The idea of 'truth-value realism, which is the view that mathematical statements have objective, non-vacuous truth values independently of the conventions or knowledge of the mathematicians' is I guess what I am am exploring too. — Tom Storm

Yes I see. First, distinguish between the truth and the realism issues, because they are, or can be, independent. Regarding truth, have a look at Fictionalism in the Philosophy of Mathematics.

Thanks and Christ! It’s a can of worms…

I know, and nobody can blame the postmodernists for that.

I wish they were more cunt and less post.

PS - That was a dumb thing of me to write. I was in a tram packed with very loud Swifties. Big concert tonight. I was a bit overwhelmed…

No worries. I assumed you’d assumed I was replying to your comment in the Shoutbox about Nietzsche.

:up:

what is the relationship of the reality we map maths too (or visa versa)? — Tom Storm

I guess I don't see math as separate from the mapping process in the equation 'math properly mapped=reality.' My equation would be 'a mind mapping=the reality of math.' So the math is more closely tied to the mind's activity, than it is to a reality separate from the mind.

The objectivity of math comes in the picture where two people can't seem make 2 plus 2 equal anything but 4. Everyone (objectivity) sits in the place of Reality (objectivity). And everyone sees the same thing when 2 is added to 2. So I call my subjective experience when 2 is added to 2, objective, because no other subject is really even trying (let alone able) to show me something other than 4. This tells us something about the minds. The mind is a part of reality, so it tells us something about reality. But minds map to other minds, and the mapping is actual communication when they map through something objective. My mind can map to your mind, when we use math, for instance. But my math won't necessarily map to anything other than another mind.

Same goes for logic. Same goes for language. But the objects of language are much more complex than mere numbers. With numbers and math, we can quickly and easily connect minds. With language it is harder, because the objects of language keep the minds apart further; but every now and then someone says "I see what you are saying" and repeats it in their own words so the first person says "yep, you got it." At that point the minds are mapped to each other through the words. Like they do with math. And now we might call something objective, as in, something that the mind will have to see if the mind is looking the same way as another mind.

I don't see math as separate from the mapping process in the equation 'math properly mapped=reality.' My equation would be 'a mind mapping=the reality of math.' So the math is more closely tied to the mind's activity, than it is to a reality separate from the mind. — Fire Ologist

Interesting. I once posited here somewhere (perhaps unwisely Kantian) that maybe maths may be part of our cognitive apparatus - like space, perhaps a preconscious organising feature of the human mind, a frame upon which we’re able to understand the physical world.

Same goes for logic. Same goes for language. — Fire Ologist

Many postmodernists seem to challenge the idea that language represents reality. So if language seems to be metaphor - maths appears to be more than this and I come back to it's 'unreasonable effectiveness'. I'm not sure we can really say that language is as effective as a maths equation.

This recognizes the issues at the foundations of math but also fixes "math as math" in itself, as a long-form tautology. Or maybe the culture is that of universe, and its history is all time, and the society is the society of minds. Only such influences will produce a math, and because these influences are so simple (universe, mind, all time) that math is so simple and need never change - we've fixed it that way in its own axioms.

It's not this, my comment was just about the context in which math is consistent within assumed axioms. Saying "if these are the rules of the game, these are the legal moves," doesn't need to suppose that the rules aren't influenced by culture, history, language, etc., that there might not be different or better rules, or that the rules themselves are tautologically true. It's to say something more like "here are Jim's rules for Chess and if you play Chess according to Jim's rules x follows." So, it's more like a sample space of possible tautologies. Saying "here is how Jim plays Chess," isn't to say anything about the cultural or historical influences on why Jim plays Chess that way.

Maybe there is a post-modern argument to be made that these social or historical factors shouldn't be ignored as much as they are (that said, historical analysis of mathematical concepts seems quite common in mathematics books I've read). But we aren't fixing anything with its own axioms, we are studying what happens, given we provisionally accept some axioms. This to me seems like a distinct difference.

The idea of 'truth-value realism, which is the view that mathematical statements have objective, non-vacuous truth values independently of the conventions or knowledge of the mathematicians' is I guess what I am am exploring too. — Tom Storm

This hinging on the bifurcation I initially mentioned in my original post, here’s a simple argument for (some) mathematical statements having such "truth-value realism":

Regardless of ontological approach (materialism, idealism, dualism, pluralism, and so forth), that quantity occurs in the world is a fact. Secondly, the cognition of quantities can only occur via mathematical semantics (this irrespective of their symbolic representation, if any). Therefore, some mathematical statement (namely, those which can be mapped onto the empirically know world) have "objective, non-vacuous truth values independently of the conventions or knowledge of the mathematicians".

This conclusion, however, will directly ground mathematical thinking in the metaphysics of identity as foundation, for quantity can only occur with the occurrence of individuated identities (i.e., units, aka unities of that being addressed), and these are not always as intuitive as they might at first appear (the Sorites paradox as one easily expressed example of this).

At any rate, the only way I see of disparaging this stated conclusion is by disparaging the reality of quantity in the world.

This leads me to think that social constructivism/constructionism is not necessarily postmodern in the philosophical sense, even if these distinct approaches are lumped together in the popular imagination.

EDIT: And note that the theory discussed in that paper is based on the social construction theory of John Searle, not usually regarded as a postmodernist. — Jamal

One could examine social constructionisms along a realist-relativist dimension, with Searle being a realist and writers like Ken Gergen identifying themselves as postmodernist relativists.

↪Tom Storm I suspect that postmodernists talking about mathematics woudl be a dime a dozen. Google supports this.

But a mathematician talking about post modernism... that might be interesting. — Banno

As if we haven’t already heard plenty from the likes of Sokal. Reactionary anti-postmodernist chatter from mathematicians , scientists and politicians is no less common than pomo investigations of mathematics.

Thanks and Christ! It’s a can of worms… — Tom Storm

And if you are interested, fictionalism is just one of the schools of thought surrounding the foundations of mathematics within nominalism, there are many more. And you should also read up on the Grundlagenkrise (which I plan on making a thread on). This article is also a good cursory view on the ontological view of platonism. But I think that this article is even more general and talks not only about numbers but also about universals in general.

Speaking of Fictionalism, it battles with Quine-Putnam's indispensability argument, which was mentioned on the "Infinity" thread (a mess of a thread admittedly)

Good points on the grounds of mathematics. Now perhaps we could have a thread on postmodernism and science, differently from postmodernism and mathematics, there is looots of content around that :razz:

Now perhaps we could have a thread on postmodernism and science, differently from postmodernism and mathematics, there is looots of content around that :razz:

A bitterly ironic area to consider considering that most POMO thinkers tended to be far to the left side of the political spectrum. For decades they sharpened and refined their critiques of the sciences, and no one really paid attention to them. Then, finally, a huge swath of the public did start taking their critiques seriously, but it tended to largely be the far-right of the political spectrum who did this. "Who funds this research? Who stands to gain financially? What are the power relations in the field? What are the socio-historical factors influencing theory?"

These finally became areas of core focus, but ironically the goal of the critiques became things like denying climate change and denying that vaccines were beneficial.

Then, finally, a huge swath of the public did start taking their critiques seriously, but it tended to largely be the far-right of the political spectrum who did this. "Who funds this research? Who stands to gain financially? What are the power relations in the field? What are the socio-historical factors influencing theory?"

These finally became areas of core focus, but ironically the goal of the critiques became things like denying climate change and denying that vaccines were beneficial. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The only thing the far right took seriously from pomo critiques of science was the fact that they were questioning science. They never had the slightest understanding of exactly what pomo was questioning about science, and so didn’t realize that pomo was not so much interested in rejecting the value or legitimacy of established scientific assertions, but instead wanted to bring to light its unexamined presuppositions so that it could be dethroned from its authoritarian pedestal. The far right, by contrast , maintains science on a pedestal of extreme authority, and specifically rejects scientific conclusions when they are derived using methods that are too ‘relativistic’ for the right, such as climate science.

Many have gotten the idea that the far right in the U.S. believes truth is something made up, and they blame pomo for this. But it is one thing to claim that they ignore or distort facts , it is quite another to assert that they have taken radical relativists to heart and think that there are no correct facts. I've heard it said the right is living in a post-truth world. My response is that one could not fond a find a group of people more wedded to a doctrinaire and almost fundamentalist concept of truth.Talk about facts of the matter. The Trumpian right fetishizes and reifies facts with a religious zeal. Unfortunately they reduce scientific facts to simple causal relations. They tend to be metaphysical, or naive, realists about both ethical and objective truth.

It is this Ayn Randian mentality toward rationality that makes them unable to appreciate ambiguities and complexities of the sort that crop up in climate change and covid science. The continual on-the -fly adjustments in medical recommendations in response to new study results over the course of the pandemic do not fit the simplistic image many Trump conservatives have of how science was supposed to operate. Their thinking about science has on the whole not progressed beyond a Baconian hypothetico-inductive methodology. As a result, they lost faith faith in the veracity of what they were being told.

Maybe there is a post-modern argument to be made that these social or historical factors shouldn't be ignored as much as they are (that said, historical analysis of mathematical concepts seems quite common in mathematics books I've read). But we aren't fixing anything with its own axioms, we are studying what happens, given we provisionally accept some axioms. This to me seems like a distinct difference. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not just a matter of avoiding fixing our axioms.
Axiomization itself, and the propositional logic it is grounded in, are deconstructed by writers like Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger and Deleuze.

I respect many of your views, but:

But it is one thing to claim that they ignore or distort facts , it is quite another to assert that they have taken radical relativists to heart and think that there are no correct facts. [...] They tend to be metaphysical, or naive, realists about both ethical and objective truth. — Joshs

How is that not blatantly incongruous (this in non-dialetheistic systems, if it needs to be said)?

Where “truth” is understood as conformity that which is actual/real/factual, that “the truth that ‘there is no truth’ is itself and affirmed truth” is not true on account of having no truth-value—and that one must be learned in many an authority figure to comprehend this—certainly seems post-modernistic to me. And, here, truth is whatever one wants to be true just in case one has the leverage, or power, to force the belief of its reality upon not only oneself but upon as many others as possible. Truth here can only be created in radically relativistic manners, rather than ever being the ontically uncreated waters in which we swim and breathe as psyches (this metaphorically speaking) and, on occasion, being that which can be discovered. In which case, this “metaphysical/naive realism regarding ethical and objective truths” wherein “facts can be and are ignored and distorted” is in perfect keeping with the radical relativism wherein there is no objective truths to speak of. This, again, granting a non-dialetheist reality.

As if we haven’t already heard plenty from the likes of Sokal. Reactionary anti-postmodernist chatter from mathematicians , scientists and politicians is no less common than pomo investigations of mathematics. — Joshs

Yeah, what would mathematicians know about maths?

The article I shared was about as sympathetic as you might expect, and more than I expected. It takes an example from the literature,

Absolutism is deliberately replaced by cultural relativism, as if 2 + 2 = 5 were correct as long as one’s personal situation or perspective required it to be correct — White 2009,

...and points out that

First of all, cultural relativism is out of context in this setting. When postmodernists claim that a mathematical truth is never absolute, they mean it is to be interpreted relative to a background. Certainly 2 x 5 = 1 is true in mod (3) arithmetic. No sane mathematician or educator would go around redefining addition or any other mathematical construct because his or her “personal situation” requires it to be correct. The Platonic fact that the sum of the interior angles of a triangle being exactly 1800 was challenged neither because the personal situation of Lobachevski nor because the personal perspective of Riemann warranted it, but because the resulting geometries turned out to be no more or no less correct that the Euclidean one. — Ilhan M. Izmirli

But no doubt you have a different opinion?

A bitterly ironic area to consider considering that most POMO thinkers tended to be far to the left side of the political spectrum. For decades they sharpened and refined their critiques of the sciences, and no one really paid attention to them. Then, finally, a huge swath of the public did start taking their critiques seriously, but it tended to largely be the far-right of the political spectrum who did this. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Horseshoe theory in full display. Not that it is impressive, being extreme is a big thing to have in common.

"Who funds this research? Who stands to gain financially? What are the power relations in the field? What are the socio-historical factors influencing theory?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

You really can't expect that to be in the modern far-left's script because the people who write the script are exactly the people who funded that research.

This leads me to think that social constructivism/constructionism is not necessarily postmodern in the philosophical sense, even if these distinct approaches are lumped together in the popular imagination. — Jamal

Very much so. One problem is that PoMo has spiritual objections to truth, but mathematics takes a far more pragmatic approach. So mathematicians will insist that certain statements are true. PoMo, not so much.

There are whole worlds between platonic realism and post modern relativism.

We also have at hand that classic rebut to Feyerabend: If anything goes, everything stays.

That is, if we drop the notion of truth as a valid assessment of our utterances in favour of the will to power or some such, we are endorsing the powerful, reinforcing their hegemony.

Post modernism cannot speak truth, therefore it cannot speak truth to power.

↪Joshs
As if we haven’t already heard plenty from the likes of Sokal. Reactionary anti-postmodernist chatter from mathematicians , scientists and politicians is no less common than pomo investigations of mathematics.
— Joshs

Yeah, what would mathematicians know about maths — Banno

What would philosophers such as Descartes, Leibnitz or Avicenna know about maths? Don’t be fooled by the fact that recent philosophers like Derrida, Heidegger and Husserl didn’t contribute innovations that would be considered mathematical within a conventional criterion of maths. Their work was intimately engaged with and reflected a profound understanding of the deepest foundations of mathematics and logic, every bit as much as predecessors like Leibnitz.

The article I shared was about as sympathetic as you might expect, and more than I expected. It takes an example from the literature,
Absolutism is deliberately replaced by cultural relativism, as if 2 + 2 = 5 were correct as long as one’s personal situation or perspective required it to be correct
— White 2009,
...and points out that
First of all, cultural relativism is out of context in this setting. When postmodernists claim that a mathematical truth is never absolute, they mean it is to be interpreted relative to a background. Certainly 2 x 5 = 1 is true in mod (3) arithmetic. No sane mathematician or educator would go around redefining addition or any other mathematical construct because his or her “personal situation” requires it to be correct. — Banno

This article is as ignorant of and unengaged with the actual arguments of key pomo figures like Deleuze and Derrida as is Sokal’s. None of the philosophers I follow claim that 2+2 can equal anything other than 4. They recognize that it is precisely the nature of numeric calculation that it abstracts away all meaningful contexts associated with what is counted, leaving only the repetition of ‘same thing, different time’. Derrida writes:

“I can manipulate symbols without animating them, in an active and actual manner, with the attention and intention of signification…Numbers, as numbers, have no meaning; they can squarely be said to have no meaning, not even plural meaning. …Numbers have no present or signified content. And, afortiori, no absolute referent. This is why they don't show anything, don't tell anything, don't represent anything, aren't trying to say anything. Or more precisely, the moment of present meaning, of “content,” is only a surface effect.”

The contentlessness of numeration leads to the fascinating fact that its components originate at different times and in different parts of the world as a human construction designed for certain purposes . And yet, even though these constructions emerged as contingent historical skills, their empty core of the identical ‘again and again’ allows them to be universally understood.

But the later Wittgenstein complicates matters here. Maths may have at its core empty repetition of the same, but its evolution plugs this into operations, rules and procedures that don’t guarantee in advance the persisting identity of their sense. As Lee Braver interprets him,

Wittgenstein’s early conception of meaning and his commitment to Logi­cal Stoicism drove him to rid the arena of truth and logic of all human interference, which required that the states-of-affairs asserted or denied by a proposition be completely delineated, as we saw with the questions con­cerning whether the book was still on the table under all possible circum­stances. He gave up this dream when he recognized our ineliminable role in
applying the rules. No matter how assiduously we strive to passively obey a rule, we still need to make the phronetic judgment call as to whether this state-of-affairs counts as an instance of the rule: “if calculating looks to us like the action of a machine, it is the human being doing the calculation that is the machine.”

We feel that all possibilities are settled in advance because we rarely step outside the normal circumstances where our footing is so sure we imag­ine it to be perfect. Wittgenstein spends considerable time constructing scenarios that throw our intuitions out of whack and leave us uncertain about what to say. This doesn’t expose a disturbing, problematic gap in our everyday usage, but rather shows that we get along fine without the propo­sitional omniscience he had previously found necessary. Without meaning-objects’ applications coiled up, as it were, within words or the mind like a retractable measuring tape, Wittgenstein now sees each application as metaphysically unguaranteed by past instances.

“We must not suppose that with the rule we have given the infinite extension of its application. Every new step in a calculation is a fresh step. . . . It is not in the nature of 23 and 18 to give 414 when multiplied, nor even in the nature of the rules. We do it that way, that is all.”

No matter how clearly the world seems to take us by the hand and lead us, it is always up to us to recognize its authority and interpret its commands; neither past usage nor reality forces us to go on in one particular way. We will never get to the other side of the ellipsis of “and so on . . .”—not because of our all-too­-human limitations, but because there is no other side; that’s the point of an ellipsis.

Since the notion of infinite extensions occurs paradigmatically in math­ematics, Wittgenstein spends a great deal of time on this subject, origi­nally planning part II of the Philosophical Investigations to focus on it. Just
as linguistic meaning occurs in our use of it, so mathematics only exists in our calculations, which means that
“there is nothing there for a higher intelligence to know—except what future generations will do. We know as much as God does in mathematics.”

Mathematics and grammar are inventions, not discoveries. As Simon Glendinning writes, each new application of a rule “is ungrounded or structurally abyssal. That is, it is logically prior to a determined rationality (or irrationality).”Without timeless mathematical truths, the notion that humanity has always followed a rule incorrectly is simply incoherent: how we follow it is the right way. “The point is that we all make the SAME use of it. To know its meaning is to use it in the same way as other people do. ‘In the right way’ means nothing.”This seems to entail the worrying possibil­ity that if everyone began, say, adding differently—getting “6” from “2 + 3,” for example—then that “wrong” practice would become “right”, but this concern hasn’t followed the argument all the way out.

If we see this “new” way as maintaining the same rule of addition we have always used, then it isn’t new at all. If no one (except a few cranks) judges a change to have occurred then we have no ground to say that a change
has occurred. It isn’t so much that our notion of green may turn out to be grue as that, if we all “change” from green to grue without noticing it then no change has taken place—and scare quotes proliferate. If a tree changes color in the forest and no one realizes it, then who exactly is claiming that it changed? We imagine God sadly shaking his head at our chromatic apos­tasy, but the only way for this picture have an effect would be for Him to make His displeasure known—which would mean, in turn, that someone did notice. Alluding to the most famous modern discussion of skepticism, Wittgenstein asks:

“is no demon deceiving us at present? Well, if he is, it doesn’t matter. What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over.”

A deception, carried out perfectly, becomes truth.

↪Joshs I respect many of your views, but:

But it is one thing to claim that they ignore or distort facts , it is quite another to assert that they have taken radical relativists to heart and think that there are no correct facts. [...] They tend to be metaphysical, or naive, realists about both ethical and objective truth.
— Joshs

How is that not blatantly incongruous (this in non-dialetheistic systems, if it needs to be said)? — javra

I didn’t mean that I believe , or postmodernists believe, that
the far right ignores or distorts facts. I meant that those more moderate than the far right who share with the right a rejection of pomo relativism believe that the right is ignoring or distorting facts. In other words, both the non-pomo left and the far right believe in the non-relativist objectivity of scientific truth. They just disagree on what constitutes the proper scientific method for attaining objective truth. Postmodernists, on the other hand , disagree with both of these groups on the coherence of their various ideas of objective truth.

In other words, both the non-pomo left and the far right believe in the non-relativist objectivity of scientific truth. They just disagree on what constitutes the proper scientific method for attaining objective truth. Postmodernists, on the other hand , disagree with both of these groups on the coherence of their various ideas of objective truth. — Joshs

I'm having a hard time understanding this. To not be presumptuous, can you clarify the following:

According to radical relativism, is the "scientific method" which produces the claim that dinosaurs walked the earth along humans on a par to rather distinct, also termed "scientific method" that produces the claim that humans did not exist when dinosaurs roamed the earth?

Secondly, are both just mentioned claims of objective truth of equal value in their being socially constructed truths that nevertheless compete for dominance within society?

Lastly, if postmodernists do not believe in there being correct facts - else expressed, do not believe in objective (rather than fabricated/created) truths - how do postmodernist resolve the contradictory nature of the two just stipulated claims?

That certainly describes part of the "far-right". And it would be fair to say that POMO is often used selectively. Arguments against the institutions of science can be pulled out of their original context and still employed effectively.

However, I wouldn't characterize the entire Far-Right as hewing to realism or an "objective" view of truth or morality. The intellectual base of the "Alt-Right," is almost the opposite. You could consider Nick Land, Gavin Yarvin, the whole "Dark Enlightenment Movement," the Hestia Society, etc. These figures are often anti-realist re history, and quite relativist vis-á-vis morality. For BAP's brand of Nietzscheanism, it seems morality is quite relative, defined by the heroic individual.

History doesn't exist as a truth to be discovered but is all narrative, a battlefield. Aesthetics (for them, those of the Dark Age or Middle Ages) not truth should ground political judgements. Virtually everything is a "psyop" because what is important about events is the way people use them to shape the "perceived truth" of the world and the Zeitgeist, not the "objective truth" of events.

Consider Nick Lands "core" influences: Gilles Deleuze, Curtis Yarvin, Georges Bataille, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant, etc. or his focus on cybernetics, hyper-reality (and his hyper-racism), nihilism. His biggest impact can be seen in the widespread cries for "accelerationism" (originally Lenin's idea) you see in Right Wing spaces online, and which now even seem to be bleeding into Republican policy in the House ("make it worse, fix nothing, so as to accelerate the collapse.")These people are on the Right because they are anti-egalitatian, reactionary, often pro-eugenics, etc., but they also seem born of POMO in many key respects. They grew up reading and in some cases teaching Deleuze and Derrida, but then remained/became reactionary neo-fascists.

This sort of seems inevitable to me. What kept POMO on the left in the first place? The relativism it allows for allows it to be reformulated in right wing terms quite easily.

Anyhow, it occured to me that the demonstrative nature of mathematics might make it harder for POMO to take root.

Core ideas in POMO show up in the pre-Socratics but never really take hold as a significant factor in philosophy. Why is this?

One big reason might be ancient philosophy's focus on techne over gnosis as a paradigmatic form of knowledge, e.g. "knowing how to repair a boat," versus "knowing why boats float." Techne is demonstrative in a very apparent way. If you claim you know how to fix a car and then can't get it to start, it is clear that you don't know how to fix that particular car. Success is definable in a prephilosophical way.

Modern philosophy is much more concerned with how we know the truth values of propositions. However, it seems like Plato or Aristotle fairly often consider "knowing," in terms of "knowing how to do something."

I would not say that math is demonstrative in the way that patching a flat tire is, but it certainly has many demonstrative elements. We generally talk about "learning biology," but it would be a bit uncommon to say "I know how to do biology," or "I am doing political science." We'd be much more likely to say "I am learning about political science," than "I am learning to do political science." But with mathematics, "doing" seems to have a much more central role. "I know how to do mathematics," rolls out a lot more often than "I know how to do linguistics." We "calculate" and "compute" as verbs distinct from "knowing about."

There is, of course, still "knowing about mathematics" as well. But part of mathematics seems very much to be performative. "I know how to do long division," isn't as much a claim about knowledge of the properties of division with larger numbers as it is a claim to be able to carry out a certain sort of activity.

Someone can be said to be "good at math," in the way we say someone is "good at gymnastics," or "good at painting." That is, in general, to be "good at biology," means to be highly knowledgeable about it, but being "good at math," is often a statement about performance of tasks as much as, or even more than, being knowledgeable about mathematics.

And maybe this is why so many people who stop at high school level math tend to think of it in such objective terms. It seems like higher level mathematics moves more into "knowing about," while introductory math focuses heavily on "knowing how to."

I am interested in what postmodernism has to say about mathematics. — Tom Storm

I think it would be better to ask what postmodernism has to say about the sciences in general, not narrowing down to math. What does postmodernism say about logic? What does postmodernism say about philosophy?

I would argue hardly anything itself.

Postmodernism is more concentrated on society and how society works, human behaviour and those reflect on things like mathematics etc. And this very common also to for example the history of science and how social sciences look at the sciences. They aren't interest in the subject matter itself, they are interested more on the community that makes up the scientific community and how it behaves.

Hence for example the findings of Thomas Kuhn and "Kuhnian paradigm shifts" only show how this community works and doesn't tell us of the actual science matter itself. And mathematics is in this same category.

Yet on many occasions the mathematicians or scientist don't understand this. They think for instance Kuhn, from all people, is somehow degragading their actual field of study as if it would say about something about the science or math itself. It doesn't.

This is something that people should understand here. It's about just how much people are Platonist and how much constructivists and what has happened for this to change. Not exactly on what post-modernism says about Platonism and Constructivism philosophically. Then you end up with nonsense.

There was the famous Sokol affair, where a postmodern journal published an article arguing that quantum gravity was a social construct.

Unbeknownst to the publishers it was satire, exposing the lack of scientific rigor of the postmodernist.

Not sure they've fully recovered from that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

It doesn't help that it happened again in 2018 with significantly more ridiculous articles:

Included among the articles that were published were arguments that dogs engage in rape culture and that men could reduce their transphobia by anally penetrating themselves with sex toys, as well as a part of a chapter of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf rewritten in feminist language.[3][5] The first of these had won special recognition from the journal that published it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

↪Tom Storm There was the famous Sokol affair, where a postmodern journal published an article arguing that quantum gravity was a social construct.

Unbeknownst to the publishers it was satire, exposing the lack of scientific rigor of the postmodernist.

Not sure they've fully recovered from that — Hanover

Pomo was never in high regard among the general population , so there was nothing to recover from. Those who have a rigorous , scholarly understanding of the best works in this area of philosophy know that Sokal never bothered to do his homework, having failed to show an adequate comprehension of the arguments involved.