Gesturing Toward Reality: David Foster Wallace and Philosophy

Title Page\nCopyright Page\nContents\nNotes on Contributors\nAcknowledgements\nLove, and What You Will, Do: An Introduction\nChapter 1 How We Ought To Do Things with Words1\n	The players, the stage\n	Methodological Descriptivism\n	Philosophical Descriptivism\n	Stop and think about how you’re saying what you’re saying\nChapter 2 The Subsurface Unity of All Things, or David Foster Wallace’s Free Will1\n	I\n	II\n	III\nChapter 3 A Less “Bullshitty” Way To Live: The Pragmatic Spirituality of David Foster Wallace\n	Stage setting: Two parables one point\n	The epistemic effects of a life curved inward\n	Overcoming epistemic obstacles: Or, how to care about the stranger\n	Seeing and the sacred\n	The fish prequel\nChapter 4 This Is Water and Religious Self-Deception\n	Of water and Eskimos\n	Self-deception\n	Problematic psychological processes\n	Religious self-deception\n	What should we do?\n	Conclusion\nChapter 5 Inside David Foster Wallace’s Head: Attention, Loneliness, Suicide, and the Other Side of Boredom\nChapter 6 The Lobster Considered\n	Moral status explained\n	A little argument\n	Animals and the moral landscape\n	A cautionary note\n	Sentience: Pain and suffering17\n	What exactly is pain?25\n	The mechanics of pain\n	Objections\n	Conclusion\nChapter 7 The Terrible Master: David Foster Wallace and the Suffering of Consciousness (with guest Arthur Schopenhauer)\n	The guest\n	The will\nChapter 8 Philosophy, Self-Help, and the Death of David Wallace1\n	“A troubled little soldier”\n	Lifeline\nChapter 9 Untrendy Problems: The Pale King’s Philosophical Inspirations\nChapter 10 The Formative Years: David Foster Wallace’s Philosophical Influences and The Broom of the System\n	The family background\n	The American Way\n	Like father like son\nChapter 11 Beyond Philosophy: David Foster Wallace on Literature, Wittgenstein, and the Dangers of Theorizing*\n	On Wallace and narrative philosophy\n	On Lobsters, Omelas, and battling boredom\n	On Wittgenstein and the danger of theorizing\n	On preaching, choosing, and knowing one’s way about language\nChapter 12 Good Faith and Sincerity: Sartrean Virtues of Self-Becoming in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest1\n	Introduction\n	Sincerity: A Sartrean, existentialist ideal\n	Good faith and sincerity in Infinite Jest\n	Conclusion\nChapter 13 Theories of Everything and More: Infinity is Not the End\n	Metaphysics is dead. Long live metaphysics!\n	Doomsday argument: The world doesn’t exist\n	Objective phenomenology: Wallace’s moral meta-fiction\n	Wallace’s big TOE\n	Good and bad infinity: Morning Boys! How’s the world?\nChapter 14 Does Language Fail Us? Wallace’s Struggle with Solipsism\n	A solipsism of sorts\n	Missing the Wittgensteinian point\n	Wallace’s challenge to solipsism\n	Wallace, solipsism, and “Good Old Neon”\n	Wallace’s skepticism about moral language\n	True empathy in Wallace’s “Good Old Neon”\nIndex