This debate is as old as the ground we walk upon. Take, for example, Book
II, Chapter XXV from the Discourses of Epictetus (Matheson trans.),
entitled "How the Art of Reasoning is Necessary":
> When one of his audience said, `Convince me that logic is useful,' he
> said,
> Would you have me demonstrate it?
> `Yes.'
> Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument?
> And, when th other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I
> impose upon you? And when the man had no answer, he said, You see
> how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you
> are not even able to learn this much - whether it is necessary or
> not.
This is interesting because it's almost a blend of the two critiques -
modernist and postmodernist - that we've been tossing around. The
Modernist critique says that you cannot prove the "laws" of reason to be
false without first assuming them to be true (what someone has,
mistakenly, termed a "performative contradiction" - this would be a
propositional contradiction). And the postmodern critique that reason,
unable to prove its own validity without entering a reductio ad absurdem
which - by its own rules - disproves itself as invalid.
Although the modernist version of this criticism is certainly vacuous, the
postmodern critique is devastating, and it seems clear to me that most
postmodernism has to begin from it.
The postmodern attack is a form of immanent critique: it agrees to play
the devils advocate and accept the rules of modernism - hypothetically
assuming the terms of a metarational discourse - to show that it is
internally contradictory, that it is self-refuting. A similar tactic was
employed by Marx, whose immanent critique of capitalism involved accepting
the "rules of the game" laid down by classical political economists
(Smith, Ricardo, etc.) to show that - by its own rules - capitalism brings
about its own dissolution. The postmodern critique is, of course,
demonstrative, while the Marxist critique is predictive and sociological,
but the same general logic is being attempted (whether either succeeds or
fails). Even some of the staunchest positivists have admitted that any
system of verifiability must be pre-supposed - that it simply cannot be
proven or justified without always having need of a "higher" system of
verifiability to prove it. Take, for example, A.J. Ayer's introduction to
_Logical Positivism_ (p. 15-16):
> An obvious objection to the verification principle, which the
> positivists' opponents were quick to seize on, is that it is not
> itself verifiable... Surprisingly, Wittgenstein acceded to the charge.
> "My propositions," he said at the end of the Tractatus, "are
> elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them
> as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over
> them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed
> upon it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world
> rightly." But this is a vain attempt to have it both ways. No doubt
> some pieces of nonsense are more suggestive than others, but this
> does not give them any logical force. If the verification principle is
> really nonsensical, it states nothing; and if one holds that it states
> nothing, then one cannot also maintain that what it states is true.
> The Vienna Circle tended to ignore this difficulty: but it seems
> fairly clear tthat what they were in fact doing was to adopt the
> verification principle as a convention. They propounding a definition
> of meaning which accorded with the common usage in the sense that it
> set out the conditions that are in fact satisfied by statements which
> are regarded as empirically informative. Their treatment of a priori
> statements was also intended to provide an account of the way in which
> such statements actually function. To this extent their work was
> descriptive; it became prescriptive with the suggestion that only
> statements of these two kinds should be regarded as either true or
> false, and that only statements which were capable of being either
> true or false should be regarded as literally meaningful.
> But why should this prescription be accepted? The most that has
> been proved is that metaphysical statements do not fall into the same
> category as the laws of logic, or as scientific hypotheses, or as
> historical narratives, or judgements of perception, or any other
> common sense descriptions of the "natural" world. Surely it does not
> follow that they are neither true nor false, still less that they are
> nonsensical?
> No, it does not follow... The question is whether one thinks the
> difference between metaphysical and common sense or scientific
> statements to be sufficiently sharp for it to be useful to underline
> it in this way. The defect of this procedure is that it tends to make
> one blind to the interest that metaphysical questions can have. Its
> merit is that it removes the temptation to look upon the metaphysician
> as a sort of scientific overlord...
So, you see that the verification principle was used to dismiss
metaphysical claims (as unverifiable), and yet when turned upon itself, we
find that the verification principle must be accepted metaphysically (i.e.
without verification). You'll note the language that Ayer is forced to
shift to to justify it's employment after acknowledging this difficulty:
it becomes a "useful" tool that is "descriptive" of the common usage of
the terms "truth" and "meaning." But, of course, there is now a strong
pragmatist movement that explicitly attempts to construct the rules of
language - from grammar to verification - from their common usage (e.g.
Gilbert Ryle, Speech Act theorists like Searl, Habermas, etc.). This
movement sets itself directly in opposition to the positivist tradition,
that has a long history of arriving at logical structures at great odds
with normal usage.
The Modernist response consists, essentially, in saying: "Aha! You are
forced to assume the rules of our game in order to disprove them.
Otherwise, your tongues are tied and you cannot offer a critique at all."
This, of course, ignores the nature of an immanent critique: it is not
that postmodernists are forced to accept a modernist system of
verification in order to disprove the modernist system of verification -
on the contrary, the postmodernists are showing that anyone accepting the
system must, in order to avoid a propositional contradiction, exempt the
system itself from the rules of the game, and accept it on faith or some
arbitrary criteria of "utility" (as Ayer does). To say - as Epictetus
does - that one cannot enter into a debate with a modernist unless one
accepts their system of verification, is not to say that it is an
apodictical "system," nor that it is one that can be verified... it is
neither.
It is true that a postmodernist must adopt /some/ criteria for
verification to engage in debate as to what is true and what is false, but
a "cynical" or "kynical" discourse can be employed which does not consider
itself a metadiscourse, and acknowledges its own subjective position. The
postmodernist accedes to his/her own criticism of modernism by embracing
the faith/arbitrariness upon which any logic he/she uses rests.
Why indeed, then - to repeated Ayer's question - should we accept the
modernist "prescription" as to what should be considered "true" and what
"false"? There's no reason at all why we would. Certainly no
/demonstrable/ reason. This is the point at which we recognize that power
precedes knowledge. Indeed, power - through its selection of acceptable
discourse and "correct" systems of verification - determines what counts
as knowledge and what does not.
Enter Nietzsche, Foucault, etc., etc.
Rinse.
Repeat as needed.
----Ben
II, Chapter XXV from the Discourses of Epictetus (Matheson trans.),
entitled "How the Art of Reasoning is Necessary":
> When one of his audience said, `Convince me that logic is useful,' he
> said,
> Would you have me demonstrate it?
> `Yes.'
> Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument?
> And, when th other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I
> impose upon you? And when the man had no answer, he said, You see
> how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you
> are not even able to learn this much - whether it is necessary or
> not.
This is interesting because it's almost a blend of the two critiques -
modernist and postmodernist - that we've been tossing around. The
Modernist critique says that you cannot prove the "laws" of reason to be
false without first assuming them to be true (what someone has,
mistakenly, termed a "performative contradiction" - this would be a
propositional contradiction). And the postmodern critique that reason,
unable to prove its own validity without entering a reductio ad absurdem
which - by its own rules - disproves itself as invalid.
Although the modernist version of this criticism is certainly vacuous, the
postmodern critique is devastating, and it seems clear to me that most
postmodernism has to begin from it.
The postmodern attack is a form of immanent critique: it agrees to play
the devils advocate and accept the rules of modernism - hypothetically
assuming the terms of a metarational discourse - to show that it is
internally contradictory, that it is self-refuting. A similar tactic was
employed by Marx, whose immanent critique of capitalism involved accepting
the "rules of the game" laid down by classical political economists
(Smith, Ricardo, etc.) to show that - by its own rules - capitalism brings
about its own dissolution. The postmodern critique is, of course,
demonstrative, while the Marxist critique is predictive and sociological,
but the same general logic is being attempted (whether either succeeds or
fails). Even some of the staunchest positivists have admitted that any
system of verifiability must be pre-supposed - that it simply cannot be
proven or justified without always having need of a "higher" system of
verifiability to prove it. Take, for example, A.J. Ayer's introduction to
_Logical Positivism_ (p. 15-16):
> An obvious objection to the verification principle, which the
> positivists' opponents were quick to seize on, is that it is not
> itself verifiable... Surprisingly, Wittgenstein acceded to the charge.
> "My propositions," he said at the end of the Tractatus, "are
> elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them
> as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over
> them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed
> upon it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world
> rightly." But this is a vain attempt to have it both ways. No doubt
> some pieces of nonsense are more suggestive than others, but this
> does not give them any logical force. If the verification principle is
> really nonsensical, it states nothing; and if one holds that it states
> nothing, then one cannot also maintain that what it states is true.
> The Vienna Circle tended to ignore this difficulty: but it seems
> fairly clear tthat what they were in fact doing was to adopt the
> verification principle as a convention. They propounding a definition
> of meaning which accorded with the common usage in the sense that it
> set out the conditions that are in fact satisfied by statements which
> are regarded as empirically informative. Their treatment of a priori
> statements was also intended to provide an account of the way in which
> such statements actually function. To this extent their work was
> descriptive; it became prescriptive with the suggestion that only
> statements of these two kinds should be regarded as either true or
> false, and that only statements which were capable of being either
> true or false should be regarded as literally meaningful.
> But why should this prescription be accepted? The most that has
> been proved is that metaphysical statements do not fall into the same
> category as the laws of logic, or as scientific hypotheses, or as
> historical narratives, or judgements of perception, or any other
> common sense descriptions of the "natural" world. Surely it does not
> follow that they are neither true nor false, still less that they are
> nonsensical?
> No, it does not follow... The question is whether one thinks the
> difference between metaphysical and common sense or scientific
> statements to be sufficiently sharp for it to be useful to underline
> it in this way. The defect of this procedure is that it tends to make
> one blind to the interest that metaphysical questions can have. Its
> merit is that it removes the temptation to look upon the metaphysician
> as a sort of scientific overlord...
So, you see that the verification principle was used to dismiss
metaphysical claims (as unverifiable), and yet when turned upon itself, we
find that the verification principle must be accepted metaphysically (i.e.
without verification). You'll note the language that Ayer is forced to
shift to to justify it's employment after acknowledging this difficulty:
it becomes a "useful" tool that is "descriptive" of the common usage of
the terms "truth" and "meaning." But, of course, there is now a strong
pragmatist movement that explicitly attempts to construct the rules of
language - from grammar to verification - from their common usage (e.g.
Gilbert Ryle, Speech Act theorists like Searl, Habermas, etc.). This
movement sets itself directly in opposition to the positivist tradition,
that has a long history of arriving at logical structures at great odds
with normal usage.
The Modernist response consists, essentially, in saying: "Aha! You are
forced to assume the rules of our game in order to disprove them.
Otherwise, your tongues are tied and you cannot offer a critique at all."
This, of course, ignores the nature of an immanent critique: it is not
that postmodernists are forced to accept a modernist system of
verification in order to disprove the modernist system of verification -
on the contrary, the postmodernists are showing that anyone accepting the
system must, in order to avoid a propositional contradiction, exempt the
system itself from the rules of the game, and accept it on faith or some
arbitrary criteria of "utility" (as Ayer does). To say - as Epictetus
does - that one cannot enter into a debate with a modernist unless one
accepts their system of verification, is not to say that it is an
apodictical "system," nor that it is one that can be verified... it is
neither.
It is true that a postmodernist must adopt /some/ criteria for
verification to engage in debate as to what is true and what is false, but
a "cynical" or "kynical" discourse can be employed which does not consider
itself a metadiscourse, and acknowledges its own subjective position. The
postmodernist accedes to his/her own criticism of modernism by embracing
the faith/arbitrariness upon which any logic he/she uses rests.
Why indeed, then - to repeated Ayer's question - should we accept the
modernist "prescription" as to what should be considered "true" and what
"false"? There's no reason at all why we would. Certainly no
/demonstrable/ reason. This is the point at which we recognize that power
precedes knowledge. Indeed, power - through its selection of acceptable
discourse and "correct" systems of verification - determines what counts
as knowledge and what does not.
Enter Nietzsche, Foucault, etc., etc.
Rinse.
Repeat as needed.
----Ben