Radical Feminist Epistemology and Postmodernism (2 of 2)

[@TMMx]

You've probably heard the anecdote that John Searle used to tell about asking Michel Foucault why french philosophers write so badly and Foucault said that if he wrote clearly, people in Paris wouldn't take him seriously.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I hadn't, actually, but it certainly fits.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I have indeed. He's one of many prominent philosophers who have been accused of such behavior recently, Thomas Pogge and Peter Ludlow being two others. On the one hand it's really disappointing that this seems to be a pattern in my discipline, but on the other I'm glad that we're starting to have a conversation about it. Hopefully things will change.

[@rmeddy]

Please don't tell me the girl is Chinese

[@ThePolistiren]

Hold on! "Accusations" As in no verdict has been given. Congrats on propagating fake terror with no evidence, just like The Red Scare guys from the 60s. Then you wonder why people don't take philosophy seriously.

[@Flatscores]

He literally said "accusations". Where is the fake terror? Projecting much?

[@Flatscores]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only fan of postmodern thought. It's become such an empty signifier for people. Lumped together without any thought with feminism and "cultural marxism" to form this conceptual front which they oppose themselves to.

[@BRAUSA]

It’s interesting, incredibly profound really. Wish it didn’t manifest as authoritarian though.

[@CosmoShidan]

Great lecture! Thanks for posting this. Good gravy I can't believe I missed out on this video series. That's what I get for spending too much time on twitter. lol.

[@vincentduhamel7037]

Liked and subscribed. Thank you for the quality content. I wonder which top female scientist you are referring to when you say some have explicitly criticized radical feminist epistemologies.

[@Songriquole]

What do you mean by "postmodernism"? You've only mentioned Derrida - the problem is that postmodernism is an umbrella term regrouping many mutually exclusive philosophers. I agree that Derrida is quite obscure though, but I'm not sure how that could prove there's no idea behind this complexity. He can also show himself to be quite clear and to explain very interesting ideas. As an example, there's his talk "Pourquoi la Guerre?" with Baudrillard, another philosopher we refer to as "postemodernist".

[@socialcommentary1014]

And yet it’s all worthless bullshit. I damn the French for their fraudulence in this regard. We went from Descartes to this crap? Ugh.

[@thiagomacekgoncalveszahn1469]

Now at the end of a PhD dealing a lot with the philosophy of biology and linguistics, I've started the series a month ago or so and been watching all videos (a long time after their release, granted). I've generally found them very good, but this video was the first one where I feel you failed to be properly respectful and at least try to present a balanced perspective, or at least some possible charitable readings - more so for postmodernism, but also for radical feminist epistemology. I get that the science wars are a very controversial topic and it's hard not to take sides, but I feel trying to be as nuanced as you were when presenting Feyerabend would be much more interesting and informative here.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I actually have updated this one for my real classes. I'm not happy with this one in retrospect either. I should probably remove this one and replace it with my updated one. Thanks for the nudge.

[@LeonhardEuler1]

I'm going to guess that the hoax is the statement regarding manifolds with/without boundary (speaking as someone who knows quite a bit about what those are). It comes off as someone who knows what those words mean, but threw in some random buzzwords around it to make it look a certain way (i.e. exactly what Sokal was doing), whereas the quote about the Einsteinian constant just comes off as rambling.

[@Evilanious]

Im guessing the mention of topology was by Sokal.

[@johnsmith-mv8hq]

That's what I felt too. But, taking my lead from Sisyphus, I sought out the text to (perhaps ironically!) the truth. Thus, I found along the way an interesting book - "The Sokal Hoax: The Sham that Shook the Academy" Prof. Alan D. Sokal , Univ of Nebraska Press, 2000.

[@skepticallypwnd]

Fantastic lecture/essay/work, sir! Really good stuff... Are you familiar with Carol Tavris? I'll bug you in a couple weeks when I start releasing my videos with her.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

Yes! I really enjoyed her book "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)". I mention it in my video "We All Preach The End of the World."

[@skepticallypwnd]

SisyphusRedeemed I'll check that out... Are you familiar with her book Mismeasure of Woman? This video of yours really reminded me of it.

[@SisyphusRedeemed]

I don't know that book. I'll see if I can find a copy. Thanks for the tip.

[@edthoreum7625]

16:00 sokol (hard science]v. Postmodern [ funds lacking=envy]

[@johnsmith-mv8hq]

A great lecture! It got me thinking. I had a couple questions, Sisyphus - would Socrates have being sympathetic to, perhaps even amused by, Sokal's hoax? Would his publication be seen as being in bad faith? Or as a legitimate attempt to explore and examine core concepts of a mysterious body of philosophical practice? Reading up on the Sokal Hoax it seems that some of the attacks on Sokal and the defence of 'Social Text' journal came from a political perspective - as if defending notions and cultural manifestations of 'postmodernism' or 'science' themselves were a political behaviour. Most of the leading elites surrounding 'Social Text' appeared to be from the more-or-less radical left, often with (arguably) strong links to Zionist principles, African-American radical pan-African agitation and that synecdoche of the Greenwich Village cultural elite so beloved to be seen as the 'bad guy' when people tend to critique and complain about the 'East Coast Left Wing Elites.' This extra dimension of political elements in the aftermath of the Sokal Hoax seemed to add a whole new way of seeing Sokal's motives, how his enemies framed his attack and how his supporters did likewise. What would your take on this political direction be? Given how the radical left of, primarily German Jewish emigres fostered and dominated the 'Critical School' around the 1950's in the USA and fought against what they saw as crass commercial and Capitalistic features of American culture (and how a few of these people were genuinely part of the Soviet Union's various psy-ops against the USA), we might even have a whole authentic reason to see why it's called the Science Wars. Not all of Sen. Joe Macarthy's claims were nonsense: there truly were KGB agents in Hollywood and the White House. Ideas are weapons. Which ideas should we adhere to? How do we test them? As HBO's Chernobyl illustrates, the truth is very 'fluid' in the hands of skilled artists. Sokal's hoax illustrates this too. It all sounds plausible. So, how do we approach a debate around ontology and epistemology when the ideas themselves are often or potentially weaponized? A lot more is at risk than a scientist's reputation. Ideas can liberate countries or enslave the masses. Who can we trust?

[@smartzeusy]

I actually got it right and spotted Derida right away, even though I'm not familiar with most of his work. The first quote seemed to refer to how language is used while the second is just utterly nonesensical. Whatever meaning, if any, Derrida meant to convey by his words however does escape me. Despite many who desire to portray Nietzsche as some sort of proto post modernist and ultimate relativist, I can't help but feel that standpoint epistemology when taken beyond it's most basic and rudimentary intuitions is partly exactly what Nietzsche warns about when he speaks against equality and democracy. But then again he also was very skeptical of the naive "will to know" you speak of as "just follow the evidence where it leads" at the end of your video, the real motive behind acquiring knowledge may very often prove to be much less innocuous. I'd be very curious to know your perspective about the caricature Nietzsche makes (In the Gay Science IIRC?) of modern scientists as docile, obedient herd creatures etc?

[@EdsEnemy]

Damn it I'm halfway through that Plotnitsky shit and I still have no idea what's going on. It didn't help that one of the quotations you provide which "comes from the Sokal paper" is actually a quotation from Derrida which is then used to prop up the nonsense in the paper, rather than being nonsense straight from Sokal himself. I'm beginning to think you did that as a kind of perverse joke, and Derrida is just misunderstood. Fuck it I'll just have to read it myself and come to my own conclusions about what he was trying to say.

[@tyunbv762qpl6]

Chaque membre de sa famille est important.

[@camiloperdomo2367]

I think that a large group of post-modernist write in a complicated/obscure language because, deep down they know that what they are writing or doing "research" about is complete bullshit. You read things like the so called 'auto-ethnography' and without all the jarging, buzzwords and the word salad, what they write, it is just a child-story of what that person thought and how that person felt when that person was playing a sport or a game or whatever. Conversely, in other fields, the language becomes obscure solely because the level of technical knowledge that is required in order to understand what is the topic that is being addressed. Indeed, the mere fact that you can construct a credible post-modern statement or articles just by randomly combining 'complicated' words, should be enough evidence that this way of thinking is just a joke. But I don't know, I don't have a PhD in post-modern studies, I cannot write an article in how racist playing soccer really was when I was a child .

[@insidetrip101]

"I think that a large group of post-modernist write in a complicated/obscure language because, deep down they know that what they are writing or doing "research" about is complete bullshit." I actually disagree. I think the answer is much more sad and depressing. The reason why they do such things is because it speaks to the human condition. From my experience, those whom I have met that do the whole post-modernist jargon, while incredibly confident on the outside, are very insecure on the inside. I think its a show, and they're just trying to puff themselves up because they're actually insecure. The unfortunate thing is that they never end up feeling secure, they just go deeper and deeper instead of actually addressing the insecurities. Its actually really sad, and anyone who writes and speaks in that manner I have a certain kind of pity for. They signify a fear of rejection because they're unwilling to put their ideas that they identify with so fervently out there to actually be criticized. It really does come down to fear of rejection. Writing is an incredibly personal task, and for your writing to be rejected is pretty horrifying.

[@tyunbv762qpl6]

Aspect pratique de la weed: j'arrête de réfléchir et je ressens.

[@Blackerer]

Do you think that the obssession with diversity of backgrounds should be replaced with obsession with intellectual diversity? This would lead to diversity of backgrounds as well. Also, Ive noticed that all of your examples of the successful application of differing points of view are somehow related to biology, psychology and sociology, where this absolutely makes sense. Arm chair psychology and sociology are the worst nightmare, if you just avoid even considering other points of view. Youre essentially projecting then. Id have to dig through history to find this (if you want), but as far as I remember there was a case, where actually a republican point of view helped understanding some phenomenon and considering the dominance of the left intellectual sphere in these areas, it wouldnt have been considered. Btw, this is not a really an attack on the left wing point of view, rather than pointing that intellectual diversity inevitably implies other forms of diversity and also improves the research. Counter to that though, I cant see much application in glaciology for example in any more significant way than "by interaction, these people understand that there are X types of ice with these behaviors, we have less, shouldnt we explore this?" (yeh, I went there). Even if having a scientist who has grown up with ice and has a lot of first hand experience with its behavior under different circumstances is very helpful.

[@matthewa6881]

Sokal... ha ha classic.

[@Antiposmoderno]

SOkal is himself a joke