Science for Communists?
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Lbird,there are only six ways information gets into the meatbot. Five are the senses, the 6th is DNA, that is the networks of information I mentioned, expressely, that is social. Remember, I don't exist, I'm just an emergent nodal point, one algorithm running in parrallel process with many others. This meatbot is an indivisible component of a greater network.
YMS wrote:Lbird,there are only six ways information gets into the meatbot. Five are the senses, the 6th is DNA…Ah, yes, I forgot you're 'meatbot man'.No chance of you realising that humans create information, in their minds, using social theories, by critical assessment, and not from your six 'individualist, biological senses' routes.Reading your previous post, I was nearly in seventh heaven, there…
Yes, new information (and data) is created within the mind, but the only ways that can be got out is via the five and passed on to another meatbot in the same way. No information is ever created, it is merely transformed. The meatbots are the gatekeepers of discourse.
“Sensuous” ShoesYou repudiate Marx—not Engels—by rejecting (1) “sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity”, and (2) “human practice itself as objective practice”.¹ You avoid explaining how an anti-objective social constructionist, like yourself, can carry out the practice of tying his “sensuous” shoelaces without appealing to the objectivity of “sensuous” practice.You vaguely imply that consciousness imposes its own socially-constructed substitute for objectivity—a non-“sensuous”, non-practical, cerebral [pseudo]objectivity—upon our “sensuous” practice.Even so, you still have some remarkable things to explain to the rest of us who agree with Marx that our mediated consciousness of the world is based upon the immediate objectivity of our “sensuous” practice in it.How does your anti-objective consciousness, which philosophically distrusts the objectivity of “sensuous” practice, convince a social constructionist that his “sensuous” shoelaces have been tied in actuality?By what criterion can a social constructionist confirm that his “sensuous” shoelaces have actually been tied, without having recourse to the objectivity of “sensuous” practice?Non-objective ExploitationUnless an anti-objective social constructionist can convince us that his criterion of anti-objective truth is meaningful, what hope does he have of being able to convince the working class of the desirability of anti-objective socialism run by anti-objective practice?What hope, if he then lectures the working-class that the pinnacle of anti-objective social-constructionist dogma is that its “sensuous” social subjection under capitalism is itself an objectivity “myth”.What hope indeed, if we are asked to accept the social-constructionist anti-objective truth that:There is nothing objective about the capitalist practice of exploitation!There is nothing objective about our “sensuous” experience of exploitation!If any of us “sensuously” conceive that capitalist exploitation is objective, we are to be mercilessly condemned as individualist ahistorical Leninists.Capitalist exploitation is simply not objective.Such is anti-objective social-constructionist wisdom.Standing on “Sensuous” FeetNow let us follow Marx instead of anti-objective social constructionism.Marx conceives the world of appearance [phenomena] as the immediate world of “sensuous” practice, and the world of consciousness as our meditated comprehension of the immediate world.Marx, like most of us, takes the world of immediate “sensuous” practice to be objective. His materialism—as asserted in the Theses on Feuerbach—is nothing more than his implicit affirmation that the immediate mediates the mediated.His materialist conception of history is nothing more than his explicit affirmation that the immediate world of “sensuous” practice transfers its objectivity to the mediated world of consciousness.² The significant point to comprehend is that the mediation—i.e. the “sensuous” practice that mediates immediate consciousness—confers objectivity on mediated consciousness, but it cannot/does-not confer objective truth on it.Thesis II makes this unambiguously clear. Mankind must prove the objective truth of his consciousness.How the mature Marx goes about proving the objective truth of consciousness is Marx’s scientific method—a forum topic that has been dogmatically debased in subservience to shallow anti-objective social constructionism.Marx’s actual scientific method is for a dedicated thread. It requires actual practical knowledge of how he used the materialist conception of history throughout Capital.Notes ⁽¹⁾ Theses V and I. ⁽²⁾ “Social being determines consciousness.” [A Contribution towards a Critique of Political Economy, Preface].
YMS, post #856, wrote:…got in…YMS, post #858, wrote:…got out…Sounds like your making it up, as you go along, YMS, merely as a response to what I say, rather than as a principled position which you take on these questions.In the first, you argue 'information' comes from the outside, from external reality to passive human senses.In the second, you argue 'information' comes from the inside, from critical human thinking to external reality.I don't think that you've really given it much thought, have you?
So, twc, would Australian Aborigines from 5000 years ago be able to 'tie their shoelaces', even though they'll never have been taught how to? Would they even recognise 'shoes' for what we use them for?I think Marx would argue that 'tying shoelaces' is a social activity, learned from a specific society, in specific historical circumstances, in a society that has access to relatively advanced technology, that has a need for shoes.Your very long post will be meaningless to most people.Surely what we should be trying to do is explain what Marx means?He argues for socio-historic specificity, and socially-produced theories which allow social practice to take place. That's how we learn and produce knowledge.Kids learn to tie their shoelaces from their parents.
It's simply a corrolary: information comes in, is transformed, comes out again and is shared with other meatbots. At the minimum the senses shape (or constrain) the information in and out. I'll admit to being a bit rushed and unclear around the word 'created', I'll re-iterate that information can only be a transformation of real events (or at least of their sensory manifestations, and thus ideas can only be transformations of previous information). Obviously, that means lots of new and interesting combinations of ideas (especially through the working of memory). In a way, ideas emerge from our 6th sense: the structure and mechanisms of our brains.
YMS wrote:I'll re-iterate that information can only be a transformation of real events…So, it's not 'created' by humans, then.That's where we differ. I keep saying this, but no-one seems to want to read.Marx argues that humans 'create' something that doesn't already exist.You (and the others) are arguing that humans merely 'transform' something which already exists.This all revolves around the 'active side' of idealism, which Marx praised, in the Theses on Feuerbach.Philosophers, sympathetic to Marx, have pointed out throughout the 20th century that to argue for 'revolution' requires critical and creative thought, because 'what exists' must be criticised (not simply 'taken in for tranformation') and something new must be created.Engels seemed to be completely unaware of the reversion he did, to the 'materialism' of pre-1845, a materialism which provided the philosophical basis for 19th century positivist science, which influenced Engels to the detriment of what he'd learnt from Marx. Elite science leads to elite politics.While socialists/communists look to Engels, 'science' (meaning induction) and individualism (of the biological senses), there won't be any revolution, because a conscious revolution is not possible without critical and creative thought by the entire working class.There'll be social upheavals, of course, but they won't be of the sort that we'd like to see.Most likely the "death camps, gulags and barbarism" sort of upheaval.
LBird wrote:That's where we differ. I keep saying this, but no-one seems to want to read.Marx argues that humans 'create' something that doesn't already exist.Like a bag of chips or a Cake. I don't think I need Marx to tell me that.
Vin Maratty wrote:LBird wrote:That's where we differ. I keep saying this, but no-one seems to want to read.Marx argues that humans 'create' something that doesn't already exist.Like a bag of chips or a Cake. I don't think I need Marx to tell me that.
But you have to have the idea of 'a bag of chips or a cake' prior to creating them.Chips and cakes don't appear from spuds and flour talking to us, and saying, "Go on, dumb human, do as you're told!"That's the method of inductive science, employing individualist senses, and ignoring social factors.I know it's completely ludicrous, but some people listen to that sort of nonsense!Apparently, they do need Marx to tell them that. I've told you, the bourgeoisie are laughing at us.
I'm not sure we're differing as much as you think. If I take a block of marble, a hammer chisel and some imagination, I am merely transforming the marble into a statue, nothing is created, but transformed into a work of art. The act of labour is an act of transformation. Criticism is transformation. With poetry, you study a text, and produce a different text, that is the criticism, it is a continuation of the poetic relationship.
YMS wrote:…merely transforming the marble into a statue, nothing is created…Michelangelo would be weeping at that.It's the words of a bourgeois, who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing."David: the meatbot view", just about sums it up.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)
LBird wrote:YMS wrote:…merely transforming the marble into a statue, nothing is created…Michelangelo would be weeping at that.
Why only Michelangelo? Are you suggesting the Statue was created by an individual? That is what the boureoisie would have you believe
Why would he weap? What a transformation: the block, the chisel, the muscles, the brain all turned into a statue.There's a fabulous line in Herzog's film about Antarctica: the universe sees itself through our eyes. We are part of the unfurling of the universe, and the only bit that sees and creates its potential (through our labour).
“Sensuous” TraditionSo your mother transmitted down to you by “sensuous” practice the tradition of shoelace tying.Presumably you were taught that child-tricky algorithm by “sensuous” practice.Presumably you were already taught how to verify your laces were tied by the everyday “sensuous” practice of comparing concrete appearance against abstract theory.If so, you were taught, like the rest of us, unconscious respect for the objectivity of “sensuous” practice.That’s all Marx meant by objectivity.The tradition is what Marx [Hegel, Feuerbach] consider to be a historical social construct.The objectivity of “sensuous” practice is what Marx discovers in the Theses on Feuerbach, and distinguishes himself from Hegel and Feuerbach—and from you. Hegel and Feuerbach were innocent of their omission, but you consciously flaunt it.Knotty ProblemSo the problem remains. Just how do you carry out your mother’s transmitted instructions, and just how do you manage to verify that your laces are tied, without having recourse to Marx’s objectivity of human “sensuous” practice?Your whole theory of the non-objectivity of social and scientific “sensuous” practice depends on your plain answer to a plain question.Your whole integrity, and credibility as a socialist, depends on a direct answer—not one that hides behind 5000 year-old Aboriginal culture, which somehow your mother managed to avoid when she transmitted the objectivity of “sensuous” practice you now deny.Your entire intellectual and honourable humanity is at stake. No devious shifts this time.
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