BioGio

Congrats on beating the final boss of literature.  Now be sure to look up all of the bibliographical work done on Ulysses (e.g., the pages upon pages written about whether the telegram to Stephen Dedalus should read "Mother dying" or "Nother dying") and ask yourself, "Did I really read this book?"

In all seriousness, though, in what context/for what purpose exactly are you studying Ulysses?

Yes, but holding hands leads to kisses on the cheek. Kisses on the cheek lead to kisses on the lips. Those lead to dates, dates lead to marriage... and then LGBT+ couples with a baby carriage!

Next thing you know you've gotta raise a kid.  Your life falls apart.  Forget that last part.

(I tried to think of something witty to say, but I really couldn't think of anything. It's awesome to see you again!)

Sadly, my resources aren't currently accessible to me, and they're not showing up to easily on Google.  If you want some general resources, look up "original affluent society" or a similar term.  Suffice it to say that human remains indicate that the heights of people in early agricultural societies are substantially lower than the heights of foragers.  (I think I've seen claims that heights didn't return to Paleolithic levels until well after the Industrial Revolution--but don't trust my memory.  And let's also bear in mind that--beyond having a shoddy memory--I'm absolutely, emphatically not an expert in archaeology.)  We also know that modern foragers such as the !Kung have surprisingly short "work weeks" (working for under five hours daily).  In short, foragers actually had it really good, to the extent that it's hard to explain what pressures would sustain agriculture.

This is of course the problem with revisionist history--it's way too easy and appealing to just say "everything you thought you knew about the Neolithic is wrong!" but that's not a particularly responsible position.  In this case, we know that agriculture did eventually "win out" over foraging, so we're left wondering why.

EDIT:  Wow I completely hijacked this blog post, sorry.

Haha, that's great.  (Incidentally, I think Googling "crow agricultural revolution" turns up your blog posts on this--they're quite the tale.  I'd just like to quickly posit that since there's evidence agriculture actually worsened the quality of life for early man, preventing a crow colony from foraging could--from a certain perspective--be animal abuse.  So add potential felony charges to beak injuries in your list of risks associated with neolithizing crows.)

Love the twist at the end.  Short stories with unnerving final revelations are my favorite category in the literary horror/thriller genre.

My main gripe is this phrase:  "causing him to try yelping in pain, only to find he couldn’t."  The subject just jumps around way too much in that sentence, and there's a part of me that wants to parse "causing him to try yelping in pain" as an appositive.  Also, the "try verbing" construction suggests to me that the action was completed but ineffectual (think:  "try turning it off and on"), so the final phrase of the sentence is jarring.  (I could probably give this whole thing a quick once-over for usage/grammar if you'd like, but this is the only thing that jumped out at me.)

EDIT:  Also, what's this about a Crow Agricultural Revolution?  I assume more speculative fiction?  I only ask because I'm working on a project right now that has required I do a bit of research into early agriculture.  Do you need any resources on the subject?

This would be a really good parable if: S&T didn't take everything so seriously, people didn't hold bonesiii in such esteem around here, and bonesiii had indicated he has an academic education in or understanding of logic.

You've got to specify the relevant field, otherwise you'll pick up linguistics or literature articles, as opposed to history.  Better still if you know a particular journal.  Also, try removing the word "European" from your search, or enclose it and the noun it modifies in quotation marks.

I really like Anguillan, even if it is already an English word.  Sefalops is a bit too transparent.  The rest I can take or leave.

All fanfics deserve a place in the Apocrypha

Also, declaring something false does not automatically mean the opposite of it is true. It simply means that something is not true.

It does, however, mean that the negation of it is true, at least in classical/standard logic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_function

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_value

Sorry for the late reply.
 

There are two points I was trying to make there.
1) That existentialism would involve invalidating the physical world's existence (it has no meaning, only the spiritual world does), and

2) The physical world DOES have relevance, it does exist, thereby existentialism is false. (In this case, I believe Platonism/Theory of Forms and Christian Existentialism to be false, if that helps.)

Okay, but existentialism does not entail a belief in a "spiritual world." Absolutely no existentialist believes that the physical world does not exist. Rather, they believe that it exists before it has "essence." Further, I honestly have no idea what you're talking about when you mention a "spiritual world." (The closest thing I can think of would be the world of forms, but Platonism is a metaphysical position and therefore completely unrelated to existentialism.)
 

To be fair, I know a "logical positivist" who is affecting my thinking indeed. But I don't always agree with him because he seems to not understand the pain that is associated with why people avoid truth.

Speaking of which, I take it you've done some philosophy studies of your own?

I take it you're referring to bonesiii here? I've never seen him refer to himself as a logical positivist. (To be perfectly honest, I've never seen him refer to belonging to any particular school of thought, though, so he could be a logical positivist. It's probably worth noting that logical positivism is somewhat rare currently.) You do realize that logical positivism is a very specific school of thought, right?

Also, to be clear: I do not hold a degree in philosophy. If you'd like, I could probably put you into contact with some people who do.
 

However, I'm genuinely interested to know how I could be misusing that word, and about the "serious unsolved problems in the field of logic". But both times when this has been brought up, nobody has bothered to explain to me why I was wrong. This kinda leaves me thinking that you think that this is so obvious it doesn't need stated and I'm some sort of dooficus for not getting it.

Unfortunately, I believe that logic is the "study of everything that is" which is basically the same as saying "the study of which things are true and which ones are not". I kinda feel that this is so obvious that it doesn't need stated either, but that doesn't mean I'm right. Even if I am right, I would like to know why so I can mount up the proper response in my next debate with DeeVee.

What I'm getting at is the fact that logic is an actual field of philosophy. It takes on a variety of forms, but all of them are extremely rigorous and scientific. On BZP in general, people seem to think that in order to "know logic" you just have to know a list of informal logical fallacies and know how to spot them. This is actually a pretty common attitude on the Internet overall.  I've seen websites that have pages on "logic" that are nothing more than a collection of fallacies.  (They make my stomach churn.)

If you'd actually like to learn about the still-unsolved problems that logicians are struggling with, I'd recommend asking around on websites with actual logicians. I think Reddit has an "ask philosophers" forum that should have professional philosophers to give you a decent overview. A decent problem to start of with would be the problem of induction (which I referred to in my earlier post).

It's sort of a shame that DV didn't go into any detail about his criticisms of "logic" on BZP (if those are indeed his!). I'd love to know whether we're talking about the same thing.
 

Anyway, by characters who use logic, I mean characters who do stuff for reasons that make sense. To be clear, shooting someone just because the sun is in your eyes (to ref the Stranger) doesn't make any sense. They don't lengthy proofs to make sense, it just has to fit in the willing suspension of disbelief.

You're not supposed to agree with Meursault's decision to shoot the Arab, for the record. Throughout The Stranger, Muersault is alienated from society and from his own emotions, only capable of expressing vague physical discomfort. The shooting of the Arab because of the heat of the sun is simply the most extreme example of this alienation. This also gets into that whole "literature-as-exercise-in-empathy" thing: even though you realize Meursault's made an awful mistake, you should to see how he did so.
 

And for the most part, people do want to be happier. Thus characters who don't and act stupidly illogical because they don't...annoy me. There could be an emotional reason for that, but wouldn't that be obvious? The solution is to deal with the logical fallacy that is causing the negative emotion, not run around doing a bunch of stupid stuff that doesn't make sense. (Although I sometimes do that myself lol - the key is that I want the characters to overcome that, not give up hope and die.)

I'm really not sure what you mean by a lot of this. Literature does require a fair amount of interpretive thought (so "emotional reasons" for characters' behaviors aren't plainly clear, but they do exist). And anyway, a big part of "literature-as-an-exercise-in-empathy" involves confronting the characters who think differently than you do. If you just get irritated whenever someone acts "stupidly illogical" and can't empathize with them, then you are really missing out on something.

Incidentally, I've never heard anyone say that logical fallacies are the cause of negative emotions. I guess you'd have to ask a psychologist about this, though.

But to talk about literature, Meursault doesn't give up hope at the end of The Stranger. The final words of narration are tremendously, powerfully hopeful: Meursault expresses the desire to be greeted with "cries of hate." It's a strange thing to hope for, but that's precisely the point of the novel.
 

I'm not sure why this point is relevant to the preceding statements. I will cautiously agree with it - after all, if the truth were truly something we could all accept, we wouldn't study it to try to figure it out.

I probably should have been more clear here. I was referring to your statement that "And then, if the true point of literature is some philosophical point, the only thing that should matter is having the correct viewpoint, as opposed to all the wrong ones, and getting everyone to agree (nobod does). Instead, literature class throws looking for truth and real answers out the window under the "we have to 'expand your horizons with varying perspectives'" excuse." It seems like you were trying to say that, "Since literature class doesn't make everyone agree on everything, it does not impart knowledge of the truth." I was trying to say that if you believe that, then you must also believe that logic does not impart knowledge of the truth, because logic also doesn't make everyone agree on everything.
 

Anyway, it appears that I may need to look up these "debates in the field of logic", as you say. While I may simply laugh at them in the end, it would behoove me to be better informed.

It would certainly be a good idea to get better informed about the field of logic. But please, please, please, please do not be so arrogant as to "laugh at [the debates in the field]." Realize that there are people who have given their entire lives to the serious study of logic, performing countless hours of research in the field, and they don't necessarily agree with each other. Bear in mind that you probably do not know better than them.

You can't make meaning out of meaninglessness, Ballom. You can't make something out of something that is opposite of it, without introducing something else. You can't make truth out of lies.

 

Also, if there is no meaning, there is no truth. Now is that sentence true? Is any of this true?

 

For the record, I reject that premise outright anyway. It basically goes back to the "only the spiritual world exists and has meaning/universe is a projection" premise, thereby the physical world does not, and you can make meaning out of it because it's your projection. Unfortunately for everyone, the physical world does have relevance - no amount of projection will make you well enough to go to school if you're sick, and if I hit you with a sledgehammer to the back of the head, you will still be very dead. The physical world DOES have meaning - if only the physical operations of your fingers on those keys that allow you to type this.

You're mixing up several different philosophies and treating them as though they were all one thing.  Existentialism is the belief that existence precedes essence, so there is no inherent meaning in anything.  An apple, for instance, exists before it has a purpose; so does human life.  Since these essences do not exist independently, they must be created through human thought and action.  For instance, I give apples the purpose of being eaten at breakfast.  (Absurdism takes basically the same approach; whether they're the same philosophy isn't quite clear.  Camus was hesitant about applying the label "existentialism" to his philosophy, but then again so was Sartre, for a while.)

But then you bring in all this stuff about a "spiritual world," and you've completely lost me.  It sounds like you're making reference to some type of Platonism--perhaps taking "essence" to mean the same thing as "Platonic Form"?  Or maybe that's an oblique reference to something about Christian existentialism?  Existentialism certainly does not require the existence of a world of forms in addition to the physical world (the Theory of Forms).  And I don't get why you bring up the idea of "projecting" to be able to live after an attack by sledgehammer.  Is this a misunderstanding of radical freedom?  The "projecting" involved in Platonism is not at all a conscious decision, but rather a function of the universe.

You don't have to agree with this.  The whole Analytic camp (and particularly logical postivists) hated existentialism.  I've had the pleasure of meeting people (online) who still turn their noses up at any reference to "Continental philosophy"--and some of those people were even PhD's in philosophy!

And I'm sure you could write a stellar essay disagreeing with Camus.  Any decent literature class ought to allow for serious criticism of the works read.  That's pretty much the entire point of a lot of literary theory (e.g., deconstructionism or Marxist critical theory).  You shouldn't, however, reject serious philosophies out of hand.  It's tremendously dismissive to simply ignore a viewpoint with which you don't agree, and it's both rude and quite insulting to do this when you clearly do not understand that viewpoint.

That isn't unique to Continental philosophy or literature.  There are real, serious unsolved problems in the field of logic.  You have your typical examples like the problem of induction, of course.  (What wide-eyed philosophy undergrad hasn't read Hume and suddenly fallen prey to the belief that the Sun may not rise tomorrow?)  Then there are matters like falsificationism vs. verificationism, where scientists often have a different opinion than philosophers.  (I think Neil DeGrasse Tyson recently attracted some bad press for making some comments about philosophy that are rather reminiscent of your opinions.)

(Incidentally, this is something that has bothered me for a long time about the way that we talk about "logic" on BZP.  There's this sort of cartoonishly simple view of logic as being basically a knowledge of informal fallacies and not a lot else.  There's no appreciation for the actual complexity of the field of logic, so a lot of people end up thinking that just "thinking things through" is equivalent to "being a logician" or whatever.  You might say that it's enjoyable to read about characters who use logic, but when the author starts peppering their book with predicate calculus and lengthy proofs, that enjoyment would almost surely evaporate.  I totally admit to having that perspective not too long ago, and I'll be the first to kick myself for that--but BZP seems to propagate that view a lot.  I think that DV's made some similar criticisms of BZP, particularly S&T, although I can't recall when I saw him saying so.)

Along the same lines, I am positive that your literature curriculum is not solely comprised of existentialist works.  For instance, nothing written before the life of Soren Kierkegaard can be reasonably categorized as existentialist.  Heart of Darkness is relatively pessimistic, but Conrad isn't generally grouped as an existentialist.  (And given that the novel's subject is the brutal colonization of the Congo, it has good reason to be less than cheery.)  It uses a fair amount of dreamlike scenes that convey a sense of confusion--but not to the point that Conrad is trying to undermine his reader's belief in logic.

There are surely happy endings in your literature class's assigned readings.  The most obvious example would have to be any of Shakespeare's comedies.  Or Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which I don't think "paints life as worse than it is" (unless your life has been really fantastic).

The point of works of fiction is to entertain anyway and escape from real life. Anyone who is looking for meaning ought to do themselves a favor and look at real life instead of turning to fiction in order to find truth. (While authors can choose to take themes from real life and put in their fiction, this is not the case here because the authors paint real life as worse than it actually is.)

For what it's worth, I completely disagree when you say that the purpose of fiction is to "entertain" and "escape from real life."  That may be all you look for in fiction, but that's not the end-all-be-all.  Fiction is a spectacular way to learn about other's experiences; it's a means of practicing empathy.  (I think David Foster Wallace said something to this effect, and that's now one of those quotes people like to throw around.)  Beyond that, truths about philosophy and, well, "real life" can absolutely be communicated through literature.  Fiction allows one to present realistic scenarios that encapsulate a particular outlook or theme.

Just because not everyone believes the same thing doesn't mean that literature is futile.  If that were the case, then logic would be pointless, too!  As I said before, there are still major debates (and resulting discoveries) taking place in the field of logic.  It would be tremendously imprudent to completely ignore these.

--------------

Incidentally, I don't get what you said about catharsis at all, and I'm saying that out of sincere confusion.  Whatever you meant, it's probably a good idea to be careful applying Aristotle to the entire body of literature that you read.

Wait, was your original post not supposed to be humorous?  Because what you said is correct (and I don't think either of the people in that thread disagreed with you), but you phrased it in a funny way.

Your generation is the most literate generation in the history of the world. Yes, texting and social media accounts have actually made kids smarter.

 

Anyone who says the next generation is dumber is wrong.

When you say "most literate," do you mean "most capable of reading and writing" (i.e., highest literacy rates), or do you mean "most aware of the outside world"?  (Or do you mean both, because the ability to read would suggest greater access to information?)

Plus there's the matter that changes in literacy rates vary pretty drastically between different countries (i.e., generation and location are factors in who's the "most literate" ever).  I read somewhere that literacy rates are starting to level off in parts of Europe (or maybe it was America?), so that's certainly significant.  It's quite possible that OP's generation (or the one immediately preceding) will be the last to be more literate than the prior generations.

If that's the case, then at least OP can take solace in the fact that his children will be justified in hating their generation.

>showing your powerlevel

This one time, I heard someone say "Some infinities are bigger than others," and I got really excited and started talking about transfinite numbers and nondenumerability.  I wound up taking half an hour to explain, and they just said, "Yeah, and the amount between 0 and 1 is more than between 0 and 1/2."

The moral of the story is, The Fault in Our Stars seems to misrepresent both William Shakespeare and Georg Cantor.  Also, showing mathematical proofs to strangers is time-consuming.

My whole family loves Tom Lehrer.

Your whole family has excellent taste.

Is your dad a big Tom Lehrer fan?

I HAVE met [...] Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author of 'One Hundred Years of Solitude') before he passed away.

That's awesome.  Under what circumstances did you meat him?  A book signing?

(Incidentally, has BZP gotten more lax about posting in other languages?)

¿Desde cuando hablás vos el idioma español?

How long have you been speaking the Spanish language?  (voseo because I felt like it)

And I see that this is a dumb question because you are from Colombia.  Oops.  Well, I've never seen a Spanish-language AMA before, so I've got to ask, are they called HCPs?

What's the strangest thing in your home/place of residence?

What is your elevator pitch for this blog entry?

This is why I always drive home at 2:00 A.M. in the afternoon.

Hey man, good to have you back with us.

 

~B~

Ballom!  I missed you, man; nice to see you again.  I'll be sure to check out and review whatever epic you're currently working on.

Always saying "yes" is boring.  =/

 

ALSO I AM SO HAPPY WITH MYSELF!

 

You don't even know

 

(Seriously, though, there haven't been too many new features since then.  It's basically a "like" button that allows people to anonymously approve of things without actually posting.  It works nicely for things that get viewed a lot, but have no comments.  I like it)

Fine, be that way.  All enjoying your own actions and the features of this site.  You, you... enjoyer.

It's basically Reddit upvotes with no option to downvote, and it's anonymous.

 

Also since you've returned, insert obligatory advertisement for the OTC, we need peeps down there for stories and RPGs. Mostly RPGs. =P

Huh, I don't remember there having been two Off-Topic forums (probably just bad memory though).  I'll try to venture down.

I've never understood the outrage with the Anne Frank House scene. Green was - or was at least trying to - write complex characters. While intelligent, that doesn't exactly mean that they always do what they should do.

Like I mentioned in the entry, most people get fed up over the Anne Frank House scene because they somehow think the actions of Green's characters somehow equates to his personal views, which is blatantly ridiculous. No one says that Anthony Burgess was promoting ultraviolence in A Clockwork Orange any more than they claim Eoin Colfer really believes in technologically advanced subterranean fairies. There's no logical basis to it.

 

I'm certainly not against people objecting to the scene itself - though I don't, because it's a fictional story - but to say that it somehow reflects on the morality of its author is astoundingly stupid.

I think most people have the problem with the other characters applauding the kiss.  Depiction isn't endorsement, but uncritical depiction (i.e., characters do the wrong thing, everyone celebrates it by clapping and whooping) is at the very least severely flawed.  (The classic endorsement-versus-depiction example is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, which despite being narrated by Humbert is more overtly critical of Humbert than Green is of the Anne Frank House kiss.)

Others object to the way Green draws parallels between death in genocide and death from cancer.  This parallelism seems mostly just clumsy to me, like Green didn't quite think through the difference between racism and illness.

- BioGio