Squeers,

Thanks for the long exposition. I take your answer to my questions to be that you still do not like to call yourself a postmodernist, but subscribe to the idea of the “postmodern condition”, although I did not find the term defined in http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm you gave before. (One probably would have to read the lot to understand what a postmodernist condition is, for which - if I may say so - my stomach has been spoiled by my marx-leninist teachers many years ago).

On the other hand, you seem to endorse Derrida who is usually considered one of the leading postmodernists. I agree that your - actually nobody’s - personal philosophy should not be reducible to only what this or that philosopher, however prominent, taught. Nevertheless, I was looking for philosophical schools for orientation, to help me to find my layman’s way through the labyrinth of words whose meanings is often obscure to an outsider (to postmodernism, constructionism or deconstructionism, literary criticism etc) that I am. So I take it that your approach to philosophy starts from criticism of text (e.g. Gadamer) rather than from science or metaphysics. Am I right?

Another question concerning labels. You call yourself an atheist. Would you call yourself a materialist? From your expressed views, or rather doubts, about consciousness, I would say no. If so, could you explain in what sense are you an atheist but not a materialist?

I also note that you did not comment on my preference for models (actually "representation" is probably to term philosophers use) as a tool in epistemology as related to philosophy of science. I presume this is because you do not see philosopphy of science (which one cannot say much about without knowing some mathematics and its role in forming physical theories) as that important. Which brings me to this:
ctd

ctd
I am not a warrior on the side of science against literary critics (C.P. Snow’s terms; no postmodernism yet at his time). I think these are two (epistemological?) perspectives that can complement each other: both perspectives can offer insights enriching the other. What has let to “science wars” was a failure to communicate serious philosophical insights, that existed on both sides of the C.P. Snow divide. Where I am biased is only that I believe more nonsense has been written by philosophising “literary criticists” than by philosophising scientists.

However, Dawkins - whatever you might think of the quality of his philosophising, where I probably agree with you - and his apostles are not the only ones who testify to the fact that in our century science (and philosophy of science) is as predominant in the formation of comprehensive (as well as “unsophisticated”) world views, as was theology (and metaphysics, speculations about God etc), in the past. I think also preferences for a coherence or correspondence theory of truth should be influenced by considerations in the philosophy of science (and mathematics).

In the Middle Ages and later you could not be much of a philosopher without being knowledgeable about theology. Today the position that belonged to theology is taken by science, or rather physics, and I would stress, mathematics. It is ignorance in mathematics (and theoretical physics) that led some postmodernist authors make fools of themselves, see Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals Abuse of Science, Picador 1998 that I have already mentioned elsewhere. I know, there are also public pronouncements by scientists and mathematicians that testify to the authors’ naiveté outside their field of expertise, but as mentioned above, I believe that these are fewer (or at least were, until Dawkins’ explicit scientistic reductionism)

George,
The phrase “postmodern condition” is nominally lyotards, but I’m using it literally.
I’ll get back to you later.

Luciferase is increasingly shrill and now makes an impressive scene with his dudgeon, still without having considered my criticism. He knows his raving will secure him kudos, however, from those at least who are equally impressed by the right noises they’ve learned to mistake as argument. Apart from his small-minded howls that I’ve been somehow inconsistent in a way that’s definitive—which he doesn’t explain or demonstrate. He doesn’t need to; the mere charge, and the manner of its delivery, has more effect and costs less effort than a reasoned defence, assuming he could defend his position. He still hasn’t answered a single question or criticism I’ve made against “The New Atheism”. To reiterate, it’s been its institutionalising ambitions I’ve asked valid questions of and criticised from the start, and not atheism or science per se—and now he stoops to the exaggerations, bombast and denunciations of the hack barrister and the indignant preacher. I’ve taken the trouble to lay out my position as clearly as possible, given the constraints of time and space, why can’t he do the same? There’s no content in all his posts together and now, at the whiff of an innuendo, he rails impressively and feigns vindication.
But to the substance of my supposed sins.

<goes on to hammer science as being socially constructed, showing where he stands in the Science War>
I’ve only said what’s perfectly correct, that subjectivity is culturally constructed, not science, and thus that science carried out by a culture’s practitioners is prone to bias and to following its dictates. Science is the cat’s paw. Far from hammering it, I said, “This is not to deny the achievements of modern science”, but then the offending passage:
“but because it takes its evidence (and cue) from the prevailing order of things, it’s prone to accept as realities things that are merely evidence of underlying biases and ideological pressures, thus empiricism will always confirm the status quo”.

tbc

...I wonder if anyone’s bothered to think about this? I know Luciferase hasn’t. It’s actually a paraphrase from a recent essay by John Lancaster, himself paraphrasing Marx—this will only further discredit the proposition in the conditioned minds of some, I realise. The logic, however, derives from Hegel and Lancaster goes on:
“He [Marx] would have particularly disliked the modern tendency to argue from ‘facts’, as if those facts were neutral chunks of reality, free of the watermarks of history and interpretation and ideological bias and of the circumstances of their own production”.
This surely bears thinking about? Or we could just demonise Marx as a “postmodernist” too, to go with his litany of sins.
< Science is self correcting>
This is true to a point. But in that case it had to be ‘wrong’ in the first place, and it’s only self-correcting in its object—which is culturally designated—and not in its context. It took decades to develop the atomic bomb.
Luciferase goes on to make a parody of what I’ve said above, as if I’ve denied the usefulness of scientific method, or that “Scientific ideas are jettisoned or amended as they fail”—this the very mode by which I try to proceed intellectually, which he condemns as “inconsistent”. Science is a mode of postmodernism too apparently! He criticises me for not having “a strong position on anything”, yet the success of science is due “entirely” to its perennial scepticism and unbelief!
<His stance has shifted and it is simply because it is necessary to prosecute his case against rational scientific thought to attack atheism>
I’m not making a case against scientific thought or atheism. Empiricism is a necessarily laborious process, pedantically carried out specifically to try overcome the prejudices and passions that confound human reason. Read Hume! This august personage failed, however, to consider that empirical evidence is both limited to that garnered by the human senses—requiring ever-more sophisticated tools and means of penetrating its surface/sensual appearance—and that the interpreter (scientist) remains prey to the prejudices and passions his pseudo-objective stance is designed to overcome.

..Cont
I have nothing but respect and admiration for the painstaking efforts of scientists, and for science “in itself”. I only say that its studied-objectivity does not work independently of reason; they work together, and while the latter is often rash, as well as compromised in itself, the former is myopic and indifferent. Science is the tool of reason, and a damn good one, but it doesn’t make a good tradesman. And like all tools, it’s adapted to and does the bidding, conscious and unconscious, of its manipulator—this is one reason why it’s so difficult to construct objective experiments.
The phrase “scientific reason” is oxymoronic—The New Atheist phrase, “Scientific Truth”, is idiotic—(you have to know something about the history of modern philosophy to get this) and Dawkins’s reasoning on religion and society is based entirely on his prejudices and passions. He’s myopic, like a scientist, but makes no empirical analysis whatsoever. He’s slave both to scientific conceit and ideological manipulation. He should stick to biology, about which he knows something and is obliged to be rigorous.
Thus too I’m not making a case against atheism, which is merely a non-subscription I subscribe to, but against the “New Atheism”, which seeks to sterilise society without realising what it is it wishes to purge—or instantiate! It castigates “religion” indiscriminately, as though there’s no qualitative difference among the host. Evidence is ruled inadmissible if it can’t be dissected and the collective miscreant is sent into exile (underground) for being “irrational”. This is the best bit; the empiricist forgets his essentially poor judgement and conflates rationalism with scientific method, as if the reason:empiricism nexus has been spontaneously transcended and the self-appointed high priests of the new atheism are now independently rational—alleluia!
Religion is either, as Marx has it, “a register of the theoretical struggles of mankind”, or it’s “the projection of genuine human needs onto the fabric of the universe”, as Hegel had it; or perhaps it’s a dialectical synthesis. The material point is its symptomatic of human society, or the human condition, and it can’t be rationalised away.

*The material point is its symptomatic of human society, or the human condition, and it can’t be rationalised away.*

I think it can be quite logically explained, why religions exist
in the first place, by understanding how brains function.

As people evolved to have large brains, we also evolved to be anxious.
If Squeers had been walking through the woods with his tribe and
lightning struck 8ft ahead of him and killed his best mate, Squeers
would have been highly traumatised. Not able to understand lightning,
Squeers would have been terrified that he might be next. If I had
convincingly explained to Squeers that it was just the sky god and
that if he slaughtered a goat for the sky god, he would be fine,
Squeers would have felt much better believing me and would have
hurried off to perform his ritual.

The brain works by various feedback loops and people are much more
content and less anxious with perceived certainty then uncertainty.
Some read horoscopes, some palms, some tarot cards, some like runner
have their certainty in heaven.

All quite rational and explainable really.