Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

[gⅼеɳ ☣]

I don't know anyone who still claims to be (or think as) a postmodernist.  The 
temporal context implied by "post-" simply indicates a stage we've gone 
through, not a centralized, coherent way of thinking.  The transition referred 
to by "postmodern" simply indicates that we lost our *assumed*, fixed, 
foundation.  Modern had a firm, fixed footing.  We lost that and now we'll 
always be post modern.

Attempts to replace the previous (modern) footing with some new, unitary, 
coherent foundation have been successfully resisted.  But it seems to me like 
we're arriving at a constraint-based way of thinking.  Yes, *within* some set 
of constraints, there's plenty of semantic wiggle.  The constraints 
circumscribe a set of equivalent re-groundings.  But it's clearly nonsense to 
re-ground to something outside the constraints.  I.e. we're approaching 
something modelable by things like Kripke semantics.  Given a language, some 
things make sense and others don't.  Change languages and what makes (versus 
what doesn't make) sense changes.

If we get to the point in science where we can seriously talk about 
consciousness, then perhaps that will provide a new, fixed, grounding for 
meaning.  But until then, perhaps our best bet is to categorize types of 
language(s) and types of sentences in those languages to further constrain the 
wiggle room that postmodernism originally pointed out.


On 11/18/2017 10:15 AM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> PoMo seems "mature" enough now that it, itself is wanting to be received 
> seriously (trying to rationalize itself to rationalists?).   It's 
> (unfortunate) association with the Beat culture (my experience growing up was 
> that the Beats were mostly the over-30 dropout men who were trying to horn in 
> on the youth culture of the Hippies, especially (surprise!) the girls) and 
> aspects of the (subsequent) drop-out culture exemplified by the Merry 
> Pranksters.
> 
> But what comes after/follows-from PoMo?   Post-Postmodernism?  MetaModernism? 
>   A plenitude of *modernisms (as suggested by the PoMo aesthetic?)
> 
> From the Wikipedia Post Postmodernism entry:
> 
> /Salient features of postmodernism are normally thought to include the 
> ironic play with styles, citations and narrative levels,//^[6] 
>  //a 
> metaphysical skepticism or //nihilism 
> //towards a “//grand narrative 
> //” of Western culture,//^[7] 
>  //a preference 
> for the virtual at the expense of the real (or more accurately, a fundamental 
> questioning of what 'the real' constitutes)//^[8] 
>  //and a 
> “waning of affect”//^[9] 
>  //on the part 
> of the subject, who is caught up in the free interplay of virtual, endlessly 
> reproducible signs inducing a state of consciousness similar to 
> schizophrenia./^/[10]
> /
> 
> All I know about PoPoMo I just read in Wikipedia (how non-PoMo of me?) but 
> recognize some of the ideas and names referenced there.   Eric Gan's 
> PostMillenialism struck me for it's dismissal (judgement?) of PoMo as 
> "victimary thinking"... a corollary of nihilism?   I don't really take Gan's 
> Generative Anthropology seriously (though it has interesting ideas) and DO 
> (against my personal convenience) believe in a postCapitalist/postDemocracy 
> (r)evolution on the cusp of happening (perhaps even in my lifetime?).
> 
> I also find something interesting in this description of metaModernism (same 
> source):
> 
> /As examples of the metamodern sensibility Vermeulen and van den Akker 
> cite the 'informed naivety', 'pragmatic idealism' and 'moderate fanaticism' 
> of the various cultural responses to, among others, climate change, the 
> financial crisis, and (geo)political instability./
> 
> /The prefix 'meta' here refers not to some reflective stance or repeated 
> rumination, but to Plato's //metaxy //, 
> which intends a movement between opposite poles as well as beyond.//^[25] 
>  /


-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ


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Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

[gⅼеɳ ☣]

FWIW, I view existentialism as a re-grounding of meaning, onto "what it's like" 
to be human (or any thinking thing).  Postmodernism is simply the realization 
that meaning *can* be re-grounded at will.  It focuses less on fixing/fixating 
on humans and more on our ability to change what we're fixated on.  It just so 
happens that humans are masters of re-grounding.  So, lots of postmodern stuff 
ends up being about humans and how/that they re-ground.

Read this way, existentialism is completely antithetic to postmodernism.

On 11/18/2017 07:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, what is the relation between PoMo and Existentialism?   I take 
> existentialism to be the doctrine that all meaning in life, if human life has 
> any meaning, is generated or asserted by the humans that live it.

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

Re: [FRIAM] Postmodernism for Rationalists

[gⅼеɳ ☣]

FWIW, I view existentialism as a re-grounding of meaning, onto "what it's like" 
to be human (or any thinking thing).  Postmodernism is simply the realization 
that meaning *can* be re-grounded at will.  It focuses less on fixing/fixating 
on humans and more on our ability to change what we're fixated on.  It just so 
happens that humans are masters of re-grounding.  So, lots of postmodern stuff 
ends up being about humans and how/that they re-ground.

Read this way, existentialism is completely antithetic to postmodernism.

On 11/18/2017 07:53 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, what is the relation between PoMo and Existentialism?   I take 
> existentialism to be the doctrine that all meaning in life, if human life has 
> any meaning, is generated or asserted by the humans that live it.

-- 
☣ gⅼеɳ


FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove