Such blows are nothing new; what might be signaling the death of postmodernism is the transition, with 'science' as taskmaster, back into metaphysics. Now, prior to this, post-structuralism had already rendered such existentialist-grounded notions as 'alienation' largely passe, there being no univocal 'self' to be alienated. But, the new metaphysicians, these naturalists, have declared that, by and large, postmodern continentalism only went halfway, when exceeding the boundaries of normality became too radical, a kind of reactionary spirit injected itself into the varying discourses absent apperceptiveness.
This is how R. Scott Bakker summarizes the matter: (from his blog, Three Pound Brain...a special thanks to "MICHAEL S. PEARL" for the introduction)
"You see science overthrowing the self, troubling the subject, and you see confirmation, when what you should worry about is the trend. You never pause to consider in your celebrations of fragmentation the possibility that everything is broken all the way down, that with the subject goes meaning and morality and so on. You need to realize that your noocentrism could be of a piece with biocentrism and geocentrism, that in essence, you're simply stamping your feet...
Everywhere it seems, there is a breaking ranks towards a revitalized scientific realism: science tells us how the world, in fact, is and all is not well in the garden of what Bakker calls 'transcendental pollyanna atavism.' Amazing! This same individual (humorously) references phenomenology as "a form of philosophical anosognosia".
Hence, perhaps the true death of postmodernism: scientific realism. And nothing 'unsophisticated' a la the Sokal Affair. Ray Brassier, Quentin Meillassoux, Graham Harman, even Nick Land cannot be accused of ignorance relative to the varying antirealisms qua postmodernism. Now, in an interesting interview Ray Brassier stated the following, he asserts that the:
"fundamental issue facing contemporary philosophy: how does human experience fit into the world described by science? Contemporary philosophers can be sorted into two basic camps: in the first, there are those who want to explain science in terms of human experience; in the second, there are those who want to explain human experience in terms of science."
Brassier contends that as the explanatory reductionism via science continues, it is sheer "panglossian" to insist that, in light of the coming conceptual revolution, we will remain "human;" he does not think it wise to engage in the contemporary attempts at reenchanting the world, instead, the ramifications of science and entailing experiential reductionism should be pushed to its limits, a nihilism without bounds.
Intentionality itself may be completely illusory, causally inert.
Bakker calls noocentrism a kind of "magic." Worse still (in some circles), "the bonfire of the humanities has begun."
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