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March 2011 – Metaphor Hacker
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Knowledge Philosophy

Are we the masters of our morality? Yes!

Morality and the freedom of the human spirit We spend a lot of time worrying about the content to which we expose the young generation both individually and collectively. However, I am exceedingly coming to the conclusion that it makes absolutely no difference (at least as far as morality and lawfulness is concerned). Well sure, […]

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Extended writing Linguistics

Comedian identifies a critical flaw in structuralism: Are distinctive features like leather sleeves

I always thought this little bit by Demetri Martin highlights a crucial deficiency in any distinctive feature analysis. Demetri Martin: “I was at a party, and I saw a guy with a leather jacket, and I thought, ‘That’s cool’. Then I saw a guy with a leather vest and I thought, ‘That’s not cool’. It […]

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Knowledge Philosophy Scholarship

Epistemology as ethics: Decisions and judgments not methods and solutions for evidence-based practice

Show me the money! Or so the saying goes. Implying that talk is cheap and facts are the only thing that matters. But there is another thing we are being asked to do with money and that is put it where our mouth is. So evidence is not quite enough. We have to also be […]

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Blending Extended writing Framing Knowledge Metaphor

Do science fiction writers dream of fascist dictatorships?

Some years ago in a book review, I made an off-the-cuff comment that thriller writers tend to be quite right-wing in their outlook whereas science fiction authors are much more progressive and leftist. This is obviously an undue generalisation (as most of such comments tend to be) but it felt intuitively right. Even then I […]

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Extended writing Knowledge Linguistics Metaphor Philosophy

The brain is a bad metaphor for language

Note: This was intended to be a brief note. Instead it developed into a monster post that took me two weeks of stolen moments to write. It’s very light on non-blog references but they exist. Nevertheless, it is still easy to find a number of oversimplifications,  conflations, and other imperfections below. The general thrust of […]