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Dank (pg. 16)
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| wotyzoid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
...logical formalism does not attack other views/systems for using its own logical, scientific, rigorous structures. It presupposes that they are true and then builds from there. It says, well, we need to start with something, let’s get on with it and build up from here. Post-structuralism says, lets deconstruct and de-legitimise everything and blow it all up, oh and by the way, we’re better than everyone else. |
Omg GTFO!
This precisely the over-simplistic critique of someone who doesn't understand the point of post-structuralism that woony is pointing out.
Go be a bitch a somewhere else! |
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| wotyzoid |
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| wotyzoid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Woony
Of course someone that hasn't been taught in the kind of language that post-structuralism uses will not understand the philosophic language of someone like Derrida |
And just to be completely fair, I think this is bull too. The whole point of a lot of what he writes in the beggining of Of Grammatology from what I understand is that although it may be impossible to completely rip a text from its "context", it is that striving to do so what renders the reader an understanding more significant than that which the author might have originally intended. The self-defeatism is the schtick, if you will. I'm not well taught in philosophy and I get it. Its not rocket science, its just trippy. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
Woah guys. Kenny's smoked one bowl, read one intro to one text, and he gets it, man. He gets it.
| quote: | Originally posted by wotyzoid
from what I understand is that although it may be impossible to completely rip a text from it's "context", it is that striving to do so what renders the reader an understanding more significant than that which the author might have originally intended. |
You're certainly demonstrating a flair for borderline-nonsensical sentences. The master would be proud. |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
You assumed that because I don’t like post-structuralism that I am an analytic and that I don’t get post-structuralism, with little evidence for that assumption. |
But in the beginning you didn't give me any evidience to go off except stating that it's nonsense with no explanation for why that is. And empiric evidience tells me that in that case, 90% of the time people that state that poststructuralism is complete nonsense are analytics and do not know what they are talking about - am I not being a great analytic? :p Maybe I was wrong for going by empiric experience but dude, dealing with this all the time when most of the people saying that kind of stuff haven't even tried engaging with it gets ing tiring. I've been involved in way to many of these arguments with people that have absolutely zero interest in actually engaging with it. If you had started with what you said about it in your last posts, I wouldn't even have bothered.
| quote: | Originally posted by Lews
The fundamental difference is that logical formalism does not attack other views/systems for using its own logical, scientific, rigorous structures. It presupposes that they are true and then builds from there. It says, well, we need to start with something, let’s get on with it and build up from here. Post-structuralism says, lets deconstruct and de-legitimise everything and blow it all up, oh and by the way, we’re better than everyone else. I never argued that post-structuralism is worthless, I obviously said above that there is value in it, but it is inherently problematic (by nature). This problematic-ness, like I noted above and, as I mentioned, Habermas points out, attacks itself as much as it attacks any other views/systems. And yet, post-structuralism tries to lay claim to being better than those systems – leading to an inherent conflict in itself both on its own terms (being self-referential) and in the terms of others (being illogical). Consequently, it cannot help but be nonsensical. It defeats itself on its own terms and on the terms of others – and then it has the god damned gall to claim it is just not understood and that it is just too complex and obscure for the simple people to understand. It is patronising and presumptuous and, all-in-all, rather annoying. |
But you started out saying it's nonsense without any of these disclaimers. That's the same as saying it is worthless. I just get really triggered by the word nonsense, because when it used, generally, there is no disclaimer. I wouldn't even call logical positivism complete nonsense and that's about as discredited as a philosophical system can get. As I've said before I wouldn't disagree, that given your definition of post structuralism, it's inherently going to self destruct but I think your characterization of post structuralism is unfair because I don't think this idea of deconstructing it all and building the system to end all systems was ever really it's main goal. Maybe people got to that conclusion when they marathon read all of Derrida as some kind of deconstruction instruction bible but people stopped doing that 15 years ago, deconstruction is totally out of style even within continental philosophy. Maybe the Richard Rorty essay I posted earlier is a bit favorable but it was published in a post-structuralist journal and it's conclusions about what this approach can do are very mild. In any case, many of these texts are too fragmentary to support such a grand system anways - above all they encourage you to take what you like and then run and go to do your own thing - I believe that they were smart enough to be self-aware that they were also sabotaging their own positive system with their negative approach, so that can't have been the main goal. Like I've said, despite all the proclamation of the failure of the project of deconstruction etc. the main project of poststructuralism has already suceeded in that it has invoked meta-level discussion and self reflection that wasn't even a thing previously. Even the staunchest critics of poststructuralism are more careful and reflective with great statements and grand narratives than they were before it and thus I think it's already proved it's usefulness. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
To be fair, it was only me who used the word "nonsense", and that was because of the meme you linked which equated a bunch of post-structuralism with Lysenko. Now, I'm neither a biologist nor an agriculturist, but I'm pretty sure the consensus is firmly that Trofim Lysenko was a pseudo-scientific quack. That meme also lumped in the likes of Freud, Lacan and Saussure, who based a lot of their arguments on notions that contemporary psychology and linguistics have thoroughly debunked.
That meme to me seemed to be specifically trolling science/logic types by labelling as "scientific" a bunch of thinkers whose theories have been fairly unequivocally debunked. But since so much post-structuralism still takes (or rather "took") the ideas of those early pioneers as undisputed fact, it's kind of an implicit admission that most of that field is essentially built on bunkum. |
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| wotyzoid |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
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You're ing annoying and predictable, Woony left you hanging and now you wanna start with me. Go start a blog. I don't smoke bowls, I roll spliffs, there's your first article.
THIS IS A DANK THREAD, this petty discussion is NOT DANK
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Speaking of inevitable and accurate... May the dankness recommence:
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| wotyzoid |
Me relaxing on Friday night:
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| Mr.Mystery |
| quote: | Originally posted by wotyzoid
THIS IS A DANK THREAD |
Not really. |
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| Woony |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
That meme to me seemed to be specifically trolling science/logic types by labelling as "scientific" a bunch of thinkers whose theories have been fairly unequivocally debunked. But since so much post-structuralism still takes (or rather "took") the ideas of those early pioneers as undisputed fact, it's kind of an implicit admission that most of that field is essentially built on bunkum. |
The idea that poststructuralism takes psychoanalysis and structuralism as "undisputed facts" is just not true, there's a long and varied history between these disciplines. Just as an example, Deleuze wrote a whole book ting on psychoanalysis and the complex relationship to structuralism should be obvious just from the name. More importantly, when you take concepts from a more emperic realm into the philosphical realm, it doesn't matter if they become empirically debunked, for example even though it came from linguistics, in much of poststructuralism the signifier/signified dystinction is obviously much more of an epistemological and metaphysical statement. Much of premodern philosophy is built on empiric, scientific and religious assumptions that are completely laughable by modern standards, that doesn't mean that it's bunk. Roger Scruton wrote a whole bunk scrutinizing poststructuralists for "bad science" completely missing the point that a) it's not claiming to be an empiric science and b) philosophy has a long history of borrowing and abusing concepts taken from elsewhere. Also, philosphical theories, unless they claim to be strictly scientific (logical positivism) never really get "debunked" since you can't emperically debunk them. They may become abandoned or out of style but eventually some guy will take these concepts, abuse, morph and revive them, no matter how "debunked" they were at the time, for example Nietzsche was considered a joke in academic circles for a long ass time before he was taken seriously. Another example in analytic circles would be Alvin Plantinga repopularizing the ontological argument, a piece of scholastic logic that in his original form will be utterly hair raising to most modern people and that was considered totally and 100% debunked by Kant by almost everyone for like 200 years. Similarily, analytic thomism isn't bunk just because it's based on a way of thinking that's generally considered outdated. This is why I am so opposed to any philosophical thinker or even a whole philosophical tradition being "nonsense", as long as there are some concepts one can take and run, there's value and sense there. |
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