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[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Well, if everyone else is happy that 'true knowledge' and the 'object being known' are the same thing, I'm outvoted. [….] But… it still bothers me that you can only recognise two alternatives… why is my explanation of three not working?

Probably because you overstate your case by saying that your version of the three-elements theory means that  it was once "true" that some cats were witches, that the Sun used to move round the Earth and, presumably, that the Ether used to exist. You are guilty of what you are accusing others of — assuming that there is no third approach and that if people don't accept that it was once true that the Sun moved round the Earth that means that they must think that "true knowledge" and the "object being known" are the same thing.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Probably because you overstate your case by saying that your version of the three-elements theory means that it was once "true" that some cats were witches, that the Sun used to move round the Earth and, presumably, that the Ether used to exist.

The simple 'historical fact' is that it was once 'true': cats were witches, and the sun went round the earth.For some reason, you're insisting that 'true' means 'reality'. It doesn't.Perhaps if I put it like this:True = reality + theoryThis allows us to explain changes in 'true': if the theory changes, the 'truth' changes – but 'reality' doesn't change. This can explain Piltdown man and The Ether. They were true, according to science, and then they weren't, according to science. Scientific theories changed.You, DJP and Ed seem to be equating 'true' (which is related to the entity of 'knowledge' (produced by humans actively combining reality + theory)) with 'reality' alone.

ALB wrote:

You are guilty of what you are accusing others of — assuming that there is no third approach and that if people don't accept that it was once true that the Sun moved round the Earth that means that they must think that "true knowledge" and the "object being known" are the same thing.

This is exactly what you're doing – equating 'object being known' (sun) and 'true knowledge' (what a society considers to be true about the sun). This can't be done.If I'm 'guilty' of anything, it's being patient, trying to explain 'science' to comrades. Let's hope it's worth it, and bears some fruit.Perhaps if some other comrades commented… if no-one agrees with me, I'll give up, though with regrets.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

The simple 'historical fact' is that it was once 'true': cats were witches, and the sun went round the earth.

I agree that there can be no absolute truth, that external reality exists, that knowledge is our interpretation of external reality, and that our interpretation of this changes over time, but the above is a deduction too far from the theory of knowledge put forward by Pannekoek and others.The fact that you think that this conclusion follows from it ought to make you reconsider whether you are interpreting the theory correctly. In fact can you produce any statement by Pannekoek, Marx, Jonathan Marks and others whose support you have invoked backing up your statement above? I suspect that the only people you might be able to bring forward in support of it will be postmodernists or some other relativists.I suppose you could use your paradox as a way of bringing out the difference between "knowledge" and "reality" but I'd suggest that a more accurate and useful way of explaining your paradox would be:It is a "historical fact" that up to the 17th century it was generally believed to be true that the Sun moved round the Earth.The external reality of the relation between the Sun and the Earth has not changed. It was the same up to the 17th century as it is today.Today, in the light of further evidence and theorising, a better interpretation of this reality is that the Sun goes round the Earth and always has done.So, it was not true that the Sun went round the Earth in the 17th century and before.Another way-out would be to refuse to answer Pontius Pilate's question and not use the words "truth" or "true" at all. In other words, do we need a theory of truth as well as a theory of knowledge?I agree that this discussion seems to have run its course but hopefully  it will have clarified everyone's ideas on the issue. 

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

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.

Is this the sort of thing you have in mind for settling the validity of scientific hypotheses:http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/07/rubicon-river-italy-mock-court-caseAccording to today's papers, the Pisciatello got 269 votes, the Uso 215 and the river Mussolini had renamed the Rubicone 173.Ah, but does that mean that the Pisciatello was the "true" Rubicon?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

It is a "historical fact" that up to the 17th century it was generally believed to be true that the Sun moved round the Earth.The external reality of the relation between the Sun and the Earth has not changed. It was the same up to the 17th century as it is today.Today, in the light of further evidence and theorising, a better interpretation of this reality is that the Sun goes round the Earth and always has done.So, it was not true that the Sun went round the Earth in the 17th century and before.

[my bold]Can't you see that your two uses of 'true' here are different?The first relates to epistemology (knowledge, a human creation), whereas the second relates ontology, to the 'object', which is 'discovered'.Pannekoek's statement clearly relates to the first use, and the second relates to his view of 'materialism'.Simply put, you're using 'true' to mean 'objective'. But 'truth' relates to 'knowledge'.

ALB wrote:

Ah, but does that mean that the Pisciatello was the "true" Rubicon?

Quite frankly, taking the piss does your case no favours. Why you won't engage with the arguments is a mystery to me.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Can't you see that your two uses of 'true' here are different?

Yes, I can. That's why I suggested that another way round your paradox was to not use the words "true" and "truth" at all. So, the statements would read:"It is a "historical fact" that up to the 17th century it was generally believed that the Sun moved round the Earth."and"So, the Sun did not go round the Earth in the 17th century and before."Sorry you took the news item about the Rubicon as taking the piss. I just thought it was an amusing aside to the discussion here.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Yes, I can. That's why I suggested that another way round your paradox was to not use the words "true" and "truth" at all. So, the statements would read: "It is a "historical fact" that up to the 17th century it was generally believed that the Sun moved round the Earth."and"So, the Sun did not go round the Earth in the 17th century and before."

But you're still doing the same thing. To make them commensurate, your second statement would have to read:It is a 'historical fact' that up to the 21st century it was generally believed that the Earth moved round the Sun.Your second statement is unhistorical, and is a claim about eternal 'discovery' in the objective world. Pannekoek says that our understanding of the Sun's movements relative to the Earth is a human creation, just like the laws of physics.

ALB wrote:

Sorry you took the news item about the Rubicon as taking the piss. I just thought it was an amusing aside to the discussion here.

My apologies. Frustration is getting the better of my sense of humour, unfortunately. That's always a bad sign.

[ALB]

What about: It is now known that the Sun did not move round the Earth in the 17th century and before?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

What about: It is now known that the Sun did not move round the Earth in the 17th century and before?

As long it is mirrored by: It was then known that the Earth did not move round the Sun in the 17th century and before.'Known' is in the realm of 'human understanding', as Pannekoek argued, not in the realm of the 'nature'.

Pannekoek wrote:

…from the point of the scientific investigator, [who] sees all this [ie. Sun, Earth, nature, etc.] as an element of nature itself which has been discovered and brought to light by science.

The relative paths of the Sun and Earth are not 'discovered', but…

Pannekoek wrote:

…are products which creative mental activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

If they are 'human products', they can be wrong. What's 'scientific truth' in one era can be shown to be 'untrue' in another era. That doesn't mean the external world of nature changes in either.For Pannekoek, 'mental activity' and 'natural phenomena' have to be combined to 'produce' 'the works of science'.Theory + reality = truth.'Truth' is not 'reality'.

[twc]

Whence Socialist Ideology?

Marx showed that the materialist conception of history implies that socialism lacks capitalism’s need to camouflage social relations of class dominance.

When people cooperate to run society as associated producers of wealth and culture, mystification of social reality [conscious and unconscious ideology] vanishes along with the rest of the social-superstructural conditions required to reproduce the capitalist class as dominant.

[Social Reproduction].

But LBird fears the emergence of a new ruling class of scientists who own and control scientific truth and keep the rest of us in deliberately ignorant subjection under socialism.

He asserts that all truth is irredeemably ideological, and so it had better conform to society’s ideology than to the ideology of the practicing scientists who discover and formulate it. Of course, the practice of discovery and formulation is irredeemably ideological as well. Everything is an ideological social construct.

LBIrd demands that all of society decide on the truth of science, its laws and its results.

Democratic Truth

The following suggests some of the apparent absurdity of demanding that we all vote democratically to formulate ideological truth. Recall, we are not discussing scientific accountability, or scientific practice, or scientific fraud, as such, but only scientific truth.

How do we go about assessing physical truth of this kind [expressed in a mathematical creole for viewing on this web site]?

ℒ_{SM} =

kinetic energies and self-interaction of the gauge bosons

¼ W_{μν} • W^{μν}

— ¼ B_{μν} B^{μν}

— ¼ G^a_{μν} G^{μν}_a

kinetic energies and electroweak interactions of fermions

+ bar{L} γ^μ ( i ∂_μ

        — ½ g τ • W_μ

        — ½ g′ Y B_μ ) L

+ bar{R} γ^μ ( i ∂_μ

        — ½ g τ • W_μ

        — ½ g′ Y B_μ ) R

W^{±}, Z, γ and Higgs masses and couplings

+ ½ | ( i ∂_μ — ½ g τ • W_μ

   — ½ g′ Y B_μ ) φ |² — V(φ)

interactions between quarks and gluons

+ g″ ( bar{q} γ^μ T_a q) G^a_μ

fermion masses and couplings to Higgs

+ ( G_1 bar{L} φ R
  + G_2 bar{L} φ_c R
  + h . c . )

No Conviction without Determinism

The first lesson a scientist learns is to hold conviction in abstract determinism.

Judging deterministic truth is a measurable task, and so it is meaningful. By what criteria do we judge ideological truth?

How can we judge truth if we don’t recognize the efficacy of abstract determinism to predict the outcomes of states and actions?

If we do recognize abstract determinism, why do we need to vote on truth, rather than just test its efficacy?

If testing [experiment, observation and measurement] are irredeemably ideological, can we stop the recursive ideology-on-ideology descent other than by collective ideological fiat?

If theory is irredeemably ideological, what are our grounds for conviction? Enthusiasm?

Conviction in abstract determinism worries the philosopher, but it is the only reliable source of conviction we have.

Conviction in class consciousness is ultimately conviction in scientific determinism, or it remains ideology, as it does for LBird.

Science as Determinism

Contrary to LBird’s imaginings, mankind created science neither to seek truth nor to answer interesting questions [no matter how significant they have emerged as consequences for us] but to solve practical problems.

LBird sees science springing from theory [ideological assumptions] not from practice [need, experience, measurement]. Textbooks and subject reviews often cut to the chase and start their presentation with abstract categories and abstract determinisms — as if they sprung from nowhere — and deterministically develop these abstractions to describe actual instances of material phenomena.

But it would be truly amazing if those abstract categories and abstract determinisms could yield concrete abstractions that actually describe material phenomena if the abstractions themselves had not been originally plucked from the material phenomena they’re stuffed back into.

Marx’s Science

Marx, in Capital, who thought deeply about science as process, first analyses the material practice of commodity exchange in order to abstract from it his key conceptual category value [an imaginary category like all abstractions, that doesn’t correspond to anything material, except by deterministic derivation of concrete mental instances of it].

Marx deliberately offers us the phenomenology of discovery before presenting the logic of determination. He first builds his toolkit of abstract categories [such as surplus value] before he can actually launch the investigation.

In other words, he starts with the practice he hopes to turn his abstractions back into — the material substrate that engendered them, but this time as mentally concrete instances. That’s how all deterministic science generates conviction. The only conviction we really know, and can rely on.

And what is Marx’s abstract deterministic logic? It is the materialist conception of history. Here is the sought-for “proletarian science” of society and of the “ideology” of class society.

Postscript

Note how the formalism of base–superstructure determinism transcends LBird’s tripartite model of cognition — it alone yields truth by conviction [What’s so special about Base–Superstructure Determinism?]. That is the only truth we know.

By the way LBird, there’s little new under the sun.

Marx was quite familiar with the 18th century French materialist view that “opinion [ideology] governs the world”.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

LBird sees science springing from theory … not from practice …

If I've said 'interaction between subject and object' on this thread once, I've said it a thousand times.What do you think 'interaction' is? Contemplation?And how does human 'practice' happen, without human 'theory'? Induction?

[alanjjohnstone]

Do you think we scared off the original poster, Sotionov ? If he is still reading the thread, i wonder if he has had his questions answered to his satisfaction.

[twc]

LBird wrote:

And how does human 'practice' happen, without human 'theory'? Induction?

Drivel. We acted before we were conscious of it. Consciousness comes after.[Social being determines consciousness. But you know no determinism,]This quote is precisely what you said ages ago — "science begins with theory", or words to that effect. And that theory is based on ideological assumption, etc.Your defense of interaction between subject and object is almost meaningless waffle. Only you could imagine that has any definite meaning.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

ALB wrote:

What about: It is now known that the Sun did not move round the Earth in the 17th century and before?

As long it is mirrored by: It was then known that the Earth did not move round the Sun in the 17th century and before.

That won't work because it assumes that the word "know" meant the same then as it does today. Which it didn't, so we'd be using the word in two different senses.

[Ed]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Do you think we scared off the original poster, Sotionov ? If he is still reading the thread, i wonder if he has had his questions answered to his satisfaction.

No I doubt we scared off Sotinov, I doubt he was coming back to this thread. His questions were answered but I suspect he would have only been satisfied if we had agreed with him. I don't think his opinion was changed.if that's what you mean. Although you can go ask him yourself if you feel the need. http://www.revleft.com/vb/mutualism-t181834/index.html?t=181834

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