Or it means you don't realise that someone else's text is intelligible. Texts don't need "correspond" to a referent to be intelligible or be meaningful. Meaning is within the text or discourse itself, rather than being granted by the world outside of it. Thorongil is just unwilling to examine the text itself for meaning.

Post-modernism is not really "relativism." Their are countless truths post-modernists argue, both of ethics and description. The argument is not "no discourse is better than another." It is that no discourse is less meaningful than another. If we are to object to a discourse, we can only do so with our own discourse. The world, nature, logic or God cannot render a discourse without meaning, even a nonsense one.

What post-modernism eschews is the narrative of logical necessity to the world. Our meaning and myths are just that: ours. They aren't made a destiny of tradition or the "nature" of the outside world. It's this which Thorongil hates. He's not objecting to post-modernism because of it's frequently opaque jargon or sometimes convoluted obsession with identities. The point of contention is entirely to do with the way post-modernism eliminates the single narrative from which we all spring.

What does white privilege mean? Well it's obvious to anyone who sincerely takes a look at themselves and their environment. Only someone willfully blind could fail to understand how it pervades all aspects of contemporary american life. — csalisbury

Oh my days... oh my days... White privilege - that thing which decreases your chances of, for example, becoming a university professor, while your position is given to the black female lesbian, even though her capacity to fulfil the function of that position is inferior. White - so unfortunate to be born white in today's world. Everyone discriminates against you, curses you, accuses you of having oppressed them. Ridiculous! Fuck political correctness.

We should stop this divisive racial narrative - white vs black, etc. Makes no sense. People who engage in this discourse raise the dust themselves, and then complain they cannot see.

Are we, should we, each just make up our own narrative about what is most important, are we, should we each just make up our own narrative about how to live the best life possible? — anonymous66

Yes, I think we are just making up our own narrative. No I don't think we should because I agree with Kant that should (ought) implies both Can and Can not, and I don't think we have any choice but to make up our own narrative. We are story-making animals, whether we like it or not.

That is not to say that we pluck any narrative out of thin air at random. Rather, we forge a narrative as our life progresses, based on what helps us to make most sense of our experience, and to achieve a sense of purpose and maybe even contentment.

I have a contradictory-seeming, yet (I believe) internally consistent, view of most postmodernists. I love some of their ideas, particularly those about there being no absolute truth and all beliefs being ultimately psychologically and socially constructed. But I dislike the obscure way that those ideas are frequently (not always) expressed.

The problem is easily resolved for me though, by getting exposure to postmodernism through secondary sources that can put things in plain words. Landru, for instance (where is he, by the way?).

The point of contention is entirely to do with the way post-modernism eliminates the single narrative from which we all spring. — TheWillowOfDarkness

How could there even be a single narrative (from which we all spring)?

no discourse is less meaningful than another. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Whether discourses are more meaningful, or less meaningful, than others is a horse a-piece. It's a distinction without a difference.

Meaning is within the text or discourse itself, rather than being granted by the world outside of it. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Right, so...

7. Read the following text and find the meaning within the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. No outside world may be consulted. Your opinion of what meaning is within the text may not be offered as a meaning. (15 points)

Pigeons on the grass alas.
Pigeons on the grass alas.
Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons
large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the
grass.
If they were not pigeons what were they.
If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they. He had
heard of a third and he asked about it it was a magpie in the sky.
If a magpie in the sky on the sky can not cry if the pigeon on the
grass alas can alas and to pass the pigeon on the grass alas and the
magpie in the sky on the sky and to try and to try alas on the
grass alas the pigeon on the grass the pigeon on the grass and alas.
They might be very well they might be very well very well they might
be.
Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily
Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily.

8. Explain why your discourse in answer to Question 7 is less meaningful than another. (10 points)

9. If you successfully explained in question 8 why your discourse in question 7 was less meaningful than another, please explain why you didn't submit a more meaningful narrative. Do you think we're running a degree mill here? (10 points.)

The very same sophistic point was made over 2000 years ago by Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things."

How could there even be a single narrative (from which we all spring)? — Bitter Crank

7. Read the following text and find the meaning within the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. No outside world may be consulted. Your opinion of what meaning is within the text may not be offered as a meaning. (15 points) — Bitter Crank

This is an example of the single narrative from which we are supposed to spring. To understand the passage, I supposedly have no access to the passage through myself. I must pay attention to the text which is outside of me, else I cannot know what he text means.

The problem is that this is a myth. In every instance of "consulting the outside world," I'm using my discourse. In understanding the text, the meaning of the text is given in me. "Nothing but the text" includes my observations and thoughts of the world around me. In consulting the "outside world," one has understanding of the text. In every case, one never gets outside the discourse or text they are talking about.

8. Explain why your discourse in answer to Question 7 is less meaningful than another. (10 points)

9. If you successfully explained in question 8 why your discourse in question 7 was less meaningful than another, please explain why you didn't submit a more meaningful narrative. Do you think we're running a degree mill here? (10 points.) — Bitter Crank

The postmodernist's point is there is no contest of meaning. With respect to the text you have written out, there are innumerable meanings, interpretations and intentions, some of which are the authors, others which are not. All are just as meaningful as the other (though, not necessarily coherent, truthful or ethical). Any answer I give to question 7 is no less (or more meaningful) than another. There is no degree mill.

You are the one who thinks we are running a degree mill. If an answer doesn't fit the "superior" or "more meaningful" narrative, then the discourse supposedly has no meaning. Any discourse must reflect this single narrative or else be irrelevant.

Whether discourses are more meaningful, or less meaningful, than others is a horse a-piece. It's a distinction without a difference. — Bitter Crank

Clearly not, under your argument. You are the one who thinks my answer must be more meaningful than any other. The distinction has enough difference for you to think I need to make the "more meaningful" argument to be saying anything worth listening to.

It seems to me that [post-modernism] could be described as a period of history, but it is also a movement and school of thought. They even have their own journals.

Just because one lives during a certain time period, it doesn't follow that they buy into postmodernistic ways of thinking.


My point is, to try and sort out 'what postmodernism is', as if it were like, say, Marxism, or idealism, or positivism, is to misunderstand it. I think a good deal of the nonsense that goes on in Universities under its banner is because of the idea that post-modernism is something like a school, approach, or even attitude. It is simply the situation we find ourselves in, culturally - that is no 'master narrative' or 'ultimate objective truth' that we can point to, which could serve as the framework for a consensus. (I don't agree, incidentally, that life is that way, but I think I'm starting to understand and find some value in those who say that it is.)

By the way, another good title for those of eclectic interests, like myself - Zen and the Art of Post-modern Philosophy: Two Paths of Liberation from the Representational Mode of Thinking, Carl Olson.

A favourable review is here

In terms of certain knowledge, yes. I know more about post-modernism and understand a relationship between discourse and meaning.

Is it more meaningful? No. My knowledge is relevant to making particular certain points of knowledge and ethics, but that it. No-one needs to be "saved" by this knowledge. I speak to teach about a subject of knowledge and ethics, not be the snake-oil salesman who creates a problem ( "you are meaningless" ) just to drive them to my particular way of thinking.

People will get along fine without this knowledge. Their lives matter and the live well. They don't need to think or feel like me to have a meaningful life.

Once you say that words no longer correspond to reality, that they construct reality, or that nothing is outside the text, etc then we cannot but talk past each other. Such claims, which amount to epistemological and moral relativism, are self-refuting, in that they assume that which they attempt to disprove. But if the person to whom I am speaking still refuses to cede this point, then I'm done and dusted with the whole affair. — Thorongil

I really can see why you think about it like that, and in many cases I would agree. The only quibble I would raise is that, I think Derrida, and some others, are actually quite playful in their approach. What they're trying to throw off is the kind of implicit authoritarianism you find in any form of absolutism; the assertion that there is an absolute truth, is usually followed by the clause 'and we have it'.

So 'deconstruction' is the attempt to see through such declarative metaphysic. But, it has to be done in the right spirit. If it is really motivated by nihilism - nothing means anything, or everything is equally meaningless/ful - then certainly it can easily collapse into mere nonsense, and often does. But I think there is actually another layer of meaning there, which has to be referred to obliquely, so to speak, lest it too become another 'declarative metaphysics'.

The reason I say that, is because in some respects Zen Buddhism is very much a de-constructive philosophy. Some of its main texts, for instance the Diamond Sutra, are really absurdist and iconoclastic. But at the same time, there is a real seriousness of intent there. It uses humour and absurdity to break up our pompous sense of what is important. Hence that book I linked to above.

I saw a great presentation at the first Science and Nonduality (SAND) conference, in 09, on 'Joyful Irony and Western Emptiness Teachings', by Tomas Sander, which elaborated on these ideas.

This thread is too funny. The OP makes an offhand remark about 'postmodernism' and people lose their shit. It's like one of those Manchurian candidate activation words, where just its mere mention is enough to get people fomaing at the mouth. It used to bother me, but now I just feel sorry for anyone with that reaction.

I mean you get along fine without it. Your life doesn't suddenly lack meaning because you don't understand post-modernism and meaning like I do. No-ones doe's. My narrative is not needed for a meaningful life. There are countless other ones which work just as well in that regard.

We should all be grateful that you have time to condescend to us. ;-)

Pomo is for attracting mates.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things."

POMO is subject to same performative critique.

Clearly not, under your argument — TheWillowOfDarkness

Correct. "More meaningful/less meaningful, all the same" is definitely not my schtick.

Some people know more and have greater insights into the meaning of texts, events, behaviors, music, art, and so on than others do. I think there is a contest of meaning. Some people win it, and some people lose it--ignominiously.

With respect to the text you have written out, there are innumerable meanings, interpretations and intentions, some of which are the authors, others which are not. All are just as meaningful as the other — TheWillowOfDarkness

The text is from “Four Saints in Three Acts”, libretto by Gertrude Stein, score by Virgil Thomson. "The piece was originally presented by The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music in 1934, opening in Hartford, Connecticut, and then moving to Broadway where, surprisingly, it was a big hit, running for sixty performances."

I've read the libretto, heard an early (1940s) recording, and seen the opera on stage. I find it moderately pleasant, but after a while it becomes extremely tedious. Both Gertrude and Virgil both use repetition with a vengeance. I have no idea what pigeons are doing on the grass, alas, alas.

I like James Thurber's approach to pigeons much better. POMO would please Stein, it would not please Thurber.

"From where I am sitting now I can look out the window and see a pigeon being a pigeon on the roof of the Harvard Club. No other thing can be less what it is not than a pigeon can, and Miss Stein, of all people, should understand that simple fact. Behind the pigeon I am looking at, a blank wall of tired gray bricks is stolidly trying to sleep off oblivion; underneath the pigeon the cloistered windows of the Harvard Club are staring in horrified bewilderment at something they have seen across the street. The pigeon is just there on the roof being a pigeon, having been, and being, a pigeon and, what is more, always going to be, too. Nothing could be simpler than that. If you read that sentence aloud you will instantly see what I mean. It is a simple description of a pigeon on a roof. It is only with an effort that I am conscious of the pigeon, but I am acutely aware of a great sulky red iron pipe that is creeping up the side of the building intent on sneaking up on a slightly tipsy chimney which is shouting its head off."

James Thurber

that is terrific BC (in the absence of internal comments) (Y)

...although Stein knew that a rose is a rose is a rose.

Correct. "More meaningful/less meaningful, all the same" is definitely not my schtick.

Some people know more and have greater insights into the meaning of texts, events, behaviors, music, art, and so on than others do. I think there is a contest of meaning. Some people win it, and some people lose it--ignominiously. — Bitter Crank

That's a truth of knowledge, insight, ethics and experience. Some people are better at things than other people. Some states are more ethical than others. This doesn't render the worse states without meaning. It just means they are not ethical or useful in a particular context. Meaning is not the battlefield, ethics are.

A pile of shit is shit art due to its failure: it does not live up to what it ought to be. It certainly has meaning, no more or less than a masterpiece, but it is wrong. A waste of space and effort; disgusting, something that no-one gets any insight or benefit from. We ought not concern ourselves with it because its meaning (just a pile of shit) is one of failure.

Post-modernism is laying these ethics bare. It refuses to accept the "just so story" that worse things are an empty set, such that they don't even qualify as a meaning. People don't just "win" by default. It's an action of ourselves and the text. We are committing violence towards one idea or another-- not "meaning vs no meaning" but "ethical meaning over unethical meaning."

The pile of shit is shit art by its meaning, by the expression of the object and its interaction with us. The contest is between ethical discourses. (e.g. "the pile of shit is wrong; it deserves no praise as art" vs "the pile of shit is a worthwhile commentary on the state of the politics in America; we should praise the telling as art").

Despite it being shit art, the meaning of the pile of shit remains. For those who love it, it remains an entertaining snipe at the state of politics, an expression of an artform. It might be crass, shallow or even immoral, but it still means what it does.

Do you mean the critique that says it's a performative contradiction, Cavacava, or did you want to say something else?

I don't expect consistency or cogent argument or even non-contradiction from PoMo texts, any more than I would from poetry.

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance (1841).

I don't think postmodernist philosophy counts, for the most part, as philosophy (in the sense of philosophy understood as being a dialectical response to and continuation of, the whole tradition, rather than a rejection of it) at all. The movement is a rerun of the Sophist movement of Ancient Greece; it ( mostly) rejects dialectic, pure and simple; and where it appears not to it is radically ambivalent about it. That doesn't mean they necessarily have nothing interesting to say. Taking into account the etymology, according to which 'philosophy' means 'love of wisdom', and given that you might think wisdom consists in living well, then anything that is said in a PoMo text that helps you to live well, might be thought to be real philosophy on that score alone.

pigeons — Bitter Crank

Spring is here, spring is here
Life is skittles and life is beer
I think the loveliest time of the year
Is the spring, I do, don't you? Course you do
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me
And makes every Sunday a treat for me

All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park
Every Sunday you'll see my sweetheart and me
As we poison the pigeons in the park

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY

The only quibble I would raise is that, I think Derrida, and some others, are actually quite playful in their approach. — Wayfarer

I completely agree. When I've spent some hours struggling over some analytic analysis that has emphasised the 'anal' in both those words, it's a relief to get to Derrida, and laugh sometimes. If only more philosophy were funny.

Socrates
Secondly, it involves this, which is a very pretty result; he concedes about his own opinion the truth of the opinion of those who disagree with him and think that his opinion is false, since he grants that the opinions of all men are true.

Plato, Theaetetus 171a

I've never really liked postmodernism much, as it seems to be denying objective truths, and that would involve a contradiction. — anonymous66

In my view truth is subjective. (Namely, it's a subjective judgment regarding the relation of a proposition to something else--states of affairs in the world, for example, if we use correspondence as the relation.)

The old "Is that objectively true?" thing--which is what I'm assuming you're talking about with the contradiction comment, is silly, because of course I'm not saying that it's objectively true that truth is subjective. If I believe that truth is subjective, then I believe that "Truth is subjective" is subjectively true.

What do you think? Are we, should we, each just make up our own narrative about what is most important, are we, should we each just make up our own narrative about how to live the best life possible? — anonymous66

You can't avoid coming to your own conclusion about what's important and how to live the best life possible. Even if you were to simply decide to follow someone else's views about that stuff, you're still coming to your own conclusion, contra others you could reach, that it's important/the best life possible for you to follow that other person's/those other persons' views.

The very same sophistic point was made over 2000 years ago by Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." — John

What sophistic point?

I want to go on record as saying that I don't believe that man is the measure of all things, and I see the dangers of Sophistry. I accept that there are objective truths.

I guess I'm just being honest and pointing out that even though I believe in objective truths, there is obviously much that we don't know... And because of that fact, man has been creating narratives for quite some time. Is it really all that controversial to point out that fact? I suppose if you want to leave the word "narrative" and postmodernism out of the equation, then it could be said that man has been telling himself different stories, and trying out different explanations for various topics for quite some time. What is the nature of knowledge? What is the nature of the universe we find ourselves in? What is the best way to live one's life? What is the best society? What is the best form of government? What is the nature of morality? I find myself in a world in which I can't give unassailable answers to those questions. If your experience is different in some way, do tell. If there are obvious truthful answers to these questions then, by all means, fill me in. I like security.

Narratives are a requirement. If not narratives, then not psychology, for example. What I mean is that each school of thought and form of therapy is vastly different. If not narratives, then why not just one school of thought, and one form of therapy?

I'd like to hear alternatives for narratives, if there are any. If there are truths that should be told instead of narratives, then I'd like to hear them. I'm all for truth.

scientism — anonymous66

Oh oh, they are all exhibiting POMO vocabulary and concerns. Call the cops. — Bitter Crank

Literally the first time I was exposed to the term "scientism", was when it was used by a Christian Creationist to disparage evolution. The gist was "You're sure about evolution? That's because you dismiss Christianity in favor of Scientism".

Does anyone else see defenders of Christianity as just people defending their favorite narrative? It's like they're saying, "c'mon, it's a complete story that has worked for thousands of years. if we'd all just buy into it, then we'd all agree on everything, and we wouldn't have to worry about stuff." or maybe, "c'mon, Christianity works. We just cleaned up this epistemological mess, and now you guys are messing it all up again with your uncomfortable questions and observations"

Now, that might be a "very pretty result" but it does seem somewhat strange, because it doesnot seem to follow from the idea that all opinions are true, and hence that the opinions of "those who disagree with him" are true, that his opinion is false. The sophist's position, as characterized by Socrates, is that all opinions are true and on this position the truth of the opinions of those who disagree with him does not render his own opinion false; this would be true only according to Socrates' position. But Socrates cannot use the premise that all opinions are true because it is contrary to his own position.

I was just pointing out that the sophistic point made in the maxim "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not" (to give it in full) may be read as being equivalent to the PoMo idea that all is discourse; that all our knowledge is constructed, that is, by us and cannot have any reference to a supposed reality beyond us.

It seems to me you're searching for an intellectual certainty that cannot be had. For me, it's all about intellectual commitment. I commit myself to the notion of a truth beyond us (contra the sophists and the PoMo's) because I think the logic of our situation and our discourses themselves demands such a commitment. I do not commit myself on the basis that I think I have discovered any proof that there is a truth beyond human discourse, because such proof is not possible.

The argument is a reductio ad absurdum, no?

The way I see it, the position is reduced to absurdity only by Socrates' use of a premise which is foreign to the position. I think that's a problem for Socrates' argument.

Personally I do think that the idea that all opinions are true is absurd; but for me that is an intuitive realization and I don't have an argument against the sophistic position that does not use premises that come from my intuitive realization, premises that are foreign to the position itself. So, in short, I don't believe the position's own premises can be used to reduce it to absurdity.