A life in words

  • A false dichotomy

    Objective and subjective are the same thing. Somehow. But we all default to dualism – it’s very hard to actually conceive of how the material and experiential worlds are equivalent since, of course, it’s one of the great unsolved problems of our time. That laughter can be provoked by manipulating a certain location in the…

  • Philosothought

    The acknowledgement of difference is the first step on the path to the integration of difference. Those who discriminate must resemble the thing they discriminate against at least enough to recognize it. To pattern match, the system must somehow embody the pattern. The seed of overcoming discrimination is present within the discrimination itself.

  • ‘they’ is not a drop-in replacement for ‘he’ and ‘she’, but we could use one

    Singular usage of ‘they’ is well-established in English, going back centuries. Depending on your exposure to it, you may yourself use it regularly, as I happily do. It’s great having a single word that can refer to individuals whose gender is unclear or unspecified. However, gender-neutral ‘they’ and its friends ‘them’, ‘their’, and ‘theirs’, do…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty