[LBird]

Prefatory comment:Rowley doesn’t define what he means by ‘scientific’, but he seems to share ‘common sense’ opinions that ‘science’ produces ‘objective knowledge’, in the positivist sense.

Rowley, pp.2-3, wrote:

Marxism, however, [regarding]…working class revolution …predicted what must happen in the world as the result of the operation of objective laws of history… Marxism, precisely because it was a scientific statement about the world …How ever, the authority of its science depended upon a valid epistemology. Scientific socialists could act without moral blame only if they had confidence in their ability to know objectively the laws of history.

As ever, no mention of the proletariat democratically determining ‘objective knowledge’, a ‘scientific knowledge’ which must always be ‘socially-objective’, rather than ‘objective’ in the positivist sense of ‘knowledge being a reflection of reality’. This is not possible. 

Rowley, p.5, wrote:

Bogdanov sought a form of empiricism that could provide certainty without relying upon Kantian categories. He realized the centrality of epistemology to the debate, but (in light of contemporary trends in philosophy) he declined to rely on Plekhanov's unsophisticated "reflection" theory of knowledge. Following the empiriocriticism of Ernst Mach, Bogdanov espoused a strict empiricism and denied the possibility of a priori knowledge of any sort at all.

We can reject Plekhanov’s (and Lenin’s) ‘reflection theory of knowledge’ (naïve realism) without needing to fall into empiricism. Theory precedes observation.

Rowley, p.5, wrote:

Following the empiriocriticism of Ernst Mach, Bogdanov espoused a strict empiricism and denied the possibility of a priori knowledge of any sort at all…. Bogdanov defined reality in terms of experience: The real world is identical with human perception of it. Bogdanov's universe was a monist system, but the monism was "a type of organization according to which experience is systematized." It is a monism of "knowing method." In Empiriomonism, the first major collection of his positivist writings, Bogdanov illustrated how this was possible. "The basis of 'objectivity,' must lie in the sphere of collective experience … The objective character of the physical world consists in the fact that it exists not for me individually but for everyone, and for everyone has a definite meaning, exactly, I am convinced, as it does for me." In this way the sense of a real external world, the knowledge, and the values of any particular social group are not the mere subjective whims of individuals. "Reality" is made up of the shared perceptions of the collective consciousness of a society. "The physical world is collectively organized experience."

Bogdanov seems to equate ‘reality’ (ie. object) with ‘knowledge’. We have already seen that this can’t be done. Object, subject and knowledge are separate cognitive categories, and ‘knowledge’ is an on-going process, not a ‘once-for-all-time’ discovery, which some authority then ‘knows’ with finality.Given the rest of the article’s quotes from Bogdanov, I’m inclined to view Bourrinet’s opinion’s of Bogdanov in a more favourable light than you do, ALB.Rowley also mentions Lenin.

Rowley, p.12, wrote:

Lenin attempted to achieve an objective justification of his social ideals. He required objective proof of proletarian revolution without which his program would have been mere subjective idealism. In order to preserve scientific inevitability, Lenin had to insist on materialist monism and the possibility of objective knowledge.

As we now know from the events after 1917, those who argue for ‘the possibility of objective knowledge’ and ‘scientific inevitability’ are defending ‘authority’ in science, which inexorably leads to defending ‘authority’ in politics.Communism must involve the democratic control of all social authority, including ‘science’.

Rowley, p.12, wrote:

Why did Lenin insist on Plekhanov's and Engels' scientism, determinism, and materialism?

Yes, Engels will come into our discussions, eventually, but it needs to be on another thread.

Rowley, p.15, wrote:

Bogdanov's Empiriomonism may have been originally conceived in order to justify violent revolution, but his intellectually honest philosophical development toward moderation and cultural transformation has left him with a deservedly high reputation as both a philosopher and a revolutionary.

Needless to say, I don’t share Rowley’s opinion of Bogdanov’s ‘deservedly high reputation’. I think Bogdanov was a bourgeois intellectual, as was Lenin and is Rowley.None of the three mention workers’ democratic control of all aspects of social life. That, to me, is the peak of ‘intellectual honesty’.All in all, ALB, I think that I have great differences, epistemological and political, with Bogdanov. I’ve ordered Kolakowski’s book, and will read his opinions of Bogdanov, but I think that your advice to me to look to Bogdanov, in some way, is seriously misplaced.

[LBird]

ALB, have you read:Bogdanov and Lenin: Epistemology and RevolutionDavid G. RowleyStudies in East European Thought, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Mar., 1996), pp. 1-19

Quote:

ABSTRACT. This paper explains how A. Bogdanov changed from a left Bolshevik impatient for armed insurrection into a moderate proponent of revolution through cultural transformation by placing him in the context of a debate over epistemology among Russian Social Democrats in the early twentieth century. By relying on neo Kantian epistemology to justify socialist revolution, N. Berdyaev actually began to turn away from Marxism. Lenin espoused a naive realism that was consistent with scientific socialism, but which did not satisfy Bogdanov. Empiriomonism, Bogdanov's neo-Positivist epistemology, led him away from violent revolution and toward a proletarian cultural revolution.

I haven't read it, yet, myself, but will do so soon.

[LBird]

Thanks for your opinion, ALB.

ALB wrote:

Anyway, (for what it's worth) here is Kolakowski's summary of some of Bogdanov's views (he devotes 11 pages of his Main Currents of Marxism to discussing them).

I'll have to get hold of Kolakowski's first volume, and dig a bit deeper.

[LBird]

For ALB, info regarding our discussion of Bogdanov:

Bourrinet, The Dutch and German Communist Left (1900-68), pp. 229-30, wrote:

Within the RSDLP, and especially in the bolshevik fraction, there was a whole tendency, represented principally by Bazarov, Lunacharsky and Bogdanov, which defended, within the party and even externally, the empiriocritical conceptions of Mach and Avenarius, with the aim of ‘going beyond’ Marx’s limitations. With Bogdanov, the social process was reduced to the biological process of the organism adapting to the environment, and the relations of production were reduced to the purely technical aspects of the organisation of labour – a thesis which in some ways prefigured the stalinist view. At the same time, by affirming that social life is in all its manifestations a conscious psychic life”, that “social existence and social consciousness are identical in the exact sense of the word”, Bogdanov denied the marxist thesis that consciousness only reflects social life more or less, that it lags behind it, and that material social existence develops independently of the social consciousness of humanity. The implications of Bogdanov’s view were that social classes were always conscious of the social relations presiding over their activity in production, and thus that the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat – which in Marxist theory is alone capable of seeing social reality clearly – was no different from the consciousness of other, non-proletarian social strata. In this sense, Bogdanov was simply reflecting his old populist conceptions, which Bolshevism had always fought against. Under the cover of ‘empirio-criticism’, Bogdanov’s theories opened the door to a mechanistic, fatalistic conception of the revolutionary process as well as to idealist voluntarism on the political level.

[my bold]What do you think, ALB? Is it a fair reflection of Bogdanov’s views, in your opinion?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Indeed, that the apiarist industry is a party to a power struggle to defend itself was, kind of, part of the point.

Yeah, the link between 'power/authority' and 'science'.Since twc doesn't do 'discussion', and prefers one-sided harangues, full of irrelevant asides, where twc's opponents must 'confess their sins' for daring to be 'critical of science', it's hard to sort the wheat from the chaff of their posts. twc has clearly done a fair amount of reading, but doesn't care to engage and explain, so that we can all ask questions and try to advance all of our understandings of this vital issue about the nature of 'science'.I've tried at least twice to interact with twc, but all I've received is personal abuse. I refuse now to deal with twc, though I'd be interested to read other posters' discussions with twc, if that's at all possible.

[LBird]

Thanks for the link, YMS.

Bee Article wrote:

Facts are not simply discovered by science as absolute truths, but are instead constructed in social contexts that are riddled with power relations. As the old adage suggests, knowledge and power are always intertwined.What becomes a fact and what does not is a social and political issue that is concerned with what kind of knowledge – and importantly whose knowledge – acquires legitimacy and therefore authority.

Yeah, this quote seems to support some of the things that I've argued:'Facts' are socially-constructed by authorities, not just simply 'innocently discovered by a neutral method'.We have to question 'who' produces the specified 'facts', and for what and whose 'purposes', and using what 'method'.The days of just accepting 'scientists' disinterestedly gathering 'obvious data' as an act of charity or professional pride, is long gone.'Science' is about power, legitimacy and authority, and there is no 'method' which avoids these human issues.Communists must take a critical interest in these questions. It's my opinion that if science is not under our democratic control (and I mean 'cognition', too, not just funding, research aims or teaching, for example), it will be under the control of a self-selecting elite.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

So what do you think we should do with facts that contradict our true faith, sorry ideology?

The ideology of 'I don't use an ideology, I just use facts' is an ideology. It's a 'true faith', which can't be argued with, as we have seen, no matter what evidence is presented to contradict it, even with those who present videos that contradict it!

ALB wrote:

But we are in danger of turning yet another thread into a discussion of your theory of science.

Yeah, let's just stick to the 'facts', eh?

ALB wrote:

Which is where the neuroscience and (yes) neuroscientists come in. They do indeed seem to be doing our work for us. After all, we are not qualified to do it ourselves, are we? Are you?

I like the 'personalisation' of the argument, ALB! Always the touch of those who are unsure!In fact, yes, I am 'qualified' to argue with the results of behaviourists' and neuroscientists' work: I'm a Communist. It gives me a head start.But… we wouldn't want a 'science' thread to turn into a discussion of 'science', would we?Fancy continuing to challenge the 'True Faith' of 'objective scientific method' which neutrally produces 'facts', which we then interpret.No, 'cart before horse', or 'slab before sea', as a critical Carr would say. But then, you'd know Carr, wouldn't you ALB? Remember, the guy that the SPGB holds up as a source for ideas, but then ignores those ideas in their practice?Right, I'll leave this issue alone now, on this thread, and refer anyone who's interested in finding out how 'science' actually does work, to the Pannekoek thread.

[LBird]

colinskelly (about Kliman), wrote:

That what is require is not leaders but popular consciousness: “…the core issue is not one of “taking power,” but of what happens after… There needs to be a new relation of theory to practice, so that regular people are not just the muscle that brings down the old power, but become fully equipped, theoretically and intellectually, to govern society themselves. Nothing short of this can prevent power from being handed over to an elite. It seems very utopian, but there really is no alternative.”

[my bold]This is the key factor, in my opinion. And if the Leninists want to damn me as a 'utopian', so be it.And I include 'science' in this scenario.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Behavioral economists and psychologists are doing the hard work for us!

Well, they'll collect 'facts' which accord with their ideological theories, so we'll have to sift and re-order their 'facts' according to our ideological theories, and then use our theories to accumulate more 'facts' from our perspective, and see how this mass of accumulated 'facts' from various sources seems to 'fit' together.Science means ideology.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

The truth of a theory relating to something 'out there' is not testing by comparing it with other theories but by attempting to compare it with the thing we are refering to.

You'll have to describe the 'method' you have in mind to do this 'comparing' to 'something out there' which doesn't involve a 'theory', DJP.That's what this whole discussion is about.If you have non-theoretical, neutral access to the 'thing out there' (object), please share it with us.The 'attempt to compare' is a human, social, theory-informed, activity. To argue otherwise, is to espouse inductivism or positivism.Just as your video shows, if anyone had been asked 'how many species did you see?', they would have answered 'one', ie., humans.But as to how many species were in the video, that depends on one's theory! Mere observation is not enough.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Well, I could do but that wouldn't affect the truth or falsity of any claims they make!

Of course it will! 'Truth' and 'falsity' are related to 'knowledge', which is a social construct, and thus has a social and class component.This will be even more evident within psychology than it is in physics.

DJP wrote:

Much of this will come from behavioural science and behavioural economics.

You do know that these are heavily ideological? You are taking the piss out of me, aren't you?Perhaps I'm missing the irony in your post, DJP?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

…"I better concentrate on the white players" isn't much of a theory after all.

[my bold]So, it is a 'theory', though?

DJP wrote:

This is why scientific knowledge advances, because it has an inbuilt awareness of our infallibility and uses nature (with the knowledge that we cannot directly or fully observe it) as the external referee when theories compete against each other.

I presume that you meant to write 'fallibility' here, DJP?And if so, I take it you now agree that the sun/earth relationship is 'knowledge' and is a fallible social construct based on an indirect or 'not full' observation? Of course, any new fallible theory would have to compete with this old fallible theory on the basis of the sun/earth as an external component of both theories, rather than as a objective 'referee'. The sun/earth will only tell us what we ask – they are infinite in their information. The 'object' is a component of 'knowledge', not an impartial judge of it.Thus, sun/earth relationship (knowledge) would have a history, and could potentially change, and can't be a one-off discovery of The Truth, suitable for all eternity.This is one thing we mean by 'science'. Acceptance of human fallibility. 'Truth' sits in 'knowledge', not the 'object'.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

I'm going to be taking part in the pilot run of this course, as there's been discussion on this site concerning cognition thought I would share.

Just make sure you know which political ideology the organisers espouse, and get some basic definitions from them about what they mean by 'science', 'mind', 'rational', 'morality', etc., etc.Sounds very interesting. Even if you find that you disagree with their political beliefs, there should be plenty of 'facts' (sic) given, which you will then be able to rework into a more suitable framework, should it prove necessary.You might even be able to teach them a thing or two! Hope you enjoy it, DJP

[LBird]

DJP, that video is a superb illustration of the theoretical preconceptions all humans have, and which necessarily determine selection. Thanks.There is no passive observation of the object. 'Theory determines what we observe'.

[LBird]

Karl Marx wrote:

The weak points in the abstract materialism of natural science, a materialism that excludes history and its process…

Capital, Chpt 15, fn 4.

DJP wrote:

The quotes are all well and good, but I don't know who your highlighted passages are aimed at since no-one on here has expressed any kind of dualist philosophy?

That's not true, DJP. twc (and Brian?) didn't like my quoting of Smith when when twc wanted a 'science' quote. twc separates out so-called 'hard science', like physics, from so-called 'soft science', like sociology. This can't be done: it is methodologically incorrect.Anyone asked to give an example of 'science' is entitled to choose any discipline, from history to psychology and the rest, for their polemical purposes. Those arguing for 'science' are not allowed to circumscribe 'science' to 'physics' (or what they erroneously call, 'proper science').

[Author]

Posts