Is Post-Modernism a rejection of Empiricism?

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Happy Ent said:

In English, the plural does not take an apostrophe. The possessive does.

Well thanks for the tip OberGruppenGrammarFuhrer.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Jo, HE,

Wait just a second.  Post-modernism rejects logic and its underlying principles?

Why is post-modernism not just a subset of nihilism?

[Happy Ent]

25 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Why is post-modernism not just a subset of nihilism?

If you want, then that’s what it is, epistemologically (but there’s a political dimension to it as well).

But read Hicks’ book, it is right up your alley. Among other things, it explains the arrow

Nietzsche (Kierkegård, Schopenhauer, etc.) -> Pomo crap

very well.

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Jo498 said:

I am also not quite sure if Rorty is a fully fledged postmodernist. He is close but often seems to oscillate between a somewhat more sensible pragmatist (I think he called himself one for a time) position and postmodernism.

I agree on all of that. It’s just that currently, Rorty is my first suggestion for somebody who wants to visit pomo territory without being intellectually and morally appalled. He is the entrance drug.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Does post-modernism posit the solipsistic nature of human perception as a bar upon us knowing absolute truth, or, that because we perceive the Universe solipsisticly we have no basis for believing in the existence of absolute truth about anything?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

How can those who buy into post-modernism criticicize anyone about anything?  If truth is unknowable or non-existent why do "facts" matter?  

Why are the people creating their "creation museum" (with the dinosaur riding Jesus) or the Flat Earth adherents laughable when a Post-Modernist posits there is no way to show that they are wrong?

[FalagarV2]

I don't think that treating these separate thinkers as part of a unified post-modern-ism is all that enlightening as there's a big difference between them re: the status of truth, I think (Foucault is not Derrida is not Deleuze). If we focus on Foucault, he was certainly not a nihilist (nor was Nietzsche, for that matter); he worked in extension of the enlightenment tradition. In his analyses he often (provocatively) brackets truth and morality, but he certainly saw himself as serving truth, justice, liberty, etc. Read his "What is enlightenment?".

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

How can those who buy into post-modernism criticicize anyone about anything?

From the perspective of Marxism. (That is to say, by intent and rhetorically plausible outcome: who is meant to suffer?) 

Really, read Hicks. Postmodernism is a complete and consistent epistemological, political, and moral framework. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

14 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

From the perspective of Marxism. (That is to say, by intent and rhetorically plausible outcome: who is meant to suffer?) 

Really, read Hicks. Postmodernism is a complete and consistent epistemological, political, and moral framework. 

Sounds interesting, but that's a $500.00 book.  I'll have to hope my local library has it.

[OldGimletEye]

11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

I'm no expert with that level of abstraction, but I don't think moral relativism and post-modernism are identical.

So long as Post Modernism is willing to admit that there are at least some objective truths, then there shouldn’t be a problem. But, I’m not quite convinced it does. At some point, there isn’t “competing narratives”. And I’m not saying reasonable people can’t disagree. And I'm not saying there aren't times when we just don't know.

11 hours ago, Rippounet said:

Post-modernism is about bringing scepticism to an entirely different level and thus putting in doubt any grand narrative or truth. This does not, as you seem to think, prevent anyone from holding some moral values. On the contrary, I am tempted to say that doubting the dominant metastructures and paradigms would lead to an increased importance of one's personal moral principles.
By contrast, moral relativism would be the tendency to accept the fact that different civilizations have different values -and refrain from being judgmental about the ones you reject.
In other words, I do not think that post-modernism necessarily leads to moral relativism or nihilism. I personally see post-modernism as a philosophical approach that questions what is generally accepted as true (by reminding everyone that truth may be beyond the human grasp), especially when it is accepted with limited empirical data (for one reason or the other). In other words I see it as a means rather than an ends.
So from my perspective, using a post-modernist approach, it would have been possible for someone to realize slavery was wrong far before the American Civil War. One might have been able to question the ideological, economic and moral arguments supporting slavery and expose them as unsatisfactory.

Post Modernism is, evidently, against “grand narratives or truth”. It's my understanding, and somebody correct me if I’m off base here, that post modernist dislike grand narratives or truths because they feel such things are used by dominant groups to keep control over less powerful groups.

But, it just seems to me, that some of us lefty sorts of people do want to tell a “grand narrative” or truth. I mean what if I want to put together the grand narrative of how minorities or women have been oppressed in history? What if I want to show how that historical discrimination still affects them today? So,  I go out and gather historical evidence and then add to it sociological and economic studies that show how they are still being affected. I go out and make a very well researched case. But, then after doing this:

Post Modernist Guy says, "we'll see there is no grand narratives or truths."

Well, thanks post modernist guy. We might often have similar aims, but I just can’t help but think you’ve given me the good old blue falcon here.

And it seems to me, that the no “grand narratives or truths” prohibition is quite limiting. It would seem to imply there is no point looking at the historical record to figure out how things might work. Supposing I’m doing some international relations stuff, and I want to understand how states function, maybe like when they go to war or when they might not. So I go and comb over the historical record and then build a game theoretic model of how states act. Now the model might be garbage or it might be fairly good, but whether it is or isn’t post, modernist guy says it’s all junk because there are no grand narratives or truths, so don't even bother.

And why, according to post modernism, is rationalism and empiricism not capable of making critiques of bad or hideous social practices?

It’s been years since I’ve read Reflections On The Revolution In France, 1790, and since I’ve got a memory like a goldfish, I don’t remember much, but it seems to me when Burke wrote the line:

Quote

We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.

He was saying, “I’m tired of you snotty eggheads going around questioning everything. Would ya stop!” And he wrote this almost two hundred years before post-modernism developed.

The thing with post modernism is that it seems very good at pointing out that some social practice or institution is arbitrary or just made up bullshit. It seems less good at what to do about it, since it seems reluctant to commit to truths or to one narrative.

If you're sitting around the US in 1840 and think slavery is wrong, at some point ya gotta commit and think that objectively and truthfully it’s wrong, and not say, “well from my standpoint it’s a problem, but from another ‘narrative’,well……….”

[Rippounet]

46 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Post Modernism is, evidently, against “grand narratives or truth”. It’s my understanding, and somebody correct me if I’m off base here, that post modernist dislike “grand narratives or truths” because they feel such things are used by dominant groups to keep control over less powerful groups.….”

I believe this is correct and well put.

46 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

So long as Post Modernism is willing to admit that there are at least some objective truths, then there shouldn’t be a problem. But, I’m not quite convinced it does.

That would depend on the post-modernist. From what I gather, most post-modernists did have a specific purpose in deconstructing the dominant "grand narratives." Only a minority, or people who have gone too far down the rabithole, would go all the way to nihilism.

46 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

But, it just seems to me, that some of us lefty sorts of people do want to tell a “grand narrative” or truth. I mean what if I want to put together the grand narrative of how minorities or women have been oppressed in history? What if I want to show how that historical discrimination still affects them today? So,  I go out and gather historical evidence and then add to it sociological and economic studies that show how they are still being affected. I go out and make a very well researched case. But, then after doing this:

Post Modernist Guy says, "we'll see there is no grand narratives or truths."

Well, thanks post modernist guy. We might often have similar aims, but I just can’t help but think you’ve given me the good old blue falcon here.

I think this is where you're mistaken. The oppression of minorities or women is not a "grand narrative," it's too factual for that.

What is meant by "grand narrative" is more abstract imho.
The way I was taught about postmodernism is that it was a direct consequence of the two world wars. After such terrible destruction culminating with the atomic explosions in Japan, and followed by the daily nuclear anxieties of the Cold War, men started to question the validity of the "grand narratives" underpinning such global conflicts. To the average individual, the grand promises of liberal democracy, fascism or communism, now seemed absurd in the face of the slaughter that the opposition between such ideologies led to ; the truths they claimed could no longer be relied upon. The absurdity of the 20th century, thus laid bare, gave way to new forms of reflexion and expression that would be more centered on the here and now, on a form of theorization that would be more concrete and immediately significant.
I tend to see existentialism and postmodernism as going hand in hand. Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno.

 

 

[Ormond]

This is a very interesting thread -- though I don't pretend to fully understand some of the deeper philosophical points.

As an academic psychologist, though, the funniest thing to me in the original linked-to article was the sign at Pacifica University that read: “B.F. Skinner is the Anti-Christ”. This must have been in 1998 at the very earliest -- when Skinner had been dead for at least 8 years and the field of psychology had already moved beyond his version of radical behaviorism which was super-positivist in its orientation. By the time Skinner died, psychology had entered what is sometimes called the "cognitive revolution" where most scientific researchers in the subject believed one had to look at what was going on inside the heads of human beings instead of just "immediately observable behavior." To see people actually still taking Skinner seriously enough to call him the Anti-Christ at that point in history shows they just weren't keeping up with Skinner's own field.

The findings of cognitive psychology are a big part of what someone else in the thread mentioned as the basis within science itself for showing how an individual's subjective reality affects their interpretation of the world. On the other hand, some of the strongest satements of some postmodernists about language don't seem to hold up. Language can shape how we think, but the strongest version of what's called the Whorfian hypothesis, which posits that one simply cannot think certain thoughts in certain languages, is going too far. It may take more words to explain a particular concept in some languages than others, but it can be done. 

Psychology today is actually rapidly moving toward biology  and neurology. Its problem today is too many "pop psychologists" making really simplistic and overly broad conclusions about how "religion" or "conservatism" are caused by particular brain structures based on very preliminary research findings. That's how people like Sam Harris end up being criticized as "phrenologists", as was mentioned in another thread. A small dose of postmodernist thinking is a good antidote to such reductionism -- as long as one doesn't take it too far and reject the possibility of getting closer to the "Truth" of the matter with further research.

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sounds interesting, but that's a $500.00 book.  I'll have to hope my local library has it.

It’s 7.49$ on Kindle. Or free on the author’s website, in PDF: http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hicks-ep-full.pdf

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

It’s 7.49$ on Kindle. Or free on the author’s website, in PDF: http://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/hicks-ep-full.pdf

Danke.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Rippounet said:

That would depend on the post-modernist. From what I gather, most post-modernists did have a specific purpose in deconstructing the dominant "grand narratives." Only a minority, or people who have gone too far down the rabithole, would go all the way to nihilism.

I guess.

I’ll have to start reading more post-modernist, I suppose. But, I’ve gotta say, from some of the stuff I’ve read, written by some of them, it seems to me they were in some kind of bad writing contest with Ayn Rand.

As I said earlier, I need simple sentences. I guess I’ll be doing a copy of “Post Modernism For Dummies”. Hope one is out there. And hope it has lots of pictures.
 

Just now, Rippounet said:

I think this is where you're mistaken. The oppression of minorities or women is not a "grand narrative," it's too factual for that.

Well if we can accept some facts as being objectively true, then does that mean they approve of us taking those basic facts and then trying to build models or making inferences from them to explain other facts? 
 

Just now, Rippounet said:

What is meant by "grand narrative" is more abstract imho.
The way I was taught about postmodernism is that it was a direct consequence of the two world wars. After such terrible destruction culminating with the atomic explosions in Japan, and followed by the daily nuclear anxieties of the Cold War, men started to question the validity of the "grand narratives" underpinning such global conflicts. To the average individual, the grand promises of liberal democracy, fascism or communism, now seemed absurd in the face of the slaughter that the opposition between such ideologies led to ; the truths they claimed could no longer be relied upon. The absurdity of the 20th century, thus laid bare, gave way to new forms of reflexion and expression that would be more centered on the here and now, on a form of theorization that would be more concrete and immediately significant.
I tend to see existentialism and postmodernism as going hand in hand. Maybe I'm wrong, I dunno.

I think it’s always prudent to have one’s bullshit detector on the max power setting. That said, is it futile to try to look critically at the historical record and then try to explain what the fuck happened?

[Rippounet]

10 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think it’s always prudent to have one’s bullshit detector on the max power setting. That said, is it futile to try to look critically at the historical record and then try to explain what the fuck happened?

I think post-modernism is just a fancy way of doing just that, with a lot of complicated words.

[Jo498]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Does post-modernism posit the solipsistic nature of human perception as a bar upon us knowing absolute truth, or, that because we perceive the Universe solipsisticly we have no basis for believing in the existence of absolute truth about anything?

They are not solipsist in the traditional sense. As far as I understand it, important strains for postmodernism are

- A "historization" of everything. There are no objective universal categories as virtually everyone believed from Aristotle to early modernity and as Kant and Hegel tried to restore after the onslaught of Hume. Everything, including the very basis of gaining and confirming knowledge, modes of thought or discourse are contingent or historical. (I think this can be found in Nietzsche already to some extent.)  This has a strongly skeptical dimension but it is also tied to genealogies of certain concepts we tend to take for granted or as "natural". (For me this is the most interesting point of po-mo and I think there are at least potentially some insights in intellectual history and good critical arguments to be found here. Although I personally am decidedly pre-modern in most of these fundamental questions and think that the tradition from Plato through early modernity had it mostly right ;))

- Then there is Freudian psychoanalysis (important for at least for some of the French ones, I believe). There are potential subtexts behind everything that can be brought out be deconstructing the "official" or apparently obvious meanings. I am rather dubious about this because Freud has mostly been superseded in his field and it is really strange that some of his ideas live on in another field after having become obsolete in psychology for decades.

- Then there is the linguistic angle, that's why it is often called "poststructuralism".

I don't think one can understand to what kind of problems the postmodernists are reacting if one jumps from Locke or Rousseau to the mid-20th century. One has to understand at least some core ideas of Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche and probably Heidegger to get into a certain mind frame before their questions and problems even begin to make sense. This is very unfortunate because all these "modern" predecessors of postmodernism are often dense, potentially deep authors one cannot ingest in a free afternoon or even a long weekend.

[Ormond]

44 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

 

- Then there is Freudian psychoanalysis (important for at least for some of the French ones, I believe). There are potential subtexts behind everything that can be brought out be deconstructing the "official" or apparently obvious meanings. I am rather dubious about this because Freud has mostly been superseded in his field and it is really strange that some of his ideas live on in another field after having become obsolete in psychology for decades.

 

Yes, many psychologists think this is really strange, too. Freud was brilliant, and a few of his ideas are still accepted in psychology (the most important being the basic idea that a lot of the motives for human behavior are unconscious -- though his claim that they are unconscious because they consist of sexual and aggressive wishes that are being actively repressed has not been backed up by research.) But for decades I've been telling my students in introductory psychology that the main reason they have to learn the basics of Freudian theory is not because he's still important in psychology, but because psychoanalysis has had such a huge impact on Western culture in general, it's something they need to know about to understand a lot of literature, films, and other cultural products -- including those French postmodernists!

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Rippounet said:

I think post-modernism is just a fancy way of doing just that, with a lot of complicated words.

I'm like Homer Simpson. Mainly, I like getting my information from monitors at gas stations. This is going to be rough.

[Jo498]

As for Scott's initial question, the answer is yes. But it is a little like asking if Lutheran Protestantism was a rejection of the cult of Zeus. A Lutheran obviously rejects Zeus worship as pagan idolatry but the point of Lutheranism is rather a rejection of certain aspects of Roman Catholicism.

It should also be pointed out that many people tend to misunderstand the claims and the level of a lot of philosophical analysis. Such claims usually do not directly conflict with claims of empirical science because they are more general and (at least in ambition) more fundamental. As a toy example (I am not sure if someone would really do such a thing): A philosophical criticism of GimletEyes example above with some game theoretic model could cast doubt upon the idealized and abstracted model of rationality that informs such game theoretic models. The idea of radically simplifying and quantifying human rationality would be seen as a gross distortion of the actual complexity, freedom etc. of human thinking and behavior. It would try to expose all the assumptions that implicitly go into such kind of modelling and show why and how they are problematic.