Young Master Smeet
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LBird wrote:Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, wrote:IIIThe materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
Standing superior to society does not mean that they get to dictate, but that they standard apart as if they were not effected by the happenings of society, and 'above the fray'."The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity." I wonder what he meant by the 'new materialism'?
LBird wrote:It's elitist, through and through, which Marx warned about. The materialists will always divide society into two, the smaller part dictating to the larger part.as will the idealists and the dualists and the stuff monists, if the desire arises, I don't think you've demonstrated this is a particular feature of materialism, which is the claim that exerything, including our thoughts, is made of matter. It makes no claim, in itself on how that matter is shaped, transformed, etc.Also, I'd note that materialism, the claim that the world is made of matter, is not an exact fit with any particular method of science, e.g. empirisim, positivism, pragmatism, etc.
LBird wrote:They know what they're doing, without the grubby workers intervening, in their 'Objective Search for The Truth' [TM bourgeoisie, 1660]1660 was when the bourgeoisie were revolutionary, the truth was on their side. A ruling class defends itself through obscurantism, and the denial that reality can ever be known.But, I do ask again, which serves a ruling class more, a fixed reality, or one that can be changed by fiat? ISTR that Workers Councils in Russia voted for Lenin an awful lot, as they helped the Bolsheviks launch their counter revolution.
LBird wrote:Perhaps socialism to you is merely an administrative task, and the workers should keep their ignorant noses out of administration and out of science?Workers already run the administration of capitalism from top to bottom, why should they stop when we have socialism?
LBird wrote:YMS fears 'the mob' ruining his science, and them not becoming class conscious, but passively following a demagogue. Perhaps you do, too.Whatever, there's no sign of any socialism I can recognise in YMS's bourgeois bluffing. Or robbo's individualist concerns.I was simply asking, which one is more likely to be elitist, a philosophy of the world in which the word of a king can be contradicted by evidence, or one where the king can demand a vote to recognise that he can turn the tides? Also, note, I said nothing about mob rule, but organised mobilised dictatorship of the Leninist type.
LBird wrote:And finally, you admit that 'you have to know, prior to change' – the complete opposite of Marx, who argued that 'we know by changing', 'we are active producers of our knowledge'. It doesn't simply 'sit out there', 'waiting to be known', but is produced by active workers.It's laughable bourgeois nonsense, your ideology, YMS.No wonder you NEVER mention democracy in the 'finding' process. Unlike Democratic Communists, who always mention democratic production.Oh, what happened to
Someone or other wrote:But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.So, to re-iterate:1) How can we know the results of the vote, without a vote to tell us the results of the vote?2) Is the material substrate differentiated? Does it bring any qualities to the relationship with human labour in producing organic matter?3) Can consensus gentium be subject to coercion? Could a mobilised dictatorship enforce a vote, and thereby determine truth as a minority with the acquiesence of the majority?
LBird wrote:Not implement our theories.Passively 'look to the world, to data, to matter', you workers! Don't change your world!The elitist materialists will surreptitiously provide the 'theories to be implemented' and pretend that they aren't.Beware, workers. The elite 'know matter'.You can find matter for yourself, you don't need the elite. You can't change it, unless you know it first, ignorance never helped anyone. Much better than living the vision of the great leader.
LBird wrote:But, YMS can't understand this reply, because it is meaningless to his ideology, which is concerned with 'inorganic nature', or, as Engels termed it 'matter'. YMS wants to discuss 'matter', not Marx's socio-historical production of 'organic nature'.This category of 'matter' is supposedly outside of consciousness, that is, not in any relation to a consciousness, and is a concern of materialists.Marx was concerned with a social product, not an ahistorical, asocial 'matter'.But how does inorganic nature relate to organic? The socio-historic production is important, and there has to be something about the different productive epochs that regularises them across different societies (to take the blunt approach, the 'stages theory of history) much as convergent evolution requires similar ecological niches.Anyway, some might wonder why I've spent a lot of time on this. Frankly, it's because I think, pace LBird, his theory lends itself very strongly towards vanguardist elite rule.A proponderant minority, with suffice armed force could install a mobilised dictatorship, force peopleto vote, and 'move heaven and Earth to enact the will of Chairman LBird'. Plenty of dictators have tried this 'ther is no real world but what I say' schtick. Divorced from a reality principle, any ruling gang is free to declare that bread is their body and wine is their blood, and there is no life without Chairman LBird. The point is that we can all look to the world, look to the data, confirm our theories.
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/115As if on cue…
Once again, Lbird, when asked to substantiate his theories walks away with the ball. Any lurkers out there will recall that I've consistently called for democracy in science, complete freedom of investigation and practice in science, the free and conscious association of producers.Lets recall, this has happened before, when Lbird was challenged over how we could know the results of the votes of truth (since ther result of the vote is a truth claim about the world, only a vote can determine what the result of the vote was, if ojnly we could know the result of that vote). Lbird walked away then, waited, and came back a short while later.Now, LBird is being asked is the material; substrate differentiated. Again, he cannot answer, if he says no, he's saying, in effect, matter doesn't exist. If he says yes, then, necessarilly, it must at least delimit the truth claims we can make about it.All Lbird has left is argument by assertion, and the fact that, like Fox Mulder, he wants to believe.
Young Master Smeet wrote:LBird wrote:A relationship between consciousness and 'inorganic nature'.Is this 'inorganic nature' uniform, or differentiated?
See, folks, what we have here is the nub of the matter. Lbird cannot accept any differentiation in 'inorganic nature/the material substrate', since to do so would be to accept that external matter can determine, at least negatively, the things we can say about it.However, the other side of the problem is that Lbird specifically states that knowledge, and organic nature, somes from "A relationship between consciousness and 'inorganic nature'." My emphasis. Now, a relatiuonship presupposes two things and the things must be separate, though they may have properties in common. But, in order to change either one of the parties, or to create a third item, there must be differences between the two things. Now, if the material substrate/inorganic nature does not bring any features to this party, and the infinite variability of labour accounts for all the characteristics of our objects, then it becomes redundant to talk of a relatiuonship between "consciousness and 'inorganic nature'."A maths example suffices:(ax1)+(bx1)=cx1Since 1 does not change throughout the formula, it is ineffect identical to a+b=c.It thus becomes false to state that knowledge and the organic world comes from a relationship between "consciousness and 'inorganic nature'", since consciousness alone produces the differences in objects and determines their character.So, LBird is on a cleft stick. Either knowledge does not arise from relationship between "consciousness and 'inorganic nature'" or inorganic nature is differentiated, and it plays a role in detmining valid truth claims about the world.
LBird wrote:A relationship between consciousness and 'inorganic nature'.Is this 'inorganic nature' uniform, or differentiated?
LBird wrote:The characteristiscs ONLY EXIST as A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN an active human consciousness in its practice of CREATING those objects that are objects-for-us, ie. 'organic nature'.A relationship between an active human consciousness and what?
Young Master Smeet wrote:Lbird #154 wrote:Marx, me, you (and most socialists, I think) agree that 'inorganic nature' exists external to 'consciousness'.So, is inorganic nature, the material substrate, differentiated, or uniform?
LBird wrote:Thus, your ideology is not democratic, but elitist.Oh, and this doesn't follow, a once and eternal truth could equally be non-elitist.
Lbird #154 wrote:Marx, me, you (and most socialists, I think) agree that 'inorganic nature' exists external to 'consciousness'. [Lbird #163 wrote:No, it's the character of the hurdle in relation to a human that would limit, an individual runner, for example.OK, so, lets call it character, rather than quality. You accept, you accept, I repeat, you accept that inorganic nature exists "external to 'consciousness'" — your own words. That the things in inorganic nature have characteristics (your word is character). These characteristic only manifest themselves to us via our relations, that's fine, but at the very least, you have to accept that A≠B, that is to say, A does not share the characteristics of B, and A cannot relate to a human in the same way as B, else A=B would be true. That is to say, at the least, there are things we cannot truthfully say about an object.I have read what you have said, it appears you have not.
