Truth for a Postmodern Era

2020

One of the assumptions of the authors in this book is that quite often the media intelligence appears misleading—e.g., little attention is payed to the check on the sources of the news, let alone the cases of intentionally trade a fake news for a genuine one. It is difficult to pinpoint the real causes of this state of affairs, but I think that the needed explanation should focus on the general structure of our culture. This is why I would rather refer to that frame of mind which sometimes is called postmodernist and amounts to a disparagement—if not a denial—of truth. In fact, the basic postmodernist idea is that the certainties the so-called “modern” era took as an indisputable prerogative of the humankind are nothing but illusions. Human beings are just incapable of affording firm foundations for what they think and say, so that notions such as truth, fact, world and the like, which in the modern era have been taken to ground rationality, are actually devoid of content. At best, they are human constructs. “There are no facts, only interpretations” is the by now well-known leitmotif put forward by people subscribing to this point of view. Granted, the way in which the moderns interpreted the “firmness” of the foundations is unacceptable as well—we cannot avail ourselves of beliefs endowed with absolute and universal validity. But ‘no absolute and universal foundations’ does not mean ‘no foundations at all’. Accordingly, in the paper I show that the ideology of postmodernism is polluting our mental, intellectual, theoretical and physical environment. This happens just because this ideology has obliterated the vital distinction between being right and thinking one is right. In particular, I try to show this by giving an analysis of the notion of post-truth, one of the postmodernist’s favorite notions.

Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 2019

The article presents an attempt to use the logical theory of Dignāga (ca 480 - ca 540) to address the critique levelled against the treatment of “truth” as an unattainable ideal in postmodern/poststructuralist philosophy. Dignāga has famously endorsed the Buddhist critique of language as an imperfect tool to articulate valid statements about reality, but he has also shown how double negation can be used to make limited positive statements by denying their opposites. In practice, this method can be used for the development of ethical concepts that can be shared between parties who would not agree, for example, on a positive definition of “justice”, but would nonetheless all consent to characterize certain practices as unjust.

2006

It is difficult to think of a topic of greater concern than the nature of truth. Indeed, truth and the knowledge thereof are the very rails upon which people ought to live their lives. And over the centuries, the classic correspondence theory of truth has outlived most of its critics. But these are postmodern times, or so we are often told, and the classic model, once ensconced deeply in the Western psyche, must now be replaced by a neopragmatist or some other anti-realist model of truth, at least for those concerned with the rampant victimization raging all around us. Thus, “we hold these truths to be self evident” now reads “our socially constructed selves arbitrarily agree that certain chunks of language are to be esteemed in our linguistic community.” Something has gone wrong here, and paraphrasing the words of Mad magazine’s Alfred E. Newman, “We came, we saw, and we conked out!” The astute listener will have already picked up that I am an unrepentant correspondence advocate wh...

When Jean-Francois Lyotard defined the postmodern condition as a state of incredulity toward metanarratives, he set the stage for a series of ongoing debates about the various narrative systems by which human society orders and gives meaning, unity, and "universality" to its experience. Lyorard himself, in debate with the defender of the "unfinished project" of modernity, Jurgen Habermas, took on what he saw as the dominant metanarratives of legitimation and emanci pation , arguing that postmodernity is characterized by no grand totalizing master narrative but by smaller and multiple narratives which do not seek (or obtain) any universalizing stabilization or legitimation. Fredric Jameson has pointed out that both Lyorard and Habermas are really, in fact, working from "master narrative" posi tionsone French and (1789) Revolutionary in inspiration and the other Germanic and Hegelian; one valuing commitment, the 186

Xlibris, Inc., 2002

As an intellectual movement postmodernism was born as a challenge to several modernist themes that were first articulated during the Enlightenment. These include scientific positivism, the inevitability of human progress, and the potential of human reason to address any essential truth of physical and social conditions and thereby make them amenable to rational control (Boyne and Rattansi 1990). The primary tenets of the postmodern movement include: (1) an elevation of text and language as the fundamental phenomena of existence, (2) the application of literary analysis to all phenomena, (3) a questioning of reality and representation, (4) a critique of metanarratives, (5) an argument against method and evaluation, (6) a focus upon power relations and hegemony, (7) and a general critique of Western institutions and knowledge (Kuznar 2008:78). For his part, Lawrence Kuznar labels postmodern anyone whose thinking includes most or all of these elements. Importantly, the term postmodernism refers to a broad range of artists, academic critics, philosophers, and social scientists that Christopher Butler (2003:2) has only half-jokingly alluded to as like “a loosely constituted and quarrelsome political party.” The anthropologist Melford Spiro defines postmodernism thusly: The postmodernist critique of science consists of two interrelated arguments, epistemological and ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First, because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, according to the epistemological argument cannot be a science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science according to the ideological argument, subverts oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world peoples. [Spiro 1996: 759] Postmodernism has its origins as an eclectic social movement originating in aesthetics, architecture and philosophy (Bishop 1996). In architecture and art, fields which are distinguished as the oldest claimants to the name, postmodernism originated in the reaction against abstraction in painting and the International Style in architecture (Callinicos 1990: 101). However, postmodern thinking arguably began in the nineteenth century with Nietzsche’s assertions regarding truth, language, and society, which opened the door for all later postmodern and late modern critiques about the foundations of knowledge (Kuznar 2008: 78). Nietzsche asserted that truth was simply: a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are. [Nietzsche 1954: 46-47] According to Kuznar, postmodernists trace this skepticism about truth and the resulting relativism it engenders from Nietzsche to Max Weber and Sigmund Freud, and finally to Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and other contemporary postmodernists (2008:78).

Edukacja Filozoficzna, 2018

In this paper I will defend the idea of the success of post-truth as one of the main features of hypermodernity. In order to understand such a claim, I will start by defining “post-truth” and showing the key differences that separate it from simple manipulation or lies. I will explain how post-truth characterizes a whole new way of understanding the difference between truth and falsity: a new attitude of indifference to the sharp distinction that moderns and ancients had placed between these two notions. I will contend that this new attitude had been announced by the work of at least three recent philosophers: Harry Frankfurt, Gianni Vattimo and Mario Perniola. They give different names to “post-truth”, though, and attribute it to different causes (from anti-intellectualism to the new media and to sheer carelessness). After that, I will explore how two key aspects of hypermodernity (according to Gilles Lipovetsky), i.e. hyperindividualism and hyperconsumption, cohere with this spread of post-truth. Finally, I will summarily refer to some political and geopolitical events that corroborate the relevance of post-truth in our hypermodern world.

2015

The position and role of reason in the Quran play a vital role in understanding Islam's relationship with both modernity and postmodernism. This is because, in many accounts, modernity involves the diffusion of rationalism in all spheres of life and the main concern of postmodernism is oriented towards the deconstruction of the assumptions and promises of instrumental reason. It can be argued that the Quran does not accord reason, in the conventional, modernist, sense a foundational or sovereign status. This has serious consequences for Islam's epistemological relationship with postmodernism as well as the postmodern condition as it is manifested in the sociopolitical field. Of major concern in this regard is whether or not Islam constitutes a metanarrative in the postmodernist sense and how this impacts upon its relationship with both modernity and postmodernism _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Does Islam constitute a metanarrative in the postmodernist sense? If so, what are the epistemological and sociopolitical implications of this relationship between Islam and postmodernism? Postmodernism may be viewed as an intellectual position which casts doubt on systems of thought which claim to justify their views about reality, knowledge and society through appeal to allegedly objective and universal criteria like modern science and universal reason.Francois Lyotard, the first scholar to introduce postmodernism to philosophy, calls the above position towards the justification of knowledge claims "incredulity towards metanarratives". Metanarratives are " interpretive frameworks or ways of understanding the world that are claimed to have truth or validity that crosses all spatial and temporal boundaries, true for all people, at all times and in all places" 1 The notion of the metanarrative is centered on the distinction between knowledge production and justification in traditional and modern societies. Knowledge legitimization in tribal and pre-modern societies inheres in their traditions and foundations myths. It is by virtue of relating their traditions and handing down their customs that they are legitimized. They do not have to appeal to a criterion which is outside their traditions, like reason or science, in order to legitimize themselves. What is at stake here is not the nature of truth-claims or their scope but the manner of their justification. If they are justified according to universal criteria which is outside cultures and perspectives and have universal applicability they are then considered as metanarrative. And this is exactly the case in modern societies which claim to justify their views about knowledge and society through appeal to allegedly objective and universal criteria like universal reason or modern science. But the problem with this method of justification according to Lyotard is that it too has to ultimately rely on narratives, on ways of legitimation which inhere in the system. This is because scientific knowledge "cannot know and make known that it is the true knowledge without resorting to the other, narrative, kind of knowledge, which from its point of view is no knowledge at all. Without such recourse it would be in the position of presupposing its own validity and would be stooping to what it condemns" 2 It is the consensus of the experts which ultimately constitutes the proof which scientists rely on. Hence they are similar to narratives.