Is Post-Modernism a rejection of Empiricism?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 6/1/2017 at 8:53 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Rippounet,
 

 

 

If we are made to understand that "reality is actually subjective" how can there ever be an objective reality to study with empiricism?

Pragmatism, Scot. We understand people have subjective experiences of reality where they build their own constructed views of the world, but we also understand an objective reality likely exists, and that objective reality we can try to understand, and we can try to not allow it to hurt those who are most vulnerable to it.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:06 AM, OldGimletEye said:

If reality is just subjective, then I don't know how we're supposed to advance on anything other than say to each other "this my truth and that's your truth and they are both equally valid."

Other than being problematic for figuring out how things work, whether in the physical world or in the social world, the other thing I dislike about it, concerns basic ethical notions. I'm not in denial that some ethical notions might be socially constructed to some extent. On the other hand, there are some things I feel are just wrong. Period. Things like slavery, murder, and rape and so forth. Ultimately, I'm a moral universalist and reject relativism.

You're simplifying too much. For example, if the objective reality of the world around us has, within it, a disease that affects certain people more than others--then those affected people will feel subjectively different about the world than those not affected. We should not dismiss how those people construct their worldviews, but try to understand them, help them, etc. This is really simplifying, but I hate this argument. Read Derrida and Foucault instead of just hating them. Most of your concerns would go away.

[Jo498]

On 5.6.2017 at 3:03 AM, Catelyn Cerwyn said:

That is why it appears so funny to me to read this thread and see people arguing about something that quantum mechanics has already told us cannot exist in the universe we live in – absolute quantifiable truths about observable phenomena. But have at it if you want to keep talking about a non-event!

Also, it is another form of intellectual nihilism to write off entire areas on human inquiry as not worthy of investigation, because the subject makes you uncomfortable or its implications scares you, and then to cut down a misinterpreted strawman version of it. It sounds like a lot of further reading and understanding is required. To paraphrase Barristan Selmy, “Why ask for truth if you close your ears to it?”

If you believe that a physical theory like quantum mechanics can tell us that e.g. precise measurements of location and momentum are impossible you have basically answered the philosophical questions regarding reality, objective knowledge etc. in the affirmative. Because then you believe that QM is a reliable tool to tell us something true about an objective world. If QM is true Heisenberg's uncertainty relations are a true fact about the world and we know this. So we have already presupposed that there is truth, objectivity and reliable tools for acquiring knowledge. (All of which certain brands of po-mo would reject.)

Sure, the QM result does not agree with some naive or "mechanist 19th century physics picture" of the world but this is not really the deep question at hand in epistemology. Rather if and how we can know and justify some things.

To clarify: I do not deny that results of a science like QM can lead to the revision of some fundamental general concepts. That something cannot have simultaneously "sharp values" of certain quantities or non-locality certainly are such revisions. But for that to be even possible one has to start from a generally "realist" stance, namely that the science in question does tell us something about the structure of an objective world with reasonable confidence, otherwise it would make no sense to take such a result as a reason for revision of general concepts like objecthood, causality etc.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

11 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

Pragmatism, Scot. We understand people have subjective experiences of reality where they build their own constructed views of the world, but we also understand an objective reality likely exists, and that objective reality we can try to understand, and we can try to not allow it to hurt those who are most vulnerable to it.

Simon,

"Pragmatism... that's all you have to offer."

Actually, that plays well with what I said earlier about PoMo/PoSt being a better tool than framework.  If you ignore the broader implications of a "post-truth" philosophy and pragmatically pretend those broader implications don't exist I can see its utility.

Problems arrise, however, when people refuse to look at this pragmatically.

[maarsen]

Scot, let's go back to Godel and Wolpert.  Godel's theorem says that there are mathematical hypotheses that are unprovable. The theorem does not tell us how to tell provable  from unprovable. What you do at that point,  as with the parallel lines axiom in Euclid,  is assume both are true and create a new branch of mathematics. Let's do the same with Wolpert's theorem. When we come across a physics-based hypothesis that cannot be proved to be right or wrong, assume that it is both right and wrong. This does not nullify your earlier axioms that you used to bring you to that point.  We then still have a broad base of theory that conforms with our perceptions of the universe, except we now have a point of bifurcation that leads to new theories of how the universe works. I think this is an absolutely fascinating tool just as non-EucIidean geometry was for the development of mathematics. 

The world does not become unknowable but our knowledge is broadened and deepened. There is no chaos and anarchy in mathematics due to the fact of having unprovable hypotheses.  Why should the same not be true for physics. Throwing up your hands and refusing to stretch your mind may be the essence of Pomo, but for the truly intellectually curious Incompleteness theorems are a road map. 

 

[Kalbear]

On 6/4/2017 at 3:57 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Yes.  If it's not... everything is meaningless and we're left with nihilism.

Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.

Just because you can't prove something is true doesn't mean you can't act like it is. What this should rob you of is not your belief, but in your certainty that you're right.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

13 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Don't let perfection be the enemy of good.

Just because you can't prove something is true doesn't mean you can't act like it is. What this should rob you of is not your belief, but in your certainty that you're right.

That's a fair point.  That said I've never been, on large questions, one who parades a great deal of certainty.  

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That's a fair point.  That said I've never been, on large questions, one who parades a great deal of certainty.  

You just literally said that if there is no objective truth that means life is meaningless. I call shenanigans. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

40 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

You just literally said that if there is no objective truth that means life is meaningless. I call shenanigans. 

Nope.  I just said I can't know with certainty.  Not that I didn't believe objective truth didn't exist.  Just that it's really hard to know what it is.

[BloodRider]

As I told a real live Sophist once, everything may be all in your head, but if whatever you make up behaves in the same way as if there is an actual objective reality, then what does it matter where that reality comes from.  You still have to deal with wiping your ass after you take a shit or you are gonna smell bad.

[DMC]

The article in the OP is farcical.  Moreover, considering my field I feel obliged to personally defend against this notion that academic liberals are pervading our youth with that dastardly "post-modernism."

On 6/1/2017 at 8:40 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is the author correct about the predominance of post-modernist thought on University campuses?

No.  

Been busy so I don't know how much this has been addressed in the thread, but really:  no.  If anything, my most pressing critique of my colleagues/superiors is there is far too much effort in developing quantitative (or otherwise empirical) methods to isolate causality in order to explain political phenomena that will almost certainly never be settled.  This is not unique to political science - the penis envy among the social sciences (including sociology, economics, and - yes - psychology) towards the hard sciences' predictive capability has led us to overemphasize empiricism, or more precisely positivism.

While the behavioral reformation of the 1950s (which the author laughably conflates with ideological conservatism) may have abated somewhat, every social science R1 program in the country is pretty much solely focused on producing empiricists.  In fact, you won't make it you're not on board.  Hell, even middling schools - of which I got one of my MAs from - abide by this paradigm.  I was in junior high when this author was at Duquesne, so maybe things have changed, but I can't imagine that much.

That being said, "political theory" courses are still required in any grad program.  There you learn the philosophy of political science, and science in general.  The author would do well to read Thomas Kuhn's classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to learn an appropriate middle ground between the constructed false dichotomy.  Any scientist that maintains there is only one objective reality - and not open to ideas that challenging the existing paradigm/consensus - is a very poor scientist.

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

 Any scientist that maintains there is only one objective reality - and not open to ideas that challenging the existing paradigm/consensus - is a very poor scientist.

Hm… Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

The idea that there is only one objective reality is 

1. entirely irrelevant to the mindset of a working scientists. Scientist don’t worry about Truth or Objective Reality. They worry about falsifying hypotheses and constructing knowledge. (Very few scientists worry about capital-T truth. They aren’t Platonists. Many amateurs who fetishise science to care about Truth, so do many religious people, and some philosophers. Most working scientists find the entire concept weird.)  

2. completely consistent with how most scientists conceptualise reality, which works well for them. (So, it is a good description of the day-to-day worldview of world-class scientists to say that they believe in an objective reality. This implicit belief serves them well.)

3. orthogonal to the (laudable and heavily incentivised) goal of overthrowing existing theories. Scientists desire the disconfirmation of existing orthodoxy. However, it almost never happens, and one of the big problems with Kuhn is that he has built an entire theory of Science on very few outliers. Kuhn is largely irrelevant, scientific revolutions don’t happen, theories are almost never overthrown. However, disconfirmation, iterative improvement, and refinement happen all the time.    

Example:

David Deutsch is a brilliant example of a fantastic scientist who has a very clear intuition about there being an objective reality. (He of them many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics.) Clearly, we cannot gain knowledge about this reality by empiricism, which he therefore rejects. Equally clearly, our current models fail to describe the reality, and he rejects the Copenhagen interpretation (which is the current model, or lack of model.)

So: the existence of an objective reality is a useful description of how scientists think and of how science works. Truth is a useless or misleading concept in describing how scientists think and how science works. (Caveat: I am one of the few counterexamples, since I work in a definition-theorem-proof field that is entirely platonic. However, I am a distraction.) Disconfirmation (of claims, hypotheses, or – very seldom – theories) is the normal process of science, the goal of which is to amass knowledge (in particular, explanation).

[Centrist Simon Steele]

On 6/6/2017 at 4:53 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Simon,

"Pragmatism... that's all you have to offer."

Actually, that plays well with what I said earlier about PoMo/PoSt being a better tool than framework.  If you ignore the broader implications of a "post-truth" philosophy and pragmatically pretend those broader implications don't exist I can see its utility.

Problems arrise, however, when people refuse to look at this pragmatically.

Agreed. When people sit down and say, "My own truth is all I need," or some variation of that, I would argue they are perverting what postmodernism is. But I am not an expert on this subject. This has just been how I've come to view the philosophy.

I had to look up the quote by the way...then I slapped my forehead for being a doof. 

I also love Happy Ent's post--I wish I could articulate those ideas so clearly.

[DMC]

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Only the Sith deal in absolutes.

I will do what I must...

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

1. entirely irrelevant to the mindset of a working scientists. Scientist don’t worry about Truth or Objective Reality. They worry about falsifying hypotheses and constructing knowledge.

Yep.  That was what I was (apparently poorly) trying to articulate.

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

2. completely consistent with how most scientists conceptualise reality, which works well for them. (So, it is a good description of the day-to-day worldview of world-class scientists to say that they believe in an objective reality. This implicit belief serves them well.)

The bolded directly contradicts your first point.  What could be said is scientists accept the validity of the world/environment/whatever that they perceive as a basis for their inquiry.

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

3. orthogonal to the (laudable and heavily incentivised) goal of overthrowing existing theories.

Agreed!

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

However, it almost never happens, and one of the big problems with Kuhn is that he has built an entire theory of Science on very few outliers.

Um, I'm not a huge Kuhn enthusiast - just thought it was relevant to the OP - but emphasizing those very few outliers is pretty much his entire point.

12 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

scientific revolutions don’t happen, theories are almost never overthrown.

Now I'm beginning to wonder if you've even read Kuhn.  The fact theories are "almost" never overthrown is the premise.  And to the bolded - seriously?

[Jo498]

What does it even mean for there to be several "objective realities"? One should not confuse a method (like falsificationism) with philosophical presuppositions. (One should also not confuse certainty with truth and objectivity. Probably there is no certainty outside of a narrow field of logics and maths.)

The very idea of falsificationism is based on conjectures being refuted by an independent reality. Falsificationism does not say that conjectures are refuted by other conjectural constructions. If there could be several objective realities it is not even clear how there could be a conflict between some conjectures and data or some conjectures and others. The only case for something like that to be easily possible would be clearly non-overlapping domains. Sure, this is often the case. It is very probably largely irrelevant for cell biology how man types of Higgs boson there are (it is probably even irrelevant for most semiconductor physics). But does this mean that cell biology describes a different "reality" from particle physics? Not a different level or aspect of reality?

But for theories of the same domain to be in meaningful conflict requires that they are about the same independent reality. Otherwise there would be no conflict.

Briefly: The falsificationist cannot even get started without the presupposition of an independent reality that can make his conjectures fail.

[Happy Ent]

2 hours ago, dmc515 said:

Now I'm beginning to wonder if you've even read Kuhn.  The fact theories are "almost" never overthrown is the premise.  And to the bolded - seriously?

I actually have, and liked it. Like many of the other philosophers in discussed in this thread, he is far better than the vulgar reception of his main idea. The opinions of Vulgo-Kuhn (which have led to some kind of epistemic nihilism of viewing the scientific method as a constant revolution of ephemeral theories and therefore being worthless) do exist in public discourse, and I falsely attributed them to you, for which I apologise.

Indeed, we seem to disagree on relatively little.

[BloodRider]

The Invisibilia podcast is really hitting the objective vs. perceived reality this season.  If you are interested, give this weeks episodes a listen too.  I linked to last week's elsewhere.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510307/invisibilia

[BloodRider]

Scott, did you cast a summon Kuhn spell in my podcast feed?

Anyway - here is another good examination of Kuhn's philosophy and how much into everything is relative he really was.

https://hiphination.org/episodes/episode-9-the-ashes-of-truth-april-18-2017/

[DMC]

On 6/8/2017 at 4:08 AM, Happy Ent said:

I actually have, and liked it. Like many of the other philosophers in discussed in this thread, he is far better than the vulgar reception of his main idea. The opinions of Vulgo-Kuhn (which have led to some kind of epistemic nihilism of viewing the scientific method as a constant revolution of ephemeral theories and therefore being worthless) do exist in public discourse

Yes, that is obscene, crude, and anathema to the spirit of Kuhn's ideas.

On 6/8/2017 at 4:08 AM, Happy Ent said:

I falsely attributed them to you, for which I apologise.

Indeed, we seem to disagree on relatively little.

No worries, if anything I owe you an apology as I became unnecessarily defensive and confrontational.  Otherwise known as stupid drunk.

[Egalitarianism Always]

On 08/06/2017 at 9:08 AM, Happy Ent said:

Like many of the other philosophers in discussed in this thread, he is far better than the vulgar reception of his main idea. The opinions of Vulgo-Kuhn (which have led to some kind of epistemic nihilism of viewing the scientific method as a constant revolution of ephemeral theories and therefore being worthless) do exist in public discourse,

True, and has the same outcome as the mirror which is too teleological.  Both have the fault of applying science by an ideology.

Science isn't a progression of reason and neither is it as the false Kuhnians put it, both those ideas provide the grounding States and individuals have used for truly terrible atrocities.

Francis Bacon saw science not as an intellectual adventure but as a means for State power.  Application of general knowledge principles, missing knowledge because of racism, homophobia, economic classicism, genderism, sentienism.

If our scientific knowledge has been proven to be riddled with horrendous selfishness, then without a doubt it still is and I have shown this to be the case repeatedly.  Bringing air pollution right back into the debate, genetic genderism against XX individuals and now against XY individuals.