An interesting observation after traditional Christmas arguments with my right--wing relatives in Poland:
Alt-right is now talking 100% postmodernism.
History made full circle: half-century ago it was mostly far left who ranted about "gender aspect of mathematics" and "science as a social construct", basically denying humans ability to objectively describe reality.
@kravietz
It's this again, but on a longer timeline. Leveraging "stale pasta and recycled memes" (from over 100 years ago).
What's really interesting is how reusing old memes makes a new story more plausible, even among people who believe themselves to be against said memes in their older form.
Unless there is an evolutionary reason why our brains like these ideas and so their current resurgence has no relationship to their previous life.
This sounds like a good explanation of the generic mechanism but what raised my eyebrows was that the relative I talked to was almost literally quoting the arguments you could before only in works of postmodernist philosophers such as Derrida - far fetching statements about relativity of science and inability to describe reality objectively. He used it specifically to reject easily observed phenomena such as CO2 concentration in atmosphere, so you get where that was going :)
He obviously didn't acquire these from reading of Derrida whom he would despise if he ever heard about him (because "leftist") but from alt-right press. What was especially sad is that he's an engineer by education, so when he started ranting about his "intuition" about CO2 levels the obvious question I had was whether the chemical engineering installations he helped design were also built based on "intuition"...
@kravietz
He didn't invent these arguments himself so the person who did probably used postmodernist literature as a base.
Now whether they used it because it's pleasing to the mind or they used it because it has cultural base to build upon is what I'm not so sure of.
But, as I seem to recall, some surprisingly specific stories like virgin birth go way back into antiquity so I think there is a good argument to be made that beliefs are believable because they pattern on older beliefs.
@kravietz thinking critically about how science and our economies work is not about being on the left or on the right. Your relatives may be waking up.
@edsu He's not thinking "critically", this is an absolute opposite of critical thinking. He was just denying a basic physical observation because he didn't like its conclusions. At the same time he didn't deny Newton's laws of motion or Einstein's theory of relativity and he's benefiting from them on daily basis.
@kravietz ok, but Marx and Derrida were.
@kravietz "These tools were initially forged by Marx" as somebody who is studying Marx, I'd like to know what you base this claim on. As far as I know, Marx was radically on the side of considering objective reality to exist and to be something we could understand.
Also, I'd like to point out that "science as a social construct" is not incompatible with a belief in the ability to objectively describe reality. Our descriptions are just prone to be influenced by our biases.
Thank you for constructive comment on the subject.
Marx introduced a whole new analytical apparatus (specifically diamat and histmat) which he continuously boasted as "scientific", which was later repeated by Marxist-Leninist and Stalinist philosophers.
"The iron laws of dialectics" however from today's perspective can be only described as pseudo-scientific - and have been explicitly described as such by Popper and Kołakowski.
@kravietz Karl Marx may have had a very loose understanding of scientificness of his Historical Materialism, which is more like an analysis of historical accounts, but I fail to see how this has anything to do with a belief in humans ability to objectively describe reality, which Marx supported (in fact, it's more correct I think to say that Marx believed this too much, which is why he thought he could make the analysis of history into a science).
So while modern science has been always to some extent obviously impacted by human bias, the bias is perceived specifically as failure of science, and science has procedures to prevent the bias from happening.
In case of Marxism, the bias was at the heart of the ideology and any non-compliance with its fundamental assumption was immediately labelled as "reactionary" even if observed reality obviously contradicted the ideology.
@kravietz "... modern science... to some extent obviously impacted by human bias, [it] is perceived... as failure of science..."
Isn't individual instances of science supposed to fail? That's what makes it able to progress? But I don't know of anyone, except perhaps the radically religious or -spiritual (quite opposite of Marxists who generally are hardcore materialists), who perceives science in general as a failed because biases can occur.
Who do u refer to specifically that believes this?
@amici Marxist materialism didn't make it immune to bias. Quite the opposite. Marx believed very strongly (as most narcissist people do) that he discovered unique and absolute laws of history and economy. When observation didn't match the "laws", instead of modifying them he adapted his "analytical apparatus" to bend the reality around the laws, and then argued the "bourgeois science" is wrong, thus undermining the very basic assumptions behind scientific approach.
@kravietz My key question remains unanswered: who do you refer to specifically that believes that science generally fails because biases can occur? That believes a social construction of science means we can't objectively describe reality? Because I don't think that characterizes any significant amount of Marxists, and certainly not Marx himself.
@amici At the same time Marx's "laws of dialectical materialism" were mostly banal or vague or, as pointed out by Kołakowski, simply nonsense. Laws such as "everything in the world changes and is connected" are so vague that they cannot be either proven or disproven, yet for half century they were referred with quasi-religious care in serious policy and philosophical treaties. This annoyed Popper so much that the came up with the initial ideas on what we can actually call science.
@kravietz I am familiar with Popper, and I have read a significant chunk of his critique of Plato (though not his critique of Hegel/Marx yet). But I feel this conversation about dialectical materialism is off the track of what this conversation is about: namely Marx and Marxist's supposed (by you) belief that reality can't be objectively described due to the social construction of science.
If you read my initial comment, you will see that I did not say "Marx claimed reality can't be objectively described". I wrote Marx forged the tools that later opened the doors to the hell of postmodernist denial of science.
@kravietz That does not make much sense, since "These tools" would have to refer to something you said earlier, and the toot to which you attached the toot about "These tools" is the one about "basically denying humans ability to objectively describe".
But okay. If that's not what you meant then my question is unnecessary.
By "these tools" I meant diamat and histmat which Marx introduced basically because he wanted to obtain specific conclusions that "bourgeois science" wasn't able to deliver.
The statement about inability to objectively describe reality referred to 20th century postmodernists, I similarity in motives and mpde of operation of both Marx and postmodernists.
Now we got climate deniers, anti-GMO and anti-vaxxers who resort to the same techniques for the same reasons.
@kravietz "...I meant diamat and histmat which Marx introduced... to obtain specific conclusions that 'bourgeois science' wasn't able to deliver." Honestly this I have never heard of so I have nothing to comment here except it would be nice if you'd be able to point to where Marx writes about "bourgeois science" so I could understand the context myself. Without knowing context, I'd have to guess it refers to scientists who're afraid to speak truth to power because capitalists pay their salary
For detailed discussion of the scientific character of Marxism I recommend Kołakowski volume III chapter IV, which can be found in an old edition here https://ipfs.io/ipfs/bafykbzacebo552r2kndqxzvf2byvpag4dz2z3eb2dylr5ziqj2hnbptqciwhu?filename=Leszek%20Ko%C5%82akowski%20-%20Main%20Currents%20of%20Marxism_%20Its%20Origin%2C%20Growth%2C%20and%20Dissolution_%20Volume%203%2C%20The%20Breakdown.%203%20%281978%29.pdf
@kravietz Does this contain an answer to my question about who specifically believes the idea that reality can't objectively be described?
Another in-depth analysis of scientific character of Marxist economy can be found in "The logic of the planned economy" by Pawel H. Dembinski (1991) which I'm unfortunately unable to find anywhere in electronic version and I have a paper copy.
@kravietz Same question as previously: does it answer my question. If not, then I actually have Marx's own texts and so I can find out there what he says about his dialectical materialism, historical materialism and so forth.
Probably the most prominent example of this attitude of Marxism was the rise of Lysenkoism and subsequent prosecution of geneticists in USSR - a conflict that originated specifically from rejection of the idea that a fundamental change in nature could be a result of a random mutation in individual organism, a concept fundamentally incompatible with Marxist ideals.
@kravietz Marx was not a Marxist. And I mean that literally, because Marx said he was not a Marxist. I do not think what happened in the USSR, especially under Stalin, has much to do with what Marx wrote about also. So while the prosecution of geneticists may describe Stalin's reign, it doesn't really have anything to do with Karl marx.
@kravietz
This post is gonna trigger! Trigger far righties for any association with Marx. Trigger far lefties due to criticism of Marx.
These tools were initially forged by Marx to facilitate his wishful thinking about how societies operate that science did not support.
In 20th century far-left faced the same challenge and picked the same tools as they knew them well due to ideological compatibility and general inspiration by Marx.
Today the same Marx-inspired tools are being picked up by alt-right generation that talks about "evils of cultural Marxism" (a bullshit term on its own).
Sokal Affair was LOL, this is LOL squared.