Christopher Norris

Lost in the Funhouse: Baudrillard and the Politics of Postmodernism

‘Forget Foucault’ was Baudrillard’s title for a nifty piece of polemics which, in the current French manner, staked his claim to be ‘post-’, just about everything, post-structuralism and Foucault included.1 I think we would do well to forget Baudrillard, though not without treating his texts to more in the way of argued critique than Baudrillard sees fit to provide when dealing with his own precursors and rivals on the intellectual scene. Baudrillard is undoubtedly the one who has gone furthest toward renouncing enlightenment reason and all its works, from the Kantian-liberal agenda to Marxism, Frankfurt Critical Theory, the structuralist ‘sciences of man’, and even — on his view — the residual theoreticist delusions of a thinker like Foucault. The nearest equivalents are Richard Rorty’s brand of postmodern neopragmatist anti-philosophy and the strain of so-called ‘weak thought’ (not unaptly so called) that has lately been canvassed by Gianni Vattimo and other Heideggerian apostles of unreason.2 But one suspects that Baudrillard would reject these comparisons, regarding them as moves in a pointless game whose rule-book has been endlessly re-written and should now be torn up for good and all.

Sexed equations and vexed physicists The ‘two cultures’ revisited

This article examines various issues raised by the famous Sokal hoax and in the follow-up book that Sokal coauthored with his physicist colleague Jean Bricmont. I argue that the episode cannot be dismissed as just a passing salvo in the ‘science wars’ but should be read in the wider context of present-day debates about science, cultural studies and the ‘strong programme’ in sociology of knowledge. Beyond that, it reveals some genuine problems with the kinds of anti-realist, cultural-relativist, or social-constructivist approach that Sokal/Bricmont take as their targets, often with good reason. However I suggest that some physicists - quantum theorists especially - have themselves encouraged this trend by advancing a range of dubious speculative arguments or by declaring scientific realism no longer tenable on the basis of far from decisive experimental evidence. This helps to explain why Sokal’s article manifests all the signs of ‘unstable’ irony, and perhaps why the Social Text editors were taken in by its motley parade of citations from cultural theorists and ‘respectable’ scientific sources alike. My discussion covers some basic issues in the interpretation of quantum mechanics by way of showing how they have influenced debate not only in post-Kuhnian history/philosophy of science but also in various quarters of postmodernist cultural theory. What limits the effectiveness of Sokal/Bricmont’s critique is their failure to acknowledge this further irony and their blanket attack on a range of (mainly French-influenced) movements of thought which require more discriminate treatment. Their case would have gained additional force had it taken account of other - e.g. Wittgensteinian - sources for this widespread turn toward cultural-relativist thinking.

“Nuclear criticism” ten years on

Nuclear Criticism. By KEN RUTHVEN. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press and London: University College, London Press. 1993. vii+120 pp.

Derrida on Rousseau: Deconstruction as Philosophy of Logic

In the lengthy reading of Rousseau which makes up the central portion of Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatolog. there is much that should interest philosophers of logic (Derrida 1976). Just recently some writers — Graham Priest among them — have broken the effective veto on discussion of Derrida’s work in the analytic community and ventured to suggest that his proposals concerning the ‘logic of supplementarity’ might usefully be looked at in relation to current debate about deviant, many-valued, or paraconsistent logics (Priest 1994, 1995; also Norris 2000a: 125–47, 148–71). What I aim to do here is to put the case that Derrida’s commentary on Rousseau is not only an exercise in rhetorical deconstruction — or ‘literary’ close-reading — but also, more to the point, a set-piece example of modal-logical analysis. Before that I shall discuss some salient issues that emerged from the notorious exchange (the ‘determined non-encounter’, as Derrida ironically described it) between Derrida and John Searle on the topic of Austinian speech-act theory, a debate which has left its protagonists — as well as the rival commentators — deeply divided as to who came off best (Austin 1963; Derrida 1977a,b, 1989; Searle 1977).

What Strong Sociologists can Learn from Critical Realism: Bloor on the History of Aerodynamics

Abstract This essay presents a long, detailed, in many ways critical but also appreciative account, of David Bloor’s recent book The Enigma of the Aerofoil. I take that work as the crowning statement of ideas and principles developed over the past four decades by Bloor and other exponents of the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of scientific knowledge. It therefore offers both a test-case of that approach and a welcome opportunity to review, clarify and extend some of the arguments brought against it by critical realists. This purpose is particularly well served by Bloor’s having here assembled such a wealth of scientific, historical, political and socio-cultural data concerning one specific, very crucial period of research into theories of aerodynamic lift. His book thus provides an exceptionally useful point of engagement for anyone seeking to adjudicate these issues from a critically angled but engaged and constructive standpoint.

Sport, Craft Or Technique? The Case of competitive aeromodelling

This essay takes competitive aeromodelling as a test case for certain contentious issues in philosophy of sport. More specifically, I look at the challenge it presents to prevailing ideas of what properly counts as ‘sport’, which in turn have their source in other, more basic or deep-rooted preconceptions. Among them are a range of ‘common-sense’ beliefs about the properly (naturally) human, the mind/body relationship, the role (if any) of scientific-technological innovation as a means of performance enhancement, and – most fundamentally – the distinction between nature and culture in so far as it bears on these questions. My approach is broadly deconstructionist in taking them as genuine questions and in pressing hard on those unresolved problems thrown up by any attempt to secure a definition of ‘sport’ that would pre-emptively exclude any kind of advanced technological adjunct (or Derridean ‘supplement’) that seemed to lead outside and beyond the realm of ‘natural’ human powers, capacities and skills. On the other hand I acknowledge – as against ‘strong’-conventionalist (e.g. Wittgensteinian) approaches – that the category ‘sport’ cannot be relativised or culturally contextualised to the point where it loses all determinate sense or normative significance. My main purpose here is to assess various claims and counter-claims by running them past a fairly detailed account of competitive aeromodelling – or one particular branch thereof – and the kinds of difficulty it creates not only for conservative, essentialist or naturalising definitions but also for that other reactive trend towards all-out cultural-relativist or social-constructivist doctrines. In addition, though far from incidentally, I want to make the case that this is indeed a sport on any reasonable, fair, or adequately informed reckoning and that its recognition as such might help to clarify certain obscure corners of current philosophical thinking about these issues.

McDowell on Kant: Redrawing the Bounds of Sense

John McDowell’s Mind and World is a notable attempt to redirect the interest of analytic philosophers toward certain themes in Kantian and more recent continental thought. Only thus, he believes, can we move beyond the various failed attempts – by Quine, Davidson, Rorty, and others – to achieve a naturalised epistemology that casts off the various residual “dogmas” of old-style logical empiricism. In particular, McDowell suggests that we return to Kants ideas of “spontaneity” and “receptivity” as the two jointly operative powers of mind which enable thought to transcend the otherwise unbridgeable gulf between sensuous intuitions and concepts of understanding. However, this project miscarries for several reasons. Chief among them is the highly problematical nature of Kants claims, taken over by McDowell without reference to their later treatment at the hands of subjective and objective idealists. Hence he tends to fall back into different versions of the same mind/world dualism. I then question McDowells idea that Kant can be “naturalised” by reinterpreting those claims from a more hermeneutic or communitarian standpoint with its sources in Hegel, Wittgenstein, and Gadamer. For the result is to deprive Kant’s philosophy of its distinctively critical dimension not only with regard to epistemological issues but also in relation to matters of ethical and sociopolitical judgement.

Great Philosophy: Discovery, Invention, and the Uses of Error

Abstract In this essay I consider what is (or should be) meant by the description ‘great’ philosophy and then offer some broadly applicable criteria by which to assess candidate thinkers or works. On the one hand are philosophers in whose case the epithet, even if contested, is not grossly misconceived or merely the product of doctrinal adherence on the part of those who apply it. On the other are those – however gifted, acute, or technically adroit – to whom its application is inappropriate because their work cannot justifiably be held to rise to a level of creative-exploratory thought where the description would have any meaningful purchase. I develop this contrast with reference to Thomas Kuhn’s distinction between ‘revolutionary’ and ‘normal’ science, and also in light of J.L. Austin’s anecdotal remark – à propos Leibniz – that it was the mark of truly great thinkers to make great mistakes, or (on a less provocative interpretation) to risk falling into certain kinds of significant or consequential error. My essay goes on to put the case that great philosophy should be thought of as involving a constant (not just occasional) readiness to venture and pursue speculative hypotheses beyond any limits typically imposed by a culture of ‘safe’, well-established, or academically sanctioned debate. At the same time – and just as crucially – it must be conceived as subject to the strictest, most demanding standards of formal assessment, i.e., with respect to basic requirements of logical rigour and conceptual precision. Focusing mainly on the work of Jacques Derrida and (at greater length) Alain Badiou I suggest that these criteria are more often met by philosophers in the broadly ‘continental’ rather than the mainstream ‘analytic’ line of descent. However – as should be clear – the very possibility of meeting them, and of their being jointly met by any one thinker, is itself sufficient indication that this is a false and pernicious dichotomy.

Postmodernism, Politics, and the Assault on Truth

Let me say straight off that I am highly sympathetic to the various lines of argument mounted in this book. Detmer (who teaches philosophy at Purdue University) has some forceful views about what he sees as the creeping malaise of ‘postmodern’ sceptical relativism, and expresses those views with great vigour and cogency. He has a sharp eye for the kinds of logical blunder and self-refuting claim that characterise so much of this writing, along with a deep sense of moral outrage at the sorts of alliance struck up—albeit very often unwittingly—by the pomo deniers of truth and reason with the purveyors of mass-media falsehood and manufactured consensus. If the approach isn’t exactly ‘critical realist’ in the specific, fairly technical sense of that term most familiar to readers of this journal it is none the less an apt enough descriptor for much of what Detmer has to say. Indeed I should guess that if he had taken time out to read up on the CR literature in philosophy of science, sociology of knowledge, and cultural theory then he might well have discovered a strong elective affinity as well as some useful argumentative support. On the other hand critical realists will find in his book a highly informative survey of the way that these debates have shaped up on the US cultural-political scene during the past couple of decades, along with a shrewd, philosophically angled treatment of the main issues. Of course Detmer is by no means the only writer to have diagnosed and countered this current drift toward an attitude of ‘anything goes’ relativism according to which—in its more extreme (or facile) versions—truth just is whatever we take it to be by our own individual or cultural lights. Indeed his book makes copious reference to others (Allan Bloom among

Reply to Jeff Malpas: on truth, realism, changing one's mind about Davidson (not Heidegger), and related topics

This essay responds to Jeff Malpass foregoing article, itself written in response to my various publications over the past two decades concerning Donald Davidsons ideas about truth, meaning, and interpretation. It has to do mainly with our disagreement as regards the substantive content of Davidsons truth‐based semantic approach in relation to the problematic legacy of logical empiricism, including Quines incisive but no less problematical critique of that legacy. I also raise questions with respect to Malpass coupling of Davidson with Heidegger, intended to provide a more adequate depth‐ontological grounding for the formalized (logico‐semantic) conception of truth that Davidson adopts from Tarski. My essay then argues the case for an outlook of objectivist causal realism joined with a theory of inference to the best, most rational explanation that would satisfy this need in more philosophically (as well as scientifically) accountable terms.