Latour, Kristeva, Derrida, Baudrillard, etc

[HoreTore]

Does anyone here have knowledge of any of these four, or their many brethren? If so, could you explain what their theories are all about? My impression is that all they've produced are countless volumes of unscientific complete bull. Does anyone want to correct me on that?

[Husar]

I just know that Latour is apparently a middle east expert, Baudrillard I've heard before but about her and the other two I have no idea.

[HoreTore]

I just know that Latour is apparently a middle east expert

That's a first. Never heard that before. You sure we're talking about the same Bruno Latour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour)?

[Sarmatian]

Unless they plan to overthrow Obama, why do you want to talk about them in the Backroom?

[Hax]

There are likely more competent people than I on these forums, but I know a thing or two about Derrida.

Derrida is a post-modernist philosopher, whose ideas of deconstructionism focused on analysing reccurent elements within any form of text. The term "deconstructionism" refers to the attempt to show that terminologies and concepts that we often assume to have a certain meaning, have no intrinsic value on and of their own account.

[HoreTore]

terminologies and concepts that we often assume to have a certain meaning, have no intrinsic value on and of their own account.

Does he go further(ie making claims about the meaning of actual knowledge, not just terms) than that, like Latour does? And if he does, what is your opinion of the validity of such thought?

[Hax]

Hmm, I'm not exactly sure. It might be that he means to say that outside of discourse, nothing real exists in the world, but I might be confusing him with someone else here.

[Husar]

That's a first. Never heard that before. You sure we're talking about the same Bruno Latour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour)?

No, I'm sure you're talking about the wrong guy. Peter Scholl-Latour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Scholl-Latour) is the one I mean.

[The Stranger]

Does anyone here have knowledge of any of these four, or their many brethren? If so, could you explain what their theories are all about? My impression is that all they've produced are countless volumes of unscientific complete bull. Does anyone want to correct me on that?

im reading about Derrida and Baudrillard atm, although it is their aesthetics mainly. I know about about derridas deconstruction, also related to political theory.

I know a tiny bit about latour, although i have friends who know much more about him and a professor who works in the same area of philosophy as him and are "friends".

if you have a less vague/more serious question, perhaps i can help you or pass the question on for you.

[CountArach]

Hmm, I'm not exactly sure. It might be that he means to say that outside of discourse, nothing real exists in the world, but I might be confusing him with someone else here.
I belive this is the crux of it, or at least Post-Structuralism in general (that is to say, the same philosophy that most of the above authors are generally accepted to be founding members of).

Does he go further(ie making claims about the meaning of actual knowledge, not just terms) than that, like Latour does? And if he does, what is your opinion of the validity of such thought?
That's really something much more associated with Foucault and Epistemiology than Derrida though my knowledge of Derrida is much more limited. Derrida was more linguistically focussed where Foucault's thought was founded on a discussion of knowledge (and the methods for 'discovering' it) as a discursively-created thing with no intrinsic value.

[Sarmatian]

So, they want to get Putin, right?

C'mon, throw me a bone here.

[HoreTore]

So, they want to get Putin, right?

C'mon, throw me a bone here.

Actually, this is the reason I've been reading these, Sarmatian. It first started when Latour was awarded the Ludwig Holberg-prize(major irony alert) earlier this year. Fast forward a couple of days, and the old and bitter professor Jon Elster publishes a chronicle in aftenposten, demanding the prize is shut down as it has disgraced itself by giving awards to charlatans(Kristeva, Jameson and Latour). This sparked several other chronicles, either attacking Elster or joining his attack on Latour.

These were published on the net as well, with open commentaries. Now, these are usually cesspits of vulgarities from "the facebook-conservatives"(derogatory norwegian term for the right-wing nonsense manifesting itself on the net). On these articles, however, it was completely silent. I found this fact both interesting and hilarious. What we had was a high temperature debate between Marxists attacking each other for politically correct science. You'd think that would make any right-winger firing on all cylinders, yet it was completely silent. One of the chroniclers even joined the comment section, yet no right-winger reared its head, it was just a collection of various academics. Apparently, the debate was conducted at a level too intelligent for your average islamophobe, and they're all too uneducated to even know what the Marxists were talking about...

Oh, and several of them were of the dangerous cultural-Marxist flavour as well...


im reading about Derrida and Baudrillard atm

First of all: you have my deepest condolences.


if you have a less vague/more serious question, perhaps i can help you or pass the question on for you.

Well, as chronic vagueness seems to be a trademark of these writers, you'd think it was appropriate to ask them vague questions...

But okay, I've got a question which is as concrete as it gets:

Kristian Bjørkdahl attempted to defend Latour from Elster's criticism. As one example of Latour's worth, he attempted to explain that 2+2=4 is not necessarily true. Rather, 2+2=4 is just a convention that scientists agree on, and represents no fundamental truth(which doesn't seem to exist anyway, but that's another story). 2+2=4 s apparently only true because of the meaning given to "2", "+", etc.

Now, as I see it, this sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of what mathematics actually are. So, my question is: is it possible to maintain that 2+2=4 does not represent a fundamental fact without having misunderstood the very basis of what mathematics are?

[The Stranger]

Actually, this is the reason I've been reading these, Sarmatian. It first started when Latour was awarded the Ludwig Holberg-prize(major irony alert) earlier this year. Fast forward a couple of days, and the old and bitter professor Jon Elster publishes a chronicle in aftenposten, demanding the prize is shut down as it has disgraced itself by giving awards to charlatans(Kristeva, Jameson and Latour). This sparked several other chronicles, either attacking Elster or joining his attack on Latour.

These were published on the net as well, with open commentaries. Now, these are usually cesspits of vulgarities from "the facebook-conservatives"(derogatory norwegian term for the right-wing nonsense manifesting itself on the net). On these articles, however, it was completely silent. I found this fact both interesting and hilarious. What we had was a high temperature debate between Marxists attacking each other for politically correct science. You'd think that would make any right-winger firing on all cylinders, yet it was completely silent. One of the chroniclers even joined the comment section, yet no right-winger reared its head, it was just a collection of various academics. Apparently, the debate was conducted at a level too intelligent for your average islamophobe, and they're all too uneducated to even know what the Marxists were talking about...

Oh, and several of them were of the dangerous cultural-Marxist flavour as well...



First of all: you have my deepest condolences.



Well, as chronic vagueness seems to be a trademark of these writers, you'd think it was appropriate to ask them vague questions...

But okay, I've got a question which is as concrete as it gets:

Kristian Bjørkdahl attempted to defend Latour from Elster's criticism. As one example of Latour's worth, he attempted to explain that 2+2=4 is not necessarily true. Rather, 2+2=4 is just a convention that scientists agree on, and represents no fundamental truth(which doesn't seem to exist anyway, but that's another story). 2+2=4 s apparently only true because of the meaning given to "2", "+", etc.

Now, as I see it, this sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of what mathematics actually are. So, my question is: is it possible to maintain that 2+2=4 does not represent a fundamental fact without having misunderstood the very basis of what mathematics are?

what ive read of baudrillard, your condolences are much appreciated, Derrida is pretty interesting stuff tho.

They no doubt would have no problem with answering your "vague" question :P but as a student, and im not really into that type of philosophy/sociology/post-structuralism, so i need some more stuff to work with

As to your question, that is a good question and i dont know if i have sufficient knowledge of latours work to give the answer it deserves, but i will think about it a bit and read up a lil bit, and ill come back to you about it later. I assume i will be playing the devils advocate :P

You are a math teacher right? Could you perhaps post or pm me in short (and in a comprehensible way for a theorethical math noob) what you think the basis of mathematics is? that would give me something to cling onto :P

[HoreTore]

As I have understood it, Latour and his ilk goes on a wild chase on the "inner meaning"(or whatever term you want to use) of the statement "2+2=4", and claims that there is no fundamental truth in that statement(nor is there such a thing anywhere).

This is a fundamental error. "2+2=4" is a an abstraction of a fundamental truth which can be represented in the real world(like all maths are), the truth that if you have 2 apples and then get 2 more, you end up with 4 apples. It just doesn't get any more fundamental than that, and I see absolutely no way that anyone can claim that is not so without being a charlatan who conceals his nonsense with fancy words.

The way we represent "2+2=4" is irrelevant and can be(and has been) represented in a zillion ways. The fundamental truth behind it, however, is set in stone and cannot be questioned in any way.


Either I'm missing something in their argument, or all of those guys are hacks. Jon Elster seems to think it's the latter.


EDIT: I can give you another one too though: Latour has stated that there is no difference between a description and an explanation, and that "if a description needs an explanation, it's a bad description". How can such a statement be justified, as all science rests on the clear division between the description of a singular event and the explanation through general rules?

[Montmorency]

the truth that if you have 2 apples and then get 2 more, you end up with 4 apples. It just doesn't get any more fundamental than that, and I see absolutely no way that anyone can claim that is not so without being a charlatan who conceals his nonsense with fancy words.



The way we represent "2+2=4" is irrelevant and can be(and has been) represented in a zillion ways. The fundamental truth behind it, however, is set in stone and cannot be questioned in any way.

Those are some strong ontological and epistemological assumptions. If these Continentals are coming from an anti-realist angle, then maybe they're not so bad after all? :wink:


EDIT: I can give you another one too though: Latour has stated that there is no difference between a description and an explanation, and that "if a description needs an explanation, it's a bad description". How can such a statement be justified, as all science rests on the clear division between the description of a singular event and the explanation through general rules?

I do know that one Continental view is that science "can only describe, not explain". Maybe related?

I've heard that somewhere - who knows - but here's (http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept06/Weinberg/Weinberg.html) an essay on the subject a quick search found.


It might be supposed that something is explained when we find its cause, but an influential 1913 paper by Bertrand Russell had argued that "the word `cause' is so inextricably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable" 2. This left philosophers like Wittgenstein with only one candidate for a distinction between explanation and description, one that is teleological, defining an explanation as a statement of the purpose of the thing explained.

To be honest, I don't quite get Latour, in light of this. Maybe he means that descriptions are teleological too? Or as teleology must be abandoned there can no longer be a distinction between "explanation" and "description"?


THE TROUBLESOME WORD "fundamental" can't be left out of this definition, because deduction itself doesn't carry a sense of direction; it often works both ways. The best example I know is provided by the relation between the laws of Newton and the laws of Kepler. Everyone knows that Newton discovered not only a law that says the force of gravity decreases with the inverse square of the distance, but also a law of motion that tells how bodies move under the influence of any sort of force. Somewhat earlier, Kepler had described three laws of planetary motion: planets move on ellipses with the sun at the focus; the line from the sun to any planet sweeps over equal areas in equal times; and the squares of the periods (the times it takes the various planets to go around their orbits) are proportional to the cubes of the major diameters of the planets' orbits.

It is usual to say that Newton's laws explain Kepler's. But historically Newton's law of gravitation was deduced from Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Edmund Halley, Christopher Wren, and Robert Hooke all used Kepler's relation between the squares of the periods and the cubes of the diameters (taking the orbits as circles) to deduce an inverse square law of gravitation, and then Newton extended the argument to elliptical orbits. Today, of course, when you study mechanics you learn to deduce Kepler's laws from Newton's laws, not vice versa. We have a deep sense that Newton's laws are more fundamental than Kepler's laws, and it is in that sense that Newton's laws explain Kepler's laws rather than the other way around. But it's not easy to put a precise meaning to the idea that one physical principle is more fundamental than another.

It is tempting to say that more fundamental means more comprehensive. Perhaps the best-known attempt to capture the meaning that scientists give to explanation was that of Carl Hempel. In his well-known 1948 article written with Paul Oppenheim, he remarked that "the explanation of a general regularity consists in subsuming it under another more comprehensive regularity, under a more general law". 4 But this doesn't remove the difficulty. One might say for instance that Newton's laws govern not only the motions of planets but also the tides on Earth, the falling of fruits from trees, and so on, while Kepler's laws deal with the more limited context of planetary motions. But that isn't strictly true. Kepler's laws, to the extent that classical mechanics applies at all, also govern the motion of electrons around the nucleus, where gravity is irrelevant. So there is a sense in which Kepler's laws have a generality that Newton's laws don't have. Yet it would feel absurd to say that Kepler's laws explain Newton's, while everyone (except perhaps a philosophical purist) is comfortable with the statement that Newton's laws explain Kepler's.

This example of Newton's and Kepler's laws is a bit artificial, because there is no real doubt about which is the explanation of the other. In other cases the question of what explains what is more difficult, and more important. Here is an example. When quantum mechanics is applied to Einstein's general theory of relativity one finds that the energy and momentum in a gravitational field come in bundles known as gravitons, particles that have zero mass, like the particle of light, the photon, but have a spin equal to two (that is, twice the spin of the photon). On the other hand, it has been shown that any particle whose mass is zero and whose spin is equal to two will behave just the way that gravitons do in general relativity, and that the exchange of these gravitons will produce just the gravitational effects that are predicted by general relativity. Further, it is a general prediction of string theory that there must exist particles of mass zero and spin two. So is the existence of the graviton explained by the general theory of relativity, or is the general theory of relativity explained by the existence of the graviton? We don't know. On the answer to this question hinges a choice of our vision of the future of physics - will it be based on space-time geometry, as in general relativity, or on some theory like string theory that predicts the existence of gravitons?

THE IDEA OF EXPLANATION as deduction also runs into trouble when we consider physical principles that seem to transcend the principles from which they have been deduced. This is especially true of thermodynamics, the science of heat and temperature and entropy. After the laws of thermodynamics had been formulated in the nineteenth century, Ludwig Boltzmann succeeded in deducing these laws from statistical mechanics, the physics of macroscopic samples of matter that are composed of large numbers of individual molecules. Boltzmann's explanation of thermodynamics in terms of statistical mechanics became widely accepted, even though it was resisted by Max Planck, Ernst Zermelo, and a few other physicists who held on to the older view of the laws of thermodynamics as free-standing physical principles, as fundamental as any others. But then the work of Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking in the twentieth century showed that thermodynamics also applies to black holes, and not because they are composed of many molecules, but simply because they have a surface from which no particle or light ray can ever emerge. So thermodynamics seems to transcend the statistical mechanics of many-body systems from which it was originally deduced.

Nevertheless, I would argue that there is a sense in which the laws of thermodynamics are not as fundamental as the principles of general relativity or the Standard Model of elementary particles. It is important here to distinguish two different aspects of thermodynamics. On one hand, thermodynamics is a formal system that allows us to deduce interesting consequences from a few simple laws, wherever those laws apply. The laws apply to black holes, they apply to steam boilers, and to many other systems. But they don't apply everywhere. Thermodynamics would have no meaning if applied to a single atom. To find out whether the laws of thermodynamics apply to a particular physical system, you have to ask whether the laws of thermodynamics can be deduced from what you know about that system. Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't. Thermodynamics itself is never the explanation of anything - you always have to ask why thermodynamics applies to whatever system you are studying, and you do this by deducing the laws of thermodynamics from whatever more fundamental principles happen to be relevant to that system.

In this respect, I don't see much difference between thermodynamics and Euclidean geometry. After all, Euclidean geometry applies in an astonishing variety of contexts. If three people agree that each one will measure the angle between the lines of sight to the other two, and then they get together and add up those angles, the sum will be 180 degrees. And you will get the same 180-degree result for the sum of the angles of a triangle made of steel bars or of pencil lines on a piece of paper. So it may seem that geometry is more fundamental than optics or mechanics. But Euclidean geometry is a formal system of inference based on postulates that may or may not apply in a given situation. As we learned from Einstein's general theory of relativity, the Euclidean system does not apply in gravitational fields, though it is a very good approximation in the relatively weak gravitational field of the earth in which it was developed by Euclid. When we use Euclidean geometry to explain anything in nature we are tacitly relying on general relativity to explain why Euclidean geometry applies in the case at hand.

[HoreTore]

I've found nothing so far which justifies picking their theories out of the garbage bin, that's for sure...

These guys are prime examples of why most philosophy is a waste of time and energy, and little more than the wanking circle of the clueless.

[Tellos Athenaios]

The main application of their ideas is in history and literature AFAIK, as a counterpoint to grand narrative (Marxist) history. However that vein was mined to exhaustion about 50 years ago. The problem with their work is that while it might yield some interesting theoretical party tricks, by and large it only serves to make the observer lose all confidence in philosophy as a discipline. Drilling down to details of less than a planck length simply doesn't really do the field of philosophy any favours; you don't solve big questions or explain big theoretical problems with new found models of the world nor does it improve the literature in any way (it gets progressively harder to stomach any of it).

[The Stranger]

The main application of their ideas is in history and literature AFAIK, as a counterpoint to grand narrative (Marxist) history. However that vein was mined to exhaustion about 50 years ago. The problem with their work is that while it might yield some interesting theoretical party tricks, by and large it only serves to make the observer lose all confidence in philosophy as a discipline. Drilling down to details of less than a planck length simply doesn't really do the field of philosophy any favours; you don't solve big questions or explain big theoretical problems with new found models of the world nor does it improve the literature in any way (it gets progressively harder to stomach any of it).

im not really wellread in this post-structuralist philosophy and apart from a little bit of phenomenology and hermeneutics im not really interested in it. however i do believe that philosophy can be and has been influential. one obvious example is how marx his ideas have determined the lives of millions of people, pretty much half the earths population at one point. and it can be argued if marx was a philosopher, i suppose every discipline would try to claim him if they backed his ideas, but he was clearly influenced by "true" philosophers, such as hegel and thus also kant.

it really kinda depends what type of things you talk about, but imo the beauty of philosophy, that you can pretty much apply it to anything, is also its danger. In short though, there are many misconceptions about it which are in no way accurate or founded in "reality/fact/whatever". It is important to keep people on their toes and not slump into dogmas, something which happens even in science, despite of what many people would like to believe. You may not like continental philosophy which is in many ways about "dreamy" subjects because it has no use or benefit, but i still think it is valuable and important when a philosopher like Heidegger explores the consequenses and dangers of a culture and way of thinking that is totally fixated on usefulness and functionality or instrumental rationality.

it is one of the fundamental traditions in european history and i dont think you can really understand many things that have happened on an intellectual level and which sometimes had more or less widespread consequenses if you do not atleast know philosophy, whether you agree is something else. but many notions you have about knowledge, about existence of things in the world, many concepts in modern science (even though now they may have a different content, still stand in the line of that tradition, think only of atoms, essences etc) all start with what a few greeks thought up, and perhaps some people before them, though we have no written statements to attest to it and thus if it was so, it is now lost in time.

many people often make jokes about philosophy of science but I think it is more because it makes them uncomfortable for some reason than anything else because there actually have been some very influential things that have come from that corner. Kuhn being the most famous but Goodman imo should be almost just as famous for pretty much proving that induction is irrational while it is still, after everyone almost agrees that his work is irrefutable, one of the most common methods of justification used in science. ofcourse you can simply claim it is all fancy wordplay and hocus-pocus, but that is hardly a sound counter-argument. Ridicule is just a sign of poor understanding in many cases.



Kristian Bjørkdahl attempted to defend Latour from Elster's criticism. As one example of Latour's worth, he attempted to explain that 2+2=4 is not necessarily true. Rather, 2+2=4 is just a convention that scientists agree on, and represents no fundamental truth(which doesn't seem to exist anyway, but that's another story). 2+2=4 s apparently only true because of the meaning given to "2", "+", etc.

Now, as I see it, this sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of what mathematics actually are. So, my question is: is it possible to maintain that 2+2=4 does not represent a fundamental fact without having misunderstood the very basis of what mathematics are?

my first explanation of this would be that he is trying to claim that mathematics does not exist in the world as you say it does, there are never 4 (or any number of) apples in the world, just a bunch of individual apples. That we say that there are 1, 2, 3, 4, or 2x1 + 2x1 = 4 apples is something that we force onto the world from or with the power of our cognitive structures. In that sense it is only a convention in the sense that we agreed, or that some pioneers decreed, that these tokens must represent an abstract notion which we project onto the world and must behave in a certain way. So we do not discover math in the world, we project it onto the world even though the object of its projection is something in the world (an apple, a car, whatever).

Im not sure if that made sense, and i dont know if that is what he meant to say. I can ask my professor the question if you really want a good answer.



I can give you another one too though: Latour has stated that there is no difference between a description and an explanation, and that "if a description needs an explanation, it's a bad description". How can such a statement be justified, as all science rests on the clear division between the description of a singular event and the explanation through general rules?

I think here you misunderstand him, what you mean is more the observation of a singular event instead of the description. I think description is used here in a different way than the daily use of it.

I think, in the light of this essay, http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept06/Weinberg/Weinberg.html, that Latour is actually arguing in favor of science by claiming that if science can describe things in the world it can also explain things in the world.

[Montmorency]

Meillasoux - Brassier - Churchland - Dennet - Chalmers - Metzinger - Tononi - Edelman - Searle - Bakker

Philosophers worth reading?

Of course I must admit to having read precious little of them. :clown:

[The Stranger]

dennet is certainly interesting imo. but it comes down to taste in most cases. einstein is undeniably important and worth reading, but for the life of me i cant be bothered to read it.

[Tellos Athenaios]

im not really wellread in this post-structuralist philosophy and apart from a little bit of phenomenology and hermeneutics im not really interested in it. however i do believe that philosophy can be and has been influential. one obvious example is how marx his ideas have determined the lives of millions of people, pretty much half the earths population at one point. and it can be argued if marx was a philosopher, i suppose every discipline would try to claim him if they backed his ideas, but he was clearly influenced by "true" philosophers, such as hegel and thus also kant.

it really kinda depends what type of things you talk about, but imo the beauty of philosophy, that you can pretty much apply it to anything, is also its danger. In short though, there are many misconceptions about it which are in no way accurate or founded in "reality/fact/whatever". It is important to keep people on their toes and not slump into dogmas, something which happens even in science, despite of what many people would like to believe. You may not like continental philosophy which is in many ways about "dreamy" subjects because it has no use or benefit, but i still think it is valuable and important when a philosopher like Heidegger explores the consequenses and dangers of a culture and way of thinking that is totally fixated on usefulness and functionality or instrumental rationality.

it is one of the fundamental traditions in european history and i dont think you can really understand many things that have happened on an intellectual level and which sometimes had more or less widespread consequenses if you do not atleast know philosophy, whether you agree is something else. but many notions you have about knowledge, about existence of things in the world, many concepts in modern science (even though now they may have a different content, still stand in the line of that tradition, think only of atoms, essences etc) all start with what a few greeks thought up, and perhaps some people before them, though we have no written statements to attest to it and thus if it was so, it is now lost in time.

many people often make jokes about philosophy of science but I think it is more because it makes them uncomfortable for some reason than anything else because there actually have been some very influential things that have come from that corner. Kuhn being the most famous but Goodman imo should be almost just as famous for pretty much proving that induction is irrational while it is still, after everyone almost agrees that his work is irrefutable, one of the most common methods of justification used in science. ofcourse you can simply claim it is all fancy wordplay and hocus-pocus, but that is hardly a sound counter-argument. Ridicule is just a sign of poor understanding in many cases.

The problem with the post-structuralists is that it sort-of-kind-of forces philosophy into the corner of the obscure and irrelevant. Not because the angels-on-pinhead type debate it revels in is necessarily obscure or irrelevant but rather because that is not a theoretical detail or exercise but apparently the actual core of the discipline. For example, CS has some of that too (
http://james-iry.blogspot.nl/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) as exemplified by

Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?" and let's not get started on Software Engineering. However ostensibly both CS and Software Engineering are not all hung up about the angels on the pinhead, but on getting on with life and discovering new things. This is where post structuralism falls down: having dug so deep to undermine everything they kind of lost sight of the entrance/exit of the mineshaft. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has given up on the rescue and simply put up some yellow tape and danger signs near the entrance/exit.

Try and compare with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine etc. Whatever their errors, at least they were trying to solve thorny questions and grapple with the big theory questions of their day -- advancing the field.


my first explanation of this would be that he is trying to claim that mathematics does not exist in the world as you say it does, there are never 4 (or any number of) apples in the world, just a bunch of individual apples. That we say that there are 1, 2, 3, 4, or 2x1 + 2x1 = 4 apples is something that we force onto the world from or with the power of our cognitive structures. In that sense it is only a convention in the sense that we agreed, or that some pioneers decreed, that these tokens must represent an abstract notion which we project onto the world and must behave in a certain way. So we do not discover math in the world, we project it onto the world even though the object of its projection is something in the world (an apple, a car, whatever).

Which is kind of why HoreTore is right to dismiss them. Mathematics is fundamentally not a vague description of the world, it is rather a precise and abstract definition based on what we see of the world. It is exactly the opposite of what post structuralist navel gazing would have you believe. 1 + 1 = 2, not because one bean and another bean makes two beans instead of "some beans", but because 1 + 1 = 2 is proven Math (by Bertrand Russell IIRC). It is no coincidence that we can describe the world in terms of Mathematics, we defined the Mathematics so we could do it in a convenient way. That's also why even basic Math today used to be pretty state of the art only 100 years ago, whereas in other areas the state of the art has only recently advanced beyond what it was even thousands of years ago.

This also means that you (the philosophers) have to do rather better than playing at Humpty Dumpty with the words; you have to produce something of real knowledge, of real value. Not everyone is willing to venture past the looking glass for your argument's sake. Which also explains why philosophy doesn't really make the waves it could do even 100 years ago, it long ceded the role of soul searching and answering existential questions to the natural sciences in favour of attacking dictionary definitions.

Philosophy has real use, but in order to be recognised and to fulfill its potential it might need to actually engage with the wider world.

[CountArach]

The main application of their ideas is in history and literature AFAIK, as a counterpoint to grand narrative (Marxist) history.
This. Philosophy is mostly applicable to social science.

As for the problem with 2+2=4, the way I see it is that while we can all accept it discursively and there are obvious practical uses to it, there is no inherent meaning in the signified "2" nor the signified "+" and hence it is hard to defend their existence as a real and extant phenomenon. It is possible to at least conceive of a mathematical system built on a different numerical system which can explain the signified "4" without reference to "2" or "+" or which would not even seek to discover "4" but rather have a different formulation for that same signified. That is to say, "2+2=4" is only one way of expressing a problem (an explanation "=" of "4") and one discursively-grounded way of discovering it - "2+2". It is about breaking down our assumptions about what is inherent and instead showing that our ideas about reality are inescapably grounded in a socio-linguistic discourse.

I'm not sure what this all leads to, but how do we know that it doesn't lead anywhere without exploring it? Also note that I'm not defending the logic of the exploration, and this is only my guess at their argument, but rather I think that it is important that all disciplines are examined from a post-structuralist perspective because it can often push new things into the limelight that people had not considered before. It is happening right now with history and it will almost certainly happen to the sciences at some point.

[The Stranger]

The problem with the post-structuralists is that it sort-of-kind-of forces philosophy into the corner of the obscure and irrelevant. Not because the angels-on-pinhead type debate it revels in is necessarily obscure or irrelevant but rather because that is not a theoretical detail or exercise but apparently the actual core of the discipline. For example, CS has some of that too (
http://james-iry.blogspot.nl/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html) as exemplified by and let's not get started on Software Engineering. However ostensibly both CS and Software Engineering are not all hung up about the angels on the pinhead, but on getting on with life and discovering new things. This is where post structuralism falls down: having dug so deep to undermine everything they kind of lost sight of the entrance/exit of the mineshaft. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has given up on the rescue and simply put up some yellow tape and danger signs near the entrance/exit.

Try and compare with Plato, Aristotle, Augustine etc. Whatever their errors, at least they were trying to solve thorny questions and grapple with the big theory questions of their day -- advancing the field.



Which is kind of why HoreTore is right to dismiss them. Mathematics is fundamentally not a vague description of the world, it is rather a precise and abstract definition based on what we see of the world. It is exactly the opposite of what post structuralist navel gazing would have you believe. 1 + 1 = 2, not because one bean and another bean makes two beans instead of "some beans", but because 1 + 1 = 2 is proven Math (by Bertrand Russell IIRC). It is no coincidence that we can describe the world in terms of Mathematics, we defined the Mathematics so we could do it in a convenient way. That's also why even basic Math today used to be pretty state of the art only 100 years ago, whereas in other areas the state of the art has only recently advanced beyond what it was even thousands of years ago.

This also means that you (the philosophers) have to do rather better than playing at Humpty Dumpty with the words; you have to produce something of real knowledge, of real value. Not everyone is willing to venture past the looking glass for your argument's sake. Which also explains why philosophy doesn't really make the waves it could do even 100 years ago, it long ceded the role of soul searching and answering existential questions to the natural sciences in favour of attacking dictionary definitions.

Philosophy has real use, but in order to be recognised and to fulfill its potential it might need to actually engage with the wider world.

but post-structuralism is only a small portion of philosophy, in a very specific time and also pretty much located in france, why would you strike down the entire discipline of philosophy based on their "errors". atleast that was the feeling i got from your post and which is why i wrote my response, maybe i misunderstood.

[Greyblades]

Wow, It's amazing to witness all the myriad ways there are to say nothing at all.

[Tellos Athenaios]

This. Philosophy is mostly applicable to social science.

As for the problem with 2+2=4, the way I see it is that while we can all accept it discursively and there are obvious practical uses to it, there is no inherent meaning in the signified "2" nor the signified "+" and hence it is hard to defend their existence as a real and extant phenomenon. It is possible to at least conceive of a mathematical system built on a different numerical system which can explain the signified "4" without reference to "2" or "+" or which would not even seek to discover "4" but rather have a different formulation for that same signified. That is to say, "2+2=4" is only one way of expressing a problem (an explanation "=" of "4") and one discursively-grounded way of discovering it - "2+2". It is about breaking down our assumptions about what is inherent and instead showing that our ideas about reality are inescapably grounded in a socio-linguistic discourse.

The point is: Mathematics defines the concept of 2, namely 2 means "2 units". Then that's, you know, defined. By definition. You can define different numerical systems (sets and Fibonacci numbers spring to mind) but that doesn't alter the meaning of "2" or "2 + 2" in any way, you just write it differently. If you want you can describe 2 + 2 = 4 like this:


// notation using the empty set by induction, the value of a number is the cardinality of its representation, pretty much the apples example
{Ø, {Ø}} + {Ø, {Ø}} = {Ø, {Ø}, {Ø, {Ø}}, {Ø, {Ø}, {Ø, {Ø}}}}

Or this:


// notation using the Fibbonaci sequence, with F(0) = 1, F(1) = , F(2) = 2. If you want to be pedantic, 4 is F(2) . F(2).
F2 + F2 = 2 F2
// F1 + F2 = F3 = 3
// F3 + F3 = F4F1 = 6



I'm not sure what this all leads to, but how do we know that it doesn't lead anywhere without exploring it? Also note that I'm not defending the logic of the exploration, and this is only my guess at their argument, but rather I think that it is important that all disciplines are examined from a post-structuralist perspective because it can often push new things into the limelight that people had not considered before. It is happening right now with history and it will almost certainly happen to the sciences at some point.

As things stand it is considered proven that you cannot unify all of Mathematics in one big theory of everything, yet despite that nobody is rushing to investigate the meaning of '2'. There is not much point. It turns out you can represent '2' in any number of ways, but that is merely useful in specific problem domains in the same way a metaphor is a useful literary device -- it does not fundamentally alter anything in Mathematics. Similarly it is quite clear that the Standard Model is not a fully adequate description of the physics in the known universe, but people don't rush to investigate the meaning of the word "quantum" or "quark".

Fundamentally, people in other sciences don't reject observable reality nor do they focus solely on the specific labels we choose to assign to observations. If words are inadequate or insufficient to describe the situation fully, we'll make new ones. Perhaps not as philosophically satisfying, but a good deal more practical and productive.


but post-structuralism is only a small portion of philosophy, in a very specific time and also pretty much located in france, why would you strike down the entire discipline of philosophy based on their "errors". atleast that was the feeling i got from your post and which is why i wrote my response, maybe i misunderstood.

As I see it the job of philosophy is probably best explained by referring to the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which a bunch of philosopher's let Deep Thought decide the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. When presented with the result they are disappointed and Deep Thought asks them whether they are sure what their question means. Next, they promptly commission the construction of an even bigger computer to compute the question to the answer to the question itself.

That is all backwards. It's the job of the philosophers to shape the questions and analyse the answers (in the context of the questions). Post structuralism is exactly that backwards approach: content to apply Deep Thought to the task (of the meaning of words) and leave it at that. It doesn't really bother with formulating questions outside the process of its own analytical Deep Thought on hidden assumptions. But those questions are precisely where true philosophy begins; the precise meaning of words is merely a means to an end, an analytical side-show and not even a particularly interesting one at that. That's my objection to post structuralism.

[The Stranger]

As I see it the job of philosophy is probably best explained by referring to the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which a bunch of philosopher's let Deep Thought decide the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything. When presented with the result they are disappointed and Deep Thought asks them whether they are sure what their question means. Next, they promptly commission the construction of an even bigger computer to compute the question to the answer to the question itself.

That is all backwards. It's the job of the philosophers to shape the questions and analyse the answers (in the context of the questions). Post structuralism is exactly that backwards approach: content to apply Deep Thought to the task (of the meaning of words) and leave it at that. It doesn't really bother with formulating questions outside the process of its own analytical Deep Thought on hidden assumptions. But those questions are precisely where true philosophy begins; the precise meaning of words is merely a means to an end, an analytical side-show and not even a particularly interesting one at that. That's my objection to post structuralism.

but you are kinda forgetting the context and time in which many of these works were written, most of them are negative works which criticize other works which posited a positive truth or depiction of reality. They often, atleast in the case of Derrida, tried to show that what these people wanted to do, was not possible and that the reason of why their endeavour failed was already embedded in the their work itself. They go into language so deeply because the people they were criticizing had pretty much enthroned language and attributed to it all kinds of powers that according to the post structuralists were not as straightforward and unproblematic as those people would have wanted everyone to believe.

as the name already implies, i think its a mistake to regard post structuralism as something independent.

[Papewaio]

In a war where are the philosophers deployed and do the winning nations spirit them away?

[The Stranger]

... what does that have to do with anything?

[Papewaio]

It's a utility argument. Which of course assumes that utility exists.

Essentially when push comes to shove how valuable are philosophers in a war? Does the opposing side value them enough to assassinate them or spirit them away post war?

[The Stranger]

i know its an utility argument but do you seriously believe everything should have utility?

also in line with what you say you should rephrase to "how useful are philosophers in a war?" i believe it has value, just as art and literature, happiness and glory. it is about as useful as shakespeare and tolkien or george martin would be in a war, but what else would men be fighting for? sure, the big bosses may all do it for greed and power but not the enlisted soldier.

and it is my sincerest hope, perhaps in vain, that philosophy will help avoid war in which case your question would be rendered obsolete. every intelligent soul in the western world has in one way or another been influenced by the products of philosophy, and i think in many ways we are better of for it. the same is true of science, but i have never seen them as things that oppose each other.

anyway i think were trailing off topic now. this was never about philosophy in general, just a certain wave.

[Papewaio]

Numbers are a concept. Not all numbers have a tangible physical counterpart. For instance imaginary numbers are an idea.

Now having said that. It doesn't mean that all numbers do not have a physical counterpart or that concepts cannot have a concrete counterpart. Money, and the value of it is a concept.

But I'm pretty sure that those who argue that there is no physical analog to numbers can quickly be tested and found wanting.

[Montmorency]

But I'm pretty sure that those who argue that there is no physical analog to numbers can quickly be tested and found wanting.

Numbers are of course physical in the sense of being molecules and electro-magnetic fields within the human CNS.

But anti-realism, yo.