Post-deconstructionism (post-post-structuralism [post-post-post-modernism]))

Explaining philosophy in simple terms is hard, but I'm restricted to the post limit and your attention span, so I'll start with a true story.

My father comes from a family of alcoholics, many of them died or killed themselves because of their addiction. At Christmas I brought my boyfriend over to visit my parents and during his two-day stay, he remained tipsy throughout. My mother was abused by a past husband and is hypersensitive to potential abuse. On the second day of my boyfriend's stay, he slammed me to the ground and bruised my shoulder.

So my mother tells my father. Now my father is pissed, and he starts bitching about all this to his family. After a bad case of Chinese Whispers and gossiping, my sister decides to come over and starts shouting at my boyfriend, accusing him of being a rapist.

What really happened? My boyfriend hadn't drank alcohol the entire year, and only did so then because in his family, the tradition is to drink and he assumed ours was too (there was an endless supply here). After watching WWE on TV and he thought it would be funny to try to copy some of the moves, and, being drunk, his poor coordination led to the incident.

So here we have example of cognitive biases, narratives based on different historical contexts, misinterpretations, incomplete information leading to misconceptions, lies built upon other lies, and emotions clouding judgement

Philosophers (Wittgenstein, Saussure) once viewed the problem of language as the problem of using "signs" (words, symbols, speech, art, or anything else that represents some aspect of reality) to describe reality, but failed to recognise that even if we all universally used the same "signs" and there was no ambiguity in them, it wouldn't make communication any more accurate than it is (by a substantial degree).

Then came the deconstructionists, post-structuralist, and post-modernist, who made some remarks about narratives and reality. It's true that unless we understand everyone's reality then our own is subjective. This ironically became a new dogma: instead of accepting that objective reality is difficult, we made that the objective reality. We have this tendency to want easy answers and this let us sit back and stop asking questions altogether.

I think Heidegger had the right idea for tackling this problem but he is misunderstood for the precise reasons outlined here. You see, unless you have the intuition for this kind of thing -- unless you understand the psychology of bias, the mechanism by which rumours spread and the importance of historical context -- his "theories" won't make any sense to you. How can you use text to teach someone how to overcome a midlife crisis if he is in his twenties?

Nobody understands him because you're all stuck in this series of philosophical arguments, each based on the last. It is possible to transcend this but nobody could tell you how.

Other urls found in this thread:

pnas.org/content/110/37/15145
counter-currents.com/2010/12/fenimore-coopers-white-novels/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

>Nobody understands him because you're all stuck in this series of philosophical arguments, each based on the last. It is possible to transcend this but nobody could tell you how.
I only read this.

This was an interesting read. I hope somebody smarter than me responds with insight, because I don't fully understand.

I regret posting that last line because it isn't particularly useful but I couldn't fit any more in the post. Let me give you another analogy.

If I use the word "tree" we can both be fairly sure of what it means because we can point to an object in the real world and define it as a "tree".

If I use the word "pain", we can't point to an object, but we can infer meaning: if we both slashed our wrists, we would both feel something, and because we are biologically similar, for most humans that feeling would be similar.

What if someone can't feel pain? How do you describe pain to them? This is the problem of language: not whether there's a word for something or there isn't. Heidegger was clear on why he coined so many new words, and it wasn't because the words themselves would improve our understanding.

Referring back to my original post, it is not that "alcoholism" or "abuse" means different things to different people... the words are complete misnomers if they're used to describe wildly different concepts. The answer isn't to invent more words or use more descriptive phrases. Saying "I've suffered a lifetime of tragedy all because of alcohol" and "one time I had five beers" is completely meaningless because we cannot infer anything from words unless we have both lived the exact same experience and can point to it as we utter the words.

Language in all form can portray, at best, a minuscule fraction of reality provided the reader has lived a similar life to the author.

A-re you Kafka?

>boyfriend
no
>failed
no
>How can you use text to teach someone how to overcome a midlife crisis if he is in his twenties?
same way an 8 y.o. feels nostalgia when near the end of the hobbit.
same way a kid learn his first words
>Nobody understands him
u 1st
>If I use the word "tree" we can both be fairly sure of what it means because we can point to an object in the real world and define it as a "tree".
no

There's this anecdote that Kafka laughed so hard when writing that he would wake up his neighbours in the middle of the night. When I first read The Trial I had no idea who Kafka was, and after reading it, my interpretation was that the author was some kind of civil servant, or possibly worked at a large corporation, and the whole story was a parody of the bureaucratic practices and policies that can be found at such institutions. His laughter was probably from hysteria, from having to work in these kinds of environments. I know that feel, and I laughed too. I have no idea whether those were his intentions with The Trial, regardless, if his aim was to use farce to represent the absurdities of these institutions, then his execution was brilliant: although I had known nothing about the author's life, he was able to communicate the nightmarish feeling of being forced to follow ridiculous rules at a faceless organisation to someone born 100 years later.

Anyway, I hadn't thought of Kafka when I wrote this, but it's interesting to note that innovative fiction like his is a much better tool for communicating ideas about feelings. A history textbook on Austrian government and its workers would not have been as effective in evoking the feeling of being in a "Kafkaesque" scenario.

We know but what's your point

stfu augustine

Well of course language is restrictive. We are beings that rely on our senses. For example war book will never fully depict the horrors of it, the actual imagery, the thundering sounds, the smell of blood and sand/ dirt being kicked up by bullets. The only way to help someone through an experience is if you yourself experienced it. That’s why you’re family was concerned about the events that happened at Christmas, because they personally felt it. Yes they made hasty judgment but not without reason

You've left me seriously confused.

The opening sections of Philosophical Investigations quite clearly argue against your claim that the method children use to learn words can continue past simple objects. Reread the parts about "meaning as use".

You've also contradicted yourself: You say that we can't point to trees and call them trees, but you also say "same way a kid learn his first words" -- the way children learn their first words is exactly through pointing.

I'm not sure what else to say. I don't think you understood Wittgenstein at all and you have delineated your objections well enough for me to respond.

>opening
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.
>simple objects
they aren't
>children learn their first words is exactly through pointing.
pnas.org/content/110/37/15145
then again ur so retarded it might be ur case

The problem lies in your question. You are still after a simple statement, when it's impossible to reduce a complex reality to 140 characters, because in the process, all meaning will be lost. It's like reading the back of Moby Dick and thinking you now "know" what it's about.

All forms of communication are like an extremely lossy form of compression. Imagine taking a photo of the Mona Lisa on a camera phone from 1998. That's how narrow and distorted our window into the world is. The late 20th century French intellectuals were optimists in that pragmatically speaking they thought that we should try to understand each other rather than arguing. Some of the analytic philosophers were pessimists in that they believed we should just focus on what we *can* know for sure.

My "point" is that there is a position that transcends both of these.

that they know philosophy and can spit out boring analyses
>inb4 biological-structuralism beats postmodernism to a pulp

length of work doesn't equal closer to reality
Distillation is possible and the belief we have to use time to represent our reality (as it is temporal) is not enlightening

Exactly, but people don't exert scepticism when using language. This is not something trivial; the lack of scepticism and vigilance of the possibility of false perceptions leads to much of the suffering in the world. Families, offices, businesses are all plagued by this.

Well we are also emotional beings. Of course in literature and fiction in general we can have a character go on rants that are articulate and in depth and are able to criticize the world because we are calm when writing, but in conversations; fuck,shit, and cunt will be thrown around alot

>biological-structuralism
doesnt work because evolution is constant, whats correct now will change as society and its people mutate

Philosophy is taking in the raw material of the world and making sense of it. Simple.

You're still contradicting yourself. You quote Wittgenstein, who believed that the process of learning language wasn't adequate for understanding the meaning of all words, then you say the process is complex enough to account for complex words. So which is it?

Also imagine if two people are talking about life and you called them retards and sent them a link to a physics journal. That's what you're doing. By "point to trees" I obviously oversimplified the learning process.

It looks like you're in a hurry since you can't even spell out words in full so please don't respond any more because there isn't going to be a fruitful discussion.

>raw material
>taking in
>making sense
you could write a few books on extrapolating what any of these phrases mean

SIMPLE

>raw material
Understanding the outlinings of things, like analytics, finding out how many corners a shape has, how big it is etc.
>taking in
have IQ
>making sense
Processing the information, extrapolating the reasons for why something is like it is, joining different forms (ideas) and see how they fit with each other.
As I said, simple. Now, there are possibly thousands of corners to understand, and how they all fit together, and that's why people write books. Also, so that unenlightened people can understand that there are corners on different places. But roughly speaking, that's what philosophy is.

>length of work doesn't equal closer to reality
Obviously it doesn't necessarily bring you closer to reality. I could write a thousands words to describe the pattern on my wallpaper and not say anything of value. But I don't see how you can make accurate descriptions of reality with brevity. Anytime you "distil" your thoughts, you might believe that the meaning is all still there, but your readers won't. When I read your posts I have nothing but the words on the screen to infer meaning.

>the belief we have to use time to represent our reality (as it is temporal) is not enlightening
I don't think Heidegger thought this was particularly enlightening either.

So you're basically rambling about how stupid your family is for "protecting you" from a guy when it was all a misunderstanding.
Yeah, people should ask around before they make invalid conclusions. Was that what you were trying to say with this other stuff?

this board is a disgrace

haha1!1 where do you come from. It's my first time here

I think there's some of that on The Trial but in his diaries Kafka wrote that he saw K. guilty. I think what made Kafka laugh was that K. never considered he was indeed guilty, even if he wasn't guilty of whatever he was being accused of.

Anyway, I mentioned Kafka because of this quote:
>We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell

OP here (not )

This is another illustration of what is obnoxiously referred to as "the curse of knowledge" -- you are unable to put yourself in the position of someone that doesn't know what you know. You need to realise that if someone were to read that analysis and not know a thing about philosophy, it would not be of much use to them. It is simple to you because you have the clarity that allows you to see the entirety of philosophy as "simple". To someone else who is still stumbling around in the dark trying to find a light switch, it might all still appear like a clusterfucker.

It's like taking some quote about wisdom like "all I know is that I know nothing" and expect a young child to have the underlying life experiences to really get it.

L O N D O N

>people should ask around before they make invalid conclusions
You are jumping to conclusions just like my parents did. People "should" but is it even possible to? I have yet to see a shred of evidence that this is a possibility.

>structuralism
>how a sentence is structured can make you picture something in your head
>deconstructionism
>how a single word can mean multiple things between people
>post deconstructionism
>how letters make you think of something?
>how the sound of a word makes you feel?
wtf is post deconstructionism? my critical theory book has nothing on this

Incredible. As I sat in the dining room of the psychiatric ward I was staying at, looking at all the others suffering and unable to describe their feelings to anyone, that exact thought occurred to me. I tried to make them feel better with simple gestures like giving them my butter and jam in the morning, knowing I'll never understand their pain and they won't understand mine.

Anything else you could point me to? Any other thoughts on this subject? You are very perceptive to have made that connection.

Hmm, I'm feeling like I grasp the issue at hand.
Misery expands because people don't understand each others points of view?
You're bringing in words here for some reason. People have different definitions of a word which causes misunderstanding, and feud. I've seen this many times. Explaining what your definition of the situation, and thereby your world-view to someone, helps us to understand each other. But many people don't do this, not the word, not anything. They're egocentric, and not heliocentric. Is this what you're talking about?

I'm the "what's your point" guy, I might have got you confused, I'm not I meant that I do agree with you on your premises (although I've never read Wittgenstein, tbqh) but didn't understood where you were getting at. What would be that transcendant proposition though ? Isn't this an issue with subjectivity ? Language as a sort of struggle between competing subjectivities ?

Stopped reading after you implied that Wittgenstein started developing his philosophy before Heidegger.

Sometimes I think about people that I know dying and whatnot. Millions die every day, what's their lives like at that moment, how has it been. It stops you in your track, that's for sure.

They are meaningless if you are trying to derive meaning from the word itself. You must first understand the concept, then realise that there is a name for it.

It's like trying to look up post-modernism in a dictionary. Wrong approach, first you must read a bunch of post-modern literature and through an understanding of their similarities, arrive at the meaning of post-modernism. This is why nobody agrees on one definition of any of those terms, they are the product of a "movement" or a group of works or ideas.

I'd argue there are principae vitae that organize themselves in such a structure that is immutably verisimilar to each other

Meaning and accuracy are not the same. I think your false equivalency is the cause of your statements and ergo people's general confusion therewith

OP here. I can't solve any more Captchas. I'm going to bed and will respond to anything else tomorrow.

Yes, something like that. I'm wondering if there's an effective and fairly concise way of illustrating how "misery expands" to somebody not familiar with the process.

Nietzsche's essay "On the Prejudices of Philosophers" accuses philosophers of making claims about truth when in reality these truths are just reflections of their lives and characters. I'd agree, so I can't define this transcendental position as though I have all the answers, but what is clear to me is that we must employ both scepticism and empathy, rather than going to extreme views like "because there is no objective reality we must all either be right or all be wrong". I don't think as a collective we're going to reach this mentality. It seems like a fantasy partly because of the destructive nature of communication.

I need to work on making my point with fewer words. Apologies to everyone.

>but failed to recognise that even if we all universally used the same "signs" and there was no ambiguity in them, it wouldn't make communication any more accurate than it is (by a substantial degree).
how can you have read wittgenstein but still make such a simple error?
>no ambiguity
>communication still ambiguous
you've invented a new meaning for the word ambiguity, one which excludes lived/embodied context. this is not the way w would understand miscommunication at all. w understood this sort of phenomenological "problem" of meaning in the same way as heidegger.
you've said nothing w hasn't already, somehow thinking you've surpassed him when you're just reiterating his ideas less eloquently.

>my boyfriend
are you gay?

This essay by D. H. Lawrence may be of your interest. He talks about how in most cases communication exists inside the context of ideals that don't properly reflect reality and therefor what is communicated can't reflect reality either. What he proposes instead, although in a rather vague way, as an example of sincere communication is the encounter of two persons where both exposes freely their very self unto the other without a filter of abstractions and regardless of the consequences that such encounter may have. It's perhaps a rather fascist idea but it's very interesting nonetheless.
counter-currents.com/2010/12/fenimore-coopers-white-novels/

OP I think you are very intelligent and thank you for posting this thread

:)

do females no exist?

>So which is it?
depends on the language game retard :*
>you called them retards and sent them a link to a physics journal
they deserve it for not understanding contemporary philosophy and science of language or proposition 7 of the tractatus
>By "point to trees" I obviously oversimplified the learning process.
its not obvious or simple in any way nobody learns anything related to botany or grammar this way does the child learn if the signifier tree is plural or what a non-tree is in fact the interlocutor also needs to explain pointing itself is a signifier for 'ostensive definition'
now since u said u learned ur language by means of pointing did u learn what a pointed index finger is for by means of a 2nd finger pointed at it and then a 3rd finger pointed at the 2nd and then a 4th over and over again
seriously do u think this is the lesson of wittgenstein who is ranting against augustine and his earlier work and ostensive definitions the latter noone in the philosophy of language taks seriously anymore
u belong in an institution
>there isn't going to be a fruitful discussion
i know and ull keep getting btfo again lmao ur out of ur league kid

>u
>ur
>lmao
>noone
Jesus. Just stop.

its very obvious hes making fun of you for being a gay idiot lol

they exist but they can't compete with traps to get a bf

The Woman does not exist, no.

>My father comes from a family of alcoholics
>boyfriend
>My mother was abused by a past husband and is hypersensitive to potential abuse
>After watching WWE on TV
Are you ontologicool?

I, too, like Heidegger and Derrida.

I don't see your point OP

>This ironically became a new dogma: instead of accepting that objective reality is difficult, we made that the objective reality. We have this tendency to want easy answers and this let us sit back and stop asking questions altogether.
Deconstructionists, true deconstructionists (of which there are many) don't fall into this trap. Derrida, Spivak, Butler, and others write so obscurely in order to avoid this trap, to keep meaning always deferred, always undecidable. Deconstruction demands it, because deconstruction is in the business of always deconstructing itself. There can't be a post-deconstruction in the way that there can be post-post-structuralism and post-post-modernism because of this; deconstruction, done properly, is incapable of hegemony, of orthodoxy.