To think you clever lot can explain postmodernism

[FlamedToACrisp]

I've just come across postmodernism, and I can't get my head around it at all.

What am I to understand of sentences like: "Such reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an artifact of scientific practice and language." (Encyclopedia Britannica) ?

If we reject the idea of reality, what does that leave? I mean, what's the point? Our 'reality' is experienced by us as real on every level, and, barring The Matrix or similar, surely it walks like a duck?

Is it just a load of pretentious bollocks, or have I missed an important point?

@BlueRaincoat1

I believe (as I think most people believe) in the fact of objective material realities that exist outside of interpretation, and are true irrespective of language. For example that an unsupported object on earth will fall down (gravity). That 2 + 2 = 4. That if you stand in the rain you get wet. While postmodernism can help with exploring narratives and the reason why certain interpretations of sociological structures to historical events may be held up as 'the truth' , I am not on board with using it for deconstructing what I would consider immutable truths about material reality. I think that could be quite harmful as it can undermine the possibility of knowledge and the use of a fixed language structure (which we need for laws, medicine, science etc.)

Absolutely - this is why I suspect we have some of the issues we have today and why they are being defended so virently by some - they are 'truths' academically in response to someone's personal story, for exampe.

This comes back to my earlier comment about the graduates I am meeting now and how they have grasped some ideas but not a sfully as needed and then they struggle. Postmodernism works when applied to 'art' because it is subjective in its nature (and ultimately just an interpretation - C'est ne pas un pipe?) but it cannot be extrapolated out onto what you call 'immutable' truths or science. They are what we are left with when we strip everything interpretive away and down to a one-dimensional view that wouldn't allow ambiguity and multiplicity (until quantum mechanics threw a spanner into the works, I guess).

You are not wrong, @Blue I don't think - and I think somewhere along the way the grand narratives were replaced by the media narratives to these people - they became an intellectual position to view things from rather than a prism applied up close to something in order to illustrate a point. The object has become immaterial (and defined now by the market anyway) and the discourse is the focus yet it is really thin and superficial - hence why people are lost.

They are what we are left with when we strip everything interpretive away

Is that even possible though? Can you give an example?

@Gobb

I just meant that there are certain things we can say are 'immutable'

For example, someone I know was questioning evolutionary theory and the big bang/start of the universe. She was insistent that as none of us were there, we couldn't know what happened. That is true in a philosophical sense, I guess but the physicist who was with us said we do know what happened - we know what gases were there and what happened. Both views could be considered true I suppose depending on the perspective you want to engage in but we recognise the scientific view when talking about the scientific world as the reasoned view as scientific enquiry is based on using observable reality to find broad truths that develop our knowledge of the physical world. It is true that we may discover something that turns our previous thinking on its head, it is always a possibility, but if you look at scientific enquiry it is based on recognising immutability - based on it's telelogical truth, if you will.

Asked DH as he loves architecture....

Referential ironic reference to the past is post modernism.
Modernism ( rules/order, form and function) got rid of decorative twee, where as post modern is a whimsy inside joke, think Greek columns or temple looking building (MI5) bits added on with no actual function

I’m sorry I asked 😵...zzzzzzz

@duletty

I guess that would work as in

• traditional architecture (doric forms, arches, etc) were shaped by the prevailing thoughts of their day (form / beauty / structure / space)
• modernism came along and said 'that's your idea of beauty based on your traditions (Eurocentric aesthetics?) and space/ form/ etc can be viewed differently (a good example is looking at interior space and flow rather than how imposing the exterior of a building is - also more organic lines like Corbusier.

• post modernism said OK, if everything is subjective and nothing is now to be viewed from an objective perspective then I can blend these different elements together to create a new hybrid.

But I think in architecture it is so heavily influenced by material - as in new and accessible material.

[quote serenada]@Gobb

I just meant that there are certain things we can say are 'immutable'

For example, someone I know was questioning evolutionary theory and the big bang/start of the universe. She was insistent that as none of us were there, we couldn't know what happened. That is true in a philosophical sense, I guess but the physicist who was with us said we do know what happened - we know what gases were there and what happened. Both views could be considered true I suppose depending on the perspective you want to engage in but we recognise the scientific view when talking about the scientific world as the reasoned view as scientific enquiry is based on using observable reality to find broad truths that develop our knowledge of the physical world. It is true that we may discover something that turns our previous thinking on its head, it is always a possibility, but if you look at scientific enquiry it is based on recognising immutability - based on it's telelogical truth, if you will.[/quote]
Thanks Serenada

What I would also say from your example is that I guess it's possible that your physicist is wrong about what happened. But that doesn't mean that something didn't 'in fact' happen. And it is possible for that to be known. I'm not sure where your friends theory about the impossibility of knowledge leaves us.

The big bang and evolution are good theories constructed from evidence, but they're not truths. Although I suppose you could adopt a theory as a truth, and it sounds as though the physicist in your story thinks the woman should. I've heard that argument before, that unless we are experts in the field, we should accept the opinions of experts as if it were truth and it does make sense in a way to do that, I suppose. It's not science when we do that, though, although it's quite sciency.

I suppose it just depends on who you're around. I'm much more likely to come across people overstating the evidence than I am people giggling and saying oh we don't know anything we weren't there. That actually makes me laugh, but I suppose if you were around it all the time it would be annoying.

Yes, but you are into metaphysics then, aren't you - we know something happened - the 'what' is questionable but we use logic (from philosophy) to shape language to create realities in order to communicate (Saussure again). Within these realities we establish certain paradigms - science has facts for example. Yes, it is all ultimately created by us to make sense of our environment/existence but we divide things up into immutable and mutable and I don't think post modernists were originally questioning this - they were just conscious that writers, for example, creating a world within a text could establish any truths they wanted but the real world did have existing truths - it also ties in with the Enlightenment and Age of Reason stuff that man is in control not God (God being the term of higher authority rather than God as nature i.e forces of the natural world)

I think immutable truths include things like

• if I stand uncovered in the pouring rain, I get wet
• if I stand in my garden and throw an unsupported object in the air it falls down
• I would say 2+2=4 is an objective truth
• that humans are mortal.

@Gobb

The big bang and evolution are good theories constructed from evidence, but they're not truths

Yes - I guess they are truthful to the evidence as opposed to nonsensical - that's what I meant.

@BlueRaincoat1

And you can say that those things are immutable because you have evidence to assert that. That evidence is rock solid in its physical sense (it rains, I get wet if I am outside, uncovered)

In a philosophical sense, I guess we could say it rains, 'I' don't get wet, my clothes do - we have considered the 'I' in both sentences differently and representing something different each time.

Sentence 1 - 'I' me, a person standing over there in the rain
Sentence 2 - 'I' myself as I see me (my feelings, self, interior world)

We establish a common frame of reference (Structuralism and Saussure/Levi Strauss would say so that we communicate meaning (the real value of language) to one another) and our ideas exist within this - post modernism sits comfortably within the linguistic framework - it just highlights the ambiguities and anomalies that also exist there.

But, look I am really just basing this on what I studied at UG level and what I have read and thought about - I may well be off track - just find it interesting to discuss !

Hah me too- I did philosophy at undergraduate level and found it very hard to be honest. I think I'd be much better placed to study it now.

I do agree that language and the acceptance of a collective understanding of the meaning of words is at the heart of my examples.

But then I have no idea where a deconstruction of that common understanding leaves us. How is that desirable? I appreciate that truth cannot sensibly be the result of what is desirable- but how can a deconstruction of common understanding lead us to a place of knowledge? I do wonder what the 'endgame' of postmodernism is - I'd be happy to hear an explanation!

truthful to the evidence

That's a good phrase, I never heard it before. Theory construction is abductive, not deductive though, which means that there's not necessarily just one way of being truthful to the evidence. It doesn't follow that all ways are truthful, obviously.
But yes, I think I see what you mean, whatever method we use to prefer some theories over others is our method of being truthful to evidence, so the process is the truth. Although I suppose that process is always subject to interpretation as well (?)

Yes to both of you but the post modernists recognised that we have tp establish some common ground in language and philosophy in order to convey ideas - they knew you couldn’t keep burrowing through as you were effectively undermining your audiences position, then.

Have to go now as someone in the house has a high temperature (38?) and I will sit with them but I will come back to this thread - it is interesting and I can pretend I am Francoise Sagan, sitting in a cafe at the Sorbonne 😆 not covered in Calpol and vomit !

@toconclude no high horses here I assure you. I mean, of course I understand that it's not a question of whether the Battle of Hastings happened. But IME of being taught about this postmodernism goes beyond basic issues of provenance, bias etc to the point where the debate about perspectives on what happened becomes more important than understanding how what happened affected people's immediate and material realities.

As PP say this is an issue in fields where an agreed common language is important to make progress. Yes, we can have a debate about the colonialist structures that mean we say 2+2=4, there's an interesting thread about that in FWR at the moment, but if you are trying to launch a spaceship the various perspectives on that equation are not going to be as important as what that equation means for the next steps of your calculation. And yes I know that progress is itself a contested signifier etc etc etc.

As I said, I'm inclined to critical realism. I believe that there is an objective reality, I believe it is not knowable, it is contested, there is no way for us to know it, but in the end we get further as a society/civilization/whatever by agreeing on a best possible approximation that allows us to learn more about the simulacrum of 'reality', always mindful that we might have interpreted it all completely wrong.

This was not my experience of postmodernist historiography during my degree.

Placemarking to read this later and to laugh at my own limited cognitive abilities

Intellectual masturbation! Our perception of reality is a construct of the mind, and our interpretations of reality are subjective and value-driven. But we generally all agree on the nature of reality. Even postmodernists will all drink a cup of espresso, not try to use it as underwear.

@BakedCam

It is a tough one, OP.

In a nutshell, postmodernists reject truth as fact, they relate truth to individual experiences. That is my very basic and limted understanding of it.

Heard the line, 'there's her side, there is his side and then there is the truth?'

It crosses quite a few disciplines- feminism, sciences, languages.

Look forward to reading other responses on this one.

It’s thousands of years old then. Pontius Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?”

Did he @VinylDetective
What did Jesus say ?

See these two loaves and fishes? I bet you wouldn’t believe that would feed 5000, would you? It’s all in the way you consider it, mate. I’m telling you - I’m years to come they’ll still be talking about this and putting up pictures in specially designed galleries they call ‘churches’ [snigger]

Jesus , the first post modernist. Who knew?

Jesus , the first post modernist. Who knew?

Nobody. Because it wasn’t Jesus. It was Pontius Pilate. There’s nothing new under the sun. And no amount of pretentious wankery will make it so.