In this post, I will expand a bit on the Pluckrose and Lindsay summary of postmodernism mentioned in the last post. Let me reiterate here that postmodernism is a sprawling, (probably intentionally) vaguely defined philosophy, so that many such organizations are possible. I’m choosing this one because it’s clear, well-documented and accessible (and, to be honest, because the authors largely agree with me on the dangers of “pomo”). To go beyond my short summary here, I recommend that you read (at least) the first chapter of Cynical Theories.
Knowledge Principle
Radical skepticism about whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism.
Note that this does not imply (as is sometimes stated) that objective reality does not exist, only that we can’t really know what it is, outside of our own cultural norms. Postmodernism does, though, largely reject the notion of improving our epistemic methods and scope to gradually approximate more and more of the objective reality – in particular, it rejects the scientific method as simply one possible way to “understand” reality. It is ultimately not any sort of “reasonable doubt” about any specific proposition or statement – doubt of the sort that leads one to think carefully about what evidence would support or falsify the specific proposition – but rather “radical doubt” as to whether or not any evidence would suffice for one to believe any proposition.
All large-scale intellectual systems (classical liberalism, science, Christianity, Marxism, even postmodernism itself) are classified as “metanarratives” and dismissed as limited in scope to the culture in which they are embedded. Perhaps most tellingly, no real substitute for these metanarratives is offered – all the various means of generating and evaluating evidence, of advancing knowledge of reality and understanding the world, all of these are knocked down at a stroke, with nothing to replace them but ultimately the exercise of raw power. Hence, the second principle:
Political Principle
A belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how.
Note that this is not the statement that society contains such systems, which may exert this sort of epistemic control, but rather that society is formed of power systems which do exert epistemic control. This should be a familiar fallacy by now – the same quantification error (swapping an existential quantifier for a universal one) committed by ideological Marxists, Critical Race Theorists and their fellow travelers. The same problems ensue – since one has assumed that these systems exist everywhere, one is freed from the necessity of producing evidence for them. Furthermore, any evidence one might marshal is inextricably linked with the power structure of the society in which it is embedded, hence tainted with a bias toward the status quo. Freed (as before, in CRT and Cultural Marxism) from any mooring to facts and data, we move on to the first theme:
Theme: Blurring of Boundaries
Deprecation of the use of categories – objective/subjective, truth/belief, man/other animals, man/machine, health/sickness, sex and gender, etc.
Since “true” and “false” are themselves categories, this trend further untethers postmodernism from facts and data. Any attempt at criticizing postmodernism itself is brushed aside – once the tenets of postmodernism are assumed, it becomes unfalsifiable, since evidence itself is deprecated.
Theme: Power of Language
Any attempt at objective truth becomes simply a linguistic construction of chains of “signifiers” with no real external referents.
The most prominent expression of this particular theme was the deconstruction technique of Jacques Derrida. Particularly in his three 1967 works (Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena), he posited that words do not refer to things in the real world and refer instead only to other words. The fundamental unreliability of language means that it cannot accurately represent or communicate reality. It is worth noting, however, that (at least in English translation) just the three books mentioned occupy 984 pages of text. Surely Derrida must have thought that all these words communicated or represented something!
Deconstruction itself, while it must be academically rewarding in some sense, seems rarely to result in any particular insights. I’m not sure I can improve on Pluckrose and Lindsay’s statement that, “deconstructive approaches to language…look very much like nitpicking at words in order to deliberately miss the point.”
Theme: Cultural Relativism
Everything is relative to the culture in which it is embedded; discussion of another culture is impossible and discussion of one’s own culture is hopeless except as one is oppressed or marginalized.
Assertion of this thematic statement makes cultural criticism and reform impossible, since by definition the only criticisms that count (that is, the ones that won’t be dismissed) are made by those who have no power in the culture. Similar to the Inductive Definition of Social Justice, the only response to nearly any cultural situation is guilt for some, anger for others. Improvement and reform is a fool’s errand in the postmodern universe.
Theme: Loss of Individual and Universal
The concept of universal human nature is naïve and the concept of an autonomous individual is a myth; only small local groups or tribes positioned in the same way relative to power are worth serious consideration.
Under the postmodern framework, individuals are only seen as exemplars of some group or other to which they belong. Our earlier discussion about statistical fallacies implies then that this framework is a minefield of potential statistical disaster. Perhaps it’s just as well that postmodernists don’t really believe in reason and data (too categorical).