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I enjoyed the recent thread on postmodernism (http://www.project-reason.org/forum/viewthread/22295/). In that thread, Rob (with the big German name) said, “The dry rot of relativism has taken over academe (even science faculties) to an alarming extent and people need to speak up about it.” I totally agree, having earned a BA in Anthropology that was full of nonsense and mumbo jumbo. It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth. Are not anthropologists and sociologists and psychologists those who are best equipped to say, “Look, this is how these different societies do this thing, and this society has the most success with it, so we’re gonna go out on a limb and say that this is the best way we know now how to organize ourselves”? And yet this sort of a project doesn’t seem to exist, and they teach our young adults that we cannot know, and that there are millions of viewpoints, and instead of evaluating them with an intent to improve ourselves, we should make up a bunch of nonsense words and navel-gaze unto nothingness.
I admit two goals here: one, improve the world by advancing the new discipline Harris proposed; and two, find an intellectual home for myself, as I have put off my own advanced academic training because I cannot find a department or discipline that focuses on anything even remotely close. My dream discipline and department would combine sociology, anthropology, psychology and philosophy to survey ways of organizing human behavior and institutions and compare their efficacy in improving the human condition. It would avoid moral relativism, though be capable of understanding differences in moral starting points and goals. It would not focus on philosophical thought experiments, but apply itself to real-world problems. It would not kowtow to politically correct notions of the “unutterable” and instead risk offending some entrenched resentments. It would not presume a homogeneous political affiliation, and would produce policy recommendations fearlessly. The writing that comes from this department would be comprehensible to all with an education and would not be a jumble of made-up words that actually mean nothing (I’m looking at you, anthropology.)
Does this exist? If not, how can we infiltrate academia and create it?
You have to be part of something to infiltrate it. It’s up to the people in academia to change the culture. Probably going to take a long time, as academia seems as impervious to change as the Roman Catholic Church. Such is the manner with established organizations. Probably starts one prof at a time, and it will be a long process and very painful.
You have to be part of something to infiltrate it. It’s up to the people in academia to change the culture. Probably going to take a long time, as academia seems as impervious to change as the Roman Catholic Church. Such is the manner with established organizations. Probably starts one prof at a time, and it will be a long process and very painful.
Of course it would come from inside. But let’s look at that practically. What discipline would I choose? Would I have to pretend along with the mumbo jumbo for awhile in order to have freedom later? How does one get money and departmental support while criticizing everything they do? You see the practical problems… maybe it needs funding from some outside source…
You have to be part of something to infiltrate it. It’s up to the people in academia to change the culture. Probably going to take a long time, as academia seems as impervious to change as the Roman Catholic Church. Such is the manner with established organizations. Probably starts one prof at a time, and it will be a long process and very painful.
Of course it would come from inside. But let’s look at that practically. What discipline would I choose? Would I have to pretend along with the mumbo jumbo for awhile in order to have freedom later? How does one get money and departmental support while criticizing everything they do? You see the practical problems… maybe it needs funding from some outside source…
Yeah, I think you have to play by the rules for awhile. Be a good little girl until you get tenured and then start raising hell. Even while you are being a team player you can start sowing the seeds. But if you are perceived early on as a trouble-maker, you may not last. Look at the woman who dared to contest Joe Paterno at Penn State a few years ago.
. . . The writing that comes from this department would be comprehensible to all with an education and would not be a jumble of made-up words that actually mean nothing (I’m looking at you, anthropology.)
Does this exist? If not, how can we infiltrate academia and create it?
You’d probably have better luck approaching a music conservatory and demanding an end to all the dissonance.
I’m sorry to hear that a lot of nonsense is still being written by people who claim to be society’s experts. What will it take to fix such a ridiculous condition? I think you should make use of their own clubs (jargon) to beat the nonsense out of them. After all, a deconstructing attitude in itself can be perfectly modern and in sync with reality as it’s understood by wise people.
Write articles about the abuse of language. Start web sites that isolate and mock certain statements. Found a foundation. Rampage about the room making noise. Your writing chops seem in order. Do have a ton of free time to deconstruct the hell out of them?
. . . The writing that comes from this department would be comprehensible to all with an education and would not be a jumble of made-up words that actually mean nothing (I’m looking at you, anthropology.)
Does this exist? If not, how can we infiltrate academia and create it?
You’d probably have better luck approaching a music conservatory and demanding an end to all the dissonance.
I’m sorry to hear that a lot of nonsense is still being written by people who claim to be society’s experts. What will it take to fix such a ridiculous condition? I think you should make use of their own clubs (jargon) to beat the nonsense out of them. After all, a deconstructing attitude in itself can be perfectly modern and in sync with reality as it’s understood by wise people.
Write articles about the abuse of language. Start web sites that isolate and mock certain statements. Found a foundation. Rampage about the room making noise. Your writing chops seem in order. Do have a ton of free time to deconstruct the hell out of them?
No, I do not have a ton of time! I have four kids, two businesses, and elderly parents. But I do write on my blog, and that would be an appropriate place for some of this that you suggest, especially as it relates to the anecdote Harris tells and Rob quoted about the academic who supports burqas and plucking out eyeballs. My blog is nearly entirely been against circumcision so far, and that is what my readers expect, though I do work in as much anthropology, ethics and religious critique as I can.
Hi Lillian, as somebody whose spent a lifetime in academia I can quote Bill Clinton and say I share your pain. If you’re looking for a home for your goals one way to go might be “interdisciplinary” studies. Of course you’ll find lots of junk that has to be endured but a stealth approach can often work wonders. That takes advantage of another thing that is rampant in academia - lots of stressed out people trying to publish the next paper and willing to take up (i.e., beg, borrow, or steal) new ideas that they think will do it for them. For a graduate student a useful method for taking advantage of this is to ask questions in seminars or even better at conferences. The questions need to be carefully crafted, otherwise you’ll get a reputation as a kook, the technique is that you want to appear relatively naive but the question contains an idea that leads towards the sort of approach you want to take and at the same time doesn’t appear so off paradigm as to warrant automatic rejection. It’s the Johnny Appleseed method. Later in your career, after tenure when you decide to really get radical, your foundation will be there.
You might also check out some of the work done by people outside the human social sciences that applies to these sciences, for example, some of the research at places like the Santa Fe Institute.
An anthropologist you might find interesting is C.R. Hallpike. His book Foundations of Primitive Thought (if I recall the title correctly) takes the sort of approach you might find interesting.
More generally, what you’re looking for is exactly the sort of issue I’ve been trying to make for some time, namely that science needs to develop new methods and validity criteria in order to deal with questions such as deciding between one cultural practice or another.
It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth.
Not sure what “pernicious nonsense” you are referring to but the The Moral Landscape is likely ignored because it is a dismally poor book filled with nonsense itself.
It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth.
Not sure what “pernicious nonsense” you are referring to but the The Moral Landscape is likely ignored because it is a dismally poor book filled with nonsense itself.
The “pernicious nonsense” she’s referring to is relativism.
nv - 22 July 2012 07:09 AM
You’d probably have better luck approaching a music conservatory and demanding an end to all the dissonance.
It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth.
Not sure what “pernicious nonsense” you are referring to but the The Moral Landscape is likely ignored because it is a dismally poor book filled with nonsense itself.
Agreed. It will affirm some the moral dogmas for the already-convinced but as a critique of post modernism… we MUST look elswhere. Even if one simply started with better penned versions of utilitarianism.
I think what you have to do is willfully divorce the propositions that are unpleasant or disagreeable from those that are discernibly innaccurate. Viewing moral conclusions in the light of their anthropological roots leads one to some very uneasy places. Disambiguating the language of moral claims is similarly uncomfortable. I share this distress. But if we conflate differring preferences with objective reality we are only proving the post modernist point.
Where, precisely, is post modernism FACTUALLY wrong? I think you need start there.
Hi Lillian, as somebody whose spent a lifetime in academia I can quote Bill Clinton and say I share your pain. If you’re looking for a home for your goals one way to go might be “interdisciplinary” studies. Of course you’ll find lots of junk that has to be endured but a stealth approach can often work wonders. That takes advantage of another thing that is rampant in academia - lots of stressed out people trying to publish the next paper and willing to take up (i.e., beg, borrow, or steal) new ideas that they think will do it for them. For a graduate student a useful method for taking advantage of this is to ask questions in seminars or even better at conferences. The questions need to be carefully crafted, otherwise you’ll get a reputation as a kook, the technique is that you want to appear relatively naive but the question contains an idea that leads towards the sort of approach you want to take and at the same time doesn’t appear so off paradigm as to warrant automatic rejection. It’s the Johnny Appleseed method. Later in your career, after tenure when you decide to really get radical, your foundation will be there.
You might also check out some of the work done by people outside the human social sciences that applies to these sciences, for example, some of the research at places like the Santa Fe Institute.
Your practical plan of action, though very reasonable, strikes this impatient person as taking a looooooong time. I will also ask my undergraduate advisor and risk offending him (he loves Baudrillard, etc.) as he knows me. His advice was U. Chicago Human Development Program, which is multidisciplinary, though Prof. Shweder, apologist for religious circumcision, is one of the bigwigs there, and putting myself right out front as against him would not be politic. (A lot of my writing is already against circumcision and we have debated the pros and cons of hiding it versus putting it out there from the gate.)
It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth.
Not sure what “pernicious nonsense” you are referring to but the The Moral Landscape is likely ignored because it is a dismally poor book filled with nonsense itself.
The “pernicious nonsense” she’s referring to is relativism.
nv - 22 July 2012 07:09 AM
You’d probably have better luck approaching a music conservatory and demanding an end to all the dissonance.
Yes, and you’d be on equally firm footing.
*The lack of a multi-quote feature is very annoying.*
Yes, I was referring to relativism. The anecdote in Harris’ book was a female academic defending hijab/niqab/etc. and also defending a hypothetical plucking of childrens’ eyeballs for religious reasons. This position is the logical outcome of the pomo “deconstruction” agenda. If the postmodern ideas are followed to their ends, you get nihilism, which is fun for 20 year old Redditors, but a waste of time for those who are nominally studying the social sciences. It is also inherently cowardly. True, we do not know everything. True, some things we try to improve the world will have unintended negative consequences. True, others may disagree with us. Does that mean we should throw our hands up and say it’s all relative, it’s all unknowable? Some of the most intelligent people out there are wasting their time with this defeatist, shameful crap, instead of doing what they can to improve people’s lives, learning from history and other cultures and moving forward. The relativist position is belied by actual human behavior: apply Rawls to relativism - if you could choose where to be born, would you choose the culture with the burqas, honor killings, mutilated genitals and failed economic systems, knowing that you’d have a pretty good chance of being worse off than you would were you born in the U.S.? Of course not. For all their bluster, none of those academics would, either. And it’s not just “preference,” and that is where Harris’ book comes in: can we develop a science that can show that people would be less fulfilled/happy/etc. in Afghanistan than they are in the U.S.? Because we all know it intuitively - we know that our preference is determined both by what we are used to, but also by simply being human and having that internal drive to live and flourish.
It took me years to get over the pernicious nonsense they teach and babble about, and it saddens me now that the disciplines that SHOULD be thrilled to take up Sam Harris’ challenge in The Moral Landscape seem more inclined to ignore it totally as some sort of ridiculous atavistic obsession with objective truth.
Not sure what “pernicious nonsense” you are referring to but the The Moral Landscape is likely ignored because it is a dismally poor book filled with nonsense itself.
Agreed. It will affirm some the moral dogmas for the already-convinced but as a critique of post modernism… we MUST look elswhere. Even if one simply started with better penned versions of utilitarianism.
I think what you have to do is willfully divorce the propositions that are unpleasant or disagreeable from those that are discernibly innaccurate. Viewing moral conclusions in the light of their anthropological roots leads one to some very uneasy places. Disambiguating the language of moral claims is similarly uncomfortable. I share this distress. But if we conflate differring preferences with objective reality we are only proving the post modernist point.
Where, precisely, is post modernism FACTUALLY wrong? I think you need start there.
I disagree. I see no need to critique pomo in some sort of Hegelian process. It’s garbage, pure and simple. Actually, it’s sophistry. As I said above, it is not about just “differing preferences,” and it is about “objective reality.” The key is a lack of fear, a moral/spiritual/whatever you want to call it perspective (and let me put out there that I am an atheist, lest I get my own thread qualifier like “+/-LC”): I won the lottery of life. I was born healthy and wealthy in the U.S. I never need worry about going blind from guinea worms, or being killed in tribal conflict, or having my genitals sliced off, or being married at the age of 12 to some old man, etc. I also was gifted with an active mind, and emotions, which allow me to feel for other people and animals. There is no god, but my morality, my brain, every sense of myself and the universe, tells me that I have a duty to share some of my wealth with others. It does not prescribe HOW, though. That is where science should step in: curing diseases, debating political structures, etc. This is a great project, and in my mind, the only project worthy of academics’ great minds. Instead, they waste their time on unintelligible nonsense that improves nothing, helps no one, and serves only as a rate limiter and job security for those who don’t have the guts to take a stand and do something. There are better and worse ways to organize human existence and behavior, and yet the disciplines which should study this ignore it and mock it.
Lillian: Look, this is how these different societies do this thing, and this society has the most success with it, so we’re gonna go out on a limb and say that this is the best way we know now how to organize ourselves”?
I don’t know how we can escape moral relativism. How does one determine what is the “best way to organize ourselves” ? Doesn’t it depend upon society’s values, which vary from culture to culture? How, for instance, to answer the question “what is more important…the rights of the individual or the rights of the group?” I suppose one can strike a balance between them, but, still, at some point, a decision has to be made, like in relation to killing defective babies, the death penalty, and end-of-life decisions.
Lillian: Look, this is how these different societies do this thing, and this society has the most success with it, so we’re gonna go out on a limb and say that this is the best way we know now how to organize ourselves”?
I don’t know how we can escape moral relativism. How does one determine what is the “best way to organize ourselves” ? Doesn’t it depend upon society’s values, which vary from culture to culture? How, for instance, to answer the question “what is more important…the rights of the individual or the rights of the group?” I suppose one can strike a balance between them, but, still, at some point, a decision has to be made, like in relation to killing defective babies, the death penalty, and end-of-life decisions.
Or am I not understanding your point?
No, you bring up good points. There are certainly different starting perspectives, such as collectivist vs. individualist, but this does not mean it’s all morally relative or ambiguous, or will result in a “wash” in terms of Harris’ concept of the Well-being of conscious creatures.
Lillian, I posted before I read your subsequent posts. I do get your point. Why worry about the questions we can’t answer, when there are obvious questions we can resolve…for instance, in regard to good health and living conditions.
The reasons I brought up the “good of the individual” vs the “good of the group” is because it is an important one. However, reason would dictate that there can be a balance between the two. Working out the details might be tricky, but do-able, if people were fair, reasonable, willing to compromise, and not indoctrinated by religious assumptions.
. . . The anecdote in Harris’ book was a female academic defending hijab/niqab/etc. and also defending a hypothetical plucking of childrens’ eyeballs for religious reasons. This position is the logical outcome of the pomo “deconstruction” agenda.
What is pomo?
LillianCannon - 23 July 2012 05:21 AM
If the postmodern ideas are followed to their ends, you get nihilism, which is fun for 20 year old Redditors, . . .
Should I assume you’re calling such editors communists? Also, if you consider certain of Sam Harris’ philosophical takes on things, we’re smack-dab in the heart of nihilism. To Harris, for instance, any human being is a mere puppet not just without a soul but also without so much as a self, for God’s sake. Now that’s what I would call nihilism.
‘My dream discipline and department would combine sociology, anthropology, psychology and philosophy to survey ways of organizing human behavior and institutions and compare their efficacy in improving the human condition’
The relativist position is belied by actual human behavior: apply Rawls to relativism - if you could choose where to be born, would you choose the culture with the burqas, honor killings, mutilated genitals and failed economic systems, knowing that you’d have a pretty good chance of being worse off than you would were you born in the U.S.? Of course not.
And why do you suppose that is? It’s because I wasn’t born in an alien culture. If I had been—if you had been—you’d choose the culture in which you were brought up, too: burqas, honor killings, mutilated genitals, “failed” economic systems and all. You’d find that preferable to the West’s “decadent nihilism.”
Hell, to hear you bemoaning the lack of moral values that supposedly stem from relativism, and your insistence that “objective” right and wrong exist and that you know what it is—one might mistake you for a burqa-wearing, honor-killing, genital-mutilating Muslim yourself.
In other words, “objective” right and wrong are determined by the culture in which you were born.
Yes, I was referring to relativism. The anecdote in Harris’ book was a female academic defending hijab/niqab/etc.
That is one opinion/view or relativism, and one I disagree with. But there is nothing in moral relativism that says you, I or anyone have to agree that what other people do/believe is morally right/OK.
ASD: And why do you suppose that is? It’s because I wasn’t born in an alien culture. If I had been—if you had been—you’d choose the culture in which you were brought up, too: burqas, honor killings, mutilated genitals, “failed” economic systems and all. You’d find that preferable to the West’s “decadent nihilism.”
I agree. It depends on our experiences as well as whether or not our values are group-centered or individual centered. Remember that Egyptian guy, Sami, who thought stoning adulterers was okay because it help prevent sexually-transmitted diseases and strengthened the family? We may have been able to convince him that whipping was the way to go, but he just couldn’t see how awful, from our perspective, his moral values appeared to be.
But, on the other hand, I do see Lillian’s point. We shouldn’t just sigh and resign ourselves and giving up on the idea of establishing a core of values relevant to all cultures. I mean, we could start off by agreeing that blatantly torturing children is not a virtue, but then….damn it…we have to define torture. When we struggle to do that, we’ll start quarreling again.
I keep thinking that, since we are all human animals, there must be some universal values that we all share and that we can work together to ameliorate suffering. Except that Catholics wouldn’t like that, would they? Many of them think suffering is sanctifying.
I don’t know. I’m too old and tired to confront these issues. I didn’t even know what pomo and reddit are. The world needs spunky young people like Lillian to attempt to resolve them. Go girl!
