Essay Three Part Two: Abstractionism -- Or, 'Science' On The cheap

Preface

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July 2015: A recent computer meltdown has resulted in the codes I inserted into several Essays at this site altering randomly (I have no idea why!). This has made the formatting and fonts I have used vary erratically. I am currently trying to correct this error, but it might take several weeks to implement fully.

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This Part of Essay Three has been written and re-written more times than any other at this site; the first half of it still contains rather too many mixed metaphors and stylistic monstrosities. I am in fact experimenting with new ways of expressing ideas that have been raked over countless times in the last 2400 years by Traditional Thinkers. It will require many more re-writes before I am completely happy with it; in which case, the reader's indulgence is required here more so than elsewhere.

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

It is also worth pointing out that a good 50% of my case against DM has been relegated to the End Notes. Indeed, in this particular Essay, most of the supporting evidence is to be found there. This has been done to allow the main body of the Essay itself to flow a little more smoothly. This means that if readers want to appreciate fully my case against DM, they should consult this material. In many cases, I have added numerous qualifications and considerably more supporting detail to what I have to say in the main body; in addition, I have raised several objections (some obvious, many not -- and some that will have occurred to the reader) to my own arguments -- which I have then answered. [I explain why I have adopted this tactic in Essay One.]

If readers skip this material, then my answers to any objections they might have will be missed, as will the extra supporting detail and the many qualifications I have included. [Since I have been debating this theory with comrades for over 25 years, I have heard all the objections there are! Many of the more recent on-line debates have been listed here.]

In addition, it is worth pointing out that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality", "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used in this Essay (in connection with Traditional Philosophy and DM) aren't meant to imply that all or even most members of various ruling-classes actually invented these ways of thinking or of seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example, Heraclitus, Plato, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius). They are intended to highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise the interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them. Up until recently this dogmatic approach to knowledge had 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, this will become the central topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published); until then, the reader is directed here, here, and here, for further details.

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

As of July 2015, this Essay is just under 74,000 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be found here.

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

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(1) Introduction

(2) The Traditional Approach To Abstract General Ideas

(a) Dialectical Traditionalism

(b) How Not To Solve A Problem

(c) Descent Into A Metaphysical Abyss

(3) Empiricism And The Anthropomorphic Brain

(a) Bourgeois Individualism

(b) How Not To Solve Insoluble 'Problems' 101

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

(4) Yet More Headaches For Dialecticians

(a) Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge

(b) Driven To Abstraction

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

(d) Collective Error Over General Terms

(5) Abstractionism: Bury It -- Or Praise It?

(a) Nothing To Lose But Your Confusion

(b) Public Criteria Versus Private Gain

(c) Particular Problems With Dialectical Generality

(6) Appearance And Reality

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

(b) Does Reality Contradict Appearances?

(i)   Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science

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

(iii) 'Contradictory' Capitalism?

(c) Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances

(i)   Are All Appearances 'False'?

(ii)  Dialectics Engages Auto-Destruct Mode

(d) Why Science Cannot Undermine Common Sense

(i)   Ordinary Language Confused With Common Sense

(ii)  Why Scientists Cannot Afford To Undermine Common Sense

(7) Anti-Abstractionism

(a) 'Mental Strip-Tease'?

(b) Do Scientists Indulge In Abstraction?

(c) Anti-Abstractionism

(i)   Berkeley And Frege

(ii)  The Young Marx And Engels

(8) Bertell Ollman's Traditionalism

(a) Initial Disappointment

(b) The Privatised 'Process Of Abstraction'

(c) Karl Marx -- A Magician?

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

(e) Ollman Misconstrues The Nature Of Change

(f) 'Internal Relations' To The Rescue?

(g) Welcome To The Desert Of The Reification

(h) Brain Scans Required?

(i) Ollman Versus DM's Critics

(9) Notes

(10) References

Summary Of My Main Objections To Dialectical Materialism

Abbreviations Used At This Site

Return To The Main Index Page

Contact Me

Introduction

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

[DM = Dialectical Materialism/Materialist; DL = Dialectical Logic.]

The Traditional Approach -- Rationalism And Original Syntax

Dialectical Traditionalism

As Part One of this Essay demonstrated -- and as Part Two will further confirm --, beyond one or two superficial differences, dialecticians have bought into the traditional view of 'abstract general ideas'.

Radical they are not.

In Metaphysics, reference to such ideas was intimately connected with the so-called 'problem' of "Universals".¹

Rationalist Philosophers tended to argue that general words/concepts were either anterior to experience or were apprehended (using 'the light of reason', or other a priori, regulative 'concepts'/'categories') by means of generalisations drawn (or "abstracted") from, or even applied to, an unspecified number of particulars (i.e., individual objects/events of a certain sort) given in experience. The 'concepts', 'categories', or 'Ideas' so derived -- or employed -- were supposed to represent/reveal the formal, constitutive or 'essential' properties of all particulars of that type: 'primary'/'secondary' qualities or properties (as they later tended to be known), which they either instantiated, or in which they were said to "participate".

Naturally, this made material objects and events seem less 'real' than the abstractions that supposedly lent them their substantiality, or which constituted their "essence". Because of this, the general -- the 'rational' -- came to dominate over the particular -- the material --, in all subsequent thought originating in the Rationalist tradition. What were in principle invisible and undetectable "essences" came to be seen as more real than the world we see around us.

Hence, in view of the fact that these 'abstractions' were Ideal objects -- they were in fact Abstract Particulars --, this meant that for Rationalists reality was essentially Ideal. In comparison, the material world was a shadow world, not fully 'real', since it was characterised by contingency, brute fact and uncertainty. The rational structure that underpinned appearances was the real world, and that world was accessible to 'thought' alone. If general terms constituted (or even expressed) the 'essence' of material objects, then material objects were only such because of the Abstract/Ideal Particulars that underpinned them. Naturally, this implied that the material world was only 'real' because it was in effect Ideal, an abstraction in its own right.

[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 that matter itself is, therefore, an abstraction! In which case, these erstwhile hard-headed 'materialists' have already capitulated to a core principle of Idealism -- matter is an abstraction! (Hard to believe? Check out Essays Ten Part One and Thirteen Part One.)]

To be sure, Descartes believed there were two substances -- Mind and Matter --, but it soon became apparent (in the work of Spinoza, and in a somewhat different form in Leibniz's writings -- and later still in Hegel's 'theory'), that there is only one rational/real substance: Mind. All else is an 'appearance', and hence 'accidental' and 'ephemeral'.

The traditional approach, which particularises general terms and nominalises verbs, has in different guises 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 forms of Rationalist Philosophy are simply different forms of Idealism. And, as we will see, this approach to generality has spread its tentacles (in one shape or another) into all subsequent metaphysical forms-of-thought --, so much so that it is abundantly clear that all forms of Traditional Philosophy (Rationalist, Nominalist, Realist, Monist, Dualist or Empiricist) are no less Idealist.^1a

These "ruling ideas", invented by Greek Thinkers, thus found a new home in more recent, Bourgeois surroundings, albeit with fresh content to mirror the new social and economic conditions.

Even when this 'theory' is flipped "right-side up" (and "put on its feet"), allegedly in DM, material reality is still viewed as secondary, derivative, dependent, not fully real. The material world, as seen by dialecticians, requires the rational principles encapsulated in DL to give it life and form. After all, underlying "essences" 'contradict' "appearances", and in that punch-up, it is always "essence" which assumes primacy.^1aa

[This, of course, helps explain why DM-fans find it impossibly difficult telling non-believers what their 'abstractions' correspond with in 'reality'. As we saw in Part One (and as we will see in more detail In Essay Twelve Part Four), if there were anything in the universe for these 'abstractions', these 'rational principles', to correspond, nature would indeed be 'Mind'. On the other hand, if there isn't, then what use are they?]

As the Book of Genesis noted, in an Ideal world it takes the word of 'God' (or something analogous) to give life and form to matter; without it, all would be lifeless, chaotic and would probably cease to exist:

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

In like manner, a 'Dialectical Logos' is required not just to add form to formless matter, but to call it into existence (from 'Nothing'), to give it life and make it move. Matter, even for DM-fans, isn't sufficient to itself. Which is, of course, why Hegel and DM-fans have to appeal to a linguistic form -- contradiction -- to make things move, and to give them life.

"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. Italic emphases in the original. Bold emphases added.]

Because of this, it isn't possible to find a single physical correlate in nature for the abstractions dialecticians have conjured into existence (or, rather, for the 'abstractions' they borrowed from Hegel and other boss-class theorists) --, and since they form the essential nature of material objects and processes, they must be Ideal, too.

And that is why the aforementioned dialectical "flip" is no flip at all.

Furthermore, and worse: over the last 150 years, dialecticians have conspicuously failed to say what they think matter is. As noted above, the very most they will say is that it is an 'abstraction'!

In that case, it is hardly surprising to find that DM-fans have had to denigrate ordinary language, and thus the experience of ordinary workers (accusing them of being dominated by 'commonsense', 'formal thinking' or 'false consciousness' -- thus aping a tactic initiated and perfected by ruling-class theorists), in order to 'justify' their appropriation of Hegelian concepts in their failed attempt to make DM work. [These allegations will be substantiated in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

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

Moreover, as indicated earlier, this version of 'upside-down Idealism' [DM] sees the material world as less real than the Ideal world that lends it its substance/'essence', and which determines what DM-theorists regard as "concrete".

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

How Not  To Solve A Problem: Double It

Nevertheless, 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 to try to solve a problem by immediately doubling it.

So, if there is a difficulty explaining the connection or similarities between particulars given in experience, there is surely a more intractable one accounting for the alleged link between those newly constructed Abstract Universals and the particulars that supposedly instantiate them. Worse still, if the solution to this age-old conundrum implies there is a link of some sort that connects material particulars with 'a something we-know-not-what' -- i.e., with a specially invented 'Universal' --, situated in a mysterious world anterior to experience, and hence accessible to thought alone, then this is a 'solution' in name only.^1b

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

Clearly, this third term simply reproduces the original problem. Plainly, because questions would naturally arise over the link between this new term and the other two items -- each particular and its hypothesised Universal -- it had been introduced to connect.

However, Abstract Universals 'exist' in an Ideal realm, and they supposedly have connections with particulars in this world that are of a different order from those that material particulars might enjoy among themselves. Plainly, this just leaves the 'abstract' side of this family of 'solutions' shrouded in total mystery.

Hence, if, for example, the introduction of Universal/Concept, C₁, is required to account for the common features shared by objects A and B, then a new Universal/Concept, C₂, a third term, will be required to account for the connection between C₁ and A, and between C₁ and B, and so on. The whole exercise thus threatens to inflate into an infinite regress, leaving nothing explained. Indeed, if C₁ 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 to either A or B, so the above argument is misconceived.

Well, it would be if 'Universals' hadn't already been turned into Abstract Particulars (or the names thereof) by the syntactical dodge exposed in Part One of this Essay. But, because Traditional Theorists have been doing precisely this since Ancient Greek times, Aristotle's point (suitably adapted) applies to every known version of this theory. In which case, 'Universals' (and/or 'Concepts'', "Ideas" and "Categories"), as they feature in Traditional Thought (and, alas, in DM, too), cannot be general. They are just particulars of a rather peculiar sort, ashamed to come out of the closet.

Hence, the question remains: Is there a general term that is capable of linking ordinary material particulars with these newly-minted Abstract Particulars?

That is just one of the reasons why this 'problem' is addressed in the way it was in Part One of this Essay. There, the discussion was aimed at exposing the syntactical error that originally motivated it, wherein predicate expressions were transformed into the names of Abstract Particulars. To be sure, Aristotle himself half recognised this problem (as we have seen), but the logic he developed wasn't sophisticated enough to account for its origin (and thus for its solution -- or, rather, its dissolution), and he ended up committing an early form of this error himself (in what turned out to be a precursor of the identity theory of predication discussed in Part One (this links directly to a downloadable .doc file)).

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

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

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

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

Descent Into A Metaphysical Abyss

Unfortunately, this ancient error has been passed down the centuries to later generations of Traditional Theories, as this ancestral fall from linguistic grace traduced the entire population of flawed 'solutions' that have descended from it by unnatural selection --, including the poor relation found in DM, the theoretical runt of this class-compromised litter.

Empiricism And The Anthropomorphic Brain

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

[It is worth noticing that this approach also implied that the 'mental' side of the equation came first -- with 'mind' holding primacy over matter, once more. So, as we will see, the 'high road' (Rationalism) and the 'low road' (Empiricism) both led Traditional Theorists into one form of Idealism or another.]

In fact, the 'mind' was somehow able to 'apprehend' the common elements supposedly shared by particulars given in experience (which process manifested itself internally in the production, or the 'processing' of "ideas", "impressions" and "sense data" -- or, of late, "qualia").

Minimal agreement aside, such theorists tended to be divided over whether universal terms were genuine features of reality or were simply a by-product of an overactive mind --, or, indeed, whether they were empty words and thus perhaps just "useful fictions".

As things turned out, it mattered not, for on this view general words were once again demoted, and then transformed into 'mental particulars' (i.e., they were the names of ideas in the mind or of processes in the brain). Even though Berkeley saw the need to escape from this theoretical cul-de-sac, his 'solution' merely sank the empiricist tradition deeper into the same old Idealist quick sands.

Unfortunately, there were other problems over and above those that had been bequeathed to empiricist thought as a result of the syntactical sins of their philosophical forebears: if 'general' ideas are in fact particular to each mind (and, on this view, they had to be such for, plainly, no two individuals shared the same mind or were fed the same experiences), they couldn't be general across a population -- even in theory! [The point of that comment will soon emerge.] This is all the more so if the 'process of abstraction' (as this was conceived by empiricists) merely creates yet more abstract particulars, just as earlier forms of the 'same' charade had manufactured rationalist abstract particulars in ancient, medieval and early modern thought.

In that case, the empiricist tradition seemed quite happy to maintain, and then elaborate upon, these ancient misdemeanours. This particular set of "ruling ideas" (i.e., these 'abstractions') now colonised another set of eager brains.

To explain: assume thinker T₁ has formed (by whatever 'empirical means' available to her) the supposedly general idea, G₁, and thinker, T₂, forms the 'same' general idea, G₂, of supposedly the 'same' objects. Now, in order to say of these 'general ideas' (G₁ and G₂) that they are indeed ideas of the same things (or, indeed, are the same general idea), a third term will be required to connect them (i.e., because in that case G₁ and G₂ would presumably both be exemplars of the same general, general idea, G), so that it could truly be said that these two were instances of the same 'concept'/'idea'/'impression'. But, this now falls foul of Aristotle's objection, which in turn means that every single 'solution' offered up in the empiricist tradition suffered from the same fatal defect that blighted those that had been dreamt up by the rationalists.

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

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

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

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

Naturally, this is just another way of saying that intentions can't create generality any more than wishes can alter the travel arrangements of beggars.

Indeed, simply gluing the word "general" onto the word "concept" (as perhaps 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 yet another particular --, or, at least, it is the title thereof.

In fact, any attempt to derive generality from the atomised conceptual fragments that (on this view) floated randomly into each individual mind via the senses will always hit the same brick wall: abstraction only succeeds in creating the names of abstract particulars --, whosoever indulges in this black art, whenever it is practiced, and with whatever philosophical intentions this conjuring trick is attempted.

Fortunately, however, for us genuine materialists, the logic of predication (as it features in ordinary language) has already fixed the result in our favour --, and there is no leave to appeal its uncompromising judgement. Generality is a feature of the way we use words, not a property of those words themselves.

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

It could be countered that inter-communication isn't threatened by empiricist versions of abstractionism, since communication with others is not only possible, it is actual -- because, manifestly, people can and do 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 forged, and now trapped, in each socially-atomised brain.

[To see this, just replace the "G₁" or " G₂" with "G_3-n- G_n", where "n" can take any value from one to six billion, or more, in the above argument, and the rest should follow.]

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

And the same difficulties will afflict anyone who aims to provide their own general solution to this bogus 'problem'. A strategy forged along these lines is doomed to fail because any explanation of how the particular ideas of general terms located in separate heads actually resemble the same general features of reality they supposedly express/mirror -- or even the same particular ideas of these alleged general terms located in any one else's head --, would each require its own linking term, on the lines detailed above. Accounting for these would, of course, make squaring the circle look like child's play in comparison; this Sisyphean task would simply create yet more abstract particulars locked in the individual mind of anyone foolish enough to try.

In short: a 'general' silk purse cannot be made out of this atomised pig's ear.

Struggling to escape these metaphysical quicksands thus sinks the trapped Philosopher deeper in the mire. Given the traditional approach, Abstract Particulars (but not general terms) loom out of the shadows at every turn as increasing numbers of them are required to account for the last batch that have just conjured into existence. And, since none of them is capable of evolving into a higher general form by its own efforts, this approach to knowledge/ontology simply creates an endless series of abstract dead ends.

Bourgeois Individualism

Just as ancient rationalist ideas can be traced back to Aristocratic notions invented and propagated by Greek Philosophers (concerning the 'natural' hierarchical or divine order underpinning the Universe, a view itself motivated by the need to 'justify' social stratification and inequality, etc.), the origin of more recent Atomist and Empiricist theories of Universals can be linked to the rise of Bourgeois 'democracy', with its characteristic emphasis on "possessive individualism". [On this, see Note 2.]

If this new social order was meant to be democratic (but only "within certain limits"), founded on the assumed psychology of the fabled Bourgeois Individual, then private ownership in the means of mental production made eminent good sense.

The fragmentation introduced into society by the development of Capitalism was mirrored in an analogous dissolution of the Universal into its particulars, now scattered across countless million, isolated bourgeois heads.

Capitalism freed workers from the land, and so Empiricism freed Ideas from their formerly 'oppressive'/hierarchical Platonic Forms and Aristotelian Universals; the old ontological pecking-order crumbled as new market conditions swept all before them. The need to 'justify' undemocratic state power and rationalise the newly emerging class relations meant that theorists found they also had to concoct novel ways of conceptualising 'reality'.

As we will soon see, in this respect Empiricism couldn't cut mustard. A fresh wave of Rationalist thought was needed: (a) To counter this fragmentation of knowledge, and (b) To provide the theoretical/ideological unification that the (Absolutist) Bourgeois Nation State required, as well as (3) To 'justify' its 'rightful' sovereignty. The ideas of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, among many others, were thus thrown into the breach, as fresh waves of boss-class theory emerged from these newly commissioned ruling-class hacks.^1c0

Even so, just as workers still got screwed in the new market economy (only now in novel ways), general ideas were likewise shafted (but in the same old way).^1c

Once more, this turn to Rationalism was futile; the ancient fragmentation of general ideas cannot be reversed -- whoever tries to do it. Indeed, as the fabled soldiers found with respect to Humpty Dumpty, once in pieces, 'general concepts' are impossible to put back together again.²

Figure One: Abstractionism Takes A Tumble

No surprise then that despite countless pretensions to the contrary, these 'modern' theories found it equally impossible to account for the very thing they had been invented to explain: generality.

If generality is simply an aspect of the mind's operation (and not a feature of 'things-in-themselves' -- as some rationalists claimed) --, it was far from easy to see what it was about each particular idea of the general (located in each head) that made it general, or even appear to be general, now that one and all had been hived-off and then lodged in individual bourgeois skulls.

Given this 'modern' account, there would be nothing but individual ideas loosely tied together in ways that became increasingly difficult to fathom, floating about in each socially-atomised mind. At a minimum, even a general idea like this (i.e., that which apparently concerns "every individual", and seeks to tell us what is in their heads -- soon to be re-Christened 'Thought', 'The Understanding', or 'Speculative Reason') is, on this theory, devoid of any clear sense itself. If Philosophers couldn't account for generality (largely because they had killed it stone dead long ago), then they had no way of accounting for its appearance, or lack of it, anywhere else --, either in the general population, or in the privacy of their own heads. Indeed, how is it even possible to speak about "every head" with anything other than a string of empty words if generality had already been done to death?^2a

As noted above, some attempt might be made to attach to the word "idea" another as-yet-to-be-explained term -- i.e., "general" (as in, say, "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" in the mind, as this family of empiricist theories consistently maintained), then a phrase like "the general idea of..." would still be particular to whoever thought it, whatever associationist incantations might have been uttered over it.

The definite article, of course, gives the game away.

In that case, for Empiricists, "general idea" would be as empty a phrase as "general particular" was for Rationalists.

Feigned generality like this implies that the use of these terms amounted to little more than epistemological 'promissory notes' -- of little real value if there was nothing in the bourgeois vaults to settle these rapidly inflating 'semantic debts'.

Thus it was that in the empiricist tradition there unfolded several more centuries of a priori 'science-on-the-cheap', this time backed not even by printed currency, but by yet more empty words.

[It might be thought that empiricist epistemology is a posteriori, not a priori. However, it was, and still is, based on some rather fanciful a priori psychology. More on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Of course, to suppose otherwise (i.e., to imagine that the word "general" -- or any other term, for that matter --, is quite up to the task of creating generality all on its own and by its own efforts) is tantamount to thinking that words can determine, or project their own meanings throughout the whole of 'semantic space' (with this feat miraculously coordinated across each and every epistemologically-isolated bourgeois skull), as if they are autonomous agents. But, unaided, as a mark on the page --, or even as an "idea" in the head --, the individual word "general" seems entirely incapable of unscrambling this very real metaphysical egg.

On the other hand, if general ideas actually do represent "things-in-themselves" (that is, if there are indeed "real universals" that exist 'somewhere', to which general words supposedly 'correspond') -- as the scientific realist wings of this traditional journey to nowhere maintained -- it would surely prove impossible to explain the mode of signification of either term, as we are about to see.

If each general idea/word refers to something, somewhere in reality -- in Platonic Heaven, Hegelian Hell, or anywhere else -- they could only do so if they functioned as names, or name surrogates. But, as we saw in Part One, if that were so, general ideas/words couldn't be general, just particular.

Even if one and all were grandiosely re-christened as a "General Name", they would stubbornly remain humble particulars (in this case, they'd still amount to a particular phrase -- and/or what each supposedly referred to --, for reasons outlined above). No matter what was done to each and every particular instance of the word "general", it still would prove quite incapable of escaping from the atomised dungeon into which it had been so unceremoniously thrown.^2b

Hence, if each 'bourgeois mind' had its own individual 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 is/was in the skulls of all who played this futile game, with these fractured rules.

The bottom line is, of course, that if anything supposedly general is capable of being named, it can't be general, it must be particular.

And, rather like virginity, once lost, generality cannot be restored.³

How Not  To Solve Insoluble 'Problems' 101

Empiricists attempted to solve this intractable 'problem' by wisely diverting attention from it: they invented an irrelevant 'mental' capacity, an ability the 'mind' apparently possessed enabling it to spot "resemblances" between the various 'impressions' and 'ideas' the senses supposedly sent its way, or which were prompted by them.

But, once again, Aristotle's objection rears its annoying head: if there is a problem over the existence of 'resemblances' 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 takes place hidden away in the 'mind', the philosophical 'problem' this approach sought to resolve simply resurfaces in a completely intractable form, since inner processes of this sort are beyond both objective and subjective confirmation.⁴

Generality, driven inwards is even more difficult to coax out of its individualised shell.⁵

Platonic Realism, Aristotelian Conceptualism and Bourgeois Empiricism (along with a host of other metaphysical doctrines that addressed this pseudo-problem in these terms) all run aground on these unyielding particularist rocks.

By way of contrast, the words we use in ordinary language enable with ease the expression of generality when they are left to social agents to breath life into them. However, they soon lose all semantic vitality when they are replaced by the moribund abstract singular terms invented by work-shy Philosophers with more leisure time on their hands than is good for anyone.⁶

However, by placing all the emphasis on each individual's apprehension of generality (howsoever this is engineered in that individual's head), theorists found they could only account for generality by surreptitiously re-employing other general terms somewhere else.

This unfortunate turn-of-events arose largely because Traditional Philosophers tended to conceive of this conundrum epistemologically. Unfortunately, the logical fall from grace that initiated the original 'problem' (in Ancient Greek thought, covered in detail in Part One) was simply ignored, buried as it now was under centuries of irrelevant psycho-babble (aka, Traditional Epistemology). And there it largely remains entombed to this day.^6a0

As Empiricists conceived things, if experience presents 'the mind' with particular ideas, then generality must be cobbled-together from whatever resemblances it notices in each assumed exemplar. This made the whole 'problem' seem to depend an individual's 'inner recognitional capacities', as if the fragmented contents of 'the mind' were like the faces of long lost friends who had wandered fortuitously into the same room, and in strict order.

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

No good constructing a photo-fit.^6a

Worse still, not one of these impromptu 'visitors' would resemble the next without the use of the general terms this 'theory' was meant to explain!

Anyway, given this family of theories, general terms had to be distilled painstakingly from a manifestly finite batch of examples, those that serially confronted each lone abstractor and/or observer (as the whim took them, or as their imagination went into hyper-drive) in random order.

But, if each lone 'mind' is supposed to extrapolate successfully from the few particulars that fortune tossed its way, then, in order to create the relevant abstract general ideas, each fragmentary experience -- each sensation, impression, idea, or quale (singular of qualia)  -- would have to be coaxed out of its shell, and given a radical make-over.

In order to do that, the 'mind' would have to re-connect these sensate atoms (sensations, impressions, ideas, or qualia) with others of the 'same sort', using whatever similar features it happened to notice. But, not only does this make it hard to explain how any two lone abstractors could ever form the same idea of anything, it makes the whole process dependent on similarity.

This new twist now introduced yet another general idea through the back door -- as noted above --, while failing to explain either the general or the particular that had just slipped out the front. If two things are similar then plainly this must be so with respect to some feature they both hold in common, which feature (of necessity) cannot itself be another particular (or it wouldn't be held in common).

Nevertheless, just as theologians discovered (with respect to their ideas of the Trinity, in, for example, the Athanasian Creed: "Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance"), so empiricists found with regard to their fragmentary ideas of generality: it was impossible for them not to confound the particular without dividing the Universal.^6b Hence, if each individual shares exactly the same universal of resemblance (say, G₁, from earlier), then that term must be particular to that individual. The general, having thus been distributed over the entire congregation of novice abstractors, cannot now fail to inherit this fractured nature.

Conversely, if the re-distribution of generality hadn't been carried out in a perfectly egalitarian manner, the relevant individuals wouldn't be collected under the same general term, shared equally between all.

On the other hand, once more, if generality is shared equally, it would be hard to tell each individual apart. Hence, the general is either divided or the material particulars are confounded.

Moreover, how might either of these be accurately ascertained across an entire population of lone abstractors?

No good commissioning a Gallup Poll.⁷

And, if they can't communication will be rendered impossible.

In that case, the choice between confounding the individuals or dividing the substance (the general) plagued Empiricists and Rationalists alike, as it had done Trinitarians -- and for the same basic reason: this entire family of doctrines had been sired by the same inherited syntactic sins.

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

Intelligent Ideas Versus 'A Little Man' In The Head

These problems do not, of course, stop there. Any answer to questions concerned with how the 'Mind' sifts through the 'ideas' of particulars the senses supposedly send its way, or which prompt them, sorting them correctly into the right groups, would surely have to appeal to a prior grasp of general words (in public use). This is a point Kant which realised (in his own confused way, confused since he situated this 'sorting' in 'the mind' and ignored the public use of language): experience without 'concepts' is useless; 'concepts' without experience are empty:

"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." [Kant (1998), p.193, A51/B75. Bold emphases in the original. By "intuition" Kant meant something like "immediate experience" -- Caygill (1995), pp.254-57.]

"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.]

Without this pre-requisite (our public use of the vernacular), inter-subjective 'objectivity' would surely be an empty notion.

Indeed, this is just another way of saying that 'impressions'/ideas can't be expected to sort themselves neatly into groups, since they have neither the motivation nor the wit to do so. They clearly need some form of regimentation. But, in the age-old battle between the One and the Many, the Many have always proved to be far too rebellious to marshal themselves voluntarily in the required manner; the One far too Ideal (and thus too weak) to crack the necessary whip.

However, if regimentation is possible, and achievable -- and, if 'objectivity' is to be preserved --, then principles external to these unruly 'impressions'/ideas (the Many) must be found to lend the 'Mind' (the One) a helping hand. Never was care in the community of ideas more needed than here. And yet, if these 'impressions'/ideas are to become more than a heap of conceptual dust (that is, if there is in this bourgeois community of ideas no such thing as "society", to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher), this 'care' must be sought elsewhere.

As seems plain, the sortal principles necessary to keep these disorderly 'impressions'/ideas in check can't be self-explanatory, nor can they be self-regulatory. If they were, then there would seem to be no reason why this can't also be true of these 'impressions'/ideas, or why they can't troop unaided into the right metaphysical categories -- certifying their own inter-subjective 'resemblances' (with others of the same ilk) without an internal drill-sergeant to whip them into shape.

Alternatively, if every 'impression'/idea were indeed capable of self-regulation and self-sorting, that would remove the need for a 'Mind' with its attendant goons to do the regimenting.

[Henceforth, I will drop the cumbersome phrase "'impression'/idea" and just refer to ideas.]

Clearly, the first of the above options would see the 'Mind' as a sort of internal drill sergeant (thus anthropomorphising it); the second would put this sergeant out of work with a compulsory demob notice.

[There are echoes of both halves of this dilemma in Cognitive Psychology and Behaviourism: the former anthropomorphises the brain, the latter banishes the 'Mind' altogether (i.e., it sends this drill sergeant packing). 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 particulars (supposedly delivered to it by the senses, or as a result of the 'impressions' they created) to general ideas that they allegedly instantiated. This handy 'solution' left it unexplained how this 'extrapolation' could be carried out without the 'Mind' already having some notion of the general to guide it.

And, as Kant wondered: where on earth would that come from?

Nevertheless, if particulars are to be corralled into the correct sortal groups by the 'Mind' (or, these days, by its 'modularised' goons), there seem to be only two ways this could come about:

(A) The first involved an appeal to specific 'mental faculties' (again, these days called "modules"), which all novice abstractors supposedly possess or to which they enjoy automatic and privileged access -- mental "bodies of armed men", as it were -- to do the marshalling for them. Bourgeois Ideas, born free, would everywhere have to be put in chains. This is the 'mental' equivalent, perhaps, of the Absolutist State.

(B) The second appealed to the "natural properties" that ideas and/or "concepts" were supposed to possess, which meant that they could regiment themselves 'voluntarily' into the right sortal categories with no outside assistance. This is the 'mental equivalent', perhaps, of an Anarchist Utopia.

Taking each in turn:

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

[Modern analogues have these 'hard-wired' into the brain as a sort of "transformational grammar" (now called "Unbounded Merge"), or even a "Language of Thought." On this, see Cowie (2002).]

An older version of this theory held that innate ideas were capable of 'naturally' enabling each aspiring abstractor in such a way that they could classify particulars under the relevant general terms. Of course, that seemed to place this option in the Rationalist camp, and perhaps because of this the temptation became irresistible to bury the source of these 'innate principles' in the mists of time -- boosted of late with a set of Neo-Darwinian fairy-tales projected way back into the Pleistocene -- original syntax now based on Genetics, not Genesis.⁸

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

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

Even more convenient was the fact that although abstract ideas were held somehow to be real, they also transcended actual or possible detection by any conceivable, materially-based technique -- rather like the gods of yore. And, as was the case with those ancient divinities, these abstractions underpinned, gave substance to, or even created material reality (as they 'self-developed', for example, in Hegel's Hermetic Universe).

In fact, given this approach, abstract ideas were more real than material objects and processes. The latter were rather lowly, contingent beings hardly worth mentioning in Ideal company.

Moreover, since these abstractions could be, and had been, named, they must exist somewhere; linguistic reification had in fact transformed them into something Super-Real -- since they were somehow above and beyond those unreliable, contingent 'appearances' -- in order to be worthy of the Super-Scientific truths they supposedly delivered. Even better, they had somehow been programmed into subject-copula-predicate sentences -- even if this was only in the Indo-European family of languages.

As we saw in Part One of this Essay, science-on-the-cheap like this has dominated practically all forms of Abstract Traditional Thought since Greek times -- it is indeed a genuine ruling idea:

"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 options implied that ideas 'naturally' congregated of their own 'free will', as it were, into their 'correct'/'natural' pigeon holes. But, if ideas are capable of assembling themselves into classes under their own steam, they must possess a 'herding instinct' of some sort. Clearly, in order for them to gather together correctly, such ideas must either:

(B1) Possess an intellect of their own, or

(B2) Be capable of 'obeying' of being 'guided by' certain specific natural/logical 'laws', or a "law of cognition".

As far as (B1) is concerned, ideas were not only capable of 'recognising' those of the same kind, they were bright enough and meek enough to flock together with no further ado. This implied that they were able to, (B1a) 'Detect' for themselves the resemblances they shared with others of their clan -- which once more meant that they were really surrogate minds, skilled at identifying their own close 'mental relatives' correctly and unerringly.

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 belief that: (i) Ideas were just minds writ small, or (ii) Minds were little more than Incarnate Ideas.

The first of these options (B1a(i)) found a safe haven in Leibniz's mind (whether this was his own idea, or he was programmed to think it was is somewhat unclear) -- whereby everything  is 'really' composed of pre-programmed, inter-reflecting 'minds' (or "Monads").

The second (B1a(ii)), in a much grander form, parasitized Hegel's brain. There, Mind was self-developing Idea, the Supreme Controller of this Metaphysical Mystery Tour. To be sure, Hegel certainly thought he was the engineer of his own ideas, but if he was right, he was just the oily rag.

In connection with (B2) above, the idea seemed to be that natural 'laws' operating on the contents of the 'Mind' could account for their regimentation in strict battalion order (a time-worn idea that resurfaces these days in naturalistic accounts of 'the mind'). Once again, this merely reduplicated the very problem it was meant to solve, for this implied that an external will ran both the 'inner' and the 'outer' world, as everything in this unified 'Mental Cosmos' obeyed orders as if one and all were law-abiding citizens.

Clearly, in order for something to be capable of obeying orders it must be intelligent (otherwise, the word "obey", used in such a context, must have a different meaning). But, in like manner, these 'inner ideas' must be intelligent, too, only now they were supposedly governed by the 'laws of thought'. Each of these 'ideas' wasn't simply a passive lodger in the brain, but were active citizens in this (internal) Cosmic/Cognitive State. In that case, the Inner Microcosm could mirror the Outer Macrocosm (and vice versa), as assorted mystics constantly remind us: the Mind is well-ordered because the Cosmos is, and vice versa. The two could know each other because both were Mind, or the product of Mind.

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

This in turn suggests that 'objective laws', and the objects that 'obeyed' them were merely a reification of the subjective mental capacities and dispositions of the one indulging in all this armchair speculation.⁹

Conversely, this also implied that the human mind was intelligent simply because the universe was (this notion can be found in the odd idea that the universe became conscious of itself as a result of the emergence of humanity (a doctrine implicit in Hegel, but openly propagated by Teilhard de Chardin, Bergson, and several Marxist dialecticians -- Ted Grant, for example), which conclusion itself was a reflection of the tortured 'logic' used to mirror the thoughts of the superhuman alter-ego that allegedly ran the entire shown, 'The Absolute', which we met in Part One.

Given this scheme-of-things, not only was the Real Rational, and the Rational Real, there was in fact only the Rational.

Be this as it may, these two options readily collapse either into Subjective or into Objective Idealism -- as we have seen.¹⁰

Yet More Headaches For Dialecticians

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

Oddly enough, both of these 'difficulties' re-surface, albeit in a modified form, in the DM-theory of 'abstraction'.

Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge

The first of these later came to be known in Traditional Philosophy as "the problem of induction". This 'problem' centres on the (presumed) theoretical possibility that future events might not conform to what might ordinarily be expected of them, or they might fail to remain locked inside the conceptual straight-jacket the 'mind' had hitherto created for it.¹² If any single 'mind' is capable of experiencing only a limited range of exemplars from which it has to cobble-together the general ideas later attributed to it, subsequent experience could always refuse to play ball, metaphysically 'rebelling', as it were.

In that case, the future might fail to resemble the past in any meaningful sense. Not only might the Sun fail to rise tomorrow, but cats might even refuse to walk about on mats, and could even turn into them. Worse still, fire might no longer burn books on Metaphysics -- as Hume had hoped -- but write them instead --, and Hegel might even begin to make sense.

[I hasten to add that these aren't my views; I am simply summarising the 'problem of induction'.] 

Of course, some philosophers have argued that it these 'difficulties' could be neutralised if the mind somehow gained direct access to 'abstract' ideas (Real Universals, or General Concepts/Categories, etc.), which are fully capable of regimenting the contingencies of nature (or the 'impressions' of them the senses supposedly send their way), so that the future is guaranteed to resemble the past (or, at least, our knowledge of one or both).

However, in order to control these potentially 'rebellious' events/ideas, something a little more convincing than Locke's Social Contract, or Hume's feeble habitus (habit), is surely called for. Ancient Greek notions concerning the ordered Cosmos -- a limited Whole, an idea concocted at a time when an Idealist theory like this seemed to make sense to the ruling-class hacks who dreamt it up --, didn't translate well into the fragmented, bourgeois world of the 18th century, one threatened daily by these unruly material particulars.^12a

In such inhospitable surroundings, not only must these controlling 'Concepts'/'Abstractions' be robust enough to organise things behind the backs, as it were, of their producers (i.e., Traditional Theorists), they must exist prior to, and be independent of experience -- or, suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves.

Initially, for "crude materialists", at least, it wasn't easy to account for the source or the effectiveness of these 'sergeant-major'-like concepts, -- i.e., 'mental constructs' ('concepts' and 'categories', etc.) that countenance no exceptions, past, present or future. The theoretical rescue for empiricists and materialists (if such it may be called) came from an unexpected source: German Idealism. More specifically, and even more revealingly, this 'rescue' turned out to be an impossibly convoluted and obscure version of Ancient Greek Hermeticism.

The Seventh Cavalry had thus arrived in the nick of time, but it was, alas, blowing a very indistinct note, possibly none at all. Esoteric Flannel now replaced Errol Flynn.

The 'Epistemologically Imperialist Utopia' concocted by these Teutonic Idealists required the invention of Super-Duper 'Concepts', Industrial Strength 'Categories', and Carbon Fibre 'Principles', packing enough metaphysical clout to control the deliverances of the senses with an iron hand -- these days these are beefed-up with impressive sounding phrases -- like "natural necessity", "conceptual-", or "ontological-necessity" --, otherwise the semi-house-trained impressions ('intuitions') the senses send their way might revolt, and set up their own Anarchist Collective, where fires might actually freeze things instead of burn them, fish might break out in song, and Dialectical Marxism might become a ringing success.¹³

Furthermore, these 'Concepts', 'Categories' and 'Principles' would have to be logical -- or, indeed, 'dialectical' --, if they were to capable of exercising sufficient control over the future course of events, and of making sure that every single sense impression/idea was sorted into the correct metaphysical box, collected under the right general term and never thought to step out of line.

As noted earlier, free-born bourgeois ideas were now clapped in chains. The 'free market' revolution was over. The Rationalist and Idealist takeover was a veritable 'Mental Thermidor'.¹⁴

One awkward question remained: How could something even as powerful as a 'Logical Principle' guarantee that future contingencies will always do as they are told? Surely these 'rational principles' are particulars themselves -- especially if they reside in individual, and isolated bourgeois skulls?

The point being: logical principles can't supply generality of their own; that derives from the application of a rule, which, naturally, neither words nor 'Concepts' -- nor even 'Principles' -- can quite manage on their lonesome. Once again, it is human beings (as a collective, not as individuals) who determine what constitutes the correct application of a rule, since, as has been pointed out many times, words, 'Concepts', and 'Principles' have neither the wit, intelligence or social structure sufficient for the task. That was, indeed, the point of emphasising the atomisation that underpins the bourgeois 'logical principles' discussed briefly, earlier in this Essay. The fragmentation introduced into epistemology (in both its Rationalist and Empiricist wings) means that in the heads of socially isolated bourgeois thinkers these 'Concepts' could only operate as the names of abstract particulars, or as particulars themselves, thus destroying generality and undermining the unity of the proposition.^14a0

Clearly, these 'Logical Principles' could only regiment those unruly ideas/particulars if they controlled the future and were thus intelligent agents themselves. Truth be told, it was almost as if these 'Logical Principles' existed in 'external' reality, too, and were those very Ideas themselves in 'self-development'. In Hegel, this doctrine sundered the distinction between Mind and Matter; control of future contingencies now became a question concerning the self-discipline of an army self-developing 'Concepts'.

Indeed, these 'Concepts' controlled the future because they controlled themselves, and with a bright and shiny 'new logic' -- a dialectical logic -- to lead the way; a 'logic' itself based on a distorted metaphor about how arguments edge toward their conclusions. This new 'logic' laid down the law, and everything in nature -- Mind and Matter -- had to bend the knee to its contradictory Will.

The World Soul in Plato had new life breathed into it and now ran the entire show; the future was now under the effective control of this 'logic' as part of the supernatural self-expression of this 'animating spirit'. In this way, the social application of linguistic rules was inverted and became the inner expression of 'Self-Developing Mind'.

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

As we saw, Ancient and Medieval Logic had in effect destroyed the expression of generality in language. In its place, an ersatz form of 'generality' was called into play as part of the operation of a Cosmic Mind operating inside Hegel's 'mind'. But, when Hegel's fantasy is "put back on its feet", the ancient errors on which it is based weren't undone. They were fetishised all the more, and were transmogrified into the animating spirit of (supposedly) inert matter. This gave life to the empty imaginings of inherited from the 'crude materialists' -- without which the universe would be like a 'clock without a spring'. Hegel's 'Self-Developing Mind', now "back on its feet", re-animated matter, and nature was summarily re-enchanted. [Harrington (1996).]^14a1

Paradoxically, in this topsy-turvy 'dialectical universe', the workings of the Iron Laws of the Cosmos are held to be wholly compatible with freedom! These Self-Developing Ideas were, of course, free because they were a law unto themselves. The 'good news' for humanity is that the more they subject themselves to these Laws, the 'freer' they become. As the Gospel says, "The truth shall make you free", and the 'law' of Christ brings 'true' freedom.

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

You just couldn't make this stuff up!

But, that's Diabolical Logic for you...

Rousseau thought he could justify social control in this way, but all he had was an 'Ideal Thermidor' in mind (to support his theory). Hegel later found his Ideas controlled him, but only if he projected social being internally, and fetishised them for good measure inside his head. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social relations between human beings (language, argument and dialectic) not only upended itself and manipulated his thought processes, it ran the entire universe. This is indeed the philosophical equivalent of the deranged who claim to be 'God'. Hence, instead of the psychologically-challenged contradicting themselves, Hegel's universe did it for them!

Feuerbach plainly got things completely the wrong way round; Hegel's 'God' is the projection of humanity inwards, not outwards. For DM-fans, ideas supposedly 'reflect' the world --, but they do so only if they allow Hegel's mystical and fractured 'logic' to control their thoughts, too.^14a2

Indeed, as Max Eastman noted:

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

[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max Eastman should check this out first before finally making up their mind.]

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

However, this Idealist 'solution' only succeeded in creating another problem: If autocratic 'Principles' like these are required in order to control unruly reality, as well as our ideas about it, and knowledge is still dependent on the vicissitudes of human cognition, then these 'Principles' must undermine themselves. Indeed, if the cosmic order can only be comprehended (and put in order in each bourgeois skull) by anthropomorphising both reality and our ideas about it, then that anthropomorphisation cannot 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 boss-class suspicions motivated this suicidal 'theory' in the first place, helping it engineer the destruction of generality), then these 'inner human beings' (these anthropomorphised, Self-Developing Ideas), and their shadowy 'internal relations', must be equally, if not more, suspect.

If normal, very material human beings can't be trusted, then what confidence can we have in the reliability of these inner, ghostly spectres, these shadow human beings?

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

Given this approach, humanity-wide conceptual coordination would be miraculous. Indeed, it would be no less miraculous for this to happen across the population even of a small village, let alone a large city.

In fact, it is far more likely that each and every member of the much smaller, self-selected group of 'professional abstractors' -- or, fir that matter, every single Hegel scholar -- is dancing to a different dialectical tune echoed in each socially-atomised head under the direction of their very own quintessentially bourgeois brain.

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

So, in the realm of ideas alone it proves impossible to undo the effects the bourgeois revolution introduced into epistemology. If each of us has to performs 'feats of abstraction' in our socially-atomised heads, then there can be no such thing as socialised knowledge.

This helps account for the many and varied, and failed, theories of knowledge we have had inflicted upon us over the last four hundred years -- to add to those concocted during the previous two thousand.

Nevertheless, by these means the Individual was allowed if not invited to strike back, initially disguised as the Dialectical Guru, Hegel Himself. Only he (and perhaps his DM-descendants) were 'licensed' to interpret the development of thought, and thus the course of history (for the benefit of the rest of benighted humanity). Dialectical Philosophers were now Dialectical Prophets, a resolutely substitutionist ideology their gospel.^14a

Given this approach to knowledge, no matter how robust the (metaphysical) coercion involved (operating inside each dialectical skull), the coordination of knowledge across a whole population would be, as we have seen, quite miraculous --, unless it had been imposed on all those involved by the Iron Will of the Glorious Leader, the Great Teacher -- or simply, 'The Party'. The Invisible Hand was now replaced by the Mailed Fist of the Stalinist State -- or the Guardians of Orthodoxy in the case of non-Stalinist parties. In the 'bourgeois market' of internally-processed ideas, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand couldn't leave even so much as a smudged fingerprint. Hence, a very visible mailed fist belonging to the Dialectical Magus -- which sometimes took the shape of Gerry Healy; elsewhere that of Mao, or even the Great Teacher Himself, Stalin -- was required to guarantee good epistemological order.

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

However, not only would each lone abstractor have absolutely no access to the ideas tucked away in the heads of other lone abstractors, they would have no way of checking whether or not they were even edging their abstractions in the 'right', or even the 'same', direction. [And, it is no good appealing to 'practice', since that, too, is over-shadowed by the dead hand of abstraction.]

Despite this, the fact that inter-subjective agreement does actually take place (and countless times, everyday) suggests that the fanciful neo-bourgeois picture is as wide-of-the-mark as anything could be. Indeed, when the day-to-day requirements imposed by the material world on every socially-active agent are factored in, this myth falls apart even faster than a WMD dossier.

The reason for this isn't just because it is highly unlikely that each mind would form the same general idea of the same objects and processes from its limited stock of data -- which is problematic enough in itself in view of the fact that no two people share exactly the same experience or draw the same conclusions from it. It is because even the word "same" attracts identical difficulties (irony intended), and that in turn is because this very question implicates a concept that looks suspiciously general in itself. If no two minds can check the supposed 'similarities' in or between anyone else's ideas -- howsoever dialectically orthodox those abstractors or these concepts are -- then there is no way that a social process, if it is based on abstraction, could even make it onto the starting grid, let alone begin the race. Questions would naturally arise as to whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general -- or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such isolated dialectical minds. And these worries would persist until it had been established whether or not each enquirer had the 'same' ideas about the word "same", let alone anything else.

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

Worse still: given the 'dialectical' view of identity, this problem can't even be stated, let alone solved. The peremptory rejection of the LOI now returns to haunt DM-epistemology; by confusing a logical issue with an epistemological red-herring, the quest for what is supposed to be superior 'dialectical' knowledge has become trapped in a solipsistic dungeon.

[LOI = Law of Identity.]

Once more, that is because it has yet to be explained how any two dialectically-distracted minds could frame the same general, or even particular, idea of anything at all -- even before the dialectical juggernaut begins to roll --, or how a check might be made whether either of them had accomplished this correctly, or not. And, this 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 has the same idea of the work "correct"!¹⁵

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

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

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

[The reader can finish that question for herself.]

Furthermore, it is equally unclear how even this relatively minor worry (about the generality of what are supposed to be general ideas) may be communicated between these lone abstractors without employing the very same notion that originally required explanation -- i.e., generality itself --, along with the application of the LOI as a rule of language.¹⁶

More problematic still (for those who at least gesture at accepting even a minimally social view of language and knowledge) is the following question: How might it be ascertained whether or not the same ideas about anything (be they abstract, concrete, general, or particular) have been inherited correctly from former generations of intrepid abstractors? Without access to a time machine, mind probes -- and, once more, a prior grasp of the very things they have allegedly 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 'common inheritance'.

But, given DM-epistemology, no start could even be made to the building of knowledge: not only would this 'intentional edifice' have no foundation (the aim to build on inherited knowledge), no two prospective labourers would have the same plot of land to labour upon, the same plan to guide them, the same materials to work with -- nor even the remotest idea about what would conceivably count as the same brick!

[Except, of course, by sheer coincidence; but even then aspiring abstractors would still be unable to determine any similarities -- plainly, since they'd need general ideas to do this (which they haven't yet got), and the word "same" is itself subject to the same artificially induced doubts (no pun intended), as pointed out above.]

Again, but to change the image, this is because dialecticians unwisely threw their hand in before the cards had even been dealt, for they are the ones who deny that anything could be exactly the same as anything else (except in the most tenuous and abstract of forms). If they insist on taking pot shots at the LOI, is it any wonder they keep shooting themselves in the non-dialectical foot?

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

Worse still, no dialectician would or could have the same (or approximately the same) general (or particular) idea as he/she previously had about anything -- last week, yesterday, or even a few seconds ago --, so that they could say of their own opinions that they were even approximately stable from moment to moment.

In that case, of course, the 'process of abstraction' can't even begin!

It should hardly need pointing out that abstraction can't make a start where there is nothing common to abstract, or no shared concepts to work with from moment to moment -- or, where no 'law of cognition' remains the same from second to second, or which is shared across an entire population of socially isolated dialectical skulls.^16a

An appeal to memory here would be to no avail, either. That is because it would be unclear to anyone attempting to remember whether or not the general ideas they had (even a few moments earlier) were the same as, or were different from those they now possessed until they could recall whether or not they had the 'same' idea of "same" that they once had.

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

In this way, the theory of abstraction has not only destroyed each and every dialectical proposition (this was established in Part One of this Essay), the entire project succeeded in strangling itself before birth when it appropriated the regressive bourgeois idea that we all abstract in the privacy of our own heads -- just as it succeeds in undermining the thought processes of anyone foolish enough to give it so much as the time of day.

Of course, that is why an earlier claim was advanced (i.e., again, 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.

Indeed, as we have just seen.

Driven To Abstraction

The above points might be regarded by some as a grossly unfair misrepresentation of DM. As TAR notes:

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

This appears to contradict the claim made above that DM-epistemology cannot cope with future contingencies. If scientists actually use abstractions -- and legitimately so -- why can't DM-theorists do likewise? Why can't the latter project their ideas into the future in like manner (especially if their work is subject to constant empirical check)? Alas for Ms Lichtenstein, successful practice refutes her excessively negative conclusions.

Or, so it could be claimed.

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

[Why this is so seems pretty obvious (but reasons for concluding this were given at the beginning of Part One of this Essay); this topic will be examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

As Part One showed, the motivation to try to extrapolate from a finite body of 'partial' knowledge to infinitary conclusions about all of reality, for all of time was originally prompted by an ideologically-motivated, but syntactically inept interpretation of general words as the names of abstract particulars. To compound this ancient error, the resulting 'abstractions' were then projected back onto a 'shadow-reality' anterior to experience, which supposedly underpins the material world in an as-yet-to-be-explained manner, and which shadow-reality is more real that the universe we see around us.

Moreover, as far as dialecticians are concerned, they eagerly bought into this Idealist view of knowledge, and it completely compromises their epistemology, since these moves are based on a limited set of linguistic malapropisms (and only on this set), not on evidence derived from the sciences (or even everyday experience).

Worse still: as Part One also showed, these moves destroy the capacity language has for expressing anything whatsoever -- particular or general.

Indeed, quite apart from the fatal consequences noted above, if general ideas are in fact the names of abstract particulars, no general conclusions can be drawn from them -- and certainly not by means of another set of abstractions that simply reproduced the very same error.¹⁷

Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?

The second difficulty (mentioned earlier) is connected 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 (1) Anthropomorphised the brain and/or its ideas, or they (2) Fetishised language, so that the products of social interaction were reified as the relation between objects and processes, or as those objects and processes themselves.

As we have also seen, in order to explain the operation of 'the mind', Empiricists found that they had to postulate the existence of 'intelligent ideas', which were either spontaneously gregarious, or were somehow capable of obeying rules intelligently as they went about their lawful business.

On the other hand, Rationalists held that apparently contingent events in the outside world couldn't account for our -- or, in fact, their -- ideas about these events. In fact, as they saw things, the reverse was the case: it was the nature -- or later, the development -- of our ideas/minds that explained the 'outer' world, which in the end, of course, implied that reality was fundamentally Ideal. All this is reasonably obvious. The next bit isn't.

On the basis of this world-view, theorists constructed (or 'discovered') what they took to be nature's "laws", but they weren't to suppose their theories were true merely because nature was law-governed. On the contrary, many held that the connection was much tighter than this: they were able to read these 'laws' into nature because the mind itself was structured in a particular way. The very possibility of experience meant the world had to be a certain way (or we couldn't know it).¹⁸ This put human cognition right back at the centre of the meaning/cognitive universe, and what was intended to be a 'Copernican Revolution' in Philosophy turned out to be its opposite, a Ptolemaic realignment.

If indeed the world was a reflection of 'God's Mind' -- and the human mind is in turn a pale reflection of 'His' 'Mind', too --, the 'inter-reflection' between mind and world, world and mind, guaranteed that thought left to its own devices was capable of penetrating beneath the surface of 'appearances' and right into to the heart of 'Being' itself, uncovering its hidden 'essences'. General laws seemed to be either the result of these 'self-directed' concepts, which accurately captured or mirrored nature's inner secrets, or they were their constitutive cause.

As Hermetic Philosophers had imagined, the Microcosm of the human mind reflected the Macrocosm of 'God's' creation because both were Mind, or were the product of it. Union with 'God' was of a piece with union with Nature, which helps explain the origin of what is the main problematic of German Idealism: 'Subject-Object Identity'. In Hegel's system, the union between the 'Knower and the Known' was guaranteed by the application of Divine/Dialectical Logic; the mystical Rosicrucian wedding was thus finally engineered.^18a

Empiricist theories arrived at analogous conclusions, but from a different direction (albeit sometimes expressed atheistically).¹⁹

Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- every branch of Traditional Philosophy sooner or later finds its way back to the Ideal home from whence it slithered.²⁰

Nevertheless, serious problems this approach to knowledge brings in its train re-surfaced in DM, only now in a more acute form. Dialecticians claim that their system somehow reverses the above process of cognition in order to neutralise its Idealist implications (albeit after its "mystical shell" has been removed, leaving only the "rational kernel"). So, they declare that their theory has been rotated through 180 degrees to stand on its own two materialist legs -- hardly noticing that the Ideal backside is now where the materialist head used to be, and vice versa.

At least that explains all the hot air.

["Arse over tit", as we say up North.]

However, psycho-logical machinery like this wasn't designed to operate in reverse; the Ideal forward gear always seems to reassert itself.

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

And we can now see why: it comes with the territory. The Dialectical Macrocosm and the Dialectical Microcosm are two sides of the same class-compromised coin. This is because this entire world-view was inherited (in modified form) from Aristocratic Greek thinkers who intended, and who designed it to work this way. These ruling-ideas rule 'radical' heads because, to DM-fans, they seem so natural and quintessentially 'philosophical'.^20a

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

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

"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 pretend that these abstractions have been derived from the world (or from some sort of 'law of cognition'), tested in practice, but the above considerations cast serious doubt on the validity of that claim.

These infant doubts will soon mature quite alarmingly.

Collective Error Over General Terms

Nominalism excepted, traditional accounts of the origins 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, maybe sometimes the other way round (depending on which myth-maker was telling this tale), unifying particulars under an 'objective law' --, as it progressively disregarded their unique ("accidental", "inessential") properties, or as it searched for wider connections in order to uncover the 'essences' that supposedly underpin 'appearances'.²¹

That alone should have made erstwhile materialists pause for more than just a thought; what on earth could be so materialist about a theory that has to withdraw from the material into the Ideal in such an irresponsible manner?

The pay-off, so we have been led to believe, is the greater explanatory power (etc.) this approach supposedly brings in its train; but if this 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 these material bodies themselves (and, because of which dialecticians regard matter itself as an abstraction!) -- since these 'abstractions' are required to explain objects and process in this world, not the other way round -- one wonders what sort of victory has been won over Idealism.

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

In fact, the reverse appears to be far more likely. Indeed, this entire approach looks for all the world to be based on the belief that material reality is insufficient of itself, inadequate and not fully real, and that nature requires the background operation of Ideal principles to make it work. For dialectical materialists, matter (would you believe!) seems to be far too crude or lifeless to do anything on its own -- even if matter is all that nature has to offer. Apparently, it needs a 'Logic' to make it tick. Well, we all know which religion is based on the Logos.

[Answer: the vast majority.]

And that explains why Lenin could declare that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism".²²

By nailing their colours to this ruling-class masthead, dialecticians have unfortunately placed themselves on the side of the 'Gods'.²³

Abstractionism: Bury It -- Or Praise It?

Nothing To Lose But Your Confusion

Unfortunately, unlike Capitalism, Abstractionism has attracted few effective gravediggers. Those that it has managed to accrue have revealed that they have been even less successful overthrowing the latter than workers have been at toppling the former. That is largely because these erstwhile undertakers were (and still are) more content simply to point out the psychological impossibility of the entire abstractionist process rather than reveal its logical flaws, or expose its ideological motivation. So, these "ruling ideas" live on to rule another day -- and another dialectician.

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

Public Criteria Vs Private Gain

In the event, as seems obvious, an ability to talk about, say, dogs depends on a prior grasp (in use) of the relevant general terms. This fact doesn't need an explanation -- nor could one be provided for it that doesn't also employ the very things that required explaining in the first place, i.e., general terms.²⁵

If the above observations possess one advantage, it lies in re-directing attention away from hidden (internal) processes and hypothesised private, individualised abilities -- allegedly possessed by expert 'lone abstractors' -- and toward socially-acquired and publicly checkable skills and capacities in a endeavour to understand the use of language, generality and socially-constituted knowledge.

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

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

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

Particular Problems With DM-Generality

It has been argued at length above, and in Part One, that instead of beginning with the general as a way of advancing toward knowledge of the particular, the DM-'process' of abstraction in fact turns general words into the names of abstract particulars, which 'process', unsurprisingly, then proceeds to go nowhere with them. This not only distorts the way language functions -- destroying the capacity it has for saying anything at all --, it demolishes the dialectical circuit before it can even be tested in practice.

The remainder of this Part of Essay Three will be aimed at widening, and then providing further substantiation for these allegations.

Appearance And Reality

The Underlying 'Essence' Of 'Being'

A cursory reading of earlier sections might prompt the objection that they ignore the fact that scientists actually use the method of abstraction -- and have done so for centuries -- in their search for knowledge. According to this widely held belief they do this in order to discover -- or 'uncover' -- the underlying, "objective" nature of reality.

[The first part of this counter-claim was examined in Note 24; both will be  examined in detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, to be published in 2015.]

However, this objection invites consideration of two further ideas that DM-theorists have inherited from traditional Metaphysics: (1) The distinction between "appearance" and "reality", and (2) The difference between "essence" and "accident".

Once again, we see that dialecticians have (naively) bought into these ancient, Aristocratic distinctions, having meekly accepted the class-motivated dogma that 'appearances' aren't 'fully real', and that 'abstraction' is required if we are to penetrate the outer 'shell' of the former in order to gain access to the underlying 'rational order' of the latter.

The reason for wanting to do this, so we are told, is that it enables theorists to comprehend 'appearances' (and/or objects and processes) more fully and scientifically. Ironically, we will soon see that this is the opposite of what actually emerges at the end.

In this connection TAR makes the following series of points:

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

But, according to Rees, 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." [Ibid., p.188.]

And, this is where abstraction supposedly enters the picture:

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

However, abstraction cannot simply function 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." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]

There are several points here that are worth examining in more detail, but for present purposes attention will be confined to the supposed contradiction between "appearance" and allegedly "deeper reality" (as both of these apply to the natural and the social world).

["Social contradictions" will be examined below, and in Essay Eight Parts Two and Three.]

Does Reality Contradict Appearances?

Contradictions Supposedly Generated By Science

Despite the fact that dialecticians assert that appearance and reality (or, 'essence' and 'appearance') contradict each other, they seldom tell us what they mean by this, nor do they illustrate this alleged clash with examples drawn from the natural world. [Those that supposedly emerge in the social sphere will be examined presently.] Nevertheless, even if they were to provide an explanation, it still isn't easy to see what the putative contradiction between 'appearance' and 'reality' is supposed to be.^26a

If we examine the volunteered example below, we might be able to make sense of the wider claim that there is a clash of sorts between the way things appear and the truths scientists and/or Philosophers are supposed to be looking for that are somehow hidden beneath them.

The aforementioned example has been deliberately chosen for its triteness and its familiarity. Something more arcane would have obscured the issues involved. Other examples will be considered as the argument unfolds, and 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 example doesn't illustrate a process in nature, and so it isn't relevant. However, it is relatively easy to adapt it so that this objection itself becomes irrelevant, as we will also see.

[Other examples of this alleged incongruity can be altered in like manner, but I will refrain from doing this here for obvious reasons. Hence, those examples should be read in the same way to prevent this section descending into obscure, scholastic pedantry.]

Nevertheless, this illusion could 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 R2b, form apparently contradictory pairs, but this type of incongruity is clearly not the sort to which Rees and other dialecticians are alluding -- which is the alleged contradiction between appearance and reality. R1 and R2 are plainly both about appearances, hence, they aren't about the aforementioned clash between appearance and reality.

Perhaps then, the following will work?

R3: This stick bends when put in water.

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

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

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

R5: This stick appears bent in water.

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

The problem with these two is that they aren't contradictories since they can be (and are) both true at once, and they can both be false at once; there appears to be no logical connection between them. The truth of one does not imply the falsehood of the other, nor vice versa. Nor do they seem to be 'dialectically' connected: they don't struggle with one another nor do they turn into each other (as they should if the DM-classics are to be believed).

It could be objected to this 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 do not really bend when partially immersed. This clash could lead to a rejection of this unscientific belief, as indeed it does. In that sense, therefore, it could be argued that reality does indeed contradict appearances.

But, does all this make it false to say that sticks look bent in water? Clearly not. And yet if these two sentences were contradictory (recall, no two contradictory propositions can be true together), and given that R6 is true alongside R5, it would be false to say that they are contradictory.²⁹

In connection with this it is also worth recalling that according to physical theory light rays are deflected as they pass between the air and water, creating the 'illusion' of bent sticks. However, if sticks didn't really look bent in water (or if it were false to say that they appeared to bend when immersed) this would refute the scientific thesis that light rays themselves deviate upon entering or leaving the relevant media. Tinker around with theses like this too much and far more serious problems will arise, threatening to undermine at least this part 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 the appearance recorded in R5!

Again, it could be objected that this is an entirely specious response. The fact is that scientific knowledge is inconsistent with the belief that sticks bend in water. No amount of re-interpretation can minimise its significance.

However, that would have been an effective rebuttal if (1) The argument above were about beliefs and not about appearances, and if (2) It could be shown that anyone actually believed (or has ever believed) that sticks bend in water -- since this version of the counter-response in the previous 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 true, but the DM-claim is that appearances contradict reality. It says nothing about beliefs doing this.

Indeed, the point made above is that far from reality contradicting appearances scientists themselves need appearances to be correct (to confirm such things as Snell's Law), and hence they have to take note of 'seemingly' bent sticks. Clearly, that is because scientists have to look at things, 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 they would wonder if they were hallucinating.

Hence, the above objection only seems to work by confusing appearances with beliefs. Now, it is certainly not being questioned here whether or not propositions drawn from science contradict certain beliefs about the world and what it contains. But, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.

It could be objected that the argument above is inconsistent, for while it alleges that there can be no contradiction between appearances and reality there can be, and are, contradictions between scientific propositions and certain beliefs.

So, on the one hand, while these are contradictory:

B1: p.

B2: NN believes that not p,

on the other, these aren't:

B3: p.

B4: It appears to NN that not p.

How can the former be deemed contradictory while the latter aren't?

Or, so it might be wondered.

Of course, the wording of my earlier claim was specifically this:

B5: It is certainly not being questioned here whether propositions drawn from science contradict certain beliefs about the world and what it contains. But, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.

Now, while not p certainly is the contradictory of p, p itself isn't the contradictory of the back end of B4, i.e., what "to NN that not p" expresses (in this particular sentential context). [I have put "not p" and "p" here in bold to show these symbols are being mentioned, not used.]

If B2 were instead:

B6: It believes to NN that not p (sic),

a case could be made against what I said, but it wasn't, and so it can't. In that case, B1/B2 and B3/B4 aren't analogous. [B6 is deliberately stilted so that this point could be made. In addition, it mustn't be assumed that I believe B1 and B2 are contradictory; I am just seeing where this counter-argument might go.]^29a0

It could be argued that if we re-word the above, they might still be contradictory; perhaps as follows?

B7: p.

B8: NN has a belief that not p.

B9: p.

B10: 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 contradict one another (irony intended) by a crass misuse of language (in B10). People can no more have appearances than they can have seemings or lookings. Of course, if we had sentences in language like these (mirroring those like B10):

B11: It believes to me that not p,

B12: It appears to me that not p,

then we might be able to make this response work, but we don't -- and it isn't difficult to see why. We form our beliefs based on all manner of contingencies, but appearances are things we undergo, like it or not -- we do not form them. Moreover, we use sentence like "NN believes that p", but not "NN appears that p".

So, as noted above, appearances aren't beliefs.

Nevertheless, it could still 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 appearance is contradicted by objective fact.

However, this latest objection itself labours under several misconceptions:

(1) First, appearances are part of reality. No one supposes, surely, that appearances are fictional or that they have been invented, or that they only exist in 'heaven'. It isn't as if our ancestors made this fable up and several millennia later we have finally rumbled to it. In that case, appearances are just as 'real' as unbent sticks are. [Of course, the problem here centres on the word "real". I will say more about this in Essay Twelve.] 

(2) Moreover, and worse, since neither appearances nor reality are propositional, no contradiction could be possible between them.^29a

It could be objected that the issue in hand is the contradiction between essence and appearance not that between appearance and reality, which is an invention of the present Essay.

But, even if the meaning of "essence" itself were clear, it is difficult to see how there could be such a contradiction, not unless appearances and essences were propositional, too. Hegelians might be able to get away with this idea (but as far as I know they haven't sought to do so yet), since, for them, everything is Ideal; but materialists can't.

Of course, that comment itself depends on a view of contradictions I do not expect dialecticians to accept, but until they tell us what they do mean by 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 would perhaps display a little too much impatience on my part to expect them to produce one in the next generation 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 features sticks that look bent in water. In that case, unless dialecticians have a theory about the 'essence' of sticks that differs from their notion of 'real sticks', this objection must fail. After all, Novack it was 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.]^29b

Which more or less settles things; appearances are just as much a part of reality as essences are, if they coincide. [How they manage do this in the case of bent sticks I will leave those addicted to this of this way of talking to fathom out for themselves since I neither prefer it, nor can make any 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 be able to see it) -–, but this apparent bending of sticks forms a basis for the 'objective' fact that confirms the scientific belief that light changes its path when passing between media. If the appearance of bending sticks were merely subjective, what should we make of the idea that light alters its course? Is that subjective too? Is the 'objectivity' of science founded on such weak 'subjectivist' 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 pun intended). Since objectivity relates to something called "observer independence", appearances must be subjective -- or so it could be argued.

(A) First of all, I'm not advancing any such claim, since I reject the use of metaphysical language like this. I have already noted above that I do not prefer this way of talking; obscure language like this is merely being employed here to assist in its own demise. Hence, the frequent use of 'scare' quotes.

(B) Secondly, if appearances are subjective then, because the fact that philosophers and scientists believe that appearances are subjective is also an appearance it, too, must be subjective -- in that it plainly isn't "observer independent", either. In fact, as should seem reasonably clear, no observation made by scientists or philosophers could ever be "observer independent", and thus "objective".

In fact, if 'objectivity' is understood as "observer-", or "mind-independence", then it would 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 status of the opinions of anyone who holds that rash belief itself.

So, if 'objectivity' is defined as "observer-independence" etc., then plainly the notion that light bends when it moves between media (and every other belief we have) can't be 'objective'. As seems undeniable, the truth of this and every other scientific idea depends on centuries of observation (and no little human thought), as much as it depends on the current beliefs of human beings. Exactly how the former can be held to be independent of the latter is a mystery few 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 would be able to form no 'objective' beliefs whatsoever.

Of course, all this will be music to dialecticians' ears, since they already accept the dialectical interplay between the 'objective' and the 'subjective':

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

In that case, we must abandon the idea that "objective" means "mind-independent". [More on 'objectivity' here.]

However, if dialecticians are prepared to do that, 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 do this in certain ways!

It could be objected here (no pun intended, again) 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, no more will be said about it here.

However, Dialectical Marxists surely can't accept Hegel's notion of objectivity, since it would transform them into Objective Idealists. So, until we are informed exactly what dialecticians mean when they say the sort of obscure things about 'objectivity' that Lenin does, little more can be done with it.

[However, it is important to remind ourselves that in Materialism and Empiriocriticism Lenin clearly means by "objectivity" the existence of objects and processes independent of, and exterior to, the human mind, which doesn't appear to be what Hegel meant by this  word (no pun intended, once again). I have said much more about this in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

Nevertheless, 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 as it would be if there were no minds -– that is, it aims to depict reality as it is in-itself, perhaps in its constantly changing 'essence'.

Of course, this take on 'objectivity' would undermine what Lenin has just said, since "nature in-itself" doesn't mean "nature-as-observed-by-some-mind-or-other".

Even so, the use of the world "picture" above is a give-away. Pictures are only such because of the observers who view them. Eliminate the latter aspect of science and its 'picturing' role must go with it. To be sure, the physical object that constitutes a picture (the canvas, the frame, the paint, and so on) won't vanish if humanity and all sentient life perished, but the verb "to picture" is for us transitive; without our input, no picturing could take place. The Moon, for example, isn't a picture for, or of, anything.

That is, of course, why we find the 'ideal observer' -- and/or the use of terms that imply that actual observers exist somewhere --, who views events (even if only as part of a 'thought-experiment') cropping up all over the place in such quasi-'objectivist' theories of nature. 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 it is meant to be 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 here (although it is debatable whether the word "objectivity" is much help), 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'd plainly be no 'appearances' to conflict with anything, and, indeed, no one to do the 'contradicting'.

So, 'objectively' speaking (to adopt this confused mode of expression for the moment) appearances cannot contradict "things-in-themselves", if they are 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.

However, this latest attempt to rescue the claim that reality contradicts appearances labours under another confusion: one that holds that 'commonsense' and ordinary language are somehow the same. They are not.

[This is a topic that is examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (however, some of this material has been posted here temporarily). There, it will become apparent that since no one seems to have a clear idea what the term "commonsense" means (in its philosophical sense, that is), it is difficult to make much of this objection.]

It is also worth pointing out here that long before the scientific study of nature began, human beings were well aware of the fact that sticks do not bend in water. It hardly took a Newton or a Galileo to uncover this amazing fact. This isn't to say that earlier generations were able to explain this phenomenon, but that fact plainly isn't relevant to the topic in hand.

[Several of the other 'corrections' scientific advance has allegedly forced on 'commonsense' are examined below, and again in other Essays posted at this site.]

As we have just seen, this entire topic revolves around the use of two obscure terms-of-art: "objective" and "subjective". Neither of these has a clear meaning or a fixed use -- even among those who think they know what they mean when they employ it. Of course, this implies that the distinction between these two words must be 'subjective' itself -- again, if we must accept this obscure way of talking.

Be this as it may, if the thesis that reality contradicts appearances really does depend on this obscure pair, then it would prove impossible to assess until these terms have been given a clear sense -- and, incidentally one that doesn't itself depend on a single instance of human/observer-motivated input --, for that would render it subjective, too.

[Again, 'objectivity' and 'subjectivity' are examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

Finally, as noted above, this entire issue reduces this discussion to a consideration of contradictory beliefs -– those engendered in us by scientific advance, as opposed to those derived from 'commonsense'. If this is all it means then this, too, won't be controverted here, for there is nothing in the least bit puzzling about contradictory beliefs. Indeed, they are as common as dirt.³⁰

The 'Contradiction' Between Science And 'Commonsense'

In view of the above, perhaps we should consider examples that illustrate the alleged conflict between science and 'commonsense' (conflicts that many think have actually taken place), 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.

Again, while R8 and R9 might look contradictory they fail to illustrate the sort of conflict we seek since they are both about appearances again. And 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 true. And, we surely wouldn't conclude that R10 had been contradicted if sunrise couldn't be seen one morning because of, say, fog; that is, if it didn't appear to rise. Nor would R8 become false if, in the future, scientists changed their minds about the truth of R10 (or its corollary, the idea that the earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way round).³¹

Clearly, this recurring problem is the result of a difficulty that John Rees and every other dialectician seem to have overlooked: it isn't possible to form a contradiction by comparing a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports appearances, indeed, as we saw above.

In short, the following schematic sentences:

R11: It appears to be the case that p.

R12: It is not the case that p.

cannot form a contradictory pair when interpreted in the manner specified, and then conjoined (where, again, "p" is a propositional variable).

Moreover, unless we subscribe to the view that facts and appearances are intelligent and/or belligerent -– that is, that they are capable of picking arguments with one another -- it would make no sense to suppose that appearances could literally contradict (i.e., "gainsay") true propositions. 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 in any obvious way. They do not turn into one another (which is what dialectical opposites are supposed to do, so we are told), nor do they cause each other to change. So, as such, this alleged contradiction makes little sense even in DM-terms.

Furthermore, the apparent motion of the Sun is the same today (with respect to sunrise, at least) as it was thousands of years ago. To be sure, we might interpret things differently today, but that doesn't affect how things still appear. In that case, a DM-'contradiction' here must be figurative, at best -- or perhaps it is merely terminological.

Nevertheless, it could be argued that there are aspects of scientific knowledge that do in fact contradict appearances, despite what has been argued here. 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. Hence, the following pair of propositions could illustrate the intended contradiction:

R13: The earth moves.

R14: It is not the case that the earth moves.

These certainly contradict one another, but even this pair is not what we are looking for, since neither of them is about appearances.

Moreover, Rees seems to be interested in contradictory pairs where both halves are true, those involving seemingly 'correct' appearances which are contradicted by genuinely 'objective' underlying realities -– otherwise the alleged superiority of DL over FL would be illusory. That is because, as already noted, DM-style contradictions must both be true at once (or, they must both 'exist' at once, to use the jargon), unlike their less contentious FL-cousins. Unfortunately, however, R14 is false.³²

This means that we still don't actually have a DM-'contradiction', even in this relatively clear case. Nor are we ever likely to get one --, and that is for the reasons stated above.

Even if a case could be made supporting the view that scientific propositions contradicted indicative sentences expressing appearances, that still wouldn't achieve all that dialecticians require of them. That is because (as argued at length in Essay Five) propositions that might look contradictory -- and which are both held to be true -– would normally be disambiguated or they would be given a background against which they might be understood, which would resolve the apparent contradiction.

This latest assertion is no mere 'bourgeois' prejudice or diktat. Consider the following examples, which are analogous to the previous pair:

R15: The strikers moved.

R16: It is not the case that the strikers moved.

This pair certainly looks contradictory (especially if both relate to the same strikers at the same moment, and thus both are held true) -- but this would cease to be the case once it was discovered 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 prompted by one set of observations would merely appear to contradict those motivated by another. As soon as a frame of reference is supplied the 'contradiction' disappears.

And it won't do to complain about the trite nature of R15 and R16 --, not, that is, unless and until DM-theorists tell us what they mean by the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction". [Since this topic is dealt with fully in Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three, no more will be said about it here.]

All this is quite apart from the fact that DM-texts themselves contain little other than trite examples (boiling water, contradictory seeds, anecdotes from The Arabian Nights, characters who speak "prose all their lives", the differential fighting ability of Mamelukes, cone bearings, "Yea, Yea"/"Nay, Nay", etc., etc.) -- it is Mickey Mouse Science, after all.

As seems clear, apparent 'contradictions' aren't presented to us by nature and/or society totally unadorned, as it were; they arise either from ambiguities inherent in language or from a lack of clarity (etc.) in the original 'problem' (or so it is claimed in these Essays). In the above case, the 'contradiction' plainly arose because of a (suppressed/covert) change in reference frame.

Naturally, this would make such contradictions sensitive to the choice of reference frame, but not dependent on reality as such. However, that was certainly not the point DM-theorists wanted to make about their 'contradictions'. And yet, those mentioned above were either artefacts of a conventionalised choice of inertial frame or they were a direct consequence of confused thinking; they are certainly not based on 'reality' (whatever that means).³³

It could be objected that in a perfectly ordinary sense the following two sentences are contradictory:

C1: It appears to be φ-ing.

C2: No, it isn't φ-ing.

[Where "φ" stands for a verb clause or phrase.]

Consider this ordinary language interpretation of C1 and C2:

C1a: "It appears to be raining."

C2a: "No, you're mistaken, it isn't raining."

Or, consider this example:

C3: "The Sun appears to be moving."

C4: "No, you're mistaken, the Sun isn't moving."

Anyone who uttered C2a (or C4) would be correcting (gain-saying) anyone who uttered C1a (or C3), contradicting them.

This shows that the earlier claim that "it isn't possible to form a contradiction by comparing a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports appearances" is false.

Or, so it could be argued.

Of course, C4 is wrong anyway, since the Sun is moving relative to the Galaxy, so it isn't too clear that C3 and C4 will be of much use to DM-apologists, especially since the obvious reply to anyone who tried to correct C3 by means of C4 would be:

C5: "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, C3 and C4 aren't contradictories since they can both be true (and they 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" had many different meanings.]

The same sort of response applies to C1 and C2:

C6: "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."

Hence, this is still the case: "It isn't possible to form a contradiction by comparing a proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports appearances."

'Contradictory' Capitalism?

Putting the natural sciences to one side for the moment, Rees and other DM-theorists in fact use examples drawn from HM to illustrate the alleged clash between "essence" and "appearance". [Several other examples are considered at length in Essay Eight Part Two, here, here and here.]

Perhaps an examination of these will help make the point clearer?

Rees's argument, for instance, proceeds as follows:

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

This passage makes it plain that while Capitalism appears on the surface to be fair, its underlying 'essence'/nature is thoroughly exploitative. Hence, in that sense it could be claimed that appearances contradict reality.

Unfortunately, Rees's example isn't even a contradiction however much we might deplore the things it reveals. [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 too hasty? Maybe we can rephrase Rees's claim so that the alleged contradiction becomes more obvious:

R17: Capitalism appears to be fair.

R18: It isn't the case that Capitalism appears to be fair.

This pair of sentences certainly looks contradictory, but as we saw above, because both sentences are about appearances, they aren't what Rees intended.³⁴

Well, maybe then the following are?

R19: Capitalism is exploitative.

R20: It isn't the case that Capitalism is exploitative.

This pair certainly seems contradictory, too, but once again, since these two sentences do not contrast appearance with reality they won't do either.

A more useful guide to Rees's intentions is perhaps contained in the relation he says exists between "essence and appearance" and "subjective and objective" views of the world:

"[F]or Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]

This could mean that these hard-to-pin-down DM-'contradictions' actually arise between "subjective" and "objective" views of the world. But, even if what Rees says were the case, what precisely is the contradiction here?

Perhaps the following 'argument' might help bring it out:

R21: Capitalism appears to be fair.

R22: This appearance leads people (including workers) to think that it is fair.

R23: Hence, Capitalism is fair. [Or, so they conclude.]

R24: But, revolutionary theory and practice convinces some that Capitalism isn't fair.

R25: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair. [Or, so some conclude.]

R26: Consequently, Capitalism is both fair and not fair.

R27: But, the contradiction in R26 implies that R23 can't be true (based on the truth of R25).

R28: Therefore, Capitalism isn't fair.³⁵

Ignoring the fact that the above argument in hopelessly invalid, its message looks reasonably clear: the 'objectivity' of revolutionary theory (expressed in R24) makes plain the contradiction in R26.

However, even if this were the case, the contradiction is still not between appearance and reality, but between certain beliefs held about both -- or perhaps the inferences that could be made from each.

Anyway, few people (and certainly no revolutionaries) believe that capitalism is both fair and not fair at the same time. Anyone who gives the matter sufficient thought will agree either with R23 or 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. But, we have been here already.³⁶

It could be objected that the above appearances lead to the false belief that Capitalism is fair, which is contradicted by the fact that it isn't, and it is this which yields 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 (1) Whether any two can be (unequivocally) held true together and (2) Whether appearances contradict reality --, both of which have yet to be established.³⁷

Hence, it doesn't look like we can construct a clear example of the sort of contradiction Rees had in mind -- even when we use his own choice of candidate!

Nevertheless, this latest impasse introduces yet another problem facing DM-epistemology: if appearances are finally acknowledged to be (in some way) deceptive, not entirely or fully accurate (or 'real'), or they are said to be limited or misleading to some extent, how can anything of value be learnt from them, or by means of them? Worse still, if revolutionary practice itself takes place at the level of appearances how can it serve as a test of the objectivity of Marxist theory?

The next few sections are aimed at resolving these unexpected difficulties.

Adrift In A Sea Of Appearances

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 imagined -- and this isn't just because the word "objective" is itself hopelessly vague. As noted above, it 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 here its deliverances can only surface in the world of appearances.

Unless we believe in telepathy, or are committed to the bizarre idea that theoretical propositions live an abstract world accessible to the 'mind' alone, and aren't embodied or expressed in anything material -– that is, that they cannot ever be written down or spoken out loud, or even whispered in 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 these 'unreliable appearances'.

Are All Appearances 'False'?

Exception might be taken to the above since it seems to imply that dialecticians regard appearances as unreliable, misleading or false (even though, as we will see, Herbert Marcuse, for example, openly admitted they are). On the contrary, it could be maintained that dialecticians (or the majority of them) do not believe this of appearances. Indeed, the following passage from TAR underlines this fact:

"…[T]his does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Bold emphasis added.]

"There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Ibid., p.188.]

But if, as these passages say, superficial appearances aren't a guide to deeper "essences" -- indeed they "contradict" them --, then they must be deceptive at some point, especially if most human beings misread them or are misled by them and it takes clued-in Marxists to disabuse them of their false beliefs or incorrect conclusions. 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, and hence false. There is no other way of reading this passage. [This topic is discussed more fully in Notes 33 to 35.]

Again, it could be argued that DM-theorists don't accept such a simple-minded view of the relation between appearance and reality; they hold that 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 and/or critical analysis/synthesis (subsequently confirmed in practice) to a more adequate (less partial/relative), theoretical and concrete understanding of reality, which is also rooted in past theory (which, in turn, isn't set in stone). In the long-run, this process leads to a more accurate account of the real processes at work in Capitalist society. At each stage, thought returns to the original world of experience where, after again being tested in practice, its content may be viewed in a more all-rounded, concrete manner. This process of cognition renders any conclusions drawn objective, or increasingly objective (even if they are still only partially/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, all-rounded light, allowing revolutionaries to understand why things seem the way they do, and why most individuals view them in this light.

Or, so it might be argued.

Despite the fanfare, the fact is that the old conservative adage, "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work", for instance, could not serve as a guiding principle for revolutionaries writing agitational leaflets, no matter how many hoops dialectical sloganeers force it through.

That is because at no stage in the execution of these elaborate dialectical gyrations would it be correct to say, think, or even imply that Capitalism isn't exploitative. No matter how many dialectical somersaults are expertly performed, only the most naïve of militants would believe a boss who said that he or she couldn't afford the latest pay demand from a 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 -- this side of a major sell-out, that is -- believes Capitalism is "fair" and acts in accordance with that belief.³⁹

Anyway, this 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 dialectical gyrations -- like those that Rees mentions above (my words, not his!) -- take place in a sort of 'inner psychic sports arena', as it were, where concepts and abstractions are put through their paces in private. And not just that; it very much looks like these dialectical summersaults must be performed afresh each time, by DM-fans, in each individual head.

That was one of the main themes of the first half of this Essay: the idea that DM-epistemology, for all its pretensions to the contrary, is trapped in a bourgeois individualist hole.

[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 was noted earlier, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the process of abstraction is a skill that adepts learn to perform as isolated individuals in their own private inner auditorium: their heads. We have yet to witness teams of synchronised dialecticians all chanting in unison the latest verbal application of their most recent dialectical flip/abstraction, under the direction of the Absolute as it Notions its way into glory --, or, indeed, under the unforgiving lead of a Gerry Healy or a Bob Avakian in full sectarian flow. So, how DM-fans imagine they are capable of coordinating their separate dialectical aerobics (if, as they imagine, these are all carried out in some sort of inner mental gymnasium) is entirely mysterious. In fact, given the truth of DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians would be able to determine whether or not their individual feats of abstraction actually converged on the same target, let alone the right target. [On that, see here and here.]

An appeal to a publicly accessible language would be no avail either, as pointed out earlier. Moreover, since such a language is also situated in this unreliable world of appearances, recourse to it would be like checking one's height put touching the top of one's head.

[And, as if to rub it in:  (a) HCDs are, to all appearances, petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and (b) LCDs are by-and-large petty-bourgeois or de-classé martinets, both of whom arrived at (allegedly) the same individualist conclusions but by far less salubrious methods.]

In short, the superficial gestures DM-theorists make toward their (supposed) belief in the social nature of language and knowledge are at odds with their theoretical pronouncements. Given the latter, knowledge and language couldn't be social products. Conversely, if language and knowledge are social products, Abstractionism can't work. [On this, see here.]

Here, at least, 'essence' and 'appearance' neatly coincide; a genuine 'unity of non-opposites'!

To be sure, we see dialecticians reporting to all-and-sundry the results of their own 'inner' machinations -- this they do verbally, or in print; indeed they have no choice, they have to do one or other of these, and in this 'world of appearances' --, but short of a hot-line connecting each dialectical brain to the next, there is no way that the contents of any one inner 'abstractorium' could be made available to any other member of the same 'dialectical display team', for validation, or even for comparison.

So, in order to compare their ideas (etc.), dialecticians have to record their deliberations in this material world, in some form or other, where these nasty 'appearances' reign supreme.

If so, and if we are to believe what we are told about this unreliable world of appearances, no DM-proposition could be "objective" in any sense of that word.

Of course, it could be argued that even if DM-propositions surface in the world of appearances, that doesn't affect their content, what they are about. And yet, anyone wishing to ascertain what these theses are "about" has to rely on what appears before them in this shady world of appearances, and thus what they conclude about their content will only appear to be this or appear to be that.

There is no way round this unmoveable obstacle for anyone who has bought into the boss-class distinction between 'appearances' and 'reality'.

Furthermore, even if it were true that abstraction takes place in the 'mind', unless DM-theorists are prepared to accept a quasi-Cartesian account of thoughts (whereby the latter guarantee their own veracity, as opposed to merely appearing to do so),^39a this inner, dialectical detour can't succeed in grounding DM-abstractions in objectivity (again, to use the jargon). Hence, without postulating the existence of abstractions that are self-authenticating, and thoughts that are self-certifying (and thus in need of no support from practice or evidence), these 'inner phenomena' can't by-pass the need to make a validating entrance into the world of 'subjective' appearances.⁴⁰

Moreover, an appeal to 'inter-subjectivity' can't 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 thus 'contradicted' by underlying 'essences', as is any opinion formed about them, too.

Even in the mind's alleged 'inner chamber', a 'thought' is no less of an appearance than are deliverances of the senses. Even to the most solipsistically-incarcerated individual, his or her thoughts merely appear to him/her to be thus and so.

And even if such ideas and concepts were 'self-certifying', they would still only appear to be so.^40a

If, on the other hand, the existence of self-interpreting and auto-confirming thoughts were part of DM-epistemology (however, there is an echo of this idea in Hegel, but as far as I can determine, no Marxist dialectician has gone the whole hog here and agreed with Hegel -- or even much as half-hog, in that direction), and thoughts were deemed not to be part of the world of appearances, then they would be no different from the 'intelligent ideas' we met earlier.

However, as seems plain, if DM-theorists were to argue along these lines, it would make a mockery of the materialist flip they supposedly inflicted on Hegel's system, for such thoughts would then be little different from Hegelian ideas, but now in fragmented self-development. So, if thoughts are to be excluded from the world of appearances, then there seems to be no way to distinguish them from Platonic/Cartesian/Hegelian self-developing, self-certifying ('semi-divine') Ideas. And, if that is so, their subsequent referral back to the empirical world for testing and verification 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 higher up the cosmic pecking-order: did Gerry Healy check a single thing he ever said?

And, of course, we all know Bob Avakian doesn't need to.

But, the situation is worse than this might suggest: not even 'God' can side-step how things appear to 'Him'. Even to the 'Absolute Idea', at the end of time, things will merely appear to be as history has delivered them to 'Him/Her/It'. Once again: Even if their 'appearance' coincided with their 'essence' (to use the jargon) they would still be appearances.]

And we can console ourselves with the further thought that whoever denies these deflationary conclusions must do so in this world of appearances, or stay silent.

Indeed, even Hegel's system is accessible only to those who can read, speak or hear. That is because Hegel's writings (indeed, anyone's writings) confront us now as phenomenal objects; and, in this world, appearances hold the whip hand.

Any appearance to the contrary is manifestly misleading.

Dialectics Engages Auto-Destruct Mode

Furthermore -- and this shouldn't need pointing out --, thoughts and theories can be every bit as mistaken as beliefs based on appearances can.⁴¹ For example, the thought that sticks bend when put in water is no less (potentially) misleading than is the analogous appearance to that effect. [That is partly what lay behind the point made above about contradictory beliefs.]

Indeed, the history of science is littered with erroneous and radically mistaken theories. With respect to DM, the situation is far, far worse. Given the DM-thesis 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 is substantiated at length here.] If so, there is an extremely high probability that even the soundest of DM-theses only looks correct, and the very latest and best DM-abstraction merely appears to be valid, when neither are, or even remotely are.⁴²

Unfortunately, just as soon as the virus-like distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality' is introduced into thought, the downfall of the theory welcomed it is all but guaranteed. Indeed, for that theory: the hour of its birth is the hour of its death.

And, this is one idea that does self-develop, but not in a healthy direction, or in a direction DM-theorists should fi8nd conducive. In fact, it soon engages self-destruct mode. For if nothing in epistemology is indubitable (save we revert to comforting Cartesian certainties, once more --, which anyway only seem to be secure, and only seem so to those who think ideas can interpret themselves), then the superiority of thought over phenomena, essence over accident, and reality over appearance is illusory -- given this crazy way of seeing 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 latterly suspect theories cannot form a secure basis for any subsequent explanation of the "true nature" of those equally shaky appearances. An apparently correct theory is clearly incapable of providing the required certainty for the safe interpretation of suspiciously misleading phenomena. In which case, a radically suspect theory (such as DM) stands no chance.

Oscillate dialectically as much as you like -- between 'thought' and 'appearance', 'essence' and 'accident' --, loop the dialectical loop all day long, it matters not; traditional philosophical notions like these (i.e., "essence", "reality", "appearance", "theory", and "objectivity", and their ilk), are now irredeemably lost in this shadowy world of misleading semblances.⁴³

So, it now seems that the already suspect dialectical circuit locks DM in permanent orbit around these eternally shaky appearances. In that case, with respect to any given DM-theorist, who uses problematic concepts like these ('appearance' and 'reality'), the supposed route that leads him/her into abstract theory -- and then back again (via practice), as a way of delving behind phenomena to uncover these hidden "essences" --, is forever blocked. For just as soon as a single DM-abstraction is penned, typed, thought about or spoken, it enters and then remains trapped in this world of faded simulacra.

Despite -- and contrary to -- this, it could be argued that dialecticians actually locate abstraction in thought, and this associates it with theory and thus with essences, not with appearances.

But, this rebuttal won't do, for thought (according to DM) only becomes objective in practice. Thought does not become objective if it remains confined in an inner, mental/abstract domain; it has to enter the phenomenal world through practice (minimally, it has to be spoken or written down, if it is to be acted upon, or tested) in order for it to mature into 'objectivity'. Unfortunately, given this unwise way of depicting things, in the phenomenal world appearances reign supreme, and any material representation of thought (and any attempt to resolve anything whatsoever in practice) must negotiate its peace with them.

Indeed, given the traditional view of things, appearances are unforgiving taskmasters.

Moreover, if the further restrictions 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, too -- even more so if the 'asymptotic approach' metaphor is thrown in for good measure. Furthermore, as we discovered is the case with thought, confirmation isn't self-certifying, either; it too has to earn its keep in this vale of appearances. Practice is also situated there. Hence, any test of theory must take place in this 'unreliable world of appearances'. If so, practice, even if it were a test of truth, can't provide DM-epistemologists with a handy 'get-out-of-a-need-to-appeal-to-appearances' card.

Negotiate this rusty old DM-banger around as many dialectical bends as you like, it matters not: it still winds-up wrapped around the same old tree of appearances.

And, this is just one more reason why genuine materialists distrust the Idealist non-sense dialecticians have unwisely imported into Marxism, courtesy of that Hermetic Harebrain, Hegel.

Indeed, as we have seen, this interminable muddle is a direct consequence of importing a set of ideas from Traditional Metaphysics; in this case, those associated with the 'appearance'/'reality' distinction.

It may be avoided (with ease) by rejecting this historically regressive clanger in its entirety.

Naturally, this doesn't mean that an HM-analysis of Capitalism, for example, is incapable of distinguishing between its genuinely exploitative relations and the false beliefs workers (and others) form of them --, nor of accounting for the contradictory ideas people develop as a result.⁴⁴ But, it does mean that we may only construct these successfully (in HM) if the confused categories of traditional Metaphysics and DM are completely excised.

And good riddance, too...

Notes

1. A short, clear introduction to this topic can be found in Staniland (1973). A more comprehensive account is to be found in Aaron (1967), although the latter concentrates almost exclusively on post-Cartesian theorists. Also see Tugendhat (1982), as well as here, here and here.

In addition, it is worth noting that DM-theorists have an idiosyncratic understanding of the word "metaphysics". I have discussed this topic in more detail here. Readers are directed there for more details.

1a. As we saw in Part One of this Essay, and as we will also see in Essay Four, Traditional Theorists adopted a grammatical theory that in effect altered the way general words were supposed to work in indicative sentences, transforming predicate expressions into the names of Abstract Particulars. These misbegotten 'abstractions' were then projected onto the world so that material reality was made to conform to them rather than the other way round; the Ideal became the arbiter of the material.

In this way, the 'rational' world of Ancient Greek Theorists (as well as that of the vast majority of subsequent Philosophers) was nothing more than the back-reflection onto the world of distorted language, as Marx himself noted:

"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 let slip:

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

[The ideological background that motivated these moves is exposed in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

Moreover, our presumed (but never proven) ability to 'abstract' certain Concepts/Ideas into existence, or call them to mind, is supposed  to be innate. Of course, hardcore Rationalists (like Descartes, Leibniz, and probably Hegel) held that these concepts were innate anyway (or they were innate to the architectonic (i.e., cognitive structure) of our minds; that is, our minds cannot but think in certain ways -- an idea which is up-front in Kant), which explains how we are supposed to be able to see, apprehend or comprehend these concepts/'abstractions' in the objects we experience, by means perhaps of what Lenin called a 'law of cognition'. In more contemporary terms, these concepts/abstractions in effect 'organise experience'; they make experience possible. This line-of-attack was supposed to cut the ground from under Empiricism, since it stressed the supposed fact that without these concepts/abstractions, we could learn nothing from experience.

There are very strong echoes of this approach to knowledge in DM-epistemology, which isn't surprising given the fact that it is supposed to be 'upside-down' Hegelianism. Indeed, this is abundantly clear from these words of Lenin's:

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Emphases in the original.]

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid., p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]

[I have discussed the above 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 serious limitations, in Cowie (2002), pp.1-68. [Cowie also shows that the underlying assumptions of Rationalism and Empiricism are remarkably similar.] These 'limitations' are also apparent in DM-epistemology. I will return to this theme in later Parts of Essay Three. [Also see Cowie (2008), and Stich (1975).]

1aa. Marcuse expresses the Idealism implicit in the Hegelian tradition (upside down, or 'the right way up') rather well:

"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 be is free in the eyes of God, by nature, etc....

"Existing as the living contradiction between essence and appearance, the objects of thought are of that 'inner negativity' which is the specific quality of their concept. The dialectical definition defines the movement of things from that which they are not to that which they are. The development of contradictory elements, which determines the structure of its object, also determines the structure of dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic is neither the abstract, general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general form of thought -- nor the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man. This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends." [Marcuse (1968), pp.110-17. Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphases added. Spelling adjusted to conform to 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 alleged '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 to the conventions adopted at this site.]

We will have occasion to return to these two quotations, later. [However, also see Note 1b.]

The Idealism apparent here -- or, at least in Marcuse's analysis -- was brought out (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.]

1b. Donald Davidson puts this point rather well:

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

Of course, Davidson goes on to argue that Plato appears to have overcome this problem by arguing that it is a mistake, for example, to think that shapes also have a shape, or that Socrates resembles the concept of a man. This may be so, but it isn't easy to see how the Forms could be exemplars of the things they instantiate if they share nothing with them. Indeed, why call something the Form of Circularity if there is nothing circular about it? of course, a rule (if this is what the Forms are) in no obvious ways resembles the objects or propositions to which it is or can be applied, but there is little in Plato that suggests he regarded his Forms a rules. But, if the Forms are to work as exemplars, there would have to be some rule that informed those who (implicitly or explicitly) utilised the Forms (or their linguistic counterparts, if they have any) how to use them correctly. perhaps this is to view the Forms in the wrong way. Plato talks as if we just 'see'/'remember' the Forms, and there's an end of it. [I have said more about this below, here and here.]

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

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

This Aristocratic depreciation of both the material and the contingent is what we find, too, in the later Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions, both of which found echo in Hegel's work, and thus in DM. [On that, see O'Regan (1994). This theme will be explored in detail in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).]

Indeed, if "What is rational is real, and what is real is rational" [Hegel (2005), p.xix.], then both of these (the 'real' and the 'rational') must be inaccessible to the senses, and the outward appearance of things cannot match their real form. That is because only 'the Mind' is 'rational', and since material things aren't 'Mind', they can't be 'rational' -- nor can they be governed by rational principles. [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: these two can only be reconciled if the material world is now interpreted as an aspect of 'Mind', or even perhaps as an Ideal entity itself. Hence, the logical conclusion of this approach to 'knowledge, as indeed Hegel saw, is that despite appearances to the contrary everything must be 'Mind', an aspect of 'Mind', or a reflection of 'Mind' in self-development.

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

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

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

"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv; again these authors record this erroneously as p.v, 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 to 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 an empty charade (in that it can't deliver what had been advertised for it), it destroys the capacity we have for articulating any ideas at all. [We saw how this happens in Part One.]

Even worse: Dialectical Marxists have shown that they are only too willing to adopt this anti-materialist and hence ruling-class view of 'reality'. These 'ruling ideas' certainly rule supposedly radical minds. The sad truth is that the approach that dialecticians have imported into Marxism has been to no avail; it has delivered no knowledge at all. In fact, if 'true', it would prevent any from being formed.

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

Figure Two: Jack Negotiates A Far Superior Deal

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

[On the "Third Man Argument", see  Allen (1960), Code (1985), Cohen (1971), Geach (1956), Owen (1953), Strang (1963), and Vlastos (1954, 1956).]

It is important to add to what I said earlier: Plato himself doesn't make the sort of mistake I attribute to others throughout this Essay -- except in places were he argues that the forms also "participate" in their own form (when, for example, he speaks of the Form of the Beautiful being beautiful itself, which implies it, too, is an Abstract Particular). In fact, he hypostatises the Forms in other ways (and not solely to provide a reference for predicate expressions), but as exemplars. The latter function rather like, say, the Standard Metre in Paris. [I owe this point to Peter Geach, who reveals it originated with Wittgenstein; on that, see Geach's article referenced above. (There is also an echo of this idea in Donald Davidson's comment, above.)]

Be this as it may, there is a problem even with this interpretation of Plato's Forms; cf., Note 1bb, below.

1bb. Once more, it is worth pointing out that this criticism isn't aimed at the use of abstract nouns in ordinary language, merely the artificial 'abstractions' concocted by Philosophers.

However, if we accept Plato's more considered theory (that the Forms were exemplars), then an anthropological and/or sociological account of generality becomes possible, for in that case, as Berkeley certainly appreciated (and as Wittgenstein considered in detail), generality can be accounted for on the basis of rule-governed linguistic behaviour, rather than on the basis of a mystical theory that appealed to a set of ghostly Forms, Concepts, Categories, Ideas, and Universals.

This also undercuts a serious problem faced by those who regard the Forms as exemplars. If the Forms end up working like the Standard Metre in Paris (as I suggested above), then the 'Third Man' problem simply reappears. That is because even the Standard Metre shares properties/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 is how we apply the rule that is important), and not so much a physical exemplar, then these 'difficulties' vanish. It makes no sense to suppose a rule shares anything with whatever it is applied to -- and, the Standard Metre itself can't tell us how to apply it, either.

[Of course, the above is far too sketchy an account of this important idea, but this isn't meant to be an academic exercise in Philosophy! (On this topic, see the references given in Essay Twelve Part One, where I develop some of these points in more detail.)]

1c0. This isn't to suggest that there weren't other important currents in political thought, but in this section of the Essay I am concentrating on one of the main sources of rationalist theories of the state as well as the 'world-views' that underpinned them.

1c. This might not seem a crucially important point; that misconception will be laid to rest in Essay Twelve (summary here), where these philosophical moves will be linked to other themes that run through the history of ruling-class thought, later to re-surface in DM alongside the substitutionism it helps rationalise. [On the latter, see Essay Nine Parts One and Two.]

2. The ideological background to "Possessive Individualism" is set out in detail in MacPherson (1964); an outline of its philosophical context can be found in Hacking (1975). [Unfortunately, despite its other strengths, Hacking's book is largely a-historical --, i.e., in the sense that it fails to link changes in philosophical fashion to contemporaneous social forces, ideological pressures, and the novel Mode of Production -- which is no 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 found in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987), and Sohn-Rethel (1978).

A Wittgensteinian slant to all this can be found in Robinson (2003), especially chapters 9, 10, 12 and 14.

More details can be found at Guy Robinson's website, here. [Unfortunately, Guy's site is down right now. However, many of his Essays are accessible at this site, here. (Sadly, I heard that Guy passed away in October 2011.)]

2a. As should now be clear: If the traditional analysis of predication transformed general terms into the names of abstract particulars, then even the sentence, "This is a general idea of F" must suffer a similar fate, with the term "general idea of F" now naming yet another abstract particular!

The bowdlerised and corrupted 'Term Logic' employed by early modern Philosophers and Logicians (including Kant and Hegel) even interpreted quantifiers (such as "every", "all", "nothing", and "some") as special sorts of names. This ancient error wasn't corrected until Frege's revolutionary logic hit the philosophical streets nearly a century later. [On this, see Geach (1972b), and Beaney (1996). See also here, but note the caveats I have posted here.]

This archaic syntactical screw-up resurfaces, too, in the way that concepts are interpreted by DM-theorists: just like names, they are held to refer to, or are said to "reflect", aspects of reality. These 'concepts' are thus capable of being true (or "relatively true") on their own, as isolated atoms. To be sure, dialecticians might want to reject this conclusion, but by turning them into the names of abstract particulars that alone belies each and every such denial.

Unfortunately, these 'dialectical moves' are based on the idea that the unit of meaning and/or truth (so to speak) is the individual word/concept, not the sentence or the proposition. In this way, naming, not saying, becomes the model for understanding linguistic meaning -- and anything else, for that matter. [On this, see Hacking (1975).] That, of course, 'allowed' Hegel to see the self-development of concepts as central to his system, thus ignoring how we actually use language. [On this, see here, and Note 6a, below.]

In that case, over the last few hundred years we have witnessed the generation of several hundred cubic metres of Idealist hot air, the motivation for which was this seemingly insignificant logical gaffe. As Wittgenstein noted: Metaphysics is merely a shadow cast on reality by grammar; in this case, distorted grammar -- as, indeed, Marx himself pointed out:

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

[More on this in Part Three of this Essay, and in Essays Twelve (summary here) and Thirteen Part Three.]

2b. As we saw in Essay Three Part One, it is human beings who supply the generality here, not words, concepts, or ideas. Plainly, that is because words, concepts, and ideas have no social structure, history, or language -- whereas we do.

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". This is undeniable, but while it is clear that Proper Names name particulars (or individuals -- but even then, our use of such names is itself rather complex; on this see Baker and Hacker (2005, pp.227-49)), it is unclear what general names could actually name. Even to ask this question would be to give the game away, since, obviously, it trades on the idea that general terms name something. Hence, in order to remain consistent with the use of ordinary names, general names would have to be viewed as referring expressions, too, denoting an individual of some sort -- be this a Universal, a class, group, natural kind, set or concept. So, even though some might want to speak of "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…", named by the relevant 'general name', the use of the definite article nullifies the generality that such general terms once seemed to enjoy.

Hence, in this case, 'abstract individuals' (such as, "the Universal", "the set of…", or "the class of…", or "the natural kind…") become the referents of these supposedly 'general names', cancelling their generality. Plainly, they now work just like Proper Names.

Of course, giving such abstractions a name begs the question --, which is: Is there indeed one 'thing' there to be named?

Despite an ancient grammatical and logical tradition that treats general nouns as general names (an approach that was itself based on the metaphysical views being questioned here), as we have seen, we may only concur if we too aim to destroy the facility we have in language for using such terms to express generality (along the lines outlined in Part One of this Essay).

It could be objected that classes/ sets, for example, aren't necessarily or even typically singular, but are compound in nature and can have any number of members/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 collected by that class; so the extension of the class human being is every human being.]

Of course, it isn't too clear whether predicates designate anything; if someone says "The boss is a crook", the use of "...is a crook" isn't to designate, but to describe. [On this see Slater (2000).]

Turning a description into a designation would, however, 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 a euphemism (i.e., "designate") as a fig-leaf to hide that fact.

Again, as Fraser Cowley pointed out:

"The open sentence 'x is a spider' determines a class only because 'spider' signifies a kind of thing. It is by being one of that kind...that a value of x is a member of the class. To identify something as a spider, one must know what a spider is, that is, what kind of thing 'spider' signifies. Kinds of things can come to be or cease to be. The chemical elements, kinds of substances, are believed to have evolved. The motorbike -- the kind of vehicle known as a motorbike -- was invented about 1880. The dodo is extinct. There is no obvious way of producing sentences equivalent to these in terms of classes. The class of dodos and the class of dead dodos are not identical: though all dodos are dead, a dead dodo is not a dodo....

"Since a kind is to be found wherever there are particular things of the kind, it can have various geographical locations. The lion is found in East Africa. Lions are found in East Africa. It makes no difference whether we say 'the lion' or whether we say 'lions': what is meant is the kind of animal. To say that it can be seen in captivity far from its remaining natural habitats does not contradict the statement that it is found in East Africa. A kind is not a class: the class of lions is nowhere to be found...." [Cowley (1991), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. The rest of this part of Cowley's book is relevant, too.]

On this, see Ryle (1949). In fact, Ryle called this error the "Fido-Fido Fallacy": the idea that to every word there must correspond something in reality (abstract or concrete) that it names or designates. His point is well summarised here. [This links to an article by Yorick Wilks (a one time student of Wittgenstein's), available as a PDF here.]

4. Why that is so will be revealed presently.

5. It is arguable that for all their apparent sophistication modern 'scientific' theories of mind and language (cybernetically-, cognitively-, or physicalistically-orientated, etc.) haven't advanced much beyond this point. That contentious claim won't be defended here (although it will be defended in depth in Essay Thirteen Part Three).

[This entire approach to the Philosophy of Mind is criticised in Bennett and Hacker (2003, 2008).]

6. We saw the life drained out of general terms in Part One of this Essay, with all those lists.

The social and ideological background to, and motivation for, such moves will be explored at length in Essay Twelve (summary here, and here).

6a0. For example, witness the habit DM-fans have of speaking about logic as a study of the 'laws of thought'. [On this topic, see my comments over at Wikipedia.]

6a. No wonder Plato had to appeal to the alleged pre-existence of the soul to account for these 'recognitional powers'. According to Plato, we all know the Forms since we were all acquainted with them before we were born. The shock of birth apparently makes us forget this. Subsequent (philosophical/'genuine') knowledge was thus a form of recollection, and our recognition of the Forms (in the objects that supposedly instantiated them) kicked in because the Forms were in effect rather like long lost acquaintances we had met and knew in our pre-existing life -- but these were 'acquaintances' of a rather peculiar sort. [On Platonic recollection, see Crombie (1963), pp.135-47, Guthrie (1986), pp.249-77, and Scott (1999). More on this here, and more particularly here. See also Note 25, below.]

It is here, in this doctrine, that we can see yet another pernicious side-effect of Traditional Theories of meaning; if meaning is centred around single words, concepts or ideas, then theorists must relate to them as one individual does to another (or, as one mind does to one concept, idea, or 'representation', taken individually), just as they do with all their earthly acquaintances. Knowledge and meaning thus become relational properties -- the Knower is linked somehow to the Known, the meaning of a word is related to whatever it supposedly refers, Signifier and Signified, each 'Mind' is connected with its ideas/concepts (which, as we have seen, are all abstract objects of a rather peculiar sort), as they individually make themselves manifest to that Knower.

[In a later Essay, we will see this error resurface in connection with Hegel's 'understanding' of truth, among other things. See also here.]

But, these 'acquaintances' are in fact total strangers -- and completely featureless they are, too. Furthermore, since ideas do not carry with them a 'Metaphysical Identity Card', how anyone could cognise, let alone re-cognise, these faceless spectres is deeply puzzling.

[There are echoes of this 'problem' in more recent Nativist theories of language, based, for example, on the work of 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 offensive ideas on race, among other things; fortunately, this 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 rather similar misdemeanours.

[These issues are discussed extensively in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

6b. In fact, the insurmountable 'problems' the doctrine of the Trinity brought in its train arose precisely from Plato and Aristotle's attempts to account for generality. More specifically: because of the 'Forms', 'Universals' and 'Substances' they invented. [Of course, this fact has been known to anti-Trinitarian Christians for some time.]

7. These points depend on an earlier argument, and might not be fully appreciated by anyone who has skipped it.

Even so, this isn't to suggest that there aren't or weren't countless 'solutions' to these classical brainteasers, only that this puzzle has resisted one and all for nigh on 2400 years.

An entirely new approach is long overdue it would seem.

Fortunately, one such was suggested a generation or so ago, the central point of which is that philosophical 'problems' like this can be resolved by dissolving them, by identifying the syntactical (etc.) and semantic blunders that gave them life, and which even now keep them alive.

So, a return to our use of ordinary language at least has the following to recommend it (that is, as far as Marxists are concerned): it situates knowledge and the search for knowledge in the public domain, and hence on home turf for the left, basing it on the material language of the working class (a tactic we saw Marx himself advocate).

[This topic is examined in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Two (summary here).]

8. These rather gnomic comments will be expanded upon in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

8a. Again, this theme will be developed extensively in Essay Three Part Five -- along lines suggested by Bertrand Russell [in Russell (1917b)], and developed here, and here -- the first of these is Swartz (2009), the second, Swartz (1985).

How Traditional Theories arise from a misuse of language is explored in Essay Twelve Part One. On how they anthropomorphise the brain, see Essay Thirteen Part Three' more specifically, here and here.

More details can be found in Price and Corry (2007). The line I will be adopting (but with a far less theoretical slant to it) can be found 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; this will be 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, in fact: reality is engineered so that it reflects how both Traditional and DM-theorists think we think; in that case, discourse doesn't reflect the world, the world reflects discourse. Indeed, this 'cardboard reality' is no more than a shadow cast on the world by a misuse and misconstrual of language, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, and Plato.]

10. That explains an earlier aside: Traditional Philosophy is based on alienated thought-forms and a fetishisation of language. [More on that in Essay Twelve, too (summary here).]

11. More details will be given in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).

12. Once again, I am forced to frame this 'problem' using traditional jargon, but readers mustn't  assume I think any of it makes sense.

The so-called "Problem of Induction" focuses on the assumed fact that generalisations about the future course of nature -- based on a finite number of observations of how certain objects, processes or events have behaved in the past (etc.) --, cannot provide a deductively valid basis for an inference that events (of a certain type) that have not yet happened will always resemble those (of that type) which have; or, more generally, that the course of nature will remain 'the same' (howsoever that is to be conceived). So, for example, just because water has always frozen at a certain temperature, that doesn't mean that it always will freeze at that temperature (that is, given the same level of purity and atmospheric pressure, etc.). Or, to use David Hume's example, just because bread has always nourished us doesn't (deductively) imply that it always will; hence, 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." [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Part I. My quoting this does not imply I agree with it!]

This is brought out rather well in 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 to the conventions adopted at this site; spelling modified to agree with UK English.]

[Once more, I hasten to add that the above doesn't represent my opinion; I am merely making a point about the traditional approach to this topic. Where Hume went wrong is that if something is assumed to be bread, but it fails nourish us (all things being equal!), we'd have good reason to stop calling it bread.]

However, as we have seen, the traditional approach to 'Universals' merely translates 'answers' to this 'problem' into another 'problem' of the same form, involving yet more Abstract Particulars --, which, of course, may or may not behave the same way tomorrow as they have done today, if we approach this 'problem' in this way. Although Abstract Particulars might be Ideal/heavenly creatures, there is no guarantee they, too, won't 'come off the rails' one day. Some might want to say that these are changeless abstractions (although it isn't too clear that a DM-fan can advance that response), but even if that were so, the words used to express this idea aren't, and there is no guarantee that they will mean the same in the future as they had in the past, or even that our memory of these abstractions will do so either. [On that, see here.]

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

Of course, any theory committed to the Heraclitean Flux (such as DM) has only succeeded in sinking itself even deeper in the mire, for, if there is a universal flux, the future can't resemble the past! Indeed, the word "resemble" can't even resemble itself! [The 'relative stability' defence was neutralised here.]

This traditional 'problem' partly originates in the mistaken view that scientific theory delivers a special sort of truth. When that idea is abandoned, a solution to the 'problem' of induction soon suggests itself. [Notice the word "theory" here. I am not impugning scientific fact -- but, facts aren't the same as theories. These rather controversial assertions will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

Nevertheless, let us pose this 'problem' more acutely, pushing it a little further than is usually the case: Since both the flow of ideas in the mind (even those in the head of an Über-Rationalist like Hegel), and the sensations that accompany them are also events, subjective experience can't avoid being thrown into irredeemable doubt concerning the (future) behaviour of even these 'mental events'.

In that case, our experience of anything that has yet to occur (and this includes our own future thoughts) might fail to 'resemble' what they had been, or seemed to have been, in the past. Even the nature of our sensations and ideas could alter from moment to moment. If we experience an idea now as an idea of a certain sort, it could be experienced and/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 the language available to do this, or because that language (and/or its accompanying 'thoughts') might also change before we manage to utter anything about anything). If we have to appeal to 'Universals' ('Concepts', 'Categories', 'Principles', 'Ideas' or 'Rules') in order to guarantee that this won't happen, then, because they, too, are particulars (given the theories under review in the first two Parts of Essay Three), this line-of-defence is no use, either. That is because these 'Universal' particulars (for want of a better phrase) are subject to the very same doubts about their future behaviour as are ordinary material particulars (if we insist on thinking of this 'problem' traditionally). In that case, no particular -- abstract or concrete -- can secure any general conclusions about the future, concerning other objects, events and processes --, or even about themselves. There are no self-certifying ideas to be had, given this way of conceiving this 'problem'.

Worse still: any 'solution' to this 'problem' (should one ever be found!) could itself be experienced as a non-solution (or, indeed, as anything whatsoever) at some point in the future -- especially if we are foolish enough to accept the Heraclitean Flux.

Naturally, expressed in this way, and for theorists who are happy to employ the language and concepts of Traditional Philosophy, the 'problem' of how the present 'binds' the future has already lost its way. In fact, as should seem obvious, phrases like "The present" and "The future" are particulars, too (or, they 'refer' to Abstract Particulars), and as such they possess neither the brain nor the brawn to assist Traditional Thinkers extricate themselves from this sceptical quagmire.

And, herein lies a clue to the solution to this family of 'problems': reject this entire way of talking.

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

As we now know -- partly because it was exposed in Part One of this Essay -- the source of these 'difficulties' lay in the syntactical blunder committed by Greek metaphysicians and grammarian; hence, the dissolution of 2400 years of wasted effort (suggested above, and in Part One) recommends itself.

That is why Wittgensteinians have no need of a philosophical theory in their endeavour to deflate the balloonfulls of hot air that ruling-class thinkers have been inflating for over two thousand years; these theories self-deflate when (1) The source of hot air is switched off, and (2) A very real, materialist pin is introduced into the equation.]

12a. David Hume attempted to solve this 'problem' by an appeal to habits of the mind (hence my use of the word "habitus"), which supposedly induces in us certain expectations about the future based on past experience. Clearly, this rather vague notion is susceptible to the challenges set out in the previous Note, among many others.

However, the abandonment of the 'logical' or necessary connection between a Universal and its Particulars, which took place in the High Middle Ages (with the rise of Nominalism -- but the cracks were beginning to form in the work of post-Aristotelian theorists in the Ancient World, the Nominalists merely prised them open for all to see), introduced radical contingency into Traditional Theories of nature. This development wasn't, of course, unconnected with the decline of the power of the Papacy as Feudalism began to unravel, giving way to early forms of the market economy.

Rationalist Philosophers (like Spinoza and Leibniz) attempted to repair the damage this 'revision' had inflicted on the 'rational order'. To that end, they devised several 'necessitarian' theories of their own; unfortunately, these theories were predicated on the same old "ruling ideas" -- i.e., on (a) The dogma that 'reality' is 'rational', and that (b) fundamental 'truths' about 'reality' can be ascertained by thought alone. [On the general background to this, see, for example, Copleston (2003a, 2003b).]

Here is how I have made a similar point in Essay Eleven Part Two (in relation to a discussion of certain aspects of Christian Fundamentalism and 'Intelligent Design', but it seems relevant to the theme of this Essay):

There is an excellent summary of the two main ways theists have conceived of the relationship between 'God' and 'His' creation, in Osler (2004), pp.15-35. [These neatly mirror the tensions in the DM-account of nature, too.]

Here follows a summary of part of Osler's thesis (with a few additional comments of my own thrown in): If 'God' is related to material reality by necessity, then there will be a logical connection between the properties exhibited by any given finite being and its "essence", just as there will be a logical link between created beings and 'God's' nature -- otherwise this would introduce radical contingency in creation, undermining 'The Almighty's' nature and 'His' control of 'Creation'. Because of this, language and logic must constitute reality (why this is so is outlined here). [Of course, 'cosmic verities' like these can only be accessed by speculative thought.] In which case, all that exists must ultimately be an expression of the logical properties inherent in 'God', and this in turn means that nature must be an emanation -- that is, material reality must be logically "emergent" -- from the 'Deity'. Everything in nature must therefore be inter-linked by "internal" and/or "necessary" relations/connections, which relations/connections are derivable from the concepts implicit in 'God's' nature (since they are mirrored in fundamental aspects of creation). This idea is prominent in Plotinus and other Neo-Platonists, like Hegel.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of 'ordinary' human beings can neither access nor comprehend this 'rational view' of reality; their lack of knowledge/illumination means that they misperceive these logical properties as contingent qualities -- and 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?

On the other hand, if 'God' acted freely when 'He' created the world (that is, if 'He' wasn't acting under any form of 'compulsion' from 'His' logical properties), then there will be no logical/necessary connection between 'The Creator' and 'His' creation, nor, indeed, between each created being. Every aspect of reality will thus be genuinely contingent, and appearances will no longer be 'deceptive' (since they can't occlude the hidden, esoteric "essences" mentioned above -- for there are none). There are therefore no synthetic a priori truths (as these later came to be known), ascertainable by thought alone. The only path to knowledge is via observation and a careful study of the 'Book of Nature'. Hence, it isn't surprising that the foundations of modern science were laid in the Middle Ages largely by theorists who adopted the latter view of 'God' -- for example, Jean Buridan. [Copleston (2003b), pp.153-76, Crombie (1953), Grant (1996), Hannam (2009), Lindberg (2007).]

In post-Renaissance thought, the former ('necessitarian') tradition resurfaced in Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel; the latter tradition (the 'voluntarist') in an attenuated form in Newton and others who stressed 'God's' free will and the contingency of nature, the primacy of empirical over a priori knowledge, and thus the importance of observation and experiment over speculation and abstract theory -- i.e., the early empiricists and the so-called "mechanists".

[To be sure, 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.]

So, when, for example, Fundamentalist Christians look at nature and they see design everywhere, they also 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 'God' and 'His' relation to the world).

Christian mechanists saw design in nature, too, but their view became increasingly deistic, and then atheistic. The introduction of a contingent link between 'God' and nature severed the logical connection that earlier theorists had postulated, making "the God hypothesis" seem increasingly redundant. [On this, see Lovejoy (1964). There is also a good account of this in Redwood (1976). Also see Dillenberger (1988).] The first sign of these novel developments are to be found in the debate between Leibniz and Clarke. [Cf., Alexander (1956), and Vailati (1997).]

Much of this had been apparent, however, in the writings of the Medieval Nominalists, whose work severed the logical link between a substance and its properties, following on a reaction to the tradition begun by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) -- with his separation of 'essence' and 'existence' in created beings --, Averroës (Ibn Rushd) and the so-called "Latin Averroists" (like Siger of Brabant). The latter argued strongly in favour of Aristotle's doctrine of natural necessity, 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).

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 properties of bodies (their "accidents") logically linked to their nominal essence (as this later came to be called by John Locke). [On this, see Osler (2004), and Copleston (2003a), pp.136-55, 190-95, 437-41; (2003b), pp.43-167.]

In the 18^th century, a resurgence of the first tradition (the 'necessitarian' approach) prompted, among other things, the "re-enchantment" of nature in the theories invented by the Natürphilosophers, and later those cooked up 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). The Hermetic background to all this can be found in Magee (2008). See also Essay Twelve (summary here)....]

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

I will say much more about this in Essay Three Part Five, were I will link the above considerations to Traditional Theories of Mind, Will, Freedom. Necessity, and Determinism, connecting them with the subsequent enchantment of nature apparent in Dialectical Marxism (in Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two (summary here)).

13. Anyone who objects to the anthropomorphic terminology used at this point in the Essay should recall that it is only being employed in order to show how completely unbelievable Traditional Theories like this really are when its language and concepts are pushed to the limit, and thus applied more consistently -- and its class roots exposed -- than is usually the case.

Anyone who still objects should rather take issue with those who concocted these theories, not those who seek to lampoon them.

14. This echoes Rousseau:

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." [Rousseau (1952), p.3.]

14a0. The phrase "undermining the unity of the proposition" refers to the fact that Traditional Logic and Grammar in effect turned propositions into lists of names. Since lists say nothing (unless they are articulated with words that aren't names), this move would destroy the capacity language has for expressing anything at all. [That was, of course, the main theme of Part One.]

14a1. As Glenn Magee points out:

"What Hegel's system promises is a transformed experience of the world, in which we see familiar things in a new light. Science, poetry, art, religion, the state, are all seen to be expressions or embodiments of the Absolute. Ordinary things suddenly take on new meaning. That which had been thought to be a human contrivance, carried out only for finite human ends, devoid of any higher meaning, mystery or religious significance...is now suddenly imbued with spiritual significance.... Thus, Hegel attempts to heal the rift in the modern consciousness between thought and sensation, or thought and experience, by giving us a new form of experience. The very modern scientific and philosophical ideas that formerly seemed to cut us off from experience and from our intuitions of the divine are now seen to be moments of a system of experience that constitutes the divine itself. Hegel's system is an attempt to 're-enchant' the world, to re-invest nature with the experience of the numinous lost with the death of the mythical consciousness." [Magee (2008), p.97. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]

14a2. Which might help explain why Trotsky argued as follows:

"Dialectic training of the mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist, demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories. Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions with the banalities of 'common sense.'" [Trotsky (1971), p.70. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

As with any opiate, a constant series hits becomes necessary; not only that, it robs each junkie of his/her will. In Essay Nine Part Two, we will discover why hard-nosed revolutionaries (like Engels, Lenin and Trotsky) surrendered (alienated) their own wills to this mythical 'Cosmic Will'.

14a. This also helps account for the rather odd fact that the more 'dialectical' the party the more autocratic it seems to be -- and the more prone it is therefore to split. When it comes to imposing order on the faithful, the dialectically-mailed fist soon replaces the invisible hand of reasonableness, and fights quickly break out. This is especially true of the Stalinists and the Maoists (when they actually manage to seize power). However, their parties don't actually split or fragment (unlike the Trotskyists, who have turned fragmentation into an art form), they imprison, silence, or 'liquidate' every single dissenter.

[These ideas are developed extensively in Essay Nine Part Two in order to expose the damage DM and its petty bourgeois acolytes have inflicted on Marxism.]

15. In fact, in the bourgeois intellectual universe -- populated with nothing but particularised ideas, atomised concepts, and socially isolated thinkers -- any attempt to prove there are other minds clearly faces an uphill task.

Some may be tempted to argue that a lone abstractor could extrapolate from her own experience to the conclusion that others are just like her and have minds, too. However, any theory based on only one self-observation like this 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 name), it would be impossible for this lone abstractor to be able to say towards what any such guess was aimed. That is because, of course, belief in other minds requires the use of yet more general words, which this theory lacks -- or, rather, which it has just destroyed.

[The details surrounding Wittgenstein's dissolution of these and other 'problems' won't be entered into here. I will say more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Three. However, those new to his ideas should perhaps begin with Glock (1996), Kenny (1973), and Sluga and Stern (1996); also see here.]

16. This topic is discussed more fully in Essay Six.

16a. The 'relative stability' defence was neutralised in Essay Six, too.

Be this as it may, any attempt to make use of the 'relative stability' response would be to no avail, either, since, given DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians could possibly have the same idea even about relative stability, or even the same idea about relative stability as they themselves had only a few moments earlier.

And, it is no use replying that they'd have relatively or approximately the same idea about relatively or approximately the same idea, since the phrase "relatively or approximately the same" is up for grabs, too, having now no determinate sense. That is because if we have no idea what counts as exactly the same, we are surely in no position to declare that something only approximates to it. And, the same would be true of any other words thrown in for good measure in a vain attempt to sort this out -- including the word "word".

17. It would be no use appealing to the 'relative' or 'partial' nature of knowledge here, either, since, as we shall see in Essay Ten Part One, the implication of this particular doctrine is that, given DM, reality (or our knowledge of it) would be indistinguishable from Kant's Noumenon -- even if we could say that much!

18. This idea is prominent in Kant, although it was less clearly expressed in the work of earlier thinkers. However, since Hegel adapted Kant's approach by-and-large) to suit his own ends, the passage in the text only needs to be true of post-Kantian Idealists for it to apply to DM (upside down or 'the right way up').

Of course, these days evolution (as opposed to our social development) is considered by many to be capable of shaping the 'mind'; I have devoted much of Essay Thirteen Part Three to showing how misguided this is. Interested readers are directed there for more details.

18a. The details behind Hegel's, shall we say, 'Rosicrucian leanings' can be found 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 discipline' (i.e., the study of 'Subject/Object Identity') has dominated much of what passes for theory among HCDs, just as it has formed an important strand in 'Continental Philosophy' for the last two centuries or so. Its origin in mystical thought (indeed, this union forms the main 'problematic' of mysticism in general) hardly raises an eyebrow in either tradition, but especially not in ideologically-compromised HCD-cabals. In fact, I have lost count of the books and articles written (in both traditions) concerning the (mystical) union between the Knower and the Known, between 'Subject' and 'Object'. [Of course, HCDs don't see things this way, but mystical union is nevertheless what they seek; indeed, in some cases they are quite open about it (but wisely using less compromising language). More on this, here.] An excellent example of this can be found here. [Unfortunately this link is now as dead as the ideas it promoted.]

A summary of the background to this sorry affair can be found in Beiser (2005), and in more detail in Beiser (2002).

One unfortunate HCD critic of this site has fallen under its spell, too -- here. See also here, where many of the archived articles (written by Raya Dunayevskaya) reveal that the same Hermetic virus is to be found, perhaps in a more concentrated form. Also see here. [Several more examples of this HCD/DM-affliction will be given in Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).]

[HCD = High Church Dialectician, a term which is explained here.]

19. If the 'mind' knows only its own ideas and impressions (etc.), then the outer world cannot fail to be a back-reflection/projection of what that 'mind' contains. Furthermore, since the 'world' isn't just a mere idea, but the subject's own idea, there would be, on this view, no real difference between the 'objective' and the 'subjective'.

Naturally, Empiricists will want to deny this; but if they are right, every single one of them will simply be arguing with him/herself, not me!

Others may object that this confuses Empiricism with Solipsism, but that isn't so. In fact, it goes further; it identifies them. This isn't just to pick on Empiricists; one implication of the criticisms levelled at this site is that all metaphysical theories of knowledge collapse into some form of Solipsism.

That controversial claim will be defended in Part Four of this Essay. Also see Note 20, below.

20. Hegel:

"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.]

Of course, this means that even an upside-down and eviscerated version of Hegel's system -- whether or not it is back "on its feet" (i.e., DM) -- is no less Ideal.

Hegel was quite clear: Logic and the Divine Logos are one, Nature is Idea, and the Idea is Logos in self-development:

"Actuality is the unity, become immediate, of essence with existence, or of inward with outward. The utterance of the actual is the actual itself: so that in this utterance it remains just as essential, and only is essential, in so far as it is immediate external existence.

"We have ere this met Being and Existence as forms of the immediate. Being is, in general, unreflected immediacy and transition into another. Existence is immediate unity of being and reflection: hence appearance: it comes from the ground, and falls to the ground. In actuality this unity is explicitly put, and the two sides of the relation identified. Hence the actual is exempted from transition, and its externality is its energizing. In that energizing it is reflected into itself: its existence is only the manifestation of itself, not of another....

"Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often absurdly opposed. How commonly we hear people saying that, though no objection can be urged against the truth and correctness of a certain thought, there is nothing of the kind to be seen in actuality, or it cannot be actually carried out! People who use such language only prove that they have not properly apprehended the nature either of thought or of actuality. Thought in such a case is, on the one hand, the synonym for a subjective conception, plan, intention, or the like, just as actuality, on the other, is made synonymous with external and sensible existence. This is all very well in common life, where great laxity is allowed in the categories and the names given to them; and it may of course happen that, e.g., the plan, or so-called idea, say, of a certain method of taxation, is good and advisable in the abstract, but that nothing of the sort is found in so-called actuality, or could possibly be carried out under the given conditions. But when the abstract understanding gets hold of these categories and exaggerates the distinction they imply into a hard and fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in this actual world we must knock ideas out of our heads, it is necessary energetically to protest against these doctrines, alike in the name of science and of sound reason. For on the one hand Ideas are not confined to our heads merely, nor is the Idea, on the whole, so feeble as to leave the question of its actualisation or non-actualisation dependent on our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely active as well as actual. And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and irrational, as purblind or wrong-headed and muddle-brained as would-be reformers imagine. So far is actuality, as distinguished from mere appearance, and primarily presenting a unity of inward and outward, from being in contrariety with reason, that it is rather thoroughly reasonable, and everything which is not reasonable must on that very ground cease to be held actual." [Hegel (1975), pp.200-01, §142; I have used the on-line version here, and have left the MIA links in. Minor typos corrected.]

"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, there is no on-line version of this book; the one published at the MIA isn't this particular work.]

Moreover, Hegel specifically linked this conception of the relation between Logic and the world with ideas spun by Ancient Greek Theorists:

"This objective thinking then, is the content of pure science. Consequently, far from it being formal, far from it standing in need of a matter to constitute an actual and true cognition, it is its content alone which has absolute truth, or, if one still wanted to employ the word matter, it is the veritable matter -- but a matter which is not external to the form, since this matter is rather pure thought and hence the absolute form itself. Accordingly, logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a finite mind.

"Anaxagoras is praised as the man who first declared that Nous, thought, is the principle of the world, that the essence of the world is to be defined as thought. In so doing he laid the foundation for an intellectual view of the universe, the pure form of which must be logic.

"What we are dealing with in logic is not a thinking about something which exists independently as a base for our thinking and apart from it, nor forms which are supposed to provide mere signs or distinguishing marks of truth; on the contrary, the necessary forms and self-consciousness of thought are the content and the ultimate truth itself." [Hegel (1999), p.50, §53-54. Bold emphases alone added.]

So, just another "ruling idea", then...

20a. On this, see Note 20, above. This topic will be covered in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two to Four, and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here).

21. It shouldn't be concluded that these comments imply that Nominalism is my preferred option, nor even that it is 'correct'. In fact, as the Introductory Essay pointed out, I reject all philosophical theories as non-sensical hot air, and that includes Nominalism. Why this is so is explained in detail in Essay Twelve Part One.

22. As Lenin noted:

"Intelligent idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism. Dialectical idealism instead of intelligent; 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...."

And we now know why: Lenin's compromise with, and appropriation of, this archaic set of "ruling ideas" clearly compromised and undermined 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.]

How and why this happened to Lenin and other Dialectical Marxists -- and what ideological motivation lay behind it -- will be the subject of Essays Nine Parts One and Two, Twelve (summary here), and Fourteen Part Two.

On this, also see Note 23.

23. Diodorus Siculus is, in think, the originator of this 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.]

However, my reference to this trope in fact alludes to an image in Plato's Sophist, one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, this dialogue is the principle source of much of subsequent Idealism. The section reproduced below revolves around a conversation between an Eleatic "Stranger" (who appears to be a follower of Parmenides) and a character called "Theaetetus":

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

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

"Theaetetus. How is that?

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

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

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

"Theaetetus. True.

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

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

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

"Theaetetus. What?

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

The battle itself is described in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 675-715), available here.

From this it is quite clear that Marxist Dialecticians are far closer to the Idealist 'Gods' than they are to the materialist Giants!

[To be fair to John Rees, he does at least try to defend a DM-view of concepts (that aren't somehow 'fully material') in his examination of "friendship", on pp.109-10, of TAR. His argument will be examined in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is published).]

24. The views of some 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.]

Anti-Abstractionism

Mental 'Strip-Tease'

[This forms part of Note 24.]

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless, the analogy with clothing is as inapt as any could be. For one thing, it is surely abnormal to imagine that clothing is causally related to -- or physically connected with -- the body of the wearer. Yet, the properties of an object are linked in some way to its constitution. 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 'metaphysically transparent', so to speak.

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

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

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

For instance, while Abstractor A might begin by ignoring/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 first, second or third a cat's colour, fur, fleas, whiskers, tail, intestines, age, number...?

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

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

It could be objected none of this really matters, the results will be the same anyhow. But, how do we know? Is there a rule book to guide us? Is there an abstractionists' algorithm we all unconsciously 'follow', programmed into each of us as a set of tried-and-trusted instructions? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? And, if there are metaphysical disrobing protocols determining the order in which Tiddles's qualities are to be paired away (or attributed to it), so that this process is to be executed correctly by one and all, when and where did we learn them? On the other hand, if there aren't any such protocols, how might each intrepid abstractor know if he or she had abstracted Tiddles the same way each time?

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

Furthermore, even if there were clear or plausible answers to such questions, the fact is that it is impossible for anyone to check anyone else's abstractions to see if they tally -- or, e, if they had 'abstracted them right (in fact the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances), all of which means that this process can't form the basis of 'objective' science. Plainly, that is because (1) No one has access to the results of anyone else's 'mental processes', and (2) There appear to be no rules governing either the alleged results or the 'process' itself.

On the contrary, and in the real world, agreement is reached by the use of publicly accessible general terms already in common use long before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical) ancestral abstractors' eyes.

[That is, of course, just a roundabout way of saying that "abstraction" is a highly misleading euphemism for subjective, uncheckable idiosyncratic classification.]

One obvious reply to all this 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 have to know how to use the general word "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 concerned. 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'? If we already have to know how to use the word "cat" in order to abstract the 'right' object, what, pray, is the point of abstracting it? This would seem to be about as pointless as checking to see if you know your own name by looking it up in a telephone directory.  

Again, in response to this it could be argued that past experience guides us. But, how does it do this? Can any of us recall being made to study the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors in days of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of inner personal Microsoft Office Assistant, if we hit the right internal 'Help' key? But, what kind of explanation would th be of the allegedly intelligent power 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 it. In order to do this, 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, genetic or biochemical (etc.). Clearly, in each case and at each stage, greater abstraction is required.

Or, so the argument might go.

Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction" means, it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible and checkable set of 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 of being able to polish rough and ready particulars into smooth general concepts. If abstraction were an occult (i.e., hidden), inner process then, as noted above, no two people would ever agree over the general idea of, say, a mammal, let alone that of a cat. All would have their own idiosyncratic inner, but intrinsically un-shareable and un-checkable exemplars.

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

Human beings have generally managed to agree on what animals they consider belong to, say, the Class Mammalia -- i.e., those individuals who possess the relevant education and linguistic skills. [We might join Hilary Putnam and call this a legitimate division of linguistic labour (although, without implying an acceptance of his conclusions about 'essentialism').] However, this agreement doesn't include those individuals who are supposed to possess unspecified abstractive powers. Trainee zoologists do not gain their qualifications by demonstrating to their teachers their expertise concerning 'inner dissection' of mental images, ideas, or concepts. The same is true of practising zoologists. On the contrary, these individuals have to demonstrate their mastery of highly specialised techniques, technical vocabulary and sophisticated theory, which expertise they must exhibit publicly, showing they are capable of applying them in appropriate circumstances and in a manner specified by, and consistent with their professional standards, etc., etc.

The widespread illusion that we are all experts in the 'internal dismemberment' of ideas is motivated by another confusion, which also originated in Traditional Philosophy: the belief that the intelligent use of general words depends on some form of internal, mental 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 an 'inner act of meaning', naming or "representation", matching words to images, sensations, processes, and/or ideas in the brain/'mind'.

At work here is another inappropriate set of metaphors, which trade on the idea that the mind functions like an inner theatre, TV or computer screen -- now refined with an analogy drawn against Microsoft Windows perhaps, wherein 'the mind' is described as "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 things in the right folders and setting-up efficient 'networks', etc., etc.). Given this family of metaphors, understanding is modelled on the way we now look at pictures (or "inner representations", once more), using the equivalent of an inner eye to appraise whatever fortune sends our way.

This family of metaphors is but a faint echo of Plato's theory of knowledge by acquaintance, and his allegory of the Cave. [It must be added that these allegories were intended to make different points for Plato himself.] More recent versions of this family of ideas see knowledge as the passive processing of "representations" by socially-isolated, lone abstractors -- even if this approach to knowledge was subsequently augmented by dialecticians and their gesture toward practice. Nevertheless, this view of knowledge turned it into a form of acquaintance. Believe it or not, the reasoning is little more complex than this: we all know our friends by personal acquaintance or 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. [More on this in Essays Three Part Four and Thirteen Part Three (here and here) and Six.]

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

Even the attempt to investigate the truth of that particular assertion (i.e., that there is no evidence of scientists privately dismembering ideas in their heads) would automatically throw into doubt the role abstraction is supposed to play in science. That is because such an inquiry would have to examine the notes, documents and writings of scientists -- not their brains. Indeed, any recognition of the relevance of the publicly available, linguistic production of such scientists, their equipment and techniques (etc.), their social surroundings -- 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 and/or philosophical views he or she might otherwise rehearse in public.

Here, as elsewhere, actions speak louder than abstractions.

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

But, Don't Scientists Use Abstraction?

Admittedly, this way of putting things might fail to coincide with the way that scientists themselves theorise about what they do. But, and once more: their practical activity belies whatever post hoc rationalisations they might advance about the nature of their work.

Except in certain areas of obsolete psychology, in seeking to advance scientific knowledge scientists report neither on the results of their processing of 'mental entities', nor on the contents of their heads. And, they certainly do not 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, researchers develop new theories (at the very least) by extending the use and application of publicly accessible scientific language (already in use), theories and techniques. And, this they by employing, among other things, analogy, metaphor and the novel use of general terms, again, already in the public domain. All this is allied to the construction of specific models and "thought experiments", alongside the employment of other assorted rhetorical devices. [On this, see the references listed here.]

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

Despite this, it could be objected that these comments thoroughly misrepresent the way that knowledge advances. In fact (but edited down), the objection might proceed as follows: scientists attempt to discover the underlying nature of objects and processes in the world in order to reveal the laws and regularities (etc.) that govern the universe. To take just one example: an animal's essential nature -- arrived at by increased use of abstract terms -- turns out to be its DNA (or whatever). Another, but more general example could be the way that Physicists extend knowledge by developing increasingly abstract theories expressed in complex mathematical formulae and/or causal laws.

But, this can't be correct; scientists manifestly did not discover DNA by the use of greater or more refined abstractions. They used the theoretical and practical advances achieved by earlier and contemporaneous researchers (which advances themselves weren't arrived at by abstraction), and they augmented them with their own ideas (often those that had been developed by teams of scientists, working in certain research traditions), as well as the results of other innovative experiments, in the same or related fields. All of these were/are based on cooperative work, thought and observation -- frequently assisted by the use of models, yet more 'thought experiments', all expressed in a public language, subsequently published in an open arena.

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Abstractionists

Berkeley And Frege

[This, too, is a continuation of Note 24.]

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

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

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

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

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

"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:

"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.]

Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for those of his day who imagined that a 'process of abstraction' underpinned mathematical concepts, in particular the views of the 19^th century mathematician and mystical Platonist, Georg Cantor and his followers (on the mystical aspect of Cantor's work, see Aczel (2000)):

"Many mathematicians react to philosophical expressions in a [magical] 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 following dialogue may serve as illustration:

"Mathematician: The sign Ö-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…. [And] 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….

"So let us get a number of men together and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of 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 [one] answer and the other with another?…. 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!'…. '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?'" [Frege (1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point.]

Frege's parody of Cantor illustrates just how ridiculous the idea is that abstraction can create mathematical concepts out of mere signs, or, indeed, out of anything.

[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).]

The Young Marx And Engels

[This is still a continuation of Note 24.]

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

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

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

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

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

"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.71-75. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.]

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

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

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

"When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit.'" [Ibid., pp.73-74. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

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

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

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

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Ibid., p.75. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this site.]

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

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

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

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

In his perceptive analysis of Metaphysics, 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 to the conventions adopted at this site.]

Linguistic monstrosities like those above -- and worse -- litter the pages of Traditional Philosophy texts in their ancient, medieval and modern incarnations. For example, in a recent book on the nature of 'Time' we find the following rather bizarre phrases:

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

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

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

Ollman's Traditionalism

Initial Disappointment

[This is also a continuation of Note 24. I am including Ollman's work in this Essay since many comrades recommend it as an excellent explanation of 'the dialectic' at work. A recent example of this can be found here, where I have also posted a series of fatal objections.]

Recently, Bertell Ollman has outlined what he takes to be Marx's use of abstraction (in Ollman (2003), pp.59-112; this material also appears in Ollman (1993), pp.23-83)).

However, readers of Ollman's work will be forgiven their sense of disappointment that after the opening fanfare (to the effect that 'abstraction' is centrally important to Marx and Marxist theory), no account is given beyond the usual superficial gestures at explaining what the actual process is itself:

We have already seen that neither dialecticians nor their 'theory' are capable of explaining change -- indeed, we also saw that if this theory were true, change would be impossible (on that see Essays Five through Eight Part Three, but especially here and here), just as we have also seen in this Essay that no sense can be made of the 'process of abstraction'. So, the question is, has Ollman anything new to add that might turn the tide of theory back in favour of this discredited left-over from the Metaphysics of Ancient Greece?

Well, apparently not, for all he has to offer are a few pages of trite observations about what he thinks we all do when we allegedly engage in 'abstraction' (supported by no evidence at all), and what he thinks scientists engage in when they construct their theories (again, supported, not by evidence, just a lively imagination).

The Privatised 'Process of Abstraction'

Perhaps this is being unfair? In that case, it might be wise to examine what Ollman actually says to see if the above comments are 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 to the conventions adopted at this site, as they have been in the rest of the passages quoted from this source. Referencing conventions changed to concur with those adopted at this site, too.]

Now, we have seen that the way this 'process' is depicted by Traditional Theorists (like Ollman) means it is in fact an individualised 'mental' skill -- and one that undermines belief in the social nature of knowledge and language.

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

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

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

Indeed, this is something Ollman himself points out:

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

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

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

[In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have read (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 a lengthy 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 the fact that even though Marx gestured in its direction, HM doesn't need this obscure 'process' (that is, where some sense can be made of it) -- or, indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language completely undercuts abstractionism.

[Nor does Ollman take into consideration Marx's own refutation of abstractionism, in The Holy Family.]

Nevertheless, the few things that Ollman does say about this 'process' do not 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 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.

As far as can be determined, that is all Ollman has to say about this 'process' as such (as opposed to his comments about how Marx is alleged to have used it).

Now, anyone reading through the above passage will surely conclude that Ollman has omitted the social aspect of knowledge. Sure, he gestures toward it with a comment that we must factor in "group interests, and other social constraints", but how this helps turn an individualised 'aptitude' into a socially-conditioned skill is left entirely unclear (which isn't surprising, since this trick is impossible to pull-off). How is it possible for Abstractor A to ensure that he/she has abstracted anything in the same way as Abstractor B? Given this theory, all they have to go on are their own subjective attempts to this end, but they will have no way of comparing their results with those of anyone else.

[Since this line of objection was rehearsed in detail here and here, I won't rake over it again in this section.]

An appeal to a public language here as a way out of this impasse would be to no avail, either, for this theory undermines the very possibility of there being such a language. That is because this theory bases language acquisition itself on the process of abstraction. In which case, anyone who accepts this theory can hardly appeal to language to bail it out -- at least, not without arguing in a circle.

As we have seen, this entire approach is entangled in, and has been compromised by, the post-Renaissance, bourgeois view of language, cognition, and knowledge, which pictures these as skills we all learn as isolated individuals, or which are the result of such privatised skills, but which we are later supposed to bring to society as social atoms in order to compare the 'contents of our minds' with those of others in the same market place of ideas. On this view, the social comes second, the individual first. Plainly, this only succeeds in undermining the social nature of language and knowledge. [More on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

As Meredith Williams noted of Vygotsky's views (which 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.]

However, 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 too hasty, so we will have to wait to see how Ollman digs himself out of this particular bourgeois-inspired hole in his future work -- if he does.

Independently of this, Ollman has surely confused the capacity we have for concentrating on certain features of the world with this artificial 'process' of abstraction. So, to take his example, when we attend a concert, we might indeed concentrate on the soloist, say, but we do not abstract him or her.

It may be argued that this is indeed where abstraction kicks in; but what do we gain by saying this that the word "concentrate" hasn't already achieved for us? What extra feature does this alleged 'process' 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).

Of course, none of us begins with these skills. We all have to be socialised into them, and have to be taught what our words mean (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 -- one area where 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 social contexts. Abstraction (supposedly) takes place in a hidden, inner world, where the bourgeois individual reigns supreme.

Karl Marx's Magic Trick

Nevertheless, Ollman informs us that Marx in fact employed four different senses of "abstraction": (1) A division of the world into manageable "mental constructs"; (2) The results of the latter process; (3) In relation to a deficient, or ideological use of certain concepts; and (4) In connection with his own method in Das Kapital (pp.61-62).

Now, it is undeniable that Marx used this word ("abstract" and its cognates), and he certainly imagined he had applied this 'process' in the pursuit of his studies, but there nothing in Marx's writings to show he actually abstracted a single thing. And, this isn't just because the 'process' itself is impossible to carry out.

The passage that is usually quoted to show that Marx did in fact use abstraction actually fails in this respect, as we are about to see:

"It seems correct to begin with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973), pp.100-01.]

As I noted in Part One of this Essay:

In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does in this passage; he merely gestures at doing it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians. This isn't to disparage Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work if the baleful influence of traditional thought had been kept totally at bay.

[Yes, I know the quotation above in red is from the Grundrisse, not Das Kapital!]

What Marx actually did was use familiar words in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling 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 (or, indeed, re-create his alleged 'abstractions'), which they would have to do if the 'process of abstraction' were something we all do privately in our heads. And, they certainly don't have to copy Marx's supposed moves -- and they most certainly can't copy them, for Marx failed to say what he had actually done with the concepts he employed, or how he had 'mentally processed' them (if in fact he had done so!). Indeed, his 'instructions' about how to abstract the "population" are even less useful than John Lennon's famous remark that to find the USA you just had to turn left at Greenland. Hence, no one could possibly emulate Marx here since there are no usable details -- which, of course, suggests that Marx did not in fact do what he said he had done, or had proposed to do, otherwise, careful thinker that he was, he would have spelt them out. More significantly, no one since has been able to reconstruct these mythical 'mental' moves, or show that their own weak gesture at applying this method is exactly the same as the one used by Marx -- or even that it yields the same results, as noted earlier.

Of course, none of this is surprising. As we have seen, abstractionists become rather vague when it comes to supplying the details of this mysterious 'process'; that is why, after 2400 years of this metaphysical fairy-tale having been spun -- over and above the sort of vague gesture theorists like Ollman offer their readers --, no one seems able to say what this 'process' actually is!

By way of contrast, the actual method Marx employed (as noted above: we can actually see him doing this on the page -- i.e., indulging in an intelligent and novel use of language) is precisely how the greatest scientists have always proceeded. In their work, they construct arguments in an open arena, in a public language -- albeit this is often accompanied by a novel use of old words --, which can be checked by anyone who cares to do so. This can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".

The Young Marx And Engels Torpedo 'Abstractionism'

Marx and Engels's earlier words are, therefore, surely a more accurate guide to what he actually did in Das Kapital:

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

"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Marx and Engels (1975), p.75. Bold emphases 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.]

Here, the process of abstraction is shown up for what it is: capitulation to philosophical confusion that is based on a distortion of ordinary language (which is, oddly enough, the approach to Traditional Theory advocated in these Essays).

Ollman Misconstrues Change

Ollman now offers his readers the following highly clichéd comments 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.]

Although Ollman is concerned to tell us that Marx "abstracted" change, he neglected to tell us exactly where he did this, or even what it means to "abstract" change.

Be this as it may, we shall see in Essay Six that Heraclitus in fact got into a terrible mess over the criteria of identity for mass nouns and count nouns. But, he had an excuse: he lived at a time when little was known about this distinction (indeed, in Greek I have been told that this distinction doesn't exist; I have yet to verify this claim!). This is no longer the case. So, Ollman's breezy conclusions (based on no reference at all to any modern work in this area) are far less easy to excuse.

Now, had Heraclitus said that it was impossible to step into the same body of flowing water twice, he might have had a point. Even so, and despite what he said, it is quite easy to step into the same river. [On this, see here.] Indeed, without that particular capacity, not even Heraclitus could test his own 'theory' (or even imagine such a test being performed in his 'mind's eye'), for he would not be able to recognise the same river to test it on!

[The 'relative stability' argument is also neutralised in Essay Six.]

Nevertheless, Ollman nowhere even so much as questions Heraclitus's semi-divine ability to extrapolate from his trite, and incorrect observations about stepping into a river to what must be true right across the entire universe for all of time.

Ollman 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 -- this is the German Ideology -- 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 -- this is Capital Volume One -- RL)." [Ibid., p.65. Spelling altered to conform with UK English. Referencing conventions modified to agree with those adopted at this site.]

But, as we have also seen (in Essay Three Part One, here), abstraction may only penetrate to the heart of things if 'reality' itself were abstract (i.e., if it were Ideal).

What is more, the 'below the surface' metaphor explains nothing, either (on that, see here).

Now, no one doubts that social development and science may or may not be able to tell us how things "really are", or how they "actually change", but it certainly can't do this by means of abstraction, for that 'process' deprives language of its capacity to express generality.

Even if abstraction could do all that Ollman claims for it, dialectics would be the last theory that scientists would look to for assistance, for it would make change impossible!

So, all this labour has brought forth not even a mouse!

"The Mountain labor'd, groaning loud,
On which a num'rous gaping crowd
Of noodles came to see the sight,
When, lo! a mouse was brought to light!" [Phaedrus, IV, XXIV.]

Ollman spends the next few pages outlining several of the abstract terms he believes Marx employed (whereas Marx doesn't appear to call them this!), in the course of which he makes the following 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.]