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Comment by tomlock | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly the field that talks most about epistemology and different epistemologies, is philosophy, which I'm pretty sure is part of the "grievance studies" bloc the authors wish to push a narrative about. It is absolutely the field you'd go into if you wanted to dissect and examine different epistemologies.

> post-structuralism, postmodernism, critical theory and deconstruction

I've worked in the pre-eminent enemy-of-the-right organisation in Australia, GetUp. I also am/was a postgrad philosopher. I can confidently say I've not heard a single left-wing activist talk about any of those 4 areas in my time working at that organisation, or, truly, in any other activist context.

Additionally, to read these four areas and to then claim that they form the basis of "identity politics" demonstrates a fundamental misreading. Perhaps this misreading is a motivated one.

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"I can confidently say I've not heard a single left-wing activist talk about any of those 4 areas in my time working at that organisation, or, truly, in any other activist context."

I've mostly heard these things discussed on Reddit and YouTube because of Jordan Peterson. I've heard postmodernism discussed by a professional counseller but nobody else I've ever talked to. I find it intriguing the intensity which people fight beliefs that seemingly few people believe or have even heard of.

I do find epistemology a very interesting subject in the modern day though. I've heard arguments in Canada about how traditional native forms of knowledge should be acknowledged to be as legitimate as science. People aren't proposing this merely as a thought experiment they want things like oral tradition to hold weight in the court system. They feel that a lack of scientific evidence about possible harms from say natural resource development is being used as grounds to harm the ecology of areas in spite of the warnings and precautions of oral traditions. Epistemology is becoming very relevant politically here in these parts yet it seems to be a subject that both myself and the public at large is uneducated about.

I'd be interested to hear more about this - but in the past its certainly true that indigenous myths were seen as useless to science. There are several examples of natural events and disasters being correlated with myths retold in indigenous oral histories.

You're right to point to Mr. Peterson regarding these postmodernism complaints. A succinct summary is that he claims in a movement called "postmodern neo-marxism". Marxism is a modernism movement, the phrase itself is already a contradiction. And yeah, almost no activists even know about postmodernism.

I can't find the resources I was looking at but here's one paper on the subject

https://cirl.ca/files/cirl/david_laidlaw-en.pdf

Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge DOES have weight in the Canadian legal system just not very much especially in the lower courts. A point bought up in the context of using it in the courts is - isn't oral tradition fundamentally built on hearsay?

It is a super interesting jurisprudential question, because legal systems are typically objective in part, but also rely on some idea of what a "reasonable person" would consider factual or reasonable. It stands to reason then, that under a native epistemology, it is reasonable for oral tradition aka hearsay to be given legal weight - when under the modern tradition we wouldn't. It is probably worth wondering if we'd consider aboriginals to have no knowledge if we took a hardline view that all hearsay was not knowledge. I think that's a pretty counterintuitive conclusion, so I think there must be some credit given to knowledge in a system with no written record. And, the next question that comes to my mind anyhow is what would it be like if nothing was considered knowledge unless it was written down? This isn't even currently the case in our modern tradition, given that witnesses and memories are still considered to have at least some weight.

A couple of questions

1. How big is GetUp here in Australia? How many full time staff?

2. How can you be a postgrad philosopher in both the present and past tense?

1. The information you seek... is found in the first Google result.

2. Counter-question: Is it possible to simultaneously hold a post-graduate degree, and be studying one?

1. I would prefer to hear the answer from someone with personal knowledge as not everything you read on Google is true.

2. Yes, but that was not my question.

Ok, and ok.

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