Postmodernism, History and Philosophy: How is the Past Reconstructed or Deconstructed?

[Gertie]

I'm vaguely thinking we need a formula of some sort to assess which approach is appropriate to which context.  If you want to  reduce emissions you need to look at the physically observable and measurable evidence and develop science based methodologies.  You also want to persuade people of the reality and urgency of the crisis and how they can help.

I think it's the "persuasion" that's the hard part. There are philosophers — perhaps of the more Analytic persuasion? — who think that people are, or can be, persuaded by facts. Empirical observation reveals that this is not so. There is a distinctly human aspect to persuasion, and it includes emotion and sociocultural matters.

Sadly, many of those who actually have the skill of persuasion are charlatans and self-centred sociopaths, but the fact () remains that persuasion (of human beings) is an art in itself, and this is what must be harnessed if we wish to persuade people. Perhaps this ought not to be the case, but it is.

A more holistic approach is required, you might say

[chewybrian]

What "postmodern" thinker said truth is relative?

My first instinct is to reply "all of them", since I think the idea is at the core of the philosophy. Maybe someone more versed in it can verify that or tell me I'm wrong. However, certainly some of them said so.

There is nothing to be known about anything except an initially large, and forever expandable, web of relations to other things. Everything that can serve as a term of relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on for ever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down, all the way up, and all the way out in every direction: you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations., Richard Rorty

https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2016/ ... ost-truth/

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty explains his antirepresentationalism. Knowledge, and implicitly truth, are indissoluble from language, he argues. Our language is contingent. Therefore our relationship to the world is bound to be contingent as well. We, as humans, are not in an epistemically privileged/representational relationship with the world. Instead, Rorty invites us to adopt the Darwinian narrative according to which we, along with many other species, cannot really know the world, but only adapt to it. Our intellects and vocabularies "have no more of a representational relation to an intrinsic nature of things than does the anteater's snout" (1998/1999, p. 49).

Furthermore, philosophers such as Nietzsche fundamentally changed how we see Truth and Reality. In Rorty’s reading (1989), Nietzsche brought contingency to the forefront of philosophy, as the thinker argued truth was so accidental and relative to the perspective of the truth-seeker that every philosophy is a mere “involuntary and unconscious autobiography” and every metaphysics a “confession of its originator” (1886). Nietzsche liberated us from the Plato-Kant canon, prompting us to replace unity with multiplicity, to start creating instead of hoping to find.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transf ... ics-truth/

In “Truth and Politics,” whenever (Hannah) Arendt talks about truth she always specifies what kind of truth she means: historical truth, trivial truth, some truth, psychological truth, paradoxical truth, real truth, philosophical truth, hidden truth, old truth, self-evident truth, relevant truth, rational truth, impotent truth, indifferent truth, mathematical truth, half-truth, absolute truth, and factual truth. There is no “the truth,” only truth in reference to something particular. The adjectives she attaches to truth transform the concept into something worldly.

https://www.allaboutworldview.org/postm ... osophy.htm

One of the themes in Postmodern philosophy is a denial of universal, objective truth. This is clearly declared in Jean- Francois Lyotard’s famous statement “incredulity towards metanarrative.”4 A metanarrative refers to a unifying story that seeks to explain how the world is—in other words a metanarrative is a worldview. Lyotard suggests that we should be skeptical of such broad explanations. For example, the statement “God so loved the world” is nonsensical to Postmodernists for two reasons: (1) they deny the existence of God, and (2) statements reflecting the whole world (metanarratives) are impossible.

For Postmodernists, since there is no universal Truth (capital “T”), there are only “truths” (small “t”) that are particular to a society or group of people and limited to individual perception. Written or verbal statements can reflect only a particular localized culture or individual point of view. A well-worn catchphrase we hear in this regard is, “That may be true for you, but not for me.”

These are some of the easiest ideas to give my assent of any I've encountered. I don't see why would-be philosophers would be so ready to dismiss them. I do see why others would be so, because they are perhaps not eager to think for themselves or have cracks appear in their world view. They want to be right to justify their actions which follow logically from their opinions. The philosopher, though, should want to be right for the sake of being right alone. She should be eager, then, to get on with her proper business, which is just these kinds of considerations.

To say instead that we possess objective truth and are therefore justified in acting upon it is to run the risk of acting as the Spanish Inquisitors, torturing in the name of Jesus, or the founding fathers, retiring to their plantation full of slaves after laying out "self-evident truths" about the inalienable rights of man, or GW authorizing waterboarding in the name of freedom, or Obama sending in the drones, etc... If I hold my opinion to be rational, objective truth, then someone else's opposing opinion can only represent ignorance, deceit or malice. On these flimsy pretenses we justify all sorts of nastiness when it's quite likely that objective truth (if we were able to grasp it) would indicate that we were both wrong.

[Sy Borg]

I'm vaguely thinking we need a formula of some sort to assess which approach is appropriate to which context.  If you want to  reduce emissions you need to look at the physically observable and measurable evidence and develop science based methodologies.  You also want to persuade people of the reality and urgency of the crisis and how they can help.

I think it's the "persuasion" that's the hard part. There are philosophers — perhaps of the more Analytic persuasion? — who think that people are, or can be, persuaded by facts. Empirical observation reveals that this is not so. There is a distinctly human aspect to persuasion, and it includes emotion and sociocultural matters.

Sadly, many of those who actually have the skill of persuasion are charlatans and self-centred sociopaths, but the fact () remains that persuasion (of human beings) is an art in itself, and this is what must be harnessed if we wish to persuade people. Perhaps this ought not to be the case, but it is.

A more holistic approach is required, you might say

As far as I can tell, persuasion is something that moguls, advertisers, "deal-makers" and "opinion makers" engage in, leveraging crowd dynamics.

On a more personal level, Does persuasion happen? I don't remember seeing too many being persuaded by my thoughts on forums over many years

The closest would seem to be telling people what they want to hear in words they'd wished they'd thought of themselves. So, for instance, the mob that Trump incited to attack the Capitol wouldn't have needed a ton of persuasion. Many would just be happy to have the chance to go yahooing around The Seat of Power. A memory for a lifetime! Others were blinkered fanatics, already on the edge. Some took the excuse to kill. All they needed was an excuse, rather than to be convinced. It didn't matter that Trump was obviously lying, not if enough people pretend he wasn't.

So, on a personal level, all we can is say our bit, if we wish. If it fails to resonate, BAU. If it does, hopefully it's for the better.

[Belindi]

I'm vaguely thinking we need a formula of some sort to assess which approach is appropriate to which context.  If you want to  reduce emissions you need to look at the physically observable and measurable evidence and develop science based methodologies.  You also want to persuade people of the reality and urgency of the crisis and how they can help.

I think it's the "persuasion" that's the hard part. There are philosophers — perhaps of the more Analytic persuasion? — who think that people are, or can be, persuaded by facts. Empirical observation reveals that this is not so. There is a distinctly human aspect to persuasion, and it includes emotion and sociocultural matters.

Sadly, many of those who actually have the skill of persuasion are charlatans and self-centred sociopaths, but the fact () remains that persuasion (of human beings) is an art in itself, and this is what must be harnessed if we wish to persuade people. Perhaps this ought not to be the case, but it is.

A more holistic approach is required, you might say

Yes, wholistic but also the revolutionary approach is what needed, with not so much persuasion, more enforcement of reasonable laws, by means of a population that is not apathetic.

Most people in developed free countries are under-educated and persuaded to be compliant by means of sweeteners. In un- free developed countries most people are made compliant by state terrorism. In both cases people don't demand efficient and honest government.

What proportion of the entire population even marches on demonstrations, even in free countries? Answer: an exceedingly small proportion. Apathy is not natural but is artificially created by the establishment.

The establishment claims that a popular face like Trump's or Boris's is trustworthy. Without even mentioning these people's petty crimes, an educated populace would not be enchanted by pretty faces and would demand long term results.

The principle behind these political facts is neither modern or postmodern but is common to both.
The eternal moral principle is that in a shared world each individual must be enabled to be as powerful as he can be.

[Pattern-chaser]

Much of philosophy seems like sweeping up the ashes of former movements, including modernism, and sometimes it seems as if all the original ideas (and even music) may have been tapped into already. What is there left to discover? In some ways, it feels almost like the post-apocalyptic as opposed to postmodern age. But, hopefully, there are positives to be discovered yet.

All of that sounds acceptable and believable, but at the same time, an equally serious consideration of what we do know, and what we don't, often results in the conclusion that we have barely scratched the surface of the knowledge that is there to be known. There is a universe full of it, after all, maybe even multiple universes. As I have aged, I have followed in the footsteps of those giants who preceded me, and concluded that I know next to nothing.

[Pattern-chaser]

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transf ... ics-truth/

In “Truth and Politics,” whenever (Hannah) Arendt talks about truth she always specifies what kind of truth she means: historical truth, trivial truth, some truth, psychological truth, paradoxical truth, real truth, philosophical truth, hidden truth, old truth, self-evident truth, relevant truth, rational truth, impotent truth, indifferent truth, mathematical truth, half-truth, absolute truth, and factual truth. There is no “the truth,” only truth in reference to something particular. The adjectives she attaches to truth transform the concept into something worldly.

I have long been bothered by truth being such a slippery concept. This puts some of my doubts into words, as I have so far been unable to do. But I'll leave it at that, so that this topic can return to showering postmodernism with mindless bigotry.

[JackDaydream]

Much of philosophy seems like sweeping up the ashes of former movements, including modernism, and sometimes it seems as if all the original ideas (and even music) may have been tapped into already. What is there left to discover? In some ways, it feels almost like the post-apocalyptic as opposed to postmodern age. But, hopefully, there are positives to be discovered yet.

All of that sounds acceptable and believable, but at the same time, an equally serious consideration of what we do know, and what we don't, often results in the conclusion that we have barely scratched the surface of the knowledge that is there to be known. There is a universe full of it, after all, maybe even multiple universes. As I have aged, I have followed in the footsteps of those giants who preceded me, and concluded that I know next to nothing.

There is a paradox between the illusion of knowing so much and knowing so little. Wittgenstein's emphasis on uncertainty is probably important here, even though in daily reality so much is taken for certain often. Life is so unpredictable in a way which can be both unnerving and astounding. It is likely that the everyday assumptions which many hold on to are vastly different from a hundred years ago. Of course, there are so many variations in thought, but the loss of belief in God and the supernatural may be the overriding one and it was central to postmodernist deconstruction. But, it is questionable whether we have simply 'scratched the surface' of knowledge and what is yet to come, through science or other epistemological methods? To what extent will knowledge be found in the outer or inner realm of experience, or the tension between these sources for understanding?

[Belindi]

Chewy Brian quoted:

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty explains his antirepresentationalism. Knowledge, and implicitly truth, are indissoluble from language, he argues. Our language is contingent. Therefore our relationship to the world is bound to be contingent as well. We, as humans, are not in an epistemically privileged/representational relationship with the world. Instead, Rorty invites us to adopt the Darwinian narrative according to which we, along with many other species, cannot really know the world, but only adapt to it. Our intellects and vocabularies "have no more of a representational relation to an intrinsic nature of things than does the anteater's snout" (1998/1999, p. 49).

Epistemic privilege is a matter of degree not a matter of kind. I suppose other mammals, birds, and reptiles have at least vestigial ability to abstract symbolic meanings from environmental events that impinge on them.

Environments of phenomena are not static ; no event is identical to some other event. Heraclitus was right. This being so our relationship to "the world" includes respect for probabilities(inductive reason). Probability in common sense and in science is essential to our cultural and genetic adaptation to the constant variation in events.

[Belindi]

Persuasion is the prerogative of any society's establishment. As free people we need to constantly be partisan to the individual and his needs and feelings.Trump's mob was not free but was enchanted by Trump's misinformation.

[Gertie]

The idea that we each model reality as we experience it (as flawed and limited subjects whose observations 'create' colour and edges for example) isn't controversial. That we then compare notes about our private experiential models using symbolic language, this creates an extra layer of interpretation, isn't either. And it's these inter-subjective shared notes about personal models which become our accepted shared model of the world. Knowledge and truths are created this way, as something subjects do.

Hoffman calls them Darwinian fictions. Not some perfectly authoritative knowledge of reality. We had to invent gods for that. Science itself relies on inter-subjective falsifiability of what is third party observable and measurable - physical stuff and processes. And appropriately uses the language of models, theories and accounts to describe its findings. The 'soft' sciences don't even have that observable/measurable type of third party falsification which the physical stuff and processes of the universe offers.

And if shared knowledge is built from imperfectly communicating subjects' imperfect models of reality, you have to take account of our cognitive, social and psychological biases, conscious and unconscious, too. Especially in the social sciences, where you can't point to a physical object like a tree, ask if others see it too and get the same measurements. It's no wonder it's the social sciences which ran most forcefully into the issues PM raises.

To respond to this messy, nuanced and ultimately subject-centric nature of knowledge as something flawed subjects do (via creating models of reality), with all its obvious caveats, by running to the dictionary, isn't philosophy. It looks like a need for tidiness and certainties, the impulse behind perfect godly knowledge. The Enlightenment was supposed to offer this type of tidy certainty through evidence and reason, which Modernism built on as the engine for its optimism. But the Holocaust isn't reasonable, weapons of mass destruction science helped create dropped on civilian cities isn't reasonable. War, prejudice and allowing climate change via technological industrialisation, mass production and colonisation of the world's resources to wreak global destruction aren't reasonable. Everyone being able to read about it and especially watch it on TV brings it home too. The PM day of reckoning, the antithesis, was inevitable unless we were dumbly going to plough on without reflection.

That reflection happened in an ad hoc manner with PM, as different academic fields and the arts address it different ways. PM isn't the same type of Grand Narrative as Religion and Modernism, it's more of a critique. And you can argue over bits n pieces, but its critique nails some basics like the nature of truth and knowledge in ways which shouldn't be controversial unless you have some other specific belief like religion or naive realism. Which is a tough one to defend, and not how people here are challenging PM.

[Pattern-chaser]

There is a paradox between the illusion of knowing so much and knowing so little.
...
But, it is questionable whether we have simply 'scratched the surface' of knowledge and what is yet to come, through science or other epistemological methods? To what extent will knowledge be found in the outer or inner realm of experience, or the tension between these sources for understanding?

We don't know what we don't know, and we don't realise (know) that we don't know it, as the famous American philosopher, Donald Rumsfeld, said. And he was ridiculed for it, when it might be the only wise thing a politician has ever said.

But consider our situation. There is a spacetime universe there, and an incredible amount of things to know about it. We could, in theory, know everything there is to know about it. And this huge body of knowledge is just the start. Once we know all there is to know about the spacetime universe, we can start on the infinite and abstract mental world of concepts, ideas, and imagination...

Does it seem reasonable to you that humans could know everything about everything? It doesn't to me.

[JackDaydream]

There is a paradox between the illusion of knowing so much and knowing so little.
...
But, it is questionable whether we have simply 'scratched the surface' of knowledge and what is yet to come, through science or other epistemological methods? To what extent will knowledge be found in the outer or inner realm of experience, or the tension between these sources for understanding?

We don't know what we don't know, and we don't realise (know) that we don't know it, as the famous American philosopher, Donald Rumsfeld, said. And he was ridiculed for it, when it might be the only wise thing a politician has ever said.

But consider our situation. There is a spacetime universe there, and an incredible amount of things to know about it. We could, in theory, know everything there is to know about it. And this huge body of knowledge is just the start. Once we know all there is to know about the spacetime universe, we can start on the infinite and abstract mental world of concepts, ideas, and imagination...

Does it seem reasonable to you that humans could know everything about everything? It doesn't to me.

It would not be possible to know everything because that would be omniscience. It seems more about different ways of framing. As one comes across a new perspective it is a way of putting it altogether differently. However, aspects get lost in the process too. For the last couple of years, I have been reading philosophy in conjunction with using websites. I would say that in some ways I consider myself as knowing more, in the sense that I have read writers like Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein who I had not read previously, and these ideas have opened my eyes. Also, I have become aware of the way in which certain ideas which I had, including ones on life after death, were extremely muddled. So, it has been about trying to go beyond fuzziness but I am also aware of how much I don't know.

It is not entirely about reading, or lack of it, but by the way in which life comes together in practice. I am far less knowledgeable in doing things on the computer than most people. That is partly because I have not put the time and energy into it. A lot of the people I know access information and communication through 'What's App' and Zoom. When they hear that I don't use these they think that I am missing out. So, it is partly about how aquiring knowledge is slanted towards one's interests, which means that the more one follows a specialised interest it is a form of narrowing down the horizons through focus. In some ways, it is possible to be aware of lack of knowledge, but it also about blindspots, in which one can be unaware of lack of knowledge too.

[Sculptor1]

The entire answer to this thread is contained in a book I read many years ago.

All you have to do is read it and understand it, and all will be revealed.

The book is "The Archaeology of Knowledge" by Michel Foucault.

[chewybrian]

The idea that we each model reality as we experience it (as flawed and limited subjects whose observations 'create' colour and edges for example) isn't controversial. That we then compare notes about our private experiential models using symbolic language, this creates an extra layer of interpretation, isn't either. And it's these inter-subjective shared notes about personal models which become our accepted shared model of the world. Knowledge and truths are created this way, as something subjects do.

Hoffman calls them Darwinian fictions. Not some perfectly authoritative knowledge of reality. We had to invent gods for that. Science itself relies on inter-subjective falsifiability of what is third party observable and measurable - physical stuff and processes. And appropriately uses the language of models, theories and accounts to describe its findings. The 'soft' sciences don't even have that observable/measurable type of third party falsification which the physical stuff and processes of the universe offers.

And if shared knowledge is built from imperfectly communicating subjects' imperfect models of reality, you have to take account of our cognitive, social and psychological biases, conscious and unconscious, too. Especially in the social sciences, where you can't point to a physical object like a tree, ask if others see it too and get the same measurements. It's no wonder it's the social sciences which ran most forcefully into the issues PM raises.

To respond to this messy, nuanced and ultimately subject-centric nature of knowledge as something flawed subjects do (via creating models of reality), with all its obvious caveats, by running to the dictionary, isn't philosophy. It looks like a need for tidiness and certainties, the impulse behind perfect godly knowledge. The Enlightenment was supposed to offer this type of tidy certainty through evidence and reason, which Modernism built on as the engine for its optimism. But the Holocaust isn't reasonable, weapons of mass destruction science helped create dropped on civilian cities isn't reasonable. War, prejudice and allowing climate change via technological industrialisation, mass production and colonisation of the world's resources to wreak global destruction aren't reasonable. Everyone being able to read about it and especially watch it on TV brings it home too. The PM day of reckoning, the antithesis, was inevitable unless we were dumbly going to plough on without reflection.

That reflection happened in an ad hoc manner with PM, as different academic fields and the arts address it different ways. PM isn't the same type of Grand Narrative as Religion and Modernism, it's more of a critique. And you can argue over bits n pieces, but its critique nails some basics like the nature of truth and knowledge in ways which shouldn't be controversial unless you have some other specific belief like religion or naive realism. Which is a tough one to defend, and not how people here are challenging PM.

The challenges to PM put forth here seem to be a straw man sliding down a slippery slope. There is an attempt to equate the reasonable parts (like everything you mentioned) with the most extreme elements of postmodernism and/or to presume that any PM ideas would inevitably lead down the path to extremism. Everything you said shows the value of postmodern ideas as a check on modernism gone mad and a valuable tool for trying to reach a new, higher level of objectivity (beyond the framework of our own world view and the traditions and customs of our own society).

The unreasonably severe reaction to reasonable ideas such as those you mentioned seems to point to the truth of the problems postmodernism seeks to address. There are problems under the surface that some folks don't what to acknowledge because they prefer not to think for themselves or presume they are benefiting from the status quo.

[Gertie]

The idea that we each model reality as we experience it (as flawed and limited subjects whose observations 'create' colour and edges for example) isn't controversial. That we then compare notes about our private experiential models using symbolic language, this creates an extra layer of interpretation, isn't either. And it's these inter-subjective shared notes about personal models which become our accepted shared model of the world. Knowledge and truths are created this way, as something subjects do.

Hoffman calls them Darwinian fictions. Not some perfectly authoritative knowledge of reality. We had to invent gods for that. Science itself relies on inter-subjective falsifiability of what is third party observable and measurable - physical stuff and processes. And appropriately uses the language of models, theories and accounts to describe its findings. The 'soft' sciences don't even have that observable/measurable type of third party falsification which the physical stuff and processes of the universe offers.

And if shared knowledge is built from imperfectly communicating subjects' imperfect models of reality, you have to take account of our cognitive, social and psychological biases, conscious and unconscious, too. Especially in the social sciences, where you can't point to a physical object like a tree, ask if others see it too and get the same measurements. It's no wonder it's the social sciences which ran most forcefully into the issues PM raises.

To respond to this messy, nuanced and ultimately subject-centric nature of knowledge as something flawed subjects do (via creating models of reality), with all its obvious caveats, by running to the dictionary, isn't philosophy. It looks like a need for tidiness and certainties, the impulse behind perfect godly knowledge. The Enlightenment was supposed to offer this type of tidy certainty through evidence and reason, which Modernism built on as the engine for its optimism. But the Holocaust isn't reasonable, weapons of mass destruction science helped create dropped on civilian cities isn't reasonable. War, prejudice and allowing climate change via technological industrialisation, mass production and colonisation of the world's resources to wreak global destruction aren't reasonable. Everyone being able to read about it and especially watch it on TV brings it home too. The PM day of reckoning, the antithesis, was inevitable unless we were dumbly going to plough on without reflection.

That reflection happened in an ad hoc manner with PM, as different academic fields and the arts address it different ways. PM isn't the same type of Grand Narrative as Religion and Modernism, it's more of a critique. And you can argue over bits n pieces, but its critique nails some basics like the nature of truth and knowledge in ways which shouldn't be controversial unless you have some other specific belief like religion or naive realism. Which is a tough one to defend, and not how people here are challenging PM.

The challenges to PM put forth here seem to be a straw man sliding down a slippery slope. There is an attempt to equate the reasonable parts (like everything you mentioned) with the most extreme elements of postmodernism and/or to presume that any PM ideas would inevitably lead down the path to extremism...

The unreasonably severe reaction to reasonable ideas such as those you mentioned seems to point to the truth of the problems postmodernism seeks to address. There are problems under the surface that some folks don't what to acknowledge because they prefer not to think for themselves or presume they are benefiting from the status quo.

Yep. ''straw man sliding down a slippery slope'' - nice!