DJP
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In the meantime here's some cause for hope http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/internet-argument-resolved-2014030584268
LBird wrote:Out of non-living material, comes living material.Out of unconscious, living material, comes living consciousness.Out of living consciousness, comes self-consciousness.Out of self-consciousness comes original ideas.Original ideas form the basis for conscious changes to non-living material.But, to reduce these steps to saying 'non-living material changes non-living material', while true at some level, surely loses some of the subtlety in an explanation of human, conscious activity within our natural world.OK great. Now explain why you think that is not a physicalist or is incompatible with a physicalist framework.Thanks.
LBird wrote:Out of non-living material, comes living material.Out of unconscious, living material, comes living consciousness.Out of living consciousness, comes self-consciousness.Out of self-consciousness comes original ideas.Original ideas form the basis for conscious changes to non-living material.But, to reduce these steps to saying 'non-living material changes non-living material', while true at some level, surely loses some of the subtlety in an explanation of human, conscious activity within our natural world.OK great. Now explain why you think that is not or is incompatible with a physicalist framework.
If you can define what you mean when you say 'materialism', 'physicalism' and 'realism' we might be able to get somewhere..
LBird wrote:Theory and practice is not 'materialist', but 'idealist-materialist'.And that's where you're plainly wrong.Materialism entails that all things including 'theory and practice' are material.I think the problem with this discussion is that we are using the same terms to mean different things….
robbo203 wrote:The point Im getting at is that we should move away from this kind of crass mechanistic notion that material conditions "produce" ideas which the base-superstructure model often, unfortunately, seems to encourage. Actually this is a form of mysticism. Ideas are held to be latent in the mysterious workings of the universe and become manifest in its unfolding. This is to strip history of any kind of creative aspect and reduce us to the role of passive onlookersIndeed. And Engels said words to this effect in the 1890'shttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htmhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htmBut this is quite seperate to the metaphysical question of materialism and physicalism.
LBird wrote:It doesn't seem as if we're going to get to the bottom of Marx's quote, on this thread, now.It's quite simple. What makes a good a commodity and possess value is not the physical characteristics of the good itself but the social relations between the producers themselves.Now we get to the question of "what is a social relation". I'd say social relations are the aggregate outcome of the actions of people in society. How people act in society depends, to a certain degree on their consciousness and their consciousness is in turn conditioned by the society they are in. Both affect each other in a co-defining relationship.There is nothing in this that leads us to abandoning physicalism (in the metaphysical sense of the word).If you think physicalism is unable to deal with relations you are wrong.
Young Master Smeet wrote:My view is that value is material, entirely and completely and is subject to the laws of thrmodynamics, it is only created (and destroyed) in so much as it is one thing transformed into another, ultimately energy from the sun.LOL I don't think that's quite right either. You're going too far in the other direction now.How can concepts or social relations be subject to the laws of thermodynamics?The brains that hold these concepts or the bodies (and brains) that act out these relations will be but I can't see how the concepts and social relations are, these things supervene on the physical as it where..
LBird wrote:The social relation existed before the concept was dreamt up. I'm talking about the causal mechanism that destroys the lives of humans.Value existed before Marx identified it. Value is nothing to do with 'grey matter'. Capitalism ruined humans prior to 1867.Well yes, value is a concept that describes how certain kinds of society function. But then to claim how a society functions has 'nothing to do' with what goes on in peoples brains seems a little strange. Unless you're going to try and say that thinking has nothing to do with brains.
LBird wrote:So, you agree, YMS, that 'value' contains no matter, is not in the 'grey matter' of individuals (not even in one synapse of one head, never mind in all 7 billion), and is a real mechanism (but not physical) that causes our problems?Are you talking about 'value' the concept or 'value' the social relation?
LBird wrote:Well, perhaps I've succeeded (at last!) in pointing out to you the difference between a 'realist' and a 'physicalist' view of nature.The only trouble here is that physicalism and materialism are realist positions, but not the only ones.You're jumbling up definitions..
LBird wrote:If 'value' is in the 'grey matter' of individuals, 'all in the head', why doesn't everybody in capitalist society know about 'value' just by thinking about what's in their heads?I don't think anyone has claimed that value is 'all in the head'…
LBird wrote:God is real.I think a 'materialist' will disagree with that statement, but a 'realist' will agree with it.LOL I don't think realism entails one to have to say that! One can say that the concept 'god' is a real thing that exists as a concept in the minds of people (and so affects how they behave) but at the same time say that thing that the concept refers to does not exist in the real world.Surely you have to separate the concepts from the entities / non-entities they refer to. Otherwise you will have to say that anything that can be concieved is real. I don't think anyone would use 'real' in this sense.
That's what I'm talking about. I interviewed Andrew Kliman but the resulting article is probably about 4 pages long. I'm guessing they're waiting till there's enough room to put it in..
