[LBird]

ALB wrote:

…to see if it would throw any light on where LBird is coming from… As far as I can see, the person who comes nearest to LBird's position is the physicist Ernst Mach…

It’s  always easier to pidgeonhole someone, rather than actually discuss what’s being said, isn’t it?I’ve stated repeatedly, giving quotes, that I’m ‘coming from’ the likes of Marx and Pannekoek, with influences from Einstein and Lakatos. The suggestion that I’m a ‘Machist’ says more about ALB’s ideology of science than it does about mine.

DJP wrote:

I think LBird was claiming to be a realist whilst at the same time also holding to extreme cognitive relativism… Though he would deny it I think there was a strong influence of postmoderism in his thinking…

Marx was clearly a relativist, too, of the ‘social’ kind (‘modes of production’ – has anyone heard of them?). PostModernism is a relativism of the ‘individualist’ kind, and since I constantly quote Marx’s social ideology, and stress ‘democratic control of knowledge production’, how this can be construed as PM, I don’t know. The accusation says more about DJP’s ideology of science than it does about mine.As for YMS’s quote from Charlie, it just backs up my ‘social’ (and thus agreeing with Marx) position on the nature of ‘science’. However, YMS, employing an individualist ideology of science, wishes to read it as comfort for ‘individualist sense experience’. Marx makes it very clear that ‘sense perception’ is a socially-created experience of nature, and not merely what any person can see, hear, smell, touch or taste. If any individual could be magically transformed to a different society, they would experience nature in a different way. Nature does not tell us what it is; we ask questions, and thus the answers are already pre-loaded. The myth that science produces ‘Eternal Truth’ (which is knowledge that is the same for any observer, at any time, in any society, forever) is a bourgeois myth, tied in with the need for ruling class legitimacy and authority.Finally, in YMS’s quote, Charlie clearly puts humanity at the forefront of science (not simple ‘nature’, as for bourgeois science and a misled Engels), and aims to build ‘one science’ in which ‘physics’ and ‘sociology’ employ the same method. The positivists of the 19th century thought that this meant making ‘sociology’ more like ‘physics’. We now know, since Einstein, that ‘physics’ is more like ‘sociology’, and that this must be the aim of our proletarian ‘science’, to democratise knowledge production, as part of the task by the proletariat to assume control of all production.

Marx wrote:

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Bourgeois science clearly separates the ‘arts’ (or ‘human sciences’) from ‘science’ (or, at heart, ‘physics’). Marx argues against this, and I follow Marx on this point. If ‘proletarian science’ means anything, it is the methodological unity of all of the ‘sciences’. In a nutshell, physics must become poetical, rather than mathematical. Scientists have a social duty to explain, in a manner understandable to most humans, rather than retreat into a world of mumbo-jumbo, as did priests. Today’s scientists are simply old-fashioned elitists, as we can tell from the horror expressed by those on these threads, who consider themselves ‘scientists’, at the thought of workers voting on the ‘truth’. For them, one professor’s vote is worth a million workers’ votes. We have to undermine this elitism, and start to build for the day when workers will democratically control the means of production, distribution and consumption. And that includes ‘science’.

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

 Vin, mate, try just reading on this thread, and try to think about what's being said, and keep your comments to a minimum, for now.You're out of your depth, comrade. I'm trying to give you good advice.

 When you are unable to give an answer you inevitably become personal. Why not deal with the content of my post. Would you as a 'communist' (Shakespear comes to mind here) allow an 'elite' (your words) make undemocratic decisions about your treatment? 

Sigh.If the 'elitist' brain surgeon was named Dr. Mengele, then, no, I wouldn't.According to YOUR METHOD, Vin, you would allow Dr. Mengele to make decisions about your treatment.We really have to lift this discussion beyond "What if, to me as an individual…".Can't you and YMS address some of Rovelli's concerns?

[LBird]

Y'know, we're trying to discuss philosophy, and the scientific method that would best suit the democratic proletariat in its attempts to understand the world and thus to build Communism, in the light of the obvious failure of 19th century science, and we're reduced to nuts, widgets and dentists.I sometimes wonder…

[LBird]

Vin Maratty wrote:

LBird wrote:

Do you wish an elite to make 'estimations', YMS, or a whole society?

If you mean by 'elite' someone like a brain surgeon then I would prefer the 'elite' to make the estimation rather than wait for a democratic decision.  Tho' I would not refer to a specialist as 'elite'. That would  obfuscation. 

Vin, mate, try just reading on this thread, and try to think about what's being said, and keep your comments to a minimum, for now.You're out of your depth, comrade. I'm trying to give you good advice.2nd Warning:  2. The forums proper are intended for public discussion. Personal messages between participants should be sent via private message or by e-mail.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

So some people will have 5,000 hours of practice in science, some people will have less than a 1,000…

[my bold]Yes, 90% will have over 5,000 hours, and 10% will have less than a 1,000…What?That wasn't your assumption?My assumptions are based upon my political ideology, that of Communism, which asserts that the proletariat has the innate ability to run the economy and society, by democratic means. This, of course, includes 'science' as part of the means of production, so I 'assume' that 5,000 hours is a gross underestimate of the time which will be put in by most workers to develop their understanding of the world we live in.Errrr…. You're not assuming that most people are naturally thick, are you, YMS?Now, there's a 'ruling class idea' if there ever was one!

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

All a vote can tell us is what the majority agree is the case, not what is the case.

Could you describe the 'scientific method' which doesn't require voting, YMS? The method that does tell us 'what is the case'?'Scientists' throughout the 19th century alleged that they had one that told us 'what the case is', but Einstein disproved that allegation.This has been the basis of discussion by philosophers ever since, and, indeed, by the brighter physicists, like Rovelli.

Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy, wrote:

This reading of scientific thinking as subversive, visionary, and evolutionary is quite different from the way science was understood by the positivist philosophers… (p. xii)Facile nineteenth-century certainties about science— in particular the glorification of science understood as definitive knowledge of the world—have collapsed. One of the forces responsible for their dismissal has been the twentieth-century revolution in physics, which led to the discovery that Newtonian physics, despite its immense effectiveness, is actually wrong, in a precise sense. Much of the subsequent philosophy of science can be read as an attempt to come to grips with this disillusionment. What is scientific knowledge if it can be wrong even when it is extremely effective? (p. xv)But answers given by natural science are not credible because they are definitive; they are credible because they are the best we have now, at a given moment in the history of knowledge. (p. xvi)

'Best' is an estimation, the product discussion, by humans.Do you wish an elite to make 'estimations', YMS, or a whole society?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

It's alleged it takes 10,000 hours of work to become an exprt in any field (this also applies to music, sport and art).  Now, 10,000 hours is a lot of life, and we all have finite lives.  At some point, we have to surrender to expertise.Now, obviously, there are spaces for democratci control.  Will we build a sucessor to CERN?  That's a democratic question.  All scholarly communications should be available freely, everyone should have access to acadmic libraries.  Publishing houses should have juries or elected boards to decide what to put into mass runs (and there needs to be a variety of publishers).Obviously, only one eye can go to a telescope at a time (or put another way, time with a massive radio telescope will need to be booked), and a demonstrated capacity to use it should be at least one critirion.  Any (shudder) individual should be free to follow whatever object of study they choose, but when serious resources are required, and collaborative effort is needed, then that is a matter for democratic control.Is someone who has spent 10,000 hours studying physics an elite?  no, because they haven't spent 10,000 hours studying biology, or working a lathe, or farming.  People will do different work, and each specialism is equally useful to society; and that is what social production of knowledge looks like.

Perhaps you're missing the part of a 'scientific education' under Communism that will make it a requirement that any 'specialist' will be taught to explain their findings to a non-specialist audience, YMS.The separation of 'science' from the 'arts' will be rejected, and 'individual findings' will only reach the status of 'scientific knowledge' after a vote by non-specialists.If 'it' can't be explained to our society, 'it' won't be 'scientific knowledge'.To maintain otherwise, that 'the masses' can't ever understand 'specialities', is to join Bakunin.I'm not a Bakuninist, YMS. Are you?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

This approach is very different from YMS's (and DJP's?) constant harping on about 'individuals', rather than 'classes'.

Where do I harp on about individuals, my whole thrust has been about ideology being  matter of class not individual.  When there are no more classes there is no more ideology and we will be individuals, fully realised,  in an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

Even under Communism, YMS, with every individual fully developed by our society, 'reality' will still not tell us 'what it is'.Our different views of 'reality' will no longer have a 'class' basis, but there will be different views, and we'll have to vote on these options.We should be open from the start that in Communist society all humans will collectively decide what 'reality is'.Sometimes we'll make mistakes, because humans do, and so our 'scientific method' will emphasise the need for more than one 'True Account'. Thus, the 'authority' of 'scientists' will be downgraded: we'll no longer have an elite who allegedly employ a 'special, neutral method' outside of the democratic control of all of us. Our method will produce 'Options for Choice', not 'The Truth'.Debate, dissent and criticism will be at the heart of our unified scientific method, encompassing all disciplines from physics to sociology.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

The Cheshire Cat and its smile, and 'physicalism'.

Tell me more..

What a coincidence! "'Quantum Cheshire Cat' becomes reality"http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28543990

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Bakunin wrote:

A scientific body to which had been confided the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established powers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of its government and direction.But that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all constituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal suffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is true, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a body of politicans, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting themselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a country, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy. Witness the United States of America and Switzerland.Consequently, no external legislation and no authority – one, for that matter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the servitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themsleves.Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others.If I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness to follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary, their indications and even their directions, it is because their authority is imposed on me by no one, neither by men nor by God. ions and even their directions Otherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their counsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would make me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps of truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed on me by my own reason. I am conscious of my own inability to grasp, in all its detail, and positive development, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labour. I receive and I give – such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subbordination.https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/authrty.htm

David Adam wrote:

“Teach the people?” Bakunin once asked. “That would be stupid. . . . we must not teach the people, but incite them to revolt.”8 Marx had always rejected this approach. In an argument with Weitling, who was an advocate of individual dictatorship, Marx said that to rouse the workers without offering any scientific ideas or constructive doctrine was “equivalent to vain dishonest play at preaching which assumes an inspired prophet on the one side and on the other only the gaping asses.”9 Marx specifically criticized the Bakuninists in the First International in similar terms: “To them, the working class is so much raw material, a chaos which needs the breath of their Holy Spirit to give it form.”

http://libcom.org/library/marx-bakunin-question-authoritarianismYou stick to Bakunin for your 'individualist' ideology, DJP, and I'll stick to Marx, for my 'Communist' ideology.We all know that Bakunin hid his 'authoritarianism' behind the myth of 'individualism'. [read the link, comrades]It always goes back to 'special' individuals, at first in 'woodwork' or any other artisan activity, then 'science', then 'politics'.Elitism in science will bolster elitism in politics.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

LBird wrote:

YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?

Ironically, it is your view that gives some standing to "individualist" ideas in that it makes any individual's "bias" (the new word here for "ideology") as good or as bad as the next while YMS's view says that it is possible for humans to share the same "bias", over non-social science today and over most things in socialism/communism, so that a common understanding/interpretation can be reached and acted on. He could claim to be more "common-ist" than thou. In the end of course It's relativism v universalism again (and again).

Unfortunately, you've forgotten our earlier discussions about the nature of the 'subject', within the epistemological triad of 'object, subject, knowledge' (our 'Schaff' threads), ALB.For a Communist, the 'subject' is a 'social individual', not a 'biological individual'. For us, 'individuals' embody social ideas (or ideologies). That's why (except on this thread, where I've specifically attempted to discuss at a simpler level without links and quotes, as I made clear at the start) on the other threads I always gave authors, books, links, quotes to where 'my' ideas come from. This is the correct scientific method, to expose one's sources and thus ideology.I'm not an individual, I'm a worker. This identification affects ones view of the world, social and natural.In this context, of course, Marx is a 'relativist', not a 'universalist', to use your terms of reference. I suspect you're following Engels here. Marx's concept of 'mode of production' should be enough to remind comrades of Marx's 'relativism' on the subject of 'knowledge'.Different societies understand the world differently. This viewpoint means that Marx was ahead of 'bourgeois science' by about 100 years.This approach is very different from YMS's (and DJP's?) constant harping on about 'individuals', rather than 'classes'.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'd have thought the important thing about science is that we know we don't know, but that, according to our best efforts, this is the way things stand.  It's just one of those things you have to live with, much like the inevitability of death.Likewise, all language is inherently metaphorical, and any word can only refer to what it was iterpreteted to mean the last time it was used.  This has radical implications, but not on a day to day basis: I mean, I can never fully know what you mean; but I can take a workable stab most of the time.If everyone is biased, no-one is biased.  What matters is when classes introduce systematic bias.  The bias of individuals is what we fight against through dialogue and dialectic.  We will never eradticate bias.It's like the old saw about how maybe when I see red, I'm seeing the colour you see when you say green.  I can never know.  It's impossible.  But what we can know is that when we point to something and say it's red, we both agree that it is red, and the sam boundaries apply to green.As the story goes:

Quote:

Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to knock this notion out of their heads, say by stating it to be a superstition, a religious concept, they would be sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful results all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence.

YMS, I'm a Communist, not a Liberal.Why you continue to engage me with individualist ideas, I'll never know.Why not start a thread named 'Science for Individualists', and leave this one to the self-professed Communists?

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I'm not here to have a go or try and derail this thread. I'm genuinely interested in your view as to how this lack of scientific "truth" could or will impact on a socialist society or even the attempt to bring it into existence?

No, I know that you are one of the few who seem to be able to recognise the problems that Rovelli discusses, and, further, realise that this has implications for human knowledge and its impact on society. So, I know your questions are genuine, and not simply bloody-minded refusal to think about the consequences of accepting YMS's 'banal' points.Put simply, if 'truth' is socially-produced, why shouldn't it be socially-controlled?And for us, discussing a 'socialist society' which by definition will be run on democratic lines, why shouldn't all scientific activity be democratically-controlled?The alternative is that 'truth' reflects 'nature' (and so is eternal 'Truth') and thus 'nature' should have the last word, not humans.But, when those who espouse the 'elitist' view of human knowledge production are asked, how do 'elite' humans 'know' what nature says, they revert to old-fashioned science, which we now know doesn't allow 'nature' to speak for itself. Elistist methods will produce elitist ideas.Humans always put words into nature's mouth. Once we recognise that, we can ensure that those doing the 'putting' are us. That is, socialist society.If this doesn't help, or is too obscure, or needs some clarification, please ask away!

[LBird]

So, Rovelli doesn't know, Einstein doesn't, we all know Newton didn't know, even Pannekoek says that the 'laws of physics' are a human construct, but to YMS this is all just 'banal'.Do you really not read anything at all being posted on here? Or understand the importance of what's being said?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I have never implied that atrsonomy is "The Truth", you seem to attribute views to me I don't hold.  I stated simply that today astronomy (simple measurement of stellar locations, has no social ideological aspect.  tehre are ideological debates around the big bang theory, and obviously creationism has specific local political aspects.  That everyone is biased is banal, as relevant as saying everyone has skin.So, lets debate communist skin's application to science.Apparently in court, they have given up (in England) on 'Beyond a reasonable doubt' — that confuses people.  They now ask: are you sure?  Now, I'm sure what my name is, but that isn't truth, abstract and eternal.  I'm sure India is there.  I'm sure geostationery sattelites can track my position to within ten square metres.  Reliable organised knowledge tells me this.  Knowledge produced not as arbitrary personal belief, but for others, according to agreed methods.I am not sure of the predictions of greenhouse models, but I find them convincing.  I am sure that the green house effect is true and adding carbon dioxide to an atmosphere will lead to temperature changes.I'm convinced that Elephants are long and smooth with a point at the end.

This post of yours is beneath contempt, YMS. You should be ashamed, and grow up, if you're going to discuss philosophy with the grown-ups.Reminder:  2. The forums proper are intended for public discussion. Personal messages between participants should be sent via private message or by e-mail.

[Author]

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