Design Inference and Mind

This is a topic that's been bothering me off and on for a while, I've written a few posts on it and then deleted them.  Even before I declared that I was leaving message boards I was trying to get a post done on this. Anyway, since I always change my mind on how to approach it, let me just cut and paste this email I sent to Elliot Sober yesterday:

Dr. Sober,

I've read a number of your papers online and your arguments against Design Inference resonate with me more than others I've read. I'm also quite interested in phil. mind. For some reason, "I", keep thinking eliminativism is my only option if the argument works that we can't (in theory) know anything about the content of alien (or computer) minds or even if they have minds/intentions. It seems to me that if there is some kind of ultimate structure to mind, whether it's neuro-chemical reactions or functional relations, then an alien with that would have mental content translatable, ultimately, in human terms. In other words, if humans could come up with a geneneral case model of the mind, we'd be able to reduce all langauges to little thought-bit representations. We'd then have a general theory of language. And if we had a general theory of language/signification, we'd have a prior pattern to compare space signals to. And then we'd be able to test for "specified complexity". Ok in practice I'm sure never, but as a thought exercise, it seems that way to me. That any atomistic theory of mind would at least weakly validate, in principle, the idea of "specified complexity".

thanks for your part in bringing sanity to the world.

 --

Given I didn't ask permission to post his response and that his reply was very thoughtful, I won't post it but I'll just give my interpretation of what he said. First of all, it might be helpful to get Sober's take on the "other minds" problem generally, not specifically related to DI:

http://philosophy.elte.hu/colloquium/2000/Marcius/Sober-paper.htm

In his response to me he left the ID stuff out completely and concentrated on elimitavism. If I understood him correctly, he thinks eliminativism is too extreme because we could say the same thing about life, throw out the concept of life because we might not one day be able to identify whether something is alive or not. The problem I gather, in his view, a matter of epistemology only. But I can't quite figure it out whether he means there is no way to interpret mind from behavior in extremely foreign cases or that it's possible in theory, but we need some ingenious invention. The second seems to me to still allow DI as valid in principle, the first may or may not. I'm sure his view is consistent and I just don't get it but I don't want to keep bugging him. That would be like asking God for the same toy over and over again, he has better things to do.

Other solutions may be in assuming too much in my argument. For instance, part of my argument is rooted in Quine's observations and his move from language non-translatability to elimitavism. Perhaps there is a way that thought atoms exist but don't give rise to a universal language. Well, there could be questions like that at every step of my argument.

I had another thought just today on the matter though. Maybe externalism would help. If that sounds obscure, take a look at Putnam's Twin Earth Experiment: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/twinearth.html

I probably should have thought of this before, but anyway, in externalism, mental content depends on things external to the individual. So it would be impossible for humans through introspection to reverse engineer mental content and derive a general case, the secret to language (if it makes sense to even call it that) would forever be part of the Ontic world.

After a couple quick searches I can't figure out if Sober is an externalist or not. Another possibility is I'm reading too much into Sober. Maybe he believes DI is a theoretical possibility but well beyond our abilities, and that Dembski's problem is making too many ridiculous assumptions about what we know in order to make a science out of it that gives us the results IDers claim. 

Topic: Mind

There is a broad range of thought seeking to define qualia, from non-existence, to basic feelings like pain, to even broader experiences - what it's like to win a footrace or be a CEO. The problem - and it's a perplexing one - is that there might be two things in the universe instead of one. It's a problem, because on one hand science has been so good at explaining things we'd hate to just give up and say, alright, everything in the universe has an explanation but we're going to make an exception for this one "thing," mind - especially the definition that turns on "what it's like" to be something. Mind is the last little corner of the universe anyone with any credibility might conjur up a dualistic story about. And it doesn't seem like we can just shrug off the problem and declare victory for physicalism. The feeling of pain is clearly not a material thing like a rock or a tree. How to deal with it?

My gut instinct is that the problem of mind is as much of a problem for language as it is a problem of ontology. That's certainly not an original thought, philosophers from Dennett to Searle complain about how philosophical language makes the problem that much harder to deal with. A key issue, it seems to me, is that of referance generally. Take the Leibniz thought experiment of walking through the brain. We can walk through the maze of mechanical functions and never see a pain or a thought. This supposidly shows that thoughts and mechanical things are of two different kinds. A succinct reply to this from Rorty goes along the lines that, indeed, Mayan script is also meaningless to convey Mayan concepts unless one speaks Mayan. It's not inconceivable then, that we might one day understand brain language and "seeing a thought" won't seem so ridiculous. We must also concede that language, even the language of science has evolved over time. What does the word "quark" really refer to? How about "gravity?" The language of science has become increasingly more abstract over time and what the brain is able to cognitize as familiar e.g., familiar in the way simple expressions in one's own langauge is familiar (which are also incidently, often the most untranslatable and meaningless on a realist's account), has changed. The abstraction of relativity at one time pushed the imaginations of reputable scientists but today, is readily grasped by bright young undergrad students. So I don't think there is an open and shut case for the failure of "science" to be able to account for mental content, qualia specifically, or even "first-person"-ness. But I think to maintain this view, one has to be flexible on how language works and take a view in the direction of Quine, Wittgenstein, and some of the Continentals. What the future might hold seems more foreign than it might really be, and what the present holds might seem more natural and 1 - to - 1 in correspondance with the external world than it really is. And sure, I use those "really"'s loosly.

All of this doesn't mean I think the matter is settled or even close to being settled. I just don't think with the arguments currently on the table for the "hard problem" hands down secures us a dualist ontology, or even one that requries a clear disctinction between the "first-person" and "third-person."

Fading Dennett?
Topic: Mind

I'm going to get back into this blog. Life is becoming a *little* more normal again and some of the otherwise message board time I'd have spent circling around the same-old I've been able to put into reading an article or two here and there. I don't have anything incredibly insightful to bring up but maybe I can dip my toes into some trivial stuff to get back into things. I might also, shortly, begin allowing comments. The only problem I have with that is managing spam and so on.

I was in the bookstore a couple weeks ago and stumbled accross a new book by Susan Blackmore, "Conversations on Consciousness." It's pretty basic reading and I got through about a third of it there in one sitting. I think it might be worth having given the number of entries from scientists and philosophers in the field for novices like me, but I'd buy it used from amazon. The most interesting thing I read - and unfortunately I can't recall the guy's name - was a particular scientist who specialized in optometry and thinks they've found the seat of consciousness accross a piece of the visual center of the brain. What made his idea interesting, though (and I'm really hoping I'm not confusing his piece with another article in the book), was his idea that some people might experience consciousness more or less intensively. This was brought up as an explanation as to why Daniel Dennett might be so ready to reject the existence of qualia. HAHA. I couldn't believe it. Funny thing though, is that John Searle has made a similar accusation against Dennett, and I've seen other accusations on the web that Dennett might just be a "philosophical zombie" (a being that passes the Turing test without any inner life).

The first thing I thought of are the Christians who, following Plantinga, accuse athiests of possibly being defective and lacking a proper Sensus Divinitatis. Funny that even those at such a high level are willing to suppose some kind of cognitive defect to explain an opponent's position (I'm sure Dennett has his own equivalent invective.) Dennett, for those who just kind of hear his name as linked to dogmatic atheism on the web, is a very well-rounded and talented guy, not just an attack dog for what some would see as nihilism. In addition to being an Oxford Phd at 23, he's a jazz musician, a near professional sculptor, and for years sang in a classical choir. An expert downhill skier (in his youth) and sailor too - let's not forget atheletics. Just my own intuition here, but it would seem to me that if there were those who really didn't have a keen consciousness, such a circumstance wouldn't be tied up with such a wide range of abilities. I'd expect that, if it's really something that happens, for it to correlate more with Asbergers or something.

Anyway, more on my frustrations getting a handle on the issue of qualia in the next post.

Sociology of Knowledge
Now Playing: To Be Edited!
Topic: Lectures On Doubt
Knowledge as a social institution is most certainly an idea that most atheists aren't going to have much patience for. The typical fear, and in some cases for good reason, is that what's being argued for allows anything to become knowledge so long as everyone believes it and that there is no world external to our minds. Of course, many religious folks in all their simplicity really latch on to this idea because they think it means that if a lot of people believe in something nuts, like their God, then it must be true. This is similar to the tactic I've discussed before about Christian penchant for radical skepticism when they're backed into a corner.

I tried to argue in favor of constructivism as an experiment on FAIR the other day, sort of an unconventional angle to take I know, but then again, why not deny them of their belief that if they can get rid of the enlightenment their problems are over?

Now, I really don't have it in me to do a technical post tonight. Maybe that's a good thing, keep it simple to understand, and me from stumbling over myself. I pick Kuhn for my example here because he's relatively well known and he himself or some variation of his "paradigms" are invoked all the time by religionists who are trying to save their beliefs by making them a "paradigm" without a common ground shared with today's science establishment whereby they could ever risk being wrong.

Well, according to Kuhn, not any old idea with a following qualified as science. Science in fact, was a relatively recent phenomena that required a high level of organization to acheive. A science has an extensive core body of research that everyone agrees on and those working within normal science should strive to work within the paradigm. So not just any rogue professor with a website and an ax to grind against the institution "has a paradigm." It would be difficult to argue that even a large body of informal researches united in more or less the same cause could have a paradigm. Paranormal studies are a good example. In a later post, I might fill in the details on why I believe that. UFO studies are something I follow and fit the bill perfectly I think.

I need to emphasize something I said above. According to Kuhn, researchers should stick with the paradigm. One of the things very troubling to the enlightenment was the opressiveness of religion, and even with the huge success of science as an institution in today's world, the enlightenments glowing ashes are no less concerned. That way of thinking holds out for an ideal where nothing is sacred. Where the institution can never put to death another Galileo. Where the lowliest waif can revolutionize the entire institution overnight given a profound discovery. But the problem here is a practical one. How many straws of hay do we have to pull out of the bail before we draw blood? Shout's like Feynman's "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts" seem to assure us that never again will superstition and beaurocracy stiffle progress, but in practice, how much sense does it really make for a large, complex institution to proceed like that? The downside is that pseudoscientists, apologists, and downright cranks LOVE this philosophy! Because to them, today's science is the church and they're justified from the outset to apostatize. Now we might sit back comfortably and say fine, let them bring the evidence! Well, the problem with that is, bringing in extraordinary evidence for review is hard to do even within the establishment. It's not as simple as providing a literal smoking gun picked up from the crime scene. Testing ideas often require funding. Giving research a fair hearing and reviewing the evidence also takes time and costs money. None of this stuff happens in a vacuum where only pure truth zips around as an eternal constant. All those voices challenging the status quo demand to be heard. But if evolution is our goal, giving them all a fair shake would be akin to being open to every mutation, fragmenting the herd and winding up with genetic drift, loosly interconnected colonies of mutants that are doomed to die rather than a stronger species. Kuhn recognized this problem and was therefore, against science as open to all ideas. Revolutions would come, but not everyday or from just any source. As new discoveries are made within normal science, evidence would eventually surface that doesn't fit right, leading to a crisis and a need for possibly a new framework.

I brought up John Gee's apologetics for the Book of Abraham on a post a couple months ago. Gee has invoked Kuhn in the past to make the point that Egyptology might not yet be ready for the Book of Abraham. While it may hypothetically be true that someday the BOA might be vindicated, Kuhn's position would actually be that Gee's apologetics are counterproductive to science - he should be doing "normal Egyptology." And further, Gee's research couldn't really be properly considered science. Whereas from the enlightenment heritage, it's tougher to rule him out of court without sitting down and carefully reviewing his, and every other fringe researcher's, "evidence" and giving him a fair hearing.

That ended up being kind of a long post. To sum up the scope of what I'm trying to say, a lot of atheists when they think of Kuhn or more broadly, any philosophy that considers science a social institution, they think of backs turning on reality. Well, that's a valid concern that I obviously don't have room to talk about in this post, but that's only a small part of what constructive theories are trying to get at. The truth is, and it's ironic for some apologists, that constructivists ideas can actually guard science from the dangers of religion and crackpots better than traditional enlightenment ideas, in some ways at least.

Moral Relativism
Topic: All Is Permitted

The typical arguments I've had with Christians online - and there have been many - have been pretty superficial as I've discussed in previous posts.  The typical Christian has plenty of roadblocks preventing her from pursuing an avenue that involves actual thought. The usual form of the discussions I have are an exercise in trying to get the Christian to understand that if the criteria must be "absolutist" or "objective" morals then atheists aren't necessarily worse off than theists. The reality is of course, I'd wager, that atheists are less absolutist and objective on the whole than Christians are, but that's only because they are serious about understanding a complex issue rather than just throwing out whatever conceptual framework is necessary to assure that whatever they believe at the time is right and can't be questioned.

"Absolute" and "Objective" often mean the same thing in ethics though you could separate the terms to mean "fixed" and "external." There are cases where, for instance, ethics could be external and variable. If you've happened to read my posts on structuralism (or are already familiar with the idea), it's easy to see how, if the thought of two societies are different and if one is more or less bound to the thinking of their society, that ethics would be externally bound to the collective resources of society but variable in that the collective resources of societies differ. I'm not saying I buy into this, but I think it's interesting to think through the problems if it were the case. The problems would actually be I think, not as bad as people imagine. The biggest fear of course, is that if morals aren't "Objective" then they could be anything. Of course logically speaking, any given number of things could be different than they are, but they aren't. Without some articulation on the driving force which would make them be anything, then I see no serious reason to accept that accusation blindly. It's logically possible for there to be 100 foot tall spiders but there aren't. And if the hermeneutical point holds that cultures don't readily translate into each other, then it does no good to say, "Aha! See, those guys over there get to cheat on their wives so I'm going to be one of them!" Since one wouldn't be thinking through the "cheating" in context of the other society's thought structures, then it would be impossible to pull off. So the egregious feats of reckless abandon in the name of technicalities aren't at least, pulled off trivially if a thought-through version of moral relativism holds.

Again, I'm not saying I believe all that. And even if I did, then I'd be willing to be a little whiggish and force my values on a society that has a tradition which looks an awful lot like child prostitution. At any rate, our desire for objective morality is rooted in our desire to have the greatest reasons for taking morals seriously in our own lives as well as in other's. But there is also a pull from moral relativism to be practical. I mean, even if we're not prepared to view acts within ancient cultures as moral, most of us are at least willing to allow for mitigating circumstances. What for instance, can we really consider to be a reasonable expectation for a Neanderthal? For only the most naive is negotiation out of the question, and they are the ones who will typically have some kind of silly notion that the Bible has enforced a consistent objective ethic on man from the dawn of time. Which is of course an outright laugh. Moral positions within the Bible and within the cultures which have relied on the Bible have been as variable in their ethics as just about anyone else. The reality of the situation is that we should all be a little confused about what's right and what's wrong. Because if there is a danger that relativistic assumptions will undermine the continuity of good, there is also the danger that absolutist assumptions will tempt us into immortalizing bad. In the balance I'd guess the latter has historically been the greater problem, despite the vivid imaginations of the religious right.

A final comment on relativism. One of the thought-terminating arguments against the very consideration of relativism is that - as virtually every Christian on the net who's never studied ethics for more than five minutes can tell you - relativism is self-refuting. If all is relative, then so is the utterance, "all is relative." Of course, all we have to do to fix that is to say, "all is relative except for this." In any case, this is more of a problem within logic regarding self-reference that unfortunately reveals itself in language use generally. Self-reference is a significant problem where naive set-theoretic assumptions reign (where there are no restrictions on what can belong to a set) and so logicians try to find ways to plug that hole. The most well-known fix being Bertrand Russell's theory of types which essentially just disallows self-reference. I'm not arguing that Russell's controversial idea is true, that's well beyond my qualifications to even have an opinion, but I'm just pointing out that the work to fix problems in logic fortuitously salvages relativism from being self-refuting. The point is that true or false, the suggestion to delimit the sentence in question isn't just an ad hoc ideologically driven one set out to make the truth anything we want.

Detroit
I'm going to drop another odd post here. For those who know me pretty well on the net and read what I have to say now and again, a net hobby I have that surfaces from time to time that I haven't talked about much is browsing websites documenting the ruins of Detroit.

Don't ask me why I think this is interesting. But every month or so, I find myself looking through the same sets of pictures once or twice.

Two well-known sites are:

forgotten

And take the tour:

Detroit Yes

I've never been to Detroit. I drove by it once though a few years ago when I was in Michigan for my job. Not sure if I'll ever actually find myself there.

Tom Leykis
Tom Leykis hosts a "shock jock" radio show that I listen to everyday on my way home from work. On the surface, Leykis seems to be nothing more than chauvinist bent on demeaning women and celebrating all the things we've been brought up to think are bad. Digging a little deeper, however, he's still a chauvinist, but he's pretty honest and consistent in his positions, and there is so much I think if presented a little differently (something he himself often does in debates with callers therapeutically) it's tough to disagree with him. Now, it's both edifying and frustrating for me to listen to him. I don't really want to get into personal details online, but I'm in the transition between a single life where I pretty much believe "anything goes" and family life. Most people seem to just assume family life is where it's at. But all you have to do is look around a little bit and it's clear that family life is by and large, just as much of a failure as any other kind of life. And I think, it's highly mistaken to believe that family life is the one and only true source of possible happiness and fulfillment or to find fulfillment in anything else is bad, and should make one feel guilty. It would apparently, given the number of broken homes, be better for a lot of people out there to abstain from marriage and family altogether, much in the same way others should abstain from alcohol and drugs. And I think Tom's message, cynical as it may come across, is a message of hope for a lot of guys who can't get the indoctrinations of the white picket fence out of their head on their own. Contrary to what church tries to tell us, Hollywood is as obsessed with "family life" as the reigning paradigm for fulfillment every bit as much as religion is. But family life, let's face it, just isn't for everyone.

For Leykis, the lifestyle he teaches and the typical alternative of family life are either/or propositions. What he's trying to get you to do I think more than anything, is to be honest about your choices. I hate to invoke Kierkegaard here, but I can't help think of the aesthete and the religious, and the lack of grounding outside of personal choice to make either meaningful. Leykis' counsels also, strangely, remind me of Mormon thinker Hugh Nibley, who influenced me greatly prior to my wholesale apostasy from religion. Nibley often worked out his politics in terms of oppositions such as the "Sophic" vs. "Mantic" (roughly reason vs. revelation) or "Zion" vs. "Babylon." But as a religious man and intellectual anti-intellectual, Nibley didn't per se, put the life of faith above reason, but rather emphasized the two were diametrically opposed ways of looking at the world that simply don't understand one another. Even within his diatribes against the evils of "Babylon," he's willing to admit that the worldly life is fulfilling for those who live it. Where Nibley concedes a problem is in mixing the two together. Misery isn't living in Babylon, misery is living in Zion, with one foot in Babylon. The Sophic worldview isn't a lost cause either, but the dishonest deviations found in "sophistry" are. Tom Leykis, in a similar way, doesn't preach against marriage and kids as so many misunderstand him to do. Rather, he teaches that you can't have both worlds, you have to pick one or the other, and then must live what you pick like there's no tommorow. The problem is that people want the freedom of being unmarried but are too lonely, so they get married. Or married people like the stability of family life, but they are too career oriented and so get divorced. Leykis realizes millions of years of evolution make a settled-down committed relationship difficult to achieve given our biological urges. People think all too lightly that they can simply lose themselves in love and wholesale ignore the calls of nature to "get it on," not realizing what they thought was love was merely one of those fleeting urges in disguise.

Often callers who only grasp the most inflammatory aspects of Tom's message seek approval for cheating on their spouses, thinking they'll get a pat on the back. But that's never the case. If you love your wife or husband, but you just need a little "fix" on the side, for him, it's too bad. Because ultimately it won't work and will lead to far more misery than braving the temptation or getting divorced and then giving in. Sometimes a caller will emphasize the great sex their spouse gives but this never impresses Tom, because the reason to get married is for the "emotional fulfillment" and if one's concern is focused so much on sex, then the options will always be better in a unmarried situation, and that fact will be a pressure in breaking the marriage. So as you listen, you're forced to recognize just how much you're predisposed to envy the lifestyle that Tom lives, and that there is really, an attractive and fulfilling choice with a support group that doesn't involve the white picket fence. So if you want the white picket fence, you better know what you're getting into and you must really want it. Of course, the converse is also true. Living Tom's lifestyle isn't a walk in the park either, there are another completely different set of challenges and sacrifices involved. But essentially, for him, you've got to take up the life you've chosen and refrain from the temptation to slip up and try to do both - because that's what's going to take your life from boring - if that's the problem - to miserable. On one occasion, a caller phoned in to tell Tom that he had a great job as a lawyer making a lot of money and that, since his college days, now being in his mid-thirties, he's slept with at least 300 women. He's wondering now if maybe he should settle down. What's there left to do? Does he just continue to make money and sleep with more women? The logic here is, I've lived the bachelor's dream, now it's time for something else. I got the feeling the caller would think Tom would be impressed enough with his exploits to say, "Hey man, you excelled in my teachings, you are a model student and have nothing to prove, feel free to retire and find the love of your life." But Tom didn't say that, he instructed the caller that he's living the life, and should in fact continue to do so. Sleep with 300 more women. Continue to make more money. The caller was a bit confused and at the end of the conversation basically said, "Oh, ok. Well thanks, I guess I'll just continue on." The wisdom was subtle. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution which says to spread the seed, and fifteen years or more of putting that message into practice, and what are the chances this caller is going to walk into a lifelong relationship? Chances are, he'll find someone, settle down and have a couple of kids, and then in a few years cheat, lose his family and most of his money, and then be miserable. Tom knows, he's fallen 4 times. The answer from religion of course would be, "He's looking for something real, can't you see that? Can't you see he might be ready for the real joy found in the gospel of Jesus?"

But after 300 women, see, he's already chosen his life. He's already demonstrated, to the nth degree, what he really wants. Any life choice will include moments of indecision and times of boredom and feeling like everything is repeating. Is he going to feel any different after changing diapers for 1000th time? Or after having his wife nagging at him to take the garbage out? The odds are, he won't last. His best bet is to embrace the life he's already constructed and move on to 301.  Yes, the religious answer would emphasize what Christ might do for him - might do for him. Maybe, one time out of a hundred? Or a thousand? People do make radical life changes and find fulfillment, but it's an exception to the rule. And it actually works both ways. I know a guy who was rich, had the model family, and a respectable church position, and left at least the first two for a one-night stand. And it appears now many years after the fact that he's never been happier. People who are cut out for it even get bored in family life, and think maybe they need to move on to some quick fix for excitement. One in a thousand times it will work. Anyway, So that's my long introduction to Leykis. Since I'll never call in and argue with the other guests, I can get it off my chest here.

Structuralism, the Outside World, and Beyond
Now Playing: - It's been edited now
Topic: Postmodernism

Structuralists looked for general patterns which govern human institutions, most famously, language, beginning with Ferdinand de Saussure's A Course In General Linguistics.  Saussure saw language as the most obvious example of the broader subject of human signification. That general subject is called semiology. Borrowing Wiki's summary of Saussure:

...he argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a signifier (the sound pattern of a word, either in mental projection - as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves - or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act) and a signified (the concept or meaning of the word). This was quite different from previous approaches which focused on the relationship between words on the one hand and things in the world that they designate, on the other.

This way of thinking is sure to run into trouble with American science students. What of the relationship between the signified and the thing in the real world? (the details be damned, we just want to make sure no one is getting away with believing there isn't really anything 'out there') Apparently that question didn't interest Saussure, unlike Charles Sanders Pierce who constructed a semiology roughly similar to Saussure's with the exception that he added a third element which corresponds to the outside thing. From a class handout written by a friend of mine, a real live publishing Frankfurt School cultural theorist known on the web sometimes as et in Utah ego*,

The differences we readily experience as independent of language are in fact constructed by it. This does not mean that language creates "actuality" (that is, trees, rocks, buildings, people) but that language turns undifferentiated, meaningless nature into a differentiated, meaningful cultural reality. The most significant feature of Saussure's work is the argument that language precedes experience. We have no direct access to the world; our relationship to it is always mediated by, and dependent on, language.

Two important ideas from this excerpt, 1) No, structuralists aren't naive idealists who believe everything is somehow a construct of the mind, there is an external world 'out there'. 2) What we experience as reality is preceded by language.

I'd like to pause now and Reflect briefly on point three I made in my first post on postmodernism, that postmodernism isn't the same thing as existentialism. The two are often conflated with each other and with a naive idealism that to my knowledge no idealist ever believed, that postmodernists are out there making 'their own truth' whatever they want it to be, pace Sokal, jumping out of 21st floor apartment buildings without harm if that's how they personally wish to construct the world.

Descartes was the founder of modern philosophy, and he was French. He believed in a stable essence of the mind which allowed him to deduce certainty about some aspects of the world based on thought exercises. Jean-Paul Sartre (who chronologically came after Saussure), the famous French theorizer of existentialism is well known for his catch-phrase "existence precedes essence." Sartre then, thoroughly educated in Descartes' philosophy, denied any stable essence of the mind or consciousness, consciousness was a product of experience with the world. But the French structuralist Ferdinand de Saussure argues essentially, "language precedes existence." What constitutes a person's experiences is greatly determined by context, by reigning (power) structures such as language. Postmodernism is heavily influenced by this idea:

Much of what is usually referred to as "postmodern theory" derives from, or in response to, Ferdinand de Saussure's work in linguistics.  His theories have had enormous influence because of the way they challenge fundamental assumptions about the production of meaning and the relationship between language and the world. - et
 

In traditional modernism, the subject has an essential nature or an 'ego'. Existentialism rebels and now the subject is out making choices, hopefully authentic ones, "constructing himself" and so on. Postmodernism follows the existentialist rejection of essentiality, but takes up structuralism's discourse of the subject as determined by context. Rejoining where we left the discussion on Saussure's theory, what might be a simple, tangible example as to how language defines experience?

The most revolutionary element in Saussure's work is his insistence that languages don’t produce different versions of the same reality, they in effect produce different realities. That different languages conceptualize the world in significantly different ways is demonstrated by the fact that even such "physical" or "natural" phenomena as colours are not "the same" in different languages. Russian does not have a term for blue. The words poluboi and sinij which are usually translated as "light blue" and "dark blue" refer to what are in Russian distinct colours not different shades of the same colour. The English word brown has no equivalent in French. It is translated into brun, marron, or even jeune depending on the context. In Welsh the colour glas, though often translated as "blue," contains elements which English would identify as "green" or "grey." Because the boundaries are placed differently in the two languages the Welsh equivalent of the English "grey" might be glas or llwyd. - et

A clarification at this point is in order. It might be slightly confusing to read the above and work it into the definition of structuralism which I gave of looking for general patterns behind human institutions. How can that be, if human institutions are fragmented and constitute different realities? What is intended to be constant, however, are shall we say, the individual Legos, while the resulting project or structure, a Lego spaceship, or boat, or car are variable. The Legos in this case, are the signifiers and signifieds, and this is what all languages have in common.

Now we might be sly and ask, can Saussure, thinking within French, be sure that "signifier" and "signified" are articulated in other languages such that they are universally, the building blocks he claims they are? Questions like this seem to be what guide Jacques Derrida's critique of structuralism. Derrida shows (see especially Of Grammatology) that structuralism can't escape its own discourse, the articulation of structuralism doesn't happen from some privileged, stable space, it doesn't comment from "outside the text." There are preconditions, in fact, to language, the very language within which Saussure is writing. One might find this encapsulated in his invented term, "differ(a)nce." I'm going to try and get away with now saying, "differance precedes language" in Derrida's thought to keep with our allusion to Sartre. But Derrida fights tremendously the urge to just continue playing the game I'm calling here "this precedes that." On the one hand, Derrida recognizes he's helpless to escape this game, that's partly his point, but on the other, the game's underlying holism, can perhaps, be clarified. He says in his essay Differance,

..I wish to underline that the efficacy of the thematic of differance may very well, indeed must, one day be superseded, lending itself if not to its own replacement, at least to enmeshing itself in a chain that in truth it never will have governed.

I realize this is getting pretty abstract as I'm making no attempt here to explain what differance is (and good luck to me if I ever try), but the key point for this entry is that Derrida is acknowledging an inherent impossibility in the project of structuralism, or any other kind of -ism which might displace structuralism, including his own 'deconstruction' - ism. So while to an American educated science student like myself, structuralism appears "anti-foundational" with the pluralistic world it creates, there is an anti-foundationalism beyond that, which if not overturning structuralism, severely attempts to deepen it. This might be called, poststructuralism.

So now if we've come this far, where does postmodernism fit in? From Steven Best and Douglas Kellner's book, Postmodern Theory,

Poststructuralism forms part of the matrix of postmodern theory, and while the theoretical breaks described as postmodern are directly related to poststructuralist critiques, we shall interpret poststructuralism as a subset of a broader range of theoretical, cultural, and social tendencies which constitute postmodern discourses....

The discourse of the postmodern also encompasses a socio-historical theory of postmodernity and analysis of new postmodern cultural forms and experiences...

More extreme advocates of the postmodern were calling for ruptures with modern discourses and the development of new theories, politics, modes of writing, and values...

It's hard to know what quotes to pick as the discussion goes on for pages. From what I can gather, the postmodernists (postmodern theorists) are almost always shall we say, philosophically poststructuralists and adopt the discourse common to structuralism and poststructuralism. But a key defining characteristic would be their theorizing of a "postmodern age" which breaks with the modern age, or new theories on especially politics and society that attempt to radically break with modern conceptions. So while Jacques Derrida for instance, is often perceived as a poststructuralist, he's not really a postmodernist because his essential concern is his deconstructive reading of philosophers and theorists, not theorizing about a postmodern condition of the world or any supposed break between a modern and postmodern era. Whereas readily identifiable postmodern theorists like Jean Baudrillard are concerned with contemporary issues such as the Gulf War, terrorism and the twin towers, and the role of technology in contemporary life right down to the topic of password protection.  And all of this of course, as symptomatic of a postmodern condition, where his theorizing is both radicalized poststructuralism and post-Marxism.

 

*I have implicit permission to quote et since she complained (jokingly, I think) I didn't cite her on another blog entry of mine. But I never clarified whether such a citation could include using a real name.

The Real World Part 2
Topic: Postmodernism
I wanted to continue the discussion on the relation between postmodernism and the external world, since that's where the hottest disputes with it in cyberspace at least seem to erupt. There is one point I can't emphasize enough that contributes to misconceptions of postmodernism as being inherently anti-science or anti-"reality". I have a couple of excerpts from wikipedia that might help us get a handle on this, why trying to abstract commentary on the results of emperical science from postmodernism is difficult to do. From their entry on "Continental Philosophy":

Continental philosophy includes phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism, deconstruction, French feminism, critical theory such as that of the Frankfurt School, psychoanalysis, the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and S?ren Kierkegaard, and most branches of Marxism and Marxist philosophy (though there also exists a self-described Analytical Marxism).

Pop-quiz: Which philosophical subject at the root of the philosophy of science from the positivists to Kuhn is glaringly lacking in this definition?

***********

The answer is, epistemology. Critics with a standard American science education often seem to want one thing out of philosophy; a thorough justification of science which makes it the standard for human knowledge. Given that I have a standard American science education, I sympathize incredibly. I don't care for religion, I certainly don't want to leave the door open for any nutty idea out there God has supposidly communicated to be on equal ground with modern physics. But, how to assess the postmodernist's verdict on knowledge in any kind of a straightforward way if epistemology wasn't popular in Europe? When I began trying to read Derrida, having recently completed a modern philosophy class, I was thoroughly confused trying to make sense of it within the parameters of epistemology as had been laid out in my course, namely in studying Descartes, Hume, and Kant. That led me to assume the worst, initially, when I'd read pronounciations such as, "There is nothing outside the text." Instinctively, I wanted to apply everything I read to the problem of knowledge. But that doesn't quite work if the context has nothing to do with epistemology. Trying to figure out what Derrida's thought implies for emperical science or epistemology generally would be, in my opinion, tremendously difficult. To reiterate this point, one can't easily at all glean from the postmodernists commentary on the results of science experiments or the justification of knowledge generally, since they weren't studying those subjects. For the next quote:

Moreover, while analytic philosophy is generally carried on around certain perennial topics of dispute, as debates in which individual philosophers give their piecemeal contributions, continental philosophy has a tendency to center instead on key thinkers and to discuss their philosophies in relation to each other.

Context then, is ever more important when studying continental philosophy because the terminology will be tied the thinkers they are responding to. Obscure language aside, this alone will make covering ground more difficult since it means there will be more background to study before getting a handle on what's going on. This further underscores the point I've been trying to make that to understand the postmodernists, you have to understand what they're responding to. To sum up, the postmodern theorists aren't responding to the logical positivists, and those who they are responding to (i.e., their response to modernism) studied different subjects than the logical positivists. So to extract concise judgements by "postmodernism" which strike at the heart of science, as articulated by postivist philosophers of science, will be tough going.

Prophets, Drugs, and Spiritual Laboratories
Topic: Buskirk Review

Scientists, notably Sagan and Richard Feynman do have some strong rhetoric against authority. Though I think they probably aren't quite so naive about it as they might come across at times. Certainly, I can agree that science would come to a dead stand still if no one took any science on shall we say, "faith." There simply aren't enough hours in the day to confirm every experiment relevant to one's field prior to accepting them as true. And even if there were enough hours, it would be a terrible waste of time and resources. The important, and relatively straightforward point about authority is that in science, a patent clerk can revolutionize physics. And that in physics, revolutions are a good. In Mormonism, there is no concept of rejecting the revelations of a prophet. And if there is ever, the rejection of a revelation, that rejection must come from another prophet. At any point in Mormon history, the current prophet has always been irrefutably right. For those who think I exaggerate, please conjure up in your mind one doctrine, or matter of revelation, not opinion, that has ever been wrong. The problem isn't with authority, but supposed absolute and incontestable authority, the very kind the Mormon prophet claims.

Continuing on with how we might know religious truth, Dr. Buskirk cites Boyd K. Packer's salt as the sensus divinitatis in his well-known talk, The candle of the Lord.(304) To that I respond with Alice in Chain's, Junkhead,

You Can't Understand A User's Mind
But Try, With Your Books And Degrees
If You Let Yourself Go And Open Your Mind
I'll Bet You'd Be Doing Like Me
And It Ain't So Bad!

A Heroin addict might fail to articulate what his drug is like. But that doesn't mean we should take that leap of faith and find out for ourselves. If the religious experience is truly incommensurable, it's pointless to sell it as enlightenment. Equally likely, is that it's a trip into the "deranged and frenzied" as Korihor taught. You take a 50-50 chance. Maybe I'll try the red pill, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll try heroin, or perhaps Mormonism. If Anne Sulliven could figure out how to communicate with Helen Keller, then Packer is left without excuse.

Finally, Dr. Buskirk quotes Henry Eyring,

“I have often met this question: ‘Dr. Eyring, as a scientist, how can you accept revealed religion?’ The answer is simple. The Gospel commits us only to the truth. The same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion. Try it. Does it work?”

How would the same pragmatic tests that apply in science apply to religion when religion, according to Dr. Buskirk, occupies the domain of a completely different category? How do you "try" moral obligations and come to the decision that they "work?"