[extropy-chat] PHIL: Derrida and Deconstruction

[Anders Sandberg]

Damien Broderick wrote:
> At 09:46 AM 11/2/2006 -0800, Jef wrote:
>
>>My bottom-line and crude assessment is that postmodernism represents
>>essentially a bottomless pit of navel-gazing, mental masturbation
>>and academic in-fighting.
>
> The last-mentioned is crucial, especially when parsed as
> "ladder-climbing" (into the professoriate).

I'm at the 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) conference in
Vancouver right now, surrounded by amazing amounts of postmodern thought
(and other styles I don't even know what to call). It is great fun,
especially since I don't have a great stake in it.

This morning the session about the military enhancement of human bodies
was revealing. The speakers picked apart underlying assumptions of the
improved soldier and the "militarized citizen". A woman held a talk in
high postmodern that was beautiful poetry. The main thrust of it all was
of course a deep suspicion of the military-industrial-academic machine
producing all this normalization and enhancement to further its own
agenda. But at the same time it was so clear that this was done from the
perspective of *another* machine, this one producing analysis, concerns
and criticism for a living. Just as the military industrial complex is a
business so is academia. But admitting it is impossible for either, since
both have to hide their essential self-servingness under the image of
"protecting democracy" or "intellectual inquiry" (of course, some people
in these respective machines actually strive for these goals, but to
thrive you have think about the bottom line, whether it is counted in
dollars or tenure probability).

As for myself, I have given a little talk here picking apart narratives of
the social effects of enhancement (be they transhuman or bioconservative).
With some luck it will become a book chapter. More on that later.

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University