Latour, Kristeva, Derrida, Baudrillard, etc

[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/S.../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.

[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 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.

[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 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?