Pannekoek’s theory of science

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Actually, it's not so much religion that I want to discuss as what are the limits to the field of democratic decision-making in a socialist/communist society, i.e what decisions can be left to individual choice and what to be made collectively.

If there's one issue that's more important for Communists than 'science', it's 'democracy'! In fact, many of my positions on science are predicated upon democratic control, and in that sense, at least, democracy is more fundamental than science.Anyway, I'll get back to the issue of the 'subject' in our tripartite schema, later, unless there are any objections, from any other readers as well as from you. I think 'knowledge' has been done to death for now, at least until we have a bit more discussion on subject and object, which might help clarify their relationship and thus their product, knowledge.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

If science does not produce 'certain' knowledge (and science already tells us that it doesn't), this lets in the social aspect.Once this is done, it's as 'scientifically valid' to start from the Koran, which will 'explain and predict' from a 'Muslim science' perspective.That's our problem, in a nutshell. We have to find a social basis for 'Communist science'.There are no bald 'scientifically arrived at ones'. That is to posit a socially-neutral method of science. You (and ALB) seem to agree that this doesn't exist, without realising its implications.

But where are you getting your certainty from?How do you know that what you are claiming above is true?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

If science does not produce 'certain' knowledge (and science already tells us that it doesn't), this lets in the social aspect.Once this is done, it's as 'scientifically valid' to start from the Koran, which will 'explain and predict' from a 'Muslim science' perspective.That's our problem, in a nutshell. We have to find a social basis for 'Communist science'.There are no bald 'scientifically arrived at ones'. That is to posit a socially-neutral method of science. You (and ALB) seem to agree that this doesn't exist, without realising its implications.

But where are you getting your certainty from?How do you know that what you are claiming above is true?

I’m making the same claim as a certain DJP:

DJP, post 352, wrote:

OK, we might be getting somewhere now.All you are saying here is that knowledge is that knowledge is uncertain, that's fine….We need to have a critior to enable us to evaluate competing claims. This criteria will never give us 100% certainty. So whilst appreciating that we can (probably) never know the absolute truth when faced with two competing claims we should choose the one that offers the most explanatory and predictive power.

You seem to be able to logically follow and accept the argument thus far, DJP, but then, when you realise just what this acceptance of yours entails, you recoil in horror and try to revert to ‘discovery science’, a ‘neutral scientific method’, that ‘certainty’ and ‘truth’ are absolutes, and thus ask me about ‘my certainty’ and ‘my truths’.I’d like to move on to discussing the ‘subject’, not ‘my truth about the subject’, but a discussion in which we all participate, and try to improve our ‘knowledge’ of the scientific method. That is, to define what we Communists consider to be the ‘scientific method’ and then, as you say, ‘when faced with two competing claims we should choose the one that offers the most explanatory and predictive power.’But… our ‘choice’ surely has to be a ‘democratic choice'?It’s possible to argue that the ‘choice’ should be made by each ‘individual’, or by a small ‘elite’ of ‘scientists’, or by a ‘society’ as a whole. I favour the latter, and I also think that a discussion of the nature of the ‘subject’ will help to clarify this question, and provide some potential answers, including the three that I’ve suggested. But, perhaps other posters can suggest other candidates for the ‘subject’ – god/allah/the party/rainman/your invisible gorilla/etc.

[LBird]

On the issue of the nature of the ‘subject’, unless anyone disagrees, I’ll proceed on the assumption that the ‘subject’ (which interacts with the ‘object’ to produce ‘knowledge’) is a social entity, not an isolated individual (‘well, I have my opinion and I don’t need to back it up with evidence: I’m entitled to my personal opinion, irrespective of my comrades reasoned arguments’) nor a social elite of self-selecting ‘scientists’ (‘well, we scientists are the ones to tell you thickoes just what is the ‘truth’ about nature and society: we have both an intelligence and  training that you are not capable of having, and we employ a special socially-neutral method’).I’m making this assumption because I’m also assuming that most people reading this will already be Communists and Marxists (of some stripe), and I don’t need to make a case for opposing the widespread bourgeois ideological myth of ‘the individual’ or a case for democratic control by all over any social power. If I prove to be wrong on these assumptions, or if any non-Marxists are still reading, we can go back and discuss those assumptions of mine.Since Schaff looms large in my thinking, I’ll provide his view, for those who wish to follow up this discussion with some further reading. I should apologise to any women comrades reading, because Schaff was writing before feminist struggles of the ’60s (he was born in 1913), and always uses the term ‘man’ when he could have used ‘humanity’ (Marx is also open to the same criticism: he too was a social individual of his times).

Schaff, pp. 51, 55, wrote:

…the third model…emphasizes the active role of the subject who is conditioned in many ways, but always socially, thus bringing into cognition his [sic] socially transmitted mode of perceiving reality….Man [sic] is, in his [sic] reality, an ensemble of social relations; if one disregards this social content of the human individual, then only the ties of nature will remain as a link between people…in addition to biological determinates, social determinates also exert a moulding influence on him [sic], and this is why he [sic] is a social individual. Marx emphasizes this vividly stating that man [sic] is “the ensemble of social relations”.

From this, I think we have to assume that our ‘perception’ of the ‘object’ is inescapably ‘social’: as Einstein said, ‘theory determines what we observe’, and our ‘perception’ is shaped by the social theories to which we are exposed prior to the act of perception by an individual employing their ‘own senses’. We have seen with DJP’s video just how strongly our perception is affected by prior ‘conditioning’. The notion of the five ‘senses’ alone, doing the perceiving passively through an isolated biological individual, as for ‘induction’, just cannot stand any longer. At this point, I should say that both Dietzgen and Untermann make the mistake of emphasising ‘induction’ as the ‘scientific method’. This is understandable given the times when they wrote, under the heavy influence of 19th century positivistic science. Engels, too, made the mistake of allowing positivism to misdirect him, when he contributed to ‘Marxist’ science thinking, which has proved to be so deleterious upon following ‘Marxist’ thinkers, including Lenin.But, on the contrary, Marx’s early works on epistemology weren’t even published until well into the 20th century, and he doesn’t seem to have fallen into the ‘inductivist’ trap. For example, when Marx talks of ‘the senses’, it’s clear that he isn’t simply referring to them as biological mechanisms, or arguing that, if one keeps social ideology at bay, then one can simply passively experience reality, as the empiricists argue, through one’s senses, without troubling to include the mind. For Marx, our senses are fundamentally historical and social, not mere individual and biological, senses, and which develop in society:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

… for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

[my bold]http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmNot only is the ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ a social creation, but so too are our senses themselves.Thus, the ‘subject’ (in our tripartite schema of cognition) develops and changes throughout history, constantly influenced by, and in turn influencing, social factors. We have to always situate any ‘scientific understanding’ within a historical, social and developmental context. The bourgeois alternative, what Pannekoek labels ‘discovery science’, which allegedly produces ‘eternal truths’, supposedly employing an ahistorical and asocial ‘neutral method’, is a myth. Science is a source of social power, and scientists currently wield this power outside of our democratic control, most often to the tune of the bourgeoisie. Under Communism, the social activity of science in all its facets must be subject to our democratic control.

[twc]

This pre-War article, written before Schaff and Lakatos, explains the social content of cognition.  Its author takes the view that social practice determines social thought in direct opposition to the view you express here that social thought determines social practice.  This article [abridged and slightly modified] is relevant to the current thread.Do you have any comment to make on it?What determines the activity of mankind?The idealistic conception of history explains the events of history, as caused by the ideas of men.  This is wrong, in that it confuses the general abstract formula with a special concrete meaning.  It omits the real problem, the origin of these ideas.The materialist conception of history explains these ideas as caused by the social needs arising from the conditions of the existing system of production.The manner in which mankind earns its living, i.e., the economic organization of production, places each individual in determinate relations with every other, so determining his/her thinking and feeling.Mankind, like any living organism, has needs that must be satisfied as conditional to its existence, and is surrounded by nature that provides the means to satisfy those needs.Our needs and the impressions of the surrounding world are the impulses, the stimuli, to which our actions are the responses.  Needs, as directly felt, and the surrounding world, as observed through the senses, work upon the mind, produce thoughts, ideas and aims, stimulate the will and put the body in action.We demonstrate the actual historical truth of these principles by showing the chain of cause and effect of past events which proceeds from economic needs to new ideas, from new ideas to social action, from social action to new institutions, and from new institutions to new economic systems.Both original cause and final effect are economic, and so we may reduce the actual process to a short formula by omitting the intermediate terms which involve the activity of the human mind.The human mind is entirely determined by the surrounding real world, which is not restricted to physical matter only, but comprises everything that is objectively observable.New ideas thus appear to arise from two sources: present reality; and the system of ideas transmitted from the past, which also have their origin in the real world under social conditions — what may be termed the social memory, the perpetuation of collective ideas, systematized in the form of prevailing beliefs, and transferred to future generations in oral communications, in books, in literature, in art and in education.As forces in modern social development, these traditional ideas persist after their material roots have disappeared, and hamper the spread of new ideas that express new necessities — they lag behind the development of society.These necessities when too strongly in contradiction with the old institutions, lead to explosions, to revolutionary transformations, by which lagging minds are drawn along and are themselves revolutionized.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

This pre-War article, written before Schaff and Lakatos, explains the social content of cognition.

I can't find any link within your post, twc.

twc wrote:

Its author takes the view that social practice determines social thought in direct opposition to the view you express here that social thought determines social practice.

This is an incorrect assertion. I haven't 'expressed the view' that 'social thought determines social practice'.I've expressed the view that the active subject interacts with the really-existing object to produce knowledge.If you don't agree, you should outline the theory of cognition that you think that 'science' employs.If you don't agree that there are three separate entities to this process of cognition, how many are there?If you don't agree that the subject is an active social entity, what is it?If you don't agree that the object pre-exists the cognitive process, what creates it?If you don't agree that knowledge is created by the subject, is it just a passive reflection of the object, as for Lenin?You've had the chance to participate in this thread from the start, twc, but have not engaged in discussion, and have merely stated your beliefs and used attacks to 'personalise' the issue of cognition.If you now wish to participate, I welcome that. But… you must engage, and engage without personal attacks, or I will go back to ignoring you. The ball's in your court.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

Our needs and the impressions of the surrounding world are the impulses, the stimuli, to which our actions are the responses. Needs, as directly felt, and the surrounding world, as observed through the senses…

This conception regards the subject as passive, and suggests that the object, as the active entity, imposes itself upon the passive subject as a copy, or reflection, by its ‘impulses’ to which the subject merely ‘responds’. It is also ahistoric and asocial, because it relates to an individual (biological needs and fixed senses), and doesn’t relate to a dynamic society. Marx disagrees with this formulation, as I have already shown:

Marx, EPM, wrote:

… for this reason the senses of the social man differ from those of the non-social man. Only through the objectively unfolded richness of man’s essential being is the richness of subjective human sensibility (a musical ear, an eye for beauty of form – in short, senses capable of human gratification, senses affirming themselves as essential powers of man) either cultivated or brought into being. For not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of its object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present. The sense caught up in crude practical need has only a restricted sense.> For the starving man, it is not the human form of food that exists, but only its abstract existence as food. It could just as well be there in its crudest form, and it would be impossible to say wherein this feeding activity differs from that of animals. The care-burdened, poverty-stricken man has no sense for the finest play; the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense. Thus, the objectification of the human essence, both in its theoretical and practical aspects, is required to make man’s sense human, as well as to create the human sense corresponding to the entire wealth of human and natural substance.

Marx stresses the ‘social’, ‘unfolding’, ‘cultivated’, ‘coming to be’.He disparages ‘crude practical need’ as a biological impulse, and suggests that both our ‘needs’ and our ‘senses’ grow in society.Your views, twc, seem to me to have been formed by Engels’ and Lenin’s views of nature and consciousness, rather than Marx’s. I might be wrong with this guess, but you can correct me if my speculation is incorrect.

[twc]

LBird wrote:

I can't find any link within your post, twc.

http://libcom.org/library/society-mind-marxian-philosophy-anton-pannekoek

[LBird]

Pannekoek wrote:

In such a process of unceasing transformation, human consciousness adapts itself to society, to the real world.Hence Marx's thesis that the real world determines consciousness does not mean that contemporary ideas are determined solely by contemporary society. Our ideas and concepts are the crystallization, the comprehensive essence of the whole of our experience, present and past. What was already fixed in the past in abstract mental forms must be included with such adaptations of the present as are necessary.

Science as change.http://libcom.org/library/society-mind-marxian-philosophy-anton-pannekoekSelective quoting is no answer, twc. We can all find parts of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dietzgen, Untermann or Pannekoek to support our case. I can even find parts of all of those thinkers that I disagree with.Can't you try some of your own thinking? Why not discuss, rather than merely reiterate? What are your views of the process of cognition of science, in the light of the 20th century advances in human thinking and knowledge?

[twc]

LBird Disowns his own “No Brainer”

(1) LBird wrote:

This is an incorrect assertion.  I haven't 'expressed the view' that ‘social thought determines social practice’.

Nonsense.  You’ve insisted “a thousand times” that theory precedes practice.

(2) LBird wrote:

The issue of whether ‘theory precedes practice’ or 'practice precedes theory' surely has already been settled to most comrades minds, given the quotes which support the 'theory' position, and the absence of any justification for the 'practice precedes theory' argument?It's a no-brainer, comrades.  Theory precedes practice.  Even the bourgeois thinkers, catching up with Communists, have got that far.

In (1) you disown your own “no brainer” (2).  On your own estimation, you fall behind “even the bourgeois thinkers ”.If you don’t consider social thought determines social practice and theory precedes practice as equivalents, then you must holdtheory isn’t social thoughtpractice isn’t social practiceprecedes isn’t deterministic [in the sense of cause preceding effect], i.e., theory precedes practice for no apparent reason.Which is it?Pannekoek’s Aim is to Refute LBird’s “No Brainer”

(3) LBird wrote:

Selective quoting is no answer.

Selective quoting?  Pannekoek’s entire article for Science and Society was written precisely to refute your idealistic conception of history that “explains the events of history, as caused by the ideas of men” — a determined demolition of your central idealistic thesis that theory precedes practice.Pannekoek’s sole aim was to destroy the idealistic foundation of science (1) that you seek to impose upon the Socialist Party as a “no brainer” — a conception of science you share with “even the bourgeois scientists” (2).Confirmation Bias

(4) LBird wrote:

We can all find parts of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dietzgen, Untermann or Pannekoek to support our case.

You must realize I set a trap for you.  You homed in on the gorilla you were looking for, and leapt to the conclusion that the author must be anti-Pannekoek.When you discovered that the author was in fact Pannekoek, your motivated reasoning hunted out any “supportive” quote that settled the case to the satisfaction of your confirmation bias.Disagreeing with Marx and Pannekoek

(5) LBird wrote:

I can even find parts of all of those thinkers that I disagree with.

You sure can.  Most of the time.In #236, you openly rejected the central tenet of Marx’s theory of cognition — the materialist conception of history — by quoting, as you assumed, Marx against his own central cognitive claim.Little did you realize that Pannekoek deliberately wrote his Science and Society article to assert that his own theory of cognition was not invented by him, but was the materialist conception of history — Marx’s theory of cognition.The sole question of agreement is:  Do you agree or disagree with the historical materialist case Pannekoek makes against your idealistic claim that theory precedes practice?That’s what matters. Pannekoek’s Theory of Cognition is the Materialist Conception of History

(5) LBird wrote:

What are your views of the process of cognition of science, in the light of the 20th century advances in human thinking and knowledge?

In so far as 20th century “advances” in human thinking appear to “advance” beyond the materialist conception of history, they actually retreat backwards from it.Twentieth-century critics reject the materialist conception of history as totally discredited on a variety of grounds — as grossly inadequate, as scientifically reductive, as crudely deterministic, as crassly anti-intellectual, and so rightly superseded.Since the materialist conception of history is the foundation of historical materialism, any overhauling of it in the light of 20th century “advances” is ipso facto not historical materialism, but is ipso facto an alternative conception of history that is not Marx’s.Consequently, LBird, who lacks conviction in the materialist conception of history, is not describing Marx’s and Pannekoek’s common theory of cognition.It is important to reiterate that Pannekoek’s article for the peer-reviewed journal Science and Society is the expression of his conviction in the 19th century materialist conception of history as the scientific foundation for comprehending human consciousness.And, if a theory of human consciousness isn’t a theory of human cognition, then the term “cognition” has no comprehensible meaning at all.AnswersHow Many Entities are there in the Process of Cognition?In the deepest cognitive sense, only one — society.  Society is simultaneously subject, process and object.The so-called “interaction” between subject and object is nothing other than the necessary process of social reproduction — the nature-imposed inescapable compulsion for society to continually reproduce itself.Is the Subject an Active Social Entity?In the deepest cognitive sense, the subject is society.In a derived sense, the effective subject, under capitalism, morphs into man’s alienated creation — capital — an abstract [theoretical] social construction that is just as materially real and palpable as Pannekoek’s abstract [theoretical] social construction — energy.Neither capital nor energy is a concrete being.  They are both abstractions from concrete processes, one social and the other physical.Processes and relationships are not concrete.  They are abstractions, and as such form the elements of our abstract cognition.  Abstraction is what cognition does.Our abstract cognition tells the socialist that the abstraction capital truly dominates us and not the concrete objects that temporarily store it, just as surely as it tells the physicist that the abstraction energy dominates physical processes.The possibility of such non-Schaffian comprehension follows directly from Marx’s theory of cognition — the materialist conception of history.  Stunning.Twentieth century thought, try and improve on that 19th century thought, if you can!Does the Object pre-exist the Cognitive Process?Yes, but it also co-exists with it and is created by it.From the this-sidedness of our comprehension [in young Marx’s terminology], concrete objects are mere forms of appearance of our real and palpable abstractions.  They are transitory repositories of our permanent abstractions of social and physical processes: e.g., of capital and energy.We cognize the world by universalizing the individual.  Abstract theory is universal and essential, but the concrete actuality it seeks to comprehend is individual and accidental.Hence the this-sided illusion that theory precedes action because theory has relative independence and autonomy, but is nevertheless ultimately subservient to the world it comprehends.  That is Marx turning Hegel upside down, or right side up.It is not truth that changes but theory.Does twc Agree with Lenin?No.  Like many world socialists, we never ever came under his influence.But you can see from how the materialist conception of history comprehends the world by abstraction [as does science] that naive or sophisticated comprehension of concrete objects, á la Lenin or Schaff, plays a minor role in cognition.Has twc 'Personalised' the Issue of Cognition?You personalized this thread from its inception.  You came here on a crusade to educate the Party into adopting democratic control of scientific thought.Since, for you, cognition is scientific thought, you sought the Party to endorse monitoring and controlling human cognition per se.I let you continue, without intervention, for over 100 posts through many weeks, because your target idea seemed totally inconceivable to other posters, and so remained innocuous enough.But when Party members started signing up, unconsciously, to your target scheme, I immediately stated my opposition to it by calling a spade a spade, and denouncing your target scheme as socialist thought policing.You took personal umbrage, and refused point blank to talk to me.Since then you’ve written hundreds of posts trying to lure people into endorsing your, apparently innocuous, target scheme.Thought policing is far more dangerous for socialism than Bakunin’s smash the state, Bernstein’s reformist revisionism, Lenin’s Bolshevism, Pannekoek’s council communism and Sraffa’s physicalism.  These only tell us how to achieve socialism.You tell us how to run it!It is naive not to expect resistance to a policy of determined censorship and shackling of human thought.Thought is marxian superstructure.  Thought is subversive, and will burst all censorship imposed upon it and all shackles that conflict with the marxian base.That is marxian negation of the negation.If a socialist base can only be defended by shackling human thought, it is not worth human defending.  That is, and always has been, for over a century, the Party’s unique position on achieving and maintaining socialism!

[Brian]

Brilliant!  This is something I can comprehend.  Thanks twc.  Can't wait for a response.  Love it.

[LBird]

twc, post 365, wrote:

Its author takes the view that social practice determines social thought in direct opposition to the view you express here that social thought determines social practice.

After some consideration, I thought that I should revisit this statement by twc, as it seems to suggest that there are only two contrasting views about a particular subject. I seem to remember that other posters, too, at least initially, tried to reduce these issues of cognition to an either/or problem.I’ve tried to show, through Schaff, that there are numerous stances which could be taken, and there are some that Schaff mentions that I haven’t even covered. This led me to try to uncover the basis of this dichotomous approach to issues which don’t lend themselves to such a simple viewpoint, like ‘theories of cognition’. Since I’ve experienced similar problems elsewhere, regarding other different issues (that is, the constant reduction of various philosophical issues to a simplistic two-sided view), I though that I should point out what I consider that the problem might be.To be clear, it seems to be the reduction of all philosophical problems to the fundamental issue of idealism versus materialism. In short, any attempt of mine to discuss ideas, ideology, consciousness, cognition, epistemology, understanding, etc., when I try to bring human thinking into the debate, seems to always be met by accusations of ‘idealism’ on my part, which is contrasted to the ‘proper’ Marxist method of ‘materialism’. This is embodied in twc’s view, above, that ‘practice determines thought’ (implying a ‘materialist’ position) which ‘opposes my view’ that ‘thought determines practice’ (implying an ‘idealist’ position).Of course, the latter is not my view, but then, neither is the former. My view is essentially the same as Marx’s, that ‘praxis’, the unity of though and practice, is a method which overcomes the separation into either the passive, thoughtless, practice of materialism or the active, practiceless, thought of idealism.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, wrote:

IThe chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinct from the thought objects, but he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. … Hence he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.IIThe question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.IIIThe materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice. 

Here, Marx thought that he had overcome both Feuerbach’s ‘materialism’, which ignored ‘the active side’ which had correctly been developed by idealism, and earlier ‘idealism’, which he condemned as ‘thinking that is isolated from practice’. For Marx, early materialism was passive and ‘contemplative’, whereas earlier idealism had captured something important, ‘abstract activity’ but it had forgotten ‘real, sensuous activity’.I think that Schaff’s third model of tripartite cognition (subject, object, knowledge) is the one that meets Marx’s desired method: the active social subject interacts through practice with the really-existing object, to produce knowledge. This also meets Pannekoek’s belief that:

Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, wrote:

Hence Historical Materialism looks upon the works of science, the concepts, substances, natural Laws, and forces, although formed out of the stuff of nature, primarily as the creations of the mental Labour of man. Middle-class materialism, on the other hand, from the point of view of the scientific investigator, sees all this as an element of nature itself which has been discovered and brought to light by science. Natural scientists consider the immutable substances, matter, energy, electricity, gravity, the Law of entropy, etc., as the basic elements of the world, as the reality that has to be discovered. From the viewpoint of Historical Materialism they are products which creative mental activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

The culprit, I think, for this ‘return’ to pre-Marxian materialism, that notion that ‘matter’ impinges on the passive senses, and that any talk of ‘human consciousness being essential’ is ‘idealism’, is Fred Engels. His works have been massively influential upon ‘Marxism’ from before Lenin, and it’s arguable that Engels’ philosophical ideas are not Marxist at all, but a return to pre-Marxist ‘materialism’.I think that a discussion of Engels’ views, as opposing Marx’s, would require a new thread, so I won’t discuss it further on this one, but I felt obliged to make comrades aware of what I consider to be a fundamental problem within all discussions by Communists about issues relating to consciousness. This includes not just cognition, but also science and the class/party relationship, in my experience.To finish, twc and any other posters who wish to understand these issues of cognition must be very wary of this simplistic separation of materialism versus idealism.[edit]I've just seen twc's latest diatribe, after I posted this, and I despair.

[ALB]

twc wrote:

You came here on a crusade to educate the Party into adopting democratic control of scientific thought. Since, for you, cognition is scientific thought, you sought the Party to endorse monitoring and controlling human cognition per se.

It looks, LBird, as if this issue of the limits of democratic control will have to be settled first, i.e. what do you mean by "democratic control of ideology"? Do you really think that democratic control should extend to what people should think?On the thread about what would real democracy look like (the appropriate thread, I suggest, to discuss this) you replied that in a socialist/communist society this would apply to education, including what today is called "civics" and perhaps to child-rearing. That education policy should be subject to democratic control seems reasonable enough (these are already subject to social control today, even if not democratic), but the term "democratic control of ideology" can be understood or misunderstood in a more sinister sense. As I said,what exactly you mean by this seems to needs clearing up, best on the other thread.http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/what-would-real-democracy-look

[Brian]

ALB wrote:

twc wrote:

You came here on a crusade to educate the Party into adopting democratic control of scientific thought. Since, for you, cognition is scientific thought, you sought the Party to endorse monitoring and controlling human cognition per se.

It looks, LBird, as if this issue of the limits of democratic control will have to be settled first, i.e. what do you mean by "democratic control of ideology"?

Its not just the implications of  "Do you really think that democratic control should extend to what people should think?" which concerns me but also the suggestion on how  people should think.  It seems to be implicit within LBird's contributions that he's fixed on one particular methodology ruling the roost in reference to the scientific method. If this is indeed his case all sorts of problems lay ahead …..Nuff said.  I'll join you on the other thread.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Do you really think that democratic control should extend to what people should think?

What's the alternative? Leave it in the hands of a minority, as it is now?What? You actually believe the ruling class myth that 'we are all individuals'? That we all now think as 'individuals', and that future democratic control of our socialisation processes would be a retrograde step? That we shouldn't have a collective say in how we reproduce our society?

Brian wrote:

It seems to be implicit within LBird's contributions that he's fixed on one particular methodology ruling the roost in reference to the scientific method.

Yeah, the method of democratic control of science. You obviously disagree with me, and seem to be in agreement with twc. But twc hasn't explained, unlike me, what their method actually looks like in practice. In effect, twc's method comes down to placing one's trust in scientists: 'Our betters'. No thanks.I suppose this derail saves anyone from the SPGB having to discuss the method of science. Surely there must be someone reading who can discuss these fundamental issues?

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