/lit/ - Literature

>>17543670
>independent thinking

The tradition of "individual thinking" in the west (particularly as opposed to submission to authority in eastern traditions) isn't the same as "isolated thinking." Practically the entire strain of western though since Plato has relied on natural teleological principles of reason, justice, and beauty. The "independence" is simply the idea that everyone has some capacity to think in accordance with these principles, and to basically navigate them, with more or less help in terms of reflective meaningful dialogue with others (or even yourself, if you are patient enough and self-critical). If "independent thinking" were "isolated thinking" we'd have no coherent strains of anything; it would be /lit writ.

>>17511771
>How is this board well read and is still racist and misogynist like the rest of the website?

Nobody tell him..

>>16719493

A few years ago I dropped from a philosophy phd in a top-10 program in the US. (I was "abd") I spent a year getting into software engineering and have zero regrets (as well as a great job).

>>16710387

Your "prose" is fine, but the concepts aren't treated well. For example, a "martyr" is someone who dies for their religious beliefs. An "altruist" is someone who acts with the interests of others in mind. You conflate and mix the two pretty badly in your first three sentences: "I listed martyrs" "these altruists" "thus altruistic martyrs" -- that's a confused procession.
> The only possible explanation of altruism given to us by Psychological Egoists is that the altruist is motivated by the consequences of 'good' actions, whereby any brief pleasure is felt enough to constitute self-interest
This doesn't make sense. Altruism isn't possible on the Pscyhological Egoist view; it has to be that there just isn't altruism, and instead "altruism" just involves delusion about reasons.
> The problem with that explanation is the fact that this argument is only applicable to martyrs of the theistic type
Martyrs or altruists? Super confusing. Why would a Psychological Egoist doubt the motives of martyrs? They might expect heavenly rewards, so it's in line with Psychological Egosim; but it isn't in line with altruism, and you haven't said anything about what an "altruistic martyr" might be. Is that someone who acts on the basis of others because their religion commands them to? That's pretty confused, and doesn't really align with altruism at all since the actual basis for their actions is just the religious command, even if the thing they are commanded to do is in the interests of others. (That's like saying if someone held me at gunpoint and forced me to give you money, I'm acting "altruistically under duress" -- but of course I'm not acting altruistically at all, even if I give you a big chunk of cash.)
It goes on and on like that. You are confusing so much. You are probably super young, and sometimes it helps to see exactly what the critic of your paper sees so that you can recognize your own habitual conflations. My advice is to separate the terms out carefully, ask what the REAL connection is between them (if any) and see if you can trace those connections (or lack of connections) better.

>>16702274

> 'dwarf' has a negative connotation, use 'midget'
> 'midget' has a negative connotation, use <x>

There is a game here. Terms with negative connotation usually earn their negative connotation by the things they denote and not by special power of the terms. You can switch the term, but that new term will grow its own negative connotation. Enough bending to this whim.

>>16692037

This. I don't agree with him on a lot of things but McKenna is a great "alt-thought" guy. His stuff on the Alchemists is particularly good.

>>16674423
>understanding

Not only is Plato hitting on something, we still do not have a clear account of what "understanding" itself is. Of course, we understand the general idea, and the word motives a discussion, but good luck with that analysis.

>>16670950
>the meaning of life is to find the meaning of life

That's a little bit circular. I prefer: the meaning of life is to discover the context of life.

>>16667258

> mentions a bunch of arguments
> doesn't rehearse any of them
> dismisses them outright no serious explanation

Check and mate, God-tards!

>>16657840

It sounds interesting but the format makes it unreadable. Maybe link to an external source or something so we can just read it without all the gaps. Or, better yet, summarize the argument/position for us.

>>16659233

Wittgenstein is a genius and his ideas are extremely provocative. But it is also extremely easy to not understand him and to go full-/lit and think he proved something he didn't, or claimed something he didn't. You have to dig carefully to find the good threads and the true insight.

>>16641837

Solway sounds confused. First, individuals don't "decide" what they mean by words, unless they are stipulating; but stipulation isn't ordinary and so doesn't fall under the concern raised. (Fucking Duh..) Second, Quine is happy to suppose that "bachelor" and "unmarried man" are "synonymous," at least for the purpose of the argument - that's how the issue gets motivated. The PROBLEM he raises is in terms of explaining what "synonymous" means. His argument is that the notion of "synonymy" is the problem; that it is left completely unexplained by those that appeal to the analytic/synthetic distinction in other areas (e.g., logical positivism). And, again, to point to Solway's confusion, even if "synonymy" is "made so" by the individual, what exactly is "made so" in the process of making "bachelor" and "unmarried man" "synonymous" (lots of quotes there, sorry)? Nothing further is said. And again, if he's suggesting it is just stipulation on the part of an individual, it isn't very interesting. (If I stipulate that "bird" means "flying animal" and I come across a penguin, does it even matter? If I'm stipulating what I mean by "bird" then the penguin isn't a "bird," but who gives a shit about that kind of scenario? I'm clearly just confused and am trying to stick to a definition that is clearly besides the point of "bird.")

>>16643689

Esoteric Plato is next-level

>>16638448

Ayn Rand isn't a great writer, and she isn't a great thinker. But her thoughts are provocative, and sometimes that alone makes something worth reading. And, to be fair, she offers a pretty decent counter-point to a lot of fluffy unmotivated nonsense. I've known a lot of people that read Rand's work and it snapped them out of a trance. None of them ended up as "Objectivists" or whatever the fuck they call themselves, but I think many credit her for giving them a pretty useful jolt.

>>16635389

It's a stand-in name, but the view ascribed isn't all that uncommon. Look at Brentano and Meinong. The basic idea is that we can have thoughts with the content that "X does not exist." On a pretty simple account of meaning that proposition ("X does not exist.") means something; but to mean something each term has to denote something, otherwise there's no way to distinguish the meaning of the claims "Santa does not exist" and "Rudolph does not exist." So on the Meinongian view, Santa and Rudolph must exist, in some referentially-accessible sense, even if they aren't "actual" (good luck explaining that distinction). Quine objects to that, since it introduces the existence of too many things (i.e., pretty much everything) via a philosophical maneuver about meaning. So Quine goes on to give his account (which echoes Kant) that existence isn't a property and when you say "Santa does not exist" you are not asserting that there is a thing, Santa, that lacks the property of existence. Instead, he pushes "existence" into a logical sense (instead of a property/predicate) and translates the meaning as something like "It is not the case that anything is Santa-like."
Of course Quine himself doesn't even get it right when he starts by asserting the naive proposition that "Everything exists," which would have to get an analysis like.. "For all X, X exists?" But then existence is again a predicate.. So it's still a puzzle.

>>16632417

Psychoanalysis as an approach to cure/alleviate pathological mental states suffers from an unbelievably naive oversight, which is the basic question of why simply becoming aware (and again, only theoretically aware) of an unconscious mental state would have any affect at all on a person. If it's simply that the origin story of the pathological state itself causes the person to re-evaluate themselves or something, OK, but then any story should suffice (and so, psychoanalysis is unnecessary; you could just tell them they are the reincarnation of jojo and that's why they are always anxious..). But no, it has to be a "true" uncovering of something. But then what is so special about the awareness of the actual unconscious mental state? There's no story about it. it's just left to the reader as a 'well duh' with absolutely zero serious attempt at explanation.

>>16623551

The paradoxes of voting: things like Arrow's theorem and the more focused Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem. The whole methodology of voting as a measure theory is pretty suspect; just the basic idea that there are ways of aggregating psychological states that aren't (potentially) determined by the method of aggregation itself pretty hopeless. Here's a good example of how that works (the "discursive paradox"): Suppose three judges (1,2,3) are trying to decide the guilt of Bob. Bob is charged with some crime (C) that requires establishing that he is guilty of two separate things, (A) and (B). So, in other words, if Bob is guilty of A and B then he is guilty of C. The judges could then approach finding his guilt in one of two ways: they could "vote" on C by itself, or on A/B separately. Suppose the votes break down as:
1. A, not-B, not-C
2. not-A, B, not-C
3. A, B, C
So if the judges vote on A/B separately, there is a majority for A, and a majority for B, so we have A and B which gives us C. But if they voted on C directly, it would be majority not-C.
That's a basic example of how the "method" you take to aggregate beliefs can end up producing violations of basic consistency rules. And arguably there's no "better" method (between those two, at least) for figuring out what to do.

>>16626924

I don't think the "decadent" idea of pleasure is the idea of pleasure involved in the aesthetic pleasure of art per se. It might be the pleasure involved in "erotic art" or something else, but that's distinct, and on some views actually detracts from the "art." Kant's view is that aesthetic pleasure is a pleasure found in the purposeless play of cognition. So maybe Wilde's view is similar. As the rest of that quote goes, and paraphrasing (see the link for the wider context), the "uselessness" of art, in any particular setting, is what makes it "useful" in all settings. And that's pretty similar to Kant's take, which is that the feature of art that makes it art is just its ability engage our cognitive faculties in a purely disinterested activity. It's not a leap to think that if it were also something with a "purpose" (like a diagram illustrating parts of the body) that purpose would detract from the aesthetic pleasure (on Kant's version) even if it doesn't distract from something like its capacity for arousal (which is what I take to be more in line with the "decadent" view).

>>16620296

Church Fathers are real-deal. One version is that, because it is absurd, it is likely to be true; just like a weird detail in a story that tells you it isn't a lie. Another version is, because it is absurd, "belief" as an assertive mental state isn't required, and so it is more of an adherence than a conviction. I think the second case here has some good comparison to Gendlae's recent notion of "aliefs." I'd like to hear other intepretations from Catholic scholars though, as I am not one.

>>16613678

Indeed.

>>16613532

Kant's view of mathematics was pretty short-lived. I still don't quite understand what it is supposed to be. I get the motivation for saying that things like mathematical equivalences are "synthetic" but the rest of the account, regarding how we come to know mathematical truths, is a little thin. I prefer Frege's view in the Foundations of Arithmetic, particularly his anti-cognitivism, but even then there's a big lurking problem with his view of numbers being extensions of concepts (e.g., Russell's paradox shows up right away).
These issues about mathematics though are one of the true sources of mystery.

>>16605419

But that's all part of the concept of the good will. The good will needn't bring about any good consequences, it only needs to act in accordance with the moral law. And it isn't circular: on reflection, the good will is the only thing good in itself; what else is good in itself? Other things are good "for this" or good "for that" but the good will isn't "good for" anything; that's the wrong concept when talking about the good will. It's a similar move regarding moral motivation. If "right action" just meant "right action to achieve X" then it wouldn't capture the concept of a moral motive and would only capture the concept of a hypothetical imperative.
You have to start with the actual issue in front of us: there are clearly (lower-case-I) imperatives that govern what we should do IF we want to achieve some end, but there are also those (upper-case-I) Imperatives that are supposed to light up on their own, that are full-stop just-do-it kind of commands that are not subject to some other consideration.
Of course what Kant says is that we have no proof that anyone actually IS moral in this sense, that anyone has ever actually acted according to the moral law, but he's giving an outline of the concept of morality that (at least) our ideals track.

>>16604260

There is a tremendous well of stuff happening in the Euthyphro. Notice that Euthyphro himself is prosecuting a very peculiar case. He is charging his own father (unheard of) with a crime that requires a particular kind of "caring" expressed towards the victim, who himself is not all that deserving of caring. It really is a case that exhibits what we would consider "devotion to justice."
The other big question is what does Socrates actually think about the case and Euthyphro himself? My view is that Socrates actually does believe that Euthyphro has an understanding of piety, as he is not bringing a misguided charge against his own father, but actually something like a "pure" charge, thus making him pious for honoring the gods with a clear sense of justice. But Euthyphro cannot say what exactly piety is; and the "traditional" Socratic view (/Platonic view) is that understanding equals explanation, but Euthyphro can't explain shit. So the real question is whether the Socratic view of understanding is correct, or if there can be understanding even without explanation. And if there is a good counterexample to this doctrine in all of the dialogues it is probably Euthyphro.

>>16603459

I have to agree with this. A lot of his stuff has this subtext of just absolute boredom, of not being engaged with something properly. Although I think the modern world doesn't (often) engage us properly, the "boredom" part isn't there anymore, or at least to the same degree.