/lit/ - Literature

>>9633222
>Come to think of it I didn't finish FT&L.
Neither did DFW.
>Can someone maybe break it down?
Maybe. But I'd rather just keep copypasting bits and pieces of it like a huge jackass. Here, have the ending of the essay:

>Taylor’s claim was never really that fatalism was actually “true,” only that it was forced upon us by proof from certain basic logical and semantic principles. This essay’s semantic analysis has shown that Taylor’s proof doesn’t “force” fatalism on us at all. We should now recall that Taylor was offering a very curious sort of argument: a semantic argument for a metaphysical conclusion. In light of what we’ve seen about the semantics of physical modality, I hold that Taylor’s semantic argument does not in fact yield his metaphysical conclusion. And now the fact that it appears as though he can get his metaphysical conclusion from his semantic argument only by positing at the outset the truth of a doctrine thoroughly metaphysical, seems to warrant the following conclusion of our own: if Taylor and the fatalists want to force upon us a metaphysical conclusion, they must do metaphysics, not semantics. And this seems entirely appropriate.