the language of postmodernism

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iambiguous
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the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Can language express truth? Can language give us a clear picture of reality?
Here of course what everyone will expect me to note is this: "given what particular context?"

Yes, that's my main "thing" when it comes to philosophy. And why wouldn't it be since, above all else, I come back to connecting the dots existentially in regard to this question: "how ought one to live in a world awash both in conflicting moral and political value judgments and in contingency, chance and change?"

Truth and clarity there.
Discussing Postmodernism has become almost prosaic given the intellectual climate of the 2010s. However, it has posed questions which directly challenge the most classical assertions of how we understand the world around us. For that alone it is worth responding to.

Postmodernism also remains relevant because much of current thinking is rooted in Postmodern ideas. This goes beyond just academic circles: it is easy to catch Postmodern ideas in everyday discourse. Nothing is unusual about hearing someone retort in an argument “Well, that’s subjective,” or if they are more well versed and a little bolder “That’s just interpretation, there’s never really any one meaning.”
Here, of course, it depends on how far you go with this. After all, think about your day to day interactions with others. Think about all of the countless times you don't stop to insist, "that’s just interpretation -- subjective -- there’s never really any one meaning."

Nothing much "postmodern" about the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around is, human biology, the rules of logic.
These ideas originate from Postmodern language theory in particular. What is referred to as “Postmodernism” refers to a specific idea of language and how it functions. These ideas were shaped by numerous thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s: most popularly through French thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, who took the core ideas on language and related them to concepts of power, oppression, and freedom.
On the other hand, the language that postmodernists use to deconstruct meaning and purpose in our lives necessarily includes their own arguments. For me, it still comes down to connecting the dots existentially between this or that "core idea" and this or that set of circumstances. Power, oppression and freedom out in what particular world understood in what particular way? That laborious, often futile task of separating what through language we claim to believe is true and what we are in fact able to demonstrate is true for all rational human beings. Postmodernism changed none of that.

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Re: the language of postmodernism

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Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
A critique of language of all things may appear benign and simply technical at first, but the challenge undermines confidence in our ability to have knowledge and the possibility of truth.
That's always been the thrust of my own argument...that in many crucial respects language seems to be profoundly embedded in our subjective experiences. Resulting in countless "failures to communicate". And what if these failures revolve around the fact that in regard to "conflicting goods" -- moral and political value judgments at odds -- human language is, perhaps, simply not capable of resolving these historical and cultural conflagrations?

There are some things languages can be very, very precise regarding in connecting the dots between words and worlds. But with other things, well, as they say, "the rest is history".
Let us explore both, but first I will need to explain the Postmodern understanding of language which I have been alluding to. I do warn that in discussing “Postmodernism” that there is a risk in generalization. The term remains elusive and the various thinkers who are characterized as Postmodern are not totally unified in their views. I will stick to explaining the broadly agreed upon problems Postmodern thinkers find in language and dabble with some responses.
Right from the start then...

Using language, to what extent are we able to "explain the Postmodern understanding of language" the author or anyone else refers to? After all, why do you suppose that once we leave discussions that pertain largely to "generalizations" imparted about postmodernism, and bring them "out into the world" of actual human interactions, we come to the at times heated debates regarding what postmodernism is? What if human language itself [even here] is not capable of bridging those subjective interpretive gaps and coming up with a more objective, "unified" consensus?

Especially given that, in regard to moral and political dissension, all language going back to the pre-Socratics, have utterly failed to bring about that vital unification that would make the "failures to communicate" go away. Here, in many crucial respects, postmodernism is just the next "school of thought" in line.

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Skepdick
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Skepdick »

All systems failures could be attributed to a single root cause—a failure to communicate --Alfred Korzybski
Aumann's agreement theorem says that two people acting rationally (in a certain precise sense) and with common knowledge of each other's beliefs cannot agree to disagree.
The postmodernist observation on the difficulty in aligning/calibrating our language is valid, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

It is absolutely possible (*maybe), perfectly reasonable, and often absolutely necessary to re-negotiate language/semantics in real time.

For this to happen, however, at least one of the interlocutors in the conversation needs to have rejected Logocentrism as being true; and explicitly at least one of the interlocutors needs to be profficient in Code-switching. This allows for the necessary concessions to be made for the negotiation to succeed.

If both people are skilled code-switchers this process is incredibly rapid.

If there is no code-switcher in the conversation then agreement is not possible, because both interlocutors are optimising for dominating/controlling the narrative. Neither of them is able to abandon their normative language use.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

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Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Postmodern theories of language challenge the belief that language provides a stable way of understanding the world. When you use language, you are partaking in the act of representing things in the world through concepts.
Come on, we all know that in the course of living our lives and interacting with others from day to day, language is there to provide us with the sort of communication that is, over and over and over again, extremely stable. The concepts overlap with the world with the sort of precision that allows us to sustain social interactions we scarcely have to think about at all. Language and the either/or world are truly made for each other.

Where does postmodernism fit in there? Theoretically or otherwise.
This does not have to be simply through speech, when you are thinking or simply identifying an object you are representing the world through language.
Yes, but identifying what object in what set of circumstances? Are you or are you not able to communicate the object effectively to others through language such that all of us "of sound mind" are able to discuss it at length with no real conflicts?

But, as is almost always the case when it comes to "illustrating the text" here, the example is invariably something like this...
If you are for instance looking at a red apple, you will have the corresponding thought “That is a red apple,” which frames the experience and allows you to understand it. In that case, language is being used to formulate a claim which represents something out there in the world, namely that the apple is there and that it has the characteristic of “redness”. “There” is used to represent a concept of space–namely where the object is–and “red” is used to represent a concept of colour. Real things are therefore represented with concepts in language.
Yes, and how is any of this different for the postmodernists? Instead, as with most truly controversial discussions and debates, "attitudes of skepticism toward what it considers as the grand narratives and ideologies of modernism, as well as opposition to epistemic certainty and the stability of meaning" revolve far more around value judgments in the is/ought world?

But there, in my view, postmodernists are no less the embodiment of "I" at the existential juncture of "identity, conflicting goods and political economy".

Just note a "situation" that generates moral and political conflagrations, and we can discuss our own use of language -- limitations in particular -- in conveying "the objective truth".

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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by trokanmariel »

One could be faced with moral initiative versus language absolutism. The context here, being to eradicate the word squatter, but not have that eradication clash with the moral initiative of 1998's 54 owning Rhyl's arcades.

To not squat, is to eradicate the central government concept, however, the central government institution is responsible for the night and day buzz head culture responsible for nightclubs.

Next, then, is the chain sequence that affords the clash not clashing with the left to right sequence.

So, at each stage, language may be a solution, but, referencing may be in the end a problem for the singularity essence.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Postmodern language theories argue that this sort of linear connection between language and objects in the world is fallacious and that, in fact, these kinds of representations are unstable. Instead of language being an accurate link to understanding reality, it is a product of culture and social circumstances. Therefore, representations and language are more indicative of culture rather than an objective reality.
Tell that to physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, meteorologists, mathematicians and those in other disciplines who would never think of the language they use to communicate back and forth as anything but entirely linear. Even among anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and others in the "soft disciplines", they are able to agree on any number facts embedded in human interactions.

Ever and always [to me] the bottom line: that all we can do here is to note the extent to which anyone using language to communicate something that they believe is true are able, if pressed, to demonstrate to the best of their ability that in fact it is true. Or is true in one set of circumstances but not necessarily in another.

Postmodernists are no less included here.
The argument is that all human thought is done through language and that language has an intrinsic “messiness” to it. It relies on words and signs which Postmodernists claim can have countless meanings and interpretation. Without unified meanings Postmodernists argue that it becomes impossible to have singular representations of things in the world, meaning there is a large degree of interpretation to what is deemed reality–therefore, reality is never separated from a subject.
Sure, I may be misunderstanding the point being made by particular postmodernists, but the fact is that in any number of contexts there exist a reality that is clearly separate from the "interpretations" of the "subject".

This computer technology for example. What, it can't be encompassed and communicated in language without the discussion breaking down into heated disagreements about what the actual components of it are or how they work together to make it possible to function as they do.

It's like those who yank nihilism out of the is/ought world and attempt to make it applicable to, say, the laws of nature, mathematics, the rules of logic?

Yes, if you go far enough out on the metaphysical limb and start factoring in solipsism and sim worlds and dream worlds and determinism and Matrix realities -- "the gap", "Rummy's Rule" -- who the hell really knows what Reality itself is.

I'm always willing to concede that in regard to human language.

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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

The 'modern' in 'postmodern' refers to the age of enlightenment or reason, or perhaps Renaissance. What followed modernism was doubt about enlightenment of reason.
Tell that to physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, meteorologists, mathematicians and those in other disciplines who would never think of the language they use to communicate back and forth as anything but entirely linear. Even among anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and others in the "soft disciplines", they are able to agree on any number facts embedded in human interactions.
All these scientists and even some social scientists, when they are wearing their scientists' white coats, subscribe to enlightenment values. We require them to do so. When the same men philosophise they can see that all the enlightenment wisdoms amount to stories we tell ourselves.
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind: We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Shakespeare The Tempest
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Belinda wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 12:17 am The 'modern' in 'postmodern' refers to the age of enlightenment or reason, or perhaps Renaissance. What followed modernism was doubt about enlightenment of reason.
Here, the distinction I make is between the either/or world encompassed in the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, the rules of logic etc., and the is/ought world where "interpretation" suffuses all moral and political "conflicting goods". Then the part where we go all the way out on the metaphysical limb and tackle such profoundly problematic enigmas as solipsism, determinism, sim worlds, dream worlds, Matrix conundrums.

How many postmodern mathematicians and physicists and chemists and biologists are there? Until they do go out and explore the very, very big and the very, very small realities/"realities".

Thus...
Tell that to physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, meteorologists, mathematicians and those in other disciplines who would never think of the language they use to communicate back and forth as anything but entirely linear. Even among anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and others in the "soft disciplines", they are able to agree on any number facts embedded in human interactions.
Belinda wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 12:17 amAll these scientists and even some social scientists, when they are wearing their scientists' white coats, subscribe to enlightenment values. We require them to do so. When the same men philosophise they can see that all the enlightenment wisdoms amount to stories we tell ourselves.
Of course here I always come back to this: "we'll need a particular context."

Whose rendition of an enlightened wisdom? Whose story ought to prevail? Given what sets of circumstances? And, for me, postmodernists like modernists like premodernists are left with the task of closing the gap between what they believe is true subjectively "in their heads" and what they are able to demonstrate to others is true objectively for all rational men and women.

And indeed as both William Shakespeare and George Harrison once surmised, "all things must pass".

Then the part where each of us come up with our own "story" to grapple with that.

Most of course through God and religion.

Me? I'm still rooted to the subjective assumption that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless? And then one day I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion...nothingness.

Unless of course I'm wrong?

And how could I possibly know the answer to that? Any more than the postmodernists among us can.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:53 pm
Belinda wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 12:17 am The 'modern' in 'postmodern' refers to the age of enlightenment or reason, or perhaps Renaissance. What followed modernism was doubt about enlightenment of reason.
Here, the distinction I make is between the either/or world encompassed in the laws of nature, mathematics, the empirical world around us, the rules of logic etc., and the is/ought world where "interpretation" suffuses all moral and political "conflicting goods". Then the part where we go all the way out on the metaphysical limb and tackle such profoundly problematic enigmas as solipsism, determinism, sim worlds, dream worlds, Matrix conundrums.

How many postmodern mathematicians and physicists and chemists and biologists are there? Until they do go out and explore the very, very big and the very, very small realities/"realities".

Thus...
Tell that to physicists, chemists, biologists, geologists, meteorologists, mathematicians and those in other disciplines who would never think of the language they use to communicate back and forth as anything but entirely linear. Even among anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and others in the "soft disciplines", they are able to agree on any number facts embedded in human interactions.
Belinda wrote: Sun Feb 27, 2022 12:17 amAll these scientists and even some social scientists, when they are wearing their scientists' white coats, subscribe to enlightenment values. We require them to do so. When the same men philosophise they can see that all the enlightenment wisdoms amount to stories we tell ourselves.
Of course here I always come back to this: "we'll need a particular context."

Whose rendition of an enlightened wisdom? Whose story ought to prevail? Given what sets of circumstances? And, for me, postmodernists like modernists like premodernists are left with the task of closing the gap between what they believe is true subjectively "in their heads" and what they are able to demonstrate to others is true objectively for all rational men and women.

And indeed as both William Shakespeare and George Harrison once surmised, "all things must pass".

Then the part where each of us come up with our own "story" to grapple with that.

Most of course through God and religion.

Me? I'm still rooted to the subjective assumption that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless? And then one day I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblivion...nothingness.

Unless of course I'm wrong?

And how could I possibly know the answer to that? Any more than the postmodernists among us can.
We make our own meanings and purposes. The justification is existential not essential.

As for postmodernism, it would not have been possible had there never been modernism that itself evolved from premodernism the age of faith. Would you say that history itself is a modernist endeavour? History is compounded of science and interpretation. I think interpretation tips the balance.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Belinda wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:26 pm
We make our own meanings and purposes. The justification is existential not essential.
I agree. But, in regard to our communication in the is/ought world, I root this in dasein. As encompassed in the points raised in the OP of this thread from another philosophy venue: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

And that, re this thread, postmodernists are, in my view, interchangeable with all the rest of us. And that, in the either/or world, there appears to be an objective reality that is, in turn, able to be communicated back and forth between all rational men and women
Belinda wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:26 pm As for postmodernism, it would not have been possible had there never been modernism that itself evolved from premodernism the age of faith. Would you say that history itself is a modernist endeavour? History is compounded of science and interpretation. I think interpretation tips the balance.
Well, again, for me, the crucial distinction, whether you call yourself a premodernist, a modernist or a postmodernist, revolves around the extent to which, given a particular set of circumstances, you are able to close the gap sufficiently enough between what you believe in your head is true about it and what is able to be demonstrated as in fact true for all rational men and women.

How are postmodernists any different from the rest of us in that regard?
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

iambiguous wrote: Thu Mar 03, 2022 9:09 pm
Belinda wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:26 pm
We make our own meanings and purposes. The justification is existential not essential.
I agree. But, in regard to our communication in the is/ought world, I root this in dasein. As encompassed in the points raised in the OP of this thread from another philosophy venue: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=194382

And that, re this thread, postmodernists are, in my view, interchangeable with all the rest of us. And that, in the either/or world, there appears to be an objective reality that is, in turn, able to be communicated back and forth between all rational men and women
Belinda wrote: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:26 pm As for postmodernism, it would not have been possible had there never been modernism that itself evolved from premodernism the age of faith. Would you say that history itself is a modernist endeavour? History is compounded of science and interpretation. I think interpretation tips the balance.
Well, again, for me, the crucial distinction, whether you call yourself a premodernist, a modernist or a postmodernist, revolves around the extent to which, given a particular set of circumstances, you are able to close the gap sufficiently enough between what you believe in your head is true about it and what is able to be demonstrated as in fact true for all rational men and women.

How are postmodernists any different from the rest of us in that regard?
It's quite hard for me consistently to root justifications in Dasein. Like we all must live everyday lives in the charade that things are real and more or less enduring, so we also must live with some degree of moral stability. Postmodernism has made modernists less sure . It's good to doubt.

I think that what is true of all rational men and women is that since postmodernism happened a larger proportion of rational man and woman became doubters. Events like Stalin, Hitler, and Putin make rational people more able to identify good and evil. It's easier to define evil than to define good, so PM has dwindled over the last two weeks.

I think the intellectual leaders of all world class religions are modernists, and these leaders are morally ranged against Putin's war. Now even more than before I feel that the Golden Rule of the Axial Age is a constant and is so for most rational men and women.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Postmodern Understandings of Language and Power – Explanations and Refutations
February 1, 2019 Otto King
from The Postil Magazine website
Language having a cultural dimension also poses a challenge. Since, in this view, meaning is framed by the culture which creates it, what language can express about reality is structured by the types of discourses and meaning which is possible with the ideas of that culture. What Postmodernists are arguing is that the ideas of a culture limit what language can say about reality.
Right, like if different cultures set about creating a space program, there won't be any number of instances in which the language used to build the rocket ships won't be entirely interchangeable around the globe. On the other hand, the language used to convey differences of opinion regarding whether funding a space program is or is not more reasonable than spending the money on healthcare or infrastructure down here on planet Earth?
If true, this has significant implications, because every human body of knowledge (“epistemology”) has relied on the intuition that language can at least roughly represent reality. Without that foundational assumption, it is impossible to make any claims about the world or have any form of understanding---consequently defeating the possibility of having knowledge entirely.
Exactly. So, I've never really been entirely clear as to what the fuss is all about in regard to postmodernism, deconstruction, semiotics, etc.

To me, they all eventually became just another way of noting that in regard to "I" in the is/ought world, communication often breaks down precisely because language in regard to value judgments doesn't work the way it does in regard to material interactions in the either/or world.

Postmodernism then becomes just another way of encompassing the points I raise in with respect to dasein.

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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

From a quote via iambiguous:
If true, this has significant implications, because every human body of knowledge (“epistemology”) has relied on the intuition that language can at least roughly represent reality. Without that foundational assumption, it is impossible to make any claims about the world or have any form of understanding---consequently defeating the possibility of having knowledge entirely.
I recommend Basil Bernstein , sociolinguist, on "codes". Roughly, language includes two easily identifiable codes. One 'code' is everyday social language, and the other 'code' is explicit task-oriented language. Lexicons for instance jargons or slangs may correlate with one or other code but not necessarily so.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by iambiguous »

Belinda wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 3:51 am
It's quite hard for me consistently to root justifications in Dasein. Like we all must live everyday lives in the charade that things are real and more or less enduring, so we also must live with some degree of moral stability. Postmodernism has made modernists less sure . It's good to doubt.
Again, with respect to the laws of nature, mathematics and the empirical world around us...what charade? Here a charade [if there is one] would revolve around sim worlds, dream worlds, Matrix worlds.

And "moral stability" in any given community down through the ages will revolve around a particular entanglement of "might makes right", "right makes might" and/or "democracy and the rule of law".

Postmoderism changes none of that for me.
Belinda wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 3:51 amI think that what is true of all rational men and women is that since postmodernism happened a larger proportion of rational man and woman became doubters. Events like Stalin, Hitler, and Putin make rational people more able to identify good and evil. It's easier to define evil than to define good, so PM has dwindled over the last two weeks.
Good and evil to me are existential fabrications rooted in particular historical, cultural and interpersonal contexts. And ever and always evolving in a world riddled with contingency, chance and change. There is no objective Good and Evil in a No God world. Though this too is no less an existential fabrication of my own.
Belinda wrote: Fri Mar 04, 2022 3:51 amI think the intellectual leaders of all world class religions are modernists, and these leaders are morally ranged against Putin's war. Now even more than before I feel that the Golden Rule of the Axial Age is a constant and is so for most rational men and women.
Putin rationalizes what he does. Just as we all do. Essentially the invasion of Ukraine is neither inherently nor necessarily rational or irrational, moral or immoral.

I believe that in the absence of God human existence itself is essentially meaningless and purposeless. Ending for each of us one by one in oblivion.

But I have absolutely no capacity to demonstrate this beyond the manner in which I too root these things in dasein.
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Re: the language of postmodernism

Post by Belinda »

Some rationalisations are better than other rationalisations.
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