Op-ed on the "surprising" leftist origins of "Post-Truth"

[Israel_B]

@Wanderfound

which includes some free-to-download stuff, such as http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/socialist_scholars_PUBL.pdf

Quoting from there:

Davide Whiteis, in an article recently submitted to Z Magazine, said it well:

Too many academics, secure in their ivory towers and insulated from the real world consequences of the ideas they espouse, seem blind to the fact that non-rationality has historically been the most powerful weapons in the ideological arsenals of oppressors.

Along similar lines, the philosopher of science Larry Lauden observed caustically that

the displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is – second only to American political campaigns the most prominent and pernicious manifestations of anti-intellectualism in our time

The Frankfurt School (to their credit) at least understood that forcing models onto reality wasnt working but unfortunately they tried to do the same tired thing by just redefining terms until the models fit reality by making words meaningless. The 90s folks like Lind, etal just took this play book and ran with it. Not far from that to post truth.

[Wanderfound]

I’ll just note that there’s nothing in the Sokal paper about “the Frankfurt School”.

To give an idea of the gist of that paper, see:

[quote]My aim isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit or sociology. I know perfectly well that the main threats to science nowadays come from budget-cutting politicians and corporate executives, not from a handful of postmodernist academics. Rather, my goal is to defend what one might call a scientific worldview - defined broadly as a respect for evidence and logic, and for the incessant confrontation of theories with the real world; in short, for reasoned argument over wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. And my motives for trying to defend these old-fashioned ideas are basically political.

I identify politically - as I think all of us here today do - with the Left, understood broadly as the political current that denounces the injustices and inequalities of capitalist society and that seeks more egalitarian and democratic social and economic arrangements. And I’m worried about trends in the American Left - particularly in academia - that at a minimum divert us from the task of formulating a progressive social critique, by leading smart and committed people into trendy but ultimately empty intellectual fashions; and that can in fact undermine the prospects for such a critique, by promoting subjectivist and relativist philosophies that in my view are inconsistent with producing a realistic analysis of society that we and our fellow citizens will find compelling. It seems to me that truth, reason and objectivity are values worth defending no matter what one’s political views; but for those of us on the Left, they are crucial - without them, our critique loses all its force[/quote]

[…]

[quote]Now let me be clear: I’m not saying that it’s easy to determine, in any specific case, which claims of truth are in fact truths. Trying to make that distinction is, after all, what all of our intellectual work is about; and if it were so easy, then we’d be out of a job. (Of course, we may be out of a job anyway, but that’s another story.) What I’m saying is that it’s crucial to distinguish between the concept of “truth” and the concept of “claim of truth”; if we don’t do that, we give away the game before it starts.

Unfortunately, some people, starting from the undoubted fact that it’s difficult to determine the truth - especially in the social sciences - have leapt to the conclusion that there is no objective truth at all. The result is an extreme epistemological skepticism: so that even when postmodernists and their friends concede the existence of an external world - as they pretty much have to - they hobble themselves with a self-imposed inability to make any coherent assertions about that world. How such an extreme skepticism could be a philosophical foundation for political radicalism beats me.

On the contrary, as Barbara Epstein pointed out yesterday, political radicalism means speaking truth to power. Against the mystifications promoted by the powerful, we have to offer to our fellow citizens a coherent and persuasive account of how the existing society really works; we have to criticize that society on the basis of a coherent set of ethical values; and finally, we have to make coherent proposals for how to change that society so as to bring it more in accord with our ethical values[/quote]

-from Truth, Reason, Objectivity and the Left, Alan Sokal, a talk presented at the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York 1997.

[Israel_B]

@Wanderfound

I’ll just note that there’s nothing in the Sokal paper about “the Frankfurt School”.

Didnt mean to imply otherwise. I simply found the bit I quoted relevant to the topic at hand, whether there is a connection between Cultural Marxism and Post Truth. I mentioned the Frankfurt School as the original group of thinkers from which originated Cultural Marxism only.

Whether or not the Frankfurt School gets counted as post modernism which Sokal concerned himself with isnt germane in my thinking of “connect the dots” here.

[Wanderfound]

@Israel_B

Didnt mean to imply otherwise. I simply found the bit I quoted relevant to the topic at hand, whether there is a connection between Cultural Marxism and Post Truth. I mentioned the Frankfurt School as the original group of thinkers from which originated Cultural Marxism only.

Whether or not the Frankfurt School gets counted as post modernism which Sokal concerned himself with isnt germane in my thinking of “connect the dots” here.

Yup, gotcha. All cool.

I was more concerned that the wider readership of the thread didn’t get a misleading idea about the basis of Sokal’s critique.

[Israel_B]

@Wanderfound

I was more concerned that the wider readership of the thread didn’t get a misleading idea about the basis of Sokal’s critique.

Good point. I suspect for one that most in the thread so far probably arent differentiating between v1 & v2 of the idea of Cultural Marxism and why Sokal might be germane here. I’m not that good at expressing my thoughts on matters philosophical so your assist is appreciated.

[Kimmo]

There’s some good stuff about the problem with postmodernism on this page: https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence/

Of course, it’s not so much a problem of postmodernism itself, but the lack of a perceived alternative to the paradigm of modernism beyond nihilism.

[Israel_B]

Postmodernism may well have been the caltrops that sent liberal academia off the road and into the ditch.

[Kimmo]

I think it’s something deeper.

IIRC if you read the wall of text on the other end of my link, the guy makes the case that there’s proper, original po-mo, which is intended to prompt an evolution to a higher paradigm. And that folks must be prepared and nurtured over the bridge to the other paradigm, which can take a couple of years, in which time, there’s no foundation for your worldview.

And furthermore, there’s no structure for, or tradition of facilitating that leap, and thus many people never make it, and settle for nihilism. And after a generation or two, that’s what many academics are teaching po-mo as.

Fuck nihilism - it takes away your brain and your balls.

[Kimmo]

@Kimmo

Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence | Vividness

This is some pretty interesting stuff, BTW. Someone here blew me away with this link - A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse | Meta-rationality - and it said I should read that other page first.

You know when you come across a perspective that’s like a lens that brings your view into focus? This one has a pretty broad scope, too.

[Israel_B]

@Kimmo

which is intended to prompt an evolution to a higher paradigm

Yeah I’m familiar with that. Unfortunately no one was ever able to sufficiently tell me what the promised land was supposed to be with “true” post modernism. In the end it just came off as more academic white washed bullshit.

FWIW I’m well aware that some say the same about religion. However if the European Intellectual Post Christian scheme of modernism didnt quite work out as planned, I’ve yet to see what post modernism was supposed to deliver.

@Kimmo

Fuck nihilism - it takes away your brain and your balls.

Yep. I’d say it even takes away a person’s spirit as well, but for the purpose of discussion and for the ladies who have something other than balls, lets not get too pedantic

[fuzzyfungus]

What this piece seems to be missing is a proper examination of where garden-variety ‘lying’ fits into the picture; and what makes ‘post-truth’ a different and special animal.

It’s certainly true that, if you want to put the most intimidating air of authority in your restatement of The Dude’s “That’s just, like, your opinion, man…”, you want to draw on a bunch of mostly lefty postmodernist academics. They are hardly the first to take their epistemology with a stiff hit of subjectivity(the more Romantically inclined blood-and-soil ethnic nationalists and their vaguely mystical inherently local synthesis of people, culture, and place are arguably a good example, not particularly left wing; and rather more likely to attract popular support); but they are certainly a good pick if you want to sound really authoritative about how ‘authority’ is fundamentally problematic.

That said, though, much of the world’s supply of bullshit and falsehood exists not because of epistemological nihilists; but because of people who find that lying, obfuscation, etc. suit their purposes. Depending on your take on the line between ‘deceptive signalling’ and ‘lying’ we’ve been lying for a very, very, long time; quite possibly longer than we’ve been human and certainly longer than we’ve had postmodernists. Sometimes borrowing some postmodern trimmings is a useful lying strategy: if you can’t make your falsehood look presentable, spamming something about intersubjectivity and the unreliability of ‘truth’ is a next-best option; but it’s just one strategy among many; and if you want it to work on people who aren’t your starstruck grad students odds are that a PR flack or someone from advertising is a much better choice for the production of applied nonsense.

So; because I don’t want to risk further rambling, that is what bugs me about this piece: yes, it’s true(and, as far as I know, not even controversial) that Team Postmodernism is on the cutting edge of intimidating theoretical work on post-truthery; but that’s quite different from having successfully promulgated the idea beyond their rather obscure niche.

If we want to give them credit/blame them, or even assert that ‘post truth’ is a thing; it seems like we need to distinguish between people who are ignorant of, or untroubled by, postmodernist objections to ‘truth’; but either just don’t feel like telling it or trust others to do so; and people who actually act differently because of epistemological uncertainty.

In the same vein, it seems worth looking at the relative, population level, influence of people whose job it is to produce hyperspecialized and esoteric works to impress their peers vs. people whose jobs involve manipulating public opinion. We’ve had those since the Sophists were annoying Plato, probably longer; and they have considerable practical experience.

[Kimmo]

@Israel_B

Unfortunately no one was ever able to sufficiently tell me what the promised land was supposed to be with “true” post modernism.

I think the articles I linked do a pretty good job, at least, if you can grok that ‘fluidity’ concept.

[anon75430791]

So for a hot minute advances in communication and a thriving free press driven by reporting standards made it not so bad for a while?

I could buy that.

[Israel_B]

@Kimmo

I think the articles I linked do a pretty good job, at least, if you can grok that ‘fluidity’ concept.

I’m either not smart enough or not familiar enough with the internal referential spiral. I get that the name of the post post modernism goal is “meta rational” but beyond that obvious thing, still a bag of nope.

[Kimmo]

It basically comes down to not throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to accepting the limitations of a strictly rational perspective, or acknowledging that the list of cognitive biases doesn’t make intuitive thinking entirely useless, and attempting to synthesise the two. It involves embracing ambiguity to inhabit an agnostic space where it’s tough to imagine seriously having any more than 50% certainty of any hypothesis.

Kinda like with the intersection of quantum theory and relativity, you just have to accept that somehow neither is a complete explanation of reality, and just get on with it.

[Israel_B]

I’ll have to take your word for it.

[Kimmo]

Maybe someone else can come along and throw some light on it from another angle…

[Wanderfound]

@Kimmo

It basically comes down to not throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to accepting the limitations of a strictly rational perspective, or acknowledging that the list of cognitive biases doesn’t make intuitive thinking entirely useless, and attempting to synthesise the two. It involves embracing ambiguity to inhabit an agnostic space where it’s tough to imagine seriously having any more than 50% certainty of any hypothesis.

It would’ve been good if you’d found a link that made that case in a clear and concise manner, backed up by reasoned argument and perhaps empirical data.

Instead, the link was to an incredibly long-winded, rambling and indirect essay, which begins by declaring itself to be so sublime that any apparent errors are the fault of the reader, and proceeds to lay out an ambiguous case based upon a tortured analogy with a shallow understanding of a dated scientific hypothesis of questionable validity.

Or, in other words, postmodernism.

[Israel_B]

@FerrisWheeler

You know, talking to other people in an inclusive way is possible?

Don’t mistake a comment made as a specific reply with something like passive aggressive generality.

[Kimmo]

Although admittedly long-winded, I found it a worthwhile read. But of course, YMMV.