Archive for the ‘Language’ Category
Sunday, March 15th, 2026
Reading Nikhil Mahant, Why alien languages could be far stranger than we imagine I was pleased to note that he canvassed the possibility of communication systems that were, as he says, non-linear – but by which he really meant not language-like in the way that language is defined for philosophical ...
Posted in Language, Philosophy, Space | No Comments »
Friday, February 27th, 2026
In discussion, a friend proposed that the use of the via negativa might be defended even if it lacks logical or rational justification by supposing that there is an ‘aura’ that is associated with certain words and which remains when they have been definitionally negated in pursuit of some ‘deeper’ ...
Posted in Language, Religion | No Comments »
Thursday, February 26th, 2026
Hilary Putnam claimed as a consequence of the causal-descriptive semantic theory, that if you were a brain in a vat then you could never think that you were a brain in a vat, let alone say it, because the terms would fail to be properly causally connected to the things ...
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Monday, February 9th, 2026
As part of my effort to create a performance-oriented version of Beowulf, I had to look into the proposed theories of metre for Old English. I thought I might as well put the summaries of what I found here.
From a study of old Germanic and Scandinavian poetic metres, Eduard Sievers[1] derived ...
Posted in Art, Language, Texts | No Comments »
Thursday, July 2nd, 2020
The Dialectician Hui Shi (Huizi) (??, 370-310 BC) is mentioned in several ancient works, like the Hanfeizi and the Xunzi that have been mentioned before, but especially in the Zhuangzi. In that work he is presented as a friend of Zhuang Zhou and a foil for his jests. In c. ...
Posted in Arguments, Language, Philosophy | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 4th, 2019
Au sud du Levant à cette époque nous trouvons beaucoup de preuves de dévastation des villes. La plupart des villes les plus importantes sur la via maris (la route qui relie les villes côtières entre l’Egypte et la Syrie) étaient détruites. Nous voyons les couches de destruction à Ashdod, à Ashkelon, à ...
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Wednesday, August 21st, 2019
Les gens qui étaient cités dans les inscriptions de Mérenptah n’étaient pas tous des arrivées nouvelles en histoire égyptienne. Les Lukkas étaient bien connus comme étant des pirates depuis plusieurs siècles. Ils étaient venus des Terres des Lukkas, dont l’emplacement précis n’est pas connu, mais qui devait être quelque part ...
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Wednesday, August 14th, 2019
La seule région d’où nous avons des comptes rendus du déroulement des faits de cet effondrement, c’est l’Égypte. Sous le règne du roi Mérenptah (1213-1203) de la XIXe dynastie et encore une fois sous le règne de Ramsès III (1186-1155) de la XXe dynastie l’Égypte avait subi des attaques d’ennemies ...
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Thursday, August 8th, 2019
Vers l’an 1200 av. J.-C. les terres autour de l’est de la mer Méditerranée avaient été depuis longtemps civilisées et faisaient parties d’un système, apparemment stable, des états civilisés. Au sud, l’Égypte florissait sous les dynasties Ramessides du Nouvel Empire; à l’est, les Kassites régnaient à Babylone, le royaume médio-assyrien ...
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Tuesday, July 9th, 2019
In continuing the Beowulf translation I came to ll. 3074f which are described as a locus desperatus in Klaeber in a long note (pp. 266 f.) There is no agreed upon solution to the problems of the text - which do not seem to be errors in transcription or copying, but in ...
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