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)
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