--- Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this particular
> work by Cornforth was
> later incorporated into his SCIENCE AGAINST
> IDEALISM.
>
> I'm still trying to process the fact that this
> person apparently trained in
> some sophisticated philosophy could descend to
> writing the shit he wrote on
> dialectical materialism. Perhaps, like the Soviet
> philosophers, he was
> much better at criticizing bourgeois philosophy than
> coming up with a
> positive credible version of diamat.
No one has even come close.
> >George Reisch in his book on logical empiricism,
> >*How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of
> Science*
> >has a discussion of Cornforth's book. He notes
> that
> >Cornforth and other Communist philosophers had
> >enjoyed amicable relations with the logical
> positivists
> >in the 1930s. And back then, it certainly helped
> >that one of the leading logical positivists, Otto
> >Neurath, considered himself to be a Marxist.
> >
> >Later on relations between the Communists
> >and the logical empiricists broke down and
> >according to Reisch, Cornforth in his book
> >started off by reiterating Lenin's criticisms of
> >the Machists, which Cornforth applied against
> >the logical empiricists. Thus, the logical
> empiricists
> >were charged with being subjective idealists,
> >with having an overly formalistic approach to
> >philosophy and the like.
Most of the LPs were prety much what we'd call lefty
social democrats, Schlick being an exeception, a real
AUstrian right-winger (libertarian, we'd say).
Yet even so, Cornforth
> >still spared Neurath from many of the criticisms
> >that he lodged against people like Philipp Frank,
> >Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach and Moritz
> >Schlick. Indeed, Cornforth went out of his way
> >to praise some of Neurath's work.
> >
> >As Reisch points out one of the reasons
> >that Neurath's work lost its hold among
> >philosophers of science in the post-WW II
> >period was because of the perception
> >that it was "Communistic."
Lost it; hold? Recall whom Quine quotes in his
epigraph to Word and Object -- Quine was a
right-winger. In fact, Neurath's dialetical holism is
central to the internal deconstruction of LP by
Hempel, Carnap, and others, and corew to the emerginge
neopragmatism that Ralph despises so utterly.
It was seen
> >by his critics as offering a philosophical
> >basis for "totalitarianism" and was codemned
> >as such.
But the U of C continued to publish the Unity of
Science series -- Kuhn's masterpiece, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, is in that series in the early
60s..
In fact,
> >Neurath was no dialectical materialist
> >but his socialist and Marxist sympathies
> >were quite apparent and they were seen
> >as coloring his work. And that was more
> >than sufficient to condemn it to obscurity
> >in the post-WW II period when virulent
> >anticommunism was holding sway
> >in the academy.
But Ayer -- a very hard left Labourite -- published
Neurath's uncompromisingly Marxist essay Sociology and
Physicalism in his influential anthology Logical
Positivism.
jks
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