world. An artwork can depict a scene- a cafe or a restaurant, or …
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There is usually agreement that something is a work of art, but what causes this agreement? Is there something objective in the arrangement of the artwork that causes some kind of aesthetic experience in each of us? Or is it entirely a subjective interpretation, hence that only some people will evaluate and understand something as …
One approach is to say that reality causes us to have perceptions of how reality is like. So, the apple causes us to have a perception of the apple. We see the appearance of the apple- its red skin, its round shape. The appearance of an apple is what allows us to infer the apple. …
Continue reading “What is the relation between consciousness and reality?”
Traditionally, we come to know things either through sense experience or through rational inquiry. We come to know the concept “chair” by looking at various chairs, and by seeing how chairs are used, namely, for sitting on. We come to define the concept “physical object” through rational thought- a physical object is a tangible entity …
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What differentiates us humans from animals? What motivates or what is the driving force for us as human beings? Are humans essentially thinking or intellectual beings? Is a sense of self what makes us human? In our Focus Inquiry, we tended towards the idea that human beings are naturally desiring- they desire to create buildings, …
The Dream Argument for Scepticism about the External World: (1) Subjective experience is either a dream or reality. (2) If subjective experience is a dream, then it is caused by the mind. (3) If subjective experience is reality, then it is caused by the world. (4) There is no difference between the experience of a …
In this article, I associate madness with psychiatric medical conditions. For example, people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, or manic-depression have mental illnesses and have shown symptoms of madness. Symptoms of madness include psychosis- being out of touch with reality. The terms ‘mental illness’ and ‘medical condition’ imply that there ought to be some …
CHAN LI SHAN 