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 videos will 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. That is still the case with Windows 11, as
far as I can determine.]
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 and 11 do likewise.
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 them 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.
Finally, if you are viewing this
with Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have
used. Mozilla often replaces them with an "º'.
There are no such problems with Chrome, Edge, or Internet Explorer, as far as I can
determine.
I don't know if that is
the case with other browsers.
This Second 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 number is no exaggeration!).
The
first half of it still contains a few
too many mixed metaphors and stylistic monstrosities. I
was originally experimenting with a new way 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.
Added
on Edit: April 2024: I have just spent another three months re-structuring
and re-writing this Essay again(!), and have eliminated most of the remaining
stylistic monstrosities referred to earlier. When complete, this re-write means
this Essay will finally be in, or near, its final form.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
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 grumble about that since they
believe everything is interconnected and that must also surely apply 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 or incorrect 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.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
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 important to point 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
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
main 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, it is also worth noting
that a good 25-30% 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 evidence 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
evidence
and the many qualifications I have added. 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.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
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'.
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!
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!
In this
Second Part of Essay Three
traditional answers
to the 'problem' of generality (which involved, inter alia,
the invention of 'Universals',
'Forms',
'Abstract Ideas', 'Categories' and 'Concepts'), alongside 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 borrowed from Traditional Thought -- will be subjected to sustained and
destructive criticism.
Part Oneof this Essay
showed that, beyond a few 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.
In
Traditional Metaphysicsthe explanation of the origin and nature of generality was
intimately connected with the so-called 'problem' of 'Universals'.1
RationalistPhilosophers
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 'pure thought'. The
'concepts', 'categories', and 'Ideas' that were concocted as a result were supposed
to 'represent', 'reflect' or even 'reveal' the formal/constitutive properties
belonging to each
particular of a given type, making them what they are. As such, these formal
properties defined the particulars that instantiated them. Depending on their
precise nature and provenance, these were
variously classified as "essential", "primary",
or even "secondary"
qualities that individuals of a given 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. Bold emphasis added.]
[The reader is encouraged to keep that last sentence
in mind as this Essay unfolds.]
Such
knowledge was therefore deemed in some way, "innate", based on 'concepts' or
'faculties' that were themselves "innate" (or were in the end guaranteed by
'God'). Here is Descartes
(expressing ideas typical of this sub-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 (in nature and society) were somehow less 'real' than the abstractions
that supposedly lent them their substantiality, or which constituted their
'essence'. Partly because of this,
in the Rationalist Tradition,
the general -- the 'rational' -- came to
dominate over the particular, the material and the
contingent.
Hence, what were in principle invisible and undetectable
'essences' were viewed as
more real than the individual objects and events we see and experience in the world around us.
Here is 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.)]
And
concerning the Rationalist Philosophers who directly 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 and link added; paragraphs merged.]
"Lying beyond
experience" implies the results are superior to scientific knowledge.
Indeed, as we also saw in Part One, these
'objects of thought' turn out to be Abstract Particulars. This meant that for Rationalists, while 'reality
itself' was essentially Ideal, the physical universe was in effectashadow world, not fully 'real', since that was where
contingency, brute fact, 'appearances', finitude and uncertainty reign supreme.
As Plato and Hegel argued, the 'rational
structure' that supposedly lay 'behind appearances' was the real world --
indeed, only 'God' was "truly actual", fully 'real'. That
invisible world and these 'concepts' were only capable of being accessed by 'thought'
(and it had to be 'thought' of a special kind, and activated by a select group
of 'thinkers'). 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 supposedly 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 which we (supposedly) refer
to by our use of common nouns. Depending on the philosophical system concerned, this meant that
these Abstract Particulars existed prior to the
relevant objects in material world that they instantiated, or they somehow give them their
'substantiality', their limited, temporary or 'apparent actuality'. For still other
thinkers
these 'abstractions' were simply 'mental constructs' to which a theorist must refer
if they wanted to understand the objects and processes in the material world --, or,
indeed, if their aim was simply to
construct a more comprehensive and accurate theory about their
provenance,
nature and inter-connections.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 at least claim to be materialists, they even asserted that
matter itself was 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 where we see the conflation of 'talk about talk'
with 'talk about the world' re-surface, a perennial 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), andas 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
around with certain words/'concepts') also reflected, if not constituted, the 'external' world in
development. In that way he thought he was able to project the contents of his
head onto 'external reality', which was as impressive a case of
epistemological megalomania as one could wish to find. As sort of
Inter-Galactic version of someone who thinks he is, not even Napoleon, but
'God'.
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', now on
steroids) 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 formsof Traditional Philosophy -- Rationalist,
Nominalist,
Realist,
Monist,
Dualist,
Empiricist
and Positivist
--
are equally Idealist.
[Why that
comment applies to Empiricism, Nominalism and Positivism will be entered into
presently.]
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 saw light of
day.
Even
when this 'theory' is flipped "right-side up" (or "put back on its feet" --
supposedly
in DM), material reality is still viewed as secondary, derivative, dependent, not fully real. Once again, witness where we are told by erstwhile
materialists that
matter is just an abstraction. The material world,
at least as it has been interpreted 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 ends 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 whatit 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 -- as well as Appendix Three), if therewereanything in
the universe for these 'abstractions', these 'rational principles', to
correspondwith, that would imply 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? Simply to boost the morale of DM-theorists?
Or maybe: to give them something to fall out over, allowing them to accuse one
another of not 'understanding' dialectics?
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 'everything out of
nothing'. Without that, everything would
have remained
lifeless, chaotic and might even have ceased to exist --, or, indeed, might even
have failedto begin existing:
"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.]
"In the beginning was the Word [λόγος
--
logos],
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind." [John
1:1-4. Bold emphasis 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 all of this literally out of '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' via
'Becoming'.
Here is what
I have written
elsewhere about this (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"!
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 --
i.e.,
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 linguisticforms
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 the full 360º.
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 more than a handful 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!
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.
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
previously 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 alone.
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.
So, this third term
simply 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'
forever shrouded in mystery, with no hope of any such 'solution' ever being
found.
Hence, if the introduction of
Universal, Concept or 'abstraction' (call it, "C1") is required in order to account for the common features shared,
for instance, by objects A
and B, then a new Universal, Concept or abstraction (call it, "C2"
-- a third term), will be required to account for the commonality between both C1
and A, and C1
and B, and so on. The whole exercise thus threatens to generate an
infinite regress, leaving nothing explained.
"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. That might very well 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 in this world? Why can't they, perhaps,
exemplify the Form of
Squareness, or of Triangularity, with which they also share nothing? There has
to be some reason why the Form of Circularity expresses what all circles have in
common that prevents the Form of Squareness, of Triangularity or even of
Happiness from doing this. But just as soon as it is acknowledged there is
something in common between a given Form and the particulars that supposedly
fall under it (and which rules out any other Form), the 'Third Man Argument'
kicks in again.
Of course, a rule (if
that 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) used them, or their
linguistic counterparts, as exemplars how to apply them correctly. But, there are no
such rules,
or none that Plato mentioned. An
object, a Form, can't tell anyone how to use or apply it. An interpreted rule can and
typically would. A chess piece, for example, can't tell a novice chess
player how to
move it; the rules of chess, once understood, typically do.
[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. However, as we will see, this pseudo-problem is easily
resolved, as this Essay, in tandem with Part One, will demonstrate.]
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, once more, 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,
and which it doesn't share with
squareness. But, 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 has already been 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 pre-natal, 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
Form, 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 this would now surely apply to all
'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 once again 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 -- off into 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 the privacy of 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). Those
assorted writings merely record the results of their private musings, they don't in any way alter their
provenance and meaning -- still less do they validate their legitimacy.
This is precisely where Hegel's non-social theory of knowledge
-- aka his bourgeois individualism, for that is what it is
(once again: Hegel worked it
all out in the 'privacy of his 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.
Hegel could
assert and insist all he liked -- and can do so until his face turned blue (as,
indeed, can any of his groupies) -- that the results he had achieved were
'objective' and delineated how all thought actually proceeds if carried out in
the way he (sort of) described, but that would simply be to thump the table.
Because he began by using the traditional concepts and methods he inherited from
previous generations of mystics and day-dreamers (albeit adapted and transformed
to his own ends), and he did all this 'in his head', there is no way out of the
'subjective hole' he had dug for himself -- as the above comments, the rest of
this Essay and much of Essay Twelve will underline.
And the
same goes for anyone foolish enough to use his ideas/method.
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 detail in
Part One of this
Essay.
However, this
Platonic doctrine immediately
demotes
the 'evidence' that sense experience delivers to each 'knowing subject', rendering it
merely 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 this
Platonic, anti-scientific attitude re-surface in the thought of several
DM-theorists, who argue that facts are not only an impediment,
they are entirely misleading! After all,
they 'contradict essence'. In Essay Two, we saw
CLR James arguing
along those lines.]
This Aristocratic depreciation of the material world -- with its associated contingency
--
and the denigration of the thought and lives of ordinary human beings continued 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 Essays Twelve Part Seven and Fourteen Part
One (summaries here
and
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,
andthe 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 somehow an aspect of 'Mind', an "abstraction"
of some sort itself, or even
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'.
That helps explain why Hegel thought
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 from Hegel:
on why everything is (really) an 'abstraction' (and hence 'mental' in some way):
"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.)]
Here, too, 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.]
Not to be outdone, 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. In the same Essay,
I have also quoted
other DM-fans who say much the same.]
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 -- it has given us 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 make it up, so I won't say it.
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 promoted 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.
[How that actually worked was explained 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' now clearly rule what are supposed to be
radical minds. The sad truth is that this approachto knowledge, which dialecticians have imported into Marxism, has,
ironically, 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.
[This also helps explain why DM-theories collapse
quite so readily into incoherence -- as the next ten Essays
will amply demonstrate.]
Davidson then turns his attention to Aristotle's non-solution; and, since
Hegel adopted and adapted Aristotle's theory -- albeit buried under a ton
of gobbledygook --, the following remarks also apply 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 emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
The
'necessary' connection that was supposed to exist between these 'forms' and the
particulars they allegedly exemplify ends up reducing them to the
level of particularity, too, thus vitiating the whole process. That is because
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 thoroughly misconceived.
Well, it would be if
'Universals' hadn't already been transformed into Abstract
Particulars
-- or, rather, if the words we use (supposedly) to refer to them hadn't been transformed into the Proper Names thereof
--
as a result of the syntactical segue exposed in
Part One of this
Essay (and alluded to by Davidson, above). But, because Traditional Theorists have been doing
precisely this --
at least
since the Presocratics -- Aristotle's
'Third Man Argument' (suitably adapted in each case)
applies to every
known version of this theory. In which case,
it turns out that all those
'Universals', 'Concepts', 'Ideas', 'Categories' and 'Abstractions', as they
feature in Traditional Thought (and, alas, in
DM, too), can't be general. They are just particulars of a rather
peculiar, if not grandiose, 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 of Traditional Lore?
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 aim was to explain and expose the syntactic and semantic moves that
originally created
this ancient conundrum -- i.e., how generality can be
accounted for by reference to what turn out to be invisible Abstract Particulars
and
where predicate expressions have been transformed into Proper Names thereof. 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). This meant he wound up
accepting an early version of this error -- i.e., in relation to 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.,
C2from earlier) is superfluous, if a new general term isn't
after all 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 an
Abstract Particular itself, or the Proper Name thereof!
But, if
objects in the world can be inter-related without an entire gamut of '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
any such '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 (invisible) 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, if that were the case?
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
originally been
assigned to them -- i.e., accounting for generality.1b
For many
Plato scholars and logicians, there
is a 'more important logical principle'
seemingly buried in the weeds here: the 'problem
of self-predication' (that many commentators and critics try to attribute to Plato).
This 'problem' arises when it is asked whether, say, the Form of
the Small is itself small, or the Form of the Heavy is itself heavy.1bc
The above
two examples have been 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 and mischievously acting as a subject term), which results in
what is called "the problem of self-predication". But, this is just another
pseudo-problem. That is because the first "small" in
P1 is no longer a predicate; it now functions as the Proper Name of the
abstract particular, 'Small' (again, 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" (or even "...small") a predicate, 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 -- a topic also briefly covered below.]
Well, this
would be a 'more important logical principle' if it
hadn't been based on
the transmogrification of predicate expressions into singular terms, which
in the end means
that nothing has actually been 'self-predicated', here. This ancient
pseudo-problem has been conjured into existence by these spurious linguistic
moves, and nothing more. That is because there has
been no predication applied to a predicate expression in P1 or P2 -- so there
has in fact been no 'self-predication' for a single logician to worry about. 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.
So, this
confusion has arisen largely because of two inter-related factors:
(i)
Those taken in by it 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 certain words occupy in
indicative sentences; and,
(ii) The 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 them into the role occupied by singular/subject terms. That done,
putting "heavy" and "small" at the beginning of P1 and P2, for instance, will
seem 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 can no longer
be 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).
In the above
we have examples of attempted self-predication, but they make this 'important logical principle' all the more obviously nonsensical.
And
that is why I haven't considered this 'important 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.]
Unfortunately, this ancient syntactical error has been passed down the centuries
to later generations of traditional theorists, a fall
from linguistic grace traducing the entire population of flawed
'solutions' that have descended from it with modification by unnatural selection --, including its
'poor relation' in DM.
Philosophers of a more practical, or 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 at this point that in general, just like the Rationalists, the
Empiricist approach to the source and status of knowledge also
implied that the 'mental' side of the equation took precedence. That is, 'mind' holding primacy over matter,
once more. As we will see,
the 'high road' (Rationalism) and the 'low road' (Empiricism) both
motivated Traditional Theorists
to adopt one
form or other of Idealism -- indeed,
as Hegel himself noted. That
is largely because post-Renaissance they were all working largely within the
Cartesian Paradigm,
whose basic approach they never questioned: knowledge begins with the
individual. It is therefore no coincidence that the
heyday of Empiricism coincided with the rise of the Capitalist Mode of
Production, but that had no noticeable effect on the Idealism either explicit or
implicit across the entire spectrum of Traditional Thought that appeared at this
time across early
modern Europe.]
The Empiricist approach to the formation of
'Universals' held that
'the mind' was somehow capable of to 'apprehending' 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 latterly, "sense data", but even more recently, "qualia"/"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 simply 'empty terms', perhaps
even
"useful
fictions", which interpretation tended to dominate
Positivist fringes of Empiricism.
As soon became
obvious, these
seemingly profound differences 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 out this theoretical
cul-de-sac -- with its obscure 'abstractions' -- his 'solution' only succeeded in sinking the Empiricist Tradition
even 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 actually particular
to each 'mind'. [That had to be the case with this family of theories since no two
individuals shared the 'same mind' or experienced the same sensory input.] In that case, these
'ideas' couldn't be
general across an entire population, not just in fact, but also 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 languageunique to each lone abstractor, which in turn
meant that
inter-subjective communication was impossible.
The 'process of
abstraction' as it had been conceived by these Empiricists had simply created yet moreAbstract
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 repeated wrong turns and
perennial errors. This particular set of "ruling ideas" (i.e., a
commitment to 'abstractionism' and the concomitant existence of 'abstractions') had now succeeded
in colonising more than its fair share of early modern, petty-bourgeois brains.
These "ruling ideas" found a welcome home there and there they remain to this day.
However, the
problems this approach faced threatened its status 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, in
the world or wherever...) -- call the latter, "g1"
--, and thinker, T2,
forms 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 that weren't
the case (if there were no general term linking the general terms lodged in
separate heads),
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 (in
any shape or form), or
even if there were two or more occurrences of what might even be taken to be green1.
That is, that these were actual occurrences of green1,
as opposed to something entirely different. The same problem confronts each lone abstractor
even with respect to their own ideas,
since they would now 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.
In the meantime, readers are directed to Hacker (1987), Bennett and Hacker
(2022), pp.140-46, and Stroud (2000).]
So, for this
theory to work,
a third linking term would be required -- but, given the tenets of Empiricism, where that might have come from
is a
mystery best passed over in silence (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 at least factually
wrong. I have neutralised that
objection,
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 empties generality of all content,
thus 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 intentionalgenerality 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 this
solipsistic
universe, since it itself is the Proper Name of yet another particular,
'Intentional Generality'.
[To see this, just replace "G1"
with "intentionally general idea, G1"
in the above argument; the rest
follows.]
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.
[To see this, just replace "G1"
with
"general concept, G1"
in the above argument; the rest
follows.]
In fact,
given
this entire family of theorists, 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 or by 'the mind') will always hit the same
unyielding brick wall:
abstraction always succeeds in creating the Proper Names of abstract
particulars --, whoever
indulges in it, whenever they so indulge and with
whatever 'noble philosophical intentions' they attempt to rationalise
their behaviour.
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
argued 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-isolated skull. [On that,
see the next sub-section.]
[To see this, just replace the "G1"
or "G2" with"G3
toGn",
where "n" can take any value from one to seven 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 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. [I.e., "G3
toGn"
from above.]
And the same
difficulties confront anyone who sought their own general solution to this
spurious problem. A
strategy along those lines is doomed to fail because any explanation of how the particular ideas of
general terms located in each individual head actually resembled the same
general features of reality they supposedly express, reflect or mirror -- or even the
same particular ideas of these (allegedly) 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 sink the trapped Philosopher ever deeper. Given
the traditional approach, Abstract Particulars are required at every turn as yet more
of them
are required to account for the last batch that had just been concocted.
Since none are capable
of evolving into a higher general form by their own efforts, this approach to
knowledge simply creates an endlessly ascending series of
Abstract Particulars, each one even more obscure than the last in line.
Just as
(in the 'west') Rationalist ideas grew out of aristocratic notions dreamt up by
Ancient Greek Philosophers
-- concerning the 'natural' or
divine hierarchical order that supposedly underpinned the Universe, a theory 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 that emerged alongside the rise of post-Renaissance, early modern Bourgeois 'democracy', with its characteristic emphasis
on "possessive
individualism". [On that, see Note 2.]
If this
bright and shiny, novel 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'began to make
perfectly
good sense.
The social,
economic and political 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 heads. Out of the window went the 'necessary' connection
presumed to exist
between an object and its properties, or between a subject and its predicates, a
doctrine presumed unshakably true by influential Ancient
Greek Rationalists and Medieval philosophers. Along with that went the
link between a general term and what it supposedly represented or reflected in
'reality' (or even in 'the mind').
Clearly, moves like these 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 must mean 'God Himself' couldn't be rational,
either. These moves also threatened the 'legitimacy'
of Kings and Queens, as well as aristocratic and priestly authority. The rapidly
dissolving hierarchy that
had dominated Europe for countless centuries depended on its 'divine'
origin, which in turn was based on the presumed 'rationality of reality', with
everything in its assigned place in the Cosmic Order. If that legitimacy was to
be restored, these 'necessary connections' had to be revived as a
matter of some urgency.
Figure Two: Medieval Hierarchy --
'Guaranteed'
By Metaphysics
[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 a core part of his
response to
Hume's criticism of
rationalist theories of causation, which had sought to dissolve 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, those in power and their ideologues felt a pressing
need to 'justify' undemocratic,
hierarchical state power, while also rationalising 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 even 'natural'.
In this respect,
Empiricism couldn't
cut mustard. A fresh wave of Rationalist thought was urgently needed, in
order to:
(i) Counter the
dangerous fragmentation of knowledge;
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
But, it wasn't just workers who got screwed by the new 'market economy' (now in a novel way), general ideas were similarly
shafted (but in the same old way).1c
However this hasty turn to Rationalism was philosophically futile.
The fragmentation general ideas
had suffered at the hands Ancient Greek theorists can't be reversed,
whoever tries to do it. That will always be a non-starter unless the syntactic sins of
Europe's philosophical forebears are themselves reversed.
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 fix:
generality. And this wasn't just a philosophical problem, left unresolved
it threatened to undermine the nature, scope and validity of science itself.
If
generality is merely an aspect, a consequence or the result of the
operation of a given individual's 'mind' (not a feature of
'things-in-themselves' -- as Rationalists would at least like to think), it wasn't
easy to see what it was about
each particularidea of the general that actually made it general, or even
appear to be general, especially now that they had all been re-located and
now lodged in individual bourgeois skulls.2
Given this
new, post-Cartesian approach there would be
nothing but
individual ideas floating about in these epistemologically-isolated heads,
loosely tied together in a manner that became increasingly difficult to fathom,
let alone explain.
[Recall, it
was assumed by early bourgeois theorists (from both the Empiricist and Rationalist
currents) that we
construct or form our own knowledge of the world as individuals. It is also worth
pointing out that I am not arguing that the above were actually socially-isolated,
only that as far as their theory of knowledge was concerned, they might
just as well have been. I have said more about that,
here.]
At a
minimum, given this theory, even a general idea like this (i.e., one
that, in a vain attempt to create 'objectivity' out of 'subjectivity' -- which
supposedly roped in "every individual", and sought to tell us what
takes place inside 'every thinking brain' -- 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
words if
generality had long ago already been laid to rest --, including the general nature
of the word "head" itself?2a
To be
sure, some attempt might be made
to
attachanother, 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
particularin 'the mind' of whomsoever invented it, whatever
associationist or "clear and distinct" incantations had been
muttered over it.
Given the results of
Part One, it should now be reasonably clear that because the
traditional analysis
of predication had turned general words into singular terms (i.e., Proper
Names or
Definite Descriptions), each of which now 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 anAbstract Particular! The definite article, of course, gives
the game away.
So it was thatin the
Empiricist
Tradition there followed several more centuries of
a priori 'science-on-the-cheap', via the mythical 'process of
abstraction', the results of which were 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
on its own, by its
own rather puny efforts -- would be
tantamount to imagining words themselves are capable of determining,
and then projecting, their own meaning across the whole of 'semantic space' (with this trick miraculously
perfectly coordinated
inside every single epistemologically-isolated bourgeois brain), 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.
Lifting
yourself by your bootstraps would be a doddle in comparison.
On the other hand, if general
ideas are capable of representing or "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 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 Paradise, Aristotelian
Arcadia, 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, neither general
ideas nor general words could begeneral, justsingular.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.]2c
Even
if each individual 'bourgeois mind' had its own idea of a given 'general name', one that was particular to each
head, the
universality that post-Renaissance theorists sought would forever remain
elusive, fragmented as it now 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 begeneral 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,
like virginity, once lost can't be
restored.3
Of course, Empiricists didn't just sit on their thumbs for a couple of
centuries, they did make some attempt to solve these 'problems' -- but they did
so by the simple expedient of deflecting attention from
them. Not one of them even so much as questioned the complex word-juggling
that had given life to this ancient pseudo-problem (analysed in detail in
Part One).
One aspect of their attempt to divert attention from their predicament involved
the invention of an irrelevant 'mental' capacity, an almost magical ability the 'mind' supposedly
possessed, which '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 ugly 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 these
are even more problematic, since they lie 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 this newly minted, 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
that task is left to social agents who use it everyday, with little fuss. But, the general nouns they employ soon lose their
generality when they
are elbowed out of the way, 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 by the 'mind'),
theorists found they could only hope to 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 psychologistically. Unfortunately, the logical fall from grace that
gave birth to the original 'problem' in Ancient Greece was consistently ignored,
buried, as it was now, under centuries of irrelevant psycho-babble.
And there it largely
remains entombed to this day.6a0
As far as
Empiricists saw these issues, if experience presents the 'mind' with
particular 'impressions', generality had to 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, but this side of the heavenly curtain!), as if the fragmented contents of
the 'mind' -- these 'ideas', 'impressions' or 'concepts' -- could be handled like the
faces of long lost friends and relatives who had perhaps wandered fortuitously into the same room and
in some sort of order.
Friends one can recognise;
but how
would it be possible for anyone to 'recognise' an idea they had never
encountered before?
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 this: "Ah, here is yet another impression/image/sensation of something
I haven't yet got a word for...". And, even as that individual's
epistemological 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 will return to discuss the
defunct, 'associationist psychology' that lies behind this theory
later on in this Essay. It is
sufficient to note here that any such 'associations' would be triggered by the
word "mammal" and "animal" as much as they would by "cat". [There are
similar 'triggering problems'
with other 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 finite
range of examples, those that confronted each lone abstractor, or observer, as
the 'slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune'
sent their way --, or as any given 'mind' processed them on its own unshared and
unshareable terms.
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 (for want of a better phrase)
In order to do that,
the 'mind' would have to re-connect each 'epistemological atom' (all these 'sensations', 'impressions', 'ideas' or
'qualia') 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 plainly 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 Fandb is F, and hence
this was enough to decide 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 'members' of its "extension".
Clearly, this new
twist only succeeded in introducing a
generalidea/term 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
Alas,
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
[Note 6b should in fact be Note 7b,
but it would make a mess of far too many other links to change it!]
Hence, if each individual shares exactly the same universal ofresemblance (call it, "G"), then that term will be particular
and unique to that individual
abstractor,
as we found was the case with "CAT", earlier. that is because the 'general', having
faced an attempt to distribute it across the entire set of novice abstractors
(in order to try to secure some level of agreement between them) can't fail to take on this already fragmented nature.
So, if "CAT", for example, is understood differently by each lone abstractor (as it must be given
this family of theories) it can no longer be general, but must be particular to each
'mind'.
Hence, G will be now be fragmented, too. 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, by some miracle, could by-pass
the entire 'abstractive process' and declare every idea
of 'CAT' was the same as all the rest, with that judgement itself not based on NM's
own 'ideas', but on 'reality itself' -- no one would be able to declare that
all those lone abstractors had the same idea, 'CAT', let alone of anything else
[NM
would have to by-pass these 'processes' (and base her judgement on 'reality
itself' -- in effect thereby abandoning empiricism) otherwise her ideas would be
trapped
in the same epistemological bind, and would therefore be of no use at all in
this respect.]
The
universal, now divided, will always be defeated.
Conversely,
if the above distribution of general ideas hadn't been carried out in a perfectly egalitarian manner, the
relevant particulars wouldn't have been collected together under the same general terms,
shared
equally between all.
On the other
hand,
if, say, Ghad been shared equally across an entire population, so that every
abstractor had exactly the same idea of 'CAT', for example,
individuality would be lost.
So, in these
terms the general was either divided (and was unique to each lone abstractor) or the particulars
were confounded
(since their ideas would now all be identical).
[If the
individual is confounded, then there will be no individuals of a given type,
there will only be one substance, one Universal spread out, as it were across
all its apparent instances/moments. In that case each 'seemingly individual' CAT
would simply be a 'manifestation' of CAT-in-General. Appearances would then be
misleading. While you might foolishly think you are seeing a concrete particular
(a cat!), in reality all you are seeing is a moment in the life of a 'Concept'.
The cat you see is a mere 'appearance, a brief manifestation. Its 'reality' is
defined by the Universal, which it 'shines' in your direction. We will meet this
quandary again later, as DM-theorists vainly try to explain why 'essence
contradicts appearances', and why they think 'matter is just an abstraction'.
Those who know enough Hegel will also
know where all this is headed. (These points also depend on an
earlier argument and might not be fully
appreciated by
anyone who hasn't read it or hasn't remembered 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. [The last
of these links to a PDF]
Unfortunately, these 'problems' don't stop there.
Nor do they become any the less intractable.
As should
now seem obvious, answers
were still required for a range of awkward
questions about on how 'the mind' is able to sift through the 'ideas'
and/or
'impressions' the senses supposedly send its way. Moreover, any effective
responses to these nagging questions will also
have to include convincing answers to further queries about how 'the mind' manages to
sort these 'ideas' and 'impressions'
into the
'correct' categories. But, as we
have just seen, that will depend on the individual involved alreadyhaving a grasp of the general
terms involved if she is to prove capable of rising to the task.
This is
something Kant certainly began to realise in his own
confused way (confused,
since he located this 'sorting' faculty in 'the mind', unwisely 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;
italic emphasis added.
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.]
But, 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 'unruly' and
'ill-disciplined' (so to speak) to be capable of marshalling
themselves in the required manner, while the One was far too 'aloof', and
hence too 'weak' (so to speak, once more) to crack the
whip and round anything up. Even so, if some form of regimentation were even to
be possible, 'principles'
external to these disorderly 'impressions' and 'ideas' (the Many) must be found,
and to lend 'the mind' (the One)
a helping hand. Never was care in the communityof ideas more needed than
here. And yet, if these 'impressions' and 'ideas' were to become more than 'a heap of
conceptual dust', haphazardly deposited inside each cognising skull (i.e., not
sorted into the correct conceptual pigeon holes, or any at al!), such 'care'
must be sought, from somewhere.
[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 those '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 their 'kin' -- why they couldn't just assemble themselves
under the 'correct' general term/noun without a 'drill-sergeant' to whip them into shape.
Indeed, if
'ideas' werecapable of self-regulation, or of self-sorting, that would
surely remove the need for a 'mind' and its
attendant goons to do all that 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). So, is 'the
mind' in control here, or all these 'ideas'? And could even that question
be answered without crediting both with human characteristics?
[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 its way, extending up to the formation of
general ideas themselves, which all those 'resemblances' supposedly implied in
the process.
However, this 'solution' left unexplained exactly how these 'extrapolations' might be carried out without
'the mind'
already having some notion of the general already installed to guide it.
And, as Kant
(on a good day) might have asked: 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 successfully achieved:
(A) The first
involved a reference to specific 'mental faculties' (these days they are called, "modules")
that every novice abstractor supposedly possesses, 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
now 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 zero 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
ideas/principles", 'programmed' into the mind, either activated or guided
by the "laws of thought", the "natural light of reason", or
some other handy a priori 'mental architectonic'. [Caygill
(1995), pp.84-85.]
[More recent analogues
of this 'bourgeois mental assembly-line' have these structural factors 'hard-wired' into 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 now based on Genetics, not
'Genesis'.8
Other versions of
Option (A)
weren't even remotely Empiricist, making 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
defunct Divinities, these abstractions underpinned, gave substance to, or
even created the material world we see around us -- for example, when
they unceremoniously 'self-developed' while they sojourned 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. The latter were,
after all, debased, lowly,
contingent
entities
-- fit only for destruction,
according to Hegel
--, hardly
worth mentioning in Ideal company.
Moreover, since
each abstraction
had been given a rather
grandiose
name, that implied they
mustsurely exist somewhere. How could they fail to do that if
generation after generation of 'high-status' thinkers had gone to the trouble of
identifying them for us and had thoughtfully named them? Linguistic
reification
had
now transformed them, rendering them Super-Real, since
their 'ontological' rank was, of course, way above the lowly status of
all those unreliable
'appearances'. This meant, of course, that they alone (these 'abstractions') 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 mischievously, buried these 'abstractions' in
familiar areas of grammar -- for instance, the subject-copula-predicate
form --, even if this intergalactically important linguistic artifice onlyshowed 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
began to scratch their heads. 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, and willingly trooped into the pigeonholes belonging to the
'correct' general
noun. However, if they were capable of
assembling themselves into classes under their own steam,
that implied they possess some sort of 'herding instinct'. Clearly, in order for them to
gather together correctly, they must either:
(B2) Be capable of
'obeying', or being 'guided by', specific natural or logical 'laws' of
some description.
As far as (B1) is concerned, ideas were not
only capable of automatically 'recognising' those of 'their kind', they were
sufficiently compliant, and intelligently enough, to be able to flock together with no further ado. This in turn implied that they
were capable of:
(B1a) 'Detecting'
the resemblances they shared with others of their ilk -- which meant that they
were
surrogate minds themselves, 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) found safe haven in Leibniz's mind -- whether it was his own idea or he was
programmed to think it was is somewhat unclear -- where everything in
the universe was 'really' composed of countless pre-programmed, inter-reflecting
little 'minds' (all those "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. Hegel certainly
thought he was the engineer of his own ideas, but if he was
right, he was merely theoily 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 any of ideas on offer, and in strict battalion order -- a theory that
has resurfaced these days in several alter-egos as
naturalistic theories
of 'the mind'. Once again, this merely reduplicates the very problem it was
meant to solve, since 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 Essay Thirteen
Part Three, in
relation to re-branded, neo-Hegelian ideas
that have recently coalesced around various strains of what has ironically been
called (by its inventors),
Critical Realism.]
Clearly, in order for something to be
capable of obeying orders it must be intelligent (otherwise, the
word "obey" must have a different meaning). Hence,
these B2-type 'ideas' must be intelligent in some way. Except, now they were
supposedly 'controlled' by 'laws of thought', part of an updated version of the
'mental architectonic',
mentioned above. However, none of these ideas were
passive lodgers in the brain. Quite the reverse. They were active citizens in this (internal) 'Cognitive
State'. Partly because of that, this Inner
Microcosm
was deemed capable of reflecting the Outer Macrocosm (and
vice versa) -- as mystics never tire of telling us. Hence, 'the mind'
was 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 thus 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. This
elaborates on similar points
made earlier.]8ao
Small wonder then that Traditional Theories
of causation (and, indeed, those connected with of 'physical law') are shot through
with anthropomorphism, mysticism and animism -- ideas 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 supposedly 'objective laws' --
and, indeed, the objects and processes that 'obeyed' them -- were in effect both a reification and
a projection of the subjective
mental capacities and dispositions of the individual theorists that had sat back
and indulged in all this
armchair speculation. These individuals had peered into a deep well of
metaphysical fantasy and, unsurprisingly, saw their own faces reflected back at them.9
That might
help explain the link with
Feuerbach that Marx
spotted:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof thatphilosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thoughtand expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
and link added.]
"The characteristic human mode of being, as distinct from that of the animal, is
not only the basis, but also the object of religion. But religion is the
consciousness of the infinite;
hence it is, and cannot be anything other than, man’s consciousness of his own
essential nature, understood not as a finite or limited, but as an infinite
nature.
A really finite being has not even the slightest inkling, let alone
consciousness, of what an infinite being is, for the mode of consciousness is
limited by the mode of being. The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life
is confined to a particular species of plant, does not extend beyond this
limited sphere; it is, of course, able to distinguish this plant from other
plants, but that is the entire extent of its knowledge. In a case where
consciousness is so limited but where, precisely because of this limitation, it
is also infallible and unerring, we speak of instinct rather than consciousness.
Consciousness in the strict sense, or consciousness properly speaking, and
consciousness of the infinite cannot be separated from each other; a limited
consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite and
all-encompassing. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the
consciousness of the infinity of consciousness. To put it in other words, in its
consciousness of infinity,
the conscious being is conscious of the infinity of its own being."
[Feuerbach (1957), pp.2-3.
The online version I have quoted here is different from the 1957 edition I have
referenced. Bold emphases added.]
In other
words, where humans think they see 'god', in reality they see themselves writ
large. Philosophers do something analogous: where they think they see
'Being' (or core aspects of 'it'), in reality they see themselves looking back
at them. No wonder then that Hegel had to re-enchant nature to make his ideas
'work'. No wonder, either, that Empiricists had to credit 'ideas' with human
characteristics, and Rationalists turn 'the mind' into an homunculus.
Conversely,
the above theories implied that the
human mind was intelligent simply because the universe was. That notion can
be found reverberating in the odd idea that the universe became 'conscious of itself'
with 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). Moreover, that 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 only the Rational,
only 'the Mind'.
Hegel, again
(one of the few things he got right):
"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.]
As Hegel
knew full well, both options readily collapse into one form or other of
Idealism --
Subjective
or
Objective --
indeed, as we have seen.10
Traditional
'solutions' to these bogus philosophical 'problems' -- "bogus" because in the
'West' they were based 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
Philosophy to try to sort out.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.
In
Traditional Philosophy the first of these 'difficulties' subsequently came to be
known as the "Problem
of Induction". That quandary involved 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' that traditional
theorists had tailored for them.12
Hence, this
'problem' is based on the supposed fact that generalisations about the future
course of nature -- when theorists rely solely on how
certain objects, processes and events had behavedin the past --, can't provide a
deductivelysound basis for the belief that future objects, processes and events will
always behave 'the same way'. Or, more generally,
that the course of nature will remain identical from day-to-day (howsoever that is
to be 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 mean 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
overall idea has been 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
neither the above nor what follows represents
my views. Once again, my aim is simply to underline the serious problems faced
by traditional attempts to address the 'problem of induction'.]
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 bread to begin with. [Hume's point also borders
on science fiction, the philosophical mis-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
tomorrow as they do today While these Abstract Particulars might be thoroughly
Ideal -- 'Mental' or 'Heavenly' entities of some sort -- there is no guarantee that even if they
faithfully tow the line on Wednesday they will continue doing so one minute past
midnight Thursday morning.
Some might
argue that we are dealing here with 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 next week as they have this. Or even that
any memories we have of them, or these 'abstractions', will remain the same, either.
Nevertheless, it is worth reminding ourselves that the whole point of inventing
'Universals' was to control the particular. But, if the general is itself now
particular (i.e., if each of these 'Universals' has had its generality
surgically removed, via the syntactic
hocus pocus analysed in detail in Part
One), what is there left to do all that controlling? Sense experience deals only
with the particular. Who has ever seen a 'general cat'? What would one even
look like? Who has even eaten 'general fruit'? We have already seen
DM-theorists define the abstract along such lines:
"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts
from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is
itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or
heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually
existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science
'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by
experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating
and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the
'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method
which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with
abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the
two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998),
p.131. Bold emphasis added.]
This
approach was central to Marx and Engels's earlier criticism of Hegel's
method (whatever they later thought!):
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… 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'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -– 'Fruit'…. 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 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….
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'…. 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.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
But that is
exactly what Engels himself subsequently reverted to doing:
"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.]
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. Bold
emphasis alone added. The original passage from Hegel has been reposted in
Note 10a.]10a
Subsequent
DM-theorists have argued likewise (including John Rees, quoted earlier); here
are two more from diametrically opposite wings of Dialectical Marxism:
"Engels…attacks those who fail to see
[that scientific] concepts are abstractions from real experience, and [who] ask
about what is 'matter as such' or 'motion as such'. 'Matter as such and motion
as such have not yet been seen or experienced by anyone, but only the various,
actually existing material things and forms of motion. Matter is nothing but the
totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted, and motion as
such nothing but the totality of sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words
like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many
differently sensuously 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'. Engels gives us an analogy, 'We can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit,
because no one has so far eaten fruit as such.'" [McGarr
(1994), pp.152-53; quoting Engels (1954),
pp.235-36. Paragraphs merged.]
"One quite often hears people say 'all things consist of matter'. They do not
consist of matter. They are the specific, concrete forms of its
manifestation. Matter as such is an abstraction. Looking for a uniform
matter as the principle of everything is like wanting to eat not cherries but
fruit in general. But fruit is also an abstraction. Matter cannot be
contrasted to separate things as something immutable to something mutable.
Matter in general cannot be seen, touched or tasted. What people see, touch
or taste is only a certain form of matter. Matter is not something that exists
side by side with other things, inside them or at their basis. All existing
formations are matter in its various forms, kinds, properties and relations.
There is no such thing as 'unspecific' matter. Matter is not simply the real
possibility of all material forms, it is their actual existence. The only
property that is relatively separate from matter is consciousness as an ideal
and not material phenomenon." [Spirkin (1983),
p.67. Bold emphases added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
That is why
Lenin also said the following:
"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.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
Just like
the Rationalists, Lenin thought that genuine knowledge arose out of the general,
not the particular. So, the particular not only has to be brought under the
general it is in the end only a particular because of the general.
Each individual given in experience is anindividual of a certain type
(i.e., it instantiates a specific 'Universal'), and that is what
supposedly guarantees its future (law-like) behaviour. Here is Hegel scholar,
Katharina Dulckeit, summarising Hegel's view on this:
"[It] must be remembered that
[Hegel's] analysis of the forms of judgment in the Logic is motivated by
his interest in essential judgement. There are two conditions for such
judgements. To begin with, a judgement is an essential judgement only if P
tells us precisely and exclusively what s is; no less and no more. But
merely predicating universals of particulars is insufficient for this, unless
the term in the predicate position at once expresses the essential nature of the
subject.This, in turn, argues Hegel, is possible only if the 'is' expresses
some identity between s and P. For if essential determination were possible
exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate
and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external.
As a consequence, s would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while
P would designate something distinct from s, namely a universal.
But the truth of
sense-certainty in the
Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual,
an
individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals. It follows
that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a
universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and P are
utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will
necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where
judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because
it entails the distinction between s and P which would commit us
to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology."
[Dulckeit (1989), pp.115-16. Bold emphases
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]
Which is
partly what Lenin was trying to say in this passage:
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common,
etc., [sic] with anyproposition...: [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.359-60.
Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
And why
Engels said this:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In
fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual
thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into
universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the
eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the
eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the
infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels
(1954),
pp.233-35.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
And here is
a passage from a dusty old
Stalinist
text from the 1930s:
"The central fallacy involved in all metaphysical
reasoning is -- expressed in terms of logic -- the complete confusion of the
relations between the categories of Particular and General: of Unique and
'Universal.' Thus, for instance, if I affirm: 'John is a Man' I affirm that
'John' is a particular specimen of the general (or 'universal') category 'Man'.
I understand what 'John' is by subsuming him under (or
'identifying him with') the wider category 'Man'. Metaphysical reasoning
proceeds on the tacit or explicit assumption that the general category 'Man' and
the particular category 'John' exist independently of each other: that over and
above all the Particular 'Johns' in creation (and 'Toms,' and 'Dicks' and
'Harrys' and so on) over and above all particular men, there exists somewhere --
and would exist if all particular men ceased to be, or had never been -- the
general category 'Man.'...
"The dialectical method traverses this rigid metaphysic
completely. The category 'Man' includes, certainly, all possible 'men.' But
'Man' and 'men', though distinct, separate, and separable logical categories,
are only so as logical discriminations, as ways of looking at one
and the same set of facts. 'Man' -- is -- all men, conceived from
the standpoint of their generality -- that in which all men are
alike. 'Men' is a conception of the same fact -- 'all men' -- but in respect
of their multiplicity, the fact that no two of them are exactly alike. For
dialectics, the particular and the general, the unique and the universal -- for
all their logical opposition -- exist, in fact, in and by means of
each other. The 'Johniness' of John does not exist, cannot possibly be
conceived as existing, apart from his 'manniness'. We know 'Man' only as the
common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is
identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other
men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one
group.
"It is the recognition of this 'identity of all (logical
pairs of) opposites,' and in the further recognition that all categories
form, logically, a series from the Absolutely Universal to the Absolutely Unique
-- (in each of which opposites its other is implicit) -- that the virtue of
Hegel's logic consists…. Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is
-- a man.
Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns)
are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by
observing those things in which he is not --what the other men are.
At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of
distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing
characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise
the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood
when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John
(i.e. all man (sic)) in general.
"…When I affirm that 'John is a man' I postulate the oppositional
contrast between John and not-John and their coexistence (the negation of
their mutual negation) all at once. Certainly as the logical process is
worked in my mind I distinguish first one pole, then the other of the
separation and then their conjunction. But all three relations -- or
better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the
beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Jackson
(1936), pp.103-06. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
Here, too,
is Bertell Ollman arguing that sense experience (on its own) is too random, the
material it has to deal with too varied, complex, and orientated around the
particular to be comprehensible, which is why he claims we all have to engage in
'abstraction' -- that is, we all supposedly focus on certain aspects of reality
and 'collect' the particulars we experience into certain categories or under
specific concepts:
"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 parceled (sic) 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.
[Ollman (2003),
p.60. Bold emphases added.]
[The only
problem for Ollman is that for Hegel (as Dulckeit points out), whatever is given
in experience is already a particular of a certain type. They can't be
experienced in any other way. How that is supposed to work is still a
mystery (if we approach this topic in the way Traditional Philosophers
have), but I will simply draw a veil over that intractable problem for now.
Incidentally, I have subjected all of the above ideas to sustained criticism in
Part One.]
Finally (on
this), we have already met the following passage several times, which neatly
sums up the attitude of theorists who influenced all of the above DM-theorists:
"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.]
So, the
'laws' these theorists sought involved an appeal to the general, and hence to
'Universals'. But, paradoxically, that was also true of the Empiricists,
who had to admit that genuine knowledge only arose when 'the mind' somehow
cobbles-together the general from the particular.
However, as
we have also seen, both traditions led 'bourgeois thought' down yet another
blind alley -- where it remains to this day.
In that case, an
appeal to 'Universals' was no help at all since they also turned out to be particulars.
And, because of
that they, too, couldn't guarantee their
own future 'law-like' behaviour without another hierarchy of 'Universals' to do
it for them --
and so on ad infinitem...
Of course, any theory
(e.g., DM) that bases itself on the
Heraclitean
Flux [HF] only succeeds in sinking itself even faster, That is
because: if there
is indeed a universal flux, the future can't
resemble the past! And what is perhaps worse, under such circumstances not
even the word "resemble" can 'resemble' itself
from moment to moment! If everything is always changing, that must surely apply
to words and their meanings. How could it fail to do so?
[The 'relative stability
of language'
response, which is often wheeled out in reply at this point, has been neutralised
here.]
This
'problem' also partly arose out of the
mistaken belief that scientific theories themselves express a special
sort of truth.
When that idea is itself questioned, a solution to the 'problem of induction' soon
suggests itself. [Notice a use of the word "theory" here. I am not impugning scientificfacts. 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,
when this line-of-thought is expressed a little more, shall we say,
emphatically, 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 behavioureven of 'mental events',
such as these.
[The reader
should keep in mind that the following comments only apply if we adopt the
above way of conceiving knowledge. Again, they do not represent my views.]
In that case, our experience of
anything that has yet to occur (which must also include our own futurethoughts) might fail to
'resemble' what they had been, or seemed to have been, in the recent past. Even the
nature of our sensations and ideas could alter from moment to moment, given this
approach to knowledge (and especially if we take into account the HF). 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, or because that language
might itself have changed before we succeed in uttering anything at all.
[The moral
of this tale is that the HF is no respecter of those who are foolish enough to
give it credence. It holds sway over everything they say or believe -- not one
atom of which is the same now as it was a fraction of a second earlier. If they
imagine otherwise, they aren't bona fide HF-ers. They are philosophical
windbags.]
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 -- i.e., 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'. It is why
Plato and his ilk invented them. it was the whole point of his
Allegory of the Cave.
[On that, see
Appendix B of Essay Eight Part Two.]
That was
certainly the attitude motivating the German Idealists (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. 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.]
However,
this approach will always prove to be futile. That is because we will now have to appeal to
'abstractions' (i.e., 'Universals', 'Concepts', 'Categories',
'Principles', and 'Ideas', every one of which has been privately processed
and created),
in order to help guarantee that the 'empirical instability', which every
theorist working in the tradition characterised as such, won't undermine the
status of scientific (or even philosophical)
knowledge. But, as we have seen, these 'abstractions' are all particulars (or
the Proper Names thereof), so theyare
clearly of no use in this regard. That is because they 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 -- is capable of providing 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 were foolish enough buy into the HF.
Naturally,
expressed the way this has been for countless generations,
any attempt to 'solve the problem of induction' -- 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 are singular terms that 'refer' to Abstract Particulars, alongside that other Abstract Particular,
'Time'), and as such they are incapable of preventing the ideas
expressed by anyone who adopts this approach to knowledge from sliding off into
oblivion.
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
ideologically-motivated syntactical moves carried out by Ancient Greek metaphysicians, logicians and grammarians. In
which case, the dissolution of over two millennia of such utter confusion clearly recommends itself.
The bottom line here is that if any given 'mind' is capable of experiencing only a finite number of
exemplars from which it has to piece-together general ideas, subsequent experience could
always refuse to play ball, 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 begin to make sense.
Of
course, as already noted, some have tried to argue that these 'difficulties'
might be neutralised if the mind was capable of gaining direct
access to these 'abstract ideas' (Real Universals, General Concepts and Categories, etc.,
etc.), which were
supposed to be fully capable of regimenting
the deliverances of the senses (or, even 'external reality'). If so, that would
mean the future course of events could be guaranteed to resemble the past
(in te sense discussed above).
However, in order to control
'unruly' ideas/particulars, something a little more
robust
than Locke's Social
Contract or
Hume's
'habits of the mind' are called for. Unfortunately, Ancient Greek theories about an
ordered
Cosmos didn't sit too well with the socially-, and politically-fragmented bourgeois world of the
17th
and 18th centuries.
A completely novel approach was called for.
As already noted,
Hume
attempted to address this 'problem' by appealing to rather vague habits of the mind,
which somehow induce in us certain expectations about the future based on
past experience. Clearly, this nebulous idea is susceptible to the challenges
set out earlier. This is quite apart from the fact that just as soon as it is acknowledged that
any series of
events is subject to sustained sceptical onslaught like this, it is
difficult to see how even 'habits of the mind' can emerge unscathed. Or do we
now have to appeal to a habit of the habits of the mind to guarantee
their constancy? One suspects another infinite regress looms large...
The abandonment of the 'logical', or
necessary, connection between a Universal and the particulars that fall under it
-- i.e.,
between an object and its
properties (which we also met
earlier) -- that took place
in the High Middle Ages with the rise of
Nominalism
(but the cracks were already forming in the work of post-Aristotelian
theorists; the Nominalists merely prised these fissures wide enough for
all to see), introduced radical contingency, not just into Traditional Theories of
Causation, but into 'reality' 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) made a
valiant attempt to repair the damage these untoward developments had
inflicted on the
'Rational Order' (inherited from the Ancient Greeks) and on the Christian 'God's relation to 'His' creation. To that end, they
constructed 'necessitarian' theories of their own that sought to
re-establish the logical connection between a given substance and its 'accidents', its
properties. Unfortunately, these
theories were
themselves based
on the same old "ruling ideas" -- i.e., principally on the dogma that 'Reality'
is 'Rational' -- and hence that fundamental 'truths' about 'it' may be derived from thought/language alone.
[On the
general background to this, see, for example, Copleston (2003a, 2003b, 2003c),
and the references given below..]
Here is how I have made a similar point in Essay Eleven
Part Two -- part of
a brief consideration of certain aspects of Christian Fundamentalism and 'Intelligent
Design', which also turns out to be relevant to the above considerations:
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 contingentqualities. 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 genuinelycontingent, 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 (IbnSīnā, 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).
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
were thought capable of slotting 'ideas' in the right 'mental pigeonholes' be robust
enough to do this ('behind the backs of their producers', as it were, since no
one is normally aware this is taking place -- which is why it took a few
'bright spark philosophers' to 'discover' it), they must also exist prior to, and
be independent of, experience. If that weren't the case, they'd risk suffering the
slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves.
If experience can't deliver 'genuine
knowledge', the aforementioned 'Concepts and 'Abstractions' must be held aloof.
After all, 'bad associations' spoil
useful abstractions.
Initially,
at least for "crude materialists", 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',
'abstractions', etc., etc.), which did all this regimenting and permittedno exceptions,
past, present or future. However, the 'intellectual rescue' for empiricists
and materialists alike (for want of a better phrase) came from an unlikely and
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 'god-botherers'.
The
baroque systems
concocted by these Teutonic Idealists also required the invention of Self-Developing, Super-'Concepts',
alongside Industrial Strength 'Categories', which packed enough metaphysical clout to control the
'untamed deliverances of the senses'. These days such 'heavy-duty
principles' have been strengthened by the addition of a handful of
impressive-sounding phrases -- such as, "natural necessity", and
"metaphysical-", and "ontological-necessity". Jargon like this is required, otherwise the
feral impressions/ideas the senses send the mind's way might continue to
mis-behave and
set up their own 'Anarchist Collective' -- where fires
might actually freeze water, 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
-- indeed, 'dialectical' --, if they are to prove capable of exercising rigid control
over the future
course of events -- or even the future deliverances of the senses and the
overall direction of 'thought' --, ensuring that every single impression and
idea trooped into the right 'metaphysical pigeonholes', each labelled with the
correct general term.
As
noted earlier, bourgeois ideas (supposedly 'born free') were now clapped in
chains. The 'free market' of ideas, this bourgeois 'revolution in the head', was
over. The Rationalist/Idealist rescue mission looked more like a veritable 'mental
Thermidor' than it
did liberation.14
But, one
nagging question remained: How could something even as powerful as a 'Logical
Principle' guarantee that future events, or our impressions of them, will always
tow the line and perform as expected? As we have just seen, these 'rational
principles' are particulars themselves and no less in need of regimentation. If
not, there was no good reason why ordinary particulars needed to be regimented
in this way.
[How could
an abstraction control anything? Why would something physical --
in 'external reality' or even in the CNS -- 'obey' an abstraction? How could
anything that lacks intelligence, or even sentience (i.e., all those 'ideas' and
impressions') do any obeying to begin with?
[That knotty
problem, which both science and philosophy have failed to solve (and they're not
even close!) will be addressed in detail in Essay Three Part Five. Some of that
material has already been published in Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here and
here.]
[CNS = Central Nervous System.]
The point
at issue is itself rather straightforward: 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 on their own. It requires human beings
(and, as part of a collective) to 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
nor social structure sufficient to the task.
[It is worth
reminding the reader, again, that what now follows isn't my judgement on
bourgeois theorists; it is implied by their own words.]
That was, indeed, the point of
emphasising the (social and theoretical) atomisation that gave birth to the bourgeois 'logical'
principles mentioned
earlier in this Essay. The fragmentation introduced
into epistemology (in and by both its Rationalist and Empiricist wings) meant that
in the heads of these socially-isolated thinkers, 'Concepts'
can only operate as the Proper Names
of Abstract Particulars
-- or, indeed, as those Particulars themselves, destroying generality and undermining the
unity of the proposition. So, for example, 'the concept of time' (in
Kant) and 'the concept of Being' (in Hegel) are each just good an example of an Abstract Particular
as anything Aristotle or Plato had ever dreamt up.14a0
Clearly, 'Logical Principles' like this could only succeed in regimenting ideas and
particulars if they somehow managed to control their future
behaviour, which implied were must be intelligentagentsthemselves.
Furthermore, the way they were often spoken about meant it was
almost as if these 'Logical Principles'actually exist
in 'external reality', too, and were even those Ideas in 'self-development'.
Either that, or they were the 'internal regulative principles' which supposedly whipped the raw deliverances of
the senses into shape. In Hegel, this
doctrine completely eradicated the distinction between Mind and Matter -- which is
largely
why Engels thought he could get away with arguing that matter is just
an
abstraction, employing virtually same argument (and
even the same example!) Hegel had used:
"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. Bold emphasis alone 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.]
"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. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"Essence
becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to
essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is
therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination
of being the other of form. It is consequently the real
basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the
reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element
to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence. 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, §§
978-979.
Bold emphasis alone added. Typos in the on-line version corrected. Paragraphs
merged.]
In which
case, control of future
ideas/beliefs (and external contingencies) now became a question
concerning the self-discipline of an entire battery of self-developing
'Concepts'. In fact, these 'Concepts' controlled the future
because they had a 'new logic' -- a
'dialectical' logic -- to power the engine. Unfortunately this 'logic' was
itself based on a
mis-applied metaphor about how verbal and written arguments themselves edge toward
a conclusion. That explains the presence of the word
"contradiction". [There is no other reason for using it.]
This new
'logic' laid down the law, which meant that everything in nature -- Mind and Matter --
bent the knee to its Contradictory Will.
Plato's
World Soul was
given a new lease of life. Since it now ran the show, the
future was controlled by its 'logic', a 'supernatural' expression of its
'animating
spirit'. In this way, words that had been based on the social application of linguistic rules
were re-configured as a universal expression of 'Self-Developing Mind'.
It is precisely here that the fetishisation
of language -- referred to in
Part One -- emerged in Dialectical Philosophy, subsequently in Dialectical
Marxism.
As we have
seen, Ancient and Medieval Logicians had, by their ideologically-driven
mis-characterisation of
predication -- in alliance with the invention of 'abstractions' --, destroyed
any
possibility of expressing generality in (their use of) language. In its place, an ersatz
'generality' was invented as an expression of a 'Cosmic Mind' working inside Hegel's
skull.
Unfortunately for Dialectical Marxists, even when this fantasy is "put back on
its feet", the logical blunders on which it
had been based haven't been eradicated. They remain blunders. Indeed, in Hegel's hands they were fetishised
all the more,
transmogrified into a 'spirit' that supposedly animated 'inert matter'.
This breathed 'life' into theories that had originally been invented by
'crude materialists', since,
without this animating spirit -- without these 'contradictions' -- matter would
remain
inert. Indeed, 'reality' itself would be 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.]
"It was absolutely necessary to explain why the American
'radical' intellectuals accept Marxism without the dialectic (a clock without
a spring)." [Trotsky
(1971), p.56. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
Hence, Hegel's
'Self-Developing Mind', now "back on its feet", re-animated matter,
which actually amounted to the re-enchantment of nature. [Harrington
(1996).]14a1
Paradoxically,
but no less implausibly, the 'Iron Laws of the Cosmos' were supposed to be
wholly compatible with human freedom! These 'Self-Developing Concepts'
were, of course, 'free' because they were a law unto themselves. Indeed, they even
seemed to control 'God', who, it turned out, was being led
like a dog
on a leash by 'His' very own 'self-developing' ideas. 'He' was both 'object' and
'subject' to the all-powerful 'dialectic'.
As far as
humanity was concerned, the 'good
news' turned out the opposite of what might have been
expected: hence, the more an individual subjected herself to these 'Laws' the 'freer'
she became.
Ironically, the more human beings were in chains the less they were in chains!
Rousseau
thought he could justify social control somewhat similarly:
"In
order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly
includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that
whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the
whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;
for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures
him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the
political machine; this alone legitimises civil undertakings, which, without it,
would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses." [Rousseau
(1913), p.15; Book One, Chapter Seven. Bold emphasis added.]
But what he had in mind wasn't
the a
sort of 'Ideal
Thermidor' needed to control all those 'ideas' and 'impressions'. In sharp contrast, Hegel's
'logic' seemed to offer some hope in that direction, but he soon discovered that his Ideas controlled him,
not he them --, but only by fetishising the ideas he imagined were ('logically') fighting it out inside his head,
turning them onto the rules that ran the universe. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social
relations between human beings (language, inference, contradiction) not only
ended up manipulating
his thought processes, it now powered the entire universe! Critics might be forgiven for labelling this, 'Ontology for
Megalomaniacs'. It is indeed the philosophical equivalent of
a deranged individual claiming to be Napoleon, or even 'God Incarnate'.
According to Hegel, his 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 little more than the projection of social protocols and human characteristics
inwards and outwards. Subsequently, for DM-fans, their ideas supposedly 'reflect'
the world, but that turns out to be so only if they allow Hegel's
'logic' to control their thoughts and lead them by the nose.14a2
Indeed, as Max Eastman
reminded us:
"Hegelism is
like a mental disease; youcan'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 quasi-religious fervour with which 'The Sacred Dialectic' is protected and 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 autonomous 'concepts'/'principles' such as these were required so that order
might be imposed on
recalcitrant reality -- or our ideas about it --, and
if knowledge is still
dependent on the vicissitudes of human cognition, then those 'principles'
only succeed in undermining
themselves. If the 'Cosmic Order' can only be comprehended by being put into
some sort of 'order' inside each bourgeois skull (by anthropomorphising 'reality'
and
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
ideologically-motivated
accusations originally gave birth to this
family of theories in the first place), 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?
That worry
is underlined all the more, not just because it is
difficult enough to account for the social nature of knowledge in the
individual case, but because it becomes completely intractable when 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, conceptual
coordination across the whole of humanity would surely be miraculous. Indeed, it would be
such for
it to take place with respect to the inhabitants of a small village, let
alone a large city.
In fact, it
is far more likely that every member of this
self-appointedclub of 'professional abstractors' -- or,
indeed, every single Hegel
scholar -- is
dancing to a different 'dialectical tune' playing in each socially-atomised head.
[Apologies
again for those mixed metaphors!]
The problems we met earlier (concerning
the social, psychological and epistemological fragmentation
introduced into 'western thought' by the rise of capitalism) re-surfaces precisely here.
The bourgeois
psyche disunited can never be re-united.
So, in the realm of ideas alone,
it proved
impossible to undo the effect that bourgeois social relations introduced into
epistemology. If every single human being has to perform these 'feats of abstraction' in
such a
socially-isolated head, there can be no such thing as socialised
knowledge.
Or, to be more accurate, no such thing asknowledge.
Period.
This helps
account for the countless
failed 'theories of knowledge' post-Renaissance philosophy has
cobbled-together over the last four
centuries (to add to the many that had been invented over the previous two millennia).
Nevertheless, by these means the Individual was allowed to strike back, initially disguised as the
Dialectical GuruHimself -- Hegel. Only he (and perhaps his
DM-progeny) were 'licensed' to comprehend the 'self-development of thought',
and thus the course of history, thus passing the 'good news' on to the rest of
us. Dialectical
Philosophers were now in effect Dialectical Prophets -- the 'Marxist
wing' now possessing a resolutely
substitutionist ideology as their
guiding creed.14a
Once more, given this
approach to knowledge, no matter how robust the metaphysical, neurological or
psychological coercion involved (operating inside each dialectical skull), its
coordination across an entire population (or even a significant proportion of
it) would indeed be
miraculous. That is
unless, of course, it had been imposed on everyone by the Glorious Leader -- or, maybe just 'The Party'.
In much of 20th century Dialectical Marxism, 'logic' was replaced by the Mailed
Fist of the Stalinist State; failing
that, in non-Stalinist parties by the
Guardians of Orthodoxy.
In the 'bourgeois market' of
internally-processed ideas,
Adam Smith'sInvisible
Hand failed to leave even so much as a fingerprint. Hence, the
highly effective Mailed Fistof the
Dialectical Magus -- which sometimes took on the shape of
Gerry Healy,
elsewhere Mao Zedong, Bob
Avakian, Marlene Dixon,
Abimael
Guzmán, or even the Great
Teacher Himself, Stalin -- was required to help guarantee
'good epistemological order' inside each dialectical skull.
[Exactly how 'Epistemological Stalinism' like
this has worked its way into practically
every wing of Dialectical Marxism, and thus into virtually every party and tendency on
the far left, is explored in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
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 well wide-of-the-mark. Indeed, when the day-to-day
requirements imposed
on each active agent by the natural and social world are factored that
picture falls apart even faster than the
portrait of Dorian Gray.
The reasons for saying this aren't hard to find and
are even more problematic that has already been suggested (again, this is
only if
we assume that
'abstractionism' is 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
itself challenging enough 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 same
difficulties (irony intended). Moreover, in its endeavour to explain
generality, the 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
one
were based on
abstraction, could conceivably be viable. Questions would naturally arise whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general, or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such
'epistemologically-isolated
dialectical brains'. 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
established,
for goodness sake?
Worse still:
given the 'dialectical' view of identity, this 'problem' can't even bestated, let alone solved. The
peremptory rejection of the LOI now
returns to haunt DM-epistemology in a novel way. By confusing a logical issue with
an epistemological
red-herring, the search for what had been touted as a superior form of 'dialectical
knowledge'/'logic' is now trapped in the 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 form the
same general, or even particular, idea of anything at all --
even before
the dialectical juggernaut began to roll --, let alone how a check might be made
whether or not either of them had managed to perform
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 ramshackle 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 encouraged 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 separate desert island -- only that since
DM-epistemology holds that knowledge (etc.)
begins with whatever each abstractor
manages to process in their head as an individual (and that must be the
case from birth onwards). Clearly, this implies that in relation 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 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 seemingly minor worry (about the generality of what were supposed to be general ideas) may be
communicated between each lone abstractor, 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 (i.e., for those who at
least say they accept even a minimally social view of
language and knowledge): 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', supposedly belonging to this 'shared inheritance'.
Of course, given
the validity of DM-epistemology, no start could even be made at
building 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 the remotest idea about what could conceivably
even count as the
'same brick'!
This means that, based on the strictures
dialecticians have themselves placed on concrete applicationsof the LOI, no two people
couldever have the same general -- or even the same particular -- idea of anything
whatsoever.
Nor could they even have the same idea about approximate identity (so that
they could conclude their ideas only roughly coincided with
anyone else's). If the 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 even approximately the same) general
(or particular) idea that 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 begin to get off the ground!
At this
stage it should hardly need pointing out that 'the process of 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 are 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
at this point would be to no
avail, either. That is because, not only are memories themselves subject
to the HF, it has yet to be established that anyone
involved in the has the
same memory even of the meaning of the word "memory" from
moment to moment, let alone the words "language" and "word"!
Once again: how on earth might
and of that be
established, for goodness sake?
[I
hasten to add, once again, that the above sceptical remarks do not represent my views! They
are only being aired here 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 evenbeforebirth, as its adherents
unwisely accepted the
regressive bourgeois doctrine that we all 'form these abstractions 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.
"…[A]ll science 'deductively
anticipates' developments –- what else is an hypothesis tested by
experimentation?" [Rees (1998), p.131.]
That appears
to contradict the claim made earlier that DM-epistemology can't cope with future
contingencies. If
scientists actually use abstractions -- and legitimately so -- how can they present problems when DM-theorists
use them, too? What stops dialecticians from projecting their ideas into the future
in like manner, especially when their theories are subject to constant empirical
check?
Alas for Ms Lichtenstein, successful practice refutes
the countless negative conclusions drawn at this site.
Or, so it could be
objected...
Quite apart from the fact that practice has
actually delivered the oppositeverdict (on that, see Essay Ten
Part One), it is worth pointing
out that, based on DM's
own principles, the above neat pro-DM 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 would only
be able to do that 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 bold 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 acknowledge was only 'partial' knowledge -- to conclusions about
all of reality, for all of time; and,
(ii) That
approach was originally motivated by an ideologically-driven, but syntactically inept,
re-interpretation of
general words as the
Proper Names of Abstract
Particulars, thus destroying generality (in language), which it had sought to
account for and explain. The errors created by that wrong turn were compounded
when the 'abstractions' that had just been concocted were projected onto
what was in effect a 'shadow-reality', anterior to 'appearances', which supposedly underpinned the
material world. This
ersatz-reality was then regarded as 'more
real' than the physical universe we see around us.
DM-theorists bought into this Idealist view of knowledge (for reasons explored
in Essay Nine
Part Two), even though it
undermined their entire theory. That is because this approach is
based solely on a
series of linguistic tricks and distortions,not on evidence derived from the
sciences --
or
even from everyday experience -- still less from
actual revolutionary practice.17
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
discovered, 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 'intelligently obeying' 'externally imposed' rules/laws.
On the other hand, Rationalists held that
contingent events couldn't account for our knowledge of them. As they saw things, the reverse was the
case: it was the nature and development of their own ideas, or their
operation of principles hard-wired in their 'consciousness'/'minds' (by 'God' or
by 'nature'), that
explained the 'outer' world. So, 'rational thought' was the key to understanding
all of 'reality'. 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, fundamentally 'mind-like'.
All of this is reasonably
clear, so far.
The next bit isn't.
On
the basis of the entire family of rationalist 'world-views', Traditional Theorists
thought they had constructed
(or had even 'discovered') what they took to be nature's fundamental "principles"/"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
becausethe mind
was structured in a specific way. Furthermore, 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 know anything at all about it.18
This placed human rationality (or, to be honest, the 'rationality' of the select few
who thought along these lines) right at the centre of 'the meaning/cognitive universe'.
So, what
was supposed to be a 'Copernican
Revolution' in Philosophy and Science turned out to be the exact opposite:
its
Ptolemaic realignment. 'The human mind' constructed the world and
now lay at its 'centre', not the other way round. Indeed, for a few hard core Rationalists, 'the mind' and its machinationsactually constituted the world.
And it was to these mad dog Rationalists that early Marxists foolishly paid heed.
[On the pernicious nature of Idealism and why many opt for it (several of which
motivating factors apply with equal justification
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 is also a pale
reflection of 'His' 'Mind' --, then the 'inter-reflection' between 'mind'
and world, world and 'mind', would appear to guaranteethatphilosophical thought, left to its own devices,
would be capable of penetrating beneath surface 'appearances', right
to the heart of 'Being' itself, uncovering its 'hidden essence'. General laws
thus seemed to be either the result of these 'self-directed' concepts, which
accurately captured or mirrored nature's inner secrets, or they were in
effect their constitutive cause
(i.e., 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 bothwere actually the same 'substance', '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 doctrine (that found
their way into
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 correct application of Divine -- aka
'Dialectical' -- 'Logic'. The
mystical
'Rosicrucian wedding' had finally been consummated.18a
Empiricist theories arrived at
vaguely analogous conclusions, but from a different direction expressed in markedly different
language.19
Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- each and 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 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 am quoting Marx here, not to
censure him, but to criticise the use to which his words have been put;
I have taken a completely different view of this famous phrase from the
Afterword to the Second
Edition of Das Kapital, in
Essay Nine Part One).
Hence, they claim their theory rotates Hegel's through 180º,
which means it now stands proudly on its own two very materialist feet -- hardly noticing that
the Ideal backside is now located where the materialist head used to be.
Well, that
helps explain all the 'dialectical hot air'.
However, sub-logical,
mystical chicanery like this
wasn't designed to operate in reverse, which is why Idealist forward gear
always remains engaged.
As
Essay Two has shown, dialecticians proceed as if it were quite natural,
if not totally uncontroversial, to extrapolate from thoughts, words
or concepts to the derivation of necessary and universal truths about
nature and society. Not only do
they proceed
as if they think their laws and a priori
theories are applicable to all of reality, for all of time, theyhave
to talk that way.
[Those who
think that the above allegations are wildly inaccurate are invited to check
Essay Two -- and the scores of quotations from the DM-classics and even more
from subsequent DM-theorists -- that confirm their accuracy.]
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 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 it should
work this way. These
archaic "ruling-ideas" now rule 'radical' brains because, to DM-fans, they seem
so natural, so
quintessentially 'philosophical'.
If DM-theorists didn't think and talk like this, they wouldn't have a
'genuine philosophy' to call 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 fail to promote philosophical 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 carry-overs from Ancient Greek Philosophy imply about Nature
except that it is just one Big Idea?
Or, more accurately:
what else could they imply
other than Hegel Junior (DM) looks just like his dad, Hegel Senior?
"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 never tire of telling us that their
'abstractions' have been derived from nature and society via some sort of 'law
of cognition', and have been "tested in practice":
"Testing by facts or by practice respectively, is to be found
here in each step
of the analysis." [Lenin
(1961), p.318.]
The above
considerations cast serious doubt on the validity of Lenin's claims.
However, as the Essays posted at this site unfold such
infant doubts will mature
quite alarmingly
Nominalism
aside, traditional theories concerning the origin and nature 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 Idealist fantasist was telling the tale),
were capable of unifying
particulars under an 'objective law', or by means of something called
an "apprehension". The first approach saw all this taking place as 'the mind' progressively disregarded
the
unique ("accidental" or "inessential") properties and predicates
(these two now irreversibly run together) that belonged to particulars given in
experience; the second had 'the mind' searching for wider connections in order to 'uncover'
the hidden 'essences' that
allegedly
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, or which had to disregard aspects of the material world, in such an irresponsible and peremptory manner in order to advance
knowledge?
The pay-off,
so we have been led to believe, is the greater 'explanatory power' and
understanding both approaches
supposedly enabled. But, if either of the latter 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 material bodies themselves -- since these 'abstractions' are required
in order 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.
[Truth be
told, one would have thought that the word "capitulation" was more appropriate,
here. At best, this would represent a 'victory'
of the same order, perhaps, as that of the Church over 'sin', 'crime' and war.
Or, that of Social Democracy over Capitalism. This question becomes 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 further compounded by the additional fact that Dialectical Marxism has been
such an abject, long-term failure.
These two features aren't, of course, unconnected.]
In
fact, the opposite appears to be far more likely. Indeed, this entire approach
is openly, if not brazenly, based on the
ancient dogma that material reality is somehow insufficient of itself; that it isn't
fully real, and is essentially dependent on something that isn't itself material,
an idea itself coupled with the
mystical belief that nature requires an underlying superstructure of Ideal
Principles to make it work, let alone allow it to exist.
The result is that DM-theorists (would you
credit it!)
believe that matter is far too crude and
lifeless to do anything on its own (recall:
Engels, taking a lead from Hegel, actually called matter an "abstraction"!)
-- even though this appears to be all that nature has to
offer. Apparently, nature 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, in one form or another the
vast majority
are. We have already seen this from the Gospel of John:
"In the beginning was the Word [λόγος
--
logos],
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning.Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made.
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".
Plainly, he hadn't fully shaken off the regressive influence 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. I explain
why he said this, here.) ]
[It is
quite clear from this that Lenin meant "Dialectical idealism is closer to
intelligent materialism than crude materialism...".]22
Other dialecticians often quote this
passage approvingly -- for example,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here (the last of
these links to a PDF). By nailing their colours to this (class-compromised)
mast, DM-fans 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 by
Hesiod in his
Theogony (links at the end)
and later by Plato in his dialogue,
Sophist, which is one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, the
Sophist and two of his other dialogues -- Theaetetus (Plato
(1997e)) and
Parmenides (Plato
(1997d)) -- are together theprinciple source of much of subsequent Idealism.
The following excerpt from the Sophist reports 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.
Bold emphases added.]
[As noted
earlier, this battle is described in
Hesiod's
Theogony (lines 675-715), available
here.]
Again, from this it is quite clear that
Marxist Dialecticians are far closer to the above 'Idealist Gods'
than they are to the
'Materialist Giants'!23
Naturally, that
helps explain why
DM-theorists insist matter is just an 'abstraction'.
Unfortunately, unlike Capitalism,
Abstractionism has attracted few effective gravediggers, and those it has managed
to recruit 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
underline the
psychological impossibility of the 'abstractionist project' than
they are to expose its logical flaws --, or, indeed, reveal its ideologically-compromised
origin and motivating
force.
So, this batch of "ruling
ideas" lives on to rule another day -- and another dialectician.
More
recently, however, Abstractionism has been subjected to a series of destructive
critiques, but it still lumbers on. That in turn is partly because many of those who
avowedly came to bury it -- unlike Shakespeare's
Mark Antony -- ended up praising it, by emulating it. In so doing they
only succeeded in breathing new life into its moribund cadaver by inventing
several brand new,
'essentialist' theories of their own.24
As
we have seen, and as seems
reasonably clear, an ability to
talk about cats and dogs, for instance, 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
offered that hadn't already employed the very phrases that required explaining in the
first place --, i.e., general terms.25
If the above observations
have anything going for them, it perhaps lies in re-directing our
attention away from trying to examine hidden, internal processes and privately executed abilities
-- supposedly possessed by each 'lone abstractor' -- and toward sociallyacquired, publicly performed, checkableskills
and capacities in a endeavour to understand discourse, generality
in language and
socially-sanctioned knowledge.
Of course, only anti-materialists will
complain at this point.
Which is why,
these essays, emphasis has been placed on our use of ordinary language in the 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
at this site would mean that human cognition is open to view,
subject to public scrutiny -- unlike the mysterious, inner rituals and goings on that
supposedly underlie
the 'process of abstraction' --, which, it is worth recalling, fails even to
deliver even what had been advertised for it.26
It has been argued at length
(both 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 precisely nowhere. This not only distorts the way language actually
works --
destroying the capacity it has for saying anything at all, into the bargain --, it stalls the 'dialectical
juggernaut'
even before it can be tested in practice.
Much of the rest of this Part of Essay Three
is aimed at elaborating upon, and then substantiating, these
sweeping allegations.
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?
[Admittedly,
in several of the above 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
question 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, ad infinitem. I owe this general 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 untoward analogy between the
properties an object is supposed to possess and clothing. Hence,
according to one
version of the
'abstractive process' (dominant in the empiricist tradition, but also echoed by
many DM-fans -- one of whom is quoted extensively in Appendix One), as each outwardly unique distinguishing feature of a
given particular is 'peeled off' (or "disregarded") by 'the intellect', the true
(general) form of
the 'object' in question is gradually supposed to come into view. But, of
course, this peculiar disrobing ceremony takes place in the
'mind's eye', far from public access and any form of check, accessible only to those
who are capable of 'metaphysically undressing' things like tables, chairs, cats, dogs,
planets and galaxies. Indeed, 'conceptual strippers' like this must be capable of
deciding what has to betrue not only of all the many examples of 'the same sort' (for instance, all
cats) that haven't yet been ideally skinned this way (by anyone, not just themselves), but also of the
many more (cats in this case) that no human will ever experience. All
this is based solely on a brief
'internal inspection' of a severely limited sample of such ghostly
spectres.
However, and this should hardly need pointing out, the properties 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 normally are. On that basis, dogs might be
expected to be able to sing like larks, kettles recite the
Gettysburg Address and dialecticians accept criticism without 'throwing
a wobbly'.
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 many different ways) 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
-- to name just a few of the relevant surrounding circumstances. 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'.
That is a
point Hegel himself tried to make in his own obscure way. [On that,
see below.] The opposite idea, of course,
undermines the 'necessary connection' that is supposed to exists between an
'essence' and its 'accidents'/'external properties', threatening the 'rationality'
of nature and society, discussed earlier (here
and here). It would also
represent a dagger aimed at the heart of
Lenin's
attempt to appropriate
Hegel's
response to Hume's criticisms of Rationalist theories of causation.
Moreover, and
perhaps more absurdly, properties
can't be peeled away from objects as part of an obscure internal 'disrobing ceremony'. 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 unfolded. In fact, we
find the opposite is the case as each 'metaphysical burlesque show'
progresses.
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' (or, now, 'non-cat') would serve rather
badly in any subsequent generalisation based on 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 any of the latter.
Furthermore, 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 abstracted from it (or even 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
from, or attribute to, this unfortunate mammal 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: the 'disrobing 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, which can be
removed from a given 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). On one version of this
'process' we end up removing a series of Abstract Particulars -- not properties,
as originally intended -- from an increasing ghostly spectre. Or, on another, we
end up with the reverse of this: attributing such a set to what amounts to an
Idealist Apparition.
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 philosophers' 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 we all implicitly appear to know? 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 community 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 has 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 soon block our path: it
would still be impossible for anyone to check
a single one of these abstractions to see if they tallied with those produced by
anyone else -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them
correctly. In fact, the word "correct" can gain no grip in such
circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems
correct will be correct. But for something to be correct it needs to be checked against a
standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one doing the judging.
But, there is no such standard. 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 might even 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':
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.
Naturally, this means that this obscure process can't form the basis of
'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we were to 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 reached by the use of publicly accessible general terms already in
common use, words that were in the vernacularlong 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 at 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
'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 'abstracted', or even report about such
'abstractions'? On the other hand, if each intrepid abstractor already
knows how to use the word "cat" (in order to abstract the 'right' object), one
might very well wonder what the point is of abstracting that
furry mammal in the first place? It 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 -- or on the Internet.
Again, in
response 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 from 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 a response might proceed...
Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction"
means, it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible and checkable set of
behavioural/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 agree over the general idea of, say, a
mammal, let alone 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, that 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 necessary education/qualifications, and
show they have the required linguistic and organisational skill sets. We might even join with
Hilary
Putnam and call this a legitimate
division of linguistic labour (although, without implying an acceptance of
his other ideas about 'essentialism').
However, this specific phenomenon doesn't
include individuals who possess unspecified abstractive powers.
So, for example, trainee zoologists don't gain their qualifications by demonstrating to their
teachers an expertise in performing the 'inner dissection' of 'mental
images', 'ideas', or 'concepts'. The same is true of practising zoologists. On the contrary, they
will have
had to demonstrate their mastery of highly specialised techniques,
relevant vocabularies and current theory, which skills they are required to exhibit
publicly,
showing they are capable of applying them in appropriate circumstances and in a
manner specified by, and consistent with, the professional standards and
expectations laid down by their teachers, their adjudicators or their
professions.
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 'inner acts of meaning', 'naming'
or 'representing' -- matching words to images, sensations, processes
or
ideas in the 'mind'/brain.
At work here is another inappropriate set of
metaphors which in turn trades 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 internal 'icons', 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 it is now applied to 'internal
representations', with each of us employing the equivalent of an 'inner eye' to appraise
whatever fortune sends our way.
[Again, 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',
also involving his
Allegory of the Cave. [Of course, Plato's tropes were intended to make a
different set of points, but his focus 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 'mind' of
each socially-isolated, lone abstractor (even if this approach to knowledge was
subsequently augmented by a gesture
toward practice in DM-Epistemology). Nevertheless, this view of knowledge acquisition pictures
it as a form of acquaintance. However, the reasoning here is little more
complicated 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. In this case, 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. It was also
briefly discussed
earlier.]
Naturally, if this hidden, privatised abstractive skill
had ever been of any importance in the history of science, we should expect to find evidence
of it in the work of thevast 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 turns out to be 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 (by those who do accept the validity of abstractionism). That is because such an inquiry would have to examine physical evidence
-- i.e., the notes, documents
and writings left by these scientists, not their brains. Indeed, any
recognition that what counts as relevant here are the publicly available,
written records of these individuals, alongside the equipment and techniques they used
(etc.) coupled with their
social surroundings, circumstances and ideological commitments -- as opposed to the
'contents
of their heads' -- 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 air 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.)]
Admittedly,
this way of putting things might fail to agree with the opinion scientists
in general have about their own methods; nevertheless their practical activity belies
whatever post
hoc
rationalisations they care to advance concerning the nature of their work or the
methods they use.
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
a
publicly accessibleset of words, scientific techniques
and, in many cases, already established theory. And, this they do,
among other things, by employing analogy, metaphor and an
innovative
use of general terms already in the scientific lexicon or the public domain. All
of this is often allied with the
construction of tailor-made models and specifically targeted "thought
experiments" (which also employ publicly accessible words), augmented by the use of other rhetorical devices. [On this
in general, see the
references listed
here.]
[Naturally,
this doesn't mean that these factors aren't related to, or constrained by, the development of
the forces and relations of production. But, as noted earlier, such 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 order to
reveal the laws and regularities (etc.) that govern the natural and social world. 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' versus 'reality' distinction,
below.]
To take
just one example: let us suppose that an animal's 'essential' nature --
allegedly arrived at by the use of increasingly refined abstractions -- turned
out to be its DNA (or, if not that, it turns out to be something else). 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 and/or
causal laws.
But, that 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
previous and contemporaneous researchers -- which, in turn, weren't arrived
at by 'abstraction' --, that they then augment with their own ideas, expressed,
not in 'mental imagery', but in a public language, once more. These might also have
been developed by, or received input from, other teams of scientists working in related research traditions.
Added to this might the results of other
innovative experiments in the same or connected 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' -- again: all of which are expressed in a public language, subsequently published,
appraised and checked in the open.
None of
these (save, perhaps, 'thought experiments')
even remotely looks like a 'mental process', still less an example of
'abstraction' carried out in a secluded 'inner' sanctum. And,
as far as 'thought experiments' are concerned, these, too, are typically rehearsed
in the public domainand 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. Also see the later
remarks about 'mental arithmetic' which are connected with above points
about 'thought experiments'.]
Of course,
it could be objected that no one
really thinks abstraction is "done in the head", or that scientists don't use a
publicly accessible language in relation to their work. Hence, it might be
maintained that scientists nevertheless endeavour to form abstract ideas,
idealisations and theories based on their
use of such resources. In which case, much of the material above (and in Part
One) is completely misguided.
Or so it might be claimed...
First, that
isn't what DM-theorists themselves say about the 'process of abstraction'.
Not only have we seen that DM itself grew out of the Rationalist Tradition in
Philosophy, whose theorists largely agreed with Plato about the source and
nature 'reliable knowledge':
"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.)]
Again, here
is what we read about the Rationalists who directly influenced dialecticians:
"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.]
And this is what Kant had to say about such
'knowledge':
"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
added; 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. Bold emphases added.]
Here, too, is Hegel echoing the above
sentiments:
"To reach
rational knowledge by our intelligence is the just demand of the mind which
comes to science.
For intelligence, understanding, is thinking, pure activity of the self in
general;
and what is intelligible is something from the first familiar and common to the
scientific and unscientific mind alike, enabling the unscientific mind to enter
the domain of science. (p.7, §13)
"It is this process by which science in general comes about, this
gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology
of Mind.
Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage,
is without the essential nature of mind, is sense-consciousness.
To reach the stage of genuine knowledge, or produce the element where science is
found – the pure conception of science itself – a long and laborious journey
must be undertaken.
This process towards science, as regards the content it will bring to light and
the forms it will assume in the course of its progress, will not be what is
primarily imagined by leading the unscientific consciousness up to the level of
science: it will be something different, too, from establishing and laying the
foundations of science; and anyway something else than the sort of ecstatic
enthusiasm which starts straight off with absolute knowledge, as if shot out of
a pistol, and makes short work of other points of view simply by explaining that
it is to take no notice of them. (pp.15-16, §27)
"...Thoughts become fluent and interfuse [fused together -- RL],
when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment,
when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself.
It does not 'abstract' in the sense of getting away from itself and setting
itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quality of its
self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete -- which
is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content -- and the fixity of
all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which
are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the
ego.
In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions, concepts, and are then
what they are in truth, self-moving functions, circles, are what their substance
consists in, are spiritual entities.
(p.20, §33)
"Looked
at as the concatenation of their content, this movement is the necessitated
development and expansion of that content into an organic systematic whole. By
this movement, too, the road, which leads to the notion of knowledge, becomes
itself likewise a necessary and complete evolving process. This preparatory
stage thus ceases to consist of casual philosophical reflections, referring to
objects here and there, to processes and thoughts of the undeveloped mind as
chance may direct; and it does not try to establish the truth by miscellaneous
ratiocinations, inferences, and consequences drawn from circumscribed thoughts.
The road to science, by the very movement of the notion itself, will compass the
entire objective world of conscious life in its rational necessity.
(p.20, §34)
"...What
mind prepares for itself in the course of its phenomenology is the element of
true knowledge.
In this element the moments of mind are now set out in the form of thought pure
and simple,
which knows its object to be itself. They no longer involve the opposition
between being and knowing; they remain within the undivided simplicity of the
knowing function; they are the truth in the form of truth, and their diversity
is merely diversity of the content of truth.
The process by which they are developed into an organically connected whole is
Logic or Speculative Philosophy.
(pp.21-22, §37)
"Here we find contained the principle that Being is Thought: here
is exercised that insight which usually tends to deviate from the ordinary
non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being. In virtue,
further, of the fact that
subsistence on the part of what exists is self-identity or pure abstraction,
it is the abstraction of itself from itself,
in other words, is itself its own want of identity with itself and dissolution –
its own proper inwardness and retraction into self -- its process of becoming.
(p.33, §54)
[The above words were taken from the Preface
to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (also called Phenomenology of Mind)
i.e., Hegel
(1977), pp.7-33). Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site.
Had similar passages been quoted from the rest of the book (never mind other
works of his), this Essay would be tens of thousands of words longer!]
As we have seen, this is how
Marx and Engels summed up
Hegel's method of 'abstraction':
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… 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'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'…. 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 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….
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'…. 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.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
As their
younger selves, Marx and Engels clearly saw 'abstraction' as a private,
individualised process, the products of which they described as "abstract creations of the mind"
and an "unreal creation of the mind" -- just as the Essays posted at this
site have alleged.
So, it
should hardly surprise us that DM-theorists (who have in general
ignored/rejected the above demolition of Hegel's method, penned by the more
youthful Marx and Engels) emulate Hegel (alongside the rest of the ruling-class,
Rationalist Tradition, going back at least to Plato), promoting and privileging
the 'mental processes' that gave rise to 'abstractions', which supposedly form
the bedrock of knowledge.
Here
are just a few examples of DM-theorists confirming the above accusations
-- beginning with Lenin, followed by John Rees, Alexander Spirkin and several
others:
"The
approach of the (human) mind to a particular thing, the taking of a copy (= a
concept) of it is not a simple, immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one
which is complex, split into two, zig-zag-like, which includes in it the
possibility of the flight of fantasy from life; more than that: the possibility
of the transformation (moreover, an unnoticeable transformation, of
which man is unaware) of the abstract concept, idea, into a fantasy....
For even in the simplest generalisation, in the most elementary general idea
('table' in general), there is a certain bit of fantasy. (Vice
versa: it would be stupid to deny the role of fantasy, even in the strictest
science...." [Lenin
(1961), pp.370-71. All but one example of bold emphasis added. Italics
in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site.]
"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.
From living perception to abstract
thought, and from
this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth,
of the cognition of objective reality." [Ibid.,
p.171.Italic
emphases in the
original.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.
Italic emphases in the original.]
"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from
'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very
concept of 'fact' is itself an
abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a
'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing
phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science 'deductively
anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by
experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating
and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the 'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method
which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with
abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the
two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998), p.131.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"Abstraction is the mental identification, singling out of some object from
its connections with other objects, the separation of some attribute of an
object from its other attributes, of some relation between certain objects
from the objects themselves. Abstraction is a method of mental
simplification, by which we consider some one aspect of the process we are
studying. The scientist looks at the colourful picture which any object
presents in real life through a single-colour filter and this enables him to
see that object in only one, fundamentally important aspect. The picture
loses many of its shades but gains in clarity. Abstraction has its limit.
One cannot abstract the flame from what is burning. The sharp edge of
abstraction, like the edge of a razor can be used to whittle things down
until nothing is left. Abstraction can never be absolute. The existence of
content shows intrinsically in every abstraction. The question of what to
abstract and what to abstract from is ultimately decided by the nature of
the objects under examination and the tasks confronting the investigator.
Kepler, for example, was not interested in the colour of Mars or the
temperature of the Sun when he sought to establish the laws of the
revolution of the planets. What we get as a result of the process of
abstracting is various concepts about certain objects, such as 'plant',
'animal', 'human being', ideas about the separate properties of objects and
the relations between them ('whiteness', 'volume', 'length', 'heat
capacity', etc.).
"Idealisation as a specific form of abstraction is an important technique
in scientific cognition. Abstract objects do not exist and cannot be made to
exist in reality, but they have their prototypes in the real world. Pure
mathematics operates with numbers, vectors and other mathematical objects
that are the result of abstraction and idealisation. Geometry, for example,
is concerned with exact circles, but physical object is never exactly
circular; perfect roundness is an abstraction. It cannot be found in nature.But it is an image of the real: it was brought into existence by
generalisation from experience. Idealisation is a process of forming
concepts, whose real prototypes can be indicated only to a certain degree of
approximation. As a result of idealisation there comes into being a
theoretical model in which the characteristics and aspects of the objects
under investigation are not only abstracted from their actual empirical multiformity
but also, by means of mental construction, are made to stand
out in a sharper and more fully expressed form than in reality itself. As
examples of concepts resulting from idealisation we may take such things as
the 'point' (an object which has neither length, nor height, nor breadth);
or 'the straight line', the 'circle', and so on.... The mental transition from the more general to the less general is a process
of limitation. Without generalisation there can be no theory. Theory, on the
other hand, is created so that it can be applied in practice to solve
certain specific problems. For example, when measuring objects or building
certain technical structures, we must always proceed from the more general
to the less general and the individual, there must always be a process of
limitation. The grotesque fantastic images of mythology with its gods and
monsters are closer to ordinary reality than the reality of the microworld
conceived in the form of mathematical symbols. One can see that the turn
towards the abstract is a very obvious trend of our time. Recourse to the
abstract may also be observed in art, in abstract pictures and sculptures.
"The abstract and the concrete. The concept of
'the concrete' is used
in two senses. First, in the sense of something directly given, a sensuously
perceived and represented whole. In this sense the concrete is the starting
point of cognition. But as soon as we treat it theoretically the concrete
becomes a concept, a system of scientific definitions revealing the
essential connections and relations of things and events, their unity in
diversity. So the concrete appears to us first in the form of a sensuously
observable image of the whole object not yet broken down and not understood
in its law-governed connections and mediations, but at the level of
theoretical thought it is still a whole, but internally differentiated,
understood in its various intrinsic contradictions. The sensuously concrete
is a poor reflection of phenomena, but the concrete in thought is a richer,
more essential cognition. In contrast to the abstract the concrete is only
one moment in the process of cognition, we understand it by comparing it
with the abstract. Abstraction usually suggests to us some thing 'mental',
'conceptual', in contrast to the sensuously observable. The abstract is also
thought of as something one-sided, poor, incomplete, separated, or as a
property, a relation, a form, etc. withdrawn from its connection with the
whole. And in this sense not only a concept but even an observable image,
for example, a diagram, a drawing, an abstract painting, stylisation, a
symbol may be abstract. The category of abstraction is contradictory. It is
dead, one-sided, separated from the living phenomenon, but it is also an
essential step towards the knowledge of a concrete fact brimming with life.
We call knowledge abstract also in the sense that it reflects a fragment of
reality, as it were, stripped down, refined and thereby impoverished. Abstractions are
'bits' of whole objects, and our thinking works with
such 'bits'. From separate abstractions thought constantly returns to the
restoration of concreteness, but each time on a new, higher basis. This is
the concreteness of concepts, categories, and theories reflecting unity in
diversity.
"What
do we mean by cognition as a process of ascent from the abstract to the
concrete? '...[C]ognition rolls onwards from content to
content. First of all, this advance is determined as beginning from simple
determinatenesses the succeeding ones becoming ever richer and more
concrete. For the result contains its beginning and its course has
enriched it by a fresh determinateness. The universal constitutes the
foundation; the advance is therefore not to be taken as a flowing
from one other to the next other. In the absolute method the
Notion maintains itself in its otherness. the universal in its
particularisation, in judgment and reality; at each stage of its further
determination it raises the entire mass of its preceding content, and by its
dialectical advance it not only does not lose anything or leave anything
behind, but carries along with it all it has gained, and inwardly enriches
and consolidates itself." [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel's Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe. Fünfter Band. Wissenschaft der
Logic. Berlin, 1834, Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, S.348-49. (This is in
fact
Hegel (1999), p.840. §1809.)] Seen in this light, the process of abstraction is a
realisation of the principle: one must step back in order to get a better
view. The dialectics of the cognition of reality lies in the fact that by
'flying away' from this sensuously given reality on the 'wings' of
abstraction, one may from the heights of concrete theoretical thought better
'survey' the essence of the object under investigation. Such is the history
and logic of scientific cognition. Here we have the essence of the Marxist
method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. According to Marx, this
method is the means by which thought assimilates the concrete, reproduces it
by linking up concepts into an integrated scientific theory, which
reproduces the objective separateness of the objects and the unity of its
essential properties and relations. The concrete is concrete because it is a
synthesis of many definitions, and, consequently, a unity of the diversity.
The principle of concreteness means that we must approach facts of natural
and social life not with general formulas and diagrams but by taking into
exact account all the real conditions in which the target of our research is
located and distinguish the most important, essential properties,
connections, and tendencies that determine its other aspects." [Spirkin
(1983),
pp.232-35.
Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. I have used the translation found in Hegel
(1999), not Spirkin's version. Several paragraphs merged.]
Here, too, is Bertell Ollman:
"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. Bold emphasis added.
]
"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 parceled (sic) 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." [Ollman (2003),
pp.60-61. Bold emphases added.
Several paragraphs merged. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Referencing conventions modified for the same
reason.]
Not
forgetting our old 'friends', Woods and Grant:
"Without abstraction it is impossible to penetrate the object in
'depth,' to
understand its essential nature and laws of motion. Through the mental work of
abstraction, we are able to get beyond the immediate information provided by our
senses (sense-perception), and probe deeper. We can break the object down into
its constituent parts, isolate them, and study them in detail. We can arrive at
an idealised, general conception of the object as a 'pure' form, stripped of all
secondary features. This is the work of abstraction, an absolutely necessary
stage of the process of cognition." [ Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.85-87.
Bold emphases added.]
And here is
Andrew Sayer:
"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 we saw was the
case with Ollman -- and this applies to everyone else who has written on this --,
we are never toldexactly how
the above process works, or even why it doesn't result in the creation of a
'private language'. As we also saw, Ollman pointed this out himself:
"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.]
Finally, here is Marx himself (in an
oft-quoted passage, which contradicts
what he had to say
earlier about abstraction):
"There
are characteristics which all stages of production have in common, and which are
established as general ones by the mind;
but the so-called general
preconditions of
all production are nothing more than these abstract moments with which no real
historical stage of production can be grasped....
"It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the
real precondition, thus to begin, in economics,
with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire
social act of production. 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. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn
presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is
nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price etc. Thus,
if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of
the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move
analytically towards 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 former is the path historically followed by economics at the time of its
origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the
living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they
always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of determinant,
abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As
soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and
abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended from the simple
relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange
value, to the level of the state, exchange between nations and the world market.
The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is
concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of
the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of
concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the
point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for
observation and conception.
Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an
abstract determination; along the second,
the abstract determinations lead towards a
reproduction of the
concrete by way of thought.
In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product
of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself
out of itself, by itself,
whereas the method of rising from the
abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the
concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.
But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into
being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value,
presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations;
as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never
exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given,
concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an
antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of consciousness -- and this is
characteristic of the philosophical consciousness -- for which conceptual
thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is
thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of
production -- which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside --
whose product is the world; and -- but this is again a tautology -- this is
correct in so far as the
concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a
product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product of the
concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above observation and
conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of observation and conception
into concepts.
The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product
of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way
different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of
this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head
just as before; namely as long as the
head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the
theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as
the presupposition.
"But do not these simpler categories also have an independent
historical or natural existence pre-dating the more concrete ones? That depends.
Hegel, for example, correctly begins the Philosophy of Right with possession,
this being the subject's simplest juridical relation. But there is no possession
preceding the family or master-servant relations, which are far more concrete
relations. However, it would be correct to say that there are families or clan
groups which still merely possess, but
have no property. The
simple category therefore appears in relation to property as a relation of
simple families or clan groups. In the higher society it appears as the simpler
relation of a developed organization. But the concrete substratum of which
possession is a relation is always presupposed. One can imagine an individual
savage as possessing something. But in that case possession is not a juridical
relation. It is incorrect that possession develops historically into the family.
Possession, rather, always presupposes this 'more concrete juridical category.'
There would still always remain this much, however, namely that the simple
categories are the expressions of relations within which the less developed
concrete may have already realized itself before having posited the more
many-sided connection or relation which is mentally expressed in the more
concrete category;
while the more developed concrete preserves the same category as a subordinate
relation. Money may exist, and did exist historically, before capital existed,
before banks existed, before wage labour existed, etc. Thus in this respect it
may be said that the simpler category can express the dominant relations of a
less developed whole, or else those subordinate relations of a more developed
whole which already had a historic existence before this whole developed in the
direction expressed by a more concrete category.
To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from the simple to the
combined, would correspond to the real historical process.
"As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest
possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to
all.
Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone.
On the other side, this abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental
product of a concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours
corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer
from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance
for them, hence of indifference.
Not only the category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means
of creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked with
particular individuals in any specific form....
"In
the succession of the economic categories, as in any other historical, social
science, it must not be forgotten that their subject -- here, modern bourgeois
society -- is always what is given, in the head as well as in reality, and that
these categories therefore express the forms of being, the characteristics of
existence, and often only individual sides of this specific society, this
subject, and that therefore this society by no means begins only at the point
where one can speak of it as
such; this
holds for
science as well. This
is to be kept in mind because it will shortly be decisive for the order and
sequence of the categories....
"Every moment, in calculating, accounting etc., that we transform commodities
into value symbols, we fix them as mere exchange values, making abstraction from
the matter they are composed of and all their natural qualities.
On paper, in the head, this metamorphosis proceeds by means of mere abstraction;
but in the real exchange process a real mediation is
required, a means to accomplish this abstraction."
[Marx (1986), pp.26-80.
Bold emphases alone added. The on-line translation has been quoted here -- i.e.,
Marx (1973) -- while
the page numbers are those found in MECW edition -- i.e.,
Marx (1986) -- which
translates the above slightly differently, but in a way that still makes the
same points. I have linked to both versions above so readers can check for
themselves.]
Marx clearly connects abstraction with what goes on
"in the head", and is processed "mentally", "by the mind".
[Admittedly he also says it takes place "on paper",
but he nowhere explains how that is actually done -- nor has anyone
else since.]
This is what Alex Callinicos had to say about the
above:
"First, the process of knowledge is one that takes
place within thought. Neither its commencement nor its conclusion
involves any direct encounter with the real. To start with the 'real
precondition' involves its evaporation into 'an
abstract determination'.
And where the 'scientifically correct method' is employed its result is, not the
concrete reality itself but the 'reproduction
of the concrete by way of thought'. Marx emphasis this point...:
'The
concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a
product of thinking and comprehending;...a product...of the
working-up of
observation and conception into concepts.
The totality
as it appears in the head,
as a
totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head,
which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the
artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real
subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head
just as before;
namely as long asthe
head's
conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical.' [Marx (1986), loc cit.]
"In this way the central thesis of empiricism, that
scientific knowledge rests upon the direct access of the subject to reality, was
overturned. Instead attention was focussed upon the process of theoretical
knowledge itself, 'the
working-up of observation and conception into concepts'....
"Second, Marx advances a new theory of scientific
abstraction, which tells us something about the internal structure of the
process of knowledge. When Marx writes that:
'the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which
thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind',
[Marx (1986),
loc cit.].
"he is setting behind him classical epistemology's
theory of abstraction. The theory he rejects is one in which abstraction is
essentially the process whereby thought abstracts from the real the
essential relationships which it makes the first principles of the science.
Abstraction is identified analysis -- thought penetrates the real, paring away
the inessential phenomena in order to grasp the underlying essence.... The
notion of science as a process taking place within thought implies a breach with
this theory of abstraction, since any direct relation between thought and
reality is denied." [Callinicos (1978), pp.136-38. Emphases in the original,
except in place of italics Callinicos uses underlining. Several
paragraphs merged; minor typos corrected. Referencing and formatting conventions
altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]
As we have seen, Callinicos has seriously
misunderstood empiricism -- that is, he ignores the many ways it is
fundamentally like the rationalist approach to knowledge that he is trying
to attribute to Marx --., and as we will see, even Hegel rejects this way of
interpreting our 'encounter with the real'. Nevertheless, Callinicos at
least underlines the connection between abstraction and 'what goes on in the
head'. [Having said that, it isn't too clear that Callinicos would express
himself this way today, almost forty-five years later! Readers should bear that
in mind before they judge him too harshly!]
Be this as it may, I have subjected much of the
above (and not just what Callinicos had to say) to detailed criticism across
both Parts of Essay Three.
So, it is reasonably clear that DM-theorists believe
the 'process of abstraction' is carried out 'in the head'/'in the mind' -- as
has been repeatedly argued at this site.
Furthermore,
this isn't what scientists
actually do. Nor is it what anyone does. The opposite idea is a
myth put about by professional philosophers, amateur metaphysicians and
DM-fans.
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 (much of
that material has been summarised in the last few sub-sections). The claim that
the rest of us engage in abstraction has been subjected to sustained and
destructive criticism throughout Essay Three Parts One and Two.
However, I
will say more about science, scientists and what they do or do not do in a later
sub-section: "Appearance and Reality".
Nevertheless, anti-abstractionism 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 accessed in Jesseph (1993),
pp.9-43. On Berkeley in general, see
here;
his case against abstraction is expertly summarised
here.]
Berkeley's arguments in this regard
are based on the observation that it is impossible to form an abstract idea of
anything whatsoever since that would require whatever it is possessing and not to possessing
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):
"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 the latter's '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 here 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).]
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; paragraphs merged.]
However, in a passage that has already been
quoted several times -- taken from The Holy Family, which reveals Marx and Engels at the height of their philosophical powers
-- we find the following acute observations (notice a similar reference to
Vishnu that we witnessed 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-Szeligaas a mystery-monger.... ["Szeliga"
was thepseudonym 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. Several paragraphs merged.]
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
anticipatesFrege'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 impossibleto 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, yougive on the contrary the natural fruits a
supernatural significanceand 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 alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site;
paragraphs merged.]
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
(covered in detail in
Part One of this
Essay). As they themselves point 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 alone added. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
Here, Marx and Engels quite rightly
argue
that it is the distortion of language that gives life to metaphysical
'abstractions'. 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
alone added; paragraphs merged.]
The
highlighted words in the
above passage 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;
paragraphs merged.]
Linguistic monstrosities like those above --
and worse -- litter the pages of
books and articles written by Traditional Philosophers in their
Ancient, Medieval and Modern re-incarnations. For example, in a recent book on the
nature of 'Time' we find the following rather bizarre terminology:
"Any property partly composed
of presentness, apart from the two properties of pastness and futurity is not an
A-property." [Smith (1993), p.6.]
In relation
to which we note
with Frege that the powers of
certain HinduDeities have here been channelled in order to conjure 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, itself) can be accessed 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.]
As noted
several times, 'abstractionism' is intimately connected with the
archaic distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality. It is to that
topic that I now turn.
A cursory
glance through the first half of this Essay might
motivate the observation 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 that widely held belief
-- certainly widely held among DM-fans -- they do
so in order to discover, or, perhaps, 'uncover', the underlying, "objective"
nature of 'reality'.
[The first
part of that 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 late 2025.]
However, the above objection invites closer consideration of three distinctions that DM-theorists have also inherited from Traditional
Metaphysics:
(i) Between "appearance" and "reality";
(ii) Between "essence" and "accident"; and,
(iii)
Between
"necessity" and
"contingency".
Once again dialecticians have
(unwisely)
bought into these ancient, aristocratic distinctions, meekly accepting
what was originally a class-motivated theory 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, of course, 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.)]
DM-theorists' adoption of this (general) approach held out the prospect that
they
could comprehend not just 'appearances', but objects and
processes more fully, scientifically and philosophically.
Ironically,
as we will discover, that
is the exact opposite of what actually emerged at the end of this
(futile)
exercise.
"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
whole-heartedly agree:
"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; paragraphs merged.]
"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.]
"[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.
Paragraphs merged.]
"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.]
[I have
quoted several more comments like the above -- 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.]
This is
apparently where abstraction supposedly enters
into the
picture (no pun intended!):
"[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 appearancesand 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 these terms 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.]
Do
'appearances' motivate false beliefs? Dialecticians appear to be rather confused about
this (irony intended).
But, maybe that
negative remark is a little too hasty...
In which case, it might be
useful to
back-track a little and examine
in slightly more
detail what Hegel and
several DM-theorists have
to say about the connection between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'/'actuality',
as well as any connection their ideas might have with the nature and origin of false beliefs.
Unfortunately, finding a clear, connected (or even consistent!) set of ideas in Hegel is like
looking for a tiny thread of straw-coloured cotton buried 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 emphases alone 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 opinions 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 factors like this wouldn't motivate a few false beliefs.
However,
Hegel's theory is rather more complex than the above brief remarks might
themselves suggest. It isn't as if 'essence' is 'true' and 'appearance' is 'false', to put
it 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
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 or a
window.
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 Hegel left them with!), 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
(appearances of) feet.
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 by this, nor do they illustrate this
alleged clash with many 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 -- and one blessed with what would
amount to
uncharacteristic clarity -- it
would still be difficult to see what the 'contradiction' here (between
'appearance' and 'reality') could actually be.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 mentioned above. Here,
for example, is Herbert Marcuse expressing the overall idea:
"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 emphases 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 (i.e., concerning the lack of
any connection between 'the principle of identity' and 'the principle of
contradiction'). Marcuse's risible attempt to criticise Wittgenstein,
Analytic Philosophy
and the ordinary language of working people (in One Dimensional Man) 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 it 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 reveals
a
depth of confusion one normally associates with thelogically-challengedLCD-wing of Dialectical Muddle:
"...the principle of identity
is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault
of incorrect thinking)...", [Ibid.]
But it seems HCD-honchos
like Marcuse are
just as clueless about FL as their lowly LCD-brethren. Indeed, as we have seen (here,
for example), Hegel committed several of his own egregious logical blunders,
upon which insecure base Marcuse unwisely predicated 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) and (e) are, of course, variants of one another.]
In which case, many contradictions
can be, and are, the result of an
application of 'correct' thinking. One imagines Marcuse 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 brazenexample 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.
Several paragraphs merged.]
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 (without
justification) 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 mysterious. 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:
(iii) Testifies
in court (as in "NM is appearing for the prosecution");
(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 one or other of the above senses 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 seems they too are 'appearances', 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 likepermanent features of
the natural world, which means, of course, that this distinction itself has
now 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 clear. 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,
too, has been
"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 very well 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 that 'seeming'
itself (i.e., the Sun orbiting the Earth) isn't "the real thing".
The Earth orbits the Sun. End of story. The either-or of common sense wins again.
In which
case, it is far from clear why Cohen referenced the above textbook since we are now
no clearer than we were before about what these two (i.e., Cohen and Konstantinov) mean. 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 would seem that 'essence' depended on the choices we make, not 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 emphases 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 (if there
are any such!) "necessarily
expresses itself through the appearances". If that were so, why did no one
manage to 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 claimed 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!
That helps explain why there are still so many
who erroneously think the
Earth is flat (since, locally, it appears to be so) and conclude it
is the Sun that moves relative to it.
That 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.]
Hegel fans
have yet to explain how something "hidden" can
"express itself through the appearance".
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 odd 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 thereby need to rely on
its appearance, which we have just been warned not to trust since some
(or is it all?) of
them are "false". If it is only some, how might we
distinguish the 'false'- from the 'not-false'-appearances? Mao failed to say.
It would be no use appealing to scientific observations since they
also rely on these already 'suspect appearances'. And, what would be the point of
"analysing" such dubious data inputs, these 'nefarious appearances', if they can't
be trusted? All the data from telescopes. microscopes, computers, instruments,
thermometers, gauges and measuring devices in general confront us now as
'appearances', which have all now been thrown into doubt. We have no way of
'leaping out of our heads' in order to 'intuit' nature directly (whatever
that might mean!). No good, either, appealing to someone's writings for help -- not even
Mao's! -- since
they too now confront us as 'appearances'!
[Misguided attempts to defend Mao on this issue 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 emphases added. Tony has clearly bought into
the gobbledygook format one find all across Dialectical Marxism.]
"'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 removethe 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.)
Bold emphases alone 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 (bourgeois) economists. Are there any Marxists who would
agree with them that this 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' (when
looking at it from above, say), 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
invalidate the inference 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!
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 (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 its 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 appearto 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/'contradiction' between 'commonsense' and 'science'.
The
following case in point has been deliberately
chosen for its triteness and its familiarity. A more
arcane
example
would 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 phenomenon 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
what appear to be
contradictory pairs, but this type of incongruity clearly isn't the sort to
which Rees and other dialecticians are alluding -- which is 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 draw a contrast between 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 asthey 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 do 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 just in case 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.]
It could be objected that the fact
that sticks appear to bend in water prompts the naïve 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 such 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
mean it is 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) -- and 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), they must be intending to
revise
the meaning of the word "contradiction", as opposed to using a familiar term
drawn from ordinary language. It is worth reminding ourselves that in ordinary language the
verb form of this word (i.e., "to contradict") literally means "to gain-say", to say the
logical opposite
of what another says. Either that, or DM-fans are trying 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), situated
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 by anyone (Marxist and
non-Marxist) 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 at least 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 plainfact 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 last but one paragraph specifically mentioned what might
plausibly be believed by naïve 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 bebent 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.
In that case, the above pro-DM 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
held
about the world (expressed propositionally) that humanity might once have
accepted or to which some still adhere. But, to state the obvious, 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:
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
held
about the world (expressed propositionally) that humanity might once have
accepted or to which some still adhere. But, to state the obvious, 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 that "not p"
were the case
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 this 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 such 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 possibly 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,
we might be able to make
some sense of this response, but we don't, and it isn't difficult to see why we
don't. 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 so. In that sense, subjective appearances are contradicted by
objective facts.
However,
this latest pro-DM 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
the con. 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 perhaps 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 peculiar idea (but as far as I know they haven't wandered down that
blind alley, yet),
since, for them, everything is Ideal; but materialists can't.
Of
course, that comment itself depends on a view of "contradiction" 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 odd 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' observation 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 in such a way? 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
such metaphysical language, which this is. I have already noted above that I don't prefer this
odd way of talking. Obscure language like this
is merely being employed here to assist in its 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, philosophers or anyone else
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.]
If so, we are forced to abandon the idea that "objective" means "mind-independent",
thus 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 naïveté 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.]
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
in fact
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 such 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 that 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 isin-itself (perhaps with respect to DM, as it is in
relation to its constantly changing nature).
Of course, this take on 'objectivity' would
clearly 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, of course, 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. Nor is your favourite aunt (if you have one).
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, at least, in 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 what 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 real 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', 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 to be 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, a Galileo or an Einstein 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 them has a clear meaning or a fixed use
(when employed metaphysically), 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 theory
that 'reality contradicts appearances' actually depends on this obscure pair,
it must 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!
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.
In view of the above, perhaps we should
consider examples that illustrate the alleged conflict between science and
'commonsense' (disparities many think haveactually 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 thick cloud -- that is, if it didn't appear
(to a local observer) 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 an insurmountable (logical) barrier. 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 onlymatters 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).
These two
aren't even inconsistent, since they can both be true (when they have been
interpreted).
Consider these pair interpreted sentences:
R11a: It appears to be the
case that it is raining.
R11b: It appears to be raining. [Which
is a more colloquial version of R11a.]
R12a: It is not the case that it is
raining.
R12b: It isn't raining. [Which is a more
colloquial version of R12a.]
R12c: The
water main next door has just burst.
So, NN
might look out of the window and truthfully utter R11b, while NM
truthfully comes out with R12b a few seconds later. Both are speaking the truth
since, unbeknown to NN, there has just been a major fracture in a
neighbouring water pipe, which is cascading what looks like rain high into the
air over NN's house, prompting NM to utter R12c soon after.
[Yes, this
is yet another trite example, but it has the not inconsiderable merit of making
things clear enough even for benighted DM-fans to get the point.]
Moreover, unless we subscribe to the view
that facts and appearances are intelligent, or
are perhaps both argumentative and
belligerent -– that is, we assume they are capable of arguing with each
other -- 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, either. They certainly 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 (which, once more, the
DM-classics tell us they must do). 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 also told). So, even if this were a
contradiction, it wouldn't be dialectical.
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.
Admittedly, we might interpret this particular phenomenon differently today, but that doesn't affect how things
stillappear to observers. In that case,
at best, any DM-'contradiction'
here must be
figurative, if it is to apply in any meaningful way -- either that or it must
depend on some sort of terminological re-definition (that has yet to be
explained with any clarity).
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 could well 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.
In addition, Rees seems to be interested in
contradictory pairs whereboth halves are true (or which relate to
'contradictory' states of affairs that somehow coexist) -- i.e., those involving seemingly 'correct' appearances which are
'contradicted' by genuinely 'objective' underlying realities
-– otherwise the alleged superiority of
DL over
FL would surely 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.
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 when one was true the other was false. [Or even
that they both fail to relate to 'contradictory' states of affairs that coexist.] But, because DM-theorists
without exception fail to specify clearly what they actually 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.]
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 '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 uniqueframe of reference. But science itself can neither confirm nor confute
thatparticular 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. Italic emphasis in the original.]
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.]
"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.
"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.]
Again, 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
that, 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.
or even 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 any change in motion, and that 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 factors involved, the walker herself. That is, of course, just a roundabout way of
saying that we don't live in a mathematical universe, or even 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 Eleven Part One and
Essay Five)! A perusal of any advanced physics
discussion board or forum will also amply confirm this. For example, I have been asking
Professors of Physics on Quora for the last six 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 -- let alone 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 the above considerations were an accurate
depiction of the relation between these two theories (the Ptolemaic and the
Copernican), 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
reflect objects and processes that '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 any 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' (at least as
Lenin defined "objectivity"). 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 astheir 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), andit
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
both that scenario and its opposite?
Returning to saner issues: as I pointed out
earlier (but 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 is 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.
That pair certainly looks
contradictory (especially if both relate to the same strikers at the same
moment, and 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 (or, indeed, different
background circumstances) 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; their focus centres 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 or 'reflecting' 'appearances' (or perhaps even expressing a 'commonsense view' of
the universe), and they still hold either or both to be true, or 'partially/relatively true' --
whether or not
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 debunked, erroneous or otherwise misguided theories from previous
generations/centuries. Andif 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 early modern
'urban myth' that some women not only can, they have actually 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 much 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.]
[Of
course, any dialecticians tempted to cling on 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 have to 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 another 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' ('truth'). (More on this in
Essay Twelve (when it is
published in full). See also,
here and
here.)]
On the other hand, if an antiquated, obsolete
or debunked 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,
in that case, 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'). We would not have
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) confronting each other.
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 relativelyclear 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
in favour of the view that scientific propositions contradict indicative sentences
that 'give expression to
appearances', that still
wouldn't achieve all that dialecticians seem to require of them. 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:
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 --, that is, not 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 the DM-literature itself contains 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 isMickey Mouse Science,
par excellence, so DM-fans have no room to point their
ideologically-compromised fingers at critics like me.
Indeed, 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
our use of 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 a 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
Philosophers and scientists often
confuse ordinary language with 'commonsense',
run the two together or argue that they (somehow) depend on each other. [On this
topic in general, see Peels and Woudenberg (2020).] Part of the idea
here seems to be that the former 'contains' or 'expresses' the latter.
However,
concerning
the alleged contradiction between 'appearance and reality' (discussed in
previous subsections), the latter has itself been (partially) illustrated by the
obvious clash between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomical systems,
that is between early modern theories that the Earth
isn't sat motionless at the centre of the Universe and earlier theories that it
was. These days those who tend to conflate the vernacular with
'commonsense' also seem to 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 human psychology and behaviour --, and everyday language.
So, given this rather widespread view of 'commonsense', it would seem incongruous,
misguided or even mistaken to use the word "sunrise", for instance, when the Sun doesn't actually
rise. Along with other notorious examples (some of which will be reviewed in
Essay Thirteen Part Two), this is supposed to show that ordinary language still retains concepts
based on, or derived from, defunct metaphysical, religious or quasi-scientific
doctrines, 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 employment, and use "common sense" to
refer its ordinary use --
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 put to one side
for now.]
Notwithstanding the above, 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 that 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), Peels and Woudenberg (2020), Stebbing (1958) and Stroud (2000). This issue will be
discussed in more detail in Essays Twelve Part Seven and Thirteen Part Two. Since
writing this, I have come across a somewhat similar approach to the line adopted
at this site in
Frank (1950), Chapter Seven.]
Nevertheless, a much more revealing fact about ordinary language -– and one all
too easily
missed -- is that we can readily form the negations of sentences that
contain allegedly obsolete notions (like those about 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" and "spin", etc.), the meaning of which has almost invariably been modified by
re-definition, or analogically and/or
metaphorically (etc.). In addition, scientists introduce technical terms not found in
the vernacular (at that time), but which might subsequently appear in ordinary speech, such as "electricity",
"protein" and "placebo"
-- or which might not, such as "allele",
"superposition"
and "2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine". 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 leading 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, serious problems. Here, for example, is leading Physicist, the
late
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 and several links added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site.]
I don't want to suggest that I agree with
everything the above author has to say
about the nature of language (or even scientific language!), but
Peat's comments certainly indicate that (some) leading scientists themselves are aware
there is a problem. [A point brought out rather well by Becker (2018).]
[Admittedly, Peat concurs with Bohm when he suggests that we need to learn from Native
American languages, many of which seem to have a rather peculiar grammar, but it is to be
wondered how a culture that has produced no science or technology of any note
has much in this respect to teach one that has. (Again, this topic 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
of the present Essay seeks to show, it can't. Having said that, 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.
Clearly, 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 that word is an echo of the old Geocentric
Theory of the solar system, no one thinks that when Astronomers use it 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 stellar influence. Still less would anyone be willing to accept the
idea that when someone is described as "hysterical" it 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 also 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",
that would suggest scientists are
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 is in each case an unrelated or even obsolete use
of language. For example: "Oxygen"
(derived from the original Greek meaning "acid"); "Quark"
(coined by
Murray
Gell-Mann from Finnegans
Wake -- and 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 some sort of 'semantic adhesive'. 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, indeed, for what it purpose was used (even
many centuries later). But, that would also suggest 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,
especially since many seem to think that not even the letter "A" can't
remain the same from moment to moment never mind a word and its meaning. This topic was covered in Part One,
here. On those
(allegedly) morphoholic letter "A"s, see
Essay Six.]
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' their meaning when young, rather
like the way that they might pick up a virus from a sibling, friend or carer.
Given that view, each speaker must remain 'infected with these unchanging
meanings' for the rest of their life.
[The
recent widespread infatuation with
Richard
Dawkins's
'memes' also
trades on a pernicious version of this
fetishisation 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 that case,
it looks like 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 physical existence
of human beings and their relation to the material universe. It would be a function of the
social life of words and these disembodied 'meanings'. Hence, as noted
above, 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-division and the class war 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 ancient myths
about
language and meaning as a gift of
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, Rees argues that while 'commonsense' might be alright in its own
legitimate sphere it is nevertheless inadequate when it is 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 range 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 greatlyshortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modernEnglish, but omitting simple and complex
tensed participles and
auxiliary
verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded
complexity, rapidity or scope:
[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, tides ebb and flow or winds blow -- would
thereby have advertised a lack of comprehension of English (or whatever language theirs happened to be),
compounded by a dangerously
defective knowledge of the world. So, not knowing that fires burn or rivers flow, for example,
could endanger someone's 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 instance, reflected a 'fixed and changeless' view of
the world would probably be regarded as learning
disabled. Either that or they would perhaps be viewed as if they were in the grip of an
off-the-wall
philosophical theory of some description.]
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, a brain scan or even the
use of a consulting couch. 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; bold emphases added.]
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
was, apparently, 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 ofcomprehending 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 translatedin 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) If we suppose Hegel were
mistaken -- and we are capable of understanding him enough to be able to say eventhat 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. [Admittedly, 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.]
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 numerous dials, read
several meters, carefully mix a few 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, write code or programme a
computer, consult a computer screen, construct (physical or 'virtual') models,
research the relevant literature, speak to colleagues, write reports, formulate
and use equations, attend conferences and seminars, publish papers, articles and books, apply for
grants, etc., etc. Most of these have to be carried out if a theory is to
become anything other than speculative, tentative or remain merely hypothetical, let
alone accepted as established fact (or as a valid theory). Clearly, every single
one of these activities and performances takes place in the ordinaryphenomenal world and have to be carried out by ordinary (albeit highly
qualified and trained) human beings.
These are non-negotiable facts.
Hence, such socially-conditioned, communally-sanctioned and
professionally-mandated practices take place in this world,
the world of phenomena, and this enables the
intelligent and efficient prosecution of scientific research and with that the
advancement of knowledge (albeit seriously distorted by capitalism). 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.,
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 also constrained and regulated by the same conventions
and protocols that govern
everyday behaviour, speech and reasoning, which are in turn 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.
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 actually 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
reallyis 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
(all those underlying) 'real essences' is pointless. Indeed, 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 (or
the time they have worked) 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 will.
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
-- which is
because it is
predicated on a
series of
logical blunders -- while the
second half self-destructs no less readily.
That
is, of course, quite apart from the fact that this alleged 'dialectical interplay' also
takes place in 'the world of appearances', which means that it is clearly incapable of turning
phenomenological dust into epistemological gold 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 don't prefer
this way a talking, and, once more, it is only being used here in order to
assist in its own demise. Those two words do not, and nor should they be taken to imply I am promoting, advocating
or recommending
Phenomenalism, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. Again, I
reject all philosophical theories as
incoherent non-sense.]
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 remark:
"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
"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 meanhere (and no one ever 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:
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 (indicated by
'scare' quotes in S2b), then S2b 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.
S2b: It isn't the case that 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. This means that
anyone objecting in this way clearly means by "the Sun rises in the morning",
"the earth falls away in the morning".
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.]
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 therefore 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:
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 (1) was used in S10 to
derive the falsehood of S6.]
(2)
Reality itself is contradictory.
On the
contrary, 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 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 'difficulties', 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"
is 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 this:
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.]
Putting the
natural sciences to one side for the present, Rees and other DM-theorists often
cite examples drawn from (a 'dialectical' version of)
HM to illustrate the
alleged clash between "essence" and "appearance".
[Several other
such examples have been
considered at length in Essay Eight Part Two,
here,
here and
here.]
Perhaps an examination of the
cases they cite might help clarify the point DM-theorists wish to make?
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.... 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; paragraphs merged.]
This passage makes it plain that while
Capitalism appears on the surface to be fair (but surely only to
non-Marxists and non-socialists), its underlying 'essence' is
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 seems to express. [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? It might prove possible to rephrase Rees's argument so
that the alleged contradiction becomes a little more obvious, perhaps on the
following lines:
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
will suffice?
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 clearer
understanding of Rees's intentions might 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 would
suggest 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, even 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 others that Capitalism isn't fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism
isn't fair. [Or, so they 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).
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.
But of
course, R26 is an incorrect statement of the results of this argument, which
should be this:
R26a:
Consequently, some think capitalism is fair while others believe it isn't.
However,
even if that were the case,
the supposed 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 -- by different individuals.
Anyway, few people (and certainly
no revolutionaries) believe that capitalism is both fair and not fair at
the same time (as R26 seems to imply). 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,
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 example!
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.
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 DM-theorists often imagine. Nor can it be
'objective' itself -- and that isn't just because the word
"objective" is itself hoplessly 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 -- not to mention the materials any such practice has to deal
with (i.e., books, articles, computer screens, etc., etc.) are all also trapped
in this 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, typed or spoken about,
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'.
Rees in fact
makes some attempt to address these concerns by arguing that Lenin's theory had
progressed markedly (and 'dialectically') between the writing of MEC and
PN. I have reviewed this material in Appendix Three.
Exception might be taken to the above
comments since
they seem to imply that dialecticians regard appearances as unreliable,
misleading or false -- even though, as we will see,
Herbert
Marcuse, for example,
openly admits they are.
We also saw earlier that other DM-fans said more-or-less the same -- for
instance,
here and
here.
On the
contrary, it could be maintained that dialecticians (or perhaps the majority of them)
don't believe
this of appearances. Indeed, the following passage from TAR underlines this:
"[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, to some level or 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 and 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
'appearances' struggle
with and then turn into 'deeper reality' (as the
DM-classics tell us all such 'dialectical opposites' must)? If they do,
DM-theorists have been remarkably secretive about this. 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 this 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' such 'deeper reality'. Or are we to suppose that 'deeper
reality' wasn't 'contradicted' until sentient life evolved? While that
odd idea might sit well with maverick Hegelian Idealists, or even run-of-the-mill
theists, it can't do so for hard-headed
materialists.
Once more,
none of this makes sense, eveninDM-terms!
It could be
objected that if there were no sentient beings then there would 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 (again, like the proletariat can't exist without the capitalist class, or so
we are told). That will have to be the case if this were a 'dialectical
contradiction' (and if the DM-classics are 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, once more, 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 previously
accepted, relatively true
theory, which in turn isn't set in stone. In the long-run, this method 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 progressive refinement 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
supposed to be here, even in
DM-terms!
Ignoring that annoying problem 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 naïve 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
and in Appendix Three ("dialectical
gyrations" are 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 (isolated) 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. Certainly, we have yet to witness teams of synchronised dialecticians
all chanting in unison the latest verbal application of their most recent
'dialectical flip', or each 'freshly produced 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 socially-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 earlier,
in such
circumstances there can be no
such thing as "right".]
An
appeal to a publicly accessible language here would be to no avail, either -- as pointed out
earlier. Moreover,
since the use of any such language takes place in this'unreliable world of appearances',
recourse to it would be rather like trying to check your height by placing your hand on the
top of your
head.
[Once again:
in the above it was assumed that DM-epistemology and the 'dialectical theory of
abstraction' was entirely valid.]
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 are social products, abstractionism is 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 on 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 (i.e., report on their ideas verbally or in print), or keep their
theories to themselves. Moreover, they have to do so in this
'world of appearances', too.
But, short of ahot-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', forcomparison, 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 were to 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
objected 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 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 dialecticians are capable
of ascertaining what this content really is, then, if DM-epistemology is
to be believed, any such '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 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. In Appendix Three, I have dealt
with John Rees's attempt to rescue Lenin from the solipsistic black hole
he created for himself in
MEC.]
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 a single DM-abstraction 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
individuals, their thoughts only
appear to them to be thus and so.
And even if such ideas and concepts were
'self-certifying', they would still only appear to do that.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: NNthought a stick
was bent until she realised it was partly immersed in water.
T3: NMthought 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
have them
in a vice-like grip. This paradigm forms part of a family of theories all of which
regard 'thoughts' as inner, shadowy 'mental' events, states, processes or episodes,
which somehow
represent things to us 'internally' and 'directly'. Integral to this is the
further belief that it is 'the mind' that 'refines' all this 'data' for us,
which also happens to be a consequence
of certain (still-to-be-indentified) neurological/psychological processes taking
place 'in each head'. This means that the results of all these inner processes are only accessible to the individual concerned:
"Descartes's view of the nature
of mind endured much longer than his view of matter. Indeed among educated
people in the West who were not professional philosophers it is still the most
widespread view of the mind. Most contemporary philosophers would disown
Cartesian dualism but even those who explicitly renounce it are often profoundly
influenced by it. Many people, for instance,
go along with Descartes in identifying the mental realm as the realm of
consciousness. They think of consciousness as an object of introspection; as
something we see when we look within ourselves. They think of it as an
inessential, contingent matter that consciousness has an expression in speech
and behaviour. Consciousness, as they conceive it, is something to which each of
us has direct access in our own case. Others, by contrast, can only infer to our
conscious states by accepting our testimony or making causal inferences from our
physical behaviour." [Kenny (1992), p.2. Bold emphases added; paragraphs
merged.]
"In philosophy, ever since
Plato, the mainstream opinion has been that the mind is the organ of thought;
thinking is what the mind is for, and we act as we do because we think what we
do." [Fodor
(2011), p.24. Bold emphasis added.]
"Philosophical
reflection on human nature, on the body and soul, goes back to the dawn of
philosophy. The polarities between which it fluctuates were set out by Plato and
Aristotle. According to Plato, and the Platonic-Christian tradition of
Augustine, the human
being is not a unified substance, but a combination of two distinct substances,
a mortal body and an immortal soul. According to Aristotle, a human being
is a unified substance, the soul (psuchē) being the form of the body.
To describe that form is to describe the characteristic powers of human beings:
in particular, the distinctive powers of intellect and will that characterize
the rational psuchē. Modern debate on this theme commences with the
heir to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition: namely, the Cartesian conception of
human beings as two one-sided things, a mind and a body. Their two-way causal
interaction was invoked to explain human experience and behaviour.
"The greatest
figures of the first two generations of twentieth-century neuroscientists, e.g.,
Sherrington,
Eccles and
Penfield, were avowed
Cartesian dualists. The third generation retained the basic Cartesian structure,
but transformed it into brain–body dualism: substance dualism was abandoned, but
structural dualism retained. For neuroscientists now ascribe much the same array
of mental predicates to the brain as Descartes ascribed to the mind, and
conceive of the relationship between thought and action, and experience and its
objects, in much the same way as Descartes -- essentially merely replacing the
mind by the brain. The central theme of our book was to demonstrate the
incoherence of brain–body dualism, and to disclose its misguided
crypto-Cartesian character. Our constructive aim was to show that an
Aristotelian account, with due emphasis on first- and second-order active and
passive abilities and their modes of behavioural manifestation, supplemented by
Wittgensteinian insights that complement Aristotle's, is necessary to do justice
to the structure of our conceptual scheme and to provide coherent descriptions
of the great discoveries of post-Sherringtonian cognitive neuroscience."
[Bennett and Hacker (2008), pp.240-41. Bold emphases and links added. Italics
in the original.]
"...[V]irtually no
philosopher doubted, from the time of
Locke
until roughly 1914, that, whatever concepts and ideas were, they were clearly
mental objects of some kind. And no large-scale and comprehensive demolition job
was done against this particularly wide-spread and influential philosophical
misconception until
Wittgenstein produced his
Philosophical Investigations...." [Putnam (1975b), p.7.]
As Essay
Thirteen Parts One and
Three show, DM-theorists have
clearly bought into this view of 'the mind' and 'thought'; they just have a
different theory that accounts for it. They too are locked into the
Platonic/Christian/Cartesian view of 'the mind', 'thought' and 'consciousness',
that all are internal, private, individually-experienced phenomenon. That helps
explain why they all define 'the process of abstraction' in terms of private
mental acts. Hence, it has seemed
obvious to many that since appearances arise from sensation, they can't be 'thoughts' (nor
visa versa).
However,
here is Plato laying the foundations of this theory of 'the mind' -- i.e., that
'thought' is like 'the soul' in private conversation with itself:
"Soc. But must not the mind,
or thinking power, which misplaces them, have a conception either of both
objects or of one of them?
"Theaet. Certainly.
"Soc. Either together or in succession?
"Theaet. Very good.
"Soc. And do you mean by conceiving, the same which I mean?
"Theaet. What is that?
"Soc. I mean the conversation which the soul holds with herself in considering
of anything. I speak of what I scarcely understand; but the soul when thinking
appears to me to be just talking -- asking questions of herself and answering
them, affirming and denying. And when she has arrived at a decision, either
gradually or by a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does not doubt,
this is called her opinion. I say, then, that to form an opinion is to speak,
and opinion is a word spoken, -- I mean, to oneself and in silence, not aloud or
to another: What think you?
"Theaet. I agree."
[Plato
(1997e), p.210. However, I have used Benjamin Jowett's on-line version, not
the one found in Plato (1997e). Bold emphases added.]
Similar ideas were expressed in another of his
dialogues,
the
Sophist (in this case, the exchange is between the
Eleatic Stranger and
Theaetetus himself):
"Str. And therefore thought, opinion, and imagination are
now proved to exist in our minds both as true and false.
"Theaet. How so?
"Str. You will know better if you first gain a knowledge of what they are, and
in what they severally differ from one another.
"Theaet. Give me the knowledge which you would wish me to gain.
"Str. Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is
called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?
"Theaet. Quite true."
[Plato
(1997b), pp.287-88.
Once again, I have quoted Benjamin Jowett's on-line version, not Plato (1997b). Bold emphases added.]
[Details
concerning other Ancient Greek thinkers who took a similar line can be found in
Sorabji (2004), pp.205-26. I have entered into this topic in greater detail in
Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here.
Readers are directed there for more information.]
But this
'inner world' is uncheckable and hence whatever each individual
experiences there (that is if they do!) may only appear to be this or
that.
So, 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'. Hence it would seem that the only difference between them (i.e., between
'thoughts' and 'appearances') is that the latter
appear to 'arrive from the outside' while the former are supposedly generated
'internally', under our control (to a limited extent). But, given this view of
'appearances', the belief that there
is an 'outside', which can act as a 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' and which is capable of so regimenting them. This idea in turn trades on what has come to be
called 'the
homunculus fallacy' (a theory recently animated in Pixar's cartoon,
Inside Out), which is, clearly, no solution at all. 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.
Earlier, we saw that this approach to knowledge in the end trades on a further
belief that either:
(b) 'The mind' is in effect an internal,
bourgeois individual,
different from the Christian/Cartesian 'soul' in name only.
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 (link above), 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 validate or 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 began 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 'Ideas' -- only now trapped in, and
defined by, 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
validation would 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 tocheck anything. (Perish the thought!) But, the situation is even worse 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 'appearance'
coincided with 'essence' (to use the jargon) on the Final Day, they would still
only appear to do so. 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 rejects or denies 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...
Furthermore
-- and this shouldn't really need
pointing out --, thoughts and theories can be every bit as mistaken as
beliefs based on appearances can (if we accept this way of picturing knowledge).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 beliefs and theories. With respect to DM, the situation is
even 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 allegation
was substantiated
here.] If so, there is an
extremely high probability that even the soundest 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 acceptable. In fact, it soon engages self-destruct mode. For if
nothingin epistemology is indubitable (save we revert to those
comforting Cartesian certainties --, 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; after all, even Descartes required 'God' to validate them!), then the
superiority of 'thought' over 'sensation', 'essence' over 'accident' and 'reality' over
'appearance' is illusory -- given this crazy way of viewing things.
In which case, alongside misleading
phenomena, we now have to contend with even more dubious DM-theories and
'abstractions'. And, like it or not, these increasingly suspect theories can
provide no secure basis for an explanation of the "true nature" of
all those equally
shaky 'appearances'. In short, an apparentlycorrect 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 concepts like these (i.e.,
"essence", "reality", "appearance", "theory", "objectivity", and their ilk), are
forever lost in a shadowy world of 'misleading
semblances'.43
So, it now
looks like the
'dialectical circuit' locks DM in permanent orbit around these ever shaky 'appearances'. In that case, with respect to any given DM-theorist who employs
problematic concepts like these ('appearance' and 'reality', again), the
supposed route that leads them to the formation of abstract theory, and back again (via practice),
as a way of delving behind phenomena to uncover hidden "essence", 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 objected that, contrary to the above, dialecticians locate abstraction in thought; that associates it with theory
and hence (at least intentionally) with essence, not with
appearance. So the aforementioned anti-DM 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
doesn't
become objective if it remains confined to an inner, mental or abstract domain.
It has to enter the phenomenal world through practice. Minimally, it at
least has to be
vocalised or written down if it is subsequently to be acted upon or even tested,
and 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. That would be
the case all the more so if
the 'asymptotic approach'
metaphor is thrown in for good measure (which,
as we have seen,
implies a highly corrosive form of scepticism itself). 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'. And, of course, practice takes place there, too. Hence,
anytest
of theory must be actioned in this 'unreliable world of appearances'. If
so, practice, even if it were a test
of truth, can't provide DM-epistemology 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 makes no difference. It still ends-up wrapped around
the same oldtree 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 discovered,
this muddle is a direct consequence of appropriating a set of ideas Dialectical
Marxists borrowed from
Traditional Metaphysics -- in the present case, those associated with the
'appearance'/'reality' and the 'essence'/'appearance' distinctions.
It may
only be avoided by rejecting these regressive dogmas in their entirety.
Naturally,
that
doesn't mean 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 only do so successfully when the confused
categories of Traditional Metaphysics and DM are completely abandoned.
[This used
to form part of Note 24. I have
added the following criticism of certain aspects of
Bertell Ollman's work since several comrades recommended it as an excellent explanation
of 'the dialectic', especially in connection with the 'process of abstraction'.
A recent example of the latter can be found
here, where I have also posted a
series of 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 his ideas on this topic 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) of the actual process
itself.
Here is the opening salvo:
"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.]
However, we have already seen that neither dialecticians nor their 'theory' are actually capable of explaining
change; indeed, we also discovered that if this theory were true, change would
actually be
impossible (on that see Essays Five through Eight Part Three, but especially
here
and here). In addition, we have
also shown throughout much of Essay Three Parts
One and Two, that no sense can be made of the 'process of
abstraction', either. 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 confusion?
Well,
apparently not, since all Ollman has to offer are a few pages of trite observations
about
what he thinks we all do when we allegedly engage in 'the process of 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 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.]
Perhaps the foregoing is being unfair to Ollman? In that case, it might be wise to
examine what he
actuallyhad 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'.
"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.
Nevertheless, the few things Ollman
does say about this topic hardly 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 this is all that Ollman has to say about the 'process of
abstraction' 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
natureof knowledge, just as he has confused paying attention, or paying heed,
with abstraction. Sure, he
gestures toward acknowledging the social nature of knowledge -- for
instance, 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 obscure, That isn't
at all surprising since this trick is impossible to pull-off. For example, how
might it be possible for
Abstractor A to ensure that she has abstracted anything in
the same way as Abstractor B? Given this theory, all these two will have to go on
are their own individual, subjective attempts to that end. Indeed, all they
have are their own
private takes on "group
interests, and other social constraints", and the same goes for everyone
else in the same group. However, neither of them has any way of comparing the results delivered by
this 'process' with those produced by 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 that
material again in this
sub-section.]
Moreover, 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
supposed to be 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.
Of course,
it could be argued that the 'process of abstraction' isn't in the end under our
conscious control (i.e., it is involuntary, rather like
belief-formation), but if that is so, much of what Ollman and others have to say
about this 'process' becomes even more obscure. So, was Marx consciously
'abstracting' when he spoke about this 'process' applied to 'the
population'? If not, what sort of intellectual exercise was he involved in when
he wrote the following?
"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.
Bold emphases added.]
It seems
impossible to view the above highlighted words as if they were part of an
involuntary exercise (i.e., one not under Marx's control), and if that is
so, and this is regarded as a paradigmatic example of the 'process of
abstraction', it must be the case that that process is voluntary (i.e.,
supposedly under our control), after all.
[As noted
above, I return to consider this passage in more detail
below.]
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'. [Once again, 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 any such language. That is because it
bases language acquisition, as well as
linguistic meaning, 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,
post-Renaissance
bourgeois individualist theories of language,
cognition and knowledge, which picture these as dispositions, aptitudes and skills we all
activate, or learn, as isolated individuals. We are
later supposed to bring the results of these dispositions, aptitudes and skills
back into society (still acting 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 individual is ranked first
while the social is placed second in the pecking order.
Hence, given this approach, we act and learn as social atoms, first, and then attempt to transform ourselves into 'social molecules',
second.
This is the abstractionist version of Margaret
Thatcher's "There
is no such thing as society".
[There is 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
a little hasty, so
we will have to wait to see how (or if) Ollman manages to dig himself out of this particular,
bourgeois-individualist hole.
[Update 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 might be
objected that this is precisely 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 any 'abstract general ideas'? Or
even the
Proper Names thereof? If it does, Ollman has yet to inform his readers.
This
is quite apart from the fact that even when we concentrate on the soloist, for
instance, the
rest of the orchestra doesn't become silent or disappear. But, 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, indeed, 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.
Which means they can not only be checked they can be shared (with ease). Abstraction (supposedly) takes place
in a hidden, inner world where the bourgeois individual reigns supreme
-- where testing has no jurisdiction and sharing becomes impossible.
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. The same is the case with
abstractions (the following material is relevant to the
earlier discussion of 'thought
experiments').
There are
several problems with that attempted rebuttal:
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 result' 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. We
are taught them, in the open.
[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 can 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 those produced by
anyone else -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them
correctly. In fact, the word "correct" can gain no grip in such
circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems
correct will be correct. But for something to be correct 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 -- or on Google.
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?...
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 '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', with 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 focus 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 'mind' of
each socially-isolated, lone abstractor (even if this approach to knowledge was
subsequently augmented by a gesture
toward practice in DM-Epistemology). Nevertheless, this view of knowledge acquisition pictured
it as a form of acquaintance. However, 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 general 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. Bold emphasis added.]
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 is what gives meaning to 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 would be the case if all cats died; the word "cat" would still have a
meaning and that meaning would be given by the 'abstract concept' -- or whatever
any particular version of this family of theories implied.]
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
on (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 Proper Names or other singular terms (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
-- a term 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.
(1)
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.]
(2)
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 (which 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 just assigned him.
So, the sentence "Socrates runs" now becomes a list of nouns, "Socrates"
"Identity" and "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 finally arrive at these abstract terms,
the result supposedly yields 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
might be
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.
Hence, we all end up
meaning something
different
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....
By way of contrast, 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.
"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 '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 also seen.
Ollman
informs his readers that Marx employed four different senses of "abstraction" --
e.g., in relation to:
(i) Dividing of the world into manageable "mental
constructs";
(ii) The
results of the process itself;
(iii)
Describing the
difference between a deficient, ideological use of certain concepts; and,
(iv) His use
of this method in
Das Kapital (pp.61-62).
It is, of
course,
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 his 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, it is because of
what he himself had to say about it. Moreover,
the passage usually quoted
in support of the claim
that Marx used 'the process of 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.]
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 and convincing as the hand
movements of stage magicians. That 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 he had omitted what few (superficial) examples
there remain of methods employed in traditional thought.
[Yes, I know the
first quotation above is from the
Grundrisse, not Das Kapital!]
What Marx actually
did was put
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
would have to do in order to follow someone else's thoughts. And they
definitelycan'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 'instruction' how to
go about 'abstracting' 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. That, 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 or emulate these mythical 'mental moves', or show
that their own weak gesture in that direction is exactly thesameas the one used by Marx, or even that it yields the same resultsas
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." [Ibid.]
From there we
then:
"[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." [Ibid.]
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? In fact, and unfortunately, Marx left no detailed rules informing
his readers how he understood the
nature of class. Volume Three of Das Kapital notoriously breaks off at that very
point. As I pointed out in Essay Eight Part Two (here),
Marxists ever since have been struggling 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 core distinction, 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 (let alone, in private, in their heads)?
And problems
like these 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?
What if analysis can proceed indefinitely? How can we rule that
out? Where do we stop? And how might we ascertain, concerning any two randomly selected abstractors,
that they
will always stop at the same point if all this takes place, secretly, 'in the head'?
So, as I
suggested earlier, 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 particular passage and 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
the least bit surprising. As we
have seen, abstractionists
(typically) 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
in response.
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 their readers --, no one seems
able to say what this
'process' actually is, let alone what its results turn out to be!
By way of contrast, the actual method Marx
employed (as noted above: we can physicallysee him using it, on the page
in front of us -- i.e., indulging
in an intelligent and novel, if imprecise, use of language) is precisely how
the greatest scientists have always behaved. In their work they present evidence
and construct arguments in the open, in a public domain using a public language,
even if that is often accompanied by
an innovative use of words -- all of which can be checked, examined and questioned by anyone who
has a mind to do so.
That can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".
"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 now offers his readers the following
(highly clichéd, but no less terminally vague) remarks 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.
Bold emphasis and link added.]
Although Ollman
tries to argue that
Marx "abstracted" change, he forgot to say exactly how or where he did
this, or even what it means to "abstract" change, to begin with. 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 Pj
be true of A at t2
and Pj
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",
and
Pj
∈Γ.]
[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, 12:13:27 on May 17, 2023,
when she had been writing about him a few seconds earlier, Engels himselfhad 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, despite what a
dictionary might tell you, there is currently no
(philosophical) 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 even 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 with 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 (or
even know about)?
Are complex and simple changes to be aggregated? Are the above examples
also to be taken into account in this respect? That is, those concerning A?
If you mention a distant galaxy have to magically changed it? 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. Does the Sun change if you scratch your head? 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, college course or organ transplant --, and NM, who was
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 those questions, 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 (in
relation to A) to be drawn),
what chance is there that there is an 'abstract' concept of
change that applies to every single instance of it, past, present and future,
and that we are capable of arriving at it?
[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
fluid, is 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
or even concluded 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 or 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. [These trite examples illustrate the stark difference between count
and mass nouns and how we all handle them in everyday life, irrespective
of any (philosophical) theories we might assent to.] 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 -- follow the "mass noun" link above for more
details) 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 knowthat 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 froma single 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 onthis 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 that 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, of course, 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 were to assume that
'the process of 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 forthnot
even so much as an abstract mouse!
Ollman spends the next few pages
listing and examining 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.
Bold emphases added.]
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 countless action words (see below!).
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 happen in relation to ordinary language,
that would itself be another regrettable result of the same set of crass syntactic errors that
originally 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 modernEnglish, but omitting simple and complex
tensed participles and
auxiliary
verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded
complexity, rapidity, or scope:
[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., as 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), loc cit.]
If some 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 'process' 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.]
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 that, 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 haveno 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, or be defined in terms of
them, 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, set up or establish, 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 notorious
Ontological Argument.
It seems,
therefore, that
those who accept this
view of the nature of Capital -- the alleged 'relation', not the book(!)
-- in support can only appeal 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 of which confusions are further compounded by,
(iv) A 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 solely from language
or thought. These moves mean that those enamoured of this way of reasoning
now imagine they need provide little to no evidence in support -- as we have just seen is
the case with Ollman (with his laughable 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).]
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 down, 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, ifH(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) through 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, either. 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
thought were "essential" weren't "essential", after all.
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/Hegelian Horror Show
won't wash -- that is, no more than it would be acceptable for George W Bush, for
instance, to
deny he is a mass murderer, or for
Richard Nixon to deny he is 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.]
"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 are 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 ways he could possibly know anything about the alleged "mental
activities" engaged in by Karl Marx (and what resulted from them). In that
case, these words look like an empty gesture:
"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.]
Some
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, and in the open. 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. And Ollman has been as tight-lipped about it as other
DM-theorists 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", either, 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 Marxhimselfhad 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 now adds these remarks:
"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-à-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 and 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 thepublicly 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 regard), 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
trying to do
-- again, doing so in an open arena, using a public language (in the shape of
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 the page.
Once again, actions speak louder than abstractions.
Here is Ollman, once more:
"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 becauseMarx 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 fantasy.
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.]
"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 processessolely 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 modified to conform with 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
hidden, 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 economistshadalso published in the open. Hedidn't oncethink 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.
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
modified
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 published at this site --, it is
now plain that the above
critics weren't anywhere near harsh enough.
Another
aspect of the defensive stance adopted by dialecticians is the fact that few of
them fail to argue that hostile critics of Dialectical Marxism always
seem
to attack
"the dialectic". This then allows them to brand all such detractors "bourgeois
apologists", which in turn means that
whatever the latter say can safely be ignored as, 'plainly', ideological.
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 visited 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 (indeed, no one
understands), 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 they are even capable of detecting such "differences",
DM-theorists themselves have shown that they, too, don't understand their own
theory (as these Essays have also repeatedly 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 published at this site
also show, there is now no good reason to cling to these vague and confused DM-fantasies, even though there
are
easily
identifiable psychological and ideological motivating factors that help
explain 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 and misbegotten set of doctrines for contingent psychological,
opportunist and
ideological reasons,
and for no other.
[Again, there is much more on this in Essay Nine Parts
One and Two.]
[The "Ah, but what about 1917?" defence
has also 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.
Plato, Rationality, The 'Soul',
And A 'Well-Ordered' City
In his dialogue, the
Republic, Plato makes an explicit connection between a 'well
ordered' city, a 'just city', the 'rational order of the soul' and the class
structure of such a society (the following discussion takes place between Socrates, Adeimantus and
Glaucon (Plato's
older brother), beginning with Socrates -- bold emphases added):
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 these ancient mystics -- 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
nounechon, 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). However, on this in general, see Williams
(1973) and Ferrari (2005).
John Rees made a valiant attempt to circumvent the serious
problems Lenin's Theory of Knowledge creates (at least as far as it had been set
out in
MEC), analysed in
detail in Essay Thirteen Part One.
The main problem arose out of Lenin's almost obsessive reliance on "images" as
the sole source of his (and our) knowledge of the outside world (see the
proof texts quoted below). Unfortunately, this meant his theory was no better than those put forward by the subjective idealists and immanentists he was
criticising in MEC. Consequently, this left Lenin in the same predicament as the
latter had been, As we saw in the aforementioned Essay and Essay Ten
Part One, his theory ended up
trapping him either in a solipsistic universe or a sceptical black
hole.
It might be thought that Rees
successfully demonstrated that Lenin's later, more sophisticated and
'dialectical' theory (expressed in
PN) had no such
implications. Indeed, some might conclude it rescued Lenin's ideas from the two
philosophical dead ends mentioned earlier.
In order to show that that isn't so it might prove useful to
review a few of the points made in the first of above two Essays:
Several critics of the claim that if Lenin were correct, humanity would only
ever have 'images' have objected that this isn't Lenin's position, nor is it
even remotely like it. However, when asked precisely what
these 'other elements of knowledge' are or might be, they grow suspiciously
quiet....
In fact, Lenin had the following to say about
sensation, knowledge and 'images':
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an
image of the external world...." [Lenin (1972),
p.69. Bold emphasis added.]
"All
knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is
true. But the question arises, does
objective reality 'belong to perception,' i.e., is it the source of
perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no, you
are inconsistent and will inevitably arrive at subjectivism, or agnosticism,
irrespective of whether you deny the
knowability of the thing-in-itself, or the objectivity of time, space and
causality (with Kant), or whether you do not even permit the thought of a
thing-in-itself (with Hume). The inconsistency of your empiricism, of your
philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the
objective content of experience, the objective truth of experimental
knowledge...."
[Ibid.,
p.142. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
Now, Lenin had just told us that:
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world...."
[Ibid.,
p.69.]
And:
"All
knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception." [Ibid.,
p.142.]
So, if all knowledge comes from sensation, and
sensation is an 'image' of the world, the only conclusion possible is that,
according to Lenin, all we have as a basis for our knowledge of the external
world are 'images'.
Lenin then proceeds to underline this point:
"For instance, the materialist Frederick Engels --
the not unknown collaborator of Marx and a founder of Marxism -- constantly and
without exception speaks in his works of things and their mental pictures or
images..., and it is obvious that these mental images arise exclusively
from sensations. It would seem that this fundamental standpoint of the
'philosophy of Marxism' ought to be known to everyone who speaks of it, and
especially to anyone who comes out in print in the name of this philosophy....
Engels, we repeat, applies this 'only materialistic conception' everywhere and
without exception, relentlessly attacking Dühring for the least deviation from
materialism to idealism. Anybody who reads Anti-Dühring and Ludwig Feuerbach
with the slightest care will find scores of instances when Engels speaks of
things and their reflections in the human brain, in our consciousness, thought,
etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas are 'symbols' of things,
for consistent materialism must here use 'image,' picture, or reflection instead
of 'symbol,' as we shall show in detail in the proper place." [Ibid.,
pp.32-33.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"[S]ensation
is an image of the external world...." [Ibid.,
p.56. Bold emphasis added.]
"The doctrine of introjection is a muddle, it
smuggles in idealistic rubbish and is contradictory to natural science, which
inflexibly holds that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations,
i.e., the images of the external world, exist within us, produced by the action
of things on our sense-organs." [Ibid.,
p.95.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from
this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which
materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that
outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and
that our perceptions are images of the external world." [Ibid.,
p.111.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Thus, the materialist theory, the theory of the
reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity:
things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images." [Ibid.,
p.119.
Bold emphasis added.]
"For the materialist the 'factually given' is the
outer world, the image of which is our sensations." [Ibid.,
p.121.
Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of
the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the reality
existing outside us, it is only the image of that reality."
[Ibid.,
p.124.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
"The fundamental
distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy
consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception,
idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality."
[Ibid.,
p.320.
Bold emphasis added.]
"What has
annoyed this most worthy 'recent positivist'? Well, how could he help being
annoyed when he immediately realised that from
Haeckel’s
standpoint all the great doctrines of his teacher Avenarius -- for instance,
that the brain is not the organ of thought, that sensations are not images of
the external world, that matter ('substance') or 'the thing-in-itself' is
not an objective reality, and so forth -- are nothing but sheer idealist
gibberish!?" [Ibid.,
p.428. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Link and bold emphasis added.]
There doesn't seem to be much wiggle room here.
Lenin clearly believes that sensations are images (but,
how is an itch, a noise, or a smell, an 'image'?) of 'the external
world', and he is quite clear that sensation (or perception), and hence 'images',
are our only source of knowledge.
Lenin does make some attempt to argue that we
validate these 'images' by means of practice:
"Verification of these images, differentiation
between true and false images, is given by practice." [Ibid.,
p.119. Bold emphasis added.]
But, as has already been pointed out, if Lenin is to
be believed, all we have are images of practice, and hence no 'objective'
way of discriminating a reliable from an unreliable, a valid from an
invalid 'image'. Unless human beings can somehow 'leap out of their heads', or
'by-pass their sensory organs', there is no way to escape from this DM-'prison'
-- if Lenin is to be believed.
Others have wanted to argue that Lenin thought we
have direct access to the outside world via our senses (otherwise known
as
Direct Realism -- we
see this defence attempted in, for example, Goldstick (1980)) -- which
supposedly by-passes these images. Well, Lenin might or might not have believed
this (even though there is precious little textual support for such an
interpretation; there is far more in support of the view that Lenin was a rather
confused
Representational Realist, of sorts), the question is: how could he
possibly have known this if all he has are these 'images' to guide him?
Lenin might have sincerely believed he possessed
eyes, ears, skin and other sense organs, and that they connected him with
'objective reality' outside of himself, but, if his theory is correct, all he had were
images of these organs, and hence images of the 'external world'. Here he is
again:
"This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of
the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the
reality existing outside us, it is only the image of that
reality." [Ibid.,
p.124.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
There is no hint in the above of any such 'direct access to reality'; indeed, Lenin has
inserted a layer of 'images' between himself
and the 'outside world', the existence of which can now only be taken as an act
of faith. Now that Lenin has drawn a veil of 'images' between himself and the
outside world there is no way around this impasse. He is forever trapped
behind this curtain.
It could be objected that Lenin quoted a reply to
this supposed problem, written by Engels:
"Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by
mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation there was action. Im
Anfang war die That.
And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented
it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities
we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise
of our sense-perceptions.
If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an
object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail.
But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does
agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then
that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far,
agree with reality outside ourselves....
"And whenever we find ourselves face to face with a failure, then
we generally are not long in making out the cause that made us fail; we find
that the perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and superficial,
or combined with the results of other perceptions in a way not warranted by
them.... So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly, and to
keep our action within the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and
properly used, so long we shall find that the result of our action proves the
conformity...of our perceptions with the objective...nature of the things
perceived.
Not in one single instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our
sense-perceptions, scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas
respecting the outer world that are, by their very nature, at variance with
reality, or that there is an inherent incompatibility between the outer world
and our sense-perceptions of it."
[Ibid.,
pp.118-20. Bold emphases alone added. Lenin is here quoting the Introduction
to the English Edition of
Engels (1892), p.381 (this links to a PDF). Bold emphases added.]
To which Lenin added:
"Thus, the materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of
objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity: things exist
outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these
images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice."
[Ibid.,
p.119.]
However, as noted above, Lenin made the mistake (which
Engels didn't) of inserting a veil of 'images' between himself and the world
he has yet to prove exists. He even reiterates this idea: "Our
perceptions and ideas are their images."
Admittedly he also added that
"[v]erification of these images, differentiation between true and
false images, is given by practice", but no amount of observation, practice
and science can
remove this screen, since all Lenin now has are 'images' of science, practice and
their supposed results.
[The difficulties Engels's theory itself faces are different,
but no less insurmountable; they will be outlined in Essay Three Part Six, when
it is published.]
In which case,
Lenin still remains trapped in a world of 'images' all of his own
making....
One
of the few recognisablyphilosophical arguments to be found in
MEC (aimed at countering the views
of Phenomenalists, etc.) is the following:
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it
is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the
latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism
deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of
knowledge." [Ibid.,
p.69. Bold emphasis added.]
"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of
that which it 'images.'" [Ibid.,
p.279. Bold emphasis added.]
That's it!
On the basis of this half-formed, quasi-argument Lenin hoped to counter
philosophical theories some still regard as definitive -- especially when
they are set against the sophomoric version of
naïve realism Lenin
tried to promote in MEC.
[I hasten to
add that I don't consider the aforementioned philosophical theories
in any way definitive! In fact, I regard all philosophical theories as
incoherent non-sense.]
Before we
consider whether or not Lenin's argument is successful in its own right, it is
worth pointing out (to those dialecticians who question the deliverances of
'commonsense', which I take to be the same as "naïve
realism", referred to by Lenin -- and who also regale us with the
'appearance'/'reality' distinction) that 'commonsense' can't in fact be
called into question if it is to act as a basis for the Lenin's theory of
knowledge.
[Those who
think this an unfair criticism of Lenin should read on before they adopt that
hasty conclusion.]
Despite
this, and given the other complexities that DM introduces, Lenin's alleged
foundation stone soon starts to crumble into dust. According to DM-epistemology,
knowledge depends on the completion of an
infinite
process
before
the very first thing can be known about anything in the DM-"Totality"
with anything other than
infinite uncertainty.
We have
already seen that this
approach to knowledge means that nobody is in any position to determine
what even a simple tumbler is before
everything about everything is known first.
In response,
it could be argued that the above counter-claim is just another unfair caricature of
dialectical epistemology. In response to that it is worth remembering that
anyone who objects on that basis is similarly in no position to assert it
successfully until we are given a clear account of
DM-epistemology. After over 150 years, we are still waiting.
Indeed, given DM-epistemology, no one
would be in any position to assert that the above counter-claim is being unfair to DM
or Lenin and hope to be speaking the truth
until they too had completed
the aforementioned infinite pilgrimage to Dialectical Mecca!
This means that all forms of 'dialectical knowledge'
are permanently trapped in this sceptical quagmire -- if Engels and Lenin
are to be believed.
[The above seemingly controversial
accusations were fully substantiated in Essay Ten
Part One. Readers are
directed there for more details.]
Despite this, it is worth reflecting on
the sort of response that, say, a
Phenomenalist
might make to Lenin's assertion that his theory begins with the
"naïve" beliefs of ordinary folk, and builds from there:
"The 'naïve realism' of any healthy person who has not been an inmate of a
lunatic asylum or a pupil of the idealist philosophers consists in the view that
things, the environment, the world, exist independently of our
sensation, of our consciousness, of our self and of man in general.
The same experience (not in the Machian sense, but in the human sense
of the term) that has produced in us the firm conviction that independently
of us there exist other people, and not mere complexes of my sensations of high,
short, yellow, hard, etc. -- this same experience produces in us the
conviction that things, the world, the environment exist independently of us.
Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external
world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged,
and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism
deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its
theory of knowledge." [Ibid.,
pp.68-69. Bold emphases alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
She (the
supposed Phenomenalist) might wonder what, for instance, the word "image" is
doing in such prosaic surroundings. Indeed, she might even suggest that if we
were to ask the average man/woman about what they know about the world,
the word "image" would appear nowhere in the reply.
Hence, not
only is the aforementioned dialectical meander through infinite epistemological
space counter-productive (since it implies infinite and permanent ignorance of
everything and anything),
it begins in the wrong place! 'Commonsense'/"naïve realism" -- whatever
they are -- neither start nor end with images.
[To be sure,
certain forms of phenomenalist psychology might do this, but 'commonsense' does
not. Or, if it does, we still await the proof. The latter would be
worthless, anyway, since it too would merely consist of, or would be
based on, yet more 'images'!]
It is worth
pressing this point home: there is no evidence that the "naïve" beliefs of
anyone -- not even the naïve beliefs of DM-fans -- are based on
imagery of any sort, but there is much to suggest that they aren't. Hence, there
is no evidence that either ordinary people or sophisticated socialists
believe any of the following (that is, before they had encountered the DM
classics, traditional epistemology or 'pop science'):
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external
world…." [Lenin
(1972), p.69. Italic emphases in
the original.]
"The gist of his theoretical mistake in
this case is substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of
politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical attitude is:
'on the one hand, and on the other', 'the one and the other'. That is
eclecticism.
Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their
concrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces. I have shown
this to be so on the example of politics and economics....
"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass
cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties,
qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite
number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world....
"Formal logic, which is as far as
schools go (and should go, with suitable abridgements for the lower forms),
deals with formal definitions, draws on what is most common, or glaring, and
stops there. When two or more different definitions are taken and combined at
random (a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel), the result is an eclectic
definition which is indicative of different facets of the object, and nothing
more.
"Dialectical logic demands that we should go further. Firstly, if we are
to have a true knowledge of an object we must
look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is
something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of
comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly,
dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development,
in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not
immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is
in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection
with the surrounding world. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an object must
include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a
practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical
logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late
Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel...." [Lenin
(1921), pp.90-93. Bold emphases alone added;
quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In order to
see this, consider the following example -- suppose worker, NN, asserted
the following:
L1: "That policeman hit me over the head
with a truncheon!"
Now, only a
rather desperate
cop-defender would respond with this remark:
L2: "You are mistaken. What you
experienced was in fact only an image of a policeman clubbing you."
We can be
reasonably sure that NN doesn't need to wait for the
asymptotic-train-of-knowledge to hit the buffers-of-absolute-certainty
before she can claim to know
what happened on the said picket line as the cops attacked it. Indeed, NN would
be justifiably angry if a DM-fan told that her knowledge of these
uniformed assailants was only relative and partial, and that she had failed
to consider all those pesky "mediacies" before arriving at such a 'rash'
conclusion. In fact, we can be quite certain now (without the
presence of an accompanying image -- and even before the epistemological train
leaves the dialectical sidings on its endless meander to nowhere-in-particular)
that NNknows she was hit on the head and who was responsible
for it.
Indeed, this would be the
line
Socialist Worker and other revolutionary papers
would take if one of its correspondents witnessed Police violence -- in cases
like the Police riot in Chicago in
1968, or in Red Lion Square London in
1974, or in relation to the death of
Blair Peach in Southall 1979, the
UK Miners' Strike, the picketing at
Wapping in 1986, the
march against the Nazis at
Welling
a few years later, the Police riots in
Trafalgar Square in 1990, those in
London in
April 2009,
Genoa in
2001 and
2003, those in New York and
San Francisco in 2003,or even those in
2011 to clear theOccupy Movement off
the streets, etc., etc.
In fact, their readers would know precisely when they could
stop trusting Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers: just as soon
as they began reporting events in the way that Lenin characterised
"objectivity", or if they ever started referring to the "images" in people's
heads as evidence supporting claims made about Police violence,as opposed to
the incidents themselves, video footage,
photographs, witness statements and medical reports (etc.). Or, if they were
foolish enough to insist that every
"mediacy" had to be taken
into account before anyone could decide what had happened on a given picket line or
demonstration, and what to do aboutit.
In
practice, not one single revolutionary paper, book or article begins
with "images" when covering the class war (nor do they bang on about concepts
eternally converging on reality).Not even the worst union bureaucrat in the history of the labour movement
would buy into such a use of language as a way of excusing a sell-out! That is,
that everything that had
happened was just an "image"!
In fact, it
is more than a little surprising that die-hard supporters of Lenin's theory
never point out to the editors of SocialistWorker and other Marxist papers, journals and books where they are all going
wrong as they foolishly report on actualevents in the real world. Why hasn't a single
admirer of MEC written to these papers to insist that reports
of, say, neo-Nazi violence be replaced with descriptions of 'images' in victims'
heads? Whatever one thinks of the letters sent to the far left press, unless they are
heavily censored, none of them have ever admitted that their reports are
defective because they foolishly wrote about the actual events in the real world,
recklessly ignoring 'images' inside the skulls of observers and victims alike. Or, that they failed to mention
any of those pesky "mediacies".
Anyway,
despite what he said, Lenin didn't actually begin with
the "naïve" beliefs of mankind. In fact, he did the opposite: he
undermined them from the start. Indeed, he began with the theories of
various ruling-class hacks,
even if he modified and adapted them to his own
ends. This he did by reducing ordinary belief (partially or completely) to
images.
The same can be said of any socialist (reporter or otherwise) who might
think to do likewise -- for example, by writing about the images of
Police brutality inflicted on the images of miners, which images of
events occurred in their image of
Orgreave
in an image of 1984 --, in their paper (or an
image of it).
[And it is
little use being told that Lenin argued that such 'images' reflect 'objective'
reality; the point at issue here is whether or not he began with the naive
beliefs of ordinary people. The question whether they actually reflect
'objective' reality will be considered
below.]
DM-theorist's actual starting point is consistent with what was alleged
earlier: their open and egregious
denigration
of the vernacular -- and that includes a consistent devaluing of the experience
of ordinary workers (since they have supposedly been 'bought-off' by
super-profits, mesmerised by the 'banalities' of 'commonsense', or they have
been hypnotised by 'formal thinking'/'commodity fetishism'), which patronising
paradigm DM-fans have imported into Marxism from the work of the aforementioned
ruling-class hacks.
[There is more on this in Essay Twelve (summary
here).
Having said this, it is important to add that there is no evidence that Lenin
adopted the above patronising attitude toward workers -- except, perhaps, where he
promoted the idea that there is a 'labour
aristocracy' that had been bought-off by 'super-profits' and the theory that
knowledge consists of 'images'. It is also worth noting that he nowhere
distanced himself from what Engels had to say about the 'banalities' of
'commonsense'.]
Clearly
this is the real "copy theory of knowledge":
(i) Reproduce the ideas and thought-forms of rulings-class hacks; and,
(ii) Make sure your theories are an exact image of theirs!
Rees addresses none of these problems anywhere in his book (or,
indeed, anywhere else as far as can be ascertained), and neither has anyone
else. Of course, the above criticisms were first posted more than ten years
after
Rees's book was published so it is hardly surprising he failed to address them
there. But what does he argue anyway? Here is the relevant passage from TAR
(however, because italic and bold emphases both appear in the original, I
have had to highlight passages I want to focus on using bold coupled with a
yellow marker pen):
"What does this conception of
consciousness mean for Lenin's theory of knowledge?
It required that Lenin make
a considerable, though not complete, break with the ideas contained in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. First, let's look at what did not
change. Lenin, of course, remained a materialist. He continued to insist that
material reality existed independently of human thought and, indeed, that the
very ability to think was a product of natural development: 'Concepts, and the
art of operating with concepts are not inborn, but is the result of 2,000 years
of the development of natural science and philosophy.'
Thus, 'men's ends are engendered by the
objective world and presuppose it, -- they find it as something given, present,'
consequently, 'the dialectics of things
produces the dialectics of ideas, and not vice versa.' [The second
two passages that Rees is here quoting are
Lenin (1961), pp.189,196. I can't find the
first passage anywhere in Lenin (1961), certainly not on the page Rees himself
referenced, p.264. Minor typo corrected.]
"It is
important not to lose sight of the fact that Lenin never abandoned this
commitment to materialism. This is especially the case, because some otherwise
valuable analyses of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, most recently Kevin
Anderson's Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism, tend to underestimate this
element of continuity in Lenin's thought. Yet
these broad statements of materialism were only the beginning of the problem,
not its solution. They could not, for instance, furnish an account of the
relationship between the dialectic of ideas and the dialectic of reality, which
Lenin obviously no longer conceived in the linear and one-dimensional pattern
outlined in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. The language of 'copies'
and 'photographs' is entirely absent from the Philosophical Notebooks. Lenin still sometimes talks of consciousness reflecting reality in a general
sense, but the term is rarely used without substantial qualification:
'The
reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not "lifelessly,"
not "abstractly," not devoid of movement,
not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of
movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.' [Rees is here
quoting Lenin (1961), p.195. Emphases in the original.]
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality," he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [This is from
Lenin (1961), p.182.] This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism. But now Lenin adds that it is
also impossible because knowledge requires an active process of abstraction
capable of discriminating between essence and appearance. This process is simply
not possible using a crude copy theory of consciousness. Lenin himself makes the
point:
'Logic is
the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge.
Knowledge is the
reflection of nature by man. But this is not a simple, not an immediate, not a
complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation
and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc.,…
embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law governed character
of eternally moving and developing nature.' [This is also from
Lenin
(1961), p.182.]
"Thus,
Lenin develops a more active and independent role for consciousness than the
framework of Materialism and Empirio-criticism could allow. He even went
so far as to exclaim, 'Man’s consciousness not only reflects the world, but
creates it.' [Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.212.] That sentiment could
never have found its way into Materialism
and Empirio-criticism, if only because
Bogdanov would have seized on it as contradicting Lenin's whole line of
argument. Such ideas required a dialectical theory of cognition to root them in
a marxist framework, and this was precisely what Materialism and
Empirio-criticism lacked. But
wasn't Lenin purchasing this more independent role for consciousness at the
expense of scientific precision?
How can we know that our consciousness really
corresponds to the world if it is only an 'approximate,' 'conditional,' and
abstract representation of reality? Lenin's answer has two aspects. First,
abstraction can be a method of seeing reality more clearly, as we saw in
relation to the question of essence and appearance, and, second, consciousness
must issue in practical activity, which will furnish the proof of whether or not
our conceptions of the world are accurate.
'Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract…does not get away from the
truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of
matter,
of a
law of
nature, the abstraction of
value,
etc., in short
all
scientific abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and
completely. From living
perception to abstract thought,
and from this to practice,
-- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of
truth,
of the cognition of objective reality.'
[Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.171.]
"The
second leg of this process, the movement to practice, is crucial because what is
involved is a fusion of intellectual understanding and objective existence.
Human action, in the sense that Marx understood the question in his analysis of
human labour, is not simply an extension of thought nor merely an objective
occurrence in the external world, like the wind blowing the branch of a tree. It
is a conscious act. 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 therefore is unable to enter the historical chain as an objective force
which, in the case of the class struggle, seizes the masses. This is Lenin's
meaning when he writes 'practice is higher than
(theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of
universality, but also of immediate actuality.'
[Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.213.
Emphasis in the original.] Or, in a slightly elaborated version of the same
point:
'The
activity of man, who has made an objective picture of the world for himself,
changes external actuality, abolishes its determinedness (=alters some sides
or other, qualities, of it), thus removes from it the features of Semblance,
externality and nullity, and makes it as being in and for itself (=objectively
true).' [Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), pp.217-18. Emphasis in the
original.]
"We
can see here how for Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective
and objective and the gap between essence and appearance. The ground for this
theoretical discovery had been laid by Lenin's theory of the party, always the
most dialectical and the most important element in his marxism. The whole
conception of a party that is part of, but for long periods separated from, the
majority of the working class demands a dialectic that understands the unity of
opposites, the essential nature of practice, and the concrete historical nature
of development." [Rees (1998), pp.189-91. Spelling
modified to UK English; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Minor typos corrected. Several paragraphs merged.]
Rees is
correct, here. Lenin's 'theory of knowledge' clearly underwent a profound change
between the writing of MEC and PN, even though there were important areas he
didn't abandon (which Rees also summarises). However, the phrase "theory of
knowledge" has rightly been put in 'scare' quotes since it would be stretching
its meaning beyond breaking point to call what Lenin had to say on this topic in
PN a theory. It is far too brief, superficial, enigmatic and fragmentary
for it to be so described, free of irony.
Nevertheless, Lenin nowhere repudiates his earlier comments about the sole
source of our knowledge -- i.e., that it derives from experience/sensation and
results in 'images'. In PN he certainly qualifies those earlier opinions and
adds an active input of the intellect (in combination with practice, a factor
also underlined in MEC), with an added emphasis on 'abstraction', which, as we
have come to expect from DM-theorists, he nowhere explains.
Rees
tells us the following (quoting Lenin):
"The language of 'copies'
and 'photographs' is entirely absent from the Philosophical Notebooks. Lenin still sometimes talks of consciousness reflecting reality in a general
sense, but the term is rarely used without substantial qualification:
'The
reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not "lifelessly,"
not "abstractly," not devoid of movement,
not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of
movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.' [Rees is here
quoting Lenin (1961), p.195. Emphases in the original.]
But how
does 'reflection' work if it doesn't create 'images'? What does it
produce? Apparently, this is the answer:
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality,"
he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [This is from
Lenin (1961), p.182.]
This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism. But now Lenin adds that it is
also impossible becauseknowledge requires an active process of abstraction
capable of discriminating between essence and appearance. This process is simply
not possible using a crude copy theory of consciousness. Lenin himself makes the
point:
'Logic is
the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge. Knowledge is the
reflection of nature by man. But this is not a simple, not an immediate, not a
complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation
and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc.,…
embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law governed character
of eternally moving and developing nature.' [This is also from
Lenin
(1961), p.182.]
"Thus,
Lenin develops a more active and independent role for consciousness than the
framework of Materialism and Empirio-criticism could allow."
[Rees, loc cit. Bold emphases alone added.]
So,
knowledge is still produced by:
(1)
'Reflection', but this is an endless, even an "infinite process";
(2)
'Reflection' produces "abstractions,
concepts, laws, a scientific picture of the world"; and,
(3) The new
theory emphasises the active input of 'consciousness' (although neither Lenin
nor Rees tells us if this is an individual or collective sort of
consciousness, or even if it is an abstraction itself -- more on that
presently).
As we
discovered in Part One, the nature of each of these "abstractions" is
mysterious, so exactly how the introduction of this term here can help is no
less of a mystery.
After
quoting several attempts by DM-theorists to explain the nature of an
'abstraction', I made the following points in Part One (which have yet to find
an answer):
[P]erhaps there is some way of harmonising these passages that allows
DM-supporters to come up with a convincing, or even a plausible, answer to the following questions:
(a) What is the precise nature of these
DM-"abstractions"? And,
(b)
Exactly what do they 'represent' or 'reflect' in nature and society, and how
do they do it?
Satisfactory answers to both
of the above from DM-fans would lend support to the claim that
their ideas haven't been "imposed" on nature and society, after all.
However, given the additional fact that DM-supporters invariably ignore such
'pedantic quibbles', readers might not be surprised to learn that
the present writer refuses to hold her breath waiting for an answer. Those very
same readers might like to ask DM-fans themselves for an unambiguous response to the above two
questions; they will receive no such reply.
[If, per
impossible, any do receive and answer, please
contact me with the details. I'll be looking out the window for a few
flying pigs. There should be dozens of them!]
Be
this as it may, another question now forces itself upon us:
(c) How is it possible for DM-theorists to evade the
Scylla ofDogmatism while avoiding the
Charybdis of
Empiricism?
Well, in this Essay we will find out how
DM-theorists manage to avoid the latter by sailing
headlong into the former, the Scylla of Dogmatism -- i.e., in the way
that they all proceed "from
principles which are validated by appeal to
abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely
theoretical source" (to
quote George Novack, again),
despite their frequent protestations to the contrary....
To state the obvious, without
minds to invent them there would be no abstractions. On the surface,
therefore, it would seem that any theory committed to the 'objective'
existence of 'abstractions' (or, "real abstractions") must be
Idealist, whatever complaints are made to the contrary. As we will see, even
when we dig 'below the surface',
Idealist implications like this are difficult to resist. In which case, that
earlier
"seem" itself turns out to be far too tentative, and by a wide margin,
too.
If 'abstractions'
aren't 'objective' -- that is, if they aren't "mind-independent", or if they
fail to relate to anything that exists in "mind-independent" reality --, then it
is difficult to see how they could possibly assist anyone construct an accurate
account of nature and society, or, indeed, any theory that is supposed to be 'objective'.
Nor is it easy to see
how scientific knowledge could advance by means of 'abstractions' if they
are somehow fictional. How could fictional concepts help account
for a... -- for want of a better phrase -- ...non-fictional world?
Well, perhaps there is
a way of interpreting the nature of abstractions (or what they supposedly
'reflect' in the world) that is capable of extricating them from the shadowy world of
make-believe. On the other hand, could it be that their only 'legitimate'
role is to help maintain the morale of scientists and philosophers? That is, it could
turn out that 'abstractions' merely enable those who believe in them construct grandiose theories about 'fundamental' features
of the world, true for all of space and time, in the comfort of their own
heads, as we have seen throughout the history of philosophy. One suspects so -- and if those suspicions bear fruit, much of Traditional Thought should rightly be classified
as a considerably less entertaining, but far more dogmatic, version of the
collected works of the
Brothers Grimm (that is,
as
fantasy fiction
on stilts).
On
the other hand, if
abstractions are 'objective' -- but only 'minds' can construct, or even
appreciate, them --, questions would naturally arise over what they could possibly
reflect in nature. Exactly whatis it that corresponds with an 'abstract idea'?
What do they capture in 'reality' if they only exist 'in the mind'?
Of course, for non-materialists and old-fashioned
Realists,
quibbles like these present few problems --, except perhaps an
awkward question about the precise meaning of the word "objective".
Indeed, for Traditional
Theorists the ultimate constituents of reality were often in the end taken to be either
(i)
mind-like objects, (ii) non-material "concepts", or
(iii) "Ideas" floating about in some abstract mental, or even
'divine', space. In
that case, the word "objective" -- that is, before its meaning
flipped a couple of centuries ago (it used to mean what "subjective" now means,
and vice versa; on this, see Daston (1994), and Daston and Galison
(2007)) -- is almost synonymous with another word we use these days, namely, "Ideal". In fact, old-fashioned
Realists are
difficult to distinguish from
Objective Idealists, and, truth be told, as far
as the latter were concerned the word "objective" clearly does no real work.
But,
the same can easily be
said of "Ideal"
--
and its close relative, "idealisation"....
Oddly enough, however, we find a
DM-classicist of the stature of Lenin arguing along familiar lines, for all the world sounding
like a born-again Realist with added Hegelian spin:
"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.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
Unfortunately, Lenin forgot to say how
any of this rather ambitious project was at all possible if abstractions are nothing but
the creations of the human
mind. If scientific knowledge more truly reflects the world the more
its abstractions are correct, or valid, how is that possible if
abstractions don't exist 'objectively' in the material world, in some form or
other, for scientists, or, indeed, Marxist philosophers, to reflect?
Once
again: if abstractions don't exist in the outside world then what is there in nature for them
to
reflect, or for them to
represent to us?...
Recall that for Lenin,
and those who agree with him, 'objective existence'
is anything that is exterior to, and independent of, the mind, ratified
by practice:
"[T]he 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),
p.311.]
"Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically
implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human
mind and reflected by it." [Ibid.,
p.312.]
"[I]t is the sole categorical, this sole
unconditional recognition of nature's existence outside the mind and
perception of man that distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativist
agnosticism and idealism." [Ibid.,
p.314.]
"The fundamental characteristic of
materialism is that it starts from the objectivity of science, from the
recognition of objective reality reflected by science." [Ibid.,
pp.354-55.]
"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made
from this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which
materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that
outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and
that our perceptions are images
of the external world...."
[Ibid.,
p.111. Bold emphasis added.]
"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.,
pp.148.]
"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.]
Lenin never repudiated the above claims.
This can only mean that DM-abstractions can't be 'objective'. They don't exist
"outside our minds".
On the other hand,
if we simply ignore
'annoying quibbles' like these -- and even if we were to suppose that abstractions actually exist
in the 'outside world' so that abstract general words can and do refer to them, or
which 'reflect' them --,
what form do they take? Of what are they composed? Worse still: where
do they exist? And how can they possibly interact with human minds? Are we
somehow 'mentally linked' (or can we be 'linked') with or to them -- even though there seems to be no conceivable way they could be
physically connected to us or could even interact with us? Or, do we perceive them by
what is the equivalent of a
Third Eye?
Perhaps so --, as August Thalheimer let slip in relation to another of DM's
core principles:
"Only a person trained
in dialectics will perceive the permeation of opposites. Of course, this does
not depend only upon training in dialectics, but also upon the class viewpoint,
the social viewpoint which the individual adopts." [Thalheimer
(1936), p.164.]
Maybe
that is also true of DM-abstractions? Only the faithful, only those with the 'eyes to see',
can see them....
Maybe dialecticians are capable of seeing or
'apprehending' these 'abstractions' by a special 'act of cognition'? If so, the
Idealist implications of that avenue of knowledge would be plain for all to see
(no pun intended). Indeed, it finds immediate echo in
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.)]
As
far as Idealists might be concerned, Plato's comments present few immediate problems
-- although, Essay Three Part Two (Sections
One and
Two), will show that this dogmatic approach to knowledge
possesses fatal consequences all
of its own.
Nevertheless, this
leaves dialecticians with several annoying headaches,
the origin of which this Essay will seek to find.
To that end, and in order to make genuine progress, we will need
something a little more helpful than Lenin's enigmatic prose (quoted earlier)
to light the way. Surprisingly,
DM-theorists have, to this day, remained studiously silent on these issues
-- saving, of course, where they have been content merely to repeat
Lenin's words in one form or another in the vain hope that repetition
will generate clarity where enigmatic prose on its own manifestly can't....
Each (genuine) abstraction therefore seems to operate like a key
capable of unlocking the verysecrets that govern the
inner workings of the entire universe, an artefact of thought that
supplies each mind prepared to indulge in this ancient art with universally valid principles
-- the results of which, oddly enough, don't actually exist anywhere in
extra-mental reality!
However, in order to exert a little more pressure on the opposing idea (that 'abstractions' do somehow exist..., somewhere),
it might be useful to consider a handful of additional questions:
(d)
If
abstractions are general in form, and do in fact exist in the
'outside world', how does such 'generality' actually express itself?
(e)
Is an
abstraction somehow 'spread out', as it were -- like some sort of 'metaphysical
liquid', or
even 'force field' -- over the 'concrete particulars' that supposedly
instantiate it, uniting the diversity we see all around us, perhaps by a
mysterious power unbeknown to us?
(f) Or, are
abstractions merely
one aspect of the complex tales human beings tell one another? Are they
merely subjective stories dressed
up in pseudo-objective finery, but which are essential for the successful
advancement of knowledge (even though they aren't really 'real' in themselves)?
Unfortunately,
however, the questionable origin of this approach to knowledge (in the
theories of openly Idealist
Philosophers) has done little to improve its image,
nor does it inspire much confidence.
Small wonder then that consistent materialists have, in general, regarded abstract
ideas as guilty
until proven even more guilty.
Nevertheless, more work will need to be done before it becomes clear whether or
not
'abstractions' aren't simply useful fictions, handy at least for
maintaining the morale of scientists, or, indeed, for giving dialecticians something over which they can endlessly
perseverate --, and,
if we are brutally honest, for
precious little else.
Even
so, short of burying this entire topic under layers of impenetrable
Hegelian jargon, dialecticians haven't advanced much beyond the subjective stage,
if such it may be called. In fact, as we will
see, the way that dialecticians conceive of abstractions and the 'processes' by
which they say they have been given life, underminethe
very generality they had been introduced all along to explain.
As should seem reasonably clear: if true, that controversial allegation would
completely undermine
the DM-theory of knowledge.
This ironic 'dialectical inversion'
-- whereby DM-abstractions end up killing the very theory that spawned them --
will be the subject of the rest of this Essay, as well as its funeral pyre.
One
will search long and hard, and to no avail, through Rees's book (and the work of
other DM-theorists) for any answers to such questions, or even some sort of
recognition that they are aware of these problems.
[Having
said that, Rees makes some attempt in TAR
to explain what the (supposed) abstract concept 'friendship' actually means.
What he has to say will be addressed in Essay Twelve Part Four.]
It
therefore looks like 'abstractions' can't be images, so what are they? As
we found out in Part One, in physical form they typically appear as the Proper
Names of "abstract
particulars", thus destroying generality. [That was the main theme of Part
One.]
However, Lenin also had this to say:
"Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its 'immediate totality,' he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [Lenin (1961), p.182.
Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"The
activity of man, who has made an objective picture of the world for himself,
changes external actuality, abolishes its determinedness (=alters some sides
or other, qualities, of it), thus removes from it the features of Semblance,
externality and nullity, and makes it as being in and for itself (=objectively
true)." [Lenin (1961), pp.217-18. Emphasis
partly in the
original.]
But
what else is a picture but an image? Admittedly, Lenin calls this an "objective"
and a "scientific" picture, and he connects it with the "activity of man", which
seems to be a reference toward practice. But, as we have also seen, these
'abstractions' are all 'mental' entities, or are the product of privatised
mental processes, the nature of which are no less obscure.
Rees
also pointed out the following:
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality,"
he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [This is from
Lenin (1961), p.182.]
This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism." [Rees, loc cit. Bold
emphasis alone added.]
But, as
we saw earlier (and in more detail in Essay Ten
Part One), this aspect of
Lenin (and Engels's) theory in fact undermines knowledge, and, ironically,
implies its opposite, scepticism.
Even
though Lenin has now dropped his almost neurotic focus on 'images', the
'abstractions' he substituted for them appear to be even more problematic. All
of us know what an image is, but no one seems to be able to say what an
'abstraction' is -- other than use words associated with them that imply they
refer to Abstract Particulars of an equally obscure nature. So, in place
of a screen of 'images' between each human being and the world, we now have a
layer of 'abstractions'. This represents a major step backwards!
Once
again, it is little use Lenin or Rees appealing to practice here, since there
remains this veil of 'abstractions' not only between each of us and any practice
we happen to be involved in but also between us and the results of that
practice.
In
which case it is impossible to agree with Rees when he says this:
"We
can see here how for Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective
and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Rees, loc cit.]
Exactly
how a layer of mysterious abstractions -- which have now elbowed aside those
pesky 'images', coupled with an infinitary process that never reaches its goal
-- is able to do this Rees unsurprisingly passed over in total silence.
In
which case, Lenin's 'dialectical theory' provides no way out of the solipsistic
black hole into which MEC had dumped him a few years earlier -- nor, indeed,
does it rescue his ideas from the corrosive acid of scepticism.
Quite the reverse, it implies both.
Rees's rescue attempt was therefore a total failure...
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 are 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 emerged as a result were then
imposed on 'reality' so that what were supposed to be 'essential' features of
the world were transformed into a reflection of
these 'abstractions', not
the other way round. That is, these 'abstractions' were projected onto
'reality'.
In this way, the Ideal came to be the arbiter of the
'Real' for the
next 2400 years.
This
is one of the ruling ideas spoken about by Marx and Engels (in their early
work):
"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.]
Although they do not identify this aspect of
Traditional Thought, given its provenance and longevity, it is clear that it
fits the above description. Indeed, as this part of Essay Three (and much of
Essay Twelve, will show).
Hence, the 'rational' universe of Ancient Greek Thought
(and that 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 opined:
"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.]
[As noted above, 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'. In that case, our minds cannot but operate in certain ways --
a doctrine that is 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. As
Lenin might have said, this was perhaps because of a 'law
of cognition' (but only at work in those with a mind to so think). In much
more contemporary terms, these concepts, or 'abstractions', in effect help
'organise experience'; in some cases, they actually 'constitute experience' --
or they even 'constitute reality itself'. In other words, at some level
'abstractions' render experience
of the world possible. This approach was
supposed to cut the ground from under the Empiricists 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 approach is in fact a faint echo of Plato's
theory, which 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, which isn't surprising given the
fact that it is supposed to be 'right-way-up' Hegelianism. Indeed, the fact that
this (Idealist) method had been adoption by DM-theorists was made abundantly clear
by Lenin himself:
"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.]
As I pointed
out earlier:
And that
helps explain why Lenin could declare
that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism". He
hadn't fully shaken off the regressive influence of Christian Mysticism (I
explain why, here):
"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...".]
[I have discussed the first two of 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.Herbert Marcuse
certainly helped underline
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. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling
modified 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 passages, later.
The above
remarks echo Lenin's own comments:
"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. Bold emphases alone 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.
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 don't prefer that
descriptor) in ordinary language,
merely the 'abstractions' concocted by Traditional Philosophers.
However, if we
accept Plato's more considered theory (i.e., that the Forms are exemplars), then an
anthropological/sociological account of generality might become feasible. That
is because, as
Berkeley certainly appreciated (and as
Wittgenstein analysed in detail),
generality can be accounted for on the basis of rule-governed linguistic
behaviour, rather than in terms of a mystical theory that appeals to
a set of ghostly Forms, Concepts, Categories, Ideas, 'abstractions' or 'Universals' of dubious
nature and provenance.
This also underlines a serious problem
faced by those who regard Plato's Forms as exemplars. If they
end up working
like the
Standard Metre
in Paris (an idea suggested above), then the 'Third Man' problem will simply reassert
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
the
rule), and not so much as a physical exemplar, then these 'difficulties'
will 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, see also
Note 1b.]
In order to
save my readers having to inform me: Yes
I am aware that the definition of a metre has recently been 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 always 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 referential target
for
predicate expressions), but as exemplars.
Exemplars function rather like,
say, the
Standard Metre
in Paris does (or, as it 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, eventhis interpretation of the Forms runs into the
ground. On that, see Note 1bb.
1bc. This 'problem' has been widely
discussed in the Plato literature. However, 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 fathomless 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 theories of the
state, as well as background 'world-views' that supposedly underpins
them. So, it requires the universe to be
declared 'rational' so that inequality, oppression and exploitation can be
'justified' or granted a 'divine seal of approval'. Why that is so will be
explored in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two and Three (summary
here).
1c.Some might fail to see this as a vitally important issue. That misconception will be laid to rest
in Essay Twelve (summary link above), 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.]
[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 them 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
bowdlerisedand 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 (apparently hidden, or
perhaps even 'mental') aspects of reality, or which somehow lend 'substance' the
material objects. [This was covered in detail in
Part One, some of which material
has now been re-posted to Appendix
Three.] These 'concepts' are therefore capable of being true (or "relatively true") on their own,
as isolated linguistic atoms. While dialecticians might try to reject
that conclusion, the way they themselves refer to the 'abstractions' they claim
to have unearthed gives the lie to any such rejections -- that is when they end
up turning these 'Concepts' (these 'abstractions') into the Proper Names of Abstract
Particulars (as demonstrated in detail in Part One).
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 paradigm for
understanding meaning in language. [On this, see Hacking (1975).] That, of
course, is what '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 (this is a
paraphrase of Wittgenstein (2009), p.123e, §§371-73)
-- but, in this case, by
distorted grammar --, as, indeed, Marx himself also 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
alone 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.
See also Hacker (1997), pp.179-214.]
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.
2c. It might be thought Davidson is
factually wrong when he said this:
"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), p.90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
It could be
objected that just because something can be referred to doesn't automatically
mean it is a particular. There are collective nouns that name groups or classes,
and hence can be used to refer to non-particulars like these. -- for example,
"the team", "the party", "the council". None of these is a particular. Referring
to them does not make them particulars.
I have dealt
with that response in Note 3, below.
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, or they can name mountains,
oceans,
rivers, forest fires, numbers, sets, collectives and processes -- but even here our use of such names is itself rather complex
(on that see Baker and Hacker (2005, pp.227-49)), it is far from what general names
actually succeed in naming. Even to raise
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. In turn, that would mean general names (common
nouns, etc.) should also 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
use such phrases as, "the set of…", "the
class of…", or "the natural kind…", which are supposedly named by a relevant
'general noun' (such as "number", "table", "animal", "planet" or "molecule"
-- as in, for example, "the class of planets" or "the set of numbers"), the use of the definite article
clearly
neutralises the generality that such 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 different or more complicated.
Of course, giving such
'abstractions' aProper Name begs the question --, i.e., that there is just one 'thing'
there to
be named, in the first place. In that case, "Table" would be the Proper Name
of the set of all tables, as "Cat" would be of the set of all cats.
Despite the
existence of an ancient grammatical and logical
tradition that treats general nouns as general names (an approach which
is itself based on the metaphysical theories that are being 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 them 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 composite, or 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, it is 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. [That takes care of the objection recorded in
Note 2c.]
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.
"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
highly relevant, too.]
On this,
also see Ryle (1949). Ryle
labelled this widespread philosophical error, the "Fido-Fido
Fallacy". That label highlighted the (unsupported) 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', somewhere.
[Ryle's argument is
summarised
here. (This links to an article by
Yorick Wilks --
who was at one time a
student of Wittgenstein's -- and is available as a PDF
here.)]
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 has been analysed in detail (and described in the above terms) in Bennett and Hacker (2008, 2022).]
6.We saw the
life drained out of general terms in Part One of this Essay with all those
lists.
6a0.
For instance, note the (lazy) habit DM-theorists have of speaking about logic as a study
of 'the
laws of thought', "the science of cognition" or "the science of thought".
Here are a few examples, beginning with Engels:
"In every epoch, and
therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at
different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different
contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical
science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is
of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields.
Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an
'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines
to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels
(1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
"As soon as each special
science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and
of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is
superfluous. That which still survives, independently, of all earlier philosophy
is the science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics.
Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of nature and history." [Engels
(1976), p.31.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Logic is the science of
cognition. It is the theory of knowledge…. The laws of logic are the reflections
of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.... [These] embrace
conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally
moving and developing nature."
[Lenin (1961),
p.182. Bold emphasis
alone added.]
"Hegel himself viewed
dialectics precisely as logic, as the science of the forms of human
cognition.... What does logic express? The
law of the external world or the law of consciousness? The question is posed
dualistically [and] therefore not correctly [for] the laws of logic express the
laws (rules, methods) of consciousness in its active relationship to the
external world.... Thought operates by its own
laws, which we can call the laws of logic...." [Trotsky (1986), pp.75, 87, 106.
Trotsky is apparently referring to Hegel's Introduction to The Science
of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999),
pp.43-64.
Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
"Modern philosophy, beginning
with Bacon of Verulam
and closing with Hegel, carries on a constant struggle with the Aristotlean
(sic) logic. The product of this struggle, the outcome of philosophy, does not
deny the old rules of traditional logic, but adds a new and decidedly higher
circle of logical perception to the former ones. For the sake of better
understanding it may be well to give to this circle a special title, the special
name of 'theory of understanding,' which is sometimes called 'dialectics.' In
order to demonstrate the essential contents of this philosophical product by an
investigation of the fundamental laws of traditional logic and to explain it
thereby, I refer once more to the teacher of elementary logic, Dittes.
"Under the caption of
'Principles of Judgment' he teaches: 'Since judging, like all thinking, aims at
the perception of truth, the rules have been sought after by which this purpose
might be accomplished. As universally applicable rules, as principles or laws of
thought, the following four have been named:
'(1) The law of uniformity (identity).
'(2) The law of contradiction.
'(3) The law of the excluded third.
'(4) The law of adequate cause.'...
"I
have just declared that logic so far did not know that the perception produced
by its principles does not offer us truth itself, but only a more or less
accurate picture of it. I have furthermore contended that the positive outcome
of philosophy has materially added to the clearness of the portrait of the human
mind.
Logic claims to be 'the doctrine of the forms and laws of thought.'
Dialectics, the product of philosophy, aims to be the same, and its first
paragraph declares: Not thought produces truth, but being, of which thought is
only that part which is engaged in securing a picture of truth. The fact
resulting from this statement may easily confuse the reader, viz., that the
philosophy which has been bequeathed to us by logical dialectics, or dialectic
logic, must explain not alone thought, but also the original of which thought is
a reflex."
[Dietzgen (1906),
pp.385-88. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site; several paragraphs merged; link and bold emphases added. As I demonstrated
in Essay Four Part One, the
above comments are about as false as the average Tory Party election video.
Dietzgen is here quoting
a certain
Dr
Friedrich Dittes, who wasn't a logician but, if anything, an Austro-German
educator and psychologist.]
"We
previously stressed the reactionary role of the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle. Now we shall speak of its great progressive role. This resides in the
fact that the ruling classes of Athens at that time believed the aim of the
exploitation of slave labor and their class rule to be the free development of
human capacities, above all, the development of reason. This is closely
connected with the fact that this slave production was not ultimately and
predominantly commodity production, not production for the sake of surplus value
like capitalist production. Its chief aim was production for individual use,
production of use values. From this it followed that the ruling class was not
absorbed in business or industry, but conceived its ideal to be the development
of art and of science. Thus arose the extraordinary great interest in the
investigation of human reason, in
the discovery of the laws of thought.
Through this activity the Greeks created a new epoch in the general development
of history.
As represented by Aristotle they built up the doctrine of the forms and laws of
thought, known as formal logic.
They also laid the foundation for what is called dialectics. Wherein dialectics
and formal logic differ, we shall soon see.
The science of the laws of thought, formal logic, reached its highest point with
Aristotle.
It was here developed so broadly and fully that it was not until the beginning
of the 19th century that the German philosopher, Hegel, could make a significant
and decisive advance over it.
"I will now briefly explain what formal logic is and how it differs from
dialectics.
Formal logic can be defined as the theory of the laws of thought without regard
to the content of thought.
The theory of thinking or logic describes how concepts are built and wherein the
different concepts differ from each other in regard to form. It deals with the
different kinds of propositions and, ultimately, with the different kinds and
forms of inferences, of syllogisms. Logic seeks to teach how to think
correctly."
[Thalheimer (1936), pp.87-88.
Bold emphases added. As Essay Four Part
One has also shown, the characterisation of FL (and even AFL) that
Thalheimer is about to unleash on his readers is entirely fictional.]
[FL = Formal Logic; AFL =
Aristotelian FL.]
"[T]he science of the thought
process. Logicians investigate the activities of the thought process which goes
on in human heads and formulate the laws, forms and interrelations of those
mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Whatever thoughts we think,
and whatever language they are expressed in, they must satisfy the basic
requirements of the reflection of reality in thought. These requirements give
rise to the laws of thought, to principles of logic. For thoughts are
reflections of the real world, and in the process of reflection, as Marx
said, the material world is translated into forms of thought. The process of
reflection and translation has its own laws -- the laws of thought, the
principles of logic.... Logical
principles are laws of thought, not laws of reality; they are not laws of
material processes, but the laws of the reflection of material processes."
[Cornforth (1963), pp.50-52. Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
"A view that is
often encountered among dialectical materialists is that formal logic is
applicable to static situations, but since, in reality, nothing is static,
formal logic is superseded by dialectical logic, which permits logical
contradictions. Within the framework of this view, thought is the appropriation
(in the mind) of the objectively existing material world, while dialectical
logic, that is, dialectics taken as logic, must be considered to be the laws of
thought (or correct thinking). Thus, in the approximation where things are
viewed as static, formal logic becomes the laws of
thought, equally in approximation. When, however, things are viewed in their
motion, change, and development, dialectical logic becomes properly the laws of
thought." [Marquit (1990), quoted from
here.]
"Formal
logic intended universal validity for the laws of thought.
And indeed, without universality, thought would be a private, non-committal
affair, incapable of understanding the smallest sector of existence. Thought is
always more and other than individual thinking; if I start thinking of
individual persons in a specific situation, I find them in a supra-individual
context of which they partake, and I think in general concepts. All objects of
thought are universals. But it is equally true that the supra-individual
meaning, the universality of a concept, is never merely a formal one; it is
constituted in the interrelationship between the (thinking and acting) subjects
and their world. Logical abstraction is also sociological abstraction. There is
a logical mimesis which formulates
the laws of thought
in protective accord with the laws of society, but it is only one mode of
thought among others. [Marcuse
(1968), p.115; bold emphasis added.]
On this specific topic, see my comments over at Wikipedia, which have been re-posted
here.
But this
doesn't stop there. DM-theorists aren't alone. As we will see in Essay Thirteen
Part Three, the vast bulk of
contemporary Cognitive Theory, Philosophy of Mind and Neuroscience remains
trapped in this neo-Cartesian Paradigm. [On that see, Bennett and Hacker (2008,
2022). See also later
in this Essay.]
6a.No wonderPlato had to appeal to the alleged
pre-existence of the soul to account for such '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 is
therefore a form of
recollection.
Hence, our re-cognition of the Forms in the objects that supposedly instantiate
them in this world was (supposedly) rekindled because the Forms are
rather like long lost acquaintances we have all met in our 'pre-existing life'.
That is so even though these are 'acquaintances' of a rather peculiar sort,
about which we had temporarily forgotten. 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). There is more on this topic,
here, but especially 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, 'abstractions' or ideas, then
theories of meaning must be expressed in terms of
one individual relating anotherindividual -- as one mind relates to one
concept, idea, 'abstraction' or 'representation' --,
just as they do with any normal acquaintance. Knowledge and meaning were
thereby turned into, or were based on, individualisedrelationalpowers or skills. The
Knower is somehow connected to the Known on a one-to-one basis. The meaning of a word
(concept or 'abstraction') is now related to whatever it
supposedly refers to, based on the relationship that a Knower has with an Object.
[These days this idea is 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 that Knower. Here we find
the origin of the theory that abstraction takes place in 'the mind' of each individual
as they relate to and process to their own private ideas, one at a time
-- such as 'the population'.
This explains why DM-theorists repeatedly speak about the Knower knowing an 'object' (often
using such phrases as "things", "this thing", "thing-in-itself",
"things-in-themselves", "things-for-us", "this object") and why
Engels fixated onSubject/Object
Identity -- or the 'identity of thought and Being', a spurious relation that
has exercised DM-fans 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.
Here, for
example, is Lenin in just the first few sections of
MEC (in what
follows bold emphases alone have been added and quotation
marks have been altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site):
"The materialists, we are told, recognise something unthinkable
and unknowable -- 'things-in-themselves'
-- matter 'outside of experience' and outside of our knowledge. They lapse into
genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something
transcending the bounds of 'experience' and knowledge. When they say that
matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists
take as their basis the 'unknown,' nothingness; for do they not themselves
declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge? The materialists
lapse into 'Kantianism' (Plekhanov, by recognising the existence of 'things-in-themselves,' i.e.,
things
outside of our consciousness);
they 'double' the world and preach 'dualism,' for the materialists hold that
beyond the appearance there is the
thing-in-itself;
beyond the immediate sense data there is something else, some fetish, an 'idol,'
an absolute, a source of knowledge?..." [Lenin
(1972), p.10.]
"Our
Machians have written so much about the 'thing-in
itself'
that were all their writings to be collected they would result in mountains of
printed matter. The 'thing-in-itself'
is a veritable bête
noire with
Bogdanov and Valentinov, Bazarov and Chernov, Berman and Yushkevich. There is no
abuse they have not hurled at it, there is no ridicule they have not showered on
it. And against whom are they breaking lances because of this luckless 'thing-in-itself'?
Here a division of the philosophers of Russian Machism according to political
parties begins. All the would-be Marxists among the Machians are combating Plekhanov's 'thing-in-itself';
they accuse Plekhanov of having become entangled and straying into Kantianism,
and of having forsaken Engels. (We shall discuss the first accusation in the
fourth chapter; the second accusation we shall deal with now.) The Machian Mr.
Victor Chernov, a Narodnik and a sworn enemy of Marxism, opens a direct
campaign against
Engels because
of the 'thing-in-itself.'...
"[I]t is not true that Engels 'is producing a refutation of the
thing-in-itself.'
Engels said explicitly and clearly that he was refuting the Kantian
ungraspable (or
unknowable)
thing-in-itself.
Mr. Chernov confuses Engels' materialist conception of the existence of
things
independently of our consciousness. In the second place, if Kant's theorem reads
that the
thing-in-itself
is unknowable, the 'converse'
theorem would be: the unknowable is
the
thing in-itself.
Mr. Chernov replaces the
unknowable by the unknown, without
realising that by such a substitution he has again confused and distorted the
materialist view of Engels!...
"Engels clearly and explicitly states that he is contesting both
Hume and Kant. Yet there is no mention whatever in Hume of 'unknowable
things-in-themselves.'
What then is there in common between these two philosophers? It is that they
both in
principle fence off 'the
appearance' from that which appears, the perception from that which is perceived
the
thing-for-us
from the 'thing-in-itself.'
Furthermore, Hume does not want to hear of the 'thing-in-itself,'
he regards the very thought of it as philosophically inadmissible, as
'metaphysics' (as the Humeans and Kantians call it); whereas Kant grants the
existence of the 'thing-in-itself,'
but declares it to be 'unknowable,' fundamentally different from the appearance,
belonging to a fundamentally different realm, the realm of the 'beyond..., inaccessible
to knowledge, but revealed to faith....
"And if that is so, three important epistemological
conclusions follow:
1. Things exist
independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of
us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is
equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this
alizarin and received no sensations from it.
2. There is definitely no
difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself,
and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is
known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific
boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the
thing-in-itself is 'beyond' phenomena (Kant), or that we can and must fence
ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which
in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) --
all this is the sheerest nonsense,..., crotchet, invention.
3. In the theory of
knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically,
that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but
must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how
incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact.
"Once we accept the point of view that human knowledge develops from ignorance,
we shall find millions of examples of it just as simple as the discovery of
alizarin in coal tar, millions of observations not only in the history of
science and technology but in the everyday life of each and every one of us that
illustrate the transformation of 'things-in-themselves'
into 'things-for-us,'
the appearance of 'phenomena' when our sense-organs experience an impact from
external
objects,
the disappearance of 'phenomena' when some obstacle prevents the action upon our
sense-organs of an
object
which we know to exist. The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this
-- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism
deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that outside us,
and independently of us,
there exist objects, things, bodies
and that our perceptions are images of the external world....
"What can be done with a Voroshilov whose every phrase makes
confusion worse confounded! It is sheer ignorance, Mr. Victor Chernov, not to
know that
all materialists assert the knowability of things-in-themselves.
It is ignorance, Mr. Victor Chernov, or infinite slovenliness, to skip the very
first phrase
of the thesis and not to realise that the 'objective truth'...of thinking means nothing
else than
the existence of
objects
(i.e., 'things-in-themselves') truly reflected
by thinking. It is sheer illiteracy Mr. Victor Chernov, to assert that from
Plekhanov's paraphrase (Plekhanov gave a paraphrase and not a translation) 'it
appears as though' Marx defended the other-sidedness of
thought. Because only the Humeans and the Kantians confine thought to 'this side
of phenomena.' But for all materialists, including those of the seventeenth
century whom Bishop Berkeley demolished (see Introduction), 'phenomena' are 'things-for-us'
or copies of
the 'objects
in themselves.'
Of course, Plekhanov's free paraphrase is not obligatory upon those who desire
to know Marx himself, but it is obligatory to try to understand what Marx meant
and not to prance about like a Voroshilov....
"Albert Lévy is a professor. And a proper professor must abuse the materialists
as being metaphysicians. For the professorial idealists, Humeans and Kantians
every kind of materialism is 'metaphysics,' because beyond the phenomenon
(appearance,
the thing-for-us)
it discerns a reality outside us. A. Lévy is therefore essentially right when he
says that in Marx's opinion there corresponds to man's 'phenomenal activity' 'an
activity of
things,'
that is to say, human practice has not only a phenomenal (in the Humean and
Kantian sense of the term), but an objectively real significance. The criterion
of practice -- as we shall show in detail in its proper place... -- has entirely
different meanings for Mach and Marx. 'Humanity partakes of the absolute' means
that human knowledge reflects absolute truth; the practice of humanity, by
verifying our ideas, corroborates what in those ideas corresponds to absolute
truth.... The reader sees that Lévy does not for a moment doubt that Marx
recognised the existence of
things-in-themselves!"
[Ibid., pp.104-15. Minor typo
corrected; one paragraph merged.]
Here he is
in just the first half of
PN (I have omitted the scores of Hegel quotes that refer to the
"thing-in-itself"):
"This is very profound: the Thing-in-itself and
its conversion into a
Thing-for-others
(cf. Engels
). The
Thing-in-itself
is altogether an
empty, lifeless abstraction. In life, in movement, each
thing
and everything is
usually both
'in
itself'
and 'for
others'
in relation to an Other, being transformed from one state to the other."
[Lenin (1961),
p.109.]
"The
Thing-in-itself
is related to Being as the essential to the non-essential?...
"Transcendental idealism...places 'all determinateness of things
(both with regard to form and to content) in consciousness...accordingly, from
this point of view, it falls within me, the subject, that I see the leaves of a
tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not as square, and taste
sugar as sweet and not as bitter; that I determine the first and second strokes
of a clock as successive and not as simultaneous, and determine the first to be
neither the cause nor the effect of the second, and so forth'.... Hegel further
makes the reservation that he has here investigated only the question of the
Thing-in-itself
and [external reflection]." [Ibid.,
pp.149-50.]
"Hegel in favour of the cognisability of the
Thing-in-itself."
[Ibid., p.173.]
"Apparently, Hegel perceives scepticism here in the fact that
Hume and Kant do not see the appearingThing-in-itself
in 'phenomena,' divorce phenomena from objective truth, doubt the objectivity of
cognition, remove, [everything empirical] from the [Thing-in-itself]...."
[Ibid., p.205.]
"Elements of dialectics.
One could perhaps present these elements in greater detail as
follows:
"1.
the objectivity of
consideration (not examples, not divergencies, but the
Thing-in-itself).
"2. the entire totality of
the manifold
relations of this thing to others.
"3. the development of
this thing, (phenomenon, respectively), its own movement, its own life.
"4. the internally contradictory tendencies (and sides)
in this thing.
"5. the thing
(phenomenon, etc.) as the sum and
unity of opposites....
"8.
the relations of
each thing
(phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but general, universal.
Each thing
(phenomenon, process, etc.) is connected with every
other...
"11. the endless process of the
deepening of man's knowledge of
the thing,
of phenomena, processes, etc., from appearance to essence and from less profound
to more profound essence." [Ibid.,
pp.220-21. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. I have replaced any German words
Lenin used with their English equivalents as suggested by the editors, and
indicated by the use of square brackets.]
It wouldn't
be difficult to illustrate a similar, almost neurotic obsession with
"things"/"objects" -- which each Knower knows by entering onto a relation with
it (in this case a "thing-in-itself" or an "image" of it, etc.) -- right
across the DM-literature.
Knowledge
thus becomes relational not propositional -- and when this
involves a relation between Knower and an 'idea', an 'image', an 'abstraction'
or a 'concept', scepticism soon
follows in its train. [On the significance of those observations, also see
Essay Six, here. I have said
much more about 'Subject/Object Identity' in Note 18a, below. See also Note 25.]
[In Essay
Twelve Part Six we will see this knowledge-is-a-relation error resurfaces in
connection with Hegel's 'understanding' of truth, among other topics.]
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, just how anyone is
capable of
cognising, let alone
re-cognising, 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 topics. 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 and other related issues
have been discussed extensively in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]
6b.
In fact, the insurmountable 'problems' the doctrine of the
Trinity introduced into Christian Theology arose directly out of attempts made
by Plato and Aristotle's
to account for generality; but more specifically because of the 'Forms', 'Universals' and 'Substances'
they invented as a result. Of course,
that fact hasn't
been
lost on
anti-TrinitarianChristians
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 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
originally breathed life into them and which even now keep them on life support.
So, a return to
the 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 onhome 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).]
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 that, see Williams
(1973) and Ferrari (2005). See also
here.
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 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.]
"Essence
becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to
essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is
therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination
of being the other of form. It is consequently the real
basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the
reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element
to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence. 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, §§
978-979.
Bold emphasis alone added. Typos in the on-line version corrected. Paragraphs
merged.]
12.Once again, I am forced to
'frame this
problem' by employing traditional jargon, but readers mustn't assume I think any of it
makes the slightest sense.
I will say
much more about this topic in Essay Three Part Five where I will link the above
considerations with Traditional Theories of Mind, Will, Freedom, Necessity, and
Determinism. This will also connect them with the
re-enchantment of
nature by Dialectical Marxists (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 theories being targeted at
this site, not those who lampoon them.
"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 (1913),
p.3;
Book One, Chapter One.]
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), that destroys
the capacity language has for expressing anything at all. That was, of course, the main theme of
Part One. Readers are directed there for more details.
"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
numinouslost 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 thought he saw the 'Absolute' everywhere
and in everything, DM-theorists see the "Totality". In that light everything "takes on a new
meaning".
14a2.
Which might help
explain why Trotsky came out with the following remark:
"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' seems to rob DM-junkies of
their free will, a point underlined by Max Eastman:
"Hegelism is
like a mental disease; youcan'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 in effect 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 to fragment, or, indeed, for its 'leaders' to imprison or
execute annoying critics and infidel 'Revisionists!' whenever they are in power. In such circumstances, the
'dialectical mailed fist' soon replaces the invisible hand of
reasonableness and internal fights soon break out. This is especially true of Stalinists
and Maoists (if and when they actually manage to seize power). While such parties don't
split or fragment as much as Trotskyist parties -- who have incidentally turned
sectarianism and fragmentation
into an art form, analogous to a schizophrenic amoeba on speed --, they soon turn the
level of vitriol up to eleven as they imprison, section, 're-educate', silence or
'liquidate' the politically/ideologically recalcitrant. No man, no problem...
[Yes, I am aware Stalin probably didn't say this!
But it certainly represents what happened in 'certain countries' a few
generations ago.]
These
accusations
have been fully substantiated in Essay Nine
Part Two, in order to expose the damage DM, in the hands of its petty bourgeois acolytes,
has 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, from inside the bourgeois conceptual universe --
an intellectual space populated by little other
particularised ideas, atomised concepts and socially isolated thinkers
(i.e., as far as theirown theorists picture things) -- any attempt to prove there
are other minds facesinsurmountable obstacles.
Some might respond that a
lone abstractor could extrapolate from her own experience to the conclusion that
others are just like her, and who therefore also have minds. However, any theory based on oneobservation 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 specify whatany such guess had actually been directed toward. That is because, of course,
belief in other minds requires the use of yet more general terms, which this theory
lacks -- or, rather, which it has just emptied of their generality. This is quite apart
from the fact that Lenin's theory of perception would trap
him, and 'everyone else', in a
solipsistic dungeon, mentioned earlier.
[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.]
16a.
Be this as it may, any attempt
made to
appeal to
the 'relative stability of language' would be to no avail, since, given
DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians could possibly have the
sameideaeven about 'relative stability', noryet the same idea
about 'relative stability' that 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' since the phrase
"relatively or approximately the same" is itself subject to the same
limitations since it now has
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 only approximate to something when we have some idea what it is we are
trying to approximate, but we have no idea in this case 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
"words".
In a dialectical universe, all that is
solid melts into the air.
[Again, I
hasten to add that the above remarks don't represent my ideas; I am simply
exposing DM's ridiculous implications.]
17.
It would be no use,
either, appealing to the 'relative' or 'partial' nature of knowledge
at this point, since, as we saw in Essay Ten
Part One if, per impossible,
DM were true, 'reality' would be indistinguishable from Kant's Noumenon
-- even if we could say that much!
18.This idea is up front in Kant, although less
sophisticated versions can also be found in the
work of several 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 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.
"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 definitely not in ideologically-compromised HCD-circles. 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 "things-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 and
Lenin's
thoughts on this have been 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 that,
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 typos 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 posted
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
what passes for thought there. [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 the case than he proved anything in the tangled
mess
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 dungeonmentioned earlier, the 'object' of
knowledge now having evaporated 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. On failed attempts to argue that
Lenin's later theory of knowledge benefitted from his engagement with Hegel, see
Appendix Three.]
19.If the 'mind' knowsonly 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'. When a theorist begins with the 'contents of the mind', there is
no escape from this philosophical straightjacket. Indeed, since the 'world' isn't just a mere idea, but the subject's
own idea, in the end there can be no real difference, just a rhetorical
distinction, between the
'objective' and the 'subjective', given this approach to 'knowledge'.
Naturally, Empiricists
might want to deny
those implications, but if they are right, every single one of them will simply be arguing with
him/herself, not me!
Others might
object that all this confuses
Empiricism with
Solipsism,
but that isn't so. In fact, it goes much further; it identifies them.
That
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 -- that is, 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
inverted, eviscerated and facile version of Hegel's system (i.e., DM) is no less Ideal.
Hegel was quite clear: Logic and the
Divine Logos
are one, Nature is Idea, and the latter 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,
leaving 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 originally spun by Ancient Greek
(ruling-class) 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.]
20a.On this, see
Note 20, above. This topic will
be covered in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two to Four, as well as Essay Fourteen
Part One (summaries here
and here).
21.The readershouldn't conclude from these comments that
Nominalism
is the present author's 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 was 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 all 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.
To
be fair to John Rees, and as noted in Appendix Three, 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).
His argument will be examined in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is
published in late 2024).
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.
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 conflate into a single concept, '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. In the latter 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 distinction 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" (sic) doesn't make
sense, 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: 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 specific 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 variety, 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 in French 'Philosophy'
-- which is
rather ironic when we remember that French does have a set of verbs that clearly
distinguishes between 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.
(There will be 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 is meant 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
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. In which case, 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 in conservative circles.
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 transform them into.
However, the
'abstractions' they attempt to define (or identify) are '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
actual objects from which they have supposedly been 'abstracted'
(where, presumably, they exist somehow 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
then 'apprehended' by special 'acts of intellection', or
by something 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'
cognised by other
intrepid abstractors.
In this respect, too, the postulation of such
'abstractions' (or
'abstract ideas' and 'concepts') only succeeds in undermining the
social nature of language and knowledge by suggesting that such key linguistic activities are
private, socially-atomised and
representational in nature.
It is worth recalling, too, that what had been
touted all along as an ontological and epistemological exercise (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 amply demonstrated.
26a.In addition to what has already been covered (derived
from Hegel's work), extra 'dialectical' background can be found
here -- and good luck
trying to make any sense of it!
27.
I have employed the rather stilted sentential prefixing
clause (or, as it is generally known: 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 examples/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 "contradiction" -- and the many
failed attempts to explain what Hegel was banging on about in connection with
that word -- in
Essays Four, Five,
Essay Eight Parts
One,
Two,
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
or has been openly expressed, only how that could be done):
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 p
and 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 too 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 much more 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 (alleged) 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 any sense of this.
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.
"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 was
transient? Or that they can/will
at some point perish?
However, Novack concurs with
Hegel by 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.
"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. Links added.]
As should
seem obvious to an atheist, this sort of language only makes sense to believers. However, as soon as we take
'God' out of the picture, this 'theory' falls apart faster than one of Donald Trump's speeches.
That is partly because the distinction between what is 'real' and what is 'not
real' is spurious when used in the above profligate manner. [Again on this, see
Austin (1964), pp.62-83.] As if
the difference between a 'real' and a counterfeit dollar note might lie in
the fact that the latter will perish, not the former. Or, indeed, that there
exists somewhere a 'real dollar note' that will never perish and which forever
stands in silent judgement on its inferior, this-worldly cousin. Anyone who
thinks that a real Van
Gogh (painting) will never fade or require preservation and restoration,
no matter what is done to it, whereas a fake van Gogh (i.e., one that can be
described as "not a real van Gogh") will crumble to dust if left to its own
devices would be well advised never seek employment in the art industry.
Figure Five: 'The Potato Eaters' By
Vincent Van Gogh -- Not The 'Real' Painting
Just A 'Perishable' Copy
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; several paragraphs merged.]
Shiva, is also supposed to be the "most powerful
god"; compare that idea 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)].
Er..., what was it
that someone once said about
"the ideas of the ruling class..."?
Even so, the following
question is still in want of an answer: 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 and 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 nonsense, for
they don't change -- or, if they do, they don't do so as a result of their
'internal contradictions'.
As far as we know they last forever unless acted upon. Left alone they appear to
be eternal beings.
Photons are
similarly uncooperative since they are as un-dialectical as are
electrons.
[More on that,
here.]
Be this as it may a third time, anyone
familiar with the genre will already know that the sort of
flowery language Novack inflicts on his readers goes down rather well in DM-circles (that
is especially
so in relation to the HCD-fraternity), even though it exudes an offensive Christian
odour (with a minor
chord whiff of Hinduism or even
Buddhism
wafting in the background), especially when we view 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 (i.e., provide consolation) 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', or re-enchant nature. 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 is actually 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 to that end. Clearly, this is not
an insignificant detail since it now redirects attention to the conflict that
might or might not exist between contradictory
beliefs, something we can get a handle on. But, in that regard, and with respect to bent sticks, for
instance, 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.
Furthermore, none of this
seems to have anything to do with
the supposed contradiction between appearance and reality, since,
plainly, such contradictions are between beliefs expressed in
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 are 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
only 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 does and doesn't 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 follow the link in Note 32, below.
32.The content of Note 32 has now been moved to the main body of this Essay,
here.
34.Anyway, and once more, these two
sentences are far too
ambiguous to be considered
contradictory. [Anyway, in relation to R17 and R18: 'appears' to whom? And in
what way? Indeed, what is the criterion of 'fairness' being applied 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 as follows:
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 others that Capitalism isn't fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism
isn't fair. [Or, so they 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 even 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 will, not unsurprisingly,
flounder. 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 come out with.
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 philosophicaluse of terms
like "objective" and "subjective" to which exception has
been taken.
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 deployed in order to exert pressure on the
rest of their theory. But, that doesn't imply I accept "subjective" and "objective"
have a 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, fictional 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 such state or process in the
CNS (again, on this view,
not mine!). Moreover, 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, but not for 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 naïveté 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 paradoxical consequence of Lenin's theory 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 have done that if they were 'self-certifying'. And yet,
evento 'God' they 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 'appearances' 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 this 'coinciding', given that odd way of talking.
40.As we have seen, and as we will see even more as the Essays at this site
unfold, dialectical thoughts arefar from self-certifying. Indeed, many
of them self-destructwith alarming ease, while the rest are based on
one or more of the following dubious factors:
Admittedly, it is controversial to claim that
thoughts should be classified alongside appearances, but since these
terms-of-art (as they feature in Metaphysics) are devoid of any clear
meaning, the denial of this claim would be devoid of sense, too. 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, in that case all we
would have here are
yet more
signs, and signs can't interpret themselves.
"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 outlined in Williams (1999a). [This overall topic is covered in more detail
in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
Bloor's book is one of the better
contributions to the debate concerning the nature of rule-following to have
appeared in the last twenty-five years, or so; however, there are several serious weaknesses
to 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 from Bloor's.]
"[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 these sentiments. If
not, he was wise to so 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 Part One,
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
(at least to
its supporters) to be an excellent theory, in reality it is the exact opposite.
A
rather ironic 'dialectical' inversion, one feels.
There would, of course, be no point arguing
for or against the truth of DM, or seeking to confirm any part of it in practice, if
thoughts were self-certifying.
43.This word (i.e., "semblances")
isn't being used here with its Hegelian meaning. 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 make sense 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.
Here we have yet more fluent Martian from self-proclaimed Marxists!]
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