Gnostic Marxist
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Apologies in advance.
Virtual Comrade William McGonagall came to mind.
Don’t mind him. He has lost it.
A problem with brainy, he gets to be Zany.
His Phi Beta Kapas mixed with Frank Zappa.
His mind mixed with brain an incredible slosh,
he thinks all scientists on the side of the posh.He see an elite, incredible feat,
to counter with which we vote with our feet,Instead of the thories,we’ll deliberate and meet,
to decide which is best, incredible choice,In the new world where we’ll all have a voice.
Either ‘mind’ is ‘social’, as Marx and the Socialist Standard argue, or ‘mind’ is ‘individual’, which is what the bourgeoisie argue.
Once again, LBird, if the mind is social that necessarily implies that there must be an objective reality even if we can only apprehend this reality through our own conscious minds. It is our conscious minds that act to persuade us that such an objective reality exists.
“Social” implies the existence of other people apart from ourselves who therefore constitute part of this objective reality. Yet you have consistently argued from your philosophical idealist standpoint that there is no such thing as an objective reality and that “Nothing can have a ‘real existence independent of humanity because humans couldn’t know it.” So dinosaurs couldn’t have really existed, according to you, even though the fossil record shows that they did exist and became extinct long before human beings came into existence.
But equally, according to you, there is no reason to believe that other people exist in an objective sense given that you deny that there is such a thing as objective reality. That being the case, I still want to know from you then how you can possibly argue from your point of view that there is such a thing as a social mind? That is not a problem for me to explain since I do hold other people exist in an objective sense and it is through our social interactions with these other people that our consciousness takes shape
You, on the other hand, have no way of explaining how the social mind arises. If the social mind implies the objective existence of other people, and if you dispute that other people exist in this objective sense, then the very concept of a social mind becomes meaningless in your terms.
All thoughts, all consciousness, begins and ends in your own mind by your own reasoning since it is only your own mind that you have access to, not the minds of other people whose objective existence you deny. In other words, you argue for the very thing that you say the bourgeois argue for – the individual mind
You appear to have a ‘correspondence theory’ of ‘truth’, which argues that the ‘idea’ reflects the ‘referent’.
That’s rubbish. I have explicitly argued against that position in my advocacy of emergence theory. To reiterate, emergence theory holds that higher levels of reality are dependent or supervene on lower levels of reality but are not reducible to the latter. Consciousness does not simply reflect objective reality but actively interprets it
There is no such thing as a unicorn, for example. But the features that make up this mythological creature are drawn from objective reality and imaginatively reassembled in a particular configuration that is our imaginary unicorn
As I have constantly pointed out, there is a two-way interaction between objective reality and subjective consciousness. By denying the very possibility of an objective reality, you deny also the possibility of any such interaction. The very concept of social production which you go on about at length is incompatible with your own philosophical idealism.
For something to be a product of something else implies the latter is external to the former but it is this precisely externality that you have called into question in the first place
Good stuff Robbo. It’s the same argument that Marx used against the creationist in that quote our feathered friend is always bringing up. But that’s not surprising as our feathered friend is a creationist. He too thinks the world has been created, only he calls the creator “Social Mind” rather than “God”.
ALB wrote: “He too thinks the world has been created, only he calls the creator “Social Mind” rather than “God”.”
Don’t you feel ashamed of your Leninist-like lying about your opponent’s politics and philosophy?
Marx argued that active, conscious, humanity was the creator.
You can only read ‘social mind’ because you want, just like Lenin, to portray your opponent as an ‘idealist’.
robbo – try and read some philosophy, especially Marx’s.
alan, Wez, Matt – don’t you think that it’s odd that it’s me quoting the Socialist Standard, and you’re all arguing against it?
“The creation of the earth has received a mighty blow from geognosy – i.e., from the science which presents the formation of the earth, the development of the earth, as a process, as a self-generation. Generatio aequivoca is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation.” (K. Marx, 1844).
Yeah, ALB, ‘Generatio aequivoca’ means ‘self-emancipation’.
Every quote you make from Marx, or even the Socialist Standard, undermines your anti-democratic Leninist Materialism.
I know you’d rather deal with ALB and Robbo since they are at a level that you feel justifies your learning
Again in case you missed my post, could you answer the simple direct questions i posed.
LBird
Instead of accusing your opponents of lying – which is rich coming from you since you have constantly lied throughout this thread (for instance, equating the views of this Party with mechanical materialism) – and patronisingly urging them to “study philosophy” as if they know nothing about the subject, why don’t you ever deal with the crux of the argument that shows you to be a philosophical idealist from start to finish?
You have explicitly denied the existence of an objective reality external to our minds. As explained to you the fact that we only apprehend that reality through our minds is no proof against the existence of such a reality and this is a huge problem for you. It actually destroys everything you have been arguing for hitherto
If there is no objective reality then there can be no other people as part of that objective reality. If there are no people as part of objective reality then there can be no such thing, according to you, as a society or a social mind. Consciousness can only ever be YOUR consciousness – your individual mind – and everything you experience and perceive in the world can only be a product of your individual mind
So it turns out your philosophy is precisely the philosophy of the bourgeois philosophers you pretend to criticise. Though you may vehemently protest against this conclusion, you reject the idea of society and social production in favour of pure individualism and this all stems from the fact that you are a philosophical idealist. Nothing (including other people) has a real existence outside of the conscious mind which can only ever be YOUR own individual conscious mind.
Someone tell him to consult an encyclopaedia.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/equivocal%20generation
https://socratic.org/questions/what-is-the-difference-between-spontaneous-generation-and-biogenesis
Writing before Darwin and Pasteur, Marx was of course wrong but at the time (1844) it seemed the only materialist explanation.
ALB wrote: “...Marx was of course wrong…”
ALB’s now quoting bourgeois encyclopaedias to prove Marx was wrong! LOL!
Sorry, a materialist is quoting objective sources, which were nothing to do with bourgeois social production.
alan, this is pretty sorry stuff, to be aligning yourself with – ALB the Leninist, who favours bourgeois thinking over Marx, and robbo, who’s got his own personal connection to the ‘object’.
Where’s the self-emancipation of the proletariat, amongst all this bourgeois ‘objective science’?
I’ll stick to quoting the Socialist Standard! You couldn’t make this up!
Yeah, ALB, ‘Generatio aequivoca’ means ‘self-emancipation’.
Every quote you make from Marx, or even the Socialist Standard, undermines your anti-democratic Leninist Materialism.
LOL more hilarious rubbish from LBird, the same person who accuses others of lying and then lies about his opponents who have made crystal clear their opposition to Lenin’s mechanical one-way brand of “materialism”
“Generatio aequivoca” does not mean “self emancipation” (a political construct). Rather the idea which goes back to Aristotle refers to the process of spontaneous generation by which new life forms supposedly emerge in the physical world (the real existence of which is something that LBird as an idealist, denies)
Actually, Marx’s explanation was quite wrong and theories of spontaneous generation were increasingly discarded from the mid 19th century onward after the experimental discoveries of scientists like Pasteur. Nevertheless, Marx was quite correct in locating the process by which new life forms in the external physical world rather than in the conscious mind which is LBird’s view
alanjjohnstone wrote: “For the record, can you suggest any political party, contemporary or historical, that has been more democratic than ourselves? Likewise, can you provide an example of a socialist party exemplifying socialism more than we do?”
Is this the question you were referring to, alan?
1. You’re not a ‘democratic party’. Every time I ask by who (and how) is ‘truth’ created, you don’t answer ‘humanity’ by ‘democracy’. You favour the social production of ‘truth’ by an elite of ‘specialists’. Youse write this stuff, it’s not an allegation by me.
2. You’re not a ‘socialist party’. ‘Socialism’ can only be ‘democratic socialism’ (see 1.), and can only be produced by the self-emancipation of the proletariat, not by an ‘elite’ or by ‘biological individuals’. Socialism means all social production is democratic, including our science.
robbo, you haven’t read or understood Marx, so quit now, whilst your ignorance, and touching faith in the bourgeoisie, is still partially hidden.
robbo203 wrote: “Actually, Marx’s explanation was quite wrong…”
So, why bother with Marx and Capital?
Oh, sorry, you don’t.
So LBird, when are you ever going to get round to dealing with this point
“If there is no objective reality then there can be no other people as part of that objective reality. If there are no people as part of objective reality then there can be no such thing, according to you, as a society or a social mind. Consciousness can only ever be YOUR consciousness – your individual mind – and everything you experience and perceive in the world can only be a product of your individual mind”
Are you going to repeatedly ignore this – just as you repeatedly ignored explaining why or how you propose to have the entire world population vote on in order to validate the “truth” of tens of thousands of scientific theories?
Every time anyone presents an inconvenient question to you, you run away and hide or deftly change the subject….
robbo, you must try and read my answers. It’s pointless to keep asking the same question.
‘Objects’ are socially created. That’s the answer.
The fact that you disagree, and want ‘objects’ to be ‘independent of human conscious activity’, is an ideological position.
Deal with your ideology, and ask where it came from.
Hint: it didn’t come from you.
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