The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Postmodernism, pseudosciences, religion and the left > Comments

Postmodernism, pseudosciences, religion and the left : Comments

By Daniel Raventós, published 19/3/2010

'Postmodernism, pseudosciences, religion and the left', by Alan Sokal, is a book that won’t be on the shelves of postmodernists and fans of pseudoscience.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All
Squeers,
I am glad you are back, since you are one of the atheists on this OLO I think I can communicate with as well as learn from.

You again mention Lacan, so when you acquire the new book make sure to check what they write about his abuse of mathematics, although there is no separate chapter devoted to him as in “Fashionable Nonsense”. Since I didn’t (and don’t) know much about Lacan I thought these were just some occasional escapades that Sokal/Bricmont quote. Now I read (http://www.egs.edu/media/library-of-philosophy/jacques-lacan/biography/) that “Lacan strived to create a more precise mathematically based theory in the last stage of his career. His "meta-theory" of psychoanalysis uses mathematics …”. Well, my understanding of “symbolic order” is probably as poor as Lacan’s understanding of topology, but I would not use that term to support my views. Believe me, a mathematician reads things on http://nosubject.com/Mathematics like an astronomer would read a webpage dedicated to astrology.

On the other hand, I can understand your irritation with “the cock-suredness of positivism”, however, if by “its marvelous new toys” you mean new technology, they are achievements of science, not of a particular philosophy. I think in this context positivism is the more classical term for scientism, where one has to distinguish between its epistemological and ontological varieties (c.f. http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10176&page=0#165070). Do you agree with this distinction? One can reject “epistemological relativism” that Sokal/Bricmont argue against without subscribing to the closed-outlook epistemological (or even ontological) scientism.

Also, I do not understand what you understand by being “disgusted with its irresponsible, chameleon-like apoliticism”: how can a philosophy of (natural) science be responsible or political? Of course, a scientist can/should have these adjectives when putting his/her findings in practice but perhaps not when pondering the epistemological implications of his/her findings.
Posted by George, Sunday, 21 March 2010 1:24:30 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
george, i have no doubt that i'm one of the less favoured atheists for you, but on this thread i think we'll be in very strong agreement. (though i'll probably still phrase it differently). i certainly agree with you that religion need not be pseudoscience, and i also very much liked the gross-levitt book, and the sokal-bricmont book.

for what it's worth, the term "pseudoscience" seems unfortunately misleading. i'd say what sokal/bricmont/gross/levitt are attacking is antiscientific thought rather than pseudoscientific thought.

squeers, i guess i wasn't aware i'd been anywhere. though, graham is pissed off enough at my being pissed off with him that i think my resigning/suspension from OLO is imminent. (the thought keeps me awake at night, sometimes for whole seconds at a time).

i'm wary of your comments similarly to what george expressed. again, one can appreciate the power of science and the scientific method, and even to say scientific truth has a special and probably unique solidity, without engaging in scientism. but the counterattacks on this thread seem to be attacking scientism much more than science.
Posted by bushbasher, Sunday, 21 March 2010 2:16:06 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Here is an essay that may help in explaining it in a brief summary - many years have lapsed, and many Syntheses have mutated – The fact that needs to be observed in that the origins of New age Occultism is one of , but of the same origins ; The variations are abundant , so it seems difficult to separate and Identify individual Occult Ideology ;

- The transition is by Language and invented words - and ridicules philosophical notions of grandeur and a simple Psychological tactic aimed to polarize peoples thoughts based on the Absolution of a grand Lie.

That means; you know it is a Lie, and so do the persons proselytising such a lie; But they say it, and everyone else is Gob smacked at hearing it, and be it by any methodology to refute it has been removed. So the Grand Lie is now the Grand Truth.

http://majorityrights.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/96/
Posted by All-, Sunday, 21 March 2010 7:12:38 AM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
All,
I can't comment much on your "pig poo", except to say its an apt metaphor for your command of the topic. I have yet to see any dirt on Derrida substantiated--indeed, very few people conduct the kind of "micro" reading that he does.
Bushbasher,
it'd be a shame for OLO to lose your rough but acute reasoning.
And thank you, George, it's mutual.
But to the topic, though it's hard to decoct such complex issues into pure pith (rather than pig poo).
Let's forget the modern sceptics for a minute; Hume was more radical, and more original, than any of them. Modern empiricism and natural science begin with Descartes (and continue to this day), who absurdly posited the cogito as a priori. Hume trumped Locke and Berkeley by acknowledging that "all" the "objective" sciences are no more than fictions. Even mathematical concepts, according to Hume, are fictions and "can easily be explained psychologically through the lawfulness of the associations and the relations between ideas". Hume radicalised Cartesian faith in the cogito and, by association all the rational cogitations of science that proceeded from it. Dogmatic objectivism has been cast in doubt ever since (though you wouldn't know it). It was the transcendental tradition, that Kant instituted, that tried to repair the damage, but it is based on metaphysics, on hidden accomplishments of mind that transcend merely sensory imput. This has never been substantiated and science is still practiced under the blind assumption that its data is correct.
As you know, George, I have very little math, but apart from Lacan being something of a magpie, even using math for his bricolage, my (limited) understanding is that he more uses its symbols. But I don't want to defend him; he argues that the Self is a pure construct of the symbolic order and I disagree; I prefer to see it (the Symbolic Order) as ideology that can be transcended.
In any event, poststructuralists are firmly in the sceptical Humean tradition, while positivism is yet to properly examine its credentials.
Do numbers hold sway above the flux for you, George?
Posted by Squeers, Sunday, 21 March 2010 7:52:19 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
George:
"how can a philosophy of (natural) science be responsible or political? Of course, a scientist can/should have these adjectives when putting his/her findings in practice but perhaps not when pondering the epistemological implications of his/her findings".

Scientific method is of course unaffiliated with any political/philosophical/ethical institution, and this is what I'm critical of. Scientific innovation is an end in itself rather than necessarily serving humanity's best interests. Yet it "is" opportunistic, though possibly not in a deliberate sense (this is an interesting question, whether scientific advance, riding on the back of often iniquitous human aspirations--nuclear weapons, gas chambers etc. is culpable). Though in the sense that pure science will collaborate (indifferently) with any ideology, government or megalomania (which is what I meant by "chameleon-like"), it is "irresponsible" by default.
Science produces ever more creature comforts and all manner of technologies simply because that's what it does for as long as the fuel holds out; it uses whatever resources, materials or data is available to feed an insatiable, indeed mindless, drive.
This is Enlightenment technology, but is it doing us any good? Yes it keeps us entertained, palliated and alive longer, but are we happier or more fulfilled thanks to the achievements of science--such that we may dispense with questions of ultimate meaning and ethics? Do such things cease to be important in our technocratic age? Are we to be endlessly entertained by baubles and banish thoughts of our mortality?
Are positivism and scientific advance ontologically and, arguably more important, "ecologically" sustainable. The answer to the latter seems a resounding no! Science, working with capital, has facilitated unsustainable population growth and infrastructure, as well as unconscionable human inequality and unethical exploitation of all other fauna and flora. Put another way, it combusts and extinguishes life with complete equanimity, having no truck with "meaning", which does not compute.
Speaking only for ourselves, Techne also alienates humanity from the real conditions of life. This is arguably part of the human condition, yet technology has added many layers between us and the (Lacan's) "Real".
Posted by Squeers, Sunday, 21 March 2010 10:24:35 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Could say some of the questions and suggestions in the above do naturally interest us old historians, but still reckon they are a waste of time in today's troubled world.

Not too good for the future when us going on 90 year old's have to steer the minds of the young one's.

Cheers, Bushbred, Buntine, WA.
Posted by bushbred, Sunday, 21 March 2010 10:25:03 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy