Postmodernism: Profound, or Gibberish?

[doppelganger]

lol, but Sunstone's statement was definitely modernist.

Surprisingly so, considering its source.

 

[doppelganger]

Can anyone explain what the heck this postmodernist author is saying?

For the record, what the author is saying in this excerpt is, "I'm a crappy writer". :yes:

 

[3.14]

postmodernism is just like saying that someone is constipated when you actualy mean the person is full of ****.

 

[lilithu]

Is the recognition that there are different perspectives unique to postmodernism?

I think the recognition that there are different valid perspectives is.

Where does science fit in--is it considered "modernist"? Because I don't think it would be quite accurate to say that science only accepts one "truth". A "scientific" view of the Bible, I would think, would be open to all truth candidates a priori, but seeks to whittle them down or recombine them as necessary, through critical analysis and facts, to construct a single, coherent approximation to the "truth" (or web of truths, and any equivalent representations therein).

Honestly, I do not know how to even approach the question of whether science is modern or postmodern. That to me is like asking whether farming is modern or postmodern.

They key, it seems to me, is to allow for the possibility to be wrong. Any view, or method, which cannot reject any statement as wrong, cannot (it seems to me) embrace any statement as true, either, at least not in any meaningful sense.

That may be the key, but it is not the key to postmodernism. A modernist can allow for the possibility of being wrong. But he or she still assumes that there is one right answer (attainable via reason). One can be very open to correction and yet be a modernist. Postmodernism doesn't just say it's possible to be wrong. It says that there is more than one right answer.

(There is a point of contention - and this is where Dopp and I have tangled in the past - over whether all views are equally valid, or whether some are not valid but there are still multiple valid views.)

I see. I didn't realize that all of what we today consider to be literary criticism was synonymous with postmodernism. I thought postmodernism was a subset of modern literary criticism.

The term postmodern actually covers a wide variety of topics, and I jumped in saying that I would share with you what I know, but I must confess that I really only look at it from the epistemological standpoint. For example, I know nothing about postmodern architecture, or why it's even called that.

And I'm no expert on literary criticism. But so far as I know, the methods that we generally think of as literary criticism today are deconstructionist, ala Derrida, and thus postmodern. Dopp or Nanda or others, please feel free to jump in. I do not wish to mislead Spinks with my enthusiastic ignorance.

Yes, I see what you're saying. I was mistaken because I thought "postmodernism" was totally unconstrained, but I see now that there are constraints, i.e. there are claims which are supported by the evidence (the text) and there are claims which are not, to varying degrees.

Totally unconstrained?

I think it gets that reputation because postmodernism does value novel viewpoints, which at its best allows us to see things from a new perspective and at its worse is just.... well, it's worse than absurd. People can make all sorts of crappy claims but if they fail to make a convincing argument, then they're not going to get very far. And in order to make a convincing argument, there are constraints.

That's not what I hear them claiming when I listen to them on the radio. I hear them quote the text, make inferences on what Job is feeling/thinking, what God is feeling/thinking, who Job is and what the story means, relying heavily on quotes from the text. No doubt they also believe the events described were real historical events, but that belief is not incompatible with the textual criticism you've described, it's just an addition to it.

Cool. I must confess I do not spend much time listening to Christian evangelical preachers, so I wouldn't know.

Well, not unless the preachers are the likes of Jim Wallis, or Carton Pearson.

 

[Sunstone]

Is science not post-modern? :cover:

I would consider science independent of that game.

 

[doppelganger]

I would consider science independent of that game.

How is science independent of perspective?

 

[Sunstone]

How is science independent of perspective?

It's not. But are you claiming that anything which recognizes perspective is post-modernist? Maybe we are thinking of different things when we think of "post-modernism". I don't think of science as post-modernist because it pre-dates post-modernism. But then, I think of post-modernism as an ideology. And I have very little use for ideologies -- any ideologies. Ideologies are like voter guides for people who don't think for themselves.

 

[doppelganger]

It's not. But are you claiming that anything which recognizes perspective is post-modernist? Maybe we are thinking of different things when we think of "post-modernism".

I'm not referring to the sloppy sort of tripe quoted in the OP. I mean real post-modern Philosophy: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Cassirer, Heidegger. This IS in the Philosophy forum after all.

I don't think of science as post-modernist because it pre-dates post-modernism.

Post-modernism pre-dates "post-modernism."

But then, I think of post-modernism as an ideology. And I have very little use for ideologies -- any ideologies.

Yeah, I could see how that would leave a bad taste in your mouth. The real mccoy is the ultimate expression of un-ideology in many ways. Not surprisingly, like anything else, people who don't get it insist on pontificating about it anyway.

 

[Sunstone]

I'm not referring to the sloppy sort of tripe quoted in the OP. I mean real post-modern Philosophy: Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, Cassirer, Heidegger. This IS in the Philosophy forum after all.

OK. I read what you've said and the Wiki article -- and if we're talking about post-modernism in those terms, then I can see the attraction. After all, many of the philosophers you list and in the Wiki article influenced my thinking when I was in school. I just never associated them that much with post-modernist thought before.

Post-modernism pre-dates "post-modernism."

I believe I understand what you mean by that. Do you understand my point, too?

Yeah, I could see how that would leave a bad taste in your mouth. The real mccoy is the ultimate expression of un-ideology in many ways. Not surprisingly, like anything else, people who don't get it insist on pontificating about it anyway.

In this thread, I've been thinking of post-modernism as the sort of jargon ladden tripe found in the OP. Anyone who passes crap like that off as legitimate discourse deserves to have their testicles gnawed on by an army of extremely ruthless termites, but if we're talking of post-modernism in a larger sense than what's in the OP, then I should probably start taking this thread seriously.

 

[doppelganger]

In this thread, I've been thinking of post-modernism as the sort of jargon ladden tripe found in the OP. Anyone who passes crap like that off as legitimate discourse deserves to have their testicles gnawed on by an army of extremely ruthless termites, but if we're talking of post-modernism in a larger sense than what's in the OP, then I should probably start taking this thread seriously.

That's a real problem any time you're dealing with academics. Unfortunately for many people imagining they are great scholars, they are simply not equipped to be anything more than students - even if they convince a philosophy department to give them a Ph.D. The problem manifests in an academic subculture in different fields where they have to say is little more than empty commentaries on the works of great thinkers, using obtuse language as a substitute for anything creative or insightful.

 

[Sunstone]

I've got a question, though. Could you spell out a bit the relationship between post modernism and science, Brendan?

 

[doppelganger]

I've got a question, though. Could you spell out a bit the relationship between post modernism and science, Brendan?

Sure. Post-modernism is predicated on the awareness that what appears to be "objectively" or "absolutely" true to me is never more than an arbitrary construct of my thoughts. When I talk about how the world works and what causes things, I am abstracting models to make predictions and collect useful information and organize in ever more useful ways.

If I believe that scientific knowledge is "true" then I am no longer capable of improving the model, making it more useful or adapting it to my changing needs. So the first essential relationship between science and post-modern philosophy is the apprehension of the world from a position of skepticism and uncertainty. Things are not the way I think about them, though the way I think about them may be very useful for some purposes, and very problematic for others.

Post-modernism recognizes that the things I think I perceive are there and take the forms they have because of the way I look at them and the way my thoughts are organized about them. If the way I look at them changes (by, for example, changing my memories, or rearranging the template by which I think about basic notions like being and causation, or how I process sensory information as in the case of drugs or brain damage), then I change the things I see. So the second major connection between science and post-modernism is that both understand that we do not and cannot study an objective or absolute reality. We can only study what we've said about that reality. This is evident in the scientific method itself. Hypothesis testing is fundamentally not a search for truth, but a manner of comparing the relative usefulness of different models for assessing probabilities. And if my purposes change, then the usefulness of the models change.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I think the recognition that there are different valid perspectives is.

You don't think people recognized different valid perspectives before post-modernism? Could you clarify what you mean here?

For example: by the end of the 19th century, three different formulations of classical mechanics had been developed, namely 1) Newton's laws of motion, 2) Lagrangian dynamics, and 3) Hamiltonian dynamics. It was recognized that all three perspectives were valid. This was long before post-modernism.

Honestly, I do not know how to even approach the question of whether science is modern or postmodern. That to me is like asking whether farming is modern or postmodern.

Well let me modify the question then: how does a post-modernist regard science?

That may be the key, but it is not the key to postmodernism. A modernist can allow for the possibility of being wrong. But he or she still assumes that there is one right answer (attainable via reason). One can be very open to correction and yet be a modernist. Postmodernism doesn't just say it's possible to be wrong. It says that there is more than one right answer.

Okay, I understand that postmodernism says that. But it seems to me that:
1) A priori, we cannot say how many right answers there will be to a given problem, and there is no reason to assume that all problems admit more than one solution. The number of right answers possible will depend on a case-by-case basis on the problem being discussed and the assumptions being made. To take a simple example from math, there are two correct answers to the problem X^2 = 25 (namely, X = +5 and X = -5), whereas there are an infinite number of correct answers to the problem X > 25 .
2) The fact that many things admit more than one right answer is trivial and has been recognized for centuries. Differential equations would be a lot easier to solve if they didn't admit an infinite number of correct (but extraordinarily different, non-trivial) solutions.

(There is a point of contention - and this is where Dopp and I have tangled in the past - over whether all views are equally valid, or whether some are not valid but there are still multiple valid views.)

Again, why would we expect any statement about this to be true categorically? The number and validity of possible answers can only be determined by examining the specifics of each individual question. This is demonstrably true in mathematics and I expect it is true in general.

 

[lunamoth]

What will post-postmodernism be I wonder? It seems like often we don't recognize and name a paradigm shift until we near the end of it and have already started something new.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Sure. Post-modernism is predicated on the awareness that what appears to be "objectively" or "absolutely" true to me is never more than an arbitrary construct of my thoughts. When I talk about how the world works and what causes things, I am abstracting models to make predictions and collect useful information and organize in ever more useful ways.

If I believe that scientific knowledge is "true" then I am no longer capable of improving the model, making it more useful or adapting it to my changing needs. So the first essential relationship between science and post-modern philosophy is the apprehension of the world from a position of skepticism and uncertainty. Things are not the way I think about them, though the way I think about them may be very useful for some purposes, and very problematic for others.

Post-modernism recognizes that the things I think I perceive are there and take the forms they have because of the way I look at them and the way my thoughts are organized about them. If the way I look at them changes (by, for example, changing my memories, or rearranging the template by which I think about basic notions like being and causation, or how I process sensory information as in the case of drugs or brain damage), then I change the things I see. So the second major connection between science and post-modernism is that both understand that we do not and cannot study an objective or absolute reality. We can only study what we've said about that reality. This is evident in the scientific method itself. Hypothesis testing is fundamentally not a search for truth, but a manner of comparing the relative usefulness of different models for assessing probabilities. And if my purposes change, then the usefulness of the models change.

Most of this seems pretty reasonable. I am inclined to add the following propositions (what do you think?)

1) It is useful to assume that there exists an objective, absolute reality;
2) Assuming there is an objective reality, it is useful to distinguish between methods which are more or less reliable (i.e. objective) in elucidating its properties, and more or less robust to a priori assumptions about that reality.

So what I'm saying is, if we basically accept what you described as the postmodern view, we may very well construct notions of "objectivity" and "truth" and so on because they are useful constructs. I would argue it is *more useful* to employ those constructs than to neglect them.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

By the way....the OP was a computer-generated essay from
www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/postmodern (note that the site seems to be down right now)

But no one fell for it and my fun was ruined. Lunamoth knew what was up from the beginning!

 

[doppelganger]

1) It is useful to assume that there exists an objective, absolute reality;

Generally, yes, it is useful. But I explained that above. It is not always useful though. And scientific progress requires that we recognize that despite the usefulness of assuming we've described reality "objectively" at no point have we actually done so.

2) Assuming there is an objective reality, it is useful to distinguish between methods which are more or less reliable (i.e. objective) in elucidating its properties, and more or less robust to a priori assumptions about that reality.

I have a couple of problems with this one. First, usefulness is inevitably a product of purpose, and purposes are narrow and malleable. Since we assume we are tinkering with an "objective" reality, but really aren't, it makes it easier to charge headlong into new useful technologies without being wary of the potential unknown effects on ourselves and our environment. Second, this is a potential barrier to communication between people, because it treats the models, symbols and words we use to describe things as the things themselves.

So what I'm saying is, if we basically accept what you described as the postmodern view, we may very well construct notions of "objectivity" and "truth" and so on because they are useful constructs. I would argue it is *more useful* to employ those constructs than to neglect them.

In some areas it is considerably less useful to do so. And in science generally, it is counterproductive to do so as the method itself depends on not making that assumption. Today's dogma is yesterday's insanity and heresy. That's applicable in every field of human endeavor - whether religion, art or science.

Science is fundamentally uncertain and must remain so. That is its sine qua non. When one settles on certainty in one's ontological propositions, it becomes belief.

 

[doppelganger]

What will post-postmodernism be I wonder? It seems like often we don't recognize and name a paradigm shift until we near the end of it and have already started something new.

Good point, Laurie. These shifts happened a long time ago and are only now cycling into the general public consciousness. Biology is gradually being replaced by Ecology. Though Einstein clung vigorously to his desire for objective certainty, quantum mechanics established that God does indeed play dice. Innovations in psychology, neurology and computing were opened up by a shift to post-modern paradigms in science.

To view scientific knowledge through the lens of Enlightenment-era idealism is no longer as useful to us as it once was. I love Vaclav Havel's explanation of how:

What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper. The point is that the solution they offer is still, as it were, modern, derived from the climate of the Enlightenment and from a view of man and his relation to the world that has been characteristic of the Euro-American sphere for the last two centuries. Today, however, we are in a different place and facing a different situation, one to which classical modern solutions in themselves do not give a satisfactory response. After all, the very principle of inalienable human rights, conferred on man by the Creator, grew out of the typically modern notion that man - as a being capable of knowing nature and the world - was the pinnacle of creation and lord of the world.

This modern anthropocentrism inevitably meant that He who allegedly endowed man with his inalienable rights began to disappear from the world: He was so far beyond the grasp of modern science that he was gradually pushed into a sphere of privacy of sorts, if not directly into a sphere of private fancy - that is, to a place where public obligations no longer apply. The existence of a higher authority than man himself simply began to get in the way of human aspirations . . .

What makes the Anthropic Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis so inspiring? One simple thing: Both remind us, in modern language, of what we have long suspected, of what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and perhaps what has always lain dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the things that form the basis of man's understanding of himself, of his place in the world, and ultimately of the world as such.

A modern philosopher once said: "Only a God can save us now."

Yes, the only real hope of people today is probably a renewal of our certainty that we are rooted in the earth and, at the same time, in the cosmos. This awareness endows us with the capacity for self-transcendence. Politicians at international forums may reiterate a thousand times that the basis of the new world order must be universal respects for human rights, but it will mean nothing as long as this imperative does not derive from the respect of the miracle of Being, the miracle of the universe, the miracle of nature, the miracle of our own existence. Only someone who submits to the authority of the universal order and of creation, who values the right to be a part of it and a participant in it, can genuinely value himself and his neighbors, and thus honor their rights as well.

It logically follows that, in today's multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies - it must be rooted in self-transcendence.

 

[doppelganger]

I think it's also interesting to note that as the post-modern paradigm has filtered down to the level of public consciousness it has stimulated what appears to be a pre-modern reactionary counter-movement, with the traditional forces that opposed the Enlightenment in the first place re-asserting themselves because the primacy of science no longer holds them in check as well as it once did. For evidence and extensive detail of this as a global phenomenon, I highly recommend Benjamin Barber's book Jihad v. McWorld.

 

[Sunstone]

Most of this seems pretty reasonable. I am inclined to add the following propositions (what do you think?)

1) It is useful to assume that there exists an objective, absolute reality;
2) Assuming there is an objective reality, it is useful to distinguish between methods which are more or less reliable (i.e. objective) in elucidating its properties, and more or less robust to a priori assumptions about that reality.

So what I'm saying is, if we basically accept what you described as the postmodern view, we may very well construct notions of "objectivity" and "truth" and so on because they are useful constructs. I would argue it is *more useful* to employ those constructs than to neglect them.

I'm in very substantial agreement with you Spinks. I would qualify what you've said, though, by pointing out that it is to our benefit to become adept not only in some of the objective models of reality, but in any other useful models we find -- and then pick and choose which model to use depending on which has the greater predictive value in a given set of circumstances. In Nietzsche's phrase, we should become "cosmic dancers" who do not rest their feet heavily on any one model, but "dance" between them depending on which has the greater predictive value in the circumstances.

I'm aware, though, that a problem with the view I've just espoused is the difficulty of actually doing it. It's very easy to talk about it, but most often it's hard to do it. And I think that's especially true since most of us are way more familiar with one or two models of reality than we are with the several that are out there.