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Where does instinct stop and high level cognition and self awareness begin? What makes deliberate thought inherently different from instinct?
>books and journals for these questions
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>>7703918
Awareness of our own existence and self-reflection is something necessary, but not sufficient I think to move from instinct toward self-awareness.
Humans are one of the few species that are able to recognize themselves in a mirror
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_stage
and sometimes they don't. I've met some truly mentally disabled kills that are unable to recognize themselves in mirrors.
I think Hegel gives in the Phenomenology (or was it in the Philosophy of Right?) the movements from consciousness to self-consciousness. If we consider a Hegelian answer, deliberate thought is different from instinct in the fact that instinct moves the subject to satisfy a specific desire because of the object of desire while for the self-conscious subject the desire itself in a context with others is the object of desire, this is, it is deliberate as long as I take into account, even in the slightest form, my relation with others in the consummation of my desire (they will think good or bad of me, it leaves me in an empowered position or subjugated to them, etc). Instinctive thought dies within the object, and has no immediate relation with other people.
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>But the medical gentleman seems to have said that any number of the serious characters were mad. Macbeth was mad; Hamlet was mad; Ophelia was congenitally mad; and so on. If Hamlet was really mad, there does not seem much point in his pretending to be mad. If Ophelia was always mad, there does not seem much point in her going mad. But anyhow, I think a saner criticism will always maintain that Hamlet was sane. He must be sane even in order to be sad; for when we get into a world of complete unreality, even tragedy is unreal. No lunatic ever had so good a sense of humour as Hamlet. [...] The whole point of Hamlet is that he is really saner than anybody else in the play; though I admit that being sane is not identical with what some call being sensible. Being outside the world, he sees all round it; where everybody else sees his own side of the world, his own worldly ambition, or hatred or love. But, after all, Hamlet pretended to be mad in order to deceive fools. We cannot complain if he has succeeded.
>But, whatever we may say about Hamlet, we must not say this about Macbeth. Hamlet was only a mild sort of murderer; a more or less accidental and parenthetical murderer; an amateur. But Macbeth was a good, solid, serious, self-respecting murderer; and we must not have any nonsense about him. For the play of Macbeth is, in the supreme and special sense, the Christian Tragedy; to be set against the Pagan Tragedy of Oedipus. It is the whole point about Oedipus that he does not know what he is doing. And it is the whole point about Macbeth that he does know what he is doing. It is not a tragedy of Fate but a tragedy of Freewill. He is tempted of a devil, but he is not driven by a destiny.
What do you think?
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>>7703917
Is that Orson Wells?
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>>7704929
The Orson Welles Macbeth is a must watch.
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>>7704945
I've heard people shit on it a lot.
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What is the worst word in the English language and why is it "actually"?
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well, no, actually, it's not...
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>>7703890
The worst word is actually metrosexual.
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>>7703890
It's actually, "really".
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https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/533688-william-gass-s-fifty-literary-pillars
Is he patrician?
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>>7703864
stop smaipping this BITCH!!!!!!
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>>7703875
>smaipping
I-I don't understand.
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what a fat ugly bitch
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Are there any unironic anti-natalists on /lit/ over the age of 21?
Who else here has decided not to "have kids"?
What do you think of Zappfe's essay on the matter?
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As if we had a choice
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>>7703860
I'm in my 30's and married and have no kids. I had a vasectomy when I was 24 though.
I'm not anti-natalist though as I don't think anybody should have kids though I do think it's largely a bad idea for those individuals.
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>>7704698
OK, looking it up I probably am but I don't believe in burdening other people with it.
Just finished this. It wasn't bad, but "the greatest sci-fi epic ever?" Really? It read like a YA novel in a lot of parts.
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It's overrated by sci-fi nerds because you're supposed to be awed by the amazing detailed world-buildings but normal readers don't give a shit about that and see it as a generic buy becomes hero fantasy novel.
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very few hardcore sci fi readers (emphasis readers - not generic "i like all things sci/fi fantasy aka i watch game of thrones) would consider dune the end all be all sci fi epic. it ranks highly for many people, and sure some consider it a favorite, but "the greatest sci-fi epic ever" is a title that gets slapped on every single book cover possible by publishers
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>>7703800
It was written in 1965 back then almost none good sci fi existed
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Hi /lit/ thought on George Orwell?
just got done reading The Clergyman's Daughter
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>>7703799
His essays are miles better than his novels, and it's a shame that schools force kids to read 1984 instead.
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>>7703839
1984 is his master work. Stop being a contrarian.
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>>7704472
Indeed.
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Do you think your environment and tools you use makes the writing quality better? Surely it can nurture the mind more. When you sit at your plastic keyboard without even having a cabinet of formadelhyde specimens behind you you can't expect to write manly words.
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Why are "manly" words "better"? If I'm sat at my plastic keyboard with nothing behind me then I'm a step closer to writing things that everyone who does the same will empathise with.
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>>7703807
Writers don't write for writers
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>>7703793
Definitely. I can't write or draw/paint well in my apartment when it's cluttered or trashed.
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Me and a friend are planning to write a satire based on a gay, maybe pedophile, communist, fedora, prep, fat friend of us. The satire will take the form of a greek comedy, so we will fulfill our heads with thegreeks.pdf for the next 30 days.
How autist/10 is this?
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>>7703772
>me and a friend
get the fuck outta /lit/ and study grammar, then write satires.
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>>7703777
Relax m8, it won't be written in english
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>>7703780
Okay.
In that case: 4/10 autism points, becauseat least you decided to make it greek instead of simple contemporary crap
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Is their a more patrician writing system?
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>>7703749
Yeah, the use of correct grammar.
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Yes
26 standard roman characters = billions of possible combinations; a huge number of actual words
n stupid heiroglyph things = n possible words at most
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>>7703782
n hieroglyphs
+ x phonetic and semi-phonetic characters with multiple arrangements on the whole letter
that glyph above has three parts which make up the entire word, the only character which is itself an entire word is the hand with a pen on the top, the leftmost and bottom most parts are syllables
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What are some entry-level /lit/ books from the period between the Greeks and the 19th century? This isn't covered much in the charts.
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That's because the chart is shit.
Try these:
The Saga of the Volsungs
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Golden Ass - Apuleius
But don't worry too much about difficulty, sometimes it's good to jump into a "hard" book. Even if you don't understand it all, you can always reread.
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read the sticky
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>>7703727
Lolita is shit don't listen to /lit/
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What does /lit/ think about these books? Should I buy them all or are they shitty as fuck?
Dubliners
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
Finnegans Wake
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>or are they shitty as fuck
Why would you phrase this so awkwardly
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shitty as fuck
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>shitty as fuck
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So the /lit/ archive isn't coming back, is it?
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someone emailed warosu, said it'd be back end of feb or march iirc.
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>>7703682
we've got our top men on it
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what's your opinion about this book. what are the meanings
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>>7703636
A neurotic woman assuming everyone is as neurotic as her, no concept of plot, and SJWs sucking her dick= anything by Virginia Woolf
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Someone had blundered.
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>>7703639
Poor Pleb.
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Why is French so overrated? Why do so many people call it "a beautiful language"? I hate it; it just sounds like you are about to throw up every 2 seconds. Anyone else feel me?
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No. Read your post again and realize how shitty it sounds compared to french.
Pauvre type.
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Nah, you're a tard
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>>7703569
Ignore these fucks OP, its the vilest tongue I regularly hear.