[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Sociobiology in the USSR
It's a fascinating story, and it illustrates the incredible ideological naivete the intellectuals produced by class societies, whether of the capitalist or Stalinist sort. Wilson and Skinner on the one hand, the Soviets on the other (except this Dubinin looks like a smart fellow)--what fools! At 11:09 AM 3/25/2004 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: Loren Graham in his 1987 book *Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union*, amongst other things noted that E.O. Wilson's writings on sociobiology received a rather surprisingly favorable reception in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that Wilson's theories concerning the biological roots of human behavior seemed to go against some basic tenets of Marxism. ... ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] What Next? - Marxist Discussion Journal
The reviews are interesting, esp. that of Raya Dunayeskaya. It breaks off though in mid-sentence. Either there is something wrong with my Internet connection (which might well be the case) or this web page. Anyway, the reviewer captures the essential problem with deciphering Raya. Also, in view of Raya's chronic slandering of CLR James, a reading of James's NOTES ON DIALECTICS is in order. Remember that the two once had a common perspective on workers' self-emancipation, which Raya later patented as her own creation along with her Hegelian accretions. At 07:17 AM 5/29/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: The current edition of the on-line journal What Next? features among other things Martin Sullivan on the Respect Coalition, Barry Buitekant on Lindsey German and crime, articles on Marxism and Anarchism, the United Front, and George Orwell, plus Ian Birchall's review of Dave Renton's Dissident Marxism, Mike Rooke on Raya Dunayevskaya. http://mysite.freeserve.com/whatnext ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis - The C.L.R. James Institute: http://www.clrjamesinstitute.org Ralph Dumain's The Autodidact Project: http://www.autodidactproject.org Nature has no outline but imagination has. -- William Blake ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re:[Marxism-Thaxis] Fw: Discussing Sudan #1
It is always worthwhile to look beneath the surface and investigate the facts, but I don't trust Lil Joe's rhetoric. There's something sectarian and dishonest about this. Do you have any better sources that would help people unravel the situation? At 06:34 PM 8/1/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: SOUThern MILITIA ARMED and TRAINED BY ISRAELl, FINANCED BY u.s. republican regime and supported politically by the congressional black caucus, trans-africa, and most black american reactionary racialists. Discussing Sudan #1 by Lil Joe [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Fw: Discussing Sudan #1
Said web site is very depressing. Aside from the personal biography, the site seems to be a mixture of Afrocentrism and extreme left sectarianism. Some of it is literate, and some of it is stupid. The article by tow other folks labeling Michael Moore as a white nationalist is enough to condemn the whole web site. If I want to be subjected to this stupid shit, I might as well sit back and listen to Pacifica radio. At 09:01 PM 8/1/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: Well Lil Joe had originally sent that piece directly to this list but for various reasons it bounced to me as moderator so I then forwarded it to the list. (BTW I found this political biography of Lil Joe at http://www.nathanielturner.com/liljoebio.htm. Well over at Uncle Lou's Marxmail list, there has been some discussion of Sudan, starting with the following piece that was posted by Uncle Lou, himself. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Forward from PENL- Louis on China and socialism
This shows you the despicable consequences and delusions of Stalinism. Monthly Review would like to get itself off the hook but one must recall its despicable support for Maoism. The very wording of this article implies that nothing was really wrong in the beginning except excessive centralization, and then the corruption of market socialism messed up the society. Who in their right mind would ever make allowances for China, from Deng Xiaoping onward, or before, during the execrable Cultural Revolution? How stupid, how naive can people be? The answer of course, is that socialism is a hobby in the West of the middle class with time on its hands. Slumming in the third world is all these people know. Of course they will delude themselves and then pat themselves on the back for seeing the obvious when it finally becomes convenient to do so. At 06:38 AM 8/2/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: In the next part, Marty and Paul take a close look at the economic transformation of China in terms of the underlying logic of market socialism rather than as a function of the greed or bad faith of people at the top. In other words, once China committed itself to market solutions to long-standing economic problems, all the same old crap was destined to reappear. At the close of the Mao era, China faced serious problems that stemmed from an overly centralized planning apparatus. There was underproduction in one sector and overproduction in the other. There were also investment imbalances. Deng proposed that the country solve these problems by using market mechanisms. This restructuring of the economy took several stages to implement. .. Quoting from their conclusion, Marty and Paul make a point that is crucial for understanding the drawbacks of seeing China as some kind of model--either socialist or as a nationalist development schema: ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] John Kerry will make his adoring anti-war groupies look like fools - Ed Luttwak
It is essential not to have illusions. It is also crucial to defeat Bush. At 12:47 PM 10/24/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: Sunday Telegraph October 24, 2004 John Kerry will make his adoring anti-war groupies look like fools By Edward Luttwak ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] John Kerry
Living in Washington, I see all too well how far people will go in abasing themselves on behalf of the Democratic Party. Supporters of the Democrats are in a hamstrung position, stuck in the logic of the downward spiral of the political system. And I'm certain that the political crisis in the USA will intensify with the election of Kerry, in ways that go beyond the political degeneration that transpired while Clinton was getting his dick sucked in the Oval Office. However, I don't think we will have a replay of Clinton. Aside from what backbone Kerry will or will not summon, I think that the political system will become much more unstable than it was when Newt and the other white boys were trying to paralyze the federal government. However, even a center-right government makes a big difference compared to a far-right government when one thinks of the damage Bush will do in every sphere of life if he is allowed to continue. And there is the question of the balance of power, if we can call it that, among the electorate. The franchise must be protected against jim crow practices, and this means a Democrat must be elected even though Gore was a spineless little shit in refusing to stick up for black voters in Florida. This is a trivial election only for leftists with one hand stroking their putzes and their head up their ass. At 01:43 PM 10/24/2004 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 13:07:30 -0400 Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It is essential not to have illusions. It is also crucial to defeat Bush. The problem is that's of Kerry supporters do have illusions concerning him. The fact is, he is a hawk concerning both Iraq and the so-called war on terrorism and he has spent this campaign trying to outflank Bush from the right on these issues (sort of like JFK's 1960 election strategy against Nixon). I see no reason why he won't govern this way, if he enters the Oval Office next year, given his political record, and the kinds of political forces that he would most likely be bumping up against, if he becomes president. Also, the record of liberals and progressives in regards to the Clinton Administration is not very comforting here. Under Clinton we saw such things as the passage of NAFTA and GATT, the abolition of AFDC, the passage of anti-terrorism legislation following the Oklahoma City bombing (which presaged Bush's Patriotic Act), the prosecution of a war against Yugolslavia in 1999, and the brutal imposition of sanctions (backed up by frequent aerial assaults) against Iraq. In other words stuff, that most progressives would never have tolerated from a Republican president. But after all, Clinton was our guy who was himself under constant attacl by the right, so all was forgiven. I suspect that we would see much the same thing under a Kerry Administration. He too will come under assault by the right-wing attack machine and all manner of liberals and progressives will be looking the other way, when Kerry pursues a more aggressive foreign policy, or revives the draft or attempts to privatize social security, or does other things that a Republican president cannot do, since after all Kerry is our guy. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Empire v. Democracy: Interview with Michael Parenti
Stalinist leanings aside, Parenti got to the heart of the issue of globalism: Globalism is the elevation of the property value above all democratic values, above all other social values. So any kind of public service can be wiped out for interfering and creating lost market opportunities for the private market. The private market is elevated above the law. It's not just that NAFTA will cost us jobs or weaken our consumer protections. It's that NAFTA is undermining democracy itself. It undermines our very right to question or to pass laws that can create public services. Today, under the new globalization, Canada has to pay millions of dollars to UPS because they have a public postal service that is taking away potential market opportunities from UPS. So here you have a country having to pay a private corporation for the right to deliver its own mail to its own people. Every single public service today is potentially targeted. I wish that some of our good progressive economists would take themselves to school on this issue and understand that there is a qualitatively new development in globalism. Globalism does not just mean international capital investment and imperialism. It's the whole new subterfuge of so-called free trade, which is destroying substantive democracy rule itself. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Have a happy and merry December 25
A-fucking-men! But: Born: 4 Jan 1643 in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England Died: 31 March 1727 in London, England Isaac Newton was born in the manor house of Woolsthorpe, near Grantham in Lincolnshire. Although by the calendar in use at the time of his birth he was born on Christmas Day 1642, we give the date of 4 January 1643 in this biography which is the corrected Gregorian calendar date bringing it into line with our present calendar. (The Gregorian calendar was not adopted in England until 1752.) http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Newton.html At 05:47 AM 12/25/2004 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: Today, as the world pauses on the birthday of one of history's greatest men, whose teachings continue to benefit the entire human race, let us join in toasting the memory of Sir Isaac Newton, and of all the giants on whose shoulders he stood. Jim Farmelant ___ 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] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
Reading this old thread of my late beloved Lisa brings back a lot of memories. I do not, remember, however, how this discussion proceeded from there. I do remember that it was an unfinished discussion, and that I had it in the back of my mind to engage Lisa once again attempting to divert her attention from dead-end leads and toward another direction. She was engaged and committed to the study of this material,. and to engagement with the marxists on the lists she moderated, perhaps much more than it or them deserved. Lisa had a voracious, unquenchable passion for knowledge and synthesis, and she studied a variety of subjects in addition to her professional scientific competence. I still think my interventions were sound. I did have to deal with the consequences of using a word without checking its meaning in the dictionary--prevarication. Occasionally in our private discussions we would step on one another's toes, but she couldn't get enough of them. I remember that I had it in mind to discuss with Lisa something that was confusing her at the time, still struggling with Engels. It was on the question of dialectical laws, which she tacitly assumed, as do sloppy Marxist thinkers on the subject (i.e. most of them), that these laws are something like laws of nature. Engels himself is responsible for this half-assed thinking, which is why I don't think it is useful to invest oneself in what Engels literally says. I meant to broaden the discussion to get Lisa out of struggling with an arguing against what is essentially a dead-end position. But then Lisa died suddenly, and this conversation, like many other conversations between us, was cruelly ended by circumstance. Sigh. At 06:09 PM 2/18/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: Dialectics of Nature [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:ROSSERJB%40jmu.edu Fri, 14 Jun 1996 05:10:59 -0500 (EST) * Previous message: Labor Party platform http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/001068.html * Next message: Dialectics of Nature http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/001067.html * Messages sorted by: [ date ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/date.html#106 6 [ thread ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/thread.html#1 066 [ subject ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/subject.html# 1066 [ author ] http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1996-June/author.html#1 066 ___ 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] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
I made a comparable argument as part of a recent discussion in a local philosophy group. The topic was emergence. I made a pitch for Engels as a pioneer of this concept. Curiously, much of the literature on the subject--including encyclopedia articles--is heavily biased in citing its history. Usually there is a focus on the British emergentists, and no mention at all of Hegel, Engels, or any Soviet work. Part of this I think is due to the provincialism of Anglo-American philosophy. Another failure of the literature is to make a clear distinction between the mystical idealist versions of emergentism and emergent materialism. In fact, we have a theoretical biologist in our midst who is a devotee of Whitehead and Bradley's internal relations. He has been ambiguous about what exactly he is committed to, but I smell a rat. I've also been using the emergentist concept in some of my thinking in progress on Marx, particularly Marx's curious statements on science in the 1844 manuscripts. I find some interesting ideological turns going on these days in cosmology at one end and cognitive science on the other, and I relate these to a fundamental contradiction of bourgeois consciousness that Marx point to, but my project is to elaborate the idea in ways Marx did not likely intend in those texts. Lisa would have been rather resistant to emergentist claims, from what I remember. I called her attention to some work on activity theory, which was presented at an APA meeting in New York--it must have been at the end of 1995. Lisa was not impressed. As an evolutionary biologist she used statistical models to study foraging behavior and did not believe that 'consciousness' mattered. I got rather short-tempered with her in some of the discussions we had, and we never had a chance to hammer out our differences. Beginning with my suspicions about sociobiology, I was very skeptical of the intellectual irresponsibility of biologists who overstep their limitations in making claims about society. Lisa was committed to natural science, was adamantly opposed to the social constructivism which had poisoned the left by this time, but was interested in Donna Haraway and curiously tolerant of Lucy Irigiray[sp?]. Besides being an environmentalist, Lisa was also a feminist and gay rights activist. Curiously, my shameless political incorrectness attracted rather than repelled Lisa. She considered me a kindred spirit, I suppose to the consternation of her many PC male feminist admirers in the left. I recall at least one other fellow who became infatuated with her. We used to talk about this as well as the craziness in the New York left and on the Marxism lists. She was a total e-mail addict: she couldn't enough of this stuff. Aside from biology, she was studying economics and philosophy on the side. She was insatiable in intellectual matters as in every other respect. She was a piranha in her passion for intellectual input and synthesis. She was also a very, emotional, sensitive person--she had a special look in her eyes, that haunts me to this very day. She had a variety of interests and talents in addition to science--she was into folk-dancing, and she made clothing. She had it all, she did it all. She was only beginning to realize her potential when she died shortly after her 35th birthday. How it pains me to write these lines. At 01:28 PM 2/19/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: I took a peek at some of the posts on Engels and Dialectics of Nature. Sorry about the loss of Lisa, she was clearly a very able thinker and writer. Thank you, Ralph, for sharing your fond memory of her. My own take on dialectics fits very closely with Engels, along the lines George Novack argues. I do agree that the dialectical laws of nature can be generalized, as Engels attempted in his studies. But what Engels did was just a beginning. Christian Fuchs has an article in a 2003 issue of Nature Society and Thought (Vol 16 No 3) entitled The Self-Organization of Matter that continues the discussion of finding parallels between dialectics and what I tend to call emergence theory (aka hierarchy theory, self-organization theory, complexity science, and many other terms coming out of general systems theory from the 1960's and earlier). I think Engels, and for that matter, Novack, would find this exploration very fruitful. I am beginning to become aware of some of the work Soviet scientists have done in earlier decades along these lines - B.M. Kedrov, for example. The concept of the transformation of quantity into quality, thought of merely as mechanical cause and effect, is commonplace - apply enough heat and water boils. But in Dialectics of Nature, among other things, Engels was exploring something much more general about this concept - the transformation of energy from one form to another, such as from mechanical to electrical. A liquid changing to a gas is just
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
At 11:17 PM 2/19/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: What wonderful descriptions of an obviously wonderful person. 35 is way, way to soon to go, what a tragedy. What was Lisa's full name? Does she have a representative piece of writing on the internet or otherwise published? Whether she does or not, she is clearly being remembered here, and that counts. I do not know of any print publications of hers. She contributed to the old spoons Marxism lists. I don't know what is representative since I haven't read any of this stuff for years. I haven't even been able to bring myself to re-read her personal correspondence to me. An interesting link between emergence theories from the late 19th and early 20th Century and Marxism is Joseph Needham and his concept of integrative levels. He wrote a book on this in the 1930's I haven't found yet. While I know of Needham generally, I haven't seen this work, which may be a significant connecting link historically. A little internet googling reveals that this concept had an interesting journey via library science in the 1950's - as a way of conceptualizing how reality is constructed - and was considered by some as a possible replacement to the Dewey Decimal system. Yes, I've read some of this literature. There's a book by Jolley on integrative levels I probably have somewhere. In actual fact, the Dewey Decimal System itself was influenced by Hegel via W.T. Harris, the most influential of the St. Louis Hegelians. Ethel Tobach and colleagues did some interesting work in biology using the concept of integrative levels in the 1970's, another line of research I have not gotten my hands on yet. Ethel, who I notice is an associate editor of NST, wrote a really interesting article on integrative levels in a 1999 book of essays about activity theory edited by Yrjo Engestrom et al, Perspectives in Activity Theory. Tobach is the one I heard at the APA meeting I mentioned. I told Lisa about this, but she was not sympathetic. Tobach's article is entitled Activity theory and the concept of integrative levels. She points out (pg 134) The concept of integrative levels has a long history. I am constrained to cite its more modern beginnings: first, the work of Joseph Needham, a biochemist, who formulated the basic premises of the concept in the 1920's; second, the article by Alex Novikoff, also a biochemist, in 1945 in *Science* that was the first clear statement of the concept; and finally, the writings of T.C. Schneirla (1971), a comparative psychologist who specialized in the study of the behavior of ants. This is a very useful reference. Thanks. In explaining integrative levels, Tobach says page 135 The causal relationship between and among levels is derived first from the contradictions within each level and then from the contradictions between the inner contradictions of any one level and its contradictions with preceding and succeeding levels. The causal relationship between and among levels is dialectical and multidirectional. Emergence theory and dialectics have many lineages and deep interconnections. My general sense is these concepts are experiencing a kind of zeitgeist. Were Engels alive today! There is something happening in emergence, it seems, though it remains controversial. I am very wary of the uses of Whitehead's process philosophy. Another line of discussion this opens up - one of hundreds that are possible - is the problem of reductionism (which seemed to be what was slowing Lisa down) on one hand, and the problem of holism, on the other. Both are products of mechanical thinking. You are correct, sir. I wouldn't use the word mechanical, but that's semantics. Emergent materialism is not holist. it is also important not to confuse theory reduction with reductionism. There are two books on these questions from the Dialectics of Biology group. This question is treated in at least one of the essays. An associate of Christian Fuchs, Wolfgang Hofkirchner, also coming from a general dialectical materialist perspective, wrote a provocative paper that took up reductionism and holism, entitled Emergence and the Logic of Explanation: An Argument for the Unity of Science In: Acta Polytechnica Scandinavica, Mathematics, Computing and Management in Engineering Series 91 (1998), 23-30 http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/igw/Menschen/hofkirchner/papers/InfoScience/Emergence_Logic_Expl/echo.html Fuchs has a strong leaning toward Ernst Bloch and Herbert Marcuse, BTW. Of course, all the traditional debates in Marxism will realign themselves on a higher and sharper level, so to speak, as the ideas of emergence become integrated into dialectical materialism. I have my doubts about Bloch and Marcuse, but this looks to be a very interesting reference to explore. Thanks. Ralph, please tell me a little about Donna Haraway and Lucy Irigiray(sp), I don't know them. Haraway, I think, wrote PRIMATE VISIONS. I think it has
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
At 09:05 PM 2/22/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: Interesting comment on the Dewey Decimal System. Now I am curious about how it was invented and constructed, and how Hegelianism was part of that. The Library of Congress system also has a logic I haven't investigated but would like to understand. Also, BTW, who were the St. Louis Hegelians? There is exactly one journal article on Hegel's influence on the DDC. I'll look up the reference. I don't know where my copy of the article is, but if I find it, I should scan it. The LC system is not very logical, but it works for classifying millions of documents. I will also look up the reference to Jolley. I think it is THE FABRIC OF KNOWLEDGE. I think I have this buried deep. St. Louis Hegelians--wow! I'm lacking for time now, but here's my bibliography: The American Hegelians http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/hegelus1.html There's also a connection between the Ohio Hegelians and abolitionism. Yes, I agree, that idealist form that emergence theorizing took in the 1920's definitely contains hazardous material. Vygotsky has a succinct remark about that trend I'll try to dig up. I also want to mention an article or two by an activity theory influenced theoretician named Keith Sawyer (teaches at Washington Univ in St Louis, by coincidence) where he traces the history of emergence theory back to the 1870's - but in a later post, kinda short on time this week. Please do look up these references. I realize I am swimming against certain classical Marxist terminology trends by using the term mechanical in this particular way, but it somehow seems to feel right to me to use this as the core concept - the organizing concept - behind formal, Aristotelian, and other non-dialectical kinds of logic. I would happily listen to an argument against this way of using mechanical. I'm probably swimming more against the tide than you are. Perhaps some significant discussion will emerge later on. What a terrific web site you have, Ralph! I've used materials from it numerous times already and looking it over now am somewhat dizzied by the depth and breadth of the articles you have compiled. Bravo! Thanks! ___ 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] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
References: This is all there is on the subject: Graziano, E.E. Hegel's Philosophy as Basis for the Dewey Classification Schedule, LIBRI, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 45-52. Library science book, on integrative levels: Jolley, J. L. The Fabric of Knowledge: A Study of the Relations Between Ideas. London: Duckworth, 1973. 130 p. illus. 23 cm. At 01:24 AM 2/23/2005 -0500, Ralph Dumain wrote: At 09:05 PM 2/22/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: Interesting comment on the Dewey Decimal System. Now I am curious about how it was invented and constructed, and how Hegelianism was part of that. The Library of Congress system also has a logic I haven't investigated but would like to understand. Also, BTW, who were the St. Louis Hegelians? There is exactly one journal article on Hegel's influence on the DDC. I'll look up the reference. I don't know where my copy of the article is, but if I find it, I should scan it. The LC system is not very logical, but it works for classifying millions of documents. I will also look up the reference to Jolley. I think it is THE FABRIC OF KNOWLEDGE. I think I have this buried deep. St. Louis Hegelians--wow! I'm lacking for time now, but here's my bibliography: The American Hegelians http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/hegelus1.html There's also a connection between the Ohio Hegelians and abolitionism. Yes, I agree, that idealist form that emergence theorizing took in the 1920's definitely contains hazardous material. Vygotsky has a succinct remark about that trend I'll try to dig up. I also want to mention an article or two by an activity theory influenced theoretician named Keith Sawyer (teaches at Washington Univ in St Louis, by coincidence) where he traces the history of emergence theory back to the 1870's - but in a later post, kinda short on time this week. Please do look up these references. I realize I am swimming against certain classical Marxist terminology trends by using the term mechanical in this particular way, but it somehow seems to feel right to me to use this as the core concept - the organizing concept - behind formal, Aristotelian, and other non-dialectical kinds of logic. I would happily listen to an argument against this way of using mechanical. I'm probably swimming more against the tide than you are. Perhaps some significant discussion will emerge later on. What a terrific web site you have, Ralph! I've used materials from it numerous times already and looking it over now am somewhat dizzied by the depth and breadth of the articles you have compiled. Bravo! Thanks! ___ 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] [marxistphilosophy] matter motion [fwd]
This essay is now on my web site: Matter and Motion by L. Bazhenov http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/bazhenov.html While generally this kind of material has a tendency to get tedious, this article sums up the issues very succinctly and is useful both to the general reader and the miseducated specialist. I've got to give credit to the Soviets for pointing up the pitfalls of bourgeois philosophy. This article is particularly relevant to our recent discussion on emergence in Washington, in which proponents of emergence turned out to be easy prey for process philosophy and other speculative and mystical nonsense, whilst opponents couldn't get the point of the concept. The key points here are probably familiar to all, some are anyway: (1) energetism the phenomenalist conceit that matter has disappeared at the end of the 19th century, criticized by Lenin (2) Lenin's notion of the philosophical as distinct from the scientific conception of matter, and its importance (3) the inseparability of matter and motion for the contemporary scientific world-picture (4) the question of the circular definition of matter (5) from metaphysical substantialism (matter without motion) to pure functionalism/behaviorism (motion without matter) in scientific philosophies (6) the twin metaphysical errors: 1. Denial of the qualitative distinction of the higher form of motion and reduction of the higher form to the lower one. 2. Absolutization of the qualitative distinction of the higher form of motion and the latter's alienation from its associated lower forms of motion. (7) critique of vitalism qualified defense of mechanicism (8) defense of reductionism against mystical anti-reductionism (Engels for reduction rehabilitation of reductionism in the USSR) ___ You can fool some of the people all of the time and jerk the rest off. -- Robin Williams Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxistphilosophy/ * To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ___ 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: [marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
She's a co-author of EINSTEIN A-Z. I saw both of them here in Washington, and both are foxes. The book itself seems to be primarily of value to those not already well versed in Einstein lore. At 09:33 PM 2/21/2005 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: Science writer, Karen C. Fox, has posted on her website, a a paper that she wrote back in school on the issue of emergentism vs. reductionism in the philosophy of biology, Does Biology Reduce to Physics? A Look at How the Question Has Been Answered Through Time. (http://www.karenceliafox.com/Science/philosophy_brush.htm) ___ 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] integrative levels library science on the web
THE CLASSIFICATION RESEARCH GROUP AND THE THEORY OF INTEGRATIVE LEVELS L OUISE F. S PITERI http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/review/summer1995/spiteri.pdf or http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/review/summer1995/spiteri.html Integrative level classification Research project http://www-dimat.unipv.it/biblio/isko/ilc/ Summary of the Principles of Hierarchy Theory http://www.harmeny.com/twiki/pub/Main/SaltheResearchOnline/HT_principles.pdf or http://www.nbi.dk/~natphil/salthe/hierarchy_th.html also: hierarchy theory: bibliography http://necsi.org:8100/Lists/complex-science/Message/4890.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] Novack vs. Van Heijenoort on dialectics, 1943
I have stumbled onto some long sought material in my files, i.e. my notes from 1991 on debates on dialectics conducted under pseudonyms, featuring William Warde (George Novack) and Marc Loris (Jean Van Heijenoort), with interventions by John G. Wright, J. Weber, George Sanders, Irwin Hyper Buddy Lens, and Ben Maxson. (I haven't checked my pseudonyms lists to determine who's who). It turns out that I even have a text file of my notes. I can't remember whether these e-mail lists allow attachments, but one way or another I could easily send my file. The question is: would anyone be able to understand my fragmentary notes? I had assumed that this material came from the very rare international bulletins of the 4th International (which I believe I also checked), but rather it's in the relatively (and I mean only relatively) more accessible SWP internal bulletins. I guess I was too cheap to have all this stuff photocopied when I researched it in New York 14 years ago. I was hoping to put the articles by Van Heijenoort online, but unfortunately I only have a photocopy of a relatively trivial piece: SURPLUS VALUE AND EXCHANGE OF EQUIVALENTS (NOTE ON AN EXAMPLE IN WILLIAM F. WARDE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE LOGIC OF MARXISM) by Marc Loris, SWP Internal Bulletin, vol. V, no. 5, Dec. 1943: p. 31-35. I also have a photocopy of two pages by George Sanders on the dialectics of tonality in music (Vol. V, no. 4, Oct. 1943: p. 14-15). Why I don't know. All of this discussion was a reaction to Novack's (Warde) DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, OUTLINE COURSE #3 (National Education Dept., SWP (1943), 52 pp.). The debates that matter are found in: SWP. Internal Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 2, July 1943. 28 pp. Vol. V, no. 4, Oct. 1943. 15 pp. vol. V, no. 5, Dec. 1943. 35 pp. I don't have the wherewithal at the moment to track down this material (the repositories I know are in New York or Berkeley/S.F.) and get it photocopied, but if anyone else is game, let me know. My general evaluation is that Van Heijenoort had something important to say about the distinction and evaluation of the notions of subjective and objective dialectics, and Novack had his finger up his ass as usual. The other commentators took sides and there may be something interested in whoever backed Van Heijenoort. Van Hiejenoort used antoerh pseudonym, Gerland, and there's at least one relevant article in THE NEW INTERNATIONAL. It may have been The Algebra of Revolution. I thought I had a photocopy somewhere, but damned if I know where. Anyway, this is Van Heijenoort's prehistory, which is why I would like to find the material. As Irving Anellis reports, Van Heijenoort does not report discussing dialectics in WITH TROTSKY IN EXILE, probably because Trotsky was such a dogmatic prick Van Heijenoort didn't want to make trouble for himself. I'll upload my notes if anyone's interested. ___ 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] Hegelian influence on library classification
W.T. Harris, the most influential of the St. Louis Hegelians, is determined to be the decisive influence on the organization of the Dewey Decimal Classification system: Hegel's Philosophy as Basis for the Dewey Classification Schedule by Eugene E. Graziano http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/hegelddc.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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Old Thread: Dialectics of Nature
I'll be interested in seeing what Soviet philosophical literature you have. I have tons of it myself, more in book than in journal form, though I probably have articles buried somewhere too. I know someone who wants to support a project to scan it all, but I don't know anyone who has the time for that. It takes a whole lot of time just for me to do one article or book chapter. I am ready to pass out right now, but I should also mention the need to list important secondary works. There are some terrific books out there, from the insanely expensive to the insanely discounted, interestingly, published in the post-Soviet era. BTW, I'm usually a qualified defender of Engels; i.e. I defend his basic project, if not the specific execution of same. I also forgot to mention that the technical literature on emergence focuses on two issues known as supervenience and downward causation. BTW, did Whitehead have any kind of social theory? At 02:35 PM 2/25/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: Ralph Dumain: There's a treasure trove buried inside mountains of crap, CB: No doubt true. Maybe we can even use some of the crap as fertilizer for fruitful endeavor :), and then treasures of yore are surrounded by earthly dirt. Thanks for all these direct texts , Ralph ! I will be reading your list of articles. I actually have a fair number of hardcopy books and articles of Soviet philo and philo of science, and they are not in computer texts. I'll gather some to post. I actually did come across Jean Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels, and arrogant non-pro mathematician that I am , I had a response to Van Heijenoort. I can't remember it right off, but I'll reread Van Heijenoort and see if I can remember what I thought of. Comradely, Charles ___ 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] Hegelian influence on library classification
Glad I could be of service. It took a hell of detective work to unearth it, and all night to edit it to some decent level of acceptability. I think I discovered the article in 1980 in either a comprehensive Hegel bibliography or a library science literature search. As far as I can determine, that's all there is on Hegel for librarians. The St. Louis Hegelians comprise a huge topic, and the Ohio Hegelians, which included the abolitionist Moncure Conway and the revolutionary refugee August Willich, are also highly important. There was a lot more going on in 19th century America than we realize. For example, an indirect connection between Ludwig Feuerbach and Frederick Douglass: Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/dougls1.html At 05:44 PM 2/25/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: What a delightful article, Ralph! Thanks! ~ Steve At 09:00 AM 2/25/2005 -0500, you wrote: W.T. Harris, the most influential of the St. Louis Hegelians, is determined to be the decisive influence on the organization of the Dewey Decimal Classification system: Hegel's Philosophy as Basis for the Dewey Classification Schedule by Eugene E. Graziano http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/hegelddc.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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Novack vs. Van Heijenoort on dialectics, 1943
At 06:01 PM 2/25/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: Yes, that would be an interesting discussion to read. Where does one get SWP internal bulletins from the 1940's? In New York, the best place is Tamiment Library at NYU, where I did a great deal of research in the '90s. Also Prometheus Research Library, a much more reasonable outfit than its parent organization the Spartacist League. They were very helpful to me. I think maybe the Center for Socialist History in Berkeley has this stuff too. And there are probably other places. I notice, Ralph, the occasional disparaging remark about Engels and the one below about Novack. I think I can make a case that while one may disagree with their views, their writings and thinking emanated from world views that were based on a scientific methodology, not on idiosyncratic intellectual inventions, muddled thinking, or just plain subjectivism. I think I can also make a case, even more controversial for some, that Marx and Engels were consistent, and, furthermore, Novack was reasonably consistent with them. That last one is especially controversial, of course. And as for the problem of dialectical laws, I think Novack explains or defends the concept pretty well, along the lines that Engels used it. Well, I'm not part of the anti-Engels Engels-betrayed-Marx industry. However, these are not sacred texts, so we do have to read them critically. Perhaps Novack was faithful in rendering Engels' confusion, I don't remember. But Novack was terribly confused, as was Trotsky, on these matters. However, confusion abounded in those days, e.g. that awful book by John Somerville. ___ 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] Novack vs. Van Heijenoort on dialectics, 1943
The Philosophy of Marxism: An Exposition is the book I had in mind. It is often used as a standard textbook. What a piece of crap! But rather typical, esp. of the books that muck around with dialectical logic. (The later Soviet textbooks became a bit shrewder, pretty much avoiding the topic of the relation between formal and dialectical logic and thus some embarrassment.) I guess Somerville was not a CP member, but it seems he was a fellow traveller of some sort. The problem is that the same deficiencies in this area accrue to a number of tribes--Stalinists, Trotskyists, Maoists--so no one tendency is responsible. Once in a while, somebody tries something a little different in the area of marxist education. Here's an interesting specimen: How to Think (Sojourner Truth Organization) http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/howtothink.html At 09:11 PM 2/26/2005 -0500, Jim Farmelant wrote: BTW, what awful book and who was John Somerville? He was an American philosopher who wrote studies of Soviet philosophy, most particularly his book, * Soviet Philosophy: A Study of Theory and Practice*. BTW in case you were interested, here is a later piece that I found online by Somerville: Somerville, J. (1967) The Nature of Reality: Dialectical Materialism (pp. 3-32). In The Philosophy of Marxism: An Exposition. Minneapolis: Marxist Educational Press. http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/Somerville(1967).htm He was, I believe, one of the first American philosophers to investigate developments in Soviet philosophy. BTW, Sidney Hook's famous attack on Somerville, Philosophy and the Police, is available online, providing that you are willing to shell out some bucks to The Nation. ___ 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] Novack vs. Van Heijenoort on dialectics, 1943
I've addressed the Somerville question elsewhere. I always assumed he was Cp, judging by the company he kept. But I don't think so; that's why I referred to him as a fellow traveller. I've not visited CSH in Berkeley, which is based on Hal Draper's work, but I would assume it is comprehensive, as are the New York collections. At 04:29 PM 2/26/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: At 02:42 AM 2/26/2005 -0500, you wrote: At 06:01 PM 2/25/2005 -0800, Steve Gabosch wrote: Yes, that would be an interesting discussion to read. Where does one get SWP internal bulletins from the 1940's? In New York, the best place is Tamiment Library at NYU, where I did a great deal of research in the '90s. Also Prometheus Research Library, a much more reasonable outfit than its parent organization the Spartacist League. They were very helpful to me. I think maybe the Center for Socialist History in Berkeley has this stuff too. And there are probably other places. Thanks. Are these collections fairly complete? ___ 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] Feuerbach-Frederick Douglass
Pass out?--meaning got to get some sleep and can't hold out any longer. There are a number of important connections between people that drop out of historical awareness. One task of scholarship is to restore those connections. The 1990s were a marvelous decade for historical research and publication in many areas. Lost connections between different peoples and national intellectual traditions have been discovered not only for Douglass, but for Du Bois, Richard Wright, and many others. It's inspiring, but unfortunately the news hasn't trickled down to the average person. At 06:51 PM 2/27/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/dougls1.html ^^^ CB: Feuerbach and Frederick Douglass: Now there's a Thaxis cite for Black History Month ! ___ 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] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
We should find out more about what the Chinese have done. It would also be interesting to know if in some way, Marx's attempts to think through the problem based on outdated math books anticipated future developments. However, the account below looks silly to me. The existence of multiple models for number systems is the product of advances in axiomatization which were just underway in the late 19th century. It was not possible before then to create a consistent conception of infinitesimals. Hence dogma is not an issue. The development of the theory of limits by Weierstrauss (et al) provided a rigorous foundation for calculus for the first time. I do not know whether Someone like Robinson could have accomplished nonstandard analysis several decades earlier, but I don't think it could have been done in the 19th century. It does seem odd, as Goedel says, that things developed as they did, but on the other hand, foundations always come last, not first. Marx missed out on all this, but he could be said to have made an honorable effort at analyzing the old math textbooks he was using. Van Heijenoort has no beef with Marx, but he is unhappy with Engels' dogmatism as well as his lack of knowledge. Engels, though, seems to be an innocent victim of working in an intellectual vacuum in a hostile environment. However, as time goes one, the excuses decrease. As for the philosophical meaning of axiomatic systems--which is quite a different matter from the nonsense about flux and static--and which version of analysis is more intuitive, I once posed the question to Saunders MacLane. He was rather puzzled by my question, and could only recite the usefulness of various axiomatic systems. In any case, the relationship of axiomatic systems to one another, to intuition, and to the material world, is a much more dynamic and complex relationship--well worth investigating!--than the childish level of Marxism is prepared to engage. Perhaps this is one reason Van Heijenoort got so disgusted with Marxists in the 1940s and decided to try his luck elsewhere. The notion that Marxists have a right to be provincial, sectarian, and ignorant has got to be stopped. Marxists should take as their province the totality of human knowledge, not a pitiful little intellectual ghetto called Marxism. When you have a police state to back you up, you can puff out your chest, but when you're a tiny marginalized subculture, you're just pathetic. At 12:21 PM 3/3/2005 -0700, Hans G. Ehrbar wrote: Abraham Robinson's nonstandard analysis adds more numbers, infinite numbers and infinitesimal numbers, to the numbers line. Just as Margaret Thatcher says that society does not exist, modern mainstream mathematics is based on the dogma that infinitesimals do not exist. Robinson showed, by contrast, that one can use infinitesimals without getting into mathematical contradictions. He demonstrated that mathematics becomes much more intuitive this way, not only its elementary proofs, but especially the deeper results. I understand that the so-called renormalization problem in physics, according to which certain physically relevant integrals become infinite and somehow have to be made finite again, has a much more satisfactory solution in nonstandard analysis than in standard analysis. The well-know logician Kurt Goedel said about Robinson's work: ``I think, in coming years it will be considered a great oddity in the history of mathematics that the first exact theory of infinitesimals was developed 300 years after the invention of the differential calculus.'' When I looked at Robinson I had the impression that he shares the following error with the ``standard'' mathematicians whom he criticizes: they consider numbers only in a static way, without allowing them to move. It would be beneficial to expand on the intuition of the inventors of differential calculus, who talked about ``fluxions,'' i.e., quantities in flux, in motion. Modern mathematicians even use arrows in their symbol for limits, but they are not calculating with moving quantities, only with static quantities. Robinson does not explicitly use moving quantities, he uses more static quantities, and many mathematicians criticize nonstandard mathematics because it simply has too many numbers. The Chinese manuscript you just sent to the list seems to have a much more dialectical view of nonstandard analysis than Robinson himself, and in addition it makes a bridge between Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts and nonstandard Analysis. This is very exciting News to me. Can we find out more about this? Hans. ___ 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] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I've got to run now, so briefly: At some point, a modus vivendi was worked out, which allowed the propaganda apparatus to do its thing while leaving scientists and mathematicians alone to do theirs. This has roots towards the end of the Stalin era, in the late 1940s, when formal logic was once again taught as a subject. Perhaps by this time Stalin had stopped sending scientists and mathematicians to the Gulag. But obviously, he and his henchmen realized that the USSR could not compete in the dawning atomic and computer age without serious investment in physics, logic, math, cybernetics. So of course they were encouraged. In this respect, Stalin proved to be smarter than the dumbass Maoists who looked to peasant society. At 02:37 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: I'm not sure that abstract mathematics was altogether destroyed in the Soviet Union's academics, because of some anecdotal evidence I have. When I was an undergraduate in 1968, the honors math majors ( the best math students) _had_ to take Russian language courses, because so much of the world's advanced math and physics was being done by Soviets. Charles ___ 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] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I haven't been online since mid-afternoon, so I'm just now catching up. I hope others paid more careful attention to my recent posts. There are serious consequences when one allows oneself to get trapped in a narrow corner. It is incumbent upon anyone attempting to speak for the whole to attempt to gather up the whole of knowledge and not just hide in a tiny corner. With respect to philosophy, it is important to understand how fragmented philosophy has been for well over a century. The artificial attempt to overcome fragmentation within bourgeois philosophy in the Anglo-American world is based on the deceptive and false dichotomy of analytical and continental philosophy. Even those who recognize the spurious basis of this categorization have done little more than to defect to or incorporate the irrationalist wing of bourgeois philosophy (which also includes Wittgenstein, though classed among the analytical philosophers). Later on I will have more to say about a book I'm reading, FUTURE PASTS: THE ANALYTIC TRADITION IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY. There is a tremendous amount of useful historical information here from people in the know. However, the attempts to accommodate the irrationalist tradition new and old are pitiful and really show up the duplicitous basis of liberal inclusiveness. Of course, Hegel and Marx are silenced in this story. And it should also be evident how tortured so much of the history of analytical philosophy is from the false phenomenalist premises on which it was built. There's a chapter on Mach as a pivotal figure inspiring this movement. And remember that Lenin took a hard lone against Mach, for which he deserves a lot of credit. There is a lot entailed by writing Marxism back into the history it has been written out of. But this shows up not only the inadequacy of analytical and irrationalist philosophy, but the underdevelopment of Marxism in certain areas due to the fragmentation and segregation of intellectual traditions. Marxism will have something to say about all this, but not from hiding among the Marxist classics and their imitators. Part of resurrecting the history of Eastern European (Marxist) philosophy is to look at how philosophers in those countries themselves attempted to negotiate the boundaries of intellectual traditions, not just in the USSR, but even more conspicuously in Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere. There are more sophisticated models to be found than one finds in the usual party literature. Lenin made an honest attempt to deal with the situation he inherited as best he could, but he was helpless in combatting the inward-turning of Marxism, which he partially abetted whatever his intentions. Lenin's conception of the unity of logic, epistemology, and ontology lacked the specificity to come to terms with contemporary developments of which neither he nor his successors were apprised. (Interestingly, I have a very obscure book from Czechoslovakia on the history of logic which takes up Lenin's perspective with the sophistication of a professional logician.) Just was the rest of the world refused to have anything to do with Marxism, so Marxism was not favorably positioned to integrate the newest developments in logic and mathematics. It is essential, in order to complete the story, to recognize the distinction between objective and subjective dialectics. There is a whole history of Marxist philosophy of science (see, e.g. Helena Sheehan). If you read Sheehan carefully or other literature, you will find that the philosophical substance of dialectics of nature lies in emergentism, and that most Marxist scientists completely skirted around the issue of subjective dialectics (logic), preferring to reiterate vague assertions inherited form Engels and canonized by the Soviets. I will get into this in more detail another time. The moral of the story: historical reconstruction of knowledge is a huge task. You don't want to leave it in the hands of bourgeois philosophy, do you? At 09:05 PM 3/3/2005 +0100, Choppa Morph wrote: Marxism isn't Marxists, and definitely not Stalinists. The ideas of Marxism are the only ideas that can save humanity from destruction and barbarism via the revolutionary transformation of society by the revolutionary working class. It's not pathetic to know the power of the genie in your battered old lamp. It's not a question of attitude (pitiful, puffed up, pathetic) but of organization and determination. Nice to know someone's against provincialism, sectarianism, ignorance and pettiness, though. So inspirational. Yup, a veritable Moses to lead us out of our pitiful little intellectual ghetto... Choppa ___ 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] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
You are correct about Lenin as well as Marx and Engels. Lenin was careful about communists' overstepping their bounds of competence. However, even during the 1920s, when activity in all areas was quite creative before Stalin's clampdown, certain bad habits got established. I don't recall exactly when interference in the sciences began. There was of course the notorious meddling in Soviet genetics, which resulted in Lysenkoism and severe consequences for Soviet agriculture. But the theory of relativity was also denounced as not conforming to principles of dialectical materialism, which occasioned some mockery from Einstein. (After the Post-Stalin thaw, Einstein was held up as an exemplar of dialectical materialist thought.) Mathematicians also suffered during this period. Kolman testifies to the ineptitude imposed on a number of areas. No, there was no lack of scientific enterprise in the USSR, but it's a miracle that the incompetence and despotism of the leadership didn't sink the whole country completely, ironic in view of the crash program of industrialization which was dubbed building socialism. It is also important to recognize that the ideological rhetoric used was similar to yours: This aspect is also interesting because Engels' theory and philosophy of mathematics is exactly materialist, of course, in contrast with that of what is probably the theory of most abstract mathematicians, i.e. idealist, emphasis on derivation outside of practical activities. Business is the _most_ practical activity. Even physics is less practical. Business is the most highly math practical activity, in a sense. And yet how impractical the repression of theoretical thought proved to be. Even Bukharin was naive in this area. Some talk he gave to the effect that there was no future for pure research got Michael Polanyi so perturbed, he proceeded to develop his own ideas about science. There's a new book on the strange career of Soviet cybernetics I need to get. I know I had some correspondence with Rosser in the '90s, but I can't remember what about. The first of his essays most pertinent to our discussion seems to be; Aspects of Dialectics and Nonlinear Dynamics http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb/DIANONL.DYN.doc At 04:45 PM 3/3/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: They were probably doing good physics and math all along. Don't think they suddenly changed course and caught up and passed the rest of the world. Crude scientists would not have been able to pick up on the atom bomb so quickly. You know Sputnik and all that. Afterall, Marx, Engels and Lenin put a lot of emphasis on science. Stalin and Stalinists did a lot of following those three to the tee. M,E and L did not teach establishing an intellectual ghetto, but rather exactly participating in the totality of human knowledge. The problem with the Soviet Union was _not_ lack of scientific work and culture. However,on cybernetics the word seems to be that they missed the boat on that , contra what you say below. Charles ___ 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] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I'm substantially in agreement with you here. Now, if one wants to unify the marxist and natural-scientific perspectives, in place of relegating them to separate perspectives, then one has to rise to that level of abstraction to construct a unified account of both. This ridiculous meme theory is a noteworthy example of the failure of natural scientists to encompass the social. They've still learned nothing. And Marxists also have their work to do. (I just ran into Sohn-Rethel's first blunder: his account of Galileo's concept of inertia.) BTW, what do you think of this biosemiotics business. The one theoretical biologist I know who is into this is full of crackpot ideas. Im very distrustful: Claus Emmeche Taking the semiotic turn, or how significant philosophy of biology should be done http://mitdenker.at/life/life09.htm Also at this url: http://www.nbi.dk/~emmeche/cePubl/2002b.Wit.Sats.html Note this key passage: More and more biologists are beginning to understand that the essence of life is to mean something, to mediate significance, to interpret signs. This already seems to be implicitly present even in orthodox Neo-Darwinism and its recurrent use of terms like code, messenger, genetic information, and so on. These concepts substitute the final causes Darwinists believed to have discarded 150 years ago, they have become firmly established in molecular biology with specific scientific meanings; and yet they the semiotic content or connotations are rarely taken serious by the scientists to the extant that there is a tendency to devaluate their status as being merely metaphors when confronted with the question about their implied intentionality or semioticity (cf. Emmeche 1999). This secret language, where code seems to be a code for final cause, points to the fact that it might be more honest and productive to attack the problem head-on and to formulate an explicit biological theory taking these recurrent semiotics metaphors serious and discuss them as pointing to real scientific problems. This means that a principal task of biology will be to study signs and sign processes in living systems. This is biosemiotics -- the scientific study of biosemiosis. Semiotics, the general science of signs, thus becomes a reservoir of concepts and principles when it is recognized that biology, being about living systems, at the same time is about sign systems. Moreover, semiotics will probably not remain the same after this encounter with biology: both sciences will be transformed fundamentally while gradually being melded into one more comprehensive field. While many of the ideas adumbrated in this review seem to be quite fruitful, this paragraph is the tipoff that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. At 05:28 PM 3/4/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Have been following your discussion with considerable interest. Sorry to lurk so long, but I was occupied in finishing up a paper. I was particularly interested in your earlier discussion on emergence. I agree strongly with Jay Gould that dialectics; Hegelian and Marxist alike, describe what I suppose would now be called emergent functions. I have many reservations about Engel's representation of the dialectic and his three so-called laws appear to me to be a snobbish attempt to present Dialectics for the Working Class. Certainly Llyod Spencer and Andrzej Krauze's Hegel for Beginners and Andy Blunden's Getting to Know Hegel are much more successful representations of dialectical theory. A search for emergentism in Marxism would be better served by reinvestigating the methods of Hegel (his Logics) and of Marx (Practice, or, better, labour practice) for the mechanics and process whereby they derive emergent complex moments from simpler prior conditions. I suspect that the concretisation of abstraction through successive negation, unity of labour practice and extant condition in the productive process, and sublation of prior syntheses in extant dialectical moments will have more significance for understanding emergence in human history than the hierarchy theories of Salthe, Swenson, and O'Neil, the emergent semiotics of Hoffmeyer and so on. That is not to say that systems, even cybernetic systems, are not relevant to the investigation, but, we must remember that despite Engel's (sometimes brilliant and sometimes embarrassing) adventures in the dialectics of Nature, that Hegel and Marx theoretical interests were exclusively focussed on human activity and human history and were only interested in Nature as a derived function of human inteaction with material conditions. Even Hegel's dialectics on Nature concerned the Natural Sciences and not Nature as such (as the subject of human contemplation). Which bring us to the problem of Natural science and Marxism. Certainly the Natural sciences are a component of modern history. They more or less emerge in late Mediaeval Europe together with the development of powerful urban commercial
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
It depresses me that we still have to have these discussions in 2005. But once more into the breach . . . First, I'd suggest looking at Engels' motives for doing what he did, which was not to present a finished ontology for all time but to combat the half-assed philosophical vulgarities of his day which were also interfering with a proper theoretical perspective on social organization. Duhring was only one example of the mismosh that occupied so much of the intellectual energy of the second half of the 19th century--second-rate metaphorical extensions of physics and biology into the social sciences, vulgar evolutionism, etc. Secondly, I am reminded of a now-defunct journal of Marxist philosophy of science called SCIENCE NATURE. See the table of contents on my web site: http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/sncont.html This journal illustrates the ups and downs of the subject, from attempts at refined thinking to the usual intellectual sloppiness and dogmatism, unfortunately practiced by the journal's editor. There was at least one article by a Soviet scientist illustrating how dialectical thinking helped him. I can't be certain, but this might be the one, in issue #1: NIKOLAI N. SEMYENOV: A study in creativity On Intuition Versus Dialectical Logic As I recall, it really is an example of Holton's themata, as Jim has described it. In cases like this--theoretical problems in physical sciences--I think that's the only way the dialectical concept makes any sense. The conception of emergent properties, which ties into diamat--matters in certain types of cases, i.e. with the emergent properties of organisms, and ultimately with human existence--consciousness and social organization. There may also be some importance in physics or others areas--but in a much more subtle form than the generally crude conceptions of dialectic repeated ad nauseam. The real question is which has done more harm--botched notions of subjective dialectic (logic) or of objective dialectic (dialectics of nature)? The two issues are linked though distinct. This reminds me that I need to write up my analysis of a British Marxist book from the '30s, ASPECTS OF DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, is which the usual sloppy notions of dialectical logic were debated. When I acquired this recently, I was surprised to find how dogmatic and fuzzy-minded J.D. Bernal in response to reasonable objections. Allegiance to Soviet Marxism did a lot of harm, which obviously has yet to be undone. I also have some more info for later on how party interference in science as well as other areas such as philosophy set the USSR back considerably. The record is disgraceful, esp. from 1929 on. At 01:51 PM 3/8/2005 -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote: I have always wondered about the fruitfulness of abstract consideration of dialectics, particularly where they are (it is?) discussed as a method. Here Jim F seems to suggest the SJG thought that dialectics was a method or at least a heuristic for producing hypotheses. I have never seen any evidence that there was ever any method for producing hypotheses, dialectical or other. To use SJG's contrast of Soviet (dialectical)-Western (not dialectical -- mechanical? gradualist? evolutionary?) scientific training, one would expect to be able to test whether this supposed difference in training made any difference in the kind of hypotheses scientists from Soviet and non-Soviet backgrounds put forward. I have not done any such study, but I am very skeptical that it would turn up any systematic differences in the way science was done in the USSR vs the US, or in the kinds of hypotheses created by Soviet and American scientists. I expect that this is so in part because scientists (in my experience) don't pay a lot of mind of methodological broughaha that is not immediately relevant to work they are doing. The transformation of quantity into quality (for example),a t that level of abstraction, is not something with obvious application to just about anything in practical scientific wirk, so is likely to be ignored by practicing scientists. This is what we would expect if we buy into the broadly Kuhnian picture of science as involving periods of normal science punctauted by episodic revolutionary transformations that give scientists a new paradigm to work out by normal scientific methods. This picture of scientific activity -- which, incidentally, sounds dialectical even though it was developed by a nice liberal in Cold-War America (first ed. of Kuhn's Structure of Sciebtofic Revolutions published in 1960) -- suggests that most science is going to be normal, incremental, evolutionary working out of accepted big hypotheses until the general framework cracks -- and this does not depend on the particular training of scientists in doalectics (or not). In fact all the standard examples of scientific revolutions come from science done by non-dialectically trained thinkers -- Lavoisier's discovery of
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I'm still waiting for your account of biosemiotics. From what I've found on the web, it looks like crackpot mystical pseudoscience to me. Once again, my EMERGENCE BLOG: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html As for current objectives, one ought to consider refining one's tools rather than repeating the same old crap from a century ago. Marxism-Leninism continues to wreak its harm from beyond the grave--what a shame. At 01:18 PM 3/9/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: As I, hopefully with some success, indicated above, method cannot be divorced from the objectives. The theory of Natural Selection certainly works. Combined with population genetics it has become the foundation of some of the most dramatic and disturbing social and cultural changes yet encountered by man (including even the effect of Newtonian physics and 18th and 19th century chemistry on industrial process in the early 19th century). Yet it is a very simple (and very abstract) theory that is almost entirely restricted to explaining the fact of change without any value for understanding the formal changes in the development of organisms. It is the very modesty of the objectives of Darwin's theory that lies at the heart of its gradualism. If you wish to explain how the relative distribution of populations of species changes over time, Natural Selection is a more than adequate model. In Natural Selection theory everything having to do with formal changes or even in adaptive interaction of life forms with their environment is relegated to absolute chance and therefore totally outside the ken of serious investigation. Even the integration of evolutionary theory with genetics does no more than explain the changes in the relative distribution of known genes and genetic combinations. The actual development of anatomical and behavioural formations is regarded as the function of improbable mutations and of equally fortuitous environmental conditions completely external to the useful interaction of statistically measureable inputs and outputs of the selective process. I doubt whether punctuated equilibrium alone is an adequate basis for introducing the dialectic into evolutionary theory. By and large it is based on the same kind of statistical considerations that are important to standard evolutionary theory. Dan Dennett in his Darwin's Dangerous Idea does a fairly thorough job on Punctuated Evolution (see chapter 11, 3, Punctuated Equilibrium: A hopeful Monster pp. 282 -298 and 4, Tinker to Evers to Chance: The Burgess Shale Double-Play Mystery pp 299-312. Rather I see the potential for a dialectical understanding of evolutionary process in the research on the mechanisms of adaptation, coevolution, and organic symmetry (both in anatomical form and in activity). Stuart Kauffman is the most prominent of theoreticians in this field, but far from being the only one. Others, including Varela and Maturana (Maturana uses some dialectics - Marxist dialectics in his formulations) on autopoiesis, Salthe's (also much influenced by Hegel) on hierarchies of being and emergent systems, and Mark Bedau who formulates conditions for artificial life. Despite the nearly frantic exploration for the theoretical formulation that will unite the disparate and far-ranging investigations on the development of life forms, we have yet to see a thinker in this area on the level of Marx who can produce a satisfactory general paradigm for the development of life forms. I suspect that the philosopher of science who will effect such a synthesis has already been born and may be even well on his way to producing such a theory. Dennett, always the champion of evolutionary theory, argues that Stuart's ideas do not really contradict Darwin's Dangerous Idea, since the object of his work concerns the restrictions on the development of organic design rather than the changes in the relative distribution of genetically defined populations over time. Just as the gradualist model of the transformation of liquid to gas doesn't contradict the negation of Magnitude by Quantity, nor should the gradualist theory of Natural Selection contradict a dialectical theory of the development of organic form, the practical objectives of these theories (and the circumstances involved in the realization of these objects) are entirely different. Lenin's idea of a unified, universal science is engendered by his failure to realize that adherence to an uncompromising theory of the material nature of being was in fact in direct contradiction with Marx and Engel's view that labour, the unity of thought and activity, is the paradigm for the understanding of the development of human activity, collective and individual, in human history. To argue that all practice must be based on dialectical method is much like asserting that one needs to adopt the same factory system for boiling a pot of tea for guests as for the production of teapots for marketing purposes.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectics of Nature
Engels gives an impressive historical overview. Of great interest is the relationship between the advances in science and the overall legitimating philosophy--deism or French materialism. This illustrates a subtlety often lacking in such discussions. At 09:36 AM 3/9/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: But what especially characterises this period is the elaboration of a peculiar general outlook, in which the central point is the view of the absolute immutability of nature. In whatever way nature itself might have come into being, once present it remained as it was as long as it continued to exist. The planets and their satellites, once set in motion by the mysterious first impulse, circled on and on in their predestined ellipses for all eternity, or at any rate until the end of all things. The stars remained for ever fixed and immovable in their places, keeping one another therein by universal gravitation. The earth had persisted without alteration from all eternity, or, alternatively, from the first day of its creation. The five continents of the present day had always existed, and they had always had the same mountains, valleys, and rivers, the same climate, and the same flora and fauna, except in so far as change or cultivation had taken place at the hand of man. The species of plants and animals had been established once for all when they came into existence; like continually produced like, and it was already a good deal for Linnaus to have conceded that possibly here and there new species could have arisen by crossing. In contrast to the history of mankind, which develops in time, there was ascribed to the history of nature only an unfolding in space. All change, all development in nature, was denied. Natural science, so revolutionary at the outset, suddenly found itself confronted by an out-and-out conservative nature in which even to-day everything was as it had been at the beginning and in which - to the end of the world or for all eternity - everything would remain as it had been since the beginning. High as the natural science of the first half of the eighteenth century stood above Greek antiquity in knowledge and even in the sifting of its material, it stood just as deeply below Greek antiquity in the theoretical mastery of this material, in the general outlook on nature. For the Greek philosophers the world was essentially something that had emerged from chaos, something that had developed, that had come into being. For the natural scientists of the period that we are dealing with it was something ossified, something immutable, and for most of them something that had been created at one stroke. Science was still deeply enmeshed in theology. Everywhere it sought and found its ultimate resort in an impulse from outside that was not to be explained from nature itself. Even if attraction, by Newton pompously baptised as universal gravitation, was conceived as an essential property of matter, whence comes the unexplained tangential force which first gives rise to the orbits of the planets? How did the innumerable varieties of animals and plants arise? And how, above all, did man arise, since after all it was certain that he was not present from all eternity? To such questions natural science only too frequently answered by making the creator of all things responsible. Copernicus, at the beginning of the period, writes a letter renouncing theology; Newton closes the period with the postulate of a divine first impulse. The highest general idea to which this natural science attained was that of the purposiveness of the arrangements of nature, the shallow teleology of Wolff, according to which cats were created to eat mice, mice to he eaten by cats, and the whole of nature to testify to the wisdom of the creator. It is to the highest credit of the philosophy of the time that it did not let itself be led astray by the restricted state of contemporary natural knowledge, and that - from Spinoza right to the great French materialists - it insisted on explaining the world from the world itself and left the justification in detail to the natural science of the future. I include the materialists of the eighteenth century in this period because no natural scientific material was available to them other than that above described. Kant's epoch- making work remained a secret to them, and Laplace came long after them. We should not forget that this obsolete outlook on nature, although riddled through and through by the progress of science, dominated the entire first half of the nineteenth century, and in substance is even now still taught in all schools. 1 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch01.htm#p1 The first breach in this petrified outlook on nature was made not by a natural scientist but by a philosopher. In 1755 appeared Kant's Allgemeine Naturgesehichte und Theorie des Himmels [General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens].
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
At 10:28 AM 3/9/2005 -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote: --- Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I can't speak to THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, as I haven't read it, though it is gathering dust somewhere. The Dialectics of Biology group produced a couple of interesting books, mostly without mumbo jumbo, as I recall. I assume you meant 100% not 10% external. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose are all first rate scholars, and the book is quite good in its substantive parts. But the so-called dialectics is some sort of ritual chant, and the history is potted and not altogether accurate. As for dialectics and emergence, I think there is an essential distinction to be made between emergent materialism and idealist/vitalist notions. Vitalism of any sort has been dead dead dead since the mid-late 19th century. Certainly no serious biologist has maintained any such notion in this century. Everyone agrees that there are no special vital properties that explain why organisms are alive. The dispute has been between crude reductionism and variants of sophisticated reductionism and emergent antireductionism. It is very hard to tell these positions apart when they are suitably qualified. Well, there was Driesch in the '20s, but I suppose that wasn't serious. But some of this stuff--biosemiotics--is highly suspect, and I'm suspicious of process philosophy as well. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If dialectics can help, I'm in favor of it, though i have not seen any evidence that dialectics itself is more than an emergent property of a certain sort of usefully holistic thinking. I mean, it's a real enough phenomenon. Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci are crealy dialectical thinkers. But I don't think they came to their subject matters with an antecedent dialectical method they could apply to those subject matters. They thought about things in a manner that was dialectical. Better to try to follow their example in their concrete analyses than to extract a method from their procedures. Yes, I agree. I was trying to get at the same thing. And of course for Marx, Lukacs, and Gramsci, dialectics of natural processes was irrelevant. Fair enough. But analytical philosophers certainly developed versions, e.g. Moore's theory of supervenient properties -- the good being (he thought) a non-natural property that supervened on natural ones, such that two actions/people could not be alike in all natural properties but differ in whether they were good or not. Soviet tampering with the various sciences and disciplines is not news. . . . Perhaps though another thing to look at is the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy in the teens and '20s--what was the competition doing Well, there is what it looks like now and what it looked like then. And what it to liked to them as opposed to what it looked like, e.g., to Russell or Dewey or even to Gramsci or Lukacs or Weber. I'm not sure what you mean, but of course there's a different perspective at that moment and retrospectively. Perhaps the historical research being done now will help. I think for example of THE PARTING OF THE WAYS, which is about Canrap, Heidegger, and Cassirer. Where sympathetic critics try to refine the concepts, they are constantly beaten back by intellectual ineptitude and dogmatism, whether it is Bernal against Macmurray, Novack against Van Heijenoort, Sayers against Norman The record is dismal. I don't know MacMurray, but the other examples are like the Jones Junior High vs. the Green bay Packers, just in terms of sheer candlepower. Bernal was no second-rater, though, at least in hsi biology and history. ___ 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] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Justin has already spoken for himself. However, I'll remind you that our current discussion (originating on the marxism-thaxis list) involves solely diamat as a general ontology and its applications to the natural world. Justin sees no use for this and you don't either, though from different orientations. What Justin thinks beyond that, and with respect to Hegel, I'm not certain, but I've not known Justin to be interested in the stuff that interests you. So in a way your critique doesn't apply except insofar as you disagree with whatever Justin has to say about natural science and scientific method. Further comments below . . . At 08:14 PM 3/10/2005 -0500, chris wright wrote: Justin, as I have no idea what you mean by dialectic, this is difficult to make heads or tails of. Are you looking for a methodology? I know this is not popular, but dialectic is NOT a method. A method has at its base an assumed separation of first order and second order reasoning, i.e. empirical fact and its theorization. A methodology involves having a 'theory of' something, something external to whomever does the theorizing. As is clear from the very opening Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel opposes this, and so too does Marx, as is self-evident to a careful reading of his works. I'm not sure what this means, though I recognize the Hegelian reference. All three of us would probably agree there is no general (dialectical) method external to the subject matter and applied from outside. This is especially so with respect to the history of inept dialectical interpretations of nature, which usually proceed in just this manner. However, I'm disturbed by your wording: something external to whomever does the theorizing. All science--all attempts at objective thought--aim at being external to the whomever who does the theorizing. Without the separation of knower and known we are back to pre-Enlightenment divine right of kings and popes. Modern natural science begins with astronomy and physics, the mathematical description of nature and a rethinking of the nature of forces. Aside from the theological and political disturbances this created, there was also a disturbance in philosophy, which necessitated a realignment, for example of subject and object, material and mental substances. However, this is a change outside science proper. Philosophy is a different animal from science--and the philosophical image of science is different from its content. This was already true of Newtonianism, which spread as an intellectual phenomenon in ways outside of its manifest scientific content, analogous to ideas about cosmology, quantum mechanics, evolutionism, computing, chaos, etc. spread in the culture today. Without the subject-object distinction, there is no science, only superstition, and to the extent that Hegelianism denies this, it is unscientific, pace the efforts of Hegelians to whine about Kantianism, dualism, etc. The real problem comes when the scientific world-picture evolves to reinsert the human being and ultimately the cognizing subject back into it. This is what we now call the social or human sciences, though there is no hard and fast separation in the cognitive realm. This is precisely the point at which the young Marx (1844) intervenes. Remember, the division of the universe into primary and secondary qualities (which replaces the old distinction between essence and appearance or whatever the complementary concept is), enables a separation between the structure of matter in se and its processing by our particular sensory apparatus, the brain, and finally its subjective experiencing. This, not Goethe's crapola, was the route to progress in science. However, in what Marx would call the reconstruction of the concrete (what the Poznan School refers to as scientific idealization), we come to the point where the conscious subject re-enters the scientific world picture, and here is where everything becomes a mass of confusion. Now once some of the Soviet philosophers who survived several decades of misdeeds tackled this problem again (from the 1960s on), they came up with more sophisticated formulations than earlier. (It would be interesting to know what the survivors of these survivors say a decade and a half after the end of the Eastern European Stalinist regimes. I should e-mail Lektorsky and ask him.) This is also where emergent materialism comes in. Most of the stuff I've read, while conservative in most matters of reductionism, draw the line at the problem of consciousness (and one would have to add social institutions, which are manifestly incomprehensible in physicalist terms, pace Neurath), and concede that here is where the concept of emergence is likely indispensable. You seem unaware that that split is implicit when you say what one needs is to know the subject matter in detail and have imagination. Either you are engaging in
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Wow! Thanks for the synopsis. I don't understand how biosemiotics is Neo-Kantian, though. If you are referring to Soviet philosopher David Dubrovsky, I'd appreciate some expansion on this topic as well. Do you know whether Whitehead had a social theory? The lack of social theory in the biosemiotcs schema is as telling as the failure to distinguish between the semiosis of unicellular organisms and human beings. I saw Sebeok back in the '70s. He didn't talk about this, but he did say something suspicious. He said something about overeating as a craving for information. This is a cute metaphor, but it also reveals the idealism of interpreting the material universe as information. This picture shows up what I'm trying to get it in the distinction between mystical and materialist emergentism. There is a dialectical lesson here. Note that the linchpin of all these bad biosemiotic arguments comes from the metaphysical ordering of empirical data and the manipulation of the relationships between philosophical categories. This is where dialectics is important, not in the direct intervention into empirical science. I think I need to repeat this last paragraph a few hundred times and then explain it. For now, though, just note the categorial relationships between matter, information, meaning, mind, society ... that form the basis of this idealist discipline. At 12:26 PM 3/12/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Ralph, 1.You should be distrustful of this biosemiotics business. In essence, it's just a new twist on the kind of Neo-Kantian Ideas, Western and Russian, that Lenin (1908) warned us about in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. 2. I don't know just how much you want to know about it so I'll just provide a quick sketch of the origins, history and family ties of biosemiotics and a general description and criticism of two of its more important theoretical developments (Western: Hoffmeyer and Emmeche, Russian: Alexei Sharov). ORIGINS, HISTORY, AND GENEOLOGY OF BIOSEMIOTICS: 3. Biosemiotics shares with Ethology and Biosociology a common ancestor in Jakob v. Uexküll of umweltforschung fame. Umwelt can be understood to mean the world of significant experience of any specified, individual life form. 4.Here's how it's put in the encyclopedia of the free dictionary.com http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Umwelt Umwelt (from the German umwelt, environment) is the biological foundations that lie at the very epicentre of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal. The term is usually translated as subjective universe. Uexküll theorized that organisms can have different Umwelten, even though they share the same environment. Each component of a Umwelt has a meaning which is functional for a particular organism. Thus it can be water, food, shelter, potential threats, or points of reference for navigation. An organism creates its own Umwelt when it interacts with the world, and at the same time the organism reshapes it. This is termed a 'functional circle'. The Umwelt theory states that the mind and the world are inseparable, because it is the mind that interprets the world for the organism. 5.As you can gather from this description, umwelt is a very Kantian concept. That is to say that umwelt describes the world of the life form as the product of its subjective consciousness. Uexküll (1864-1944) along with Dilthey and Popper in historical studies and Levy-Bruhl and Franz Boas in anthropology and Mach and Avenarius in the philosophy of science is among the considerable number of European and Russian intellectuals who developed the distinctive Neo-Kantianism that still dominates much of the so-called advanced thinking of modern science, even today. 6. Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001), the Hungarian-American semioticist, combined v. Uexküll's ideas with the theories of language of de Sassure and Jakobsen thereby inventing the discipline of biosemiotics. Sebeok's biosemiotics is based on the following three principles: See http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/biosemiotics for more on this. 1. The signification, communication and habit formation of living processes 2. Semiosis (changing sign relations) in living nature 3. The biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation Biosemiotics is biology interpreted as sign systems. It certainly is a revolutionary approach when compared with the almost exclusive focus of orthodox biological theorizing on the mechanical properties of life systems. Biosemiology represents a new focus on life process (rather than mechanism) as the conveyance of signs and and their interpretation by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules. While biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology - from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies - its object is to bring together
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
There's a fundamental miscommunication gong on here. But first . . . At 07:02 PM 3/11/2005 +, redtwister666 wrote: Facilitating Organization Change: Lessons from Complexity Science by Edwin E. Olson, Glenda H. Eoyang, Richard Beckhard, Peter Vaill. Notice the E. O. Wilson of sociobiology fame is not an adviser on organization (as in social organization) change, ie corporate restructuring, via complexity science in biology. So much for the objectivity of the natural sciences in their methods. Sociobiology is finally being even more open about the idea that it thinks that natural science is social science. What crap. This sounds even worse than sociobiology proper. Positivism + metaphysics = social obscurantism A Nice Derangement of Epistemes : Post-positivism in the Study of Science from Quine to Latour by John H. Zammito Since the 1950s, many philosophers of science have attacked positivism--the theory that scientific knowledge is grounded in objective reality. Reconstructing the history of these critiques, John H. Zammito argues that while so-called postpositivist theories of science are very often invoked, they actually provide little support for fashionable postmodern approaches to science studies. Possibly true, though Rorty came out of this tradition, too, as I think Feyerabend(?). Its very weaknesses enable irrationalism as the fallout. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity by Stuart Kauffman (Please note, that much of Kauffman's work is highly lauded, including by Richard Lewontin, so he is not a neo-con wank but a highly respected biologist) I've heard of this guy, but don't know what else to say. The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox : Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities by STEPHEN JAY GOULD Meditations on science and philosophy. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory by Stephen Jay Gould 1400 pages of evolutionary goodness. And you thought the man could only write articles. 3 books of possible interest for the emergence discussionÂ… though Kauffman may belong here as well in some of his work. From Brains to Consciousness? Essays on the New Sciences of the Mind by Steven Rose The Making of Intelligence by Ken Richardson, Steven Rose Emergence: From Chaos to Order (Helix Books) by John H. Holland Holland might be one of these people I found suspect. Emergence is the notion that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. So Ralph, is that what you have in mind? I distinguish between mystical and materialist emergentism, a distinction not always reflected in lists of readings on the subject. The subject is important, as it also relates to various notions of reductionism. One's notions of one reciprocally determines notions of the other. The fact that the rebellion against reductionism so often leads to mysticism--as in cosmology, biosemiotics, complexity theory, etc., and especially science popularization--is an ideological problem of great import. Dialectical thinking is much more important on this level of interpretation than it is mucking about with the boiling point of water. So I didn't see how it was solely about Diamat as a general ontology. That was your point, and I truly still do not quite grasp your take on this, so I refrained from saying anything much about it. In fact, I am still not sure what is so interesting about it. What is the real opposition to materialism in science, even so-called bourgeois science? Idealism cannot be present in the attention to the material world, but more likely in the explanations of phenomena that science works with, in the idea that mathematics can adequately grasp phenomena, etc. Why is emergence in your mind more materialistic than non-emergence? What is the ontological value beyond swatting the stupidities of creationists and spiritually-minded physicists who import clearly unscientific nonsense into their explanations of phenomena they must nonetheless examine materialistically? See my response above. There is an essential distinction to be made between emergent materialism and mystical emergentism. If emergence matters at all--if the reductive approach to the material/ideal society/mind/body problem doesn't work, then what are the alternatives? The growing trend toward mysticism and irrationalism suggests the importance of the topic. something external to whomever does the theorizing. All science--all attempts at objective thought--aim at being external to the whomever who does the theorizing. Without the separation of knower and known we are back to pre-Enlightenment divine right of kings and popes. Ralph, if you think this is what I mean, then we have a problem. Do you think that there is some magical separation the scientist can achieve from that which she studies? Do methods, priorities, questions asked, general technological level, etc. not intervene? What's more to the point, do you think that Watson and Crick's
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Article on Goedel and Einstein
This is as good a way as any to celebrate Einstein's birthday. Cheers. I read the first 50 pages of Rebecca Goldstein's new book on Goedel, INCOMPLETENESS. A good read read. I loved Goldstein's first novel THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM. I saw here about the time she was hawking her third or fourth book. Anyway, I just read a couple articles about Frege. You can also read my 2001 tribute to Einstein: A Personal Tribute to Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955) http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/einstein.html At 03:40 PM 3/14/2005 -0500, Charles Brown wrote: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050228crat_atlarge ___ 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] Does Gödel Matter?
I'm not aware that he was a social critic, but according to Rebecca Goldstein, he was a first class metaphysical control freak, leaving nothing to ambiguity or contingency. I don't know whether Godel would say anything about law, but surely it hardly holds up to the standards of formal mathematics, and no one would be follish enough to think it does. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mar 15, 2005 4:30 PM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Does Gödel Matter? %% CB: I think Hegel mentions math and jurisprudence as prime areas of the operation of formal logic. VFR: True enough, but I've a strong feeling that there's more to the lawlessness of laws and constitutions than formal logic. ^^ CB: I'm curious to hear your discussion of the more there is to it. I was just thinking that _Goedel_ was likely to find logical problems with the consistency or completeness of jurisprudential laws and constitutions. Or was he a social critic that I don't know about ? ___ 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Les Shaffer on Kurt Gödel
I don't quite understand the remark about the mixing od semnatic and syntactic arguments by Godel. Also, what is the relation to physics? -Original Message- From: Jim Farmelant [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mar 16, 2005 1:40 PM To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Les Shaffer on Kurt Gödel ___ 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] Les Shaffer on Kurt Gödel
I'm skeptical of many of these analogies of formal systems and dialectics. However, it could be said that the inexhaustibility and incompleteness of the process of axiomatization, along wth other seminal discoveries of the 20th century, accords with the Marxist perspective as well as with a yet unnamed modern scientific perspective (i.e. as opposed to the mystifications of popularization). -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mar 17, 2005 9:24 AM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Les Shaffer on Kurt Gödel On Marxmail, there was also the following post on this thread. In it, Carlos suggests Goedel's work as an expression of Leninist epistemology in mathematics. So, perhaps incompleteness is an expression of Engels and Lenin's dialectic of absolute and relative truth, and their metaphor of the mathematical asymptotic curve; relative truth as a curve progesses toward the line that it absolute truth but never reaches it, is _incomplete_. As finite beings our knowledge of the infinite universe is always incomplete. Materialist mathematics should reflect that. Charles ___ 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] Does Gödel Matter?
I've heard conflicting things about Heisenberg's politics. His behavior during the war was ambiguous, as was the case with many other German scientists. After Einstein emigrated to the USA, he was so pissed off at his german colleagues he requested his greetings to be forwarded to only one German physicist--it might have been Laue. But he was pretty fed up. I'm not aware that Einstein would generally make political affiliation a criterion for discussion of professional issues. According to Goldstein, Einstein and Godel were an odd couple even philosophically, but there was some intellectual interest that bound them together. -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Mar 17, 2005 11:18 AM To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and the thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] Does Gödel Matter? Oudeyis victor CB: I think Hegel mentions math and jurisprudence as prime areas of the operation of formal logic. VFR: True enough, but I've a strong feeling that there's more to the lawlessness of laws and constitutions than formal logic. ^^ CB: I'm curious to hear your discussion of the more there is to it. I was just thinking that _Goedel_ was likely to find logical problems with the consistency or completeness of jurisprudential laws and constitutions. Or was he a social critic that I don't know about ? VFR Was thinking of Hegel, not Gödel. From his biography, Gödel sounds like he belongs to the same cloud-9, right-wing, mathematician category as Nash. ^ CB: Heisenberg was on good terms with the Nazis. From what I can tell, Goedel was not progressive , but sort of apolitical. I think the article I posted here on Goedel and Einstein as buddies at Princeton said that some Nazis beatup Goedel at one point. Also, for what its worth, would Einstein hangout with a rightwinger ? ___ 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] Pragmatism bibliography, annotations reviews
In view of an upcoming local discussion of pragmatism, I've organized some of my material on the subject: Pragmatism and Its Discontents: Selected Bibliography (sans annotations) http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/pragmabib.html Pragmatism and Its Discontents: Annotated Selected Bibliography http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/pragmabib-a.html The Ins and Outs of Lloyd's 'Left Out' http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/leftout.html Note that the bibliography is not an attempt to cover the subject. It is an assemblage of interesting sources on pragmatism, consisting mostly of contemporary reviews and revivals of pragmatism, historical critiques, and newer and older Marxist critiques. The bibliography exists in two versions--plain and annotated, with cross-linkages between the two. My web page on 'Left Out consists of: (a) R. Dumain's review of (a) Left Out: Pragmatism, Exceptionalism, and the Poverty of American Marxism, 1890-1922 by Brian Lloyd, (b) R. Dumain's review of John Ryder's book review (c) additional remarks on pragmatism in reaction to Ryder. I have an additional electronic pile of unorganized scribblings on pragmatism I should attempt to organize. This last item (c) gives a foretaste of why I consider pragmatism an unsatisfactory allegiance for scientific realists and materialists. While some friends of mine who also claim to be pragmatists adhere also to a realist position, I have never been able to understand the justification for this. So perhaps some scientific realist minded individuals could assemble some ideas on what is distinctive in pragmatism that matters to them that is not already presupposed in the realist/materialist perspective. ___ 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] A. Mani : Re: Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 17, Issue 19
More like backwardness and ignorance. At 03:01 AM 3/20/2005 +0530, A. Mani wrote: Re: 1. They're back! Church Bulletins: (Charles Brown) It is the result of Hegelian 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] Emergence, Pierce pragmatism
Just stumbled onto this paper: CHARBEL NIÑO EL-HANI and SAMI PIHLSTRÖM Emergence Theories and Pragmatic Realism (Draft version, February 2002. Comments welcome. Please do not quote.) http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/papers/emergentism.pdf ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
sufficiently precise. They understood the general sensibility, but stuck with the authority assumed by the USSR, they traded off of ambiguity while tailing dogmatism. In Frank's opinion a rapproachment between diamat and logical empiricism was possible to the extent that dialectical materialists would be willing to deemphasize the three laws of dialectics and to the extent that they would be willing to avoid describing matter as something that exists objectively, as opposed to instead of speaking in terms of intersubjective propositions. But this is all wrong. Dialectical laws aside, the Marxist position on matter is the correct one, and Frank is full of beans. Likewise, logical empiricists, in Frank's view ought to be willing to admit the usefulness of dialectical thinking. Meaning what, though? Both dialectical materialists and logical empiricists should, for Frank, be willing to endorse what he called the doctrine of concrete truth, in which the truth of propositions is judged in terms of the practical conclusions that follow from them, with their validity being assessed in terms of their consequences for practical life. I don't think this is a valid conception of concreteness. I recognize an implicit reference to Lenin, but even there the analogy is naive. Frank noted the similarities of the doctrine of concrete truth to the doctrines of the American pragmatists, and so he suggested that logical empiricism, pragmatism, and dialectical materialism ought to be regarded as allied philosophies. What nonsense. Of course, we have a one-man example of the alliance of the latter two in young Sidney Hook. Of course it should be noted that there was a history between Frank and Lenin. When Frank was only about 24 years old, Lenin singled him out for criticism in his *Materialism and Empiriocriticism*, when he attacked him as a Kantian, for having embraced Poincare's conventionalism. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mec/three3.htm (There is a story, that decades later during the McCarthy period, when Frank came under investigation by the FBI for his support for progressive causes, Frank pointed out this passage to the special agents who were assigned to speak with him, and that seemed to leave them satisfied). --- On the other hand, it seems to me that the dialectical materialist tradition addressed certain issues that were not necessarily dealt with in the most satisfactory manner in the logical empiricist and analytical philosophy traditions: for example the issue of emergentism versus reductionism. I remember Ralph Dumain pointing out on his marxistphilosophy list, that most of the anglophone literature on this issue neglects the contributions of Hegel, Engels and indeed of the Soviets, while focusing most of its attention to the British emergentists. Right, and I also said the standard reference works fail to distinguish between materialist and idealist emergentism. We have representative of both in our group. I will add that our main Popperian, following Popper, rejects materialism as a label for his position based on the very limited way the term is usually applied in this neck of the woods. The overall point is that all wings of bourgeois philosophy are inadequate for fulfilling the synthetic functions of philosophy. The Soviets had their limits and were severely held back by dogmatism and repression, but the very fact that they had to show themselves superior to the dominant ideologies of the west meant that they could at least criticize the assumptions, structures, and dynamics of the various schools of bourgeois philosophy. Immersed in the bourgeois capital of the world, and coming into contact with the type of intellectuals I do, I can testify to their bankruptcy on all profound issues. And I'll add I've never met a pragmatist who was capable of stringing two coherent thoughts together. ___ 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: marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Some comments interleaved: At 12:16 PM 5/20/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Charles: The demonstration that Mach is an idealist in general is the main thesis of Lenin's book _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_. I don't know whether a reiteration of the main arguments is worthwhile here. . ^^ CB: One thinks of Marx's comments about the need for abstraction to make up for inability to directly observe in certain aspects of science. Marx was talking about political economy, but it applies to natural sciences. Just as the fact that we cannot as individuals directly observe the _whole_ of economic life doesn't thwart a science of it, neither does the indirect inference of the existence of atoms mean that they are metaphysical concepts. Much of astronomy involves indirect observation and inference. Basically anytime instruments such as microscopes and telescopes are used, there is an inference, not a direct observation. I don't think it was just the existence of atoms at stake. Mach was stuck in the rut of phenomenalism. Dodging the materialist position, Mach attempted to redefine matter as permanent possibilities of sensation. CB: Einstein essentially has the same position as Lenin on the philosophical dispute Lenin takes up in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ .. Charles: Our terminology is that Einstein is a materialist, with respect to atoms. As Jim points out below, upholding the absoluteness of space and time are not part of what defines a materialist position. Lenin defines materlialism as belief in objective reality outside of our thoughts, not belief in absolute space and time. I believe you are correct here. Charles: Never said Einstein had a preconceived ideology. In fact, the point to be made here is that Einstein's arriving at a materialist ( your realist) position based on, as you say, the dictation of science, is pretty powerful independent corroboration of the Engels-Lenin philosophy of science positions. Without starting out thinking as Engels and Lenin, the great thinker and scientist ,Einstein ,arrives at the same conclusions as Engels and Lenin, and based on actual scientific work, very high quality scientific experience. I would word this differently. First, scientific conclusions and philosophical conclusions are not identical. Einstein in many respects converged with the (Marxist) materialist position in rejecting empiricism and inductivism. His early interest in Mach was based on the operationalization of basic concepts, hence a rethinking of the empirical meaning of time. Beyond that, Einstein rejected Mach's positivist philosophy. Einstein himself said that scientists are philosophical opportunists, taking from various philosophies what is useful to them. But yes, generically he can certainly be classified as a materialist. Einstein was a physicist, let's not forget, and while he wrote about economics and social affairs, and occasionally commented on the mind-body problem, he never worked out a position and thus never had anything to say about emergentism that I'm aware of. Engels Lenin corroborate Einstein in the generic sense that both realized early on that scientific developments were going to force a new conception of science. This has happened in a variety of ways. See for example Milic Capek's (1961?) book on the philosophical impact of contemporary physics, as only one example. Now physics and cosmology are in a turmoil, and physicists are openly admitting the need for a revolutionary new theory to account for dark matter/energy. They seem to be tremendously naive philosophically, but the beauty of even the most confused science are the mechanisms of accountability for making empirical data cohere with mathematical formalisms, constructing some kind of physical models, however bizarre, so that science can progress even when people don't really know what they're talking about. . CB: What scientific theory does Lenin dismiss on philosophical grounds in MEC ? None. He criticizes empirio-criticism, a philosophical theory. He doesn't criticize any physical theories, Mach's or others, in MEC. He only says the new physical theories of that period are not a basis for ditching materialism ( your realism), as Mach does. I believe you are correct here. Justin: As for Einstein's realims it was case by case. Einstein took no position on materialism, the idea that everything in the world is in some sense material. Charles: Lenin's definition of materialism in MEC is belief in the existence of objective reality. Einstein believes in the objective reality of atoms, which he specifically disputed with Mach, who coincidently was the main target of Lenin's book on the general issue that the atoms issue is a specific example of. Einstein made some statements that evince belief in God. That would be non-materialism. Lenin terms Mach a Kantian , i.e. dualist, shamefaced materialist, agnostic.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: O, Dialectics! (and spleen)
On the second article referenced: SOCIOBIOLOGY: THE NEW RELIGION http://itest.slu.edu/articles/90s/blackwell2.html The author lucidly outlines the dilemmas involved in Wilson's position, but I find his argument conclusive. Scientific materialism is not a religion, and if a certain brand of scientist can only assert it as a form of faith, I conclude that the scientist as well as the religionist has failed to transcend the philosophical antinomies of bourgeois society, which come to a head at the point at which natural science meets the subject-object relation. Marx addressed this issue philosophically (though not in a full-blown scientific manner) in the 1844 manuscripts. Engels was essentially engaged in trying to formulate a non-mystical materialist emergentism combatting the pseudo-scientific evolutionary confusionisms of the late 19th century. The author of this article breaks off just at the point where he needs to begin to analyze why Wilson's attempt to analyze religion as a branch of genetics cannot succeed. At 01:39 PM 5/25/2005 -0400, Ralph Dumain wrote: At 02:14 PM 5/25/2005 +, redtwister666 wrote: Long-winded? I am hurt! And I do not want to have anybody by the balls. This is not a cock fight or an ego trip. That is just unnecessary provocation and 'starting shit.' In biology it is quite clear that sociobiology is self-consciously materialist ontologically. What is funny is that some religious types perceive sociobiology as 'more' materialist than Gould, Lewontin, et al because of their biological determinism (greater or weaker), while seeing it simultaneously as deeply religious. For interesting articles, see http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0101/articles/bethell.html http://itest.slu.edu/articles/90s/blackwell2.html Cheers, Chris ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
I don't think anyone has paid attention to a word I've said, but I am intrigued by this intervention, particularly the key assertion: NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD. I am puzzled by the conclusion, though: In general, where we find irreconcilable (in practice) dialectical arguments we have entered into a debate over ethics or ethos rather than over a scientific issue. Dialectical arguments of this sort are properly the realm of religion and traditional philosophy, classic materialism being an example of the latter. I don't get it. At 04:08 PM 5/25/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: It appears that we've regressed once more back to the issue of the ontology of nature, i.e. the question of what IS nature. First let me bore you with a brief bit of history: After nearly centuries of ferocious dialogue between those who argued that the world is essentially ideal and those who asserted that the real world is that of the spirit, Descartes proposed that the subject matter of philosophy be changed from the nature of being to the nature of knowing. Descartes by his argument that the world is essentially material, but is given essence by the spirit of intellect is more or less a precursor of Kant. Over against Descartes, Spinoza (drawing from his intimate acquaintance of Muslim and Jewish philosophy) rejected the typically Western European differentiation of body and soul and presented the view that the world unites both materia (i.e extension) and intellect as two united dimensions of the same universe. At the turn of the century (18th and 19th that is) Kant once again changes the rules of thinking about things. Instead of examining the relationship of abstract knowledge to the world (there virtually being none in the purviews of Berkeley and Hume) he proposed to examine the relation of the activity of knowing, i.e. the use of the essential tool of knowledge formation, logic, to man's sensual perception of the world. Not surprisingly he found virtually no relation at all so he proposed that universal knowledge (the intersubjective transcendental ideas) is a function of the universality of the organ of knowledge, the human brain and its products. Hegel's objection to Kant's formulation is based on Kant's almost mathematical abstraction of logic, hence of human thought from concrete experience. Yes, Hegel for all his idealism did regard sensual experience as the critical test for the practical value of ideals! For Hegel human thought should include the entire realm of human science and could not be examined by examining the operations of a single human mind. For Hegel the dialectic was the process; intellectual, practical, and social whereby men acquired and developed their knowledge of the real world. Now, to the guts of the issue: For those who have read Marx and Engel's Ad Feuerbach, the 11 short theses whereby Karl and Friedrich declare their rejection of ontological materialism; the materialism of Holbach, of Diderot and of Feuerbach, in favour of a revision of Hegelian Objective Idealism will or should realize that Marx and Engel's were not going back to the tired (Lenin called them, silly) arguments of mechanical materialism. In essence Marx and Engel's (and Lenin after 1914) adopted the Kantian and Hegelian revisionist views of the object of philosophy as the study of how men interact with their world rather than in trying to determine the real nature of that world or the relation of that world to human thought. Their basic disagreement with Kant and Hegel rests on the latters' determination that human interaction, indeed that human knowledge is purely a function of ideation. To correct Hegel's basically correct view of the science of history as a study of the intellectual, practical and social process by which men acquired and developed their knowledge of the real world, they presented arguments showing that logic (i.e. dialectics) extends to all aspects of human interaction with nature; physical, sensual, and intellectual. Describing their accomplishment in a dialectical form, the materialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin is not a statement about the world but about the unity of logical and physical and sensual activity in human labour (practice). NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD. As regards the universality of the laws of dialectics: The abstract laws of dialectics are universalities. We may like McTaggart find them less than perfect, but whatever the modifications, revisions and so on we may make on dialectics is a matter of dealing with universals. That dialectic processes may produce divergent truths is a different issue from the universality of the logical process itself. To understand the emergence of divergent
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: O, Dialectics! (and spleen)
While I have some idea of what I don't like about the other arguments presented so far, I am baffled by this one. What exactly are you asserting about the relation of philosophy and politics? What do you think about the assertion made by Chris (and others over the past century) that Lenin was only using the philosophical disagreement with Bogdanov and others for pragmatic political purposes and was not serious about the intrinsic philosophical issues in their own right? I don't buy it, myself, but I haven't the time for a detailed historical exploration. What does Dasvid Joravsky have to say about this, for example? I read somewhere that he shows that Lenin was trying to separate out the political from the philosophical issues, and to combat the _partisan_ use of empiriocriticism with party sanction. BTW, as you may know, Lenin recognized that Engels had vastly oversimplified matters for purposes of popularization, but this was, I believe, in later writings (crica 1914?) and not in MAEC. I don't think that either Engels or Lenin was engaged in a trivial enterprise. However, a century (and more) later we ought to be able to express ourselves with greater depth and clarity in light of our historical perspective and the tools of analysis at our disposal now. The Marxist-Leninist tradition ingrained a number of very harmful habits. Instead of acting like parrots on our deathbeds, we can still think, can't we? We aren't required to be the zombies of Marxism-Leninism or council communism. Why rehash all these dead issues unless we are prepared for more incisive thinking? At 04:47 PM 5/25/2005 +, gilhyle wrote: Let me get this right: If you are involved in building a political party and someone advocates a philosophy which influences people in that party so as to weaken the commitment of party members to political positions you advocate, you are not permitted to enter the lists to debate with that person until you have worked out all the problems of philosophy. It is - apparently - not permitted to draw out the implications of realism and the opposing point of view in abstraction from the related philosophical questions in order to achieve an important POLITICAL result...seems quite the opposite to obvious to me ! Polemic has an urgent political purpose, you do your best now with the tools available. Later when there is a world war on that means you are shut up in Switzerland, you might take some time to go off and study some Hegel. What is wrong with that? (By the way, I dont recall Lenin significantly misquoted Kant - any examples?) Apparently it isn't permitted, either, to point out the obvious (as Engels did) since to do so involves making a banal point. That is not obvious to me either, but maybe I'm being banal in saying that. Then lets look at the draft Dialectics of Nature - did Engels rely on banal 'dialectical laws' to draw profound conclusions without regard to the detail of the science concerned. I don't see it there. It never ceases to amaze me that people can rely on the difficulty (undoubted difficulty) in articulating a coherent and comprehensive statement about realism and ontology to suggest that Lenin and Engels were incredibly negligent or incoherent. SInce neither man was practising philosophy, it is hardly surprising that they didn't produce it. All this means is that Marxism then had not and maybe did not need to have resolved all the problems of philosophy. Of course Pannokoek might (falsely) have though otherwise. Now, if you want to leave Engels and Lenin alone and try to talk about realism and ontology, I will await with interest and growing impatience your articulation of what Engels and Lenin should have said...I haven't heard it so far. ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
First see my reply to Steve Gabosch. I would also suggest that your conclusion requires clarification: Of course, this unifrom worldview as an epistemological claim has something to do with class ineterests. Therefore, it is not surprising that Marxism is subject distortions. But how far can this distortion can go? If the laws of dialectics are objective, then it is not wrong to suppose that they bring themselves permanently to the fore. In other words, there are limits to this distortion. In my previous response I related the class interests and epistemological claims to the socialization of intellectuals in the division of labor. I would say that class interests most often get expressed indirectly, and the 'class interests' of intellectuals in the realm of their intellectual work that is not explicitly about class interests has to do with their mode of socialization and self-preservation. Otherwise I am reluctant to equate class interests with epistemology in a directly partisan way, since most intellectuals are actually unaware and completely clueless about their presuppositions, and are themselves in most cases helpless victims rather than perpetrators of their tacit assumptions. You know, I deal with these people in Washington and I can't stand them, but the majority of them are too clueless to be held culpable; it would be like holding soap opera addicts culpable for their substandard tastes and lack of critical acumen. I mean, you can get mad at them for being stupid, but they don't know any better. I don't understand your claims about the objectivity of dialectical laws asserting themselves in the end. Greater clarity is needed here. At 01:53 AM 5/25/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Gabosch wrote: I appreciate Ralph's recent thoughts, and Charles's responses. For my part, I agree with Engels (and Marx) that nature is dialectical. As I see it, this classical Marxist claim is first and foremost an ontological statement about the nature of reality, and must be seen in terms of a *materialist* dialectical worldview. From this foundational worldview, the epistemological problem of how to develop dialectical knowledge (concepts, etc.) follows, and in turn, dialectical logic and other forms of conscious dialectical knowledge become possible to discover and analyze. In other words, the logical development of the materialist dialectic itself flows from nature to society to thought. Historically, humanity and its known thinkers have discovered important wisdoms about our dialectical material world, society and minds, here and there, many times over, but it was not until Marx, Engels, the modern proletarian communist movement and the modern proletariat entered history - and the end of class society could become a possibility - that dialectical materialism could emerge as a worldview. This worldview has certainly been dogmatized and reduced to trivialities in the hands of some, especially those who wielded so-called Marxist governments as weapons of repression and purge, greatly heating up personal and political tension around these philosophical questions to this day. Even just Marxist terminology can evoke strong feelings, such as my (for some, provocative) association of dialectical materialism with proletarian communism. And of course, bourgeois society has heaped enormous distortional derision on Marxist ideas of all types since the beginning of Marxian communism. It takes serious effort to navigate these obstacles and learn and comprehend Marxist theory at all, let alone form an intelligent opinion about whether nature is dialectical or what being dialectical at all means. I think the point is well taken - but still possible to overstate - that even the most advanced philosophical and scientific work on the materialist dialectic is still rudimentary. So much work lies ahead. My take on emergentism is that it has great potential to enhance and advance the effort to unify philosophy and science on dialectical, materialist and socialist principles. To reiterate my basic take on dialectics: I think beginning with the concept that nature is dialectical, as Marx and Engels did, is the right place to start, because it places one squarely in the dialectical materialist and proletarian communist worldview. I agree with every single sentence. I think without this ontological claim that the laws of dialectics are universal, working in different forms in nature, society and thought there can hardly any uniform worldview. One needs just to consider all the difficulties of Barkely, Kant and Hegel to come to this conclusion. B had to bring en external force called god into play to be able to suppose that there is an order in nature. K left out the idea of uniformity in nature. H equated nature to thought. Of course, this unifrom worldview as an epistemological claim has something to do with class ineterests.
Re: [marxistphilosophy] marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Very interesting. It is difficult to judge Korsch, Pennekoek, or Lenin from these fragments alone. A more detailed study of all three is indicated, I see. Just a few hurried notes on the Korsch piece. He never conceived of the difference between the historical materialism of Marx and the previous forms of materialism as an unbreachable opposition arising from a real conflict of classes. He conceived it rather as a more or less radical expression of one continuous revolutionary movement. Thus Lenin's materialistic criticism of Mach and the Machians, according to Pannekoek, failed even in its purely theoretical purpose mainly because Lenin attacked the later attempts of bourgeois naturalistic materialism not from the viewpoint of the historical materialism of the fully developed proletarian class, but from a proceeding and scientifically less developed phase of bourgeois materialism. There is an obscurity here in delineating the precise relationship between the development of materialism and class conflict. He fully acknowledges the tactical necessity, under the conditions in pre-revolutionary Czarist Russia, of Lenin's relentless fight against the left bolshevik, Bogdanov, and other more or less outspoken followers of Mach's ideas who in spite of their good revolutionary intentions actually jeopardised the unity and weakened the proven revolutionary energy of the Marxist party by a revision of its monolithic materialistic ideology. Korsch cites Pannekoek's view, which seems from an intellectual standpoint lacking in integrity, and then disagrees with it politically: In fact, Pannekoek goes somewhat further in his positive appreciation of Lenin's philosophical tactics of 1908 than seems justified to this writer even in a retrospective analysis of the past. If he had investigated, in his critical revision of Lenin's anti-Machist fight, the tendencies represented by the Russian Machists as well as those of their German rnasters he might have been warned against the unimpeachable correctness of Lenin's attitude in the ideological struggles of 1908 by a later occurrence. When Lenin, after 1908, was through with the Machist opposition which had arisen within the central committee of the Bolshevik party itself, he regarded that whole incident as closed. Then a recitation of the sins perpetrated later by other Leninists in comdemning Bogdanov, which are redolent of Stalinist rhetoric. The description of Bogdanov's philosophical position is no more edifying. Korsch laments Lenin's attack against positivism as a development of materialism. Furthermore, he judges it to be opportunistic: This fallacy is that the militant character of a revolutionary materialist theory can and must be maintained against the weakening influences of other apparently hostile theoretical tendencies by any means to the exclusion of modifications made imperative by further scientific criticism and research. This fallacious conception caused Lenin to evade discussion on their merits of such new scientific concepts and theories that in his judgement jeopardised the proved fighting value of that revolutionary (though not necessarily proletarian revolutionary) materialist philosophy that his Marxist party had adopted, less from Marx and Engels than from their philosophical teachers, the bourgeois materialists from Holbach to Feuerbach and their idealistic antagonist, the dialectical philosopher Hegel. Rather he stuck to his guns, preferring the immediate practical utility of a given ideology to its theoretical truth in a changing world. This doctrinaire attitude, by the way, runs parallel to Lenin's political practice. Indeed, such instrumentalism is fallacious, but is this a correct portrayal of Lenin's attitude towards scientific developments? I would add that one of the problems with the Marxist tradition is the general problem of the uneven development of science with respect to philosophy. A person that knows only one of these is generally ill-equipped to tackle the other. The moment Marxism was established institutionally as a body of thought, largely in the hands of the German Social Democrats, this problem was created, not by them specifically, but by the overall social fragmentation responsible for the fragmentation of intellectual trends. Further, the problem of uneven development was exacerbated by the importation of Marxism into backward Russia. I am puzzled by the following argument: It is a long way from Lenin's violent philosophical attack on Mach and Avenarius's idealistic positivism and empiriocriticism to that refined scientific criticism of the latest developments within the positivist camp which was published in 1938 in the extremely cultured periodical of the English Communist party.[8] Yet there is underlying this critical attack on the most progressive form of modern positivistic thought the same old Leninist fallacy. The critic
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Well, if you got my point (2), the rest shouldn't be so mysterious. ME openly admit they're not going to tackle directly either the natural sciences as an intellectual enterprise or their objects of study (laws of nature). At the same time they admit that's part of the picture, though they are specifically beginning their studies from the standpoint of historical materialism. That's a pretty damn important point, esp. for those who would make claims about Marx's attitude to science. As I recall, at that stage, Marx only really considers science as something that plays a role in industry--man's advanced interchange with nature. Science as an intellectual activity in itself, as theorizing, method, or research, is not part of the picture at this time. Hence, ME do not turn their attention to the philosophy of the natural sciences. I'll add to that: when Marx makes remarks criticizing prior materialism, this belongs to the history of philosophy, not actual modern science. Discussing Epicurus and Democritus or the French materialists is not engaging with science. I'll add also, that a philosophy of nature is not a philosophy of science, if a perspective on scientific methodology as a means of understanding nature is not included in it. BTW, Marx's early writings (vol. 1) includes some outline of Hegel's philosophy of nature. But I don't really know how Marx may have used Hegel's PN. Does anyone know something I don't? At 12:06 AM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: Steve responds to a post from Ralph: Ralph: on 5/29/2005 at 12:48 PM Ralph explained, referring to the passage from ME copied below: ... Note that ME state that natural preconditions antedate historical analysis, but they are not going to delve into them at this point. Two conclusions follow: (1) Nature is not merely a social category for Marx as some claim; (2) Marx doesn't take the trouble at this point to investigate natural science and especially not its objective correlate as an activity in itself, since the question at hand is the organization of man's practical interaction with nature in conjunction with social organization. But doesnt practical interaction include natural scientific research, methodology, and theory? It must, of course, ... Steve: I am with Ralph so far, but I am puzzled by where Ralph goes next: Ralph: ... but note that Marx is onto the direct, practical transformation of nature as it applies to material production and not that aspect of it that deals with specialized scientific activity. Note the plural references to physical preconditions--nature in general and human physiology in particular--that are acknowledged as preconditions and then set aside. Do you see the distinction here? Steve: To be honest, I don't get what point Ralph is trying to make yet, so I guess I have to answer: no - I don't yet see the distinction being made here - sorry! Ralph, if you would be so kind as to explain this distinction ... - Steve ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
I do not understand the meaning of the three quotes from Ilyenkov. At 02:03 PM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: ... from my 1977 Progress edition, which I was lucky to get through the internet last year. I corrected a couple scanning errors from the MIA version. Copied from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay8.htm from page 283: A consistently materialist conception of thought, of course, alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way, in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories. Marx and Engels established above all that [the] external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation, but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. from page 285: Psychological analysis of the act of reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation, rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. from page 286-287: In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence. Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man's action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of any thinking. Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. ___ 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] O! Dialectics
Don't forget the extensive discussion of materialism in THE HOLY FAMILY. Of course, what distinguishes home sapiens from the other monkeys is not labor as an abstraction, but the brain difference, which means the genetic capacity for language and hence cultural transmission of information, plus the other distinguishing features such as upright gait, opposable thumbs. Your point about imagination signals Marx's recognition of the cognitive difference. At 10:12 AM 6/6/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: RE Lil Joe joe_radical Lil Joe: Here, Charles, I think we have a major disagreement as far as Marxian materialism is concerned. Marx never wrote of 'materialism' and 'idealism' as a discussion outside the context of the materialist conception of history. ^ CB: He discusses materialism in The Theses on Feuerbach. Engels discusses materialism beyond the materialist conception of history. See especially _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ for this discussion. ___ 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] 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. 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? 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Interleaved comments on further fragments of your post: At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: .. I see your not going to let me deal with the dogmatics of classical materialism briefly. The kernel of my argument is that in general, discourse segregated from practice can only be theological, i.e. concerning articles of faith rather than descriptions of demonstrable practice. I say in general, since scientists usually discuss their findings with only minimal reference to the practicalities that are the origins and ultimate objects of their work. This is mostly a manifestation of the extreme division of labour that isolates professional researchers from all but the immediate subjects of their work. In any case, I've yet to see a monograph or article of a natural scientist that presents his work as having universal significance. There are exceptions to this rule such as Hawkins in physics and Dawkins in population genetics, and the result is invariably utter nonsense. I'm referring here to Hawkins conviction that unified field theory will provide an ultimate theory of the physical world and to Dawkin's projection of the mechanics of population genetics to the science of culture (memics and all that). Science as the theory of practice is implicitly restricted in relevance to the conditions of the moment (even when the problems it is designed to treat are projected into the near or far future). The discoveries of this kind of science are inevitably relevant only to the particular circumstances of their production, and to the specific subjects of their focus and have no claim as eternal truths. Einstein, Newton and Galileo will never acquire the sainthood of the revealers of final truths. On the contrary, their ideas will only remain significant so long as they are relevant to the practices and technologies that we men need to perpetuate ourselves, ourselves here meaning the entire complex of organic and inorganic components of our individual and collective life activities. Thus, science as the theory of practice is an inherently revolutionary activity. This is interesting as a vantage point, i.e. beginning from the scope of praxis and explaining why scientists can be blockheads when they venture beyond the specific praxis that enabled them to achieve what they did. But I find this approach more credible when it is re-routed back to objectivity. Discussion on the nature of being, on the substance of nature, and so on is from the point of view of historical materialism no less restricted to the conditions of its production than is practical science. However, the inherent object of such discussions is the determination of the absolute and final nature of things at all places and in all times. The ostensible object of the advocates of such metaphysical finalities is the expression of ultimate truths regarding the universe and its parts, the absolute contradiction to the objects of practice and the science of practice. Anyway, it is one thing to develop theories concerning particularities of that grand everything we call nature, it's quite another to present particular results as universals about the universe. The former can be demonstrated, proved if you will, the latter extends beyond all possibilities of human experience, hence it can only be a product either of divine revelation or of normative practice, i.e. ethos. I prefer ethos to divine revelation. I'm afraid I don't quite grasp this. You are suggesting, I think, that general ontological pronouncements not tied to some current concerns of praxis become fruitless or even retrograde metaphysics. I don't quite agree with this, but I do agree that these traditional philosophical concerns become more dynamic and fruitful when connected to specific problems of the present. .. 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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Well, my reaction here re-invokes my sense of the tautology of all such arguments. That is, there can be no meaningful claims about the universe apart from our interaction with the universe since we can't make any claims about anything without interacting with the phenomena about which we are making claims. Your claim that all our knowledge claims about the universe from the Big Bang on, are expressions of human need, is tautologically true, and hence not very interesting or revealing. At 11:51 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD Whether or not nature has a history is a question for nature, of little relevance for the practical realization of human needs. Man, in order to better determine his needs and the means necessary to realize them investigates through reason and practice (experimentation and informed search) the development of the relevant (essential) incohoate features of the natural world, including those of his own activities. The result is the objective determinations of past events in the natural world and of their relevance to the form and substance of our current needs and to the realization of these in practical activity. The laws and principles as well as the developmental schemas produced by our research into what is called Natural History are a product of and the means for realization of strictly human objectives. Is this a history of nature? Well, we are ourselves an integral part and force of the natural world and the massive array of objects we depend on for perpetuation of our life activity have their ultimate origin in nature, but that's a far cry from arguing that human beings and their essential equipage is identical with the totality of nature or that our activity in nature involves nature as a whole. Regards, Oudeyis ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
Your reasoning is fine up until the braking point I note below. At 03:10 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Steve, Well, now I know what comes after the snip. First paragraph: Oudeyis is saying nothing about what nature is, but rather is writing that whatever understandings man has of nature are a function primarily of his active interaction (his labour) with the natural conditions of his existence. The difference between knowing what nature is (i.e. its essential being or nature if you will) and having a working knowledge of world conditions is all the difference between the treatment of nature in Marxist and classical materialist theory. Now then, the only part of nature humanity can know is that part of it with which he has some sort of contact, and at least for Marxism, the only part of nature about which man can develop theories of practice is that which he can or has changed in some fashion. When it comes to explaining the practical foundation scientific cosmology we argue that the theories regarding the behaviour of huge masses of material over barely conceivable periods of time and spatial dimensions are projections based more often as not on experimentation with some of the very smallest of the universe's components; atoms, quarks, and so on). Anyway, its hard to imagine how men would know things about which they have absolutely no experience and how they would know how things work without a working experience with them or with things like them. Divine revelation perhaps? Finally, there is no doubt that nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon and that its existence is important for the creation of a materialist ideology. There are three ways the unknown makes itself felt in material human experience: 1.The fact that human practice and the science that represents it in thought is open ended or, better yet, appears to have no outward limits is a clear indication of the existence of more to nature than that which is treated by our current state of knowledge and practice. 2. The classic observations by Marx in the first chapter of German Ideology (1845) and the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844) that the physical and sensual interface between man a nature in human labour is far more concrete than can ever be represented by even the most developed dialectics. The rational representation of men's activity in the world is then an inherently uncompletable task. 3. Hegel in his discussion of being makes the point that the logical formula A = A has no demonstrable correspondence with actual experience; diversity is an inherent property of identity (Andy B. presents a pretty thorough discussion on this in his The Meaning of Hegel, Chapter iv section, Diversity(essential Identity ) ). The whole basis of all rational activity, all dialectics, conscious and unconscious, deliberated and automatic, is the unity between the essential transitoriness of experienced moments and the determination of identities; qualities, quantities, measure and all the other things we have to know to develop a working model of the world. It's the unity of logical categorization and the essential temporality of immediate experience that fuels the dialectic and makes it so important a tool for exploration of the unknown. Second paragraph: The clarification of what exactly is the significance of the *objective* nature of nature is probably Ilyenkov's most important contributions to Scientific Marxism. Indeed for orthodox Marxists, including Lenin in his earlier writings (prior at very least to his readings in Hegel in 1914 and possibly as early as his article on Emprio-positivism), did indeed inherit the classical materialist concept of the objectivity of nature in the metaphysical sense of the essential being of nature; known, unknown, whatever. Ilyenkov in the last paragraphs of chapter 8 of Dialectical Logic summarizes the reasoning that is the basis of the concept of nature as prior to and independently of humankind. So far so good. Here he distinguishes between Marx and Engel's theories of human activity and Hegel's idealism by recapitulating their description of man as a product and force of nature that transforms nature into the instruments of his activity in appropriating nature's goods and producing from them the means for the perpetuation of his body organic and inorganic. Fine, except that with the diversification of human expertise, the self-reproduction of society's cognitive and practical interests means that some investigations by some individuals may not necessarily be directed towards the ends of instrumental self-preservation, though of course indirectly every human activity--play being the most universal example--develops skills that are always instrumentally useful in the end. Nothing could more clearly describe the independence of abstract nature from the emergence of human activity in the world. After all, if man has his origins in the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
A question on one of your assertions: Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. How can dialectics be a property of all life no matter how primitive when you deny a dialectics of nature apart from praxis, which assumes cognitive activity? Is an amoeba a being-for-itself in addition to a being-in-itself? At 03:47 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Nicely put. Several tentative responses: The question remains, though, even within our sphere of action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is dialectics just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from intelligent life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Following Hegel's schema of the development of logic, I would argue that just as there is objective logic (i.e. logical activity that can only be known reflectively as an object of reflection) there is an objective dialectic. The basic kernel of both logic and dialectic (they are after all the same) is purposive activity. It matters not that the agents of purposive activity are fully or even at all conscious of their cognitive activity, the very prosecution of intentional activity implies logic/dialectics. Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the dialectics of science? I think I gave a partial answer to this question in my response to Steve's last message. The products of human activity should never be regarded as the issue of pure logic or of the unfettered human imagination. Even Hegel would not accept this proposal. Science no less then the material products of human labour represent a unity of human activity in an independent external world that has existed prior to man's emergence and confronts men's ambitions with conditions to which he must accommodate his activity if they are to realize their goals. Labour is a cooperative activity in which men work with nature as their partner. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:29 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! I will need to address subsequent posts on this topic, but first: there is an interesting implicit subtlety here. If the question is not whether nature is dialectical but whether science (the study of nature) is dialectical, then even though nature exists independently of man, science as a form of human activity and cognition does not, since, tautologically, we only know what exists via interaction with the rest of nature and can't speak of anything else except as a hypothetical metaphysical possibility. The question remains, though, even within our sphere of action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is dialectics just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from intelligent life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Again, here's the ambiguity. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the dialectics of science? More to come. At 12:14 PM 5/27/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
Yes, I have this book somewhere. So are you going to forward your review to this list? At 03:31 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Unfortunately, the mainstay of Western interpretations of Ilyenkov's works is the absolutely wierd product of a Brit academic who represents them as a sort of sociologically oriented form of Neo-positivism (itself a contradiction!). I wrote a first draft on his work that was totally unsatisfactory (too lacking in focus), and am now finishing up the outline of a revision which hopefully will be the basis of a more accurate presentation than was my first effort. I don't quite get this. But my first question is: who is this Brit neo-positivist academic? Dave Bakhurst of Queens College Ontario and author of Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. 1991 ___ 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] O, Dialectics!
Very interesting post. Just a few isolated comments to begin . . . At 03:10 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: .. The fact that life forms activities are directed to concrete future states, they are, no matter how simple or mechanical, exercises in reason. This why, if you will permit a reference to an earlier thread, I regard the investigation into biosemiology to be a vitally important exploration of the roots of reason. The most primitive forms of self reproduction are a totally mechanical process yet they are at the very root of the rational process. We are not here proposing that nature has a rational aspect, a la Spinoza. As I wrote earlier I really have no idea what nature or Nature is. What I am proposing is that the roots of rationality are in the mechanical purposive activity of life forms and that whatever life forms know [including ourselves of course] is a function of our practical activities in nature FROM THE VERY ORIGINS OF THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE in whatever form it may be acquired, stored, recovered etc. But biosemiology itself seems to be rather obscurantist, more akin to Whitehead's philosophy of organism than to Marx. 2. Objectivity: In its essence objectivity refers to conscious reflection on something rather than the reflection of something in consciousness. That is to say that objectivity is the function of a activity and not something we passively assimilate as we confront the daily world. Some of the things or, better, activities we objectify (very few in my opinion) are those of our own subjective consciousness. Most are not. Most of our objectifying involves activities that are the preconditions for our own subjectivities, either the activities that emerge out of the collective subjective activities of men learned or developed in the course of collaborative activities while others involve activities that are preconditions for consciousness in all its aspects. Hegel, for example, divides his system of logic into two parts, objective logic and subjective logic or notional logic where the former is that logic which we enact without subjective reflection. Objective logic is objective because the only way we can deal with it intellectually in any other fashion than just doing it is as an object of reflection [I expect AB to come down on me like a ton of bricks on this one]. In its many concrete manifestations in human activity, intellectual and material, the principle of self-perpetuation, at least for men, is as subjective an issue as is the concept of self; the idea of property, of individual interests and even of family values are directly related to the activity of primitive self-perpetuation, though highly charged with many concrete connections to the complexities of human social existence. These slogans of superficial individualism of Social Darwinism and its inheritors, the bio-sociologists and others like them, only scratch the surface of things. Regarded objectively, the self-perpetuating activity of life forms is sublated in virtually all forms of human activity from eating and intercourse to social labour, wage slavery, and social revolution. Sounds like some version of Lenin's (or the Soviets' in general) theory of reflection. Life activity is a form of reflection. However, the 'roots of reason' strike me as no more than roots, not reason. ... The natural sciences reflect exactly this relation between intellect and practice. There are no real ontological truths in science. Nothing is holy or beyond question and the only real proof is a sort of abstracted form of practice, experimentation. Whatever ontologising scientists do, and some do, is tolerated by the scientific community only insofar as it remains speculation and does not interfere with the scientific process. Great scientists have had ideas; Newton philosophized that the world was a clock wound up by the creator and then left to its own devices, Einstein was sure that God does not play dice, and Hawkins was until a few years ago sure that unified field theory would answer all the questions of physics. Most of these and many more are, fortunately, either forgotten or on the way to being forgotten, though the scientific contributions of their makers remain important, even vital, components of the giant artefactual system men have built to enable their persistence in the world. The Royal Society started this practice, to keep metaphysics and theology out of empirical science. Finally, the natural science of human activity and history, and this is what Historical Materialism, should be and sometimes is, can least afford the ontologising forays that occasionally crop up in fields such as physics, chemistry and organic sciences. The very abstractness of the subjects of these sciences renders the prononciamentos of important scientists fairly harmless in the long run. The natural science of human activity
[Marxism-Thaxis] Marxist Internet Archive snafu?
Is anyone else finding that the MIA search engine doesn't work properly now? I get the number of results for a search, but not the results themselves. ___ 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] Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis
I'm assembling some key quotes relevant to recent discussions on these lists and also to projects I'm working on. I would appreciate suggestions for additional quotes surrounding this theme: Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marx-skeptic.html I'm sure I'm forgetting something. There is some quote in young Marx's works about the spectator theory of knowledge (crouching outside the universe looking in), but I can't place it. I thought there was something else from Engels on the nature of deductive, axiomatic reasoning (proofs stemming from axioms), but I haven't found what I was looking for, and I may have misremembered quotes I've already found. ___ 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] Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis
Looking over the Theses on Feuerbach, one wants to reproduce the whole thing without taking anything out. And all my other quotes are out of context, thus perhaps distorting the overall picture of what Marx was dealing with, while applicable to entirely different situations. Then again, I've provided links so that people can explore the source texts further. In selecting these quotes, I wanted to use them as a reference basis for many discussions. I was thinking about praxis as a counterweight to skepticism and a certain kind of dualism. Thesis one relates to this theme, of course, but then one needs to clarify what is meant by hitherto-existing materialism (which admittedly is an issue), the contributions of idealism, Feuerbach's ideas, the theoretical attitude, the dirty-Jewish conception of practice. This seemed a bit much for a quote. one would use to preface other discussions. I must say though that I got a fresh take on the subject from reading the Theses through again. There was a discussion several months ago, on the marx-hegel list, I believe. Marx: 1 The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity. At 07:52 AM 6/10/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: I notice you start with the second thesis on Feuerbach. Any reason not to include the first thesis where the terms practical-critical activity or praxis occur ? Charles ^^ Ralph Dumain I'm assembling some key quotes relevant to recent discussions on these lists and also to projects I'm working on. I would appreciate suggestions for additional quotes surrounding this theme: Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marx-skeptic.html I'm sure I'm forgetting something. There is some quote in young Marx's works about the spectator theory of knowledge (crouching outside the universe looking in), but I can't place it. I thought there was something else from Engels on the nature of deductive, axiomatic reasoning (proofs stemming from axioms), but I haven't found what I was looking for, and I may have misremembered quotes I've already found. ___ 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] Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis
It didn't take long to find the first quote I was looking for. It was of course in Marx's Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, which contains a dozen of his juiciest passages. I phrase I had in mind was But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. This article also has the choice words on the criticism of religion, the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat as universal class, the weapons of criticism, and more more more. Anyway, I picked out the key passages for my purpose, which now head my growing web page: http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marx-skeptic.html These quotes of course add new elements to the topic of my web page--religion, etc., but they too are part of the discussion of skepticism and the knowability of reality, and the relation of theory to social life. They address the question of praxis centrally, certainly as effectively as the later Theses on Feuerbach, even though they stem from Marx's Feuerbachian period before his break from the Youug Hegelians tout cout. I've going to review a few other passages before I finalize this web page. I guess my memory is playing tricks after all these decades. I though Engels had written something else on the nature of axiomatic reasoning (proof), i.e. that all proofs depend on premises, but the choice of premises is outside of logic, but comes from the real world itself. But probably I am misremembering one of the other quotes I've used. At 12:24 PM 6/12/2005 -0400, Ralph Dumain wrote: Looking over the Theses on Feuerbach, one wants to reproduce the whole thing without taking anything out. And all my other quotes are out of context, thus perhaps distorting the overall picture of what Marx was dealing with, while applicable to entirely different situations. Then again, I've provided links so that people can explore the source texts further. In selecting these quotes, I wanted to use them as a reference basis for many discussions. I was thinking about praxis as a counterweight to skepticism and a certain kind of dualism. Thesis one relates to this theme, of course, but then one needs to clarify what is meant by hitherto-existing materialism (which admittedly is an issue), the contributions of idealism, Feuerbach's ideas, the theoretical attitude, the dirty-Jewish conception of practice. This seemed a bit much for a quote. one would use to preface other discussions. I must say though that I got a fresh take on the subject from reading the Theses through again. There was a discussion several months ago, on the marx-hegel list, I believe. Marx: 1 The main defect of all hitherto-existing materialism — that of Feuerbach included — is that the Object [der Gegenstand], actuality, sensuousness, are conceived only in the form of the object [Objekts], or of contemplation [Anschauung], but not as human sensuous activity, practice [Praxis], not subjectively. Hence it happened that the active side, in opposition to materialism, was developed by idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects [Objekte], differentiated from thought-objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity. In The Essence of Christianity [Das Wesen des Christenthums], he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance [Erscheinungsform]. Hence he does not grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity. At 07:52 AM 6/10/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: I notice you start with the second thesis on Feuerbach. Any reason not to include the first thesis where the terms practical-critical activity or praxis occur ? Charles ^^ Ralph Dumain I'm assembling some key quotes relevant to recent discussions on these lists and also to projects I'm working on. I would appreciate suggestions for additional quotes surrounding this theme: Marx Engels on Skepticism Praxis http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/marx-skeptic.html I'm sure I'm forgetting something. There is some quote in young Marx's works about the spectator theory of knowledge (crouching outside the universe looking in), but I can't place it. I thought there was something else from Engels on the nature of deductive, axiomatic reasoning (proofs stemming from axioms), but I haven't found what I was looking for, and I may have misremembered quotes I've already found. ___ 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] Engels: yesterday or today?
The aristocracy – and nowadays that also includes the middle classes – has exhausted itself; such ideas as it had, have been worked out and utilised to their ultimate logical limit, and its rule is approaching its end with giant strides. The Constitution is its work, and the immediate consequence of this work was that it entangled its creators in a mesh of institutions in which any free intellectual movement has been made impossible. The rule of public prejudice is everywhere the first consequence of so-called free political institutions, and in England, the politically freest country in Europe, this rule is stronger than anywhere else – except for North America, where public prejudice is legally acknowledged as a power in the state by Iynch law. The Englishman crawls before public prejudice, he immolates himself to it daily – and the more liberal he is, the more humbly does he grovel in the dust before his idol. Public prejudice in “educated society” is however either of Tory or of Whig persuasion, or at best radical – and even that no longer has quite the odour of propriety. If you should go amongst educated Englishmen and say that you are Chartists or democrats – the balance of your mind will be doubted and your company fled. Or declare you do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and you are done for; if moreover you confess that you are atheists, the next day people will pretend not to know you. And when the independent Englishman for once – and this happens rarely enough – really begins to think and shakes off the fetters of prejudice he has absorbed with his mother’s milk, even then he has not the courage to speak out his convictions openly, even then he feigns an opinion before society that is at least tolerated, and is quite content if occasionally he can discuss his views with some like-minded person in private. * * * As I have said, we too are concerned with combating the lack of principle, the inner emptiness, the spiritual deadness, the untruthfulness of the age; we are waging a war to the death against all these things, just as Carlyle is, and there is a much greater probability that we shall succeed than that he will, because we know what we want. We want to put an end to atheism, as Carlyle portrays it, by giving back to man the substance he has lost through religion; not as divine but as human substance, and this whole process of giving back is no more than simply the awakening of selfconsciousness. We want to sweep away everything that claims to be supernatural and superhuman, and thereby get rid of untruthfulness, for the root of all untruth and Lying is the pretension of the human and the natural to be superhuman and supernatural. For that reason we have once and for all declared war on religion and religious ideas and care little whether we are called atheists or anything else. If however Carlyle’s pantheistic definition of atheism were correct, it is not we but our Christian opponents who would be the true atheists. We have no intention of attacking the “eternal inner Facts of the universe, on the contrary, we have for the first time truly substantiated them by proving their perpetuity and rescuing them from the omnipotent arbitrariness of an inherently selfcontradictory God. We have no intention of pronouncing “the world, man and his life a lie; on the contrary, our Christian opponents are guilty of this act of immorality when they make the world and man dependent on the grace of a God who in reality was only created from the reflected image of man in the crude hyle of his own undeveloped consciousness. We have no intention whatever of doubting or despising the “revelation of history, for history is all and everything to us and we hold it more highly than any other previous philosophical trend, more highly than Hegel even, who after all used it only as a case against which to test his logical problem. It is the other side that scorns history and disregards the development of mankind; it is the Christians again who, by putting forward a separate “History of the Kingdom of God” deny that real history has any inner substantiality and claim that this substantiality belongs exclusively to their otherworldly, abstract and, what is more, fictitious history; who, by asserting that the culmination of the human species is their Christ, make history attain an imaginary goal, interrupt it in midcourse and are now obliged, if only for the sake of consistency, to declare the following eighteen hundred years to be totally nonsensical and utterly meaningless. We lay claim to the meaning of history; but we see in history not the revelation of “God” but of man and only of man. We have no need, in order to see the splendour of the human character, in order to recognise the development of the human species through history, its irresistible progress, its evercertain victory over the unreason of the individual, its overcoming of all
[Marxism-Thaxis] ANB - Bio of the Day: Henry Winston [fwd]
Special Announcement: OUP is pleased to announce that ANB Online is now available by individual subscription for $14.95 a month. For more information or to subscribe, please visit http://www.anb.org. American National Biography Online [ illustration ] Henry Winston. Second row, center, with John Williamson, left, and Jacob Stachel, right. Front row, left to right: Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and Benjamin Davis. Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-111436). Winston, Henry (2 Apr. 1911-13 Dec. 1986), a leading figure in the Communist party of the United States for forty years, was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the son of Joseph Winston, a sawmill worker, and Lucille (maiden name not known). Both of his parents were children of slaves. The family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, after World War I. Winston dropped out of high school in 1930 and, unable to find a job, participated in demonstrations of the unemployed led by the Communist party (CPUSA). Impressed by Communist efforts to help the jobless and agitate on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, six young African Americans from Alabama convicted of raping two white women in a trial permeated by racism, he first joined the Young Communist League in 1931 and the Communist party shortly thereafter. Promising young black Communists were not common in the early 1930s, and Winston quickly ascended the party ladder. He moved to New York City soon after joining the YCL, and for the next two years he organized unemployed workers. In 1932 he was involved with the National Hunger March to Washington, D.C., and in 1933 he made the first of many trips to the Soviet Union. Elected to the National Executive Committee of the YCL in 1936, he served as the organization's national executive secretary from 1937 to 1942. Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1942, Winston (serving in Great Britain and France) was out of the country when Earl Browder, the party's general secretary, dissolved the CPUSA in favor of a political association in 1944. As a result, he was untainted by the political sin of Browderism when, in 1945, the Soviet Union signaled its displeasure with Browder's decision. When the long-time party leader refused to recant, he was removed from his position and expelled. In 1945, following Winston's release from the army and the party's reconstitution, he was appointed to the National Committee of the CPUSA. Two years later he was chosen as organizational secretary, making him one of the party's top leaders. Winston was thus one of eleven party leaders arrested in 1948 and charged with violating the Smith Act, a sedition law passed by Congress in 1940. Tried on charges of conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the U.S. government by force and violence, Winston and the other defendants were convicted in 1949 after a rowdy trial in New York where Winston was one of several to draw contempt citations for his conduct. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Smith Act in Dennis v. the U.S. in 1951. Convinced that fascism was imminent in the United States, concerned that the party's leadership might never emerge from prison, and determined to preserve its top cadres, the CPUSA decided to organize an underground apparatus. Four of the Smith Act defendants, including Winston, jumped bail and went into hiding. Winston managed to evade an intensive FBI manhunt and remained underground for nearly five years. At first, he lived in Brooklyn. Early in 1952, he moved to the Chicago area, traveling disguised as a clergyman. He lived with sympathetic families, used false names, and tried to remain inconspicuous. Two of the fugitives were arrested by 1953. Winston and Gil Green, the other National Board member still at large, met occasionally to discuss party policy. During this period Winston wrote for the party press under the name Frederick Hastings. As the issue of communism lost its potency, the fugitives began to discuss surrendering. In March 1956, with Joseph R. McCarthy censured by the U.S. Senate and their co-defendants emerging from prison, Winston and Green, the last remaining party leaders still in hiding, surrendered to federal authorities; in addition to the five-year sentence for violating the Smith Act, Winston faced an additional three years for jumping bail. Sent to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Winston began to suffer from headaches and dizzy spells in 1958. Not until 1960 was he diagnosed as having a brain tumor. In February he was sent to Montefiore Hospital in New York; while the tumor was removed, he lost his sight. His illness and charges that federal authorities had mismanaged his health care led to a campaign for his release that drew support from such prominent anticommunists as Reinhold Niebuhr and A. Philip Randolph. President John F. Kennedy granted him executive clemency in June 1961. Following his release,
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the idea as a reflection on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. That is to say, in Science the idea is hijacked to formulate theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. ___ 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] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
As I see it, your clarifications are even more nonsensical than your original statements. Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Utter nonsense! You started out with something original to say and now you're sabotaging your own efforts with this gibberish. At 10:46 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the idea as a reflection on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. - Sorry, wrote this in a hurry. It should read: Scientific knowledge is represented in the form of ideas, but unlike the ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. That is to say, in Science the idea is hijacked to formulate theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. -- This should be rewritten to read: That is, the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Oudeyis ___ 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] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I am confused by this beyond the reasonably clear first and third sentences of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the second paragraph. At 07:51 PM 6/20/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: I regard Ilyenkov's contribution rather as the Logic (method or met) for a practical (materialist or natural science) of ethics (ethos). There is a restriction as to what degree social relations are actually embodied in all cultural objects, this restriction being those imposed by the universal natural laws and principles as they apply to the interaction of labour, instruments and the subjects of production (materia, parts etc.) involved in the productive process. It is the irreducible fact that production involves relations that are entirely indifferent to human social activity and to human consciousness collective or otherwise that compromises any hypothesis that artefacts may be the representations of ideals or of social life. I would go further than this and argue that it is the very irreducibility of human labour to a simple replication of idealized objects that forms the material basis for the dynamics of human development and the indeterminism intrinsic to all human endeavor. Ilyenkov by presenting a materialist theory of the ideal, the ideal as a product of men's socialization of productive experience be of his own labour or of mobilizing and controlling the labour of others, provides us with a model for explaining how practical activity becomes ethical activity. This is extremely important not only to Marxist theory but to the general model of historical development, since the ideal as the means whereby men coordinate their activity with others is not the creative activity that enables human adaptation to world conditions. It more than any other theory of social life explains the contradiction implicit in adaptively; conservation of historical developments together with creative modification of labour and means of production in response to changing natural conditions. Oudeyis ___ 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] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Comments to selected extracts below At 01:43 PM 6/19/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Ideality like spoken language is not one thing or another, but two things, the objectified notion in consciousness and its material representation by some form of language, united as a more concrete concept, the ideal. The ideal cannot just be a manifestation of consciousness (Dubrovsky's argument) in which case it would be a purely subjective product, at best the internal expression of the individuality of the thinker (whatever that might be). Nor can it be just the symbolic representation since this after all is ultimately just a thing, a material object. It is only when consciousness is given material form by symbolic representation and the material artefact is made significant by its embodiment of conscious reflective thought that the ideal can be said to exist. Fascinating. .In short, ideality is expressed in a cultural artefact through human labour informed by the image of the object of his labour activity. For an idealist such as Hegel who regards human activity as beginning and ending with the ideal, the outcome of human labour is a simple materialization of the ideal. I can see the Hegelian view that the empirical world is a materialization of Geist, but does Hegel make this specific claim about human labor? For a Marxist materialist, labour practice involves far more than just the expression of the ideal in material form. Labour activity involves the interaction between men as creatures of nature (you know; arms, legs, hands, eyes and things like that.) and nature and therefore the intervention of natural laws and principles that are external to the ideal and are entirely indifferent to the social conventions of mankind. Thus the outcome of labour is a considerably more complex product than the idealists would have us believe it is. OK, but is Hegel's view really contravene your characterization of labor? I would also add here that not only is production a unity of consciousness (ideality) and physical/sensual activity, but so too is the acquisition of labour skills. A person cannot pass the ideal as such to another person, as the pure form of activity. One can observe the activity of a painter or an engineer as long as one likes, striving to catch their mode of action, the form of their activity, but one can thus only copy the external techniques and methods of their work but never the ideal image itself, the active faculty itself. The ideal, as the form of subjective activity, is only masterable through active operation with the object and product of this activity, i.e. through the form of its product, through the objective form of the thing, through its active disobjectification. The ideal image of objective reality therefore also only exists as the form (mode, image) of living activity, coordinated with the form of its object, but not as a thing, not as a materially fixed state or structure. (Ilyenkov Dialectical Logic Chapter 8 paragraph 50) Fascinating. ___ 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] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
At 02:12 PM 6/22/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Hegel regards objectification as simply the alienation of spirit in the object. The ideal itself is the alienated spirit that has become a universal through the mediation of language. True, I've not addressed the problem of whether Hegel regarded labour activity (transformation of the ideal as consciousness joined with language forms by its expression in labour activity) but if I recall correctly he does not really concern himself with this problem. The question of the effect, if any, of labour activity on the ideal certainly does not appear in the Logic. Marx in his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy takes Hegel to task for regarding the nature that becomes the subject of logos as the abstracted nature of theory rather than the material nature external to intellect. It is however an interesting question, and I would appreciate any additional information on this. Meanwhile I'll do some investigation on my own. I can't help you answer my question, but it _is_ the question (Hegel's specific view of labor activity) which you did not clearly address in your exposition. In respect to the relation between reason and nature for sure (see above). While it is true that the laws and principles that govern material practice directed towards the realization of the objectives of labour activity are abstract theoretical representations they or at least their application are subject to the test of nature which is not dependent solely on human knowledge but also involves phenomena that is entirely indifferent to the intellectual creations of men. How does this differ from Hegel's view? Hegel as an inheritor of idealist tradition would not express himself this way, but presumably he has a way of accounting for the testing of our subjective notions about nature. Thus theory, even natural science theory, can never precisely describe actual labour activity if only because the natural conditions confronting labour are in a constant state of change. Thus the natural laws or application of natural laws incorporated into the design of any given labour activity will never be exactly those encountered in the course of actual labour activity. This is what bugs me about your conception of scientific theory, which is not about labor activity. I don't like this way of expressing things. This, by the way, is how Lenin regards Engels theory of freedom and necessity in human activity. Secondly, Engels does not attempt to contrive definitions of freedom and necessity, the kind of scholastic definition with which the reactionary professors (like Avenarius) and their disciples (like Bogdanov) are most concerned. Engels takes the knowledge and will of man, on the one hand, and the necessity of nature, on the other, and instead of giving definitions, simply says that the necessity of nature is primary, and human will and mind secondary. The latter must necessarily and inevitably adapt themselves to the former. Engels regards this as so obvious that he does not waste words explaining his view. It needs the Russian Machians to complain of Engels' general definition of materialism (that nature is primary and mind secondary; remember Bogdanov's perplexity on this point!), and at the same time to regard one of the particular applications by Engels of this general and fundamental definition as wonderful and remarkably apt! Thirdly, Engels does not doubt the existence of blind necessity. He admits the existence of a necessity unknown to man. This is quite obvious from the passage just quoted. But how, from the standpoint of the Machians, can man know of the existence of what he does not know? Is it not mysticism, metaphysics, the admission of fetishes and idols, is it not the Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself to say that we know of the existence of an unknown necessity? Had the Machians given the matter any thought they could not have failed to observe the complete identity between Engels' argument on the knowability of the objective nature of things and on the transformation of things-in-themselves into things-for-us, on the one hand, and his argument on a blind, unknown necessity, on the other. The development of con-sciousness in each human individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity at large presents us at every step with examples of the transformation of the unknown thing-in-itself into the known thing-for-us, of the transformation of blind, unknown necessity, necessity-in-itself, into the known necessity-for-us. Epistemologically, there is no difference whatever between these two transformations, for the basic point of view in both cases is the same, viz., materialistic, the recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of external nature, and of the fact that this world and these laws are fully knowable to man but can never be known to him with finality.
[Marxism-Thaxis] Jean-Paul Sartre (June 21, 1905 - April 15, 1980)
Tuesday was not only the summer solstice, but the 100th birthday of Jean-Paul Sartre. While he has never been the center of my intellectual attention, I've had occasion to think about him recently, and in many ways he serves as an important historical test case for philosophy and social theory. There are numerous web sites on Sartre. Here's one: Sartre Online http://www.geocities.com/sartresite/home.html I keep bumping into this forbidding volume in bookstores: Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One, which has recently re-appeared (2004) in a new translation. I doubt I would survive reading 835 pages of this stuff. There are also numerous book-length critiques of this critique. The introduction to this word was translated into English and published as Search for a Method (1968). I have numerous problems with what I know of Sartre's politics and philosophy and their various zigzags over the decades. I'm mostly familiar with key essays of the 1940s, of which the famous Existentialism is a Humanism (1945) and Materialism and Revolution (1946) are most dubious, revealing an untenable and intolerable Cartesian/Kantian dualism. Basically, Sartre was confronted with a philosophical dualism he spent all of the 1950s attempting to surmount: abstract individualism vs. Stalinist regimentation. Struggling to worm his way out the cul de sac of quasi-Heideggerian existentialism towards a sociologically conscious perspective, Sartre, as a free-floating intellectual, struggled with the Stalinist version of Marxism institutionalized in the French Communist Party. This was the stark duality that many radicals in many nations faced after the Second World War. (Titles of novels of the period are most revealing of the dilemma that gelled as the Cold War began: Albert Camus' The Stranger, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Richard Wright's The Outsider.) A few days ago I stumbled across an essay which I think aptly critiques Sartre's not totally successful attempt to surmount this duality: Parsons, Howard L. Existentialism and Marxism in Dialogue (A Review of Sartre's Problem of Method), in: Marxism and Alienation: A Symposium, ed. by Herbert Aptheker (New York: Humanities Press / Marzani Munsell, 1965), pp. 89-124. I have some historic gripes about Parsons, but he does an excellent job in this review. Also, I think it reveals a very general theoretical and practical dilemma, and a historic dilemma at the very center of 20th century philosophy. Personally, I think that Sartre's early philosophy is pretty much bankrupt, as evidenced by his own attempts to break out of its limitations. I don't know if Sartre's critique, which he considered among his top theoretical works, has been absorbed into the consciousness of the theory industry, which is now organized against the outbreak of individualism of any kind, let alone the good kind, but those who have the wherewithal to wade through this stuff perhaps should do so. I have SEARCH FOR A METHOD buried deep and unread somewhere. Maybe I should read it one of these days. Anyone want to go to the beach? ___ 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] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I've not had time to keep up with your ongoing debate on Ilyenkov. Since you are apparently preparing something for publication, I hope you will apprise us of the finished product. This line of enquiry, it seems to me, is much more important than most philosophical projects being undertaken. I have yet to address our last round on science as labor. I'll have to review the last few posts so that I can state my misgivings more clearly. I seem to be suffering from the aftereffects of the Stalinist equation of science with production. At 09:03 AM 6/27/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Steve and Ralph, Thanks for all the help. Oudeyis ___ 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] emergence blog update
I've created a new web page for emergence-related posts of 23 Feb - 23 March 2005: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html The original archive covering 5 Nov 2004-25 Feb 2005 can be found at: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog-02.html The next installment will cover May-June 2005. Last night I read some material on Whitehead's political and social philosophy, which only confirms for me the banality of his social view, which is predicated directly from his speculative metaphysics. I hope to contrast this with the emergent materialism and social theory of Marxism. Whitehead knew neither Hegel nor Marx, but only, alas Bradley. Whitehead is a major source, it seems, for the biosemiotics jibber-jabber in our midst (Washington). ___ 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] emergence blog update
I'm working on overhauling the format of my emergence blog: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html I'm adding a link section, which includes both links from the blog entries and others. Anyone with good links I've not covered is welcome to suggest more. I'm particularly interested in historical surveys not biased towards British emergentism. I've updated my archive to include entries from 23 Feb - June 3 2005: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog-03.html The original archive covering 5 Nov 2004-25 Feb 2005 can be found at: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog-02.html The next installment will cover whatever I can of June 2005, a rather difficult undertaking considering the entanglements of a number of topics. I'll also add some remarks on Whitehead's metaphysics and social and political philosophy, and the shoddy analogical reasoning that seems to be incorporated in biosemiotics. ___ 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] Re: [marxistphilosophy] demystifying Marx in mainstream reference works (Myths Legends)
You are correct, sir. Lichtheim to some degree shortchanges that tradition, while the Marxist Internet Archive endorses it: http://www.marxists.org/subject/students/index.htm I find this much more objectionable than Lichtheim, although I think Lichtheim takes some shortcuts I would not. I would for example be much more careful about attributions of positivism to Engels or 2nd International Marxists. I strongly object to Marxism-Leninism, including its Trotskyist variants, but I do not hold to the denigration of the thought of either Engels or Lenin. That is, I support the disaggregation of Marx from Engels and others from a scholarly point of view without dogmatically severing them one from another either. Hence my objections to some of the essays on the Marx Myths site. At 02:05 PM 7/2/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: One of my frequent scourings of SF used bookstores in the 1970's produced this set of volumes, still sitting on my bookshelves. I am glad to see it available on line. I hadn't looked at the Lichtheim article before, or at least, don't remember it making any impression on me. It covers a number of ideological trends generated by Karl Marx, describing two in the passage that Jim quotes below, but does not seem to give credit to the one that I subscribe to - that Marx, Engels and Lenin were following the same essential philosophy and methodology, that there is a core continuity between these revolutionaries and others (I would include, for example, Trotsky and Guevara) that can be continued in our time. - Steve On Sat, 02 Jul 2005 11:41:51 -0400 Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What do you think of this encyclopedia entry by George Lichtheim: HISTORICAL AND DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM Dictionary of the History of Ideas http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/ot2www-dhi?specfile=/texts/english/dhi/dhi.o2wact=textoffset=8277756query=holismtag=HISTORICAL+AND+DIALECTICAL+MATERIALISM I think it's pretty good, though I think a number of additions and qualifications are needed. ___ 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] emergence blog news: Whitehead
I wrote a little piece called Whitehead or Marx? Or, How to Process Philosophy, which is now at the head of my emergence blog: http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/emergence-blog.html It combines two ideas: the general obfuscatory character of speculative metaphysical constructions, and the necessary sociological naivete that follows. There are a number of objectionable trends that draw upon Whitehead for inspiration: New Age thought, mystical science and consciousness studies, biosemiotics . . . I didn't write a fully fleshed-out essay, but hopefully this will give the flavor of my argument. ___ 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] Articles, Translations, and Materials on Dialectical Materialism
I must have mentioned this at some time, but anyway, here's a site with bibliography and translations of various materials on Soviet philosophy, East European Marxist philosophy, Chinese Marxist philosophy, et al. You may find a few references to Soviet philosophy I overlooked, though I'm familiar with most of them. http://tomweston.net/dialecthtm.htm ___ 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] RE: George Resich's *How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science
At 06:47 PM 7/19/2005 +0900, CeJ wrote: I'm wondering if the cold war actually transformed anything. And is there really much more to say on the topic after Lakatos, Feyerabend, but also the post-structuralists? What does this mean? More interesting to me has always been LP-related but not pure LP. For example, Wittgenstein's foray into the philosophy of psychology. One totally underestimated philosopher of science was the non-LP Jean Piaget, a Swiss who wrote in French. Piaget was quite interested in a unity of sciences and even wrote a monograph about it (which we never studied in university philosophy of science class back in the early 80s, but whose main name, Kuhn, later acknowledged a debt to Piaget). Interestingly enough a quick search of the Marx-related web yielded a typical Piaget piece about the LPs! I might add, cognitive science could sure use a review of the likes of Wittgenstein, Piaget, and Vygotsky. Here is just an excerpt that focuses on the LPs--the part about Chomsky is QUITE good. I really like the end sentence of the excerpt, so much I'll quote it here too, for those who aren't going to read what follows or surf to the site: The part about Chomsky is not good at all. More comments below addressed to the Piaget essay. If indeed we find logical structures in the coordinations of actions in small children even before the development of language, we are not in a position to say that these logical structures are derived from language. This is a question of fact and should be approached not by speculation but by an experimental methodology with its objective findings. A good position to take. The first principle of genetic epistemology, then, is this - to take psychology seriously. Taking psychology seriously means that, when a question of psychological fact arises, psychological research should be consulted instead of trying to invent a solution through private speculation. Philosophy of language is mostly speculation, n'est ce pas? It is worthwhile pointing out, by the way, that in the field of linguistics itself, since the golden days of logical positivism, the theoretical position has been reversed. Bloomfield in his time adhered completely to the view of the logical positivists, to this linguistic view of logic. But currently, as you know, Chomsky maintains the opposite position. Chomsky asserts, not that logic is based on and derived from language, but, on the contrary, that language is based on logic, on reason, and he even considers this reason to be innate. He is perhaps going too far in maintaining that it is innate; this is once again a question to be decided by referring to facts, to research. But is this an accurate characterization of Chomsky's position? This doesn't sound right to me. It is another problem for the field of psychology to determine. Between the rationalism that Chomsky is defending nowadays (according to which language is based on reason, which is thought to be innate in man) Where does Chomsky claim that language is based on reason? The second reason is found in Godel's theorem. It is the fact that there are limits to formalisation. Any consistent system sufficiently rich to contain elementary arithmetic cannot prove its own consistency. So the following questions arise: logic is a formalisation, an axiomatisation of something, but of what exactly? What does logic formalise? This is a considerable problem. There are even two problems here. Any axiomatic system contains the undemonstrable propositions or the axioms, at the outset, from which the other propositions can be demonstrated, and also the undefinable, fundamental notions on the basis of which the other notions can be defined. Now in the case of logic what lies underneath the undemonstrable axioms and the undefinable notions? This is the problem of structuralism in logic, and it is a problem that shows the inadequacy of formalisation as the fundamental basis. It shows the necessity for considering thought itself as well as considering axiomatised logical systems, since it is from human thought that the logical systems develop and remain still intuitive. Good point. The third reason why formalisation is not enough is that epistemology sets out to explain knowledge as it actually is within the areas of science, and this knowledge is, in fact not purely formal: there are other aspects to it. Good point. In his conclusion to this volume, Beth wrote as follows: The problem of epistemology is to explain how real human thought is capable of producing scientific knowledge. In order to do that we must establish a certain coordination between logic and psychology. This declaration does not suggest that psychology ought to interfere directly in logic - that is of course not true - but it does maintain that in epistemology both logic and psychology should be taken into account, since it is important to deal with both the formal aspects and the empirical aspects of human
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] scarcity as philosophy
This is horseshit. Who's the moron who wrote it? At 10:07 PM 7/24/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The Coming Trade War and Global Depression By Henry C.K. Liu Part 4: Scarcity Economics and Overcapacity The monotheism myth, the belief in the one true God, creator of heaven and earth, constitutes a system in which identity depends on the rejection of multiculturalism and the subjugation of personal independence. .. ___ 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] scarcity as philosophy
You should think twice before subscribing to mystical right-wing propaganda in the name of environmentalism. This anti-montheistic rhetoric is not only unscientific nonsense, it is the very language of neo-fascist pagan and Hindutva cults. As for the existence or non-existence of scarcity, that is an empirical and not a mystical question. It is a disgrace for any Marxist--even a Stalinist--to promote such neo-Nazi filth. At 10:39 PM 7/24/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is horseshit. Who's the moron who wrote it? The Coming Trade War and Global Depression By Henry C.K. Liu Part 4: Scarcity Economics and Overcapacity Reply The author name is clearly stated above. The source of the article was included. Please define horseshit in philosophic terms. Below is more of the article and why I forwarded as scarcity as philosophy. Actually, scarcity as ideology would have been more accurate. Waistline But the law of scarcity, like monotheism, is a baseless myth, because it does not reflect the visible truth about the real world. The scarcity myth has come to be regarded as a law in large measure through the enormous influence that the Bible has exerted on the making of the Western mind, and thus the Western fixation on material accumulation. There is ample evidence that scarcity is the result of mal-distribution rather than a natural state. ___ 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] scarcity as philosophy
Liu's mystical-nationalist drivel is so similar to the arguments of the Hindutva fascists, who also have an affinity to neo-pagan fascists in the West, I neglected to qualify my outburst by specifying that Liu's argument was not based on India nor was it specifically about environmentalism. It seems that Liu is actually a Chinese nationalist and apologist for Chinese Stalinism. See, e.g.: http://atimes01.atimes.com/atimes/others/Henry.html http://www.mail-archive.com/leninist-international@buo319b.econ.utah.edu/msg00730.html At 11:18 PM 7/24/2005 -0400, Ralph Dumain wrote: You should think twice before subscribing to mystical right-wing propaganda in the name of environmentalism. This anti-montheistic rhetoric is not only unscientific nonsense, it is the very language of neo-fascist pagan and Hindutva cults. As for the existence or non-existence of scarcity, that is an empirical and not a mystical question. It is a disgrace for any Marxist--even a Stalinist--to promote such neo-Nazi filth. At 10:39 PM 7/24/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is horseshit. Who's the moron who wrote it? The Coming Trade War and Global Depression By Henry C.K. Liu Part 4: Scarcity Economics and Overcapacity Reply The author name is clearly stated above. The source of the article was included. Please define horseshit in philosophic terms. Below is more of the article and why I forwarded as scarcity as philosophy. Actually, scarcity as ideology would have been more accurate. Waistline But the law of scarcity, like monotheism, is a baseless myth, because it does not reflect the visible truth about the real world. The scarcity myth has come to be regarded as a law in large measure through the enormous influence that the Bible has exerted on the making of the Western mind, and thus the Western fixation on material accumulation. There is ample evidence that scarcity is the result of mal-distribution rather than a natural state. ___ 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] Re: George Resich's *How the Cold War
At 04:56 PM 7/25/2005 +0900, CeJ wrote: .. I guess one question for discussion is whether or not, formal linguistics as it follows from Chomsky and Halle is really more about logic than it is about psycholinguistics. Earlier I called it an epistemologically naive psychologization of structuralism. Which then brings us back to the ultimate question: is logic something that results from human psychology or something that exists outside it? (Which also seems to bring me back to one of the first things I posted to this list). There are a number of questions balled together. While I think that the competence/performance distinction as originally conceived forestalled working out the actual relation between the two (perhaps premature at the time) and thus equated psychology (competence) with the linguistic formalism, I fail to see how linguistics is merely logic. Would you call generative phonology a form of logic? On the broader question of logic, you wouldn't want to revert to the psychologism of the late 19th century, would you? There have been attempts to avoid both psychologism and Platonism--Popper, the Soviet notion of ideality, etc. ___ 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] Paraconsistency Philosophy
I have initiated a web guide to resources on paraconsistency: Paraconsistency Philosophy http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/paraconsistency.html If anyone wishes to add further links, please let me know. I found lots more articles on the subject on the web, but my aim here is to include selected articles of a broader philosophical interest. On my next go-round, perhaps I should add links to wordl congresses and discussion fora on the subject. ___ 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] RE: Paraconsistency Philosophy
I've already received some responses to my call for feedback on the philosophy of paraconsistency. Also, viz. recent discussions on the dichotomy of Platonism and psychologism (objective vs subjective idealism?), I'm wondering if people could get something out of my little review of Adorno's critique of Husserl in AGAINST EPISTEMOLOGY: Adorno contra Husserl http://www.autodidactproject.org/my/adornohuss.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] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Van Heijenoort research
This Russian journal apparently is no longer online. However, I just discovered a copy of the article I saved on disk. I'll email it to anyone to wants it. At 09:08 AM 8/13/2005 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: On Sat, 13 Aug 2005 08:20:03 -0400 Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Some years ago I had a link to this article, perhaps sent by Jim Farmelant, which now seems to be obsolete. Google is not helping. Is this perhaps cached somewhere? Irving Anellis Leon Trotsky on Mathematics and Logic See http://old.ssu.samara.ru/research/philosophy/journal5/2.html It doesn't seem to have been archived anywhere. I even tried the WayBack Machine (www.archive.org) but came up dry. ___ 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] Cornforth request
There's a fellow in Latvia who needs Maurice Cornforth's THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE to scan for his students. He will even send the book back when he's through with it. He cannot find a copy of the book for himself. Anyone care to help? ___ 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] In Defense of Philosophy
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this particular work by Cornforth was later incorporated into his SCIENCE AGAINST IDEALISM. I'm still trying to process the fact that this person apparently trained in some sophisticated philosophy could descend to writing the shit he wrote on dialectical materialism. Perhaps, like the Soviet philosophers, he was much better at criticizing bourgeois philosophy than coming up with a positive credible version of diamat. Now that I think of it, I basically got on with my own intuitive version of dialectical materialism without accepting any of its standard presentations, which are all horrible, sloppy, half-assed, splapdash efforts. Let me remind you that the fellow I mentioned specifically needs that one book in Cornforth's trilogy on diamat, THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. For some reason, he has to use it for his students, Marx help them. At 08:10 PM 8/16/2005 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:59:06 -0400 Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: _In Defense of Philosophy_ is Cornforth's polemic on positivism. I have a hardback copy. George Reisch in his book on logical empiricism, *How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science* has a discussion of Cornforth's book. He notes that Cornforth and other Communist philosophers had enjoyed amicable relations with the logical positivists in the 1930s. And back then, it certainly helped that one of the leading logical positivists, Otto Neurath, considered himself to be a Marxist. Later on relations between the Communists and the logical empiricists broke down and according to Reisch, Cornforth in his book started off by reiterating Lenin's criticisms of the Machists, which Cornforth applied against the logical empiricists. Thus, the logical empiricists were charged with being subjective idealists, with having an overly formalistic approach to philosophy and the like. Yet even so, Cornforth still spared Neurath from many of the criticisms that he lodged against people like Philipp Frank, Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach and Moritz Schlick. Indeed, Cornforth went out of his way to praise some of Neurath's work. Cornforth was at one with Neurath in terms of being very devoted to the unification of the sciences. And Cornforth took many of the other logical empiricists to task precisely for their having abandoned the cause of the unity of science. As Reisch points out one of the reasons that Neurath's work lost its hold among philosophers of science in the post-WW II period was because of the perception that it was Communistic. It was seen by his critics as offering a philosophical basis for totalitarianism and was codemned as such. In fact, Neurath was no dialectical materialist but his socialist and Marxist sympathies were quite apparent and they were seen as coloring his work. And that was more than sufficient to condemn it to obscurity in the post-WW II period when virulent anticommunism was holding sway in the academy. ___ 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] In Defense of Philosophy
The problem with presentations of diamat is not the ontology, but the totally confused, embarrassing approach to logic, which was especially bad prior to the 1950s. After that, the Soviets attempted to avoid soiling themselves as foully as they had before. However, the damage has been done. Maoism degraded the process even further. I never took any of those presentations seriously. I always thought the books by John Somerville and George Novack were pieces of shit. I'm sad to see Cornforth just as inept. The article I have by Irving Anellis, Leon Trotsky on Mathematics and Logic, seems to be incomplete. Anellis also deals with Van Heijenoort, but he totally trashes Trotsky as an arrogant, incompetent ignoramus in the field of logic. Interestingly, Anellis also outlines Soviet work in mathematical and non-classical logics in the 1930s. BTW, I also thought that Neurath's article in Ayer's anthology, arguing for physicalist conceptions applied to sociology, was nonsense through and through. At 10:46 PM 8/16/2005 -0700, andie nachgeborenen wrote: --- Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this particular work by Cornforth was later incorporated into his SCIENCE AGAINST IDEALISM. I'm still trying to process the fact that this person apparently trained in some sophisticated philosophy could descend to writing the shit he wrote on dialectical materialism. Perhaps, like the Soviet philosophers, he was much better at criticizing bourgeois philosophy than coming up with a positive credible version of diamat. No one has even come close. But Ayer -- a very hard left Labourite -- published Neurath's uncompromisingly Marxist essay Sociology and Physicalism in his influential anthology Logical Positivism. ___ 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] In Defense of Philosophy
OK, jks, after suffering through Cornforth's MATERIALISM AND THE DIALECTICAL METHOD, I can see why you hate diamat as you do. This sort of literature corrupts everyone indoctrinated by it. But diamat doesn't have to be that dumb. I've been defending a more sophisticated version of it on the Internet since the early '90s, and my views have undergone modification the more I learn. The revolution in logic occurred about the same time, I think, as Engels was writing his stuff, but while the paths of the two traditions have crossed at various points, the appropriate lessons were never properly disseminated, if in fact, definitive conclusions can even be drawn. When one dumbs down, the effect is not to popularize ideas but to sabotage them. I detest the culture of simplemindedness promulgated by the CPs, Trots, Maoists, and assorted Stalinists. A lot of smart people have gone along with them, possibly by trading on the vagueness and ambiguities of their doctrines, simultaneously politically intimidated by them. I cannot stand Marxist-Leninists. Why haven't they all died off already? I don't buy Carnap's argument. He claims that metaphysics is poetry, only bad poetry. And I don't buy the notion that poetry is non-cognitive. Jabberwocky is non-cognitive. Andrew Lang is non-cognitive, I'm guessing. But a whole lot of poetry has gone to great lengths to be cognitive. Nietzsche, whom Carnap supposedly valued, was not merely a poet. At 01:08 PM 8/17/2005 -0700, andie nachgeborenen wrote: Cognitively meaningless, which does not mean utter nonsense. Poetry is also cognitively meaningless for the LPs, which means for them roughly you don't try to assess its truth value by using it to generate predictions about future observations. That seems right, although you can get truths about human nature/behavior from poetry, as Aristotle said. But the LP's didn't even have to think that doing, say, Hegelian metaphysics was pointless, just that it wouldn't tell you about the way things actually are, a notion they would regard as cognitively meaningless as well. Metpahysics would be more like poetry -- a view that, actually, I think Heidegger came to believe. If the LPs themselves ever got around to that historical or sociological analysis, I am not aware of it, except in the form of crude polemics about bad metaphysics. The closest exception is Reichenbach's book on the Rise of the Scientific Conception of Philosophy, which is a little less manifesto-like and a little less polemical than Ayer's Language, Truth, and Logic. ___ 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] Graham Priest, paraconsistent logic, philosophy, OR, logic reality (9)
Priest, Graham. Beyond the limits of thought. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Chapter 14 covers the later Wittgenstein before turning to Derrida. As we know, Wittgenstein later repudiated the Tractatus, reverting from mystical logicism to a much more objectionable irrationalist collectivist solipsism. On this point see Ernest Gellner's WORDS AND THINGS and LANGUAGE AND SOLITUDE. Anyway, here Priest follows Kripke in interpreting Wittgenstein. The question here is the nature of following a rule, language being a rule-governed activity. How do we follow a rule, though? Wittgenstein rules out mental states as the determiners of the application of a rule. Hence it is wrong to call meaning a mental activity. We are left with the indeterminacy of rule-following and hence meaning. Rule-following is just playing according to the rules of socially established language games. Wittgenstein concludes that philosophy is disallowed from interfering with language use; in the end philosophy can only be descriptive and leave everything as is. Rather than debating what a foul load of horseshit Wittgenstein has dropped on us, I'll move along with Priest's argument, which is that Wittgenstein's own argument becomes impossible by his own lights. (213) Kripke claims that Wittgenstein's views consonant with his style. (213-4) But for Priest, as Wittgenstein has expresses the inexpressible, we once again come to a paradox at the limit of expression. Again Priest is interested only in revealing the paradox, and ignores what else might be wrong with this way of thinking. Derrida's hobbyhorse is the denial of presence, or metaphysics. Derrida denies that anything can act as a presence to ground meaning. Derria departs from the structuralism of Saussure. Writing, unlike speaking enables the appropriation of linguistic expressions in different contexts. All words refer to other words indefinitely, and there is no escape from circularity to find ground in the transcendental signified. Here we are led to the play of differance. Deconstruction involves the self-undermining of texts. A text that endorses some presence x is dependent on the opposite of x, i.e. on the x/non-x distinction. The distinction is shown to be false, and we are led to undecidability. The emergent undecidable concept undercuts the original distinction, . . . shit, I can't go on. Read this for yourself (214-8). The punchline is obvious: how then is Derrida's own argument interpretable? We are at something like Cratylus' problem, except here it cannot be evaded, given the attack on presence. Differance is claimed to be unnameable. All language is structured by binary opposition, hence metaphysics is inescapable and hence no way of expressing its negation or an alternative. One technique for dealing with this situation is to adopt Heidegger's device of writing under erasure. However, the consequence of Derrida's views are that his writing is meaningless, yet if we understand him, it does have a meaning. In all these cases we are left with the paradoxes at the limits of the expressible--with ineffability. The next chapter is the conclusion to the book's first edition. But let me first venture some other observations. All of these ventures in the philosophy of language are predicated on much more than the set-theoretic and semantic paradoxes treated earlier. Sure there is a formal element involved that can be given logical expression. But yet there are a set of assumptions at work which are not merely intrinsic to the structure of logical assertions. There are additional assumptions about the nature not just of the logical assertions made with language but about language as a whole, how it's learned, what it expresses, its relation to both reality (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology). And all of these arguments trade on all the old skeptical conceits that came out of the age of empiricism: i.e. if we don't have absolute proof, we can't know anything. And yet, the realm of natural language or knowledge claims never has anything to do with absolute proof, of which there is none outside of axiomatic systems. That is, there never is absolute justification for any knowledge claim. We've known this for well over two centuries, but instead of concluding that aprioristic philosophy is useless, these philosophers have just turned apriorism on its head and reverted to a skepticism they then struggle to weasel out of, all on the bogus assumption that language, concept formation, epistemology, and ontology can all be reduced to formal logic. In its positivist phase, bourgeois philosophy pretends it can do everything worth doing via logic or banish all other questions to the realm of meaninglessness. In its decadent phase, bourgeois philosophy settles in its old folks home, till it finally becomes senile with mysticism and
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest, paraconsistent logic, philosophy, OR, logic reality (8)
Priest, Graham. Beyond the limits of thought. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Chapter 13 is titled Translation, Reference, and Truth. Here is where Priest engages Quine, Davidson, and others. The postulation of semantic correlates is deep-sixed by Quine's behaviorism. Quine trashes any notion of mentalism, any notion of meaning not implicit in overt behavior. (Cf. Quine's Ontological Relativity'.) Down with the 'museum myth' of meaning goes the deteminacy of sense. Another consequence is Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. In translating an unknown language, we find that there may be different analytical hypotheses for the language which conform to all observed speech dispositions. The reason there is no unique solution is the same we know there is none for any observed empirical regularities, after Hume. And what applies to unknown languages also applies to known languages, such as the English we are using now. This, however, brings us to a familiar self-referential paradox. How are we to apply a determinate meaning to Quine's own statements? Are we all translating Quine's writings into our own idiolects, creating an indeterminate range of personal meaning-schemas? If this were so, how could we ever understand, or agree or disagree with Quine's views or with the arguments of one another about them? Yet it seems that Quine's utterances do have determinate sense in spite of his assertions. Priest cites Searle as making a such an argument against Quine, Searle basing his objections on Quine's behaviorism. Priest, however, claims that behaviorism is not essential to the indeterminacy argument, as the argument would work just as well with intensional notions. (199) I made note of this given my absolute lack of respect for behaviorists. From inscrutability of sense we derive inscrutability of reference, and then not just to the utterance of others but to one's own. But we are once again led into the paradox of expression: the indeterminacy of reference cannot be expressed, yet here it is expressed perfectly. (201) Quine is aware of the problem and is forced to conclude that the notion of reference is meaningless. Quine finds a number of subterfuges to circumvent the undesirable implications of this situation, such as reference to a background language, which Priest finds unsatisfactory. How then does one relate this background language to reality, and deal with claims about reality? Here at least Priest shows himself to be aware not just of paradoxes, but of the shortcomings of empiricism (204). Next comes Davidson, who is neither a behaviorist nor an extensionalist. Priest outlines Davidson's specs for a theory of language. He uses Tarskian theory to construct a finitely axiomizable theory of truth for a language. This would seem to follow in the footsteps of Frege, who suggested that the meaning of a declarative sentence is its truth conditions. I fail to see why this is so. It seems to me a prima facie senseless supposition. OK, so suppose we can construct a theory of a natural language in the language itself. Davidson admits of a problem here. Priest asserts that the attempt to resolve the contradiction at the limit of cognition results in a contradiction at the limit of expression (206-7). Davidson, in On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme finds himself in another quandary, argues that the claim that the conceptual systems of two speakers may be different, or the same, is senseless. Such is the legacy of the progression Frege-Wittgenstein-Quine-Davidson. Clearly there is something wrong with all this, but what? Presumably, Priest is interested in the unavoidability of contradiction at the limits of thought, and thus the universality of his Inclosure Schema. He never asks the salient question: why equate in the first place language (the linguistic expression of thought) with formal logic? What is the relationship of both to each other and to reality? In fact, these questions are evaded from first to last? Perhaps one might pursue this hypothesis: the logical conclusion of positivism (and hence 'postpositivism') is mysticism. ADDENDUM: It would be instructive to compare the relation of logic to language as philosophers see it as to the way that real linguists see it. To be sure, logic becomes central to linguistic theory in the wake of the Chomskyan revolution, but would any linguist interested in the logical structure of natural language venture the claim that the meaning of a sentence is its truth conditions? Linguistic theory indeed mandates the formulation of natural language sentences in a formal apparatus (hence the interest in Montague grammar, for instance), yet the perspective seems to be different: to stretch logic to fit the facts of natural language, not to assume that language is just logic in longhand. There's something
[Marxism-Thaxis] Graham Priest, paraconsistent logic, ..... (7) -- OOOPS!
Sorry, folks, my diagram got completely screwed up by Eudora, dammit! I don't know how to fix this in an email format. reality - --- thought - language - --- mathematics-logic -- concepts ___ 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] general marxist philosophy sites in English?
This might seem like a silly question, but one is bound to forget something when confronted with internet information overload. I'm so used to consulting the Marxist Internet Archive for materials, I tend to forget about other relevant sites. Two recent occurrences reminded me of the need to check up on sources: (1) a text by Colletti on Marx 2 mao not available elsewhere; (2) this still unfulfilled request by this fellow from eastern Europe who needs the Cornforth text on diamat. I have bookmarks to dozens of marxist sites, of organizations, journals, archives, and individuals. But now I see I need to make a list of sites with a variety of texts on marxist philosophy and theory. I already have critical theory fairly well covered, so, excluding sites devoted to individuals and news, I need to catalog repositories of theoretical Marxist texts in English. Here is what I'm working with offhand. Feel free to add to my list. The largest repository of Marxist literature can be found at Marxists Internet Archive: http://www.marxists.org/ There is also quite a bit at: From Marx to Mao http://www.marx2mao.com/index.html#Collections See collections on Marx Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao see esp. Other Texts and Documents http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/Index.html An excellent repository: Libertarian Communist Library http://www.libcom.org/library/ Sources on dialectical materialism http://tomweston.net/dialecthtm.htm There is also an interesting site, In Defence of Marxism: http://www.marxist.com/ with materials on philosophy: http://www.marxist.com/philosophy.asp Institute for the Study of the Science of Society http://www.scienceofsociety.org/ Marxism Page http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/marx.html Collective Action Notes http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379/ World History Archives Historical materialism http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/10/index-b.html Movement for a Socialist Future has some philosophical articles. See, e.g.: http://www.socialistfuture.org.uk/msf/ideas%20and%20philosophy/THREEBYGH.htm Dialectics for Kids http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/ Marx Myths and Legends http://marxmyths.org/index.shtml Organizations: Marx and Philosophy Society http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/sefd0/mps/index.html Archives of materials not online comprises another large area. I'll just give one indication: Marx Memorial Library http://www.marxmemoriallibrary.sageweb.co.uk/ ___ 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] Logic and Dialectics by Robin Hirsch revisited
About a year ago I got into a discussion with someone on this article. This is how it began: Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 06:39:07 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Logic and Dialectics by Robin Hirsch In Cultural Logic: http://eserver.org/clogic/2004/hirsch.html Some useful references. This is a succinct criticism of the sloppy approach to dialectics, in view of developments in logic and mathematics since the 19th century. However, the author's logic falters when drawing conclusions on the value of dialectical thinking. I then got embroiled in a brief argument as to whether Hirsch had anything positive to contribute to the understanding of dialectical thinking, Hegel, or Marx. The discussion resulted in about a dozen posts, and quickly got sidetracked over the first few. I will reproduce a fragment of my first response: Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 02:56:59 -0400 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: Logic and Dialectics by Robin Hirsch There is a fundamental problem I have in approaching your response to this article as well as the original article itself. In order to clarify it, I need to triangulate the three basic philosophical tendencies at work: (1) mathematical logic analytical philosophy (2) dialectical materialism its relation to formal logic (3) your Hegelian approach to Marxism. Hirsch and you deal with the problematic aspects of (2) from entirely opposite standpoints which in actuality don't intersect. Your approach disregards (1) almost entirely, except when it enters into the sights of your real target, which is (2). Hirsch has nothing to say about the terrain covered by (3) and engages the common turf fought over between (1) and (2), based on the claims of each to have a scientific perspective on the world and an approach to logic. There is a basic incommensurability here, because the tradition that feeds on the past 130 years of mathematical logic, and the Hegelian tradition that one way or another feeds into both diamat and your perspective, have remained completely apart from one another, and it is a rare individual who has the competence to cover the ground of both traditions. You seem to be unaware what a serious problem this is. Hirsch's concern is with the ineptitude of those elements within the diamat tradition which make a complete hash of logic. He is right to criticize this. However, Hirsch further complicates the matter by falling apart logically when he reverts to discussion of political matters: his concern with logic here is logically inept and intellectually incoherent. The question of the correspondence view of truth is an important one, especially given the idealist nature of the coherence theory of truth. This is of course an issue that belongs to epistemology and by implication ontology generally, in which Marxists have had a stake as well. The Soviets may have accomplished little else, but they were very good in combatting all the worst tendencies of neopositivism and postpositivism in the West. The question of logic requires a deeper approach, especially its historically problematic relationship with ontology. The rigidified diamat illegitimately based upon the messy reasoning of Engels has had a rather childish view of logic, which Hirsch attempts to correct. There is a deeper question about logic, however, which is addressed although not clarified by the form-content issue. Again, here we have two entirely separate traditions that never intersect and therefore never get compared on an intelligent basis. The indifference of formal logic to content is its strength: that's what logic is, to begin with. The issue of its relationship to the structure of the concepts plugged into it should not be so mysterious, but this is where the problem lies as well as the alienation embedded not in the formalism itself but in the lack of contact between those who study the formal structures of deductive inference and the subject matter of the real world. But the attempts to politicize logic and make it relevant to real life always betray the bad faith of anti-intellectualism, and Hirsch after all his efforts to raise the dismal level of orthodox Marxism ultimately collapses into incoherence himself. His example of contradictions--inconsistencies--in. U.S. policy over Iraq is more confused even than diamat's more intelligent representatives, because he descends beneath the level of those he criticizes. The Soviets once did as the Trotskyists continue to do (based on the nonsense written by Trotsky and Novack) to get mixed up about logic, but since the '50s they have been smart enough not to get logical inconsistency mixed up with dialectical contradiction at least. (Their fudging ultimately was based on treating Engels as sacred text instead of straightening out his confusions.) You
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: [marxistphilosophy] Dialogues on the Philosophy of Marxism
I don't believe I have seen this book, and I've seen a lot of stuff by Parsons and Somerville. As it happens, I need this journal article by Parsons that the Library of Congress seems to have misplaced: TI: HISTORY AS VIEWED BY MARX AND WHITEHEAD. AU: PARSONS,-HOWARD-L SO: Christian-Scholar. FALL 67; 50: 273-289 IS: 0361-8234 AB: Marx and whitehead differed on idealism and materialism, the nature of historical conflict, and the method of historical change. but their positions interpenetrate and unite at many points. whitehead was an activist and appreciated the force of economics and revolution; marx was a scholar and appreciative of reason. both recognized the role of both thought and practice in hisotry. both understood man's interdependence with the ecological environment, though marx elevated man more than whitehead, who was speculative and cosmological. both began with an interlocked community in history. For marx nature is advanced in man; for whitehead, man is advanced in the whole of nature. At 10:40 PM 9/2/2005 -0400, Jim Farmelant wrote: I was wondering if Ralph Dumain has seen this book, *Dialogues on the Philosophy of Marxism: From the Proceedings of the Society for the Philosophical Study of Dialectical Materialism* eds. John Somervilee Howard L. Parsons, published by Greenwood Press, 1974? Apparently is a collection of papers presented at discussions held by the Society for the Philosophical Study of Dialectical Materialism which was/is organized under the auspices of the American Philosophical Association. At these discussions, American, Soviet, and other eastern European philosophers participated. The book provides coverage of discussions concerning various topics in Marxist philosophy including its philosophical foundations, Marxism and logic (relationship between formal logic and dialectical logic), philosophy of science, Marxism and humanism, ethical theory, alienation, and Marxism and existentialism, amongst other topics. Jim F. ___ 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] Graham Priest: dialectic dialetheic
Priest, Graham. 'Dialectic and Dialetheic', Science and Society 1990, 53, 388-415. Priest is an odd duck. He illustrates the problem of combining two disparate enterprises: the pursuit of logic as a pure formal enterprise (in his case paraconsistent logic, which admits of true contradictions, whose attendant doctrine is dialetheism), and the substantive engagement with philosophical issues and ultimately the real world. While logic was practically developed to study the nature of inference, valid and invalid argument (without larger philosophical claims), its formal form has never neatly meshed with the messiness of the real world nor with the structuring the categories of its fundamental understanding. Furthermore, mixing up logic with metaphysics has, historically, more often served the cause of mysticism than science. In his 1995 (with additions in 2002) book BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT, Priest bravely reviews the history of western philosophy (with Nagarjuna thrown in in 2002) and attempts to unify all paradoxes in his Inclosure Schema. (I have uploaded his diagram to two discussion lists with the filename logicreal2.rtf) Paradoxically, paradoxically, by the time he has accomplished this task, he has left the philosophical content of all these philosophies embodying these paradoxes behind. In other words, the bare formal structure he seeks to generalize does not do justice to the nature of the philosophical issues involved. In a later paper on philosophy in the 21st century, Priest predicts that Asian philosophy will be the next big thing. Perhaps this ties in to his interest in Nagarjuna, Taoism, and the martial arts. About Marxism he seems to throw up his hands and suggest that somehow it drowned in the Sea of Ilyenkov. I'll review this article more extensively at a later date. However, back in 1989, Priest aggressively attempts to prove that Hegel, Marx, and Engels were adherents of dialetheism. What this amounts to may prove instructive. (1) That Hegel's dialectics is dialetheism should be a no-brainer, Priest argues. Hegel states that the very nature of motion embodies contradiction. (You will be familiar with the issue from Zeno's paradox.) But others have denied that Hegel affirms contradiction in the formal logical sense. Marxist philosophers have made similar denials about the marxist view of dialectical contradiction. Sometimes contradiction is characterized as the co-existence of conflicting forces, which is hardly a logical interpretation. Priest cites a few to that effect. After the Stalin era (in which contradiction hazily covered a variety of meanings), a growing number of Soviet philosophers dissociated the notion of dialectical contradiction from any taint of logical contradiction (Sheptulin, Narskii), and some maintain that contradictions hold in thought but not in reality (Narskii). (2) The arguments against this position: In Hegel's time, the only logic extant was Aristotle's logic, which Hegel deemed inadequate from a dialectical perspective. But Frege/Russell logic is far more sophisticated, and is the gold standard now. Contradiction is even more taboo. Note Priest's quotation of Popper on dialectic. Most Marxists, who know little of formal logic, have been browbeaten into retreating from dialetheism. But now we have paraconsistent logic to the rescue. (3) Dialetheic logic: Priest outlines the principles of paraconsistent logic, which may assign truth values of both true and false. He also discusses its semantics. He also introduces an operator ^ to nomialize sentences, e.g. ^A means that A (e.g. 'that Sam went to the store' is true). Further discussion. (4) Motion: an illustration. Priest claims that paraconsistent logic can easily render Hegel's notion of the paradox of motion into logical form. He also deals with an argument based on a distinction between extensional and intensional contradiction. In extensional contradiction, there is no intrinsic connection between the conjuncts. But for intensional (putatively dialectical) contradictions, there is an internal relation between the conjuncts not captured by a mere extensional conjunction (A not-A). Priest treats this latter qualification by way of example (with reference to Grice's conversational implicature), but leaves us hanging, and promises to pick up the argument again in section 8. (5) The history of Hegel's dialectic: This section is quite interesting, and appears to be remote from the realm of paraconsistent logic. Hegel draw on his predecessors Kant and Fichte as well as the medieval Neo-Platonists who held that the One embodies contradictions. Priest quotes Hegel's analysis of Kant's antinomies of reason. Hegel objects to Kant's banishing contradiction from the world and relegating it to the Reason claiming that reason falls into contradiction only by applying the categories. The postulation of the
