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Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis You cant dig deeper than the very language we use to philosophize with. Every attempt at undoing postmodernism
by ThomPete 8y ago
Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis You cant dig deeper than the very language we use to philosophize with. Every attempt at undoing postmodernism will get you right back at the postmodern realization. So very much alive at least philosophically but we are also starting to realize this in other areas.
- goatlover 8y agoOr you can stop making philosophy an exercise in linguistic analysis. Language is the tool we use to ask questions with, not the things we are asking about.
- ThomPete 8y agoBut asking those questions bring you right back at defining them. We can ignore it just like we can ignore quantum physics talking about classical physics but that just mean we are ignoring them and reducing the discussion into a frame of reference which is exactly the point of postmodernism.
- goatlover 8y agoI don't think any interesting questions boil down to agreeing on a dictionary definition. Say you could get everyone to agree on the same definition for free will or consciousness. You're still left with the same questions about to what extent do we have defined free will and subjective experiences, which people will still disagree and debate on. Unless you get people to agree on definitions that define the problem away, but then you're just going to be using a different definition to pose the question that came up, because it will keep coming up. Language is just a tool to express ourselves. It's not the fabric of existence.
- ThomPete 8y agoBesides personal experience of phenomena what other way do you express your philosphical inquiry in? The dictionary isnt the point here, postmodernism isnt concerned about that. Its actually a critique of exactly that.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoIt's not about agreeing on some dictionary definition. The exercise is semantic in the sense that it seeks to describe and then connect sets of concepts to sets of beliefs in certain contexts. So in that sense, it's analytically deep. However what tends to happen is that most casual students get to a certain depth in PM, say undergraduate level, give up on the complexity and then throw their hands up and say "nothing is real so I can create my won world that you need to conform to." That's the problem.
- moolcool 8y agoThat comes with the implication that everything in classical physics is a solved problem though. Just because you can distill anything to meta-questions doesn't mean you should, or that it's (necessarily) a productive exercise for your application. You can build an engine without pondering the nature of iron atoms
- ThomPete 8y agoYou can but philosophically you cant without creating some sort of frame of reference. Scientific discoveries are not philosphical truths they are something else.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoBut that's a dead end. In Francis Schaeffer's phrase, in postmodernism "language leads to language and nothing more" (emphasis added).
- roenxi 8y agoBut in practice we can clearly define some things objectively. If that were truly impossible, we would be unable to share common languages to any degree and it would be impossible for two separate cultures to communicate. At some level reality itself may be an illusion and we can never be sure of time and space. However, if we concede that point, then we concede that potentially nothing exists then we cannot debate it because we don't exist either. So even by discussing a matter we are taking an assumption that we exist and that something exists for us to talk about, even if the precise meaning of the words isn't nailed down by anyone. At this point, postmodernism starts to look a bit weak, because to communicate we must assume some shared reality between two parties which is quite possibly going to be objective by both parties standards. And in the framework of human endevour, there are a huge number of hypothetical realities we have ruled out by scientific experiment. It is overwhelmingly likely at this point that something objective exists and we've narrowed in on it quite a bit from, say, 10,000 BC.
- ThomPete 8y agoWe can define things to a good enough degree that its useful but its still a reduction of reality.
- cirgue 8y agoReally, it all comes back to “am I just a hallucinating brain in a vat?” But the answer to that question doesn’t much matter really. If that’s the case, why not just pack up all the books and go to the beach? Same thing with language. It’s one interesting line of inquiry, but it’s hardly the only one worth discussing.
- ThomPete 8y agoThat depends on how deep your philosophical inquiry is.
- aphextron 8y ago>Or you can stop making philosophy an exercise in linguistic analysis. Language is the tool we use to ask questions with, not the things we are asking about. "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
- zepto 8y agoPerhaps that is just wrong.
- dwaltrip 8y agoA large portion of my thought is very much non-linguistic. Visuospatial thoughts are the easiest example. This even happens for things that aren't inherently spatial, like abstract concepts, if there is a useful spatial metaphor.
- ThomPete 8y agoThoughts yes, now try and express those thoughts to get me to agree and you will understand what we are talkingabout.
- dwaltrip 8y agoWill a wink suffice? How about a photograph or a song? Edit: Language is fascinating, of course. However, I find the underlying mental layers that support it to be equally fascinating, if not more so.
- ThomPete 8y agoAre they claims about the world or just expressions?
- omginternets 8y agoWhat's the difference?
- sien 8y agoAnother thing about some form of linguistic analysis being the final form of philosophy is that another form of linguistic analysis, that of Wittgenstein, predates Postmodernism by 50 years. In addition that Existentialism is after Wittgenstein's take on a analysis. Existentialism attempts to answer the questions that we care about such as how we live our lives and our own values. Existential philosophy is also, in part, very readable opposed to the great difficulty of reading Postmodernism.
- avs733 8y agoYou can look at intent and honesty. The metamodernism stuff is confusing but interesting
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y ago> Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis. Hardly. There are plenty of psychoanalytical models (still being) explored that have more utility and the inevitable philosophies that extend from them will be just as final. The tools of measure are the roots of modern philosophy and postmodernism is little more than an ancient narrative about behavior that sprouts from mass media.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tzahola 8y agoSo it’s like bedrock in minecraft.
- forapurpose 8y ago> Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis You cant dig deeper than the very language we use to philosophize with. Every attempt at undoing postmodernism will get you right back at the postmodern realization. So very much alive at least philosophically but we are also starting to realize this in other areas. I've thought about it in similar ways, but I fear those are the words of the incumbent facing the disrupter (if you'll pardon an abused analogy). What you say is true if you start with the premise of the postmodernist. That is, in effect I see it as saying nothing more complicated than postmodernism is the outcome of postmodernist assumptions. Typically, the disrupter has a different agenda, different goals entirely, which is why the incumbent can't understand them - it makes no sense in the context of the incumbent's goals. In this case, the agenda, the assumption, of postmodernism is a desire for the truth (which can't be had) or as realistic an understanding of it as possible. An hypothesis, stealing a bit from the article: The psuedo-modernist, to use the word from the article, doesn't care about the truth, so all your postmodernism is in the trash. Their reality is whatever they create or believe in the moment. It's fake news, fake economics, fake science (climate denial), whatever is in their Facebook feed, whatever their sources or friends repeat over and over, whatever is said most loudly or with the most anger - whatever can be insisted upon - whatever makes you angry. (Remember when anger was a sign of irrationality? Now it's a sign of a new reality being created.) All authoritative sources are destroyed, including all work product of academia (if you believe some HN comments). Propaganda is reality, and to an extent that is true: Perception is reality, and people can maintain those delusions for a long time. (And yeah, that's pretty scary.) "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick (though I've never verified its provenience)
- ThomPete 8y agoWe can't know the truth but we can be it.
- sien 8y agoExcept that Wittgenstein and much of Analytic Philosophy was already there 75 years ago and was largely ignored by Foucault, Derrida and others. Wittgenstein is all about trying to work out how language works. Postmodernism combines Nietzsche and Marx and then looks at text but ignores people who had been looking at text philosophically for decades.
- ThomPete 8y agoI don't think Wittgenstein was ignored (especially not his later work) they just had different goals. You could equally claim that all postmodern philosophy is really just Zen Buddhism reinterpreted. I don't think it takes anything away from anyone.
- sien 8y agoHowever, since there was a significant form of textual analysis that predates Postmodernism it shows that forms of textual analysis have had later philosophical movements. It also shows that Postmodernism itself is the second form of textual analysis in recent times which indicates that it is unlikely to be the final form of philosophy. The other point about Postmodernism is that while texts are meant to be reinterpreted in any way the reality is that shallow readings of who the author was and what they like to do in the bedroom has been the primary result.
- ThomPete 8y agoNot it doesent show that. The “conclusions” are more or less the same and non have had further developments inside their respective frameworks. I.e there isnt any critique of postmodernism that takes it further only back, there isnt any critique of zenbuddism that takes it further etc.
- ThomPete 8y agoWhy the downvotes? Arent we just having a discussion?
- kazagistar 8y agoUpvotes and downvotes are part of the discussion. If we didn't want them to be, we wouldn't use those parts of the internet that have these verbs to have our discussions.
- ThomPete 8y agoWe don't have downvotes for disagreement. The guidelines clearly point that out.
- detaro 8y agoThey do not. Reddit has that rule, HN doesn't. (and old statements from moderators saying it's ok)
- ThomPete 8y agoCan you point to that statement cause that seems contrary to establishing a civilized debate? You downvote if something as an example is of topic or inflamatory or otherwise destroyes the conversation, not something you disagree with which is part of the discussion. Never heard it was ok to downvote just because you disagree but would love to see the statement about that.
- myWindoonn 8y agoHi! I want to demonstrate a tenet of postmodernism. I'm wondering whether you'd agree with the following paragraph, even though my words aren't your words: You and I are exchanging words right now. Those words don't really mean anything. Meanings are private to each mind, and everybody decodes words and interprets them as having different meanings. Those meanings, or perhaps those concepts, within each mind will give rise to some sort of worldview (or POV for short) which gives everybody their own uniquely-colored glasses through which the world's stage, players, narratives, and behaviors appear filtered, giving rise to new meanings and possibilities. This paragraph was hand-written and spontaneous, but I think that you'd nonetheless agree with it because it is an attempt to capture common societal ideas about how English encodes meanings, and thus I think that most English-speakers will decode it to predictable concepts, and I think further that folks who have studied philosophy, not just postmodernism, will find concepts in it similar to the concepts that I've imagined. Why this is fascinating: I think that this understanding of language decoding as a strange loop is totally overlooked by this crowd, but it could completely overhaul how giants in the field are read, in particular Hofstadter.
- ThomPete 8y agoWe exchange words that we learned the meaning of both literally (by dictionary) and by concept (by meaning). We both are brough up in a context where we understand the meaning of "the desktop" as a metaphor for computer UI unless (unless you haven't learned that then you think it's the other physical desktop) See https://medium.com/swlh/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-at-computers-9feadc741f7f https://medium.com/swlh/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-... where I explore that. In other words, we are using language as a way to communicate experiences of phenomena (an apple or a painting or a movie) but our experiences will never be exactly the same and we will never be referring to exactly the same but it's good enough statistically to be "a pattern" So yeah I guess I agree if I understand you correctly.
- vixen99 8y ago“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” ― Roger Scruton
- ThomPete 8y agoThis is just a re-writing of "if you say there is no truth then what you say isn't true" But that's missing the larger point which is that perhaps we shouldn't look at things as being true or false but instead useful. In other words "there is no truth" is, of course, neither true nor false but just a perspective that's useful (just like believing in truth can be). I am fine with the incompleteness of this perspective (i.e. it's never fully resolved) and I would argue that philosophically there is no way around it (I can take any claim you make about truth and deconstruct it) and show that it's based on an apriori frame of reference. So you have to think about it differently than "Truth" to understand the point of postmodernism.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoBut go back to forapurpose's post (parallel to vixen99's). If people genuinely believe that truth isn't the point, would you not see the behavior that forapurpose describes?
- ThomPete 8y agoNo, because you don't need truth to build useful assumptions about the world.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoBut the way that plays out in politics is like this: If I don't have truth, I can't persuade others that their position is wrong. So I have to try to persuade them that their position is less useful. But in the world of politics, that itself is a truth claim. So I'm reduced to "what's useful for advancing my team". And it turns out that fake news, outright lies, and constant propaganda are useful for that. (Postmodernism doesn't recognize the possibility of real truth. Does it recognize that some things are still lies?) In practice, therefore, postmodernism turns out to be rather destructive in its effect on the political system. One might even say that, in this area, postmodernism is not useful, at least in terms of the system as a whole.
- iron0012 8y agoRight? It's so weird that the dudes that rail against postmodernism fundamentally fail to understand that it's not a single assertive ideology, it's just a simple observation of the way things are in the world around us. It's not like anybody has ever set out to "make postmodernism happen", it's just a condition that has arisen via historical consequence. So when people attack "postmodernists", it's like--you realize that these philosophers did not "create" postmodernism, right? They just describe what they're seeing in the world.