Postmodern Philosophy : what is it good for?
Introduction : I'm starting with a post from a thread, on the topic below, that had already run it's course. But I have only recently had the opportunity to dialogue with posters who seem to be arguing from a Postmodern worldview. PM never had much influence in my part of the world, so I had to do some quick Google research in order to begin to understand what the "PM posters" were talking about --- since they carefully eschewed defining terms.
Personally, I have had no formal training in philosophy, so I don't fall into any of the usual sub-categories, except possibly the Pragmatists. And that is mostly because of my interest in Science, not because I am a disciple of Pierce. I assume that the PM critique of Modernism was justified, but I fail to see any positive basis for a 21st century worldview.
So, in this thread I'm trying understand the appeal of the blatantly antiscience, and vaguely anti-reason, Postmodern philosophy. Here's a quote, referring to Focault, from a book surveying the varieties of philosophical thinking : "the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control." IOW, Science is Politics???
From the other thread : "What's the use of discussing philosophy without definitions?"
I have also been puzzled by some poster's aversion to defining terms. But I gradually came to suspect that it's due to a recent (20th century) split in the philosophical community that has been labelled as Analytic vs Literary, or Modern vs Postmodern. It may also be viewed as Reductive vs Holistic. I try to integrate analytical objective methods with holistic subjective intuition in my own personal worldview. But to see them as implacable enemies seems to require a desperate Win-Lose Good vs Evil attitude toward the world.
Postmodernism was just beginning to become a "thing" in my part of the world as I graduated from college. At the time, and in my field of Architecture, I found the PM approach incomprehensible. So I went out into the real world, and forgot it as a passing fad. Until, 40 years later, I began to see PM terminology and attitudes popping-up on this forum. Therefore, I'm assuming that some posters were influenced in college by the holistic Literary doctrines of PM. Am I wrong in attributing the ambiguity of some forum "arguments" to Postmodern influences?
In the last few weeks, I've made an attempt to understand where these PM posters are coming from. But they don't seem to be able to explain their avoidance of defining terms, except to imply that to "carve reality at its joints" is an arrogant or hubristic assumption that the continuum of reality can be broken down into reductive parts by those who are embedded in the system. As I noted, if that is so, then Science is impossible and Philosophy is fictional. Instead, the PM attitude seems to be more Political, in the sense that "truth" is whatever the powers-that-be say it is. Hence, PM philosophers seem to be trying to tear-down (deconstruct) the bastions of Modernist oppression, including Science and Capitalism.
After some extended dialogues with what I'm calling "PM posters", I got the feeling of ennui that I associate with the play Waiting For Godot. It's a sense of Nihilism, meaninglessness and pointlessness of life. That may not be the way they feel, but it's my frustrated impression of a vague undefined disorganized hopeless worldview. Yesterday, I watched a Netflix movie, Everything Beautiful is Far Away, that gave me the same Godot feeling. There was no plot to speak of, just aimless people wandering in the desert for no apparent reason, except they didn't like to live in the polyglot multicultural confusion of the city. What little dialogue that passed between them was focused on pragmatic issues like food & water, or a hypothetical (mythical) lake of water in the desert as a possible destination.
Is this ambiguous worldview just a minority trend in philosophy, or is it the wave of the future? Am I a dinosaur who believes in a rational world where motley people can communicate and coexist? Should I try to read Wittgenstein and Foucault? Or is it too late for me? :worry:
Personally, I have had no formal training in philosophy, so I don't fall into any of the usual sub-categories, except possibly the Pragmatists. And that is mostly because of my interest in Science, not because I am a disciple of Pierce. I assume that the PM critique of Modernism was justified, but I fail to see any positive basis for a 21st century worldview.
So, in this thread I'm trying understand the appeal of the blatantly antiscience, and vaguely anti-reason, Postmodern philosophy. Here's a quote, referring to Focault, from a book surveying the varieties of philosophical thinking : "the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control." IOW, Science is Politics???
From the other thread : "What's the use of discussing philosophy without definitions?"
I have also been puzzled by some poster's aversion to defining terms. But I gradually came to suspect that it's due to a recent (20th century) split in the philosophical community that has been labelled as Analytic vs Literary, or Modern vs Postmodern. It may also be viewed as Reductive vs Holistic. I try to integrate analytical objective methods with holistic subjective intuition in my own personal worldview. But to see them as implacable enemies seems to require a desperate Win-Lose Good vs Evil attitude toward the world.
Postmodernism was just beginning to become a "thing" in my part of the world as I graduated from college. At the time, and in my field of Architecture, I found the PM approach incomprehensible. So I went out into the real world, and forgot it as a passing fad. Until, 40 years later, I began to see PM terminology and attitudes popping-up on this forum. Therefore, I'm assuming that some posters were influenced in college by the holistic Literary doctrines of PM. Am I wrong in attributing the ambiguity of some forum "arguments" to Postmodern influences?
In the last few weeks, I've made an attempt to understand where these PM posters are coming from. But they don't seem to be able to explain their avoidance of defining terms, except to imply that to "carve reality at its joints" is an arrogant or hubristic assumption that the continuum of reality can be broken down into reductive parts by those who are embedded in the system. As I noted, if that is so, then Science is impossible and Philosophy is fictional. Instead, the PM attitude seems to be more Political, in the sense that "truth" is whatever the powers-that-be say it is. Hence, PM philosophers seem to be trying to tear-down (deconstruct) the bastions of Modernist oppression, including Science and Capitalism.
After some extended dialogues with what I'm calling "PM posters", I got the feeling of ennui that I associate with the play Waiting For Godot. It's a sense of Nihilism, meaninglessness and pointlessness of life. That may not be the way they feel, but it's my frustrated impression of a vague undefined disorganized hopeless worldview. Yesterday, I watched a Netflix movie, Everything Beautiful is Far Away, that gave me the same Godot feeling. There was no plot to speak of, just aimless people wandering in the desert for no apparent reason, except they didn't like to live in the polyglot multicultural confusion of the city. What little dialogue that passed between them was focused on pragmatic issues like food & water, or a hypothetical (mythical) lake of water in the desert as a possible destination.
Is this ambiguous worldview just a minority trend in philosophy, or is it the wave of the future? Am I a dinosaur who believes in a rational world where motley people can communicate and coexist? Should I try to read Wittgenstein and Foucault? Or is it too late for me? :worry:
Comments (301)
Post-Modernism is rejecting reason and rational thinking. Post-modernists typically reject post-modernist thinking when it benefits them and accept it when it benefits them. An example of this is an air traffic controller at an airport has to reject post-modernism. The philosopher on sites like this can get away with anything they want and speak all the non-sense they want.
The funny thing is religionists are very often the ones who ones who reject post-modernism.
The absolute truth may be very hard to get sometimes but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
So the ancient decrepit view of postmodernism is that it basically says that philosophy can never escape the text, and that the world of definitions is still a text, but a particularly vacuous, dull and above all circular text, called "a dictionary".
I disagree. I think one can act out one's philosophy.
My 2 bits - insofar as Modern philosophy (Modo) proposes° solutions to the 'criterion' & 'demarcation' problems which, on pain of vicious circularity, such proposals° are necessarily noncognitive, Postmodern philosophy (p0m0) reduces (1) nonphilosophical cognitivity (truth-values) to philosophical noncognitivity (meaning-uses) and then (2) noncognitivity as such to mere narrative, or textual, form (i.e. institutional norms aka "power") - without warrant, or noncognitively. :gasp: :shade:
For decades I've asked "Why? To what end?" As if Modo isn't also inherently pyrrhonian (re: categorical dis/beliefs), critical° (re: antinomies, meta-nonsense) & fallibilist (re: truth-claims). Like nihilism (though not even a specimen of that dis-ease), p0m0 amounts to a relativism so radical it refutes itself, which many adherents (i.e. contemporary sophists & cliteratti) seem to celebrate as a feature (i.e. post-rational(?), post-logo/phallo-centric(???)) rather than as a bug (e.g. vicious circularity, etc).
:mask:
So long as you don't tell anyone about it :rofl: Although it's interesting to wonder how well we could even put together one's own philosophy without language.
Postmodernism interests me, in part because of its scepticism and relativism, in part because of its contribution to literature and architecture, but also because it's odd that something that has so many elements that have entered a mainstream that also roundly denounces it, which is a measure of just how shit the shit parts were.
I think pomo tends to get delineated in philosophy to the science wars and religious opportunism, with maybe a sneering nod toward Derrida. I see it as part of a broader change in thinking starting with Kant, going through Darwin, through relativity and quantum mechanics, through the phenomonologists and existentialists, through Popper, Wittgenstein and Derrida, to a healthy scepticism or even antagonism toward nationalism, moral objectivity, populism, anthropocentrism, rationalism, religion, and political ideology.
I think, similar to the existentialists, the big problem with postmodernists was that, once they'd established a scepticism toward grand narratives, they promptly constructed a grand narrative around it. Another similarity with existentialism was that, even if you accepted it, there's not much else you can do with it.
And what people did do with it was bad. Scepticism got replaced by selective scepticism, grand narratives rearing their heads on the basis that science, the figurehead system of knowledge of modernism, could provide no more insight than anything else. The humanities queued to tear it down, leaving a distrust that hasn't really shifted. Feminism found systems of power even in office air conditioning.
Truth became up for grabs, alternative facts entered the right-wing political mainstream, and now we're post-truth altogether, with nationalism, moral objectivity, and populism getting by on "What's truth anyway?" Which is a shame, because the whole point of pomo was to call bullshit out.
Last night I saw a YouTube video by philosopher Stephen Hicks, who seems to specialize in analyzing PM from a scientific and analytic perspective. He connects it with far left politics (including Socialism). Which may explain why I don't hear much about it, here in the far right deep South. Here's a quote from Amazon books :
Explaining Postmodernism : philosopher Stephen Hicks provides a provocative account of why postmodernism has been the most vigorous intellectual movement of the late 20th century. Why do skeptical and relativistic arguments have such power in the contemporary intellectual world? Why do they have that power in the humanities but not in the sciences? Why has a significant portion of the political Left - the same Left that traditionally promoted reason, science, equality for all, and optimism - now switched to themes of anti-reason, anti-science, double standards, and cynicism? Explaining Postmodernism is intellectual history with a polemical twist, providing fresh insights into the debates underlying the furor over political correctness, multiculturalism, and the future of liberal democracy.
https://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Postmodernism-Skepticism-Socialism-Rousseau/dp/0983258406
if you wrote a book like that, no one would buy the book. For someone to interpret that they would have had to have sat for 15 minutes looking up each term. I'm sure you'll have some explanation for why i'm the dumb one but go ahead.
You essentially wrote your answer like it was math proof or like the user was reading object oriented code like a Java program.
Who else can't read this without adding an emphatic shout of "Absolutely nothin'"?
Good Lord!
Where did you find that PoMo review written in PM doublespeak? :razz:
Doublespeak : deliberately euphemistic, ambiguous, or obscure language.
Term from the book 1984
Waiting for Godot was presented by the Lockdown Theatre Company last night; it was four in the morning here, a somehow apt time. A dreadful play, one I find hard to avoid.
But again, who are the post moderns of whom you speak? I hadn't noticed any since the departure of @Landru Guide Us.
I think postmodernism is poorly defined in general, but the closest thing that fits the label is exactly this kind if “reverse scientism”, reducing talk of descriptive truths to attempted power grabs. I consider it, along with regular scientism, a kind of (for lack of a better word) “cynicism”, that inevitably leads to nihilism, which as you say if self-refuting.
I write on that topic:
The other kind of reductionism that I consider tantamount to cynicism is constructivism, which claims that all assertions of supposed facts are in actuality just social constructs, ways of thinking about things put forth merely in an attempt to shape the behavior of other people to some end, in effect reducing all purportedly factual claims to normative ones. That is to say, in claiming that all of reality is merely a social construct, such constructivism reframes every apparent attempt to describe reality as actually an attempt to change how people behave, which is the function of normative claims. On such a view, no apparent assertion of fact is value-neutral: in asserting that something or another is real or factual, you are always advancing some agenda or another, and the morality of one agenda or another can thus serve as reason to accept or reject the reality of claims that would further or hinder them. This is simply the flip side of the same conflation of "is" and "ought" committed by scientism: where scientism pretends that a prescriptive claim can be supported by a descriptive claim, constructivism pretends that all descriptive claims have prescriptive implications. Constructivism responds to attempts to treat factual questions as completely separate from normative questions (as they are) by demanding absolute proof from the ground up that anything at all is objectively factual, or real, and not just a normative claim in disguise or else baseless mere opinion. So it ends up falling to justificationism about factual questions, while failing to acknowledge that normative questions are equally vulnerable to that line of attack. Thus such constructivism is tantamount to cynicism with regards to factual questions, inevitably leading to metaphysical nihilism. (This is remarkably similar to the concept termed "bullshit" by Harry Frankfurt, which he defines as a kind of dishonest speech that is worse than lying, in that while a liar cares about what is or isn't true and aims to convince people that falsehoods are true or vice versa, a bullshitter doesn't care at all what is or isn't true, and instead cares only about what people can be made to do by making a superficially descriptive claim that was never really meant to describe anything).
But in rejecting constructivism, I am not at all rejecting the employment of social constructs in the description of social behavior. I am merely against the claim that all of reality is merely a social construct, and thus that there there can be no mere attempts (however fallible) at description of an objective reality that are not implicitly pushing some prescriptive agenda. Social constructs are actually defined in a sense by their unreality: to say, for example, that money is a social construct, is to say that there is nothing intrinsic about gold, or seashells, or any other token of currency, that makes it really money, that could be found in a thorough description of the gold or shells or whatever themselves. Nothing is really money in any objective sense; things are only subjectively accepted as money by some people, and to say that something is money (to some people) is really to say something about the people (namely, that they will accept the thing in trade), not about the thing itself, but phrased in such a way as to project what the people think about the thing onto the thing itself. That is undoubtedly an indispensable concept for describing many social behaviors, but to say that all of reality is merely socially constructed is consequently to deny that there is anything really real about reality, or at least to refuse to even attempt to talk about it, or to believe that others are genuinely doing so, insisting instead that all that can be discussed is the things that people think about it.
Although I don't speak the language of DoubleSpeak, I still think there must be some kernel of insight or wisdom that appeals to liberal-minded academics. I can see why it might appeal to marginalized people of oppressed sexes and races. But I don't understand why it has to be expressed in such vague language and paragraph-long sentences. I can be sympathetic with social justice and skepticism toward the "inhumane & materialistic" worldview of Scientism. But PM seems to go to the opposite extreme. Is this a new secular religion for the downtrodden masses? I doubt that the masses uderstand arcane academic abstractions.
The posters who raised these questions in my mind, did not identify as PM, but seemed to find some kinship with my own inclusive worldview, and scientific speculations. So in order to find some common ground for communication, I tried to discover their reason for avoiding analytical definitions, in the traditional manner of philosophical dialogue. For an obviously highly intelligent person to think in such abstruse terms, there must be something that PM is "good for". :nerd:
Quoting Banno
I'm not going to identify them, and they didn't represent themselves as PoMo. That was my best guess as to their motivation. :cool:
That reminds me of Plato's negative attitude toward Sophistry. They seemed to be like lawyers, who are not interested --- or don't believe --- in Truth, but use complex language as a weapon to win us-vs-them competitions. :smile:
In any case this is perhaps a side issue, and others have rebutted PoMo most satisfactorily.
Say it again!
[video] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc[/video]
We have all the best music.
That may explain why my innocent attempts to define my personal meaning of relevant terms were rejected as promoting some hidden agenda. My only agenda was to make sure we were both talking about the same thing. :smile:
The issue is, that's not were you start in philosophy, it's where you finish.
Two of these things are not like the others.
That seems to be their fear, that I would exclude too many possible meanings in the interest of clarity. But I was inviting them to present their own definitions, so we could find common ground. But, the very idea of analytical definition seemed repugnant. I am open to the concepts of subjectivism & Holism, but communication between parties requires us to strip away most of the irrelevant shades of meaning, and to work with the kernel. :smile:
Well, there’s at least two things to be addressed in philosophical conversations: do these ideas relate to each other in such-and-such way, and are these ideas the proper referents of such-and-such words. You can define the meaning you want to give the words you’re going to use so you have some way to have the first conversation without having to settle the second conversation first. But then even if everybody agrees on the first conversation, there’s still the open question of the second one.
I assume you mean, that you start with a general concept and weed-out irrelevancies, in order to reach a meaning that is specific to the situation at hand. The definitions of assumptions I was talking about were the first step on that journey. :smile:
"The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms" ---Socrates
“If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” ___Voltaire
Taking words as the names of ideas - "are these ideas the proper referents of such-and-such words" - is tantamount to assuming that words are the names of private mental things. Hence this description of philosophical discussion is already half way to the subject/object dichotomy.
Words are part of the world, much the same as chairs and rocks. Only some of them are nouns.
Does that mean the PoMo movement has resulted in driving the political Left and Right farther apart? I hadn't thought of the cynical "fake news" notion as a reaction to Postmodern pushing from the Left. :chin:
And yet the Socratic Method consists in showing the faults of those definitions.
How's that?
180 Proof's (quite spot on, imo) response uses, almost without exception, well-defined/understood technical terms in philosophy. And as this is quite literally "The Philosophy Forum"... I'd say any problem lies on the other end. Using relevant technical terminology is hardly a legitimate criticism in this context- if there's terms you aren't familiar with, ask for clarification (or just perform a simple Google search).
If truth is irrelevant, and power is what is to decide, then it is the powerful who make the decisions. And they will do so in their own favour. Hence, the outcome of a PoMo approach is not radical change, but arch conservatism.
The greatest criticism of Feyerabend's "Anything goes" is pointing out that this will have the effect that everything stays.
But even then, there IS still an open question as to whether that big long thing is what ordinary people not there for the labelling will take your use of such labels to mean.
I like to be productive with my time.
"p0m0 amounts to a relativism so radical it refute itself,"
That about summarizes what you were saying. To many people what you were saying is obvious after they've spent alot of time discussing this issue. Many of us have been discussing post modernism for a long time. When i'm on a philosophy forum i'm usually required to be coherent and would be accused of being snobbish if phrased things the way you did. However in our defense people who use forums like this tend to prefer technical terms.
I'll give you an example:
p0m0
doesn't show up on google or bing as post modernism.
Trying to participate in a technical discussion without bothering to do even the slightest bit of work acquainting yourself with the relevant terminology would certainly qualify as a colossal (and entirely predictable) waste of ones time.
Then I don't know what to make of this:
Quoting Pfhorrest
because I don't know what the referent of, say, "Democracy" is.
Of course it is. Its a discussion of the value or worth of a particular genre or sub-discipline of the academic field of philosophy. And "dismissed" isn't the same as "addressed", but whatever floats your boat I suppose.
You are not forced to be here.
A process or practice can be a noun. “Democracy“ refers to some kind of political process or practice. Where is the problem?
oh.
In a sense. This is my historical perspective, others may think pomo played a lesser role, but it seems to me that more positive pomo criticisms and scepticisms of systems of knowledge such as feminism laid the groundwork for a 'truth egalitarianism'.
The invalid idea synonymous with postmodernism that science is untrustworthy comes from perfectly valid points made by people like Popper, Kuhn and Latour that science is not some kind of deterministic, culture-independent accumulation of facts and formulation of fact-driven theories that can be proven. There is an anchoring to popular ideas (i.e. a politics) that eventually cannot be sustained, leading to paradigm shifts. This is certainly true. It is generally necessary to embed new work within well-accepted frameworks. Funding plays a big role too, which is also political to an extent.
TL;DR version, the occurrence of paradigm shifts suggests that, at any given time, there exist other possible and very different scientific explanations for phenomena that aren't considered... yet!
The incorrect reading of this is that one theory has no more value than another. Creationism becomes the equal of cosmology, intelligent design the equal of natural selection, unknown non-human factors the equal of manmade climate change. This is not rigorous thinking but relies on non-scientific ideas: selective evidence, unjustified assumptions, suspension of the falsification criterion.
A good example is the advent of social psychology. The idea of social psychology is sound, but the mode of social psychology is to set up a false dichotomy between nature and nurture. Any evidence of natural factors (evolution) in human behaviour is instantly seized on and reinterpreted through a nurture-only lens, without evidence, logic, or any solid theoretical framework of its own. Evolutionary psychology does not assume a nature-only stance, but social psychology's raison d'etre is to undermine any possible natural factor to forward its political exploitation of postmodern scepticism: that truth is a social construct. Social psychology, dangerously, is accepted as science while being utterly anti- and unscientific, to the extent that, a few years ago, a social psychologist won an award from the Royal Society for a book which included the belief that "gonads are a social construct".
It is not postmodernism's fault particularly. It put forward valid methodologies to identify errors in systems of knowledge. To my knowledge, no one has a rebuttal. The egalitarian hypothesis came separately, from people within pomo (like Feyerabend, and Latour himself) and without, particularly the church, feminism, and capitalism. (The original investors in climate change research were Shell and Exxon. Huge investors in criticism of the science of that research were later Shell and Exxon.) The parity of systems of knowledge does not derive from scepticism or deconstruction: it derives from deliberate political decisions to push certain metanarratives while pretending to be merely rigorous about others.
Maybe I can offer some defense of postmodern philosophy, even if I don't necessarily consider myself pomo. I sometimes get lumped into that category because I write weirdly.
Postmodern writers avoid the traditional use of definitions. Definitions imply the world should be divided nicely into parcels that clearly differentiate one parcel from the other. A postmodern writer believes nature does not define herself, so any attempt to nail down a black and white concept can only represent an impulse to authority — a desire to exert power over the dialogue. A postmodern writer would not be out of line in saying, "this is how I choose to use this word when I make a speech act," but would avoid a claim that the word in use represents some "accessible meaning from all points of view" such as an Archimedean point. Postmoderns eschew a concept like "objective reality," whatever that may come to represent.
I think it is unfair to say that postmodernism resulted in a new Grand Narrative, but rather comprises a whole slew of critiques of the modern narrative.
If I were to level a critique of postmodernism, it is not that postmodern discussions replace the modern narrative with a new narrative, but that postmoderns fail to assert anything. All they accomplish is unsaying what has come before.
Unfortunately, the correct (from a modern discussion) move from postmodernism is not to ignore the critiques and simply resort back to modern ways. Instead, we find ourselves needing to build what comes next, a post-postmodern dialogue where new claims get asserted without resorting to a new Grand Narrative. The Philosophy Forum is far from getting there, yet.
Well, it did, but not because of pomo. "Everything is a social construct" is a grand narrative that grew out of pomo, but it wasn't pomo. Pomo would dictate that such a system of knowledge ought to be treated with scepticism and deconstructed like any other language-based. Unfortunately pomo is associated with the former more than the latter.
Welcome to the forum! Good first post imo!
Indeed. Particularly the Fundy extremist.
Do you know what post modernism is? It deals with saying all or most things are subjective truth and that there is no objective truth.
Sure. That's a Kierkegaardian view. And your point ?
Are you saying objective truth doesn't exist?
You don't have to be a fundy extremist to accept that objective truth exists.
Absolutely not. There exists both subjective and objective truth. We can't escape it. In principle, if we had a material world with no subjective observers, then one could argue that objectivity is the only thing that exists. But then that would present a paradox. Similarly, you could be like the Idealist and argue that only the mind exists, and therefore all is subjective.
In my opinion, the important takeaway from post-modernism is the value of being willing to make those distinctions between subjectivity and objectivity, both metaphysically and ontologically. Subjective truth's and objective truth's are also interesting in that they span the concepts found in logic and epistemology as well.
Agreed! I was just supporting your view about the irony.
Might have some utility in literary commentary I s'pose.
Long ago, they made students at the college I attended read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Thus they perpetuated the annoying use of "paradigm" and "paradigm-shift" as buzz words. They also made us read Plato's Republic. Damn them!
Kuhn seemed intent on proclaiming that science is subject to all sorts of un-scientific things, and great scientific discoveries or profound changes in science weren't really the result of (you guessed it) the acclaimed scientific method. I think. It's been awhile.
Anyhow, I view it and postmodernism (to the extent I know anything about it) as a kind of reaction to the worst excesses of the Enlightenment and the faith in the scientific method and reason as methods by which we may obtain a better world. Because it flourished in the Academy, where all is seemingly incubated, the postmodern point of view came to be applied helter-skelter, and I think got out of hand to the point that the use of reason and science was discouraged, even thought declasse in a sense; not done by those in the know.
Consider the relationships between Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, Postmodernism (1966-present.)
What I enjoy reading about is the distinctions between the logic of language and the meaning of words. I think it was Derrida who wanted to deconstruct meaning by making a point about the meanings of words used in a sentence; he called it free play ( see below example). Similarly, I think Nietzsche argued that the very basics of knowledge and language is [not necessarily] not a reliable system of communication. Here are some examples about ambiguity in the deconstruction of a sentence:
[i]Time (noun) flies (verb) like an arrow (adverb clause) = Time passes quickly.
Time (verb) flies (object) like an arrow (adverb clause) = Get out your stopwatch and time the speed of flies as you would time an arrow's flight.
Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (object) = Time flies are fond of arrows (or at least of one particular arrow).[/i]
Probably not the best example, but the point is that rational forms of truth are limited to things like the logic of words and language. But truth and fact well up into our lives exceeding such verbal formulation. And Phenomenology, is one example of that (contemporary philosophy).
Yes. That's what I meant by the observation that PoMo may have driven the Left and Right farther apart than usual. Trump seems to be the very self-interested anti-liberal capitalist power that the PMers were warning about. Ironically, his ambiguous use of language and lack of concern for Truth, may be embarrassing for traditional Conservatives. Perhaps arch-liberals and arch-conservatives have some sophistry tactics in common, merely serving different interest groups.
I agree.
added to my journal. Don't have time to go through it right now.
"Good God, y'all!"
Can you explain how we arrive at "objective truth", whatever that is?
I saw this, then lost it, now found it again. They are all different, and there a few ways of breaking them down, but the main characteristic is they are centred. Nationalism centres around the nation-state you were accidentally born into, moral objectivity about an objective set of moral truths, populism (in a broad sense, not just anti-elitism) around majority opinions, anthropocentrism around human primacy, rationalism around objective reality as discoverable by thinking really hard about it, and political ideologies around particular needs and wants. Religion falls under several of these (but definitely not rationalism).
I listed them as targets of postmodernism which tends to decentre, particularly in its early incorporation of hyperreality, championing of multiculturalism and pluralism, its post-anthropocentrist environmental philosophy, and scepticism to claims of objective truth.
The obvious one I omitted is science, for a few reasons. First, science absorbed pomo criticism rather well. Second, modern science contributed to rather than defended itself against decentering ideas, and is well aware of its relationship to objective reality. And third, it's difficult to find anti-scientific postmodernism that isn't actually a competing ideology wanting to use pomo scepticism to forward its own metanarrative. From Wikipedia:
which accords with my evaluation of anti-science agendas that continue to this day: a selective incredulity toward metanarratives. Major players like Lyotard, Derrida, Kellman and eventually Latour himself did not see scientific evidence as no better or worse than religious dogma a la Feyerabend but did see it as fair game for study, which it was, and that was good. But the tactical and populist appeal of anti-science by what Latour rightly calls "extremists" was set in, and now pomo is more associated with rejection of science (esp. by the conservative wing of the scientific community) than anything else.
This seems to me qualitatively different from the rejection of metanarratives, but that might be my bias.
The scientific method, followed by conventional history, seems to be the closest process by which we arrive at "objective truth", and whatever that is, it is at most a relativistic approximation.
Would you be willing to offer more understanding of how you use the word 'relativistic'? I'm familiar with 'subjective'. Do you intend the two words as synonyms?
No, they are not synonyms. I find this to be a common misconception. Subjective truth is not relativistic, and because of its immediacy, it is probably correct to say it is absolute.
But you agree then, we never know the truth — we only arrive at an approximation?
I agree that absolute truth or objective truth is very hard to obtain more often than not but i don't think it benefits any person to say it doesn't exist. Absolutely everything can be quantified including human personalities. Are you familiar with sampling in reference to compact discs (wave files)?
2 + 2 is definitely equal to 4 but to measure the degree to which African Americans were victimized in their enslavement in the antebellum years would be very hard to nail down to an exact value. Its not that that sort of thing can't be quantified, however its that it would be extremely hard to quantify. The best you could get for something like that is a ball park figure similar to how software developers quantify the efficiency of an algorithm.
The quickest way to become irrational is to reject the idea that objective truth exists. I'm sure i'll be accused of being irrational for whatever reason.
I didn't see you respond to someone else in this way. I would have to argue we are in agreement not disagreement. Once again i only replied to your reply to me. I didn't see all the posts that were posted.
Yes, and the truth of consensus is not excluded. But I can arrive at my subjective truth via reflection - what I think I believe at present, and althought it may be impermanent or subject to temporarility, it is by no means an approximation.
It will save me explaining again how objective truth is not a thing.
Well, that's wrong for starters.
With respect to chosen mathematical axioms. I can give you an axiomatic mathematics in which 2+2=4 is unjustified.
1. There does not exist an empty set 0={}.
2. Etc.
i disagree. I don't know how we would prove each other wrong.
Please explain further.
What is this in reference too?
oh thanks. Yeah i agree with you.
Surprisingly apt.
I find you to be rational here. I think that for a postmodernist, rationality is not a requirement though.
Quoting tilda-psychist
So if we never know the truth, exactly, what value is there in saying it is objective?
I'll explain my view a little further. I consider the things that we call true to be sentences. If you are saying something is true, you are referring to a sentence or text or model.
And when it comes to the sentence, we only compare the symbols of the sentence to some other phenomenal experience. We say the sentence is true because it jibes with experience. But then the true-ness is not a relationship with the thing-in-itself. We never arrive at noumena.
Now, you may say that you and I experience the same underlying thing, but that goes beyond what we can know. We don't even know we have the same experience of phenomena. All we have are the shared sentences that come between us.
But shared sentences with unverifiable phenomena or noumena are not a model for objectivity. We are merely comparing subjective experience. Here the term intersubjectivity better describes what we are modeling. We have to leave objectivity as unnattainable or at least unknowable.
I don't say "There is no objective truth," but rather just avoid using the word objective, where intersubjective is really what is happening. We can leave the discussion of the terms "There is" and "truth" for another time.
I think where we disagree is whether or not absolutely everything can be quantified including human personalities. I believe absolutely everything can be quantified. However i wouldn't argue that everything or even most things should be quantified.
All that being said NASA actually doesn't come to exact answers but they come closer to the truth than Chevrolet does when they pursue the truth.
If you are saying that the pursuit of what is commonly called the objective truth can hurt everyone in the end, then i agree with you. The pursuit of the truth can sometimes be detrimental to society but not pursuing the truth can also be detrimental to society sometimes. I believe in scientific determinism which is a form of fate, all of our opinions and actions are outside of our control.
Sigh.
What phenomenal experience do we compare "and" to?
What about "why?", or "Hello", or "autocratic"?
Indeed, it seems htat most words do not work in this way.
Sigh.
You and I are both looking at this post. That's sufficient, sans the "underlying thing", for all our purposes outside of philosophy.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
The funny thing is that we overwhelmingly agree on which sentences are true and which are false. It's as if we shared a world about which we are speaking... Or better, we are embedded in the world.
Hence that unattainable, unknowable noumena is pretty much irrelevant. Hardly worth talking about, really.
That's roughly the view Wittgenstein espoused.
You ask a fair question. I already volunteered that I write weirdly. Maybe I'm using the word phenomenon in a way that is different than what you are used to. When I speak of phenomena or experience, I refer to a very broad group of events. I consider thoughts, dreams, physical sensations, emotions, feelings, beliefs, desires, and memories to fall under the realm of phenomena. They are the starting point from which we come to know the world.
As far as the experience that jibes with "and" it is an intuition upon which we build our sense of logic. It is a phenomena.
As far as "why", and "Hello", there are other kinds of language behaviors people engage in besides making claims about their experiences. There are lots of kinds of language moves.
Quoting Banno
The funny thing is, we, you and I, as well as a broader group of people all over the globe, overwhelmingly disagree on what i the best way to communicate our experience. If we agree so much, then you will find no problem in avoiding phrases like "objective reality."
You overstate the things we agree upon by dismissing the whole world of subjective experience that does not constitute medium-sized dry goods.
I do disagree that everything can be quantified. How much do I love my daughter? How good is sex?
What is the likelihood my wife is angry tomorrow? What number measures her anger.
I don't believe mathematical models provide the same descriptions as qualitative observations.
Your post is 217.9134 true.
i'm not sure there is a point in arguing with you. Its not that you are dumber than me but that you don't see everything as a system.
I believe there is a connection between everything including apples and oranges (don't compare apples to oranges). Some things have a one to one relationship, some a linear relationship, some a inverse exponential relationship and some things an exponential relationship. Then you have things like bell curves. Ofcourse we have to also consider constants and coefficients.
We happen to use some words in common, but we use them differently, say different things, come from different backgrounds, and generally have entirely different experiences.
The number of things we agree about are just as interesting as our disagreements. It just happens that more of our discourse brings up differences because differences make up the majority of the sentences we choose to share.
You deny that my experience is not the same as yours. That we both are writing with words from an English dictionary doesn't even mean we use the same language. Grammars vary, logics vary, meanings vary.
Doubt only makes sense against a background of certainty.
But the way you select your framing, the units, scales, and relationships you choose to quantify come about as a result of the way you intend to use the numbers as symbols.
The statement "Everything is quantifiable" is not the sort of thing that get's quantified.
This, being a thread about postmodernism, is not one that will benefit either of us by proving your side wrong. Instead, the point in our discourse, for you, may be to come to identify the different way in which postmodernists and pragmatists come to use language.
There may be use in coming to understand an alternate system, which is consistent in its own right, but does not produce the same kinds of sentences you are used to. There are advantages to understanding what the postmodernists are saying, engaging with their critiques, and moving beyond the Ancient Platonic/Aristotilean approach to philosophy.
I'm sorry if I created any sort of sense that one of us is dumb or even wrong for saying the things we are saying.
It's not even that I don't understand your appeal to mathematics. I work in a quantitative field. What I am saying is that there are advantages in observing things in this world that are not communicated by numerical models.
true.
If it's not worth explaining again, it probably has no merit. And I can easily prove wrong the proposition: "objective truth is not a thing", because it certainly is a term, and a term is a thing.
Quoting Banno
You are incorrect. By your logic, every time I perform a mathematical function it should be accompanied by some corresponding external phenomenon, which is absurd. If you are saying that performance of the function itself suffices as its own phenomenon, then you are admitting that it indeed has no relation to life.
No more so than notions of objective reality, which you support in your support of natural science. Objective reality doesn't depend on there being some unquestionable set of descriptive statements; as you know in science everything is open to question, every claim is tentative, subject to later revision. There's no reason that one can't take precisely that same attitude toward morality, which would be exactly as objective an approach to morality as the scientific approach is to reality. That would mean there isn't some unquestionable set of prescriptive statements ("moral truths"), just a notion that there is some scale of correctness, some way to indicate what the direction toward more correct is, something by which such statements can be critically compared to each other, rather than all being equally indefensible out the gate.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Okay, so you meant capital-R "Rationalism" as in the anti-empirical philosophical movement containing people like Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, not just common-noun rationalism as in asking for reasons to (dis)believe things and not just obeying orthodoxy on faith. No disagreement there then.
Let's suppose you bought a dozen eggs, you are no longer dealing in pure mathematical truth, you have now introduced something external and independent to the universal idea of 12. More importantly, the mathematical concept "12" is only related to life, in this case, if you actually did buy something, and they were actually eggs, and you actually expected to receive a specified amount. Otherwise 12 in itself has no concrete relation to life.
Translation: you disagree because it is over your head.
Love you Banno :kiss:
Here's another thread for you not to read: Subject and Object
Exactly, just like the claim: "it's raining except for when it isn't". To bring it back to the OP, when it is true that it actually does, that would be an example of an objective truth.
:rofl:
I believe absolutely everything can be quantified including the personality of people.
I believe there is a connection between everything including apples and oranges (don't compare apples to oranges). Some things have a one to one relationship, some a linear relationship, some a inverse exponential relationship and some things an exponential relationship. Then you have things like bell curves. Ofcourse we have to also consider constants and coefficients.
If we started categorizing each of those 12 eggs and tried to fit each of those 12 eggs into a categorization system where there were 100 categories based on different features of those eggs, there would be at most 12 different categories for that dozen or perhaps all 12 fit into 1 category. The only way for 100 of those categories to be represented would be for there to be something like 8 or 9 categories. And yes i'm too lazy to do the math for how many dozen eggs it would take to meet 100.
Should most or all things be quantified, probably not, but i think it expands our own minds when we acknowledge that absolutely everything can be quantified. Have you ever played a game like World of WarCraft? That is a fairly complicated game and the truth of the matter is that game could be made a whole lot more complicated.
You have your 3d engine and all the various things related to the 3d engine. Then on top of that you have the extreme complexities dealing with role playing games and also modern role playing games. Once again the game could have been made alot more complicated. Are you familiar with the games Arma 2 and Arma 3? These are dynamic battle field games. In 100 years these games will be looked upon by some as simple. For me i'll probably never code games this complicated.
In both, objective reality is inferred from human activity. In science, the existence of objective reality is the simplest possible explanation for why the universe behaves as if it does, i.e. it appears to be a top-down. In morality, not so much. We know why morality is in some ways universal and others not, and it's a bottom-up structure, not a top-down one. (We'll end up making every thread about this before the week is out.)
Quoting Pfhorrest
Aye, the principals of the Enlightenment, and therefore the principles of the Enlightenment. Pomo places an emphasis on lived experience rather than abstraction-wrangling.
Would it be fair to say the ontology of things encountered in mathematical study do not all correspond to physical objects which are seen, felt, heard, smelled, or tasted? Do I leave something out of what you are trying to say when I make that distinction between mathematical phenomena and "lived" (i.e. physical) phenomena?
:up:
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
:fire:
I’m not sure what you mean here by top-down and bottom-uo. I would describe science as a bottom-up process the way I mean those words: it’s a decentralized, fallibilist operation, rather than some authority handing down truths from on high. You seem to think that an objective morality would have to be that kind if from-on-high approach, but my point is that science doesn’t do that and yet is still objective about reality, so we can do likewise toward morality too.
Science interrogates what appears to be an objective reality out there through indirect observation and modelling. While the means (knowledge, funding, technological capability, reigning paradigm, political amenability) are human all too human, it interrogates phenomena that don't seem to depend on those means other than their availability to us by those means. It seems to be mind- and culture-independent phenomena that minds and cultures are interrogating. In that sense, it is top-down: objective reality is assumed to exist (although the perspectives on it are relative) and we are probing its reactions.
Morality does not seem this way. Moral capacity appears to be genetic, passed from individuals to individual, and application of that capacity appears to have some bits that are universal, some that are local. For instance, pretty much everyone wants to be good to their mother, but few are bothered about being to strangers, especially if those strangers are vulnerable. These distinctions seem to arise from culture: conformity within social groups. These cultures do seem to converge as well, but not spontaneously, rather through mixing with other cultures. For instance, abolition of the death penalty in Chad this year does not represent an independent trend toward moral rightness but instead is "aimed at harmonising our laws in line with all the countries of the G5 Sahel Group" (Djimet Arabi).
The spread of moral ideas is bottom-up: it grows out of interactions of individuals within a social group and interactions between social groups. Whereas an objective reality is the best and simplest explanation for the perception of a regular, predictable universe, objective morality is not. At best, it makes no difference whether it exists or not, because bottom-up self-organising morality has all of the explanatory power and seems like what actually occurs.
To the extent that that is true, I would say the exact same thing about reality. Humans seems to have a lot of the same subjective experiences and to perceive a lot of the same things in those experiences and so to believe a lot of the same things.
But some people don’t. Beliefs about reality obviously differ drastically between cultures, especially historically before the rise of science (look at all the different religions’ accounts of the nature and history of the world). Perceptions differ too because they are inherently interpretations, not the raw sensory observations themselves. Even sensations differ: some people are blind or deaf, some women have tetrachromatic vision and some men are color blind, etc.
Science is in assuming that we can account for and reconcile all those differences and converge on some total common agreement about what is real if we’re just very careful, thorough, and methodical about it. That involves assuming that there is some objectivity reality that all of our different experiences, sensations, perceptions, beliefs, are incomplete or distorted pictures of.
I see no reason not to approach morality in the same way, not so unlike how you describe it, but in undertaking a project to do that, we necessary act under the tacit assumption that there is some objective morality: that we can account for and reconcile all our moral differences and converge on some total common agreement about what is moral if we’re just very careful, thorough, and methodical about it.
That's true, you can reject the theory of evolution in a similar way that you can reject a human right. The distinction is that, for those who investigate this putative objective reality, it does seem to exist or, as NdGT put it, "The great thing about facts is that they're true whether you believe them or not". It would be a lot harder for a biologist to disbelieve evolution than it would for a Louisiana pastor.
It is in empiricism that the explanatory power of objective reality finds its place, not in belief systems. You and I can in principle evolve a freshwater fish from a seawater fish or vice versa in laboratory conditions... we don't have to settle for belief, although it is also precisely this empirical criterion that makes science worth trusting. Empirically, physical law dictates phenomena, not vice versa.
If two scientists disagree on a conclusion drawn from a set of observations, is that conclusion still objective?
If different sets of data lead to different coefficients in a linear regression, are the coefficients objective?
If every data point has some error with respect to the model that is based on that data, is the error objective?
Besides that, would you be willing to describe what make up the constituents of reality? It seems like a term that gets itself used in many different ways by as many speakers.
Is reality made up of physical objects? What about the mathematical formulas that describe those objects? Then, what again about the perceptions of those objects?
Can you provide a demarcation between what is real and unreal, besides the distinction you make between the objectively real and subjectively real?
Completely true, but what is empiricism if not appeal to the things we have in common between our sensory experiences, and a commitment to sorting out why we sometimes have different ones?
There is a kind of experience that impacts opinions about morality in the same way sensory experience impacts opinions about reality: appetitive experiences, things like pain and hunger etc. An appeal to the things we have in common between such experiences and a commitment to sorting out why we sometimes have different ones would enable an approach to morality just as objective as a scientific approach to morality.
That statement assumes, with the verb "would enable", that the reason we have different experiences of moral claims have similar attributes with why one person sees a thing as a different color as another. You have an embedded assumption that the causes of the differences are of a like kind. You assume that because differences in some reports of phenomena have been reconciled by a deeper explanation that is agreeable to both parties, that differences in all sorts of phenomena can be reconciled in that way. The way you move from some to all in your analysis does not follow a deductive path. It is a product of an induction, and not strictly logical.
Do you agree with the way I differentiated between deductive and inductive as applying to your argument?
Gnomon, I believe part of Postmodernism movement/Existentialism (19-20th Century) and Phenomenology (20th) were developed in response to the limitations or gaps left from Logical Positivism. A few bullet points of contrast:
Logical Positivism: Does not recognize Kantian synthetic a priori knowledge.
Existentialism: People actually make decisions based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality.
Phenomenology is perhaps a little more interesting, as taken from Wiki:
[i]1.Phenomenologists reject the concept of objective research. They prefer grouping assumptions through a process called phenomenological epoché.
2.They believe that analyzing daily human behavior can provide one with a greater understanding of nature.
3.They assert that persons should be explored. This is because persons can be understood through the unique ways they reflect the society they live in.
4.Phenomenologists prefer to gather "capta", or conscious experience, rather than traditional data.
5.They consider phenomenology to be oriented toward discovery, and therefore they research using methods that are far less restrictive than in other sciences.[4][/i]
Hope that helps some.
It's not embedded as in tacit or implicit, I explicitly say we pragmatically must make such an assumption, because to do otherwise is simply to give up on the attempt. If we haven't succeeded at the endeavor yet, we just haven't succeeded yet, but that is no grounds to say success is impossible. It is assuming that success is impossible because it has been hard so far that is the inductive leap. I am saying to keep open to the possibility of it, and keep trying, always.
The objective reality I was referring to is that which the theoretical model seeks to represent, rather than the objective reality of particular measurements as published in journals, which is more a historical matter. We found X. They found Y.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
There's usually two ways of doing it. You either start from an unexplained observation and build theoretical models to explain it, or you start from a prediction of a model and perform measurement to verify or falsify the prediction. The conclusions drawn from the former are about how nature must be to produce the observed phenomenon, and from the latter are about how well the model describes nature. It would be premature to make any conclusions about objective reality in the first instance. In the second, we might conclude nature either is or is not much like the model. All of it is open to challenge. There are often competing models for the same phenomena, such as in cosmology, in which case, again, conclusions about objective reality are premature. The hope is to find a test that eliminates one or more competing theories.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
Error can cover uncertainty or instrument error. Neither say much about objective reality of, say, gravity waves. They do say something about the precision and/or accuracy of the experiment.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
No, the most I think we can say is that, whatever objective reality may be, if it may be, and it seems it may, it behaves a bit like theoretical models in the circumstances those models have been proven successful.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
Every experiment is physical. It involves physical humans handling physical apparatus. Whatever phenomenon is being studied, it must have an effect on the physical apparatus and so is physical. Whatever objective reality causes those phenomena, if there is one, must be physical to cause physical phenomena.
Mathematical models of that reality are cultural artefacts. But they are real cultural artefacts. :)
Yes, so from belief to knowledge. The theorising, the methodology, the prediction, the measurement, the recording, the conclusion, and the publishing--the elements of scientific knowledge--are cultural, for sure. This is what pomo insisted.
But the holistic empirical evidence for a regular (even if just statistically so), predictable universe is not contained in one of these but in the totality of human experience of physical phenomena. That is the reason why it is simpler to assume an objective physical reality: it is the simplest possible explanation for the appearance of an objective physical reality.
Morality includes all of the cultural symptoms but it does not seem to obey objective moral laws. Moral trends are observable as in science, but their causes are evident. The similarity between progressively moral countries are most simply understood via the interactions of individuals and groups within them and between societies themselves. One can posit objective moral law, but it has little explanatory power compared to the assumption of an objective physical reality which obeys physical law.
Conversely, it would be difficult and certainly not simple to explain the appearance of objective physical reality purely in terms of scientific culture and innate capacity to science.
Moral law isn't supposed to be explanatory. It's not descriptive, but prescriptive.
Why is physicality a requirement of an experiment. Why don't mental phenomena constitute that which can be studied by science?
If moral law does not reflect something that can be observed or described, then how is it any different than rules for the sake of rules?
I spoke already upthread about my problem with social constructivism taking all attempts to talk about facts as actual hidden power grabs, and trying to take moral discourse to be description is the same problem in reverse. There are two different kinds of reductionism that I consider tantamount to “cynicism” (an approach that can’t help but lead to nihilism of some sort), because each of them effectively refuses to consider even the possibility of answers to a certain kind of question, by insisting that that kind of question is reducible to another, unrelated kind of question.
Besides constructivism already discussed, scientism conversely attempts to reduce all questions to questions of fact, which is to say, descriptive questions, questions about reality. Questions of norms, which is to say, prescriptive questions, questions about morality, are a fundamentally different kind of question to questions of fact, to which a descriptive statement gives no answer; something David Hume called the "is-ought problem". If someone asks whether something ought to happen, a statement to the effect that something does (or does not) happen gives no answer at all to that question.
So to insist on discussing only matters of fact, and trying to twist all discussion of norms into discussion of facts, is simply to avoid answering any normative, moral questions at all, and so implicitly to avoid stating any opinion on morality at all, leaving one in effect a moral nihilist. Scientism responds to attempts to treat normative questions as completely separate from factual questions (as they are) by demanding absolute proof from the ground up that anything at all is objectively normative, or moral, and not just a factual claim in disguise or else baseless mere opinion. So it ends up falling to justificationism about normative questions (where justificationism is the primary kind of “cynicism”), while failing to acknowledge that factual questions are equally vulnerable to that line of attack. Thus such scientism is tantamount to cynicism with regards to moral questions, inevitably leading to moral nihilism.
But in my rejection of scientism, I am not at all rejecting science. I have great esteem for science and hold it to be the uniquely correct way of building true descriptions of reality. I am only against attempting to reduce all discourse to attempts at describing reality, when we clearly also do other things with our speech as well. Ordering someone to do something, for instance, is not an attempt to describe what that person is doing, and such a command cannot be factually right or wrong (although we could instead evaluate the command as normatively right or wrong). I hold moral claims to be more akin to such orders or commands than they are to descriptive claims, though they are often phrased in such as way as to project that morality as though it were a descriptive property of whatever is being evaluated; not unlike with social constructs.
Here's my take: Post-modernism is a total willingness to deconstruct. Usually this leads to themes like irony or absurdity. Why? Because when you deconstruct something that is assumed to be a monolithic "thing", it is actually seen for just a convention. To be real basic here.. Take any classic sitcom (Leave it To Beaver, Fully House, The Cosby Show.. or whatever variation from countries around the world).. That is modernism.. There is a structure.. family has value.. life has lessons... things can get solved..etc. Now think of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The Office, etc.. It deconstructs the conventions we take seriously and then sees the absurdity in it, often using irony and satire to show you how silly it is to take these conventions as serious in the first place.
The only thing I would amend is the notion of mathematical phenomenon and lived phenomena. The former is a contradiction of terms and the latter a tautology. That is to say, life is ever and always phenomenological in each and every aspect, whereas there is no such thing as mathematical phenomenon (althought it is correct to say pure mathematics is itself a phenomenon or phenomenological) since any relation between mathematics and life is mediated by logical deliberation. It can be emphasized that, even if purely conceptual mathematics can be indirectly related to actual life with logic, it by no means is a causal necessity, hence there is no necessary relation between mathematics and life.
Building on that: The Simpsons is removed, detatched : it's a vessel for writerly jokes imposed from without, that use the sitcom format as a canvas-sandbox to demonstrate cleverness.
Seinfeld comes just a bit later and is about living in a world where everyone knows it's all bullshit, but still has to live among the detritus. it's much more human: it's about how perennial human sexual and status games always continue, using what's at hand - and the comedy is that what's on-hand (for 90s new yorkers) is utterly disconnected from any unifying sense of value.
The Office comes even later. Michael , at heart, is a George Costanza character - but he can't admit to himself that's what he is. It's a George that can't even be real with Jerry. He's so far gone, all the charm of George is lost in Michael's compulsive need to hide he's a George.
Dwight, in a key way, is Kramer (qua the character who is unaware of the new social system and lives eccentrically in the past) except he, Dwight, is not even likeable, because the eccentric outsider archetype has been fused with the vindictive sycophant archetype.
Jim lives among it all, above it all, looking at the camera to signal 'this is nuts, and I know its nuts ---I keep working here, but I at least know it's all a joke.' That allows the romantic relationship with Pam, who also knows its all a joke, and then the series skews sentimental.
Take all those elements, add em together, and you have a decent blueprint of social mores in 2000-200ish. The hero basically eyerolls at the camera, whenever anyone else does anything (always in caricature.) He's passive as heck, and his activeness is usually shitting on dwight, and, since the writers fused any-alternative-way-of-living with sycophantic-meanspirited-and-creepy, means that the hero of the show proves his value (and thus is worthy of love) by doing his job, not taking it seriously, and demeaning people who have alternative sources of value.
But what's important is that there's a hero in The Office - Jim's a 'good guy, even though he's a dick sometimes, but ultimately his heart is in the right place when the dust settles.' There isn't one in the other two. It's a reconstructive effort, though a questionable one.
Quantification is nothing more than mediation with mathematics. And since it is possible for the thinking individual to mediate anything in life, all it takes is a basic knowledge of mathematics for one to quantify shit.
Quoting tilda-psychist
Everywhere I look, wherever I see a relation between two or more otherwise independent things, I see an imposition and a synthesis of convention - that is, every connection I see in life has been placed there in some manner by mankind. That is why I believe there is no natural and necessary relation between any two things in life, including the relation between a thing and its identity. Yet there is a practicality with convention, a dependabilty from its having been tested, and many conventions are so intuitive that their relating of things is practically seamless despite the fact that the relating of anything to anything else is essentially a process of mediation - an artificial relation.
i can see why you believe this. Alot of what i believe stems from religion and to some extent pan-psychism and scientific determinism (~Fate).
Same with me, my thoughts here are closely tied in to my religious belief. At the core of it, I believe anything in life is only related to anything else indirectly - through mediation. Yet I make one reservation (which I can only justify by virtue of the absurd): that there is actually one thing that can relate directly to other things in life (requiring no mediation), it is the subject (qua. the thinking, existing individual).
i guess.
I believe I am a subject, and I believe in other subjects, and though it is impossible to objectively prove that there is no such thing as subjectivity, I know @Banno will try. One thing I do know, if you begin doubting subjectivity, you will eventually face yourself in solipsism, and such demonic masturbation I prefer to avoid.
Great analysis overall. I'm going to evince my own "look at the camera/eye roll" moment now and mention that I remember seeing a video about (the very epitome of literary criticism of post-modernism perhaps?) David Foster Wallace talking about this very idea that The Simpsons/ Seinfeld doesn't have as much a narrative hero (maybe an anti-hero or near-hero at best in Homer or perhaps Lisa?). They mentioned The Office as trying to "reconstruct" a sort of moralistic (sentimental?) post-modernism missing in the first two.
Either way, it is an interesting idea regarding irony/satire. When is one to be ironic and one to be authentic? Is there a good balance?
I think if there is any "truth" to the ideas of post-modernism it might be this: We are always a creature one step removed from from primary existence. A fish swims, eats, hides, follows innate behaviors, it does not self-reflect. Even an ape or a dolphin probably doesn't go much past certain very basic communications and certain cultural learning. Humans are fully linguistic, cultural, generative, and iterative. It is hard to have a thought and then not have an analysis of that thought terms of other thoughts. It's hard to have a thought in isolation of its own self-analysis. The same goes for social things like values. It would be inauthentic not to self-analyze social and personal beliefs. But at the same token one disregards all sense of authenticity if one is fully and only ironic (which might be Wallace's complaint about post-modernism).
Seinfeld is the ultimate post-modern sitcom. In a way we are living in a post-Seinfeld world. How does one take any social situation seriously really? I find it interesting with any form of satire or social criticism, that even after seeing the humor, when people go back to "living their lives" they don't actually take the lessons with them, and go back to living as if their life is not that super set of absurd circumstances as well, but a "real serious and dignified" narrative. A less obvious version of this are people who romantically think that things like "travel", "mountain climbing", "camping", and "sky diving" or (insert any modern form of trying to signal getting back to nature, going "extreme", or being an "travelling explorer") are truly some edifying thing.. None of the absurdities of shitting in a hole (whist camping without a bathroom facility around), uncomfortable sleeping, the very fact that most people are bringing all this modern equipment to be safe and comfortable in the "wilderness". You will probably lose something on that trip, get annoyed at your friend, etc. But yeah, might have some socially created "authentic" moments hanging out with friends in a different setting than a city place or someone's residence. Anyways, I digress.. but these trivialities matter in all of this...
In a way, my authentic attempts to get people to understand antinatalism can be seen as modernist.. in that it is taken so seriously, it is really believed. Suffering is to be something to be reckoned with, and the eye rolling resumes. "Stop being so serious!" would be the major response. The modernist inverse answer to my form of modernism would be "Technology, family, and shared values will triumph over your pessimism". And so we got two schools of thought.. life is a joke, don't take it seriously, or life has values that should be cherished so stop being so pessimistic..
Anyways, to shaggy dog this shit some more...I see a weird dichotomy between the "truths" of technology and the "lived experience" of humans who bring it about. There is something absurd about a coder drinking his energy drink, playing around with lines and lines of programming language, and yet there is the knowledge that microprocessors carry currents that go on and off and allow data to be stored and used to perform computations and ultimately do tasks or present information for the end user. The absurdity of living out this life.. and the "truths" we mine from technology. There is a dull centered-ness we cannot escape no matter how much the absurdity allows us to escape and laugh at ourselves.. We can laugh all we want, at the end of the day we want that technology created from the "truths" that were created from people focusing on copious amounts of minutia on very specific subjects related to things like, I don't know, the properties of semi-conductors, the mathematics of electrical currents, the set of machine code that can be compiled into programming language code, and on and on and on to the very billions of words in academic journals on all the technology, and all the companies, and the universities, and the rest. Laugh all you want about the absurdity of your day, the dull, boring truths of specific fields will haunt you to come back and need them so you can look at your phone to watch a video of someone reacting to a video of a cat doing something funny, sitting on the porcelain throne...
i certainly don't doubt that subjective truth exists. This may seem counter-intuitive but i would argue that embracing the concept that objective truth exists allows for the concept of the moral victory. On the other hand if we take the pursuit of objective truth out of hand it can destroy the concept of moral victory. I'm sure you would agree striking a balance in anything is important.
Yes. I can understand that what eventually became the "Postmodern" movement was intended as a correction to unwarranted assumptions and reliance on cold Reason to the exclusion of warm Emotions. Much of the negative criticism was well-founded. But, I don't understand the alternative vaguely-defined non-rational methods that seem to have replaced the analytical methods of Logical Positivism.
To me, the Enlightenment's Scientific method & mindset is flexible enough to adapt and evolve as the circle of knowledge expands *1. Even its attitude toward homosexuals and "differently-abled' people has become more politically-correct in recent years (especially since Nazi science was discredited). So, Modern Science is inherently self-correcting, but changed cultural attitudes take time. I assume that some disadvantaged & marginalized people felt an urgent need for a more inclusive Science. But, why kill the goose that laid the golden egg of material progress, just because moral progress lagged behind?
In the Venus & Mars thread, the notion of different thinking styles was raised. So, I'm wondering if the philosophical "reasoning" styles of Postmodernists, have more in common with Venus than with Mars. By that I mean, ineffable subjective feelings are given more weight than well-defined objective reasons. Just for the sake of argument, I'm wondering how many of the prominent PM philosophers were "gay" (pardon the assumption of a feminized brain). If their thinking styles a were closer to female than male, that might explain the communication gap between PoMo and Modernist philosophers, who seem to be mostly heterosexual males *2. Is this thought experiment treading in dangerous waters? :gasp:
*1 My own personal worldview is intended to expand the circle of Science --- to update its outdated materialistic paradigm --- not to undermine its rational power.
*2 The female philosophers I'm familiar with don't seem to have any problem expressing their feelings & reasons in logical & categorical syntax & semantics. So they must be well-versed in man-speak.
Yes, I can't see post-modernism working in anything other social situatedness, It just has nothing useful to say about "modern" themes like science, technology, material living conditions, efficient causes, etc. It has all to do with human hopes, social relations, etc.
I guess one can argue that post-modernism is realizing that the social situation is much duller, meaningless, circular, and less fulfilling as one would presume with all the technology. Technology for technology's sake, or progress seems to be unjustified fantasies. We can do technology, and do it to an expansive degree so what does this mean? The minutia mongering is needed on all levels for modern society. Yet humans are still a social creature.
Double eye-roll & I'll venmo you a 20-spot if you can find & link a vid matches that description. You sure? (The closest dfw thing I can think is his discussion of 'the most photographed barn in america' from Delillo's White Noise or the bit in Infinite Jest about the cultural shift expressed in the differences between Hawaii Five-O & Hill Street Blues.)
just saw your post tho, have to crash but ill respond soon, had to quickly defend my honor.
I like where you're taking this. I don't deny objective truth exists, I just hold it to be a different (and a lesser) kind of truth than subjective truth.
I would disagree that the moral victory relies on objective truth. For starters, there are myriad conflicting moralities based on corresponding objective truths, which in turn, can do nothing to reconcile their differences. So, I can only surmise that when you mention the concept of the moral victory depending on objective truth, you are referring to a "might makes right" scenario in which the superior morality is capable of total domination, and of enforcing its ethics upon all others.
As I see it, the moral victory depends on subjective truth. That is to say, it does not come in one's subscription and adherence to personal principle or an ethical code, the moral victory depends on the decisiveness of the subject; the moral victory comes in the moment of choosing how one will act, and choosing rightly insofar as right is determined by subjective truth.
:lol: .. I am not accusing you of nicking the YouTube video.. I just instantly saw a parallel there when I saw what you wrote.. Here is the video I was referring to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4
But I'm also interested in your thoughts on the other stuff I wrote about.
Be ironic toward the made-up hifalutin' nonsense, and be authentic toward the simple, fallible things of genuine value. Try for truth, try to do good, and in doing so tacitly assume through your actions like they are attainable, never impossible, but also never guaranteed. If someone thinks either is guaranteed, roll your eyes at them. But also roll your eyes at those who think either is impossible. Just get to work, realizing it might be hopeless, but try anyway.
Jim rolls his eyes at the camera over all the office bullshit, but he still does an honest day's work.
To quote IJ (sort of), I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
I'ma respond, just too late for me to dig in tonight. Hit you back during my work-from-home new-systems office training tomorrow.
:up:
Ok, this might be a sin against all social media, but I am going to quote the first comment on this video's comments section in YouTube, because I actually think it is damn good, and I think you would appreciate it too.
[quote=Aubrey Grant from YouTube comments]Interesting presentation of some fairly complex stuff. But doesn't this video kind of miss Wallace's point about the ineffectiveness of irony? His main problem is not with irony/irreverence/self-referentiality itself but with the fact that where these were effective literary techniques in the 60s and 70s, by the 80s they had been completely co-opted by television and marketing strategies (also on television). The critical force of irony is hollowed out because we've been trained in the arts of thinking ironically by television. By aiming to convey sincerity (the gooey and embarrassing and frankly unfortunate but honest aspects of living) he doesn't turn away from irony but rather passes through it, to the other side, where 'lived experience' shines through again. Maybe Brief Interviews with Hideous Men is a good example: where he uses irony as a form of speaking to allow the shittiness of everyday decisions/actions gain relevance/relatability. The Office and Community may have similar objectives insofar as both are ironic and sincere. But isn't this just another example of exactly what he was originally arguing against: that television has the power to co-opt ways/modes of thinking/experiencing the world, where we always experience that world in absolute solitude, completely alone and by its mediation, always at a distance, never IN it. At least with shows like arrested development, it's always sunny and seinfeld, the void is recognizable as a form of experience. With the 'sincere' ones you mentioned, the soft irony and self-referentiality, are techniques used to draw the viewer towards a false sincerity which, in the end, just covers up the emptiness of our lives in world conditioned by total connectivity and total isolation. Pretty sure DFW just wants us all to make friends and be nice to them.
[/quote]
For reference to YouTube video where comment came from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2doZROwdte4
You could probably argue that Hollywood sometimes promotes post-modernism. If it 10 years 90% of Hollywood or mass media movies promote post-modernism as well as far left liberal ideals, you could thus say that most of humanity has chosen a new set of subjective truths to be objective truths.
Considering economics and money and also resources is tied into everything, i believe this will happen whether i win this argument either way. I'm just cutting to the chase right now. I believe the conservatives have conservative options but they reject conservatism because they would also at the same time accept that their own biases are the main cause that our society is not conservative. I could sit here and argue with you about post-modernism but i believe our society's acceptance of post modernism stems from a lack of true conservatism among conservatives. Everything is linked to economics and resources in my opinion.
And what is genuine value? What is an honest day's work?
It's not taking any grand narratives seriously [see the recent post about hard work and genuine value]. It's a boogeyman as it lurks behind all sincere claims. An ironic and cynical skewer against your hard-held belief is galling. Done right, it lets everyone in on the game, rather than a tool to denigrate.
There is no metaphysical or epistemological center. Schopenhauer's Will is overrarching but is diffused in the post-modernism of 20th century Existentialism.. where the meaningless Will is neutered to just meaningless perspectives.
In short you admitted that objective truth exists. We could all argue which percentage of objective truth is actually really objective truth. Most people would argue relationships matter and then we could all argue how much relationships matter in relation to things that are typically argued to be practical matters (things completely separated from human relationships). As long as two people both agree that subjective truth and also objective truth exist, how much is left in an argument over post-modernism is up to how much energy the two people want to expend arguing/debate about it. Unless you have some side topic in relation to post-modernism, i have no reason to continue the debate at this point in time.
The true and the good, like always. But no from-on-high declaration of what is absolutely true or what is absolutely good, what you must believe or what you must do. Just fallible ordinary people doing their best to at least try.
Is this even true? I like Hegel and he never defines his terms. He lets you figure the puzzle out for yourself. He wanted clear conceptions though the way Descartes wanted them, although Descartes was far smarter as a mathematician than Hegel. On the other hand, Hume and the Greek skeptics speak of a joy to be found through being very confused that I identify with. I don't know if it's moral to enjoy such a pleasure, but it seems natural to me and is part of my search for wisdom. Like Hegel, I want to know everything and nothing at the same time.
Enough..
I wanted to ask: is post-modernism simply relativism rehashed? Is it simply joy in confusion?
But, no, it seems he didn't.
The definition of 4 according to the dictionary is 3 + 1. You can probably guess what the definition of 2 based on that previous example.
Its hard understand more complex concepts if we don't have a partial or full grasp on more basic concepts.
Post-modernism is generally associated with a rejection of objective truth. I'm sure i'm missing something with that overly simplistic definition so you could probably get a better picture of post-modernism by using wikipedia.
As you might be aware anyone can alter or write up a wikipedia document. I used to use philosophy forums in my early 20s.
I would argue its pretty hard to get killed. If you want to live a long life (as you well know there are no certainties) play video games, go to work and exercise. Driving a car is dangerous. Eating healthy helps too.
Yes. Yes.
In modern science, mental phenomena are not considered non-physical.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Irrespective of what it's for, if it adds no understanding to moral behaviour, i.e. if morality is equally explicable without it, objective morality is at best redundant.
The Simpsons is a great example. I've never really given Seinfeld or the US The Office much of a shot. The UK Office is very embedded in realism, but yes The Simpsons is pure pomo: irreverent, disjointed, uninhibited by reality.
My pomo touchstones are two of my favourite authors: Samuel Beckett and Thomas Pynchon. Beckett took as his starting point the poverty of language. He often put high and low culture on equal footing. And his characters were inescapably artificial, sometimes suspecting (as in Not I and The Unnamable) that they are fictional characters. Beckett associated the compulsion of characters to speak their dialogue with human compulsion, and particularly the artist's compulsion, to express.
Pynchon was very influenced by his WWII experience, the tendency of humanity toward chaos, loss of faith in nation and the ensuing paranoia, and the ability of circumstances to disintegrate human personality. Gravity's Rainbow, for instance, is about the decentering of personality when the fetishism of something like the atomic bomb turns it into a nominal moral good.
I think Pynchon more than anyone embodies the postmodern viewpoint: decentered perspectives, distrust of truth, distrust in what's real, equality of culture (all of his novels are musicals, for instance), dubiousness of the ordering capability of narrative. All of his stories are illustrations of what happens when your assumptions are shaken.
Personally I am very intrigued by the ideas of hyperreality. In a time where people more than ever live within a simulation of their own lives (social media), the ideas within hyperreality are of great importance in order to analyze this landscape.
If people want more info on postmodernism, Stanford has it covered.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/
I agree that the lines of inquiry you mention lead to moral nihilism. Without some initial assumption of at least one kind of claim "I ought _____," or, "People in my society ought _____," or especially, "All people ought ______," there is no way to arrive at a moral answer simply by making descriptive observations. I understand the is/ought problem. But then I fail to understand how you intend to make work the pairing of the words "objective morality." What transcends the phrase "I don't approve of murder," (1) and leads to the logical conclusion "All people should disavow murder" (2). I think we would agree, statement 1 expresses a personally held (subjective?) value. What makes statement 2 objective, in that it states anything other than the personally held value of the speaker? Does statement 2 become objective because it has the word 'all' in it, or is there something else going on here?
You mention there are questions of norms. What kind of question leads to an answer of the "objective morality" kind? Why do you pursue such questions? What is the value for me to pursue such questions? Ought I? But then what leads me to believe "I ought to pursue moral questions" without simply assuming I should from the get-go?
Perhaps you would prefer to answer a different set of questions from me. Are there competing objective moralities which each lead to their own conclusions, equally defensible, but mutually cancelling? For example, are both statements, "Killing humans is always wrong," and, "Killing is permissible by some class of humans," morally objective but incompatible? If not, what makes one statement objective and the other not objective? And how would you label non objective-moral statements when they appear to have a moral flavor?
Would you be willing to expand on this? Specifically could you explain what 'everything' refers to? Also can you explain how you use the phrase "everything is linked" ?
But postmodernism is still broader than just some conclusions easily dismissive. The link between psychology and postmodern ideas of concepts, language and perspectives of reality makes for some truth values in their conclusions. I'm not a big fan of the extreme conclusion about language being "everything", but as a form of skepticism about theories and our perception of truth, it gives us a way to view our own ideas in yet another perspective in order to test their falsifiability.
It also gives a lens to view our knowledge through. A further detachment from ourselves in order to question something. Like how hyperreality works in a modern world where almost everyone with an internet connection has produced a concept of reality on their social media pages, for which others construct a reality and perspective of them. How do we view the world if we aren't sure where the blindfold is? If we don't know what glasses we are wearing.
While the analytical philosophy gives us more practical conclusions for rational thinking, postmodernism gives us tools to fine-tune these conclusions. So instead of conclusions, I think postmodernism is a powerful method in how we conduct rational thinking.
You might be confusing postmodernism with Post Structralism.
I bet that's where all this confusion originates. :rofl:
? I'm not sure what I said implied I was talking about 'some conclusions easily dismissive'. To call something aesthetic or cultural is not at all to dismiss it. If anything to say so is to note postmodernism's far broader reach than some academic backwater movement.
Postmodernism is closely in connection with poststructuralism.
Quoting StreetlightX
Maybe I read your comment as if postmodernism should only be about culture and aesthetics?
The irony of this is interpreting and deconstructing what that sentence meant :wink:
Quoting StreetlightX
It's not about what it should be. It's about what it is - and that people need to understand what they are talking about before blabbing on about 'subjective truth' or whatever other wrongheaded trash they associate with postmodernism.
Yes, agreed, but do you propose that culture and aesthetics is the only thing that it is?
Chomsky on postmodernism:
I mean, deconstructing reality, language etc. can be applied to more than just culture and aesthetics, right? Just wondering how to interpret the conclusion you made?
It's really a matter of aesthetics, imo.
Yes, agreeing with you. But you said "as it should in any discussion of postmodernism", which sounds a bit dismissal of the depth of postmodernism outside aesthetic and cultural impacts.
Fair enough. I'm trying to countervail the tendency of those in this thread who treat it as primarily an academic or even philosophical movement of some kind. A confusion - itself confused - of a distinction between postmodernity and post-structuralism, a la @Wheatley.
Ok, gotcha.
You reference postmodernism with respect to aesthetics and culture. You speak of an association with 'subjective truth' as wrongheaded trash. Do you find postmodern philosophical approaches eschew discussions about subjective understanding? Or do you only speak pejoratively about the phrase 'subjective truth' ?
Not me.
Lyotard’s philosophy exhibits many of the major themes common to post-structuralist and postmodernist thought.
https://www.iep.utm.edu/lyotard/#SH4b
Lyotard was a theorist of postmodernity. He was incredibly critical of it, and the fact that he is often called a 'postmodernist' philosopher - as if he advocated or celebrated it - is not only wrong, it is practically the opposite of what he would have wanted. He bemoaned the end of the meta-narrative, which was coincident, for him, with the crisis of capitalism. He was a diagnostician of postmodernity, not a cheerleader for it.
I don't have a dog in this fight. I'm just attempting to understand postmodernism, that's all. Thanks for that correction.
Ok. Much appreciate this correction, SLX. :cool:
When I think of postmodern philosophical approaches, I consider deconstruction and the moving away from a meta-narrative. While deconstruction may be understood without taking a 'subjective' approach, the process by which a meta-narrative gets dissolved often appeals to subjectivity (as in, differences in how different subjects come to understand a text).
While I don't find the phrase 'subjective truth' to be an aid to the postmodernist, I find that subjectivity plays an indirect role in their discussions. Especially since many postmodern writers seem eager to slip out of the label of 'relativist' while still maintaining that perspective (as a concept) plays a role in disestablishing the notion of facts.
This is not true. Lyotard was critical of universals and metanarratives in his work.
This is ironic because the primary object of deconstruction was the subject. As in quite literally, 'subjectivity' was perhaps the first thing to go, the first thing to have been 'deconstructed', before almost anything else. Any 'appeals to subjectivity' you might find in deconstruction are simply misreadings by the ignorant or the malicious.
Yes - Lyotard was subtle enough to have critiqued both metanarratives and their dissolution, without acceding to any false choice between them.
Later on i replied with the following:
In short you admitted that objective truth exists. We could all argue which percentage of objective truth is actually really objective truth. Most people would argue relationships matter and then we could all argue how much relationships matter in relation to things that are typically argued to be practical matters (things completely separated from human relationships). As long as two people both agree that subjective truth and also objective truth exist, how much is left in an argument over post-modernism is up to how much energy the two people want to expend arguing/debate about it. Unless you have some side topic in relation to post-modernism, i have no reason to continue the debate at this point in time.
No, I mean he was critical of them in the sense that he thought they were bullshit. He did not bemoan their loss.
Yeah he hated the post-truth fallacy. He did not agree with the view that, since science is cultural, it's truths are no better than ideological ones or lies (same thing). But they all did. Derrida. Rorty. Even Latour in the end.
I was thinking about this earlier. I can't think of a perceived problem with postmodernism that doesn't reduce to an anti-postmodern methodology of the form:
1. Subject privileges X and not !X.
2. Therefore !X.
This is basically the post-truth movement in a nutshell, a systematic lapse in any kind of logic that itself privileges one binary value over another. Postmodernism is (1) by itself. Post-truth adds (2).
Gnomon, if you study LP (in a sort of succinct paraphrase here) they only believed that truth should be investigated and validated through a priori or a posteriori methodology. Subjective truth's, phenomenological truth's, and metaphysical and/or cosmological inquiry was not considered as a valid form of reasoning. Hence, the synthetic a priori: 'all events must have a cause' would be denied by the LP as a methodology in discovering any type of truth. Accordingly, Kant argued that synthetic a priori knowledge is, on the other hand, possible.
That is why many in both modern and post modern physical science and cognitive science, have written about the gaps left from LP. For instance, most all physical theories in physics start with synthetic propositions that can be tested. And most cognitive experiments/theories in psychology involve phenomena beyond that rational from LP.
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not sure I'm following you there. Can you elucidate a bit more on that? In other words, are you implying (as a heterosexual or gay person as you suggested) that both brain hemispheres should be discouraged from use, or somehow not a virtuous ideal?
From what I understand postmodernism is a cultural phenomenon. Yet there are some people (I am not going to name names) who claim that postmodernist philosophers are unethical and want to destroy society, families, and religion.
[b]Postmodernism is an antichristian,[3] far-left, 20th century worldview and academic movement characterized by denial of objective truth, and which asserts that assertions of objective knowledge are essentially impossible.
Alan Sokal famously exposed postmodernism as deeply flawed in 1996 by successfully publishing nonsense in a postmodern journal.[10] Since then, postmodernism has largely been considered a laughingstock among all but the most liberal academics.
https://www.conservapedia.com/Postmodernism[/b]
You can't make this shit up.
:rofl: :rofl: :starstruck:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, agree, self-reflexivity just simply is something we do. (To really scramble the coordinates: it might also be true that 'inauthenticity' is just something we do, so that it would be inauthentic to be authentic, and vice versa )
I think some people actually do like travelling, mountain climbing, camping and skydiving, though I agree that many people fetishize these experiences. Being exposed to Seinfeld (or the culture that produces it) doesn't necessitate that you then see the world as totally absurd, contingent, and so forth. Seinfeld isn't the truth of a culture, it's one expression of one part of it.
But -- I take your point, which I think is essentially drawing attention to an archetypal progression:
(1)Whole->(2)Rupture
(or: [eden->exile])
From (2) Rupture there are a lot of options. For example:
(A)Return
(B)Reconstruct
(C)Toil & Curse
(D)Seek Vengeance
(E)Go Forward
(F) Toil & Joke
etc etc
For example: Ahab, in Moby Dick, is following a [1-2-D] progression where the rupture is linked to a determinate enemy against whom one can avenge oneself. (see also: Satan in Paradise Lost)
Many leftist criticisms of conservatism are that they follow a [1-2-A] progression where A functions as a denial of the fact of 2, and leads to a kitschy dissociation from real conditions. I take this to be the lens through which you're viewing 'camping' and other scare-quoted activities - I think that is true of many who partake in them, though not all.
Following this:
I would say that there are many 'authentic' ways to move in the 1-2-X progression and think it just plum isn't true that 1-2-C is the only one (any of these can be either 'authentic' or 'inauthentic' including C.) I don't really think there is anything sad and absurd about the coder, at least not inherently, it depends a lot on what you're bringing with you. (There is something about certain (most?) 1-2-C proponents that suggests a deep preference for a 1-2-A progression + a certain defeatism. )
Ah. Thank you. Perhaps I don't miss him that much after all.
Yes, Hollywood definitely does, and I think it does it in a very irresponsible and socially unhealthy way. As far as a new set of values, I believe most of humanity has been shifting to a new set of objective truths since the Enlightenment era, and we are getting really close to permanently displacing the old truths, I think it has to do with the internet. And I agree, subjective truth is becoming the new objective truth, and that is a scary prospect. The bottom line is, in order to maintain healthy individuals in a healthy society, a balance needs to be cultivated.
Quoting tilda-psychist
To clarify, I wasn't arguing, I just figured your thoughts made a nice contrast to some ideas I had, so I just wanted to share a different persective. I don't necessarily think you are wrong about anything we've discussed.
And that statement "post modernism stems from a lack of true conservatism among conservatives", couldn't be more accurate. Conservativism is being swept along in the wave of postmodernity, and is as much a victim to postmodernism as anything else in this era.
I have nothing in particular to contribute, just experimenting with thought. I will just add, like everything else, postmodern values are not necessarily bad, and in fact have much merit, for example, providing a powerful basis for individuality. Unfortunately, like most ideological constructs, its greatest proponents tend to drive it towards a radical interpretation and implementation. They key is to use it as a tool to balance out rigid convention, not to make ourselves tools in service of postmodernism
Perfect example of the post-modernist tendency for cynical critique, but ironically used on post-modernism itself.
No. I was merely wondering if the emphasis on ineffable Emotion over explicit Reason in PM reflects a "feminized brain" in male homosexuals, who became leaders of the PoMo movement. It's just a matter of mild philosophical (not prurient) curiosity, not an attempt to validate a left vs right brain hegemony, or to demean women and gays. If most PM promoters were hard-core heterosexual males, I'll have to find a different theory to explain the Postmodern communication "gap".
As discussed in the Venus vs Mars thread, the communication problems between husbands & wives seems to stem from their different ways of expressing ideas and feelings. The wives tend to assume that their husbands should "feel their pain", without having it expressed in precise words. Women seem to be better at such holistic non-verbal Empathy than men. Of course, these are generalizations, with many exceptions that prove the rule.
The Psychology Today article below, summarizes the different cognitive styles as "Men systematize, women empathize". I would translate that into : men tend to analyze strong feelings into sub-structures looking for reasons, while women are more likely to accept their emotions as unexplained black boxes. For example, the woman may feel anxiety without knowing what caused it. So they just want relief or at least sympathy. Whereas, the man immediately looks for underlying causes, which tends to seem remote & cold to someone just wanting a hug of reassurance.
If gay men do indeed have feminized brains, as some have suggested, then their manner of expression may be more holistic than analytic. Which would make it less understandable by left-brain macho males. Hence, the anti-PM animosity expressed in sharp words by the male posters on this thread. :cool:
Feminized Brain : https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-difference-between-a-female-brain-and-a-feminized-male-brain
:mask: :point:
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
:rofl:
Quoting csalisbury
Yes, I agree with that youtube comment as well and as you say is "a little too quick and easy". At the end of the day, the show is not the person watching the show. The show resolves, but YOU have not and thus I also agree that there is a sort of empathy in the Seinfeld no sentimentality versions, because it is as the commenter said (my emphasis bolded) "
Quoting csalisbury
This could be a useful/productive heuristic and analysis of the post-modern idea (i.e. Whole -> Rupture/ Eden -> Exile). However, what are you applying the terms Whole/Eden and Rupture/Exile to? Is it grand narrative/ previous "given" truth ---> to individual perspectives and then one's reaction to the grand narrative once one's grand narrative is deconstructed and neutered of its grandiosity (e.g. Ahab's life previous to the encounter with the whale..Ahab seeing his previous picture of life disrupted by the tragic loss of his leg..Ahab no longer caring about anything but revenge on the whale)?
Quoting csalisbury
How does this apply to antinatalism? 1) Life is good 2) One sees that life is suffering 3) One seeks to prevent that which is suffering (what you possibly mischaracterize as C)?
Rather, I see the post-modernist as saying something like this:
1) schopenhauer1, you have this false "truth-narrative" that suffering "matters" in some way beyond one's own pain and suffering.. In other words, it is used as a basis for action.
2) schopenhauer1, this needs to be deconstructed as simply your narrative. Other people don't care about suffering like your narrative. They have other narratives that are to them more important. The only linking narrative is that everyone has a narrative.
3)schopenhauer1, therefore what are you going to do about this deconstruction of narrative? Are you going to go back to the notion that suffering is still of upmost importance as a guiding principle for action?
It’s redundant to a descriptive explanation, sure. The point is there are things to do other than describe. To insist only on describing is just to ignore other kinds of questions entirely; case in point, prescriptive ones.
You seem to be talking entirely about why people do what they do and judge how they judge what each other do. I’m taking about why people should do this or that, and equivalently how we should judge what they do. Different questions entirely, and answering only the first sheds no light at all on the second.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
It it a claim of objectivity because it says that a certain judgement is the correct one, one that should be held by everyone. It may or may not be a correct claim.
It’s perfectly analogous to the difference between “I see a lake” and “everyone ought to agree that there is a lake there” (which is a weird way of saying “there is really a lake there”). The latter is a claim of objectivity just because it’s not couched in any particular perspective. It may or may not be correct, depending on whether it really does pan out in every perspective or not.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
They are both claims of objectivity, because they are not couched in any particular perspective, but because they are incompatible at least one of them has to be an incorrect claim.
I get that. I think though, the important point to be made viz PM is that, not only did the domains of physics and psychology abandon LP as being the exclusive means to a given truth, that philosophy itself explored all they could explore with the rational left-brain, as it were. And so, another frontier was left to discover/uncover, which as you rightfully suggested, a more wholistic approach to both philosophy, logic (inductive reasoning/synthetic a priori knowledge, etc.), and psychology was embraced. It's not one over the other, as needed, both are good.
Then the other component intrinsic to the human condition, would then make full use out of those two-halves, so why not use them (aka: emotional intelligence)? At the risk of redundancy, I think Aristotle said the greatest gift we can give to ourselves is to 'know thyself'.
So is the claim, "Everyone ought to agree that there is a lake there," also an objective moral claim, since it includes an ought (and you have already established you believe it is an objective claim).
I'm wondering how you propose we verify the correctness of an objective moral claim. I have some sense of how to cash out a descriptive claim (though I may even deny that treating a description as an "objective truth" is problematic). I don't have the same understanding of what makes an ought statement true. If a claim with ought is treated as an imperative, it doesn't seem to lend itself to being true. Saying, "Stop!" or, "Disavow killing for sport!" doesn't seem like the type of language move that gets dubbed 'true' or 'false.'
Quoting Wheatley
I think there's a very valuable skill to learn from reading people who focus on the analysis of discourse and how it intersects with politics. Especially when the truth is ambiguous, opinion will be shaped along lines of expressive power.
If you were a Marxist (or left historicist philosopher) in the 60's and 70's you were living in the wake of a failed international project of overthrowing capitalism. A project that believed intimately in the feedback of theory and practice. They liked that intersection very much, "the most advanced Marxist science" (a trope in MLM) was a guarantor that "the revolutionary class" was adapted to the local conditions of the dialectic of capitalism and thus told you what to do to overcome it.
It all failed. Catastrophically or with outstanding banality depending on where you live. Bang or whimper.
One category Marxists really liked was false consciousness; widely held thought patterns and systems of thought that justified the subjugation of the working class. If you have "the most advanced Marxist science", you purport to know the truth that these thought patterns deviate from or work to conceal.
To contextualise it philosophically, there's a quote from Sartre (in his Maoist phase) directed at Foucault; "Foucault is the last barricade the bourgeoise can erect against Marx". That poststructuralist stuff was not popular with the Marxist left. Intellectuals were very happy to call other intellectuals servitors and spokespeople of false consciousness. Debord even viewed intellectuals with a public voice as class traitors; they were consumer subjects living a life of intellectual freedom so that people could see 'em on TV and feel expressed - engendering passive contemplation rather than actually doing anything worthwhile with their critical impulses.
I think the failure of the internationals and the Soviet project hit the collective consciousness of left theory pretty hard - it especially traumatised the transfer of theoretical truth to effective practice. The truth had failed, maybe what was thought was not the truth to begin with? What went wrong? The common assumption that there was a privileged (by truth) model of historical-political development died along with its widespread Marxist examples. The truth of history you say? If true theory and revolutionary political practice were so connected, how could the truth on history's side fail?
Maybe the truth of models of historical development doesn't suffice to explain how they function in society. The truth of any model doesn't describe its societal role. That hits hard; the truth is relatively impotent. The truth about any truth: it underdetermines its own interpretation a lot.
No, that’s just me being fast and loose with trying to translate an ordinary “there is a lake there” sentence into the weird way you phrased the analogous moral claim.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
By appeal to experiences with imperative import, i.e. hedonic experiences, things that feel bad or feel good. Just like we appeal to empirical experiences to verify descriptive claims. But not just our own experiences at the present moment; that wouldn’t be objective. Objectivity is absence of bias, so it must be based on all experiences of everyone everywhere any time. We can never fully account for all of that, in either descriptive or prescriptive matters, but that gives us the direction to move toward more objectivity.
So do you take objectivity to be a scale as opposed to binary — in that a claim can be more or less objective than another claim? Does it become more objective when more people share the experience? Are moral claims more-objective democratically? Then does that same democratic approach have any relationship to the true-ness of an objective moral claim?
I apologize if it seems like I am grilling you. I really do have an interest in establishing what would make an objective moral claim, or what would make a moral claim true. It's just that as I ran up against these same questions for myself, I did not arrive at a satisfying answer.
The reason I appeal to non-objective senses for sentences has come from hard lost battles with skepticism. Over time I have come to relate to a kind of skepticism which leans toward moral nihilism, not out of desire, but rather lack of certainty.
I'm not so sure. The Russian Empire was already at the start of recession when the Revolution began; indeed, poverty was part of the momentum. It got a lot worse after, then swiftly recovered. Looking back, the Soviet economy continued more or less as the Russian Empire's would have done without that economic crises; i.e. just like most other economic crises, it didn't have a long-term effect. The fall of the Soviet Union did have a negative impact, lengthened with some well-deserved sanctions. On the whole, Russia has fared less well as a capitalist democracy than it did as a theocracy or communist hellhole. I suspect the poor stayed poor throughout.
Quoting fdrake
Yes, perhaps not surprising. Marx's scientific economic theory was a key component of modernism, not just in politics, economics and philosophy but in art, design, manufacturing and technology. While the West were winning the war against Communism, modern art museums would only accept mass-produced, cheap-as-chips, disposable machine-made ceramics, for instance, still humping the Marxist dream. Sartre discovered that there's no "should" in human existence, then somehow discovered this means we "should" all be communists.
Foucault was already a big deal when he abandoned Marxism, describing it as a 19th obsolescence in The Order of Things, and rejecting humanism as a mistaken belief that man is sovereign over himself in the light of how much power epistemes have over man's beliefs. [Archaic gender-biased pronouns not my own.] For Sartre, who had done the most unexistential thing in subscribing wholesale to an external ideology, this was blasphemy.
Ideology does not suffer relativism, pluralism, or criticism at all.
I've heard that. It's been a long time since I've read anything about it; perhaps you can critique what I remembered and sythesised.
(1) The communists really did largely industrialise the country eventually.
(2) Resource distribution was very coupled to status in the political hierarchy and extremely coupled to where one lived. It tended to keep the poorest the poorest, but...
(3) It created a network of industrial specialists that flowed freely (with some symbolic protestation from the state) within the state.
(4) Because the Russian economy was still import and export dependent for basic functioning, the state still had to play global capitalist macro policy. It played the resource extraction/subjugation game with other countries in the bloc.
(5) When the Soviet bloc fell, the Russian economy was already prefigured for capital flow, and this created the authoritarian state + oligarchy we all know and love today.
Bolshevism was ultimately another path from peasantry to capitalism.
I don't want to throw all the blame for the destitution on the communists, the trade sanctions had a huge impact. It's still worth considering a failure of communism for economic reasons as the eventual development was to capitalist oligarchy. It's even more worth considering a failure of communism for humanitarian ones (genocide, police state). Stalin was on the cover of Time magazine a lot and seen as a countercultural hero; I imagine it was like a worldwide version of the Jimmy Saville paedophile scandal for the leftist intellectual elite.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
At the risk of derailing the thread, I think it does now. To quote the Big Lebowski; That's Just Like Your Opinion Man and That's The Stress Talking. Well researched point? Just like your opinion man. Anger at injustice? That's just the stress talking. If we're going to recognize the failure of unifying narratives as a societal feature; that means we emphasise that we already live in a relativistic chaos of filter bubbles. Politics is mostly a spectacle; political representation in its default form is opinion management, how we socialise and are exposed to information is managed by external interests. There's a revolving door between those interests and positions of political power.
Unifying narratives don't hold much weight in a condition where no one trusts who spouts them. Their positive visions of the future are dead before they're even thought. Everything that remains is critique and political negation of manifest injustice; and you don't need a systematic world vision for that, you just need to grasp how a localised injustice is (re)produced. Pay no attention to the capital flow behind the curtain.
Oh, I was just saying that this:
[
[quote=schopenhauer1]Seinfeld is the ultimate post-modern sitcom. In a way we are living in a post-Seinfeld world. How does one take any social situation seriously really? I find it interesting with any form of satire or social criticism, that even after seeing the humor, when people go back to "living their lives" they don't actually take the lessons with them, and go back to living as if their life is not that super set of absurd circumstances as well, but a "real serious and dignified" narrative. A less obvious version of this are people who romantically think that things like "travel", "mountain climbing", "camping", and "sky diving" or (insert any modern form of trying to signal getting back to nature, going "extreme", or being an "travelling explorer") are truly some edifying thing.[/quote]
]
seemed to be an example of a whole->rupture->[x?] frame, specifically the whole->rupture->return one.
In terms of applying the scheme on a grander scale: I think modernism/postmodernism/post-postmodernism is often discussed according to that scheme, but I think that's more a function of the human-mind imposing a particular narrative structure on history (as it always does) than a reflection of an absolute shift. Simpsons-Seinfeld-Office, for example, is one through-line, but only if you're selecting certain shows, excluding others, in order to make it all fit. I think that through-line is true enough, a real expression of something, but it's one thread among many.
:up:
Just so stories are signposts.
It seemed you were saying more than that :smirk: .
Quoting csalisbury
Yes one thread among many is what I'm saying as well (at least how post-modernism characterizes almost everything). My major critique is that post-modernism might be about threads about people's reaction to modernism, but modernism cannot be escaped. By modernism I mean here the very "real" through-line of technology, science, and how it touches all aspects of life (creating the personal narratives that we try to critique, find absurdity in, etc.). You need that superstructure there since pretty much the Enlightenment for the various personal threads and narratives to play out. It is all in reaction to that inescapable reality. You can critique it, accept it, optimism of progress, pessimism of minutia-mongering, the optimism of "authentic" experiences of travel and mountain climbing, and the pessimism of angst of being an autonomous individual in a much wider, often impersonal system. However, you cannot escape the modernism of technology. You can deconstruct narratives all you want, technology, science, and the minutia needed to keep this going is here to stay.
Nice potted history! It made me smile, and it sounds right to me. With the caveat that Russia was never not an authoritarian state. Different political structure, same authoritarianism.
Quoting fdrake
Well I suppose the mirror image of what I said is also true: it isn't at all obvious that ceasing to be a communist country has helped. But there probably is little excuse for that. They have not helped themselves.
Quoting fdrake
Now I'm depressed. It depends where you are, I guess. I think some ideologies are now fair game, yes. I think others are trickier. It would be difficult getting your well-thought-out alternatives to democracy heard anywhere, Islamic theocracy heard in many places, capitalism heard in the US. Postmodernism (yay, back on topic!) has been roundly rejected, and fifty percent of the reason seems to me that it criticised everything: rationalism, science, Marxism, architecture, literature. Half of its counter-criticisms are "It undermines us!" We have some sacred cows left in the field. But fuck it, dude. Let's go bowling!
The Big Lebowski... contender for greatest postmodern film ever? It was so postmodern, Pynchon pretty much reused it for Inherent Vice. (Probably not. I can imagine him working on that novel for six years, going to the cinema to see the latest Coens movie, and becoming extremely paranoid :rofl: )
I think what I see here applies as well. I wonder your thoughts as well.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, I think that's fine. I don't think the original movers and shakers of postmodernism were attempting to undermine the practise of science, which is what conservative scientists accused it of and which pomo's inheritors and exploiters actually did. Lyotard's criticism of scientific knowledge was merely that it must coexist with others. For instance, science cannot account for itself scientifically: it must resort to narrative. So what he's saying here is that, even for science itself, scientific knowledge is insufficient: one must be pluralistic.
That pluralism seems a difficult burden. There was I think it was an IPCC report a few years back containing various perspectives on climate change. One was journalistic, another was social science. Climate change study is fundamentally scientific and, naturally, the social scientists didn't have a great deal of success wrangling ice flow stats into their narrative, leading the usual arrays of right-wing nutjobs to sing their usual songs of hoaxes, inconsistencies, and controversies. Clearly that is a case of non-scientific knowledge being given too much weight in postmodern approaches to what amounts to scientific reporting for governments.
On a broader tangent, I think a lot of conservative ideas are post-modern actually. Look at the defense of Trump. Many people well say, look "Bill Clinton and Joe Biden did x,y,z.. the system itself is already corrupted" thus Trump's very transparent narcissism and divisiveness is given a pass. Really what they are saying is "If I don't like the other person's policies, then character counts. If I do agree with policies, character doesn't matter". Anyways, it is a form of relativism to say all is corrupt therefore this instance doesn't matter as well and is a dangerous way of thinking for any form of representative democracy.
Anyways, I see what you are saying that what one does with science, especially as it relates to competing forces of economics and political ideology is up for narrative grabs. However, I am talking about technology and science en totale. That is to say.. You enjoy perhaps having air conditioning, electricity, refrigeration, running water, advanced medicine, engineering of all kinds, transportation and the like. That just can't be narrated away. One has to reckon with that core reality. Post-modernism is always in relation to this core, but it never overtakes it. So it can make fun of the realities of having boring jobs to support this way-of-life (of the system that brings about this technology), it can provide absurd takes on things, but it is always apart of the very thing it looks to critique. There is no escaping it.
Or Bush Jr's "alternative facts" era. Or the Anglican church's "Teach the controversy!" I think the conservative post-truth MO was learned from the aforementioned inheritors and exploiters of pomo on the left, though. "Everything is a social construct" is a metanarrative. "Everything is equally true or not true, it's all just perspective" is a metanarrative. Alternative facts and fake news seem to me more cynical recyclings of that.
Quoting schopenhauer1
For sure, narrative truth should not squeeze out scientific truth. My point was that I don't think it was ever intended that such an anti-technological or anti-scientific stance should be taken from pomo theory, although it obviously was. Feyerabend, who was uncoincidentally a very religious man, is the only big hitter I know of who actually tried to undermine the role science plays in society. Latour, another very religious man, was compulsively critical of scientific culture, but his actual criticisms were sound and are taught today in at least one Physics department (my old one).
Finally OP-relevant: I genuinely do think that if people were less reactionary, postmodern criticism could be useful in other ways. When I was still active in research, my department started a graphene group years after other universities had had many successful publications on graphene. By this time, graphene was a thriving area of research but no longer the fave of the condensed matter community, which had turned its eye toward topological insulators. So why get in so late? Because that's where the funding was and that's what everyone else was doing. We weren't likely to add value, but God forbid we study one of the other, lesser-studied subjects! And we're not talking a two-bit former tech college, we're talking a Russell Group university.
This is exactly the sort of bullshit postmodern critics of science were banging on about. We have cultural inertias that actually stop us doing good science. It's a bit like cinema. Remember when Scream came out and then multiplexes were filled with cheap crappy horror films for years until the next thing became a fad? Same goes for science. People study and get funding for whatever most people happen to be studying and getting funding for, while interesting questions go unanswered.
This is the sort of level postmodern criticism was aiming at. It was quite legitimate and, had the Sokals of the world not been such a bunch of crybaby reactionists, would have been really useful to take on board. I do think it's a shame that, to the extent that pomo had value, we killed it off, and, to the extent that it survived, it had hugely negative value.
Yes. That's the point of my BothAnd philosophy. I'm open to more holistic thinking, which is partly why I was looking into the PoMo movement, to see if they knew something I needed to know. But I am mostly a left brain thinker. So, the PM writings that I've seen just make no sense to me. Maybe I need "Queer Eye for the Straight Philosopher". :joke:
BothAnd : Individuals may have strong beliefs & principles. But interpersonal endeavors require more flexibility. So, this blog is an argument for Relativism, Negotiation, Compromise, & Cooperation.
The usual alternative to these wavering wimpy ways is the unyielding dominant stand-point of Absolutism, Conflict, and Competition. Royal and Imperial political & religious systems tend to adopt an autocratic stance of “my way or the highway”. Whereas, In more democratic and egalitarian systems, the marketplace of ideas will determine truths and values.
http://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page6.html
Was going to respond in more depth to you, never did; the @Kenosha Kid beat me to it. What he said! (I think we're largely in agreement, ourselves, schop; besides antinatalism, anyway)
For sure. I think you can keep the baby of these stories while throwing out the bathwater : just because they're human impositions doesn't mean they're not worthwhile. I think they function as projections, which are, as you say, signposts. As signposts, they key you in on what one part of you is dimly aware you need to work on personally.
So you get the best of both worlds. You still get to keep everything of value in those stories, only seen (more helpfully now!) for what they were; at the same time you no longer have to project yourself into the world so much, which unclutters your vision, and lets you see it in its grainier actuality (which usually (not always) means: locally)
Antinatalism?!? :scream:
Quoting Gnomon
I suppose the irony would be that the left brain my-way-or-the-highway persona would be considered deficient and/ or not normal in their way of thinking :chin:
Ha! I suspect that some wives consider their clueless left-brain husbands to be mentally deficient when they give the wife a box of tampons for her birthday. That's a joke I recently heard. :joke:
Ha! That's a whole nother confounding correlation of causal associations!! LOL
Not quite. Objectivity, as in making an objective claim, a claim that something is objectively correct, is binary. Either you are saying that this opinion is the right one, for everyone, or else you're just saying that it's the one you happen to have. (I call this distinction between these different kinds of speech-acts "impression" vs "expression", and while I do think that impressions are kind of imperative-like in that they are trying to get others to think some way, and expressions are kind of indicative-like in that they are just showing what you think, both impressions and expressions can have descriptive content or prescriptive content, which are respectively also indicative-like and imperative-like in different ways).
Objective reality/morality is the limit of a series of increasingly improved subjective opinions on what is real/moral. There being such a thing as "improvement" in subjective opinion is the only practical consequence of there being such a thing as objectively correct, since as it is a limit it can never actually be reached. There being something objective in principle just means that differing subjective opinions are commensurable: one can be less wrong than another, rather than all being equally (or at least incomparably) wrong.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
If by democratic you mean majoritarian, then I don't think there's anything democratic about it.
When we do physical sciences, we don't take a poll on what people believe, or even what they perceive, and then say that whatever wins that poll is the thing that's objectively real, or that things with higher poll numbers are "more objective". But we do take into account everything that is observable by everybody in every context, repeating other people's observations by standing in the same context as them, and as necessary accounting for any differences between us until we can confirm. Then we come up with whatever model we have to come up with that accounts for all of those observations, even if that model isn't what anyone perceived or believed to begin with.
I say to approach ethics in exactly that same manner. It doesn't matter what anyone intends or desires, but it matters what everyone feels in a more raw way -- their experiences of pain, hunger, etc, before they're interpreted those into particular desires or intentions. We need to take account of all such experiences (which I term "appetites") had by everybody in every context, standing in the same context as them to confirm that that is actually what someone experiences in such a context, as necessary accounting for any differences between us until we can confirm. Then we come up with whatever model we have to come up with (a model of how the world should be, rather than how it is: a blueprint, not a still life) that accounts for all of those experiences, even if that model isn't what anybody desired or intended.
The limit of the series of models come up with by the physical sciences done in such a way, as we take into account more and more empirical experiences (observations) by more different kinds of observers in more different contexts, just is what objective reality is. Likewise, the limit of the series of models come up with by comparable "ethical sciences" done in that analogous way, as we take into account more and more hedonic experiences by more different kinds of people in more different contexts, just is what objective morality is.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
I didn't feel like you were grilling me, but I do appreciate you saying this anyway. It makes me feel more like I'm helping someone figure out something they've tried and failed to figure out, and less like I'm arguing with someone trying to convince them of something they don't want to believe.
You may be interested in another thread where we're mostly discussing the same topic, and more generally the principles that underlie my view on that topic and all others:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8626/the-principles-of-commensurablism
Oh, I still hold the position.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
And why the scream?
Quoting csalisbury
Ha, please give us the secret! To be fair, there is no reason not to be antinatalist, I don't know if you still hold that non-antinatalist position. Looks like you do. We've never discussed AN from the position of how it is just force converting people (by birthing them) into the ideology (of any given society). Not sure if that's post-modern, but it is certainly understanding that there is an agenda going on, new people are tools to carry out this agenda, and considerations of suffering are indifferently left in the ditch as just an unjustified but necessary byproduct of this agenda. See my recent post here:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Instantly made me listen to it lol.
It is interesting you bring up the idea of limit. I'm not sure if you mean this as a metaphor, or as a literal model of what you are trying to convey. From what you say, I gather that objectivity is binary. I also gather that an objective claim can either be correct or incorrect. While no idea can be more correct than correct, I gather you are saying some ideas can be more incorrect than others.
I appreciate that you put your model in terms of limits. That is a language I can follow. In analysis, limit is understood with a very formal definition. The concept gets described in terms of number, with deltas and epsilons. There is a very precise and formal way to test for a limit.
Would you be willing to share a formal definition of limit as you apply it to objective morality? I'm trying to gauge if you are trying to convey something you intuitively understand, or if your idea can withstand the scrutiny of logical analysis.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This is an interesting description of what we do with science. I would have described the method differently. Could I ask you, do you have hands on experience with science? Have you done lab work in a university setting or been paid for scientific research? I ask because my experience has been different.
But we've talked about this before. And our conversation on this thread is much more interesting than the antinatalism thing.
I do mean it in the same sense it is used in calculus, something that a series asymptotically approaches, but I don’t mean it to be the exact sense of the limit of a numerical series. I guess you could call it a qualitative rather than necessarily quantitative version of a limit. Though in cases where it is possible to quantify the thing in question, I guess such a qualitative limit becomes the same thing as the ordinary quantitative limit, making the former concept perhaps a conservative extension of the latter.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
Yes. It is the old idea of being less wrong, as in
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
I have not, but I think I know where you are going with this, because the accounts I hear from people who have don’t generally involve thinking of things in terms like that, and that’s neither surprising nor a problem to me.
My description is a very high-level account of things so abstract they just form a background part of the norms of science that don’t usually need to be spoken about. The only time a working scientist would need to account for science in such a way is when justifying it against something radically different, like fundamentalist religion, or (back on topic) truth-relativist postmodernism.
Which would then be doing philosophy of science, or epistemology more generally, which is why such things are discussed more in those fields, and not among working scientists.
I hesitate to raise this point here, because I by and large agree with what you're saying, but....
I don't have a good grasp on Lyotard, but his The DIfferend, for whatever reason, is a book I keep coming back to and never finishing. The central concept, the 'differend', is something like: a thing that needs to be articulated, but is inarticulable in an existent 'idiom' (read: 'language game') The book is about how new language games emerge, or how existing language games are changed. I agree with the defense of Lyotard against pop-lyotard, but also real-lyotard was (1) firmly insistent on the incapacity of existing 'idioms' to express what needs to be expressed and (2) painstakingly focused on showing what that process looks like when you retain good, analytical hygiene (the book is shot through with kripke and wittgenstein and kant) while also alllowing for something new.
By which I mean: The pop-Lyotard is wrong; but the defense against the pop-lyotard is also off - he's not bemoaning - but is nevertheless closer to the truth, as correction, than the pop version.
Hard digression for sure, but I will never stop complaining that no one reads Lyotard's work besides the pomo report. He's the best mix of analytic and continental. I kind of want to start a reading group and finally finish this book. It's a gem.
Can you elaborate on this? It almost sounds like these people are beyond deliberative capabilities, not just merely ignorant.
Quoting csalisbury
Then what are we talking about? You also know that it can be about marginal prevention of suffering. One less couple having kids, is one less possible sufferer. It doesn't have to be "If a significant amount of people don't stop, it is thus a useless, ineffective position". But I'll grant you this, it is more than the merely trying to reduce suffering. It points to meaning. Why start another life, brings in all sorts of ideas regarding purpose, "what's this all for?", absurdity, the bare-bones of existing itself. I always categorize the main motives of humans as simply survival-related. comfort-seeking, and entertainment-seeking. I also recognize its cultural context (i.e. our "modern" one post-Enlightenment, informed by the contingencies of history, and the situatedness of culture, causality, time, space, and circumstance). This "is" the bare-bones human condition. Why do we seek to reproduce this condition? I also mentioned that it is enculturating new people in a way of life. Why the compulsive "need" for enculturating more people into a way of life? It is oddly unjustified except in the "scare quotes" I have used in my previous post (i.e. not very good reasons to mess with the whole, ya know, existential status of a whole other person). We can self-reflect on every level, yet the minute we do so with procreation and its implications for negative consequences, absurdity, and the human condition, it is panned out-of-the-gate? There is something suspicious about that reflexive defense itself. It is almost as bad as people saying, "The political system is corrupt, ergo, I support this particular political corrupt person because there is no escaping the corruption". It is using the "everyone's corrupt" to support "this brand of corrupt".
Quoting csalisbury
Yes, agreed. I am fascinated with minutia-mongering for example. The ways that fellow humans (including myself if forced) to focus on minute points of data, knowledge, etc. in order to create technological applications. All the steps involved in manufacturing technology, all the procedures around distributing it through distribution/logistics boggles the mind how details of details of details are focused on by various individuals.
Great example here.. and this is nothing:
[quote=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unit]An ALU is a combinational logic circuit, meaning that its outputs will change asynchronously in response to input changes. In normal operation, stable signals are applied to all of the ALU inputs and, when enough time (known as the "propagation delay") has passed for the signals to propagate through the ALU circuitry, the result of the ALU operation appears at the ALU outputs. The external circuitry connected to the ALU is responsible for ensuring the stability of ALU input signals throughout the operation, and for allowing sufficient time for the signals to propagate through the ALU before sampling the ALU result.
In general, external circuitry controls an ALU by applying signals to its inputs. Typically, the external circuitry employs sequential logic to control the ALU operation, which is paced by a clock signal of a sufficiently low frequency to ensure enough time for the ALU outputs to settle under worst-case conditions.
For example, a CPU begins an ALU addition operation by routing operands from their sources (which are usually registers) to the ALU's operand inputs, while the control unit simultaneously applies a value to the ALU's opcode input, configuring it to perform addition. At the same time, the CPU also routes the ALU result output to a destination register that will receive the sum. The ALU's input signals, which are held stable until the next clock, are allowed to propagate through the ALU and to the destination register while the CPU waits for the next clock. When the next clock arrives, the destination register stores the ALU result and, since the ALU operation has completed, the ALU inputs may be set up for the next ALU operation.[/quote]
There is no post-modernizing this minutia/necessary factoid of how computation works in computer processors. Yep, it's there. It's applicable (aka "real"), it is useful to many people who don't even know the minutia that brings them the technology. That is our reality, that is what we are replicating for survival, comfort, and entertainment's sake (i.e. that is our "cultural context" I keep talking about as the milieu for how our survival/comfort/entertainment plays out).
Long story short (and please don't just quote this last sentence.. I did write a lot above), Post-modernism wants to find ironic, absurd humor to give us an escape from the actuality, the real, the dull, the boring, the minutia, of the everydayness of the modern. In this regard, it is ineffective, escapist, and doesn't change the dull reality any ounce. At best it creates insensible sentimentality to try to console, but mainly it is simply the reiteration that there is no where to go, nothing to do.
As for the rest: it seems like you don't like your job - that's a common thing. Strip metaphysics and go from there.
I'm getting that.
Quoting csalisbury
I guess you figured out the source of all the problems. You seemed to have not even attempted to discuss minutia-mongering as it relates to modernism (contra post-modernism). So looks like you're just not interested in what schop1 has to say in general. You've entertained the pop-culture stuff and DFW and published works.. But schop1 neologisms = not engaging in.. I'll try to throw more well-known philosophy content your way that is not from schop1, but peer-reviewed and/or published literature stuff only ;).
"Lyotard's affiliations here would seem to be with the Anti-Oedipus of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who also warned us, at the end of that work, that the schizophrenic ethic they proposed was not at all a revolutionary one, but a way of surviving under capitalism, producing fresh desires within the structural limits of the capitalist mode of production as such. Lyotard's celebration of a related ethic emerges most dramatically in the context of that repudiation of Habermas's consensus community already mentioned, in which the dissolution of the self into a host of networks and relations, of contradictory codes and interfering messages, is prophetically valorized.
...Lyotard's insistence on narrative analysis in a situation in which the narratives themselves henceforth seem impossible is his declaration of intent to remain political and contestatory; that is, to avoid one possible and even logical resolution to the dilemma, which would consist in becoming, like Daniel Bell, an ideologue of technocracy and an apologist for the system itself. How he does this is to transfer the older ideologies of aesthetic high modernism, the celebration of its revolutionary power, to science and scientific research proper. Now it is the latter's infinite capacity for innovation, change, break, renewal, which will infuse the otherwise repressive system with the disalienating excitement of the new and the "unknown" (the last word of Lyotard's text), as well as of adventure, the refusal of conformity, and the heterogeneities of desire."
Which is to say - as I read it - that the recourse to the paralogism (and the differned, after it) and so on is a strategic initiative, one specifically tailored to the postmodern condition, and not some trans-historical maneuver designed to work at all times in all places. So there's a kernel of truth in Lyotards' own 'postmodernism', but it is, once again, tributary to the condition that 'preceded' him and to which he is responding in his own time and place.
:rofl:
I did think this was your idea of objective reality; you've said as much before, although also said things that caused me to doubt it. It doesn't seem to mean the same as definitions I've seen or used. By lieu of it being an extrapolation of subjective opinions, it is not mind-independent, for instance.
When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former.
What differs between your concept and the mathematical concept is seriously important though. In mathematics, the quantitative nature of the concept of limit allows it to get defined formally. There is a clear method in mathematics for testing if a limit exists, or calculating said limit if a series converges.
I am asking if you would be willing to formalize your concept of limit, as it pertains to objective morality, so that given moral claims do lend themselves to analysis. Without this formal definition of concept and a subsequent proposition that extends the concept of limit, I'm afraid you haven't carved out grounds for your case for objective morality, yet.
What you are saying so far is that an understanding of objective morality can be formulated. That is an interesting claim, but it has no teeth until you actually demonstrate such a formulation. I'm alright with you describing a concept of limit that relies on a qualitative rather than quantitative approach. However, I would like to have more discussion on the qualities then. I get a sense that you have a strong intuition on which what you are saying is based. I'm interested in how you would nail down your intuition into sentences that would allow me to interact with the same intuition and make it my own. I would be interested in making sentences of a kind that are consistent with your approach, where we would both go along with some sentences and also mutually agree on which sentences get categorized as errors or wrong.
If your hypothesis about objective morality is correct, then at the very least, there must be some set of sentences which you and I can identify and label as "correct" through some method as well as some other set of sentences which get labeled "incorrect" by the same method. If the method you choose to employ hinges on the concept of limit, then we should both also be able to evaluate the degree of incorrectness in some statements and come to consensus on that degree.
Admittedly, I'm skeptical we will arrive at a formal method and even more skeptical that we will arrive at consensus on how we evaluate the incorrectness of sentences. I'm willing to go along with you as long as you are willing to contribute to the discussion. I will try to be charitable to your side, and not just argue for the sake of promoting my counter-narrative. However, my commitment to charity does not restrict me from employing all means of reasonable critique to analyze the foundations of your argument.
But I fear you are treating "scientists" as too broad a class. Sure, there are some scientists who still employ the variable of "putative reality" in their interpretations, but I believe for most scientists who are philosophically inclined, that interpretation is not the norm.
In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model.
I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality).
But that's not how I model. That's also not what the mathematical methods I employ do. If anything, mathematical modeling works to reduce the expectation of putative objective reality. It may come to be recognized in terms of parsimony or Occam's razor.
A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. An account of an underlying putative objective reality does not get mathematically defined. Instead, a "good mathematical model", includes only data and formulas to translate call to response. Existence of any other kind is not philosophically covered — either in the science or the math.
That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.
What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts.
... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality.
What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena.
Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field?
That is not what is left in the Standard Model, though. I think what you've got here is an exclusive definition of "model" that only applies to whatever minimal thing you happen to be hypothesising about at the time, as use-once-and-destroy model. This does not match the definition of "model" in "Standard Model" though.
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
Applying the SM to a particular question will give you predictions and, yes, you will only use the pertinent bits (e.g. ignore strong interaction in weak phenomena). But the SM itself is a model of an aspect of reality, derived from, but now independent of, particular problems in quantum field theory. It itself is not the minimal representation of the problem in hand and it exists whether you are performing a calculation or not. (Let's not go down the "Does the Moon exist when I don't observe it root :rofl: )
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics.
Fair enough. I've never worked in a quantum-physics lab, so I fear I'd get in over my head if I got into the hairy details of everything that goes into developing the Standard Model, how observations get made, and how you would interpret the data. I would be at a disadvantage if we were to discuss details of that particular science.
Could I ask we move the example of science under discussion to something more tangible and less reliant on complex formulas, building sized machinery, detailed computer algorithms, various interpretive frameworks, uncertainty principle, relativity, and interactions between fields and forces. I fear we may get bogged down in discussions about how that science gets performed, instead of science as a general theme.
Could I propose we move the discussion to something more tangible, say billiard balls, which operates on the scale of medium-sized dry goods? The application of Philosophy of Science should remain the same without loss of generality. At any point, please let me know if the simplification dismisses something important to the discussion.
For this discussion, I even propose we make the greatest number of simplifications possible to only keep "Science" as a field as the topic under consideration. Let's assume no friction, sin x = x, no uncertainty comes into play in the measurement of mass and velocity, etc.
In the discussion of billiard balls, an interesting finding may be the conservation of momentum when two balls collide. To model this, all we need to know are the masses of the balls, their locations, and their velocities. The variables we model are m: mass, x_1_i and x_2_i: the initial positions of the balls, v_1_i and v_2_i: the initial velocities of the balls, t: time elapsed, and some formula preserving momentum.
From the phenomena that are measured for the variables, the model predicts the observed velocities of the billiard balls after a collision. The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand.
We may come to test the model by making a large number of observations of pairs of billiard balls and recording their initial and ending velocities. But the accuracy of the model does not tell us about it's accuracy with respect to some putative reality. Instead, the only measure we have available for the accuracy of the model is a measure of error as it relates the sample to the model. I restate, the only features available to the science are phenomena (sample data) and model (formula relating the conservation of momentum). Even the assertion that momentum is a putative thing is questionable. Momentum, designated by the variable p, can be said to be another mathematical construct (an emanation of the model).
Maybe I'm missing something when you talk about a throw-away model. But I'll have to ask you to explain further if I am going to understand what you are saying about Science.
That is correct; the mathematics itself guarantees no generality. But modelling is something people do with mathematics, not something mathematics does. The observer in question formulates theoretical general laws of billiards which may be falsified, but are not.
50 years later, those laws are still predicting outcomes of billiards events. Why is it so reliable? Is it because the mathematics is so clever? It it because billiardologists have a culture that produces reliable frameworks? Both are important to discovering general laws of billiards, but cannot explain why the model itself never, ever fails.
That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.
Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect.
If all that we were saying reduced to the same outcomes (which is not what you are saying, I know) this discussion would be pointless. You and I would be simply arguing over semantics and syntax. But I believe you and I agree, this is not a to-may-to vs. to-mah-to issue.
The reason I am less eager to conform the language to one of objective reality focuses on the use of a single ontology to underlie all phenomena. From what I understand, (and admittedly I may be in waters over my head,) the way apples and oranges exist in some objective reality are different than the constituents of a Standard Model. On one level, apples and oranges are things I can see, touch, feel, and taste while quantum particles do not obtain of the same phenomena. On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. And we've only discussed some domains of physics, the queen of science, without getting into different structures that exist in chemistry, biology, and medical science. And then even more when we get to social sciences.
By divorcing the ontology that informs our grammar into seeming things (phenomena) and existing things (objective reality as noumena) we find that modeling only requires phenomena. That our minds gravitate toward persistent objects (an instinct maybe – perhaps misguided) does not mean that the naive understanding of things-as-real best describes the world as it is, fundamentally and metaphysically. I advocate a departure from this common sense approach in order to gain better understanding of phenomena as not-guided by intuitions of substance or essence. I may be speaking above my pay grade, but I understand that at least some physicists agree with my interpretation.
That we use the mathematical models to perform an induction from observation set to general is already somewhat problematic for me, but I am able to go along with that approach insofar as it works (or has worked in the past) to predict future phenomena when constrained by the same data gathering techniques that were used to develop the model. I am reticent to make an additional leap that such predicted phenomena tell us more than that — some expectation about the world as a whole or reality beyond phenomena, which becomes a second level of induction.
Can you tell me, do you know of any fellow physicists who may advocate a similar philosophical or linguistic approach that I do? Or in your experience have all physicists come to consensus against me?
Being at the unattainable limit of that series, it is independent of anybody’s particular mind. It is composed entirely of mind-accessible stuff, but people thinking that it is this or that way isn’t what makes it what it is. People just have limited access to it in practice, though all of it is accessible in principle, so they can at best access and incomplete approximation of it. But the series of increasingly more complete approximations points us at whatever lies at the end of that limit.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Nothing needs to be empiricism-independent to be objective. You are conflating objectivism with what I call “transcendentalism”, that being anti-phenomenalism, empiricism being the description half of phenomenalism.
It’s the difference between being mind-independent and mind-inaccessible. We can never know anything about any reality that’s non-empirical; we’d just have to take someone’s word on it. The only reality that we can know and interrogate and try to come to grips with is the empirical one that we have direct but incomplete access to.
s/reality/morality and s/empirical/hedonic
So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.
These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.
The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.
My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.
So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain.
Understood, but an extrapolation from actual mental and cultural content still isn't independent of mind and culture. It does not contain identical content, but it contains extrapolations of real mental and cultural moral trends.
To put it another way, had the trend of moral history been to become more individualistic, more selfish, more cruel (holy f**k, that's the current trend!), the extrapolation and thus the quality of moral objectivity, would be different.
The assumption of the objective reality underpinning scientific models, which themselves also have a trend, is that it is truly independent of that trend. It is precisely the supposed objectivity that stops us going down e.g. deterministic models of elementary particles: we couldn't do that because the phenomena and our idea of objective reality would diverge. Equivalents of the sorts of utilitarian local moral developments of places like Chad, which will yield a better morality in Chad through socialisation, don't really work in theoretical modelling. Funding might be conformist, what you choose to study might be conformist, but the actual models themselves have to match how the assumed objective reality seems. If it exists, it informs us. The moral objective reality you describe is informed by us only if I have understood it correctly.
Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement.
Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)?
I get that apples and oranges are things. They are objects we may say exist. (I'll remain silent as to their putative-ness.) I would say they are constituents of reality. Is work a real thing too? Does work exist? Exist as a putative object? How about fields? Charges? I'm wondering if the objectively real things in a quantum model are of the same order of things in the realm of apples and oranges?
It may seem like I am arguing frame or mereology or substance as opposed to putativity, but I wonder at what order are our concepts just ideas, and at what order do they become real, putative things?
Is a dollar a real thing? Not the dollar bill, but the value I own? How about Germany, is that a real thing? Is democracy or justice a real thing? Which are puttative and which are ideal?
Which are phenomena and which are the real and underlying things?
Phenomena seem knowable ot me. What phenomena are about seems more vague.
I still haven't been talked off the perch of "phenomena and model" which it seems I can know.
I'm not saying to extrapolate from the trends of actual models we have to project what the final correct model will end up being at the infinitely far future. If we could do that, we would just jump straight to using that model right away.
I'm saying that if you have any means of ordering models as superior or inferior, even if you don't know what lies at the unattainable extreme in the "superior" direction, that very ordering entails that some models are less wrong than others, and increasingly approximate some not-wrong-at-all (i.e. correct) one at that unattainable extreme.
With the physical sciences, we have some way to gauge which models are superior to others (concordance with empirical experience), and that very idea of some being superior to others just is our idea of objectivism about reality. Saying there is an objective reality isn't saying that any of our models are, or even in principle ever can be, perfectly in accordance with it. Just that there is some way to gauge which are closer or further from it.
All we need for objectivism about morality is a similar notion of measuring moral models against each other and gauging which is superior or inferior to the other. (This is exactly why I call my philosophy "commensurablism").
To deny that is just complete moral nihilism, saying that no notion of morality is better than any other; that Hitler didn't actually do anything wrong, because nothing at all is "actually wrong", people just have different feelings about things.
As I recall you already deny that all moral systems are equally wrong, and think that some are less wrong than others. That's all moral objectivism is.
The rest is you conflating objectivism with what I call "transcendentalism" (anti-phenomenalism), and therefore with absolutism (or fideism, anti-criticism, excessive certainty), likely all because of reducing talk of norms to talk of facts (scientism, which entails justificationism [non-critical rationalism] about norms, which makes it a kind of what I call "cynicism", which entails nihilism via infinite regress). It looks to me like you are doing precisely the top part of this diagram with regards to moral, and likely misreading me as doing the bottom part (which which I disagree just a vehemently as the top):
Nothing wrong with disagreement. Unless you disagree?
Quoting Adam's Off Ox
If you mean what I think you mean, I'd say not. A model is not an exact description of an objectively real object. It is an approximate and incomplete description of phenomena from whose regularity we assume has a single underlying reality.
Brains also have models of apples. We can identify apples very quickly and anticipate their tastes. Things that look like apples but aren't can be mistaken for apples; things that don't look like apples aren't mistaken for them, unless the brain is at fault. Things that comprise my brain's model of an apple are: a generic apple shape, one of a set of generic apple colours or colour patterns (such that I can say: "This is apple white paint" or "The colour gradation is like an apple"), a generic apple size, a generic apple weight, a generic apple cross section with the membrane on the outside, the flesh most of the way through, then the core with its pips on the inside, several generic apple textures (waxy membrane, wet crunchy wall), and a narrow spectrum of apple flavours.
Newtonian mechanics has a much simpler approximation to the same apple. Mostly, it will be treated as a point particle with a generic apple weight. A more thorough model would be of a slightly irregularly-shaped body with an almost uniform density. Either way, it will be a generalised apple, as applicable to any apple as this one.
A biologist's model of the same apple will be more thorough than the brain's in some regards. They will see the different cells that make up the membrane, wall, core and pips. But they would have to defer to the chemist to account for the flavour, etc. Again, this will be a generalised apple. A chemist will also have a more thorough view of each of the kinds of cells that make up that apple, in particular a generalised model of the chemical constituents of those cells, but will be unconcerned with the macroscopic features of the apple.
The quantum chemist will focus on the chemical constituents of the cells and not necessarily even be concerned with the cells themselves. They are interested in how the structures of the molecules' atoms gives rise to electron behaviour that correspond to chemical laws.
At each stage, each person may be thinking about the same apple (the thing "under consideration"), but only I have a particular concern with this apple because this apple is not a regular, generic thing but a particular thing.
The sort of objective reality I have been talking about is not the objective reality of this particular apple. It is the objective reality of the universe having physical laws that mean: when I bite this apple I will taste apple flavour; when I throw this apple at a person it will hurt yay much; when I dissect this apple it will have these cells; when I perform chemical experiments on a parenchyma cell I will see these sorts of results; when I irradiate chemicals found in parenchyma cells I will see this emission spectrum.
Does that make sense? The objective reality of the apple itself is a slightly different concern. I can't build a theory out of a single data point, and I can't make a prediction from one apple alone (although a chemist could do a lot with a single apple). An apple is really a single phenomenon. I do feel justified in believing in the objective reality of the apple itself for similar reasons, but more phenomenological than scientific.
When our ancestors lived in disparate social groups, I don't think, for even the most philosophical among them, a philosophy of morality would have been possible. We are hard-wired for selfish actions, hard-wired for altruism and hard-wired for empathy. Moral decisions would have been personal and practical: do I steal the food from the neighbour and risk being chased out of the group? do I give half of my food to my starving neighbour and go hungrier for a couple of days?
Morality only really became a concern when people came regularly into contact with people they were not related to and might not benefit from in the future. Not extending altruism and empathy beyond our kin was the mode of the powerful and the thuggish. I want this land, I will kill enough of its inhabitants until no one questions that it is mine. I want vast, cheap labour, I will steal people from their homes and violently force them to work. I want to copulate with this woman I don't know, I will rape. Alongside the uglier history of moral behaviour, we have also had people who took the opposite or an intermediate stance, which is the view that has been winning out for a while, a stance that the powerful still resist: we should extend altruism and empathy to everyone as if they were our kin. And then there are the majority who genuinely don't care.
There is a fundamental reason why the first and last of these are morally inferior positions, and it has nothing to do with any mind-independent moral objectivity and everything to do with the real biological basis of our morality: those views are fundamentally hypocritical and antisocial. The capacity for empathy, necessary for socialisation, in turn necessary for our survival and even our evolution, is as present in a slave-owner as in an emancipationist, and the slave-owner can't possibly be of the opinion that, if the roles were reversed, he would be okay with that. His actions, as indicated by his lack of altruism and empathy, are the same kind of antisocial as the stone age ancestor who steals the food from his neighbour. We have a survivalist basis of morality: the slave owner should be outcast.
To that extent, there is usually a basis to choose.
Beyond that, morality is an existential problem. We are thrown into a world of strangers with a biological capacity to be kind and empathetic toward people but we also have the ability to not bother. Doing no harm is easy enough, but is it better to do good than do no harm, is it better to do good for 10 and harm 1 than do no harm, etc., etc. Moral philosophy. There is no biological, survivalist, social basis for these sorts of moral questions. It is the same as meaning in existentialism. You have existence, and you have freedom, and there is no telling what you should do with it. Likewise you have wants and needs, but also altruism and empathy, and there's no rulebook for how to apply these in what combinations for how long and how often. Your morality is what you do with the choices you're given. You can keep your head down. You can appease your conscience and whet your oxytocin appetite with occasional arbitrary acts of kindness. You can become an activist for an oppressed people or dig wells in Africa until you drop. And whatever you do, this is you, making you as you go along, and as long as you're not antisocial (and most people with power still are) and fall into the group above, there's no should. This, for me, is a proper description of hedonism.
And, as with existentialism, morality is shaped by particular, local, temporary socialisation. Where they differ is that a good existentialist will tell you to ignore everyone else and be authentic, whereas a good person is designed to be socialised: that's part of the package. But we are not designed for a particular socialisation.
I think the illusion of objective morality comes down to the fact that, in history, most moral progress is made on the first kinds of moral questions regarding genuinely antisocial behaviour. Moral philosophy often deals with the second kind and struggles to find a basis for choosing, because they are not questions of anti-social/social behaviour, but what particular uses I should make of my social capacity. It is presumed, from the illusion of objective morality, that there must be answers and we just don't know them. People from one region at one time swing this way, people from another region another time swing that. Who is right? There must be an answer. But there isn't one. Your morality was not evolved to face these kinds of problems.
I may end up getting more wordy in my descriptions in the future, where "apple" is a complex model made up of many submodels which each predict some particular phenomena.
I don't disagree that there is something that persists that drives the phenomena I experience. And that something drives my experience in a way that is independent of my will. It's not like we disagree with that sense of objective or putative. I do see from what you are describing that I have become less averse to a putative aspect of a model, although I believe I will still tend to focus my language on the consistency of observed phenomena.
I still have some objections to the concept of "objective reality", but that has more to do with rejecting an authoritarian approach to language than an actual interpretation of model.
Thank you for the discussion. I feel I learned something and was guided to a change in view, even if it doesn't do much to change my behavior.
In other words, they are inconsistent and biased, not treating the same things in the same contexts the same way regardless of the individuals involved. Which is exactly the opposite of objectivity. The problem with those is precisely that they are non-objective; they only seem, subjectively, good to a few people, disregarding any concern for consistency or neutrality, i.e. objectivity.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
This is where modal (with a d, not an r) reasoning becomes important. On my account of morality, doing good (rather than just no harm) is only a supererogatory good: it is not obligatory. Supererogatory goods, I remind you, are the moral equivalent of contingent truths, just as obligation is the moral equivalent of necessity. Something contingent is non-necessary, it is possibly not; and something supererogatory is non-obligatory, it is permissibly not. But contingent things can still be true or false, and supererogatory things can still be good or bad.
So it sounds like we are in agreement. You are not obligated to do goods above and beyond simply not doing harm. There are many things that are permissible. Just like any truth that isn't logically necessary is merely possible: it might be true, but it might not. But we can still say, of the many possibilities, which are more likely than others; and some of them will in actuality be false, even though they were possible. And likewise, of the many permissible courses of action, we can say which are (morally) riskier than others, more probably going to end up bad; and some of them will in actuality be bad, even though they were permissible.
'Lurks behind' is nice, as it suggests the repression of an internal boogeyman.
I like Lyotard's book, but the position sketched above has been with us much longer than the term 'postmodern,' no? What about an atheist who doesn't believe in progress? Is that enough?
:up:
Assuming the existence of an objective reality underpinning the regularity of phenomena at various scales neither compels one to consider all objects at each of those scales nor dictates a limit on what can be considered objectively real. It is not a prescriptive statement to say that the simplest explanation for the appearance of objective physical reality is an actual objective reality. As I said, how you consider a particular apple is a separate, although related concern. (An objectively real apple is the simplest explanation for seeming consensus that this is indeed an apple too. However, it lacks the regularity of multiple events that is so compelling for a belief in objective physical reality.)
I think the literary critique has been there or a long time. Look at Voltaire's Candide and other satires, or example. You can go back to Aristophanes if you really wanted. It is the specific use of irony and cynicism in backlash against meta-narratives of Enlightenment ideals (roughly starting around the late 1600s) that post-modernism is taking a stance on. Atheists, for example, can be very "modernist" in their politics, historical thinking, and views of science. Traditional Marxism is atheistic, but it believes in an unfolding historical truth of economic determinism that leads to "progress" in the form of an "end to history" which is the communistic form of political economy. You also have it in the forms of libertarianism where the "freedoms" afforded from a free-market economy bring the most prosperity and material wealth and is thus its own praise for the meta-narrative of economic market mechanisms. Secular humanists might have a similar outlook in regards to human progress through science being a key to human happiness.
In the field of history, it would critique Enlightenment's view that there is any discernible pattern one can use to characterize history. Certainly it would be contra Hegel's view, but also possible views that there were particular "eras" that have ultimate discernible causes and effects that can be deduced like a science or a through-line that is "just so".
It would apply to views of hard sciences being the suspect for any means to ultimate answers. Thus human nature would tend to be understood as having something biologically "fixed" in modernism, where post-modernism would emphasize human fluidity through language communities.Thus there would be a de-emphasis on evolutionary psychology "just so" stories, anthropologies that rely on reductionism of the human animal to a fixed pattern. Rather they would emphasize the inability to define humans in terms of biological or behavioral traits. Post-modernists would say rather that this should be looked at from the perspective of how various communities use language and how cultures are consider themselves in context of other cultures. Thus, one can argue identity politics is considered hand-in-hand with post-modernist thinking. Enlightenment has a unifying outlook and narrative generally and principles are often steeped in ideas of science, progress, etc. I kind of picture something like Star Trek as a science fiction version of modernism at least in its imagining of the Star Fleet and its mission to explore space (though various episodes might touch on post-modern points)., Post-modernism has a multiplicity and disorienting aspect in opposition to linearity of modernism. There is never one perspective only to consider.
In literature and movies, it might be found in not following linear time or space like in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five. It might be to reject the narrative of the happy industrialized lifestyle for the absurdities of various everyday social interactions, and the negative interpersonal aspects of maintaining such an economy in an industrialized world.
In leftist politics, a modernist might emphasize cultural unity, our sameness, and how science and technology unifies people. The post-modernist would focus on the differences, how communities have their own narratives that are often not considered by the power structures that be. It is more about power and its relation to groups. In rightist politics, a modernist would emphasize also cultural unity and economic determinism through markets. Post-modern rightists tend to be an oxymoron but, there could be methods in rightwing politics that can be considered post-modern, such as relativizing the "truth" of academic liberal "elites" which they deem as a meta-narrative.
I agree that it is contrary to objectivity. I just disagree that the opposite therefore implies objectivity. The discerning feature is in the evolved biology of mankind: it is statistical, self-assembling and contingent. (We might yet evolve stronger bases for dealing with strangers, for instance.) Bad here is the same kind of bad as a bad apple tree that bears no apples: it is a failure to be what you are. We are social animals, evolved to outcast individuals who hurt the group as a whole. (We now actually praise such individuals. We might, on the contrary to my last parenthetical, yet evolve to see antisocial behaviour as good.)
And I think the truth of this lies in the cosmic insignificance argument, that, ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're a bad person in the scheme of things. You can't say that about the objective reality of, say, gravity: "Well, we released that ball and it went up, which is gravitationally bad, but not important in the scheme of things." Things falling upwards would render the reasoning behind an assumption of objective physical reality itself invalid, and science couldn't exist. It is the scheme of things that is most affected.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think not quite. A couple of counter-examples...
I said above that most questions of harm (e.g. invasion, slavery, rape) can be resolved in a certain way. There are some that cannot be resolved this way. A Christian raises their child in their faith. For them, this is a morally good, possibly obligatory action depending on their views. For me, this counts as doing harm, insofar as it puts the child at a disadvantage in discerning truth from lies, reality from make-believe, and so is a morally bad, impermissible action. But this is a case where, if roles were reversed, the Christian would attest that they would want the perceived harm done to them.
In your view there is one answer to this question: it has one particular position on each of the charts you presented. In my relativistic view, each of those charts belongs to an individual, with conformity between individuals giving statistical scales for a community. So while I bemoan the ignorance and harm, I do understand why it is right from the Christian's point of view to do what they are doing. It is a very good thing for them to do from their frame of reference, a very bad thing from mine.
Another is what I've mentioned before: insoluble moral questions, such as the train track question. Your schema dictates that there is an absolute answer, but we might not know it. Mine allows for the fact that the right answer for me is different from the right answer for you. A real-world example of this is the competing rights of women as described by trans-exclusionary feminists (TEFs) and of trans-women (TW). These arise out of mutually-exclusive concerns.
A TEF never has to consider what it is like to seem to yourself a woman trapped in a man's body by accident of birth. A TEF has always had to consider the danger of finding themselves along with a physically overpowering male stranger. A TW has less reason to consider the latter and more reason to consider the former. The problems that arise have binary answers. No midpoint between the two positions can be taken: either TW have access to female spaces or they do not; either TEFs accept TW as women (and become TIFs) which means, effectively, pretending that women born in men's bodies are typical women's bodies, or they do not.
Any answer to this binary question is nothing more than picking sides: "I hold the concerns of this group to be more important than the concerns of that group". That cannot concur with an objective moral position because it is in itself a bias. One could, and TIFs and TWs often do, argue that the TEF position is impermissible prejudice, but to do so would be to deny woman any safe space at all, including from cis men, which does harm. One could argue that cis women outnumber trans women and opt for the greater good, but that's qualitatively the same hypocrisy as slave traders and Nazis, i.e. to not extend altruism and empathy to smaller out-groups.
Moral relativism, based on the existential problem of applying biological moral capacity evolved in one environment to a completely different environment, allows for the fact that some moral questions only have frame-dependent answers. Moral objectivity does not: it is an assertion that one group's concerns outweigh another's in cases such as these through top-down morality in principle (if not in practise, lacking access to objective truths). But also in principle, either position could be legally enforced, and the course of moral trends would go one way or another. What's actually happening is that each property owner is responsible for insisting on their own moral position: if a CEO forbids TWs from using female toilets, that is their prerogative, and the TW is free to find a more sympathetic employer; if they permit it, that is also their prerogative and the TEFs are free to find a more sympathetic employer. Pluralism and relativism provide bottom-up solutions that actually make sense.
I find it fascinating that with such a strong grasp of postmodernist ideas, you end up at "no where to go, nothing to do" (it makes me immediately turn inwards to try and find what I missed)
The non prescriptive nature of postmodernist thinking has the potential to be freeing, as the only framework without a "system" which provides infinite options and 0 hard restrictions.
It quite literally puts all of the power of life in your hands whilst simultaneously highlighting that all other (current) systems demand you remove some level of that responsibility and place it externally.
There are a lot of things postmodernism is not great at, most obvious being the pragmatic movement forward of society (on whatever level). However it is the single greatest defence humans have against external dangerous human thought.
Granted, there is a freeing aspect to post-modernism's dedication against meta-narratives, what I am saying is that it doesn't solve anything against the problems of modernism, because at the end of the day, as long as you use technology created from Enlightenment principles (that is to say all modern technology), and as long as society is organized in economic principles surrounding the use of the technology and its distribution, post-modernism can only provide an escapist, artistically inspired display, but nothing that brings us to a new way of life, really.
It's like hippies and going back to nature.. you need the technology to go back to nature people.
Or communes that rely on the outside for its technology to thrive.. nope you need that outside economy to thrive people.
Or whatever else is trying to get "past" modernism and its ways of life. Just won't happen. Even if they do, there is no "solution" anyways. There just is in fact, no place to move, no place to go, no such thing as a Utopia even in principle. We have minutia-mongering, technology and our escapisms of our personal dramas within it.
Quoting 180 Proof
I.e. Here's 'the XY-thing' (Modo); and yet this Y-thing 'about any ~X-thing sans a Y-thing' (p0m0). :joke:
Wow! I never expected the plaintive OP to get such reaction. But it has veered off into some very technical and arcane discussions. Anyway, I'll add my 2 cents worth, in a more general sense. I view PM as a cultural course correction, that has influenced the world in a manner similar to Marxism. It raised consciousness of some issues, but didn't offer a viable alternative to the core of the 17th century Enlightenment's legacy : the novel method of acquiring practical knowledge that we call "Modern Science". :nerd:
Anti-Modernism :
[i]Modernism inherited the scientific methods & attitudes of the Enlightenment, but focused more on technological expertise than on philosophical wisdom. Thus, its rapid material progress was at the expense of spiritual values, and often left some large segments of society behind in the rush for the next great thing.
Postmodernism was an attempt to level the playing field for less-developed nations, and for the forgotten people of various genders, colors, and locations. Ironically, its academic language was often lost on the very ones it was intended to raise up.[/i]
Age of Re-Enlightenment :
Perhaps the BothAnd successor to Postmodernism will be called the “Re-Enlightenment”, as old verities are re-discovered.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page14.html
So this is where I find the value of postmodernism. No predetermined hierarchies. No utopia. Pure choice. Historically people have needed narrow illogical frameworks to motivate themselves to restlessly strive forward. Think clergy building stability via monogamous societies. I don't think its a leap to suggest this may be a cultural characteristic, not intrinsic. And in the future we recognise the grey, ambiguous, interconnectedness of everything which will lead to fascinating new insights and innovations.
I think it has everywhere to go as it is not bounded by a systematic framework of restrictions or isolated thinking. Always looking for a critique though so please fire away!
We seem to see the situation in basically the same way. How do some of John Gray's darker passages fit in here? He attacks the religion of progress.
I also was just shown this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hJv5yBLe9c
Does it have everywhere to go except nowhere? Is it bound to this project of not being bounded?
Quoting Risk
Novelty as progress? Is 'pomo' another name for an old demon?
Quoting Yellow Horse
I challenge you to explain any such case of progress not being novel. Real or abstract.
I don't know if you'll count this, but some people think in terms of forgotten wisdom. They want to return to the good old days. Backwards is forwards for them.
Yeah I've read one or two of his books. I generally agree, though not necessarily my brand of pessimism. Still laudable. I'll check out the video.
Quoting Risk
So I think there are more concrete motivations than "pure choice". We may be condemned to be free, but we are not free not to die. We are not free not to be uncomfortable. We are not free to not be bored. I truly think every motivation can be categorized under our striving wills' need to survive, find comfort, and entertain ourselves.
In the "modern" world, we have science and technology. This is the superstructure cultural context in which we play out our will's need for survival, comfort, and entertainment. We cannot just "be" we are always "becoming". That is to say, we must race down the hill so we don't trip over ourselves. How does this play out? Getting the raise, the house, the accomplishment of some sort, get the relationship, etc. It's always trying to get the next thing. Then we have to slow down.. We always have to figure out how to find rest.. meditate, relax, enjoy the moment. We can never JUST BE. We have to speed it up or slow it down. Fill it with things or clear the mind. This just indicates life is just something to DEAL WITH. We are given this gift of dealing with, being demanded from, and demanding from others. And we call this "good". What's the matter with never being? Deep sleep? Unborn? After alive? What is it about BEING?
Anyways, sentimental notions of looking at the camera rolling the eyes, or the moments in the office that are not dull.. "Look the office is a place of meaning in the dull absurdity".. That kind of shit makes it seem like there is vindication, salvation, and the rest. They are creative stories by writers, producers, directors, and set crew.. It was their way to make money to make you feel better, on the vision they had of modern life.
Technology lulls you into thinking things are great, but we are never content, and it is just in the name of survival, comfort, and entertainment. Post-modernism micro-narratives are no more a salvation than grand narratives of success, accomplishment, everything is great, progress, innovation, etc. It's suffering all the way around, suffering in just being, and then add the suffering of any situation on top of the core strivings of the human. The absurdity of the repetition of living daily is not overcome just because we can make art based on this understanding.
One of the most pessimistic mythologies is Philipp Mainlander's idea that God was originally a unified super being that could not stand its own unity. It was essentially bored. Thus, it individuated itself in the world in a big bang so as to be able to become nothing eventually. Now there is some metaphysical pessimism :lol:.
For me Gray is just an example. Will tech give us utopia? Will we all wake up and be cool one day? How does antinatalism connect to the apocalypse desired by the first Christians or concerns about overpopulation? Does part of us want it all burned down and over with?
As a novelty-as-progress addict, I'd tell the forgotten-wisdom crowd that they can't get the moment back, that the image of that wisdom is different the background of our world now.
At the same time, I don't think that the mission has to consciously be the search for novelty. I imagine old dogs annoyed at all the new tricks they don't feel like learning. I tend to read the dismissal of 'pomo' as a defense against difficult novelty.
I don't think you can count the impossible as a choice. I think you may agree that choice would be the set of all possibilities that could be actualized in your life. Talking about choice beyond that simply doesn't make sense. If we don't set this definition, we end up talking in nonsensical terms such as choosing whether blue is a colour.
I would disagree that we are free not to be bored or uncomfortable. I think the most obvious way to demonstrate this is by pointing out that even on a bed of nails, some find it comfortable. Even in isolation, some are never bored. So to arrive at your assertion, you would need to define the words as things guaranteed to occur. Thus stripping their negation from the set of all life possibilities.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I'm sure you would call it striving ey Schopenhauer ;)
Just as with Arthur, I disagree with you here. You are setting the rules of engagement without any logical foundation to them. Claiming things must be so and not justifying why.
- Our wills need to survive. What is suicide but a logical contradition to this so called universal law
- comfort. What about those who seek discomfort, even enjoy pain.
Unjustified, unverified rules of engagement.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Again these rules of engagement are unjust. We observe time (at least in a spatial sense) linearly. Therefore we are always, by definition, moving to the next thing. This is not a choice. To Just Be, would to somehow be able to freeze time. So to build premises around what life is, based on such self fulfilling terminology doesn't make sense.
Quoting schopenhauer1
And to hit the proverbial nail on the head of why Post Modernism is, to me, the only way to Be. Contentness comes from within yourself. If you give up the meta narratives and accept full responsibility, absurdity and possibility for your life, contentness and everything else become states you choose. You can define your contentness to be that encompassing moments of not being content. It is not an infinite subdivisible moment of measurability, contentness is cumulative.
I think my favourite iconography from all of philosophy was whem Camus sketches out;
While Sysphus was condemmed to push the boulder, he was not condemned to be sad whilst doing so
The freedom this perspective offers when you abondon the meta narratives and recognise choice for what it is and can be, seems only achievable through post modernist thinking.
Hence What is it good for, absolutely EVERYTHING.
People train themselves to do this. Most socially-enculturated humans without developmental issues get bored. It's a fact. Just because certain people are able train themselves to "clear the mind" or try to adapt their comfort levels to conditions, does not mean that these are not motivations for our dissatisfactions at most times in our lives. Go to work, clean the dishes, ride your bike, hunt the animal, dance around the fire.. Take away over-inflated romantic notions or overwrought theories of motivation, it's survival, comfort, or entertainment (mainly from boredom) or a combination of two or three of them at once.
Quoting Risk
That's the point, it ISN'T by definition, part of our existence. We CAN'T escape it.
Quoting Risk
I disagree. There is a meta-narrative- survival, comfort, entertainment motivations in a cultural context. The "condemned to be free" is only within that broader framework.You are condemned to be free actually gets neutered to "You are condemned to be free within the context of cultural contingency, and the needs to survive, find comfort, and entertainment". Entertainment here is anything that provides meaning or flow states in your life. Something to keep your big brain occupied. It could be ANYTHING that is not survival or comfort-seeking. Washing the dishes, probably out of comfort-seeking. Going to work, probably out of survival needs. Buying food, survival. Going to the bathroom, mainly survival. Going mountain-climbing, entertainment need. Religious observation, entertainment-seeking. Reading philosophy, entertainment seeking. Saving someone who is injured- taking away the discomfort of seeing someone in pain. For survival to work on a societal level, it may also fall into that to teach altruism when needed. Our core dissatisfaction with being, needs an avenue in the linguistic-cultural framework of a society and with our linguistically-based brains to interact with it. However, many layers of soci-cultural avenues to carry it out, the core goes back to survival, comfort, entertainment.
Quoting Risk
Yes but the boulder being pushed is the unmovable conditions. Coping mechanisms to deal with the initial conditions are all this is. It doesn't change the conditions.
I'm more interested in catharsis through complaint. We need to recognize the suffering and not try to smooth it over, deny it, sublimate it, ignore it, accept it, etc. The best way to rebel against the fate is to not create the fate for yet more people by procreation. Stop the whole madness altogether.
Quoting Risk
Actually Schop wrote a lot about suicide, and that it was simply the will, acting against itself, thus still using will to negate the will. It is finding comfort in non-existence.
People mostly seek discomfort for a greater sense of entertainment or for a greater sense of comfort later on. Exercise for example for health or the exercise high or to look a different less discomforting way.
Observation and experience tell me this is the best understanding of what is going on.
Quoting Risk
No meta-narratives..but you like your electricity right? You like living in a dwelling right? That requires all the minutia-mongering of the meta-narrative of modernism. You can hack it in the wilderness but that required you to be in the meta-narrative to try to break away from it (usually unsuccessfully as even tribal societies must live in the narratives of their tribal way of life and teach the survival context of that way of life).
I completely agree that most do, but trying to equate the majority of a time period with any kind of truth context has failed miserable throughout time. Slavery being the easiest example to point to of general agreement shown over time as a naive, outdated way of thinking. Similar to what I equate your observation to.
Labelling existence as such massively over simplified principles is appealing to the meta narratives of the time, indefensible beyond just "being so" and affirming their existence. I'm not one to fall back on science and statistics but building your worldview on such ideas has never stood the test of time, in the history of world. So to believe yours are somehow different, a stretch to me.
Quoting schopenhauer1
So by not escaping it and it being true by default, it surely is by definition, no? Can a triangle escape from having 3 sides?
The rest, if you accept the nihilistic determinism of your life then you are free to prescribe meaning beyond being bored or uncomfortable. I dont disagree that strife and pain are a part of life, i merely disagree that you should fight it or be disappointed by it. Accept it as part of this ryzhomatic society and culture you are forcible born into, and choose to take from it a completely subjective set of goals and opinions.
The meta narrative simply being that you are free to choose everything, your pain, your pleasure and everything in between. I'm for sure biased now into the post modern views, but i am yet to see any argument that provides any concrete basis for existing in any different way. All your assertions have no further justification than being "just so". Indefensible in a wider philsophical context. I don't deny that pragmatism requires more than just PM, but setting worldviews around anything else seems naive and outdated.
Since you invite critique, your ideology is that of the consumer at the spiritual mall. I don't critique it from the outside as a stranger. In some ways this is also self-critique.
I'm just saying something like...it's one more ideology, this joyful nihilism.
@schopenhauer1 dwells only on the bad stuff, but he makes some good points.
It's kind of top-level ideological or merely ideal unboundedness. As bodies caught in the machine of the world (both social and physical), such ideal infinity quietly depends on the smooth functioning of all kinds of boring mundane things (boring to our p0m0 trickster.)
Kierkegaard wrote about it.
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The aesthetic stage of existence is characterized by the following: immersion in sensuous experience; valorization of possibility over actuality; egotism; fragmentation of the subject of experience; nihilistic wielding of irony and scepticism; and flight from boredom.
****
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/#Aesth
I'm not religious like K, but the guy is fascinating.
I offer this critique, and at the same time I think playing with ideas is one of the best aspects of human existence. We could probably both critique together a spirit of seriousness that never loses itself in the play.
Here's a quote from the gospel of Thomas, which I offer not as a religious person but instead as a passage that can be read in defense of the 'fragmentation of the subject of experience.' For me the clothes represent our serious personalities that we take so seriously.
*****
His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"
Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."
As tempting as this sounds, I don't think humans prescribe their own meaning. To me it's more plausible to understand even the project of prescribing one's own meaning as 'forced' on us through a sort of seduction.
The 'joyful nihilist' is one more role we can find ourselves playing and defending, because it grabbed us in a way that other roles just didn't.
Yeah, this is more-or-less what I was trying to say. The joyful nihilist is not free of the modern superstructure. It is just one reaction or "role" to take on in reaction to it. Even then, it is more of a literary role. Rarely do people practice what they preach. Rather, they are hard at work deciding what food to buy at the market and ensuring their customers, bosses, or investors are happy. They can make fun of the situation at certain times, they can say they are "joyfully" experiencing their own micro-narrative or laughing at the absurdity, but they do care about their more "modern" interests as it has to do with their basic needs of survival, comfort, and entertainment.. That's it folks. It is the necessary condition of being human in a social and physical environment.
My point is that the sentimentality or the laughter one can find in some of these literary and pop-culture post-modern tales, does not "resolve" our own very nature (i.e. survival, comfort, entertainment) which is inextricably and inescapably tied up with the minutia-mongering (i.e. often dull, scientific driven, very detail-oriented, depersonalized, etc.) modern world. We cannot escape the modern in some micro-narrative fantasy. We are always in relation to it. You cannot watch your show or read your book without all the patents, inventions, and ideas of modern technology, science, distribution, etc.
For me it cuts both ways. I relate to the joyful nihilist and the anguished pessimist who longs for the end of the world. That's why I mentioned the early Christians, who I understand to have been an apocalypse cult, disgusted with the whore of Babylon, drunk as she is on the blood of martyrs.
When the religion of progress becomes less believable and synthetic threats become more plausible (like panvasive thoughtcrime scanners brought to you by A.I., to name just one), ...antinatalism asks after a gentle genocide.
Antinatalism, our aesthetic trickster will remind us, is caught up too in the usual role-play --on the great stage of fools, some pretending to laugh and others to cry.
If our joyful nihilist is forced to scrub toilets, then our pessimist also forgets to be anguished and enjoys his grim pessimism as an especially cruel joke played on us by the hole where the gods should be (which is perhaps one more fascinating image of a god, after all.)
I think it's more like modernism in rehab. The question that comes to mind is: 'what will it become when it gets out'?
Yes. I'm quoting myself again. That's because the thread has veered-off into some nitty-gritty philosophical analysis, and has revealed a polarized attitude toward Postmodernism. Some hate it, some love it. But, although its influence seems to be primarily among intellectual elites, PM appears to have made a lasting impression on human culture.
I must admit that, coming from a Modernist worldview, I didn't understand Postmodernism at first, and simply ignored it as a temporary fad in philosophy. But I now see it as a necessary step in the evolution of human understanding. FWIW, here's view of PM from a broader academic & scientific perspective.
Excerpt from Scientific American magazine article by Annick DeWitt, who calls herself a Worldview Researcher :
[i]In the West, we have over time seen massive shifts in our collective worldviews, which academics have frequently described as a move from more traditional, generally religion-based worldviews to more modern worldviews, in which science, rationality, and technology have become central. This change is often understood to have started with the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, and has gradually resulted in a more (philosophically) materialistic understanding of reality.
Much more recently, particularly since the 1960’s, we have seen the rise of more postmodern worldviews, which emphasize other-than-rational ways of knowing, such as moral, emotional, and artistic ones, as well as values beyond the material, such as creativity, self-expression, and imagination. This perspective was largely forged by cultural elites within academia and the arts, and coincided with the rise of emancipatory movements for causes such as the environment and the rights of minorities, women, and gays. Now some academics are talking about another, newly emerging worldview, which is sometimes referred to as integral or integrative. This worldview is characterized by an attempt to bring polarized perspectives together and integrate them into a larger, more unified understanding of reality.[/i]
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/understanding-our-polarized-political-landscape-requires-a-long-deep-look-at-our-worldviews/
This does not seem at all compatible with the assessment in the linked article:
Lyotard develops some reflections on science and technology within the scope of his postmodern philosophy [see The Postmodern Condition]. The changing status of science and technology is a primary feature of the postmodern condition, and Lyotard calls certain new forms of science postmodern. His concern with an ontology of events and a politics of competing representations of those events underlies his theorization of science and technology in postmodernity, in which the collapse of metanarratives has meant the proliferation of multiple, incommensurable language games (of which science is only one). We should interpret Lyotard as taking this to be a good thing, since such a proliferation more accurately reflects his general ontological view of the world as composed of events which give rise to multiple interpretations, and which can never be accurately captured by a single narrative. Metanarratives do violence to alternative representations of events that are valid in their own right. Lyotard sees the rise of capital, science and technology linked through legitimation by performativity as a similar threat, however. He calls this threat “terrorism”: the threat of exclusion from playing a language game.
Although I haven't read Lyotard, this analysis seems to make sense.
Hello Gnomon,
I see you haven't posted on this forum in months either.
I'm not sure you will see this. I hope you are doing well.
Anyway, since you mentioned postmodernism and Foucault, I thought I would share with you this message I received. I just finished Episode 5: A Bird's Eye View, and Episode 6 will be titled 'The Inside Out of Color', but I do plan on fulfilling the request of this new friend when I get to writing Episode 7. This thread of yours is full of wonderful dialogue which will be quite helpful for my writing prompts!
Well, I tried to post the message image here, but it didn't work. Perhaps a link will.....
IMAGE