'Postmodernism' as Existential Threat.

[woops]

not saying they're right but they exist & are vocal

 

[luka]

well ive never come across them i'll have to take your word for it

 

[woops]

i've just been picking over some of the k-punk material, interviews etc and it seems pretty clear to me that he sees individual psychology, critical theory (which is philosophical i don't see any argument there) and political trends as all of a piece

 

[Mr. Tea]

in the broadest sense a kind of truth search, or way to establish consistency, or for solid foundations to build upon. a field of play in which certain moves are permitted and possible and even have to be played as the moment arises. a working through of implications etc

Lol, what does this even mean?

And doesn't a lot of this type of discourse abandon the entire of concept of truth, or at best reduce it to what is essentially a personal belief or opinion?

 

[Mr. Tea]

yeah we're agreeing

OK, fair enough!

 

[luka]

Lol, what does this even mean?

And doesn't a lot of this type of discourse abandon the entire of concept of truth, or at best reduce it to what is essentially a personal belief or opinion?

if you dont know what it means you shouldnt be in this conversation.

 

[luka]

this is no place for common sense man. this is for me and Stan to push the boundaries of the comprehensible. let's keep the standards up please. no spluttering.

 

[Mr. Tea]

if you dont know what it means you shouldnt be in this conversation.

Now look who's playing at being Daddy!

 

[luka]

i dont think its so much about undermining the concept of truth so much as undermining sme truth claims in the service of truth. that would be how i would characterise the action of doubt and questioning and suspicion generally.

 

[woops]

Now look who's playing at being the big Other!

textbook postmodernism suggests there is no final level of truth though, luke has just advocated a scientific method

 

[luka]

no, i havent

 

[woops]

get rid of supposed certainties to find the facts

 

[luka]

not facts. thats the difference.

 

[woops]

explain the difference between facts and truth then please, i'm curious, not prodding

 

[luka]

have to go out for a bit. sorry. be back a bit later. you work thorugh it.

 

[luka]

i think therefore i am is not a fact its a more or less stable platform from which to push off.

 

[Mr. Tea]

explain the difference between facts and truth then please, i'm curious, not prodding

I know you didn't ask me, but I would say a truth is something that can be demonstrated by reason alone (e.g. there is no largest prime number), while a fact can be demonstrated empirically (e.g. diamond is the hardest substance).

So while new truths can be discovered, they are in a sense eternal and universal - especially those that depend only on maths or logic, in that you can't think of a universe in which they're not true. Whereas facts are contingent - you can easily imagine an alternative universe with slightly different laws of physics where diamond is not the hardest substance; or you can imagine a new substance being discovered that's harder than diamond (which actually is the case, I think).

 

[constant escape]

Well to what degree is truth, itself, a quality that is particular to a given psyche, with a given set of experiences and a given set of values? We can make the case the universal truths exist, but in a somewhat pre-articulated and fuzzy way.

But then again, if the system didn't pit at least some of its components against the average, the average itself wouldn't be as refined. That is, if some universal truth appeared clearly to everyone, the system arguably would be ineffectively tempering the collective refinement of truth.

Arguably we see this in politics: if we consider the entire array of political viewpoints as being orchestrated by some preconscious, preindividual function, then dissent among viewpoints would arguably function as some kind of combustion to concatenate dialogues that humans are only partially conscious of.

In this case, the function would best function if some of the viewpoints adamantly opposed others.

Truth is anisotropic, perhaps, appearing differently from different perspectives, different angles. The angle would be the viewpoint, the particular value system, and the whole set of possible angles would be the ideological matrix established by preconscious, preindividual, but perhaps nonetheless physical forces.

And within such a space, values become unambivalent and take positions, and each position makes an implicit negation of some set of other possible positions, an infinite set.

 

[Mr. Tea]

textbook postmodernism suggests there is no final level of truth though, luke has just advocated a scientific method

I feel I should point out that any true postmodernist would call a textbook a 'textext'.

 

[woops]

so facts are a subset of the truth then