My Publications

Below is a list of my recent publications:

Can Pascal's rationality rescue the pandemic vaccine?
Blue Labyrinths, April 2021

Art, temporality and "motions of the mind"
Blue Labyrinths, October 2020

Research paper: Time and the Jorge Luis Borges and the Nothingnessof the Self

Literature & Aesthetics Journal (Sydney, Australia), 2020

Jorge Luis Borges displays an ambivalence in his writings towards the reality of time’s flow. On the one hand, he seems to accept arguments from various thinkers refuting the reality of time. “And yet, and yet…” Borges appears unable to feel completely reconciled to such a view of time. I argue that this is because a view that refutes time denies the observer too along with it. I conclude with demonstrating how Borges, by trying to identify a reconciliation between a refutation of time and acknowledgment of its reality, addressed this problem.

Aesthetic ineffability and the rebirth of the reader
Aesthetics Research Lab, May 2020

The ineffable experience in literature may be a product of both the author and the reader. There is similarly a need for a confluence between the artist and viewer in other art forms too for ineffability to arise.

Vasily Grossman, Graham Greene and the nature of doubt

The Punch Magazine, May 2020

What’s more important: having faith or being human? This essay examines this question by juxtaposing the work of the Russian writer Vasily Grossman against that of the English novelist Graham Greene.

Vivaldi for Gorillas: Seeking Aesthetics in Adversity

Aesthetics Research Lab, March 2020

Why does someone reach for beauty in circumstances of adversity when it is usually presumed that staying alive presupposes all else?

The Exile of Pessoa & Camus

The Punch Magazine, May 2019

Poet and philosopher Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) described himself as someone who is an “exile from the country of which he had always considered himself a citizen…”

Is it apposite to associate exile with someone who — apart from spending nine years in South Africa during his youth — essentially never stirred out of his native Portugal? This essay examines this question by comparing Pessoa to another famous exile, Albert Camus.

A disdain for the discrete: How art transcends logicand language

Epoché Magazine, March 2018

In this essay I argue that art is able to open a new window on to reality only when art can transcend reason and the confines of language. I contend further that both logic and language have their limitations when used as tools for the creation of meaning and that art helps us overcome these inadequacies in the way it transcends — or even transgresses — the absolutes that underpin our “rational” view of the world. I believe too that the violation of the strictures of logic by art is also emblematic of art’s heightened awareness of certain unique features of reality — in particular, its dynamic and fluid nature — which are not normally readily visible to a mind tied to thinking in terms only of binary truth values.

Research paper: Literature and the construction ofreality

Literature & Aesthetics Journal (Sydney, Australia), March 2018.

In this paper, I consider the idea that Ernst von Glasersfeld’s “radical constructivism” offers an ideal framework for putting in place a reality of the best fit for us. Along with this, I examine also the fundamental biological and epistemological limitations that we are faced with when trying to fathom objective reality and, secondly, the inescapable gap between language – which we use as a primary cognitive tool in our attempt to comprehend the world. The paper then show that literature – especially fiction – best meets the criteria for addressing these gaps and constructing such a model of reality in line with what radical constructivism proposes.

Research paper: Jorge Luis Borges and the Nothingnessof the Self

Literature & Aesthetics Journal (Sydney, Australia), 2016 (published January 2017).

In this paper, I discuss how Borges uses his ideas on selfhood to explore the “central problem of literature” that Andre Maurois highlighted and how in the process projects to the reader his idea of reality. I argue also that the self that Borges tries to present in his work may nevertheless not be always congruent with the self he may have wanted to convey. This is because his quest is influenced by a number of factors, not least the fact that the self-creation process is affected by our interplay with the external world.