I don't understand the philosophy of this story at all Veeky Forums. What must I read to make sense of it?

paradigm shift.

how the fuck is he at all comparable to franzen

i know this is bait but still

The problem is that the meanings of certain words or phrases he uses to define or describe his key ideas are not, to me, especially intuitive. For instance:

>It is no exaggeration to say that Tlön's classical culture comprises a single discipline - psychology. All other disciplines are held to be inferior to this one. I have mentioned that the men of this planet conceive the universe as a series of mental processes that unfold not in space but serially in time. Spinoza attributes to his inexhaustible deity the faculties of omnipresence and of thought; nobody in Tlön would understand the juxtaposition of the former, which is characteristic only of certain states of being, with the latter, which is a perfect synonym for the cosmos. In other words, they cannot conceive that space can exist in time. The sight of a puff of smoke on the horizon and then of a burning field and then of a half-stubbed-out cigar that produced the blaze is deemed an example of the association of ideas.

(This is not the translation I'm reading (Penguin Modern Classics), but reading this hasn't helped clarify my doubts.)

I can't imagine what he means by "mental process". What does this mean?

>... nobody in Tlön would understand the juxtaposition of [omnipresence], which is characteristic only of certain states of being, with [thought], which is a perfect synonym for the cosmos.

What does that have to do with the statement before it (mental processes unfolding serially in time)?

Thinking is a mental process. I don't understand what's confusing you.

DELET

Literature isn't for everyone.

It isn't a philosophy, it's a joke about philosophical facts being derived from language. If you had that particular ridiculous language then you would be able to manufacture certain contradictions and 'prove' impossible things. This story is not some kind of magical deep metaphysical lesson, it's a game.

Read (or at least read an overview of) A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley, the story should make a lot more sense after that.

This. Borges is just being cheeky all the time

No, it isn't. You had better leave.

I understand that, but I want to understand the philosophical facts he derives to fit his made-up planet, notwithstanding the fact that those facts have no basis in reality because they are meant to actively deny "our" reality.

Never mind all that now, 's assertion/reminder that thinking is a mental process was what I needed to make all the pieces fit together.