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Well, lads?
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>>8116980
You could fit four in the back of her! *buzzer*
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>>8116980
Literally nothing unexpected has ever happened to me as a result of being here.
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>>8116980
my dick grew about 6 inches
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Did too much interracial, which ruined it for me.
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>>8116175
Gira didn't do it
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>>8116304
What does this mean?
Do you think DFW was a good professor? The syllabus of the course looks shit.
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>>8115972
>420C Stevenson Hall
DUDE WEED LMAO
I think he tried to go for absolute basics to teach the principles of LA, which kind of makes sence.
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>thinking he put any effort into teaching when all he wanted to do was write
It's not like he taught at a great school anyway
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>marry higgins clark
dfw was the original avant-teen
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Where leaves determinism punishment?
Given that we are all the products of our genetics and our upbringing - that even our faculties for self improvement, our capacity to dedicate ourselves to live a moral life, our dedication to ethical standards are given to us, not genuinely achieved - how should we approach the question of punishment? How could anybody truly, morally deserve anything in a world where none of us are the prime mover unmoved, the uncaused cause of ourselves?
Do the answers to these questions have consequences for our justice systems and criminal law? For our personal daily lives and interactions with others?
Key concepts for those who're just getting into this:
>retributive vs. utilitarian vs. restorative justice
>(moral) desert
>compatibilism vs. hard determinism
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Smilansky has a final chapter on this in Free Will and Illusion. He basically says the de facto position of philosophy at this point is incompatibilist determinism, and then goes "so uh, what now?" His answer is basically that the reigning justice model, or the best one we have or something, isn't about fairness*. If it were, it's clearly not "fair" to give sentences to people who didn't "earn" them (in the sense of desert), because no one can ever earn anything because free agency is impossible.
* or about brute utilitarian efficacy in deterrence for that matter, because then we'd be a lot more lax about the "innocent until proven guilty" thing, and just accept the occasional missentencing as a "better safe than sorry" measure, catch probably 5000% more criminals, and deter crime much more efficiently
In my opinion, free will discussions can be split into three levels. On the top level, you have the grand cosmic questions, everything from "why do I feel free if I'm not?" to "is an unfree life meaningless? should I just kill myself?" to "how can I even 'deliberate' if deliberation implies agency somehow?!". On the bottom level, you have the naturalized/pragmatic aspects of living daily life; whether or not the philosophers resolve these issues definitively, you still have to go and prosecute some guy for stealing tomorrow, because that's your job. Even more obviously, your balls itch and you can either scratch them or not. So you'd better either slap down some William James-tier "FUCK YOU, I'M FREE IF I WANNA BE"/"Desert is meaningful because it feels like it is" axioms, or just stop moving until your protons decay.
The middle level is theoretically important because it's where the two meet. This is where Smilansky tries to come in, literally talking about what would happen if everyone on earth suddenly grokked the current philosophical consensus of incompatibilism seeming like the most parsimonious and least anthropocentric or religious solution. But in practice, he just vibrates between the top and bottom levels over and over again, and pretends the blur over the middle section is actually inhabiting it. That's what pretty much every treatment of the middle level is. There's just no real praxis. I guess some of the pomo guys try to force us to radically "destabilise" and live forever in the "discourse" of the milieu, but then they also go and fuck underage French girls so.
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>>8115831
>He basically says the de facto position of philosophy at this point is incompatibilist determinism
Well that's empirically wrong - about 70% of philosophers are deterministic compatibilists, and about 10% libertarians. Why would he say such a thing?
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>>8115559
>Where leaves determinism punishment?
noice grmr
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What's your opinion on better than food book reviews?
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I like a lot of the books he does but I get nothing out of his videos.
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I've watched every single one of his videos multiple times. He single handedly got me into reading, thanks to my friend from steam linking me to his youtube channel. I've bought a ton of the books he's reviewed.
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>>8115167
Pretentiousness personified. Not a surprise since he majored in film.
Hey /lit/
So my grandmother recently died and left us a cabin in her will which is located just outside of Haugesund in Norway. My parents and sibling have no use for it so I've decided to live there for the next year to focus on my writing.
Has anybody here dong something similar?
What tips do you have?
Pic related: it looks similar to this and overlooks the water
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>>8113600
Set up a daily regimen of fitness and chores
Get a local job to break up your day, like chopping wood or painting fences.
Participate in local activities
That way you are participating in life and ideas will come to you, don't go full cocoon mode.
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>>8113600also sorry for grandmum
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>>8113606
I am going to go cocoon mode for the first few months at least, having worked full-time for years now without a break. Also for fitness yes I will continue to jog and also swim.
Anonymous
Why I am not a Christian 2016-06-02 10:34:48 Post No.8113362
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Why I am not a Christian 2016-06-02 10:34:48 Post No.8113362
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Has anyone managed to rebut Bertrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian?"
Here are some excerpts
>There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause.
> If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws which God issues he had a reason for giving those laws rather than others -- the reason, of course, being to create the best universe, although you would never think it to look at it -- if there were a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by introducing God as an intermediary.
>Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan or the Fascists?
>There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching
>There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but He chose to send them into the pigs.
> That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which, at the present moment, the church, by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering. And of course, as we know, it is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."
>The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings.
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Wittgenstein did when he called all of Russell's non mathematical writings utter garbage which no one should ever read.
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>>8113372
How exactly is that a rebuttal?
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Well, that's wrong Russell. There is such a thing as avoiding the occasion of sin. In other words, not tempting the Lord. Secondly, that confessor would be putting temptation before the nun, however free of evil intent he'd be. Should I read the rest of OP's post? With such a worthless beginning, no.
Anonymous
Countries by Literary Merit 2016-06-02 04:31:45 Post No.8112525
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Countries by Literary Merit 2016-06-02 04:31:45 Post No.8112525
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Countries by Literary Merit
Anonymous
2016-06-02 04:31:45
Post No. 8112525
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Attempt (and subsequently fail) to disprove this meme ranking
Russia
Greece (Classical)
///POWER GAP///
England
France
Ireland/Germany
America
Italy
Spain
///POWER GAP///
Irrelevant
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English for me, thanks
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>>8112525
France = Russia > America = England > Germany > Ireland = Italy > Spain > Everybody Else
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>>8112549
Spain = Argentina
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>"He ate the last of the eggs and wiped the plate with the tortilla and ate the tortilla and drank the last of the coffee and wiped his mouth and looked up and thanked her."
How can he keep getting away with shit like this?
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I'd love to see the quality of the writing in the novels you've published. Oh wait...
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>>8111105
>literally choosing a line that has "tortilla" in it.
Try harder anon.
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>>8111139
Most self-respecting writers wouldn't publish literal shit. The problem is that John Green isn't a self-respecting """""""author"""""""".
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So /lit/, what pulled you out of your first existential crisis?
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>>8106382
religious existentialism
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>>8106382
other crises
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>>8106382
Ignoring it and then losing interest.
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>graduated on May the 20th
>been working menial jobs since while living at home
>remember sitting at home watching the French Open final when Wawrinka beat Djokovic
>graduated on May 20th, 2015
Welp, I'm officially a loser.
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>>8122789
As in college or high school?
Why aren't you applying to better jobs?
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>>8122793
We both know his degree is unemployable.
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>>8122789
The whole "college is for the enrichment of the soul and intellect" meme sure hits hard when you have to stare at the void that is life and your first student loan bill.
t. b.a. history with honors, 2005
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Hi /lit/ I'm looking for a book that has similair atmosphere to the movie wickerman or antichrist, could you help me out?
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bumperinho
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for something similar to the Wicker Man, try some older English horror writers:
Arthur Machen
M.R. James
Algernon Blackwood
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The Magus
Hello /lit/. I am looking for books with the following qualities. I'd be chuffed if you'd oblige me with some suggestions.
- Focused on action; feelings and emotions rather than thought and reason; the present moment rather than contemplations of future or past
- Eloquent and stylistically sophisticated, but raw and emotional
- Experimental, audacious, unconventional
The more it fits with these descriptions, the better.
Thanks in advance! :)
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i think you need to start with the greeks
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>>8122538
Is Homer pretty close to what I'm talking about? His works do sound promising on that front.
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>>8122542
yeah man do it
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Which authors hit "rock bottom" /lit/, particularly before they had anything published?
I can think of:
Houellebecq
>wife divorced him, then was unemployed and in and out of mental institutions
Walser
>poor and then institutionalized
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>>8122500
wilde
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Which authors languished in unfulfilled mediocrity forever?
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Donald Ray Pollock did manual labor until he turned 50, then he pulled himself together and started studying english at university and writing short stories
Hey /lit/ I wanna start getting into Japanese lit what are the best books to get into it.
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that crazy bodybuilder. he committed sudoku. don't remember name.
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>>8122483
Yukio Mishima. Seems like an interesting guy but I haven't started reading his books yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishima
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start with the greeks