5.2.8 Denying the consequent

There is a valid form of logical reasoning called “denying the consequent” (aka “modus tollens”) which can be used to show that induction is a valid and fully warranted methodology that we may rely upon. The form of the argument is:

If P, then Q.
Q is false.
Therefore P is false.

Following this logical form, the use of inference from real world experience is justified by the following sequence:

• If (P) induction from sense experience to make inferences about the world is invalid and unjustifiable, then (Q) science (which relies on inference) has no hope of working.


• However, (Q is false) science does work! There are countless examples of the progress that it has introduced, discoveries that it has made, and new technologies it has spawned. There are no counter examples to its success.


• Therefore, (P is false) our inferences from the real world ARE justified and valid.

Obviously if there was significant evidence in support of the claim that drawing conclusions through the scientific approach was invalid, then opponents would have a case. But such evidence is entirely absent, and there is overwhelming counter-evidence. Nor is there any competing theory as to why science tends to produce correct, useful, consistent, predictive, and informative results. Barring the existence of a competing explanation that accounts for its success (trickery by Satan to test our faith is one such untestable explanation, as is Solipsism), it’s plain, obvious, common sense to accept as fact that inference from the real world is valid. It would require agonizing logical contortions to explain away the falseness of statement “Q” above (i.e., “science has no hope of working”) using some other argument. The rule of Parsimony would indicate that the obvious explanation, above, is the correct one.

We should not become over excited by the fact that an established formal argument supports the use of induction. Language can be slippery, and we have seen earlier in this document a case where the cousin of modus tollens, modus ponens, was used to prove both that reality IS an illusion and later that reality IS NOT an illusion. So be careful with these simple techniques, they can be misused.

5.2.7 Foundationalism and Coherentism

After a slight divergence to study Postmoderism (a late addition to the 5.1 chapter which covered Faces of Idealism), we come back to the topic in section 5.2 - How Can we have Confidence in our Infererences.

Scientists attempt to justify their scientific assertions and interpretations by reference to other specific scientific statements and theories, which are usually more basic or fundamental statements. We have seen how this can lead to an infinite regression of assumptions and justifications, each of which must be proved. Hume, among others has written about this problem. To avoid this problem, the concept of Foundationalism was introduced, initially by Descartes, built up by Hume, and given modern form by Newton, Russell and others. This concept says that basic, self-evident, foundational beliefs exist and that these require no proof. These are said to be "properly basic". These, then, serve as the basis for derived, non-properly basic, beliefs.

Foundationalism may seem ultimately futile, because it says that at some point, you can’t have any more proof so you just have to accept some beliefs as being self-evident, or foundational. But if the alternatives are infinite regress or circular reasoning, some consider it the "least bad" route. In our normal lives we each intuitively accept some things as properly basic (such as the existence of the past, of other minds, of the external universe, our our own selves). No matter how much your system can explain, there will be something underlying your system that is unexplainable. This is true in geometry, calculus, and physics as much as in religion and mythology – that is the nature of explanation in all its contexts. This is called the Regress problem, and some people are uncomfortable with it. In the search for certainty, to have to resign after several deep iterations is unsatisfying. But the alternative (an infinity of ever more refined explanations) presents at least as many problems. Philosopher Paul Thaggard, no fan of Foundationalism or the need for absolute certainty, helps us put Foundationalism in perspective: "the foundational search for certainty is pointless, and that what matters is the growth of knowledge, not its foundations." Thaggard recommends Cohertism (discussed below) as a more satisfying alternative.

Foundationalists respond to the regress problem by claiming that these most basic beliefs do not themselves require justification by other beliefs. Such would be the case with Russell's Five Postulates, and Newton's Rules of Reasoning in Natural Philosophy, and Aristotle's Laws of Thought (all described elsewhere in this document). Sometimes, these “foundational” beliefs are characterized as beliefs of whose truth one is directly aware, or as beliefs that are self-justifying, or as beliefs that are infallible. According to one particularly permissive form of foundationalism, a belief may count as foundational, in the sense that it may be presumed true until defeating evidence appears, as long as the belief seems to its believer to be true (a "properly basic" belief). Others have argued that a belief is justified if it is based on perception or certain a priori considerations. In any case, it can appear to detractors as philosophical hand-waving.

In physics and the philosophy of science, it is beginning to appear that "Structural Realism" is gaining support in recent years. This theory states that underlying the most basic of objects - subatomic particles, there exists nothing but mathematical properties and structural relationships between properties that themselves are incapable of further reduction. They are the primitives from which the universe is constructed. They would represent the foundation (See Max Tegmark's, Our Mathematical Universe and James Ladyman, Understanding Philosophy of Science). In this view, our best theories in physics do not describe the actual nature of things, but the structure of reality. This allows retention of our structural understanding even as our theories change and even replace each other (for example, as Special Relativity replaces Galilean/Newtonian physics, or the Thermodynamic/Kinetic theory of heat replaces the Caloric theory, or Quantum Mechanics replaces Classical Mechanics). A crude statement of Epistemic structural Realism is the claim that all we "know" of reality is the structure of the relations between things and not the things themselves, and a corresponding crude statement of Ontic Structural Realism is the claim that there are no ‘things’ at all (at least at the lowest levels) and that structure and relationships between structures is all there is. This is the "state of the art" in Physics as far as Foundationalism goes.

Coherentism is a competing solution to the "infinite regress" problem of induction - and is also a way to avoid Foundationalism. This model of knowledge asserts that scientific statements can be said to be valid if they fit cleanly into an existing, coherent system of other known facts or beliefs. In other words, if they form part of a coherent whole (such as the existing body of science), they can be said to be correct. In this view, there is no requirement that scientific statements always be supported by more fundamental statements, instead they can be said to be provisionally “true” if they successfully serve their role in a network of mutually supporting scientific disciplines. Similarly, the fundamental statements that support more complex concepts in several disciplines are buttressed by their repeated successful application. For example, it is not possible to “prove” Newton's Law of Gravity:

Every particle of matter in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is directly proportional to the product of the masses of the particles and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

But it plays such a consistent and predictable role in so many situations that it is considered as true as any scientific principle can be (leaving relativity and quantum gravity aside...). Supporters of this way of looking at scientific statements include Willard Quine and E. O. Wilson who popularized another word for this concept: consilience. However, it was not Wilson who came up with the concept. William Whewell coined the term in 1840 when he said, "The Consilience of Inductions takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an Induction obtained from another different class. Thus Consilience is a test of the truth of the Theory in which it occurs." Stated differently, Consilience is an assertion of the truth of the Theory in which is occurs. However, when a new observation conflicts with the existing body of knowledge, either the observation is incorrect, or the body of knowledge (e.g. existing theories) need to be modified. This is exactly what has happened with Newton's theory in the face of Einstein's discoveries. A useful model for thinking about this is to consider the "scientific edifice" of facts, hypotheses, and theories as less a rigid structure, but a network of relationships. If a new discovery fits well into the existing network, then it can be thought of as consistent with the view of the world contained in that network. If it fails to mesh with the network, then something is wrong - either the new discovery is wrong, or some of the "nodes" in the network need modfication to accomodate the new information. This way of assimilating or rejecting new information definitly conflicts with the Popperian method, which is to reject new information that fails experimental testing. As Duhem/Quine argued, maybe some of the auxilliary assumptions (related nodes in the network) are in need of attention.

Innumerable scientific observations from many disciplines support each other and provide confirmation and support for each other in very convincing ways. For example, Eddington's observations of light bending during a 1919 solar eclipse is considered the first evidence to provide solid support for Einstein's theory of General Relativity. This support didn't come from physics, per se, but from astronomy. Other astronomical phenomena (gravitational redshift of light) have provided equally compelling support.

Genetic research, discoveries in paleontology, in molecular biology and anatomy support and explain a mechanism for Darwin's theory of Evolution and are coherent with it. Plate tectonics explains how mountain ranges formed, which is coherent with much earlier discoveries of submarine fossils atop the peaks of our tallest mountain ranges and fossil similarities on the east coast of South America and west coast of Africa. Other coherent discoveries in geophysics involving magnetic field orientations in rocks on formerly adjacent plates have added additional support.

The chief criticism of foundationalism is that it can lead to the arbitrary or unjustified acceptance of certain basic beliefs. If we can all use personal preference to arrive at our unproven axioms, then strange and divergent belief systems can, will, and do emerge. The criticism of coherentism is that it is basically circular: A explains B, B explains C,and C explains A. A strong objection to coherentism is that it would be possible to have two sets of separately coherent data, that are internally consistent, but which conflict with each other. For example, Young Earth Creationists and Flat Earthers have gone to great extremes to create very details networks of facts and evidence to support their claims which they believe are interally consistent, but which disagree with the coherent set of scientific data. There is nothing within the definition of coherence that makes it impossible for two entirely different sets of beliefs to be internally coherent, but which conflict with each other.

The only other alternative that is generally suggested is to accept the infinite regress and move on. These three choices (foundationalism, coherentism, and infinite regress) bear a close resemblance to the three legs of Münchhausen's trilemma (so named because Baron Münchhausen supposedly pulled himself out of a swamp by his own hair). Simply put, the trilemma factors all possible proofs for a theory into three categories:

• The circular argument, in which theory and proof support each other (coherentism)
• The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof (infinite regress)
• The axiomatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts (foundationalism)

5.1.1.9.3 Postmodernism and science

The Postmodernism argument runs that economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society in which ideas are “simulacra” and only inter-referential representations, mere copies or echoes of each other, with no real original, stable or objective source for communication and meaning. Globalization, brought on by innovations in communication, manufacturing and transportation, is often cited as one force which has driven the decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication, or intellectual production. Scientific publications, whose conclusions change from year to year demonstrate (in their opinion) that there is no solid basis to scientific investigation - that scientists publish to boost their individual reputations and to secure grant money, not to advance a solid body of knowledge.

Given the antipathy of postmodernism to reason, logic, and science, what is the basis of its attack? Fundamentally, it consists of an attempt to reduce science to yet another belief system supported by cultural norms and biases – no better or worse than any other, and on a par with religion, political dogma, or historical tradition. The Postmodernists, radical skeptics of all knowledge, claim that science is a mythic narrative - one among many others. It is just one other way of looking at the world, subject to its own faith claims, with its own priesthood, just like a religion.

Susan Haack, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami, admits that it is true the science has some figures that are regarded with some deference, and it has its share of jargon which is practically impenetrable to the lay person. But it is not just one of many legitimate ways of figuring things out. Every day all of us engage in various kinds of empirical inquiry. You might try a variety of routes to get to work, finding some that get you there faster than others. What is it that makes one route superior? Fewer stop signs, faster speed limits, less traffic? The inquiry of science is continuous with this sort of ordinary every day inquiry. As Thomas Huxley wrote, science is more careful, it's more detailed, and it's more scrupulous. But even though its language is difficult to master, it is not impenetrable at its core. It is an extension of how we all, everyday, get through the world. It is continuous with an activity with which each of us is familiar: ordinary, everyday, empirical investigation. Ordinary common sense is continuous with science. The practice of science is not different in quality from the normal empirical activities we exercise every day during our normal interactions with the world, as we test the environment around us.

However, it should be emphasized that scientific knowledge does not always resemble common sense knowledge. In many ways, the presently accepted scientific theories of the world are very unlike what we think of as common sense beliefs about the world. On the contrary, they frequently defy common sense. The argument that the methods of science are like the methods of everyday life is not a claim about the body of currently accepted scientific theories, but is rather a claim about how scientific inquiries proceed. What distinguishes the sciences in this area is that they have developed an enormous array of techniques and tools for conducting their inquiries that make them much more powerful - mathematics, methodology, computers, statistics, measuring tools, instruments of observation that extend our unaided senses, and a centuries old expanding and self-correcting body of knowledge. Science has organizational methodologies that allow enormous amounts of information to be evaluated, cataloged, understood, and related to other knowledge. However, given all these advantages over commons sense, we should keep in mind the quote from Einstein, "science is a refinement of everyday thinking".

The postmodernist argument also misses the important point that science is an open system of inquiry that is subject by its very methods to outside falsification – even from external reality itself. Faith and dogma, on the other hand, are closed belief systems reliant upon authority or revelation. Stanley Fish, a Postmodernist apologist, argues,

“But what about reasons? Isn’t that what separates scientific faith from religious faith; one is supported by reasons, the other is irrational and supported by nothing but superstition? Not really.”

He asks this rhetorically, because the article in which this quote appears attempts to show that the reasons for trusting rationality and evidence are as arbitrary as the reasons for trusting any other non-rational explanatory system.

This perfectly expresses the core misunderstanding of Postmodernist criticism of science. Although there is plenty of “reason” to have confidence in the explanatory structure which is science, it is not this set of reasons which separates science from faith, but rather, it is methodology. Fish paints a picture of science as a game of inventing reasons to explain specific beliefs (the context of discovery) in something of a post hoc manner. Rather, science is much more about testing those reasons against reality and previously elaborated theories (the later justification which follows discovery). This second, often overlooked, aspect of science is utterly lacking from faith-based belief systems. The glamour is in the discovery, but the bulk of the work is in the painstaking justification, cross-checks, tests for consistency, and confirmation exercises that follow.

Postmodernists also counter scientific falsifiability by attempting to argue that science picks and chooses convenient sources for what it would consider adequate falsification, just as any other belief system would. For example, they might ask,

“Is there something that would falsify a religious faith in the same way that some physical discoveries would falsify a scientist’s belief in natural selection? As it is usually posed, the question imagines disconfirming evidence coming from outside the faith, be it science or religion. But a system of assumptions and protocols (and that is what a faith is) will recognize only evidence internal to its basic presuppositions. Asking that religious faith consider itself falsified by empirical evidence is as foolish as asking that natural selection tremble before the assertion of deity and design. Falsification, if it occurs, always occurs from the inside.”

This is consistent with Thomas Kuhn, who wrote that paradigms can only be judged from within the paradigm itself, not falsified from the outside. And when one paradigm shifts to another it happens for quirky and subjective (i.e. cultural) reasons. Kuhn and Fish miss the whole “later justification” thing that is central to scientific methodology. They miss that science itself is not a set of beliefs but a set of methods. Yes, culture plays its role as it does in every human endeavor. But it is not the driving force, and (in a free inquiry) science does not reach its conclusions to achieve social goals.

Two common Postmodernist critiques of science runs like this: “Because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, psychology, and other human studies, cannot be science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth of any sort. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science subverts oppressed groups, females, ethnics, third-world peoples" (Spiro 1996). These objections are self contradictory. They purport to make some sorts of truthful statements about the world. Any argument that is based on the assertion that “Everything is subjective." runs into immediate problems. This idea is nonsensical. Anti-postmodernist Thomas Nagel has written, "for it would itself have to be either subjective or objective. But it can't be objective, since in that case it would be false if true. And it can't be subjective, because then it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false."

The imminent analytic philosopher, Willard V. O. Quine, maintains that scientific reality is indeed a somewhat arbitrary social construct. He says:

Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.

Sokal and Bricmont, in their book Intellectual Impostures — Fashionable Nonsense, highlight the rising tide of cognitive relativism, the belief that there are no objective truths but only local beliefs whose truth value is relative to the social group or individual which holds the belief. They draw attention to the abuse of concepts from mathematics and physics, such as:

• Using scientific or pseudo scientific terminology without bothering much about what these words mean.


• Importing concepts from the natural sciences into the humanities without the slightest justification, and without providing any rationale for their use.


• Displaying superficial erudition by shamelessly throwing around technical terms where they are irrelevant, presumably to impress and intimidate the non-specialist reader.


• Manipulating words and phrases that are, in fact, meaningless. Self-assurance on topics far beyond the competence of the author and exploiting the prestige of science to give discourses a veneer of rigor.

Relying as it does on deconstruction, postmodern analysis is built on questioning the assumptions underlying any text, “deconstructing” its meaning. The problem is, it’s rare that a postmodernist critique of anything doesn’t consist of some of the densest, most impenetrable verbiage in existence. These sorts of arguments often claim that rationality, logic, and empiricism are nothing more than a hegemony of the dominant power structure being imposed upon the very definition of “data” or “reality,” the implication that it is the “dead white males” whose hegemony is being served. Ironically, it is Postmodernism itself which commits this intellectual crime in the most flagrant manner. As Steven Novella wrote,

Philosophers of science have largely moved beyond the postmodernist view; they now understand that this view was extreme and not an accurate description. In fact, the specific criticism is that this view confused the context of discovery, which is chaotic and culturally dependent, with the context of later justification. Regardless of how new ideas are generated in science, they are eventually subjected to systematic and rigorous observation, experimentation, and critical review. It is later justification that gives science its progressive nature

5.1.1.9.2 What's Wrong With Postmodernism?

The several examples of beneficial Postmodernism in art, architecture, literature, science, and anthropology given above show it to be a mind opening, cobweb clearing, refreshing way to look at old issues from new and creative directions. What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with being creative, free from dogmatism, and open minded - with seeing things from new perspectives and thinking outside-of-the-box?

No doubt during the mid 20th century there was an excess of conformity and conventionalism. Of course the historic “certainty” of Western Civilization in their religions, history, political systems, art, and culture was highly chauvinistic and ill-informed. That supposed superiority was concluded in ignorance of the rich and varied alternatives from other parts of the world and other times in history. But the West had no monopoly on cultural bigotry – the same sort of provincial thinking was common to most isolated cultures, which describes most of the world up until just the last few decades (as we enter the Information Age). And it continues today - stories of racism, bigotry, violence, and condescension in countries with highly homogeneous and uniform populations in eastern Asia, the Middle East, northern Europe, and Africa abound. And America is not cured of this problem, either.

Clearly, taking off blinders to the cultural, historical, artistic, and philosophical riches available from other cultures and civilizations is a good thing. But Postmoderinsm has taken this good thing too far, and it has already begun to consume itself. What started as a movement to discover new and personal meaning, to broaden horizons, expand thinking, and to break stifling limitations on creativity became a license to reject all established meaning, value, and significance – a total repudiation and revolution against the history of acquired knowledge - destruction of the old, sweeping it away to introduce the new. In tune with the disposable society of the late 20th century which values "newness" as implicitly good and the what has gone on before as passe, Postmodernism struck a chord with the rebellious sentiments of the 1960’s and 70’s. The movement probably peaked around that time with the various social revolutions in France (1968) and the counter-culture movement in America (1960's and early 1970s). But it's heyday is over. As we roll into the 20th century, its shortcomings have overwhelmed it, and it has now retreated to a fringe position, still popular with various Liberation Movements, though. Criticisms of postmodernism include assertions that postmodernism is meaningless and purposely obscure and unintelligible. It immunizes itself from criticism through various techniques (such as redefining terms when convenient, or rejecting outside analysis as invalid, prima facie). Noam Chomsky wrote that because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge, it is without value. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals do not respond like people in other fields when asked,

...what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc?...If [these requests] can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: 'to the flames'.

Christian philosopher William Lane Craig said

The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism!

Formal, academic critiques of postmodernism can also be found in works such as Fashionable Nonsense by Alan Sokal.

The Postmodernist approach has helped writers, artists, and scientists break through barriers erected by tradition and established “wisdom” to go on to achieve radical and innovative breakthroughs. However, there is another saying of uncertain origin: “keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out”. This succinctly encapsulates the pitfall into which Postmodernism and Deconstruction have fallen. It is one thing to sweep out old, musty truisms, stodgy conventions, and outdated theories, but not at the expense of discarding all accumulated wisdom and knowledge to make room for some brave new world. This philosophical/literary system lacks a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle, while embodying extreme complexity and celebrating internal contradiction, ambiguity, and diversity for diversity's sake. To those first discovering it, it may seem either intoxicatingly liberating or, on the other extreme, a parody or satire of itself - sheer intellectual fraud.

Dr Alan Bloom, the author of The Closing of the American Mind, was a conservative Humanities scholar at the University of Chicago. During the 1960’s and 1970’s he became increasingly distressed over the direction in which the academic Left was taking Humanities studies at American universities. He believed that the Civil Rights movement, the Anti-War movement, the Women’s movement, and the Third-World movement, all of which help foster the concept of multiculturalism were leading to a paralyzing cultural relativism. The worst thing that a professor could do in academia during this era was to actually come to a conclusion about anything. Instead, what was required was to retain a perpetually open mind - so open, that, in fact, they become closed (thus the title of his book). This paradoxical statement meant that by remaining open to everything, by refusing to apply reason and logic to judge and discriminate among choices, such as whether Shakespeare was a greater writer than Agatha Christie, or indeed if Shakespeare could be judged superior to Australian Aborigine story tellers, then you become mired in indecision. This indecision is based on the belief that we have no right to judge one over the other, to use discrimination (a word which has been much maligned recently) to evaluate relative quality. When we do that, we deny the critical power of human reason. If the University System has any one purpose, it is expose young minds to ideas, and then show them how to use their wits, their intellects, available information, evidence, and human reason to come to informed decisions about things. He worried that this was no longer happening at universities because of the emerging view that all ideas were of equal value. Although Bloom was alarmed only at the erosion of the integrity of the Humanities, we see a similar relativistic attack on the sciences by Creationists and New Age proponents who claim that their brands of alternative science should have an equal footing with traditional science.

To them, western science is just one among many equally valid "narratives", not to be privileged in its competition with native traditions. They maintain science and reason, as a means to discovering the universe, is an arbitrary and uncompelling approach to understanding - no better or worse that any other epistemological preference.

Although considered a fairly recent philosophical movement, Postmodernism really began with Kant's assertion that we cannot know things in themselves and that objects of knowledge must conform to our faculties (i.e., categories) of mental representation. Postmodernism takes this further by claiming that all we know, and all we can know, is filtered by our political and socio-economic preconceptions. Unlike other branches of philosophy, whose proponents assiduously, but often vainly, strive to describe and illuminate, Postmodernism keeps its opponents off balance and disoriented by refusing to submit to definition - in fact rejecting the constraints of definition altogether. It protects itself from criticism by being especially slippery. Just as Solipsism erects logical barriers around itself that effectively stifle criticism while doing nothing to demonstrate its validity, Postmodernism creates similar obstacles by preemptively disarming all external attacks first by refusing to submit to characterization or description, and then by holding to the position that growth and change can only occur from the inside, not from the outside. In their view, critiques originating from outside its domain have no legitimacy. This strategy poisons the well against useful critique and blocks any possible rebuttals.

In their view, religion can criticize religion, science science, history history, and literature literature. No change comes from outside. Each person and each discipline must look into itself for meaning and to discover its problems and to determine its own future. By this standard, no disparagement originating from outside the structure of Postmodernism need be taken seriously. This argument may sound vaguely familiar, as it is the partial basis for the argument that in American society, “dead white males” have no authority to advise minorities, women, or anyone else on their social agendas, philosophies, or world views. This cliché derives from that origin. More than any other branch of philosophy or culture examined in this paper, Postmodernism has successfully framed itself in such vague and indescribable terms that any attempt at definition is rendered nearly impossible. There is practically no assertion one could make that could not be disputed endlessly by well-versed Postmodern apologists. They typically condemn classification and description of their discipline as excessively confining and stereotyping, as an attempt to usurp power by imposing definitions from outside rather than allow it to develop as it chooses and to define itself.

Although the movement’s current incarnation traces back only as far as the late 1960s with the publication of several books by Jacques Derrida in 1967, Michel Foucault in the 1970s, and several other writers of that time, it received a tremendous political and spiritual boost from the Afro-Asian Conference in April 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia. Hosted by President Sukarno, it launched the modern “Third World” movement, heralding the end of the dominance of the West, with its “rapacious capitalism” and overbearing colonial hegemony.

These non-aligned former colony countries did have a legitimate complaint against the West. It was the first time in history that they had been able to come together to express a unified front to the former colonial powers. They may have gone overboard, and made their point too strongly. But they had been victimized for centuries by the powers of Europe and America (England, Spain, Portugal, Holland, United State, Germany, and others). This forum allowed them to express their independence from the Great Powers, to reject the Cold War dichotomy that (mostly) the US and the USSR were pushing on them, and to begin to exert global influence for the first time.

Even given that the participants had good reason to protest their historic treatment, this conference trumpeted the beginning of their new world order, a pacific, non-aligned, supposedly virtuous utopia, free from the colonial past and from white, Western dominance. These ex-colonial states were inherently “righteous” by the fact of their history of victimization. This shared experience united the new non-aligned nations under the flag of oppression. As Modern Times author Paul Johnson satirically wrote, “a gathering of such states would be a senate of wisdom”. But its first order of business was to engineer the escape from the political, historical, artistic, and intellectual shadow of western culture. It would accomplish that in two strokes - by demolishing the icons of that culture, while simultaneously promoting its own. The traditions and culture of the West were roundly condemned, not for any lack of merit, but merely for being associated with a repugnant, oppressive past. This would not have been the first, nor the last time an individual or group adopted a belief system whose primary attractiveness was its tremendous potential to materially benefit its adherents. This movement ushered in an era of unprecedented influence and prestige for the previously dispossessed of nations. Perhaps the Postmodernist accusation that “all institutions, creations, artwork and moral values are expressions of a primal will to power; the enforcement of one person’s ideology on another” is more projection and description of its own value system than a fair analysis of the values and institutions of those it condemned.

But, aside from being intellectually dishonest and devious, are there any structural/logical problems with this philosophy? The writer, Pauline Rosenau, identified seven contradictions in Postmodernism:

1. Its anti-theoretical position is, itself, essentially a theoretical stand.


2. While Postmodernism stresses the irrational, instruments of reason are freely employed to advance its perspective.


3. The Postmodern prescription to focus on the marginal is itself an evaluative emphasis of precisely the sort that it otherwise attacks.


4. Postmodernism stress inter-textuality but often treats text in isolation when it is convenient.


5. By adamantly rejecting modern criteria for assessing theory, Postmodernists cannot argue that there are no valid criteria for judgment.


6. Postmodernism criticizes the inconsistency of modernism, but refuses to be held to norms of consistency itself.


7. Postmodernists contradict themselves by relinquishing truth claims in their own writings.

In short, if they held themselves and their theories up to the same analysis that they direct outwards, their theoretical framework would be in tatters.

There are countless examples of twisted logic and crazed rationales in modern society that all have a similar underlying essence of unreality. On one level they seem to not break the rules of logic, and at another level, their conclusions are seemingly insane. In George Orwell’s 1984 we have a compelling description of how the so-called Ministry of Truth which used “Newspeak” to brainwash the people of Oceania. The party slogans were: "War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength". Through crafty manipulation of language, throwing out conventional definitions and re-framing reality in line with the party view, outright lies became self-evident truths. This lexical legerdemain turns words on their heads, robbing text of meaning, equating sense and non-sense, undermines logic and reason itself as simply alternative narratives that we repeat to ourselves.

Postmodernists behave like the stereotypical unscrupulous lawyer trying to win the case: truth and justice aren’t the point; instead using any rhetorical tool or trick that works is the point. Sometimes contradictory lines of argument work, your audience’s desire to belong to the in-group can be played upon, or appearing absolutely authoritative works to camouflage a weak case. Sometimes condescension works. It relies on rhetoric rather than substance.

We can see this occur in current events: religious cults or other minority groups which have long been victimized by bigotry or racism, grab the opportunity when the tables turn, to become bigots and racists themselves, providing a rationale supported by their doctrine. However, a typical postmodernist justification which explains all this away is that it is impossible for a minority to be bigoted or racist, since these traits are expression of power, and minorities have no power (Education & Racism, National Education Association. 1973). This is modern Newspeak postmodernism par-excellance. This very argument is frequently used in modern culture, for example, by Troy Davis in his Whyaminotsurprised blog: “In other words, the very social construction of "race" itself was the act of White oppressors for the purpose of exploiting and dominating people of color...consequently, I (and I am not alone here) don't believe that it's possible for a person of color to be a racist.”

So, reason takes a backseat to the intent of the message. Foucault shared these sentiments, claiming “reason is the ultimate language of madness,” suggesting that nothing should constrain our beliefs and political preferences, not even logic or evidence. Frank Lentricchia, another left-wing theorist, said the postmodern movement “seeks not to find the foundation and conditions of truth, but to exercise power for the purpose of social change.” And Stanley Fish has argued that theorizing and deconstruction “relieves me of the obligation to be right … and demands only that I be interesting.” There is a pattern here. The common goal is to simultaneously remove the supports of conventional wisdom by redefining truth and falsehood, right and wrong, reality and illusion, while also promoting themselves as the fresh arbiters of a new form of insight and authority. It is a bald power-play to enfranchise the previously powerless, to dethrone reason and replace it with a social subjectivism that, they believe, has suffered much reduced prestige at the hands of science, reason, and technology.

Mainstream Philosophy has largely abandoned Post Modernism. It was chic for a few decades, but now it considered a failure. It is one of many half-thought-out and inadequate attempts at new philosophical schools (the same is true of Ayn Rand's Objectivism). Post Modernism is not taken seriously by other philosophers, but is still practiced in niches where out-of-power groups and the academics who support them continue to try to wrest power from the dominant group. It is a thin philosophical veneer overlaying what would otherwise be a naked power play. For an example of how it is currently being expressed, see this Harvard Law Record article describing how "Critical Race Theory (CRT)" is justified by an appeal to "White Privilege" and "Institutional Racism". According to CRT, the current establishment can do nothing to defend itself because it is inherently biased and evil. It should just dissolve itself and give power to the non-white races. It uses a Postmodern defense of this agenda.

Noam Chomsky has argued that postmodernism is meaningless because it adds nothing to analytical or empirical knowledge. He asks why postmodernist intellectuals do not respond like people in other fields when asked, "what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc.? If [these requests] can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: 'to the flames'."

Philosopher Daniel Dennett declared, "Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."

5.1.1.9.1 Deconstructionism

The last element in the bullet list above, deconstruction (or deconstructionism), began as a literary analysis practice popularized by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s and 70s. It is based on the idea that meaning is always uncertain, is non-objective, and that it is not the task of the literary critic to illuminate meaning in a given text – each individual can determine what something means for himself. In other words, meaning and value are subjective and relative. It exemplifies the cliche, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. This is tame enough, and even justified and empowering, when not taken to extremes. But with Derrida, all external meaning becomes irrelevant, if not altogether non-existent. Derrida began with the established concepts of “the signified” and “the signifier”. An idea (the signified) is represented by a sign or word (signifier), and the signifier can never be the same as the signified. Derrida extended this, introducing an infinite series of signifiers referring to other signifiers, none ever settling on a firm "signified" entity. Because deconstructionism questions order and certainty in language and what language attempts to represent, its opponents view it as an intellectually obscure, negative cultural and philosophical critique – it tears down, but does not build anything to replace what it destroys. Initially considered elitist, nihilistic, and subversive to humanistic ideals, deconstructionism has been much debated in academic circles. It has gained more widespread acceptance, although it still remains, to an extent, a radical and controversial way of analyzing texts. Its critics deride it as being intentionally abstruse and recondite, full of obfuscation, and riddled with pretentious blather.

In one famous incident (the "Sokal affair") a physicist intentionally submitted a confusing and garbled scientific article to a Deconstructionist periodical and had it published. The author, Sokal, revealed that his fake article was "a pastiche of left-wing cant, fawning references, grandiose quotations, and outright nonsense", which was "structured around the silliest quotations [he] could find about mathematics and physics" made by postmodernist academics. This event demonstrated that practically any kind of politically / socially “correct” balderdash is acceptable to the Postmodern elite, independent of its intellectual quality.

Many literary critics detest practice of deconstruction, believing that deconstructing a text robs it of meaning and ultimately destroys the value of anything it touches. To those who defend its use, the answer to this criticism might be: “How does one define value? What is meaning?” So, the rebuttal is to challenge the very question itself, and attempt to demonstrate that the question is meaningless. Instead of answering the criticism, the criticism itself is shown to be flawed. But the critics persist. They convincingly claim that deconstructionism is nihilistic, that authors like Derrida attempt to undermine the ethical and intellectual norms vital to the classical conceptions of knowledge and wisdom. They accuse Derrida and his kind of denying the possibility of actual knowledge and meaning, creating a blend of extreme skepticism and solipsism, which these critics believe harmful. Under Derrida, Postmodernism took a decidedly destructive and non-productive turn.

A major criticism leveled at deconstructionism is that its proponents seldom attack their own work in the same way; why not deconstruct deconstructionism, itself, for instance? Heaven forbid! There are also obvious limitations to which texts can be deconstructed: although some think it can apply to anything, it is hard to see how it can address mathematical or (some) scientific papers without the knowledge of these areas that most deconstructionists lack or without tackling the philosophical problems associated with them first.

5.1.1.9 Postmodernism and Deconstructionism

Here is a new section that I really should have added back there just after the chapter on "Omphalos". It is a school of philosophy that is so difficult to talk about intelligently and coherently that I didn't really know how to approach it. The very difficulty I have in describing this phenomenon is part of what gives it power. This will be a multi-part entry. Sorry that it's out of order. But here goes:


What is Postmodernism?
Creative individuals from many disciplines popularized this political / philosophical / literary / artistic movement in post WWII Europe and America. Although influenced by Nietzsche and Heidegger’s arguments against pure objectivity, it became a significant movement only after the war.

This movement gave us Dada art, surrealism, and abstract expressionism. In music, Philip Glass’s minimalist composition, Frank Gehry’s and Rem Koolhaus’s architectural responses to “glass box” skyscrapers, literary creations from Vonnegut and Burroughs all contain strong postmodernist elements. Postmodernist historian Howard Zinn helped us see our mistakes in Viet Nam. It revels in iconoclastic attacks on blandness, the status quo, conventional wisdom, ultimate “Truth”, and the accepted norm. It strongly encouraged “thinking outside the box” and finding new and personal meaning instead of accepting established explanations. Postmodernist thinking has helped usurp established common knowledge in anthropology and archeology where prejudice, dogma and tradition have historically taken tenacious handholds and have been difficult to dislodge. As convincingly argued in the book, 1491, by Charles Mann, the new evolving consensus on the arrival and culture of indigenous people in the Americas has strongly depended on revolt against established norms and accepted doctrine. James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed ends with a postmodernist chapter celebrating the uncertainty of science and knowledge. For those of us who grew up in the last third of the 20th century, we may recall our English teachers urging us to discover anew the meaning in the classics of history, rather than regurgitate the Cliff notes. Rebellion and non-conformity drove and energized it, frequently resulting in stunningly beautiful and important works, creative new insights, and introducing many new concepts and phrases into our modern lexicon (“paradigm shift”, “authenticity”, “deconstruction”, “multicultural”, “post colonial”, “cultural relativism”, "speak truth to power", etc).

So what is it, anyway? Charles Upton in The System of Antichrist wrote, “Postmodernism is the name for the general quality of our time. It holds that all worldviews are constructed by historical processes, by culture and religion, so postmodernism sees those worldviews ('tall stories') as a function of power rather than truth.”

In this context postmodernism is the notion that all ideas and beliefs can be best understood as subjective human storytelling – narratives dominated by culture and bias with no special relationship to the truth. Philosophers of science have already rooted out the flaws in such reasoning (in philosophical parlance, postmodernism confuses the exciting context of “discovery” with the context of later labor intensive “justification”). When applied to science it negates the implication of methodology and reduces all scientific research to a cultural narrative.

Without delving to how it differentiates itself from “Modernism”, and after attempting to reconcile many divergent and conflicting descriptions, it is possible to trace the outline of its tenets, though it is fundamental to Postmodernism’s nature to resist and reject all such attempts:

• There is no objective truth or reality.


• Reality is constructed by our minds and mental representations (as Kant would have it). It is only as we choose to configure it. The only reality is chaotic potential.


• All comprehensible worldviews are oppressive, and as such should be deconstructed (i.e., overturned).


• “Truth” is plural and ultimately subjective. Meaning, truth and morality do not exist objectively; rather they are constructed by the society in which we live.


• All institutions, creations, artwork and moral values are expressions of a primal will to power; the enforcement of one person’s or group's ideology on another.


• Reason is thrown out and therefore there is really no basis for debate. Fulfillment comes from submerging one’s self in the larger group and developing a radical openness to existence by refusing to impose order on life.


• Revolutionary Critique of the Existing Order – The old ‘modern’ society from the enlightenment period with its rationalism and unitary view of truth needs to be replaced with a ‘new world order.’


• “Deconstruction”, an analytical method used extensively in postmodernism, is the progressive pulverization of reality with the goal of pursuing the meaning of a text or assertion so as to undo the oppositions on which it is founded, and to show that that same foundation is fatally unstable and impossible.

I group this movement with the other instances of idealism because many postmodernists dispute the prevailing conceptions of reality. Jean Baudrillard, one of its founders, maintained that there is no such thing as reality. Everything we consider real is only a simulation, or “simulacra”. This very statement, like many others they make, reflects an internal logical inconsistency. It would require he have access to the “true” reality so as to compare it with the “simulation” to even be able to make this assertion. But if he can indeed do that, then his initial statement is false. And besides, even if there were such a thing as “true” vs “simulated” reality, who is Jean Baudrillard to tell us which is which? He would have to possess a perceptual ability that enabled him to see through the simulacra and simulations to the underlying reality so that he might compare them with such a reality, discern differences and distinctions, and thus have empirical grounds to make his pronouncements concerning them. And if he can do this, why can not we all?

5.2.6 Wesley Salmon and the Problem of Induction

Wesley Salmon was a 20th century philosopher who took up the study of how causality functions and why the transfer of information from one spatio-temporal location to another serves as its fundamental mechanism. He continued the investigation into questions of inference, induction, and the scientific process.

According to Salmon, we all believe we have knowledge of facts that extend beyond what we directly perceive. Our view of events is severely limited by both space and time. Based on our limited experiences we presume to predict future events. Take this hypothetical situation: suppose that you have drawn a number of balls from an urn and discovered them to all be black in color. You might infer, therefore, that all the balls from the urn will be black. This is an "ampliative" inference: the conclusion asserts something that is not found in the premises – nothing in the past record of choosing only black balls implies anything about the color of balls you will draw in the future. Some black balls have been drawn from the urn - therefore can one conclude that they will be black as we continue drawing? No, not at all, because in this sort of “non-demonstrative” logic, it is perfectly possible for the conclusion (all future balls will be black) to be false even if the premises are true (all the balls so far were black). Although this example is contrived, that is exactly the kind of judgment we make about the prospects for a sunrise each morning.

A related form of this scenario is called the “Black Swan” problem – it may be that all swans you have ever seen before are white, but you would not be on firm logical ground to conclude that all swans in the world are white. Even a single black swan (which was finally seen by Europeans when they first visited Australia) would invalidate your premature conclusion.

Hume and many others have noted that such inferences would be valid if we could have recourse to some sort of principle of uniformity in nature. If we could prove that the course of nature is uniform, that the future will be like the past, then we would be justified in generalizing from past cases to future cases - from the observed to the unobserved. We have found by experience that nature has exhibited a high degree of uniformity and regularity so far, and we infer inductively that this will continue. Even though we all have many beliefs about unobserved worlds, and in some of them we place great confidence, they are without a solid rational justification. By habit, we assume an intrinsic uniformity in the processes of nature. Such a belief seems easy to rationalize - these inferential methods of both common sense and science have proved themselves by their results. No other method can claim a comparable record of successful accomplishment, and probably most importantly, there is no compelling evidence or reason to believe differently. Consider the amazing technological and scientific discoveries that have been made using these techniques. However, it is easily shown that this is a circular argument, and once again we arrive at the necessity of making an assumption – the world is regular and, within limits, it conforms to predictable and regular patterns. Other theories may explain our experiences here in the world - the theory that the sun has risen every day so far but will stop doing so tomorrow fits the existing data as much as the theory that the sun will always rise. But is it just as believable? The answer is no - it is not. It is clearly an ad hoc explanation designed merely to fit the data, but can offer no explanation or predictions that are of any use. Given the two options: uniformity vs uniformity up to now, followed by chaos tomorrow, the former is far more deserving of belief than the latter.

The universality, uniformity, and predictability of nature are concepts that make their appearances in all debates involving inference and induction. It seems that for inference from past experience to be a valid way of reasoning about future events or current, but unseen events, we must believe that the future will be like the past. This implies a uniformity that spans time and space. But is this a good assumption? If we allow ourselves to be trapped in the circular explanation, it is not good enough.

But why should we limit ourselves in this way? Isn't predicting the sunrise substantially different than predicting whether the next ball will be black or not? We know almost nothing about the unseen balls in the urn, but we know an enormous amount about how the sun and earth are related. Thanks to Newton, we understand orbital mechanics. We can trace the history and describe the structure of the solar system, and the laws of gravity and angular momentum are well-known. Even more, we can apply our knowledge of the Milankovitch cycles that describe the 41,000 year cycle of Earth's precession, and even bring in General Relativity to describe the subtle changes in the precession of Mercury's perihelion. All these facts and theories support the modest contention that tomorrow the sun will rise. Combining the findings from the sciences and many other disciplines to form a network of supporting evidence is the essense of "Coherentism", discussed in the next section. It is a hopeful alternative to the tautology we are trapped in when we use induction to prove induction. The next section describes this concept.