Again, my stuff is shelved just below your commentary:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 3:51
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Note my interleaved comments on a fragment of a key post of yours
At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote:
..........................
> 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.
If I understand you correctly, you argue that so long as the natural
sciences dealt with phenomena that was simple enough to contemplate
without
our needing to be aware o the activity of the contemplating subject, the
old
materialism served as a sufficient paradigm for explanations of the
observed. It is only when we deal with men, i.e. ourselves that we must
take into account our own subjectivity to understand what's going on.
I prefer to stand your argument on its head. As long as human needs
could
(and given the available technology, only could) be satisfied by
manipulation of his world on a purely mechanical level, the contemplative
and mechanical paradigms of classical materialism was a viable system for
explaining the effectiveness of human practice.
In turn, I could stand your argument on its head. What is the vantage
point: objective reality with the relation of human practice as a
reflection of it, or the justification of practice by its ability to
fulfill needs? Either vantage point could be considered a question of
perspective from one angle or the other. They could be equivalent. Yet I
see my argument as basic as yours as derivative, though that perspective
is also valid, i.e. explaining the effectiveness of human practice under
defined conditions.
It appears that my argument is not clear enough here. The point is that the
determination any objective reality is always a function of some sort of
practical activity.
To try first to describe object reality in all its concreteness and then to
try to determine which part of that reality is relevant to practical
activity is an impossible task. To carry out an aimless effort to produce a
comprehensive (concrete) representation of objective reality is one with the
kinds of hopeless sisyphusian tasks that Borges likes to write about. The
determination of objective reality can only be seriously countenanced when
we've decided what we want to do with that reality. Once we've determined
the aims of our theorizing activity we can determine the essence of the
problem (which is a description of the universal property or properties of
the object of our theory) and then proceed to a rational determination of
the concrete (particular) conditions of the world and of our activities
relevant to the object of our theorizing.
With the development of new
technologies and new needs, (like the development of machinery and
instruments powered by electricity). One of the earliest examples of this
development in Physics was the birth (emergence?) Heisenberg principle in
Quantum physics. Newtonian physics dealt with big things that could be
measured with instruments that had no apparent effect whatsoever on the
measure itself, thus the measurement itself could be factored out of the
explanation of the activities of the things measured. Small particle,
high
energy physics deals with things so small and so sensitive to the effects
even of light that physicists must at very least take into account the
effect of their measuring activities on the subjects of their research.
As I suggest below the big revolution in modern natural science, the
revolution that is giving birth to concepts such as autopoiesis, emergence
and non-linear causality (attractors and Feigenbaum trees) is mostly, (if
not mistaken the attractor was first formally described by Lorenz in 1963
a
weatherman and the term "strange attractor was first used in 1971 by
Ruelle and Takens to describe fluid dynamics) connected to the
investigation
of systems that are ever more sensitive to our handling of their
components;
such as weather, the behaviour of ecosystems, animal ethology and so on.
This is of course a function of the kinds of needs that our once largely
mechanical handling of the conditions of our existence has produced.
Thus,
for example, the development of air transport has created an urgent demand
for extremely accurate weather prediction, much more accurate than the
simple Newtonian based physics of atmospherics and energetics (the
meteorology we learned in Highschool) can provide. The modern aircraft
which
is still, perhaps only barely, a mechanical instrument has compelled the
development of meteorology into a science in which mechanism is entirely
sublated into a system that cannot be regarded as mechanical by any
definition.
But note it's not just our needs, but the objectivity of the realities
under investigation, for whatever reason we needed to engage them, that
force methodological and philosophical revisions. One could easily argue
for a dialectics of nature on this basis and not just a dialectic of
science. Your perspective is interesting because it begins from the
vantage point of practice. But do you really prove anything different
from my perspective?
I think I do for two reasons:
1. The reason given in my first response, that aimless investigation of
objective reality leads only to a hopeless tangle of related facts without
any truly utility for anything but the entertainment for the casually
curious. This method of presenting reality as an exhaustive array of
related facts is regarded by some very traditional schools of history as the
proper practice of professional history. Of course such historiagraphy is
never truly comprehensive. It is in essence the practice of history for the
edification of elites, recounting the great deeds of their ancestors and the
evil activities of their enemies.
Scientific theorizing on reality, idealist or naturalist-materialist must be
aimed (be teleologically linked to some object) to effectively focus
attention on the issues of significance.
2. The dialectics of science is in the sense that I use it is also the
dialectics of nature (in the sense that I describe significant nature). If
as I wrote above that the only comprehensive theory of nature has its
origins and object in practice, then in fact I'm arguing that the only worth
while cognition concerning nature is that which is embodied in scientific
practice.
It is not enough to explain the increasing dominance of processual and
teleological explanations in natural science as a function of the subjects
of scientific investigation. This is obvious. The real issue is the
effect
of the development of human needs (mostly as a consequence of the
transformations men have made on the conditions of his own existence) on
the
determination of the components of our life support system that must be
changed and the means available to us (mostly the accumulated practices
that
men apply to transform the conditions of his existence) to change those
components.
..........
Again, I see this as adapting the vantage point of needs and praxis as the
point of departure. But I don't see the difference that makes a
difference.
See above
Oudeyis
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