/lit/ - Literature

>>3463518
>New to 4chan?

Oh Lord no.

I pop in here now and then to troll victims of critical theory and pick up recommendations for interesting reads.

>>3463504

You, sir, are a quality poster and a true gentleman.

>>3463505

Absolutely, even if only for the mental exercise of "let's not decide whether this is true or false, but rather try to understand how it could seem true to this guy."

After all, our own mental models of the Universe are probably hilarious to most other people now, and certainly will be to everyone in a few hundred years.

>>3463481
>Wittgenstein

Never much cared for that guy, always seemed like Schopenhauer's doom 'n gloom in fancy clothes. But then I guess being a gay Jew in Europe in his time would probably lend to a pessimistic worldview.

Always good to see how the other side thinks, though.

>>3463453
see
>>3463418
>>3463396

I prefer Russell's, because it's his traditional blend of genius-level scholarship and thought with a thread of dry humor to keep the book from getting pompous like most philosophical histoires tend to be.

>>3463427
>existentialist anti-philosophy
>commendable

not sure if serious

>>3463386
>recommending Sartre to anyone

Oh God why, might as well just throw Schopenhauer and a pack of razor blades in there while you're at it.

>>3463396
>this

I also like Russell's History of Western Philosophy as a starter.

>>3463404
>mfw this was almost exactly what I was about to say

Your script doesn't mean much when the editor just hacked five scenes out of the flick to improve the pacing.

>>3354932
>All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy repeated 600 times produces P.G. Wodehouse
>P.G. Wodehouse
>repetitive

OH IT IS ON NOW, "ANALYZER"

>copy/paste Who Shot Ya by Notorious B.I.G.
>get this

William Gibson confirmed for #1 gangsta in the writing biz

>>3211602

Deconstruction is holding a spare eyebrow.

>and being raped by it because it's a man's eyebrow

>>3211549
>"Really similar" doesn't mean "his answers were correct."

Yes, actually, for a physics question, "really similar" to the actual authority's answer means "correct." Unlike, say, postmodernism, math-based stuff is either right or wrong. In this example, the guy was right, but didn't understand the underlying math.

If Person A tells you the answer of a complicated equation that you don't know how to do, and then Person B asks you for the answer, you can give the correct answer without understanding the math. Dig?

>Just because Duke publishes something doesn't mean they reviews and edit the submissions

Uh, actually, it does. That's how a submitted paper ends up being printed in the journal. You submit something, one of the editors reviews it, and decides whether to publish it or not. Or do you think manuscripts just transmute into journal pages by magic?

>Just because you personally feel incredulous doesn't make it nonsense

The thing they published was nonsense. It didn't make any sense, because it was deliberately constructed to make sure it didn't. But he used all the right buzzwords and took the right attitudes, and so to the presses it went!

>Further, Sokal's paper didn't prove anything.

Actually it did! It proved that you can carefully construct something to be deliberately meaningless, load it with hilarious math errors that a first-year student would easily identify, and submit it to a respected humanities journal, whereupon the editors will soberly review it, decide it's great, and publish it.

>Comp Sci
>doesn't know what comp sci is
>theoretical physics concerned with the moment of the Big Bang
>doesn't understand why that's hilarious

>>3211520

I'm sure people have different ideas of Edward Cullen, too!

>>3211495
>implying burger rape doesn't go without saying

>>3211444
>>3211468

I can't get past how hilariously wrong that is

>person A doesn't like Big Macs
>person B loves them
>therefore "Big Mac" is meaningless

>>3211444
>To have such radically different understandings of the word is to essentially say that the word duck is meaningless.

The understanding isn't different, both people will think of a bird in the Anatidae family.

They will feel differently about that same duck and ducks in general, but they'll know we're talking about ducks.

Therefore what you're saying doesn't make any sense.

>>3211402
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/oct/10/fakingthephysics

>if you look at the answers given they are really very similar

So his answers were correct, even though he didn't understand the underlying math, because he'd been talking with physicists. I can tell you the basic method of operation of local anaesthetic without understanding ion transfer and the actual chemical mechanics involved. This does not mean that local anaesthetic doesn't work or that doctors are charlatans.

Simply, the sociologist knew how to answer a provable question correctly, despite not having the math background, whereas Sokal deliberately made up complete bullshit and got it published. See the difference?

>was not even peer-reviewed.

It was nonsense, friend. Nonsense. The editors of a Duke University academic journal should be able to recognize deliberate meaninglessness when it is submitted to them. Instead they thought it was keen and published it.

>>3211405

In that case, it has absolutely nothing to do with Einsteinian physics, and it is even more clearly pseudointellectual dishonesty to try to frame it in that terminology. Any metaphor that the audience will grasp will do there, but the deliberate choice of using the (totally wrong) pop-culture sense of relativity is worse than the pebble and the pond.

If you're going to try to dress up your philosophy in scientific terminology, you have to understand the science.

>>3211341
>>3211333

See, this is what happens when someone who has never been inside even a first-year physics classroom decides to talk about physics.

The problem is not just that it's scientifically wrong, but almost completely the opposite of the basic idea of Einsteinian general and special relativity. It's the version of relativity that a sci-fi movie character might spout to another, because neither the writer nor the audience actually have any idea about the concept, and it's incorrect.

The problem is, if you understand anything about physics, you instantly understand with both things that you're dealing with pseudointellectual bullshit, but at least the sci-fi movie is not pretending to intellectual greatness.

It has as much relation to relativity as saying "the pebble of trauma disturbs the stillness of the pond of the mind" -- actually, it's saying exactly that, but trying to dress it up as science. If you're just going to use any old metaphor you can think of, the pebble is at least intellectualy honest.

>>3211302

You should read a little further 'til you get to the Alan Sokal prank.

Or, I can sum it up -- he submitted a paper to Social Text called 'Transgressing the Boundaries: towards a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity" in the every same vein, a 'proof' of postmodernist nonsense loaded with physics jargon. It was published with great acclaim, and then Sokal revealed that he'd deliberately constructed it to be completely meaningless.

>Anyone who has spent much time wading through the pious, obscurantist, jargon-filled cant that now passes for 'advanced' thought in the humanities knew it was bound to happen sooner or later: some clever academic, armed with the not-so-secret passwords ('hermeneutics,' 'transgressive,' 'Lacanian,' 'hegemony,' to name but a few) would write a completely bogus paper, submit it to an au courant journal, and have it accepted . . . Sokal's piece uses all the right terms. It cites all the best people. It whacks sinners (white men, the 'real world'), applauds the virtuous (women, general metaphysical lunacy) . . . And it is complete, unadulterated bullshit — a fact that somehow escaped the attention of the high-powered editors of Social Text, who must now be experiencing that queasy sensation that afflicted the Trojans the morning after they pulled that nice big gift horse into their city.

To repeat: Deliberately constructed to be completely meaningless but all sciencey-sounding.

>>3210972

Or, it's a bunch of know-nothing assholes dressing up their hilarious bullshit in mathematical terms so it sounds all intellectual 'n stuff, even though to anyone with even a passing familiarity with either subject it's instantly revealed to be nonsensical meaninglessness.

Read "Intellectual Impostures."

http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/824

>>3203332
>fondamental meaning behind words.
>thinks words have inherent meaning

Holy shit, so deconstruction is the result of people not grasping one of the fundamental concepts of language

I mean, if words have inherent "actual" meanings, why are there different languages at all?

>>2632247
>trainwreck of grammar
>pretension of intellectual superiority
>thinks we're having an argument
>belligerent

I suggest you look up that word in the dictionary sometime, friend <3

>>2632252

Easy -- to treat the historical and social context of a given work as its actual 'meaning,' rather than what the author actually intended to communicate when he or she wrote it, is the same principle as disregarding what a person says because of who he is. It is "consider the source," which is anti-logic.

It's no different from Hannity viewers disbelieving something they saw on CNN because it's THAT DAMN LIBRUL MEEDYA.

The message is what is important, not where it is coming from. If a neo-Nazi skinhead says "the building is on fire," "consider the source" might just get you burned to death.

Sadly, I'd love to stay longer but I have to run. For fun, try apply deconstruction to the works of Marx and Engels and see how much an English prof applauds your intellectual consistency.

>>2632236
>colonic fukushima in progress

Ah, the mark of the Liberal Arts intellect -- "ur dumb lol"

Consider that your education dollar may not be producing much of a benefit.

>>2632220
>anal devastation
>no counterargument

You know what's sad? When I did my degree (in real science), I supplemented it by reading the greats, for free, from the library. In this fashion I was able to touch my mind to some of the greatest geniuses of history -- the closest thing possible to attending a lecture by them. I became a better person for the reading, by hearing what they had to say (which is why people wrote it down).

All art and writing is a communication from an artist or thinker to us, the audience. The whole of deconstructionism and indeterminacy is a massive logical fallacy -- it is argumentum ad hominem elevated to a discipline. I mean, "consider the source" is a logical fallacy. What you guys have been taught to do is consider ONLY the source. That's sad.

I became educated for free -- you are clearly actually paying some washed-up old radical to vaccinate your mind against the collected wisdom of centuries of civilization, and that's a bitter shame.

>>2632195
>authorial intent doesn't matter lol!

I know, it's weird how they even bothered to choose any words at all! Writers should just throw down a flood of random letters and numbers on the page, and then we'll just look at the date and place it was published and from that we can draw our conclusions as to what it really means.

>>2632198

Indeed! Nothing really means anything after all, everything's just a product of its time and the socio-economic oppressive conditions involved, right? There's certain no universality to the human heart and soul.

>>2632202
>philosophy isn't math

Strange. The fathers of philosophy would laugh at you for saying that. Remember what was written over the entrance to the Academy?


PROTIP: You're having your minds poisoned by Marxists.