[DJP]

LBird wrote:

This view sees ‘materialism’ as a form of ‘idealism’, because it ignores human creative ideas. 

All this only has traction in your mind because you are stuck in a dualistic way of thinking.Materialism does not ignore "human creative ideas" but just places them within nature / the universe not above / below or outside of it. Marx clearly stated that he was a materialist and opposed this to idealism

Marx (1868) wrote:

[…] He knows very well that my method of development is not Hegelian, since I am a materialist and Hegel is an idealist.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_03_06-abs.htm

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

But if we define 'ideology' to be human ideas which distort reality, and we know that any scientific method distorts reality (and it must, otherwise we must argue for a 'copy theory of knowledge' (that is, Lenin's view in Materialism and Empirio-Criticism that knowledge is a reflection of reality, a mirror-image)), then we can see that any scientific method is also an 'ideology'.

But we don't define ideology as that, yet at the same time we know that there cannot be such a thing as perfect human knowledge..

[DJP]

Seems to me, as far as this topic goes, when we got there the cupboard was bare.

[DJP]

Speaking of Positive Money, did their newer book "Modernising Money" ever get a once over in the Standard?

[DJP]

Perhaps if you offer up your own thoughts first a discussion will get going….

[DJP]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Your science for communists sound like it always has to me – a load of bollocks

I believe an equivelent but more technical term may be "bullshitting"

Quote:

"Bullshit" does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions. It may also merely be "filler" or nonsense that, by virtue of its style or wording, gives the impression that it actually means something.In his essay on the subject, William G. Perry called bull[shit] "relevancies, however relevant, without data" and gave a definition of the verb "to bull[shit]" as follows:To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.[7]The bullshitter generally either knows the statements are likely false, exaggerated, and in other ways misleading or has no interest in their factual accuracy one way or the other. "Talking bullshit" is thus a lesser form of lying, and is likely to elicit a correspondingly weaker emotional response: whereas an obvious liar may be greeted with derision, outrage, or anger, an exponent of bullshit tends to be dismissed with an indifferent sneer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Distinguished_from_lying

[DJP]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I thought that parliament is the legislative body of the state in this country. So given it is such it would surely be  dismantled (not the building) as there will be no need for capitalist laws in a fully socialist society?

ALB wrote:

Obviously the present state, including parliament, is not something that can be used in its present form to change society.

[DJP]

Well if you want to know abour Deitzgen read ALBs 1975 article:http://mailstrom.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/joseph-dietzgen-workers-philosopher.htmlI think Strawsons article on materialism and monism is good, concise and clear:http://cognet.mit.edu/posters/TUCSON3/Strawson.htmlFor an introductory book to philosophy of mind see "Philosophy of Mind" by Ian Ravenscroft or "Mind" by John Searle For Critcal Realism see this, the same website has other articles about ithttp://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/more-words-on-critical-realism-getting-clear-on-the-basics/

[DJP]

How fair do you think this summary is LBird?http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/more-words-on-critical-realism-getting-clear-on-the-basics/

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

I'm sure you're already aware of my opinion that Critical Realism seems to be the best candidate for this job.

Unfortunately it seems no one else shares this opion.CR seems like a non starter not least for its insistence on occult like "non-physical casaul powers", what are they and how do they exert these powers? From what I can make out it's a bit like a reversion to ancient greek teleological explanations…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

One of the key ideologies within science is 'physicalism', which is the match to 'individualism', because it essentially reduces to the lowest 'component'. The 'real' for this ideology is the component, upon which the structure sits. On the contrary, for those who reject 'componentism' in both science and society, the 'real' is the structures, both 'physical' and 'social'. Thus, 'worker' is a structural identity, whereas'individual' is a component identity. And focus on 'component' hides 'structure'.

So the structure is "real" but the components are not?Nonsense about reductionism and individualism being the same aside. You do know that there is such a thing as "non-reductive materialism" and that is what the supervenence thing is a part of?

[DJP]

Thought isn't an object, it's a process. Thoughts are nothing more than brain processes. Mental states are multi-realisable, meaning that thought x can be realised in multiple configurations of grey matter.Thought is a physical process occuring in brains like flow is a physical process occuring in rivers.What do you think? What good reason is there to think otherwise?But just as Strawson said in the paper quoted "If one hasn't felt a kind of vertigo of astonishment, when facing the thought that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon in every respect, then one hasn't begun to be a thoughtful materialist. One hasn't got to the starting line."

[DJP]

ALB wrote:

No doubt some of those who call themselves "materialists" or "physicalists" do think that the physical does "supervene" on the non-physical in "reality" (and so are "dualists").

Bear in mind there are two kinds of dualism. Property dualism (there are two kinds of properties mental and physcal) is compatible with materialist monism whilst substance dualism (there are two kinds of substances the mental and the physical) is not.Strawson is a property dualist and he makes the distinction between "stuff monism" and  "thing monism".

wikipedia wrote:

According to stuff monism there is only one kind of stuff (e.g. matter or mind), although there may be many things made out of this stuff. According to thing-monism there exists strictly speaking only a single thing (e.g. the universe), which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

Note I'm only mentioning Strawson because he mentions stuff that seems useful to our discussion. I haven't read that much of his stuff but have previously heard of him in the textbooks…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

This is different to Marx and Dietzgen's ideology, which is 'real=(material/physical/concrete) or ideal'.

There's no Dualism in Marx or Dietzgen so this is wrong. And as far as I know this is not the definition of "real" that is put forward by the critical realists either (see previous posts in the thread)…

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

At least 'real' will cause them to ask, 'what does that mean?', and we can answer 'material and ideal'.

And then awkward buggers like me will ask what do you mean by 'material' and 'ideal' and what it is that separates the two?

[Author]

Posts