/lit/ - Literature

>>1725505

4. Even if what OP says is true, no one gives a shit and life goes on.

I think you're absolutely right.

Oh shit, we've communicated a theory about the nature of ontology and epistemology. I guess that blows your argument to shit.

Amazing! I don't see anything at all in the first post!

why are you trying to communicate anything then

>>1725517
Language only communicates itself. We've done nothing to demonstrate or prove the nature of reality or existence because if reality does exist ('reality' in the platonic sense, which is the only way people ever mean it) we can never get past language in our attempts to reveal it to one another. We've communicated, and nothing more. Or, rather, you've communicated, because you can't even be certain that I exist. Maybe you are the only thing in existence, and the physical world you know, including all of the ostensibly sentient inhabitants it ostensibly contains, is an illusion. But you're all like, "if I'm the only thing in existence then who the fuck am I talking to, smart ass?" And I'm all like, "obviously your own fucking self, manifesting to you as a human being on a thing called 4chan which also doesn't exist. If your perception is the only thing you can verify, then why is it so hard to believe that you're just watching your own illusion explain to you why it's possible that could be the only thing in existence."

But you aren't the only thing in existence. My own reason tells me that the only thing I can certainly know to exist is myself (and if I abandon reason, then I have to doubt even that). So here I am trying to convince what's quite possibly a figment of my imagination that he is the only thing in existence, just to help articulate to myself that the only thing I can ever be sure of is my own reality. And he's probably all like "look at this solipsistic retard have a conversation with himself on 4chan" not even realizing that all along MY existential meditation was just a demonstration that the reality of reality cannot be communicated.


tl;dr- fuck off, language is all you have, there is no 'truth'

really, this is you speaking, you're the only thing in existence

>>1725589
awesome

Oh fuck the poststructuralists are back.

>>1725598
>>1725595
>>1725589
>>1725535
>>1725519
>>1725517
>>1725514
>>1725505

you now realize these posts don't exist

gorgias was all about the cash moneys man

>>1725614
Nigga gotta get paid, son.

Seriously, the reason no one knows about the sophists is that Plato decided that real philosophers aren't allowed to make money, and so he accused Gorgias of greed and deception in a dialogue after the dude had already been dead 40 years, and so western philosophy forgot all about Gorgias and the sophists for about 2000 years.

>>1725619
Seriously, the reason is their whole attitude, that lead to their fellow Greeks being so pissed off with them that they were all executed.

Premise 1 is demonstrably untrue

premise 3 is unfalsifiable

>>1725589
>Language only communicates itself
language is symbolic, not recursive

>>1725640
1. No, it isn't. Reality cannot be demonstrated.
3. Right.


>>1725641
Sure. Mind explaining what your sentence symbolizes?

>>1725589
3/10
You get points for taking out new critical voices for a test drive, but you lose points for samefagging in >>1725595


This anon has the right idea: >>1725641, "language is symbolic, not recursive". This is to say, as a symbol, language both points toward itself (the insight of structuralists and post-structuralists) but also points away from itself (the insight of people like Bloom and Fish who focus on the social and psychological affects of language).

I think what bothers you is the fact that the dynamics of language put it under troubling limitations. Because it points toward itself (meaning arises from a internecine "warring chain of signifiers" as Derrida put it), it can never be an unmediated medium of truth and reality. Yet, you go too far in arguing that this is evidence of the nonexistence of all things. Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, to crib something that comes up again and again in atheist vs theist debates. And obviously, to follow up my point, you go too far in arguing that because language is subject to exacting limitations, it conveys nothing but itself.

>>1726722

>but also points away from itself (the insight of people like Bloom and Fish who focus on the social and psychological affects of language).

what is this idea called?

another pretender for the role of god in our little play.

>>1726722
And obviously, to follow up my point, you go too far in arguing that because language is subject to exacting limitations, it conveys nothing but itself.

because no signifier is its sign, or has any intrinsic connection to its sign (excepting onomatopoeia), this can't be true. language can only convey ideas which there is language for, and those ideas have no physical reality, because every act of description is necessarily metaphorical at best. if i might also quote derrida, "there is nothing outside the text"

>>1727945
sorry, meant to greentext that first bit

That's pretty cool OP, but I don't think it's LITERATURE

>Nothing exists

>>1727951
ITT we have discussed some critical theory, including some important theoreticians- Gorgias, Plato, Derrida, Bloom, and Fish. we have discussed poststructuralism and structuralism.

if don't know why any of this is /lit/related it's time to get off /lit/

>>1727951

>>1725519
lol

>>1725519

>demonstrates my point

Any knowledge we have of the world is made up of subjective perceptions

when you see a tree, or a table, you never see that tree or that table.
Your eyes pick up the light reflected off those objects. Your brain interprets this information and creates an image for you.

So any knowledge of the external world is made up of sensations.

BUT, the table, the tree, they're not made up of sensations. They are not the light and they are not the interpretations of the processes in your brain.
They are not formed from the constituents of your sensations, but that is the only thing you can ever know of them.

TLDR: don't know shit captain

They shouldn't have made the matrix. Here goes an entire generation to hell.

>>1728015
And all caused by a Nozick's counter-example...

>>1728015
>Plato shouldn't have written the cave, here goes an entire philosophical tradition to hell.

>>1728015
mfw plato's allegory of the cave

>>1728010
MFW Philosophy student posts something relevant and smart on this board

>>1728010
oh man, what a wholly bunch of bullshit
"seeing" is a sensation, my friend.
and I think our sensations are realiable enough to have been developed over a course of hundrends and hundreds of years throughout natural selection, so what we see isn't really fake and we don't hit a "tree" when expecting to insert a penis inside a vagina.

>>1728010
a theory of a theory of a theory etc

ITT:
Americans and Descartes: a story of misery, failure and mythology.

>>1728112
Doesn'tknowshit.jpg

>>1728112
>"seeing" is a sensation, my friend.

It's a subjective sensation with intermediary steps. You haven't disproven the idea that what you see is not really the true essence of an object, but your mind's interpretations.

I challenge you to explain the color red to me. Not in terms of a certain wavelength of light, but the qualitative experience that you go through when you see something that is red. That is subjective experience.

>>1728135
okay, I didn't say it wasn't a subjective experience.
>not really the true essence of an object, but your mind's interpretations
well, remarking the fact that everything we feel or see etc. passes through my mind's interpretation, it's pretty difficult (not to say otherwise) to know that "true essence".

>>1728150
>well, remarking the fact that everything we feel or see etc. passes through my mind's interpretation, it's pretty difficult (not to say otherwise) to know that "true essence".

Of course it's difficult, actually, I believe it's impossible. We can never speak about the true nature of reality to one another because we don't know it ourselves, and language is already totally removed from truth, because... well, it's completely artificial.

>>1728112

this guy sucks

im still only at Hume but i took a few days break because i was lonely sad and ill get back to it soon.

general question to everyone, are the last 3 tiers for real or just like d&e's personal picks? because i dont see how the row before leads to that. like Wittgenstein to Crowley guy. i dont get that.

>>1728163

can we discuss the idea that perhaps plato was wrong, and there is no transcendental, ethereal, white, One, monistic, perfect holy truth? and that perhaps the best truth we can come up with exists in language, and if there is such a truth as plato describes, we can't access it because it's removed so far from us

>>1728186
mfw you got trolled so hard

>>1728190
nah Republic was good fun and i had already read that. the majority Descartes was kind of ridiculous though. and i now read a summary of each one beforehand because they use out of date definitions, etc. i dont see how the 3rd tier is trolling as Russell's list is kind of similar. can you maybe elaborate?

>>1728194

so what if the cave is actually the picture in the cave.

>>1728188
>can we discuss the idea that perhaps plato was wrong, and there is no transcendental, ethereal, white, One, monistic, perfect holy truth? and that perhaps the best truth we can come up with exists in language, and if there is such a truth as plato describes, we can't access it because it's removed so far from us

I don't believe there is such a truth.
We all form our own truths, like you say, found upon language. At a certain age you learn a word, let's say, "horse," and as you come to perceive instances of horses throughout your life, you reconcile and amend your mental concept of the horse. The word horse brings certain thoughts to your mind. Memories of horses, when you saw them, smelled them, the things that they share in common, these sensations form your mental concept of its form.

Essentially, we are all the god of our own reality. Those mental concepts define how we perceive and judge the world. When people speak to each other, they share their knowledge of forms. What is a disagreement besides a disagreement upon the nature of form? "People of a certain race act a certain way," this is one person's conceptualization of a form. "No they don't, I have a friends who's black and doesn't steal bikes."

A wise person is able to discuss the forms that define their reality. They are open to different interpretations. An ignorant person will always disagree with divergent opinions because they cannot handle the possibility that their understanding of reality is incorrect.

i dont care what you think i dont want to know alot i just like these for fun. i think just the attention you sometimes need to follow or think abstract is a nice feeling afterwards.

~scream from the haterz got a nice ring to it
i guess this why every superhero need his theme music~

>>1728186
you'll be fine with everything in the intermediate tier ty and maybe the tao and the analects