[ExI] Wiki entry of Critical Theory of Posthumanism

[Stefano Vaj]

2011/12/4 Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>

> I was reading the Wikipedia entry on the critical theory branch of
> posthumanism for discussion with a friend and I came across this:
>
>
> "The posthuman is a being that relies on context rather than relativity<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism>,
> on situated objectivity<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_%28philosophy%29> rather
> than universal objectivity, and on the creation of meaning through 'play'
> between constructions of informational pattern<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_recognition> and
> reductions to the randomness of on-off switches<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-off_keying>,
> which are the foundation of digital <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital>
>  binary <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system> systems"
> (Wikipedia entry on posthumanism)
>
> I think I may have some idea what they mean when they say 'creation of
> meaning through play between constructions of informational pattern' and
> some vague idea of what contextual objectivity might mean, but the rest
> leaves me somewhat bewildered. This is why I never took philosophy in
> college. I can find no other place on the web or Wikipedia itself that
> clarifies what in the hell this might means Anybody got any idea? It could
> be the reason this passage was flagged as needing citation.
>

If this is serious, and no Sokal's friend has edited the entry for his own
amusement, I personal deplore the usual indulgence in oracular word games.

But, with a little effort, I think this "narrative" can be "deconstrued" as
follows: in a posthumanist perspective, the context of a given statement is
fundamental to assess its "objective" meaning (and "truth"), and this
meaning is ultimately determined  by the "play" between the construction of
new paradigms (say, in our case, the "posthuman change") and the
identification of the arbitrary, that is free, yes/no parameters that
define it (as for Chomsky languages are defined by how they operate the
switches of our "universal grammar").

In other words again: humanism is based on the idea that a universal human
nature exists that prevents practically or at least ethically any attempt
to tinker with meanings, which would be given by God or some secularised
avatar thereof, and could be derived mechanistically without any "random",
digital choice of their parameters.

All this is very abstract, but, hey, it is still less boring than John
Stuart Mill... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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