/lit/ - Literature

I agree

Let me repeat. I have not read all the work of this present generation of writing. I have not had time yet. So I must speak only of the ones I do know. I am thinking now of what I rate the best one, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, perhaps because this one expresses so completely what I have tried to say. A youth, father to what will—must—someday be a man, more intelligent than some and more sensitive than most, who—he would not even have called it by instinct because he did not know he possessed it because God perhaps had put it there, loved man and wished to be a part of mankind, humanity, who tried to join the human race and failed. To me, his tragedy was not that he was, as he perhaps thought, not tough enough or brave enough or deserving enough to be accepted into humanity. His tragedy was that when he attempted to enter the human race, there was no human race there. There was nothing for him to do save buzz, frantic and inviolate, inside the glass wall of his tumbler, until he either gave up or was himself, by himself, by his own frantic buzzing, destroyed.

http://faulkner.lib.virginia.edu/display/wfaudio23_1

>>5204385
No you don't.

>>5204389
Anon, what are you doing?

>>5204360 →
>>5204360 →
>>5204351 →

This is unacceptable. It would be a shame if we let /lit/ slip in quality.

Mods... since some are responding in another thread, I guess that you could please delete the ones without spam. But please note that I am the OP of this thread, so if you are doling out punishment, I have not done wrong.

>>5204390
Anon, I forbid you to make a meme of my post here.

Bring it to s4s for board approval.

>>5204429
Oh man. I love that little movie. The owl is definitely the best character.

>>5204360
>Obviously there is such a thing as "morality"-- we have a word for it.

We have the word "magic", too. But it usually refers to clever tricks and self-deception.

>What is the nature of this thing called "morality"?

It is, like most human constructs, an attempt at categorization. And, like most categorization, it is imposed from the outside. There is nothing "inherently" good or bad, etc.

>what is "identity", and what is its relation to action?

Any attempt at "identity" is a fracturing a man's being-in-the-world, his relation to the world and to other people. To reduce a man to his "vices" or "virtues" or any other attributes is to fracture a part from the whole. Because of this, it is very much possible and often common for "identity" to resemble nothing of a man's action.

>Is there such thing as moral progress or regress?

Within the bounds of some particular usage of "morality", yes. Like any game, there are rules which can be learned and a sense of progress to be had. However, which game of "morality" you are playing is largely dependent upon who you are interacting with, who is judging you, where you are, the place in history, etc.

>Be sure to mention what kind of conceptual schema your description of morality relies upon.

Pointless categorization makes it easier for handwavers to handwave. No thanks.

>Do you think that morality can be descriptive, or does morality necessarily implicate "prescriptive" or "normative" language?

It is descriptive, but that means that there can be no singular morality and that all conversations about morality depend on the participants. There may be a dominating view, but even then there are shades of ambiguity and discrepancy thanks to the nature of language.

>Do leaders lead the State's construction of morality, or does the State reflect the morality of the people?

It is reciprocal.

>But, simultaneously, there are common threads amidst the moralities of different cultures... why is that?

I couldn't possibly know, but most cultures still glorify murder despite what the dominant morality preaches...so long as it is murder performed by the State.

Bump.

The fucking mods, I swear.

>>5204351
dubs for a duplicate thread
>>5204360

Bump.

>>5204447
>Obviously there is such a thing as everything of which I can speak, but does it mean it actually is the case that that thing exists in the world, or exists in any meaningful, relevant capacity?

The thing of which you speak does exist in some way-- but you principally distinguish between "that which can be said to exist" and "that which actually exists".

Well, I grant your distinction and ask you this: is "that which can be said to exist" completely separate and distinct from what is actual?

In other words, here's what I have in mind: is human thought and language (that which can be thought or said to exist) alien to the world (that which actually exists)?

If so, can human language (that which can be said to exist) ever become actual (that which can be said to ACTUALLY exist?)

Or, could it be that human thought and language is completely abstracted from what actually exists? When I think of "unicorn", I do not as a human have an original idea-- rather, I am abstracting from actual things that I've seen ("horses" and "horns"). Then, I simply graft a "horn" to a "horse" in my imagination, and my artificial "unicorn" is complete.

Since you use the term "actuality", do you think that it is fair to bring up the old distinction of "actuality/potentiality"?

If you believe that some things exist actually, while other things exist potentially, what does this say about the nature of existence on the whole?

A thing is actual: "a thing is", "a thing exists".
A thing is potential: "a thing is...?", " a thing ... exists?"

Does the actual subsume the potential? For example, when I say "a thing exists in potentiality", is it fair to modify the statement as "in actuality, a thing exists in potentiality?"

What is the nature of the existence of potentiality? In physics, we say that an object has potential energy.

Say you're buying a new action figure and see that its box boasts of some of the figurine's attributes. "Opposable thumbs!" "Spring-loaded missile launcher!" "Three outfit configurations!"

Are the qualities of "opposability", "spring-loadability", and "fashionability" actual qualities of the action figure?

"Salesperson, are you telling me that this action figure is spring-loaded?" "Yes sir, the action figure is actually spring-loaded?" "Show me." "Well, first you have to load the spring." "So NOW it's spring-loaded."

Or was it spring-loaded before? Can all of a thing's potential qualities be said to exist? But wait, when we say that they are actual when they do exist.

So, maybe we can update our "actual" and "potential" like so:

A thing is actual: "a thing is", "a thing exists".
A thing is potential: " a thing can become to be", "a thing is becoming."

However, we may also just revise our plan and reject the old distinction of "actuality" and "potentiality". Then, we might return to work on our unicorn and "that which can be said to exist".

>>5204360
These duplicate threads are your most creative work yet.

Just to be clear mods, this is the real thread.

>>5204920
Let's consider the notion of actuality/potentiality of which you speak with counterfactuals.

[]p -> p
~([]p -> p)
1.1 []p
1.1 ~p
1.1 p

if p necessarily exists, then with kripke semantics we can say p exists. If we treat potentiality as some object existing in some possible world, then we beg the question: why speak of existence if all things have some counterfactual existence? Certainly "human thought" as you say certainly relates to the world, but it is not a one-to-one correspondence. "human thought" or "language" is expansive in that what could be the case may still be treated as what is the case. Because morality has the potential to exist because language doesn't seem to preclude this potential is empty if we are merely speaking of possibility. What is important is:

A. What is necessarily the case
B. What is the case in this possible world.

My apologies clearly, unintentional.