Re:Education Without Truth in Postmodern Perspectivism
by api on Thursday April 09, 2020 @07:16PM
(#22828226)
I am willing to entertain the idea that postmodernism has been misunderstood, but I still consider that a bit of an indictment. If a few people misunderstand you, it's their failure. If everyone misunderstands you, it's your failure. Even worse the misunderstanding here is extremely destructive. It's a misunderstanding that enables the worst of the worst of the intellectual landscape.
I feel like some people wear "nobody understands me" as a badge of distinction. This is wrong. If nobody understands you, you're a poor communicator.
> I think it's an argument essentially captured in the term "ivory tower", which began being used for academics in the 1800s. It's a pretty old argument.
I suppose it is an old argument, but I don't think that invalidates it. I think it's always been true and what we're seeing is the gradual unfolding of the consequences. Of course I still do believe that the ivory tower has become more tower-like in recent years, especially in the humanities. Why is Jordan Peterson so popular? Where are the public intellectuals who are not crackpots or misogynists to answer the deep life questions of all these disenchanted people who otherwise flock to people like him?
Science and engineering papers are impenetrable too, but those at least yield end products that have results in the world outside academia. At the most base level academia can always petition for their continued existence on the grounds that they are necessary to maintain military superiority. That's a narrow rationale, but if all else fails it's not wrong and it at least grounds academia in society somehow.
I think academia has to either come down from the ivory tower or the tower will fall when the masses inspired by a tweet by the first American Emperor lynch them all for promoting vaccination.
I agree that we can't go back to the positivist position, but it's also not clear to me that positivism is wholly wrong. It seems to work really well in certain domains. What we need is to examine the domains where it doesn't work and decide if we need to refine it, expand upon it, or realize that its domain is in fact limited and come up with new methods for other domains. "Anti-method" is not a method, so that's not an answer. That's giving up on the question.
I feel like some people wear "nobody understands me" as a badge of distinction. This is wrong. If nobody understands you, you're a poor communicator.
> I think it's an argument essentially captured in the term "ivory tower", which began being used for academics in the 1800s. It's a pretty old argument.
I suppose it is an old argument, but I don't think that invalidates it. I think it's always been true and what we're seeing is the gradual unfolding of the consequences. Of course I still do believe that the ivory tower has become more tower-like in recent years, especially in the humanities. Why is Jordan Peterson so popular? Where are the public intellectuals who are not crackpots or misogynists to answer the deep life questions of all these disenchanted people who otherwise flock to people like him?
Science and engineering papers are impenetrable too, but those at least yield end products that have results in the world outside academia. At the most base level academia can always petition for their continued existence on the grounds that they are necessary to maintain military superiority. That's a narrow rationale, but if all else fails it's not wrong and it at least grounds academia in society somehow.
I think academia has to either come down from the ivory tower or the tower will fall when the masses inspired by a tweet by the first American Emperor lynch them all for promoting vaccination.
I agree that we can't go back to the positivist position, but it's also not clear to me that positivism is wholly wrong. It seems to work really well in certain domains. What we need is to examine the domains where it doesn't work and decide if we need to refine it, expand upon it, or realize that its domain is in fact limited and come up with new methods for other domains. "Anti-method" is not a method, so that's not an answer. That's giving up on the question.