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Philosophy of language

Essays and videos on philosophy, the history of ideas, ethics and life’s big questions

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A hospital room with a patient in a gown and headscarf speaking to a doctor, while a man stands nearby taking notes.

essayIllness and disease

The power of the ‘C’ word

Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?

Benjamin Chin-Yee

A man looking up from the driver’s seat of a yellow vehicle with an open window and side mirror visible.

essayPhilosophy of language

Extraterrestrial tongues

Imagining how aliens might communicate prepares us for first contact and illuminates the nature of our own languages

Nikhil Mahant

Photo of the Phaistos Disc, an ancient clay tablet with spiral symbols, on a black background.

essayLanguage and linguistics

The lonely life of a glyph-breaker

The heroic days of deciphering hieroglyphics and cuneiform make for great stories, but will we ever see that happen again?

Francesco Perono Cacciafoco

Photo of fishermen in a circle on a lake using large nets at sunrise with a distant island and hills in the background.

essayHuman evolution

The commitment to collaborate

Though natural selection favours self-interest, humans are extraordinarily good at cooperating with one another. Why?

Saira Khan

Painting of a serene night scene with a full moon reflecting on a dark blue lake surrounded by silhouettes of rocks and trees.

essayStories and literature

The listening gift

It is the dark matter of conversation, the white space around a poem. For Rilke, listening is receiving the divine

Faith Lawrence

Two weathered, clay duck sculptures facing each other against a grey background.

essayMetaphysics

The truth about fiction

What distinguishes fiction from nonfiction? The answer to this perennial question relies on how we understand reality itself

Hannah H Kim

A still life painting featuring a white jug, an orange sphere, and two books against a deep blue background. The objects are arranged on a yellow-wooden and dark surface, with the orange resting on the book. The geometric composition is bathed in shadow and light.

essayThinkers and theories

Philosophy is an art

For Margaret Macdonald, philosophical theories are akin to stories, meant to enlarge certain aspects of human life

Peter West

A black and white photograph shows a woman on the edge of a sand dune overlooking the sea leaning back into a strong wind

essayLanguage and linguistics

Cathedrals of convention

Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and essential – especially language

Reuben Cohn-Gordon

Black-and-white photo of a man and a woman, seen from behind, on the deck of a boat, looking out to shore

essayPhilosophy of language

Metaphors make the world

Woven into the fabric of language, metaphors shape how we understand reality. What happens when we try using new ones?

Benjamin Santos Genta

A black and white shot shows three men sitting on a sea wall and seen from a diminishing perspective such that they represent a scale of size

essayPhilosophy of language

The geometry of other people

Some friends are ‘close’. Others are ‘distant’. But our spatial descriptions of social life are more than just metaphors

David Borkenhagen

Elderly man sitting at a table in a spacious, elegant room, holding a cane and looking contemplatively to the right.

essayPhilosophy of language

Quantum poetics

How Borges and Heisenberg converged on the notion that language both enables and interferes with our grasp of reality

William Egginton

A painting of a man in a military uniform, sitting on a chair with a solemn expression, against a dark red background.

essayMood and emotion

The joy of sulk

Full of implicit rules and paradoxes, sulking is a marvellous example of intense communication without clear declaration

Rebecca Roache

Man with glasses and long hair in a dark suit, gesturing while speaking in a dimly lit room with bookshelves and two blue lamps in the background.

videoMetaphysics

Is the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ even worth asking?

9 minutes

Interpreters working in separate booths for different languages, equipped with computers, microphones, and headsets at a conference.

videoPhilosophy of language

For Ludwig Wittgenstein, language is a game, but not a frivolous one

43 minutes

A blank page with a small pencil drawing on the bottom right, showing a faint outline of a landscape or structure.

essayStories and literature

Nil by page

When a writer stares down a blank page, the whole of literature stares back. Why, then, leave the empty page as it is?

Andrew Gallix

A black swan stands on a sandy shore with a city skyline and planes performing aerobatics in the background.

essayThinkers and theories

Hegel today

Too dense, too abstract, too suspect, Hegel was outside the Anglophone canon for a century. Why is his star rising again?

Willem deVries

Close-up of a vintage book titled “Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words of Whatsoever Language, now used in our refined English Tongue.”

essayLanguage and linguistics

Typos, tricks and misprints

Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology

Arika Okrent

Illustration of two yellow blobs on a red hill with green leaves, an Italian flag on a stick, and the words ‘EM’ and ‘EH’.

videoLanguage and linguistics

Ums, likes and y’knows get no respect – but they’re vital to conversation

6 minutes

Photo taken from inside a cafe shows a man and woman hugging on the street outside the window. People sitting in the café are blurred in the foreground.

essayPhilosophy of mind

The problem of now

The injunction to immerse yourself in the present might be psychologically potent, but is it metaphysically meaningful?

John Martin Fischer

A bearded man in a red shirt and a woman in a white robe, both holding white cups, seated on a bed in conversation.

essayPhilosophy of language

Thoughts into words

Here’s the paradox of articulation: are you excavating existing ideas, or do your thoughts come into being as you speak?

Eli Alshanetsky

Black-and-white photo of two girls and one boy in 1940s attire playing in a street with houses in the background.

essayLanguage and linguistics

Hand to mouth

If language began with gestures around a campfire and secret signals on hunts, why did speech come to dominate communication?

Kensy Cooperrider

Two young women at night in a yellow-lit street, one looking at her phone, the other smiling and holding her phone with one hand.

ideaLanguage and linguistics

Hypocognition is a censorship tool that mutes what we can feel

Kaidi Wu

A red toy chattering teeth with white teeth and pink feet set against a plain grey background.

essayPhilosophy of language

The ethics of speech acts

It’s one thing to say something. It’s quite another for a person to do (or not do) something because of what you’ve said

Guy Longworth

Black and white photo of people in fur coats sitting inside a train compartment with a snowy landscape visible through the window.

essayPhilosophy of language

Making up stuff

A novel, by definition, tells a fictional story – but does that make its author a liar? On the space between stories and lies

Emar Maier