POSTMODERNISM

Randorama · Post by **Randorama** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:20 am

At time Jerry Fodor feels rather post-modern, honestly. My favourites also are David Lewis Dennett, there is something about defending crazy positions that is really entertaining (read: philosophy by and at large).

Then again, the only philosophers I'd take seriously are Richard Montague and Robert Stalnaker (USA) and Hans Kamp (NL), but only and exclusively for their "technical" contributions. Maybe something by Pylyshin, too.

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:45 am

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:14 am

RGC wrote:extreme clarity or GTFO.

Is jargon allowed? You won't find a philosophical school without it.

If jargon is allowed, and an idea to which we want to refer has already been fully developed by someone who used obscure language, do we have to re-invent the wheel to suit your clarity trieb?

Do we have to claim our ideas are original in order not to refer to someone who expressed them less clearly than we know how to? What are you doing when you dissociate words from ideas like that?

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:19 am

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:25 am

Worthy it may be, but it won't get you far in academic writing, where citations are expected and intellectual property is respected.* Further development of an idea derived from a bullshit generator is fine, when you actually do it instead of just talking about how stupid it sounds.

Do you hear a narration in your head as you read each word? That can slow a fellow down.

*"There's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose who knows
Who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall" —Morrissey

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:45 am

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:08 am

trivial wrote:1 Do we have to claim our ideas are original in order not to refer to someone who expressed them less clearly than we know how to?

RGC wrote:2 As for having to re-invent the wheel: The onus applies exclusively where you feel driven to become intelligible.

RGC wrote:3 What makes you think striving to become intelligible in some way prohibits the citation of others' works? Quite the contrary, in fact.

Clearly the problem is one of attention span. We should apparently strive not to allude even to our own prior sentences; clarity demands it.

I will rephrase for the sake of sense: in 2 you respond to 1 by saying it's good to re-invent the wheel. Is this a fair characterization, in terms of the consensus we're reaching?

In 3 you contradict your own linkage of 1 and 2. Citation was a bad thing in 2 but an acceptable thing in 3. Intelligibility is compatible with full acknowledgement of one's sources in 3, but not in 2.

I hope our conversation has produced something less muddled than before.

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:26 am

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:32 am

Insecure about my intelligibility? You bet! Undergrad profs made me feel pretty good about it, then the real world crushed my dreams.

I apologize for emitting a Reichian teutonism while addressing the queen's subject, in case that was what made you think I was upset.

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:46 am

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:57 am

RGC wrote:I've witnessed universities shunned, cast-aside, and trampled upon, on the grounds that its Professors simply weren't ready to appreciate the dazzling brilliance before them. Just apply that thinking and you won't go far wrong.

Good sir, I shouldn't have characterised university as "unappreciative". The fault lay with me, and with my work ethic, and with the fact that one had nothing to say, having said one's piece.

I am best-pleased to have pitched you a mini-meme, and hereby relinquish copyright.

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:18 pm

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:30 pm

Have you read the section of Lyotard's Libidinal Economy bearing the heading "Use Me"? The turnless turning of the Moëbian band shows us more than the meanderings of a Klein bottle, an entity revealed at a glance to be of higher dimension.

Peace out.

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:57 pm

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:02 pm

Two Iains; one an author, the other a lowly translator. Perfect.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:54 pm

RGC wrote:
Ed Oscuro wrote:Also, I have seen the Communications From Elsewhere site before; didn't spend a ton of time with it though. Lots of compelling analysis but it's hard to find time for it all.
You are aware it's a bullshit generator that gives new pomo essays everytime you F5?!

I think you should take another look at it - all the free article briefs you could ever wish for and then some. I quote it all the time!

RGC wrote:Here's a splendid snippet from one I achieved (see if you can top it):

“Class is fundamentally elitist,” says Derrida. However, the main theme of d’Erlette’s[8] critique of poststructuralist nationalism is the genre, and some would say the rubicon, of dialectic reality. Sartre uses the term ‘cultural libertarianism’ to denote the role of the poet as reader.

It could be said that in Clerks, Smith denies Lacanist obscurity; in Mallrats he examines conceptualist rationalism. Marx’s essay on preconceptualist desemioticism holds that discourse is a product of the collective unconscious.

Not topical to this year's studies, but I'll file that one away for topical use later.

RGC wrote:I'm tempted to fail you in beginner clarity class on account of my having to google trieb

But if it was French everybody would get it, amirite?

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:19 pm

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:31 pm

Ed Oscuro wrote:But if it was French, everybody would get it, amirite?

zees popularité, she ees a fickle mistress, no?

RGC · Post by **RGC** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:33 pm

maxlords · Post by **maxlords** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 4:01 pm

@ RGC: LMFAO!

I've never understood why some philosophy tries to purposely obfuscate the meaning of their statements. Bleah. Why CAN'T you say it clearly? Is it now traditional to make it more obscure to sound more intellectual? Hell, you can sound just as intelligent without making statements like:

"The turnless turning of the Moëbian band shows us more than the meanderings of a Klein bottle, an entity revealed at a glance to be of higher dimension. "

An essentially meaningless statement, as a Moebius strip (note the change to band to sound more intellectual) is a 2 dimensional figure contorted into a semblance of 3D, and a Calvin Klein cologne bottle is just a bottle that IS 3D. I know I know....couldn't resist. But seriously...a Klein bottle is a 3D Mobius strip, so all you're saying is this:

"A Mobius strip is two dimensional, but looks like it's 3 dimensional, while at a glance, you can see a Klein bottle is three dimensional. However, we can learn more from the Mobius strip." It's a pointless observational statement. It's analyses like that that pissed me off and got me out of philosophy entirely. 20 minutes to find out that what you've read is meaningless. Blech.

professor ganson · Post by **professor ganson** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:30 pm

maxlords wrote:@ prof. ganson: Had no idea there was GOOD current philosophy. Nice to know.....wish I had the time to actually study it Anything on the less complex side? Or is it all mostly highly specialized?

Mostly highly specialized and technical. For something excellent and accessible, I recommend Thomas Nagel's Mortal Thoughts, a collection of his brilliant essays from the 70s. Discussion of the issues has advanced considerably in most cases, but it's a great place to start.

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:45 pm

maxlords: The strip is usually opaque, while the bottle is usually clear. The "band" term was the translator's choice, not mine.

Strip and bottle are similar, but not the same. The clear one reveals its connectedness only under closer scrutiny than the opaque one calls for. Clarity may conceal.

You should have expected Poe's Law to rear its head in this thread, amirite?

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:55 pm

RGC wrote:Get a room you two. You have much to discuss the rest of us couldn't begin to comprehend.

/me looks at RGC's location

I have a recent-ish (90s) copy of Roger Scrouton's "An Intelligent Person's Guide to Philosophy," which could be a fun read sometime in the future, I suppose.

@ maxlords: lulz

For the sake of a good (in my view, I'm no geometry professional!) could be like: A moebius strip is a postulated 2D object inhabiting (not simply represented by) real space.

"Turnless turning" is a neat little phrase, although my biggest question is where the author of your cited sentence gets off rolling in a discussion of some impossible abstraction. It does expand the brain's ability to accept various models, but I can't imagine how it's really more practical than, say, a discussion of quantum mechanics and its supposed intersection with the human being, or other things that power the processes of life and modern technology.

One of the things that I notice about Postmodernism is that at times it seems rather Zen - but I haven't heard that postmodernists are especially fond of asking people to question the validity of their words. So it's sort of a game of "being meta," I guess.

I like Zen better. "What is the Postmodernism? A shit stick!"

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:09 pm

Clearly we are stopped cold, at different intersections on the same road.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:13 pm

Maybe I should give the ol' signal a whack with the sillystick to get it unstuck?

I still need to read the rest of Jameson.

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:15 pm

He's just an Ohioan who got uppity, like me. I wouldn't take either of us too seriously.

maxlords · Post by **maxlords** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 7:16 pm

trivial wrote:maxlords: The strip is usually opaque, while the bottle is usually clear. The "band" term was the translator's choice, not mine.

Strip and bottle are similar, but not the same. The clear one reveals its connectedness only under closer scrutiny than the opaque one calls for. Clarity may conceal.

You should have expected Poe's Law to rear its head in this thread, amirite?

Nice. An anti-Semetic comment veiling your "sarcasm" with a added law that defends undetectable sarcasm. My family does happen to be Jewish too... [/conversation]

My point was simply that the strip/bottle comment is the sort of non-useful dissection that should just go away.

@ prof ganson: Cool, man. I think I've read part of it in the past. My issues aren't with that style...just that some of the current types of advances aren't really going anywhere. I'll grab Mortal Thoughts if I see it kicking around though. So there's nothing modern that really compares or is a less technical read huh? Bummer.

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:53 pm

I had an epiphany. Morrissey wrote something anti-semetic and I quoted him. Sorry Maxlords, it was just something accessible that popped into my head.

Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:02 pm

i prefered the story

trivial · Post by **trivial** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 10:04 pm

But Erasure had their heyday just after Morrissey's. It was ungracious.