Conversation

Replying to
Postmodernism isn’t so much anti-enlightenment as it is recognition of the fact that the methods of inquiry of the enlightenment lead to divergent conclusions far more often than they lead to convergence, and that this was mostly okay
2
29
The recognition started with romanticism actually. This upset a lot of people. They went on an authoritarian bender trying to scope the methods so it would only produce universal convergence and trying to declare non-convergent results of reasonable enquiry “not truth” illegality
1
10
One strand of high modernism represented this anxiety. High modernism is a “merge to trunk” bias favoring convergent core of enlightenment inquiry. It has a high voice bias. You do not get to agree to disagree. You do not get to exit saying “willing to be misunderstood”
1
15
Curiously it has both right and left versions. The right version is “debate me dammit why won’t you debate me? you hate truth” The left version is “exit is a privilege, continued dialogue is respect for goals of solidarity/collective action” Both are enlightenment hangovers.
2
17
In the merge/fork metaphor, postmodernism accepts promiscuous forking without even bothering to make self-soothing noises about eventual synthesis. Fork away. If we go beyond each other’s light-speed horizons so be it.
1
11
Where there is no unqualified reproducible outcome to a method of inquiry, even success or failure do not necessitate convergence. I fork from your project. You succeed, I fail. Do I have to agree you found a truth while I chased a lie and merge back with you, shamefaced? Hell no
1
10
We can both make up accounts and stay on our forks. Even death is not a definitive resolution. I can go to my grave convinced I found the truth despite failing and that you’ve built success upon a lie that just hasn’t caught up with you yet.
1
10
Now the consensus has unraveled further. There isn’t even loose agreement on legitimate methods of inquiry. We’re off ex-post legibilized bureaucratized “scientific method” as a gold standard. This is also fine, as far as I’m concerned. Methodological anarchy ftw.
1
12
If you’re not solving for convergence anyway, and various degrees of exit are a legit option, do you even need agreement on methods? Nothing of consequence rests on people agreeing on conscious methods of inquiry, 90% of the time. Life is not a science. Why enforce a standard?
2
11
Replying to
A 'truth' realized by revelation, for example, may have no empirically accessible truth value. If you can use the belief/message to influence the behavior of others, however, you have an empirical set of effects which are completely orthogonal to the truth value of the belief.
1
1
Replying to
My standard isn’t even that high or require acknowledgement of alternative “high” standards of truth. My standard is to do without standards because the “truth” doesn’t actually need standardization 90% of the time. You can use astrology or quotes from the Simpsons as your mode.
Replying to
Would that suggest simply selecting your truth by personal intuition or reasoning, without reference to a socially specified epistemological frame of reference?
1
Replying to
Yeah, whatever works for you or even fails. The only ultimate failure is death, and that’s not something we can avoid anyway (at least I don’t think we can), so long as you’re alive and retelling your story for yourself, that’s your truth. Everything else is standards compliance.
1
Show replies