The One Time Alan Sokal Completely Destroyed Postmodernism
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ย. 2024
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This clip explaines the Sokal Hoax which showed the low standards of academic postmodernist journals.
Comlete context of the video quoted under creative common licence: • Sokal's Hoax
To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons... enses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
This channel aims at extracting central points of presentations into short clips. The topics cover the problems of leftist ideology and the consequences for society. The aim is to move free speech advocates forward and fight against the culture of SJWs.
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If you are interested in a less "ranty" and more nuanced explanation of the developmental process of postmodernism and how it finally led to the unholy mixture between postmodernism and neo-marxism we see today, check out this clip from Stephen Hicks, a professor of philosophy at rockford university: th-cam.com/video/1cuxEmy_Ipo/w-d-xo.html
PhilosophyInsights --I started the video link, then I heard or saw the quote from Jordan Peterson (whom I admire) saying something like "the Left is always one solution away from Utopia!" I don't disagree; I just can't confine it to the Left.
I'm gonna guess you've read Chris Hedges excellent book, "I Don't Believe in Atheists" where he challenges the Utopian goals of the Four Horsemen. Is Sam Harris on the Left? That's not rhetorical I really don't know. Hitchens was the darling of Fox News and drinking buddy of Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza before we lost him to cancer. But I suspect we lost the sharpest edge of his wit to alcohol some time before that.
Neo-Marxist? That term gets thrown around so often, but I never meet anyone who invokes anything Marxist as a real solution, and I'm certainly not a Marxist but I get called that (Neo-Marxist) a lot.
Why? Mostly for trying to point out that our current health care drama will become a major tax break for those need it the least. Do I resent the wealthy getting wealthier? Not at all! Not the wealth that's being made. Some of the methods are disturbing, but so many of those making it are often called Leftists, themselves.
Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are Leftists? Hillary as a Democrat made me vote third party. In another time I could persuade myself she was a Robber Baron for. Privatized Prisons, but a Democrat,?
I've never seen so much red baiting since Nixon and Humphrey.
I'm not upset about Trump. I don't care for someone my age who acts silly. I'd rather lose my hair old that age blessed me with than fail to lose the infantilism that he embraces.
But I'll take him over what's become of the New Deal Party.
William Tyndale -- Yes, we get so tribal! One of my daughters teaches math; the other is a doctor: they were telling me they found themselves in a CEU class, together. I'm simplifying the process, but in essence: There would be four subjects at a table, and they'd be told one of them would get, say, $1,000. Of course they all wanted to be that person. Then the "winner" was told that to get the money, it was contingent on agreeing that the other three would get $5,000 each. In almost every case the winner would refuse the $1,000 insisting it was unfair! They would do without rather than accept that others got more! The point was beyond jealousy; their reasons revealed a lurking suspicion of exclusion of tribal entitlement. That method of infuriating taxpayers with tales Welfare Queens, those non-working "takers" doing less but getting more who have us voting against our best interests out of resentment. I'm still trying to process what's causing this predictable behavior.
"Neo-marxism"... You people are even worse than the postmodernists.
Give it a rest. You aren't saying anything. Even worse than postmodernism is the new 'discourse of the internet' comprised of populist, right-wing rubbish.
Perhaps the difference between right prattle on the internet and left prattle is that the western democratic state supports and bankrolls left prattle. Populist right-wing rubbish is not as powerful as many think, esp in Europe - where social democratic shit runs in the veins of the body politic. Rawls may have been American and a social democrat, but he is the essence of Europe and postmodernism's power.
In fact most of postmodernism is simply a justification for the existence of an over-powerful state, while pretending to be neutral (sometimes and or ultimately) about such things.
PM is a con trick - it pretends to be, or is, more than one thing and is simultaneously many, often, conflicting things. This is insane and stupid but careers are invested in such stupidity.
This is hardly novel in modern public policy and can be detected as early as the beginning of the 20th century in policy areas like education . There, disparate and conflicting policy is a century+ old.
This is what happens if you put intellectuals in charge of public policy. Intellectuals are fucking morons and should be told to fuck off.
Fuck postmodernism, fuck the left and fuck the power of the modern state.
Postmodernists could build us missile defence by merely disagreeing with the conceptual framework of nuclear physics.
nice jijijijij
They wouldn't because a missile is shaped like a penis and therefore sexist. They would just give all individuals explosive liquid (gender fluid) and let them chose the shape of their own defence weapon.
You just gave me a laugh! Thank you!
good one - lol
Funny. ❤
"E=mc2 is sexist" ...and I spat my drink laughing
Didn't you know. They never dropped the atom bomb either, it's all subjective. The Japanese made it up.
What Jane Elliot did was try to make people empathise and get closer together.
Identity politics makes people focus on their own victim or perpetrator status and actively denies opportunities to erase boundaries between groups.
It reinforces in-group and out-group structures.
I also doubt Elliot believes post modernist crap. Her experiment was taken too far by people who saw it as a tool for tearing down power structures instead of helping people.
SierraSierraFoxtrot I don't think she's a Post-Modernist. The trouble with Post-modernism is, it's fine for interpreting Ingmar Bergman Movies and Italo Calvino novels but, Science? Politics? Pfff
I know Jane Elliot has been an good activist but, her work has been taken on by a bunch of bullies who use much more harsh tactics than herself when giving seminars. But I've also heard her say "All White people are supremacists [Not racists, supremacists] if that wasn't true you didn't do very well at school". She's a big advocate for the "It's All systemic" argument. When she started in the USA you had the Jim Crow South which was starting to be dismantled. To use that argument in the UK 2007 is a bit misguided. She also talked about Identity all day long, I happened to agree with a lot about what she said about identity in fact but, again, when the people you are teaching are soft in the head, this is what you get. I don't blame her, I don't blame Post-Modernism or John Rawls either but the three together in the minds of spoiled little tyrants who sound like Roman Emperors but claim to be "Left-Wing" well ..... I've met a lot of bullies in my time and every single one claimed to be "Oppressed" or at some point said "I hate Bullies". They think that they are the victims even when they are the ones on the attack.
SierraSierra, Jane Elliot was an intellectual mediocrity on the Left--aren't they all?--who took the Social Environmental Hypothesis as an explanation of racial disparities for granted as true. It's the assumption that all the races are absolutely equal in innate intelligence, and that any and all disparities in their intellectual and economic achievements are due solely to disparities in their social environments. Big mistake. Her experiment was irrelevant for science. The consensus among specialists today in the relevant sciences of evolutionary biology, psychometrics, molecular biology, and neurophysiology, based on the mountain of scientific evidence that keeps piling up, is the Biological Determinist Thesis, that the races are NOT equal in innate intelligence, that their present disparate intellectual and social status correlates with their disparate genetic profiles. And there's nothing that can be done to change them, leftists' Wishful Thinking aside.
The only people in academia who persist in clinging to the Social Environmental Hypothesis for dear life are the non-specialists in the humanities and social sciences, e.g., anthropologists, sociologists, historians, philosophy instructors, etc., unfortunately, whose numbers are legion.
Jane Elliot was a 3rd grade teacher, not a scientist or an intellectual.
Your criticism should reflect reality.
Did you hear the one about the post modern mafia boss?
He's gonna make you an offer you can't understand.
😆
Xe's gonna make you an offer that you're a bigoted member of the oppressor class if you refuse... and also, how dare you assume the Mafia boss' gender!
Postmodernists missed the elephant.
lol
Clips such as this are wonderful encapsulations of what postmodernism is commonly taken to be: loose context and rapid-fire buzzwords in an ocean of self-righteous indignation.
And I could defend any statement, no matter how ridiculous, by simply claiming that I'm not being understood, and anyone who disagrees is "self-righteous". THAT is the secret of postmodernism. It's yet another version of "accuse your opponent of the very thing you're doing".
It's the adult equivalent to the childish "I know you are, but what am I?"
My dad became a postmodernist at 70 after his memory and good mind died.
I took an English and Media Studies degree in the mid-90's. One day, a lecturer told me that the text we were studying meant anything I wanted it to mean and that this applied to all language. This is when I realised that the course was garbage and so after my first year I left and studied English elsewhere. However, before I left, I bet a fellow student I could incorporate any random quotes into our next paper. I took a piece of discarded photocopying we found in the bin and I used it in the next paper - even before we'd seen the question: it received a first. Postmodernism is a case of those who have nothing worth saying, saying it with words that convince idiots that they are saying something profound.
Postmodern thinking turned me into an empiricist.
This didn't age well. We now know that Social Text was not (and never was) a peer reviewed journal. It was an obscure zine. The editors read Sokal's paper and asked Sokal to revise certain sections, which he refused to do. So the paper was put aside for two years before it was even published as part of an issue devoted to science and society. The fact that the paper was published does not mean it undermined all postmodernism, as Sokal seems to have believed. It is one paper in one zine. Similar hoaxes have been done to other journals in other academic fields. The Sokal affair only tells us about the quality of one zine.
I always think of Post-modernist thinkers and acolytes as victims of their own ridiculous practical joke. They’re all laughing manically at the world and each other but it’s been going on so long no one can remember what the joke was about. And now they’re scared because if one of them stops laughing and says ‘hold on a minute what they fuck are we laughing about??’ They might loose face. So they just hysterically laugh into eternity because to stop would suddenly give it meaning.
Brilliant comment!
This gets at the heart of epistemology. Really, what is knowledge outside of our own phenomenal experience? With that said, science is the best epistemological approach to knowing the noumenal world (in Kantian terminology); and post modernism is a sham.
Abu Antar Why am i surprised that a concise and informed comment had so few likes?
bigMACDavey Thank you for taking notice!
Yes and yes, AA.
In Kantian terms the noumenal world is unknowable by definition. Science IS the best methodology of less biased pattern recognition as it has the best track record of getting us what we want, but the patterns recognized will always only be patterns of experience. For Kant the metaphysical is beyond perception.
If you understood Kant, science is about the phenomenal world.
One problem with the Sokal Hoax, as proof of anything, is that it is a one case study and it is not possible to conduct a statistically significant study based on his "experiment". It was a prank that exposed some bad practices of one journal, but does it bring a universal truth? I am not sure we can say that categorically.
And because you let's say, refute Sokal, does that mean that there is no universal truth?
@@criss5405 I know I'm quite a bit late but if you personally disagree with "Je pense donc je suis" than I guess yes
It confirms what a lot of people are saying all over the place already, and what is plainly visible if you pay attention.
@@mr_reborn Which is?
It exposed the obvious lies of the foremost postmodernists, we could of course claim this just means the top ones are crock.
Fun Fact: Dr. Sokal's paper was published on April 1, 1996.
Postmodernism in a nutshell is recreational outrage.
Postmodernism is a mental illness
Hah. Very original
"recreational outrage", I like it. Cheers.
+Daemon postmodernism is a construct created by people who believe science is the same thing as life. Art, literature, music, love, hate, politics, relationships, clothes, cars blah blah blah on and on, all subjective realities. If there was an OBJECTIVE reality, we would have discovered it long ago, Hitler was wrong, MAO was wrong, Pol Pot was wrong there are infinite ways to be human not one.
'recreational outrage' Well said, I will use this.
The person in the cover shot isn't Sokal. It's Bruno Latour.
I think that the main importance of postmodernism is its challenge to the metanarratives, I do agree with the postmodernist in this point.
Agreed. We have no standards by which metanarratives can be evaluated, so postmodernists try to find other reasons for why one way of thinking might be preferred over any and all others.
"Completely Destroyed!!"
Don't you ever get tired of writing these titles?
K Y Racist! 😝
As far s we know, 2+2 = 5 is also true, and is also a plausible answer. 2+2 = 4 just yields us a more common result that can be used for any use of efficiency. We are going off decimal as a matter of fact. The point of the CommonCore method is to look at the *structure*, not the answer. But turn that to a conspiracy man. Anyway, I hate CommonCore anyway as its an obsure government sponsored program with its intents not laid bare. However that doesn't mean we should reward ignorance and comfort.
As much as I'd like to see some sense knocked into the humanities. The Sokal affair seems to have been a mere setback. Twenty years later and things are crazier then ever.
§öphişt "as far as we know 2+2=5"???
that can only comes.from someone who
1.- Doesnt know shit about math
2.- Doesnt know shit about the phisophy of math
how can you make that conclusion? Math = Logic, and logic = reason and argument, and math creates nuances out of things (we used math to create and manipulate objects)
Sounds like to me you fear the unknown and you are basically trying to reconfirm your bias.
Sadly, Post-modernism has only tightened its stranglehold on academia since Sokal's expose. One is reminded of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice in Fantasia.
Tasty Worker You Christians have been saying that shit for 2,000 years.
And remember: the sorcerer was forced to clean up want his apprentice started.
Part of the issue here is a misunderstanding of the intention of most reputable postmodernists. The intention is not to doubt that there isn't some event really happening, but that the certainty of any one perspective is incomplete. Relativism has been around for millennia, but relativity and relational thinking has only more recently been accessible to the masses. "Post" modernity doesn't necessarily mean after the END of modernity, but having passed through modernity and learned something about modernity and its limitations.
Very well put. It is far too easy to pretend that postmodern means antimodern.
Humor (esp. mockery) has a sanitizing effect on self-importance. Academia has made itself uniquely susceptible to this cleansing agent.
Yes. Especially the mockery of those who have no experience with academia. I can only imagine how excited a construction worker would be for a lawyer to mock his profession, as the non-academics mock the academics.
The speed of sound is being oppressed by the speed of light! #allspeedsmatter
In good debate practice I was taught that you take on the opponent's perspective and truly understand it and then argue FOR it. I'm not sure anyone I have ever heard in any setting has done this with Postmodernism because they don't demonstrate much understanding of it.
The problem here is the postmodernists can't describe their own theories.
Postmodernist theories and just vague and dumb enough just doing so with them is extremely difficult and not fruitful. You won't get anything out of taking on the perspective of a flat earther, they'll always be wrong
@@paddleed6176This is because post-modernism (or, to be more accurate, post-structuralism) doesn’t consist of theories in the generally accepted sense of the word, for the simple reason that it constitutes the questioning of all theory.
If we say that Sokal "destroyed" post modernism, ie, that a single hoax can demolish an entire academic approach, then we are committed to Piltdown man "destroying" science, which is nonsense. Post modernism has problems, and some practitioners of post modernism are intellectual frauds, as Sokal demonstrated. But that does not mean post modernism is entirely without intellectual merit. Post modernists have made some genuinely insightful observations - and they do so consistently in areas where those following more classical epistemologies consistently fail to do so.
The different is that Piltdown man was already considered dubious from the getgo by many academics, it just couldn't be proven that its a hoax for a while for several reason. Secondly, you cannot really replicate another Piltdown Man in hard sciences, at least no where near this kind of scale and absurdity. Whereas not only can the Sokal Affair be replicated, it HAS been done so with the intent of replicating it, except this time its actually far worse and says more about the "academic left" than anything Sokal affair could've said. Look up the grievances studies hoax, its insane. The sheer scale of this hoax is what is truly notable, not just the number of hoaxes exposed. If it wasn't obvious then, it surely is obvious now that a large portion of leftist academia are intellectual frauds, phonies and actual dangers to western civilization
Along with Sokal in the 1990s, the great philosopher of science Karl Popper published the essay and book entitled “The Myth of The Framework” - ie, that the claim that understanding different perspective turn on the impossibility of verification communication without common premises and experience. Popper shows us that this ancient sophistry is defeated by the common problem-solution dituation. This Truth is taught repeatedly by honest historians covering Europes encounters with New World and Oriental cultures for many hundreds of years. Failure to admit this demonstrates the vacuity and banality of PoMo “philosophy”. The scribe’s indoctrinating evil are ever so busy.
All Sokal did was show that scientific concepts were being misused in post-modern philosophy. He didn't "destroy" post-modernism, whatever that's supposed to mean.
So, the falsification and exposure of cult beliefs as NOT science has no value? You ought to be aware that the witches that used to be burned for blasphemy in the old days are no different from the “deplatformed” victims of censorship today.
Oh gawd! He defeated the mighty strawman! :O
Your country is crumbling under postmodern ideas, and you talk about strawman. How blind can you be?
In a sence, the whole Postmodernism is a strawman, an academic pseudo-intellectual nonsence with thesaurus.
The positivist still checks under his bed for monsters.
Loved the elephant analogy at the end!
Why are all these titles so hyperbolic? It makes me feel 14 years old. "Destroyed postmodernism forever?" - Oh, so we can just consider this issue solved, then? No honest thinker feels the need to banish an entire school of thought. It wouldn't exist if it didn't have some elements of truth. These titles are way too self-congradulatory, oversimplified, and drawing an unnecessary line in the sand so you can get an easy ego-boost by "othering" an entire wing of philosophy.
Actually its done for clicks and traffic... and dollars. Not condoning it, but you clicked too, didnt you.
It's anti-intellectual.
This is all true. I taught myself postmodern philosophy through the "Introducing" books by Icon. They destroyed me. No joke. They stripped me of all meaning and purpose. Caused me to destroy the old foundations but gave me nothing to replace them with. All that was left was despair and nihilism.
Small number voted this down. Such people are socially constructed.
Ooooo you got us man, you really did.
I don't believe you are the author of that comment. The author is dead. It (the author) is a social construct.
Please don't ask why death is not a social construct.
A student once asked me whether social constructs are social constructs - I replied that's the question you ask about God, when in childhood.
The commenter has assured to herself that op is a dead fedora with arms
"If you dare be one of the few different from the rest of society, you're obviously socially constructed"
Or maybe you're so concerned with what the popular opinion is that you're demonstrating the same as you seek to demonstrate.
The 1st is right. I am socially constructed. I have no moral agency. I am part of a minority culture and that culture is also socially constructed. Furthermore, we are not responsible for anything we do. So when we come and shit in your street, and rape your daughters, we are not responsible. That we are socially constructed means we carry the promise that we may be re-made in the image or design of some maker. Such designers are lefty and have attended 3rd rate universities, studied 2nd rate subjects which are dominated by 4th or 5th rate thinkers. They can't even get the number order right! Having said that, I like the idea of God being a social worker. Beards and sandals - it gives a sense of continuity.
Sokal proved that, despite conventional wisdom, dazzling with brilliance and baffling bullshit are not mutually exclusive.
This is great. What he said about not forgetting that there is still an elephant there, nails the whole problem.
It doesn’t take a tenured professor to tell you that this man does not understand what post modernism is
If I wanted to learn about post modernism who would you rec
@@hectorgarza5205 hi yes first id like to point out that the idea that there is a monolithic wave of ideas dubbed "post modernism" is kinda weird as many "post modernist" thinkers had some pretty different beliefs and toolboxes, and are mostly seem really only connected in their hypercriticality and all that comes from that. Maybe check out Derrida, and Boudrillard.
“Consciousness is used in the service of hierarchy,” says Bataille. However, Lyotard’s essay on capitalist libertarianism implies that reality comes from the collective unconscious. If neostructuralist narrative holds, we have to choose between textual theory and precultural narrative. If one examines subdeconstructive theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept Sartreist existentialism or conclude that language is capable of intentionality. In a sense, Hubbard[1] suggests that the works of Rushdie are not postmodern. Foucault suggests the use of capitalist subdialectic theory to read and analyse society.
Thus, the main theme of the works of Rushdie is the role of the poet as observer. The subject is interpolated into a subdeconstructive theory that includes culture as a reality. Therefore, Sontag uses the term ‘neostructuralist narrative’ to denote the bridge between sexual identity and society. The subject is contextualised into a cultural paradigm of discourse that includes art as a totality.
It could be said that Lacan uses the term ‘subdeconstructive theory’ to denote not narrative, as Lyotard would have it, but prenarrative. Bataille promotes the use of neostructuralist narrative to attack outmoded, colonialist perceptions of culture. Therefore, the subject is interpolated into a subdeconstructive theory that includes reality as a reality. The collapse, and eventually the dialectic, of neostructuralist narrative depicted in Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet emerges again in The Moor’s Last Sigh.
[1]. Hubbard, M. (1981)
Subdeconstructive theory and neostructuralist narrative. Yale University Press
Can you say no truth exists, isn't that a statement of truth??
Pop Land No, there are truths. I live on earth, I'm a specific height and weight with a specific set of biological and psychological functions. These are all truths, your choice is to accept truths or deny them. If you choose to lie to yourself and arrogantly claim to know lies to be truth then that leads down a path of cynical, bitter arrogance that can only manifest itself as anger, hate and violence. Certain truths actually exist, whether you like it or not. Be at peace with these truths or deny them, the choice is yours.
Pop Land bingo. saying there is no truth is a performative contradiction- it attempts to assert a truth even as it denies that truth exists.
young people, pop land in her opening statement doesn’t mean that it is specifically “true” when she calls it a statement of truth, she means that intends to articulate truth
Unless you are working in mathematics or logic, nothing is absolutely true (black or white). Instead of absolute truth, what we should be talking about is agreement with nature. If a theory agrees with nature in 99.9% of cases, it isn't too far of a stretch to call (assume) it true (100% agreement). If a theory has only 70% agreement, counterexamples don't disprove it. It is still more correct than incorrect, but our language does not facilitate quantifying the "truthfullness" of statements.
Pop Land No, truth exists. That is a statement of truth.
Two problems: first, bad editors don't make a good theory bad. Second, if you have not made the linguistic turn, you will hardly be able to catch up with either side of this debate.
This is a pretty weak treatment. He invokes postmodern authors without actually quoting them. Instead he segues into un-cited and absurd remarks from people he has described as fans of those authors. This is really sloppy. I don't defend post modernism but I do defend ethical and charitable academic standards. If you are going to critique a particular concept you should actually take the time to describe it. Foucault, for instance, doesn't dismiss science in the way that he describes at all. Please be more thorough than this.
"He invokes postmodern authors without actually quoting them"
If you read the Sokal/Bricmont book on which this is based, you will see that it quotes several postmodernist box office stars at considerable length, which is necessary in order for the authors to establish their central claim, namely that postmodernism's champions are serial abusers of mathematical and scientific terminology which they themselves don't understand.
This ought to be followed by Peter Boghossian discussing the Sokal Hoax and it’s recurrence in the “[Race, gender, identity]…Studies Hoax” - co-authored author James Lindsey and Helen Pluckrose - who published “Award Winning” papers exposing the pablum espoused as “profound” there.
I had to endure postmodern theory as a Lit and Film major in the late 80s. Derrida was all the rage. The nonsense actually led me to abandon my master degree and escape academia. Best decision I could’ve made at the time, as it led me into a long successful career in advertising and publishing.
So you had to endure Derrida for a few weeks? You must be an expert! I did a couple of months of medicine and now I’m a doctor!
@@thefuturist8864, apparently you have difficulty with comprehension. I spent 6 years wallowing in it for my two bachelors and another two semesters in graduate studies, which convinced me to depart academia. 🤷♂️
I read Sokal & Bricmont's post-hoax book Impostures Intellectuelles, which features the hoax article as a chapter - utterly hilarious!
YES!
This video is a treasure. Thank you for posting.
"Destroyed"? Alan Sokal doesn't think he "destroyed" postmodernism. This kind of shameless hyberbole is a bit unbecoming in a video that purports to be about serious philosophy, is it not? Here are Sokal's own words on the subject:
From the mere fact of publication of my parody I think that not much can be deduced. It doesn't prove that the whole field of cultural studies, or cultural studies of science -- much less sociology of science -- is nonsense. Nor does it prove that the intellectual standards in these fields are generally lax. (This might be the case, but it would have to be established on other grounds.) It proves only that the editors of one rather marginal journal were derelict in their intellectual duty, by publishing an article on quantum physics that they admit they could not understand, without bothering to get an opinion from anyone knowledgeable in quantum physics, solely because it came from a ``conveniently credentialed ally'' (as Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins later candidly admitted[12]), flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions, and attacked their ``enemies''.
Thank you for bringing to our attention this important bit of information. It shows Sokal to be a reflective and credible thinker, and not just another career provocateur or intellectual narcissist making a fast buck from bashing the "academic left" and posing as a martyr of political correctness.
Sweet! Sorry if I was a bit salty.
yes, but the "academic left" DO need to be bashed. They have it coming.
+Hey Guys? Ever wonder why so many academics are lefties. Is it a commie plot? The Chinese are communist and our biggest trade partner, so that doesn't seem like a threat from the inside out it's already happening from the outside in. Maybe it has something to do with the popular vote in the US. Even when the left loses there are more of them then the other guys. And just wait three years, if he lasts that long, ALABAMA elected a democrat? It's gonna be ugly for the right. So you got the academic left, the media, Hollywood, LGBTQs, the judiciary, the intelligence community, you got investigators, students, blacks, browns, Europe etc. And they all need bashing? Let us know how that works for you......
Well no single paper or book alone can destroy a movement. It's more like death from 1000 cuts and some cuts count for more than others. Of course this does not mean that listening to the arguments of one person alone in one sitting can never be enough to convince the listener. I imagine all of those disaffected college students in their sociology courses reading a chapter from Foucault or Heidegger or Derrida and becoming instant converts! If it's possible to destroy the idea of there being objective facts and a mind-independent reality from one person giving a lecture in front of naive impressionable disaffected college students, or from reading a few paragraphs of "truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever" then I guess anything is possible.
But the real issue is not whether any one person or anyone movement can destroy another movement. The real issue is whether there can be any movement that destroys the possibility of objective truth or falsity without destroying itself. In this regard some would say clips like this and even Sokal's work are redundant. But I would say, given the current sociopolitical climate and our inability to take a stand against or disempower those who propound "alternative facts", they help to remind us once again of the real issue.
All of this is based on the deeply mistaken conception many people have that postmodernism denies that there is a reality out there. It absolutely does not. What it does deny is that we can ever have a pure, transparent apprehension of that reality, not mediated by the emphases and limits of social constructs (including language). If you think about it that way, the claims of postmodernism have obvious merits for questioning and undoing some of the assumptions on which our world is based. In other words, postmodernists certainly wouldn't deny that "e=mc-squared" works, within its given assumptions, but they would inquire how that line of thinking comes to be and if it is the only way to approach the truth of the universe--something with which quantum physicists themselves would fully concur. The problem comes with a false relativism--people saying, if there is no one, pure truth, than all versions of truth must be equal--which is absolutely NOT the point of postmodernism.
"What it does deny is that we can ever have a pure, transparent apprehension of that reality, not mediated by the emphases and limits of social constructs (including language)" - If everything we know is mediated by social/linguistic constructs then how do we know for sure if the universe exists or if DNA is real or if E=MC^2? How do we know if postmodernism is correct? If the answer is "we don't know" or "all we can know is what we create or construct that makes sense that some how fits or works", you are left with scepticism, relativism or pragmatism, all of which represents different pomo flavors.
"The problem comes with a false relativism--people saying, if there is no one, pure truth, than all versions of truth must be equal--which is absolutely NOT the point of postmodernism." - It may not be the point of postmodernism but it damn sure is one of the logical implications. Most pomos actually seem to realize this and go for it yet you don't. Even the pragmatists eventually has to explain why this or that action works better than another on the basis of some claim about what is true or false or right or wrong.
All that this pomo nonsense amounts to is us chasing our own tails not even being able to capture it let alone moving forward in a socially progressive manner.
I would be more inclined to take people 'destroying' postmodernism seriously if a) they showed any understanding of the philosophers they are criticising and b) if they understood that the idea that what is often called the 'postmodern conception of truth' is not that all beliefs are equally true, but that the standard for what counts as truth dependent on something else.
I too can 'destroy' a position by strawmanning the hell out of it by relating it to famous philosophers whom I have never read. Look here it goes: "Everyone who beliefs in cultural progress is stupid, you know people that follow Hegel, because once the admins of the leading white supremacy forum did not realise that a troll was sharing fake information."
I did it, I wrecked the vaguely, nondescript position of 'believers in cultural progress' by not mentioning any of the arguments they use, misrepresenting their position, taking a very particular and extremist group of people that I choose to make representative of this position, linking it to a famous philosopher who's work I have not read but I belief to be somewhat related to the topic because someone else once told me so and mentioning how in this group of people there was an outlet that was unable to check the validity of an article.
By following these steps anyone can 'destroy' anything! Just add water!
Posting on a random forum is not the same as submitting a paper for peer review and publication in an academic setting.
@@musashidanmcgrathYou're kinda proving OP's point by just saying whatever you think will sound like a bigger dunk on your opponent:
Sokal submitted an article/essay, not a paper, and
Social Text (the magazine he submitted it to) was not peer reviewed at the time of his submission and didn't claim to be.
@@musashidanmcgrath the paper wasn't peer reviewed it was a journal that commonly published fiction and opinion pieces, please actually read up on what you're criticizing
@@marcuscarlson7911 I'm talking generally. Obviously it wasn't peer reviewed. That's the entire point.
@@musashidanmcgrath but it really isn't, because there are peer reviewed critical studies journals, the guy just decided not to submit to one of them because he knew that his article wouldnt be accepted
That bastard. I didn't listen to that quote all the way to the end, so I literally spent the last 2 hours learning about Freud, and Jacques Lacan to try to make sense of any of that BS. Then I gave up and played it all the way through and realized I wasn't just stupid af.
Great channel
Why, oh why, is Bruno Latour pictured on the thumbnail for this video!? Sure, he's a contemporary French philosopher, but he is in so many ways the antithesis of this movement: brilliantly clear writing, razor sharp arguments, and offering a way out of the dangers of postmodernism and the "science wars". PLEASE don't lump him in with the philosophical approaches critiqued in this video. Apart from my beef with Latour's pic, a great video!!
He coauthored a highly influential book with Steve Woolgar called "Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts" which did no less than to obscure the difference between the idea of there being scientific facts and the way in which we try to acquire those scientific facts. Was this Latour's fault or was it because his audience are too intellectually dimwitted to know the difference? To be fair and respectful to the authors, one might have suspected the latter. But in the that book Latour and Woolgar are very careless and very imprecise with the way in which they use the word "fact", with their frequent use of the word "construction" and "creative" referring to the practice of science, while also being quite strong in their criticism about what they perceived to be a lack of an empirical basis for modern science.
"We do not deny that science is a highly creative activity. It is just that the precise nature of this creativity is widely misunderstood. Our use of creative does not refer to the special abilities of certain individuals to obtain greater access to a body of previously unrevealed truths; rather it reflects our premise that scientific activity is just one social arena in which knowledge is constructed." (pg. 31)
If indeed he was trying to offer a "way out of the dangers of postmodernism and the "science wars""... well he sometimes has a strange way of showing it. I would say that at best he can be considered utterly careless in the way in which he communicated his message and quite confused about the issues like many postmodernists/social constructionists are. That is being generous to him.
Thanks for your reply. I see, and mostly agree. However, this is VERY early book by Latour, and since the '90s he has been very clear to assert that he does not deny the facts of science. In fact, he was appalled by how Laboratory Life was misinterpreted and abused. I would direct you to an excellent, short article from 2004 which clarifies his views on science, and in which he demolishes the relativist, post-modern denial of scientific fact: "Why has Critique run out of Steam?". It's genuinely a fun read. Latour really eviscerates Critical Theory (the core discipline which Sokal rails against) in his book "Reassembling the Social," also from 2004. In the book he also clarifies what it means to say something is "constructed" or is "a construct", and how this idea is so often abused in the humanities to great detriment of society. You might be pleasantly surprised by his work. Take it for me, Latour is definitely on our side, so to speak!
Thanks for that. I had a quick read of the article and note the following quote:
"The mistake we made, the mistake I made, was to believe that there was no efficient way to criticize matters of fact except by moving away from them and directing one’s attention toward the conditions that made them possible. But this meant accepting much too uncritically what matters of fact were." - He then goes on to say "Reality is not defined by matters of fact. Matters of fact are not all that is given in experience. Matters of fact are only very partial"
I can see what he is trying to do and I see your point in defending him and so in light of this we should not label him as a postmodernist or constructivist (or whatever!).... But I would point out that his use of the term "fact" or the phrase "matters of fact" is still rather careless! Maybe it's a language barrier thing (him being French) but I'm not sure. Maybe he can't break free from the shackles of his French intellectualism and his sociology upbringing! So what is Latour trying to say? That in trying to discover those facts, the tools that we have, our sense experiences, our capacity to reason, our ability to communicate through language, are still very crude, while at the same time we have to overcome biases, prejudices, sociopolitical influences - Is that what his point is? That it's really really hard to discover facts about the world? Well duh!
Maybe scientists themselves and the public that take for granted what scientists say and Latour's work is intended to educate them. That's fine. But I think his method of education is itself so philosophically unsophisticated and crude and confused and obtuse that all he will achieve is to create the kind of confusion that he has created and more likely to promote postmodernism than to fight against it! And in the end he has to distance himself from the pomos and then needs to explain himself like he has in this article that you cite.
I mean no philosopher (in the west) with a basic education in metaphysics and epistemology assumes a "naive realist" view of the world, nor do they assume science justifies that naive realism. In other words no philosopher thinks that facts are just plucked off of trees and eaten fresh. We know there is processing involved, statistical inferences, caveats, confounders, controls, the need to repeat and replicate experiments, tentative conclusions, discussion, argument, debate, qualification, peer review and critique. We don't need no damn sociologist to tell us that this is what happens.
Instead of reading Latour who is more sociologist than philosopher, people should just do a basic college entry level course in metaphysics and epistemology and philosophy of science. I can see that Latour is on our side but perhaps he is best kept on the bench and out of the play! At best he can be a spy or insider and infiltrate the opposition and bring them down from the inside!
Thanks for your (very thorough) reply. Put it simply, Latour shows how the actions we take, the tools we use, and the words we employ are an essential part of how we construct what we call "facts" and "reality". In short, he shows how the results of scientific inquiry are objective and not subject to relativist "deconstruction". However, how these results are expressed (through prose, text, etc) are constructed through our semiotic toolbox, and are subject to deconstruction and debate. For the scientists, his work simply reminds them of how the tools in the laboratory and tools of language shape their results. For the social science scholar, he illustrates how scientific facts exist and are not subject to relativist deconstruction. Anyway, this is a vast oversimplification of Latour's incredibly nuanced work. If you really want a complete exegesis on the techniques of Actor-Network Theory and his critique of postmodern critical theory, start with Reassembling the Social. Anyway, thanks again!
I'm starting to think that Latour is confused. I don't think he successfully illustrates how scientific facts exist and are not subject to relativist deconstruction at all. A very simple disclaimer at the outset that scientific facts exist independently of semiotics, social theory, anthropology, language, biology, physics etc, would have saved him a lot of trouble. But he doesn't do this. Is it because he is stupid or ignorant? Or perhaps he doesn't truly believe this at all. Maybe he is still confused.
Semiotics and social theory explain how humans communicate and socially interact (which includes scientists in their laboratories) but this has ZERO to do with the purpose of science and the existence of scientific facts. Human biology and human biophysics explains how humans survive and function and move about (including scientists) - but this has ZERO to do with the purpose of science and the existence of scientific facts. So what the hell is Latour and any other "sociologist of science" or "anthropologist of science" trying to do? Is it just a hobby? Like bird-watching? Scientist-watching?
Maybe Latour does actually believe that the social, lingustic, physical and biological dimensions of human existence somehow affect facts about the world. He likes to use the word "facts" and "reality" instead of "beliefs" or even "knowledge". That demonstrates utter carelessness, ignorance or at best confusion. It is starting to appear to me that Latour may be has already committed himself to an anti-realist or relativist deconstructionist view of knowledge and reality. I'm not familiar with his Actor_network theory but it sounds very anti-realist, constructivist and relativist. This is from the Wikipedia entry on ANT - "Broadly speaking, ANT is a constructivist approach in that it avoids essentialist explanations of events or innovations (i.e. ANT explains a successful theory by understanding the combinations and interactions of elements that make it successful, rather than saying it is true and the others are false)".
This might be my own prejudice but I point out that he has a background in sociology, anthropology and French philosophy, not science, or philosophy or science or metaphysics or epistemology. So if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck... maybe it's a duck. And a complete exegesis on Latour or ANT or anything in the postmodern, poststructuralism, social theory, sociology, anthropology, hermeneutics, semiotics, literature would be a total waste of time. Too obscure, inconsistant, equivocal, crude, and conjectural. Practically incomprehensible compared to the works in every other discipline. Hence you get all kinds of conflicting interpretations that go nowhere.
My objection to this treatise is contingent, yet prevailing throughout, upon a regressive/agressive bi-constructual duplicity implied by the speaker's conspicuously unstated disavowal of a preeminent, self-referential sub-eminence. Otherwise I concur with him.
I am so so so glad I found you.
Constant attacks on reality, objectivity and reason are now everywhere in our culture. This world needs Ayn Rand!
Why is reason good? what about unreason? like passions, feelings, love?
What did Aya Rand do?
As a living young commentator cogently sums up Rand, reality doesn’t give crap about you “feelings. Thus, reality always has the final say. And Rand would add that your only fundamental choice in your existence is whether or not you choose to acknowledge it.
While postmodern thought makes assertions on a position of unjustifiability, this monologue kind of misses the point. The claim is not that there is no "real"; the claim is that what is the "real" cannot be known through anything other than the filter of the observer, and is therefore only a representation constructed relatively by the observer. The models that we construct to describe what we observe, to each other, are representations. So, we all exist relatively in this medium. And, that which we refer to as "real" is itself a representation of whatever is, so the "real" is therefore relative.
these kinds of monologues will always miss the point because they are fundamentally premised on a midwit's understanding of a libelous caricature rather than a committed thinker's engagement with the actual text. What people who come to these kinds of videos want is to be rewarded for being lazy and uncurious, they want to be patted on the back and affirmed when they dont understand something- its not a failure on their part, but is in fact a grand academic conspiracy to pump out nonsense, purely just to 'confuse' and 'subvert' you. This is the 'rational explanation' these paranoiac simpletons have cooked up in place of being honest with themselves and admitting they don't understand.
Man, what a hysteric and unrelaxed way of speaking. Hurts to listen to. Need a stiff drink to calm my senses after watching this. By God, take it easy, man. Everything is gonna be ok.
Apart from this neurotic's style: as much as I agree with bashing the non-constructive ways of postmodernism, there is just simply no way to say there is something like an objective 'true' reality, at least in the empirical sense in which tihis man means it; it is typical of a special sort of scientism, which is devoid of any imagination and which is totally enclosed within the human world as if that is the locus of truth, and totally enclosed within its time in history, to make that claim.
But this is not even the point. this scientism thinks there is a dictionary of 'real things' out there, a list of names and words, floating apart from creation, in which the 'real' things are listed. Atoms are there. Tables are there. But reality is way too subtle and elusive to be broken down into 'the ultimately real things.' It just does not work that way.
I find the arguments this squeeqy-voiced man uses to be not convincing at all, and by far not self-critical enough. To admit that 'yes, reality is mediated by our senses (Immanuel Kant), and yes, there is such a thing as perspective (the elephant metaphor is borrowed from Buddhism, but squeeker doens't care to mention)' and after that stating that there still is an objective reality, which is ultimate, is like saying: 'sure, there are very convincing philosophical arguments out there for X, but we are still going to go with Y.. Just.....because.' Immanuel Kant wrote a whole goddam book to show that the 'ultimately real thing' (Ding an sich) does not exist, or rather that we cannot acces it, and this man says: 'not true. I've seen it meself! I've seen it through me microscope, which is state of the art modern, so I should know. I mean goddammit, we live in the 21 century! Don't you think we should have stumbled upon the objective reality by now? I've seen it! Through me microsope! It is very modern, it's the newest, I got it for my birthday.'
We will never be able to have knowledge that is unconditioned, unmediated, not culturally and historically determined, not totally intertwined with society's way of looking at things. It will never ever happen, simply because knowledge is never formed in a vacuum apart from the world- as much as hysteria-man wants to think. Science is a product of of its time, and it wil always be that way.
This is not the same thing as agreeing with postmoderism, which just wants to break any narrative about the cosmos into a million pieces and leaves us no ground to stand on. It is simply saying: our knowledge about the world is never precise, always conditioned, always from a human perspective, and it is very limited. It would become us to see this and be humbled just a tiny bit.
Niiiiice! Thank you for taking the time to express a wider perspective.
Now tell me moron, is this the objective truth?
The problem with Sokal’s account of postmodernism is that it doesn’t take into account the centuries of philosophical enquiry that has led to it. Postmodernism (or, to be more precise, poststructuralism) is an attempt to put into practice Nietzsche’s critique of truth, wherein he wrote that what we call truth is always grounded in some kind of fiction. For example: the idea that objective truth exists and that it is derived from our experience of the physical world is founded upon various ideas such as a cognising self, faculties of the mind which are consistent with the objects of physical reality, and neutrality of methodology. None of things can be taken as given, and they are only rendered thinkable on the basis of related ideas. There is no ‘view from nowhere’ and all thought takes place within, and because of, contexts.
It is, sadly, rare to find anyone who has attempted to engage with postmodern thought (without intending to undermine or ridicule it) and who can present a reasoned objection to it. Overwhelmingly, most of its critics begin by assuming its falsity and put forward an overly simplistic and false conception of what it is.
Sokal exposes what "peer review" means in postmodernism. It means nothing.
The journal he submitted the paper to was not peer reviewed, and did not claim to be.
Also, it was published as a think piece, not a piece of rigorous academic work.
Peer review, as understood in empirical science, is not applicable to other fields. Can we imagine a book review that has been ‘peer reviewed’? What about a work of epistemology or moral philosophy? Why must we equate empirical adequacy with meaningfulness?
The irony is that many of the leading exponents of moral relativism (e.g., BF Skinner, Paul de Man) have been reactionary and conservative. Noam Chomsky, on the other hand, has consistently been one of the fiercest critics of postmodernism, and one of the most cogent advocates of an absolute basis for moral judgement. Finally, Alan Sokal himself is, in his own words, "an unabashed Old Leftist".
Sokal is one with Pepe.
JCDenton 2012 shadilay
A few books if you're interested in this subject:
Fashionable Nonsense (Alan Sokal with Jean Bricmont)...mostly excerpts of writings by prominent social constructionists but with side commentary by Sokal and Bricmont. They highlight the nonsense in the text and explain why it's jibberish or nonsensical when they specifically attempt to use scientific jargon. It includes the Social Text essay mentioned in the video as an appendix.
Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left (Roger Scruton)...each chapter deals with the work and its surrounding social/historical context of a foundational postmodern/relativist/neomarxist thinker. Fairly heavy but well worth the read; despite the title it's actually pretty balanced.
The Social Construction of What? (Ian Hacking)...I haven't read this one yet, it's on my list. Hacking is prominent in philosophy of science (which is deeply informed by the history of science). This is his contribution to and assessment of the "Science Wars."
If you want to read something to balance yourself out, Science as Social Knowledge by Helen (surname escapes me) and/or Scientific Knowledge: a Sociological Analysis by Barry Barnes and David Bloor.
Most of the above are history/philosophy of science oriented (Scruton's is broader) because that's my field. Hope they're useful. Scruton has a cool art documentary called "Why Beauty Matters" that can easily be found online...it's his thesis on why postmodernism is a blight on art/architecture. There's also a paper criticising how differential equations were employed via the work of some social constructionist...I think it's by either Bricmont or Sokal, it's absolutely seething with rage/annoyance and worth reading. If I remember, I'll edit with the title/author...if I forget you can probably find it via Google or Google Scholar
I am not really post-modernist but all these guys that criticize it to it's core really go out of their way in their cherry-picking for most radical thoughts in it. guys... don't take their word for it - read Derrida and Foucault - and then make your decisions, really, there is a lot you can learn from them. Make your own conclusions
indra gleizde Sure. While I'm at it, I'll read the Quran to get a good feel for equality between the sexes.
I think the idea here is to pick the most extremist view of any idea and present it as the core of that ideology, which is a very easy way to avoid discussion and critical thinking. It's a way to not hear what others have to say.
exactly, whilst its true theorists like Sandra Harding which he quotes might fall within the boundaries of his strawman, they are pretty outside, barely considered as anything to do with the core of it. Postmodernism is not even an ideology, I can find arguments between various postmodernists discussing BETWEEN themselves holding opposing views on whether science is truth becuse the majority do keep it as truth and only criticise the surrounding culture of science. But there's not really a connecting thread, half of his confusion is between postmodernITY which is the cultural phenomena or 'era' criticised by various postmodernists in the first place-what we might define as "post-truth" you'd only have to read a smigen of Baudrillard to find he is predicting and critiquing what we now call "post truth" society NOT supporting it!. Postmodernism is not a helpful term, its just an umbrella for various critical thinkers that couldn't be pigeonholed, the only thing shared is opposition to ideology in fact.
@indra gleizde I would rather the premises necessitate the conclusion.
indra gleizde It isn't cherry picking at all. It shows the absolute conclusion of the thought process of it. These aren't extremists but those who took the work seriously enough to make it a basis for other realms of thought. It shows the failure of the ideas by not holding up in other context. When an idea is formed, it must hold up within all the realms of thought.
This is great. Objective reality exists and it's preferable to know what it is when possible. But, sometimes we don't yet have all the facts on most things, which makes reality appear less objective than it really is.
Operating like that isn't inherently a problem if you know that's what you're doing and you don't have a more accurate understanding available.
But, it does happen regularly where things like psychiatric medications get passed off in a way that's not technically correct. We don't really know that hormones are the cause of these disorders, but we know that in many cases putting them back the way we expect them to be brings relief. Not ideal, but it's better than what was being done previously.
I dabbled in postmodernism for a while and came to the conclusion that it's somewhat acceptable if you still keep looking for a more objective truth when you haven't got anything to go by. But, the main danger is that it stops you from looking and testing.
His argument against postmodernism is not only built over a strawman, but it's also very easy to see the moment when his argument stops being about science and becomes political. Why not try to engage against the arguments of people like Foucault or Derrida instead of just trying to ridicule them?
Orange I've read a Foucault book.Or tried to, some of it was stimulating, most of it seemed like him flexing his vocabulary and was fairly nonsensical.
Im far left, but in with Chomsky. Postmodernist in academia is fairly useless and even detrimental.
+The Indispensable Chompers. right or left, if politics had an answer we'd know it by now. The world as it actually is has zero to do with a unified field theory of reality, there is none. Bean counters know that 1+1=2 and rocket scientists can sometimes get us in orbit. But that's the easy part, the hard part is getting six billion to agree on anything. You don't use science to enjoy art or literature, you don't use it to pick a spouse or a house, you don't use it..... YET, to pick an offspring. Some people love the freedom of postmodernism and some love libertarian control, or vice versa. Italians love pasta, German trains run on time, and the French think they're better then everybody else, no one knows why.
These recent 'objectivistic'' attacks against some imaginary monolithic CONSTRUCTION of their (attackers') own making labeled simply as "postmodernism" (a practice which in itself is very emblematic and telling of the primary (fraudulent) motives of the given academics and/or their seriously lacking & distorted understanding of the field) are more often than not mere politco-ideologically motivated rants/statements which have quite a different basic function than purely/ingeniously an intellectual one. These 'anti-postmodern critiques' are thus much more informative as regards the political and economical hegemony, power struggles (concerning status, resources etc.) within the universities (and also to some, in a sense paranoid, extent in the society as a whole) than of the actual nature/inherent problems defining such a diverse and complex field one could characterize with the umbrella term 'postmodern'. Ironically, the whole one-sided 'debate'/ attempted ridicule feed to public by this 'click of Anglo-American scientists' only proves the prevalence and influence of those very sociological/"Marxist" factors (they want to downplay also) at play in their ill-defined polemics presented as if intellectually sincere criticism of the 'concerned elite citizens of Academia' defending graciously the Holy Truth. A weak disguise with transparent motives, guys. Try harder! (I know you can do better.)
Orange no his argument is not based on a straw argument post-modernism precedes from a false assumption and therefore rich is a false conclusion. Knowledge is not relative perspective of that knowledge is relative but the knowledge itself the fact that the truth is not relative. This is why the whole gender argument Falls flat on its ass.
+Scott Smith there is no gender argument, there are ignorant people like you who come to conclusions based on a paucity of experience and their own subjective agenda and don't even know it. Your poor credibility would be improved slightly if you embraced punctuation.
When you don't know
that you don't know
what you don't know,
you believe you know
what you don't know.
BUT YOURE WRONG
Left, right, centrist, libertarian, etc. can move forward into action by agreement that identity politics is wrong and that Postmodernist-marxism is an evil idea. Everyone agrees. We work from there. Political agreement is always a compromise of ideals in practice but allows everyone to move forward and take action to deal with the most basic problems together.
This is a simplistic strawman criticism. Yes there are many inane ideas and positions in postmodernism, but all postmodern ideas are the same. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is the father of post-modernism. Modernism uses religious categories to define reality. Science just substitutes man for god, but all categories are essentially the same. Nietzsche blew this up in his Twilight of the Idols in 1889.
Thomasrice07
Nietzsche was a madman, who indeed fits in well with the postmodernists.
The funny thing is that you call other postmodern ideas silly, while your own believes are just as bad.
Nietzsche is not the father of postmodernism! He warned us about the dangers of a society without God.
Sokal, the forefather of The Greviance Study papers.
Except that Pluckrose, Lindsay and Boghossian had a much better idea of what they were doing. They targeted specific journals in order to test whether badly-written articles would nevertheless be published on the basis of shared political values. Sokal, on the other hand, cobbled together one paper and sent it to one journal based on a straw man that he vainly believed represented the whole of postmodernism. The former was an important test to see the extent to which political values can undermine lack of rigour, while the latter was mere arrogance.
He hasn't completely destroyed post modernism, he just taken the most outrageous and radical examples of post modernism trying to work its way into science. I agree with him that the examples he provides are insane and stupid, but post modernism is an incredibly broad movement that encompasses art and philosophy. Science is objective, values are not, postmodernism acknowledges that your morals, ethics, and sense of right and wrong are essentially built by your value structure.
For example, it's not objectively right or wrong to eat animals. One perspective is empathetic, which is that you choose not to eat animals because you feel bad for them and don't want to hurt them. Another perspective is that we should eat animals because we are evolved to be omnivores so it is ok for us to eat them. Neither perspective is the "right answer", they are both bringing valid points to the table. Which perspective you prefer is just dependent on where your values lay.
I absolutly agree. How do you explain that to retards so they realise they are being manipulated into taking sides without any regard of what the other side has to say?
Splendido Splendente Based on these comments, most of these people have a very narrow understanding of post modernism. Most of them seem to believe its synonymous with femenism
You don't destroy a 'movement' that was never a movement or ideology. there's not much shared between different postmodernists, and they basically all disown eachother anyway, certainly Sandra Harding is barely considered at all as anything but a joke!..repeat: its not an ideology- you can find this guy's criticisms very much WITHIN other postmodernist writings..... But one thing that is mostly shared is rejection of ideology, stop taking sides and ideologies as some dogma to live by, and assuming your opponents all live under one huge bible of postmodernism: at least gives us that message which this guy desperately needs: or at least to "check his fallacies!"...
jorgepeterbarton Very well put.
Postmodernism as a whole is a joke, though. Chomsky is right that it simply adds nothing to the equation. There is, ironically, no "value" in it. All you can do with a postmodernist approach is to obscure with convoluted language, or to state meaningless truisms in a way that seem profound.
You don't need to be a postmodernist to believe in moral relativism. Your argument about eating animals is a perfect example of what postmodernism is, I give you that. All you did was saying "well, either you think it's right or you don't, you can argue either way." There is nothing profound about this. And this is the full extend to which the postmodernist toolkit can bring you.
Philosophy, or ethics in this example, is precisely concerned with *which* framework *should* be chosen by people. And the philosophers in these field surely thought about meta-ethics and the question of their futility before, and in a much more deep and coherent manner, than postmodernist critics ever have. It's not enough to simply postulate that because there are different frameworks, none of them could be *right* or that any attempt to make people change their "values" is futile. You actually need to demonstrate this.
Given how heterogenous "postmodernism" is, yes, it's not easy to make an overall criticism for which there won't be lots of self-professed postmodernists who object. But that's precisely pointing to its weakness. Its defining characteristic, more than any other attribute or "core value", seems to be methodologically vague, overly wordy and convoluted gobbledygook.
The Social Text was absolutely not a major journal, it was not peer reviewed, that's how it worked. These kinds of things happen everywhere and hoaxes of this type have been made with a lot of other different scientific journals in very different fields.
The video started very badly: "There are those who believe in absolute truth and those who believe in absolute relativism".
I almost stopped the video right there.
I nevertheless watch it to the end.
Not a great video. He talks in a far too emotional way, it's difficult to filter the emotion to get the substance of what he says.
In the end, it feels like he has found his own personal boogeyman "Post-modernism". Feminists have "Patriarchy", this guy has "Post-modernism".
these sociologists and feminists/SJWs argue in emotion, even in 'scientific' sociology journals, kind of like how Sokal used 'the language of the sociologists against them' by making a stupid paper, the speaker is argueing in emotions (like his opponents would). This is why so many people hate republicans b.c they wanna talk about facts and figures and the left uses anecdotal instances (like pregnancy by rape) and argue from a position of emotion. I get what you're saying Im an analytical person too but in the public eye you have to use emotion to argue or else ur opponent will dominate public opinion by calling you heartless, racist, blah blah. Perfect example, (i hated) Mitt Romney, he's actually a really nice guy Mormon, doesn't drink has a good family and Obama and the Dems demonized him, Biden said quote "he's gonna put you all [black ppl] in chains' at a rally. And what did Mitt say about Obama? His policy sucks but that Obama was a 'nice guy'. Talking fact and figures does make sense but public opinion is a popularity contest
Post-modernism really is a thing, it is an intellectual movement that opposed everything from the Enlightenment including reason and individualism, you should check it out, I recommend Explaining Postmodernism by Stephen Hicks.
"This is why so many people hate republicans b.c they wanna talk about facts and figures"
If this were actually the way Republicans operated, they'd be a party made almost entirely of agnostic atheists who are pro-science and who use data-driven analytics to come up with the best social policies possible. In reality, the Republican party is bursting at the seams with Christian theocrats who cherry-pick their own holy books in order to treat others like second-class citizens while openly denying science.
"the left uses anecdotal instances (like pregnancy by rape) and argue from a position of emotion."
That's not anecdotal evidence. That's a possible scenario that should be considered when making abortion laws.
"Perfect example, (i hated) Mitt Romney, he's actually a really nice guy Mormon, doesn't drink has a good family and Obama and the Dems demonized him"
That's a perfect example? No, that's a terrible example. Obama didn't "demonize" Romney. Romney said some stupid shit (47%) that the general public took out of context without the Dems having to do anything. The fact that Romney doesn't drink is also bad, because he does it for religious reasons, meaning he's so irrational that he lets his personal decisions be dictated to him by a book left behind by a long-dead con artist. That's not a good trait at all for a leader.
ydela1961 this man obviously takes himself far too seriously. "pseudo-intellectual" doesn't quite describe him but he's way too self important and apparently is so without any real justification. "poser". that's the word i'm looking for.
Mister Guy SLAM!!! hahaha
And a medical researcher wrote a paper arguing for a new rule for approximating areas for curves. This is known as the trapezoidal rule; a rule that was discovered thousands of years ago. The paper she published the "discovery" in has hundreds of citations.
A lab submitted a paper to Nature on Cancer. They received a comment back from one of the journal reviewers saying "you used a math formula. the nuances of math may be lost on Nature's audience" as a reason why the paper was denied.
The moral of this story is that there are shitty papers in every single discipline, the hard sciences included.
If his audience loses sight of the fact there was an elephant in the parable,
I would say, they are not any brighter than the post-modernists.
Destroyed? Postmodernism has never been stronger, decades later.
Quite. I guess that's because we're dealing with something political rather than purely academic.
What we lose sight of is that "subjective" has its normal meaning only as contrasted with "objective". These concepts or their meaning as words are "parasitic" upon each other. So to then claim that all "knowledge" is "subjective" is an attempt to alter the meaning of both of these terms by changing them to ones that exclude any use of "objective"; and then triumphantly claim that [objective] Reality is likewise subjective; when all that's really been done is to misuse the term "subjective" and to try to fool one's self or especially other people into thinking that there is no such thing as objective Reality: so that "Anything goes."
Subjectivism or "Everything is subjective" is simply a Prescription about how to use words. It's more like a chant we'd have to start the day with, before going onto the realities we'd have to confront for the rest of the day, which wouldn't have changed at all but which we'd be prevented from saying are "objective". "Everything is subjective" is also self-contradictory, because it claims to be an objective fact about Reality.
Likewise with "All Cultures are equal." The terms "equal" and "unequal" have their normal meaning only because both are possible in the real world. But to suddenly prescribe that "All Cultures are equal" completely abstracts "equal" from its normal use, by making "unequal" impossible to use. Therefore "equal" no longer means what it used to. While some people like to think that it still does and that they've therefore altered Reality, usually to a form that only they can help the rest of us to get along with.
There have to be rules for the use of words, which are, after all, only appearances, sounds, or sensations, etc.. But if there aren't any rules or "They're all subjective", then how is communication by words even possible?
I don't like inequality. Inequality is in conflict with empathy. So what do I do to stay internally consistent? I'll take a theory that helps me blame something or someone. What are my other options? :)
"The elephant is still there". Nobody's arguing about that. However, a lot of people fail to recognize that more than physical realities exit. And, a lot of those non-physical realities include subjective opinions. A subjective opinion might be only an opinion. But, it's a fact that people have them. Deal with it.
Science is not a "social" construct, it's an intellectual construct. Or rather, it is a method we have devised to try and filter our or at least penetrate those limitations in our perspective or contingencies in our knowledge, and thereby enable us to discover cold, hard facts about the universe around us. This method enables us to achieve verifiable, repeatable, testable results, and thanks to it, we can build planes that don't fall out of the sky, and computers that link an entire world of information together.
I never thought I'd live to see the day when "intellectuals" would start to label observable and testable natural laws as "sexist." Orwell's famous quote comes to mind: "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."
Sokal is a man after my own heart... I SO wish I had done that!
The thing is, relativism makes sense to a certain point. Let's just take moral relativism.
From Wiki:
1. "Descriptive moral relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral;"
2. "meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong;"
3. "and normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it."
These points are logical steps built upon each other. Regarding 1.: Some societies declare drug usage as legal, some as illegal. Some cultures see slavery as fine, some don't. Some consider conquering, killing, warmongering and raping as fine, some don't. It all also depends on the time frame. So indeed different cultures have different views on morality.
About 2.: Sure - what *is* objective even? Who could ever tell what is really right or wrong? Muslims don't seem to care highly about human rights and are quite intolerant - yet they seem to prevail quite fine, even though warmongering, chaotic and barbaric. Genghis Khan didn't think highly of pacifism either, yet the genetic spread of his people across Eurasia must be tremendous.
Regarding 3.: Here I get real difficulties to argue for it. This one makes no sense.
Now, let's get to some counterarguments. Sure, different cultures have different views on morality, but assuming morality works in binary - meaning things are either moral or amoral (with various degrees of magnitude, which we omit for now). So there is something objective to it. Morals may have been always there, they may just not have been followed by societies. Taxation is theft - forces of authority will come and punish or kill you if you don't bleed your "fair share" to the takers - the exploiters and parasites. Yet it is totally normal practice today, just as slavery was a few centuries ago. But even back then there was awareness that slavery was amoral. So cultures don't just have their own "versions" or views of morality - they just have varying application of morality.
Another point is that if theft would be moral, first of all, it wouldn't be called theft, and the second one would be that defending against theft wouldn't be a thing. People would just freely take things and nobody would have to care - property wouldn't exist either then. However, it is people who acquire resources through work, and people work differently hard (some even don't work at all) - so people want to keep what they worked for, and not just randomly hand it out (or have it taken away). If resources would be sparse (which they were for basically as long as humanity existed minus 1-2 centuries at best), following that strategy could be suicide. Not only that, working would become disincentivized, and at the end everybody would simply starve. Despite all advancements, that's also what occurred in communist regimes basically every time. That's not a workable strategy to prevail. Therefore property *must* be a concept that exist, and therefore theft *must* be a concept that exists. Not only that, even animals recognize property - especially if it's about food and prey - that's even the case cross-species.
Now, regarding 2. one could say that violence is a better system to perpetuate genes than pacifism. But that does not constitute morals - that's just biology and evolution in their works. Morals is not about the *goals*, it's about the *methods*. "The end does justify the means" even implies that there has to be made justification for means which must be inherently amoral. So there was awareness of amorality taking action for a "higher good." Morality can never claim that theft is moral, nor can it claim murder as moral (given that survival is a basic instinct and a necessity for existence), however there is self-defence and possibly prevention against actions taken against you or other people.
Either way, the definitions of "right" and "wrong" are ambiguous.
Now to 3.: Let's say fine - nobody is objectively right or wrong. Yet everybody has it's own stance, and cultures have shared stances. Everybody has it's own view on "right" and "wrong." That does not imply that cultures should tolerate other cultures or their lack or "overabundance" of morality - quite the contrary. It implies that there is no objective ground to stand upon, so everybody must rely on some "arbitrary" relative set of views. That objective ground could have served as a way to slowly approach towards to, so that all those pesky arbitrary relative sets of views can converge towards it - as a middle ground where actual communication can occur.
But then comes the hit! "...we *ought* to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it." - Wait what? It's like saying because we don't know what 2+2 is (yet), we have to accept and tolerate every possible answer, no matter how unreasonable?! We could at least say based on what we know it's somewhere between 1 and 10, so the answers -5, 0, 2740 could be dismissed right away. No - we *ought* to tolerate every answer. Where does this madness come from so suddenly? 1. and 2. made sense and can be argued for and against, but by god - I can argue better for fascism than for the third step of moral/cultural relativism. But I simply can't, it's so devoid of logic and common sense.
At this point I do not even want to attempt to get into the reasoning - as it seems it is driven by some subconscious drive of globalist people, who are Marxist Socialists, postmodernists, moral/cultural relativists and multiculturalists. I have my theories about that. But let's keep this post short...
Back in the 90’s, I was in a sociology class and my professor asserted that there were no natural instincts, everything is a social construct. I looked around and everyone was nodding in agreement. I asked him to clarify and he doubled down without any evidence. I pointed out numerous examples of instincts, many of which are duplicated in the animal kingdom. He had the class in stitches, mocked me and suggested my reply was sexist and racist. That was his defense. If I questioned his premise or conclusions then I’m a bigot. I got a C in that course.
sounds like you got mogged by Chad professor
That carpet definitely transgresses the boundaries.
Lack of peer reviewed studies/reports seems to be rampant in the social sciences at universities
Postmodernism is still here. I guess he didn't destroy it.
If Sokal really "Destroyed Postmodernism" so long ago, then it wouldn't be the problem it is today.
He destroyed a faulty part of Postmodernism. To really and completely destroy it, is not only to destroy the wrong parts, but also understand and integrate the right parts. The reason it's still so powerful these days is because most normal people have rejected ALL of it. We need to identify and adopt the good things in it, and debunk the nonsensical parts.
@@annebombaHe didn’t even destroy ‘faulty’ parts. He assumed that any field of academia that didn’t share the values and linguistic standards of positivist empiricism must be pointless and arrogantly manifested his assumption in what he believed would bring down an entire endeavour.
Actually, the original Einstein equation was expressed as m=E/c2 so the coefficient 1/c2 is in fact a tiny number
The title completely matches the video.
The elephant, that's all I need to remember.
Larry the Cable Guy says it more succinctly. "You can't fix stupid"!
*_20 Thumbs Up!_* ...if it were possible. Damn, this is a slam dunk! Very nicely done. There are absolutes and there are relative conditions. The trick is to know the difference.
Everything is a social construct. Even the Moon is a social construct. There is nothing that distinquishes the denser condensation of matter to the less dense condensation of matter that surrounds the Moon without us, the viewer assigning meaning to it. Like the space around it, the Moon too is just singular atoms, but just huddled closer together. Only the viewer, that is a sentient being, names the condensation the Moon and attaches meaning to it. That doesn't mean that the Moon does not exist. It exists, it has consequences to the space surrounding it, but what the Moon is, is determined by the viewer. Without human, or other sentient viewers, nothing has meaning, it just is. But just because the Moon is a social construct, it doesn't mean that it can be anything and everything. The same is true of the humans as a species. Without us humans describing forms of life as a "species", "species" wouldn't exist. Sure some forms of life would mate and have offspring, others would not. But there would be no social constructs there of. You can't will to be a snake, just as you can't eat a mountain. Just because everything is a social construct, it doesn't mean all social constructs are automatically vacuous and should be judged on a moral basis only and that they cannot have any basis in the underlying basis in the sensible reality. If you would live by this credo you would have to question everything, because everything you see is socially constructed! The computer you are on, the table it sits on, the chair you sit in, even the breeze that comes in from your window. That would be insanity, the world would break down into meaningless sensory data.
TL;DR Just calling something a social construct is not enough to dismiss it entirely
One is reminded of the Ern Malley poems. It didn't dent the modernist poetry movement at all. In fact, they adopted Ern as one of their own, despite the fact that he was a hoax, and the poems deliberately written to be meaningless. Post-modernism grinds along, too.
The thumbnail is not Alan Sokal, it's Bruno Latour.
The Sokal hoax was stupid tho.
He submitted to a paper to see if they'd peer review it, it shouldn't be a shock that they didn't: It wasn't a peer reviewed journal, or even a physics journal, any science he submitted should have been uncontroversial. He wanted to see if they'd include him just because he was a scientist from a hard science. That's exactly why they printed his article, it was printed in an issue specifically focusing on arguments for or against the position that science is or isn't a social construct.
Whether you agree with postmodernism or not, this wasn't any kind of real intellectual exercise, it was just a 'gotcha' that really does nothing to advance either side of the argument.
fun tho
They stacked a pile of bricks into a rectangle and placed it in The Tate Gallery ,London in the 1970s. This has been most Unforgettable symbol about why Post- Modernism is utter crap for my generation at least
Sad that postmodernism has been confused with radical gender politics 😔
This guy Sokal is a hero. Unfortunately, he didn't ALSO predict social media and the alt right.
I'm a scientific instrumentalist and am agnostic on scientific realism...and I am convinced that postmodernism is hot garbage.
I have a couple questions on what others make think is relation to this topic? I would love to hear other insights and responses to a few:
What's your consensus on modernism?
Regardless of influence, do you postmodernism as necessary? Possibly as a perspective that drives itself to alteration and possible regression for other ideals to later take precedence?
What are your thoughts on modern and postmodern art and literature? Not so much easy targets like Jackson Pollock or minimalism. For example, modernism explored cynicism of conventions and tested what rearrangements or challenges to their form could be made?
Is this mostly about the whole SJW nonsense? I notice that for a "philosophy" channel, it's mostly targeting the regressive left's bullshit.
Do you think there's more to postmodernism than throwing out logic and saying "it's all relative"? Or do you just see it as a cop out movement?
I miss the days we didn't suffer the idiots, the immature and the ignorant.
reminds me of when a painting by a mule called lolo painted sunset over the adriatic was entered into the Salon Des Independantes
Why is the thumbnail of Bruno Latour?
Why would you present a picture of Bruno Latour for a video about Sokal?
Maybe actually put Sokal in the thumbnail instead of Bruno Latour
I don't believe Sokal took a gamble when he presented his paper to the journal as a hoax. The Journal had no peer review process. It's like submitting your research paper to Plusone.
A DEFINITION OF HERMETICAL IS USING METAPHORS TO DESCRIBE A MODEL OF A TRANSCENDENTAL THING. LIKE LOVE OR JUSTICE. HERMETICAL QUANTUM GRAVITY WOULD BE A METAPHOR MODEL OF SOMETHING WE CAN'T BE SURE OF BY STRICT MEASUREMENT.