How to be a Good Postmodernist

Delivered to the Raleigh Tavern Philosophical Society

  February 26, 2004  

By

Michael D. Capistran

Copyright 2004

 
Postmodernism

 

Postmodernism as a term has different meanings in different disciplines.  It seems to have derived originally from the fields of art and architecture, in particular as a response to the functionalist approach to architecture of the early- and mid-Twentieth Century of creating practical structures that could tend to be more like buildings suited to lives of drudgery than homes or dwellings.  I shall not be addressing these original issues or disciplines, however; I shall rather be addressing the epistemological and metaphysical, sometimes ethical, issues associated with the philosophical opinion that this term has come to represent.

 

Any philosophical position or theory is difficult to focus in on, but postmodernism is particularly difficult to pin down.  This is partially due to its emphases upon methods of collage, pastiche, and multivalence perspectives.  Postmodernism is particularly difficult to define because most postmodernists will claim there is no centralized definition of the term.  Postmodernism would have to be approached through multiple perspectives, not only because this is the way to approach anything but also because there are multiple different versions of postmodernism.  Some explanation would be in order.

 

Though there are many influences on postmodernism, perhaps the best approach to it is through Kuhn.  In the early 1960's Kuhn performed the impossible by uniting the philosophical community behind his assessment of science in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.[1]  Kuhn provides many examples leading up to his assessment, but a particularly valuable one is the anomalous card experiment.[2]  A deck of cards is prepared in which the color of some of the cards is changed.  For example, one of the cards might be a red ace of clubs.  A subject is shown one card from the deck after another and is asked to identify the card:

 

Even on the shortest exposures many subjects identified most of the cards, and after a small increase all the subjects identified them all.  For the normal cards these identifications were usually correct, but the anomalous cards were almost always identified, without apparent hesitation or puzzlement, as normal.  The black four of hearts might, for example, be identified as the four of either spades or hearts.  Without any awareness of trouble, it was immediately fitted to one of the conceptual categories prepared by prior experience.  One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified.  With a further increase of exposure to the anomalous cards, subjects did begin to hesitate and to display awareness of anomaly.  Exposed, for example, to the red six of spades, some would say:  That’s the six of spades, but there’s something wrong with it – the black has a red border.  Further increase of exposure resulted in still more hesitation and confusion until finally, and sometimes quite suddenly, most subjects would produce the correct identification without hesitation.  Moreover, after doing this with two or three of the anomalous cards, they would have little further difficulty with the others.  A few subjects, however, were never able to make the requisite adjustment of their categories.  Even at forty times the average exposure required to recognize normal cards for what they were, more than 10 percent of the anomalous cards were not correctly identified.  And the subjects who then failed often experienced acute personal distress.  One of them exclaimed: “I can’t make the suit out, whatever it is.  It didn’t even look like a card that time.  I don’t know what color it is now or whether it’s a spade or a heart.  I’m not even sure now what a spade looks like.  My God![3]

 

Kuhn suggests that scientists operate in a similar fashion, in the following sense.

 

Kuhn postulates, and has much evidence for, a view that science is performed in two primary stages.  A theory is advanced that receives acceptance by large or important portions of the scientific community.  It becomes established and leads to a variety of research projects in keeping with its tenets.  That is, the theory itself makes certain predictions and the predictions are investigated.  An example would be the observational predictions on the part of Newton's theory of gravity that objects attract one another in conformity with an inverse-square law.  The law itself is simple enough and it is easy enough to observe the positions of the planets.  The difficulty is that the law says not only that the earth is attracted to the sun, but the sun is attracted to the earth; the earth is attracted to Saturn; Saturn is attracted to Mars, and so forth - each object pulling the others out of their orbits.  This, at the time, was a mathematical nightmare that required a considerable amount of time - about a hundred years - to resolve into a testable model.  At that time the astronomers reported that the objects - the planets and the sun - were not in the positions predicted.  Particularly, the outer known planets, Jupiter and Saturn, were drawn too far out of their orbits at certain times.  The options were then, simply speaking, to throw the theory out as incorrect or to keep the theory and account for how the theory had gone awry.  If the theory was correct, as astronomers believed it was, then there should be some way to account for the unexplained perturbations.  There must be another object that had not yet been accounted for.  The astronomers worked out the mathematics of where the object had to be, turned their telescopes to that position, and discovered the planet Neptune.  Neptune had been overlooked as a planet because it had been observed in various places at various times as a new star.  Such investigations of predictions made by a theory Kuhn refers to as "normal science".  They are much akin to puzzle solving. 

 

Sometimes, however, certain predictions of the theory do not hold true and what Kuhn refers to as "anomalies" develop.  Such data are embarrassing for the holders of the theory and are simply ignored and shunted aside until someone comes along who takes them seriously and uses them to construct a new theory to which they are subsumed.  This results in a new theory that is not in keeping with the old one and is in competition with it.  If the new theory develops adherents, it may be that it becomes more accepted than the old one and supercedes it.  The development and elaboration of such theories Kuhn refers to as “Revolutionary Science”.  If the new theory becomes accepted, it then reverts to Normal Science as scientists begin basing their research on the articulation of the predictions of the new theory.

 

Two paradigms are, states Kuhn, incommensurable.  As  interpreted by some, this means it would be impossible to apply a common standard to assess them.  If this claim is true, then there would be no standard by means of which the competing theories of, say, phlogiston and oxidation could be compared.

 

The primary question that was posed as a result of Kuhn's work, however, was:  Is objectivity possible?  As expressed by Kuhn:

 

But is sensory experience fixed and neutral?  Are theories simply man-made interpretations of given data?  The epistemological viewpoint that has most often guided Western philosophy for three centuries dictates an immediate and unequivocal, Yes!  In the absence of a developed alternative, I find it impossible to relinquish entirely that viewpoint.  Yet it no longer functions effectively, and the attempts to make it do so through the introduction of a neutral language of observations now seems to me hopeless.[4]

 

The problem in the anomalous deck of cards experiment given above is not that the subject reports a red card as a black card but the subject sees a red card as black.  “One would not even like to say that the subjects had seen something different from what they identified.”  The distal stimulus is red; the proximal stimulus is black.  Put simply, theory affects perception.  If our very observations are governed, or even just affected, by our background beliefs or "paradigms" - that is, if what we perceive is to any extent a function of what we already hold true rather than a function of the distal percept - then can we achieve any sort of certainty, or even just reasonable results, in science or any other field?

 

Some people answer:  no, objectivity is not possible.  Some people answer:  yes, objectivity is possible.  Postmodernists have tended towards the former opinion.  Particularly in question is what is referred to as the Correspondence (or Mirror) Theory of Truth.  Originally attributed to Aristotle, the theory claims that something (expressed in terms of words or thoughts) is true just in case it correctly depicts, expresses, or corresponds to the way the world actually is.  But if we may not access "the way the world actually is" because of our previous intellectual commitments and beliefs, such a theory - so it is claimed - gets tossed out the window as a project impossible even in principle.  Particularly this is held to be so because of precommitments of a societal character.  Our local culture has such an enormous impact over our latent intellectual assumptions and beliefs that these become invisible to us and are beyond our control.  They constitute a  "paradigm" or intellectual pre-judgment that intrinsically alters our very perception.  Just as scientists often see what their theories predict rather than what is actually there (several new stars rather than a planet), so our cultural background holds great influence over our own perceptions.  A very important example of this is the outlook on the part of Europeans and North Americans who viewed the rest of the world as "uncivilized" or importantly subhuman.  A white person from the old south looking at a black person saw something less than human and was able to find any amount of substantiating evidence to reinforce this view.  This then led to European cultural imperialism and the subjection of various peoples, including their destruction in some cases, all in the name of progress, but actually out of cultural hubris and arrogance.  This Euro-centered, self-serving view is often referred to by postmodernists, after Lyotard, as the Grand Narrative.[5]

 

So what is the answer?  One of the things all this means is that the old "positivist" view that science is but a distillation of observations is no longer tenable.  For "positivist" read "modern".  So the answer, say postmodernists, must be some sort of post-modern, post-positivist, or post-empiricist position.

 

The answer preferred by many postmodernists is:  pastiche.  We can't get out of our various cultural pre-commitments, but we can perceive the same thing from various perspectives.  This will then help vitiate the negative effects of arrogance and hubris inherent to growing up in any specific culture - particularly the Western one.  For example, if we are able to perceive religion from various different cultural perspectives - such as that of the Japanese, Tibetans, Indonesians, and Liberians - then we shall have a much better perspective on what religion is all about than if we adopt a simplistic Western perspective that our religion is the best and only true one.  This will then have the salutary effect of lessoning the extent and number of executions, mass-murders, pogroms, wars of a religious character, and general over-all hatred in the world.  That is, such pastiche or multiple perspective approach will result in tolerance and less of the problems associated with cultural arrogance.

 

There is an important difficulty with this point of view, however.

 

 

Relativism

 

Many postmodernists believe relativism is the best answer to epistemological questions.  Relativism says that knowledge (and probably truth and ethics as well) is relative (to something: the individual, the culture, the society, a group of experts, privileged holders of power, etc.) and therefore (here's the important part) objectivity does not exist.  The attractive aspect of this position is that it seems to lead to tolerance of a diversity of opinions.  All positions are correct from some (relative) perspective.  There are just differing interpretations, and if we cannot objectively judge - if all positions are incommensurable - then we should not attempt to.

 

There are many responses to relativism, but the primary and foremost response was delivered by Plato over 2,000 years ago when he had Socrates ask Thrasymachus in the opening book to the Republic: Can one be wrong?  And this is the approach I suggest to use with relativists.  When you hear someone say every position is just as good as any other from its own perspective and is just a different interpretation, ask the following question:  "Can anyone be wrong?"  What you will probably receive is a blank look, a puzzled expression, and then the question, "What do you mean?"  Say, "I mean:  Can anyone be wrong?  Have you ever been wrong?  Have your parents ever been wrong?  Are your boss or children or spouse ever wrong?  Has our President ever been wrong?  Is it possible in principle our President ever could be wrong?  Have men ever been wrong about women?  Have women ever been wrong about men?"  Probably you will receive the question:  "Wrong according to whom?"  Pursue the point:  "Wrong according to you.  It's your opinion we're discussing.  Can a person be wrong?"

 

Be prepared for some waffling.  The person will, however, either have to accept, in keeping with the claim that everyone is (relatively) right, that it is impossible for anyone to be wrong - which was the person's original claim - or the person will have to take back the claim that all positions are right and admit that people can sometimes be wrong.  Although there are quite many people who would like to believe that everyone is right - in their own way - there are actually very few people who will believe that no one can ever be wrong.  The one position implies the other, however.  Some few people will actually admit that no one is, can, or could ever be wrong.  As peculiar as this sounds, at least be satisfied that you are in the presence of an honest person - a strange one, but an honest one.  If this person happens to be your teacher or professor, you should at least be able to get the person to agree to allow you to give yourself your own final grade because:  isn't your opinion just as valid, just as good, and just as worthwhile an interpretation as your teacher's?  Or does your teacher not really believe what your teacher is saying?  From my own experience, however, most people who claim to be postmodernist will not have considered this implication to their belief and will be caught quite flat-footed.

 

A variation of the relativist position (and the discussion above) is the view on the part of many postmodernists that knowledge (or even truth) is decided by well-positioned "experts".  Using the question just posed, such opinion implies that the Qualified Qualifiers were correct when they delivered the verdict that Galileo was wrong and guilty of heresy when he taught that the earth orbits the sun. This is the old view (again on the part of Thrasymachus) that passage of a law (or societal acceptance) decides what is just or what is good.  In postmodernist parlance: “the winners write the history books”.  But the same traditional response (again on the part of Socrates) applies, however, that there would then never be an unjust law.  That is, if the laws are identical to justice, then the laws will always be just by definition alone and could never be, even in principle, unjust.  In symbols:

 

Law = Just                   Law ≠ Just

 

A modern twist to this response, as pointed out by many observers, is that any social reformer would not only be performing illegal acts but unjust and unethical ones as well.  As above, if you can convince yourself that there never is, or could be, an unjust law you may join the small group of honest but strange persons referred to previously.  Most people, however, will find themselves unable to accept the position that no one can ever be wrong for some rather obvious reasons.

 

 

Step One - Tolerate Any Reasonable Position

 

Any discipline involves a regional ontology.  Our knowledge is therefore context-dependent and what we perceive is dependent upon what we already hold true. There are occasions in which differing perspectives may be equally valid, though different.  The dispute between particle and wave theories of light at the early part of the Twentieth-Century is a classic example.  Each side perceived the world according to a different perspective and, in accordance with a different paradigm, cited different evidence - or even the same evidence - in defense of its theory.  Though entirely different,  competing theories may be equally true.  Many such differences derive from the fact, however, that not only are both accounts equally true, they are equally false as well and an entirely different and new perspective is required.

 

Knowledge can only be measured against a background of established social expectations and learned communal practices; particularly, truth occurs within the context of language, and languages vary.   This is not then to say, however, that truth does not or cannot exist.  Knowledge is dependent upon differing perspectives, cultures, languages, but this does not mean that opinions can’t be wrong.  It means that there are varying perspectives that may be considered right, sometimes more or less right.  That knowledge is dependent on context, however, does not mean that just any old thing will work; it instead means that there are rather specific expectations before something will count as knowledge.  Again, that there are different possible answers that may be right does not therefore mean there can be no answers that are wrong.

 

Not only are there multiple perspectives and interpretations, however, there is an additional issue difficult to approach and that I cannot speak of greatly here.  A specific theory or belief might be true or false depending on the frame or perspective taken.  That is, not only knowledge, but truth is context-dependent.  For example Galileo's theory of free-fall is true within a Galilean perspective, but it is false within a Newtonian perspective.  This is because the Galilean perspective does not take into consideration the miniscule attraction of the earth to the falling object.  The point is not that Galileo's law is approximately true but that that it is in fact true - from the limited Galilean frame of reference.  The situation is not different in advanced physics.  We must choose a frame of reference to make any sense of the world.  The question is primarily one of exclusion.  Intellectually we must always exclude data and experiences to make sense of the world.  The primary function that our sensory array has been developed to do is not gather information but filter or selectively exclude it.

 

A very important - and sufficient - reason to be tolerant of differing perspectives, however, is that it has happened often in the past - very often in fact - that the received position has turned out to be simply wrong.  In addition, we need specifically to always be careful that our own opinion might be a rationalized product of our own mind.  I shall have more to say about this.

 

The correct answer to the question posed by Kuhn is not that objectivity is impossible but that it is difficult.  Some people see, finally, the black card as red, and though some people don't it is still wrong to call the red card black.

 

"But," a person might respond, "What do you mean by 'reasonable'?  Whose reason?  What reason?”

 

 

 

 

Step Two - Take Out the Trash:  When You Find Yourself Addicted to an Unreasonable Opinion let it Go

 

Face it people:  there are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.  It's not a question of whose rationality, which standards, whether reason is relative to cultures or individuals; there just ain't nearn.

 

Let us recognize that activation of opiate receptors might be from an irrational source, and that it's not guns that are the most dangerous weapons but ideas that are the most dangerous weapons.

 

When you find that your theory predicts something and that thing does not come true, try reassessing your theory.  When you find that your attempts at collectivization result in the starvation of millions of people, let your dogma go.  When your opinion concerning eugenics finds yourself or your acquaintances performing acts you feel to be abysmally unethical, let your opinion go.  When you find yourself hunting witches or torturing people to save their souls, try kicking back with some quality time to reassess your opinion.  When you find yourself accusing a person of rape who has never raped anyone, and justifying it because the person must be some sort of rapist anyway, give some thought to the possibility you might be wrong.  When you find yourself running an airliner full of people into a large building because you think, really really think, God wants you to, try for a moment to release yourself from your ideological chains.  When you find yourself in agreement with your friends as they assure you a country has weapons of mass destruction, publicly go to war for this reason, and subsequently discover the country actually doesn't have such weapons, try reassessing your beliefs.

 

Or, even better, paraphrasing Galileo, try constructing your theory to fit the evidence rather than constructing the evidence to fit your theory.

 

Not all beliefs, interpretations, narratives, or stories are true.  Throw out the ones that are not.

 

No, it's not true that any narrative is just as good as any other.  No, it's not true that scientific hypotheses are just ungrounded stories, narratives, or myths that happen to be accepted by some conveniently positioned "experts".  No, Hollywood doesn't produce reasonable biographies that are just true from a different perspective or interpretation.  No, there is no such thing as phlogiston - nor, yet, any reasonable theory of cold fusion.  No, you can't get all the nutrition you need from breathing air alone.  There are some positions, narratives, or beliefs that simply aren't true.  Do not attach yourself to them for misguided ideological reasons; throw them out.

 

No, there is no crises of the substantiation or verification of science of which the scientists are unaware.  This is because the method of questioning data analysis and scientific method posed by Kuhn and his associates is itself based upon scientific method, as Kuhn’s deference to Koyre shows.  Instead of doing as philosophers have done in the past, coming up with an a priori theory of how science supposedly proceeds, he took the time to look at the history of science to see how it in fact proceeded and provided the evidence so that others could publicly and openly judge.  This is his warrant and this is the cause of the near-universality of his acceptance.  He used the empirical (not empiricist) method.  People who claim the old "positivist" view of science is wrong are right but this doesn't mean then that science doesn't exist or has no method.  It simply means it never had the method advanced by the a priori positivists.  Yes, rigid empiricism is wrong, but that doesn't mean that just anything goes.  Despite problems with philosophical explanations of how scientific method works, science is still the only method we have for reassessing our opinions - reasonable or otherwise - and correcting our pre-judgments.  Keep in mind that although our knowledge is context-dependent, one paradigm is not always just as good as any other.  Paradigm changes do happen - sometimes for good reasons, because one paradigm actually is better than another.

 

Science is not, as some would have it, in a state of disarray. It continues on in the manner in which it always has, using the methods and practical tools that it develops and to which it has become accustomed.  The only real difference is that the lay community has come to recognize that science is not certain - something that really should have come as no surprise considering the inherently hypothetical nature of its discipline - and that scientists are sometimes as susceptible to the pre-judgments and preconceived notions as are ordinary people - something that also should have come as no surprise.

 

It is very difficult to investigate things when the mind is not free.  Human beings receive conditioning within the social context of their friends, relations, and culture.  As a hypothetical and purely heuristic example, the friends of our parents might continually tell us that what we must do is spend more money and lower taxes and we uncritically adopt that opinion as an ideological dogma.  As we have seen in the case of Kuhn’s deck of cards experiment, conditioning has a remarkable control over the mind.  Prejudice enters into our very perception and reinforces our old opinions even when our old opinions might otherwise be easily demonstrated as wrong.  We still see the red card as a black one and we cannot help but perceive evidence for the opinions of our parents' friends everywhere.  We need, however, to consider the possibility that our conditioning itself might be wrong - not just wrong from a perspective, but wrong.  Sometimes there really are right and wrong answers - though they may be difficult to recognize.  Real actions we perform have real consequences whether we wish to accept those consequences or not.  We can't, ceteris paribus, lower taxes and spend more money, no matter what our parents’ friends might have ever told us.  When our theory doesn't work we need to seriously reflect upon it and consider changing it.

 

Most opinions are held simply because most of the people with whom we associate hold them.  This is true to an extent in science as well, but there is a very important difference between the opinions held by most people and the opinions held by scientists. Scientists sometimes take a look around to try to see if their opinions are correct.  Most people do not.  Opinions in science allow for the possibility they might be wrong.  Opinions held by most people do not.  They are, unfortunately, held as truth, absolute and eternal.

 

Opinions not held on evidence that do not allow for the possibility of being wrong are compulsions.  They are, as Freud said, wishful thinking.  What postmodernists refer to as the Grand Narrative was an example of wishful thinking - the West wanted to believe it was better than everybody else.  But the Grand Narrative is not breaking down into local narratives, as some would have us believe.  Human beings being such as they are, the Grand Narrative will only be replaced by yet another fad of hubris and arrogance - perhaps, in this case, postmodernism itself.  The moral to the story is that truth can never be approached through dogma and that the difficulty is not only in appreciating different accounts of the truth - something we need to do - but also differentiating between opinions we hold that are in keeping with the phenomena - the things themselves - and those that are not.  We must free our minds of preconceptions, and when postmodernism itself becomes a series of preconceived notions supporting - in principle - preconceived notions, it is time to let it go.  Allow me to explain.

 

There is a website you may go to and it will write for you a postmodernist essay.  The essay is generated randomly and is entirely meaningless.  Here is the URL: http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/.  According to this website, a physics professor has succeeded in getting an entirely meaningless article manufactured in such a fashion published in a professional journal.  Unfortunately, much of postmodern discourse is jargon and jargon developing around an opinion should be considered a symptom of ossification.  When our words take on lives of their own and ride free from the phenomena we may attain a natural high associated with hubris.  If this didn't result in our getting angry at other people about it, this might not be such a bad thing.  When we feel a compulsion to use new-fangled figurative jargon or even, now, old-fashioned figurative jargon in an attempt to express ideas in keeping with the latest dogma or literary fashion, we have left authenticity behind.  We have turned away from what postmodernism originally tried to do.

 

This is what we mean by deconstruction.  We must challenge the opinions received from authority.  Just because our society tells us something is true does not make it true.  Look at the evidence carefully.  Try to have an open mind.  Continually question, particularly your own opinion.  Try to view an opinion from the perspective of those that hold it.  If the opinion seems reasonable from that perspective and can possibly fit the phenomenal evidence, even if one does not agree with it, keep it as a provisional option.  The primary deciding factor, however, is that in view of the remarkable ability of the mind to alter perception, if the opinion is not even supported by the proximal stimulus – as in the case of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – give serious consideration to dropping the opinion.  That is, if the opinion clearly and obviously isn't reasonable or can't possibly fit the phenomenal evidence, junk it.  But don't keep a theory out of emotional fear, because it provides you with psychological hubris, because other people tell you to, or because no opinion can ever be wrong.  When we finally perceive that the card is not black but red, let us have the courage to admit our mistake and change our minds.  Conformism applies not only to what a government might say or to propaganda or a political agenda.  Conformism is a very strong component of the human psyche and results in various kinds of correctness, political and otherwise.  Deconstruction requires, however, more than a litany of accepted and acceptable ideological terms.  To adopt the phrase from Orwell, it takes an ability to face unpleasant facts.  In this sense, insofar as postmodernism has become an ideology, postmodernism itself requires deconstruction.

 

For what it's worth, I shall add my own bit of jargon to the vocabulary of the moment.  I refer to opinions held as compulsions in the face of countermanding evidence as cynosures.  The term cynosure originally means magnetic center, but within the context I am proposing a cynosure is an ideological dogma, and an important property of a cynosure is that it is an illusion - it is not true.  Postmodernism has become a cynosure insofar as it states on the one hand that any opinion is just as good as any other but on the other then accepts that belief itself (that opinions are all equally as good) as warrant to get angry at people who do not believe as postmodernists believe.  One questionable defense used by postmodernists is that postmodernism can't be proven wrong because there is no one theory of postmodernism but many different postmodernisms.  Insofar as postmodernism refuses, as a matter of principle, to admit of countermanding evidence, it has become something we believe only because we repeat it to ourselves to the point that it unduly affects our perception.  It has become a cynosure.  That is, it has succumbed to the same social pressures it had originally set itself against.

 

Postmodernism was originally set against a propensity to see things in black and white, absolutist terms.  People who think in such terms were depicted as “modern”, but this was an injustice.  Modernists, postmodernists, and people who adhere to all sorts of faiths and beliefs can see things in such narrow and, at times, fanatical terms - or not.  Postmodernism has turned out to be no panacea against rigid hubris and superficial dogmatism; it has provided no antidote to past, modern, or postmodern ideological excess.

 

With respect to the extraordinary violence to which our past and current dogmas have led, I suggest we might consider the possibility of getting our endorphins from body-piercings or tattoos rather than from the mindless repetition and reinforcing of ideological mantras, or the torturing or bullying other people because of localized and self-replicating ideological perspectives. The natural, inherent, predictable disposition on the part of human beings to blame others for our problems and point the finger elsewhere is something that needs to be countermanded by being honest with our experiences.

 

Postmodernism is on its way out and this is a probably good thing.  The pastiche or collage approach - the appreciation of multiple perspectives and points of view - is, however, still important and needs to be retained despite any excess of faddish ideologies.  The important insight is the epistemological realization that there exist or may be multiple acceptable formulations which may be considered true.  But one doesn't have to adhere to a dogma to believe this - it can be shown experientially - and one doesn't have to adhere to an opinion that there can never be a wrong opinion to believe this either.  It would be a mistake to believe that every opinion is just as good as any other.  That is, it would be a mistake to believe there are no mistakes.

 

 

How to be a Good Postmodernist?

 

Probably just don't be one.



[1] Kuhn, Thomas S.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd. Ed.  U. Chicago: Chicago.  1962, 1970, 1996  ISBN: 0-226-45807-5.

[2] Bruner, J.S. and Leo Postman.  “On the Perception of Incongruity: A Paradigm,” Journal of Personality, XVIII (1949), 206-203.  Cited in Kuhn, op. cit., p. 62 ff.

[3] Ibid. 218.  Cited in Kuhn, op. cit. pp. 63-4.

[4] Kuhn.  Op. Cit. 126.

[5] Lyotard, Jean-Francois.  The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.  Bennington, Geoff & Brian Massumi, trans.  U. Minnesota: Minneapolis.  1984, 1989.  ISBN 0-8166-1166-1.