[LBird]

ALB wrote:

I think that in his confused way he may be trying to say  the same as us, i.e. that there is something out there which exists independently of consciousness and that to survive in it humans, in societies, create 'mental constructs' of it which are not the same nor a mirror image of it.

I must say that I welcome gratefully (not sarcasm) ALB's belated realisation that I'm actually making serious political and philosophical points in these debates.

ALB wrote:

LB is using it differently to mean some part of his "inorganic nature" that humans have already isolated in their mind and which is thus already a mental construct.

No, I am not arguing that 'inorganic nature' is 'isolated in the mind'.This is the reading of 'materialists', who do not recognise the Marxian concept of the 'ideal-material' (or, to re-term it, the 'socially-produced').'Materialists' separate 'ideal' and 'material' (ie. separate 'consciousness' and 'being'), and so have a fixation upon separating the 'mind' from 'matter'.What humans 'socially-produce' (by 'theory and practice') is 'mind-matter', our 'nature-for-us', our 'organic nature'. So, it's not 'inorganic nature in the mind'. That is an impossibility. Our 'the sun' is the result of social theory and practice, and is not just in the mind. It is a social product, which thus exists, and we are its creator.ALB, unless you reveal your ideology of how you're 'understanding' what I'm saying, then we will continue to have problems, and you'll continue to 'interpet' what I'm supposedly saying, rather than understanding just what I am saying (from a different ideological perspective).Clearly, I'll say that what differs between us, is our differing ideological approachs, mine being Marx's, and yours being Engels'.I hope that we can now clarify our political differences, which have epistemological and thus scientific consequences.The key issue is whether 'the sun' is socially-produced (thus we can change 'the sun') or 'the sun' is simply 'out there' as it is, fixed forever (and thus we can't change it).To pretend to talk of 'the sun' outside of our knowledge of it, is bourgeois ideology, can be located in time and within a class' reactionary interests, and leads to an inability to change our world.

[LBird]

Vin wrote:

SocialistPunk wrote:

But it hasn't been lost on anyone watching this discussion that in "answering" my question you conveniently side step the gist of my enquiry, that the sun was doing its thing long before any consciousness came into being.

LBird will continue to avoid answering simple questions. He prefers to pretend that the issue is a complex one and to string long words together which when all joined up amounts to a load of bollocks 

You're right, Vin, there are always 'simple' answers to 'simple' questions, and don't you let that clever bastard Marx befuddle you with talk of 'value'.Socialism is just a 'practical' task, a 'simple' process, for essentially 'simple' people.It makes one wonder why anybody actually bothers to read books, and has discussions about politics and philosophy, when everything is so 'simple'.SPGB? The Simple Party Grounded in the Bourgeoisie.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

I doubt if any member of this forum, or scientist, would question your statement "radiation (as human knowledge) didn't exist before human consciousness". After all how can human knowledge exist without humans. And I have no doubt that science will continue to update and change much scientific knowledge in the future.But it hasn't been lost on anyone watching this discussion that in "answering" my question you conveniently side step the gist of my enquiry, that the sun was doing its thing long before any consciousness came into being.

SP, I've answered your question – you just don't like the answer.You're just following bourgeois ideology, which argues that 'knowledge of the sun' is separate from 'the sun'. The 'gist of your enquiry' is a bourgeois gist, although no doubt you regard it as simply an innocent, individual, personal question. There are none so blind as those who will not see.So when I describe the socio-historical emerge of 'knowledge of the sun', you say that's all very well, but what about 'the sun' which exists outside of 'knowledge'.For humans, we create 'knowledge of the sun', and that's it.To talk of 'the sun' outside of our 'knowledge of the sun' is meaningless. Have you never heard of Einstein's theory of relativity, and the need to acknowledge the position of the observer?When you say "the sun was doing its thing long before any consciousness came into being", how do you know this?Your only answer is that you have a special method which allows you access to 'the sun' without using your consciousness.That's fine as an answer, but it's a bourgeois answer. And I've already pointed out just when and why 'your' viewpoint emerged in society.These are philosophical issues, which have political implications, and for someone who's not really interested in politics, philosophy or science, it's perfectly acceptable to just use their 'common sense' to understand 'the sun'.For those of us, who are socialists, and are concerned to build the class consciousness of the proletariat, then these political issues have to be addressed.For those, who aren't really interested in democracy in science, or the production of 'truth', or workers' power, or class struggle in the ideology of science, or giving socio-historical accounts of human activities, then these can be ignored, and life can go on as normal under the bourgeoisie.After all, who in their right mind would argue about the sun?Any individual, using their own sight, can see the sun. And science is simply 'individual experience' writ large, isn't it?Day-to-day experience of the world tells us all we need to know, doesn't it?Right, that's 'the sun' dealt with – no need for LBird's complete bollocks!Next, value!What's the method? Ignore philosophy, including Marx's Capital (that's full of inexplicable bollocks, too, workers don't need to read that). Just use one's individual experience – well, whoever felt 'value'? No-one! Let's stick to tangible things, like the price label on a commodity. No need for all this 'science' guff, just read the price tag, if one wants to know its value! Easy-peasy!And so, the SPGB and its supporters fall back into normal life, which abhors talk of 'revolutionary science' and the philosophical need for democracy to determine what 'the sun' is.The long snooze resumes. And Marx remains either unread or glanced at uncomprehendingly. The SPGB has fought the good fight, once again, and seen off those radicals and trouble-makers, who actually read what physicists say about the problems within physics, and can actually give socio-historical accounts of 'knowledge production'.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

LBird,An answer to this simple, you might say child like question, may help me and others get to grips with what you are saying.If we use the sun bombarding this planet with its radiation, as an example of phenomena. Do you accept that it existed or took place before human conciousness came into existence?

SP, if 'phenomena' require an active relationship between 'consciousness and being', then 'phenomena' can't exist outside of either 'consciousness' or 'being'.If you wish to separate 'being and consciousness' (a socio-historical act which I've already located in time and ruling class context), then be aware that you doing this is not your individual choice, but an ideological acceptance of a ruling class idea.Marx argues that humans labour upon something that is outside of consciousness (which he calls 'inorganic nature' or a 'material substratum'), but that 'theory and practice' (by a society, not an 'individual') is required to create our phenomena (or 'organic nature', the nature we know, or 'nature-for-us').'Radiation' exists for us as part of 'nature-for-us', and we can locate the emergence of this 'nature-for-us' in a socio-historical context.In the past, a different society could have regarded burns received from what we know call 'radiation' as 'god's breath'. But clearly, it would not be what we call 'radiation' with all the accompanying baggage of how to avoid or treat it. 'God's breath' would have been produced by a different social theory and practice, and would have been very different in its social consequences.Of course, it's possible to agree with the bourgeoisie, who say that now humans have a method which allows them to finally know 'The Truth' of all phenomena, and so once we 'discover' 'radiation' it is known forever.But the last hundred years, since Einstein's theory of relativity, have taught us that what we once thought was 'eternal truth', like Newton's theories or Euclid's geometry, are nothing of the sort. They are both socio-historical, and we can now locate their start and end as 'truth', and show which social groups produced them.The bottom line, as an answer for your reasonable question, is that 'radiation' (as human knowledge) didn't exist before human consciousness, and that we now know when it emerged, and we also know, because of developments in science, that at some point a new theory will emerge and be tried in social practice, and that 'radiation' will disappear like just like other 'scientific truths', like the 'ether' or 'phlogiston' or 'Piltdown Man', to be replaced a different concept.I know that anyone brought up in bourgeois society, under the pressure of ruling class ideas about the wonderful geniuses we have guiding us to their promised land, finds this socio-historical account of 'science' difficult to accept. We're all told from birth that 'science is objective' and that we should trust 'scientists'. But the bourgeoisie are lying to us.'Radiation' is a concept produced by humans, not a reflection of a 'phenomenon'.Whilst 'radiation' is useful to society, we'll stick with it, and use the concept to guide our actions.But to talk of an asocial, ahistoric 'radiation' which is 'True' and always will be, outside of 'consciousness', is essentially meaningless, and contrary to Marx's notions of social theory and practice, in which humans are the 'active side'.To ignore Marx is to return to notions of passive humanity, which observes and describes 'reality' as it is.That is the ideology of 'materialism'.

[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

I do create matter, but afterwards I usually wipe my arse and flush it away, I suggest you might do the same with the shit you produce.

Oh dear.No matter how often I treat you as an adult, you revert to child-like ignorance.You could always try political and philosophical debate, but it's clearly beyond you.Try reading a book, Tim.Perhaps 'Janet and John' is about your level.

[LBird]

Tim Killgallon wrote:

I would describe myself as a Materialist and I do not see "any talk of consciousness as idealism". That would be a ridiculous statement, not only that, I have never come across any other member of the SPGB in pushing 35 years of membership of the party state any thing of the kind. The statement is however typical of the specious arguments you put forward.

So, Tim, what ideology do you employ in physics?That is what 'talk of consciousness' implies – that you will reveal your social consciousness, which you employ when you create your object.This is neither 'ridiculous' or 'specious'.I keep asking materialists to reveal their ideology, and they refuse.I then reveal their ideology, and point to the page of the pamphlet which contains its origins…… and that revelation and evidence is ignored, and I'm called an 'idealist', just as you did, earlier.You think Marx's 'theory and practice' amounts to 'theory' – you said so, earlier.

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Can i mischievously suggest that we apply LBird's workers' democracy to gravity, have a democratic vote that concludes gravity does not exist and then suggest he jumps from a top of a high building to prove that science is purely ideological and gravity does not exist if we vote it doesn't…  You know i'm only joking LBird…i'd miss you if you were gone…but i might be the only one it seems from the feelings of the forum. 

You're making a joke, alan, but it's clear from the usual contributions that no matter how many times I stress Marx's 'theory and practice', the materialists read 'theory'.They do so, because they have an ideology which tells them the knee-jerk reaction to any claims for 'consciousness', even Marx's 'theory and practice', the active relationship between consciousness and being, is to call that 'idealism'.So, they read 'theory and practice' as 'theory'.Every time.

[LBird]

Tim Kilgallon wrote:

The bit that L Bird seems unable to comprehend is that the understanding (i.e.. the model, in this case the theoretical model of gravity) is produced by human consciousness and as such reflects all of the various influences, specific and general, human experience brings with it. HOWEVER that model or view or theory etc. created as it is by human consciousness is ultimately based on a reality processed by the individual, the group, the social class, etc. We can alter our perception of reality, we can alter our understanding of reality, what we cannot change by thought alone, is the reality itself. What L Bird appears to be suggesting is that matter only exists when observed by a human, whereas the truth is that human perception of reality only exists when humans perceive reality. In addition to this L Bird seems to suggest that the only factor in human perception is social Cass, whereas this is far from the case, for instance does reality change because an individual with schizophrenia observes it.

[my bold]Tim, you're still arguing for the bourgeois ideology of 'passive reflection', based on a pre-existing 'reality', which can be detected by an 'individual', and that Marx claims 'thought alone changes'.On the contrary, 'consciousness', by the method of 'theory and practice', creates the 'reality we know'.No-one argues that 'thought alone changes reality' – Marx argues for 'theory and practice'.Humans do not 'perceive reality' – that is 'passive observation' or 'contemplation', which Marx opposes.Humans create their reality by actively creating it by theory and practice upon 'inorganic nature', which produces our objective 'organic nature'.That is, humans create 'matter'.'Matter' is a social product of the interaction between consciousness and being.The bourgeoisie deny this creative power to humans, and pretend that they alone have a method to observe and describe 'the obejctive world'.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Pannekoek was not arguing that there was nothing out there independently of consciousness.

No-one is arguing that is 'nothing out there independently of consciousness'.There is, according to Marx, 'inorganic nature', from which we actively create 'organic nature'.Since materialists see any talk of 'consciousness' as 'idealism', they are forced to pretend that Marx denied the active role of critical and creative human consciousness, and they follow Engels in claiming that 'matter' is the 'active side'.

[LBird]

SocialistPunk wrote:

That the descriptions given to such phenomena are best efforts to describe something that is perhaps beyond description.

You're missing a subtlety here, SP.The phrase 'description given to phenomena' suggests that the 'phenomena' exist outside of 'description'.But the 'description' describes a 'phenomenon' that is created by the interaction of 'consciousness and being'.The alternative, that somehow a 'description' is a passive copy, a reflection, of an 'objective phenomenon' leaves out any room for the 'active side' of human 'consciousness'.Marx argues that we create our object.So, 'the descriptions given to such phenomena (ie our objects) are best efforts to describe something' we have created.The 'something that is perhaps beyond description' is Marx's 'inorganic nature', the externality from consciousness that provides a resource for our labour, our theory and practice.Marx argues that we 'metabolise' inorganic nature into organic nature, so 'phenomena' are our creation, and our descriptions of phenomena are thus objective descriptions of our objects.Thus, 'objective' for Marx means 'socially-objective' (and thus changeable by humans), and not 'objective' as a pretence that it reflects something out there.To claim that 'phenomena' exist outside of consciousness, and we know those 'objective phenomena' is to fall for bourgeois ideology, and to believe, as YMS does, in 'Eternal Truth' of 'gravitational waves', and to end any hope we have of 'changing' the world. If the world is now 'known', it is fixed. And this fixed world would be the one created by the bourgeoisie.

[LBird]

Some food for thought, for those opposed to ‘politics in physics’, on the context of the emergence of this longstanding bourgeois view of the relationship between science and politics. This is a view which Communists should replace with one that argues for the democratisation of all science and truth-production.

W. Schafer(ed) Finalization in Science (1983) pp. 252-3, wrote:

The traditional relationship between science and politics was based upon a historic compromise worked out in the mid-seventeenth century. The New Science of “experimental philosophy” relinquished all of the moral, political, educational and social aims established for it by Bacon, Comenius, Winstanley and many others in the early-seventeenth century. The absolutist state rewarded the renunciation of the ideals of science as a radical project for socio-political reform with the offer of wide-ranging privileges for “pure” natural science; the founding of the Royal Society in London(1662) and the Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris(1666) formed part of this process. Royal support for the New Science was paid for by separating science from politics.

[my bolds]http://www.bokus.com/bok/9789027715494/finalization-in-science/This was the historical point at which a social class pretended to remove 'consciousness' from any relationship with 'being'. It did so to renounce radical political thought in physics.Marx pointed out that this relationship between the two is inescapable for humanity, in its active production of scientific knowledge.Unless both the historical emergence and class basis of bourgeois physics is recognised, then we workers will remain in thrall to bourgeois ideology.The ruling class always seek to eternalise their rule, and they do so too in physics, just as in any other social activity.

[LBird]

ALB, post #14, wrote:

…the phenomenon always existed…

ALB, post # 17, wrote:

…It too "is only a mental abstraction, a set of formulas, better than the former, hence more true, because it represents more phenomena…

[my bolds]Please tell me that you recognise that these are two contradictory statements, ALB.Either a 'phenomenon' 'always existed' (ie, 'exists' outside of any consciousness)…or a 'phenomenon' is 'only a mental abstraction' (ie. requires a consciousness to 'exist').You really don't seem to understand what these epistemological debates are about, ALB.The former belief is Engels (objective 'existence' outside of any relation to consciousness) and follows the bourgeois ideological separation of 'being from consciousness'.The latter belief is Marx (and, at least partially, Pannekoek) and requires the relationship between 'being and consciousness' to produce the 'phenomenon'.Science is a socio-historical activity concerned with producing knowledge, and so 'truth' can be changed, as Marx argued; scientific knowledge is not a passive reflection of 'eternal phenomena'.You really should try to understand the differences between your two statements, because the secret of your own coming to consciousness lies in that self-understanding.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

 In other words, the phenomenon always existed and it's just that it has now been described, more accurately/usefully in terms of being able to predict the way it will continue to manifest itself. But, unfortunately …

…Marx's theories intervened.But you wouldn't know anything about them, would you, ALB?Y'know, socio-historical production and change.No, you're all for 'always existed', merely being 'described', 'useful prediction'.You make me laugh. It's as if you've never read Marx.

[LBird]

I'll leave this thread to the materialists, now, and let them remain cheerleaders for bourgeois physics, which even their physicists have known for a hundred years does not suffice.Since YMS is not a Democratic Communist and Marxist, his ideological opinions are those of the bourgeosie, and so carry no weight.But, to those of you reading, who do consider yourselves socialists and influenced by Marx, ask yourselves, in all of these discussions:- who stresses socio-historical production?- who stresses socio-historical change?- who stresses the proletariat?- who stresses 'theory and practice', rather than 'evidence' (ie. 'practice and theory')?- who stresses democracy, rather than elite physics?- who stresses change, rather than stability?- who stresses the revolution required in physics?

[LBird]

Young Master Smeet wrote:

Quote:

When a gravitational wave passes by, the stretching and squashing of space causes these arms alternately to lengthen and shrink, one getting longer while the other gets shorter and then vice versa. As the arms change lengths, the laser beams take a different time to travel through them.

That really happened, it will always have happened, future generations may forget, but it did happen.  No human made the light take different times to pass down the tube, if the light had taken a constant time, then their theories would have been refuted.

That's your ideological opinion, YMS, but it's not Marx's or mine.Your opinion contains no socio-historical perspective, and so can't explain change.You believe in 'Eternal Truth', once 'discovered', 'known forever'.That belief cannot even explain changes in bourgeois science.

[Author]

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