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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   26059 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 29, 2024

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I think the biggest issue is that he assumes all these 'great' thinkers of the past actually had a point. From my perspective it's all a tower of nonsense with more dung being flung on top and each successive generation just adding more nonsense to the pile.

Saying that Adorno or Horkheimer said something isn't a valid argument if Adorno and Horkheimer were making bad arguments in the first place. You can't just cite each others claims as authoritative if those claims are bullshit in the first place.

Not that Zizek cares, his whole philosophy runs on vibes and free association. He is a clown and he likes it when you laugh at him. Trying to argue with a clown is like wrestling with a pig.

I go back and forth. Sometimes I feel exactly the same way as you, that it's all just a gigantic tower of bullshit pseudo-intellectualism using big words to intimidate normies while not actually proving anything. Other times I think... there might something to this. I think the way it's supposed to work is like a big aggressively-growing business. They can't possibly explain the entire market/all of society, and they know there will be a lot of mistakes along the way. Still, they do their best to make a coherent plan, and muddle along through, and as long as it's more right than it is wrong it will make progress. It's a way to deal with incredibly difficult problems that are just too massive to handle in a simple, rigorous, step-by-step "scientific" way.

But that does allow for a lot of bullshit to get through too... it's hard to tell!

There are plenty of philosophers like Hume, who awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, or the late Daniel Dennentt, who aren't building on this pile of nonsense.

There are also various social scientists, historians and other academics who just roll their eyes at this nonsense. There are prominent ones like Alan Sokal and Richard Dawkins who even poke the hornets nest from time to time.

It's not hard to tell, there is real stuff being discussed it's just not being discussed by this inbred movement within academia.

OK but the two philosophers you cite are both dead, who social science is really a different field. I thought we were talking about humanities and continental philosophy here? Do you just want to dismiss literally all of modern humanities as nonsense?

Continental Philosophy is, to a great extent, un-rigorous sociology and social psychology. Talking about social science in the same breath is just accepting that fact.

These philosophers are talking about stuff that overlaps with social science and science in general. Philosophy isn't some separate world where you can say whatever you like. It is bound by the same rules as everything else. If you are making a point about how humans operate you are making a point that overlaps with economics, sociology, history, psychology, etc. Continental philosophers often make claims about humans that go against what we know about those areas, not to mention claims about physics or mathematics. Sokal makes a big deal in his debunkings of post-modernism the ways that they used ideas from mathematics and physics incorrectly.

'I confess myself a worshipper of Mazda, a follower of Zarathushtra, one who hates the Daevas and obeys the laws of Ahura'

I think the biggest issue is that he assumed all these ‘great’ thinkers of the past actually had a point.

He read their works and found value in them. You can also read his work, look at the claims he cites, and decide if it makes sense to you or not. There’s no confession of faith required, just reading and thinking about what you read, same as you do in many other contexts.

Saying that Adorno and Horkheimer said something isn’t a valid argument if Adorno and Horkheimer were making bad arguments in the first place.

No one thinks that simply citing a claim from a canonical text makes it authoritative. Everyone who writes philosophy is acutely aware that, for every historical philosopher they admire, there are legions of other philosophers who think that guy was an idiot, all his arguments were trash, etc. No one has any illusions about anything being authoritative.

Citing a claim is just you telling the reader where you got it from, nothing more. It’s still on you to evaluate the claim, check the primary source if you want, etc.

In one hundred years your shitposts will be taken seriously by the intellectuals of the time.

If Derrida can do it, then anyone can. Post-modernism is the intellectual equivalent of a banana duct-taped to a wall.

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