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10 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

We, the 'deconstructionists' cannot find meaning in the words as they relate to other words, instead of 'constructing' the relationships between concepts and how they are derived from their existential referents.

It would seem that actually deconstructionism assumes that there is only relation of words to words, so that's the only place to find any kind of meaning. It becomes something like linguistic analysis or sophism (where discourse is just about the way you use words). I mean, I agree that it's not good epistemologically but it might not be as bad as it seems at first glance. 

10 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

but to maintain one's clarity and commitment to a policy of using language as a tool of cognition.

It looks to me that everything to a deconstructionist reduces to language or the way language develops. Keep in mind that this all has to do with literary analysis. I think the policy of a deconstructionists is to stick to only the text and not refer to anything else. It's like the story by Borges where a guy extensively studies Don Quixote then rewrites the novel himself from the perspective of a 17th-century Cervantes - without any references or assistance or even the original book to read from. It is analysis and reevaluation of text through the text itself, but clearly missing reference to reality or objectivity. Can we understand what an author means without also understanding the world they lived in, the things they referred to, the life they lead? I don't think so, but a deconstructionist probably would think it is possible - all you need is the text. 

This article is worthwhile, and you can see the problems with deconstructionism better.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/what-the-national-review-gets-wrong-about-deconstruction/

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41 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

It would seem that actually deconstructionism assumes that there is only relation of words to words, so that's the only place to find any kind of meaning.

Without reference to reality, the mere relating of words to words leaves you with no referents outside the circular reference(s) identified.

At some point a deconstructionist is usually provided an implicit whitewashed acceptance of some sort upon which to build further. For a deconstructionist to cede an ostensive definition in a case of either a referent of a first-level concept or a sensory quality such as blue, circle, or even a directional indication, undermines a sole reliance upon words yeilding to objective building blocks. 

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1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

Without reference to reality, the mere relating of words to words leaves you with no referents outside the circular reference(s) identified.

Well, you said they don't relate words to words, but that's what they do. It's not that there are no referents, or that they are circularly referenced (I don't know what that means), but whatever referents we use cannot be objectively determined or that you cannot find meaning through objective references. Something to that effect. And, as I mentioned before, it is mostly literary analysis; it is not some wider theory about epistemology, whatever its implied epistemology would be.

1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

undermines a sole reliance upon words yeilding to objective building blocks. 

Of course you and I would care about these definitions when analyzing a piece of literature, since that would be part of the analysis, and that our modern terms and ideas have relevance to the analysis. Although it makes some sense to focus on the words the writer uses, and not about what definitions they should have used and without modern influence. The original author uses the terms they did for the reasons they had, nothing to do with your modern assumptions. The whole thing is a focus on discourse, nothing else it seems. There is nothing but the text, according to deconstruction. You and I would say there is more than just the text.

How did this all spring anyway? I don't see where this was mentioned.

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8 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

I remember when Gary Hull and others were butting heads with the postmodernists back in the mid-90s when the buzzword was "multiculturalism."

The other buzzword was "political correctness" also heard less today.

The two phrases now seem like soft entrees to postmodernism, proper.

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34 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

How did this all spring anyway? I don't see where this was mentioned.

Deconstructionism you mean? It is daily that we see another book being 'canceled' by the literary or historical 'revisionists'.

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This article is worthwhile, and you can see the problems with deconstructionism better.

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/what-the-national-review-gets-wrong-about-deconstruction/

Worth reading as a cynical defense of deconstructionism. And it is not meant by Derrida to be DEconstructive the author insists. "Not demolition or destruction".

Excerpt:

Thinking Otherwise

I can already hear the complaints and moans of the skeptics — skeptics like those given voice by the National Review: What’s the point? Why mess with the status quo when everything seems to be working just fine? Or perhaps even more critical: Isn’t this kind of mental gymnastics just an exercise in navel contemplation reserved for privileged elites?

This last item is less a question and more of a containment strategy. What those in power want and need is for this kind of academic super-power to be restricted and locked-up in ivory towers. They know that problems begin when this stuff gets out in to the world and starts making trouble. And deconstruction is, if nothing else, another name for “making trouble.” Although informed by and made possible through a direct engagement with the literary monuments of the past — a veritable who’s who of dead white male authors — deconstruction provides a way forward into possible futures that are not beholden to a repetition of what has gone before.

So go ahead, blame deconstruction for the social, political, and cultural transformations breaking out all over the place. That’s the point".

 

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1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

It is daily that we see another book being 'canceled' by the literary or historical 'revisionists'.

That isn't deconstructionism. I'm asking why DW brought it up in this discussion. Or rather, I'm sure there is a connection, but deconstructionism is literary analysis. 

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

And it is not meant by Derrida to be DEconstructive the author insists. "Not demolition or destruction".

Well yeah, it's a portmanteau, as much it seems like it is meant to be a synonym of destruction (it probably doesn't seem that way in French). There is nothing wrong with breaking your assumptions, or smashing your false idols. There is also nothing wrong with making something new out of that. That's what Oism is to some degree - rethinking your assumptions about morality, breaking them apart, and making something new out of it. The difference being that we think objective meaning is possible to find. Of course, deconstructionism goes especially wrong because of the focus on the text while ignoring pretty much anything else. 

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2 hours ago, Eiuol said:

How did this all spring anyway? I don't see where this was mentioned.

Since you asked:

17 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Cancel culture clearly had its start in "critical xyz theory" which had its roots in deconstructionism (a theory that's still quite new to me)

My initial citations were an exploration into a couple of entrees I considered relevant regarding  'deconstructionism'.

Do you suppose post-modernism and deconstructionism both attempt to undermine positing forth an objective reality? 

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1 minute ago, dream_weaver said:

My initial citations were an exploration into a couple of entrees I considered relevant regarding  'deconstructionism'.

But why did you decide to post it here, was it mentioned in the podcast episode?

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55 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Do you suppose post-modernism and deconstructionism both attempt to undermine positing forth an objective reality? 

That is a certainty. Objective reality is being destroyed. And too, I've been noting recent-times skepticism of knowledge, a growing anti-conceptualism. Both (postmodernist) attacks were validated by Hicks tracing the pattern from the German to the French p-m philosophers and to America, I found. 

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47 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

That isn't deconstructionism. I'm asking why DW brought it up in this discussion. Or rather, I'm sure there is a connection, but deconstructionism is literary analysis. 

Well yeah, it's a portmanteau, as much it seems like it is meant to be a synonym of destruction (it probably doesn't seem that way in French). There is nothing wrong with breaking your assumptions, or smashing your false idols. There is also nothing wrong with making something new out of that. That's what Oism is to some degree - rethinking your assumptions about morality, breaking them apart, and making something new out of it. The difference being that we think objective meaning is possible to find. Of course, deconstructionism goes especially wrong because of the focus on the text while ignoring pretty much anything else. 

You could read the article you posted more carefully. He is not only "thinking otherwise", he admits "deconstructionism ... is another name for making trouble". That's "trouble" for trouble's sake. But if you think there's anything healthy in there...or comparable with O'ism.

Deconstructionism is meant to develop uncertainties and skepticism in even the word-concepts that our thinking depends upon, I consider a tool in the general spread of postmodernism and the other postmodernists, along with Derrida.

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33 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

 

But anyway, critical theory didn't develop out of deconstructionism as you suggested. 

I misspoke, your are correct - I should have said out of postmodernism, which you see mentioned below ("...drawing on Marxism and postmodernism"), if this article extolling critical race theory is not just too damn sad to read. CRT is the singular method to *divide* individuals (by race) by paying extra-special attention to race.

https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-race-theory-4685094

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And while the ARI scholars have been blathering on about "a religious tribal mentality", and the cancel culture happening on "both sides of the aisle" [huh, say what?] -- CRT, in the destructive form of Leftist, racist, collectivist and Marxist indoctrination - and the coming education and government policy - AND a policy in business corporations and private companies - has been taking off in the USA, soon, naturally, to be imitated and implemented in many other places.

Did they pay any attention to Hicks on postmodernism? Interview him, cite his book? Conceptually anticipate the ominous consequences of Leftist- p-modernism? I haven't heard. Or could he be safely ignored as on the other side of an old (stupid, never-ending) schism - i.e. not "one of us"?

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13 hours ago, whYNOT said:

The two phrases now seem like soft entrees to postmodernism, proper.

Postmodernism is a placeholder word. It refers to a series of intellectual plagues that will kill off the weakest ideologies and leave a wasteland in which the strongest ideas may flourish and spread out.

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7 hours ago, whYNOT said:

And while the ARI scholars...

Recently, Mike Mazza asked for some philosophical questions for upcoming shows. While May 5th has come and gone, providing queries that fit within the charter of the ARI would be more instructive accepting the offer as a request to be an ally than to simply take umbrage with past shows, especially in the light of the title of this thread.

Given Rand's description of the barren field of philosophy in For The New Intellectual, MisterSwig's optimism for the strongest ideas flourishing and spreading is joined with the podcasts he has put together with others as he continues to explore the terrain.

If there is a vacuum in leadership regarding ideas, then there is an opportunity to provide an example of more effective leadership. 

Division and derision are tools used to tear down while seeking to unite and promote set in place a different foundation upon which others can build. 

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6 hours ago, MisterSwig said:

Postmodernism is a placeholder word. It refers to a series of intellectual plagues that will kill off the weakest ideologies and leave a wasteland in which the strongest ideas may flourish and spread out.

To your conclusion - I trust so. Eventually.

P-M, that rather indeterminate and highly subjectivist theory, as anyone can hear already (and Hicks confirms), necessarily brings with it a political ideology to force its implementation, Marxism, which will not be so quickly dispatched. Right now, the social effects I can regularly see, read of and can imagine by CRT and CGT are disturbing to witness. The relations strained between generally amicable race, and other 'groups', the control of younger minds also, and psychological elimination of honest dissent. This sacrifice of tribes by tribe identity finally brings together altruism and collectivism.

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6 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

.

If there is a vacuum in leadership regarding ideas, then there is an opportunity to provide an example of more effective leadership. 

 

Do Objectivists need leadership? I don't see the necessity.

The Institutions do best with what they are good at, the usually excellent lectures, books, etc..

Anyone's opinion piece clearly marked as personal opinion, is of course fine.

I'd prefer they leave the practical applications up to the individuals concerned.

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49 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Do Objectivists need leadership? I don't see the necessity.

I get the sentiment. Still, leadership is a fact of life. Starting out with our parents when we are young, teachers that inspired us, individuals with virtues that we admire in various walks of life.

57 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

I'd prefer to leave the practical applications up to the individuals concerned.

Practical applications of what? Without the leading discoveries in so many walks of life (leadership in the various fields of endeavors), take a familiar line from a familiar story here:

[H]ow many independent conclusions you have reached in the course of your life and how much of your time was spent on performing the actions you  learned from others[?]

How individuals conduct themselves in spaces where actions can be observed, or how they express themselves, where others can read/listen, depending on the medium, provide material for evaluation.

Leaving the practical application up to the individual concerned could be a vote of confidence that a wino vagrant on a park bench would serve to them as an example of how mot to live their life. Does that make a ne'er-do-well a leader in what not to emulate? It may express the sentiment, but it also inverts the lesson and only makes it accessable to those who have developed that level of discernment.

Of course I should also indicate that this was only a matter of my opinion, lest any facts contained therein actually, indeed, be  facts.

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

The Institutions do best with what they are good at, the usually excellent lectures, books, etc..

And the 'institution' of OO is good at...?

What is the road and the nature of the battle? Are they, too, to be only a matter of opinion?

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On 5/10/2021 at 2:32 AM, dream_weaver said:

I get the sentiment. Still, leadership is a fact of life. Starting out with our parents when we are young, teachers that inspired us, individuals with virtues that we admire in various walks of life.

 

My thoughts are learnership rather than leadership, d_w. That's what's required. I think the new and young Objectivists have had enough of adult strictures and other dogmatic teachings, which they are leaving behind. They will all be idealists and be mostly, more independent minded than average, so do they want more authoritarianism? I think not, they are people who want to learn to think and live for themselves; when ARI (since that's what this is about) has produced expertise (basically, how to think) sans authoritarianism (what to think) they've been at their best. But you know the history, and the signs are there is still that intrinsicism-authoritarianism and a divisive mentality re other scholars and organisations. (Certainly, for example, the more mature Objectivists will resent being berated for their political choices).

I came to this late, not even knowing of rifts and divisions until about 15 years ago, but my impressions are that the early post-Rand days were about 1. who owns the intellectual property of O'ism and 2. faithfully keeping Objectivism 'pure' to Rand.

There's plenty already written about those, but I think O'ism is now 'owned' by every individual who knows it and uses it, and he/she has that right. Objectivism is 'out there' - largely due to ARI - and those concerned should have confidence that Rand's literature is for all time , and that too the follow up writings by many other scholars will not be able to tamper with it, while forever expanding upon and bringing fresh insights to the theories. Nobody can disturb the essential body of work. The philosophy has its own non-contradictory fail-safe built-in.

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