Please can we take a step back? I need people to ELI5 why postmodernism is a legitimate "stage"

General
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My previous thread on this did not provoke the discussion I was hoping for, so I am going to re-ask the question a different way.

Firstly, it seems to me like at least 90% of the people here view postmodernism (or a postmodern perspective) as a necessary stage. That is true whether we are talking about periods of Western ideological history, or stages in personal development. The historical view is that modernism had somehow expired, or become untenable, and that postmodernism was the essential next step, but that it somehow “isn’t enough” and we need to move on to metamodernism. The personal development view is that a postmodern perspective is a necessary step in the onward and upward path towards some sort of conclusion (“enlightenment” – whatever that might mean.)

When I question this, I don’t seem to get much traction. I feel people don’t think it is important – presumably they think I’m just wrong, and that I’m in such a minority that it doesn’t matter and I’ll learn eventually.

The problem is that vast numbers of people have never accepted that postmodernism was legitimate at all. This includes highly influential thinkers such as Chomsky and Nagel. The reason for their wholesale rejection of postmodernism is that they cannot accept its opening premises. These are that there is no such thing as truth, that everything is perspective or relative, and that the age of totalising “grand narratives” is over forever (which amounts to saying there will never be a holistic , coherent “theory of everything”). From this point of view postmodernism cannot be a stage of anything at all – it was never a legitimate way of looking at things.

There is a fundamental question here about who can be part of 2R and how they can be part of it. How can a person who never accepted postmodernism become part of a Second Renaissance which assumes PoMo was a necessary stage and isn’t open to questioning that?

So my questions this time are:

(1) Why do you believe postmodernism was ever legitimate?
(2) Can you see a place in 2R for anti-postmodernists like Chomsky and Nagel? What is their path to this new movement? What is their role in it? Or do you see them as modernists who have no path to 2R because they refuse to see the light of the “postmodern stage” they need to go through?

This proto-movement has nearly all of the elements it needs to actually change the world in a major way. It really is desperately needed, and massive change is coming whether we like it or not. But I do not think that can happen until this specific problem has been resolved. I think the real Second Rennaissance needs to appeal as much to anti-postmodernists as it does to post-postmodernists.

And in the interests of making this easier to understand, I think this problem is ultimately political in nature. I saw it very clearly in Brendan Graham Dempsey’s facebook groups. JK Rowling is still viewed as the devil incarnate, and the reason is that she point blank refused to accept the premises of postmodernism. But I don’t think 2R can happen without people like her on board. All she has ever done is defend biological realism. If people like her are your enemy, then I don’t think you’ve got a viable movement – at least not a movement capable of fulfilling the ambitions of 2R. There has got to be a more full-throated acknowledgement of what was wrong with postmodernism – there needs to be an acceptance that the postmodern perspective was wrong. JK Rowling is owed an apology, not more abuse.

2

As a simple starting point, why do narratives of intellectual history use the word “postmodern” in the first place? What phenomena are included in that category? Is there a better term to call whatever those phenomena are?

By way of evidence, I’ll offer this. Feel free to counter with better evidence if it can be found.

3

I don’t see how questions can amount to evidence of anything at all. But they do work as starting points.

Why do we have to use that word? The concept was entirely the invention of the postmodernists themselves – no neutral observer declared we had entered a postmodern age or condition. And it became sufficiently large and influential that it cannot be ignored. But I think we can say the same two things about scientology, and it does not follow that scientology should be granted any credibility. It’s just nonsense, because it is founded on entirely false premises.

What phenomena are included? I’m happy to go with the postmodernist’s self-declaration, as already described above: there is no such thing as truth, that everything is perspective or relative, and that the age of totalising “grand narratives” is over forever (which amounts to saying there will never be a holistic , coherent “theory of everything”). That is the theory. In practice it becomes everything we now associate with “woke” politics.

I am not aware of a better term than “postmodern social leftism” or “woke ideology”. I don’t think there’s any difficulty in identifying what it is that we are talking about.

What motivated the postmodernists? I agree with Chomsky. They were political leftists – including Maoists and Stalinists – who had watched communism go bad. They needed to revive their flagging careers so they made up a load of cynical but fashionable nonsense. There was a deliberate intention to mislead and confuse, as well as sustain academic careers pretending to be profound when in fact most people didn’t have a clue what they were actually talking about and, in truth, neither did they. That’s what the Sokal hoax was about.

Does that answer the questions?

4

I prefer to peel back onions a bit at a time, so let’s just focus on this statement. (Anyone else who cares can certainly chime in on the rest as the spirit moves …)

Are you seriously asserting that the past 2 or 3 generations of continental philosophy, not to exclude its many ripple effects in Anglo-American academics, is in any way commensurate with Scientology? Consider the ranking below. Somehow, L Ron Hubbard did not make the list.

https://www.eoht.info/page/Humanities%20citation%20ranking

5

Clearly continental philosophy is a lot more influential than scientology. But if if it based on equally invalid opening assumptions then that makes things worse, not better. It cannot be given a free pass just because it has been hugely influential.

I think we need to start at exactly the place I opened this discussion – from the perspective of somebody like Chomsky or Nagel, why is postmodernism legitimate at all? Where does postmodernism start? I have suggested what its opening premises are, and I’ve taken them from the horse’s mouths – it isn’t a strawman definition. If you take away those premises, then what remains intact of postmodernism?

It may help here to make a direct comparison with scientific materialism. Materialism is incoherent, so scientific materialism is also built on a false assumption. We can ask the same question – if you take away materialism then what remains intact of science? The answer isn’t entirely clear yet, but it certainly isn’t “none of it”. Most of science would survive the death of materialism, though some of it would be changed and some parts would be transformed. Some wrong claims would also disappear (such as “consciousness is just brain activity”).

What of postmodernism can survive if it founding assumptions are rejected? I presume the answer is at least some of it…but maybe not that much.

6

Modernism is based on beliefs that are universal in character, i.e. the idea that there is such thing as “Medicine” and not “Indian Medicine”, for example. In other words, being right is about having the right view, and this view must be the same for everyone.

To claim that Postmodern is a legitimate stage is equivalent to the claim that the maps drawn in the Modern stage are not the territory they are taken to be. E.g. the Modernist view of economics only describes reality if one doesn’t look very closely. One can scrutinize other domains similarly and find the Modernist view incapable of self-critique due to this fundamental limitation. So, Postmodernism is awareness of this problem to some degree, even if the answers are incapable of integrating the truths of Modernism. Is this legitimate knowledge, i.e. is there a problem to be aware of? I would suggest that if the answer is yes, than Postmodern can be a legitimate stage.

The existence of Post-post-modern is the interesting one to me. Is there a level of awareness where the pre-trans fallacy loses its power?

7

I don’t think Chomsky is really a consistent critique of Postmodernism. His linguistic theories can be taken to be Modernist, but a critique of Modernist political and economic theory is a big part of his shtick.

8

Is there a modernist view of economics? I don’t know what that is. In fact, I’m not even sure what the word “capitalism” means in any coherent collective sense. I do know what “growth-based economics” means, and that is certainly wrong, but acknowledging that it is wrong does not legitimise anything about postmodernism. It is wrong because it is detached from reality.

So part of the problem here is that it is not clear what “modernism” means either. As a contrast term to postmodernism it only acquires meaning after postmodernism is defined (modernism is what came before, various parts of which are being rejected for various reasons).

One can scrutinize other domains similarly and find the Modernist view incapable of self-critique due to this fundamental limitation.

Again, since I am not clear what is meant by “modernism”, I don’t know what this means either.

So, Postmodernism is awareness of this problem to some degree, even if the answers are incapable of integrating the truths of Modernism. Is this legitimate knowledge, i.e. is there a problem to be aware of? I would suggest that if the answer is yes, than Postmodern can be a legitimate stage.

OK. So from my perspective, I am not “aware of this problem”, because I don’t think the problem has been defined clearly enough. That’s exactly what I am asking in the opening post – if you’re going to say “We’re in the postmodern age now, because modernism has failed” then you’ve got to be very clear what it is that has failed.

I personally think three things have failed:

(1) Growth-based economics.
(2) Metaphysical materialism (because of the hard problem of consciousness).
(3) Postmodern anti-realism (because structural realism is true).

I can explain exactly what those things are, and why they do not belong in the new paradigm. So my question remains the same – why should I accept anything at all which is derived from the anti-realist, anti-rationalist opening gambit of postmodernism?

Do you mean “pre-transgender” fallacy?

If so, then I have no idea what that means either. Gender ideology is a good example. It is pure postmodernism. There is no scientific use for the concept of “gender”, and yet the ideologues never stop claiming it is based on science. The cultural consequences of this have been enormous and incredibly harmful to the whole of society.

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This is the most withering attack on postmodernism I have ever seen:

Noam Chomsky - Postmodernism I

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I know he critiques Postmodernism - I’m saying his critique isn’t consistent.

You asked what a Modernist view of economics would be - it is one based on naive ideas of a universal character. E.g. humans are utility maximizers.

There is a stage of development where naive universal principles are developed (e.g. Newton’s absolutist space and time). And there is a stage of development where these beliefs are falsified. The repudiation of universals is a natural progression from the adoption of universals, if indeed they are ill-founded.

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OK, thanks for that. I understand what the pre-trans fallacy is now, and completely agree. But I am not sure I understand your question or what it has to do with postmodernism.

14

OK. But we can reject that without rejecting anti-realism. We don’t need anything resembling postmodernism to conclude that this simplistic, mechanistic view of humans is inadequate. We do need to reject materialism though (for reasons which are hopefully obvious).

But only if they are ill-founded. We don’t have to reject universals or absolute truths as a general principle just because some of them turn out to be wrong.

Right?

15

If there’s a Post-post-modern, or awareness that doesn’t result in the baby getting thrown out with the bath water, then it must follow the Modern. But is it the next level of development after the Modern? Does one go from naively believing in Universals to an integrated view of the map’s relation to the territory? Or does one disbelieve in truth altogether after finding out the map is not the territory? This boils down to the question: is one still liable to throwing babies out with bathwater after one discovers the problems with Modernism? I’d say yes.

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Quotes and citations would be very helpful to support this assertion.

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Sure they would. But why do you even need to ask for them, given that I’m using a standard definition and you aren’t proposing any alternatives?

I am not aware of any alternatives. Are you?

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I cited the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and provided a link. That’s a standard. Do you have a better standard? Please furnish it.

19

If there’s a Post-post-modern, or awareness that doesn’t result in the baby getting thrown out with the bath water, then it must follow the Modern. But is it the next level of development after the Modern?

My answer is yes, although I don’t think we should be using the term “modern”. I call it “The Age of Disjunction” and I see postmodernism as its final historical sub-stage.

Does one go from naively believing in Universals to an integrated view of the map’s relation to the territory? Or does one disbelieve in truth altogether after finding out the map is not the territory?

As things stand it is very difficult to make that transition without going through a stage of not knowing what to believe. I went through that transition myself, on my way from being a materialist to being a mystic. But it did not last very long. We’re talking weeks rather than years, and I was doing it without a usable map to get me from one to the other. I believe that part of the 2R project – an essential part – is to provide exactly that map – a pathway from modernism to post-postmodernism/2R which does not involve postmodernism at all. This is part of my own personal project. I wish to provide a means for people like who I was (somebody who thinks like Richard Dawkins) to escape from scientism and find a safe landing place in a new ideological system. If you tell them they’ve got to go through a postmodern stage on the way, then you’ve lost them.

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I did not see where you cited that? Was it in this thread? I just looked back and still could not see it.

I can use google though. Postmodernism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

“That postmodernism is indefinable is a truism. However, it can be described as a set of critical, strategic and rhetorical practices employing concepts such as difference, repetition, the trace, the simulacrum, and hyperreality to destabilize other concepts such as presence, identity, historical progress, epistemic certainty, and the univocity of meaning.”

That is not a good start. It is pure postmodernism itself – the initial impression is of self-defeating, incomprehensible garbage which serves no other purpose than to corrode the legitimacy of other disciplines. Isn’t this exactly why people like Chomsky and Nagel can’t stand it?

Can you provide a concise, comprehensible definition of postmodernism?

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I would suggest that even if you went through the Postmodern stage rather quickly, it’s still a necessary stage to work through. In my experience, there is a clinging to beliefs at any (pre-Integral/first tier) stage, and giving up the clinging is necessary in order to develop a more integrated view. In other words, knowing one is wrong always precedes development of a more correct view. It seems to me you’re questioning whether or not this is necessary, but it seems self-evident to me that it is. Am I understanding correctly?

P.S. I’m not familiar with any Integral/Meta-Modern/Second Renaissance pissing contests that may or may not have taken place, so I’ll just use the Integral terminology I’m familiar with.