Episode #118 … A Basic Look At Postmodernism

27 thoughts on “Episode #118 … A Basic Look At Postmodernism”

1. Uh oh … we're back to a squirrelly theory again.

2. Self-Identity is a misnomer, an ambiguous term, defined through cultural norms. Self is a construct.

3. Truth is a God to Enlightenment thinkers.

4. Knowledge is only a knowledge from a certain perspective We can only find out things from our narrow, culturally and historically influenced method of perception based on culturally biased view and experience through which we make sense of the world. Scientists can only leave those egos and biases they are self-aware of at the door, but not the rest of them, including the ones that make the perception possible.

5. My favorite so far 😍

6. 18:30 "The a government, it's much easier if everyone is the same person, because they're much easier to control."

   I disagree. "Divide and conquer" can be a very effective strategy for controlling an opponent who would otherwise outnumber you.

7. This how a physicist gave postmodernism a hilarious black eye and live to tell about .

   For anyone who pays attention to popular accounts of physics and cosmology, quantum gravity is a thing. How could it not be? Quantum gravity is the place where the two pillars of modern physics—quantum mechanics and relativity—collide head-on at the very instant of the Big Bang. The two theories, each triumphant in its own realm, just don’t play well together. If you are looking for fundamental challenges to our ideas about the universe, quantum gravity isn’t a bad place to start.

   A bit over two decades ago, quantum gravity also proved to be the perfect honey trap for a bunch of academics with a taste for nonsense and an envious bone to pick with science.

   In 1994, NYU physicist Alan Sokal ran across a book by biologist Paul Gross and mathematician Norman Levitt. In Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science[3], Gross and Levitt raised an alarm about those in the new field of “cultural studies” who were declaring that scientific knowledge, and at some level reality itself, is nothing but a social construct. Unsure whether he should take Gross and Levitt at face value, Sokal went to the library and dove into the literature that they were criticizing. When he came up for air, he was much more familiar with the postmodernist critique of science. He was also appalled at the depth of its ignorance about the subject.

   Most scientists respond to such nonsense with a muttered, “good grief,” but Sokal felt compelled to do more. He decided to give postmodernists a first-hand demonstration of the destructive testing of ideas that tie science to a reality that cuts across all cultural divides.

   Sokal had a hypothesis: Those applying postmodernism to science couldn’t tell the difference between sense and nonsense if you rubbed their noses in it. He predicted that the cultural science studies crowd would publish just about anything, so long as it sounded good and supported their ideological agenda. To test that prediction, Sokal wrote a heavily footnoted and deliciously absurd 39-page parody entitled, “Transgressing The Boundaries. Toward A Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”[

   The paper is worth reading just for a belly laugh. It promises “emancipatory mathematics” at the foundation of “a future post-modern and liberatory science.” “Physical ‘reality’,” it declares, “is at bottom a social and linguistic concept.” He embraces the notion, seriously proposed by some, that logic itself is invalidated by “contamination of the social” When he showed it to friends, Sokal says, “the scientists would figure out quickly that either it was a parody or I had gone off my rocker.”

   Sokal submitted his paper to a trendy journal called Social Text. Understanding the importance of ego, he freely and glowingly cited work by several of the journal’s editors. For their part, the folks at Social Text were thrilled to receive Sokal’s manuscript. Here at last was a physicist who was “on their side!” After minor revisions, the paper was accepted and scheduled to appear in an upcoming special “Science Wars” edition.

   The bait had been taken, but the trap had yet to be sprung. That came with a piece by Sokal in Lingua Franca that appeared just after Social Text hit the stands, exposing “Transgressing the Boundaries” as the hoax it was.

   Parody sometimes succeeds where reasoned discourse fails. Sokal’s little joke burst free of the ivory tower on May 18, 1996, when The New York Times ran a front-page article entitled, “Postmodern Gravity Deconstructed, Slyly.”The Sokal Hoax became a hot topic of conversation around the world!

   Reactions to Sokal’s article were, shall we say, mixed. The editors of Social Text were not amused, to put it mildly, and they decried Sokal’s unethical behavior. One insisted that the original paper was not a hoax at all, but that fearing reprisal from the scientific hegemony, Sokal had “folded his intellectual resolve.” It was lost on them that had they showed the paper to anyone who knew anything about science or mathematics, the hoax would have been spotted instantly.

   As most scientists did: When I heard about it, I busted a gut!

   I still laugh, but the Sakai Hoax carries a serious message. In addition to diluting intellectual rigor, the postmodern assault on science undermines the very notion of truth and robs scientists and scholars of their ability to speak truth to power. As conservative columnist George Will correctly observed, “the epistemology that Sokal attacked precludes serious discussion of knowable realities.” Today, from climate change denial, to the anti-vaccine movement, to the nonsensical notion of “alternative facts,” that blade is wielded on both sides of the political aisle.

   Sokal gets the last word. Quoting from his 1996 Lingua Franca article, “Anyone who believes that the laws of physics are mere social conventions is invited to try transgressing those conventions from the windows of my apartment. (I live on the 21st floor.)”

8. There are no such thing as a “Post-Modernist”, Post-Modernism is a way of doing philosophy, quite distinct from critical analysis.

   If you would like a more clearer exposition what Post-Modernism is, please see my exposition at the bottom with a link to it.

   Post-Modernism is affirming of a greater future of a “will of the people, represented through accountable elected leaders that operates with values of consultation and transparency”.

   Most commentators like the ones above do not grasp it because P-M is approached very much how an English-speaker would read, for example French as if it is English and then flee, screaming French is meaningless, not a language at all. In other words, modernism is a paradigm qualitatively different from Post-Modernism to be approached as a distinctly different paradigm.

   Post-Modernism defies definition, yet many people, invoke a definition of Post-Modernism.

   Please read the segments, which are in the process of completion from the bottom to the top, chronologically:
   https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMenfmFkY/

9. …and as always, I both agree and disagree with postmodernism (at least, as far as I understand it)… but i suppose that is a fairly postmodernist take.

10. And what we are learning today is that they were all the way off and that social fragmentation INCREASES tribalism.

11. Is this video suggesting that all belief in God and holding to historic religions like Christianity and Islam is "religious fundamentalism?" If that is the case that seems to me to be a fairly pejorative understanding of religious thought and practice.

12. I'm a post modernist that likes Jordan Peterson

13. 10:00

14. Postmodernist sound almost delusional. So, lets follow a line of thinking im going to propose: lets go back a couple of millions of years (easy to do, right?). We are apes, almost hominids. We have a sharp intelligence, but still rudimentary. We have a sharp perception, but we are still unable to question what we percieve. We are kind of curious machines, with basic needs and the most simple methods to fulfill them. Now, one fine day, the son of one of this lovely apes is born with a gen modification: lets say, a bigger brain. THIS is the first hominid. He scratches his head, he looks around, he is intrigued by that wich surrounds him. He knows there is something big, ENORMOUS, around him, above him. He knows so from the very firs moment he is able to go beyond his day to day routine and take a second to only THINK, without any evident porpouse. BUT, he still joins the hunting parties, he still mates with several females, that give birth to a bright couple of hominids. They are more intelligent, an so, more suited for survival. Have you followed me this far? So, for postmodernist, that first hominid reinvented the world, with a BIASED perception (whatever that nonsens means, like someone could see a wale instead of a tree in his backyard). For postmodernist, this hominid structured the world as he wanted it to be, for his convinience, lets say. But, did he? He still behavies the same way his group does: he still lives in group, moumbles an shout in interactions with them, trying to make his preeminence clear, trying to get females interest, trying to eat the best seeds or preys. He still fucks and shits, and drinks water. The only thing that changed in his percetpion, is the IDEA of something bigger than himself and what is immediate to him. THATS IT. His perception is barely sharper than the rest of them. His intelligence is barely superior.

    So now, and thank you if by any chance you got this far, i ask you: WHEEEEEN DID THIS CONSTRUCTION BEGUN??? WHEEEEN DID MAN DISTORTED THE WORLD??? Why is it so hard for most of us to understand that BIOLOGY underlays in the way we percieve and understand the world? Why is it so hard to understand that our knowledge and inteligence HAS DEVELOPED AND EVOLVED as a result of useful genes mutations, and that it has structures and serious limitations that WE CANNOT superced (i mean, not with our will, but with long periods of evolution)? We ARE conditioned in the way we percieve, but before being so because of society, we are conditioned BY NATURE. How can we be soooooo arrogant to claim that our perception is OUR CREATION?? that if we wanted to, we could change society IN ONE GENERATION, if we educated our kids in a different way? how can we reject to see the obvious constants through time and geographies??

15. Excellent presentation

16. Can you do some videos on Critical Realism by Roy Bhaskar, and Margaret Archer's Morphogenetic approach?

17. Run into a wall and tell me whether it's true or not that you smashed against it. Truth is out there and you can easily drive face first into it.

18. I've been thinking that what brains do is similar to calculus. Think about how reality thru the senses is perceived, each moment is very similar to the next usually, with small changes. So in analyzing and coming up with a semi-accurate picture of reality by using calculus, the person can get on with their day. It's kind of the opposite of fragmentalization. Is this why smaller groups are (arguably) more cohesive and productive? That the fragmentation of reality tends to creep back in somehow, when the relationship changes thru the size of the group? Trust is lost because fragmentation creeps in as the size of the group becomes larger, since we lose the ability to perform calculus on something so chaotic. This then inspires more control politically which sort of works (depending on freedom of speech) and economically which doesn't (forms classes). So the fragmenting of society that PoMo desires is about forming many smaller groups with more autonomy, which makes it more amenable to this sort of calculus on a larger scale than individual.

19. Absolutely phenomenal explanation! Thank you.

20. Scientific Method leads to the creation of the phones/ laptops you people use to reject its value. Post modernism hasn't given us shit other that entitled individuals obsessed with there feelings with the ability to reject any criticism on the basis of their philosophy. Scientific method leads to tangible improvement while post modernism leads to what exactly? Why embrace a philosophy that has accomplished nothing in terms of improving society, is it because is helps you justify your unhealthy feelings? I pity all of you… such a sad existence of stagnation and excuses

21. Thank you, great discussion..

22. Thank you you cannot contain your love for PM..
    I am not alone |?| !

    or is it your enthusiastical nature or your enthusiasm for philosophy…ohhhh oh I'm such a fool

23. What a great podcast/video. Subscribed and looking forward to more…

24. Except, post-modernism is contributing to the same assumptions that they critique, namely that reason allows the individual access to make these truth claims, because that is what post-modernism is still doing. They still believe that this is the truth. They never understood the reason for the story (the narrative). In the end, they only contributed to the narrative of enlightenment, haha!

25. Postmodernists do not believe in original sin, don’t assume they believe in the sovereign individual. The pro free speech postmodernists may claim that they do not believe in god, but they act like god exists. The rest of them/ you need to read The Gulag Archipelago. Understanding postmodernists is like walking through a desert!

26. this is an exceedingly helpful video especially when dealing with people who insist on using grand narrative modernist binaries to classify humans like people/ people of color or white / brown rather than calling people diverse (or the name they determine themselves with…yeesh) especially after mapping of the human genome proves that all of their grand narratives around the pseudoscience of race is all codswallop.

27. You podcasts are really educational. Thank you so much. I can appreciate the postmodern argument but I can't help but sense that postmodernism is self-defeating and self-contradictory. It claims there are no grand narratives, yet it asserts fragmentation is good. On what basis and evidence does it arrive at conclusion? How does it know that fragmentation will not be far worse than grand narratives in the long run? And how does it make the assessment that it is good*? Is there an absolute standard of *good in postmodernism? And why should you or I subject ourselves to its definition? I'm suspicious that it's trying to smuggle in grand claims that it has no right to make. I'll keep an open, but watchful, eye as I make my way through the next episodes. Thanks for making me think!

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