A Critique of Postman’s Underlying Epistemic Presuppositions and Definitions

Postman’s second chapter in Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Media as Epistemology,” would be more accurately titled “Media as a Normative Ethical Antecedent.” An epistemological theory serves as a framework of truth, what it describes, and how it can be rationally achieved. The examples Postman provides are instances of value judgments passed on the medium of which epistemic prescriptions arise, primarily in terms of practicality or linguistically transmissive convenience. Of course, cognitive and cultural biases can create a nebulous and fallacious state of epistemic-value synthesization against foreign mediums. The layman will favor his own media platform as an arbiter of truth in contrast to others. However, this has no bearing on the reality of genuine epistemological application or derivation. He also shows a lack of comprehension within the field when he claims “Seeing is believing” as a “preeminent… epistemological axiom” (Postman 24), entirely omitting significant branches such as academic skepticism that reject this aphorism.

With those organizational criticisms made, I will move on to the actual point presented in the chapter. Postman posits that mediums of epistemic communication are arbitrarily defined and that the cognitive qualities that are necessitated for their understanding are capriciously valued in the society which they originate from. He extrapolates this cultural observation to epistemology and, as I pointed out earlier, mistakenly equates the shifting of communicative value as a shift in the method of achieving truth or the conceptualization of what truth is. Postman provides the example of an economist using a poem, proverb, or personal anecdote to illustrate economic truths. He shows that we would conceive it as absurd, but then asserts that our conception is not justified and is a mere product of our modern media bias. He attempts to negate criticism in saying that numbers may perhaps be the best method of displaying economic truths, but then goes on to contradict himself and again claim that they are arbitrary.
Postman essentially claims that historical shifts in communication (oral to writing to print to television) have been results of erratic cultural changes. I would counter that they have been concrete cultural advancements. Each technological innovation has served the purpose of extending the longevity of information. The oral society would be limited to dependence on the memory and passing on of future generations. Once writing was developed, a minority scribe class could preserve information for those who possessed the rare ability to read. The advent of the printing press expanded this process to the general population, at the least within the developed world. Now television can reach millions, and the Internet allows information to be immortalized not just in stone or print but in an infinite database that can be accessed anywhere at any time. Each stage of course demanded unique skills to be able to utilize fully. The initial requirement was the memorization of hundreds to thousands of proverbs, then later an elite education to achieve literary competence. However, now (again, within the developed world) almost anyone has the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of our species and find the information they seek.
The skills required for comprehension becoming more and more complex I do not see as an arbitrary convolution, but as a demonstration of the advancement of our species. As we continue developing “new forms of truth-telling” as Postman words it, they become objectively more efficient at achieving the goal they are created to strive for: the preservation of knowledge. Postman claims he is not for epistemic relativism, but the arguments he forms do not support this position. Making a statement such as “[poems, proverbs, and anecdotes] are certainly capable of expressing truths about economic relationships, as well as any other relationships” (Postman 23) is reductionist at best. Postman’s conclusion may be appealing, but the premises upon which they are constructed are not grounded in empirical reality.

-Tyler Brunson