Crossing the divide: A website about Literature, Art & Philosophy by Venkat Ramanan

How do you convince someone to take the coronavirus vaccine? This essay argues that we can do so by presenting to them a reasoned argument from theology, namely, Pascal's wager. See essay at  https://bluelabyrinths.com/2021/04/25/can-pascals-rationality-rescue-the-pandemic-vaccine/ The Triumph of Death (1532) by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  My research paper on “Time and the Observer in Jorge Luis Borges” has been published in the 2020 edition of the Literature & Aesthetics journal released a few days back. Abstract: Jorge Luis Borges is ambivalent in his views of time and is unwilling to completely accept a denial of the reality of time. I argue that this is because a view that refutes time denies the observer too along with it.  Borges tries therefore to identify a reconciliation between a refutation of time and its reality.  (Image: Edwaert Collier - Vanitas Still Life with a Statuette of an Antique Athlete and a Print of Michelangelo (1675) - Public Domain)

Jorge Luis Borges, 1968 (Credit: Wikimedia Commons) My research paper on “Jorge Luis Borges and the Nothingness of the Self” has been published in the 2016 edition of the Literature & Aesthetics journal released a few days back. 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.

This was originally posted as a "viewpoint" at Aeon Conversations Cicero looked upon philosophy as a way to prepare for death as it worked in two ways. Firstly, reason and contemplation distracted us from quotidian cares and drew our souls from our bodies in a semblance of death. Secondly, the purpose of gaining wisdom is to teach ourselves to not be afraid to die. Death and taxes, Benjamin Franklin noted, are the only two inevitable things in House of Excise Collector (built in 1841), Prague (Photo: Wikimedia/Public Domain) our lives. We can hope to influence taxes by changing our politicians every now and then or, in the case of despotism, get rid of our rulers by more violent means. But we have no choice but to accept death. Cicero looked upon philosophy as a way to prepare for death as it worked in two ways. Firstly, reason and contemplation distracted us from quotidian cares and drew our souls from our bodies in a semblance of death. Secondly, the purpose of

The machines in this case exhibit not only vast intelligence but also considerable wisdom that far exceeds the purpose for which they were built and the algorithms that defined them. They have apparently acquired such wisdom by somehow transitioning from syntactics to semantics, gaining an ability to possess content and meaning. The leadys are not just a brain in a vat anymore; they are persons (or even better?) Will machines take over the world one day? This question has been in the news recently with leading thinkers like Professor Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk of Tesla expressing the worry that uncontrolled evolution of machine intelligence may one day presage the end of humanity. [i] This fear of rampant technology ruling the world is however is not of recent vintage, especially among the literati. Writers ranging from HG Wells and Aldous Huxley to more recent ones like Arthur C Clarke and scientist and writer Baroness Susan Greenfield have produced some well-known an