Skepticism vs Postmodernism

[@incollectio]

Thanks Carneades! This series was excellent and highly topical, untying some knots in my head about current affairs. I'd say it was even therapeutic at times, with an expected Pyrrhonian release at the end. Keep repaving the agora with the rubble of the Ivory Tower, towards the land of logos and arete. :)

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Thanks so much!

[@user-pt3jr5cv1e]

Hey Carneades, I would like to point out an issue. Many would argue that Jacques Lacan is the "densest" pillar of postmodernism, and his view about ontology, epistemology and the relation between the 2 is way more similar to the attitude and claims of the Pyrrhonian skeptic than this video could show. Keeping in mind that he's a psychoanalyst, for Lacan (trying to simplify this as much as possible, way too much unfortuntately but I want to keep this as analytic as the topics of this channel would require), linguistic claims simply cannot be truth-bearers as they are outisde the bounds of what he defines as "truth", which is rather an ontological experience, which can be referenced and pointed towards than an epistemic reality. For Lacan, linguistic claims create meaning, which serves to cover/hide the hole which is the impossibility of expressing truth. For the separation of the registers of meaning and truth he gives the example of the liar paradox: Meaningfully, there is a pardox, but truthfully, the one who says "I am a liar" is a liar. This makes the same argument that works for the Pyrrhonians, work for Lacan: If when Pyrrhonians say that their "It simply appears to me that I have no beliefs but I might be wrong" they don't make an epistemic claim, but simply point out towards an absence, then when a Lacanian would say that there are not metanarratives, or even specifically, to quote Lacan, that "there is no pre-discursive reality", he simply points out to the absence of truth behind the claims of one specific discourse or another, but that meaning is created within them. In really soft terms, it's rather an "I'm not feeling it" than a "it is false and wrong", since we're talking about something which, according to him, cannot even be true or false, wrong and correct.

[@ivyshi7775]

Thank you for the amazing series! Thank you for all the efforts that you have put it here!

[@mikegloudemans5937]

Thanks a bunch for this series -- I think I have a few of your postmodernist series to complete still, but from all that I've seen of it I've really appreciated it.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Glad you enjoyed! It is a complex topic that is often misunderstood. Hopefully I was able to shed some light.

[@talrotem370]

Just finished the series and wanted to thank you! Really great content, gonna check some more of it

[@Dieaconus]

I'm so happy I found your channel. I have always been a Pyrrhonist skeptic and just never knew the words for it. I first found your video on abductive reasoning and have been binging everything you've posted since

[@kylerodd2342]

“All meta narratives are false,” is just a proposition based in a certain logic. If the logic is inductive then it’s always at risk of being falsified. In fact the proposition is better used as an hypothesis to then test against all the particular meta narratives found. The proposition I often hear though is not that meta narratives are false but that they don’t capture all important perspectives or ways to think about the world. Metanarrative-thinking then begins to give way to perspectival-thinking, where totalizing narratives about the world are avoid to include things we may not know but could discover.

[@alexwiththeglasses]

Total amateur old guy here… really enjoyed this series up until this last episode, and it may be because of my ignorance or just not getting it. Most other sources I’ve seen say “incredulity toward meta narratives” but never “all meta narratives are false”. I don’t about anyone claiming that we know all meta narratives in the first place. It seems strange to reduce PM to the childish level of a “there are no absolutes” paradox. But I’m slow & likely missing something here & will listen again to this. Thx for this wonderful series - I subscribed & will go back & “like” each video in this playlist.

[@nicolasjanvier8617]

From one total amateur told guy to another: not only do I agree with your criticism of Carneades's video on that point, but I would further posit that the old "there are no absolutes" paradox cannot be used as an argument against postmodernism. What it points at is at a problem fundamental to logic itself (the set of all set that does not include itself). Hence to refute postmodernism on the basis that its claim that there are no metanarratives is itself a metanarrative, is not a refutal at all. On the contrary, it gives more weight to the postmodern critique of logic and rationality.

[@alexwiththeglasses]

@ Thx for your thoughtful comment! I currently look at it as a difference in the nature of the claims - apples and oranges. A meta narrative not only makes truth claims about the world, but suggests that our view of the world is best interpreted through the lens of a specific meta narrative. Incredulity simply questions that all-encompassing suggestion. In this sense, all meta narratives are prescriptive. PM is not, and describes the problems that meta narratives seem to share in common. But my view could change tomorrow😆

[@hus2809]

Thank you for this spectacular series. It was really helpful.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching.

[@ksastrophy]

Thank you very much for this series! I would be very happy if you could make some videos on metamodernism

[@ar-4775]

I love it when you include Pyrrho

[@albertlewis4407]

Thank you for the series. I learned so much!

[@werrkowalski2985]

It seems like postmodernism is a kind of academic skepticism, but postmodernists generally aren't aware of the problems with this kind of academic skepticism.

[@Asankeket]

Interesting. This gave me a lot to think about, but something in this last chapter appears to map to what I tend to say in debates about truth: I use an epistemological guideline that everything we claim to know is preliminary. This is a guideline rather than a claim because it is possible that something we claim to know is objective truth, but we are unable to determine that. With regard to modernist claims, we cannot know anything without context, but common human experience provides a context within which we may be able to make true statements about human life and society, and those aspects of the world which are part of that context. That these statements may not be true outside of that context is, for now at least, irrelevant. And "for now" is, at any time, everything we can hope for. We cannot move beyond ourselves unless we learn to communicate with entities that do not share our context. Could we communicate with those? We do not know. For now.

[@0x400Bogdan]

My favorite series. Thank you.

[@deepashtray5605]

I'd have to say that postmodernism in both art and philosophy are just one kind of reaction to the incredible upheavals that have occurred over the last 200 years. In this period you could find people born in a world where the steam engine and horse and buggy were the state of the art in transportation, and lived to see a man walk on the moon; I've known people who could say that. In this period (paraphrasing David Attenborough) humans have overrun the entire planet. Communications could take weeks or months, now everyone has a cell phone. Women can hold the highest offices in business and politics without having to inherit them. As compared to the previous 2,000 years the life expectancy and standard of living for every person on the planet has increased exponentially. Common thread? At minimum certainly a correlation. Now just waiting for the troll to show up....

[@lotoreo]

very interesting thought! thanks for that

[@deepashtray5605]

@@thotslayer9914 And here's the troll, right on cue.You're so predictable. By the way, if you don't stop posting on my video you will be blocked, which I'm sure just infuriates your little Dunning Kruger senses.

[@deepashtray5605]

@@thotslayer9914 Nothing to settle, but I'll take you up on your offer. Bye.

[@InventiveHarvest]

Good series. Didnt like the subject, but you explained it well. Thank you.

[@Shevock]

Interesting link between academic skeptics and postmodernism. One metanarrative that postmodernists generally hold as true, that academic skeptics do not, is that diversity is good.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

I think that you may be confusing postmodernism with liberalism. Postmodernism is skeptical of all metanarratives, including the claim that diversity is good. In terms of thought or positions, postmodernists doubt that any one view is correct and so accept the reality that there are a diversity of views, none of which are perfectly correct, but they don't think that is a good thing. The fallacy of wishful thinking shows that just because someone thinks something is true, does not mean they think it is good (kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJWXY4RppK-Wlck). Here's the video on political postmodernism for more (kzbin.info/www/bejne/nneceY2Dpb-trac).

[@werrkowalski2985]

I think postmodernism has evolved, there isn't just one definition of postmodernism, and the commonly presented one (ie general skepticism of all metanarratives) is problematic because of the reasons enumerated in the video. I think it may be more charitable to characterise original postmodernism as skepticism of modernist metanarratives. Nick Land's philosophy is sometimes described as postmodern, and it is skeptical of certain modernist narratives, so I can see why it can be described as postmodern. But it is also skeptical of equality.

[@acatssoftnose3940]

So a Pyrrhonian Skeptic would be more interested in methods, activities, and habits that help them to better understand the world vs. making claims and building ideologies off of them? If so, I like it. It feels like a cleaner version of skepticism compared to what I've seen other people exhibit. It's almost like being a thinker with a toolbox with no clear worldview in mind.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Great question. Pyrrhonian skepticism as I frame it, is about searching for tools and methods to better understand the world, while maintaining a high bar for accepting anything as true.

[@wellyouthoughtwrong3429]

Is "all metanarratives are untrue" a metanarrative too? Is there any benefit here to taking a non-cognitive approach over an error approach? I'm super new and haven't read anything so I'm wondering if a postmodernist is even actually committed to truth-apt narratives. One could easily question whether narratives are propositions in the first place. Or if I'm mistaken and PM is making a normative commitment 'all metanarratives are wrong', is it not logically consistent yet an argument against teaching metanarratives including PM? 'Untrue and wrong" might be how a modified PM may think of it.

[@Pfhorrest]

If we follow the Pyrrhonian path to doubt about everything, we still find ourselves unable to act without at least tacitly assuming something or another. This is where pragmatism comes in, because which assumption we act on regarding whether or not it is possible to make progress towards truth can in itself affect the possibility of making progress towards truth; for in acting to pursue truth, we tacitly assume that there is some chance of success toward that, and contrapositively in assuming that there is no hope of success at that, we undermine any motive to pursue it, so even if it were possible after all we would never find out because we just gave up. So pragmatically speaking, from the place that Pyrrhonian skepticism takes you to, it is always the better bet to act on the at least tacit assumption that Postmodernism and its ilk are false, and that there is some objective truth or another, and we can somehow or another gauge how close or far to that competing answers are in relation to each other, and so inch our way toward it.

[@0x400Bogdan]

We can act without making conscious statements about the world.

[@Pfhorrest]

@@0x400Bogdan That's why I included "tacit" in there. You may not be consciously making an assumption, but your actions will be consistent with an assumption one way and thus inconsistent with the contrary assumption, so in deciding how to act you are tacitly making one assumption or the other. Reasons to act one way or the other are thus equally reasons to make one assumption or the other.

[@werrkowalski2985]

He has made a video where he talked about how one could act without beliefs, so maybe a more powerful critique may be that it seems that it is difficult to see how a pyrrhonian skeptic could hold that he doesn't believe any propositions are true, and that he doesn't have belief in that claim either without accepting some presupposed meta-claims, like that there is such thing as truth, there is such thing as propositions, or that it is possible for some propositions to not be true. While it may be conceivable that a skeptic could try and claim that he doesn't know if these meta-claims are true, then it seems that to accept that claim he would need to accept another set of meta-claims, so it seems that it would lead into a kind of an infinite regress. If the success of explaining a puzzle at stage n in a regress depends on the success of explaining a puzzle at stage n+1, then the regress is vicious. In this case whether each claim is true, (for example that we don't know if we don't know if any proposition is true), depends on whether its presuppositions are true, ie the meta-claims, but we don't know if these are true either, so whether any claim of the form "I don't know if x is true" is itself true, depends on truth of a meta claim, and so on and so on. I believe it can be argued that this regress is vicious.

[@unknownknownsphilosophy7888]

How does one successfully doubt a non-personal phenomenal consciousness though? Just the general sensation of "seemingness" not the one to whom the seemingness belongs if anyone, but that seemingness generally is... because it strikes me that some raw seemingness can't be an illusion because raw seemingness is a prerequisite for both illusions and hallucinations, for illusions and hallucinations to take place they must "seem" to take place... how does the skeptic doubt "seemingness" because it seems very distinct from doubting the self or thinking.. It seems to doubt it there must seem to be the process that doubting takes place.. thus "seeming" seems to be the closet thing to being unassailable that we could find

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

There appear to be different mental processes that you can undertake. You might be thinking through a problem, you might be envisioning an idea, you might be making a decision. "Seemings" i.e. some kind of mental representation of a state of the world, are merely one thing that a mind could be doing. Instead of experiencing a seeming you might be making a choice, or thinking through a problem. Since there are multiple things your mind might be doing, it is possible to mistake one for another (you might actually be making a decision when you think you are experiencing a "seeming"). And therefore you might be mistaken, thinking something is appearing before you when in fact you are making a decision, or thinking through a problem. One might then ask, what about taking this one stage up and going more general still with something like the claim that mental states exist. However, there seem to be at least some extreme physicalists that think they don't, so doubting even this seems quite possible, since it is possible that things like "belief" or "seeming" don't really exist to be believed in.

[@polemizator723]

But they dont claim that all metanarratives are false. In previous videos there are just sceptical about them because there cant prove themselves. Are there relly claim that we SHOULD deny all metanarratives? Why postmodernism cannot claim that all method of interpretation can be use but not proven.

[@0x400Bogdan]

Analytic vs. Continental would be great!

[@itsmeagain1415]

Can someone tell me if skeptics have made a case against mathematics and logic??

[@testianer]

Yes, in Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism, book 2

[@gurgel4130]

Pyrrhonian skeptics do indeed doubt logic and mathematics. For example one could say that logic is inherently an axiomatic system just like any other (say communism or maybe even the axioms I hold when I speak to you) and that it’s very hard to know if the axioms of logic are the correct ones to find any sort of truth.

[@الكئيبالبائس]

@@testianer I don't think that Empiricus had any idea about modern mathematical foundations and basically what mathematical logic rests upon. like modern logic is basically the treating of any structure of knowledge that CAN NOT give rise to contradictory statements, there are even I think paraconsistent logic which can somewhat handle contradictions, I'm sure this channel addressed this in there several logic series, right?? or am I missing something?

[@الكئيبالبائس]

@@gurgel4130 But the thing is that you can consider it and like the laws of thought to be like 50% true and 50% false, and since all of knowledge and reasoning are based on such 50% true laws, then the truth of every element of knowledge and even other like secondary laws in accordance is going to be a less percent but the catch is that you can never discard their truth probability, and no matter how much you can be skeptical of every single line of reasoning, it's truth would never like "vanish" so in the case of these "axioms" you don't have to prove them, if the truth of any piece of knowledge can't surpass them and whoever who wants to doubt has nothing to do (as they are already doubted) so he can only try to come up with something even more true ;)

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Yep. Or for the more modern skeptic, Russell's Paradox (kzbin.info/www/bejne/fGXFoWqKabyjZ8U) and Godel's incompleteness Theorem (kzbin.info/www/bejne/inPFfHeoqrmKiJY).

[@pooroldnostradamus]

Hmm, I'm not sure if I liked this video. I shall reserve my judgement for now.

[@dr_regularlove]

I will admit, I fell off your channel for a little while due to my preconceived notions of what your biases might be. However, I returned on this episode and found a very thoughtful analysis of the underpinnings of thought about so-called postmodernism. I may have to watch the preceding episodes in the postmodernism series now. That said, the ending of every episode on this channel of "stay Skeptical everybody" is one small part of why I became, lol, Skeptical! of this channel. Skepticism as a method of analysis, I think, is good. But as a Marxist (yes, I admit), I am concerned with the truth of ideas but also, importantly, the role of ideas in the development of history. The development of history, meaning "history" as the development of the various human capacities for understanding and surviving in the world (sublimated here is "which" sets of humans involved in the act), is often rarely determined by the ideas of Skeptics, but rather by predominant forces organized around material interests. The Skeptic's principled pursuit of "truth" in this context has as much meaning as is allowed to survive; more to the point, the arguments of Skeptics will be promoted so long as they are useful to those who have the cachet to promote them, or repressed (violently or otherwise) as long as they are not, or (worse) present a threat to the status quo. To be on the side of principled critique without making positive claims is, in the development of history which often cares not for notions of ethics, justifiability, or even more fundamental notions of logical soundness, to be used and discarded as necessary. At some point there are perhaps *leaps* that are possible, acts which are made regardless of any formalism which would satisfy any Skeptic, which regardless lead perhaps to an historical inflection which, on the net, develops history in a way which increases the overall human capacity for understanding and surviving in the world. All the while, Skeptics will make their points and probably be correct. Yet, as has ever been, history marches forward with and/or without them. I suppose to sum up my point: the Skeptics during revolution are just the same as the Skeptics during reaction and counterrevolution. This isn't to put Skepticism down, by any means. I suppose I mean to highlight the politico-historical situation of such a position. To quote Karl Rove: "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

[@MalTheMostTired]

After watching this I am pretty sure I am skeptic towards most issues and post-modernist towards social and political phenomena. I believe that logic(as least how we define in it currently) has flaws and short comings for dealing with the everyday and people. That said, I believe logic has a means to correcting for this (as I believe it has done many times over) only because logic has became subjectivity defined in the minds of the individual. I think logic needs to be defined for the current age or at the least we really start debating and attacking what is thought to be as "logic".

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

Interesting position. So you are claiming that there is no one right paradigm of logic, that we are just getting closer to the right paradigm of logic but have not gotten there yet, or that we don't know if we have the right paradigm or if there is a right paradigm?

[@wheresmyeyebrow1608]

If no meta-narrative can be found now, why should we ever believe one will be found in the future?

[@MendTheWorld]

Your question is not different from the problem with inductive reasoning. The fact that no defensible meta-narrative has yet been found does not, in and of itself, prove that none is possible.

[@wheresmyeyebrow1608]

@@MendTheWorld Sure but the same good be said of God and a plethora of others; I mean that's literally the Spaghetti god argument is it not?

[@lotoreo]

@@wheresmyeyebrow1608 why can't there be a spaghetti god? the most we can say is that from our vantage point, there would be no reason to assume there is one, not that one can certainly not exist

[@wheresmyeyebrow1608]

@@lotoreo idk like I completely agree with the notion that we should analyse every single thing and notion throughout, but at least personally I think it's safe to say that since a lot of these 'non-existing' things seem to follow a pattern (what seems to link Spaghetti Monster, Unicorns, Spirits, and the like) that it's at the very least *ok* to disregard them outside genuine consideration

[@lotoreo]

@@wheresmyeyebrow1608 sure, but in philosophical terms we would have to admit that we can neither say they exist nor that they do not exist, if you claim anything else, you're not being totally honest imho

[@Garland41]

I must simply disagree with this assessment for one simple reason: this presents Postmodernism from an epistemological view instead on an ontological view while making your skepticism an ontological view instead of epistemological. For instance Derrida, Foucault, and Deleuze, while they may not call themselves postmodern, express the postmodern sensibility from working from Ontological difference against the Hegelian and Husserlian Modernism.

[@CarneadesOfCyrene]

As the series notes there are many different things identified as Postmodernism. This video is focusing on one of the central threads that ties these views together, Lyotard's definition of Postmodernism as incredulity towards metanarratives (arguably Lyotard should have a certain privilege of place here as the only one (of the philosophers) to actually use the term postmodern). This view is inherently epistemic, incredulity is about disbelief. Additionally why do you think I am framing skepticism in ontological terms? Skepticism is a lack of belief, that is an epistemic issue. Skeptics don't make ontological claims about the way the world is. Though perhaps I am using an analytic version of this distiction, when you mean to reference a continental one?