[robbo203]

gnome wrote:

Pluto failed to meet the third criterion.  I don't have any particular opinion about that so I won't be casting my vote should the question arise and neither, I suspect, will 99.99% of Earth's population.

 Ah but you really must cast  your vote on this pressing matter, Dave!  Otherwise, how would LBird be able to proclaim that the socially-constructed, proletarian-sanctioned version of the Truth  had been realised if 99.99% of the population took your desultory and indifferent attitude to this question?  I mean – damn it! – if only 0.01% of the populace voted to to affirm that Pluto was a planet that would surely make it an elitist bourgeois decision – would it not? – and we couldnt have that in a democratc communist society, could we?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.'Matter' is a socio-historical product, robbo. Why won't you discuss the social history of the production of 'matter'?

 This getting so tedious.  The very fact that you put matter in inverted commas signifies very clearly you are talking about our social interpretation or construction of matter.  Now I have already stated that we cannot apprehend matter without some idea or theory of matter – I agree with Popper in this respect that theory precedes facts – and that this idea is socially constructed.  But I have also stated that in order to have an idea or interpetation of matter, nature or whatever   such a thing must exist in a physical sense in the first place, must precde out interpretation of it .   You can't have a socially constructed theory of the "sun" with some physical object called the sun existing in the first place to have an interpretation about.  Or do you believe that you can, LBird?  Im beginning to understand Vin's frustration over your pig-headed opaqueness

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

 You're going to have to read Marx, robbo.I've provided the quotes, time and time again, and I'm not doing your work for you, any longer. Go and pick up a book.

 I have read Marx and nowhere does he say what you are suggesting.  You have misundertood Marx and youve misundersood what I have been  saying as well. If you think otherwise then prove it,  Where, for example, did Marx say 'Nature is nothing for us'  Cite your source

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

.Simple Marxism, twc. 'Nature', as we know it, is currently a class construct. 'Nature', as we don't know it, is, as Marx said, 'nothing for us'.

 Evidence?  Where did  Marx say such a thing? I suspect most of the time you are just inventing things about what Marx said  in order to bolster your belief that you are some sort of Marxist (as opposed to the Leninist we all know you to be),  At any rate if such quote exists it could not mean what you want it to mean.   In order to interpret nature and I agree our view of nature is inescapably a matter of interptation,  there must be something there to interpret in the first place.  Is that not the case or would you beg to differ?

[robbo203]

LBird wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

 Human beings obviously did not create the sun, it is the idea of the sun that is socially created or culturallly conditioned.  …For clarification, I suggest in future the word interpret be used instead of create … 

You'll have to tell us how you know the sun, robbo, outside of our social 'idea of the sun that is socially created'.

As usual you display your dazzling ability to completely ignore what other people have said.  Here for the record is what I saidOur interpetation of the material world is indeed a social product but not literally the material world itself even if we can never apprehend this world except through our particular  interpretation of it. Do you understand what I meant by that and how it answers your question or do I need to explain it to you?

LBird wrote:

Marx uses the word 'create', because we 'create' any 'sun' that we 'know'. So, to switch to 'interpret' is a political and ideological step away from Marx.You clearly think that your knowledge of the 'sun' is not socially created, but your individual knowledge from your biological senses. You should be open to us and yourself, that your method is a non-social method, and also a non-historical method, because you claim to know the 'sun' as it 'is', outside of our historical creation of 'our-sun'.

 Once again you totally misrepresent what  I said.  I did  not say our" knowledge of the 'sun' is not socially created" I said that that thing that we interpet as being the "sun" – a physical object –  was NOT created by us and could not have been created for us.  As far as we know its been around for billions of years while homo sapiens as a species has only been around for 100,000 years Stop playing with words LBird.  You know exactly what I am saying.  You know also that the sun as a physical object was not created by us unless that is you have completely lost your marbles.  Nowhere did Marx say we create inorganic matter in this physical sense, That would be too daft for words.   What he said was we transform matter through labour into the products of our labour.  That is something quite diferent to what you are trying to imply

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

Your full of contradictions, LBird. The Sun has not changed only our interpretation of it . Admit it – your goose is cooked

 Indeed,  This whole tedious discussion could have been avoided had LBird chosen his words more carefully.  To say that the material world is socially created is potentially misleading if understood literally.  Human beings obviously did not create the sun, it is the idea of the sun that is socially created or culturallly conditioned.  But LBird's elliptical and dogmatic way of expressing himself does not allow for this fine distinction to be made and hence we have to put up with his totally unwarranted and endless jibes about "rocks speaking" to "Engelsian materialists " For clarification, I suggest in future the word interpret be used instead of create in conjunction with the expression "material world".  Our interpetation of the material world is indeed a social product but not literally the material world itself even if we can never apprehend this world except through our particular  interpretation of it.  If you dont make this distinction then you are indeed vulnerable to the accusation of idealism – the notion that human beings literally created the sun in this instance presumably becuase they thought it would great idea to brighten up their world 

[robbo203]

Vin wrote:

We find it easy to explain how and why unemployment, poverty, crime and war are all inevitable consequences of the capitalist mode of production, yet we are reluctant to explain how and why socialism is also the inevitable consequence of the same. mmm I wonder why?I'm in the 'inevitable' camp. I  chose to join the coming revolution but it was a Hobson's Choice. That damn materialismUp the Revolution!  

 I dont think it follows that because poverty, unemployment, crime etc is inevitable  under capitalism that socialism is inevitable  for the same reason.  These are two quite different  things you are trying to account for.    The Great Depression in the 1930s generated poverty and unemployment on a mass scale but no discernable movement towards socialism.  On the contrary, in Germany, for instance it gave rise to the Nazi regime. To say  socialism is inevitable is to make a teleological statement as I mentioned earlier (post 20) – namely that history is moving towards a pre-ordained goal.  Marx I think by and large rejected teleological explanations despite making statements that have a teleological ring to them.  I have yet to come across a convincing reason why socialism is inevitable. I am fully with you, Vin, in declaring "Up the Revolution!"  But that is not a teleological statement but rather a statement of revolutionary intent.  Revolution is something we socialists choose to work towards….

[robbo203]

 On the question of whether socialism is inevitable or not.  I don’t personally think it is – though I would like to imagine it was!  There’s more to this than just the (remote) possibility that humanity might destroy itself first and thereby remove the prospect of socialism altogether.  Adam makes the point that humans are problem solving animals and that, sooner or later, they will solve the problem that is capitalism by replacing it with socialism.  Maybe.  But there is a difference between individuals and humanity as a whole in this generalised sense.  Socialism depends on increasing numbers of individual workers becoming socialists themselves – it’s not going to happen in one go – but one of the greatest obstacles in the way of this happening, if not the greatest, is that the very smallness of the socialist movement acts as a deterrent to people joining. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that keeps the socialist movement small, unfortunately In other words, it is not that people are not problem solvers that is the problem – Adam is right, human beings are indeed problem solvers – but rather the problem we face as socialists is one of human irrationality, including our own.  Human beings are irrational as well as rational, creatures.  That is to say we are Janus-faced.  It is our tendency to conform, to follow the herd – in a way an expression of our social nature – that ironically makes the assertion that “socialism is inevitable”, problematic. It is not inevitable as long as people conform to the mores and values of capitalism.   There is no necessary reason why they should not continue to do so indefinitely (unfortunately) because the problem, as I say, is not really an intellectual one of rationality and “problem solving”.  The problem is one values and working class self-belief, even self recognition, in the face of relentless capitalist propaganda  Max Adler , an early Marxist once wrote of workers being “finally driven by formal-teleological causality” to establish socialism. This is what was meant by socialism being inevitable (“telos” being the Greek word for purpose or goal).  Society was moving slowly but surely towards a preordained end.  This sense of “inevitabilism” was rife among socialists in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Kautsky's contribution to the SDP’s Erfurt Programme of 1891, for example, openly talked of socialism as being not only desirable but "something inevitable".  Marx and Engels likewise spoke in the language of inevitabilism on various occasions,  In the Communist Manifesto, for example, they confidently claimed that the “development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm.  Similarly in the Preface to Capital vol 1 we find these words:  Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm)  However, I think theweight of evidence suggests that they did not, on the whole, endorse a teleological view of history.   Teleological-type statements issuing from them asserting the inevitable victory of the proletariat and the like might be better seen as propagandistic exercises in morale boosting and wishful thinking, than considered theoretical positions.  For instance, Marx welcomed Darwin's Origin of the Species precisely because "it deals a death blow to teleology in the natural sciences" (Marx's letter to Engels , January 16, 1861 Selected Correspondence Moscow 1975).  In The German Ideology the notion that "later history is…the goal of earlier history" was dismissed as a "speculative distortion" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm). This was a decisive rejection of Hegel's idealist teleology which posited the goal of history as the mind becoming completely aware of itself.    Further evidence can be seen in the apparent willingness on their part to consider departures from the strict linear or progressivist model of social evolution usually associated with them long before this model came under sustained attack by the cultural relativists like Franz Boas in the early 20th century. At any rate it does seem to me that to an extent Marx and Engels did embrace an anti-teleological perspective and that to that extent you could argue that they did not envisage socialism as being inevitable. Meaning human creativity and human unpredictability also play a role in the way history turns out

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

I don't know if this is true:https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ban-on-ladders-and-soapboxes-at-speakers-corner-80tk2nqw3But if so (it could be just another "health & safety" joke), it needs challenging. Anyone up for going along next Sunday or the Sunday after, with our platform, to see if it is? And, if so, to challenge it?

 Bloody nanny state "No Steps, No platforms , no chairs" indeed! Only allowed to stand on your own two feet, LOL.   Its a pity they didnt apply this same faux concern over health  and safety  with respect to your height from ground level to the  rather more pressing matter of putting workers in buildings twenty four floors high and clad in flammable material.  I suppose extendable (or even non extendable) household ladders are next on the list of things the nanny state is going to ban and thereafer, whatever few opportunities for free speech that remain…

[robbo203]

rodmanlewis wrote:

robbo203 wrote:

 Really, what lies befind the controversy over free will is  the theory of causation.   The classical precept of mechanical philosophy was articulated by the philosopher David Hume – namely that causes always precede effects.  Causation is thus unidirectional in this view of the universe.  You strike one bar billard ball with a cue and the ball collides with another  which then collides with  another causing the last to sink into the pocket at the far end of the table.  It is purely mechanical and in theory entirely predictable 

We may think we have free will, but advertisers know better–they know what will pull at our heartstrings, tickle our fancy, make us desire things we thought we could do without, and leave us with the feeling that we have complete control over our decisions.We are either manipulated by agency, or by sometimes motiveless societal pressures. Capitalism doesn't function in the interests of society as a whole, but because there are so few of us who have considered a fundamental change, capitalism has to justify its continuation and is rationalised into staying put, regardless of the consequences.

 Hmmmm. If advertisers "know" that we do not have free will , then why would they bother to advertise? They advertise in order to persuade or exhort us to buy their wares.  That presupposes that we have a choice and are capable of choosing., Look, the concept of free will does NOT imply we are not influenced.  That is a metaphysical version of the concept which I reject.  I think it is this version that John has in mind which is why this debate is to some extent at cross purposes. I endorse a position known as soft determinism or compatabilism – that free will is compatible with determinism.  I oppose hard determinism because hard determinsim presupposes everything in principle is totally predictable and also becuase its way of expliaining things is fundamentally reductionist and simplistic,  Everything can be satisfactorily explained in physicalist terms since the physical world preceded  and therefore gave rise to human conscousness which is seen as an effect rather than a cause in its own right.  In other words hard determinism denies the possibility of "downward causation"http://www.informationphilosopher.com/knowledge/downward_causation.html Also I canot see the point of being a socialist or organising in a socialist party if you literally hold a hard determinist position,  If the future is entirely predictable what is the purpose of trying to push for an alternative to capitalism?  It will either happen or not happen as the case may be.  Might as well grab some popcorn , put your feet up and watch the movie called Life being played out in front of you Marx argued that human beings make their own hstory but under circumstances not of their own choosing.  The point os that he fully allowed for human agency and saw history as a creative process not a telelogical process.  Marx was a soft determinist as am I and as I think every socialist should be

[robbo203]

 

John Oswald wrote:

Individuality is also the cherished illusion behind this clinging to free will. To our own eyes we are individuals. But we are each one of us walking societies of cellular individuals, all bound by the chain of causation 

 No John the very opposite is the case.  Mechnical determinism which you espouse is a theory of one way causation.  Society is the product of concrete individuals since causes must always precede effects.  There can never be downward causation  in your view of the world.   Society is the product of individuals .  Your theory of causation precludes the possibility of society shaping individuals, of two way interaction. This view is fully consistent with the early bourgeois philosophers like Locke and Hobbes who posited the idea of an isolated pre social individual who entered into a soial contract with other such indivduals to form a society for their mutual benefit.  It is a complete myth of course.   

[robbo203]

John Oswald wrote:

 It should be the very realisation that the will is swayed and not free that makes socialists, or anyone for that matter, campaign. What would be the point of campaigning, speaking, publishing etc., if the will were immune to motive?

This is a straw argument.  No proponent of free will ever suggested will was immune to motive (with the exception of indeterminists that is).  Soft determinists argue that will in only free in a relative sense.  You need to address the argument from EMERGENCE THEORY which I presented in the preceding post.  Its implications for the kind of mechanical theory of causation you espouse are highly significant, I think. It should be the very realisation that the will is swayed and not free that makes socialists, or anyone for that matter, campaign. What would be the point of campaigning, speaking, publishing etc., if the will were immune to motive?  [/quote]

[robbo203]

Hi Meel I think the problem of free will really boils down to a question of interpretation.  Proponents of free will are NOT saying that our will is uncaused – apart from a few who subscribe to the theory of indeterminism.  This is where the confusion arises.  Opponents of free will seem to think this is what the proponents in general are saying but it is not the case.  The case for free will does not depend on the idea of free will being free in some absolutist sense. Really, what lies befind the controversy over free will is  the theory of causation.   The classical precept of mechanical philosophy was articulated by the philosopher David Hume – namely that causes always precede effects.  Causation is thus unidirectional in this view of the universe.  You strike one bar billard ball with a cue and the ball collides with another  which then collides with  another causing the last to sink into the pocket at the far end of the table.  It is purely mechanical and in theory entirely predictable Free will is also said to be entirely predictable in theory according the opponents of this idea and so is not really free will at all.  Becuase causation according to mechanical philosopy is unidirectional any explanations for the decisions that we make as human agents are essentially physicalist explanations.  This is becuase the physical world preceded human consciosuness in the same way that causes precede effects.  The different levels of reality are built up, layer upon layer, such that each layer culimating in human conciousnesss can be completely satisfactorily or adequately explained by those layers  beneath it. Note that what follows from this is that there can be no such thing as "downward causation".  In other words, effects cannot exert an  influence on what caused them.  Effects can only be the medium through which more fundamental causes exert their influence on still higher levels of reality.  So sociological explanations can be entirely reduced to phsychological explanations,  psychological explanations to biological, biological to chemical, chemical to physical and so on.  Ultimately what this means is that the reason why I mugged the old lady crossing the street for her purse can be entirely or satisfactorily  put down to the behaviour of certain sub atomic particles of which my body is composed. It really had nothing to do with my upbringing or capitalism. This is the reductio ad absurdum that ultimately vindicates the concept of free will.  It posits human consciousness as an emergent property that supervenes – is dependent  on – the physical brain but is not reducible to the human brain in that mechanical sense.   You cannot trace particular  mental states to particular brain states, for example – the argument for "wild disjunction" as it is called – but very clearly you cannot have a mental state without a brain state.  You cannot think without a brain. With emrgence theory the whole paradigm of mechanical philosophy and one-way causation breaks down – and therefore the argument against free will.  If downward causation exists then so too must free will at least in a relative sense.  This is called soft determinism – a view I endorse – as opposed to the hard determinism of mechanical philosophy There is also a third position – namely that of indeterminism which I touched upon.  Though I am a soft determinist I also believe some things in the universe do not necessarily have to have a cause.  Determinism can happily coexst with indeterminismhttps://davidmyatt.wordpress.com/theory-of-the-acausal/ If you think this is impossible ask yourself the question – what caused matter to come into existence?  If everything must have a cause then matter too must have a cause.  Logically, you are faced with just two options.  Either there was a Final Cause – God – that brought matter into existence or whatever it was that brought matter into  existence must itself have been caused and so on ad infinitum by a process of infinite regression.  However the argument about infinite regression amounts to an argument in favour of acausailiy.  If you reject the idea of a Final Cause then you must logically acept the theoretical possibility of indeterminism.  It has to be one or the other. The really interesting philophical question to address I think is how, in that case, does causality coexist with acasuality.  I really wouldnt have a clue about how to go about answering that question but it could  have profound implications for the whole argument about free will

[robbo203]

John Oswald wrote:

Free will linked to human chauvinism: .

 Not necessarily. Maybe some other animal species, apart from human beings that is, exercise "free will" too. Check out this rather interesting linkhttp://www.sci-news.com/biology/chimpanzees-cumulative-culture-04914.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BreakingScienceNews+%28Breaking+Science+News%29

[robbo203]

  There are 3 basic positions we can take on this question of free will – the hard determinist postion that everything we do is determined or caused and therefore free will is an illusion- the indeterminist position that we have absolute free will to chose whatever we want- the soft determinist position that we have free will but it is constrained and limited  by the circumstances we find ourselves in  I will focus mainly on the first and third of these.  Sam  Harris in his book Free Will (Free Press New York 2012)  advances the case for hard determinism  The argument boils down to this: any event or action that happens must happen because of an antecedent cause of which it is an effect  There can be no such thing as an event that happens for no reason at all.  Therefore the proposition that we can somehow escape, or rise above, the nexus of causality through the exercise of "free will " is manifestly false.  Even the very choices that we seemingly  freely make are  caused and so are not really free ar all.  However,  hard determinism possesses a soft underbelly that renders it vulnerable to attack.  In the first place, the contention that no actions are free is an unfalsifiable proposition which admits no counterexample; it is not testable in terms of scientific methodology.  Moreover it confuses coercion with causation.  There is surely an important  qualitative difference between having to do something when a gun is pointed at your head and doing it voluntarily.  You may say both actions are caused in some sense but that in no way clinches the argument for hard determinism.  John Horgan makes a rather telling point in this regard in his review of Harris' book, as follows:  "But just because my choices are limited doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Just because I don’t have absolute freedom doesn’t mean I have no freedom at all. Saying that free will doesn’t exist because it isn’t absolutely free is like saying truth doesn’t exist because we can’t achieve absolute, perfect knowledge.Harris keeps insisting that because all our choices have prior causes, they are not free; they are determined. Of course all our choices are caused. No free-will proponent I know claims otherwise. The question is how are they caused? Harris seems to think that all causes are ultimately physical, and that to hold otherwise puts you in the company of believers in ghosts, souls, gods and other supernatural nonsense.But the strange and wonderful thing about all organisms, and especially our species, is that mechanistic physical processes somehow give rise to phenomena that are not reducible to or determined by those physical processes. Human brains, in particular, generate human minds, which while subject to physical laws are influenced by non-physical factors, including ideas produced by other minds. These ideas may cause us to change our minds and make decisions that alter the trajectory of our world."(http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2012/04/09/will-this-post-make-sam-harris-change-his-mind-about-free-will/) What Horgan is alluding to here is Emergence Theory.  This is well explained by David Graeber  in summing up the broad outlines of Roy Bhaskar's "critical realist" approach: Reality can be divided  into emergent stratum: just as chemistry presupposes but cannot be reduced to physics so biology presupposes but cannot be reduced to chemistry, or the human sciences to biology.  Different sorts of mechanisms are operating on each. Each, furthermore, achieves a certain autonomy from those below: it would be impossible to even talk about human freedom were this not the case, since our actions would simply be determined by chemical and biological processes….the higher  the emergent strata one is dealing with, the less predictable things become, the involvement  of human beings of course being the most unpredictable  factor of all (Graeber D, 2001,  Towards and Anthroplogical Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, Palgrave p.52-53)  The view that everything has a cause and, in that sense, is a necessary consequence of what preceded it is called "mechanical determinism" which is not the same thing as "teleological determinism".  In the fomer case, it is what happened in the past that determines what is happening now as per David Hume's famous observation in his A Treatise of Human Nature  (1739), that "The cause must be prior to the effect." With teleological determinism, by contrast, it is the future, in a manner of speaking – in the sense of a goal that we are striving towards  – that explains what is happening now.   A given effect  is to be explained in terms of its final cause  or  purpose – its "telos".    So for example , philosophers going all the way back to Aristotle have argued that the natural world around us shows clear signs of teleological or purposeful design and that this is proof positive of the immanence of "Gods will" (and hence, also, the existence of God).    Mechanical determinism,  by contrast, is not concerned with final causes at all but merely "efficient causes".  Efficient causality  which makes a given effect dependent on prior events is, of course, what interests science in its endeavour to understand phenomena.  So rather than see the natural world as displaying signs of purposeful design , it sees it instead as the purposeless outcome of mechanical laws – natural selection However with the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century this mechanistic view of the universe has been called into question.  Concepts such as Heisenbergs uncertainty principle, the Observer Effect , the Butterfly Effect etc etc have enterered into modern scientific discourse. Have a look at this interesting little youtube presentationhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQKELOE9eY4 All this does not mean that mechanical determinism has now been "refuted" , only that it cannot in itself provide all the answers.  What applies to the physical or natural sciences applies even more so to the social sciences, in my view  It is significant that Marx welcomed Darwin's book as finally having put paid to teleological think in the natural sciences.  But  I dont think this amounts to a rejection of teleological thinking altogether.  At the macro level of society in general we  may very well question whether there is a some predetermined goal – for instance, socialism – towards which we are inevitably moving. (Paradoxically enough, "inevitablism"  in  this sense within the early socialist movement expressed by people like Karl Kautsky  was a product of 19th century thinking when mechanical determinism was the reigning paradigm).    However, at the micro level of individuals we are all of us clearly subject to teleological thinking – we have goals which determine our present actions – and this is very much tied up with the question of free will  It seems to me that while Marx rejected teleological thinking in some respects,  I dont think this can be interpreted as a wholesale endorsement of mechnical determinism either. He did allow room for the contingent and the unpredictable in his view of history.  As he put it "individuals make their own history, but not of their own free will, not under circumstances  they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 1852).   What  Marx seems to be rejecting here is not the idea – central to the notion of morality  itself, incidentally  – that humans can choose, can exercise free will,  but rather that they are not at liberty to choose  – or rather, to achieve –  just whatever they want.  They cannot;  they are clearly constrained by material circumstances and it is in that sense, referring to the general pattern of history itself,  that Marx is saying the outcome is not the result of their own free will.  The same might be said of Marx's statement  that “men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will” in the Preface to  A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.  It is not that "will" is being denied here;  all that is being asserted is that the relations into which human beings enter are pre-constituted in the form of particular social institutions that predate our own existence and which, of necessity,  we have to deal with as individuals I would say this makes Marx a "soft" determinist, rather than a "hard" determinist and therefore someone who did allow some scope for the exercise of free will  

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