/lit/ - Literature

>>11190646

Its true meaning cannot be truly known because we don't know the proper questions to ask about it

>>9934046

>Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

>>9882331
This isn't a fix all and it depends what philosophers you're reading (some don't work this way at all), but maybe try a more Analytic approach if you want to grasp arguments. I'm assuming you don't know this stuff already so sorry if you do and I come across as patronizing.

So basically you need to work out what conclusion a writer is trying to push towards in a passage, which will generally be explicitly stated either at the start or the end of the argument.

Try and work out if its inductive or deductive argument. You work this out by figuring out what premises the writer is using to support their conclusion and the way those premises relate to that conclusion.

If an argument is deductive, it’s argued using premises which the writer claims logically lead to the conclusion. So, an example from Descartes' Meditation:
>Nevertheless I have long had fixed in my mind the belief that an all-powerful God existed by whom I have been created such as I am. But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place, and that nevertheless [I possess the perceptions of all these things and that] they seem to me to exist just exactly as I now see them? And, besides, as I sometimes imagine that others deceive themselves in the things which they think they know best, how do I know that I am not deceived every time that I add two and three, or count the sides of a square, or judge of things yet simpler, if anything simpler can be imagined? But possibly God has not desired that I should be thus deceived, for He is said to be supremely good. If, however, it is contrary to His goodness to have made me such that I constantly deceive myself, it would also appear to be contrary to His goodness to permit me to be sometimes deceived, and nevertheless I cannot doubt that He does permit this."
So, if you look at this passage and strip away any extraneous stuff, you get the Deceiving God Argument:
Premise 1) If there is an all-powerful God, he is able to deceive us into believing that we clearly perceive some essential laws about reality (e.g. mathematical laws, spatial laws etc.)
Premise 2)If it's possible we can be deceived about these essential laws, then our knowledge of the world is uncertain.
Premise 3) There is (or it's at least possible that there is) such an all-powerful God
Conclusion 1: It's possible we are being deceived about these essential laws
Conclusion 2 (which follows from Conclusion 1): Knowledge of the world is uncertain (Radical Scepticism)

(1/2)

>>9822700
I mean I could prove you wrong just by pointing out that analytic philosophy didn't come out of a vacuum and in fact rests on many other important thinkers who aren't analytics like Aristotle and Hume, so if you consider Analytic philosophy the only worthwhile philosophy, then you won't even be able to understand Analytic philosophy itself, let alone those other thinkers

So what made him "go continental"?

>>8545394
What's this madman's philosophy all about? Is he worth reading for a dirty continental like myself? Like, does he have crossover appeal like Witty does?

Do his theory have actual implications in the real world, or are they just autistic word-games like most analytic """"""philosophy"""""""?

Did Ludwig Wittgenstein have Asperger's syndrome?


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10795857

>>7378031

Technically speaking....

>>6893641
/r/badphilosophy is basically /lit/

>Instead of answers, why not even more questions?