[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
Afterthought: "something external to whomever does the theorizing." Aren't you missing out on the notion that Hegel deems philosophy as scientific, i.e. systematic, reproducible, and detachable from the empirical knower? Wasn't this the crux of his quarrel with Schlegel? The unity of subject and object is still a theoretical construct, or we'd be held hostage to the personal authority of thinker as some kind of guru. With this in mind, see the latest addition to my web site: After the 'System': Philosophy in the Age of the Sciences (Extract) by Gyorgy Markus http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/markus1.html The question of knowledge vs knower modes of legitimation is dealt with by Karl Maton, e.g.: "Popes, Kings & Cultural Studies: Placing the commitment to non-disciplinarity in historical context" by Karl Maton http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/PKCS.html At 08:14 PM 3/10/2005 -0500, chris wright wrote: Justin, as I have no idea what you mean by dialectic, this is difficult to make heads or tails of. Are you looking for a methodology? I know this is not popular, but dialectic is NOT a method. A method has at its base an assumed separation of first order and second order reasoning, i.e. empirical fact and its theorization. A methodology involves having a 'theory of' something, something external to whomever does the theorizing. As is clear from the very opening Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel opposes this, and so too does Marx, as is self-evident to a careful reading of his works. In the latter, you assume a stance outside the object which is theorized, as if there was nothing involved in it becoming an object for you. In asking after the truth of the statement "A rose is red", you would assume the distance of the asker from the question. And indeed the "scientific method" seems predicated on this separation. This is what is referred to as "reflexivity", akin I think to what Hegel called the positing of presuppositions. The fact and the theorization of the fact must be simultaneously interrogating each other. The theory must be open to factual contradiction and the facts must be opened up as containing theoretical presuppositions in regarding them as facts. It is exactly scientific methodology which hates ad hominem, as if there are were a purely external, objective reality that could be reached by adequate knowledge of the subject matter and imagination. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
At 10:28 AM 3/9/2005 -0800, andie nachgeborenen wrote: --- Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can't speak to THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, as I > haven't read it, though it > is gathering dust somewhere. The Dialectics of > Biology group produced a > couple of interesting books, mostly without mumbo > jumbo, as I recall. I > assume you meant 100% not 10% external. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose are all first rate scholars, and the book is quite good in its substantive parts. But the so-called dialectics is some sort of ritual chant, and the history is potted and not altogether accurate. > > As for dialectics and emergence, I think there is an > essential distinction > to be made between emergent materialism and > idealist/vitalist > notions. Vitalism of any sort has been dead dead dead since the mid-late 19th century. Certainly no serious biologist has maintained any such notion in this century. Everyone agrees that there are no special vital properties that explain why organisms are alive. The dispute has been between crude reductionism and variants of sophisticated reductionism and emergent antireductionism. It is very hard to tell these positions apart when they are suitably qualified. Well, there was Driesch in the '20s, but I suppose that wasn't serious. But some of this stuff--biosemiotics--is highly suspect, and I'm suspicious of process philosophy as well. Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If dialectics can help, I'm in favor of it, though i have not seen any evidence that dialectics itself is more than an emergent property of a certain sort of usefully holistic thinking. I mean, it's a real enough phenomenon. Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci are crealy dialectical thinkers. But I don't think they came to their subject matters with an antecedent dialectical method they could apply to those subject matters. They thought about things in a manner that was dialectical. Better to try to follow their example in their concrete analyses than to extract a method from their procedures. Yes, I agree. I was trying to get at the same thing. And of course for Marx, Lukacs, and Gramsci, dialectics of natural processes was irrelevant. Fair enough. But analytical philosophers certainly developed versions, e.g. Moore's theory of supervenient properties -- the good being (he thought) a non-natural property that supervened on natural ones, such that two actions/people could not be alike in all natural properties but differ in whether they were good or not. > > Soviet tampering with the various sciences and > disciplines is not news. . . . Perhaps though > another thing to look at is > the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy in the > teens and '20s--what > was the competition doing Well, there is what it looks like now and what it looked like then. And what it to liked to them as opposed to what it looked like, e.g., to Russell or Dewey or even to Gramsci or Lukacs or Weber. I'm not sure what you mean, but of course there's a different perspective at that moment and retrospectively. Perhaps the historical research being done now will help. I think for example of THE PARTING OF THE WAYS, which is about Canrap, Heidegger, and Cassirer. Where sympathetic critics > try to refine the > concepts, they are constantly beaten back by > intellectual ineptitude and > dogmatism, whether it is Bernal against Macmurray, > Novack against Van > Heijenoort, Sayers against Norman The record is > dismal. I don't know MacMurray, but the other examples are like the Jones Junior High vs. the Green bay Packers, just in terms of sheer candlepower. Bernal was no second-rater, though, at least in hsi biology and history. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
--- Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I can't speak to THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, as I > haven't read it, though it > is gathering dust somewhere. The Dialectics of > Biology group produced a > couple of interesting books, mostly without mumbo > jumbo, as I recall. I > assume you meant 100% not 10% external. Lewontin, Kamin, and Rose are all first rate scholars, and the book is quite good in its substantive parts. But the so-called dialectics is some sort of ritual chant, and the history is potted and not altogether accurate. > > As for dialectics and emergence, I think there is an > essential distinction > to be made between emergent materialism and > idealist/vitalist > notions. Vitalism of any sort has been dead dead dead since the mid-late 19th century. Certainly no serious biologist has maintained any such notion in this century. Everyone agrees that there are no special vital properties that explain why organisms are alive. The dispute has been between crude reductionism and variants of sophisticated reductionism and emergent antireductionism. It is very hard to tell these positions apart when they are suitably qualified. Here a different sort of "dialectical" > perspective will be > useful. If you look at my emergence blog, you will > see a criticism of an > effort to use process philosophy in a theory of > emergence, with respect to > quantum physics. I've been reading some nonsense > about > biosemiotics. There's a lot of metaphysical junk > going on--at the > scientific as well as the popular level, > apparently--mucking up synthetic > perspectives of cosmic evolution and biological > evolution. The upshot is > that there is something categorically wrong with > much of this material, and > here dialectics--by which I'm referring to the > relationships between > philosophical categories--may serve to demystify > rather than remystify the > issues Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If dialectics can help, I'm in favor of it, though i have not seen any evidence that dialectics itself is more than an emergent property of a certain sort of usefully holistic thinking. I mean, it's a real enough phenomenon. Hegel, Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci are crealy dialectical thinkers. But I don't think they came to their subject matters with an antecedent dialectical method they could apply to those subject matters. They thought about things in a manner that was dialectical. Better to try to follow their example in their concrete analyses than to extract a method from their procedures. > I'm not sure what you mean that the concept of > emergence was developed by > analytical philosophers. A lot of different people > were in on this from a > variety of perspectives. Fair enough. But analytical philosophers certainly developed versions, e.g. Moore's theory of supervenient properties -- the good being (he thought) a non-natural property that supervened on natural ones, such that two actions/people could not be alike in all natural properties but differ in whether they were good or not. > > Soviet tampering with the various sciences and > disciplines is not news. . . . Perhaps though > another thing to look at is > the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy in the > teens and '20s--what > was the competition doing Well, there is what it looks like now and what it looked like then. And what it to liked to them as opposed to what it looked like, e.g., to Russell or Dewey or even to Gramsci or Lukacs or Weber. Where sympathetic critics > try to refine the > concepts, they are constantly beaten back by > intellectual ineptitude and > dogmatism, whether it is Bernal against Macmurray, > Novack against Van > Heijenoort, Sayers against Norman The record is > dismal. I don't know MacMurray, but the other examples are like the Jones Junior High vs. the Green bay Packers, just in terms of sheer candlepower. Bernal was no second-rater, though, at least in hsi biology and history. > __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Re: Van Heijenoort's critique of Engels
I can't speak to THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, as I haven't read it, though it is gathering dust somewhere. The Dialectics of Biology group produced a couple of interesting books, mostly without mumbo jumbo, as I recall. I assume you meant 100% not 10% external. As for dialectics and emergence, I think there is an essential distinction to be made between emergent materialism and idealist/vitalist notions. Here a different sort of "dialectical" perspective will be useful. If you look at my emergence blog, you will see a criticism of an effort to use process philosophy in a theory of emergence, with respect to quantum physics. I've been reading some nonsense about biosemiotics. There's a lot of metaphysical junk going on--at the scientific as well as the popular level, apparently--mucking up synthetic perspectives of cosmic evolution and biological evolution. The upshot is that there is something categorically wrong with much of this material, and here dialectics--by which I'm referring to the relationships between philosophical categories--may serve to demystify rather than remystify the issues. Indeed, the half-assed vulgarities of our day are different. I'm not sure what you mean that the concept of emergence was developed by analytical philosophers. A lot of different people were in on this from a variety of perspectives. Soviet tampering with the various sciences and disciplines is not news. I just happened to read an interesting article in a festschrift to Robert Cohen that sums them up historically. Not surprisingly, philosophy itself was hit the first and hardest of all disciplines. All the idealist philosophers were shipped out of the country. Having read Berdyaev, I'd say that was no loss. The problem is, lacking any institutional experience of methodological pluralism, the Soviets made a mess by bureaucratically imposing an immature philosophy as mandatory for everyone, especially prior to the stage of synthesizing existing results from a variety of traditions, including, of course, innovations in logic. This was of course tied into the Soviets' dilemma with respect to "red vs. expert." They felt the imperative to institute their own hegemony, in a situation in which the inherited intelligentsia was not trusted. But in the process of so doing, they induced certain institutional and intellectual bad habits which already created problems in the relatively loose 1920s, even before the horrors of the Stalin period. Perhaps though another thing to look at is the dominant schools of bourgeois philosophy in the teens and '20s--what was the competition doing? On dogmatism and stagnancy: the examples are legion. The allegiance to the Soviets, Trotsky, Mao--the whole pattern of adherence to authority--has wreaked untold damage. Where sympathetic critics try to refine the concepts, they are constantly beaten back by intellectual ineptitude and dogmatism, whether it is Bernal against Macmurray, Novack against Van Heijenoort, Sayers against Norman The record is dismal. At 11:03 PM 3/8/2005 -0800, Justin Schwartz wrote: --- Ralph Dumain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It depresses me that we still have to have these > discussions in 2005. It depresses me that intelligent people are still wearing down their shoes talking about dialectics in this way. We have had over 100 years without moving forward an inch out of the murk and without the slightest reason to believe that such talk is anything more than a post hoc way of fitting ideas into an arbitarry and unenlightening scheme. But > once more into the breach . . . > > First, I'd suggest looking at Engels' motives for > doing what he did, which > was not to present a finished ontology for all time Wrong target. I wasn't talking about Engels and wasn't ascribing to anyone the hope of presenting a finished ontology. > but to combat the > half-assed philosophical vulgarities of his day And why think that thsi way of talking is useful in combating the half-assed philosophical vulgarities of our day, which are quite different. > which were also interfering > with a proper theoretical perspective on social > organization. Duhring was > only one example of the mismosh that occupied so > much of the intellectual > energy of the second half of the 19th > century--second-rate metaphorical > extensions of physics and biology into the social > sciences, vulgar > evolutionism, etc. And why do we need dialectical doubletalk to zap this stuff? I have been inspired by this discussion and the interest of a friend ins ociolobiology to reread Lewontin, Kamin & Rose, The Dialectical Biologist. The dialectical talk is 10% external to the scientific criticism and even to the historucally based ideologiekritik. > > Secondly, I am reminded of a now-defunct journal of > Marxist philosophy of > science called SCIENCE & NATURE. See the table of > contents on my web site: > > http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/sncont.htm
