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Comment by cuspy | Hacker News Reader

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.

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The proposition that there is no such thing as objective truth is itself a proposition of a supposed objective truth.

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.

You did great up to

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.

> All ideas are 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.

What postmodernist works have you read?

The belief in self-consistent logical systems of argument must also be accepted on faith, without logical proof. There is no falsifiable theory that proves falsification as the final criterion for distinguishing science from non-science, etc. It's your faith-based attachment to the the falsifiability demarcation theory and to a metaphysically "laden" notion of logical validity that causes the impasse. All of these "defeater"-style logical arguments ultimately rest on a kernel of faith. Foucault, or any other decent theoretician, would recognize in this the expression of power that comes out of a particular historical tradition of knowledge rules. The empowered popular discourse they are rooted in is exactly what Foucault would call an "episteme". (Which again, few thoughtful practicing scientists would claim they "believe" in. Rules are always provisional frameworks for the complicated objectives of science, which themselves exist inside a sort of network or market. Nothing is simple or linear.)

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.

> 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.

> Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance ...

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.

You should read some philosophy of science. Start with Karl Popper. He's the person whose work you're referencing when you talk about falsifiability, and I think you'll relate to his writing, but he'll also challenge you to think a little more deeply about what science is - and indeed, what truth is.

> You should read some philosophy of science.

1. What, again?

2. You should address the topic.

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