Western philosophical debates about Modernism and Postmodernism since the 1970s have often focussed on rival claims and counter-claims regarding objective truth, on the one hand, and the social construction of “truths” on the other. What light can 21st-century post-Postmodern positions – especially Metamodernism and ‘Post-Truth’ – throw upon these debates?
This History of Ideas talk will offer a very rapid and selective top-down examination of these issues regarding Postmodernism and its aftermaths via its altercations with Architecture and Science. Where have these philosophical developments left us, both morally and aspirationally, one quarter of our way into the 21st Century?
Reflecting on that wonderfully thought-provoking talk of Bob Clarke’s . . .
There seem to me (in a more coherent mood than yesterday!) various distinctions that need to be made separately from each other.
1. Some statements (a) are meant to be either true or false, such that there is a ‘fact of the matter’. Other statements (b) are not meant to be true or false, but evaluative. Others (c) are presented as statements of fact, but are unverifiable/unfalsifiable and literally nonsense.
2. In the case of (a), the only sensible way of deciding the truth-value is evidence and reason – a blanket approach which includes science. That method may decide, perhaps tentatively, that the statement is true, or false, or simply unknown/unknowable. Even if, for practical reasons, it is unknowable – e.g. whether the last dinosaur died on a Tuesday (= a multiple of 7 days before today!) – we do assume that there is a fact of the matter.
3. In the case of (b), we argue for a statement by trying to persuade people to view the world in the way we do – not because that gets to the ‘truth’ but because we think that holding that view of the world will make people happier, or more appreciative of beauty, or whatever.
4. The problem arises when (1) we treat statements of value (Bach is greater than Beethoven, empathy is good, animals are equal to humans) as if they are statements of fact, where evidence and reason might reach a definitive answer – maybe this is what the post-modernists were on to; and (2) when we make unverifiable/unfalsifiable claims, type (c), believing them to be ‘true’, when they are really just nonsense (there are fairies at the bottom of my garden, God is great and disapproves of abortion, several of my neighbours are witches). Some of type (c) statements are harmless nonsense, but others, e.g. about witches or about the unpleasant principles of a supernatural being, can be highly dangerous.
5. Another, and separate, distinction is between (two, at least) modes of belief: reason and something called ‘faith’. But I’ll leave that until later . .