Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Vienna Circle etc.
Hi Given that Bertrand Russell rejected verificationism as the criterion as to what is science, can you tell me what was his criterion or criteria for identifying science as against non-science was? Paddy Hackett ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Vienna Circle etc.
On Vygotsky: http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg01947.html -- CeJ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: JF: I am interested in them because of my general interest in the philosophy of science and the broader implications: culturally, socially and politically of differing philosophies of science. Concerning the Vienna Circle, I am in agreement with George Reisch that because of the peculiarities of the reception of logical empiricism into the anglophone world, especially in the US, people have generally failed to understand or appreciate the broader concerns of the Vienna Circle, so that it was generally understood in the US as having been mainly about modern logic and the philosophy of science, whereas they in fact had much broader interests. I'm interested in issues in philosophy of social sciences (psycho-, logico-formal, cognitive, linguistic, social, etc.), but my limited knowledge of the VC leads me to think (perhaps quite wrongly) there wasn't much fruitful work done amongst them in such areas. I haven't had time to search down info. on all the official members listed in that manifesto. And although Popper never got listed as a VC member (and was down officially as an opponent of the logical positivists), they published at least of his books, didn't they? Of their contemporaries, I find Husserl and Vygotsky much more interesting on scientific approaches to the social and psychological realms. And in education, I would cite Freire and his use of non-positivistic approaches. (You could say variations of positivism pervade academic social sciences in the anglophone world and much of Europe. And that would include the way academia co-opts 'practitioner sciences' in order to make more high-paying work for itself and to control certification and indoctrination in education and other applied and clinical specialities. For example, academic approaches to 'qualitative research' , 'classroom resarch', and 'action research'.) Husserl, I believe, is a hugely under-estimated influence on so much of modern and post-modern philosophy. Directly and indirectly. He got somewhat dismissed because of anglo-analytic propaganda about Frege. Popper seems to have got some of his ideas about open society directly from Husserl, but Popper is a direct product of the logical positivists/empiricists and Husserl is not. He is a true opposition to it. You can dismantle Popper with Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend. You can find parallels between late Popper and Piaget. But you can also demolish Popper using Husserl's analysis of why positivist programs fail in the 'sciences of man'. Interestingly enough Carnap's itinerant education led to his being taught by a who's who of philosophy, including Husserl, Frege, and Bruno Bauch, as well as personal correspondence with Russell. Also, you could say Heidegger's philosophy starts with the teaching of Husserl. Even Goedel cited Husserl as an influence. I should like to re-read Wittgenstein on psychology in light of having read more of Brentano, Husserl and the gestaltists. Husserl is that rationalist hinge on which so much modern and post-modern philosophy swings. So why did Husserl and Vygotsky refer to a CRISIS in naturalistic and positivist approach to the 'sciences of man'? (Though it is often forgotten that to quite an extent positivism originates in attempts to shift social philosophy into a scientific framework--such as Comte's sociology.) (I think RD has reviews and essays that relate to Husserl (such as Husserl vs. positivism). Could he post some links and excerpts if he has time? ) Here are some online Husserl and Vygotsky primary sources, typical of what I have I have been reading off and on for the past two years at marxists.org. 1. http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/husserl2.htm (by the way, I have the book, but am citing an online source for list participants) small excerpt �61. Psychology in the tension between the (objectivistic-philosophical) idea of science and empirical procedure: the incompatibility of the two directions of psychological inquiry (the psychophysical and that of psychology based on inner experience). ALL SCIENTIFIC empirical inquiry has its original legitimacy and also its dignity. But considered by itself, not all such inquiry is science in that most original and indispensable sense whose first name was philosophy, and thus also in the sense of the new establishment of a philosophy or science since the Renaissance. Not all scientific empirical inquiry grew up as a partial function within such a science. Yet only when it does justice to this sense can it truly be called scientific. But we can speak of science as such only where, within the indestructible whole of universal philosophy, a branch of the universal task causes a particular science, unitary in itself, to grow up, in whose particular task, as a branch, the universal task works itself out in an originally vital grounding of the system.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Symbolic Logic
Hi Jim and others Perhaps you can help me here. How does the development of symbolic logic by BR and others apply to logical atomism. How does this logic relate to propositions and their relationship with each other Paddy Hackett ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] 40 years after
Martin Luther King, Jr. (15 January 1929 4 April 1968) ___ Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Ayer
Late in his career, Ayer revised his opinion of Lenin's _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ in a favorable direction, I believe. CB From: Jim Farmelant On Thu, 3 Apr 2008 17:05:10 +0100 rasherrs rasherrs at eircom.net writes: How does A.J. Ayer fit into this matter of the peculiarities of the reception of logical empiricism into the anglophone world. I obtained my initial more direct experience of it throug Ayer's titles? Ayer was politically a social democrat. During the 1930s he flirted with joining the British CP but declined to do because of the incompatibility between diamat and his own logical empiricism. Thereafter, he was a longtime supporter of the British Labour Party, except for a few years in the early 1980s when he supported the breakaway Social Democratic Party. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Paradox of Production
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/a-list/2008-April/070729.html The Paradox of Production Bill Totten by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (March 26 2008) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society One of the things that makes the challenge of peak oil so insidious, and so resistant to quick fixes, is the way in which many things that seem like ingredients of a solution are actually part of the problem. Petroleum provides so much of the energy and so many of the raw materials we take for granted today that the impacts of declining oil production extend much further than a first glance would suggest. Read through discussions of the energy future of industrial society from a few years back, for example, and you’ll find that many of them treat the price of coal and the price of oil as independent variables, linked only by the market forces that turn price increases in one into an excuse for bidding up the price of the other. What these analyses missed, of course, is that the machinery used to mine coal and the trains used to transport it are powered by diesel oil. When the price of diesel goes up, the cost of coal mining goes up; when supplies of diesel run short in coal-producing countries - as they have in China in recent months - the supply of coal runs into unexpected hiccups as well. I’ve pointed out in previous posts here that every other energy source currently used in modern societies gets a substantial “energy subsidy” from oil. Thus, to continue the example, oil contains about three times as much useful energy per unit weight as coal does, and oil also takes a lot less energy to extract from the ground, process, and transport to the end user than coal does. Modern coal production benefits from these efficiencies. If coal had to be mined, processed, and shipped using coal-burning equipment, those efficiencies would be lost, and a sizeable fraction of total coal production would have to go to meet the energy costs of the coal industry. The same thing, of course, is true of every other alternative energy source to a greater or lesser degree: the energy used in uranium mining and reactor construction, for example, comes from diesel rather than nuclear power, just as sunlight doesn’t make solar panels. What rarely seems to have been noticed, however, is the way these “energy subsidies” intersect with the challenges of declining petroleum production to boobytrap the future of energy production in industrial societies. The boobytrap in question is an effect I’ve named the paradox of production. It’s crucial to understand that the problem with our society’s reliance on petroleum is not simply that petroleum will become scarce in the future, and will have to be replaced by less concentrated or less abundant fuels. It’s that a huge proportion of industrial society’s capital plant - the collection of tools, artifacts, trained personnel, social structures, information resources, and human geography that provide the productive basis for society - was designed and built to use petroleum-derived fuels, and only petroleum-derived fuels. Converting that capital plant to anything else involves much more than just providing another energy source. Consider the difficulties that would be involved in building the sort of hydrogen economy so often touted as the solution to our approaching energy crisis. We’ll grant for the moment that the massive amounts of electricity needed to turn seawater into hydrogen gas in sufficient volume to matter turn out to be available somehow, despite the severe challenges facing every option proposed so far. Getting the electricity to make the hydrogen, though, is only the first of a series of tasks with huge price tags in money, energy, raw materials, labor, and time. Hydrogen, after all, can’t be poured into the gas tank of a gasoline-powered car. For that matter, it can’t be dispensed from today’s gas pumps, or stored in the tanks at today’s filling stations, or shipped there by the pipelines and tanker trucks currently used to get gasoline and diesel fuel to the point of sale. Every motor vehicle on the roads, along with the vast infrastructure built up over a century to fuel them with petroleum products, would have to be replaced in order to use hydrogen as a transport fuel. The same challenge, in one form or another, faces nearly every other energy source proposed as a replacement for petroleum. It’s not enough to come up with a new source of energy. Unless that new source can be used just like petroleum, the petroleum-powered machines we use today will have to be replaced by machines using the new energy source. Furthermore, unless the new energy source can be distributed through existing channels - whether that amounts to the pipelines and tanker trucks used to transport petroleum fuels today, or some other established infrastructure, such as the electric power grid - a new distribution infrastructure will have to be built.
[Marxism-Thaxis] April 11-13: Andre Gunder Frank's Legacy of Critical Social Science
April 11-13: Andre Gunder Frank's Legacy of Critical Social Science http://www.worldhistorynetwork.org/dev/agfrank-program.htm With apologies for the late advertisement, I'd like to inform friends, colleagues, and comrades of an upcoming conference in honor of Andre Gunder Frank at the University of Pittsburgh, April 11-13. Speakers will include Giovanni Arrighi, Immanuel Wallerstein and Samir Amin, as well as a whole slew of other people. The website should have all the necessary information, but feel free to also contact me on or off list for more information. Note that there is an unfortunately steep $30 fee for students, $60 for others. Solidarity, Isaac -- Isaac Curtis Graduate Research Assistant Department of History University of Pittsburgh http://www.pitt.edu/~pitthist/graduate/Isaacbio.html ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Cuban permaculturist: Climate change means we must change
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm3PcU5BpRg ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Necessity and Freedom: Why is written history a history of class struggles ?
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/a-list/2006w13/msg00105.htm [A-List] Necessity and Freedom: Why is written history a history of class struggles ? To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [A-List] Necessity and Freedom: Why is written history a history of class struggles ? From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2006 11:46:01 -0400 Thread-index: AcZVCOndPvKTcx49T+G2XoHCqLNKgwACaK6mAFTwkrAAAUaBEA== Idealist philosopher 1...but seeing every circumstance in which humans survive biologically as natural makes the term meaningless. * * * Idealist philosopher 2 :I was just about say something very similar to this. CB: Treats natural and biological synonymous - which they are. ^ Idealist philosopher 2: Are rocks biological? ^ CB: Our only natural interest in rocks is the extent to which they impact our physiology. Lets make Idealist philosopher 2's comment plainer. 2 is saying that the category natural is bigger than just the biological. Nature also includes physics, not just biology, but geology, chemistry, physical earth science. But so what ? Surely human biological life always conforms to the laws of physics, geology , chemistry, etc. To say that human nature refers to human biology , especially, doesn't create a problem in the sense that, of course, in the levels of organization of the sciences, biology embeds the physical sciences as a premise. In the same way, human historical life embeds biology, exactly the point being made here. Biology is emergent from physics, but physics remains a necessary premise of biology. Human culture and history are emergent from biology, but biology remains a necessary premise of culture and history. (See _Culture and Practical Reason_ by Marshall Sahlins) Exactly implication in the formal logical sense. Culture implies nature or Culture === Nature or If culture, then nature. Nature is a necessary condition of culture. Culture is a sufficient condition of nature. Modus Tolens : Not nature, not culture. Nature is a NECESSARY condition of culture or history. Nature is a without which not, a _sine qua non_, a but for condition or cause of history. Here necessity is a very precise usage. Meeting the requirements of physiology is a necessary condition for human history. It is not a sufficient condition. It cannot explain all of history. This is the usual idealist philosopher's correct point. History is not a simple reflex of meeting physiological requirments. True. However, interestingly, Marx and Engels root the determinism of historical materialism in the activities that _include_ meeting physiological requirments ( see the passage from _The German Ideology_) Production and exchange and productive classes are defined by activites some of which are all of the critical physiological-needs meeting activities. That's where the class arrangement of society gets its necessity or brings necessity to bare in human affairs. It is dogmatic , in Cornforth's sense of censoring questioning , to suppress discussion of the question why is written history a history of class struggles ? Of course, with Marxism necessity is discussed in the same category as freedom. Karl Marx Capital: Volume 3 Abstract from Ch. 48: The Trinity Formula Written: First Published: Full Text: This Abstract: In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening
[Marxism-Thaxis] Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei
Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei I. Bourgeois und Proletarier [2] Die Geschichte aller bisherigen Gesellschaft [3] ist die Geschichte von Klassenkämpfen. Freier und Sklave, Patrizier und Plebejer, Baron und Leibeigener, Zunftbürger und Gesell, kurz, Unterdrücker und Unterdrückte standen in stetem Gegensatz zueinander, führten einen ununterbrochenen, bald versteckten, bald offenen Kampf, einen Kampf, der jedesmal mit einer revolutionären Umgestaltung der ganzen Gesellschaft endete oder mit dem gemeinsamen Untergang der kämpfenden Klassen. In den früheren Epochen der Geschichte finden wir fast überall eine vollständige Gliederung der Gesellschaft in verschiedene Stände, eine mannigfaltige Abstufung der gesellschaftlichen Stellungen. Im alten Rom haben wir Patrizier, Ritter, Plebejer, Sklaven; im Mittelalter Feudalherren, Vasallen, Zunftbürger, Gesellen, Leibeigene, und noch dazu in fast jeder dieser Klassen besondere Abstufungen. Die aus dem Untergang der feudalen Gesellschaft hervorgegangene moderne bürgerliche Gesellschaft hat die Klassengegensätze nicht aufgehoben. Sie hat nur neue Klassen, neue Bedingungen der Unterdrückung, neue Gestaltungen des Kampfes an die Stelle der alten gesetzt. Unsere Epoche, die Epoche der Bourgeoisie, zeichnet sich jedoch dadurch aus, daß sie die Klassengegensätze vereinfacht hat. Die ganze Gesellschaft spaltet sich mehr und mehr in zwei große feindliche Lager, in zwei große, einander direkt gegenüberstehende Klassen: Bourgeoisie und Proletariat. Aus den Leibeigenen des Mittelalters gingen die Pfahlbürger der ersten Städte hervor; aus dieser Pfahlbürgerschaft entwickelten sich die ersten Elemente der Bourgeoisie. Die Entdeckung Amerikas, die Umschiffung Afrikas schufen der aufkommenden Bourgeoisie ein neues Terrain. Der ostindische und chinesische Markt, die Kolonisierung von Amerika, der Austausch mit den Kolonien, die Vermehrung der Tauschmittel und der Waren überhaupt gaben dem Handel, der Schiffahrt, der Industrie einen nie gekannten Aufschwung und damit dem revolutionären Element in der zerfallenden feudalen Gesellschaft eine rasche Entwicklung. Die bisherige feudale oder zünftige Betriebsweise der Industrie reichte nicht mehr aus für den mit neuen [4] Märkten anwachsenden Bedarf. Die Manufaktur trat an ihre Stelle. Die Zunftmeister wurden verdrängt durch den industriellen Mittelstand; die Teilung der Arbeit zwischen den verschiedenen Korporationen verschwand vor der Teilung der Arbeit in der einzelnen Werkstatt selbst. Aber immer wuchsen die Märkte, immer stieg der Bedarf. Auch die Manufaktur reichte nicht mehr aus. Da revolutionierte der Dampf und die Maschinerie die industrielle Produktion. An die Stelle der Manufaktur trat die moderne große Industrie, an die Stelle des industriellen Mittelstandes traten die industriellen Millionäre, die Chefs ganzer industrieller Armeen, die modernen Bourgeois. Die große Industrie hat den Weltmarkt hergestellt, den die Entdeckung Amerikas vorbereitete. Der Weltmarkt hat dem Handel, der Schiffahrt, den Landkommunikationen eine unermeßliche Entwicklung gegeben. Diese hat wieder auf die Ausdehnung der Industrie zurückgewirkt, und in demselben Maße, worin Industrie, Handel, Schiffahrt, Eisenbahnen sich ausdehnten, in demselben Maße entwickelte sich die Bourgeoisie, vermehrte sie ihre Kapitalien, drängte sie alle vom Mittelalter her überlieferten Klassen in den Hintergrund. Wir sehen also, wie die moderne Bourgeoisie selbst das Produkt eines langen Entwicklungsganges, einer Reihe von Umwälzungen in der Produktions- und Verkehrsweise ist. Jede dieser Entwicklungsstufen der Bourgeoisie war begleitet von einem entsprechenden politischen Fortschritt [5]. Unterdrückter Stand unter der Herrschaft der Feudalherren, bewaffnete und sich selbst verwaltende Assoziation [6] in der Kommune[7], hier unabhängige städtische Republik [8], dort dritter steuerpflichtiger Stand der Monarchie [9], dann zur Zeit der Manufaktur Gegengewicht gegen den Adel in der ständischen oder in der absoluten Monarchie [10], Hauptgrundlage der großen Monarchien überhaupt, erkämpfte sie sich endlich seit der Herstellung der großen Industrie und des Weltmarktes im modernen Repräsentativstaat die ausschließliche politische Herrschaft. Die moderne Staatsgewalt ist nur ein Ausschuß, der die gemeinschaftlichen Geschäfte der ganzen Bourgeoisklasse verwaltet. Die Bourgeoisie hat in der Geschichte eine höchst revolutionäre Rolle gespielt. Die Bourgeoisie, wo sie zur Herrschaft gekommen, hat alle feudalen, patriarchalischen, idyllischen Verhältnisse zerstört. Sie hat die buntscheckigen Feudalbande, die den Menschen an seinen natürlichen Vorgesetzten knüpften, unbarmherzig zerrissen und kein anderes Band zwischen Mensch und Mensch übriggelassen als das nackte Interesse, als die gefühllose „bare Zahlung“. Sie hat die heiligen Schauer der frommen Schwärmerei, der ritterlichen
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Symbolic Logic
rasherrs Hi Jim and others Perhaps you can help me here. How does the development of symbolic logic by BR and others apply to logical atomism. How does this logic relate to propositions and their relationship with each other Paddy Hackett ^^^ CB: Russell was anti-dialectics ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Character issue
The unique aspect of Obama's candidacy is that, like MLKing, he is risking his life , 'cause the ghost of jim crow ain't entirely dead yet. Or maybe it is ? Obama is testing the American soul. The media isn't saying that, but most Black people feel it. Obama like King is using a non-violent tactic. King said judge by the content of character, not color of skin. Today, anti-affirmative action people claim we should be colorblind , that we don't need affirmative action. Obama says, ok , judge me colorblindly, by the content of my character, not the color of my skin. I am not raising race. His character includes the courage to risk his life. Chas. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Ida B. Wells
Gotta mention I saw an ed television documentary on Ida B. Wells last night. Wells was the great anti-lynching crusader. In Memphis there was horrendous racist killing of three Black store owners ( If you get the details of the story , you will feel the horror). In that concrete situation, Wells editorialized and initiated a mass exodus of Black people from Memphis, 6,000 people, a sort of strike. It had a big economic impact. That was a tactic used in that situation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_B._Wells “During her participation in women’s suffrage parades, her refusal to stand in the back because she was black resulted in the beginning of her media publicity. In 1889, she became co-owner and editor of Free Speech, an anti-segregationist newspaper based in Memphis on Beale Street. In 1892, however, she was forced to leave the city because her editorials in the paper were seen as too agitating. In one of her articles, written after three of her friends who owned a grocery store were attacked and then lynched because they were taking business away from white competitors, she encouraged blacks to leave Memphis, saying, “there is …. only one thing left to do; save our money and leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property, nor give us a fair trial in the courts, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood when accused by white persons.” Many African-Americans did leave, and others organized boycotts of white-owned businesses. As a result of this and other investigative reporting, Wells’ newspaper office was ransacked, and Wells herself had to leave for Chicago.” Of course, many years later MLKing was assassinated in Memphis, on April 4, 1968, 40 years ago today. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
