What is Postmodernism? 

Skeptic explains, more like skeptic mANSPLAINS

Can you explain why America's political terms are all ass backwards? Liberal in America means what conservative means in Europe, libertarian in America means what liberal means in Europe, and in Europe libertarian means communist, while in America socialism means what social democracy means in Europe. Why is all of this?

The postmodernist says "there is no such thing as truth!" and the rationalist responds: "Is that true?"

Original full title: **What is Postmondernism? Seriously, I have no fucking idea**

I did my degree in Post-Moderism. You give a fairly good explanation to begin with but make a few basic errors. One is you lump logic and reason and empiricism together throughout the video, whereas in Modernism logic and reason not kindred with empiricism or even allied, they are opposing views. Making this distinction is especially prevalent because Post-Modernism tends to reject logic and reason and accepts empiricism without question. Secondly you make the common mistake of viewing Post-Modernism as an ideology rather than a description. A person with the flu can be described as having the flu by a doctor, but the person with the flu can't call themselves a fluist. Post Modernism is an observation and reporting of what is happening in the world not an ideology to follow. From about 7:35 your case study is an error. You say humanities departments have adopted their own version of reason abandoning empiricism. This is perfectly correct. However this is not an example of a Post-Modernist ideology, it's more an example of Modernist Rationalism. Yes some people people mistakenly call it Post-Modernism, but it's the exact opposite of Post-Modernism which is a rejection of any truth in reason. Describing what these people are doing as Post-Modernism is about as accurate as saying Cultural Marxism is an example of Marxism. You then give a list of abstract SJW words and then say they are Post-Modernist words and can only be proven through the lens of Post-Modernism. This again is quite incorrect, once again more examples of Rationalism. Post-Modernism can prove nothing, it denies all abstract truths. In summery. Post-Modernism is a form of extreme scepticism. So extreme, sceptics reject it for being too sceptical (which is kind of ironic). It looks at the world and gives a description of the present, saying people are losing faith with western modernity and beginning to reject it replace conventional truths and values which ones they have made up themselves. It is not condoning this, or advocating any of these new made up values. Post modernism also as a system of scepticism pointing out these new made up values and truths are of no more or less validity than the ones they are replace, everything is subjective. In each generation new values and ideologies replace the old, claiming they are true and previous wrong. Post-Modernism analyses, then describes and predicts what Humanities Departments, Flat Earthers, SJW's, the Alt Right, New Atheists, rampant consumerism and so on are doing, it not the ideology of any of them. It's the Doctor examining them, and them the flu diagnoses.

Explain why Shitposting is such a widespread form of communication among the technologically literate

Judging by the comments, only about half of the people here have heard of this concept before. Postmodernism does not simply reject logic. It critiques logic as a symptom of positivism and is skeptical of its objectivity (or objectivity of any kind) and its universal applicability. It acknowledges the existence of things that we take for granted but explains them from a different perspective. Sure the Age of Enlightenment is good and everything, but the philosophies that emerged from it are crude and overtly optimistic at times. Also, the word "post" when talking about disciplines or schools of thought is used to indicate a contribution to something that came before it and not an outright rejection of it. It builds on modernism by critiquing and replacing certain parts of it.

"What is Postmodernism?" I honestly couldn't tell you if you put a gun to my head.

Post-Modernism as a concept is fine. The problem is: nobody is using it correctly. They’re just destroying things and not reassembling it to understand it, hence: not truly utilizing Post-modernism.

A postmodernist is just somebody who hasn't saved his father from the underworld. And that's that.

only a sith deals in absolutes

>be a skeptic >question everything and look for the true value of the things >look at postmodernism >realize it's about questioning everything and looking for the inherent value and logic behind all things >condemn it for doing it Say what?

could you explain the difference between Libertarianism and Anarcho Capitalism?

Is mayonaise an instrument?

Explain how England became my city

I really liked your editing in this video. Nicely done!

How to respeck wahmen?

What if butts had boobs?

researching for a school project. by far the most straight forward and easy to understand video I've found so far, and it even made me laugh. Good one!

7:15 "Post-modernism questions traditions and conventions" ... but isn't this the definition of Modernism

explain why my cat keeps taking a shit on the neighbors lawn

Postmodernism questions everything, except Islam.

I've had concerns over that language barrier for a while, even within my own ideology discussions almost always wound up speaking this weird set of lingo that required lectures to understand and all it did was alienate outsiders, thank you for bring that up i was starting think i was the only one.

Nice lil short vid Skeptic, love what you do so much

Explain quantam mechanics

Is sociology a real science?

I love this video on a few different levels. 1: It is interesting. 2: It is entertaining, because you're a generally charismatic presenter. 3: You do a great job of visual presentation/animation. 4: It is not about RU-vid drama. I'd love you to take a not-too-discused topic and just give me a segment on it. In a similar format to John Oliver's 10-20 minute deep dive segments. Even though I love those segments, I think you're even better in a lot of ways(you do a better job of using your time efficiently for maximum impact).

Thank you. This was the best description I have seen or read about Modernism and Post Modernism and I am working on a PhD and still could not grasp the conepts of what thiese two concepts were/are. I appreciate you taking the time to break it down.

I don't think it's intellectually honest to argue that post-modernism is basically wrong without actually looking at post-modern theory in a direct way (Discipline and Punish etc.).

Reason and logic did NOT START WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT!!! #Aristotle #Euclid

In this video, Armoured Skeptic argues against skepticism.

This was a fantastic explanation! Thank you so much!!!

You should do a full series on postmodernism; answering the questions it raises on metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and science. The skeptic community needs to attack postmodernism by the bottom-up, and not the top-down.

Social sciences are soft sciences by definition but some people think they are above physics, mathematics and even the oldest science phylosophy.

Post modernism is where you take down the fence, then examine each fence post to see which ones are rotted and need to be replaced. After you have "modernized" all the posts that need to be replaced, you then re-attach the fence.

Thanks for this video. It helped me understand why I've been so troubled by some of the discussions I've been having lately. It doesn't bother me when people strenuously disagree with me, but I am very troubled by the dismissal of logic and reason in general.

Flat earth (REAL!!!!) 2016 part 2 when?!?!?!

What do you think of libertarians?

Postmodernism: “There is no truth” Common Sense: “Why do you say that like it’s true?” Postmodernism: “…”

What is Postmodernism? I think I'd rather ask Logicked. At least I know he will research it properly.

Postmodernism brought us Metal Gear Solid 2. I rest my case.

Can you help me understand how to form my thoughts better, in a way that meaningfully conveys my intended message? I struggle with that :^) Like, figuring out how to say this took way too long, and I still don't know if my question truly conveys my original intentions. Maybe, instead of such a specific question, why don't I broaden it: How can I argue my points without making a fool of myself because of poor speaking skills? How can I become better at organizing my thoughts?

Shakespeare said “there is no right or wrong but thinking makes it so” that sounds postmodern to me!

The Real question is, will Greg actually listen to Layman and do some improvement?

You heard it here folks, logic is a modern invention created in the enlightenment

In school I learnt that postmodernism was more or less everythig is abstract, nothing has meaning.

Not breaking down things constantly gives me anxiety because I can’t find a satisfying base to start from.

So, after many years of not watching AS, I've come back to this video after having gone through the proverbial mill of third level education to see if what skeptic said aligns with what I've since learned about postmodernism and share my insight on how it affected academia. My field is history, so I'm going to discuss what the postmodern movement did to the historical community. Rocked it's ass is the answer. It was the 1980s and everything was a lie. Since the 1800s historians worked under the assumption that by delving into archival sources and supplementing them with some archaeological evidence an objective historical fact could be discerned. If you had Jesus' birth certificate you could claim with certainty he was born on the 25th December 0AD. Posmodernism then pointed out that historians were looking at the past through a medium, the sources which survived. Having Jesus' birth cert didn't make his date of birth a fact, it only made the existence of someone recording his birthdate a fact - the accuracy of sources was thrown into question. Then came the matter of narrative. Postmodern historians concluded that if a historian compiled as many sources as possible and then wrote a book on his chosen topic his account was not an uncovering of the facts of history but instead a reconstruction of what the past might have been to the best of our knowledge based on what sources say. All history out of necessity discards information which isn't pertinent and indulges in conjecture where information is limited. In this way a historian fashions a narrative in order to create an argument. The reason why historians disagree when using the same sources is because the narratives they've constructed point in different directions. This point on narratives and reconstructions has now been largely accepted as a limitation of the historical method in modern times, even by historians who are quite vocally against post-modernism. The most obvious example is the enlightenment principle of progress. Basically, enlightenment philosophy proposed that mankind was on an exponential trajectory of improvement, we would continue to get smarter, be wealthier, live better. History written with this mindset formed a narrative which reflected that ideology, so if you wrote about the french state it was a history of how the french people were destined to pull themselves out of absolutism and achieve wealth in industrialism - everything had a trajectory. Modern (really postmodern) history rejects this notion, there is no inevitable trajectory to improvement in anything. If we take a concept like lower class wealth, we no longer expect and then write about the gradual accrual of capital, we instead see an ebb and flow, some generations live wealthier than the ones before and then there's some crash and everyone's worse off for a couple of generations. History is unpredictable and volatile. However, the sticking point of contention was the idea of 'objective truth', this was the really concerning spanner that postmodernism threw in the historical works. If historians couldn't achieve objective truth then why were we studying history at all? The belief that history couldn't prove anything was then coopted by holocaust deniers. 'Historians only make reconstructions, they can't prove the holocaust happened.' This all came to a head with the Irving V Lipstadt defamation trial. In short, historian Deborah Lipstadt called pop-lit history author David Irving a holocaust denier in her book based on what Irving said in his published works. Irving sued Lipstadt for defamation and used postmodern ideology as a defence. 'There are no objective truths in history, I have a narrative, Dr Lipstadt has hers, we conflict but neither are wrong.' He was then met with an absolute tour de force of historians who demonstrated the methods of history, how we corroborate sources and prove facts within the limits of our sources. This has been termed 'qualified objectivity'. The court ruled that historical methods could establish knowledge about the past. In this sense, traditional modernism won. I'd like to finish by pointing out that postmodernism also expanded what historians considered worthwhile to study. Where before history was either political, economic,military, or personal (so-called 'great man' history) the debate soon moved on to look at what else there was to talk about. Women's history, social history, affect history, global history, religious history - all these disciplines got their start because postmodernism demanded that history take on a wider scope to get a fuller image (or reconstruction) of what the past was like. What was deemed a valid source was also expanded, where before we relied on written survivals and archaeology the map was now open. Architecture, oral tradition, period novels, artwork, political cartoons. Admittedly postmodernism also creates a blurred line between primary and secondary sources but i wont get into that right now. Finally, postmodernism also demanded that we revise what we've said in the past, re-read our sources and look at them more sceptically - this is revisionism. Many take revisionism to mean a 're-writing' of history in an Orwellian sense but more accurately it's a belief that we shouldn't take one book, written 130 years ago, as the be all end all of historical fact on a topic. The sources that that historian used should be re-read more critically, if more sources have been uncovered they should be included, and if we find that that historians conclusions were wrong then we should write corrections. In summary, postmodernism is like a bomb that blows up conventional wisdom. It's a philosophy based on hyper scepticism and atomising knowledge. It takes a while but it usually finds a settled place in academic communities. Some of its tenants have been absorbed in historical methods, some have been legally disproved -something that doesn't happen often in ANY academic discipline. It's usually not easy to come on one side or the other when talking about something as nebulous as postmodernism. It's a multifaceted concept with some good ideas and some bad. The key point though is that it was exactly what history needed at the time to research more varied topics, ask new questions and justify its own existence.

Reads title: that thing paul joseph watson hates

I'm glad you're tackling this topic!

Thank you for the amazing video. I'm starting to get interested in post-postmodernism, and I wonder if it actually have groundings in philosophy or just in literature. It would be interesting to see a video about it.

Brilliant cohesive video!! Interesting point you say that ‘Post Modernism isn’t all bad’ and proceed to show an example in architecture like the ‘dancing house’ in Prague, I agree that is a remarkable awe inspiring staple in architecture. However upon dissecting that I would say that no matter how you make a building look, you are still confined to apply logic, math and reason to make the building functional else it will fall apart. That same principal applies I think to the post modernist ideology.

What is the difference between classical liberals and libertarians?

Should have talk about the Frankfurt School and it's "critical theory" and the influence of french postmodern thinkers such as Foucault , Derrida or Bourdieu... They are the one who divided the society between oppressors / oppressed

I Gotta Say This Video Really Helped Me With My Own Philosophical Ideas- I Quit Social Science In College and Now Struggle To Express My Views Outside The Classroom Setting Due To The 'Language' Idea- Except I Completely Understand Both Sides Language Choices and The Additional Concept That Like All Languages, There's Simply Some Things That Don't Carry Over; Great Video ^~^

Postmodernism is the subtle art of fixing everything that isn't broken.

Explain the difference between Anarchists(antifa style) and AnCaps(Like Hans-Herman Hoppe).

I usually come here to make a meme comment. Not today.

Hi Skeptic! Love the channel and good job on the content. You seem to really do your research. Based on my education and experience, (I have a BA in Political Science and an MBA, both from good public universities.) the following is how i learned it and how i apply it. The difference between Modernism and Postmodernism breaks down to exactly what you alluded to, cause and effect. The difference is that in Modernism, the past and the meaning we assign to it are treated as constants. This has been a fantastic school of thought for a long time but lends itself to paradoxes in certain circumstances. Shroedingers cat is a good example. A modernist would basically say that cat is alive AND dead simultaneously. This sounds good except we cannot extrapolate further without certainty. We cannot decide whether or not to bring the cat food or bury it. And from an economic perspective doing both leads to inefficiency. Postmodernism is not so much a response ( many people say it is but it drastically oversimplifying the concept) as it is an alternative solution. What a postmodernist would say is that we know whether or not to feed tor bury the cat based on our own experiences with the cat. Postmodernism does not claim to have the correct answer to whether or not to feed the cat, but instead postulates that the state of the cat can be inferred based a combination emotional and rational judgement. The problem with postmodernism is that while it is highly deductive, it is not very inductive. A postmodernist may say something like “i feel like its a lucky cat, so i should bring it food”. Now postmodernism does not claim you will be right, only that you now have a process for going further than modernism. Thats one of the reasons we called it postmodernism. I am an options trader and i use postmodern thought in certain probability models, so it does have value. The problem lies when people try to make Postmodernism an inductive model, which it is not. Taking the cat example, its impossible to create a generalized law about whether or not to feed the cat if everyone found their cat in shroedingers box, postmodernism would say each and every person would need to use their own system of beliefs, values, and rational thought to determine whether or not to feed the cat. This is why modernism and and postmodernism coexist from a political and financial standpoint. This is how i learned it in school and thought id share. Unfortunately like many schools of thought, it changes depending on what craft you practice. For an art student, its a style. For historians, its a period more defined by skepticism. It has many practical effects in business and finance. ( a company like amazon made no sense from a modernist standpoint) modernist economics taught that things Porters five forces model would predict amazons failure. A postmodern approach ( analysizing the Free cash flow model) would have predicted this success early on. I have drastically oversimplified these concepts in the interest of brevity, even as long as this text wall is it could go one for days. Just figured id share my perspective. Thanks for the videos! I appreciate the work that goes into making these.

I've heard many great thinkers explain post modernism, and I like yours most tbh. You dumb it down to the point that normal people can understand yet not so dumb the message is lost or demean me.

I'm actually really happy you explained this, it really shines a light on all of this. And while we may never understand them, knowing that they think on a different spectrum means that perhaps at some point when we begin to understand them we can finally explain things to them.

Hey skeptic, explain hyper normalisation.

Thank you, i am a graphic designer studying postmodernism and i've enjoyed this video, and definitely learned more about it.

I love how you put on contrabandits there

My parents are trying to keep me off the internet as much as possible because of how much you're teaching me. From another's perspective I can see how that can seem like a good thing since young teens probably wouldn't understand much and would take another step and do something stupid. But for me it was like I was about to walk into the fire and I stumbled across you and decided to take a step back and see maybe I DON'T know everything (which sadly enough most teenagers believe they DO know everything so big deal on my end), and maybe I should be skeptical before jumping into any idea that suits me. Thank you for unconsciously pulling me away from the cliff I was about to fall into, by just being you.

whaaaaaaat?!! a video that isn't 7 hours long? are you ok sceptic?!!!!

"Proven through the lense of postmodernism" is an oxymoron

Can really taste your art history background in this one.

I don't think you understand postmodernism at all. The hippie counterculture movement is not postmodernism. The societal flaws you see today are not postmodernism. That moron talking about science is not postmodernism. You are equating postmodernism to the degeneration and regression of society, you connected postmodernism with SJW nonsense but you don't even understand postmodernism enough to define how that connection exists (and you didn't, which bothers me immensly that you are comfortable with the amount of proof you gave for your argument). Postmodernism as a movement rejects ideology, if SJW shit was the norm, then it'd be more postmodern to reject that. Concepts like patriarchy and rape culture are *not* postmodern ideas because they are claimed to be based on fact and truth, whereas in reality they are based more on ideology than anything else - basically their entire structure of existence is rejected by postmodernism. The whole idea is to challenge you and how you percieve things. I don't even know why I have to defend the movement, I think it's outdated and stagnant in my own field yet even so it had it's important period in history. It deserves it's share of criticism, but you are talking about it in such an absolutist way and are conflating it with such ridiculous nonsense as if you are completely incapable of introducing and presenting a concept on your own, unlike debunking someone elses nonsense, you become way more sloppy and don't research your subject. 2/10 see me after class

Yeah... no. There are two schools of thought in postmodernism. One is that you break down structuralism and binaries. The other is that binaries are inevitable, but through knowledge of them and how they work- through questioning them- you gain enlightenment. There were thinkers within postmodernism who believed that "escaping" the system in a conventional sense only brought insanity. So don't paint postmodernism with a broad brushstroke, because just the same way that it believes in disestablishing conventions like "right" and "wrong", it also emphasizes the ultimate subjectivity of perspective, which is one of the *most* important aspects of debate- making concession, and finding compromise. Postmodernism made me who I am. One of the most important parts of being a skeptic is always questioning everything, and this includes the value and meaning of ideologies.

The skeptic face makes me question myself. Great video tho, helped a lot!

You refer to them "speaking two different languages." Ludwig Wittgenstein referred to this as Sprachspiele, or "Language Games," with the notion that different disciplines use terminology differently (they're using the same game pieces, but playing by different rules), and this leads to no little confusion and frustration. You can read about Wittgenstein's views on this in _Über Gewißheit,_ or in English translation in _On Certainty._ It's a brief text, but a very important one.

This is a terrible mischaracterization of Post-modernism. You make it sound like a political philosophy of "do whatever suits you", when in reality, postmodernism brings up questions like "what if there are variant forms of logic" and "to what extent does language influence the way we think something is true". These are legitimate questions. Western Logic is analytical and linear, being based in mathematics. Hindu Logic, for example, though, is based in Grammar, and results in paraconsistencies. As a result, not only are the ideas between west and east different, the fundamental assumptions are different. Also, the modernist west has been chained to the subject-object dichotomy, at least since Descartes. But the idea that "I think therefore I am" makes sense is based in the principle that every verb must be tied to a noun. That is a fashion of certain western languages, not a principle of philosophy. And there are null-subject languages like Korean.

This title... Bracing for Gregory to talk for 20 minutes about something he doesn't even remotely grasp

In a class I took on world religions, we discussed how modernism where religion is vacant and the horrible events that occurred in the 20th century created a post modernist world where nothing matters anymore and we as a species have no idea where to go next. We discussed a famous soviet dissenter, whose name I cannot spell for the life of me, who explained the reason why mankind became this way he said because "man has forgotten God".

Hey Skeptic, liking the new series. Could you maybe do an episode breaking down the difference between Existentialism and Absurdism?

You just tee it up for Dr. Layman, don't you?

Posts modernism in reality is BS but postmodernism in art can be amazing, but that's where postmodernism belongs, in fantasy and fiction

That moving background is playing havoc with my ADHD >.>

That was good. Is that compliment too Modernist? Nice work, Greg!

As always i will quote myself: It's not idea that is bad, it's always people that fuck everything up.

(1) "The red pill of the 18th century" has to be the most cringe thing ever said. Sorry :/ (2) I don't think you understand that philosophers have always debated what objective truth is. It's called epistemology. We didn't just start doubting it because of some 20th century artistic movement. (3) Stop making all these false equivalencies. (4) You can empirically study things like "rape culture." If you don't understand the process of studying psychological sciences, or if you think that it is not possible because "postmodernism," then I'm sorry, you too are doubting your precious "objective truth." (5) To that point, the scientific method doesn't claim objectivity, but it is our only hope of falsifying things to a certain degree of objectivity. Without it, we fall down into death spiral reasoning, which lets our beliefs inform our observation inform our belief creation. Can't be checked. The sci-method is the best we've got, but can't *prove* certain things because of the process of falsification and theories (ex: it's *difficult* both to prove a multiverse and might just be *impossible* to prove a god's existence). Perhaps those religious people post-Enlightenment were the first "postmodernists" because they stopped looking objectively at things. But I also wouldn't say that. That is simply incorrect. Still, it doesn't give them any more validity. See where I'm going with this? (6) The Enlightenment caused many things, but the Industrial Revolution was still more than a century away. Yes, the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment paved the way for this, but so did many other things... stop saying misleading things and making false equivalencies, again. (7) For a skeptic, you really don't challenge your own assumptions. It makes me feel misled.

I think this quote can sum up this vídeo "From the experience of reading abstract philosophical texts, we all know the relief one feels when the argument is interrupted by what we call a "concrete" example. Yet at that very moment, when we think at last that we understand, we are further from comprehension than ever"

Great video. Thank you for creating this.

explained it better than both my history teachers.

I'm still befuddled that someone so smart can continue to pronounce the word "tenet" as "tenant."

This was so helpful. Thank you.

This really did make me happy! You explained it well, I think 😂

I knew this in philosophy class, but I forgot lol

Life is to fucking complicated

“Gregory what’s a lesbian”

The Enlightenment era ideas were NOT like the Red Pill of those days, because the Red Pill is Right wing, and the Enlightenment era ideals and thinkers were Left wing.

Ask Jordan Peterson if you want a really good answer to this question.

Post modernism proves the earth is flat.

My philosophy is that of June: why can't everyone just get along?

I appreciate that this video exists, but mostly because people pointed out that it is not educational on the subject matter due to it's scope coupled with bad research and misrepresentation. Thank you educated people for directing me to learn something while on snack break. Straight to Dr.Layman's response it is!

This isn't something to explain as much as to have a conversation abut. How do you view our future in a world of science? Like: The inevitability of robots consuming all the free jobs. Recent concepts for faster than light travel. Unlimited super precise gene editing with CRISPR-Cas9 and the debate on is it "moral" to have a person who is born superior and a lesser person born naturally. Do you think an AI would threaten humanity or help us with exponential growth in research? Do you think all of existence is a simulation? Will Greece join Russia in a new USSR because of Russia offering to pay off their debts and then sum. Should a colony on mars be a new country, a colony of the country who sent it or a neutral colony of earth? What era of music do you like the most and what does ShoeOnHead like? Should we transform mars before we try colonize it? and so on.

Logic machine broke

As a skeptic you should have a lot of post-modernist views. You shouldn't question everything all the time, but the heart of post-modernism is skepticism.

That was sooo helpful!