The gravity of the situation

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Relational between what?  If there is no quality of nature, there is no relationship.

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No, I keep saying, we produce 'organic nature' from 'inorganic nature', by social theory and practice.

If there is no quality to 'inorganic nature' then there is no need for Marx and Pancake to refer to it (a simple textual matter). There is only social theory and practice producing organic nature (or society, for Cakey boy).What I want is for you to respond to this simple peice of logic.

Which 'piece of logic' would that be, YMS?What's so difficult about understanding a productive relationship between an active, creative humanity and 'inorganic nature'.You simply want 'quality' to be within 'inorganic nature'.Marx argues that we produce our 'organic nature', which is clearly where 'qualities' lie. That is the 'qualities' are 'relational qualities'.

[Young Master Smeet]

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Which 'piece of logic' would that be, YMS?

That if inorganic nature has no qualities, there is no relationship, and for all intents and purposes, does not exist. Why would Marx talk about inorganic nature if the qualities of Labour alone produced organic nature?Lets take Tony:

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For Historical Materialism it is a question of the relationship of our thoughts to the phenomena which we experience as the external world.

For those who dabble in English, that sentence can only be read there being pheneomena of experience of the external world.I mean, there is a relationship between a lock and a key, between pencil and paper, but there is no relationship with a void, unless a party brings some qualities that affect, combine with or change the otehr, there is no relationship.I cheerfully accept that humans create their social world, and all things in it, including ideas (which are entirely material from beginning to end); I'm happy to accept thatour ideas come from our being in the universe, and it is our active processes of living in it that produces ideas, but we are limited in what we can do, and our ideas are limited by what we can do.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

Which 'piece of logic' would that be, YMS?

That if inorganic nature has no qualities, there is no relationship, and for all intents and purposes, does not exist. Why would Marx talk about inorganic nature if the qualities of Labour alone produced organic nature?

What bit is so difficult to understand?From your ideological point of view, 'qualities are as they are, and are found within inorganic nature'.In opposition to this, Marx argues that 'qualities are produced, and are found in organic nature'.

YMS wrote:

Lets take Tony:

Quote:

For Historical Materialism it is a question of the relationship of our thoughts to the phenomena which we experience as the external world.

For those who dabble in English, that sentence can only be read there being pheneomena of experience of the external world.

Yes, and 'experience' is not a passive experience, as for your ideology, but is an experience created by human activity, during its social theory and practice upon 'inorganic nature'.Marx goes as far as to say that even human senses are social, and so what an individual 'experiences' is a social experience (involving perception), and not merely a biological experience. So, if it were possible to transfer an individual to another society, that individual would 'experience' the world differently. That is, 'phenomena' are socially produced.

YMS wrote:

I mean, there is a relationship between a lock and a key, between pencil and paper, but there is no relationship with a void, unless a party brings some qualities that affect, combine with or change the otehr, there is no relationship.

Yes, and the relationships produced by active humans with a lock and key are either the states of 'a locked door' or 'an unlocked door'. That is, the relationship between 'a lock and a key' is not one of juxtaposition of static things, but an active one in which humans are the active side. The same goes for 'pencil and paper', when employed by active humans a 'drawing' is produced.

YMS wrote:

I cheerfully accept that humans create their social world, and all things in it, including ideas (which are entirely material from beginning to end); I'm happy to accept thatour ideas come from our being in the universe, and it is our active processes of living in it that produces ideas, but we are limited in what we can do, and our ideas are limited by what we can do.

Which philosophy puts its focus on 'limits', and which puts its focus upon 'changes'?That is, what we can attempt to do with social theory and practice.Humans were and are 'limited' by all sorts of 'biological facts', but we attempt to change those 'facts of nature'.We don't have wings, but we can fly.As I say, for a supposed socialist, I find your focus upon what humans can't do, more suitable to a conservative philosophy of 'what we have, we hold, and no further'.The emphasis on 'limits' is hardly conducive to a philosophy of revolution.Whatever happened to the attitude of 'All that is solid melts into air'?

Marx wrote:

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned…

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htmNot exactly your "but we are limited in what we can do, and our ideas are limited by what we can do", is it?

[Young Master Smeet]

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What bit is so difficult to understand?

How something with qualities can interact with something that has no qualities.  Please explain that.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

What bit is so difficult to understand?

How something with qualities can interact with something that has no qualities.  Please explain that.

I though that I had, YMS.For my ideology (Marx's idealism-materialism), 'qualities' are produced by humans, and so are within 'organic nature'.For your ideology (Engels' materialism), 'qualities' are simply within 'inorganic nature'.To you, 'qualities' are 'something out there', within 'being' alone, and outside of 'consciousness'.To me, 'qualities' are 'relations produced', between 'consciousness' and 'being'.You are juxtaposing static possessed 'qualities', I am producing dynamic relational 'qualities'.As to which ideology is suited to change, you have to decide.I fear that you want an answer that is 'True', and so are searching for this, from your ideological perspective.The answer, however, is a socio-historical 'truth', from my ideological perspective.

[Young Master Smeet]

Nope, I'm afraid you still haven't explained how inorganic nature relates to human labour. 

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For my ideology (Marx's idealism-materialism), 'qualities' are produced by humans, and so are within 'organic nature'.

So qualities are produced ex-nihil?

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To me, 'qualities' are 'relations produced', between 'consciousness' and 'being'.

Do consciousness and being each have qualities?  Or are they undifferentiated?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Nope, I'm afraid you still haven't explained how inorganic nature relates to human labour.

I'm afraid that I have, YMS, and at great length.Both the production of 'qualities' and 'differentiation'.There are two answers: for one ideology, 'qualities' are within 'inorganic nature'; for the other ideology, 'qualities' are actively produced in 'organic nature'.For the first ideology, the claims of the second are meaningless; for the second ideology, the first can't explain active production by societies.You don't seem to like this answer, that involves 'consciousness' and ideologies, and want an answer that only involves 'inorganic nature' to the exclusion of 'consciousness' and ideologies.That desire of yours is a product of your current ideology.You want to 'passively know' the 'world' without involving a 'active knowing subject'.We hold differing political and philosophical views about 'nature', YMS.That is the 'explanation'.

[Young Master Smeet]

Quote:

for one ideology, 'qualities' are within 'inorganic nature'

For that ideology, what role does inorganic nature play in the production of those qualities?  Can you explain how these qualities are produced? 

[Young Master Smeet]

(p.s. you've added Aunt Sally/Straw man to the list….)

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

(p.s. you've added Aunt Sally/Straw man to the list….)

I though that we might get through just one day with the SPGB without resorting to accusations/abuse, but it seems to be endemic within the party. For once, I'll let it be.I've patiently explained, YMS, and if you don't like my explanation, you'll have to explain that 'dislike' to yourself.You seem, at present, to be blaming me, rather than blaming your ideology, but, there we go.I'll leave it at that for today, because I know we won't make any further advance on our exchange so far.

[Young Master Smeet]

Oh, the hilarity, I point out the straw man fallacy, and Lbird responds with: an ad hominem (with a touch of appeal to the gallery).  No account for the production of quality within his 'ideology'  Whenever I asked Lbird to give an account of his ideas, he responded with what he supposes to be my ideas (or a version of what he supposes to be my ideas), a classic straw man fallacy.  he would usually couch that with a reference to Marx (an appeal to authority fallacy). What we are left with no account within his schema for how inorganic and organic nature relate to one another.  We know that qualite emerges within 'organic nature', but have no idea is human being/consciousness or labour possess qualities.I think it would be fair to say Lbird can't answer that point.

[Bijou Drains]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Oh, the hilarity, I point out the straw man fallacy, and Lbird responds with: an ad hominem (with a touch of appeal to the gallery).  No account for the production of quality within his 'ideology'  Whenever I asked Lbird to give an account of his ideas, he responded with what he supposes to be my ideas (or a version of what he supposes to be my ideas), a classic straw man fallacy.  he would usually couch that with a reference to Marx (an appeal to authority fallacy). What we are left with no account within his schema for how inorganic and organic nature relate to one another.  We know that qualite emerges within 'organic nature', but have no idea is human being/consciousness or labour possess qualities.I think it would be fair to say Lbird can't answer that point.

Game, set and match to YMS

[SocialistPunk]

It would be interesting to see what effect a like or dislike feature would have on this discussion. 

[ALB]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Why would Marx talk about inorganic nature if the qualities of Labour alone produced organic nature?

Actually Marx does not talk about "inorganic nature" in the sense that is being bandied about here. For what he actually said when he once used the term, see quote here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/gravity-situation?page=3#comment-29415There's no reference here to humans converting "inorganic nature" into "organic nature". If anything, it would be the reverse, with humans extending their own "organic nature" into "inorganic nature". So, even the appeal to authority fails.And he certainly did not mean by it Kant's unknowable thing-in-itself:

LBird wrote:

'Inorganic nature' is an unknowable 'in itself' ingredient for active human social theory and practice.

If that's what you think the world external to human consciousness is no wonder you get into the contradictions that you are so ably exposing. If it's "unknowable" you can't say anything about it by definition. It might as well, like God, not be there.

[twc]

EntanglementTerrell Carver (Marx and Engels — The Intellectual Relationship, 1983) charges Frederick Engels with many anti-Marx crimes, not least of which is a suggestion [yes, Carver calls it only a ‘suggestion’ in his mind] that Engels foists upon Marx:“the matter–consciousness dichotomy generally employed by natural scientists”whereas for Marx “social-being and consciousness were never defined dichotomously” since“social-being did not exclude ideas (used in practice)”“consciousness (i.e. mere ideas) did not exclude a connection sooner or later with practical activities.”Cutting the Gordian KnotMarx explicitly states, in perhaps the two most prominent places in his economic output, that the scientific way to disentangle the entanglement of social-being and consciousness was to divide and conquer.Only a New Left agenda could blind its adherents to what Marx unmistakably says, in the two most prominent sources they all have read, and reread, and in which they have merely discerned their own polemical agenda, never once registering that Marx is hereby cutting, before their polemically blinded eyes, the social-being–consciousness entanglement, they so fetishise, with his—to them philosophically crude—dichotomous sword of analytical abstraction.Marx had every right to believe that he had made it abundantly clear that his social-being–consciousness dichotomy was the indispensable core of his scientific principle.Marx presumably thought he had every right assume that:his 1859 Preface to the Critique of Political Economy adequately explained the scientific role of his dichotomy—especially since he instantiates its scientific function in the book.his 1873 ‘Afterword’ to Capital Vol. 1 would put his dichotomous cutting of the Gordian Knot beyond possible doubt.  You may not agree with his social-being–consciousness dichotomy as a scientific tool, but it is impossible to deny that he used it.Divide and ConquerHere follow five assertions from the celebrated ‘Afterword’:“The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned…  This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life.”“For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it.”“Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.““If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness.”“That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point.”There is no room to doubt that Marx wielded the dichotomy as his cleaver to divide-and-conquer the otherwise hopelessly entangled knot of social-being and consciousness.Marx’s Endorsement of the DichotomyThe above extracts, taken from the celebrated ‘Afterword’, were written by Russian economist I. I. Kaufmann. Here follows Marx’s famous ringing endorsement of Kaufmann’s review:“Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?  Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry.  The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connection.  Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described.  If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.”ConclusionsAny account of the materialist conception of history that does not take Marx’s social-being–consciousness dichotomy to be Marx’s essential scientific tool for investigating social-being and consciousness—society and social consciousness—is scientifically worthless.This uncompromisingly fatal conclusion more or less destroys the voluminous accounts emanating from or influenced by the New Left.[Posters may recall that I promised the forum a rebuttal of such modern reassessments.  But on the present occasion I am delighted to let mid-19th century economic scientists Marx and Kaufmann preempt the philosophical moderns by 150 years.]As far as the criminality of Marx’s social-being–consciousness dichotomy is concerned, Terrell Carver is indicted for gross misrepresentation.Frederick Engels is absolutely correct.

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