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

[Pattern-chaser]

Explicit language is open to all. For instance there is no ambiguity in efficient instructions about how best clean an oven.

OK, now that your oven is nice and clean, thanks to the clarity of your unambiguous and explicit instructions, let's write an equally-clear description or definition of truth, or better still, beauty.

Modernism does not include lack of insight into hidden prejudices and dogmas, one's own or other people's. … relativity is widely recognised and so we have jumped over the hurdle of postmodernism.

Any call to (re-)examine our axioms or assumptions — 'accepted wisdom' — is probably worthwhile. And may I suggest that anyone who thinks this has been done enough, often enough, is ... confused?

[Pattern-chaser]

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?



P.S. You seem refer to relativism as a Bad Thing, but it is usually used as an antonym for absolutism. And since absolutism is probably a non-starter, I see relativism as a good thing, or at least an acceptable, practical, one.

[Pattern-chaser]

Pomos need to recognise that relativity is widely recognised and so we have jumped over the hurdle of postmodernism.

I agree. The lessons of postmodernism have been largely absorbed in academia and, to a lesser extent, in society at large.

I'm afraid I disagree. Lessons are rarely learned, and even more rarely are these insights remembered and retained. That's the source of proverbs like 'history repeats itself', isn't it?

[chewybrian]

I'm afraid I disagree. Lessons are rarely learned, and even more rarely are these insights remembered and retained. That's the source of proverbs like 'history repeats itself', isn't it?

I have to second that. Perhaps a few eggheads in the philosophy department have moved on, but much of society is digging in to fight postmodernism, much less moving beyond it. Heck, a lot of them have not even accepted modernism, preferring creationism to evolution, for example.

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The attempts here to "show" this so far have been strawman characterizations of postmodernists by those who oppose them, along the lines of the "War on Christmas". I haven't seen the postmodernists themselves saying these things. Trying to look at things from many viewpoints is hardly the same as saying objective truth does not exist. Saying objective truth is probably out there, but that it is unlikely that we have gotten hold of it--that's the message I take away, and it seems quite reasonable. Saying that people who propose to give you absolute truth often have a hidden agenda, sometimes known to them or sometimes by proxy--this seems obvious enough, too.

I would think we are in a post-postmodern situation, where it's acknowledged that anything goes in our meta-culture, but these are not all equal. The cream and the scum tend to rise to the top, which somewhat clarifies relative merits.

Some thought provoking material here:

The baby and the bathwater idea rings true when someone wants to accept one side fully and discredit the other. This reminds me of a free will and determinism argument. The ideas seem mutually exclusive and the idea of compatibilism seems whacky. Rather, I would prefer to say that they are each only models, thus incomplete or imperfect. That does not say that either or neither is not useful to us, but only that they are simply models. We can't pretend to have everything figured out, and we should use each model to help us along when it seems wise, all the time trying to come up with better models.

[Consul]

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The best concise description is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmo ... philosophy

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"THE POSTMODERN KNOWLEDGE PRINCIPLE

Radical skepticism as to whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism

Postmodernism is defined by a radical skepticism about the accessibility of objective truth. Rather than seeing objective truth as something that exists and that can be provisionally known (or approximated) through processes such as experimentation, falsification, and defeasibility—as Enlightenment, modernist, and scientific thought would have it—postmodern approaches to knowledge inflate a small, almost banal kernel of truth—that we are limited in our ability to know and must express knowledge through language, concepts and categories—to insist that all claims to truth are value-laden constructs of culture. This is called cultural constructivism or social constructivism. The scientific method, in particular, is not seen as a better way of producing and legitimizing knowledge than any other, but as one cultural approach among many, as corrupted by biased reasoning as any other.

Cultural constructivism is not the belief that reality is literally created by cultural beliefs—it doesn’t argue, for instance, that when we erroneously believed the Sun went around the Earth, our beliefs had any influence over the solar system and its dynamics. Instead, it is the position that humans are so tied into their cultural frameworks that all truth or knowledge claims are merely representations of those frameworks—we have decided that “it is true” or “it is known” that the Earth goes round the Sun because of the way we establish truth in our current culture. That is, although reality doesn’t change in accordance with our beliefs, what does change is what we are able to regard as true (or false—or “crazy”) about reality. If we belonged to a culture that produced and legitimated knowledge differently, within that cultural paradigm it might be “true” that, say, the Sun goes round the Earth. Those who would be regarded as “crazy” to disagree would change accordingly.

Although the claim that “we make reality with our cultural norms” is not the same as the claim that “we decide what is true/what is known according to our cultural norms,” in practice this is a distinction without a difference. The postmodern approach to knowledge denies that objective truth or knowledge is that which corresponds with reality as determined by evidence—regardless of the time or culture in question and regardless of whether that culture believes that evidence is the best way to determine truth or knowledge. Instead, the postmodern approach might acknowledge that objective reality exists, but it focuses on the barriers to knowing that reality by examining cultural biases and assumptions and theorizing about how they work.

This is what the American postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty refers to when he writes, “We need to make a distinction between the claim that the world is out there and the claim that the truth is out there.” In this sense, postmodernism rests upon a broad rejection of the correspondence theory of truth: that is, the position that there are objective truths and that they can be established as true by their correspondence with how things actually are in the world. That there are real truths about an objective reality “out there” and that we can come to know them is, of course, at the root of Enlightenment thinking and central to the development of science. Profoundly radical skepticism about this idea is central to postmodern thinking about knowledge.

French philosopher Michel Foucault—a central figure of postmodernism—expresses this same doubt when he argues that, “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice.” Foucault was especially interested in the relationship between language, or, more specifically, discourse (ways of talking about things), the production of knowledge, and power. He explored these ideas at length throughout the 1960s, in such influential works as Madness and Civilization (1961), The Birth of the Clinic (1963), The Order of Things (1966), and The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). For Foucault, a statement reveals not just information but also the rules and conditions of a discourse. These then determine the construction of truth claims and knowledge. Dominant discourses are extremely powerful because they determine what can be considered true, thus applicable, in a given time and place. Thus, sociopolitical power is the ultimate determiner of what is true in Foucault’s analysis, not correspondence with reality. Foucault was so interested in the concept of how power influences what is considered knowledge that in 1981 he coined the term “power-knowledge” to convey the inextricable link between powerful discourses and what is known. Foucault called a dominant set of ideas and values an episteme because it shapes how we identify and interact with knowledge.

In The Order of Things, Foucault argues against objective notions of truth and suggests we think instead in terms of “regimes of truth,” which change according to the specific episteme of each culture and time. As a result, Foucault adopted the position that there are no fundamental principles by which to discover truth and that all knowledge is “local” to the knower—ideas which form the basis of the postmodern knowledge principle. Foucault didn’t deny that a reality exists, but he doubted the ability of humans to transcend our cultural biases enough to get at it.

The main takeaway from this is that postmodern skepticism is not garden-variety skepticism, which might also be called “reasonable doubt.” The kind of skepticism employed in the sciences and other rigorous means of producing knowledge asks, “How can I be sure this proposition is true?” and will only tentatively accept as a provisional truth that which survives repeated attempts to disprove it. These propositions are put forth in models, which are understood to be provisional conceptual constructs, which are used to explain and predict phenomena and are judged according to their ability to do so. The principle of skepticism common among postmodernists is frequently referred to as “radical skepticism.” It says, “All knowledge is constructed: what is interesting is theorizing about why knowledge got constructed this way.” Thus, radical skepticism is markedly different from the scientific skepticism that characterized the Enlightenment. The postmodern view wrongly insists that scientific thought is unable to distinguish itself as especially reliable and rigorous in determining what is and isn’t true. Scientific reasoning is construed as a metanarrative—a sweeping explanation of how things work—and postmodernism is radically skeptical of all such explanations. In postmodern thinking, that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and is therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political.

This view is widely attributed to the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, who critiqued science, the Enlightenment, and Marxism. Each of these projects was, for Lyotard, a prime example of a modernist or Enlightenment metanarrative. Ultimately, Lyotard feared that science and technology were just one “language game”—one way of legitimating truth claims—and that they were taking over all other language games. He mourned the demise of small local “knowledges” passed on in narrative form and viewed the loss of meaning-making intrinsic to scientific detachment as a loss of valuable narratives. Lyotard’s famous characterization of postmodernism as a “skepticism towards metanarratives” has been extremely influential on the development of postmodernism as a school of thought, analytical tool, and worldview.

This was the great postmodernist contribution to knowledge and knowledge production. It did not invent the skeptical reevaluation of well-established beliefs. It did, however, fail to appreciate that scientific and other forms of liberal reasoning (such as arguments in favor of democracy and capitalism) are not so much metanarratives (though they can adopt these) as imperfect but self-correcting processes that apply a productive and actionable form of skepticism to everything, including themselves. This mistake led them into their equally misguided political project."

(Pluckrose, Helen, and James Lindsay. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity; and Why This Harms Everybody. Durham, NC: Pitchstone, 2020. pp. 32-5)
<QUOTE

[chewybrian]

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The best concise description is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmo ... philosophy

This strikes me as something like asking Casey Kasem to explain the music of Frank Zappa.

QUOTE>
"THE POSTMODERN KNOWLEDGE PRINCIPLE

Radical skepticism as to whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism
...
the postmodern approach might acknowledge that objective reality exists, but it focuses on the barriers to knowing that reality by examining cultural biases and assumptions and theorizing about how they work.
...
that which is known is only known within the cultural paradigm that produced the knowledge and is therefore representative of its systems of power. As a result, postmodernism regards knowledge as provincial and intrinsically political.
...
<QUOTE

This second one seems much more on the mark. The bits I snipped out seem to support the objections I had about the other characterizations of postmodernism that have been quoted or linked here so far. When someone latches onto this set of ideas and finds value in them, there is not much cause to label them a left-wing loon. These ideas reveal an attempt to use next-level objectivity to search for next-level truth. Thus, they seem like they should be appealing to most philosophers. When you go beyond these kinds of descriptions into cartoon supervillain characterizations of pm, credibility is strained and doubts emerge about motives.

[Pattern-chaser]

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The best concise description is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmo ... philosophy

OK, thanks. My first impression is that the Britannica article is more of a criticism than a definition of postmodernism. Perhaps I am mistaken.

[JackDaydream]

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The best concise description is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmo ... philosophy

OK, thanks. My first impression is that the Britannica article is more of a criticism than a definition of postmodernism. Perhaps I am mistaken.

I will offer one summary which may be helpful in trying to define the idea of the postmodern, based on Lyotard's distinction between it from modernism, in Seidman and Alexander(eds, 2001): The New Social Theory Reader',
'...from the philosophy of empiricism to rationalism and idealism, moderns have become convinced that philosophy could determine truth from falsity and right from wrong. Lyotard's claim is that today the grand narrative has lost its power. Such stories and discourses are no longer believed or the status or being just one interpretation among others. Post-modern culture is characterised not by the loss of belief but the acceptance of the plurality of beliefs without the need- or credible effort- to create a hierarchy of truth. This sense of the contingent, uncertain, pluralistic, and open-ended character of knowledge is extended to identity and social ethics. The shift in the realm of culture is related to the development of societies that are more information driven, and therefore decentralised and contract based.'

[Belindi]

Explicit language is open to all. For instance there is no ambiguity in efficient instructions about how best clean an oven.

OK, now that your oven is nice and clean, thanks to the clarity of your unambiguous and explicit instructions, let's write an equally-clear description or definition of truth, or better still, beauty.

Modernism does not include lack of insight into hidden prejudices and dogmas, one's own or other people's. … relativity is widely recognised and so we have jumped over the hurdle of postmodernism.

Any call to (re-)examine our axioms or assumptions — 'accepted wisdom' — is probably worthwhile. And may I suggest that anyone who thinks this has been done enough, often enough, is ... confused?

Good, truth, and beauty are subjective.

There are definitive examples of each of the above, but no authoritative examples except when for instance a composer is also a very skilled performer.

Language and meaning are socially constructed so we have socially accepted authorities on the use of artefacts, criminal and civil law, and applied sciences such as horticulture, cleaning, cookery, engineering, and so forth.

Postmodern conscience is particularly good for historiographers who otherwise may be unaware of their biases and fail to edit their language so to give the proper weight to their interpretations of evidence about the human past.

[Gertie]

I would think we are in a post-postmodern situation, where it's acknowledged that anything goes in our meta-culture, but these are not all equal. The cream and the scum tend to rise to the top, which somewhat clarifies relative merits.

Some thought provoking material here:

Thanks for that vid.  What a great analysis of where modernism and its post-modernist response.  (Note when I say great analysis I mean  that's how I see it too!)



We shouldn't be looking to PM for answers to how to deal with the failures of Modernist optimism, it's just a response.   Something else has to follow PM to do that.  And currently we're in fragmentary po-mo limbo, and that in itself is a prob in the face of the existential threats we face.



Is Meta-modernism the way forward?  It's   new to me, my initial thought is we need more than tone and ironic earnestness, however brill Bo Burnham is - we need something of meaningful substance.   And there's no putting the centrality of the Subject back in the bottle imo, to knowledge, meaning, morality - the big philosophical questions we build our shared world views around - so how do we deal with that. 


I personally like the notion of ''Mattering'' and thinking through contextual Appropriateness.  These are substantial ideas with practical applications.  But getting a structured, easy to grasp  handle on these ways of thinking which lead to practical categorising and prioritising (rather than heirachies) is a challenge tho...  


Matteringism?  Not very catchy! 

[Sy Borg]

I'm afraid I disagree. Lessons are rarely learned, and even more rarely are these insights remembered and retained. That's the source of proverbs like 'history repeats itself', isn't it?

I have to second that. Perhaps a few eggheads in the philosophy department have moved on, but much of society is digging in to fight postmodernism, much less moving beyond it. Heck, a lot of them have not even accepted modernism, preferring creationism to evolution, for example.

Is it just the eggheads? It seems like quite a few of us at the forum with either modest, or no, credentials are well aware that modernism has its limitations, especially at a time when there's an explosion of claims and counter-claims, and these have been exposed by postmodernism. Yet we also know that postmodern rejection of standards is similarly flawed, that there is a middle ground that embraces credible standards, especially in science, but accepts that traditional modernist standards are more like administrative conveniences than ontic observations.

In a short, modernism undervalues its epistemological shortcomings and subjectivity while postmodernism overvalues them.

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The attempts here to "show" this so far have been strawman characterizations of postmodernists by those who oppose them, along the lines of the "War on Christmas". I haven't seen the postmodernists themselves saying these things. Trying to look at things from many viewpoints is hardly the same as saying objective truth does not exist. Saying objective truth is probably out there, but that it is unlikely that we have gotten hold of it--that's the message I take away, and it seems quite reasonable. Saying that people who propose to give you absolute truth often have a hidden agenda, sometimes known to them or sometimes by proxy--this seems obvious enough, too.

I would think we are in a post-postmodern situation, where it's acknowledged that anything goes in our meta-culture, but these are not all equal. The cream and the scum tend to rise to the top, which somewhat clarifies relative merits.

Some thought provoking material here:

The baby and the bathwater idea rings true when someone wants to accept one side fully and discredit the other. This reminds me of a free will and determinism argument. The ideas seem mutually exclusive and the idea of compatibilism seems whacky. Rather, I would prefer to say that they are each only models, thus incomplete or imperfect. That does not say that either or neither is not useful to us, but only that they are simply models. We can't pretend to have everything figured out, and we should use each model to help us along when it seems wise, all the time trying to come up with better models.

I actually agree that postmodernism has tended to throw modernism's baby out with its bathwater; standards do matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Likewise, modernism tended to throw theism's baby out too; subjectivity does matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Before that, theists threw the baby of indigenous interconnectedness with the land out with the bathwater; the human relationship with nature does matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Early humans were seemingly in a situation where they ended up losing the blissful simplicity of animal life for the efficacy of human busy-minded strategising. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

To be fair, it seems that whole "babies" have not been ejected, with the toes of modernism, theism, interconnectedness and simplicity still remaining in the bath even as the bathwater runs out, so to speak.

[Belindi]

I'm afraid I disagree. Lessons are rarely learned, and even more rarely are these insights remembered and retained. That's the source of proverbs like 'history repeats itself', isn't it?

I have to second that. Perhaps a few eggheads in the philosophy department have moved on, but much of society is digging in to fight postmodernism, much less moving beyond it. Heck, a lot of them have not even accepted modernism, preferring creationism to evolution, for example.

Is it just the eggheads? It seems like quite a few of us at the forum with either modest, or no, credentials are well aware that modernism has its limitations, especially at a time when there's an explosion of claims and counter-claims, and these have been exposed by postmodernism. Yet we also know that postmodern rejection of standards is similarly flawed, that there is a middle ground that embraces credible standards, especially in science, but accepts that traditional modernist standards are more like administrative conveniences than ontic observations.

In a short, modernism undervalues its epistemological shortcomings and subjectivity while postmodernism overvalues them.

Postmodernism is characterized by extreme skepticism about objective truth and knowledge...

This is the part of postmodernism I can't seem to find any information about. Can you, with your seemingly infinite 'encyclopedia', offer me an enlightening link, please?

The attempts here to "show" this so far have been strawman characterizations of postmodernists by those who oppose them, along the lines of the "War on Christmas". I haven't seen the postmodernists themselves saying these things. Trying to look at things from many viewpoints is hardly the same as saying objective truth does not exist. Saying objective truth is probably out there, but that it is unlikely that we have gotten hold of it--that's the message I take away, and it seems quite reasonable. Saying that people who propose to give you absolute truth often have a hidden agenda, sometimes known to them or sometimes by proxy--this seems obvious enough, too.

I would think we are in a post-postmodern situation, where it's acknowledged that anything goes in our meta-culture, but these are not all equal. The cream and the scum tend to rise to the top, which somewhat clarifies relative merits.

Some thought provoking material here:

The baby and the bathwater idea rings true when someone wants to accept one side fully and discredit the other. This reminds me of a free will and determinism argument. The ideas seem mutually exclusive and the idea of compatibilism seems whacky. Rather, I would prefer to say that they are each only models, thus incomplete or imperfect. That does not say that either or neither is not useful to us, but only that they are simply models. We can't pretend to have everything figured out, and we should use each model to help us along when it seems wise, all the time trying to come up with better models.

I actually agree that postmodernism has tended to throw modernism's baby out with its bathwater; standards do matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Likewise, modernism tended to throw theism's baby out too; subjectivity does matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Before that, theists threw the baby of indigenous interconnectedness with the land out with the bathwater; the human relationship with nature does matter. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

Early humans were seemingly in a situation where they ended up losing the blissful simplicity of animal life for the efficacy of human busy-minded strategising. The result? Widespread confusion and depression. And rapid progress.

To be fair, it seems that whole "babies" have not been ejected, with the toes of modernism, theism, interconnectedness and simplicity still remaining in the bath even as the bathwater runs out, so to speak.

I agree with all the above from Sy Borg. There are times and seasons for modernism and postmodernism. The urgency of present ("bathwater") crises is surely a time for modernism, especially with the huge amount of scientific evidence we have, evidence that builds up from day to day.

[chewybrian]

...To be fair, it seems that whole "babies" have not been ejected, with the toes of modernism, theism, interconnectedness and simplicity still remaining in the bath even as the bathwater runs out, so to speak.

I agree with all the above from Sy Borg. There are times and seasons for modernism and postmodernism. The urgency of present ("bathwater") crises is surely a time for modernism, especially with the huge amount of scientific evidence we have, evidence that builds up from day to day.

Yes, I second, or third, everything Sy Borg said (and it was well said). I also agree that we need modernism to come to the rescue in terms of global warming, resource depletion, overpopulation and such. But, I think it is always time for both, and we need postmdernism to guide us in the treatment of minorities, native people, LBG folks, and in our pathetic attempts at international cooperation in place of war or competition. It seems reasonable to think that we also need a third path, a model that might replace both and serve us better than either or both, but I don't see that there is a better one yet.

[Belindi]

...To be fair, it seems that whole "babies" have not been ejected, with the toes of modernism, theism, interconnectedness and simplicity still remaining in the bath even as the bathwater runs out, so to speak.

I agree with all the above from Sy Borg. There are times and seasons for modernism and postmodernism. The urgency of present ("bathwater") crises is surely a time for modernism, especially with the huge amount of scientific evidence we have, evidence that builds up from day to day.

Yes, I second, or third, everything Sy Borg said (and it was well said). I also agree that we need modernism to come to the rescue in terms of global warming, resource depletion, overpopulation and such. But, I think it is always time fI'd say nothing rather than upset him.
or both, and we need postmdernism to guide us in the treatment of minorities, native people, LBG folks, and in our pathetic attempts at international cooperation in place of war or competition. It seems reasonable to think that we also need a third path, a model that might replace both and serve us better than either or both, but I don't see that there is a better one yet.

we need postmdernism to guide us in the treatment of minorities, native people, LBG folks, and in our pathetic attempts at international cooperation in place of war or competition.

We do! Would you agree the 'soft' human sciences of psychology, anthropology, social psychology, and sociology can inform us as to how and how much modernism can help.