Explains the embodied meaning theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. This provides an alternative way of understanding meaning based on our bodies that has huge implications for our thinking.

Why meaning is an important subject that relates to other issues and enshrines false dichotomies. At the basis of these false dichotomies is the split between cognitive meaning (‘dictionary meaning’) and emotive meaning (‘meaning of life meaning’). In our experience, no such split occurs.

Integration may be thought of psychologically, but it applies just as much at the social and political level.

This understanding of the role of the ego can be supported by the work of Iain McGilchrist on the specialisations of the two brain hemispheres.

We are dependent on the ego, and cannot escape it, but we can gradually integrate conflicting egoistic desires.

Explains the argument (in Buddhism and Hume) that the self is a metaphysical belief beyond experience, but suggests the ego (the wish to be a self) as a much more helpful concept that we can relate to experience. The ego is a set of projections and identifications that are not necessarily limited to one individual.

Explains why the division between desire for enlightenment and ordinary desire in Buddhism is problematic, and offers an alternative model compatible with integration of desires.

How can we identify metaphysics? This discussion offers some initial key features.