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I don't get the impression that its relevance is due to any particular currency within actual philosophy circles, but rather because postmodernism is the motte

by nkoren 9y ago

I don't get the impression that its relevance is due to any particular currency within actual philosophy circles, but rather because postmodernism is the motte to which the more academic strains intersectional feminism retreat when pressed -- and that very much is a "thing" in contemporary left-wing activism and internet flame wars. On the street and in less academic varietals of intersectionalism, this just consists of "you should shut the fuck up, because you are male / white / heterosexual / cisgendered / wealthy / neurotypical / had good parents / some other form of privileged that I just thought up". In more respectable garb, this gets dressed up as "your arguments have no validity, because <insert postmodernist gloss on ad hominem dismissal here>". Which is no less toxic to having any kind of rational and inclusive dialogue, and deserves to be taken down on its own terms. (Note: this is coming from someone who is firmly left-wing and even has considerable respect for many aspects of intersectional feminism when applied in a philosophical / analytical context; I just despise what it has done to the tone of left-wing activism over the last 10 years.)

kadenshep 9y ago
>"you should shut the fuck up, because you are male / white / heterosexual / cisgendered / wealthy / neurotypical / had good parents / some other form of privileged that I just thought up". Holy narratives bat man. That is such an inaccurate assessment of what is being discussed, I'd wager you have ulterior motivations for being so disingenuous. I feel like the "shut the fuck up" part of that is a complete misunderstanding of what happens when people who have secure livelihoods in whatever form attempt to "educate" or dismiss the complaints others have about the society they live in, even though the "educators" often have no experience with the hardships being discussed and don't see (and even worse, don't appreciate) the advantages that were given to them -- either due to aggregate "system" side-effects or just straight up inherited security (in its many forms). Or even worse, these "educators" can't even begin to abstractly reason why these complaints might have some merit. In other words, they aren't presenting arguments. There isn't some attempt to counter-reason with the complaints. The actual "shut the fuck up" comes from the "other" side, which strangely seemed to be entirely missed in your post. If you're going to try to use SJW-boogeyman talking points, just come out and do it. Don't try to dress up a turd with poorly used and understood philosophical nomenclature.
- stult 9y ago
  Are you... are you trying to prove his point? >Holy narratives batman Postmodern narrative analysis as gloss. >you have ulterior motives for being so disingenuous Straight into the ad hominem. >when people who have secure livelihoods in whatever form attempt to "educate" or dismiss the complaints others Some other form of privilege you just thought up.
  - kadenshep 9y ago
    >Straight into the ad hominem. That's not an ad hominem. If you're going to use logical fallacies you had best understand what they are. And don't try to partially quote me to make my statements seem more definitive than they were presented. Nothing I said even remotely resembles what his point was attempting to state. And I definitely didn't just construct some random form of privilege there. What is the point of your response to my post?
    - Ygg2 9y ago
      > That's not an ad hominem. It absolutely is. You are attacking the person, not his argument.
      - kadenshep 9y ago
        The credibility of his own perspective on this matter is pretty fundamental to the basis of his perspective and his quote. I'm not taking to disparate events or characteristics and using it to dismiss what he's saying, quite the opposite actually -- I'm saying he's dismissing others, poorly understands what is actually being discussed, and is "misquoting" what other people are actually stating. It's not a fallacy. I could have called it ignorance, but that'd require he demonstrate some unfamiliarity with the subject, which he clearly isn't all that unfamiliar with it. It is strange that his his "quote" is getting a free pass, despite it not having any backing to it what so ever. Have a good read: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html
        9y ago
gizmo 9y ago
You may despise the tone of left-wing activism, but arguments based on identity aren't ad-hominem. Some people need to "shut up", as you put it, so that other folks who have relevant experience and expertise can talk and be heard. Forms of privilege aren't just thought up on the spot, activists have been talking about privilege for the better part of a century. You complain about internet flame wars, but you have interpreted left-wing activism in such an uncharitable way that almost no reasonable response is possible.
- dahoramanodoceu 9y ago
  Privilege is one thing, while invalidating someone's argument or, more accurately, squelching it through intimidation, based on some non-essential element of their being is the most appalling behavior in the US. They've been doing it for centuries. This is the first time, however, that the supposed 'enlightened elite' (the urban left) has jumped on the bandwagon of self-righteous prejudice enforced through violence and intimidation. Shame on y'all. It's cannibalizing the left.
- stult 9y ago
  >arguments based on identity aren't ad-hominem Well here's the problem. Arguments that discredit another perspective based on the identity of who is making it are ad hominem. Arguments about the discursive process itself that address representation of various identities aren't. For example, if you tell me that privilege prevents minority voices from contributing to a national dialogue on poverty alleviation, I would agree. But that's not how people use identity in most online or casual arguments. They use identity to directly discredit and silence their opponents. Telling others to shut up isn't a good faith starting point for a productive conversation. That approach is based on an unrealistic, zero sum interpretation of how people interact, where it's only possible for one person to speak on any given subject. Getting more black people involved in a conversation on race doesn't mean silencing all the white people. Yet that's where these conversations often progress to. It's extraordinarily unpleasant to experience and completely useless for fostering dialogue.
  - nkoren 9y ago
Emma_Goldman 9y ago
Yeah, I think you need to parse the popular expression of vague post-modernist thought in political debate from the philosophical proponents of post-modernism. You ought not infer the emptiness of the second from the emptiness of a lot of the first. There are a lot of very bad arguments in circulation about POV epistemology, e.g. you should not be able to speak to an issue given your sociological standpoint. That is very reductive / simplistic, obviously.
- nkoren 9y ago
  Absolutely. Both privilege and oppression are real and worth understanding, and at an academic level, intersectional feminism has done a lot of good work in this regard. Recognising that structures of oppression with regards to race, gender, sexuality, etc. are not totally uncorrelated, but have commonalities that are worth identifying and studying in their own right, is a significant innovation of intersectional feminism, and I respect it. Similarly, the concept of "privilege" is very worth unpacking. To those who can think of themselves as "just a person" living on some kind of neutral substrate, that feels like the most ordinary and natural thing in the world -- but it's a huge privilege. If you're a woman, this fact is continually thrown in your face, in a way that distinctly qualifies and limits your "personhood". If you're a gay black woman, then the qualifications and limitations genuinely get multiplied. I think it's important to unpack and understand this, and I welcome philosophies that aid in doing so. (As an aside, I don't consider this kind of cultural analysis is at odds with rationality, until it crosses the threshold of insisting that it is describing the whole of reality in a totalising way, at which point it does start having genuine philosophical problems.) The problem is that the populist expression of this pretty much boils down to "you have privilege, so shut up", which A.) is illiterate, because "privilege" is neither a personal nor even a cultural failing -- it's the lack of privilege that's a problem, and B.) utterly inimical to fostering any kind of understanding. Anyhow, I suppose this is no different from what happens when any other nuanced philosophy gets used as a tool in populist conflicts. I have huge respect Buddhism as a philosophy, but it is nonetheless being used as a justification for persecution and genocide in Burma. Here or there, I think it's important to not let enlightened ideas be used as an excuse for being a jerk. (Nor to let jerks discredit enlightened ideas, although on the whole I'm less concerned about this).

by nkoren 9y ago

kadenshep 9y ago

>"you should shut the fuck up, because you are male / white / heterosexual / cisgendered / wealthy / neurotypical / had good parents / some other form of privileged that I just thought up". Holy narratives bat man. That is such an inaccurate assessment of what is being discussed, I'd wager you have ulterior motivations for being so disingenuous. I feel like the "shut the fuck up" part of that is a complete misunderstanding of what happens when people who have secure livelihoods in whatever form attempt to "educate" or dismiss the complaints others have about the society they live in, even though the "educators" often have no experience with the hardships being discussed and don't see (and even worse, don't appreciate) the advantages that were given to them -- either due to aggregate "system" side-effects or just straight up inherited security (in its many forms). Or even worse, these "educators" can't even begin to abstractly reason why these complaints might have some merit. In other words, they aren't presenting arguments. There isn't some attempt to counter-reason with the complaints. The actual "shut the fuck up" comes from the "other" side, which strangely seemed to be entirely missed in your post. If you're going to try to use SJW-boogeyman talking points, just come out and do it. Don't try to dress up a turd with poorly used and understood philosophical nomenclature.

stult 9y ago
Are you... are you trying to prove his point? >Holy narratives batman Postmodern narrative analysis as gloss. >you have ulterior motives for being so disingenuous Straight into the ad hominem. >when people who have secure livelihoods in whatever form attempt to "educate" or dismiss the complaints others Some other form of privilege you just thought up.
- kadenshep 9y ago
  >Straight into the ad hominem. That's not an ad hominem. If you're going to use logical fallacies you had best understand what they are. And don't try to partially quote me to make my statements seem more definitive than they were presented. Nothing I said even remotely resembles what his point was attempting to state. And I definitely didn't just construct some random form of privilege there. What is the point of your response to my post?
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    > That's not an ad hominem. It absolutely is. You are attacking the person, not his argument.
    - kadenshep 9y ago
      The credibility of his own perspective on this matter is pretty fundamental to the basis of his perspective and his quote. I'm not taking to disparate events or characteristics and using it to dismiss what he's saying, quite the opposite actually -- I'm saying he's dismissing others, poorly understands what is actually being discussed, and is "misquoting" what other people are actually stating. It's not a fallacy. I could have called it ignorance, but that'd require he demonstrate some unfamiliarity with the subject, which he clearly isn't all that unfamiliar with it. It is strange that his his "quote" is getting a free pass, despite it not having any backing to it what so ever. Have a good read: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adhomine.html
      - 9y ago

gizmo 9y ago

You may despise the tone of left-wing activism, but arguments based on identity aren't ad-hominem. Some people need to "shut up", as you put it, so that other folks who have relevant experience and expertise can talk and be heard. Forms of privilege aren't just thought up on the spot, activists have been talking about privilege for the better part of a century. You complain about internet flame wars, but you have interpreted left-wing activism in such an uncharitable way that almost no reasonable response is possible.

dahoramanodoceu 9y ago
Privilege is one thing, while invalidating someone's argument or, more accurately, squelching it through intimidation, based on some non-essential element of their being is the most appalling behavior in the US. They've been doing it for centuries. This is the first time, however, that the supposed 'enlightened elite' (the urban left) has jumped on the bandwagon of self-righteous prejudice enforced through violence and intimidation. Shame on y'all. It's cannibalizing the left.
stult 9y ago
>arguments based on identity aren't ad-hominem Well here's the problem. Arguments that discredit another perspective based on the identity of who is making it are ad hominem. Arguments about the discursive process itself that address representation of various identities aren't. For example, if you tell me that privilege prevents minority voices from contributing to a national dialogue on poverty alleviation, I would agree. But that's not how people use identity in most online or casual arguments. They use identity to directly discredit and silence their opponents. Telling others to shut up isn't a good faith starting point for a productive conversation. That approach is based on an unrealistic, zero sum interpretation of how people interact, where it's only possible for one person to speak on any given subject. Getting more black people involved in a conversation on race doesn't mean silencing all the white people. Yet that's where these conversations often progress to. It's extraordinarily unpleasant to experience and completely useless for fostering dialogue.
- nkoren 9y ago

Emma_Goldman 9y ago

Yeah, I think you need to parse the popular expression of vague post-modernist thought in political debate from the philosophical proponents of post-modernism. You ought not infer the emptiness of the second from the emptiness of a lot of the first. There are a lot of very bad arguments in circulation about POV epistemology, e.g. you should not be able to speak to an issue given your sociological standpoint. That is very reductive / simplistic, obviously.

nkoren 9y ago
Absolutely. Both privilege and oppression are real and worth understanding, and at an academic level, intersectional feminism has done a lot of good work in this regard. Recognising that structures of oppression with regards to race, gender, sexuality, etc. are not totally uncorrelated, but have commonalities that are worth identifying and studying in their own right, is a significant innovation of intersectional feminism, and I respect it. Similarly, the concept of "privilege" is very worth unpacking. To those who can think of themselves as "just a person" living on some kind of neutral substrate, that feels like the most ordinary and natural thing in the world -- but it's a huge privilege. If you're a woman, this fact is continually thrown in your face, in a way that distinctly qualifies and limits your "personhood". If you're a gay black woman, then the qualifications and limitations genuinely get multiplied. I think it's important to unpack and understand this, and I welcome philosophies that aid in doing so. (As an aside, I don't consider this kind of cultural analysis is at odds with rationality, until it crosses the threshold of insisting that it is describing the whole of reality in a totalising way, at which point it does start having genuine philosophical problems.) The problem is that the populist expression of this pretty much boils down to "you have privilege, so shut up", which A.) is illiterate, because "privilege" is neither a personal nor even a cultural failing -- it's the lack of privilege that's a problem, and B.) utterly inimical to fostering any kind of understanding. Anyhow, I suppose this is no different from what happens when any other nuanced philosophy gets used as a tool in populist conflicts. I have huge respect Buddhism as a philosophy, but it is nonetheless being used as a justification for persecution and genocide in Burma. Here or there, I think it's important to not let enlightened ideas be used as an excuse for being a jerk. (Nor to let jerks discredit enlightened ideas, although on the whole I'm less concerned about this).