ALB

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  • in reply to: a joke sort of #95291
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Here's a better one (from The Skeptic). It's about the man who prayed to god night after night for a new bicycle but no bicycle ever arrived. Eventually he realised that prayer does not work like that — so he nicked a bike and prayed for forgiveness.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94879
    ALB
    Keymaster
    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.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94873
    ALB
    Keymaster

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

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94871
    ALB
    Keymaster
    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.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94869
    ALB
    Keymaster
    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?

    in reply to: The ICC way and our way #95242
    ALB
    Keymaster

    The trouble with your theory of alienation is that it is a psychological one, a state of human existence, even a quasi-religious one. Humans were originally at one with themselves and the rest of nature, then with class society they became separated from this, but will be reconciled with their true nature again in socialism/communism. Indeed a "grandiose" project. In Hegel of course it was explicitly religious: Man was once united with God, then became separated and at the end of history will become re-united with God.I think it's better to regard "alienation" as sociological rather than psychological and see it as the separation (divorce, alienation) of the producers from the means of production and from what they produce. Ending alienation then becomes more prosaic and simply means bringing the means of production under the collective ownership and control of the producers. Which needn't take long.As to the rotation of tasks envisaged by Marx and Engels, this could be implemented very soon after the means of production have become the common heritage of all. I can't see this as justifying a decades-long transition period.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94868
    ALB
    Keymaster
    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. 

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94866
    ALB
    Keymaster
    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.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94863
    ALB
    Keymaster
    LBird wrote:
    ALB, your confusing the 'object' with 'knowledge'. Ditto DJP.Your model of cognition has only two components: the 'subject' and the 'object'. For you both, 'knowledge' is identical with the 'object', and thus 'knowledge' is not an independent entity.The model of cognition that stress those two components (object and subject) and excludes a third component (knowledge) is positivism.

    That may be the "model of cognition" you would prefer to argue against but that's not the one being put forward here.Early on you reposted here something you'd sent to the ICC forum which included this definition of "Critical Realism":

    Quote:
    The third view of science is one I would call Critical Realism. This approach accepts an independently existing object, an active, inquisitive subject, and sees knowledge as a product of the interaction between subject and object. This differs from positivism in that ‘knowledge’ is not identical to ‘object’: ‘knowledge’ is also an independent variable, something actively created by humans by their interrogation of external reality. Thus, depending upon the questions posed by humans, ‘knowledge’ is based upon, but not the same as, the object. ‘Truth’ exists, but it must always be partial truth produced by humans attempting to understand reality. Realism differs from relativism in that the ‘object’ is not created by humans, ‘knowledge’ is based on (and can be compared with for confirmation) a questioning of an independent reality, and that the mind of the subject is not an individual mind, but the socially-created mind of a social individual. This view begins from our tripartite premise of separate ‘object, subject, knowledge’: it recognises object, subject and knowledge as three interacting variables. [My emphasis]

    I said I liked this definition, i.e that I more or less agreed with it.The view you've been expressing in your more recent posts seems to depart from the part I've put in bold which is conceding that the "truth" of some statement claiming to be  "knowledge’ has to confirmed by being compared with external reality and is not just a matter of the dominant opinion at the time. In other words that "knowledge" to be genuine knowledge has to be confirmed by a comparison with external reality (the ever-changing world of phenomena); which is precisely the point we have been trying to make and why, for instance, it was never true that some cats were witches (as in fact many people recognised even in the 17th century).You call for more quotes from Pannekoek. Here's how (in chapter 4 of Lenin As Philosopher) he explains how we "know" the external world exists and existed before there were humans:

    Quote:
    According to our experience people are born and die; their sensations arise and disappear, but the world remains. When my sensations out of which the world was constituted, cease with my death, the world continues to exist. From acknowledged scientific facts I know that long ago there was a world without man, without any living being. The facts of evolution, founded on our sensations condensed into science, establish a previous world without any sensations. Thus from an intersubjective world common to all mankind, constituted as a world of phenomena by science, we proceed to the constitution of an objective world.
    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94856
    ALB
    Keymaster
    LBird wrote:
    ALB wrote:
    Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

    Yes, it does!

    Ok, post-modernism rules ! Next question: Does this mean that before homo sapiens evolved it was not "true" that the Earth existed?

    in reply to: Lonely at the top: the decline of political parties #88833
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Contribution here from an ex-member.  I reckon that in trying to re-engage in the present political system workers who have seen through it (even if they vote), he's set himself a more difficult task than ours of trying to get workers to replace capitalism with socialism.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94852
    ALB
    Keymaster
    LBird wrote:
    What if the society that asks this question is 17th century England? The ‘object’ might be ‘known’ to be a ‘witch’, rather than a mere ‘cat’.This ‘knowledge’ is ‘true’. Since ‘knowledge’ is a social creation, the knowledge, to all intents and purposes is, ‘true’. It is a ‘witch’, not a ‘cat’.

    Does this mean it was "true" that the Sun moved round the Earth until the view that the Earth moves around the Sun became the new "truth"?

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94851
    ALB
    Keymaster
    LBird wrote:
    I can do no better than re-quote Anton Pannekoek, once again.

    Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, p. 29, wrote:
    .

    Theories of 'butterfly spots' are a human creation, not a discovery of 'butterfly spots'.

    I agree with everything Pannekoek writes here. It's a good book which anyone interested in the theory and nature of science should read. Recommended reading for socialists too (also for its rejection of Leninism and its view that the Bolsheviks were establishing state-capitalism not socialism in Russia). It can be read online here.Of course theories of butterfly spots, gravity, entropy, sub-atomic particles, etc, etc are human creations in the sense that they are essentially descriptions, if sometimes complex ones, made of parts of the ever-changing world of phenomena by "the creative mental activity" of humans. They are not a mirror image of something existing out there that has been "discovered", but a more or less useful description of the course of some phenomena out there, useful, that is, for human survival in the best conditions. Their "truth" depends on their accuracy in  predicting what will happen or what would happen again if the same course of phenomena were to be repeated.But I don't think that, as a Professor of Astronomy, Pannekoek would have subscribed to your view that the "truth" of a scientific theory should be decided by a democratic vote (the opinions of a majority) as opposed to accuracy of prediction. I can't see him approving putting the question of the predicted date of the next appearance of Halley's Comet to a vote. Its "truth" will be confirmed by its next appearance, irrespective of how people might vote.Interesting discussion here of whether or not Pluto, in the light of further empirical observations, should still be called a "planet"; which did go to a vote. Not sure that I'd have been qualified to vote on such an issue or would be if a similar issue came up after socialism/communism has been established.  Not sure either that I'd regard it as a grave infringement of democracy if I wasn't given a chance to vote on this. At the risk of being accused of pandering to the man on the Clapham omnibus (and no doubt of a lot more!), I'd say leave it to the International Astronomical Union.Anyway, how do you propose that such an issue be decided in a socialist/communist society? And which way would you have voted?

    in reply to: Government launches “Immigrants, go home” campaign #94904
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Now Labour is jumping on the anti-immgrant bandvan, reviving Gordon Brown's slogan of "British Jobs for British Workers" and targetting "legal" immigrants:http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/labour-targets-next-tesco-new-2150777Politics in Britain is definitely becoming nastier. It's about appealing for the votes of bigots and xenophobes without appearing to be one yourself.

    in reply to: Organisation of work and free access #94847
    ALB
    Keymaster

    Well, yes, it is a matter of opinion but I'm still not clear what is the opinion you don't share.Is it:(a) that deciding priorities and allocating resources for scientific research and deciding whether or not to accept any outcome as "true" are not something different,or(b) that deciding whether or not to accept any outcome as "true" should not be the subject of a democratic vote..

Viewing 15 posts - 8,446 through 8,460 (of 9,543 total)