Perhaps we can think of
>reality and its relation to human cognition and production in terms of a
>continuum?
Well if we do this we accept my argument, reality is differentiated not
monovalent, so I am unlikely to disagree. However, we should beware here of
what Bourdieu calls the "synoptic illusion", and actually, thinking about
it, I don't like the idea continnum. The crucial point is between an
ontological notion of truth and an epistemological one. There are, and can
be, socially produced truths (epistemological) about gravity, but whatever,
the (ontological) status of such a force is not dependent upon such
descriptions and will exist without them. Besides we still reach a problem
about the socially produced truths. Lets think about this.
Am free to describe a given social object - say homosexuality - any way I
care to? Would my set of beliefs about homosexuals constitute a truth? And
if not why not? You argued that homosexuals were A...Z, and claimed this to
be true. I denied this. What about the possibilty that both of us were
wronng and what could possibly count as being wrong on your reading? Are you
arguing for conventionalism, neo-pragmatism, or some form of
authoritarianism vis-a-vis truth? I don't know, it is very difficult to
unpick what your position is and the whole idea of the social construction
of truths is a very complicated issue.
>One of the impressions I have from your posts, Colin, is that while you
>are willing to admit (as above) that lots of truths are socially produced,
>you become abusive and dismissive (which is fine; I'm not complaining)
>when postmodernists try to trace out the twists and turns of
>truth-production.
No, i think here you are being a bit unfair. I admit I have a propensity to
be dismissive, but then again much that the postmoderns say tends to result
in logical absurdities. After all, you your self seem now to accept at
leasdt some version of a realist metaphysics. And I thought I was being
fairly, err, restrained of late. Oh well, I wonder what the truth is (sorry
cheap shot) about my posts.
And I don't understand -- not that you owe anyone an
>explanation -- why after granting a point that after all has been
>primarily established and popularized for by postmodernists (namely, the
>social construction of all sorts of truths) you dismiss them so
>contemptuously.
Sorry, John, maybe (and I am going to get slightly polemical here) in an
ideological fog you have simply missed my arguments. I define my position as
epistemologically relativist, that is that I accept that knowledge is
produced in social contexts. That is, that knowledge is socially produced.
The key point, and maybe this is where I do get dismissive, is the failure
to differentiate between knowledge and being. That is, I get dismissive when
I see being reduced to knowledge of being. Yes society produces truths,
Blacks we are told are intellectually inferior to whites. This is a socially
produced truth, produced moreover by the powerful. But it is a lie. There is
a distinction between reality (even social reality) and its descriptions.
For example, England played a wholly socially produced football game the
other day. England beat Italy four goals to nil in Milan. A truth? No, this
description is simply not true. England beat Poland (Yes....) by two goals
to nil in Poland.
>
>The relevant question probably isn't: Do you think there's a real world
>which exists no matter what, no matter how you interpret it? The question
>rather is: where on the continuum above do we roughly locate the dividing
>line (if we grant there is one) between socially constructed and
>no-matter-what truths?
There is no simple dividing line. And I think the crucial question about the
real world actually makes a crucial difference, because on an idealist
metaphysics it is, or might be admissable to reduce being to knowledge. Even
Goodman, has to concede that even if the stars aren't actually there there
must still be something there that we do divide up in certain ways.
Moreover, the failure to think consitently about the features of that
reality, tend to lead back to an empiricist ontology. You can see examples
everywhere of this. Rorty says, yes there is an mind independent reality,
but no we can say nothing of it. Hence Rorty reduces being to its
descriptions. This is exactly the move the empiricists made, esse est
percipi. To be is to be percieved. I reject all such naive ontologies.
>
>I would put my line pretty far to the left of the continuum. The truths
>that are manifestly socially produced -- such as, "it is true that human
>beings are greedy and selfish and self-interested" -- poses a problem, I
>take it, for neither of us, nor for the rest of the postmodern world you
>so wantonly ridicule.
Only when they get silly John, I mean, if you wantonly say there is no such
thing as nature, Judith Butler seems to imply (actually, what Butler really
ends up saying is that 'the concept of nature is a concept'. Wow didn't we
all need to know that.) then I reserve the right to wantonly ridicule you.
The responses are always, as of course you would expect on my realist
metaphysics, a response top something, not an ex nihilo outburst.
And I completely agree with you that Foucault is
>much more concerned with the mid-point of the continuum and continuing on
>to the right.
Actaully, he may well have been concerned with this but you can find many
instances where Foucault says "in reality" when talking about the social
world and, of course, many many places where he says that the truths of
biology, for example, are not the same sorts of truths as those of the
social world.
>
>But I am also taken by Nietzsche's argument (and Kant's; at least for the
>first point) that the natural world is (1) organized by restricted and
>specific kinds of human perception that do not and cannot encompass all of
>reality; (2) often *re*-organized and "re-perceived" in line with paradigm
>shifts we are familiar with from the history of science. Thus, to talk of
>a "reality" existing independent of the "mind" is genuinely misleading,
>and would lead (and has led) practitioners of both the social and natural
>sciences down dead ends.
I fail to see how you can say that to talk of a reality existing independent
of the mind is misleading, when you also say the:
>natural world is (1) organized by restricted and
>specific kinds of human perception that do not and cannot encompass all of
>reality;
What is it that human perception does not encompass then? I mean come on,
you can't have a go at me for being dismissive, when you write such
manifestly contradictory things.
>But Colin, if we stop *describing* it as "the force that attracts" and
>instead describe it as "the ether that connects all" or "the repulsion
>that keeps everything in harmony" won't our picture of reality change and
>thus the truth about that reality change?
No. Try a better example call it a force that allows us to fly off the tops
of buildings. What changes with the description is indeed our picture of
reality as you put it. But is reality nothing but opur pictures of it? This
is all much to anthropocentric for me. It's also very empiricist, and that's
the real danger. Because as you yourself put it earlier such a view has (and
has led) practitioners of both the social and natural sciences down dead
ends. You think that postmodernism represents a radical new view on the
world I see only a reinscription of what we have already had. And remember,
the Logical positivist were anti-realists also.
Because we won't say anymore
>"this is the force that attracts." Instead we say "this is the ether that
>connects." Those two descriptions of the "same" force make it out to be
>very different kinds of forces!
They do yes. But are they both right, and insert my new redescription, are
all three right?
>
>I'm talking about the hey-day (hay day?) of psycho-normative disciplinary
>creation of homosexuality, not today.
But it wasn't true then either.
>Yes, and of course what the power-knowledge circuit then does is do its
>best to get everyone to act according to the model, treating variations as
>interesting and illuminating but maintaining and attempting to impress on
>others the model.
Yes, and the truth about homosexuality keeps on breaking the boundaries of
description we place on it.
>That's exactly correct. Truth as a useful weapon. We need to get more Real
>Politik about truth. Again, you combine granting huge areas of the
>postmodern argument -- areas that would not have been conqeured without
>the work of legions of intellectuals in and out of the academy -- with a
>dismissive attitude towards it.
Oh come on, these fall back positions you so blithely attribute to legions
of postmoderns were made centuries ago. What is so new about the fact that
knowledge is socially produced?
>But it ill-becomes someone who grants so much of the postmodernist
>argument to claim that "most postmoderns actually look pretty silly and
>absurd."
See above. And equally John, it ill becomes someone who says 'yes there is a
mind independent reality', and then 'no there is no mind independent
reality' often in the same sentence, to castigate anyone'.
In fact, we are both willing
>to admit (and have agreed) that some truths are socially produced. This
>is, you know, a fairly recent development -- one which we owe to
>postmodernists and others (such as historians of science).
This is an absurd lie, look one name, two actually Mannheim, Marx, oh what
the hell, Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, Plato, Cratylus, Protagoras, I mean
really, this could get boring. If you really think this is true then you are
indeed advocating radical subjectivism. Nice of you to write of almost half
of the history of philosophy. Equally, of course, I don't suppose it matters
to you. since truth is simply what say it is then, ipso fcato it is truth
that we owe a debt of gratitude to postmoderns. Are you claiming a God like
position here, are you, and the rest of the postmoderns "the Creator"?
You want to
>take everyone who says "truth is constructed" and put them on Ridiculous
>Island, where people say things like: "I construct all truth with my mind;
>therefore, I will stand in front of this oncoming vehicle and simply make
>it not true that being hit by an oncoming vehicle will harm me."
Nah, only the people whose position would make such a claim a possibilty.
Which is errr......
>Well, I don't know. What does your four year old say about gravity?
He doesn't, as Wittgenstein (someone else to add to the list above) might
say, he practices it.
Thanks,
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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA
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