I like this and agree that this thing deserves its own name. In my own head (you may not agree) this view often also includes ideas like ‘explicit formal metrics often get Goodhart-ed into useless cargo cults, top-down rational plans often erase illegible local wisdom’, etc. The kind of cluster people seem to get from Seeing Like A State, The Great Transformation, etc. (I’ve never read either of those myself though.)
To my mind this cluster is something like ‘pomo ideas grafted on analytic rootstock’, rather than the normal continental rootstock. And I think the main influence it misses because of this is phenomenology (gworley I think may be pointing somewhere similar). Thinking seriously about subjective internal experience often pulls people towards a more thoroughgoing rejection of modernism than the ‘skeptical modernism’ one.
I don’t understand any of this well myself, though, and I’d struggle to unpack any of this into a compelling argument for someone who didn’t basically already agree with me.
Yep, that’s what I’m aiming at in my other comment: there’s a fundamental problem with the epistemologies of modernism in that they assume the possibility of perfect knowledge of that which cannot be perfectly known, and it is especially complicated when modernism tries to focus on empericism yet also assumes empericism can grant objective knowledge. Postmodernism fails in other ways, specifically by undervaluing the intersubjective and the way it suggests the existence of stuff prior to observation.
Skeptical modernism seems to be moving in the right direction but, as you say, doesn’t seem to be paying enough attention to phenomenology and as such is addressing what I said were the surface level problems with modernism while missing the deeper epistemological issue.
“and as such is addressing what I said were the surface level problems with modernism while missing the deeper epistemological issue”—If you think the main purpose of Skeptical Modernism is to be true then you haven’t understood the purpose of this post.
Goodhart’s law and an awareness of metis are definitely in the same cluster. ‘pomo ideas grafted on analytic rootstock’ is a great summary of what it is.
I like this and agree that this thing deserves its own name. In my own head (you may not agree) this view often also includes ideas like ‘explicit formal metrics often get Goodhart-ed into useless cargo cults, top-down rational plans often erase illegible local wisdom’, etc. The kind of cluster people seem to get from Seeing Like A State, The Great Transformation, etc. (I’ve never read either of those myself though.)
To my mind this cluster is something like ‘pomo ideas grafted on analytic rootstock’, rather than the normal continental rootstock. And I think the main influence it misses because of this is phenomenology (gworley I think may be pointing somewhere similar). Thinking seriously about subjective internal experience often pulls people towards a more thoroughgoing rejection of modernism than the ‘skeptical modernism’ one.
I don’t understand any of this well myself, though, and I’d struggle to unpack any of this into a compelling argument for someone who didn’t basically already agree with me.
Yep, that’s what I’m aiming at in my other comment: there’s a fundamental problem with the epistemologies of modernism in that they assume the possibility of perfect knowledge of that which cannot be perfectly known, and it is especially complicated when modernism tries to focus on empericism yet also assumes empericism can grant objective knowledge. Postmodernism fails in other ways, specifically by undervaluing the intersubjective and the way it suggests the existence of stuff prior to observation.
Skeptical modernism seems to be moving in the right direction but, as you say, doesn’t seem to be paying enough attention to phenomenology and as such is addressing what I said were the surface level problems with modernism while missing the deeper epistemological issue.
“and as such is addressing what I said were the surface level problems with modernism while missing the deeper epistemological issue”—If you think the main purpose of Skeptical Modernism is to be true then you haven’t understood the purpose of this post.
Goodhart’s law and an awareness of metis are definitely in the same cluster. ‘pomo ideas grafted on analytic rootstock’ is a great summary of what it is.