Essay Three Part Two: Abstractionism -- Or, 'Science' And Mathematics On The Cheap

And How This Undermines Dialectics

 

Visitors are encouraged to read Part One of this Essay first, where much that is seemingly taken for granted below was fully substantiated.

 

Technical Preliminaries

 

Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play the video I have posted to this page. As far as I can tell, it plays as intended in other Browsers. However, if you have Privacy Badger [PB] installed, it won't play in Google Chrome unless you disable PB for this site.

 

[Having said that, I have just discovered that such videos play in IE11 if you have upgraded to Windows 10. It looks like the problem is with Windows 7 and earlier versions of that operating system. I have as yet no idea whether or not that will still be true of Windows 11.]

 

If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View' (in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and add this site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's browser, Edge, automatically renders these links compatible; Windows 10 does likewise. [Again, I have yet to determine if that is also the case with Windows 11.]

 

However, if you are using Windows 10, IE11 and Edge unfortunately appear to colour these links somewhat erratically. They are meant to be mid-blue, but those two browsers render them intermittently light blue, yellow, purple and even red!

 

Firefox and Chrome reproduce these links correctly.

 

Several browsers also appear to underline these links erratically. Many are underscored boldly in black, others more lightly in blue! They are all meant to be the latter.

 

Preface

 

This Part of Essay Three has perhaps been written and re-written more times than any other at this site (in fact well over fifty times -- and that is no exaggeration!). The first half of it still contains rather too many mixed metaphors and stylistic monstrosities. I was originally experimenting with new ways of expressing ideas that have been raked over countless times in the last 2400 years by Traditional Thinkers, which is why that rather peculiar style was adopted. So, this Essay will require many more re-writes before I am completely happy with it; in which case, the reader's indulgence is required here perhaps more than elsewhere.

 

Added on Edit: October 2020: I have just spent the last six months re-structuring and re-writing this Essay. Many of the 'irritating rhetorical flourishes' that adorned earlier versions have been removed (or have been replaced by less annoying and convoluted sentences). However, I am still not entirely satisfied with the end result, so it will probably take several more re-writes before that is no longer the case.

 

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Several readers have complained about the number of links I have added to these Essays because they say it makes them very difficult to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly lodge that complaint since they believe everything is interconnected, and that must surely apply even to Essays that attempt to debunk that very idea. However, to those who find such links do make these Essays difficult to read I say this: ignore them -- unless you want to access further supporting evidence and argument for a particular point, or a certain topic fires your interest.

 

Others wonder why I have linked to familiar subjects and issues that are part of common knowledge (such as the names of recent Presidents of the USA, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, the titles of popular films or certain words that are in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't assume that topics which are part of common knowledge in 'the west' are equally well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies', or any at all. Many of my readers also struggle with English, so any help I can give them I will continue to provide.

 

Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links connect to web-pages that regularly change their URLs, or which vanish from the Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent that they have changed or have disappeared I can't possibly keep on top of this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers informed me of any dead links they happen to notice.

 

In general, links to 'Haloscan' no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.

 

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As is the case with all my Essays, nothing here should be read as an attack either on Historical Materialism [HM] -- a theory I fully accept --, or, indeed, on revolutionary socialism. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a revolutionary over thirty-five years ago.

 

The difference between Dialectical Materialism [DM] and HM, as I see it, is explained here.

 

It is also worth pointing out that a good 30% of my case against DM has been relegated to the End Notes and the Appendices. Indeed, in this particular Essay, much of the supporting evidence is to be found there. That has been done to allow the main body of the Essay to flow a little more smoothly. This means that if readers want fully to appreciate my case against DM, they should consult this material, too. In many cases, I have added numerous qualifications and considerably more supporting detail to what I have to say in the main body; in addition, I have raised several objections (some obvious, many not -- and some that will have occurred to the reader) to my own arguments, which I have then answered. [I explain why I have adopted this tactic in Essay One.]

 

If readers skip this material, then my answers to any objections or qualms they might have will be missed, as will the extra supporting detail and the many qualifications I have included. Since I have been debating this theory with comrades for over thirty years, I have heard all the objections there are! [Many of the more recent on-line debates have been listed here.]

 

In addition, it is worth pointing out that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality", "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used at this site (in connection with Traditional Philosophy and DM), aren't meant to suggest that all or even most members of various ruling-classes actually invented these ways of thinking or of seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example, Heraclitus, Plato, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius). They are intended to highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them. Up until recently this dogmatic approach to knowledge has almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who either relied on ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run the system for the elite.**

 

However, that will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published); until then, the reader is directed here, here and here for more details.

 

[**Exactly how this applies to DM will, of course, be explained in the other Essays published at this site (especially here, here and here). In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the argument (but this time with absolute beginners in mind), here.]

 

Finally, since what follows continues where Part One left off, these two Essays should be read in conjunction with one another. In this Part of Essay Three, I take many of the points established in Part One for granted.

 

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As of March 2024, this Essay is just over 124,500 words long; a much shorter summary of some of its main ideas can be accessed here.

 

The material presented below does not represent my final view of any of the issues raised; it is merely 'work in progress'.

 

[Latest Update: 05/03/2024.]

 

Quick Links

 

Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections.

 

If your Firewall/Browser has a pop-up blocker, you will need to press the "Ctrl" key at the same time or these and the other links here won't work!

 

If you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox you might not be able to read all the symbols I have employed. I have no idea if other browsers are similarly affected.

 

I have adjusted the font size used at this site to ensure that even those with impaired vision can read what I have to say. However, if the text is still either too big or too small for you, please adjust your browser settings!

 

(1) Introduction

 

(2) The Traditional Approach To Abstract General Ideas

 

(a) Dialectical Traditionalism

 

(b) Philosophy And 'The Problem Of Universals'

 

(c) How Not To Solve A Problem -- Begin By Doubling It

 

(d) 'Self-Predication'

 

(e) Descent Into A Metaphysical Abyss

 

(3) Empiricism And The 'Anthropomorphic Brain'

 

(a) The Empiricist 'Mind' Hits A Brick Wall

 

(b) Bourgeois Individualism

 

(c) How Not To Solve Philosophical 'Problems' 2.0

 

(d) Intelligent Ideas Versus A 'Little Man' In The Head

 

(4) Yet More Headaches For Dialecticians

 

(a) Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge

 

(b) Driven To Abstraction

 

(c) Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?

 

(d) Collective Error Over General Terms

 

(5) Abstractionism: Do We Bury It Or Praise It?

 

(a) You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Confusion

 

(b) Public Criteria Versus Private Gain

 

(c) Particular Problems With 'Dialectical Generality'

 

(6) Anti-Abstractionism

 

(a) 'Mental Strip-Tease'?

 

(b) Do Scientists Indulge In Abstraction?

 

(c) Anti-Abstractionism

 

(i)   Berkeley And Frege

 

(ii)  The Young Marx And Engels

 

(7) Appearance And Reality

 

(a) The Underlying 'Essence' Of 'Being'

 

(b) Does Reality Contradict Appearances?

 

(i)    'Essence' And 'Appearance'

 

(a) Hegel

 

(b) Dialectical Marxists

 

(ii)   'Commonsense'

 

(iii)  Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science

 

(iv)  The 'Contradiction' Between Science And 'Commonsense'

 

(v)  Does The Earth Move?

 

(c) Why Science Can't Undermine Common Sense

 

(i)   Ordinary Language Conflated With Common Sense

 

(ii)  Why Scientists Can't Afford To Undermine Common Sense

 

(iii) 'Contradictory' Capitalism?

 

(d) Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances

 

(i)   'Dialectical' Practice Can't Be 'Objective'

 

(ii)  Are All Appearances 'False'?

 

(iii) Dialectics Engages Auto-Destruct Mode

 

(8) Appendix One: Bertell Ollman's Traditionalism

 

(a) Initial Disappointment

 

(b) The Privatised 'Process Of Abstraction'

 

(c) Karl Marx -- A Magician?

 

(d) The Young Marx And Engels Torpedo 'Abstractionism'

 

(e) Ollman Misconstrues The Nature Of Change

 

(f) 'Internal Relations' To The Rescue?

 

(g) Welcome To The Desert Of The Reification

 

(h) Brain Scans Required?

 

(i) Ollman Versus DM's Critics

 

(10) Appendix Two: Plato, Rationality, The 'Soul' And A 'Well-Ordered' City

 

(11) Notes

 

(12) References

 

Summary Of My Main Objections To Dialectical Materialism

 

Abbreviations Used At This Site

 

Return To The Main Index Page

 

Contact Me

 

Introduction

 

In this Part of Essay Three, traditional answers to the 'problem' of generality (which involved, inter alia, the invention of 'Universals', 'Forms', 'Abstract Ideas', 'Categories' and/or 'Concepts'), and the deleterious effect they have had on Dialectical Marxism will be critically examined. In addition, the distinction between "appearance" and "essence"/"reality" -- a dichotomy dialecticians have also imported from Traditional Thought -- will be subjected to sustained and destructive criticism.

 

The Traditional Approach -- Rationalism And Original Syntax

 

Dialectical Traditionalism

 

Part One of this Essay showed that, beyond superficial differences, Dialectical Marxists have bought into a thoroughly traditional view of 'abstract general ideas'. This Part of Essay Three will further underline how conservative this approach to theory turns out to be.

 

Radical they are not.

 

Philosophy And The 'Problem Of Universals'

 

In Traditional Metaphysics, the explanation of the nature of generality was intimately connected with the so-called 'problem' of 'Universals'.1

 

Rationalist Philosophers tended to argue that general words or 'concepts' were either anterior to experience or were apprehended by means of generalisations drawn, or "abstracted" from -- or even applied to -- an unspecified number of particulars (i.e., individual objects or events of a certain kind) given in experience, or encountered in 'thought'. The 'concepts', 'categories', and 'Ideas' so derived were supposed to 'represent', 'reflect', or even 'reveal', the formal, constitutive properties belonging to each particular of a given type. Depending on their nature and provenance these were variously classified as "essential", "primary", or even "secondary" qualities that individuals of that kind either instantiated or in which they were said to "participate".

 

"The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience.... Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world." [Markie (2017). Paragraphs merged.]

 

"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated problem of universals was invented by Plato.... The distinction of particulars and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]

 

Such knowledge was therefore deemed "innate", based on 'concepts' or 'faculties' that were themselves "innate" (or were guaranteed by 'God'). Here is Descartes (expressing ideas typical of this branch of ruling-class thought):

 

"For since God has endowed each of us with some light of reason by which to distinguish truth from error, I could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied with the opinions of another, unless I had resolved to exercise my own judgment in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the task...." [Descartes, Discourse on Method, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

 

Naturally, this meant that material objects and events were somehow less 'real' than the abstractions that supposedly lent them their substantiality, or which constituted their 'essence'. Partly because of this, the general -- the 'rational' -- came to dominate over the particular, the material and the contingent in the Rationalist Tradition. So, what were in principle invisible and undetectable 'essences' were regarded as more real than the individual objects and events in the world around us.

 

"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a, pp.1254-55. I have used the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published version translates the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it." Cornford renders it thus: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible; that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." (Cornford (1997), p.192.)]

 

And concerning the Rationalist Philosophers who influenced DM-theorists, we read:

 

"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. Bold emphasis added.]

 

Here is Hegel echoing and amplifying these ideas:

 

"The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that we know about are to us appearances only, and we can never know their essential nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach.

 

"Plain minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows. The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however, though it is far in advance of vulgar realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel (1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold emphases added.]

 

"...only...God is actual...He is the supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance, and only in part actuality." [Ibid., p.9, §6; bold emphasis added.]

 

'Abstractions' were therefore Ideal 'objects of thought' -- that is, they either represented each individual philosopher's 'Ideas', or they were the 'thoughts' attributed to one or more of the many 'deities' humans have invented throughout history, including Hegel's 'Absolute'.

 

As I pointed out in Part One:

 

Philosophy was now viewed as a unique and special source of Super-Knowledge -- knowledge that is not only anterior to, it is even more fundamental than anything the sciences could possibly deliver. It is "Superscientific" because its theses reveal Super-Necessities underpinning 'Being' itself, knowledge of which is attainable by the application of 'reason' alone. As Immanuel Kant noted:

 

"First, concerning the sources of metaphysical cognition, it already lies in the concept of metaphysics that they cannot be empirical. The principles of such cognition (which include not only its fundamental propositions or basic principles, but also its fundamental concepts) must therefore never be taken from experience; for the cognition is supposed to be not physical but metaphysical, i.e., lying beyond experience. Therefore it will be based upon neither outer experience, which constitutes the source of physics proper, nor inner, which provides the foundation of empirical psychology. It is therefore cognition a priori, or from pure understanding and pure reason.... Metaphysical cognition must contain nothing but judgments a priori, as required by the distinguishing feature of its sources." [Kant (1953), pp.15-16. (This links to a PDF.) I have quoted the on-line version which is a different translation to the one I have referenced. Bold emphases added; link added and paragraphs merged.]

 

"Lying beyond experience" implies it is superior to scientific knowledge.

 

Indeed, as we also saw in Part One, these 'objects of thought' were Abstract Particulars. This meant that for Rationalists, while 'reality itself' was essentially Ideal, the physical universe was in effect a shadow world, not fully 'real', since that was where contingency, brute fact, finitude and uncertainty reigned supreme. As Plato and Hegel argued, the 'rational structure' that supposedly lay behind 'appearances' was the real world -- indeed, only 'God' was "truly actual" --, and that world and these 'concepts' were accessible by 'thought' alone. If general terms -- common nouns, such as "cat", "table", "money", "value", "population", etc. -- are capable of reflecting the 'essence' of material bodies (as well as their inter-relationships), then that was because of the Abstract Particulars to which they allegedly referred, or which they instantiated (such as 'The Form of the Cat', 'The Concept, Table', 'The Population'). Hence, these Abstract Particulars were ('ontologically', and even 'epistemologically') anterior to the objects to which we supposedly refer by our use of common nouns. Depending on the philosophical system under consideration, this meant that Abstract Particulars exist prior to the relevant objects in material world, or they somehow give them their 'substantiality', their limited, temporary or apparent 'actuality'. For other theorists, they were simply 'mental constructs' to which theorists must refer if they want to understand the objects and processes that litter 'reality' -- or, indeed, if they want to construct a more comprehensive and accurate theory about their nature and properties.1a

 

[We will see Engels, Lenin and other DM-theorists reach similar conclusions, arguing that the 'concrete' is only concrete because of the abstractions to which we have to appeal in order to render them 'concrete' -- and, oddly enough for those who claim to be materialists, they even assert that matter itself is an abstraction! In which case, these self-proclaimed, hard-headed 'materialists' were already tail-ending Idealism by their adoption of a core principle of Rationalism -- i.e., that matter is fundamentally an abstraction!]

 

It is here we see the conflation of 'talk about talk' with 'talk about the world' surface, a confusion we encountered in Part One. We met it, for example, when we saw theorists treat predicates as both the referents of general terms (i.e., the objects or sets of objects in the world supposedly designated by predicative expressions), and as general terms in language. They were thus extra-linguistic and linguistic at the same time! This semantic slide helped Hegel conclude that what went on in his head (as he juggled with certain words/'concepts') also constituted the 'external' world in development.

 

While Descartes imagined there were two substances -- 'Mind' and Matter --, it soon became apparent (in the work of Spinoza and in a somewhat different form in Leibniz's writings -- and later still in Hegel's 'theory') that there is only one rational or 'real' substance: 'Mind'. Everything else is an 'appearance', and hence 'accidental', 'ephemeral', transient, contingent.

 

The traditional approach, which particularises general terms and nominalises verbs, has, in one form or another, dominated Western Thought -- and latterly DM -- for the best part of 2500 years. Its 'logical conclusion' in the work of Leibniz and Hegel (and their latter-day epigones) only serves to underline the claim advanced in these Essays that all ancient, medieval and early modern versions of Rationalist Philosophy are simply different forms of Idealism. And, as we will see, this approach to generality (as well as the meaning of general terms themselves) has spread its tentacles into every subsequent metaphysical system --, to such an extent that it is clear that all forms of Traditional Philosophy -- Rationalist, Nominalist, Realist, Monist, Dualist, Empiricist and Positivist -- are no less Idealist.

 

These "ruling ideas", originally given life in 'the west' by Ancient Greek Philosophers, found a new home in more recent, bourgeois surroundings, albeit with a brand new content that mirrored the novel social and economic conditions in which they found themselves.

 

Even when this 'theory' is flipped "right-side up" (or "put back on its feet"), supposedly in DM, material reality is still regarded as secondary, derivative, dependent, and not fully real. Once again, witness where we are told by erstwhile materialists that matter is just an "abstraction". The material world, as the latter is viewed by dialecticians, requires the rational principles encapsulated in DL to give it life and form. After all, underlying "essences" 'contradict' "appearances", and in that philosophical wrestling match, it is "essence" that always finishes on top.1aa

 

Here, for example, is Lenin:

 

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid., p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Notice that it is abstraction that drives thought closer to the truth. Moreover, as we saw in Part One, according to Lenin and Engels, the concrete only emerges at the end of an infinite process. In that case, nothing could ever rightly be said to be concrete. [We will also see later that Lenin is even less ambiguous in the other things he had to say about this mysterious process (here and here).]

 

This helps explain why DM-fans find it impossibly difficult to tell non-believers (or even each other, for goodness sake!) exactly with what it is in reality that their 'abstractions' actually correspond. [Here is a recent example.] As we also saw in Part One (and as we will see in more detail In Essay Twelve Part Four), if there were anything in the universe for these 'abstractions', these 'rational principles', to correspond with, it would imply that nature is 'Mind', or the product of 'Mind'. On the other hand, if there isn't anything with which they correspond, what possible use are they? To boost the morale of DM-fans?

 

As the Book of Genesis noted, in an Ideal world it takes the 'Word of God' (or something analogous to it) to give life and form to matter, creating both out of 'nothing'. Without that, everything would remain lifeless, chaotic and might even cease to exist --, or, indeed, might even fail to begin to exist:

 

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.... And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God called the firmament Heaven.... And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so...." [Genesis, Chapter One, verses 2-11.]

 

"1 In the beginning was the Word [λόγος -- logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind." [John 1:1-4. Bold added.]

 

In like manner, according to DM-theorists, a 'Dialectical Logos' is required, not just to add form to formless matter, but to call it into existence, give it life, make it move and do so literally from 'Nothing'. Creation ex nihilo isn't just a Christian dogma, it is also a DM-dogma -- courtesy of Hegel's 'derivation' of everything from 'Nothing' and 'Being'.

 

Here is what I have written elsewhere about that (slightly edited):

 

One particular 'argument' is of special interest here; it crops up in different forms in several places in Hegel's work, and attempts to connect "Being" with "Nothing" and then both with "Becoming", by magically 'deriving' all three from the verb "to be"....

 

Amazingly, this 'argument' was praised by Lenin and Trotsky....

 

Rees summarised thus 'argument' in the following way:

 

"The 'Science of Logic' begins with the most abstract of all human ideas, Being. This is the bare notion of existence shorn of any colour, size, shape, taste or smell. This first concept is also, in its way, a totality. Although Being reveals no characteristics or distinguishing marks, it does, nevertheless, include everything. After all, everything must exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. Being is therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists; it is the most common of all human ideas. Every time we say, 'This is --,' even before we say what it is, we acknowledge the idea of pure Being…. But Being also contains its opposite, Nothing. The reason is that Being has no qualities and no features that define it. If we try to think about pure Being…we are forced to the opposite conclusion, Being equals Nothing.

 

"But even Nothing is more than it seems. If we are asked to define Nothing, we are forced to admit that it has at least one property -– the lack or absence of any qualities…. This presents us with a strange dilemma: being is Nothing and yet Nothing is something. Hegel, however, is not so stupid as to think that there is no difference between being and Nothing, even though this is what our logical enquiry seems to suggest. All that this contradiction means is that we must search for a new term that…can explain how Being and Nothing can be both equal and separate (or an 'identity of opposites'…). Hegel's solution is the concept of Becoming." [Rees (1998), pp.49-50. Spelling adjusted in line with UK English; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

But, there is no way that these concepts ("Being", "Nothing" and "Becoming") could have been derived from "careful empirical work", nor can they be "tested in practice" -- let alone abstracted from anything that is recognisably material.

 

In the end, the fact that erstwhile materialists (like Lenin and Trotsky -- or even Rees, since he nowhere criticises this 'argument') praised this prime example of linguistic mystification isn't the least bit surprising -- when their own ideas are viewed against the class-compromised background of Traditional Thought.

 

This is how Trotsky characterised it:

 

"The identity of Being (Sein) and Nothingness (Nichts), like the contradictoriness of the concept of the Beginning, in which Nichts and Sein are united, seems at first glance a subtle and fruitless play of ideas. In fact, this 'game' brilliantly exposes the failure of static thinking, which at first splits the world into motionless elements, and then seeks truth by way of a limitless expansion [of the process]." [Trotsky (1986), p.103.]

 

Whereas Lenin thought it was:

 

"Shrewd and clever! Hegel analyses concepts that usually appear dead and shows that there is movement in them." [Lenin (1961), p.110.]

 

However, at no point do Rees and other DM-fans repudiate this style of reasoning, only some of its 'Ideal' implications -- which, coupled with the praise Lenin and Trotsky heaped upon it, indicates that, for dialecticians, the rejection of Hegelian Absolute Idealism is purely formal, and clearly superficial. By no stretch of the imagination have any of the above conclusions been drawn from "an analysis of real material forces", or anything even remotely like one. The fact that leading DM-classicists could claim to learn anything about the nature of "static thinking" from such woefully defective 'logic' reveals how superficial their frequent and vociferous rejection of Absolute Idealism really is. The 'logic' of this passage is entirely bogus and thoroughly Idealist, again, as George Novack noted:

 

"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]

 

The concepts Hegel employed are the result of grossly exaggerated abstractions, tortured 'logic' and terminally dubious assertions....

 

In fact, this Hegelian 'derivation' has set a new gold standard for all forms of LIE, for from it everything in existence -- every object, thought and process -- can be 'derived' miraculously from the verb "to be"!

 

[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]

 

So, even for DM-fans, matter isn't sufficient to itself -- indeed, it is an 'abstraction'. Which is, of course, why Hegel and Dialectical Marxists found they had to appeal to a linguistic form -- to 'contradiction' -- to set things in motion and give them life. Creation, life and movement via language (in the Bible) and 'logic' (logos) mirrored by linguistic forms achieving the same result in DM:

 

"Contradiction is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity." [Hegel (1999), p.439, §956. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"So long as we consider things at rest and lifeless, each one by itself…we do not run up against any contradictions in them…. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction…. [T]here is a contradiction objectively present in things and processes themselves, a contradiction is moreover an actual force...." [Engels (1976), pp.152-53. Bold emphases added]

 

"Dialectics…prevails throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954), p.211. Bold emphasis added]

 

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).

 

"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self'-movement. The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new. The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]

 

Because of this, it isn't possible to find -- or even suggest there is -- a single physical correlate in nature and society for the abstractions that dialecticians have conjured into existence (or, to be more honest, the 'abstractions' they imported from Hegel and other ruling-class theorists) to correspond with. But, since they form the 'essential nature' of material objects and processes, this means that, for DM-fans, the latter must be Ideal, too.

 

And that is why the aforementioned dialectical "flip" was in the end through a full 360ş.

 

Hence, it is hardly surprising to find that DM-fans have had to denigrate, or at least depreciate, ordinary language and with it the experience of ordinary workers (accusing them of being dominated by 'commonsense', 'formal thinking' or 'false consciousness' -- aping a tactic adopted and perfected by countless generations of ruling-class hacks), in order to 'justify' and rationalise the importation of Hegelian concepts into the workers' movement, in a vain attempt to make DM work.

 

[These allegations will be substantiated in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

 

As we will discover throughout the rest of this site: because of their reliance on the traditional thought-forms they imported into revolutionary socialism, dialecticians have only succeeded in saddling themselves and our movement with a host of insoluble theoretical problems. This also helps explain why every single dialectician slips into a priori, dogmatic mode-of-thought at the drop of a copula --, and why they all fail to notice this even after it has been pointed out to them!

 

Moreover, as indicated earlier, this version of 'rotated' Idealism [i.e., DM] pictures the material world as less 'real' than the Ideal world that lends it its substance, its 'essence', and which in the end determines what DM-theorists finally regard as "concrete".

 

And we can now see why that is so: for dialecticians, material objects are only "concrete" in the Ideal Limit. But, since that limit is forever unattainable, this implies that, for them, there are in effect no concrete objects or processes at all!

 

How Not To Solve A Problem: Begin By Doubling It

 

As Aristotle pointed out -- in reference to Plato's Theory of Forms and the so-called "Third Man Argument" --, it isn't a good idea when trying to solve a problem to begin by doubling it.

 

[The Third Man Argument first saw light of day in Plato (1997d), p.366, 132a-132b.]

 

By this he meant that if there is a difficulty explaining the similarities that exist between the particulars given in experience, there is surely a more intractable one accounting for the alleged link between these particulars and the Abstract Universals (The Forms) they supposedly instantiate (in Plato's theory).

 

Where there was once only one problem, now there are two.

 

Worse still, if the solution to this age-old conundrum implies there is a link of some sort between particulars and a 'something-we-know-not-what', (i.e., a specially-concocted 'Universal', located in a mysterious world anterior to experience, accessible to thought alone), then this is a 'solution' in name only.

 

Hence, if an abstract term is required to account for the similarities that exist between particulars, then a third term would clearly be required to account for the similarity between that abstraction and those particulars themselves. Otherwise, the connection wouldn't be rational, merely fortuitous, or accidental, undermining the whole point of the exercise.

 

[That helps explain why the medieval, 'Identity Theory of Predication' was adopted by Hegel; that was discussed in detail in Part One.]

 

So, this third term reproduces the original problem; that is because questions would naturally arise over the link between this new term and the other two (i.e., between each particular and this hypothetical 'Universal' that had been introduced in order to connect them!).

 

While Abstract Universals like this 'exist' in an 'Ideal World' anterior to the world we see around us, they also supposedly enjoy connections of some sort with particulars in this world, connections that are of a different order to those that material particulars presumably enjoy among themselves. Unfortunately, this leaves the 'abstract' side of this family of proposed 'solutions' shrouded in mystery.

 

Hence, if the introduction of Universal/Concept, C1 is required in order to account for the common features shared, for instance, by objects A and B, then a new Universal/Concept, C2, a third term, will be required to account for the commonality between C1 and A, and between C1 and B, and so on. The whole exercise thus threatens to generate an infinite regress, leaving nothing explained.

 

Donald Davidson put this point rather well:

 

"In one dialogue or another Plato tells us that the forms are not perceived by the senses, but are objects of the mind; that they are imperishable; that they are indivisible; that they are superior to material objects; that they are norms by which we judge material things; that they have a certain creative power (the form of wisdom 'makes' Socrates wise). Material objects participate in, resemble, copy, or are modelled by the forms. Problems arise because some of these characteristics of the forms turn out to clash with others. If material things resemble the forms they instantiate to various degrees, then material things have something in common with any form they resemble. If a well-drawn circle resembles the form of circularity, it must be because both the particular drawn circle and the form of circularity share the property of circularity; but then what the particular and the property share must be still another form. Scholars of Plato have puzzled over this problem, the problem of the 'third man,' because it seems to lead to an infinite regress." [Davidson (2005), pp.78-79. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

 

Of course, Davidson goes on to argue that Plato appears to have 'solved' this problem by arguing that it is a mistake to think that shapes also have a shape, or that Socrates resembles the concept of a man. This may be so, but it isn't easy to see how the Forms could be exemplars of the particulars they supposedly instantiate if they share nothing with them. Indeed, why call something the Form of Circularity if there is nothing circular about it? Or if there is nothing in common between this Form and circles that have been drawn, or could be drawn? Why aren't they, perhaps, exemplifying the Form of Squareness, or of Triangularity, with which they also share nothing? Of course, a rule (if this is what the Forms are) in no obvious way resembles the objects to which it is, or can be, applied; but there is little in Plato that suggests he regarded his Forms as rules. Moreover, if the Forms are supposed to work as exemplars, there would have to be a rule of some sort that informed those who implicitly (or explicitly) use them, or their linguistic counterparts, as exemplars how to apply them correctly. But, there are none, or none that Plato considered. An object, a Form, can't tell anyone how to apply it. An interpreted rule can and typically would. Chess pieces, for example, won't tell a novice how to move them, the rules of chess, once understood, will.

 

[There is a sophisticated defence of Plato in Meinwald (1990, 1992). The reader will have to decide for herself whether or not it is successful.]

 

Well, this might be to misinterpret the nature of Plato's Forms, perhaps even anachronistically. In fact, Plato talks as if we just 'see' or 'remember' the Forms (on this, see Note 6a), and that is all there is to it. But, if we are to recognise the Form of Circularity and distinguish it from, say, the Form of Squareness, there must be something about the former that doesn't apply to the latter, which it shares with examples of circularity we see in this world that it doesn't share with squareness in this world. And what can that be? A name or label of some sort? But, names can't express a rule, either, nor can labels. We already know what circularity is, so our understanding is already biased (so to speak), but just looking at the alleged Form of Circularity in Platonic Heaven before we were born (which is how Plato apparently conceived of this Cosmic Drama) without knowing what it represents or how to apply it would tell us nothing. Maybe we were all given a guided tour or presented with an 'Empyrean User's Handbook' of some sort? If so, that would make this a social theory of knowledge and all the problems Plato associated with banausic theories like that would now surely apply to any 'heavenly' versions of it.

 

What, for example, would be common to The Form of Dog, or the Forms of Cat, Lion, Horse, Rat and Crocodile that would make them all partake in the Form of Animal? That question would clearly re-introduce Aristotle's Third Man Argument, only now applied to the Forms themselves!

 

Maybe Platonic Heaven works in 'mysterious ways', and Cosmic Knowledge is different from ordinary, boring earthy knowledge. But, that is precisely the point at issue, for Plato's theory kicks this 'problem' off, not into the long grass, but into a fundamentally mysterious arena, the clouds...

 

Of course, this 'difficulty' resurfaces in Hegel's theory, but in a different form (no pun intended), for he had no way of knowing whether or not his apprehension of the concepts of interest to him were genuine copies of those processed by the Absolute Itself --, or, for that matter, whether or not they were the same as anyone else's. Indeed, he would have no way of knowing whether or not he had interpreted them correctly, or even what they really meant. Having the name of a concept (such as "Being") would be of no more use to Hegel than seeing the Form of Circularity would be to our allegedly pre-existent selves in Platonic Heaven. The name of a concept can provide no clues how it should be applied -- or even what it meant -- certainly no more than 'the word' "Meskonation" would help you, dear reader, if you simply stared at it, or thought about it for weeks on end.

 

[Don't look that word up! I invented it, just like Philosophers invented "Being".]

 

Of course, it could be argued that Hegel inherited a range of concepts from previous generations of philosophers (e.g., "Being", "Nothing", "Form" -- or even "Concept" itself), which isn't the case with "Meskonation". That is undeniable, but it misses the point. Hegel could stare at the word "Being" all day long and that would still fail to tell him that what he meant by that word was the same as, or was different from, what previous thinkers had meant by it -- or, indeed, that the meaning of any of the words they had used in their explanation of what they meant by "Being" were the same as, or were different from, what he now meant by those words -- without a social theory or social explanation of meaning to assist him, or them. The fact that Hegel processed these ideas 'in his head' undermines any attempt on his part to formulate just such a social theory, or explanation. And it is little use, either, pointing to his many writings, or those of previous thinkers, as a way of extricating Hegel from this impasse (because those ideas, expressed in print, plainly aren't locked inside Hegel's skull, or theirs) since those writings merely record the results of their private musings, they don't in any way alter their provenance, meaning, or legitimacy.

 

This is precisely where Hegel's non-social theory of knowledge -- aka his bourgeois individualism, for that is what it is (after all, Hegel worked it all out in the 'privacy of his own head') -- landed his theory of 'conceptual development'. Simply grafting a temporal component onto Plato's Theory of Forms is no solution. Time cannot add a dimension of meaning where there was none to begin with. [I have said more about this here and here.]

 

Any who doubt this need only ask themselves in, say, a few months' time if "Meskonation" now means something to them, and then whether or not it means the same as it does to anyone else as it does to them.

 

[There is more about this below, here and here.]

 

Be this as it may, Davidson makes the point that even if Plato managed to circumvent these 'difficulties', his theory falls foul of another, even more intractable infinite regress: the problem of predication and the unity of the proposition -- covered in Part One of this Essay.

 

However, this Platonic doctrine immediately demotes the 'evidence' that sense experience delivers to the 'knowing subject', rendering it only of secondary importance (or even of no importance at all) compared to whatever is contributed by 'thought', or by 'tradition' -- as, indeed, Plato's Allegory of the Cave confirms.

 

[Indeed, we will soon see, a number of DM-theorists argue that facts are an impediment and are actually misleading! After all, they contradict 'essence'. In Essay Two, we saw CLR James arguing much the same.]

 

This Aristocratic depreciation of the material world, its associated contingency and denigration of the thought and lives of ordinary human beings continue in the later Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions, both of which find clear echo in Hegel's work and thus in DM. [On that, see O'Regan (1994). This theme will be explored in detail in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]

 

In which case, if "What is rational is real, and what is real is rational" [Hegel (2005), p.xix], then both the 'real' and the 'rational' must be inaccessible to the senses, and the outward appearance of things can't possibly match their real form. That is because only 'the Mind' is 'rational', and since material things aren't 'Mind', they can't be 'rational', either -- nor can they be governed by rational principles. Or so this theory would have us believe.

 

[The various responses that could be made to that seemingly dogmatic assertion will be considered in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four.]

 

Or, perhaps better: matter and 'mind' can only be reconciled if the material world is viewed as an aspect of 'Mind', an "abstraction", or even as an Ideal entity in its own right. Hence, the logical conclusion of this approach to 'knowledge', as indeed Hegel seemed to believe, is that despite appearances to the contrary everything must be 'Mind', an aspect of 'Mind' or a reflection/expression of 'Mind' in 'self-development'. Hence, for Hegel, every single philosophy was merely a different form of Idealism:

 

"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; §316. Bold emphasis added.]

 

Here is more of Hegel:

 

"If abstraction is made from every determination, from all form of anything, what is left over is indeterminate matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction. (Matter cannot be seen, felt, and so on -- what is seen, felt, is a determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form). This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen, spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity." [Hegel (1999), pp.450-51, §979. Bold emphasis alone added. (Typos in the on-line version corrected.)]

 

And here is Engels:

 

"Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the qualitative differences of things in lumping them together as corporeally existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing." [Engels (1954), p.255. Bold emphases added. I have dealt with this issue in much more detail, here.]

 

Here, too, is Lenin:

 

"If abstraction is made from every determination and Form of a Something, indeterminate Matter remains. Matter is a pure abstract. (-- Matter cannot be seen or felt, etc. -- what is seen or felt is a determinate Matter, that is, a unity of Matter and Form)." [Lenin (1961), pp.144-45. Italic emphases in the original; bold added. The original passage from Hegel has been reposted in Note 57 of Essay Thirteen Part One.]

 

While we might expect an Absolute Idealist like Hegel to consign matter to a waste bin labelled "Abstractions in here please", it is quite shocking to see erstwhile materialists agreeing with him! I am sure the reader will now be able to see what a pernicious influence Hegel has had on Dialectical Marxism -- materialists who think matter is an abstraction! At this point I'd be tempted to say "You just couldn't make this up!", but you don't need to, so I won't.

 

At best, this means that 'appearances' are indeed misleading; at worst, they are 'contradicted' by underlying 'essences' -- as dialecticians are happy to tell us. In any such clash between the 'evidence' that the senses deliver and the rational principles upon which the 'Mind' supposedly relies, Traditional Thought has always privileged the latter over the former, as the following authors point out:

 

"Empirical, contingent truths have always struck philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained…. Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere, e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or in quantum mechanics today. One feature that explains philosophers' fascination with truths of Reason is that they seem, in a deep sense, to be fully intelligible. To understand a necessary proposition is to see why things must be so, it is to gain an insight into the nature of things and to apprehend not only how things are, but also why they cannot be otherwise. It is striking how pervasive visual metaphors are in philosophical discussions of these issues. We see the universal in the particular (by Aristotelian intuitive induction); by the Light of Reason we see the essential relations of Simple Natures; mathematical truths are apprehended by Intellectual Intuition, or by a priori insight. Yet instead of examining the use of these arresting pictures or metaphors to determine their aptness as pictures, we build upon them mythological structures.

 

"We think of necessary propositions as being true or false, as objective and independent of our minds or will. We conceive of them as being about various entities, about numbers even about extraordinary numbers that the mind seems barely able to grasp…, or about universals, such as colours, shapes, tones; or about logical entities, such as the truth-functions or (in Frege's case) the truth-values. We naturally think of necessary propositions as describing the features of these entities, their essential characteristics. So we take mathematical propositions to describe mathematical objects…. Hence investigation into the domain of necessary propositions is conceived as a process of discovery. Empirical scientists make discoveries about the empirical domain, uncovering contingent truths; metaphysicians, logicians and mathematicians appear to make discoveries of necessary truths about a supra-empirical domain (a 'third realm'). Mathematics seems to be the 'natural history of mathematical objects' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.137], 'the physics of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1976), p.138; however these authors record this erroneously as p.139 -- RL] or the 'mineralogy of numbers' [Wittgenstein (1978), p.229]. The mathematician, e.g., Pascal, admires the beauty of a theorem as though it were a kind of crystal. Numbers seem to him to have wonderful properties; it is as if he were confronting a beautiful natural phenomenon [Wittgenstein (1998), p.47; again, these authors have recorded this erroneously as p.41 -- RL]. Logic seems to investigate the laws governing logical objects…. Metaphysics looks as if it is a description of the essential structure of the world. Hence we think that a reality corresponds to our (true) necessary propositions. Our logic is correct because it corresponds to the laws of logic….

 

"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv (this links to a PDF); again these authors record this erroneously as p.v; although in the edition to which I have linked, it is p.xliii -- RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]

 

"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29.]

 

But, as we will see in Essays Ten Part One and Twelve Part One, not only is the above search for a priori knowledge a charade (in that it can't deliver what had been advertised all along for it), it destroys the capacity we have for articulating any ideas at all.

 

[We saw how that actually worked in Part One.]

 

Even worse: Dialectical Marxists have from the beginning shown that they were only too willing to adopt this anti-materialist, ruling-class view of 'reality'. These 'ruling ideas' certainly now rule what are supposed to be radical minds. The sad truth is that the approach to knowledge that dialecticians have imported into Marxism ironically has the opposite effect: it delivers no knowledge at all.

 

In fact, if 'true', 'dialectics' would undermine science completely.

 

This means that while DM-theorists have hocked the 'materialist cow', they haven't even received a handful of beans in return.

 

 

Figure One: Jack Negotiates A Far Superior Deal

 

[This also helps explain why DM-theses collapse so readily into incoherence, as the next ten Essays will demonstrate.]

 

Davidson then turns his attention to Aristotle's non-solution (and, since Hegel adopted and adapted Aristotle's theory -- albeit buried under a mountain of gobbledygook --, the following also applies to his version):

 

"Aristotle again and again reverts to the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study.... Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused? If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars." [Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

 

The 'necessary' connection that was supposed to exist between these 'forms' and the particulars they allegedly exemplified in the end reduced them to the level of particularity, too, thus vitiating the whole process -- since it destroys generality, the very thing the 'forms' had been introduced all along to explain.

 

But, if C1 (from earlier) can't connect A and B directly on its own, what then is the point of introducing it?  

 

Of course, it could be argued that C1 belongs to a different category from A and B, so the above argument is misconceived.

 

Well, it would be if 'Universals' hadn't already been transformed into Abstract Particulars -- or, rather, the words we use to refer to them are transformed into the Proper Names thereof -- as a result of the syntactical segue exposed in Part One of this Essay (also alluded to by Davidson, above). But, because Traditional Theorists have been doing precisely this -- at least since Plato was in short togas -- Aristotle's point (suitably adapted in each instance) surely applies to every known version of this theory. In which case, 'Universals', 'Concepts', 'Ideas' or 'Categories', as they operate in Traditional Thought (and, alas, in DM, too), can't be general. They are just particulars of a rather peculiar sort -- ashamed, perhaps, to come out of the Idealist Closet.

 

Hence, the 'philosophical' question remains: Is there a general term, or any term, that is capable of linking ordinary objects and processes given in experience with these Abstract Particulars?

 

That is just one of the reasons why this 'problem' has been addressed in the way it was in Part One of this Essay. There, the discussion was aimed at exposing the syntactic and semantic moves that originally created this ancient conundrum -- whereby predicate expressions were transformed into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. To be sure, Aristotle himself half recognised this problem (as we have seen), but the logic he constructed wasn't sophisticated enough to account for its source (and thus for its resolution), and he ended up accepting an early instantiation of this very error,-- in what turned out to be a precursor of the Identity Theory of Predication, discussed in Part One (this links directly to a downloadable .doc file).

 

On the other hand, if the aforementioned "third term" (i.e., C2 from earlier) is superfluous, if a new general term isn't needed in order to connect an abstraction to each material particular, then it is difficult to see why particulars themselves need a second term (i.e., C1) to link them, in the first place. This is especially so if it turns out that this 'general term' (C1 again) is itself incapable of doing the job assigned to it -- once more, because it has been transmogrified into a particular itself, or the Proper Name thereof!

 

But, if objects in the world can, and do, relate to one another without a whole gamut of such abstract intermediaries (which are, after all, the metaphysical equivalent of the Crystalline Spheres and the Epicycles of Ptolemaic Astronomy) -- or, perhaps better, if speakers manage to use general terms with ease every day of their lives without all this fuss --, what need is there for these 'abstractions', to begin with?1bb

 

Alternatively, if the relation between Universals and Particulars isn't one of resemblance (i.e., if C1 fails to resemble A or B), then the relation between each particular and its Ideal 'exemplar' must itself be mysterious. If Universals and Particulars don't resemble one another, it what way can they possibly be connected; how could the one connect the other two?

 

Indeed, it is far from clear what a Universal could possibly supply a particular that our use of general worlds can't provide, anyway -- and that worry isn't helped when it is recalled that, in Traditional Thought, Universals were pictured in a way that deprived them of the capacity to fulfil the very role that had been assigned to them -- i.e., accounting for generality.1b

 

'Self-Predication'

 

There is a 'more important' logical 'principle' buried in the weeds here, the problem of self-predication that many commentators try to attribute to Plato, and hence which arises in this context when it is asked whether, say, the Form of the Small is itself small, or the Form of the Heavy is itself heavy:1bc

 

Here are the above few examples, translated into quasi-Plato-speak in P1a and P2a:

 

P1: Small is small.

 

P2: Heavy is heavy.

 

P1a: The Form of The Small is small.

 

P2a: The Form of The Heavy is heavy.

 

It has been argued that in P1, for example, the predicate, "small", is predicated of the other predicate term, "Small" (now misleadingly acting as a subject term), which results in what is called "self-predication". But, the first "small" in P1 is no longer a predicate; it now functions as the Proper Name of the abstract particular, 'Small' (indeed, as we saw in Part One). Of course, what we actually have here is a predicate expression, "ξ is small" attached to a subject term, "Small".

 

[As we also saw in Part One, calling "small" a predicate (or even "...small"), as opposed to referring to "ξ is small" as a predicative expression creates the sort of confusions that plagued Traditional Philosophy for over two thousand years -- no less so here. Readers are referred back to Note 15a of Part One for more details -- also briefly covered below.] 

 

Well, this would be a 'more important' logical principle if it weren't based on the above transmogrification of predicate expressions into singular terms, which in turn means that nothing has actually been 'self-predicated'. That is because there has been no predication applied to a predicate expression in P1 or P2 -- i.e., there has in fact been no 'self-predication'. What has happened is that a predicate expression has been attached to a singular term that is typographically identical to part of the predicate expression itself.

 

This confusion has arisen largely because of two inter-related factors:

 

(i) Those taken in by this confusion focussed on superficial linguistic factors -- i.e., if something looks like a predicate expression it must be a predicate expression --, instead of examining the logical role such terms occupy in indicative sentences; and,

 

(ii) Their adoption of an Ancient Greek interpretation of predicate expressions (again, covered in Part One of this Essay).

 

If you regard a predicate expression as an inscription of some sort (for example, "heavy" or "small"), but not the linguistic expression of a rule (for example, "ξ is heavy", or "ξ is small"), then it will seem legitimate to swap their roles in indicative sentences, inserting these inscriptions into the role occupied by singular/subject terms. So, putting "heavy" and "small" at the beginning of P1 and P2, for instance, will look quite legitimate when all that that move will have achieved is to change what had been a general noun into a singular term, meaning it is no longer operating as a predicate expression, and hence is no longer general. So, in P1, for example, the word "small" at the beginning is no longer a predicate expression but a singular term, a Proper Noun (that now names a mythical Abstract Particular, 'Small').

 

[The word "inscription" applies to physical marks on a page/screen/wall/blackboard/whitescreen/cavewall... that aren't considered random, but are held to be the product of intentionality, part of a natural-, or even a formal-language -- or perhaps even a work of art, no matter how 'primitive'.]

 

On the other hand, if the above were examples of 'self-predication' we would have to have something like the following:

 

P1b: ξ is small is small (sic).

 

P2b: ζ is heavy is heavy (sic).

 

That would make this 'logical principle' all the more obviously nonsensical.

 

And that is why I haven't considered this 'fundamental logical principle' in any of my criticisms of Plato.

 

[The use of Greek symbols and why a predicate expression is the linguistic expression of a rule were explained in Part One of this Essay, here and here.]

 

Descent Into A Metaphysical Abyss

 

Unfortunately, this 'antediluvian error' has been passed down the centuries to later generations of traditionalists, this ancient fall from linguistic grace traducing the entire population of flawed 'solutions' that have descended from it by unnatural selection --, including its 'poor relation' in DM.

 

[Apologies once again for those mixed metaphors!]

 

Empiricism And The 'Anthropomorphic Brain'

 

The Empiricist 'Mind' Hits A Brick Wall

 

Philosophers of a more practical, and maybe a more worldly or empiricist frame-of-mind, approached this 'problem' from a different angle; they held that general terms were 'constructions' of some sort, cobbled together somehow by the 'mind'.

 

[It is worth noting that their approach also implied that the 'mental' side of the exercise takes precedence -- i.e., with 'mind' thus holding primacy over matter, once more. As we will see, the 'high road to knowledge' (Rationalism) and the 'low road' (Empiricism) both motivated Traditional Theorists to adopt one form or other of Idealism -- indeed, as Hegel himself noted -- since the Renaissance they have all been working within the Cartesian Paradigm, whose basic approach they never questioned. Indeed, the heyday of Empiricism coincided with the rise of the Capitalist Mode of Production, but that had no noticeable effect on the Idealism explicit, or implicit, right across the entire spectrum of Traditional Thought in early modern Europe.]

 

This line-of-thought held that the 'mind' was somehow able to 'apprehend' the 'common' elements supposedly shared by particulars given in experience, which 'mental' ability manifested itself internally in the production, or the 'processing', of "ideas", "images", "impressions" or "sense data" -- but, more recently, "qualia" and "tropes".

 

Theorists working in this tradition tended to disagree over whether 'universals' were genuine features of reality or were simply a by-product of an overactive mind --, or, indeed, whether they were merely 'empty terms', and thus perhaps just "useful fictions", which slant tended to dominate positivist wing of Empiricism.

 

As things turned out, these differences of opinion mattered little; given this overall approach, general words (common nouns) were once again demoted, having now been transformed into the Proper Names of 'mental particulars' of one sort or another -- i.e., they were in fact the names of ideas located in each head). Even though Berkeley saw the importance of escaping from this theoretical cul-de-sac -- with its obscure 'abstractions' -- his 'solution' only succeeded in sinking the Empiricist Tradition deeper into the same old Idealist quick sands.

 

Unfortunately, there were far more serious problems over and above those bequeathed to empiricist thought as a result of the syntactical sins of their philosophical forebears (covered in Part One), which this tradition also shared with the Rationalists. To be more specific: these 'general' ideas were in fact particular to each mind. [That had to be the case with such theories since no two individuals could share the 'same mind' or have the same experiences.] In that case, these 'ideas' couldn't be general across an entire population, not just in fact, but in theory! This meant that each supposedly general idea was exclusive to each individual. As Bertell Ollman pointed out, this approach to abstraction and generality only succeeded in creating a private language unique to each lone abstractor, which in turn implied that inter-subjective communication was impossible.

 

The 'process of abstraction' as it had been conceived by these Empiricists simply created yet more Abstract Particulars --, or the Proper Names thereof -- just as earlier versions of the 'same process' had manufactured all those Rationalist Abstract Particulars. The Empiricist Tradition seemed quite happy to accept, and then elaborate upon, these oft-repeated wrong turns and philosophical errors. This particular set of "ruling ideas" (i.e., a commitment to abstractionism and the existence of 'abstractions') had now succeeded in colonising early modern, petty-bourgeois brains. It found a home there and there it remains to this day.

 

However, the problems this approach faced threatened it from the get-go, for they were analogous to those faced by the Rationalists. So, assume thinker, T1, has formed the 'general idea', G1, of whatever it supposedly 'represents' or 'reflects' (in the head or in the world) -- call the latter, "g1" --, and thinker, T2, formed the 'same' 'general idea', G2, of supposedly the 'same' property, object or process, g1. Now, in order to say of these 'general ideas' (G1 and G2) that they were indeed ideas of the same things (or, indeed, were even the same general idea), a third term will be required to connect them. That is because, in this case G1 and G2 would both presumably be exemplars of the same general, general idea (that is no mis-print!), G, so that it could truly be said that these two were instances of the same 'concept', 'idea', or 'impression'. Of course, as noted above, if this weren't the case (if there were no general term linking the general terms in each head), communication would be impossible. [More on that later.]

 

Hence, if intrepid Abstractor, A, forms an idea of green1, based on her perception of a series of 'green objects', and Abstractor, B, forms and idea of green2 in a similar way, then in order to determine that these were in fact two ideas of 'green itself' (or were 'the same idea of green', whatever that means!), a new term will be needed to connect them, namely "green itself". Without that, there would be no way of deciding that these two had formed a common idea of green, but had instead formed two different ideas of 'green'. Worse still, if there were no third connecting term, there would be no way of deciding they had any idea at all of green, or even if there were two or more occurrences of what might even be taken to be green1, that is, that they were actual occurrences of green1. The same problem also plagues each abstractor with respect to their own ideas since they would need a linking term connecting the idea they had of 'green' yesterday with one entertained today.

 

[For those who think colour terms, and other 'secondary properties'/'qualities', are subjective and don't exist in the 'outside world', just replace "green1" and "green2" with "table1" and "table2", or "flat surface1" and  "flat surface2". In order to connect them we would need a third term, such as "table itself", "tabularity", or "flat surface itself". The rest follows as before. I have dealt with the incoherent idea that colours exist only in 'the mind' in Essay Thirteen Part One, here.]

 

So, for this theory to work, a third linking term would be required -- but where that might have come from is a mystery given Empiricism, since it can't have come 'from experience' -- not without the same problem arising.

 

Plainly, this 'new term' is now susceptible to Aristotle's objection, which means that every single 'solution' concocted by those working in the Empiricist Tradition suffered from the same fatal defect that blighted those that had been dreamt up by the Rationalists. Without this 'new linking term' (which once more can't have come from experience) all communication would flounder. But, since we actually do manage to communicate nearly every day of our lives, this theory isn't even plausible.

 

[It could be argued that human beings regularly fail to communicate, so the above conclusions are misguided. I have batted that objection out of the park, here.]

 

As we will see, this not only makes it impossible for every single Traditional Theorist -- indeed, those drawn from right across the philosophical spectrum -- to account for inter-communication, representation and learning, it also emptied generality of all content, vitiating the whole exercise.

 

[Exactly how this approach to knowledge would make communication (etc.) impossible will be re-examined below, but in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

Of course, it could be objected that such ideas had intentional generality built into them --, whereby their inventors intended they should refer to general features of reality. But, as should seem obvious, 'intentional generality' is similarly trapped in a solipsistic universe, since it is itself the Proper Name of a particular.

 

[To see this, just replace "G1" with "intentionally general idea, G1" in the above argument; the rest follows.]

 

Naturally, this is just another way of saying that intentions can't create generality any more than wishes can affect a beggar's prospective travel arrangements.

 

Indeed, simply gluing the word "general" onto the word "concept" (perhaps as part of an 'intention' to refer to a "general concept") would merely saddle prospective users of that word with a term born of the same defective logic, for the phrase "general concept" is the Proper Name of a yet another particular.

 

In fact, given this entire family of traditional theorists (working in this area), any attempt to derive generality from the atomised conceptual fragments that float randomly into each individual head via the senses (or which are somehow cobbled together in 'the mind') will always hit the same brick wall: abstraction only succeeds in creating the Proper Names of abstract particulars --, whoever indulges in it, whenever it is practiced and with whatever 'noble philosophical intentions' it is performed.

 

Fortunately for genuine materialists, the logic of predication (as it features in ordinary discourse) has already loaded the dice and fixed the result in their favour --, and there is no leave to appeal its uncompromising verdict. Generality is a feature of the way we use words, not a property of those words themselves -- or, indeed, a property of the 'images', 'ideas', 'impressions' or 'signs' that supposedly underpin, or are represented by, such words.

 

[That surprising conclusion was established in Part One of this Essay.]

 

It could be countered that inter-communication isn't in fact threatened by empiricist versions of abstractionism, since communication with others is not only possible, it is actual; manifestly, people share their ideas.

 

But, quite apart from the above response assuming what was to be proved, it runs aground almost immediately. That is because it reproduces Aristotle's original problem -- only now greatly magnified. It is an even worse idea to multiply one's difficulties by a factor of several billion -- right across the entire human race -- in an endeavour to account for generality by an appeal to the abstractions engineered, and now trapped, in each socially-atomised skull. [On this, see the next sub-section.]

 

[To see this, just replace the "G1" or "G2" with "G3 to Gn", where "n" can take any value from one to six billion, or more, in the above argument, and the rest will still follow.]

 

In that case, we wouldn't just have the two theorists mentioned above with their two (supposedly) individually-formed 'general' ideas of 'green' ('table' or 'flat surface'), we would have billions of 'minds', with countless individual ideas of 'green' ('table' or 'flat surface') to interconnect.

 

And the same difficulties confront anyone who sought their own general solution to this spurious problem. A strategy along these lines is doomed to fail because any explanation of how the particular ideas of general terms located in each separate head actually resemble the same general features of reality they allegedly express, reflect or mirror -- or even the same particular ideas of these (supposedly) general terms located in anyone else's head --, would require its own linking term on the lines explored earlier. Accounting for them would, of course, make squaring the circle look like child's play in comparison. This pointless task would simply create yet more abstract particulars locked in the individual mind of anyone foolish enough to try.

 

Struggling to escape these metaphysical quicksands will only suck the trapped Philosopher deeper. Given the traditional approach, Abstract Particulars are required at every turn as yet more Abstract Particulars are required to account for the last batch that had just been concocted. Since none of them is capable of evolving into a higher general form by its own efforts, this approach to knowledge simply creates an endlessly ascending series of Abstract Particulars.

 

Bourgeois Individualism

 

Just as Rationalist ideas grew out of aristocratic notions dreamt up by Greek Philosophers -- concerning the 'natural' or divine hierarchical order that underpins the Universe, itself motivated by the pressing need to 'justify' ruling-class power, social stratification, exploitation, oppression and inequality --, the origin of more recent Atomist and Empiricist theories of 'Universals' were connected with the novel ideological landscape created by the rise of post-Renaissance, early modern Bourgeois 'democracy', with its characteristic emphasis on "possessive individualism". [On that, see also Note 2.]

 

If this bright new social and political order was meant to be democratic (but only "within certain limits"), founded on the presumed psychology, or the self-serving 'rationality' of the fabled Bourgeois Individual, then private ownership in the means of 'mental production' also made eminent good sense.

 

The fragmentation introduced into society by the break-up of Feudal relations of production and the rise of Capitalism was mirrored by an analogous splintering of the old Aristotelian 'Universals', now rebranded as just so many 'ideas' scattered across countless epistemologically-isolated bourgeois skulls. Out of the window went the 'necessary' connection presumed to exist between an object and its properties, or a subject and its predicates, a doctrine presumed by influential Ancient Greek Rationalists and Medieval theologians. Along with that went the link between a general term and what it supposedly represented, or reflected, in 'reality' or in  'the mind'. But, these moves threatened the 'rationality' of the universe: if the connection between an object and its properties is merely adventitious, then, au fond, nature can't be 'rational', and that meant 'God Himself' couldn't be rational, either. If the cosmic, and, therefore, the political order, which bestowed 'legitimacy' on Kings and Queens, as well as on aristocratic and priestly hierarchy, was still capable of being justified, this 'necessary' connection had to be restored as a matter of some urgency.

 

[I have said more about this metaphysical aspect of Christian Theology, below.]

 

This helps explain why Hegel adopted the Identity Theory of Predication (mentioned earlier), since that theory (alongside its associated concepts) sought to re-configure and re-establish these 'necessary' connections, which then formed an integral part of his response to Hume's criticism of rationalist theories of causation (which had sought to sunder them).

 

Just as capitalism increasingly 'freed' workers from the land and from feudal ties to Lords and Ladies, so Empiricism 'freed' bourgeois ideas from all those 'oppressive', aristocratic Platonic 'Forms' and Aristotelian 'Universals'. The old ontological pecking-order began to fall apart as new market conditions swept all before them. Despite this, the need still remained to 'justify' undemocratic, hierarchical state power, and then rationalise the newly emerging class relations that began to crystallise in early modern Europe. This meant that ruling-class theorists now had to find novel ways of conceptualising 'bourgeois reality', showing that it too was 'god'-ordained or 'natural'.

 

In this respect, Empiricism couldn't cut mustard. A fresh wave of Rationalist thought was urgently needed in order to:

 

(i) Counter this dangerous fragmentation of knowledge;

 

(ii) Re-configure the sort of Metaphysical Holism required by the newly-emerging, Absolutist Nation States; and,

 

(iii) Rationalise 'god'-given, regal sovereignty.

 

The theories concocted by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, Kant and Hegel proved to be exactly what the bourgeois doctor ordered as fresh waves of Metaphysics flowed freely from the pens of these ruling-class ideologues.1c0

 

As part of this, it wasn't just workers who got screwed by the new 'market economy' (but now in a novel way), general ideas were similarly shafted (but in the same old way).1c

 

However, this return to Rationalism was philosophically futile; the fragmentation of general ideas (accomplished by Ancient Greek theorists) can't be reversed -- whoever tries to do it -- unless and until the syntactic sins of yesteryear have themselves been addressed and annulled.

 

No surprise then that, despite countless claims to the contrary, these newly-concocted 'modern' theories found it equally impossible to account for the very thing they had been invented to explain: generality. And this wasn't just a philosophical problem, it threatened to undermine the nature and scope of scientific law.

 

If generality is merely an aspect, or a consequence, of 'the mind's operation' (but not a feature of 'things-in-themselves' -- as some rationalists at least claimed), it was far from easy to see what it was about each particular idea of the general that actually made it general to begin with, or even appear to be general, especially now that they had been re-located in each individual bourgeois skull.2

 

Given this 'modern' approach, there would be nothing but individual ideas loosely tied together in a manner that became increasingly difficult to fathom, let alone explain, floating about in each socially-atomised head.

 

[Recall, it was assumed by early bourgeois theorists (both Empiricist and Rationalist) that we construct our own knowledge of the world as individuals. It is also worth pointing out that I am not arguing that they were actually socially-isolated, only that as far as their theory of knowledge was concerned, they might just as well have been.]

 

At a minimum, given this theory, even a general idea like this (i.e., that which apparently concerns "every individual", and which tries to tell us what takes place inside each skull -- soon to be re-Christened "Thought", "The Understanding", or even "Speculative Reason") is devoid of any clear sense. If philosophers couldn't account for generality -- largely because they had killed it stone dead a good two thousand years earlier --, they had no way of accounting for its appearance anywhere else, either in the general population or in the privacy of their own heads. How is it even possible to speak about "every head" with anything other than empty terms if generality had already been laid to rest, including the general nature of the word "head" itself?2a

 

To be sure, some attempt might be made to attach another, yet-to-be-explained term to the word "idea" -- i.e., "general", as in "general idea" --, but, if all meaningful words in circulation have to be backed by genuine 'mental bullion' (i.e., if they all have to be cashed-out in terms of 'ideas' held in 'the mind', as this family of theories consistently maintained), then a phrase like "the general idea of..." would itself still be a particular in 'the mind' of whomsoever used it, whatever associationist or "clear and distinct" incantations had been uttered over it.

 

Given the results of Part One, it  should now seem reasonably clear that because the traditional analysis of predication turned general words into singular terms (i.e., Proper Names and Definite Descriptions), each of which named an Abstract Particular, then the sentence, "This is the general idea of F" must suffer the same fate, since the phrase, "the general idea of F", is yet another singular term designating an Abstract Particular! The definite article, of course, gives the game away.

 

So it was that in the Empiricist Tradition there followed several more centuries of a priori, 'science-on-the-cheap', this time backed not even by printed currency, just more empty words.

 

[It might be objected that Empiricist Epistemology is a posteriori, not a priori. Well, so the official brochure would have us believe; but it had always been predicated on rather fanciful, a priori psychology, supported by what was in effect science fiction. (I have said more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Three.)]

 

To suppose otherwise -- that the word "general", or any other term, for that matter, is capable of creating generality by its own puny efforts -- would be tantamount to thinking that words themselves are capable of determining, and then projecting, their own meaning across the whole of 'semantic space' (with this trick miraculously coordinated inside every single epistemologically-isolated bourgeois head), as if they were autonomous agents, not the individuals who used those words. But, unaided -- as a simple mark on the page or even as an "idea" in the head -- the word "general" seems utterly incapable of rising to the challenge, creating generality out of thin air.

 

Picking oneself up by one's bootstraps would be a doddle in comparison.

 

On the other hand, if general ideas are capable of representing, or of "reflecting", "things-in-themselves" (that is, if there are indeed 'real universals' that exist 'somewhere', to which general words supposedly 'correspond' or 'refer') -- as the scientific realist wing of this traditional approach to epistemology and ontology maintained -- it would surely prove difficult to explain the mode of signification of the term "general idea" without admitting it was no longer general -- as we are about to find out.

 

If each general idea, or word, does indeed refer to something, somewhere, in reality -- in Platonic Heaven, Hegelian Hell, or anywhere else, for that matter -- they could only do so if they functioned as Singular Terms. But, as we saw in Part One, if that were so, general ideas/general words, couldn't in fact be general, just singular.2b

 

As Donald Davidson remarked with respect to Aristotle's theory -- but his words apply to any other general terms so transformed -- quoted earlier:

 

"Aristotle again and again reverts to the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study.... Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused? If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars." [Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

 

 Even if each 'bourgeois mind' had its own idea of a given 'general name', and one that was particular to each individual head, the universality that post-Renaissance theorists sought would forever remain elusive, fragmented as it now remained in the socially-isolated skulls of all who played this futile game.

 

[I have explained what I mean by "socially-isolated", here.]

 

As Davidson noted, if anything that is supposed to be general is capable of being given a Proper Name, or referred to by means of a singular term, it can't be general, but must be particular.

 

And generality, rather like virginity, once lost can't be restored.3

 

How Not  To Solve Philosophical 'Problems' 2.0

 

Empiricists attempted to solve these intractable 'problems' by the simple expedient of diverting attention from them. They invented an irrelevant 'mental' capacity, an almost magical ability the 'mind' supposedly possessed that 'enabled' it to 'discern' resemblances between the various 'impressions', 'images, 'ideas' the senses sent its way -- or which were subsequently cobbled-together from them.

 

But, once again, Aristotle's objection rears its annoying head: if there is a problem over the 'resemblances' that exist between objects of a certain sort in 'external reality', it is surely a bad idea to retreat from the Real into the Ideal in an attempt to resolve it. Indeed, if this process is hidden away in the 'mind', the philosophical 'problem' this approach sought to resolve will now only resurface in a completely intractable form, since inner processes like this are beyond both objective and subjective investigation.4

 

Generality, driven inwards in this way, is even more difficult to coax out of solitary confinement.5

 

Platonic Realism, Aristotelian Conceptualism and Bourgeois Empiricism (along with a host of other metaphysical doctrines that attempted to address this pseudo-problem) all ran aground on these unyielding rocks.

 

By way of contrast, ordinary language enables the expression of generality when it is left to social agents to use it. But, the general nouns they employ soon lose their generality when they are replaced by the abstract singular terms introduced by Traditional Philosophers.6

 

However, by placing all the emphasis on an individual's apprehension of generality (howsoever that was conceived in or by the 'mind'), theorists found they could only account for generality by surreptitiously re-employing it elsewhere.

 

This unfortunate turn-of-events arose largely because Traditional Philosophers tended to conceive of this conundrum epistemologically, perhaps even psychologically. Unfortunately, the logical fall from grace that gave life to the original 'problem' in Ancient Greece (discussed in detail in Part One) was simply ignored, buried under centuries of irrelevant psycho-babble. And there it largely remains entombed to this day.6a0

 

As Empiricists conceived of things, if experience presents the 'mind' with particular 'impressions', generality must be constructed from whatever resemblances the mind 'notices' in each assumed exemplar ('the mind' clearly now having replaced the individual concerned; more about that surreptitious move later). This made the whole 'problem' look as if it depended on an individual mind's inner 'recognitional capacities' (echoes of Plato here), as if the fragmented contents of the 'mind' -- these 'ideas', 'impressions' or 'concepts' -- were like the faces of long lost friends and relatives who had wandered fortuitously into the same room, and in some sort of order.

 

Friends one can recognise; but how could anyone possibly 'recognise' an idea they have never seen before?

 

No good constructing a photo-fit.6a

 

Worse still, none of these impressions or ideas would resemble the next in line without the use of the general terms this 'theory' was itself meant to explain. "Ah, here is yet another (impression of a) cat!" could never legitimately be uttered by an empiricist at the beginning of their associationist career, since, at best, what they really meant was "Ah, here is yet another impression/image/sensation of something I haven't yet got a word for...". And, as that empiricist's career progressed, all they would be able to do is give their 'idea' of a cat -- but, where that word had come from was, unsurprisingly, left entirely mysterious -- the Proper Name "CAT", thereby neutralising its generality.

 

Of course, the usual response here is that each individual comes to associate words like "cat" with their ideas/impressions of that animal. I return to discuss the defunct, 'associationist psychology' that lies behind this theory later on in this Essay. It is sufficient to point out here that such associations would be triggered by the word "mammal" and "animal" as much as they would by "cat". [There are also problems with co-extensive terms, for example, "red" is co-extensive with "colour" which associations can't discriminate between. On this see, Cowie (2002) and Mandelbaum (2020).]

 

Anyway, given this family of theories, general terms had to be distilled painstakingly from a manifestly finite range of examples, those that confronted each lone abstractor, or observer, as the whim took them, or as their 'mind' processed them.

 

But, if each socially-isolated 'mind' is supposed to extrapolate successfully from the few particulars fortune sent its way, then, in order to construct from them the relevant 'abstract general idea', each 'sensation', 'impression', 'idea', or 'quale' (singular of qualia) would have to be given a general make-over.

 

In order to do that, the 'mind' would have to re-connect each epistemological atom (these 'sensations', 'impressions', 'ideas', or 'qualia', again) with others of the 'same sort', using whatever similar features it happened to notice in each. But, not only does this make it difficult to explain how any two lone abstractors could ever form the same idea of anything, it makes the whole process dependent on a suspiciously loose notion of "similarity", a term whose use depends on generality itself.

 

So, if two 'impressions', a and b, are said to share a "similar" property, designated by the use of a common noun, F -- so that it might be judged that a is F and b is F, too, and hence this determined that a is similar to b in so far as they both share F -- that would only be possible if F were already a general term, otherwise it couldn't be shared, nor could it collect a and b together as part of its "extension".

 

Clearly, this new twist only succeeded in introducing a general idea through the back door while failing to explain either the general or the particular that had just slipped out the front. If the two 'impressions' mentioned above are indeed similar, then that would only be so with respect to some feature, F, that they both held in common, which feature (of necessity) can't itself be another particular (or it couldn't be held in common).

 

Hence, in order to rescue generality from such radical particularisation a new general term had to be smuggled back in while no one was looking.7

 

However, just as theologians discovered long ago -- in relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity (expressed in, for example, the Athanasian Creed: "Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance") --, empiricists found that with regard to their fragmented ideas of generality, it was impossible for them not to confound the particular without dividing the Universal.6b

 

Hence, if each individual shares exactly the same universal of resemblance (call it, G), then that term will be particular and unique to that individual abstractor, as we found was the case with "CAT", earlier. In this way, the 'general', having thus been distributed over the entire set of novice abstractors, can't fail to take on this already fragmented nature. If "CAT" is understood differently by each lone abstractor (as it must be given this family of theories) it can no longer be general, but particular to each mind.

 

Hence, G will be now be fragmented. So, each abstractor will have their own unique, 'mental' idea, 'CAT', which would resemble no one else's idea, 'CAT'. In which case, unless someone (call her, "NM") had access to the contents of every 'mind' involved -- but who could also by-pass these 'abstractive processes' and declare every idea was the same as every other, that judgement not having been based on NM's own 'ideas', but on 'reality itself' -- no one would be able to declare that all these abstractors had the same idea, 'CAT'.

 

[NM would have to by-pass these 'processes', otherwise her ideas would be locked in the same epistemological cul-de-sac, and would therefore be no use at all in this respect.]

 

The universal, now divided, will always be defeated.

 

Conversely, if the above distribution of generality hadn't been carried out in a perfectly egalitarian manner, the relevant particulars wouldn't have been collected together under the same general term, shared equally between all.

 

However, if, say, G had been shared equally across an entire population, so that every abstractor had exactly the same idea (for example, of 'CAT'), individuality would be lost.

 

The individual confounded was now defeated.

 

So, in these terms the general was either divided (and was unique to each lone abstractor) or the particulars were confounded (since their ideas are all identical).

 

[These points depend on an earlier argument and might not be fully appreciated by anyone who hasn't read it.]

 

In that case, the choice between confounding the individuals or dividing the substance (i.e., dividing the general) plagued Empiricists and Rationalists alike, just as it had the Trinitarians -- and for the same basic reason. That is because this entire family of doctrines descended with modification from same ancient syntactic screw up we met in Part One.

 

All of which helps explain the continual oscillation in Traditional Ontology between Monism, Dualism and Pluralism.

 

Intelligent Ideas Versus A 'Little Man' In The Head

 

These problems don't, of course, stop there. Nor do they become any the less intractable.

 

However, answers are still required for nagging questions about on how 'the mind' sifts through the 'ideas' or 'impressions' of particulars the senses supposedly send its way. They will also have to include answers to further questions about how 'the mind' manages to place these 'ideas' or 'impressions' in the 'correct' sortal groups, which would surely have to appeal to a previous grasp of general terms (of some sort, at some level) by the individual concerned if she is capable of doing just that (as we saw in the previous sub-section).

 

This is something that Kant certainly began to realise in his own confused way (confused since he located this 'sorting' faculty in 'the mind', ignoring the public use of language):

 

"Our cognition arises from two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is the reception of representations (the receptivity of impressions), the second of the faculty for cognizing an object by means of these representations (spontaneity of concepts); through the former an object is given to us, through the latter it is thought in relation to that representation (as a mere determination of the mind). Intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition.... Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." [Kant (1998), pp.193-94, A51/B75. Bold emphases in the original. Paragraphs merged. By "intuition" Kant meant something like "immediate experience" -- Caygill (1995), pp.262-66.]

 

"Our knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a cognition." [Online version of the above. As we saw in Part One, Hegel also made a similar point, except he claimed what Kant called an "intuition" was already conceptualised. How that was possible he left rather vague.]

 

Without this necessary pre-condition (i.e., the public use of language), inter-subjective 'objectivity' would remain a vacuous notion.

 

Indeed, this is just another way of saying that 'impressions' and 'ideas' can't be expected to sort themselves neatly into groups (as if they were autonomous or self-directing agents), since they have neither the wit nor the intelligence to do so. Even for Kant, they required some form of regimentation, externally imposed on them. [That is, regimentation external to the 'impressions' themselves -- i.e., clearly provided by 'the mind'.]

 

However, in the age-old battle between the One and the Many, the Many have always shown themselves to be far too 'uncivilised' and unruly (so to speak) to marshal themselves voluntarily in the required manner, while the One was itself far too Ideal (and thus far too weak) to crack the whip. Even so, if some form of regimentation were even to be considered possible, 'principles' external to these unruly 'impressions' and 'ideas' (the Many) must be found in order to lend 'the mind' (the One) a helping hand. Never was care in the community of ideas more needed than here. And yet, if these 'impressions' and 'ideas' are to become more than a heap of 'conceptual dust' haphazardly deposited inside each cognising skull, such 'care' must be sought elsewhere.

 

[Henceforth, in order to save on needless repetition, I will just refer to 'ideas', but readers should assume I also mean 'impressions', where relevant.]

 

As seems plain, the sortal 'principles' necessary to keep these disorderly 'ideas' in check can't be self-explanatory, nor can they be self-regulating or self-directing. If they were, there would seem to be no reason why that couldn't also be the case with these 'ideas' themselves --, or, indeed, why 'ideas' couldn't be expected to troop unaided into the right metaphysical categories, certifying their own inter-subjective 'resemblance' with others of the 'same kind' -- and hence marshalled together under the 'correct' general term/noun --, without a 'drill-sergeant' to whip them into shape.

 

Indeed, if every 'idea' were capable of self-regulation, or of self-sorting, that would surely remove the need for a 'mind' and its attendant goons to do the regimenting.

 

Clearly, the first of the above two options would see 'the mind', or its 'principles', as some sort of 'drill-sergeant', thus anthropomorphising it/them; the second would throw this 'sergeant' on the scrap heap, implying these 'ideas' were autonomous agents (anthropomorphising them, instead).

 

[There are faint echoes of both halves of the above dilemma in Cognitive Psychology and Behaviourism. The former anthropomorphises the brain (picturing it as some sort of diminutive human being lodged inside each skull, an homunculus), the latter scraps 'the mind' altogether, leaving ideas to fend for themselves. (There is much more on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.)]

 

Of course, Empiricists claimed that 'the mind' was somehow capable of extrapolating way beyond the limited number of 'ideas' the senses sent in its general direction, extending all the way up toward general ideas themselves, which all those 'resemblances' supposedly implied. However, this 'solution' left unexplained exactly how these 'extrapolations' might be carried out without 'the mind' already having some notion of the general having already been installed to guide it.

 

And, as Kant might have wondered: Where on earth could that have come from?

 

Nevertheless, if particulars are to be marshalled, or 'cognised', into the 'correct' sortal groups by 'the mind' and/or its 'principles', there would seem to be only two ways this might be achieved:

 

(A) The first involved a reference to specific 'mental faculties' (these days called, "modules") that every novice abstractor supposedly possessed, or to which they have automatic, even privileged, access, to do the regimenting for them -- mental "bodies of armed men", as it were. Bourgeois Ideas, supposedly born free, would everywhere have to be clapped in chains. This is the 'mental' equivalent, perhaps, of the Absolutist State.

 

(B) The second appealed to the 'natural propensities' that 'ideas' supposedly possessed, which meant that they were capable of regimenting themselves, marching 'voluntarily' into the 'right' boxes with no outside assistance. This is the 'mental equivalent', perhaps, of an Anarchist 'Utopia'.

 

Taking each in turn:

 

(A) One version of this alternative postulated the existence of "innate principles", 'programmed' into the mind, activated or guided either by the "laws of thought", the "natural light of reason", or some other handy a priori 'mental architectonic'. [Caygill (1995), pp.84-85.]

 

[Modern analogues of this bourgeois 'mental assembly-line' have these factors 'hard-wired' in the brain as a sort of "transformational grammar" (now re-christened, "Unbounded Merge"), or even a "Language of Thought." On this, see Cowie (2002).]

 

An older version of this specific alternative held that 'innate ideas' were (at some level) capable of motivating aspiring abstractors themselves, allowing them to classify each particular under the relevant, 'correct' general term. How each individual knew what was 'correct' and what was 'incorrect', and how they might agree with one another across an entire population, we must pass over in silence -- largely because those who adopted this alternative approach did likewise and passed over it in silence, too.

 

Of course, this places Option (A) squarely in the Rationalist Camp, and perhaps because of that the temptation became irresistible to bury the source of these 'innate principles' in the mists of time -- boosted of late with a veritable barrage of Neo-Darwinian fairy-tales back-projected into the Pleistocene. Original syntax was now based on Genetics, not Genesis.8

 

Other versions of Option (A) weren't even remotely Empiricist; they made a confident debut appearance in the Cartesian-Leibnizian-Kantian-Hegelian tradition of a priori myth-making.

 

Nevertheless, each variant shared the same fundamental premiss: abstract concepts and ideas were alive and well, and were either living in a skull near you, or were perhaps camped out somewhere in 'objective' reality waiting to be enlisted to the cause -- presumably, by merely being thought-about by a suitably well-motivated 'abstractor'.

 

Even more convenient was the additional fact that although abstract ideas were held somehow to be real, they also transcended actual or possible experience. Indeed, in this they bore an uncanny resemblance to the 'gods' of yore. Moreover, as was the case with those Ancient Divinities, these abstractions underpinned, gave substance to, or even created the material world we see around us -- for example, when they unceremoniously 'self-developed' in Hegel's Hermetic House of Horrors.

 

Given this approach, abstract ideas were in fact more real than the material objects and processes we see around us every day. The latter were debased, lowly, contingent entities -- fit only for destruction, according to Hegel --, hardly worth mentioning in Ideal company.

 

Moreover, since these abstractions could be given -- and had been given -- rather grandiose names, they must surely exist somewhere. Linguistic reification now transformed them, rendering them Super-Real, since their 'ontological' rank was, of course, above and beyond the lowly status of all those unreliable 'appearances'. This meant, of course, that they alone were capable of generating and then guaranteeing the Super-Scientific Truths of Traditional Metaphysics.

 

As James White pointed out (quoted earlier):

 

"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. In fact, Rationalists since Plato's day had already concluded this.]

 

Even better, our ancestors had helpfully, if not playfully, buried these 'abstractions' in a familiar area of grammar -- the subject-copula-predicate form --, even if this intergalactically important linguistic device only showed its face in the Indo-European family of languages, rarely anywhere else.

 

As we saw in Part One, science-on-the-cheap like this has dominated practically all forms of Traditional Thought since Thales and Anaximander both drew breath. It is, indeed, one of the perennial "ruling ideas":

 

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

 

(B) The second of the above two Options implied that 'ideas' congregated 'naturally' of their own efforts into the 'correct' pigeon holes, under the 'right' general noun. However, if they were capable of assembling themselves into classes under their own steam, they must possess a 'herding instinct' of some sort. Clearly, in order for them to gather together correctly, they must either:

 

(B1) Possess an intellect of their own; or,

 

(B2) Be capable of 'obeying', or being 'guided by', certain specific natural or logical 'laws' of some sort or description.

 

As far as (B1) is concerned, ideas were not only capable of automatically 'recognising' those of 'the same kind', they were intelligent enough and compliant enough to flock together with no further ado. This in turn implied that they were able to:

 

(B1a) 'Detect' the resemblances they shared with others of their ilk -- which meant that they were really surrogate minds, skilled at identifying their own close 'mental relatives' correctly, and unerringly. [Echoes of Plato again.]

 

Alternatively, these spontaneously gregarious ideas were:

 

(B1b) 'Programmed' to behave as if they could act this way.

 

In short, these two sub-options (B1a and B1b) traded on the further belief that:

 

B1a(i): Ideas were just minds writ small; or,

 

B1a(ii): Minds were little more than Incarnate Ideas.

 

B1a(i) found a safe haven in Leibniz's mind -- whether it was his own idea or he was programmed to think it was his is somewhat unclear -- where everything in the universe was 'really' composed of countless pre-programmed, inter-reflecting little 'minds' (the "Monads").

 

B1a(ii), in a much grander, if not grandiose and narcissistic form, parasitized Hegel's brain. There, 'Mind' was self-developing Idea, the final Supreme Controller of this Metaphysical Mystery Tour.

 

To be sure, Hegel certainly thought he was the engineer of his own ideas, but if he was right, he was merely the oily rag.

 

However, in relation to (B2), the implication seemed to be that natural 'laws' operating on the contents of 'the mind' could account for the regimentation of the ideas on offer, in strict battalion order -- a theory that has resurfaced these days in naturalistic theories of 'the mind'. Once again, this merely reduplicates the very problem it was meant to solve, for it implied that an 'external Will' of some sort ran both the 'inner' and the 'outer' world, as everything in this 'Mental Cosmos' obeyed its orders, like the law-abiding citizens they now seemed to be.

 

[I have covered this option in more detail in relation to the re-branded, neo-Hegelian ideas that have recently coalesced to form the various strains of Critical Realism, in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

Clearly, in order for something to be capable of obeying orders it must be intelligent (otherwise, the word "obey" in such contexts must have a different meaning). Hence, these 'ideas' must be intelligent, only now they were supposedly controlled by the 'laws of thought', or some form of cognitive architectonic. However, none of them were passive lodgers in the brain, but active citizens in this (internal) 'Cognitive State'. In that case, the Inner Microcosm was deemed capable of reflecting the Outer Macrocosm (and vice versa) -- as mystics never tire of telling us. Accordingly, 'the mind' was held to be well-ordered because the Cosmos was (and vice versa -- indeed, this is where the word "rational" comes from -- on this see Dodds (1951)). The Inner and the Outer ('Thought' and 'Being') were capable of knowing or reflecting one another because both were fundamentally the same,  both were 'Mind', or the product of 'Mind'. [There is a faint echo of this in Kant; a deafening echo in Hegel.]8ao

 

Small wonder then that Traditional Theories of causation (and, indeed, theories of 'physical law') are shot through with anthropomorphism, mysticism, and animism, which can only be made to work if inappropriate modal terms (like "necessary" and "must") are press-ganged into service.8a

 

This in turn suggested that these 'objective laws', and, indeed, the objects and processes that 'obey' them, were in effect both a reification and a projection of the subjective mental capacities and dispositions of the individual theorists that had indulged in all this armchair speculation. The latter peered into a deep well of metaphysical fantasy and, unsurprisingly, saw their own faces reflected back at them.9

 

Conversely, it implied that the human mind was intelligent simply because the universe was -- this notion can be found reverberating in the odd idea that the universe became 'conscious of itself' as a result of the emergence of humanity (a doctrine implicit in Hegel, but openly propagated by Teilhard de Chardin, Bergson, and, more surprisingly, several Marxist dialecticians; Ted Grant, for example) --, which conclusion was itself a consequence of the tortured 'logic' that supposedly mirrored the thoughts of the Superhuman Alter-Ego that allegedly ran the entire show -- 'The Absolute' we met in Part One, or "the Totality" we will meet in Essay Eleven.

 

Given this set-up, not only was the Real Rational and the Rational Real, there was in fact only the Rational, only 'the Mind'.

 

Be this as it may, these two options readily collapsed into one form or other of Idealism --  Subjective or Objective -- indeed, as we have seen.10

 

Yet More Headaches For Dialecticians

 

Traditional 'solutions' to these bogus philosophical 'problems' -- "bogus" because in the 'West' they had originally been based solely on a class-motivated misconstrual of a small, unrepresentative grammatical feature of Indo-European grammar (as we saw in Part One of this Essay, and in Essay Two). Unfortunately, the 'solutions' on offer only succeeded in creating two further difficulties for Traditional Philosophers.11

 

Oddly enough, both of these 'problems' re-surfaced in a modified form in the DM-theory of 'abstraction', as we are about to discover.

 

Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge

 

In Traditional Philosophy the first of these 'difficulties' subsequently came to be known as the "Problem of Induction". The latter involves the (presumed) theoretical possibility that future events might fail conform to what might ordinarily be expected of them; or, to put this in another and perhaps more accurate form: future events could fail to be constrained by the 'conceptual straight-jacket' traditional theorist had hitherto set for them.12

 

Hence, this 'problem' is based on the assumed fact that generalisations about the future course of nature -- when they rely solely on how certain objects, processes or events have behaved in the past --, can't provide a deductively sound basis for an inference that future objects, processes, or events will always behave in the same way. Or, more generally, that the course of nature will remain identical from day-to-day (howsoever that is understood). So, for example, just because water has always frozen at a certain temperature that doesn't mean that it will always freeze at that temperature (always assuming the water has the same level of purity, is cooled at 'normal' atmospheric pressure, etc., etc.). Or, to use David Hume's example, just because bread has always nourished those who consume it that doesn't imply it always will. In that case, he claimed there is no contradiction in supposing it won't.

 

"All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.

 

"Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind." [Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Part I. Link added; several paragraphs merged.]

 

This idea was brought out rather well by the following passage:

 

"But there is a price to be paid for this new methodology. About a hundred years after Bacon, Hume (1711-1776) pointed out the problem.

'The bread, which I formerly eat, nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that time, endued with such secret powers: But does it follow, that other bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary.' [This passage is taken from Part II of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and can be accessed here -- RL.]

"If we want to be very careful and not lump things into the same category, if types are not real, if the only real things are particular individuals, then there are no general truths about bread. We can describe the colour, shape, texture, taste and so on of this piece of bread, but if the general kind 'bread' isn't real, then whatever I learn about this piece of bread won't help me learn anything about the next piece of bread. That is the crucial usefulness of real types: if 'cat' is a real type, and not simply a nominal type, then whatever I learn about this particular cat will help me understand all cats. I can learn and know something about how to cure a problem with your cat if I have studied other cats, as long as they are identical in nature. If there is no reality to their unity as cats, then every new particular is just a new thing, and we can learn about it only by studying it; nothing else we study can possibly help us. So the existence of universals turns out to have a very profound impact on scientific methodology and epistemology." [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links added.]

 

[I hasten to add that the above doesn't represent my views; I am merely making a point about traditional approaches to this topic. Where Hume went wrong was to overlook the fact that if something that is taken to be bread fails to nourish us (all things being equal!), we would have good reason to question whether it was indeed bread. Furthermore, Hume's point borders on science fiction, the philosophical use of which I have criticised in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

However, as we have seen several times already, traditional 'answers' to the 'problem of Universals' only succeeded in transforming it into another conundrum involving Abstract Particulars, which, if they exist, may or may not behave the same way the next day as they did the day before. While these Abstract Particulars might be thoroughly Ideal -- 'Mental' or 'Heavenly Creatures' of some sort, or, indeed, something else -- there is no guarantee that even if they faithfully tow the line today they will do so tomorrow.

 

Some might argue that these are changeless abstractions (although it isn't too clear that a DM-fan can consistently champion that response), but even if that were so, the words used to express that idea aren't abstract, and there is no guarantee that they will mean the same in the future as they have done in the past -- or even that our memory of them or these 'abstractions' will remain the same, either.

 

In short, an appeal to 'Universals' is no help at all if they turn out to be particulars, too, which, because of that, can't guarantee their own future behaviour without another hierarchy of 'Universals' to do that for them, and so on ad infinitem.

 

Of course, any theory that bases itself on the Heraclitean Flux (e.g., DM) has only succeeded in sinking itself even deeper in the mire, for if there is indeed a universal flux, the future can't resemble the past! And what is worse, the word "resemble" can't even 'resemble' itself from moment to moment!

 

[The 'relative stability' argument, which is often wheeled out in reply, has been neutralised here.]

 

This 'problem' partly arises out of the mistaken belief that scientific theories themselves express a special kind of truth. When the idea that scientific theories are the sorts of things that are capable of being either true or false, a solution to the 'problem' of induction soon suggests itself. [Notice the word "theory" here. I am not impugning scientific facts. To state the obvious, facts aren't the same as theories. These rather controversial claims will be expanded upon and defended in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

 

Nevertheless, if this 'problem' is expressed a little more acutely, pushing it much further than is usually the case, several remarkable conclusions soon follow: Since both the flow of ideas 'in the mind' (or even those 'in the brain' of an Über-Rationalist, like Hegel), alongside any sensations that accompany them, are also events, 'subjective' experience itself can't avoid being thrown into doubt, which in turn raises questions about the future behaviour even of 'mental events', such as these.

 

[The reader should keep in mind that th following comments only apply if we adopt the above way of conceiving knowledge. They do not represent my views.]

 

In that case, our experience of anything that has yet to occur (which must also include our own future thoughts) might fail to 'resemble' what they had been, or seemed to have been, in the past. Even the nature of our sensations and ideas could alter from moment to moment, given this approach to knowledge. If we experience an idea now as an idea of a certain sort, it could be experienced or thought of as something totally different tomorrow, even though it might prove impossible to say right now what that might be -- either because we haven't yet the language available to us to do it, or because that language might itself change before we succeed in uttering anything at all.

 

Recall, 'abstractions' were invented to provide some sort of philosophical -- or even scientific -- stability to the deliverances of the senses. They were supposed to help provide a secure foundation for knowledge, a basis that transcended the particular by 'ascending' to the general -- to 'abstractions' and 'Universals', which were held to be far superior to, and more reliable than, ephemeral, contingent, transient facts based on experience and 'appearances'.

 

However, this approach is in fact futile, for we now have to appeal to 'Universals' ('Concepts', 'Categories', 'Principles', 'Ideas' or 'Rules'), all of which have supposedly been privately processed, in order to help guarantee that the aforementioned 'empirical instability' won't undermine scientific or philosophical knowledge. But these 'abstractions' are all particulars, too, so they are clearly of no use in this regard. That is because these 'Universal' particulars (for want of a better term!) are subject to the very same suspicions about their own future constancy that (allegedly) confront ordinary material particulars (such as the nourishing properties of bread, mentioned earlier). In which case, no particular -- abstract or concrete -- can provide a secure basis for a single general conclusion about the future constancy of other objects, events and processes. There are no self-certifying ideas to be had here, given this way of conceiving the 'problem'.

 

Worse still: any 'solution' to this 'problem' (should one ever be found!) is itself subject to the same suspicions, and hence could itself be experienced as a non-solution the very next day -- especially if we are foolish enough buy into the Universal Heraclitean Flux.

 

Naturally, expressed this way, and in relation to the thoughts and theories of those who are only too happy to employ the language and concepts of Traditional Philosophy, any attempt to 'solve the problem' of how the present 'binds' the future has already lost its way. In fact, as should now seem obvious, phrases like "The present" and "The future" are particulars, too (or, they 'refer' to Abstract Particulars alongside that other Abstract Particular, 'Time'), and as such they are totally incapable of preventing the ideas expressed by anyone who accepts this rather foolish approach to knowledge from sliding off into fathomless scepticism.

 

And, therein lies a clue to the dissolution to this family of 'problems': reject this entire way of talking as incoherent non-sense.

 

Not even the anti-materialist, Aristocratic Philosophers who invented it could make head or tail of it.

 

As we now know -- mainly because it was exposed in Part One of this Essay -- the original source of these 'difficulties' was a syntactical blunder committed by Ancient Greek metaphysicians, logicians and grammarians. In which case, the dissolution of over two millennia of monumentally wasted effort (mentioned above) clearly recommends itself.

 

So, if any given 'mind' is capable of experiencing only a finite number of exemplars from which it has to piece-together the general ideas later attributed to their thought, subsequent experience could always refuse to play ball, metaphysically 'rebelling', as it were.

 

In that case, the future might fail to resemble the past in any meaningful sense. Not only might the Sun fail to rise (tomorrow), and water fail to boil at a given temperature, but cats might even refuse to walk about on mats -- and Hegel might even begin to make sense.

 

Of course, as noted above, some philosophers have argued that these 'difficulties' might be neutralised with ease if the mind was capable of gaining direct access to these 'abstract' ideas (Real Universals, General Concepts and Categories, etc.), which were supposed to be fully capable of regimenting contingent nature (or, perhaps, the 'impressions' the senses sent its way), so that the future could be guaranteed to resemble the past -- or, at least, resemble our previous experience and knowledge of it.

 

However, in order to control these potentially 'rebellious' ideas, something a little more robust than Locke's Social Contract and Hume's feeble 'habits of the mind' were called for. Ancient Greek notions concerning an ordered Cosmos -- a limited Whole, which dogma was itself concocted at a time when Idealist theories like this seemed to make some sort of sense to the ruling-class hacks who breathed life into them --, didn't harmonise too well with the socially-, and politically-fragmenting bourgeois world of the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

As noted above, David Hume attempted to solve this 'problem' by an appeal to rather vague habits of the mind, which supposedly induce in us certain expectations about the future based on past experience. Clearly, this nebulous idea is susceptible to the challenges set out above -- indeed, as Hume himself half admitted. This is quite apart from the fact that once it is acknowledged that any series of events in this universe is subject to a sceptical onslaught like this, it is difficult to see how even 'habits of the mind' can emerge unscathed.

 

The abandonment of the 'logical' or necessary connection between a Universal and the particulars that fall under it, between an object and its properties (which we met earlier) that took place in the High Middle Ages with the rise of Nominalism (but the cracks were already forming in Ancient Greece in the work of post-Aristotelian theorists; the Nominalists merely prised these fissures wide enough for all to see), introduced radical contingency into Traditional Theories of Causation and Nature itself. This development wasn't, of course, unconnected with the decline of the power of the Papacy as Feudalism itself began to unravel, giving way to early forms of the market economy.

 

Rationalist Philosophers (like Spinoza and Leibniz) attempted to repair the damage these 'revisions' had threatened to inflict on the 'Rational Order' and on 'God's relation to 'His' creation. To that end, they concocted a series 'necessitarian' theories of their own that attempted to re-establish the logical connection between a given substance and its 'accidents', its properties. Unfortunately, these theories were themselves predicated on the same old "ruling ideas" -- i.e., on the doctrine that 'Reality' is 'Rational' and hence fundamental 'truths' about 'it' could be derived from thought alone.

 

[On the general background to this, see, for example, Copleston (2003a, 2003b, 2003c).]

 

Here is how I have made a similar point in Essay Eleven Part Two -- in a brief consideration of certain aspects of Christian Fundamentalism and 'Intelligent Design', which also seems relevant to at least one of the main themes of this Essay:

 

There is an excellent summary of the two main avenues theists have taken in their endeavour to conceive of the relationship between 'God' and 'His' creation, in Osler (2004), pp.15-35. [Not unexpectedly, these neatly mirror the tensions that plague the DM-account of nature, too.]

 

Here follows a summary of the relevant parts of Osler's thesis (with a few additional comments of my own thrown in for good measure):

 

Traditionally, there were two ways of conceiving 'God's' relation to material reality:

 

(a) 'He' is related to it by necessity, as an expression of 'His' nature; or,

 

(b) 'He' is related to it contingently -- as an expression of 'His' 'free will'.

 

If (a) were the case, there would be a logical connection between the properties of created beings and their 'essence' -- i.e., the logical core of each being, which is either an expression of its unique nature, or of the 'kind' to which it belongs. In turn, this would be a consequence of the logical or conceptual links that exist between 'creation' and 'God's Nature'. If that weren't the case, it would introduce radical contingency into creation, undermining 'God's Nature' and 'His' control of 'Creation'. As a result language and logic must constitute reality (why that is so is outlined here).

 

[Also worth pointing out is the fact that Super-Truths like this -- about fundamental aspects of 'reality' -- may only be accessed via speculative thought.]

 

This means that all that exists is either:

 

(i) An expression of the logical properties inherent in 'God'; or,

 

(ii) An emanation from 'God'.

 

That is, material reality must be logically 'emergent' from, and hence connected with, the 'Deity'. So, the universe 'issues' forth from 'His' nature 'eternally' and a-temporally, outside of time, since that is where 'He exists'. Everything must therefore be inter-linked by 'internal', or 'necessary', relations, all of which are derived from, and constituted by, 'concepts' implicit in 'God', which are consequently mirrored in fundamental aspects of creation. This idea is prominent in Plotinus and subsequent Neo-Platonists, like Hegel.

 

Given this approach, it is clear that the vast majority of 'ordinary' human beings are incapable of accessing, nor can they even comprehend, this 'rational' view of 'reality'. Their lack of knowledge, education and 'divine illumination' means that, at best, they misperceive these 'logical properties' as contingent qualities. Hence, for them, appearances fail to match underlying "essence". Naturally, this implies that "commonsense" and ordinary language are fundamentally unreliable.

 

Now, where have we heard all that before? Email me if you know...

 

Option (b), on the other hand, implied that 'God' acted freely when 'He' created the world. So, if 'He' wasn't acting under any form of 'compulsion', logical or conceptual -- i.e., 'He' wasn't acting on the basis of the logical properties inherent in 'His' nature -- then there will be no logical or necessary connection between 'The Creator' and 'His Creation'. Nor, indeed, would there be such between each created being. Every object and process in reality would therefore be genuinely contingent, and appearances will no longer be 'deceptive', since they can't mask the hidden, esoteric 'essences' mentioned above -- for there are none. That being the case, there are no synthetic a priori truths (as these later came to be known) ascertainable by thought alone. The only path to knowledge was through observation, experiment, and careful study of the 'Book of Nature'. It is no coincidence then that the foundations of modern science were laid in the Middle Ages largely by theorists who adopted this view of 'God' -- for example, Jean Buridan.

 

[On this, see also: Copleston (2003c), pp.153-67, Crombie (1970, 1979), Grant (1996), Hannam (2009), Lindberg (2007).]

 

In post-Renaissance thought, the 'necessitarian' tradition re-surfaced in the work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hegel; the 'voluntarist' tradition saw the light of day in an attenuated form in the work of Newton, the Empiricists, and the so-called "mechanists". They all tended to stress the connection between 'God's' free will and contingency in nature, alongside the primacy of empirical over a priori knowledge and the superiority of observation and experiment over speculation and abstract theory.

 

[Admittedly, the above categories are rather crude; for example, Descartes was a mechanist, but his theory put him on the same side of the fence as Spinoza and Leibniz, whereas Gassendi was also a mechanist, but his ideas aligned him with the voluntarists. On this, see Copleston (2003d).]

 

So, when Fundamentalist Christians, for example, look at nature and see design everywhere, they also claim to see 'irreducible complexity' -- the handiwork of 'God' -- and they either put this down to 'His' free creation, or they see it as an expression of logical properties imposed on nature by the Logos (depending, of course, on how they view the nature of 'The Creator' and 'His' relation to the world).

 

Christian mechanists saw design in nature, too, but their theories became increasingly deistic, and later openly atheistic. The admission of a contingent link between 'God' and nature severed the logical connection that earlier theorists had postulated, making "the God hypothesis" seem increasingly redundant [Laplace -- "I have no need of that hypothesis".]

 

[On this, see Lovejoy (1964). [This links to a PDF.] There is also an excellent account of these developments in Redwood (1976). Also see Dillenberger (1988). A classic expression of these developments can be found in the debate between Leibniz and Clarke. Cf., Alexander (1956), and Vailati (1997).]

 

Much of this controversy had been motivated much earlier by the work of the Medieval Nominalists, whose theories also sundered the logical link between a substance and its properties as part of a reaction to the tradition begun by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, with his separation of 'essence' and 'existence' in created beings), Averroës (Ibn Rushd), and the so-called "Latin Averroists" (e.g., Siger of Brabant). The latter argued strongly in favour of Aristotle's doctrine of natural necessity, thus undermining 'God's' free will -- at least, so far as the Roman Catholic Church saw things. This reaction was also prompted by philosophical worries about the nature of transubstantiation and the relation between the 'essence' of the emblems (the bread and the wine in the Eucharist) and their 'accidents' (their apparent properties). Here 'appearances' most definitely couldn't reflect 'essence' otherwise the bread would look like human flesh and the wine would smell of blood!

 

The aforementioned reaction was occasioned by the 'Condemnations of 1277', whereby the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, condemned 219 propositions, among which was the Averroist interpretation of Aristotle -- particularly the idea that the created order was governed by logical necessity. The most important response to these condemnations appeared in the work of the Nominalist, William of Ockham, who, as a result, stressed the 'free will of God' and thus the contingent nature of the world. For Ockham, this meant that there were no 'essences' in nature, nor were the apparent properties of bodies (their 'accidents', again) logically connected with their 'nominal essence' (as this later came to be called by Locke).

 

[On this, see: Osler (2004), Copleston (2003b), pp.136-55, 190-95, 437-41, Copleston (2003c), pp.43-167, and Copleston (2003e), pp.79-107.]

 

In the 18th century, a resurgence of the 'necessitarian' tradition motivated, among other things, the "re-enchantment" of nature in the theories concocted by the Natürphilosophers and Hegel -- and later still in those invented by Marxist Dialecticians.

 

[On this, see Harrington (1996), Lenoir (1982), Richards (2002), and Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two, when they are published. More details can be found in Foster (1934), Hooykaas (1973), Lindberg (2007), and Osler (2004). For the Hermetic background to all this, see Magee (2008). Cf., also Essay Twelve (summary here). At a later date I will publish an essay on Leibniz I wrote as an undergraduate, which anticipated some of the ideas in Osler's book, for example.]

 

So, where Christians see design, DM-fans see "internal relations". Same problematic, same tainted source, same bogus 'solution' to this set of pseudo-problems.12a

 

In such inhospitable surroundings, not only must the 'Concepts' and 'Abstractions' that attempt to regiment impressions and ideas into the right sortal groups be robust enough to organise the contents of the 'mind' behind the backs, as it were, of their producers, they must also exist prior to, and be independent of, experience -- or, risk suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves.

 

Initially, for "crude materialists", at least, it wasn't easy to account either for the source, or the effectiveness, of these 'sergeant-major'-like concepts -- i.e., all those 'mental constructs' ('frameworks', 'concepts' and 'categories', etc.), which do all this regimenting and permit of no exceptions, past, present or future. The theoretical 'rescue' for empiricists and materialists alike came from a totally unexpected source: German Idealism. More specifically, and even more revealingly, this 'rescue' turned out to be an impossibly convoluted, obscure version of Ancient Greek Neoplatonism, with just enough Hermeticism thrown in to fool the unwary.

 

This philosophical version of The Seventh Cavalry arrived in the nick of time, too, but it was, alas, blowing a very indistinct note -- possibly none at all.

 

Esoteric Flannel in place of Errol Flynn.

 

The systems concocted by these Teutonic Idealists required the invention of Super-Duper 'Concepts', Industrial Strength 'Categories', Carbon Fibre 'Principles', and Borazonic Ideas, packing enough metaphysical clout to control the deliverances of the senses with an iron rod. These days such heavy-duty principles have been further strengthened by the introduction of several new, impressive-sounding phrases -- such as, "natural necessity", "conceptual-", or "ontological-necessity". Jargon like this is clearly required, otherwise the semi-house-trained impressions the senses deliver might continue to revolt and set up their own Anarchist Collective -- where fires might actually freeze water instead of boiling it, fish might break out in song, and Dialectical Marxism might even become a ringing success.13

 

Furthermore, these 'Concepts', 'Categories' and 'Principles' would have to be logical -- or, indeed, 'dialectical' --, if they were capable of exercising such rigid control over the future course of events -- or even the future deliverances of the senses --, ensuring that every single impression and idea trooped into the correct metaphysical pigeonhole, collected together under the right general term and never once stepping out-of-line.

 

As noted earlier, bourgeois ideas (once 'born free') were now clapped in chains. The 'free market', bourgeois 'revolution in the head' was over. The Rationalist and Idealist takeover turned into veritable 'mental Thermidor'.14

 

However, at least one nagging question remained: How could something even as powerful as a 'Logical Principle' guarantee that future events, or our impression of them, will always do as they are told, or perform as expected? Surely these 'rational principles' are particulars themselves and no less in need of regimentation.

 

The point here is rather simple: logical principles per se can't create generality; generality emerges from the application of a rule, which neither words nor 'Concepts' -- nor even 'Principles' -- can quite manage to do all on their lonesome. It is human beings (as part of a collective) who determine what constitutes the correct application of a rule, since, as has been emphasised many times: words, 'Concepts', and 'Principles' have neither the wit, intelligence or social structure sufficient to the task.

 

[It is worth reminding the reader again, that what follows isn't my judgement on bourgeois theorists, it follows from their own theories.]

 

That was, indeed, the point of emphasising the atomisation that gave birth to the bourgeois, 'logical principles' mentioned earlier in this Essay. The fragmentation introduced into epistemology (in and by its Rationalist and Empiricist wings) meant that, in the heads of these socially-isolated bourgeois thinkers, these 'Concepts' can only operate as the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars, or, indeed, as particulars themselves, destroying generality and undermining the unity of the proposition into the bargain. So, for example, 'the concept of time' (in Kant) and the concept of 'Being' (in Hegel) are no less Abstract Particulars than anything Aristotle or Plato had ever dreamt up.14a0

 

Clearly, 'Logical Principles' like this could only succeed in regimenting unruly ideas and mutinous particulars if they somehow controlled future behaviour, and were thus intelligent agents themselves. It was almost as if these 'Logical Principles' actually existed in 'external reality', too, and were those very Ideas themselves in 'self-development' --, or they were the 'regulative principles' which supposedly led the deliverances of the senses by the nose. In Hegel, this doctrine clearly sundered the distinction between Mind and Matter -- which is largely why Engels thought he could get away with arguing that matter is just an abstraction, indeed, using a very clear echo of the very same argument (and even the same example!) that Hegel had employed:

 

"When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as if it were on the same level, it sinks into the particular itself. Even common sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the particulars. Would anyone, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, pears or grapes, and not fruit?" [Hegel (1975), p.19, §13, quoted from here. Italic emphases in the original; bold added.]

 

"It is the old story. First of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space. The empiricist becomes so steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he believes that he is still in the field of sensuous experience when he is operating with abstractions.... The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds. But, of course, we are supposed not to know what matter and motion are! Of course not, for matter as such and motion as such have not yet been seen or otherwise experienced by anyone, only the various existing material things and forms of motions. Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also pro tanto know matter and motion as such.... This is just like the difficulty mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit, because no one has so far eaten fruit as such." [Engels (1954), pp.235-36. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

"N.B. Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the qualitative differences of things in lumping them together as corporeally existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing." [Ibid., p.255. Bold emphasis added.]

 

Hence, control of future contingencies now becomes a question concerning the self-discipline of a veritable army self-developing 'Concepts'. In fact, these 'Concepts' controlled the future because they had a bright, shiny 'new logic' -- a dialectical logic -- to lead the way, a 'logic' that was itself based on a seriously distorted metaphor about how verbal and written arguments themselves edge toward a conclusion. [Which helps explain the presence of the word "contradiction".]

 

This new 'logic' laid down the law, which meant that everything in nature -- Mind and Matter -- could do little other than bend the knee to its Contradictory Will.

 

The World Soul in Plato was given a new lease of life and now ran the show; the future was henceforth under the mesmeric control of its 'logic' -- as part of the supernatural self-expression of an 'animating spirit'. In this way, the social application of linguistic rules was inverted and became the inner expression of 'Self-Developing Mind'.

 

It is precisely here that the fetishisation of language -- referred to in Part One -- inserted itself into Dialectical Philosophy, and then into Marxism.

 

As we have seen, Ancient and Medieval Logicians had, by their implausible theory of predication coupled with their appeal to 'abstractions', in effect destroyed the possibility expressing generality in language. In its place, an ersatz 'generality' was taken off the bench and sent in to play, only now it was to do so as a key component in the cunning plan of a 'Cosmic Mind' somehow beavering away inside Hegel's skull. Unfortunately for Dialectical Marxists, even when Hegel's fantasy is "put back on its feet", the logical blunders on which it had been based remain blunders. Indeed, in his hands they were fetishised all the more, transmogrified into a 'spirit' that somehow animated what would otherwise have been 'inert matter'. This now breathed 'life' into the moribund theories formerly concocted by the 'crude materialists', for without this animating spirit -- these 'contradictions' -- those metaphysical systems would be inert, too. Indeed, like a 'clock without a spring'.

 

"Contradiction is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity." [Hegel (1999), p.439, §956. Bold emphasis added.]

 

Hence, Hegel's 'Self-Developing Mind', now "back on its feet", re-animated matter; but that untoward result turned into the mystical re-enchantment of nature. [Harrington (1996).]14a1

 

Paradoxically, these new 'Iron Laws of the Cosmos' were supposed to be wholly compatible with human freedom! These Self-Developing Ideas were, of course, 'free' because they were a law unto themselves. Indeed, they even seemed to control 'God', who, it turns out, had all along been led by the nose by 'His' very own 'self-developing' concepts.

 

The 'good news' for humanity is now the opposite of what might otherwise seem to be the case: the more they subject themselves to these 'Laws', the 'freer' they became. As the Gospel says, "The truth shall make you free", and the 'law' of Christ brings 'true' freedom.

 

Hence, the more human beings are in chains the less they are in chains!

 

You just couldn't make this stuff up!

 

Fortunately, you don't have to make anything up since that is the job Diabolical Logic has taken upon itself.

 

Rousseau thought he could justify social control in this way, too, but what he had in mind was a sort of 'Ideal Thermidor'. In sharp contrast, Hegel discovered that his own Ideas controlled him --, but only if he introjected the protocols of 'social reality', thereby fetishising the ideas he imagined were ('logically') fighting it out inside his head. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social relations between human beings (language, argument, contradiction, dialectic) not only ended up manipulating his thought processes, it ran also the entire universe!

 

Wags might be forgiven for labelling this approach, 'Ontology for Megalomaniacs'. It is indeed the philosophical equivalent of a deranged individual who claims he is Napoleon or even 'God Incarnate'. According to Hegel, these crazy concepts have taken over the asylum! Instead of the 'psychologically-challenged' contradicting themselves, Hegel's universe did that for them!

 

In relation to this, Feuerbach plainly got things the wrong way round: Hegel's 'God' is the projection of human capacities inwards, not outwards. For DM-fans, ideas supposedly 'reflect' the world, but that only turns out to be the case if they unwisely allow Hegel's 'logic' to control their thoughts, too.14a2

 

Indeed, as Max Eastman reminded us:

 

"Hegelism is like a mental disease; you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]

 

[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max Eastman should check this out, and then perhaps think again.]

 

Which, of course, helps explain the semi-religious fervour with which The Sacred Dialectic is defended by all those whose brains it has colonised. [On that, see here and here.]

 

However, Hegel's Idealist 'solution' only succeeded in creating another problem: If autocratic 'principles' like these are required so that order might be imposed on recalcitrant reality -- as well as on our ideas about it --, and if knowledge is still dependent on the vicissitudes of human cognition, then these 'principles' will only succeed in undermining themselves. If the 'Cosmic Order' can only be comprehended by being put into some sort of 'reflected order' inside each bourgeois skull by anthropomorphising reality as well as our ideas about it, then that anthropomorphisation can't fail to self-destruct. That is because, if ordinary human beings can't be relied on (i.e., if the vernacular is untrustworthy and 'commonsense' is unreliable --, which ruling-class accusations had motivated this family of theories in the first place, in Ancient Greece), then these 'inner human beings' (these anthropomorphised, 'Self-Developing Ideas'), and their mysterious 'internal relations', must be equally suspect.

 

If the ideas of everyday, material human beings can't be trusted because of their reliance on 'appearances', what confidence can be placed in the reliability of these inner, ghostly spectres, these shadow human beings?

 

This worry emerges not just because it is difficult enough to account for the social nature of knowledge in the individual case, but because this 'problem' becomes completely intractable when it is generalised to take into account the countless minds supposedly able to perform the same tricks and arrive at the same conclusions from their limited experience and finite stock of ideas. [As we saw earlier.]

 

Given this approach, humanity-wide conceptual coordination would surely be miraculous. Indeed, it would be miraculous for that to happen across the inhabitants of a small village, let alone a large city.

 

In fact, it is far more likely that every member of the much smaller, self-selected coterie of 'professional abstractors' -- or, for that matter, every single Hegel scholar -- is dancing to a different dialectical tune playing away in each socially-atomised head.

 

[Apologies again for those mixed metaphors!]

 

The problem we met earlier (concerning the social and epistemological fragmentation introduced into 'western thought' by the rise of the market economy) re-surfaces precisely here: the bourgeois psyche disunited will, it seems, never be re-united.

 

So, in the realm of ideas alone, it proved impossible to undo the effect that the bourgeois revolution introduced into epistemology. If every single human being has to perform these 'feats of abstraction' in each socially-isolated head, then there can be no such thing as socialised knowledge. Or, to be more accurate, no such thing as knowledge.

 

This helps account for the countless failed 'theories of knowledge' post-Renaissance philosophers have cobbled-together over the last four hundred years -- to add to those dreamt-up during the previous two thousand.

 

Nevertheless, by these means the Individual was allowed to strike back, initially disguised as the Dialectical Guru, Hegel Himself. Except, only he (and perhaps his DM-descendants) were 'licensed' to interpret the self-development of thought, and thus the course of history for the benefit of the rest of benighted humanity. Dialectical Philosophers were now Dialectical Prophets, a resolutely substitutionist ideology their Gospel.14a

 

Once more, given this approach to knowledge, no matter how robust the metaphysical, neurological or psychological coercion involved (operating inside each dialectical skull), the coordination of knowledge across a whole population would be quite miraculous --, unless, of course, it had been imposed on all involved by the Iron Will of the Glorious Leader, the Great Teacher -- or, simply, 'The Party'. The Invisible Hand was now replaced by the Mailed Fist of the Stalinised State. Failing that, by the Guardians of Orthodoxy in non-Stalinised Marxist parties. In the 'bourgeois market' of internally-processed ideas, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand couldn't leave so much as one single fingerprint. Hence, the highly visible Mailed Fist of the Dialectical Magus -- which sometimes took the shape of Gerry Healy, elsewhere that of Mao, Bob Avakian, Marlene Dixon, Abimael Guzmán, or even the Great Teacher Himself, Stalin -- was required in order to guarantee decent epistemological order inside 'the collective dialectical skull'.

 

[Exactly how 'Epistemological Stalinism' like this has worked its way into practically every nook and cranny of Dialectical Marxism, and thus into virtually every party and tendency on the far left, is explored in Essay Nine Part Two.]

 

However, not only would each lone abstractor have no access to the ideas tucked away in the heads of other lone abstractors, they would have no way of checking whether or not they were even driving their own abstractions in the 'right' -- let alone the 'same' -- direction!

 

And, it is no good appealing to 'practice', either, since that, too, has now been overshadowed by the dead hand of abstractionism.

 

Despite this, the fact that inter-subjective agreement actually takes place (and countless times, every single day) suggests that this fanciful, bourgeois individualist picture is as well wide-of-the-mark. Indeed, when the day-to-day requirements imposed by the material and social world on each active agent are factored in, this myth falls apart even faster than a WMD dossier.

 

The reasons for this aren't hard to find (if we assume for the purposes of argument that, per impossible, abstractionism were a valid theory): not only is it is highly unlikely that each abstractor would form the same general idea of the same objects and processes from their limited stock of data -- which is problematic enough in itself in view of the fact that no two people share exactly the same experience or draw the same conclusions from it -- but, the word "same" attracts the very same difficulties (irony intended). Moreover, in its endeavour to explain generality, this traditional approach to knowledge involves an appeal to a concept that looks suspiciously general itself. If no two minds can check the supposed 'similarities' in or between the ideas held by different individuals, then there is no way that a social process, if it were based on abstraction, could or would be viable. Questions would naturally arise over whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general, or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such socially-isolated dialectical minds. And these worries would persist until it had been established whether or not each abstractor had the 'same' idea about the word "same", never mind anything else.14b

 

And, how on earth might that be ascertained, for goodness sake?

 

Worse still: given the 'dialectical' view of identity, the problem can't even be stated, let alone solved. The peremptory rejection of the LOI now returns to haunt DM-epistemology. By confusing a logical issue with an epistemological red-herring, the quest for what has been touted as a superior form of 'dialectical knowledge' has now been trapped in a solipsistic dungeon (mentioned in Note 15 -- link below).

 

[LOI = Law of Identity.]

 

Once more, that is because it has yet to be explained how any two dialectically-distracted minds could frame the same general, or even particular, idea of anything whatsoever -- even before the dialectical juggernaut begins to roll --, or how a check might be made whether or not either of these intrepid abstractors had managed to accomplish this miraculous deed correctly. And, that isn't so much because none of us has access to the mind of any other abstractor -- which, on this view, we haven't -- it is because it has yet to be established whether anyone even has the same idea of the word "correct"!15

 

Once more: how on earth might that be established, for goodness sake?

 

Again, it is no use looking to practice to rescue this failing theory, for it has yet to be established whether or not any two abstractors have the same abstract (or even 'concrete') idea of practice!

 

Once more, how on earth might that...?

 

[The reader is invited to finish that sentence for herself.]

 

By "socially-isolated" I don't mean to suggest that intrepid abstractors are literally isolated from one another -- as if they each lived on a desert island -- only that since their theory holds that knowledge (etc.) begins with whatever they manage to process in their own heads as individuals (and this must be the case from birth onwards). Clearly, this implies that when it comes to language and knowledge they might as well be literally isolated. As I have shown earlier in this Essay: given this view of abstraction, it is in fact impossible to build a workable, or even a believable, account of the social nature of language and knowledge.

 

[I have developed this line-of-thought more extensively in Essay Thirteen Part One; readers are directed there for more details.]

 

Furthermore, it is equally unclear how even this relatively minor worry (about the generality of what were supposed to be general ideas) may be communicated between such lone abstractors, at least not without employing the very same notion that originally required explanation -- generality itself --, along with the application of the LOI as a rule of language.16

 

More problematic still (for those who at least gesture in the direction of accepting even a minimally social view of language and knowledge) is the following consideration: How might it be ascertained whether or not the same ideas about anything (abstract, concrete, general, or particular) have been inherited correctly from previous generations of intrepid abstractors? Without access to a time machine, mind probes -- and, once more, a prior grasp of the very things they supposedly bequeathed to us (i.e., general ideas!) -- no one would be in any position to determine the accuracy of a single 'concept' or 'dialectical principle' belonging to this 'common inheritance'.

 

Of course, given the validity of DM-epistemology, no start could be made at any attempt to build such knowledge. Not only would this 'intentional edifice' have no secure foundation -- since its basis (i.e., supposedly inherited knowledge) has already been shown to be no firmer than quicksand -- no two prospective 'labourers' would have the same plot of land on which to work. Nor would they have the same plan to guide them, the same materials to work with, or even the remotest idea about what could conceivably count as the 'same brick'!

 

This means that, based on the strictures dialecticians have themselves placed on concrete applications of the LOI, no two people could ever have the same general -- or even particular -- idea of anything. Nor could they have the same idea about approximate identity (so that they could conclude their ideas only roughly coincided with those of anyone else). If the dread word "same" can't be the same in any two heads, the phrase "approximately the same" stands no chance.

 

Worse still, no dialectician would or could have the same (or approximately the same) general (or particular) idea as they previously had about anything even a few seconds earlier so that they could say, concerning their own opinions, that they were even approximately stable from moment to moment.

 

In that case, of course, the 'process of abstraction' can't even get off the ground!

 

At this stage it should hardly need pointing out that abstraction can make no start where there is nothing common to abstract, or no shared ideas, impressions or concepts to work with from moment to moment, or which were capable of being shared across an entire population of socially-isolated dialectical abstractors.

 

[Once more, the 'relative stability of language' defence was neutralised in Essay Six.]16a

 

An appeal to memory here would be to no avail, either. That is because, not only are memories themselves subject to the dread Heraclitean Flux, it has yet to be established that anyone has the same memory even of the meaning of the word "memory" from moment to moment.

 

Once again: how on earth might that be ascertained, for goodness sake?

 

[I hasten to add, once again, that the above sceptical remarks do not represent my views! They are only being aired in this Essay to expose the yawning chasm of scepticism implied by Traditional-, and DM-Epistemology.] 

 

In this way, abstractionism has not only undermined the status of every single dialectical proposition (a result established in Part One of this Essay), the entire project has only succeeded in strangling itself even before birth as its adherents unwisely accepted the regressive bourgeois doctrine that we all 'abstract in the privacy of our own heads'.

 

Of course, that is why an earlier claim was made (at the end of Part One) that the hypothetical activities of our heroic 'ancestral abstractors' can't have taken place, since no sense can be made of the possibility that they could have.

 

Driven To Abstraction

 

The above points might be regarded by some as a grossly unfair misrepresentation, perhaps even a distortion, of DM.

 

As TAR notes:

 

"…[A]ll science 'deductively anticipates' developments –- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation?" [Rees (1998), p.131.]

 

This appears to contradict the claim made above that DM-epistemology can't cope with future contingencies. If scientists actually use abstractions -- and legitimately so -- why does that present problems when DM-theorists do likewise? What stops the latter from projecting their ideas into the future in like manner -- especially if their work is subject to constant empirical check?

 

Alas for Ms Lichtenstein, successful practice refutes her excessively negative conclusions.

 

Or, so it could be maintained...

 

Quite apart from the fact that practice has in fact delivered the opposite verdict (on that, see Essay Ten Part One), it is worth pointing out that based on DM's own principles, this neat picture would only work if 'reality itself' were Ideal. That is because, even if the author of TAR were correct that science "'deductively anticipates…' developments", it could only do so if reality already had an underlying logical structure and nature was 'externalised thought', and hence no different in form from Objective Idealism.

 

[The reasons for drawing such a conclusion were given at the beginning of Part One of Essay Three. This topic will be re-examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

 

Among other things, Part One showed that:

 

(i) Traditional theorists extrapolate from a limited body of (presumed) facts -- comprising what they admitted was only 'partial' knowledge -- to conclusions about all of reality for all of time; and,

 

(ii) These moves were originally motivated by an ideologically-driven, but syntactically inept, re-interpretation of general words as the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars, thus destroying the generality (in language) that this approach had sought to explain. This ill-advised wrong turn was further compounded when these theorists projected the 'abstractions' they had just concocted onto what was now a 'shadow-reality', anterior to 'appearances' that supposedly underpinned the physical universe (in a still-to-be-explained manner). This ersatz-reality was then held to be 'more real' than the material world we see around us.

 

DM-theorists readily bought into this Idealist view of knowledge, even though it completely compromised their overall theory. That is because these moves were based solely on a series of linguistic distortions, not on evidence derived from the sciences -- or even from everyday experience -- still less from day-to-day revolutionary practice.17

 

Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?

 

The second difficulty (mentioned earlier) isn't unconnected with the first, but has somewhat different implications. As we have just seen, traditional solutions to the 'problem' of Universals only appeared to succeed because they either:

 

(i) Anthropomorphised the brain (along with its ideas), or they,

 

(ii) Fetishised language, so that the product of social interaction (language) was reified and transformed into the relation between objects or processes, or they were those objects and processes themselves. We saw this throughout Part One in connection with Traditional Theorists' and dialecticians' confusion of talk about talk with talk about the world -- for example here and here

 

As we have also seen, in order to explain the operation of 'the mind', Empiricists found that they had to postulate the existence of what were in effect 'intelligent ideas', which were either spontaneously gregarious or were somehow capable of obeying externally imposed rules 'intelligently'.

 

On the other hand, Rationalists held that contingent events in 'reality' couldn't account for our -- or, indeed, their own -- ideas about them. As they saw things, the reverse was the case: it was the nature and development of their ideas, or their minds, that explained the 'outer' world. Naturally, this inverted epistemology and ended up dictating to nature what it must be like or what it must contain, implying that reality was fundamentally Ideal.

 

All of this is reasonably clear.

 

The next bit isn't.

 

On the basis of the entire family of rationalist 'world-views', traditional theorists thought they had constructed (or even 'discovered') what they took to be nature's fundamental "properties"/"laws", but what they didn't do was conclude that their theories were true merely because nature and society were law-governed. On the contrary, many held that the connection was much tighter than this. They imagined they were able to read these 'laws' into nature and society simply because the mind was structured in a specific way. In addition, the very 'possibility of experience' meant that the world (natural and social) also had to be structured in a certain way, otherwise we couldn't experience it, or even know anything at all about it.18 This placed human cognition right at the centre of 'the meaning and cognitive universe'. So, what was intended to be a 'Copernican Revolution' in Philosophy turned out to be the exact opposite: its Ptolemaic realignment. 'The human mind' now constructed the world, not the other way round. In fact, for some hard core thinkers, 'the mind' and its machinations actually constituted the world.

 

[On the pernicious nature of Idealism, and why many opt for it (several of which motivating factors apply equally well to Marxist dialecticians), see: 'Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. However, in relation to Stove's work, readers should take note of the caveats I have posted here.]

 

If, as tradition would have it, the world is a 'reflection' of 'God's Mind' -- and the human mind ('at its best') is also a pale reflection of 'His' 'Mind' --, then the 'inter-reflection' between 'mind' and world, world and 'mind', would guarantee that philosophical thought left to its own devices was capable of penetrating beneath surface 'appearances', right to the heart of 'Being' itself, uncovering its hidden 'essences'. General laws thus seemed to be either the result of these 'self-directed' concepts, which accurately captured or mirrored nature's inner secrets, or the latter were their constitutive cause (what Aristotle might have called their material and formal cause).

 

Hermetic Philosophers had imagined that the Microcosm of the human 'mind' reflected the Macrocosm of 'God's' creation because both were Mind. As we have seen, this idea dates back at least to Plato:

 

"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a, pp.1254-55. I have used the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published version translates the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it." Cornford renders it thus: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible; that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." (Cornford (1997), p.192.) See also Note 1b.]

 

Mystical versions of the above that found their way into both NeoPlatonism and Hermeticism held that union with 'God' was of a piece with union with Nature (or rather with its 'Essence'), which helps explain the origin of what turned out to be the main problematic of German Idealism: 'Subject-Object Identity'. In Hegel's system, the union between the 'Knower and the Known' was itself guaranteed by the right application of Divine -- aka Dialectical -- Logic; the mystical 'Rosicrucian wedding' had finally been consummated.18a

 

Empiricist theories arrived at somewhat analogous conclusions, but from a different direction, and expressed in markedly different language.19

 

Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- every tributary of Traditional Philosophy sooner or later found its way back to the Ideal home from whence it came:

 

"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; § 316. Bold added.]20

 

Nevertheless, the serious problems this approach to knowledge brought in its train re-surfaced in DM, only now in a much more acute and problematic form. Dialecticians claim that their system somehow reverses the above process of cognition in order to neutralise its obvious Idealist implications (albeit after the "mystical shell" has been removed, leaving only its "rational kernel" -- I quote Marx here, not to criticise him, but to criticise the use to which his words have been put; I take a different view of these famous phrases, as I have argued in Essay Nine Part One). So, they claim that their theory has been rotated through 180ş, to stand proudly on its own two, very materialist legs -- hardly noticing that the Ideal backside is now where the materialist head used to be.

 

At least that helps explain all that hot air.

 

However, sub-logical, mystical trickery like this wasn't designed to operate in reverse -- which is why the Idealist forward gear always remains engaged.

 

As Essay Two has shown, dialecticians proceed as if it were quite natural -- hardly worth mentioning, in fact --, as if it were totally uncontroversial to extrapolate from thoughts, words or concepts to the derivation of necessary and universal truths about nature and society. Not only do DM-theorists proceed as if they think their laws and a priori theses are applicable to all of reality, for all of time, they have to talk this way.

 

And we can now see why that is so: it comes with the territory. The Dialectical Macrocosm and the Dialectical Microcosm are two sides of the same class-compromised coin. That is because this entire world-view was inherited (in a modified form) from Aristocratic Greek thinkers who designed it, and who fully intended that it should work this way. These "ruling-ideas" rule 'radical' heads because, to DM-fans, they seem so natural, if not quintessentially 'philosophical'. If DM-theorists didn't think and talk like this, they wouldn't have a 'genuine philosophy' of their own -- certainly not one that Lenin claimed was the logical culmination of the very best elements of 'western thought':

 

"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]20a

 

This is, of course, the intellectual equivalent of wanting to 'hang with the cool kids'. It is also one of the main reasons HCDs reject my Essays. They don't contain any gobbledygook.

 

If abstractions provide the 'metaphysical glue' that supposedly binds knowledge together (or which enables the formation of knowledge, as Lenin argued), what else could these creatures of Greek Thought imply about Nature except that it is just one Big Idea?

 

Or, more accurately: what else could this doctrine imply but that Hegel Junior (DM) looks just like his dad, Hegel himself?

 

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid., p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Perhaps we can now understand why Lenin argued this way: DM is the Ideal offspring of an equally Ideal Family. And this family tree stretches right back into the mists of ruling-class time.

 

Of course, dialecticians are among the first to tell us that these abstractions have been derived from nature and society via some sort of 'law of cognition', and which have been "tested in practice", but the above considerations cast serious doubt on the validity of those claims.

 

These infant doubts will mature quite alarmingly as the Essays posted at this site unfold.

 

Collective Error Over General Terms

 

Nominalism to one side, traditional accounts of the origin of Abstract General Ideas all shared the belief that 'the mind' was somehow capable of ascending from particulars (given in experience) to the general (not so given) -- or, perhaps sometimes the other way round (depending on which myth-maker was telling the tale), unifying particulars under an 'objective law', or doing so by means of something called an "apprehension" --, as it progressively disregards their unique ("accidental", "inessential") properties/predicates (the two irreversibly run together by now), or as it searched for wider connections in order to 'uncover' the hidden 'essences' that supposedly underpinned 'appearances'.21

 

That alone should have made those who at least claimed to be materialists pause for more than just a moment; what on earth could be so materialist about a theory that has to withdraw from the material into the Ideal in such an irresponsible and peremptory manner?

 

The pay-off, so we have been led to believe, is the greater 'explanatory power' this approach supposedly brings in its train. But, if that is gained at the expense of populating the world with nearly as many abstractions as there are material bodies, and which turn out to be more real than those material bodies themselves -- since these 'abstractions' are required to explain the nature and behaviour of objects and process in this world, not the other way round -- one wonders what sort of victory has been won over Idealism.

 

[A 'victory' of the same order, perhaps, as that of the Church over 'sin', 'crime' and war? Or, that of Social Democracy over Capitalism? These questions become all the more ironic when it is recalled that dialectics is incapable of explaining anything at all (as we will see as the Essays at this site unfold), a disconcerting outcome only further compounded by the additional fact that Dialectical Marxism has also been an abject, long-term failure.]

 

In fact, the reverse appears to be far more likely. Indeed, this entire approach is clearly based on the ancient belief that material reality is insufficient of itself, that it isn't fully real but is fundamentally dependent on something that isn't itself material, alongside the supposition that nature requires a background operation, or structure, of Ideal principles to make it work, let alone allow it to exist in the first place.

 

The result is that DM-theorists (would you believe!) believe that matter is far too crude and lifeless to do anything on its own (recall: Engels actually called matter an "abstraction"!) -- although this appears to be all that nature has to offer -- apparently it also requires a 'Logic' to make it tick or even give it 'substance'. Well, we all know which religion is based on a belief in the Logos.

 

Spoiler Alert: apparently, the vast majority do in one form or another. We have already seen this from the Gospel of John:

 

"1 In the beginning was the Word [λόγος -- logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind." [John 1:1-4. Bold added.]

 

And that helps explain why Lenin could declare that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism" -- he hadn't fully shaken off the cloying grip of Christian Mysticism:

 

"Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism. Dialectical idealism instead of intelligent; (sic) metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude, rigid instead of stupid." [Lenin (1961), p.274.]

 

[It is quite clear from this that Lenin meant "Dialectical idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than crude materialism...".]22

 

By nailing their colours to this (ruling-class) mast, dialecticians have unfortunately placed themselves on the side of the 'Gods'.

 

Diodorus Siculus is, I think, the originator of that trope:

 

"When the Gigantes about Pallene chose to begin war against the immortals, Herakles fought on the side of the gods, and slaying many of the Sons of Ge [or Gaia, the 'Earth Goddess' -- RL] he received the highest approbation. For Zeus gave the name of Olympian only to those gods who had fought by his side, in order that the courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he considered only Dionysos and Herakles worthy of this name." [Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.15.1.]

 

This metaphor alludes to an image painted in Hesiod's Theogony (links at the end) and later in Plato's Sophist, one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, that, work alongside two of his other dialogues -- Theaetetus (Plato (1997e)) and Parmenides (Plato (1997d)) --, are, collectively, the principle source of much of subsequent Idealism.

 

The excerpt from the Sophist reproduced below revolves around a conversation between an Eleatic "Stranger" (who appears to be a follower of Parmenides) and a character called "Theaetetus":

 

"Stranger. We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to comprehend as that of not-being....

 

"...There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence.

 

"Theaetetus. How is that?

 

"Stranger. Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and trees; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body.

 

"Theaetetus. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are.

 

"Stranger. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.

 

"Theaetetus. True.

 

"Stranger. Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which they call essence.

 

"Theaetetus. How shall we get it out of them?

 

"Stranger. With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be very great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in getting an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I tell you what we must do?

 

"Theaetetus. What?

 

"Stranger. Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then their opinion will be more worth having; for that which better men acknowledge has more weight than that which is acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but seekers after truth." [Plato (1997b), pp.267-68, 246a-246d. I have used the on-line version here.]

 

[As noted earlier, this battle is described in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 675-715), and is available here.]

 

Again, from this it is quite clear that Marxist Dialecticians are far closer to the Idealist 'Gods' than they are to the Materialist Giants!23

 

[Again, this helps explain why DM-theorists try to tell us that matter is just an 'abstraction'.]

 

Abstractionism: do We Bury It Or Praise It?

 

You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Confusion

 

Unfortunately, unlike Capitalism, Abstractionism has attracted few effective gravediggers, and those it has managed to accrue have proved to be even less successful at overthrowing the latter than workers have been at toppling the former. That is largely because these would be undertakers were (and still are) far more content simply to point out the psychological impossibility of the entire abstractionist project than they are to reveal its logical flaws --, or, indeed, expose its ideologically-compromised motivating factors. So, this batch of "ruling ideas" lives on to rule another day -- and another dialectician.

 

More recently, however, even though Abstractionism has been subjected to a series of destructive critiques, this ancient theory still lumbers on. That in turn is partly because many of those who avowedly came to bury it -- unlike Mark Antony -- ended up praising it by emulating it. In so doing they have only succeeded in  breathing new life into its moribund cadaver by inventing brand new 'essentialist' theories of their own.24

 

Public Criteria Vs Private Gain

 

As we have seen, and as seems reasonably clear, an ability to talk about, say, cats and dogs depends on a prior grasp (in use) of the relevant general terms (otherwise, plainly, nothing would have been said about them!). This fact needs no explanation -- nor could one be provided for it that hadn't already employed the very things that required explaining in the first place, i.e., general terms.25

 

If the above observations have anything going for them, it lies perhaps in the re-direction of our attention away from hidden, internal processes and privately executed abilities -- allegedly possessed by each 'lone abstractor' -- and back toward socially-acquired, publicly performed and checkable skills and capacities, in a endeavour to understand not only discourse, but generality in language and socially-constituted knowledge, into the bargain.

 

Naturally, only anti-materialists will cavil at this point.

 

Which is why emphasis has been placed in these Essays on our use of ordinary language in a public domain. That is also why serious questions have been raised about the ability we are all supposed to possess of being able to squeeze abstract epistemological juice from desiccated discourse in the 'privacy of our heads'.

 

In contrast once more, the approach adopted here would mean that human cognition is open to view, subject to public scrutiny -- unlike the mysterious, inner rituals that underlie the 'process of abstraction', which, it is worth recalling, fails to deliver even what had been advertised for it.26

 

Particular Problems With 'Dialectical Generality'

 

It has been argued at length above, and in Part One, that instead of beginning with the general as a way of advancing toward knowledge of the particular, the DM-'process' of abstraction in fact turns general words into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars, which then succeeds in going nowhere. This not only distorts the way language actually functions -- destroying the capacity it has for saying anything at all --, it stalls the 'dialectical circuit' before it can even be tested in practice.

 

Much of the rest of this Part of Essay Three is aimed at widening, and then substantiating these sweeping allegations.

 

Anti-Abstractionism

 

Mental 'Strip-Tease'?

 

[This used to form part of Note 24.]

 

While we are at it, what exactly are the common features that can be abstracted from (or even attributed to) all shades of, say, the colour blue? Or, the notes that can be played on the bagpipes? Or, the taste of different wines? Or, the feel of silk, wool and nylon? Or, even the smell of roses?

 

[Of course, in several of these examples, the use of other general terms might come into play -- but they, too, will attract similar questions. For instance, an appeal might be made to certain tastes or aromas that can be detected in different wines -- for example, "a fruity bouquet". But, once more, what are the common features of "fruity bouquets"? One answer to that might involve a reference to the taste or smell of Lychees, for instance. But, what are the common features of the taste/smell of Lychees? And so on. I owe this point to Geach (1957).]

 

One of the more bizarre aspects of the mysterious process of abstraction (which is in fact little different from the method adopted, or advocated, by many dialecticians --, and which is rarely noticed) involves the drawing of an unintended analogy between the properties an object is supposed to have and clothing. Hence, in the 'abstractive process', as each outwardly unique distinguishing feature of a particular is 'peeled off' (or "disregarded") by 'the intellect', the true (general) form of the 'object' in question is supposed gradually to come into view -- but, of course, that only takes place in the 'mind's eye'. This 'mental disrobing ceremony' is, naturally, accessible only to those who are capable of 'metaphysically undressing' things like tables, chairs, cats, dogs, electrons and galaxies. Indeed, 'conceptual strippers' like this must be capable of deciding what has to be true not only of all the many examples of 'the same sort' (for instance, all cats) that haven't been ideally skinned in this way (by anyone, and not just themselves), but also of the many more that no human will ever experience -- based solely on a brief 'internal' inspection of a severely restricted sample of these ghostly spectres.

 

However, and this should hardly need pointing out, the properties of objects don't resemble apparel in any meaningful sense. If this had ever been an apt analogy then these 'metaphysical garments' (i.e., an object's properties) would be just as shareable as items of clothing. On that basis, dogs should be expected to be able to sing like larks, kettles recite the Gettysburg Address, and dialecticians accept criticism.

 

Nevertheless, the analogy with clothing is as inapt as any could be. For one thing, it is surely abnormal to imagine that clothing is causally related to -- or physically connected with -- the body of its wearer. Yet, the properties of an object are linked (in some way) to its constitution. Colour, for example, is intimately connected with the atomic and molecular structure of the item in question (and, of course, the light source). For another, while clothing may perhaps serve to hinder the appreciation of underlying form, an object's properties advertise it, they don't mask it. They are, so to speak, 'metaphysically transparent'.

 

This image, of course, undermines the necessary connection between each 'essence', each 'substance' and its 'accidents', its properties, threatening the 'rationality' of nature and society, discussed earlier. That would be a dagger at the heart of Lenin's attempt to appropriate Hegel's response to Hume's criticisms of Rationalist theories of causation.

 

Furthermore, and more absurdly, properties can't be peeled away from objects as part of a hidden, internal 'disrobing ceremony' of some description. Or, if they can, one would expect that the nature of each underlying 'object' should become clearer in all its naked glory as the proceedings unfold. In fact, we find the opposite turns out to be the case as each 'metaphysical burlesque show' proceeds.

 

If, for instance, a cat were to lose too many of its properties as it is 'mentally skinned', it would surely cease to be a cat. Clearly, this philosophically-flayed 'ex-cat' (now 'non-cat') would serve rather badly in any subsequent generalisation based upon it. Indeed, strip the average moggie of enough of its properties and it would be impossible to decide whether or not the rest of the abstractive process had been carried out on the same mammal, the same animal, or, for that matter, on the same physical object -- let alone the same idea of one and all.

 

Moreover, in the absence of any rules governing the process of abstraction (such as where to begin, which feature to abstract first, which second -- which never) one person's abstractions would surely differ from those of the rest of the abstractive community.

 

For instance, while Abstractor A might begin by ignoring (or attributing) Tiddles's engaging purr, B might start with her four legs, and C might commence with her shape. But, do we (should they?) ignore (or attribute) first, second or third a cat's colour, fur, fleas, whiskers, tail, intestines, age, number...?

 

And, as part of the abstractive process, which number relevant to each cat is to be put to one side (or attributed to it): the one cat, its two ears, its four legs, its dozen or so whiskers, or the several trillion atoms of which it is composed...?

 

And where do we stop? Are we to whittle-away (or attribute to it) its position on the mat, the last dozen or so things it did, its current relation to the Crab Nebula..., or what?

 

Perhaps even worse still, this analogy pictures properties as objects that bodies or processes possess. For example, it is only possible to abstract colour if it is treated as an individual in its own right, rather like an organ or a limb can be removed from a body. This is just another untoward consequence of the 'process of abstraction' itself, whereby the general nouns we use to express properties are transformed into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars (as we saw in Part One).

 

It could be objected that none of the above really matter; the results will be the same anyhow. But, how do we know? Is there a rule book to guide us? Is there an abstractionists' algorithm we all unconsciously 'follow', programmed into each of us at birth (or is it at conception?), a set of tried-and-tested instructions? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? And, if there are metaphysical disrobing protocols determining the order in which Tiddles's qualities are to be paired away (or attributed to it), so that this process might be executed correctly by the entire coterie of intrepid abstractors, when and where did they learn them? On the other hand, if there are no such protocols, how might each aspiring abstractor know if he or she had abstracted Tiddles the same way each time?

 

Do we all keep a secret Abstractor's Diary? An internal log of what we did the last time we thought about that cat -- or any cat?

 

Furthermore, even if there were clear -- let alone plausible -- answers to such questions, another annoying 'difficulty' would block our path: it would still be impossible for anyone to check a single one of these abstractions to see if they tallied with anyone else's -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them right. In fact, the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems right will be right. But for something to be right it needs to be checked against a standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one judging. But, there is no such standard, here. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat will be private to that individual abstractor. They have no way of checking their abstractions with those of anyone else, which means, of course, there can be no standard, 'abstract cat' to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means of which anyone's abstractions can be deemed correct.

 

Later on in this Essay I will be pointing out the following in relation to Andrew Sayer's and Bertell Ollman's 'theory of abstraction':

 

True to form, Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise this 'process' reveals that he, too, thinks this is an individualised, if not private skill, in relation to which we all seem to be 'natural' experts:

 

"The sense in which the term ['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. [In a footnote, Sayer adds 'My use of "abstract" and "concrete" is, I think, equivalent to Marx's' (p.277, note 3).]" [Sayer (1992), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

As is the case with Ollman, and, indeed, everyone else who has pontificated about this obscure 'process', we aren't told how we manage to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a 'private language'.

 

Indeed, this is something Ollman himself pointed out:

 

"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003), p.63. Bold emphases added.]

 

Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!

 

It is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore, that he is at least aware of it.

 

[In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have encountered (in nigh on thirty years) who even so much as acknowledges this 'difficulty'! Be this as it may, I have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more details.]

 

Of course, none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman recognised that even though Marx gestured in its direction, HM doesn't need this obscure 'process' (that is, where any sense can be made of it) -- or, indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language completely undercuts abstractionism.

 

Naturally, this means that this process can't form the basis of 'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we substitute "idealisation" for "abstraction"). Plainly, that is because (i) No one has access to the results of anyone else's 'mental machinations' (or idealisations), (ii) There appear to be no rules governing the production of these abstractions --, or, indeed, governing the entire 'process' itself --, and, as we have just seen, (iii) There is no standard of right, here.

 

By way of contrast, in the real world agreement is achieved by the use of publicly accessible general terms already in common use, words that were in the vernacular long before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical) ancestral abstractors' eye....

 

One obvious reply to the above might be that we abstract by concentrating only on those factors that are "relevant" to the enquiry in hand. But, what are these "relevant factors"? And who decides? How might they be specified before an enquiry has begun? Surely, in order to know what is "relevant" to the process of, say, 'abstracting a cat', one would already have to know how to use the general term "cat", otherwise the accuracy of any supposed 'abstractions' that might emerge at the end would rightly be called into question, let alone those concerning the competency of the abstractor him/herself. If he/she doesn't already know how to use the word "cat", what faith can be put in anything they subsequently 'abstract', or even report about such 'abstractions'? On the other hand, if an intrepid abstractor already knows how to use the word "cat" (in order to abstract the 'right' object), one mind very well wonder what the point is of abstracting that furry mammal in the first place? This would seem to be about as pointless as checking to see if you know your own name by looking it up in a telephone directory.

 

Again, in response to this it could be argued that past experience guides us. But, how does it manage to do this? Can any of us recall being asked/made to study the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors in the days of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of inner personal Microsoft Office Assistant -- or these days, Cortana --  if we hit the right internal 'Help' key? But, what kind of explanation would that be of the supposedly intelligent process of abstraction if it requires a guiding hand? And where on earth did this 'inner PA' receive its training?

 

Once more, it could be objected that in the investigation of, say, the biology of cats, it is important for scientists to find out what these animals have in common with other members of the same species, family, order, class or phylum, so that relevant generalisations might be made about them. In order to do that, zoologists disregard (or attribute) certain features common to cats and concentrate on those they share with other mammals, vertebrates, living things, and so on --, be they morphological, ecological, behavioural, genetic or biochemical (etc.). Clearly, in each case, and at each stage, greater abstraction is required.

 

Or, so the argument might go.

 

Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction" means, it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible and checkable set of linguistic skills and performances, similar in all but name to description, analysis and classification (etc.). It has nothing to do with a private, internal 'skill' we are all supposed to possess, namely being able to polish rough and ready particulars into smooth general concepts. If abstraction were an occult (i.e., hidden), inner process then, as noted above, no two people would ever agree over the general idea of, say, a mammal, let alone that of a cat. All would have their own idiosyncratic inner, but intrinsically un-shareable and un-checkable, exemplars.

 

Again, one response to this could be that while we might use language to facilitate the transition from a private to the public arena, that doesn't impugn our abstractive skills. Unfortunately, this objection introduces topics discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three, so readers are directed there for more details. Nevertheless, a few additional comments are worth making in reply.

 

Human beings have generally managed to agree on what animals they consider belong to, say, the Class Mammalia -- i.e., human beings who possess the relevant education and linguistic skills. We might even join with Hilary Putnam and call this a legitimate division of linguistic labour (although, without implying any acceptance of his ideas about 'essentialism'). However, this phenomenon doesn't include humans who are supposed to possess unspecified abstractive powers. So, for example, trainee zoologists don't gain their qualifications by demonstrating to their teachers an expertise in performing an 'inner dissection' of certain mental images, ideas, or concepts. The same is true of practising zoologists. On the contrary, they have had to demonstrate their mastery of highly specialised techniques, relevant vocabulary and current theory, which skills they are required to exhibit publicly, showing they are capable of applying them in appropriate circumstances in a manner specified by, and consistent with, the professional standards or expectations laid down by their teachers, their professions or their peers.

 

The widespread illusion that we are all experts in the 'internal dismemberment' of images, ideas or concepts is motivated by further confusion, which also originated in Traditional Philosophy: the belief that the intelligent use of general words depends on some sort of internal, naming, representing or processing ceremony. In effect, this amounts once more to the belief that, despite appearances to the contrary, all words are names, and that meaning something involves the aforementioned 'inner acts of meaning', 'naming' or 'representing' -- matching words to images, sensations, processes, or ideas in the 'mind'.

 

At work here is another inappropriate set of metaphors which in turn trade on the idea that the mind functions like an inner theatre, TV or computer screen -- now refined perhaps with an analogy drawn against Microsoft Windows, whereby 'the mind' is taken to be "modular" (operated, no doubt, by the internal analogue of a computer geek, skilled at 'clicking' on the right inner 'icon' at the right moment, filing items in the right folders, setting-up efficient 'networks', etc., etc.). Given this family of metaphors, understanding is clearly modelled on the way we ordinarily look at pictures, but now applied to 'internal representations', each of us employing the equivalent of an 'inner eye' to appraise whatever fortune sends our way.

 

[This set of inappropriate metaphors underpins Pixar's recent film, Inside Out.]

 

These tropes are a faint echo of Plato's theory of knowledge by acquaintance and his Allegory of the Cave. [Of course, Plato's tropes were intended to make a different set of points, but his focusing on vision is the relevant factor for present purposes.] As we have seen, more recent bourgeois versions of this family of ideas regard knowledge as a passive processing of 'representations' in the 'minds' of socially-isolated, lone abstractors -- even if this approach to knowledge has been augmented by dialecticians with a gesture toward practice. Nevertheless, this view of knowledge acquisition pictured it as a form of acquaintance. The reasoning here is little more complex than this: we all know our friends by personal acquaintance, or by sight, so we all know the contents of our minds by (internal) acquaintance or (inner) sight.

 

This once again reminds us why Traditional Theorists argued that knowledge is a relation between the Knower and the Known. Here we are the Knowers and our own (internal) ideas are the Known.

 

[There is more on this in Essays Three Part Four, Thirteen Part Three (here and here), and Six.]

 

Naturally, if this hidden, privatised abstractive skill had ever been of any importance at all in the history of science, we should expect to find evidence of it in the work of the vast majority, if not every single, scientist. Alas there is none.

 

Even an attempt to investigate the truth of that particular assertion (i.e., that there is no evidence that scientists privately dismembered ideas in their heads/'minds') would automatically throw into doubt the role that abstraction is supposed to play in science. That is because such an inquiry would have to examine physical evidence -- i.e., the notes, documents and writings of these scientists, not their brains. Indeed, any recognition that what is relevant here are the publicly available, written records of these individuals, the equipment and techniques they used (etc.), coupled with their social surroundings, circumstances and ideological commitments -- as opposed to the contents of their heads -- which recognition would confirm that in their practical activity no historian of any intelligence actually believes that abstract ideas (understood in the traditional sense, as the products of 'inner acts of intellection') underpin scientific knowledge, whatever theoretical or philosophical views they might otherwise entertain, or rehearse in public.

 

Here, as elsewhere, actions speak louder than abstractions.

 

[Again, several examples (drawn from the work of a handful of 'great' scientists), which disprove the contention that they were/are abstractors extraordinaire will be given in Essay Thirteen Part Two. (See also below.)]

 

But, Don't Scientists Use Abstraction?

 

Admittedly, this way of putting things might fail to align with the opinion that scientists in general have about their own methods, but their practical activity belies whatever post hoc rationalisations they might advance concerning the nature of their work.

 

Except in certain areas of obsolete psychology, when they endeavour to advance scientific knowledge, scientists neither report on the results of their own internal processing of 'mental entities', nor on the contents of their heads. And, they certainly don't require the same with respect to the heads of others in their field, nor anywhere else for that matter. On the contrary, as far as their work is concerned they develop novel hypotheses (at the very least) by extending the use and application of publicly accessible scientific words, techniques and, in many cases, established theories. And, this they do by employing, among other things, analogy, metaphor and an innovative use of general terms already in both the lexicon and the public domain. All of this is often allied with the construction of tailor-made models and specifically targeted "thought experiments", augmented by the use of other rhetorical devices. [On this, see the references listed here.]

 

[Naturally, this doesn't mean that these factors aren't related to the development of the forces and relations of production. However, as noted above, these issues will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

 

Despite this, it could be objected that the above comments thoroughly misrepresent the way that knowledge advances. In fact (but edited down), the objection might proceed as follows: scientists attempt to discover the underlying nature of objects and processes in the world in order to reveal the laws and regularities (etc.) that govern the universe. Indeed, DM-fans often quote this famous passage from Volume Three of Das Kapital:

 

"But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804.]

 

[I have commented on this passage in Essay Twelve Part One; readers are directed there for more details. Also see my debunking of the 'appearance'-'reality'/'essence' distinction, below.]

 

To take just one example: an animal's 'essential' nature -- supposedly arrived at by the use of increasingly refined abstract terms -- turns out to be its DNA (or, if not that -- it is 'whatever'). Another, but more general example could be the way that Physicists extend knowledge by developing increasingly 'abstract theories' expressed in, or by, complex mathematical formulae, models, or causal laws.

 

But, this can't be correct; scientists manifestly didn't discover DNA by the use of greater or more refined abstractions. They used the theoretical and practical advances achieved by both previous and contemporaneous researchers -- that in turn weren't arrived at by 'abstraction' --, and which they augment with their own ideas. The latter might also have been developed by other teams of scientists working within a certain research tradition, to which might be added the results of other innovative experiments in the same or related fields. All of these were, and still are, based on cooperative work, thought and observation -- frequently assisted by the use of models and yet more 'thought experiments', all of which are expressed in a public language, subsequently published, appraised and checked in the open.

 

None of these (save, perhaps, those 'thought experiments') even remotely looks like a 'mental process', still less an example of 'abstraction' carried out in a private, 'inner' sanctum. And, as far as 'thought experiments' are concerned, these, too, are typically rehearsed in the public domain, and in a public language. Any alleged 'mental processes' that accompany them are likewise advanced by an innovative use of language -- but, with the volume turned down.

 

['Thought experiments' will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two; some of the relevant literature devoted to them has been listed in Essay Four.]

 

Of course, it could be argued that no one supposes that abstraction is "done in the head", or that scientists don't use a publicly accessible language in relation to their work. It might therefore be maintained that scientists still endeavour to form abstract ideas based on their use of such resources, and in this way.

 

Again, this isn't what scientists actually do. The above is a myth put about by professional philosophers and amateur metaphysicians.

 

These somewhat controversial claims (i.e., those relating to what scientists do, as opposed to what they or others say they do, or what they or others imagine they do, or, indeed, what certain philosophers think they do) will be substantiated (and illustrated) more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

 

This is quite apart from the fact that abstractionists themselves tell us that abstraction is "done in the head"; many examples of this were listed in Part One (here, here and here), as well as elsewhere in this Essay (for example, here and here).

 

I will say more about science and scientists later on -- in the following section: "Appearance and Reality".

 

Anti-Abstractionists

 

Berkeley And Frege

 

[This, too, used to be part of Note 24.]

 

Nevertheless, anti-abstractionist thought is a relatively recent phenomenon. The first major thinker to subject it to detailed criticism (outside the Medieval Nominalist tradition, that is) was Berkeley.

 

[Berkeley's arguments against abstract ideas are summarised in Dancy (1987), pp.24-40; a different approach linked to Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics can be found in Jesseph (1993), pp.9-43. On Berkeley in general, see here and here; his case against abstraction is expertly summarised here.]

 

Berkeley's arguments in this regard revolve around the observation that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of anything whatsoever since that would require whatever it is supposed to be to possess and not to possess several (incompatible) properties at one and the same time. He asks whether anyone:

 

"…has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall correspond with the description that is here given of the general idea of a triangle, which is, neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural (Isosceles -- RL), nor scalenon (Scalene -- RL), but all and none of these at once." [Berkeley (1975b), p.81.]

 

Based on his own inability to form such abstract ideas, Berkeley casts doubt on the capacity of others to do the opposite:

 

"I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to myself, must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall or low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described [of a general man]. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever." [Ibid., p.78.]

 

A somewhat similar argument can be found in Frege (in his review of Husserl's Philosophy of Arithmetic):

 

"Abstraction

 

"The author himself finds a difficulty about the abstraction that provides the general concept of the collective. He says (p.84):

 

'The peculiarities of the individual contents that are collected...must be completely abstracted from, but at the same time their connection must be maintained. This seems to involve a difficulty, if not a psychological impossibility. If we take the abstraction seriously, then the individual contents vanish, and so, naturally, does their collective unity, instead of remaining behind as a conceptual extract. The solution is obvious. To abstract from something simply means: not to attend to it specially.' 

 

"The kernel of this explanation is obviously to be found in the word 'specially'. Inattention is a very strong lye; it must be applied at not too great a concentration, so that everything does not dissolve, and likewise not too dilute, so that it effects a sufficient change in the things. Thus it is a question of getting the right degree of dilution; this is difficult to manage, and I at any rate have never succeeded....

 

"[Detaching our attention] is particularly effective. We attend less to a property, and it disappears. By making one characteristic after another disappear, we get more and more abstract concepts…. Inattention is a most efficacious logical faculty; presumably this accounts for the absentmindedness of professors. Suppose there are a black and a white cat sitting side by side before us. We stop attending to their colour, and they become colourless, but are still sitting side by side. We stop attending to their posture, and they are no longer sitting (though they have not assumed another posture), but each one is still in its place. We stop attending to position; they cease to have place, but still remain different. In this way, perhaps, we obtain from each one of them a general concept of Cat. By continual application of this procedure, we obtain from each object a more and more bloodless phantom. Finally we thus obtain from each object a something wholly deprived of content; but the something obtained from one object is different from the something obtained from another object -– though it is not easy to say how." [Frege (1980), pp.84-85. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for those of his day who imagined that mathematical concepts could be created, or perhaps apprehended, by a 'process of abstraction' --, in particular, the views of the 19th century mathematician and Mystical Platonist, Georg Cantor, as well as his followers:

 

"We may begin here by making a general observation. When negroes from the heart of Africa see a telescope or pocket watch for the first time, they are inclined to credit these things with the most astounding magical properties. Many mathematicians react to philosophical expressions in a similar manner. I am thinking in particular here of the following: 'define' (Brahma), 'reflect' (Vishnu), 'abstract' (Shiva). The names of the Indian gods in brackets are meant to indicate the kind of magical effects the expressions are supposed to have. If, for instance, you find that some property of a thing bothers you, you abstract from it. But if you want to call a halt to this process of destruction so that the properties you want to see retained should not be obliterated in the process, you reflect on these properties. If, finally, you feel sorely the lack of certain properties in the thing, you bestow them on it by definition. In your possession of these miraculous powers you are not far removed from the Almighty. The significance this would have is practically beyond measure. Think of how these powers could be put to use in the classroom: the teacher has a good-natured but lazy and stupid pupil. He will then abstract from the laziness and the stupidity, reflecting all the while on the good-naturedness. Then by means of a definition he will confer on him the properties of keenness and intelligence. Of course so far people have confined themselves to mathematics. The following dialogue may serve an illustration:

 

'Mathematician: The sign √(−1) has the property of yielding -1 when squared.

 

'Layman: This pattern of printer's ink on paper? I can't see any trace of this property. Perhaps it has been discovered with the aid of a microscope or by some chemical means?

 

'Mathematician: It can't be arrived at by any process of sense perception. And of course it isn't produced by the mere printer's ink either; a magic incantation, called a definition, has first to be pronounced over it.

 

'Layman: Ah, now I understand. You expressed yourself badly. You mean that a definition is used to stipulate that this pattern is a sign for something with those properties.

 

'Mathematician: Not at all! It is a sign, but it doesn't designate or mean anything. It itself has these properties, precisely in virtue of the definition.

 

'Layman: What extraordinary people you mathematicians are, and no mistake! You don't bother at all about the properties a thing actually has, but imagine that in their stead you can bestow a property on it by a definition -– a property that the thing in its innocence doesn't dream of -– and now you investigate the property and believe in that way you can accomplish the most extraordinary things!'

 

"This illustrates the might of the mathematical Brahma. In Cantor it is Shiva and Vishnu who receive the greater honour. Faced with a cage of mice, mathematicians react differently when the number of them is in question. Some…include in the number the mice just as they are, down to the last hair; others -– and I may surely count Cantor amongst them -– find it out of place that hairs should form part of the number and so abstract from them. They find in mice a whole host of things besides which are out of place in number and are unworthy to be included in it. Nothing simpler: one abstracts from the whole lot. Indeed when you get down to it everything in the mice is out of place: the beadiness of their eyes no less than the length of their tails and the sharpness of their teeth. So one abstracts from the nature of the mice. But from their nature as what is not said; so one abstracts presumably from all their properties, even from those in virtue of which we call them mice, even from those in virtue of which we call them animals, three-dimensional beings -– properties which distinguish them, for instance, from the number 2.

 

"Cantor demands more: to arrive at cardinal numbers, we are required to abstract from the order in which they are given. What is to be understood by this? Well, if at a certain moment we compare the positions of the mice, we see that of any two one is further to the north than the other, or that both are to the same distance to the north. The same applies to east and west and above and below. But this is not all: if we compare the mice in respect of their ages, we find likewise that of any two one is older than the other or that both have the same age. We can go on and compare them in respect of their length, both with and without their tails, in respect of the pitch of their squeaks, their weight, their muscular strength, and in many other respects besides. All these relations generate an order. We shall surely not go astray if we take it that this is what Cantor calls the order in which things are given. So we are meant to abstract from this order too. Now surely many people will say 'But we have already abstracted from their being in space; so ipso facto we have already abstracted from north and south, from difference in their lengths. We have already abstracted from the ages of the animals, and so ipso facto from one's being older than another. So why does special mention also have to be made of order?'

 

"Well, Cantor also defines what he calls an ordinal type; and in order to arrive at this, we have, so he tells us, to stop short of abstracting from the order in which the things are given. So presumably this will be possible too, though only with Vishnu's help. We can hardly dispense with this in other cases too. For the moment let us stay with the cardinal numbers.

 

"So let us get a number of men together and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of the pencil and the order in which its elements are given. After we have allowed them sufficient time for this difficult task, we ask the first 'What general concept…have you arrived at?' Non-mathematician that he is, he answers 'Pure Being.' The second thinks rather 'Pure nothingness', the third -– I suspect a pupil of Cantor's -– 'The cardinal number one.' A fourth is perhaps left with the woeful feeling that everything has evaporated, a fifth -– surely a pupil of Cantor's -– hears an inner voice whispering that graphite and wood, the constituents of the pencil, are 'constitutive elements', and so arrives at the general concept called the cardinal number two. Now why shouldn't one man come out with the answer and the other with another? Whether in fact Cantor's definitions have the sharpness and precision their author boasts of is accordingly doubtful to me. But perhaps we got such varying replies because it was a pencil we carried out our experiment with. It may be said 'But a pencil isn't a set.' Why not? Well then, let us look at the moon. 'The moon is not a set either!' What a pity! The cardinal number one would be only too happy to come into existence at any place and at any time, and the moon seemed the very thing to assist at the birth. Well then, let us take a heap of sand. Oh dear, there's someone already trying to separate the grains. 'You are surely not going to try and count then all! That is strictly forbidden! You have to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction....' 'But in order to be able to abstract from the nature of a grain of sand, I must surely first have looked at it, grasped it, come to know it!' 'That's quite unnecessary. What would happen to the infinite cardinals in that case? By the time you had looked at the last grain, you would be bound to have forgotten the first ones. I must emphasise once more that you are meant to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction. Of course for that you need the help of supernatural powers. Surely you don't imagine you can bring it off by ordinary abstraction. When you look at books, some in quarto, some in octavo, some thick, some thin, some in Gothic type and some in Roman and you abstract from these properties which distinguish them, and thus arrive at, say, the concept "book", this, when you come down to it, is no great feat. Allow me to clarify for you the difference between ordinary abstraction and the higher, supernatural, kind.

 

"With ordinary abstraction we start out by comparing objects a, b, c, and find that they agree in many properties but differ in others. We abstract from the latter and arrive at a concept Φ under which a and b and c all fall. Now this concept has neither the properties abstracted from nor those common to a, b and c. The concept "book", for instance, no more consists of printed sheets -- although the individual books we started by comparing do consist of such -- than the concept "female mammal" bears young or suckles them with milk secreted from its glands; for it has no glands. Things are quite different with supernatural abstraction. Here we have, for instance, a heap of sand...." [Frege (1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point. Italic emphases in the original. Links added; reformatted to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Frege's parody of Cantor illustrates just how ridiculous it is to suppose that abstraction can create mathematical concepts out of mere signs, or, indeed, out of anything. [Frege's comments find echo in the thoughts of Fraser Cowley, quoted elsewhere in this Essay. Frege's criticisms of Cantor are summarised in Dauben (1979), pp.220-25. A more detailed discussion of these matters can be found in Dummett (1991). On the mystical provenance of much of Cantor's work, see Aczel (2000).]

 

The Young Marx And Engels

 

[This material also used to appear in Note 24.]

 

There are several remarkably similar passages to the above in Marx's earlier work:

 

"Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction -- for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis -- presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that if you leave out of account the limits of this body, you soon have nothing but a space -– that if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians, who in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core….

 

"Just as by means of abstraction we have transformed everything into a logical category, so one has only to make an abstraction of every characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain movement in its abstract condition -- purely formal movement, the purely logical formula of movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the movement of things...." [Marx (1978), pp.99-100. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

However, in a passage that has already been quoted in Part One -- from The Holy Family, and which reveals Marx and Engels at the height of their philosophical powers -- we find the following acute observations (notice a similar reference to Vishnu we found in Frege above):

 

"Now that Critical Criticism as the tranquillity of knowledge has 'made' all the mass-type 'antitheses its concern', has mastered all reality in the form of categories and dissolved all human activity into speculative dialectics, we shall see it produce the world again out of speculative dialectics. It goes without saying that if the miracles of the Critically speculative creation of the world are not to be 'desecrated', they can be presented to the profane mass only in the form of mysteries. Critical Criticism therefore appears in the incarnation of Vishnu-Szeliga as a mystery-monger.... ["Szeliga" was the pseudonym of a young Hegelian, Franz Zychlinski -- RL]

 

"The mystery of the Critical presentation of the Mystéres de Paris is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction. Once Herr Szeliga has proclaimed that 'degeneracy within civilisation' and rightlessness in the state are 'mysteries', i.e., has dissolved them in the category 'mystery', he lets 'mystery' begin its speculative career. A few words will suffice to characterise speculative construction in general. Herr Szeliga's treatment of the Mystéres de Paris will give the application in detail.

 

"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'.

 

"By this method one attains no particular wealth of definition. The mineralogist whose whole science was limited to the statement that all minerals are really 'the Mineral' would be a mineralogist only in his imagination. For every mineral the speculative mineralogist says 'the Mineral', and his science is reduced to repeating this word as many times as there are real minerals.

 

"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction.

 

"The speculative philosopher therefore relinquishes the abstraction 'the Fruit', but in a speculative, mystical fashion -- with the appearance of not relinquishing it. Thus it is really only in appearance that he rises above his abstraction. He argues somewhat as follows:

 

"If apples, pears, almonds and strawberries are really nothing but 'the Substance', 'the Fruit', the question arises: Why does 'the Fruit' manifest itself to me sometimes as an apple, sometimes as a pear, sometimes as an almond? Why this semblance of diversity which so obviously contradicts my speculative conception of Unity, 'the Substance', 'the Fruit'?

 

"This, answers the speculative philosopher, is because 'the Fruit' is not dead, undifferentiated, motionless, but a living, self-differentiating, moving essence. The diversity of the ordinary fruits is significant not only for my sensuous understanding, but also for 'the Fruit' itself and for speculative reason. The different ordinary fruits are different manifestations of the life of the 'one Fruit'; they are crystallisations of 'the Fruit' itself. Thus in the apple 'the Fruit' gives itself an apple-like existence, in the pear a pear-like existence. We must therefore no longer say, as one might from the standpoint of the Substance: a pear is 'the Fruit', an apple is 'the Fruit', an almond is 'the Fruit', but rather 'the Fruit' presents itself as a pear, 'the Fruit' presents itself as an apple, 'the Fruit' presents itself as an almond; and the differences which distinguish apples, pears and almonds from one another are the self-differentiations of 'the Fruit' and make the particular fruits different members of the life-process of 'the Fruit'. Thus 'the Fruit' is no longer an empty undifferentiated unity; it is oneness as allness, as 'totality' of fruits, which constitute an 'organically linked series of members'. In every member of that series 'the Fruit' gives itself a more developed, more explicit existence, until finally, as the 'summary' of all fruits, it is at the same time the living unity which contains all those fruits dissolved in itself just as it produces them from within itself, just as, for instance, all the limbs of the body are constantly dissolved in and constantly produced out of the blood.

 

"We see that if the Christian religion knows only one Incarnation of God, speculative philosophy has as many incarnations as there are things, just as it has here in every fruit an incarnation of the Substance, of the Absolute Fruit. The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind. Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth, which are incarnations of 'the Fruit', of the Absolute Subject. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit'.

 

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'. And in regard to every object the existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation.

 

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'

 

"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975), pp.54-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

This quotation almost completely undermines the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that both Marx and Engels later seem to have lost the philosophical clarity of thought they displayed in this passage. In many respects it anticipates Frege's and Wittgenstein's approach to abstract ideas, even if phrased in a completely different philosophical idiom.

 

It is worth underlining the fact that this passage exposes the sham nature of the 'dialectical circuit', not just Hegel's use of it. As Marx and Engels argue:

 

"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….

 

"When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit.'" [Ibid., pp.58-60. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Marx and Engels are quite clear here: no amount of "careful empirical" checking can turn a creature of abstraction back into its concrete alter ego.

 

It is also important to note that Marx and Engels also anticipated the approach adopted in these Essays -- that abstract general ideas are the result of a syntactically inept re-interpretation of ordinary general terms (outlined in detail in Part One of this Essay). As they themselves pointed out:

 

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….

 

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Ibid., p.60. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Here, Marx and Engels quite rightly point out that it is the distortion of language that gives life to metaphysical abstraction. Indeed, they underlined this approach to ordinary language (and the distortion it suffers in the hands of Philosophers) in The German Ideology (partially quoted earlier):

 

"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

 

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]

 

The highlighted section of the last paragraph above might well serve as the guiding principle of this site. Indeed, Wittgenstein himself could almost have written it.

 

In his perceptive analysis of Metaphysics, the late Fraser Cowley had this to say about 'abstract universals':

 

"In the traditional doctrine, according to which one can both refer to universals and predicate them of particulars and other universals, a general term like 'lion' would signify or designate a universal. This universal would be predicated of a particular in such a sentence as 'This is a lion' and referred to in such a sentence as 'The lion is a creature of the cat family.' The lion being carnivorous and subject, I believe, to melancholy in captivity, that universal would be carnivorous and subject to melancholy. And just as one can point to an animal and say 'this kind' or 'this species', so one should be able to point to one and say 'This universal comes from East Africa'…. But clearly 'universal' is not admissible in such contexts, and this shows that the logical syntax is quite different from that of 'kind,' 'sort,' 'type,' 'species,' and so on….

 

"Many people have tried in their metaphysical performances consciously or half consciously to avoid such nonsense by referring, for example, to the universal which is allegedly predicated in 'This beast is a lion,' by the expression 'lionhood.' Many similar malformations occur in philosophical writings -– doghood, thinghood, eventhood, and so on. They are formed by mistaken analogy with manhood, womanhood, girlhood, widowhood, bachelorhood, and of course not with neighborhood, hardihood, falsehood, likelihood, or Little Red Riding Hood." [Cowley (1991), p.92. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Linguistic monstrosities like those above -- and worse -- litter the pages of (traditional) philosophical books and articles, in their Ancient, Medieval and Modern incarnations. For example, in a recent book on the nature of 'Time' we find the following rather bizarre phrases:

 

"Any property partly composed of presentness, apart from the two properties of pastness and futurity is not an A-property." [Smith (1993), p.6.]

 

Here we note with Frege that the powers of certain Asian deities have been channelled in order to create out of thin air the required temporal 'properties': "pastness", "presentness" and "futurity." There are countless pages of material like this in contemporary metaphysical literature, and not just those concerning the nature of 'Time'.

 

[Sustained criticisms of abstract general concepts and ideas (as well as essentialism) can be found in the following: Hallett (1984, 1988, 1991) and Kennick (1972). A more general refutation of abstractionism is outlined in Geach (1957). A broad attack on the nature of abstract objects can be found in Teichmann (1992). See also here.]

 

Appearance And Reality

 

As noted above several times, 'abstractionism' is intimately connected with the ancient distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality. It is to that traditional dogma that I now turn.

 

The Underlying 'Essence' Of 'Being'

 

A cursory glance through the first half of this Essay might prompt the objection that it ignores the fact that scientists actually use the method of abstraction, and have done so for many centuries in their search for knowledge. Hence, according to this widely held belief (certainly among DM-fans), they do so in order to discover -- or 'uncover' -- the underlying, "objective" nature of 'reality'.

 

[The first part of this counter-claim was in fact examined earlier, here and here; both halves will be re-examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, to be published in 2025.]

 

However, the above objection invites closer consideration of two further ideas that DM-theorists have also inherited from Traditional Metaphysics:

 

(i) The distinction between "appearance" and "reality", and,

 

(ii) The difference between "essence" and "accident", "necessity" and "contingency".

 

Once again dialecticians have (unwisely) bought into these ancient, aristocratic distinctions, meekly accepting what was a class-motivated dogma that 'appearances' aren't 'fully real', and that 'abstraction' (or 'thought') is required if we are to penetrate the outer 'shell' of the former in order to gain knowledge of the underlying 'rational order' represented by the latter. Earlier we saw Plato set the stage for this:

 

"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a, pp.1254-55. I have used the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published version translates the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it." Cornford renders it thus: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible; that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." (Cornford (1997), p.192.)]

 

In short, this approach enables intrepid DM-theorists comprehend 'appearances', objects, and processes more fully, scientifically and philosophically.

 

Ironically, as we will discover, this is the exact opposite of what actually emerged at the end of the exercise.

 

In this connection TAR makes the following series of points:

 

"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

Others agree:

 

"But, as Marx said, 'all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided' and the sun appears to go round the earth but in reality, as we all now know, it is the other way round." [John Molyneux, quoted from here. Accessed 09/02/2018. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order to reveal the reality that is disguised within. That is the reason for Marxist economic theory. As the Soviet economist Rubin explained, 'Marx approaches human society by starting with things, and going through labour. He starts with things which are visible and moves to phenomena which have to be revealed by means of scientific research...'. We must see beyond the appearance of things to the real relationships." [Rob Sewell, quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link and bold emphases added.]

 

"It is because of this very sequence of the successive grades of scientific knowledge that science can evolve. Knowledge advances by the road of contradiction. It is accompanied by errors, by deviations from the direct attainment of its object. The external appearance of things for a time hides the true content of objects from the eyes of the seeker. Thus when first we look at merchant-capitalist society the relations between people are hidden by the relations between things. But the practical mastery of the material world tears away the covering of appearance from the objects of investigation, rectifies error by transforming into actuality the true objective content of knowledge, and purges science of the illusory. Scientific experience, which is handed over by one generation to the next, and is each time enriched by some new scientific discovery, is all the time increasing the possibility of an adequate knowledge of the objective world. The experience of industrial practice, the traditions of revolution, scientific discoveries, the store of ideas, are handed over from one epoch to the next and ever more deeply disclose the infinite possibilities of human thought. In the unlimited advance of human history, at every new step of its development there is a fuller, richer, more diverse revelation of the absolute content of the material world, which content, though confined within historically limited ideas, is nevertheless absolute truth. The progressive advance of human thought, the law-governed connection of its different stages, were guessed in an inspired manner by Hegel, who criticized both the metaphysical view of knowledge (which admits only the eternity of truths), and relativism. In his Phenomenology of Spirit he characterizes the succession of philosophic systems in the following words:

 

'The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see the one or the other in any explanation about such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather it sees only contradiction in that variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes, the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this equal necessity of all moments constitutes from the outset the life of the whole.' [We might note in passing the batty nature of Hegel's analogy between budding plants and the advance of knowledge -- RL. (Bold added.)]

 

"But, for Hegel, the inevitable development which gives rise to these different ideas and successive systems arises from a merely logical unfolding, so that they are revealed finally as only moments of the 'absolute idea.' For dialectical materialists the unity of relative and absolute truth is based on the limitless development of social-historic practice, in which the systematic connections of the material world are disclosed." [Shirokov (1937), pp.123-24. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Shirokov is here quoting Hegel (1977), p.2, although that published version differs slightly from the version over at the Marxist Internet Archive (to which I have linked) and the version quoted by Shirokov.]

 

"But this tendency in capitalism goes even further. The fetishistic character of economic forms, the reification of all human relations, the constant expansion and extension of the division of labour which subjects the process of production to an abstract, rational analysis, without regard to the human potentialities and abilities of the immediate producers, all these things transform the phenomena of society and with them the way in which they are perceived. In this way arise the 'isolated' facts, 'isolated' complexes of facts, separate, specialist disciplines (economics, law, etc.) whose very appearance seems to have done much to pave the way for such scientific methods. It thus appears extraordinarily 'scientific' to think out the tendencies implicit in the facts themselves and to promote this activity to the status of science.

 

"By contrast, in the teeth of all these isolated and isolating facts and partial systems, dialectics insists on the concrete unity of the hole. Yet although it exposes these appearances for the illusions they are-albeit illusions necessarily engendered by capitalism in this 'scientific' atmosphere it still gives the impression of being an arbitrary construction." [Lukacs (1971), p.6. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"[Appearance is a] philosophical term concerned with the relativity of perception and the difference between immediately given sensual knowledge and conceptual knowledge of the lawfulness of things. Appearance is the dialectic of Form and Content, the recognition of the difference between them. In Hegel's Logic, Appearance is the second grade of Essence, moving beyond the recognition of the outer form of a thing to its lawful, inner character or content. Appearance is a modification of Being which includes Essence but is transient and unstable, because it is still partial or abstractly one-sided." [Glossary of terms at the Marxist Internet Archive. Emphases and link in the original.]

 

"Now, if you've never thought critically about how a capitalist economy works or never had the benefit of reading Marx, then all of that probably sounds like some pretty crazy sh*t. About as crazy as telling Joshua of the Hebrew Bible that the Sun is the stationary centre of the universe (or our solar system) and the Earth revolves around it. Only a madman would think such a thing. It is obvious that the Sun rises in East and sets in the West. But, in reality, the Sun rising and falling around the Earth is merely the form of appearance that the Sun takes from our immediate experience. If we took the Sun simply as it appears, never thought critically about its movements or lack thereof, then we would never be able to apprehend the nature of our solar system.

 

"Critical thought demands abstraction. We must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract." [Quoted from here. Bold emphases added; spelling modified to conform with UK English.]

 

[I have quoted several more comments like this from the likes of Herbert Marcuse, George Novack, Mao and others in the next main sub-section.]

 

But, according to Rees, who clearly agrees with Rubin, Shirokov, Lukacs, and Hegel (perhaps only in this respect), a commitment to scientific knowledge also involves the belief that:

 

"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), p.188. Bold emphases added.]

 

And, this is where abstraction supposedly enters into the picture:

 

"[K]nowledge requires an active process of abstraction capable of discriminating between essence and appearance." [Ibid., p.189. Bold added.]

 

"Critical thought demands abstraction. We must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to understand." [Quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

 

However, abstraction can't simply operate by itself:

 

"[A]bstraction can be a method of seeing reality more clearly…[but] consciousness must issue in practical activity, which will furnish the proof of whether or not our conceptions of the world are accurate…. In conscious activity, human beings overcome the abstractness of thought by integrating it with concrete, immediate reality in all its complexity -– this is the moment when we see whether thought really does assume an objective form, whether it really can create the world, or whether it has mistaken the nature of reality and is therefore unable to enter the historical chain as an objective force which, in the case of the class struggle, seizes the masses…. [F]or Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Rees (1998), pp.190-91. Bold emphasis added. Paragraphs merged.]

 

It is far from clear what much of the above actually means (and that isn't just because of the obscure language used), but for present purposes attention will be confined to the supposed 'contradiction' between "appearance" and "deeper reality" (as both of those 'concepts' apply to the natural and the social world).

 

["Social contradictions" will also be examined below, but in much more detail Essay Eight Parts Two and Three.]

 

Does Reality 'Contradict' Appearances?

 

'Essence' and 'Appearance'

 

Do 'appearances' motivate false beliefs? Dialecticians appear to be rather confused about this (irony intended).

 

Maybe this is all a little too hasty. In which case, it might be both wise and helpful to examine in slightly more detail what Hegel and several DM-theorists have had to say about the connection between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'/'actuality', as well as any link their ideas might have with the nature and origin of false beliefs.

 

Hegel

 

Unfortunately, finding a clear, connected series of ideas in Hegel is like looking for a tiny thread of straw-coloured cotton hidden somewhere in a dozen haystacks while wearing sunglasses at dusk on an overcast day! Nevertheless, here are some of the things he did say:

 

"The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that we know about are to us appearances only, and we can never know their essential nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows. The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however, though it is far in advance of vulgar realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel (1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold added.]

 

"The Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection in it is the suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which, while as reflection-into-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form, reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To show or shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished from Being -- by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when it is developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly is not something beyond or behind appearance, but -- just because it is the essence which exists -- the existence is Appearance (Forth-shining).

 

"Existence stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But appearance (forth-showing) is not to be confused with a mere show (shining). Show is the proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The immediate, instead of being, as we suppose, something independent, resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as such it is packed or summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a ground forward into existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself, but on something else, is just appearance. In our imagination we ordinarily combine with the term appearance or phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things existing, the being of which is purely relative, and which consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own, but are esteemed only as passing stages. But in this conception it is no less implied that essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather it is, we may say, the infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue into immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appearance which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and has its being not in itself but in something else. God who is the essence, when he lends existence to the passing stages of his own show in himself, may be described as the goodness that creates the world: but he is also the power above it, and the righteousness, which manifests the merely phenomenal character of the content of this existing world, whenever it tries to exist in independence." [Ibid., §131, pp.186-87. Links in the original; bold emphases added.]

 

That shows Hegel held these peculiar ideas for theological reasons. Even so, what he says above (e.g., "essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance") appears to contradict what we read below (no pun intended). I'll return to consider that possible interpretation presently.  

 

"Essence that issues from being seems to confront it as an opposite; this immediate being is, in the first instance, the unessential. But secondly, it is more than merely unessential being, it is essenceless being, it is illusory being [Illusory Being, Schein = Appearance -- RL.] Thirdly, this illusory being is not something external to or other than essence; on the contrary, it is essence's own illusory being. The showing of this illusory being within essence itself is reflection." [Hegel (1999), §818, p.394. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

This clearly implies that the opposite of 'essence' is 'illusory being' (Schein = appearance or illusion), and that can only mean it is in 'some sense false', or misleading. It is hard to see how anything illusory can fail to motivate a false belief --, or, at the very least, for it fail to be misleading.

 

Michael Inwood adds the following thoughts concerning Hegel's ideas in this area:

 

"Essence shows or appears (scheint), but itself remains hidden behind a veil of Schein.... This suggests the idea of a world that is the reverse of the world of appearances, in which everything that has, in our world, a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the opposite quality." [Inwood (1992), pp.39-40. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

Once more, it isn't easy to see how that wouldn't motivate false beliefs.

 

However, Hegel's theory is rather more complex than the above brief remarks might suggest. It isn't as if 'essence' is 'true' and appearance is 'false', to put this at its crudest. The relation between the two is much more involved (if that, too, is even the correct word to use here!). The background is again supplied for us by Inwood:

 

"Kant held that objects with which we are acquainted are appearances. So too does Hegel, or at least he regards some of them as appearances. But he does not mean the same by 'appearance' as Kant does. Kant distinguishes carefully between the words 'appearance' (Erscheinung) and 'illusion' (Schein). All phenomenal objects are appearances, in the sense that they are merely the way in which reality as it is in itself appears to us. But we can, nevertheless, distinguish between the illusory and the real within our experience, within the realm of appearances:

 

'When I say that the intuition of outer objects and the self-intuition of the mind alike represent the objects and the mind, in space and time, as they affect our sense, that is, as they appear. I do not mean to say that these objects are a mere illusion. For in an appearance the objects, nay even the properties that we ascribe to them, are always regarded as something actually given. Since, however, in the relation of the given object to the subject, such properties depend on the mode of intuition of the subject, this object as appearance is to be distinguished from itself as object in itself.' [Inwood is here quoting Kant (1998), B69, p.190, although he has employed a different translation.]

 

"Hegel, too, distinguishes between Schein and Erscheinung, but not in the same way that Kant does. The word Schein, for example, does not mean only 'illusion', but has connotations, over and above those which Kant ascribed to it, in virtue of its association with the verb scheinen, 'to shine'. Moreover, unlike Kant, Hegel calls physical entities Schein at least as often as he characterises them as Erscheinungen, though this is due in part to his liking for the pun on Sein ['to be' -- RL]. The important point, however, is that when Hegel claims that objects are appearances he does not mean what Kant meant:

 

'The objects of which we are immediately aware are mere appearances, i.e.,... they have the ground of their being not in themselves but in something else. But then the further question is how this something else is determined. According to the Kantian philosophy the things of which we are aware are only appearances for us, and their in-itself (Ansich) remains for us an inaccessible beyond.... The true situation is in fact this, that the things of which we are immediately aware are mere appearances not only for us but in themselves (an sich) and that the very essence (Bestimmung) of things which are thereby finite is to have the ground of their being not in themselves but in the universal divine idea. This conception of things is then also to be denoted as idealism, but, in contrast to that subjective idealism of the critical philosophy, as absolute idealism. This absolute idealism, although it goes beyond ordinary, realistic consciousness, is yet in substance so little to be regarded as the property of philosophy that it rather forms the basis of all religious consciousness, in so far as this too regards the sum of everything that exists (da ist), in general the world we see, as created and governed by God.' [Hegel (1975, §45, p.73. (This is a different translation of the same passage that was quoted earlier.) Bold emphases alone added.]

 

"We might infer from this passage that everything except the logical idea itself is an appearance." [Inwood (2002), pp.408-09. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Inwood then points out that even this might be to misinterpret Hegel. Hegel sometimes distinguishes objects from appearances, although it isn't easy to see how he can do so consistently (no irony intended). Anyone interested can read Inwood's valiant attempt over the next few pages of his book to make some sort of coherent sense out of what Hegel was trying to say -- Inwood (2002), pp.409-16. In the end he is forced to conclude that for Hegel everything in the phenomenal world is an appearance, but grounded in "the logical idea", and hence in 'God'. [Ibid., p.413.]

 

In that case, comments like this are highly misleading:

 

"Hegel rejects the idea that reality is something which underlies appearance. He says that reality is manifest in appearance. Characteristics that we normally think only apply to our representations of reality actually apply to reality itself," [Sorensen (2003), p.304. Italics in the original.]

 

If 'reality' were indeed structured as Sorensen thinks Hegel believed, why would we need philosophers to bring us the good news and open our eyes? It is precisely because a philosopher like Hegel thought that such 'gems of wisdom' were hidden from those who rely only on appearances (and who are thereby deceived into thinking that that is all there is) that he argued the way he did. [Not that it is quite as easy as Sorensen seems to think determining what, if anything, Hegel was banging on about!] Hence, even for Sorensen's version of Hegel, 'reality' lies behind 'appearances', although it has to 'shine' through (whatever that means) for thinkers like him, but not the rest of us, to see. No one before Hegel noticed all this 'shining', so for everyone else who thinks like this, appearances act more like a veil than a torchlight.

 

Anyway, as we are about to see, Dialectical Marxists have greatly 'simplified' this picture (in fact they have hacked it to pieces in order to try to make some sort of sense of the tangled mess they found in Hegel!), which means it is more than a moot point whether they have been faithful to the distinction between 'appearance' and 'essence'/'reality', at least as Hegel seemed to conceived it. [Irony intended.]

 

Admittedly, it could be argued that 'Marxist-dialectics' must stand or fall on its own merits. Indeed so, but since Marxists use Hegel as some sort of philosophical Zimmer Frame, it isn't easy to see how it can stand on its own two feet.

 

 

Figure Two: How Some Marxists View

Support From Hegel

 

It is to what they have to say that I now turn.

 

Dialectical Marxists

 

Despite the fact that dialecticians assert that 'appearance' and 'reality' (or, 'essence' and 'appearance', etc.) contradict each other, they seldom tell us with any clarity what they mean, nor do they illustrate this alleged clash with examples drawn from the natural world. [Those that supposedly arise in society will be examined presently.] Nevertheless, even if DM-theorists were to provide their readers with a full and complete explanation, one blessed with what would be uncharacteristic clarity, it would still be difficult to see what the 'contradiction' here (between 'appearance' and 'reality') could actually amount to.26a

 

Admittedly, in addition to the passages quoted in an earlier sub-section, Marxist dialecticians have made some attempt to explain what they intend, albeit in terms not yet blessed with the sort of clarity alluded to earlier. Here, for example, is Herbert Marcuse expressing the overall idea as follows:

 

"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised; the principle of identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault of incorrect thinking); final causes are removed from the logical order....

 

"Existing as the living contradiction between essence and appearance, the objects of thought are of that 'inner negativity' which is the specific quality of their concept. The dialectical definition defines the movement of things from that which they are not to that which they are. The development of contradictory elements, which determines the structure of its object, also determines the structure of dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic is neither the abstract, general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general form of thought -- nor the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man. This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends." [Marcuse (1968), pp.114-17. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

"The doctrine of Essence seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts' and from the scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that permanent is in the first instance their Essence.' The knowledge that appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth. The mark of dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential from the apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse (1973), pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting Hegel (1975), p.163, §112. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions employed at this site. Minor typo corrected.]

 

[We will see in Essay Eight Part Three how wide of the mark the first paragraph of the above passage actually is. Marcuse's risible attempt to criticise Analytic Philosophy (and the ordinary language of working people) has already been taken apart in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

[HCD = High Church Dialectician; LCD = Low Church Dialectician; FL = Formal Logic.]

 

The above passage, of course, says more-or-less the same as John Rees (quoted earlier), but with just enough obscure jargon thrown in to confuse the uninitiated.

 

Even so, the reader will no doubt have noticed that an HCD of Marcuse's undoubted stature quotes not one single FL-text (or source) in support of this rather contentious allegation:

 

"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless...." [Ibid.]

 

Marcuse must know that there are many ancient and modern logicians and philosophers who have in fact adopted this way of talking about the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance', even though FL itself doesn't seem to enter into any of this directly. On the other hand, if it does, we still await proof that "Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless." Marcuse certainly offered his readers none.

 

However, this comment:

 

"...the principle of identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault of incorrect thinking)...", [Ibid.]

 

reveals the depth of confusion one normally associates with the logically-challenged LCD-wing of Dialectical Muddle, but it seems HCD-honchos are just as clueless about FL as their lowly brethren. Indeed, as we have seen (here, for example), Hegel committed several of his own egregious logical blunders, upon which insecure base Marcuse unwisely based much of his thought.

 

This is quite apart from the fact that contradictions aren't the result of "incorrect thinking". As Marcuse should have known, had be bothered to stay awake in any logic lectures he took as a student, they can be, and often are, the result of one or more of the following:

 

(a) A genuine disagreement between two individuals;

 

(b) An argument aimed at reductio ad absurdum;

 

(c) A mismatch between theory and observation in the sciences (more on that in Essay Thirteen Part Two);

 

(d) An illustrative example in logic (where no mistakes have been made); or,

 

(e) An indirect proof

 

[(b) and (e) are, of course, variants of one another.]

 

In which case, many contradictions can be the result of an application of 'correct' thinking. One imagines he has simply confused falsehood with invalidity -- a rooky mistake.

 

Finally, it is worth pointing out that Marcuse admits the following:

 

"To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience." [Ibid. Bold added.]

 

So he, too, holds that appearances can be, and (often?) are, false.

 

George Novack also weighed in on this with his very own brazen example of dogmatic apriorism:

 

"What distinguishes essence or essential reality from mere appearance? A thing is truly real if it is necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence, and only so long as it proves itself to be necessary. Hegel, being the most consistent idealist, sought the source of this necessity in the movement of the universal mind, in the Absolute Idea. Materialists, on the other hand, locate the roots of necessity in the objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting forces which create, sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy agree in connecting reality with necessity.

 

"Something acquires reality because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development. It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its reality and dissolves into mere appearance.

 

"Let us consider a few illustrations of this process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant, seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development. [We see here that Novack isn't ashamed to cite Hegel's batty idea about blossoms which we met earlier -- RL.]

 

"Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational or non-rational." [Novack (1971), pp.86-87. Bold emphasis added.]

 

It isn't my immediate concern to criticise this (almost classic) example of mystical Natürphilosophie (however, it will be in a later Essay), but merely to note: (a) The fanciful way that the term "contradiction" has been employed by Novack, and (b) His idiosyncratic use of the word "appearance". Exactly why a seed turning into a plant makes the seed an "appearance" Novack failed to say (except he regards Hegel's word on such matters as Gospel Truth), but why any of this is a 'contradiction' he left entirely obscure. Of course, this might be a faint echo of an idea Hegel floated that anything that is transient or which lacks permanence is an 'appearance'. [Inwood (2002), pp.408-13.] Indeed, in relation to that it is worth asking how Novack knows that something is real only if its "appearance" coincides with its "essence" (always assuming that there are such things as 'essences', to begin with). That is, over and above merely accepting Hegel's diktat, to that effect, once more.

 

This peculiar belief is in turn connected with the idea that some things appear for a short time and then disappear or fade away, like someone who (i) Has a part in a play (as in "NN, now appearing in Death of a Salesman on Broadway"), (ii) Occupies an official position for a year, (iii) Testifies in court (as in "NM is appearing for the prosecution"), or (iv) Is famous only for fifteen minutes. Or, maybe even when we (v) Describe how someone looks -- as in "Her appearance gave her away; she was clearly terrified", or "His appearance changes from day-to-day; he is a master of disguise." In this sense we might at a stretch say that a plant or a flower is "an appearance". At a stretch that is certainly a valid (if trivial) point, but it is still unclear what it has to do with 'essence' and 'appearance'. Originally, the point here was, of course, to contrast the transient existence of certain phenomenal objects and processes compared with those that are perhaps more permanent. For example, the play mentioned above might be on Broadway for a season, but Broadway will still be there after the play is well gone. So, it looks like 'essence' is somehow connected with permanence, 'appearance' with transience (no pun intended). And yet, do these more permanent features of the world have the 'ground of their being' within themselves (to paraphrase Hegel), or do they not also 'rely on God'? If the latter is the case, then even 'essences' are also 'appearances'. Will Broadway still be there in five billion years time? Will plants and seeds? I think there is room to suppose they might not. So, it they too are 'appearances', even if we were to accept Hegel's defective typology.

 

Furthermore, what connection is there between 'appearances' that might deceive us -- like the way that sticks appear to bend when partially immersed in water or the way the Sun appears to rise in the East and fall in the West -- and the sort of 'appearances' mentioned in the previous paragraph, those associated with a lack of permanence? Presumably sticks will still look bent when partially immersed in water in ten million years' time, just as the apparent motion of the Sun will remain the same as long as the Sun, the Earth and human beings still exist. Given the considerations mentioned above, these 'appearances' are also really 'essences' since they look like permanent features of the natural world, which means, of course, that this distinction itself has become absurd.

 

[I will return to consider such phenomena again, below, here, here and here.]

 

Be this as it may, how any of the above is connected with 'contradiction' is still far from obvious. It might be time to contrast it with Novack's earlier warning:

 

"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]

 

And yet much of what Novack has to say about "appearance" and "reality" (and, indeed, about 'dialectical logic' in general) is based on "abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source"; and the same can be said about the other DM-fans quoted at this site on such topics.

 

HCD theorist, Hyman Cohen, took great exception to 'crude' interpretations of the 'contradiction' between 'essence' and 'appearance' (as part of his response to an article written by one, Mark Mussachia):

 

"Yet, if one consults a textbook of Marxist philosophy (Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow -- this appears to be Konstantinov (1974), pp.188-92 (no pun intended!) -- RL), it is plain to see that essence and appearance are depicted as complex categories, correlated categories whose oppositeness does not constitute a total negation, one of the other, but a unity; they are characterised through one another." [Cohen (1980), p.120. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Well, this is what we find in the above textbook (the reader will no doubt notice the dogmatic nature of what is about to follow, and should ask herself if it is "validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source", and note the dearth of evidence offered in support):

 

"Essence and appearance are correlated categories. They are characterised thorough one another. Whereas essence is something general, appearance is individual, expressing only an element of essence; whereas essence is something profound and intrinsic, appearance is external, yet richer and more colourful; whereas essence is something stable and necessary, appearance is more transient, changeable and accidental. The difference between the essential and the unessential is not absolute but relative. For instance, at one time it was considered that the essential property of the chemical element was its atomic weigh. Later this essential property turned out to be the charge of the atomic nucleus. The property of atomic weight did not cease to be essential, however. It is still essential in the first approximation, essential on a less profound level (sic!), and is further explained on the basis of the charge of the atomic nucleus.

 

"Essence is expressed in its many outward manifestations. At the same time essence may not only express itself in these manifestations. When we are in the process of gaining sensory knowledge of a thing, phenomena sometimes seem to us to be not what they are in reality. This seemingness is not generated by our consciousness. It arises through our being influenced by real relationships in the objective conditions of observation. Those who thought the Sun rotated around the Earth took the seeming appearance of things for the real thing. Under capitalism the wages of the worker seem to be payment for all his work, but in reality only part of his work is paid, while the rest is appropriated by the capitalists free of charge in the form of surplus value, which constitutes the source of their profit.

 

"Thus to obtain a correct understanding of an event, to get to the bottom of it, we must critically test the evidence of immediate observation, and make a clear distinction between the seeming and the real, the superficial and the essential. Knowledge of the essence of things is the fundamental task of science. Marx wrote that if essence and appearance directly coincided, all science would be superfluous. The history of science shows that knowledge of essence is impossible without considering and analysing the various forms in which it is manifest. At the same time these various forms cannot be correctly understood without penetrating to their 'foundation', their essence." [Konstantinov (1974), pp.191-92. Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]       

 

Well, this is all rather vague, and not entirely consistent (an approach one has come to expect of any self-respecting DM-ideologue!). One minute we are told that 'essence' is "profound" and "intrinsic", the next that it might not be such, but "relative" and hence not the least bit "intrinsic". At this point, one might well mischievously ask: Is there perhaps a contradiction between what appears to be the definition of "essence" and what it 'really' is? I fear the answer to that might be "yes", since the definition of "essence" seems to contradict its own 'essence'! And, far from being told that 'essence contradicts appearance' we find these rather sheepish words in its place:

 

"When we are in the process of gaining sensory knowledge of a thing, phenomena sometimes seem to us to be not what they are in reality." [Ibid. Bold added.]

 

Only "sometimes"? And only "seem"? How often is "sometimes"? And how definitive is this "seem"? Does the Sun orbit the Earth, or not? Do sticks really bend in water? Do objects shrink as they recede from us? Is the Earth really flat? Are workers paid for all the hours they work, all the value they create?

 

In connection with this, and as should seem plain, the reader would be well advised to ignore DM-criticisms of the "either-or" of 'commonsense' at this point since it looks like the above textbook has just applied it. [No puns intended in that sentence!] That is because the answer must include one or the other of the following options: either the Sun orbits the Earth or it is the other way round, but not both! This textbook clearly opts for the former, not both. So, this innocent-looking "seem" is a perhaps little stronger than it appears to be (irony intended, this time), since this 'seeming' itself (i.e., the Sun orbiting the Earth) isn't "the real thing". The Earth orbits the Sun. End of story (so we are told). The either-or of common sense wins again.

 

[On why it will always win, see here.]

 

In which case, it is far from clear why Cohen referenced this textbook since we are now no clearer than we were before about what these two (i.e., Cohen and Konstantinov) meant. Quite the reverse in fact. What, for example, does Cohen mean by the following?

 

"[E]ssence and appearance are depicted as complex categories, correlated categories whose oppositeness does not constitute a total negation, one of the other, but a unity; they are characterised through one another." [Loc cit.]

 

So, how is the correct relation (whatever it is) between the Sun and the Earth "characterised" by the appearance that the Sun orbits the Earth, when we are now told that the reverse is the case? As we have just seen, there is an unambiguous "either-or" at work here, which implies that the former and the latter aren't in the end "characterised through one another". They rule each other out.

 

Furthermore, this surely can't be true:

 

"The difference between the essential and the unessential is not absolute but relative. For instance, at one time it was considered that the essential property of the chemical element was its atomic weigh. Later this essential property turned out to be the charge of the atomic nucleus. The property of atomic weight did not cease to be essential, however. It is still essential in the first approximation, essential on a less profound level, and is further explained on the basis of the charge of the atomic nucleus." [Konstantinov, op cit.]

 

If the above were the case, it looks like 'essence' depends on the choices we make, not on the way things are independently of us.

 

Cohen's comment is, therefore, far too brief, confused and enigmatic to be of much help, while the much longer passage from Konstantinov is, as we have just found out, far too vague and inconsistent to be of any use at all.

 

The same confusion is apparent in the comments made by a fan of Systematic Dialectics with whom I debated these issues recently:

 

"Now, if you've never thought critically about how a capitalist economy works or never had the benefit of reading Marx, then all of that probably sounds like some pretty crazy sh*t. About as crazy as telling Joshua of the Hebrew Bible that the Sun is the stationary centre of the universe (or our solar system) and the Earth revolves around it. Only a madman would think such a thing. It is obvious that the Sun rises in East and sets in the West. But, in reality, the Sun rising and falling around the Earth is merely the form of appearance that the Sun takes from our immediate experience. If we took the Sun simply as it appears, never thought critically about its movements or lack thereof, then we would never be able to apprehend the nature of our solar system.

 

"Critical thought demands abstraction. We must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract." [Quoted from here. Bold added; spelling modified to conform with UK English.]

 

"'[E]ssence' isn’t 'in a secret world lying behind "appearances"'. It has no reality except in its appearance. However, taking the appearances to be exhaustive of reality is a mistake.... [E]ssence, necessarily expresses itself through the appearances." [Quoted from here and here; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold added.]

 

First, that isn't how scientific knowledge of the Solar System developed or went through a profound series of changes in the 16th and 17th centuries. As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Two in much more detail, Copernicus's ideas, for example, were motivated by two key factors: his Hermeticism and his search for mathematical simplicity:

 

"At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest [Hermes Trismegistus -- RL] labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around it. Moreover, the earth is not deprived of the moon's attendance. On the contrary, as Aristotle says in a work on animals, the moon has the closest kinship with the earth. Meanwhile the earth has intercourse with the sun, and is impregnated for its yearly parturition." [Copernicus, De Revolutionibus, Book 1, Chapter 10, partially quoted in Kuhn (1995), p.131, using a different translation.]

 

Kuhn adds the following thoughts about the work of the next scientist in line, Johannes Kepler:

 

"Neoplatonism is explicit in Copernicus' attitude toward both the sun and mathematical simplicity. It is an essential element in the intellectual climate that gave birth to his vision of the universe. But it is often hard to tell whether any given Neoplatonic attitude is posterior or antecedent to the invention of his new astronomy in Copernicus' thought. No similar ambiguity exists with respect of the later Copernicans. Kepler, for example, the man who made the Copernican system work, is quite explicit about his reasons for preferring Copernicus' proposal, and among them is the following:

 

'[The sun] is a fountain of light, rich in fruitful heat, most fair, limpid, and pure to the sight, the source of vision, portrayed of all colours, though himself empty of colour, called king of the planets for his motion, heart of the world for his power, its eye for his beauty, and which alone we should judge worthy of the Most High God, should he be pleased with a material domicile and choose a place in which to dwell with the blessed angels…. For if the Germans elect him as Caesar who has most power in the whole empire, who would hesitate to confer the votes of the celestial motions on him who already has been administering all other movements and changes by the benefit of the light which is entirely his possession?....[Hence] by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of God himself, not to say the first mover.'" [Kuhn (1995), p.131, quoting Kepler from Burtt (1954), p.48. Spelling modified to conform with UK English. (These link to PDFs.)]

 

As Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, pointed out:

 

"[T]he new theory of Nicolaus Copernicus which, while still committed to uniform circular motion, argued that by placing the sun at the centre instead, the apparent retrograde motion of the planets could be accounted for with greater mathematical simplicity and elegance." [Quoted from here; accessed 15/09/2020. Spelling modified to conform with UK English; bold emphasis added.]

 

The next scientist in line, Galileo Galilei, didn't indulge in any historic feats of 'mental abstraction', either, as he helped hammer the last few nails in the coffin of the old Aristotelian/Ptolemaic system. Not a bit of it; he did something overt. He looked down a telescope and saw that several planets had their own moons. The old system couldn't explain this and this showed that Kepler's model (which also needed revising) was at least physically possible. [On this, see Koestler (2017).]

 

So, 'abstraction' (even if we knew what it was) played no part in these developments.

 

Second, one might well wonder how the above passage might be rendered consistent -- i.e., in relation to how, for example, the Sun 'appears' to move and how 'essence' here (that is, if there are any such!) "necessarily expresses itself through the appearances". If that were so, why did no one see the supposed 'essence' involved in this phenomenon for what it was until the above scientists appeared on the scene? That is, why did it take so long before anyone argued that the Earth moves relative to the Sun, not the other way round? Why did it take so long for scientists to arrive at that conclusion? And how does this particular 'essence' (a moving Earth) "necessarily express itself through the appearance" of its opposite: the fact that the Earth appears to be stationary? It rather looks like the 'essence' in this case (whatever it is!") failed to "express itself through the appearance". Indeed, it induced in humanity a set of false beliefs that lasted many centuries -- that the Earth doesn't move and sits stationary at the centre of the Universe --, which is, of course, inconsistent with what we now know to be the case, that the Earth does move. In fact, it is now plain that the 'essence' here was locked away in a "secret world lying behind appearances", since it took so long for anyone to force it into the open!

 

This is, indeed, what Hegel himself asserted:

 

"The immediate Being of things is thus conceived under the image of a rind or curtain behind which the Essence is hidden." [Hegel (1975), p.163, §112. Bold added.]

 

Finally, I return to consider the motion of the Earth several times again below and show that the neat picture painted by DM-fans isn't quite as clear cut as they would have us believe.

 

On this issue, here is what one commentator had to say (quoted earlier):

 

"Essence shows or appears (scheint), but itself remains hidden behind a veil of Schein (appearance -- RL).... This suggests the idea of a world that is the reverse of the world of appearances, in which everything that has, in our world, a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the opposite quality." [Inwood (1992), pp.39-40. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

At a time in his life when his ideas were influenced by ruling-class forms-of-thought like these, Marx also expressed this idea rather forcefully:

 

"The contradiction between existence and essence, between matter and form, which is inherent in the concept of the atom, emerges in the individual atom itself once it is endowed with qualities. Through the quality the atom is alienated from its concept, but at the same time is perfected in its construction. It is from repulsion and the ensuing conglomerations of the qualified atoms that the world of appearance now emerges. In this transition from the world of essence to the world of appearance, the contradiction in the concept of the atom clearly reaches its harshest realisation. For the atom is conceptually the absolute, essential form of nature. This absolute form has now been degraded to absolute matter, to the formless substrate of the world of appearance." [Marx (1975b), pp.61-62. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

 

Here, too, is Mao:

 

"We should draw a lesson here: Don’t be misled by false appearances. Some of our comrades are easily misled by them. There is contradiction between appearance and essence in everything. It is by analyzing and studying the appearance of a thing that people come to know its essence. Hence the need for science. Otherwise, if one could get at the essence of a thing by intuition, what would be the use of science? What would be the use of study? Study is called for precisely because there is contradiction between appearance and essence. There is a difference, though, between the appearance and the false appearance of a thing, because the latter is false. Hence we draw the lesson: Try as far as possible not to be misled by false appearances." [Mao (1977b), pp.165-66. Bold emphases added.]

 

So, it seems reasonably clear from this that for DM-fans, 'essences' are 'hidden' and 'appearances' are in some sense false or misleading.

 

In addition, one might well wonder how the following is even possible:

 

"It is by analyzing and studying the appearance of a thing that people come to know its essence." [Ibid.]

 

Surely, in order to study "the appearance of a thing" it seems rather obvious that we would need to rely on its appearance, which we have just been warned not to trust since some of them are "false". [But how we tell all the 'false'- from the 'not-false'-appearances is unclear.] It would be no use appealing to scientific observations since they also rely on these 'suspect appearances'. And, what would be the point of "analysing" such dubious data inputs, these 'nefarious appearances', if they can't be trusted? No good, either, appealing to anyone's writings for help -- not even Mao's! -- since they too now confront us as 'appearances'!

 

[Misguided attempts to defend Mao have been subjected to detailed criticism elsewhere in this Essay.]

 

Other Marxists have also made similar points:

 

"Whereas Kant stopped at contradiction, Kant being paralyzed by its omnipresence where thought was concerned, Hegel presses forward to the recognition of the profound truth of contradiction, and thus Hegel is not trapped with an incognizable essence and a perfectly cognizable appearance, as in Kant; since, for Hegel, reality can only present itself by means of contradictory oppositions, such as the opposition appearance/reality." [David DeGrood, quoted from here; bold emphasis alone added.]

 

"Elsewhere, it is the contradiction between essence and appearance that is emphasised in the dialectic approach." [Hirsch (2004), p.8. Bold added.]

 

"In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin, after renewed study of Hegel, explicitly breaks with reflection theory in favour of a much more dialectical theory of cognition that emphasises the contradiction between essence and appearance and establishes consciousness, not just as a reflection of the world, but also as a factor capable, through practice, of shaping it. Human knowledge, according to Lenin, depends upon an active process of abstraction, capable of distinguishing between essence and appearance, rather than passive reflection, an insight with profound consequences for the theorisation of literary production." [Quoted from here, pp.31-32. (This links to a PDF.) Accessed 19/08/2020. Italic emphasis in the original, bold added.]

 

"Essence refers to 'the negative reciprocal reflectedness of many capitals with one another through which they themselves, in as much as they are concretely different from one another, are posited as capitals essentially identical to one another; that is existing values that valorise themselves…. This is their identity within their difference.' Appearance refers to 'the reciprocal relation of the many capitals among themselves whereby, as capitals that are different in many concrete aspects, they oppose and compete [with each?] other in order to obtain their greatest valorisation. This, by contrast, is their difference within their identity.' [The author] is able to show -- through the Hegelian categories of repulsion and attraction, quality and quantity, one and many -- that the contradiction between essence and appearance is mediated in a more concrete form, 'as capital in its existence in-and-for-itself'." [Tony McKenna, quoted from here, accessed 19/08/2020, Bold added.]

 

"'If the essence and appearance of things directly coincided, all science would be superfluous'. Does Marx's dictum lead to novel insights? The purpose of science is to discover the nature of reality concealed under surface appearance. Based on this definition, Marx makes the above assertion -- if things appeared exactly as they are, there would be no need for science to remove the veil of appearance. Social science, therefore, is the search for the real nature of society, underneath all of its visible, external façades. If the reality of society is easily observable in our everyday experience, then there is no need for scientific reflection on society, as Marx defines science. The idea that society has an 'appearance', which is not the same as social 'essence', forms the starting point for the Marxist discussion of ideology. Ideology is what allows a society to persist, even though the essence of that society may contain contradictions.

 

"It is important to note that the difference between appearance and reality is not due to some form of false belief or faulty vision on the part of the observer. The appearances are caused by the reality. There is no 'mistake' in the observance of society, because it is the nature of society that the essence projects a certain appearance. It is the nature of a mirage that it is an illusion, it is not a case of 'faulty vision'. A person with normal vision will still see a mirage, as it is the very essence of the mirage which creates the illusion.

 

"Marx was primarily concerned with the nature of the capitalist mode of production. The cardinal tenets of Marx's theory of the essence of capitalism are: Only expenditure of labour creates economic value, in proportion to the amount of labour expended; workers do not receive the whole value of what they produce -- capitalists enjoy profits due to surplus value, for which the worker is not paid; labour power is the only form of capital investment which creates profit. (1) The social appearance, on the other hand is: An object is worth what it can be exchanged for in the market, i.e. its exchange-value; workers appear to be paid for all of their labour; capital is seen to 'create' profit. There is clearly a marked difference between the appearance and essence of society. Marx uses the idea of 'commodity fetishism' to explain this difference.

 

'Commodity fetishism' is the vision of objective value in commodities especially money, as the commodity of exchange. Under a society with exchange, the only way people can gauge value is during the exchange process. For example, in the labour market, a worker will agree to a contract with an employer for a certain wage per time period. The worker feels that he is being paid for all of his work, and the employer feels that the value of the labour-power employed is worth the wage. The actual value of the labour is more than the wage, as the employer will eventually extract a surplus value when the product is sold. The cause of this commodity fetishism is the nature of the exchange process. The result is that some aspects of the appearance of society are the 'inverse' of its essence.

 

"The notion of 'inversion' is very important to Marx, as it sums up the idea that the capitalist mode of production contains contradictions. The contradiction is between the essence and appearance. Marx goes so far as to say that 'everything appears as reversed in competition'. Ideology 'conceals the contradictory essential relations...because it is based on a sphere of reality which reveals the contrary to its essential relations'. The role of ideology, therefore, is to hide the essence of society as it contradicts the appearance, which is beneficial to the ruling class at the time. As ideology is based on the 'phenomenological sphere', or the sphere of 'appearances', it fulfils its role by reinforcing the appearances of society, thus further burying the 'essence'." [Luis Avilés, quoted from here. Accessed 16/12/2016. Minor typo corrected. Some paragraphs merged.]

 

So, this theory (that there is a 'contradiction' between 'essence' and 'appearance') is mainstream and is clearly widely held among Dialectical Marxists.

 

However, in the last of the above passages, Luis Avilés seems to want to have his cake and eat it. On the one hand, he claims that "the difference between appearance and reality is not due to some form of false belief or faulty vision on the part of the observer", but he then says "It is the nature of a mirage that it is an illusion, it is not a case of 'faulty vision'. A person with normal vision will still see a mirage, as it is the very essence of the mirage which creates the illusion." But, if someone sees what she takes to be water, and which is just a mirage, she is entertaining a false belief that there is water.

 

Avilés then tells us that "workers appear to be paid for all of their labour" and the "worker feels that he is being paid for all of his work...." Is that a true or a false belief? He adds "The actual value of the labour is more than the wage." If so, the aforementioned worker held a false belief. There appears to be no other way of making sense of this.

 

Somewhat appropriately, comrades like Avilés and Mandel (considered below) appear to be able to hold two contradictory ideas 'in their heads' at once, that 'appearances', or the beliefs they motivate, aren't false, even while they are false!

   

DM-stalwart, Ernest Mandel, tackles this knotty 'problem' head on:

 

"But for Marx, the materialist dialectician, the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' in no sense implies that 'appearance' is less 'real' then (sic) 'essence'. Movements of value determine in the last analysis movements of prices; but Marx the materialist would have laughed at any 'Marxist' who suggested that prices were 'unreal', because in the last analysis determined by value movements. The distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' refers to different levels of determination, that is in the last analysis to the process of cognition, not to different degrees of reality. To explain the capitalist mode of production in its totality it is wholly insufficient to understand simply the 'basic essence', the 'law of value'. It is necessary to integrate 'essence' and 'appearance' through all their intermediate mediating links, to explain how and why a given 'essence' appears in given concrete forms and not in others. For these 'appearances' themselves are neither accidental nor self-evident. They pose problems, they have to be explained in their turn, and this very explanation helps to pierce through new layers of mystery and brings us again nearer to a full understanding of the specific form of economic organization which we want to understand. To deny this need to reintegrate 'essence' and 'appearance' is as un-dialectical and as mystifying as to accept 'appearances' as they are, without looking for the basic forces and contradictions which they tend to hide from the superficial and empiricist observer." [Mandel (1976), p.20. (This links to a PDF.) Italic emphasis in the original. Bold added.]

 

It could be argued that this shows that Marxists don't believe that appearances are false.

 

First of all, it is worth noting that Mandel considers social phenomena, here. He would hardly suggest, for example, that because sticks appear to be bent in water that that implies they are bent, or that this bending is somehow "real". Do they really bend in water? Would it be false to say sticks are actually bent in water? Indeed, it would.

 

Second, Mandel asserts that Marx would have laughed at any 'Marxist' who suggested "prices were 'unreal'" simply because prices are really determined by the movement of value. But, would it be true to say that price is an accurate reflection of value? No, it wouldn't. So, this appearance (that is, if it is one!) is deceptive and motivates a false belief among economists. Which Marxist would agree with them and accept that as a true picture of the economy? Would Marx? Again, no, he wouldn't.

 

Third, Mandel then argues that:

 

"The distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' refers to different levels of determination, that is in the last analysis to the process of cognition, not to different degrees of reality." [Ibid.]

 

Well, this would suggest that Marxism doesn't actually tell us about "reality", since, according to Mandel, the distinction between "appearance" and "essence" is merely a heuristic device that no more relates to "reality" than any other "appearance". "Essence" would now seem to be no more "real" than, say, the shape of a table. When asked what the 'real shape of a table' is, what could anyone say? Tables look different from different angles, as does everything else. If someone were to insist that this is the 'real shape of a table', would they be stating a truth? Of course not.

 

Hence, Mandel's 'explanation' is no help at all. It fails to show that 'appearances' don't motivate false beliefs -- those held by anyone 'not in the know', for example. Nor does it demonstrate that the distinction drawn between 'appearance' and 'essence' doesn't refute the conclusion that Marxists believe 'appearances' are in some sense false.

 

[I will look at what Mandel says about 'abstraction' in a later re-write of this Essay.]

 

Finally, as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, a desperate appeal to "practice" at this point (perhaps in order to help resolve these 'problems') would be to no avail. Practice takes place at the level of 'appearances', so one set of 'appearances' can hardly absolve another set -- that is, if they even needed absolving in the first place!

 

[See also Note 29b.]

 

'Commonsense'

 

Issues connected with 'commonsense' clearly have a role to play in the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'. However, few DM-theorists inform their readers/audience (with any consistency or clarity) what they mean by 'commonsense' (although Lenin once claimed that "common sense = the prejudices of its time" [Lenin (1961), p.271]) -- let alone what its core, or even component, beliefs are supposed to be. One theorist who did make some attempt to address this 'problem' was the STD, Teodor Oizerman. Here, he is speaking about 'everyday consciousness', which I take it is meant to be the same as 'commonsense':

 

"Everyday consciousness is a multi-layered complex and contradictory entity composed of a multitude of perceptions, emotions and concepts that are generated and continuously reproduced by the relatively constant and familiar conditions surrounding individuals.... We encounter concepts of everyday consciousness everywhere. They are, first and foremost, empirical notions consisting partly of relative truths and partly of illusions and errors: water boils at 100oC; gold does not rust; the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening; money in a savings bank pays interest. Proverbs are classic expressions of everyday consciousness, polished to perfection by the ages; they are the quintessence of popular wisdom ('life is not a bed of roses'), the class instinct of the oppressed and exploited..., popular fears and hopes." [Oizerman (1982), p.101. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

One can almost hear the contempt and condescension in Oizerman's voice as he wrote this. But, what evidence was offered in support of these claims?

 

None at all.

 

[I have said much more about 'commonsense', here.]

 

We will examine one of Oizerman's examples (sunrise) later in this Essay, but if we focus on the volunteered example given below, we might be able to make some sense of the broader claim that there is a 'clash of sorts' between the way things appear to be and the truths scientists and Philosophers are supposed to be looking for, somehow tucked away and hidden 'below the surface' -- that is, the supposed clash between 'commonsense' and 'science'.

 

Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science

 

The following case in point has been deliberately chosen for its triteness and its familiarity. A more arcane example would plainly have obscured the issues involved. As noted above, other instances of this phenomenon (where 'appearances' appear to 'contradict reality') will be considered as the argument unfolds in this Essay, as well as in other Essays posted at this site.

 

This volunteered example concerns the apparent incongruity that exists between the way that sticks look bent and the fact that they do not really bend when they are partially immersed in water. Of course, it could be objected that this doesn't illustrate a process in nature, and so it isn't relevant. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy to adapt this example so that the objection itself becomes irrelevant, as we will also see.

 

[Other instances of this alleged incongruity can be modified in like manner, but I will refrain from doing so here for obvious reasons. Hence, they should be viewed in the same way, in order to help prevent this section descending into recondite, scholastic pedantry.]

 

Be this as it may, this illusion, or incongruity, might be expressed as follows:

 

R1: This stick appears bent in water.

 

R2: It isn't the case that this stick appears bent in water.27

 

R1a: This stick appears to bend when immersed in water.

 

R2a: It isn't the case that this stick appears to bend when immersed in water.

 

R1 and R2, and R1a and R2a, form apparently contradictory pairs, but this type of incongruity clearly isn't the sort to which Rees and other dialecticians are alluding -- i.e., the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality. Plainly, R1 and R2 are both about appearances, hence, they don't illustrate the aforementioned clash between appearance and reality.

 

Perhaps the following will suffice?

 

R3: This stick bends when put in water.

 

R4: It isn't the case that this stick bends when put in water.

 

Again, these two seem to be contradictory, but, unfortunately once more they aren't what Rees and other dialecticians have in mind, either, since they fail to contrast appearance with reality. R3 and R4 merely express two contradictory propositions relating to a possible state of affairs; neither is about appearances.

 

However, the following pair of sentences does attempt to contrast appearance and reality:

 

R5: This stick appears bent in water.

 

R6: It isn't the case that this stick is bent in water.28

 

The problem with the above two is that they aren't contradictories since they can be both true at once, just as they can both be false at once. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other, nor vice versa. There is therefore no logical connection between them. Nor do they even seem to be 'dialectically' connected: that is, they don't struggle with one another, nor do they turn into each other (as they should if the DM-classics are to be believed). Moreover, they don't imply one another (in the way that the existence of capitalist class supposedly implies the existence of the proletariat, and vice versa).

 

[It is worth reminding ourselves that two propositions are contradictory if they can't both be true and they can't both be false, at once. Not only do they have opposite truth values, the truth of one implies the falsehood of the other, and vice versa. I only mention this since most DM-fans seem oblivious of it, often conflating the LEM, PB (propositional bi-polarity) and the LOC with one another -- and, indeed, all of them with opposites, inconsistencies, absurdities, contraries, paradoxes, puzzles, quandaries, oddities, irrationalities, oppositional processes, antagonisms, opposing forces, events that go contrary to expectations, alongside a whole host of other unrelated idiosyncrasies. In fact, they are so eager to see contradictions everywhere, that they find they have to tinker with the meaning of "contradiction" so that (for them) it becomes synonymous with "struggle", "conflict", and "opposition". I have said much more about that in Essay Eight Part Two.]

 

[LOC = Law of Non-Contradiction; LEM = Law of Excluded Middle; PB = Principle of Bivalence.]

 

It could be objected that the fact that sticks appear to bend in water prompts the naďve belief that they do just that, which contradicts the fact that they don't really bend when partially immersed. That incongruity, or at least its realisation, could motivate someone into rejecting an unscientific or false belief. In that sense, therefore, it could be argued that reality does indeed contradict appearances. [It is far from clear that anyone who accepts the line expressed here or here -- that appearances, or the beliefs they motivate, aren't false/'unreal'  -- can actually make this argument.]

 

But, does this make it false to say that sticks look bent in water? Clearly not. In which case, if these two sentences were indeed contradictory (recall, no two contradictory propositions can be true together or false together) -- given that R6 and R5 are both true -- it would be incorrect to say that they are contradictory.

 

R5: This stick appears bent in water.

 

R6: It isn't the case that this stick is bent in water.

 

Of course, if DM-theorists reject this contention (as it seems they will), then they must be intending to revise the meaning of the word "contradiction", as opposed to using a familiar term drawn from ordinary language -- where, incidentally, in ordinary language the verb form ("to contradict") literally means "to gain-say", to say the opposite of what another says. Either that, or they seek to revise a typographically similar word ("contradiction") found in FL where two contradictory propositions have to have opposite truth-values, and where the truth of one implies the falsehood of the other.

 

In fact, dialecticians appear to oscillate between a hybrid understanding of "contradiction" (no pun intended), positioned half-way between the meaning(s) it has in the vernacular and the connotations it has in FL, all the while somehow linking it with the maverick sense given to this word by Hegel -- which has yet to be explained with any degree of clarity.29

 

Naturally, dialecticians are at liberty to make whatever revisions they deem necessary, and use words as they please; but any attempt to do so in this case would have no more significance, or effect, than would a similar attempt to revise the definition of, say, "relative surplus value" in order to 'prove' that because Marx ignored this 'new definition', his analysis of the (social) source of value was therefore misguided.

 

In connection with this, it is also worth recalling that according to physical theory light rays are deflected from their path when they pass between air and water, creating the 'illusion' that sticks bend. However, if sticks didn't really look bent in water (or if it were false to say that they appeared to bend when immersed) that would refute the scientific fact that light rays themselves deviate upon entering or leaving the relevant media. Tinker around with beliefs like this too much and far more serious problems will emerge that threaten to undermine much of Physics.

 

So, even in this sense, appearances aren't 'contradicted by reality' -– far from it, they play an essential part in the verification of scientific theory concerning light as it passes between media. Hence, the scientific truth that light deviates when passing between media is confirmed by, if not founded upon, the appearance recorded in R5! And this isn't even a transient appearance (as noted above, this will presumably last as long as the human race exists); so given what we found out earlier, this can't even be an Hegelian 'appearance'.

 

R5: This stick appears bent in water.

 

It could be objected that the above is an entirely specious response. The plain fact is that scientific knowledge is inconsistent with the belief that sticks bend in water. No amount of 're-interpretation' can minimise its significance.

 

However, that would have been an effective rebuttal if, (i) The argument above were about beliefs and not about appearances, and if (ii) It could be shown that anyone actually believed (or has ever believed) that sticks really do bend in water, That is because the pro-DM counter-response volunteered in the previous paragraph specifically mentioned what might plausibly be believed by naďve or untrained observers. Undeniably, such a belief would be incompatible with what we know to be the case, but the DM-claim is that appearances contradict reality. It says nothing about beliefs doing that.

 

Indeed, the point made above is that far from reality contradicting appearances, scientists themselves need appearances to be correct in order to confirm such things as Snell's Law, and hence that they have to take note of what seem to be bent sticks. Plainly, that is because scientists have to look at objects and processes in the world, and if they saw sticks in water that didn't appear to bend when immersed they would either question whether the liquid concerned was indeed water or wonder if they were hallucinating.

 

Hence, the above objection only seems to work by confusing appearances with beliefs. Now, it certainly isn't being questioned here whether or not propositions drawn from scientific investigation contradict certain beliefs about the world (expressed propositionally) that humanity might once have accepted or to which some still adhere. But, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.

 

It could be objected that the argument above is inconsistent. On the one hand, it alleges that there can be no contradiction between appearances and reality but on the other it allows for the fact that there can be -- indeed, there are -- contradictions between scientific propositions and certain beliefs.

 

So, the above argument appears to hold that these are contradictory:

 

B1: p.

 

B2: NN believes that not p.

 

But, it also seems to hold that these aren't contradictory:

 

B3: p.

 

B4: It appears to NN that not p.

 

How can the first pair be deemed contradictory while the second isn't?

 

Or, so it might be argued...

 

Of course, the wording of my earlier claim was specifically this:

 

B5: It certainly isn't being questioned here whether or not propositions drawn from scientific investigation contradict certain beliefs about the world (expressed propositionally) that humanity might once have accepted or to which some still adhere. But, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.

 

Now, while not p certainly is the contradictory of p, p itself isn't the contradictory of, NN believes that not p, although, it would certainly be paradoxical if NN believed not p while acknowledging that p itself was true. [That conundrum has since come to be known as Moore's Paradox, after British Philosopher, G. E. Moore, one of Wittgenstein's tutors. I have comment on the Paradox in Part One, here.]

 

Nor is p the contradictory of the back end of B4 -- i.e., p isn't the contradictory of "to NN that not p" (in this particular sentential context).

 

B4: It appears to NN that not p.

 

In that case, B1/B2 and B3/B4 aren't comparable.

 

[B6 has been deliberately left in a stilted form so that the point might be easier to see. In addition, it mustn't be assumed that I believe B1 and B2 are contradictories (they aren't!); I am just seeing where a DM-counter-argument might take us.]29a0

 

It could be argued that if we re-word the above, they might still be analogous; perhaps in the following way:

 

B6: p.

 

B7: NN has a belief that not p.

 

B8: p.

 

B9: NN has an appearance that not p.

 

In response to this I will merely note that these two sets of sentences can only be made to appear to be analogous (irony intended) by a crass misuse of language (in B9). But, human beings can no more have appearances than they can have seemings or lookings. Of course, if we had sentences in language like B10 (mirroring those like B9, or even B11):

 

B10: It believes to me that not p,

 

B11: It appears to me that not p,

 

then we might be able to make some sense of this response, but we don't -- and it isn't difficult to see why. We form our beliefs based on all manner of contingencies, but appearances are things we undergo, like it or not -- we don't form them. Moreover, we use sentences like these: "NN believes that p", but not "NN appears that p"; "NM believes in the branch secretary", but not "NM appears in the branch secretary"; "NP believes he can win", but not "NP appears he can win"; "MN has lost her belief in the Labour Party", but not "MN has lost her appear (sic) in the Labour Party", and so on.

 

So, appearances still aren't beliefs, nor are they analogous to them.

 

Nevertheless, it could be objected that while sticks might appear to bend in water, the fact is that they don't actually do this. In that sense, subjective appearances are contradicted by objective facts.

 

However, this latest objection itself labours under several misconceptions:

 

(1) First, appearances are, I take it, 'part of reality' (for want of a better phrase). No one supposes, surely, that appearances are fictional in the way that The Tooth Fairy or Pixies are, or that they have been invented (like, say, Sherlock Holmes or Fake News). It isn't as if our ancestors made a fable up that there were such things as appearances and several millennia later we have finally realised this and have now seen through it. If so, appearances are just as 'real' as unbent sticks. [Of course, the problem here centres on the word "real" and the profligate and incautious way it is used in Traditional Thought. I will say more about that in Essay Twelve. In the meantime, readers should consult Moore (1953), pp.216-33, and Austin (1964), pp.62-83.]29a

 

(2) Moreover, but worse, since neither 'appearances' nor 'reality' are propositional, no contradiction is possible between them.

 

It could be objected that the issue here is the contradiction between essence and appearance not between appearance and reality, which is an invention of the present Essay. [However from the quotations we have seen above, here and here, that isn't the case.]

 

But, even if the meaning of "essence" were itself clear, it is difficult to see how there could be such a contradiction, not unless appearances and essences were also propositional. Hegelians might be able to get away with that idea (but as far as I know they haven't wandered down this blind alley, yet), since, for them, everything is Ideal; but materialists can't.

 

Of course, that comment itself depends on a view of contradictions I don't expect dialecticians to accept, but until they tell us what they do mean by their use if this word, little progress can be made. Since we have only been waiting for 200 years to be informed what dialecticians actually mean by "contradiction", it might perhaps be a little impatient of me to expect them to produce one in the next century or so.

 

[This topic is discussed in more detail in Essays Four, Five, Eight Parts One, Two and Three, and Eleven Part One.]

 

Moreover, it is important to remember that the example under discussion here focuses on sticks that look bent in water. In that case, unless dialecticians have a theory about the 'essence' of sticks that differs from their notion, or any notion, of 'real sticks', this objection must fail, too. After all, it was Novack who argued that:

 

"...A thing is truly real if it is necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence.... Materialists...locate the roots of necessity in the objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting forces which create, sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy [i.e., Idealism and Materialism -- RL] agree in connecting reality with necessity. Something acquires reality because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development. It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its reality and dissolves into mere appearance." [Novack (1971), p.86. Paragraphs merged.]29b

 

Which more or less settles things: appearances are just as much part of reality as essences are, if they coincide. [How they manage do that in the case of bent sticks I will leave those addicted to this of this way of talking to figure out for themselves, since I don't prefer this use of language and I, for one, can make no sense of it.]

 

(3) Thirdly, the idea that it is merely a 'subjective' experience that sticks appear to bend when put in water is itself mistaken. Not only does everyone see the same appearance (i.e., bent sticks) -– which means it can't be subjective (or only one person would see it) -–, but this apparent bending of sticks forms a basis for the 'objective' fact that confirms the scientific fact that light changes its path when passing between media. If the appearance of bent sticks were merely subjective, what should we make of the idea that light alters its course? Is that subjective too? Is the 'objectivity' of science founded on such weak 'subjective' foundations?

 

Again, exception might be taken to the claim that appearances are "objective", since most philosophers and scientists appear to agree that they are subjective (no irony intended). Since objectivity relates to something called "observer independence", appearances must be subjective -- or so it could be argued.

 

(A) First of all, I'm not advancing any such claim, since I reject the use of metaphysical language, which this is. I have already noted above that I don't prefer this way of talking; obscure language like this is merely being employed here to assist in its own demise. Hence, the frequent use of 'scare' quotes.

 

(B) Secondly, since it is also an appearance that philosophers and scientists believe that appearances are subjective, that belief must itself be subjective; it plainly isn't "observer independent". In fact, as should seem reasonably clear, no observation made by scientists or philosophers would or could ever be "observer/mind independent", and thus "objective", given this crazy way of talking.

 

So, if 'objectivity' is understood as "observer-", or "mind-independence", it would surely be impossible to form an 'objective' opinion of anything -- let alone about 'subjectivity' -– that is, while we humans unwisely possess 'minds' and foolishly go about the place observing things.

 

Indeed, as we shall soon see, any attempt to classify appearances as 'subjective' (hence not fully 'real') would fatally undermine not only science, but the opinions of anyone who holds such an unwise belief.

 

Hence, if 'objectivity' is defined as "observer-independence" etc., then plainly the notion that light bends when it passes between media (and every other such belief we have) can't be 'objective'. As now seems undeniable, the truth of this and every other scientific idea depends on centuries of observation (and no little human thought, too), as much as it depends on the current beliefs of yet more human beings. Exactly how these can be independent of one another is a mystery few dialecticians bother to explain. Eliminate the 'subjective' element from science -- if that is what it is -- and everything we believe to be 'objective' must go with it. If science dealt only with "observer-independent" realities, we wouldn't be able to acquire any 'objective' beliefs whatsoever.

 

Of course, all this will be music to dialecticians' ears, since they already accept the idea that there is a dialectical interplay between the 'objective' and the 'subjective':

 

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

In that case, we are forced to abandon the idea that "objective" means "mind-independent", contradicting Lenin:

 

"We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? This hoary philosophical query is confused by Mach. If you hold that it is not given, you, together with Mach, inevitably sink to subjectivism and agnosticism and deservedly fall into the embrace of the immanentists, i.e., the philosophical Menshikovs. If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them. Therefore, to say that such a concept can become 'antiquated' is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments of fashionable reactionary philosophy. Could the struggle between materialism and idealism, the struggle between the tendencies or lines of Plato and Democritus in philosophy, the struggle between religion and science, the denial of objective truth and its assertion, the struggle between the adherents of supersensible knowledge and its adversaries have become antiquated during the two thousand years of the development of philosophy?...

 

"As the reader sees, all these arguments of the founders of empirio-criticism entirely and exclusively revolve around the old epistemological question of the relation of thinking to being, of sensation to the physical. It required the extreme naďveté of the Russian Machians to discern anything here that is even remotely related to 'recent science,' or 'recent positivism.' All the philosophers mentioned by us, some frankly, others guardedly, replace the fundamental philosophical line of materialism (from being to thinking, from matter to sensation) by the reverse line of idealism. Their denial of matter is the old answer to epistemological problems, which consists in denying the existence of an external, objective source of our sensations, of an objective reality corresponding to our sensations. On the other hand, the recognition of the philosophical line denied by the idealists and agnostics is expressed in the definitions: matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation, and so forth....

 

"'Matter is disappearing' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter is vanishing and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are likewise disappearing which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary (impenetrability, inertia, mass, etc.) and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972), pp.144-45, 165, 311. Bold emphases alone added, quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Ibid., p.148. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157. Bold emphasis added.]

 

[There is much more on 'objectivity' here.]

 

It isn't easy to make the above comments consistent with one another.

 

However, if dialecticians are prepared to contradict Lenin, then much of their epistemology will soon follow it out the window, for, according to this latest turn-of-events, it seems that nature is 'objective' only if we know about it, and then only if we manage to do so in certain ways!

 

It could be objected here that this misconstrues Hegel's notion of objectivity; indeed, it confuses it with a much looser modern concept. Hegel drew many of his ideas from Kant's Critical Philosophy and adapted them accordingly. In fact, his ideas on this score can't be separated from his system as a whole.

 

However, since this topic will be examined in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six, not much more will be said about it here.

 

Nevertheless, for present purposes it is worth pointing out that Dialectical Marxists surely can't accept Hegel's notion of objectivity, since it would mean they were Objective Idealists. In that case, until we are informed exactly what dialecticians do mean when they say the sort of obscure things about 'objectivity' that Lenin comes out with, little more can be done with their confused ideas.

 

[It is important to remind ourselves that in Materialism and Empiriocriticism, quoted above, Lenin clearly meant by "objectivity" the existence of objects and processes independent of, and external to, the human mind, which doesn't appear to be what Hegel meant by this word (no pun intended); that is, if we could determine what Hegel actually meant by anything he came out with. I have said much more about this in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

 

In response it could be argued that an objective view of nature is one which attempts to picture it as it must be (or as it must have been) without observers, or even as it would be if there were no minds to observe and interact with it, That is, it aims to depict reality as it is in-itself, perhaps even with respect to its constantly changing 'essence'.

 

Of course, this take on 'objectivity' would undermine what Lenin has just said, since "Thing-in-themselves" doesn't mean "Things-as-observed-by-some-mind-or-other":

 

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

Here, Lenin appears to connect objectivity with what we determine it to be when we investigate it 'dialectically' (no pun intended again!). As usual, the pronouncements coming from DM-fans are about as clear and perspicuous as the Nicene Creed. I will leave it to others make what they can of this dialectical muddle.

 

Independently of this, the above use of the word "picture" is itself something of a give-away. Pictures are only such because of the observers who view them. Eliminate the observer and the 'picturing' role of science must go with it. Admittedly, the physical object that constitutes a picture (i.e., in one sense of that word, the canvas, the frame, the paint, and so on) won't immediately vanish if humanity and all sentient life perished (or it won't depending on how that happens!), but the verb "to picture" is for us transitive. Without human input, no picturing can take place. The Moon, for example, isn't a picture for, or of, anything.

 

That is, of course, why we find the 'Ideal Observer' -- and/or the use of terms that imply that actual observers exist somewhere --, cropping up all over the place, supposedly viewing events (even if only as part of some 'thought-experiment' -- such as "Imagine you are travelling on a light beam/at the speed of light"; or "Imagine you live in two-dimensional Flatland!") in many 'objective' theories or descriptions of nature -- or, indeed, their popularisations. On that basis, the term "objective" would mean something like "observer-, but not ideal-observer-independent". In other words, science would be 'objective' only if we conveniently forget that is meant by "observer-independent".

 

Again, it could be argued that the objectivity of science is based on the following sort of counterfactual:

 

R7: Even if there were no observers, light would still bend as it passed between media.

 

Naturally, sentences like R7 won't be controverted at this site (although it is questionable whether the word "objectivity" is of any help, here), but it is worth pointing out that R7 isn't relevant to the doctrine presently being challenged, for if there were no observers then appearances couldn't contradict reality -- for, in that case, there would plainly be no 'appearances' to conflict with anything, nobody to do the 'contradicting', and no one to experience a single 'appearance', to begin with.

 

So, 'objectively' speaking (to adopt this confused mode of expression for the moment) appearances can't contradict "things-in-themselves", even if they were counterfactually depicted this way.

 

It might still be felt that there must be a contradiction between 'commonsense' -- or ordinary language -- and scientific knowledge if the latter is to make any progress. We no longer believe many things that once seemed obvious to 'commonsense', which, of course, means that most of our former erroneous ideas must have been either abandoned or corrected by science at some point.

 

Or so it might ne maintained...

 

However, this latest attempt to rescue the theory that reality contradicts appearances labours under another confusion -- one based on the belief that 'commonsense' and ordinary language are somehow the same. They aren't.

 

[This topic is examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (however, some of that material has been re-posted here). There, it will become apparent that since no one seems to have a clear idea what the term "commonsense" means (as it is used in Philosophy), it is difficult to make much sense of this objection.]

 

It is also worth pointing out that long before the scientific study of nature began, human beings were well aware of the fact that sticks don't bend in water. It hardly took a Newton or a Galileo to uncover that amazing fact! This isn't to say that earlier generations were able to explain this phenomenon, but that plainly has no bearing on the topic in hand.

 

[Several of the other 'corrections' scientific advance has allegedly forced on 'commonsense' will be examined in the next sub-section, and again in other Essays posted at this site.]

 

As we have just seen, this entire topic revolves around the use of two obscure terms-of-art: "objective" and "subjective". Neither of these has a clear meaning or a fixed use -- even for those who think they know what they mean. Of course, this implies that the distinction between these two words must be 'subjective' itself -- again, if, for the moment, we accept as legitimate this obscure way of talking.

 

Be this as it may, if the thesis that 'reality contradicts appearances' actually depends on this obscure pair, then it would prove impossible to determine its veracity until those terms have themselves been given a clear meaning -- and, incidentally a meaning that doesn't itself depend on a single instance of human or observer-motivated input --, for that would render it/them 'subjective', too!

 

[Again, 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' are examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

 

Finally, as noted above, this entire issue reduces discussion to a consideration of contradictory beliefs -– the erroneous nature of which becomes obvious by scientific advance (as opposed to those derived from 'commonsense'). If that is all this means then it, too, won't be controverted here, for there is nothing in the least bit puzzling about false beliefs, still less about contradictory beliefs.

 

Indeed, they are as common as sand on Blackpool beach.30

 

The 'Contradiction' Between Science And 'Commonsense'

 

In view of the above, perhaps we should consider examples that illustrate the alleged conflict between science and 'commonsense' (disparities many think have actually arisen as scientists study of nature -- which, as we have seen, is a favourite topic much cited by DM-fans), in order to try to understand what the supposed 'contradiction' between 'appearance' and 'reality' is meant to be. To that end, consider the following:

 

R8: The Sun appears to rise each morning.

 

R9: It isn't the case that the Sun appears to rise each morning.

 

R10: It isn't the case that the Sun rises each morning.

 

Once more, while R8 and R9 might look contradictory they fail to match the sort of conflict we seek since they are both about appearances. In addition, there is no obvious logical connection between R10 and either one of R8 and R9. That is because the truth or falsehood of R10 has nothing to do with the truth or falsehood of R8 and R9, nor vice versa. In fact, if the earth were stationary, and it was the Sun that moved, things would appear no different than if the reverse were the case. Furthermore, we surely wouldn't conclude that R10 had been contradicted if sunrise couldn't be seen one morning because of, say, fog or a thick of cloud; that is, if it didn't appear to rise. Nor would R8 become false if, in the future, scientists changed their minds about the truth of R10 (or its corollary, the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way round).31

 

Clearly, this recurring problem is the result of a serious difficulty. In fact, it is more like a fatal objection that John Rees and other dialecticians seem to have overlooked: it isn't possible to form a contradiction from a proposition that expresses only matters of fact conjoined with one that reports only appearances, indeed, as we saw earlier.

 

In short, the following schematic sentences:

 

R11: It appears to be the case that p,

 

R12: It is not the case that p,

 

can't form a contradictory pair when interpreted in the manner specified, and then conjoined (where, again, p is a propositional variable).

 

Moreover, unless we subscribe to the view that facts and appearances are intelligent, or perhaps argumentative and belligerent -– that is, that they are capable of disputing among themselves -- it would make no sense to suppose that an appearance could literally contradict (i.e., "gainsay", "speak against") a true proposition. Not only are appearances non-linguistic and non-sentient, but as far as propositions and appearances are concerned, they don't seem to oppose each other 'dialectically' in any obvious way. They don't turn into one another (which is what dialectical opposites are supposed to do, so we are told), nor do they cause/motivate each other to change. The existence of one doesn't imply the existence of the other (unlike the existence of the proletariat, which is implied by, and implies in return, the existence of the capitalist class, so we are told). Hence, as such, this alleged contradiction makes little sense, even in DM-terms.

 

Furthermore, the apparent motion of the Sun is the same today (with respect to sunrise, at least) as it was thousands of years ago. To be sure, we might interpret this particular phenomenon differently today, but that doesn't affect how things still appear to observers. In that case, at best, a DM-'contradiction' here must be figurative if it is to apply in any meaningful way -- either that or it  depends on some sort of terminological re-definition (that has yet to be explained). If this were a genuine DM-'contradiction', something should have changed at least since Copernicus wrote what he did (since 'dialectical contradictions' cause change, so we are also told) Has the apparent motion of the Sun each morning changed in all that time? Not that anyone has noticed. [Email me if you disagree.]

 

Nevertheless, it could be argued that there are aspects of scientific knowledge that do in fact contradict appearances, despite what has been argued above. It is surely true that those who relied on 'commonsense' at one time imagined that the earth was stationary, whereas scientists now know that our planet moves. In which case, the following pair of propositions illustrate the intended contradiction:

 

R13: The earth moves.

 

R14: It is not the case that the earth moves.

 

Even though these two certainly contradict one another they aren't what we are looking for -- since neither of them is about appearances.

 

Moreover, Rees seems to be interested in contradictory pairs where both halves are true (or which relate to 'contradictory' states of affairs that coexist), those involving seemingly 'correct' appearances which are contradicted by genuinely 'objective' underlying realities -– otherwise the alleged superiority of DL over FL would be illusory. That is because, as already noted, both halves of a DM-style contradiction must both be true at once (or, once more, they must relate to 'contradictory' states of affairs that coexist), unlike their less contentious FL-cousins.

 

Unfortunately, however, R14 is false.32

 

Does The Earth Move?

 

It hardly needs pointing out that Rees (and other DM-theorists) wouldn't be interested in pairs of supposedly contradictory propositions if they thought both were false, or that one was true while the other was false -- or even that they both failed to relate to 'contradictory' states of affairs that coexisted. But, because DM-theorists without exception fail to specify clearly what they mean by "contradiction" in such contexts (or, indeed, in any contexts), it is impossible to say whether or not even this supposition is itself correct.

 

It could be objected that modern, post-Copernican science has in fact contradicted Aristotelian and Ptolemaic theories about the immobility of the Earth. Of course, that is itself a controversial interpretation of the relationship between ancient and modern science -– and one that isn't obviously correct. [I will explain why that is so in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

 

[TOR = Theory of Relativity.]

 

Be this as it may, one clear consequence of the TOR is that with a suitable change of reference frame it is possible to picture the Earth as stationary and the Sun (etc.) in motion relative to it. That done, the above alleged 'contradiction' disappears. In which case, the only necessary 'correction' to Aristotelian/Ptolemaic Physics (in this respect) would involve the abandonment of the idea that the Earth is situated in a unique frame of reference -– but science itself can neither confirm nor confute that particular metaphysical (or even theological) assumption.

 

On this topic, Robert Mills had this comment to make:

 

"Another way of stating the principle of equivalence, a way that better reflects its name, is to say that all reference frames, including accelerated reference frames, are equivalent, that the laws of Physics take the same form in any reference frame…. And it is also correct to say that the Copernican view (with the sun at the centre) and the Ptolemaic view (with the earth at the centre) are equally valid and equally consistent!" [Mills (1994), pp.182-83. Spelling altered to conform with UK English.]

 

It is worth recalling that the late Professor Mills was co-inventor of Yang-Mills Theory in Gauge Quantum Mechanics, and was hence no scientific novice.

 

Add to that what noted Astronomer, Fred Hoyle, had to say:

 

"Instead of adding further support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions the Einstein theory goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful physical sense...." [Hoyle (1973), pp.78-79. Paragraphs merged.]

 

"We now know that the difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance. But such an understanding had to await Einstein's theory of gravitation in order to be fully clarified." [Hoyle (1975), p.416.]

 

Similarly, Nobel Laureate Max Born commented as follows:

 

"Thus from Einstein's point of view Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right. What point of view is chosen is a matter of expediency. For the mechanics of the planetary system the view of Copernicus is certainly the more convenient. But it is meaningless to call the gravitational fields that occur when a different system of reference is chosen 'fictitious' in contrast with the 'real' fields produced by near masses: it is just as meaningless as the question of the 'real' length of a rod...in the special theory of relativity. A gravitational field is neither 'real' nor 'fictitious' in itself. It has no meaning at all independent of the choice of coordinates, just as in the case of the length of a rod." [Born (1965), p.345. I owe this reference to Rosser (1967).]

 

However, this particular idea pre-dates the TOR; as Robert DiSalle notes (who also provides the background to these theoretical developments), it goes back at least to Leibniz:

 

"The term 'reference frame' was coined in the 19th century, but it has a long prehistory, beginning, perhaps, with the emergence of the Copernican theory. The significant point was not the replacement of the earth by the sun as the centre of all motion in the universe, but the recognition of both the earth and the sun as merely possible points of view from which the motions of the celestial bodies may be described. This implied that the basic task of Ptolemaic astronomy -- to represent the planetary motions by combinations of circular motions -- could take any point to be fixed, without sacrificing predictive power. Therefore, as Copernicus suggested in the opening arguments of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, the choice of any particular point required some justification on grounds other than mere successful astronomical prediction. The most persuasive grounds, seemingly, were physical: we don't perceive the physical effects that we would expect the earth's motion to produce. Copernicus himself noted, however, in reply, that we can indeed undergo motions that are physically imperceptible, as on a smoothly moving ship.... At least in some circumstances, we can easily treat our moving point of view as if it were at rest.

 

"As the basic programme of Ptolemy and Copernicus gave way to that of early classical mechanics as developed by Galileo, this equivalence of points of view was made more precise and explicit. Galileo was unable to present a decisive argument for the motion of the earth around the sun. He demonstrated, however, that the Copernican view does not contradict our experience of a seemingly stable earth. He accomplished this through a principle that, in the precise form that it takes in Newtonian mechanics, has become known as the 'principle of Galilean relativity': mechanical experiments will have the same results in a system in uniform motion that they have in a system at rest. Arguments against the motion of the earth had typically appealed to experimental evidence -- e.g., that a stone dropped from a tower falls to the base of the tower, instead of being left behind as the earth rotates during its fall. But Galileo argued persuasively that such experiments would happen just as they do whether the earth were moving or not, provided that the motion is sufficiently uniform.... Galileo's account of this was not precisely the principle that we call 'Galilean relativity'; he seems to have thought that a system in uniform circular motion, such as a frame at rest on the rotating earth, would be indistinguishable from a frame truly at rest. The principle was named in his honour because he had grasped the underlying idea of dynamical equivalence: he understood the composition of motion, and understood how individual motions of bodies within a system -- such as the fall of a stone from a tower -- are composed with the motion of the system as a whole. This principle of composition, combined with the idea that bodies maintain their uniform motion, formed the basis for the idea of dynamically indistinguishable frames of reference....

 

"Leibniz, later, articulated a more general 'equipollence of hypotheses': in any system of interacting bodies, any hypothesis that any particular body is at rest is equivalent to any other. Therefore neither Copernicus' nor Ptolemy's view can be true -- though one may be judged simpler than the other -- because both are merely possible hypothetical interpretations of the same relative motions. This principle clearly defines (what we would call) a set of reference frames. They differ in their arbitrary choices of a resting point or origin, but agree on the relative positions of bodies at any moment and their changing relative distances through time...." [DiSalle (2020). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphasis in the original; spelling modified to agree with UK English. Link added.]

 

[Although, DiSalle also points out that Leibniz's equivalence principle was actually inconsistent with his view of motion. It took the TOR to sort that conundrum out.]

 

Of course, as Leibniz argued, it could always be claimed that Copernican theory is simpler than the Ptolemaic system, but until we receive a clear sign that nature works in accordance with our notion of simplicity (or cares a fig about it), that response won't wash.

 

Here is physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder:

 

"They were so sure, they bet billions on it. For decades physicists told us they knew where the next discoveries were waiting. They built accelerators, shot satellites into space, and planted detectors in underground mines. The world prepared to ramp up the physics envy. But where physicists expected a breakthrough, the ground wouldn't give. The experiments didn't reveal anything new. What failed physicists wasn't their math; it was their choice of math. They believed that Mother Nature was elegant, simple, and kind about providing clues. They thought they could hear her whisper when they were talking to themselves. Now Nature spoke, and she said nothing, loud and clear." [Hossenfelder (2018), p.vi. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis added.]

 

This is quite apart from the fact that 'simplicity' itself is impossible to define in non-question-begging terms. For example, which is the simpler of these two formulae?

 

(1) θ = Ae-kt

 

(2) θ = At2 + Bt + C

 

Plainly, (2) is algebraically 'simpler', but (1) is 'simpler' if we judge simplicity on the basis of the number of terms employed. Naturally, the problem deciding which 'law' (when expressed mathematically, for example) is 'simpler' becomes all the more difficult as the complexity level rises. [On this, see Losee (2001), pp.228-29.]

 

Of course, the above interpretation of the relation between the Copernican and the Ptolemaic systems suffers from the not inconsiderable problem of trying to explain how, if we fix the frame of reference so that the Earth is stationary while the rest of the heavens revolve around it, the 'fixed stars' manage to travel quite so far and so fast. Indeed, if they complete one revolution per day (as they must given this view), then they will have to travel many times faster than the speed of light, as the stars and galaxies many billions of light years distant do a complete circuit in 24 hours. [Naturally, that assumes that the 'fixed stars' are thousands, millions or billions of light years away.]

 

Even more puzzling still: if any point anywhere can be taken as the centre of a stationary frame of reference and everything else moves in relation to it, then, for example, when someone sets off for a walk, and they are considered stationary while the rest of the world moves past them (again, on this view), one might very well wonder why every other object, and especially every other human being, fails to register the acceleration that they must undergo to accommodate that individual's ambulatory proclivities. Or, indeed, why water in nearby canals, rivers or lakes doesn't slosh about. Why drinks in cups or glasses don't spill when anyone 'gets up' to 'leave' a bar. Why houses or flats don't crumble to the ground as if hit by an earthquake whenever anyone sets off on a sprint. And so on...

 

It won't do at this point to complain that the above aren't inertial frames of reference but involve accelerated (i.e., non-inertial) frames of reference. The fact that not all of the above experience accelerations (and the 'inertial forces' associated with them) tells us which object(s) have changed their motion and which haven't.

 

However, let is assume that the relative motion between the ground and someone who sets off for a walk is zero before that change in motion, and after this individual sets off it is a steady, not now accelerating, 4 km/hr. But, after she sets off, the ground isn't moving any faster relative to that individual (no matter what the mathematics of relative motion might tell us -- the ground hasn't accelerated!), that individual is moving 4 km/hr faster relative to the ground than before. In which case, even though a mathematical description of the relative velocities here can't discriminate between these two scenarios (i.e., the question concerning which one, the earth or the walker, is now moving faster relative to the other than they were before), a physical description, and more importantly our experience of the world, most certainly can distinguish between them. If we were to argue that the ground is now actually moving 4 km/hr faster relative to the walker than it was before, then we would be forced to conclude that the earth (not the walker) must have undergone an acceleration. But that is true of only one of these two objects, the walker herself. That is, of course, just a roundabout way of saying that we don't live in a mathematical universe, or that the world we live and experience in isn't a mathematical object.

 

Indeed, if we were to press these considerations much further, they could stand as an effective 'common sense' refutation of a core principle of Relativity Theory. Well, we should perhaps leave such puzzles to the experts to sort out...

 

[I posted this conundrum on a physics discussion board a few years ago, but the answers I received were incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't think the universe is a mathematical object of some sort. (I certainly failed to understand them, and I have a mathematics degree!) Indeed, the ensuing discussion showed that if you know enough technical jargon, you can make anything appear to work (rather like the word salads bandied about in Medieval Theology -- anyone who has read enough of that material will know what I mean). They also illustrate how much disagreement there is among physicists over such basic issues as space, time and motion (indeed, as noted in Essay Five)! A perusal of any advanced physics discussion board will amply confirm this, too. For example, I have been asking Professors of Physics on Quora for the last four years to explain what energy is; they all either ignore the question or change the subject pretty quickly!]

 

Having said that, it is worth pointing out that in relation to the relative motion of heavenly bodies, the above local considerations don't apply (except, maybe, the one related to the superluminal velocity of the orbiting stars). This might illustrate the fact that a mathematical theory could appear successful when it is applied to the entire universe, and might even make very accurate predictions, but when it comes to its application to the world as we know it, or as we experience it locally, it might not seem quite so sensible -- or even believable.

 

In which case, the TOR makes very poor predictions about our experience of the everyday world. [I will say much more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Two. In the meantime on this topic, readers might like to watch this video which shows that General Relativity implies that, contrary to appearances, the earth rises to meet a 'falling body', the body itself does not move! Make of that what you will.]

 

Nevertheless, even if this were an accurate depiction of the relation between these two theories, it would still fail to be of much use to DM-fans -– that is, not unless they abandon the requirement that DM-'contradictions' should both be true (or that they must 'co-exist'). But, as noted earlier, both sets of propositions (concerning the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems) can't be true at once, given their commitment to the superiority of the latter system over the former. And should DM-fans decide that the Equivalence Principle vindicates their approach (in that it allows us to regard both systems as equally valid), that would be no help, either. That is because this principle merely says that the validity of each depends on the frame of reference chosen, which means that when one frame is chosen, one option is left by the wayside (until a new frame is chosen). Dialecticians certainly can't appeal to the alleged contradiction between 'appearance' and 'reality' here, since there is no 'reality' for anything to contradict until a reference frame has been chosen -- which, of course, makes each separate system a creature of convention, and not the least bit 'objective'. It is also worth recalling that there aren't just two competing reference frames up for grabs here; any point in space (and, plainly, there are countless septillions of these) is equally valid.

 

It might, however, be interesting to see whether or not any DM-fans who accept the Equivalence Principle are brave enough to countenance the rather startling consequences that follow from it (several of which were outlined above), as well as their opposites. Would they, therefore, be happy to accept that the stars both (really) travel many times faster than the speed of light and that they don't, at the same time? Or that when dialectician, D(1), say, sets off for a demonstration she in fact remains stationary and the demonstration actually comes to her (without those in the demonstration noticing the subsequent acceleration as D(1) 'sets off' from home, in the way they might feel such forces when sat in a car as it accelerates, or brakes), and it doesn't.

 

Or, even this puzzling conundrum: when comrade D(1) (still the centre of a frame of reference) dives into a swimming pool she is met with a wall of water accelerating upwards to meet her, but without any distortion to its shape. That is, every part of the entire body of water in the pool must accelerate upwards at the same time and the same rate, behaving like a perfectly rigid solid, not a liquid. Must DM-fans accept that scenario and its opposite?

 

Returning to saner issues: as I pointed out above (and in more detail in Essay Five), the only 'contradiction' that can be cobbled together in this case would involve an undischarged ambiguity:

 

A1: The Earth moves.

 

A2: The Earth does not move.

 

But, this apparent 'contradiction' would vanish as soon as the following ambiguity was resolved:

 

A3: In Inertial Frame, IF(1), the Earth moves.

 

A4: In Inertial Frame, IF(2), the Earth does not move.

 

But, this is no more a contradiction than the following example would be (one that will be used again below):

 

R15: The strikers moved.

 

R16: It is not the case that the strikers moved.

 

This pair certainly looks contradictory (especially if both relate to the same strikers at the same moment, and thus both are held true), but that would cease to be the case when it was revealed that the said strikers were sat on a train that was travelling at 80 miles per hour. On the train, these militants could be sat perfectly still, but to an observer on a platform they would appear to be moving at speed. Since all motion is relative to an inertial frame, the beliefs motivated by one set of observations would merely appear to contradict those motivated by another. But, as soon as different frames of reference are taken into account, the 'contradiction' disappears.

 

[DM-fans might be tempted to respond that the above sort of contradiction isn't of the type they are interested in; they focus on 'dialectical contradictions'. I have dealt with objections like this in Essays Five and Eight Parts One, Two and Three, where we will see that dialecticians themselves haven't a clue what a 'dialectical contradiction' is -- or if they have, they have kept that secret to themselves remarkably well for over 150 years.]

 

However, if both Aristotelian and Ptolemaic astronomies are now regarded by DM-theorists as representing 'appearances' (or, perhaps, expressing a 'commonsense view' of the universe), and they still hold either or both to be true, or 'partially/relatively true' -- even if they are 'contradicted' by 'reality' -- then it seems that they must also be prepared to accept the truth, or 'partial/relative truth', of any number of other erroneous or misguided theories. And if that is so, they must also be prepared to accept the truth, or 'partial/relative truth', of what were once viewed as 'commonsense' ideas –- such as, say, the ancient belief that a woman who sees a hare will give birth to a child with a hare-lip. Or, the more modern 'urban myth' that some women can, and have given birth to live rabbits. [Pickover (2000).] It seems they would have to accept the truth (or 'relative truth') of fables like these and their negations!

 

If we are meant to countenance DM-'contradictions' where both halves are 'true' (or they represent coexistent 'contradictory' states of affairs), alongside the odd idea that there is some truth even in the most outlandish of theories (perhaps as knowledge 'spirals' in on 'absolute truth' -- that topic has been covered in more detail in Essay Eleven Part One), then the above conclusions seem unavoidable.

 

Here, for example, is Cornforth:

 

"Just as truths are for the most part only approximate and contain the possibility of being converted into untruths, so are many errors found not to be absolute falsehoods but to contain a germ of truth.... We should recognise, then, that certain erroneous views, including idealist views, could represent, in their time, a contribution to truth -- since they were, perhaps, the only ways in which certain truths could first begin to come to expression...." [Cornforth (1963), pp.138-39. Bold emphasis added. Paragraphs merged.]

 

But, what is remotely true about such fanciful ideas? What, for example, was even vaguely correct about the ancient idea that angels push the planets along in their orbit around the earth? Or, the more recent dogma that AIDS is a punishment from 'God'? If there is nothing true in outdated or offensive theories or 'propositions' such as these (or, those listed here, for example), then a DM-'contradiction' can't be cobbled-together from their defective parts -- that is, should we ever be told what a 'dialectical contradiction' actually is!

 

[Of course, any dialecticians who are tempted to cling to unvarnished Hegelianism a little too enthusiastically (upside down or 'the right way up') will have to adopt a radically different view of truth (i.e., they will regard it as the degree of conformity -- or lack of it -- between an object and its 'concept'). But, as we saw in Part One of this Essay, that 'theory of truth' only works if an ancient syntactical confusion -- i.e., the belief that concepts can be treated as objects, or the Proper Names thereof -- is itself correct, and hence that such 'objects' can be put in some sort of relation with another 'object'. (More on this in Essay Twelve (when it is published in full). See also, here and here.)]

 

On the other hand, if an antiquated or obsolete theory is to be rejected because it is based on 'appearances', not 'reality', then DM-style 'contradictions' couldn't feature in it anywhere, after all. That is because we would have alleged truths (those supposedly depicting 'reality') facing putative falsehoods (those allegedly encapsulating 'commonsense', ancient, or obsolete views of, or ideas about, 'reality') -– but never two truths, still less two 'partial truths' (i.e., those belonging to an outmoded conception confronting the less 'partially-true' theories found in more recent scientific theories of 'reality', or aspects of it).

 

Howsoever these options are reshuffled there appear to be no winning cards in any of the hands DM-theorists have dealt, or could have dealt, themselves.

 

This means that we still don't have a DM-'contradiction', even in this relatively clear case. Nor are we ever likely to get one --, and that is so for the reasons set out above.

 

Even if a case could be made that supported the view that scientific propositions contradict indicative sentences that 'give expression to appearances', that still wouldn't achieve all that dialecticians seem to require. That is because (as argued at length in Essay Five) propositions that might look contradictory -- and which are both thought to be true -– would normally be disambiguated, or given a context against which they might be understood, which would resolve the apparent contradiction.

 

And this latest assertion is no mere 'bourgeois' prejudice or diktat. Consider the following example, again, which is analogous to the previous pair:

 

R15: The strikers moved.

 

R16: It is not the case that the strikers moved.

 

As we saw earlier, when a frame of reference is supplied the 'contradiction' here disappears.

 

And it won't do to complain about the trite nature of R15 and R16 --, not, that is, unless and until DM-theorists tell us what they mean by the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction". [Since this topic is dealt with more fully in Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three, no more will be said about it here.]

 

All this is quite apart from the fact that DM-texts themselves contain little other than trite examples -- boiling water, contradictory seeds, cooks who add too much salt to soup, characters who speak "prose all their lives", the differential fighting ability of Mamelukes, "cone bearings", "Yea, Yea"/"Nay, Nay", etc., etc.

 

DM is Mickey Mouse Science, par excellence, so DM-fans have no room to point their ideologically-compromised fingers at yours truly..

 

Just as the above is quite apart from the fact that relative motion is hardly a "trite" topic in physics.

 

As seems clear, apparent 'contradictions' aren't presented to us by nature and society totally 'naked', as it were. They arise either from ambiguities inherent in language, or from a lack of clarity (etc.) in the original 'problem' -- or so it has been argued in Essay Five. In the above case (i.e., R15 and R16), the 'contradiction' plainly arose because of an unacknowledged change of reference frame.

 

While this would make such 'contradictions' sensitive to the choice of reference frame, it wouldn't automatically imply they were dependent on 'contradictory states of affairs' or 'contradictory processes' in 'reality' (whatever that means). However, that was certainly not the point DM-theorists wanted to make about the 'contradictions' that interest them. And yet, those mentioned above were either artefacts of a conventionalised choice of reference frame or they were a direct consequence of confused thinking. They were certainly not based on 'reality' (again, whatever that means).33

 

Science Can't Undermine Common Sense

 

[The following material used to appear in Note 33.]

 

Ordinary Language Conflated With Common Sense

 

Philosophers and scientists often confuse ordinary language with 'commonsense'. Part of the idea here seems to be that the former 'contains' or 'expresses' the latter. With respect to the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality, this was partly motivated, for instance, by early modern theories that the Earth isn't sat motionless at the centre of the Universe, as we have just seen. These days those who conflate the vernacular with  'commonsense' have in mind the supposed link between what many have termed "folk" theories of nature (e.g., that the Earth is stationary while the Sun moves) -- or those that apply to our psychological makeup --, and everyday language. Given this approach to 'commonsense', it would seem incongruous, mistaken or misguided to use the word "sunrise" when the Sun doesn't actually rise. This is supposed to show that ordinary language still retains concepts based on, or derived from, defunct metaphysical, religious or quasi-scientific beliefs and theories, which in turn is taken to mean that the vernacular is defective, at least in areas that involve science, psychology and philosophy.

 

[It is worth pointing out that I restrict the word "commonsense" to its theoretical and philosophical use, and the term "common sense" to its ordinary employment -- as in, for example, "Use your common sense. Only an idiot will put their hand in a lion's cage!" What links, if any, there are between the two phrases I will leave to one side for now.]

 

However, even if this seeming incongruity actually had anything to do with common sense, it would still fail to show that the vernacular depends upon or encapsulates outmoded scientific or metaphysical theories. This can be seen from the fact that all of us (scientists included) still employ terms like "sunrise" despite our assenting to contemporary theories of the Universe. We aren't to suppose that when scientists, for example, use the word "sunrise" they do so ironically, duplicitously, or thoughtlessly.

 

Moreover, unless scientists and philosophers used and already understood terms taken from ordinary language, they could scarcely begin to correct common sense -– always assuming that it needed correcting, or even that this is what scientists or philosophers in fact do, or wished to do.

 

[On this topic, see Baz (2012), Button, et al (1995), Cowley (1991), Cook (1979, 1980), Ebersole (1967, 1979a, 1979b), Hacker (1982a, 1982b, 1987), Hallett (2008), Hanfling (1984, 1989, 2000), Ryle (1960), Macdonald (1938), Stebbing (1958) and Stroud (2000). This issue will be discussed in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Two. Since writing this, I have come across a somewhat similar approach to the line adopted here in Frank (1950), Chapter Seven.]

 

However, a much more revealing fact about ordinary language -– and one easily missed -- is that we can readily form the negations of sentences that contain allegedly obsolete notions (like the daily ascent of the Sun). Consider, for instance, the following hackneyed example (quoted earlier):

 

"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order to reveal the reality that is disguised within." [Quoted from here.]

 

This yields the following pair of propositions:

 

S1: The Sun rises in the morning.

 

S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises in the morning.

 

First of all, the fact that we can form the negation of every indicative empirical sentence capable of being written or uttered (in every language on the planet that has the relevant vocabulary) demonstrates that the vernacular is neither a theory nor is it dependent upon one. That is because -- to use another argument I owe to Peter Geach -- no viable theory could countenance the negation of all its empirical propositions, as ordinary language readily does.

 

Naturally, this claim is somewhat controversial -- but, only for those intent on depreciating or denigrating ordinary language!

 

[Ordinary language will be defended in depth in Essay Twelve Part Seven; some of that material has already been published here.]

 

Second, scientific theories extend, develop and even replace ordinary words, using typographically similar terms with new meanings (such as "time", "space", "solid", etc.), the meaning of which has been modified by analogy and metaphor (etc.). In addition, scientists introduce technical terms not found in the vernacular at that time, but which might later appear in ordinary speech, such as "electricity" -- or "2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine", which hasn't. But, unless these revisions and innovations had been linked to ordinary language and practice, at some point, at some level, in some way, their meaning would be completely unclear if not entirely indeterminate. In turn that would mean any theories that used them would thereby be rendered incomprehensible. Which is, of course, part of the reason why several scientists tell us, for instance, that no one understands Quantum Mechanics:

 

"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory can't possibly have understood it." Niels Bohr

 

"If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it." John Wheeler

 

"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense." Roger Penrose

 

"There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics…. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'but how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that." [Feynman (1992), p.129. Bold emphases added.]

 

 

Video One: "Nobody Understands Quantum Mechanics"

 

Clued-in physicists already seem to be aware that the language they use presents, or even generates, problems. Here, for example, is leading Physicist David Peat:

 

"It hasn't been a great couple of years for theoretical physics. Books such as Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong embody the frustration felt across the field that string theory, the brightest hope for formulating a theory that would explain the universe in one beautiful equation, has been getting nowhere. It's quite a comedown from the late 1980s and 1990s, when a grand unified theory seemed just around the corner and physicists believed they would soon, to use Stephen Hawking's words, 'know the mind of God'. New Scientist even ran an article called 'The end of physics'.

 

"So what went wrong? Why are physicists finding it so hard to make that final step? I believe part of the answer was hinted at by the great physicist Niels Bohr, when he wrote: 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out about nature. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.'

 

"At first sight that seems strange. What has language got to do with it? After all, we see physics as about solving equations relating to facts about the world -- predicting a comet's path, or working out how fast heat flows along an iron bar. The language we choose to convey question or answer is not supposed to fundamentally affect the nature of the result.

 

"Nonetheless, that assumption started to unravel one night in the spring of 1925, when the young Werner Heisenberg worked out the basic equations of what became known as quantum mechanics. One of the immediate consequences of these equations was that they did not permit us to know with total accuracy both the position and the velocity of an electron: there would always be a degree of irreducible uncertainty in these two values.

 

"Heisenberg needed an explanation for this. He reasoned thus: suppose a very delicate (hypothetical) microscope is used to observe the electron, one so refined that it uses only a single photon of energy to make its measurement. First it measures the electron's position, then it uses a second photon to measure the speed, or velocity. But in making this latter observation, the second photon has imparted a little kick to the electron and in the process has shifted its position. Try to measure the position again and we disturb the velocity. Uncertainty arises, Heisenberg argued, because every time we observe the universe we disturb its intrinsic properties.

 

"However, when Heisenberg showed his results to Bohr, his mentor, he had the ground cut from under his feet. Bohr argued that Heisenberg had made the unwarranted assumption that an electron is like a billiard ball in that it has a 'position' and possesses a 'speed'. These are classical notions, said Bohr, and do not make sense at the quantum level. The electron does not necessarily have an intrinsic position or speed, or even a particular path. Rather, when we try to make measurements, quantum nature replies in a way we interpret using these familiar concepts.

 

"This is where language comes in. While Heisenberg argued that 'the meaning of quantum theory is in the equations', Bohr pointed out that physicists still have to stand around the blackboard and discuss them in German, French or English. Whatever the language, it contains deep assumptions about space, time and causality -- assumptions that do not apply to the quantum world. Hence, wrote Bohr, 'we are suspended in language such that we don't know what is up and what is down'. Trying to talk about quantum reality generates only confusion and paradox.

 

"Unfortunately Bohr's arguments are often put aside today as some physicists discuss ever more elaborate mathematics, believing their theories to truly reflect subatomic reality. I remember a conversation with string theorist Michael Green a few years after he and John Schwartz published a paper in 1984 that was instrumental in making string theory mainstream. Green remarked that when Einstein was formulating the theory of relativity he had thought deeply about the philosophical problems involved, such as the nature of the categories of space and time. Many of the great physicists of Einstein's generation read deeply in philosophy.

 

"In contrast, Green felt, string theorists had come up with a mathematical formulation that did not have the same deep underpinning and philosophical inevitability. Although superstrings were for a time an exciting new approach, they did not break conceptual boundaries in the way that the findings of Bohr, Heisenberg and Einstein had done.

 

"The American quantum theorist David Bohm embraced Bohr's views on language, believing that at the root of Green's problem is the structure of the languages we speak. European languages, he noted, perfectly mirror the classical world of Newtonian physics. When we say 'the cat chases the mouse' we are dealing with well-defined objects (nouns), which are connected via verbs. Likewise, classical physics deals with objects that are well located in space and time, which interact via forces and fields. But if the world doesn't work the way our language does, advances are inevitably hindered.

 

"Bohm pointed out that quantum effects are much more process-based, so to describe them accurately requires a process-based language rich in verbs, and in which nouns play only a secondary role....

 

"Physics as we know it is about equations and quantitative measurement. But what these numbers and symbols really mean is a different, more subtle matter. In interpreting the equations we must remember the limitations language places on how we can think about the world...." [Peat (2008), pp.41-43. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Now, I don't want to suggest that I agree with the above author's comments about the nature of language (or even about scientific language!), but they certainly indicate that (some) leading scientists themselves are aware there is a problem.

 

[To be sure, Peat concurs with Bohm when he suggests that we need to learn from Native American languages, which seem to have rather odd grammars; but it is to be wondered how a culture that has produced no science or technology of any note has much to teach one that has. Again, this line of defence will be pursued in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, to be published sometime in 2025. Nor is it at all clear what it means to say that language contains certain assumptions. In fact, as this section seeks to show, it can't. However, it is important to add that when I say Native American culture has produced "no science or technology of any note" I don't mean to disparage, demean or depreciate that culture. Plainly, Native Americans wouldn't have survived had they not developed any scientific ideas or any technology. Plainly they did. What I am alluding to is the vastly superior scientific knowledge and technology the development of capitalism has enabled -- even if the class war has greatly distorted and abused both -- upon which the very possibility of socialism and human emancipation are predicated.]

 

Third, returning to the case in point, the view defended here means that the word "sunrise" is no more problematic than "nightfall" and "daybreak" are. No one imagines that the use of "nightfall" commits anyone to a "folk theory" of the susceptibilities of darkness to the law of gravity, or that "daybreak" suggests mornings are brittle. Or, indeed, that their use reflects a defunct or obsolete scientific theory, or even that they encapsulate common sense. Consider the word "solstice" (from the Latin solstitium -- meaning "point at which the sun seems to stand still"). Even though this word is an echo of the old Geocentric Theory of the solar system, no one thinks that when Astronomers use this word they are secretly, or inadvertently, committed to defunct Ptolemaic Theory.

 

Indeed, and to change the example, no one (certainly no scientist) believes that when someone catches the 'flu (or influenza) there is some sort of cosmic influence at work, even though, as matter of fact, the original use of this word (from the medieval Latin, influentia) was based on an ancient, mystical theory about there being just such a stellar influence. Still less would anyone be willing to accept the idea that when someone is described as "hysterical" this implies they have a wandering womb (even though that word was originally connected with an obsolete scientific theory about wandering wombs -- taken from the Greek, hysteria or 'womb', and from which we get "hysterectomy"). Nor do psychologists these days believe that "lunatics" are sensitive to phases of the Moon, or even that phlegmatic individuals have a superabundance of phlegm, and so on. In fact, if the term "Big Bang" were to be understood as unsympathetically as critics of common sense interpret "sunrise", we would be committed to the view that the origin of the Universe was not only rather loud, it had been witnessed by some form of sentient life -- not to mention the idea that sound can travel across a vacuum!

 

[On "influenza", type that word into the search box here. On hysteria, see here and here. Of course, since the 'Big Bang' is also supposed to be the origin of space and time, there was nowhere for the sound, if there had been any, to travel.]

 

On "lunacy", we read this from the BBC:

 

"In folklore, a full moon is associated with insanity -- hence the word lunacy -- werewolves and all manner of unpleasant happenings. However, when psychologists and statisticians have looked into the matter, a lunar influence on the human brain and behaviour remains elusive. Overwhelmingly they have failed to discover a correlation between the timing of a full moon and events such as assaults, arrests, suicides, calls to crisis centres, psychiatric admissions, poisonings and vehicle accidents.

 

"Eric Chudler, who has compiled a long list of the research says: 'Most of the data -- and there have been many studies -- find that there is not an association between the phase of the moon and any of those abnormal behaviours.' Many believers of the full moon myth work in law enforcement and health professions. Police officers and hospital staff frequently witness horrific and upsetting events. Mr Chudler suggests that when these traumatic things happen, workers are much more likely to notice a full moon shining in the sky than they are to register more modest half or quarter moons. Consequently, they only make a connection with accidents or crimes when the moon is at its most obvious and symbolically significant." [Quoted from here. Several paragraphs merged; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]

 

But, that doesn't stop ordinary speakers using the words "lunacy" and "lunatic" (often colloquialised as the 'politically incorrect', "loony"), and they do this without (in general) being aware of the alleged connection between the phases of the Moon and madness, etc.

 

In addition, it is worth adding that there are many scientific terms in use today that are themselves derived from what are unrelated, or even obsolete, uses of language. For example: "Oxygen" (derived from the original Greek meaning "acid"); "Quark" (coined by Murray Gell-Mann from Finnegans Wake -- are Quarks really "coloured"?); "Law" ("layer, measure, stroke", derived from Jurisprudence); "Atom" (meaning "indivisible"); "Acid" (meaning "of the taste of vinegar", "sour" or "sharp to the taste"); "Alkali" (Arabic, "the ashes of a plant"); "Algebra" (Arabic, "reunion of the broken parts", or "the reduction"); "Alcohol" (Arabic, al-kuhul, "powdered antimony", or eye-makeup), "Flow" (Old High German, flouwen, "to rinse"); "Force" (Latin, "strength, courage, fortitude; violence, power, compulsion"); "Root", used in Mathematics (part of a plant); "Matrix" also used in mathematics (from the Latin for "mother" or "womb"); "Vector" (again from the Latin, vehere, "to carry"); "Missing Link" (from The Great Chain of Being), "Planet" (late Latin, planeta, or "wanderer"), "vaccine" (from vacca, cow), "inoculate" (from the Latin, inoculatus, "to graft a bud" into a tree or shrub), "electricity" comes from the Greek word for amber -- ἤλεκτρον -- "electron", but no one supposes it still carries that connotation.

 

[Concerning The Great Chain of Being, see Lovejoy (1964). On this topic in general, see Crosland (2006) and Danziger (1997).]

 

Moreover, the idea that words are capable of encapsulating ancient beliefs or defunct theories implies that 'meanings' are able to accompany or follow words down the centuries as if they were glued to them by a 'semantic adhesive' of some sort. This would further imply that when a word had gained a specific meaning it will always connote the same no matter when it was subsequently used or for what it was used (even millennia down the line). But, that would also imply words were quasi-intelligent beings with 'memories', whose denotations and connotations are hard-wired into these 'memories' and can't be altered or modified by subsequent users or uses.

 

[It would be decidedly odd to see DM-fans accept the theory that there are such unchanging meanings hard-wired into certain words. This topic was covered in Part One, here.]

 

Howsoever these metaphors are interpreted they clearly imply that users will have the meanings of words dictated to them by those words themselves, or even that each user somehow 'catches' the meaning of these words when young, rather like the way that they might pick up a virus from a sibling, friend or carer.

 

[The recent infatuation with Richard Dawkins's 'memes' also trades on this fetishised myth. On the weakness of this aspect of Dawkins's 'theory, see McGrath (2005). See also Essay Thirteen Part Three, here. (Any who object to my referencing McGrath's book, which defends theism should also point a few fingers at DM-fans who look to Hegel who had a similar aim in mind. Of course, I am only recommending McGrath's arguments directed against 'memes', which seem to me pretty conclusive, not his Theology!)]

 

In this instance, something analogous to a foreign body will have taken over a given speaker, controlling her brain and governing her speech. Learning a language would be more like contracting a disease, or even like being 'possessed', rather than it being a socially-acquired skill. Meaning in language wouldn't be a function of communal life and social interaction, or even the material existence of human beings. It would be a function of the social life of words and their disembodied 'meanings'. Hence, the claim that words still carry their ancient or obsolete meanings about with them would amount to their fetishisation, in effect, humanising symbols while de-humanising humans. So, piled on top of the alienation inflicted on humanity by class-divided society would be the alienation of their control over language. Language and meaning would be the creation of extra-human forces, mirroring the tale we are told in and by certain mythologies that language and meaning were bestowed on humanity by the 'gods'/'God'. [On this novel form of linguistic fetishisation, see also here.]

 

Admittedly, TAR's general point appears to be that while science presents us with an 'objective' view of the world, ordinary 'commonsense' operates at the level of 'subjective appearance'.

 

"But Hegel is also difficult for reasons that are not the result of character and circumstance. His theories use terms and concepts that are unfamiliar because they go beyond the understanding of which everyday thought is capable. Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that.' And, within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes…. It is the search to resolve…contradictions that pushes thought past commonsense definitions which see only separate stable entities." [Rees (1998), pp.45, 50.]

 

"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Ibid., p.187.]

 

In the above passage Rees argues that while 'commonsense' might be alright in its own legitimate sphere, it is nevertheless inadequate when applied in more technical areas or in circumstances that involve change.

 

Here are my comments (taken from Essay Four Part One) about the first of the above two passages of Rees's (slightly edited):

 

Concerning the alleged limitations of ordinary language, John Rees expressed himself as follows:

 

"Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that'. And, within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes." [Rees (1998), p.45.]

 

The problem with this passage is that it gets things completely the wrong way round. It is in fact our use of ordinary language that enables us to speak about change, movement and development. Complex philosophical jargon (especially terminology invented by Hegel) is completely useless in this regard, since it is wooden, static and of indeterminate meaning, despite what Rees asserts.

 

[Any who think differently are invited to reveal precisely which set of Hegelian terms is able do what the words listed below (or their equivalent in German) already achieve for us, only better.]

 

As is well-known (at least by Marxists), human beings managed to progress because of their interaction with nature, later constrained by the class war and the development of the forces of and relations of production. In which case, ordinary language -- the result of collective labour -- couldn't fail to have invented a array of words with the logical and semantic multiplicity that allowed its users to speak about changes of almost limitless complexity, speed and duration.

 

This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed. Here is a greatly shortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modern English, but omitting simple and complex tensed participles and auxiliary verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded complexity, rapidity, or scope:

 

Vary, alter, adjust, adapt, amend, make, produce, revise, rework, advise, administer, allocate, improve, enhance, deteriorate, depreciate, edit, bend, straighten, weave, merge, dig, plough, cultivate, sow, reap, twist, curl, turn, tighten, fasten, loosen, relax, ease, tense up, slacken, fine tune, bind, wrap, pluck, carve, rip, tear, mend, perforate, repair, puncture, renovate, restore, damage, impair, scratch, diagnose, mutate, metamorphose, transmute, sharpen, hone, modify, modulate, develop, upgrade, appear, disappear, expand, contract, constrict, constrain, shrivel, widen, lock, unlock, swell, flow, glide, ring, differentiate, integrate, multiply, divide, add, subtract, simplify, complicate, partition, unite, amalgamate, fuse, mingle, disseminate, connect, entwine, unravel, link, brake, decelerate, accelerate, fast, slow, swift, rapid, hasty, protracted, lingering, brief, heat up, melt, freeze, harden, cool down, flash, shine, glow, drip, bounce, cascade, drop, pick up, fade, darken, wind, unwind, meander, peel, scrape, graze, file, scour, dislodge, is, was, will be, will have been, had, will have had, went, go, going, gone, return, lost, age, flood, swamp, overflow, precipitate, percolate, seep, tumble, plunge, dive, float, sink, plummet, mix, separate, cut, chop, crush, grind, shred, slice, dice, saw, sew, knit, spread, coalesce, congeal, fall, climb, rise, ascend, descend, slide, slip, roll, spin, revolve, circulate, bounce, oscillate, undulate, rotate, wave, splash, conjure, quick, quickly, slowly, instantaneously, suddenly, gradually, rapidly, briskly, hurriedly, absolutely, lively, hastily, inadvertently, accidentally,  carelessly, really, energetically, lethargically, snap, drink, quaff, eat, bite, devour, consume, swallow, gulp, gobble, chew, gnaw, digest, ingest, excrete, absorb, join, resign, part, sell, buy, acquire, prevent, block, avert, avoid, forestall, encourage, invite, appropriate, lose, find, search, pursue, hunt, track, explore, follow, cover, uncover, reveal, stretch, distend, depress, compress, lift, put down, fetch, take, bring, carry, win, ripen, germinate, conceive, gestate, abort, die, rot, perish, grow, decay, fold, empty, evacuate, drain, pour, fill, abduct, abandon, leave, abscond, many, more, less, fewer, steady, steadily, jerkily, intermittently, smoothly, awkwardly, expertly, very, extremely, exceedingly, intermittent, discontinuous, continuous, continual, emit, push, pull, drag, slide, jump, sit, stand, run, sprint, chase, amble, walk, hop, skip, slither, crawl, limp, swim, fly, hover, drown, submerge, immerse, break, abrogate, dismiss, collapse, shatter, split, interrupt, charge, retreat, assault, squash, adulterate, contaminate, purify, filter, clean, raze, crumble, erode, corrode, rust, flake, demolish, dismantle, pulverise, atomise, disintegrate, dismember, destroy, annihilate, extirpate, flatten, lengthen, shorten, elongate, crimple, inflate, deflate, terminate, finish, initiate, instigate, augment, replace, undo, redo, analyze, synthesise, articulate, disarticulate, reverse, repeal, abolish, enact, quash, throw, catch, hour, minute, second, instant, moment, momentary, invent, devise, teach, learn, innovate, forget, rescind, boil, freeze, thaw, cook, liquefy, solidify, congeal, neutralise, evaporate, condense, dissolve, process, mollify, pacify, calm down, excite, enrage, inflame, protest, object, challenge, confirm, deny, repudiate, reject, refute, expel, eject, repel, attract, remove, overthrow, expropriate, scatter, distribute, equalise, surround, gather, admit, acknowledge, hijack, assemble, attack, counter-attack, charge, repulse, defeat, strike, occupy, picket, barricade, revolt, riot, rally, march, demonstrate, mutiny, rebel, defy, resist, lead, campaign, educate, agitate, organise...

 

[In each case, where there is a noun form of a word its verb form has been listed (for instance, "object" as in "to object"). Moreover, where I have listed the word "ring", for example, I also intend cognates of the verb "to ring" -- like "ringing" and "rang". I have also omitted many nouns that imply change or development, such as "river", "runner", "wind", "lightning", "tide", "cloud", and "fire". Anyone who didn't know such words implied changing processes in the world -- that rivers flow, fires burn, runners run, and winds blow -- would merely underline their lack of comprehension of English (or whatever language theirs happened to be), compounded by a dangerously defective knowledge of the world. Not knowing that fires burn, for example, would endanger life. In addition, several of the above also have verb forms, such as "fired" or "winding". Other nouns also imply growth and development, such as "tree", "flower", "mouse", "day",  "human being". Anyone who thought "human being", for example, reflected a 'fixed and changeless' view of the world would perhaps be regarded as suffering from some form of learning disability; either that, or they were in the grip of an off-the-wall philosophical theory of some sort.]

 

Naturally, it wouldn't be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally thousands of entries -- on that, see here and here --, all capable of depicting countless changes in limitless detail (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from mathematics, science and HM). It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by Rees, and others -- such as Woods and Grant) that ordinary language can't depict change adequately, since it is supposedly dominated by 'the abstract understanding', a brain module helpfully identified for us by Hegel without a scrap of supporting evidence, still less a brain scan. By way of contrast, ordinary language performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.

 

Naturally, it wouldn't be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally thousands of entries -- on that, see here and here --, all capable of depicting countless changes in limitless detail (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from mathematics, science and HM). It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by Rees, and others -- such as Woods and Grant) that ordinary language can't depict change adequately, since it is supposedly dominated by 'the abstract understanding', a brain module helpfully identified for us by Hegel without a scrap of supporting evidence, still less a brain scan. By way of contrast, ordinary language performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.

 

Dialecticians like Rees would have us believe that because of the alleged shortcomings of the vernacular only the most recondite and abstruse terminology -- concocted by Hegel, the meaning of much of which is still unclear, even to Hegel scholars! -- is capable of telling us what we already know, and have known for tens of thousands of years, that things change!

 

Indeed, we read the following (about ancient cosmology):

 

"Now, to understand the power of sacred cities and cosmic shrines we have to understand the power of the cosmos. The ancients recognised that there is really only one thing taking place in the universe, one expression of transcendental power, and that is change. Day transforms into night. Each night alters the shape of the moon. Seasons change. Seeds sprout into the light and gradually grow into mature plants that flower and blow to seed. Through metamorphosis, tadpoles become frogs, and caterpillars become moths. Our lives change.... The world changes.... Everything changes, but for the ancients, change occurred in an ordered and oriented world." [Krupp (1997), p.17. Paragraphs merged.]

 

It is preposterous, therefore, to suppose that the ability to express change hadn't been incorporated into language many thousands of years before 'Being' inflicted Hegel and his crazy ideas on humanity.

 

Of course, as Rees himself implicitly concedes, Hegel's jargon has had to be 'translated' into 'ordinary-ish' sorts of words for the rest of us to be able to gain even a glimmering of the obscure message it supposedly conveys -- that was the point of Rees's précis of a key Hegelian 'deduction' that many other Hegel scholars have also 'translated' for us (and which will be discussed in detail Essay Twelve Part Five, summary here); cf., Rees (1998), pp.49-50 --, the aim of which, apparently, was to reveal that we can't possibly understand change without such assistance!

 

[Although an earlier version of this 'derivation' was published in Hegel (1977), Hegel's more 'mature' attempt to 'obtain' 'Nothing' from 'Being', and then 'Becoming' from the 'relation' between those two, appeared in Hegel (1999), pp.82-108. As noted above, just like Rees, others have tried to make this incomprehensible derivation 'comprehensible', for example: Burbidge (1995), pp.38-45; Carlson (2007), pp.9-53; Hartnack (1997), pp.11-19; Kaufmann (1978), pp.199-203; and Marcuse (1973) pp.129-34).]

 

But, if we already have ordinary terms (like those listed above) that enable us to talk about and comprehend change what need have we of Hegel's obscure terminology?

 

Conversely, if, according to Rees, ordinary language is inadequate when it is faced with the task of 'translating' Hegel's observations into something we can understand, then how would anyone be able to grasp what Hegel supposedly meant, or even determine whether he meant anything at all? Why translate Hegel into the vernacular if the latter can't cope?

 

On the other hand, if we are capable of comprehending Hegel's obscure ideas only when they have been rendered into ordinary-ish sorts of terms, why do we need his convoluted jargon to reveal to us what it now turns out our language was quite capable of expressing to begin with -- when (on this supposition) it must have been adequate enough for just such a successful re-casting of his ideas by commentators like Rees for the rest of us to grasp? After all, that is why they chose to translate it.

 

If ordinary language enables its users to capture what Hegel meant, in what way is the vernacular defective? Alternatively, if it can't do this, then how might we ever understand Hegel? In that case, if Hegel were correct, no one (including Hegel himself!) would be able to understand Hegel! That is because, ex hypothesi, his words would then be incapable of being translated in terms that anyone could comprehend.

 

Conversely, once more, if Hegel's words are translatable in terms we can understand, that must mean we already have the linguistic resources available to us to comprehend change perfectly well, thank you very much.

 

In which case, the following dilemma now faces Hegel-fans:

 

(a) If we suppose Hegel were correct (that ordinary terms can't adequately capture change), no one would be able to understand him, or,

 

(b) Alternatively, if we suppose Hegel were mistaken -- and we are capable of understanding him enough to be able to say even that much -- no one need bother, since the vernacular would in that case be perfectly adequate on its own.

 

Either way, Marxists would be well-advised to avoid that obscure bumbler like the plague....

 

Here is John Rees again:

 

"Hegel is also difficult for reasons that are not the result of character and circumstance. His theories use terms and concepts that are unfamiliar because they go beyond the understanding of which everyday thought is capable. Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that'. And, within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes…. It is the search to resolve…contradictions that pushes thought past commonsense definitions which see only separate stable entities." [Rees (1998), pp.41-50. Bold emphasis added.]

 

Contrary to what Rees asserts, ordinary language not only doesn't, it can't, assume anything. Plainly, it is human beings who assume things, and they do so by means of the language they use. Unless language had the capacity to allow for the possible truth or the possible falsehood of these assumptions, and that of their negations, no assuming could even begin. That is, of course, because assumptions can be correct as well as incorrect. [Of course, it could be argued that Rees was employing metonymy here. Maybe so, but the point still stands. Language isn't an autonomous system; it takes human beings to give it life.]

 

Moreover, the rich and diverse vocabulary available to ordinary speakers also allows for the assumption (but it is far more than this) that objects can and do change -- and in complex ways, too. Indeed, ordinary language enables its users to speak about and study a wide variety of changes in seemingly limitless detail. A long list of just some of the words available in the vernacular that enable this was given earlier.

 

Hence, and despite what Rees says, the sophisticated nature of ordinary language permits the formation of the following sentences that depict change with ease:

 

H78: This protest is increasing in size as we watch.

 

H79: That case is becoming too heavy for the children to carry.

 

H80: This venue is now too small for our meetings.

 

H81: This spider's web is beginning to disintegrate.

 

H82: This train is being re-painted.

 

H83: That light over there is defective; it keeps flickering.

 

H84: This is how to lose members rapidly: spout dialectics at them.

 

H85: This dispute is no longer about working conditions.

 

H86: This entire continent is moving closer to Asia.

 

H87: That is how to break an egg.

 

H88: This is how to change workers' minds.

 

H89: This π-bond breaks in less than 5 nanoseconds if the molecule is rapidly heated.

 

H90: In an instant the pickets had re-grouped ready for the next police charge.

 

Many of the above sentences are somewhat stilted because they have been deliberately tailored to use the words "this" and "that" (i.e., the form of words that Rees employed to caricature the vernacular), in order to show that "things and ideas" aren't "assumed" to be stable -- contrary to his assertion. However, the above list of examples at least demonstrates that even using Rees's implausible and highly restricted phraseology, ordinary language is capable of expressing material changes (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from science and mathematics), something Hegel's tortured prose can't emulate -- that is, not without raiding the vernacular, or aping the protocols of ordinary discourse, to assist it do just that.

 

Even given this highly limited and constrained form of language, the above list of sentences can easily be extended. Of course, if the full range of words and phrases available to ordinary speakers were called upon (H90 being just one example of such), it would be possible to form an indefinitely large set of sentences of far greater sophistication than anything dreamt of in Hegel's work, picturing changes of every imaginable type.

 

This shows that ordinary language is capable of depicting (and thus permitting the explanation of) change in the real world far better than any philosophical theory yet devised.

 

Now, this isn't something that a sophisticated user of English (like John Rees) should have to have pointed out to him -- even though my having to do so is a sad reflection of the intellectual decay that 'dialectical thought' induces in those held in its thrall.

 

Hence, it is a little rich of Rees proclaiming the superiority over the vernacular of the language employed in Hegel's work, and, indeed, in DM -- since, if 'true', DM would make change impossible.

 

[These allegations will be examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve Part Seven; as noted above, some of that material has already been posted here.]

 

Scientists Can't Afford To Undermine Common Sense

 

[This material used to appear in Note 33.]

 

Furthermore, and following on from what Rees had to say about science, it could be argued that because appearances can be and often are deceptive, scientific knowledge has to be based on theories that go beyond, or even behind, the phenomenal world in order to reveal its underlying "essence". These 'deeper realities' must be capable of explaining not only why appearances are what they are but also why they look the way they do.

 

Despite the above, it is plain that scientists have to rely on their activity in this world -- the world of 'appearances' -- to test, refine and confirm their hypotheses, or improve their theories. No matter how sophisticated, technical or "elegant" a given theory is, at some point researchers will have to interface with the ordinary world in order to test or modify, it. To that end, scientists have to do one or more (possibly even most) of the following: check several dials, read a few meters, mix some substances, carry out multiple measurements, record and check data, design, handle or calibrate instruments, conduct surveys, look down microscopes, telescopes or other optical devices, collect samples, consult computer screens, construct models, research the relevant literature, speak to colleagues, write reports, formulate and use equations, attend conferences, publish papers, articles and books, apply for grants, etc., etc. Most of these must be carried out if a theory is to become anything other than speculative, tentative or merely hypothetical, let alone established fact. Clearly, all of these activities and performances take place in the ordinary phenomenal world and have to be carried out by ordinary (albeit highly qualified and trained) human beings.

 

Socially-conditioned and communally-sanctioned practices that take place in this world, the world of phenomena, enable the intelligent and efficient prosecution of scientific research and hence the advancement of knowledge. In addition, the vernacular not only enables the education and socialisation of aspiring scientists, it underpins the skills necessary for the comprehension and performance of all standardised laboratory-, field- and research-techniques, as well as the design of surveys, questionnaires, experiments and expeditions (etc.). It even lies behind the writing of every summa vitae (résumé), job reference, employment application, research post, and all transfers and grant requests. While on the one hand mundane aspects of our material and social existence like these also facilitate successful inter-communication between scientists, on the other they provide a readily available and fertile source of the metaphors, analogies, figures of speech and models that breathe life into the vast majority of scientific hypotheses, theories, reports and papers.

 

Every single one of the above procedures and routines is regulated by the same conventions that govern everyday behaviour, speech, and reasoning, which in turn are mediated by familiar, mundane physical skills and practices, all of which are once again materially-, socially-, and historically-conditioned.

 

[On this see, Arib and Hesse (1986), Baake (2003), Brown (2003), Cantor (1987), Fahnestock (2002), Gould (1988), Griffiths (2001), Gross (1996), Guttenplan (2005), Hesse (1966), Keller (1995, 2002), Kuhn (1993), Leatherdale (1974), Lynch (1996), MacCormac (1976), Polanyi (1962), Ravetz (1996), pp.69-244, Way (1994), White (1996b), and Young (1985).]

 

In which case, scientists can't afford to risk undermining the deliverances of either the phenomenal or the social world, just as they can't afford to depreciate ordinary language and everyday practice for fear that by sawing away at the branches upon which they are collectively sat, they risk their own catastrophic fall.

 

 

Figure Three: I Came, I Saw, I...

 

It could be argued at this point that Rees's account doesn't imply that appearances can't be trusted; indeed, as noted above, he actually argued that his own analysis:

 

"…does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

But, as was pointed out in more detail earlier, the highlighted clause above implies that the surface phenomena in Capitalist society are different from their underlying form, which, of course, means appearances can't be relied upon. That accounts for the author's use of the word "real".

 

Consequently, to return to earlier examples: the idea that appearances aren't "real" (or "fully real") might motivate a belief that just as, say, the Sun appears to rise in the morning (but doesn't really do so), and just as sticks, for instance, look as if they bend when partially immersed in water (but they aren't really deformed in this way), and just as objects, for example, seem to shrink in size when they recede from us (when they don't really grow smaller), and just as tables and floors, say, give the impression that they are solid (when they are really 'composed' mostly of 'empty space'), so the surface appearance of Capitalism only seems to be fair when 'underneath' it really isn't fair at all. In that case, it is reasonably clear that for anyone who thinks like this appearances can't return a true picture of reality.

 

That is why no one believes that deep down objects change their shape as we walk round them, that the Sun is really the same size as the Moon, or that ships slowly sink below the waves when they sail over the horizon. And, presumably, it is also why only deeply confused (reformist?) socialists believe Capitalism really is fair.

 

[Note that I am most decidedly not committed to the idea that appearances are deceptive, since only human beings (or what they produce -- in writing, speech or art, for example) can literally be deceptive. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm merely drawing out the consequences of this family of confused ideas, metaphors, analogies and metaphysical fairy tales that DM-fans have unwisely imported in Marxism. However, further consideration of this specific topic would take us too far into HM, an area largely avoided in these Essays -- for reasons outlined in Essay One.]

 

Moreover, the objection that Rees doesn't really believe that appearances are deceptive implies that his own distinction between surface phenomena and underlying, 'real essences' is pointless; his overall argument would make no sense unless he believed that appearances were deceptive-in-themselves. Otherwise, why try to isolate or identify underlying "essences" if surface phenomena have never, or won't ever, mislead anybody? Why delve deeper if Capitalism not only looks fair, it can also be regarded as essentially fair (given this way of talking)? And, why try to explain to workers that their wages represent only a fraction of the value they produce if what they are actually paid does in fact represent a 'fair slice of the cake'?

 

Doubtless, several of the above assertions might still attract criticism from some quarters. However, any such critics can console themselves with the thought that the resolution of these issues may only take place in the phenomenal world -– that is, in this world of appearances, ordinary language, written documents and everyday computer screens. Hence, if the superiority of science and/or dialectics may only be established by a defence located precisely here, in the world of 'unreliable' appearances and 'untrustworthy' ordinary language -- using the printed page, books, articles, spoken and written words, argumentation, observation, experimentation and the like --, then any criticisms of the points made above must surely self-destruct. If those advancing such criticisms are only able to convince others of the correctness of what they say by arguing that no one can really trust what they read, see or hear -- except, of course, they can trust the material form of the argument that had just been used to express those very doubts and which has just been given a convenient exemption certificate --, then self-destruct they must.

 

If phenomena are untrustworthy, then any phenomenal statement of that 'fact' must be unreliable, too.

 

And, it is little use referring sceptical onlookers to the 'dialectical' interplay between "appearance" and underlying "essence" (as we saw Novack attempt to do earlier), since the first half of that alleged "interplay" is defective -- and that is because it is predicated on a series of logical blunders -- while the second half self-destruct no less readily.

 

That is quite apart from the fact that this alleged 'dialectical interplay' also takes place in the world of appearances, which means that it is incapable of turning phenomenological dust into epistemological gold simply because DM-fans simply think it can.

 

[It is worth recalling at this point that I am using the words like "phenomena" and "phenomenological" to refer to the deliverances of the senses; I do not prefer this way a talking, and, once more, it is only being used in order to hasten its own demise. They do not, and nor should they be taken to imply I am promoting, advocating or recommending Phenomenalism, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly.]

 

~~~~~~oOo~~~~~ 

 

Returning now to the main theme of this section of the Essay: if scientists themselves understand the meaning of the word "rise" (in S1, for example), then they can't simply re-define it to suite themselves, perhaps under the mistaken impression that such a revision would help uncover its 'real' meaning. To see this, consider again the following:

 

"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order to reveal the reality that is disguised within." [Quoted from here.]

 

As well as this pair of sentences:

 

S1: The Sun rises in the morning.

 

S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises in the morning.

 

If the word "rises" in S1 or S2 doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean, then any scientist or philosopher using sentences like these wouldn't in fact be clarifying or correcting ordinary language; he or she would be attempting to change, modify or even replace it.

 

Worse still, if the word "rises" in S1 or S2 doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean, then those two sentences would be incomprehensible since they would now contain at least one word ("rise") that no one seems to understand (in this context).

 

It might be wondered how it could be true that "no one seems to understand" the verb "to rise"? Of course, every competent speaker of English (or, indeed, other languages that possess an equivalent verb) knows how to use this word and hence understands it. What is being claimed here isn't that no one understands this word, only that in this case, with specific reference to S1 and S2 (but, not in relation to other, unrelated sentences), if "rises" doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean here (and no one succeeds in informing us what its 'alternative/real meaning' is in these two sentences), then S1 and S2 must be incomprehensible, since, in this specific instance, these two sentences would contain at least one word ("rises") that no one understands in this context. If so, S1 and S2 might just as well have been:

 

S1a: The Sun schmises in the morning.

 

S2a: It isn't the case that the Sun schmises in the morning.

 

On the other hand, if the word "rises" in S2 is to be understood in a new and as-yet-unspecified, or even in a technical, sense, then S2 would no longer be the contradictory of S1, and so couldn't be used to 'clarify' or 'correct' it. Either way, it isn't possible to correct ordinary language in this way. [Why this tactic will always fail, no matter how it is re-packaged, was explained in detail, here.]

 

S1: The Sun rises in the morning.

 

S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises in the morning.

 

It could be argued that it is perfectly clear what "rises" means in this context: it refers to what we see in the morning, on a cloudless day, if we look to the east.

 

But what we see is consistent with the earth being stationary, too.

 

Again, it could be countered that the point is that post-Renaissance science has taught us that the Sun doesn't actually rise; the horizon falls as the Earth rotates.

 

In which case, this use of "rise" doesn't mean what we take it to mean after all -- and we are back where we were a few paragraphs back.

 

Rees also claimed that underlying reality contradicts appearances:

 

"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), p.188.]

 

Perhaps giving echo to this famous comment of Marx's:

 

"Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

[However, on this passage see my comments here.]

 

Although Rees doesn't himself use S1 or S2 [repeated below], they might nevertheless serve to illustrate the alleged conflict he seems to have in mind. If so, it could be argued that these two sentences reveal that the apparent motion of the Sun was in fact contradicted by later developments in science, which also demonstrate the limitations of 'commonsense'.

 

The problem with this reading of S1 and S2 -- expressed in S3 and S4 -- is that (as noted several times already) these two don't contradict one another; nor do they even depict a contradictory state of affairs. That is because, given such an interpretation, S3 reports that the Sun appears to rise. But, if appearances were deceptive, and it appears to be the case that the Sun rises (even if it doesn't), then both of the following could be true:

 

S3: The Sun appears to rise in the morning.

 

S4: The Sun does not rise in the morning.

 

[S1: The Sun rises in the morning.

 

S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises in the morning.]

 

But, we have been here already.

 

Perhaps the worry exercising DM-theorists might be brought out by means of the following 'argument':

 

S5: The Sun appears to rise.

 

S6: Therefore, the Sun does rise.

 

S7: But, modern science shows that the Sun does not rise.

 

S8: Therefore, the Sun does not rise.

 

S9: Hence, the Sun both rises and does not rise.

 

S10: S9 is a contradiction, and so it is false.

 

S11: If S8 is still held true, then based on the falsehood of S9, S6 is also false.

 

It looks like S9 might be the contradiction DM-theorists intend. The idea appears to be that while phenomena might lead us to accept one set of beliefs, the development of science has forced us to adopt an 'opposite', or even 'contradictory', set. Once again, the conclusion seems to be that scientific knowledge contradicts 'commonsense' and ordinary language.

 

Of course, DM-theorists -- if they accept this line of reasoning -- must abandon one or both of the following claims:

 

(1) Contradictions are true, or they reflect contradictory states of affair that coexist.

 

[The opposite of this was used in S10 to derive the falsehood of S6.]

 

(2) Reality itself is contradictory.

 

The continued acceptance of (1) would mean that while it is still held true that scientific knowledge contradicts 'commonsense', 'incorrect' and 'correct' beliefs would both now be true. Clearly, that would completely undermine the advance of scientific knowledge. If mythical tales and allegedly erroneous 'folk' theories were all true (even though they 'contradict' fact and/or theory), then there would seem to be no point bothering with scientific research. On that basis, we would have to accept as true the 'fact' that the Earth sits stationary at the centre of the Universe and the fact that it is in motion on the periphery of the Galaxy. Naturally, it would then prove impossible to agree that science provides an 'objective' account of reality if the opposite of what scientists believe to be the case is also the case.

 

Some might respond here by pointing out that earlier it was argued that the Ptolemaic view of the universe is just as valid as the Copernican. But, the above comment seems to suggest the opposite. Which is it to be?

 

In reply, it is worth adding that wherever the truth lies, no one would hold both of these beliefs true at the same time. If a scientist wants to use or accept one approach, he or she will not use or accept the other at the same time, otherwise irredeemable confusion would ensue. Anyway, the above example is somewhat unique; we certainly wouldn't be this accommodating with other scientific theories that are (supposedly or even genuinely) in competition with ancient beliefs/dogmas. For example, no one -- it is to be hoped(!) -- accepts the literal truth of the Biblical account of creation and Darwin's theory of descent through modification and natural selection, or the Humoral Theory and the Germ Theory of disease, and so on.

 

Finally, it should to be recalled that I am not airing my views here, merely highlighting the insurmountable obstacles that face DM-theorists if they insist on sticking to the ideas they inherited from Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up').

 

Despite these problems, S5-S11 present serious problems of their own:

 

S5: The Sun appears to rise.

 

S6: Therefore, the Sun does rise.

 

S7: But, modern science shows that the Sun does not rise.

 

S8: Therefore, the Sun does not rise.

 

S9: Hence, the Sun both rises and does not rise.

 

S10: S9 is a contradiction, and so it is false.

 

S11: If S8 is still held true, then based on the falsehood of S9, S6 is also false.

 

There are at least three serious problems with the above 'argument':

 

[1] Plainly, S5 does not imply S6, which means that S9 can't be derived from S5-S8.

 

[2] S9 isn't a contradiction -- it is far too ambiguous. [We encountered similar ambiguities here.]

 

[3] If all phenomenal reports are to be subjected to this sort of test (or this level of scrutiny), then it might prove impossible to show that S7, for instance, is true. That is because the validation of S7 would require extensive reliance on other phenomenological reports, all of which would be susceptible to the same sort of destructive or sceptical analysis.

 

This is quite apart from the fact that S7, for example, is a phenomenal object itself (it is after all a physical object on your screen!), and is therefore 'untrustworthy' -- or what it says is unreliable, given this theory.

 

In which case, S9-S11 can't be derived from these premisses. This putative reductio is defective from start to finish.

 

It could be objected that in a perfectly ordinary sense the following two sentences are contradictory:

 

Z1: It appears to be φ-ing.

 

Z2: No, it isn't φ-ing.

 

[Where "φ" stands for a verb clause or phrase, such as "rain" -- so "φ-ing" would become "raining".]

 

Consider this ordinary language interpretation of C1 and C2:

 

Z1a: "It appears to be raining."

 

Z2a: "No, you're mistaken, it isn't raining."

 

Or, consider this example:

 

Z3: "The Sun appears to be moving."

 

Z4: "No, you're mistaken, the Sun isn't moving."

 

Anyone who uttered Z2a (or, indeed, Z4) would be correcting (i.e., gain-saying -- speaking against) anyone who uttered Z1a (or Z3), thus contradicting them.

 

This shows that the earlier claim that "It isn't possible to form a contradiction from a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports an appearance" was false.

 

Or, so it could be argued...

 

Of course, Z4 is false anyway, since the Sun is moving relative to the Galaxy; so it isn't too clear that Z3 and Z4 will be of much use to DM-apologists, especially since the obvious reply to anyone who tried to correct Z3 by means of Z4 would be:

 

Z5: "Well, I didn't say it was moving, only that it appears to be -- and it still appears to be moving, despite what you say."

 

So, Z3 and Z4 aren't contradictories since they can both be true (and can both be false). This is, of course, because of the equivocal nature of the verbs "move" and "appear". [In Essay Five we saw that the word "move" was rather complex and had many different meanings.]

 

The same sort of response applies to Z1a and Z2a:

 

Z6: "Well, I didn't say it was raining, only that it appears to be -- and it still appears to be raining, despite what you say."

 

[Z1a: "It appears to be raining."

 

Z2a: "No, you're mistaken, it isn't raining."]

 

In which case, this is still the case: It isn't possible to form a contradiction from a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports an appearance.

 

[Anyone who thinks differently is invited to email me with their best shot.]

 

'Contradictory' Capitalism?

 

Putting the natural sciences to one side for the moment, Rees and other DM-theorists cite examples drawn from HM to illustrate the alleged clash between "essence" and "appearance".

 

[Several other such examples are considered at length in Essay Eight Part Two, here, here and here.]

 

Perhaps an examination of the cases they cite might help establish the point DM-theorists intend?

 

Rees's argument, for instance, proceeds as follows:

 

"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Bold emphases added.]

 

This passage makes it plain that while Capitalism appears on the surface to be fair, its underlying 'essence' is thoroughly exploitative, or, at least, its 'essential relations' are. Hence, in that sense it could be claimed that appearances do indeed contradict reality.

 

Unfortunately, Rees's example isn't even a contradiction, howsoever much we might deplore what it expresses. [Why that is so is explained more fully here. On the highly misleading metaphor that certain truths, or even "essences", lie somehow "below the surface", see here.]

 

Perhaps this is being a little too hasty? Maybe we can rephrase Rees's comments so that the alleged contradiction here becomes a little more obvious:

 

R17: Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

R18: It isn't the case that Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

This pair of sentences certainly looks contradictory, but as we saw above, because both sentences are about appearances, they aren't what Rees intended.34

 

Well, maybe then the following are?

 

R19: Capitalism is exploitative.

 

R20: It isn't the case that Capitalism is exploitative.

 

This pair certainly seems contradictory, too, but once again, since these two sentences fail to contrast appearance with reality they won't do either.

 

A more perspicuous representation of Rees's intentions maybe found in the relation he says exists between (i) "essence and appearance" and (ii) "subjective and objective" views of the world:

 

"[F]or Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]

 

This could mean that these hard-to-pin-down DM-'contradictions' actually arise between a "subjective" and "objective" view of the world. But, even if what Rees says were the case, what precisely is the contradiction here?

 

Perhaps the following 'argument' might help bring this out:

 

R21: Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

R22: That appearance leads people (including workers) to think it is fair.

 

R23: Hence, Capitalism is fair. [Or, so they conclude.]

 

R24: But, revolutionary theory and practice convince some that Capitalism isn't fair.

 

R25: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair. [Or, so others conclude.]

 

R26: Consequently, Capitalism is both fair and not fair.

 

R27: But, the contradiction in R26 implies that R23 can't be true (based on the truth of R25).

 

R28: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair.35

 

Ignoring the fact that the above argument is hopelessly invalid, its message looks reasonably clear: the 'objectivity' of revolutionary theory (expressed in R24) makes plain the contradiction in R26.

 

However, even if that were the case, the contradiction here still isn't between appearance and reality, but between certain beliefs held about both -- or perhaps the inferences that could be drawn from each.

 

Anyway, few people (and certainly no revolutionaries) believe that capitalism is both fair and not fair at the same time. Anyone who gives the matter sufficient thought will agree either with R23 or with R25, but not both at once. Indeed, that is why R28 would be held true by socialists. However, DM requires both R23 and R25 (and hence R26) to be true at once (or, for both to reflect co-existent contradictory states of affairs). But, once more, we have been here already.36

 

It could be objected that the appearances referred to above prompt the false belief that Capitalism is fair, which is contradicted by the fact that it isn't, and this is what creates the required contradiction. But, no one is questioning the fact that there are all sorts of contradictory beliefs in people's heads. What is at issue here is (a) Whether R22 and R28 can both be (unequivocally and unambiguously) held true together and (b) Whether appearances contradict reality --, both of which have yet to be established.37

 

Hence, it doesn't look like we can construct a clear example of the sort of contradiction Rees had in mind -- even when we use his own choice of candidates!

 

Nevertheless, this latest impasse introduces yet another problem facing DM-epistemology: if appearances are finally acknowledged to be (in some respects) deceptive --, or, at least, not entirely, or not fully accurate (or 'real') --, or they are said to be limited in some way and are misleading to some extent, how can anything of value be learnt from them, or by means of them? Worse still, if revolutionary practice takes place at the level of appearances, how could it serve as a test of the objectivity of Marxist theory itself?

 

The next few sections are aimed at resolving these unexpected difficulties.

 

Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances

 

'Dialectical' Practice Can't Be 'Objective'

 

I propose to examine the contribution revolutionary practice makes to the validation of theory in more detail in Essays Ten Part One and Nine Part Two, but for present purposes it is worth pointing out that practice can't in fact test 'objectivity' in the way that is often imagined, nor can it be 'objective' itself -- and this isn't just because the word "objective" is itself interminably vague. As noted above, that is because practice clearly takes place at the level of appearances, which, according to DM, can't be anything other than 'subjective'.38

 

Admittedly, some Marxists claim that there is such a thing as "theoretical practice", but even there, its results and deliverances can only surface in the world of appearances.

 

Unless we believe in telepathy, or are committed to the bizarre idea that theoretical propositions live an abstract world accessible to the 'mind' alone, and aren't embodied or expressed in anything material -– that is, that they can't ever be written down or spoken out loud, or even whispered to oneself during soliloquy -– the deflationary conclusion that theoretical propositions are as material as sticks and stones seems to be reasonably clear.

 

Plainly, that is because abstract objects (and any words used to express them) must make some appearance in the phenomenal world at some point or be forever unknown to us. In the real world, even theoretical propositions have to be written down or uttered in a public language, and that immediately places them in the grip of all those 'unreliable'/'deceptive' 'appearances'.

 

Are All Appearances 'False'?

 

Exception might be taken to the above since it seems to imply that dialecticians regard appearances as unreliable, misleading or false -- even though, as we will see, Herbert Marcuse, for example, openly admitted they are. We also saw earlier that many other DM-fans say more-or-less the same, here and here.

 

On the contrary, it could be maintained that dialecticians (or the majority of them) don't believe this of appearances. Indeed, the following passage from TAR underlines this fact:

 

"…[T]his does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market.... There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), p.187-88. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

 

But if, as these passages say, superficial appearances aren't in fact a guide to deeper "essences" -- indeed they "contradict" them --, then they must be deceptive at some point, at some level, to some extent, especially if most human beings (apparently) misread them or are misled by them and it takes clued-in Marxists to disabuse them of their false beliefs or misguided opinions. If the exploitative relations in Capitalism aren't really as they seem, and if on this view they "appear in a form different from their real nature", then what they reveal can't be anything other than misleading (to many), and hence false. There is no other way of reading this passage. [This entire topic is discussed more fully here.]

 

But, in what sense do 'appearances' "contradict...deeper reality"? Do they struggle with, and then turn into, one another (as the DM-classics tell us they must)? If they do, DM-theorists have been remarkably secretive about the details. Do they even imply one another such that the existence of one implies the existence of the other (like the existence of the proletariat is said to imply the existence of the capitalist class)? That can't be correct, for if it were, then that must mean that before sentient life evolved, the existence of "deeper reality" will have implied, even back then(!), that there must also be 'appearances' somewhere for non-sentient objects and processes to 'experience' so that they always 'contradict' "deeper reality". Or are we to suppose that "deeper reality" wasn't 'contradicted' back then? While that odd idea might work for maverick Hegelian Idealists, or even run-of-the-mill theists, it can't work for hard-headed materialists.

 

Once more, this doesn't make sense even in DM-terms.

 

It could be objected that if there were no sentient beings then there could be no appearances and hence no contradiction of the sort described in the last but one paragraph. Maybe not, but in what way does the existence of 'underlying reality' imply the existence of surface appearances so that the one can't exist without the other (like the proletariat can't exist without the capitalist class, or so we are told), which they will have to do if this were a 'dialectical contradiction' (and if the DM-classics were to be believed)? If 'underlying reality' existed before sentient life evolved (or it wouldn't have evolved!), then it can exist without there being any appearances to 'contradict' it. If so, that means this 'contradiction' can't be 'dialectical', whatever else it is --, or that couldn't happen. Compare this supposed possibility (that there was an 'underlying reality' before there were any 'appearances') with the following suggestion: There was a time when there was a proletariat but no capitalist class, or there was a capitalist class but no proletariat. For DM-fans, are either of these even conceivable? I suspect not. In which case the conclusions drawn above still appear to be correct.

 

Again, it could be argued that DM-theorists reject such a simple-minded view of the relation between appearance and reality; they hold there is a dialectical interplay between theory and practice. This means that even though thought depends on appearances for its immediate content, it nevertheless ascends by means of abstraction, or critical analysis/synthesis (subsequently tested and confirmed in practice) to a more adequate (less partial or less relative), theoretical and concrete understanding of reality. This process is also rooted in previous theory, which in turn isn't set in stone. In the long-run this yields a more accurate account of the real processes at work in Capitalism. At each stage, thought returns to the original world of experience where, after again being tested in practice, its content may be viewed in a more all-rounded, concrete manner. This process of cognition renders any conclusions that have been drawn and tested in this manner, objective --, or, at least, increasingly objective (even if these results are still only partially or relatively true). Hence, appearances needn't be regarded as merely subjective, as suggested above; their connection with underlying reality allows them to be viewed in a different, more complex, inter-connected, less one-sided light, allowing revolutionaries to understand why things seem the way they do, and why most individuals view them in the way they do.

 

Or, so it might be argued...

 

However, that doesn't explain what the 'contradiction' is here, even in DM-terms!

 

Ignoring that thorny topic for the present, and despite the fanfare, the undeniable fact is that the old conservative adage, "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work", for instance, couldn't serve as a guiding principle for revolutionaries writing agitational leaflets, no matter how many hoops dialectical sloganeers might try to force it through.

 

That is because at no stage in the execution of the above dialectical gyrations would it be correct to say, think, or even imply that Capitalism isn't exploitative. No matter how many impressive or intricate dialectical somersaults are expertly performed, only the most naďve of militants would automatically believe the boss of a profitable company who said that she "couldn't afford" the latest pay demand from the strike committee.

 

If so, and in practice once more, no revolutionary would take the beliefs motivated by the 'superficial appearances' of Capitalist society as anything other than false, or self-serving. Certainly, no Marxist -- that is, this side of a major sell-out -- believes Capitalism is "fair", and then acts in accord with that belief.39

 

Anyway, the pro-DM-rejoinder (from a few paragraphs back) seems to rely on the assumption that thoughts and theories aren't themselves 'appearances' -– i.e., that they don't surface in a public language, in an open arena, in a material form of some sort. In fact, reading DM-texts on the "dialectical method" one gets the distinct impression that complex dialectical gyrations -- like those Rees mentions above (my words, not his!) -- take place in a sort of 'inner psychic sports arena', as it were, where concepts and abstractions are put through their paces in private. And not just that; it very much looks like these dialectical summersaults must be performed afresh each time in each dialectical head.

 

That was one of the main themes of Part One of this Essay: the idea that DM-epistemology, for all its pretensions to the contrary, is trapped in a bourgeois individualist, isolation cell.

 

[The general principles underlying the social nature of language and knowledge will be addressed again in much more detail in Essays Twelve Part One and Thirteen Part Three.]

 

Hence, as noted earlier, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the process of abstraction is a skill that adepts learn to perform as socially-isolated individuals in their own private inner sanctum, their heads. We have yet to witness teams of synchronised dialecticians all chanting in unison the latest verbal application of their most recent dialectical flip, or abstraction, under the direction of the Absolute as it Notions its way into Glory --, or, indeed, under the unforgiving glare of a Gerry Healy, a Bob Avakian or even a Chris Cutrone. So, how DM-fans imagine they are capable of coordinating their individual dialectical somersaults is entirely mysterious. In fact, given the validity of DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians would be able to determine whether or not their isolated feats of abstraction actually converged on the same target, let alone the right target. [On that, see here and here. As we also saw, in such circumstances there can be no such thing as "right".]

 

An appeal to a publicly accessible language here would be no avail, either, as pointed out earlier, once more. Moreover, since the use of such a language also takes place in this 'unreliable world of appearances', any recourse to it would be like checking your height by placing your hand on the top of your head.

 

[Again, above we were assuming the validity of DM-epistemology and its 'theory of abstraction'.]

 

In short, the superficial gestures DM-theorists make in the general direction of their (avowed) belief in the social nature of language and knowledge are at odds with their own pronouncements on this and related subjects. Given the latter, knowledge and language wouldn't actually be social products. Conversely, if language and knowledge were social products, abstractionism would be a non-starter. [On that, see here.]

 

Here, at least, 'essence' and 'appearance' appear to coincide -- a genuine 'unity of non-opposites'!

 

In both Parts of this Essay we have witnessed a handful of dialecticians reporting the results of their own self-confessed, 'internal investigations' (since they all describe 'abstraction' in terms of inner 'mental processes'), verbally or in print. Indeed, they had no choice. They have to do one or other of these or keep their ideas to themselves, and they have to do so in this 'world of appearances', too. But, short of a hot-line connecting one dialectical brain to the next, there is no way that the contents of any one such 'inner DM-auditorium' could be made available to any other member of the same 'dialectical community', for comparison, let alone validation.

 

So, in order to compare their ideas (etc.), dialecticians have to record or express their 'inner deliberations' in this material world in some form or other, where those 'unreliable appearances' reign supreme.

 

In that case, and if we believe what we are told about this 'untrustworthy world of appearances' and its 'subjective' nature, no DM-proposition could be "objective", in any sense of that word.

 

Of course, it could be argued that even if DM-propositions surface in the world of appearances, that doesn't affect their content, what they are about. And yet, anyone wishing to ascertain what they are "about" has to rely on what appears before them in this 'shady world of appearances', which means that what they actually claim they can 'see'/'read', or even conclude about such content, will only appear to be this, or appear to be that. On the other hand, if they are capable of ascertaining what this content really is, then, if DM-epistemology is to be believed, that 'reality' must 'contradict' what 'appears' in front of them, otherwise this theory is defective at its core, and no one need pay it any heed.

 

Alas, there is no way round this obstacle -- that is, there isn't any for those who have bought into this ruling-class distinction -- between 'appearance' and 'reality'.

 

[The word "see" and "read" above are in 'scare' quotes for reasons set out in detail in Essay Thirteen Part One, since, if Lenin is to be believed, all a DM-fan has recourse to are 'images' of the world (and hence 'images' of books and articles about DM), not the world itself. Readers are directed to that Essay for proof.]

 

Furthermore, even if it were true that the process of abstraction takes place in the 'mind', unless DM-theorists are prepared to accept a quasi-Cartesian account of thoughts (whereby the latter somehow guarantee their own veracity, as opposed to merely appearing to do so), this inner, dialectical detour can't succeed in grounding DM-abstractions in 'objectivity' (again, to use the jargon).39a Hence, without postulating the existence of abstractions that are self-authenticating and thoughts that are self-certifying (and which therefore require no support from practice or evidence), these 'inner phenomena', 'inner representations', can't by-pass the need to make a validating entrance into the world of 'suspect appearances'.40

 

Even in the mind's alleged 'inner chamber', a 'thought' is no less an appearance than are the deliverances of the senses. Even for the most solipsistically-incarcerated individual, his or her thoughts only appear to him or her to be thus and so.

 

And even if such ideas and concepts were 'self-certifying', they would still only appear to be so.40a

 

Presumably the following -- or what they can be used to express -- would be counted as examples of thought at some level:

 

T1: "That stick is bent in the water", said the philosopher.

 

T2: NN thought that the stick was bent until she realised it was partly immersed in water.

 

T3: NM thought he had won the vote until the result of the recount was announced.

 

On the basis of these (and countless other examples one could think of), it might prove difficult to maintain the idea that thoughts are neither appearances nor part of the 'world of appearances'. In fact, the above are not only about appearances, they are appearances themselves.

 

It could be objected that appearances relate to sense perception, which is what distinguishes them from thoughts. But, T3, for example, isn't about 'sensations', it is about how things appeared to NM at a certain point during a re-count, and perhaps afterwards. It records a reported appearance that prompted NM's thoughts, and he was wrong. What appeared to be the case turned out not to be so.

 

Of course, what has exercised Philosophers (and amateur metaphysicians) over the centuries is a certain picture, one that seems to hold them in a vice-like grip. The latter is part of a family of theories that holds 'thoughts' are inner, shadowy 'mental' events, states or episodes that somehow represent things to us 'internally' and 'directly', which 'the mind' has 'processed' for us or which are a consequence of certain neural/psychological events 'in our heads', that are only accessible to the individual concerned. Hence, it has seemed obvious to many that since appearances arise from sensation, they can't be 'thoughts' (nor visa versa).

 

But, given this traditional way of picturing human psychology/cognition, appearances now turn out to be shadowy, inner 'entities' that are examined by an 'inner eye' of some description. If so, that can't be what distinguishes them from thoughts. On this view, both 'thoughts' and 'appearances' are privately experienced and processed events or states hidden away in the recesses of 'the mind'. The only difference between them (i.e., between 'thoughts' and 'appearances'), it would seem, is that the latter appear to 'arrive from the outside' while the former are supposedly generated 'internally', under our control (to some extent). However, given this view of 'appearances', the belief that there is an 'outside' to be the source of anything is itself based on an 'appearance', which, plainly, undermines this presumed difference, making both 'thoughts' and 'appearances' 'internal' events, processes or states, after all. [Again, I have said much more about this in Essay Thirteen Part One. Note, once again: I am not reporting my own beliefs here, merely pointing out the absurd consequences of accepting ruling-class forms-of-thought, in this case the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'.]

 

Moreover, the supposition that 'thoughts' are under our (possibly limited) control trades on the further idea that there is something 'internal' to each of us that is separate from our 'thoughts' which is capable of so regimenting them. This theory in turn trades on what has come to be called 'the homunculus fallacy' (an idea recently animated in Pixar's cartoon, Inside Out), which is, clearly, no solution. Whatever it is that controls our 'thoughts' must itself attract the same questions that the 'mind' and its 'thoughts' already attract, generating an infinite regress.

 

[We saw earlier that this approach to knowledge in the end requires the further belief that either (a) ideas are 'minds' themselves, capable of self-direction, or (b) the 'mind' is in effect an internal, bourgeois individual, different from the Christian/Cartesian 'soul' in name alone.]

 

Naturally, the dualism underlying this picture of 'the mind' is something materialists would want to reject, anyway. Unfortunately, there is no way for DM-fans to do this. Why that is so is discussed in detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three, where the idea that 'mental events' are 'inner objects and processes' has been subjected to sustained and destructive criticism.

 

On the other hand, if the existence of self-interpreting and auto-confirming thoughts were part of DM-epistemology (there is an echo of this in Hegel, but as far as I can determine, no Marxist dialectician has gone the whole hog here to agreed with Hegel -- or even so much as half-hog in that direction), and thoughts were deemed to be no part of the world of appearances, they would be no different from the 'intelligent ideas' we met earlier.

 

Furthermore, an appeal to 'inter-subjectivity' can't securely ground this theory, either. That is because, if this theory were correct, the reports others deliver would similarly be trapped in this world of 'unreliable appearances', and would therefore also be 'contradicted' by 'underlying essences', as would any opinion formed about them.

 

Once more, until a clear account of the nature of 'thoughts' and 'appearances' (as these 'concepts' are understood by DM-theorists) is forthcoming, it is difficult to say whether the two are the same or different, or only appear to be the one or the other.

 

However, as seems reasonably clear, if DM-theorists were to argue along these lines and begin to agree with Hegel on this (whole hog or half hog), it would make a mockery of the materialist flip they supposedly inflicted on his system, for such thoughts would then be little different from all those mysterious Hegelian 'idea' -- only now trapped in some form of psychologically-isolated, socially-fragmented, 'self-development'. So, if thoughts are to be excluded from the world of appearances, there seems to be no way of distinguishing them from Platonic/Cartesian/Hegelian 'self-developing', 'self-certifying' ('semi-divine') 'Ideas'. And, if that were so, their subsequent referral back to the empirical world for testing and verification would surely be an empty gesture. Why bother to test a god-like thought? Did Moses check the Ten Commandments or the creation story in the Book of Genesis?

 

[Moving even higher up the Cosmic Pecking Order: did Gerry Healy attempt to substantiate a single thing he ever said (except by quoting Holy DM-writ -- i.e, Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky)? And, of course, we all know Bob Avakian doesn't need to check anything. (Perish the thought!) But, the situation is worse still than this might suggest, since not even 'God' can side-step how things appear to 'Him'. Even for the 'Absolute Idea', at The End of Time, things will merely appear to be as history has delivered them to 'Him/Her/It'. Once again: Even if their 'appearance' coincided with their 'essence' (to use the jargon) they would still only appear to coincide. That, after all, would be just another 'brute fact' about how the 'Absolute' so happens to string ideas together.]

 

And we can console ourselves with the further thought that whoever denies or rejects the above conclusions must do so in this world of 'appearances', or stay forever silent. Even Hegel's system is only accessible to those who can read, speak or hear. That is because Hegel's writings (indeed, anyone's writings) confront us now, and always will do so, as phenomenal objects -- and in this world, 'appearances' reign supreme.

 

Of course, any appearance to the contrary is entirely misleading.

 

Dialectics Engages Auto-Destruct Mode

 

Furthermore -- and this shouldn't need pointing out --, thoughts and theories can be every bit as mistaken as beliefs based on appearances can.41 For example, the thought that sticks bend when immersed in water is no less (potentially) misleading than is the analogous appearance to that effect. [That is partly what lay behind the point made earlier about contradictory beliefs.]

 

Indeed, the history of science is littered with erroneous and radically mistaken theories. With respect to DM, the situation is very much worse. Given the DM-theory that knowledge depends on an infinite, asymptotic convergence on an ever-elusive Absolute or Ideal Limit, DM-epistemology is little different from radical scepticism. [That claim was substantiated here.] If so, there is an extremely high probability that the soundest of each and every DM-theory only looks correct, and that the very latest and best DM-'abstraction' merely appears to be valid, when neither are.42

 

Unfortunately, just as soon as the virus-like distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality' is introduced into thought, the downfall of the theory that welcomed it with open arms it is all but guaranteed. Indeed, for that theory, the hour of its birth is the hour of its death.

 

Even more annoying: this is one idea that does self-develop, but not in a healthy or welcome direction. Or, indeed, in a direction DM-theorists should find at all comforting. In fact, it soon engages self-destruct mode. For if nothing in epistemology is indubitable (save we revert to those comforting Cartesian certainties, once more --, which anyway only seem to be secure, and only seem to be such to those who think that ideas can somehow interpret and validate themselves; even Descartes required 'God' to validate them!), then the superiority of thought over phenomena, essence over accident and reality over appearance is illusory -- given this crazy way of viewing things.

 

In which case, alongside misleading phenomena, we now find we have to contend with even more dubious DM-theories and 'abstractions'. And, like it or not, these increasingly suspect theories can't provide a secure basis for any attempted explanation of the "true nature" of all those equally shaky appearances. In short, an apparently correct theory is clearly incapable of providing the required certainty for the correct interpretation of (allegedly) misleading phenomena. In that case, an already radically suspect theory (such as DM) stands no chance.

 

Oscillate dialectically as much as you like -- between 'thought' and 'appearance', 'essence' and 'accident' --, loop the dialectical loop all day long, it matters not; traditional philosophical notions like these (i.e., "essence", "reality", "appearance", "theory", "objectivity", and their ilk), are now lost in a shadowy world of 'misleading semblances'.43

 

So, it now looks like the 'dialectical circuit' locks DM in permanent orbit around these 'eternally shaky appearances'. In that case, with respect to any given DM-theorist who employs problematic concepts like these (i.e., 'appearance' and 'reality'), the supposed route that leads them into abstract theory -- and then back again (via practice), as a way of delving behind phenomena to uncover all those hidden "essences" --, is forever blocked. For just as soon as a single DM-abstraction is penned, typed, thought about or spoken, it enters and then remains trapped in this world of 'faded simulacra'.

 

It could be countered that dialecticians actually locate abstraction in thought, and that associates it with theory and thus with essence, not with appearances. So the above remarks are completely misguided.

 

But, that pro-DM-rebuttal is itself wide of the mark, for thought (according to dialecticians) only becomes objective in practice. Thought does not become objective if it remains confined to an inner, mental or abstract domain. It has to enter the phenomenal world through practice. Minimally, it has to be vocalised or written down if it is subsequently to be acted upon or even tested, in order for it to mature into 'objectivity'. Unfortunately, given this way of depicting things, in the phenomenal world, appearances reign supreme, and any material representation of thought (just as any attempt to test anything in practice) must negotiate its peace with them.

 

Indeed, given the traditional view of things, the world of appearances turns out to be an unforgiving and unrelenting dictator.

 

Moreover, if the further restrictions that DM places on thought are taken into account (i.e., those related to practice, once more), there would be no way of corroborating a single DM-proposition -- at least, none that weren't themselves compromised by doubts initiated by the 'reality'/'appearance' distinction itself -- and even more so if the 'asymptotic approach' metaphor is thrown in for good measure. Furthermore, as we discovered was the case with thought, confirmation isn't self-certifying, either; it, too, has to earn its keep in this 'vale of appearances'. As we have seen, practice is situated there, too. Hence, any test of theory must take place in this 'unreliable world of appearances'. If so, practice, even if it were a test of truth, can't provide DM-epistemologists with a handy 'get-out-of-any-need-to-appeal-to-appearances-free' card.

 

Negotiate this rusty old DM-banger around as many dialectical bends as you like, it will make no difference. It still ends-up wrapped around the same old tree of 'superficial appearances'.

 

And this is just one more reason why genuine materialists distrust the Idealist nostrums dialecticians have unwisely imported into Marxism, courtesy of that Hermetic Harebrain, Hegel.

 

Indeed, as we have seen, this muddle was a direct consequence of appropriating a set of ideas Dialectical Marxists found in Traditional Metaphysics -- in the present case, those associated with the 'appearance'/'reality' distinction.

 

It may only be avoided by rejecting this historically regressive dogma in its entirety.

 

Naturally, this doesn't mean that an HM-analysis of Capitalism, for example, is incapable of distinguishing between its genuinely exploitative relations and the false beliefs workers (and others) form of them --, nor accounting for the contradictory ideas people develop as a result.44 But, it does mean that we may do so successfully only if the confused categories of Traditional Metaphysics and DM are completely rejected.

 

And good riddance, too...

 

Appendix One

 

Ollman's Traditionalism

 

Initial Disappointment

 

[This used to form part of Note 24.]

 

[I have included a criticism Ollman's work since several comrades recommended it as an excellent explanation of 'the dialectic', especially in relation to the 'process of abstraction'. A recent example of this can be found here, where I have also posted a series of serious objections to it.]

 

In a book published a few years ago, Bertell Ollman outlined his interpretation of Marx's use of abstraction -- i.e., in Ollman (2003), pp.59-112; that material also appears in Ollman (1993), pp.23-83.

 

However, readers of Ollman's book will be forgiven their acute sense of disappointment that after the opening fanfare (to the effect that 'abstraction' is centrally important both to Marx and Marxist theory), no account was given beyond the usual, by-now-familiar superficial gestures at explaining what the actual process itself is:

 

"First and foremost, and stripped of all qualifications added by this or that dialectician, the subject of dialectics is change, all change, and interaction, all kinds and degrees of interaction. This is not to say that dialectical thinkers recognize the existence of change and interaction, while non-dialectical thinkers do not. That would be foolish. Everyone recognizes that everything in the world changes, somehow and to some degree, and that the same holds true for interaction. The problem is how to think adequately about them, how to capture them in thought. How, in other words, can we think about change and interaction so as not to miss or distort the real changes and interactions that we know, in a general way at least, are there (with all the implications this has for how to study them and to communicate what we find to others)? This is the key problem addressed by dialectics, this is what all dialectics is about, and it is in helping to resolve this problem that Marx turns to the process of abstraction." [Ollman (2003), pp.59-60. Bold emphasis added. As we will see, Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise the 'process of abstraction' is no less disappointing.]

 

We have already seen that neither dialecticians nor their 'theory' are actually capable of explaining change -- indeed, we also saw that if this theory were true, change would be impossible (on that see Essays Five through Eight Part Three, but especially here and here), just as we have seen earlier in this Essay that no sense can be made of the 'process of abstraction'. So, the question remains: has Ollman anything new to add that might turn the tide of theory back in favour of this discredited intellectual fossil, this left-over from Ancient Greek Metaphysics?

 

Well, apparently not, for all Ollman has to offer are a few pages of trite observations about what he thinks we all do when we allegedly engage in 'abstraction' (supported by no evidence at all -- either quoted, cited or referenced), coupled with what he thinks scientists engage in when they construct their theories (again, supported, not by evidence, just a lively and creative imagination).

 

[The serious philosophical difficulties there are attempting to define change, let alone trying to form 'abstract ideas' about it, have been explored in more detail below.]

 

The Privatised 'Process of Abstraction'

 

Perhaps the foregoing is being unfair to Ollman? In that case, it might be wise to examine what he actually had to say to see if the above comments are really as peremptory and prejudicial as they might at first sight seem.

 

"In his most explicit statement on the subject, Marx claims that his method starts from the 'real concrete' (the world as it presents itself to us) and proceeds through 'abstraction' (the intellectual activity of breaking this whole down into the mental units with which we think about it) to the 'thought concrete' (the reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind) (Marx (1904), pp.293-94; this is a reference to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy -- RL). The real concrete is simply the world in which we live, in all its complexity. The thought concrete is Marx's reconstruction of that world in the theories of what has come to be called 'Marxism.' The royal road to understanding is said to pass from the one to the other through the process of abstraction." [Ibid., p.60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site, as they have been in the rest of the passages quoted from this source. Referencing conventions changed to agree with those adopted at this site, too. Bold emphases added.]

 

So, according to Ollman, abstraction is a "royal road to truth", which breaks down the "real concrete" into manageable "mental units" we then use to "think about" the world. How we do this is passed over in silence. No surprise there, then.

 

However, we have seen that the way this 'process' has been and still is conceived by Traditional Theorists (like Ollman) means it is an individualised, isolated 'mental' skill -- which we have also seen completely undermines the social nature of knowledge and language.

 

Just like Ollman, Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise this 'process' reveals that he also thinks this is an individualised, if not a private skill, in relation to which we all seem to be 'natural' experts:

 

"The sense in which the term ['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. [In a footnote, Sayer adds 'My use of "abstract" and "concrete" is, I think, equivalent to Marx's' (p.277, note 3).]" [Sayer (1992), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

As was the case with Ollman -- and, indeed, everyone else who has written about this obscure 'process' --, we aren't told how anyone manages to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a 'private language'.

 

Indeed, this is something Ollman himself has pointed out:

 

"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003), p.63. Bold emphases added.]

 

Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, of those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!

 

It is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore, that he is at least aware of it.

 

In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have encountered (in nigh on thirty years) who even so much as acknowledges this 'difficulty'!

 

[Be this as it may, I have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more details.]

 

Of course, none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman recognised that even though Marx gestured in its direction, HM doesn't need this obscure 'process' (that is, where any sense can be made of it) -- or, indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language completely undercuts abstractionism.

 

[Nor does Ollman appear to take into consideration Marx's own refutation of abstractionism, published in The Holy Family.]

 

Nevertheless, the few things that Ollman does say about this 'process' fail to inspire much confidence:

 

"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and communicated it must be parcelled out. Our minds can no more swallow the world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere', which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart.

 

"We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought, and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of abstraction.

 

"Responding to a mixture of influences that include the material world and our experiences in it as well as to personal wishes, group interests, and other social constraints, it is the process of abstraction that establishes the specificity of the objects with which we interact. In setting boundaries, in ruling this far and no further, it is what makes something one (or two, or more) of a kind, and lets us know where that kind begins and ends. With this decision as to units, we also become committed to a particular set of relations between them -- relations made possible and even necessary by the qualities that we have included in each -- a register for classifying them, and a mode for explaining them.

 

"In listening to a concert, for example, we often concentrate on a single instrument or recurring theme and then redirect our attention elsewhere. Each time this occurs, the whole music alters, new patterns emerge, each sound takes on a different value, etc. How we understand the music is largely determined by how we abstract it. The same applies to what we focus on when watching a play, whether on a person, or a combination of persons, or a section of the stage. The meaning of the play and what more is required to explore or test that meaning alters, often dramatically, with each new abstraction. In this way, too, how we abstract literature, where we draw the boundaries, determines what works and what parts of each work will be studied, with what methods, in relation to what other subjects, in what order, and even by whom. Abstracting literature to include its audience, for example, leads to a sociology of literature, while an abstraction of literature that excludes everything but its forms calls forth various structural approaches, and so on." [Ibid., pp.60-61. Bold emphases added. Minor typo corrected.]

 

As far as can be determined, that is all Ollman has to say about this 'process', as such (as opposed to his comments about how Marx allegedly used it).

 

Now, anyone reading through the above passage will surely conclude that Ollman has forgotten about the social nature of knowledge, just as he has confused paying attention, or paying heed, with abstraction. Sure, he gestures toward the social aspects of knowledge with his comment that we must factor in "group interests, and other social constraints", but how this helps turn an individual 'aptitude' into a socially-conditioned skill is left entirely unclear (which isn't at all surprising, since this trick is impossible to pull-off). How is it possible for Abstractor A to ensure that he/she has abstracted anything in the same way as Abstractor B? Given this theory, all these two have to go on are their own individual, subjective attempts to that end -- indeed, all they have are their own private take on "group interests, and other social constraints", and the same goes for everyone else in the group. However, have no way of comparing the results delivered by this 'process' with those of anyone else. Ollman has already half admitted this, but, as noted earlier, we are still waiting for his solution to this conundrum.

 

[However, since this criticism was covered in detail here and here, I won't rake over it again in this sub-section.]

 

Much of what Ollman focuses on isn't under our conscious control:

 

"We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually see?' (What came into your line of vision?)." [Ibid.]

 

But, 'abstraction', at least as Ollman and other DM-theorists conceive it, is supposedly under our conscious control. It is something we intend to do. So, as we will see, dialecticians deliberately focus on one specific concept that Marx himself dealt with, "the population", which they force through a few dialectical hoops (or so they tell us). In which case, much of the above quotation appears to have nothing to do with 'abstraction' in the 'dialectical' sense of that word.

 

That shouldn't be taken to mean I think we can't intentionally focus on something in our line of sight, or in our surroundings, but when Ollman says "We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses", he isn't speaking about intentional behaviour, but something that isn't under our control. So, once again, this can't be used to analogise 'the process of abstraction dialectically'. [Indeed, as we will see, trying to 'abstract' "the population" is far from easy or straightforward. Not even Marx managed to do it!]

 

An appeal to a public language here (as a way out of this impasse) would be to no avail, either, since this theory undermines the very possibility of there being such a language. That is because it bases language acquisition, as well as meaning in language, on 'the process of abstraction' itself. In which case, anyone who accepts this theory can hardly appeal to language to bail it out -- at least, not without arguing in a circle.

 

As we have seen, this entire approach is entangled in, and has been compromised by, the post-Renaissance, bourgeois individualist theories of language, cognition, and knowledge, which picture them as dispositions, aptitudes and skills we all activate, or learn, as isolated individuals. Either that, or we are later supposed to bring the results of these dispositions, aptitudes and skills to society as social atoms in order to compare, or share, the 'contents of our minds' with those of others in the same market place of ideas. Given this family of theories, the social comes second, the individual first. Hence, we act and learn as social atoms, first, and then attempt to transform ourselves into social molecules, second. This is the abstractionist's version of Margaret Thatcher's "There is no such thing as society". [More on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

As Meredith Williams noted of Vygotsky's views (whose ideas are, alas, highly influential among DM-fans):

 

"Vygotsky attempts to combine a social theory of cognition development with an individualistic account of word-meaning.... [But] the social theory of development can only succeed if it is combined with a social theory of meaning." [Williams (1999b), p.275.]

 

Williams could in fact be talking about any randomly-selected Dialectical Marxist who has written on this subject (including Ollman).

 

Again, these comments might seem to some a little hasty, so we will have to wait to see how Ollman digs himself out of this particular, bourgeois-individualist hole in future work.

 

[Update August March 2024: Twenty-two years later and there is still no sign of Ollman's long-awaited, miraculous 'escape'!]

 

Independently of this, Ollman has surely confused the capacity we have for concentrating on certain features of the world with the 'process of abstraction'. So, to take his example, when we attend a concert, we might indeed concentrate on the soloist, say, but we don't abstract him or her. Concentrating on a musician doesn't result in the production of abstract particulars, abstract ideas, or the Proper Names thereof, which the 'process of abstraction' supposedly does.

 

It may be argued that that is indeed where abstraction kicks in.

 

But what do we gain by saying this that the word "concentrate" hasn't already achieved for us? What extra feature does the alleged 'process of abstraction' now add? Ollman doesn't say. In fact, this 'crucially important process' stalls at this point. It has nowhere to go and nothing to work with (as the earlier sections of this Essay have demonstrated). Does listening to a concert produce a single abstract particular? Or 'abstract general idea'? Or the Proper Names thereof? If it does, Ollman has yet to tell us.

 

This is quite apart from the fact that even when we concentrate on the soloist, the rest of the orchestra doesn't become silent or disappear; that is the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen when we 'succeed' in 'abstracting' something.

 

Of course, none of us begin with these skills. We all have to be socialised into acquiring them and have to be taught what our words mean (or, of course, shown by example). We can see this from the way that individuals from other cultures focus on different aspects of their surroundings, especially when it comes to listening to music. In relation to this we all have to develop 'trained ears'. Hence, even if there were such a 'process of abstraction', it wouldn't be needed, for we already have the skills necessary to advance knowledge using these socially-acquired capacities. Moreover, these skills possess the not inconsiderable advantage that they follow from, but do not undermine, the social nature of language and knowledge. They are also learned, tested and performed in the open, in social contexts. Abstraction (supposedly) takes place in a hidden, inner world, where the bourgeois individual reigns supreme -- and testing has no jurisdiction.

 

Someone might object that we manage to do many things in our heads, such as mental arithmetic, but that doesn't mean we can't know or share its results or make sense of them.

 

There are several problems with that objection:

 

First, I have devoted much of Essay Thirteen Part Three [Sections (2) through (6)] to undermining the idea that we do anything at all 'in our heads/brains'. Readers are directed there for more details.

 

Second, even if it were true that 'mental arithmetic' was performed 'in our heads', it in no way resembles the 'process of abstraction'. With 'mental arithmetic' we aren't dealing with symbols that have been 'abstracted into existence' in the way that supporters of abstractionism imagine is the case with the words we use. For example, how on earth would it be possible to abstract into existence the number two (you'd need to be able to count to two correctly first so that you knew you were abstracting the right number to begin with and hadn't mistaken it for, say, three!)? Or zero? Or negative numbers? Or a real number, like π? Or a Hermite Polynomial and an Abelian Group?

 

[Readers mustn't confuse "the number zero" with "nothing", for, as Blaise Pascal pointed out, if "zero" meant the same as "nothing" then 1 and 10 would be the same since, on this assumption, they are both one followed by nothing. Hence, zero can't be 'abstracted' from nothing; it can't be what every example of nothing has in common. If it were, one would equal ten!]

 

Moreover, the meaning of the symbols used and the legitimacy of the operations employed in mental arithmetic were established in the open long before anyone calculated anything 'in their head'. That isn't so with 'abstraction'. The meaning of any of the terms handled 'in the mind/head' during the 'process of abstraction' (assuming for the moment that that were possible) are set by that process itself. In addition, we have no clue what 'operations' are being used by each lone abstractor (they either can't or they simply refuse to tell us!), nor have we any idea if they are legitimate 'operations', yield the 'right results', or even if there are any 'right' results for them to obtain, to begin with(!) --, unlike mental arithmetic.

 

Here is Frege on that very idea that numbers, for example, can be abstracted (this was quoted earlier):

 

Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for those of his day who imagined that mathematical concepts could be created, or perhaps apprehended, by a 'process of abstraction' --, in particular, the views of the 19th century mathematician and mystical Platonist, Georg Cantor, and his followers:

 

"We may begin here by making a general observation. When negroes from the heart of Africa see a telescope or pocket watch for the first time, they are inclined to credit these things with the most astounding magical properties. Many mathematicians react to philosophical expressions in a similar manner. I am thinking in particular here of the following: 'define' (Brahma), 'reflect' (Vishnu), 'abstract' (Shiva). The names of the Indian gods in brackets are meant to indicate the kind of magical effects the expressions are supposed to have. If, for instance, you find that some property of a thing bothers you, you abstract from it. But if you want to call a halt to this process of destruction so that the properties you want to see retained should not be obliterated in the process, you reflect on these properties. If, finally, you feel sorely the lack of certain properties in the thing, you bestow them on it by definition. In your possession of these miraculous powers you are not far removed from the Almighty. The significance this would have is practically beyond measure. Think of how these powers could be put to use in the classroom: the teacher has a good-natured but lazy and stupid pupil. He will then abstract from the laziness and the stupidity, reflecting all the while on the good-naturedness. Then by means of a definition he will confer on him the properties of keenness and intelligence. Of course so far people have confined themselves to mathematics. The following dialogue may serve an illustration:

 

'Mathematician: The sign √(−1) has the property of yielding -1 when squared.

 

'Layman: This pattern of printer's ink on paper? I can't see any trace of this property. Perhaps it has been discovered with the aid of a microscope or by some chemical means?

 

'Mathematician: It can't be arrived at by any process of sense perception. And of course it isn't produced by the mere printer's ink either; a magic incantation, called a definition, has first to be pronounced over it.

 

'Layman: Ah, now I understand. You expressed yourself badly. You mean that a definition is used to stipulate that this pattern is a sign for something with those properties.

 

'Mathematician: Not at all! It is a sign, but it doesn't designate or mean anything. It itself has these properties, precisely in virtue of the definition.

 

'Layman: What extraordinary people you mathematicians are, and no mistake! You don't bother at all about the properties a thing actually has, but imagine that in their stead you can bestow a property on it by a definition -- a property that the thing in its innocence doesn't dream of -- and now you investigate the property and believe in that way you can accomplish the most extraordinary things!'

 

"This illustrates the might of the mathematical Brahma. In Cantor it is Shiva and Vishnu who receive the greater honour. Faced with a cage of mice, mathematicians react differently when the number of them is in question. Some…include in the number the mice just as they are, down to the last hair; others -- and I may surely count Cantor amongst them -- find it out of place that hairs should form part of the number and so abstract from them. They find in mice a whole host of things besides which are out of place in number and are unworthy to be included in it. Nothing simpler: one abstracts from the whole lot. Indeed when you get down to it everything in the mice is out of place: the beadiness of their eyes no less than the length of their tails and the sharpness of their teeth. So one abstracts from the nature of the mice. But from their nature as what is not said; so one abstracts presumably from all their properties, even from those in virtue of which we call them mice, even from those in virtue of which we call them animals, three-dimensional beings -- properties which distinguish them, for instance, from the number 2.

 

"Cantor demands more: to arrive at cardinal numbers, we are required to abstract from the order in which they are given. What is to be understood by this? Well, if at a certain moment we compare the positions of the mice, we see that of any two one is further to the north than the other, or that both are to the same distance to the north. The same applies to east and west and above and below. But this is not all: if we compare the mice in respect of their ages, we find likewise that of any two one is older than the other or that both have the same age. We can go on and compare them in respect of their length, both with and without their tails, in respect of the pitch of their squeaks, their weight, their muscular strength, and in many other respects besides. All these relations generate an order. We shall surely not go astray if we take it that this is what Cantor calls the order in which things are given. So we are meant to abstract from this order too. Now surely many people will say 'But we have already abstracted from their being in space; so ipso facto we have already abstracted from north and south, from difference in their lengths. We have already abstracted from the ages of the animals, and so ipso facto from one's being older than another. So why does special mention also have to be made of order?'

 

"Well, Cantor also defines what he calls an ordinal type; and in order to arrive at this, we have, so he tells us, to stop short of abstracting from the order in which the things are given. So presumably this will be possible too, though only with Vishnu's help. We can hardly dispense with this in other cases too. For the moment let us stay with the cardinal numbers.

 

"So let us get a number of men together and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of the pencil and the order in which its elements are given. After we have allowed them sufficient time for this difficult task, we ask the first 'What general concept…have you arrived at?' Non-mathematician that he is, he answers 'Pure Being.' The second thinks rather 'Pure nothingness', the third -- I suspect a pupil of Cantor's -- 'The cardinal number one.' A fourth is perhaps left with the woeful feeling that everything has evaporated, a fifth -- surely a pupil of Cantor's -- hears an inner voice whispering that graphite and wood, the constituents of the pencil, are 'constitutive elements', and so arrives at the general concept called the cardinal number two. Now why shouldn't one man come out with the answer and the other with another? Whether in fact Cantor's definitions have the sharpness and precision their author boasts of is accordingly doubtful to me. But perhaps we got such varying replies because it was a pencil we carried out our experiment with. It may be said 'But a pencil isn't a set.' Why not? Well then, let us look at the moon. 'The moon is not a set either!' What a pity! The cardinal number one would be only too happy to come into existence at any place and at any time, and the moon seemed the very thing to assist at the birth. Well then, let us take a heap of sand. Oh dear, there's someone already trying to separate the grains. 'You are surely not going to try and count then all! That is strictly forbidden! You have to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction....' 'But in order to be able to abstract from the nature of a grain of sand, I must surely first have looked at it, grasped it, come to know it!' 'That's quite unnecessary. What would happen to the infinite cardinals in that case? By the time you had looked at the last grain, you would be bound to have forgotten the first ones. I must emphasise once more that you are meant to arrive at the number by a single act of abstraction. Of course for that you need the help of supernatural powers. Surely you don't imagine you can bring it off by ordinary abstraction. When you look at books, some in quarto, some in octavo, some thick, some thin, some in Gothic type and some in Roman and you abstract from these properties which distinguish them, and thus arrive at, say, the concept "book", this, when you come down to it, is no great feat. Allow me to clarify for you the difference between ordinary abstraction and the higher, supernatural, kind.

 

"With ordinary abstraction we start out by comparing objects a, b, c, and find that they agree in many properties but differ in others. We abstract from the latter and arrive at a concept Φ under which a and b and c all fall. Now this concept has neither the properties abstracted from nor those common to a, b and c. The concept "book", for instance, no more consists of printed sheets -- although the individual books we started by comparing do consist of such -- than the concept "female mammal" bears young or suckles them with milk secreted from its glands; for it has no glands. Things are quite different with supernatural abstraction. Here we have, for instance, a heap of sand...." [Frege (1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point. Italic emphases in the original. Links added; reformatted in line with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

As I point out below, 'the process of abstraction' determines the meaning of the abstractions, or the words used to represent the abstractions, that emerge at the end. That isn't the case with 'mental arithmetic' (however, DM-theorists regularly conflate words with whatever they are supposed to represent, as we have seen). Unless the individual doing these calculations 'in her head' already understood the public, shared meaning of number words, how to employ them, and had been trained in the correct use of mathematical operations, she wouldn't be able to do any arithmetic, let alone any 'in her head'. We don't learn these skills individualistically, or assign our own meanings to number words and mathematical operations, piecemeal by our own efforts.

 

[Once more, to imagine otherwise would be to accept some form of bourgeois individualism, which would also, of course, undermine commitment to the social nature of language and knowledge.]

 

That is why we all comprehend the results of 'mental arithmetic'; we already understand the language of mathematics before we try to do any. That isn't the case with abstractionism.

 

(3) There is no social training enabling each individual to perform successfully 'the process of abstraction'; it is a quintessentially individualistic process. As I have pointed out already (slightly modified):

 

Is there a rule book to guide us? Is there an abstractionists' algorithm we all unconsciously 'follow', programmed into each of us at birth (or is it at conception?), a set of tried-and-tested instructions? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training?...

 

Furthermore, even if there were clear -- let alone plausible -- answers to such questions, another annoying 'difficulty' would block our path: it would still be impossible for anyone to check a single one of these abstractions to see if they tallied with anyone else's -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them right. In fact, the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems right will be right. But for something to be right it needs to be checked against a standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one judging. But, there is no such standard, here. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat will be private to that individual abstractor. They have no way of checking their abstractions with those of anyone else, which means, of course, there can be no standard, 'abstract cat' to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means of which anyone's abstractions can be deemed correct.

 

One obvious reply to the above might be that we abstract by concentrating only on those factors that are "relevant" to the enquiry in hand. But, what are these "relevant factors"? And who decides? How might they be specified before an enquiry has begun? Surely, in order to know what is "relevant" to the process of, say, 'abstracting a cat', one would already have to know how to use the general term "cat", otherwise the accuracy of any supposed 'abstractions' that might emerge at the end would rightly be called into question, let alone those concerning the competency of the abstractor him/herself. If he/she doesn't already know how to use the word "cat", what faith can be put in anything they subsequently 'abstract', or even report about such 'abstractions'? On the other hand, if an intrepid abstractor already knows how to use the word "cat" (in order to abstract the 'right' object), one mind very well wonder what the point is of abstracting that furry mammal in the first place? This would seem to be about as pointless as checking to see if you know your own name by looking it up in a telephone directory.

 

Again, in response to this it could be argued that past experience guides us. But, how does it manage to do this? Can any of us recall being made to study the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors in the days of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of inner personal Microsoft Office Assistant -- or these days, accessing Cortana --  if we hit the right internal 'Help' key? But, what kind of explanation would that be of the supposedly intelligent process of abstraction if it requires a guiding hand? And where on earth did this 'inner PA' receive its training?...

 

The widespread illusion that we are all experts in the 'internal dismemberment' of images, ideas or concepts is motivated by further confusion, which also originated in Traditional Philosophy: the belief that the intelligent use of general words depends on some sort of internal, naming, representing or processing ceremony. In effect, this amounts once more to the belief that, despite appearances to the contrary, all words are names, and that meaning something involves the aforementioned 'inner acts of meaning', 'naming' or 'representing' -- matching words to images, sensations, processes, or ideas in the 'mind'.

 

At work here is another inappropriate set of metaphors which in turn trade on the idea that the mind functions like an inner theatre, TV or computer screen -- now refined perhaps with an analogy drawn against Microsoft Windows, whereby 'the mind' is taken to be "modular" (operated, no doubt, by the internal analogue of a computer geek, skilled at 'clicking' on the right inner 'icon' at the right moment, filing items in the right folders, setting-up efficient 'networks', etc., etc.). Given this family of metaphors, understanding is clearly modelled on the way we ordinarily look at pictures, but now applied to 'internal representations', each of us employing the equivalent of an 'inner eye' to appraise whatever fortune sends our way.

 

[This set of inappropriate metaphors underpins Pixar's recent film, Inside Out.]

 

These tropes are a faint echo of Plato's theory of knowledge by acquaintance and his Allegory of the Cave. [Of course, Plato's tropes were intended to make a different set of points, but his focusing on vision is the relevant factor for present purposes.] As we have seen, more recent bourgeois versions of this family of ideas regard knowledge as a passive processing of 'representations' in the 'minds' of socially-isolated, lone abstractors -- even if this approach to knowledge has been augmented by dialecticians with a gesture toward practice. Nevertheless, this view of knowledge acquisition pictured it as a form of acquaintance. The reasoning here is little more complex than this: we all know our friends by personal acquaintance, or by sight, so we all know the contents of our minds by (internal) acquaintance or (inner) sight.

 

And it is no use appealing to a public language -- again --, as I argued in Part One:

 

An appeal to the existence of a public language would be to no avail, either. Again, if each abstractor 'processes' their 'abstractions' in the privacy of their own heads, no one would be able to tell whether Abstractor A meant the same as Abstractor B by his or her use of the relevant words (or the relevant 'concepts' -- like "Substance", "Being", "Nothing", "The Population", "abstract labour", etc.) drawn from the vernacular, or elsewhere. Definitions would be no help, either, since, just like memory, they also employ 'abstractions' -- so, they would also be subject to the same awkward questions. For how can Abstractor A know what Abstractor B means by any of the abstract terms he/she has processed without access to her/his 'mind'? Abstractor B can't point to anything which is 'the meaning' of a single abstraction he or she might be trying to define, so he/she can't use an ostensive definition to help Abstractor A understand what he/she means (even if meanings could be established that way). No particular, or no singular term, can give the meaning of any abstraction or abstract term under scrutiny (as those who accept this theory intend, not as I have criticised it -- so I am not contradiction my claim that these abstractions are really the Proper Names of abstract particulars). That being so, the same 'difficulties' would confront the general terms supposedly used in any definition used to that end, and so on...

 

In connection with this topic, I posted the following material over at the Soviet Empire Forum a few years back (slightly modified and re-edited):

 

The meaning of the abstract nouns and/or adjectives obtained via the 'process of abstraction' is established by the results of that process.

 

"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated problem of universals was invented by Plato.... The distinction of particulars and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]

 

So, for example, the word "cat" no longer relates to cats in the real world but to an 'abstract particular', 'cat', that emerges as a result of this 'process'. Sure, it is supposed to 'reflect' cats in reality, but whether or not it does that, the abstraction at the end gives the meaning of the word "cat"; the fury animal on the mat does not. We can see this from the fact that if and when that cat dies, the meaning of "cat" does not die with it.

 

The same is the case with "population" and "value". What Dialectical Marxists mean by, say, "value" is given by the process of abstraction applied to the ordinary noun "value", so that the 'dialectical meaning' of the processed noun, "value", is no longer the same as the meaning of its ordinary, typological twin. The 'dialectical word', "value", now applies to the abstraction, 'value'. How this then reflects what supposedly occurs or exists in the economy is to be determined by the new meaning it has just acquired. "Value" now becomes the Proper Name of 'Value', naming this novel abstract particular.

An abstract particular is like a genuine particular (such as the chair you are now sat in (if you are), the screen you are looking at -- or even, you), to which we can, if we so choose, give a Proper Name, or pick out by the use of a singular term (such as the definite description, "The screen you are now looking at"), except 'abstract particulars' don't exist in the world around us. They are, however, still to be designated by the use of a Proper Name or other singular term (such as "The Form of the Good", "Cathood", "The Population", or "Value").

In Plato's theory these abstract particulars turned out to be the 'Forms'. In Aristotle's they were 'Universals'; in other philosophers' systems they were variously 'Concepts', 'Categories' or 'Ideas', supposedly named by abstract general nouns or adjectives (or even nominalised verbs -- to be explained presently). This helped encourage the parallel idea that all words are names -- they name the ideas/concepts/categories we have in our heads, all of which we comprehend [perhaps more fully] at the end of the supposed 'process of abstraction'.

This means that this process was a spin-off of the idea that we are only able to understand [anything using] language if all our words name something. Given this theory, Proper Names/Proper Nouns (like "Plato", "Socrates", "George W Bush") are easy to grasp; they name the individual idea we supposedly have of the person or object involved, or, indeed, they name those individuals or objects themselves. But general words don't seem to name anything tangible. What does "cat" name? Or "value"? "Cat" can't name all the cats we have met, since that would mean one person's idea of a cat would be different from another's, and the word would change its meaning as we met new cats. Hence, philosophers invented the 'process of abstraction' so they could explain what all of us name when we talk about cats -- i.e., what the general noun "cat" names, which was then transformed into the Universal 'Cat', Cathood, or the Essence of Cat. So, "Cat" became the Proper Name of Cathood, or even its 'essence'. The same is the case with "commodity", "population" and "value" in Marx's later work, since their meaning can't be ascertained by actually pointing to, or at, anything in society, either. They supposedly depict something 'below the surface of appearances', but they also have to be 'processed' first by each lone abstractor if they are to be understood by that person. This means that the 'real' meaning of all general nouns must be ascertained -- or, rather, that meaning must be fixed -- by a similar 'process of abstraction'.

We are all supposed to be able to discover the 'real meaning' of such abstractions by one or other of the following two avenues, depending on whether the theorist concerned is an Empiricist or a Rationalist.

For the Empiricist, we attain the general idea of 'cat' by a process of subtraction (something we do 'in our heads') until we obtain the general idea of a cat, something all cats supposedly share -- this is Locke's theory, for example. The 'process of abstraction' yields the 'real' or perhaps the 'nominal' essence of the item concerned. [The real essence is what is supposed to exist in the outside world independently of us -- what philosophers these days might call a de re essence. The nominal essence is just a name we supposedly give things, which might or might not actually or fully reflect anything in reality -- what philosophers these days would call a de dicto essence.]

For the Rationalist, however, we arrive at our knowledge of these 'forms' or 'concepts' by the 'light of reason' (in effect, we think 'god's thoughts' after 'him'), or, according to Plato, we recall
 the Forms we met in our earlier existence, in Heaven, which we then forget about as a result of the shock of birth. For the German Idealists, we apply these general terms to objects we meet in experience by a 'law of cognition', as Lenin might have put it. Marx described this process as follows:

 

"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'." [Marx and Engels, The Holy Family.]

 

All very mysterious...

[By the way, to nominalise a verb is to turn it into a noun. For example, in place of "Socrates runs" we obtain "Socrates is a runner" -- so, plainly, "Socrates" names Socrates, or our idea of him, and "runner" (now a noun) names the general category or class, 'runner', or our idea of it, to which he supposedly belongs. 'Runner' is now an abstract particular, and the abstract noun "Runner" becomes its Proper Name, designating the 'class of runners'. In addition, according to the Identity Theory of Predication that Hegel borrowed from Medieval Theologians, the verb "is" 'names' 'the identity relation' (or it just designates 'Identity'), which we are now supposed to imagine exists between our idea of Socrates and our idea of the class or category of runners to which we have assigned him. So, the sentence "Socrates runs" has become a list of nouns "Socrates" "Identity" "Runner" (via "Socrates is a runner"). The significance of that observation will soon emerge.]

 

The original generality expressed by terms like "cat", "runner" or even "value" has now been lost since a class is a particular. [Added on Edit: This topic was covered in detail in Part One; the argument in support has been summarised here.]

For both wings of Traditional Philosophy, howsoever we arrive at these abstract terms, the result supposedly gives us the meaning of the words we ordinarily use to describe objects and processes -- relating to 'concepts' or 'ideas' in our heads, in the world, in the economy, in Platonic Heaven or wherever they are situated. So, this also became a theory of meaning.

[Ian Hacking's book, Why Does Language Matter To Philosophy? -- Hacking (1975) -- describes this tradition in relatively few pages with admirable clarity.]


As Bertell Ollman points out, the problem with this is that the 'process of abstraction' (howsoever it is conceived) means we would all construct a private language. However, we also all end up meaning something different from everyone else by the words we have just processed, making communication impossible. [This is one reason why Wittgenstein criticised the idea of a private language -- as well as the doctrine that all words are names in the Philosophical Investigations
(Wittgenstein (2009).]

 

"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...."

 

[This comes from Ollman's The Dance of the Dialectic, quoted earlier....]

What Marx and Engels did was reverse this: If language is primarily a means of communication, not representation (as tradition would have it -- i.e., the old theory held that these 'abstractions' were represented in our heads and supposedly reflected something, somewhere), then we must begin with the fact that we use language to communicate and our theory of language and meaning has to adapt to that fact. Anything else would undermine the social nature of language and human intercommunication.

Wittgenstein picked this idea up in his conversations with the Marxist economist, Piero Sraffa (Gramsci's friend), and it completely revolutionised his approach to language. He then adopted what he called an 'anthropological', human-centred, view of discourse.

According to this view, we are all socialised by our carers, siblings, peers, and teachers to use language in the same way. We don't decide for ourselves what our words mean (by a 'process of abstraction', or in any other way). That was the old idea -- you can see why that 'old approach' appealed to bourgeois individualist philosophers (like Locke, Berkeley and Hume). It still does, and it remains the leading view of language, which helps explain the dominating influence of cognitive psychology on contemporary theories of mind and language (even Chomsky has fallen for into this trap, with his Cartesian approach to language and mind). It is still the "ruling idea" in the field. Wittgenstein and Marx's approach is almost totally disdained -- and, alas, totally ignored by those who also claim to be Marxists!

So, given this new, Marx/Wittgenstein approach, we are all taught what our words mean, we don't teach ourselves 'in our heads' or anywhere else, for that matter. Hence, this approach begins with the social and works from there, not the other way round. At a stroke, this re-orientation eliminates all the classic problems associated with abstractionism and representationalism....

However, the old approach to language and meaning ends up undermining discourse completely, as Professor Lowe explains:

 

"What is the problem of predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple subject-predicate sentence, such as..., 'Theaetetus sits'. How are we to understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this sentence, 'Theaetetus' and 'sits' respectively? The role of 'Theaetetus' seems straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for, a certain particular human being. But what about 'sits'? Many philosophers have been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it can be possessed by many different individuals.

"But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the sentence 'Theaetetus sits' into a mere list of (two) names, each naming something different, one a particular and one a universal: 'Theaetetus, sits.' But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that can be said to be true or false, in the way that 'Theaetetus sits' clearly can. The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, 'Theaetetus, possessing, sits.'

"Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly known as 'Bradley's regress', in recognition of its modern discoverer, the British idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute idealism...." [Lowe (2006).]

 

So, the traditional theory reduces all words to nouns (in fact Proper Nouns), and hence all such sentences to lists of names, and lists say nothing. [Again, I have explained in detail how that works in Essay Three Part One.]

Now, the core of my criticism of this ancient theory of abstraction is not so much that we would or wouldn't know what our words mean...it is that it would make it impossible for anyone to say anything at all if it were true! All our (subject/predicate) sentences would fall apart as mere lists.

None of this happens if we take Marx's advice:

 

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [The German Ideology, bold added.]

 

Note that Marx specifically connects the traditional theory with the philosophically individualised lives of the theorists who invented it (i.e., petty-bourgeois, early modern philosophers, from Hobbes to Hegel), and he also links this approach to abstraction with the distortion of language.

This germ of an idea was taken up by Wittgenstein and was used by him to revolutionise philosophy, so that if he were correct, his method would bring to an end 2500 years of empty speculation. It also meant that the old 'ruling ideas' (abstractionism and representationalism, etc.) can gain no grip and should therefore be rejected by Marxists.

My work is (partly) aimed at bringing this revolution back into Marxism itself. [Links added.]

 

In which case, an appeal to mental arithmetic is of no help at all in trying to make sense of the 'process of abstraction'. When we engage in mental arithmetic we employ words and symbols that already have publicly accepted meanings (and, as we have seen, meanings that can't themselves have been obtained by abstraction). In addition, we employ mathematical operations we have already been taught before we even attempt to 'work something out in our heads'. So, these operations have been validated before they are used in mental arithmetic. The 'process of abstraction' gives a new meaning to the terms that emerge at the end (but in effect it empties them of meaning, as we have just seen, since they are now "distorted" words, according to Marx) -- and, as we have also seen, there is no way that any given abstractor can know that the supposed meanings they have given to the terms they have supposedly 'abstracted into existence' are the same as, or are different from, anyone else's, or even the same as those they 'abstracted' even the day before. Finally, the 'process of abstraction' itself can't have been validated before it was used, since, beyond a few vagaries, no one seems to know what this 'process' actually involves, as we have seen, too.

 

Karl Marx's Magic Trick

 

Nevertheless, Ollman tells us that Marx in fact employed four different senses of "abstraction" -- e.g., in relation to:

 

(i) A division of the world into manageable "mental constructs";

 

(ii) The results of this process;

 

(iii) The difference between a deficient, ideological use of certain concepts; and,

 

(iv) The method he employed in Das Kapital (pp.61-62).

 

Now, it is undeniable that Marx used the word "abstract" and its cognates, and he certainly imagined he had employed this 'process' in his later work, but there nothing in Marx's writings to show that he actually abstracted a single thing. And, that isn't just because the 'process' itself is impossible to carry out, let alone describe with any clarity or in detail.

 

The passage that is usually quoted in order to show that Marx did in fact use abstraction actually fails in this regard, as we are about to discover:

 

"It seems correct to begin with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973), pp.100-01.]

 

As I noted in Part One of this Essay:

 

In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does in this passage; he merely gestures at doing it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians. This isn't to disparage Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work if the baleful influence of traditional thought had been kept totally at bay.

 

[Yes, I know the first quotation above is from the Grundrisse, not Das Kapital!]

 

What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing this. They don't need to do a brain scan on Marx (even if he were still alive!), nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument. Nor do they have to re-create these alleged 'abstractions', which they would certainly have to do if the 'process of abstraction' were something we all do privately in our heads, or have to emulate in order to follow someone else's thoughts. And they definitely can't copy Marx's moves here, since he failed to say what he had actually done with the concepts/words he used -- nor did he specify how he had 'mentally processed' them (if in fact he had done so!). Indeed, his 'instructions' describing how to abstract the "population" are even less useful than John Lennon's famous remark that to find the USA you just had to turn left at Greenland. Hence, no one could possibly emulate Marx here since he left us no usable details, which, of course, suggests Marx didn't in fact do what he thought he had done, or proposed to do, otherwise, careful thinker that he was, he would have spelt them out. Perhaps more significantly, no one since has been able to reconstruct these mythical 'mental' moves, or show that their own weak gesture at applying this method is exactly the same as the one used by Marx -- or even that it yields the same results as those allegedly achieved by Marx (indeed, as noted earlier).

 

In fact, it is quite apparent from the above passage that Marx had forgotten about his own refutation of this very process! [On that, see here, and again in the next sub-section, below.]

 

Marx says it "seems correct" if we begin with "the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population...", but he notes the latter is abstract if we omit "the classes of which it is composed." Marx then suggests that we proceed as follows: "[B]egin with the population, [but] this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and...then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until [we have] arrived at the simplest determinations." From there we, "[R]etrace the journey] until [we have] finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse."

 

But, what "simpler concepts" are these? Marx failed to say, and no one has filled in the gaps since. And what the criterion of a "simpler concept" is supposed to be is left entirely mysterious. Is class simpler than population? Or vice versa? Unfortunately, Marx left no detailed rules informing his readers how he understood the nature of class. Volume Three of Das Kapital notoriously broke off at that very point. As I pointed out in Essay Eight Part Two (here), Marxists have been struggling ever since trying to do what Marx failed to do: decide exactly who belongs to the proletariat and hence who belongs to the capitalist class. If, after 150 years we are still far from clear about this, and Marx failed to describe with any clarity what the composition of each class is, how can anyone claim with any confidence that Marx had actually done what he said he had done above, or that it is even possible for anyone to do it (in their heads)?

 

And problems like this might very well also apply to the "thinner" abstractions to which Marx alluded -- about which he was also tight lipped. What are these "thinner" abstractions? And what counts as the "simplest determinations", and how on earth do we do we know they are the simplest? Indeed, what counts as a "simplest determination"? Worse still: how do we know there are any such "simplest determinations", to begin with? Maybe analysis can proceed indefinitely? How can we rule that out? Where do we stop? And how might we ascertain, concerning any two randomly selected intrepid abstractors, that they will always stop at the same point if all this takes place 'in the head'?

 

So, as I suggested, Marx's verbal flourishes are no more substantive than the hand gestures of stage magicians. It isn't easy to see why so many Dialectical Marxists have relied so much this passage and have also failed to ask the sort of questions posed above, given its lack of detail and tantalising vagueness. We aren't even told what a "determination" is, for goodness sake! Is it the same as a Hegelian 'determination'? Or has it a different meaning?

 

Of course, none of this is surprising. As we have seen, abstractionists become rather vague when it comes to setting out the details of this mysterious 'process' (and anyone who questions these DM-prevaricators can expect much hand waving and deflection). Not even Marx, genius though he was, is clear about this! That is why, after 2400 years of this Ancient Greek metaphysical fairy-tale having been spun -- over and above the plethora of vague gesture theorists like Ollman offer up to their readers --, no one seems able to say what this 'process' actually is, let alone what its results amount to!

 

By way of contrast, the actual method Marx employed (as noted above: we can physically see him using it, on the page -- i.e., indulging in an intelligent and novel, if imprecise, use of language) is precisely how the greatest scientists have always proceeded. In their work, they present evidence and construct arguments, in the open, in a public language, and this is often accompanied by an innovative use of language, all of which can be checked, examined or questioned by anyone who has a mind to do so.

 

This can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".

 

The Young Marx And Engels Torpedo 'Abstractionism'

 

Marx and Engels's earlier words are, therefore, surely a more reliable guide to what he actually did in Das Kapital:

 

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….

 

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Marx and Engels (1975), p.60. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

 

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

In the above passage, the 'process of abstraction' is shown up for what it is: a systematic capitulation to philosophical confusion based on a distortion of ordinary language.

 

Ollman Misconstrues Change

 

Ollman now offers his readers the following (highly clichéd, but no less vague) comment about change:

 

"Beginning with historical movement, Marx's preoccupation with change and development is undisputed. What is less known, chiefly because it is less clear, is how he thought about change, how he abstracted it, and how he integrated these abstractions into his study of a changing world. The underlying problem is as old as philosophy itself. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, provides us with its classic statement when he asserts that a person cannot step into the same river twice. Enough water has flowed between the two occasions so that the river we step into the second time is not the same river we walked into earlier. Yet our common sense tells us that it is, and our naming practice reflects this view. The river is still called the 'Hudson', or the 'Rhine' or the 'Ganges'. Heraclitus, of course, was not interested in rivers, but in change. His point is that change goes on everywhere and all the time, but that our manner of thinking about it is sadly inadequate. The flow, the constant alteration of movement away from something and toward something else, is generally missing. Usually, where change takes place very slowly or in very small increments, its impact can be safely neglected. On the other hand, depending on the context and on our purpose in it, even such change -- because it occurs outside our attention -- may occasionally startle us and have grave consequences for our lives." [Ollman (2003), p.64. Link added.]

 

Although Ollman is concerned to tell us that Marx "abstracted" change, he forgot to say exactly where he did this, or even what it means to "abstract" change. What is common to every conceivable example of change? Ollman also neglected to inform his readers about that, too.

 

Among professional philosophers a perspicuous, non-trivial definition of change has yet to be agreed upon (Mortensen (2020)). An appeal to something called, 'Cambridge Change' (a term introduced by Peter Geach, in Geach (1968) pp.13-14, reprinted in Geach (1969), pp.71-72) would also prove to be a dead end, as we are about to find out.

 

Despite this, we might still try to define change in the following way (along lines suggested by 'Cambridge Change'):

 

W1: Let Γ be the set of predicates true of A at t1, where A goes proxy for a singular term designating some object (with "object" defined as "anything to which a singular term can legitimately be applied" -- that might sound circular, but it isn't), and tm is a temporal variable (for m Z+). [Z+ is the set of Positive Integers and "" stands for "belongs to".]

 

W2: Let Γ comprise the following members: {P1, P2, P3..., Pi..., Pn} (for n Z+). [Where Pk goes proxy for legitimate and distinct predicate expressions.]

 

W3: For A to change, at a minimum: (i) Let Pi be true of A at t2 and Pi be false of A at t1, or (ii) Let Pj be false of A at t2 and Pj be true of A at t1 (where t2 > t1). [Here, ">" stands for "later than".]

 

[Colloquially, W3 reads as follows: At a minimum, let something be true of A at a later time that was false of it earlier, or let something be false of A at a later time that was true of it earlier.]

 

The problem with this attempt to define change is that (what would rightly be regarded as) superficial relational predicates, which become true of A, will imply it had changed when it hadn't actually done so.

 

So, if the new predicate true of A were "NN thought about ξ", yielding "NN thought about A" -- or the new predicate that had been true of A, but was now false of A, were "NM wrote about ζ", yielding "NM wrote about A" --, then, while both of these would satisfy the above definition, implying A had changed, they wouldn't actually mean A had changed because of that. Otherwise we would have to argue that if someone began to think about, say, the Crab Nebula, that would mean it had changed simply because someone on earth had thought about it; or that if someone else stopped writing about Engels at, say, 12:13:56 pm on May 17, 2020, when she had been writing about him a few seconds earlier, Engels himself had changed!

 

[The use of Greek letters like those employed above was explained here.]

 

Clearly, this definition of "change" is unacceptable, but no one has come up with a better, non-question-begging or generally accepted alternative. So, there is currently no definition of change!

 

[I won't enter into why we don't actually need a philosophical definition of change -- or even why one can't be found no matter how hard we try -- in this Essay, or at this site.]

 

Now, it is reasonably clear that Marx, genius though he was, didn't solve this 'problem', which has also dogged Traditional Thought for over two thousand years, but it is even clearer still that Ollman hasn't, nor did he point his readers to where he thinks Marx might have done so. In that case, the question remains: how is it possible to form an 'abstract concept of change', if, after over two thousand years, we still lack a workable, or acceptable, definition? What can possibly have been 'abstracted' if we have no clear idea what we are aiming for? Or where to begin, for goodness sake!?

 

With that in mind, we might further ask: Precisely which examples of change are we to count as relevant? Which of these will settle where we can even begin to abstract the supposed 'concept of change'? Are social changes to be lumped together will changes in nature? Are local changes on this planet to be equated with those halfway across the universe? Are recent changes to be associated with those that took place billions of years ago, which we will never experience? Are complex and simple changes to be aggregated? Are the above examples (concerning A) also to be taken into account in this respect? What about other instances of change? Does, say, a tree in Chicago change if an apple hits the ground in South Africa? According to DM-fans, everything is interconnected, so that tree must change if an apple falls somewhere half-way across the globe. What about someone -- call her, NN -- who is second in line in a queue on the phone -- or she's on a waiting list for a flat, a college course or an organ transplant --, and NM, who is first in line ahead of her, drops out. NN will now be first in line, but has she actually changed just because of that?

 

We might be tempted to say "Yes" to both of those questions (or even to all of them), but what do they have in common with, say, a leaf changing colour, a child having her hair cut or someone just thinking about Karl Marx? If we can't say what these and many other examples one can think of have in common (and which don't also allow the ridiculous conclusion we met earlier to be drawn), what chance is there that we could form an 'abstract' concept of change that applies to every single instance of it, past, present and future?

 

[And these problems won't go away by the simple expedient of ignoring them -- a tactic beloved of DM-fans with whom I have debated such topics in the past. (I have covered possibilities like these -- as well as those that involve the obscure DM-concept, 'internal relations' -- in much more detail in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two, here and here.)]

 

Be this as it may, we saw in Essay Six that Heraclitus got himself into a terrible mess over the criteria of identity for mass nouns and count nouns in his attempt to 'show' that change was universal, based on his thoughts about stepping into a river! In relation to which we read the following:

 

"Among the best-known fragments is Heraclitus' claim usually given as 'one cannot step into the same river twice' which is actually translated from the Greek as 'In the same river we both step and do not step, we are and are not' meaning that, since the waters of a river are constantly in motion, one cannot ever experience the same waters across one's feet.... In this same way, life is also in constant motion and one should not expect any aspect of it to remain still for one's personal pleasure." [Quoted from here; accessed 14/08/2023. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Engels concurred:

 

"When we consider and reflect upon nature at large or the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless entanglement of relations and reactions in which nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away. This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus: everything is and is not, for everything is fluidis constantly changing, constantly coming into being and passing away." [Engels (1976, p.24. Bold emphasis added.]

 

But, Heraclitus had a legitimate excuse. He lived at a time when little was known about this terminological difference. Indeed, I have been told that the distinction between mass and count nouns doesn't actually exist in the Greek language; nevertheless, even though I have yet to verify that supposed fact, no Greek speaker would try to count cabbage or chalk, although they would endeavour to count cabbage heads and sticks of chalk. Nor would they even attempt to weigh fans (that isn't a typo!) when asked how many were sat in a coach on their way to a UK Premier League football (soccer) match, but they would take steps to count them. That excuse is no longer available, so Ollman's breezy conclusions (which were clearly based on little or no awareness of contemporary work in this area) are far less easy to forgive.

 

Now, had Heraclitus said that it was impossible to step into the same body of flowing water twice he might have had a point. However, despite what he did say, it is quite easy to step into the same river. [On that, see here.] Indeed, without that particular facility not even Heraclitus could test his own 'theory' (or even imagine such a test being performed in his 'mind's eye'), for he wouldn't be able to recognise the same river to test it on, let alone assert anything about it! And, of course, the word river legitimately applies to bodies of water that typically flow, so anyone using the word "river" would already know that they flow, otherwise they would be using that word with no comprehension of its meaning. In which case, Ollman is mistaken when he says:

 

"The underlying problem is as old as philosophy itself. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, provides us with its classic statement when he asserts that a person cannot step into the same river twice. Enough water has flowed between the two occasions so that the river we step into the second time is not the same river we walked into earlier. Yet our common sense tells us that it is, and our naming practice reflects this view. The river is still called the 'Hudson', or the 'Rhine' or the 'Ganges'." [Op cit., bold added.]

 

But, if the above bodes of water are called rivers, that implies they change and flow, and naming them doesn't alter that fact. As if names can't be applied to changing objects! Who thinks that calling a hurricane "Katrina" means it doesn't change? Who in their left mind thinks that calling a huge conflagration, "The Camp Fire", means that it won't kill them if they don't get out of its way? [Ollman sort of half admits this, anyway, below.]

 

[The 'relative stability' of language defence was neutralised in Essay Six.]

 

Nevertheless, Ollman nowhere even so much as questions Heraclitus's semi-divine ability to extrapolate from trite observations about stepping into a river to what must be true right across the entire universe for all of time!

 

He continues:

 

"In contrast to this approach, Marx set out to abstract things, in his words, 'as they really are and happen,' making how they happen part of what they are (Marx and Engels (1964), p.57 -- Ollman is here referencing the German Ideology (i.e., Marx and Engels (1976), p.31, see below -- RL). Hence, capital (or labour, money, etc.) is not only how capital appears and functions, but also how it develops; or rather, how it develops, its real history, is also part of what it is. It is also in this sense that Marx could deny that nature and history 'are two separate things' (Marx and Engels (1964), p.57). In the view which currently dominates the social sciences, things exist and undergo change. The two are logically distinct. History is something that happens to things; it is not part of their nature. Hence, the difficulty of examining change in subjects from which it has been removed at the start. Whereas Marx, as he tells us, abstracts 'every historical social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence' (My emphasis (i.e., Ollman's emphasis -- RL)) (Marx (1958), p.20 -- Ollman is here referencing Das Kapital Volume One -- i.e., Marx (1996), p.20, see below -- RL)." [Op cit., p.65. Spelling altered to conform with UK English. Referencing conventions modified to agree with those adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

But, as we have also seen (in Essay Three Part One), abstraction may only penetrate to the heart of things if 'reality' itself were abstract (i.e., if it were Ideal).

 

The MECW edition renders the above passages from The German Ideology and Das Kapital as follows:

 

"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way." [Marx and Engels (1976), p.31. Bold emphasis added.]

 

I can't find the second passage to which Ollman refers on this page, or on surrounding pages of The German Ideology. Here is the third:

 

"...[B]ecause it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary." [Marx (1996), p.20.]

 

Of course, in the first passage Marx refers to abstraction that "can only be made in the imagination", but he pointedly failed to tell us how this might actually be done, and neither does Ollman. What is more, Ollman's 'below the surface' metaphor explains nothing, either (on that, see here).

 

Now, few doubt that social development and science may be able to tell us how things "really are" (depending on what is meant by that phrase), or how they "actually change", but they certainly can't do so by means of abstraction, for that 'process' deprives language of its capacity to express generality. Furthermore, even if we assume that abstraction could do all that Ollman claims for it, DM would be the very last theory that scientists would turn to for assistance --, since, if it were true, change would be impossible!

 

So, all this labour has brought forth not even so much as an abstract mouse!

 

The Mountain labor'd, groaning loud,
On which a num'rous gaping crowd
Of noodles came to see the sight,
When, lo! a mouse was brought to light! [
Phaedrus, IV, XXIV.]

 

Ollman spends the next few pages outlining several of the abstract terms he believes Marx employed (whereas Marx doesn't appear to call them "abstract"!), in the course of which he makes the following more substantive point:

 

"Before concluding our discussion of the place of change in Marx's abstractions, it is worth noting that thinking in terms of processes is not altogether alien to common sense. It occurs in abstractions of actions, such as eating, walking, fighting, etc., indeed whenever the gerund form of the verb is used. Likewise, event words, such as 'war' and 'strike', indicate that to some degree at least the processes involved have been abstracted as such. On the other hand, it is also possible to think of war and strike as a state or condition, more like a photo than a motion picture, or if the latter, then a single scene that gets shown again and again, which removes or seriously underplays whatever changes are taking place. And unfortunately, the same is true of most action verbs. They become action 'things.' In such cases, the real processes that go on do not get reflected -- certainly not to any adequate degree -- in our thinking about them. It is my impression that in the absence of any commitment to bring change itself into focus, in the manner of Marx, this is the more typical outcome." [Ollman (2003), p.67.]

 

Ollman is absolutely right to point out that ordinary language contains many words that can be used to depict change, and yet he, like so many others, also confuses the vernacular with "common sense". However, he seems content merely to assert that "thought" assumes, or concludes, that many of the words we use to speak about change actually depict states or conditions (when no such 'assuming' or 'concluding' actually goes on -- or if it does, Ollman failed to provide any evidence or argument in support), which would only succeed in undermining another feature of language he had only just mentioned -- the fact that the vernacular contains many action words.

 

This is, of course, the problem with abstraction and reification, but it isn't obviously related to "common sense". And yet, if what Ollman says does indeed take place with respect to ordinary language, that would be the result of the same set of crass syntactic errors that misled philosophers and grammarians in Ancient Greece, exposed in Part One of this Essay, and which have now re-surfaced in 'Marxist' dialectics!

 

In that case, if "common sense" is at fault, so too is DM! On the other hand, if ordinary language hasn't been deliberately distorted in this way (and if we take seriously the advice Marx and Engels offered earlier), the action verbs to which Ollman refers won't end up being deformed in such a Philistine manner. Indeed, as pointed out in Essay Four:

 

As is well-known (at least by Marxists), human beings managed to progress because of their interaction with nature, later constrained by the class war and the development of the forces of and relations of production. In which case, ordinary language -- the result of collective labour -- couldn't fail to have invented a array of words with the logical and semantic multiplicity that allowed its users to speak about changes of almost limitless complexity, speed and duration.

 

This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed. Here is a greatly shortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modern English, but omitting simple and complex tensed participles and auxiliary verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded complexity, rapidity, or scope:

 

Vary, alter, adjust, adapt, amend, make, produce, revise, rework, advise, administer, allocate, improve, enhance, deteriorate, depreciate, edit, bend, straighten, weave, merge, dig, plough, cultivate, sow, reap, twist, curl, turn, tighten, fasten, loosen, relax, ease, tense up, slacken, fine tune, bind, wrap, pluck, carve, rip, tear, mend, perforate, repair, puncture, renovate, restore, damage, impair, scratch, diagnose, mutate, metamorphose, transmute, sharpen, hone, modify, modulate, develop, upgrade, appear, disappear, expand, contract, constrict, constrain, shrivel, widen, lock, unlock, swell, flow, glide, ring, differentiate, integrate, multiply, divide, add, subtract, simplify, complicate, partition, unite, amalgamate, fuse, mingle, disseminate, connect, entwine, unravel, link, brake, decelerate, accelerate, fast, slow, swift, rapid, hasty, protracted, lingering, brief, heat up, melt, freeze, harden, cool down, flash, shine, glow, drip, bounce, cascade, drop, pick up, fade, darken, wind, unwind, meander, peel, scrape, graze, file, scour, dislodge, is, was, will be, will have been, had, will have had, went, go, going, gone, return, lost, age, flood, swamp, overflow, precipitate, percolate, seep, tumble, plunge, dive, float, sink, plummet, mix, separate, cut, chop, crush, grind, shred, slice, dice, saw, sew, knit, spread, coalesce, congeal, fall, climb, rise, ascend, descend, slide, slip, roll, spin, revolve, circulate, bounce, oscillate, undulate, rotate, wave, splash, conjure, quick, quickly, slowly, instantaneously, suddenly, gradually, rapidly, briskly, hurriedly, absolutely, lively, hastily, inadvertently, accidentally,  carelessly, really, energetically, lethargically, snap, drink, quaff, eat, bite, devour, consume, swallow, gulp, gobble, chew, gnaw, digest, ingest, excrete, absorb, join, resign, part, sell, buy, acquire, prevent, block, avert, avoid, forestall, encourage, invite, appropriate, lose, find, search, pursue, hunt, track, explore, follow, cover, uncover, reveal, stretch, distend, depress, compress, lift, put down, fetch, take, bring, carry, win, ripen, germinate, conceive, gestate, abort, die, rot, perish, grow, decay, fold, empty, evacuate, drain, pour, fill, abduct, abandon, leave, abscond, many, more, less, fewer, steady, steadily, jerkily, intermittently, smoothly, awkwardly, expertly, very, extremely, exceedingly, intermittent, discontinuous, continuous, continual, emit, push, pull, drag, slide, jump, sit, stand, run, sprint, chase, amble, walk, hop, skip, slither, crawl, limp, swim, fly, hover, drown, submerge, immerse, break, abrogate, dismiss, collapse, shatter, split, interrupt, charge, retreat, assault, squash, adulterate, contaminate, purify, filter, clean, raze, crumble, erode, corrode, rust, flake, demolish, dismantle, pulverise, atomise, disintegrate, dismember, destroy, annihilate, extirpate, flatten, lengthen, shorten, elongate, crimple, inflate, deflate, terminate, finish, initiate, instigate, augment, replace, undo, redo, analyze, synthesise, articulate, disarticulate, reverse, repeal, abolish, enact, quash, throw, catch, hour, minute, second, instant, moment, momentary, invent, devise, teach, learn, innovate, forget, rescind, boil, freeze, thaw, cook, liquefy, solidify, congeal, neutralise, evaporate, condense, dissolve, process, mollify, pacify, calm down, excite, enrage, inflame, protest, object, challenge, confirm, deny, repudiate, reject, refute, expel, eject, repel, attract, remove, overthrow, expropriate, scatter, distribute, equalise, surround, gather, admit, acknowledge, hijack, assemble, attack, counter-attack, charge, repulse, defeat, strike, occupy, picket, barricade, revolt, riot, rally, march, demonstrate, mutiny, rebel, defy, resist, lead, campaign, educate, agitate, organise...

 

[In each case, where there is a noun form of a word its verb form has been listed (for instance, "object" as in "to object"). Moreover, where I have listed the word "ring", for example, I also intend cognates of the verb "to ring" -- like "ringing" and "rang". I have also omitted many nouns that imply change or development, such as "river", "runner", "wind", "lightning", "tide", "cloud", and "fire". Anyone who didn't know such words implied changing processes in the world -- that rivers flow, fires burn, runners run, and winds blow -- would merely underline their lack of comprehension of English (or whatever language theirs happened to be), compounded by a dangerously defective knowledge of the world. Not knowing that fires burn, for example, would endanger life. In addition, several of the above also have verb forms, such as "fired" or "winding". Other nouns also imply growth and development, such as "tree", "flower", "mouse", "day",  "human being". Anyone who thought "human being", for example, reflected a 'fixed and changeless' view of the world would perhaps be regarded as suffering from some form of learning disability; either that, or they were in the grip of an off-the-wall philosophical theory of some sort.]

 

Naturally, it wouldn't be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally thousands of entries -- on that, see here and here --, all capable of depicting countless changes in limitless detail (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from mathematics, science and HM). It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by Rees, and others -- such as Woods and Grant) that ordinary language can't depict change adequately, since it is supposedly dominated by 'the abstract understanding', a brain module helpfully identified for us by Hegel without a scrap of supporting evidence, still less a brain scan. By way of contrast, ordinary language performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.

 

If the above verbs are put in the present continuous tense (e.g., flowing, burning, running, turning, organising, dissolving, crumbling...), and then placed in a sentential context (e.g., "The cops were running away from the strikers", "Management's resolve is crumbling", "The strike committee is still organising the picketing"), or, indeed, other more complex present tenses are used (e.g., the present iterative or frequentative), then only those woefully ignorant of language would conclude the following alongside Ollman:

 

"On the other hand, it is also possible to think of war and strike as a state or condition, more like a photo than a motion picture, or if the latter, then a single scene that gets shown again and again, which removes or seriously underplays whatever changes are taking place.... And unfortunately, the same is true of most action verbs. They become action 'things.' In such cases, the real processes that go on do not get reflected -- certainly not to any adequate degree -- in our thinking about them." [Ollman  (2003), ibid.]

 

If workers are striking, or a war is being fought, who in command of their senses would conclude that a "state or condition" (and one that "removes or seriously underplays whatever changes are taking place") was being described or even implied?

 

Moreover, it isn't too clear what an "action 'thing'" is supposed to be. Perhaps Ollman means that "most action" verbs can also be thought of as depicting a "state or condition", but, since dialecticians like Ollman make a virtue out of abstraction, which freezes verbs and predicate expressions into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars, we would be well advised to take his comments with more than a pinch of non-dialectical salt.

 

[For a much clearer and comprehensive account of state, activity and performance verbs than the one Ollman offers his readers (with his rather amateurish and risibly superficial 'analysis' of this grammatical form), see, for example, Kenny (1963), pp.151-86, Kenny (1975), and Hacker (2007), pp.90-160.]

 

'Internal Relations' To The Rescue?

 

Ollman then breaks off at a tangent and begins a consideration of "internal relations" (a 'concept' that will be destructively analysed in Essay Four Part Two), which 'allows' him to make several wild and unsubstantiated claims about Marx's method. In the course of which he adds the following remarks:

 

"The view held by most people, scholars and others, in what we've been calling the common sense view, maintains that there are things and there are relations, and that neither can be subsumed in the other. This position is summed up in Bishop Butler's statement, which G. E. Moore adopts as a motto: 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing,' taken in conjunction with Hume's claim, 'All events seem entirely loose and separate' (Moore, (1903), title page; Hume (1955) p.85 -- see the References for further details; the first reference is to Moore (1959) -- RL). On this view, capital may be found to have relations with labour, value, etc., and it may even be that accounting for such relations plays an important role in explaining what capital is; but capital is one thing, and its relations quite another. Marx, on the other hand, following Hegel's lead in this matter, rejects what is, in essence, a logical dichotomy. For him, as we saw, capital is itself a Relation, in which the ties of the material means of production to labour, value, commodity, etc., are interiorized as parts of what capital is. Marx refers to 'things themselves' as 'their interconnections' (Marx and Engels (1950), p.488 -- Briefwechsel Volume 3 -- RL). Moreover, these relations extend backward and forward in time, so that capital's conditions of existence as they have evolved over the years and its potential for future development are also viewed as parts of what it is." [Ibid., p.69. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Referencing conventions altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]

 

So, on the basis of a short, enigmatic quotation from Butler (!), and a brief comment of Hume's (!!), Ollman thinks he is able to tell us what the "common sense" view is.

 

[In Essay Seven Part One, I have labelled risible 'evidential displays' like this, beloved of DM-fans, "Mickey Mouse Science". However, in that Essay I merely accused LCDs of this, but here we see a card-carrying HCD indulging in the sport. And Ollman isn't alone; other HCDs do likewise. That allegation will be substantiated in Essay Twelve.]

 

[LCD = Low Church Dialectician; HCD = High Church Dialectician; follow the links for an explanation.]

 

However, as we saw in Part One, Ollman is only able to confuse relations with "things" because of yet another linguistic sleight-of-hand (whereby nominalised (and particularised) relational expressions have been transformed into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars). Because of this, Ollman thinks he can legitimately blur the distinction between "things" and "relations" -- indeed, that is the only way he is able get away with it.

 

In this case, however, Ollman merely echoes an assertion he copied from Marx, that Capital is a relation. Of course, what he means is that in order to understand Capitalism, it isn't enough just to look at "things", but at their interconnections, their history, their development, and so on. I have no problem with that! And yet he fails to tell us why that makes Capital a relation. Naturally, if it were a relation, it could have no relations of its own. On the other hand, it could have relations of its own only if it were an object or system of some sort.

 

Here is an example of a relation, represented by the relational expression, "ξ is larger than ζ":

 

Y1: A is larger than B. [Where "A" and "B" stand for singular terms -- i.e., Proper Names or Definite Descriptions.]

 

Y2: Ψ(ξ,ζ).

 

[I have explained the use of symbols like these, here.]

 

Plainly, the relation here is A being larger than B. It is far from clear how that relation itself can also be comprised of relations. Whatever A or B stand for might themselves be composed of relations, but how can the relation itself (i.e., expressed by the verb phrase "is larger than") be composed of anything? A relational expression (which, as the word suggests, expresses the intended relation) reflects a connection between the relata involved, it isn't itself composed of anything. Asking what a relation is made of is as nonsensical as asking what tallness and largeness are composed of.

 

Here is something -- a workers' picket -- that is composed of relations (expressed by a series of relational expressions):

 

Y3: The picket was formed by a1, stood next to a2, stood next to a3, stood next to..., ai,..., stood next to an. [Where ak stands for the Proper Name of an individual, one of the said pickets.]

 

Now, it might be easy to see how Capital is comprised of relations, somewhat analogous to the situation depicted in Y3 (in a much more complex way, obviously), but dialecticians like Ollman have yet to explain how Capital can be a relation while also being composed of relations, like we saw with Y1/Y2. Perhaps Ollman means Capital expresses a relation held between this and that? Or that Capital comes into being when human beings enter into certain relations? Even then, it is still hard to see how it can also be a relation. Nothing Ollman or other fans of the dialectic have so far said makes the supposed dual nature of Capital any the clearer.

 

Ollman (and other HCDs) may be content with this way of talking about relational expressions, but his (or their) only defence would once again involve an appeal to the misguided syntactical segue mentioned earlier, which reifies relational expressions so that they become objects in their own right, or the Proper Names thereof. Sliding between these two -- for example, between a set of relational expressions and the Proper Name, "Capital", which names an identifiable object, system or process -- 'allows' DM-theorists to imagine capitalism can be comprised of relations and be a relation at the same time. We also saw (here) that this defective approach to the denotation of relational and nominal expressions is what underlies the verbal tricks Hegel thought he could pull (in order to befuddle his readers), moves that are analogous to the equally suspect word magic that 'underpins' Anselm's Ontological Argument.

 

It seems, therefore, that those who accept this view of the nature of Capital -- the alleged 'relation', not the book(!) -- can only appeal in support of this view to (i) a rather simple-minded view of "common sense", backed up by (ii) an evidential display that makes WMD-dossiers look substantial and convincing in comparison, allied with (iii) an idiosyncratic interpretation of the logic of relational expressions, all compounded by (iv) a rather Philistine view language!

 

[The reader will no doubt have noticed that this is precisely the accusation made at the beginning of Essay Three Part One, and will be repeated many times as the Essays at this site unfold. Moves like those Ollman makes are a hallmark of ruling-class forms-of-thought -- i.e., Linguistic Idealism [LIE] --, that is, the belief that profound theories aimed at expressing fundamental features of nature and society (valid for all of space and time) can be inferred from language or thought alone. These moves mean that those fond of this way of reasoning imagine they need provide little to no evidence in support -- as we have just seen is the case with Ollman with his appeal to what Hume and Butler had to say (in order to substantiate his hasty conclusions about "common sense"!). This approach to language and knowledge will be criticised extensively in Essay Twelve (parts of which have already been published here, here and here).]

 

Welcome To The Desert Of The Reification

 

It could be objected that Ollman in fact rejects many of the above criticisms -- for example, with these words:

 

"In order to forestall possible misunderstandings it may be useful to assert that the philosophy of internal relations is not an attempt to reify 'what lies between.' It is simply that the particular ways in which things cohere become essential attributes of what they are. The philosophy of internal relations also does not mean -- as some of its critics have charged -- that investigating any problem can go on forever (to say that boundaries are artificial is not to deny them an existence, and, practically speaking, it is simply not necessary to understand everything in order to understand anything); or that the boundaries which are established are arbitrary (what actually influences the character of Marx's or anyone else's abstractions is another question); or that we cannot mark or work with some of the important objective distinctions found in reality (on the contrary, such distinctions are a major influence on the abstractions we do make); or, finally, that the vocabulary associated with the philosophy of internal relations -- particularly 'totality,' 'relation,' and 'identity' -- cannot also be used in subsidiary senses to refer to the world that comes into being after the process of abstraction has done its work." [Ibid., p.72. Bold emphasis added.]

 

But, that is precisely what Ollman does do (i.e., "attempt to reify" 'abstractions'), and a few bluff denials in no way alter that fact. Moreover, as we have seen (here and here), it isn't possible to halt, or even slow, the dialectical juggernaut as it careers off the road into the infinite beyond, or neutralise the fatal criticism that, if this 'theory' were true, it would indeed be necessary to "understand everything in order to understand anything".

 

If Ollman were right that "the particular ways in which things cohere become essential attributes of what they are", then:

 

L1: For any given object or process, H(1), its "essential" nature must be connected (in some as yet unspecified way) with some other object or process, H(2), which in turn must likewise depend on H(3)..., which in turn must depend on H(i)..., which in turn must depend on H(n) (for an indefinitely large n).

 

L2: In that case, in order fully to understand H(1) it must, of necessity, imply that H(2), H(3)..., H(i)..., H(n) also be fully understood.

 

L3: However, if H(n) can't be fully understood without fully understanding H(n-1), and H(n-1) can't be fully understood without fully understanding H(n-2), then, by (n-1) applications of this rule, H(1) can't be fully understood until H(2)-H(n) are fully understood.

 

L4: Hence, nothing can be fully understood until everything is fully understood.

 

And it won't do to substitute "understood" for "fully understood", here. Or, rather, that ploy might have had a chance of succeeding if the "attributes" to which Ollman refers hadn't been described as "essential". If these "attributes" are, indeed, "essential", then they are essential to understanding anything to which they supposedly belong, relate or "cohere". Anything less than full understanding here would surely threaten their status as "essential". How would we know these are indeed "essential" attributes if we don't fully understand them? Without compete knowledge (which must surely accompany full understanding) it might turn out that what we take to be "essential" isn't "essential" after all.

 

[I have said much more about this topic, here.]

 

Moreover, we have also seen that no sense can be made of dialecticians' use of words such as "totality" and "identity" (on that, see here, here and here). Finally, simply denying the untoward consequences of this Hermetic Horror Show isn't acceptable -- just as it isn't acceptable for George W Bush, for instance, to deny he is a mass murderer, or Nixon to deny he was a crook. The evidence tells a different story.

 

[As noted above, I will return to the Idealist doctrine of 'Internal Relations' in Essay Four Part Two.]

 

Brain Scans Required?

 

Ollman continues:

 

"Once we recognize the crucial role abstraction plays in Marx's method, how different his own abstractions are, and how often and easily he re-abstracts, it becomes clear that Marx constructs his subject matter as much as he finds it. This is not to belittle the influence of natural and social (particularly capitalist) conditions on Marx's thinking, but rather to stress how, given this influence, the results of Marx's investigations are prescribed to a large degree by the preliminary organization of his subject matter. Nothing is made up of whole cloth, but at the same time Marx only finds what his abstractions have placed in his way. These abstractions do not substitute for the facts, but give them a form, an order, and a relative value; just as frequently changing his abstractions does not take the place of empirical research, but does determine, albeit in a weak sense, what he will look for, even see, and of course emphasize. What counts as an explanation is likewise determined by the framework of possible relationships imposed by Marx's initial abstractions.

 

"So far we have been discussing the process of abstraction in general, our main aim being to distinguish it from other mental activities. Marx's own abstractions were said to stand out in so far as they invariably include elements of change and interaction, while his practice of abstracting was found to include more or less of each as suited his immediate purpose. Taking note of the importance Marx gave to abstractions in his critique of ideology, we proceeded to its underpinnings in the philosophy of internal relations, emphasizing that it is not a matter of this philosophy making such moves possible -- since everybody abstracts -- but of making them easier, and enabling Marx to acquire greater control over the process. What remains is to analyze in greater detail what actually occurs when Marx abstracts, and to trace its results and implications for some of his major theories." [Ibid., pp.73-74. Bold emphases added.]

 

But, we have yet to be told what these 'abstractions' are, or how Ollman could possibly know anything about them if, as he says, they are "mental activities" or the product thereof! Has he exhumed Marx's body and held a séance over what remains of the corpse? Maybe he has access to a time machine, travelled back to the 1870s and performed a brain scan on Marx (always assuming the relevant equipment can accompany him on his journey)? But, these seem to be the only two ways he could possibly know anything about the alleged "mental activities" engaged in by Karl Marx (and what resulted from them).

 

Someone might respond that we might be able to begin with Marx's actual results on the page and then 'reverse engineer' the method by which he must have obtained them. Of course, 'reverse engineering' only works because engineers and scientists already understand the processes involved, which they can specify in detail. That is what allows them to 'run the film in reverse', as it were. But, we have no idea what the 'processes' involved here are. In that case, it isn't possible to 'reverse engineer' the production of a single 'abstraction' -- no more than we can 'reverse engineer' something no less mysterious: the 'mind of god' and how 'he' created non-abstract cats, for instance.

 

Furthermore, as we have seen, it is little use appealing to the language Marx used since that can't tell us anything about these hidden "mental activities", nor does it show that Marx actually indulged in the yet-to-be-explained 'process of abstraction' (that is, over and above his use of the word "abstract" from time to time -- even though he failed to tell us with any clarity what he meant by it!). Sure, Marx must have given thought to what he was writing about, but that has nothing to do with the 'process of abstraction', since Marx had to use familiar words drawn from a public language in order to do all that thinking. And the language he chose to employ to that end will already have general terms that aren't themselves the product of 'abstraction' -- that is, not unless they had been subjected to the sort of distortion exposed in Part One, and which Marx himself had both criticised and condemned.

 

But, is it even true that "everybody abstracts"? Well, as this Essay has shown, not only is there no evidence that they do, no one seems to be able to tell us what they are all supposed to be able to do while they are allegedly involved in doing it! Nor can anyone work out how the heroic "mental activities" of Abstractor A could possibly agree with those of Abstractor B, or, indeed, how it is possible for anyone to check the results.

 

Ollman continues:

 

"The process of abstraction, which we have been treating as an undifferentiated mental act, has three main aspects or modes, which are also its functions vis-ŕ-vis the part abstracted on one hand and the system to which the part belongs and which it in turn helps to shape on the other. That is, the boundary setting and bringing into focus that lies at the core of this process occurs simultaneously in three different, though closely related, senses. These senses have to do with extension, level of generality, and vantage point. First, each abstraction can be said to achieve a certain extension in the part abstracted, and this applies both spatially and temporally. In abstracting boundaries in space, limits are set in the mutual interaction that occurs at a given point of time. While in abstracting boundaries in time, limits are set in the distinctive history and potential development of any part, in what it once was and is yet to become. Most of our examples of abstraction so far have been drawn from what we shall now call 'abstraction of extension.'

 

"Second, at the same time that every act of abstraction establishes an extension, it also sets a boundary around and brings into focus a particular level of generality for treating not only the part but the whole system to which it belongs. The movement is from the most specific, or that which sets it apart from everything else, to its most general characteristics, or what makes it similar to other entities. Operating rather like a microscope that can be set at different degrees of magnification, this mode of abstraction enables us to see the unique qualities of any part, or the qualities associated with its function in capitalism, or the qualities that belong to it as part of the human condition (to give only the most important of these levels of generality). In abstracting capital, for example, Marx gives it an extension in both space and time as well as a level of generality such that only those qualities associated with its appearance and functioning as a phenomenon of capitalism are highlighted (i.e., its production of value, its ownership by capitalists, its exploitation of workers, etc.). The qualities a given capital may also possess as a Ford Motor Company assembly line for making cars or as a tool in general -- that is, qualities that it has as a unique object or as an instance of something human beings have always used -- are not brought into the picture. They are abstracted out. This aspect of the process of abstraction has received least attention not only in our own discussion but in other accounts of dialectics. In what follows, we shall refer to it as 'abstraction of level of generality.'

 

"Third, at the same time that abstraction establishes an extension and a level of generality, it also sets up a vantage point or place within the relationship from which to view, think about, and piece together the other components in the relationship; meanwhile the sum of their ties (as determined by the abstraction of extension) also becomes a vantage point for comprehending the larger system to which it belongs, providing both a beginning for research and analysis and a perspective in which to carry it out. With each new perspective, there are significant differences in what can be perceived, a different ordering of the parts, and a different sense of what is important. Thus, in abstracting capital, Marx not only gives it an extension and a level of generality (that of capitalism), he also views the interrelated elements that compose it from the side of the material means of production and, simultaneously, transforms this configuration itself into a vantage point for viewing the larger system in which it is situated, providing himself with a perspective that influences how all other parts of the system will appear (one that gives to capital the central role). We shall refer to this aspect of abstraction as 'abstraction of vantage point.' By manipulating extension, level of generality, and vantage point, Marx puts things into and out of focus, into better focus, and into different kinds of focus, enabling himself to see more clearly, investigate more accurately, and understand more fully and more dynamically his chosen subject." [Ibid., pp.74-75. Bold emphases added.]

 

And yet, we still haven't a clue what this 'process' is (other than that it is a "mental act"), and no idea what all those 'abstractions' are supposed to be that emerge at the end. In that case, the distinctions Ollman wants to draw above are about as useful as a classification of angels concocted by Medieval Theologians. Independently of this, how Ollman knows so much about abstraction when neither he nor anyone else has access to the mental gyrations of other intrepid abstractors (and is so vague about what goes on 'in his own head', for goodness sake!), least of all Marx's, is no less of a mystery. The very best he can do is tell us about the "three main aspects or modes" of his own abstractions, if these are indeed "mental acts", as he says they are. Of course, it is quite clear what Ollman is doing when he tells us about the abstractions Marx supposedly accessed/employed: he is relying on what Marx committed to paper, he isn't relying on a single one of these supposed "mental acts". In other words, he, like the rest of us, has focused on the publicly available writings Marx left behind. But, what that has got to do with this inner 'process of abstraction' is still a mystery.

 

Be this as it may, Ollman's distinctions might turn out to be of some use in the analysis of Capitalism (I will pass no comment on that possibility, except to point out that, as we saw in Part One, the 'process of abstraction' destroys generality, it doesn't express it or even provide theorists with a "level of generality", so it would be wise to maintain a healthy scepticism in this respect), but if that is so, it would be because:

 

(i) Ollman uses general terms drawn from a publicly accessible language, and he pointedly doesn't use abstractions (since the meaning of the latter is based on those "mental acts", about which he can know nothing); and because,

 

(ii) Ollman nowhere asks his readers to scan his brain in order to comprehend his own (or even Marx's) 'abstractions'. Indeed, Marx took care to explain what he was doing -- again, doing so in an open arena, using a public language (in the writings he left behind). That is, of course, what allows his readers to understand (or, in some cases, try to understand) his words, which they couldn't do if they paid attention to his 'mental' deliberations while ignoring what he actually set down on paper.

 

Once again, actions speak louder than abstractions.

 

Here is Ollman, again:

 

"As regards the abstraction of extension. Marx's general stand in favour of large units is evident from such statements as, 'In each historical epoch, property has developed differently and under a set of entirely different social relations. Thus, to define bourgeois property is nothing else than to give an exposition of all these social relations of bourgeois production.... To try to give a definition of property an independent relation, a category apart, an abstraction and eternal idea, can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics and jurisprudence' (Marx (n.d.), p.154; this is a reference to The Poverty of Philosophy -- RL). Obviously, large abstractions are needed to think adequately about a complex, internally related world." [Ibid., pp.75-76. Bold emphasis added. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Referencing conventions altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]

 

But, the passage Ollman quotes can't be about Marx's own 'abstractions', and that isn't just because it fails to mention "mental acts", it is because Marx himself repudiates these mythical 'objects' in the very work Ollman quoted! It is also worth recalling that that rejection agrees with what we discovered earlier about Marx's opinion of this backwater of Ancient Greek myth-making. The following is also from The Poverty of Philosophy:

 

"Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction…presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that if you leave out of account the limits of this body, you soon have nothing but a space -– that if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians, who in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core…." [Marx (1978), p.99.]

 

Ollman continues:

 

"The specifics of Marx's position emerge from his frequent criticisms of the political economists for offering too narrow abstractions (narrow in the double sense of including too few connections and too short a time period) of one or another economic form. Ricardo, for example, is reproached for abstracting too short a period in his notions of money and rent, and for omitting social relations in his abstraction of value (Marx (1968), p.125; Marx (1971), p.131 -- these are references to Theories of Surplus Value, Parts Two and Three -- RL). One of the most serious distortions is said to arise from the tendency among political economists to abstract processes solely in terms of their end results. Commodity exchange, for example, gets substituted for the whole of the process by which a product becomes a commodity and eventually available for exchange (Marx (1973), p.198 -- this is a reference to the Grundrisse -- RL). As Amiri Baraka so colourfully points out: 'Hunting is not those heads on the wall' (Baraka (1966), p.73. This is now Baraka (2009), p.200 -- RL). By thinking otherwise for the range of problems with which they are concerned, the political economists avoid seeing the contradictions in the capitalist-specific processes that give rise to these results." [Ollman (2003), p.76. Spelling changed to conform to UK English; referencing conventions altered to agree with those adopted at this site. Minor typos corrected. Bold emphases added.]

 

And yet, Marx's criticisms aren't aimed at these alleged 'abstractions' (which, even if they do exist, are, once more, the product of certain hidden and unspecified, "mental acts"), but at the tendency classical economists have for concentrating on "results", allied with their penchant for substituting "commodity exchange...for the whole of the process by which a product becomes a commodity and eventually available for exchange." Similarly, Ricardo is taken to task for fixating on "too short a period in his notions of money and rent, and for omitting social relations...". In this respect, Marx plainly relied on what these economists had also published in an open arena. He didn't once think to speculate about what might have gone on in their heads.

 

[Of course, Ollman inserted the word "abstracting", here, but since that 'process' is once more based on nondescript "mental acts", he (seriously) can't have meant this, otherwise Marx couldn't have advanced the criticisms he did. And that is because, once more, Marx didn't once attempt to read the 'minds' of these economists.]

 

And, as far as those alleged "contradictions" are concerned, until we are told what they are, Ollman might just as well have written the following for all the good it does:

 

"By thinking otherwise for the range of problems with which they are concerned, the political economists avoid seeing the schmontradictions in the capitalist-specific processes that give rise to these results."

 

[As we will see in Essay Twelve, Ollman's attempt to 'define' "contradiction" (pp.17-18) is no help at all.]

 

Now, other than the passage quoted in the next sub-section, I don't plan to chisel away at the other things Ollman has to say over the next thirty-five or so pages of his book, not just because that would make this Essay tedious in the extreme, but because they add very little to his attempt to explain what 'abstractions' are -- as the reader is invited to check for herself.

 

To be sure, Ollman advances a series of familiar claims about other areas of dialectics (which have been batted out of the park elsewhere at this site, some of which will be examined again in Essay Twelve), but he has little more to add concerning the nature of 'abstraction', certainly nothing which makes this mysterious 'process' any clearer, more comprehensible, or even vaguely plausible.

 

Ollman Versus Dm's Critics

 

In which case, the following passage is all the more unfortunate:

 

"Is there any part of Marxism that has received more abuse than his dialectical method? And I am not just thinking about enemies of Marxism and socialism, but also about scholars who are friendly to both. It is not Karl Popper, but George Sorel in his Marxist incarnation who refers to dialectics as 'the art of reconciling opposites through hocus pocus,' and the English socialist economist, Joan Robinson, who on reading Capital objects to the constant intrusion of 'Hegel's nose' between her and Ricardo (Sorel (1950), p.171; Robinson (1953), p.23 -- references given at the end of this Essay -- RL). But perhaps the classic complaint is fashioned by the American philosopher, William James, who compares reading about dialectics in Hegel -- it could just as well have been Marx -- to getting sucked into a whirlpool (James (1978), p.174 -- again, reference given at the end -- RL)." [Ibid., p.59. Referencing conventions altered to conform with those adopted at this site. Links added.]

 

In view of the continual slide into confusion and error that bedevils 'dialectics' -- exposed in and by the Essays at this site --, it is now plain that the above critics weren't anywhere near harsh enough.

 

As I pointed out in Essay One:

 

Another aspect of the defensive posture adopted by dialecticians is the fact that few of them fail to argue that hostile critics of Dialectical Marxism always manage to attack "the dialectic". This then allows them to brand all such detractors "bourgeois apologists", which in turn means that whatever they say can safely be ignored -- as, 'plainly', ideological.

 

[This is the DM-equivalent of the Roman Catholic Church's old Index of Forbidden Books.]

 

However, it has surely escaped their attention that the reason 'the dialectic' is attacked by friend and foe alike is that it is by far and away the weakest and most lamentably feeble aspect of traditional 'Marxist Philosophy'. Far from it being an "abomination" to the bourgeoisie (even though the State Capitalist rulers of Eastern Europe, the former USSR, Maoist China and North Korea are, or were, rather fond of it, as are those sections of the bourgeoisie that publish books and articles on dialectics, or, indeed, on 'Marxist Philosophy'), 'the dialectic' has in fact proved to be an abomination on revolutionary socialism.

 

So, our enemies attack dialectics precisely because they think they have found our Achilles Heel.

 

Whereas, revolutionaries like the present writer attack it for the opposite reason: to rid Marxism of its Achilles Heel.

 

Admittedly, Trotsky tried to respond to this line-of-argument along the following lines:

 

"Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the camp of opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals consider the dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time they take advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to verify differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long known fact is backed by all the evidence of experience." [Trotsky (1971), p.94.]

 

But, Trotsky's argument actually works both ways, for if it is difficult for workers to verify the "differences" he mentions, then that plainly allows others (such as party leaders, party hacks and party theorists) to manipulate workers with ideas they don't understand, or can't check (i.e., those found in DM itself). And, far from it being the case that only workers find it hard to defend -- or even understand -- this 'theory' so that they are capable of detecting such "differences", DM-theorists themselves have shown that they, too, don't understand their own theory (as these Essays have also demonstrated, particularly this one)! That isn't because it is a difficult theory to grasp; it is because it is based on incomprehensible Hegelian gobbledygook (upside down and the 'right way up').

 

However, as the Essays posted at this site also show, there is now no good reason to cling to these vague and confused DM-mantras -- even though there are easily identifiable psychological and ideological motives why they are, have been, and will continue to be embraced by the DM-faithful.

 

Hence, the conclusion is inescapable: petty-bourgeois revolutionaries maintain their commitment to this mystical set of doctrines for contingent psychological, opportunist and ideological reasons, and for no other. [More about that in Essay Nine Parts One and Two.]

 

[The "Ah, but what about 1917?" defence has been neutralised here.]

 

The class origin or current class position of comrades like Trotsky works against them, as well. After all, they, too, aren't above (i.e., they aren't exempt from) Marx's declaration that:

 

"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [Marx (1987), p.263.]

 

[The "Ah, but that's just crude reductionism!" riposte has been defused here.]

 

So, Ollman's attempt to explain 'the process of abstraction' -- particularly as Marx is alleged to have used it -- was completely wasted effort. I have absolutely no idea why I was directed to his work, except to conclude that those who recommended it to me have clearly given this topic little or no critical scrutiny.

 

Appendix Two:

 

Plato, Rationality, The 'Soul', And A 'Well-Ordered' City

 

In the Republic, Plato makes an explicit connection between 'well ordered' city, a 'just city' and the 'rational order of the soul' (the discussion takes place between Socrates, Adeimantus and Glaucon (Plato's older brother), beginning with Socrates):

 

We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet; but if, on trial, this conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the State, there will be no longer any room for doubt; if it be not verified, we must have a fresh enquiry. First let us complete the old investigation, which we began, as you remember, under the impression that, if we could previously examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less difficulty in discerning her in the individual. That larger example appeared to be the State, and accordingly we constructed as good a one as we could, knowing well that in the good State justice would be found. Let the discovery which we made be now applied to the individual -- if they agree, we shall be satisfied; or, if there be a difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have another trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed together may possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth, and the vision which is then revealed we will fix in our souls.

That will be in regular course; let us do as you say.

 

I proceeded to ask: When two things, a greater and less, are called by the same name, are they like or unlike in so far as they are called the same?

 

Like, he replied.

 

The just man then, if we regard the idea of justice only, will be like the just State?

 

He will.

 

And a State was thought by us to be just when the three classes in the State severally did their own business; and also thought to be temperate and valiant and wise by reason of certain other affections and qualities of these same classes?

 

True, he said.

 

And so of the individual; we may assume that he has the same three principles in his own soul which are found in the State; and he may be rightly described in the same terms, because he is affected in the same manner?

 

Certainly, he said.

 

Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an easy question -- whether the soul has these three principles or not?

 

An easy question! Nay, rather, Socrates, the proverb holds that hard is the good.

 

Very true, I said; and I do not think that the method which we are employing is at all adequate to the accurate solution of this question; the true method is another and a longer one. Still we may arrive at a solution not below the level of the previous enquiry.

 

May we not be satisfied with that? he said; -- under the circumstances, I am quite content.

 

I too, I replied, shall be extremely well satisfied.

 

Then faint not in pursuing the speculation, he said.

 

Must we not acknowledge, I said, that in each of us there are the same principles and habits which there are in the State; and that from the individual they pass into the State? -- how else can they come there? Take the quality of passion or spirit; -- it would be ridiculous to imagine that this quality, when found in States, is not derived from the individuals who are supposed to possess it, e.g. the Thracians, Scythians, and in general the northern nations; and the same may be said of the love of knowledge, which is the special characteristic of our part of the world, or of the love of money, which may, with equal truth, be attributed to the Phoenicians and Egyptians.

 

Exactly so, he said....

 

Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the same way, and in virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise?

 

Certainly.

 

Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the State constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the State and the individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues?

 

Assuredly.

 

And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just in the same way in which the State is just?

 

That follows, of course.

 

We cannot but remember that the justice of the State consisted in each of the three classes doing the work of its own class?

 

We are not very likely to have forgotten, he said.

 

We must recollect that the individual in whom the several qualities of his nature do their own work will be just, and will do his own work?

 

Yes, he said, we must remember that too.

 

And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be the subject and ally?

 

Certainly.

 

And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with noble words and lessons, and moderating and soothing and civilizing the wildness of passion by harmony and rhythm?

 

Quite true, he said.

 

And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having learned truly to know their own functions, will rule over the concupiscent, which in each of us is the largest part of the soul and by nature most insatiable of gain; over this they will keep guard, lest, waxing great and strong with the fullness of bodily pleasures, as they are termed, the concupiscent soul, no longer confined to her own sphere, should attempt to enslave and rule those who are not her natural-born subjects, and overturn the whole life of man?

 

Very true, he said.

 

Both together will they not be the best defenders of the whole soul and the whole body against attacks from without; the one counselling, and the other fighting under his leader, and courageously executing his commands and counsels?

 

True.

 

And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to fear?

 

Right, he replied.

 

And him we call wise who has in him that little part which rules, and which proclaims these commands; that part too being supposed to have a knowledge of what is for the interest of each of the three parts and of the whole?

 

Assuredly.

 

And would you not say that he is temperate who has these same elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that reason ought to rule, and do not rebel?

 

Certainly, he said, that is the true account of temperance whether in the State or individual.

 

And surely, I said, we have explained again and again how and by virtue of what quality a man will be just.

 

That is very certain.

 

And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form different, or is she the same which we found her to be in the State?

 

There is no difference in my opinion, he said.

 

Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a few commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of what I am saying.

 

What sort of instances do you mean?

 

If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just State, or the man who is trained in the principles of such a State, will be less likely than the unjust to make away with a deposit of gold or silver? Would any one deny this?

 

No one, he replied.

 

Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his country?

 

Never.

 

Neither will he ever break faith where there have been oaths or agreements?

 

Impossible.

 

No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to dishonour his father and mother, or to fail in his religious duties?

 

No one.

 

And the reason is that each part of him is doing its own business, whether in ruling or being ruled?

 

Exactly so.

 

Are you satisfied then that the quality which makes such men and such states is justice, or do you hope to discover some other?

 

Not I, indeed.

 

Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion which we entertained at the beginning of our work of construction, that some divine power must have conducted us to a primary form of justice, has now been verified?

 

Yes, certainly.

 

And the division of labour which required the carpenter and the shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing each his own business, and not another's, was a shadow of justice, and for that reason it was of use?

 

Clearly.

 

But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others, -- he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals -- when he has bound all these together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over it ignorance.

 

You have said the exact truth, Socrates.

 

Very good; and if we were to affirm that we had discovered the just man and the just State, and the nature of justice in each of them, we should not be telling a falsehood?

 

Most certainly not.

 

May we say so, then?

 

Let us say so.

 

And now, I said, injustice has to be considered.

 

Clearly.

 

Must not injustice be a strife which arises among the three principles -- a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal, -- what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice?

 

Exactly so.

 

And if the nature of justice and injustice be known, then the meaning of acting unjustly and being unjust, or, again, of acting justly, will also be perfectly clear?

 

What do you mean? he said.

 

Why, I said, they are like disease and health; being in the soul just what disease and health are in the body.

 

How so? he said.

 

Why, I said, that which is healthy causes health, and that which is unhealthy causes disease.

 

Yes.

 

And just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause injustice?

 

That is certain.

 

And the creation of health is the institution of a natural order and government of one by another in the parts of the body; and the creation of disease is the production of a state of things at variance with this natural order?

 

True.

 

And is not the creation of justice the institution of a natural order and government of one by another in the parts of the soul, and the creation of injustice the production of a state of things at variance with the natural order?

 

Exactly so, he said.

 

Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?

 

True.

 

And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?

 

Assuredly.

 

Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice and injustice has not been answered: Which is the more profitable, to be just and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished and unreformed?

 

In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous. We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable, though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital principle is undermined and corrupted, life is still worth having to a man, if only he be allowed to do whatever he likes with the single exception that he is not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice; assuming them both to be such as we have described?

 

Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous. Still, as we are near the spot at which we may see the truth in the clearest manner with our own eyes, let us not faint by the way.

 

Certainly not, he replied.

 

Come up hither, I said, and behold the various forms of vice, those of them, I mean, which are worth looking at.

 

I am following you, he replied: proceed.

 

I said, The argument seems to have reached a height from which, as from some tower of speculation, a man may look down and see that virtue is one, but that the forms of vice are innumerable; there being four special ones which are deserving of note.

 

What do you mean? he said.

 

I mean, I replied, that there appear to be as many forms of the soul as there are distinct forms of the State.

 

How many?

 

There are five of the State, and five of the soul, I said.

 

What are they?

 

The first, I said, is that which we have been describing, and which may be said to have two names, monarchy and aristocracy, accordingly as rule is exercised by one distinguished man or by many.

 

True, he replied.

 

But I regard the two names as describing one form only; for whether the government is in the hands of one or many, if the governors have been trained in the manner which we have supposed, the fundamental laws of the State will be maintained.

 

That is true, he replied.

 

Such is the good and true City or State, and the good and true man is of the same pattern; and if this is right every other is wrong; and the evil is one which affects not only the ordering of the State, but also the regulation of the individual soul.... [Plato (1997f), 435b-449a, pp.1066-77. I have used the on-line translation here.]

 

In Plato's, The Laws, Book X, [i.e., Plato (1997g)], the above considerations are interlinked with piety shown toward the 'gods' and the ordered nature of the Cosmos. I won't quote this material here; it will be posted in Essay Twelve Part Two.

 

Contemporary mystics are still referencing ancient mystics -- like Plato, Aristotle and Heraclitus -- in this respect:

 

"Greek philosophy emerged through speculation on the cosmic myths that symbolically revealed the divine order of the universe. From these speculations on the cosmic order arose the various notions of the elements, the planetary motions and mathematics, and these notions were related to the question of the human order and the order of society. It was understood that the human order was distinct from that of the immortal gods, yet also distinct from biological necessity. Human nature dwelled in a region between the immortal and the mortal, open to eternity yet projected into time, apprehending the unchanging yet compelled to adapt to the ever-changing. In the primordial myths the order of nature (physis) and human law (nomos) arose together and were bound together. The order of nature and the order of the city resided in the rule of the gods, and this order could be observed in the harmony and proportion found throughout the Earth and the heavenly motions. The cosmos was filled with intelligence and with reason (nous), and every part and every motion attended the good of the whole....

 

"In this way, Greek philosophy originated in meditation on cosmic myth, the primordial apprehension of the whole, with a view to affirming its truth through reason. And this meditation takes the form of the question: how may the human being and society live in accord with the cosmic good? What is the appropriate life of the human person or citizen? It is at once a rational and a religious question. For the Greek philosophers, questions of the explanation of things are secondary to this essential question that awakens questioning in the first place. Philosophical enquiry is not a precursor to the scientific explanation of things, because explanation is not a final end in itself, while the question of how should life be lived is. And so Greek philosophy, even in its weaker or degenerate forms, for example, with the sophists whom Plato frequently challenges in the dialogues, always remains concerned with the relation of the divine cosmic order and the order of society or the polis. The polis and the cosmos are bound together, just as the polis and the soul are bound together. Greek society drifted into political decline as it forsook these connections.

 

"In their acts of resistance to the disorder of the age, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle experienced and explored the movements of a force that structured the psyche of man and enabled it to resist disorder. To this force, its movements, and the resulting structure, they gave the name nous. As far as the ordering structure of his humanity is concerned, Aristotle characterized man as the zoon noun echon, as the living being that possesses nous.

 

"And it is with a view to restoring these connections that Plato and Aristotle enquired into the nature of the polis and the question of the relation between nature (physis) and law (nomos). Thus Heraclitus says 'Those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common to all as a city holds fast to its law (nomos), and even more strongly. For all human laws (anthropeoi nomoi) are fed by the one divine law (theois nomos). It prevails as much as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare'. Hence the nature of the polis and the divine law that sustains it cannot be separated without causing harm." [Quoted from here. Bold emphases alone added.]

 

The above remarks connect all this with the cosmic order; that is, with questions concerning how, in an ordered cosmos, everything may be held together in proportion and in specific ratios (from which comes our word, "rationality"), and on this idea was based "The music of the spheres" (which topic will be explored in Essay Twelve Part Two). On that, see James (1995).

 

Notes

 

1. A rather short but admirably clear introduction to this entire topic can be found in Staniland (1973). A more comprehensive study is Aaron (1967), although the latter concentrates almost exclusively on post-Cartesian theorists. Also see Tugendhat (1982), as well as here, here here and here.

 

It is worth adding that DM-theorists have adopted an idiosyncratic and self-serving interpretation of the word "metaphysics"; I have discussed this topic at greater length here. Readers are directed there for more details.

 

1a. As we saw in Part One of this Essay, and as we will see in Essay Four, Traditional Theorists (in Ancient Greece) concocted a logico-grammatical theory that in effect altered the way general words were supposed to work in indicative sentences, transforming noun-, and verb-phrases in predicate expressions into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. The misbegotten 'abstractions' that were produced as a result were then imposed on 'reality' so that 'it' was transformed into a reflection of these 'abstractions', not the other way round.

 

In this way, the Ideal came to be the arbiter of the 'Real' for the next 2400 years.

 

Hence, the 'rational' universe of Ancient Greek Thought (and of the vast majority of subsequent philosophical theories) was nothing more than a projection onto the world of the products of systematically distorted language, as Marx himself pointed out:

 

"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis alone added.]

 

Indeed, as Hegel also intoned:

 

"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; §316.]

 

[The ideological background that motivated these regressive moves will be explored in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

 

Moreover, the 'ability' to 'abstract' certain 'Concepts' or 'Ideas' into existence is supposed to be innate in all of us. Of course, hardcore Rationalists (like Descartes, Leibniz, and Hegel) held that these concepts were, indeed, innate (or they were innate because of the architectonic (i.e., cognitive structure) of our 'minds'. That is, our minds cannot but operate in certain ways -- a doctrine up-front in Kant -- which theory sought to 'explain' how we are all supposed to be able to see, apprehend or comprehend 'abstractions' as they are instantiated in the objects we meet in experience -- by means, perhaps, of something Lenin called a 'law of cognition'. In more contemporary terms, these concepts, or 'abstractions', in effect helped 'organise experience'; in some cases, they actually 'constituted experience', or they even 'constituted reality itself'. In other words, at some level they make experience of the world possible. This approach was supposed to cut the ground from under Empiricism since it underlined the supposed fact that without these concepts, or 'abstractions', we wouldn't be able to apprehend anything at all via experience. I have quoted Kant to this effect in the main body of this Essay.

 

As we also saw in the main body of the Essay, this is a faint echo of Plato, who expressed the idea theologically:

 

"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men. Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a, pp.1254-55. I have used the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published version translates the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it." Cornford renders it thus: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible; that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." (Cornford (1997), p.192.) See also Note 1b.]

 

There are also distinct echoes of this approach to knowledge in DM-epistemology, too, which isn't surprising given the fact that it is supposed to be 'right-way-up' Hegelianism. Indeed, the adoption of this method by DM-theorists is left abundantly clear from these words of Lenin's:

 

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Emphases in the original.]

 

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid., p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

[I have discussed the above remarks in more detail in Part One of this Essay.]

 

There is an illuminating discussion of this trend in Rationalism, along with an exposé of its crippling limitations, in Cowie (2002), pp.1-68. [Cowie also shows that the underlying assumptions of Rationalism and Empiricism are remarkably similar. However, I was saddened to hear Fiona Cowie passed away recently.] In like manner, these 'limitations' also apply to DM-epistemology. I will return to this theme in later Parts of Essay Three. [Also see Cowie (2008), and Stich (1975).]

 

1aa. Marcuse underlined the Idealism implicit in the Hegelian tradition; in fact, he openly championed this aristocratic approach to knowledge:

 

"The doctrine of Essence seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts' and from the scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that permanent is in the first instance their Essence.' The knowledge that appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth. The mark of dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential from the apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse (1973), pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting Hegel (1975), p.163, §112. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Minor typo corrected; bold emphases added.]

 

"Prior to this formalisation, the experience of the divided world finds its logic in the Platonic dialectic. Here, the terms 'Being,' 'Non-being,' 'Movement,' 'the One and the Many,' 'Identity,' and 'Contradiction' are methodically kept open, ambiguous, not fully defined. They have an open horizon, an entire universe of meaning which is gradually structured in the process of communication itself, but which is never closed. The propositions are submitted, developed, and tested in a dialogue, in which the partner is led to question the normally unquestioned universe of experience and speech, and to enter a new dimension of discourse -- otherwise he is free and the discourse is addressed to his freedom. He is supposed to go beyond that which is given to him -- as the speaker, in his proposition, goes beyond the initial setting of the terms. These terms have many meanings because the conditions to which they refer have many sides, implications, and effects which cannot be insulated and stabilised. Their logical development responds to the process of reality, or Sache selbst ['thing itself' -- RL]. The laws of thought are laws of reality, or rather become the laws of reality if thought understands the truth of immediate experience as the appearance of another truth, which is that of the true Forms of reality -- of the Ideas. Thus there is contradiction rather than correspondence between dialectical thought and the given reality; the true judgment judges this reality not in its own terms, but in terms which envisage its subversion. And in this subversion, reality comes into its own truth.

 

"In the classical logic, the judgment which constituted the original core of dialectical thought was formalised in the propositional form, 'S is p.' But this form conceals rather than reveals the basic dialectical proposition, which states the negative character of the empirical reality. Judged in the light of their essence and idea, men and things exist as other than they are; consequently thought contradicts that which is (given), opposes its truth to that of the given reality. The truth envisaged by thought is the Idea. As such it is, in terms of the given reality, 'mere' Idea, 'mere' essence -- potentiality....

 

"This contradictory, two-dimensional style of thought is the inner form not only of dialectical logic but of all philosophy which comes to grips with reality. The propositions which define reality affirm as true something that is not (immediately) the case; thus they contradict that which is the case, and they deny its truth. The affirmative judgment contains a negation which disappears in the propositional form (S is p). For example, 'virtue is knowledge'; 'justice is that state in which everyone performs the function for which his nature is best suited'; 'the perfectly real is the perfectly knowable'; 'verum est id, quod est' ['the true is that which is' -- RL]; 'man is free'; 'the State is the reality of Reason.'

 

"If these propositions are to be true, then the copula 'is' states an 'ought,' a desideratum. It judges conditions in which virtue is not knowledge, in which men do not perform the function for which their nature best suits them, in which they are not free, etc. Or, the categorical S-p form states that (S) is not (S); (S) is defined as other-than-itself. Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be, because he is free in the eyes of God, by nature, etc....

 

"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised....

 

"Existing as the living contradiction between essence and appearance, the objects of thought are of that 'inner negativity' which is the specific quality of their concept. The dialectical definition defines the movement of things from that which they are not to that which they are. The development of contradictory elements, which determines the structure of its object, also determines the structure of dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic is neither the abstract, general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general form of thought -- nor the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man. This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends." [Marcuse (1968), pp.110-17. Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphases added. Spelling adjusted to conform with UK English. I have used the on-line text here, and have corrected any typographical errors I managed to spot.]

 

It is worth noting that Marcuse connects the subject-predicate form with the supposed 'contradiction' between 'essence' and 'appearance', which neatly confirms the analysis developed in Part One of this Essay.

 

The same basic point is made by John Rees, but fortunately in much plainer language:

 

"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market.... There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), pp.187-88. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.]

 

We will have occasion to return to these two quotations, later.

 

The above remarks echo Lenin's words:

 

"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58, 359-60. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases added. Paragraphs merged.]

 

The Idealism apparent in Lenin and Marcuse's words was highlighted (no doubt inadvertently) by George Novack:

 

"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]

 

1bb. In addition, it is worth pointing out once again that this criticism isn't directed at the use of general nouns (or even 'abstract' nouns -- although I do not prefer that designator) in ordinary language, merely the 'abstractions' concocted by Traditional Philosophers.

 

However, if we accept Plato's more considered theory (i.e., that the Forms were exemplars), then an anthropological or sociological account of generality might become feasible, for, in that case, as Berkeley certainly appreciated (and as Wittgenstein considered in detail), generality can be accounted for on the basis of rule-governed linguistic behaviour, rather than on the basis of a mystical theory that appealed to a set of ghostly Forms, Concepts, Categories, Ideas, or Universals of dubious nature and provenance.

 

This also underlines a serious problem faced by those who regard the Forms as exemplars. If the Forms end up working like the Standard Metre in Paris (suggested above), then the 'Third Man' problem simply reasserts itself. That is because even the Standard Metre shares properties or features with an ordinary measuring rod or device. However, if the Standard Metre is regarded as the embodiment of a rule (in which case, it becomes important how we apply that rule), and not so much a physical exemplar, then these 'difficulties' once again vanish. It makes no sense to suppose that a rule shares anything (relevant) with whatever it is applied to, and the Standard Metre itself can't tell us how to apply it, either. However, on this point, also see Note 1b.

 

Of course, I am aware that the definition of a metre was recently changed:

 

"In 1960 the meter was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange-red light, in a vacuum, produced by burning the element krypton (Kr-86). More recently (1984), the Geneva Conference on Weights and Measures has defined the meter as the distance light travels, in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 seconds with time measured by a cesium-133 atomic clock which emits pulses of radiation at very rapid, regular intervals." [Quoted from here. Accessed 30/06/2020.]

 

1b. On the "Third Man Argument", see  Allen (1960), Code (1985), Cohen (1971), Geach (1956), Owen (1953), Strang (1963), and Vlastos (1954, 1956). For the general background, see Crombie (1963), pp.247-472, and Copleston (2003a), pp.163-206.

 

It is important to add the following to what was said earlier: Plato himself doesn't make the sort of mistake I attribute to others throughout this Essay -- except in places where he argues that the forms also "participate" in their own form (when, for example, he speaks of the Form of the Beautiful being beautiful, which implies that it, too, is an Abstract Particular). In fact, he hypostatises the Forms in other ways (and not solely in order for them to provide a reference for predicate expressions), but as exemplars.

 

Exemplars function rather like, say, the Standard Metre in Paris does (or used to do). [I owe this point to Peter Geach, who reveals that this idea originated with Wittgenstein; on that, see Geach's article referenced earlier. (There is also an echo of this approach to Plato in Donald Davidson's comment, above.)] However, as pointed out earlier, even this interpretation of the Forms runs into the ground. On that, see also Note 1bb.

 

1bc. This 'problem' has been widely discussed in the Plato literature. Since I regard it as a pseudo-problem I will say no more about it here. Readers who want to dip a toe in this bottomless ocean of confusion might like to start with Meinwald (1992).

 

1c0. This isn't to suggest that there weren't other important currents in political thought, but in this sub-section I am concentrating on one of the main sources of rationalist conceptions of the state, as well as the background 'world-view' that supposedly underpins them. The universe has to be declared 'rational' if inequality, oppression and exploitation were to be 'justified' and granted a 'divine seal of approval'.

 

1c. Some might not regard this as a vitally important point. That misconception will be laid to rest in Essay Twelve (summary here), where philosophical moves like this will be linked to other ideological priorities that run right through the history of ruling-class thought, later to re-surface in DM alongside the substitutionism it served to 'rationalise. [On the latter, see Essay Nine Parts One and Two.]

 

2. The ideological background to "Possessive Individualism" is detailed in MacPherson (1964); an outline of its philosophical context can be found in Hacking (1975).

 

[Unfortunately, despite its other strengths, Hacking's book is largely a-historical --, i.e., in the sense that it fails to link changes to, and developments in, philosophical fashion to contemporaneous social and political forces (or even to the ideological pressures that accompany both), with the rise of the bourgeois Mode of Production. Of course, that is no big surprise since Hacking doesn't claim to be a Marxist.]

 

A clearer Marxist account -- but, restricted to philosophical ideas supposedly connected with scientific change -- can be found in Freudenthal (1986), with a more sophisticated one in Hadden (1994). The latter is itself based on ideas presented in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987), and Sohn-Rethel (1978). See also, Kaye (1998).

 

For a Wittgensteinian slant on all this, see Robinson (2003), especially chapters 9, 10, 12 and 14.

 

More details can be accessed at Guy Robinson's website, here. [Unfortunately, Guy's site is no longer available. However, many of his Essays can now be accessed at this site -- here (reproduced with his son's permission). Sadly, I heard that Guy passed away in October 2011.]

 

2a. The bowdlerised and corrupted 'Term Logic' (developed by Medieval and Early Modern Logicians and Philosophers) also interpreted each of the quantifiers (such as "every", "all", "nothing", "some", etc.) as a special sort of name. This error wasn't corrected until Frege's revolutionary logic hit the philosophical streets a century-and-a-half ago.

 

[On this, see Geach (1972b), and Beaney (1996). See also this, but note the caveats I have posted here.]

 

This ancient syntactical wrong turn resurfaces in the way that concepts are interpreted by DM-theorists: they are viewed as Proper Names that supposedly refer to, or "reflect" certain aspects of reality. Such 'concepts' are thus capable of being true (or "relatively true") on their own, as isolated linguistic atoms. While dialecticians might want to reject that conclusion, their overt turning of these 'Concepts' into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars undermines each and every such repudiation.

 

Unfortunately, 'dialectical moves' like this are based on the idea that the unit of meaning, or of truth, is the individual word, or 'concept', not indicative sentences. As a result, naming, not saying, becomes the dominant model for understanding meaning in language. [On this, see Hacking (1975).] That, of course, 'allowed' Hegel to see the self-development of concepts as central to his system, ignoring how we actually use language. [On this, see here, and Note 6a, below. [I have covered this topic in detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

As Wittgenstein noted: Metaphysics is merely a shadow cast on reality by grammar -- but, in this case, distorted grammar --, as, indeed, Marx himself pointed out:

 

"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added.]

 

[There will be far more on this in Part Three of this Essay, as well as Parts Two to Seven of  Essay Twelve (summary here), and Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

2b. As we saw in Essay Three Part One, it is human beings who supply the generality here, not words, concepts, or ideas. Plainly, that is because words, concepts, and ideas have no social structure, history, intelligence or language -- whereas we, as a species, have all four.

 

3. The natural response to this would be to argue that general names aren't like Proper Names, they have a different "mode of signification". That is undeniable, but while it is clear that Proper Names typically refer to, or stand for, particulars/individuals (although some can refer to works of art and music, to mountains, oceans and rivers, forest fires, numbers, sets, collectives and even processes -- but even there our use of such names is itself rather complex (on that see Baker and Hacker (2005, pp.227-49)) --, it is unclear what general names could actually name. Even to ask such a question would be to give the game away, since, obviously, it trades on the suppressed premise that general terms are just Proper Names writ small! Plainly, that would be to model the denotation of general names on the way Proper Names refer to whatever they denote, which means that general names (common nouns, etc.) would correctly be viewed as referring expressions, denoting an individual of some sort -- be this a 'Form', Universal, 'abstraction', class, group, natural kind, "range of values", set, Idea, 'Category' or 'Concept'. So, even though some might want to speak of "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…", supposedly named by a relevant 'general noun' (such as "table, "animal", "planet" or "molecule"), the use of the definite article neutralises the generality that these terms could be used to express.

 

Hence, countless abstract particulars -- such as, "the Universal", "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…" -- supposedly then become the referents of these 'general names', a grammatical slide that only succeeds in cancelling their generality. That is because they would now operate just like Proper Names, even if their mode of signification appears to be more complicated.

 

Of course, giving such abstractions a name begs the question --, i.e., that there is just one 'thing' there to be named, in the first place.

 

Despite the existence of an ancient grammatical and logical tradition that treats general nouns as general names (an approach that was itself based on the metaphysical views questioned in both Parts of Essay Three), as we have seen, we may only concur if we, too, seek to undermine the facility we have in language for using such terms to express generality (along the lines outlined in Part One).

 

It could be objected that classes and sets, for example, aren't necessarily, or even typically, singular, but are compound in nature and as such can include or encompass an indefinite number of elements. In that case, when a predicate designates the extension of a class, it is neither naming it, nor referring to it.

 

[The extension of a class is every object belonging to that class; so the extension of the class human being is every human being.]

 

Of course, it isn't too clear whether predicates designate anything. If someone says "The boss is a crook", the use of "...is a crook" isn't to designate, but to describe. [On that, see Slater (2000).] Moreover, the Proper Names given to human beings designate individuals who are also collections of limbs, organs, molecules. But that doesn't prevent an individual from being a particular. The same applies to the nouns we supposedly use to 'designate' sets, classes, collections or 'natural kinds' -- they become Proper Names (and hence singular terms) if we treat them as referring expressions in this way.

 

Moreover, turning a description into a designation would be to repeat the errors analysed in Part One of this Essay; that is, it would be to model all meaningful discourse on the naming relation, only in this case using euphemisms like "designate" as some sort of fig-leaf to hide that fact.

 

Again, as the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:

 

"The open sentence 'x is a spider' determines a class only because 'spider' signifies a kind of thing. It is by being one of that kind...that a value of x is a member of the class. To identify something as a spider, one must know what a spider is, that is, what kind of thing 'spider' signifies. Kinds of things can come to be or cease to be. The chemical elements, kinds of substances, are believed to have evolved. The motorbike -- the kind of vehicle known as a motorbike -- was invented about 1880. The dodo is extinct. There is no obvious way of producing sentences equivalent to these in terms of classes. The class of dodos and the class of dead dodos are not identical: though all dodos are dead, a dead dodo is not a dodo....

 

"Since a kind is to be found wherever there are particular things of the kind, it can have various geographical locations. The lion is found in East Africa. Lions are found in East Africa. It makes no difference whether we say 'the lion' or whether we say 'lions': what is meant is the kind of animal. To say that it can be seen in captivity far from its remaining natural habitats does not contradict the statement that it is found in East Africa. A kind is not a class: the class of lions is nowhere to be found...." [Cowley (1991), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. The rest of that section of Cowley's book is relevant, too.]

 

On this, also see Ryle (1949). Ryle labelled this widespread philosophical error, the "Fido-Fido Fallacy". This was the supposition that to every word there must correspond something in reality (abstract or concrete) that is designated or named by that word -- i.e., each was the Proper Name of a 'something'.

 

[His argument is summarised here. (This links to an article by Yorick Wilks -- a one time student of Wittgenstein's -- and is available as a PDF here.)]

 

4. Why that is so will be revealed presently.

 

5. It is arguable that for all their apparent sophistication, modern 'scientific' theories of mind and language (cybernetically-, cognitively-, physicalistically-, neurologically-, or psychologically-orientated) haven't advanced much beyond this point. That contentious claim won't be substantiated here (although it has been defended in depth in Essay Thirteen Part Three).

 

[This entire approach to the Philosophy of Mind is criticised in Bennett and Hacker (2008, 2021).]

 

6. We saw the life drained out of general terms in Part One of this Essay with all those lists.

 

The social and ideological background to, and motivation for, such moves will be explored at length in Essay Twelve (summary here and here).

 

6a0. For example, note the habit DM-fans have of speaking about logic as a study of the 'laws of thought'. [On this specific topic, see my comments over at Wikipedia.]

 

6a. No wonder Plato had to appeal to the alleged pre-existence of the soul to account for these 'recognitional powers'. According to Plato, we all know the Forms since we were all acquainted with them before we were born; the shock of birth apparently makes us forget these pre-natal soirees. Subsequent (i.e., 'philosophical' or 'genuine') knowledge was therefore a form of recollection. Hence, our re-cognition of the Forms in the objects that supposedly instantiated them in this world was supposedly rekindled because the Forms were rather like long lost acquaintances we had met in our 'pre-existing life' -- even if they were 'acquaintances' of a rather peculiar sort -- but which we had only temporarily forgotten about. Philosophy supposedly reminds us of what we already know -- if we but knew it!.

 

[On Platonic recollection, see Crombie (1963), pp.135-47, Guthrie (1986), pp.249-77, and Scott (1999). More on this topic, here, but more particularly here. See also Note 25, below.]

 

It is here, in this doctrine, that we meet yet another pernicious corollary of Traditional Theories of meaning: if meaning is a function of single words, concepts or ideas, then theorists find they have to account for meaning in terms of one individual relating another individual -- as one mind relates to one concept, idea, or 'representation' --, just as they do with their any normal acquaintance. Knowledge and meaning thus became individualised, relational powers or skills. The Knower is connected somehow to the Known on a one-to-one basis. In that case, the meaning of a word is related to whatever it supposedly refers based on the relationship that a Knower has with the Object -- an idea these days captured by the Signifier and Signified motif in Semiotics. Hence, each 'Mind' is connected with its ideas or its concepts (which, as we have seen, are all abstract objects of a rather peculiar sort), as they individually make themselves manifest to each Knower. Here we find a germ of the theory that abstraction takes place in 'the mind' of each individual as they relate to and process to their own private set of ideas, one at a time -- like 'the population'. This explains why DM-theorists speak about the Knower knowing an 'object' (often speaking about "this thing", "thing-in-itself" and "thing-for-us") and why Engels fixated on Subject/Object Identity -- or the 'identity of thought and Being', a spurious relation that has exercised dialecticians ever since -- which had been one of the main problematics of German Idealism:

 

"The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death -- from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world.... But the question of the relation of thinking and being had yet another side: in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question.

 

"The most telling refutation of this as of all other philosophical crotchets is practice -- namely, experiment and industry. If we are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian ungraspable 'thing-in-itself'. The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained just such 'things-in-themselves' until organic chemistry began to produce them one after another, whereupon the 'thing-in-itself' became a thing for us...." [Engels (1888), pp.593-95. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]

 

Admittedly, Engels subjected several attempts to solve the problem of the 'relation of thinking to being', but he still attempted to offer his own solution. He never even asks whether this is the correct way to approach this entire topic. As such he remained trapped within the confines of Traditional Thought.

 

[In a later Essay, we will see that this error resurfaces in connection with Hegel's 'understanding' of truth, among other things. See also, here.]

 

But, these Platonic 'acquaintances' are in fact total strangers, and they are completely featureless, too. Furthermore, since ideas don't carry with them a 'Metaphysical Identity Card', so to speak, how anyone could cognise, let alone re-cognise, these faceless spectres is puzzling, to say the least.

 

[There are also echoes of this 'problem' in more recent Nativist theories of language, based, for example, on the work of Noam Chomsky. On this, see Cowie (1997, 2002, 2008), and Sampson (2005). Also see a summary of Sampson's criticisms, here. (I hesitate to refer anyone to Sampson's work since he is a right-wing Tory who holds several offensive ideas about race, among other things. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to have affected his work in this area.)]

 

Indeed, the article by Yorick Wilks (mentioned in Note 3, above) takes Jerry Fodor to task for similar errors.

 

[These issues have been extensively discussed in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

I have said much more about 'Subject/Object Identity' in Note 18a, below.

 

6b. In fact, the insurmountable 'problems' the doctrine of the Trinity introduced into Christian Theology arose directly out of Plato and Aristotle's attempts to account for generality -- but more specifically because of the 'Forms', 'Universals' and 'Substances' they invented. Of course, this fact hasn't been lost on anti-Trinitarian Christians for many centuries.

 

7. This isn't to suggest that there aren't, or haven't been, countless 'solutions' to these classical brainteasers, only that this knotty 'problem' has resisted every single one of them for nigh on 2400 years.

 

Plainly, an entirely new approach is long overdue.

 

Fortunately, one such was suggested a generation or so ago, the central plank of which is that philosophical 'problems' like this can be resolved by dissolving them, by identifying the syntactic and semantic errors and misconstruals that breathed life into them and which even now keep them on life support.

 

So, a return to use of ordinary language has at least the following to recommend it (that is, as far as Marxists are concerned!): it re-locates language, science and the search for knowledge in the public domain, and hence on home turf for the left, basing it on the material language of the working class -- a tactic we saw Marx himself advocate.

 

[This topic will be examined in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two and Seven (summary here).]

 

8. These rather gnomic comments have been expanded upon in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

 

8a0. The connection between a rational soul and a well ordered city was made explicit in Plato's Republic. I have reproduced the relevant passage in Appendix Two. On this, see Williams (1973).

 

8a. Again, this theme will be developed and defended in Essay Three Part Five -- along lines suggested by Bertrand Russell [i.e., in Russell (1917b)], expanded on here, and here -- the first of these is Swartz (2009), the second, Swartz (1985).

 

How Traditional Theories in general grew out of the systematic distortion of language is explored in Essay Twelve Part One; the 'anthropomorphisation of the brain' is examined at length in Essay Thirteen Part Three -- specifically, here and here.

 

[More details can be found in Price and Corry (2007). The line I will be promoting (but one given a far less theoretical slant) can be accessed in Hacker (2007), pp.57-89.]

 

9. We shall meet this particular option again in connection with the RRT in Essay Twelve Part Four (summary here).

 

[RRT = Reverse Reflection Theory (which is really a Projection Theory). This will be fully explained in Essay Twelve Part Four. Basically, the idea is that given DM, language and 'mind' do not in fact reflect reality (as its theorists maintain); quite the reverse, reality is structured so that it reflects how both Traditional and DM-theorists think we cognise it. In that case, discourse doesn't reflect the world, the world is made to reflect discourse. Language and meaning are thereby projected onto the world. Indeed, the cardboard 'reality' that results from this 'reverse-reflection' (this projection) is no more than a shadow cast on the world by the systematic distortion of language, to paraphrase Wittgenstein again -- and Plato.]

 

10. This helps explain an earlier aside: Traditional Philosophy is based on (a) Distorted language, (b) An entire family of alienated thought-forms, and (c) The fetishisation of discourse. [There is more on this in Essay Twelve, summary here.]

 

11. More details will be given in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).

 

12. Once again, I am forced to 'frame this problem' employing traditional jargon, but readers mustn't  assume I think any of it makes the slightest sense.

 

12a. The material that used to be here has been moved to the main body of this Essay.

 

I will say much more about this topic in Essay Three Part Five, were I will link the above considerations to Traditional Theories of Mind, Will, Freedom. Necessity, and Determinism. This will also connect them with the re-enchantment of nature apparent in Dialectical Marxism (i.e., in Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two (summary here)). See also, Note 14a1, below.

 

13. Anyone who objects to my use of such flowery language should rather take issue with those who concocted the target theories, not those who seek to lampoon them.

 

14. This echoes Rousseau:

 

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." [Rousseau (1952), p.3.]

 

14a0. The phrase "undermining the unity of the proposition" refers to the fact that Traditional Logic and Grammar turned propositions into lists of names. Since lists say nothing (unless they are articulated with words that aren't names), this move destroys the capacity language has for expressing anything whatsoever. That was, of course, the main theme of Part One. Readers are referred there for more details.

 

14a1. As Glenn Magee points out:

 

"What Hegel's system promises is a transformed experience of the world, in which we see familiar things in a new light. Science, poetry, art, religion, the state, are all seen to be expressions or embodiments of the Absolute. Ordinary things suddenly take on new meaning. That which had been thought to be a human contrivance, carried out only for finite human ends, devoid of any higher meaning, mystery or religious significance...is now suddenly imbued with spiritual significance.... Thus, Hegel attempts to heal the rift in the modern consciousness between thought and sensation, or thought and experience, by giving us a new form of experience. The very modern scientific and philosophical ideas that formerly seemed to cut us off from experience and from our intuitions of the divine are now seen to be moments of a system of experience that constitutes the divine itself. Hegel's system is an attempt to 're-enchant' the world, to re-invest nature with the experience of the numinous lost with the death of the mythical consciousness." [Magee (2008), p.97. Bold emphasis and link added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

Where Hegel saw the Absolute in everything, DM-theorists see their "Totality". In that light everything "takes on a new meaning".

 

14a2. Which might help explain why Trotsky argued as follows:

 

"Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities of 'common sense.'" [Trotsky (1971), p.70. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

As is the case with opiate addiction, regular hits become necessary. Not only that, but this intellectual drug robs DM-junkies of their free will, a point underlined by Max Eastman:

 

"Hegelism is like a mental disease; you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]

 

[Again, anyone who objects to my quoting Max Eastman should check this out and then perhaps think again.]

 

In Essay Nine Part Two, we will discover exactly why (otherwise) hard-nosed revolutionaries (like Engels, Lenin and Trotsky) surrendered (or "alienated") their will to ideas that depend on, or which promote, the existence of just such a 'Cosmic Will'.

 

14a. This also helps account for the rather peculiar fact that the more 'dialectical' the party the more autocratic it seems to be -- and the more prone it is therefore to fragment and split, or, indeed, imprison and/or execute the 'recalcitrant' and the 'Revisionists!' when in power. In such circumstances, the dialectically-mailed fist soon replaces the invisible hand of reasonableness and fights soon break out. This is especially true of Stalinists and Maoists if and when they actually manage to seize power. Their parties don't split or fragment as much as Trotskyist parties -- who have incidentally turned fragmentation into an art form, almost like a schizophrenic amoeba on speed --, not a bit of it. They are hardcore, and soon turn the volume to eleven as they imprison, section, 're-educate', silence, or 'liquidate' infidels. After all, no man, no problem...

 

These accusations have detailed extensively in Essay Nine Part Two (in order to expose the damage DM and its petty bourgeois acolytes have inflicted on Marxism).

 

14b. In the main body of this Essay I have shown that, given the traditional view of abstraction, it is impossible to construct a workable, let alone a believable, theory of the social nature of language and knowledge. It has been further demonstrated that this view of abstraction (if coupled with Lenin's theory of knowledge set out in MEC), traps each lone abstractor in their own private solipsistic universe. As such, they are literally isolated individuals, since, for all they know -- or can prove otherwise given the meagre resources with which DM-epistemology has saddled them --, they are all alone trapped in their own 'image' of 'the universe' and all it contains.

 

[I have developed the above point at length in Essay Thirteen Part One; readers are directed there for more details. Also see Note 15, below.]

 

15. In fact, inside the bourgeois intellectual universe -- a conceptual dungeon populated with nothing but particularised ideas, atomised concepts and socially isolated thinkers (i.e., as far as their own theories picture things) -- any attempt to prove there are other minds faces insurmountable obstacles.

 

Some might be tempted to argue that a lone abstractor could extrapolate from her own experience to the conclusion that others are just like her who also have minds. However, any theory based on one observation is no better than a guess. Worse still, since the language used to formulate any such theory is hopelessly impoverished (since, as we have seen, every word has been tuned into a Proper Name), it would be impossible for this lone abstractor to be able to say toward what any such guess had actually been directed. That is because, of course, belief in other minds requires the use of yet more general words, which this theory lacks -- or, rather, which it has just emptied of all their generality. This is quite apart from the fact that Lenin's theory of perception would trap him and 'everyone else' in a solipsistic conceptual dungeon, mentioned above.

 

[The details surrounding Wittgenstein's dissolution of these and other 'problems' won't be entered into here. I will say more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Three. However, those new to his ideas should perhaps begin with Glock (1996), Kenny (1973), and Sluga and Stern (1996); see also here.]

 

16. This topic is discussed much more fully in Essay Six.

 

16a. Be this as it may, any attempt to appeal to the 'relative stability' defence would be to no avail, since, given DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians could possibly have the same idea even about relative stability, nor yet the same idea about relative stability as they themselves had only a few moments earlier.

 

And, it is even less use replying that they would have relatively or approximately the same idea about relatively or approximately the same idea about such things since the phrase "relatively or approximately the same" is itself subject to the same limitations having now no determinate sense. That is because, if we have no idea what counts as exactly the 'same this' or the 'same that', we are surely in no position to declare that something only approximates to either. We may approximate to something only  when we have some idea what it is we are trying to approximate, but here we have no idea since DM-theorists tell us there is no such thing as absolute identity. That means there can be no approximation to it either.

 

And, the same would be true of any other words thrown in for good measure in a vain attempt to sort this out -- and that includes the word "word".

 

In a dialectical universe, all that is solid melts into the air.

 

17. It would be no use appealing to the 'relative' or 'partial' nature of knowledge here, either, since, as we shall see in Essay Ten Part One, the implication of that particular idea is that, given DM, 'reality' (or our knowledge of it) would be indistinguishable from Kant's Noumenon -- even if we could say that much!

 

18. This idea is up front in Kant, although it was also less overtly expressed in the work of earlier thinkers. However, since Hegel (by-and-large) adopted and then adapted Kant's approach to suit his own ends, the comments in the main body of this Essay only need to be true of post-Kantian Idealism in general for it to apply to DM (upside down or 'the right way up').

 

Of course, these days, evolution is considered by many to have shaped the 'mind' in this and many other respects; I have devoted much of Essay Thirteen Part Three to showing how misguided that idea is, too. Readers are directed there for more details.

 

18a. In relation to which we read the following:

 

"Nature, the real, what is perceived, is the 'Idea in apparent shape, which mind, in its synthetic power, posits as the object opposed to itself,' as described by Hegel (p.127). What is perceived is thus 'the determination by mind of its own substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process which no doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors which apparently negate each other, but which, by the very activity of such negation and separation, passes beyond the contradiction it implies to a unity which heals the fracture.' The dialectical synthesis of the differentiation in the absolute in the ideal constitutes the subjectivity of mind, the subjective. In subjective mind, the real is not 'explicitly unfolded,' as it is in perception, and complete self-consciousness. The real becomes the other to subjective mind in its state of explication, but an other that is defined by finitude rather than the infinity of the absolute. Mind must project itself into its other in order to recover the infinity of the absolute in the subjective. Mind cannot recover its subjectivity in the real through logic or discursive reason, through that which established its finitude in the real. This can only be accomplished in the intellectual in philosophy.

 

"In perception, mind always has a sense that what is being given of the real in perception is not being in its completion; the limitations of reason are self-apparent in self-consciousness as well. The nature of the human mind is to seek completion in being, whether it be reconciliation of the primordial dehiscence, or recognition of the presence of the absolute in the ideal. Ordinary consciousness is the 'entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and for that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and un-reconciled spirit' (p.128). In such a consciousness, the satisfactions of reason can only have a 'purely relative and isolated validity,' a condition which thought must necessarily seek to surpass. Appearance as given by perception is seen as a finite function of reason, and in the perception of the real, the intersection of mind and what is external to it, 'mind grasps its finiteness as the negation of its own essential substance, and is aware of its infinity.' In this activity mind is subjective because it is self-determinate and the object of its own will. In this activity mind enacts the principle of differentiation which is the essence of the absolute; reasoning mind doubles itself in relation to the absolute, where the knower and the known are undifferentiated. In this way the infinite is injected into the finite, the ideal into the real, as the real is participant in reason. In absolute mind, the intellectual of Plotinus, principle and activity are the same, ideal and real. In the ideal, the real is participant in the absolute." [Hendrix (2019); quoted from here (this links to a PDF). Bold emphasis and links added. The page references are to Hegel (1920), Volume One, in the edition I have used.]

 

The details underlying Hegel's, shall we say, 'Rosicrucian leanings', are expanded upon in Magee (2008), pp.35-36, 51-53, 248-57. See also Benz (1983) and O'Regan (1995). On Rosicrucianism in general, see Yates (2004). [The Introduction to Magee (2008) can be accessed here.]

 

This terminally obscure 'intellectual' game (i.e., the 'Subject/Object Identity' problematic) has dominated much of what passes for theory among HCDs/'Academic Marxists', just as it has formed an important strand in Continental 'Philosophy' for the last two centuries or more. However, the origin of this 'problematic' in mystical thought (indeed, this 'union' also forms the main 'problematic' of mysticism in general) hardly raises an eyebrow in either tradition, but especially not in ideologically-compromised HCD-cabals. In fact, I have lost count of the number of books and articles written (in both traditions) concerning the (mystical) union between the Knower and the Known, between 'Subject' and 'Object', the 'Subjective' and the 'Objective', or, indeed, concerning 'the thing-in-itself' and 'a thing-for-us'. These theorists are all trapped by a picture or metaphor that regards knowledge as a relation between two objects, the Knower and the Known, once more. [See also Note 6a above, where Engels's thoughts on this were quoted.]

 

Of course, HCDs refuse to see things this way (i.e., as a mystical union), but mystical union is nevertheless what they seek. Indeed, in some cases they are quite open about it (but wisely using less ideologically-compromised if not more diplomatic language). There is more on this, here.] An excellent example of this can be found here. [Unfortunately that link is now as dead as the ideas it once promoted. Added on Edit: The article itself has now re-surfaced here.]

 

[HCD = High Church Dialectician; that term is explained here.]

 

Here is what the Glossary at the Marxist Internet Archive had to say about this:

 

"'Subject' refers to the person or entity carrying out and responsible for an action, rather than the object which is being acted upon. The term is often used as a synonym for 'human being', or the consciousness of a human being. In the context of history, 'subject' means the agent of history, the people who are the conscious architects of events, rather than their unconscious tools. The 'subject-object' problem, or the separation of subject and object is often taken as a fundamental problem of Western thinking, ever since Descartes invented the 'Cartesian divide' as an epistemological problem. [In fact this 'divide' is much older (albeit expressed differently), as we have seen -- RL.] For dialectics, subject and object can only be understood as opposite aspects of the subject-object relation and thus inseparably part of the same relation.

 

"It was Kant who defined the 'Subject' in ethical terms, as the moral agent, having freedom and subject to moral laws. Hegel further developed the concept to overcome the division between the individual 'Subject' or person and the corporate or collective 'Subject,' by means of an understanding of 'Subject' as a self-conscious system of activity, in which the Individual, Universal and Particular aspects are coordinated. Historically, the individual subject only gradually distinguishes herself from the social subject of which she is a part. See 'Subjectivity.'... The earliest recorded use of the word was in 1315 as an adjective meaning 'bound to a superior by some obligation' and in 1340 the word was used as a noun to mean a person under the dominion of a Monarch, as in 'a subject of King Henry.'

 

"In 1374, Chaucer used the word in the sense of 'subject matter' about which different things could be said, and in 1380 the word was used to refer to the substance to which attributes (in the Aristotelian sense) adhered. In this sense, the word has been generalised from being 'subject' to an obligation to being 'subject' to any kind of attachment or property. In 1551, 'subject' was used in the sense of something to which properties could be attributed, and In 1603, Shakespeare used the word in the sense of a thing having a real independent existence, and therefore properties inhered in it, and to which attributes could be contingently attached. By 1638 it had taken on the modern meaning of the word 'subject' in grammar, as opposed to 'predicate' which expresses properties of the subject. The subject is then the 'do-er' of the verb, and we can see the beginnings of a move from the passive carrier of attributes and obligations to the do-er of actions.

 

"With René Descartes in 1638, as the Latin subjectum, the word then came to mean a fully conscious thinking 'subject,' in particular the mind or ego, as the subject in which all ideas inhere, and to which all representation and operations are to be attributed. In other words, the thinking and cognising agent. With Descartes, the word did not have an ethical connotation however, but is understood epistemologically. With Kant, the meaning of the word stabilised in its modern philosophical meaning as the moral agent:

 

'A person is a subject who is capable of having his actions imputed to him. Moral personality is, therefore, nothing but the freedom of a rational being under moral laws; and it is to be distinguished from psychological freedom as the mere faculty by which we become conscious of ourselves in different states of the identity of our existence. Hence it follows that a person is properly subject to no other laws than those he lays down for himself, either alone or in conjunction with others.' [Introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785] [Emphases in the original -- RL.]

 

"With Hegel, the word takes on the broader meaning, not restricted to the individual ego or person, but rather the self-conscious, self-legislating social actor which is both corporate and individual, including for example, states, families and individuals -- provided they are legally free agents (in his day, excluding women and children, for example)." [Quoted from here; accessed 05/02/2017. Several paragraphs merged. Except where indicated, bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. One link added; minor typo corrected.]

 

"Subject and Object are crucial concepts in Epistemology, the study of knowledge. 'Subject' refers to the active, cognising individual or social group, with consciousness and/or will, while 'object' refers to that on which the subject's cognitive or other activity observes. In the dialectical theory of knowledge, the important thing is to understand the subject and object as a unity and to see both the activity of the subject (which had been developed by idealism -- see Theses on Feuerbach No.1) and the independent existence of the world of which the subject is a part (which had been emphasised by materialism)." [Quoted from here; accessed 05/02/2017. Bold emphases and one link added; paragraphs merged.]

 

A survey of the background to this sorry affair can be found in Beiser (1987, 2002, 2005, 2008). Cf., also: Copleston (2003d, 2003f, 2003g), O'Hear (1999) and Pinkard (2002). On this, see also David Stove's articles: 'Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. [In relation to Stove's work readers should take note of the warning I have added here.] In relation to the words "objective" and "subjective" see here and here. See also the path-breaking study, Daston and Galison (2007).

 

One unfortunate HCD critic of this site has fallen under the spell, too -- as has another, even more recently. See also here; many of the archived articles at that site were written by Raya Dunayevskaya, where it is clear that the same Hermetic creed now dominates thought. [See also here. Several more examples of this HCD/LCD-affliction will be given in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).]

 

The above article (from the Marxist Internet Archive) says that for Hegel the word "subject":

 

"...takes on the broader meaning, not restricted to the individual ego or person, but rather the self-conscious, self-legislating social actor which is both corporate and individual, including for example, states, families and individuals...." [Quoted from here; accessed 05/02/2017.]

 

Certainly, that might have been Hegel's intention, but he no more proved this to be so than he proved anything in the rat's nest that constitutes his entire output. But, even if we assume Hegel was correct, Lenin's theory of knowledge (in MEC, which based everything on 'images') undermined it completely. In that case, the 'knowing subject' of DM becomes the bourgeois individual again and is left trapped in the solipsistic dungeon mentioned earlier, the 'object' of knowledge now having vanished into thin air. [On this, see Essay Thirteen Part One. See also an analogous difficulty for Hegel considered earlier (applied to his use of words like "Being"). How the points made there will underline the relevance of the remarks above will be made fully explicit in Essay Twelve Part Six.]

 

[MEC = Materialism And Empirio-Criticism, i.e., Lenin (1972).]

 

On this topic, see Note 25 and Note 19.

 

19. If the 'mind' knows only its own ideas and impressions (etc.), then the 'outer world' can't fail to be a back-reflection, or projection, of what that 'mind' contains, howsoever that basic idea is spruced up with complex 'theories of cognition'. Once a theorist begins with the 'contents of the mind', there is no escape from this philosophical black hole. Indeed, since the 'world' isn't just a mere idea, but the subject's own idea, there can in the end be no real difference between the 'objective' and the 'subjective', given this approach to 'knowledge'.

 

Naturally, Empiricists might want to deny the above implications, but if they are right, every single one of them will simply be arguing with him/herself, not me!

 

Others might object that the above confuses Empiricism with Solipsism, but that isn't so. In fact, it goes much further; it identifies them. This isn't just to pick on Empiricists; one implication of the criticisms levelled at this site is that all metaphysical theories of knowledge collapse into some form of Solipsism -- i.e., given what little sense can be made of them in the first place.

 

That controversial claim will be defended in Part Four of this Essay (when it is published). Also see Note 20, below.

 

20. Of course, this means that even an upside-down, eviscerated version of Hegel's system (i.e., DM) -- whether or not it has been put back "on its feet" -- is no less Ideal.

 

Hegel was quite clear: Logic and the Divine Logos are one, Nature is Idea, and the Idea is Logos in self-development:

 

"Actuality is the unity, become immediate, of essence with existence, or of inward with outward. The utterance of the actual is the actual itself: so that in this utterance it remains just as essential, and only is essential, in so far as it is immediate external existence.

 

"We have ere this met Being and Existence as forms of the immediate. Being is, in general, unreflected immediacy and transition into another. Existence is immediate unity of being and reflection; hence appearance: it comes from the ground, and falls to the ground. In actuality this unity is explicitly put, and the two sides of the relation identified. Hence the actual is exempted from transition, and its externality is its energizing. In that energizing it is reflected into itself: its existence is only the manifestation of itself, not of another.

 

"Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often absurdly opposed. How commonly we hear people saying that, though no objection can be urged against the truth and correctness of a certain thought, there is nothing of the kind to be seen in actuality, or it cannot be actually carried out! People who use such language only prove that they have not properly apprehended the nature either of thought or of actuality. Thought in such a case is, on the one hand, the synonym for a subjective conception, plan, intention, or the like, just as actuality, on the other, is made synonymous with external and sensible existence. This is all very well in common life, where great laxity is allowed in the categories and the names given to them; and it may of course happen that, e.g., the plan, or so-called idea, say, of a certain method of taxation, is good and advisable in the abstract, but that nothing of the sort is found in so-called actuality, or could possibly be carried out under the given conditions. But when the abstract understanding gets hold of these categories and exaggerates the distinction they imply into a hard and fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in this actual world we must knock ideas out of our heads, it is necessary energetically to protest against these doctrines, alike in the name of science and of sound reason. For on the one hand Ideas are not confined to our heads merely, nor is the Idea, on the whole, so feeble as to leave the question of its actualisation or non-actualisation dependent on our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely active as well as actual. And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and irrational, as purblind or wrong-headed and muddle-brained would-be reformers imagine. So far is actuality, as distinguished from mere appearance, and primarily presenting a unity of inward and outward, from being in contrariety with reason, that it is rather thoroughly reasonable, and everything which is not reasonable must on that very ground cease to be held actual." [Hegel (1975), pp.200-01, §142; I have used the on-line version here, and have left the MIA links in. Minor typos corrected. (I have informed the editors over at the MIA.)]

 

"The divine Idea is just this: to disclose itself, to posit this Other outside itself and to take it back again into itself, in order to be subjectivity and Spirit.... God therefore in determining Himself, remains equal to Himself; each of these moments is itself the whole Idea and must be posited as the divine totality. The different moments can be grasped under three different forms: the universal, the particular and the individual. First, the different moments remain preserved in the eternal unity of the Idea; this is the Logos, the eternal son of God as Philo conceived it.... The third form which concerns us here, the Idea in the mode of particularity, is Nature....

 

"A rational consideration of Nature must consider how Nature is in its own self this process of becoming Spirit, of sublating its otherness -- and how the Idea is present in each grade or level of Nature itself...." [Hegel (2004), p.14, §247. As far as I can ascertain, the copy published at the MIA with this title is a different version of the same edition. Indeed, this is what the MIA has to say about it: "From 'Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline and Critical Writings', Edited by Ernst Behler, translated by Steven A Taubeneck from the Heidelberg text of 1817, published by Continuum, 1990. The more widely known translation by A V Miller (1970 -- i.e., 2004 -- RL) is a translation of the late versions of Hegel's Encyclopedia with additions by Leopold von Hemming and K L Michelet."]

 

Moreover, Hegel specifically linked this conception of the relation between Logic and the world with ideas spun by Ancient Greek Theorists:

 

"This objective thinking then, is the content of pure science. Consequently, far from it being formal, far from it standing in need of a matter to constitute an actual and true cognition, it is its content alone which has absolute truth, or, if one still wanted to employ the word matter, it is the veritable matter -- but a matter which is not external to the form, since this matter is rather pure thought and hence the absolute form itself. Accordingly, logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind.

 

"Anaxagoras is praised as the man who first declared that Nous, thought, is the principle of the world, that the essence of the world is to be defined as thought. In so doing he laid the foundation for an intellectual view of the universe, the pure form of which must be logic.

 

"What we are dealing with in logic is not a thinking about something which exists independently as a base for our thinking and apart from it, nor forms which are supposed to provide mere signs or distinguishing marks of truth; on the contrary, the necessary forms and self-consciousness of thought are the content and the ultimate truth itself." [Hegel (1999), pp.50-51, §53-54. Bold emphases alone added. Links also added.]

 

So, just another "ruling idea", then...

 

20a. On this, see Note 20, above. This topic will be covered in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two to Four, and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here).

 

21. The reader shouldn't conclude from these comments that Nominalism is my preferred option, nor even that it is 'correct'. In fact, as the Introductory Essay pointed out, I reject all philosophical theories as incoherent non-sense, and that includes Nominalism. Why that is so is explained in detail in Essay Twelve Part One.

 

22. And we now know why Lenin really meant these words: "Dialectical idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than crude materialism...". Lenin's importation into Marxism of these well-entrenched "ruling ideas" clearly compromised his materialist good sense:

 

"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

 

How and why that happened to Lenin (and, indeed, to other Dialectical Marxists), and what ideological motivations they expressed or underpinned -- are the subject of Essays Nine Parts One and Two, Twelve (summary here), and Fourteen Part Two.

 

23. The material that used to be here has now been moved to the main body of this Essay.

 

To be fair to John Rees, he does at least try to defend a DM-view of concepts, those that aren't somehow 'fully material' -- for example, in his examination of "friendship" (pp.109-10, of TAR). That argument will be examined in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is published).

 

24. The views of several of these will be examined in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

 

Mark Anthony:

 

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." [Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.]

 

The material that used to be here has now been moved to the main body of this Essay. In addition, my criticism of Bertell Ollman's theory of abstraction, which also used to be here, has been moved to Appendix One.

 

25. The following takes up where Note 18a left off.

 

This seems to be the import of a passage from TAR, quoted earlier:

 

"[I]t is impossible simply to stare at the world as it immediately presents itself to our eyes and hope to understand it. To make sense of the world, we must bring to it a framework composed of elements of our past experience; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience." [Rees (1998), p.63.]

 

As will be argued later, this is a rather odd way of making the point that knowledge isn't solely, or maybe even directly, derived from 'experience'.

 

While several of the comments in the main body of this Essay might lead some to conclude that this objection centres on the recognitional capacities of, for example, trainee canine classifiers, it doesn't in fact so depend. As pointed out in Essay Six (and Note 6a, above), this particular metaphor trades on a confusion between two different uses of the verb "to know" introduced into Traditional Epistemology by Plato, which he then proceeded to conflated into a single concept of 'knowledge'.

 

Knowledge of a friend or an acquaintance isn't the same as propositional knowledge; there is a difference between "NN knows that p" and "NM knows A" (where "p" is a (conformable) propositional variable, and "A" stands for a Proper Name (as do NN and NM), or some other singular term -- where, in that eventuality, A would in that case really be "The F that is G", and where "F" and "G" are in turn noun phrases). Modern English doesn't have a pair of words that brings this out very well, but French does: connaitre and savoir. "Acquaintance" is far too weak here, and misleading. [I owe this point to Peter Geach.]

 

[A "conformable" proposition would be one that makes sense in such a context. So with respect to: "NN knows that Paris is the capital of France", "Paris is the capital of France" makes sense, so it is conformable. But, "NN knows that Julius Caesar lives between Marx and Saturn", where "Julius Caesar lives between Marx and Saturn" doesn't make sense (if said in say in January 2024), so it isn't.]

 

Knowledge (connaitre) of one's friends, for instance, does involve recognitional capacities since it alludes to an ability we are all supposed to possess of being able to identity over time specific individuals with whom we are acquainted as friends. Propositional knowledge (savoir) isn't a relation between the Knower and the Known, unless we regard a proposition -- or what it supposedly refers to (i.e., a fact) -- as an object of some sort -- in this case a set of ink marks on the page, perhaps. If that were so, it would express an alleged relation between the supposed Knower and that set of ink marks, which one presumes isn't what was meant by knowing something to be the case. When we know, for instance, that the Nile is longer than the Thames, we aren't adverting to a relationship we might have with a set of inscriptions -- or even certain sound waves propagated through the air --, nor yet the rivers themselves.

 

So, from:

 

K1: NN knows MM,

 

we can't infer:

 

K2: NN knows.

 

But, from the following:

 

K3: NM knows that p,

 

we can infer:

 

K4: NM knows.

 

[Where "NN", "MM" and "NM" are Proper Name surrogates, and  "p" is a (conformable) propositional variable, once more.]

 

This shows that we already distinguish the relational (transitive) from the non-relational (intransitive) form of the verb "to know" -- "NN knows that p", being of the latter form, and "NN knows MM", the former.

 

[These observations alone render obsolete large swathes of Ancient and Modern Epistemology (much of which, predictably, is now to be found festering away in French 'Philosophy' -- which is rather odd when we remember that the French do have a set of verbs that clearly distinguish these two forms of knowledge!]

 

On the other hand, if these two terms are conflated, generality will exit through the back door, as we saw in Part One. [The same comment applies if it were concluded that knowing that the Nile is longer than the Thames puts us in a relationship with one or other of these rivers. (More on this in Part Four.)]

 

In the second case, it confuses objects with states of affairs and what we know about them.

 

[Concerning what I mean by the word "inscription", see here.]

 

Moreover, if the successful use of general terms were based on recognitional capacities we should then have to postulate a second order ability to recognise when a particular was an example of the right type, as well as recognising which word correctly applied to either or both -- and so on, ad infinitem. But, this just re-introduces Aristotle's objection, since, at a stroke, it doubles the number of 'difficulties' with which we originally began instead of eliminating them. Furthermore, and once again, it would involve the use of the very thing that was to meant be explained -- i.e., generality --, and reference would now have to be made to further mysterious, inner "mental acts" to buttress the public use of words, and so on. On this, see Note 26.

 

On this topic in general, see Hacker (1987) and Geach (1957). Problems associated with naive accounts of language acquisition are examined in Cowie (1997, 2002) -- who has, to her credit (on pp.x-xi of her (2002)), also underlined the connection that exists between certain theories of the origin of language and several regressive, right-wing political and social nostrums that have become 'popular' of late.

 

26. That this is the correct approach can be seen from the fact that Traditional Philosophers themselves have to employ general words to account for general ideas, whatever else they later try to change them into.

 

However, the 'abstractions' they attempt to define (or identify) are supposedly located in one or other of the following:

 

(i) A mysterious region of the 'mind'/brain in some as-yet-unspecified form;

 

(ii) A 'heavenly' or a 'Platonic' realm (these days, the so-called 'Third Realm'); and,

 

(iii) The objects from which they have been 'abstracted' (where, presumably, they are spread out, distributed or shared equally among their exemplars in an as-yet-to-be-explained manner. I will return to this topic in Essay Thirteen Part Two).

 

These 'abstractions' are 'apprehended' by special 'acts of intellection', or by something perhaps even more mysterious, 'intuition'.

 

Plainly, as such, these 'abstract particulars' may only be accessed privately, and only by the individual abstractor concerned. Unlike objects in the natural and social world --, which are openly and publicly accessible by anyone involved in conversation, research or collective labour --, abstract particulars are quintessentially private and unique to each mind. In that case, not only is their nature and existence in principle un-checkable, they can't be compared with any of the 'abstractions' developed by other intrepid abstractors.

 

In this respect, too, the postulation of such 'abstractions' (or 'abstract ideas' and 'concepts') only serves to undermine the social nature of language by suggesting that such key linguistic activities are private, inner, socially atomised and representational in nature.

 

It is worth recalling, too, that what had been advertised all along as an ontological and epistemological expedition aimed at tracking down these elusive 'Universals', these 'abstractions', now turns out to be little more than a quibble about the meaning of general nouns, only surprisingly ineptly expressed -- as Part One of this Essay demonstrated.

 

26a. In addition to what has already been covered (derived from Hegel's work), some extra 'dialectical' background can be found here -- and good luck trying to make sense of it!

 

[The material that used to be here has now been moved to the main body of this Essay.]

 

27. I have employed the rather stilted sentential prefixing clause (or, as it is generally known, a sentence-forming operator), "It is not the case that…", in order to avoid well-known scope ambiguities (this links to a PDF), which often result from an incautious use of the negative particle in certain sentential contexts.

 

28. R6 has also been left somewhat 'stylistically-challenged' to minimise the differences between the stated examples. The same applies to several other illustrative sentences used in this part of the Essay.

 

R6: It is not the case that this stick is bent in water.

 

29. I say much more about 'contradictions' in Essays Four, Five, Eight Parts One, Two and Three, and Essay Eleven Part One.

 

29a0. The alleged contradiction might emerge along something like the following lines (although it isn't being suggested here that this is how the argument has ever actually proceeded, only how it could do so):

 

C1: NN believes that p.

 

C2: Science has shown that not p.

 

C3: Therefore, not p.

 

C4: NN accepts the truth of C3.

 

C5: Therefore, NN believes both that p and that not p.

 

[Where "p" is a propositional variable, and "NN" is a Proper Name surrogate.]

 

Of course, it is then up to NN to adjust her beliefs, or otherwise.

 

However, C3 doesn't follow from C2, unless the following assumption is added:

 

C2a: Whatever science has shown to be the case, is true.

 

Or something like it.

 

[Recall that "not p" (when disquoted -- i.e., when those quotation marks have been removed) is just as capable of being true as any non-negated proposition, when it has been interpreted. For example: "The Thames is neither longer than, nor the same length as, the Nile" is just as true as, "The Nile is longer than the Thames".]

 

[How observation and experiment (but not beliefs) can contradict scientific theory will be examined in detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

 

29a. Admittedly, it could be claimed that Hegel also appeared to believe this (i.e., that appearances were part of reality -- although he would have refrained from calling them "real" -- on that, see Note 29b, below). In which case, it isn't too clear what the contradiction here is supposed to be.

 

Alas, what little help we get from DM-fans turns out to be no use at all in trying to make sense of any of its.

 

Anyway, what Hegel had to say about appearances is not only about as useful as a chocolate tea pot, it is as clear as mud (to vary the image). I have said more about that here. See also the next Note.

 

29b. As pointed out above, Novack argued as follows:

 

"Let us consider a few illustrations of this process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant, seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development. Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational or non-rational." [Novack (1971), pp.86-87. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

 

Why Novack thought it wise to describe plants as "non-real" is unclear, to say the least. If they were plastic, or were part of a painting, sculpture or the icing on a cake he might have had a point. Perhaps he meant the existence of such plants is transient? Or that they can at some point perish?

 

However, Novack concurs with Hegel in regarding as not real, or not fully real, whatever it is that perishes, or can perish:

 

"We have already seen what great measure of truth there is in the proposition that the real is rational. We have ascertained that all things come into existence and endure in a lawful and necessary way. But this is not the whole and final truth about things. It is one-sided, relative, and a passing truth. The real truth about things is that they not only exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing away of things, eventuating in death, is expressed in logical terminology by the term 'negation.'

 

"The whole truth about things can be expressed only if we take into account this opposite and negative aspect. In other words, unless we introduce the negation of our first affirmation, we shall obtain only a superficial and abstract inspection of reality.

 

"All things are limited and changing. They not only force their way and are forced into existence and maintain themselves there. They also develop, disintegrate and are pushed out of existence and eventually disappear. In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They likewise negate themselves and are negated by other things. By coming into existence, they say: 'Yes! Here I am!' to reality and to thought engaged in understanding reality. By developing and eventually going out of existence, they say on the contrary: 'No, I no longer am; I cannot stay real.' If everything that comes into existence must pass out of existence, as all of reality pounds constantly into our brains, then every affirmation must inexorably express its negation in logical thought. Such a movement of things and of thought is called a dialectical movement.

 

'All things...meet their doom; and in saying so, we have a perception that Dialectic is the universal and irresistible power, before which nothing can stay, however secure and stable it may deem itself,' writes Hegel. (Shorter Logic, p.128.) [I.e., Hegel (1975), p.118, §81 -- RL.]

 

"There is a fable in The Arabian Nights about an Oriental monarch who, early in life, asked his wise men for the sum and substance of all learning, for the truth that would apply to everything at all times and under all conditions, a truth which would be as absolutely sovereign as he thought himself to be. Finally, over the king's deathbed, his wise men supplied the following answer: 'Oh, mighty king, this one truth will always apply to all things: "And this too shall pass away".' If justice prevailed, the king should have bequeathed a rich reward to his wise men, for they had disclosed to him the secret of the dialectic. This is the power, the omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever emerging from, annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things.

 

"This 'powerful unrest,' as Leibnitz (sic) called it, this quickening force and destructive action of life -- the negative -- is everywhere at work: in the movement of things, in the growth of living beings, in the transformations of substances, in the evolution of society, and in the human mind which reflects all these objective processes.

 

"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous aphorism: All that is rational is real. But for Hegel all that is real is not without exception and qualification worthy of existence. 'Existence is in part mere appearance, and only in part reality.' (Introduction to the Shorter Logic, §6.)  [I.e., Hegel (1975), p.9, §6 -- RL.] Existence elementally and necessarily divides itself, and the investigating mind finds it to be so divided, into opposing aspects of appearance and essence. This disjunction between appearance and essence is no more mysterious than the disjunction between the inside and outside of an object." [Novack (1971), pp.84-86. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. I have reproduced the edition of Hegel's work used by the editor of Novack's on-line text, Andy Blunden, not the version that appears here.]

 

As if the difference between a 'real' and a counterfeit dollar note might lie in the fact that the latter will perish, but not the former. Or, indeed, that there exists somewhere a 'real dollar note' that will never perish. However, as soon as we take 'God' out of the picture, this 'theory' falls apart faster than one of Donald Trump's speeches.

 

Be this as it may, except for its overtly religious language, the above passage from Novack isn't significantly different from the way that some of the Hindu faithful depict Shiva.

 

"Shiva (Sanskrit: Auspicious One), or Siva, is one of the main Deities of Hinduism, worshipped as the paramount lord by the Saivite sects of India. Shiva is one of the most complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is the destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger." [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"Shiva is 'shakti' or power, Shiva is the destroyer, the most powerful god of the Hindu pantheon and one of the godheads in the Hindu Trinity. Known by many names -- Mahadeva, Mahayogi, Pashupati, Nataraja, Bhairava, Vishwanath, Bhava, Bhole Nath -- Lord Shiva is perhaps the most complex of Hindu deities. Hindus recognize this by putting his shrine in the temple separate from those of other deities....

 

"Shiva, in temples is usually found as a phallic symbol of the 'linga', which represents the energies necessary for life on both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic levels, that is, the world in which we live and the world which constitutes the whole of the universe. In a Shaivite temple, the 'linga' is placed in the centre underneath the spire, where it symbolizes the naval of the earth....

 

"Shiva is believed to be at the core of the centrifugal force of the universe, because of his responsibility for death and destruction. Unlike the godhead Brahma, the Creator, or Vishnu, the Preserver, Shiva is the dissolving force in life. But Shiva dissolves in order to create, since death is the medium for rebirth into a new life. So the opposites of life and death and creation and destruction both reside in his character....

 

"Since Shiva is regarded as a mighty destructive power, to numb his negative potentials he is fed with opium and is also termed as 'Bhole Shankar', one who is oblivious of the world. Therefore, on Maha Shivratri, the night of Shiva worship, devotees, especially the menfolk, prepare an intoxicating drink called 'Thandai' (made from cannabis, almonds, and milk) sing songs in praise of the Lord and dance to the rhythm of the drums." [Quoted from here. Spelling altered to conform with UK English. Bold emphases added. Links in the original.]

 

Is this not then the dance of the 'Hindu dialectic'?

 

Shiva, is also supposed to be the "most powerful god"; compare that dogma with the following:

 

"This is the power, the omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever emerging from, annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things." [Novack, op cit.]

 

Or, indeed, compare it with Raya Dunayevskaya's entire book: "The Power of Negativity". [Dunayevskaya (2002)].

 

Similar thoughts can be found in other religions (e.g., Buddhism, Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Daoism).

 

Er..., what was that again about "the ideas of the ruling class..."?

 

Even so, the answer to the following question is still in abeyance: Is it the "whole and final truth about things" that they pass away, or is that itself a "one-sided, relative, and...passing truth"?

 

If the latter is the case, we can ignore it (since it might not be true tomorrow). On the other hand, if it isn't, then some things are permanent (namely this truth), and the above idea (i.e., 'the "whole and final truth about things" [is] that they pass away'), is false, which means we can ignore it.

 

Either way, we can ignore it.

 

Be this as it may once more, as we will see in Essays Seven Part One and Fourteen Part One (summary here) -- indeed, as we have just seen --, Novack's words express a mystical, even poetic, view of nature that openly confuses linguistic and logical categories with reality itself (i.e., it conflates talk about talk with talk about things, as we have witnessed several times with DM-fans). It also represents a faint echo of the doctrine (which Hegel certainly accepted) that only 'God' is fully real, since 'He' alone 'exists of necessity'. Everything else is merely contingent and depends on 'Him' for its own insecure, tenuous or temporary grip on the 'Real', on existence.

 

Novack neglected to quote the following part of the above passage, and it isn't hard to see why:

 

"...we must presuppose intelligence enough to know, not only that God is actual, that He is the supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance, and only in part actuality." [Hegel (1975), p.9, §6; bold emphasis added.]

 

The only question we should now be asking is: Why is anyone on the revolutionary left taking advice from that mystical charlatan?

 

However, as if to spoil the Hermetic Hilarity, protons, for example, seem to have received an exemption certificate from all that perishing and passing away (is this perhaps a gift from 'Being' itself?), for they don't change -- or, if they do, they don't do so as a result of their 'internal contradictions'. Photons are similarly as uncooperative as they are un-dialectical -- as are electrons. [More on that, here.]

 

Be this as it may once more, the sort of flowery language Novack employs goes down rather well in DM-circles (especially among the HCD-fraternity) -- even though it has a distinctly offensive whiff of Christianity, Hinduism, or even Buddhism about it, especially when we are allowed to see those Hegelian quotations in all their mystical glory! As is the case with openly religious thinkers, such flowery language only serves to provide some form of consolation for its hapless victims.

 

[There is more on how such language manages to do this in Essay Nine Part Two. Again, on this, also see David Stove's: 'Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. However, in relation to Stove's work, readers should take note of the caveats I have posted here.]

 

The bottom line here is, of course, that DM-passages like this only make sense if we are prepared to anthropomorphise 'reality'. Novack's "Here I am" and "No I am not" rather give the game away, one feels.

 

Last but not least: we have yet to be told what the 'contradiction' here actually is supposed to be!

 

[HCD = High Church Dialectics/Dialectician, depending on context; that term is explained here.]

 

30. There is something distinctly odd about the idea that appearances are capable of 'contradicting' reality, the facts, or, indeed, anything at all. That is because, plainly, appearances can't contradict anything unless both ('appearance' and 'reality') are expressed in indicative sentences -- or, perhaps, both induce beliefs conducive to that end. Clearly, this not insignificant detail now redirects attention to the conflict that might or might not exist between contradictory beliefs. But, in that regard, and with respect to bent sticks, for example, who actually believes sticks are bent in water? More to the point: which person of sound mind believes that sticks are both bent and not bent in water?

 

And yet, if that is the sort of confusion that scientific advance encourages us to abandon, it would be no great loss to humanity.

 

However, none of this has anything to do with the supposed contradiction between appearance and reality, since, plainly, such contradictions would be between beliefs expressed in and by language; still less would it have anything to do with 'commonsense'.

 

It could be argued that sticks actually do look bent and not bent when partially immersed in water: the half in the liquid looks bent while the other half does not. But not even that is a contradiction since what we now have here are two different propositions:

 

V1: The bottom half of this stick looks bent in water. [Where a pointing gesture makes it clear which stick and what part is meant.]

 

V2: The top half of this stick doesn't look bent in water. [Where a pointing gesture makes it clear that the same stick is meant.]

 

We would have a contradiction here if either of these were the case:

 

V3: The bottom half of this stick does and doesn't look bent in water at the same time. [Where a pointing gesture makes it clear which stick is meant.]

 

V4: The top half of this stick doesn't and does look bent in water at the same time. [Where a pointing gesture makes it clear that the same stick is meant.]

 

But they aren't, so we don't.

 

31. Those who think this unlikely should read Note 32, below.

 

32. The content of Note 32 has now been moved to the main body of this Essay, here.

 

33. The content of Note 33 has now been moved here.

 

34. Anyway, and once more, these two sentences are far too ambiguous to be considered contradictory. [But, 'appears' to whom? And in what way? Indeed, what is the criterion of 'fairness' at work here?]

 

R17: Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

R18: It isn't the case that Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

35. For the sake of argument (as was also the case here), I am assuming that this reductio is valid (plainly, it isn't!), and that R26 is a contradiction. But, even if, per impossible, this argument were valid, it would still be of no help to DM-fans. If contradictory pairs of propositions can both be true at once (or what they supposedly depict can coexist), R27 would be false, and R28 would no longer follow from R21-R27. Given DM, therefore, the argument would be 'valid' just in case it wasn't!

 

[I have also ignored what seems to be the correct implication of some of the sentences in this argument, which is that people (workers) hold contradictory beliefs about Capitalism.]

 

For ease of reference, R21-R28 were:

 

R21: Capitalism appears to be fair.

 

R22: That appearance leads people (including workers) to think it is fair.

 

R23: Hence, Capitalism is fair. [Or, so they conclude.]

 

R24: But, revolutionary theory and practice convince some that Capitalism isn't fair.

 

R25: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair. [Or, so some conclude.]

 

R26: Consequently, Capitalism is both fair and not fair.

 

R27: But, the contradiction in R26 implies that R23 can't be true (based on the truth of R25).

 

R28: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair.

 

36. Naturally, the way this point has been presented in the main body of the Essay prejudices, or biases, any conclusions that might be drawn from it. Anyway, it isn't faithful to the aim of the argument that was re-constructed (and expressed in R21-R28, reproduced in Note 35, above). But, DM-texts themselves are the source of the problem. As noted earlier, since it isn't possible to form a contradiction by conjoining a proposition expressing an appearance with one recording matters of fact, any attempt to do so (again reproduced in Note 35), not unsurprisingly, flounders. Moreover, and for the same reason, the options available to DM-theorists to extricate themselves from this dialectical mess are no help, either (as I have shown in this Essay). So, until DM-theorists clarify what they mean by much of what they say, little more can be done to make sense of anything they do say.

 

37. The reasons for the presence, or even for the formation, of contradictory beliefs in the 'minds' of the unwary and the inattentive won't be entered into here since that would take us too far afield into areas covered by HM. However, several possible examples have been covered in more detail here.

 

38. It could be objected that this latest assertion contends that appearances are 'subjective', when it was argued earlier that they were 'objective'. Again, which is it to be?

 

Of course, it is the philosophical use of terms like "objective" and "subjective" to which I take exception. So, this part of the Essay is simply responding to the employment (by dialecticians) of hopelessly vague language. They certainly seem to believe that appearances are subjective (or, at best, inter-subjective) and it is that assumption which is being used in order to put pressure on the rest of their theory. But, this doesn't imply I accept that "subjective" and "objective" have any clear meaning when used 'philosophically', or, indeed, 'dialectically'.

 

On the other hand -- to continue with this hopeless idiom --, appearances are also 'objective' in that they are presumably part of the real world (i.e., they don't belong to any other!). Even if propositions about appearances turn out to be totally mistaken, or entirely made up, they would still exist as a brain state or process (on this view, not mine!), or they would have 'emerged' from some state or process in the CNS (again, on this view, not mine!), and they would exist in each individual mind independently of every other mind, or so it would seem. If your thoughts are 'external' to my 'mind', and are 'external' to every other 'mind' on the planet, then, according to Lenin, they must be 'objective' -- that is, for everyone else, not you!

 

"We ask, is a man given objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or not? This hoary philosophical query is confused by Mach. If you hold that it is not given, you, together with Mach, inevitably sink to subjectivism and agnosticism and deservedly fall into the embrace of the immanentists, i.e., the philosophical Menshikovs. If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long, long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them. Therefore, to say that such a concept can become 'antiquated' is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments of fashionable reactionary philosophy. Could the struggle between materialism and idealism, the struggle between the tendencies or lines of Plato and Democritus in philosophy, the struggle between religion and science, the denial of objective truth and its assertion, the struggle between the adherents of supersensible knowledge and its adversaries have become antiquated during the two thousand years of the development of philosophy?...

 

"As the reader sees, all these arguments of the founders of empirio-criticism entirely and exclusively revolve around the old epistemological question of the relation of thinking to being, of sensation to the physical. It required the extreme naďveté of the Russian Machians to discern anything here that is even remotely related to 'recent science,' or 'recent positivism.' All the philosophers mentioned by us, some frankly, others guardedly, replace the fundamental philosophical line of materialism (from being to thinking, from matter to sensation) by the reverse line of idealism. Their denial of matter is the old answer to epistemological problems, which consists in denying the existence of an external, objective source of our sensations, of an objective reality corresponding to our sensations. On the other hand, the recognition of the philosophical line denied by the idealists and agnostics is expressed in the definitions: matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in sensation, and so forth....

 

"'Matter is disappearing' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter is vanishing and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are likewise disappearing which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary (impenetrability, inertia, mass, etc.) and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972), pp.144-45, 165, 311. Bold emphases alone added, quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

 

"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Ibid., p.148. Bold emphasis added.]

 

"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157. Bold emphasis added.]

 

I have said more about this in Essay Thirteen Part One, for example, here and here.

 

39. Again, the circumstances which motivate members of different classes to draw true or false conclusions about the nature of Capitalist society won't be entered into in this work.

 

39a. But, even for Descartes, his self-certifying ideas only seemed to him to be reliable. After all, he admitted he needed 'God' to ratify his "clear and distinct" ideas if they were to be declared indubitable. He would hardly do that if they were 'self-certifying'. And yet, even to 'God' these are also appearances! And, plainly, 'God' couldn't appeal to a superior 'Deity' to ratify 'His' ideas.

 

"For since God has endowed each of us with some light of reason by which to distinguish truth from error, I could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied with the opinions of another, unless I had resolved to exercise my own judgment in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the task....

 

"For, in the first place even the principle which I have already taken as a rule, viz., that all the things which we clearly and distinctly conceive are true, is certain only because God is or exists and because he is a Perfect Being, and because all that we possess is derived from him: whence it follows that our ideas or notions, which to the extent of their clearness and distinctness are real, and proceed from God, must to that extent be true. Accordingly, whereas we not infrequently have ideas or notions in which some falsity is contained, this can only be the case with such as are to some extent confused and obscure, and in this proceed from nothing (participate of negation), that is, exist in us thus confused because we are not wholly perfect. And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing. But if we did not know that all which we possess of real and true proceeds from a Perfect and Infinite Being, however clear and distinct our ideas might be, we should have no ground on that account for the assurance that they possessed the perfection of being true." [Descartes, Discourse on Method, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

 

Even if such 'appearance' coincided with their 'essence' (to use the jargon, once more) they would still be appearances, and those 'essences' would still only 'appear to be essences', as would all that 'coinciding', given this way of talking.

 

40. As we have seen, and as we will see even more as the Essays at this site unfold, dialectical thoughts are far from self-certifying. Indeed, many of them self-destruct with alarming ease, while the rest are based on one or more of the following dubious factors:

 

(i) A series of logical blunders;

 

(ii) A set of superficial exercises in 'conceptual' analysis;

 

(iii) Badly constructed 'thought experiments'; and,

 

(iv) Mickey Mouse Science.

 

Admittedly, it is controversial to claim that thought should be classified as an appearance, but since these terms-of-art (as they feature in Metaphysics) are devoid of any clear meaning, the denial of this claim would be equally devoid of sense. Either that, or the claim itself would be impossible to assess, and for the same reason. The negation of non-sense is also non-sense. [Follow that link for an explanation of the meaning of "non-sense" used at this site.]

 

[On the inappropriateness of depicting sensations and 'appearances' in the traditional manner, see Hacker (1987).]

 

40a. As Wittgenstein noted, all we would have here would be yet more signs, and signs can't interpret themselves.

 

Peter Hacker is worth quoting in this regard:

 

"It is indeed true that a sign can be lifeless for one, as when one hears an alien tongue or sees an unknown script. But it is an illusion to suppose that what animates a sign is some immaterial thing, abstract object, mental image or hypothesised psychic entity that can be attached to it by a process of thinking. [Wittgenstein (1969), p.4: 'But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.'] One can try to rid oneself of these nonsensical conceptions by simple manoeuvres. In the case of the idealist conception, imagine that we replace the mental accompaniment of a word, which allegedly gives the expression its 'life', by a physical correlate. For example, instead of accompanying the word 'red' with a mental image of red, one might carry around in one's pocket a small red card. So, on the idealist's model, whenever one uses or hears the word 'red', one can look at the card instead of conjuring up a visual image in thought. But will looking at a red slip of paper endow the word 'red' with life? The word plus sample is no more 'alive' than the word without the sample. For an object (a sample of red) does not have the use of the word laid up in it, and neither does the mental image. Neither the word and the sample nor the word and the mental pseudo-sample dictate the use of a word or guarantee understanding.

 

"...It seemed to Frege, Wittgenstein claimed, that no adding of inorganic signs, as it were, can make the proposition live, from which he concluded that [for Frege -- RL] 'What must be added is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs'. [Wittgenstein (1969), p.4.] He [Frege -- RL] did not see that such an object, a sense mysteriously grasped in thinking, as it were a picture in which all the rules are laid up, 'would itself be another sign, or a calculus to explain the written one to us'. [Wittgenstein (1974), p.40.].... To understand a sign, i.e., for it to 'live' for one, is not to grasp something other than the sign; nor is it to accompany the sign with an inner parade of objects in thought. It is to grasp the use of the sign itself." [Hacker (1993), pp.167-68. Italic emphases in the original.]

 

There is an excellent account of this in Bloor (1997). A more profound analysis can be found in Kripke (1982), with another intelligent approach in Williams (1999a). [This topic is covered in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

 

Bloor's book is one of the better contributions to the debate over the nature of rule-following to have appeared in the last twenty-five or so years; however, there are several serious weaknesses in his overall argument. They will be discussed in more detail a later Essay. [On this in general, see also Kusch (2006), which develops ideas not a million miles different to Bloor's.]

 

41. Although TAR does advance the following claim:

 

"[C]oncepts which arise from direct interaction with the world cannot be false." [Rees (1998), p.92.]

 

Nevertheless, from the surrounding context it is unclear whether or not Rees actually agrees with those sentiments. If not, he was wise so to demure. Clearly, concepts themselves can't be either true or false. It makes no sense at all to ask whether "….cat" (or even "cat") is true or false. Hegel thought otherwise, but that idea was itself based on a confusion between concepts and objects, analysed in Part One of this Essay (and in Essay Four, here and here).

 

However, I will return to this topic again in Part Three of this Essay, and in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six.

 

42. In fact, this work is aimed at demonstrating that although DM appears to its supporters to be an excellent theory, in reality it is the exact opposite.

 

A rather nice 'dialectical' turn of events, one feels.

 

There would, of course, be no point arguing for or against the truth of DM, or seeking to confirm it in practice, if thoughts were self-certifying.

 

43. This word (i.e., "semblances") isn't being used here in its Hegelian sense. This is what the Glossary over at the Marxist Internet Archive has to say about the Hegelian version of this term (and good luck trying to understand it!):

 

"Illusory Being [or semblance] is a category of Hegel's philosophy denoting the sceptical moment when an object is first perceived. The Dialectic of Reflection is the dialectic of the essential and unessential. Illusory Being is the negative moment in this dialectic -- the unessential. Against the position of scepticism, Hegel says that it must be recognised that the unessential is Being's unessential, that is, the thing is expressed in the unessential as well as in the essential, only the unessential is not yet recognised for what it is." [Quoted from here; accessed 14/02/2017. Italic emphasis and link in the original. Fluent Martian from self-proclaimed Marxists!]

 

44. That topic won't be addressed here for reasons outlined in Essay One.

 

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--------, (1997f), Republic, translated by G. M. A Grube, revised by C. D. C Reeve, in Plato (1997a), pp.971-1223.

 

--------, (1997g), The Laws, translated by T. J. Saunders, in Plato (1997a), pp.1318-1616.

 

Polanyi, M. (1962), Personal Knowledge. Towards A Post-Critical Philosophy (Routledge).

 

Price, H., and Corry, R. (2007) (eds.), Causation, Physics, And The Constitution Of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited (Oxford University Press).

 

Ravetz, J. (1996), Scientific Knowledge And Its Social Problems (Transaction Publishers, 2nd ed.).

 

Redwood, J. (1976), Reason, Ridicule And Religion. The Age Of Enlightenment In England 1660-1750 (Thames & Hudson).

 

Rees, J. (1998), The Algebra Of Revolution (Routledge). [This links to a PDF.]

 

Richards, R. (2002), The Romantic Conception Of Life. Science And Philosophy In The Age Of Goethe (University of Chicago Press).

 

Robinson, G. (2003), Philosophy And Mystification. A Reflection On Nonsense And Clarity (Fordham University Press). [Certain parts of this book can be accessed here. (Unfortunately, that site is now down, however, many of Guy's essays have been re-posted here.)]

 

Robinson, J. (1953), On Re-Reading Marx (Students Bookshop).

 

Rosser, W. (1967), Introductory Relativity (Plenum Press).

 

Rousseau, J. (1952), The Social Contract (J M Dent and Sons).

 

Russell, B. (1917a), Mysticism And Logic (George Allen & Unwin).

 

--------, (1917b), 'On The Notion Of A Cause', in Russell (1917a), pp.132-51.

 

--------,  (1937), The Principles Of Mathematics (George Allen & Unwin, 2nd ed.). [This links to a PDF of the Routledge 2010 edition.]

 

Russell, C. (1973) (ed.), Science And Religious Belief. A Selection Of Recent Historical Studies (Open University Press).

 

Ryle, G. (1949), 'A Review Of Meaning And Necessity By Rudolf Carnap', Philosophy 24, pp.69-76, reprinted in Ryle (1971) as 'Discussion Of Rudolf Carnap: Meaning And Necessity', pp.225-35.

 

--------, (1960), Dilemmas (Cambridge University Press).

 

--------, (1971), Collected Papers Volume One: Critical Essays (Barnes & Noble Inc.).

 

Sampson, G. (2005), The 'Language Instinct' Debate (Continuum Books, 2nd ed.).

 

Sayer, A. (1992), Method In Social Science. A Realist Approach (Routledge, 2nd ed.).

 

Scott, D. (1999), 'Platonic Recollection', in Fine (1999a), pp.93-124.

 

Shirokov, M. et al (1937), A Textbook Of Marxist Philosophy (Victor Gollancz). [This book in fact has no publication date, but internal evidence suggests that it was published in the mid-, to late-1930s, so I have arbitrarily assigned it the given date. The entire book can now be accessed here (as a PDF), and parts of it here.]

 

Slater, H. (2000), 'Concept And Object In Frege', Minerva 4. [Minerva is an on-line Philosophy Journal. This article has now been reprinted in Slater (2007), pp.99-112.]

 

--------, (2007), The De-Mathematisation Of Logic (Polimetrica).

 

Sluga, H., and Stern, D. (1996) (eds.), The Cambridge Companion To Wittgenstein (Cambridge University Press).

 

Smith, Q. (1993), Language And Time (Oxford University Press). [More details here.]

 

Sohn-Rethel, A. (1978), Intellectual And Manual Labour (Macmillan).

 

Sorel, G. (1950), Reflections On Violence (Free Press).

 

Sorensen, R. (2003), A Brief History Of The Paradox. Philosophy And The Labyrinths Of The Mind (Oxford University Press).

 

Staniland, H. (1973), Universals (Macmillan).

 

Stebbing, L. (1958), Philosophy And The Physicists (Dover).

 

Stich, S. (1975) (ed.), Innate Ideas (University of California Press).

 

Stove, D. (1991), The Plato Cult And Other Philosophical Follies (Blackwell).

 

Strang, C. (1963), 'Plato And The Third Man,' Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 37, pp.147-64; reprinted in Vlastos (1971), pp.184-200.

 

Stroud, B. (2000), The Quest For Reality (Oxford University Press).

 

Swartz, N. (1985), The Concept Of A Physical Law (Cambridge University Press).

 

--------, (2009), 'Laws Of Nature', Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

 

Teichmann, R. (1992), Abstract Entities (Macmillan).

 

Trotsky, L. (1971), In Defense Of Marxism (New Park Publications).

 

--------, (1986), Notebooks 1933-35 (Columbia University Press).

 

Tugendhat, E. (1982), Traditional And Analytic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press).

 

Vailati, E. (1997), Leibniz And Clarke (Oxford University Press).

 

Vlastos, G. (1954), 'The Third Man Argument In The Parmenides', in Allen (1965), pp.251-63.

 

--------, (1956), 'Postscript To The Third Man: A Reply To Mr Geach', in Allen (1965), pp.279-91.

 

--------, (1971) (ed.), Plato. A Collection Of Critical Essays. Volume One: Metaphysics And Epistemology (Doubleday Anchor).

 

Way, E. (1994), Knowledge, Representation And Metaphor (Intellect Books).

 

White, J. (1996a), Karl Marx And The Intellectual Origins Of Dialectical Materialism (Macmillan).

 

White, R. (1996b), The Structure Of Metaphor (Blackwell).

 

Williams, B. (1973), 'The Analogy Of The City And The Soul In Plato's Republic', in Lee et al (1973), pp.196-206, reprinted in Fine (1999b), pp.255-64. 

 

Williams, M. (1999a), Wittgenstein, Mind And Meaning (Routledge).

 

--------, (1999b), 'Vygotsky's Social Theory Of Mind', in Williams (1999a), pp.260-81.

 

Wittgenstein, L. (1969), The Blue And Brown Books (Blackwell). [The Blue Book can be accessed here.]

 

--------, (1974), Philosophical Grammar, edited by Rush Rhees, translated by Anthony Kenny (Blackwell).

 

--------, (1976), Wittgenstein's Lectures On The Foundation Of Mathematics: Cambridge 1939, edited by Cora Diamond (Harvester Press).

 

--------, (1978), Remarks On The Foundations Of Mathematics, translated by Elizabeth Anscombe (Blackwell, 3rd ed.).

 

--------, (1998), Culture And Value, edited by G. H. von Wright, translated by Peter Winch (Blackwell, 2nd ed.).

 

--------, (2009), Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, revised by Peter Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Blackwell, 4th ed.).

 

Yates, F. (2004), The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routledge).

 

Young, R. (1985), Darwin's Metaphor (Cambridge University Press).

 

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