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November 7th 2013

Sam Wyss

Initially, I felt it necessary to apologize at the beginning of this post on the lack of my understanding on this material, but I decided to stray from that, because hopefully my questions, and desire for clarity, will help spark further discussion. Other than that, I have no opinion on the matter, simply questions. So here it goes. Modernity is obsessed with the idea of accuracy and precision of knowledge obtained by science and reason. In post-modernity, have we strayed from that idea in the sense that we believe knowledge can be derived from something other than science and philosophy? Or is more along the lines that we might say that meaning and clarity that we once thought were so obtainable are not nearly that simple? In my outside research on what postmodernism is concerned with, it appears that the way we look at the world, from the enlightenment on, is skewed, it is fraud. There are some truths that can be derived from the fruits of philosophy, but meaning is only a construct of our subjective consciousness. Is that right? If so, where does that place philosophers in the world? Do they have any value? How do we obtain knowledge in an objective way? Is that a possibility? Another piece that sparked my interest and my question was the quote that Alfino references, which is that of Derrida regarding differences and traces of things. If I understand that piece right, Derrida is saying that no “element” can stand by itself, because everything can be traced to something else. So, that would imply things are an illusion. In regards to that idea, is there every a chance of trusting something to be one-hundred percent true, or is this life a narrative that we create from our consciousness, and all we do is play a long in the narrative? (Truly, I hope I am not getting this wrong and creating questions that aren’t related to the subject matter.) If the presence of meaning is nothing more than an illusion, we can never place meaning in something, right? That seems a bit scary and disheartening. Okay, I don’t want to run on with a list of questions, especially if I do not understand the material fully. Thanks everyone!

Alynna Nemes

In the Grenz reading, the post modernist philosopher, Rorty, clearly made philosophers less significant than his predecessors. In the Republic, Socrates describes the ideal state using philosophers as kings and rulers. Rorty would reject Socrates belief that philosophers should be placed on a high pedestal. He voices that philosophers are not that special and great after all; "The post modern philosopher can only decry the notion of having a view while avoiding a view about having views" (159). The significance and importance of philosophers has vanished because postmodernists like Rorty, abandon the philosophical goal of searching for a universal theory of knowledge in favor of an ongoing discussion ; philosophy goes from knowledge to interpretation- from epistemology to hermeneutics. In hermeneutics, there are countless ways to view and understand the world and how we should live life. All these ways to live life are in conflict with one another. There is no unity or coherence in how we view the world. Plato, Marx, Kant, and many other philosophers have conflicting views on meaning, morality, and living. Rorty goes further to say that philosophy "is not endowed with the ability to decide issues of ultimate significance for human life, that the philosopher is no super scientist" (160). The quest to find meaning and answers to life's biggest questions through philosophy has ended because all it can do in a postmodern world is have well informed opinions and debates.

One thing I find troubling about postmodern philosophy is that language becomes insignificant in the sense that that "a word has no intrinsic meaning, that it is merely a convention, the regular use of a mark or noise. Language, in turn is a tool- human beings using marks and noises to get what they want" (Grenz 154). If everyone believed that language is condensed and had no intrinsic meaning, there would be no articulate and meaningful civilization. This reminded me of George Orwell's 1984 novel where vocabulary is increasing becoming limited and shortened to the point where people in this society would be expected to speak in quacks and noises. Postmodernists really make what people use to express value and meaningfulness trivial and insignificant.

Peter Guthrie

Dr. Alfino describes Post Modernism as a methodological strategy and has post structuralist (culture understood in terms of abstract sets of opposition) views of meaning. Post Modernism holds that all effort and understanding comes from one's use of the contents of their own consciousness and that consciousness is only has meaning pre-linguistically (outside of language). When things change language is used to express and explain it. So it is not the words that have meaning. I think, what it being said is that words are only a convention, a way to point at, the meaning in our own consciousness. Post Modernism moves away from a system of language and meaning where one person codifies and sends the message and the other person decodes it. In Post Modernism, what makes something what it is is its place in a system and meaning is distributed within the system of signification. This is mostly what I got out of the lecture but Dr. Alfino also makes a distinction between a signified and a signifier. However, on this point and on a few others I could use a little more explanation before I try to write about them here.

Marshall Powell

I thought the Grenz article was very interesting. The short summaries of the origins of Michel Foucault, Richard Rorty, and Jacques Derrida were informative and really helped to frame their ideas and philosophy. The most interesting of these ideas for me were those of Foucalt relating to knowledge. There is a very strong feeling in contemporary scientific communities of objectivity. Science is viewed as the highest form of human thought, and the discoveries made by science are considered the most accurate, and nearest to truth forms of knowledge. Foucault's claims about the biased and self serving nature of science and history are very controversial. In someways it is clear that science is always hampered by the subjective nature of our interest. In scientific studies, it is impossible to be completely exhaustive in your data collection, and similarly data is not collected at random. There is always some outside force directing the collection of data and information. This outside force is human focus and interest. Human focus and interest, however, is easily influenced by outside pressures of society, and the desire to better one's own personal position. In this way, I believe that Foucault is right in claiming that there is a weakness in science.

I find Derrida's claim that there is nothing beyond the text a bit difficult to grasp. I'd like to discuss this topic in class.

Riley Peschon

Having never been formally introduced to postmodernism, I found the idea of rejecting the autonomous self to be very intriguing. It feels as if much of the philosophy in Gonzaga’s core curriculum (at least in my experience) rarely touches on this denunciation, as we strive towards become holistic individuals.

I was particularly interested in one section of Alfino’s presentation, where he stated that “postmodern thought as a form of cultural criticism… shows us insightful things about how we represent ourselves in a cultural sense” and the lack of access to the conscious outside of language. The communication between the conscious and the self seems pretty unanswerable at this point. Alfino’s notes correlated with Foucault’s perspective, as Grenz said that he would ask, “how has the concept of human nature functioned in our society?” rather than “what is human nature?” I have always had the idea that the human conscious was somewhat inherent. Postmodernism challenges this, as not only is the conscious shaped by culture (not too radical of an idea), but human nature is something that can be altered by culture as well.

Grenz described that both Derrida and Foucault were certainly against our “logocentric quest for meaning” (150). This is genuinely new territory for my philosophical thought process and to be honest, it is pretty awesome. I look forward to discussing this more in class, as there seems to be a lot of stances in postmodernism worth talking about. Discussing in class will help my understanding of some of the thought processes involved, as I also struggled to fully grasp some of the ideas that Grenz went over.

Evan Dobbs

I found the Badiou reading very challenging and confusing at times. He made very bold statements, but seemed to back them up with common critiques of society like "materialism, commercialism, etc." without clearly stating how these things have harmed the things he says it has harmed. Nevertheless I will try and sum up what I think he is trying to argue. I believe Badiou is taking issue with the fact that philosophy is somewhat giving up on the questions posed by early philosophers about knowledge and truth. He thinks contemporary philosophy is "too strongly committed to the equivocalness of meaning and the plurality of languages." I think the key word Badiou has a problem with is "equivocalness," which can be defined as open to two or more interpretations. Multiple interpretations does not sit well with him. Badiou wants to bring philosophy back to the days of competing ideas, where one or the other could be right, not both. The "desire" seems to be gone from philosophy since everyone seems to be content with differing opinions. Badiou goes on to suggest a new system of thinking. He denounces language as a tool to be used by philosophers, and agrees with Plato that it is the "things" we should be concerned with, not necessarily the language.