Philosophy Now Forum

Logik wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:00 am The scientific method is the best tool we have for generating knowledge. Is it perfect? No. Can it be improved? Maybe.
To attribute "failure" to it is to contrive a false dichotomy. We are better off with it than without it.

It seems to me you are on a witch hunt - you are looking for something/someone to blame for the mess we find ourselves in.
You are looking to personify an enemy, for it is hard to fight an invisible force. Which is all rather ironic, because you have been employing a post-modernist tactic in all of your arguments.

YOU have been practicing deconstruction, all while blaming post-modernism

Post-modernism is a blessing in disguise. In showing us that all narratives are equally meaningless it forces us to confront the actual problem.

Human values and morality are more fundamental than narratives!

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pm FYI,

Post-modernism does not accept the validity of the scientific method. Postmodernists do not believe in quantum gravity, for example, but I doubt many middle-class, tenured Postmodern professors in the US would be willing to jump off a the top of a tall building to vindicate this claim ?

Post-modernism is dedicated to destroying Western free-market capitalism, along with all of the fundamental cultural values of Western civilization.

Postmodern philosophy is pure unadulterated, obscurantist, nonsensical HORSESHIT, and its current practitioners in the modern Western academy are nothing more than charletans and intellectual imposters.

In short,anyone who defends postmodern (deconstructionist, poststructuralism) as "a blessing" is an ignorant fool.

If you would like some examples of just how insane, arrogant and hollow postmodernist thinking is, let me know, and I jot down a few for you.

Regards

Dachshund

Logik wrote: ↑Sun Mar 10, 2019 7:00 am The scientific method is the best tool we have for generating knowledge. Is it perfect? No. Can it be improved? Maybe.
To attribute "failure" to it is to contrive a false dichotomy. We are better off with it than without it.

The scientific method cannot be applied to itself, as the nature of its validity is put into question. "Better off"...that is a statement of belief. It is also a statement of belief about what science is and is not...and we are left with progressive axioms.

It seems to me you are on a witch hunt - you are looking for something/someone to blame for the mess we find ourselves in.
You are looking to personify an enemy, for it is hard to fight an invisible force. Which is all rather ironic, because you have been employing a post-modernist tactic in all of your arguments.

False, prime triad...all axioms progress to further axioms. You sure do like putting labels on things don't you.

YOU have been practicing deconstruction, all while blaming post-modernism

It would be hypocritical not to apply post-modernism to post-modernism. I already argue for constant morality/ethics, truth, etc. already...so taking an assymetric stance on really does very little for you.

Post-modernism is a blessing in disguise. In showing us that all narratives are equally meaningless it forces us to confront the actual problem.

Human values and morality are more fundamental than narratives!

Human values and morality are narratives relative to post-modernism. The nature of human constitution is relegated to a replaceable tool...it is grounded in a destruction of basic ethics.

Logik wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 4:05 pm

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pm FYI,

Post-modernism does not accept the validity of the scientific method. Postmodernists do not believe in quantum gravity, for example, but I doubt many middle-class, tenured Postmodern professors in the US would be willing to jump off a the top of a tall building to vindicate this claim ?

Post-modernism is dedicated to destroying Western free-market capitalism, along with all of the fundamental cultural values of Western civilization.

Postmodern philosophy is pure unadulterated, obscurantist, nonsensical HORSESHIT, and its current practitioners in the modern Western academy are nothing more than charletans and intellectual imposters.

In short,anyone who defends postmodern (deconstructionist, poststructuralism) as "a blessing" is an ignorant fool.

If you would like some examples of just how insane, arrogant and hollow postmodernist thinking is, let me know, and I jot down a few for you.

Regards

Dachshund

I don't particularly care for broad generalization of "what postmodernism is" be honest. That's playing exactly into Derrida's hands - that is just your interpretation. Postmodernism means many things to many people. There is simply no comparing Focault to Rorty for example.

In a pure pragmatic fashion - I take what I like from postmodern philosophy and leave what I don't.
Deconstruction is par for the course. It's akin to Pyrhonian skepticism. It's scientific reductionism applied to language.

Or as any software engineer recognizes it - debugging.

The key point remains - if you deconstruct everything down to its foundations you will find out that the foundations are made up

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:01 pmPhilosophy fundamentally comes down to a question over the nature of measurement...

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:01 pm...(hence quantitative and qualitative values at the practical ethical level) and as such what I argue strictly addresses either directly or by proxy the nature of postmodern philosophy as strictly a value system premised on the continual progression of "language" which effectively "mirrors" the progressive nature of facts in science.

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:01 pmIn trying to "fit in" with the public materialistic mindset philosophy mimiced the nature of the "wheel of science" which continually dissolves facts into further "facts" with any prior "facts" effectively being negated by the new ones. Hence most scientific facts are strictly just spontaneously localization of certain relations we use to guide how we percieve the world; hence ourselves.

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:01 pmThe problem occurs that this "progression" causes a continual divergence within the group and individual perspectives, evidenced in not just the identity crisis of the modern person but group incoherence and the generation gap.

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2019 6:01 pmThe difference is that they applied this to "language"...hence the mass confusion.

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pmPost-modernism does not accept the validity of the scientific method.

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pmPostmodernists do not believe in quantum gravity...

uwot wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 10:05 pm

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pmPost-modernism does not accept the validity of the scientific method.

Could you outline the scientific method and give an example of a post-modernist who rejects that model?

Dachshund wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 3:41 pmPostmodernists do not believe in quantum gravity...

Do you? If so, which version quantum gravity do do believe in?

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pm I'd avoid using the term "postmodern" in this conversation though. It actually references the era of 1960s onwards that embraced INDETERMINISM and UNCERTAINTY as a standard approach to everything, often too extreme, rather than the traditional foundation approaches that the "Modern" era - what the rationalists and determinists embraced. "Modern" was the term those of the past referred to against the prior "dark ages" in thinking, beginning with Newton and ending with Einstein (approximately). It is abused by those who are often themselves anti-logical, anti-science, but meant to address an acceptance of alternative views or extensions to the 'classical' bottom-up processes of thinking that was becoming too burdensome for the average person to understand or be willing to challenge. "Modern" was the the term used to identify the quick advancement of science, society, and technology that occurred after the "Renaissance" (REnewal era) that came AFTER the relative 'dark ages'.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 4:38 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pm I'd avoid using the term "postmodern" in this conversation though. It actually references the era of 1960s onwards that embraced INDETERMINISM and UNCERTAINTY as a standard approach to everything, often too extreme, rather than the traditional foundation approaches that the "Modern" era - what the rationalists and determinists embraced. "Modern" was the term those of the past referred to against the prior "dark ages" in thinking, beginning with Newton and ending with Einstein (approximately). It is abused by those who are often themselves anti-logical, anti-science, but meant to address an acceptance of alternative views or extensions to the 'classical' bottom-up processes of thinking that was becoming too burdensome for the average person to understand or be willing to challenge. "Modern" was the the term used to identify the quick advancement of science, society, and technology that occurred after the "Renaissance" (REnewal era) that came AFTER the relative 'dark ages'.

Ironically, the Postmodern critique is premised on a very specific meta-narrative. (Lyotard said it meant "incredulity toward [all] meta-narratives," but apparently this one was excepted). It's the story of how Modernity failed, science was disproved, technology went pear-shaped, truth was discovered to be perspective, politics were exposed as a fix, economics were only a story of racism, and reality itself turned out to be a construct. And it's the tale of how wise the people of our day are, since they suddenly discovered all this when others had lamentably gone astray.

Unfortunately for Postmodernists, their own fairy tale fails it's own basic test. It is just another fairy tale among fairy tales, if we believe Lyotard. Why not pick your own delusion, something more comforting, since no meta-narrative is true anyway? Moreover, if it's just another "construct," then why believe it, rather than the Modern story of perpetual progress or any of the other meta-narratives on offer? It has no special privilege of being objectively true -- since truth itself doesn't exist.

The only way it can really recommend itself is if it happens to turn out to be objectively true: however, it cannot prove it is, if all logic, science and history, the possible sources of proof for that, are actually mere "constructs" of the regnant powers. So it's a view that is essentially self-defeating: if it's objectively true, then its claim that there's no objective truth is objectively false. If it's not objectively true, then it is, by definition, false...just another subjective perspective with no special factual value.

If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it

JOHN WHEELER

...well, God just works in mysterious ways.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pmGood start-up questions.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pmI'd avoid using the term "postmodern" in this conversation though.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pmIt actually references the era of 1960s onwards that embraced INDETERMINISM and UNCERTAINTY as a standard approach to everything, often too extreme, rather than the traditional foundation approaches that the "Modern" era - what the rationalists and determinists embraced.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pm "Modern" was the term those of the past referred to against the prior "dark ages" in thinking, beginning with Newton and ending with Einstein (approximately). It is abused by those who are often themselves anti-logical, anti-science, but meant to address an acceptance of alternative views or extensions to the 'classical' bottom-up processes of thinking that was becoming too burdensome for the average person to understand or be willing to challenge. "Modern" was the the term used to identify the quick advancement of science, society, and technology that occurred after the "Renaissance" (REnewal era) that came AFTER the relative 'dark ages'.

uwot wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 6:24 am

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 11:20 pm "Modern" was the term those of the past referred to against the prior "dark ages" in thinking, beginning with Newton and ending with Einstein (approximately). It is abused by those who are often themselves anti-logical, anti-science, but meant to address an acceptance of alternative views or extensions to the 'classical' bottom-up processes of thinking that was becoming too burdensome for the average person to understand or be willing to challenge. "Modern" was the the term used to identify the quick advancement of science, society, and technology that occurred after the "Renaissance" (REnewal era) that came AFTER the relative 'dark ages'.

Well yeah, that's one interpretation.

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 11, 2019 7:38 pm "Creative Will" becomes a foundation then....

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:09 amEven reading my own explanation back might make some misinterpret me. To clarify, "modern" was a modern term to the Renaissance thinkers upon rapid progress in science, rationalism, and skepticism in the prior stronghold of the more strict authoritarianism most often enforced through churches.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:09 amI don't know when precisely it was understood to begin...

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:09 am...but take it to refer to anything embracing determinism and certainty through BOTH science and logic. The failure relates to quantum weirdness interpretation and the limitation theorems about logical certainty. (Godel, Turing, Church).

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:09 amI think it is more about politics though. The fear of the U.S.S.R. getting ahead of the U.S. in the space wars lead to concern about how the education system could appeal to more students wanting to study science and other intellectual pursuits. As such, they adopted a leniency to HOW they teach.

Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Tue Mar 12, 2019 7:09 amWhat was your own interpretation of failure regarding methodology of science?