I did not imply that postmodernism is the ‘most advanced stage yet.’ In an integral framework, calling something a ‘historical stage to be transcended’ means it is something to be outgrown and left behind, not put on a pedestal. We agree that its excesses are a dead-end; we differ on whether any of its observations on perspective have baseline value.
How can you outgrow something if it was never legitimate in the first place, and you never believed it? Almost nobody in the scientific community ever accepted postmodern relativism and anti-realism, so how can they outgrow it? They can grow past it…
How can I “outgrow postmodernism”? I have always been a realist, and I never accepted a word of it. I can’t stand Continental Philosophy.
How about the idea “The map is not the territory” - is this an example of Modernist, or Postmodernist thought?
I first encountered that phrase via Robert Anton Wilson, who belongs to neither category. He took it from Korzybski, who I don’t know much about. In my experience of its use, I find it frequently abused, and I rarely or never use it myself. Of course the map is not the territory. The question is whether the map is any good, and the closer it is to an actual representation of the territory, the more useful it is.
Here’s a list of ideas that are generally considered Postmodern. Do you reject all of them?
1. Knowledge is situated
People do not think from nowhere. What counts as obvious, rational, normal, scientific, civilized, or beautiful is shaped by history, language, class, gender, institutions, education, and culture. This does not mean all views are equally true. It means every claim is made from some position.
2. Language shapes perception
Words are not neutral labels pasted onto reality. The categories we use — “madness,” “crime,” “development,” “terrorism,” “normal,” “race,” “masculinity,” “objectivity” — influence what we notice, what we ignore, and what actions seem justified.
3. Power and knowledge are connected
Institutions do not merely discover truth; they also classify, rank, reward, punish, and normalize. Schools, courts, hospitals, media, bureaucracies, and sciences can produce real knowledge while also producing social control. This is one of Michel Foucault’s most important insights.
4. Grand narratives deserve suspicion
Postmodernists are skeptical of sweeping stories like “history is inevitably progressing toward freedom,” “science will solve all human problems,” “the market naturally produces justice,” or “our civilization represents universal reason.” Such narratives may contain truth, but they often hide exclusions, violence, or failure.
5. Identity is partly constructed
Postmodernism usefully shows that identities are not just biological or private facts. They are shaped by social scripts, institutions, language, expectations, and performance. This does not mean identity is fake. It means identity is partly made through social meaning.
6. Marginal perspectives can reveal blind spots
People excluded from dominant institutions often see things that insiders miss. This is not because marginalized people are automatically correct, but because dominant groups often mistake their own perspective for neutrality.
7. “Neutral” standards can smuggle in values
A test, archive, map, museum, legal code, algorithm, or academic canon may look objective while reflecting hidden assumptions about what matters, who counts, and what is worth preserving.
8. Texts and symbols can mean more than their authors intended
Postmodern literary theory rightly emphasizes ambiguity, irony, intertextuality, and the instability of meaning. Meaning is not simply injected by an author and extracted by a reader; interpretation depends on context.
9. Modern progress has real costs
Industrialization, bureaucracy, scientific management, colonial development, and technological rationality can bring benefits while also producing alienation, ecological harm, domination, surveillance, and cultural erasure.
10. Categories are useful but dangerous
Postmodernism is good at noticing when categories harden into false essences: “the East,” “the West,” “the criminal,” “the primitive,” “the normal person,” “the rational man.” Categories help us think, but they can also trap people.
1: Not controversial, doesn’t depend on anti-realism or deny objective truth.
2: Obviously true for humans, given the number of people who have been totally brainwashed by gender ideology. There is no “neutral language” we can think in (apart from mathematics and logic, but they have no meaning).
3: Veering towards slimy postmodern doubletalk. It all depends which “institutions” you are talking about, and how they operate. Not acceptable without close attention to the details of what is being claimed.
4: Hard reject. Grand narratives must be judged on their merits. As you’ve stated it, this idea poisons the well from which a correct grand narrative must be drawn. Postmodernism IS a grand narrative.
5: That’s not what postmodernism claims. It goes much further than that. It actively denies the biological facts. The problem with postmodernism is that it claims identity is entirely constructed.
6: Very obviously true, given that I am the ultimate outsider pointing out the ultimate blind spot, and I am accusing 2R of having a very large systemic blind spot than none of you can see. Has nothing to do with postmodern anti-realism.
7: Obviously true. Not dependent on postmodernism.
8. Hard reject. Absolute toxic nonsense. The last 4 words are true, the rest is worthless pomo bs.
9. I would have accepted this if you hadn’t put “colonial” in there. That word is a red flag, and an anachronism. The moment non-postmodernists see that word, they stop reading.
10. True, but the devil is in the detail, and this insight is not the property of postmodernism.
Nicely framed utilization of McGilchrist to identify what is going on here.
Shame it is an AI-generated strawman, eh? I am using both hemispheres, not just the left.
Nice try though.
I too am somewhat guarded when hearing terms like ‘the Truth’. Even within a hardcast mathematical system of axioms it cannot be fundamentally complete, or true, independently - without introducing another system. Godel proved that. Even the constituents of fundamental particles have no independent, static meaning - they are simply transient excitations of fields that, too, are in flux. Against this mathematical and physical background, how can the conceptual world projected by humans ever claim to grasp something even close to ‘the Truth’?
If you wanted to get closest, it would be something on the level of unity/interconnection, e.g. the state we attribute to the big bang; the state when all particles, forces and fields were (are?) unified. Maybe, adopting a Buddhist stance, it could be seen as Nirvana. Maybe Rta. Pretty much all philosophical frameworks have a name for it.
Claiming an objective reality above someone else, or a group, or a philosophical framework is something that either aims to cause friction or conquest. The latter you need to back up with power, as per the European colonisers. Then it might work.
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I too am somewhat guarded when hearing terms like ‘the Truth’. Even within a hardcast mathematical system of axioms it cannot be fundamentally complete, or true, independently - without introducing another system.
Truth does not require the completion of every detail. The fact that we can never have access to knowledge of the entire universe is not a legitimate refution of physicalism, is it? Physicalism is refuted because it cannot account for consciousness, which is a question about the fundamental structure of reality, not about a complete account of every intimate detail.
Godel proved that.
Godel’s proof only applies to a closed system. 2PC is open because The Void is infinite. It contains the potential for all possible systems, not just our universe. That is why the wiki entry for the Void ends with a discussion of Godel.
Even the constituents of fundamental particles have no independent, static meaning - they are simply transient excitations of fields that, too, are in flux. Against this mathematical and physical background, how can the conceptual world projected by humans ever claim to grasp something even close to ‘the Truth’?
I don’t understand the objection. Can you explain it more clearly, and less like it sounds like it was generated by an AI? I’ve re-read it 3 times, and cannot extract any clear, static meaning from the words. It’s too vague.
If you wanted to get closest, it would be something on the level of unity/interconnection, e.g. the state we attribute to the big bang; the state when all particles, forces and fields were (are?) unified. Maybe, adopting a Buddhist stance, it could be seen as Nirvana. Maybe Rta. Pretty much all philosophical frameworks have a name for it.
Again, this far too vague. The whole system is necessarily a whole system, but what has this got to do with whether or not we’ve got the basic ontological structure of reality correct?
Claiming an objective reality above someone else, or a group, or a philosophical framework is something that either aims to cause friction or conquest.
No it isn’t. I seek truth as an end in itself, and I think everybody else should too. I see no connection at all between truth-seeking and conquest, apart from the fact that an entity with more accurate information about reality is better equipped to conquer or to resist being conquered. A lack of truth is a pragmatic weakness.
If somebody makes a truth claim that other people don’t agree with then this is bound to cause friction, but given that reality consists of individually embodied agents, friction is inevitable.
The latter you need to back up with power, as per the European colonisers. Then it might work.
I really can’t see a connection between truth-seeking, truth claims, and the history of European empire-building.
Truth does not require the completion of every detail. The fact that we can never have access to knowledge of the entire universe is not a legitimate refution of physicalism, is it? Physicalism is refuted because it cannot account for consciousness, which is a question about the fundamental structure of reality, not about a complete account of every intimate detail.
Then one must be prepared to accept that it is not ‘the Truth’, but rather one interpretation.
Godel proved that.
Godel’s proof only applies to a closed system. 2PC is open because The Void is infinite. It contains the potential for all possible systems, not just our universe. That is why the wiki entry for the Void ends with a discussion of Godel.
Infinity cannot be proven and is paradoxical too. To debate infinity would be the subject of another post however. For the present context, I simply impart that I see infinity as akin to invoking God, angels, or any other concept that cannot be proven per se. It has no meaning. Likewise, no truly open systems have been proven to exist (they would need to be infinite, as noted).
Even the constituents of fundamental particles have no independent, static meaning - they are simply transient excitations of fields that, too, are in flux. Against this mathematical and physical background, how can the conceptual world projected by humans ever claim to grasp something even close to ‘the Truth’?
I don’t understand the objection. Can you explain it more clearly, and less like it sounds like it was generated by an AI? I’ve re-read it 3 times, and cannot extract any clear, static meaning from the words. It’s too vague.
I was commenting on the nature of the physical world. An objective ‘Truth’ would, as you refined it in your original post, need to be static and absolute.
If you wanted to get closest, it would be something on the level of unity/interconnection, e.g. the state we attribute to the big bang; the state when all particles, forces and fields were (are?) unified. Maybe, adopting a Buddhist stance, it could be seen as Nirvana. Maybe Rta. Pretty much all philosophical frameworks have a name for it.
Again, this far too vague. The whole system is necessarily a whole system, but what has this got to do with whether or not we’ve got the basic ontological structure of reality correct?
I sense we would be going to waste a great deal of time on such topics. My training is in physics, yours more in philosophy. We can share in both, and I like to think I can participate in philosophical discussion (as here), but it requires some baseline degree of mutual understanding - the alternative being lots of time to elaborate, provide examples, etc. Time is something I have precious little quantity of - as you may have gleaned by my almost once-yearly participation on this forum.
Claiming an objective reality above someone else, or a group, or a philosophical framework is something that either aims to cause friction or conquest.
No it isn’t. I seek truth as an end in itself, and I think everybody else should too. I see no connection at all between truth-seeking and conquest, apart from the fact that an entity with more accurate information about reality is better equipped to conquer or to resist being conquered. A lack of truth is a pragmatic weakness.
The quest for truth is noble. The issue here is claiming an objective Truth and casting that in a manner that another framework is broken because it can’t see the objective Truth you profess to know.
If somebody makes a truth claim that other people don’t agree with then this is bound to cause friction, but given that reality consists of individually embodied agents, friction is inevitable.
The latter you need to back up with power, as per the European colonisers. Then it might work.
I really can’t see a connection between truth-seeking, truth claims, and the history
The European powers imposed their objective ‘Truth(s)’ in a similar superior stance. Their methods, of course, were very different. They didn’t discuss, as you do. I presumably don’t need to reiterate all the shameful methods they employed. Ones that anyone with European heritage (myself included) should feel some responsibility for, and a desire to restore part of what was lost, however possible. Even if it’s a losing battle.
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>Then one must be prepared to accept that it is not ‘the Truth’, but rather one interpretation.
Something does not become an interpretation because it is incomplete. These are two entirely different things.
>Infinity cannot be proven and is paradoxical too. To debate infinity would be the subject of another post however. For the present context, I simply impart that I see infinity as akin to invoking God, angels, or any other concept that cannot be proven per se. It has no meaning. Likewise, no truly open systems have been proven to exist (they would need to be infinite, as noted).
You were arguing that a cosmological system cannot possibly be true because of Godel. I pointed out that Godel’s theorem only applies to closed systems. I do not have to prove that reality contains something infinite in order for Godel’s theorem to not apply to it. You are confusing two things:
(1) The properties of X.
(2) The possibility of proving that X has those properties.
I did not claim I could use mathematics or logic to prove 2PC is true.
>I was commenting on the nature of the physical world. An objective ‘Truth’ would, as you refined it in your original post, need to be static and absolute.
Why? Why would the claim that physicalism is true (for example) require anything other than that physicalism is true? What work is “static and absolute” doing? Why has it got anything to do with what I am saying?
>I sense we would be going to waste a great deal of time on such topics.
Yes…
>The quest for truth is noble. The issue here is claiming an objective Truth and casting that in a manner that another framework is broken because it can’t see the objective Truth you profess to know.
If physicalism is true, idealism is false. That is just logic. There cannot be multiple, mutally-contradictory trruths
>The European powers imposed their objective ‘Truth(s)’ in a similar superior stance.
No they didn’t. They used brute force, not an argument.
How does a statement become an interpretation? How can a statement be anything other than an interpretation?
The formalism of quantum mechanics is a mathematical description of the behaviour of the unobserved wavefunction. It is a probabilistic mathematical description of what we will observe in future. The interpretations of QM are competing explanations for what the formalism means with respect to the metaphysical structure of reality. The original formalism isn’t an interpretation because it is a literally true description of what we observe (we always observe one of the predicted outcomes, and there’s no empirical reason to doubt the probabilities are correct). The interpretations are interpretations because all of them are consistent with observation, and yet they make different claims about the structure of reality.
That is just one example, of course. In this case the interpretation is required because the formalism raises metaphysical questions it cannot answer – it is incomplete, because the reality we actually observe is singular and definite whereas the formalism just provides a range of probabilities. And the question is metaphysical because we cannot observe what is happening to the unobserved system…by definition.
You continue to construct these discussions as though reality must conform to a rigid binary architecture in order to qualify as “truth.” But that assumption itself is precisely what remains unproven.
You say:
“If physicalism is true, idealism is false.”
Only if both are being framed as mutually exclusive totalising systems…?!
Reality repeatedly demonstrates that observation, framing, scale, and context alter what appears “true” from a given perspective. A sphere viewed in two dimensions can appear as a circle. That does not make the circle “false.” It makes it partial. Likewise, wave-particle duality did not resolve itself because physicists shouted:
“Choose one ontology immediately!”
Your framing treats perspectival limitation as equivalent to falsehood. They are not the same thing.You also keep subtly sliding between:
-
truth existing,
and -
humans possessing final access to it.
Those are radically different claims.
I suspect this is why the conversation keeps orbiting the same roundabout. You approach discussion as though contradictions must be forcibly collapsed into singular conceptual supremacy. But many systems are complementary, layered, scale-dependent, or emergent.
One almost imagines a future Ministry of Truthfulness where arriving philosophers are processed at customs:
“Physicalist?”
“No.”
“Step aside please sir.”
“Dualist?”
“Hm. Suspicious. Secondary screening.”
“Process-relational emergent non-dualist?”
“Remove your shoes and surrender all nuance immediately.”
The deeper issue is this:
You seem to assume that if truth exists, then one framework must ultimately annihilate all others into total submission.
Nor does one map become “the Truth” merely because it loudly declares sovereignty over the others.
Even mathematics itself contains structures that are simultaneously locally coherent and globally paradoxical. Infinity, curvature, undecidability, complementarity, observer-dependence, chaos, emergence - modern thought has repeatedly revealed that reality is stranger than rigid binary metaphysics prefers.
And perhaps that is precisely where humility enters, recognising that finite beings may perceive different cross-sections of a structure larger than any single conceptual frame can fully contain.
Now I have to hop off this roundabout, but wish you (and others) on another pleasant round or two+++ 
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Justin, I am not interested in talking to your AI.
Should we apply the same to yours? Most of my replies/original posts are not AI, unlike yours. You are correct that this one was. I don’t have the time as you do to sit before screens being not just a keyboard warrior but going around and around endlessly with no forward motion to achieve some synthesis. Healthy inquiry usually contains moments of uncertainty, open questions, curiosity, synthesis, concession, mutual refinement, respect and even a little playfulness occasionally. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen any one of those things in all your various posts.
There aren’t any of mine. I do not use AI to generate replies in debates. I’ve only ever done that once on this forum, and that was in response to an AI generated post (credited as such), and was itself declared to be an AI-generated response, and I provided a seperate non-AI-generated response to that AI post.
Generating opening posts with AI, when done openly, is a completely different matter. That can be done in a genuinely neutral manner (if the prompt is neutral). Responding with AI is a substitute for doing your own thinking.
Got it. The problem is when someone posts a great deal of text, and it takes time to both read and then to formulate answers to every point. Should that mean this person is allowed dominance of space and being noticed just because they have more time? AI can balance it somewhat. Also it appeared to me that you are quite liberal in your use of it. But the main issue is whenever I answer you, and not just in this post, it feels like it doesn’t matter, because you are so deeply attached to your own perspective that even the possibility of going outside it, if only partially, is ruled out. That said, maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. The thing is, even the stance of possessing an objectified static Truth, in the context of invalidating another approach, seems by definition to overrule even the possibility of open debate against it. When I’ve raised points, in this post and others, your response is often ‘that is too vague’ or ‘how is that relevant’? If someone isn’t willing to see things in a comparable manner, that means they have no space to question their own knowledge. I’d also add the response you note wasn’t entirely AI and was edited, not just spewn out without a glance.
That is an interesting question, but completely off-topic. I do indeed post a lot of text, and I do indeed have more spare time than most people. Does that mean other people, who have less time, should be able to use AI in order to compete in terms of volume of text? I don’t think so. If you don’t have enough time to properly engage, then maybe this activity isn’t for you.
The problem is that the whole point in having a debate is for everybody involved to test their own thinking against other people’s, and as soon as somebody starts using AI then they have stopped thinking, which makes it pointless for everybody else to continue.
Also it appeared to me that you are quite liberal in your use of it.
I am not opposed to using AI in principle (some people are).
The thing is, even the stance of possessing an objectified static Truth, in the context of invalidating another approach, seems by definition to overrule even the possibility of open debate against it.
I am actively inviting debate. Providing an explanation for why you think X must be correct does not “by definition over-rule the possibility of open debate”. It is a challenge.
When I’ve raised points, in this post and others, your response is often ‘that is too vague’ or ‘how is that relevant’?
Both of those are reasonable things to say in a debate.
Could we possibly get back on-topic? This kind of stuff doesn’t make good reading material.