As I see it, the disagreement here is not over the existence of objective reality, Frank never denied mind-independent reality, but over whether Lenin’s 1908 category of matter is required as a foundational axiom of scientific method. Frank consistently argued that science secures objectivity through empirically testable relations and practice, while ontological interpretations, whether Kantian, Machian, or materialist, are philosophical superstructures imposed about science rather than presupposed by it. As Frank stated, “The existence of an external world independent of our consciousness is the presupposition of all natural science” ( Philosophy of Science: The Link Between Science and Philosophy , 1957, p. 12). Contrary to both Mach and Bogdanov, he did not reduce scientific concepts to sensations or organizational schemas of experience, but treated them as empirically constrained representations of an independent reality whose ontological articulation remains a philosophical question.
Critically, reading Lenin’s 1908 polemic as definitive ignores his later development: in the Philosophical Notebooks (1914–15), reflection is described as a “living, dialectical process” ( CW 38, 190–91; PSS 29, 163–64) and vulgar materialism is criticized for treating abstractions as fixed dogmas ( CW 38, 221–22; PSS 29, 197–98). From that later standpoint, Frank’s anti-apriorism is best understood as methodological materialism without metaphysical inflation, not as subjective idealism or pragmatism, and the charge of anti-materialism conflates a methodological dispute about how science secures objectivity with a denial of objective reality itself. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39828): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39828 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116902646/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
