Postmodernism generator(elsewhere.org)
elsewhere.org
Postmodernism generator
http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
17 comments
Can you point to any postmodern philosophy papers that are useful?
How about some that merely make non-obvious true points?
Or some that are at least interesting?
It probably seems like I'm bashing postmodern philosophy, but although I expect this line of thinking to end at the conclusion "postmodern philosophy is useless," I've never actually followed it myself, and I would honestly be very happy if you could answer "yes" (with examples) to at least one of the above questions. It's just that from my vantage point as a relatively uninformed outsider the field feels vacuous.
And your logic in the last sentence of your post is terrible.
How about some that merely make non-obvious true points?
Or some that are at least interesting?
It probably seems like I'm bashing postmodern philosophy, but although I expect this line of thinking to end at the conclusion "postmodern philosophy is useless," I've never actually followed it myself, and I would honestly be very happy if you could answer "yes" (with examples) to at least one of the above questions. It's just that from my vantage point as a relatively uninformed outsider the field feels vacuous.
And your logic in the last sentence of your post is terrible.
It is much longer than an essay, but I would highly recommend Heidegger’s The Question Concerning Technology.
Now as inspired as the text is, it is not a light read. But not all meaningful scholarly work needs to be written like a popular science novel. (I mean, ever try reading Gödel’s famous paper?) I read Heidegger in the context of a Philosophy seminar and frankly it helps having access to secondary sources for help.
On a more positive note, Heidegger has only been called postmodernist in retrospect. At the time he was producing these essays and writings, there was no postmodernist jargon to lean on. So his writings are pleasantly free of words that only help to obscure.
Now as inspired as the text is, it is not a light read. But not all meaningful scholarly work needs to be written like a popular science novel. (I mean, ever try reading Gödel’s famous paper?) I read Heidegger in the context of a Philosophy seminar and frankly it helps having access to secondary sources for help.
On a more positive note, Heidegger has only been called postmodernist in retrospect. At the time he was producing these essays and writings, there was no postmodernist jargon to lean on. So his writings are pleasantly free of words that only help to obscure.
Can you point to any philosophy papers that are useful?
I'll admit to throwing a paper out the window for including the phrase "occluded feminine matrix", but I expect things I haven't studied to be hard to understand. Focusing in computer science has some unexpected dividends in related fields (math, physics, even economics), but that doesn't mean every field must have synergy with our career choice. Is the idea that postmodern literary criticism is hard to read because we're untrained really that toxic?
Is the idea that postmodern literary criticism is hard to read because we're untrained really that toxic?
I have a graduate degree in literature and, for what it's worth, even with years of training I find a lot of that stuff unintelligible. At the time it struck me as a classic emporer's-new-clothes situation. I would occasionally amuse myself by tossing out bogus sentences that sounded just like, say, Derrida, and people would nod in the same way.
That said, I applaud your open-mindedness. Postmodern criticism is full of the most unbelievable bullshit, but in retrospect I can't dismiss the whole thing. This sympathy would probably vaporize if I were forced to read those papers again. But I've learned about two things in the meantime that are reminiscent of postmodernism and which I do take seriously.
One is the recent wave of neural/psychological research about how our experience of ourselves and reality is constructed in ways that don't at all correspond to our beliefs. There are many such findings and from what I've gleaned, they consistently refute our concept of ourselves as rational actors making controlled decisions as we move through objective reality. (I'm still waiting for someone to write a good general survey of this material. There's a crying need for one, though it might not be very popular.)
The other is the history of religious and spiritual ideas, which I was astonished to find contain many of the same teachings about how our identities are constructed and conditioned. If you read any Vedantic literature, for example, the first thing you run across is "you are not who you think you are". Similar concepts are found in Western traditions. This skepticism about the artifacts of the conditioned mind is very postmodern in a way. But there is also a profound difference: while spiritual teachings are all about connection with something beyond mental constructs, the postmodernists deny any such beyond. Regardless of one's position on religion etc., I think this points to the real weakness of postmodernism: because it treats everything as the same kind of fiction to be deconstructed, it lacks any compass for distinguishing true from false or good from bad. It's inevitable that you end up with a profusion of arbitrary language, a.k.a. bullshit, when you start from the premise that everything is bullshit in the first place.
I have a graduate degree in literature and, for what it's worth, even with years of training I find a lot of that stuff unintelligible. At the time it struck me as a classic emporer's-new-clothes situation. I would occasionally amuse myself by tossing out bogus sentences that sounded just like, say, Derrida, and people would nod in the same way.
That said, I applaud your open-mindedness. Postmodern criticism is full of the most unbelievable bullshit, but in retrospect I can't dismiss the whole thing. This sympathy would probably vaporize if I were forced to read those papers again. But I've learned about two things in the meantime that are reminiscent of postmodernism and which I do take seriously.
One is the recent wave of neural/psychological research about how our experience of ourselves and reality is constructed in ways that don't at all correspond to our beliefs. There are many such findings and from what I've gleaned, they consistently refute our concept of ourselves as rational actors making controlled decisions as we move through objective reality. (I'm still waiting for someone to write a good general survey of this material. There's a crying need for one, though it might not be very popular.)
The other is the history of religious and spiritual ideas, which I was astonished to find contain many of the same teachings about how our identities are constructed and conditioned. If you read any Vedantic literature, for example, the first thing you run across is "you are not who you think you are". Similar concepts are found in Western traditions. This skepticism about the artifacts of the conditioned mind is very postmodern in a way. But there is also a profound difference: while spiritual teachings are all about connection with something beyond mental constructs, the postmodernists deny any such beyond. Regardless of one's position on religion etc., I think this points to the real weakness of postmodernism: because it treats everything as the same kind of fiction to be deconstructed, it lacks any compass for distinguishing true from false or good from bad. It's inevitable that you end up with a profusion of arbitrary language, a.k.a. bullshit, when you start from the premise that everything is bullshit in the first place.
"One is the recent wave of neural/psychological research about how our experience of ourselves and reality is constructed in ways that don't at all correspond to our beliefs. There are a great many such findings and from what I've gleaned, they consistently refute our concept of ourselves as rational actors making controlled decisions as we move through objective reality. (I'm still waiting for someone to write a good general survey of this material. There's a crying need for one, though it might not be very popular.)"
I know I'm late to the game here, but you might be interested in reading this:
http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/the-semant...
It's a write-up of a talk given by author R. Scott Bakker, an almost-but-so-fed-up-with-it-that-he-gave-it-up PhD in Philosophy about the experiential consequences of neuroscience.
However, I will argue that this differs significantly from postmodern philosophy in one key respect: while anti-foundationalism certainly is a hallmark of the school of thought, it is never founded on objective scepticism, like science. Even the points made by neuroscience (and Scott Bakker) will have to be undermined by postmodernism, as any one viewpoint (or Meta Narrative) inflects any other viewpoint and has nothing behind it but the authority of people in power.
I have a BA in English, and to the best of my knowledge and training, postmodernism is a manifestly worthless endeavour. When concepts like knowledge, empiricism, veracity, and progress become nothing but whips in the hands of the powerful, you've effectively gotten yourself into a rut you can't get out of. As a result, English departments are dying all over the US. For a detailed look at this, get Jonathan Gottschall's brilliant "Literature, Science, and a New Humanities."
I know I'm late to the game here, but you might be interested in reading this:
http://speculativeheresy.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/the-semant...
It's a write-up of a talk given by author R. Scott Bakker, an almost-but-so-fed-up-with-it-that-he-gave-it-up PhD in Philosophy about the experiential consequences of neuroscience.
However, I will argue that this differs significantly from postmodern philosophy in one key respect: while anti-foundationalism certainly is a hallmark of the school of thought, it is never founded on objective scepticism, like science. Even the points made by neuroscience (and Scott Bakker) will have to be undermined by postmodernism, as any one viewpoint (or Meta Narrative) inflects any other viewpoint and has nothing behind it but the authority of people in power.
I have a BA in English, and to the best of my knowledge and training, postmodernism is a manifestly worthless endeavour. When concepts like knowledge, empiricism, veracity, and progress become nothing but whips in the hands of the powerful, you've effectively gotten yourself into a rut you can't get out of. As a result, English departments are dying all over the US. For a detailed look at this, get Jonathan Gottschall's brilliant "Literature, Science, and a New Humanities."
I understand some of the downfalls of postmodernism and I won't defend it, but I'm not going back to rationalism, which influenced the Nazis, or Platonic or Christian Essentialism, which has marked humanity in negative ways for too many centuries, etc.
Why assume that we have to choose among a small set of predetermined schools of thought? The beauty of the scientific approach is that it makes as few assumptions as possible while remaining sane -- it doesn't force us into any single dogma. Good science doesn't lead to Nazism; a racist agenda and the backing of a powerful nation does. Sure, science has been misused (social Darwinism), but why not examine those specific misuses instead of throwing out the entire rationalist agenda?
For those who are interested, I recommend E. O. Wilson's Consilience for an in-depth discussion of how to salvage rationalism in the modern world. Flip to the end of Chapter 3 for an excellent examination of postmodernism.
Why assume that we have to choose among a small set of predetermined schools of thought? The beauty of the scientific approach is that it makes as few assumptions as possible while remaining sane -- it doesn't force us into any single dogma. Good science doesn't lead to Nazism; a racist agenda and the backing of a powerful nation does. Sure, science has been misused (social Darwinism), but why not examine those specific misuses instead of throwing out the entire rationalist agenda?
For those who are interested, I recommend E. O. Wilson's Consilience for an in-depth discussion of how to salvage rationalism in the modern world. Flip to the end of Chapter 3 for an excellent examination of postmodernism.
Studying our culture is done with great rigour by historians, sociologists, psychologists, economists, etc. Philosophy should be married with science, but it has little merrit on its own. It is an ego-centric discipline, where language, not observation, is misused as a basis to suggest some conformity.
The great philosophers of history were those that truly practiced the love of knowledge.
It was Martin Luther who, as a theologist, recognized the failures of organizing society according to catholic doctrine. It was Galileo Galilei who, as an astronomer, recognized our world was just one of many. It was Darwin who, as a biologist, recognized that the reason we exist is life's perpetual struggle for survival. It was Einstein who, as a physicist, recognized that the 2 main aspects of our perceived reality are intermingled.
The great philosophers of history were those that truly practiced the love of knowledge.
It was Martin Luther who, as a theologist, recognized the failures of organizing society according to catholic doctrine. It was Galileo Galilei who, as an astronomer, recognized our world was just one of many. It was Darwin who, as a biologist, recognized that the reason we exist is life's perpetual struggle for survival. It was Einstein who, as a physicist, recognized that the 2 main aspects of our perceived reality are intermingled.
From wikipedia: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, truth, beauty, law, justice, validity, mind, and language." So why should philosophy be married to science? It is your mind that is married to science, so you look at science to prove or explain your existence. I tend to do this, as well, which is why I'm on hacker news and I highly respect all of the mentioned scientists, but I would never confuse science with philosophy.
Furthermore, can science or any scientist explain the complexity that was Michael Jackson or is reality television, both of which were/are true Baudrillardian hyper-realities; or the complexity of image-based wars (like Iraq) and street riots (like Iran) that are fought/waged through the media/twitter/etc. Our expression/lives in postmodern times is what shapes these events and how they are lived/delivered/executed/etc, but the philosophy is the language/concepts behind all of this, and much more of the, often complex, phenomena in our society/existence.
Furthermore, can science or any scientist explain the complexity that was Michael Jackson or is reality television, both of which were/are true Baudrillardian hyper-realities; or the complexity of image-based wars (like Iraq) and street riots (like Iran) that are fought/waged through the media/twitter/etc. Our expression/lives in postmodern times is what shapes these events and how they are lived/delivered/executed/etc, but the philosophy is the language/concepts behind all of this, and much more of the, often complex, phenomena in our society/existence.
In case somebody missed it (Richard Dawkins on postmodernism):
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645178
Edit: here's the direct link to the article: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=645178
Edit: here's the direct link to the article: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html
Oh, I didn't see that somebody has already posted this as a link in the comments. No cross-posting was intended.
This generator reminds me of the Paper generator by some MIT students..
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
..much more funny and even pdf direct output :D
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
..much more funny and even pdf direct output :D
Yes, this is funny. The existence of random paper generators for a discipline doesn't say much about the rigor of that discipline. You might be able to make some kind of argument based on how long it takes for someone trained in the discipline to detect it as randomly generated.
Of course, you could imagine building a program that creates perfectly compileable, yet randomly generated programs. These guys actually did it to test gcc's handling of the volatile keyword: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/emsoft08-preprint.pdf
Of course, you could imagine building a program that creates perfectly compileable, yet randomly generated programs. These guys actually did it to test gcc's handling of the volatile keyword: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/emsoft08-preprint.pdf
This is fantastic. And there are some cool stories and links on that page. Thanks for the link :D
(I tried to upvote you and I downvoted you instead... sorry)
Ha ha ha, lets all point and laugh at the postmodernists.
Or we could just ignore them.
Or we could just ignore them.
I understand some of the downfalls of postmodernism and I won't defend it, but I'm not going back to rationalism, which influenced the Nazis, or Platonic or Christian Essentialism, which has marked humanity in negative ways for too many centuries, etc.