Postmodernity

[Vergil]

So...what do you all think about postmodernity/postmodernism? Better yet, what do you think are the theological implications of this shift in culture and thought-process?

As a young student at a 'Christian' institution, I have encountered a lot of flack for agreeing with some of the positions of postmodernism, but that is, the ones I have discovered. There are apparently many postmoderisms. What's yours?

But back again to the subject at hand, postmodernity. What are your experiences with it? What have you learned? Unlearned? What are your reactions to it? Problems with it? Concerns? Doubts?

Well, these are a lot of questions, sorry. That's probably the postmodern me coming out. Anyways, that might be enough to start a discussion.

[Jebus]

Cookie?

[jotabe]

I agree with Jeebus.

Postmodernity has been used so much left and right that has lost all its meaning, and became only a negative label. So, if you want to propose a discussion, please, ellaborate.

[Slim]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is "postmodernism" I can't really discuss until I know what the heck we are talking about here. . . .

[Bean_wannabe]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is "postmodernism" I can't really discuss until I know what the heck we are talking about here. . . .

I'm afraid I have to agree

[Jayelle]

Postmodernism generally refers to a recent school of thought (following modernism). It exists in art, culture, philosophy and theology.
Philosophy has gone through many developments - from Socratic era to Renaissance to Enlightenment to Modernism (to name a few). Postmodernism is the most recent in that development.

Many forms of philosophy begin on the art scene, and it was no different with postmodernism. Have you ever looked at a painting or a poem and asked the artist/writer "what does it mean?", only to have them reply "What do you see in it?". Modernism tended towards a single meaning where postmodernism tends towards the idea of the viewer bringing the meaning.

Essentially, postmodernism has been a movement against "Ultimate Truth".

It's alot more complicated then that, but that's my understanding of it. You are surrounded by postmoderity, you just might not realize it. Any time someone has said to you "well, that's good for you, but not for me..." , that's a product of living in a postmodern culture.

[powerfulcheese04]

I recently took a class about Postmodernism.

As far as I can gather from a semester of talking/thinking about it is, Postmodernism is generally a move against the possibility of an ultimate truth. It is also a varied, complicated, undefined idea.

Also, I've found that people who profess to believe Pomo things are generally the most arrogant, pretentious "intellectuals" that exist.

It was quite possibly the worst class I took at Rice.

[Vergil]

I have to agree with Jayelle about the description. Though, there are many strains and digressions. But I will add onto it: Postmodernism also deals a lot with the ideas of relativism (moral, cultural, etc ((which was addressed))) and subjective truth, which is probably the most interesting slice of postmodernism. Basically, and correct me if I am wrong here, the argument goes like this: if everything is perceived by a subject, then the consciousness of that subject will filter the data and come to a conclusion for the subject. That is kind of inarticulate, I apologize, but this is gray area for me.

And what's really ironic, powerfulcheese, is that postmodernity is actually a reaction against the over-confidence and arrogance of science and people that spurred the Holocaust, Genocide, Imperialism, and Eugenics, and so, those that claim to hold to it, should be the more humble, gentle, and human of the lot.

So. The discussion. Well, why not begin with how you have seen postmodernism in life, whether real, cinema, literature, or philosophical.

I will begin. For me, the most pervasive influence of postmodernism is the downfall of over-confidence, the undoing of Descartes, if you will, and his attempt to proven absolute certainty. Now, I am not denying any sort of "absolute truth," just articulating it differently. Instead of it being some overarching command, e.g., honour thy father and mother, it is reduced to the 'form' (an idea borrowed from Aristotle), and dependent on the situation. For some, honouring is allowing them to die in peace (for example, the Inuits of North America, who had to expel elders from the community who could not provide for themselves anymore, and became a burden on the insufficient resources), but for others, obedience and respect throughout life, as in many Asian cultures. I guess you would say this is a variant of relativism, but I would like to call it "Situationalism," in which the moral action is dependent on the content and the unfolding of the human telos (end, meaning, purpose, nature - again, from Aristotle).

But what about you? Where have you seen it?

[powerfulcheese04]

See, in a whole semester we definitely never touched on it being about people being humbler.

All the characters and authors we read (and, hell, all the people in my class) were uptight and pretentious. So sure that their cultural relativism was the right one.

In my experince with a rather wide reading selection is that what postmodernism means is that you can't like the characters in the books you're reading.

And that nothing means anything.

Oh, and that it's pretty much impossible to define postmodernism but it has a lot to do with the blase, kitsch and hating everyone.

[Wil]

See, I read every post, twice, and I still believe Jebus' post was the most mentally enticing. I think the idea of cookies is making it hard for me to focus on what the hell the rest of you are talking about.

Basically, POMO (damn that's such a stupid abbreviation) is the belief that there is no singular, unified truth in anything? (If that's the case, hide the math books!) Except people who follow or practice POMO are uptight, arrogant, and pretentious?

Excuse me while I go and get me some cookies...

On my way to get cookies I read more about this... and perhaps this XKCD comic sums it up.

[Jayelle]

Thing is, because we live in a postmodern world, it's likely you (and I don't just mean you, Wil, the collective you) hold some of the philosophy without knowing that it's postmodern. It's just "the way the world works". The threads on this board drip with postmodernism.

[jotabe]

And here i thought that this kind of discussion between rationalism and empirism had been over for a while. So someone goes and stays in the middle of the way.

It's really difficult to prove things a priori, unless you are dealing with formal systems (like Mathematics). Until there, this "postmodernism" (ridiculous name, since this philosophy has been around since Greek expansion throught the Mediterranean sea, afaik) is correct. But that's what experience is for.

You think your moral system is the best one? Check how societies work under it. And don't fall in the trap that "my system has never been put into practice": when you try to set up an experiment for your theory things will never be as you imagined, as variables you never though of appear. Reality sucks.

[Vergil]

Well, this is similar to the debate between rationalism and empiricism, but it does not deal with the representation theory of ideas, which is what the main argument was about back in the enlightenment. And yes, I do think that 'postmodern' ideas can be read back unto the past, but 'moderns' wouldn't it. It's kind of a postmodern thing to do.

With the relativistic and subjective consequences of postmodernity, I think that perhaps the greatest critique will be the lack of certainty in knowledge, and perhaps the downfall of reason. Perhaps also, the postmodern critique will also affect 'objective' modern science. There is a great quote about this: "Knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules." Examples abound aplenty.

[jotabe]

I doubt it, because science has its own rules to determine what knowledge is valuable and what isn't.
And what science has going for it is that this knowledge is really useful. You can create technology with it, and it works. Knowledge coming from religion or moral philosophy has never been able to do this. All attempted aplications of morality to real life have been failures to a lesser of greater degree.

[zeroguy]

It's really difficult to prove things a priori, unless you are dealing with formal systems (like Mathematics).

Ehh... I dunno, wouldn't Gödel have something to say about that? This seems to be the same thing that rather annoyed me with this xkcd comic (as long as we're linking xkcd...). I don't see Mathematical proofs as any more objective than anything else, but maybe postmodernist society has just completely influenced me...

I doubt it, because science has its own rules to determine what knowledge is valuable and what isn't.
And what science has going for it is that this knowledge is really useful. You can create technology with it, and it works.

Ehh.... Isn't the usefulness or benefit of modern technology a sometimes-debated topic? This seems like getting into a completely different area, but I wouldn't call it universally useful or beneficial. The majority certainly seems to think that way at least for now, though, so it doesn't seem like any problems along those lines are likely to happen soon...

[Wil]

See, I think the world does contain unquestionable truths. Much of math, for example, can't really be questioned. Despite the language, two of one object plus two of another will ALWAYS equal four objects. The positive side of a magnet will ALWAYS repel another positive side of a magnet. Much of science, really, seems to be fairly solid in truth. At least the very basics, anyways. There have to be truths in this world. There are truths in this world. We might not be able to see them, or understand them, but at the base of it: What goes up has to come back down when in the presence of a significant body of mass, so long as it's not traveling faster than the escape velocity of said body of mass to break free of it's gravitational pull... >.>

[jotabe]

What Godel said is that, in number theory (though it can be extended to most formal fields) there are statements whose truth cannot be proven. Still we can prove a lot of things, just as long as we assume that some truths cannot be proven.
Think of the translation from arithmetic to geometry. We have the statement "the addition of the angles of a triangle is 180º". This statement's truth (on which the Euclidian geometry rests) cannot be proven through any geometrical proof. If you doubt it, if you reject it, you can build other 2 perfectly good geometries: spheric, if the summation is more than 180º, hyperbolic if it is less.

For maths, as the formal language it is, this is enough. In science it isn't, though. But science can rely on experience, and that's what will tell us how much sum the angles of a triangle.

Technology is useful or not, as i see it. Good or bad are moral denominations that depend on the moral systems. These moral systems can be useful or not, as well: we can see that the moral systems that allow technological progress produce freer, wealthier people.

These moral systems will determine if the usage of a certain technology will be good or bad. Never the technology or the science themselves, which are morally neutral (as they should be: if we consider scientific truths as objective, they are independent of human morality. Even if they aren't really objective, we have to consider them so, to be able to work with them: considering science as objective is a matter of usefulness.)

[Jayelle]

two of one object plus two of another will ALWAYS equal four objects.

Yeah, but what IS a number anyway?

[jotabe]

It's the cardinal of a set.

[zeroguy]

What Godel said is that, in number theory (though it can be extended to most formal fields) there are statements whose truth cannot be proven.

I was referring to his second incompleteness theorem, not the first. You can prove things within the system, but that proves no outside universal truth, since you can't prove that the system is consistent unless it isn't.

Or something. I can't say I understand Godel's theorems enough to debate a lot about them.

Despite the language, two of one object plus two of another will ALWAYS equal four objects. The positive side of a magnet will ALWAYS repel another positive side of a magnet. Much of science, really, seems to be fairly solid in truth. At least the very basics, anyways.

These depend on the definitions you give to the situations and objects in question, which you can never define absolutely so as to have another person have the exact same definition as yourself. We have a common agreed-upon set of definitions, but they are defined by "truths" such as those you put forth.

JL's question demonstrates it, even if she was joking. For example, isn't (part of) the definition of the North of a magnet that it repels the North of other magnets? Saying that they repel is true (for _you_; assuming such is the definition) but vacuous.

[Wil]

Which is why I said "despite the language". Even without language you can count. Even without naming a magnets poles, they will still repel. Even without having given gravity a name it's effects were still visible. Even without understand the idea behind hydrogen fusion the sun still fuses hydrogen into helium to create energy. These are TRUTHS, even if all of humanity died tomorrow, they would still BE truths.

[zeroguy]

Even without naming a magnets poles, they will still repel.

What is the truth you are presenting, then? That these two specific pieces of metal before my eyes repel each other? Without identifying them in some way, how can you generalize the phenomenon to more than just the individual occurrance?

Perhaps another way of putting it: if I say I found a South pole on a magnet that is attracted to other South poles, you would say that's impossible because.... if it is attracted to South poles, it is by definition a North pole? If there are no other qualities you are identifying the magnets poles by, except that they repel other poles, it is a vacuous truth.

[Wil]

Now you're just arguing semantics. If you wish to call both north and south poles of a magnet south, have at it. I understand what you mean: poles are not literal. Breaking a bar magnet in half will result in both halves containing + and - ends. The point I was simply trying to make was that, again, DESPITE THE LANGUAGE, putting two positive magnetic fields together will result in a repulsion. This doesn't change even with different words or no words at all. It's the concept that matters.

[jotabe]

Well, the 2nd theorem only says that, if a logic-deductive system cannot be at the same time complete (you can create all possible logical sentences in it) and coherent (the different logical sentences won't contradict each other). The traditional argument is that, if a system is complete, it must contain sentences equivalent to "this system is incomplete", which is a contradiction, hence the system is not coherent. Hence, to have a coherent system, it must be incomplete.

Well, that's the gist of what i got when a friend explained it to me. Not that it's really important. Godel theorems is just a set of rules of the limits of pure reason to achieve knowledge. And it gives a lot more trouble to phylosophers than it does to scientists (probably because they lack the mathematical background).

About the north and south poles, they were just arbitrary names given to properties of a force field that was unlike any other, when we didn't know enough about it. Magnetic forces are due to field lines, not to... uh... "scalar charges". What i mean is that, unlike gravity and electrostatic, there isn't a "magnetic charge" that creates the field, i.e. where field lines are created or destroyed. Instead, magnetic field lines are created as complete loops.
But people didn't know about this. And they saw how both from magnets and from earth, field lines were coming out of one point, and getting in in another point, giving the illusion that magnetic field had its equivalent to charge, the poles. And arbitrarily they named them north and south, according to geography (modern convention, it seems, is calling them + and -, says wiki). But the truth about the magnetic field is the field lines, which have a very definite closed trajectory, loops, and a direction along them. (i don't feel comfortable explaining this without a blackboard to draw ) And from that, the law is that loops circling in the same direction repel each other, and loops circling in different direction attract each other.

Look at the universe: it's vast, and infinite (maybe... for our own experimental ability is as infinite as it gets: we never experienced any limits). How could we measure distances, how do we orientate ourselves? Why chosing a point to start, instead of any other? Why chosing a preferential direction if all directions are the same? Because we have to be humble, and start small. We set our arbitrary reference frames, never losing sight that they are arbitrary. That they are tools for us to create knowledge. Numbers, even if they are nothing, they are useful. They work. And the fact that our theories using numbers work, and allow us to create technology proves we were right when we started using them, and elevate the numbers from conventions to truths. The closest thing to truth we will ever be... not to be confused with the Truth, which is often improvable, unverifiable, and hence useless as knowledge.

[zeroguy]

Now you're just arguing semantics. If you wish to call both north and south poles of a magnet south, have at it. I understand what you mean: poles are not literal. Breaking a bar magnet in half will result in both halves containing + and - ends. The point I was simply trying to make was that, again, DESPITE THE LANGUAGE, putting two positive magnetic fields together will result in a repulsion.

I am not arguing semantics. It does not matter what you call each individual pole, but you do have to differentiate them somehow. You can ignore the language all you want, fine, but the truth you are talking about has to differentiate between poles in order to say anything. "Pole type A repels pole type A and attracts pole type B"; sorry if I'm using language again, but I can't really attempt to communicate examples otherwise .

This doesn't change even with different words or no words at all.

It does not change for you; for you who knows the definitions of what you have used to define the law, and for no other consciousness in existence, nor for the universe itself (since I am contesting that a law for 'the universe itself' is impossible anyway). Since you cannot provide a definition (or unique set of qualities, let's say) for the poles in question, the meaning and truth of the law is only something personal to you and you alone, and not an intrinsic attribute of existence.

The closest thing to truth we will ever be... not to be confused with the Truth, which is often improvable, unverifiable, and hence useless as knowledge.

I don't have time at the moment to read/think about most of what you posted, but I certainly agree with you here (although I would go so far as to say always but that's probably a pointless quibble). Although what I've been arguing about I certainly believe to be true, I recognize that it makes no difference.

[Wil]

You're just being difficult >.>

Things can be true without words, definitions, or even understanding. Gravity is the best example. If you can't see this then I know this great place you can play... out in traffic. >.>

[zeroguy]

You're just being difficult >.>

And I'm even contesting at the same time that it makes no difference! So bizarre...

Things can be true without words, definitions, or even understanding. Gravity is the best example. If you can't see this then I know this great place you can play... out in traffic. >.>

Oh, you. And this is where we just disagree. I wouldn't say that this would disprove what I'm saying, just that it's not very healthy to put into practice and test by experiment. Besides, I'm immortal anyway; quantum mechanics told me so.

But perhaps it's time to end this threadjack? I don't know if others wanted to use this thread for less silly things. If nothing else, we've given an instance of people seeing some postmodernism... um, yay?