From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Sat Mar 15 2003 - 04:03:18 GMT
Platt, Matt, Johnny, anybody else,
Platt said:
My grandparents believed a lot of things I don't. Likewise, my
grandchildren will believe a lot of things I don't. "Many truths change,"
which is one truth like many that doesn't. :-)
Matt:
I thought of a new way to put the post-modern's nonchalance about the
self-referential paradoxes Platt keeps accusing us of, so I thought I'd use
Platt as a segway. Presumably from what Platt has said on other occasions
and from how I understand his position, when Platt says, "My grandparents
believed a lot of things I don't," he also means that he is more right,
more correct in his beliefs. And by this he means that his beliefs are
better than his grandparents'. When Platt says, "my grandchildren will
believe a lot of things I don't," he does _not_ mean that his grandchildren
will necessarily have beliefs that are more right. He hopes they will have
better beliefs, but it may end up being the case that they will become
post-modernists, which according to Platt's lights is a bad thing.
Platt and I agree on this. I, too, think that my beliefs are better than
my grandparents' and that my grandkids may someday have some pretty stupid
beliefs. Where we differ is in the fact that Platt believes that
"betterness" is judged, not in any particular person's lights, but in the
light of Reason. Platt believes that a Tribunal of Reason judges whose
beliefs are better than whose, and that this Tribunal of Reason assures us
that when a belief is judged better, it is absolutely, now and forever,
better than the rejected belief. This is a modern perspective. So, if
post-modernism is judged by the Tribunal of Reason as being degenerate and
amoral, it will be by the light of Reason, not Platt's own particular
beliefs about the matter. (Consistent with his position, Platt admirably
leaves open the possibility that Reason will rule against him; what this
would mean if it judges against him on the issue of "modernism v.
post-modernism" is, to say the least, a little paradoxical, which is what
gives Platt the reason to think that Reason will rule on behalf of the
defendant.)
I, on the other hand, take a post-modern perspective, which says that
"betterness" is judged by our own particular lights. When slavery was
judged to be immoral, it wasn't judged by Reason, it was judged by a
community of persons who said, "Ya' know what? That whole slavery thing
really sucks for the slaves. Maybe we shouldn't do that." So, if the
issue between modernism and post-modernism is ever decided, it will be by a
particular group of people with a particular perspective, not by an
a-perspectival Tribunal of Reason.
Now, I've already noted that a paradoxical conclusion appears if Reason
judged post-modernism to be absolutely better: the Tribunal of Reason
ruled that the Tribunal of Reason does not exist. Hmm, doesn't make much
sense does it. I've noted to Platt before that this paradox only arises
when we use the modern vocabulary of a Tribunal of Reason. The switch to
post-modernism is the switch from of modern vocabulary that makes reference
to a Tribunal of Reason to a post-modern vocabulary that makes reference to
a Tribunal of People. In this case the judgement, "the Tribunal of People
ruled that the Tribunal of Reason does not exist," makes much more
sense. It is at this point that Platt accuses post-moderns of abandoning
Reason, which is true insofar as it means that we are abandoning the image
of a Tribunal of Reason judging us, in favor of a Tribunal of People who
reason out their judgements. Reason and logic don't disappear. They just
become internalized into a new set of assumptions. For instance,
Riemannian geometry looks illogical amd unreasonable to the Euclidean and
vice versa. The moral to take from this story is that we shouldn't expect
two different vocabularies to be logically compatible if they use a
different set of premises and assumptions. Using the premises of
post-modernism, no paradox arises. We simply set aside talk of
absoluteness in favor of talk of contingency. All of our judgements are
historically contingent. That means it made sense for 18th-century
slaveowners to have slaves, even though it doesn't make sense to us
now. This isn't to say that the 18th-century slaveowner's belief in
slavery is just as good as our current belief in the immoralness of
slavery. By our lights, the slaveowner, were he to be transplanted from
his time and place into our time and place, would be wrong, wrong,
wrong. By his lights, he would still be right, but the entire world-moral
community is against him and we can feel comfortable in condemning
him. The switch from a modern moral vocabulary to a post-modern moral
vocabulary is the switch from moral algebra to moral solidarity.
On the issue of contingency and the modern/post-modern debate, it makes
sense to refer to Nietzsche's famous phrase (stolen from Feuerbach): "God
is dead." What Nietzsche meant was that God was once alive. According to
an old, religious vocabulary, God did exist. But now the advent of a new,
Nietzschean vocabulary has killed Him because by the light of the new
vocabulary, God is a figment of our imaginations. At the same time, a
Tribunal of Reason did once exist. According to an old, Kantian, modern
vocabulary, a Tribunal of Reason did pass ahistorical, absolute judgement
over our beliefs. But that is not the case anymore. The advent of a new,
post-modern (as it happens, Nietzschean) vocabulary has disbanded the old
Tribunal of Reason and has replaced it with a Tribunal of People. So, it
may be fair to say that there once did exist Absolutes. But they existed
in a time that has, by my own Nietzschean lights, now since past.
Matt
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