Interesting post! But I don't understand all of it. Comments interleaved
. . .
At 07:09 AM 5/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote:
In regards to this thread on emergence and dialectics:
Your discussion (the whole thread) on dialectics and emergence conflates
several contradictory objectives: the dialectics of dialectics, i.e. the
essence of emergence in Marxist theory; the determination of the
substantiality of emergence in nature as such, and the broader question of
the relation of dialectics to nature.
Well, I do jump from topic to topic depending on the focus of the moment,
but I'm not sure I conflate objectives. The whole thread is, however, rife
with conflation.
Several points:
1. The essence of emergence in Marxist theory is the logical process whereby
any judgement (for Marx and Hegel alike) regarding the particularities of
any universal inevitably sets that particularity against the universal. The
negation is that totality of the universal that is "left out" by the
particular judgement. The emergent or what is called by Engels the negation
of the negation is the determination of another particularity that includes
the original judgement within an action that incorporates that part of the
universal that negates the original judgement. All this logical activity is
at least for Marx and Engels is what practice; physical/sensual and
intellectual is all about.
I don't understand the above.
When we discuss the emergent properties of the
dialectic we are discussing labour or man's interaction with nature as a
force of nature and not nature as such.
OK, but I don't get the meaning of the phrase "emergent properties of the
dialectic".
2. Marx and Engel's argument against Feuerbach's (and the classical
Materialists in general) was both substantial and practical. Feuerbach,
following Holbach and the French materialists interpreted materialism as a
description or determination of the essence of nature as such, as its being
or state. This is a strictly contemplative representation of nature, that
is, nature without human intervention.
I don't see this. I see the problem this way: that stage of the
development of materialism is inadequate to grasp the nature of human
activity, both practical and cognitive. Labels such as 'nature as such' or
'contemplative' don't work for me without such clarification, though it
does seem that your characterization here is consistent with me though
apparently not synonymous. The old materialism, as well as the course of
development of modern natural science, is such that it begins with the
study of the lowest levels of the organization of matter and works its way
up. But once it works its way up to the human species itself as an object
of study, its intellectual limitations become manifest. And I think this
is where Marx intervenes.
Marx and Engels adopted Hegel's activist determination of nature as a
product of the interaction of man with
nature (human purposive intervention in nature) , but revised it to include
that human intervention as a force of nature rather than just an exercise of
intellect.
OK.
For Marx, Engels, and Lenin the objective, materialist
determination of the nature of nature must be regarded as strictly a
dialectical product of the unity of human practical activity with the
natural conditions that are the subject of that activity, i.e. as a function
of human labour.
OK.
The difference between the contemplative and the activist
concepts of the nature of nature is critical. The contemplative view is
fundamentally a statement of faith, a revelation of the nature of the world,
while the activist concept has its origins and its proof in world changing
(Lenin and Ilyenkov call it "revolutionary") activity.
The wording of your argument is not sufficiently precise to me to be
compelling, but vaguely I could agree.
Since we are dealing
here with the philosophy of science and not theology, and Marxist philosophy
of science at that, we interpret the affirmation of the truth of the
material nature of nature of classical materialism as having its origins in
ethical (ethos) activity rather than in some revelation from on high.
I don't quite get this.
3. The classic substantiation of the dialectical method ( emergent logic if
you so wish it) is of course Marx's Capital. Here and there Marx and Marx
and Engels played around with more general substantiations of the method,
particularly in the German Ideology, the Grundrisse, and Engel's rather
disastrous investigations of the dialectics of the family, but they never
actually came out with a "Logic", a theory about theorizing.
I'm not sure why Engels' analysis of the family is disastrous. Marx of
course never write his promised little treatise on dialectical method. So
you don[t consider Engels' voluminous writings about dialectic a logic or
theory about theorizing?
Lenin certainly felt there was a need for such a logic, and Evald
Ilyenkov's cumulated works
comes very close to being such a "Logic". The lack of such a logic of
science (which is the same thing as the material dialectics of dialectics)
has been a regular source of confusion concerning the relation of logic to
nature, the object of scientific activity and so on.
Interesting.
The substantiation of the dialectical method in the natural sciences is
the dialectics of the scientific investigation of natural phenomenon and of
the incorporation of its discoveries in human practice and not in the
determination of the essential properties of nature as such. The object of
an investigation of this sort would be the revision of scientific activity
to achieve some specified new state in the method and/or organization of
scientific activity.
I think I agree with this.
Marx and Engels discuss these issues somewhat, Lenin's
lengthy and somewhat tiring (to read that is) Materialism and
Emperio-Criticism deals with one historical stage in the development of
scientific method (the Neo-positivist, Logical-Positivist, and Neo-Kantian
theories of science), while Ilyenkov presents a more extensive examination
of the development of science from Descartes to Marxism in his Dialectical
Logic (1974).
Interesting.
An investigation of the development of emergentist theory in current natural
science is a most interesting and important subject for investigation.
Among the most significant features of this development is the emergence of
emergentism in natural science fields closest to the subjects of dialectical
historical investigation; the study of life activity, investigation into the
social activity of organisms and research into interactional processes in
ecological communities. This is interesting material and in the hands of an
intelligent and well-informed theorist could be a landmark work concerning
the future direction of the theoretical and practical development of natural
science.
I've been discussing this as well as other issues. And it is more fruitful
and important, as I've suggested, than much of the kindergarten level
discussion of the dialectics of nature.
Is nature dialectical? I don't really know or care. Science is dialectical,
as dialectical as dialectics can be!
I think you're right. The question then is--how to put this?--the line of
demarcation between nature in itself and . . . nature for us . . . and
science. I've been cautious about making claims about the 'dialectics of
nature' in se, i.e. apart from our methods of analysis (which I guess you
might call 'contemplative'. This is the old problem, as traditional
terminology puts it, of the relation between (or very existence of)
subjective (dialectical logic as subject of debate) and objective
dialectics (which, with respect to nature, is the focus of positive and
negative engagements with dialectical thought). It's not clear to me
whether you would go along with my various analyses of this problematic
over the past dozen years, or even accept such a conceptual
distinction. But I think that the mess we've inherited shows up its
historical importance. While I agree we need an overarching conception
that somehow interrelates "nature, society, and thought", the direct
identification of all of these components with the same dialectical laws
is, I think, a logically blurred mistake. I believe this implicit problem
comes up time and time again in the history of debates, whether among
British intellectuals in the '30s, the pseudonymous debate between Novack
and Van Heijenoort circa 1943, the debate between Norman and Sayers, etc.
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