Postmodernism epistemology

[cicero117]

According to post-modernism philosophy, what is it's epistemology?

[Impenitent]

there is no proof for an after to modernism...

-Imp

[odysseus]

cicero117 wrote
According to post-modernism philosophy, what is it's epistemology?

First you have to come to terms with idealism, or phenomenology. You have to to accept that when you have an encounter with the world, the meaning, cognitive and affective, is embedded in the perceptual act itself, and any attempt to affirm what is true about things beyond the perceptual act (with all that is possessed therein) is senseless. Meanings, those definitional things, are deferential in nature: One cannot say what a house is what out the implicit reference to many other things. Meaning is contingent in the extreme! And my world is not yours. I have think of houses and my background, education, nostalgias and all the rest are not yours; they belong exclusively to me, even though we agree about so much, for in that agreement, and this is tricky and sketchy in my thinking, I admit, nothing gets privileged. These agreements simply rise up to fit occasions,but there is no standard of truth that makes something so.

Private worlds are not possible, one could say, because all that I am is internalized from others in infantile assimilation and on through life. Language is is like this and most of what we do and say fit the patterns of discourse and thought already out there. But the point here is that agreement is never achieved. I'd have to read Derrida again to put a finer point on it.

Alas, to really get this, you have to go through Husserl and Heidegger to get to Derrida. And to get here, you have to read Kant, at least. I'm just an amateur, but I can say, once you read through this literature seriously, it turns the world upside down, in an extraordinary way. Let me know if you want to read something out of continental philosophy. We could discuss as we read.

[cicero117]

cicero117 wrote
According to post-modernism philosophy, what is it's epistemology?

First you have to come to terms with idealism, or phenomenology. You have to to accept that when you have an encounter with the world, the meaning, cognitive and affective, is embedded in the perceptual act itself, and any attempt to affirm what is true about things beyond the perceptual act (with all that is possessed therein) is senseless. Meanings, those definitional things, are deferential in nature: One cannot say what a house is what out the implicit reference to many other things. Meaning is contingent in the extreme! And my world is not yours. I have think of houses and my background, education, nostalgias and all the rest are not yours; they belong exclusively to me, even though we agree about so much, for in that agreement, and this is tricky and sketchy in my thinking, I admit, nothing gets privileged. These agreements simply rise up to fit occasions,but there is no standard of truth that makes something so.

Private worlds are not possible, one could say, because all that I am is internalized from others in infantile assimilation and on through life. Language is is like this and most of what we do and say fit the patterns of discourse and thought already out there. But the point here is that agreement is never achieved. I'd have to read Derrida again to put a finer point on it.

Alas, to really get this, you have to go through Husserl and Heidegger to get to Derrida. And to get here, you have to read Kant, at least. I'm just an amateur, but I can say, once you read through this literature seriously, it turns the world upside down, in an extraordinary way. Let me know if you want to read something out of continental philosophy. We could discuss as we read.

First of all thank you for your answer.
I am still new to philosophy thus I haven't delve that deeply into modern philosophy, let alone deciding whether I prefer analytical philosophy or continental philosophy. So yes, I would appreciate greatly if you could recommend some books or journals to start on discovering modern philosophy.

Thank you!

[odysseus]

cicero117 wrote

First of all thank you for your answer.
I am still new to philosophy thus I haven't delve that deeply into modern philosophy, let alone deciding whether I prefer analytical philosophy or continental philosophy. So yes, I would appreciate greatly if you could recommend some books or journals to start on discovering modern philosophy.

Thank you!

You would have to do what any half way serious philosopher would do: Go out and get yourself a copy (or a PDF file. These you can comment in, edit comments, etc.) of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.

Keep the internet close by for commentary and the many elucidating texts. Then, after 6 months or so of pondering German idealism, you can move into Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and the rest.

Good Luck. If you ever have any areas of thought, themes, whatever, let me know. I like to write about this kind of thing, and I would encourage you to do the same: This philosophy forum is not very enlightened, but it does give YOU a chance to write, defend your thinking (against the many who will tell you how foolish you are and that you don't know what you are talking about,while they themselves have read nearly nothing). Not the snappy answer, the thoughtful comment! That requires reading.

Finally, analytic philosophy contra continental philosophy. The former is good for keeping you in line; very rigorous standards. Continental philosophy is ALSO very rigorous, and it is absolutely fascinating. Not in a strictly geekish way, but in a way that responds to your sense of original wonder and fascination about being a person in the world. I.e., existentially fascinating.

Read Kant first.

[Immanuel Can]

cicero117 wrote
According to post-modernism philosophy, what is it's epistemology?

Can I recommend a resource? Roger Lundin's The Culture of Interpretation. It will handle a lot of related questions for you, as well.

[Immanuel Can]

there is no proof for an after to modernism...

-Imp

You're not wrong. For that reason, many critics prefer the term "Late Modernism" to "Postmodernism." Because in a way, so-called "Postmodernism" is nothing other than Modernism's basic assumptions being pressed hard to their most extreme conclusions. It's a kind of "Modernism-fulfilled," not a new deal.

But one thing this weird, self-congratulating thing called "Postmodernism" has exposed, for which we can be rightly thankful, is that the Modernist assumptions under which we set out since the so-called "Enlightenment" were, in many ways, dangerously wrong and very hubristic. We were not so "enlightened" as we thought.

[KLewchuk]

According to post-modernism philosophy, what is it's epistemology?

Nonsense

As I understand it, the concept is that we cannot know objective truth since it does not exist and we merely create individual narratives.

Hence the achilles heal of the nonsense; if we cannot know, how do you know that we cannot know? Apparently there is one thing we can know, that we can't know.