Postmodernism

[volatile]

I think you pretty much answered your own question in eth quote above. It is when PoMo type philosophers (PMTPs) try to reject empiricism when it conflicts with the “reality” which the PMTP wishes to construct , that it becomes an issue for skeptics.

Indeed. But as I said, I see postmodernism as a tool of scepticism, not its enemy. Postmodernism critiques rigid orthodoxy in things like design, or sexual behaviour - things which as sceptics we should do too.

Feminist critique of science and engineering is a classic example (e=mc^2 being a "sexed" equation for example, or the guff about fluid dynamics not being modelled because it's too feminine and therefore intimidates male scientists and engineers)

Could you source a paper or work which claims that E=MCsq is a "sexed equation"? I'd be interested to see where that comes from...

There are legitimate feminist or postmodern critiques of the institutions of science, but I can't say I've ever personally seen the types of arguments of the scientific method such as you describe.

The other issue that becomes an area fro sceptics is when PMTPs, in the same way as “scientismists” conflate “fact” with “opinion”, it was never a “fact” that women should be paid less than men. When discussing how thing sshould be ordered one is not discussing facts.

Indeed. But modernism and its concurrent ideologies (see, as mentioned previously, structuralism) did treat such things as facts. Postmodernism suggests that we should think about exactly what is fact and what's opinion; it certainly doesn't seek to enforce a new orthodoxy, but to problematise existing ones.

I also find it humours that you criticise people for misreading postmodernists , but the that’s just my own twisted sense of humour

*smirk* Touché.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Could you source a paper or work which claims that E=MCsq is a "sexed equation"? I'd be interested to see where that comes from...

...snip...

http://www.endeavourforum.org.au/article09-03-05.htm

...snip...

Feminist Luce Irigaray has argued that the relativity equation, E=mc2, is a "sexed equation" that "privileges the speed of light over other speeds which are vitally necessary to us, and which therefore belong to the `masculine physics' that `privileges' rigid over fluid entities . . ."

...snip...

Looks like it comes from an article titled "Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?"

ETA: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/quoteprint.php?author=Luce Irigaray&type=s

Is e=mc2 a sexed equation?...Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypothesis that it is insofar as it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to me to indicate the possible sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having privileged what goes the fastest...
Luce Irigaray
--Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?

 

[simonmaal]

One part of post-modernism is capable of keeping our feet on the ground, so to speak. But in the process, it also brings certain dangerous by-products to the party. I'll get to the negative after I deal with the positive.

It would seem that the whole premise of this thread is that the realism-relativism relationship is a dichotomy. This is not what is argued by the majority of post-modernists. People such as Kenneth Gergen talk of the reality-relativism dialectic. This means that each can only be understood in the light of the other.

There is a material world out there that exists to be studied objectively and science is perfectly able to uncover many of these realities. But scientific data needs to be interpreted, thus enabling the subjective to impact on the objective. This is where cultural factors and politics enter into the equation. For example, some studies on race and gender have found differences between these categories (although wide differences are found within each group). So we need to somehow explain these differences. Was the study rigged? Were the results due to a Eurocentric methodology? Genetic differences? Cultural differences? What about the studies that do not find any differences? Each of these questions is heavily loaded with factors that are far from objective. I am sure that any person arguing for genetic racial differences would be vilified rather quickly.

I am with the post-modernists this far into the argument. But Gergen speaks of a democracy of ideas, meaning that different epistemologies should each have their own voice. This is, to me, a rather dangerous assertion. Gergen is saying (or implying) that experiential data (such as meditations, dreams and emotions) and hermenetic epistemology (within which psychoanalysis and social constructionism can be placed) have just as much claim to the truth as scientific findings. This "democracy of ideas" could allow fortune tellers, spiritual healers and the religious to use experiential arguments (I felt God, I knew my dead grandfather was there, I can't prove it but I nevertheless know it to be true) to displace scientific findings. In other words, circular thinking can ride roughshod over objective evidence. In this way, it does not take much to set us on the slippery slope of magical thinking.

So although post-modernism is capable of reminding us of the realism-relativism dialectic, it is also capable of unleashing chaos.

 

[volatile]

http://www.endeavourforum.org.au/article09-03-05.htm



Looks like it comes from an article titled "Le sujet de la science est-il sexue?"

ETA: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/quoteprint.php?author=Luce%20Irigaray&type=s

Thanks Darat. Now you mention it I remember Sokal bringing that up in "Intellectual Impostures". I've not read the whole article (I'm guessing you haven't either), so forgive me if I don't make a full critique just yet.

I'm no fan of Irigaray generally (far too Lacanian for my tastes), but I'm going to go out on a limb and defend her in this case. I'll hold off full judgement until I've read the whole article, but I'm tempted to suggest that she's not criticising Einstein's science in an empirical sense - that is to say, I'm sure she's not arguing that E doesn't equal MC squared.

 

[volatile]

It would seem that the whole premise of this thread is that the realism-relativism relationship is a dichotomy. This is not what is argued by the majority of post-modernists. People such as Kenneth Gergen talk of the reality-relativism dialectic. This means that each can only be understood in the light of the other.

There is a material world out there that exists to be studied objectively and science is perfectly able to uncover many of these realities. But scientific data needs to be interpreted, thus enabling the subjective to impact on the objective. This is where cultural factors and politics enter into the equation. For example, some studies on race and gender have found differences between these categories (although wide differences are found within each group). So we need to somehow explain these differences. Was the study rigged? Were the results due to a Eurocentric methodology? Genetic differences? Cultural differences? Each of these questions is heavily loaded with factors that are far from objective. I am sure that any person arguing for genetic racial differences would be vilified rather quickly.

I am with the post-modernists this far into the argument. But Gergen speaks of a democracy of ideas, meaning that different epistemologies should each have their own voice. This is, to me, a rather dangerous assertion. Gergen is saying (or implying) that experiential data (such as meditations, dreams and emotions) and hermenetic epistemology (within which psychoanalysis and social constructionism can be placed) have just as much claim to the truth as scientific findings. This "democracy of ideas" could allow fortune tellers, spiritual healers and the religious to use experiential arguments (I felt God, I knew my dead grandfather was there, I can't prove it but I nevertheless know it to be true) to displace scientific findings. In other words, circular thinking can ride roughshod over objective evidence. In this way, it does not take much to set us on the slippery slope of magical thinking.

So although post-modernism is capable of reminding us that of the realism-relativism dialectic, it is also capable of unleashing chaos.

I wholeheartedly agree, Simon, and thanks for this post.

What I'd like to point out is that science itself currently embraces a democracy of ideas - that is to say science works on the very premise that nothing can be proven absolutely. Of course, many woos will take this to mean "anything can be true", but in fact it's a post-modern understanding of things like falsifiability, which rejects the unshakable premise of perfectly quantifiable truth, which has actually helped us understand more about the world, not less.

I don't disagree that these concepts might be abused, but that is not the same as saying they are rotten from the ground up as the OP seems to suggest.

 

[simonmaal]

I wholeheartedly agree, Simon, and thanks for this post.

What I'd like to point out is that science itself currently embraces a democracy of ideas - that is to say science works on the very premise that nothing can be proven absolutely. Of course, many woos will take this to mean "anything can be true", but in fact it's a post-modern understanding of things like falsifiability, which rejects the unshakable premise of perfectly quantifiable truth, which has actually helped us understand more about the world, not less.

I don't disagree that these concepts might be abused, but that is not the same as saying they are rotten from the ground up as the OP seems to suggest.

[/quote]

I like the quote (can't remember who said it and I'm paraphrasing here) that scientific theories are not judged on whether they are right or wrong but on whether or not they are useful in relation to the available evidence. In other words, to claim that any piece of research has found a fundamental, unchangeable, indisputable truth is to lapse into dogmatic thinking. Indeed, many creationists cherry-pick in precisely this way. So even scientific findings can be misinterpreted and used to subvert the very science from which they were borrowed.

On the other hand, there are certain things that I am quite confident about, such as the world being round and in orbit around the sun and the effect of a baseball bat being swung at my head! Nevertheless, new data could warrant the causes of these phenomena to be open to debate and I, for one, would consider alternative causal explanations should there be enough evidence to warrant them. As a scientific thinker, I am capable of rejecting beliefs that I have henceforth believed to be true.

Post-modernism can take all of this into account and is therefore not an inherently dangerous ideology but I still maintain that it has its risks, a point on which I think we are both agreed.

 

[Mashuna]

I wholeheartedly agree, Simon, and thanks for this post.

What I'd like to point out is that science itself currently embraces a democracy of ideas - that is to say science works on the very premise that nothing can be proven absolutely. Of course, many woos will take this to mean "anything can be true", but in fact it's a post-modern understanding of things like falsifiability, which rejects the unshakable premise of perfectly quantifiable truth, which has actually helped us understand more about the world, not less.

I don't disagree that these concepts might be abused, but that is not the same as saying they are rotten from the ground up as the OP seems to suggest.

Jumping in at the end here, when you state that science works on the premise that nothing can be proven absolutely, are you arguing that this is a position that science has taken as a result of postmodernism, or that the approach science takes was derived through the scientific method, and postmodernism is compatable with it?

Did that make any sense?

 

[Darat]

Thanks Darat. Now you mention it I remember Sokal bringing that up in "Intellectual Impostures". I've not read the whole article (I'm guessing you haven't either), so forgive me if I don't make a full critique just yet.

...snip...[/B]

Good god no I haven't read it - and thankfully the human rights declaration means I can't even be forced to read it no matter how heinously I behave!

 

[blobru]

Just stumbling onto this thread so I won't say too much, that hasn't been already maybe.

I've poked around Post-modernism a bit, and in philosophy at least it strikes me as a reaction to the dry analytical approach that dominated most of the twentieth century. Also -- a retreat from the existentialist obsession with God, freedom and ethics. Post-modern philosophy is based in artistic 'logic', where apt associations between far-flung ideas from different disciplines is encouraged.

Modernism borrowed the freedom that technology promised us to shape the external world and applied it to the internal -- so artists experimented with new ways to communicate ideas (abstract art, modern dance, free verse, atonal music, etc). These experimental works were very hard to interpret, often even by their creators (Dadaists for example tried to create accidental art whose meaning was unknown to the artist). Post-modernism then is the extension of modernism to non-modern media. That is, everything is up for interpretation. But that doesn't mean, or shouldn't at least, that anything can mean whatever you want; it only implies that no one meaning is absolute forever in all possible contexts. That seems a slippery slope I know but I think it's just an encouragement to play with the wealth of ideas, from every time and tradition and culture, now at our disposal. It's not a serious epistemology; rather a rejection of serious-ness. I agree: E=mc² as a masculine concept seems damned stupid to me, but I hope Luce meant it only in the context of feminism (maybe: universal constants --> gender oppression? gah, still asinine...) If not, then in the context of mental health, I interpret Ms. Irigaray as not very.

Anyway! technology (reshape external) --> modernism (reshape internal) --> postmodernism (reinterpret everything), or something like that. I'm not sure how useful postmodernism is to skepticism per se, but we should know what it is, as, as others have pointed out, postmodern interpretation taken on as objective fact can and has led to some very noxious woo.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Hi again – apologies for intermittent postings but I’m a commuter and hence away from an internet link for long periods of time.

Two things:

First off, any and all concepts including (perhaps even especially) scientific ones are open to abuse. Crude scientism can be used to justify all sorts of things (sociobiologsts, again, are particularly guilty here – frankly if your theory justifies rape then your theory is wrong in all the important ways that it is possible to be wrong).

Secondly, whatever Irigary meant isn’t the issue (although I agree with Volatile that she’s unlikely to be denying the reality of the mathematical relationship). The point is that E=MC2 isn’t merely an equation. It’s also a social text. It has cultural weight. There is an important way in which it signifies ‘science’ to the general public (how do you let someone know that a cartoon character is a physicist? Put them next to a blackboard with E=MC2 on it).

Which means that, whether you like it or not, it’s fair game for cultural theorists. Asking how it might contribute as a signifier to perceptions of race, gender, sexuality etc. in the culture that generated it is a valid thing to do.

 

[brodski]

Thanks Darat. Now you mention it I remember Sokal bringing that up in "Intellectual Impostures". I've not read the whole article (I'm guessing you haven't either), so forgive me if I don't make a full critique just yet.

I'm no fan of Irigaray generally (far too Lacanian for my tastes), but I'm going to go out on a limb and defend her in this case. I'll hold off full judgement until I've read the whole article, but I'm tempted to suggest that she's not criticising Einstein's science in an empirical sense - that is to say, I'm sure she's not arguing that E doesn't equal MC squared.

That is true, her criticism is that Einstein had the affront to use C in his equations at all, because somehow pointing out that C is a universal constant (a fact she misses), and deriving information from that fact is somehow patriarchal and therefore invalidates his endeavour.
She seems to think that the only reason that C is used is because it is “the fastest”, not because it is the universal constant.

 

[volatile]

Jumping in at the end here, when you state that science works on the premise that nothing can be proven absolutely, are you arguing that this is a position that science has taken as a result of postmodernism, or that the approach science takes was derived through the scientific method, and postmodernism is compatable with it?

Did that make any sense?

Off the top of my head, I'd say B is more likely, although that the ideas rose concurrently is interesting, I'd say. I just wanted to point out that saying post-modernism was absurd for championing a retreat from "Truth" is unjustified given that the "better" alternative being posited here, that being the scientific method, is itself based on the impossibility of absolute truth as well.

As a footnote: the "approach science takes" was resolutely not derived in and of itself through "the scientific method". It is philosophers of science, often scientists themselves but not always, who have developed the current experimental methodologies.

 

[Pipirr]

volatile, I appreciate the definition. Also, I'll add that it's refreshing to read a defence of post modernism, especially in these fora.

 

[volatile]

volatile, I appreciate the definition. Also, I'll add that it's refreshing to read a defence of post modernism, especially in these fora.

My pleasure, really. I just see a post-modern approach as so liberating, enriching and enlightening that it's frustrating to see it dismissed so easily by people who really haven't encountered any post-modern thought first-hand.

 

[Matt the Poet]

My pleasure, really. I just see a post-modern approach as so liberating, enriching and enlightening that it's frustrating to see it dismissed so easily by people who really haven't encountered any post-modern thought first-hand.

Seconded.

Although this shouldn’t detract from the fact that Lacan did spend a lot of time talking cobblers about the square root of minus one.

 

[simonmaal]

The consideration of gender issues here is important and has got me thinking about another influence. Science is often discredited as being "orthodox" and "reductionist", as if these labels signify an intrinsically bad ideology or dogma. Much worse, in our current education system (in the UK), there seems to be a growing prejudice towards science as "male, patriarchal and white", as if it were part of some kind of international male conspiracy to maintain power inequalities. I would expect the situation is similar in the US and other Western nations. Of course, the irony of this vis a vis the creationist doctrine of original sin, dooming as it did all women to agonising childbirth and putting "man" as the head of the family above the woman (and the general suppression of the female by many major religions) appears to be lost on the intellectual trendies. And I am sure the women labelled as witches in the middle ages felt the full "liberating" effect of a feeling, non-evidence based system as they breathed their last breath on the ducking stool. Oh how terrible science is...

The point is that science is under attack from completely unverifiable sources, many of which (such as the Bible and Koran) led to disgraceful suffering by women. Yet the same sloppy thinking methods that led to the nonsense of our species' infancy are being taught once again in faith schools and mainstream curricula.

Our children are being educated in a system where private feeling is given the same importance as empirical study, where reason is relegated to "just one explanation amongst many". Of course, the use of traditional "female" attributes such as intuition and private feelings as a weapon against so-called intellectual sexism is as sexist as the imagined sexism it attempts to dislodge! The irony of this inverted sexism (reinforcing, as it does, traditional gender roles and differences between men and women) seems yet again to pass over the heads of our heavily politicised educational system. The danger is that post-modernism could lead us back into the dark ages.

This is, as Dawkins puts it, a betrayal of the enlightenment.

 

[Matt the Poet]

Much worse, in our current education system (in the UK), there seems to be a growing prejudice towards science as "male, patriarchal and white", as if it were part of some kind of international male conspiracy to maintain power inequalities.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this, but not a lot of evidence. Is there anything in the formal curriculum documents that actually articulates it?

Yet the same sloppy thinking methods that led to the nonsense of our species' infancy are being taught once again in faith schools and mainstream curricula.

I would submit that they have always been taught in faith schools, and I doubt that any mainstream curriculum at the level you’re discussing includes postmodern thought on the philosophy of science. I certainly don’t recall hearing Donna Haraway’s name at GSCE – indeed, I had to go and find her for myself.

Our children are being educated in a system where private feeling is given the same importance as empirical study,

What ‘importance’ axis are you placing these two things on? I don’t think it’s ever correct to tell a child (or indeed anyone) that what they feel is ‘unimportant’. It’s correct to say that if the results of empirical studies make them feel bad, then there is nothing to be done about it and they had best learn to cope. However, this is not the same as telling them that those feelings are invalid.

Of course, the use of traditional "female" attributes such as intuition and private feelings as a weapon against so-called intellectual sexism is as sexist as the imagined sexism it attempts to dislodge!

Bang on with this. No matter how much you dress it up in mystical guff about earth and salt and wombs it still boils down to ‘thinking isn’t ladylike’.

The danger is that post-modernism could lead us back into the dark ages.

But this is not postmodernism. A rigorous postmodernist would make the same accusation as you do, of ‘essentialism’ – the attribution of absolute qualities to a particular gender/sexuality/ethnicity.

You’re mixing up two things here, I think, and thus creating a straw man. The observation that a lot of science has been done by white men, and that this might just have some sort of effect on its progress is absolutely reasonable. (remember all those exciting new discoveries about clitoral anatomy a while back? Care to take a punt at why nobody had bothered to look into it before?). The contention that it is therefore worthless is not.

 

[dudalb]

Postmodernism is useful for studying art and literature, but has no relation to the real world.

And a lot of people would dispute that.
My own problem with it is that it's roots in Marxism..and Marxism is anathema to me.

 

[volatile]

And a lot of people would dispute that.
My own problem with it is that it's roots in Marxism..and Marxism is anathema to me.

Not really. Post-modernism in general and post-structuralism specifically reject Marxism and Marxist approaches...

 

[simonmaal]

I’ve seen a lot of talk about this, but not a lot of evidence. Is there anything in the formal curriculum documents that actually articulates it?

Both my sisters are teachers, so they are in a good position to comment on the subject and to dig out the relevant parts; when they have done this, I'll get back to you. This could take a day or two, but they have both raised concerns about the ways they are forced to teach. It would seem that instead of teaching our children how to think and how to take responsibility for themselves, we are telling them what to think. And by the way, pointless repressive nonsense such as the banning of the word "blackboard" is true in at least in one of my sisters' schools (I'll have to ask the other one if it is the same in her school). Ideally, I would get them to come on here and comment, but I don't think that will happen; they don't enjoy online debate as much as i do .

I would submit that they have always been taught in faith schools, and I doubt that any mainstream curriculum at the level you’re discussing includes postmodern thought on the philosophy of science. I certainly don’t recall hearing Donna Haraway’s name at GSCE – indeed, I had to go and find her for myself.

What ‘importance’ axis are you placing these two things on? I don’t think it’s ever correct to tell a child (or indeed anyone) that what they feel is ‘unimportant’. It’s correct to say that if the results of empirical studies make them feel bad, then there is nothing to be done about it and they had best learn to cope. However, this is not the same as telling them that those feelings are invalid.

Bang on with this. No matter how much you dress it up in mystical guff about earth and salt and wombs it still boils down to ‘thinking isn’t ladylike’.

But this is not postmodernism. A rigorous postmodernist would make the same accusation as you do, of ‘essentialism’ – the attribution of absolute qualities to a particular gender/sexuality/ethnicity.

You’re mixing up two things here, I think, and thus creating a straw man.

Not at all; I entered this conversation with a consideration of Gergen's "democracy of ideas", a concept that potentially places experiential "evidence" (therefore anecdote) on a par with rigorous experimental data. My first post creates the context for the second.

The observation that a lot of science has been done by white men, and that this might just have some sort of effect on its progress is absolutely reasonable. (remember all those exciting new discoveries about clitoral anatomy a while back? Care to take a punt at why nobody had bothered to look into it before?). The contention that it is therefore worthless is not.

Once again, I request that you take a look at my earlier post where I spoke up in favour of post-modernism (albeit cautiously) when everybody else was slating it. The post you are quoting needs to be read in the context of my first one. This would answer your questions and also neutralise the objection you just raised (see especially my comments on political influences).

When read in context, I am fairly sure we pretty much are in agreement on this issue, I think we are stumbling over interpretations. But we shall see...