On eight postmodernist vanities

The article is presented here courtesy of the author, Avshalom Elitzur. Previously appeared in issue 28 of the journal "Galileo" and has now been updated by the author

Hidan Classic - about eight postmodernist vanities by Dr. Avshalom Elitzur
24.10.2002
By: Avshalom Elitzur
Avshalom Elitzur is a faculty member of the History and Philosophy of Science program and the interdisciplinary major for Interpretive and Cultural Studies at Bar-Ilan University

Fashion, Oscar Wilde once said, is such a stupid thing that it has to be replaced often. Even in the world of the spirit there are fashions, and they sometimes excel in no less abominations than the rag-tag innovations of Paris. Such is the fashion that is currently taking over many departments in universities these days, "postmodernism."
True, people have the right to follow fashions in matters of taste. It is everyone's right to call "art" all kinds of doodles that seem pointless to me, because art is, by its very definition, a matter of personal taste. But when this practice also extends to science, history and law, the results are, at best, ludicrous. There is something in the postmodernist claims that spoils any desire and enthusiasm to engage in science, and it is important to explain to young people that any connection between them and science is strictly accidental. No less worrying are the social and moral consequences of postmodernism, and they also require a response. Let us, then, take a closer look at some of these sensational announcements that have been made in recent years in the media, in schools and in newspapers.
A. There is no objective truth. Everyone has their own truth and they are all true.really? Maybe there were no extermination camps? After all, there are people whose "truth", for which they are ready to go to jail, is that the entire Holocaust is a bluff. And maybe we shouldn't be moved by the figures of the Council for Child Safety regarding the thousands of children in Israel who are exposed to abuse every year? After all, almost all the abusive parents brought to court passionately tell their "truth", that is, that the spoiled child is just making up the whole story. Oh how nice it is when everyone is right! True, the late Thomas Kuhn showed that a scientific paradigm, i.e., the picture of the world created by every science, acts as a filter that prevents seeing facts that do not correspond to it. But even he was revolted when he saw his claim appearing in mystical and spiritualist writings that rejoiced at being freed from the suffocating yoke of science. Because this is precisely the difference between a scientific paradigm and other paradigms: no scientific paradigm rules forever. Sooner or later it exhausts itself, cracks appear in it and a new paradigm appears as a replacement. Astrology, on the other hand, has hardly changed at all in its five thousand years of existence. Have you ever seen astrologers (or numerologists, or UFOlogists) argue with each other? Have you heard of rival "schools" and "theories" in these fields? There are no revolutions in the mystical teachings because everyone, more or less, is right in them. Only these poor scientists progress from mistake to mistake.

B. Science, like literature and art, is a text that each reader interprets for himself by deconstruction (breaking the text and rebuilding it) according to his will. Science depends on the needs of the time and its social interests. Therefore there are no right or wrong theories. Each society and its truth, and each period and its corresponding science.Sounds really nice, but such things can only be said by someone who has no idea what science is. Under the auspices of such statements, any ignoramus who lacks understanding can spout his thoughts without hindrance, because who would dare to say that something is not true when everything is true? And especially if the speaker makes sure to mix in his words terms from the theories of relativity, quantum and chaos? And there is only a small flaw in this fashion, that when the word "nonsense" no longer has meaning - when everyone is right and no one can contradict his friend - then nothing has meaning. In the same way, you can play football under the rule that everything is allowed, that everyone judges and that everyone can count the points as they like.
The following story is already known to many, yet it is not superfluous to repeat it. One physicist, Alan Sokal, submitted an article to an important postmodernist journal proposing a "transformative hermeneutic of quantum gravity." The excited editor rushed to publish the article - and Sokal rushed to publish a parallel article in a conservative journal in which he announced that the first article was nothing more than a hoard of nonsense. Streams of postmodernist ink have been spilled over this cute trick in an attempt to show that it teaches nothing. And really, according to the postmodernists, nothing teaches anything except according to the interpretation we have chosen. But if this story does teach anything, it is that postmodernism is capable of swallowing any nonsense. Science is first and foremost an adventure. There is enormous tension in it every time our experiment or observation invites nature in its own right to express its opinion on one question or another. This tension wouldn't exist if there wasn't something out there, outside of us, in objective reality, that doesn't depend on us or our whims. And not only the natural sciences, also the life sciences, society and behavior are successful when they are guided by the honest attempt to reach the truth. True, this truth can be an ideal that cannot be reached, but that is no reason to give up on it as a guiding idea. Has anyone ever been to the magnetic north point? I am not, nor do I have any particular desire to go there. But the fact that we will never reach that distant place is no reason not to use a compass!

Only for this reason, from the aspiration to go beyond the limitations of the here and now, is the practice of science able to move us so much. Hence its power, whenever things fail our assumptions, to bring sorrow and heartbreak as only a teenage boy can feel at the time of unrequited love. And this is also the secret of his ability, on the other hand, to bring great moments of happiness, joy of victory and roars of joy that would not embarrass any group of drunken thugs on the football field. No other human creation is as busy as science with self-examination and self-criticism and the restless pursuit of a better understanding of the world. I know this because I've been there, ups and downs, for the past twenty years, and I had the privilege of writing a line and a half somewhere in one of the countless volumes of this story, and I'm tired of hearing that everything is a matter of interpretation, that science should become an ideological supermarket where everyone can choose what they want.

third. Science depends on the culture in which it grew and its claims are only valid within that culture. Scientific theories keep power in the hands of the ruling elites, mostly white males.

This claim has an old father, a mass murderer who also considered himself a philosopher of science, aka Lenin. Scientific theories, Lenin argued, also express the interests of the class that owns them. Comrade Vladimir Ilyich's Stalinist successors made extensive use of genetics, psychiatry and even quantum theory for this claim, and persecuted and even murdered scientists who held "bourgeois" theories. Post-modernism does not send people to prison, but the linguistic terror called politically correct today shuts the mouths of many people in academia and the media. Just try to say "disabled" in the United States, and you will be lynched. It should be said "physically challenged"!

Respectable American universities have been forced in recent years to open departments for women's studies, black studies (oh sorry, I meant to say: African-Americans), and studies of any disadvantaged minority. This in itself could have been a positive thing. The trouble is that these departments, which admit only those who belong to the appropriate minorities, are quickly filled with loud, untalented chatters who teach "alternative history," "alternative psychology," and "alternative science" from the point of view of their "oppressed" groups. So, for example, you will find lecturers who claim that Shakespeare stole his plays from a black author. Almost no one dares to criticize the level of these works, because any such criticism will immediately be defined as "sexist," "racist," and the like. I highly recommend on this subject Volume 775 of the 1996 Annals of the New York Academy Sciences entitled "The Escape from Science and Logic." In it, several prominent scientists point out the growing politicization of science in their fields, and repeat and explain the good old truths of science. The articles are impressive in their honesty and simplicity.

D. Quantum theory proved that the consciousness of the observer affects the observed system.

Quantum theory says nothing about consciousness. So let's make some order here. This will be a somewhat technical discussion, but with a little effort it will give you the basics for critical thinking on this topic. First, there is a fundamental difference between the formalism of quantum theory and the accompanying interpretations. The formalism is the collection of laws that predict what will happen under given conditions. It is a mathematical formalism, completely consistent and precise like no other. This formalism, and here is the heart of the problem, does not correspond to what we see in everyday life. For example: according to the formalism, a particle can be in more than one place at the same time (that is, be in superposition). And indeed, the fact that individual particles, coming out one after the other, eventually form a pattern of entanglement on a screen standing behind two cracks, shows that the formalism is correct and every single particle passed in an unexplained way, and at the same time, through both cracks. Where, then, is the problem? First, it is not clear why only individual particles appear in the superposition, and not tables and chairs or cats, since they are also made of particles. Second, the particle itself is also not always in superposition. If we repeat the double crack experiment and measure each particle during its movement, the superposition will disappear: the particle will be found to be located in one place. Only if we avoid measuring it will the particle behave according to the laws of quantum theory and create an interference pattern.

It should be emphasized: the place where the particle will be discovered following the measurement does not depend on our will. The measurement forces the particle out of the superposition and into a definite place, but we cannot decide at will where that place will be. So even in this case the viewer cannot decide what the result will be.

There is, therefore, a real problem here: quantum theory does not know how to explain why the superposition of the particle is broken as soon as it comes into contact with a measuring device or any other object. This gap between the formalism and the observed reality has given rise to several different and contradictory interpretations of quantum theory. The emphasis is on the word "interpretations" because almost all of these interpretations predict the same experimental results and therefore cannot be decided experimentally. This is the reason why none of these interpretations was accepted by the entire scientific community but remained a matter of personal taste. Thus, for example, some people believe with abysmal seriousness that the universe splits into countless universes whenever a measurement-like event occurs. Others believe, with no less seriousness, that life today affects the "big bang" backwards in time so that it created/created favorable conditions for the development of life. Among these interpretations is also the interpretation of von Neumann and Wigner, according to which human consciousness creates the state of the observed object. Some popular science writers who read this interpretation - which, as mentioned, is one of many - confused it with formalism, hence the claims that quantum theory says something about consciousness.
Like all other interpretations of quantum theory, it is impossible to disprove or confirm this interpretation and therefore it remains in the realm of philosophy and not science. If I place a camera in a dark room, which will photograph the position of a particle, even then the image will reveal that the superposition is broken, just as if a person was watching the particle. Does this mean the camera has consciousness? Adherents of the interpretation of consciousness are not moved by this problem. This only shows, according to them, that the camera itself was in superposition, meaning that it both photographed the particle in one place and also photographed it in a second place, and only when the experimenter comes to check the camera, then his consciousness creates one state of the camera. The same goes for a tape recorder and the same goes for any measuring device: as long as we didn't look at the measuring device, the device itself is in several states (the "Schrödinger's cat" paradox comes to emphasize this very absurdity). The trouble is that there is no way to disprove this theory, since as soon as we try to look into the camera to see the superposition state, the followers of the theory will claim that our consciousness has destroyed the state. Therefore this theory is unscientific like any theory that cannot be refuted (see: "objectivity versus subjectivity" by Shahar Dolev, "Galileo" 28: 76-78). Apart from that, among us, there is something quite arrogant in thinking that the entire universe (as well as galaxies that no one has yet had time to glimpse) is in superposition until life appears and "measures" it. What quantum theory does tell us is, quite simply, that there is something very fundamental about physical reality that we have not yet understood.

Quantum theory and relativity - the two great conceptual revolutions of science in the twentieth century - are incompatible with each other. For the postmodernists, of course, this is not a problem: nothing must be reconciled with anything. But this is precisely the reason why no postmodernist has so far been able to make any scientific discovery: when nothing contradicts anything, the result is barbarism without meaning. Imagine what would have happened if the young Einstein had been a postmodernist: the theory of relativity (born from the contradiction between classical mechanics and Maxwell's equations) would not have been created at all! The reason that the theory of relativity was created, and like other great and beautiful theories, is that in science, contradiction is the mother and parent of discovery. Therefore, what quantum theory teaches us is this: a completely new understanding of physical reality is needed, and this understanding will come - if only we bother and search and not settle for empty sophistry of the "everyone is right" type.

God. Aliens: Science refuses to believe the evidence about them because they do not fit its current worldview. When this world view changes he will be able to see them.

With my reddened ears I heard a well-known professor from the Hebrew University make this scholarly assertion on Channel Shmona, and none of the experts in the studio dared to ask what about demons and spirits: will they also appear when science stops refusing to include them in its worldview? This insulting claim expresses a fundamental misunderstanding regarding scientific thinking. How to explain the fact that among all those who have seen UFOs and aliens, the place of the astronomers, those people who spend whole nights watching the sky with the best instruments, is absent. According to the postmodernists, the answer is simple: it's all a matter of psychology.

If intelligent aliens are ever discovered, they will bring about the greatest revolution in human thinking. What logic would they have? What science? What ethics? What evolution did they go through? What communication do they use? One of the oldest questions in philosophy, which has troubled us since the days of Plato, will have a fascinating turn: will their mathematics be parallel to ours, so we can claim that mathematics reflects a hidden logic inherent in reality itself (as the realists believe), or will it be revealed to be a free invention of their minds (as the intuitionists believe) )? Will their encounter with us be - peace and blessings - similar to the encounters that have occurred in our history between different cultures or will these creatures be imbued with a knowledge of the respect of life and the respect of others that we have not been able to instill to this day in us and our children? And on the other hand, if all the evidence about aliens so far is not real, then they also have very important lessons, unpleasant as they may be, for psychology and sociology: they teach instructive things about the need for humans to believe, about the need to stand out and get attention, about fantasies their sexuality (see abductions for sperm extraction purposes) and the like.

How shallow and boring, however, is the postmodernist answer to this debate: "It doesn't really matter if aliens exist. What is important is that there are people who believe in their existence."

and. There is no difference between someone who takes antibiotics when he is sick and someone who takes a kamey of Rabbi Kadori. What matters is that you believe in it.

Every culture has equally effective ways of fighting disease. It's not just evil anymore, it's dangerous. Western medicine has a pedantic and tedious tool called statistics, and those who know how difficult it is for doctors to test new drugs, in studies that include thousands of people and sometimes last for many years, and to offset the placebo effect, can only envy all the miracle workers who treat masses of desperate people every day, Among them are patients with terminal diseases, all kinds of "energies," "chakras," and many other words that put a lot of money in the pocket of the "healer" without bothering to follow up the unfortunate patients.
Giving equal status to the tired doctor of a health insurance company, who invested at least twelve years in his studies, and to the idol doctor who did a correspondence degree on behalf of a "university" in a post office box abroad, means spitting in the face of one of the noblest of human traditions, a tradition that begins with the Hippocratic Oath. Child mortality - the worst of the disasters that can befall a person - has today dropped to almost zero in the Western world because millions of children receive triple vaccination and vaccinations against polio and other deadly diseases. The lives of these children are saved not because they "believe" in the treatment - at least not according to their screams at the sight of the injection - but because it simply works. Rabbi Kadori, with all due respect, when he is not feeling well, is not satisfied with the angels and demons that inhabit his aged mind but takes antibiotics, goes to the dentist and probably also uses a catheter or an enema when necessary. The fact that the heads of the country where I live are knocking on the door of this man to receive a blessing from him is in my eyes a national shame.
Conceptual pluralism means, among other things, that the disagreement between those who believe in the front and those who want to bring us back should not be obscured.

G. The role of psychology and psychiatry is not to determine who is normal and who is sick. Their role is to help each person realize himself.

This claim has raised entire generations of spoiled and self-centered narcissists. No person addicted to alcohol or any drug admits in the first place that they are addicted. On the contrary, he claims for a long time "I can stop as soon as I want" and only those around him feel that something is wrong with him. For people who have a hard time dealing with reality, "self-actualization" means staying exactly who they are, continuing to do what they want and just not bearing the consequences.
After the publication of Geoffrey Masson's angry book "The Dangers of Psychotherapy", many even among the psychologists were convinced that all mental therapy is an act of tyranny in which one person imposes his worldview on another. Many professionals have been trying in recent years to be "non-judgmental" on almost every subject. The result: an embarrassed, shallow, beautified psychology that is careful not to upset anyone. Suffice it to mention that in the latest edition of the world manual for the diagnosis of mental disorders, DSM-IV, pedophilia (sexual attraction to children) was removed from the list of mental disorders and remains defined as a disorder only when it is ego-dystonic, that is, unacceptable to the "I." Therefore, a deviant who feels at peace with what he does to children is a completely healthy person, but if his conscience torments him and he asks, God forbid, to change, then he must be treated so that he "accepts" and "loves himself."
A more serious example of this value paralysis is revealed in psychology's attitude to suicide. As someone who follows this ongoing blow to the IDF every year, I became involved in the topic of suicide prevention, and my experience in expressing an opinion that is not politically correct can teach me something. A few years ago I wrote an article in which I called for a change in the professional attitude towards the suicidal. I argued that there is no value to the work of a psychologist or psychiatrist who treats a suicidal person if he does not express a clear value position against this act, against his cruelty towards family members and especially against the folly of it from the point of view of the suicidal person himself. I also based my words on empirical data. The English version of the article was rejected by nine respected journals (one of which I myself am a member of). The claims of the critics who recommended rejecting the article were that "the author is angry" and "judgments" are merciful. Only Omega: Journal of Death and Dying (there is such a thing) published it. A short Hebrew version was sent to "Bamahane" and was rejected, according to the chief education officer at the time, Hanoch Kaptzen, due to ACA's opposition.
Finally, the article was published in the Israeli journal for psychotherapy, "Conversations." There were sympathetic responses, but one psychologist, Dr. Naomi Kellner, wrote, in black and white, as follows: "Would it be possible to firmly establish the approach that considers suicide as an act that may be rational and moral and may serve the best interests of the person who chooses it?" (This question was accompanied by plenty of references to the philosophical literature on suicide). The respected psychologist, therefore, gives the status of a rational thinker to a person in a suicidal crisis. Reading this scholarly analysis, I found myself imagining a young soldier who had just flown out of officers' training, sitting late at night and delving into the books of Sartre, Camus, Spinoza, and Maimonides, and after he finished summarizing and summarizing the arguments for and against suicide, he takes the "Uzi" and hits himself in the head with a bundle . How many acts of suicide stem from controlled and rational thinking? Ask Jordana Erzi, Orli Yaniv, Arthur Rubinstein and many others who survived suicide attempts, luckily for them and for us. The flattering treatment of a young man whose world has been destroyed due to damage to his self-image as someone who acts "according to his best interests," has nothing to do with respecting individual rights. This is just cowardice and evading responsibility. I wouldn't even let such a psychologist take care of my cat.
But not only mental health professions, medicine itself is also threatened today by attempts to blur the difference between "healthy" and "sick" in the name of non-judgment. Recently, an American psycholinguist, Harlan Lane, launched an attack on a new in-ear device that implanted in deaf children could allow them to hear better. Deafness, argued Dr. Lane, is not a disability but a culture. The deaf are a minority with their own history, social structure and values, and the ruling majority, that is, we who hear, have no right to impose their values ​​on this minority. There are parents, the esteemed doctor explained, who are really happy when they have a deaf child, and they see it as a "right." The World Federation of the Deaf and the American National Association of the Deaf have also joined in opposing the assumption that deaf children need remediation. I almost said "I can't believe my ears."

H. Western culture is responsible for violence, violence and the destruction of the environment.

And Allah! Genghis Khan probably grew up in Detroit, the Japanese kamikaze developed in the courtyards of the Habsburg House, and Pharaonic Egypt, whose rulers' obsession with eternal life cost millions of people in blood and indescribable suffering, is surely a figment of the imagination of European scholars.
In recent years, archaeologists in South America have been busy with intensive research of the Mayan and Inca cultures that ruled this continent before the arrival of the Spaniards. The grim truth that emerges from these studies is that these cultures were just as bloodthirsty and sadistic as the invaders' Inquisition rule. Unpleasant, but humans have a tendency to be mean and cruel regardless of geography. Modern archeology teaches another sad thing, and that is that many ancient civilizations died out for ecological reasons that are well known to us today: population explosion, overexploitation of resources, pollution of the environment and destruction of plants and animals. If today we have an advantage over our "spiritual" and "natural" predecessors, it is that perhaps we can learn from their bitter experience.
It is also worth mentioning that the belief that rhinoceros horn and tiger testicles can help the male power, which brought these species to the brink of extinction, was not invented by conventional medicine, the favorite punching bag of the postmodernists. Such beliefs are typical of folk, "alternative" medicine. There is no deep spiritual principle here but a way of thinking known as "sympathetic magic." Based on this simplistic logic, any animal that is lucky enough to have an organ that stimulates the imagination can become a target for mass slaughter for the benefit of rich impotents in the East and West. If we ever succeed in restoring our relationship with the sick biosphere of this planet, which threatens to collapse on top of us all, we can only do so by studying and recognizing the ancient, wonderful and intricate web of relationships between the countless different creatures that share our world with us.
We must recognize, first and foremost, that there is an order in this world that is much older than the existence of man on earth, that has clear and not particularly merciless rules of the game, and that those who ignore them may find themselves joining the dinosaurs. This learning will not come as long as we all, including whalers, oil companies and forest destroyers, treat the world as if it were an endless mall where any credit card owner can buy anything and as much as he wants.
And this, my friends, is the principle in God's knowledge that guides rational thought: in order to understand the world and others, one must make an effort to reduce the ego, put aside matters of personal taste and not highlight them, and muster a little more modesty and humility before the wonders of creation. Those who do not do this are not engaged in science, nor in the understanding of human beings, but only in themselves, and the result, it is unpleasant to say, is very uninteresting.

So don't be afraid to say out loud what your eyes see the next time the king comes out to show off his new suit. And if you listen to a lecture by Derrida or read an article by Lacan without understanding a single word, that's fine, you're in good company. "Everything here is penis and vulva, penis and vulva," wrote S. in open astonishment. Yizhar on one of these texts, and we have no choice but to agree with the words of a well-known sage from the Mishnah, R. Yossi HaGalili, who listened to the sermon of his friend R. Meir and commented to him: "Meir, there are egg patfati here!"