Or you can stop making philosophy an exercise in linguistic analysis. Language is the tool we use to ask questions with, not the things we are asking about.

But asking those questions bring you right back at defining them. We can ignore it just like we can ignore quantum physics talking about classical physics but that just mean we are ignoring them and reducing the discussion into a frame of reference which is exactly the point of postmodernism.

But in practice we can clearly define some things objectively. If that were truly impossible, we would be unable to share common languages to any degree and it would be impossible for two separate cultures to communicate.

At some level reality itself may be an illusion and we can never be sure of time and space. However, if we concede that point, then we concede that potentially nothing exists then we cannot debate it because we don't exist either. So even by discussing a matter we are taking an assumption that we exist and that something exists for us to talk about, even if the precise meaning of the words isn't nailed down by anyone. At this point, postmodernism starts to look a bit weak, because to communicate we must assume some shared reality between two parties which is quite possibly going to be objective by both parties standards.

And in the framework of human endevour, there are a huge number of hypothetical realities we have ruled out by scientific experiment. It is overwhelmingly likely at this point that something objective exists and we've narrowed in on it quite a bit from, say, 10,000 BC.

We can define things to a good enough degree that its useful but its still a reduction of reality.

I don't think any interesting questions boil down to agreeing on a dictionary definition. Say you could get everyone to agree on the same definition for free will or consciousness. You're still left with the same questions about to what extent do we have defined free will and subjective experiences, which people will still disagree and debate on.

Unless you get people to agree on definitions that define the problem away, but then you're just going to be using a different definition to pose the question that came up, because it will keep coming up.

Language is just a tool to express ourselves. It's not the fabric of existence.

It's not about agreeing on some dictionary definition.

The exercise is semantic in the sense that it seeks to describe and then connect sets of concepts to sets of beliefs in certain contexts.

So in that sense, it's analytically deep. However what tends to happen is that most casual students get to a certain depth in PM, say undergraduate level, give up on the complexity and then throw their hands up and say "nothing is real so I can create my won world that you need to conform to." That's the problem.

Besides personal experience of phenomena what other way do you express your philosphical inquiry in? The dictionary isnt the point here, postmodernism isnt concerned about that. Its actually a critique of exactly that.

That comes with the implication that everything in classical physics is a solved problem though. Just because you can distill anything to meta-questions doesn't mean you should, or that it's (necessarily) a productive exercise for your application. You can build an engine without pondering the nature of iron atoms

You can but philosophically you cant without creating some sort of frame of reference. Scientific discoveries are not philosphical truths they are something else.

Really, it all comes back to “am I just a hallucinating brain in a vat?” But the answer to that question doesn’t much matter really. If that’s the case, why not just pack up all the books and go to the beach? Same thing with language. It’s one interesting line of inquiry, but it’s hardly the only one worth discussing.

But that's a dead end. In Francis Schaeffer's phrase, in postmodernism "language leads to language and nothing more" (emphasis added).

Language does lead to language and from a philosophical perspective, that's a valid observation that doesn't invalidate postmodernism though in fact, it supports that perspective.

Any Turing machine can be described in any other?

>Or you can stop making philosophy an exercise in linguistic analysis. Language is the tool we use to ask questions with, not the things we are asking about.

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

A large portion of my thought is very much non-linguistic.

Visuospatial thoughts are the easiest example. This even happens for things that aren't inherently spatial, like abstract concepts, if there is a useful spatial metaphor.

Will a wink suffice? How about a photograph or a song?

Edit: Language is fascinating, of course. However, I find the underlying mental layers that support it to be equally fascinating, if not more so.

Are they claims about the world or just expressions?

What's the difference?

A wink is just an expression we call a wink. We can then analyze what a wink it philosophically and make claims about it. So one is the experienced phenomena the other is inquiring about that phenoma.

Can't it be argued that the expression itself is a claim about the state of the world (= "the thing I just said was in jest").

It can but then you are back to subjective interpretation.

You can wink, that wink can have meaning or it's just a wink or you got something in your eye. How do you determine what it is without having used language somehow to establish what a wink could mean? And that's just on the surface of the amgiguity.

You agreeing with him or not has nothing to do with ‘the limits of his world’.

It’s almost as though you don’t understand what he is talking about.

I understand what he is saying in fact I am the same way. Many of my thoughts are non-verbal.

But the second they get expressed into language, philosophical analysis kicks in.

You can't express truth though but you can be it (i.e. you can wink)

Philosophical analysis kicks in when someone chooses to do it and at no other time.

Language simply isn’t the limit of anyone’s world.

It’s also plainly obvious that humans have access to many other ways of expressing themselves and communicating other than language, and some truth can certainly be expressed.

I am not sure what your point is.

The second you start claiming things about how the world is through language I can access that and analyze it through ex. a postmodern lens.

You can certainly experience all sorts of things that is beyond language to express but then they are that personal experiences and highly subjective.

What Objective truth can be expressed through language? If you knew the answer to that one you would win a Nobel price and I would certainly do whatever in my power to make sure you got it cause that would be a big deal and fundamentally change EVERYTHING.

Which is why no one has taken me up on the offer to formulate such a truth. It's simply not a useful way to think about what language expresses.

I know you aren’t sure what my point is. That’s because you think your world is limited by language.

And now you’re suddenly focussed on ‘objective truth’. Moving the goalposts because it’s obvious that truth can be expressed through means other than language.

Why not just admit that language is limited but it’s not the limit of our world, or our expression? Why is that so hard?

No its not limited by that, philosphy is. Perhaps you should read a little up on postmodern theory then you would better understand the context this is debated within. You can imagine what you want that has nothing to do with what we are debating here.

"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

Is what this subthread is about.

Perhaps you should read what the people you are replying to are commenting on. Then you’ll understand the context.

I am reading it and I am replying to it. Perhaps you should let people themselves comment rather than pretend you are the judge.

I clarified the context because you decided to declare what the context was. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that. The advice about pretending to be the judge of the context seems like something you might have wanted to consider for yourself.

If you’re replying to the comment I quoted, then my points clearly stand. Language is not the limit of anyone’s world unless they decide to limit themselves that way.

And I repeat that you continue to miss the point of philosophy and are confusing means of expression with means of claiming. It has nothing to do with whether language is the limit of anyone's world we are talking about philosophy here that's the context that's what I was responding to before you started this useless diatribe. Have a great Saturday.

You’re going to pretend that this thread of the conversation doesn’t stem from that statement when it is plain to see?

Magnificent philosophy.

> "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

there are many languages and each languages has many medium. There is no limit to communication. In fact we probably don't even speak the same native language, yet here we are communicating with each other.

Perhaps that is just wrong.

Another thing about some form of linguistic analysis being the final form of philosophy is that another form of linguistic analysis, that of Wittgenstein, predates Postmodernism by 50 years.

In addition that Existentialism is after Wittgenstein's take on a analysis. Existentialism attempts to answer the questions that we care about such as how we live our lives and our own values.

Existential philosophy is also, in part, very readable opposed to the great difficulty of reading Postmodernism.

> Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis You cant dig deeper than the very language we use to philosophize with. Every attempt at undoing postmodernism will get you right back at the postmodern realization. So very much alive at least philosophically but we are also starting to realize this in other areas.

I've thought about it in similar ways, but I fear those are the words of the incumbent facing the disrupter (if you'll pardon an abused analogy). What you say is true if you start with the premise of the postmodernist. That is, in effect I see it as saying nothing more complicated than postmodernism is the outcome of postmodernist assumptions.

Typically, the disrupter has a different agenda, different goals entirely, which is why the incumbent can't understand them - it makes no sense in the context of the incumbent's goals. In this case, the agenda, the assumption, of postmodernism is a desire for the truth (which can't be had) or as realistic an understanding of it as possible.

An hypothesis, stealing a bit from the article: The psuedo-modernist, to use the word from the article, doesn't care about the truth, so all your postmodernism is in the trash. Their reality is whatever they create or believe in the moment. It's fake news, fake economics, fake science (climate denial), whatever is in their Facebook feed, whatever their sources or friends repeat over and over, whatever is said most loudly or with the most anger - whatever can be insisted upon - whatever makes you angry. (Remember when anger was a sign of irrationality? Now it's a sign of a new reality being created.) All authoritative sources are destroyed, including all work product of academia (if you believe some HN comments). Propaganda is reality, and to an extent that is true: Perception is reality, and people can maintain those delusions for a long time. (And yeah, that's pretty scary.)

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick (though I've never verified its provenience)

We can't know the truth but we can be it.

Except that Wittgenstein and much of Analytic Philosophy was already there 75 years ago and was largely ignored by Foucault, Derrida and others.

Wittgenstein is all about trying to work out how language works.

Postmodernism combines Nietzsche and Marx and then looks at text but ignores people who had been looking at text philosophically for decades.

I don't think Wittgenstein was ignored (especially not his later work) they just had different goals.

You could equally claim that all postmodern philosophy is really just Zen Buddhism reinterpreted.

I don't think it takes anything away from anyone.

However, since there was a significant form of textual analysis that predates Postmodernism it shows that forms of textual analysis have had later philosophical movements.

It also shows that Postmodernism itself is the second form of textual analysis in recent times which indicates that it is unlikely to be the final form of philosophy.

The other point about Postmodernism is that while texts are meant to be reinterpreted in any way the reality is that shallow readings of who the author was and what they like to do in the bedroom has been the primary result.

Not it doesent show that. The “conclusions” are more or less the same and non have had further developments inside their respective frameworks. I.e there isnt any critique of postmodernism that takes it further only back, there isnt any critique of zenbuddism that takes it further etc.

> Postmodernism is the final philosophical analysis.

Hardly. There are plenty of psychoanalytical models (still being) explored that have more utility and the inevitable philosophies that extend from them will be just as final. The tools of measure are the roots of modern philosophy and postmodernism is little more than an ancient narrative about behavior that sprouts from mass media.

Hi! I want to demonstrate a tenet of postmodernism.

I'm wondering whether you'd agree with the following paragraph, even though my words aren't your words:

You and I are exchanging words right now. Those words don't really mean anything. Meanings are private to each mind, and everybody decodes words and interprets them as having different meanings. Those meanings, or perhaps those concepts, within each mind will give rise to some sort of worldview (or POV for short) which gives everybody their own uniquely-colored glasses through which the world's stage, players, narratives, and behaviors appear filtered, giving rise to new meanings and possibilities.

This paragraph was hand-written and spontaneous, but I think that you'd nonetheless agree with it because it is an attempt to capture common societal ideas about how English encodes meanings, and thus I think that most English-speakers will decode it to predictable concepts, and I think further that folks who have studied philosophy, not just postmodernism, will find concepts in it similar to the concepts that I've imagined.

Why this is fascinating: I think that this understanding of language decoding as a strange loop is totally overlooked by this crowd, but it could completely overhaul how giants in the field are read, in particular Hofstadter.

We exchange words that we learned the meaning of both literally (by dictionary) and by concept (by meaning).

We both are brough up in a context where we understand the meaning of "the desktop" as a metaphor for computer UI unless (unless you haven't learned that then you think it's the other physical desktop)

See https://medium.com/swlh/anatomy-of-a-noob-why-your-mom-suck-... where I explore that.

In other words, we are using language as a way to communicate experiences of phenomena (an apple or a painting or a movie) but our experiences will never be exactly the same and we will never be referring to exactly the same but it's good enough statistically to be "a pattern"

So yeah I guess I agree if I understand you correctly.

You can look at intent and honesty. The metamodernism stuff is confusing but interesting

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.” ― Roger Scruton

This is just a re-writing of "if you say there is no truth then what you say isn't true"

But that's missing the larger point which is that perhaps we shouldn't look at things as being true or false but instead useful. In other words "there is no truth" is, of course, neither true nor false but just a perspective that's useful (just like believing in truth can be).

I am fine with the incompleteness of this perspective (i.e. it's never fully resolved) and I would argue that philosophically there is no way around it (I can take any claim you make about truth and deconstruct it) and show that it's based on an apriori frame of reference.

So you have to think about it differently than "Truth" to understand the point of postmodernism.

But go back to forapurpose's post (parallel to vixen99's). If people genuinely believe that truth isn't the point, would you not see the behavior that forapurpose describes?

No, because you don't need truth to build useful assumptions about the world.

But the way that plays out in politics is like this: If I don't have truth, I can't persuade others that their position is wrong. So I have to try to persuade them that their position is less useful. But in the world of politics, that itself is a truth claim.

So I'm reduced to "what's useful for advancing my team". And it turns out that fake news, outright lies, and constant propaganda are useful for that. (Postmodernism doesn't recognize the possibility of real truth. Does it recognize that some things are still lies?)

In practice, therefore, postmodernism turns out to be rather destructive in its effect on the political system. One might even say that, in this area, postmodernism is not useful, at least in terms of the system as a whole.

You either convince or you don't. Whether that is good or bad is purely based on the context it's judged within.

Postmodernism is just a way to analyze "the claimed" and yes it destroys (deconstructs any claim) but a decision will be made, something will win over something else.

Why the downvotes? Arent we just having a discussion?

Upvotes and downvotes are part of the discussion. If we didn't want them to be, we wouldn't use those parts of the internet that have these verbs to have our discussions.

They do not. Reddit has that rule, HN doesn't. (and old statements from moderators saying it's ok)

Can you point to that statement cause that seems contrary to establishing a civilized debate?

You downvote if something as an example is of topic or inflamatory or otherwise destroyes the conversation, not something you disagree with which is part of the discussion.

Never heard it was ok to downvote just because you disagree but would love to see the statement about that.

I can't point you to a specific place, but I recall that I made the same claim (downvote for disagree is wrong on HN), and deng corrected me.

I still think it's a lousy way to run a discussion. (Too low a bandwidth - you only get one bit of information.) But it seems to be the rules here.

/u/DanBC collected a few links a while back, I'll just link to his comment (HN search is broken for me right now): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16440683

Thanks. I stand corrected I guess. Still, don't think it's a good way to show disagreement but fair enough.

It's certainly something the community is split about, but I'm not sure it could be fixed even if it were forbidden, seems almost impossible to police.

Right? It's so weird that the dudes that rail against postmodernism fundamentally fail to understand that it's not a single assertive ideology, it's just a simple observation of the way things are in the world around us. It's not like anybody has ever set out to "make postmodernism happen", it's just a condition that has arisen via historical consequence. So when people attack "postmodernists", it's like--you realize that these philosophers did not "create" postmodernism, right? They just describe what they're seeing in the world.