Last night I had a dream that I was telling someone to check out Michel Foucault. I specifically remember spelling their name and telling them they should look him up.
Foucault? The physicist Foucault [1] responsible for the Foucault Pendulum and many other advances? Or the philosopher Foucault [2] responsible for some unfalsifiable fluff of great interest to philosophy department tea parties -- conversations that typically return to Jacques Derrida [3], the "show-stopper" who thought there was no basis for shared, objective truths, and whose views are regularly discussed as though their decoded meaning doesn't contradict the possibility of their productive discussion.
It's a sign of the times that, in Web searches, Foucault the philosopher completely buries Foucault the physicist.
(I got snookered into reading this because "power" has a meaning in physics apart from its meaning in philosophy -- the former of which actually means something.)
Foucault is not Derrida and his writing is crisp and clear and contains examples and research that empirically support his observations (in sense of empirical support one often finds in the social sciences and history). He dominates web searches for 'Foucault' quite meritoriously as Discipline and Punish is far more relevant today than 19th century work on the speed of light -- which unless I've missed the removal of the photon from current scientific explanations did not nail the coffin lid on corpuscular models of light despite the claims of the Wikipedia. I won't make a similar claim regarding the reasons a google for "foucault's pendulum" turns up more related to an Italian than a French...though personally I think Eco's work is more interesting and entertaining and informative.
Yes, that seems to be true, but from the standpoint of falsifiability, of empirical testing, they're equal.
The very fact that people feel compelled to draw a line between Foucault and Derrida, one that hasn't already been drawn by objective evidence, speaks for itself.
> ... and contains examples and research that empirically support his observations (in sense of empirical support one often finds in the social sciences and history ...
Please don't make this mistake. However strongly you feel about the present topic, don't try to fit philosophy into the science straitjacket. Philosophy's value lies elsewhere.
Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So, in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's argument.
> Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance ...
How much substance is required beyond the fact that these ideas are unfalsifiable? To a scientist like myself, saying that places the burden of evidence on the other party, who can only respond with a basis for empirical falsification. But that's not possible in philosophy, by definition.
Am I obliged to prove that Bigfoot is a myth? No, I need only say there's no evidence. And I'm not under a burden to to prove a negative in such a discussion -- impossible in any case. That makes a statement about Bigfoot comparable to statements about philosophy -- it's unfalsifiable.
> Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths"
It didn't require many words for you to establish your post-modern credentials. From here, assuming I were inclined, we would have an inconclusive-by-definition debate about whether there are objective truths ... we would philosophize.
You should read some philosophy of science. Start with Karl Popper. He's the person whose work you're referencing when you talk about falsifiability, and I think you'll relate to his writing, but he'll also challenge you to think a little more deeply about what science is - and indeed, what truth is.
> Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So, in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's argument.
Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So, in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's argument.
The proposition that there is no such thing as objective truth is itself a proposition of a supposed objective truth.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical and logically invalid, in a broad and categorical sense. Adhering to it is therefore irrational and no different than any other non-falsifiable religion that must simply be accepted on faith, without any logical proof or reasoning.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical ... Adhering to it is therefore irrational
All ideas are paradoxes, and yet we must adhere to some. The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies. Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion. And attempting to not have ideas is death. Therefore adhering to paradoxical ideas is rational.
I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
The idea that there are an infinity of primes is not at all paradoxical, it's an uncontroversial factual assertion. Most of mathematics shows the same property.
> The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies.
Not the words out of which scientific theories are constructed. Evolution. Biology. Physics. These are falsifiable (they must be to qualify as scientific theories), but they are not lies -- a word that means false claims made by a speaker who knows his claims are false. You're misusing the word "lies" to refer to something else.
> Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion.
See above. Your claim that all ideas are lies is the essence of the postmodern position. A postmodernist first denies the existence of shared, objective truths, then tries to start a dialogue requiring what's just been denied.
> I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
That's certainly true, but it doesn't follow that all is paradox, or that all statements are lies.
The belief in self-consistent logical systems of argument must also be accepted on faith, without logical proof. There is no falsifiable theory that proves falsification as the final criterion for distinguishing science from non-science, etc. It's your faith-based attachment to the the falsifiability demarcation theory and to a metaphysically "laden" notion of logical validity that causes the impasse. All of these "defeater"-style logical arguments ultimately rest on a kernel of faith. Foucault, or any other decent theoretician, would recognize in this the expression of power that comes out of a particular historical tradition of knowledge rules. The empowered popular discourse they are rooted in is exactly what Foucault would call an "episteme". (Which again, few thoughtful practicing scientists would claim they "believe" in. Rules are always provisional frameworks for the complicated objectives of science, which themselves exist inside a sort of network or market. Nothing is simple or linear.)
See my other response above about the materiality and contingency of linguistic utterances. Like all other physical phenomena, the scientific approach views language as an event, a behavior, a material process that is always context-dependent and, at the "lowest" levels, pervaded by uncertainty, even in our best attempts to model it.
Why wouldn't power in the non-physics sense not have meaning? Why are you restricting meaning, and thus truth, to just physics? In order to even participate in this forum doesn't meaning, and thus, truth, require a broader definition?
> Why wouldn't power in the non-physics sense not have meaning?
Well, I didn't say that. I said it was an unfalsifiable topic.
> Why are you restricting meaning, and thus truth, to just physics?
Didn't say that either, and just as well, since there are no truths in physics. In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true. All legitimate scientific theories remain open to falsification by new empirical evidence, in perpetuity.
Please don't keep making the same point over and over. It gets boring after a while and then crosses into harangue, like someone at a dinner party with an idée fixe. If you want to make the point once and move on, that's fine, but then please let people who are interested in Foucault discuss Foucault.
> Please don't keep making the same point over and over.
Sure, not problem. I'll stop pointing out that philosophy is a contentless debating society when the philosophers realize it, and when they stop treating it as though it constitutes an objective science (a point argued by others in this thread).
Is an idea like "in science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true" falsifiable? If yes, what kind of experiment could be designed to test it? If no, does that mean it's of no value?
It's justified by logical argument, but not by empirical evidence. There is no empirical measurement we can take or experiment we can perform that would falsify it, because things like "theories" and "truth" are not physical. If your argument is that it's falsifiable because it follows logically from a set of premises that we've all agreed to accept, and we could show it to be false by showing a flaw in that logical reasoning, then I don't see how you can state that most philosophy is not falsifiable and remain consistent.
> It's justified by logical argument, but not by empirical evidence.
On the contrary, falsifiability's merits can be tested and potentially falsified. Science produces more useful results -- a better depiction of reality -- than other pursuits that don't require falsifiability. That is a merit-test (a falsifiable one) for falsifiability.
The issue is not whether falsifiability exists, the issue is whether it has greater merit than other ways of evaluating ideas.
> ... because things like "theories" and "truth" are not physical.
Neither are ideas, but we grant ideas the status of tangible things, to the degree that we assign ownership to some of them (with mixed results). Scientific theories have validity solely to the degree to which we can correlate them with aspects of reality. This gives scientific theories a special status not shared by all ideas.
> ... then I don't see how you can state that most philosophy is not falsifiable and remain consistent.
It would be easy for a philosopher to refute such a claim -- by producing a philosophical theory that has the property of falsifiability by empirical evidence. But if that were done, the submitted theory would fail the litmus test of philosophical ideas in modern times (that they be ideas apart from empirically testable ones). This is the property that distinguishes philosophy from science. So it seems the distinction is to some extent self-referential.
Where does the concept of "falsification" come from? Karl Popper was a philosopher. The concept you using to dismiss philosophy is a product of philosophy and wouldn't exist without philosophy.
> In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true.
This statement concerns logic and epistemology, both branches of philosophy, not science.
Falsification came about as a solution to the demarcation problem and the problem of induction (both products of philosophy, not science).
You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable. In short, you haven't really said anything (our understanding of circular reasoning and begging the question also come from philosophy).
> Where does the concept of "falsification" come from? Karl Popper was a philosopher.
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. This could have happened to anyone -- Popper happens to have been that one. The influence of the falsifiability idea eclipses its source. If we lose Popper, if he turns out to have some glaring personal defect that would end the career of a politician, falsifiability remains. The reason? Falsifiability is an idea, and ideas don't have parents.
Henry Ford invented efficient production-line methods. He was also a rabid anti-Semite. Does this character defect undermine the value of efficient production methods? Only if we try to associate ideas with their originators, or imagine some connection between the two.
This is how it works in the realm of ideas -- ideas are the focus, not those who express them.
In philosophy we talk about Popper or Foucault or Derrida. In science we talk about biology or evolution or physics.
There are an infinity of primes -- easily proven. Who first had this idea? Not important -- the idea stands on its own.
> You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable.
Yes, and that's how science is defined. No falsifiability, no science. But this requires us to imagine a world in which ideas have a life of their own.
> In short, you haven't really said anything ...
A perfect philosophical rejoinder. All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness than another. Falsifiability is an idea. Therefore ...
Therefore why not take the next step and try to claim that all ideas are subjective, that we can't expect to meaningfully express and share ideas, or let reality-testing rank them in an objective way? In short, why not accept the postmodern thesis? The answer is that postmodernism contradicts the very idea of meaningful, productive conversation, conversation that might lead to a social good. To address the postmodern thesis is to fatally undermine the exchange in which it's introduced -- an exchange that requires the very thing postmodernism denies.
Meanwhile, outside philosophy, we have the recourse of testing our ideas against reality and letting reality rank the ideas for us. According to reality, natural selection shapes the biological world, and the identity of the people who stumbled on this idea is irrelevant. According to reality, there is no ether carrying light waves -- in spacetime theory, no medium is required -- and this idea's originator doesn't matter. When you understand the equations of relativity theory, you have learned the topic, and Einstein's having abandoned his first child can't undermine the idea or degrade its value.
But all that requires us to accept the idea that there is an objective, shared reality about which meaningful conversation is possible. As it happens, among philosophers this idea hasn't taken hold.
You've treated the views of a small group of philosophers as if they're representative of philosophy as a whole.
"Falisifiability" is not something that can be empirically tested because it is a concept that does not talk about things in the real, physical world. Full stop. That does not mean that we can't assign a truth value to it within a logical system, and that doesn't mean it isn't a useful idea that can guide our interactions with the real world.
There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper. Don't miss out on all that because you disagree with a few postmodernists!
> "Falisifiability" is not something that can be empirically tested because it is a concept that does not talk about things in the real, physical world. Full stop.
No, that's wrong, quite wrong. Falsifiability (the thing itself as well as its usefulness to science) can both be tested -- are tested. Disciplines that require falsifability, objectively produce better representations of reality. This is so because the elements of such a system must all pass muster with reality. All falsifiability means is that reality-testing decides what's excluded from consideration.
> There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper.
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. The idea exists independent of any individual. Were this not so, if it really was the product of a particular person and with no independent existence, it would have a vanishingly small value. The reason? Ideas exist apart from those who express them (this goes back to Plato, if not farther).
There are an infinity of primes. Who said it first? Did the idea exist before it was articulated?
Psychologists talk about schizophrenia as though it's a mental illness (it's not, it's a physical illness with mental symptoms). Does this mean schizophrenia is owned by the field of psychology, or a particular psychologist? Not remotely -- it's an idea, not a property.
If your contention is that a logical proposition like "no number of confirming observations can verify a universal generalization" can be tested empirically (i.e. by experimental observation of the physical world), then we're going to have to agree to disagree. If you agree that such a proposition is logical rather than empirical, then it seems clear that you see some use for philosophy after all, even if you resist admitting it. =)
Don't get too hung up on Karl Popper or falsifiability, by the way. What I and others are trying to point out to you is that your dismissals of philosophy implicitly rely on a foundation of philosophical arguments.
> Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it.
Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy. There is a philosophical term for the concept that ideas exist "out there" waiting to be discovered, but I don't imagine you'd be interested in the long history of that debate.
> All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness
I didn't say that. I implied that in this instance your thinking is based on a foundation of sand and isn't persuasive. Others have done better.
I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century. You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding. That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
>> Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it.
> Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy.
This misses my point, which is that anyone could have noticed the existence of falsifiability, and the fact that a philosopher noticed it means nothing. The reason? The topic is ideas, not people who uncover ideas.
> I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century.
You're assigning to me a viewpoint I've never held nor expressed. You've also abandoned the topic.
> You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding.
Ah -- so it is I who is making assumptions about the beliefs of others (something I have never done). Thanks for clearing that up, and I advise you to re-read your own posts.
> That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
It can't hold a candle to abandoning the topic entirely and moving instead into a personal discussion bearing no relevance to the topic of discussion.
It... it really doesn't, and this article makes that fact quite plain. Foucault's philosophies are nuggets of well-worn common sense extrapolated out into billowing collections of unnecessary text.
I wonder if anyone has done the kind deed of whittling his most oft-cited gaseous emanations down to their core common sense origins. That'd save a lot of time for those of us not interested in a career in academia.
The first page of "Discipline and Punish" is a very clear description of the drawing and quartering of a regicide. I am not sure what nuggets you are referring to. Citations, please. I think he is arguing against "whittling... down to their core common sense origins," because such origins are illusory.
This is a hilarious comment, given that Foucault's History of Sexuality contains almost no citations!
If you are interested in why Foucault ought to be a laughingstock, see Windshuttle's The Killing of History: https://www.amazon.com/Killing-History-Literary-Theorists-Mu... or the many essays Camille Paglia wrote on him. Her latest book has a reprint of "Review: Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf."
Bit of a strawman. Common sense is not folk wisdom. Also common sense doesn't really have a place in "cold" scientific knowledge.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out that "the world is flat" was a perfectly good theory that fit the fact for most observers. What is foolish is the refusal to change one's belief once it was proved to be wrong, or even to be closed to the possibility of an alternative.
My freshman year of college I took a Polish literature seminar and I had to give a presentation on the Foucault and the body applied to a short story I hadn't read from The Street of Crocodiles.
An important thought crashed into my head that froze me solid for about 30 seconds, "who the F cares?"
I thanked the professor for her time, told her I was done with her class and I walked out. I dropped her class and switched my major to applied math. She sent me a very nice email that wished me luck.
Power and knowledge are co-constitutive. Knowledge masks power relations between individuals and it always has a disciplinary function.
All discourses, including science, are rooted in their historical epoch. There are no transhistorical truths, but truth and justice are true relative to the field of power/knowledge they are embedded in.
Does that really sound like widely accepted common sense? Do you not agree that western societies are driven by a popular belief in either pure nationalist authority or in authority masked in terms of objectivity, scientific progress and justice?
> There are no transhistorical truths, but truth and justice are true relative to the field of power/knowledge they are embedded in.
Which is at least stated as if the quoted statement itself were a transhistorical truth. That is, the quoted statement, applied to itself, refutes itself. (Because if the statement itself is a transhistorical truth, then the statement itself is a counterexample to the claim of the statement. And if the statement itself is not a transhistorical truth, then there are transhistorical truths in other historical epochs and/or other fields of knowledge.)
My position as a materialist (and a practicing scientist) is that propositions are not magical transcendental objects. The idea of "refutation" rests on the presupposition of a given linguistic exchange being inside a self-consistent system of argument. In reality, language behaviors, including writing and argument, are always material, contingent and underspecified. Language is a "reef of dead metaphors". Utterances take place in a cultural and historical context, and their meaning, both at the level of reference and argument structure, is always dependent on that context, <i>including what I am writing right now</i>. You run into this kind of boring infinite recursion refrain when you remain attached to the idea that "proof" and "truth" operate at a metaphysical level above material. It's unfortunate that this is so widespread.
My position is that there is a reality which exists. Statements are more or less true to the degree that they conform or fail to conform to the reality of what exists. The words certainly are in a context and have meaning within that context. With well-chosen words, though, the statements can (but do not always) have a meaning that is larger than the particular context. (The meaning would have to be expressed in different words in other contexts, of course.)
Now, you could argue that we don't really know the truth of what exists, and therefore that my standard of "truth" is meaningless for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, this is what truth has been classically considered to be. (By "classically", I mean before Hegel.)
What does it mean to have a meaning that is "larger than" its context. What would that look like and what would its consequence be? If you just mean that every new statement also pushes the boundaries of or expands the discourse that it emerges from, then I agree, but that doesn't free it from its context. That new statement is still rooted in its episteme and any meaning it has is contingent.
What would be the criterion by which we could compare one system's correspondence to reality with another system? If there is no transcendental, supra-system way to compare, then where do you get the notion of "degrees" of conformation between reality and statements about reality?
Take the idea that tyranny among leaders leads to revolt among followers. Confucius said something like this, using Chinese words appropriate to the Chinese Spring and Autumn period. Locke said it, too, using English words appropriate to his time. And Foucault said it, in modern French. The truth of the statement rests on human nature, which hasn't changed that much since the time of Confucius. The words, however, have changed a lot, as have the cultures. So you say what is more universally true using the word-meanings that are current for your culture. But just because the word-meanings are only valid within your culture, that doesn't mean that you can't make statements whose truth transcends your culture.
I agree with John Searle on this one - it's unfair to Foucault (who despite his eccentricities is actually an engaging and lucid thinker IMO) to lump him together with obscurantists like Derrida:
"With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.
Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether."
There's a bit of slight of hand in criticizing Derrida for not being clear. For example, computer science utilizes obscure notation and concepts and not understanding something is generally attributed to the mental acuity of the reader.
The common response is that with computer science you can easily find an expert who can explain the uncontroversial consensus interpretation of some CS notation, whereas with Derrida et al. you'll just get more confusion.
I've always thought of Derrida as some kind of shaman poet sorcerer who uses philosophy as the material for secretive experiments, which makes me not so upset when I can't understand him.
I think Derrida is treated rather poorly, even in taught philosophy. Just because a work has multiple possible interpretations, it doesn't mean it's obscurantist or bad.
The thing that Foucault's thought misses is that there are many ways of seeing the world. You can see it in terms of power, but then confirmation bias may lead you to a place of deep social distrust not unlike our current zeitgeist.
I think you misread the article. Foucault's point is that there are many ways of seeing power. "Foucault sought to unburden philosophy of its icy gaze of capturing essences."
Enumerating ways of seeing power can lead to an obsession with it. The fact that he has been cited by so many underscores this. When people are preoccupied with whether they are one-down or one-up you end up with perpetual status seeking among individuals and groups, where one's worth is perceived as tied to that status. Does that seem familiar?
It's been a while since I read Foucault, but I don't recall him being much concerned with marginal and fleeting differences of power in the add-out/deuce/add-in spectrum. The differences I recall are more at the scale of rights to commit violence and obligations to receive it. Such differences of power are in part sustained by the idea that it is common sense that things are that way because that is the way things are naturally ordered.
It does seem familiar, but it doesn't seem like Foucault. If power's everywhere, it can hardly be a bad thing in itself. The point isn't to oppose it, but to be cognizant of it, to play with it and to not get trapped in other people's usage of it.
Foucault has a lot of important insights. My problem with him is he seems to have no real idea of how things could ever be better, and hence no way to choose between the various available overall options. Society is just oppressive power, and the only course of action seems to just be endless vigilance and resistance.
Consider him to be one of the "butterfly collectors" of this kind of social power analysis. Not everyone has to be able to develop a field; for that to happen someone has to recognize and try to catalogue it.
If you're not familiar with the metaphor, it refers to one of the development phases of a scientific discipline: before there was a theory of physics, many people described and classified various phenomena. The term comes from biology; even before Linneus, people described and collected all sorts of species; then Linneus provided a taxonomy to fit them into; and now we have a theory of genetics.
How is that worse than offering a way forward that isn't based on solid reasoning? The world isn't driven by people like Foucault who strive for a complete understanding; it's driven by people who use reductive worldviews to find the "clear" way forward. No, I much more trust and find value in world views that don't offer a clear prescription. Skeptics are the best critics of reality.
I think the problem here (and many critics) is that you read Foucault without taking into account the context of his work. Foucault was an active/socially commited philosopher who actively tried to do something to make things better. And his work is part of that.
Toward the end of his life, Foucault delivered a series of lectures in which he described the emergence of free-market/ neoliberal societies [1]. Many of his admirers are surprised when they learn that he seemed pretty enthusiastic about the prospects [2] (although he died too early to observe the power consequences of a highly marketized society, so we don't know what he would think today).
The key insight for me is the discussion of "the clearing". The clearing opens the way for new opportunities while suppressing other possibilities in exchange. This concept can be used readily to analyze the durability of certain new technologies and their effect on society. For example, Facebook clearly creates a new way to communicate, but that channel then eliminates other forms of communication in exchange.
The language of pervasive and hidden power is essential for a clear view of what the Silicon Valley is becoming.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 167 ms ] threadIt's a sign of the times that, in Web searches, Foucault the philosopher completely buries Foucault the physicist.
(I got snookered into reading this because "power" has a meaning in physics apart from its meaning in philosophy -- the former of which actually means something.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Foucault
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida
Yes, that seems to be true, but from the standpoint of falsifiability, of empirical testing, they're equal.
The very fact that people feel compelled to draw a line between Foucault and Derrida, one that hasn't already been drawn by objective evidence, speaks for itself.
> ... and contains examples and research that empirically support his observations (in sense of empirical support one often finds in the social sciences and history ...
Please don't make this mistake. However strongly you feel about the present topic, don't try to fit philosophy into the science straitjacket. Philosophy's value lies elsewhere.
How much substance is required beyond the fact that these ideas are unfalsifiable? To a scientist like myself, saying that places the burden of evidence on the other party, who can only respond with a basis for empirical falsification. But that's not possible in philosophy, by definition.
Am I obliged to prove that Bigfoot is a myth? No, I need only say there's no evidence. And I'm not under a burden to to prove a negative in such a discussion -- impossible in any case. That makes a statement about Bigfoot comparable to statements about philosophy -- it's unfalsifiable.
> Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths"
It didn't require many words for you to establish your post-modern credentials. From here, assuming I were inclined, we would have an inconclusive-by-definition debate about whether there are objective truths ... we would philosophize.
Thanks ... I'll pass.
1. What, again?
2. You should address the topic.
Ironically, your conveyance of your opinion in this dismissive register with no substance, just the affect of smug certainty, is a perfect example of why the relationship between language and power deserves attention today. Your post is a pervasive and automatic mental pattern, common in a population that has been raised to uncritically worship abstract philosophical notions like "objective truths", notions which no decent self-critical scientist would accept. Your post's voice assumes the appearance of a disciplinary authority without actually engaging substantively with the ideas under discussion. So, in effect you've provided the best possible support for the article's argument.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical and logically invalid, in a broad and categorical sense. Adhering to it is therefore irrational and no different than any other non-falsifiable religion that must simply be accepted on faith, without any logical proof or reasoning.
Postmodernism is therefore paradoxical ... Adhering to it is therefore irrational
All ideas are paradoxes, and yet we must adhere to some. The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies. Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion. And attempting to not have ideas is death. Therefore adhering to paradoxical ideas is rational.
I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The idea that there are an infinity of primes is not at all paradoxical, it's an uncontroversial factual assertion. Most of mathematics shows the same property.
> The act of mapping reality to words necessarily creates lies.
Not the words out of which scientific theories are constructed. Evolution. Biology. Physics. These are falsifiable (they must be to qualify as scientific theories), but they are not lies -- a word that means false claims made by a speaker who knows his claims are false. You're misusing the word "lies" to refer to something else.
> Imagining you have some ideas which aren't paradoxes is self delusion.
See above. Your claim that all ideas are lies is the essence of the postmodern position. A postmodernist first denies the existence of shared, objective truths, then tries to start a dialogue requiring what's just been denied.
> I would say a hallmark of sanity is the ability to work within paradoxes.
That's certainly true, but it doesn't follow that all is paradox, or that all statements are lies.
See my other response above about the materiality and contingency of linguistic utterances. Like all other physical phenomena, the scientific approach views language as an event, a behavior, a material process that is always context-dependent and, at the "lowest" levels, pervaded by uncertainty, even in our best attempts to model it.
Well, I didn't say that. I said it was an unfalsifiable topic.
> Why are you restricting meaning, and thus truth, to just physics?
Didn't say that either, and just as well, since there are no truths in physics. In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true. All legitimate scientific theories remain open to falsification by new empirical evidence, in perpetuity.
Not so for philosophy, which was my point.
Sure, not problem. I'll stop pointing out that philosophy is a contentless debating society when the philosophers realize it, and when they stop treating it as though it constitutes an objective science (a point argued by others in this thread).
It cannot help us explain art, politics, and the nature of existence.
The world is a lot less computable than you seem to believe.
But honestly I think you're just being silly and stubborn while arguing with strangers on a website.
Neither can philosophy. How you missed this obvious reply is beyond me. You need to learn the difference between describe and explain.
Yes, it is. And it passes that test.
On the contrary, falsifiability's merits can be tested and potentially falsified. Science produces more useful results -- a better depiction of reality -- than other pursuits that don't require falsifiability. That is a merit-test (a falsifiable one) for falsifiability.
The issue is not whether falsifiability exists, the issue is whether it has greater merit than other ways of evaluating ideas.
> ... because things like "theories" and "truth" are not physical.
Neither are ideas, but we grant ideas the status of tangible things, to the degree that we assign ownership to some of them (with mixed results). Scientific theories have validity solely to the degree to which we can correlate them with aspects of reality. This gives scientific theories a special status not shared by all ideas.
> ... then I don't see how you can state that most philosophy is not falsifiable and remain consistent.
It would be easy for a philosopher to refute such a claim -- by producing a philosophical theory that has the property of falsifiability by empirical evidence. But if that were done, the submitted theory would fail the litmus test of philosophical ideas in modern times (that they be ideas apart from empirically testable ones). This is the property that distinguishes philosophy from science. So it seems the distinction is to some extent self-referential.
> In science one can prove a theory false, but one cannot prove a theory true.
This statement concerns logic and epistemology, both branches of philosophy, not science.
Falsification came about as a solution to the demarcation problem and the problem of induction (both products of philosophy, not science).
You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable. In short, you haven't really said anything (our understanding of circular reasoning and begging the question also come from philosophy).
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. This could have happened to anyone -- Popper happens to have been that one. The influence of the falsifiability idea eclipses its source. If we lose Popper, if he turns out to have some glaring personal defect that would end the career of a politician, falsifiability remains. The reason? Falsifiability is an idea, and ideas don't have parents.
Henry Ford invented efficient production-line methods. He was also a rabid anti-Semite. Does this character defect undermine the value of efficient production methods? Only if we try to associate ideas with their originators, or imagine some connection between the two.
This is how it works in the realm of ideas -- ideas are the focus, not those who express them.
In philosophy we talk about Popper or Foucault or Derrida. In science we talk about biology or evolution or physics.
There are an infinity of primes -- easily proven. Who first had this idea? Not important -- the idea stands on its own.
> You are right that most philosophical statements are not falsifiable, but that simply means they are not scientific according to a definition of science that assumes all scientific statements are falsifiable.
Yes, and that's how science is defined. No falsifiability, no science. But this requires us to imagine a world in which ideas have a life of their own.
> In short, you haven't really said anything ...
A perfect philosophical rejoinder. All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness than another. Falsifiability is an idea. Therefore ...
Therefore why not take the next step and try to claim that all ideas are subjective, that we can't expect to meaningfully express and share ideas, or let reality-testing rank them in an objective way? In short, why not accept the postmodern thesis? The answer is that postmodernism contradicts the very idea of meaningful, productive conversation, conversation that might lead to a social good. To address the postmodern thesis is to fatally undermine the exchange in which it's introduced -- an exchange that requires the very thing postmodernism denies.
Meanwhile, outside philosophy, we have the recourse of testing our ideas against reality and letting reality rank the ideas for us. According to reality, natural selection shapes the biological world, and the identity of the people who stumbled on this idea is irrelevant. According to reality, there is no ether carrying light waves -- in spacetime theory, no medium is required -- and this idea's originator doesn't matter. When you understand the equations of relativity theory, you have learned the topic, and Einstein's having abandoned his first child can't undermine the idea or degrade its value.
But all that requires us to accept the idea that there is an objective, shared reality about which meaningful conversation is possible. As it happens, among philosophers this idea hasn't taken hold.
"Falisifiability" is not something that can be empirically tested because it is a concept that does not talk about things in the real, physical world. Full stop. That does not mean that we can't assign a truth value to it within a logical system, and that doesn't mean it isn't a useful idea that can guide our interactions with the real world.
There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper. Don't miss out on all that because you disagree with a few postmodernists!
No, that's wrong, quite wrong. Falsifiability (the thing itself as well as its usefulness to science) can both be tested -- are tested. Disciplines that require falsifability, objectively produce better representations of reality. This is so because the elements of such a system must all pass muster with reality. All falsifiability means is that reality-testing decides what's excluded from consideration.
> There is a lot of philosophy out there, and I think you'd find much of it just as useful as the ideas you've inherited from Karl Popper.
Karl Popper didn't invent falsifiability, he discovered it. The idea exists independent of any individual. Were this not so, if it really was the product of a particular person and with no independent existence, it would have a vanishingly small value. The reason? Ideas exist apart from those who express them (this goes back to Plato, if not farther).
There are an infinity of primes. Who said it first? Did the idea exist before it was articulated?
Psychologists talk about schizophrenia as though it's a mental illness (it's not, it's a physical illness with mental symptoms). Does this mean schizophrenia is owned by the field of psychology, or a particular psychologist? Not remotely -- it's an idea, not a property.
Same with falsifiability.
Don't get too hung up on Karl Popper or falsifiability, by the way. What I and others are trying to point out to you is that your dismissals of philosophy implicitly rely on a foundation of philosophical arguments.
Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy. There is a philosophical term for the concept that ideas exist "out there" waiting to be discovered, but I don't imagine you'd be interested in the long history of that debate.
> All ideas are constructed on a foundation of sand and no particular idea has more persuasiveness
I didn't say that. I implied that in this instance your thinking is based on a foundation of sand and isn't persuasive. Others have done better.
I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century. You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding. That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
> Yes, and he discovered it using non-scientific techniques developed in the field of philosophy.
This misses my point, which is that anyone could have noticed the existence of falsifiability, and the fact that a philosopher noticed it means nothing. The reason? The topic is ideas, not people who uncover ideas.
> I haven't much else substantive to say, except that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder about philosophy, which you construe as the works of a small group of French intellectuals from the middle of the Twentieth century.
You're assigning to me a viewpoint I've never held nor expressed. You've also abandoned the topic.
> You're also not averse to making assumptions about the beliefs of the people you're talking to based on no evidence but your own prejudices and limited understanding.
Ah -- so it is I who is making assumptions about the beliefs of others (something I have never done). Thanks for clearing that up, and I advise you to re-read your own posts.
> That isn't conducive to fruitful conversations.
It can't hold a candle to abandoning the topic entirely and moving instead into a personal discussion bearing no relevance to the topic of discussion.
I wonder if anyone has done the kind deed of whittling his most oft-cited gaseous emanations down to their core common sense origins. That'd save a lot of time for those of us not interested in a career in academia.
This is a hilarious comment, given that Foucault's History of Sexuality contains almost no citations!
If you are interested in why Foucault ought to be a laughingstock, see Windshuttle's The Killing of History: https://www.amazon.com/Killing-History-Literary-Theorists-Mu... or the many essays Camille Paglia wrote on him. Her latest book has a reprint of "Review: Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders: Academe in the Hour of the Wolf."
But of course, well-worn common sense is, and always has been, in perilous short supply.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to point out that "the world is flat" was a perfectly good theory that fit the fact for most observers. What is foolish is the refusal to change one's belief once it was proved to be wrong, or even to be closed to the possibility of an alternative.
An important thought crashed into my head that froze me solid for about 30 seconds, "who the F cares?"
I thanked the professor for her time, told her I was done with her class and I walked out. I dropped her class and switched my major to applied math. She sent me a very nice email that wished me luck.
All discourses, including science, are rooted in their historical epoch. There are no transhistorical truths, but truth and justice are true relative to the field of power/knowledge they are embedded in.
Does that really sound like widely accepted common sense? Do you not agree that western societies are driven by a popular belief in either pure nationalist authority or in authority masked in terms of objectivity, scientific progress and justice?
Which is at least stated as if the quoted statement itself were a transhistorical truth. That is, the quoted statement, applied to itself, refutes itself. (Because if the statement itself is a transhistorical truth, then the statement itself is a counterexample to the claim of the statement. And if the statement itself is not a transhistorical truth, then there are transhistorical truths in other historical epochs and/or other fields of knowledge.)
Now, you could argue that we don't really know the truth of what exists, and therefore that my standard of "truth" is meaningless for all practical purposes. Nevertheless, this is what truth has been classically considered to be. (By "classically", I mean before Hegel.)
What would be the criterion by which we could compare one system's correspondence to reality with another system? If there is no transcendental, supra-system way to compare, then where do you get the notion of "degrees" of conformation between reality and statements about reality?
"With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, “What the hell do you mean by that?” And he said, “He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, ‘You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.’ That’s the terrorism part.” And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.
Foucault was often lumped with Derrida. That’s very unfair to Foucault. He was a different caliber of thinker altogether."
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_...
Your summary is a bit reductive.
If you're not familiar with the metaphor, it refers to one of the development phases of a scientific discipline: before there was a theory of physics, many people described and classified various phenomena. The term comes from biology; even before Linneus, people described and collected all sorts of species; then Linneus provided a taxonomy to fit them into; and now we have a theory of genetics.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Biopolitics
[2] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9781509501762
The key insight for me is the discussion of "the clearing". The clearing opens the way for new opportunities while suppressing other possibilities in exchange. This concept can be used readily to analyze the durability of certain new technologies and their effect on society. For example, Facebook clearly creates a new way to communicate, but that channel then eliminates other forms of communication in exchange.
The language of pervasive and hidden power is essential for a clear view of what the Silicon Valley is becoming.