Foucault’s work on power
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"With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.
Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether."
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_...
The key insight for me is the discussion of "the clearing". The clearing opens the way for new opportunities while suppressing other possibilities in exchange. This concept can be used readily to analyze the durability of certain new technologies and their effect on society. For example, Facebook clearly creates a new way to communicate, but that channel then eliminates other forms of communication in exchange.
The language of pervasive and hidden power is essential for a clear view of what the Silicon Valley is becoming.
If you're not familiar with the metaphor, it refers to one of the development phases of a scientific discipline: before there was a theory of physics, many people described and classified various phenomena. The term comes from biology; even before Linneus, people described and collected all sorts of species; then Linneus provided a taxonomy to fit them into; and now we have a theory of genetics.
I wonder if anyone has done the kind deed of whittling his most oft-cited gaseous emanations down to their core common sense origins. That'd save a lot of time for those of us not interested in a career in academia.
This is a hilarious comment, given that Foucault's History of Sexuality contains almost no citations!
If you are interested in why Foucault ought to be a laughingstock, see Windshuttle's The Killing of History: https://www.amazon.com/Killing-History-Literary-Theorists-Mu... or the many essays Camille Paglia wrote on him. Her latest book has a reprint of "Review: Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf."
But of course, well-worn common sense is, and always has been, in perilous short supply.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out that "the world is flat" was a perfectly good theory that fit the fact for most observers. What is foolish is the refusal to change one's belief once it was proved to be wrong, or even to be closed to the possibility of an alternative.
An important thought crashed into my head that froze me solid for about 30 seconds, "who the F cares?"
I thanked the professor for her time, told her I was done with her class and I walked out. I dropped her class and switched my major to applied math. She sent me a very nice email that wished me luck.
All discourses, including science, are rooted in their historical epoch. There are no transhistorical truths, but truth and justice are true relative to the field of power/knowledge they are embedded in.
Does that really sound like widely accepted common sense? Do you not agree that western societies are driven by a popular belief in either pure nationalist authority or in authority masked in terms of objectivity, scientific progress and justice?
Which is at least stated as if the quoted statement itself were a transhistorical truth. That is, the quoted statement, applied to itself, refutes itself. (Because if the statement itself is a transhistorical truth, then the statement itself is a counterexample to the claim of the statement. And if the statement itself is not a transhistorical truth, then there are transhistorical truths in other historical epochs and/or other fields of knowledge.)
Now, you could argue that we don't really know the truth of what exists, and therefore that my standard of "truth" is meaningless for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, this is what truth has been classically considered to be. (By "classically", I mean before Hegel.)
What would be the criterion by which we could compare one system's correspondence to reality with another system? If there is no transcendental, supra-system way to compare, then where do you get the notion of "degrees" of conformation between reality and statements about reality?
Your summary is a bit reductive.
It's a sign of the times that, in Web searches, Foucault the philosopher completely buries Foucault the physicist.
(I got snookered into reading this because "power" has a meaning in physics apart from its meaning in philosophy -- the former of which actually means something.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault
Yes, that seems to be true, but from the standpoint of falsifiability, of empirical testing, they're equal.
The very fact that people feel compelled to draw a line between Foucault and Derrida, one that hasn't already been drawn by objective evidence, speaks for itself.
> ... and contains examples and research that empirically support his observations (in sense of empirical support one often finds in the social sciences and history ...
Please don't make this mistake. However strongly you feel about the present topic, don't try to fit philosophy into the science straitjacket. Philosophy's value lies elsewhere.
How much substance is required beyond the fact that these ideas are unfalsifiable? To a scientist like myself, saying that places the burden of evidence on the other party, who can only respond with a basis for empirical falsification. But that's not possible in philosophy, by definition.
Am I obliged to prove that Bigfoot is a myth? No, I need only say there's no evidence. And I'm not under a burden to to prove a negative in such a discussion -- impossible in any case. That makes a statement about Bigfoot comparable to statements about philosophy -- it's unfalsifiable.
> Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths"
It didn't require many words for you to establish your post-modern credentials. From here, assuming I were inclined, we would have an inconclusive-by-definition debate about whether there are objective truths ... we would philosophize.
Thanks ... I'll pass.
1. What, again?
2. You should address the topic.
Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So, in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's argument.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical and logically invalid, in a broad and categorical sense. Adhering to it is therefore irrational and no different than any other non-falsifiable religion that must simply be accepted on faith, without any logical proof or reasoning.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical ... Adhering to it is therefore irrational
All ideas are paradoxes, and yet we must adhere to some. The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies. Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion. And attempting to not have ideas is death. Therefore adhering to paradoxical ideas is rational.
I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The idea that there are an infinity of primes is not at all paradoxical, it's an uncontroversial factual assertion. Most of mathematics shows the same property.
> The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies.
Not the words out of which scientific theories are constructed. Evolution. Biology. Physics. These are falsifiable (they must be to qualify as scientific theories), but they are not lies -- a word that means false claims made by a speaker who knows his claims are false. You're misusing the word "lies" to refer to something else.
> Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion.
See above. Your claim that all ideas are lies is the essence of the postmodern position. A postmodernist first denies the existence of shared, objective truths, then tries to start a dialogue requiring what's just been denied.
> I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
That's certainly true, but it doesn't follow that all is paradox, or that all statements are lies.
See my other response above about the materiality and contingency of linguistic utterances. Like all other physical phenomena, the scientific approach views language as an event, a behavior, a material process that is always context-dependent and, at the "lowest" levels, pervaded by uncertainty, even in our best attempts to model it.
Well, I didn't say that. I said it was an unfalsifiable topic.
> Why are you restricting meaning, and thus truth, to just physics?
Didn't say that either, and just as well, since there are no truths in physics. In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true. All legitimate scientific theories remain open to falsification by new empirical evidence, in perpetuity.
Not so for philosophy, which was my point.
Sure, not problem. I'll stop pointing out that philosophy is a contentless debating society when the philosophers realize it, and when they stop treating it as though it constitutes an objective science (a point argued by others in this thread).
It cannot help us explain art, politics, and the nature of existence.
The world is a lot less computable than you seem to believe.
But honestly I think you're just being silly and stubborn while arguing with strangers on a website.
Neither can philosophy. How you missed this obvious reply is beyond me. You need to learn the difference between describe and explain.
Yes, it is. And it passes that test.
On the contrary, falsifiability's merits can be tested and potentially falsified. Science produces more useful results -- a better depiction of reality -- than other pursuits that don't require falsifiability. That is a merit-test (a falsifiable one) for falsifiability.
The issue is not whether falsifiability exists, the issue is whether it has greater merit than other ways of evaluating ideas.
> ... because things like "theories" and "truth" are not physical.
Neither are ideas, but we grant ideas the status of tangible things, to the degree that we assign ownership to some of them (with mixed results). Scientific theories have validity solely to the degree to which we can correlate them with aspects of reality. This gives scientific theories a special status not shared by all ideas.
> ... then I don't see how you can state that most philosophy is not falsifiable and remain consistent.
It would be easy for a philosopher to refute such a claim -- by producing a philosophical theory that has the property of falsifiability by empirical evidence. But if that were done, the submitted theory would fail the litmus test of philosophical ideas in modern times (that they be ideas apart from empirically testable ones). This is the property that distinguishes philosophy from science. So it seems the distinction is to some extent self-referential.
> In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true.
This statement concerns logic and epistemology, both branches of philosophy, not science.
Falsification came about as a solution to the demarcation problem and the problem of induction (both products of philosophy, not science).
You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable. In short, you haven't really said anything (our understanding of circular reasoning and begging the question also come from philosophy).
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. This could have happened to anyone -- Popper happens to have been that one. The influence of the falsifiability idea eclipses its source. If we lose Popper, if he turns out to have some glaring personal defect that would end the career of a politician, falsifiability remains. The reason? Falsifiability is an idea, and ideas don't have parents.
Henry Ford invented efficient production-line methods. He was also a rabid anti-Semite. Does this character defect undermine the value of efficient production methods? Only if we try to associate ideas with their originators, or imagine some connection between the two.
This is how it works in the realm of ideas -- ideas are the focus, not those who express them.
In philosophy we talk about Popper or Foucault or Derrida. In science we talk about biology or evolution or physics.
There are an infinity of primes -- easily proven. Who first had this idea? Not important -- the idea stands on its own.
> You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable.
Yes, and that's how science is defined. No falsifiability, no science. But this requires us to imagine a world in which ideas have a life of their own.
> In short, you haven't really said anything ...
A perfect philosophical rejoinder. All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness than another. Falsifiability is an idea. Therefore ...
Therefore why not take the next step and try to claim that all ideas are subjective, that we can't expect to meaningfully express and share ideas, or let reality-testing rank them in an objective way? In short, why not accept the postmodern thesis? The answer is that postmodernism contradicts the very idea of meaningful, productive conversation, conversation that might lead to a social good. To address the postmodern thesis is to fatally undermine the exchange in which it's introduced -- an exchange that requires the very thing postmodernism denies.
Meanwhile, outside philosophy, we have the recourse of testing our ideas against reality and letting reality rank the ideas for us. According to reality, natural selection shapes the biological world, and the identity of the people who stumbled on this idea is irrelevant. According to reality, there is no ether carrying light waves -- in spacetime theory, no medium is required -- and this idea's originator doesn't matter. When you understand the equations of relativity theory, you have learned the topic, and Einstein's having abandoned his first child can't undermine the idea or degrade its value.
But all that requires us to accept the idea that there is an objective, shared reality about which meaningful conversation is possible. As it happens, among philosophers this idea hasn't taken hold.
"Falisifiability" is not something that can be empirically tested because it is a concept that does not talk about things in the real, physical world. Full stop. That does not mean that we can't assign a truth value to it within a logical system, and that doesn't mean it isn't a useful idea that can guide our interactions with the real world.
There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper. Don't miss out on all that because you disagree with a few postmodernists!
No, that's wrong, quite wrong. Falsifiability (the thing itself as well as its usefulness to science) can both be tested -- are tested. Disciplines that require falsifability, objectively produce better representations of reality. This is so because the elements of such a system must all pass muster with reality. All falsifiability means is that reality-testing decides what's excluded from consideration.
> There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper.
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. The idea exists independent of any individual. Were this not so, if it really was the product of a particular person and with no independent existence, it would have a vanishingly small value. The reason? Ideas exist apart from those who express them (this goes back to Plato, if not farther).
There are an infinity of primes. Who said it first? Did the idea exist before it was articulated?
Psychologists talk about schizophrenia as though it's a mental illness (it's not, it's a physical illness with mental symptoms). Does this mean schizophrenia is owned by the field of psychology, or a particular psychologist? Not remotely -- it's an idea, not a property.
Same with falsifiability.
Don't get too hung up on Karl Popper or falsifiability, by the way. What I and others are trying to point out to you is that your dismissals of philosophy implicitly rely on a foundation of philosophical arguments.
Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy. There is a philosophical term for the concept that ideas exist "out there" waiting to be discovered, but I don't imagine you'd be interested in the long history of that debate.
> All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness
I didn't say that. I implied that in this instance your thinking is based on a foundation of sand and isn't persuasive. Others have done better.
I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century. You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding. That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
> Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy.
This misses my point, which is that anyone could have noticed the existence of falsifiability, and the fact that a philosopher noticed it means nothing. The reason? The topic is ideas, not people who uncover ideas.
> I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century.
You're assigning to me a viewpoint I've never held nor expressed. You've also abandoned the topic.
> You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding.
Ah -- so it is I who is making assumptions about the beliefs of others (something I have never done). Thanks for clearing that up, and I advise you to re-read your own posts.
> That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
It can't hold a candle to abandoning the topic entirely and moving instead into a personal discussion bearing no relevance to the topic of discussion.