Language and authenticity

How does one become self-aware if despite the limitless symbolic capacity of language, the subjective experiences can neither be adequately nor authentically captured?

Social position

How does the oppressed conceive of true freedom if the very possibility spaces of their thought is confined by their social position?

Critic

Can a critic possibly disengage - at least, temporarily - from his or her professional imperatives to sense the works of art in their pristine form?

Compassion and less-privileged

The less-privileged must have a foresight into our impending misery, for they seem invariably endowed with compassion.

Hope

I wonder what mankind would be if it were not for the hope's might to quell intuitions, reasons and emotions.

Blind

How do I explain 'color' to a blind child?

Conscience

My conscience at times seems like a mere pastiche of institutions - family, community, religion, market and state.

Schooling

Of course, my schooling has made me see many things - minute and faraway; unfortunately, this permanent grafting of telescopic and microscopic lens has obscured everything that was hitherto visible to the naked eye.

Lost sight

I seem to lack the sensitivity to appreciate the many taken-for-granted aspects of my life. Only yesterday, I realized that I have always assumed my sight every time I woke up.

Capitalism

The hegemony of capitalism is such that alternative systems of exchange are merely evaluated as more or less efficient.

Taste

What evolutionary function does the mechanism of taste serve? Often, I am misled by its semantic colorizing of consumables.

Ideas

The most powerful ideas when first proposed may have seemed the most atrocious to elites. Thankfully, the common sense of the others prevailed.

Who am I?

The least discriminating and most humbling of all the questions is perhaps the deceptively simple "who am I?" There is no reason to believe that a well schooled knows any more than an illiterate.

What does it take to form a group?

Not pre-existing similarities, but two simple rules - reciprocity and transitivity - explain how we form groups explain psychologists Kurt Gray and David Rand.
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Causation lurking deep

Kandasamy, Hardy, Page and colleagues find in a recent research that it is cortisol, not just your personal preferences, that could affect your risk-behaviour.
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Scarcity mindset

Why did the same individual farmers in India score less on IQ tests before harvest than after? Eldar Shafire, psychologist at the Princeton, explains how psychology of scarcity affects cognition.
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Noun is better than verb?

Did you know that framing an instruction as "don't be a cheater" is quite different in eliciting behavior than "don't cheat"? Even subtle linguistic cues could influence ethical behavior differently says a recent research by Bryan, Adams & Monin (2013).
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Forgot to cite?

If so, you might be engaging in research misconduct. "Rules about research misconduct," says Professor James DuBois," do not bend before breaking.
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Engaging citizens on experiments

With the advent of sites such as fold.it and testmybrain.org, university research boundaries seem to have expanded. Is this new "citizen science" worth seeking?
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Pronouns and social relationships

In German and Sanskrit, pronouns for "you" vary depending on the relationship between the referrer and referred. Does speaking such languages as compared to English prime our thoughts and behaviours distinctly?
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