What is Postmodern Political Philosophy?

An explanation of how postmodernism applies to political philosophy and politics. Including examining questions of whether Marxism, socialism and Trumpism are postmodern.

Sponsors: Joshua Furman, Roman Leventov, NBA_Ruby, Antybodi, Federico Galvão, Mike Gloudemans, Eugene SY, Andrew Sullivan, Antoinemp1, Andreas Kurz, Ismail Fagundes, Joao Sa, Ploney, Tyler James, and Dennis Sexton. Thanks for your support!

Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Collier-MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, and more! (#Postmodernism #Politics)

[Bruh-eljs]

Hey man I just want to thank you for all the content you've produced, it made my learning so much easier and faster.

[lbdeuce]

Your graphical data point was a good touch

[OrdnanceLab]

Great video that captures the nuance very well, instead of whatever Peterson is yelling about today.

[savyblizzard]

If there's something valuable PM contributed to politics, it would have to be the suggestion that maybe we're being too dogmatic with our commitments to certain predictions of history.

[Wbjpen]

This channel is a goldmine!
Warning, potential meta-narrative ahead: I can see why pundits would want to misrepresent PM, it preaches humility and caution!

[ranytith]

Really great explanation, only one critique is I'm not sure what your X-axis and Y-axis are suppose to represent when showing these graphs. But nevertheless the way you explained how a theory is suppose to work as a means to connect the data points is a very good analogy. Just like how machine learning is just very special curve fitting, theories we make in general are used to fit data points where the data points are events and we want to somehow connect these points. If that is the case, I would say you are getting a directed graph (vertices and edges). Very nice though! Cheers.

[Pfhorrest]

If political postmodernists think that socialism *is right* about some things and capitalism *is right* about other things, then they are *not* completely dismissing the possibility of any correct political metanarrative, because by saying that this view gets one thing right and that one gets another right, they're admitting that there is such a thing as "getting it right", and therefore a possibility of some view getting it *all* right.

[tomcollector]

Not sure if you are familiar with the popular "Kane B" youtube channel about philosophy. But the guy said "Skepticism is a position you can't even hold". And when I pushed him on it in the comments. He said the following: "Since people who claim to be skeptics are (a) averse to using the word "belief" but (b) still need to make the kind of distinctions between representational states that the rest of us use that word to track, they end up muddying these differences." he said this in response to me pointing out the non-trivial difference between proclivities and beliefs. I told him he should debate you (since he believes skepticism cannot rise above semantic complaining and aversion to the word "belief" as he put it). PLLEEEASSEEE debate that guy. You're my skeptical hero, it would be an amazing thing to see you dismantle that dude. This guy was so confident skepticism is an insanely stupid position (historically significant) but foolish as he seems to think.

[guillaumethemapler]

I think i just found out I might be a postmodernist? I mean once you actually understand it...

[AndrianTimeswift]

So, my stance with regards to political metanarratives is that, while the data will likely never be sufficient to distill one single correct metanarrative (that is to say, the data will always be underdetermined), some metanarratives will fit the data better than others. In that sense, I agree with the postmodernists. However, the disagreements that arise between people will be the result of more than this underdetermination. Many factors go into which political metanarrative a person will adopt, including their personal values, their intellectual capabilities, and how familiar they are with the various metanarratives. Thus it is not the case that there is a simple explanation for why people adopt the political metanarratives they do.

To illustrate the point regarding personal values, I have found myself in disagreement with others who, during the course of debate, have stated core values with which I completely disagree. For example, I might believe that it is undesirable for people to die of preventable causes, such as treatable diseases, starvation, exposure, etc. If my interlocutor does not agree with me that this is undesirable, or places some conflicting value (say, the right to own and control property) as being of much greater importance, then there is no way that I can convince them to adopt my own political views. The only way to change a person's mind at that point is to change their core values, which is not something that can be achieved through rational debate or presentation of data. Such changes are fundamentally emotional and generally occur at a subconscious level. It is as futile arguing with such a person as trying to teach arithmetic to an earthworm. We may be comparable in rationality and intellectual ability, but we will never agree upon the basic premises necessary to reach any given conclusion. This has been a rather discouraging realization for me.

That said, I do consider it possible for individuals with largely incompatible values to reach compromises. Certain values are so deeply-ingrained into the human psyche as to be almost universal. Self-interest, for example. While someone might not care if others are starving, they certainly will care if they themselves are starving. This creates the possibility of diplomacy and/or coercion, and is essentially how society is held together at the most basic level.

[hellwolfliberty]

but and meta narrative maybe have more internal consistency in explaining a set of bundles of data points being examined

[TheRealisticNihilist]

Idk anything about post modernism, but I have no idea how this escapes a very facile objection that post modernism is itself a meta narrative because the data point it's trying to explain is why so many can look at the same data and come away with different meta narratives.

If it's not supposed to be a meta narrative, then how could it predict observing the data point of people disagreeing about meta narratives?

[Dayglodaydreams]

Are you going to cover literary theory or mostly analytic philosophy of language in your Postmodernist philosophy of language video? I believe literary theory is the heart of postmodernism. Linguistics and Literary theory are the hearts of post-structuralism and deconstruction.

[saltmysoul]

I might be misunderstanding something here, but I just don't understand how the claim that "No one metanarrative perfectly explains the facts and the right way to govern" is not in of itself a metanarrative, and therefore no good. Here's my best attempt to order my thoughts on this:

If the observation that there are multiple ways to interpret the same data and arrive at different outcomes can be considered a "data point", then I believe I can come to a different conclusion from the post-modernists: that we simply haven't found this perfect metanarrative yet.

Regardless of whether or not this conclusion is true, the fact that I have been able to come to it suggests that both me and postmodernists have constructed different metanarratives about the nature of our world using the same data point.

Therefore, the idea that "there is no one metanarrative that perfectly explains the facts" is itself a metanarrative. If it is indeed a metanarrative, shouldn't postmodernists be critical of it?

That's my best attempt at constructing a formal argument. I hope it's at least understandable.

[rafilosofo]

I'm curious if this is just descriptive or if Carneades is (or has become) postmodern. The videos in this series are seeming to me particularly taking a side. It may be just my misinterpretation.

[werrkowalski]

One could also attempt to deconstruct the metanarratives one doesnt like under the guise of postmodernism, there is no such thing as true neutrality, so a postmodernist will almost always be more favorable towards certain metanarratives. I would say this is what often happens, and since scepticism of metanarratives inevitably logically leads to certain forms of relativism, why should reason or logic stop a postmodernist, if rationalism is just another metanarrative?

[SenorCitrone]

In your description isn't postmodernism then a meta-narrative itself?

[confusedarmchairphilosopher]

when people speak of trump as the ultimate postmodern president, and even if most acknowledge that trump himself holds no principal positions, I don't think they think of it as trump himself indorses postmodernism or the rejection of metanarratives, but rather that the trump phenomenon is a byproduct of the postmodern condition, ala what you described at 13:02. This is very different from the Petersonesque accusations of "postmodern neo-Marxism" wherein it is the individuals themselves that are accused of holding postmodern positions, a lot of which have nothing to do with postmodernism at all (political correctness and so on..)

[chrisstott]

Postmodernism holds that good governance is impossible? Surely all societies should reject any philosophy seeking to destroy the possibility of good governance?

[laprankster]

I wonder how all of these concepts would apply in the case of say a world government.