And that's a fair analogy. But behind the heavy verbiage, what's new in postmodernism? If you want to say that it arose in combination with a certain type of mode of production, sure, that's fine.

And its good and sometimes useful to see the power dynamics behind prisons and psychiatry or to perhaps look at knowledge as component of markets. That was better stated and established by the development of the PR system in the early 20th century. But still, it was good work.

It's also good to analyze the various aspects of states ideology and it is also useful to point out that aboriginal people's often get left out.

But to claim that science is too "arborescent" and not rhizomatic enough or to say that what's missing from analytic philosophy is that they "do philosophy" as if nothing has happened in 20th century history, as Derrida said, or to say, as Lacan that "Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance, not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the square root of -1.", doesn't look to me as any kind of advance at all.

So, yes, I do take issue with the verbiage and the use of legitimate scientific concepts in an illogical manner. At the same time I think some value can be found in most people.

But I don't see what's new about the thought, besides the jargon.

Excellent post. :up:

Ah. I think part of it has to do with one's attitudes towards the Parisians: Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze, Lyotard, Baudrillard and so on. If this is what is meant by "pomo", then I can see the many disagreements coming in.

If you have in mind Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rorty and then you add in the novelists, then I think it's interesting.

Mostly my feeling is that pomo was fundamentally accurate, but no one really knew what to do with it, much like existentialism which I think of as early postmodernism. A lot of it also seems to come down to matters of taste, or rather of distaste of things held beyond criticism being criticised. — Kenosha Kid

Yes. But I ask you, what aspect of pomo had not been articulated previously by other people many, many years ago? I mean the sophists were a kind of postmodernism.

The taste factor is crucial, I agree.

In short, there's something there, and it deserves a fairer shake, both by people outside of it and by its researchers (pomo needs a better class of postmodernist). — Kenosha Kid

I think this is quite sensible. Perhaps David Foster Wallace was the best proponent of pomo, in terms of articulating many of its peculiarly modern concerns, in ordinary language. Not only in fiction, but also in non-fiction and in interviews as well.

So you're sympathetic to postmodernism?

That sounds like an answer in the negative. — Kenosha Kid

I mean there's many aspects to it. There's even something called postmodern architecture, based on deconstruction. But the idea would be, if you ask a historian, would they recognize something like the "postmodern era"? Not most that I'm aware of.

Also, aside from quoting Lyotard's disdain for "metanarratives" or just saying something like "it's all relativism", it's far from clear what postmodernism is supposed to include, as evidenced by your own excellent OP in terms of having to say a lot to even have a discussion about it.

I'm unsure about your view here, but, what I really dislike about po-mo, outside of much of the willful obscurantism found in many of its adherents, is that they think the enlightenment was a failure. Compared to how Europe was before the enlightenment, I think such a view is pretty wild. I don't think the enlightenment project will be finished, but to say it failed misses the mark.

Not that all of pomo is bad at all, Pynchon is an amazing writer, Rorty was quite clear and some of the Parisians, mostly Foucault, had interesting things to say.

It's just quite baffling that they never really gave a good response to Sokal and Bricmont's books or arguments.

I'll end my random thoughts here...

If all it takes to describe something as an epoch of history is someone merely saying something has happened, then things would be really confusing and completely arbitrary. I mean, why then only limit ourselves to what we read in the news? We should start claiming that the descriptions we make about our neighbors daily routine is of historical importance.

There's a lot in your post, much of it quite interesting but I'd be skeptical. Rorty, for example, claimed that what was useful in postmodernism was already well established towards the end of the 19th century. Thomas Pynchon never described himself as a postmodernist, and he actually seemed to take jabs at the whole idea in his last book Bleeding Edge.

Lyotard eventually claimed that his Postmodern Condition was "a parody". I think it is much more useful to look at the development of the PR industry in the early 20th century to gain some insight into how powerful people thought about how to indoctrinate people, which forms a direct link between between irrational behavior all the way up to Q stuff.

Outside of books written by Stewart Ewen, Chomsky, Bernays and others, Adam Curtis has a few interesting documentaries on the subject, most notably The Century of the Self.

Having said that, I do think that it's fair to say that postmodernism was a movement in literature and philosophy I suppose, depending on how you view Derrida and company. But I don't think it was a historical epoch. So I can't answer the question you pose.

Interesting post though.

Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance by Thomas E. Hosinski

By far the best book I've read on Whitehead, finally I can begin to make some progress here.

Starmaking by Nelson Goodman
The World as Will and Representation by Schopenhauer
Why Materialism is Baloney by Bernardo Kastrup
Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality by Ralph Cudworth
Inborn Knowledge: The Mystery Within - Colin McGinn

There's likely more of this type of thing within the rationalist tradition, it's also an area of personal interest for me, but these days such views aren't as common.

Well, if you're not in favor for freedom of speech which you hate, they you're not in favor of freedom of speech. Saying one likes free speech when you only hear things you like, does not make you a supporter of freedom of speech.

Though misattributed to Voltaire, to him it was obvious: "I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Thanks very much for the detailed analysis. It's horrifying.

It's also quite distressing not knowing too well when a point of "no matter what we do, we are 100% fu*ked" will come. But it's likely sooner rather than later.

We've kind of reached the peak at which a typical species goes extinct, right? Something like 100,000 years or so. But taking most of life with you consciously, is a new phenomena...

I think that for philosophy specifically, you eventually find one school of thought or pattern of ideas that you sympathize with and then you mostly stick to that. Much of the brand new stuff is quite arid compared to many classics, even classics of the 20th century did much more interesting work than a lot of recent stuff.

Having said that, I suppose that once in a while going to sites like academia.edu and reading a few essays keeps you informed on the new stuff.

With science it's different, I try to find articles on astronomy weekly, to see what new discovery has been made. I also check my favorite public physicists a few times a month. With the other sciences it's more rare for me to look new stuff up, unless it makes the headlines. So your interests dictate what you follow and deem worthy of your time.

I always look for interesting YouTube lectures, these can be excellent if you find good sites. And finally I read daily the headlines in the Financial Times, Al Jazeera, Russia Today and sometimes Democracy Now! and sometimes several articles depending on the topic.

If you're looking for something not too long, but quite compact and lucid, you can't go wrong with any of Bryan Magee's books. For a first timer, I'd suggest his The Story of Philosophy: A Concise Introduction to the World's Greatest Thinkers and Their Ideas.

After that his Confessions of a Philosopher is a much more in depth study of many key philosophers.

Then you can go to Russell or Copleston, etc.

@James Riley @T Clark

To steelman an argument is to present the argument in the best possible formulation. In a sense it's presenting your opponents argument in an even stronger manner than he or she would state it.

The idea being that once you give the best possible version of such an argument, you can proceed to show why it is defective, even when presented in this manner.

But psych itself, personality theory and the like, is just no science at all because its subject matter does not lend itself to scientific enquiry. — tim wood

:up:

Exactly.

Which is why we have novels and can gain some insight into the human experience.

I don't think we know enough about "higher animals" to be conclusive on this. Obviously not based on race, but there are cases in which families of mammals leave one of there own out by themselves. It's not clear if it's something to do with the excluded one being too weak or something like that, but yes, people take this to just a whole other dimension.

Some people, likely many, like to feel they are better than someone else for X factor. Usually x factor is quite arbitrary, but complex systems get created out of these tendencies.

Well people believing in pedophiles coming from space or that Trump is going to get reinstated some time this year is so far off from anything based in reality that I wonder how a human being could come around to believe this.

It's not as if we're in the desert 2000 years ago when everything could be discussed in terms of miracles.

not different "races" — 180 Proof

Some of these Republicans make me question everything. :meh:

Sure.

We also often rationalize things away as if we were going to do whatever we ended up doing anyway. So it's not as if by having a self, we have absolute control of ourselves all the time. Often times we don't.

What I wanted to point out in the cases of DID goes in a different direction. One thing is to behave or even feel differently around types of people. Another thing altogether is being a completely different person and often not having a clue you were more than one person. So a self need not be unitary at all.

Which makes the whole topic very hard to grasp.

It's been pointed out before, but when Hume says:

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."
(Bold added)

He refers to himself four times, to then say that he only sees a perception. That's not very persuasive if the attempt is not show that the self is an illusion, which is not entirely clear.

As to what a self is, is an incredibly hard question and likely a mystery. Coincidentally I was looking at some very interesting interviews with people who have been diagnosed with dissociative personality disorder. Some of these people had up to 11 selves! If that's not baffling, I don't know what is.

And I'm no less clear on what a self is.

Here's a link for anyone interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7JK6pattE

EDIT: At around minute 17:45 you can see a person witching to another one.

This is a philosophy forum, where one would hope people would want to use reason to attempt to establish tentative conclusions about the many aspects of reality.

If there is one alleged entity with supreme power over human affairs, it would be of interest to examine this idea. Being that so many people believe in it and also being that it causes much suffering despite doing good, it is only fair for people here to point out why such reasons given for this entity are not persuasive.

This ideas has governed much of the "West" for thousands of years, with sub-optimal results...

"Baba O'Reilly" - The Who

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2KRpRMSu4g

:up:

It's just not my personal area of interest, though I do for example think that Hume's talk about ethics is interesting. Aristotle, from what I can remember, aims for a standard that is very high to be used consistently.

As for the rest, I can't say. But they must have insightful things to say.

I'm not much interested in ethics philosophically, with a few exceptions when it comes to our intuitions of right and wrong.

I suppose my exception would be Bertrand Russell. He has a bunch of stuff on ethics pertaining to all kinds of problems. One book would be The Conquest of Happiness.

In terms of essays, I think his In Praise of Idleness is quite interesting and on point. In short, almost any book or essay by him on this topic is worth skimming at least.

Yeah, that's pretty funny.

Weird names for books, back in the day.

No.

I don't think we can explain existence at all. There are facts that lead up to our existence, but they could've turned out in a different manner and we would not be here.

Yeah, there's a virtually endless variety of perspectives people can take on the very same event or circumstance.

It seems to me that what you are proposing is difficult to train for. Essentially to have better intuition. I wonder how that would work out as a training exercise.

I'm a bit unclear on the point you're making. Is it that we have to analyze appropriately certain events? So the argument would be that many people don't analyze events appropriately...



It can be very annoying, especially people who say "that's what I said!": [insert what you said for them]".

I used to think so, but I realized at some point that evil is not just the absence of good, and that there ARE evil behaviors, generally coming from certain (rare) individuals rather than from others. E.g. serial killers; the people at FAUX News, Bashir El Assad. — Olivier5

Yes. But then I'd say that instead of speaking about evil people, of which we can find quite a few, all of us can do evil things. And evil people can do good things, trivially.

One thing is to say that we don't want these types of behaviors in society, another thing is to say they're a problem, because, why would there not be evil? It's assuming that "good" is something natural or obvious.

That's quite an argument! I prefer to keep it a bit more simple and simply say that, obvious things aside such as the capital of Italy or math, we rarely get to the point in which we would be justified in saying that have completely certain justification for beliefs. Even if something happened 3 seconds ago. I don't feel comfortable stating such things, though I know it can be silly on occasions.

Don't know if it's been mentioned already, but the philosophical issue that bothers me the most in life is the issue of evil, i.e. why are people doing evil things like raping children or killing them? — Olivier5

Isn't the problem of evil a problem specifically within a theological context? Because it seems to me that if we are going to speak about the problem of evil absent theology, then we have to speak about the problem of good or the problem humor, etc.

Than you have excellent taste. Peirce, James and Dewey and all the others of that era are sometimes underrated, there's just a wealth of knowledge to be found in there works. :cool:

You’re good enough, you don’t have to be more... but you can be more, you’re never just stuck as you are. — Pfhorrest

And again, you're view is totally sensible. I'd even say it's pragmatic, in terms of the classical American tradition.

Oh yeah. I have generalized anxiety disorder and mild depression, so I'm quite aware of how tough it can be and all the many factors involved. Obviously not everybody that has an illness need have an "artistic trait".

There's also the issue that nowadays in general, we are much more open as a society all over the world, to speak about these things. Not long ago saying you visited a psychologist was akin to admitting you were insane.

It could actually be the case that everybody has some shade of mental illness, it's just part of being a person. I would not be surprised. I guess "mental illness" is not the best name after all.

As for psychopathology, it carries the connotation of serial killers or things of that nature. But clearly that can't be true of most of them.

Just take care not to confuse outward success with what it is like to be someone. Many a successful person with a mental health issue was terrifically unhappy and some famous ones committed suicide regardless, of genius and acclaim. — Tom Storm

Of course. It's a curious aspect in artists this relationship with mental illness of some kind. Some can manage it better than others. But it not pleasant in any way, I'd assume. External success is meaningless if you're miserable.

I mean sure. I forgot where I read or saw this, but someone pointed out that professional athletes happen to be people who are supped obsessed on one single thing. If they weren't obsessed on sports, they'd be obsessed with something else, sometimes leading to dangerous behavior.

The problem with terms like "psychopath", "schizophrenic" and the like, is that they really do cover a vast range of cases, to the point that these terms can be misleading. It's just that not much is understood about any of this, human beings are too complex. If a psychopath happens to be a soldier, he may do brave things in a war.

If a schizophrenic is not totally dysfunctional, they can be fantastic artists. And so on.

Sure, I'm similar in many respects. It just that if you espouse views like this, people tend to think that you're doing something wrong or are missing out on something or had some trauma, etc., etc.

And that may be true for a lot of people. But not all. If you're happy or content with who you are, I think that's what's important. No one is going to live your life for you.

Sure, I agree. This applies to virtually to everybody. Few people bother to study the underpinnings of belief systems.

:up:

I mean the "nothing to lose attitude" is great and good and is often sound advice. But if you are fine with how you are, there's nothing wrong with that. One thing is to try to keep improving on certain areas, if one deems it necessary.

But on the other hand - and this has nothing to do with Phorrest - this cultish obsession in our society of improving yourself all the time is kind of obscene. As if people were corporations who have to make more money no matter what.

Well if metaphysical views apply to ordinary life, then it's relevant. But fair enough, you are correct that it could go off topic.

That's as good a path as many notable traditions in philosophy. I may be wrong with my assumptions here, but it seems to me that a lot of this ties back to this extremely elusive field which we call "metaphysics".

@T Clark may be right that metaphysics can be thought of as what is useful. I only add that if something is useful then an aspect of your belief must have some tenuous connection to the nature of the world, as in existentialism, Daosim and different traditions say something about the world which is not captured by our physics or other sciences. It just can't be proven.

This of course contradicts in part, Clarks point about metaphysics being neither true nor false. But it rings true to me, though it could be me wanting to believe this.

If it could be detected somehow, the technology used to detect this simulation could be useful for physics(?) or whatever relevant science.

But if it is only postulated not shown, it makes no difference at all.