Just as you claim that Alan Sokal saved your sanity Helen, your wonderful clarity of thought and expression has played, and continues to play, an enormous role in saving mine. Thank you. 🙏
Ultimately, everything distills down to what works. It should be obvious to everyone that disciplined empirical methods have been successful in giving us more control over what matters to us, and that no other approach has enabled us to achieve such control over our own welfare and future. To abandon that discipline with its uniquely demonstrated power to achieve positive results, merely because we have sometimes been wrong, merely because there is no guarantee we will be, or always are, correct, merely because we want more than we have, merely because everything is not always equally fair to everyone, is not constructive. On the contrary, it is foolish since there is no alternative method that has effectively delivered results serving our self-interest.
What a wonderful tribute. I love your finely wrought sentences. Also, it would have been so fun to see you frustrating the hell out of your professors!
You or your readers might find this very recent book worth knowing about. It is by Emily Eakin and the title is The Frenchmen or; my life in theory.
The writer was captivated by French philosophical and literary "theory" in college and graduate school; she now sees it in a more mature perspective. The pleasure is partly in learning about the rather unusual lives of the authors in this tradition. There is no "death of the author" in Eakin's book, except for actual death, of course.
Yes, interesting, and an excellent summary of the problems. Springer-Nature were amongst a number of publishers that made "woke" science the only acceptable form quite explicitly in their editorials a few years ago. It has been a death knell for the influence of fascinating fields like Behavioural Genetics and Evolutionary Psychology, which tend to challenge the weaker, sentimental social psychological field, in which the moral handbook usurps empiricism.
There was some interesting work done about 2 years ago by Cory Clark, which surfaced and quantified prejudices of psychology academics in the UK, and I wouldn't believe a single recent paper based on what she found. https://www.coryjclark.com/. Fundamentally more than half of women would put social equity concerns about "truth". Many believe ostracisation, punishment and cancellation appropriate for those whose conclusions may challenge oppressor-oppressed narratives. This is a fundamental issue in such fields, as "attribution" of cause and effect is pretty much the sum of what they study and write about.
I agree (as a scientist) we should hold our views lightly, but the one we should hold the tightest at any given moment is the one where the facts most support it (while being honest about the limitations. If possible, we should seek levels of confidence with our findings): The gravitational constant is 9.8m/s squared - and seems to be the same everywhere in the universe. However, more recent science (multi-dimensionality, the paradoxes of time and contentious theories of consciousness) mean that there may be a set of presently-unknown conditions where it might not be. However, if we are building an aeroplane, we can trust “g” enough to base our design on it.
Triangulation is really useful for getting closer to "the truth" (even if we never reach it), and indeed the Superforecasting field (see Philip Tetlock) found that the people most able to predict an array of political, economic or technological events and trends (thus, who evidently, have the best grasp on what is driving thing), pursued a practice of triangulating evidence from different fields and combining probabilities based on what each perspective suggested would happen
It fundamentally feels sometimes like academia is just the slowest kid on the block - having incubated itself from complexity and adopting a weak (often puerile and facile) handbook of moral “truths” that holds the sophistication of a colouring book.
I agree to some extent that we cannot say anything is "true" but it's also a pedantic point (as per Helen’s example of the giraffe and the ant). Radical scepticism seems very much like a 5 year old's argument, when children discover that they can bait their parents by asking "but, why?" to every answer given to their last question. What we can say is that, at any given moment, we can strive for our best version of causality, and our best predictions, and a level of confidence about both. Let other ideas compete.
One last point: There are the stated beliefs of "radical sceptics" and then there is the revealed evidence of what they believe from their actions. As far as I know, most don't go and live voluntarily in segregated neighbourhoods to become “enriched”, or calculate what percentage of their salary to give away to assure that they are supporting social equity, or hold their own kids back to ensure racial equity, or skip nice holidays to save the planet. Neither do they seem bothered about evaluating whether their ideas - translated into plans and policies - do actually lead to "good", or waste time and money, perpetuate problems, or create new ones. (White privilege training is a case in point, with evidence that it cements any racial hostility).
The only answer I can see just now is that non-woke/pro enlightenment folk will eventually congregate in parts of the world to create new cultural centres where reason trumps tribalism, myths and narcissistic cult adherence. In the meantime, the best social science exists outside of journals, in a myriad of sources.
Yes, its a little more nuanced than my headline, but do watch Cory Clark and Chris Williamson talk on YT. Its a skew not a seismic difference and could well relate to underlying personality factors (e.g openess, conscientiousness) - which themselves vary by sex. Clark describes that women would also want things to be true rather than false, but when truth clases with social justice, they more likely would temper (or even disregard) truth for social equity/justice concerns.
They would perhaps argue that intellect subsumes social justice AND truth (as Wokeism requires this sort of religious self-righteousness and bigotry - in saying that the best answer to a question is a mix of truth and my personal hunches on what i feel is a morally "good" answer).
Editorial guidelines, research policies et al are all written in euphamisms - so its never explicit. E.g. Springer-Nature write "At Springer Nature our mission is to be part of progress – and that begins with inclusion: of people, perspectives, and ideas... We support inclusive editorial practices, broaden access to knowledge, and strive to ensure our content and platforms are relevant and representative." Sound harmless doesn't it? But a quick look through Google Scholar shows how the skew presents itself. And its emphatic.
I think we women feel more acutely the fact that truth can wound. That's where self-discipline comes in. Sort of like self tough love. Else we start lying to hide the truth, and turn into enablers of that which we oppose.
I am looking into social epistemology, and reflecting how the intelligence of us individuals depends on the structures that nurture and expand that intelligence: libraries and journals and encyclopedias and on and on. And dedication to seeking truth is part of i t. Truth-beauty-goodness. When people throw that in the garbage and anything goes, civ takes a hard hit.
It sounds a very interesting line of study you are doing. "Truth-beauty-goodness" and how people can best pursue the truth. My instrinct is that they are not on an equal footing: If truth dies, can you even know what is good? If truth dies, how do we decide what is beautiful and not? In today's do you think that there might be two definitions for many concepts: justice, equality, fairness, tolerance etc. i.e. two "truths"?.
It is definitely true that our eco-system enables us to be intelligent. However, it then falls to each individual to desire to use that eco-system to devlop their intelligence, doesn't it? rather than cower in whatever beliefs serve one's more impulsive emotional states.
Where you say "truth can wound" - yes! - Its why one of the (many) regrettable concepts lost with the modern age is the idea of "intent". Truth is received differently (i'd imagine) from a place of love, compassion or concern - than from someone trying to belittle/humiliate you.. "A lack of truth can wound" too.
On the men vs women differences: Men are more brutally honest, and have "banter" too, where we cloak truths in a joke. So I think we do have some instincts that truth can wound, but we perhaps more interested in "things" and how they work, than our emotions about those things.
Ultimately, Im not sure if there is a silver bullet insight as to what is behind "Wokeism". Woke people are intelligent, by accepted standards, but that's partly because these are the same people that define what intelligence is (a higher education degree rather than ability to build a house, mend a car)., and they are making a claim to define truth too.
It seems to be a swiss army knife in some ways - like a religious cult: it offers purpose, belonging, certainty, in a crazy often cruel world.
I am wrestling with a more mundane problem than yours about truth for a business venture - what does the best career information/advice look like for young people? Any ideas on the principles would be gratefully received!
Yes, of course men understand that truth can wound. It does not stop them. Men are tough minded. I miss that more and more in our world that's overrun by manipulation in the name of compassion.
When I speak of truth-goodness-beauty I mean it in the sense of us recognizing that we need to subsume our ego to these. They are ineffable and not given to definitions... and yet they are real. You can tell if a building was designed by an architect that willingly subsumed his ego to beauty as a higher power. :-) The key is to carry them in our hearts and allow ourselves be guided by them. For example, a person who is guided by truth will allow themselves be corrected by reality, whereas the other kind of person will attempt to bend reality to their worldview.
As to your question, many years ago I found the Strong-Campbell Inventory very helpful. It's called the Campbell Interest and Skills test now. That, and having a person tell you what's out there, what choices, for your particular situation. When I was very young, 15, I had no such help and picked the wrong kind of high school... and that choice made my later adolescent and early adult years pretty miserable.
"a person who is guided by truth will allow themselves be corrected by reality, whereas the other kind of person will attempt to bend reality to their worldview.".... I link this idea, thanks for sharing your very interesting thoughts Erin :-)
Yet another epistemic crisis is in full swing. Enlightenment, that was the last big one. And before that, the Gutenberg revolution. Another one, to my mind, was 3th century Christianity -- Constantine resolved it by enforced uniformity at Nicea...
This was so much fun to read! :-)
I especially loved the medicine references. Oh and this: "Gender, sexuality, and even sex are all social constructs whose boundaries need to be blurred to liberate [...] the gender non-conforming." This! I would call it more bluntly "fucking with our heads." But then, aren't the postmodernists all? :-)
And the penultimate paragraph.
The only thing that seemed to throw a small wrench into it all was this paragraph: "For a long time, counter-Enlightenment forces came primarily from the reactionary right — traditionalists who wanted to hold on to faith and tradition-based ways of knowing. We might call them the pre-modernists: those who want to turn the clock back to a time before all of this happened and inhabit a fantasy world that never existed."
Perhaps you meant it another way than I am taking it. To me, it seems to besmirch all those of us who think that tradition-based ways of knowing, having been proven to be useful for many generations, should never be tossed out simply for being traditional, and should be initially defended by all who care about the principle of "never knock down a fence before you find out why your ancestors built it there."
Yes, we should take some critiques too e.g. There are arguments that we "traditional way of knowing" people don't use enough, which augment your thoughts (e.g. "we don't believe you... because if you believe what you said, you yourself would have 'blurred your gender boundaries, of those of your children, to liberate yourselves... why say something you don't believe?') or "why replace moral value systems, and ways of constructing knowledge, that have elevated so many people from poverty and created such progress, and replace them with ones where the followers are routinely living with poverty, cruelty and dysfunction?"
However - ultimately - people don't reason themselves out of a position they got yourself via lizard brain impulses for belonging and status.
At the recept CPAC conference, one speaker made the point that the intellectual right (perhaps those who believe in "traditional ways of knowing") spend too long trying to persuade the other side to see the light, rather than cementing our own positions, strategies and knowledge. We pro-enlightenmentists don't seem to have got our act together. Surely its beyond time for pro-truth academics to launch their own credible journals for free academic enquiry and practitioner/managerial research? The current social science journals read more like an agony aunt column and activist rant. It feels like we play nto their hands, rather than creating parallel systems, which have thus far created the most headway (e.g social media/alternative news).
One of the things that's always raised my hackles about "Critical Social Justices" is its inconsistency, e.g. heteronormativity is bad but sex work is empowering, male gaze is bad but burlesque is good... believe all women, just not those white women over there... no is a complete sentence, unless you're a TERF.
It always looked like a sort of moral Gemetria for super smart people: magic wordgames that put them in the right and other people with less social clout in the wrong... and part of the "fun" is the victims knowing on some level that's how it works but having to be publicly thankful for the education.
Now, reading your piece, it sounds like there's an actual academic body of thought that thinks this is a good thing?
Don't they understand that all this works only for so long as normies let it?
The concern is social justice, not truth (or even human flourishing). Helen, i think, captures this very well. So, the logic is that if facts/evidence/data support their case, they will adopt it and elevate it. If the logic is that it doesn't (e.g. because it "reinforces negative stereotypes" or "scapegoats a community") then they would badge those facts as "hateful", "divisive" or just badge them as "misinformation", but never presenting an argument as to why, knowing that the stronger facts and logic are not on their side.
Its fundamentally no different than any other cult or fundamentalist religion in many ways: a) there is a God you shouldn't doubt (social equity/justice) woven into a mythical story of sin and redemption, b) those who criticise are blasphemers (or "uneducated"), c) the only path to richeousness is to follow the teachings, d) you were born with original sin and must repent.
The key differences are though a) you don't give up your own money to give to your "causes", you insist others do. b) you don't forgive, c) you don't repent when your ideas lead to suffering, debt or dysfunction. You just argue that the outcomes result from there not being "enough social justice", or that you can't get rid of hundreds of years of systematic oppression in a mere few years or even decades. (its akin to fundamentalists of other religions telling you that you get your reward in heaven, but you just need to stick with the plan, even as children starve to death etc!)
A cynic might say we choose our values in service of ourselves. What a neat set of values social justice provides a highly salaried academic, media figure or charity worker: Of course they should be rewarded well, they are doing the most important job in the world - correcting injustice and creating a sustainable, just future -well funded, incubated from either the trauma of effortful contributions or scrutiny or accountability. To some, this appeals.
LOL yes. Nailed it. But, we've all experienced the Critical Shit Ray (everything it points at turns to shit) used in bad faith.
What's a revelatory to me at least is that (a) the bad faith is downstream of an actual body of thought - they know they're doing it and think it's a good thing, and (b) they seem to have no awareness that the Critical Shit Ray only works as long as other people let it.
I think it’s clear what you’re saying even in your last section. Without emoticons etc to help, you might be taken out of context and quoted to prove that you’re on the other side! So to be specific and literal to protect you from anyone’s lack of humour and nuance, in your last line “Social Justice” is the good thing that we do want to thrive; the bad thing is “Critical Social Justice”. 🤔
I really appreciate your differentiation among specific, radical and strategic skepticism . And it is certainly a fair point that every paper cannot parse every detail.
Yet, as has seemed true to me of other of your writings, you are so engaged in confronting postmodernism that you go too far in dismissing any value in any perceptions coming from that direction.
I'll clip this bit from your paper:
...the belief that categories such as sex, race, and sexuality possess some inherent and stable meaning — remained suspect. But if those categories were employed strategically and politically..
IF??? And, postmodernism did not create these strategies.
The easiest to pick on here (though not the only) is "race" ... I double-checked with A.I./copilot which reinforces what I have been taught by rational, scientific academics ... that there is very little scientific basis for differentiation by race; it is primarily a 'social construct'. Here's an example of where the power that the 'woke' emphasize deserves consideration.
sorry if mine was not clear. Isn't this "strategic essentialism" what you are criticizing? (while defending the inherent stable meaning of sex, race and sexuality)?
Yes, I am criticising Gayatri Spivak’s concept of strategic essentialism used for the purpose of claiming that people with the same identity have the same ideas. I disagree with that and think it’s clear diversity within groups exist and believe that people should be treated as individuals. I’m not claiming that nobody ever essentialised groups before for strategic reasons. (Was that your criticism?) Of course they did. That’s how prejudice works.
Funny, I was but recently pondering the demise of the ultra-capitalist world hegemony, obviously a decidedly non-scientific, non-ethical, non-progressive, anti-environmental enterprise; wondering how the trails forged by Gallileo and Newton 400 years previous, that has lead to the most radical improvement of the human condition, that has delivered such glorious theories to understand the cosmos, could have brought us to the last gasp of a seemingly efficient and equitable economy to this descent into privlidge, cynicism and inequality.
If only there were some word that could capture this...
You have, of course (head slap) elaborated it.
Liberal!
The liberal, rational, skeptical, empirical philosophy of David Hume!
I bet he would find the ideas of Post-Modernism worthy of the same attention he shed on the arguments of the Reverend Berkley.
Helen Pluckrose should know better. Whether one ultimately agrees with her or not, her account compresses a very heterogeneous intellectual movement into a single epistemological position that many of the figures she discusses would not recognise.
Several points stand out. First, she conflates anti-foundationalism with radical scepticism. Most poststructuralists do not argue that "objective truth is impossible" in the simple sense she attributes to them. Rather, they question whether there exists a view from nowhere—a completely uninterpreted access to reality. That is quite different from saying that no claim is better than any other.
Take Foucault. He repeatedly insists that he is not arguing that truth does not exist. Instead, he studies what he calls regimes of truth: the historical institutions, practices and discourses through which certain statements come to count as true. He is less interested in denying scientific knowledge than in asking how particular sciences emerge and acquire authority.
Likewise, Derrida's famous "there is nothing outside the text" is routinely misread as "nothing exists except language." What he actually argues is that we never encounter reality except through systems of meaning and interpretation. That is an epistemological claim, not an ontological denial of reality.
Second, the contrast between science and postmodernism is drawn far too starkly. Contemporary philosophy of science has long recognised that observation is theory-laden, that paradigms influence inquiry (Kuhn), that underdetermination exists (Quine), and that scientific concepts evolve historically. These ideas are not generally regarded as incompatible with scientific realism. Many postmodern thinkers were engaging with precisely these debates rather than rejecting science wholesale.
Third, the genealogy from postmodernism to "Critical Social Justice" is much more complicated than Pluckrose presents. There certainly are lines of influence, particularly through postcolonial studies, queer theory and critical race theory. But there are also significant discontinuities.
Ironically, many contemporary identity-based movements make claims that classical poststructuralists would have regarded as suspiciously essentialist. For example, treating an identity category as possessing unquestionable epistemic authority sits uneasily with Derrida's deconstruction of stable identities or Foucault's genealogical suspicion of all identity categories. Judith Butler herself has frequently been critical of essentialist identity politics, even while her work has been appropriated by activists.
Fourth, Pluckrose tends to present postmodernism as a unified movement. In reality, it includes thinkers with profoundly different projects:
1. Lyotard is concerned with the collapse of legitimating metanarratives.
2. Foucault studies the historical production of knowledge and institutions.
3. Derrida develops deconstruction as a mode of reading.
4. Baudrillard analyses simulation and media.
5. Deleuze rejects many of the assumptions shared by the others.
Treating them as advancing one coherent epistemology inevitably flattens important differences.
That said, I think Pluckrose's critique does identify a real phenomenon, though perhaps not the one she thinks. There is an identifiable style of contemporary activist discourse that sometimes treats "lived experience" as beyond criticism, regards disagreement as evidence of oppression, and substitutes moral certainty for argument. One can certainly criticise those tendencies.
The question is whether that phenomenon is best understood as the logical consequence of postmodern philosophy or as a selective appropriation of certain postmodern themes combined with activist politics, social media dynamics and institutional incentives. Many scholars—including people sympathetic to poststructuralism—would argue for the latter.
In that sense, I think the strongest version of the critique would not be "postmodernism denies truth." It would be something like: "Postmodernism developed sophisticated critiques of objectivity, universality and power. Some later political movements detached those critiques from their original philosophical context, simplified them into slogans, and combined them with moral absolutism. The result is often far more dogmatic than the thinkers from whom the concepts were borrowed."
That, to my mind, is a historically and philosophically stronger argument than attributing a single doctrine of "radical scepticism" to postmodernism as a whole.
Pluckrose writes as though the choice is between:
1. Objective truth (science), or
2. Radical scepticism (postmodernism).
Thomas Nagel would say that this is far too crude. Objective knowledge is always partial and perspectival, yet it is still genuine knowledge. The "view from nowhere" is not a destination we arrive at but an ideal that guides inquiry.
One of Nagel's characteristic formulations is that objectivity consists in moving towards "a conception that is less dependent on our own particular constitution." That is an asymptotic process rather than an achieved state. This is precisely why Nagel has sometimes been admired by philosophers on both sides of the supposed "realism/postmodern divide". His insistence that consciousness has an irreducibly subjective aspect ("what is it like to be a bat?") is a reminder that some features of reality resist complete objectification. Yet he never concludes that truth is merely socially constructed.
In fact, Nagel would probably regard both Pluckrose and many postmodernists as oversimplifying matters. To Pluckrose he might say: objectivity is much more philosophically problematic than you suggest; there is no literal "view from nowhere." To the more radical postmodernist he might say: acknowledging the impossibility of a completely perspective-free standpoint does not entail abandoning the aspiration to objective truth.
That is why Nagel is often seen as occupying a distinctive middle ground. He takes seriously both the subjective character of human experience and the objective aspirations of reason. The tension between them is not a problem to be solved once and for all, but a permanent feature of philosophy.
Ironically, this means that the phrase "view from nowhere" is often used in debates in almost the opposite way from Nagel's intention. He coined it not to celebrate an attainable God's-eye perspective, but to explore the paradox that our finite, situated minds nevertheless strive for increasingly objective understanding.
It can’t be that I can never address postmodernism in a talk unless I am willing for it to be two hours long and spend 90 minutes on the differences between postmodernism and poststructuralism, the artistic and philosophical movements, the different way they manifested in different countries, the importance of understanding the difference between the critics of postmodernity and the enthusiastic progenitors of the postmodern turn, the difference between reality being out there and the truth being out there and the latter always being mediated through culture and discourse, the ways in which these ideas were evolved in the late 80s and then further bastardised around 2010 before I can talk about the broad manifestations and its attacks on science. Everyone will lose the will to live. But the pro-postmodernists will always derail any more concise discussion of epistemological issues by demanding I do. That’s why I wrote a book doing all of that. So I have thoroughly qualified everything beforehand. Alan Sokal wrote a foreword for it. Those present had read it. I cited it in the written version for anybody who wanted (much) more qualification. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. Theologians always try to derail things this way too. Different modes of address require different levels of depth and complexity and different registers.
Fair enough, but I don't think the analogy with theologians is quite fair. Classical theologians are often among the first to insist on careful distinctions, not because they want to derail a discussion, but because they think different claims require different standards of argument. Aquinas spends pages distinguishing senses of esse; the Cappadocians distinguish ousia from hypostasis; Muslim mutakallimūn distinguish God's essence from His attributes. That isn't obstructionism—it's philosophy. Likewise, if someone objects that "postmodernism rejects truth" is an oversimplification, they may not be demanding a two-hour lecture; they may simply be questioning whether the summary is accurate enough for the conclusions you want to draw from it. Brevity is a legitimate constraint, but it doesn't exempt us from representing the position we're criticising as fairly as possible. If the simplification is essential to making the argument work, then perhaps it is the argument, rather than the objector, that deserves closer scrutiny.
And they are absolutely allowed to think that and say so and restrict their own considerations to the standards of argument they think suited to the topic of God.
Others may feel differently and want to discuss their truth claims if their religion outside of theological norms and instead through biology, geology, physics, neuroscience etc. They can avoid these conversations if they so wish. Most people, however, are not sophisticated theologians and when they have concerns about religion, they tend to be much more material. My question were “Does a god exist and can it hurt me? If so, what does it want and why? Is there any reason to think a particular one exists, that the claims made about the creation of the universe are true? Or that it can make me or anyone I love survive the death of our brains and go on to live in another form experiencing eternal bliss or eternal torment for worshipping the right one correctly, incorrectly or not at all?” If there is no reason to think one does and it can, I’m happy to let the theologians do their thing and direct my attention to things I find more interesting.
I don't disagree with any of that. If the question is whether there is good evidence for miraculous claims about gods, resurrection or an afterlife, then of course biology, cosmology, archaeology, neuroscience and history all have an important role to play. Theology cannot simply insulate empirical claims from empirical scrutiny.
My concern was only with the rhetorical move of likening requests for conceptual precision to "what theologians do." Good philosophy—whether analytic philosophy, philosophy of science or theology—often begins by making distinctions. That's not a peculiarly theological vice.
Ironically, my good friend Alan Sokal himself exemplifies this attention to detail. Intellectual Impostures is painstakingly careful about distinguishing different thinkers, different arguments and different senses of key terms. Sokal didn't criticise postmodernism by saying "they deny truth"; he criticised specific claims made by specific authors, often quoting them at length and analysing them in detail. That method is part of what made the book so persuasive.
So I'd simply extend the same charity to postmodernism that you rightly extended to religion. If we think it's unfair when believers say "science is just another faith," we should also be cautious about saying "postmodernism is just radical scepticism." The strongest critiques are usually the ones that survive after we've granted our opponents their best, most sophisticated formulations.
No, the trait theologians and postmodernists share is trying to derail mundane conversation about it by insisting we instead qualify everything to death and only talk about it through the epistemology and philosophical framework of the believers.
Again, I have already done what you ask in a lengthy book and various factors of it in lengthy essays quoting them at length and analysing them in detail, in both academic papers and more accessible popular form. I’d also like to be able to address it in a talk format and that is what I was invited to do and this is the result. Do you think it is acceptable for me to address the issue in this format or in any which is not a dense academic, theoretical analysis?
I did not say that postmodernism is just radical skepticism. I identified the two main principles and four themes that were taken up by successive generations. Only briefly, admittedly, but this is a talk. It’s necessarily broad brushstrokes. Also, I said that postmodernists did not invent this and that it’s a constant of human nature. That’s why we see similar attitudes in the post-truth populists and other counter-enlightenment thinkers. I want to be able to talk about this in a range of formats and with differing levels of depth and complexity.
I absolutely think it's acceptable to address these issues in a talk rather than a monograph. No one expects a 45-minute lecture to reproduce all the caveats of a 400-page book, and audiences benefit from broad patterns as well as close textual analysis.
My reservation is slightly different. It's not that you're speaking in broad brushstrokes; it's that some of those brushstrokes risk obscuring distinctions that are doing substantive work in your argument. If one says, for example, that "postmodernists embrace radical scepticism about objective truth," many readers will naturally infer that Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and others all held roughly the same epistemological position. That is precisely the point at which specialists are likely to object—not because they demand an academic seminar, but because they think the characterisation itself is contestable.
More generally, I'm wary of comparing postmodernists with theologians in this respect. The impulse to say "that's not quite what we mean" isn't peculiar to either group; it's the response of anyone who thinks their position has been compressed too far. Scientists do it, economists do it, lawyers do it, and philosophers certainly do it.
I also wonder whether there's a slight asymmetry here. If someone gave a talk saying "Christianity teaches blind faith and hostility to reason," I suspect both of us would say that was too crude—not because we'd want ninety minutes on Thomism, but because those broad brushstrokes erase distinctions that matter. I'd like to apply the same principle to postmodernism. We can still conclude that certain strands have had deeply corrosive consequences for public reason, but the critique is stronger if it is aimed at the positions people actually held rather than a composite "postmodernism" that sometimes seems closer to its later popularisations than to the original texts.
You deserve a cup of properly made tea for this one
I think your comments about the difference between science (or the scientific method) and the wokey-cokey-crazy way of 'understanding' the world are spot on. I'd like to add one more thing, though. I think science, via the scientific method, is actually on a little bit firmer ground when it comes to objective truth.
Science absolutely can tell us, objectively, what *cannot possibly* be true. That's quite a thing. It calls into mind Edison's famous quote: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work".
It seems to me that the 'postmodernists', whatever that means (and I'm certainly no expert), do have *some* valid things to say. I mean, there are power structures, there is a limit to what we can determine to be 'true', and language is important for the way we understand and perceive the world (it doesn't alter reality though). But they've gone all a bit Dunning-Kruger and just applied these valid (but relatively minor) points willy-nilly to everything without properly understanding how ridiculous they're being.
They're like an amateur chef who discovers toasted sesame oil and then proceeds to drown every dish he makes with it.
Yes, they’ve taken the recognition that “culture exists” and maybe we should about ways in which it is unjust and then claimed this to be their own unique discovery that nobody else had thought of. Right when liberalism was decriminalising homosexuality and enabling women to take out loans and mortgages in their own name and overturning ways to keep racial and religious minorities out of professions etc.
I think the example Sokal and Bricmont gave (but I may have added this) is that we could be Brian’s in jars or plugged into a matrix and only believe ourselves to inhabit a universe with testable properties and be doing that but that reality actually exists is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis.
Your work is bearing fruit. Here in the U.S. Indivisible and other activist organizations are presenting trainings to help privileged, concerned white people interface with and support immigrant organizations and communities. The Zoom I tuned into yesterday was devoid of critical theory tropes, except for a few casual statements of pronouns. The inclusion of presenters from immigrant communities doesn't have anything to do with critical theory: the authority of the presenters is based on their experiential perspectives.
To me, it appears to me that current Anti-ICE organizers are drawing upon earlier civil rights and community organizing knowledge as a basis for current training and strategy. (Yesterday's Zoom even taught us a protest song!)
We white folks with resources to offer have to know how to let the people being directly affected by the regime take the lead and tell us what they need. There's no room for shaming us or worrying too much about current vocabulary preferences. At any rate, white sensitivity and fear of misusing privilege have always been present throughout the 20th century. Indivisible's emphasis is on face-to-face, grass-roots, highly local coalition building, and in that context everyone will grow.
Ironically, it's probably the real-world, intentional racism of the Trump administration and the imperative to do something about it that are forcing young ideologues to grow up and mellow out.
I think the question I would continue to challenge with is "why do these "benevolent" folk not simply focus on "poverty" as the criteria by which to offer charity or additional assistance?
I recall (though alas not well enough to recite) hearing of a study a while ago that suggested that mixed race groups, with common aspirations/interests, did very well - in terms of both attainment and group dynamics (e.g. put people from disadvantaged backgrounds into (say) a digital media course together, irrespective of skin colour.)
I am afraid I'm very cynical of the motive of targeting people for support based on identities rather than shared challenges or motivations. I simply can't see how a) the former doesn't breed resentment via the dynamics of competititice victimhood, and b) I can't see that its not so obvious that the segregation tactics are - at some level - desired: it could be seen to be a means to gaining power through dividing people and inciting conflict and learned dependency which the "benevolent folks" are then happy to provide, giving them either financial rewards or emotional gratification.
This reflects (bad) parenting styles e.g.
Enmeshment: Coined by family therapist Salvador Minuchin, it describes a family system where boundaries between parent and child are blurred, and the parent relies on the child (often unconsciously) for emotional support, validation, or identity, rather than fostering the child's independence. The child's autonomy gets sacrificed to keep the parent emotionally comfortable.
Infantilization refers more specifically to a parent keeping a child (or even adult child) artificially dependent by doing things for them the child could do themselves, discouraging independence, or treating them as younger/less capable than they are, often because the parent's own sense of purpose or control is tied to being needed.
But I'll hold my views lightly in case there is a decent counter-argument.
Reading Helen’s eponymously overflowing and always unbelievably brilliant writing is, I realised as I struggle for new metaphors, like watching video reels of Messi’s mesmerising football skills. Apparently, Messi’s goal scoring and assisting is rated as completely off the scale for all other footballers. He strolls around at an unheard of SIX standard deviations above the normal curve’s norm. For Helen’s rate of mesmeric scoring on Substack and just 24 hrs a day to do it in, I’ve concluded her writing must pour forth fully formed without need for editing or even spell checking! I demand video reels of HP at her desk as specific evidence one way or the other. 🫢
Just as you claim that Alan Sokal saved your sanity Helen, your wonderful clarity of thought and expression has played, and continues to play, an enormous role in saving mine. Thank you. 🙏
Thank you for your phenomenal clarity and reach.
Ultimately, everything distills down to what works. It should be obvious to everyone that disciplined empirical methods have been successful in giving us more control over what matters to us, and that no other approach has enabled us to achieve such control over our own welfare and future. To abandon that discipline with its uniquely demonstrated power to achieve positive results, merely because we have sometimes been wrong, merely because there is no guarantee we will be, or always are, correct, merely because we want more than we have, merely because everything is not always equally fair to everyone, is not constructive. On the contrary, it is foolish since there is no alternative method that has effectively delivered results serving our self-interest.
What a wonderful tribute. I love your finely wrought sentences. Also, it would have been so fun to see you frustrating the hell out of your professors!
You or your readers might find this very recent book worth knowing about. It is by Emily Eakin and the title is The Frenchmen or; my life in theory.
The writer was captivated by French philosophical and literary "theory" in college and graduate school; she now sees it in a more mature perspective. The pleasure is partly in learning about the rather unusual lives of the authors in this tradition. There is no "death of the author" in Eakin's book, except for actual death, of course.
Yes, interesting, and an excellent summary of the problems. Springer-Nature were amongst a number of publishers that made "woke" science the only acceptable form quite explicitly in their editorials a few years ago. It has been a death knell for the influence of fascinating fields like Behavioural Genetics and Evolutionary Psychology, which tend to challenge the weaker, sentimental social psychological field, in which the moral handbook usurps empiricism.
There was some interesting work done about 2 years ago by Cory Clark, which surfaced and quantified prejudices of psychology academics in the UK, and I wouldn't believe a single recent paper based on what she found. https://www.coryjclark.com/. Fundamentally more than half of women would put social equity concerns about "truth". Many believe ostracisation, punishment and cancellation appropriate for those whose conclusions may challenge oppressor-oppressed narratives. This is a fundamental issue in such fields, as "attribution" of cause and effect is pretty much the sum of what they study and write about.
I agree (as a scientist) we should hold our views lightly, but the one we should hold the tightest at any given moment is the one where the facts most support it (while being honest about the limitations. If possible, we should seek levels of confidence with our findings): The gravitational constant is 9.8m/s squared - and seems to be the same everywhere in the universe. However, more recent science (multi-dimensionality, the paradoxes of time and contentious theories of consciousness) mean that there may be a set of presently-unknown conditions where it might not be. However, if we are building an aeroplane, we can trust “g” enough to base our design on it.
Triangulation is really useful for getting closer to "the truth" (even if we never reach it), and indeed the Superforecasting field (see Philip Tetlock) found that the people most able to predict an array of political, economic or technological events and trends (thus, who evidently, have the best grasp on what is driving thing), pursued a practice of triangulating evidence from different fields and combining probabilities based on what each perspective suggested would happen
It fundamentally feels sometimes like academia is just the slowest kid on the block - having incubated itself from complexity and adopting a weak (often puerile and facile) handbook of moral “truths” that holds the sophistication of a colouring book.
I agree to some extent that we cannot say anything is "true" but it's also a pedantic point (as per Helen’s example of the giraffe and the ant). Radical scepticism seems very much like a 5 year old's argument, when children discover that they can bait their parents by asking "but, why?" to every answer given to their last question. What we can say is that, at any given moment, we can strive for our best version of causality, and our best predictions, and a level of confidence about both. Let other ideas compete.
One last point: There are the stated beliefs of "radical sceptics" and then there is the revealed evidence of what they believe from their actions. As far as I know, most don't go and live voluntarily in segregated neighbourhoods to become “enriched”, or calculate what percentage of their salary to give away to assure that they are supporting social equity, or hold their own kids back to ensure racial equity, or skip nice holidays to save the planet. Neither do they seem bothered about evaluating whether their ideas - translated into plans and policies - do actually lead to "good", or waste time and money, perpetuate problems, or create new ones. (White privilege training is a case in point, with evidence that it cements any racial hostility).
The only answer I can see just now is that non-woke/pro enlightenment folk will eventually congregate in parts of the world to create new cultural centres where reason trumps tribalism, myths and narcissistic cult adherence. In the meantime, the best social science exists outside of journals, in a myriad of sources.
"Fundamentally more than half of women would put social equity concerns about "truth".
This is shaking my faith that we women are intellectually on par. Bummer.
Yes, its a little more nuanced than my headline, but do watch Cory Clark and Chris Williamson talk on YT. Its a skew not a seismic difference and could well relate to underlying personality factors (e.g openess, conscientiousness) - which themselves vary by sex. Clark describes that women would also want things to be true rather than false, but when truth clases with social justice, they more likely would temper (or even disregard) truth for social equity/justice concerns.
They would perhaps argue that intellect subsumes social justice AND truth (as Wokeism requires this sort of religious self-righteousness and bigotry - in saying that the best answer to a question is a mix of truth and my personal hunches on what i feel is a morally "good" answer).
Editorial guidelines, research policies et al are all written in euphamisms - so its never explicit. E.g. Springer-Nature write "At Springer Nature our mission is to be part of progress – and that begins with inclusion: of people, perspectives, and ideas... We support inclusive editorial practices, broaden access to knowledge, and strive to ensure our content and platforms are relevant and representative." Sound harmless doesn't it? But a quick look through Google Scholar shows how the skew presents itself. And its emphatic.
I think we women feel more acutely the fact that truth can wound. That's where self-discipline comes in. Sort of like self tough love. Else we start lying to hide the truth, and turn into enablers of that which we oppose.
I am looking into social epistemology, and reflecting how the intelligence of us individuals depends on the structures that nurture and expand that intelligence: libraries and journals and encyclopedias and on and on. And dedication to seeking truth is part of i t. Truth-beauty-goodness. When people throw that in the garbage and anything goes, civ takes a hard hit.
That's an interesting point Erin, it makes sense.
It sounds a very interesting line of study you are doing. "Truth-beauty-goodness" and how people can best pursue the truth. My instrinct is that they are not on an equal footing: If truth dies, can you even know what is good? If truth dies, how do we decide what is beautiful and not? In today's do you think that there might be two definitions for many concepts: justice, equality, fairness, tolerance etc. i.e. two "truths"?.
It is definitely true that our eco-system enables us to be intelligent. However, it then falls to each individual to desire to use that eco-system to devlop their intelligence, doesn't it? rather than cower in whatever beliefs serve one's more impulsive emotional states.
Where you say "truth can wound" - yes! - Its why one of the (many) regrettable concepts lost with the modern age is the idea of "intent". Truth is received differently (i'd imagine) from a place of love, compassion or concern - than from someone trying to belittle/humiliate you.. "A lack of truth can wound" too.
On the men vs women differences: Men are more brutally honest, and have "banter" too, where we cloak truths in a joke. So I think we do have some instincts that truth can wound, but we perhaps more interested in "things" and how they work, than our emotions about those things.
Ultimately, Im not sure if there is a silver bullet insight as to what is behind "Wokeism". Woke people are intelligent, by accepted standards, but that's partly because these are the same people that define what intelligence is (a higher education degree rather than ability to build a house, mend a car)., and they are making a claim to define truth too.
It seems to be a swiss army knife in some ways - like a religious cult: it offers purpose, belonging, certainty, in a crazy often cruel world.
I am wrestling with a more mundane problem than yours about truth for a business venture - what does the best career information/advice look like for young people? Any ideas on the principles would be gratefully received!
Yes, of course men understand that truth can wound. It does not stop them. Men are tough minded. I miss that more and more in our world that's overrun by manipulation in the name of compassion.
When I speak of truth-goodness-beauty I mean it in the sense of us recognizing that we need to subsume our ego to these. They are ineffable and not given to definitions... and yet they are real. You can tell if a building was designed by an architect that willingly subsumed his ego to beauty as a higher power. :-) The key is to carry them in our hearts and allow ourselves be guided by them. For example, a person who is guided by truth will allow themselves be corrected by reality, whereas the other kind of person will attempt to bend reality to their worldview.
As to your question, many years ago I found the Strong-Campbell Inventory very helpful. It's called the Campbell Interest and Skills test now. That, and having a person tell you what's out there, what choices, for your particular situation. When I was very young, 15, I had no such help and picked the wrong kind of high school... and that choice made my later adolescent and early adult years pretty miserable.
"a person who is guided by truth will allow themselves be corrected by reality, whereas the other kind of person will attempt to bend reality to their worldview.".... I link this idea, thanks for sharing your very interesting thoughts Erin :-)
Yet another epistemic crisis is in full swing. Enlightenment, that was the last big one. And before that, the Gutenberg revolution. Another one, to my mind, was 3th century Christianity -- Constantine resolved it by enforced uniformity at Nicea...
This was so much fun to read! :-)
I especially loved the medicine references. Oh and this: "Gender, sexuality, and even sex are all social constructs whose boundaries need to be blurred to liberate [...] the gender non-conforming." This! I would call it more bluntly "fucking with our heads." But then, aren't the postmodernists all? :-)
And the penultimate paragraph.
The only thing that seemed to throw a small wrench into it all was this paragraph: "For a long time, counter-Enlightenment forces came primarily from the reactionary right — traditionalists who wanted to hold on to faith and tradition-based ways of knowing. We might call them the pre-modernists: those who want to turn the clock back to a time before all of this happened and inhabit a fantasy world that never existed."
Perhaps you meant it another way than I am taking it. To me, it seems to besmirch all those of us who think that tradition-based ways of knowing, having been proven to be useful for many generations, should never be tossed out simply for being traditional, and should be initially defended by all who care about the principle of "never knock down a fence before you find out why your ancestors built it there."
Yes, we should take some critiques too e.g. There are arguments that we "traditional way of knowing" people don't use enough, which augment your thoughts (e.g. "we don't believe you... because if you believe what you said, you yourself would have 'blurred your gender boundaries, of those of your children, to liberate yourselves... why say something you don't believe?') or "why replace moral value systems, and ways of constructing knowledge, that have elevated so many people from poverty and created such progress, and replace them with ones where the followers are routinely living with poverty, cruelty and dysfunction?"
However - ultimately - people don't reason themselves out of a position they got yourself via lizard brain impulses for belonging and status.
At the recept CPAC conference, one speaker made the point that the intellectual right (perhaps those who believe in "traditional ways of knowing") spend too long trying to persuade the other side to see the light, rather than cementing our own positions, strategies and knowledge. We pro-enlightenmentists don't seem to have got our act together. Surely its beyond time for pro-truth academics to launch their own credible journals for free academic enquiry and practitioner/managerial research? The current social science journals read more like an agony aunt column and activist rant. It feels like we play nto their hands, rather than creating parallel systems, which have thus far created the most headway (e.g social media/alternative news).
I completely agree. Too much effort expended in their direction, and not enough in ours.
Regarding Strategic Skepticism:
One of the things that's always raised my hackles about "Critical Social Justices" is its inconsistency, e.g. heteronormativity is bad but sex work is empowering, male gaze is bad but burlesque is good... believe all women, just not those white women over there... no is a complete sentence, unless you're a TERF.
It always looked like a sort of moral Gemetria for super smart people: magic wordgames that put them in the right and other people with less social clout in the wrong... and part of the "fun" is the victims knowing on some level that's how it works but having to be publicly thankful for the education.
Now, reading your piece, it sounds like there's an actual academic body of thought that thinks this is a good thing?
Don't they understand that all this works only for so long as normies let it?
The concern is social justice, not truth (or even human flourishing). Helen, i think, captures this very well. So, the logic is that if facts/evidence/data support their case, they will adopt it and elevate it. If the logic is that it doesn't (e.g. because it "reinforces negative stereotypes" or "scapegoats a community") then they would badge those facts as "hateful", "divisive" or just badge them as "misinformation", but never presenting an argument as to why, knowing that the stronger facts and logic are not on their side.
Its fundamentally no different than any other cult or fundamentalist religion in many ways: a) there is a God you shouldn't doubt (social equity/justice) woven into a mythical story of sin and redemption, b) those who criticise are blasphemers (or "uneducated"), c) the only path to richeousness is to follow the teachings, d) you were born with original sin and must repent.
The key differences are though a) you don't give up your own money to give to your "causes", you insist others do. b) you don't forgive, c) you don't repent when your ideas lead to suffering, debt or dysfunction. You just argue that the outcomes result from there not being "enough social justice", or that you can't get rid of hundreds of years of systematic oppression in a mere few years or even decades. (its akin to fundamentalists of other religions telling you that you get your reward in heaven, but you just need to stick with the plan, even as children starve to death etc!)
A cynic might say we choose our values in service of ourselves. What a neat set of values social justice provides a highly salaried academic, media figure or charity worker: Of course they should be rewarded well, they are doing the most important job in the world - correcting injustice and creating a sustainable, just future -well funded, incubated from either the trauma of effortful contributions or scrutiny or accountability. To some, this appeals.
Praise be to Social Justice.
LOL yes. Nailed it. But, we've all experienced the Critical Shit Ray (everything it points at turns to shit) used in bad faith.
What's a revelatory to me at least is that (a) the bad faith is downstream of an actual body of thought - they know they're doing it and think it's a good thing, and (b) they seem to have no awareness that the Critical Shit Ray only works as long as other people let it.
I think it’s clear what you’re saying even in your last section. Without emoticons etc to help, you might be taken out of context and quoted to prove that you’re on the other side! So to be specific and literal to protect you from anyone’s lack of humour and nuance, in your last line “Social Justice” is the good thing that we do want to thrive; the bad thing is “Critical Social Justice”. 🤔
Well that rocks!
Bravo Helen.
I really appreciate your differentiation among specific, radical and strategic skepticism . And it is certainly a fair point that every paper cannot parse every detail.
Yet, as has seemed true to me of other of your writings, you are so engaged in confronting postmodernism that you go too far in dismissing any value in any perceptions coming from that direction.
I'll clip this bit from your paper:
...the belief that categories such as sex, race, and sexuality possess some inherent and stable meaning — remained suspect. But if those categories were employed strategically and politically..
IF??? And, postmodernism did not create these strategies.
The easiest to pick on here (though not the only) is "race" ... I double-checked with A.I./copilot which reinforces what I have been taught by rational, scientific academics ... that there is very little scientific basis for differentiation by race; it is primarily a 'social construct'. Here's an example of where the power that the 'woke' emphasize deserves consideration.
I’m not sure what you mean. I’m describing the concept of strategic essentialism. That is what it is.
sorry if mine was not clear. Isn't this "strategic essentialism" what you are criticizing? (while defending the inherent stable meaning of sex, race and sexuality)?
Yes, I am criticising Gayatri Spivak’s concept of strategic essentialism used for the purpose of claiming that people with the same identity have the same ideas. I disagree with that and think it’s clear diversity within groups exist and believe that people should be treated as individuals. I’m not claiming that nobody ever essentialised groups before for strategic reasons. (Was that your criticism?) Of course they did. That’s how prejudice works.
I didn't get that.
I'll keep reading to get a better understanding of your perspectives.
Impressed that you reply.
Of course.
You might find this one of most use in understanding my criticism of identity politics that use strategic essentialism.
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/identity-politics-civil-rights-movements/
Funny, I was but recently pondering the demise of the ultra-capitalist world hegemony, obviously a decidedly non-scientific, non-ethical, non-progressive, anti-environmental enterprise; wondering how the trails forged by Gallileo and Newton 400 years previous, that has lead to the most radical improvement of the human condition, that has delivered such glorious theories to understand the cosmos, could have brought us to the last gasp of a seemingly efficient and equitable economy to this descent into privlidge, cynicism and inequality.
If only there were some word that could capture this...
You have, of course (head slap) elaborated it.
Liberal!
The liberal, rational, skeptical, empirical philosophy of David Hume!
I bet he would find the ideas of Post-Modernism worthy of the same attention he shed on the arguments of the Reverend Berkley.
Helen Pluckrose should know better. Whether one ultimately agrees with her or not, her account compresses a very heterogeneous intellectual movement into a single epistemological position that many of the figures she discusses would not recognise.
Several points stand out. First, she conflates anti-foundationalism with radical scepticism. Most poststructuralists do not argue that "objective truth is impossible" in the simple sense she attributes to them. Rather, they question whether there exists a view from nowhere—a completely uninterpreted access to reality. That is quite different from saying that no claim is better than any other.
Take Foucault. He repeatedly insists that he is not arguing that truth does not exist. Instead, he studies what he calls regimes of truth: the historical institutions, practices and discourses through which certain statements come to count as true. He is less interested in denying scientific knowledge than in asking how particular sciences emerge and acquire authority.
Likewise, Derrida's famous "there is nothing outside the text" is routinely misread as "nothing exists except language." What he actually argues is that we never encounter reality except through systems of meaning and interpretation. That is an epistemological claim, not an ontological denial of reality.
Second, the contrast between science and postmodernism is drawn far too starkly. Contemporary philosophy of science has long recognised that observation is theory-laden, that paradigms influence inquiry (Kuhn), that underdetermination exists (Quine), and that scientific concepts evolve historically. These ideas are not generally regarded as incompatible with scientific realism. Many postmodern thinkers were engaging with precisely these debates rather than rejecting science wholesale.
Third, the genealogy from postmodernism to "Critical Social Justice" is much more complicated than Pluckrose presents. There certainly are lines of influence, particularly through postcolonial studies, queer theory and critical race theory. But there are also significant discontinuities.
Ironically, many contemporary identity-based movements make claims that classical poststructuralists would have regarded as suspiciously essentialist. For example, treating an identity category as possessing unquestionable epistemic authority sits uneasily with Derrida's deconstruction of stable identities or Foucault's genealogical suspicion of all identity categories. Judith Butler herself has frequently been critical of essentialist identity politics, even while her work has been appropriated by activists.
Fourth, Pluckrose tends to present postmodernism as a unified movement. In reality, it includes thinkers with profoundly different projects:
1. Lyotard is concerned with the collapse of legitimating metanarratives.
2. Foucault studies the historical production of knowledge and institutions.
3. Derrida develops deconstruction as a mode of reading.
4. Baudrillard analyses simulation and media.
5. Deleuze rejects many of the assumptions shared by the others.
Treating them as advancing one coherent epistemology inevitably flattens important differences.
That said, I think Pluckrose's critique does identify a real phenomenon, though perhaps not the one she thinks. There is an identifiable style of contemporary activist discourse that sometimes treats "lived experience" as beyond criticism, regards disagreement as evidence of oppression, and substitutes moral certainty for argument. One can certainly criticise those tendencies.
The question is whether that phenomenon is best understood as the logical consequence of postmodern philosophy or as a selective appropriation of certain postmodern themes combined with activist politics, social media dynamics and institutional incentives. Many scholars—including people sympathetic to poststructuralism—would argue for the latter.
In that sense, I think the strongest version of the critique would not be "postmodernism denies truth." It would be something like: "Postmodernism developed sophisticated critiques of objectivity, universality and power. Some later political movements detached those critiques from their original philosophical context, simplified them into slogans, and combined them with moral absolutism. The result is often far more dogmatic than the thinkers from whom the concepts were borrowed."
That, to my mind, is a historically and philosophically stronger argument than attributing a single doctrine of "radical scepticism" to postmodernism as a whole.
Pluckrose writes as though the choice is between:
1. Objective truth (science), or
2. Radical scepticism (postmodernism).
Thomas Nagel would say that this is far too crude. Objective knowledge is always partial and perspectival, yet it is still genuine knowledge. The "view from nowhere" is not a destination we arrive at but an ideal that guides inquiry.
One of Nagel's characteristic formulations is that objectivity consists in moving towards "a conception that is less dependent on our own particular constitution." That is an asymptotic process rather than an achieved state. This is precisely why Nagel has sometimes been admired by philosophers on both sides of the supposed "realism/postmodern divide". His insistence that consciousness has an irreducibly subjective aspect ("what is it like to be a bat?") is a reminder that some features of reality resist complete objectification. Yet he never concludes that truth is merely socially constructed.
In fact, Nagel would probably regard both Pluckrose and many postmodernists as oversimplifying matters. To Pluckrose he might say: objectivity is much more philosophically problematic than you suggest; there is no literal "view from nowhere." To the more radical postmodernist he might say: acknowledging the impossibility of a completely perspective-free standpoint does not entail abandoning the aspiration to objective truth.
That is why Nagel is often seen as occupying a distinctive middle ground. He takes seriously both the subjective character of human experience and the objective aspirations of reason. The tension between them is not a problem to be solved once and for all, but a permanent feature of philosophy.
Ironically, this means that the phrase "view from nowhere" is often used in debates in almost the opposite way from Nagel's intention. He coined it not to celebrate an attainable God's-eye perspective, but to explore the paradox that our finite, situated minds nevertheless strive for increasingly objective understanding.
It can’t be that I can never address postmodernism in a talk unless I am willing for it to be two hours long and spend 90 minutes on the differences between postmodernism and poststructuralism, the artistic and philosophical movements, the different way they manifested in different countries, the importance of understanding the difference between the critics of postmodernity and the enthusiastic progenitors of the postmodern turn, the difference between reality being out there and the truth being out there and the latter always being mediated through culture and discourse, the ways in which these ideas were evolved in the late 80s and then further bastardised around 2010 before I can talk about the broad manifestations and its attacks on science. Everyone will lose the will to live. But the pro-postmodernists will always derail any more concise discussion of epistemological issues by demanding I do. That’s why I wrote a book doing all of that. So I have thoroughly qualified everything beforehand. Alan Sokal wrote a foreword for it. Those present had read it. I cited it in the written version for anybody who wanted (much) more qualification. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid. Theologians always try to derail things this way too. Different modes of address require different levels of depth and complexity and different registers.
https://amzn.eu/d/02TKhfh3
Fair enough, but I don't think the analogy with theologians is quite fair. Classical theologians are often among the first to insist on careful distinctions, not because they want to derail a discussion, but because they think different claims require different standards of argument. Aquinas spends pages distinguishing senses of esse; the Cappadocians distinguish ousia from hypostasis; Muslim mutakallimūn distinguish God's essence from His attributes. That isn't obstructionism—it's philosophy. Likewise, if someone objects that "postmodernism rejects truth" is an oversimplification, they may not be demanding a two-hour lecture; they may simply be questioning whether the summary is accurate enough for the conclusions you want to draw from it. Brevity is a legitimate constraint, but it doesn't exempt us from representing the position we're criticising as fairly as possible. If the simplification is essential to making the argument work, then perhaps it is the argument, rather than the objector, that deserves closer scrutiny.
And they are absolutely allowed to think that and say so and restrict their own considerations to the standards of argument they think suited to the topic of God.
Others may feel differently and want to discuss their truth claims if their religion outside of theological norms and instead through biology, geology, physics, neuroscience etc. They can avoid these conversations if they so wish. Most people, however, are not sophisticated theologians and when they have concerns about religion, they tend to be much more material. My question were “Does a god exist and can it hurt me? If so, what does it want and why? Is there any reason to think a particular one exists, that the claims made about the creation of the universe are true? Or that it can make me or anyone I love survive the death of our brains and go on to live in another form experiencing eternal bliss or eternal torment for worshipping the right one correctly, incorrectly or not at all?” If there is no reason to think one does and it can, I’m happy to let the theologians do their thing and direct my attention to things I find more interesting.
I don't disagree with any of that. If the question is whether there is good evidence for miraculous claims about gods, resurrection or an afterlife, then of course biology, cosmology, archaeology, neuroscience and history all have an important role to play. Theology cannot simply insulate empirical claims from empirical scrutiny.
My concern was only with the rhetorical move of likening requests for conceptual precision to "what theologians do." Good philosophy—whether analytic philosophy, philosophy of science or theology—often begins by making distinctions. That's not a peculiarly theological vice.
Ironically, my good friend Alan Sokal himself exemplifies this attention to detail. Intellectual Impostures is painstakingly careful about distinguishing different thinkers, different arguments and different senses of key terms. Sokal didn't criticise postmodernism by saying "they deny truth"; he criticised specific claims made by specific authors, often quoting them at length and analysing them in detail. That method is part of what made the book so persuasive.
So I'd simply extend the same charity to postmodernism that you rightly extended to religion. If we think it's unfair when believers say "science is just another faith," we should also be cautious about saying "postmodernism is just radical scepticism." The strongest critiques are usually the ones that survive after we've granted our opponents their best, most sophisticated formulations.
No, the trait theologians and postmodernists share is trying to derail mundane conversation about it by insisting we instead qualify everything to death and only talk about it through the epistemology and philosophical framework of the believers.
Again, I have already done what you ask in a lengthy book and various factors of it in lengthy essays quoting them at length and analysing them in detail, in both academic papers and more accessible popular form. I’d also like to be able to address it in a talk format and that is what I was invited to do and this is the result. Do you think it is acceptable for me to address the issue in this format or in any which is not a dense academic, theoretical analysis?
I did not say that postmodernism is just radical skepticism. I identified the two main principles and four themes that were taken up by successive generations. Only briefly, admittedly, but this is a talk. It’s necessarily broad brushstrokes. Also, I said that postmodernists did not invent this and that it’s a constant of human nature. That’s why we see similar attitudes in the post-truth populists and other counter-enlightenment thinkers. I want to be able to talk about this in a range of formats and with differing levels of depth and complexity.
I absolutely think it's acceptable to address these issues in a talk rather than a monograph. No one expects a 45-minute lecture to reproduce all the caveats of a 400-page book, and audiences benefit from broad patterns as well as close textual analysis.
My reservation is slightly different. It's not that you're speaking in broad brushstrokes; it's that some of those brushstrokes risk obscuring distinctions that are doing substantive work in your argument. If one says, for example, that "postmodernists embrace radical scepticism about objective truth," many readers will naturally infer that Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard and others all held roughly the same epistemological position. That is precisely the point at which specialists are likely to object—not because they demand an academic seminar, but because they think the characterisation itself is contestable.
More generally, I'm wary of comparing postmodernists with theologians in this respect. The impulse to say "that's not quite what we mean" isn't peculiar to either group; it's the response of anyone who thinks their position has been compressed too far. Scientists do it, economists do it, lawyers do it, and philosophers certainly do it.
I also wonder whether there's a slight asymmetry here. If someone gave a talk saying "Christianity teaches blind faith and hostility to reason," I suspect both of us would say that was too crude—not because we'd want ninety minutes on Thomism, but because those broad brushstrokes erase distinctions that matter. I'd like to apply the same principle to postmodernism. We can still conclude that certain strands have had deeply corrosive consequences for public reason, but the critique is stronger if it is aimed at the positions people actually held rather than a composite "postmodernism" that sometimes seems closer to its later popularisations than to the original texts.
Yes, I know. There is so much to this, I had to write a book to qualify everything in the way you have.
I know you know ;-)
Another banger and (s)mash article Helen
You deserve a cup of properly made tea for this one
I think your comments about the difference between science (or the scientific method) and the wokey-cokey-crazy way of 'understanding' the world are spot on. I'd like to add one more thing, though. I think science, via the scientific method, is actually on a little bit firmer ground when it comes to objective truth.
Science absolutely can tell us, objectively, what *cannot possibly* be true. That's quite a thing. It calls into mind Edison's famous quote: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work".
It seems to me that the 'postmodernists', whatever that means (and I'm certainly no expert), do have *some* valid things to say. I mean, there are power structures, there is a limit to what we can determine to be 'true', and language is important for the way we understand and perceive the world (it doesn't alter reality though). But they've gone all a bit Dunning-Kruger and just applied these valid (but relatively minor) points willy-nilly to everything without properly understanding how ridiculous they're being.
They're like an amateur chef who discovers toasted sesame oil and then proceeds to drown every dish he makes with it.
That's what it looks like to me, at any rate.
Yes, they’ve taken the recognition that “culture exists” and maybe we should about ways in which it is unjust and then claimed this to be their own unique discovery that nobody else had thought of. Right when liberalism was decriminalising homosexuality and enabling women to take out loans and mortgages in their own name and overturning ways to keep racial and religious minorities out of professions etc.
I think the example Sokal and Bricmont gave (but I may have added this) is that we could be Brian’s in jars or plugged into a matrix and only believe ourselves to inhabit a universe with testable properties and be doing that but that reality actually exists is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis.
Your work is bearing fruit. Here in the U.S. Indivisible and other activist organizations are presenting trainings to help privileged, concerned white people interface with and support immigrant organizations and communities. The Zoom I tuned into yesterday was devoid of critical theory tropes, except for a few casual statements of pronouns. The inclusion of presenters from immigrant communities doesn't have anything to do with critical theory: the authority of the presenters is based on their experiential perspectives.
To me, it appears to me that current Anti-ICE organizers are drawing upon earlier civil rights and community organizing knowledge as a basis for current training and strategy. (Yesterday's Zoom even taught us a protest song!)
We white folks with resources to offer have to know how to let the people being directly affected by the regime take the lead and tell us what they need. There's no room for shaming us or worrying too much about current vocabulary preferences. At any rate, white sensitivity and fear of misusing privilege have always been present throughout the 20th century. Indivisible's emphasis is on face-to-face, grass-roots, highly local coalition building, and in that context everyone will grow.
Ironically, it's probably the real-world, intentional racism of the Trump administration and the imperative to do something about it that are forcing young ideologues to grow up and mellow out.
I think the question I would continue to challenge with is "why do these "benevolent" folk not simply focus on "poverty" as the criteria by which to offer charity or additional assistance?
I recall (though alas not well enough to recite) hearing of a study a while ago that suggested that mixed race groups, with common aspirations/interests, did very well - in terms of both attainment and group dynamics (e.g. put people from disadvantaged backgrounds into (say) a digital media course together, irrespective of skin colour.)
I am afraid I'm very cynical of the motive of targeting people for support based on identities rather than shared challenges or motivations. I simply can't see how a) the former doesn't breed resentment via the dynamics of competititice victimhood, and b) I can't see that its not so obvious that the segregation tactics are - at some level - desired: it could be seen to be a means to gaining power through dividing people and inciting conflict and learned dependency which the "benevolent folks" are then happy to provide, giving them either financial rewards or emotional gratification.
This reflects (bad) parenting styles e.g.
Enmeshment: Coined by family therapist Salvador Minuchin, it describes a family system where boundaries between parent and child are blurred, and the parent relies on the child (often unconsciously) for emotional support, validation, or identity, rather than fostering the child's independence. The child's autonomy gets sacrificed to keep the parent emotionally comfortable.
Infantilization refers more specifically to a parent keeping a child (or even adult child) artificially dependent by doing things for them the child could do themselves, discouraging independence, or treating them as younger/less capable than they are, often because the parent's own sense of purpose or control is tied to being needed.
But I'll hold my views lightly in case there is a decent counter-argument.
Reading Helen’s eponymously overflowing and always unbelievably brilliant writing is, I realised as I struggle for new metaphors, like watching video reels of Messi’s mesmerising football skills. Apparently, Messi’s goal scoring and assisting is rated as completely off the scale for all other footballers. He strolls around at an unheard of SIX standard deviations above the normal curve’s norm. For Helen’s rate of mesmeric scoring on Substack and just 24 hrs a day to do it in, I’ve concluded her writing must pour forth fully formed without need for editing or even spell checking! I demand video reels of HP at her desk as specific evidence one way or the other. 🫢