Does Postmodernism Really Entail a Disregard for the Truth? Similarities and Differences in Postmodern and Critical Rationalist Conceptualizations of Truth, Progress, and Empirical Research Methods.

Peter Holtz

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.545959

Abstract

Within this article, I will compare postmodernist and critical rationalist conceptualizations of epistemological key concepts such as truth, progress, and research methods. An analysis of Gergen’s program for a postmodern psychology shows that a naïve positivist understanding of truth is clearly incompatible with his postmodernist approach, whereas a correctly understood falsificationist use of truth as a guiding ideal may not be. However, postmodernists are often content with a diversity of voices as the endpoint of scientific activities, whereas critical rationalists such as Popper would put more emphasis on attempts to reach a common understanding. The differences between critical rationalists such as Popper and Deutsch and postmodernists such as Gergen are more complicated when it comes to conceptualizations of progress: whereas, postmodernists do not deny the existence of some forms of progress such as technological innovation, they argue that the modernist grand narrative, which views Western culture and the corresponding technological revolutions as being equal to epistemological progress and societal and political progress per se, has become untenable. Debates on possible negative consequences of modern technology are one example of evidence for this. Here, critical rationalists tend to engage in a legitimization discourse, sensu Lyotard, and to defend Western culture with all its deficiencies as a necessary precondition for evolutionary epistemic as well as societal and political progress, although they would agree with large parts of the postmodern critique of modernism. Postmodernists and critical rationalists would both agree that psychology as a field would benefit greatly, among other things, from a transition from a methods-oriented approach to scientific knowledge to a more problem-oriented approach, and from less methodological dogmatism. Taken together, postmodernism and critical rationalism may not be as irreconcilable as it may seem at first glance.

Highlights

There are numerous examples of philosophers as well as psychologists and other intellectuals warning of the destructive powers of the obscure specter of postmodernism, which to them is apparently haunting modern psychology, and all of contemporary science and society
I would think that postmodernists such as Gergen do not have an easy answer to this argument, since the improvement of life-worlds is one of the central elements of Gergen’s outline of a postmodern psychology: In the postmodern vein, we find that all languages— even that of the research psychologist—can enter the culture and be used by people to justify, separate, control, and castigate
For example, at ideas of Pettigrew (1991) on a critical rationalist social psychology, he is envisioning a stronger unity between the different branches within social psychology such as experimental social psychology and a more qualitatively oriented “symbolic interactionist” (p. 13) approach

Summary

INTRODUCTION

There are numerous examples of philosophers as well as psychologists and other intellectuals warning of the destructive powers of the obscure specter of postmodernism (cf. Jauß, 1983), which to them is apparently haunting modern psychology, and all of contemporary science and society. It is understandable that a physicist such as Deutsch focuses in his epistemology first and foremost on what Gergen calls technological innovation and not so much on social and societal issues When it comes to societal progress or attempts at creating a better world in general, idea of small-scale societal experiments of Popper (1945) seems to be not so much different from Gergen’s concept of generative theories (e.g., Gergen, 1978): both concepts have in common that trying out new ways of living and of organizing social life is crucial for societal progress. It seems to be that both approaches share similar concerns, but their protagonists may have had personal experiences with different forms of dogmatism, which may have led to different sets of fears and concerns

METHODS

CONCLUSION