But then I think this gets at the problem pretty well -- just *who are these postmodernists*? Wouldn't it be more useful to simply name them and discuss them, if indeed there was an idea to discuss? — Moliere

Yes, I think this is what I was hoping for when I knocked out the OP. I asked for some 'stepping stones' and this could well include how Deleuze or Derrida, say, have conceptualized a particular moral question. I'm certainly a believer in examining examples.

If we were to take an example such as abortion - how might a given postmodern thinker approach this in a way that is of use to social policy?

Thank you for this considered response. I suspect that a lot of criticisms/views of postmodernism are not deeply engaged with the actual work. I know mine hasn't been.

If anything is permissible, then God is dead? per Jack Karamazov's brother, Ivan. — Bitter Crank

Digression - I prefer Zizek's restatement of that rather fatuous proclamation. Zizek: With God everything is permissible. Moral crimes may well be the presence of god. If you want a foundational justification for genocide, burning witches and heretics, torture, homophobia, misogyny, slavery, etc - then god and scripture provides this permission. If we want to see how it can be done well, go visit Islamic State.

You're trying to set out rules by which you can judge other people's behavior. Those are two separate things. — Clarky

Actually that's my take too. I'm saying that 'your own conscience' is not a good foundation as there is nothing one can't justify using such an approach. People justify slavery, sexual assault, murder, theft, anything horrendous, based on their own conscience (or lack of one). I also don't yet see how his answer relates to the OP. But I understand the broader point that perhaps all we have is personal preferences (conscience if you prefer). I do think however that even secular morality can rest on foundational imperatives, however contestable these might be.

Ethics is at its core about how we interact with others, — Banno

Yes, some of our first interactions here helped me towards an awareness of this. Morality is in the doing, not in the vast edifices of theory and principle. Its performative.

he lives in me like other people I like live in me, like Socrates, Gandhi, Vattimo, Heidegger, Heraclitus and many others. — Angelo Cannata

Do only redemptive figures live in you? How do you eliminate Pol Pot, Donald Trump, Mussolini, Genghis Khan, Adam Sandler?

Are you a relativist simply because you say, for instance, that the other is the other, and that every other is other than the other? If I want to pay attention to the singularity of the other, the singularity of the situation, the singularity of language, is that relativism? … No, relativism is a doctrine which has its own history in which there are only points of view with no absolute necessity, or no references to absolutes. That is the opposite to what I have to say. … I have never said such a thing. Neither have I ever used the word relativism.”

― Jacques Derrida

Expressed as an aphorism: If anything goes, then everything stays. — Banno

Nice.

Yes, exactly, my approach is subjective and interpretative — Angelo Cannata

Ok. And I am not trying to give offence here, Angelo, but why should anyone care? Are you saying that morality is simply a matter of personal preferences - between you and your god/abyss? In which case is there any position that can't be justified using this personal approach, from pedophilia to genocide?

That being said, I wonder whether the notions of what health is changes in the various ways morality is established. — Paine

Yep. Idea's inform and modify each other.

Of course I can demonstrate it: my daily life, second by second, is a continuous evidence of what I said. — Angelo Cannata

How is that more compelling than someone saying that their daily life is continuous evidence of Jesus working though them? I generally don't take people's word for things but consider it is part of a belief system that makes sense to them, but not necessarily to others. Your approach seems subjective and interpretive. Does it address the OP?

Thanks for the clarification. Is this a useful approach ? It seems not to provide us with much.

He calls on faith to bring about this change. Philosophy, it would seem, is incapable of bringing this about: — Fooloso4

One could read later W as a potential ally of theism in some way, right?

Is there any way of conceptualizing transcendence outside of the tropes of idealism, higher consciousness, contemplative traditions or god/s?

Every moment you make your best synthesis of all these things and you make your choices. Once you become familiar with this way, you can see that you have no need of principles, values, reference points. — Angelo Cannata

That's a big claim. Can you demonstrate it? Isn't the act of making such a synthesis itself a reference point and value?

transgressing – subverting – every "should" which, of course, is self-refuting. — 180 Proof

A performative self-refutation and a potential moral quagmire, surely?

Undermine the powers that be. — praxis

How do we know what the powers that be are, how do we even identify power apart from the crassly obvious versions? Isn't the statement that the metanarrative is dead itself a totalizing statement?

I will not accept something as true until I see the evidence that it's true.
I will take 'a leap of faith,' in life, or if a loved one asks me to or needs me to and the circumstances prevent me from taking the time to model, test and evaluate before I act but I am a lot more uncomfortable with a leap of faith, than I am with actions based on studied empirical evidence. — universeness

I generally agree. Personally I would never use the word faith to describe reasonable actions taken in the world. When I catch a plane or go travelling I don't base the decision on faith but a 'reasonable confidence' that the plans will work out and the plane won't crash. This is a rational position based on the fact that travel and planes generally work safely. Faith, on the other hand, is an excuse for believing something when there is no good reason.

Supernatural is not a philosophical term. It's a perfectly reasonable word used in journalism and general conversation to provisionally describe phenomena which apparently defy the known laws of physics - gods, ghosts, demons, necromancy, prophecy, clairvoyance, etc... People I used to kick around with 35 years ago preferred the term superphysical, but the meaning is the same.

The fact that we don't know the limits of the natural doesn't matter - supernatural is a provisional term and its boundaries are easily understood and agreed upon and can be adjusted the moment our knowledge changes.

And Plato himself requires huge erudition to read and interpret. — Wayfarer

Not having erudition and insufficient interest in Plato, I can see why it's a tradition fading away. But the philistines always win, whether you're talking good cinema or classical music. Nevertheless, I share your concerns about the welfare of some aspects of the Western tradition. Platonism is a recondite subject and in my time I have seen grown men (academics) nearly coming to blows over their interpretation of Plato's theory of forms. They were in their 50's when I was 20, so they are likely gone now and replaced by people who bicker over readings of Deleuze.

Are you saying it's hard to find robust Plato scholars who can write from a perspective located somewhere between recherché and accessible pap?

This may also be too breezy, but there's a Neo-Platonist Catholic philosopher on Youtube who who often recommends books on Plato. Check out Pat Flynn and Jim Madden (Benedictine College) - they love Gerson and various others.

He regards philosophical problems to arise from linguistic confusion. By clearing up the language he shows the way out of the fly-bottle. — Fooloso4

I wasn't aware that W had shown the way out of theism or matters connected with higher consciousness. Thoughts? Did he not just 'fly over' them?

7. Self-cleaning clothing.
8. Fully balanced, nutritious meal in pill form.

So to wrap things up, if someone has an outlandish or bizarre idea that the vast majority of others find difficult to comprehend, should we not be more careful and slow to ascribe a diagnosis — Benj96

In my experience, working in the area of mental illness and addictions for 30 years, diagnosis is not undertaken in a hurry (countries and jurisdictions may vary in approach). In most cases here people are not given a diagnosis for some time, on the basis that we don't know enough about them or their situation.

Delusion is an umbrella term for a wide range of presentations, including psychosis (usually via schizophrenia/bipolar disorder or drug induced) - where the person looses sense of reality, may experience auditory hallucinations, can't make sense of the world and struggles to communicate - to a more fixed and coherant delusional system where someone thinks they are working for the 'secret police' or for a deity. In some of these instances, people can become a serious risk to self or others if they feel this delusion is being contradicted or threatened. Or if the delusion is that someone is in love with them or they are here to save the world.

One person I met recently is living on the street and thinks he is protecting a particular government building from an atheist army. If he determines an atheist is nearby he becomes abusive and threatening. He is living in almost constant torment and fear of persecution from God for not working hard enough. Delusions are a continuum and many people who live with aggressive voices and command hallucinations and paranoia are very relieved to be able to control these symptoms with medication.

Generally someone has to be known to be experiencing delusions for one to six months before an ongoing assessment process will provide a (often provisional) diagnosis. Where a person's delusional system is nonbizarre and they just have 'odd' ideas, but present no clinical risk to the community and where psychosocial disfunction is not impaired, psychiatric services will take very little interest in them and generally regard them as 'eccentric.' Having 'outlandish ideas' does not generally qualify as delusional except in common parlance.

Therefore we say it's part of the collective consciousness — Kevin Tan

Ok, thanks. So you just mean public awareness of an issue/phenomenon. I thought you were using it in a more technical way.

United States becoming an empire like England. But clearly that didn't happen. — TiredThinker

Hmm... Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky, Tony Judt and many others have been saying for decades that this did in fact happen and that the numerous client states and enemies of the month and endless wars and incursions around the world, along with the military industrial complex and the Cocacolonization of world culture indicate that the USA is indeed an Empire.

What was Mark Twain's quote after the US subjugated the Philippines? ' America can't have an empire abroad and a republic at home.'

which follows the line of thinking inaugurated by Popper to show that some metaphysical notions can be recognised by their logical form, and goes on to show that they are pivotal to the enterprises we call science. — Banno

:up:

That quoted passage means something different from saying that 'metaphysical positions have no truth value'. That is very much the line of the 'vienna circle positivists' for whom metaphysics are nonsense — Wayfarer

No one can escape metaphysics; isn't it entirely a question of how 'fancy' you wish to make it? Even hard core physicalist scientists make a metaphysical assumption that reality can be understood. I think there is a difference between something having no truth value or being nonsense, or even being impossible to verify. It is entirely possible that one can be open to idealism whilst considering the matter impossible to verify. This doesn't make it nonsense, it just means nothing much can be said and, perhaps, that there is no intrinsic truth value (for humans) to the position.

I wonder how we would we describe the position of mysterianism in relation to the venerable mind body question? It maintians the issue can't be resolved (perhaps even in principle) which may be an overreach, but does it imply that the question or any proposed answers are nonsense too?

We see the detritus of this tendency in the many "physicists" who kindly drop in here to "fix" philosophy. — Banno

:up:

Joshs :100:
[W]e never leave the starting point or beginning, only repeat it different. i[n] this way, they are radically temporal, and radically historical. When I think this beginning, I am not capturing any discrete content but thinking from out of the midst of becoming. I am not pointing to anything that I stand outside of but enacting it, always differently, and I can speak from this ‘always different’ beginning in a self-reflexive way.
— Joshs — 180 Proof

I don't quite understand what this means. Can these ideas be summarized in plain English?

For hundreds of thousands of years, people have lived more or less full lives without ever knowing about quantum mechanics. — Clarky

And still do, as I would think most humans don't know anything about this subject and even those who do are dealing in speculative matters.

I think I largely agree with you but I suspect this is because I am not a philosopher or an academic. We inhabit a world with certain apparent conditions we can refute in argument but not through lived experience. Try refuting a bus that is heading towards you at 60. My own philistinic reaction to much of the discussion about metaphysics (or its dissolution) is simply that even Heidegger or Kant had to eat and put their pants on one leg at a time and hold views about politics. (In Heidegger's case a capacious speculative imagination and intellect didn't protect him from Nazism's dubious charms) So, in the end who (except the hobbyist and academic) really gives a rat's arse about 'noumena' or 'being' or the 'really real'?

Where I come from and live (Netherlands) this concept is taught in school and on the national news. People often say: It's part of the collective consciousness. That's why I've never doubted or questioned its existence. But maybe we're wrong. — Kevin Tan

I'm not sure I understand what you are referring to when you say 'this concept'. Can you explain? Can you provide an example from your popular culture of it being taught so I can see what you mean in action?

because their starting point a fact, frame or truth but self-reflexivity itself. — Joshs

Can you explain that? Isn't the very act of a starting point (even if self-reflexivity) a foundation or presupposition? I've not read the writers you mention - except in small portions and find them mostly incomprehensible, so generally I'm just looking for a high level overview if possible. :wink:

I think most people think there is only one correct way of seeing reality. It certainly seems that way here on the forum. — Clarky

Indeed. And ironically (or not) even those committed to perspectivism and the notion of there being no correct viewpoint - no totalizing metanarrative - seem to elevate this evaluative framework as somehow true, in itself a kind of totalizing metanarrative.

My psychological reading is a bit eccentric. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That's cool. And thank you for answering all my rather blunt questions.

For what it's worth, I'm far from Christian. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I think that is significant (to me anyway).

The work states explicitly - in spiritualized poetic language - what will happen if one "overcomes." — ZzzoneiroCosm

Is there a reference? I haven't read any religious texts in three decades.

The Utopian vision understood as inspiration for self-transformation can have a theological or non-theological context. From Marxism to Jonestown. It's wide-ranging. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Perhaps it is messianic then?

In the realm of music you have folks like Jimi Hendrix who had a desire to open the minds of his compeers — ZzzoneiroCosm

Only different in the sense that John is encouraging, even demanding, self-transformation. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So it sounds as if part of your process is making an assessment that the artist or work in question has the right intentional underpinning.

And then provides an internalizable Utopian vision - New Jerusalem - to compound encouragement with inspiration. — ZzzoneiroCosm

This is sounding more theological now.

Only different in the sense that John is encouraging, even demanding, self-transformation. — ZzzoneiroCosm

How do you make that assessment - does the work say this or does is it implied? Or is this inherent in any work that has a religious purpose?

influx of encouraging, transformative inspiration — ZzzoneiroCosm

So you're saying the prose inspires/encourages you. What is it about the prose that does this? Is it any different than me being swept away by the writing of Saul Bellow?

As a poet, I take Revelation to be a work of poetic genius. The atmosphere is one of superlative spiritual intensity, the height of inspiration. This height, this inspiration, conveys an almost divine authority, which gives the anxious seeker a refuge, a locus of encouragement and a suggestion of future self-confidence. — ZzzoneiroCosm

So this is where I fail to connect. This last sentence is especially intriguing. It sounds like you are describing an emotional reaction to the text rather than a cerebral one. Like listening to music?

As a poet, I take Revelation to be a work of poetic genius. The atmosphere is one of superlative spiritual intensity, the height of inspiration. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I find this particularly interesting. I like language but prose, not poetry. I have always found poetry to be like a foreign language. But I really like the idea of it. I find music more useful when it comes to contemplation and inspiration.

The fear and anguish arise from the fact that the old self must be destroyed before a new self can be created. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Is this symbolic language, or do you take it more literally? Is the old self 'destroyed' as such or is it superseded?

Appreciated. So the first part of the process is a recognition or identification that there is a issue needing to be dealt with (wording is difficult here). A problem to solve, a pattern to overcome...

Taking action is the next step.

Can you say some more about how an old book provides succor? Is it more in the realm of a mystical process or something that can be articulated? How does the book provide any kind of foundation to the rebuilding process you are describing? I understand how a 'self-help' book works - there are specific tasks to follow. But I guess I am lost in the symbolic aspects of the process in this instance - it that makes sense.

No worries. I'm hoping for succinct dot points or accessible touch stones to help build a bridge in my understanding of this process. I'm not good with slabs of text. :wink:

I think there is more to Socratic ignorance than simply knowing or acknowledging that you are ignorant. The examined life is an inquiry into the question of how best to live in the face of ignorance of what is best. — Fooloso4

The first part of this is intriguing. Knowing you are ignorant (in the Socratic sense) is more than just passive incomprehension. Is it not also knowing the kinds of questions and matters you are unable to answer or resolve easily for yourself or others? There is insight and depth to this illumminated or educated ignorance that exceeds everyday dimwittery.

It happened by accident. I connected John's Revelation to Campbell's take on the hero myth.


Descent to the underworld followed by rebirth and dissemination of insight gained. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Do you mind if I continue with some questions? I'm a crass methodological naturalist, with no sensus divinitatis. I spent a year studying Campbell and Jungian archetypes in the 1980's. Not that this was of any use, but I have some idea of the content. Ideas of rebirth or underworld are not meaningful to me. But I'm interested in those for whom it is.

How do you relate a book with this kind of material to your own life?

Thoughts? — ZzzoneiroCosm

This may sound like a flip and supercilious comment (and I don't mean it to be) but why bother? Why apply psychological readings to anything and to what end? Do you need to be 'overcome' or be 'improved' in some way?

Do you find Kant or Wittgenstein more easily deciphered? — Hanover

Course not. But it doesn't change what I said about Nietzsche. Nietzsche is more interesting because of his much broader appeal, much of it outside of philosophy. I think the issue is that Nietzsche is a pleasure to read (unlike most philosophers) and for many readers this creates an illusion of pellucidity.

Amazing that inventions work so well, then. Or maybe they're all in the mind as well? — Wayfarer

What do you make of the phenomenologist's position, articulated so well by Joshs?

But the fact that there is structure to the world does not mean that the world comes to our awareness packaged an ‘inherent’ way that is already mathematical. Nature became mathematizable when we contributed our own peculiar interpretive structures to it.
As you can see, I’m a mathematical constructivist, not a platonist. — Joshs

In philosophy there seems to be a constant game of 'did we discover it or invent it?' - whether we are talking math or morality. I know how you feel about Platonism, but what do you make of the view from phenomenology?