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Angus Jung wrote:

Andrew L. wrote:How's this for plain English: the ability to think beyond black-or-white understandings of meaning, truth, and history distinguishes (minimally) thoughtful people from others.

NerblyBear wrote:So, truth and falsity are not actual attributes of any given assertion about the world.

Andrew L. wrote:You need to brush up on your close reading skills, son.

He said that there is no black and white concerning "meaning, truth and history." I rebut this by showing that Julius Caesar was, in actual fact, a Roman dictator, and he did cross the Rubicon. That is black and white. If you say that it's not true, you're just ill-informed. Almost as ill-informed about history as all of the other charlatans who promote post-modernist philosophy.

So history is not something that we can dream up in our minds. It actually happened. It is black and white.

I read it just fine, thanks.

NerblyBear wrote:

Andrew L. wrote:
How's this for plain English: the ability to think beyond black-or-white understandings of meaning, truth, and history distinguishes (minimally) thoughtful people from others.

So, truth and falsity are not actual attributes of any given assertion about the world.

No. Neither I, nor Jameson, nor even Lyotard, asserts this. You're arguing with a straw man. Your close readings skills are "ass" and you don't understand what you're talking about.

How can a subject "disappear"? Am I disappearing at this moment?

Likely not, but I am from the thread. Happy St. Patty's day, kid.

Actually, if you say that there is a mystical area "beyond" black-and-white understandings of truth--in other words, if you say that truth is neither true nor false--the consequence is that any given statement about the world ("Caesar was a dictator"; "Galileo was correct") is neither true nor false, and, hence, open to interpretation. Therefore, an assertion about the world is neither true nor false, but is, rather, open to whatever spin I choose to put upon it.

Therefore, when we broaden it out, any given THEORY about the world is neither true nor false, and, therefore, there are no theories that are truly correct. This is the post-modernist position. Distrust everything. Distrust the Enlightenment. Distrust science.

An entire academic industry has been built around this stuff.

Complete balderdash.

I feel like Boss Hog just drove his Cadillac into the middle of a meeting of the Junto.

Be snobby about it all you want, people, but I, like Richard Dawkins, still await an adequate explanation of what "post-modernism" means that doesn't rely on hyped-up jargon.

Noam Chomsky feels the same way about this stuff, and I assume that you guys are fans of his. I am as well. He ridicules all of this as a capitalistic cottage industry that has completely divorced itself from the real world and is not in any way academic.

I'm not alone on this.

Like post-rock - it's a cunt's story.

Crap(ishitty)- Crap(p) - Crap(py)

NerblyBear wrote:Post-modernism is for blockheads.

We are all Devo, now!

NerblyBear wrote:He said that there is no black and white concerning "meaning, truth and history." I rebut this by showing that Julius Caesar was, in actual fact, a Roman dictator

Okay, am I the only one who finds this seriously ironic?

Antero wrote: seriously ironic

ironic