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> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with

> The difficulty is knowing what the intent was. It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent, declaring it to be completely useless, and saying that the only thing that can be used to judge a message is how it affected the recipient. Combine that with "words are violence", and you can manufacture physical abuse out of thin air. It's really not the way forward for progressivism.

__derek__ 4y ago
I never associated Hilary Putnam with postmodernism, but I suppose he could have been affected by something in the air while writing The Meaning of 'Meaning'.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externa...
DubiousPusher 4y ago
> It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent Please make the connection between the disregard of intent and any rigorous definition of "post-moderism". Genuinely I don't see it. I think the degradation of intent is more at the hands of those who have used it as a shield than anyone else. We've seen entire regions of the world thrown into chaos without consequence. Why, because the responsible parties didn't intend the chaos. At a certain point it gets a little thin. What's imporant here is scale. Yeah, if you say something that rubs someone the wrong way, they should be able to have a conversation with you about your intentions and weigh those in their judgement. But what if it keeps happening. How long does someone else need to value your intent? 10 times? 100 times? Forever? And of course when we get to things that affect people's lives on a much more material basis, maybe its good that we stop counting intent for so much. Maybe what we need is for decision makers to get a little more cautios because they will actually feel some consequences if they really screw up a lot of people's lives.
- XorNot 4y ago
  The guy who says things were "just a joke" when he see's the frown of disapproval...but he never apologizes. And he also doesn't stop doing it. It's "just a joke" every time.
  - DubiousPusher 4y ago
    Perfect explanation of how "intentions" can come not to matter because we all know and hate this type of personal interaction. Well done.
wwweston 4y ago
Postmodernism absolutely does not deny intent. In fact, motivation behind texts/speech (as well as interpretation by readers/hearers) is such an important part of it that you can't really do postmodern analysis without accounting for motives. The closest thing I can imagine for any kind of defense of your statement is that postmodernism will not let the declared or conscious intent of the speaker absolutely constrain a text. The logical distinctions between "not absolutely constraining" and "declaring it to be completely useless" should be clear. And the idea that people don't always declare their intent accurately should also be uncontroversial. Really, postmodernism is essentially very big elaboration on the principles underlying Sinclair's observation "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
freejazz 4y ago
Completely ignorant use of the word "Postmodern" for 1000, Alex
hpen 4y ago
More like postmodernism throws away objectivity. Which In practice often leads to baseless assumptions about intent.

__derek__ 4y ago

I never associated Hilary Putnam with postmodernism, but I suppose he could have been affected by something in the air while writing The Meaning of 'Meaning'.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Semantic_externa...

DubiousPusher 4y ago

> It's not a coincidence that the postmodern thoughts that underpin a lot of this bullshit simply does away with intent Please make the connection between the disregard of intent and any rigorous definition of "post-moderism". Genuinely I don't see it. I think the degradation of intent is more at the hands of those who have used it as a shield than anyone else. We've seen entire regions of the world thrown into chaos without consequence. Why, because the responsible parties didn't intend the chaos. At a certain point it gets a little thin. What's imporant here is scale. Yeah, if you say something that rubs someone the wrong way, they should be able to have a conversation with you about your intentions and weigh those in their judgement. But what if it keeps happening. How long does someone else need to value your intent? 10 times? 100 times? Forever? And of course when we get to things that affect people's lives on a much more material basis, maybe its good that we stop counting intent for so much. Maybe what we need is for decision makers to get a little more cautios because they will actually feel some consequences if they really screw up a lot of people's lives.

XorNot 4y ago
The guy who says things were "just a joke" when he see's the frown of disapproval...but he never apologizes. And he also doesn't stop doing it. It's "just a joke" every time.
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  Perfect explanation of how "intentions" can come not to matter because we all know and hate this type of personal interaction. Well done.

wwweston 4y ago

Postmodernism absolutely does not deny intent. In fact, motivation behind texts/speech (as well as interpretation by readers/hearers) is such an important part of it that you can't really do postmodern analysis without accounting for motives. The closest thing I can imagine for any kind of defense of your statement is that postmodernism will not let the declared or conscious intent of the speaker absolutely constrain a text. The logical distinctions between "not absolutely constraining" and "declaring it to be completely useless" should be clear. And the idea that people don't always declare their intent accurately should also be uncontroversial. Really, postmodernism is essentially very big elaboration on the principles underlying Sinclair's observation "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

freejazz 4y ago

Completely ignorant use of the word "Postmodern" for 1000, Alex

hpen 4y ago

More like postmodernism throws away objectivity. Which In practice often leads to baseless assumptions about intent.