swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
+
llco.org/on-falling-into-a-propeller-quotes-on-dialectics-and-science/
On walking into a propeller: Quotes on dialectics and science from Leading Light Prairie Fire
The following is from a mostly one-sided debate on the nature of dialectics versus science. We are not going to bother giving quotes from the others who participated in this one-sided debate. Those who want to see the complete debate can go here: https://www.facebook.com/classvelija/posts/316478568500207?comment_id=316523631829034¬if_t=like The comments are slightly edited.
“If you understand where dialectics comes from, then it should be apparent why it is nonsense. It comes out of the misguided, post-Kantian German idealist project to “scientize” (a better translation is “systematize”) the works of Kant. The thinkers of that period thought there was a kind of incoherence between Kant’s first and second critiques in particular. There was an attempt to systematize Kant’s works to a single principle or thought. Also, it seems like Hegel is trying to come up with Kantian transcendental categories to account for the experience of motion. But, since Hegel drops the distinction between mind and world, what in Kant are best read as merely epistemic conditions that structure experience and justification become metaphysical laws that structure the world itself. Kant’s approach to the mind is much more in line with modern cognitive science than Hegel’s metaphysics.”
“Read Mao’s On Contradiction. And I have a great respect for Mao’s work as a whole, but he was no philosopher. I think it was Althusser who said Mao is a deep thinker, not a technical one or something to that effect. Marxism has a scientific core despite the attempt to package it in unscientific Hegelian metaphysical jargon. Mao was a genius regardless of his errors.”
“The idea that all science boils down to a handful of dialectical laws is ridiculous. That isn’t how science works. Read Mao’s description of how a bomb works in On Contradiction. Then go try to make a bomb. Let’s see how helpful dialectical mysticism is. Now, go study chemistry and engineering for a few years and try. That should tell you the relative importance of dialectics. What Mao is doing in the article is not giving a real, useful scientific explanation. He is just expressing a bomb’s explosion in metaphysical terms pulled out of thin air (well, pulled out of Hegelian philosophy). Here is another example. The CP used to talk about the law of how quantitative change adds up to qualitative change. They used the example of how even though there is never a threshold of when a pile of sand becomes a mountain, if you add a single grain of sand as a quantitative increase over and over, it will add up to a mountain. This might seem right for 5 seconds until you ask yourself ‘is a mountain really just a big mole hill?’ No. They are totally different things. A mountain is formed through a process of plate techtonics, a geological process of shifting land masses pushing upwards. Adding grains of sand to a pile of sand does not give you a mountain no matter how much you add. It gives you a big pile of sand formed by a totally different process. I could go on and on. Marx appropriated some of the jargon of dialectics, but all of what is scientific in Marx can be stated without the metaphysics.”
“Think of how diverse the sciences are: physics, biology, hydrology, linguistics, social science, mathematics, geology, cognitive science and neurology, structural engineering, revolutionary science (Leading Light Communism), etc. Do all the sciences really boil down to 3 or 4 laws? Of course not. I mentioned mathematics. If one counts addition as a science, then there are some special problems. Kurt Godel proved that any finite set of laws that are powerful enough to generate all the truths of addition necessarily contains a contradiction (a set of laws that contains a contradiction will generate all statements, including all the truths of addition). Dialectics is not predictive nor really explanatory. It is more like a metaphysical rhetoric that people try to make fit science and phenomena. But the actual science gets on just fine without it. It is a kind of superfluous rhetoric. A good example of this is the Cultural Revolution debate in China on whether class struggle or unity is principal under socialism. The polemicists of that period made a simple debate of whether class struggle should be the main focus under socialism or should the main focus be unifying society around building up the productive forces into a bizarre debate of whether ‘one divides into two’ or ‘two unifies into one’ at the metaphysical level. Again, they were taking a real issue and casting it in superfluous metaphysical rhetoric. Such metaphysics just serves to obscure the real issue.
Also, what was said about how a primary aspect can change and become secondary and vice versa is no great discovery. Things change. Important things can become less important. Less important things can become more important. No shit. Is this some great dialectical discovery? No, it is a banality that every child knows. Stating that things can change, that the primary aspect can become secondary and vice versa is not stating anything scientific. Stating that does not predict anything. It is describing phenomena in dialectical jargon. It is a description of a particular kind, a metaphysical kind. It is using a certain kind of metaphor with unfortunate metaphysical baggage. Unlike science, it predicts nothing, explains nothing. Now, if dialectics was a real science you would have laws that actually predicted in a useful way. For example, please, masters of dialects tell us the universal conditions in nature (dialectics purports to be universal) that would allow us to predict when a primary becomes secondary? Tell me, under what conditions X,Y,Z will a primary become secondary? Under what conditions does a ‘second aspect’ become a ‘third aspect?’ If dialectics can’t say when/where/how these changes happen, just that they happen then it is no science. Contrast, for example, the dialectic metaphysical description that things change to the description in chemistry that predicts the conditions under which liquids become solids. There is a difference between a metaphysical description and a predictive scientific one.”
“Also, Mao’s point in On Contradiction about the united front, which was perfectly right in Mao’s context does not require the metaphysics of the rest of the article. One doesn’t need all the weird metaphysics to point out that when interests align that there can be and is unity between classes against a common enemy. Mao’s point on the united front is correct despite the problematic parts of the article.
On Rosa, I disagree with Rosa’s conclusions in that article that dialectics leads to Stalinism or whatever. However, for those who have the ability to follow her arguments, she is often more correct than those advocating dialectics. She isn’t really breaking new ground in what she says. But most logicians dismiss dialectics offhand because it is so obviously problematic. Bertrand Russell’s comments about Hegel confusing sense and reference in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a good example. There is a long tradition of criticism of dialectics. Dialectics is not really taken too seriously by most philosophers today. What Rosa does is a good job of compiling a lot stuff together from the advocates of dialectics and then tears it apart from using formal logic. This is fine in itself, but there is an overconfidence in formal logic there. I think the more powerful criticism of dialectics is not showing that it riddled with contradictions and sophistry, but that dialectics is not predictive nor explanatory in the way that science is. It is metaphysics, not science. It is superfluous to science, including revolutionary science, Leading Light Communism.
But let me point out that there is a weakness in Rosa’s other critics here. Just because people may not understand what she is saying does not make it nonsense. It’s kind of like the people who can’t follow simple mathematical arguments who dismiss Leading Light Communism out of their own ignorance. ‘Numbers Shumbers’ is their reply to well-argued, well-researched scientific arguments. Just because someone does not understand something does not mean it is nonsense necessarily. People should not be so comfortable about what they think they know. This is a lesson from another kind of dialectician in another, useful sense, Socrates. Isn’t that the first lesson of philosophy?”
“Science is a body of knowledge, a set of theories, propositions, whatever that have a high degree of both predictive and explanatory power. Predictive power is how well a theory predicts. What this is should be obvious. Explanatory power is a little more tricky, but there are those, like Quine for example, who have made ground in this area. I’m not going to get it all here, because that would be long and drawn out. But, let me use an example. Prior to the development of the sun-centered model of the solar system, there was a model of the solar system that was geo-centric. The motions of the planets were based on ad hoc descriptions of their apparent motions called ‘epicycles.’ When Copernicus first provided his sun-centered model, it lacked the predictive power of the epicycle model because all the details hadn’t been worked out in the sun-centered model yet. Specifically, Copernicus hadn’t gotten the orbits exactly right since he was still thinking in terms of pure circles. Thomas Khun discusses some of this in his book on the structure of scientific revolutions. Nonetheless, Copernicus’ model gradually was refined and the old model was exposed. Even though the predictive power may have been a bit off, more farsighted people could see the potential in his model because of its elegance and simplicity contrary to the prior model. Simplicity, predicting more with less, accounting for more with less, is one of the characteristics of a more scientific theory. For example, if you have a body of observations and you have two theories that account for them, but let’s say one theory does so with less premises, laws, etc. than the other one, then the more simpler theory has more explanatory power. This is not all there is to explanatory power, but it is part of it. There is a lot more to say here, but I will leave it here for now.”
“Marx’s original project was scientific socialism/communism, using the most advanced science to reach the goal of communism. His mathematical modeling of exploitation was a big advance even if the labor theory of value has been surpassed today, even if his dialectics were a big error. Lukacs was right when he said you can reject all of Marx’s predictions and still be a Marxist. He was wrong when he associated the scientific core of Marx with the dialectical method. The scientific core is the mathematical modeling to generate prediction and explanation regarding exploitation and social change, the modeling of how history changes, how society changes, etc., all of this can be stated without dialectics. Hegel’s record is mixed. His approach to the mind, for example, is a regression. Kant’s idea that the mind structures experience, and his functionalist, psychologist descriptions of this, are more in line with contemporary mind science than Hegel, for example. Even Locke’s clunky models of the mind are closer to contemporary mind science than Hegel. But, Hegel’s historicism was certainly an advance in other areas.
On your questions about ontology and metaphysics: There may be ontological implications to the most advanced science, but one can be anti-realist about the ontology. Ontology as ontology is superfluous. After all, science changes and so do the ontological implications of science. Science is a tool, not ‘the book of nature.’ If you want to have scientific socialism, then you need to understand the most advanced stuff out there. And that ain’t dialectics.
I am using the word ‘metaphysics’ in the orthodox way that philosophy does. The word, as I am sure you know, comes from how the librarians at Alexandrea arranged certain works of Aristotle’s. Ontology, the study of being itself, what kinds of things there are — debates about whether universals are real in the same way particulars are, debates about whether numbers are real in the same way trees are, etc. — is part of metaphysics. Although Aristotle was a genius and one of the greatest scientists of all time, metaphysics represents a kind approach divorced from science, concerns about prediction, experiment, etc. It is more a way of looking at the world and trying to tease out the answers to certain questions about existence, but existence understood in an incorrect and ‘folksy’ way. Here, I am a big fan of both Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s epistemic turns that look at how and why certain incorrect questions are generated along with the metaphysics associated with those incorrect questions. This approach is similar to how Marx deals with ideologies by examining under what conditions they arise. Academic metaphysics, ontology, whatever, is kind of like a souped-up folk understanding. It’s like if you had a folk understanding of the world, but then teased out all the implications, really made the folky understanding consistent and technical, but the whole project is misguided to begin with. Here I am talking about ‘folk understanding’ kind of the same way that eliminative materialists talk about “folk psychology,” although I have differences with them, obviously.”
“I reject dialectics because it is not science. It is metaphysics. If you read my earlier post I challenged the dialecticians to give a more sufficient version of dialectics. To use one example, of which I could have chosen numerous, merely stating that a ‘primary aspect’ can change into a ‘secondary’ is a banality. Stating it is no more scientific than stating important things can become less important. So, I will give you the opportunity to make this particular part of dialectics more like a science, more predictive, more ‘sufficient,’ to use your term Please, state under what particular conditions this happens. Under what universal conditions (dialectics does purport to be universal) X,Y,Z does a primary become a secondary? The ‘science’ of dialectics has been around since Hegel and I guess it hasn’t even advanced to a point where it can state something as basic as that. The lack of advance itself is also a characteristic of more metaphysical, less scientific projects. Contrast the lack of predictive power in the jargon of dialecticss versus the science of chemistry, which can clearly state under what conditions a liquid can become a solid, etc.
I do have very little respect for navel-gazing type phenomenology. So would Marx and Freud. Marx understood how deeply held beliefs, even ones that seem non-thematic (like a non-thematic moral intuition or emotion) is determined by society and history. This is the kind of historicism that is correct in Hegel. Very useful in understanding Antigone, for example. Freud, whatever the merits of his work as a whole, understood how important the unconscious was and that the self cannot be an accurate reporter of itself all the time. Or, you could read Sellers’ The Myth of the Given. Just look at how we mistakenly think we see color in our full visual field or how we don’t see our blindspots without prompting. There is plenty of this kind of stuff out there. Yes, you got me there. I do have respect for cognitive science, which actually gets into the nitty-gritty of how experience is constituted, which looks at the relation between the phenomenological field and the brain. Even Descartes tried to tie his phenomenology to a proto-functionalism and semi-biological description in his discussion of phantom limbs, for example. The pure navel-gazing stuff really is very pre-scientific.
As far as epistemology goes, I already answered this in my discussion of predictive and explanatory power. These two indices are the arbiter of what counts as more scientific and less scientific. And, yes, LLCO is the best arbiter of this currently for revolutionary science — but this is really not the point of this debate. It’s kind of funny to me that you single-out my discussion as somehow not being up to your standard of what epistemology should look like when I am the only one in this thread who has even come close to offering anything coherent and educated on the topic. This is a very elevated discussion for a facebook thread. Perhaps you should apply your own standards to yourself and offer your full-blown theories of epistemology or better yet turn dialectics into an actual science. I already pointed people in the right direction here. I can’t do all the work on demand in a facebook thread.
You claim that I think science is universal. Actually it is the exact opposite. The dialecticians claim they have the 3 or 4 keys to universal science to unlock everything in the universe. I stated very clearly that science is a diverse collection of different projects with different, but often related organizational principles. How the different sciences related to each other is how Wittgenstein conceived games relating to each other. There is no single set of principles that all games reduce to, no single set of criteria. What makes a game a game is that it has a family resemblance to the other games. Think of the difference between three circles overlapping in a Venn Diagram and a chain of three circles where they overlap like a bike lock chain. This is obviously oversimplified (the overlaps are more complex actually, they just don’t have a single center that counts as an ‘essence’) to make the point. Whatever your disagreements with me, I believe you should read what I am saying more closely because I clearly am not saying what you attribute to me in this case.”
“Firstly, let me get this out of the way. You have misunderstood LLCO’s conception of high and low science. High science is the more intellectual version of the breakthrough. It is always more nuanced and intellectual than low science. Low science is the form of the science that allows the high science to become relevant as a weapon of the proletariat. Low science is more formulaic, more repetitive (just read Sendero’s old literature or Chinese Maoist literature). High science is more aimed at working out the details of the scientific advance and even pushing it forward, low science aimed at creating the unity to implement that advance on the ground by unifying the revolutionary class for revolution. There is the advanced work, then there is ‘Marxism-Leninism,’ ‘Maoism,’ etc. With LLCO, we try to design our materials to reach both the intellectual revolutionary and the semi-literate proletarian. It is kind of how Gramsci said (to paraphrase liberally) it took a Lenin to make Marxism into a force of history. This really has very little to do with the discussion.
Secondly, I am not sure what your personal conception of dialectics is. I already stated I like the sense of dialectics that is found in Plato, at least his earlier works. The topic of this discussion is not Socrates’ dialectics, it is formal systems of dialectics found in much of the Marxist tradition (the handful of laws that supposedly add up to a mega-science) and in Hegel himself (at least his more mature works). The topic that is being discussed are those forms of dialectics that purport to be science. The definition you stated is more in line with the looser Socratic sense, which I already said I had no problem with. In fact, I even recommended ‘more Socrates, less Hegel,’ more reflection, less dogma, in a previous comment.
Thirdly, the ‘limits’ of particular science are not ‘always already’ determined — a horrible piece of jargon from phenomenology if there ever was one. That just isn’t true or chemistry wouldn’t develop. Modern chemistry did not simply appear in its current form. It was the process of a long journey of scientific discovery. The reason sciences like physics or chemistry or even revolutionary science develop is exactly because they are scientific. They are open to changing along certain lines, and sometimes even those lines can shift. Contrast this to formal dialectics, the last evolution of which was Mao’s addition of the supposed ‘law of the negation of the negation’ more than a half century ago. This kind of metaphysical stagnation is very different from the very active development of the sciences over time. Science is very different than metaphysics. Science may have ontological implications, but so does any claim about the world. Science does not see its ontological implications as unchanging, eternal. Science evolves.
Lastly, you aren’t reading what I state closely enough. Predictive and explanatory power is a way to evaluate one science against another. It is how one evaluates the relative value of competing theories. This is different than saying that this is the sufficient essence of every single science or science itself. And I’m clearly not saying this is the only organizing principle of every science as formal dialectics seems to claim its few laws are. The basic assumptions, methods, etc. of each particular science relate more to each other the ways one game relates to another. This is a subtle distinction, but it is an important one. And, yes, I know I gave a simpler working definition in my previous comment, but I clarified what I meant in my last post.”
“Some ‘noble lies’ are worse or better than others. "
On walking into a propeller: Quotes on dialectics and science from Leading Light Prairie Fire
The following is from a mostly one-sided debate on the nature of dialectics versus science. We are not going to bother giving quotes from the others who participated in this one-sided debate. Those who want to see the complete debate can go here: https://www.facebook.com/classvelija/posts/316478568500207?comment_id=316523631829034¬if_t=like The comments are slightly edited.
“If you understand where dialectics comes from, then it should be apparent why it is nonsense. It comes out of the misguided, post-Kantian German idealist project to “scientize” (a better translation is “systematize”) the works of Kant. The thinkers of that period thought there was a kind of incoherence between Kant’s first and second critiques in particular. There was an attempt to systematize Kant’s works to a single principle or thought. Also, it seems like Hegel is trying to come up with Kantian transcendental categories to account for the experience of motion. But, since Hegel drops the distinction between mind and world, what in Kant are best read as merely epistemic conditions that structure experience and justification become metaphysical laws that structure the world itself. Kant’s approach to the mind is much more in line with modern cognitive science than Hegel’s metaphysics.”
“Read Mao’s On Contradiction. And I have a great respect for Mao’s work as a whole, but he was no philosopher. I think it was Althusser who said Mao is a deep thinker, not a technical one or something to that effect. Marxism has a scientific core despite the attempt to package it in unscientific Hegelian metaphysical jargon. Mao was a genius regardless of his errors.”
“The idea that all science boils down to a handful of dialectical laws is ridiculous. That isn’t how science works. Read Mao’s description of how a bomb works in On Contradiction. Then go try to make a bomb. Let’s see how helpful dialectical mysticism is. Now, go study chemistry and engineering for a few years and try. That should tell you the relative importance of dialectics. What Mao is doing in the article is not giving a real, useful scientific explanation. He is just expressing a bomb’s explosion in metaphysical terms pulled out of thin air (well, pulled out of Hegelian philosophy). Here is another example. The CP used to talk about the law of how quantitative change adds up to qualitative change. They used the example of how even though there is never a threshold of when a pile of sand becomes a mountain, if you add a single grain of sand as a quantitative increase over and over, it will add up to a mountain. This might seem right for 5 seconds until you ask yourself ‘is a mountain really just a big mole hill?’ No. They are totally different things. A mountain is formed through a process of plate techtonics, a geological process of shifting land masses pushing upwards. Adding grains of sand to a pile of sand does not give you a mountain no matter how much you add. It gives you a big pile of sand formed by a totally different process. I could go on and on. Marx appropriated some of the jargon of dialectics, but all of what is scientific in Marx can be stated without the metaphysics.”
“Think of how diverse the sciences are: physics, biology, hydrology, linguistics, social science, mathematics, geology, cognitive science and neurology, structural engineering, revolutionary science (Leading Light Communism), etc. Do all the sciences really boil down to 3 or 4 laws? Of course not. I mentioned mathematics. If one counts addition as a science, then there are some special problems. Kurt Godel proved that any finite set of laws that are powerful enough to generate all the truths of addition necessarily contains a contradiction (a set of laws that contains a contradiction will generate all statements, including all the truths of addition). Dialectics is not predictive nor really explanatory. It is more like a metaphysical rhetoric that people try to make fit science and phenomena. But the actual science gets on just fine without it. It is a kind of superfluous rhetoric. A good example of this is the Cultural Revolution debate in China on whether class struggle or unity is principal under socialism. The polemicists of that period made a simple debate of whether class struggle should be the main focus under socialism or should the main focus be unifying society around building up the productive forces into a bizarre debate of whether ‘one divides into two’ or ‘two unifies into one’ at the metaphysical level. Again, they were taking a real issue and casting it in superfluous metaphysical rhetoric. Such metaphysics just serves to obscure the real issue.
Also, what was said about how a primary aspect can change and become secondary and vice versa is no great discovery. Things change. Important things can become less important. Less important things can become more important. No shit. Is this some great dialectical discovery? No, it is a banality that every child knows. Stating that things can change, that the primary aspect can become secondary and vice versa is not stating anything scientific. Stating that does not predict anything. It is describing phenomena in dialectical jargon. It is a description of a particular kind, a metaphysical kind. It is using a certain kind of metaphor with unfortunate metaphysical baggage. Unlike science, it predicts nothing, explains nothing. Now, if dialectics was a real science you would have laws that actually predicted in a useful way. For example, please, masters of dialects tell us the universal conditions in nature (dialectics purports to be universal) that would allow us to predict when a primary becomes secondary? Tell me, under what conditions X,Y,Z will a primary become secondary? Under what conditions does a ‘second aspect’ become a ‘third aspect?’ If dialectics can’t say when/where/how these changes happen, just that they happen then it is no science. Contrast, for example, the dialectic metaphysical description that things change to the description in chemistry that predicts the conditions under which liquids become solids. There is a difference between a metaphysical description and a predictive scientific one.”
“Also, Mao’s point in On Contradiction about the united front, which was perfectly right in Mao’s context does not require the metaphysics of the rest of the article. One doesn’t need all the weird metaphysics to point out that when interests align that there can be and is unity between classes against a common enemy. Mao’s point on the united front is correct despite the problematic parts of the article.
On Rosa, I disagree with Rosa’s conclusions in that article that dialectics leads to Stalinism or whatever. However, for those who have the ability to follow her arguments, she is often more correct than those advocating dialectics. She isn’t really breaking new ground in what she says. But most logicians dismiss dialectics offhand because it is so obviously problematic. Bertrand Russell’s comments about Hegel confusing sense and reference in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a good example. There is a long tradition of criticism of dialectics. Dialectics is not really taken too seriously by most philosophers today. What Rosa does is a good job of compiling a lot stuff together from the advocates of dialectics and then tears it apart from using formal logic. This is fine in itself, but there is an overconfidence in formal logic there. I think the more powerful criticism of dialectics is not showing that it riddled with contradictions and sophistry, but that dialectics is not predictive nor explanatory in the way that science is. It is metaphysics, not science. It is superfluous to science, including revolutionary science, Leading Light Communism.
But let me point out that there is a weakness in Rosa’s other critics here. Just because people may not understand what she is saying does not make it nonsense. It’s kind of like the people who can’t follow simple mathematical arguments who dismiss Leading Light Communism out of their own ignorance. ‘Numbers Shumbers’ is their reply to well-argued, well-researched scientific arguments. Just because someone does not understand something does not mean it is nonsense necessarily. People should not be so comfortable about what they think they know. This is a lesson from another kind of dialectician in another, useful sense, Socrates. Isn’t that the first lesson of philosophy?”
“Science is a body of knowledge, a set of theories, propositions, whatever that have a high degree of both predictive and explanatory power. Predictive power is how well a theory predicts. What this is should be obvious. Explanatory power is a little more tricky, but there are those, like Quine for example, who have made ground in this area. I’m not going to get it all here, because that would be long and drawn out. But, let me use an example. Prior to the development of the sun-centered model of the solar system, there was a model of the solar system that was geo-centric. The motions of the planets were based on ad hoc descriptions of their apparent motions called ‘epicycles.’ When Copernicus first provided his sun-centered model, it lacked the predictive power of the epicycle model because all the details hadn’t been worked out in the sun-centered model yet. Specifically, Copernicus hadn’t gotten the orbits exactly right since he was still thinking in terms of pure circles. Thomas Khun discusses some of this in his book on the structure of scientific revolutions. Nonetheless, Copernicus’ model gradually was refined and the old model was exposed. Even though the predictive power may have been a bit off, more farsighted people could see the potential in his model because of its elegance and simplicity contrary to the prior model. Simplicity, predicting more with less, accounting for more with less, is one of the characteristics of a more scientific theory. For example, if you have a body of observations and you have two theories that account for them, but let’s say one theory does so with less premises, laws, etc. than the other one, then the more simpler theory has more explanatory power. This is not all there is to explanatory power, but it is part of it. There is a lot more to say here, but I will leave it here for now.”
“Marx’s original project was scientific socialism/communism, using the most advanced science to reach the goal of communism. His mathematical modeling of exploitation was a big advance even if the labor theory of value has been surpassed today, even if his dialectics were a big error. Lukacs was right when he said you can reject all of Marx’s predictions and still be a Marxist. He was wrong when he associated the scientific core of Marx with the dialectical method. The scientific core is the mathematical modeling to generate prediction and explanation regarding exploitation and social change, the modeling of how history changes, how society changes, etc., all of this can be stated without dialectics. Hegel’s record is mixed. His approach to the mind, for example, is a regression. Kant’s idea that the mind structures experience, and his functionalist, psychologist descriptions of this, are more in line with contemporary mind science than Hegel, for example. Even Locke’s clunky models of the mind are closer to contemporary mind science than Hegel. But, Hegel’s historicism was certainly an advance in other areas.
On your questions about ontology and metaphysics: There may be ontological implications to the most advanced science, but one can be anti-realist about the ontology. Ontology as ontology is superfluous. After all, science changes and so do the ontological implications of science. Science is a tool, not ‘the book of nature.’ If you want to have scientific socialism, then you need to understand the most advanced stuff out there. And that ain’t dialectics.
I am using the word ‘metaphysics’ in the orthodox way that philosophy does. The word, as I am sure you know, comes from how the librarians at Alexandrea arranged certain works of Aristotle’s. Ontology, the study of being itself, what kinds of things there are — debates about whether universals are real in the same way particulars are, debates about whether numbers are real in the same way trees are, etc. — is part of metaphysics. Although Aristotle was a genius and one of the greatest scientists of all time, metaphysics represents a kind approach divorced from science, concerns about prediction, experiment, etc. It is more a way of looking at the world and trying to tease out the answers to certain questions about existence, but existence understood in an incorrect and ‘folksy’ way. Here, I am a big fan of both Kant’s and Wittgenstein’s epistemic turns that look at how and why certain incorrect questions are generated along with the metaphysics associated with those incorrect questions. This approach is similar to how Marx deals with ideologies by examining under what conditions they arise. Academic metaphysics, ontology, whatever, is kind of like a souped-up folk understanding. It’s like if you had a folk understanding of the world, but then teased out all the implications, really made the folky understanding consistent and technical, but the whole project is misguided to begin with. Here I am talking about ‘folk understanding’ kind of the same way that eliminative materialists talk about “folk psychology,” although I have differences with them, obviously.”
“I reject dialectics because it is not science. It is metaphysics. If you read my earlier post I challenged the dialecticians to give a more sufficient version of dialectics. To use one example, of which I could have chosen numerous, merely stating that a ‘primary aspect’ can change into a ‘secondary’ is a banality. Stating it is no more scientific than stating important things can become less important. So, I will give you the opportunity to make this particular part of dialectics more like a science, more predictive, more ‘sufficient,’ to use your term Please, state under what particular conditions this happens. Under what universal conditions (dialectics does purport to be universal) X,Y,Z does a primary become a secondary? The ‘science’ of dialectics has been around since Hegel and I guess it hasn’t even advanced to a point where it can state something as basic as that. The lack of advance itself is also a characteristic of more metaphysical, less scientific projects. Contrast the lack of predictive power in the jargon of dialecticss versus the science of chemistry, which can clearly state under what conditions a liquid can become a solid, etc.
I do have very little respect for navel-gazing type phenomenology. So would Marx and Freud. Marx understood how deeply held beliefs, even ones that seem non-thematic (like a non-thematic moral intuition or emotion) is determined by society and history. This is the kind of historicism that is correct in Hegel. Very useful in understanding Antigone, for example. Freud, whatever the merits of his work as a whole, understood how important the unconscious was and that the self cannot be an accurate reporter of itself all the time. Or, you could read Sellers’ The Myth of the Given. Just look at how we mistakenly think we see color in our full visual field or how we don’t see our blindspots without prompting. There is plenty of this kind of stuff out there. Yes, you got me there. I do have respect for cognitive science, which actually gets into the nitty-gritty of how experience is constituted, which looks at the relation between the phenomenological field and the brain. Even Descartes tried to tie his phenomenology to a proto-functionalism and semi-biological description in his discussion of phantom limbs, for example. The pure navel-gazing stuff really is very pre-scientific.
As far as epistemology goes, I already answered this in my discussion of predictive and explanatory power. These two indices are the arbiter of what counts as more scientific and less scientific. And, yes, LLCO is the best arbiter of this currently for revolutionary science — but this is really not the point of this debate. It’s kind of funny to me that you single-out my discussion as somehow not being up to your standard of what epistemology should look like when I am the only one in this thread who has even come close to offering anything coherent and educated on the topic. This is a very elevated discussion for a facebook thread. Perhaps you should apply your own standards to yourself and offer your full-blown theories of epistemology or better yet turn dialectics into an actual science. I already pointed people in the right direction here. I can’t do all the work on demand in a facebook thread.
You claim that I think science is universal. Actually it is the exact opposite. The dialecticians claim they have the 3 or 4 keys to universal science to unlock everything in the universe. I stated very clearly that science is a diverse collection of different projects with different, but often related organizational principles. How the different sciences related to each other is how Wittgenstein conceived games relating to each other. There is no single set of principles that all games reduce to, no single set of criteria. What makes a game a game is that it has a family resemblance to the other games. Think of the difference between three circles overlapping in a Venn Diagram and a chain of three circles where they overlap like a bike lock chain. This is obviously oversimplified (the overlaps are more complex actually, they just don’t have a single center that counts as an ‘essence’) to make the point. Whatever your disagreements with me, I believe you should read what I am saying more closely because I clearly am not saying what you attribute to me in this case.”
“Firstly, let me get this out of the way. You have misunderstood LLCO’s conception of high and low science. High science is the more intellectual version of the breakthrough. It is always more nuanced and intellectual than low science. Low science is the form of the science that allows the high science to become relevant as a weapon of the proletariat. Low science is more formulaic, more repetitive (just read Sendero’s old literature or Chinese Maoist literature). High science is more aimed at working out the details of the scientific advance and even pushing it forward, low science aimed at creating the unity to implement that advance on the ground by unifying the revolutionary class for revolution. There is the advanced work, then there is ‘Marxism-Leninism,’ ‘Maoism,’ etc. With LLCO, we try to design our materials to reach both the intellectual revolutionary and the semi-literate proletarian. It is kind of how Gramsci said (to paraphrase liberally) it took a Lenin to make Marxism into a force of history. This really has very little to do with the discussion.
Secondly, I am not sure what your personal conception of dialectics is. I already stated I like the sense of dialectics that is found in Plato, at least his earlier works. The topic of this discussion is not Socrates’ dialectics, it is formal systems of dialectics found in much of the Marxist tradition (the handful of laws that supposedly add up to a mega-science) and in Hegel himself (at least his more mature works). The topic that is being discussed are those forms of dialectics that purport to be science. The definition you stated is more in line with the looser Socratic sense, which I already said I had no problem with. In fact, I even recommended ‘more Socrates, less Hegel,’ more reflection, less dogma, in a previous comment.
Thirdly, the ‘limits’ of particular science are not ‘always already’ determined — a horrible piece of jargon from phenomenology if there ever was one. That just isn’t true or chemistry wouldn’t develop. Modern chemistry did not simply appear in its current form. It was the process of a long journey of scientific discovery. The reason sciences like physics or chemistry or even revolutionary science develop is exactly because they are scientific. They are open to changing along certain lines, and sometimes even those lines can shift. Contrast this to formal dialectics, the last evolution of which was Mao’s addition of the supposed ‘law of the negation of the negation’ more than a half century ago. This kind of metaphysical stagnation is very different from the very active development of the sciences over time. Science is very different than metaphysics. Science may have ontological implications, but so does any claim about the world. Science does not see its ontological implications as unchanging, eternal. Science evolves.
Lastly, you aren’t reading what I state closely enough. Predictive and explanatory power is a way to evaluate one science against another. It is how one evaluates the relative value of competing theories. This is different than saying that this is the sufficient essence of every single science or science itself. And I’m clearly not saying this is the only organizing principle of every science as formal dialectics seems to claim its few laws are. The basic assumptions, methods, etc. of each particular science relate more to each other the ways one game relates to another. This is a subtle distinction, but it is an important one. And, yes, I know I gave a simpler working definition in my previous comment, but I clarified what I meant in my last post.”
“Some ‘noble lies’ are worse or better than others. "
littlegreenpills
littlegreenpills
Poronto
Post rating:
+
this reads like Time Cube http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/
Crow
Crow
Post rating:
+
http://home.igc.org/~venceremos/ This ought to clear things up.
[account deactivated]
stegosaurus
stegosaurus
Post rating:
+
I AM SO FUCKING TIRED OF LONG FACEBOOK CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN LIKE TWO DOZEN PEOPLE. CHOOSE A WORSE MEDIUM FOR YOUR DISCUSSIONS. 4CHAN WOULD WORK BETTER. CHRIST.
stegosaurus
stegosaurus
Post rating:
~
another thing, who the f is klass velija. an albanian from emilia-romagna? seems a bit convenient to me. I call cia.
stegosaurus
stegosaurus
Post rating:
+
this is what communism in the 21st century looks like: me, on my phone, jamming my finger against a cracked screen repeatedly to display earlier comments. oh no, facebook, don't overload my smartphone with all of 87 comments in text, please make me click fifteen times to see the conversation from the beginning.
Crow
Crow
Post rating:
~
intellectuals are such degenerates
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating:
~
a bunch of old people still on facebook
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
~
i agree w the op except the commie stuff
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
~
i don't understand what dialectics is. i think it means something like "the actual historical process, which has a logical and discernible form, of a teleological description of history". in practice it seems like a fudge for "complex process". like if someone says that the soviet union had free speech and you point out censorship then the person has to explain using dialectics and phrases like "substantive freedom".
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
~
getfiscal posted:i don't understand what dialectics is. i think it means something like "the actual historical process, which has a logical and discernible form, of a teleological description of history". in practice it seems like a fudge for "complex process". like if someone says that the soviet union had free speech and you point out censorship then the person has to explain using dialectics and phrases like "substantive freedom".
i also agree with this post except for the commie stuff
stegosaurus
stegosaurus
Post rating:
~
I think marx criticizes proudhon for being undialectical in 'the poverty of philosophy' and i sort of understand what he means there. its not doing the thing where you try to separate the good from the bad, when, in fact, the good comes with the bad. afaik.
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating:
~
aerdil posts videos and is probably young and Cool. don't post on Facebook anymore. It's bad.
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
+
discipline posted:I wonder how many people LLCO can turn out
you mean like at one of those 100 euros/day brothels or what
notciaNOTjew
notciaNOTjew
Post rating:
~
stegosaurus posted:I AM SO FUCKING TIRED OF LONG FACEBOOK CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN LIKE TWO DOZEN PEOPLE. CHOOSE A WORSE MEDIUM FOR YOUR DISCUSSIONS..
It's called twitter
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
~
llco will be receiving a sternly worded letter about this
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
Post rating:
~
lol those ppl are rly dumb. but revleft, also known as CIA.gov, is designed for dumb ppl to confuse and depress innocent young radicals
c_woman
c_woman
Post rating:
+++++
c_woman
c_woman
Post rating:
~
realpost, imo in subjects like biology dialectics is actually a very helpful way to think about some things. there's nothing alive that isn't constantly undermining its capacity to sustain itself.
c_woman
c_woman
Post rating:
~
life is a great metaphor for capitalism. even ernest mandel in his intro to capital makes the analogy once or twice.
[account deactivated]
swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
~
c_man posted:realpost, imo in subjects like biology dialectics is actually a very helpful way to think about some things. there's nothing alive that isn't constantly undermining its capacity to sustain itself.
That's casting a pretty wide net. There are bacteria millions of years old that have been revived from dormancy. There are deep sea endoliths that have been metabolizing for over 10,000 years. And let's not forget the laughable Turritopsis dohrnii:
swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
~
c_man posted:life is a great metaphor for capitalism. even ernest mandel in his intro to capital makes the analogy once or twice.
It SUCKS.
swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
~
stegosaurus posted:I think marx criticizes proudhon for being undialectical in 'the poverty of philosophy' and i sort of understand what he means there. its not doing the thing where you try to separate the good from the bad, when, in fact, the good comes with the bad. afaik.
Marx outgrew his Hegelianism.
c_woman
c_woman
Post rating:
~
swirlsofhistory posted:c_man posted:realpost, imo in subjects like biology dialectics is actually a very helpful way to think about some things. there's nothing alive that isn't constantly undermining its capacity to sustain itself.
That's casting a pretty wide net. There are bacteria millions of years old that have been revived from dormancy. There are deep sea endoliths that have been metabolizing for over 10,000 years. And let's not forget the laughable Turritopsis dohrnii:
oh yeah definitely, i would be crazy to claim that it was necessary in every situation but i think it works decently well as a common thing to look for and then be surprised when it doesn't seem to work like you think it should.
animedad
animedad
Post rating:
~
I thought that interview with rosa (former poster, rip) in northsTar was interesting because her opposition basically came out of the culture of uk activism after the 60s, which makes some sense to me
jools
jools
Post rating:
+
swirlsofhistory posted:c_man posted:life is a great metaphor for capitalism. even ernest mandel in his intro to capital makes the analogy once or twice.
It SUCKS.
its useful for looking at certain things. but you can of course use other heuristics if you like. also marx used organicist metaphors a Lot
for more information read Heuristic Models in Marxian Theory by Loic J. D. Wacquant
swirlsofhistory
swirlsofhistory
Post rating:
~
That was a compulsive reaction to Ernst Mandel's introduction, not analogical connections with biology, which are alright as long as they don't take over what is being explained.
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
~
g.a. cohen has an essay that critiques marx's maternal metaphors for socialism which is funny but also true...... and makes you think.
littlegreenpills
littlegreenpills
Poronto
Post rating:
+
i found bhpn's okcupid and it says "intersectional chicks give me an inerectional dick"
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
Post rating:
~
littlegreenpills posted:i found bhpn's okcupid and it says "intersectional chicks give me an inerectional dick"
agree except the commie stuff
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
Post rating:
+
animedad posted:I thought that interview with rosa (former poster, rip) in northsTar was interesting because her opposition basically came out of the culture of uk activism after the 60s, which makes some sense to me
actually shes just crazy. i know its tough to be a marxist academic and academia sucks and the internet appears to be the great equalizer of knowledge but theres a reason dialectics is used by all well known marxist leaders, academics, and parties while "anti-dialectics" is a few crazy people on the internet and a few CIA analytic philosophers who no one knows or cares about. please do not waste brain power on that, im sure the Grundrisse is still unread 
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
Post rating:
~
except for the leading light communist organization obviously who through the great science of marxism-leninism-maoism-third-worldism-anti-dialectics are the only ones who understand the necessity of JDPON and will lead the masses of the third world
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
+
huey, do you think it's a problem that people with virtually identical views to yours are also considered by you to be garbage humans who will never achieve anything? like hey i'm a maoist-third worldist, no, not like those other maoist-third worldists, those people should all die. in conclusion you are a trotskyite.
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating:
+
i think the reason that anti-dialectics people are few in number is because most people writing dont give a shit about dialectics
c_woman
c_woman
Post rating:
~
you have to have heard of something to be against it. i feel like the number of people who could possibly have an opinion is probably about the same as the number of people who know what the 30 years war was.
animedad
animedad
Post rating:
~
babyhueypnewton posted:animedad posted:I thought that interview with rosa (former poster, rip) in northsTar was interesting because her opposition basically came out of the culture of uk activism after the 60s, which makes some sense to me
actually shes just crazy. i know its tough to be a marxist academic and academia sucks and the internet appears to be the great equalizer of knowledge but theres a reason dialectics is used by all well known marxist leaders, academics, and parties while "anti-dialectics" is a few crazy people on the internet and a few CIA analytic philosophers who no one knows or cares about. please do not waste brain power on that, im sure the Grundrisse is still unread
teh
Edited by animedad ()
animedad
animedad
Post rating:
~
*twiddles thumbs over the glare of my computer sccreen*
babyhueypnewton
babyhueypnewton
Post rating:
~
getfiscal posted:huey, do you think it's a problem that people with virtually identical views to yours are also considered by you to be garbage humans who will never achieve anything? like hey i'm a maoist-third worldist, no, not like those other maoist-third worldists, those people should all die. in conclusion you are a trotskyite.
no they're garbage humans despite having mostly correct views. llco are crazy which makes it sad that they make the correct analysis of third worldism look lazy and dumb