Comment author:fubarobfusco
02 October 2012 08:38:44AM
14 points
[-]
If the above is true, aren't the postmodernists right?
I do wish that you would say "relativists" or the like here. Many of your readers will know the word "postmodernist" solely as a slur against a rival tribe.
Comment author:jbash
02 October 2012 08:42:35PM
6 points
[-]
Actually, "relativist" isn't a lot better, because it's still pretty clear who's meant, and it's a very charged term in some political discussions.
I think it's a bad rhetorical strategy to mock the cognitive style of a particular academic discipline, or of a particular school within a discipline, even if you know all about that discipline. That's not because you'll convert people who are steeped in the way of thinking you're trying to counter, but because you can end up pushing the "undecided" to their side.
Let's say we have a bright young student who is, to oversimplify, on the cusp of going down either the path of Good ("parsimony counts", "there's an objective way to determine what hypothesis is simpler", "it looks like there's an exterior, shared reality", "we can improve our maps"...) or the path of Evil ("all concepts start out equal", "we can make arbitrary maps", "truth is determined by politics" ...). Well, that bright young student isn't a perfectly rational being. If the advocates for Good look like they're being jerks and mocking the advocates for Evil, that may be enough to push that person down the path of Evil.
Wulky Wilkinson is the mind killer. Or so it seems to me.
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I do wish that you would say "relativists" or the like here. Many of your readers will know the word "postmodernist" solely as a slur against a rival tribe.
Actually, "relativist" isn't a lot better, because it's still pretty clear who's meant, and it's a very charged term in some political discussions.
I think it's a bad rhetorical strategy to mock the cognitive style of a particular academic discipline, or of a particular school within a discipline, even if you know all about that discipline. That's not because you'll convert people who are steeped in the way of thinking you're trying to counter, but because you can end up pushing the "undecided" to their side.
Let's say we have a bright young student who is, to oversimplify, on the cusp of going down either the path of Good ("parsimony counts", "there's an objective way to determine what hypothesis is simpler", "it looks like there's an exterior, shared reality", "we can improve our maps"...) or the path of Evil ("all concepts start out equal", "we can make arbitrary maps", "truth is determined by politics" ...). Well, that bright young student isn't a perfectly rational being. If the advocates for Good look like they're being jerks and mocking the advocates for Evil, that may be enough to push that person down the path of Evil.
Wulky Wilkinson is the mind killer. Or so it seems to me.