Ahh…Postmodernism. You gotta love it. The whole idea that everything we know is a construct of language is such a beautiful construct of language. What? Did I just say that the very foundation of Postmodern thought cannot even be considered under its own premise? Why, yes, I did. Okay, well now you’re just talking jibberish. (And I am conversing with myself, I might add.) Actually I am talking jibberish. That is what postmodern ideology will do to you.
Let’s think as a postmodernist for a moment…. everything we know to be true is a construct of the “language game” that we have been brought up in. We can never get to the actual things “as they really are.” So according to postmodernism, I can have Jesus, you can have Buddha, and our friend can be Muslim, but we all have the truth according to the social constructs of where we were raised. Wow, really?
So how did we ever get to an understanding of the knowledge that everything is just a construct of our social environment if our minds cannot escape this social context? We cannot. “That’s correct….now tell them what they’ve won, Bob. Well, they’ve won an all-expense-paid trip to Reality. Reality is the land where truths are just that….true. Sometimes offensive, but never invented. It’s the truth. Back to you, Alex.”
Yes, how did Wittgenstein (an innovator in language constructs) pull himself out of this social construct to be able to achieve a special knowledge over all “social constructs?” Well, he did not, and this problem creates a self-defeating argument for Postmodernists.
Truth can be known. Now let’s discuss what it is! 🙂
Mary Jo
Sometimes, I just feel stoopid. Big words scare me.
Not really…awesome thought. I hate the argument “we are all god, we all have truth, and it is inside us.” Whatever. Thanx for being honest, 2chix, about Truth. I expect a lot of controversy from this blog. That’s cool. Jesus was fairly controversial Himself.
Keep it up! Remember Christ at the heart of ALL you write!
Love ya!
Nice! I particularly liked the part where Announcer Bob enters the scene to describe the prize! I think most Postmodernist would be more pleased with a Crock-Pot than with Reality.
Anyway, cool site!
….and God said, “Get your own dirt.”
Something cannot come from nothing.
For philosophers, and apologists, yes post-modernism falls apart under scrutiny. However, the man on the street thinks of it this way: If it works for you, run with it; but keep your eyes open for something that might work better. If you were to point out that arguments for post-modernism are self-defeating, they would just give you a blank stare. Any ideas on how to address the average joe?
Rick,
Yeah…great observation. I believe the average joe is going to give you a “isn’t that just your interpretation” or “what’s true for you isn’t what’s true for me.” (Although, those are somewhat catch-phrases now and not the actual terms used…I would look for more like what you put in italics.) What needs to be discovered is if “average joe” believes any truth can be known at all? The blank stare, in my opinion, comes from a lack of training in logic. Average Joe doesn’t actually think about if they can know truth or not; or doesn’t even think about thinking about truth. 🙂 One of your jobs, in dealing with postmodernism, is to get people to think about why they believe what they believe. Sometimes you will get an answer upon which you can build a discussion. Sometimes you will need to back up and discuss how we can know anything at all.
The problem with the italicized statement above is that it is so morally relative that anything could pass the “run with it” standard. That is where you might jump in their car and begin to drive off while telling them you “kept your eyes open” and “this works better.” Would that demonstrate the problem with the subjective nature of relativism?
To sum up: Why not ask people “why do you believe that?” Try to get at the core of what they are saying.
I have a feeling you already know all that I put in my response. Please feel free to ask more questions. You know I love this!
Thanks,
MJ
Great post, MJ. I look forward to reading many more.
My only comment on this is that you have terribly misunderstood Wittgenstein and caricatured postmodernism. The relativism that postmodernists like to talk about isn’t a relativism of truth it is a truth of relations (from Deleuze). Wittgenstein was not a postmodernist– he came up with the famous dictum: meaning is use– he was more of a pragmatist. Did he deny absolute meanings? Yes. Are public rules arbitrary? Yes. Is this contradictory? Not in any way that I or the philosophical establishment for the last 50 or so years can see.
The relativism that postmodernists like to talk about isn’t a relativism of truth it …is a truth of relations (from Deleuze).
Arturo, the truth of relations is what eventually ends up relativizing truth. Since reality cannot be known, due to our cultural lenses that filter all incoming information, we cannot know the truth, only what is relative to our culture. So each culture has their own way of filtering reality, which strips all cultures of any absolute truth claims. Is this Wittgenstein’s view or a later contemporary?
Deleuze – Identities are not logically or metaphysically prior to difference, Deleuze argues, “given that there exist differences of nature between things of the same genus.”[12] That is: to say that two things are “the same” obscures the difference presupposed by there being two things in the first place. Apparent identities such as “X” are composed of endless series of differences, where “X” = “the difference between x and x'”, and “x” = “the difference between…”, and so forth. Difference goes all the way down. To confront reality honestly, Deleuze claims, we must grasp beings exactly as they are, and concepts of identity (forms, categories, resemblances, unities of apperception, predicates, etc.) fail to attain difference in itself.[i]
So here is my problem with Deleuze: there is no such thing as reality. He is basing identity on difference (which I believe is your reference to his “truth of relations”). So we cannot know “the thing in itself,” or Plato’s realm of the forms, or Kant’s phenomenal realm. We have lost any kind of knowable absolutes. By Deleuze’s metaphysics, even philosophy can only have a kind of relational value in describing anything; for example epistemology. We can never really know how we come to know things according to Deleuze. This appears to me to be a road block to philosophical argumentation. How can we even begin to argue when there is no identifiable foundation for the arguments?
Not in any way that I or the philosophical establishment for the last 50 or so years can see.
Two of Wittgenstein’s modern interpreters are using him to support their postmodern theories. This can be found in the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre (professor at various universities throughout his life: Yale, Princeton, Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame) and Brad Kallenberg (Phd in philosophical theology, Fuller – currently professor at the University of Dayton). Their interpretations may be wrong, but they are utilizing Wittgenstein in support.
Thanks,
MJ
[i] Available from: Gilles Deleuze
. Accessed March 29, 2007.
All that Wittgenstein did was show us that language must be a public phenomenon– that is, there is no “anchor of meaning” behind language. Meaning is simply how things are used: Hammer means that because I use hammer to mean that. Deleuze is simply rehashing an age old conflict between universals and particulars– he is a strict nominalist in that sense. “How can we even begin to argue when there is no identifiable foundation for the arguments?” This is one of the great questions of epistemology, and so far as I can tell it has not been resolved. We are still working to find that solid foundation.
How can we even begin to argue when there is no identifiable foundation for the arguments?
Arguments do not need an identifiable foundation. They’re not anchored in immortal stone. They orbit, they cycle, they flow around attractors.
From whence did water first flow to raindrops, rivulets, rivers? Do you need to know that moment before you take a cooling sip of the stuff?
We have lost any kind of knowable absolutes
You have not lost the absolute knowledge that there are no knowable absolutes. One can “always” find an absolute. Perhaps that is the foundation you seek.
From Facebook
From Marie-Claude Plourde
—
Hi Mary Jo,
I had written this text in Facebook, but since you seem to be only reachable through this blog, even though the group is named Two Chix in Facebook, I copy my post in here. I was shocked to see that you made Wittgenstein a postmodern. Really.
—
Now, the original blog post was partly an attack on semioticians, Mary Jo saying that they were, like the postmodernists, affirming that languages could mean anything and the contrary. This was exactly what Wittgenstein tried to resolve and AVOID, as Arturo rightly pointed out.
In my view – and I must concede that I don’t know USA culture extensively – C.S. Peirce was one of the greatest minds that walked your country. Peirce built mainly from the works of Quine and Wittgenstein. He refined Saussure’s works on semiotics. Saussure’s view was dualistic: words (thereafter referred as ‘signs’) have two parts: the signifier and the referent. However, not everybody agreed on the signification of signs, making arguments hard to settle when written in natural languages.
Peirce refined Saussure’s semiotics by bringing a third party in the sign’s formal definition: the sign is now a relation between the sign itself, the referent, and the interpretant. This enables to describe the meaning of signs (words) by the linguistic community in which it is used. The meanings of signs are indeed normalized through usage. This is still a mainstream in linguistics and semiotics nowadays. It is the one I studied in my B.A. Wittgenstein was in no way saying that everything can mean nothing and the contrary; he rather set forth – with many others, like Quine and Carnap – the conditions enabling for modern semiotics to appear.
Thus, I think the vision of truth in modern philosophy is also strongly influenced by analytic philosophers and semioticians, who are mainly pragmatists: the truth can only emerge through a normative process including as many persons’ experiences as is possible. Do you want to know what are the most basic moral values people have in common? You will only have the answer from a collective sampling, and this will provide you an a posteriori statement.
Now, is truth necessarily defined by the majority? No. Can such statements a posteriori have definitive truth values? I don’t think so. They are tentative and based on observation. But it is also probably the best picture of what is truth for the people surveyed at one place and time.
I hope this helps clarify the position on languages.
My favorite quotes from Wittgenstein are from his Tractatus:
– The world is everything that is the case. (1st proposition)
– Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. (7th proposition)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus]
Au plaisir,
Marie
Continued…
—
Now, what is truth? From the viewpoint of a linguist:
“Thus all sorts of considerations determine the truth conditions of a statement, and these go well beyond the scope of grammar. Suppose I say: ‘The temperature is falling’. Nobody knows exactly what that means without extralinguistic presuppositions. Does it mean that the temperature is lower than it was five minutes ago? Perhaps. But if I say: ‘The temperature is falling’, meaning that we are heading toward an ice age, then my statement may be true even if the temperature is rising locally. Even for the simplest sentences it is impossible to set truth conditions, outside the context of language use. And we must also distinguish fixed beliefs, temporary beliefs, etc.”
[Chomsky, On Languages]
Marie
Continued…
—
About truth… I rediscovered C.S. Peirce lately, a semiotician I had studied during my translation studies. For Peirce, truth is definitely something that is knowable. I wanted to share this with you:
Peirce, having started out in accord with Kant, is here giving notice that he is parting ways with the Kantian idea that the ultimate object of a representation is an unknowable thing-in-itself. Peirce would say that the object is knowable, in fact, it is known in the form of its representation, however imperfectly or partially.
Reality and truth are coordinate concepts in pragmatic thinking, each being defined in relation to the other, and both together as they participate in the time evolution of inquiry. Inquiry is not a disembodied process, nor the occupation of a singular individual, but the common life of an unbounded community.
“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of an indefinite increase of knowledge.”
“Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a foreordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.”
Marie
Wittgenstein as a postmodernist… that is not my intent. His ideas were interpreted by postmodernists (MacIntyre, Hauerwas) in the way of social constructs and narratives. Am I mistaken that he played a role in developing language constructs?
Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of an indefinite increase of knowledge.
The statment prior to this one in the quote seems to go against what he is saying here. In this sentence, Pierce seems to establish that the real is based on community; which gets us right back to narratives as the source for all concepts and truth.
The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.
I am not sure I can agree with this statement. The real is an opinion; a universally granted opinion, but still an opinion. So basically, there is no access to truth, even on this view.
Let me know if I have grossly mistated something here.
Thanks,
MJ
Hi Mary Jo,
Sorry if I misinterpreted you, but your article was definitely not clear to me. If some postmodernists think that Wittgenstein is on their side, I think they grossly misinterpret his works.
I’m glad to debate Peirce’s epistemology with you, because I do adhere to this system and find it really fantastic. In fact, I do think that most Christians adhere to a view quite similar to his without even knowing it. Let’s see if we can agree on Peirce… 😉
I want to bring your attention on the following excerpts from my previous posts: “For Peirce, truth is definitely something that is knowable. […] Peirce would say that the object is knowable, in fact, it is known in the form of its representation, however imperfectly or partially.”
Forgive me for this mathematical analogy, but to me, it seems like Peirce presents epistemology this way: imagine ‘time’ on the y axis, and ‘correspondence with reality’ on the x axis. Then, truth would be a function that increases with time, but tending towards a vertical asymptote – this asymptote being the ‘real’. The function I make you imagine is the normalized curve of community: some persons are directly on it, some are higher, and some are lower. This ‘truth’ function is an average. Now, read back the two quotes from Peirce from my previous post with that graph in mind.
Now, I answer your questions.
“In this sentence, Pierce seems to establish that the real is based on community; which gets us right back to narratives as the source for all concepts and truth.”
No. The real is what community tends to achieve. Community tries to make the real congruent with the notion of truth that stems from consensus.
“I am not sure I can agree with this statement. The real is an opinion; a universally granted opinion, but still an opinion. So basically, there is no access to truth, even on this view.”
No again. The real is not an opinion. Truth is our opinion of reality, with the level of knowledge we have gained so far. Truth is what corresponds to reality for society at a given point in time. If you look back through history, like in your conversation with Daniel, you will notice that there have been times where truth was considered to be several Gods, or the Earth being the center of the universe. What we call truth is an evolving concept. Not reality. Because we cannot know totally truth, or because what we consider truth is not totally congruent with reality doesn’t mean that truth is not knowable, only that we don’t know the whole story.
Now, you can notice that this fits well a Christian perspective. Indeed, Christians think of God as being the real. So truth, ultimately, being what corresponds to the real, they strive to increase their knowledge of the truth. However, you cannot know the truth in its entirety. Most Christians would say that the real is indeed an ‘asymptote’, a point that you cannot reach with your human understanding (at least in this earthly life). But they consider that truth can be ‘partially’ known. Just like Peirce states.
Hope you liked this introduction to semiotics. Peirce is my hero for epistemology.
À la prochaine,
Marie
P.S. Reading back what I wrote, this is a big mistake:
“Peirce built mainly from the works of Quine and Wittgenstein”
I meant “Quine built mainly from the works of Peirce and Wittgenstein”.