VIII. Some olive branches and an end

Erin:

Fair enough. It's certainly an appealing idea, but with language as a closed, self-referential system, I'm not yet convinced it's possible. I need to think about that some more and finish Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's War and Reason -- and my reading for Rational Choice week in philosophy -- before committing to even the theoretical possibility of social prediction given perfect information. Suffice to say, I'm more interested in what's possible given today's technology and relatively unconcerned with prediction.

For what? The truism that people don't always act in their own best interest and use language imprecisely?

Meh, I typo with some frequency. I like better the irony that your passionate advocacy of skepticism and unfettered inquiry does not extend to wanting to discuss heterodox knowledge claims …

(Alan Shore begs to differ, but that’s hardly the spirit in which I meant “with all due respect.”) Please believe me when I tell you I have incredible amounts of respect for someone who intelligently, critically, and civilly hashes out the nuances of science and religion with me via the comments sections of a Facebook post for an entire week. Seriously. That basically defines my standards of respect-worthy behavior. However, I don't respect your (or anyone else’s) strawmanning of postmodernism. It *is* intellectually cowardly and it shuts down the possibility of debate just as quickly as the hysterical wilderness cry of “Faith means I don’t need to think about your evidence!” rules out any discussion of the merits of evolution with a blindly faithful (and fearful) creationist. It’s not hard to make a case for postmodernism being cast as a secular version of religion’s blasphemy and heresy – arguments that can’t (won’t) be talked about because they are too repugnant or would undermine an established system of belief. That said, I accept that you weren’t directly critiquing my arguments or language. This is, more broadly, a frustration with many people’s outright dismissal of knowledge claims on the basis of labels. It goes for Prof. Jackson’s apparent hatred of all of economics ever, or my philosophy teacher’s mocking of feminism just as much as for categorical rejections of postmodernism. And if that frustration translated into an unnecessarily harsh condemnation of your position, I apologize.

Your contention that you just don’t like postmodernism is, at a bare minimum, more intellectually honest than claiming that it’s all bullshit – and it’s certainly legitimate to have some sort of intuitive reaction to a way of thinking about the world, as discussed before. Granted, I don’t understand how a heterogeneous agglomeration of theories and methods could so grievously offend someone to the point that they can’t even bear to discuss them. This is actually a question of no small interest to me, but if you’d rather not talk about it, I will certainly respect that. I aim to challenge, not to antagonize. (I sometimes fall short of this goal.) We’ve abstracted pretty far from the original conversation, in any case.

Summary: I respect you (unquestionably) and the tenor and thoughtfulness of your arguments right up to the postmodernism bit. If I was overly confrontational (and it wouldn’t be the first time), I apologize sincerely. An olive branch: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/spacestories-gallery/all/1 (Even though Wired Science plays fast and loose with science news sometimes.)

Chris:

All fair. As yet another sidenote, I would say that though postmodernism, like any intellectual philosophy, is fairly heterogeneous inasmuch as it is treated differently across each academic discipline, the common threads that run through all of the postmodern movements are strong enough to be criticized as a whole. To a certain extent, I can criticize the Harold Washington Library and constructivism in the same breath because of their shared qualities. Unfortunately, the connections that I see in this regard must be fairly "right-brained," so it is difficult to put them into the proper terms. In terms of postmodern architecture, I am at least adept enough to say that very vew architects successfully create something that is both intertextual and good looking. What's worse, they often build those buildings on top of old, interesting buildings. They do make good sets for fighting with Batman, though.

"Hubble is back!" at number 6? These guys don't know how to prioritize... Though I will agree that the transit photos are pretty amazing.

Erin:

Oh, sure. There's definitely value to having and being able to us terms like "postmodernism" and "constructivism" and "science" and "religion." Else we wouldn't be able to talk about anything at all. I just think they should be subject to the same skepticism and analysis as ... basically everything else in our experience (or claimed to be beyond it...).

The transit photos are way cool! But I cannot understand why the discovery extensive pure water sheet ice on Mars wasn't a top story. Or the one about smashing the spaceship into the moon to send up a plume of liquid water. Also, Mars is supposed to be pretty bright tonight. I hope you're able to see it, since Boris Johnson has once again failed to issue an edict banning all non-essential lighting within the London metropolitan area for a couple hours one night a week for stargazing purposes.

Chris:

Of course. At the same time, when I say a word like "constructivism" or "religion," I have an absolute meaning in mind. The trick is communicating to others exactly what I mean by those words, which is something different (and I believe, more useful) from a simple, self-evident statement that those words mean different things when used by different people.

As for Mars, no matter how bright it may be, it's a little darker today, as NASA's given up on freeing the Spirit rover.

Erin:

For it was star stuff and star stuff it remains. Requiescat in pace.