[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Hi L BirdYou may find Brian's thread about Donald Trump provides you with a little bit of insight into your own life.

Hi TimYou may find engaging with this discussion provides you with a little bit of insight into your own ideology.

[LBird]

Quote:

…from around 1600 to 1700 a profound transformation in consciousness occurred, initially among the educated classes of Europe and England, but soon spreading, nearly everywhere through pamphlets, sermons, theater, and popular culture. In a nutshell, the new teaching was that nature consisted of dead matter. Through this lesson, a whole different understanding of "reality" was imposed on the population.

[LBird]

Some socio-historic context behind these issues.Dead on Arrival: The Fate of Nature in the Scientific Revolution

David Kubrin wrote:

The widespread social tensions, including the many dislocations, economic instabilities (rising rents, years of bad harvest, enclosures of common lands, etc.), growing landlessness among the peasantry, peasant uprisings, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, widespread religious warfare, and the various other transformations and upheavals of early modern times led to an actual Civil War and revolution in England. This lasted from 1642 until 1653. Then Oliver Cromwell took power as Lord Protector, replacing the monarchy, which was cut down with the revolutionary execution of Charles I in 1649.The Civil War appeared to pit Parliament against the Crown. But a number of truly radical groups, some on the fringes of power and composed for the most part of journeymen and apprentices, pushed for changes so revolutionary that they greatly alarmed the propertied classes represented by both the royalists and Parliament. These more radical groups, many holding to an absolute egalitarianism ("leveling") that to them was implicit in the Reformation, questioned and defied the most fundamental beliefs and customs. This included notions of private property and of sin (for a number of the radicals, the two were closely connected, if not indeed identical), as well as sexual behavior, the social role of women, and more. Some of the radicals were accused of engaging in group copulation in churches as part of their religious practice.

http://culturechange.org/issue20/deadonarrival.htmThese issues are related to 'materialism', which is a bourgeois ideology.

[LBird]

Sympo wrote:

Does the "correct" theory of truth have a name?

The problem is, Sympo, that 'correct' is a social judgement. What we're debating is the various 'social judgements' (or, 'ideologies') which produce the various 'theories of truth'.So, your 'correct' will be related to your choice of your own 'ideology'.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

This idiot should be banned permanently. And that's the truth.

[my bold]Another of the thickoes ventures an opinion, eh?Just because I showed that your ideological hero Searle was a bourgeois individualist, and you haven't the wit to argue back with me.Childish bastard.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

ALB wrote:

Actually, Sympo, while this theory, "naive realism" if you like, is alright for everyday living, it's not really adequate.  Our minds don't simply reflect or photograph the world out there "as it really is".

L.Bird wrote:

The difference in the ideologies of Engels' (and your) 'materialism', and Marx's (and my) 'idealism-materialism', is that the former sees 'external reality' 'as it is', outside of social activity (labour),…

YMS, I don't know why you bother to engage with this serial, and possibly congenital and attention-seeking, liar.

[my bold]You just can't help yourself, can you, and debate the philosophical issues, without insults?Here we go again.ALB, you're a clueless dickhead, who apparently is illiterate, and congenitally unable to control yourself.Try reading Marx, you wanker.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

When I put an ingredient into a cake, it has properties: sugar sweetens, flour thickens, water smooths, different ingredients do different things.

Yes, but we're discussing epistemology and Marx's views on social production, not 'Mary Berry bakes a cake'.As I've said previously, you keep trying to investigate the 'properties' of things outside of their ingredient relationship to creative humans, as do all Engelsian 'materialists', but I wish to continue with Marx's method.You seem to be trying to understand Marx, without Marx's ideas being involved. I don't know why you just don't openly say this to everyone. It would make the discussion easier for the uninitiated to follow.Put simply, there are two competing ideologies in play in this debate, Marx's and Engels'.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

We 'differentiate'. That is, humans are the active side in this relationship, as Marx argued, in his Theses on Feuerbach.

So, erm, what role does this ingredient play?  Does it have any properties?

The 'ingredient' is, err.. an 'ingredient'. Do I have to provide another term/phrase for you? Input into the active side?'Properties' of 'reality-for-us' are a social product of our theory and practice.If you want 'properties in themselves', YMS, you'll have to look to Engels' 'materialism', and not Marx's ideas about us humans creating our object.That's your choice, of course, but not mine. I prefer Marx.

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

LBird wrote:

He called this 'external reality' inorganic nature, and it is an ingredient into social theory and practice.

Is this ingredient uniform or differentiated? 

We 'differentiate'. That is, humans are the active side in this relationship, as Marx argued, in his Theses on Feuerbach.

YMS wrote:

Are there things we cannot do with this ingredient?

This can only be answered by social theory and practice, so any answer would also be historical, and related to the 'social production' of any particular 'mode of production'.These axioms are all Marx's: a 'social theory and practice' which changes over time, and which is understood in relation to various 'modes of social production'.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

It's all relative then.

Yes, depending upon the mode of production.Just as Marx argued.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I don't think Marx subscribed to the view that there was no "external reality" before the human mind evolved…

He didn't, and neither do I.He called this 'external reality' inorganic nature, and it is an ingredient into social theory and practice.The difference in the ideologies of Engels' (and your) 'materialism', and Marx's (and my) 'idealism-materialism', is that the former sees 'external reality' 'as it is', outside of social activity (labour), whereas the latter sees 'external reality' 'as an input' into social activity (labour).Thus, for Marx, 'external reality' can only be known by our creative theory and practice, by which we transform an 'ingredient' into a 'reality-for-us', and a world we create and can change. This is a socio-historical notion of 'our reality', rather than the 'Eternal Knowledge' or 'Truth' posited by 'materialism', which pretends to 'discover' a once-and-forever 'Truth', which it then merely contemplates eternally. Like 'Mars'.

ALB wrote:

… than he did to the "20 trillion flies can't be wrong" theory of truth. If he had, his critics would have had a field day.

Once again, this is the materialist account of a 'democratic theory of truth', and shows the elitist contempt for the developmental abilities of the proletariat, which ALB (and I'll accept unwittingly) likens to mass of flies.Since ALB implies 6 billion workers in a socialist society can be wrong, he must clearly have an idea of what the 'expert elite', who will 'know' that the 6 billion are 'wrong', looks like. I wish he'd tell us who this elite is. Perhaps 'academics' or 'intellectuals' (like Searle, who DJP erroneously looks towards for his ideology, rather than Marx).Maarx argued that socialism can only be brought about by the democratic wishes and actions of the majority.That is, the "20 trillion flies can't be wrong" actually is his 'theory of truth'.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

John Searle's "Refutation of Relativism" might be of interest herehttp://www.luxautumnalis.de/john-searle-refutation-relativism-englisch-und-deutsch/

Thanks for that DJP.From the start, Searle is clearly wrong, from a Marxist point of view.

Searle wrote:

Relativism is the theory that the truth (or falsity) of any proposition is always relative to certain sorts of psychological attitudes on the part of the person who states, believes or otherwise judges the truth of the proposition.

[my bold]He's clearly starting from the 'common sense' view of bourgeois individualism, with his axioms of 'psychological attitudes' and 'the person'.For socialists, the axioms are 'social ideologies' and 'social classes'.So we would have an opening statement of:

Quote:

Relativism is the theory that the truth (or falsity) of any proposition is always relative to certain sorts of social ideologies on the part of the social class which states, believes or otherwise judges the truth of the proposition.

This would be entirely consistent with Marx's views.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Sympo wrote:

But something is true, or false, independently from what we think of the subject, right?

There is something out there that's independent of our minds, the "outside world" if you like, statements about which are either true or false according to a particular theory of truth. But, as statements are the product of minds, it can't be said "truth" or "falsity" are independent of minds.In other words, there is an external world outside the mind (or, more accurately, of which human minds are part). Only philosophical idealists (better idea-ists) hold that this is creation of mind (whether the mind of a "God" or of collective humanity or a single individual) but, in practice, they don't really believe this as they, like the rest of us, behave as if there was an independent, external world.

ALB account is a good one, until he labels those who follow Marx's theory that 'collective humanity create their reality' as 'idealists'.The basis of ALB's ideology is Engels' 'materialism', which holds that either one is a 'materialist', or one is an 'idealist'.However, there are three positions: idealism (god creates the world/reality), materialism (the 'external world' is this world/reality') and Marx's idealism-materialism (that humans create their own 'reality' from an 'external world').So, from the perspective of ALB and Engels, anyone who argues that 'something creates their own world' (the materialists do not distinguish between 'god' and 'humanity') is an 'idealist'.From the perspective me and Marx (and we do distinguish between a 'creative god' and a 'creative humanity') anyone who argues that 'the external world just exists, and there is no active creation involved', is a 'materialist'; that anyone who argues that 'god creates the world' is an 'idealist'; and those who argue that 'humans create their own reality, by social theory and practice' are Marxists.This third, unified, position of Marx, allows him to argue that humans can change their world (as it's a creation of their own social activity), whereas the Engelsian materialists can only contemplate 'external reality', the 'Truth' which has been 'discovered' (for example, the view that  'the earth goes round the sun' is not able to be changed, and is regarded as a final truth of an external reality).So, we have 'idealism' (god), 'materialism' (contemplation) and Marx (change).You have to choose, Sympo.

[LBird]

Sympo wrote:

But something is true, or false, independently from what we think… right?

[my bold]Your question can only be answered from the basis of a 'theory of truth', Sympo.Based upon a 'correspondence theory', the answer is 'Yes'.Based upon a 'democratic theory', the answer is 'No'.The former stresses the 'independence' of an 'objective reality' which is separate from the 'subject', whereas the latter stresses the 'creation' of a 'reality-for-us' which is related to the 'subject'.Marx argued that we (as the social subject) create our object.

[LBird]

Sympo wrote:

After reading what "correspondence theory of truth" means, then yes this is what I think is correct at the moment. It appears that it isn't just "those who follow the 'materialist' ideology of Engels and Lenin" that believe in this. A lot of other people seem to believe in this.

Your're quite correct, Sympo, that 'a lot of other people seem to believe in this [correspondence theory of truth]'.The simple reason for this belief is that it is one of the ruling class ideas, which Marx claims dominate the thinking of a class society.There are always other ideas, though, which have their roots in the exploited class, and the belief in a 'democratic theory of truth' is one of those.The key point for you, though, is that you have realised that different people have different ideas about what constitutes 'truth'. It's for you, now, to research and debate these 'theories of truth', and weigh them up, and decide for yourself which one says most to you about your life in this society.

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