>What is /phil/ Philosophy General?A general for readers, students, and armchair thinkers interested in philosophy, whether it be Western, Eastern, analytic, continental, ancient, contemporary. We discuss primary texts, secondary literature, online lectures, podcasts.>Why read philosophy?Politics, science, psychology, etc. all began with or were inspired by someone who thought philosophically. Basically, if you are interested in just about anything, philosophy will help you better understand that subject. Because it is at the foundation of every conceptual institution made or discovered by humans, it is in the underbelly of human experience, and so it is worth taking seriously.>Why study philosophy formally?Surprisingly versatile and undervalued. Phil majors consistently score among the highest on the LSAT, GRE, and GMAT. Strong pipeline into law, policy, ethics consulting, AI alignment, and academia.Previous thread >>25172552
Who are some philosophers you don't see talked about on here? For me it's Hannah Arendt. I love her work and she had an amazing ability to cut through bullshit. Her analysis of totalitarian governments proved to be prophetic.
>>25194345Basically anything analytic. Parfit's great. His work on personal identity blew my skull open. I think a lot of Nietzsche enjoyers here would like Sharon Street's paper "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value."
>>25194353I'll check it out, but I never got into the analytic stuff. Guess I'll start with Parfit
>>25194353no thanks, as a 260 iq continental chad I don't take analsissies seriously
>>25194365If you've never read any analytic work, you're in for a treat. Parfit's "Personal Identity" is great. Some other recommendations for analytic work - >The Unreality of Time -- JME McTaggart (strongly recommend this one, short paper, once you get the distinction between a-time and b-time you can never unsee it)>Freedom and Resentment -- Strawson (if you're interested in the question of free will you have to read this paper)>Famine, Affluence, and Morality -- Singer (much ridiculed on /lit/ but nobody's actually read it; the single most influential and controversial paper in modern ethics)>The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy -- Diamond (from /lit/ poster to /lit/ poster, you'll appreciate this one; tldr poems/stories/etc communicate serious philosophical arguments/stances that can't be extracted from their artistic expression)>>25194370No need to limit yourself to one side of the divide. Better to read both. You get the best of both worlds that way. When I get tired of continentals doing shit like>What is freedom? That which it is to be said is what it most manifests within itself; for there are many different -doms transmuted through the ghost of the real, wherein the kingdom of freedom, so to speak, is always-already the always that it alreadys, as Nietzsche counsels us. Indeed, we must talk of the isness of the query "What is freedom?," for the isness is what it is; it insists further on being; we are not asking what it means to be free, as such a question is ineluctable in our time, but we are asking what it is to what, to is, under the plethora of -doms inside that which is not being itself untoldI turn to analytics, who will answer the question clearly - >What is freedom? Here's what I think freedom is. Here's reasons A, B, and C explaining why I'm right. Some possible counterarguments are X and Y. These counterarguments don't work for the following reasons. Now we know what freedom isThe biggest problem with continentals is that mostly they just say shit without ever actually arguing for it, and the biggest problem with analytics is that mostly they're arguing over nothing. But these are caricatures, lots and lots of good work going on in both
>>25194353>>25194414Parfit is great because he's wrong about literally everything.
>>25194414I think you are right, recommend me some Kantian analytical works to start with
time is best modeled as a a posettime and causality are the exact same thingtime does not "flow", causality does not "cause"
>>25194473 kekked at dat pic>posetdiscroot mathematics?
>>25194458The Sources of Normativity by Christine Korsgaard, collection of her papers where she argues for a neo-Kantian constructivist approach to metaethics. Stunningly influential in metaethics, very clear writer>>25194427I think he's wrong on some stuff but literally everything is too far -- even if you think this, Parfit articulates/defends his case so well that if you're a philosopher working today you have to go out of your way to argue against him, not just dismiss him offhand. That anecdote about him crying in front of the grad students during a lecture lives in my mind
Can someone explain Godels incompleteness theorem? I get it at a high level but can't explain it
>>25194546Have you read GEB? You should, Im reading it right now and I'm getting to understand a little about Godel through it.In less technical terms, it goes like this: Any consistent formal system strong enough to represent typographically that a proof exists for its own sentences is necessarily incomplete. This is because within such a system one can make statements which, once translated into english, say effectively "I am not provable." Proving something which literally translates to "I am not provable" leads to contradiction. On the other hand, not being able to prove "I am not provable" leads to incompleteness.
>>25194327I like the idea of this general (partly because I think the subject of philosophy in this board needs a containment thread) but maybe you could incentivize activity by proposing a topic for debate and/or a couple of questions in order jumpstart dialogue.
>>25195782I like the idea, but do you have an example? It would be tough because the topic could be too specific for anyone to actively answer or too broad and no good discussion happens
>>25195792Yeah>proposing a topic for debate What do people think of a certain new publication, maybe bring up a debate that started in the last thread or resurface one from a different thread... you could ask something from the perspective of what you yourself have been thinking/are struggling with (Idk, say you have been reading Rorty and you disagree with the latter part of his works and you want to discuss it for instance; people like this kind of organic talk), and so on. I see many options for what you could propose as a topic.>couple of questions There are many broad ones, like, what are you reading at the moment and how is it going so far? What have you been thinking about lately? Need help to understand something?And then maybe one or two questions of the day, like, what books would you recommend for someone starting into X? For those who study philosophy in college, how are you doing with your assignments? And, well, there's many more you can think of. I'd keep going but I'm kind of tired atm...Just try to be engaging. GL
>>25195792>>25195968Oh also you could copy the style of other boards' generals, I don't know why no one on /lit/ understands this>[X thing] Edition>Picture of a person or a pretty cover of a book related to the name of the edition EZPZSay, the Gaddis thread would not have stood up so long if it wasn't showing the guy's tired and irritated face in the picrel
o i am laffin
>>25194327I want to learn more about existensialism. I've read some Kierkegaard and Nietszche but those are just the most popular. Sartre defined the term but I don't trust the way he looks. Suggestions?
>>25194345>Hannah ArendtLove her. Haven't read anything in Foucault that she hasn't written about with great clarity
>>25194414>No need to limit yourself to one side of the divide. Better to read both."I want, once and for all, not to know many things.— Wisdom sets limits even to knowledge." - autistic moustache man
>>25194414>I turn to analytics, who will answer the question clearly - They literally don't
>>25194345Almost no one discusses Agamben after the Covid gaffe. And Ian Hacking rarely gets talked about either.
what are some fiction writers who have genuinely interesting philosophical undertones
>>25197810you have to lernen german
>>25194345People focus a ton on Eastern praxis heavy traditions but figures like Evagrios and Saint John Cassian or Saint John Climacus are ignored. Even in theology they are often bracketed off as "spiritual." The reality is that they represent the most detailed anthropology/psychology in antiquity and this ends up informing their epistemology in very interesting ways that are plausible even without their theological assumptions. I get that part of it is that you have to go through a lot of discussions of praxis and exhortations to distill this stuff, but this is equally true of all the Buddhist stuff I've read and people don't ignore that the same way.
>>25197849What think you of Abhinavagupta's Tantraloka?
>/pseud/ - Pseud General # 3
>>25198061There are like three or four ongoing Pynchon threads out there, maybe they are more suited to your mature taste?
>>25198071>t. pretentious pseud
>>25198061Hey we are having a serious discussion about philosophy here buddy
>>25197849What are some of the best philosophical anthropologists in existence?
You don’t know everything about bats. It is physically impossible for you to know everything about just one (1) bat. If you had the mental power required, you would know exactly what it is like to be a bat. You would be able to simulate it in your mind in the same way that you can imagine holding an apple.It’s just that brains are unfathomably complex and so we are unable to simulate them. Even a single part of a single cell is too complicated for a human mind to keep track of.
>>25198194I am a bat.the sky is my ocean,the clouds are my boat,and the dark rainy clouds are the wreck of edmund fitzgerald
