One of the most prominent strawman attacks of postmodernism and of relativism more generally is the statement countering the claim that all claims are equal.
I know of no one outside those attacking the claim believe this. I’ll give a couple of examples to illustrate why the attack is preposterous — a culinary case and a socio-political case.
The Proof is in the Pudding
Visit a recipe site, and search for macaroni cheese recipes. You’ll get hundreds if not thousands of recipes. Are they all equal? No. It depends on your tastes and preferences…even your audience. There are variations in the type of pasta, the type or types of cheese, whether to add additional ingredients, whether to prepare on the range or baked in the oven, and so on.
For your children, a prêt-à-manger out of the box preparation as opposed to the Gruyère and truffles verion you’re reserving for your next soirée.
Is there a best recipe? No. There are only preferences.
Is there an objectively best recipe? No. There are only preferences.
Can I create any recipe? No. Read on.
And they called it macaroni…
To have a recipe qualify as mac & cheese, there are at least to requirements for inclusion into the domain: Macaroni (or any pasta product or substitute) and cheese (ditto but with cheese products). I’m only pretty sure that no one countering that relativists claim that everything is equal is also arguing that one can make mac & cheese with, say, tacks and bricks. So, one has to question either the intelligence or the integrity of someone assuming someone else would defend this argument. Context matters. And just the choice of a contextual boundary is subjective (and relative).
Good Enough for the Government?
This works for recipes, but what about for government? Obviously Democracy is the best possible form of government because reasons, duh. And people. And agency. And other words I can imagine and associate in my defence.
As with mac & cheese, we need a defined purpose. The problem is that there are not only different purposes, there are different actors, each with their own needs and desires.
At no time is anyone arguing that public policy created by a council of gerbils is the same as that of people or or some artificial intelligence, just as no one is proposing that we throw mac & cheese against a wall in the manner or reading entrails to arrive at a meaningful end. Though, to be fair, given some policy choices I’ve seen, I might have voted for the mac & cheese method.
So, what are you trying to say?
By now a reader should have disavowed the notion that relativists do not recognise domain boundaries. It could be very legitimate for a non-relativist (objectivist?) to call something out as having improper domain boundaries, whether over-specified, under-specified, or just mis-specified, but that’s not the same claim.
A person may justifiably make the claim that such a such is not valid because it does not account for some other absent cohort. Perhaps it leaves out the dead or the unborn, or the animals, or the broader biosphere, if only by proxy. This is not to say that this would be easy or convenient, but it is certainly rational.
Most implemented government systems not only privilege humans over everything else, it virtually excludes everything else. But this is not the main point, which is that if a place and people have a functioning form of government, whether it is better or worse is up to the participants to decide, and there is not likely to be a consensus view. It should always be expected that there will be detractors for any number of reasons. There may be large contingencies of detractors. It could easily be that a government is divided into two worldviews, as in the United States, Canada, and the UK — each side claiming that they’ve got the solution, each side denying relativism in order to defend their version of truth.
Postmodernism seems to have as many definitions as the number of people who encounter it, and that’s just not very useful. It’s less useful still when people with ulterior motives control the narrative. I’d like to take back the narrative and offer a succinct definition or description and offer reasons why some of the competing definitions are fundamentally incorrect. My journey commenced on my Descriptive Postmodernism post.
Each year, I start with a new notion to explore. For 2021, it’s postmodernism. I identify as practicing postmodernist, but it seems to have a nebulous definition, and many people assume it means different things. Some definitions seem to comport and others are curious takes. I am well-aware that some people in this space have opinions at least as strong as mine, and many have deeper and/or broader exposure than I do. Nonetheless, I feel confident that my logic will resonate.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast conversation about this content
As I pursue this definition, I will explore a line of inquiry that I hope will help to frame the issue.
These are my initial questions:
What is the core definition of postmodernism?
Why hate postmoderns?
Why can’t postmodernism be constructive?
Why do postmoderns deny Truth?
When did postmodernism, a critical, dis-integrative concept become identified as being integrative?
How does one parse the theory of postmodernism from the personality who espouses a perspective on it?
Postmodernism can be viewed as a reaction to so-called modernism, but it’s not so cut and dry. Postmodernism as an intellectual pursuit was in full force in the 1970s and 80s. But Modernism was still the main thrust, as is remains today. Post- is likely an overstatement, as it did not supersede. In comparison, post-Enlightenment thought—reason and logic—still competes with pre-Enlightenment thinking—metaphysical and superstition—, but even persons holding post-Enlightenment views still cling to traditional beliefs. Contrarily, people holding modern beliefs are not likely to simultaneously hold postmodern beliefs and vice versa. For moderns, postmodernism is a hot button, trigger item. For this cohort, any association will set them off.
What is the core definition of postmodernism?
From early on, postmodernism has been used as a pejorative term by its detractors. Many academics associated to postmodernism do not identify as postmoderns. They have been categorised as such, as something they have said or written is heretical to the Modern orthodoxy.
These days—if not from the start—postmodernism is nebulous. It has long since lost its brand to detractors, and its definition is undergoing some revisionist history by this cohort. What started as a perspective or lens to disintegrate content and context is now seen by many as possessing a point of view for constructing, for building.
The Condition of Postmodernity Before defining philosophical postmodernism, let’s first exclude a possible source of confusion: postmodernity. Postmodernity is a periodical distinction, a cultural state where it occurs chronologically subsequent to the period referenced as Modernity.
Postmodernity is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and conditions and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the West since the 1960s, whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, the cultural and intellectual phenomenon, especially since the 1920’s new movements in the arts and literature.
To be fair, the philosophy of postmodernism is a reaction to the philosophy of Modernism, but there was a diversion of the periodic reference from the philosophical. If we adopt this definition, the only requirement for inclusion is to have been active in this period. Since Feminism and Marxism were coincidentally prevalent phenomena, it would be easy to include these by virtue of chronology, but it doesn’t follow that these fall into the philosophical notion of postmodernism. It may be a simple matter of the ambiguity of language.
Some social theorists and sociologists—Scott Lash, Ulrich Beck, Zygmunt Bauman, and Anthony Giddens—deny that there is a postmodern condition. Instead, they suggest that modernity has simply extended into a state of late or liquid modernity.
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives.
Jean-Francois Lyotard
To establish a grounding and because he got there first, let’s see how Lyotard defines it in the introduction to his Postmodern Condition:
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward meta-narratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements – narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Conveyed within each cloud are pragmatic valencies specific to its kind. Each of us lives at the intersection of many of these. However, we do not necessarily establish stable language combinations, and the properties of the ones we do establish are not necessarily communicable.
The simple definition is captured by the first sentence. The rest is exposition. But let’s rewind for a bit and establish a frame. Admittedly, even at the start this is ‘simplifying to the extreme‘. Moreover, the context is relative to hard sciences. Lyotard admits he was over his head. In fact, he later referred to the book as his worst. But books have lives of their own, a sentiment with which Barthes might agree.
The central point here is to question metanarratives. Period. Full stop. The next task is to ask how a postmodern might accomplish this task and what might be their perspectives and tools?
In Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology, Lawrence Kuznar claimed that « the primary tenets of the postmodern movement include: (1) an elevation of text and language as the fundamental phenomena of existence, (2) the application of literary analysis to all phenomena, (3) a questioning of reality and representation, (4) a critique of metanarratives, (5) an argument against method and evaluation, (6) a focus upon power relations and hegemony, and (7) a general critique of Western institutions and knowledge. » [See end note 1]
Postmodernism is a disintegrative system. It disassembles, deconstructs, atomises, and lays bare. It is suspicious of underlying metanarratives—and I’d be willing to argue that it is equally suspicious of stated narratives as well. It questions who is served by a given narrative, who gains and loses power by one interpretation over another.
[tools and systems]
In the end, a reader may disagree with what I am proposing here, and the reader may even be correct in claiming that my definition is too reductive. Perhaps, I should abandon the postmodern label and simply recast my definition as Disintegrationism or some such. Deconstruction is already taken, so why not?
Why hate postmoderns?
One problem I notice is that postmodernism, long being applied as a pejorative term in a similar vein to the use of SJW, is a way to discredit personalities and ideologies they disagree with. We see entire ideologies being besmirched as postmodern theories. We might see Stephen Hicks misrepresent postmodernism and conflate feminism with it. Moderns are by nature traditionalists or conventionalists, so whether postmodernism, feminism, Marxism, and the like, these are unconventional. It may be a simple heuristic trick to paint all of these with a broad brush. Nuance and difference be damned. [See end note 2] Jordan Peterson‘s bete noir is cultural Marxism, that he insists is part of the blight of postmodernist thought.
Many have attempted to conflate social theories with postmodernism, whether Marxism, feminism, identity politics, and so on. But this is inherently wrong. Lyotard provided postmodernism with its original definition in his book, but detractors have been annexing other unpopular concepts to it in order to create a sort of critical mass for the uncritical opposition.
Why can’t postmodernism be constructive?
Postmodernism necessarily can’t be constructive, because after one disintegrates a perspective into its primitive elements, any reconstruction needs another narrative to serve as a foundation. It is true that one may reconstitute a disintegrated narrative through a different lens, as cited above Marxist, and so on, but all this does is to shift perspective, point of view, and creates a new power play.
There is nothing wrong with this approach, but neither is there a reason to privilege this interpretation over the original or some other. A Marxist perspective may resonate better with Marxists, and Feminist perspective with Feminists, but this doesn’t make the interpretation better or more generally applicable. It just brings it into clearer focus for that cohort. As near-sighted lenses help the hyperopic and far-sighted lens aid the myopic, neither is inherently better outside of the defined context. And each solution would create a distortion for a person neither near- or far-sighted. There is no lens that is all things to all people.
On balance, I think it’s fair to say that postmodernism is descriptive and not prescriptive, so whilst one can play at disintegrating and reintegrating, but this is simply to gain a new perspective and new insights. In literature, we might consider, say, Philip K Dick’s, The Man in the High Castle. In this, Dick explores what might have been if the Axis led by Nazi Germany had prevailed. This alternate historical rendering can be evaluated as a postmodern exercise. Dick is not promoting this outcome, he is merely playing what-if—reordering the actors to create speculative new narratives. Although the Amazon.com version takes liberties and injects additional narrative perspective, the reintegration is still evident.
As well, postmodernism cannot be constructive because it would be infinitely recursive. For each construction, there would exist a deconstruction. All that’s occurred is a rearrangement. From the same Lego pieces, we apply a new map—a new narrative. From the position of purpose, one construction may be deemed better or preferred, but this is not likely to persist from another.
Disintegration – Reintegration Cycle
Whilst I am more interested in the philosophical, postmodernism has much application to literature. This might be better defined as poststructuralism.
Why do postmoderns deny Truth?
Some people have argued that postmodern thinkers don’t believe in the notion of Truth.
There are a few things to clarify first: the definition of truth and the context of a truth claim.
There are different and competing theories on what truth is—whether correspondence, coherence, or some other version—but that’s beyond the scope of this content. Some people use ‘truth’ as a synonym for ‘fact’, but in the name of clarity, we should separate the two concepts even if idiomatically the terms can be used interchangeably. [See end note 3] In creating this bond, it’s easy to see how these people might be confused. Virtually no one is proposing that ‘facts’ are not ‘facts’. It may be that postmodernism should have a weak and a strong version.
If the colour red is defined as the reflection by an object having a wavelength between 625 and 700 nanometres and a corresponding frequency between 400 and 480 THz, and a ball as a 3-dimensional object where every point on the surface is the same distance from the centre, and all of the incumbent terms are similarly defined and accepted with concordant definitions, then a sighted person with no colour vision perception deficiencies in an environment with natural full-spectrum lighting, will agree with the fact that the sphere is red. If one prefers to label the correspondence of a red sphere and the perception of the red ball as true, then this trivial relationship is valid.
2-dimensional render of a 3-dimensional red sphere
It may be a correct assessment that some thinkers deny all truth, but it’s more likely that these thinkers are suspicious of the person claiming to know the truth because of the relationship between truth claims and power. Although Lyotard’s commentary was directed at hard science and underlying metanarratives such as progress, most postmoderns are more concerned with claims of moral truths.
This is related to the context of a claim. Per Foucault, if one context gives me power, I am more apt to adopt that perspective in order to manifest that power. I am not going to delve into some political discourse at the moment. Apart from this, Truth—where synonymous with fact—is contextual.
Using a typical example, one can evaluate the moral claim that killing another human is immoral. In fact, many—not all—people may agree with this as a general principle. But when we apply context—say, self-defence, military action, or capital punishment—, we discover that some of the same people now evaluate that killing another human is moral. So, we arrive that this moral assessment is subject to be either true or false depending on the context it’s evaluated in. Myself, being a non-cognitivist, I find moral claims to be lacking truth aptness, but that’s another story.
When did Postmodernism become a constructive rather than decompositional philosophy?
I’ll reserve the option to finish this section later. A quick internet search finds that David Ray Griffin coined the term constructive postmodernism. Griffin appears to have an agenda to return to modernism, particularly, it seems at first glance, Pragmatism.
My initial thought is that it was not thinkers fully invested in postmodernism; rather it was people with ulterior motives. Infusing Christian elements appear to be the most common thread. This line of thought is entirely speculative, so please stand by for an update or retraction. Metamodernism appears to have similar attributes, though perhaps simply metaphysical rather than Christian in nature.
How does one parse the theory of postmodernism from the personality who espouses a perspective on it?
Many people identified as postmoderns don’t self-identify as such. Kuznar labels postmodern anyone whose thinking includes most or all of these elements, but there is a compositional challenge inherent in this claim.
There are several compositional problems. First, one can apply postmodernism to a narrow domain and operate fully as a modern in the rest—perhaps even the majority of situations. Second, one can apply a postmodern lens theoretically, but be more pragmatic in more mundane matters. Third, one might apply a postmodern lens among many lenses, defending each in turn. Fourth, one may have had strong postmodern tendencies at one point in life but not held this perspective at other points.
Taking Foucault as an example—as well as one who eschewed the postmodern label—, he did disintegrate history and did question the underlying narratives, hitting all of Kuznar’s touchpoints. For one, I would categorise him as a postmodern thinker. Moreover, his disintegration led to the discovery of a common power thread throughout. Much of his writing was focused on this power relationship and illustrated how it was manifest.
Foucault was also a vocal Marxist. This is a constructive (integrative) worldview. This perspective gives privilege to Marxism, which is antithetical to postmodernism. As a rational interpreter, Foucault determined that this was a better form of government—but clearly, that’s because he accepted the underlying narrative and historicity proposed by Marx. Does this invalidate his postmodern credentials? Do we revoke his PoMo card?
Disclaimer
Excuse me for occasionally using this space as a scratchpad, but it serves the purpose well. I’ve never delved deeply in to critical theory, though I suppose I suppose that at least some of it resonates with me.
Note that I approach this as a stream of consciousness. It’s not meant to be a robust academic treatment. Although, I do cite source documents in some cases, many of my points are anecdotal or pulled from memory, understanding fallibility and so on. I expect to return to flesh out some details, but I figure I’ll publish my thoughts now and make updates in future. I may even correct spelling, grammar, and redundancies.
My goal at the start was two-fold (at least). First, is to describe the domains of postmodernism from the perspective of a proponent (as opposed to accepting a definition imposed by detractors). Second, is to assess where critical disintegration diverged to an integration theory. It’s obvious that you hold that deconstruction and discourse analysis fall within the domain. They are certainly orthodox post-structural concepts, so I suppose a third goal might be to define the boundaries of poststructuralism relative to postmodernism.
[2] This modern cohort has a similar tendency to paint any form of Socialism as Communism, and they see the Soviet Union’s failed experiment of whatever they attempted to do as Communism. Therefore all forms of Socialism are destined to fail. The failure to appreciate nuance and detail is the common thread. I might posit that it’s similar to the phenomenon where, on average, women tend to perceive more colours (or colour names) than men.
[3] Aping logical empiricism, idiomatic language allows for broader definitions of truth and allows it to be synonymous with fact. This is similar to the idiomatic similarity of sex and gender, though this distinction is necessary for technical and academic discussion.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve defended Postmodernism (PoMo) from attack, so I am publishing this, so I can link to it. Perhaps I am not defending PoMo, but my flavour of it, but I’ve read a lot of work published by the usual suspects—some who eschew being lumped into a poorly defined category—or at least a nebulous category.
Before I get too far, I also want to remind the reader to take care to separate the philosophy from the person. One popular attack is the conflating of identity politics and social justice advocacy as PoMo phenomena. In fact, I consider myself to be PoMO—to be defined here in a moment—and a social justice warrior (SJW), this despite contesting the very notion of identity to begin with.
By definition, a summary is a reduction of some thing, but one needs to be careful not not arrive at reductio ad absurdum. Where appropriate, one may also wish to differentiate postmodernism with postructuralism. So as not to create a definition partir de rien, I’ll reference other accessible versions. A critic may disagree with these definitions, but they will serve as the foundation of my position and vantage.
Wikipedia gives us this definition (their reference links retained):
That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.
Notice the commonalities. PoMo is a descriptive, critical activity. It’s descriptive. As language and grammar can be approached descriptively of prescriptively, so can philosophy. Some ‘schools’ do both. PoMo is exclusively descriptive. PoMo was born as a reaction to Modernism, especially the unstated foundations labelled by Lyotard as metanarratives—the grand narratives and underlying ideologies of prevailing beliefs that were uncritically taken for granted, many of which that were formed or catalysed in the Age of Enlightenment.
Jean-François Lyotard defined philosophical postmodernism in The Postmodern Condition, writing “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity towards meta narratives….”[4] where what he means by metanarrative is something like a unified, complete, universal, and epistemically certain story about everything that is. Postmodernists reject metanarratives because they reject the concept of truth that metanarratives presuppose. Postmodernist philosophers in general argue that truth is always contingent on historical and social context rather than being absolute and universal and that truth is always partial and “at issue” rather than being complete and certain.[3]
My defence is that PoMo cannot be for social justice or engage in identity, as it has no positive position on these. It functions to critically deconstruct. People unfamiliar with PoMo concepts often misunderstand this notion of deconstruction. All to often, I see people criticise Derrida for his brand of Deconstruction, but that only illustrates the fact that they never read or simply misunderstand what Derrida means by Deconstruction. Perhaps, I’ll elaborate on that in future.
My point is that PoMo is corrosive—like lye. It eats away at ideologies, dissolves them. It is not meant to construct anything. So where does this constructive expectation come from? It derives primarily from two places.
Modernism
Most people casting dispersion are modernists. They need to construct things. To be fair, this perspective has been an evolutionary advantage, but some people can’t allow a bunch of Lego pieces to remain unconstructed. This is fine, but you need another tool to perform this task. It’s not PoMo.
Ad Hominem
The other challenge is the inability to distinguish between the person and the idea. Michel Foucault was very vocal in the political realm and actively promoted Marxism, but, firstly, Foucault was not a self-professed PoMo—and for several reasons, one could come to accord with his assessment; secondly, in his deconstruction of history, he discovered a foundational component—this activity being squarely PoMo—, but he reconstructed historical narratives employing the lens of power. This rebuilding is not PoMo activity.
Parting Shot
Besides—or in addition to—ignorance, some people have an agenda, and they play ad hominem games, so if they can vilify a person and associate that person to an ideology, it can have the tendency of poisoning the well. Uncritical people won’t even notice the sleight of hand and redirect.
never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance*
Hanlon’s Razor
A textbook example is Stephen Hick’s attempt in Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault to conflate feminism (a positive mechanism) with postmodernism (to reiterate, a negative mechanism). In it he claims that feminists Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mckinnon are proponents of PoMo thought, but he is apparently unaware that McKinnon has explicitly attacked PoMo as destructive to feminism. A fuller critique of Hicks‘ work can be heard on YouTube. I recommend it highly if you have the better part of an hour to spare. Jordan B Peterson is a celebrity personality whose primary exposure to PoMo is Hicks, so when you understand how off-base Hicks is, you’ll realise why Peterson is so off-base, too.
* Hanlon’s razor is originally cast as “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity“, but I prefer the term ignorance, as it it less value-laden and more broadly applicable. Besides, to be ignorant does not mean to be stupid. Many ignorant people are not stupid. I am ignorant of the Russian language, but I am not stupid.
How does one justify reason without reason? Isn’t this just circular reasoning— circular logic? Can one justify reason without employing reason? Can there be logic without reason?
The Age of Enlightenment is simultaneously the Age of Reason. Reason is the best path forward, and yet one can’t even board the train without a predisposition toward reason at the start.
This reminds me of the troubles the logical positivists encountered by claiming that everything need to be falsifiable, and yet this claim could not be falsified. It’s Hume’s ought problem.
One could employ empiricism, but can one arrive there alogically?
Is there a term for ‘not logical’ without the same baggage as illogical?
Alogical
Antilogical
Contralogical
Counterlogical
Delogical
Dislogical
Inlogical
Mislogical
Nonlogical
Oblogical
Unlogical
For example, a work of art is not (necessarily) logical, but neither is it illogical; this feels like improper usage. So, what prefix modifier would one employ to communicate ‘not within the sphere of logic’ in shorthand? Or is it just ‘not logical‘. That doesn’t seem quite right either.
Mindfulness, as with yoga and other Eastern concepts, gets diluted for consumption by the West becoming McMindfulness. I learnt Buddhism circa 1980 in Japan, introduced by a friend from New Zealand. He translated for me because all services and teachings were given in Japanese. I won’t get into how the mind-body-spirit connection of yoga has devolved into an exercise regimen in the West.
Yoga
a Hindu theistic philosophy teaching the suppression of all activity of body, mind, and will in order that the self may realize its distinction from them and attain liberation
Most Westerners have attention spans of gnats, so many Eastern concepts need to be homogenised for the Western consumer and then dosed homoeopathically. Only then can the typical Westerner performatively claim to understand these Eastern notions. To be fair, some of the loss occurs because of the lack of depth of cultural understanding—the same loss happens from West to East as well—and some is language—the concept doesn’t have a direct translation, so we end up with close enough.
A simple but hopefully instructive anecdote might help. Westerners, especially English-speakers, are typically well-aware of the native Japanese speaker’s inability to articulate the L sound, and so ‘fried rice‘ is rendered something like ‘flied lice‘. Only, this not what’s being said. What we are hearing only approximates an L to our ears, but the L sound is not what’s being uttered. The Japanese language doesn’t have L or R phonemes, respectively /l/ and /r/. So the absence of the R-sound in Japanese and the lack of this alveolar sound in English brings us close to the L sound we presume to perceive. What they are saying is /ɹ/, which is in between these two sounds. They don’t have /l/ or /r/, and we don’t have /ɹ/, so the misinterpretation goes both ways. Only a person trained in this aspect of linguistics can map the relationship, but this mapping is imperfect but satisfactorily explanatory.
Mindfulness
the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis
Mindfulness is a member of the eightfold path of Buddhist doctrine. Mindfulness is about being conscious of ‘the world’ of one’s environment and yet not be focused or ‘attached’ to any particular aspect of it. it’s simply being aware. In Buddhism, the scope of mindfulness is particular to the dharma, of which the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are constituents, so technically speaking, one would need to have these aspects available in inventory.
How Soon Is Now? Is there anything beyond now—is there a future? Was there a past? What better occasion to reflect on this than the turn of a new year, of a new decade?
Now is easy. It right here, and here, and here, and here… and interminable series of heres. The past is easy, too, we were there—the accumulation of former heres—, so at least we can claim it was real at the time—or as real as we could perceive and can imagine. Memory frailties notwithstanding, the past is indelible. Whether we are or can be aware is another story.
Past is different to history. Past is an event or events. We may not even become aware of these events until they have passed—perhaps centuries or millennia later. These may be historicised. History is a story. In French, the terms aren’t even separated. L’histoire is simultaneously a story and history, a reminder of how inextricable they are.
But what about the future? A conceptual future is a fairly new human construct. Some events occuring after now have happened since the beginning of time. In fact without time or the invention of a notion of time, there can be no future or past. It’s been said that time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”
We talk about the future, but when we reference it now, it’s only some speculative future—some admixture of uncertainty and probabilities. There are no guarantees any given event will actually manifest, whether we will be there to experience it, or whether any future will even arrive. This is a known limitation of empiricism. That the sun has risen for some 4 billion years doesn’t guarantee it will rise tomorrow. There is nothing necessarily preventing the universe from ceasing to exist tomorrow or in an instant, pardoning the nomenclature of time.
Where our perception of now is already quite limited in scope and experience, any notion of future is decidedly worse. And of all of the possible threads and imagined threads, only one will manifest—unless you subscribe to parallel universe models, in which case you can still only experience one and only one, at least for the time being.
From the perspective of now, the future, like history, is just a story. In these times of COVID, we should realise that some stories hadn’t been written. Similar storylines had been imagined and authored, but the one that manifest was different still. Truth is stranger than fiction—and worse.
But does the future exist? Can we discuss the future other than conceptually? Is the notion of future reserved for a privileged few? One so-called cognitive bias is that humans favour now and near-term events over further future events? From an evolutionary perspective, this makes perfect sense. First, I am here now, and whether I am here to experience the future remains to be seen. This bias is the basis for why most people don’t save enough for a comfortable retirement—a retirement with a comparable standard of living and quality of life as one’s ‘productive’ years.
One consideration is expected lifespan. Actuarially, a person might be expected to live on average, say, 76 years. If people my family historically live to 65 and I expect to retire thereabouts, saving past that is inefficient—transferring wealth across generations notwithstanding. If I die at 65, there is no mismatch. If I die at 76, then oopsie. Retirement income and savings is predominantly a First-world problem—a challenge for people who live in an income-based, consumerist society, so worrying about the future takes on a more relevance.
Even if I expect my village, tribe, or family care for me in my twilight years, there is still a notion of future to consider. Will they be there for me. But from an evolutionary perspective, this doesn’t necessitate a future beyond a generation, so the probability of an uncertain event is lower than, say, a thousand years from now.
NB: What had been a concept riffing on Hoffman’s evolutionary argument against reality was intercepted by the related notion of the future. I hope to return to Hoffman presently—if the future allows.
Chump in Chief* wrote a piece on dementia using analogue of the ship of Theseus. As a topic, Hobbes’** Theseus thought experiment has been well-covered, but that’s never stopped me before.
This is all about identity. Essentially, there are two perspectives. To an observer not on the ship or aware of the transformation, they would be none the wiser. For all intents and purposes, if they had ever seen the ship before, it’s the same. But what about those on the ship?
For nearly all of these observers, it’s almost unquestionably still the same ship. In a manner paralleling a person’s cells being sloughed off every 7 years, the cells in place at the start aren’t there after 7 years. Most will not doubt that you are the same person.
the average human cell is about 7 to 10 years old
As cells are continually dying and replacing themselves, for an adult the average human cell is about 7 to 10 years old, which might be interpreted as saying in the fashion of Theses’ ship that a person is anew each 7 to 10 years. Let’s ignore that this is an average, and many cells have a lifespan of only a few days whilst others—cerebral cells in particular—are here from the start and so are as old as the person.
Another perspective is to consider the replacement parts: would it matter if the colour of the parts changed in the process? What about the materials? What about the underlying architecture? What if the departing sloop arrived a schooner? Weight? What then?
My favourite extension of this thought experiment is to ask the question two-fold: Not only do we ask if this ship built with new materials is still Theseus’ ship—which to be fair is more a question of ownership than of identity—, but what if I reconstruct the original ship with the original materials. Are these both Theseus’ ships? Can we continue this exercise with new material ad infinitum?
As far as I know, we can’t repurpose cells in this fashion, but what if we could? There are many such Star Trek transporter mishap thought experiments, or the Duplicates Paradox.
In these experiments, a transporting device disintegrates the subject, and replicates the subject at a distance—but this replication presumably uses different atoms and cells, and so what if a duplicate copy is made rather than the replacement copy? Who’s identity prevails? Is it murder to eliminate one of the duplicates? Similar questions have played out in the science fiction / fantasy space.
Locke and others suggest that for people, memory and the continuity of thought are key, but your thoughts of me are not the same as my thoughts of me. This is why an amnesiac may no longer maintain some original identity, and yet to the familiar outside observer, this shell of a person remains intact. This is pretty much how it plays out with zombies and dementia patients. This sense of identity is projected upon the person rather than exuded from them.
So what is my perspective? Rather than a paradox, it is more a problem of vaguity or ambiguity and how we’re defining sameness. There are many dimensions to similarity. I can present you a red square, a green square, a blue triangle, and a green triangle and play the Sesame Street ‘one of these things is not like the other game.
Is the sameness the colour, the shape, or the number? Could one be comparing area or perimeter?
So, I’ve gone off the reservation. I don’t put a lot of weight in notion of identity. It has evolutionary merit and is an effect of humans’ nature (as it were) to categorise and taxonomise.
* This Chief Chump charge may be unwarranted or even understated, as I don’t know this bloke. ** This is the same Hobbes with the ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ claim to fame.
To the chagrin of many of my colleagues in the United States, I’ve long adopted international English for spelling. My first love was language and linguistics, and I never had a thing for American authors (until I encountered an undergrad literature course where the teacher only reviewed American fiction), so I wasn’t exposed much to American spelling. I had another Lit course, where the teacher exclusively assigned female authors without regard to national origin. Her advice to me for my choice: Be consistent. I still have an interest in language. Recently, I came across some trivia.
The word aeroplane was introduced in the late 19th century by the French aéroplane, from aéro- ‘air’ + Greek -planos (πλάνος) ‘wandering’. Joseph Pline coined the name ‘aeroplane’ in 1855 to refer to a powered, bird-shaped dirigible.
Subsequent to the original French, aéroplane, had been trisyllabic, often written aëroplane. Aeroplane had been the preferred spelling in the United States until the term was re-coined as airplane. At some point, æroplane, spelt with the initial ash (æsc) diagraph ligature was in vogue.
So-called American English favours spelling aeroplane as airplane. Interestingly, this spelling is a back formation from aeroplane to conventionally comply with airship and aircraft. ‘American English, ‘airplane’ was first recorded in 1907, four years after the first flight of the Wright brothers.
I was writing a post about cop and crime shows and fittingly commenting on cops and crime, when my girlfriend turned on Manhunt: Unabomber, a series about serial bomber Ted Kaczynski. I remember when the FBI finally caught Ted and publicised this story, but I don’t know how much of the series was dramatised versus the facts, so my comments will be on the series and not the underlying events.
I title this post after his published ‘manifesto’, Industrial Society and Its Future, but it otherwise has nothing to do with this topic or his manifesto. To me, Ted Kaczynski seems to be a contemporary Thoreau or Rousseau, a primitivist born into the wrong century.
From a philosophical position, the series depicted the perils of taking a deontological approach. Process prevailed over consequences, which resulted taking 18 years to identify and capture Kaczynski. Time and again, process and pushing paper were promoted over new methods.
criminal profiling is the astrology of forensics
As people familiar with me know, I find the discipline of psychology to be pseudoscience (or perhaps simply a parascience), and so-called criminal profiling is the astrology of forensics, which are already a bit sketchy from the start.
Television promotes the logical rationalism underlying forensic science, connecting the dots to a forgone conclusion, if only the right dots are found. As with most law enforcement and court dramas, the focus is on the good guys overcoming the bad guys. Sometimes, it’s the good cop rooting out the bad cops or the perils of a cop who crosses the line to the dark side. These shows want to show how procedural criminology is in order to dissuade people from taking this path.
Knowingly or otherwise, this is propaganda. The fact is that most crime goes unsolved. Most criminals don’t get caught. Many who get caught are not convicted. Some convicted didn’t commit the crime they have been charged with. From an economic perspective, the vast monetary value is taken by white collar professionals with MBAs not burglars and bank robbers.
Systems need people to have confidence in systems. It’s self-serving. The propaganda is important to shore up confidence in the system of law & order, but it’s analogous to slot machines in Vegas or Atlantic City or wherever. When a person wins, there are bells and lights to increase the excitement in the room. But this misses the losers. If the sound was for losers and not winners, the cacophony might be deafening.
Henry Ford failed at 7 business before succeeding
This propaganda overplays winners and concentrates focus. This is classic cognitive survivorship bias. But don’t ask about the losers. This framing isn’t limited to law enforcement. It is also employed in the prevailing Capitalist narrative, but it under advertises the fact that most entrepreneurs fail. Counter arguments are presented in the likes of Henry Ford failed at 7 business before succeeding. If you fail, just try again. It has to work out for you eventually—unless, of course, you aren’t working hard enough—not working as hard as the winners, not paying your dues.
Whilst watching, I found myself scoffing time and again. I am not a Romantic and not a Primative, so I didn’t exactly side with Kaczynski, but I definitely didn’t side with the system, even if that’s not what he was railing against.
Of interest to me was the forensic linguistics. Humourous to me was his choice of spelling. Like me, he wrote in international English. The series represented his spelling as accepted variants, but this is a US-centric position. In fact, most the the world that speaks English employes the British flavour, which is closer to international English than so-called American English, which is only spoken in the US and Central and northern South America. The rest of the world doesn’t use American English. I chose to use international English after high school. Occasionally I get comments and criticisms, but my grammatical footing is stronger than the vast majority of these. The biggest factor is that I don’t identify as an American. Rather, I am a citizen of the world. Perhaps Esperanto?
I’m not religious, so that might be why I don’t understand the so-called ‘problem of evil’. To me, it’s a sophomoric question: If God exists—and is all-good, all-loving, and created everything—, then explain how evil came to be and why it seems to be so prevalent. There’s no reason to accept Occam’s Razor, but this might be a good time to adopt it. A narrative of God is created, and then—as with retrograde planetary motion to justify a geocentric ‘solar’ system—one needs to create odd sub-narratives to fill holes in the main storyline.
The problem of evil is that it doesn’t exist. Evil doesn’t exist. Denotatively, it can be defined as very bad. Connotatively, a moral element is manifest in the term, but the word is unnecessary judgmental hyperbole.
Old English yfel (Kentish evel) "bad, vicious, ill, wicked," from
Proto- Germanic *ubilaz (source also of Old Saxon ubil, Old Frisian
and Middle Dutch evel, Dutch euvel, Old High German ubil,
German übel, Gothic ubils), from PIE *upelo-, from root *wap- "bad, evil"
(source also of Hittite huwapp- "evil").
In Old English and other older Germanic languages other than
Scandinavian, "this word is the most comprehensive adjectival
expression of disapproval, dislike or disparagement" [OED].
Evil was the word the Anglo-Saxons used where we would use bad, cruel,
unskillful, defective (adj.), or harm (n.), crime, misfortune, disease (n.).
In Middle English, bad took the wider range of senses
and evil began to focus on moral badness.
Both words have good as their opposite.
Evil-favored (1520s) meant "ugly." Evilchild is attested as an
English surname from 13c.
The adverb is Old English yfele, originally of words or speech.
Also as a noun in Old English, "what is bad; sin, wickedness;
anything that causes injury, morally or physically." Especially of
a malady or disease from c. 1200. The meaning "extreme moral
wickedness" was one of the senses of the Old English noun, but it did
not become established as the main sense of the modern word until
18c. As a noun, Middle English also had evilty.
Adolf Hitler is evil. Pol Pot is evil. Charles Manson is Evil. This employment of evil intends to communicate that these are bad (versus good) people. The intent is that these people are possessed by evil—as in an evil metaphysical spirit controlling these people. They were born with an evil soul. That’s how the term is typically employed, but this is a kin to a 4-year-old. Having yet to adopt the term, a child might, upon reflection, assert that these so-called evil people as very, very, very, very (…) bad.
One could argue that the term is shorthand for the 4-year-old’s version, but this missing the connotative subtext.
Nietzsche gave an interesting account of the origins of the term in Beyond Good and Evil. I recommend reading it along with the Genealogy of Morals. I don’t have more to add, but somehow got on this tangent after reading Nagel’s defence of religion.
Philosophics 