Chomsky's criticism of Postmodernism

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  • Опубликовано: 23 дек 2024

Комментарии • 2,3 тыс.

  • @ryangarritty9761
    @ryangarritty9761 Год назад +951

    Elements of postmodernism were already alive and thriving in the early 20th century. In his 1907 essay 'The Study of Mathematics', Bertrand Russell wrote : 'Too often it is said that there is no absolute truth, but only opinion and private judgment ; that each of us is conditioned, in his view of the world, by his own peculiarities, his own taste and bias ; and that there is no external kingdom of truth to which, by patience and discipline, we may at last obtain admittance, but only truth for me, for you, for every separate person. By this habit of mind one of the chief ends of human effort is denied, and the supreme virtue of candour, of fearless acknowledgment of what is, disappears from our moral vision.'

    • @ronh3935
      @ronh3935 Год назад +48

      thank you for this quote.

    • @loussis8584
      @loussis8584 Год назад +10

      Thank you for sharing, it is beautiful and very freeing I believe :-)

    • @afd5231
      @afd5231 Год назад +7

      @@JohannesDonnerstich 1914-B.R: Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy
      It’s Analytical Philosophy vs Continental Philosophy, Chomsky vs Foucault.

    • @afd5231
      @afd5231 Год назад +13

      @@JohannesDonnerstich no guy in particular. You can find the rather short article.
      Mathematics , with its beauty, elegance and truths, is the answer to scepticism and cynicism of those who doubt there’s truth.
      Great period for Science and Philosophy...

    • @randygram9310
      @randygram9310 Год назад

      Good old Bertrand. Worth his weight in gold. At the age of 90, he was literally badgering JFK and Khrushchev over their insanely dangerous behavior during the Cuban Missile Crisis.This would certainly constitute 'activism' from an intellectual.
      Strange as it may sound, Russell seems to have believed that a nuclear war leading to the annihilation of much of the planet was an objective truth, true for all, rather than a social construct that was true only for those seduced by the peculiar grand narrative known as science.
      file:///Users/macpro/Downloads/jadmin,+fulltext-1.pdf

  • @IgorNV
    @IgorNV Год назад +2475

    "Postmodernism is cringe" -Noam Chomsky

    • @AB-ok7hu
      @AB-ok7hu Год назад +34

      yeah, that's an argument...

    • @stueyapstuey4235
      @stueyapstuey4235 Год назад +82

      Well, Chomsky actually said 'French Intellectuals' 'writing about science induced 'cringe'. It's lazy to use the 'Post-Modern' or, 'Post-Modernism' as a synonym for Structuralism, or Post-Structuralism but here we are... All over U-Toob it's the same lazy.

    • @anarcho-savagery2097
      @anarcho-savagery2097 Год назад +55

      BASED

    • @cheezew1zz
      @cheezew1zz Год назад +9

      Literally this

    • @subcitizen2012
      @subcitizen2012 Год назад +5

      It used to be that people thought Noam Chomsky was cringe. How the times have changed.

  • @buddinganarchist
    @buddinganarchist Год назад +155

    He is not saying power difference does not exist. There is evidence, there is truth, morality. Ethics. Not everything is some game.

    • @nathanfreeman7362
      @nathanfreeman7362 11 месяцев назад +1

      Postmodernism isn't saying everything is a game. It's saying that when alot of people accept an ideology it's oppressive for people who don't or can't conform to it. Now if a Christian conservative hangs out with a group of wokies they will experience oppression. If a wokie hangs out with a group of Christian conservatives ditto. Both ideologies are full of half truths so invoking either(as an absolute)should be met with a nice strong "go fuck yourself" both sides are fragile and are just mirroring the fact that victim-oppressor are the same thing.

    • @dt6822
      @dt6822 3 месяца назад

      There is no morality. That is Chomsky's point. What do you think was Adolf Hitler's big realization? It's that we have globally adopted a "Jewish" morality - It Is by no means universal or universally eternal. The idea that the least shall become the greatest, Christianity, the idea that the poor and the weaj should be looked after by the strong and the rich - none of those are contingent. But that is exactly the point of postmodernism. They don't just deconstruct. What they insist on is that there is no such thing as objective morality, which is all the more reason to preserve the one we have. Postmodernism is a critique of scientism and of materialism.

    • @HaveYouTriedGuillotines
      @HaveYouTriedGuillotines 3 месяца назад +4

      I'm sure this is obvious to most. A great deal of Chomsky's career involved the critique of certain particularly nasty and unrestrained power structures.
      On the other hand, I would disagree and say that everything is in fact "some game."
      But I'd also say "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
      We live in a hyper capitalist society. Nearly everyone is driven by a competitive mentality, and cooperation as a competitive strategy against the hardships of nature is severely undervalued. Yes, I'm going into memetics here. It's a must. Unfortunately, this means your average person is in a situation where they need to keep game theory on the forefront of their mind, just to avoid being completely trampled by society. That also puts them precariously close to being the person doing the trampling.
      Post-modernists love to critique power dynamics, but they ironically fail to see their own power, or recognize that what society severely needs right now is for people to learn how to restrain their aggression, and stay in their own lane.
      Post-modernist activists claim to oppose capitalism, yet are some of the most hyper competitive and predatory people on the planet because they simply fail to recognize the common ground between themselves and others, and the fact they are often best served by simply agreeing to a state of non-aggression with those around them.
      This is, of course, a product of their rejection of objective reality. They simply can't recognize that the vast majority of humans aren't particularly different than them, nor are they in a particularly different boat than they are.
      The analogs that exist between all between different states of human existence simply allude them; They cannot, for instance, see that the decedent of a "white" Irish serf is often not in a particularly different situation than that of a "black" slave. And so they foolishly and pointlessly wage war with those they should be cooperating with.

    • @donaldclifford5763
      @donaldclifford5763 3 месяца назад

      Power is a mental construct. Spirituality wins.

    • @dt6822
      @dt6822 3 месяца назад

      @@donaldclifford5763 spirituality is a mental illnesz

  • @SerbAtheist
    @SerbAtheist 4 месяца назад +361

    Postmodernism: The idea that truth is always subjective, but I'm always right.

    • @rosewater6778
      @rosewater6778 3 месяца назад +16

      Brilliant! You nailed it 😅

    • @Impaled_Onion-thatsmine
      @Impaled_Onion-thatsmine 3 месяца назад +1

      its an attempted master class trying to abstract their philosophy after the period, well it can get that, or remaking a genreration before yours... you could almost call can't and hegel post modernists,, they just do it as an existentialism then abstract the content onto paper through philosophy... also all the american post modern philosophy in plain language that doesn't do the subject its authenticity. It's always on a target thats delayed or isolated somehow, reversed as a metaphysic in reality. Remember these philosophies existed for years before they were actaully abstracted. Japanese sumarai phenomology is uncanny similar to husserlian phenomonology...... Kant's town was established in 1200,... he wrote the treatise in the 18th century.... heidegger is a literal post modern remake of hegelian dialectic synthesis between concepts he made up.. its post modern as well

    • @HaveYouTriedGuillotines
      @HaveYouTriedGuillotines 3 месяца назад +10

      Chomsky's not wrong, but his critique of post-modernism is incredibly shallow. What he's speaking of is just one branch of post-modern ideology, and in one specific context.
      Post-modernism is an epistemological foundation that exists in what I would argue to be more ideologies that not, including capitalism, ethno fah shizm (I have to do this because of automated sensorship), intersectional feminism (and other socjus ideology), voodoo, most precursors to pre-modern religion (superstitions and mysticisms), new age religion, and much, much more.
      Anytime someone says "x is subjective" they're going down a post-modern rabbit hole and rejecting objective reality, and the problem with this is that power struggle becomes guaranteed because when there is no shared, external and universal truth, one can only use force to solve problems.
      This is incredibly dangerous, as the very same reality detachment that allows one to say something like "x is a social construct" can also be used to dehumanize others while rejecting all evidence to the contrary, usually by proclaiming the out group's experience and mind to be somehow incompatible with the ingroup. This is for instance seen in the "Jewish Question," wherein the out group is presupposed to be incapable of the same reasoning, experience or negotiation as the in group, and an extreme "solution" is thus justified.

    • @azeem_lahori-punjabi
      @azeem_lahori-punjabi 3 месяца назад

      😄

    • @autisticberserker1807
      @autisticberserker1807 2 месяца назад +4

      This might be the dumbest thing I read on the internet today. Congrats on not understanding something yet commenting on it anyway. Very Trumpish of you.

  • @jefersonlemos4135
    @jefersonlemos4135 Год назад +163

    I am from Brasil and I very much identify with what Chomsky says about the disconnection among the intelligensia and popular movements. I often even find latin professors deffending positions so simmilar to the US department line and reproductions of imperial myths, really terrible

    • @talastra
      @talastra Год назад

      They were probably indoctrinated in US colleges.

    • @dargkkast6469
      @dargkkast6469 11 месяцев назад

      Chomsky truly connected with people, specially with Epstein am I right

    • @joules_sw
      @joules_sw 10 месяцев назад +13

      Repiten las soluciones que les son enviadas por los europeos y estadounidenses, cosas pensadas en inglés para la gente de habla inglesa y para su contexto propio. A este paso, los avances de los saberes nuestros se va para la mierda y con ello nuestro propio auto-entendimiento y lugar en el mundo

    • @he_was_a_skater_dog
      @he_was_a_skater_dog 5 месяцев назад +4

      Not to mention the post-modern ideas about crime and violence, which have swept the imagination of our legislators and judges, and over the last thirty years turned Brazil into the most violent country in the world. It is important to point out that throughout these thirty years living conditions in Brazil IMPROVED; that is to say, if the problem were that too many people are poor, Brazil would be much more violent thirty years ago, not less. (I'm Brazilian as well, hi. 👋)

    • @levitonin7345
      @levitonin7345 5 месяцев назад +2

      @@he_was_a_skater_dog That's exactly what I thought watching the video. To this day, postmodernism has a huge influence on these topics in Brazil.

  • @rabidcentrist
    @rabidcentrist Год назад +707

    "Creating the impression of profundity"
    Yep, that pretty much sums it up.

    • @ricklanders
      @ricklanders Год назад +18

      No, that's standard discourse. There's nothing there but naive assumptions and linguistic ignorance.

    • @eskybakzu712
      @eskybakzu712 Год назад +4

      @@bobsacamano1274 Bro acting like Foucault isn't

    • @lucarmin9683
      @lucarmin9683 Год назад +33

      Much like Jordan Peterson in fact.

    • @kehana2908
      @kehana2908 Год назад +17

      literally what chomsky is accused of often

    • @rabidcentrist
      @rabidcentrist Год назад +13

      Looking at the replies, I'd like to point out I judge writers in how they write, not how they interview.
      Chomsky's writing is pretty clear and to the point, which appeals to my aesthetic and reading style.
      Foucault's writing is profundity manifest. Foucault's work on institutions such as penitentiaries is valuable nonetheless and should not be ignored.
      The biggest problem is bringing a tribal and/or consumerist approach to reading political philosophy/theory. Each theory, each perspective, is a data point for your own analysis, no single writer has the full picture. I highly recommend reading Zygmunt Bauman's work, (Liquid Modernity and Postmodernity and its Discontents) were great frameworks for how to approach previous theoretical frameworks.

  • @MA-go7ee
    @MA-go7ee Год назад +376

    In a way the post modernists won. It's remarkable how much cultural commentary is now just basically an analysis of power relationships.

    • @naveed210
      @naveed210 Год назад +23

      This intrigues me too. How much of an effect has it had on the general public? I think a lot of folk, both of a socially liberal persuasion and those on the right (but not conservatives) believe in the particulars rather than the universal, are distrustful of grand ideas and sceptical about whether there's an objective truth etc

    • @java4653
      @java4653 Год назад +34

      LOL. This is not even remotely true. It's not even possible to be true - such a thing would require a closed society, not the freedom & access to info we have. The pursuit of context today is way more open. Historical forces, dramatic events, cultural barriers, technological changes, etc. the stuff Ben Shapiro says ignore. Sometimes the bizarre p-mod conclusion is real, but often it's a *idea* distinction, like understanding 3-D in a 2-D experience. Are any ideas "real"? That kind of thing. The dumb stuff never gets far anyways. Somebody has to go too far with their thoughts to show where that is anyways.
      But then, the author here also has too narrow view of Post-Modernism, treating it like Marx and forcing it into an exact form it never had.
      And you posted this on RUclips, filled with so much commentary that it contradicts the claim.

    • @castelodeossos3947
      @castelodeossos3947 Год назад +47

      The foundation of Woke.

    • @glennmaillard5972
      @glennmaillard5972 Год назад +79

      @@castelodeossos3947 Woke again! Everything is ‘woke’...if you want it to be. Yet again, without a definition that can’t be presented in anything less than a chapter. Btw a chapter is not a definition, it’s a dissertation.

    • @pavlovsdogman
      @pavlovsdogman Год назад +70

      ​@@castelodeossos3947 Chomsky is pretty woke, he ain't no pseudo intellectual grifter like Jordan Peterson.

  • @Primitarian
    @Primitarian Год назад +114

    Chomsky has never been one to dress himself up in fads, be they of ideas or of language. He has consistently been a serious thinker to the core, which is why I have long valued, even on those occasions I disagree with him, what he has had to say.

    • @bubstacrini8851
      @bubstacrini8851 Год назад

      Chomsky has made many of us think, that doesn't mean he's infallible.
      The footage of Chomsky looks pretty old and the video is another attempt, by an independent agent to feed the appetite for anti post modernism as we collectively tumble into AI culture.
      This backlash, this appetite for anti post modernism, is nothing less sentimental nostalgia for the confused . ( Jordan Peterson, comes to mind)
      We certainly aren't living in Modernity any more Dorthy.

    • @subcitizen2012
      @subcitizen2012 Год назад +5

      Chomsky is an amazing academic, but he was also a fad.

    • @squatch545
      @squatch545 Год назад +1

      Chomsky is a pseudo-intellectual who has proven to be incorrect about nearly everything he has ever claimed.

    • @mippim8765
      @mippim8765 Год назад +4

      ......nothing like a lecture from the millionaire "socialist". .......

    • @ineshvaladolenc6559
      @ineshvaladolenc6559 Год назад +17

      ​@@mippim8765 He's a brilliant intellectual who's both an emeritus professor, lecturer in linguistics, most cited scientific article author, as well as writer who is politically active and has written several books on modern society and American and international politics.
      Most of his money comes from royalties, of which he deserves every cent and then some. It's possible to become a millionaire off of one's own work.

  • @ElSantoLuchador
    @ElSantoLuchador Год назад +109

    So Chomsky deconstructed postmodernism in terms of power relationships. What a postmodern thing to do. Derrida would be proud.

    • @AMehra-im1gr
      @AMehra-im1gr Год назад +6

      Not at all a postmodern thing to do.

    • @VolkColopatrion
      @VolkColopatrion Год назад

      hey, honestly maybe that's a good thing. the movment seems to lack applying the standards to itself and that's how we get so much problems. If it were any other ideology it would be just as bad. you can't even question postmodernism with out being denounced as a racist status quo upholder. just as the church used to denounce anyone criticizing the sale of indulgences.
      it very much is the sale of indulgences.

    • @VolkColopatrion
      @VolkColopatrion Год назад

      how do you mean? @@AMehra-im1gr

    • @wmorris189
      @wmorris189 Год назад +7

      I forced my way through Of Grammatology and at the end of that total waste of my time, i didn’t feel I was stupid and hadn’t understood a work of great profundity, which is clearly the intention, rather,
      this man is an utter charlatan. If you want to spend your time on “difficult” books and aren’t a scientist read Joyce and Beckett incredibly rewarding, which I know many of you will have done already.

    • @anthonyderosa7757
      @anthonyderosa7757 9 месяцев назад +11

      Yeah man, demonstrating that a world view makes no sense even by the standards of its own internal logic is totally the same thing as agreeing with or demonstrating the validity of its internal logic. You must have come top of your philosophy class

  • @qazmko22
    @qazmko22 29 дней назад +4

    0:53 co-auther of 'Manufacturing Consent' the lead author is Edward S. Herman (economist).
    people always leave him out.

  • @nsbd90now
    @nsbd90now Год назад +194

    Is he criticizing "postmodernism" or a certain group or type of academic? It sounds more like that than as you are portraying it. He doesn't talk about "postmodernism" in terms of textual criticism, but more about academic egos and those who absent themselves from social activism. This was not even remotely a "complete denunciation of the movement" as you conclude.

    • @riccardodececco4404
      @riccardodececco4404 Год назад +3

      both is related - the video doesn´t go profoundly into the problem of the formula of "textual criticism" used by postmodernism though....

    • @loudenlaffnite246
      @loudenlaffnite246 Год назад +4

      "He doesn't talk about 'postmodernism' in terms of textual criticism" -- who is supplying the postmodernist text & textual criticism if not those humans in the postmodernist movement?

    • @wolfgangdevries127
      @wolfgangdevries127 Год назад

      @@loudenlaffnite246 people who are at least 90 years old, I suppose.

    • @nsbd90now
      @nsbd90now Год назад +1

      @@loudenlaffnite246 It is Republicans who don't have the slightest clue what they are talking about as they are totally uneducated on the topics, the issues and the authors. And that is obvious to anyone who IS educated in those areas and familiar with those authors.

    • @toonyandfriends1915
      @toonyandfriends1915 Год назад +12

      @@loudenlaffnite246 if you think this is an actual criticism of what they are saying, then i'm afraid to admit it is ad hominem, as this really does not say anything at all except that some of them play language games

  • @markpx
    @markpx Год назад +9

    Who are the people at 2:30? I recognize Boulez, Foucault and Barthes. (Possibly also Elliott Carter.) The others?

  • @crisoliveira2644
    @crisoliveira2644 Год назад +8

    I don't know whether or not my personal experience is representative of the general state of South America, but I don't see it around here that Postmodernism has been insulating professors from popular struggle. Many professors are away from it, sure, but of those who are active in social and political movements, most can't shut their mouths about Foucault and Deleuze. I'd like to see examples of what Chomsky says, because I see many examples of the opposite every day.

    • @Suneater9
      @Suneater9 Месяц назад +1

      Just the scholars are talking about this nonsense. The working people are voting for the right wing because there is no left.

  • @BardovBacchus
    @BardovBacchus Год назад +238

    This may be a misreading of Chomsky by taking what he said too far. It could be that his critique was more limited to certain actors within the post modern movement that have had a negative effect, in his opinion, in shaping the movement overall. My analogy would be to certain teams acting in such a way as to change an entire sports league in some fundamental way. It would be taking that example too far to say the entire sport should be invalidated in some way or another. I'm not sure Noam was saying we should not analyze power structures and their real world applications, just the these twats have mucked it up by acting like lawyers instead of educators

    • @johannalvarsson9299
      @johannalvarsson9299 Год назад +4

      I think the same.

    • @castelodeossos3947
      @castelodeossos3947 Год назад +1

      Dr Chomsky gives a similarly scathing critiique of sociology as a whole in one of the table-talk interviews with the small bald gentleman.

    • @salvatronprime9882
      @salvatronprime9882 Год назад +18

      Yes I was thinking the same thing. Chomsky himself challenges the same power structures, the issue is that the postmodernists in question are just fancy talking con artists.

    • @castelodeossos3947
      @castelodeossos3947 Год назад +16

      Good point, since he himself examines power structures. His point is not that there are no power structures, but that it is one-dimensional and contrived to attribute all the ills of the world merely to the existence of hierarchies (and to add some spurious ones too), and to contrive a whole discipline/language to 'proving' that it is so. As he says somewhere, if something cannot be explained with simple language, then there's some phoniness going on somewhere.

    • @alexdavis1541
      @alexdavis1541 Год назад +3

      I'm not sure that the French postmodernists were all that influential. Could it be that we would have fallen into such a level of twattery anyway and with hindsight we can now blame them?
      We will never know of course but I have a feeling that once we have woken up to what we have done to our civilisation, and start rectifying the damage (if we ever do), it wont be the postmodernist that the new movers and shakers will be using as a reference, but the likes of James Burnham, Thomas Sowell and the Italian elite theorists.

  • @StopWarring
    @StopWarring 11 месяцев назад +45

    Mr. Chomsky, you sir are a god-send to our times and an impeccable guide and example. Thank you.

  • @gregmattson2238
    @gregmattson2238 Год назад +239

    i've also got to admit that it's a damn clever tactic of chomsky's to use the postmodernists' own arguments against them.

    • @JEQvideos
      @JEQvideos Год назад +81

      He isn't though. Most of what he says about them could be said about him as well--he is a sort of star in academia. He uses his clout to sell books. Etc. Etc. Usually when I see Chomsky talking about postmodernism he's pretty quick to admit that it is unintelligible to him and he doesn't understand what they're talking about. Which isn't really a serious critique, there are people on youtube that do a better job discussing and critiquing postmodern thought than he does.

    • @vis7139
      @vis7139 Год назад +45

      @@JEQvideos There's a great video called Animating Poststructuralism, which explains the divide between people like Chomsky (structural linguists) and people like Derrida (poststructuralists / postmodernists). If things don't make sense to Chomsky, I put it down to this fundamental disagreement on the nature of language and communication itself.

    • @JEQvideos
      @JEQvideos Год назад +5

      @@vis7139 I will check it out, thanks!

    • @commentatron
      @commentatron Год назад +4

      @@JEQvideos J. Peterson being one who bridles at any mention of postmodernism, or adherents such as Lyotard, Foucault or Derrida. His arguments seem quite well thought out and compelling (granted, I'm without a strong background in philosophy).

    • @eshitvaprakash6681
      @eshitvaprakash6681 Год назад +83

      @@commentatron Peterson? Yup, you definitely don't have a philo background.

  • @onurbo77
    @onurbo77 Год назад +46

    I honestly thought he would have stronger arguments against post modernism, other than an aggressive relativization without ideas that can stand on their own instead of just being against something.

    • @palladin331
      @palladin331 Год назад

      That's all that Chomsky knows to do: his ideas cannot stand on their own; he's against everything.

    • @RhetoricalMuse
      @RhetoricalMuse 8 месяцев назад +9

      I think he got to a point where he realised you can't argue against cray cray.

    • @hadronoftheseus8829
      @hadronoftheseus8829 6 месяцев назад +7

      You can't crack fog with a hammer.

    • @ekkeism
      @ekkeism Месяц назад

      @@hadronoftheseus8829 does not say much for the hammer either

    • @hadronoftheseus8829
      @hadronoftheseus8829 Месяц назад

      @@ekkeism You have absolutely no idea what propositional content is.

  • @matrebour220
    @matrebour220 Год назад +45

    Is Chomsky's critique not a critique of the Postmodernist thinkers themselves rather than the movement and its ideas as a whole? I think the critique is sound but what about people who agree with some of its core tenets who don't necessarily participate in that academic sphere and therefore system of power?

    • @fe7kh
      @fe7kh Год назад

      Idiotic

    • @mt5800
      @mt5800 2 месяца назад

      The problem is the movement and its ideas generate the conditions in which this system of power appears. If a system fails to hold propositions accountable to a standard of truth then those who wish to manipulate language for their own power will eventually gravitate to those systems. This is partly why Plato's philosopher kings don't want to rule, but more importantly it's why Plato is an enemy of the sophists, and his theory of truth as the form of the good is what undermines the power games of sophists like Thrasymachus, who states in the republic that "Justice is whatever is to the advantage of the stronger". Plato goes on to influence western religion and consequently the tradition of modernism, which is exactly what the postmodernists attack. But when you get rid of the true, the good, and the beautiful, all that is left is filth.

  • @LendallPitts
    @LendallPitts Год назад +4

    I do not wish to be the naysayer here but Chomsky is lumping together thinkers with quite different points of view: Derrida, Foucault, Baudrillard and Lyotard. By doing so he does his own argument a disservice. One good thing about the French and about Continental philosophy is general is that they are out there doing philosophy (Alain Badiou is an excellent example) whereas elsewhere thinkers who call themselves philosophers are publishing books about long-dead philosophers or, as is the case with the analytic school, are engaging in mental activity which has very little to do with the people's lived experience.

    • @99tonnes
      @99tonnes Год назад

      So why don't you wanna be the naysayer? Be the naysayer!

  • @SomethingToSee101
    @SomethingToSee101 Год назад +17

    I think people that are against post-modernism have difficulty arguing against it in a theoretical level and fall back into criticizing some of it's thinkers lives and their way of writing. Most critics never try to prove that post-modernism is wrong, they all do "post-modernism bad". And in my view there's a lot of things to criticise about obscurantism, the way some post-modernist ideas are used, the establishment of french academia and the lives of some thinkers, but to me its conclusions are just the logical progression of western thought, if you look at philosophy's history it always pointed in that direction

    • @vernacularpunc
      @vernacularpunc Год назад

      The postmodern is only a critique of the past, the metamodern is a way foward

    • @SomethingToSee101
      @SomethingToSee101 Год назад

      @@vernacularpunc What we can call "metamordern" is only the creation of art and culture influenced by post-modern thought. All philosophers create their work by replying to the ideas of the past, and in a way this process creates the future.

    • @vernacularpunc
      @vernacularpunc Год назад +2

      @@SomethingToSee101 Yes and postmodern thought endlessly critiques itself hence a return to sincreity despite the irony is needed

    • @CitizenAyellowblue
      @CitizenAyellowblue Год назад +2

      Pharaoh still,died of TB

    • @frimports
      @frimports 13 дней назад

      I mean you have to look at individual thinkers rather than assuming anyone from a certain era that happened to be doing continental philosophy taught the same things. Chomsky is critical of the movement and certain trends, rather than dealing directly with ideas. It’s not that Post-Modernism is hard to prove wrong it’s impossible. Most of the “social theories” are unfalsifiable. Some of them have no logical grounding whatsoever. I don’t think it’s fair to label all of them this way. Many of them were not even philosophers in the strictest sense. Most of the ones people object to the strongest Marcuse, Adorno and other Frankfurt school academics were doing a mixture of things. They were working in philosophy, sociology and psychology interchangeably for political ends (Marxism).

  • @tyronD9
    @tyronD9 Год назад +13

    It's tough watching the great Chomsky resort to name calling and mudslinging against continental philosophy from the analytical side of the philosophical spectrum rather than providing a substantive critique of postmodernism, which like all forms of thought is rife with both flaws and virtues. It's interesting that whoever edited this video attempts to suggest that "critique of power relations" and "distrust of grand narratives" is a bad thing? Or that its somehow not accurate that "dominant power structures shape peoples identities and worldviews"?

  • @perhenriksson6767
    @perhenriksson6767 Год назад +21

    Great description, modern day sophistry.

  • @vincenthe4864
    @vincenthe4864 Год назад +32

    But everything in this video is simply a critique of postmodernists rather than postmodernism as an idea? I don’t understand how this constitutes criticism on postmodernism at all.

    • @Warispeace-eq8yy
      @Warispeace-eq8yy 6 месяцев назад +1

      Well, i think it's legit cause those people built the foundations and further nurtured post modernist thought

    • @michellewruck2472
      @michellewruck2472 5 месяцев назад +11

      I had a similar thought. Just because you get caught up in power structures, doesn’t mean you’re wrong about them and their corrupting influence. In fact, everything that is explained in this video confirms post-modernists’ critiques about power. It’s just that seeing a problem and being able to fix it are two different things. At the end of the day the unbalanced distribution of power in society might not be “fixable.” It might be a necessary part of the way human beings organize themselves. This is what is so strange about us as animals on this earth. All social animals have hierarchies and I’m sure there are lots of animals in the world who don’t like their place in that hierarchy. What’s weird about us is that we can communicate about that experience in ways that can impact the actions of people in power. Language is an incredible disruptor of power. Maybe it’s not helpful to try to dismantle and spread power out completely. Maybe it’s more important to have good people in positions of power. Like a good boss, or any other good leader, good people in power can do incredible things. Still, the post-modern power structure isn’t one I’d particularly like to be a part of. At a certain point, your ideas take on a life of their own and these aren’t ideas worth getting caught up in. :)

    • @gregrice1354
      @gregrice1354 2 месяца назад +2

      @@Warispeace-eq8yy Can you name a post modernist scientist?
      can you name a post-modernist mathematician?
      Can you name a post-modernist architect or engineer?
      Can you name a Post Modernist philosophy that doesn't deny logic and objective analysis?
      Can you guess why there is so much fraud and plagiarism by university post grads in the last 20 years?
      Oh, you're just saying, "these folks said it and wrote it down, and taught it, s they nurtured it and and 'furthered' it?" Circular reasoning or Assumed Conclusion. Both are fallacious reasoning and invalid logically. Do you understand?

    • @Joeyjojoshabbadoo
      @Joeyjojoshabbadoo 2 месяца назад +1

      @@gregrice1354 Oh yeah, you think so? So what are you gonna do about it? You think you put the quietus on me or something? You and what army.... My point being, and I think I might be making a postmodernist point even though I don't really know anything about postmodernism, is I don't care what you say, make me agree with you. If you can't, you better shut up. Power's the name of the game, baby. I don't care about whatever your logical drivel says. Might is right. And isn't that Foucault's big thing, who has real power, and how is it wielded? And if so, what's the problem, is that some illegitimate line of intellectual inquiry? I wouldn't think so. Once again, I don't know anything about the dude, but I don't think you can blame him and his ilk for the collapse of contemporary academia, that was always going to happen on account of inexorable socioeconomic forces, and 60s/70s French over-intellectualism didn't have nothing to do with it. That's just our system finally devouring itself.....

    • @johnvonachen1672
      @johnvonachen1672 2 месяца назад +2

      How can you criticize something you don’t understand?

  • @jascoolo
    @jascoolo Год назад +5

    "Please eat my stale bread. I've got few sandwitches left" -Naom Chomsky

  • @BlackWASP21
    @BlackWASP21 Год назад +35

    This is not a critique Postmodernism as much as it is a critique of Posmodermist scholars and intellectuals (which is a different critique and could be applied across various ideological positions).

    • @johnnyswatts
      @johnnyswatts 3 месяца назад +2

      So, you think you can separate the art from the artist?

    • @johnnyswatts
      @johnnyswatts 3 месяца назад +1

      He seems to be saying that the critiques levelled by postmodernists can also be levelled against them.

    • @giocaliguia8370
      @giocaliguia8370 3 месяца назад +1

      @@johnnyswattsPoMos often think so. The “death of the author” - as postmodernists would call it.

    • @aussieexpertenglish5885
      @aussieexpertenglish5885 Месяц назад

      I think you're onto something here. The disreputable tactics for which the postmodernists are criticized can be found wherever you look, from the hallowed halls of the theoretical physicists to the women's sewing circle. Nonetheless, French poststructuralists do stand out in terms of the virulence and shamelessness of their sophistry, perhaps none more so than Jacques Derrida. Paradoxically, this is where I find the enduring value in Derrida's contribution. There was brilliance in his capacity to take the most reprehensible behaviour of the intelligentsia and elevate it to unparallelled heights (and despite the grave intensity of his persona, I still can't decide to what extent he was taking the piss). This forces us to recognise the destructive inanity of the games he played (or at least it ought to) and better enables us to recognise them when subtly employed elsewhere. It is proof of his genius as a wordsmith that he was so successful in getting himself taken seriously, and I can't help but admire anyone so consistently able to crack me up.

    • @criticalLocus
      @criticalLocus 18 дней назад

      @@giocaliguia8370 A.I. art, quite litterally

  • @ha5638
    @ha5638 Год назад +7

    It a popularity contest in the end, isn't it? Except that Chomsky has already won by virtue of surviving all the other dudes. Literally, the last word on the topic...this clip is just a cheap dig without any engagement on the debates.

  • @df3575
    @df3575 Год назад +18

    This clip does next to nothing to describe what post modermism is and how it functions, or how a bunch of people no one can understand gained the power suggested here...
    WHAT authority do these academics have in "3rd world countries" that at all impacts the daily lives of the people that live there? How is that authority used? I mean....just a snippet perhaps for those who don't already know (or believe) what this clip is talking about....

  • @wendigo2442
    @wendigo2442 Год назад +6

    Chomsky: "post mod...er.... frankfu......buh.... Where am I"

  • @educatingfool216
    @educatingfool216 Год назад +2

    When and where in the interview Chomsky said Postmodernism is this or that!?

  • @mr-iz8cx
    @mr-iz8cx Год назад +1

    What is the book Chomsky mentions, 'Dangerous Illusions'? I couldn't find it and am unfamiliar with the author as this is a new topic for me. Cheers

    • @robertpiotrowski9586
      @robertpiotrowski9586 Год назад +1

      I think I found it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

    • @mr-iz8cx
      @mr-iz8cx Год назад

      @@robertpiotrowski9586 Thank you Robert. That's it. I'll track down a copy

  • @ComradeRedRoo
    @ComradeRedRoo Год назад +7

    idk y but at 2:08 when it cuts to chomskys legs dangling i lost it he looks so small.

    • @criticalLocus
      @criticalLocus 18 дней назад +1

      because he is

    • @DRS659
      @DRS659 9 дней назад

      @@criticalLocus actually he is quite tall according to everyone I know who has met him over the years

    • @DRS659
      @DRS659 9 дней назад

      @@criticalLocus google says he is 5'7" though so perhaps he has shrunk ahaha

  • @lambradi
    @lambradi Год назад +3

    the most educated comment section ever

  • @ekkeism
    @ekkeism Год назад +7

    I have spent a great deal of time on Derrida and do think that he can be understood and that his ideas and reasoning are in fact quite profound. It is also to be noted that his concepts draw heavily on his philosophy predecessors such as Husserl, Heidegger, Saussure, Hegel - to mention but a few. Even those subjected to his readings eg Rousseau, Levi-Strauss contribute to his philosophy. I do not pretend to know much about his contempories - but to dismiss him as simply too difficult or obscure is also bad philosophy. There are parts of his work which are vogue seeking or sensationalist, but not what I would call the core.

    • @99tonnes
      @99tonnes Год назад +2

      I discovered Derrida, I forget by what happy accident, while studying Chomskyan linguistics (decades ago). It was such a relief to find someone with really interesting things to say about (among other things) language, when Chomsky had almost stultified me into thinking it was the most boring thing in the world. Chomsky's mind runs on very rigid rails. And Chomskyan semantics was unbelievably, laughably primitive - which they gradually, but entirely unsuccessfully, addressed by making it incomprehensibly formal, yet still incapable of getting much beyond 'analysis' of the meaning of 'bachelor'.
      I mean, I agree with you (even if I did just try to read "'Genesis and structure' and phenomenology" and got completely lost in the second half.)

    • @VioletDeliriums
      @VioletDeliriums Год назад +2

      Well Chomsky doesn't get it, so it must be wrong.

    • @Uniule
      @Uniule Год назад +3

      Majority of Deleuze's books are analyses and explanations of other philosophers' concepts, like Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Bergson and Nietzsche. Pretty important and fundamental stuff.

    • @urielnascimento3567
      @urielnascimento3567 Месяц назад

      ​@Uniule readings, yeah, but not analysis. It's the same thing Heidegger does, he just picks whatever he wants and goes with that

  • @marccawood
    @marccawood Год назад +55

    Postmodernism is not about the abolition of absolute truth (or reality) but of absolute certainty and people’s belief they have Truth.

    • @joshogden1081
      @joshogden1081 Год назад +1

      Idk what postmodernism is about, but I agree with what you're saying. The unfortunate reality is that we can't agree on What Is. Of course there is a singular absolute Truth, a Final Sum of all the infinite variables in reality, but how can any one of us Know it? How could a million, or a billion even? Our minds are not set up to pursue the truths of reality, but to feel comfortable within the chaos that is mostly impossible for us to comprehend. Going forward we must shirk our pride lest we destroy ourselves with war.

    • @icecreambone
      @icecreambone Год назад +1

      didn't foucault reject an absolute truth about justice in his debate with chomsky though?

    • @martinguila
      @martinguila Год назад +1

      No not at all, modernism, the enlightenment and science rejected the idea of absolute truth and truth based on authority since its inception. Thats why there is tradition of criticism. It has to be because science realized it is fallible because all humans are. Postmodernists pointing out the fallibalism and power interests is pointless because its obvious and known, and postmodernism has failed to come up with a better solution than having a tradition of criticism. So at its core postmodernism adds nothing constructive to knowledge production. Its a pseudo intellectual excuse for rejecting science you dont like.

    • @redrum3405
      @redrum3405 Год назад

      But typically used in the service of tearing down western norms and institutions. Never used to question the failures of the pet models of the left

    • @bodricthered
      @bodricthered Год назад

      Given 'Justice' is a human conception that's culturally normed it seems a bizarre statement that there is a capital T Truth about justice. You may as well say there's a truth about how hot to set the temperature of a shower, never mind about the context of the person using it or the environment it's being used in. It would be great if we could agree on justice, that doesn't mean we'd be right but it would at least be useful to building a happier society but I'm not going to hold my breath

  • @stevepowsinger733
    @stevepowsinger733 Год назад

    Who is the white-haired blinking professor @6:20? He looks familiar.

  • @kehana2908
    @kehana2908 Год назад +15

    there seem to be a lot of people here that vehemently anti-postmodernism/anti-poststructuralism. i would encourage you guys to read at least a bit of baudrillard and foucault to, at least, get an idea of what they're saying. chomsky, like a lot of american/analytic philosophers, has a dislike of continental philosophy. that being said, there are a lot of clever ideas in that area of philosophy, so it's at least worth reading some to get to know what you disagree with a bit more.

    • @nsbd90now
      @nsbd90now Год назад +13

      There are a lot of people here who haven't even come close to reading Derrida as a starter. "Postmodernism" is a right-wing dog whistle to them. This video was of Chomsky criticizing certain types of academics who go for fame, celebrity, rather than social justice activism. There was no criticism of "postmodernism" at all.

    • @danx1216
      @danx1216 Год назад

      LOL it is an ignorant sill Anti-intellectual game Truth is to strong for u to acknowledge a Gaslighting #CULT

    • @straightfacts5352
      @straightfacts5352 5 месяцев назад

      If the premise is wrong from the get-go (humans can neither come to know the meta-narrative if its there, or there's no meta-narrative to be known, doesn't matter which one sides with) then everything else that follows is a waste of time. The Divine exists, and is knowable by human beings. It's no surprise this movement is "of the Left" since the Left is oblivious to the existence of the Divine. Needless to point out, the Divine is the "meta narrative" (spiritual force) behind all goings on in material existence.

    • @gregrice1354
      @gregrice1354 2 месяца назад

      It is revealing that not a single person commenting, and appearing to lend some support to the idea that Post Modernism has any valid claim nor simple summaries nor an analogy as to what constitutes this "Post Modernism" as a school of thought, distinct from historic categories of reasoning, analysis, or philosophy.
      It's hogwash. Society and apparently our gullible, non-critical thinking collegians, have been duped. We will all suffer from the frustrations and stress that students who invested time in Post Modernism to any serious degree, have wasted their learning and studying time - and can't even summarize what makes Post Modernism distinct from a block of cheese. Or a wheel of cheese, if you prefer! Days and Nights are structured by our human life on this planet Earth, moving around our Sun. How uncomfortable your lives must be to be faced with facts and responsibilities and eventually, hopefully, reason.

  • @AngloSaks666
    @AngloSaks666 Год назад +110

    Total respect for Chomsky, his thinking, his experience, his observations, and also all respect to this attempt to critique something important, but we need actually engagement with a broad sample of what those who claim to be postmodernists actually say, and their couterarguments to criticism. This makes broad claims and generalisations about postmodernist thought and thinkers, many of which many of them themselves would challenge, and many of which are not what is often actually being said in the works critics draw these conclusions from. Many of the observations about the culture around it, of the status, power, financial reward, attention, etc., etc., is probably all true, but is a phenomenon surrounding it, and not the thing in itself. Many of the examples given of seemingly silly conclusions drawn or claims made by postmodernists are perhaps also true, but a mere list of such examples, not exploring where they might not exist at all, or where they might be looked at in proper context and seen to be not saying at all what people claim they are saying. There's a bunch of crap in there for sure, but that does not establish the whole venture as so flawed. It's like when the UK's Daily Mail finds immigrants defrauding the benefits system and presents that and all the realities around it that meant those immigrants could do that as a broad reality that means immigrants are a nuisance, the benefits system money merely thrown at the lazy, and the governmental systems that exist merely dumb, politically correct and wasteful. A broad look at the whole reality these examples sit in shows a very different reality in which these rare problems, dysfunctions, exploitations, and misunderstandings are inevitable hiccups in a system on the whole that makes a lot of sense. This cherry-picked bunch of criticisms and examples doesn't give a true critique of post modernism. Near the beginning a list of characteristics and central themes of postmodernism is given. These are generally taken by critics to mean that they think all proposed truths are as valid as each other, or that there is no objective reality, and that everything is a social construct, and that where the truth lies is merely a question of where the power lies, but none of these things are actually claimed by any of those listed scepticisms, which are merely a highlighting of how people variously relate their truths to their own situation and experience, and that the closed patterns of understanding we can get caught up in need to be questioned so as to in fact try at least to get closer to objective reality. I'm not saying you're wrong in any of this, just that it seems to merely be listing narrow criticisms of narrow aspects in narrow contexts, seen as shallowly at it is narrow, and therefore not to be really either clearly demonstrating real rot at the real fundament of postmodernism, nor even to be showing the more robust arguments Chomsky has. My basic response to this fashionable attacking of postmodernism in recent years is that both positive claims about it and negative ones seem to be simplistic, lacking context, and caricaturing it, and not reading it deeply or in proper context, and so it's a waste of time, and encourages me merely to go and actually read a lot more postmodernism. I feel quite sure that I'd find a lot of worth in it, even if all the negative things connected to it that are listed here are absolutely true, because it's so narrow a view, and so much cherry picking and merely listing negative critiques of it, or negative phenomena attached to it, and also often ver y rushed conclusions drawn about it that don't actully refer to the fullness of the ideas that it discusses, suggests, explains, makes claim to, etc., etc. It might seem clever that Chomsky turns their own arguments against them, and he probably is particularly doing this with those who wouldn't recognise that they're not applying the same standards to themselves, but that does not actually establish that the vast majority of them indeed would, and do apply the same standards to themselves. Just like the motivation of status, celebrity and material reward driving the activity of people criticised does not demonstrate that that drives them all, nor, even if it did prove that was true of all of them, prove that the original ideas were flawed in themselves. There is no actual dismantling of post-modernism here at all, just examples of where it does, or might, have negative outgrowings, and where it might be negatively exploited, and we don't know how often or rarely, because that context isn't given either. The closest to an actual discussion given to it is at the beginning, where all it is is a list of areas in which postmodernism questions with how much faith and confidence we should take claims that may have more of a subjective, biased or entrenched, habitual or systemised viewpoint than initially seems to be the case. That is actually the opposite of a denial of objective truth, yet....

    • @donotletthebeeswin
      @donotletthebeeswin Год назад +8

      You know he's a genocide denier right?

    • @conorknapp6764
      @conorknapp6764 Год назад +22

      Couldn’t agree more, Chomsky doesn’t actually engage with any of the claims or the discourse, he just waves it aside with a banal characterisation of it all as some celebrity-academic movement.
      For a man so erudite one would assume he could see past his own bias to critique beyond his shallow impressions, but we all have our biases I suppose, with our own blindnesses

    • @brunoaraujo1411
      @brunoaraujo1411 Год назад +12

      Everyone watching this video should read this text first.

    • @loudenlaffnite246
      @loudenlaffnite246 Год назад +10

      "My basic response to this fashionable attacking of postmodernism in recent years is that. . . .[you're] not reading it deeply" -- ah, the old yOu'Re-nOt-DeEp-EnOuGh ditty. And that's pretty choice: a Postmodernism-apologist claiming to be a victim of "fashionable" attack; outside of Critical Theory, what recent movement has gained more traction due to "fashion" than Postmodernism?

    • @grumpydharmabum
      @grumpydharmabum Год назад

      @@donotletthebeeswin ?

  • @frankv7774
    @frankv7774 Год назад +19

    In 1983 while working at a Steel mill in Cleveland my Coworker told me that "Opinions are like a$$holes everybody has one, even if you're using a colostomy bag"
    George "The Forge" Udovich
    1931-2009 RIP

  • @paissaa
    @paissaa Год назад +1

    Hate the fact that there are no links to at least some of the original content! I want to see Chomskys video

  • @lonelycubicle
    @lonelycubicle Год назад

    Near the end of his debate with Foucault, Chomsky said, “Don’t hold me to this …” and started to sketch out his theory for how could have objective ethics … would love to know if he has filled out his theory more.
    Both sides make good points and since great minds still disagree, I kinda go with act like there’s objective truth but keep those post-modern/pragmatic (like Richard Rorty) ideas in the back of your mind also.

  • @magicsinglez
    @magicsinglez Год назад +10

    You’d have to understand what they are putting across in order to be shocked.

    • @francisbarrera9868
      @francisbarrera9868 Год назад

      Keep reading the text and you might understand. What book in specific are you having trouble with? You need more philosophical grounding to read some of these texts.

    • @magicsinglez
      @magicsinglez Год назад +1

      @@francisbarrera9868: I’m saying the same thing Chomsky is saying; post-modernist writing is jibberish

    • @andrewsmith3257
      @andrewsmith3257 Год назад +1

      Exactly

  • @Leavemealonenowplz
    @Leavemealonenowplz Год назад +10

    My discipline (Anthropology) really struggles with this. Focault, Saussure, and the like are very popular amongst the people who study Sociocultural Anthropology.
    I work on the Biological and evolutionary side of things, but it’s wild because we might as well be entirely separate fields. I love the behavioral sciences, so it kills me to see how much of Postmodern thought pervades amongst anthropologists because I’ve heard so many insane takes like “Conspiracy Theorists are a marginalized group” or “Obesity is not a reliable marker of health”.

    • @heberpelagio7161
      @heberpelagio7161 Год назад

      As an anthropologist, what do you think about this?
      ruclips.net/video/JwLyP-vSnt0/видео.htmlsi=P1RYt62g4Oo_VwL3

    • @francescocerasuolo4064
      @francescocerasuolo4064 Год назад +1

      what

    • @heberpelagio7161
      @heberpelagio7161 Год назад

      @@francescocerasuolo4064, watch the video of the link a I've posted before.

    • @tangerinesarebetterthanora7060
      @tangerinesarebetterthanora7060 Год назад

      Post modernism shouldn't be applied to biology. That is playing with fire.

    • @pedrosampaio7349
      @pedrosampaio7349 Год назад +4

      Yeah they are marginalized, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing??? And indeed, sumo wrestlers are obese but they aren't particularly unhealthy

  • @PunishedFelix
    @PunishedFelix Год назад +14

    When you watched the Netflix original series but didnt read the manga

  • @williambaker3112
    @williambaker3112 Год назад +1

    Well, Peter Salmon, author of An Event, Perhaps (2020), would ask for specific examples of quotes from the works criticized...

  • @felipeormazabalmoraga7955
    @felipeormazabalmoraga7955 Год назад +1

    The book he references at the begining is called Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont

    • @99tonnes
      @99tonnes Год назад

      My copy is called 'Intellectual Impostures'. Same authors, and I suppose same book.

  • @alecmeans3442
    @alecmeans3442 Год назад +3

    This is the same Noam Chomsky who basically said that "Pirahã doesn't violate the rules of universal grammar because I said so" right?

  • @JCPJCPJCP
    @JCPJCPJCP Год назад +10

    Aren't we past all that by now?
    Aren't we into the era of post-postmodernism?
    Edit: aka metamodernism.

    • @peternyc
      @peternyc Год назад

      @LoneDuck, how is metamodernism used? Does it have a central idea to put forth, or is it more of a tool, useful in analyzing?

    • @JCPJCPJCP
      @JCPJCPJCP Год назад +3

      @peternyc
      It tries to use both Modernism and Postmodernism, strike a balance, find a middle ground.
      My understanding of it is new and limited, but it "is a thing."
      Time to do more research.
      From about 180 miles to the north, I ❤️ NYC. Lived there briefly as a child and it made a huge impression on me.

    • @peternyc
      @peternyc Год назад +2

      @@JCPJCPJCP Thanks, LoneDuck. I need to look into it more myself. NYC was a cool place before the 80's. It's a hub of capitalism, like all major cities, but you see a huge variety of ethnicities, social classes, identities, and so forth all squished into the same spaces. For that, NYC is special.

    • @MrUndersolo
      @MrUndersolo Год назад +1

      We seem to be post-everything right now (just cannot figure out what common ground we now stand on).

    • @jonathanbailey1597
      @jonathanbailey1597 Год назад +1

      It's an old, tired, and nonsense debate that captivates K-12 and first year undergraduates until they realise that it's all strawmanning and hot air.

  • @Skygoers
    @Skygoers Год назад +13

    Postmodernism is supposed to a critique, the original goal of which is to bring clarity to meaning through contextualization. It is simply an extension of the overly polemical characteristic of western academia. And Professor Chomsky’s critique of postmodernism will be welcomed by true postmodernists

  • @alanjones5639
    @alanjones5639 3 месяца назад

    Besides their stance on "objective Truths," how do the thinking styles and methods of Postmodernists differ from those commonly used by traditional (classical) metaphysicians? How might John Dewey have characterized Postmodernists and their methods?

  • @erichigley9280
    @erichigley9280 Год назад

    Book mentioned at 2:57 is Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmount.

    • @ZacharyBittner
      @ZacharyBittner Год назад

      Look up criticism of that book. Turned out it wasn't actually the win they present itself as. Like their fake essays were submitted to a fake journal.

  • @halfredp
    @halfredp Год назад +2

    Chomsky is the old guard. Postmodernists are more common than this video makes them out to be. Kurt Vongergut, Jean-Paul Sarte, John Fowles to name a few. Their ideas are represented in more works than you may think! Catch-22, American Psycho, Naked Lunch.
    This video paints Postmodernism as an absurdist abstraction. That is a lay interpretation. Postmodernism explores reality as a place much more complicated than we can perceive, and sees the human as overly confident in its abilities to perceive ideas both local and theoretical.
    To the brief “scientific” point touched on but not explained in this video, neuroscience and physics have concluded as much is true: we vastly oversimplify our reality. We are simply limited in our capacity to understand reality. We see tuberculosis, to borrow his example, as a singular thing. In reality it is millions of organisms, interacting with billions more, waging a massive war in an organism which is independent of, but also dependent on, the organ where TB wages it’s war. As a result, TB has different outcomes for different people and the course of it depends on thousands of factors (including those as distant as where you lived as a child and the climate where you live now, for example).
    Another example: consider a car. Cars are viewed as independent objects, despite their being very complicated, we feel we “know” them. Of a car’s many parts, none can operate on their own as a car is intended. In this way, a car is fundamentally different from its parts. Conversely, none of its parts could be mistaken as a car on their own. Nor could a car with its parts strewn about in the back seat operate as a car. The idea and the function of the car relies on each part, their position in space and the forces acting on them. Therefore, knowing about a car is the same as knowing about its parts and how they fit together. The view of the car as this standalone object is therefore an oversimplification. This is Postmodernism, a nuanced but comprehensive view of an object, concept or structure.
    “Why not take it further?” a Postmodernist might ask the mechanic, “why not learn about chemistry and corrosion and physics and wear?” In this way, Postmodernism is absurd because it never ceases to seek more information. Is this not what we should want for ourselves too?
    Postmodernism asks us to investigate everything to see its formal causes, and it teaches us how to do so. In learning about Postmodernism, you also learn about yourself and your life as subjects of your study. It is a fantastic and enriching experience. I am not saying they got everything right and that they’re not pretentious, but they are valuable.
    To learn more, consider reading on Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Paul Sarte, Simone de Beauvoir. It’s taxing at first, but more rewarding than Chomsky would have you believe.

  • @patpowers9210
    @patpowers9210 Год назад +6

    Liked and subscribed: a great summary of Chomsky's position.

  • @EcoMythos
    @EcoMythos Год назад +3

    I'm in 4th year for Socio-Cultural Anthropology and I get this. Next year I will be out on the street, explaining to my homeless friends how Strauss considers incest to be the basis of all culture, and how phonemes resemble kinship cladograms. *hey guys where you going?*

  • @soaked189
    @soaked189 Год назад +2

    I just get the instinct that most commentary on postmodernism doesn’t get to the heart of the ideas but it is a commentary on the groups that are a side effect of post modernist view.

  • @Scottfraser250
    @Scottfraser250 4 месяца назад

    Hi would you be willing to debate PunishedFelix?

  • @jonathanbailey1597
    @jonathanbailey1597 Год назад +18

    Hang on, this video sounds like a low-rent undergraduate essay. The characterisation of 'postmodernism' here is a strawman, and not one universally recognised. It doesn't correspond to any of the contentions of any of the purported theorists, or the various iterations of the term in architectural or artistic movements. Postmodernity if it anything like you describe, was a counter-movement in the arts. Many detractors point to French academics like Jean Francois Lyotard as proponents of a misplaced epistemological view like the one forwarded in this video. However, what they were actually up to was describing the direction of travel in society, not making a set of epistemological claims. Be that Foucault, Baudrillard, DeBord, Bachelard, Derrida, et al. I think the 'post-truth' social-media politics and 'cultures wars' of today vindicates much of what some of them wrote. Critiques like Habermas' and Chomsky's are the weakest part of their work, and did not issue from any serious engagement with the work of those claimed to 'represent' a movement in 20th century European academic (particularly French) circles, which did not in fact exist.

    • @jacobcook179
      @jacobcook179 Год назад +1

      Thank you.

    • @elkiebeerepoot5829
      @elkiebeerepoot5829 3 месяца назад +1

      I miss a lot from the first ideas of the Frankfurter Schule, Hegel, Nietzsche, early feminism, Herbert Marcuse, Angela Davies, Critical Theory and so forth, progressed in its different forms today. I should say, the influence is important in especially the social sciences, and it changed the society, if we like it or not.

  • @ChrisTopher-xu2dh
    @ChrisTopher-xu2dh Год назад +9

    Really enjoyed this. Thanks for your efforts!

  • @seanburke6521
    @seanburke6521 Год назад +5

    I know this just a short video, but it would be cool to get some examples of what you are saying. Also I tried to find the claim that postmodernists said 12 and 13 year olds should be able to choose sex partners and didn't find anything. Having references would be a good idea.

    • @castelodeossos3947
      @castelodeossos3947 Год назад

      It was an idea put forth by, among others, JPSartre and SdeBeauvoir. They even made a kind of manifesto. Found something about it once on the Net, with many outraged/self-righteous comments but not sufficiently interested to recall where/what.

    • @tedankhamenbonnah4848
      @tedankhamenbonnah4848 Год назад +8

      There is a lot of cherrypicking and unsubstantiated evidence here. Chomsky's critique of US hegemony mediation and the power structures examined by post modernists only differ in their degree of abstraction. I would think Chomsky would agree with Foucault's assertion that modern society is based upon a war production model, as he outlined in Civilization Must Be Defended. It is the other side of the coin of Chomsky's description of the Military-Industrial Complex. Post modernists have their successes and failures, like any other intellectual movement. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a common neoconservative trope.

    • @seanburke6521
      @seanburke6521 Год назад +2

      @@castelodeossos3947 That's interesting, but they aren't really considered post-modernists. But really my point is the video shouldn't make these things so obscure, if he makes a direct reference to something, say who said it and where.

    • @castelodeossos3947
      @castelodeossos3947 Год назад

      @@tedankhamenbonnah4848
      When I hear the word cherry-picking I release the safety catch on my Browning.

    • @pete3953
      @pete3953 Год назад

      You apparently didn't try very hard. For example just google Foucault and pedophilia.

  • @mencken8
    @mencken8 11 месяцев назад +2

    Mr. Chomsky is himself a postmodernist figure- a caricature of the expert who knows everything about any subject one cares to name.

  • @BenHammond
    @BenHammond Год назад +2

    I love Chomsky, and I’ve also felt quite enriched by folks like Derrida, Foucault, Rorty, etc. I wish this included specific examples of what he has in mind. Without that, most of his assertions sound fairly similar to many conservative criticisms, and standard mainstream criticisms of post-structural philosophy (many of which end up sounding like they are somewhat missing the point).
    Please don’t get me wrong, my worldview, values, and opinions are such that I’m primed to more readily accept assertions made by Chompsky than question them. I just wish he was more specific - without that this series of clips isn’t something that’s going to be compelling to folks sympathetic to what he’s critiquing.
    UPDATE: This is the best take on Chomsky's views about postmodern philosophy I've seen (one that seems sympathetic with his take). It's also worth noting that the author of this post also correctly pointed out that it seems like Chomsky is critiquing a specific subset of the broader, and more properly named "Continental Philosophy" when he uses his label "postmodern philosophy" (which is more of a pop-culture reference than a meaningful label an academic philosopher - "postmodern" or not - would use): medium.com/paul-austin-murphys-essays-on-philosophy/chomsky-on-the-pretentiousness-and-political-impotence-of-postmodern-philosophy-2da0b8a6f62b

  • @fasttwitchmedia149
    @fasttwitchmedia149 5 месяцев назад +4

    Every generation thinks it is smarter than the one that came before it and wiser than the one that comes after it. George Orwell.

    • @notreallydavid
      @notreallydavid 2 месяца назад

      UK here - did Orwell say 'smarter'? If he did, he'd be very unusual in the Britain of the 1930s and 1940s (and he'd be departing from his usual style).

    • @Ankhar2332
      @Ankhar2332 Месяц назад

      but it is smarter. older generation eventually got a dementia

  • @harshkumar2473
    @harshkumar2473 Год назад +4

    As far as i have understood choamsky ... He is very pragmatic...... He dismisses anything which is obscure and doesn't help common people directly or indirectly..... That's why he is very much against post modernism and i am trying to understand Foucault and derrida and it's very complex ....... What the hell can a common person gain from it except abstract concepts

    • @subcitizen2012
      @subcitizen2012 Год назад +2

      Youre trying to look at it pragmatically. Why does it have to illicit some sort of gain? The common man already rejects most philosophy for this reason. That's not a problem with philosophy; it's a problem with the common man expecting gain and absolute clarity. And my dear child, if you truly are curious, you better stay curious about it, just wait until you truly grasp it and realize it's not in the abstract at all, nor the practical understanding it could help you gain...

    • @LowestofheDead
      @LowestofheDead Год назад +1

      You're right, that's the real disagreement here

    • @danx1216
      @danx1216 Год назад +1

      NO it is not complex it is deliberately contradictory to put one in a maze it is a ignorant silly childish game.. #Obviosu #Cult

    • @harshkumar2473
      @harshkumar2473 Год назад +1

      @@danx1216 nopz it is complex most people don't understand these things .... And common people should gain something from everything... They are already at crisis because of rigorous capitalism.... and if they don't find anything useful in the post-modern concept to gain a common ground and overthrow regimes that are constantly trying to either use them and discard them.... Then what's the point of this philosophy.... You can point out all the contradict i have no problem with it i think it's a good thing and socrates and hegel did the same thing.... But there is something which could be understood from socrates about society and modern political methods and concept ..... That's not how it is with post-modernism ... And in fact all the post-modernist philosophers have very different ideas

    • @harshkumar2473
      @harshkumar2473 Год назад

      @@subcitizen2012 yeah if common people under the pressure of political and capitalist regime can gain some insight from anything ... Then it is illicit ... Okay

  • @petebrag
    @petebrag Год назад +21

    Wait, a structuralist analysis of postmodernism? Oh the irony. Even the haters have to admit that Foucault has aged well. What's interesting is the intention behind Chomsky's attacks.

    • @vickygreenplate113
      @vickygreenplate113 Год назад +10

      Foucault has aged very well. These systems are very hard to see. He's right about power. More so with pervasive technology.

    • @softwetbread248
      @softwetbread248 11 месяцев назад

      Chomsky is the shadow that is threatened by the postmodern condition, as such he rejects it. He is too much of a formalist to realize this though.

    • @counterstriving
      @counterstriving 4 месяца назад +1

      Yes, his intention and his emotional intensity,-- why does he express so much rancor not only toward the "effects" of postmodernism but the early big-name thinkers themselves? as if they intended and planned out all of these effects... (They didn't.)

  • @eottoe2001
    @eottoe2001 Год назад +1

    For a long time, I didn't think Postmodernism was all that relevant except in France or hoity-toity universities northeastern US, however, when I look at the tactics used to attack vaccines and science here in the US and around the world, you can see that it can have major ramifications like the US having 5 times the death rate by Covid compared to Australia, Japan, Norway, or Isreal. The evangelical movement focuses on the “personal” experience with "god" and not the theological or ethical relation to “god” in the past. The gun phrase "Gun don't kill, people kill" is exquisite post-modern because it divorces the object from the intention of the object. In the US we had 45.2K gun death in 2020.

  • @sssf55
    @sssf55 Год назад +2

    I wonder what Chomsky would have thought of Breadtubers (RUclipsrs who spread postmodernist ideas and usually have a very left leaning audience). Interestingly enough, I suspect that a lot of these individuals are unaware of the goals of such a movement. They seem to treat it like a religion of some sort.

  • @xenoblad
    @xenoblad Год назад +7

    Cool video, but I got the feeling that he’s going more after the thinkers and not their ideas.
    Is he objecting to the idea of grand narratives being false?
    Is he objecting to the idea of synthetic knowledge being true?
    At most all I got was that post modernists don’t make predictions and that’s true, but they’re not claiming to make predictions.
    They’re just doing philosophy which isn’t about predicting specific things about the future, unless you consider setting limits on what can conceptually be done to be a form of prediction.

  • @ssrmy1782
    @ssrmy1782 Год назад +31

    "I don't like the cultural philosophy that derives from the existence of people like me."

  • @DEPARTMENTOFREDUNDANCYDEPT
    @DEPARTMENTOFREDUNDANCYDEPT Год назад +19

    The parallels between postmodernism and invented "religions" like Mormonism and Scientology are remarkable. The fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" predicted all of this.

    • @Ejacunathan
      @Ejacunathan Год назад

      Can't wait to read it (:

    • @tzenophile
      @tzenophile Год назад +3

      When you say postmodernism, what exactly are you referring to? What specific position? Who said exactly what? I bet you have no answer.

    • @marymally8106
      @marymally8106 Год назад

      Hmmm.... all religions are made up.

    • @wildfood1
      @wildfood1 Год назад +1

      Los que vendieron ropa nueva al emperador crearon el posmodernismo. Supongo que necesitaban un nuevo trabajo.

    • @tzenophile
      @tzenophile Год назад +1

      There is another fun aspect to your comment; you're implying that only some religions were invented. I know you can't answer, because you're a postmodernist too, so: just for fun, how do you distinguish between invented religions and non-invented ones? Just curious, this is not a test of your IQ.

  • @Marta-zm8oe
    @Marta-zm8oe Месяц назад +1

    I think that there is much to critique postmodernism as a movement but I think their key ideas, which as someone else mentioned were present before the movement, are important. The problems of truth, grand narratives, and objective morality it is something we all should be wary of and that as secular societies grow and develop, we will have to find out for ourselves a way to have some sense of objective truth and morals. On the other hand, taken this to the absurd can take us to dangerous territory (such as saying the age of consent can be as early as 12)

    • @nonamesnonames
      @nonamesnonames 20 дней назад

      "their key ideas ... were present before the movement". Yes, they hijacked existing (and somewhat obvious) ideas to suit their agenda. Within everyone of their absurdities are grains of truth, things that people will agree to. They exploit this.

  • @stefanmarin123
    @stefanmarin123 Год назад +2

    Well, if he critiques postmodernism using its own tools and concepts, does that invalidate postmodernism, or does it prove it right? Both options seem reasonable to me.

  • @freyahah290
    @freyahah290 Год назад +3

    Fascinating that Chomsky denied the Cambodian, Rwandan, and Balkan genocides continues to have something to say about reality and power structures.

    • @AntoniRams
      @AntoniRams 4 месяца назад +1

      Chomsky supported Cambodia genocide by reds, but dictator Fidel Castro is a kind person.

    • @counterstriving
      @counterstriving 4 месяца назад +1

      He did?

  • @thesea4120
    @thesea4120 Год назад +17

    Chomsky definitely has a more coherent critique of post modernism than Jordan Peterson

    • @HrothgarPedersen
      @HrothgarPedersen Год назад +12

      With all due respect to Doctor Peterson, that’s a low bar to clear

    • @anuardalhar6762
      @anuardalhar6762 Год назад +2

      Peterson not up to the level of Chomsky.

    • @arsenskavin130
      @arsenskavin130 Год назад

      Lyotar did it first .

  • @nothingmatters321
    @nothingmatters321 Год назад +10

    How to develop an excellent critique of a philosophical movement. 1) Become an elite professor. 2) Ignore the work of others for 50 years in neighboring fields. 3) Dismiss the work. 4) Watch as admiring acolytes repeat the dismissal.

  • @thomy1955
    @thomy1955 10 месяцев назад +2

    Chomsky accuses postmodernism of the same things that are true too himself aswell. If his argument is that intellectuals and professors, through postmodernism, become wealthy and powerful, contradicting their own ideology, then that is also applicable to Chomsky himself. He himself benifts from the world and society he is critizing, living in just a theoratical world, instead of the practical. One might argue that it is the world, society, and the current systems that make them as powerful and wealthy as they are- the very same world, system, and society they are deconstructing and critizing.

  • @gregowen2022
    @gregowen2022 Год назад +2

    I've shied away and these subjects because they seem difficult to understand on their surface. What a great breakdown you've done here, thank you.

  • @skyolson3905
    @skyolson3905 Год назад +29

    Chomsky is spot-on in his analysis of power dynamics.

  • @stevemcdede8559
    @stevemcdede8559 Год назад +42

    I was mocked by other grad students because of my skepticism of postmodernism. I was labeled as a reactionary.

    • @tangerinesarebetterthanora7060
      @tangerinesarebetterthanora7060 Год назад

      Post modernism is a reactionary movement.

    • @Christobanistan
      @Christobanistan Год назад +13

      No, you're just smart and they're not.

    • @tzenophile
      @tzenophile Год назад +6

      What bothers me is that you went to a school where "postmodernism" as such was a position to defend. Just to be sure, what exact authors, books, theories etc were you skeptical of?

    • @PierreLucSex
      @PierreLucSex Год назад +2

      Yeah sure lmao

    • @addammadd
      @addammadd Год назад +3

      I agree with the above comment. I’d be interested to read precisely what you think “postmodernism” is, which authors/theories you take issue with and most importantly, why.

  • @santiagomongef
    @santiagomongef Год назад +5

    Really great video for outing Chomsky of not understanding “postmodernism” (whatever that is) or any post-structuralist philosopher. The real problem here is academia, which some of the more prominent writers have indeed circumvented.
    Chomsky’s opinions everywhere outside strict linguistics are idiotic.

    • @99tonnes
      @99tonnes Год назад +2

      And inside strict linguistics. I've been there, it's desolate.

  • @pedroivomoraes
    @pedroivomoraes Год назад

    Please, where can I find the source video?

  • @lotojarvi
    @lotojarvi 5 месяцев назад

    As opposed to what field?

  • @ast453000
    @ast453000 Год назад +5

    I don't understand why you don't let Chomsky speak for himself. His critiques of PM are perfectly clear and understandable, and -- no offense -- but much better than your inadequate explanations.

    • @robertabrahamsen9076
      @robertabrahamsen9076 6 месяцев назад

      If you didn't intend offense you ought have struck "inadequate." If your own criticism was adequate, you would have explained how the video was flawed.

    • @2o3ief
      @2o3ief 5 месяцев назад

      ​​@@robertabrahamsen9076but he did lol and inadequate is a necessary component of his complaint

  • @malcolmdrake6137
    @malcolmdrake6137 Год назад +21

    I don't hear Chomsky, I hear someone speaking FOR him...always a dangerous practice.

    • @Finnegas-Eces
      @Finnegas-Eces 4 месяца назад

      Well not really, it's what happens every day in lecture halls through out the land!

  • @hm5142
    @hm5142 Год назад +53

    As a physicist, I have assumed that no one who understood anything about physics could not be a postmodernist. Nature does not care what we believer or want, and I find that very charming.

    • @TorMax9
      @TorMax9 Год назад +23

      There are two basic steps to the postmodern pantheon, 1) no view, interpretation, equation, model, paradigm, etc., is the final, exclusive, complete truth - which I agree with, there is always room for improvement, new discoveries to be made, new information may come to light, new dimensions to be explored, new functional tools to be created, etc., and 2) therefore anything goes, which is patently absurd, some things work - others don't, some things work better - other things not so well, some things are life-affirming, life-promoting, life-enhancing - other things are life-denying, life-harming, life-ending.
      It all depends what your end goal is - promote vulnerable life in a hostile universe or create as much chaos, confusion, conflict as possible in order to wipe out the old guard and usher in the new Marxist utopia.
      The Marxists have repeatedly failed on every font - economic, cultural, creative - and have thus resorted to slight-of-hand methods like postmodernism.
      It's a power-play to undermine the "opposition - transcendental religion, the stable family, the sovereign individual, the LOGOS, rational thought, i.e., the "superstructure".
      It won't work and anybody who buys into postmodernism will soon fade away. Mother Nature won't be fooled. Physics won't be cajoled. Psychology will not be put on its head. Love will not be denied. God will not be trifled with. Life finds a way. Postmodernism will be rejected and ejected by the eternally active and dynamic immune system. The life force. In short, postmodernism is dysfunctional.

    • @patrickdunne153
      @patrickdunne153 Год назад +1

      Human beings are part of nature and they can have a caring moral outlook

    • @andsalomoni
      @andsalomoni Год назад +9

      If, according to postmodernists, everything "is a language/social construct", you can use the classical argument, a kick in the ass, then ask them in which way it is just "a social construct".

    • @AbdiHassan-jq2ln
      @AbdiHassan-jq2ln Год назад

      @@TorMax9 Marxists didn’t use post-modernism as a “slight of hand” post modernists were explicity anti marxist and the two groups hated & critiqued each other intensely
      This is basic historical knowledge wtf r u talking about?

    • @user.abuser_
      @user.abuser_ Год назад +4

      Well, friend of mine is a physicist and a postmodernist at the same time

  • @jacobmccoycomposer
    @jacobmccoycomposer 17 дней назад

    From an artistic perspective, postmodern art was HUGE in the mid/late 20th century, and can be found today as well. It’s very fascinating, an artwork that functions almost exclusively as a thought experiment. It may not be the most popular, but it’s undeniably invaluable to the world of art and how we think about it.

  •  Год назад +1

    Why life was better when I was young, and all I did was to work harder and harder? Whenever I distance myself from the crowded and loud city life, I feel happiness. And I am sure almost no one loves to live in big cities but the money was somehow taken away from the small establishments to feed giant companies. Therefore, we have to follow where the money is as being one of the better educated people. The other option is to work in a farm with a body that is not prepared and experienced to work in a farm. What must I do to be happy? Explain this Chomsky!

    • @counterstriving
      @counterstriving 4 месяца назад

      I liked your comments. The kinds of things you described are more important and real than which ideologies people "believe in" and fight over

  • @kida3168
    @kida3168 Год назад +17

    Chomsky has always been very rigid and shallow in his thinking about Postmodernism. This is weak, and has more to do with the problems with French academic rock-star culture than postmodern philosophy.

    • @transom2
      @transom2 9 месяцев назад

      Chomsky is on the money.
      Tho postmodernists may have made an occasional interesting point for the most part they generated masturbatory gibberish that did or does nothing to improve society and thereby serves the interests of the prevailing Plutocracy by failing to challenge its Status Quo.

    • @counterstriving
      @counterstriving 4 месяца назад

      Excellent comment.

  • @DaggetSWG
    @DaggetSWG 11 месяцев назад +6

    Chomsky never once could demonstrate he actually understood what post-modernism is, much less give us a succinct critique of it. He only seemed annoyed with specific people involved with the movement in the 60's and 70's, which is fair enough I guess, but hes attacking the character of the people behind the social movement, and never really the substance of any real philosophical writing. You can criticize the well known people in the movement, you can critique the accessibility of the writings, but that is no replacement for a critique of the substance behind the writings.
    Post modernism isn't one thing or philosopher. It's an undercurrent that runs alongside modernism and entails various philosophical critiques and descriptions of modernity. This video (and Chomsky) is randomly cherry picking shit about power relations, but that was primarily Foucault. There are probably a hundred different schools of thought within "postmodernism", from just as many different philosophers.
    Hell, much of Zizek's work is trying to critique and deal with post-modernists, specifically Deleuze. He is a Uber modernist and humanist, but even he recognizes that post-modernist critiques deserve more respect than what Chomsky's lazy anti-intellectual ass gives it.

    • @kelly980
      @kelly980 4 месяца назад +2

      If I write a load of gibberish and you say it's gibberish, I can just say you don't understand it. Got it.
      And Zizek is one of the biggest clowns of the lot.

  • @whynottalklikeapirat
    @whynottalklikeapirat Год назад +6

    The thing about Chomsky is I really want to know what he is saying but he sends me to sleep every time with his hypnotic drone. Denneth fools me by looking kind and invested and making little dad jokes but before you know it - you’re off … he is like an angler fish god of sleep, that way, but Chomsky shows you the nature of his sleep magic right away, and then still makes it work by fixating you with the steady, slightly slurred typewriter rythm of his voice and then softly but surely exhausting your mental faculties.

    • @wyntyrmute
      @wyntyrmute Год назад +3

      Chomsky talks like a robot that is falling asleep.

    • @whynottalklikeapirat
      @whynottalklikeapirat Год назад +1

      @@wyntyrmute when AI becomes too human for it’s own good …

    • @whynottalklikeapirat
      @whynottalklikeapirat Год назад

      @@wyntyrmute “Slurry Robot” is like an indie band name …

    • @sincerityissacred5101
      @sincerityissacred5101 11 месяцев назад

      Right. You sound like Trump criticizing the other politicians. Not entertaining enough.

    • @whynottalklikeapirat
      @whynottalklikeapirat 11 месяцев назад

      @@sincerityissacred5101 You on the other hand - are quite the barrel of laughs 😏

  • @neilanderson891
    @neilanderson891 4 месяца назад

    @ryangarritty9761 - Thank you for that long quote from Bertrand Russell in 1907. Sounds like Russell (like Chomsky, at 4:40) was ruminating on the fact that a flaw had been discovered in Mathematics prior to 1900, but it had been actively "covered up" by referring to it as a mere paradox, rather than a actual contradiction in Mathematics - as no one had an interest in casting doubt and unraveling the whole field of Mathematics. (This contradiction in Mathematics is tediously explained in "Set Theory and Metric Spaces", by Irving Kaplansky).
    Thankfully, In the 1930's, Kurt Godel (pronounced more like "Gerdel", and also sometimes spelled "Goedel") became a celebrated Logician with his proof that says something like this:
    "In any formalized system, based on logic, with a finite number of axioms, you'll always have two problems:
    (1.) There will always be true statements about the system that cannot be proven-true within the system (i.e., there's a problem with *Completeness* ), and -
    (2.) there will always be true-statements about the system that contradict other true-statements about the system (i.e., there's a problem with *Consistency* )"
    Note #1 - The proof of *Godel's Theorem* starts with a proof that there are an infinite number of prime numbers. This is done easily using a "Proof by Contradiction": Assume there are *not* an infinite number of primes. Then take the product of all the known primes, and add 1. That simple sum is not divisible by any of the known primes, therefore it must be new prime, or it's factorization contains a new prime. Therefore, there must be an infinite number of prime numbers.
    Example: If you assume there are only 3 prime numbers (say, 2, 3, and 5), and multiply them all together (i.e., 2 x 3 x 5 = 30), and then add 1 to 30, you get 31, which is a "new" prime number.
    Note #2 - Axioms can be implicit or explicit, but the only ones we know-of are explicit. We don't even realize that we're relying on the implicit-axioms. The first implicit axiom ever discovered is probably Rene Descarte's "I think, therefore I am" - but now that it's been identified, it's no longer *implicit* , it's now arguably *explicit* . Mathematics may already contain an infinite number of implicit axioms that we aren't even aware of.
    Note #3 - In my opinion, it seems that Post-Modernism arguably started in the 1930s when Godel published his proof of the theorem that bears his name, from which it "followed" that there was no Beauty in Art, nor Order & Harmony in Music, etc ...
    Note #4 - Since any complete and consistent set of axioms must be infinite, there must an infinite amount of knowledge awaiting discovery.

  • @Sigrdrifaz
    @Sigrdrifaz 2 месяца назад

    This is an underrated critique, if you simply deconstruct deconstructionism it created the very thing it says it's fighting. It's just power relations with them using the simulation of critical thought to opress critical thought of them and language minpulation to acquire power.

  • @stevekilligrew788
    @stevekilligrew788 Год назад +11

    “They muddy the water to make it seem deep!” Zen. Chomsky is correct in saying PM is a self-referential maze of ever decreasing circles. But not all of PM is unhelpful, we should not throw the baby out with the bath water. Foucault’s work on the notions of the Clinic and the Panopticon are genuinely useful and in many ways dovetail into Kuhn’s work on the Nature of Scientific Revolutions and paradigms. I consider that Chomsky is also correct in saying that academics need to exit their ivory towers and conference circuit gravy train and more readily and robustly apply their work directly with the aim of building more intelligent, resilient, utilitarian and open political systems. He himself is, and has been for several decades now, a prime example of walking that talk. More power to him and his calm, empirical, persistent and progressive approach. Namaste.

  • @gardenladyjimenez1257
    @gardenladyjimenez1257 Год назад +10

    I'm so very appreciative of your post!!! Chomsky harkens back to my own college days when I thought he was an intellectual dunce, promoting ideas that conflicted with the reality of the human condition. And - in the 70s, after all the "required readings" - I dismissed him as unworthy of further attention. Just now, I had to smile and laugh as I listened here. You have motivated me to open the door to his more recent ideas & writings. Thanks!

    • @SvendBosanvovski
      @SvendBosanvovski Год назад +2

      Honest admittance.

    • @johnlewis9158
      @johnlewis9158 Год назад

      Yes Chomsky's take on how the unvaccinated should be removed from society was spot on. Indeed if i had my way i would have lined them all up against the wall lol. Of course i jest. No i'm in the Sowell a real intellectual camp who has no time for Chomsky who should stuck to linguistics.

  • @PM2022
    @PM2022 Год назад +6

    Chomsky, not unlike the majority, assumes he knows what 'science' is, but he is mistaken. That is aside from the fact that 'linguistics' itself sits awkwardly even inside that assumption.

  • @renzo6490
    @renzo6490 Месяц назад

    2:09 does he say phenomena instead of the correct Phenomenon?

    • @brad1928
      @brad1928 Месяц назад

      Phenomena is the correct word. I don’t know why you seem to think otherwise.

    • @renzo6490
      @renzo6490 Месяц назад

      @ ….I asked a question because the answer was not clear to me.

  • @peternyc
    @peternyc Год назад +7

    The value of postmodernism is mistaken to be a philosophy of substance that has a structure. I see postmodernism's value as a methodology that can be but isn't always useful. The West, especially the US, has been intellectually vapid since the 1960's. The victory of neoliberalism over the socialist urge has been so deep and widespread, that the only thing able to grow has been the narrow utility of postmodern thinking. Postmodernism is a tool, like a hammer. Who in their right mind confuses a building for a hammer? The answer is a bourgeoisie that wants meaning in their lives when there clearly is none. The role of postmodernism in the West is to cloak the emptiness of its shallow members. Fool's gold.

  • @atticusosullivan9332
    @atticusosullivan9332 Год назад +3

    As a materialist, in the philosophical sense, postmodernism and related approaches just seem to reopen 19th century debates on idealism.
    There is an excessive focus on ideas, norms etc

  • @Knaeben
    @Knaeben 2 месяца назад +8

    This is not really about postmodernism. It's a caricature of the idea of postmodernism. There's no real information here.

  • @andrebenoit283
    @andrebenoit283 Год назад +2

    The power of correlationism cannot be understated.

  • @Hajfena63
    @Hajfena63 Год назад +2

    Am I missing something or was this almost entirely a critique of postmodernist academics rather than postmodernism itself?

  • @intranexine8901
    @intranexine8901 Год назад +4

    3:29 I refuse to believe that Chompsky said cringe, imma call that an AI deepfake, I fucking refuse

    • @barrymoore4470
      @barrymoore4470 Год назад

      He's using the word there as a verb. 'Cringe' as a verb has long been common parlance in English. This utterance gives no good basis to dismiss the footage as deceptive.

    • @intranexine8901
      @intranexine8901 Год назад

      @@barrymoore4470 Everything on the internet is a lie - Julius Caesar 2014 b.c.

    • @counterstriving
      @counterstriving 4 месяца назад

      You know people have been using that term as a verb for a long time.