/lit/ - Literature

>>22166922
He’s the only one who didn’t talk about it. When he said not to talk about it he wasn’t referring to what is not but to other philosophers talking about what they think what is not is.

>>22167958
No, OP is in a qualified way correct that the poem speaks about what is not; compare the final three lines of fr. 1 (P. will learn not just unshaken Truth, but the opinions of mortals that have no pistis) with fr. 2 & 3 (the goddess tells P. about the way of persuasion that relates to Truth, while the other way, which is-not is *unthinkable*, but apparently not *unspeakable* since she's literally saying she's going to tell it to him, and that latter path makes up the fragmented final part of the poem on Doxa), and the beginning of fr. 6 (where the conditions are that what is speakable *and* thinkable must be; this is where I think OP is probably wrong. The goddess might be saying that for something to be, it must satisfy both conditions, whereas the opinions of mortals are only speakable, but not thinkable as well), and fr. 8 lines 35-41 (where the relation between speech and thought is emphasized, and the subsequent Way of Doxa is introduced as consisting of "names").

>>22166922
You're taking it out of context. The goddess says that.

>>22166922
Based. Make rules for others, then break them yourself

>>22168139
You don't think that's Parmenides's own idea?

>>22168078
Is Unbeing, being the polar opposite of Being, a better way to talk about "what-is-not" as opposed to simply Not-Being, the mere negation of Being?

>>22168898
I'm not sure. Usually "is-not" or "not-being" is in Greek something like "ouk esti," which is literally "is not," but you have really a set of different forms of the verb "to be" being bandied about, and the negation switches from "ou" to "me" depending on grammar, or sometimes you get an "ouden," "nothing." It's a little thorny to keep track of.

>>22168959
What would be the implications of accepting this distinction between Not-Being and Unbeing?

>>22168979
I'm not sure what the distinction would be, desu. You could work out what "ouk esti" would mean based on the Way of Opinion, where errors appear to be in distinctions made in names for things that, I suppose, in Truth actually the same somehow, so "man" and "woman" and "night" and "day" are examples adduced there, which are, presumably, speakable but only apparent.

>>22169004
If it's speakable, then isn't it thinkable according to Parmenides?

>>22169019
I don't think so; the conditions seem to be:

1) Is it speakable?
2) Is it thinkable?
Therefore it *is*.

Whereas I guess with Opinion, it's speakable, but not thinkable, therefore it *isn't*. What thinking is, however, seems obscure.

>>22169490
How can something be speakable but not thinkable? The other way around seems plausible (thinkable but not speakable).

>>22170640
I mean, we readily acknowledge that people can speak falsehoods and gibberish, right? So at least on that level, there's something plausible about speach itself not being the only standard, but that does raise a question about how something like imagination fits in here.

>>22169490
whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent

>>22171143
Before we get further involved, I'd like to clarify some terminology with the help of the potential/actual distinction. Fiction is a possibility which is not actual. Falsehood is the act of claiming that one possibility is actual when, in fact, another possibility is actual. Lying is to speak a falsehood with the intention of avoiding actuality.

Gibberish is, well, gibberish. It is an attempt to communicate something intelligible that is not. It's more than just communicating a fiction or a falsehood: unicorns aren't gibberish, but a hornless unicorn is. Oftentimes, it's "not even wrong." There's two ways of going about it, I think. The first step is mechanical, caused due to some lack of intelligence, such as the gibberish produced by a baby, a mentally sick person, a sleep-deprived person, a poorly-thought out idea, etc. The second is, in a sense, overly intellectual, what is produced by railing against the limitations of thought itself. e.g. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

I don't know why we can speak gibberish, both unintentionally and intentionally. I think it's related to the question of why we make mistakes in general, and a deeper question of the difference between abstract and concrete, imperfection and perfection, the art of creativity, etc.

bump

>>22166922
It literally took over 2000 years for the west to actually follow through on this with Wittgenstein, WTF?

bumperino

no bump