[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?

Why can't cells supervene on culture?The answer to these questions is the same…

Yes, and the answer is 'they both can'!IVF is 'cells' supervening on 'culture'.It takes 'ideas' to build humans, who otherwise wouldn't exist.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

We've been through this dozens of times, DJP.

Yes we have, and perhaps you should consider why no-one is agreeing with you on some of this stuff…

But the fact that some are agreeing with me now on some stuff, when initially no-one agreed with me on anything whatsoever, shows that I'm making some inroads into the 'Engelsian Ideology'.Given time, when talk turns to proper philosophy of science from the 20th century (rather than outdated ideas from the 19th), I'm sure more will come to agree further.And as I've said before, the ideology I'm backing actually suits the strategy of the SPGB, with its emphasis on education and propaganda (ie. 'ideas') and opposition to Leninist party control in favour of the working class (ie. 'democracy').The ideology of science I'm attempting to build is both in tune with the latest philosophical advances of bourgeois thinkers and in tune with Marx, and it emphasises workers' control through democratic methods, and opposes elite and academic control of one of the most important aspects of the means of production, science.Engels' 19th century views were mistaken and are a 'dead dog' nowadays. The notion of 'matter' in physics has been discarded, and Critical Realism actually regards 'ideas' and 'material' as the same substance in 'reality' and subject to the same method, as opposed to paying lip service to their 'unity', but in practice insisting that 'matter' is the more 'basic', as does 'materialism/physicalism'.Come over to the 'Dark Side', DJP, you know it makes sense!

[LBird]

Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, pp. 488-503, extracts wrote:

3. Some Patterns of Discovery ….Most geniuses responsible for the major mutations in the history of thought seem to have certain features in common; on the one hand scepticism, often carried to the point of iconoclasm, in their attitude towards traditional ideas, axioms and dogmas, towards everything that is taken for granted; on the other hand, an open-mindedness that verges on naïve credulity towards new concepts which seem to hold out some promise to their instinctive gropings. Out of this combination results that crucial capacity of perceiving a familiar object, situation, problem, or collection of data, in a sudden new light or new context: of seeing a branch not as part of a tree, but as a potential weapon or tool; of associating the fall of an apple not with its ripeness, but with the motion of the moon. The discoverer perceives relational patterns or functional analogies where nobody saw them before, as the poet perceives the image of a camel in a drifting cloud.This act of wrenching away an object or concept from its habitual associative context and seeing it in a new context is, as I have tried to show, an essential part of the creative process. 1 It is an act both of destruction and of creation, for it demands the breaking up of a mental habit, the melting down, with the blowlamp of Cartesian doubt, of the frozen structure of accepted theory, to enable the new fusion to take place. This perhaps explains the strange combination of scepticism and credulity in the creative genius. 2 Every creative act – in science, art or religion – involves a regression to a more primitive level, a new innocence of perception liberated from the cataract of accepted beliefs. It is a process of reculer pour mieux sauter, of disintegration preceding the new synthesis, comparable to the dark night of the soul through which the mystic must pass.Another pre-condition for basic discoveries to occur, and to be accepted, is what one might call the "ripeness" of the age. It is an elusive quality, for the "ripeness" of a science for a decisive change is not determined by the situation in that particular science alone, but by the general climate of the age. It was the philosophical climate of Greece after the Macedonian conquest that nipped in the bud Aristarchus' heliocentric concept of the universe; and astronomy went on happily with its impossible epicycles, because that was the type of science that the medieval climate favoured.Moreover, it worked. This ossified discipline, split off from reality, was capable of predicting eclipses and conjunctions with considerable precision, and of providing tables which were by and large adequate to the demand. On the other hand, the seventeenth century's "ripeness" for Newton, or the twentieth's for Einstein and Freud, was caused by a general mood of transition and awareness of crisis, which embraced the whole human spectrum of activities, social organization, religious beliefs, art, science, fashions.The symptom that a particular branch of science or art is ripe for a change is a feeling of frustration and malaise, not necessarily caused by any acute crisis in that specific branch – which might be doing quite well in its traditional terms of reference – but by a feeling that the whole tradition is somehow out of step, cut off from the mainstream, that the traditional criteria have become meaningless, divorced from living reality, isolated from the integral whole. This is the point where the specialist's hubris yields to philosophical soul-searching, to the painful reappraisal of his basic axioms and of the meaning of terms which he had taken for granted; in a word, to the thaw of dogma. This is the situation which provides genius with the opportunity for his creative plunge under the broken surface.….6. The Vanishing Act ….But in the two centuries that followed, the vanishing act continued. Each of the "ultimate" and "irreducible" primary qualities of the world of physics proved in its turn to be an illusion. The hard atoms of matter went up in fireworks; the concepts of substance, force, of effects determined by causes, and ultimately the very framework of space and time turned out to be as illusory as the "tastes, odours and colours" which Galileo had treated so contemptuously. Each advance in physical theory, with its rich technological harvest, was bought by a loss in intelligibility. These losses on the intellectual balance sheet, however, were much less in evidence than the spectacular gains; they were light-heartedly accepted as passing clouds which the next advance would dissolve. The seriousness of the impasse became only apparent in the second quarter of our century, and then only to the more philosophically-minded among scientists, who had retained a certain immunity against what one might call the new scholasticism of theoretical physics.Compared to the modern physicist's picture of the world, the Ptolemaic universe of epicycles and crystal spheres was a model of sanity. The chair on which I sit seems a hard fact, but I know that I sit on a nearly perfect vacuum. The wood of the chair consists of fibres, which consist of molecules, which consist of atoms, which are miniature solar systems with a central nucleus and electrons for planets. It all sounds very pretty, but it is the dimensions that matter. The space which an electron occupies is only one fifty-thousandth in diameter of its distance from the nucleus; the rest of the atomic interior is empty. If the nucleus were enlarged to the size of a dried pea, the nearest electron would circle around it at a distance of about a hundred and seventy-five yards. A room with a few specks of dust floating in the air is overcrowded compared to the emptiness which I call a chair and on which my fundaments rest.But it is doubtful whether it is permissible to say that the electron "occupies space" at all. Atoms have the capacity of swallowing energy and of spitting out energy – in the form of light rays, for instance. When a hydrogen atom, the simplest of all, with a single electron-planet, swallows energy, the planet jumps from its orbit to a larger orbit – say, from the orbit of Earth to the orbit of Mars; when it emits energy, it jumps back again into the smaller orbit. But these jumps are performed by the planet without it passing through the space that separates the two orbits. It somehow de-materializes in orbit A and rematerializes in orbit B. Moreover, since the amount of "action" performed by the hydrogen electron while going once round its orbit is the indivisibly smallest quantum of action (Planck's basic constant "h"), it is meaningless to ask at what precise point of its orbit the electron is at a given moment of time. It is equally everywhere. 15a aThe list of these paradoxa could be continued indefinitely; in fact the new quantum-mechanics consist of nothing but paradoxa, for it has become an accepted truism among physicists that the sub-atomic structure of any object, including the chair I sit on, cannot be fitted into a framework of space and time. Words like "substance" or "matter" have become void of meaning, or invested with simultaneous contradictory meanings.Thus beams of electrons, which are supposedly elementary particles of matter, behave in one type of experiment like little pellets, but in another type of experiment they behave like waves; conversely, rays of light behave sometimes like waves and at other times like bullets. Consequently, the ultimate constituents of matter are both substance and non-substance, lumps and waves. But waves in, on, of what? A wave is movement, undulation; but what is it that moves and undulates, producing my chair? It is nothing the mind can conceive of, not even empty space, for each electron requires a three-dimensional space for itself, two electrons need six dimensions, three electrons nine dimensions, to co-exist. In some sense these waves are real: we can photograph the famous dart-board pattern they produce when they pass through a diffraction grate; yet they are like the grin of the Cheshire cat.….How did this situation come about? Already in 1925, before the new quantum mechanics came into being, Whitehead wrote that "the physical doctrine of the atom has got into a state which is strongly suggestive of the epicycles of astronomy before Copernicus." 22 The common feature between pre-Keplerian astronomy and modern physics is that both have developed in relative isolation as "closed systems", manipulating a set of symbols according to certain rules of the game. Both systems "worked"; modern physics yielded nuclear energy, and Ptolemaic astronomy yielded predictions whose precision bowled over Tycho. The medieval astronomers manipulated their epicyclic symbols as modern physics manipulates Schroedinger's wave equations or Dirac's matrices, and it worked – though they knew nothing of gravity and elliptic orbits, believed in the dogma of circular motion, and had not the faintest idea why it worked. We are reminded of Urban VIII's famous argument which Galileo treated with scorn: that a hypothesis which works must not necessarily have anything to do with reality for there may be alternative explanations of how the Lord Almighty produces the phenomena in question. If there is a lesson in our story it is that the manipulation, according to strictly self-consistent rules, of a set of symbols representing one single aspect of the phenomena may produce correct, verifiable predictions, and yet completely ignore all other aspects whose ensemble constitutes reality:"… Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and … there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts… Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with…" 23 Modern physics is not really concerned with "things" but with the mathematical relations between certain abstractions which are the residue of the vanished things. In the Aristotelian universe, quantity was merely one attribute of things, and one of the least important. Galileo's "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics" was regarded by his contemporaries as a paradox; today it has become unquestioned dogma. For a long time the reduction of quality to quantity – of colour, sound, radiation to vibrational frequencies – was so eminently successful that it seemed to answer all questions. But when physics approached the ultimate constituents of matter, quality took its revenge: the method of reduction to quantity still worked, but we no longer know just what it is that is being thus reduced. All we do in fact know is that we read our instruments – the number of clicks in the Geiger counter, or the position of a pointer on a dial – and interpret the signs according to the rules of the game:"And so in its actual procedure physics studies not these inscrutable qualities [of the material world], but pointer readings which we can observe. The readings, it is true, reflect the fluctuations of the world-qualities; but our exact knowledge is of the readings, not of the qualities. The former have as much resemblance to the latter as a telephone number has to a subscriber." 24 Bertrand Russell expressed this state of affairs even more succinctly:"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover."

https://archive.org/details/ArthurKoestler-TheSleepwalkers-AHistoryOfMansChangingVisionOfThe

[LBird]

To the unwary, it should be pointed out that quotes from Marx can be garnered to support both sides of this debate.The real task is to get to grips with the issues, and make a decision for oneself.It's the 21st century, comrades, not the 19th.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

‘Ideas’ are separate from ‘matter’, and any claim to their essential unity is pronounced to be ‘Idealism’.

Actually the opposite is true. Materialism is a claim of the essential unity of 'ideas' and 'matter'.

So why can't matter 'supervene' on ideas?Or does 'essential unity' mean 'different stuff'?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

‘Ideas’ are separate from ‘matter’, and any claim to their essential unity is pronounced to be ‘Idealism’.

Actually the opposite is true. Materialism is a claim of the essential unity of 'ideas' and matter.

We've been through this dozens of times, DJP.Why call something just 'materialism', if it's both 'ideas' and 'matter'?If it involves 'history', it is human. And Marx unified idealism and materialism into 'theory and practice'.As I've said before, as long as everyone reading this thread realises that there are two opposed ideologies at play here, then they will be able to situate themselves in the debate.Marx or Engels? That's the choice to be made.HINT: Engels' ideas are totally discredited.

[LBird]

We’re clearly seeing the separation here on this thread into the two opposed ideological strands, represented by Engels and Marx.On the one hand, we have the positivist and empirical belief in the ‘material’ (or 'physical'), a science which is ‘neutral’ and produces ‘Truth’ and which is non-ideological. ‘Ideas’ are separate from ‘matter’, and any claim to their essential unity is pronounced to be ‘Idealism’. Thus, if ‘socialism’ is ‘scientific’ in this form, it is claimed to be non-ideological. This is the tradition that follows Engels.On the other hand, we have the attempt to unify the ‘material and ideal’ in a philosophy of praxis, in which human theory and the external world are brought together in social practice. As this practice is both ‘ideal and human’, it must be ideological. The various names given to this, prior to ‘Critical Realism’, also attempt to capture this unity of ‘ideal and material’: ‘historical materialism’ or ‘the materialist conception of history’. This view sees ‘materialism’ as a form of ‘idealism’, because it ignores human creative ideas. Thus, ‘socialism’, being based upon human theory and practice, must (just like ‘science’) be ideological. This is the tradition that follows Marx.20th century philosophy of science trails after Marx in these debates. Engels has been discredited, as has 19th century 'materialism' and 'ideology-free' science.

[LBird]

Here's the quote where Marx calls 'materialism' an 'idealism', which is in line with his view in the Theses on Feuerbach that his views were a 'third way', encompassing both 'idealism' and 'materialism' in a method of 'theory and practice', and his hopes for a unified 'human science'.

Marx, EPM, CW3, p. 303, wrote:

In consequence, natural science will lose its abstractly material – or rather, its idealistic – tendency, and will become the basis of human science, as it has already become – albeit in an estranged form – the basis of actual human life, and to assume one basis for life and a different basis for science is as a matter of course a lie.

[my bold]https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htmCritical Realism, which I've outlined, can provide a 'basis' for both 'natural' and 'social' science: that is, a 'basis of human science', as Marx called it.Unless someone can provide a method, as I already have, which can be applied to both 'rocks' and 'value', then I suggest furthering the discussion on the basis of CR.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

In my experience whenever someone is unable to explain something in their own words, in a clear and precise way, it usually means they don't understand it themselves.

Yeah, and those arguing, like YMS, that neither science nor socialism are ideological, have to compete with my simple explanation, too.Put simply, we need 'ideas' to understand the world, physical and social, but human ideas always distort that world. Thus, both science and socialism, being human 'theory and practice', necessarily distort the very thing they hope to understand. They are inescapably 'ideological'. 'Ideology' is a distorting lens, and it is ever-present for humans.This is true for science due to the necessity of 'selection' from an entire universe of potential 'data'. If a society focuses upon one thing it loses focus (or misses entirely) another. I've shown this with my discussion about Critical Realism.

[LBird]

YMS, you really don't do comradely hints, do you?Anyone else want to discuss Critical Realism, Communism, Democracy and Marx's unified method?

[LBird]

YMS wrote:

Lbird: back to topic. Let me ask this. In socialism, in your democratic model, we'll still need technical experts to oeprate delcate experimental equipment, to conduct experiements and survey correctly: we can't all do the experiements and collate the data. So what we'll be voting on would be the 'selected facts'. Since we're rational people, we'll come to the conclusion the 'selected facts' demand: so won't we still be enslaved to the "enlightened" scientists? After all, we all know how appointed staff can end up controlling their oversight committees. Won't the vote, which will make all of us complicit in their facts in actuality make it harder to oppose and dispute with the scientists?

YMS, you're making so many unexamined assumptions here (which I've tried many times to get you to examine), and I've learned that you aren't really reading anything I write, so I'm not going to say it all again. Perhaps other comrades will make the attempt, and perhaps you'll heed them, but I know you've already blocked out any contribution I make.As for 'back to topic': I want to discuss Critical Realism and its usefulness for workers in trying to understand their world, physical and social, and thus examine whether it is a way of producing a unified method that Marx thought possible.If you don't want to discuss this, which I regard as at the heart of the thread title 'Science for Communists?', then I think that you're avoiding this title, and that really you want to discuss 'Science for Scientists', which, as a Communist, I'm not interested in.So, unless you want to directly discuss CR, or indirectly approach it through a discussion about 'democracy within science', then we're wasting each other's time.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I think a socialist society will still have a socialist ideology. In order to achieve a socialist society workers need to develop a conscious awareness of what is really going on in society and where their interests as a class lie. It is my view that people in a socialist society will still need to be conscious of, if not their interests in the class struggle that will no longer exists, but of where they came from and how a truly human society was achieved. I fail to see how this can be done without being aware of the existence of the two ideologies and of which one is beneficial to all humans.

I agree with this as far as it goes, SP, but I think regarding an 'ideology' as simply about 'interests', as if these themselves are not 'ideological', as a mistake. 'Interests' are as much ideal as material.Regarding science, I think all science is ideological because I see ideologies as 'distorting lenses' through which we view ourselves and our activity.Since the act of searching for answers (both natural and social) is by definition a selective, directed search, then it will always be an ideological activity which also hides, conceals and distorts.My outline of CR shows this well: if a human directs their attention to one level (eg. a rock), they are by choice not directing their attention to other levels (eg. fossils, roads, cairns, etc.).Ideologies will direct attention to different components, structures, levels and emergent properties, and we can't direct our attention to everything everywhere because that would be impossible. Science and socialism mean ideologies, and we should be aware of it, open about it, and declare our ideology.Unless we are an omniscient god. And science teaches us that we are not.

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

I will speak my mind on this thread when I please and ignore the elitist and undemocratic demands of LBird

Good for you, Vin.The 'material' is not promising, but I think we'll make a confident revolutionary of you yet!

[LBird]

norm_burns wrote:

A very useful post, summarising a long and difficult thread and perhaps saving some from having to wade through it's needless complexities. As many noted from near it's start, LBird had nothing new to say, and what he did say was often unneccessarily confused, over-wordy and long-winded. He has shown confusion about the process and development of science and the meaning of certain modern developments in it. He confuses expertise with elitism. He could have got us where he was heading in a page, but i think he likes being centre-stage, playing the great new prophet… He has been obsequious when agreed with, and obnoxious when opposed. The only democratic demand that is needed is in the 'economic' sphere of ownership and control – everything else will  follow on naturally, after the fact.

Unfortunately, norm, it's complete nonsense.It's certainly 'saving' you from thinking though.Do you really think your brief, insulting comment counts for anything whatsoever?And don't bother to read the 'Science for Communists?' thread, because clearly it'll be over your head.Back to sleep, norm.Moderator1 2nd Warning: 7. You are free to express your views candidly and forcefully provided you remain civil. Do not use the forums to send abuse, threats, personal insults or attacks, or purposely inflammatory remarks (trolling). Do not respond to such messages.

[LBird]

Comrades, either YMS is a bluffer, or he doesn't know what he's talking about, with regard to his own ideology.

YMS wrote:

I have never denied that individual senses are socially produced, you'll not be able to find a single instance of such a statement…

[my bold]Your statements throughout this thread are saturated with appeals to individuals 'senses'. Here is one example:

YMS, post #728, wrote:

…we know reality because it's before our eyes …

You should be saying 'before our social perception', and making it clear to all that neither 'individuals' nor their 'biological senses' are the source of scientific knowledge.And if 'senses are socially produced', then why aren't they subject to a democratic vote?

YMS wrote:

I've simply said that I believe a vote would be a hinderance to the social production of knoeldge, and undemocratic.

Yes, you keep saying that 'voting' is 'undemocratic'. That is because you equate, as do all liberals, 'democracy' with 'individual freedom'. You think sovereignty resides in 'the individual', and not 'society', and you have a 'fear of the mob' who, being essentially stupid compared to you, you won't allow to 'tell you the truth'.You think that your 'senses' tell you the truth, and that the senses of an elite will tell the proletariat the truth.You're either a bluffer or a dangerous anti-democrat, YMS.I warn comrades to think carefully about what YMS is arguing, and how his beliefs undermine any hope for Democratic Communism/Socialism.Plus, he's hiding his beliefs, and won't expose them to us all, as I do mine, so this should set comrades' alarm bells ringing.Ask YMS yourselves what has he got to hide, because he won't answer me.[Plus he hasn't discussed CR]

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