Charles B writes: > An aspect of this issue is the sense in which dialectics > is a logic. > What would we think if all natural and historical > theories/practices were > 'logical' ? In the sense of the formal logic of Aristotle and > I.M. Copi. > Would we think that formal logic is so 'elastic' that it cannot be > 'falsified' ? No , we would expect a certain pervasiveness of > formal logic > ,and so with dialectics.
Hegel called dialectics a "logic," while many Marxists have followed this lead. I wouldn't call it a logic in the same sense as formal (Aristotelian, deductive) logic. Alternatively, if dialectics is (are?) a logic, it's qualitatively different from formal logic. However, you're right that just like formal logic, dialectics can't be falsified. For Hegel, the real was rational and vice-versa, so that there was a correspondence between mental states (dialectical "logic") and empirical reality -- or at least there would be if we worked hard enough at improving our dialectical conceptions. On the other hand, as far as I understand Marx, the real world isn't rational. Not only are there are contradictions in the world, but our mental states don't correspond to the heterogeneous and messy reality. You can't simply go from dialectical formulas to getting conclusions about the real world. To the extent that the dialectics describe the actual laws of motion of the empirical world, it's a first approximation. The world operates _as if_ there were a dialectical process going on. In CAPITAL, for example, Marx tried to describe the laws of motion of capital, but this never was seen as describing the actual world of capitalism except at a high level of abstraction. He assumed, for example, that the working class was almost completely passive in its response to the depredations of capital (cf. Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL). The empirical world doesn't fit this assumption (unless the working class has been pretty much atomized, as in the US). For Marx, I would guess, the reality would be rational only when communism was established. But that's another story. JD
