"postmodern" thinkers... help me out

[Pattybar]

Hey there,

I'm going to lecture on some philosophical realism vs antirealism stuff next week and I need your help...

A basic concept of antirealism and postmodernism is the idea that reality = how we talk about things -- and as such, each reality is equally valid... (correct ??).

How can postmodernists answer the objection that, if reality = a construction of language and racism and sexism are functions of that created reality -- it is impossible to argue for one reality (non-sexist/racist) over the other reality (racist and sexist).

This objection seems to mire us in an impossible situation, because we can never resolve racist and sexist situations. On the other hand, since we seem to be making some progress in those areas, is that progress simply because we have changed the way we think --- because we saw the advantages of doing so??

Help me out...

Thanks,
Patty

[patio11]

Oh, got to put that in my answers file...

Asians are rude

Never heard that one before. Jed's so right on that front --I've learned more stereotypes and swear words from mandatory diversity training than from any other source. (Got called a "mackeral snapper" once, for effect. My brainwasher-in-charge had to explain why I should be offended.)

Patrick McKenzie

P.S. Oh, and "white people are punctual and musically-inclined", which is my personal favorite stereotype-that-isn't.

[Pattybar]

Jed...

But -- no matter the label we put on it -- (good or bad, etc..) isn't it the fact that, IF the pomos are right and language creates reality --- and racism is a part of that reality for someone and not for another --- there is no way we CAN justify preference of one reality over the other?

I'll grant the point about language spreading racism -- in effect, encouraging its growth where it wouldn't otherwise be --and --- IF language constructs reality, then whatever you want to call the attitude some call racism becomes real ---no?

Still, I need more help -- surely antirealism/postmodernism isn't this problematic??

Patty

[pdano]

"I think that language creates the reacism and sexism. Such things literally did not exist a hundred years ago. We look back and label now what we think by current standards were racist and sexist, but we only understand those things because we've incorporated them into our vocabulary."

I'm sorry, but this is a crock. People back then were, in fact, racist and sexist, even if we didn't have labels for it. The belief that one race was superior to others (and actions stemming from that belief) transcends the label of racism; it simply is.

What would you call those actions and beliefs that we would now call racism, if they weren't racist or sexist?

Dan

[Rebeccah Sharp]

"mackerel snapper" is a bit different. The foundation for the name literally no longer exists.

For those who don't know, it's anti-catholic, due to their tradition of eating fish on fridays when the Vatican decreed that it was a sin to eat meat on fridays. Because of Vatican II, the suggestion is now to abstain only during Lent.

[AhhAlegra]

Such things literally did not exist a hundred years ago.
I think Frederick Douglass, and for that matter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, might disagree with you. I won't go on any more that than, though I am tempted.

I sympathize with your frustrations, Patty. It seems that pomo's utility in terms of ethics is in questioning our existing systems, but not particularly in suggesting a coherent alternative system. It is the old fight between relativism and some semblance of morality that applies to more than one person.

[PancreasMatt]

Originally posted by DB8 MissingLink
Interstingly Patty, I think that language creates the reacism and sexism. Such things literally did not exist a hundred years ago. We look back and label now what we think by current standards were racist and sexist, but we only undertand those things because we've incorporated them into our vocabulary.



huh? Racism didn't exist hundreds of years ago? Thats probably because ethnocentrism was so extreme that different races weren't even considered humyn.

[patio11]

I believe the point that Patty is struggling with, and that Jeb presented, is that even though you and I know that racism is racism, if you're committed to pomo you have to recognize that its as constructed a term as anything else in your world, and there is no way to objectively prefer "non-racism" to "racism" because pomo dismisses the possibility of any objective view of anything.

Dan -- Southern slaveholders would have called what we now call racism "the natural order of things ordained by God Almighty", for example, and postmodernists would tie themselves in knots trying to explain why that is to be prefered any less than our current description of it as "Racism". Or, to put it in other words, NOTHING simply "is" if you believe post-modernism, it is all a construct.

Do we have a critical theorist around who has better than my Cliff-notes understanding to the theory to contradict this?

Patrick McKenzie

[Rebeccah Sharp]

Why are we only looking at definitions from the perspectives of the oppressors though?

[PancreasMatt]

Originally posted by DB8 MissingLink
But you are judging them by contemporary standards which would have been impossible while they were around. In order for racism to exist you have to have a concept of it that you can express. Before this concept existed no one was racist. You can't be something that doesn't exist.

jEd

so wait, what you're saying is that racism doesn't exist if we don't call it racism?

[AhhAlegra]

Cross apply Amy's question. You're telling me the unfavored minorities, be they African slaves or 'untouchables,' had no despair about their situation, because we didn't have the word "racism?" I think not.

[PancreasMatt]

Originally posted by DB8 MissingLink
I'm saying that if we don't call it racism we don't know what it is (naming it defines and creates it) and so if we don't name it we don't conceive of it. And if we don't concieve of it, how can it exist?

you must be joking. Even if something is not named, it can exist- its just not talked about- I'm sure if a language has no word for "Homicide" people still get killed.

[Pattybar]

Thanks, Dan... for:
I believe the point that Patty is struggling with, and that Jeb presented, is that even though you and I know that racism is racism, if you're committed to pomo you have to recognize that its as constructed a term as anything else in your world, and there is no way to objectively prefer "non-racism" to "racism" because pomo dismisses the possibility of any objective view of anything.

Thus, since your world is just as valid as mine -- and if mine contains what you call "racism" you have no way to justify your own worldview as better than mine -- because there is no objective view against which you can measure us both.

Additionally, the actions of racism (choosing to hire someone of one race, due to the idea that a candidate of another race is not capable of doing the job...) existed well before the term "racism" came along. So, while we may not have constructed the badness of racism, our thinking/language --which created the reality -- created the stuff we later labeled as "racist".

Since pomo was not considered "serious philosophy" in my program (very analytic... very non pomo -- with some Putnam as an exception...) -- my understanding of this is a bit shady...

I'm sure there is an answer --- if only, as soon as you can stop using the language of oppression, you become un-oppressed ---?

Patty

[Pattybar]

Ok... so now power isn't objective?

Perhaps you are right -- let me try to work on this...

You have "power" over me if my worldview is impacted by yours -- i.e. when we clash, you are unchanged and I am not?

So, those who are in the power positions get to continue in those positions? The racist gets to continue to be racist and the sexist to be sexist, no? There is no way for me to persuade them to change -- outside of somehow gaining power over them --- and, if I am someone who really believes the pomo program, I (myself...) have no basis from which to conclude that THEY should change, no?? As their construction is as valid as mine....

So, even though there is the concept of power within the system, and even if I have the power to force a change in ideas, as a pomo I have no justification for making that change because your ideas are as valid as mine.

Patty
ps, sorry if I'm repeating myself, I'm trying to make sense of all of this and seeing why many of my profs decided to avoid pomo thinking... ;)

[Pattybar]

Since the context is Intro to Philosophy, metaphysics -- we are talking about existence/reality or the lack thereof.... so, I suppose epistemology is the proper context.... sort of.

It is like saying that if you don't perceive oppression, you aren't oppressed.... AND if you perceive oppression (even when there is "really" nobody to oppress you) then you are oppressed.

The problem is that there is no way to justify a resolution to the conflicts between our constructed world views -- if WE are pomos....

Patty

[Pattybar]

What this all comes from is a feminist pomo thinker, Dale Spender, who says that sexism is due to the constructions of the language -- SO, women -- who both construct their own realities AND live within the larger, male-dominated realities, are repressed and powerless because of those constructions.

If Spender is going to be a good pomo thinker, then other sexist pomo thinkers will have no reason to prefer Spender's non-sexist constructions to their own sexist constructions and feminism can never achieve its stated goals.

Patty

[nomad]

If Spender is going to be a good pomo thinker, then other sexist pomo thinkers will have no reason to prefer Spender's non-sexist constructions to their own sexist constructions and feminism can never achieve its stated goals.

There is a difference between preference (reasons to prefer) and truth based epistemology claims. In the former we make prudential judgments. In the latter we make claims to truth as a universal and immutable worldview. Feminism, animism, mysticism, mechanistic thinking, organic thinking, etc are all paradigms or world hypotheses. Each relies on forms of proof or corroboration and each presents an image of truth in the world. For the postmodern thinker (if there is such a thing), justice is not located within one worldview but instead truth is situated and contextual.

The better formulation is to say that postmodernism is a condition where the dominant worldviews are called into question. In this formulation subjugated minoritarian knowledges are evaluated and judged not through the lens of the dominant worldview but with an understanding that the only fit criteria with which to judge them is in a sense already biased. This allows judgment to have more depth. To judge from a modern lens is to say my worldview is best and others are wrong and to prove that claim using criteria from within your worldview. For example, we prove science holds truth using the scientific method. The problem with this is that the science of a hundred years ago is obsolete. Obviously, the proof that is used to corroborate the scientific paradigm is a little bit suspect.

In the humanities this is even more pronounced. Take the IE community - if a great speaker such as Diane Feinstein (Or Kay Bailey Hutchinson) gave a persuasive speech in a round ask yourself what types of ranks she would get? I bet she wouldn't break - the reason is we have these static and largely unproblematized norms for what counts as a good persuasive speech and those are not really subjected to much scrutiny. Thus a great persuasive speakers does not fit our universal criteria for a good persuasive speaker and does not advance beyond even prelims(no full citation of sources and she expects to break?). To draw out the parallel - the question becomes what is a good speech? - no one has the perfect TRUTH answer - but we do have ideas and we can make prudent judgments based on what we know. And the more we learn the better our approximations of good speaking may be. Recognition of the postmodern in judging speeches does not mean we say - "we don't know what a good speech is --- so don't say one is good or bad." No, the postmodern thinker still judges - they just do so knowing that they don't have the whole TRUTH about good public speaking and with the understanding that they must do the best they can in an uncertain world. So the comparison would be that a postmodern thinker recoongizes that there are norms for judging an IE persuasion round but also understands that there are other ways to judge persuasive speeches and that a good persuasive speech does not always universally have to follow the rather limited and rigid formulation imposed by certain IE coaches. The rules of judging persuasive speeches are constructed and are subject to change. That does not mean that judging is pointless or that we cannot say we feel some judgments are better than others. It is just an acknowledgment that our judgments are imperfect and are structured by assumptions we make about rules we create to define the good and the bad.

So the postmodern question is what type of position should you take up as a critic. Should you assume that you know what a good persuasive speech is and when you judge great speakers - Jesse Jackson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton - do you rate them poorly (as the modern critic who has the truth about what a good persuasive speech must include)? Or is there room in your world to say that although your criteria for a good persuasive speech is one thing that there are others ways of viewing the world and that persuasion is more that what the IE community defines it as?
That question accentuates the idea that different people judge and evaluate differently - being a good judge means realizing that what counts as a good persuasive speech depends on the framework you judge within. In this sense, the postmodern thinker as you describe her makes the admission that she does not have the truth and I think that makes her judgments more telling than someone else who imagines they have the truth about what a good persuasive speech is when in fact they do not.

Peace,
nomad

[pdano]

All of this is why my general reaction to pomo discussions is to bang my head against a wall for a while.

I don't have a problem with the idea that power, and power over language in particular, constructs common perceptions of reality. But believing that there is no actual reality that influences us all, or that exists outside power constructions, is, in Patrick's term, horsepuckey.

Let's look at slavery. Jed says "In fact, I'd go so far as to say that slavery existed because there wasn't a notion of racism. Labeling something as "racist" was one of the key elements to changing how we as a society looked at it. Thus, as the notion of "racism" - new to the cognitive arena - spread, slavery took on a new normative meaning." Racism was NOT new to the cognitive arena. The common normative evaluation of racism as bad? No. People have oposed racism for hundreds and hundreds of years. It wasn't common, sure, but it certainly existed. But further, the belief that one race was superior to another race -- the definition of racism -- was not new. European colonists clearly differentiated by race -- Native Americans were, after all, "noble savages" -- and I'm not sure what else is needed to refer to them as racist. So. Racist behavior existed. People condemned it (although not necessary to prove that racism exists). What about that doesn't mean racism didn't exist 200 years ago?

This idea that if we can't conceive of something, it doesn't exist. I like this a lot. So, we're out camping. Food keeps disappearing when we're not looking. We have no way to explain it. And because we can't conceive of anything, we fear that the world has ceased to make sense. We run screaming off a cliff. Meanwhile, a non-entity named Yogi is surrounded by all our pik-a-nik baskets. Does our lack of knowledge or inability to conceive of this adorable yet mischievous ursine deny his existence? Perhaps the contention is that act of stealing, or concepts, are what do not exist if not conceived of. If no one takes the action, then yes, perhaps it doesn't exist. But as soon as anyone does it, the act and concept have come into existence.

See, now you've made my head hurt again...

Dan

[pdano]

Nomad's making an excellent differentiation between pluralism and subjectivity, I think (maybe not). Recognizing that we don't have an absolute answer, or that there are several potential right answers, is fine and good. Believing that empirical context can alter the right answer is fine and good. Believing there is no right answer... not so fine and good.

Dan

[pdano]

Why in the world is it only my reality that matters? Am I truly arrogant enough to believe that my perception of the world is the only one that matters? How sociopathic would I really have to be to act as if others didn't perceive the world in different ways?

The important reality is not what's in my head, but what's actually there. That's the reality which provides the basis for my interaction with others. It's the reality which provides me with the building blocks of conception. It's the reality, if I want to try to crudely misrepresent Levinas for kicks, that gives me a sense of self. The only basis for your statement seems to be consistency: "the point is the food is gone for a reason that is consistent with what you think you know about reality." But it's also consistent with the objective reality (or Reality) around us. So consistency isn't a reason to prefer my perception of reality to Reality.

The camping example was a crude attempt to to give an empirical comparison to the conceptual slavery example. I tried to approximate a situation in which we had no concept of what was going on around us. But, fine. Analogies suck. So let's try this on. It is absolutely unacceptable to define reality by wy of ignorance. And ignorance is really what slavery, sexism, not knowing about Yogi, etc. relies on. I could close my eyes and, notwithstanding the lack of complete opaqueness in my eyelids, and my perception of reality would not include sight or perhaps the concept of light. But that's pretty clearly an inferior version of reality, because there is, in fact, light out there, and sigh is a valuable way in which to interpret and experience Reality. In fact, what they're really experiencing isn't their own reality, but a shoddy, limited version of Reality, with certain elements suppressed.

The same is true on a conceptual level. I'm not sure there's one right answer to most questions, and there are probably several. But there are definitely wrong answers, and one of those wrong answers to "how do I conduct human relations?" is "say you're better than those who have different-colored skin." I don't think we really have to go through why that is, but we all know there are about a jillion different methods of proving it through many different lenses. Colonists, imperialists, and old Southerners (NOT ALL) chose not to see any of those rational disproofs. They closed their rational eyelids and created a shoddy, limited moral reality for themselves, no more justifiable or legitimate than a person stumbling around with their eyes closed, complaining that reality just ain't what it used to be.

Now, maybe we're wrong right now about what's right and what's wrong. That may very well be, and I may have my moral eyes closed right now. I find it extremely likely. But it doesn't mean that there isn't a right answer (or answers), even if everyone in human history has been wrong up until now.

Dan

[nomad]

When an animal kills another animal it is nature - when a human kills another human it is murder. If my cat catches and kills a mouse after in effect torturing it I do not hold a trial and then punish my cat. If a human catches, tortures, and kills another human we do. The difference is that we know that murder is wrong/evil/unjust because we have been taught it ever sinced we evolved from being animals to being humans. I think that evolution and that knowledge is a good thing. But it is learned - not innate. If an animal was to somehow hold captive another animal in a form of slavery we would call it nature and not slavery. There is a difference and that is a good thing - I think that our knowledge of the cruelty involved and our sense of responsibility for when others suffer is what makes love and care so worthwhile. We have created love and care just as we have created a code to know why slavery is wrong and why murder is wrong. The application of that code becomes all the more important when we see that it was constructed.

[pdano]

Rationality [i]is[/is] constant. Descartes wasn't really wrong about the principles of logic and doubt; he just chose to try to prove things that, rationally speaking, he was unsuccessful in proving. In the objections to his Meditations, others like Hobbes point out the holes in his book (which Descartes doesn't do a great job of defending in his replies). The principles of rational thought that you mention -- likelihood and probabilities -- are in complete concert with the rules of rationality in the First Meditation, if perhaps not with Descartes's proof of God's existence.

But even if it has shifted -- which I don't think it really has -- that just means the concept's been refined. The logical and the rational have been around in human conduct for thousands of years, though they may appear in different forms. If my particular rational bauble is cracked, it doesn't indict the general procedure. It just means I'm wrong. I've gotten used to that by now.

Ok, so you're now contending that my personal interpretation is the most important reality for me. I don't think that's possible, since it's a only a shadow of Reality. (This reminds me of the end of the last Narnia book.) But it also doesn't make it right in any way, or in concert with any justifiable code of conduct.

The issues I bring forth are issues that have the most significance to me, yes. It doesn't mean they're any more or any less legitimate than other moral failings of our society, except maybe in that these issues are more likely to be resolved than others, and my efforts may bear more fruit and have mroe social impact. I think vegetarianism is eventually going to be one of those issues, too, and I'm early on that bandwagon. But the contention that slavery is wrong isn't a temporal thing -- it's a rational thing. We're now doing what's right. So did the slaveholders that freed their slaves hundreds of years ago. So did Athenians who didn't keep slaves (although I've got no idea if there were any, or how many). And just becuse I happen to be right about it NOW has no bearing on whether I'd have been right about it THEN.

Dan

[pdano]

Nomad: the lack of blame on animals is such because they don't have the moral or rational capacity to conceive of other's liberties or rights. This is admittedly a sliding scale depending on the level of complexity of the animal. But the capacity to reason morally is what allows us to blame others, even allowing the slack of particular regional or temporal mores.

Dan

[pdano]

Yeah, so, those people think it. As a comm prof, I'd hope you're over the appeal to authority.

And I don't ever remember contending that you invented the thought; you've been pretty forward about quoting your textbooks or professors.

Dan

[boredguy8]

A big :hearhear to Jed's insight. Rationality is something very difficult to discuss. I just finished wading my way through Thomas Aquinas' Nature and Grace. After reading his discussions of reason and belief and justification, it really begins to highlight how cultural views of epistemology embed themselves, often without me being aware of the process. Taking him as the clearest representative of scholastic thought, we realize that for a long time being reasonable did not entail having Cartesian certainty. In fact, as he is building on the work of thinkers before him, I would suggest that it is not until Descartes' introduction of radical doubt that society as a whole begins to equate reason with absolute certainty.

The rejection of cartesian certainty is not new, nor is it a particular bastion of postmodernism. Al Plantinga out of Notre Dame notes that epistemic systems which reject the need for absolute certainty in order to accept a belief as warrented are borrowing heavily from the work of Thomas Aquinas (leading to the joke about "Peeping Thomists").

I also support the undercurrent in this discussion which rejects the mindset which privelidges current thought as somehow more "enlightened" than past metanarratives.

--Joey

[nomad]

the lack of blame on animals is such because they don't have the moral or rational capacity to conceive of other's liberties or rights. This is admittedly a sliding scale depending on the level of complexity of the animal. But the capacity to reason morally is what allows us to blame others, even allowing the slack of particular regional or temporal mores.



Moral capacities and rational capacities are learned - hence they are not immutable and can change over time. The capacity to reason morally is an invention - I think a great and worthwhile invention - but an invention nontheless. You have to acquire knowledge to know --- knowledge is learned - you suggest animals don't have the knowledge and so they are not guilty of the same crime as someone who knows. I think that grants my point.

We have learned to reason, to know, to rationalize, and to define certain behaviors as moral and immoral. Take an example of a human being raised in the wilderness by animals (there actually are several historic examples outside the hollywood versions of Tarzan). These humans do not have an innate capacity for language, morality, or reason. It is only when they come into contact with humans and are tamed/taught language that they begin to reason. If a man raised by wolves hunts and kills a human child from a village is the action different than if the child was killed by a lion?

If this is not making sense then go rent the Planet of the Apes movies. It speaks directly to this question. In the third movie the Chimpanzee Psychologists admit to having conducted medical experiments that killed humans for medical purposes. It is only when they realize that humans are capable of symbolic behavior that they begin to define humans as having certain rights and become horrified at what they have done. Rights are defined into being in the same way our civilization has defined into being the morals we share. Let a child be raised without human contact and the child will have no sense of rights or morality as we understand it. In fact, even if you raised several children without adult human contact I suspect it would take them some time to create a system of right and wrong and it might look nothing like the system we have. It has taken us thousands of years to create the ethical framework we live in and it is definitely a work in progress. In a hundred years we may be judged as having murdered animals for food and generations to come may look back with revulsion as we might look back on a cannibalistic culture.

How can we arrive at an understanding of killing another human as murder but also decide animals killing one another is not? That is a pretty elaborate knowledge construct - to define certain creatures as having certain capacities and define other creatures as not. Knowledge is acquired - we are not born with it. It takes work. The acquisition of knowledge lets us create highly systematized understandings of what is good and bad, ugly and beautiful etc. These are subjective - we live under conditions of epistemic pluralism - so you know that murder is wrong but you allow your cat to murder crickets. If we discover crickets have a capacity for language and that Jiminy should have some basic rights to protection from his oppressor then we may have to do things differently. What is moral today may not be moral tomorrow.

So the best way to finish this - you have to define certain things as being certain ways to win your argument - you must define humans as having certain innate faculties/capacities irrespective of external contexts. First, that is simply not true and empirical evidence shows that. Second, the very act of defining humans as having particular features constructs the reality you wish us to accept.

If everyone has an innate understanding of slavery being wrong why do we still have marriage - in many cultures a married womyn is like a slave. How can this be if we all innately know it is wrong? Are those cultures irredeemable evil? Or are we all just in need of some education?

Why study ethics? morals? rights? if they are intrinsic features born to us all shouldn't we just know them? I think you are putting the cart before the horse. We learn from our parents, our teachers, and our friends and we combine that knowledge with our experience in the world to construct an understanding that survival of the fittest does not reign as the defining feature of what is ethical.

peace,
nomad

[pdano]

For people raised by animals: indeed, there are some. I don't think these people can in any way be compared to the racists or sexists described through most of this thread, since the latter grew up in conditions where rational thought (indeed, thought itself) was encouraged. These few of billions are definitely in a context in which we wouldn't expect them to be actively reasoning (although, how old have these people gotten?). But it further doesn't address whether they have that capacity for reason and moral judgment. As far as we can know right now, most animals don't come close to having that judgment, and a very few have it imperfectly (not to suggest that we have perfect judgment at all). Most animals also aren't capable of containing the knowledge you're speaking of. The really interesting question to me is whether a human raised by these imperfect species, like chimps or gorillas, would show moral reasoning.

I don't think anyone's ever said that everyone knows slavery is innately wrong. I certainly haven't. Nor do I know what you allow your cat to do. I try not to let my dog eat insects and such.

We study morals and ethics because we want to reach a higher understanding of an ethical and moral reality, understanding that our personal reality is flawed, and hoping to get closer to what's right. I'm not (nor is anyone) saying the knowledge is innate, but rather the capacity is.

And to Jed: you didn't actually provide any evidence in that post, you just referenced people with the occasional sub-sentence quote. I don't think you're wrong because you quoted them, but I'm just not sure why you thought it was necessary to note, personally to me, that your argument was not yours.

Dan

[thedancingbear]

Originally posted by DB8 MissingLink
Yes. Remember the book 1884? How did Big Brother prevent people from feeling oppressed?

By starting a war over slavery to mask the real oppression?

IS