MentisWave: "Rationalist, right-leaning libertarian." ... Mainstream critics: "He's just another YouTube cringelord."
VIDEO EXCERPTS (maybe circa the 40-minute mark): . . . A better way to word it, is what has become more popularized within the left as of late. This merging of what you might call a
Marxist interpretation of the problems in the world, combined with Marxist solutions -- we can call that radical egalitarianism combined with more of a
postmodernist and
deconstructionist philosophy.
And the reason why I think that is so critical and necessary to understand, is because if I've got a communist over here, and I've got a free market -- you know,
Austrian school economist on this side -- and they both agree that the laws of logic apply... Well, then they can actually look at observable reality and hopefully come to some agreement about what works and what doesn't work, etc.
But if you apply a postmodernist approach, where now all of a sudden there's no such thing as objective truth -- then there's just your perspective, my perspective, and then you add on top of that
critical theory -- which says that not only is there not objective truth, but the laws of logic are on some level a tool of the ruling or
oppressor class.
[...] You've now created a world where your feet are planted firmly in midair, because now there is no mechanism to use to adjudicate differences, with respect to the data.
You have your perspective, I have my perspective, you have your data, I have my data, and we're going to come together, we're going to look all this utilizing these tools. But now what you've just said is, I don't want the tools anymore [because they're a product of the privileged oppressors]. Like, how do we peacefully adjudicate anything, then?
[...] The issue with radical postmodernism is that it's effectively just
presuppositional apologetics for secular people. [...] That's why you laugh, because you know what I'm talking about.
It's effectively just circular logic in your favor. It's an attempt to logically destroy the idea of logic, but the problem is that by doing that you've admitted that you're wrong because you can't use logic to defeat logic. Because, by your accepting that logic is valid, in order to do that. With presuppositional apologetics-- I have nothing against the religious right -- I think they have a lot of good ideas, but I don't like it when people only give religious arguments in favor of ideas.
And that's actually why we need a more intellectual right-wing. That's one of the reasons why a lot of people laugh at the conservative concepts, is because the right kind of got hijacked by these type arguments. Instead of stating we should do _X_ because of time preferences, and these reasons, and this actual data -- that kind of got replaced by 'we should do _X_ because God says so'.
What people don't understand is that that's actually a bad argument. Even if it's true that God exists and God is telling you that you should do _X_, the problem is it's just not very convincing. It's not actually a good argument, it's really just an appeal to authority. It doesn't actually explain why it is true, and in presuppositional apologetics they're just justifying circular reasoning to use that kind of reasoning.
[...] I'm really glad you're saying this, because you're getting on to my next point. That not only is radical postmodernism effectively just presuppositional apologetics for secular people, it's actually worse. Because presuppositional apologetics at least tries to foot itself in the door. Saying, okay we can't use reason, but our God can. We get our source of reason from God.
But in the case of postmodernism and radical postmodernism, they get their source of reasoning from nowhere. So the religious argument of presuppositional apologetics at least has some kind of basis up high in the sky, whereas radical postmodernism has no basis whatsoever.
It completely is self-defeating -- they're [roundaboutly] admitting that they're wrong, but they're admitting that they're wrong in a way that's thousands and thousands of pages of word salad. You only realize why they're wrong when you take the whole thing in one gulp, and you realize -- wait a minute, this is just one big massive contradiction [using logic to dismiss logic]...
Dec 14, 2024 09:27 AM
