/lit/ - Literature

Deontological "ethics" BTFO

What books which you've read do you feel contain the most universal, mind expanding thoughts, which shape how you view the world? For me it would have to be Hume, and I would imagine philosophy is the best discipline for this sort of thing.

I did not start reading seriously until I was 21, and admittedly I remain a very slow and ponderous reader.

Harold Bloom says that one should read to enrich ones inner life to paraphrase his much more eloquent explanation. To me the closest comparable phenomena is music, which at points seems to assemble in such a beautiful way that you feel the music has said something in the way the different combinations of notes create feelings, and you wonder at how a sound could reflect one's feelings, and how the different combinations create different feelings as though it were the code of the soul.

Perhaps books in a similar way places one in a position where the thoughts of another are reflected in one's mind, through the bone dead lines which mark the meaning of texts. I believe very strongly that books are helpful to those who are dispossessed of a feeling that the world around you is just boring and facile. It's easy to get sucked into such a cynicism and self confidence that you become like one who feels they have everything figured out. Assuredness of oneself is actually the mark of one who does not think deeply, I believe, because I find the more I read the more I feel my own limitations, and my own lack of knowledge comes to light relative to the broad concepts and thought patterns which books contain.

And that to me is the true reason to read. The feeling of the sublime which a book can show you; to put a crack in ones jaded disillusionment with feeling so self-assured. The illusion of self-assuredness which came from an illusion that one simply understands and knows, and the illusion that beyond oneself is just a sea of stupidity. I believe that to read well, and to read great literature which dispossesses one of the false belief of a sort of divine wisdom (known as the Dunning Kruger effect), is a feeling which can both dismount you and throw cracks between every bit of solid inference you've made, as well as ground you in newer, more unshakeable truths.

There are, of course, exceptions. Some books only seek to reinforce beliefs, instead of introducing new facts which humble you. And it is not inconceivable that any amount of reading can dislodge one from the idea that they know more than they do. I see it a lot, people who purportedly read a lot and still act like they know everything, when what they say is questionable. But I digress.

(1/2)

Hi, I’m from /sci/ and I just wanted to say FUCK this old dumbass. Maybe if he spent more time studying math and not fingering his asshole he would be smart. Lol. Of course the past is like the present dumbass.

Lmao, imagine thinking that we shouldn’t try to be as reasonable and logical as possible.

>>11530846
https://physicsworld.com/a/quantum-mechanics-trumps-nonlocal-causality/
>Because quantum properties have inherent randomness, these correlations are typically revealed in averages of many measurements.
Sounds familiar, right? And if you want something longer https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.07201

Principles of deductive inference are justified by their conformity with accepted deductive practice. Their validity depends upon accordance with the particular deductive inferences we actually make and sanction. If a rule yields inacceptable inferences, we drop it as invalid. Justification of general rules thus derives from judgments rejecting or accepting particular deductive inferences.
This looks flagrantly circular. I have said that deductive inferences are justified by their conformity to valid general rules, and that general rules are justified by their conformity to valid inferences. But this circle is a virtuous one. The point is that rules and particular inferences alike are justified by being brought into agreement with each other. A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend. The process of justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only justification needed for either.
All this applies equally well to induction. An inductive inference, too, is justified by conformity to general rules, and a general rule by conformity to accepted inductive inferences. Predictions are justified if they conform to valid canons of induction; and the canons are valid if they accurately codify accepted inductive practice.
A result of such analysis is that we can stop plaguing ourselves with certain spurious questions about induction. We no longer demand an explanation for guarantees that we do not have, or seek keys to knowledge that we cannot obtain. It dawns upon us that the traditional smug insistence upon a hard-and-fast line between justifying induction and describing ordinary inductive practice distorts the problem. And we owe belated apologies to Hume. For in dealing with the question how normally accepted inductive judgments are made, he was in fact dealing with the question of inductive validity.
The validity of a prediction consisted for him in its arising from habit, and thus in its exemplifying some past regularity. His answer was incomplete and perhaps not entirely correct; but it was not beside the point. The problem of induction is not a problem of demonstration but a problem of defining the difference between valid and invalid predictions.

>>11407685
>>11407716
I'll give a simple example. You are sitting at a table. On the table is a button and a light bulb. Each time you press the button, the light bulb blinks on then off. You press the button a billion times, and each time the bulb blinks on then off. Even considering that the same phenomenon apparently repeated a billion times, you still cannot be definitively sure that the bulb will blink on again the next time you press that button.

The argument is not that there is no causal link between the two phenomenon, but understanding the absolute nature of that causal link is impossible considering how we experience phenomena (with a finite, limited perspective). There may be an infinite amount of unseen variables behind a phenomenon we supposedly understand. Assuming causal links is as far as one could get from any sort of truth claim, as these assumptions are just habits of association; entirely meaningless fabrications not attached to any empirical knowledge (in the way that you cannot experience something before it apparently happens).

>>11037211
Feels.

>>11015948
Hume revealed in a few decades what all of indian philosophy was trying to get at for 3000 years

Is the life dedicated to art or inquiry, e.g. that of philosophy, science, literature, incompatible with the married life? Philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, and Neetchee seem to believe that they are incompatible. There are also a significant number of unmarried philosophers, scientists, artists, etc. in history. What are your thoughts on this, /lit/?

I'm hopelessly in love and I need to know whether or not this sentiment is wrong. I need books for this feel my friends.

I don't believe in causality

>>10502354
>The History of England, 6 Vols
not sure where you're getting that. I read all six

>>10460586
this doesn't answer your question but Edmund burke was a whig. I never realized David Hume was a whig until I read your thread and started reading edumund burkes wiki.

In The History of England (1754–1761), Hume challenged Whig views of the past and the Whig historians in turn attacked Hume; but they could not dent his history. In the early 19th century, some Whig historians came to incorporate Hume's views, dominant for the previous fifty years. These historians were members of the New Whigs around Charles James Fox (1749–1806) and Lord Holland (1773–1840) in opposition until 1830 and so "needed a new historical philosophy".[16] Fox himself intended to write a history of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but only managed the first year of James II's reign. A fragment was published in 1808. James Mackintosh then sought to write a Whig history of the Glorious Revolution, published in 1834 as the History of the Revolution in England in 1688. William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769) and Henry Hallam's Constitutional History of England (1827) reveal many Whiggish traits. According to Arthur Marwick, Hallam was the first Whig historian

bump

>>10452285
finishing history of England (hume)

>>10448191
Saw someone with a shaved head wearing a David Hume cap today. Shit was fire.

>that one time Hume posed for a painting with a pair of panties on his head

>>10366063
youre* real fucking stupid

David Hume

Should i read treatise on human nature, or enquiry about human understanding?

Why was he so fat?

>>10183259
>Nah he really didn't say much desu, it's all pretty simplistic analysis with a bunch of complex semantics to make it seem intellectual.
This sounds less like Wittgenstein and more like Hume

*blocks your morality*

>This distinguished philosopher was one day passing along a narrow footpath which formerly winded through a boggy piece of ground at the back of Edinburgh Castle, when he had the misfortune to tumble in, and stick fast in the mud. Observing a woman approaching, he civilly requested her to lend him a helping hand out of his disagreeable situation; but she, casting one hurried glance at his abbreviated figure, passed on, without regarding his request. He then shouted lustily after her; and she was at last prevailed upon by his cries to approach. “Are na ye Hume the Deist?” inquired she, in a tone which implied that an answer in the affirmative would decide her against lending him her assistance. “Well, well,” said Mr Hume, “no matter: you know, good woman, Christian charity commands you to do good, even to your enemies.” “Christian charity here, Christian charity there,” replied the woman, “I’ll do naething for ye till ye turn a Christian yoursell: ye maun first repeat baith the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, or faith I’ll let ye groffle there as I faund ye.” The sceptic was actually obliged to accede to the woman’s terms, ere she would give him her help. He himself used to tell the story with great relish.

Glimpses of David Hume: https://econjwatch.org/file_download/1032/HumeSept2017.pdf?mimetype=pdf