ALB
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Here she is making the news about a radio debate with Militant/TUSC yesterday:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11077637/Ukips-radio-rant-candidate-Elizabeth-Jones-worse-than-Katie-Hopkins.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11077148/Ukip-candidate-Elizabeth-Jones-flips-out-on-live-radio-broadcast.html
I still think that "materialism", even "physicalism", is not incompatible with a "monist" view which gives equal status to physical and non-physical stuff as long as it is considered one theory of the relationship between the physical and the non-physical parts of this "monist" world. After all, I'm prepared (like Dietzgen and Pannekoek) to call myself a "materialist" in the monist sense (of "stuff", i.e. "matter", being both the physical and the non-physical). I must confess, though, that I'm not too keen on the term "physicalism".
LBird wrote:There is a third alternative: Socially-objective Truth.LBird wrote:The study of science since Copernicus shows us that science is often mistaken. Einstein showed that Newton was mistaken.That's a turn-up for the books. What's all the fuss been about? But just as a matter of interest what is the current "Socially-objective Truth" (not need for a capital T if you don't want) about, say, the solar system or in astronomy generally?
Anyone know what has happened to Left Unity? They seem to have been and gone, maybe because the Green Party has stolen all their clothes or maybe because they tried to steal that party's clothes and failed.
I don't think it's me that's playing with words. I just used the word "bad" to mean "mistaken", actually in relation to ideology/false consciousness but it could be applied more widely. I know you'll come back and say that this implies the opposite — that there can be a non-mistaken understanding. But surely there's a sense in which this must be the case, without having to be committed to Knowledge as Absolute Truth?Suppose the generally agreed selection of some phenomenon is to name it "green" and somebody seeing something that meets the criteria for calling something "green" but calls it "red". Is that a mistake or not?You're perfectly free to say it's not but just somebody with a different "ideology". In fact that nobody could ever be mistaken about anything or draw a "bad" conclusion. This can't be your position can it, as you repeatedly insist that you are not a post-modernist who thinks that anything goes?So, tell us, can anyone ever be mistaken?
There's nothing much in Newport to see anyway. I should know. I was born there. They have even taken down a mural there to the Chartist Uprising in Newport in 1839. And that Celtic Manor is a monstrosity and folly built by a Canadian billionaire born there who has more money than sense.
LBird wrote:I still think you're trying to preserve big T 'true knowledge from science'.No I'm not. Why on Earth would I want to do that.
Forgot to add that a member got in a comment on the Grauniad's article:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/sep/03/eccentric-memories-and-summer-snow
One of Weidberg's famous put downs was on the EC, when a member with a certain reputation said "Let's face it, we must …", he interjected "Which face would that be?".
I know that the weekend before I'll be rushing around trying to spernd all my money before it becomes useless.
I don't think that Marx did use the term "ideology" in more than one way. I think he just used it in your first sense, Vin, i.e. to mean "false consiousness" (and which is something more than simply a wrong understanding), as pgb explained in his post a few days ago:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/science-communists?page=58#comment-16151So I don't think there could be such a thing as a "socialist ideology", at least not today, though I suppose it might be applied to the Bolshevik revolution where those who were carrying out a stage of a capitalist revolution thought, and sincerely believed, that they were carrying out a socialist one. But, obviously, it can't apply to us. Of course not as the word has prejorative connotations for Marxists.Mind you, this is just a question of definition and terminology which needn't cause difficulties if we agree on a definition or understand what the other's definition is.
To be fair, since his definition and use of the word "ideology" differs so much from that of Marx and the Marxist tradition, LBird has given us permission to use another term to express his idea. I opt for "selective" and "selection". In which case what he is saying on this point that all science (all knowledge of anything, in fact) is necessarily "selected". So a non-selective science is not possible. But whoever said it was? I don't like the word "distorted" either as it gives the impression of something bad rather than natural and normal.
Why, then, accuse YMS of being a bourgeois individualist, etc for saying the same as you?I'm surprised you didn't see this coming
The faux pas you made in discussing science in a socialist/communist society with YMS was mportant and maybe revealing because it raised the question of the possibility of a class=free (if not selection-free) science. Obviously in a classless society there cannot be any "proletarian" or "bourgeois" science, only human (or, if you like, "democratic") science.So do you accept that, at least in classless socialist/communist society, science can be class-free?
