Curious academic fads: Multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and cultural relativism

“What ‘multiculturalism’ boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture – and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.”

– Thomas Sowell, economist

The fads of twenty-first-century philosophy may be almost as bad as their names …

The fads of twenty-first-century philosophy may be almost as bad as their names. Many a bad idea has been made to sound better, by simply throwing “-ism” onto the end of a good buzzword. Although I find most postmodern writing to be intolerably bad, I should concede that by the simple addition of an “-ism,” some of their ideas can be made to sound deep and intellectual. The words with several syllables seem to conceal a certain kind of emptiness in their ideas, with the quality of the words seldom matching their intimidating quantity. But the influence of these ideas is far too prevalent for them to just be dismissed out of hand. It has been said that nutty ideas in academia will soon find their way into the broader society, about five years after their appearance in the ivory tower. Thus, the various offshoots of postmodernism have gained a foothold in everyday life far beyond their academic origins. I plan to deal with postmodernism proper (however one defines it) in another post. Thus, I will not attempt to deal with the original postmodern ideas in this post. Rather, I will here be undertaking to cover certain offshoots of postmodernism, such as multiculturalism and postcolonialism. It seems correct to identify these as offshoots of postmodernism. I will also talk somewhat here about moral relativism and cultural relativism, and how they fit into this broader postmodern picture.

Africans serving in the armies of European colonial powers – German East Africa, circa 1906

Why you should be concerned about postmodernism

I have long had a fair number of friends who identify as “Marxist” or “socialist.” But I freely admit that relatively few of my friends have described themselves to me as “postmodern” or “postmodernist.” Chances are that your experience is much the same. That is, you probably don’t know too many people who identify themselves as “postmodern” or “postmodernist.” But, if we undertake to define what “postmodernism” is, we may find that we have a fair number of friends who fit this description. We may find that postmodern ideas underlie many other belief systems – from transgender ideology and identity politics, to feminism and critical race theory. We may thus find that a fair number of our friends are influenced, in one way or another, by various postmodern ideas. And, if we take the trouble to examine these ideas carefully, we may see that they cannot stand up to serious intellectual scrutiny. Postmodernism is (and remains) intellectually bankrupt. Thus, it may be worth the time to define this philosophy, then to gauge its prevalence, and finally to take the trouble to debunk it. Perhaps, then, we will be better able to arrive at philosophical truth.

Richard Rorty, postmodern philosopher

Why I believe that critical race theory is unscientific

Scientific theories must be testable. But if both results are believed to “prove” one right …

Suppose I told you that something really crazy happened last night. Specifically, at midnight last night, everything in the universe “shrank to one-half its original dimensions.” If you were to get a yardstick, you’d see that the size of certain nearby objects has changed in the manner claimed. If so, then that would prove me right. But, if the yardstick appeared to show that the size was the same as before, then it’s because the yardstick also “shrank” as well. Thus, my hypothesis has still not been disproved – in fact, it gets “proved” either way! If you test something scientifically, then this has to be “valid” science, after all. To get a “valid” scientific hypothesis, all you have to do is to test that hypothesis, right? I mean, that’s “all” that’s required for something to be scientific.

… then it’s still not science, because there has to be some possible result that could prove it wrong

The problem with this argument is that testability alone is not sufficient. The hypothesis also has to be falsifiable. That is, you have to be able to conceive of a scenario where your hypothesis could be proven false – that is, where it could be “falsified.” If you believe that either of two opposite results would “prove” your own point of view, then you’re still not doing science. Your hypothesis may still be testable, but the test is unscientific, because its advocates cannot conceive of a result that disproves the hypothesis by their own standards. If you’re trying to determine which of two movies is “inherently better,” this kind of thing doesn’t have to be scientific. Subjective claims like this are allowed to be unscientific – not to be confused with being anti-scientific, which means something else. The problems come when theories that are not scientific are claiming to be such, like the earlier claim about the universe shrinking. This is a different kind of claim from one movie being “inherently better” than the other. The shrinking-universe hypothesis claims to be objective, and thus crosses the line into the territory of pseudoscience. The shrinking-universe hypothesis is much more deserving of censure than those theories that never claimed to be “scientific” in the first place. When you claim to be “scientific,” you need to be able to back up this claim.

Postmodernists seem to misunderstand the natural sciences

“Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in ‘eternal’ physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the ‘objective’ procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.”

– Alan Sokal’s “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (1996) – later revealed by the author to be a hoax, which he used to demonstrate how academic journals that lack peer review can allow complete nonsense like this to slip by unnoticed

Disclosure: I lack training in the natural sciences (but, then, so do most postmodernists)

Postmodern ideas have now gained a foothold in the humanities and social sciences. For example, these views seem to be particularly popular among professors of literature and philosophy. Many of them argue that all truth is both relative and subjective – a doctrine known as “relativism.” Some of them have even argued that morality is relative, to either the individual or the broader culture – a better subject for two other posts. (To be released later on.) Postmodernists are also skeptical of what they call “meta-narratives,” or grand narratives about the larger world. And, in the context of the natural sciences, they believe that the natural sciences support their relativist view of things. They believe that mathematics and physics both deny the possibility of a true knowledge of nature. They cite a number of math and science ideas (four in particular) to support these strange interpretations. But it seems that they have grossly misunderstood these ideas, which do not actually make the claims that the postmodernists attribute to them. Thus, it might be helpful to set the record straight, and show what the sciences actually say about relative truth and the theory of knowledge. I should acknowledge that, like my current targets, I admittedly lack training in the natural sciences or higher mathematics myself. I freely admit this up-front. But, then, most of my postmodern targets seem to lack training in these subjects, too – virtually all of them, it seems. Thus, any criticisms on this score would have to go both ways, if true fairness is to be observed.

Jean Baudrillard, postmodern philosopher and sociologist

A review of Michael Wood’s “Art of the Western World”

In 1969, the BBC released a classic television series called “Civilisation” (spelled in the British way). This prior series was presented by the art historian Kenneth Clark, and also details the “art of the Western world.” I am a major fan of the Kenneth Clark series, as I describe here. But it is said that each generation writes its own history. Thus, in 1989, the BBC also engaged Michael Wood to make the series “Art of the Western World.” This was some twenty years after the making of the original “Civilisation.” Michael Wood was trained as a historian, and he is an excellent filmmaker and storyteller. But he seems to have no background in art history, and probably felt his lack of knowledge in this area when he made this film. Thus, in every episode, he sometimes delegated the presenting job to other people, whose expertise he presumably would have admired. This is a different technique from merely interviewing scholars, although he also did some of that as well (particularly in his last episode). Rather, he seems to have allowed his chosen scholars a great degree of creative control over certain segments of the film. He allowed them to say basically whatever they want, and narrate their segments as they see fit. He also gave them some creative control over what images were to be shown on screen during their presentations. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another documentary film that uses this distinctive technique. This allows him to compensate somewhat for his own lack of formal background in art history. That is, he sticks to what he knows, and Michael Wood knows quite a lot.

Struggle over the Marxist heritage: The battle for the ivory tower

Karl Marx attacked other socialist and communist schools in “The Communist Manifesto”

The debate over the Marxist heritage is at least as old as Marxism itself. In the nineteenth century, for example, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published a brief work called “The Communist Manifesto.” This remains one of the most influential tracts ever written on economic theory. In that same century, they also published a three-volume work called “Das Kapital.” Some would argue that this is the most talked-about book in the social sciences – or, at least, the work that’s most frequently cited in academic journals of the social sciences. These nineteenth-century works are thus among the most influential books in human history. But Karl Marx debated with others in the budding socialist and communist movements, even attacking many of them in “The Communist Manifesto.” For example, “The Communist Manifesto” contains specific attacks on “reactionary socialism” – including “feudal socialism,” “petty-bourgeois socialism,” and “German, or ‘true,’ socialism” (as it was then called). He also attacks “conservative, or bourgeois, socialism,” although he has more mixed feelings about “critical-utopian socialism and communism” – as he states in the work itself. (Source: Chapter III, Section 3) Thus, the debate over socialism and communism goes back at least as far as the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, it still continues in full force today. Thus, this post will give a brief overview of the debates within the Marxist community, in the years since Marx’s death at age 64. I will have to skip over the original words of Marx himself, since I cover them elsewhere. Therefore, this will include a special focus on both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the developments in Marxist thinking since the twentieth-century Russian Revolution.

Karl Kautsky

A review of “Skepticism and Religious Relativism” (audiobook)

I was expecting something very different from this audiobook. Specifically, I was expecting to get an overview of agnostics, atheists, and other like-minded groups (including “secularists”). And these groups are certainly covered therein. But it is really a treatment of religious skepticism, including within the religious community. This audiobook also talks about the different kinds of skepticism, and the responses to it from within the believing community. And it finally talks about religious relativism – the idea that all religions are just a “state of mind,” and that none of them is more valid than any other. (More about that later.)

A review of “20th Century European Philosophy” (audiobook)

I already thought that twentieth-century Western philosophy was a vast wasteland, before I ever listened to this audiobook. But I listened to this audiobook with an open mind, because I wanted to better understand the history of philosophy. After listening to this audiobook, my worst fears seemed to be confirmed therein. It is hard for me to imagine a greater disaster area than the philosophies of the twentieth century.

“Man is the measure of all things” … or is he?

“It is indeed the opinion of Protagoras, who has another way of expressing it. Man, he says, is the measure of all things, of the existence of things that are, and of the non-existence of things that are not.”

– Socrates, as recorded in Plato’s “Theaetetus”

Is all truth in the “eye of the beholder?” Protagoras thought so, but Socrates didn’t …

Socrates and Plato both reported some words from the Greek sophist Protagoras, in Plato’s dialogue “Theaetetus.” The dialogue features a character by the name of “Socrates,” believed here to represent the actual and historical Socrates. The character of “Socrates” thus quotes Protagoras as saying that “Man is the measure of all things.” Thus, we seem to have the word of both Plato and Socrates that Protagoras really said this. But what does it mean that “Man is the measure of all things”? As Socrates correctly argues, it seems to mean that all truth is in the “eye of the beholder” – or, at least, that Protagoras believed this to be the case. “If I believe that something is true,” say some today, “then it must be true.” But this belief leads to a number of problematic conclusions, as Socrates proceeds to point out in this same dialogue, the “Theaetetus” – named after one of the other characters in the dialogue. Nonetheless, some today (notably certain postmodernists) still proclaim that all truth is in the “eye of the beholder.” It is acknowledged that some things really do work this way, but it would seem that other things do not. Thus, this dialogue is a timeless meditation on objective truth whose arguments need to be heard today. Thus, it may be worth examining here in this post.

Socrates