DJP
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
OK fine, but that still doesn't explain how the facts of astronomy are relative to one's position in class society.And was Pannekoek a bourgeois scientist or a proletarian one? I'm guessing he was employed by the Dutch state…Like it or not but it seems to me you are a cognitive relativist….I agree that the content of a theory (it's facts) does determine what is observed and what is disregarded, but the absolute truth of the matter lies not within the theory itself or within those professing but out there in the real world, in nature. Whether or not we can ever fully grasp this truth is another matter…
Albert Einstein wrote:Science without epistemology is – insofar as it is thinkable at all – primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject what does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far…. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as an unscrupulous opportunist.Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp p.684Quoted in Beyond The Hoax, Alan SokalMaybe it's me being thick, or I've missed one of your posts but please then do explain how this fits into your model i.e. what your criteria for evaluating truth is.Apologies if you have to repeat yourself….Do you agree or disagree with anything I said in post #122?
twc wrote:Yes, by way of moving on, the object-oriented software cycle makes an excellent analog of Marx’s descent–ascent method. And it works in practice.???
LBird wrote:If don't accept that 'truth' is a 'product', we can discuss it. Of course, I'll ask you to explain your view of 'truth' within a theory of cognition.I think I'm with Dietzgen here.The "absolute truth" is nature, the world or the universe."Knowledge" is always a partial or relative "truth" since we do not observe the world directly but only through it's phenomena and through the classifications created by cognition.When we say "it was true for the aztecs that human sacrifice appeased the gods" we are not refering to [absolute] truth but to beliefs. Though these beliefs do form a real part of the world.You have yet to explain your criteria for judging truth. With the exception of a priori systems I would like to know how this could be done without refering to the material world, the object.
I've just been having a word with old Jo, this is something he said
Dietzgen wrote:The Universe is identical with Nature, with the world and the absolute truth. Natural science divides Nature into parts, domains, branches of study, but it knows and feels that all such divisions are formal only, that Nature or Universe is in spite of all divisions undivided, – in spite of all variety and manifold natures only one indivisible, general and universal Nature, World and Truth. There is only one Existence, and all forms are modi, varieties or relative truths of one general truth which is absolute, eternal and endless at all times, in all places. Human knowledge is, like anything else, a limited portion of the unlimited, a modus, a variety of Existence or General Truth.Since the nature of truth has hitherto been regarded as purely mental, and accordingly, truth was looked upon as a thing which is only to be found in knowledge, the inquiry into human knowledge comes within the province of our subject, of our search after the absolute and relative truth and their relation.The mental world of man, that is, all we know, believe and think, forms a portion of the universal world which only in its absolute inter-relation, in its complete whole possesses an unlimited, perfect, absolute existence, a true one in the highest sense of the word. At the same time it possesses through its component parts, modi, varieties, products or phenomena an infinite number of existences of which every particular one is also true, but is as against the whole a mere relative truth.Human knowledge, itself a relative truth, is the medium between us and the other phenomena or relativities of the absolute Existence. Still the faculty of cognition, the knowing subject, must be distinguished from the object, the distinction being, however, a limited and relative one, since both the subject and the object are not only distinct, but at the same time alike in that they are parts or phenomena of the same generality called the Universe. We distinguish between Nature and parts, departments or phenomena, though these are inseparably connected with the All-Existence, emerge from it and submerge in it. There is no Nature without phenomena, her manifestations, nor phenomena without Nature, as the Absolute. It is only our knowledge which provides the separation, the mental analysis in order to form an image of the phenomena. Knowledge, conscious of its doings dealings, must know that the mentally separated, differentiated objects are indivisibly bound up with the reality of Nature.What we learn to know are truths, relative truths or natural phenomena. Nature itself, the absolute truth, cannot be known, – not directly, but only through her manifestations, the phenomena.[edit: I've added a couple more paragraphs to the quote]http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1887/epistemology.htm
LBird wrote:I've had a discussion over the weekend with my son, and we're now of the opinion that computer programming methods might make this easier to understand. Are you familiar with 'programming' in any way ajj? If not, I'll have to get my thinking cap on, again!In programming the symbols used refer to fixed things. In language the meaning of the symbols alters depending on the context. The dynamic nature of reality shows itself in language too.
LBird wrote:I can only ask again, concerning a tripartite theory of cognition (object, subject, knowledge), do you agree that 'truth' pertains to 'knowledge'?It's actually a relation between all 3.To move things forward perhaps you can answer how you would assess the truth of a claim or theory.If I was to say that the way computers work is through little men running around inside them how would prove or disprove this statement?
alanjjohnstone wrote:I hope someone is going to eventually explain this thread to the rest of us in an easy to understand way so we know what it's all aboutJust think of it as the excursions of some socialists into the domain of epistimology.http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1887/epistemology.htm
"True for" means what is / was perceived as true, but may be false. In other words the socially constructed 'truth' that LBird is fond of."True" or "The Truth" means something else; the absolute truth, the totality of phenomena which is always in a state of flux.
Julien Beillard wrote:I admit that I am presupposing an objectivist conception of truth, but what’s the alternative? Do we have any concept of truth that does not involve that kind of relation? To be sure, people sometimes say that a statement is true for one person but not another – meaning that the statement seems true to the first person but does not seem true to the second. But just as seeming gold is not a kind of gold, seeming truth is not a kind of truth. What is meant by this way of speaking (if anything), is simply belief. To say that it is true for some children that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, if that means merely that to some children it seems true that he does, is really just a way of saying that they believe it. But believing doesn’t make it so. Similarly, if moral relativism is just the claim that what seems true of morality to some people (what they believe about morality) seems false to others, this is true but philosophically trivial, and consistent with objectivism about moral truth. It is also worth noting that, interpreted in this trivial way, moral relativism could not be supported by the argument from disagreement. The gist of that argument was that moral relativism is a good explanation of the moral disagreements we observe. Yet the claim that some moral statements seem true to some people and false to others merely restates the fact of moral disagreement that is supposedly explained by relativism, it cannot explain that fact. (Perhaps some things are self-explanatory, but not moral disagreement!)http://philosophynow.org/issues/97/Moral_Relativism_Is_UnintelligibleThe above is about moral relativism but hopefully helps illustrates what I'm trying to get at.I suppose I could accept Lbirds use of "truth", as meaning the socially constructed what is "true for" people in a certain period of history, but only so long as it remains in parentheses.Otherwise we're just going to end up going round in circles.
LBird wrote:If ALB and DJP don’t agree with Pannekoek or Dietzgen, then that’s fine. But then they must say who they do agree with. Lenin, here, on the 'material'?OK, let's put 'silly' to one side in order to have a productive discussion…The thing is myself and ALB do agree with Pannekoek and Dietzgen, but not your reading of them. Which I think contradicts what they said…What do you think of my comments in post #95?
LBird wrote:The SPGB is quoting Lenin as an 'authority', now? Lenin?ALB is not the same thing as The SPGB. We may be a small party but for the time being the membership figures are greater than one…But anyway, come off it. The use of quotes and references does not imply endorsement and the notion that only communists can say true things is rather silly. Though I guess it would follow from your relativism…
LBird wrote:Pannekoek, intro, p. 33 wrote:The mind is a faculty of generalization. It forms out of concrete realities, which are a continuous and unbounded stream in perpetual motion, abstract conceptions that are essentially rigid, bounded, stable, and unchangeable. This gives rise to the contradiction that our conceptions must always adapt to new realities without ever succeeding…Here we have our three entities of cognition:Object: concrete perpetual motion (not ‘fixed’ things to ‘discover’, once and for all);Subject: our minds, actively forming something which is not the object (otherwise, why ‘form’, we could just passively observe and record?);Knowledge: temporary conceptions formed, which eternally contradict the object.
Is it correct to make the jump from conceptions to "knowledge"? I don't think so. Knowledge can only be true conceptions.Is the 'truth' of a conception settled in the sphere of the object or the subject? The object, since truth can only be tested in practice, in engaging with the real world.
LBird wrote:Given this, where does this leave the notion of ‘the path of the sun going round the earth’, in the way we conceive it, now, as a ‘fixed piece of knowledge of reality’ which having been ‘discovered’, can’t be changed?You, DJP, et al, might be correct, that our ‘truth’ about the relative paths of the sun and earth is now an eternal ‘Truth’, a fixed reflection of reality, but that is not what Pannekoek (or Dietzgen) say.I don't think anyone has claimed that reality is unchanging. So you're attacking strawmen here.As someone, can't remember who, said. "The map [theories] is not the territory [external reality]" and external reality is always in a state of flux.None of this has to lead to a relativistic notion of "truth" or the conceptions of "non-observable reality"
Lbird wrote:I know that I’m now wasting my time, and that you, DJP, et al, have already made up your minds on this issue, but, still, it would be nice if any one of you could give some evidence from Marx, Pannekoek or Dietzgen, to back up your opinions. If you can’t, it leaves one wondering just where your ideas come from. Perhaps bourgeois positivist ‘common sense’ science, the stuff we all learn as kids? Perhaps you're all just 'brilliant individuals', who don't need to 'quote' authorities, as 'cognition' is an open book to you all?Hopefully I haven't "made my mind up" on anything, I'd hope that I still possess the ability to change my views in the light of enough persuasive evidence…
Lbird wrote:Oh, I’ve noticed that the sun has come up again, this morning.LOL!
I think you're confusing 'non-observable' with not directly observable.If something is non-observable it cannot, by definition, be perceived either.I'll come back on the other points later…
