"The End of Faith" (er, Agathon?)

[Meticulous Man]

The postmodernists are everywhere

[Elok]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I actually agree that what language you have determines what thoughts you can (easily) think..

That doesn't stop new thoughts/words/etc from being developed.

That also doesn't stop things from being reality, language only restricts what parts of reality you can (easily) grasp, it doesn't mean that reality is dependent on language.

JM

I think you're describing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or something like it. It's been pretty thoroughly discredited. For example, even peoples whose language lacks words for linear time can still understand the concept perfectly well. It has to be suggested to them first, and in awkward language, but to suggest that such a thing occurs because of language limitations is to turn the situation on its head. Rather, they have no words for such a concept because their way of thinking about time without it never made a word necessary. When they develop new ways of thinking about time, they develop new words for it...as you suggest.

WRT the other stuff: My culture affects the way I perceive the world, yes, but to conclude based on that premise that all points of view are equally valid is absurd. That's like saying that, because I can only photograph any given subject from one angle at a time, all photographs of that subject are equally good.

The "framework of their ideas" is, so far as I can tell, nonexistent. It's a mess of empty jargon based on random prejudices. You can make any statement Postmodern (provided it is sufficiently stupid and left-wing) by:

1. Replacing as many simple words as possible with more obscure terms which mean the exact same things. My favorite is "larger contemporary discursive networks" instead of "what his peers were saying about the subject at the time." This ensures that, instead of your reader not understanding your point because it's nonsense, your reader will not understand your point because it's too arduous to decode. As a result, most readers will conclude that your statements are too profound to be understood, where they might have just realized you're full of crap.

2. Adding quotation marks to whatever simple words you cannot or do not eliminate, in order to indicate that you are at least sufficiently trendy to doubt the existence of simple concepts. It's not a text, it's a "text." Remember, once you stop quibbling over the limitations inherent in human language, you'll be forced to actually discuss the ideas themselves. And no postmodernist is equipped to handle actual ideas on their own merits.

3. Adding modifiers and corollaries, et cetera, wherever you see a solid and definitive statement which might otherwise be verifiable. The modifiers in question should be as vague as possible, because the purpose of this step is to cover your butt from people sniffing for BS. Instead of claiming "Mount Rushmore is a giant clitoris," you should assert that the monument "contains strong clitoral subtexts in the context of Derrida and [other name drop]'s dynamic." If pressed to pin down what you mean by "strong subtexts," spin off a dissertation on the problematic nature of tasks to define "meaning." The idea that there might be something intrinsically ridiculous just in associating two such utterly disparate elements can be suppressed by leaving the exact nature of their ostensible relationship undefined.

4. Following the example of pulp novelists and continuously dropping terms related to sex and violence, even if they appear completely out of place in the current discussion. Freud set the precedent for this sort of thing, after (correctly) inferring that people have a tendency to read anything that gives them an excuse to think about sex or violence. Your readers' appreciation for the intellectual charade you maintain to hide the basic sensationalism of your argument will drive them to overlook the silliness of what you're actually saying in it.

5. Adding cynical references to oppression and censorship, with the implication that all communication is under threat from tyrannical overlords. It helps to continually cast the hypothetical as straight, rich, white and male, in order to tap into our culture's collective guilt problems on the one hand and the victim mentality prevalent in minority studies on the other. It's also beneficial in that any ideas involving conspiracies and secrecy will sell due to pure sensationalism, regardless of their independent merits. Just look at "The DaVinci Code."

6. Finally, remembering this cardinal rule: the longer, the better. The linchpin of good PoMo writing is a bombardment of tangents and contexts so massive as to paralyze the reader's ability to analyze it. Ideally, said reader should be stuck in a neverending process of trying to untangle the vast web of ideas. Since the ideas are connected to one another in an extremely dubious fashion (see #3 above), just keeping straight what exactly it is you're saying demands all mental energy. The reader should not be able to step back and examine your argument without forgetting half of it. The only way out is to give up and call it genius, or else play chicken with a massive academic establishment.

[Terra Nullius]

We're all postmodernists now.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
The key problem for postmodernism is how do you advocate anything if nothing is true.

I doubt any good postmodernist would assert that "nothing is true."
"Nothing is uniquely true" is more likely.
Or perhaps "There's always an alternate narrative."

Problem?
'A question raised for consideration or solution?' Yes.
'Trouble: a source of difficulty?' No.

So, to paraphrase:
The key matter of inquiry for postmodernism is 'How do you advocate anything if no frame of reference is uniquely true?'

Seems like a silly use of the brainpower available to such people.

I dunno.

Seems like a reasonable thing to me, given that a key source of difficulty for 20th century thought was "How do you advocate anything if nothing is objective?"

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Elok


I think you're describing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or something like it. It's been pretty thoroughly discredited. For example, even peoples whose language lacks words for linear time can still understand the concept perfectly well. It has to be suggested to them first, and in awkward language, but to suggest that such a thing occurs because of language limitations is to turn the situation on its head. Rather, they have no words for such a concept because their way of thinking about time without it never made a word necessary. When they develop new ways of thinking about time, they develop new words for it...as you suggest.

WRT the other stuff: My culture affects the way I perceive the world, yes, but to conclude based on that premise that all points of view are equally valid is absurd. That's like saying that, because I can only photograph any given subject from one angle at a time, all photographs of that subject are equally good.

The "framework of their ideas" is, so far as I can tell, nonexistent. It's a mess of empty jargon based on random prejudices. You can make any statement Postmodern (provided it is sufficiently stupid and left-wing) by:

1. Replacing as many simple words as possible with more obscure terms which mean the exact same things. My favorite is "larger contemporary discursive networks" instead of "what his peers were saying about the subject at the time." This ensures that, instead of your reader not understanding your point because it's nonsense, your reader will not understand your point because it's too arduous to decode. As a result, most readers will conclude that your statements are too profound to be understood, where they might have just realized you're full of crap.

2. Adding quotation marks to whatever simple words you cannot or do not eliminate, in order to indicate that you are at least sufficiently trendy to doubt the existence of simple concepts. It's not a text, it's a "text." Remember, once you stop quibbling over the limitations inherent in human language, you'll be forced to actually discuss the ideas themselves. And no postmodernist is equipped to handle actual ideas on their own merits.

3. Adding modifiers and corollaries, et cetera, wherever you see a solid and definitive statement which might otherwise be verifiable. The modifiers in question should be as vague as possible, because the purpose of this step is to cover your butt from people sniffing for BS. Instead of claiming "Mount Rushmore is a giant clitoris," you should assert that the monument "contains strong clitoral subtexts in the context of Derrida and [other name drop]'s dynamic." If pressed to pin down what you mean by "strong subtexts," spin off a dissertation on the problematic nature of tasks to define "meaning." The idea that there might be something intrinsically ridiculous just in associating two such utterly disparate elements can be suppressed by leaving the exact nature of their ostensible relationship undefined.

4. Following the example of pulp novelists and continuously dropping terms related to sex and violence, even if they appear completely out of place in the current discussion. Freud set the precedent for this sort of thing, after (correctly) inferring that people have a tendency to read anything that gives them an excuse to think about sex or violence. Your readers' appreciation for the intellectual charade you maintain to hide the basic sensationalism of your argument will drive them to overlook the silliness of what you're actually saying in it.

5. Adding cynical references to oppression and censorship, with the implication that all communication is under threat from tyrannical overlords. It helps to continually cast the hypothetical as straight, rich, white and male, in order to tap into our culture's collective guilt problems on the one hand and the victim mentality prevalent in minority studies on the other. It's also beneficial in that any ideas involving conspiracies and secrecy will sell due to pure sensationalism, regardless of their independent merits. Just look at "The DaVinci Code."

6. Finally, remembering this cardinal rule: the longer, the better. The linchpin of good PoMo writing is a bombardment of tangents and contexts so massive as to paralyze the reader's ability to analyze it. Ideally, said reader should be stuck in a neverending process of trying to untangle the vast web of ideas. Since the ideas are connected to one another in an extremely dubious fashion (see #3 above), just keeping straight what exactly it is you're saying demands all mental energy. The reader should not be able to step back and examine your argument without forgetting half of it. The only way out is to give up and call it genius, or else play chicken with a massive academic establishment.

Eh, taht is because we all have human minds. I am pretty sure that there would be somethings that a different brain structure would understand more naturally then us, and I think that there might be some things that would be understandable by a different brain structure that wouldn't be understandable by us.

Language is dependent on brain structure..

JM

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I am in the group that thinks that the complete objective is unknowable..

JM

That ain't what I said. The totality of ojective reality is not knowable because we are finite beings and there is an infinite amount of information. What PoMos argue is that you can know nothing of the objective.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Terra Nullius
It's a sad day when wikipedia makes more sense than the Che.

Wiki only repeated what I wrote, in a much less compact explanation.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
What PoMos argue is that you can know nothing of the objective.

I smell empiricist BS.

PoMo stands in opposition to modernist metanarrative.
So, yes, they would mostly observe that the 'objective' is 'unknown' except within the terms of a given n"ar"r`at'i"ve.
I happen to think that's a perfectly reasonable observation.

Now Quine is certainly no PoMo. But he makes much the same observation.

The dogma of reductionism survives in the supposition that each statement, taken in isolation from its fellows, can admit of confirmation or infirmation at all. My countersuggestion, issuing essentially from Carnap's doctrine of the physical world in the Aufbau, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body

And PoMo is less fatalistic than you make it out to be. It poses the question "How can we speak meaningfully about xyz if there is no final appeal to an absolute code of knowledge?"
So knowledge of the objective is a matter for inquiry. Not some discarded impossibility.

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I am in the group that thinks that the complete objective is unknowable..

JM

You see there's your problem, right there.

It's not about "Is there an objective reality?" It's not even about the limitations of the human mind to encompass all knowledge. It's about "How do we resolve multiple, incompatible views of reality?"

It's not a great example, but consider the relativistic/ quantum model. How can two, logically distinct systems both describe the same world? Is there anything useful we can say about the relationship between the two systems?

I get the feeling that some people are so well-trained in western logic, it colours their whole thinking and they forget the possibility of an alternative.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Terra Nullius
It's not a great example, but consider the relativistic/ quantum model. How can two, logically distinct systems both describe the same world? Is there anything useful we can say about the relationship between the two systems?

You don't know what you are talking about.

JM

[Terra Nullius]

Nope. I'm not talking about what I know.

Enlighten me.

[Jon Miller]

Relativity works just fine in its region (the super fast, macro region).

Quantum mechanics works just fine in its region (the small).

It is looking at the very small and very fast region that we start to run into problems...

JM

[Terra Nullius]

Originally posted by Terra Nullius
How can two, logically distinct systems both describe the same world?

[Jon Miller]

It depends on where they are describing it.. and then the issue is looking at the boundaries..

And they aren't really logically distinct, I have heard (I don't know much s sym or string theory).

JM

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Terra Nullius

I smell empiricist BS.

Then get your nose checked. I'm a dialectical materialist.