Two features of postmodernism - unconnected?

andrewk

It recently occurred to me that the two features for which postmodernism seems to be best known, and to which its critics most strongly object, are very different from one another and are not – so far as I can tell – necessary consequences of one another.

Those features are
(1) a rejection of the notion of absolute truth, sometimes presented as a statement that 'truth is socially constructed'; and
(2) the employment of very long explanations with obscure use of language.

These seem unconnected to me because I lean strongly toward the former view but I also really dislike long, unclear explanations.

However that second doesn't necessarily mean I 'disapprove of' pomo expression, as it depends on what it's intended to achieve.

If a long, opaque passage, whether pomo or from some other school, is intended to argue that such and such is the case then I reject it because to argue that something is the case is a matter of logic. Logic can always be expressed concisely and clearly if one is prepared to work hard enough at it, and failure to do so is often an indicator of laziness, incompetence or arrogance on the part of the author.

If on the other hand, the purpose of the passage is to recommend to the reader that they consider the world from a particular perspective, that's an entirely different matter. The text of the passage is intended to create that perspective for the reader, which is a transformative, rather than a logical, exercise, and it can be as obscure as one likes. It's like listening to a poem or music. The first time I heard Brahms' second symphony on my parents' scratchy old record player was a deeply transformative experience for me, which had nothing at all to do with logic or language.

If pomo denies absolute truth then it seems reasonable to infer that its obscure passages are not intended to prove that 'this is how it is' (since there is no absolute fact of the matter about 'how it is') but rather to suggest 'try looking at things from this point of view / try to have this experience'. If so then I see no reason for anybody to object to the second famous feature of pomo. But I still don't see it as a necessary consequence of the first, or vice versa.

Nietzsche denied absolute truth but was a very clear writer, while Kant was a very obscure writer who seemed to believe in all sorts of absolutes, including truth. Neither were postmodernists.

I have some questions, on which I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts.

1. For those that like pomo, do you think these features are fair characterisations of pomo writing? If so, do you think they are related in any way or is it just historical happenstance that they both occur in the same movement?

2. For those that dislike pomo, to which of the two features do you object? If both, which one irks you most? Or is it some other feature not mentioned here?

Wayfarer

Nietzsche denied absolute truth but was a very clear writer, while Kant was a very obscure writer who seemed to believe in all sorts of absolutes, including truth. Neither were postmodernists. — andrewk

I suspect that Nietszche's misunderstanding and subsequent mis-representation of Kant's 'copernican revolution in philosophy', set the stage for the 'perspectivism'. I think it’s a mistake to say that Kant himself endorsed perspectivism, which is ‘the philosophical view that all ideations take place from particular perspectives, and that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made’ – although I can see how that conclusion might be drawn from Kant. But Kant himself believed in an ethical absolute, namely, the moral imperative, and also believed that faith in God was essential from the viewpoint of both ethics and rationality, even though he also argued that it was impossible to prove the existence or non-existence of God, on the basis of reason alone. (as per the ‘antinomies of reason’.) Whereas for Nietszche, having declared the ‘death of God’, no such moral or ethical absolute could be said to be real, which is why he predicted and was in some ways responsible for the onset of nihilism.

In any case, post-modernism (which is not anyway a school of thought or philosophy) generally understands all judgements to be embedded in a realm of discourse against which they are validated, and ‘distrusts meta-narratives’, whether they are religious or scientific in origin. As a consequence, I think most of those who describe themselves as post-modern would be hesitant to speak of any form of absolute or Capital T truth, or even its absence, as their focus is generally critical.

apokrisis

↪andrewk

On those two points, as you say, the idea that truth is socially constructed is a very acceptable and modern understanding. But where Pomo can go wrong is then in being too PC (or Marxist - the earlier incarnation of utopian egalitarianism).

So yes, our world is socially constructed. But then in recognising this fundamental subjectivity, the philosophical project can be to discover the most objective point of view. Pomo argues instinctively for plurality and thus loses sight of the possibility that there is indeed a rational unity to be found.

On the second point - opaqueness - I have no objection to jargon and difficulty. But I agree that Pomo often uses language in a way that suggest cleverness rather than actually delivering substance.

The key trick is to employ familiar dichotomies - like love and strife or potential and actual - and treat them as self-contradictory paradox that radically undermines any possibility of unifying certainty. So because neither can be right, yet both are right, everything becomes just a poetic dance around the subject designed to make the writer look clever and the subject matter forever elusive. It can be talked about endlessly, and nothing settled can emerge - which is good if you want to dazzle the impressionable.

So Pomo - not all of it of course, just the general tendency - is opaque because it has institutionalised a fundamental abuse of good philosophical reasoning. It's game is to tease with paradox rather than account via dialectical analysis.

Then the other associated stylistic fault is that it resists giving concrete examples of the abstract arguments it pretends to spin.

AP is clear as it is scientific in this respect. Here is the general theory, now here is the commonsense illustration that makes precise what I might mean. This is an example of a sound method of thought being institutionalised (even if AP can be just as wordy, muddled or trite at times).

So writing skills vary tremendously. But well structured thought will always shine through. And rigour means developing a theory that is systematic (not a toying with contradiction to prove the impossibility of systematisation). And then that system of thought might be true or false - but that isn't a problem if you also argue your case using concrete examples. That is the evidence by which readers can test the strength of the intellectual edifice you wish to present.

jkop

↪andrewk

I'd say the two are connected in the sense that without truth the human intellectual enterprise is re-directed from saying things about the world to performative utterances which are neither true nor false but do things, such as signal how advanced or superior the speaker is while pretending to say something about the world or the nature of truth. Unclarifiable unclarity does that, and it is impossible to refute.

Thorongil

But I still don't see it as a necessary consequence of the first, or vice versa. — andrewk

It's not necessary, but it does make sense that it is a consequence.

Neither were postmodernists. — andrewk

No, but they are certainly figures in a line leading to postmodernism, especially Nietzsche. This critical survey, for example, traces its roots to 18th century thinkers like Kant and Rousseau.

If both, which one irks you most? Or is it some other feature not mentioned here? — andrewk

Both equally irk me (the former, because relativism is self-defeating, the latter because it's enormously irritating to read), but another feature you neglected to mention, which I also find pernicious, is that postmodernism is in large part nested inside Marxism and leftist politics. You're right that postmodernism espouses epistemic relativism (as well as other kinds), but the default and backup position of most of its major theorists is still Marxism/leftism, even though they don't always explicitly state this. What then happens is that these thinkers are taught almost exclusively in the humanities and social sciences, excepting analytic philosophy departments, such that so-called disinterested, academic scholarship is now taken to mean, "an analysis of X according to the ideas of one or another postmodernist thinker Y."

Srap Tasmaner

↪andrewk

You are clearly right that they needn't be related. (Goodman's a pretty extreme constructivist and not at all obfuscated.)

On the other hand, it seems to me that the first characteristic underwrites the second. There are things we're careful about on the more scientific/analytic side of things that don't often seem valued on the other side:

whether a result has actually been established (to the relevant standard)
whether we are correctly interpreting or applying said result
whether we are accurately representing another's views
whether the views we put forward are consistent so far as we can determine their consequences

I find almost all these, as it were, "canons of accountability" ignored in the kind of writing I think you have in mind. Thus

scientific jargon is misused
scientific results are misinterpreted and misapplied
the works of others exist mainly as forests to be poached--fair representation of said author's views is not even one of the goals
within your own work, all you need do is suggest something, as an aside, as an analogy, and then within a few pages you can rely on it as established fact (y'know, as established as anything else) and start building on it

Argumentation is almost completely replaced by rhetoric. (God I sound like such an old fogey!)

Another side-effect is the need to move fast. Without the expectation of actually establishing anything, there's no need to take your time. In fact, it's easier to carry your readers along and keep them from noticing the shortcuts if you move quickly.

Thorongil

By the way, I think Kant's prose continually gets a bad rap, but is in fact quite pleasurable to read. He uses a fair amount of technical terms, but he's not trying to be obscure, which is the impression one gets of many postmodernist authors. On the whole, I think postmodernism is dominated by insidious hacks, but I admit that some postmodernists can be half-decent writers too. Sartre's essays and fiction are highly readable, Foucault writes a nice sentence every one in a while, and Clifford Geertz writes excellent, witty prose.

TheWillowOfDarkness

↪andrewk

To an extent, they are linked. Postmodernism is more or less us grasping the metaphysical significance of our empirical being. It outlines the beginning and ending of a language, how our ideas are produced in the world, what they mean with reference to other viewpoints and their significance to power. Most of all, postmodernism is the destruction of the metanarrative, of the idea their is one particular way of thinking or existing.

God, Capitalism, Modernism, The Enlightenment, and Communism/Marxism (if we are talking post WW2 and 1960s) are dead. They were never the only meaning of the world, only myths which hid a huge array of meanings and impacts from us. A lot of the accusation of "opaque" language are more of a political nature. Postmodernism brings in concepts which amount to the destruction of metanarrative. What better way to keep your preferred metanarrative in power than claim it's opposition is not saying anything and makes no truth claim? The claim postmodernism doesn't deal in truths or claims is what it opponents wish it was.

Much of the supposed "controversies"about postmodernism misreading or misusing "scientific concepts" is just a misunderstanding of what those arguments are doing. Take the famous accusation Newton's Principia Mathematica was a "rape manual." What did that mean? The opponents of postmodernism rant and rave about it being some nonsensical claim suggesting doing math amounts to advocating rape. It never was. Metaphor was the point-- how scientific disciplines are blind to experiences and impact of individuals, to how viewing all the world as mere objects to control excludes recognition of people and whether you ought to be controlling them.

Where the analytical reduces ( "It's just only math!" ), postmodernism expands ("No, it is not just math. It's math as part of a culture and community which has particular consequences for various people and what they mean" ). A lot of the supposed "complexity" of postmodernism is just proponents upset that the postmodernist is bringing a wider scope of the meaning of the world. Despite what it opponents would claim, postmodernism is not a metanarrative. It's point is no metanarrative is adequate. We have to don't just have to do the work of describing the interactions of the world (science), but also the meaning of our world and its relationships too.

In this respect, postmodernism has roots in Kant, who points out our experience and knowledge is always our own, and Nietszche who describes how our meaning is an expression of the world, of ourselves, rather than of another realm (e.g. God, The Enlightenment, Modernist Utopia, Communist Utopia, etc.).

_db

I would like it if someone provided me with a good example of a post-modern philosophical theory that they dislike and why they dislike it. From my own gauging, it seems like pomo, just like any other thing, is a mixture of good and bad. I do not know that much about pomo, and the general dislike of it from others has put it on the side burner for me, but I also find myself intrigued by the idea that truth is relative, or that metaphysics is bunk, etc.

Probably the issue I have with pomo, just from my opinion, is that it seems sort of disconnected and anti-methodological. It also seems to be overly-skeptical of science. It takes the scientism of today and cashes out with an view on the complete opposite of the spectrum. Which is implausible imo.

Also I never understood how it is possible for truth to be relative, and yet believe this proposition to be true.

Thorongil

I would like it if someone provided me with a good example of a post-modern philosophical theory that they dislike and why they dislike it — darthbarracuda

I have a simple assignment for you. Try reading a postmodernist with an open mind, as I once did, and see if you can make heads or tails of what he's saying. If you can, then perhaps you could enlighten us wee mortals. Usually, when someone does claim to have understood something a postmodernist has said, his or her translation turns the highly obscure and provocative claims of the postmodernist into utterly trivial points that don't need to be made. This is known as the Motte and Bailey technique discussed here, among other techniques in the postmodernist charlatan's arsenal. If you can't, you will soon begin to surmise either 1) that you just don't understand it yet or 2) that it cannot be understood and was never intended to be fully understood. If the former, you're in denial. If the latter, then you've cracked the code, as I see it.

I personally recommend Badiou if you want a good laugh. I had an especially epiphanic moment not too long ago when I realized that grown adults with PhDs actually take a guy like him seriously, when I can't read a sentence of his without scrunching my face in befuddled amusement that gives way to derisive chuckling.

VagabondSpectre

↪andrewk

I reckon I dislike post-modernism, but I don't always begrudge them the relativity and subjectivity in certain kinds of truth. Although in a lot of cases (especially where science has anything to say) this kind of thrust seems dogmatic and unwarranted. Many post-modernist rejections of certainty take different approaches to the relativity of truth, and perhaps some of them are onto something, but when this is misapplied all you get is the destruction of perfectly useful truth. "Race is a social construct" for instance is neither accurate nor useful, and it by definition discards the genetic reality that modern science holds as the objective differences between races. While it's true a specific distribution of genetic traits exists on a spectrum (i.e: the genetic trends of characteristics which delineate ethnic groups), to ignore that ethnic gene-pools do have different characteristics is to ignore reality.

Obscure language doesn't annoy me so long as meaning is not also obscured. I can deal with words I need to google, but I am severely annoyed when I need to both google words and guess what their intended use is due to vagueness and ambiguity.

Streetlight

As usual, the first thing to point out is that 'postmodernism' does not designate any school of thought or philosophy, and refers rather to a particular historical and cultural period and aesthetic. The philosophers often called 'postmodernists' are those whose philosophies are seen to respond to, or theorize in the wake of, that milieu. Importantly, those responses are not in any way univocal (they differ from philosopher to philosopher), and moreover, neither are they entirely determined by that milieu (i.e. there are often concerns other than postmodernity alone that motivate their discussions).

As someone like Fred Jameson points out, a representative list of 'postmodernists' might include poets like John Ashbury, authors like Thomas Pynchon and artists like Andy Warhol, no less than the many philosophers who are often taken to fall under this banner. For my part, I think the concerns with both truth and 'obscure language' are rather overstated, and miss the forest for the trees. The former because there is no such thing as 'the postmodernist position on truth', the latter because it's mostly a triviality that doesn't merit extended discussion.

_db

↪StreetlightX

Would you agree with the idea that "post-modern" philosophy, in particular, has a bit of a beef with science and has more proponents of scientific skepticism or relativism than those who think science discovers the real?

At any rate, phrases like "x is just a social construct" seem to be commonly found in post-modern thinkers and I wonder why that is or what exactly it means to be a social construct. Can a social construct itself be a social construct?

Erik

This is probably a really dumb question, but doesn't the claim that notions of truth are social constructs imply that the person making such a claim has somehow attained a perspective that lies outside of that (those) construct(s)?

Please excuse my naivety. I often feel like Nietzsche's philosophy falls into this trap. He was obviously intelligent enough to recognize this paradox (if indeed there is one), but I'm not sure if he was ever able to resolve it.

Edit: I hadn't initially read deathbarracuda's post right above mine, but it appears as though we have the same fundamental question.

Jamal

There was a recent article on Spiked, which makes some good points about Nietzsche's position on truth, even though it's otherwise polemically anti-PoMo and a bit shallow.

Nietzsche believed in truth, albeit of an unstable, contingent, perspectival and disposable variety. He believed in constant experimentation and argument. His Übermensch forever goes beyond and above. This is why they had to struggle, because truth was difficult but ultimately necessary to obtain through free-thinking and reason. As he wrote in Daybreak (1881): ‘Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at a cost of spiritual and physical tortures… change has required its innumerable martyrs… Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride.’ Far from being casual about truth, Nietzsche cared deeply about it. And any truth we held had to earn its keep. ‘Truth has had to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts, on which our love and our trust in life depend, had to be sacrificed to it’, he wrote later in 1888 in The Antichrist.

Nietzsche believed truths had to be earnt. He believed we had to cross swords in the struggle for truth, because it mattered so dearly, not because ‘anything goes’. We had to accept as true even that which we found intolerable and unacceptable, when the evidence proved it so. All points of view certainly are not valid. Walter Kaufmann, who began the mainstream rehabilitation of Nietzsche after the Second World War, concluded in the fourth edition of his classic Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1974): ‘Nietzsche’s valuation of suffering and cruelty was not the consequence of any gory irrationality, but a corollary of his high esteem of rationality. The powerful man is the rational man who subjects even his most cherished faith to the severe scrutiny of reason and is prepared to give up his beliefs if they cannot stand this stern test. He abandons what he loves most, if rationality requires it. He does not yield to his inclinations and impulses.’ — Patrick West

http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/nietzsches-enlightenment/19617#.WRwFGnV96kA

TheWillowOfDarkness

↪Erik

Not exactly, it means perspectives or things (e.g. identity, values, people, the thing-itself) lie outside the social construct of language or experience. Genetics and ancestry, for example, are not the language or category we use to talk about them (to address an topic VagabondSpectre mentioned).

A person's genes, for example, would be the same regardless or how we talked about them or how we categorised them as belonging to a particular race or not. Race is social construct not because people somehow genes, skin tones to ethnic history, but rather because none of those features are the category of race. Race is another layer of language and experience we've associated with facts like genes, skin colour and cultural heritage: descriptively race is not genetics, skin colour or ethnic history. It another idea (a category to which people belong) and states (our thoughts and culture of who belongs to which category) of the world altogether .

With respect to postmodernism and truth, there is no need to get outside the "social construct" to speak a truth. Any instance of of human language, experience or philosophy is a social construct (including postmodernism). For the postmodernist, telling truth doesn't mean getting outside the social construct, to access The Truth, to the irrelevance of meaning and experience. It just means using a social construct (human language, experiences) to speak a truth and meaning.

Erik

As for my very underdeveloped and largely intuitive views on the matter, I appreciate the 'truth' of perspectivism but also feel that some perspectives are more revelatory than others. Seems like different ways of approaching phenomena can disclose different aspects of their being, so no Truth with a capital T, but that concession need not lead to the reduction of truth(s) entirely to relations of power (although that often seems a significant factor in what passes for truth in a particular social/historical era) or the personal whims of autonomous subjects somehow locked in their own private worlds with their separate truths.

I'll admit that I may be strawmanning these positions, albeit it unintentionally, especially the latter one. It's an interesting topic for sure.

Erik

↪jamalrob

I certainly feel like Nietzsche adhered to a very specific metaphysical framework, one which determines his opinions/valuations on things like Christianity, democracy, etc.

His passionate criticisms of these phenomena, and related things, would only seem to make sense from some privileged standpoint. He felt he won this Truth precisely by freeing himself, in a hard-fought battle, from the dominant perspective of his (our?) time, which of course he traced back to Christianity.

Erik

Thanks Willow, I'll process your post for a bit before responding.

andrewk

Would you agree with the idea that "post-modern" philosophy, in particular, has a bit of a beef with science — darthbarracuda

Is the beef with science or with those - often not scientists - that make philosophical claims about science, such as that science reveals the Truth? The two are very different things.

I am passionate about science and devote time to improving my skills in QM and GR, as well as learning more about Thermodynamics. But I do not believe that it reveals 'Truth'. That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. My interest and participation in science is driven by considerations that are part instrumental and part aesthetic, neither of which relies on a belief that science delivers Truth.

Further society's interest in, and considerable investment in, science is principally driven by its instrumental value, not by any philosophical beliefs about Truth. We invest in science because it brings us useful things.

This is probably a really dumb question, but doesn't the claim that notions of truth are social constructs imply that the person making such a claim has somehow attained a perspective that lies outside of that — Erik

It's not at all dumb, because many people assume that. But I also think the implication fails. Someone who says truth is a social construct may also add - or leave implicit - 'including any assertions about truth that I may appear to be making now'.

Or, put more crudely, the person could just be saying 'trust nobody, including me'. There is nothing contradictory about such a statement. Nor is it only made by postmodernists. Krishnamurti, who was not at all postmodern, said things like that often.

Streetlight

↪darthbarracuda

Would you agree with the idea that "post-modern" philosophy, in particular, has a bit of a beef with science and has more proponents of scientific skepticism or relativism than those who think science discovers the real?

Not really - not because I disagree, mind you, but simply because the actual engagement with the sciences, with a few exceptions, has been relatively sparse. That is, science just isn't spoken about all that much (philosophy, literature, art, and institutions are by far the majority of the objects of analysis). The overwhelming attitude, as far as I can tell, is simply indifference. And where it has been engaged, I think there's been both positive and negative characterizations, in ways that belie any generalization. This is definitely changing btw, and some of the most exciting philosophy in the last twenty years has taken place, for my money, at the exact intersection between science and much of the philosophy influenced by 'postmodernism'.

At any rate, phrases like "x is just a social construct" seem to be commonly found in post-modern thinkers and I wonder why that is or what exactly it means to be a social construct. Can a social construct itself be a social construct?

This is one of those phrases, which, while widely attributed to postmodernist philosophers, appears almost nowhere in any of the relevant texts. The problems with the phrase are numerous, but the most obvious one would be: why 'just'? Why would something being a social construct make it somehow 'less real' than anything else? Is society somehow irreal? Second and more importantly, the idea that 'society' could itself be some sort of totalizing force that could univocally 'construct' anything at all would be among the most suspect ideas that one could possibly conceive of, in a post-modernist context.

There is some truth to the constructivist emphasis which the phrase tries to capture I think, but on its own it's a completely blunt and philosophically unsophisticated notion that, as far as I know, is pretty much never uttered by anyone relevant to the discussion.

Erik

But it doesn't it seem, @StreetlightX, that the term 'social construct' is tinged with a certain sense of arbitrariness? Even more than arbitrariness, actually, but downright calculated maliciousness, especially when paired with typical hierarchical relations of power and domination that characterize almost every social and political configuration?

My familiarity with these issues is very limited, but I have read a bit of Foucault (and a lot of Heidegger and Nietzsche, from whom he apparently drew inspiration), and I also found Edward Said's Orientalism to be extremely thought-provoking. I read it many years ago, but he seemed to find sinister motives behind the construction of particular 'truths' that oftentimes try to pass themselves off as detached scholarship. I was under the impression that this was a seminal work within the postmodern canon.

But yeah, this may be an egregious mischaracterization of a diverse 'movement' that cannot be so easily pinned down. I do genuinely appreciate any additional insight.

Streetlight

↪Erik

But it doesn't it seem, streetlight, that the term 'social construct' is tinged with a certain sense of arbitrariness? Even more than arbitrariness, actually, but downright maliciousness, especially when paired with typical hierarchical relations of power and domination that characterize almost every social and political configuration?

For sure, which is why you'll rarely find the term 'social construct' actually employed by anyone outside a kind of pejorative or highly qualified usage. Perhaps I can put the problem with the phrase this way: the idea that 'the social' constructs anything at all doesn't 'answer' the question of what something is/how something comes about - all it does is shift the answer one step back: what in turn, 'constructs the social' (this is what Darth, I think, was getting at)? In no postmodern-associated text I know (which is not to say all of them!) is 'the social' treated as an explanatory principle - in all cases would 'the social' itself - or at least it's workings - be something to be explained.

This is not to say the phrase can't be used productively, by the way. In fact, it's strongest associations are with the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who are anything but 'postmodernists', and their whole idea was to provide precisely a social theory by which to explain 'how society works'.

As for Said's Orientalism, it's been a while since I've read the work, but I don't recall him framing the issue as one of 'truth', so much as a question of discourse (his object of analysis was literature after all), and a quick skim through seems to confirm this. In fact, here's a nice passage from the introduction: "In the first place, it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality. ...There were - and are - cultures and nations whose location is in the East, and their lives, histories, and customs have a brute reality obviously greater than anything that could be said about them in the West. About that fact this study of Orientalism has very little to contribute, except to acknowledge it tacitly. But the phenomenon of Orientalism as I study it here deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient (the East as career) despite or beyond any correspondence, or lack thereof, with a "real" Orient."

Mongrel

The postmodern aesthetic is hollow and sometimes intensely self-conscious. It is hard to put into words what goes on when the whole human psyche becomes a piano. By comparison, raw, earnest modernism is childish, but the best postmodern stuff is not being condescending at all. There's love in it.

TheWillowOfDarkness

↪Erik

Yes. The "arbitrary" nature of any culture or human experience is sort of the point. Why does our culture exist the way it does?

Obviously, there are all the causal links we can describe of how our culture came to be, but that doesn't answer the question. Why is it that those states produced our culture as it is rather than some other possiblity?

In this sense, it's arbitrary. Nothing about our history necessitated our culture be one possible outcome rather than another, it just happened that way. The destiny ascribed by metanarratives is destroyed.

No longer is there any myth or value which guarantees a just world , fulfilling life or knowledge needed for life. All questions of living are turned over to ethics and power. Living with wisdom and florishing become about either doing the right thing or getting other people to do what you need. The heuristic of just partaking in belief or tradition is destroyed.

In the political context, it does mean outright maliciousness in many cases. What else can we call killing those who think differently to you to hold power? Or systematically devaluing a particular sort of person so you can just take whatever they own? Or closing a border to people fleeing conflict? Power is maliciousness a lot of the time. Do people realise at the time? Not necessarily, some just think they are doing God's will, helping savages or stopping terrorists, but that doesn't change its cruelty and malicious goal.

Srap Tasmaner

It's hard. My first post in this thread was dismissive, and I feel bad about that.

I think in some ways it's mainly a difference in attitude toward logic and science. Do you see them as liberative or oppressive? There's a touching passage in Tarski's little Introduction to Logic that I'll quote in full here:

I shall be very happy if this book contributes to the wider diffusion of logical knowledge. The course of historical events has assembled in this country the most eminent representatives of contemporary logic, and has thus created here especially favorable conditions for the development of logical thought. These favorable conditions can, of course, be easily overbalanced by other and more powerful factors. It is obvious that the future of logic, as well as of all theoretical science, depends essentially upon normalizing the political and social relations of mankind, and thus upon a factor which is beyond the control of professional scholars. I have no illusions that the development of logical thought, in particular, will have a very essential effect upon the process of the normalization of human relationships; but I do believe that the wider diffusion of the knowledge of logic may contribute positively to the acceleration of this process. For, on the one hand, by making the meaning of concepts precise and uniform in its own field and by stressing the necessity of such a precision and uniformization in any other domain, logic leads to the possibility of better understanding between those who have the will to do so. And, on the other hand, by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought, it makes men more critical--and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today.

That's Tarski writing from Harvard in 1940, having fled Poland before the German invasion.

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value.

Thorongil

Do you see them as liberative or oppressive? — Srap Tasmaner

I find this very dichotomy oppressive. The scientific method is neither good nor bad. It's just a tool. It can produce good results in the hands of responsible people and bad results in the hands of irresponsible people.

Mongrel

Some of us still cling to the hope and the heritage of the Enlightenment. And for us, clarity is itself a value. — Srap Tasmaner

Scientologists seek to eliminate irrationality from themselves and ultimately humanity, and the word they use for their goal is "clear." There are at least two sides to every story. If you only understand one side, you're only seeing 50% of the truth.

Imagine a flatscreen tv that's playing a talking head, announcing the last two sentences of the previous paragraph.

_db

I am passionate about science and devote time to improving my skills in QM and GR, as well as learning more about Thermodynamics. But I do not believe that it reveals 'Truth'. That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. My interest and participation in science is driven by considerations that are part instrumental and part aesthetic, neither of which relies on a belief that science delivers Truth. — andrewk

Wait, I'm curious, unless you're in a specialized scientific or technological field, how does QM, GR, thermo, etc help you instrumentally?

Part of the aesthetic of learning science, from what I can tell, is that you're learning stuff about the world. Science finds out what is the case, what reality is like. If all it made were models that were somehow useful but were not accurate representations of reality, I wouldn't really be interested in it. It would seem empty and fake.

Srap Tasmaner

Do you see them as liberative or oppressive?
— Srap Tasmaner

I find this very dichotomy oppressive. The scientific method is neither good nor bad. It's just a tool. It can produce good results in the hands of responsible people and bad results in the hands of irresponsible people. — Thorongil

You're right of course.

OTOH, speaking broadly (and uncomfortably) in a history-of-ideas way, there was a narrative in the period, say, between the second world war and the rise of post-structuralism and friends, that saw modernity as the problem, that painted National Socialism as "rationality run amok" or something. I don't find that view persuasive.

Srap Tasmaner

↪Mongrel

Don't diss the clams, man.

Two features of postmodernism - unconnected?

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