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[ALB]

LBird wrote:

I can do no better than re-quote Anton Pannekoek, once again.

Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, p. 29, wrote:

.

Theories of 'butterfly spots' are a human creation, not a discovery of 'butterfly spots'.

I agree with everything Pannekoek writes here. It's a good book which anyone interested in the theory and nature of science should read. Recommended reading for socialists too (also for its rejection of Leninism and its view that the Bolsheviks were establishing state-capitalism not socialism in Russia). It can be read online here.Of course theories of butterfly spots, gravity, entropy, sub-atomic particles, etc, etc are human creations in the sense that they are essentially descriptions, if sometimes complex ones, made of parts of the ever-changing world of phenomena by "the creative mental activity" of humans. They are not a mirror image of something existing out there that has been "discovered", but a more or less useful description of the course of some phenomena out there, useful, that is, for human survival in the best conditions. Their "truth" depends on their accuracy in  predicting what will happen or what would happen again if the same course of phenomena were to be repeated.But I don't think that, as a Professor of Astronomy, Pannekoek would have subscribed to your view that the "truth" of a scientific theory should be decided by a democratic vote (the opinions of a majority) as opposed to accuracy of prediction. I can't see him approving putting the question of the predicted date of the next appearance of Halley's Comet to a vote. Its "truth" will be confirmed by its next appearance, irrespective of how people might vote.Interesting discussion here of whether or not Pluto, in the light of further empirical observations, should still be called a "planet"; which did go to a vote. Not sure that I'd have been qualified to vote on such an issue or would be if a similar issue came up after socialism/communism has been established.  Not sure either that I'd regard it as a grave infringement of democracy if I wasn't given a chance to vote on this. At the risk of being accused of pandering to the man on the Clapham omnibus (and no doubt of a lot more!), I'd say leave it to the International Astronomical Union.Anyway, how do you propose that such an issue be decided in a socialist/communist society? And which way would you have voted?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

What if the society that asks this question is 17th century England? The ‘object’ might be ‘known’ to be a ‘witch’, rather than a mere ‘cat’.This ‘knowledge’ is ‘true’. Since ‘knowledge’ is a social creation, the knowledge, to all intents and purposes is, ‘true’. It is a ‘witch’, not a ‘cat’.

Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

If anyone answers "yes" to this they have swallowed too much postmodern bullshit and would do well to read any of the books by Alan Sokal

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Anyway, how do you propose that such an issue be decided in a socialist/communist society?

This, of course, is the $64,000 question! To move properly onto this issue, though, I think we first have to get some agreement about 'science'. I have to do other things now, but I'll give it some thought and post later.For now…

ALB wrote:

Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

Yes, it does!Unless one identifies 'truth' with 'object', which science itself during the 20th century has shown us can't be done.If one identifies 'truth' with 'knowledge', then it was 'true' that 'the Sun moved round the Earth'. With a later examination of the 'object' by the human subject with different social theories, 'truth' was shown to be 'untrue'. Truth has a history.A tripartite theory of cognition (object, creative social subject, knowledge produced interactively) is the basis of this perspective, as opposed to positivism (passive subject, object/knowledge the same and simply appears to subject) or relativism (creative individual subject, produces knowledge from self, object disappears).

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

If anyone answers "yes" to this they have swallowed too much postmodern bullshit and would do well to read any of the books by Alan Sokal.

Oh dear.  'Truth' equals 'object', is your ideological position, I fear. See Jonathan Marks' comments on Sokal. Must dash.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

ALB wrote:

Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

Yes, it does!

Ok, post-modernism rules ! Next question: Does this mean that before homo sapiens evolved it was not "true" that the Earth existed?

[DJP]

Seeing as a paradigm change does not occur instantaneously does that mean that there was a period of time when the theories of Ptolemy and Copernicus where both true? Or where neither true? Or did the celestial bodies cease their motion before realigning their motions to suit whatever the predominate theory of the time was?In all seriousness though it seems to me LBird's definition of "truth" throws all possiblity of rational discourse out of the window.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

‘mathematics’ is a social construct. I can show that ‘2+2=11’, in base 3. Further, if we change the meanings of the symbols ‘2’ and ‘5’, then ‘2+2=5’ would be ‘true’.

Lewis Carol wrote:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

Is Lbird trying to make the same point as Humpty Dumpty?

[Ed]

Coming back to the Mengle joke earlier his old mate Joeseph Goebbels had something to say on this. (I laughed earlier and hopefully LBird will take this with the same tounge in cheek as his earlier joke was intended)

Goebbels wrote:

"It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.”

The problem I think is the inefficiency of language, which of course is a social construct. The truth is a description of what is reality. It's opposite a fallacy is of course unreality, subjective opinion relative to the individual does not come in to play. When I suggested earlier that truth was in fact inseperable from reality I was accused of changing the parameters of debate.Dictionary definition of truthtruth  NounThe quality or state of being true: "the truth of her accusation".That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality: "tell me the truth". 

[LBird]

Ed wrote:

Dictionary definition of truth

So you regard 'dictionaries' as objective statements of 'facts'?How does your dictionary define 'Communism', comrade?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Ok, post-modernism rules ! Next question: Does this mean that before homo sapiens evolved it was not "true" that the Earth existed.

ALB, your confusing the 'object' with 'knowledge'. Ditto DJP.Your model of cognition has only two components: the 'subject' and the 'object'. For you both, 'knowledge' is identical with the 'object', and thus 'knowledge' is not an independent entity.The model of cognition that stress those two components (object and subject) and excludes a third component (knowledge) is positivism.The model of cognition employed by me, Marx and Pannekoek is a three-component model. This model allows humans to demarcate 'knowledge' as a human product, and thus accept that with humans being fallible, 'knowledge' might be untrue knowledge. In this way, 'knowledge' has a history – we can say when is was 'true' and when it wasn't, and why 'truth' changes, due to changes in social theories.

DJP wrote:

In all seriousness though it seems to me Lbird's definition of "truth" throws all possiblity of rational discourse out of the window.

'Rational'? I suppose you think rationality, too, is an eternal idea. Clearly, you'd have no time for the argument that what's 'rational' is defined differently by classes.

DJP wrote:

Is LBird trying to make the same point as Humpty Dumpty?

DJP, here, commits the error of seeing the subject as an 'individual' (Humpty Dumpty, who continually stresses 'I'). This is bourgeois ideology dressed up as 'rational questioning'.All through this thread I've defined the 'subject' as a 'social subject', whose theories emanate from social conditions.DJP wishes to ignore what I've written, and insert their own ideological categories upon my explanations.Would ALB or DJP like to explain either Marx's or Pannekoek's ideas, using the quotes I've helpfully provided, with the two-model theory of cognition that they are employing?It can't be done. Marx explicitly mentions materialism (objectivism) and idealism (subjectivism) and goes on to unite them in a theory of praxis (interaction of object and subject (humans and nature), to produce a third category, knowledge).

DJP wrote:

Seeing as a paradigm change does not occur instantaneously …

DJP is employing the ideological categories of Thomas Kuhn, who argued that 'paradigms' succeed one another, in series, over time. One paradigm eventually predominates, even with overlaps. This notion of 'serial paradigms' is a social construct.I employ the ideological categories of Imre Lakatos, who argued that 'research programmes' compete with one another, in parallel, at the same time. There are always multiple competing programmes. This notion of 'competing programmes' is a social construct.At least I can identify the ideological bases of our respective thinking. For DJP, all this is 'Humpty-Dumpty talk'.DJP and ALB have access to 'The Truth', apparently. I don't. As a Communist, I have no more access to 'truths' than any other Communist. I'd argue that we have to discuss 'social truths which change' and explain 'why' they change.Take your pick, comrades.

[LBird]

Ed wrote:

The truth is a description of what is reality.

No.'Truth' is something created by humans, as Marx said in the Theses. Feuerbach would have regarded 'truth' as synonymous with 'reality'.Does 'reality' create the 'description' of itself, while humans passively observe?To go back to an earlier analogy that we discussed, does a 'crime scene' describe itself, or is the 'description' a human construct revolving around chosen evidence?Even if that 'evidence' is necessarily partial, does that mean it must be either 'true' or 'untrue'? Can't there be two 'descriptions' of the crime scene which are both 'true', but which also conflict?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

ALB, your confusing the 'object' with 'knowledge'. Ditto DJP.Your model of cognition has only two components: the 'subject' and the 'object'. For you both, 'knowledge' is identical with the 'object', and thus 'knowledge' is not an independent entity.The model of cognition that stress those two components (object and subject) and excludes a third component (knowledge) is positivism.

That may be the "model of cognition" you would prefer to argue against but that's not the one being put forward here.Early on you reposted here something you'd sent to the ICC forum which included this definition of "Critical Realism":

Quote:

The third view of science is one I would call Critical Realism. This approach accepts an independently existing object, an active, inquisitive subject, and sees knowledge as a product of the interaction between subject and object. This differs from positivism in that ‘knowledge’ is not identical to ‘object’: ‘knowledge’ is also an independent variable, something actively created by humans by their interrogation of external reality. Thus, depending upon the questions posed by humans, ‘knowledge’ is based upon, but not the same as, the object. ‘Truth’ exists, but it must always be partial truth produced by humans attempting to understand reality. Realism differs from relativism in that the ‘object’ is not created by humans, ‘knowledge’ is based on (and can be compared with for confirmation) a questioning of an independent reality, and that the mind of the subject is not an individual mind, but the socially-created mind of a social individual. This view begins from our tripartite premise of separate ‘object, subject, knowledge’: it recognises object, subject and knowledge as three interacting variables. [My emphasis]

I said I liked this definition, i.e that I more or less agreed with it.The view you've been expressing in your more recent posts seems to depart from the part I've put in bold which is conceding that the "truth" of some statement claiming to be  "knowledge’ has to confirmed by being compared with external reality and is not just a matter of the dominant opinion at the time. In other words that "knowledge" to be genuine knowledge has to be confirmed by a comparison with external reality (the ever-changing world of phenomena); which is precisely the point we have been trying to make and why, for instance, it was never true that some cats were witches (as in fact many people recognised even in the 17th century).You call for more quotes from Pannekoek. Here's how (in chapter 4 of Lenin As Philosopher) he explains how we "know" the external world exists and existed before there were humans:

Quote:

According to our experience people are born and die; their sensations arise and disappear, but the world remains. When my sensations out of which the world was constituted, cease with my death, the world continues to exist. From acknowledged scientific facts I know that long ago there was a world without man, without any living being. The facts of evolution, founded on our sensations condensed into science, establish a previous world without any sensations. Thus from an intersubjective world common to all mankind, constituted as a world of phenomena by science, we proceed to the constitution of an objective world.

[Ed]

LBird wrote:

Ed wrote:

Dictionary definition of truth

So you regard 'dictionaries' as objective statements of 'facts'?How does your dictionary define 'Communism', comrade?

Well if truth is in the eye of the beholder I and the dictionary can be neither wrong nor right or perhaps both at the same time. Since (if) truth is subjective so must fallacies be. You gotta really love dialectics to find that contradiction plausible.

[LBird]

Well, if everyone else is happy that 'true knowledge' and the 'object being known' are the same thing, I'm outvoted.So, that being agreed, how do we account for Piltdown Man or The Ether?PS. I'm completely baffled why when one says one isn't a positivist/objectivist, the only alternative one can be is a subjectivist/idealist? That is, either 'true' or 'in the eye of the beholder'.I'm finding that I'm saying the same thing, over and over again, now, comrades, so I admit defeat.But… it still bothers me that you can only recognise two alternatives… why is my explanation of three not working?

[Author]

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