DJP
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
LBird wrote:Would you like to give the rest of us the benefit of your 'training', DJP, and explain how either 'individualism' or 'the concept of an individual' are 'transhistorical', as robbo203 suggests?
My expert training tells me to tell you to re-read post 48.
LBird wrote:Ruling classes always try to 'eternalise' their rule, and present their ideas as 'natural'. I think that this is what happens when people view the past through the lens of our 'ruling ideas' from the present. I regard 'individualism' as historically specific. That's why Descartes' claim of 'I doubt, therefore I think; I think, therefore I am' was so revolutionary. It represented a way of thinking that was entirely new. Before that 'individuals' didn't 'think'; it was left to their 'betters' (like the pope and lords) to do that!LOL You're not getting the wrong end of the stick again are you!? What was new in Descartes was not the idea that individuals could think or view themselves as individuals but the idea that the only thing that cannot be disolved by scepticism was the fact that if I am thinking there must exist an 'I' that is doing it.Everything could be halucination or deception, the only indisputable thing is that if there is a thought going on something is doing it. It is impossible to disprove the claim that we are just brains in a vat and the richness of our experiences comes from electrical signals fed to us by a mad scientist. But there's no good reason to accept that either. I should know I am a trained philosopher after all.Also the concept of an individual and 'individualism' is not the same thing….
I don't take your post as snotty as it has some useful points in there. But development and betterment of the website is temporarily on hold as we have some structural matters that need fixing first.The more places the stuff is the merrier. Incidently I think the first time I actually came across the party was via the myspace that you(?) used to do.
To be honest now that this exists:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archiveI can't see the point of this blog. Why not just scan the articles in and email them over?Just would seem a waste of your work if the articles are not going up here as well?
Does drawing an income from a pension that is derived from investment funds make one a capitalist?Does owning a paultry amount of shares make one a capitalist?Does the fact that the socialist party now (or soon will have) has funds in investment banking mean that it's members will no longer have to sell there labour-power in exchange for a wage?
Ed wrote:I take it as a given that capitalism and ownership of the means of production is 'unethical' to most.Well it's actually the actions of the working class that reproduce and expand capital. It's something we're all tied up in wether we like it or not.It seems to me the only way that you are going to avoid being ethically implicated in day to day doings of capitalism would be to live in a cave and eat moss. Hence the bankruptcy of trying to condemn capitalism from a moralising position..
admice wrote:O, sorry I see some posts about them now that I know it's Kliman related, but if you want to recommend is OK too.This is the Kliman related group: http://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/
Quote:Popper thinks that all legitimate inquiry is about solving real problems, and scientific theories are those that are potentially falsifiable: they make definitely predictions about the world that, if these fail to be true, would show that the theory is false.He did but it turned out to be more complicated than that. See Kuhn, Quine and others…Speaking of podcats a recent and fairly informative episode of in our time was about Wittengenstien, seeing as he was mentined earlier.http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0054945
I suggest if you want to know about Trotsky you should read this:http://libcom.org/library/the-kronstadt-uprising-ida-mettThat should dispel any misconceptions about Trotsky or the nature of the Bolshevik party.
LBird wrote:Natural and social science both employ the same method.No, you can't perform experiments in the same way in the social sciences as you can in the natural sciences.The phenomena that the social sciences study are "multi-realisable" in a way that the phenomena of the natural sciences are not.Chapter 5 of Minds, Brains and Science by John Searle raises some interesting points.http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yNJN-_jznw4C&lpg=PA71&ots=rA9_cwx1Xn&dq=John%20Searle%20prospects%20for%20the%20social%20sciences&pg=PA71#v=onepage&q=John%20Searle%20prospects%20for%20the%20social%20sciences&f=false
Here's another quote from the review above. Hopefully useful..
Quote:Marks's complaint (and this is a familiar one) that science has always been wrong in the past again reveals a misunderstanding of the nature of science and scientific knowledge. If scientific knowledge were absolute in the same sense that religious knowledge claims to be, then it would be quite an embarrassment to find that past discoveries were imprecise, wrong or somehow needed refining. But since scientific knowledge is always tentative, subject to a correcting fact, understanding or experiment, it is not and cannot be certain knowledge. However, to quote Bertrand Russell, "When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also add that some things are more nearly certain than others."http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2GJDSNOEUPNFJ/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0520259602&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=266239&store=books I just pulled this from a review of that J Marks book. I'm not sure if it adds anything to the debate but I think it makes some good points.
Quote:What I think Marks is deliberately missing is that science is not a philosophy, not a religion, not a way of life; it is not something only people with grants from the National Science Foundation can do. Science is a tool. Anybody can use it. It is neither good nor bad. The technological applications from science may be medicines that save lives or they may be nuclear weapons, but that is not the fault of science. That is the fault of human beings. And besides there is no putting the genie of science back into the bottle. Science is a genie of great power and utility. The society that shuns science will risk disaster.http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R2GJDSNOEUPNFJ/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0520259602&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=266239&store=booksLBird wrote:Doesn't it concern you that religious philosophers are currently ahead of many in the SPGB, when it comes to understanding science?Religious apologists just latch on to any argument that seems to support there cause. I honestly don't think that what is being demonstrated is a higher understanding of science..
