Deevolution and obscuring the meaning of words

 

cognition /kŏg-nĭsh′ən/ noun

1.    The mental process of knowing, including aspects such as awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment.

2.    That which comes to be known, as through perception, reasoning, or intuition; knowledge.

3.    The act of knowing; knowledge; perception.

What is Postmodernism and why is it a rejection of our cognitive abilities?

Criticism of postmodernism is intellectually diverse, reflecting various critical attitudes toward postmodernity, postmodern philosophy, postmodern art, and postmodern architecture. Postmodernism is generally defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection towards what it describes as the grand narratives and ideologies associated with modernism, especially those associated with Enlightenment rationality (though postmodernism in the arts may have its own definitions). Thus, while common targets of postmodern criticism include universalist ideas of objective reality, morality, truth, human nature, reason, science, language, and social progress, critics of postmodernism often defend such concepts.

Postmodern scholars promote obscurantism, are hostile to objective truth, and encourage relativism (in culture, morality, knowledge) to an extent that is epistemically and ethically crippling. Criticism of more artistic postmodern movements such as postmodern art or literature may include objections to a departure from beauty, lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviating from clear structure and the consistent use of dark and negative themes.

Critics of postmodernism frequently charge that postmodern art/authorship is vague, obscurantist, or meaningless. Some philosophers, such as Jürgen Habermas, argue that postmodernism contradicts itself through self-reference, since its critique would be impossible without the concepts and methods that modern reason provides.

Christopher Hitchens in his book Why Orwell Matters advocates for simple, clear, and direct expression of ideas and argues that postmodernists wear people down by boredom and semi-literate prose. Hitchens also criticized a postmodernist volume, The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism: "The French, as it happens, once evolved an expression for this sort of prose: “la langue de bois”, the wooden tongue, in which nothing useful or enlightening can be said, but in which various excuses for the arbitrary and the dishonest can be offered. (This book) is a pointer to the abysmal state of mind that prevails in so many of our universities."

In a similar vein, Richard Dawkins writes in a favorable review of Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's Intellectual Impostures: “Suppose you are an intellectual impostor with nothing to say, but with strong ambitions to succeed in academic life, collect a coterie of reverent disciples and have students around the world anoint your pages with respectful yellow highlighter. What kind of literary style would you cultivate? Not a lucid one, surely, for clarity would expose your lack of content.”

Dawkins then uses the following quotation from Félix Guattari as an example of this "lack of content" and of clarity: “We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multi-dimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic non-discursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.”

Let us begin with the nature of the term itself:

Relativism:

Criticism of postmodernism has also been directed at its relativist positions, including the argument that it is self-contradictory. Partly in reference to post-modernism, conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton wrote, "A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't." In 2014, the philosophers Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn wrote: "The statement that 'No unrestricted universal generalizations are true' is itself an unrestricted universal generalization. So, if relativism in any of its forms is true, it's false."

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has said "The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unliveable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism!"

Analytic philosopher Daniel Dennett said, "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."

The historian Richard J. Evans argues that while postmodernists usually identify with the political left, denying the possibility of objective knowledge about the past is not necessarily left-wing or progressive, as it can legitimize far-right pseudohistory such as Holocaust denial.

Epistemology:

Another line of criticism has argued that postmodernism has failed to provide a viable method for determining what can be considered knowledge.

Richard Caputo, William Epstein, David Stoesz & Bruce Thyer consider postmodernism to be a "dead-end in social work epistemology." They write: “Postmodernism continues to have a detrimental influence on social work, questioning the Enlightenment, criticizing established research methods, and challenging scientific authority. The promotion of postmodernism by editors of Social Work and the Journal of Social Work Education has elevated postmodernism, placing it on a par with theoretically guided and empirically based research. The inclusion of postmodernism in the 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards of the Council on Social Work Education and its 2015 sequel further erode the knowledge-building capacity of social work educators. In relation to other disciplines that have exploited empirical methods, social work's stature will continue to ebb until postmodernism is rejected in favor of scientific methods for generating knowledge.”

Marxist criticisms:

Alex Callinicos denounces notable postmodern thinkers such as Baudrillard and Lyotard, arguing postmodernism "reflects the disappointed revolutionary generation of 1968, (particularly those of May 1968 in France) and the incorporation of many of its members into the professional and managerial 'new middle class'. It is best read as a symptom of political frustration and social mobility rather than as a significant intellectual or cultural phenomenon in its own right."

Language wielded only as a tool to gain power over others:

Postmodernism also remains relevant because much of current thinking is rooted in Postmodern ideas. This goes beyond just academic circles: it is easy to catch Postmodern ideas in everyday discourse, and certainly in the policies being promoted by current governments. Nothing is unusual about hearing someone retort in an argument “Well, that’s subjective,” or if they are more well versed and a little bolder “That’s just interpretation, there’s never really any one meaning.”

These ideas originate from Postmodern language theory in particular. What is referred to as “Postmodernism” refers to a specific idea of language and how it functions. These ideas were shaped by numerous thinkers in the 1960s and 1970s: most popularly through French thinkers like Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, who took the core ideas on language and related them to concepts of power, oppression, and freedom.

A critique of language of all things may appear benign and simply technical at first, but the challenge undermines confidence in our ability to have knowledge and the possibility of truth. Let us explore both, but first I will need to explain the Postmodern understanding of language which I have been alluding to. I do warn that in discussing “Postmodernism” that there is a risk in generalization. The term remains elusive and the various thinkers who are characterized as Postmodern are not totally unified in their views. I will stick to explaining the broadly agreed upon problems Postmodern thinkers find in language and dabble with some responses.

Postmodern theories of language challenge the belief that language provides a stable way of understanding the world. When you use language, you are partaking in the act of representing things in the world through concepts. This does not have to be simply through speech, when you are thinking or simply identifying an object you are representing the world through language. If you are for instance looking at a red apple, you will have the corresponding thought “That is a red apple,” which frames the experience and allows you to understand it. In that case, language is being used to formulate a claim which represents something out there in the world, namely that the apple is there and that it has the characteristic of “redness”. “There” is used to represent a concept of space–namely where the object is–and “red” is used to represent a concept of colour. Real things are therefore represented with concepts in language.

Peterson’s take on the dangers it poses: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/philosophy/postmodernism-definition-and-critique-with-a-few-comments-on-its-relationship-with-marxism/

“DEFINITION AND CRITIQUE:

Postmodernism is essentially the claim that (1) since there are an innumerable number of ways in which the world can be interpreted and perceived (and those are tightly associated) then (2) no canonical manner of interpretation can be reliably derived.

That’s the fundamental claim. An immediate secondary claim (and this is where the Marxism emerges) is something like “since no canonical manner of interpretation can be reliably derived, all interpretation variants are best interpreted as the struggle for different forms of power.”

There is no excuse whatsoever for the secondary claim (except that it allows the resentful pathology of Marxism to proceed in a new guise).

The first claim is true, but incomplete. The fact that there are an unspecifiable number of interpretations does not mean (or even imply) that there are an unspecifiable number of VALID interpretations.

What does valid mean? That’s where an intelligent pragmatism comes into it. Valid at least means: “when the proposition or interpretation is acted out in the world, the desired outcome within the specific timeframe ensues.” That’s a pragmatic definition of truth (from within the confines of the American pragmatism of William James and C.S. Pierce).

Validity is constrained by the necessity for iteration (among other fators). Your interpretations have to keep you, at minimum, alive and not suffering too badly today, tomorrow, next week, next month and next year in a context defined by you, your family, your community and the broader systems you are part of. That makes for very tight constraints on your perception/interpretations/actions. Games have to be iterable, playable and, perhaps, desirable to the players– as Jean Piaget took pains to point out, in his work on equilibration.

RELATIONSHIP TO MARXISM:

It’s not as if I personally think that postmodernism and Marxism are commensurate. It’s obvious to me that the much-vaunted “skepticism toward grand narratives” that is part and parcel of the postmodern viewpoint makes any such alliance logically impossible. Postmodernists should be as skeptical toward Marxism as toward any other canonical belief system.

So the formal postmodern claim, such as it is, is radical skepticism. But that’s not at all how it has played out in theory or in practice. Derrida and Foucault were, for example, barely repentant Marxists, if repentant at all. They parleyed their 1960’s bourgeoisie vs proletariat rhetoric into the identity politics that has plagued us since the 1970’s. Foucault’s fundamental implicit (and often explicit) claim is that power relations govern society. That’s a rehashing of the Marxist claim of eternal and primary class warfare. Derrida’s hypothetical concern for the marginalized is a version of the same thing. I don’t really care if either of them made the odd statement about disagreeing with the Marxist doctrines: their fundamental claims are still soaked in those patterns of thought.

You can see this playing out in practical terms in fields such as gender studies and social work (as well as literary criticism, anthropology, law, education, etc.).

There are deeper problems as well. For example: Postmodernism leaves its practitioners without an ethic. Action in the world (even perception) is impossible without an ethic, so one has to be at least allowed in through the back door. The fact that such allowance produces a logical contradiction appears to bother the low-rent postmodernists who dominate the social sciences and humanities not at all. Then again, coherence isn’t one of their strong points (and the demand for such coherence can just be read as another patriarchal imposition typifying oppressive Western thought).

So: postmodernism, by its nature (at least with regard to skepticism) cannot ally itself with Marxism. But it does, practically. The dominance of postmodern Marxist rhetoric in the academy (which is a matter of fact, as laid out by the Heterodox Academy, among other sources) attests to that. The fact that such an alliance is illogical cannot be laid at my feet, just because I point out that the alliance exists. I agree that it’s illogical. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

It’s a very crooked game, and those who play it are neck deep in deceit.”

My conclusions:

If all we have left is using our words in an attempt to manipulate and shame others to force them to agree with us without using human cognition, reason, facts, and civil discourse then we have devolved into the living manifestation of the DEVO tune Jocko Homo. "Jocko Homo" is the B-side to Devo's first single, "Mongoloid", released in 1977 on Devo's own label, Booji Boy Records and later released in the UK on Stiff Records. The song was re-recorded as the feature song for Devo's first album, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! on Warner Bros. Records in 1978. The original version peaked at No. 62 on the UK Singles Chart.

The title was derived from a 1924 anti-evolution tract called Jocko-Homo Heavenbound by Bertram Henry Shadduck, while its "Are we not men?"/"We are Devo!" call and response chant is a reference to the 1932 movie Island of Lost Souls. The song had been in Devo's setlists for several years prior to being recorded, and an early version was featured in the band's 1976 short film The Truth About De-Evolution.

Our Prime Minister is the literal manifestation of the devolution of the experiment known as Canadian Confederation. He has, more than anyone, devolved the nation into an ape like mockery of reasoned cognitive discourse and civil order. We are DEVO, are we not Canucks?