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Essay Twelve Part One: Why All Philosophical Theories -- Including Dialectical Materialism -- Are Incoherent Non-Sense

May 2025: This Essay Is Currently Being Completely Re-Written And Re-Structured So Some Links Might Not Work Properly

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

[DM = Dialectical Materialism/Materialist, depending on the context; HM = Historical Materialism/Materialist, again depending on the context.]

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

Some readers might wonder why I have quoted extensively from a wide variety of DM-sources in the Essays published at this site. In fact a good 10-20% of the material in many of them is comprised of just such quotations. Apologies are therefore owed the reader in advance for the length and extremely repetitive nature of most of these quoted passages. The reason for their inclusion is that long experience has taught me that Dialectical Marxists simply refuse to accept that their own classicists -- e.g., Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao, alongside countless 'lesser' DM-theorists --, actually said the things I have attributed to them. That is especially the case after they are confronted with the absurd consequences that flow from their words; and that remains the case unless and until they are shown chapter and verse and in extensive detail. In debate, when I quote only one or two passages in support of what I allege, they are simply brushed off as a "outliers" or as "atypical". Indeed, in the absence of dozens of proof texts drawn from many such sources (across all areas of Dialectical Marxism) they tend to regard anything that a particular theorist had to say -- regardless of whether they are one of the aforementioned classicists -- as either "far too crude", "unrepresentative" or even(!) unreliable. Failing that, they often complain that any such quotes have been "taken out of context". Many in fact object since -- surprising and sad though this is to say --, they are largely ignorant of their own theory or they simply haven't read the DM-literature with due care, or at all! The only way to counter such attempts to deflect, reject and deny is to quote DM-material frequently and at length.

Furthermore, because of the highly sectarian and partisan nature of Dialectical Marxism, I also have to quote a wide range of sources from across the entire 'dialectical spectrum'. Trotskyists object if I quote Stalin or Mao; Maoists and Stalinists complain if I reference Trotsky -- or even if I cite "Brezhnev era revisionists". Non-Leninist Marxists bemoan the fact that I haven't confined my remarks solely to what Marx or Hegel had to say, advising me to ignore the confused, even "simplistic", ideas expressed by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Trotsky! This often means I have to quote the lot!

That itself has had the (indirect) benefit of revealing how much and to what extent they (the classicists and subsequent epigones across all areas of Dialectical Marxism) largely agree with each other (despite sectarian rhetoric to the contrary), at least with respect to DM!

Some critics have complained that my linking to Wikipedia completely undermines the credibility of these Essays. When I launched this project on the Internet in 2005, for the vast majority of topics there was very little material easily available on-line to which I could link other than Wikipedia. In the intervening years alternative sites have become available (for example, the excellent Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), so I have been progressively replacing most of the old Wikipedia links with links to these other sources. Having said that, I haven't done so for some of the Wikipedia links -- for instance, any that are connected with geographical, historical, scientific, biographical (etc.) topics, where the relevant areas aren't considered controversial, at least by fellow Marxists. In every instance, I have endeavoured to avoid linking to Wikipedia in relation to key areas of my arguments against DM so that at no point does my criticism of this theory/method depend exclusively on such links.

In addition to the above (as readers will soon see if they consult the Bibliography) I have provided copious references to other published academic and non-academic books and articles (posted on-line or printed in hard copy) in the End Notes to this Essay, which further develop or substantiate anything I argue, claim, allege or propose.

Several others have complained about the sheer number of links I have added to these Essays (because they say it makes them very difficult to read). Of course, DM-supporters can hardly grumble about that since they believe everything is interconnected, which must surely apply to Essays that attempt to debunk that very idea. However, to those who find this does make these Essays difficult to read I say this: ignore the links(!) -- unless, of course, you want to access further supporting evidence and argument related to a particular point, or a specific topic fires your interest.

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

Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links connect to web-pages that regularly change their URLs, or which even vanish from the Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent that they have changed or have disappeared, I can't possibly keep on top of this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers informed me of any dead or incorrect links they happen to notice. In general, links to Haloscan no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.

A good 50% of my case against DM and Traditional Philosophy has been relegated to the End Notes. This has been done to allow the Essay itself to flow a little more smoothly. Naturally, this means that if readers want to appreciate more fully my case against DM (and Metaphysics), they should also consult this material. In many cases, I have added numerous qualifications, clarifications, and considerably more detail to what I have had to say in the main body. In addition, I have raised several objections (some obvious, many not -- and some that might have occurred to the reader) to my own arguments and assertions, to which I have then responded. [I explain why I have adopted this tactic in Essay One.]

If readers skip this material, then my reply to any qualms or objections readers might have will be missed, as will my expanded comments, references and clarifications.

It is also important to point out that phrases like "ruling-class theory", "ruling-class view of reality", "ruling-class ideology" (etc.) used at this site (in connection with Traditional Philosophy and DM), aren't meant to suggest that all or even most members of various ruling-classes 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, that will become the main topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve (when they are published); until then, readers are directed here, here and here for further details.

[**Exactly how these comments apply to DM will be explained in the other Essays published at this site (especially here, here, here, and in this Essay). In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the argument (written for absolute beginners!) here.]

This Essay has been one of the most difficult to write for at least three reasons:

(i) It tackles issues that have sailed right over the heads of some of the greatest minds in human history. I hasten to add, though, that I claim no particular originality for what follows (except, perhaps its highly simplified mode of presentation and its political re-orientation); much of it has in fact been based on Frege and Wittgenstein's work, and to a lesser extent on that of other Fregeans and Wittgensteinians.

(ii) It is far from easy to expose the core weaknesses of Traditional Philosophy in everyday language, even though after well over fifty re-writes I think I have largely succeeded. [I have explained why that is important here.]

(iii) Unfortunately, those to whom this material is primarily directed (i.e., Dialectical Marxists) are almost all totally ignorant of Analytic Philosophy (particularly the work of the above two philosophers -- in fact, many won't even have heard of Frege, fewer still will have read anything he wrote!). For that reason, I have tried as far as possible to keep the material presented below as basic as possible, free of academic complexity. Hence, this Essay isn't aimed at professional philosophers! In that case, those who would like to read more substantial versions of the approach to language and Metaphysics adopted at this site should consult the relevant works referenced in the End Notes (and in several other Essays on language published at this site -- for example, Essay Three Parts One and Two, Essays Four, Five, and Thirteen Part Three).

Apologies are therefore owed in advance to readers who know enough of Frege and Wittgenstein's work to make the ideas rehearsed in this Essay seem rather trite and banal, but, as noted above, my target audience isn't well-versed in this area of Analytic Philosophy, nor do they find it at all easy to appreciate the importance of this novel approach to theory, let alone grasp its significance.

In fact, many regard Wittgenstein in an entirely negative light as both a mystic and a conservative. [I have addressed and countered those specific complaints here, here and here.]

Hence, I have written this Essay with the above Dialectical Marxists in mind, which means I have had to make things as clear, straight-forward and basic as possible.

Incidentally, some might be tempted to conclude that the ideas presented below are indistinguishable from the discredited theories put forward by the Logical Empiricists/Positivists. I respond to that erroneous inference here.

Also worth adding: the ideas presented below in no way affect the negative case against DM developed across this site, but they do help form the basis for a positive account of the origin of the dogmatic ideas that litter Traditional Thought and Dialectical Marxism.

Finally, this Essay is much more repetitive than many of the others published at this site. Experience has also taught me that if the difficult ideas it contains aren't repeated many times over (often from different angles), they either tend not to sink in or their significance is all too easily lost. Unfortunately, that is especially so with respect to the individuals mentioned above.

On a more technical note: Although I refer to the sense of a proposition (i.e., the conditions under which it would be deemed true or under which it would be deemed false) in this Essay, that is merely shorthand for the requirement of true/false bi-polarity for empirical propositions (i.e., propositions concerning matters of fact). This verbal contraction has been adopted to save on needless complexity in what isn't meant to be an academic exercise. Bipolarity (not to be confused with the so-called 'Law of Excluded Middle' [LEM]) is taken to be necessary for any (indicative) sentence to be counted as an empirical proposition.

[However, concerning my (presumed) appeal to, or my (supposed) use of, the LEM, see here and here.]

The subtle differences between these two ways of characterising the sense of a proposition -- indeed, what the sense of a proposition and what the LEM actually are -- are explained here, here, here and here. [See also Palmer (1996).] Once again, because this isn't meant to be an academic exercise, I have on occasion deliberately blurred the distinction between bi-polarity and the LEM. In addition, the reader's attention is also drawn to the difference between "non-sense" and "nonsense", as those two terms are used throughout this site. [Incidentally, my use of "sense" is explained here.] ⁰¹

I have also blurred the distinction one would normally want to draw between propositions, sentences and statements since I don't want to become bogged down with technical issues in the Philosophy of Logic or the Philosophy of Language. Even so, it will soon become apparent that I prefer to use "proposition".

[On this, see Geach (1972b, 1972c). Also see Glock (2003), pp.102-36, and Hacker (1996), p.288, n.65. (Nevertheless, it shouldn't be assumed that Geach would agree with everything the other two authors have to say, nor vice versa -- or, indeed, with anything posted at this site!)]

Throughout this Essay, I have used rather stilted expressions such as: "It is possible to understand an empirical proposition without knowing whether it is true or knowing whether it is false", as opposed to "It is possible to understand an empirical proposition without knowing whether it is true or false". I explain why I have adopted that odd way of expressing myself, here.

Three final points: First of all, throughout this site I have employed the term "Dialectical Marxism" in order to distinguish Marxism from the 'dialectical aberration' that has completely dominated revolutionary socialism for over 150 years. So, the terms 'Dialectical Marxism' and 'Dialectical Marxist' are used to refer to the mainstream 'Marxist' tradition that has accepted in one form or another the validity of DM, and as a result either applies it to all of 'reality' or restricts it to social development (i.e., where it is largely or even exclusively confined to HM). However, I distance Marx himself from this toxic mutation; why that is so has been explained here and here. Furthermore, why this Hegelianised Hybrid (but not Marxism itself) has been an abject failure for well over a century is explained here and here. [That argument has been summarised here and here.]

Second: Connected with an earlier point (about Analytic Philosophy), readers will also find I have presented a greatly simplified picture of Metaphysics. The impression given below is that metaphysicians confine themselves to the production of gnomic, single sentence statements of key ideas, and little else. Those who have read even a smattering of the subject will know that that is a gross over-simplification, almost to the point of distortion. I am acutely aware that metaphysical systems (of the sort relevant to the aims of this Essay) are vastly more complex and involved than this, but the purpose of this site, and this particular Essay, is to focus on DM and the metaphysical statements its theorists come out with, which often tend to be of the single sentence type, or they appear as single sentence summaries of key ideas. [I quote several examples in what follows and in other Essays, particularly this one.] As I have repeatedly said, the material below isn't meant to be a contribution to the academic study of Metaphysics, or its history, but an intervention in revolutionary politics. It is for this reason the focus has been narrowed to the extent mentioned above. Anyone looking for a comprehensive survey of the philosophical weaknesses inherent in metaphysics must therefore look elsewhere (although I have listed several academic books and articles in the Bibliography that provide just such a survey and critique). On the other hand, those who want to know why I have called DM a metaphysical theory and why I have labelled it incoherent non-sense will find a reasonably solid -- and, I hope, convincing -- explanation developed in the material presented below.

Last: Anyone puzzled by the unremittingly hostile tone I have adopted toward DM might find it helpful to read this first.

As of January 2025, this Essay is just over 183,000 words long; a much shorter 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'.

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

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

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

(2) Demonstrate how and why all philosophical theories (and not just DM) collapse into incoherent non-sense (Part One);

(3) Show that Metaphysics and (derivatively) DM are ruling-class forms-of-thought (Parts Two and Three);

(4) (i) Trace Metaphysics and DM back to their origin in early forms of class society;

(ii) Connect them with the 'world-views' directly or indirectly promoted or patronised by successive generations of ruling elites;

(iii) Demonstrate that despite their many differences there is an identifiable theoretical thread running through all of the above thought-forms; and,

(iv) Connect them all with ideologies that find expression in Traditional Thought that serve the interests of successive ruling classes throughout history (Parts Two, Three, and Four);

(5) Substantiate the accusation that DM is a fourth-rate form of LIE (Part Four);

(6) Expose the Mystical Christian and Hermetic origin of Hegel's thought and then expose it for what it is: sub-logical and incoherent non-sense (upside down or 'the right way up') (Parts Five and Six); and finally,

(7) Show that the defence of ordinary language and common understanding is a class issue (Part Seven).

[LIE = Linguistic Idealism (follow that link for an explanation); DM = Dialectical Materialism/Materialist depending on the context; MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, i.e., Lenin (1972); TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]

This will make Essay Twelve easily the longest work at this site, hence its division into Seven Parts.

However, my ideas on many of these issues are still in the formative stage, so much of this material will be published far more slowly than has been the case with other Essays posted at this site. As a result they will all be revised continually.

As indicated above, each of these topics will be tackled in various Parts of this Essay, but to address the first two we need to examine a rather odd claim concerning matter and motion made by Lenin (in MEC).

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

"The whole of nature accessible to us forms a system, an interconnected totality of bodies, and by bodies we understand here all material existence extending from stars to atoms, indeed right to ether particles, in so far as one grants the existence of the last named. In the fact that these bodies are interconnected is already included that they react on one another, and it is precisely this mutual reaction that constitutes motion. It already becomes evident here that matter is unthinkable without motion." [Engels (1954), p.70. Bold emphasis added.]

Lenin and Engels both asserted a typical metaphysical 'proposition'. Of course, Dialectical Marxists will reject such a characterisation of their words, but that repudiation would itself be misguided. [Why that is so is explained in what follows, and Note 1 (link below), but more specifically, here.]

What is peculiar about sentences like M1/M1a is that they purport to inform us of fundamental truths about 'reality', valid for all of space and time, albeit in this case expressed in terms of Engels and Lenin's incredulity.

Nevertheless, we aren't meant to conclude from M1a that Engels and Lenin were merely recording their own personal preferences, beliefs, or opinions. On the contrary, they certainly thought that matter and motion were fundamental features of "objective reality", that they were inseparable and that this was a scientific, or even a 'philosophically objective' fact. That was because they both accepted the background theory that motion was "the mode of the existence of matter" -– that is, they believed that matter couldn't exist without motion, nor vice versa. Motion was therefore one of the principal ways, if not the principle way, that matter expressed itself "objectively", exterior to the mind.¹

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases alone added.]

"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute, of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking." [Engels (1954), p.69. Bold emphasis added.]²

In that case, the 'content' of M1a may perhaps be paraphrased in one or more of the following ways:

In what follows, I will treat P1, P2 and P3 as the equivalent of P1a, P2a and P3a, respectively; so what I have to say about the former set of sentences also applies to the latter (unless indicated to the contrary). Having said that, there is a logical and rhetorical difference between these two sets of sentences which I propose to ignore. Not much hangs on those differences, as I trust the reader will agree. Anyway, Lenin appears to treat his versions of them as equivalents in the chapter of MEC where he covers this topic in detail: Chapter 5.3 -- for example:

[There is more about these and other alternatives later in this Essay. Why the word "content" has been put in 'scare' quotes will become clear as this Essay unfolds.]

The metaphysical nature of Lenin's pronouncement (in M1a) can be seen by the way it bypasses the need for any supporting evidence. For Lenin (and Engels), this was such an obvious truth about the connection between matter and motion that its denial was deemed "unthinkable".

Nevertheless, if humanity had access to evidence and information about motion and matter many orders of magnitude greater than is available even today, that still wouldn't be enough to show that the separation of matter from motion is impossible, let alone unthinkable. No amount of data could warrant such an extreme view. While it might in the end prove to be false that the two can be separated, its "unthinkability" can't be derived from any body of evidence, no matter how large it happens to be. As, indeed, Engels himself admitted:

So, according to Engels, evidence alone can't supply the necessity, the inconceivability or even the unthinkability that M1a seems to take for granted.

If not, the question immediately arises: From where does this idea originate? As is the case with other DM-'Laws', maybe it arises from a "law of cognition"?

"This aspect of dialectics…usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum total of examples…and not as a law of cognition (and as a law of the objective world)." [Lenin (1961), p.357. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Be this as it may, the above claims (i.e., about the metaphysical nature of DM-'propositions' like this, and the lack of conclusive evidential support) might strike some readers as rather controversial, if not completely misguided. In that case, much of the rest of this Essay will be aimed at explaining, defending and substantiating them.

[Why the word "propositions" has been put in 'scare' quotes will also become clear as this Essay Unfolds.]

The seemingly profound nature of statements like M1a is linked to rather more mundane features of the language in which they are expressed; that is, they are connected with the fact that their main verb is often in the indicative mood. [Sometimes subjunctive and modal qualifying terms -- such as "must", "can't" or "necessary" -- are thrown in for good measure, which only succeeds in creating an even more misleading picture.]

As we are about to discover, this superficial (indicative) veneer hides a much deeper logical form that only becomes apparent when sentences like these are examined a little more closely.

As noted above, expressions like these look like they reveal, or express, profound truths about 'reality', which is plainly because they resemble empirical propositions -- i.e., they look like sentences concerning matters of fact (like M6 or M6a, below). As we are about to find out, they are nothing like them.

This can be seen if we examine the following, similar-looking indicative sentences:

M2-M9 appear to share the same form: "ξ is F" -- or sometimes "ξ is a φ-er", or perhaps more accurately "ξ φ-ies".

[The use of Greek letters as gap markers (i.e., "ξ") was explained in Essay Three Part One (here and here). "F(...)" is a general predicate letter (which goes proxy for clauses like "...is a colour", or "...is greater than one", etc.), while "φ(...)" is a more specific variable letter (standing for verb phrases or clauses like "...owns a copy of TAR", "...fibs more often than not", "...runs tens miles at least four times a week", or possibly even "...thinks something is unthinkable", etc.). In what follows, when I refer to logical differences, I generally have in mind those aspects of indicative sentences that affect their capacity to be true or their capacity to be false --, or, indeed, those that are relevant to the inferences we can validly draw from, with, or by means of them.]

The logical difference of interest here (between, for instance, M6 and M2) lies in the fact that claiming to understand M2 goes hand-in-hand with knowing it is true, and vice versa. Both conditions are inextricably linked. [Some might even call M2 a definition; but either way it informs us about the meaning of the word "two". It is worth keeping that in mind as this Essay unfolds.] Hence, any claim to be able to comprehend M2 is at one with knowing it is true, and anyone who failed to see things the way they are expressed in M2 would be judged not to have understood the use or meaning of number words (or, at least this particular number word!).^3a

Compare that with M6: in order to claim to understand M6 it isn't necessary to know whether it is true or know whether it is false. Indeed, it is a pretty safe bet that everyone reading this Essay will understand M6 even though they haven't a clue whether or not it is true. Hence, unlike M2, comprehending M6 isn't the same as knowing it is true. Nothing in M6 defines the meaning of the words it uses, unlike M2.

[In future, I will omit the prefixing clauses "claim to" and "claiming to" (etc.), but in what follows they should be understood to be applicable where relevant, unless stated otherwise.]

Nevertheless, knowing what would make M6 true, or would make it false, is integral to understanding it even if neither of those options has yet been ascertained, or, indeed, will ever be ascertained. Again, it is a pretty safe bet that everyone reading this Essay will be able to say what would make M6 true and what would make it false, even if they have no idea which of those options is actually the case. Furthermore, they will still understand M6 even if they never find out whether it is true or whether it is false, nor care a fig about ascertaining either alternative.

[The significance of those comments will also become apparent as this Essay unfolds -- for instance, here.]

So, it isn't necessary to know whether Blair in fact owns a copy of TAR to be able to understand someone who asserts he does. In contrast, comprehending that two is a number is to know it is true (except with respect to a handful of trivial cases, about which more later).

M9 (which is, perhaps, a more 'objective' version of M1a) is somewhat similar to M2. For Lenin (and anyone who agrees with him), comprehending M9 involves automatically acknowledging its veracity. The truth-status of sentences like M9 seems to follow from the 'concepts' they express (or the definitions from which they follow, or on which they depend), which is why their (supposed) veracity can be acknowledged without examining any evidence. Their truth-status appears to be based solely on language or thought -- or, perhaps even on a "law of cognition".⁴

Or, as pointed out above, the truth of M1a follows from a specific definition, such as:

In that case, the truth of M9 seems to be based solely on the meaning of certain words (on their definitions) -- i.e., those used in P4.

Hence, with respect to M2 and M9, meaning and 'truth' appear to go hand-in-hand, so much so that as soon as their constituent words are comprehended (or 'cognised'), the 'truth' of each of them becomes obvious, if not "self-evident". The source of their veracity is 'internally generated', as it were. Indeed, that is why the negation, or the repudiation, of M9 (or the rejection of its (presumed) content -- expressed, for example, in P1, P2 or P3) was so "unthinkable" to Lenin and Engels. Plainly, their complete certainty followed from the definition (expressed in P4) that "Motion is the mode of the existence of matter". Hence, P4 seems to represent the core idea here, the bedrock principle that Lenin and Engels considered integral to the nature of, and the connection between, matter and motion. That helps explain why they asserted it so dogmatically, why Engels declared its opposite "nonsensical" and Lenin pronounced that opposite "unthinkable".⁵

In stark contrast, once more, it is possible to understand M6 without knowing whether it is true or whether it is false.^5a0

In fact, it is quite easy to suppose M6 is false (which it probably is). Even if M6 were true, and known to be true, it would still be possible to imagine it false (and vice versa). But, it isn't possible to imagine that M2 is false without altering or challenging the meaning of key words in that sentence. For those who agree with Lenin and Engels, the same is the case with M9 and P4. [Why that is so will be explained below.]

The actual or even possible falsehood of M6, on the other hand, would in no way threaten, undermine, alter or challenge the meaning of any of its constituent words. So, if M6 turns out to be false, that would affect the meaning of none of its words.

Despite this, in order to establish the actual truth or actual falsehood of M6 evidence isn't an optional extra. Examination of the concepts or words used in that sentence wouldn't be enough. No matter how much 'pure thought' were devoted to M6, it would still be impossible to ascertain its truth or determine its falsehood. So, the veracity (or otherwise) of M6 can't be established by thought alone; its truth-status isn't 'internally generated', but 'externally' confirmed -- or disconfirmed, as the case may be. Hence, an appeal to evidence is clearly essential.

However, and on the contrary, it isn't possible for anyone who agrees with Lenin and Engels to regard, suppose, surmise, imagine or even entertain the idea that one or both of M9 and P4 are false. This shows that there is a fundamental difference between these two types of indicative sentences -- one that their apparently identical grammatical form conceals.

As it turns out, the pseudo-scientific status and much of the 'plausibility' of metaphysical (or so-called "essential"/"necessary truths") like M9 and P4 derive directly from this linguistic masquerade (for want of a better term).

In that case, it looks like the obviousness of M9, for example, is what motivated Lenin's incredulity (reported in M1a), for it certainly seemed to him that as soon as the words in M9 were read, or were thought about, its truth would become clear to all, so that its opposite would indeed be "unthinkable".

[The objection that M1a and M9 in fact express a summary of the scientific evidence currently available -- or even the evidence that was extant in Lenin/Engels's day -- has been dealt with in Note 4, Note 5 and Note 5a.]

So, for Lenin, the first half of M1a was "unthinkable" (i.e., the "Motion without matter..." part). As we will see, that is because its denial would in effect undermine (or, at least, change) the meaning of words like "motion" and "matter", and hence would countermand the import of the concepts those words supposedly express (when put in sentential form). These inferences were based on the definition of "motion" -- that it is "The mode of the existence of matter" (P4). This would clearly show that anyone rash enough question the veracity or P4 had simply failed to understand the words/concepts "matter" and "motion". That would be a far more serious mistake than an evidential misconstrual. It would represent or reveal an error of comprehension -- or even a failure of linguistic competency.

It is also why the rejection of M9, P1 and P4 can be ruled out without the need to examine any evidence. What these sentences say gains our assent on linguistic or conceptual grounds alone. In that case, it also seems impossible to deny the truth of M1a. Such a denial would be inconceivable -- or, as Lenin himself said, it would be "unthinkable". That is also why claims like M1a (i.e., P1 and M9) require no evidence at all in their support, and why none is ever given -- and why it is difficult to imagine any evidence that could even begin to substantiate them.^5a

Hence, in connection with the truth of M1a, P1, P4 and M9 the actual state of the world drops out of the picture as irrelevant. That is why no experiments need be performed, no data collected, no observations planned or carried out, and zero surveys undertaken -- which is why none have ever been suggested by DM-supporters in relation to establishing the veracity of M1a or P4.^5b

That alone should have given someone like Lenin -- who wasn't ignorant of the scientific method -- pause for thought. Unfortunately, like so many others before him -- indeed, just like the vast majority of theorists since Ancient Greek times -- he failed to notice the significance of these seemingly trivial facts.⁶

The absolute certainty that M1a, M9, P4 and P1 appear to motivate in all those who accept their validity is quite clearly based on what their constituent words are taken to mean. The subsequent projection of P4, for example, onto the world is clearly a reflection of that conviction. If sentences like these express indubitable truths, who could possibly deny they apply across the entire universe? That is, of course, why DM-theorists like Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin were -- and others still are -- happy to continue imposing such ideas on 'reality' (follow the next link for proof). and hence regard them as valid across all regions of space and time. What else could the scores of passages (in Essay Two), taken from the DM-classics and the rest of the 'dialectical' canon, imply?

But, the alleged truth of M1a, P1, M9 -- and particularly P4 --, bears no relation to the possibilities that the material world itself presents. This can be seen from the fact that if the truth of those sentences were related to what might or might not obtain in 'reality', what might or might not be the case, evidential support would not only have been appropriate (and imaginable), it would be absolutely essential. However, with respect to the aforementioned sentences no such evidence is even conceivable. What fact or facts could possibly show that motion is inseparable from matter? Or that motion without matter is "unthinkable"? Or that motion is "The mode of existence of matter"?^6a

[Please let me know if you can think of any such evidence/experiments/observations. You'll be the first person in human history to do so if you rise to that invitation!]

This shows that M1a, M9, P1, and P4 aren't about the material world; they are (indirectly) about (or rather they arise from) a specific use of certain words -- or they reflect the (assumed) relation between the concepts they supposedly express.

[In fact, they indirectly 'reflect' an (Ideal) World anterior to experience, originally invented by ruling-class theorists, who began such talk in Ancient Greece, as the rest of Essay Twelve will seek to show. In Essay Twelve Part Four I call this the Reverse Reflection Theory -- RRT. (Follow that link for a brief explanation.(]

It might now prove helpful if we compare and contrast M1a, P1, P4, and M9 with M7 and M8:

'Propositions' like these litter the entire history of Metaphysics, but the above considerations help explain why Traditional Philosophers were only too ready to project them onto the world, dogmatically. The content of such 'Super-Truths' seemed to them to be based on something much deeper than anything that (empirical) evidence could provide. Indeed, sentences like these and many others appeared to express indubitable, 'necessary truths' about 'God', 'The Mind', 'Essence', 'Being', 'Motion', 'Space', 'Time', 'Existence', and the like. The truth of Cosmic Verities like these was prior to, but in no way dependent on, the deliverances of the senses. In fact, theories like these determined the 'logic of reality itself'. That is, they expressed concepts and categories that surpass mere human judgement and opinion, they represent or reflect the logical form of the world, and hence, for many, they gave expression to the 'Mind of God'.

In later versions of these grandiose ideas, such Super-Truths delineate the nature of any possible world.

In short, they pictured not just the logical form of any conceivable world, they provided the logical basis for every 'philosophically true' thought about 'Reality Itself'.

In previous centuries, it was believed that such Cosmic Verities expressed 'God's Thoughts', and as such they depict 'divinely-ordained laws' that governed 'Being Itself', which meant that Metaphysics was widely seen as an attempt to re-present, or 're-flect', 'Divine Truth' in the human mind, This further meant that Traditional Philosophy was seen as a legitimate and necessary extension to Theology -- a point Marx himself made.⁷

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. Bold emphases added.]

In class divided society, this linked Metaphysics with the continuous rationalisation of the status quo -- and hence with the 'justification' of inequality, oppression and exploitation created by it.

[There will be much more on this in Parts Two and Three of this Essay (summary here).]

This meant that if these Super-Truths reflected 'The Divine Mind' -- or the 'Cosmic Order' --, they could be dogmatically and legitimately projected onto the universe. No world was conceivable without them. Indeed, no configuration of matter or energy could fail to conform to Universal Truths like these, which meant supporting evidence became irrelevant. The material world itself could now effectively drop out of the picture -- at least in so far as confirmation was concerned.

[To be sure, an after-the-event appeal to nature might be made in order to illustrate such 'Super-Truths', so they might be sold more readily to the easily duped -- which is, indeed, what we find DM-advocates doing, for example, in their promotion of Engels's Three 'Laws'. But that would be the only use to which evidence would or could be put.]

As far as those who promulgated these Super-Truths were concerned, the latter appeared to be so obvious, so certain, so indubitable, that few were in any way concerned when they were airily imposed on 'reality' for more than two thousand years. On the contrary, the role that each philosophical theory was supposed to occupy (i.e., a sort of "master key" capable of unlocking the 'Underlying Secrets of Being') easily 'justified' the whole sordid affair.

Of course, Super-Verities like these had to be distinguished from ordinary, contingent, everyday, hum-drum, boring empirical truths. So, because they revealed a world of 'essences' that underpinned all of 'reality', Cosmic-Truths were subsequently given a grandiose title -- they were now labelled "Necessary Truths".⁸

Unfortunately, as we are about to discover -- and as Marx also pointed out -- traditional philosophical theories were (and still are) based on the misuse of a severely limited set of words, and therefore on an aberrant and distorted use of language. Their projection onto any and all possible worlds (based on no evidence at all) is proof enough of that. How else would it be feasible for theorists to specify what must be true across every possible world other than by a use of language that is rooted in this corner of the universe, and deliberately shape to fit? Since the semantic status of these 'Super-Truths' is supposedly 'known' prior to the examination of any evidence, their supposedly 'necessary status' can't have been derived from anything other than the (presumed) meaning of the words they contain, and hence on the (presumed) linguistic rules that governed their employment in such highly specialised/limited contexts.⁹

[Semantic status: this pertains to the truth or falsehood of an indicative sentence, whether or not that has already been established -- always assuming it can be. Any other (possible) option -- sentences remaining (permanently) truth-valueless (depending on the reason for that) -- would automatically suggest it wasn't an empirical proposition to begin with, whatever else it turned out to be. In Essay Two, several hundred examples have been given of the dogmatic assertions dialecticians come out with that are (supposedly) true for all of time and space, even though they are supported by little or no evidence or argument --, that is, over and above a handful of superficial gestures made toward the analysis of a handful of specially-chosen examples and sketchy "thought experiments", all of which are compounded by the use of ill-defined and obscure jargonised expressions imported from Hegel and other assorted mystics.]

"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.]

With the above in mind, we are now in a position to see why DM-theories appear to possess 'universal validity'. As we have seen (in other Essays published at this site), that is because they are:

(ii) Depend on a confusion of linguistic rules with substantive truths about 'reality'.

In short, DM-theorists confuse the means by which we represent the world for the world itself. The rest of this Essay (and the other Parts of Essay Twelve) will fully substantiate these seemingly controversial claims.

Of course, Traditional Philosophers and Dialectical Marxists will reject this way of viewing their ideas, but their opinion of how they think they use certain words is at odds with how they actually employ them. Why that is so will also become clearer as this Essay unfolds.

Once more, as we saw in Essay Two, while DM-theorists never tire of telling anyone who will listen that they don't impose their ideas on nature and society, they are simply 'read from the facts', their actual practice belies this. Dialecticians, en masse, regard their doctrines as universal truths, valid for all of space and time. Hence, in practice dialecticians do the exact opposite of what they say they do; they are quite happy to impose their ideas on the world, declaring them true prior to and independent of sufficient (or, in some cases, any) supporting evidence and argument. This dogmatic approach to knowledge places DM way beyond confirmation by any conceivable body of evidence.^9a

M1a, P1, and P4 are just the latest examples of dogmatic DM-apriorism. In common with other metaphysical systems, the projection of DM-theories like these onto any and all possible worlds (i.e., on 'Reality Itself') reveals they are based solely on linguistic or conceptual considerations. Since the status of these Super-Truths is 'known' well in advance of supporting evidence, their veracity can't have been derived from anything other than the meaning of the words they contain, and thus on the linguistic rules that supposedly govern their use.

Furthermore, the actual origin of every single DM-theory lends support to the above allegations. They weren't derived from a scientific study of nature but were imported from Ancient Greek, Hermetic and Mystical Hegelian thought (upside down or 'the right way up').^9b The origin of the doctrines Dialectical Marxists are happy to project onto 'Reality' dates back to a time when there was very little or no scientific evidence to speak of. And, as Marx pointed out, those theories were themselves based on distorted language and represented an extension to Theology.

Hence, the class-compromised origin of DM means that aprioristic, ruling-class ideas and thought-forms have been imported into revolutionary socialism -- and, what is more, that was "from the outside", too.¹⁰

Unfortunately for Lenin and other DM-apologists, a priori theories like this turn out to be incapable of 'reflecting reality'. As we will see, the world can't be as metaphysical-, or even as DM-theories, attempt to picture it.¹¹ There are logical features of language that prevent theorists like Lenin and Engels from (validly) asserting the sorts of things they want to say about the world, and which won't allow them to 'depict' nature in the way they think they can. Or, rather, they can't do so without those ideas collapsing into incoherent non-sense, as we are about to see. This means that DM itself ends up saying nothing at all.

The above considerations aren't unconnected with the origin and nature of metaphysical theories themselves. As will be demonstrated in later Parts of Essay Twelve, at a linguistic level Traditional Philosophy was motivated by a determination to use a narrow range of expressions idiosyncratically -- that is, Ancient Greek thinkers were determined to employ words in ways they wouldn't normally be used in everyday life. This non-standard use of language in turn involved a failure on the part of these 'linguistic innovators' to notice that it is only a misuse and distortion of language that 'allows' them to derive the 'universal and necessary truths' found throughout Traditional Philosophy, and now DM.

[Much of the mechanics (if that is the right word) underlying the above moves was exposed in detail in Essay Three Parts One and Two. I have no intention of repeating that material here, so readers are referred back to those two Essays for further details.]

The detailed analysis below will show that the distortion and misuse of language (to which Marx referred) results in the production, not of 'necessary' or universal truths, but of incoherent non-sense.^11ao

As noted above the rest of this Essay and the other Parts of Essay Twelve will fully substantiate those claims.

In the next few sub-sections I will develop an argument that appears to show that Lenin contradicted himself when he came out with claims like the one expressed by M1a (repeated below). But, as we will see by the end of this Essay, the problem goes much deeper, which, as we will also find out, means Lenin didn't in fact contradict himself, and that is because he didn't say anything comprehensible to begin with. In advance of this it will be shown that a superficial examination of Lenin's words does appear to show he contradicted himself, but as we delve deeper the real problem with metaphysical sentences like M1a will be exposed. That will in turn reveal why Lenin's words are incomprehensible, no matter what is done to try to rectify the situation. As the History of Metaphysics has shown (and as Marx also pointed out), philosophers repeatedly tied themselves in linguistic knots trying to discover profound-looking 'truths' about all of 'reality', for all of time. To that end, the next few sub-sections of this Essay expose the conceptual knots into which Lenin and Engels twisted their ideas as they developed not just their theory of matter and motion but the entire edifice of DM itself. However, while the real reason Engels and Lenin couldn't 'think the unthinkable' about matter and motion won't emerge in the next few sub-sections, it will by the end of this Essay. At that point, the real reason why what Lenin and Engels tried to rule out is 'unthinkable' (but not in the way they seemed to believe) should be plain for all to see, as will the real reason every philosophical theory suffers the same ignominious fate: the systematic production of incoherent non-sense.

[Essay Nine Part Two will explain why DM-classicists like Engels, Plekhanov, Dietzgen Lenin, Trotsky and Mao were so easily conned, and why disastrous consequences followed from allowing these ideas to take over our movement. In tandem with that, Essay Ten Part One sets out in painful detail the avoidable political debacle that predictably resulted from this, and which will continue unless we re-think things from the ground up.]

Concerning Lenin's assertion reported in M1a and P1 (both based on P4), it is worth asking the following question: What is it about these words (or what they express or 'reflect') that made them seem so "unthinkable"?

However, in Lenin's case at least, he must have thought the above words (or what they 'expressed', 'represented' or 'reflected') in order to declare that they were unthinkable! In order for those words to form the content of a thought so that they could be declared unthinkable, they would have to feature in, or be translatable into, an indicative sentence of some sort. [What is meant by "content" will be explained below.] "NN thought that..." requires completion by an indicative sentence or clause.

In which case, the phrase "motion without matter", and what it supposedly conveyed, must have been in Lenin's thoughts at some point. [The objection that this confuses use with mention will be dealt with presently.] Lenin at least had to understand the words "motion without matter" (as they are used in sentences like M1a) if he wanted to use them meaningfully; it isn't as though he chose these words thoughtlessly or haphazardly. In that case, he must have known full well what their use implied -- i.e., what they could be used to assert or what combination of matter and motion they ruled in -- or ruled out -- by saying what he did in and by M1a. If not, he would have asserted something he either didn't understand, or about which he had given no thought at all. If we assume Lenin at least thought he knew what he was talking about, and hence that he did understand M1a -- along with the phrase "motion without matter" as it is used in that sentence --, he must have devoted some thought to it. This he must have done either while actually writing those words, or long before he did so -- maybe when he first read what Engels has to say about this (quoted earlier). Otherwise, he couldn't have understood the implications of what he was saying. Hence, in order to comprehend the phrase "motion without matter" and understand what it might be used to rule in -- just so he could immediately rule it out -- he would have to have thought about what motionless matter could possibly imply is such a sentence.

In which case, it looks like Lenin had to do what he said couldn't be done; he had to comprehend and thereby think about the content of the phrase "motion without matter" and what it expressed when used in sentences like M1a. Even if he then went on to think the additional words tacked on at the end (i.e., "…is unthinkable"), he must have cognised the three 'offending' words first (i.e., "motion without matter") along with what they conveyed in or by that sentence. His thoughts didn't just switch on the moment his eyes reached the relative safety of the last two words at the end of M1a!

So, it looks like Lenin must have done what he declared couldn't be done; he must have thought the "unthinkable" in the act of declaring that no one could do what he himself had just done!

Naturally, this means that Lenin appears to have contradicted himself in practice, since he 'managed to do' what he said couldn't be done by anyone. That is why, in practice, it seems that Lenin's theory isn't just impossible to comprehend, it is impossible to state. That is, it is impossible to say what on earth Lenin meant by what he tried to say. If he managed to do what he declared no one could do in the very act of telling us they couldn't do it!, why can no one else do what he just did? What is so special about Lenin? How was he able to think the "unthinkable" in the act of telling us it can't be done?

Worse still, if the rest of us can think the offending words (i.e., what the phrase "motion without matter" seems to convey in such a sentence -- or maybe even contemplate a sentence like this, "Motion can exist without matter" -- even if what it seems to say is then immediately ruled out), and understand their content whenever we see Lenin telling us that we can't do the very thing we must have done in order to grasp the point he was trying to make, we, too, must contradict Lenin in practice whenever we consult this part of his writings. Indeed, the very act of telling us we can't think these words (or what they express/convey) prompts us to do just that!

Even those who agree with Lenin -- that "Motion without matter is unthinkable" -- must think the three 'illicit' words along with what they convey in, and by means of, that sentence. Hence, even the most slavishly obedient and sycophantic Lenin-groupie can't avoid disobeying the master every time he or she reads this contentious sentence.

Have such characters failed to notice that the very act of reading these words -- and trying to grasp their 'content' -- is automatically to disobey/contradict Lenin?

It might be thought possible to defend Lenin by arguing that his claims about matter and motion were plainly meant to be understood as hyperbole. Hence, it could be maintained that Lenin certainly didn't think that the words "motion without matter" (and what they implied in a sentential context) were literally unthinkable, merely that it made no sense to suppose there could be any actual examples of motion without matter. It could even be argued that the wording of Lenin's 'controversial' sentence meant he was simply rejecting the immobility of matter out-of-hand, as a ridiculous or patently absurd supposition, on a par with denying (liquid) water is wet or fire is hot, for example.

But, that would mean an entire section of MEC, entitled "Is Motion Without Matter Conceivable?", was misnamed. This is the section in which M1 makes its appearance. Lenin even italicised the word "unthinkable":

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

"The fact that philosophical idealism is attempting to make use of the new physics, or that idealist conclusions are being drawn from the latter, is due not to the discovery of new kinds of substance and force, of matter and motion, but to the fact that an attempt is being made to conceive motion without matter. And it is the essence of this attempt which our Machians fail to examine. They were unwilling to take account of Engels' statement that 'motion without matter is unthinkable.' J. Dietzgen in 1869, in his The Nature of the Workings of the Human Mind, expressed the same idea as Engels, although, it is true, not without his usual muddled attempts to 'reconcile' materialism and idealism. Let us leave aside these attempts, which are to a large extent to be explained by the fact that Dietzgen is arguing against Büchner's non-dialectical materialism, and let us examine Dietzgen's own statements on the question under consideration. He says: 'They [the idealists] want to have the general without the particular, mind without matter, force without substance, science without experience or material, the absolute without the relative' (Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit, 1903, S.108). Thus the endeavour to divorce motion from matter, force from substance, Dietzgen associates with idealism, compares with the endeavour to divorce thought from the brain. 'Liebig,' Dietzgen continues, 'who is especially fond of straying from his inductive science into the field of speculation, says in the spirit of idealism: "force cannot be seen"' (p.109). 'The spiritualist or the idealist believes in the spiritual, i.e., ghostlike and inexplicable, nature of force' (p. 110). 'The antithesis between force and matter is as old as the antithesis between idealism and materialism' (p.111). 'Of course, there is no force without matter, no matter without force; forceless matter and matterless force are absurdities. If there are idealist natural scientists who believe in the immaterial existence of forces, on this point they are not natural scientists...but seers of ghosts' (p.114).

"We thus see that scientists who were prepared to grant that motion is conceivable without matter were to be encountered forty years ago too, and that 'on this point' Dietzgen declared them to be seers of ghosts. What, then, is the connection between philosophical idealism and the divorce of matter from motion, the separation of substance from force? Is it not 'more economical,' indeed, to conceive motion without matter? The fundamental distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception, idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality. The world is the movement of this objective reality reflected by our consciousness. To the movement of ideas, perceptions, etc., there corresponds the movement of matter outside me. The concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation. Therefore, to divorce motion from matter is equivalent to divorcing thought from objective reality, or to divorcing my sensations from the external world -- in a word, it is to go over to idealism. The trick which is usually performed in denying matter, and in assuming motion without matter, consists in ignoring the relation of matter to thought. The question is presented as though this relation did not exist, but in reality it is introduced surreptitiously; at the beginning of the argument it remains unexpressed, but subsequently crops up more or less imperceptibly.

"Matter has disappeared, they tell us, wishing from this to draw epistemological conclusions. But has thought remained? -- we ask. If not, if with the disappearance of matter thought has also disappeared, if with the disappearance of the brain and nervous system ideas and sensations, too, have disappeared -- then it follows that everything has disappeared. And your argument has disappeared as a sample of 'thought' (or lack of thought)! But if it has remained -- if it is assumed that with the disappearance of matter, thought (idea, sensation, etc.) does not disappear, then you have surreptitiously gone over to the standpoint of philosophical idealism. And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter, for tacitly, by the very fact that they continue to argue, they are acknowledging the existence of thought after the disappearance of matter. This means that a very simple, or a very complex philosophical idealism is taken as a basis; a very simple one, if it is a case of frank solipsism (I exist, and the world is only my sensation); a very complex one, if instead of the thought, ideas and sensations of a living person, a dead abstraction is posited, that is, nobody's thought, nobody's idea, nobody's sensation, but thought in general (the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will, etc.), sensation as an indeterminate 'element,' the 'psychical,' which is substituted for the whole of physical nature, etc., etc. Thousands of shades of varieties of philosophical idealism are possible and it is always possible to create a thousand and first shade; and to the author of this thousand and first little system (empirio-monism, for example) what distinguishes it from the rest may appear to be momentous. From the standpoint of materialism, however, the distinction is absolutely unessential. What is essential is the point of departure. What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Lenin (1972), pp.318-21. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]

[I have reproduced the entire passage to short-circuit accusations that I have quoted Lenin 'out of context'!]

It clear from the above that Lenin was denying what certain scientists claimed -- i.e., that motion without matter was even conceivable. Or, as he puts it, once more:

M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]

Later he added the additional claim that matter and motion were inseparable (again quoting Engels):

"In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (read by Marx in the manuscript): 'The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved...by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science....' 'Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....'" [Lenin (1914), p.8.]

"[M]otion [is] an inseparable property of matter." [Lenin (1972), p.323. Bold emphasis added.]

Hence, the unthinkability of separating matter and motion was integral to his case against Idealism. Indeed, if motion is "The mode of the existence of matter" -- its "mode of expression" -- then these two 'concepts', or what they 'reflect', can't be separated, even in thought. As soon as any attempt were made to try to disconnect them, the one attempting to do so would no longer be talking about matter, or even about motion (as far as Engels and Lenin were concerned), no more than someone who tried to divorce the concept/phrase, "even number", from the concept/name, "two", would still be talking about the number two -- or about even numbers (which are, of course, defined in terms of their divisibility by two the result being an integer).

[Incidentally, Lenin is wrong about Marx and Anti-Dühring [AD]; Marx didn't read that book "in the manuscript". In fact, it was only after Marx's death that Engels claimed he read AD to Marx. Just think how long that would have taken. [In fact, as I show in Essay Nine Part One -- here -- it would have taken at least two days to read AD to Marx!] Can you imagine how many times the ageing Marx would have nodded off, not realising the sub-logical material that book contained, with which some would later claim he concurred? Does anyone think that Marx approved of the ridiculous things Engels said about mathematics in that AD? Marx was a competent mathematician (even though his mathematical knowledge appeared to be at least half a century out-of-date), whereas Engels wasn't. Those who now try to tell us that Marx and Engels agreed about everything have plainly failed to think through the implications of that unwise assertion, since it would mean Marx was as incompetent a mathematician as Engels! (I have covered this entire topic in much more detail here and here.)]

As noted above, Lenin was clearly echoing Engels's non-hyperbolic use of language. Or does anyone think Engels was just exaggerating for effect when he said the following?:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transferred.... A motionless state of matter is therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas...." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

Engels clearly meant every word to be taken literally, which is precisely how subsequent DM-theorists have always understood him.

In fact, if anything is, this is a core DM-precept. Both Lenin and Engels meant what they said.

At this point, someone could object that contradictions like this -- i.e., where Lenin argues that what he had just thought couldn't be thought -- are only to be expected. After all, this is dialectics! In that case, in the very attempt to think these supposedly controversial words, thought is driven to the opposite pole and is forced to conclude that they (or what they express) can't be thought.

[That response is in fact a variant of the 'Nixon Defence' we met in Essay Eight Part One. (Follow the link for an explanation!) It also represents a repudiation of the 'hyperbole defence', outlined above.]

Except, Lenin did say the 'offending words' (or their content) could be thought, after all!

However, and what is far more likely, those who read Lenin's words will doubtless conclude that in view of the fact that they, too, have just thought those very words (or their content) in the act of being told they can't do it, motion without matter (or its sentential equivalent, P1) is plainly not unthinkable!

Indeed, in view of the additional fact that belief in motionless matter was an integral part of Aristotelian Physics (which world-view dominated scientific thought for the best part of fifteen hundred years), the aforementioned readers would be right to conclude that the claim that there can be motionless matter is thinkable. Plainly, that thought is far more thinkable than its opposite -- given the fact that it was held true much longer than DM has been!

Hence, far from thought being driven to an "opposite pole", the above considerations suggest it will be riveted to just the one, at least for many centuries.

[The above shouldn't be taken to mean that the present author thinks there is, or could be, motionless matter. Any such theory would be just as metaphysical as Engels and Lenin's claims about matter and motion are, and, as this Essay will show, would therefore be incoherent non-sense.]

It could be replied that the above material promotes what is in effect a specious anti-Lenin argument. Indeed, one critic has so argued:

"An also quite clear illogicality -- or perhaps even a sophism -- is the discussion of Lenin's assertion that 'motion without matter is unthinkable'. It is held that, since Lenin obviously thought the words 'motion without matter', he has contradicted himself, showing that it is perfectly possible to think 'motion without matter'. But this is clearly an invalid reasoning. The use of the words 'motion without matter' doesn't actually imply thinking motion without matter. The example of sentence 3. above may explain what I am saying. A similar idea can be expressed by

"6. A functioning perpetuum mobile is unthinkable.

"If we follow the text, we will exclaim, 'but you have just thought of a functioning perpetuum mobile! You have just used those precise words!' What happens, though, is that when I think the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile' I am not actually thinking of a functioning perpetuum mobile. Indeed, any machine of that kind that I -- or anybody else -- can think of is either not functioning or not a perpetuum mobile (or, more probably, neither). So while I can utter the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile', I am at most thinking of the words, not of the actual thing. Same goes for 'triangular circle', 'the opposite side of a Moebius strip' (sic), or 'a man who is his own father'. And so the text incurs in a conflation between two things that a correct analysis easily shows are different." [From here. (That links is now dead!) Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Emphases in the original. Minor typos corrected; link added.]

"Rosa actually considered that objection in the long Essay she wrote (she had to since I posed that very point to her back in 1998 or 1999!), and posted a short version of it in the passage Chris quoted. The point is that Lenin would have to know what any sentence containing the phrase 'motion without matter' implied.

'In order to rule motion without matter out of court, he would have to know what he was trying to exclude. He would have to know what motion without matter was so that he could exclude it as unthinkable, otherwise he might be ruling out the wrong thing. Hence, it would have to be thinkable for Lenin to tell us it wasn't!'

"So, he would have to think these words just to rule out the possibility that there was any motionless matter in the world. Otherwise, he would have no idea what he was ruling out. But, if he had no idea what he was ruling out, he'd have no idea what he was ruling in, either. So, the real problem is not that Lenin was contradicting himself, it's that not even Lenin knew what he was talking about.

"Moreover, as Rosa goes on to point out (I think you must have missed this), it's not possible to contradict non-sense. Since a non-sensical sentence cannot take a truth-value, no sentence can count as its contradictory. So Lenin wasn't contradicting himself (Rosa toys with that possibility until she shows that he isn't even doing that!); he is far too confused to be doing it. [It's the same point she makes about dialectics; it's far too confused for anyone to be able to say if it's true or if it's false, let alone contradict it!]

'6. A functioning perpetuum mobile is unthinkable.'

'If we follow the text, we will exclaim, 'but you have just thought of a functioning perpetuum mobile! You have just used those precise words!' What happens, though, is that when I think the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile' I am not actually thinking of a functioning perpetuum mobile. Indeed, any machine of that kind that I -- or anybody else -- can think of is either not functioning or not a perpetuum mobile (or, more probably, neither). So while I can utter the words 'functioning perpetuum mobile', I am at most thinking of the words, not of the actual thing. Same goes for 'triangular circle', 'the opposite side of a Moebius strip', or 'a man who is his own father'. And so the text incurs in a conflation between two things that a correct analysis easily shows are different.'

"And yet, how would you know what you were ruling out? Unless you know what a functioning perpetual motion machine is, or could be, your claim that it is unthinkable is just an empty phrase. [Suppose I say I can think it? Suppose inventors of these machines, who still turn up regularly, also say they can think it? And, isn't the universe in perpetual motion? According to some scientists, it is. So they can think of perpetual motion; even if they are wrong, they can certainly think it.]

"Same with the other examples you mention. If time travel is possible, a man can be his own father. Now, time travel might not be possible, but we can still think a man could be his own father. A triangular circle is also a possible object of thought; given homeomorphisms, it is possible to map a triangle onto a circle. So, topologically, a circle is the same as a triangle, hence, we can think it in mathematics! And we can easily define the opposite side of a Möbius Strip as follows: hold the strip between thumb and forefinger; the opposite side to that which touches your thumb is the side that touches your index finger. That might be a cheat, sure, but it allows us to think of the opposite side of a Möbius Strip.

"So, instead of asserting that, say, 'A triangular circle is unthinkable', you'd be better off following Wittgenstein's advice here (albeit given in another context) and say that certain combinations of words aren't part of the language; we have no use for them.

"However, this can't even be the case with Lenin's declaration, since immobile matter is not unthinkable; indeed, motionless matter had been a cornerstone of Aristotelian physics, which went largely unquestioned for over a thousand years....

"Now, the real problem with Lenin's declaration isn't that he ends up in an awful muddle, but that it follows from an a priori thesis invented by Engels: 'Motion is the mode of the existence of matter'. So, his declaration that 'motion without matter is unthinkable' wasn't based on evidence (since the latter is ambiguous), or on argument, but on this a priori thesis, which Rosa has shown is non-sensical." [Italic emphases in the original; links added.]

And, as we have just seen, Lenin admitted it was possible to think what he said was "unthinkable" -- according to him, Idealists do just that!

[Later on in this Essay, I will return to the core of the above anti-RL remarks where it will become clear that my critic is in some sense correct, but not in the way he supposed. This will allow me to reveal the real reason Lenin couldn't think the unthinkable even while he had to try to do so in order to tell the rest of it couldn't be done!]

It could now be objected that this whole line-of-thought is completely misguided. Consider, for example, the following sentence:

C1 doesn't imply that the individual alluded to above has actually thought of abandoning Taiwan, which they would have to have done if the criticisms aired in this Essay are correct. All it means is that the said individual is expressing their own rejection of the possibility of abandoning Taiwan, or their own personal repudiation of the very idea.

[VP = Verb Phrase, which in this case is "Abandoning Taiwan...". This could also be classified as a Noun Phrase (NP) if "abandoning" were instead viewed as a Gerund.]

So, the clause "VP is unthinkable" can mean many things; for instance (in this instance):

Many of these alternative readings allude to the incredulity or intellectual stubbornness of the individual concerned even contemplating abandoning Taiwan; that is, these sentences record the psychological impossibility of accepting -- or even the refusal of the individual concerned to believe -- that the USA would ever abandon Taiwan. Now, if Lenin meant what he said about motion and matter in this sense, it would weaken considerably his opposition to the immobility of matter. That is because it would sever the connection his theory had with Engels's claim that "Motion is the mode of the existence of matter", which was for both of them a defining characteristic of matter, not a throw-away property the existence of which might depend on the limitations of human credulity. [Anyway, I have discussed this particular option further, below.]

More-or-less the same can be said of the other readings; they, too, sever that link.

I will return to this topic when we consider the deeper, logical problems associated with M1a (mentioned earlier).

Even so, anyone who came out with one or more of C1-C6 would have to know, and would have to have thought about, what it meant for anyone to abandon Taiwan so they knew what it was they were categorically ruling-out.

Continuing now with the above objection, it could be argued that it is perfectly clear what Lenin meant: it is impossible to think about matter without conceiving of it as also moving in some way. In other words, B1 doesn't imply B2.

B2: The sentence: "Literal motion without matter is unthinkable" is unthinkable.

In that case, and once more, maybe Lenin was merely making a psychological point about his own imagination, or what he knew, or thought he knew, about what others are capable of imagining. If so, all he was saying was that given what we know about the world (and, indeed, about ourselves, our relation to the world, and our intellectual capacities), we are all psychologically, conceptually or physically incapable of forming the thought, or giving credence to the claim, that motion is possible without matter (and/or vice versa) -- or even of conceiving that thought could be true.

[That line of defence was partly neutralised earlier, and in the last sub-section.]

So, it could be argued that Lenin considered it (psychologically) impossible to agree with P1b:

But, if Lenin was saying we are psychologically, conceptually or physically incapable of forming the thought that motion is possible without matter, he offered no evidence to substantiate what would now be a scientific claim about what human beings are capable of cognising (nor has anyone since). And, if that was his reasoning, it is pretty clear why he wouldn't have been able to produce such data (even had he tried to do so). That is because, plainly, even to pose that question is not only to think the forbidden words (or their content), it prompts any target audience into doing likewise!

Moreover, and alas for Lenin, there is abundant evidence to the contrary. As noted above, previous generations easily managed to think this very thought, and they did so for many centuries. The passivity of matter was a basic tenet of Aristotelian Physics.^11a

Having said that, Aristotle's own ideas about earthy matter are far more complex than the above comments might suggest. Nevertheless, it is still true that he believed that when located at the centre of the universe, earthy matter was motionless. [On this, see Bostock (2001), Lewis (2009), Morison (2002), Pfeiffer (2021), Sorabji (1988), and Copleston (2003a), chapter 30.]

"Now all things rest and move naturally and by constraint. A thing moves naturally to a place in which it rests without constraint, and rests naturally in a place to which it moves without constraint. On the other hand, a thing moves by constraint to a place in which it rests by constraint, and rests by constraint in a place to which it moves by constraint. Further, if a given movement is due to constraint, its contrary is natural." [Aristotle (1984b), p.458, 276: 22-26.]

[By "constraint", Aristotle meant "enforced motion"; that is, something "forcibly moved by some other mover" to wherever it ended up. (So, when you kick a ball, that is enforced motion.) On this see Bodnar (2023), Dijksterhuis (1986), pp,24-32, Guthrie (1990), pp.243-76, and Sorabji (1988), pp.219-26.]

So, Aristotle and his many followers could, and actually did, think about motionless matter.

Moreover, as my former colleague, "Babeuf", pointed out, it has been possible to think about motion without matter since at least Biblical times:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." [Genesis, Chapter One, verses 1 and 2. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis added.]

Now, it won't do to argue that the above is false, mythical or even ideological, since the only reason it has been quoted is to show that, whether or not it is one or other of the latter, some human beings (hundreds of millions, possibly even billions, in fact) can think about motion without matter, and have been able to do so for at least 3000 years.

"The feature that distinguishes Leibnitz (sic) from Spinoza: In Leibnitz (sic) there is, in addition to the concept of substance, the concept of force 'and indeed of active force...' the principle of 'self-activity'.... Ergo. Leibnitz (sic) through theology arrived at the principle of the inseparable (and universal, absolute) connection of matter and motion." [Lenin (1961), p.377. Italic emphasis in the original; paragraphs merged.]

This confirms, of course, the a priori nature and origin of this idea since Leibniz manifestly did not obtain it via observation, and would have had a stroke at any suggestion he had. Also worthy of note is the fact that Leibniz was heavily influenced by Hermetic mysticism, as was Hegel. [This will be one of the many such topics covered in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here); until then, see Ross (1983, 1998).]

As Lenin notes, the doctrine of the inseparability of matter and motion is connected with "self-activity", which is itself intimately linked with the 'contradictory nature of matter', as we saw in Essay Eight Part One. So, the 'inseparability thesis' is a 'logical' notion which 'follows' from Engels's Second 'Law'. Small wonder then that Lenin found its rejection "unthinkable".

However, if the above objection along with the alternative interpretation of Lenin's theory (i.e., that his claims about motion and matter relate to the psychological limitations human thought) are to remain viable, then, at best, we would have to interpret what he said as perhaps a confession of Lenin's own limited powers of imagination --, even though he too seemed able to rise to the occasion and think the forbidden words (or their content) while casting them into outer psychological darkness in the very act of bringing us the good news that what he had just done couldn't be done!

Furthermore, Lenin offered no evidence in support of the supposed limits on credibility, or otherwise, of anyone else, and he mentioned only two other individuals who thought as he did: Engels and Dietzgen. That being so, his confession merely records the limits of his, Engels and Dietzgen's own thought (which, as we have seen, appeared to undermine itself in the very act of its own confession!). Clearly, such asseverations (no matter how sincere) are out of place in what purports to be a scientific or philosophical analysis of matter and motion.

In any case, what could Lenin have said to someone who claimed that they could imagine motion without matter, or vice versa? [Well, we have already seen what he said, and it was (typically) dismissive.] What if Lenin had encountered a latter-day Aristotle? Several examples have been given (in this Essay) where it seems quite natural to speak about motion without matter. They may only be ruled out if it can be shown they are either metaphorical or are deemed irrelevant. But, who is to say that Lenin's employment of these words was itself literal? Or that this is their only correct use? Or even that it is the most natural way of using them? In fact, any rejection of the aforementioned counter-examples could only be based on Lenin's own lack of imagination, on that of his modern day epigones, or, perhaps, on other criteria which Lenin unwisely kept to himself (and that includes subsequent DM-theorists).

However, as the above indicates, it is possible to form the thought that motion can take place without matter. Nothing is easier. Not only does the last sentence itself prompt such a cognitive infringement, so do the sentences Lenin himself committed to paper. If they are unacceptable, it can't be for psychological reasons -- since, manifestly, they are ridiculously easy to think. If both B3 and B4, for instance, are to be ruled out as genuine examples of a thought, that should be done on logical or linguistic, not psychological, grounds, especially if the act of reading Lenin's words seems to disprove what he says in the very act of doing so.

At this point, it is worth recalling that Lenin himself acknowledged that this 'forbidden thought' can be thought, after all (perhaps not fully realising what it was he was admitting):

"From the standpoint of materialism, however, the distinction is absolutely unessential. What is essential is the point of departure. What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Lenin (1972), p.321. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Here, Lenin entertains the thought that motion could be "divorced from matter" (even if only to brand it "Idealist"), which means that he was wrong to conclude this was "unthinkable". He had just thought it! So, it can't be psychologically impossible to think these forbidden words, after all.

But that just takes us right back to the beginning. We are still no clearer what Lenin could possibly have meant, or tried to say, by what he asserted.

At this point it is worth asking the following rather obvious question: "Why did Lenin conclude that motion without matter was 'unthinkable' as opposed to claiming it was simply contradictory? Apart from saving him the trouble of having to do what he said couldn't be done -- think the very thoughts (or their sentential 'content') he wanted to convince the rest of us were "unthinkable" --, it would at least have allowed him to make his point much more succinctly, and, dare I say it, more 'dialectically'. Indeed, it would seem to be the obvious thing to say about matter and motion; that is, that any proposition asserting there is or can be motionless matter contains, or implies, a contradiction. Indicative sentences used to assert that matter is, or can be, motionless would certainly appear to contradict sentences used to claim motion is the mode of the existence of matter, or that motion is the way matter (always and under all circumstances) expresses itself.

On the other hand, it seems pretty clear why he didn't do this: if Lenin had done it, it would have given the 'dialectical' game away. That is because, if he had ruled certain things out on the basis that they were contradictory then much of DM would have disappeared down the U-bend with it. Clearly, the next question he would have faced is this: And why is just this contradictory state of affairs considered so objectionable in comparison to all the other contradictions that DM-theorists believe litter the entire universe but haven't yet been binned? For instance, why is it that dialecticians fail to say that motion itself is impossible (or "unthinkable") because it 'implies a contradiction'? Or, to take another example, that wave-particle duality is impossible (or "unthinkable") for the same reason?

In fact, the existence of matter without motion ought to make perfectly good 'dialectical sense', if only because it is contradictory -- given the background theory that motion is a mode of existence of matter. After all, the Hegelian roots of DM seem to imply that matter moves because of its inherently contradictory nature (even though the precise details are somewhat hazy).

"[B]ut contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity." [Hegel (1999), p.439, §956. Bold emphasis added.]

Indeed, it would seem from this foundational doctrine that bodies must move because mobility and passivity are a product of an internal struggle going on in all objects -- or is it between objects(?) --, since they are all UOs. So, why is there no 'unity' of these 'opposites here: 'motion and non-motion'? Anyone inclined to believe the cracked 'logic' Hegel peddled shouldn't find it too much of a leap to derive motion itself from the 'contradictory nature of matter'. The mobility of matter could then be predicated on its lack of motion! If concepts can develop into their opposites (as Hegel maintained), lack of motion should automatically 'develop', or 'pass over', into motion itself, one would have thought. Hence, far from immobile matter being "unthinkable", the foundational theory seems to require it, even if only to get everything moving, or keep it doing so!

It could be objected that that argument is ridiculous. Dialecticians don't believe that motion is a UO of itself and its opposite, lack of motion. Indeed, it could be pointed out that the above caricature isn't the contradiction, or even the sort of contradiction, to which Hegel was referring when he spoke about motion --, as Engels himself indicated:

"[A]s soon as we consider things in their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence…[t]hen we immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a contradiction; even simple mechanical change of place can only come about through a body being both in one place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And the continual assertion and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is precisely what motion is." [Engels (1976), p.152.]

However, this (proffered, hypothetical) DM-reply merely highlights the profound confusion lying at the heart of the 'theory-of-change' propounded by Dialectical Marxists -- highlighted here, here and here. The problem is that, according to what DM-theorists themselves have to say, it is unclear whether objects and processes change:

(a) Because of a struggle between 'dialectical opposites' -- i.e., as a result of their 'internal contradictions';

[Essay Seven Part Three reveals what a ridiculous conceptual muddle this foundational doctrine creates for DM-fans.]

So, if all things are UOs, and can only change because of that alleged fact, it seems that a moving body must be a dialectical union of motion and rest, otherwise it couldn't change.

In that case, if the above anti-DM conclusions are "ridiculous", that is only because it makes plain the incoherence at the heart of the DM-'theory-of-change'.

Moreover, as we saw in Essay Five, the alleged contradiction to which Engels refers (i.e., that a moving body is "Both in one place and in another place at one and the same moment of time, being in one and the same place and also not in it") can't be what makes an object move. In fact, it seems that any such 'contradiction' becomes apparent as each object moves.

[But, who can say with any clarity what this part of DM implies, if anything. Any who do think it says something determinate should get back to me after they have read Essay Five.]

Nevertheless, if Hegel is right, and objects do move because of their inherently contradictory nature, they must be UOs of some sort -- i.e., if one or more of the above three considerations apply. But, what else could any such UO be but a union of motion and its opposite, rest. Nothing else appears remotely relevant. Any who doubt this might like to contact me with an answer to this question: "What then is the dialectical opposite of motion"?

Others might be tempted to respond that that is precisely the point: because matter is contradictory, it is incessantly mobile.

But once more, if matter is truly contradictory -- and if we accept no half measures or express no "excessive tenderness" toward moving things --, matter must be mobile and at rest all at once (if the above three considerations still apply). In that case, resolute Hegelians must at least be able to think, and actually do think, the illegitimate words Lenin anathematised (or what they 'represent') -- that matter is motionless (at least, in part). It has to be if every object and process is a UO.

In fact, the good news is that there is no need to speculate any further about this DM-conundrum, for that is precisely what we observe everywhere. The seemingly 'contradictory' nature of matter (i.e., that it both moves and does not move) is not only an everyday occurrence, it is a scientific fact --, for it is true that with respect to one inertial frame an object can be at rest, but with respect to another it can be moving. And what is more, these two conditions can both be true at the same time concerning the same body.

Unfortunately for beleaguered DM-supporters this familiar (physical/mathematical) fact doesn't imply that motion is 'fundamentally contradictory in itself' (whatever that means!), only that, given different reference frames, we can picture it in no other way: as mobile with respect one frame, at rest with respect to another (at the same time). There is nothing deeply metaphysical about this; it is a spin-off of the conventions we use to depict the world. This socially-motivated fact, though, does give sense to propositions about the mobility (or otherwise) of matter, and that is because we would currently have no other way of conceiving of movement scientifically, except this way --, even if it doesn't actually make anything move (or, indeed, sustain movement) -- which is what DM/Hegelian 'contradictions' are supposedly meant to do.

Of course, the implications of unhelpful conclusions like these can only be resisted on linguistic/conceptual grounds. That is, they may only be defused by clarifying what words like "motion", "immobile", "inertial frame", "same time", and "contradiction" should be taken to mean. Naturally, anyone tempted to go down that route would have only succeeded in reminding us that Lenin's ideas in this area were, at best, the creatures of convention -- or even a result of the way he idiosyncratically chose to talk about this and other related issues -- and hence not even remotely "objective", as Lenin himself defined that word.

Moreover, given the additional fact that Lenin's philosophical ideas fall apart alarmingly easily (as, indeed, do Engels's -- on that see here and here), any such DM-'convention' isn't likely to catch on in the scientific community. In fact, neutral observers should feign no surprise if these ideas fail to make the bottom of the reserve list of viable candidates that that community would even deign to take seriously.

As pointed out earlier, it seems that Lenin must have thought the words "motion without matter" (or their sentential 'content') in order to deny they were thinkable. If so, it is difficult to see what he was driving at if the very act of saying what he did appears to undermine the point he wished to make by saying it!

However, B1 won't do either. Just as soon as the quoted sentence in B1 (i.e., B5) is entertained, it seems that that cognitive act itself will make B1 false!

Plainly that is because the embedded sentence in B1 (i.e., B5) appears to be false whenever anyone thinks it (or its 'content').

[What is meant by "content" is explained below, where it should become clear why that word has often been put in 'scare' quotes.]

B2: The sentence: "Literal motion without matter is unthinkable" is unthinkable.

Lenin certainly didn't mean B2. That riposte will be considered presently. [Again: anyone who thinks this confuses use with mention is referred to the next sub-section which deals with this.]

Moreover, it seems that B1 itself becomes false whenever B5 (or its content) is itself thought; and yet by thinking B1, B5 must be entertained. The only way anyone could agree with B1 is by thinking B5 (or its 'content') -- i.e., knowing what that 'content' means or implies. Unfortunately, this itself means we may only agree with B1 by doing what B5 says can't be done; it looks like we have to think the unthinkable, thereby making B1 false. In that case, B1 would be 'true' just in case it were 'false'; we may only assent to it if we never allow its content to cross our minds. But how could we do that if what it says isn't first understood? [That comment provides the first clue we need in order to uncover the real reason Lenin's theory of matter and motion (along with every other metaphysical theory) in the end turns out to be incoherent non-sense.]

It could be argued that this shows that B1 is true since it is indeed the case that matter without motion is unthinkable. And yet, that is precisely the point: even to assert this alleged fact requires the 'forbidden' words "matter without motion" (or their 'content') to pass through the mind; so it looks like it isn't the case that these words (or their 'content') can't be thought.^11b

But, what about the counter-claim that the above remarks confuse B1 with B2? That objection will be considered in the next sub-section, and again later in this Essay.

B2: The sentence: "Literal motion without matter is unthinkable" is unthinkable.

It could be objected that the above argument simply conflates these two propositions (in other words it confuses use with mention).^11c

R4: Sentences that assert that matter without motion is possible are unthinkable.

Clearly, R3 is susceptible to the points I have already made. But, it could be countered that Lenin obviously didn't mean this. He clearly meant R2. It is certainly possible to think the 'offending words' without imagining them to be true (a point made earlier by a critic). So, the above argument is confused and hence entirely misguided.

The question therefore becomes: Is R2 vulnerable in the same way? Is it valid to argue that Lenin was forced to contradict himself in order to make his point about matter and motion? Did he have to think the 'offending words' (in the sense that he had to imagine what would or could make them true, or he had to imagine what the world must be like if what R2 says were the case, or even that he had to contemplate the meaning of the 'offending words' in order to decide they were in the end "unthinkable") in the very act of denying anyone could do what he had just done?

Indeed, it might seem so. As we will see, in order to rule motion without matter out of court Lenin would have to know what he was trying to exclude. But, to do that he would have to know what motion without matter (or motionless matter) amounted to (i.e., what it implied) so that he could exclude that possibility from consideration on the basis that it was unthinkable. Otherwise, for all he knew, he could be ruling out the wrong condition, or, indeed, he might be ruling out nothing at all (in the sense that he wasn't engaged in an act of ruling out). Hence, the content of R2 (i.e., what it was supposedly being used to say, or could be used to say) would have to be thinkable so that Lenin could inform his readers it didn't present a viable possibility. [That remark in fact draws us closer to the real reason Lenin's words collapse into incoherence. More on that later.]

It could further be objected that R3, R4, P1, and P2 aren't what Lenin was trying to say when he argued that motion without matter is unthinkable. But, as we will see, it isn't possible to make sense of what he was trying to say whether or not he intended one or more of R3, R4, P1, P2 or even R2.

[The above is a brief summary of a much longer argument I have developed below. See also here.]

R4: Sentences that assert that matter without motion is possible are unthinkable.

However, if we assume for the moment that Lenin was right, and that we were 100% clear what he was trying to say; even then what could he possibly have meant by what he said if it seems that everyone (including Lenin) could so easily disprove, in practice, this supposedly self-evident conclusion? That is, if it is so easy to think about matter devoid of motion?

Precisely what is so unthinkable here that is also so easily thought? What is it about M1a/R2 that is supposed to command our assent -- but, apparently, only in the act of undermining what it seems to say?

As we try to answer these questions it becomes clear that there might be a grain of truth in the objection that the argument developed in this Essay appears to confuse use with mention, but not in the way that some might imagine.

The 'grain of truth' lies the form in which these ideas were expressed and the way that this affects how we interpret Lenin's words. Had Lenin come out with R1 (or R3), it is easy to see why his remarks might be correct.

R4: Sentences that assert that matter without motion is possible are unthinkable.

In R1 and R3, Lenin is merely mentioning the quoted words, he isn't using them. Those three words ("matter", "without" and "motion") are in phrasal, not clausal, form so on their own they can be neither true nor false. If Lenin meant that the act of thinking involved whatever was the object of that thought had to be in propositional form (i.e., it had to be expressed, or it had to be encapsulated, in a sentence capable of being true -- somewhat like R4, or P1, above, for example), then it seems he was right to so conclude. But in R1, those three words appear in a phrase, and so they, or that phrase, can't be true or false.

[The minimum requirement for a set of words to be capable of being true, or false, is that they comprise a clause, not a phrase (a point clear to philosophers at least as far back as Plato). Anyone not too sure what a grammatical clause is might like to check out this admirably clear explanation.]

So, if Lenin did mean by "thought" what was inferred a few sentences ago (repeated in slightly clearer form in B6, below), then the phase "matter without motion" can't be thought, since it isn't a clause.

B6: In order to be able to think something, then, whatever is thought has to be in propositional form; it must appear in a sentence (or clause) that is capable of being true.

[It is also worth recalling that a clause is also capable of expressing a proposition. On that, see Chapter Two of Geach (1980).]

However, as anyone can check, Lenin uses the word "thought" (and its cognates, such as "think") in a variety of ways in MEC, many of which are consistent with B6.

In which case, he wasn't (consciously or unconsciously) arguing that the phrasal nature of the 'three offending words' used in R2 (recall he was using them there, not mentioning them!) is what made them unthinkable. [That is the 'grain of truth' in the critic's comment, but he certainly didn't see it this way.] But, if Lenin were (successfully) to deny thinkability he would have to do so in a sentential context that was at least capable of being true (or false). If so, he would have to have some idea what it meant for someone to think these words in such a linguistic context that enabled it. Hence, those three words, at some point, would have to be expressed in propositional (or clausal) form. Otherwise, how would he be able to deny truthfully they could be thought at the same time as accepting B6. And that is part of the reason why it has been maintained throughout this Essay that Lenin thought he meant something like P1 or P2, where emphasis is placed on proposition or clausal content of a sentence that used the three 'offending' words (more about that later):

(ii) Lenin would have to know what he was ruling out; he would have to know under what conditions a sentence like "Motion can exist without matter" might be true so he could declare it was never true.

In that case, it could be that Lenin merely meant the truth of an indicative sentence (like M1a that contained, and used, the words "motion without matter") was unthinkable. Or even that such a sentence could never be true, or never thought of as true. If so, it turns out he did mean one or more of R3, R4, P1, and P2:

R4: Sentences that assert that matter without motion is possible are unthinkable.

The question is: are any of these options genuinely faithful to Lenin's intentions? Even more to the point: Are they viable in themselves?

As we will see, the answer to the second question turns out to be negative -- a result that has devastating consequences for any conceivable answers that might be advanced for the first.

As we will see, every attempt to make sense of what he and other metaphysicians dogmatically assert (about matter and notion -- or, indeed, about much else besides!) fails. And that is because what they all come out with turns out to be incoherent non-sense.

When Lenin's words are examined even more closely it becomes impossible to understand what it was he was trying to say -- or, indeed, precisely what 'truth' he was attempting to communicate to his readers. Or even whether what he appears to be saying could in any way be true, or even thought of as true, no matter how it was expressed or re-configured.

R4: Sentences that assert that matter without motion is possible are unthinkable.

M10 looks rather awkward and it isn't obviously correct. P2 looks a little less awkward. But, is it correct? Well, it is possible to think of many examples of motion that don't involve the movement of matter or the locomotion of bodies, as such. [In addition to those considered below, several dozen examples were aired in Essay Five. Readers are directed there for those details.]

"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute, of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking." [Engels (1954), p.69. Bold emphasis added.]

M11 could be true even if no matter was relocated in the process, or even as a result. [Any who object to this example should consult Note 12 where I have dealt with their qualms.]¹²

M12: The occurrence of literal motion without matter can never be thought of as true.

This seems to be closer to what Lenin might have meant, even if it still looks a little odd, or even stilted. Be this as it may, M13 presents problems of its own. Consider this apparent counter-example:

Now, M14 seems to depict literal movement, and yet it isn't easy to see whether any matter has to be re-located as a result. Perhaps we might appeal to the movement of atoms in NM's brain, or the re-arrangement of ink molecules in a diary or on wall planner -- when the new date is written somewhere ( etc.), as examples of matter in motion, in this instance. But, at best, that would simply mean motion was indirectly associated with matter, since even in a real life situation the supposed strike itself wouldn't actually exist to be moved anywhere, even though it has still been moved.

It might be objected here that this sense of "move" wasn't at all what Lenin had in mind. But, Lenin himself appealed to a wider sense of "move" in his argument against the Idealists he was criticising:

"Let us imagine a consistent idealist who holds that the entire world is his sensation, his idea, etc. (if we take 'nobody's' sensation or idea, this changes only the variety of philosophical idealism but not its essence). The idealist would not even think of denying that the world is motion, i.e., the motion of his thoughts, ideas, sensations. The question as to what moves, the idealist will reject and regard as absurd: what is taking place is a change of his sensations, his ideas come and go, and nothing more. Outside him there is nothing. 'It moves' -- and that is all. It is impossible to conceive a more 'economical' way of thinking. And no proofs, syllogisms, or definitions are capable of refuting the solipsist if he consistently adheres to his view. The fundamental distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception, idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality. The world is the movement of this objective reality reflected by our consciousness. To the movement of ideas, perceptions, etc., there corresponds the movement of matter outside me. The concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation." [Lenin (1972), pp.319-20. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

Here, Lenin refers to the movement of ideas as examples of motion (indeed, as did Engels before him), so it can hardly be objected when a wider meaning of the relevant words is used against his assertion recorded in M1a.

Again, it could be argued that in this particular example what has actually changed is the date of the said strike. It is this that has been moved not the strike itself. But again, if it were only a date that had been moved, it would still be unclear whether any matter has to be relocated as a consequence. Once more, the date is in the future, and doesn't yet exist, even though it has still been moved.

Now, it would be little use referring to the altered marks in a diary or on a wall-planner (or any of the latter located elsewhere, for that matter) in order to claim that there material changes were directly or indirectly implied in this instance. Certainly, such things may change, but if anyone were to imagine that the dates of strikes, or even strikes themselves, are simply marks on paper, then bosses could easily put a stop to trade union militancy simply by tippexing-out the relevant marks (or by destroying such wall-planners/diaries), and be done with it. The class struggle surely can't be so easily erased...

At best, therefore, the movement reported in M14 is indirectly associated with matter. Nevertheless, M14 appears to indicate that we can at least understand sentences where the connection between motion and matter isn't as obvious or clear-cut as Lenin seems to think. So, maybe we can think the unthinkable, despite what Lenin said.

But, this still leaves the status of M12 and M13 unresolved. Nevertheless, if we ignore awkward cases like M14 and concentrate on examples of movement located only in the present, we might perhaps be able to ascertain Lenin's intentions.

[Unfortunately, this restriction would make the temporal quantifier (i.e., "never") in M12 and M13 seem superfluous, if not redundant. I will ignore that (awkward) complication.]

M12: The occurrence of literal motion without matter can never be thought of as true.

However, if we are careful to stipulate that "literal motion" involves change of place, then maybe the following re-write of M12 and M13 might prove acceptable?

One obvious example of literal movement that takes place without matter -- which is not only thinkable, it is actual -- is the motion of the Centre of Mass [CoM] of the Galaxy [CMG], otherwise known as its Barycentre. [I have said more about CoMs and CMGs in Essay Eleven Part One, here.]

The CMG is located in 'empty space' (as are many Barycentres), but it exerts a decisive causal influence on everything in the Galaxy while not being material itself (it isn't made of anything, it is merely a theoretical point, a 'mathematical abstraction', if you will). In its turn, it moves under the influence of something else that isn't material -- the centre of mass of the cluster of galaxies of which ours is a part, and so on.¹⁴

This example, of course, omits any reference to the geodesics of Spacetime as causal factors in this case. However, introducing that complication at this stage wouldn't affect the point being made since geodesics are, of course, non-material themselves. Arguably, they aren't even 'extra-mental'. What exactly makes matter, or, indeed, anything, move along a geodesic is itself a moot point, which I will leave no less moot for now.

"Lagrange points are positions in space where objects sent there tend to stay put. At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses precisely equals the centripetal force required for a small object to move with them. These points in space can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system like the Sun and the Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. These can be used by spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. Lagrange points are named in honour of Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange. There are five special points where a small mass can orbit in a constant pattern with two larger masses.... This mathematical problem, known as the 'General Three-Body Problem' was considered by Lagrange in his prize winning paper (Essai sur le Problème des Trois Corps, 1772 [Essay on the Three Body Problem -- RL.]). Of the five Lagrange points, three are unstable and two are stable. The unstable Lagrange points -- labelled L1, L2 and L3 -- lie along the line connecting the two large masses. The stable Lagrange points -- labelled L4 and L5 -- form the apex of two equilateral triangles that have the large masses at their vertices. L4 leads the orbit of earth and L5 follows. The L1 point of the Earth-Sun system affords an uninterrupted view of the sun and is currently home to the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Satellite SOHO. The L2 point of the Earth-Sun system was the home to the WMAP spacecraft, current home of Plank, and future home of the James Webb Space Telescope. [This was clearly published before that telescope was positioned in January 2022 -- RL.] L2 is ideal for astronomy because a spacecraft is close enough to readily communicate with Earth, can keep Sun, Earth and Moon behind the spacecraft for solar power and (with appropriate shielding) provides a clear view of deep space for our telescopes. The L1 and L2 points are unstable on a time scale of approximately 23 days, which requires satellites orbiting these positions to undergo regular course and altitude corrections.

"NASA is unlikely to find any use for the L3 point since it remains hidden behind the Sun at all times. The idea of a hidden planet has been a popular topic in science fiction writing. The L4 and L5 points are home to stable orbits so long as the mass ratio between the two large masses exceeds 24.96. This condition is satisfied for both the Earth-Sun and Earth-Moon systems, and for many other pairs of bodies in the solar system. Objects found orbiting at the L4 and L5 points are often called Trojans after the three large asteroids Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector that orbit in the L4 and L5 points of the Jupiter-Sun system. (According to Homer, Hector was the Trojan champion slain by Achilles during King Agamemnon's siege of Troy). There are hundreds of Trojan Asteroids in the solar system. Most orbit with Jupiter, but others orbit with Mars. In addition, several of Saturn's moons have Trojan companions. In 1956 the Polish astronomer Kordylewski discovered large concentrations of dust at the Trojan points of the Earth-Moon system. The DIRBE instrument on the COBE satellite confirmed earlier IRAS observations of a dust ring following the Earth's orbit around the Sun. The existence of this ring is closely related to the Trojan points, but the story is complicated by the effects of radiation pressure on the dust grains. In 2010 NASA's WISE telescope finally confirmed the first Trojan asteroid (2010 TK7) [NASA's original link here no longer works so it has been replace with one that does -- RL] around Earth's leading Lagrange point." [Quoted from here; accessed 29/05/2025. Spelling modified to agree with UK English; several paragraphs merged. Many links and italics added.]

Somewhat similar points can be made about these LPs (no pun intended): These five Earth-Sun LPs are located in 'empty space'; while they don't exert a decisive causal influence the rest of that the Solar System (or beyond), they, too, aren't material bodies (they aren't made of anything but are the result of the confluence of the aforementioned geodesics). Despite that they all move along with the bodies whose gravitational fields created them.

Despite this, it could be argued that because matter 'creates', or it the efficient cause of, geodesics, all movement in the end is related in some respect to matter. If so, Lenin's original claim needs to be watered-down to something like the following:

[Of course, that response assumes geodesics are extra-mental entities when they are in fact mathematical objects, and, like lines of force, their physical status isn't just puzzling, it is entirely obscure. (On that, see here and below.) If so, it isn't easy to see how matter can 'create' a single geodesic.]

But, N1 might not even be true (and that possibility is quite apart from the fact that it, too, is "thinkable"; you, dear reader, have just thought it, or what it supposedly 'represents'/'reflects'!), and that could even be the case with or without the need to appeal to a single DM-precept. Anyway, as we saw in Note One, according to DM-fans, motion is "The mode of the existence of matter"; its demotion to a factor that merely plays a causal role in the whole affair would seriously weaken yet another key strand of DM.

The reason why N1 might not be true is discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part One. Briefly, that is because we don't as yet have a theory that connects QM with General Relativity, and currently the leading candidates depend on the reification of some highly abstruse mathematics, which approach itself has serious Idealist implications for Physics (as Lenin himself recognised). Such acts of reification either imply -- or are based on the unacknowledged premise -- that mathematical entities (differential equations, tensor, vector and scalar fields -- or 'the field' in general, etc.) are capable of acting as causal agents themselves. Unless we subscribe to some form of Mystical, Cosmic, Pythagorean-Platonism, that idea isn't even plausible.

It could be argued that the CMG and all these LPs are external to the mind, and so the above claims are subject to the following rebuttal (by Lenin):

"If energy is motion, you have only shifted the difficulty from the subject to the predicate, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material? Does the transformation of energy take place outside my mind, independently of man and mankind, or are these only ideas, symbols, conventional signs, and so forth?" [Lenin (1972), p.324.]

Hence, in view of the fact that scientists' ideas about the nature of matter and energy are constantly developing, facts concerning Relativity in no way embarrass DM. Whatever is objective and external to the mind is matter, and that includes the CMG and those LPs. Again, as Lenin argued:

"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind.... Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Ibid., pp.311-12. Italic emphasis in the original. Paragraphs merged.]

But, the CMG doesn't actually exist -- at least, no more than any other averaged quantity does. [LPs clearly do exist, but their nature is no less obscure than the geodesics that create them.] Is there in existence anywhere on Earth an individual answering to the following description: "The average man/woman in the UK"? If not how then can either an 'average person', or the CMG, be 'objective'? And if 'objectivity' is supposed to be "existence independent of the mind" -- and since both are creations of the human mind -- they clearly can't be 'objective' in Lenin's sense of that word.

[Naturally, the above comment about averages depends on whether we are talking about the mean, the median or the mode. In the above, the mean was intended.]

Of course, Lenin's catch-all definition -- that whatever has "objective existence outside the mind" is material -- would plainly include the CMG and the LPs by definitional fiat. But, why should we accept such a definition? Lenin's continual assertion that this is what matter is, isn't, I'm sorry to have to say, a sufficient reason for the rest of us to accept it -- unless, of course, we conclude that Lenin was a Minor Deity of some sort.

Partisan bias to one side, would we be prepared to accept a 'definition' of "fairness" promulgated by a supporter of the capitalist system which meant that that word applied to everything and anything that happened inside Capitalism that had been initiated by the ruling-class or their ideologues to their benefit? Or that wages paid to workers were "fair"? I suspect not.

Indeed, would we be happy to accept a definition of 'God' as "The Supreme and Eternal Being who exists of necessity, but whose existence can't be proved"?

Well, since 'His'/'Her'/'Its' existence can't be proved, the sentence "God is The Supreme and Eternal Being who exists but whose existence can't be proved" must be true, by definition.

But then, if 'His'/'Her'/'Its' existence can be proved, 'He'/'She'/'It' exists anyway. So, either way, 'He'/'She'/'It' must exist.

Now, it is little use pointing to the weaknesses, nor even the 'contradictions' in the above 'argument', since a smart theologian will simply play the Nixon card (beloved of DM-fans) to silence all opposition. And, if you persist, you will simply be accused of not "understanding" 'Theological Dialectics'.

Now, I don't expect the DM-fraternity to accept any of this (and that might be because of Lenin's status, or because the letter have yet to relinquish the partisan bias mentioned earlier), but when they see what odd 'entities' are permitted/admitted by Lenin's overly generous definitions of words like "objective", "material" and "matter", I suspect they might be among the first to demur.

Perhaps we should modify M15 to accommodate or neutralise such annoying counterexamples --, maybe in the following way:

Alas, M16 now concedes the point that motion can take place while spatially-, or, perhaps even temporally-, divorced from matter, since it isn't specific about contiguous or concurrent causation (which, of course, may not be what Lenin meant by M1a anyway -- who can say?). And, as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, Lenin's theory of matter (if such it might be called) is so vague and confused that little sense can be made of it.¹⁵

Nevertheless, despite these apparent problems, M15 and M16 face far more serious difficulties than the inconvenient astronomical (or even ordinary) facts mentioned above.

As we are bout to discover, detailed consideration of these 'problems' will take us to the heart of the reason what Lenin's theory, and all of metaphysics, are in the end incoherent non-sense.

[Several of the points made in this main sub-section might strike some not only as inconsistently dogmatic (given the criticisms levelled against dogmatism throughout much of the rest of this site), but also in need of substantiation. However, what follows largely serves as an introduction to ideas that will be more fully developed and substantiated as Essay Twelve, in all its Seven Parts (including the rest of Part One), unfolds. By the end of Part One, but even more so by the end of Part Seven, accusations of dogmatism should be much harder, if not impossible, to sustain. Hence, the reader's continued patience and indulgence is requested.]

The 'problems' Lenin and other metaphysicians face are a direct consequence of their use of distorted language (once again, this is a point Marx also underlined). But, there are other features of the language they employed that are less well appreciated (or, to be more honest, aren't appreciated at all), which mean that the slide into metaphysical incoherence doesn't just involve DM. With respect to Metaphysics in general, this collapse is as unavoidable as it is irreversible.

While it is true that Dialectical Marxists at least give lip service to the claim that language is both a social product and a means of communication, few of them seem to have thought through the implications of this idea.¹⁷ On the contrary, one of the least well appreciated consequences is that they imply language is conventional. Indeed, if language is social, how could it be other than conventional? Human beings invented language; it wasn't bestowed on humanity from 'on high', nor was it a gift from an 'advanced civilisation of aliens'. This means that at some point in their history human beings must have adopted, acquired or integrated a series of linguistic conventions into their inter-personal behaviour and social cohesion.^17a

In fact, an even less well appreciated corollary of the above considerations is that if language is primarily a means of communication, it can't primarily be representational.¹⁸

While it is undeniable that some Dialectical Marxists acknowledge what might seem to them to be the limited validity of this corollary -- that language is conventional -- hardly any (perhaps none at all) have considered the additional implications of the fact that language isn't primarily representational. Certainly Marx and Engels failed to do so, as have subsequent DM-theorists. Indeed, much of what they have to say on this topic -- especially in relation to 'abstraction', 'cognition', 'consciousness', and knowledge -- suggests the opposite is the case.^18a

As we are about to discover, representational theories undermine the social nature of language and the role it plays in intercommunication. This is connected with ancient theories concerning the nature and origin of language, which re-configured language as a mystical gift of 'the gods' and which in effect viewed language as a secret code that was somehow capable of 'reflecting' the underlying 'Essence of Being'. This 'code' had also been stitched into the 'fabric of reality' (originally by 'the gods', but more contemporaneously by 'natural necessity' or as an expression of 'natural law'), which was supposed to explain how it is capable of being 'reflected', so that the one can 're-present' the other, on a like-recognises-like sort of basis. This background theory helped motivate, and in some ways render 'plausible', the doctrine that language is primarily representational, as we will see in the next two Parts of Essay Twelve (summarised here).

If the world is the special creation of a 'Deity' (who supposedly conjured it into existence by means of language), then 'reality' must be essentially mind-like, constituted by 'Divine Ideas'/'Concepts'. That being the case, it seemed obvious to influential ruling-class theorists in the Ancient World that human thought must be capable of re-presenting the 'God's Mind' in the 'human mind', on the basis that there is some sort of isomorphism between the two -- since 'we' were thought to have been made in 'His Image'.

In this way Representationalism became the flip side of Theism and Idealism -- as Hegel himself noted:

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

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphases added.]

According to this archaic dogma, language contains what can only be called, hidden messages -- this idea is upfront in Kabbalism and the many 'True Bible Codes' that have surfaced of late, but it underlies much of Traditional Thought, as the next two Parts of Essay Twelve will demonstrate. Given this arcane approach, language is in effect an esoteric code, which may only be accessed, or even 'understood', by the elite, their ideologues, their hangers-on, their lackeys, or, indeed, by specially-trained professional 'Philosophers'. Comprehension of the Super-Cosmic Epistemological Nuggets of Truth the latter concoct, which supposedly lie buried in or behind ordinary-looking words, is way beyond the capacity of ordinary folks -- which isn't surprising, since no one understands them, as this Essay will reveal. That is because the 'great unwashed' are 'intellectually handicapped', trapped as they are in a 'world of appearances', their thought dominated and constrained by 'banal commonsense', 'formal thinking' and the vernacular. The Christian Tradition would have us further believe this 'Hidden Code' was stitched into the 'Primary Language' given to Adam by 'God', but similar myths abound in other cultural traditions. Indeed, as noted above, much of Hermetic, Neo-Platonic, Alchemical and Kabbalistic Mysticism is based on this view of the relation between 'God', language and 'Reality'/'Being'.

[On this, see Bono (1995), Eco (1997), and Vickers (1984b). This topic will be explored more fully in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here), and later Parts of Essay Twelve.]

Various signs, portents and 'hidden messages' were also believed to be 'written in the stars', sacred books, tea leaves, the flight of birds, the organs and entrails of slaughtered animals -- or, indeed, in a more recent, secular re-incarnation of this doctrine, they have somehow been encrypted in our central nervous system as an innate "Transformational Grammar", or "Unbounded Merge", or even as a "Language of Thought". [On this, see Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

This antiquated, re-presentational dogma later resurfaced in Dialectical Marxism in idea that 'thought is dialectical' because 'reality is dialectical' -- which 'profound secret' is, alas, hidden from those who refuse to see, or who just don't 'understand dialectics'. Fortunately for believers, DM can be viewed as an "Algebra of Revolution", which works, so we are told, because it alone is fine-tuned to harmonise with the "pulse" of 'Freedom'/'Reality' -- or, perhaps even because 'Reality' 'dances' to its highly syncopated rhythm. Those 'in sync' with these mysteries can now re-present 'the logic of Being' in 'consciousness', and then spread the 'glad tidings' to rest of benighted humanity.

As I argued in Essay Four Part One (in relation to the mystical dogma that there is a 'dialectical logic' -- of some sort yet to be clarified -- that supposedly runs the entire show 'behind, and in contradiction to, appearances'):

"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-determinations of thought are the content and the ultimate truth itself." [Hegel (1999), pp.50-51, §§53-54. Bold emphases and link added. Italic emphases in the original. I have reproduced the published version, since the on-line version differs from it; I have informed the editors over at the Marxist Internet Archive about this. They have now corrected the on-line version! Paragraphs merged.]

How is it possible that 'metaphysical truths' were only capable of being derived from, or expressed in, Indo-European languages? This is the only language family that has the required grammatical structure -- the subject-copula-predicate form -- that allows such moves to be made. Was the group of humans that invented this linguistic form uniquely blessed by the 'gods' -- or even by social evolution? Are there really 'subjects', 'copulas' and 'predicates' out there in nature for just this language group to 'reflect'?

Whatever the details finally turn out to be in each case, this almost universally-held doctrine, this "ruling idea", only succeeds in 'populating' nature with invisible "Forms", Essences", "Abstractions", "Universals", "Concepts", "Ideas", "Representations", and immaterial 'rational principles'/'laws', which were somehow capable of being reflected in and by language/'thought'. These clandestine 'entities' have supposedly been encoded in language in an abstract form, and revealed only to those capable of performing complex feats of mental gymnastics (and, of course, those with sufficient leisure time allowing them to indulge in this bogus enterprise). As if to compound this intellectual aberration, that exclusive skill has invariably been accompanied by an even more impressive ability to invent increasingly baroque but, nonetheless, entirely vacuous jargon.

This attack on the social nature of discourse was just one strand of the class-motivated assault on ordinary language and common understanding, and hence on grass-roots materialism, which soon degenerated into LIE. [More details about the latter will be given in the next two Parts of this Essay (summary here).]

As pointed out above, this anti-materialist theory views language as primarily representational. According to post-Renaissance versions of this ancient doctrine, we first of all learn to represent the world to ourselves as individuals -- and Dialectical Marxists have also bought into this approach, as demonstrated in Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three, Sections Three to Eight -- then, second, we try to communicate our thoughts to others. As far as language and knowledge are concerned, this theory pictures us all as social atoms, which its supporters then unsuccessfully try to transform these 'atoms' into 'social molecules' -- or even 'social polymers'! [Follow the above two links for the reason why this will always fail.]

Be that as it may, as all of Essay Twelve will show, instead of the obscure terminology Philosophers have invented mirroring 'reality', it actually reflects constantly changing ruling-class priorities, and, as such, it gives expression to their self-serving perception of the 'natural-' and 'social-order'. Furthermore, the obscure jargon they have all helped concoct is conducive to furthering the aims and interests of the ruling elites who finally pick up the tab, thereby helping secure their wealth and power. [How that works out has been detailed in Essay Three Part Two.]

[Dialectical Marxists are generally aware of these facts but they fail to see how the above ideological priorities and motivations have fed into and corrupted their own use of language (in DM). That was one of the main topics of Essay Nine Parts One and Two, and will be covered again from a different angle in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]

Because of their class position, Traditional Theorists were socially-, and often physically-removed -- or were alienated -- from the everyday world of work. Hence, they were 'naturally predisposed' to treat language the same way -- i.e., they were motivated to remove, or 'abstract', ordinary words from their role in communal life and inter-communication -- as Marx himself pointed out:

"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement [or, the alienation -- RL] of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphases added.]

This archaic approach to language became an integral part of an epistemological feed-back loop, helping to reinforce the idea that 'Reality' was itself linguistic and fundamentally abstract, the product of some 'Mind'. The aforementioned 'loop' is this: if this is of language, it must also be true of the world, and if it is true of the world it must be true of language. These two ideas fed into and reinforced one another. The old Hermetic adage, "As above so below" now also became "As below so above". 'Reality' was now a 'reflection' of what Philosophers said, not the other way round. [This is the RRT from earlier.]

Umberto Eco pointed out the following in relation to the Christian, Jewish and Muslim traditions (but, as we will see in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve, this view of the magical connection between language and 'Reality' occurs across many religions, cultures and philosophical traditions -- until then, readers are directed to this site for more details):

"God spoke before all things, and said, 'Let there be light.' In this way, he created both heaven and earth; for with the utterance of the divine word, 'there was light'.... Thus Creation itself arose through an act of speech; it is only by giving things their names that he created them and gave them their ontological status.... In Genesis..., the Lord speaks to man for the first time.... We are not told in what language God spoke to Adam. Tradition has pictured it as a sort of language of interior illumination, in which God...expresses himself.... Clearly we are here in the presence of a motif, common to other religions and mythologies -- that of the nomothete, the name-giver, the creator of language." [Eco (1997), pp.7-8. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.] https://tinyurl.com/4mawcb5k

In turn, this doctrine implied that only those capable of concocting greater, deeper or more general abstractions (based less and less on any real connection with the material world that these 'abstractions' supposedly 'reflected') were capable of truly grasping the deep, esoteric mysteries hidden behind 'appearances'. Or, since Hegel's day, this was true only of those able to "understand" the 'dialectic', harmonise with the "the pulse of freedom", and 'dance to its hypnotic rhythm, which enabled them to decode the "algebra of revolution".

Unfortunately, as we will also see, metaphysical 'profundities' can't be based on ordinary language. That is, they can't be derived from a social resource that serves primarily a means of communication. The vernacular actually prevents such flights-of-fancy from being engineered in a comprehensible form. It is precisely for that reason ordinary language -- along with its roots in the communal life and the daily experience of working people -- had to be down-played, denigrated and even set-aside by ancient Greek theorists possessed of a well-focussed, well-resourced ruling-class agenda. The latter were determined to show that the oppressive and exploitative social system from which they benefitted was either ordained of the 'gods' or was 'natural' and in tune with the universe, since it was predicated on, or it was an expression of, an underlying 'rational' order. That 'order' was itself located in a 'reality' composed of mysterious 'essences' that were all too conveniently 'reflected' by the very 'abstractions' they had invented, and which they alone were somehow capable of detecting. This complex web of ideas was further motivated by the systematic fetishisation of language, so that what had once been the product of the relation between human beings (language) was inverted and transformed into the relation between these 'essences' and 'consciousness'. [In fact, in many cases they were transformed into those 'essences' themselves, as talk about talk was confused with talk about the world.] In Hegel (and later in the theories concocted by Dialectical Marxists), DL -- supposedly implicit in discourse -- thus became the logic that ran the entire show, 'behind the backs of the producers', as it were.

"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-determinations of thought are the content and the ultimate truth itself." [Hegel (1999), pp.50-51, §§53-54. Bold emphases and link added. Italic emphases in the original. Paragraphs merged. I have reproduced the published version, since the on-line edition differs from it in places; I have informed the editors over at the Marxist Internet Archive about this. (They have now corrected it!)]

"[B]ut contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity." [Ibid., p.439, §956. Bold emphasis added.]

"Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they essentially are.... Contradiction is the very moving principle of the world: and it is ridiculous to say that contradiction is unthinkable. The only thing correct in that statement is that contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself. But contradiction, when cancelled, does not leave abstract identity; for that is itself only one side of the contrariety. The proximate result of opposition (when realised as contradiction) is the Ground, which contains identity as well as difference superseded and deposited to elements in the completer notion." [Hegel (1975), p.174; Essence as Ground of Existence, §119. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

The 'theoretical consequences' of the above linguistic magic tricks were imported into the workers' movement by the DM-classicists, who appropriated ideas Hegel had himself borrowed from earlier Mystics and 'god-seeking' Idealists. [And that remains the case whether or not Hegel's system is left 'upside-down' or flipped the 'right way up'.] This intellectual and ideological sell-out was further assisted by their unwise acceptance of an age-old, ruling-class approach to language, logic and 'cognition', the upshot of which was that they now in effect rejected Marx and Engels's insistence that discourse was rooted in communal life and collective labour -- not in the individual efforts of socially-isolated abstractors -- which had emphasised the primary role of language in communication, not representation.

[More details on this were given in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, greatly elaborated upon in Essay Thirteen Part Three. They will be further developed in later Parts of Essay Twelve (summary here). It is important to add that neither the social-, nor the representational-nature of language is being asserted or denied as part of a philosophical theory in this Essay. It is possible, however, to develop an understanding of the social and communicative role of language as a "form of representation" -- indeed, as just one such integral to HM -- easily expressed in ordinary language, which means it remains consonant with the experience of working people. (The term "form of representation" is explained here. See also Note 18b, and Note 19.)]

However, the above topics won't be covered in this Essay. Nevertheless, it is important to underline what has been taken for granted at this site: that ordinary language is "alright as it is" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein). Having said that, it will be agued -- indeed, it will actually be demonstrated -- that any attempt to undermine the vernacular inevitably results in the production of incoherent non-sense on the part of anyone who unwisely adopts that approach.

The rest of Essay Twelve (all Seven Parts) will be devoted to substantiating many of the above rather bald, dogmatic-looking, statements.

[The only other (seemingly viable) alternative in this respect would be to claim, alongside Chomsky, that language is somehow 'innate', that it isn't a social phenomenon and isn't therefore primarily a means of communication. Despite what some revolutionaries have argued, there is no way that Chomsky's theory can be made consistent with Marxism -- nor, indeed, can any sense be made of it. Again, I have dealt with that specific topic at much greater length in Essay Thirteen Part Three. Readers are directed there for more details.]

In this respect dialecticians aren't alone. Until recently, little critical attention has been paid to the traditional assumption that language is primarily representational --, i.e., that it first of all enables human beings to re-present the world in "thought", in the "head", the "mind", "consciousness", or "cognition" before communication can even begin.^18b

This overarching assumption has rarely been questioned (again until recently): that only after language users have learnt to 'picture reality' to themselves as individuals are they able to communicate their thoughts to others. That observation also applies to those who at least give lip service to the rival claim that the primarily role of language lies in communication (i.e., Dialectical Marxists). This means that, despite what they might say, the social nature of language is seen by the vast majority of DM-theorists as a consequence of the isolated (but later pooled) cognitive resources of each individual language-user -- that is, as an expression of their attempt to share the 'contents' of their 'minds', their 'abstractions', with one another, not the other way round.¹⁹

As Baz pointed out (quoted in Note 18b), theorists who privilege the representational nature of language tend to focus on its ability to 'reflect' the 'objective' world in 'thought' -- or, rather, they emphasise each language-user's ability to 'reflect reality' in 'thought', mediated (perhaps) by language (who, as individuals, give each of the words they use their own idiosyncratic meanings). Although social factors might be mentioned in passing, the prevailing 'representational' theory only succeeds in undermining the role any such factors play in meaning and communication. If we all (naturally) 'reflect' the world (or parts of it) 'in our heads', or in 'consciousness', what need is there for socialisation in the formation of language and thought? What role can it possibly have to play in that respect? What can it possibly contribute? That is why Representationalists often view ordinary language as an obstacle, something to be 'revised', overcome, by-passed, or even undermined in the quest for 'philosophical', 'objective' or scientific truth. For such theorists, if language were indeed social (or conventional), philosophical -- and allegedly scientific -- notions of 'objectivity' could gain no grip. This also helps explain why Representationalists of every stripe advance the same complaints against ordinary language and 'commonsense' -- i.e., these stand in the way of building an 'objective picture of reality'. That is also why they have to invent obscure philosophical jargon, by means of which they hope to by-pass the vernacular (and, in some cases, in order to confuse those 'not in the know', so that they will confuse obscurity with profundity). Here is Lenin on this:

"The flaunting of high-sounding phrases is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals." ["Left-Wing" Childishness. On this, also see Note 75c.]

"Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound." [Quoted from here.]

The above considerations also help explain the hostility shown toward Wittgenstein's work and OLP by virtually every Traditional Theorist. [I will say much more about that in Essay Twelve Part Seven.]

Naturally, this puts dialecticians in something of a bind. On the one hand they can't acknowledge the conventional nature of language without ditching their commitment to 'objectivity'; on the other, they can't reject the conventional nature of language without compromising their (avowed) commitment to its social nature. This dilemma, which fittingly illustrates their 'contradictory' approach to discourse (along with the arcane and convoluted thinking it forces on both theorists and active revolutionaries as they try (unsuccessfully) to harmonise these competing views of language) has been examined in much greater detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three where we will see that the above also applies to Voloshinov, Vygotsky and those who look to those two for inspiration.

[The philosophical use of the word "objectivity" is subjected to detailed criticism in Essay Thirteen Part One -- here. See also Note 20.]

It seems to many (even on the revolutionary left) that representational theories of knowledge and language are two genuine examples whereby private (mental) production somehow contributes to public gain. That is because, according to such theories, it is the isolated activity of lone abstractors (which we are all supposed to be) that enables cognition, that supposedly produces each language-user and enabling the social advancement of knowledge -- but only after the resulting 'abstractions' have somehow been pooled or shared.

The order of events, therefore, appears to be something like the following (give or take a few additional steps, expressed in suitably 'dialectical language' and, of course, 'tested in practice'):

The model is slightly different for those who accept Chomsky's theory -- just replace stage (ii) with 'Activate a Mental Module - The 'Language Acquisition Device', and merge it with (iii), since we are all supposed to be born with every concept we will ever need, pre-installed, they just need 'activating'. So his theory is also an example of Bourgeois Individualism, which should surprise no one since he openly admits he derived his ideas from The Founding Father of Bourgeois Philosophy, René Descartes, frequently calling it 'Cartesian Linguistics'. In fact, one of his more influential books, Chomsky (2009), has this title: Cartesian Linguistics. A Chapter In The History Of Rationalist Thought. [On this, see Behme (2011). (This links to a PDF.) Also see Behme (2014a, 2014b, 2014c).]

[Readers are referred to Essay Three Parts One and Two for supporting evidence and argument that the above do indeed form the core structure of this aspect of DM-Epistemology, and in the order specified. The only thing missing is that there is a feed-back loop that flips each lone abstractor back to Stage (i), the latter of which are then reinterpreted in light of Steps (ii) through (iv) -- all modified and shaped by practice, all liberally coated with dialectical jargon, as if it somehow 'oils the wheels of theory'. For a lengthy criticism of Chomsky, see Essay Thirteen Part Three, and Note 30, below.]

The fact that inter-communication is last in the list and the most problematic factor is something that at least one leading DM-theorist has acknowledged -- indeed, as noted in Essay Three Part Two:

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

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

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

[In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have read (in over thirty years) who even so much as acknowledges this 'difficulty'!

[Be this as it may, I have devoted Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for further details. Update April 2025: After well over 20 years waiting there is still no sign of Ollman's 'solution' to this 'problem'. Certainly, no attempt was made in Ollman (2019) to address it, let alone solve it. Nor is there any indication that others have risen to the challenge on his behalf -- or that a single DM-fan (since Ollman raised this issue) regards it as a 'difficulty' that needs addressing! One Academic Marxist with whom I debated this very topic a few years ago completely ducked the issue and showed no sign he was aware of it, never mind how to deal with it. Nor was he cognisant of the serious challenge 'abstractionism' poses for anyone who at least says they accept the social nature of language and knowledge.]

Hence, the above approach to language formation/acquisition by each user, as an individual, relegates meaning to a private domain located in that individual's 'consciousness', something each one of us then brings to language --, perhaps as an expression of that individual's own biography or the ideological and social influences that constrain and shape every human being. So, given this scenario, the individual, her cognition and her abstractive skills come before social input can even have an effect, the latter of which is somehow then constructed out of the separate contributions we all make to an overall 'pool of meaning' and knowledge.

[In Essay Thirteen Part Three (Section (4) onward) we will see that this is certainly true of the approach taken by theorists like Voloshinov and Vygotsky, along with those who have been influenced by them.]

Dialecticians will even speak about ideas existing in 'tension' with one another, in our heads!

This back-to-front theory -- which transforms ideas into agents and humans into patients -- is examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three. Suffice it to say that Parrington's commitment to the social nature of language and thought is fatally compromised by his bourgeois individualist theory of 'consciousness'.

[I am here using the word "patient" with its older meaning, as that which is acted upon not that which acts.]

Whatever the aetiology, this is one idea that has ruled in one form or another for over twenty centuries.

As we saw in Essay Three Part Two, post-Renaissance thinkers (Rationalists and Empiricists alike) took the public domain (where meaning is created), inverted it, and then projected it back into each individual head, now privatised and re-configured as the social relations among 'images', 'ideas', 'representations', or 'concepts'!

This resulted in the systematic fetishisation of language and thought, leading to the conflation of the 'objective' world with the 'subjective contents' of the 'mind'. ["Fetishised", since, as noted above, words themselves were now viewed as agents.] The outer, social world was thus re-located and placed inside each individual head, the latter seen as primary, the former as secondary (or, in some cases, even as non-existent). In this way, the social was privatised, internalised and thereby neutralised. Knowledge thus became as function of the social life among ideas, the battle fought out in each head, as Parrington tried to maintain.

No wonder then that modern philosophy soon lapsed into full-blown, overt Idealism (subjective at first, later 'transcendental', later still, 'objective'), with Immanuel Kant complaining that it was a scandal that philosophers had so far failed to prove the existence of the 'external' world! Small wonder, then, that Dialectical Marxists felt they had to re-invert things -- supposedly putting them 'back on their feet' -- all the while failing to notice that their (individualist) theory of 'mind', language and 'cognition' actually prevents that from happening.

More recently, this ruling-class thought-form (individualism in the formation of language and knowledge) has re-surfaced in several novel disguises: sometimes reduced to, and re-configured as, an inter-relationship between neurons (as they 'communicate' with one another), supposedly controlled by the overarching power of 'consciousness' -- or even the gene -- which now seems to operate as a sort of surrogate inner Bourgeois Legislative and Executive Authority; sometimes as the expression of a computational device at work in each head (or at least a device that helps 'the mind' write/use the 'software').

Given this view, while human beings might be born free (of language), everywhere they are chained by linguistic constraints manufactured and controlled by this inner, surrogate 'state' -- 'consciousness' --, which cognitive system is comprised of 'modules' or 'neural nets', dominated by the genetic inheritance of each individual). The social doesn't even get a look in -- except perhaps as a dispensable by-product or as a mere afterthought.²⁰

The aforementioned inversion (the political and social roots of which will be analysed briefly below, but more fully in Parts Two and Three of this Essay) completely undermines the claim that language is a social phenomenon. And no wonder: it perfectly mirrors the bourgeois view of language and 'mind', not Marx's take on the social nature of language and cognition.

In fact, this ideological inversion has remained 'upside down' (but in different forms) for thousands of years, and which is largely the source of the other 'inverted ideas' concocted by Traditional Philosophers and Dialectical Marxists. Inverted now, as in a camera obscura, these rotated concepts cloud the thoughts of all those whose brains they have colonised -- which, of course, helps explain why the ideas of the ruling-class always rule.

In this case, among DM-fans, these ideas have found willing converts, accomplices and proselytisers.

This recent (2023) video, by a rather sophisticated Maoist, underlines this the above (that these comrades are all marks), and the collective slide into subjective Idealism. In the comment section I tried to point this out, but that message sailed right over the heads of those so easily led astray, including the author of the video himself!]

Nevertheless, there seems little point arguing that language is a social phenomenon -- its key role being communication -- if it is primarily representational (or, if it is representational first, and only communicational second). If that were the case, the social nature of language would be anterior to, if not parasitic upon, its supposedly primary, private role. No surprise then that this view of discourse introduces its own Robinsonades, analogous to those that Marx railed against in politics and economics. Except in this case, Robinsonades were introduced to explain the supposed origin of language in each private -- if not each 'socially-atomised' skull -- and not just in connection with the 'social contract' or the economy.

If there is a point to be made here, it is perhaps as much ideological as it is anything else: If language is primarily representational then human beings must acquire language, meaning and knowledge first (as 'social atoms') before they are capable of entering into, joining or participating in a linguistic community.

But, that presents this entire (neo-bourgeois) approach with intractable problems: How is it possible for anyone to represent the world to themselves first, as an individual, and then later use language to communicate with others? If that were the case, as far as language is concerned, each human being would be first and foremost a semantic individual, and only second a communicating, social being.

[That was the point of referring to those Robinsonades, earlier; a similar worry also lay behind Ollman's comments.]

In fact, as is easy to show, given this approach to language communication would be impossible. Indeed, if it were the case that we represent the world to ourselves first before are capable of conversing with others, we would find ourselves incapable of communicating, and humanity would be, for all intents and purposes, universally autistic.

[This point will be elaborated upon and substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Given the representational approach, the role that communal life plays in the shaping of language would drop out as irrelevant.

Atomistic implications like these shouldn't be lost on anyone cognisant of the History of Philosophy and the relation between Traditional Thought and ruling-class interests/priorities, as well as how it has helped shape ideologies that rationalise, or even try to justify, exploitation, gross inequality and the wealth and power of the ruling elite -- all based on Bourgeois Individualism. This approach also linked natural law with human law, both of which were directly or indirectly related to 'God's Will'.

In connection with which it is instructive to recall that Descartes explicitly connected human law and natural law with 'Divine Law':

"The mathematical truths which you call eternal have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to talk of him as if he were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject him to the Styx and the Fates. Please do not hesitate to assert and proclaim everywhere that it is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in his kingdom." [Descartes (1991), p.23. Letter to Mersenne, 15/04/1630. Bold emphasis and link added.]

"Nevertheless, Aristotle never used the law-metaphor, though, as we have noted, he occasionally comes within an inch of doing so. Plato uses it only once, in the Timaeus, where he says that when a person is sick, the blood picks up the components of food 'contrary to the laws of nature'.... But the conception of the governance of the whole world by law seems to be peculiarly Stoic. Most of the thinkers of this school maintained that Zeus (immanent in the world) was nothing else but...Universal Law; for example Zeno (fl. 320 B.C.); Cleanthes (fl. 240 B.C.); Chrysippus (d. 207 B.C.); Diogenes (d.150 B.C.). It seems more than likely that this new and more definite conception was derived from Babylonian influences, since we know that about 300 B.C. astrologers and star-clerks from Mesopotamia began to spread through the Mediterranean world. Among these one of the most famous was Berossus, a Chaldean who settled in the Greek island of Cos in 280 B.C. Zilsel, alert for concomitant social phenomena, notes that just as the original Babylonian conceptions of Laws of Nature had arisen in a highly centralized oriental monarchy, so in the time of the Stoics, a period of rising monarchies, it would have been natural to view the universe as a great empire, ruled by a divine Logos. Since, as is known, the Stoic influence at Rome was great, it was inevitable that these very broad conceptions should have their effects in the development of the idea of a natural law common to all men whatever might be their cultures and local customs. Cicero (106 to 43 B.C.), of course, reflects this, saying... 'The universe obeys God, seas and land obey the universe, and human life is subject to the decrees of the Supreme Law.'" [Needham (1979), pp.299-303. Bold emphases and links added. Several paragraphs merged. Two minor typos corrected. The rest of the chapter is highly relevant, as are the longer articles, Needham (1951a) and (1951b). See also Zilsel (1942).]

[I have covered this specific option in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three -- especially in relation to recently re-branded neo-Hegelian theories that have coalesced around what has ironically been called (but only by its adherents/acolytes), Critical Realism. A misnomer if ever there was one! See also my comments about Christian Theology in Essay Three Part Two, as well as my remarks in Essay Three Part One about such 'laws'. I have developed some of these ideas here.]

Revolutionaries have generally resisted the claim that language is purely conventional because that would seem to imply science is conventional, too, which many think would threaten its 'objectivity'.²¹

In fact, revolutionaries have in general rejected the connection between the conventional nature of language and the 'objectivity' of science with arguments that have only succeeded in undermining both. Either that, or they have simply assumed that conventionalism must always collapse into relativism or some form of Idealism.²² However, the truth here is the exact opposite: it is the rejection of the conventional nature of language and science that compromises both. How and why that is so will be explained briefly below, but in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two. In this Essay, I propose only to examine the connection between the above considerations and Metaphysics.

If language is a social phenomenon (as Dialectical Marxists claim in their more sober moments), then, clearly, what human beings say or write must be guided by normative conventions that govern discourse and social interaction in general -- if they want to make sense. That is why it isn't possible to utter absolutely anything, make random noises (or even use ordinary words in weird ways or contexts) and hope to be understood. [Although, as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Three where we investigate speaker's meaning, as opposed to word/linguistic meaning, even the production of completely gibberish might actually 'mean something'.] Naturally, scientific language will have its own specialist vocabulary and technical protocols layered on top over-and-above, or in place of, the ordinary conventions underlying use of the vernacular. In addition, this entire ensemble will change, develop and be modified in accord with wider social and historical forces. But one thing is reasonably clear: if language is to be a means of communication, whatever lends sense to its empirical propositions must be independent of (and prior to) any truths they supposedly express.²³

[What those rather gnomic statements mean will take up much of the rest of this Essay.]

If that weren't so, language users would have to know whether an empirical proposition was true before they could understand it!

As should seem reasonably clear, any such 'possibility' is patently absurd since no one could assent to the truth -- or reject the falsehood -- of a proposition they didn't understand. Indeed, if an individual failed to comprehend what was said, she/he couldn't even begin finding out whether or not it was true.²⁴

Plainly, considerations like these connect the social nature of language with the earlier discussion of propositions like M1a-M9. There, we saw that in the case of ordinary empirical propositions (like M6), it is possible to understand them before their truth-status is known:

The overwhelming majority of English language speakers will understand M6 on hearing or reading it -- providing, of course, they know who Tony Blair is and that The Algebra of Revolution is a book, or, at least, that it is something capable of being owned -- even if they haven't a clue whether or not it is true, whether or not they ever find out which of these is the case, or even if they don't care to know which is the case. Communication (at least with respect to the conveying of information) would cease if that weren't so.

After all, how would anyone be able to convey their thoughts to an interlocutor if that individual had to know, or to ascertain, that what was said to them was true before they could understand it? How could they even go about discovering its truth if they hadn't the faintest idea what they were being told?

By way of contrast, it was also argued that with respect to metaphysical/DM-propositions things are radically different: understanding a proposition like M9 goes hand-in-hand with knowing it is true. To reject it as false would amount to changing the meaning of "matter" and/or "motion". Why that is so will be explained later on in this Essay, but it is intimately connected with the status of P4 (which defines what "motion" means):

These two alternatives hang together: to understand M9 is ipso facto to accept it as true; to reject M9 as false is to change the meaning of its key terms.

If, per impossible, the sense of an empirical proposition were dependent on truth (already established or that has to be established), or, indeed, on other truths (which would themselves have to be expressed by still further propositions), and these truths were expressed by indicative sentences, they, too, would have to be understood first before their truth-status could be ascertained. If not, it would plainly be impossible to determine their truth-status. Once again, it isn't possible to ascertain the truth of a proposition before it has been comprehended.

So, if, per impossible once more, the sense of an empirical proposition were dependent on knowing still further truths, on knowing the facts of the matter, or even on some form of Ontology, this process, or hierarchy, of dependency (of facts upon further facts, upon further facts, upon...) couldn't continue indefinitely. There appear to be only two ways an infinite regress [henceforth, IR] like this can be prevented (in such circumstances), as language users learn to employ it.

[In what follows I have left the word 'truths' deliberately vague so that several options aren't closed off from the start.]

(1) Language users must have -- or have had programmed -- in their 'minds'/brains a 'set of truths' (possibly even a 'set of rules') that aren't themselves expressed in, or expressible by, empirical propositions. That is, such speakers must have direct access to what can only be called 'non-linguistic truths', or maybe even a set of 'linguistic rules' that have been 'hard-wired' into the CNS -- perhaps written in a 'code' of some sort (which, paradoxically, wouldn't be a code or the above IR would simply kick in again; why that is so is explained in Note 25).²⁵

(2) The 'truths' upon which the sense of empirical propositions depend must be 'necessary truths', whose own truth can't be questioned (hence the word "necessary"), and whose semantic status follows directly from the meaning of the words or concepts they contain, but not from still further truths. In other words, these 'necessary truths' act rather like the buffers at the end of a railway line. The buck stops there -- at least in terms of semantic status.

Unfortunately, as we will soon see, 'necessary truths' themselves have no sense and are incapable of being either true or false (so, they incapable of acting like literal or metaphorical buffers). That will, of course, rule out Option (2).

Anyway, Option (2) concedes an earlier point -- that meaning has to precede truth -- since the truth-status of such 'necessarily' true propositions follows from the meaning of their constituent terms. [Which is why their truth 'can' be 'read off' from those meanings without any appeal to evidence other than those meanings themselves.] In that case, there would be no good reason to postulate the existence of such 'necessary' truths in order to lend support to the opposite idea -- that meaning in the end depends on truth, not truth on meaning -- since, as seems plain, Option (2) relies on the fact that meaning is sui generis, and hence that truth depends on meaning, after all.

With respect to Option (1), as will also be demonstrated, the idea that there could be sets of 'non-linguistic truths' -- or 'rules' in nature, or wherever (whether we are aware of them or not), that govern the sense of a proposition -- is based on an ancient dogma, that Nature is Mind, the product of Mind, constituted by Mind, or that it is in fact Ideal (i.e., it is comprised of Ideas "all the way down", as it were).

In this particular case, this overall theory originally trades on the (quasi-religious) belief that language itself is governed by:

(i) Nature's own 'pre-linguistic ideas' (perhaps those that pre-exist in the 'Mind of God', or which are expressed in physical form, somewhere, somehow); or by,

and hence that it is the intelligent or rational universe (or, indeed, its ultimate originating, supernatural cause) that lends to human discourse the meaning it has. Meaning is thereby alienated from humanity, its origin and ever-present source is now located either in nature itself or in 'the Deity Himself'. On this account, meaning is either,

As should now seem clear, this set of ideas meshes seamlessly with certain forms of Representationalism, for, given either view -- (a) or (b) -- human beings represent this alienated meaning to themselves automatically and naturally (by means of principles 'programmed' into us 'lawfully' by 'God', nature or even by evolution). On this view, alienated meaning once again originates in each individual human being, as if each one were a social or linguistic atom -- given to each by means of (a) or (b) above.

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. As the translators of Marx (1975c) point out, "estrangement" means the same as "alienation", p.xvii. Bold emphases added.]

[The above ideas are explored at greater length in Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three.]

In fact, more-or-less the same comment could be made about the idea that language is governed by rules that are genetically programmed into the CNS. This would, of course, make such 'rules' part of, or were created by, the 'rational structure' of the universe, only now more widely understood. However, as we will see (mainly in Essay Thirteen Part Three), that idea would only be acceptable if we were prepared to anthropomorphise the brain, and view it as intelligent, rather than human beings. Intelligence would thereby be alienated.

The (traditional) view is currently based on the (suppressed) premise that language users rely on 'intelligent' neurons that 'communicate' with each other, sending and carrying 'messages' to various areas of the body, or to one another. They are the linguists; we merely bend to their 'will'. This further implies that 'intelligent' neurons (or 'modules') determine or decide for each language user what words mean, and it is this that enables their brains to 'mirror' the outside world. [Why that theory stands zero chance or succeeding is explained here.]

In addition, as a sort of spin-off, the above would help explain how we end up using language that suggests nature itself is 'intelligent'/'rational', and is the real source of our intelligence/rationality (and, incidentally, it is why right-wingers continually bang on about genes and IQ). If nature is (simply) assumed to be rational then the language we use (when viewed this way) will seem to confirm that assumption.

So, this entire approach implies that language, or even something pre-linguistic -- alongside the neurons/modules underlying one or both -- are the agents here, we are the patients. In turn, it ends up fetishising the products of social interaction as if they (i) mirrored the real relation among things, (ii) represented or reflected the real relation between intelligent neurons/modules, or (iii) are those things themselves (to paraphrase Marx).

In short, this confuses the means by which we represent the world with the world itself.

[The liberal use of obscure jargon, inappropriate analogies, opaque and misleading metaphors, countless neologisms and 'scare' quote encrusted words by those who attempt to give concrete expression to this ideological inversion (i.e., that nature (or 'god') is the agent while human beings are the patient, at least with respect to the meaning of words) rather gives the game away, one feels.]²⁶

Naturally, philosophers of a more 'robust' theoretical temperament (for want of a better term) might be inclined to rejected responses like this (for all manner of reasons), arguing that there must be physical or causal laws of some sort governing the way human beings form empirical propositions or sentences, or which give meaning to the words they use --, concluding, perhaps, that our understanding of language should be 'naturalised' accordingly.^26a

First, we have as yet no idea what such 'laws' would even look like, let alone what they are.

Second, this account of the origin and nature of language would simply reduplicate the 'problem' it was meant to solve. There is and could be no conceivable 'law' (or set of 'laws') capable of doing all that is claimed for 'it' (or 'them') which doesn't at the same time anthropomorphise nature, or read into it the very linguistic categories it was originally introduced to explain.²⁷

Third, if language is a product of, or has been caused by, a set of laws (that allows users to acquire language in order picture the world to themselves -- i.e., if discourse is fundamentally representational) then reference to its social nature will, of course, be an empty gesture. As noted above, Marxists who have accepted one or other version of the above 'robust view' -- as a result perhaps of their unwise adherence concepts promoted in and by DM (originating, for instance, with Lenin and what he had to say in MEC) concerning the nature of cognition, or, perhaps, ideas based on Chomsky and/or Quine's work -- have universally failed to appreciate this anti-Marxist corollary.²⁸

Finally, but more importantly, another implication of the idea that understanding language is at some point parasitic on truth (as set out in Option (1) and Option (2) from earlier) is that if, per impossible, that were the case, paradoxically, it couldn't be the case. That is because this way of viewing discourse gets things the wrong way round (i.e., the supposed relation here has once again been inverted). As we have seen, the establishment of the truth-value of a proposition is consequent on its already having been understood. Humans do not first appropriate or ascertain 'truths' and then proceed to comprehend them. Both communication and representation would be impossible if that were so.²⁹

On the contrary, as was also pointed out earlier, if the sense of a proposition weren't independent of its actual truth-value, then, plainly, the mere fact that a proposition had been understood would entail it was true, or, as the case may be, would entail that it was false! Naturally, if either alternative were viable, linguistic or psychological factors (not the way the world happened to be) would determine the truth-status of empirical propositions and science would become little more than a branch of hermeneutics.^29a

Hence, given the above 'inverted' approach, as soon as a proposition had been understood, its truth (or its falsehood) could be inferred automatically. Clearly, that would destroy the distinction between empirical and non-empirical propositions, for, on such a basis, as soon as anyone understood M6, for example, they would know it was true, or they would know it was false.

In this way, we can now perhaps see how representationalism requires all indicative sentences to be of the same logical form (whether or not that form is immediately obvious). At some point, given representationalism, all indicative sentences would be, or would depend on, a 'necessary truth' or set of such 'truths' -- or, as the case may be, they would be, or would depend on, a 'necessary falsehood' or set of such 'falsehoods' -- which would 'reflect' in our 'minds' how things must be and can't be thought of as otherwise -- i.e., that their 'negations' are "unthinkable" -- or the opposite, again, as the case may be.

And, that is why this view of language, knowledge and 'mind' so naturally aligns itself with aprioristic dogmatism, with the idea that fundamental truths about nature are accessible to thought alone, and, as a result, can safely be imposed on 'reality'.

Hence, if M6 ultimately depends on a necessary truth of some sort, or if it is a disguised necessary truth itself (that is, in relation to M6, if, despite 'appearances to the contrary', Blair had absolutely no choice, his ownership of TAR was determined by the operation of a 'necessary law' of some sort (maybe, a là DM), or by the unfolding of his 'concept' (perhaps, a là Hegel), by his implicit predicates (possibly, a là Leibniz), or even by 'God' (could be, a là Calvin)), then ultimately its truth would be ascertainable without any need for supporting evidence. All one would need do is 'comprehend' the associated indicative sentence/'law', or the 'concepts' supposedly expressed, for it/them to be deemed automatically true.

[Naturally, that would make falsehood difficult, if not impossible, to explain. Why that is so is reasonably clear -- but for those to whom it might not seem all that obvious, the answer is hinted at below. A much fuller explanation will be set out in in Essay Three Part Four, where it will be shown that this theory also implies there can't be any false propositions! Until that Essay is published, the argument supporting this controversial claim has been summarised here. See also Essay Eleven Part One, here.]

As should now seem plain, this theory, or family of theories, implies that scientific knowledge is based on some form of LIE; that is, it is founded on the belief that truths about the world may legitimately follow solely from language or 'thought'. The 'mind', when it 'reflects the world', would merely be reflecting itself, or even the thoughts of a more grandiose version of itself -- perhaps even a 'Cosmic Mind' in 'self-development' -- because, on this view, the world is either 'Mind' or the product of 'self-developing Mind'.

[The last of the above was, of course, the conclusion Hegel himself alighted upon. It is revealing, therefore, to discover that the same result follows from the alleged 'inversion' of Hegel, in DM.]

Philosophers who thought along such lines in effect found themselves peering down a deep well of metaphysical fantasy and, unsurprisingly, saw their own reflection looking back up at them (loosely paraphrasing Feuerbach). [I will say much more about this and its connection with the RRT in Essay Twelve Part Four.]

"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.]

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis and link added.]

Fortunately, this way of looking at language and knowledge is undermined by the vernacular itself -- which is, perhaps, one reason why Marx himself recommended a different approach:³⁰

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

In that case, whatever lends sense to empirical propositions (i.e., whatever sets the conditions under which they are true or under which they are false) can't itself be a set of antecedent truths. Neither could it be a set of ex post facto truths (that is, truths established, or recognised as such, at a later stage).

By way of contrast, since the socially-motivated and socially-sanctioned rules governing our ordinary use of language are incapable of being true or false, they aren't subject to the above constraints. [These points will be explained more fully below and then defended at length.]

The above constraints also apply to scientific language -- that is, if it is also to function as a means of communication (and, derivatively, as a means of representation).

[On that, see Note 31 and Note 33. But this particular topic will be covered in much greater detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

Given the above considerations, we can now add the following remark: whatever lends sense to empirical, scientific propositions, it can't be a set of truths, either. If the sense of an empirical proposition were dependent on just such a set, scientists would only be able to understand one another after they had ascertained, or learnt the truth-status of, this extra set. In which case, of course, they couldn't be learnt. Clearly, there are no propositions by means of which this could be achieved that are exempt from these constraints.^{31

32} ³³

If the sense of an empirical proposition or indicative factual sentence were dependent on the truth of a further set of propositions or, indeed, other sentences of the same type, comprehension and hence communication could only be achieved at the end of an individual's education. [Which couldn't be delivered to each aspiring student, plainly because they wouldn't understand anything said to them until the end.] Hence, their education couldn't even commence until mastery had been achieved of these further 'truths', which would be required at the very beginning so that each one could grasp the sense of even one of the propositions that expressed these elusive 'extra truths' -- every one of which would in turn require the same stage-setting --, which is absurd.

[Notice, I have spoken about the sense of these propositions as opposed to their truth-value. This is an important distinction to keep in mind in order to understand the points made in the first half of Note 31. More on that as this sub-section unfolds.]

So, if the sense of an indicative sentence, S₁, for example, were dependent on the truth of another sentence, S₂, then, plainly, in order to understand S₁ (NB, not in order to ascertain the actual truth of S₁), in order to understand S₁ the truth of S₂ would have to be known, first. But, in order to ascertain the actual truth of S₂ (NB, not in order to grasp its truth-conditions), it, too, would also have to be understood first. [Plainly, as noted several times already: it isn't possible even to begin ascertaining the truth of a sentence one hasn't already understood.]

However, if the sense of S₂ were itself dependent on the truth of yet another sentence, S₃, then the truth of S₃ would have to be known, too. But, in order to ascertain the truth of S₃, it, too, would have to be understood, first -- and so on, ad infinitem...

Hence, if this approach to scientific knowledge were to be believed, in order to understand any sentence the truth of a potentially infinite set of sentences -- {S₂, S₃, S₄,..., S_n} -- would already have to be known. In that case, communication would only begin at the (infinite?) end of one's education, which makes no sense at all.

[There seem to be only two ways this infinite regress can be halted; they were discussed earlier and were both shown to fail.]

It could be objected that the above reasoning depends on human understanding. Surely, a scientific account of language should consider only objective truths, which will be such independently of human cognition. In that case, the above argument is misguided, at best.

That objection is itself misconceived. Plainly, scientists (engaged in 'objective research', establishing 'objective truths') have to understand their own sentences and those of other researchers, let alone those of their teachers, if they are to function effectively -- or at all! To state the obvious, scientists are social beings; they are only able to develop their ideas, construct their theories and hypotheses, and then test them when the empirical propositions/predictions that follow from them are expressed, or are expressible, in a comprehensible form, in some language or other. Even supposing such theories, hypotheses and propositions/predictions were highly technical and related to a world that is independent of, and anterior to, human cognition, scientists can neither rise above nor countermand the constraints placed on them by their education and concomitant social interaction (briefly outlined above).

[More details can be found in Stroud (2000), particularly pp.21-60. The word "objective" is in 'scare quotes' for reasons explained here.]

As we have seen several times already, the supposition that the constraints mentioned above are optional or can be disregarded (i.e., that that even presents a possibility) relies on a fetishisation of language: the reading of human cognitive and social capacities into nature. That clearly defeats the whole point of the exercise; far from avoiding LIE, it collapses right into it.

Nevertheless, for some readers, the above rejoinder might itself look rather dogmatic, or even resemble an a priori, transcendental argument, but both suppositions would be mistaken. [Substantiation of the remarks about fetishisation will be set out in the nest two Parts of Essay Twelve (summary here).] The other counter-claim will briefly be examined here.

When spelled-out in detail my argument isn't 'transcendental' it is more closely analogous to reductio ad absurdum, as should be plain from all that has gone before. [There will be more on this again in Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three.]

Such a reductive technique has been employed many times throughout this site. On many occasions, metaphysical-, and DM-theories have been reduced to absurdity -- for example, by demonstrating that they either imply an infinite regress, as we have just seen, or they are based on a radical misuse of language --, which means, of course, that they are incapable of being true and incapable of being false. As such, they aren't just non-sensical, they are incoherent non-sense.

Naturally, any and all analyses of this sort (presented in these Essays) is reactive, if not therapeutic. [On that, see Fischer (2011a, 2011b).] This site isn't trying to establish a new set of truths about language (or even the world!), nor is it aimed at the construction of an alternative philosophical theory. Among other things, the Essays published here respond to the claims made by metaphysicians and DM-supporters, and in doing so they endeavour to expose the latent non-sense expressed by both sets of theorists. Their main objective (other than their overt political orientation) is to remind us of what we already know by constantly turning the argument back toward the ordinary use of language -- indeed, as Marx himself enjoined -- and common understanding (not to be confused with common sense!). Any technicalities or neologisms employed to that end are dispensable or can be paraphrased away; they merely serve as shorthand.

Even so, whatever its motivation happens to be, the above argument might still appear to be, at least, factually wrong, for it is plain that when they are studying science, students, for example, have to learn countless facts before they can even begin to understand the subject. Hence, an understanding of science is manifestly based on the acquisition of a body of truths/facts, data and information -- contrary to the clams advanced earlier.

First of all, a broad understanding of science isn't the same as understanding an empirical proposition.

Second, science and mathematics are taught and learnt in a variety of ways, but novices must first have some grasp of ordinary language, everyday skills and techniques before their scientific and mathematical education can even commence. These include the ability to listen, concentrate, follow instructions (basic skills, alas, beyond some students in the present capitalist system!), read, write, count, take notes, operate a computer, check dials/read-outs, handle equipment reliably without misusing, misreading, damaging, or breaking it -- and (often later on) carry out independent research, etc., etc. If students are to progress beyond Science and Mathematics 101, these skills must be amplified by careful attention to detail, accuracy and precision, coupled with a suitable 'work ethic'; they must also display 'natural' curiosity, resourcefulness, self-motivation and a willingness to study (independently) way beyond the subject matter in hand. The vast majority of these skills are based on knowing how rather than on knowing that -- although the latter will in turn modify the former, and vice versa. Their understanding is enhanced and extended by means of illustrative examples, analogical and metaphorical reasoning, augmented by leading questions -- all of which are themselves modulated by the setting of (numerous) practical exercises, the use of simple models, pictures and graded tasks, among many other things. Only when their vocabulary has been widened and their understanding and mastery of practical skills like these have been established are students capable of comprehending -- as opposed merely to regurgitating -- any of the new facts, explanations or theories they encounter, or which are presented to them by their teachers or their reading. Indeed, only then are they able to extrapolate beyond this into new areas of knowledge (even if many choose not to go down that route). All of these are presented to students by their teachers as integral aspects of countless inter-linked forms of representation -- rules which are used to interpret any new facts learnt, unifying them into a comprehensible explanation that also conforms with other areas of current knowledge -- or, "normal science" as Thomas Kuhn has called it. [On this in general, see Polanyi (1962,1983).]

[I will say more about this below, where I outline a distinction Wittgenstein drew between "criteria" and "symptoms".]

This means that any novel truths or facts learnt by students depend on (and are concurrent with) an extension to their understanding, practical expertise and technical competence. As should seem obvious, unless students understand what their teachers have to say -- or they succeed in grasping the import of what they have read or studied --, and only if they are capable of successfully carrying out the graded tasks and exercises set, new facts could only ever be accepted as such on trust or on the basis of deference to authority. If students are to advance beyond the parrot-learning and regurgitating stage, they must undergo an extension to their comprehension. Indeed, if education were just about fact learning, no facts would actually be learnt, merely parroted. That is why, of course, the word "learning" is attached to the word "rote" only ironically.

[To be sure, some forms of rote-learning are an integral part of the mastery of several specific techniques -- for example, learning the "Times Tables" in mathematics -- or when preparing for an exam, attempting to follow directions in order to find an address in a strange town, etc., etc. If the aforementioned Times Tables haven't been leant by heart, a student's mathematical education will be seriously impaired, if not crippled. The use of electronic calculators doesn't mean that this necessary step can be bi-passed, either (as any mathematics teacher will attest, a view also supported by educational research). The above doesn't imply that facts are unimportant or that they don't assist in further comprehension. Indeed, as argued earlier, learning of any sort depends on one or more "webs of belief". However, further excursion into this area would take us too far afield into Wittgenstein's ideas about the nature of human understanding and learning. An excellent account of this aspect of his work can be found in Greenspan and Shanker (2004); cf., also Williams (1999a), pp.187-215, Williams (2010), and Erneling (1993). See also Robinson (2003b) and Hanna and Harrison (2004), especially pp.159-90.]

This is, indeed, partly how scientific advance itself is motivated and initiated -- i.e., partly, but significantly, by means of an extension to the meaning of the words used in other, possibly similar, maybe even analogous contexts and applications (alongside the establishment of new inter-relationships between them), as I hope to show in Essay Thirteen Part Two. In this way, 'old' facts are cast in a new light and novel connections become possible --, which, in effect, transform these 'facts' by analogical and figurative extension. [On this, see Sharrock and Read (2002) and the work of Thomas Kuhn in general. Cf., also Hadden (1994).]

Factors and considerations like the above also take care of the objection that if this were true -- that is, only if a proposition were part of a body of propositions would it be possible to ascertain its truth-value --, speakers wouldn't be able to understand what was said to them until they had mastered an entire language. As education and socialisation grow, so does comprehension of language itself (and that includes an understanding of specific areas of science). Neither takes precedence.

There is also a "division of labour" with respect to the practice of science, and, indeed, knowledge in general, as the late Hilary Putnam, for example, pointed out:

"[T]here is division of linguistic labour. We could hardly use such words as 'elm' and 'aluminium' if no one possessed a way of recognizing elm trees and aluminium metal; but not everyone to whom the distinction is important has to be able to make the distinction. Let us shift the example; consider gold. Gold is important for many reasons: it is a precious metal; it is a monetary metal; it has symbolic value (it is important to most people that the 'gold' wedding ring they wear really consist of gold and not just look gold); etc. Consider our community as a 'factory': in this 'factory' some people have the 'job' of wearing gold wedding rings; other people have the 'job' of selling gold wedding rings; still other people have the job of telling whether or not something is really gold. It is not at all necessary or efficient that every one who wears a gold ring (or a gold cufflink, etc.), or discusses the 'gold standard,' etc., engage in buying and selling gold. Nor is it necessary or efficient that every one who buys and sells gold be able to tell whether or not something is really gold in a society where this form of dishonesty is uncommon (selling fake gold) and in which one can easily consult an expert in case of doubt. And it is certainly not necessary or efficient that every one who has occasion to buy or wear gold be able to tell with any reliability whether or not something is really gold. The foregoing facts are just examples of mundane division of labour (in a wide sense). But they engender a division of linguistic labour: every one to whom gold is important for any reason has to acquire the word 'gold'; but he does not have to acquire the method of recognizing whether something is or is not gold. He can rely on a special subclass of speakers. The features that are generally thought to be present in connection with a general name -- necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the extension, ways of recognizing whether something is in the extension, etc. -- are all present in the linguistic community considered as a collective body; but that collective body divides the 'labour' of knowing and employing these various parts of the 'meaning' of 'gold'. This division of linguistic labour rests upon and presupposes the division of nonlinguistic labour, of course. If only the people who know how to tell whether some metal is really gold or not have any reason to have the word 'gold' in their vocabulary, then the word 'gold' will be as the word 'water' was in 1750 with respect to that subclass of speakers, and the other speakers just won't acquire it at all. And some words do not exhibit any division of linguistic labour: 'chair', for example. But with the increase of division of labour in the society and the rise of science, more and more words begin to exhibit this kind of division of labour." [Putnam (1973), pp.704-05. (This links to a PDF.) Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English; paragraphs merged.]

[Putnam was (once) a Marxist, which perhaps helps explain the economics metaphor/analogy he drew here. I distance myself, however, from his theory of meaning/reference. I will say more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

To state the obvious, if a student wishes to become proficient in any of the specialised areas of science, for example, he or she will have to master the technical use of, and demonstrate competence with, terms such as "electron", "allele", "self-adjoint operator", "wave function", "base pair", "path integral", "subduction zone", "tensor", "aldehyde" (etc,) alongside any of their associated techniques.

Incidentally, this helps explain why new theories often look plausible only to those prepared to move into the new conceptual landscape carved out by novel theories (i.e., 'forms of representation'), practices, vocabularies or "world-views" (even if they are motivated, or even hindered, by differentially-situated class-inspired, or, indeed, class-biased reactions to social change, in tandem with associated ideologies), while to others who aren't so amenable/flexible -- or who are more, shall we say, conservative-minded -- novel developments like these will seem paradoxical, ridiculous or even patently false. This helps explain why older members of the scientific community find it much more difficult to accept these new conceptual landscapes. Indeed, to them they will often appear to be completely false, absurd, or even incomprehensible.

This fact alone would be inexplicable if science advanced by the mere accumulation of facts or was predicated on the development of greater and greater 'abstractions'.

This also helps account for the way that new theories not only (partially, or even completely) change 'our view of the world' -- by modifying the language we use to depict, understand, or interact with it. Often that is done by feeding off discourse and vocabularies that have already been altered or reshaped by social and economic development elsewhere -- an example of which is given below, in relation to the work of Richard Hadden. Novel theories enable new discoveries that had been unavailable to those whose ideas are still dominated or held fast by older theories/world-views. [There is an excellent description of this very process at work today, in Smolin (2006), although the author, I think, fails to see its significance.]

In addition, the above considerations link scientific advance to conceptual change -- i.e., to changes in the use of a range of general terms -- motivated by, and coupled with, developments in the ambient Mode of Production, and hence in connection with innovative areas of research that have been promoted or enabled by such changes. Both of these factors locate such developments in the open, in the social arena, thus removing them from the world of 'inner representations' and 'abstractions' beloved of traditional 'abstractionist' and/or representationalist theories of language and knowledge, and that includes those promoted by DM-theorists. [On this, see Note 32 as well as Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three.]

As far as Marxism is concerned, this theoretical re-orientation allows an HM-account to be given of the entire process. For example, as Richard Hadden (in Hadden (1994)) shows, developments in medieval society (mainly concerning the growth of market relations) motivated the establishment of innovative conceptual connections between specific general nouns -- the (possible) relationship between which had either made no sense in earlier centuries with different Relations of Production and Exchange -- and were thus of no use to anyone because they were regarded as incommensurable (often for the same reason), and hence weren't capable of being connected by analogy.

Social Constructivists have also more generally explored the close connection between linguistic innovation and scientific change, but, as far as I am aware, there has been no serious attempt made by Marxists (other than, perhaps, Hadden (1994) and Robinson (2003) -- but see also Robinson's essays, posted at this site and those referenced earlier) to link these developments with changes in the Relations of Production, or to innovative conceptual possibilities that became available because of the emergence of a new Mode of Production or changes in the Relations of Production.

[However, in general, Social Constructivists lack a scientific account of history (i.e., HM) to provide their piecemeal theories with an overall structure, direction and rationale. Nevertheless, for a clear survey of work accomplished in this area, up until recently, see Golinski (1998). These issues will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two. See also Note 32, Note 33, Note 40a, and Note 45a, below.]

Finally, if the sense of empirical (scientific) propositions were dependent on certain truths about the world -- so that, for example, their comprehension implied they were automatically true --, that would mean scientists could abandon experimentation, surveying and observation and simply take up linguistic analysis. Science would then become indistinguishable from Metaphysics, or, indeed, from LIE. In that case, the simple expedient of understanding an empirical proposition would automatically mean that that proposition was true.³⁴

Naturally, this ratifies the claim (surely uncontroversial for Marxists) that scientific language is, like the vernacular, conventional.

Admittedly, these ideas are controversial.³⁵ They appear to imply that science isn't 'objective'. However, that belief is itself based on a misconception. [As noted earlier, this entire topic will be addressed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two. Readers are also referred to important remarks made about 'objectivity' in Essay Thirteen Part One.]

The above claims are in fact a consequence of a consistent commitment to the social nature of language. They can't be swept under the 'dialectical rug', or negotiated away without seriously undermining that fundamental Marxist insight.³⁶

We are now in a position to understand what went wrong with Lenin's claim (expressed in M1a) and thereby explain why it is that certain indicative sentences (i.e., especially those that litter metaphysical theories) lapse so readily into non-sense, with most even collapsing into incoherence.^36a

[Much of what follows in this short sub-section depends heavily on several results established earlier -- and in Essay Three Parts One and Two.]

As argued above, this problem (if such it might be called) is connected with the use of what appear to be empirical sentences to state 'necessary truths' (or even to exclude their logical opposites, those deemed 'necessarily false'). Unfortunately, such moves end up distorting fundamental features of language, rendering metaphysical sentences non-sensical and incoherent.

As we have seen, the supposed truth of metaphysical sentences follows directly from the meaning of the words they contain (which is why no supporting evidence, other than linguistic or 'conceptual', is required or even offered). As a result Traditional Theorists claim to be able access, in the comfort of their own 'minds', Universally-Valid Super-Facts that supposedly reflect fundamental truths about 'Reality'. Metaphysics thus goes hand-in-hand with representational theories of language and thought, the only problem being that, instead of their words representing the world, as they imagine, Traditional Philosophers have imposed an idiosyncratic (and, as we will see, unrepresentative and distorted) use of words on the world -- which is the RRT once again.

Moreover, as also noted above (and as we saw here), this entire way of viewing meaning and language inverts, and then internalises, externally-ratified social practices (i.e., comprehension and communication), re-configuring them as private, individual acts of intellection, which are supposedly 'immediate to consciousness', etc., etc.

So, given this view, meaning isn't a social aspect of discourse it is a direct result of the internal processing of 'images', 'ideas', 'concepts'. 'representations' and 'abstractions' in and by 'the mind', integrated into, or coupled with, the supposed use of "inner speech" --, or, for others, as a component in the 'language of thought'. Plainly, this is a thoroughly bourgeois way of viewing language, thought and meaning, an accusation that has itself been further amplified by an earlier allegation that this area of contemporary Cognitive Theory hasn't advanced much beyond the ideas and methods concocted by Hobbes, Descartes and Locke.

Alas, DM-theorists have also bought into this way of 'doing philosophy', and have thereby failed to appreciate how it completely undermines their commitment to the social nature of language, meaning and knowledge, just as they failed to appreciate that this approach to 'cognition' doesn't even deliver what had all along been claimed for it.³⁷

Hence, in his endeavour to inform his readers about the supposed relation between matter and motion, Lenin asserted that "motion without matter" is "unthinkable". Unfortunately, the content of that assertion seemed to involve him in doing the exact opposite of what he claimed couldn't be done. That meant it looked like he had to think the very thoughts (i.e., the content of what) he was trying to rule out as "unthinkable". If so, he had to understand what it meant for motion to exist without matter so that he could rule it out as something that could ever be entertained -- otherwise he would have had no idea what it was he was excluding, rendering that exclusion an empty gesture. Unfortunately, that appeared to involve him in a radically non-standard use of language, which meant he was unable to say what he thought he wanted to say. In practice his own words seemed to imply the opposite of what he imagined he intended.

In fact, this suggests that there might not have been anything there for Lenin to have intended to say or to have thought. That is because it isn't possible to say (in one sense of "say") anything meaningful that is in principle incomprehensible -- even when that 'something' is incomprehensible to the one trying to say it. While a speaker might utter complete babble, it isn't possible for them to mean anything by it (unless, of course, it is part of an elaborate code or it is aimed at simply creating an effect of some sort, such as eliciting surprise, puzzlement or consternation). One might intend to utter babble, but not intend to mean anything comprehensible by it (if the above trivial examples are excluded).³⁸

With respect to sentences like M1a, it now becomes impossible say what it was that Lenin intended to communicate to his readers. Every attempt to translate his words in less confusing terms only seems to have further undermined that supposed intention. Hence, it is pertinent to wonder what (if anything) Lenin could possibly have meant by what he said.³⁹

We have already had occasion to examine similarly incoherent DM-claims (for example, in connection with 'dialectical logic', Trotsky's attempt to expose the imagined limitations of the LOI (or even Hegel's efforts in that regard), Engels's (and Lenin's) 'analysis' of the 'contradictory' nature of motion, Hegel and Lenin's claim that everything is "self-moving" and "interconnected", John Rees's endeavour to explain DM-Wholism, among many other topics). This regular and unrelenting slide into unintelligibility isn't just bad luck. It is a direct result of the careless use, and reckless distortion, of language (among other factors, such as interpreting claims like the one expressed in M1a as super-empirical propositions that purport to reveal fundamental truths about reality, when they turn out to be nothing of the sort).^39a

An empirical proposition derives its sense from the truth possibilities it appears to hold open, which options can then be decided one way or the other by a confrontation with the (relevant) evidence. That is why the actual truth-value of, say, M6 (or its contradictory, M6a) doesn't need to be known before it is understood, but it is also why evidence is relevant in order to establish one or the other: its truth-value as "true" or its truth-value as "false".

All that is required here is some grasp of the same possibility that both of the above hold open. M6 and M6a both have the same content, and are both made true or false by the same situation obtaining or failing to obtain.⁴⁰

When a proposition and its negation picture the same state of affairs they have the same content, which is what connects the two and makes one of them the contradictory of the other. If that weren't so, they wouldn't be contradictories, for there would be nothing (relevant to both) that linked them. One of them has to be capable of being used to deny what the other one can be used to assert, and vice versa. If they failed to 'overlap' in this way, they couldn't be used in this way, to contradict or gainsay each other. So, if a given proposition is true, the state of affairs it expresses obtains; if it is false, the same state of affairs won't.

[Of course, what constitutes a specific or relevant state of affairs will be intimately connected with the propositions involved. I will leave that gnomic remark in its currently obscure form, but I will say more in Essay Thirteen Part Two -- but the reasons for saying this should become a little clearer as this Essay unfolds.]

These factors enable us to know what to look for or what to expect in order to ascertain whether the proposition in question is true or, indeed, declare it false (if we are so minded). This is just another way of saying that negation does not alter the content of an empirical proposition. If negation could alter content -- or, as we will see, if negation seemed to be able to do so -- then the sentences involved can't have been empirical, or, alternatively, can't have been contradictories, to begin with.

[The significance of those remarks will also become clearer as this Essay unfolds. But, it should be obvious to many that that paragraph, if correct, strikes at the very heart of Hegel's theory of negation, and by implication at the very core of DM, too. On whether there can be such a thing as 'real negation', a concept introduced by Kant, which Hegel turned into a key factor of his theory, see Appendix A of Essay Eight Part Two.]

The same situation obtaining -- i.e., Tony Blair owning a copy of TAR -- will make one of M6 and M6a true, the other false. If Blair does own a copy, M6 will be true and M6a false; if he doesn't, M6a will be true and M6 false. This intimate intertwining of the content and hence the truth-values of M6 and M6a are a direct consequence of the same state of affairs linking them.

If a given speaker didn't know that M6 was true (and hence that M6a was false) just in case Blair owned a copy of the said book, and that M6 was false (but M6a was true) just in case Blair didn't own a copy of the said book -- or they were unable to determine or recognise what to look for, or to expect, should they ever want to ascertain the truth-value of M6 or M6a -- that would be prima facie evidence they didn't understand either or both of M6 and M6a. These two sentences stand or fall together. If one of them stands (as true), the other falls (as false), and vice versa.

This might seem an obvious point, but its ramifications are all too easily missed, and have been missed by the vast majority of Philosophers for over two thousand years. [More on that in these references and much of the rest of this Essay (especially here and Note 45a).]

Both of these objections (which overlap somewhat) will be considered in more detail in Note 40a.

The above considerations also help explain why it is easy to imagine M6 as true even if it turned out to be false, or false even if it were true. That is, it is easy to imagine what would have made M6 false if it is actually true, and what would have made M6 true if it actually is false. [Vice versa with M6a.] In general, the comprehension of an empirical proposition involves an understanding of the conditions under which it would or could be true, or would or could be false. As is well known, these are otherwise called their truth conditions. Naturally, that allows anyone so minded to confirm the actual truth status of any given empirical proposition by an appeal to the available evidence since they would in that case know in advance what to look for or expect. And that would still be the case if no one ever wanted to ascertain their actual truth-values. A totally disinterested individual who understood M6 (or M6a) would nevertheless still know what would make it true (and the other false). [It is worth recalling what the word "disinterested" means here!]

These non-negotiable facts concerning (at least this area) of discourse also underpin the usual Marxist emphasis on the social nature of language and knowledge (also advocated at this site). The above facility (i.e., related to knowing the content of empirical propositions in advance of knowing whether or not they are true or whether or not they are false) allows interlocutors to exchange information which they can grasp independently of knowing the actual truth-value of what they have been told. They just have to know the truth-conditions -- even if they have never heard of the term "truth-condition"! If that weren't the case, if they had actually to know something (i.e., some other proposition) was true before they could understand any given empirical proposition, the entire process would stall, and communication (at least in such a context) would be impossible.

[Of course, it is certainly possible -- in fact, it is quite common -- that in order to ascertain the actual truth-value of an empirical proposition, the truth-value of other such propositions will also have to be known; but, as has already been indicated, truth-values aren't the same as truth conditions. It is by confusing these two (seemingly similar) concepts that many go astray in this area. But, as demonstrated earlier, that is not the case with being aware of a propositions truth-conditions. Truth-conditions are expressed by rules, not propositions. How that works out, and what significance it has, will be explained below.]

These everyday truisms about language fly in the face of metaphysical theories which emphasise the opposite: that in order to understand a metaphysical proposition is ipso facto to know it is true (or ipso facto to know it is false, depending on circumstances, or the theory in question), by-passing the evidential confirmation and disconfirmation stage, thus reducing the usual 'truth conditions' to one option only.

[How the above considerations relate to what we might call 'patent truths' (about matters of fact) -- such as "Fire is hot" and "Water is wet" -- has been dealt with in Note 40a, link below.]

Which is, of course, why Traditional Theories of Knowledge found it hard to account for falsehood. If we represent the world to ourselves 'in our heads', how could anything be false? It is no use replying that we can check these representations against the facts, or against the world, since, if that were so, all we would be doing is checking one set of representations against another. Furthermore, relying on testimony, evidence or argument provided by other individuals would be no help either. Again, if representationalism were true, all we would be relying on in such circumstances would be representations of testimony, representations of evidence and representations of argument.

How can one representation validate another representation, which is itself based on another representation, which is based on...?

As a species, we have (as yet) found no way of 'leaping out of our heads' in order to check our 'representations' directly against 'reality' in order to by-pass the need for any further validating 'representations'.^40a

[So, for example, how would the 'contents' of one mind be communicated to another if there were no prior means of communication that enabled it? In fact, this pre-condition is undermined (or even denied) by representational theories. Indeed, how would it be possible for anyone to communicate with anyone else if they could only figure out what their interlocutors had meant, or what their words might mean, after they had ascertained the truth of what was said? (There is more on this in Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three.)]

However, there are other serious problems that traditional approaches to language face over and above the fact it would make shared knowledge impossible.

As we are about to discover, intractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (in relation to such supposedly empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical, sentences) when any attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with such propositions -- namely: truth or falsehood.

This occurs, for example, when what appears to be an empirical proposition is declared to be "only true" or "only false" -- or, more pointedly in post-Renaissance Philosophy, 'necessarily' the one or the other. Or even when a 'necessary truth' or a 'necessary falsehood' is mis-identified as a particularly profound, universally applicable, Super-Empirical claim that employs the indicative mood (etc.), once more.

As we will soon see, this results in the automatic loss of both semantic options, and with that goes any sense the original sentence might have had, rendering it non-sensical.

That is because an empirical proposition leaves it open whether it is true or whether it is false. That is why its truth-value (true/false) can't simply be read-off from its content, why evidence is required in order to establish its semantic status (true/false), and why this means it is possible to understand it before its truth or its falsehood is known. If that weren't so, it would be impossible to establish its truth-status. Once again, it isn't possible to confirm or confute an 'indicative sentence' if no one understands what it is saying, or what it is being used to say.

When that isn't the case -- i.e., when one or other option (truth/falsehood) is closed-off, or when a proposition is said to be "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" -- evidence clearly becomes irrelevant.

So, while the truth or falsehood of an empirical proposition can't be ascertained on linguistic, conceptual or semantic grounds alone, if the truth or falsehood of a proposition were capable of being established solely, or purely, on the basis of linguistic, logical, conceptual or structural features, that means it can't be empirical -- despite its use of the indicative mood, and in spite of any of its users trying to reveal Super-Facts about 'Reality' by means of it.

If, however, such a proposition were still held true, and still thought capable of revealing a Super-Fact about the world, about its "essence" -- that would automatically render it metaphysical.^40b

Otherwise its actual truth or its actual falsehood would be evidence-sensitive not solely concept-dependent. That is, its actual truth or its actual falsehood would depend on how the world happens to be, not solely on what the words it uses are imagined to mean.

This explains why the comprehension of a metaphysical proposition goes hand-in-hand with 'knowing' its 'truth' (or 'knowing' its 'falsehood', as the case may be): its truth-status is based solely on thought, language, concepts, definitions or on meaning, not evidence.

Of course, it could be claimed that "essential' thoughts"/"truths"/'propositions' 'reflect' deeper truths about the world, those that are philosophically significant and hence more profound than common-or-garden, 'empirical truths'.

But, if thought does indeed 'reflect' the world, it should be possible to understand a proposition that allegedly expressed such a thought in advance of knowing whether it is true, or knowing whether it is false, otherwise confirmation in practice, by comparing it with the world, would become an empty gesture. But if a metaphysical proposition is to be understood, it has to be known to be true first, and that can't be based on evidence. If it were, then that proposition could be false** (which would mean its contradictory would be true). The disastrous consequences that that possibility holds out will be explored below, where it will be shown that metaphysical propositions don't have contradictories. This means that the only way that a metaphysical proposition could be true is that its semantic status follows solely and directly from the (supposed) meaning of the words it uses.

[**If the semantic status of a proposition depends on evidence, then there is a possibility it could be false. But if a proposition can't be false, then evidence becomes irrelevant. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, if a proposition can't be true, either.]

In response, it could be argued that "essential truths" are different. That objection will be examined presently.

So, if the truth of such a sentence could be ascertained from that sentence alone (i.e., if it is "self-evidently true"), then the world drops out of the picture, which would in turn mean that this sentence (or its associated thought) couldn't be a reflection of the world, whatever else it might be.⁴¹

Furthermore, but worse, if a proposition is still supposed to be empirical -- or if it is said to be about underlying "essences", or it 'reflected' them --, and can only be true or can only be false (as seems to be the case with, say, M20, below, according to Lenin), then, as we will see, intractable paradoxes soon emerge.

Consider the following sentence (which Lenin would presumably have declared necessarily false, if not "unthinkable"), M20:

Unfortunately for Lenin, in order to declare M20 necessarily and always false (or "unthinkable"), the possibility of its truth must first of all be entertained -- even if only to be ruled out immediately --, otherwise he would have no idea what he was ruling out. But, if the possible truth of M20 couldn't even be entertained by Lenin (howsoever briefly), then that would either mean M20 is incomprehensible (because of what M1a itself has to say), or that even if it were somehow comprehensible, Lenin himself couldn't understand it, but others might be able to. Either way, Lenin would have absolutely no idea what it was he was rejecting. As we will see, that has a knock-on affect on the status of M1a itself.

Of course, it could be argued, contrary to the above, that Lenin doesn't need to entertain the possible truth of M20. But, as we are about to see, if Lenin (or anyone else) didn't, or couldn't, entertain its possible truth, they would be in no position to assert M1a, or comprehend its alleged content, either.

Thus, if the truth of M20 is to be permanently excluded by holding it necessarily false, then whatever would make it true would also have to be ruled out conclusively. But, anyone doing that would have to know what M20 rules in so that they could comprehend what was being ruled out by its rejection, as always and necessarily false. And yet, that is precisely what can't be done if what M20 itself says is permanently ruled out on semantic or conceptual grounds.⁴²

[I cover this ground again from a different, perhaps more profound, angle, below.]

Consequently, if a proposition like M20 is necessarily false, this charade (i.e., the permanent exclusion of its truth) can't actually take place. That is because it would be impossible to say (or even to think) what could possibly count as making it true so that that possibility could be rejected. Indeed, Lenin himself had to declare it "unthinkable", so he not only couldn't inform his readers what would make it false, he couldn't even think about the import of these words (in the sense that he couldn't conceive their supposed content -- i.e., the state of affairs this sentence supposedly pictured or represented -- more on that presently). Hence, because the possible truth of M20 can't even be conceived, no one, least of all Lenin, would be in any position to say what is excluded by its rejection.⁴³

Unfortunately, this now prevents any account being given of what would make M20 false, let alone 'necessarily' false. Given this twist, and paradoxically, M20 would now be 'necessarily false' if and only if it wasn't capable of being thought of as necessarily false! But, according to Lenin, the conditions that would make M20 true can't even be conceived; that train-of-thought can't be joined at any point. And, if the truth of M20 -- or the conditions under which it would be true -- can't be conceived, then neither can its falsehood, for we wouldn't then know what was being ruled out.^43a

Anyone who disagrees with the above need only ask themselves: "What exactly is Lenin ruling out by his assertion of M1a?" As soon as they answer that question (i.e., as soon as they reply, "Lenin is ruling out the truth of this sentence 'Motion occurs without matter', or 'Matter can be motionless'"), they will have got the point. That is because they will have just done -- i.e., thought -- what Lenin said couldn't be done -- because it is "unthinkable". On the other hand, if they had no idea what Lenin was trying to rule out (i.e., if they can't answer the above question), that would imply they had no idea what M1a actually means.

In that case, the supposed negation of M20 can neither be accepted nor rejected by anyone, for no one would know what its content committed them to, so that that content could either be accepted or repudiated. Hence, M20 would lose any sense it had, since it couldn't under any circumstances be considered true, and hence under any circumstances be considered false. [That is, if we accept M1a.]

If, according to Lenin, we are incapable of thinking the content of the following words, we certainly can't declare M20 false:

[In what follows, by "content" I mean what an indicative, empirical sentence purports to tell us about the world (or any other legitimate subject matter), what state of affairs it supposedly expresses -- constrained by what the words of that sentence actually mean. Why that isn't inconsistent with what was said earlier about 'necessary propositions' -- i.e., that their 'truth' depends solely on the meaning of the words they use -- will be explained shortly.]

Our inability to conclude that certain 'propositions' -- or indicative sentences -- are false is in fact a consequence of several of the points raised earlier, perhaps the most important of which was this: an empirical proposition and its negation have the same content (they express the same possible state of affairs). If one of these options is ruled out -- i.e., if a supposed proposition has no negation, for instance -- the other automatically goes out of the window with it -- which means it has no content (and, as we will see, it ceases to be a proposition, or, rather, it wasn't one to begin with). And that is what we have just seen happen to Lenin's hyper-bold assertion about matter and motion. In order to appreciate why this is the more fundamental reason for the collapse of his -- and other metaphysical -- sentences into incoherent non-sense we need to back-track a little, and go over some earlier ground more carefully.

We can see exactly why such problems arise if we consider another typical metaphysical sentence, L1, and its supposed negation, L2:

L1: Time is a relation between events. [Paraphrasing Leibniz.]^43b

L2: Time isn't a relation between events.

As we have seen, the alleged truth of L1 is derived directly from the meaning of the words it contains (or the concepts it supposedly expresses, as Leibniz understood them) -- or, in some cases, from related principles, precepts and definitions (that also depend on the meaning of the words they contained). The supposed truth of L1 manifestly hasn't been derived from evidence (even if some attempt were made to "illustrate" its truth from some form of 'evidence' (directly or indirectly), or it was used to help explain certain phenomena (these days this is called 'abductive reasoning' or 'inference to the best explanation' -- there is more about this in Note 45a).

However, the unique semantic status of sentences like L1 has the consequence that if some attempt were made to deny its truth by means of, say, L2, that would amount to a change in the meaning of the word "time".

That is because sentences like L1 define what a given philosopher means by "time", how he or she intends to use that word, conceive of its related 'concept', or integrate it into any theory or theories being developed. Elsewhere L1-type sentences are sometimes call "essential propositions". They purport to reveal or even define 'the essence' of the concept(s) involved. So, the word/concept, "time", with a different 'essence' -- or where the 'essential properties' that had been attributed to it are now denied of it -- would have a different meaning. If time isn't a relation between events then the word "time" (used to assert this supposed 'super-fact' about 'time') can no longer mean the same as it did, in L1. "Time" must either possess no meaning in L2 or it must have a new meaning, one yet to be given it. [So, "time" for Newton was absolute, which tells us he meant something different by that word when compared with Leibniz. On that, see, Alexander (1956), Ariew (2000), DiSalle (2002), Earman (1989), Mcdonough (2024), Rynasiewicz (2011), Vailati (1997).] Either way, the bottom line here is that "time" has a different meaning in L1 compared with L2 (that is, if we also understand by "no meaning" a "different meaning" -- but even then "time" would not mean the same in these two sentences). And, if that is so, L1 and L2 can't represent or 'reflect' the same state of affairs. They thus have a different (supposed) content.

In that case, and despite appearances to the contrary, L2 isn't the negation of L1! That is because the subject of each sentence is different.

To see this point, compare the following two sentences:

Whether or not one or other of these is true, L4 isn't the negation of L3, and that is because since they relate to two different individuals, George W Bush and his father, George H W Bush. L3 and L4 thus have two different subjects. They are true or they are false under entirely different circumstances; they don't have the same sense, the same empirical content. Plainly, they express different possible states of affairs.

[That isn't to suggest L3 and L4 are like L1 and L2 in any other respect. The change of subject matter is less easy to see in relation to L1 and L2 since they both use a typographically identical word, "time". The difference between them is nevertheless made obvious by the fact that L1 defines a specific meaning for the word "time" while L2 denies it that very meaning. L3 and L4 are only being used to make this particular point -- a change of subject -- abundantly clear.]

Mutatis mutandis, the same comment applies in general to all metaphysical propositions -- like L1, many of which are also "essential" -- and what appear to be their negations (i.e., in the case of L1, that was L2).

L1: Time is a relation between events.

L2: Time isn't a relation between events.

Why is this important? Well, if L1 is deemed "necessarily true", under normal circumstances (to be explained presently) that would be tantamount to declaring its alleged negation (L2) "necessarily false". And yet, L2 isn't the negation of L1. So, that specific inference isn't possible. Again, that is because L1 and L2 are logically unrelated sentences because they have a different (supposed) content, they 'express a (supposed) different state of affairs'. The 'truth' or 'falsehood' of the one has no bearing on the 'truth' or 'falsehood' of the other -- unlike M6 and M6a. There are no logical links between them.^43c

This might seem an obvious point, but its ramifications are all too easily missed, and have been missed by the vast majority of Philosophers for over two thousand years....

So, if or when it has been determined that M6a is true, the falsehood of M6 can automatically be inferred -- and vice versa if M6 turns out to be true. Hence, M6 may be rejected if M6a is true just as M6a may if M6 is true. The same content tells us what we can rule in and what we can rule out. This shared content connects the two sentences, and allows these valid inferences to go through. That wouldn't be the case, and so couldn't be done, if M6 and M6a didn't have this shared content.

However, as we have seen, between a metaphysical proposition and what might appear to be its negation, there is no shared content because of a change of subject. Two metaphysical sentences like L1 and L2 fail to relate to the same supposed state of affairs, since there is no such shared content. [In fact, as we are about to reveal, metaphysical sentences have no content.] So, there is nothing that connects L1 and L2 in the above manner.

Hence, the 'truth' of L1 can't be ruled out by means of the 'truth' of L2 (nor vice versa), because we now have no idea what we are ruling out, and therefore no idea what we are ruling in. [Why that is so will also be explained presently, but it is connected with the fact that L1 and L2 express no actual or possible state of affairs.]

L1: Time is a relation between events.

L2: Time isn't a relation between events.

Or, rather, what we might imagine we are trying to rule out (i.e., L2) by the use of L1 won't in fact have been ruled out since L2 has a different subject and hence a different supposed 'content'.

Connected with this is another important principle: to declare a sentence "true" is ipso facto to declare it "not false". These two semantic conditions go hand-in-hand.

[Some might think the above represents an unwise concession to the so-called 'Law of Excluded Middle' [LEM]. I can't enter into that topic here, so any who do so think are advised to check out Note 39a, follow the link at the end of that Note, and then maybe think again.]

But, if we can't declare L1 "not false" (and we plainly can't do that if we have no idea what we are ruling out -- as soon as any attempt is made to do so by means of L2 ends up changing the subject!), we can't then say the original sentence is true.

By declaring a sentence like L1 "necessarily true", we appear to be conclusively ruling something in, and thereby conclusively ruling something out (as "necessarily false"). Hence, if L1 is deemed 'necessarily true', that would seem to imply L2 is 'necessarily false'. In that case, we would appear to be talking about -- and hence ruling out -- the same state of affairs. But, in this case there is no shared state of affairs to be ruled out, and that is because the two sentences have a different subject.

In fact, there is no state of affairs here at all, shared or otherwise. L1 picks out no state of affairs -- even in theory.

As we will see, L1 uses certain words in a specific way; it isn't about the world as such. L1 actually expresses an idiosyncratic rule for the use of "time", but it is usually interpreted or misconstrued as a fundamental truth about the world. We can see that this is the case (that L1 expresses an idiosyncratic rule for the use of "time") since L2 represents a change in meaning to a typographically identical word, "time", which shows this is about the meaning of words, not 'facts about reality'. Each seemingly identical use of the word "time" turns out to be a different use because these two otherwise identical marks on your screen have different meanings.

If, per impossible, there were a state of affairs that L1 expressed, we would be able to negate L1 legitimately (i.e., by using L2), and thereby conclude that the state of affairs L1 supposedly expressed doesn't actually obtain, even in theory. That is, it would be possible use L2 to show that what L1 says -- the state of affairs it expresses -- doesn't obtain. But, as we have just seen, we can't even do that. In relation to L2, what we think we are ruling out is what L1 expresses. But, L2 has a different content to L1, so we aren't in fact ruling out what L1 says!

L1 therefore has no content at all, and neither has L2. They are both telling us nothing at all about the world, just about two idiosyncratic, but different, uses of the word "time".

When sentences like L1 are entertained, a pretence (often genuine) has to be made that they actually mean (i.e., "say") something determinate, that they are capable of being understood and hence that they are capable of being true or are capable of being false. That is, in this case, that they at least depict an actual or possible state of affairs, even in theory. To that extent, a further pretence has to be maintained that we understand what might make such propositions true -- and hence what will make their 'negations' false -- so that propositions like L2 can be declared "necessarily false", and their content ruled out accordingly.

So, we imagine they (both) actually depict (at the very least) a theoretical state of affairs -- which is something they can't do, as we have just seen. That is because L1 and L2 actually concern the use of a specific word (in this case the word, "time"), not 'reality'. Neither expresses a fact about the world (unlike M6 and M6a) since they both express a (peculiar) rule for the use of the word "time" (albeit in this case, as we have seen, two different rules that cover two different meanings).

Neither the negation nor the truth or the falsehood of the above two has any effect on the meaning of its words, unlike L1 and L2. Again, unlike L1 and L2, M6 and M6a are about the world, are about the same state of affairs, either holding or failing to hold. M6a is the negation of M6, but that has no effect on the meaning of any of its words. L2 looks like it is the negation of L1, and that does affect the meaning of "time". That is why the apparent semantic status of L1 and L2 depends solely on the meaning of its constituent words, but in this case, since neither is the actual negation of the other, neither has an actual semantic status, as we are about to discover. The situation is different for M6 and M6a. There, the semantic status of these two sentences depends on two factors, (i) What their constituent words mean and (ii) The obtaining or otherwise of the state of affairs expressed. That is why the word "solely" was emphasised earlier.

If there were a state of affairs that L1 pictured, we would be able to negate L1 legitimately (by means of L2), but, as we have seen, that can't be done since there is a change of subject in L2.

Hence, the use of philosophical 'propositions' like L1 and L2 is completely vacuous; the entire exercise is an empty charade, for no content can be given to such indicative sentences. They depict no state of affairs, even in theory!

Again, in order to declare L1 true, we might pretend that a 'theoretical state of affairs' (at least) is being ruled out -- that which is expressed by L2. But, we have just seen that that isn't so. Nothing is being ruled in or rule out, since L1 is incapable of depicting anything, even theoretically! It has no content.

Hence, anyone who accepts L1 as true is in no position say what it depicts, even in theory. That isn't because it would be psychologically impossible for them to do so; it is because it is logically impossible. If L1 could depict something (even in theory), we could legitimately negate it; but doing so changes the subject (in L2). Hence, it isn't possible to specify conditions that would make L2 false, even in theory, without changing the subject. Nor can we say under what conditions L1 is true, and for the same reason.

But, if we can't say under what conditions L1 is true (since it depicts nothing at all), we can't say it is or isn't false, either. In which case, we are in no position to declare L1 either true or false! Any attempt to do so falls apart, for that would imply that two logically unrelated sentences (L1 and L2) were related after all.

Hence, metaphysical propositions can't be true and they can't be false. They have no semantic status, no content. They express no state of affairs, even in theory.

In which case, given what is pointed out here about sense and non-sense, metaphysical 'propositions' lack a sense, and there is nothing that can be done to rectify the situation.

Our (socially-sanctioned) use of language actually prevents them from expressing a sense, let alone being true.

They are therefore non-sensical, empty strings of words.

Metaphysical sentences actually express non-standard and quirky rules for the use of certain words, misconstrued as fundamental truths about 'reality'.

And rules can't be either true or false, just useful or useless, followed or broken. And that is exactly what we have just found with sentences like L1 and L2.

This also includes the metaphysical 'propositions' DM-theorists have cobbled-together (or have imported from Hegel, upside down or the 'right way up').

[Incidentally, the word "proposition" is in 'scare quotes' above, because it isn't clear what is being proposed, or put forward for consideration by metaphysical sentences (since, in such cases, those like L1, L2 and P4 have no content). In that case, nothing (i.e., no content) has been proposed or put forward for consideration. (However, on vagueness, see here.)]

Some might wonder why there can't be necessary states of affairs that are independent of language and hence independent of human cognition, which are, or can be, reflected by metaphysically-, or necessarily-true, propositions. The above argument just assumes (without proof) that there can't be any such.

Let us assume for the purposes of argument that L1 is necessarily true and that there is a 'necessary', or even a 'metaphysical', 'state of affairs' in the world (or 'behind appearances', etc.) accurately reflected by L1 (independent of language, independent of humanity, etc., etc.); i.e., that time is actually and 'objectively' a relation between events, or that L1 accurately 'reflects reality'.

We have already seen that this would automatically throw the semantic status of L2 into doubt, since there is still a change of subject in that sentence which means it isn't talking about what L1 is talking about, despite appearances to the contrary. Anyone who holds L2 true (for example, a Newtonian), can't now mean by "time" what anyone who holds L1 true means by the typographically identical word, "time". On the other hand, if L2 is declared false (for instance, by a Leibnizian), it can't be about "time", as that word is understood by anyone who holds L2 true. In such circumstances, it would be impossible to explain how, when L2 is true, it could fail to be about time (again, as understood by a Leibnizian), but, when it is false, it is about time!

Impossible, unless, of course, we acknowledge the fact that these are two different uses of typographically identical words.

As we have also seen, if L1 is declared "necessarily true", its falsehood is (seemingly) automatically ruled out. But, it now becomes impossible to rule out the falsehood of L1, for to do that we would (normally) have to entertain the truth of L2, or at least know what would make it true so that that possibility can be excluded. However, by declaring L1 "necessarily true" we are ruling out its falsehood and thereby seemingly ruling out the truth of L2. But, L2 is totally unrelated to L1. They both have a different subject. In that case, we can't rule out the falsehood of L1 on the basis of the actual falsehood of L2. But if that is so, we can't declare L1 "necessarily true", either. That being the case, L1 can't reflect a 'necessary state of affairs in reality'. Otherwise, all of the above would be possible: L1 would be connected to L2 by the same state of affairs, and the truth of one would rule out the truth of the other. But a change of meaning, a change of subject, between L1 and L2 rules this out.

As pointed out earlier, our use of language actually prevents metaphysical sentences from being either true or false. In that case, they are incapable of 'reflecting' anything.

But, it might now be objected that there could be states of affairs in the world that language can't reflect, which are nevertheless metaphysically necessary (and are such independently of our knowing this). Surely, the incapacity of language to reflect the world doesn't imply there are no such necessary states of affairs. Any attempt to assert there aren't any based on the presumed fact that they can't be represented in language would be guilty of the very thing such an approach aims to criticise. That is, by denying there are such metaphysical states of affairs, the above analysis attempts to derive certain truths about reality -- namely, that there are no metaphysical states of affairs -- from language (i.e., from its supposed inability to represent their actual existence).

Attentive readers will no doubt have noticed that nowhere was it asserted that metaphysical or necessary states of affairs do not or cannot exist, only that any attempt to state such supposed truths will always be non-sensical and incoherent.

However, as soon as it is asked what is implied by the phrase, "necessary states of affairs", the whole sorry mess falls apart. A "necessary state of affairs" is one that can't be otherwise -- for instance, if time were necessarily a relation between events (independently of language), it can't fail to be a relation between events. It would necessarily be a relation between events and "couldn't be otherwise". But, for such an "otherwise" itself to obtain it would have to be the case that time failed to be a relation between events in such an assume set up! And yet, as we have just seen, there is no such thing as an "otherwise" when it comes to such 'necessary/metaphysical states of affairs'. In that case, it is impossible even to describe an "otherwise" when it comes to a 'necessary/metaphysical state of affairs', for to do so would be to change the subject again! In such an eventuality we would no longer be speaking about time₁ but about time₂, where time₁ was a relation between events and time₂ wasn't! But if we can't speak about an "otherwise" without changing the subject, no coherent (or even comprehensible) possibility will have been presented for consideration. Or, at least, no more than would have been had someone asked about offside in chess or the square root of your left foot. No one is capable of theorising about offside in chess, or even begin to do so about the square root of your left foot, and the same is the case with 'necessary/metaphysical states of affairs'. There is no "otherwise" to offside in chess! There is no onside in chess. Your left foot isn't a number!

Moreover, because the negation of DM-propositions (like P4) also fail to picture anything that could be the case in any possible world (for logical, not psychological or scientific reasons), they, too, have no content. Naturally, that automatically empties the content of the original non-negated DM-'proposition' (such as P4, again), rendering it non-sensical, too.

Once again, the above might appear to be yet another example of a priori dogmatics promoted at this site -- in that it denies that DM-propositions could "picture anything that could be the case in any possible world", but that isn't so. It is rather to say that it makes no sense to suppose they were capable of picturing anything. They present us with nothing that can be given a sense, even in theory. Indeed, for all the 'sense' they do make, DM-propositions might as well have been taken from The Jabberwocky, a poem that makes about as much sense as Hegel's 'Logic':

Except, of course, The Jabberwocky is more obviously incoherent non-sense, while Hegel's work contains enough 'philosophical bait' to attract a few bites from his gullible readers. Once hooked, this unfortunately kicks in:

"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. Bold emphasis added.]

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

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

[I]ntractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (in relation to such supposedly empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical, sentences) when any attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with such propositions -- namely: truth or falsehood.

In which case, it isn't possible to restrict or exclude one of these paired semantic options (for instance, falsehood) in favour of the other (i.e., truth) --, as metaphysicians generally try to do --, without the above problems arising, thus preventing anyone from doing just that.

On the other hand, if a proposition and its negation have the same content (which will be the case if one is to count as the negation of the other), they will stand or fall together. But, that isn't so with DM-'propositions'; they stand alone, since they have no content and hence can't share content with any other indicative sentence, least of all with their own supposed negations. But that just means they too collapse as incoherent non-sense, just as we have seen happen with M1a.

This means that we need another way of explaining why DM-'propositions' were invented in the first place. [More on that presently. Why they all (and not just M1a) collapse into incoherence will also be explained below.]

As we can now see, the radical misuse of language that results in the production of what look like empirical propositions (e.g., M1a, again) involves an implicit reference to the sort of conditions that underlie the normal employment of such sentences.⁴⁴

Hence, and once again, when sentences like the above are presented for consideration, or are entertained (even for a few minutes), a pretence (often genuine) has to be maintained that they actually mean something, that they are capable of being understood, and hence that they are capable of being true or are capable of being false.⁴⁵ [This takes place even if certain restrictions are later imposed on any attempt made to 'process them, theoretically', as happened with M1a.] In that case, a further pretence has to be effected that we understand what it is (in nature or society) that might make such 'propositions' true or their 'negations' false -- so that those like M20 can be declared 'necessarily' false, or even "unthinkable".

[This 'display of comprehension' (if that is the right phrase) is evident whenever dialecticians are confronted with the accusation that they don't actually understand the weird claims they come out with. They are genuinely shocked, if not puzzled and offended by such allegations (as anyone who tries to confront Dialectical Marxists along these lines will soon learn, it they haven't already!). I used to make this point in public 'debates' I had with DM-fans many years ago -- that is, when they were actually prepared to discuss their own theory. (The word "debates" is here in 'scare' quotes because DM-fans can't actually debate this theory; they are far too emotionally invested in it, as I demonstrate in Essay Nine Part Two. This is perhaps most notoriously obvious from Trotsky's extreme reaction to anyone foolish enough to question DM.) In public, comrades used to heckle me, shouting: "You don't understand dialectics!", to which I always replied "Well, in that case, I'm in good company, since no one understands dialectics!" That used to shut them up. But, those days are long gone. The 'DM-Counter-Reformation' has well and truly set in, and, en masse, DM-fans have circled the wagons and now refuse even to debate this misbegotten theory, content merely to post abuse and personal attacks (even where they deign to respond!). Here is an example from a few years ago. (I have covered that non-debate in more detail here.) And here is another recent example where I accused an HCD of not understanding the obscure, quasi-Hegelian gobbledygook he kept spouting. Needless to say, he was 'somewhat miffed' I had the temerity so to accuse him, but, try as hard as I could, I couldn't get him to explain what he actually did mean by his use of the odd language he kept spouting. The irony of his total incapacity to make himself understood without using yet more obscure jargon (which he also couldn't explain) in order to try to 'explain' the last batch, was clearly lost on him, despite the fact that I kept making that very point to him! Of course, he isn't the only comrade who has bought into the aforementioned 'pretence' --, in effect, they have ideologically sold their 'radical souls' to the other side in the class war in this way. As is easy to demonstrate, they haven't a clue what their theory means any more than Christians have concerning the Doctrine of the 'Holy Trinity'. Nevertheless, theologians and dialecticians are both avid users of jargon they can't explain to anyone, least of all to one another.]

The entire exercise is a theoretical and practical charade, for no content can be given to 'propositions' like M20 and M1a, nor in fact to any metaphysical 'proposition'.^45a

There is another, rather odd aspect of metaphysical theories that is also worth highlighting: since the supposed truth-values of defective sentences like those below aren't determined by examining actual evidence, they have to be given a 'truth-value' by fiat. That is, they have to be declared "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" by a sage-like figure. That in turn is because their supposed truth-status hasn't been derived from any comparison with the world but (solely) from the supposed meaning of the words they contain. As we will see, that divorces them from the world, with which they can't now be compared.

Or, perhaps with much more grandiosity, their opposites are anathematised as "unthinkable" by another sage-like figure -- an 'edgy', 'Radical' Philosopher, a 'Dialectical Magus', maybe even a "Great Teacher".

Metaphysical pronouncements like the following are as common as dirt in Traditional Thought -- and, as we can now see, that is also the case with DM:

L7: Self-relation in Essence is the form of Identity or of reflection-into-self. [Hegel.]

L8: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth...is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or'. [Hegel.]

L10: All bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves. [Trotsky.]

L11: And so every phenomenon...sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite. [Plekhanov.]

L12: Motion is a contradiction. [Paraphrasing Zeno, Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov and Lenin.]

L13: Internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature ['The Great Teacher Himself' -- Stalin.]

L14: It is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion. [Engels.]

L15: All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute. [Engels.]

L16: Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object. [Lenin.]

L18: Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. [Lenin.]

L19: Contradiction is universal and absolute...present in the...development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end. [Mao.]

L20: The unity of opposites...is relative and transient...the struggle of opposites is absolute, expressing the infinity...of development. [Kharin, paraphrasing Lenin.]

[Most of the above have been quoted or excerpted from Essay Two. (where their sources can be found). The incoherence of many of them has been exposed in Essays Two to Thirteen Part One.]

Of course, the aforementioned 'ceremony' (from the previous sub-section, whereby a sage-like figure pronounces the Universal Veracity of sentences like those listed above) must be performed in abeyance of any evidence (as we saw was the case with respect to Engels's 'Three Laws' in Essay Seven Part One, for example). Indeed, no actual evidence need ever be sought. Quite the contrary in fact. Evidence would detract from, or even debase, the pre-eminent status enjoyed by such Super-Truths. They are all now in effect Metaphysical Gems, often credited with apodictic certainty by their promulgators. Such claims have by-passed, by simple decree, the usual 'grubby' social practices that help determine the veracity of ordinary, boring empirical propositions.

Such banausic protocols are way too proletarian for the soft, un-sullied hands of genuine philosophers. If you want to 'hang with the cool kids' increasingly baroque language is all you will ever need:

So, the need to provide evidence appears to be a distraction, an otherwise necessary step dedicated dialecticians should rightly avoid or reject. In the above passage, the claim that 'dialectical opposites' exist everywhere -- governing every single example of change, right across the entire universe, for all of time -- expresses a "law of cognition", a "law of the objective world", and it is those very "laws" that justify, if not "demand", the imposition of dialectical dogmas like these on nature and society.

"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…. [D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]

"Flexibility, applied objectively, i.e., reflecting the all-sidedness of the material process and its unity, is dialectics, is the correct reflection of the eternal development of the world." [Lenin (1961), p.110. Bold emphasis added.]

"Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature.... Man cannot comprehend = reflect = mirror nature as a whole, in its completeness, its 'immediate totality,' he can only eternally come closer to this, creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of the world...." [Ibid., p.182. Bold emphases alone added.]

"Nowadays, the ideas of development…as formulated by Marx and Engels on the basis of Hegel…[encompass a process] that seemingly repeats the stages already passed, but repeats them otherwise, on a higher basis ('negation of negation'), a development, so to speak, in spirals, not in a straight line; -- a development by leaps, catastrophes, revolutions; -- 'breaks in continuity'; the transformation of quantity into quality; -- the inner impulses to development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given phenomenon, or within a given society; -- the interdependence and the closest, indissoluble connection of all sides of every phenomenon…, a connection that provides a uniform, law-governed, universal process of motion -– such are some of the features of dialectics as a richer (than the ordinary) doctrine of development." [Lenin (1914), pp.12-13. Bold emphases alone added.]

Hence, the search for evidence begins and ends with Dialectical Marxists either leafing through Hegel's Logic -- or the work of some other obscure Mystic, like Heraclitus, Zeno, Plotinus, Spinoza and Jakob Boehme.

"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97. Italic emphases in the original. First bold emphasis only, added.]

According to C L R James, even to ask for any sort of proof of the 'dialectic' is woefully misguided:

'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.]

"The first thing to note is that Hegel makes little attempt to prove this. A few lines later he says:

'With regard to the assertion that contradiction does not exist, that it is non-existent, we may disregard this statement.'

"To ask for some proof of the laws, as Burnham implied, or to prove them 'wrong' as Sidney Hook tried to do, this is to misconceive dialectical logic entirely. Hegel complicated the question by his search for a completely closed system embracing all aspects of the universe; this no Marxist ever did (sic!). The frantic shrieks that Marx's dialectic is some sort of religion or teleological construction, proving inevitably the victory of socialism, spring usually from men who are frantically defending the inevitability of bourgeois democracy against the proletarian revolution." [James (1947), quoted from here. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

[We have already seen other DM-fans argue that an appeal to empirical evidence is way beneath them, and smacks of 'positivism' or 'empiricism'.]

Here is Herbert Marcuse endorsing this a priori (evidence-free) approach to knowledge:

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

'Observable facts' just get in the way of all aspiring, and dedicated, dogmatists.

Another DM-fan -- David DeGrood -- partially quoted the above passage with approval:

"To take each and every quality displayed by an object or even at face value would necessarily mean that neither a scientific nor a philosophic account could be given of it.

"[Added in a footnote:] As Herbert Marcuse explains: 'The doctrine of Essence seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of "observable facts"....' Such an anti-positivist, anti-phenomenalist, Hegelian conception of essence has been continuously relied upon by Marxist philosophers ever since. The doctrine of essence is a fundamental one. A [quotation] from Mao Tse-Tung [is a] striking confirmation of this: 'When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing; this is the only reliable and scientific method of analysis.' Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1966), p.213." [DeGrood (1976), p.73. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Neither DeGrood nor Marcuse (and, it must be said, this includes Hegel) bothered to prove (or even provide so much as a weak argument in support of the ancient idea) that 'essence' is anything other than an invention, a figment of the overheated metaphysical mind -- or, indeed, substantiate the theory that anything in the universe actually has an 'essence'. As noted in the opening section of Essay Two, the invention of words like "essence" -- creations of the Ancient Greek fantasy --, was the result of a verbal trick that 'allows' contemporary dialecticians to ignore the deliverances of their senses, and hence impose their a priori dogmas on nature and society.

[Again, I have posted well over a hundred examples of this doctrinaire frame-of-mind in Essay Two (and that number is no exaggeration, either!).]

James White highlighted this attitude to 'philosophical knowledge', in this case exhibited by the German Idealists, the intellectual ancestors of DM:

"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 (1996), p.29. Bold emphasis added.]

In fact, the above approach to 'philosophical truth' has dominated this ruling-class discipline since its earliest days in Ancient Greece, reinforced more recently and more forcefully in and by the work of early modern Rationalists like Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Wolff.

In this, they followed in Plato's footsteps -- true knowledge is 'of the mind' and bypasses the senses:

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

As we saw in Essay Three Part Two (here and here), DM-theorists do likewise -- i.e., when they also speak about unreliable 'appearances', telling all who will listen that genuine knowledge is based on countless invisible 'underlying essences' (which, incidentally, 'contradict appearances').

[Follow the previous two links for quotations from the DM-classics and subsequent DM-theorists in support.]

Nevertheless, Super-Scientific Gems like these had to have their semantic pre-eminence bestowed on them as a gift. They couldn't be expected, nor must they be allowed, to consort with vulgar empirical truths, soiled and besmirched as the latter are by so much worldly, working-class 'grime', otherwise known as the "banalities of common sense".

Instead of being compared with the world to ascertain their (supposed) truth-status, the veracity of Super-Truths like these is derived solely from, or compared only with, other related claims of similar Intergalactic Status, other Super-Truths, all part of a bogus 'terminological gesture' at 'verification'. 'Confirmation', therefore, takes place only in the head of whichever DM-theorist has cut and polished these Philosophical Gems.

As we have seen in earlier sections, it is impossible to depict the conditions under which M1b, for instance, can be declared true so that DM-theorists were capable of specifying what was actually being ruled out by the 'necessarily true' status of M1a. As is the case with other metaphysical claims, there is no legitimate negation of M1a that would (ordinarily) make M1b true. That is because the DM-concept of matter is predicated on the 'necessary truth' expressed in and by P4. That sentence tells us what DM-theorists mean by the word "matter" (and in a roundabout sort of way what they mean by "motion"). But, that isn't an empirical fact about matter -- that it moves (which could be otherwise in a different possible world, or even in this world had the universe developed differently) -- it is one of its defining characteristics. Deny that (as in P4a) and the meaning of the word "matter", as DM-theorists conceive it, must change, too.

So, Lenin's acceptance of P4 is what makes 'motion without matter' "unthinkable". In that case, anyone who attempted to deny M1a by means of M1b -- or deny P4 by the use of P4a -- would be operating with a different understanding of the word "matter". Any such rejection of P4 (by an acceptance of P4a) would mean that there had been a change of subject between these four sentences (P4/P4a and M1a/M1b). This means P4a and M1b are no longer about "matter", as Lenin and other DM-fans conceive of that word, but about 'matter' (which now has different defining conditions). Hence, despite appearances to the contrary, M1b isn't the negation of M1a, nor is P4a the negation of P4. Between each such pair there has been a change of subject.

Unfortunately, this means that there is no state of affairs that P4 or M1a could 'reflect'; if there were, there would be legitimate negations of these two sentences. [That explains why in earlier sub-sections of this Essay the suggestion that Lenin had to think the very words he said were unthinkable was hedged around with a numerous qualifications and accompanied by a liberal use of 'scare quotes'. As we are about to find out it isn't possible to think the truth of M1a or the falsehood even of M1b.] But, as we have just seen, P4a and M1b can't assume that role (i.e., they can't serve as the negations of P4 or M1a) since they are no longer about matter, but about 'matter'. As we have also seen, this now implies P4 and M1a have no content -- there are no circumstances under which either could be false, and hence none under which either could be true.

Similarly with M1a; it can't be false, since, if it were, M1b would be true. But, M1a and M1b aren't logically linked; there is no state of affairs they share because of the change of subject between them, and hence no state of affairs answering to either.

Compare M1a and M1b (and P4 and P4a) with what was said about M6 and M6a, from earlier:

This might seem an obvious point, but its ramifications are all too easily missed, and have been missed by the vast majority of Philosophers for over two thousand years...

In that case, DM-'propositions' lack a sense and there is nothing that can be done to rectify the situation. Once again, our use of language actually prevents them from expressing a sense, let alone being true.

They are therefore non-sensical, empty strings of words.

Just like other metaphysical 'propositions', M1a was 'conceived in an Ideal World divorced from the language of everyday life' and ordinary work/workers. The Super-Truths concocted in the brains of individual thinkers (as if those Super-Truths 'reflected' the 'essential form of reality') relate to nothing at all in nature or society -- despite appearances to the contrary and irrespective of the intentions of those who dreamt them up. The conventions of ordinary language -- the language of the proletariat -- actually prevent them from doing this, rendering them contentless, as we have seen.

Since it isn't possible to specify what would count as evidence that showed a proposition like M1a was true -- or even that it was false -- neither is materially-grounded. That is, their semantic status isn't sensitive to any state of affairs in the world, and that is because they have no such status. As such they can't assist in any attempt to understand the world, nor can they be used to help change it.

[But, as we will see in Essay Nine Part Two, they often manage to get in the way of any such radical change.]

That, of course, helps explain why it was concluded (in Essay Nine Part One) that DM can't be used to propagandise and agitate workers, nor can it even be employed during an actual revolution, such as 1917 -- as we have also seen.

Instead of reflecting the world, DM-theories do the exact opposite -- via the RRT the world is a back-reflection, or projection, of them. They determine the way the world must be, not the way it happens to be. The Ideal World of Traditional Philosophy is a reflection of the distorted language and ruling-class interests on which it is based.

Just like Traditional Thinkers, DM-theorists dictate to the world how it must be and how it can't be otherwise.

This is the exact opposite of genuine science, which allows the world to tell us how it happens to be.

That is why 'profound philosophical truths' can only be read from language that has been distorted and twisted out of shape (as Marx himself said) and found in sentences like M1a and P4, not from nature. Metaphysical sentences represent an attempt to impose a set of ideas on the world, hence they are 'true' only in the sense that they reflect the Ideal World concocted by their inventors (who were, originally, open and honest Idealists and Mystics), not the material world we see around us. And that is why their actual truth, or their actual falsehood, was never, and could never, be determined by a confrontation with the facts, but has to be bestowed on them as a gift by those who dreamt them up.⁴⁶

The usual protocols that help determine when something is true or when something is false (i.e., a systematic search for evidence engaged in by genuine scientists) have to be set aside, with a spurious 'evidential' ceremony substituted for it.⁴⁷

With respect to DM, this bogus ceremony is invariably carried out after the event -- that is, after a series of 'dialectical nostrums' had been imported from Hegel's 'Logic'. DM-theorists then try to 'illustrate' the various 'laws' and 'principles' of their theory (they don't even attempt a rigorous, scientific analysis of the evidence) by appealing to a narrow range of specially-selected and regularly recycled examples (as we found, for instance, was the case with Trotsky's criticism of the LOI, Engels's analysis of motion, his Three 'Laws' and Lenin's theory of knowledge).

(1) It is invariably performed in the 'mind' as part of a hasty, post hoc consideration of the 'concepts' supposedly involved. No actual experiments or scientifically-designed observations/surveys are carried out, no mathematical modelling is undertaken, no computer simulations are even contemplated. If this were ever to be presented as genuine science, it would be laughed out of court even before it was subjected to peer-review. Instead of being compared with material reality in order to ascertain their truth-values, DM-'propositions' are compared with, or are linked to, other related 'propositions' -- such as P4 -- or more often, they are compared with yet more obscure doctrines lifted from Hegel -- as part of a jargon-riddled gesture at 'verification'. This means that DM-theories are quintessentially Ideal and consistently anti-materialist.⁴⁸

(2) It often consists of a series of superficial thought experiments, which are accompanied by ill-informed 'logical' analyses of a few key terms, 'supported' by the frequent use of modal (or quasi-modal) terms -- such as "must", "inconceivable", "demand", "insist", "unthinkable", and "impossible". A classic example of this approach can be found in Engels's 'analysis' of motion, which was based exclusively on the meaning of the words/concepts involved. Engels nowhere appeals to evidence in support of what he claimed was true of every moving body in existence. In fact, it is impossible to imagine any evidence that could be offered in support. [I have dealt with this specific topic at greater length in Essay Five; readers are referred there for more details.]

(3) Almost without exception the application of DM-'laws' is illustrated by an appeal to a few specially-selected (and endlessly repeated) 'supportive' examples -- which are themselves often mis-described or left unfathomably vague.

In Essay Seven, we saw that DM-theorists offer their readers what can only be described as laughably superficial 'evidence' in support of Engels's Three 'Laws'. As a result I have called DM a classic example of "Mickey Mouse Science". We can now see why it merits just such a derogatory title: the supposedly "self-evident" or "obvious" nature of DM-claims means that little (or no) empirical support is actually required. Hence, what a few trite, specially-selected examples that are offered up are merely there to 'illustrate' (they certainly don't prove) these 'laws', which are then repeated, ad nauseam, year-in, year-out.

Incidentally, this is why DM-fans soon resort to using the following knee-jerk response, "You don't understand dialectics", aimed at critics. That is because their theory isn't based on evidence, but on a certain (and rather quirky) 'understanding' of a limited range of ill-defined words and 'concepts'.

(4) On other occasions, the 'evidence' used to 'illustrate' DM-'propositions' turns out to be the result of a few superficial forays into 'linguistic' or 'conceptual' analysis, often based on a series of 'persuasive definitions' or even more mysterious 'abstractions' (of dubious provenance).⁴⁹ More specifically, as we saw in Essay Three Part One, this 'method' is applied to predicative expressions that supposedly 'name' invisible and uncheckable 'abstractions', the latter of which turn out to be Proper Names of abstract particulars, vitiating the whole exercise by destroying the generality of the concepts they supposedly 'represent'. [Follow the above links for an explanation.]

Whatever conceptual and linguistic sleights-of-hand are involved, direct or indirect reference has at some point to be made to the ordinary meaning of the words used so that the latter can be 'revised' and put in good 'dialectical order' (so to speak). Unfortunately, since the opening moves now involve a radical misuse of the relevant terms, these words no longer possess their usual meaning, which in turn means that the whole exercise has become doubly pointless. Which is, once more, why Marx said this:

For example, DM-theorists en masse repeatedly, almost neurotically, use the term "contradiction", but they don't mean by that word what it ordinarily means, nor yet how it is defined in FL. What they think they mean is the subject of Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three. [Spoiler -- in those Essays we discover that it is completely obscure what they mean by this term, and that is the case with Hegel before them. Despite this, even if DM-fans and Hegelians can't quite say with any clarity or consistency what they do mean by "contradiction", they most definitely don't mean by that word what ordinary speakers or logicians mean by it. As I also demonstrate in Essay Five, while dialecticians tend to 'see' contradictions everywhere they look, they never bother to derive them logically, as Hegel at least attempted (notoriously, but invalidly, in connection with the 'master-servant' relation, for instance). Other than in relation to the supposed link between the proletariat and the capitalist class (which also fails), they never even attempt to show these 'contradiction' are in any way 'dialectical', it is just asserted as if it were blindingly obvious. Moreover, their use of "contradiction" can legitimately be called a distortion since they indiscriminately apply it to such diverse things as opposites, inconsistencies, absurdities, contraries, paradoxes, puzzles, quandaries, oddities, irrationalities, oppositional processes, antagonisms, interacting forces, events that go contrary to expectations along with a host of other idiosyncrasies, as I have shown in Essay Eight Part Two, when, in ordinary speech, it is restricted to what is said and then gainsaid. In Philosophy and Logic the word has several meanings depending on the theorists and the theories involved; in Essay Eight Part Three I have taken issue with most of them. [On this topic in general, see here.]

While DM-theorists are certainly free to use words anyway they please, re-configuring or revising their meaning as they see fit (not that they need my permission, acquiescence or compliance), no such revision can begin if that word has been distorted from the beginning. It isn't possible to revise a word if it isn't actually being used -- i.e., where a distorted term has been substituted for it -- or it has been replaced by a typographically identical inscription, which is then used inconsistently and idiosyncratically. In such circumstances, dialecticians only succeed in creating confusion (i.e., among themselves -- no one else is being fooled) by their odd and twisted use of this inscription. [There are more details about this 'process', here.]

Hence, in such circumstances what at first sight might appear to be perfectly ordinary terms putting in a brief appearance -- e.g., "motion", "unthinkable", "opposite", "equal", "place", "moment", "quantity", "quality", "identical", "negation", "unity", "contradiction", "change", etc., etc. -- closer examination soon shows that not to be the case. By no stretch of the imagination do these terms mean the same as the intended equivalent word in the vernacular -- and that is because of the extraordinary use to which they are now being put. [I have demonstrated this in detail in Essay Five with respect to words used by Dialectical Marxists that are associated with motion and location, for example.]

This incongruity can be seen when an appeal is made to the usual, often diverse, meaning(s) ordinary words already possess (an approach that has been adopted on numerous occasions at this site -- for example, here and here) --, that done, the seemingly obvious validity of every single DM-claim soon falls apart.

Nevertheless, this is precisely what creates the spurious 'obviousness' and 'self-evidence' that DM-'laws' appear to possess in the eyes of DM-acolytes. This also helps explain the consternation they almost invariably display when DM is threatened (as it has been at this site); after the initial shock, their reaction often involves a predictable appeal to the "pedantry"/"semantics" defence. The rationale underlying the rejection and dismantling of DM at this site is completely mystifying to those held in its thrall. How such apparently "self-evident", 'obviously true' DM-'laws' could fail to be true, or could even be questioned, becomes "unthinkable". Indeed, as noted above, those dastardly critics just don't "understand" dialectics. This also helps explain why DM-fans soon become abusive -- which is also frequently their first post-shock reaction. This level of incredulity is a direct result of the fact that the 'truth' of these 'laws' has been built into them by linguistic or conceptual fiat -- or has been bestowed on them by a DM-Prophet or 'Great Teacher'.

This is also why DM-fans find it difficult to understand anyone who has the audacity to deny, for instance, the 'obvious truth' that 'a moving object is in two places at once, in one place and not in it at the same time', even though our ordinary use of words associated with motion and place reveals our ideas in this area are far more complex than Hegel, Zeno or DM-theorists imagined. As Essay Five shows, our use of the vernacular allows for examples of movement that show Engels's theory of motion (if such it might be called -- he expressed this 'theory' of his in less than a hundred words and offered zero proof!) is seriously flawed -- that is, where any sense can be made of it.⁵⁰

It is hardly surprising that a novel and distorted use of what (superficially) look like ordinary words end up generating paradox. That is because the everyday meaning of such terms seems to 'carry over' into these new contexts, bringing in its train endless confusion as the latter meaning clashes with the distorted meaning (again, numerous examples of this were given in Essay Five, links above). That in turn helps explain why 'contradictions' seem to crop up all over the place in the DM-'Ecosystem' like Japanese Knotweed.

[In addition to Essay Five, detailed examples of this were given in Essay Three Part One, Essay Four, here, here, and throughout Essay Six.]

To compound the problem, these paradox-generating moves are frequently based on what are claimed to be the 'obvious' or the 'real' meaning of the terms involved. The wide diversity of connotations such ordinary words possess are brushed aside as 'unscientific', 'un-philosophical', "valid only within certain limits" --, or they are rejected as uninteresting, inessential, compromised by banal "commonsense" and "formal thinking", or even that they reflect the 'prejudices of the age'. For example, the real meaning of motion is supposed to imply that it is 'contradictory' and paradoxical; the real meaning of 'identity' is actually its opposite (when it is faced with change); the real meaning of "matter" implies motion and 'existence external to consciousness'; the real meaning of "metaphysics' is what Hegel says it means; the real meaning of "negation", "contradiction" and "opposite" is this, or that, or..., and so on.^50a

The original terms are then discarded as of limited utility, or even as defective and unsuitable for use either in philosophy or science. However, as we have seen, and will repeatedly see, ordinary language is castigated because it actually prevents 'philosophical' moves like those metaphysicians have always tried to pull. Hence, according to Traditional Theorists (and now DM-fans), if ordinary language stands in the way of unrestricted speculation and endless day-dreaming, it is ordinary language which is to blame, not these moves!⁵¹

The late Professor Havelock pinpointed the origin of these linguistic con-tricks (my phrase, not his!) in the moves the Presocratics tried to pull, but similar comments could very well apply, mutatis mutandis, to Traditional Philosophers and DM-theorists in general:

"As long as preserved communication remained oral, the environment could be described or explained only in the guise of stories which represent it as the work of agents: that is gods. Hesiod takes the step of trying to unify those stories into one great story, which becomes a cosmic theogony. A great series of matings and births of gods is narrated to symbolise the present experience of the sky, earth, seas, mountains, storms, rivers, and stars. His poem is the first attempt we have in a style in which the resources of documentation have begun to intrude upon the manner of an acoustic composition. But his account is still a narrative of events, of 'beginnings,' that is, 'births,' as his critics the Presocratics were to put it. From the standpoint of a sophisticated philosophical language, such as was available to Aristotle, what was lacking was a set of commonplace but abstract terms which by their interrelations could describe the physical world conceptually; terms such as space, void, matter, body, element, motion, immobility, change, permanence, substratum, quantity, quality, dimension, unit, and the like. Aside altogether from the coinage of abstract nouns, the conceptual task also required the elimination of verbs of doing and acting and happening, one may even say, of living and dying, in favour of a syntax which states permanent relationships between conceptual terms systematically. For this purpose the required linguistic mechanism was furnished by the timeless present of the verb to be -- the copula of analytic statement. The history of early philosophy is usually written under the assumption that this kind of vocabulary was already available to the first Greek thinkers. The evidence of their own language is that it was not. They had to initiate the process of inventing it.... Nevertheless, the Presocratics could not invent such language by an act of novel creation. They had to begin with what was available, namely, the vocabulary and syntax of orally memorised speech, in particular the language of Homer and Hesiod. What they proceeded to do was to take the language of the mythos and manipulate it, forcing its terms into fresh syntactical relationships which had the constant effect of stretching and extending their application, giving them a cosmic rather than a particular reference." [Havelock (1983), pp.13-14, 21. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links added; paragraphs merged.]

Ordinary language is thus caught in a what amounts to a 'philosophical vice'. On the one hand, the everyday meaning of words doesn't sanction the theories metaphysicians try to generate from them, on the other, ordinary terms are said to be inadequate because they imply 'paradoxes', when, in reality, that 'defect' is a direct result of such a cavalier misuse of the medium itself.⁵²

"Wittgenstein's ambitious claim is that it is constitutive of metaphysical theories and questions that their employment of terms is at odds with their explanations and that they use deviant rules along with the ordinary ones. As a result, traditional philosophers cannot coherently explain the meaning of their questions and theories. They are confronted with a trilemma: either their novel uses of terms remain unexplained (unintelligibility), or...[they use] incompatible rules (inconsistency), or their consistent employment of new concepts simply passes by the ordinary use -- including the standard use of technical terms -- and hence the concepts in terms of which the philosophical problems were phrased." [Glock (1996), pp.261-62. See also, here.]

"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.]

The exclusion of one or other of the semantic options ordinarily open to indicative sentences completely undermines the logical role of its non-excluded, twin: truth in favour of falsehood, or falsehood in favour of truth. For, as we have seen, if a sentence can only be false, and never true, it can't actually be false -- nor vice versa. That is because, if an empirical proposition is false, it isn't true.⁵³ But, if we can't say under what circumstances such a sentence is true then we certainly can't say in what way it falls short of this so that it could be untrue, and hence false. Conversely, if it can only be true, the conditions that would make it false are similarly excluded; if we can't say under what circumstances such a sentence is false then we certainly can't say in what way it falls short of that condition so that it could be true, and hence not false. In which case, its truth similarly falls by the wayside.

Again, this forms part of understanding the sense of a proposition; in order to grasp its sense, a speaker has to know under what conditions a given empirical proposition could be true or could be false. These two stand or fall together -- so, knowing what would make such a proposition true is ipso facto to know what would make it false, and vice versa.

Anyone who knows the English language, and knows who and what Barak Obama and Das Kapital are will understand this sentence. Even if they haven't a clue whether it is true or whether it is false, they would know what state of affairs would have to obtain for it to be true, the absence of which would make it false. The same state of affairs thus features in both cases -- to make C1 true or make C1 false. If that weren't the case, if a speaker didn't (explicitly or implicitly) know this, then that would provide prima facie evidence that they didn't understand C1 or C2.

Of course, DM-theorists aren't really interested in banal propositions like C1 and C2; they are more interested in change (especially social, political and economic change) and hence in propositions that express such phenomena. In such circumstances, the negative particle seems, to them, to add content to a given sentence. Perhaps via the NON.

This supposition involves 'the power of negativity', which drives change, supposedly by adding content. This idea will be examined in more detail in Parts Five and Six of Essay Twelve. Suffice it to say here that if this were the case, it would prevent the following two propositions from being contradictories:

[Where "x₁", "y₁", and "z₁" are Cartesian ordinates, and "t₁" is a temporal variable. If the negative particle used in C4 (i.e., in "isn't") were 'dialectical', and thereby 'added content', these two sentences couldn't be contradictories.]

"If, now, the first determinations of reflection, namely, identity, difference and opposition, have been put in the form of a law, still more should the determination into which they pass as their truth, namely, contradiction, be grasped and enunciated as a law: everything is inherently contradictory, and in the sense that this law in contrast to the others expresses rather the truth and the essential nature of things. The contradiction which makes its appearance in opposition, is only the developed nothing that is contained in identity and that appears in the expression that the law of identity says nothing. This negation further determines itself into difference and opposition, which now is the posited contradiction.

"But it is one of the fundamental prejudices of logic as hitherto understood and of ordinary thinking that contradiction is not so characteristically essential and immanent a determination as identity; but in fact, if it were a question of grading the two determinations and they had to be kept separate, then contradiction would have to be taken as the profounder determination and more characteristic of essence. For as against contradiction, identity is merely the determination of the simple immediate, of dead being; but contradiction is the root of all movement and vitality; it is only in so far as something has a contradiction within it that it moves, has an urge and activity.

"In the first place, contradiction is usually kept aloof from things, from the sphere of being and of truth generally; it is asserted that there is nothing that is contradictory. Secondly, it is shifted into subjective reflection by which it is first posited in the process of relating and comparing. But even in this reflection, it does not really exist, for it is said that the contradictory cannot be imagined or thought. Whether it occurs in actual things or in reflective thinking, it ranks in general as a contingency, a kind of abnormality and a passing paroxysm or sickness....

"Now as regards the assertion that there is no contradiction, that it does not exist, this statement need not cause us any concern; an absolute determination of essence must be present in every experience, in everything actual, as in every notion. We made the same remark above in connection with the infinite, which is the contradiction as displayed in the sphere of being. But common experience itself enunciates it when it says that at least there is a host of contradictory things, contradictory arrangements, whose contradiction exists not merely in an external reflection but in themselves. Further, it is not to be taken merely as an abnormality which occurs only here and there, but is rather the negative as determined in the sphere of essence, the principle of all self-movement, which consists solely in an exhibition of it. External, sensuous movement itself is contradiction's immediate existence. Something moves, not because at one moment it is here and at another there, but because at one and the same moment it is here and not here, because in this 'here', it at once is and is not. The ancient dialecticians must be granted the contradictions that they pointed out in motion; but it does not follow that therefore there is no motion, but on the contrary, that motion is existent contradiction itself.

"Similarly, internal self-movement proper, instinctive urge in general, (the appetite or nisus of the monad, the entelechy of absolutely simple essence), is nothing else but the fact that something is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself. Abstract self-identity has no vitality, but the positive, being in its own self a negativity, goes outside itself and undergoes alteration. Something is therefore alive only in so far as it contains contradiction within it, and moreover is this power to hold and endure the contradiction within it. But if an existent in its positive determination is at the same time incapable of reaching beyond its negative determination and holding the one firmly in the other, is incapable of containing contradiction within it, then it is not the living unity itself, not ground, but in the contradiction falls to the ground. Speculative thinking consists solely in the fact that thought holds fast contradiction, and in it, its own self, but does not allow itself to be dominated by it as in ordinary thinking, where its determinations are resolved by contradiction only into other determinations or into nothing

"If the contradiction in motion, instinctive urge, and the like, is masked for ordinary thinking, in the simplicity of these determinations, contradiction is, on the other hand, immediately represented in the determinations of relationship. The most trivial examples of above and below, right and left, father and son, and so on ad infinitum, all contain opposition in each term. That is above, which is not below; 'above' is specifically just this, not to be 'below', and only is, in so far as there is a 'below'; and conversely, each determination implies its opposite. Father is the other of son, and the son the other of father, and each only is as this other of the other; and at the same time, the one determination only is, in relation to the other; their being is a single subsistence. The father also has an existence of his own apart from the son-relationship; but then he is not father but simply man; just as above and below, right and left, are each also a reflection-into-self and are something apart from their relationship, but then only places in general. Opposites, therefore, contain contradiction in so far as they are, in the same respect, negatively related to one another or sublate each other and are indifferent to one another. Ordinary thinking when it passes over to the moment of the indifference of the determinations, forgets their negative unity and so retains them merely as 'differents' in general, in which determination right is no longer right, nor left left, etc. But since it has, in fact, right and left before it, these determinations are before it as self-negating, the one being in the other, and each in this unity being not self-negating but indifferently for itself.

"Opposites, therefore, contain contradiction in so far as they are, in the same respect, negatively related to one another. Ordinary thinking when it passes over to the moment of the indifference of the determinations, forgets their negative unity and so retains them merely as 'differents' in general, in which determination right is no longer right, nor left left, etc. But since it has in fact right and left before it, these determinations are before it as self-negating, the one being in the other, and each in this unity being not self-negating but indifferently for itself." [Hegel (1999), pp.439-41, §955-§960. Bold emphases alone added.]

However, we have already seen that the negative particle can't do what DM-fans require of it. With respect to metaphysical-, and DM-'propositions', we have seen that negating them changes the subject, which in turn means that such 'propositions' and their supposed negations are devoid of content. So, instead of adding content, 'dialectical negation' reveals they had no content to begin with.

On the other hand, if negation were capable of adding content, then C3 and C4 would thereby end up with a different content. So, if as DM-theorists insist, 'dialectical negation' adds content, then none of the propositions involved would of could be "contradictories".

Of course, they might mean something different by "contradiction"; if so, what? We have yet to be told, and we have only been waiting for two centuries.

[However, as we have seen in Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three, it is in fact impossible to ascertain what DM-fans do mean by their odd use of the word "contradiction". And, as we will discover in Parts Five and Six of this Essay, it is equally impossible to decide what, if anything, Hegel meant by his idiosyncratic use of it, too.]

So, the comprehension of empirical propositions is intimately connected with the inter-relation between these logical 'Siamese Twins' (i.e., truth and falsehood) --, and hence with the social norms governing the use of the negative particle -- coupled with the fact that an empirical proposition and its negation have the same content. The abrogation of socially-sanctioned rules like these means that 'necessarily true' and 'necessarily false' sentences (like those considered earlier) aren't just senseless, they are non-sensical. That is, they are incapable of reflecting anything in the world, which means they are incapable of being true and incapable of being false -- i.e., they are incapable of expressing a sense. Whatever we try to do with them collapses into incoherence.⁵⁴

For the last two-and-a-half thousand years metaphysicians have consistently overlooked or ignored this logical feature of empirical propositions. [So, in this respect, DM-theorists are merely, parvenus -- Johnny-come-latelies.]

This age old error convinced Traditional Philosophers that the 'necessity' of metaphysical 'propositions' derives from the nature of reality, not from the distorted language on which they were based.

Innocent-looking linguistic false-steps like these helped motivate the invention of theories that were supposed to 'reflect' the 'essential nature of 'reality', accessible to thought alone. But, if such 'truths' are based on nothing more than linguistic chicanery, on distortion or misuse, then no evidence could be offered in their support --, except, of course, 'evidence' based on yet more linguistic legerdemain.

Metaphysical 'necessity' is thus little more than a shadow cast on the world by distorted language (to paraphrase both Wittgenstein and Marx).

Over the centuries metaphysical systems were developed, not by becoming empirically more refined or increasingly useful (in connection with, for instance, technology or medicine) -- unlike what has proved to be the case with the growth of science -- but by becoming increasingly labyrinthine, convoluted and baroque as further incomprehensible layers of jargon were layered on earlier deposits of linguistically deformed bedrock.

Naturally, this confirms the fact that these two semantic possibilities -- truth and falsehood -- must remain open options if a proposition is to count as empirical, subject to evidential confirmation, and thereby count as "thinkable", in this sense.

In which case, as the above shows, no sentence can express a 'necessary truth' about the world while remaining empirical.⁵⁵

So, despite appearances to the contrary, Lenin's appeal to the 'unthinkability' of 'motion without matter' doesn't in fact say anything at all --, that is, it doesn't say anything empirically determinate. No wonder then that it was actually unthinkable.

[This section represents something of a side-show and may be skipped by anyone wanting to concentrate on the main theme. The only caveat is that subsequent sections might not be fully understood if it is by-passed. Readers who still want to skip this section can begin again here.]

Considerations like these show that indicative sentences conceal a set of diverse logical forms, which is why it is unwise to take at face value superficially similar grammatical features of language. This in turn demonstrates that while sentences like M2-M9 might well be indicative -- with several of them also appearing to be empirical -- they masquerade as empirical propositions, and, as such, fail to express a sense as we have just seen. That is itself a consequence of the conventions ordinary language users have established over the millennia -- by their practice, not in general by their deliberations --, which alone constitute the nature of empirical propositions.

This appears to be unconditionally, or even necessarily, true. However, its 'negation':

isn't false; it is either incomprehensible or, despite appearances to the contrary, it isn't about the number two. [Why that is so should become clear by the end of this sub-section.]

[In what follows, I have confined my comments to seemingly banal sentences, like M2 and M21, in order to (a) explain in what way they are 'true', and (b) help distinguish them from metaphysical-, and DM-'propositions'. However, this isn't meant to be an Essay about 'the nature of mathematics', so complex mathematical 'propositions' will in general be ignored.]

M21 isn't just contingently false -- if it is taken to be a mathematical and not simply a terminological sentence; that is, if it isn't simply viewed as a proposed revision to the names we use in our number system (what I later call the "trivial" option) -- it appears to be 'necessarily false'. But, if we put trivial examples to one side for now (on that, also see below), it is impossible to specify what could possibly make M21 true (and hence M2 false). In that case, we would be in no position to specify what M21 is trying to rule out, and hence we would be in no position to say in what way it falls short of that for it to be false.

Unlike empirical propositions, M2 and M21 don't have the same content, nor do they relate to the same state of affairs, since neither relate to any state of affairs, to begin with. If they did, a comparison with the world, a reference to facts, would be relevant to ascertaining their truth or establishing their falsehood. [Well, what fact or body of facts could decide whether or not M2 is false or is true? The same question confronts M21, too.]

That is because (as we saw earlier), between M2 and M21 there is a change of subject, since if two isn't a number (according to M21) then that use of "two" is different from its use in M2.

M2 expresses a rule for the use of the number word "two" (as a number), since it reflects the role this word occupies in our number system, and how that word is to be used -- it is prescriptive not descriptive. [On why that is decisive, see Note 45a.] At best, M21 (perhaps) records the rejection of that rule -- again, if we ignore trivial examples.

To think otherwise -- i.e., that M21 could express a supposed truth or a supposed falsehood (again assuming M21 doesn't represent a simple terminological revision, which would be the trivial case mentioned earlier) would be to misconstrue the ordinary use of the word "two" (in such a context). A major change of meaning like this, alongside the role sentences like M2 is to play in our number system, would significantly alter the mathematical propositions (equations, etc.) in which this word (or the numeral "2") occurred, and that in turn would have a knock-on effect throughout the entire system.

Some might think that M21 is "logically false" (and thus that M2 is "logically true"), but that would merely attract the sort of questions posed earlier about "necessarily false" and "necessarily true". If it isn't possible to specify conditions under which M21 would be "logically true" (trivial examples excepted, once more), then it would be equally impossible to say under what conditions it would fail to be "logically true", and hence "logically false" (or "necessarily false").

[Of course, it could be argued that M2 is "definitionally true", but that would merely amount to acknowledging that M2 was the expression of a rule, after all.]

Consider now one of the aforementioned trivial cases: suppose that in the course of development of the English language a different word had been chosen in place of "two". In such an eventuality, plainly, not much would change. Suppose, therefore, that in English "Schmoo", or a different symbol for "2" (perhaps "ж"), was used in place of "two" (or "2"). M2 and M21 would then become:

But, as noted above, that, too, would simply represent another minor terminological revision. If this word (or this new symbol) were to be used just as we now use "two" (or "2") then there would be no substantive difference. [On this, also see Note 60.] Clearly, the same comment applies to number words (and symbols) used in other languages.

Some might be tempted to argue that M21 is self-contradictory. This alleged 'self-contradiction' might be expressed as follows, in M21b or M21c:

But, as seems plain, the first use of the word "two" in M21c isn't the same as the second use of "two" in that sentence. In which case, M21c is no more self-contradictory than this would be:

M21d: George W Bush is President of the USA and George H W Bush isn't President of the USA.

Of course, M21d isn't meant to express the same logical form as M21c (plainly M21c contains definite descriptions); it is merely meant to make explicit a change of denotation between the first and the second use of the relevant words. Plainly, in M21d, the first name refers to a different individual then the second. Similarly, in M21c, while the first occurrence of "two" is the familiar number word; the second isn't. Indeed, the second actually says it isn't! Hence, the two halves of M21c do not constitute a contradiction.

So, M2 would itself only become 'false' if one or more of its constituent words changed their meanings (this is the trivial case once more -- for example, if "two" was no longer used to designate the whole number between one and three, and instead came to be the name of, say, a newly discovered planet). But even then, M2 wouldn't be about what we now call "two". Plainly, as soon as anyone attempts to deny that the number two is a number, they automatically cease to talk about the number two. [Once more, what they might be doing in such circumstances is rejecting a rule, but that wouldn't affect how the rest of us use the rules, or number vocabulary, we currently have.]

Hence, despite appearances to the contrary, M21/M21e and M2 don't in fact contradict one another. That is because M21 and/or M21e are either incomprehensible, or they are about something else -- that would be the trivial case, once more. Again, a use of negation here would, at best, amount to the rejection of a rule, or it would be trivial.^{56,

56a}

(i) The false belief that M2 actually stands alone as a mathematical unit, and isn't is part of a number system; or,

(ii) The idea that M2 is a contingent (or even perhaps an empirical) proposition.

But, what makes M2 mathematical is its use in a system of propositions, which are themselves an aspect of historically-conditioned practices inter-linked by rule-governed operations, direct and indirect proofs, inductions, definitions, and practical applications, etc., etc. Moreover, M2 isn't a contingent proposition (except with respect to trivial cases, once more), it is the expression of a rule. M2 it tells us how we use, and are meant to use, this word or symbol. It situates both in an wider system of symbols governed by historically-, and socially-conditioned prescriptions.

The 'truth' of M2 doesn't derive from the way it relates as an 'atomic unit' to an alleged mathematical fact hidden away in some sort of Platonic Heaven (or, indeed, by the way it might relate to an 'abstraction' lodged in someone's brain/'consciousness'), but from its role in the aforementioned system of propositions, connected by applications and proofs -- and by the way it has grown out of, and was developed by, wider social practices. [On this, see Note 56.]

That is why none of us would be able to comprehend an investigation aimed at testing the truth of M2 empirically. In fact, the inappropriateness of any sort of empirical verification of propositions like M2 is connected with their total lack of truth conditions.⁵⁷

Our use of such propositions -- which, as we can see, differs markedly from the way we use and comprehend empirical propositions -- indicates that they have a radically different logical form. The failure of a proposition like M2 to correspond with anything in the world (or, indeed, in 'Platonic Heaven') is revealed by the fact that (barring trivial cases, once more) we would ordinarily fail to understand its 'negation' -- i.e., M21. Trivial cases to one side, again, anyone who asserted M21 wouldn't be making an ordinary sort of factual error -- as they would had they said the following on or after the 25th of June, 2016: "It isn't the case that David Cameron has resigned as UK Prime Minister".

This can also be seen by the way that mathematics is learnt. Children learn this discipline by one or more of the following: repetition (number drilling/recitation), rote learning, repetitive calculations, practical applications, problem solving, and by the use of simple or increasingly complex proofs. They don't do so by 'abstraction'. Children aren't taught to 'abstract' numbers, but to count, and at some point the 'penny drops', as it were -- at which point parents and carers often find it impossible to stop their young pupils counting on and on.... But this is true in general. Understanding mathematical propositions goes hand-in-hand with mastering a skill or a technique, and subsequently by learning proofs, solving practical problems, in tandem with the completion of a variety of operations and guided tasks, etc., etc.^57a

In that case, it wouldn't be possible to declare M2 true because it 'corresponded' to a fact --, or, indeed, false because it didn't -- either in reality or in 'Platonic Heaven'. And that is because it isn't possible to determine what M2 rules out, and hence what it rules in (trivial cases to one side, again), without changing the subject.

This is, of course, independent of the fact that it wouldn't be possible to confirm M2 by comparing it with an abstract fact (even if we could make sense of any such 'fact', never mind how a sentence might even be compared with any sort of 'abstraction'). To understand M2 and its use is to master a technique or a rule; it isn't to have identified a confirming fact or 'abstraction against which it is to be evaluated. No fact could tell a pupil how to proceed mathematically, or how to use M2 correctly. Only the mastery of a rule could do that. In addition, as we have seen, contingent facts can be false. If M21 were an empirical or a contingent proposition, the 'falsehood of M2' would appear to make M21 true. But, as has been pointed out several times, there is a change of subject between M2 and M21, so the supposed truth of M21 would have no bearing on the semantic status of M2 (trivial cases to one side, again). As we have seen, M2 has no negation.

In that case, the mere insertion of a negative particle into a sentence doesn't automatically create the negation of that sentence (where "the negation" here means "A proposition with the opposite truth-value"), as we have repeatedly seen.⁵⁸

In this way we can see once more that the superficial grammatical structure of indicative sentences often obscures their deeper logical form. While empirical sentences may be mapped onto their contradictories by means of the (relevant) addition of a negative particle, that isn't so with non-empirical indicative sentences. This isn't, of course, unconnected with the fact that empirical sentences can be understood before their truth-values are known, whereas propositions like M2 are comprehensible independently of that pre-condition -- they are fully grasped only by those who know how to count and to calculate, etc. In that case, the meaning of M2 must be accounted for in a different way to that of, say, M6:

As has already been pointed out, M6 can be understood well in advance of its truth-value being known; that truth-value can't be ascertained on linguistic or logical grounds alone. That is quite unlike, say, M2 (or even, M1a).

This means that sentences like M2 aren't empirical. In fact, they express rules for the use of certain words (or they are the consequence of the application of those rules); that is, they express the normative application of their key terms, because of which they are incapable of being empirically true or empirically false. Any attempt to view them as empirical soon collapses into incoherence, as we have seen.

[Of course, it isn't being suggested here that children are taught mathematics by leaning to repeat, or internalise, sentences like M2. Children demonstrate they (implicitly) understand M2 by being able to count and do simple arithmetic (etc.) -- as argued earlier.]

As it turns out, the confusion of rules with empirical sentences underlies the failure on the part of Traditional Theorists to see language as a social phenomenon.⁵⁹ That is because such a failure is itself motivated by a determination to view the 'foundations of language' as solely truth-based. Given such an approach, language is thought to be based on empirical or quasi-empirical factors -- such as a capacity to 'represent reality', on its ability to 'reflect the world in the mind' or in 'consciousness' -- rather than on socially-sanctioned rules, conditioned by communal practices and norms. Given the (traditional) view, falsehood is merely an erroneous or a 'partial' application of the 'contents of consciousness', howsoever they are conceived, or it is the result of incorrect connections established between these factors. However, because any such 'representations' can only be compared with other 'representations' (because a layer of 'representations' lies between each 'Knower' and the 'Known' with now way of by-passing or 'burrowing through' it), which, naturally, succeed in leaving the world out of the account, obviating the whole exercise!

[As we will see in Essay Three Part Four, this 'traditional view of falsehood' isn't just circular, it is also incoherent.]

Hence, this approach to knowledge misconstrues social norms (such as those expressed by sentences like M2) as if they were empirical, or even Super-Empirical, propositions. In that case, normative aspects of language (i.e., rules), which are the result of a lengthy process of social development and human interaction, are re-interpreted or re-configured as if they expressed the real relation between things, or were even those things themselves. That is, they are misconstrued as 'necessary' truths that underpin reality, reflecting its "essence" or 'mirroring' abstract truths in 'Platonic Heaven'. In this way, they become Self-Certifying, Super-Empirical Truths, in no need of evidential support. It is this slide that underpins the fetishisation of language upon which Metaphysics (and now DM) is based.

That is why the falsehood of M6, for example, isn't like the 'falsehood' of M2. To repeat, in order to understand M6, no one need know whether it is true or whether it is false. The falsehood of M6 (in this case expressed by the possible truth of its negation, M6a) doesn't affect the meaning of any of the terms it contains. That isn't so with M2 and its apparent negation, M21:

Trivial cases to one side, M2 can't be false. Its 'falsehood' would amount to a change of meaning, not of fact. Hence, M2 may only be accepted or rejected as the expression of a rule of language -- or, indeed, mathematical language.⁶⁰

In fact, modification to sentences like M2 -- by means of analogy or metaphorical extension -- underlies the many major and minor conceptual revisions that mathematical or scientific concepts regularly undergo (saving, of course, trivial examples, once more).

In stark contrast, the rejection, or modification, of propositions like M6 wouldn't herald such a profound change. It is unlikely that Blair's failure to own a copy of TAR will initiate a significant conceptual revolution and modification of the English language.

The fundamental conceptual changes that are set in motion by alterations to the rules that 'govern' a mathematical, scientific or empirical use of language are also connected with factors that make metaphysical-, and DM-theses seem so certain, their rejection so completely "unthinkable" by those who dote on this way of talking. As we have seen, metaphysical sentences arise out of a distorted use of language; in fact, they generally rely on the misconstrual of rules that seek to establish, or which actually constitute, new meanings, which is what generates the belief that they represent profound 'truths' about 'Being', 'consciousness', 'essence', or even 'truth' itself. That in turn is because they all depend on, and are generated from, language alone, not from a practical interface with the world, or even with other individuals. This further motivates the impression that their truth-status is to be established and verified by 'thought' alone.⁶¹

At first sight, the physical structure of the above two sentences means that, on the surface, M9 resembles M2 and because their apparent truth-values (true) are given by, or can be ascertained from, the meaning of their constituent words.

However, M2 isn't a rule because of the meaning of the terms it contains; it is a rule because the social and historical practices upon which it is based constitute and hence express the meaning of its terms. It is how human beings have historically and practically used such terms (counting, measuring, calculating, solving, proving, buying and selling, etc., etc.) that establishes their meaning. These rules (i.e., those like M2) merely express what is part of established practice. This can be seen from the additional fact that mathematics was invented by human beings who were already social animals; it wasn't given to humanity by visiting aliens, nor was it even 'a gift the gods'.⁶²

On the other hand, if, instead, M2 expressed a rule because of the prior meaning of its terms, which had been determined by separate individuals as they 'abstracted' them into existence, de novo, each time (which is what Traditional Theory would have us believe), then their meaning would be independent of (practical) use. Plainly, in that case, meaning wouldn't be based on social factors but on metaphysical, psychological or even idiosyncratic biographical factors of dubious provenance, and even more suspect logical status. [I have covered this topic in much more detail in Essay Three Parts One and Two, and Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Indeed, if that were the case, the meaning of M2's constituent terms would have to have been established before they were used in any social practices, such as counting, measuring, calculating, solving, proving, buying and selling, etc. -- and that itself would only have been achieved by independent 'abstractors' relying (piecemeal) on just such metaphysical, psychological or biographical factors as socially atomised 'thinkers'.⁶³

In sentences like M2, each word would gain its meaning by 'naming' a 'particular' or a 'universal', or by representing an 'abstract' concept/'essence' 'underlying reality', the entire process having taken place in the head of each lone abstractor. It would then be the 'atomised meaning', and socially-isolated origin' of a term (i.e., a 'representation in the mind' of an individual theorist) that would tell each user how it should be used, by them (but no one else). Each user would be constrained in this way to use a given term according to the individual meaning this process had bestowed on each term. Words and their meanings would dictate to users how to use them and that would transform each word (or its inner 'representation') into an agent and each human being into a patient, once more.⁶⁴

But no such scenario is even remotely viable. That is because no fact, abstraction, mental image or 'inner representation' is capable of supplying the normativity that social reinforcement, education and training alone provides. Hence, if the Traditional Picture is to work, these 'abstractions', 'images', 'representations' or 'concepts' would have to replicate inside each head everything that external social factors already provide. So, these 'internal, privatised factors' would have to become agents in their own right, thus fetishising them. The role that the social world occupies would have to be to be projected into each head. This is the ridiculous conclusion that bourgeois individualism and post-Cartesian Philosophy offer those who have surrendered their thought to both. [Again, I have covered this in much greater detail in Essay Three Part Two (link above).]

"It is indeed true that a sign can be lifeless for one, as when one hears an alien tongue or sees an unknown script. But it is an illusion to suppose that what animates a sign is some immaterial thing, abstract object, mental image or hypothesised psychic entity that can be attached to it by a process of thinking. [Wittgenstein (1969), p.4: 'But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.'] One can try to rid oneself of these nonsensical conceptions by simple manoeuvres. In the case of the idealist conception, imagine that we replace the mental accompaniment of a word, which allegedly gives the expression its 'life', by a physical correlate. For example, instead of accompanying the word 'red' with a mental image of red, one might carry around in one's pocket a small red card. So, on the idealist's model, whenever one uses or hears the word 'red', one can look at the card instead of conjuring up a visual image in thought. But will looking at a red slip of paper endow the word 'red' with life? The word plus sample is no more 'alive' than the word without the sample. For an object (a sample of red) does not have the use of the word laid up in it, and neither does the mental image. Neither the word and the sample nor the word and the mental pseudo-sample dictate the use of a word or guarantee understanding.... It seemed to Frege, Wittgenstein claimed, that no adding of inorganic signs, as it were, can make the proposition live, from which he concluded that [for Frege -- RL] 'What must be added is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs'. [Wittgenstein (1969), p.4.] He [Frege -- RL] did not see that such an object, a sense mysteriously grasped in thinking, as it were a picture in which all the rules are laid up, 'would itself be another sign, or a calculus to explain the written one to us'. [Wittgenstein (1974a), p.40.].... To understand a sign, i.e., for it to 'live' for one, is not to grasp something other than the sign; nor is it to accompany the sign with an inner parade of objects in thought. It is to grasp the use of the sign itself." [Hacker (1993a), pp.167-68. Italic emphases in the original. Link added; paragraphs merged.]

But the normative use of language can only be based on, or arise out of, social factors.

Hence, the atomisation of meaning amounts to a fetishisation of language (on this, see Note 64). It would make the 'social interaction' between words (or their inner 'representations') the determinant of how human beings use, or are supposed to use, language. This would be to invert what actually happens: it is human agents who determine the meaning of their words by their social interaction and their relation to the world; it isn't words, 'abstractions', 'representations', 'ideas', 'images' or 'concepts' that do this for them.⁶⁵

In that case, the pattern underlying the linguistic and social contexts that sentences like M2 encapsulate is what gives expression to our rule-governed use of symbols like these, and which therefore constitutes their meaning. That is because patterns like this are based on generality of use -- i.e., on the possibility and the actuality of norm-governed, open-ended social employment of such expressions.^65a

The stark difference between mathematical and ordinary (indicative) sentences can perhaps be seen by the way the use of their terms can be justified. So, if someone were challenged and asked why they had used "2" in the following way, "2 + 7 = 9" (trivial cases to one side, again), all that the one questioned could appeal to would be sentences like M2 and the rules of arithmetic. Either that, or simply retort "That's what I was taught! Were you taught differently?" The above simple equation couldn't be confirmed or justified (nor would it) by comparing it with anything in the world -- or, indeed, with any 'abstractions', 'representations', 'concepts' or 'images' in anyone's head or brain, still less with any 'objects' tucked away in an Ideal form, in 'Platonic Heaven' (or wherever Mathematical Realists imagine these 'objects' hang out).

It might be thought that an attempt could be made to justify "2 + 7 = 9" by actually counting some objects. Certainly an attempt could be made to do that, but that attempt itself would only work if the parties involved already understood how to use the relevant vocabulary, rules of arithmetic and how to count. So, this 'justification' (by actually counting) would in effect be an application of rules already understood and agreed upon.

This can be seen from the fact that if someone were to count two objects, and then count another seven, but declare that there were in total ten objects, they would be told they had made a mistake. Manifestly, we use the rules of arithmetic to decide if counting has been done correctly. We wouldn't even think to revise our rules, or our use of sentences like M2, if they could be so easily 'falsified' in this way.

Once more, that response is entirely different from how we would react if M6 were shown to be false. In that eventuality, no one would think to revise the application or the meaning of any of the words used in that sentence.

In which case, sentences like M2 are used to decide whether or an interface with reality (such as counting) has been carried out correctly. The opposite is the case with M6. Facts are what determine if M6 is true; M6 isn't used to decide if the world is correct.^65b

This is how mathematical words gain their meaning: as 'cogs' in systems of concepts that have grown in relation to our social development across many centuries.⁶⁶ They didn't acquire the meaning they now have piecemeal; that is, they didn't gain their meaning atomistically, before being used socially, practically or contextually.^66a

Mathematical propositions don't gain their semantic status from the way they correspond with objects or structures tucked away in some Ideal, Platonic Realm, or from the way they match 'abstractions' and 'representations' lodged in each individual head.⁶⁷ This means that they aren't 'true' because a process of abstraction established their status (which is quintessentially an individualistic process). They are 'true' because of the conceptual and proof systems to which they belong (which, in the case of mathematics, are themselves reliant on highly regimented social practices), or because they are in some cases constitutive of the practices out of which they have grown.⁶⁸

Consequently, two isn't a number because of what the word "two" (or its original equivalent in ancient languages) 'meant' before it was used in mathematical propositions or in counting, and the like.⁶⁹ On its own divorced from such practices, the sign "2" (or the word "two") would mean nothing.^69a It would just be a mark on the cave wall or the page -- or even a sound pattern in the air. It gains its life from its use in rule-governed, socially-conditioned contexts, which were (and still are) those that take place in everyday life.

More formally, a mathematical context is a system of propositions that has grown up alongside specific social practices that are an extension of the above. So, "two" doesn't gain the meaning it has in isolation, as might appear to be the case if examples like M2 were read as trivial, terminological expressions. M2 can't supply "two" with a meaning that wasn't already there in a surrounding system of practices. Unless the practical and logical space already existed for "two" to slot into as a number term, "two" could be the name of a cat, or the colour of the sky, or it might even be a meaningless inscription. "Two" gains its meaning from the rule-governed, normative role it plays in everyday life, and hence in mathematics, linked by systems of proof, not as a result of correspondence relations, or even by means of the process of abstraction.

This can be seen by the way mathematical propositions are confirmed. We don't subject them to empirical test or perform experiments on them. Nor do we run brain scans to see if others have understood number words in the same way. We apply them successfully within the systems and practices in which members of a speech community were socialised to apply them -- and in the open.⁷⁰

In which case, M2 is empirically neither true nor false; it expresses a normative convention, a rule.⁷¹

In a way that might seen analogous to mathematical propositions, it could be argued that M9 is true because of what its constituent words mean, but the status of sentences like M9 is much more problematic.⁷² As noted above, M2 expresses a rule whose use constitutes the meaning of the number words it uses; hence, it is incapable of being either true or false. Rules like M2 are either useful or they aren't, either practical or they aren't.

But, as far as DM-fans are concerned, M9 seems to be 'necessarily true', as we have seen. Its supposed opposite (which would appear to be M9a, or perhaps more naturally, M9b or M9c) is, according to Lenin, "unthinkable". That might help explain why any attempt made to question the veracity of sentences like M9 would be met with the counter-claim claim that sentences like M9 are true because of what words or concepts like "motion" and "matter" really mean, or even because of the nature of reality, perhaps expressed by P4. This can be seen from the fact that if critics were to reject M9 (for whatever reason), it would be no use dialecticians asking that sceptic to look harder at the evidence -- of which there is none anyway in this respect. After all, what evidence could show M9 is the case? As we know, many Ancient Greek theorists accepted the evidence of their senses -- indeed, everyone's senses, it seems -- that matter is 'naturally motionless' and has to be set in motion by some motive force. In that case, all that a dialectician could do in such circumstances is appeal to the words or concepts involved, and then, with Lenin, declare that motion without matter is "unthinkable" -- which is, of course, why Lenin didn't simply say "It is false/incorrect to claim that motion can occur without matter, and here's the evidence that proves it". It is also why dialecticians (almost to an individual) respond to critics with a "You just don't understand dialectics!" They never say -- concerning the veracity of P4 or M9 -- "You should examine the evidence more carefully".

This hypothetical response -- that dialecticians could only refer itinerant doubters to what certain words or concepts 'really' mean or imply -- itself depends on an archaic way of viewing language. That approach sees discourse as a system of labels attached to -- or which 'represent' or 'reflect' (individually, as linguistic atoms) -- objects and processes in the world. Either that, or words stand for or name 'Forms', 'Essences' or 'Substances' that exist in an 'abstract world', 'Platonic Heaven', Aristotelian 'concept-space', or even as 'images, 'ideas' and 'concepts' in 'the mind'), but they don't serve as a means of communication, a dynamic expression of our communal and inter-personal life. [I have covered this topic in more detail as it relates to DM-theorists and their obsession with "things" -- as in "this thing", "thing-in-itself" and "thing-for-us", etc. -- and "objects") in Note 6a of Essay Three Part Two.]⁷³

Once more, this helps explain why the (proffered) rejoinder noted earlier (i.e., "M9 is true because of what its constituent words mean") could only ever be the last court of appeal for a Dialectical Marxist. There is nothing more that could be said to a sceptic who doubted the 'truth' of such DM-sentences. What little evidence there is that 'substantiates' even a narrow range of DM-'laws' soon proves to be of no help at all (as we have seen in other Essays posted at this site --, especially this one). It would be no use a prospective defender of Lenin pointing to more evidence if the meaning of his words caused the problem.

This 'linguistic defence' (i.e., "M9 is true because of what its constituent words mean") also gives the game away. In the end, DM-sentences are amenable to no other defence. Evidence is in the end irrelevant. DM-'laws' are the product of an idiosyncratic/odd use of language, and, as such, can only be defended linguistically, or 'conceptually'.⁷⁴

But, DM-apologists are social agents, too, so, their theories are sensitive to, or are reflective of, their class origin, current class position and the ideas they had forced down their throats when they were socialised as children -- indeed, as I have argued elsewhere at this site:

The founders of [Dialectical Marxism] weren't workers; they came from a class that educated their children in the Classics, the Bible and Philosophy. This tradition taught that behind appearances there lies a 'hidden world', accessible to thought alone, which is more real than the material universe we see around us.

This world-view was concocted by ideologues of the ruling-class, initially over two thousand years ago. They invented it because if you belong to, benefit from, or help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.

The first and most obvious way is through violence. That will work for a time, but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation (among other things).

Another way is to win over the majority -- or, at least, a significant proportion of 'opinion formers' (bureaucrats, judges, bishops, imams, 'intellectuals', philosophers, teachers, administrators, editors, etc., etc.) -- to the view that the present order either: (i) Works for their benefit, (ii) Defends 'civilised values', (iii) Is ordained of the 'gods', or (iv) Is 'natural' and so can't be fought against, reformed or negotiated with.

Hence, a world-view that rationalises one or more of the above is necessary for the ruling-class to carry on ruling "in the same old way". While the content of ruling-class thought may have changed with each change in the mode of production, its form has remained largely the same for thousands of years: Ultimate Truth (about this 'hidden world') can be ascertained by thought alone, and therefore may be imposed on reality dogmatically and aprioristically. {Some might think this violates central tenets of HM, in that it asserts that some ideas remained to same for many centuries; I have addressed that concern, here.]

So, the non-worker founders of our movement -- who had been educated from childhood to believe there was just such a 'hidden world' lying behind 'appearances', and which governed everything -- when they became revolutionaries, looked for 'logical' principles relating to this abstract world that told them that change was inevitable and part of the cosmic order. Enter dialectics, courtesy of the dogmatic ideas of that ruling-class mystic, Hegel. The dialectical classicists were quite happy to impose their 'new' theory on the world (upside down or the "right way up") -- as, indeed, we saw in Essay Two -- since that is how they had been taught 'genuine' philosophers should behave.

That 'allowed' the founders of [Dialectical Marxism] to think of themselves as special, prophets of the new order, which workers, alas, couldn't quite comprehend because of their defective education, their reliance on ordinary language and the 'banalities of commonsense'.

Fortunately, history has predisposed these dialectical prophets to ascertain truths about this invisible world on their behalf, which 'implied' they were the 'naturally-ordained' leaders of the workers' movement -- 'Great Helmsmen', no less. That in turn meant that they were in addition teachers of the 'ignorant masses', who could thereby legitimately substitute themselves for the majority -- in 'their own interests', of course -- since workers have in general been blinded by 'commodity fetishism', 'formal thinking', or they have been bought off by imperialist 'super profits'. This meant that 'the masses' were 'incapable' of seeing the truth for themselves....

In that case, and in view of what has gone before in this Essay (and this site), DM-theories are little more that misconstrued, or mis-applied linguistic rules. Appearances to the contrary, DM-'laws' aren't expressed by means of what seem to be empirical propositions; they are mis-interpreted rules for the use of Hegelian jargon, imported into Marxism from an ideological tradition that has unimpeachable ruling-class credentials.^74a

This also helps account for the frequent use of modal, emphatic, hyperbolic expressions right across the DM-literature; for example: "Motion must involve a contradiction" (several of which were quoted earlier, but more fully in Essay Two), which follow from this comment by Engels:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted….

"A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases alone added.]

"...[T]he transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa. For our purpose, we could express this by saying that in nature, in a manner exactly fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or subtraction of matter or motion (so-called energy)…. Hence it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion, i.e. without quantitative alteration of the body concerned." [Engels (1954), p.63. Bold emphases alone added.]

Add to that Lenin's comment from earlier -- "Matter without motion is 'unthinkable'" -- and his statement that dialectical logic "requires" or "demands" this or that:

"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…. [D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth' is always concrete, never abstract, as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

"Dialectical materialism is the world outlook of the Marxist-Leninist party.... The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by itself....; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by surrounding phenomena.

"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not in a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development.... The dialectical method therefore requires that phenomena should be considered not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependence, but also from the standpoint of their movement and change....

"Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides...; and that the struggle between these opposites, the struggle between the old and the new, between that which is dying away and that which is being born..., constitutes the internal content of the process of development, the internal content of the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative changes....

"If there are no isolated phenomena in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent, then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of 'eternal justice'.... Contrary to idealism..., Marxist philosophical materialism holds that the world and its laws are fully knowable, that our knowledge of the laws of nature, tested by experiment and practice, is authentic knowledge having the validity of objective truth, and that there are no things in the world which are unknowable, but only things which are as yet not known, but which will be disclosed and made known by the efforts of science and practice." [Stalin (1976b), pp.835-46. Bold emphases added; several paragraphs merged.]

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics.... As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... There is nothing that does not contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist....

"Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena.... Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1937), pp.311-18. Bold emphases added; several paragraphs merged.]

"The dialectical method demands first, that we should consider things, not each by itself, but always in their interconnections with other things.... This struggle is not external and accidental…. The struggle is internal and necessary, for it arises and follows from the nature of the process as a whole. The opposite tendencies are not independent the one of the other, but are inseparably connected as parts or aspects of a single whole. And they operate and come into conflict on the basis of the contradiction inherent in the process as a whole…. Movement and change result from causes inherent in things and processes, from internal contradictions…. Contradiction is a universal feature of all processes…. The importance of the [developmental] conception of the negation of the negation does not lie in its supposedly expressing the necessary pattern of all development. All development takes place through the working out of contradictions -– that is a necessary universal law…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.72, 90, 95, 117; Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

Finally, John Rees's comment, "Totality is an insistence...", also sprang straight out of this emphatic and dogmatic tradition.

This remains is so independently of whether or not such hyper-bold claims are accompanied by an appeal to the alleged definitions of certain words/concepts (e.g., "Motion is the mode of the existence of matter"). Empirical propositions have no need of modal 'strengtheners' of this sort. Who ever says, "Copper must conduct electricity!", or "Science demands that light travels at such-and-such a velocity!"?

"This aspect of dialectics…usually receives inadequate attention: the identity of opposites is taken as the sum total of examples…and not as a law of cognition (and as a law of the objective world)." [Lenin (1961), p.357.]

So, a "law of cognition" needs no help from the grubby, working class world of evidence and facts. Which realisation reminds us why DM-theorists seem happy to impose their ideas on nature and society. [On this, see also here.]

Or, not unless M6b were itself the conclusion of an inference, such as: "Tony Blair told me he owned a copy, so he must own one", or if it were based on a direct observation statement -- for example, "I saw his wife give him a copy as a present, and I later spotted in his bookcase". But even then, the truth or falsehood of M6b would still depend on an interface with the facts at some point, not simply on pure thought.

With M6-type propositions, it is reality that dictates to us whether or not they are true. Our use of sentences like this means we aren't dictating to nature what it must contain or what must be true of it. The exact opposite is the case with metaphysical and dialectical sentences.

M9-type sentences purport to tell us what really must be like, what it must contain. The world has to conform to what they say. Such claims can't be based on an inference from the evidence, either, since there is no body of evidence that could confirm, or even hint at, the truth of any assertion that motion is inseparable from matter, or even that it is "The mode of the existence of matter".

Nevertheless, despite appearances to the contrary, M9 can't be true solely in virtue of what its words mean. Normally, the ordinary-looking words that sentences like M9 employ gain whatever meaning they have from the part they already play in other areas, in wider human practices, those that involve their application in everyday contexts. Divorced from that background the isolated use of specialised or jargonised expressions in sentences like M9 means that they are like fish out of water, as it were. Even though the words used in DM-theories look like ordinary words, their odd use divorces them from the vernacular -- rather like the way that the theological use of words like "father" and "son" to describe 'God' and 'Christ' divorce them from their everyday meaning, too.

There are no real world systems -- i.e., systems pertaining to material practice and everyday life -- in which the idiosyncratic employment of M9's constituent terms has a life (hence, a meaning) other than these novel, specialised, isolated contexts. And, as we saw in Essay Nine Part One, DM-theories play no part even in the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries, nor do they feature in their agitation or propagandisation of the working class.

Indeed, metaphysical 'sound bites' like M9 provide the only semantic backdrop for the use of such words. Artificial and contrived DM-contexts provide a unique background for these 'dialectical nuggets', and this they do in non-practical (hence, non-material) surroundings -- quite unlike mathematical propositions, which they might appear to emulate. Isolated from material contexts in this way, the connections ordinary-looking words used by dialecticians have with the typographically similar, everyday words (from which they were allegedly 'derived', or possibly even 'abstracted') have been irreversibly cut. Because DM-jargon isn't based on material practice (that was demonstrated in Essay Nine Part One) -- and can't be used in connection with the working class, or even the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries -- it either has no meaning, or the usual meanings of the words employed denies sentences like M1a any sense, as we have seen. This, naturally, renders them not just non-sensical, but incoherent, too.^74a1

It is no surprise, therefore, to find that the use of such terms in sentences like these results in confusion and incomprehension. Nor is it any surprise to see Lenin's words fall apart and then collapse into incoherence so readily.^74b

In this at least Lenin is in 'good' company: metaphysical theories also fall apart as incoherent non-sense, only not quite as readily as the runt of the metaphysical litter, DM.

As we have seen, sentences that express (or attempt to express) rules governing our use of words are invariably mis-interpreted by DM-theorists and metaphysicians in general as if they were empirical propositions of a special, uniquely profound sort. That is, they are viewed as Super-Scientific Truths, capable of revealing the underlying 'secrets' of 'Being'. Unfortunately, we have also seen this means that such sentences turn out to be non-sensical. Even worse, because they misuse and thereby distort language they are incoherent non-sense.⁷⁵

Theoretical sentences like M9 -- but more specifically, P4 --, frequently depend on, or give rise to, a range of associated 'propositions' from which they have been 'derived', or which help 'explain' their supposed content. But, as 'metaphysical statements', they stand-alone. That is, they confront the reader as isolated philosophical 'gems', as fundamental 'truths', like these: "I think, therefore I am" (the Cogito of Descartes); "Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen" (Anaxagoras); "To be it be perceived" (Berkeley); "Time is a relation" (paraphrasing Kant and Leibniz); "The whole is more than the sum of the parts" (Metaphysical Holists of every stripe), "Every determination is also a negation" (Spinoza and Hegel); "Truth is always concrete, never abstract" (paraphrasing Plekhanov and Lenin); "All bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour...they are never equal to themselves" (Trotsky), "To be is to be the value of a bound variable" (Quine); "Existence precedes essence" (paraphrasing Existentialists like Sartre); "The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror" (Gadamer); "All that is rational is real" (Hegel and George Novack); and so on. [Several more of these 'philosophical gems' can be found here.]^75a0

Philosophical 'jewels' like these have traditionally been mined, cleaned and polished into glittering splendour by socially-isolated thinkers, who 'discovered' these treasures buried just below the surface of 'appearances' by the exercise of thought alone.^75a

[By "socially-isolated, I don't mean to suggest they weren't part of, or weren't operating within, a philosophical tradition, or that in some cases they didn't belong to a group or school of other thinkers, or even that they all lived alone, like hermits. What I am suggesting is that, as far as their philosophical 'discoveries' were concerned, they were in general divorced from ordinary life (i.e., they were in general isolated from the working class and ordinary human beings). In addition, the vast majority enjoyed a privileged lifestyle, free from daily toil, and were often supported, subsidised or patronised by members of the ruling-class. Either that or they were 'employed' by the Church, had 'independent means' or belonged to the 'privileged elite' themselves. (I will cover this topic in more detail in Parts Two and Seven of Essay Twelve.)]

But, ideas like these were never based on -- nor were they even derived from -- ordinary practice and everyday language, otherwise the rest of us wouldn't need to be informed of them.^75b

Indeed, if 'philosophical discoveries' like these had ever been based on any sort of interface with the ordinary, the quotidian, they wouldn't have struck their inventors (or anyone else, for that matter) as especially 'profound', painstakingly excavated for us by their valiant efforts, aided or not by what is, in effect, the metaphysical equivalent of a JCB: Hegel's Logic. If just anyone could come out with such ontological sparklers, who would employ or patronise a single high-priced philosopher. How much social esteem would devolve to those who came up with these theoretical trinkets is any old Tom, Dick or Harriett could do likewise?

In fact, theses like these stage a dramatic entrance into the world of 'learning' as glittering linguistic 'jewels' ('solitaire diamonds', if you will). They gain their 'meaning' -- their metaphysical shine -- solely from the artificial setting arranged for them by their inventors, making an entrance as if they were "news from nowhere", shafts of metaphysical light, 'Cosmic Verities' written on tablets of stone.

And, surprise, surprise: the vast majority of educated individuals fall for these linguistic 'Q-Drops' time and again.^75c

Nevertheless, countless generations of 'Metaphysical Prophets' invented and then promulgated these Scintillating Truths, operating almost like 'Divine Intermediaries' -- each one a latter day Hermes (the Greek Messenger of the 'Gods') -- acting as if the 'real meaning' of the ordinary-looking words they utilised is known only to them, when in fact these idiosyncratic 'meanings' had been bestowed on them because of the peculiar role they occupied in (useless) sentences like P4 and L1, a result of pioneering experiments in 'innovative' linguistic chicanery. To that end, these 'intrepid thinkers' regularly introduced novel Proper Names and Neologisms, which were pressed into service as labels for the 'abstract' objects and concepts they conjured into existence merely by thinking about them -- such as, "Being" "Essence", "Form", "Universal", "Haecciety", "Representation", "Quale", "Trope", "Thing-in-Itself", and the like.⁷⁶

The above supposition (whereby Traditional Theorists imagine they were dealing with 'real meanings' and not these specially-created 'distortions') was further motivated by the idea that words gain their meaning individually, atomistically, as linguistic or semantic 'units'. That was supposed to be because of:

(i) A direct, unmediated connection each term supposedly enjoyed with 'reality itself'; or,

(ii) The intimate link between the 'concepts' involved and various 'mental processes' taking place in each individual theorist's brain (via the mythical 'process of abstraction').

That helps explain why this odd use of language is and always has been central to Metaphysics -- and now DM -- again, as we saw in Essay Three Part One and elsewhere at this site.

Hence, for Traditional Thinkers, at first sight, the assumption that the aforementioned 'names' gain their meaning directly and solely from whatever they supposedly named seems entirely plausible, just as it seems no less plausible to suppose that language (i.e., real language, philosophical language -- not the 'woefully defective vernacular') is based on just such an atomised, socially-isolated naming ritual, which is uniquely able to lock onto on the 'Essence of Being' by the mere expedient of wishing it were so. Naturally, this trades on the further (unsupported) idea that there are such things as 'Essences', to begin with. That is yet another dogma which was simply assumed to be true, but never actually shown to be the case.⁷⁷

That is, of course, one reason why Traditional Philosophers insisted that the meaning of words is determined by such atomistic criteria; in post-Renaissance Thought this was in effect a key factor in the creation of a 'private language' each uses alone understood -- more recently 'inner speech', or maybe even a 'language of thought', has now assumed pride of place in the theoretical pecking order. All this was allegedly the result of 'inner acts' of naming certain Ideas, Categories, or Concepts held 'in the mind'/'consciousness', put there by a 'process of abstraction', each one re-configured perhaps by a stipulative definition, or a result of the "unfolding of a genetically determined program" in or by one our 'mental modules'. [I have subject speculative talk like this to close critical scrutiny in Essay Thirteen Part Three, here.]

This happens to be a danger Bertell Ollman warned about (in relation to 'abstractionism' and processes like the above) several years ago (as noted in Essay Three Part Two and quoted earlier):

As is the case with Ollman -- and, indeed, the same applies to everyone else who has written about this obscure 'process' (many of whom have been quoted in both Parts of Essay Three) --, we aren't told by Sayer how anyone actually manages to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a 'private language'.

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

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

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

It is no accident, therefore, that this approach not only torpedoes belief in the social nature of language, it is also based on a class-motivated rejection of the material roots of discourse in everyday life (explored in Part Two of Essay Twelve -- summarised here). Nor is it merely coincidental it was promoted by thinkers who were openly sympathetic to wider ruling-class interests and who almost invariably favoured this anti-Marxist view of language.⁷⁸

Conversely, it is no coincidence either that ordinary language assumed its central role in Analytic Philosophy, among left-leaning "Linguistic Philosophers" (and those influenced by Marx, like Wittgenstein), just when the working class was entering the stage of history as a significant social and political force.⁷⁹

[P5 is what I have elsewhere called 'Spinoza's Greedy Principle' [or, SGP] -- which neither Hegel nor Spinoza even attempted to justify. [I have nevertheless debunked it here and here.]

The truth of 'atomic' sentences (like the above) is somehow supposed to depend on the meaning of the words they contain. But, such a use of words can't determine the sense of any sentences formed from them.⁸⁰ Words gain their meaning from their applicability in an indefinitely large set of socially-sanctioned, communally-motivated contexts.⁸¹ They don't have a meaning bestowed upon them first, divorced from linguistic or social contexts, which 'meaning' then enables them to function in sentences, any more than a lump of gold first gains its value in nature, or even in society, on its own, as an isolated 'commodity' unconnected with certain forms of social organisation and collective labour, only to enter the economy afterwards with a value already attached to it. Meaning is no more a natural, individualistic property than value. If the contrary supposition were the case, communication would be impossible (as Ollman pointed out).⁸²

[I have covered this aspect of language more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Three, for example, here, here, here, and here.]

However, ex hypothesi, there are no other contexts in which metaphysical atoms (like M1a, M9 and P4) can make a practical or useful appearance, other than those that might help fuel endless academic debate. The fundamental propositions of Metaphysics (such as, P4, M8 and M9) stand alone as isolated nuggets of truth, core precepts, and even foundational principles (the latter of which can safely be said about P5, for example). This means that in such airless surroundings the constituent words of M9, for instance, are in fact meaningless -- despite the typographical similarity they have with ordinary words. That is because they possess no connection with ordinary contexts that are themselves embedded in, or related to, material practice. That is, of course, one reason why M1a, for example, so readily collapses into incoherence.

[Of course, the above depends on how we interpret the word "meaning"; I will say more about that presently.]

In a similar vein (no pun intended), Gold isn't just valueless in nature, it is incapable of gaining a value by itself and of its own efforts -- or, indeed, by the efforts of lone prospectors and refiners. And that metal, too, would remain valueless if it had no connection with historically-conditioned material practices in a sufficiently developed society and economy.

Of course, to suppose otherwise --, i.e., to imagine that words, or their 'inner representations', determine their own meaning independently of the use to which human beings put them in everyday contexts -- would be to fetishise them, as noted above.

Indeed, this would be tantamount to believing that words (again, or their 'inner representations') enjoyed a social life of their own anterior to, and explanatory of, the linguistic communion that takes place between human beings. If words (etc.) did in fact acquire their own meanings, piecemeal in such a manner and those meanings followed words about the place like shadows, then the idea that language is a social phenomenon would itself assume an entirely different meaning. In that case, discourse would still be social, but that would be because words were the social beings, not humans. That would in turn mean that they had gifted that property to our use of language, not the other way round!

If that were so, humanity would be social because our words already were!⁸³

We are now in a position to understand why: the supposition that a word (or, at least, its physical embodiment, its 'inner representation', perhaps) can motivate a human agent (causally or in any other way)⁸⁴ to regard it as the repository of its own meaning -- so that inferences can be made from ink marks on the page (or from 'images', 'ideas', and 'representations' in the head) to 'Super-Empirical Truths' about 'Being', or whatever -- would be to misconstrue the products of the social relations among human beings (i.e., words) as if they were their own autonomous semantic custodians, and could act as creators, carriers and enforcers of their own meaning. In effect, that would be to anthropomorphise words, treating them as if they had their own history, social structure and mode of development. In this way, the social nature of language would reappear in an inverted form as an expression of the social life of words (etc.). Humanity would be atomised, linguistic signs (etc.) socialised!⁸⁵

If that were so, and given the additional fact that meaning in language is an important cultural force that helps drive human social development, Marx and Engels should perhaps have written the following:

What goes on in the external world would then be a projection of what goes on in each head. This is once again the RRT -- only now it has been animated!

In that case, M9, P4 and even P5 can't be true in virtue of the meanings of any of their words -- for no meaning has yet been given to such an idiosyncratic use of language by human beings engaged in any form of material practice.

If, however, an attempt were made to specify the meaning of constituent words in a piecemeal fashion, a rule would be required.⁸⁶ To suppose that there is some sort of connection between a rule and reality (determined, perhaps, by a physical law) would be no help, either. If a rule were to depend on such a connection, it would become an empirical proposition, and thus cease to be a rule.⁸⁷

Unfortunately, the vast majority of philosophers have so far overlooked, or have been blind to, this seemingly insignificant point.⁸⁸

[This sub-section is a recap of earlier results, but from a slightly different angle. It can be skipped by anyone who has 'got the point'. Begin again here.]

M22: "[M]otion [is] an inseparable property of matter." [Lenin (1972), p.323. Italic emphasis added.]

In so far as M22 purports to inform us about the properties of matter (in the real world), it looks like a scientific statement. However, as we have seen, when examined it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Contrast M22 with the following:

Here, we can imagine conditions under which M23 would be false and M23a true (think of ice or steam). But, M22 is a very much stronger claim than M23, and is clearly connected with M1a (or, indeed, with M9 and P4). We can see that if we examine it more closely.^88a

If M22 is re-written slightly and tidied up to eliminate the unnecessary detail, it would become M24:

M24 is apparently always true; its 'truth' is clearly connected with the supposed meaning of words like "motion" and "inseparable", etc., both of which were ultimately based on the presumed truth of P4.

By asserting M24, Lenin certainly didn't mean to suggest that even if we were to try really, really hard we would still fail to separate the two words or 'concepts', "motion" and "matter" (what they meant or what they allegedly referred to) in our thoughts. Lenin plainly wasn't informing us that while such a separation was a particularly difficult physical or mental task, we could still make some attempt to imagine a scenario where they were separated. He was claiming that we would always find we never succeeded -- even more so than a suggestion that a normal human being could eat an entire adult Blue Whale in less than a minute could be true.

Lenin was clearly alluding to a connection between matter and motion that was much tighter than this. He was perhaps reminding us of the futility of even trying -- that this wasn't even an option --, just as it wouldn't be an option for anyone to try to disassociate oddness from the number three, or the concept, king-killer, from regicide, for instance.⁸⁹

Hence, if we were to view M23 exactly as Lenin viewed M24, it would mean that not only could water not be non-liquid, nothing other than water could be liquid, either. It would therefore imply that water wasn't just the only liquid, it was the only liquid that could exist in the entire universe -- and that liquidity was the only conceivable form of water. Of course, any such claim would be ridiculous, but Lenin is making a hyper-bold claim like this about matter and motion, not water and liquidity.

That is because, for Lenin, motion wasn't just one of the defining characteristics of matter, nothing that moves (outside of the 'mind') would fail to be material. Motion is, as it were, super-glued to matter, and only to matter -- and, indeed, vice versa -- according to Lenin. [Lenin says this over and over again in MEC; on that see here.] And this caveat covers everything external to the mind in the entire universe!

Hence, the same would have to be true with respect to water, if we were to read M23 as strictly as we are meant to interpret M24.

The main verb in M24 is clearly in the indicative mood. But, if M24 were an empirical proposition, its negation, M24a, would make sense, but for Lenin it doesn't -- indeed, it is "unthinkable", unlike the negation of M23 (i.e., M23a). That is because, once again, M24 holds open no truth possibilities; it asserts only one envisaged necessity.

Lenin obviously believed that it was impossible even to think the falsehood of M24 -- any more than it might be possible to think there were or could be triangles with four vertices. As we have seen, in this he openly agreed with Engels:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted. A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

Nevertheless, and once again, the indicative mood of the main verb in M24 hides its real nature. Only a consideration of the overall use of this claim (that is, its role within Lenin's 'system' of ideas) in the end reveals it is a metaphysical sentence, which plainly wasn't derived from the evidence but from the supposed meaning of a handful of words.

To this end, it is worth asking what could possibly make M24 'true', and, a fortiori, what might conceivably make it false.

Indicative sentences are normally true or false according to the way the world happens to be, but this sentence can't be false no matter what happens in the world. So, its falsehood can't be based on any conceivable state of affairs. As noted earlier, its truth seems to arise from linguistic (or conceptual) considerations alone, not from 'reality'. This can be seen not just because of its imputed necessity but by the way Lenin actually imagined he had established its veracity. He simply relied on its supposed self-evidence, the self-evidence of P4 and his 'definition' of matter. He didn't even think to support it with any data (or even with much of an argument!). Its semantic status was underpinned by what Lenin plainly took its words to mean. Its truth was thus internally-generated, not 'externally' confirmed.^89a

Nevertheless, what could possibly make this set of words 'necessarily true', according to Lenin? M24 is just a string of words. It would have to have some sort of projective or representational relation to the real world for it to be true, for it to be a true picture of our world, not some alternative, 'parallel', or fictional 'universe'.⁹⁰

Well, whatever it is that succeeds in achieving that must also make the following sentences false:

But, ex hypothesi, M18 and M19 (or their content) are "unthinkable", according to Lenin. As soon as we think either of them (or their content) we face the sort of problems covered earlier.

Such 'necessary' truths make the possibilities they rule out (i.e., M18 or M19) not just 'false', but Super-False, and hence "unthinkable". This they do while at the same time requiring us to have to think about whatever it is they seek to exclude so that it can be rejected out-of-hand. But, in order to do that, we should have to be able to separate, in thought, motion from matter in order to be able to declare that it can't be done -- even in thought! Unless we could separate motion from matter in thought we would have no idea what we are supposed to rule out, and hence no idea what we were meant to rule in by accepting M24.

Hence, if we are capable of grasping the truth of M24, we must already have some comprehension of what would make it false, i.e., what M24 is ruling out.

This (by-now-familiar) problem has arisen from the fact that Lenin entertained a 'necessary' truth (M24) the content of which is impossible to state in a comprehensible form.

Metaphysics consigns countless 'propositions' like M18 and M19 to linguistic limbo in this way. By adopting this approach to 'knowledge', DM-theorists similarly consign their ideas to outer darkness.

As we have seen several times throughout this site, both metaphysical and DM-sentences readily fall apart as incoherent into non-sense. They can't fail to do so. While appearing to mimic empirical propositions they turn out to be radically different, masquerading as ordinary, but far more profound, declarative sentences. Central to this (presumed) role as especially deep 'truths' is their distorted use of language; in many cases they also turn out to be mis-identified or even garbled linguistic rules.⁹¹

Such sentences often attempt to say what can only be shown by the ordinary use of language.⁹² And this they do surreptitiously and dishonestly.

Metaphysics misconstrues conventions and forms of representation expressed in, and by, our socially-, and materially-conditioned use of language, but in a form that re-configures whatever this discursive charade supposedly uncovers as Super-Empirical, 'necessary truths', quite unlike the ordinary, mundane truths associated with everyday life and ordinary practice -- or even with genuine science. Empirical propositions hold open two possibilities: truth or falsehood. Metaphysical sentences, while purporting to be empirical, close one of these off. In doing that, they end up denying for themselves any sense whatsoever; they collapse into incoherent and non-sensical strings of words.⁹³

Despite appearances to the contrary, the complete rejection of Metaphysics advocated at this site doesn't draw an a priori limit to the search for knowledge, it merely reminds us that truths about nature can't be expressed by a radical misuse of language. Nor can they be formulated in a way that renders supporting evidence irrelevant, either.

Since metaphysical theories don't present genuine empirical possibilities, their repudiation and subsequent eradication can't adversely affect the scientific investigation of the world, nor can they interfere with any attempt to change it.

Metaphysical theses don't represent profound, ambitious or risky conjectures that merit our attention or even respect; they contain nothing but empty phrases. As such they are indeed "houses of cards" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein (2009), p.54, §118) --, which, at best, express self-important confusion, at worst a ruling-class 'view of reality'.

Metaphysical pseudo-propositions violate the rules governing the formation of comprehensible empirical sentences by undermining the semantic possibilities that the latter hold out. In addition, they misuse ordinary words while pretending to extend, alter or 'sharpen' their meaning. Supposedly providing insight into the 'essential nature of reality', metaphysical and DM-theses attempt to derive substantive truths about the world from thought, or from words, alone. They thus possess an entirely undeserved mystique, which arises from their chameleonic outer facade -- that is, they resemble ordinary empirical propositions, but pretend to inform us of 'necessary' or core features of reality. But that outer facade only succeeds in concealing the fact that they thereby reduce themselves to non-sensicality and incoherence.

As should seem clear, these deflationary conclusions rule out the possibility of any future Metaphysics (including the fourth-rate version found in DM). That, of course, means the traditional approach to 'philosophical knowledge' isn't a viable option. But that doesn't mean that if we were cleverer than we now are, if we knew much more, we would be able to formulate and comprehend such Super-Truths. There is nothing there which Metaphysics can even hope or pretend to find so that a search of some sort might be launched. The language that metaphysicians (and Dialectical Marxists) themselves use rules these out as viable options from the start. This ancient 'discipline' presents us with no viable possibilities --, any more than the supposition that there is or might a 'free kick' in chess or LBW in basketball. The search for metaphysical 'truth' is therefore analogous to looking for a goal in tennis or a home run in snooker. We should therefore treat the search for such 'truths' as we would a proposed expedition to hunt for the Jabberwocky.^93a

Contrary to expectations, the repudiation of Metaphysics in fact opens up the conceptual space for science to flourish. In this way, scientists are free to formulate theories that possess true or false empirical implications. A fortiori, the latter won't depend solely on the meanings of the words they contain, but on the way the world happens to be. This wouldn't (and couldn't) be the case if science were based on Metaphysics. In such an eventuality scientific truth, per impossible, would depend solely on the meaning of words, not on any actual state of the world.

Hence, to paraphrase Kant: it is necessary to destroy Metaphysics -- and DM -- in order to make room for science.⁹⁴

01. Much of the background to this Essay is based on Wittgenstein's work, helpfully outlined for us in Harrison (1979) and Hanna and Harrison (2004). See also, Baker and Hacker (1984, 1988, 2005a). Some of what I have to say here coincides with the anti-metaphysical views expressed in Rorty (1980) (this links to a PDF). I distance myself, however, from Rorty's anti-Realism, his (inconsistent) attempt to establish a 'metaphysics of mind', and his rather odd equation of Philosophy with some form of literary criticism.

[Rorty defends his view of Wittgenstein in Rorty (2010). On that, see Horwich (2010), which is an effective reply (not that I agree with everything Horwich has to say!).]

1. Some might take exception to my use of "metaphysical" to describe such sentences. If so, they can substitute the words "dogmatic", "essentialist" or "necessitarian" for "metaphysical" (in phrases like "metaphysical theory") used throughout this Essay. That done, not much will be changed by such terminological alterations. It is the logical status of these sentences that is important, not what we call them. [More on that below.]

Here are a few relevant quotations about motion and matter from Engels and Lenin:

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transferred. When motion is transferred from one body to another, it may be regarded, in so far as it transfers itself, is active, as the cause of motion, in so far as the latter is transferred, is passive. We call this active motion force, and the passive, the manifestation of force. Hence it is as clear as daylight that a force is as great as its manifestation, because in fact the same motion takes place in both. A motionless state of matter is therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas...." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]

"Motion in the most general sense, conceived as the mode of existence, the inherent attribute, of matter, comprehends all changes and processes occurring in the universe, from mere change of place right up to thinking." [Engels (1954), p.69. Bold emphasis added.]

"In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (read by Marx in the manuscript): 'The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved...by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science....' 'Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....'" [Lenin (1914), p.8. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972), p.311. Italics in the original.]

"Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Ibid., p.312. Italics in the original.]

"[I]t is the sole categorical, this sole unconditional recognition of nature's existence outside the mind and perception of man that distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativist agnosticism and idealism." [Ibid., p.314. Italics in the original.]

"The fundamental characteristic of materialism is that it starts from the objectivity of science, from the recognition of objective reality reflected by science." [Ibid., pp.354-55. Italics in the original.]

Nevertheless, as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, even though the above two believed motion and matter were inseparable, Lenin's other defining criteria for anything to be classified as matter actually fail to rule out the existence of motionless matter.

Anyway, as these passages reveal, Lenin characterised matter in a rather odd way: i.e., as that which exists "objectively" outside, and independently of, the mind. As noted above, he also quoted Engels approvingly to the effect that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter.

But, if all motion is relative to a given reference or inertial frame, then it is entirely possible to model/depict certain bodies as motionless with respect to some frame or other. The contrary view may only be maintained if space is held to be Absolute. That condition aside, this means that motion is reference frame-sensitive. If motion can actually disappear (locally), or a body's velocity can become zero with a change of reference frame, it can't be the mode of the existence of matter, as Lenin and Engels surmised. In which case, it is perhaps more appropriate to characterise Engels and Lenin's way of depicting motion as a form of representation and, as such, regard it as convention-sensitive.

"Form of representation" will be covered more fully Essay Thirteen Part Two; however, the term is connected with the following comments of Wittgenstein's:

"Newtonian mechanics, for example, imposes a unified form on the description of the world. Let us imagine a white surface with irregular black spots on it. We then say that whatever kind of picture these make, I can always approximate as closely as I wish to the description of it by covering the surface with a sufficiently fine square mesh, and then saying of every square whether it is black or white. In this way I shall have imposed a unified form on the description of the surface. The form is optional, since I could have achieved the same result by using a net with a triangular or hexagonal mesh. Possibly the use of a triangular mesh would have made the description simpler: that is to say, it might be that we could describe the surface more accurately with a coarse triangular mesh than with a fine square mesh (or conversely), and so on. The different nets correspond to different systems for describing the world. Mechanics determines one form of description of the world by saying that all propositions used in the description of the world must be obtained in a given way from a given set of propositions -- the axioms of mechanics. It thus supplies the bricks for building the edifice of science, and it says, 'Any building that you want to erect, whatever it may be, must somehow be constructed with these bricks, and with these alone.' And now we can see the relative position of logic and mechanics. (The net might also consist of more than one kind of mesh: e.g. we could use both triangles and hexagons.) The possibility of describing a picture like the one mentioned above with a net of a given form tells us nothing about the picture. (For that is true of all such pictures.) But what does characterize the picture is that it can be described completely by a particular net with a particular size of mesh. Similarly the possibility of describing the world by means of Newtonian mechanics tells us nothing about the world: but what does tell us something about it is the precise way in which it is possible to describe it by these means. We are also told something about the world by the fact that it can be described more simply with one system of mechanics than with another." [Wittgenstein (1972), 6.341-6.342, pp.137-39. Paragraphs merged.]

Of course, a form of representation is much more involved than the above passage might suggest (for instance, it leaves out of account how theories are often inter-linked or are coordinated with one another, and it seems to suggest that physics is an a-historical, non-social discipline). Thomas Kuhn's more considered thoughts about what he calls a "paradigm" are, in some respects, a little closer to what is meant by "form of representation" at this site -- Kuhn (1970, 1977, 1996, 2000). See also Lakatos and Musgrave (1970) -- especially Masterman (1970) --, as well as Sharrock and Reed (2002). This topic is also connected with Wittgenstein's ideas about "criteria" and "symptoms". [On that, see here. Cf., also, Glock (1996), pp.129-35. Some of the background to that way of viewing science can be found in Brockhaus (1991), pp.215-50. As noted above, I will say more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

Update October 2011: A recent example of the employment of just such a form of representation (or, to be more precise, several such forms) might assist the reader understand this phrase a little more clearly. In late September 2011 the news media were full of stories about an experiment which appeared to show that a beam of neutrinos had exceeded the speed of light. Here is how the New Scientist handled the story (the relevant aspects of a range of different but intersecting forms of representation being employed here -- albeit expressed rather sketchily -- have been highlighted in bold):

"Subatomic particles have broken the universe's fundamental speed limit, or so it was reported last week. The speed of light is the ultimate limit on travel in the universe, and the basis for Einstein's special theory of relativity, so if the finding stands up to scrutiny, does it spell the end for physics as we know it? The reality is less simplistic and far more interesting. 'People were saying this means Einstein is wrong,' says physicist Heinrich Päs of the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany. 'But that's not really correct.' Instead, the result could be the first evidence for a reality built out of extra dimensions. Future historians of science may regard it not as the moment we abandoned Einstein and broke physics, but rather as the point at which our view of space vastly expanded, from three dimensions to four, or more. 'This may be a physics revolution,' says Thomas Weiler at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who has devised theories built on extra dimensions. 'The famous words 'paradigm shift' are used too often and tritely, but they might be relevant.' The subatomic particles -- neutrinos -- seem to have zipped faster than light from CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to the OPERA detector at the Gran Sasso lab near L'Aquila, Italy. It's a conceptually simple result: neutrinos making the 730-kilometre journey arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than they would have if they were travelling at light speed. And it relies on three seemingly simple measurements, says Dario Autiero of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyon, France, a member of the OPERA collaboration: the distance between the labs, the time the neutrinos left CERN, and the time they arrived at Gran Sasso.

"But actually measuring those times and distances to the accuracy needed to detect nanosecond differences is no easy task. The OPERA collaboration spent three years chasing down every source of error they could imagine...before Autiero made the result public in a seminar at CERN on 23 September. Physicists grilled Autiero for an hour after his talk to ensure the team had considered details like the curvature of the Earth, the tidal effects of the moon and the general relativistic effects of having two clocks at different heights (gravity slows time so a clock closer to Earth's surface runs a tiny bit slower). They were impressed. 'I want to congratulate you on this extremely beautiful experiment,' said Nobel laureate Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after Autiero's talk. 'The experiment is very carefully done, and the systematic error carefully checked.' Most physicists still expect some sort of experimental error to crop up and explain the anomaly, mainly because it contravenes the incredibly successful law of special relativity which holds that the speed of light is a constant that no object can exceed. The theory also leads to the famous equation E = mc². Hotly anticipated are results from other neutrino detectors, including T2K in Japan and MINOS at Fermilab in Illinois, which will run similar experiments and confirm the results or rule them out (see 'Fermilab stops hunting Higgs, starts neutrino quest'). In 2007, the MINOS experiment searched for faster-than-light neutrinos but didn't see anything statistically significant. The team plans to reanalyse its data and upgrade the detector's stopwatch. 'These are the kind of things that we have to follow through, and make sure that our prejudices don't get in the way of discovering something truly fantastic,' says Stephen Parke of Fermilab.

"In the meantime, suggests Sandip Pakvasa of the University of Hawaii, let's suppose the OPERA result is real. If the experiment is tested and replicated and the only explanation is faster-than-light neutrinos, is E = mc² done for? Not necessarily. In 2006, Pakvasa, Päs and Weiler came up with a model that allows certain particles to break the cosmic speed limit while leaving special relativity intact. 'One can, if not rescue Einstein, at least leave him valid,' Weiler says. The trick is to send neutrinos on a shortcut through a fourth, thus-far-unobserved dimension of space, reducing the distance they have to travel. Then the neutrinos wouldn't have to outstrip light to reach their destination in the observed time. In such a universe, the particles and forces we are familiar with are anchored to a four-dimensional membrane, or 'brane', with three dimensions of space and one of time. Crucially, the brane floats in a higher dimensional space-time called the bulk, which we are normally completely oblivious to. The fantastic success of special relativity up to now, plus other cosmological observations, have led physicists to think that the brane might be flat, like a sheet of paper. Quantum fluctuations could make it ripple and roll like the surface of the ocean, Weiler says. Then, if neutrinos can break free of the brane, they might get from one point on it to another by dashing through the bulk, like a flying fish taking a shortcut between the waves....

"This model is attractive because it offers a way out of one of the biggest theoretical problems posed by the OPERA result: busting the apparent speed limit set by neutrinos detected pouring from a supernova in 1987. As stars explode in a supernova, most of their energy streams out as neutrinos. These particles hardly ever interact with matter (see 'Neutrinos: Everything you need to know'). That means they should escape the star almost immediately, while photons of light will take about 3 hours. In 1987, trillions of neutrinos arrived at Earth 3 hours before the dying star's light caught up. If the neutrinos were travelling as fast as those going from CERN to OPERA, they should have arrived in 1982. OPERA's neutrinos were about 1000 times as energetic as the supernova's neutrinos, though. And Pakvasa and colleagues' model calls for neutrinos with a specific energy that makes them prefer tunnelling through the bulk to travelling along the brane. If that energy is around 20 gigaelectronvolts -- and the team don't yet know that it is -- 'then you expect large effects in the OPERA region, and small effects at the supernova energies,' Pakvasa says. He and Päs are meeting next week to work out the details. The flying fish shortcut isn't available to all particles. In the language of string theory, a mathematical model some physicists hope will lead to a comprehensive 'theory of everything', most particles are represented by tiny vibrating strings whose ends are permanently stuck to the brane. One of the only exceptions is the theoretical 'sterile neutrino', represented by a closed loop of string. These are also the only type of neutrino thought capable of escaping the brane.

"Neutrinos are known to switch back and forth between their three observed types (electron, muon and tau neutrinos), and OPERA was originally designed to detect these shifts. In Pakvasa's model, the muon neutrinos produced at CERN could have transformed to sterile neutrinos mid-flight, made a short hop through the bulk, and then switched back to muon before reappearing on the brane. So if OPERA's results hold up, they could provide support for the existence of sterile neutrinos, extra dimensions and perhaps string theory. Such theories could also explain why gravity is so weak compared with the other fundamental forces. The theoretical particles that mediate gravity, known as gravitons, may also be closed loops of string that leak off into the bulk. 'If, in the end, nobody sees anything wrong and other people reproduce OPERA's results, then I think it's evidence for string theory, in that string theory is what makes extra dimensions credible in the first place,' Weiler says. Meanwhile, alternative theories are likely to abound. Weiler expects papers to appear in a matter of days or weeks. Even if relativity is pushed aside, Einstein has worked so well for so long that he will never really go away. At worst, relativity will turn out to work for most of the universe but not all, just as Newton's mechanics work until things get extremely large or small. 'The fact that Einstein has worked for 106 years means he'll always be there, either as the right answer or a low-energy effective theory,' Weiler says." [Grossman (2011), pp.7-9. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Some links added. Several paragraphs merged. See also a report in Socialist Review. (This link is now dead!)]

The long-term success of Einstein's theory and the fundamental nature of the speed of light mean that physicists will search for other explanations of this anomaly while remaining committed to the TOR (even if this impacts on other theories, such as M-theory, for example). So, the TOR (combined or not with other theories) is used as a form of representation; that is, it is employed -- analogously like the square or the triangular mesh to which Wittgenstein alluded above --, in order to make sense of, or re-interpret, experimental evidence -- even if the latter might seem to have refuted already accepted theory -- so that it no longer does so. This approach also sanctions certain inferences as 'legitimate', others as 'illegitimate' or 'suspect'. In this way, too, scientists police their own discipline (otherwise known as "peer review").

As we now know, several errors were later discovered in the above readings, meaning that this experiment in the end failed to threaten fundamental tenets of modern physics. But, other forms of representation were used to decide even this! It is interesting to note, however, that some scientists were quite happy to weave these bogus results -- before they were 'exposed' -- into novel, or into other, theories in order to make sense of them, so that this anomalous data (rather than accepted theory) remained 'valid'. The significance of that observation will become clearer in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

[Incidentally, this highlights a growing problem in contemporary science, covered in more detail in Essay Eleven Part One -- i.e., science by press release.]

Returning to the main theme -- i.e., whether or not motion is (a) reference-frame sensitive or (b) a "mode of the existence of matter" --; some might want to argue that QM has shown (a) to be incorrect (in that QM holds that all forms of matter are in ceaseless motion), but that is 'true' only because of a theoretical inference. There is no conceivable way that this supposedly universal truth can be confirmed to be the case throughout nature, for all of time. Hence, it has to be read into nature, or imposed on it, metaphysically -- or, indeed, perhaps also as a "form of representation" in its own right.

But, even if it could be confirmed, the depiction of motion as a "mode of the existence of matter" (rather than as a highly confirmed property of matter) would still depend on space being Absolute. Moreover, there is no conceivable observation, or body of observations, that could confirm the supposed fact that motion is a "mode of the existence of matter". Indeed, as noted above, if a relevant reference frame is chosen, and which is moving at the same relative velocity as any 'particle' it is 'tracking', that would render it motionless relative to that frame (even if the location of one or both of these was thereby rendered indeterminate, according to certain interpretations of QM).

Of course, it is controversial whether or not there actually are any sub-atomic particles, as opposed to probability waves (or excitations of 'the field' -- I have covered this in more detail in Essay Seven Part One), but, even if each such particle was viewed as a probability wave (or could be so modelled), the specification of its probable velocity (relative to some frame) would similarly mean it was zero. [On this in general, see Castellani (1998).]

It could be argued that this just shows that all bodies are in constant motion relative to one another, which is all that DM-theorists need. But, as was pointed out above, even if that were so, motion would still be reference-fame sensitive, and hence it couldn't be a "mode" of the existence of matter, otherwise that wouldn't be the case.

It would seem, therefore, that Lenin and Engels need space to be Absolute if their claim that motion is a "mode of the existence of matter" is to hold water.

It could be objected once more that Lenin's views aren't metaphysical. That objection might itself be based on Engels's own rather loose and idiosyncratic characterisation of Metaphysics:

"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is "yea, yea; nay, nay"; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' [Matthew 5:37. -- Ed.] For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees." [Engels (1976), p.26. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphasis in the original; paragraphs merged.]

The vast majority if DM-fans I have so far encountered have endorsed this view of Metaphysics (as we will see below).

So, Engels appears to believe that metaphysicians are committed to the belief that:

(3) Everything is sectioned off by means of "irreconcilable antitheses", which seems to apply the LEM across the board.

(4) Metaphysics is the same as, or is expressed by, "commonsense", which works reasonably well in everyday circumstances, but beyond that, in scientific or even philosophical surroundings, it soon becomes "one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions", and, among other things, it can't see "the wood for the trees".

"As Engels said about commonsense -- 'Sound commonsense, respectable fellow as he is within the homely precincts of his own four walls, has most wonderful adventures as soon as he ventures into the wide world.' [Cornforth is here also quoting Engels (1976), p.26, but clearly using a slightly different translation -- RL.] And it is a fact that the usages of commonsense no longer suffice when we enter into philosophical discussion. On the contrary, obscurities and contradictions concealed within the commonsense standpoint then manifest themselves and have to be dealt with." [Cornforth (1959), p102. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

[Unfortunately, neither Engels nor Cornforth bothered to tell their readers what they meant by "commonsense" (or even "the commonsense standpoint" as used by the latter), but, as we have seen, that is just par for the course; nobody seems to know what it means. Nevertheless, given its connection with ordinary human beings, it no doubt deserves to be criticised -- its alleged limitations broadcast from the rooftops, its name dragged through the mud -- by those keen to emulate ruling-class contempt for working people. Why revolutionaries like Engels and Cornforth join forces with the class enemy by denigrating 'commonsense' is explained in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, and will be further explored in Part Seven of Essay Twelve.]

First of all, Engels offered his readers absolutely no evidence in support of these sweeping allegations (for example, representative case studies from the entire History of Philosophy).

Second, there have been countless Philosophers and Mystics who believed that everything is interconnected, and which change as a result of a "unity of opposites". [On that, see here, here and here.] Of course, DM-supporters classify such thinkers (often loosely) as fellow-travellers, who thought 'dialectically', not 'metaphysically'. However, it is even more revealing when we view this tradition as just another example of the ideas of the ruling-class that always rule.

Third, we have already seen that it is impossible to make sense of DM-criticisms of the LEM -- on that see here. That being the case, 'commonsense' (whatever it turns out to be!) would be well advised to stick with the LEM, and thereby reject the either-or covertly apparent in the self-refuting demand that we either accept metaphysics or we accept DM (a rigid and 'irreconcilable antithesis' if ever there was one)!

Finally, in the Essays posted at this site, we have witnessed DM-theses regularly collapse into incoherence, so there is little room for DM-fans to crow about the 'superiority' of their theory. Indeed, as Essay Seven Part Three shows, if DM were true, change would be impossible.

However, Engels's depiction of Metaphysics would unfortunately rule out as non-metaphysical much of previous 'non-dialectical' philosophy. Even Plato would have admitted that things change (albeit if only with respect to appearances).

It could be countered that this is incorrect; only DM pictures things as fundamentally changeable, fundamentally Heraclitean, and only DM relates this to change through internal contradiction (etc.). Well, we have seen, here, here and here that that isn't really so. Even in DM, some things stay the same until or unless a sufficient quantitative change induces a commensurate qualitative change -- namely, and at least including, all those "essences" that Hegel borrowed from Aristotle, which Engels also unwisely appropriated from one or both of them -- just as dialecticians also tell us that some things are 'relatively stable' (whatever that means!).

"It is even more important to remember this point when we are talking about connections between phenomena that are in the process of development. In the whole world there is no developing object in which one cannot find opposite sides, elements or tendencies: stability and change, old and new, and so on. The dialectical principle of contradiction reflects a dualistic relationship within the whole: the unity of opposites and their struggle. Opposites may come into conflict only to the extent that they form a whole in which one element is as necessary as another. This necessity for opposing elements is what constitutes the life of the whole. Moreover, the unity of opposites, expressing the stability of an object, is relative and transient, while the struggle of opposites is absolute, ex-pressing the infinity of the process of development. This is because contradiction is not only a relationship between opposite tendencies in an object or between opposite objects, but also the relationship of the object to itself, that is to say, its constant self-negation. The fabric of all life is woven out of two kinds of thread, positive and negative, new and old, progressive and reactionary. They are constantly in conflict, fighting each other." [Spirkin (1983), pp.143-144. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"All rest is however relative, while motion and change are absolute. This is to be understood as an indication of the self-activity of matter, rather than in the sense that motion is possible without rest.... Any state is temporary and transient, and any thing or phenomena has a beginning and end to its existence. The motion of matter is uncreatable and indestructible. It can only change its forms. No single phenomenon or object can lose its ability to change or be deprived of motion under any conditions.... The source of the internal activity of matter lies within it, in its inherent potentiality for the perpetual changeability of its concrete shape and form of existence. Motion is absolute, for it is unrelated to anything external that could determine it. There is nothing else in the world except eternally moving matter, its forms, properties and manifestations...." [Kharin (1981), pp.62-63. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

"To say that everything is in a constant process of development and change is not, of course, to deny that things can be relatively unchanging and stationary. It is, however, to say that rest is 'conditional, temporary, transitory [and] relative' whereas 'development and motion are absolute'...." [Sayers (1980a), p.4. Sayers is here quoting Lenin (1961), p.358, and not p.360 as Sayers has it. Bold emphasis added.]

It isn't easy to see how the above can be reconciled with the idea that "motion is the mode of existence of matter".

Be this as it may, Engels's view of Metaphysics is (yet again!) a crude version of Hegel's ideas on this topic. As Stephen Houlgate points out:

"Metaphysics is characterised in the Encyclopedia first and foremost by the belief that the categories of thought constitute 'the fundamental determinations of things'.... The method of metaphysical philosophy, Hegel maintains, involves attributing predicates to given subjects, in judgements. Moreover just as the subject-matter of metaphysics consists of distinct entities, so the qualities to be predicated of those entities are held to be valid by themselves.... Of any two opposing predicates, therefore, metaphysics assumes that one must be false if the other is true. Metaphysical philosophy is thus described by Hegel as 'either/or' thinking because it treats predicates or determinations of thought as mutually exclusive, 'as if each of the two terms in an anti-thesis...has an independent, isolated existence as something substantial and true by itself.' The world either has a beginning and end in time or it does not; matter is either infinitely divisible or it is not; man is either a rigidly determined being or he is not. In this mutual exclusivity, Hegel believes, lies the dogmatism of metaphysics. In spite of the fact that metaphysics deals with infinite objects, therefore, these objects are rendered finite by the employment of mutually exclusive, one-sided determinations -- 'categories the limits of which are believed to be permanently fixed, and not subject to any further negation.'" [Houlgate (2004), pp.100-01. Italics in the original; paragraphs merged.]

But, as has been argued elsewhere at this site, this (dare I say it?) rigid dichotomy puts Hegel himself in something of a bind, for he certainly believed that metaphysics was this but not that (i.e., it was either this or it was that, not both), and that unfortunately means even he had to apply the LEM to make his point!

Of course, it could be argued that the above observations aren't "judgements" about the fundamental nature of things -- but then again, that objection itself must use the LEM to make its point, for it takes as granted that the above paragraph is saying this, but not that (again, that it was either this or it was that, not both) about 'the fundamental nature of things'. Indeed, even Hegel's conclusions about the content of any metaphysical 'judgement' (i.e., that it says either this or that, not both) would require an implicit, or even an explicit, use of the LEM.

We can go further, any 'leap' into 'speculative' thought to the effect that this or that, or whatever, has been 'negated', must implicate the LEM, too; for it will either be the case, or it will not, that for any randomly-selected dialectical 'negation', it will have taken place or it won't. Naturally, this would imply that Hegel's thought (and that of anyone who agrees with him) -- i.e., that Hegel either said this or that, not both -- was as metaphysical as anything Parmenides or Plato came out with.

That is, if we were foolish enough to rely on Hegel to tell us what "Metaphysics" means!

The conventions of ordinary language (partially codified in the LEM, in this case) aren't so easily side-stepped, even by a thinker of "genius".

Independently of that, it might now be wondered: What marvellous solution to the antinomy concerning the origin of the universe did Houlgate manage to find in Hegel's work? Or even the one concerning the infinite divisibility of matter?

Hegel's ideas, not science, were the source of Engels's confused musing in this area, although, oddly enough, much of what Hegel had to say about Metaphysics in the Preface to the First Edition of The Science of Logic, actually agrees with much of what is said about it in this Essay (even though Hegel also drops a heavy hint that this characterisation is now obsolete, or so he thought). Here is part of it:

"That which, prior to this period, was called metaphysics has been, so to speak, extirpated root and branch and has vanished from the ranks of the sciences. The ontology, rational psychology, cosmology, yes even natural theology, of former times -- where is now to be heard any mention of them, or who would venture to mention them? Inquiries, for instance, into the immateriality of the soul, into efficient and final causes, where should these still arouse any interest? Even the former proofs of the existence of God are cited only for their historical interest or for purposes of edification and uplifting the emotions. The fact is that there no longer exists any interest either in the form or the content of metaphysics or in both together. If it is remarkable when a nation has become indifferent to its constitutional theory, to its national sentiments, its ethical customs and virtues, it is certainly no less remarkable when a nation loses its metaphysics, when the spirit which contemplates its own pure essence is no longer a present reality in the life of the nation.

"The exoteric teaching of the Kantian philosophy -- that the understanding ought not to go beyond experience, else the cognitive faculty will become a theoretical reason which by itself generates nothing but fantasies of the brain -- this was a justification from a philosophical quarter for the renunciation of speculative thought. In support of this popular teaching came the cry of modern educationists that the needs of the time demanded attention to immediate requirements, that just as experience was the primary factor for knowledge, so for skill in public and private life, practice and practical training generally were essential and alone necessary, theoretical insight being harmful even. Philosophy [Wissenschaft] and ordinary common sense thus co-operating to bring about the downfall of metaphysics, there was seen the strange spectacle of a cultured nation without metaphysics -- like a temple richly ornamented in other respects but without a holy of holies. Theology, which in former times was the guardian of the speculative mysteries and of metaphysics (although this was subordinate to it) had given up this science in exchange for feelings, for what was popularly matter-of-fact, and for historical erudition. In keeping with this change, there vanished from the world those solitary souls who were sacrificed by their people and exiled from the world to the end that the eternal should be contemplated and served by lives devoted solely thereto -- not for any practical gain but for the sake of blessedness; a disappearance which, in another context, can be regarded as essentially the same phenomenon as that previously mentioned. So that having got rid of the dark utterances of metaphysics, of the colourless communion of the spirit with itself, outer existence seemed to be transformed into the bright world of flowers -- and there are no black flowers (there are now! -- RL), as we know." [Hegel (1999), pp.25-26, §§2-3. Bold emphases alone added. Minor typo corrected; I have informed the on-line editors.]

Of course, modern metaphysicians would laugh at Hegel's question "Where are they now?" since Metaphysics (as traditionally conceived) has roared back over the last century-and-a-half and is, alas, alive and well and is now being practiced in a University or College near you.

Independently of that, we have also seen that Hegel was the main source of the slippery reasoning one encounters time and again in 'dialectical thought', the sort that 'allows' dialecticians to ignore the contradictions and equivocations in their own theory while pointing fingers at others for the very same alleged misdemeanours and sins. [There is much more on this in Essay Eleven Part One, as well as here.]

Nevertheless, Cornforth (1950), who should know better, presented two main arguments countering the standard view of Metaphysics employed in this Essay:

(1) Cornforth claims that the modern characterisation of Metaphysics derives from John Locke (p.94), even though Cornforth himself had already pointed out that the term was in fact introduced by Aristotle (p.93). [And it also seems to be inconsistent with Hegel's depiction of it, outline above.] He makes this connection because he wants to maintain that modern Philosophers reject Aristotle's search for the "essential nature of the real" (p.94), deliberately running-together the ideas of the Positivists he is attacking with the views of every modern (non-Communist) Philosopher. This allows him to reject the Positivists' understanding of Metaphysics as if it were held by each and every non-Communist Philosopher!

First of all, even when Cornforth was writing this (circa 1950), only a tiny minority of Analytic Philosophers (never mind the rest of the profession) were Positivists, so this can't be a valid reason for rejecting the standard interpretation handed down from those who first commented on Aristotle. And it can't be a good reason either for present-day dialecticians to continue rejecting the interpretation promoted at this site, which in no way depends on Locke. [Although Cornforth is right when he says that Empiricism and Positivism are both metaphysical; but then so is DM.]

Second, even if every (non-communist) Philosopher on the planet in 1950 had been a Positivist, it is clear that they would have rejected Metaphysics because, as Positivists, they accepted the traditional view of Metaphysics, which itself stretches way back beyond Locke. Cornforth just asserts that these Philosophers could trace their understanding of this word (i.e., "metaphysics") back to Locke, but he provides us with no evidence whatsoever that that is so -- not even one citation! Anyone who reads the work of the Positivists, or even the Logical Positivists, will see that they weren't just hung up on the nature of "substance" (which Cornforth focuses on simply because of what Locke had to say about it), but all areas of Traditional Metaphysics.

[A good place to start here is Ayer (2001) -- this links to a PDF -- which is an excellent representative of The Simplistic Wing of Logical Positivism. A more substantial version can be found in, say, Carnap (1950). See also Carnap (1931) -- 'The Elimination Of Metaphysics Through The Logical Analysis Of Language' (this also links to a PDF). More reliable accounts of this (now) obsolete current in Analytic Philosophy can be found, for example, in the following: Copleston (2003b), Friedman (1999), Hacker (2000c), Hanfling (1981), Misak (1995), and Passmore (1966). See also, Conant (2001). I would recommend Soames (2003a, 2003b), here, but Soames is highly unreliable in his discussions of Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language Philosophy. On that, see Hacker (2006) (this links to a PDF, too).]

"Such an attempt, however, to define 'metaphysics' in terms of its subject-matter, is hardly satisfactory. For in a sense all science, as well as philosophy, is concerned with the substance of things and with the nature of the world. If, then, to speak of the substance of things and the nature of the world is 'metaphysical', then science itself has a 'metaphysical' tendency." [Cornforth (1950), p.94. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Without doubt, metaphysical ideas have dominated much of science, but that is because "the ideas of the ruling-class always rule". And yet, except in relation to its popularisation, science has progressively distanced itself from the influence of metaphysics, especially in areas where an interface with the material world becomes paramount (for instance, in Chemistry, Geology, much of Biology, most of Physics -- and, of course, Technology). [Why that is so will discussed in Essay Thirteen Part Two, when it is published.]

Even so, Cornforth's argument still depends on the unsupported claim that Metaphysics is as he says Positivists define it.

Anyway, Cornforth is being disingenuous here, for DM itself goes way beyond modern science in seeking to pontificate, for example, about motion, telling us that it is a "mode of the existence of matter", or that it is "contradictory" -- or, indeed, about the "essence of Being" ("Thing-in-Itself"), the "interpenetration of opposites", the "negation of the negation", and so on. These vague and dubious 'concepts' certainly fit the traditional interpretation of Metaphysics.

Admittedly, the exact boundary between Metaphysics and Science might be hard to define, but that doesn't mean there is no difference between the two. There is a difference between night and day even though the boundary between them is impossible to delineate. [Again, I will say more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

These appear to be the only two substantive arguments Cornforth offered in support of his rejection of the traditional interpretation of Metaphysics (even though he had much else to say about Analytic Philosophy in the above book and other publications, aspects of which will be examined elsewhere at this site), and thus in favour of his adoption of the characterisation he borrowed from Hegel and Engels [Cornforth (1950), pp.95-98], although, oddly enough, Cornforth doesn't reveal from whom Engels pinched this idea. But, it is quite clear that all three had to modify considerably the meaning of "metaphysics" to make their fanciful ideas even seem to work, plainly in order to try both to distinguish, and to distance, Metaphysics from DM [Cornforth (1950), pp.98-101]. This is, of course, just another classic example of the sort of special pleading DM-fans are well practised at invoking.

Of course, all this is independent of Marx's own characterisation of Metaphysics. For example, in The Poverty of Philosophy, he had this to say:

"We shall now have to talk metaphysics while talking political economy. And in this again we shall but follow M. Proudhon's 'contradictions.' Just now he forced us to speak English, to become pretty well English ourselves. Now the scene is changing. M. Proudhon is transporting us to our dear fatherland and is forcing us, whether we like it or not, to become German again. If the Englishman transforms men into hats, the German transforms hats into ideas. The Englishman is Ricardo, rich banker and distinguished economist; the German is Hegel, simple professor at the University of Berlin. Louis XV, the last absolute monarch and representative of the decadence of French royalty, had attached to his person a physician who was himself France's first economist. This doctor, this economist, represented the imminent and certain triumph of the French bourgeoisie. Doctor Quesnay made a science out of political economy; he summarized it in his famous Tableau économique. Besides the thousand and one commentaries on this table which have appeared, we possess one by the doctor himself. It is the 'Analysis of the Economic Table,' followed by 'seven important observations.' M. Proudhon is another Dr. Quesnay. He is the Quesnay of the metaphysics of political economy.

"Now metaphysics -- indeed all philosophy -- can be summed up, according to Hegel, in method. We must, therefore, try to elucidate the method of M. Proudhon, which is at least as foggy as the Economic Table. It is for this reason that we are making seven more or less important observations. If Dr. Proudhon is not pleased with our observations, well, then, he will have to become an Abbé Baudeau and give the 'explanation of the economico-metaphysical method' himself.... Apply this method to the categories of political economy and you have the logic and metaphysics of political economy, or, in other words, you have the economic categories that everybody knows, translated into a little-known language which makes them look as if they had never blossomed forth in an intellect of pure reason; so much do these categories seem to engender one another, to be linked up and intertwined with one another by the very working of the dialectic movement. The reader must not get alarmed at these metaphysics with all their scaffolding of categories, groups, series, and systems. M. Proudhon, in spite of all the trouble he has taken to scale the heights of the system of contradictions, has never been able to raise himself above the first two rungs of simple thesis and antithesis; and even these he has mounted only twice, and on one of these two occasions he fell over backwards." [Marx (1976a), pp.161-65. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added; several paragraphs merged. I have used the on-line version here, but have also corrected what few typos I managed to spot.]

As seems clear from the above, Marx doesn't appear to agree with Engels over the nature of Metaphysics, clearly linking it with "dialectics" (albeit the 'dialectical method' Proudhon extracted from Hegel's work).

Be this as it may, I don't want to get hung up on a terminological point, so I recommend that anyone who objects to the usual definition of "Metaphysics" (and its cognates) -- or even the phrase "Traditional Philosophy" -- used at this site, perhaps, preferring Engels's own characterisation, substitute the following for it:

"[T]he branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world."

The above is a description of Metaphysics we find over at Wikipedia, which is, I think, reasonably accurate, if a little brief. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy is a little more specific:

"Metaphysics, most generally the philosophical investigation of the nature, constitution, and structure of reality. It is broader in scope than science..., since one of its traditional concerns is the existence of non-physical entities, e.g., God. It is also more fundamental, since it investigates questions science does not address but the answers to which it presupposes. Are there, for instance, physical objects at all, and does every event have a cause?" [Butchvarov (1999), p.563.]

Here is how the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy characterises this area of Traditional Philosophy (re-formatted):

"If metaphysics now considers a wider range of problems than those studied in Aristotle's Metaphysics, those problems continue to belong to its subject-matter. For instance, the topic of 'being as such' (and 'existence as such', if existence is something other than being) is one of the matters that belong to metaphysics on any conception of metaphysics. The following theses are all paradigmatically metaphysical: 'Being is; not-being is not' [Parmenides]; 'Essence precedes existence' [Avicenna, paraphrased]; 'Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone' [St Anselm, paraphrased]; 'Existence is a perfection' [Descartes, paraphrased]; 'Being is a logical, not a real predicate' [Kant, paraphrased]; 'Being is the most barren and abstract of all categories' [Hegel, paraphrased]; 'Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number zero' [Frege]; 'Universals do not exist but rather subsist or have being' [Russell, paraphrased]; 'To be is to be the value of a bound variable' [Quine]; 'An object's degree of being is proportionate to the naturalness of its mode of existence' [McDaniel]." [Inwagen, Sullivan and Bernstein (2023). Italic emphases in the original. Links added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"Metaphysics is the exploration of the most general features of the world. We conceive of the world about us in various highly general ways. It is orderly, and structured in space and time; it contains matter and minds, things and properties of things, necessity, events, causation, creation, change, values, facts and states of affairs. Metaphysics seeks to understand these features of the world better. It aims at a large-scale investigation of the way things hang together. Within this broad description there are two conceptions of the subject. Metaphysicians may think of themselves as investigating the facts, or discovering the broad structures of reality. Or, they may see the enterprise as more self-reflective, gaining an understanding of how we represent the facts to ourselves: how our 'conceptual scheme' or perhaps any possible conceptual scheme, structures our own thought about reality. Once this description is completed, it may be that everything possible has been done, for we have no alternative but to continue to think from within the conceptual scheme whose features we have mapped." [Blackburn (1996), p.64; (2003), p.61.]

"1. What are the most general features of the World, and what sorts of things does it contain? What is the World like?

"3. What is our place in the World? How do we human beings fit into it?" [Van Inwagen (2015), p.4. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"Philosophers of all stripes have theories to offer, for better or worse.... Theories in philosophy, whether good or bad, aim to explain something, to answer certain explanation-seeking questions.... What is being? What is thinking? What is knowledge? What are we?... Rare is the philosopher with no theory whatsoever to offer. Such would be a philosopher without a philosophy...." [Moser (1993), p.3. I owe this reference to Hutto (2003), pp.194-95.]

Here is another definition taken from an thoroughly comprehensive textbook devoted to this particular subject, followed by Le Poidevin's longer definition:

"Metaphysics is sometimes described as the study of reality, but the sciences also study (parts of) reality, so what is distinctive about metaphysics? One way of distinguishing metaphysics from science is by pointing to the level of generality in metaphysical discussion. Physics, for instance, concerns itself with particular processes, laws and entities: the conversion of one energy form into another, the laws of motion or thermodynamics, protons, neutrons and quarks. Metaphysics operates at a higher level of abstraction, and looks at those features the particular processes or entities might have in common: causal connection, taking place or existing in space and time, or being composed of matter. This distinction is not as sharp as one might suppose, however, since physics too has to deal in abstractions, and cosmology, for instance, is concerned with the nature of space and time themselves, and not just what takes place in them. Metaphysics is also interested, as physics is not, by what it is to be real. Is there anything informative we can say about the distinction between what is real, or existent, and what is not? Are there general principles that govern the whole of reality (for instance, that everything that exists must have a cause of its existence)? Having reached a view on what it is to be real -- perhaps that the character of reality is (unlike fiction) independent of our beliefs -- we may be in a better position to say what is real: that is, to catalogue, in the most abstract terms, those things that are real. Our list may include such familiar entities as persons and material objects, but it may also include items very different from these, such as numbers. The part of metaphysics that is concerned with what exists is known as ontology.... We might wonder whether there could be anything to metaphysics other than ontology, and indeed ontology does seem to be a large part of the metaphysical enterprise. But metaphysics is concerned not just with what is, but also with the way that it is. Objects do not merely exist: they have certain features. A building may be octagonal, a leaf brown, a bird in motion, and so on. Simply to list the things that are (even where 'things' is used in its widest sense) does not capture the way things are. Of course, recognising that things have features may itself lead us to expand our ontology to include properties as well as the things that have those properties. And we may have to allow not only the individual property instances but also what is common to those instances, the property types. Does this show that saying how things are just amounts, after all, to saying what there is? No, because listing all the objects and properties that exist is consistent with any number of different allocations of those properties to those objects. So something has to be said about what relates a property to an object, by virtue of which the object can truly be said to have that property." [Le Poidevin (2009), pp.xviii-xix. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this ist. Paragraphs merged.]

The above are all academic Philosophers but, finally, here is fellow Marxist, Dario Cankovic's characterisation of 'Western Philosophy' (with whom I largely agree):

"Philosophy, at least in the Western tradition (and this includes Islamic philosophy which is a direct continuation of the tradition of Late Classical-era philosophy), goes through two-phases. The first metaphysical pre-Kantian phase of philosophy conceives of its activity as investigation of the mind-independent necessary metaphysical structure of the world. The second transcendental Kantian phase conceives of its activity as investigation of the mind-constitutive world-constituting necessary transcendental structure or structuring principles of thought itself. While Kant's Copernican revolution is certainly a revolution in philosophy, insofar as in trying to render philosophy scientific it radically changes the way philosophy is done, it doesn't represent a complete break with philosophy. Philosophy remains an effort to understand the world and ourselves a priori. Furthermore, both conceive of the objects of their investigation, whether metaphysical or transcendental, as necessary and immutable, as ahistorical or transhistorical, without or outside of history. Self-conceptions of philosophers aside, philosophy is not a transhistorical category, it is a human activity and a body of theories with a history. It is conceptual investigation and invention born out of a fascination with and misunderstanding of necessity. It is decidedly pre-scientific in that it is an attempt to understand nature, ourselves and our place in it through the lens of language, though not self-consciously so. This fascination and misunderstanding is a consequence of our alienation from our collective agency. While humanity shapes and is shaped by nature and our concepts, this collective capacity doesn't extend to individual human beings. We create concepts in an never-ending exchange with nature, but you and I as individual human beings are inducted into a community of language-users of an already formed language and brought forth into an already reformed world. We -- collectively and individually -- we are ignorant of our own history." [Quoted from here. (Unfortunately, this link is now dead!) Italics in the original. Minor typo corrected; link and bold emphases added. Paragraphs merged. The rest of this article is an excellent antidote to the idea that Marx was a philosopher.]

Even so, whatever this ancient intellectual pursuit is finally called, it is abundantly clear that DM-theorists attempt to do some of the above themselves --, i.e., they endeavour to "explain the ultimate nature of reality, being and the world" in their own idiosyncratic, dogmatic, sub-Hegelian fashion. They also ask and attempt to answer similar questions along similar lines, albeit with a view to changing the world. Indeed, they have adopted much the same approach to Philosophy as the Traditional Metaphysicians to whom Moser (above) alludes -- that is, they attempt to derive fundamental truths about reality from a handful of jargonised expressions, which 'truths' are then imposed on nature, valid for all of space and time.

[That allegation was fully substantiated in Essay Two. Precisely how this series of verbal tricks works is, of course, the subject of Parts One to Seven of Essay Twelve. See also Essay Three Parts One and Two, where the ground for much that will be argued here in Essay Twelve was laid.]

As far as the attempt to define Metaphysics as the study of things that don't change, this is what the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy had to say:

"Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its subject matter: metaphysics was the 'science' that studied 'being as such' or 'the first causes of things' or 'things that do not change.' It is no longer possible to define metaphysics that way, and for two reasons. First, a philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics -- first causes or unchanging things -- would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion. Secondly, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no way related to first causes or unchanging things; the problem of free will, for example, or the problem of the mental and the physical." [Inwagen, Sullivan and Bernstein (2023). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; bold emphasis added.]

A useful (and thoroughly traditional) account of the nature of Metaphysics can be found in Aune (1986) and Van Inwagen (1998, 2015) -- with a much more comprehensive survey in Koons and Pickavance (2017) --, but there are countless books that cover the same ground. For a useful review of attempts to define Metaphysics, see Moore (2013), pp.1-22 -- although, it is revealing that philosophers can't even agree among themselves what this word means, as the above passages amply confirm!

This underlines what I posted on Quora recently, in answer to the question: "Where should I begin if I want to study Philosophy?" (slightly edited):

First, dial down your expectations. Not one single 'philosophical problem' posed by Ancient Greek thinkers (or any others since) has been solved, or even remotely solved. Nor are they likely to be. After 2500 years of this, we don't even know the right questions to ask, for goodness sake! As Oxford University Philosopher, Peter Hacker, noted:

"For two and a half millennia some of the best minds in European culture have wrestled with the problems of philosophy. If one were to ask what knowledge has been achieved throughout these twenty-five centuries, what theories have been established (on the model of well-confirmed theories in the natural sciences), what laws have been discovered (on the model of the laws of physics and chemistry), or where one can find the corpus of philosophical propositions known to be true, silence must surely ensue. For there is no body of philosophical knowledge. There are no well-established philosophical theories or laws. And there are no philosophical handbooks on the model of handbooks of dynamics or of biochemistry. To be sure, it is tempting for contemporary philosophers, convinced they are hot on the trail of the truths and theories which so long evaded the grasp of their forefathers, to claim that philosophy has only just struggled out of its early stage into maturity.... We can at long last expect a flood of new, startling and satisfying results -- tomorrow. One can blow the Last Trumpet once, not once a century. In the seventeenth century Descartes thought he had discovered the definitive method for attaining philosophical truths; in the eighteenth century Kant believed that he had set metaphysics upon the true path of a science; in the nineteenth century Hegel convinced himself that he had brought the history of thought to its culmination; and Russell, early in the twentieth century, claimed that he had at last found the correct scientific method in philosophy, which would assure the subject the kind of steady progress that is attained by the natural sciences. One may well harbour doubts about further millenarian promises." [Hacker (2001c), pp.322-23. Paragraphs merged.]

Second, begin with Bertrand Russell's Problems of Philosophy, which as about as good an introduction to Traditional Philosophy as you could wish to find -- which is also well written. Then, perhaps read some of the more accessible 'classics', such Descartes's Meditations, or his Discourse, Hume's Enquiries, Berkeley's Three Dialogues, Plato's Republic, or his Meno (Aristotle is, alas, far too difficult!), Kant's Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics -- steer clear of Hegel (who is impossibly difficult). All of these (except Hacker) -- and much more besides -- are available here: http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/philclassics.html

Traditionally Philosophy has been regarded as a sort of 'super-science', a discipline capable of revealing fundamental truths about 'reality', valid for all of space and time, ascertainable from thought, or from language, alone -- or, indeed, as some sort of uniquely authoritative moral or political guide, or perhaps even a clue to the 'meaning of life'. But it isn't like any science you have ever heard of. Traditional Philosophers typically spend a few hours in the comfort of their own heads -- by-passing all those boring observations and experiments, with their expensive equipment and a requirement that the individual concerned becomes technically competent --, and, hey presto, they emerge with a set of super-cosmic verities. This isn't to deny that some philosophers engaged in empirical work -- for example, Aristotle -- but that wasn't a core aspect of their work. Moreover, the sciences have gradually freed themselves from Traditional Philosophy by subjecting their work to empirical test (howsoever one interprets this). Nor is it to deny that scientists don't indulge in amateur metaphysics (especially in their popularisations), speculating about the nature of space or time, for example: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/

But, Traditional Philosophy is quintessentially a 'conceptual enquiry', which, directly or indirectly, revolves around what certain words mean (such as, 'time', 'space', 'matter', 'knowledge', 'belief', 'existence', 'identity', 'meaning', 'language', 'causation', 'justice', 'freedom', 'fate', 'good', 'evil', 'god', 'soul', etc., etc.), but this is in fact provides us with a clue to its fatal defects, and why it hasn't advanced one nanometre closer to a 'solution' to its 'problems' than Plato or Aristotle themselves managed.

The deflationary approach to Metaphysics adopted at this site is discussed in more detail in Baker (2004b) and Rorty (1980) -- however, concerning Rorty's work, readers should note the caveats I posted earlier.

Incidentally, the ideas presented in this Essay shouldn't be confused with those developed by the Logical Positivists (henceforth, LP-ers) -- although there are several superficial similarities, 'only at the margins', as it were -- for example, a several of those expressed in Ayer (2001), pp.1-29. [This links to a PDF.]

Even so, the differences between my ideas and those expressed by LP-ers are quite profound. For instance, I am not offering a criterion of meaning (in fact, I hardly mention this term (i.e., "meaning"), certainly not as LP-ers intended it should be understood, in this Essay. Moreover, and by way of contrast, I begin with how we ordinarily understand empirical or factual propositions, and to that end I use a term Wittgenstein introduced, "sense", to capture that. So, the approach adopted here reveals that the LP-ers got things the wrong way round; it is our grasp of the sense of a proposition that enables us to determine whether or not it is capable of being verified or falsified, not the other way round. As I frequently point out, if we didn't already understand a given proposition, we wouldn't be able to verify/falsify it, or, for that matter, know whether or not it is capable of being verified/falsified. Indeed, how would anyone go about trying to verify a proposition they didn't understand? Finally, "meaning" is a highly complex term that was grossly oversimplified by the LP-ers. [I say more about it in Essay Thirteen Part Three; see also here, and below.]

In that case, verification (as the LP-ers understood it) can't be a fundamental, or even a significant, factor in relation with our ordinary use of factual language. So, even though The Verification Principle has now been totally abandoned, its defects (real or imagined) have absolutely nothing to do with the ideas expressed in this Essay, or at this site.

2. Again, Essay Two highlighted the many occasions where modal terminology was employed by DM-theorists in place of more tentative or reasonable summaries of the available evidence, where it was clearly intended to 'beef up' the use of the indicative mood.

Here are a few such passages from the DM-classicists and 'lesser' DM-luminaries:

"But precisely therein lay the true significance and the revolutionary character of the Hegelian philosophy (to which, as the close of the whole movement since Kant, we must here confine ourselves), that it once and for all dealt the death blow to the finality of all products of human thought and action. Truth, the cognition of which is the business of philosophy, was in the hands of Hegel no longer an aggregate of finished dogmatic statements, which, once discovered, had merely to be learned by heart. Truth lay now in the process of cognition itself, in the long historical development of science, which mounts from lower to ever higher levels of knowledge without ever reaching, by discovering so-called absolute truth, a point at which it can proceed no further, where it would have nothing more to do than to fold its hands and gaze with wonder at the absolute truth to which it had attained. And what holds good for the realm of philosophical knowledge holds good also for that of every other kind of knowledge and also for practical action. Just as knowledge is unable to reach a complete conclusion in a perfect, ideal condition of humanity, so is history unable to do so; a perfect society, a perfect 'state', are things which can only exist in imagination. On the contrary, all successive historical systems are only transitory stages in the endless course of development of human society from the lower to the higher. Each stage is necessary, and therefore justified for the time and conditions to which it owes its origin. But in the face of new, higher conditions which gradually develop in its own womb, it loses vitality and justification. It must give way to a higher stage which will also in its turn decay and perish. Just as the bourgeoisie by large-scale industry, competition, and the world market dissolves in practice all stable time-honoured institutions, so this dialectical philosophy dissolves all conceptions of final, absolute truth and of absolute states of humanity corresponding to it. For it [dialectical philosophy], nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the thinking brain. It has, of course, also a conservative side; it recognizes that definite stages of knowledge and society are justified for their time and circumstances; but only so far. The conservatism of this mode of outlook is relative; its revolutionary character is absolute -- the only absolute dialectical philosophy admits." [Engels (1888), pp.587-88. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Minor typo corrected. Parentheses in the original.]

"Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphasis added.]

"Consciousness, as the Latin root word indicates, is the knowledge of being in existence. It is a form, or a quality, of existence which differs from other forms of being in that it is aware of its existence. Quality cannot be explained, but must be experienced. We know by experience that consciousness includes along with the knowledge of being in existence the difference and contradiction between subject and object, thinking and being, between form and content, between phenomenon and essential thing, between attribute and substance, between the general and the concrete. This innate contradiction explains the various terms applied to consciousness, such as the organ of abstraction, the faculty of generalization or unification, or in contradistinction thereto the faculty of differentiation. For consciousness generalises differences and differentiates generalities. Contradiction is innate in consciousness, and its nature is so contradictory that it is at the same time a differentiating, a generalising, and an understanding nature. Consciousness generalises contradiction. It recognizes that all nature, all being, lives in contradictions, that everything is what it is only in cooperation with its opposite. Just as visible things are not visible without the faulty of sight, and vice versa the faculty of sight cannot see anything but what is visible, so contradiction must be recognized as something general which pervades all thought and being. The science of understanding, by generalizing contradiction, solves all concrete contradictions." [Dietzgen (1984), pp.32-33. Bold emphases added.]

"Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object. The reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not 'lifelessly,' not 'abstractly,' not devoid of movement, not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution." [Lenin (1961), p.195. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Ibid., pp.359-60. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"As we already know that all things change, all things are 'in flux', it is certain that such an absolute state of rest cannot possibly exist. We must therefore reject a condition in which there is no 'contradiction between opposing and colliding forces' no disturbance of equilibrium, but only an absolute immutability…." [Bukharin (1925), p.73. Bold emphases added.]

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development...." [Mao (1961), pp.313. Bold emphasis added.]

"The negative electrical pole…cannot exist without the simultaneous presence of the positive electrical pole…. This 'unity of opposites' is therefore found in the core of all material things and events. Both attraction and repulsion are necessary properties of matter. Each attraction in one place is necessarily compensated for by a corresponding repulsion in another place…." [Conze (1944), pp.35-36. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

"Nature cannot be unreasonable or reason contrary to nature. Everything that exists must have a necessary and sufficient reason for existence…. The material base of this law lies in the actual interdependence of all things in their reciprocal interactions…. If everything that exists has a necessary and sufficient reason for existence, that means it had to come into being. It was pushed into existence and forced its way into existence by natural necessity…. Reality, rationality and necessity are intimately associated at all times…. If everything actual is necessarily rational, this means that every item of the real world has a sufficient reason for existing and must find a rational explanation…." [Novack (1971), pp.78-80. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

"Positive is meaningless without negative. They are necessarily inseparable.... This universal phenomenon of the unity of opposites is, in reality the motor-force of all motion and development in nature…. Movement which itself involves a contradiction, is only possible as a result of the conflicting tendencies and inner tensions which lie at the heart of all forms of matter." [Woods and Grant (1995/2007), pp.65-68. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

"…The 'whole' must be seen as an inner force which will strive to manifest itself in external reality as essence which must appear. Real 'wholes' must have elements bound together by the interaction of 'parts' and 'whole'. Since the 'parts' and 'whole' are constantly changing, the 'whole' as such can never be a sum total of its 'parts'. It is instead the sum total and unity of opposites in constant change, which are simultaneously not only single 'wholes' but many 'wholes'. Thus 'wholes' change into 'parts' and 'parts' into 'wholes'." [Healy (1982), p.58. Bold emphases in the original have been de-emphasised, new bold emphases added.]

"Contradiction, therefore, cannot be regarded as an 'empty word form' or a 'subjective' external impression, because it is contained within the very essence of all material objects and processes. It is the dialectical unity of external and internal contradiction. Thus the infinite self-movement of matter is contradictory." [Healy (1990), p.7. Bold emphasis added.]

"Hegel described this kind of account as 'bad infinity', because it postulated an endless series of causes and effects regressing to 'who knows where?' The defect of all such approaches is that they leave the ultimate cause of events outside the events they describe. The cause is external to the system. A dialectical approach seeks to find the cause of change within the system. And if the explanation of change lies within the system, it cannot be conceived on the model of linear cause and effect, because this will simply reproduce the problem we are trying to solve. If change is internally generated, it must be a result of contradiction, of instability and development as inherent properties of the system itself." [Rees (1998), p.7. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"If nature forms a totality, which it must unless we depart from materialism completely and become believers in the supernatural, and if this totality develops, as evolutionary theory indicates, then are we not obliged to picture this as self-development powered by internal contradiction?" [Ibid., p.78. Bold emphases added.]

"This appearance of opposing forces has given rise to the most debated and difficult, yet the most central, concept in dialectical thought, the principle of contradiction.... For us, contradiction is not only epistemic and political, but ontological in the broadest sense. Contradictions between forces are everywhere in nature, not only in human social institutions.... [O]pposing forces lie at the basis of the evolving physical and biological world. Things change because of the action of opposing forces on them, and things are the way they are because of the temporary balance of opposing forces.... The dialectical view insists that persistence and equilibrium are not the natural state of things but require explanation, which must be sought in the actions of the opposing forces...." [Levins and Lewontin (1985), pp.279-80. Bold emphases added. Several paragraphs merged.]

[See also this Essay, above. There are plenty more passages like this quoted in Essay Two (link above).]

3. Plainly, this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of such sentences; the examples listed were chosen to make a particular point about the connection between metaphysical sentences and what look like ordinary empirical propositions. Several more examples, taken from Traditional Metaphysics and DM-sources, have been quoted below.

3a. However, I will have to qualify this comment later on in this Essay since it is clear that mathematical propositions can't be true in the same way that empirical propositions plainly can.

4. It could be objected that to acknowledge, say, M9 as true does in fact require some input from the material world -- an appeal to evidence.

Certainly, human beings have to live in this world to be able to assert things like M9 -- if only to learn what the relevant words mean. But, as we will see later, even though ordinary-looking words are being used in such sentences, they (or, rather, the novel expressions invented by metaphysicians and the ordinary words they also use in radically new ways) can't be part of the vernacular, as Glock pointed out above.

Notwithstanding this, the fact remains that, unlike M6, it isn't possible to establish the (alleged) truth-status of M9 by comparing it with the world.

In response, it could be argued that M9 is a general proposition whereas M6 is particular.

That is undeniable, but it isn't relevant. Consider another general, but no less empirical proposition:

E1: All badgers living within a five mile radius of the centre of Luton on August 25th 2024 have eaten hazel nuts at least once that day.

Now, you can 'reflect' on E1 until the cows next evolve, but that will still fail to tell you whether or not it is true. Even though E1 might never be fully confirmed (although, it wouldn't be impossible to do so if it were to be investigated promptly with enough resources devoted to the task -- while it might prove easier to falsify), the collection of data coupled with detailed observation (etc.) would only be accepted as relevant to that end. Understanding E1 in fact tells us what to look for, what sort of evidence/investigation is relevant, what sort will confirm it and what sort will confute it, even if we never succeed in ascertaining either, or had any desire to do so.

Any who disagree are invited to contact me with details of the observations that can be made, or the experiments that can be carried out, which will show M9 and P4 are true.

Finally, it could be objected that M9 (and P4/M1a) are in fact summaries of the evidence we currently possess. This objection has already been dealt with in Note Two, but more fully in Essay Two. [See also here.]

Anyway, as we will see later, M9, P4 and M1a aren't even empirically true -- if we were to insist on reading them that way.

5. As should seem obvious, M9 has been included in the list not just because of its connection with M1a and other DM-claims, but because dialecticians appear to regard it (or, at least, P4) as an a priori truth which they feel they can assert dogmatically --, or, rather, the language they use to express it makes it difficult to defend them from just such an accusation.

However, even though M9 might look self-evident (to DM-theorists), not everyone would agree. Up until relatively recently (i.e., before, say, 1600), the idea that matter was naturally motionless (or, rather, the belief that effort had to be expended in order to put material bodies into motion and keep them moving) was uncontroversial. Indeed, that theory was a cornerstone of Aristotelian Physics, supported by countless observations over many centuries. It seemed about as well-confirmed as the claim that the sky is up and water is wet. It took a conceptual revolution to persuade post-Renaissance theorists to accept the theory that motion is a 'natural' state of material bodies (or, to be more honest, Aristotelians had to die out before any such conceptual realignment became possible). Of course, that intellectual development was itself motivated by NeoPlatonic and Hermetic ideas circulating around Europe at the time, and wasn't based on observation, either.

[References supporting the above assertions can be accessed here. The idea that matter is self-moving originated in Plato's dialogues, but it is arguable that it pre-dated even him; on that see here.]

We have also seen -- here and here -- that Lenin's theory that matter is 'self-moving' would actually render obsolete much of Newtonian mechanics, and was itself based on the ancient, mystical dogma that nature is in effect a 'self-developing Cosmic Egg'.

The point is, of course, that even though DM-theorists themselves believe that matter is always in motion, it is possible to think of it otherwise.

Indeed, as noted above, if a suitable reference frame is chosen, a moving body can be regarded as stationary with respect to that frame. Hence, not only is matter without motion 'thinkable', most people who have thought about this topic have found little difficulty in so thinking. Indeed, the idea is now theoretically respectable. Anyone who doubts that claim should check this and this out, and then perhaps think again.

5a0. If this weren't the case, then nothing determinate will have been proposed (i.e., put forward for consideration) which means that sentences like M6 would fail even to be propositions.

It is this that enables us to understand M6 without knowing whether or not it is true, or even if M6a were the case instead (i.e., once a false proposition has been understood we can imagine what would make, or would have made, it true):

On the other hand, if neither M6 nor M6a could be the case, they would both fail to be propositions. In that eventuality, it would be entirely unclear what they were proposing or putting forward for consideration.

Of course, to those of a 'dialectical' frame-of-mind, the above (apparent) application of the LEM will be anathema, and for whom acceptance of which would be a sure sign of 'formal thinking' -- i.e., the implication that any proposition has to be either true or false. In response, it is worth pointing out that this endlessly recycled DM-objection is in fact self-refuting, since it, too, relies on the LEM. That is because it must be the case that any application of the LEM is either an application of the LEM or it isn't -- it can't be both. Indeed, we can go further: any exercise of 'formal thought' is either an example of 'formal thought' or it isn't; it can't be both. A (alleged) defect in the LEM is a defect or it isn't. Hence, any DM-fans brave enough to attack the LEM will have to use it (explicitly or implicitly) in order to criticise it or highlight its supposed limitations, rendering that criticism null and void.

[Of course, if it is unclear whether or not a supposed application of the LEM is in fact an application of the LEM, then that, too, will be either unclear or it won't, and we are back where were in the previous paragraph.]

Incidentally, throughout this Essay I have used rather stilted sentences like this: "It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or knowing whether it is false". That is because there is a world of difference between the following two sentences:

A1: It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or false; and,

A2: It is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or knowing whether it is false.

As will be explained later, it is implicit in the rules we have for the application of words like "empirical" and "factual" -- i.e., that an empirical proposition can only assume one of two truth-values (true or false). In other words, such propositions are "bivalent" and have true-false polarity, but it isn't part of those rules that we must know whether any such proposition is true or know whether any such proposition is false in order to understand it. All we need know is that it could be one or the other, not both. In fact, this rule lies behind the fact that we can understand empirical sentences before we know whether they are true or whether they are false. This involves comprehending what would make them true or would make them false. [Why that is so will become apparent as this Essay unfolds.]

If that weren't so, it would be indeterminate what was being proposed or put forward for consideration -- which would in turn be enough to deny that the sentence in question was an empirical proposition to begin with.

[I have explained this idea in greater detail below. On Hegel's 'apparent' rejection of the LEM, or even his (ill-advised) attempt to criticise it, see here. Even so, the limitations of the LEM lie elsewhere. On that, see Peter Geach's article, 'The Law of the Excluded Middle', in Geach (1972a), pp.74-87.]

5a. It could be objected that DM-theorists do in fact provide evidence in support of their theory. Often this involves an appeal to the 'whole of science', or, perhaps, to 'human experience in general'. Vague gestures like this, which are often accompanied by a few sentences, paragraphs or even (at its very best) pages of specially-selected, 'illustrations' (that don't work anyway -- as we discovered in Essay Seven Part One (link at the end of this sentence, and below)) can be found all across DM-literature, with Molyneux (2012), quoted below, being just the latest example of what I have called Mickey Mouse Science.

However, as we have seen, this part of DM follows from the theory expressed in and by P4:

This means that, for dialecticians, these two 'concepts', matter and motion, can no more be separated than, say, the words "number" and "six".

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be…. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transmitted…. A motionless state of matter therefore proves to be one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas…." [Engels (1976), p.74. Italic emphasis in the original. Paragraphs merged.]

While evidence can and has been used to show that matter does move (not that that was ever in doubt, whereas why it does so and whether motion is an inherent property of matter, might have been), no amount of evidence could possibly show that motion is "The mode of the existence of matter", or that motion without matter is "unthinkable" --, that is, that matter can't exist unless it is moving, or that we can't think about matter except in this way.

And that is what makes the 'evidential display' aired in the DM-literature the charade it is. What little evidence DM-theorists bother to scrape-together is used solely illustratively; i.e., it isn't used to establish the truth of a given DM-theory, merely make it seem clearer, more plausible, or perhaps even more 'scientific' -- and plainly this is aimed at those new to the theory. No independent expert in the relevant fields would accept it as proof. In Essay Seven, this approach to knowledge was dubbed, "Mickey Mouse Science". And the accuracy of that observation is itself confirmed by the further fact that this particular theory (about the universal nature of motion) is based on Hegel's dogmatic assertions (as is much else in DM), who arrived at such conclusions before very much evidence was actually available.

Of course, his ideas in this area were ultimately derived from Heraclitus, who advanced claims like this before there was any scientific data at all! Indeed, he arrived at this 'Super-Scientific truth' (concerning universal change), valid for all of space and time, by merely thinking about the possibility of stepping into the same river more than once! Unfortunately, Heraclitus even screwed that up! [On this, see Essay Six.]

All As we saw in Essay Seven Part One (and other Essays at the site, such as Five and Six) DM-theses possess little other than a priori, dogmatic 'support' like this, so it is no use dialecticians pretending their ideas were originally motivated by evidence, or even by a summary of evidence available now, in the 21st century.

[There is more on this topic here, as there will be in several later Parts of Essay Twelve (when they are published).]

5b. In fact, it is hard to imagine single experiment that could be carried out that might be aimed at confirming such hyper-bold theories. Because they are derived from thought/language alone, they reflect their inventor's determination to use words idiosyncratically. Each of these Cosmic Verities is then used as a rule to interpret experience (as a form of representation -- albeit an incoherent form of representation, as we will see), and hence they are used to dictate to nature how it must be, what it must contain and how it must act (this is the RRT, again). That is, of course, why they seem 'self-evident' to those who concoct them, why so many modal terms are used in their formulation, why no confirming experiments are called for and why none are ever carried out. After all, has a single DM-supporter ever even so much as proposed a method for testing -- let alone actually proceeding to test -- the veracity of the vast majority of DM-theses? Why bother testing what appear to be self-evident truths? Who ever tests whether vixens are female foxes or whether three is a number?

It could be objected that Trotsky, for example, did in fact propose an experiment -- whereby two bags of sugar could be weighted to test the validity of the LOI. But, anyone who thinks that what Trotsky proposed could rightly be described as an "experiment" has a novel understanding of the nature of that word. Since I have covered this topic at length in Essay Six, the reader is directed there for more details.

Unfortunately for dialecticians, this immediately divorces their 'Super-Truths' from a materialist account of nature and society. If, however, the 'truth' or the 'falsehood' of DM-theories like these is dependent on thought alone, how could these 'Super Verities' be anything other than Ideal?

Worse still: if DM-claims are indeed Idealist, how could they be used to help change the world?

Well, as we saw in Essay Nine Part Two, that isn't strictly true. They can be so used -- but only negatively --, in ways that help benefit the class enemy, heaping ordure on Marxism.

Small wonder then that DM has presided over 150 years of almost total failure. [More on that in Essay Ten Part One.]

Admittedly, some of these pronouncements are 'supported' by a series of short, or even a few more protracted arguments, which are merely used to help 'derive' these 'Super-Truths' from still other a priori theses, 'self-evident truths', assorted 'thought experiments, stipulative definitions and therefore, ultimately from words alone. Their 'veracity' isn't based on physical evidence, but on what their constituent words or concepts (and those of any supporting ideas) seem to mean. The linguistically-based nature of their derivation means they can be viewed as universal truths in no need of evidential support. We saw this was the case with Engels and Lenin, whose conclusions about matter and motion followed from P4 (not from a thorough review of the evidence):

[The significance of the above comments will be explored as this Essay unfolds.]

6a. Again, it could be objected that Lenin actually devoted an entire section in MEC to providing support for this claim of his. Hence, the allegations advanced in this Essay are entirely baseless.

Unfortunately, Lenin actually spent the bulk of the aforementioned section of MEC to picking a fight with various Idealists, which makes much of what he had to say irrelevant to the concerns addressed in this Essay (and, indeed, irrelevant to supporting the above objection!).

However, in order to consider every conceivable avenue open to DM-fans to defend Lenin, it is necessary to check whether or not his arguments hold together, even in their own terms.

Lenin's opening point in this part of MEC (I am ignoring the preamble on pp.318-19 since it seems to add nothing substantial) is this:

As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, Lenin's principal tactic when confronting ideas he doesn't like is to caricature them -- the above being an excellent example. "The entire world is his sensation"?! I can think of no Idealist of note who has ever argued this. [Email me if you disagree and can name a few such (with proof!).]

Even so, the force of Lenin's argument depends on his running-together two senses of "move". This allows him to insinuate that any Idealist who claims that "the world is motion" must somehow be contradicting herself, since her thoughts (and hence the contents of her world, presumably) "move". Now, even if we allow Lenin to get away with this conflation, how this shows that "motion without matter is unthinkable" is still far from clear.

It could be argued in defence of Lenin that for an Idealist, even thinking about matter involves motion, namely the motion of their own thoughts. In that case, motion without matter is indeed unthinkable. But, and once again, even if we accept Lenin's equivocation between these two senses of "move", we have already seen that he declared that:

In that case, if an Idealist thinks of something non-material (such as 'god'), and his/her thought 'moves' in order to do this, then motion without matter is thinkable, nay actual, after all! [Whether 'God' is material or not will be discussed in Essay Thirteen Part One, but it is difficult to think of a single DM-fan who would want to argue that 'The Deity' can be so described!] Moreover, a consistent Idealist (of the sort Lenin is caricaturing) would probably conclude that while her ideas might move, that doesn't imply anything concerning the motion, or lack of motion, of matter, since she denies there is such a thing as matter (i.e., as conceived by materialists).

Nevertheless, what devastating dialectical argument does Lenin now deploy in order to cast even this straw doctrine into oblivion? Wonder no more:

"The fundamental distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception, idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality. The world is the movement of this objective reality reflected by our consciousness. To the movement of ideas, perceptions, etc., there corresponds the movement of matter outside me. The concept matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation. Therefore, to divorce motion from matter is equivalent to divorcing thought from objective reality, or to divorcing my sensations from the external world -- in a word, it is to go over to idealism. The trick which is usually performed in denying matter, and in assuming motion without matter, consists in ignoring the relation of matter to thought. The question is presented as though this relation did not exist, but in reality it is introduced surreptitiously; at the beginning of the argument it remains unexpressed, but subsequently crops up more or less imperceptibly.

"Matter has disappeared, they tell us, wishing from this to draw epistemological conclusions. But has thought remained? -- we ask. If not, if with the disappearance of matter thought has also disappeared, if with the disappearance of the brain and nervous system ideas and sensations, too, have disappeared -- then it follows that everything has disappeared. And your argument has disappeared as a sample of 'thought' (or lack of thought)! But if it has remained -- if it is assumed that with the disappearance of matter, thought (idea, sensation, etc.) does not disappear, then you have surreptitiously gone over to the standpoint of philosophical idealism. And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter, for tacitly, by the very fact that they continue to argue, they are acknowledging the existence of thought after the disappearance of matter. This means that a very simple, or a very complex philosophical idealism is taken as a basis; a very simple one, if it is a case of frank solipsism (I exist, and the world is only my sensation); a very complex one, if instead of the thought, ideas and sensations of a living person, a dead abstraction is posited, that is, nobody's thought, nobody's idea, nobody's sensation, but thought in general (the Absolute Idea, the Universal Will, etc.), sensation as an indeterminate 'element,' the 'psychical,' which is substituted for the whole of physical nature, etc., etc. Thousands of shades of varieties of philosophical idealism are possible and it is always possible to create a thousand and first shade; and to the author of this thousand and first little system (empirio-monism, for example) what distinguishes it from the rest may appear to be momentous. From the standpoint of materialism, however, the distinction is absolutely unessential. What is essential is the point of departure. What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Ibid., pp.320-21. Italic emphases in the original; link added.]

This passage more than most exposes Lenin's philosophical naivety, if not incompetence. As pointed out earlier, this topic will be discussed in much greater detail in Essay Thirteen Part One, but, for present purposes, we need only note that all that the above 'argument' demonstrates is that Lenin based his own ideas on the fact that he had 'images' of something-or-other, and that what those 'images' 'reflect' must therefore exist. He supported this inference with a dubious claim that whatever is reflected in the mind must exist in the external world -- on that, see below.

But, even if we were recklessly charitable here, the most this 'argument' could conceivably establish is that Lenin's images correspond to his own image of reality, since all he has are images with which to compare his other images! He has no way of comparing his images with anything which isn't also an image. He couldn't jump 'out of his head' to access the world 'directly' in order to check his images against the reality he thinks they 'reflect'.

An appeal to practice, or even science, at this point would be to no avail either, since, if Lenin were right, all he would have are images of practice and images of science!

[I hasten to add that this doesn't imply that I doubt the existence of the external world! But, anyone who agrees with Lenin faces serious problems, since they can only appeal to faith in support of their belief in 'objective reality'. In which case, they are philosophically no better off than Bogdanov and the others Lenin was criticising in MEC -- the "Fideists", as he called them. (As noted above, I have gone into this at much greater length in Essay Thirteen Part One.)]

Hence, at most, all that the above passage shows is that materialists (according to Lenin's definition of them) have a different 'view of reality' than Idealists, not that Idealists can't think about motion. Indeed, he all but admits that they can do:

"And this always happens with people who wish, for 'economy's sake,' to conceive of motion without matter...." [Ibid.]

"We thus see that scientists who were prepared to grant that motion is conceivable without matter were to be encountered forty years ago too, and that 'on this point' Dietzgen declared them to be seers of ghosts. What, then, is the connection between philosophical idealism and the divorce of matter from motion, the separation of substance from force? Is it not 'more economical,' indeed, to conceive motion without matter?" [Ibid., p.319. Bold emphasis and link added.]

"What is essential is that the attempt to think of motion without matter smuggles in thought divorced from matter -- and that is philosophical idealism." [Ibid., p.321.]

"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge." [Ibid., p.69. Bold emphasis added.]

"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'" [Ibid., p.279. Bold emphasis added.]

[Nevertheless, how Lenin knew the above was true for other minds -- which can't actually be minds, since they exist outside his mind (and he has as yet no proof there are any other minds out there), which means, by his own criterion, these 'minds' must be material! -- he kept to himself.]

Now, the inference that images imply the existence of the thing imaged is manifestly absurd. If that were the case, we would have to start believing in the real existence of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, for example. [On this, see here and the extended discussion here. Of course, since Lenin didn't believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, it is clear that he either didn't really believe "The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'", or he hadn't thought through the implications of his theory. And the same can be said of his epigones, who have uncritically swallowed this view of perception and knowledge.]

But, even if Lenin were right, how does any of this show that motion without matter is inconceivable or "unthinkable"? Indeed, not only is motion without matter conceivable, it is actual. Several examples of this everyday phenomenon have been given later on in this Essay.

Again, the most this argument is capable of establishing is that the idea of motion and the idea of matter are inseparable, or that the idea of motion without the idea of matter is 'unthinkable', but then only for "materialist" and "matter" defined in Lenin's rather odd way. Lenin had no way of breaking out of this Idealist circle.

However, Lenin has another argument up the image of his sleeve. After a detour that took him into a consideration of Bogdanov's ideas, he argued that:

"Ostwald's answer, which so pleased Bogdanov in 1899, is plain sophistry. Must our judgments necessarily consist of electrons and ether? -- one might retort to Ostwald. As a matter of fact, the mental elimination from 'nature' of matter as the 'subject' only implies the tacit admission into philosophy of thought as the 'subject' (i.e., as the primary, the starting point, independent of matter). Not the subject, but the objective source of sensation is eliminated, and sensation becomes the 'subject,' i.e., philosophy becomes Berkeleian, no matter in what trappings the word 'sensation' is afterwards decked. Ostwald endeavoured to avoid this inevitable philosophical alternative (materialism or idealism) by an indefinite use of the word 'energy,' but this very endeavour only once again goes to prove the futility of such artifices. If energy is motion, you have only shifted the difficulty from the subject to the predicate, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material? Does the transformation of energy take place outside my mind, independently of man and mankind, or are these only ideas, symbols, conventional signs, and so forth? And this question proved fatal to the 'energeticist' philosophy, that attempt [sic] to disguise old epistemological errors by a 'new' terminology." [Ibid., p.324; links added.]

This amounts to arguing against 'energeticists' (i.e., those who claim that matter does not exist, or that it is simply energy) that they have merely:

"shifted the difficulty from the subject to the predicate, you have only changed the question, does matter move? into the question, is energy material?" [Ibid.]

Well, if Lenin's words alone were sufficient, they would settle the issue. Unfortunately, they aren't. So, what argument does he offer in support of his idiosyncratic 'translation' of "Does matter move?" into "Is energy material?" Apparently none at all -- or, none other than the following idiosyncratic re-definition of "matter" (which he repeats endlessly throughout MEC without once trying to justify it):

"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Ibid., p.311.]

"Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Ibid., p.312.]

So, Lenin's only justification seems to be that to deny, or reject, what he or Engels asserts about matter is to brand oneself an Idealist. However, since Lenin failed to show that his own ideas (supposedly about reality, 'reflected in the mind', etc.) don't themselves collapse into Idealism, this is no help at all.

Exactly how Lenin's ideas collapse into Idealism will (once again) be examined at length in Essay Thirteen Part One, but the argument there will revolve around his only apparent argument for the existence of the external world (which we examined briefly above): that an image implies the existence of the thing imaged!

"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'" [Ibid., p.279. Bold emphasis added.]

But, as pointed out earlier, all that Lenin had to rely on here was his own image of a mirror -- assuming that this is what lay behind his use of this ancient Hermetic metaphor. His knowledge of mirrors was his only guide when it came to using this figure of speech -- i.e., the trope concerning 'reflection'. So, all he had were images of mirrors! In which case, the most this argument establishes is that images reflect other images!

Now, it could be argued that mirrors actually reflect the images of objects, or they reflect objects themselves, which is undeniable; but that response can only be maintained by those who reject Lenin's hopelessly confused epistemology, who don't think that all we have available to us are images. That is because Lenin has yet to show that there are any 'real mirrors', as opposed to images of mirrors. Or, indeed, show that these images of mirrors reflect objects as opposed to reflecting the images of images of 'objects'. His version of the traditional representative theory of knowledge, whereby we represent the world to ourselves (as 'ideas', 'concepts', 'images', or even 'representations') in our heads undercuts all talk of an 'objective' world independent of our knowledge of it, as was abundantly clear to 18^th century Idealists like Berkeley. Now Lenin, and/or his apologists, might try to belittle, deny or repudiate that line-of-argument, and then maybe kick up an image of a cloud of dust (by the use of the sort of repetitive bluster they learned from Lenin) to hide the fact that this image of Lenin's argument doesn't work. But, to all but true believers, it is plain that his 'theory' would transform the world into a set of images and, indeed, images of images.

[Again, I hasten to add that this isn't my theory (I reject all philosophical theories as incoherent non-sense, as this Essay shows). I am merely exposing the unacceptable implications of Lenin's theory.]

And, as we will see below, it is no use Lenin, or one of his epigones, appealing to the 'commonsense' ideas of ordinary folk to bail him out:

"Materialism deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of knowledge." [Ibid., p.69.]

That is because, all Lenin has are 'images' of such 'folk' and 'images of what they do and do not believe!

However, if we now to address Lenin's actual inference, images don't in fact imply the existence of anything, since they are 'uninterpreted inner objects of cognition' (to use traditional jargon). And an act of interpretation (i.e., one such that re-configures these 'objects' as the images of this, or of that) would have nothing but still other images (interpreted or not) to assist it to that end. And, as we will see in Essay Ten, practice can't turn an image into something it isn't.

Still less is it any use arguing that the human race wouldn't have survived had their images of the world not approximately, or even exactly, corresponded with the world (or at least local parts of it), since, and once again, all Lenin and his supporters have in their heads are images of humanity surviving. Lenin has yet to show that his images of 'humanity doing anything' actually correspond with 'anything outside the image they have inside their heads/brains'. Whatever evidence might be offered in support will be no more than another set of images, given this defective epistemology and even more ridiculous starting point. Lenin has given us no way of producing anything other than these yet-to-be-authenticated-images. After all, no image can authenticate itself or, indeed, validate another image.

In addition, we have already seen that Lenin's approach to knowledge implies extreme scepticism. Hence, far from beginning with the "naive beliefs" of ordinary folk, his theory in fact obliterates both them and their beliefs! If we were to believe what Lenin says, both would just be 'images' in his head.

The rest of Lenin's 'argument' in this section of MEC adds little to the above (as will become apparent in Essay Thirteen Part One); in that case, Lenin failed to demonstrate by argument or evidence that motion without matter is "unthinkable".

[Some might object that Lenin's ideas underwent considerable development between the writing of MEC and PN. That response has been dealt with in Appendix Three of Essay Three Part Two.]

7. Of course, it is worth adding here that metaphysical theories aren't set in concrete; they change and develop in accord with the rise and fall of each Mode of Production, in line with the ideological imperatives of each ruling elite, or those of any insurgent class intent on replacing the old ruling elite -- or, indeed, in line with those of any such "prize fighters". [On this, see Shaw (1989).] Having said that, there is a common thread running through each version of ruling-class Philosophy: the doctrine that Cosmic Verities, valid for all of space and time, can be inferred from thought or language alone -- as Marx and Engels pointed out:

"[O]ne fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." [Marx and Engels (1968b), p.52. Bold emphasis added.]

"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. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an 'eternal law.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]

Admittedly, the Early Ancient Greek Philosophers didn't use the word "metaphysics"; that term was introduced much later, by Aristotle. Nevertheless, the various world-views on which Super-Knowledge like this feed certainly date back (in the 'West') at least to Anaximander and Anaximenes. In the 'East', of course, it stretches even further back. [There is more on this in Note I above, as well as in Parts Two and Three of this Essay.]

8. These days 'necessary truths' tend to be defined extensionally, that is, they are said to be true in every possible world. [Divers (2002), Kirkham (1992), Menzel (2016).] That rather odd idea will be critically examined elsewhere at this site.

However, this isn't to suggest that all metaphysicians attached such modal qualifications to the word "truth" -- certainly not pre-Leibniz. Hence, the use of the phrase "necessary truth" in these Essays (in order to highlight the confusion that is alleged to exist between necessary and contingent truths) is merely a handy way of underlining a common thread running through the entire history of Metaphysics.

Clearly, some sensitivity needs to be shown when analysing the metaphysical ideas of thinkers who wrote before this phrase entered philosophical currency. Having said that, it is the use to which a theorist puts his/her ideas that is important. If that use is no different from the employment of genuinely necessary truths (as the latter have been conceived more recently), no serious distortion of the original ideas need be implied.

On this, see the extended comments in "Grammar and Necessity" in Baker and Hacker (2009), pp.241-370. Much that these two authors have to say is consistent with the view adopted at this site -- but this work of theirs should be read in the light of other references given below, particularly the work of David Bloor and Martin Kusch. Nevertheless, it greatly extends and amplifies the comments related to that topic in this Essay.

9. The ease with which all metaphysicians perform this trick (i.e., deriving necessary truths from a handful of words) isn't the only clue we have about the real nature of the dogmatic theories Traditional Philosophers conjure out of less than thin air. A detailed consideration of different interpretations of the words used -- coupled with a demonstration that there are other ways of viewing them (which are equally, if not more, plausible) -- shows that metaphysical theories depend on little other than a grim determination to use language in odd ways and/or distort it.

Hence, it is possible to show that these 'Super-Truths' decay into incoherence because they:

(b) Are based on a highly specialised, limited, distorted or implausible use of language.

In which case, they can't be reflections of the 'necessary' or 'essential' features of this universe (or, indeed, of any universe). Far from depicting the 'logical or essential form of the world', they either express, or depend on, identifiable ruling-class assumptions about the sort of universe that is conducive to their interests, their determination to maintain power and reproduce contemporaneous relations of exploitation, or they reflect their inventor's determination to use language idiosyncratically.

[These contentions will be substantiated in the next two Parts of Essay Twelve; the other allegations will be substantiated in the later Parts of the same Essay.]

It could be argued that the philosophical language is legitimate in itself, and shouldn't be beholden to ordinary usage.

In response, the reader is referred back to Glock's comments above, as well as the following -- even though these words were largely aimed at Cognitive Scientists and the analogy they draw is with computers, they still in general apply to the point at issue:

"As to the widespread disparagement of attempts to resolve philosophical problems by way of appeals to 'what we would ordinarily say', we would proffer the following comment. It often appears that those who engage in such disparaging nonetheless themselves often do what they programmatically disparage, for it seems to us at least arguable that many of the central philosophical questions are in fact, and despite protestations to the contrary, being argued about in terms of appeals (albeit often inept) to 'what we would ordinarily say...'. That the main issues of contemporary philosophy of mind are essentially about language (in the sense that they arise from and struggle with confusions over the meanings of ordinary words) is a position which, we insist, can still reasonably be proposed and defended. We shall claim here that most, if not all, of the conundrums, controversies and challenges of the philosophy of mind in the late twentieth century consist in a collectively assertive, although bewildered, attitude toward such ordinary linguistic terms as 'mind' itself, 'consciousness', 'thought', 'belief', 'intention' and so on, and that the problems which are posed are ones which characteristically are of the form which ask what we should say if confronted with certain facts, as described....

"We have absolutely nothing against the coining of new, technical uses [of words], as we have said. Rather, the issue is that many of those who insist upon speaking of machines' 'thinking' and 'understanding' do not intend in the least to be coining new, restrictively technical, uses for these terms. It is not, for example, that they have decided to call a new kind of machine an 'understanding machine', where the word 'understanding' now means something different from what we ordinarily mean by that word. On the contrary, the philosophical cachet derives entirely from their insisting that they are using the words 'thinking' and 'understanding' in the same sense that we ordinarily use them. The aim is quite characteristically to provoke, challenge and confront the rest of us. Their objective is to contradict something that the rest of us believe. What the 'rest of us' believe is simply this: thinking and understanding is something distinctive to human beings..., and that these capacities set us apart from the merely mechanical.... The argument that a machine can think or understand, therefore, is of interest precisely because it features a use of the words 'think' and 'understand' which is intendedly the same as the ordinary use. Otherwise, the sense of challenge and, consequently, of interest would evaporate.... If engineers were to make 'understand' and 'think' into technical terms, ones with special, technical meanings different and distinct from those we ordinarily take them to have, then, of course, their claims to have built machines which think or understand would have no bearing whatsoever upon our inclination ordinarily to say that, in the ordinary sense, machines do not think or understand." [Button, et al, (1995), pp.12, 20-21. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Hence, if philosophers use, for example, the word "knowledge" in an attempt to inform us what knowledge really is, but their use bears no relation to how that word is normally employed, then what they have to say will relate to 'knowledge', not knowledge, leaving the 'philosophical problem' of knowledge unaffected. [On that, see also Baz (2012) and Coulter and Sharrock (2007).]

9a. Some might object at this point and counter-claim that this emphasis on evidence, confirmation and proof shows that the present author is indeed a positivist, or at least an empiricist. Neither is the case. The present author is merely holding DM-theorists to their word:

"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. Bold emphasis added.]

"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels (1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Ibid., p.47. Bold emphases alone added.]

"The general results of the investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As Dühring proceeds from 'principles' instead of facts he is an ideologist, and can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx and Engels (1987), Volume 25, p.597. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"The dialectic does not liberate the investigator from painstaking study of the facts, quite the contrary: it requires it." [Trotsky (1986), p.92. Bold emphasis added]

"Dialectics and materialism are the basic elements in the Marxist cognition of the world. But this does not mean at all that they can be applied to any sphere of knowledge, like an ever ready master key. Dialectics cannot be imposed on facts; it has to be deduced from facts, from their nature and development…." [Trotsky (1973), p.233. Bold emphasis added.]

"Dialectics and materialism comprise the basic elements of the Marxist cognition of the world. But this by no means implies that they can be applied in any field of knowledge like an ever-ready master-key. The dialectic cannot be imposed on facts, it must be derived from the facts, from their nature and their development." [Ibid. Bold added.]

"Whenever any Marxist attempted to transmute the theory of Marx into a universal master key and ignore all other spheres of learning, Vladimir Ilyich would rebuke him with the expressive phrase 'Komchvanstvo' ('communist swagger')." [Ibid., p.221.]

"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 emphases added.]

"Our party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are…without disguises and without fantasy…. Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a 'system' as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.14-15. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

"[The laws of dialectics] are not, as Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not a suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is available." [Rees (1998), p.9. Bold emphasis added.]

"'[The dialectic is not a] magic master key for all questions.' The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.... The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.42, 46-47. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

9b. On the ruling-class origin of the ideas promoted by DM-theorists, see Essay Nine Part Two, here.

10. These allegations will also be substantiated in later Parts of Essay Twelve, as well as Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here).

However, it is important to register the following caveat (also added to Essay Nine Part One):

Having said that, it needs emphasising up-front that it isn't being maintained here that leading revolutionaries adopted ruling-class ideas duplicitously or willingly. What is being alleged is that they did this unwittingly. Exactly how and why they did so will be revealed in Part Two.

11. The word "can't" isn't meant to suggest a physical limit, here. It expresses the fact that metaphysical theories soon descend into incoherent non-sense and can't fail to do so. That is because, by means of them, their inventors attempt to transcend the expressive limitations of language. [More on that below; see also Note 9.]

11a0. It is worth pointing out that at this site "non-sense" is not the same as "nonsense". The latter term has various meanings ranging from the patently false (such as "Karl Marx was a shape-shifting lizard") to plain gibberish (such as "783&£$750 ow2jmn 34y4&$ 6y3n3& 8FT34n"), assuming the latter isn't a code of some sort.

"Non-sense", as that word is being used at this site, characterises indicative sentences that turn out to be incapable of expressing a sense no matter what we try to do with them. ["Sense" is explained below.] That is, such sentences are incapable of being true and they are incapable of being false. In metaphysical theories, as we have seen, the indicative or fact-stating mood is regularly mis-used, mis-applied or misconstrued. So, when sentences like these are employed to state supposedly 'fundamental truths about reality', they badly misfire since they can't possibly do that. [Later sections of this Essay will explain why that is so.]

Hence, non-sensical sentences as such are neither patently false nor plain gibberish. [However, there are different sorts of non-sense. More about that later.]

Finally, the word "sense" is being used in the following way: it expresses what is understood to be the case for a given proposition to be true or what is understood to be the case for that proposition to be false, even if neither of those options is ever actually known -- even if neither option may ever be know, or even if no one ever cares to know.

For example, everyone (who knows English, who knows who Tony Blair is, and that Das Kapital is a book that is capable of being owned) will understand T1 upon hearing or reading it. They grasp its sense --, that is, they understand what (certain parts of) the world would have to be like for it to be true and what (certain parts of) the world would have to be like for it to be false.

More importantly, the same situation that makes T1 true (if it obtains) will make T1 false (if it does not obtain).

These conditions are integral to our capacity to understand empirical propositions before we know whether they are true or before we know whether they are false. Indeed, they explain how and why we know what to look for (or what to expect) in order to show, ascertain or recognise that such propositions are true, or in order to show, ascertain or recognise that they are false -- again, even if we never succeed or even wish to succeed in doing either.

[Alternatively, if an individual didn't know such things (implicitly or explicitly), that would indicate they didn't actually understand T1. Some have raised several objections to this characterisation of sense; their claims will be dealt with later on in this Essay.]

11b. Conversely, it could be argued that this shows B1 is false. That possibility will be tackled presently.

11c. Here is an example where the word "Marx" is being used: "Marx wrote Das Kapital Volume One"; and here is one where the word "Marx" is only mentioned but not used: "'Marx' contains four letters."

This apparently clear distinction has been challenged several times. On that, see, for example, Moore (1986).

12. However, if 'thought itself' is to be linked with the motion of matter -- at however deep or complex a level that is deemed to take place -- then the second of these sentences (i.e., "This could be true even if no matter was in fact relocated in the process") would plainly be incorrect. Anyway, such a theory (about 'thought and matter') seems to depend on the truth of reductive materialism, a doctrine Lenin would certainly have rejected.

But, even if M11 were contestable on other grounds, it wouldn't be difficult to think of other examples that aren't so easily dismissed. Consider, therefore, the following:

E3: You say you'll mend the fence, but that job seems to move further into the future by the day.

E6: Multiplying –2 by –3 moves it from the set of Negative Integers to the set of Positive Integers (= 6), even while all three remain in the set of Real Numbers.

E7: The disqualification of Leaping Lena in the 3.30 at Belmont moved Mugwump into first place.

E8: The back of the Necker Cube moves to the front (and vice versa) depending on how you view it.

E9: The result of the strike ballot moved the question of tactics to the top of the agenda.

The above senses of "move" cannot easily be reconciled with Lenin's ideas about matter and motion.

[Many more examples like this were given in Essay Five. See also Note 13, below.]

Admittedly, some might try to dismiss one or more of the above examples (and, indeed, those in Essay Five) by refining Lenin's 'definition' of matter, or even motion -- in tandem with the use of a several other (ad hoc) dodges, perhaps. Alternatively, still others might point out that these examples employ the word "move" with a different meaning compared to Lenin's use of it. But, even if that were so, it still wouldn't mean Lenin's was the correct way -- or, indeed, the only way -- to use this word. Clearly, what Lenin actually meant by "motion" (that is, if he did mean anything by it!) must be ascertained before a decision can be made either way. However, Lenin's intentions aren't at all easy to fathom; in fact, it is difficult to make head or tail of much that Lenin has to say in this area -- especially throughout MEC -- as will be demonstrated in the main body of this Essay and Essay Thirteen Part One.

If further exception is still taken to the counter-examples given above (each of which, incidentally illustrate a perfectly ordinary use of the word "move" and its cognates), then that would amount to finding fault with ordinary language, not with the present author or even with the examples given. But, we have already seen what serious problems confront anyone reckless enough to do down that rabbit hole.

Indeed, these examples represent a much wider and more representative sample of the use of "move" than is generally the case in the scribblings of Idealists and metaphysicians (including Lenin). As seems clear, they show how ordinary human beings regularly employ this word (and others related to it) in their interface with the world and with one another; they do so in ways undreamt of in or by Traditional Thinkers.

Whatever else Lenin might have imagined he meant by his use of "motion"/"move", it is clear that ordinary speakers don't employ them this way, and neither do scientists. The use of these two words by everyday materialists -- i.e., workers -- is not only a better, it is amore reliable, guide to their range of connotations than that of inconsistent materialists/closet Idealists -- i.e., dialecticians. If Lenin's employment of this word diverges from its materially-grounded use in everyday life, then so much the worse for him and anyone who agrees with him.

However, it could be countered that it is perfectly clear what Lenin intended; he was alluding to the physical or literal meaning of the word "move" -- i.e., connected with locomotion and "change of place", studied in and by the physical sciences and applied mathematics. Hence, the above anti-DM response is as misguided as it is irrelevant.

In reply, it is worth noting that the alleged physical sense of "move" (interpreted as "change of place") isn't without problems of its own. Since that was discussed in detail in Essay Five (link above), the reader is referred there for further details.

Lenin speaks here about "the movement of ideas" and the "motion of...thoughts, ideas, sensations". He can't have meant "change of place" by that use of "move"/"motion"!

So, if Lenin is allowed to employ a (slightly) wider use of "motion" (and/or its cognates), DM-fans can hardly complain when the very same tactic is adopted by those who don't accept DM.

Independently of this, it is easy to show that Lenin is entirely unclear what he meant by "move" (and/or its cognates), just as he was unclear about "matter" -- on that, see here and Note One.

Finally, since many of the above examples relate to events that take place, or might take place, outside the mind, they clearly relate to material movement, as defined by Lenin. If they're unacceptable, then the problem lies with Lenin's characterisation of matter and motion, not with those examples.

M12: The occurrence of literal motion without matter can never be thought of as true.

The employment of that word was deliberate; that is because M12 could be true while M13 is false (which means that M13 can't follow from M12).

On the other hand, M13 could follow from M12 if an extra Idealist (or even suppressed) premiss were added, namely:

Since it is central to my case against DM that its theorists (covertly) accept M12a (on that, see the RRT, as well as Essays Two, Twelve Part Four, and Thirteen Part One), then, at least for them, M13 would follow from M12 (via M12a).

[The reverse implication is also problematic, since M13 could be true while M12 is false. However, that invalid inference isn't relevant to the aims of this Essay and will therefore be ignored.]

13. Another example of the indirect connection of motion with matter is the following:

Even though something material would have to move for the shadow itself to move, the latter's motion is clearly non-material, and depends on the absence of matter (i.e., light).

Surfaces are rather puzzling; no one seems to be sure whether they are material or not. [Cf., Stroll (1988).] Few doubt they can move. The same goes for waves, shapes, holes, corners, boundaries and edges [Cf., Casati and Varzi (1995, 1999, 2023), and Varzi (1997, 2023)], all of which can move (indeed, some actually do move; e.g., Mexican Waves). The same applies to reflections and shadows. [On the latter, see Sorensen (2003, 2008). On shapes, see Bennett (2012).]

Hence, not only is motion without matter conceivable, it is actual, as many of the above demonstrate.

[This forms part of Note 17. However, I have covered this topic in much greater detail here.]

Marx's belief in the social nature of language, and the fundamental role it plays in communication (not representation), is confirmed by the following passages:

"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. -- real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. [Marx and Engels (1970), p.47. Bold emphasis added.]

"Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also possesses 'consciousness,' but, even so, not inherent, not 'pure' consciousness. From the start the 'spirit' is afflicted with the curse of being 'burdened' with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not enter into 'relations' with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.... On the other hand, man's consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all...." [Ibid., pp.50-51. Bold emphases added.]

"One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers 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 were bound 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 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; paragraphs merged.]

"The object before us, to begin with, material production. Individuals producing in Society -- hence socially determined individual production -- is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rousseau's contrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small. It is, rather, the anticipation of 'civil society', in preparation since the sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth. In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. This illusion has been common to each new epoch to this day. Steuart avoided this simple-mindedness because as an aristocrat and in antithesis to the eighteenth century, he had in some respects a more historical footing. The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a Zwon politikon not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society -- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the centre of the most modern economics by Bastiat, Carey, Proudhon etc. Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a historico-philosophic account of the source of an economic relation, of whose historic origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or Prometheus stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more dry and boring than the fantasies of a locus communis." [Marx (1973), pp.83-85. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

"The main point here is this: In all these forms -- in which landed property and agriculture form the basis of the economic order, and where the economic aim is hence the production of use values, i.e., the reproduction of the individual within the specific relation to the commune in which he is its basis -- there is to be found: (1) Appropriation not through labour, but presupposed to labour; appropriation of the natural conditions of labour, of the earth as the original instrument of labour as well as its workshop and repository of raw materials. The individual relates simply to the objective conditions of labour as being his; [relates] to them as the inorganic nature of his subjectivity, in which the latter realizes itself; the chief objective condition of labour does not itself appear as a product of labour, but is already there as nature; on one side the living individual, on the other the earth, as the objective condition of his reproduction; (2) but this relation to land and soil, to the earth, as the property of the labouring individual -- who thus appears from the outset not merely as labouring individual, in this abstraction, but who has an objective mode of existence in his ownership of the land, an existence presupposed to his activity, and not merely as a result of it, a presupposition of his activity just like his skin, his sense organs, which of course he also reproduces and develops etc. in the life process, but which are nevertheless presuppositions of this process of his reproduction -- is instantly mediated by the naturally arisen, spontaneous, more or less historically developed and modified presence of the individual as member of a commune -- his naturally arisen presence as member of a tribe etc. An isolated individual could no more have property in land and soil than he could speak. He could, of course, live off it as substance, as do the animals. The relation to the earth as property is always mediated through the occupation of the land and soil, peacefully or violently, by the tribe, the commune, in some more or less naturally arisen or already historically developed form. The individual can never appear here in the dot-like isolation...in which he appears as mere free worker." [Ibid., p.485. Bold emphasis added.]

[Much of this anticipates Wittgenstein, except, he would have questioned the above use of "consciousness". On that see Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

"Much more important is the direct, demonstrable influence of the development of the hand on the rest of the organism. It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man's horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other.... First labour, after it and then with it speech -- these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect...." [Engels (1876), pp.356-57. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

[I defend a particular interpretation of this general idea in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

This isn't to suggest that Marx and Wittgenstein would have seen eye-to-eye (quite the reverse, in fact), or that Marx was a proto-Wittgenstein; far from it. However, as I have argued here and here, anyone who concludes the contrary faces serious difficulties over interpretation, at the very least.

Having said that, there are clear indications that Wittgenstein adopted his 'anthropological' approach to language as a result of long conversations he had with Piero Sraffa, a noted Marxist, and because of his clear sympathies with the left.

So, far from Marx being a proto-Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein is, in some (limited) respects, a latter-day Marx. In fact, in many ways, Wittgenstein stands to Marx as Feuerbach does to Hegel. [I hope to defend that particular analogy in a later Essay. However, see here.]

17a. The comments at this point in the main body of this Essay do not, of course, imply these conventions are set in stone. Many have changed over the millennia while some plainly have not and cannot. [I have covered several of the latter considerations in Essay Five.]

18a. It could be objected that Voloshinov's work is a clear exception to these sweeping allegations. That objection has been neutralised in Essay Thirteen Part Three, Sections (4)-(6).

"The prevailing conception of meaning, is, importantly, representational, or, as it has sometimes been put, 'descriptivist'. Those who adhere to it would not deny, of course, that we do any number of things with words other than describing, asserting, stating, or otherwise representing things as being one way or another. Nonetheless, they would insist (and presuppose in their theories and arguments) that the representational function of language is somehow primary and fundamental to it, and that there is in every (philosophically interesting) case a representational ('semantic') element to speech and thought -- an indicative core, as Davidson puts it (1979/2001, p.121) -- that may, and should, theoretically be separated from the rest of what is involved in speaking or thinking.... The prevailing assumption is that our words, and hence their meanings, ought first and foremost to enable us to form representations of things and the ways they stand -- to 'capture the world', as Horwich tellingly puts it (2005, p.v) -- and only as such may be usable for doing things other than, or beyond, representing. This is taken to be true not just of words such as 'Gödel', 'cat', 'water' and 'red', but also of philosophically troublesome words such as 'know', 'think', 'believe', 'see', 'seems', 'looks', 'good', 'reason', 'will', 'world', 'part', 'cause', 'free', 'voluntary', 'intention', 'soul, 'mind', 'pain', 'meaning', and so on.... What makes these words fit for this function, it is further presupposed, is their power to 'refer to' or 'denote' or 'pick out' some particular relation that sometimes holds between knowers and facts, or propositions...." [Baz (2012), pp.17-19. Bold emphases alone added; referencing conventions altered to conform with those adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged.]

[While I agree with much of what Baz says in the above work, in some cases I think he pushes his ideas a little too far, and certainly beyond anything Wittgenstein himself would have envisaged. Not that that is decisive in itself; but, in so far as Baz is trying to defend Wittgenstein, that observation is nevertheless apposite.]

[Added on Edit: The above site is now all but defunct, so I have republished an edited version of that summary in Essay Three Part Two, here. Material that used to be here has now been moved to the main body of the Essay.]

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

It is now perfectly clear that Dialectical Marxists have accepted Bourgeois Individualist theories of meaning, which they have loosely and precariously grafted onto a (sort of) social theory of language and 'consciousness'. As Meredith Williams commented on Vygotsky's ideas (a theorist whose work is 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.]

Alas, Williams could in fact be talking about any randomly-selected DM-theorist who has written on this subject.

[I examine several of the most important of the above in Essay Thirteen Part Three, sections (4)-(6).]

21. In fact, disappointingly few Marxists have commented on language in any great detail or to any depth. Those that have at least made moves in that direction unfortunately also tend to undermine, denigrate or depreciate ordinary language. Either that or they make all the usual mistakes, implying that they, too, accept the idea that language is primarily representational.

[The above allegations will be substantiated in Essays Twelve Part Seven and Thirteen Part Three. They were also covered in Essays Three Part Two, and Four Part One.]

Independently of this it is important to note that Conventionalism is itself highly complex and comprised of a set of widely differing strands and currents. Having said that, what unites modern and classical versions of this approach to language is a determination to invent or derive a priori theories about the nature of both discourse and science, which is in turn based on certain interpretations of the supposed meanings of certain words. Such theories won't be defended in this Essay -- or anywhere else for that matter. [Nor will these somewhat controversial claims.]

Despite this, there are grammatical features of language (which Conventionalists mistakenly misconstrue as (empirical) facts about language and the world (etc.)), which underpin the anthropological approach to discourse that has been adopted at this site -- that is, as a "form of representation" not as a philosophical theory. Those features are also compatible with the claim that language is conventional (in a suitably qualified sense). [There is more on that below, the rest of Essay Twelve and Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three.]

Unfortunately, there are also few comprehensive -- let alone convincing -- Marxist analyses of Science, despite the fact that revolutionaries in general have a such high regard for that entire discipline.

However, Robinson (2003) contains one of the best (currently) available Marxist accounts of science (see also his unpublished essays, which have been posted at this site). See also, Miller (1987).

While Science itself has advanced dramatically since Engels's day, accounts of it written by Dialectical Marxists have largely stood still, and that is especially true of the last fifty or sixty years. DM-theorists have obviously been more intent on rehashing tired old ideas lifted from the 'dialectical classics' than they have been with keeping abreast of current developments in the History and Philosophy of Science (which has itself undergone something of a revolution since Kuhn (1962) was published). [This links to a PDF of the Second Edition.]

Two of the more recent attempts to squeeze scientific knowledge into a dialectical boot it won't fit are RIRE and Mason (2012) -- each of which is in effect (i) just a padded-out, 'beefed-up' version of Baghavan (1987) and a shorter (but much less hagiographical) version of Gollobin (1986). All four read like notorious and futile Creationist attempts to make The Book of Genesis seem consistent with modern science. Another recent example in that direction is Malek (2011). [Malek is a retired scientist and, despite his rather odd devotion to DM, some of his comments about the Idealist implications of modern science are well observed.]

[Readers should check out the desperate debating tactics adopted in defence of DM over at the Soviet Empire Forum and the Guardian Science blogs (a few tears ago) where a comrade who writes and argues like Malek operates under the pseudonyms "Future World" and "Futurehuman", respectively. It should be noted, however, that the second of these two individuals has denied he is identical with the first! Incidentally, I am not 'outing' ("doxing") a fellow comrade here; Malek has openly acknowledged he is 'Futurehuman' in The Guardian comment section.]

To compound the problem, there have been even fewer attempts to understand the History of Science from an overtly revolutionary perspective. Phil Gasper's review back in the 1990s only serves to underline this easily confirmed fact. [Gasper (1998).] However, much of what Gasper has to say is itself excellent and well worth reading for its own sake.

Classical Marxist histories of science are by now badly dated. Even when new they tended to adopt an a priori and somewhat 'Whiggish' approach to the subject, dominated by the constant repetition of familiar DM-clichés.

Regrettably, that observation also applies to Boris Hessen's classic study of the social dimension of Newton's work [Hessen (1971) -- this links to a PDF]. Despite its obvious strengths, and in spite of the fact that Hessen was working under intolerable pressure at the time, this work of his is far too insubstantial to count as a significant contribution either to history or to theory. No doubt had the author lived he would have developed, justified and substantiated many of his more controversial claims. Unfortunately, however, in the intervening years little extra evidence or argument has emerged in support of his main thesis. As if to compound matters, Hessen's study is fatally compromised by his reliance on far too many of Engels's erroneous ideas in this area. [Cf., Graham (1985); and Clark (1970).]

Bernal's classic work is more closely tied to the actual development of science, but even here the author is ideologically biased toward Stalinism. On this, see Bernal (1939, 1969). [Cf., also Ravetz (1981), and Swann and Aprahamian (1999). On Bernal's life and his Stalinist bias, see Brown (2005).]

Excellent (left wing) historical work includes the following: Farrington (1939, 1974a, 1947b, 2000), the classic analyses in Caudwell (1949, 1977), Zilsel (2000) and Needham (1951a, 1951b, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1979), and, of course, Needham (1954-2004). A recent minor classic, however, is Conner (2005), which I cannot praise too highly.

Other works written from a Marxist perspective (but surprisingly ignored by Gasper) are rather more successful, though. Among these are Freudenthal (1986) and Swetz (1987). [Cf., also Høyrup (1994).] Also omitted: are: Albury and Schwartz (1982), Easlea (1973, 1980), J. Jacob (1988), M. Jacob (1976, 1988, 2000, 2006a, 2006b), Krige (1980), and Mason (1962). Of course, several of the latter were published after Gasper's article was written!

However, by far and away the best work in this area is Hadden (1988, 1994), which developed ideas originally aired in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987) and Sohn-Rethel (1978) -- alas, also omitted from Gasper's review. Hadden's book should, however, be read in conjunction with Kaye (1998).

Also, since writing much of the above, I have had the pleasure of reading Lerner (1992). Lerner is clearly a Marxist or has been heavily influenced by Marxism. Whatever one thinks of his criticism of the BBT, his analysis of science, as far as it goes, is excellent.

[BBT = Big Bang Theory; RIRE = Reason In Revolt; i.e., Woods and Grant (1995/2007).]

A 'Marxist' book that readers should study with caution, though, is Gillott and Kumar (1995). Those two are in fact ideologues of the old UK-RCP -- the remnants of which, over at Spiked, now pass themselves off as supporters of unfettered free market capitalism and act as shills for Big Capital! The reason for claiming that can be found, for example, here, here, here and here. [The last link is now dead since the host site had been subjected to numerous hack attacks of a rather suspicious nature (that link is also now dead!) -- plainly because it is one of the best resources on the Internet that exposes the GM industry.]

As noted above, a recent addition to the literature is Mason (2012), which is devoted to criticising some of the core ideas aired in RIRE, from a 'dialectical' angle. Parts of this book are excellent, but much of it is highly repetitive and, where it discusses DM, recklessly naive. On that, see here.

Incidentally, Gasper's account is itself compromised as much by his uncritical acceptance of DM as it is by its extreme philosophical brevity --, which is puzzling given his professional expertise in this area. For example, while he rejects "Social Constructivism", he does so on the basis of a few rather dismissive, all-too-brief remarks, which he neglects to substantiate with evidence or argument. In marked contrast, Gasper seems quite happy to accept what Engels and Lenin (etc.) had to say about science with scarcely a blink, when what they wrote is supported by evidence, analysis and argument that is considerably thinner and weaker than anything that can be found in the work of even the most feeble-minded and superficial of social constructivists.

Another book widely respected and referenced among revolutionaries is Helena Sheehan's badly mis-titled work: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science [Sheehan (1993)]. It is mis-titled for the simple reason that readers will search long and hard (and to no avail) for anything even remotely resembling the Philosophy of Science -- or even a Marxist perspective on that discipline! What they will find instead, however, is an excellent but no less depressing and detailed account of what various DM-apologists imagined was or wasn't the relation between Marxism and science, among many other seemingly irrelevant topics. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those tedious, obsolete ideas, inter-party disputes and opinions now only possess curiosity value, of sole interest to antiquarians and die-hard DM-fans, but few others. Even in their heyday, those moribund arguments, quarrels and theories were seldom less than dogmatic, motivated more often than not by sectarian in-fighting and point-scoring than they were by a genuine search for the truth. Alas, that frame-or-mind still dominates much of Dialectical Marxism, and not just in relation to science.

In spite of this, it turns out that Sheehan's book is (inadvertently) valuable in other respects since it exposes the monumental waste of time and energy Dialectical Marxists have devoted to a 'theory' that few have managed to advance much beyond Engels's amateurish and faltering first attempt and Lenin's descent into Subjective Idealism (exposed in Essay Thirteen Part One). To that end, Sheehan's book contains page-after-page of incriminating evidence, which reveals the extent to which this 'theory' has helped cripple, and even ruin, Marxist theory in this area as some of our very best minds have attempted to grapple with the incomprehensible gobbledygook Hegel inflicted on humanity, which wasn't, I take it, part of Sheehan's original intention. https://tinyurl.com/yc6xcyb7

These rather depressing conclusions have been further amplified by the following studies of the 'unfortunate' relationship between Stalinised Marxism and post-1920 science (typified by the work of Lysenko): Birstein (2001), Graham (1971, 1987, 1993), Joravsky (1961, 1970), Kojevnikov (2004), Krementsov (1997), Lecourt (1977) [this links to a PDF], Medvedev (1969), Soyfer (1994), and Vucinich (1980, 2001). For a different perspective, see Lewontin and Levins (1976). [I have said much more about this dark period in the development and degeneration of Soviet Science in Essay Four Part One.]

In passing, it is worth noting that Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin's two books on science -- i.e., Levins and Lewontin (1985) and Lewontin and Levins (2007) -- are excellent, but only when they steer clear of 'dialectics'.

There are countless books and articles that focus on Marxism and science written by Stalinists but few are worthy of mention. Interested readers are referred to the sources listed above, as well as to Helena Sheehan's work for more details. However, the following three books by the same author are worthy of note: Omelyanovsky (1974, 1978, 1979).

Other sources I have found useful over the years are: Gregory (1977), Little (1986), Railton (1991), Thomas (1976), Wartofsky (1968, 1979) and Young (1990). Special mention, however, should once again be made of Caudwell (1949, 1977), whose brilliant insights are only slightly ruined by the author's vain attempt to defend DM. I have in fact developed several of his ideas at this site.

Nevertheless, easily the best general book on the Philosophy of Science written from a Marxist perspective is Miller (1987) -- mention of which was also omitted from Gasper's article. [But not from Gasper (1990).] Another important Marxist author is Richard Boyd; cf., Boyd (1989, 1991, 1993, 1996).

John Dupré's work has also been composed from a quasi-Marxist angle -- i.e., Dupré (1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2012), and Barnes and Dupré (2008).

22. The author of TAR, John Rees, clearly rejects Conventionalism, but unfortunately he failed to explain why (cf., Rees (1998), p.297). In MEC, Lenin made a characteristically weak gesture at refuting a handful of conventionalist interpretations of science that were current in his day, but, as noted in Essay Thirteen Part One, to call what he had to say in this area a joke would be to praise it a little too highly.

Lenin almost invariably confronted each and every opinion he disliked with a neurotic repetition of the following mantra:

"[T]he concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Lenin (1972), p.312; italic emphasis in the original. A list of over forty passages in MEC like this has been posted here.]

As things turned out, Lenin's timing was rather unfortunate, for a few lines later he posed this question:

"Do electrons, ether and so on exist as objective realities outside the human mind or not…? [S]cientists…answer [this] in the affirmative." [Ibid., p.312; italic emphasis in the original.]

But, what was so objective about the Ether that failed to prevent its subsequent fall from scientific grace?

Clearly, the problem with what can only be described as 'revisionary realism', which Lenin promoted in MEC (although he didn't use that term), is that it is continually left with having to explain how such 'objective entities' suddenly vanish from the universe and thereby become 'non-objective'. Even worse is having to explain precisely what scientists were talking about before these 'ontological deletions' took place. [I will say more about that in Essay Thirteen Parts One and Two.]

Nevertheless, in defence of Lenin it is worth pointing out that there are scientists who still believe that the Ether does exist in some form or other. On that, readers might like to consult this website (and follow the links there). See also Essay Eleven Part One, where the opinions of several leading scientists on this mysterious 'entity' (including the views of Einstein himself) have been quoted and/or referenced.

Despite this, DM-theorists can take little comfort from the inability of prominent Physicists to make their minds up over such a basic issue. That is because it is quite clear that the changing concept of the Ether can't be attributed to the development of greater and greater abstractions --, i.e., those that have been applied to, or derived from, nature. If that had ever been the case, the Ether would hardly keep disappearing from Physics and then re-appearing again later with completely different physical and mathematical properties. In fact, Einstein himself conceived of the Ether as little more than a mathematical construct. [Cf., Kostro (2000).] There is no way that that view of the Ether can be equated with Aristotle's, Newton's or even Maxwell's.

Nevertheless, some might think that another of Lenin's comments could help clarify matters:

"[D]ialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties…." [Ibid., p.312.]

The idea here seems to be that 'objectivity' isn't undermined by the passing away of obsolescent theories that postulate the existence of soon-to-be-eliminated, but still supposedly, 'objective' entities. That is because these older theories were less near the truth than those that eventually superseded or replaced them, but which don't postulate the existence of these formerly 'objective' objects and processes.

Let us suppose that theory, T, for instance, postulates the existence of entity, or process, E, and that DM-theorists accept T as "objectively, but partially, or even relatively, true". Suppose further that scientists later reject T along with E. It can't now be argued that the content of T was "objective" or even "partially" true, since it was neither. If E doesn't exist (and never did), any claims made about 'it' are now devoid of content.

[In fact, such claims will be neither (empirically) true nor false -- for reasons examined in more detail in the main body of this Essay, but more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

Now, in relation to the example under consideration here: if there is no Ether, Physicists won't have taken one step 'closer' to the 'truth' by postulating its existence. On the other hand, if the Ether does exist, Physics must have gone backwards when it was rejected.

It could be objected that questions regarding the non-existence of the Ether (or Phlogiston and Caloric) are neither here nor there. What really matters is that researchers are able to advance scientific knowledge by developing certain techniques (conceptual, experimental, mathematical and/or methodological) as a result of assuming such entities do exist. Hence, given this (modified) account, even wildly incorrect theories can help science progress.

No doubt they can, but what has this got to do with 'objectivity'? If the Ether, Caloric and Phlogiston don't exist, and never did, the supposition that they do takes science away from the 'truth', away from 'objectivity'. Spin-off benefits (howsoever impressive) have nothing to do with 'objectivity' -- which, according to Lenin, relates to the 'mind independence' of objects and processes:

"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Lenin (1972), p.148. Bold emphasis added.]

"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157. Bold emphasis added.]

'Objectivity', as Lenin conceived of it, has nothing to do with improved technique. Belief in God, for example, helped numerous great scientists construct classical Physics, but no one supposes that collateral advances like this mean that belief in God was 'closer to the truth', or 'objective', just because of that. [On this, for example, see Dillenberger (1988), and Hooykaas (1973).]

If the 'objective' status' of the entities and processes that scientists study, or claim to have discovered, turn out to be irrelevant -- and only (adventitious) spin-off techniques are what really matter -- then the status of those techniques themselves can't fail to warrant suspicion.

Dialecticians often use the word "spiral" to describe the faltering progress of knowledge -- as science supposedly "spirals" in on the truth --, but, as the above shows, if that were correct, a better word would surely be "screwy". [There is more on this in Essays Ten Part One and Thirteen Part Two.]

However, it is worth pointing out that Conventionalism doesn't face problems like these (even if other 'difficulties' stand in its way), whereas all forms of Metaphysical Realism do.

Admittedly, the evidence for the 'existence' of many of the above was at one time considered compelling, but as Philosopher of Science, P K Stanford, notes:

"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18^th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19^th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9.]

[See also: Stanford (2000, 2003, 2006a, 2006b, 2009, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2023), Chang (2003), Cordero (2011), Laudan (1981, 1984), Lyons (2002, 2003, 2006), and Vickers (2013). (Several of these link to PDFs.) My referencing these works doesn't imply I agree with everything they contain.]

Even Woods and Grant acknowledge this (but mysteriously fail to apply it to DM):

"[T]here are few things in science that are not called into question sooner or later." [Introduction to the e-book edition of Woods and Grant (1995/2007).]

It is often argued that the above objects and processes weren't part of "mature" science, and are in stark contrast to the "mature" theories extant today. Anyone who thinks that should read Baggott (2013), Smolin (2006) and Woit (2006), and then perhaps think again. [This topic will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two; see also here.]

24. It could be argued that this isn't so. Someone could hold a sentence true even before they understood it. For example, some may implicitly accept the views of an authority on a given subject; others might accept the word of a holy man/woman. [Martin (1987), for instance, pushed that line.]

Consider, therefore, these examples (which were deliberately made incomprehensible to underline this point):

L1: Professor NN said, "The admurial current in this sample of Blongit has a value of 15.542 buhrs/spec when subjected to a Moggle Field of 1.896 galols/klm^7.6134."

L2: St. MM uttered these immortal words: "Orle Geerlty Jurthir Shcmood gleebers a minnert whal replificatoe."

Well, is either of these true? Would anyone accept them as such before they understood the odd words they contain? If they were to do so, the next couple of questions would be: "What precisely are you holding true here? To what are you committing yourself if you haven't a clue what these sentences say?"

Putting to one side how anyone could possibly know whether or not this 'holy' woman had ever lied if everything she says were so readily believed by the faithful independently of any attempt to validate the 'gems' she came out with -- never mind the profound gullibility it reveals --, this sort of credulity is manifestly centred on the person concerned not the 'content' of the words she utters.

It could be objected that the above examples are highly contentious, and are therefore irrelevant. Maybe so, but until any such objector manages to produce a sentence that he/she doesn't understand that he/she would hold true if uttered by a figure of authority (religious or otherwise) -- while explaining precisely what was being held true, even though they had no idea what they were committing themselves to --, they will have to do.

"[W]e worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity." [The Athanasian Creed, quoted from here.]

Here we have a set of indicative-looking sentences that absolutely no one understands, but which many millions hold true, contrary to what was asserted earlier.

The first point worth making in response would be to remind the objector that the original point had been as follows:

It could be argued that this isn't so. Someone could hold a sentence true even before they understood it.

In relation to the above Creed, that isn't so. Believers claim this dogma is true before they understand it and they hold it true even though they never succeed in understanding it. By way of contrast, metaphysicians claim to understand the 'propositions' they concoct.

Secondly, serious questions would arise concerning what exactly is being held true, here. Consider this puzzling sentence:

"So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God."

If there are three persons who are all 'God' how can there only be one 'God', not three 'Gods'? How can that be true?

Thirdly, it is quite clear that the above use of "true" bears no relation to its use in connection with empirical propositions, or even in connection with metaphysical 'propositions'. It is a religious use of that word and hence bears as much a connection to the ordinary use of "true" as the religious use of "father" bears to the ordinary word, "father". Is 'God' really a father? Does 'He' have a body, does 'He' have a head, does 'He' eat food, breath, go to the toilet? Is 'He' married? Does 'He' even have sex organs? If not, in what way is 'He' a father? Or even male? On the other hand, if 'He' does, in what way is 'He' 'God' and not a creature like the rest of us? Again, this is all a 'mystery', apparently.

Fourth, as also noted above, this expression of faith is centred on the institution of the Church and/or the religious tradition to which a given believer belongs, not the 'content' of the words that had been strung together -- since their 'content' remains a 'mystery'. So, holding The Athanasian Creed 'true' is tantamount to saying "I have faith in the Church and it's all a mystery...". Hence, this is an expression of faith (or even gullibility) not knowledge.

Finally, this Essay is centred on scientific knowledge and whether or not DM is an incomprehensible metaphysical theory. Any appeal to what the god-botherers among us accept or reject would only succeed in underlining the accuracy of the following remark:

25. It is here that we can see just how the 'representational-' or 'referential-theory' appears to gain some sort of grip, or plausibility: if nature contains a secret code of sorts (perhaps written in a mathematical (or 'Ideal') form --, or which exists in a form that is structurally/physically causal (maybe existing as an aspect (or module) of/in the 'architectonic of our cognitive processes') -- then, if it is also assumed that nature is "rational", human beings would be rational only if they were 'in tune' with that 'external rationality'. That being the case, any sentences that state truths about reality would gain the sense they have by 'reflecting', expressing, representing or incorporating that 'code' -- i.e., 'reflecting', expressing, representing or incorporating this "external rationality" -- in a like-represents-like sort of fashion ("as above so below" -- as ancient Hermeticists expressed this idea).

That is why 'correspondence' theories seem so plausible to many. If language had no 'secret code' -- or, rather, if language had no 'deep structure' that was, incidentally, only capable of being accessed by a tiny minority -- correspondence theories would make little sense. The 'logical structure' of the world and the logical structure of language (or even 'the Mind' and its 'architectonic' -- these days labelled as its 'modularity') somehow miraculously match/mirror one another. [I have covered this topic in more detail in Interlude Two.]

Naturally, this raises serious questions about the origin of this hidden 'code' (or this 'deep structure'), what gives it the 'sense' it has (it must have one or it wouldn't be a language, let alone a code), and why it can't be misinterpreted or subject to alternative readings.

And yet, if it is indeed a code, it will have to have been transposed from some language or other, using a translation manual -- otherwise it wouldn't even be a code, it would be a 'code', a term we don't yet understand. That naturally means it is language that explains codes, not the other way round.

Some might point to codes that have already written into nature --, for example, the Genetic Code. But, that code isn't like the codes human beings have written, invented or developed. As we have just seen, codes depend on the prior existence of a language, into and out of which they can be translated using an agreed upon (normative) translation manual. Clearly, we can only attribute such a feature to nature if we are prepared to anthropomorphise it.

[In fact, the game is up whenever 'reality' is described as "rational" -- clearly implying its origin in, or its creation by, some 'mind' or other.]

Hence, whatever else it is that geneticists are referring to when they speak about "codes", they can't be talking about those that human beings invent, nor anything like them. In which case, once more, they must be referring to 'codes', not codes. Either that, or they are using the word "code" as a technical term -- which only succeeds in misleading the incautious. [There is more on this in Bennett and Hacker (2021), pp.177f, and Bennett, et al, (2007), pp.146-56.]

As should seem obvious, we can't hope to solve 'puzzles about reality' like this by postulating intelligent causes, howsoever they are re-packaged. As David Hume pointed out, if human intelligence is to be accounted for by an 'exterior intelligence' or 'rationality' -- of whatever sort or provenance --, an infinite regress must ensue. That sceptical argument, of course, isn't weakened in the slightest if the word "God" is replaced by "law" -- or even if "rationally-based-and-evidentially-supported-objective-theory" were substituted for one or both. On this, see Hume (1963).

Some, like Daniel Dennett, have tried to argue along neo-Darwinian lines that human intelligence can be modelled along such lines, that is, as a creation, or a combination, of the interplay between random mutation/variation and natural selection. I have said much more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Three. [See also Bennett and Hacker (2021), pp.470-91, and Bennett, et al, (2007), pp.146-56. There is more on this in the main body of the Essay (here), and will be in Part Four (to be published in 2025). See also, Essay Three Part Two.]

26. This was discussed more fully in Essay Three Part Two (link above) and was also addressed in detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

26a. A representative example of this approach can be found in Devitt and Sterelny (1999), but there are countless others. [No pun intended. I will say more about this topic in Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three.]

27. This topic will be tackled in Parts Two and Three of this Essay, and again in Essay Thirteen Part Three (link above).

29. Naturally, this puts considerable weight on the word "understanding", but anyone who has problems with that word is already way beyond my help.

My argument also appears to ignore the possibility that humans could first appropriate non-linguistic 'truths', rather like non-human animals do as they react to their surroundings. Humans also learn this way, and, after having acquired language, proceed to comprehend the world about them, the entire process of course stretching across many thousands of years.

The wishful thinking -- or, indeed, the science fiction -- evident in the above will be considered later.

[On this, see Baker and Hacker (2005a), pp.357-85, and Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.305-56. See also here, as well as Note 31.]

The analysis presented in the main body of this Essay has largely restricted attention to indicative sentences and empirical propositions. That isn't meant to depreciate or indirectly denigrate other forms of discourse (i.e., questions, commands, fictional, poetic and ethical language, optatives, etc.), nor is it to ignore the importance of figurative speech and prosody.

The discussion here has been deliberately restricted in this way for two reasons:

(1) Metaphysical theories purport to be based on Industrial Strength, Super-Factual propositions. However, as I have shown, they all rely on a systematic failure to distinguish between different types of indicative sentence -- that is, between 'pseudo-empirical' and empirical propositions, between those that ape the indicative mood but collapse into non-sense and incoherence upon examination, and those that don't.

(2) Empirical propositions are, of course, intimately connected with the possibility of expressing and advancing scientific knowledge.

[In addition, and for the sake of simplicity, the distinction sometimes drawn between type and token empirical propositions has been ignored. Naturally, in a comprehensive account of the linguistic phenomena under review these issues, and many others besides, will have to be addressed -- for all that that would be inappropriate in an Essay of the present sort, or in connection with the rather narrow aims of this site.]

Since the other issues mentioned above aren't related to the topics under discussion here, and as important as they are in themselves, analysis of their mode of signification has been omitted.

Moreover, the idea that these Essays are fixated on single sentences -- a clichéd criticism of Analytic Philosophy often advanced by dialecticians -- is no less misguided. Single sentences are analysed here merely to focus attention on problems associated with specific DM-theses, and hence on difficulties that dialecticians universally fail to notice --, and, indeed, on age-old problems that have been imported from Traditional Thought. Where relevant, wider contextual issues have, of course, been taken into account (for example, in this Essay in relation to what Lenin had to say about matter and motion).

However, it is high time for DM-fans to face the fact that if they can't handle single sentences, they stand no chance with larger bodies of text.

Having said that, 'Contextualism' (i.e., the idea that words, or indeed sentences, gain their meaning from their context of use) has been criticised at length in Essay Thirteen Part Three. In addition, Metaphysical Holism (of the sort that dialecticians have unwisely bought into) has also been destructively analysed in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two, as well as here.

29a. It might be wondered how anyone who understands an empirical proposition -- like, say, M6 -- would know it was true, as opposed to not knowing it was false.

[I]f the sense of a proposition weren't independent of its actual truth-value, then, plainly, the mere fact that a proposition had been understood would entail it was true, or, as the case may be, would entail that it was false! Naturally, if either alternative were viable, linguistic or psychological factors (not the way the world happened to be) would determine the truth-status of empirical propositions and science would become little more than a branch of hermeneutics.

Of course, it isn't easy to think our way into such an odd (and plainly) defective account of empirical propositions, which is why sentences like M1a were considered first, in relation to which it is easier to see how and why the 'comprehension' of metaphysical claims go hand-in-hand with knowing which of their supposed truth-values actually obtains.

For theorists like Engels and Lenin who accept the theory that "Motion is the mode of the existence of matter" (P4), the 'comprehension' of M1a automatically implies it is true. However, if that were also the case with plain and simple empirical propositions, then the comprehension of M6 would automatically imply it was true, too. In that case, the alleged truth, and thus the comprehension, of M6 would follow from some other proposition, or propositions (just as the 'truth' of M1a seems to follow from the 'truth' of P4), which would, of course, mean that anyone who didn't know these other 'truths' wouldn't be able to comprehend M6, which is absurd.

It could be argued that it is easy to see what truths would have to be known first if M6 is to be understood -- namely that Tony Blair is a man (and/or) that he exists, as well as the fact that The Algebra of Revolution is a book (or that it is something that can be owned).

This topic is partly what motivated Wittgenstein to argue as follows in the Tractatus:

"Objects make up the substance of the world. That is why they cannot be composite. If the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was true. In that case, we could not paint any picture of the world, true or false." [Wittgenstein (1972), p.11, 2.021-2.0212.]

Now, I don't want to enter into a discussion about what Wittgenstein did or didn't mean by "substance", only to point out that he later replaced the logical objects and formal concepts of The Tractatus with "logical grammar", "agreement in judgements" and a shared "form of life". [Wittgenstein (2009), p.94e, §§241-42.] In other words, he regarded the rules we use in the formation of propositions like M6 as a sort of non-propositional bedrock, which meant that the sense of such propositions don't depend on the truth of another proposition, or set of propositions. [How that works will be explained later. On the above passage from the Tractatus, however, see White (1974, 2006).]

The point is that if someone didn't in general know these things, they wouldn't be able to enter into this specific use of language (fully or partially). But, this isn't factual knowledge, it is the possession of a set of (behavioural) skills. I will say much more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Three. [See also Note 31.]

30. One of the leading alternative accounts of language on offer these days -- the so-called "Nativist" theory of Chomsky, Fodor, Bickerton and Pinker, among others -- will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three. [Until then, the reader is referred to Baker and Hacker (1984), Behme (2011, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c), Cowie (1997, 2002, 2008), Everett (2008, 2012), Sampson (2005) and the review posted here.]

Also worth consulting are the following essays written by Sampson, here, and here. [The reader is, however, warned that Sampson is a right-wing Tory who holds objectionable, racist views (and much else besides). Despite this, Sampson is, in my view, right about Nativism (a doctrine that, oddly enough, also underpins other right-wing ideas). See also, here.] {The last two links are now dead!}

Furthermore, as we will see later, only if a proposition were part of a body of propositions would it have a sense to begin with, and hence would it be possible to ascertain its truth-value. Empirical propositions don't face the world as isolated units, nor do they function like arrows that pin truths to targets single-handedly (to vary the image). They function more like nets catching fish (to vary it once more). However, these nets are such because of the form of representation, or parts of several such forms (as the case may be), employed by users to that end.

This might seem to make a mockery of the argument presented in the main body of this Essay: that to understand the sense of a proposition like M6 is ipso facto to know what would make it true or what would make it false. That argument seems to suggest such propositions face the world as atomic units, so to speak, not part of a body of propositions, as alleged above.

I will deal with that objection in the section dealing with Wittgenstein's comments on "criteria and symptoms". In the meantime, Quine's arresting metaphor will perhaps make this point a little clearer:

"The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be re-distributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entail re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections.... But the total field is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole. If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement -- especially if it is a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field." [Quine (1951), pp.42–43. This links to a PDF. Spelling modified to agree with UK English; paragraphs merged.]

[I distance myself from the ideas presented in much of the rest of the above paper -- on that see, for example, Grice and Strawson (1956) (this links to a PDF), and Glock (2003) -- as well as the claim that "it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement", since, as we have seen, it is easy so to do. However, the above comments, suitably re-phrased, neatly overlap with Wittgenstein's approach (in this area). On that, see Glock (2003) again, and Hacker (1996), pp.189-227.]

Hence, the actual truth of propositions like M6 depends on a whole web of background practices and beliefs (this is what Quine later came to call "The Web of Belief" -- on that, see Quine and Ullian (1978) -- this links to a PDF). This means that while it might seem that empirical propositions face conformation or confutation on their own, their conformation and confutation also depend on this background.

[Readers are directed to Note 36, Note 40a, and the section below on Scientific Knowledge, for more details.]

In this regard, it is also important to distinguish between the sense of a proposition and its truth-value. While the truth-value of M6, for example, will depend on the truth of several other propositions (i.e., indicative sentences expressing the existence of whatever makes M6 true or M6 false, or which record the facts of the matter), its sense won't.

[I deal with this topic at greater length in the next sub-section, but it will help if readers keep the above caveats in mind as they proceed.]

32. This doesn't mean that there exists (somewhere -- perhaps 'in each head') a body of precise rules governing human language and its use. What it does in fact mean will be addressed Essay Thirteen Part Three.

Rules, of course, are no more capable of being true or false than imperatives or interrogatives are. They are dependent on wider social practices and hence, as such, are historically-, and socially-conditioned.

Given that approach, social change is reflected in language by, among other things, concomitant alterations to the conventionalised, rule-governed use of certain words. Naturally, this situates and embeds language, and thus thought, in material conditions (i.e., in real social interactions that arise from underlying Relations of Production, etc.), not in a hidden, 'mental' realm (supposedly located in each brain), or in a socially-isolated and atomised arena subject only to each individual's mysterious (and uncheckable) powers of 'abstraction' and 'representation'.

[There is more on this in Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three. On this in general, see Robinson (2003a), and Hanna and Harrison (2004). Unfortunately, the latter work has been spoiled somewhat by the adoption of Kripke and Evans's 'causal theory' of names. It should therefore be read in conjunction with Baker and Hacker (2005a), pp.113-28, 227-49. Kripke and Evans's theories can be found in Kripke (1980) and Evans (1973, 1982). I'll address some of their ideas in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

On the basis of the "anthropological approach", briefly outlined in this Essay, thought is more naturally grounded in discourse, human history, material practice, social interaction and communication, but only derivatively linked to the capacity human beings have of representing things to themselves by means of language (etc.) -- i.e., with the latter typically carried out in the open, in a public area -- written on a cave wall, on parchment or paper, in print or by means of the spoken word, for example. So, given the approach adopted at this site, these 'representations' are all publicly accessible and hence are inter-subjectively checkable. They aren't to be found 'in the head'. [Exactly why that is so is explored at length in Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three.]

In this way, therefore, there is no need for anyone to advance a vague, DM-style reference to the 'dialectical' unity between 'thought and practice', since, given the approach adopted here, 'thought' is constituted both by social practice and by our use of language, all three being inter-twined. 'Thought' thus requires no further 'philosophical' elaboration. It is, therefore, what our everyday use of words about it says it is, not what Idealist Philosophers or inconsistent materialists (i.e., Dialectical Marxists) tell us it must be.

Extensive critical examination of the perennial confusions (such as those inspired by the above Paradigm) -- found in Psychology, Neuroscience and the Philosophy of Mind -- can be accessed in the following: Anscombe (2000), Baker and Hacker (1984, 2005a, 2005b), Bennett and Hacker (2008, 2021), Bennett, et al, (2007), Budd (1989), Button, et al, (1995), Coulter (1983, 1989, 1993, 1997), Coulter and Sharrock (2007), Erneling (1993), Fischer (2011a, 2011b), Goldberg (1968, 1991), Goldstein (1999), Greenspan and Shanker (2004), Hacker (1987, 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1996, 1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b, 2004, 2007a, 2010, 2012, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2013d), Hark (1990, 1995), Hilmy (1987), Hutto (1995), Hyman (1989, 1991), Johnston (1993), Kenny (1973, 1975, 1984a, 1984b, 1992, 2003, 2006), Malcolm (1968, 1977a, 1977b, 1980, 1986b), Racine and Slaney (2013), Ryle (1949a) (this links to a PDF of the 2009 edition), 1971a, 1971b, 1971c, 1971d, 1971e, 1982), Schroeder (2001a), Schulte (1993), Shanker (1986b, 1987b, 1987c, 1987d, 1988, 1995, 1997, 1998), Stern (1995), Suter (1989), Williams (1999), and Wittgenstein (1958, 1969, 1980b, 1980c, 1981, 1982, 1989, 1992, 1993, 2009).

Furthermore, because we use words rather like (but not exactly like) we use tools, language has played a key role in human social evolution. That observation is important because language is partly constitutive of our 'consciousness'.

[The latter word is in 'scare' quotes because in such contexts it is often employed as a metaphysical term-of-art redolent of Cartesianism. On that, see Hacker (2007a), (2012), and (2013a).]

This Essay, therefore, begins where Engels's theory (of the development of human 'consciousness' through cooperative labour and the use of tools (etc.)) left off.

[Again, this topic will be covered in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

33. Unfortunately, the nature of science and scientific language remained largely unexplored in Wittgenstein's work. This failing has been compounded by the same neglect from many of those who work in the Wittgensteinian tradition (in Analytic Philosophy), who haven't significantly developed or extended his method into this area since his death. Strange though this might seem, that comment also applies to Thomas Kuhn's work and that of Norwood Russell Hanson.]

[Added on Edit, December 2023: That picture has now changed a little since the above words were first written, a topic that will be covered in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, which I aim to publish sometime in 2026.]

The crucial point here is that Wittgenstein's method isn't confined to issues connected with ordinary language (as many erroneously suppose) -- it applies to anything we should want to call a language, or practice (the former understood in a non-essentialist sense, of course -- since it is we who decide, not some underlying 'essence of language' or 'thought' that does this for us or on our behalf). Hence, his method encompasses scientific, technical and formal languages (and practices). Admittedly, an extension of his method into wider uses of language would require a detailed analysis of each of them in use, in conjunction with the practices out of which they have arisen. Since that is way beyond the scope of this Essay and this site, such an analysis won't be attempted here, but several important related issues will be discussed in Essay Thirteen Parts Two and Three, as well as the rest of Essay Twelve, when they are finally published (a summary of the latter can be accessed here).

However, with respect to the analysis of figurative and analogical language, the picture isn't much better. For example, despite the subsequent but nonetheless relatively minor advances that were made (mostly in the High Middle Ages), our understanding of the logic of analogy has largely remained where Aristotle left it 2400 years ago. [Update May 2025: It looks like that picture is finally beginning to change. On that, follow the above link, which is to Bartha (2019).]

Naturally, this means we don't as yet have a clear or comprehensive idea how such specialised uses of language actually relate to our wider understanding of the world, or, indeed, ourselves in general. [Although, as the above edit indicates, that picture is beginning to change.] In which case, much of what has been written about the scientific use of metaphor and analogy is of limited value. [And recent work on metaphor, which has wandered off down a Cognitive Science cul-de-sac, following the work of George Lakoff and others, has only made a bad situation worse. This doesn't mean that specialist areas of discourse (like these) are illegitimate, only that we don't yet understand how they work (and it looks like the only way they can be understood is by the use of yet more figurative language, which, as must seem obvious, is tantamount to arguing in a circle!). And this lack of understanding is connected with the way that most theorists casually and uncritically employ figurative language to state what they think are literal truths about the world, or, indeed, about language itself. In other words, they use metaphor and analogy to hide their ignorance, often from themselves.

Unfortunately, this means that the above theorists are held captive by a "misleading picture" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein), which distorts the way they make sense even of their own theories. [On this, see Fischer (2011a, 2011b), and Egan (2011).] In turn, as noted earlier, this predicament isn't unconnected with the traditional idea that language is first and foremost a means of representation. That 'assumption' (based as it is on ancient metaphors, as we will see as the rest of Essay Twelve unfolds) seriously compromises their thought from the beginning.

That topic will receive further consideration in the next two Parts of this Essay, where an attempt will be made to connect the move toward a representational view of language (which began in the 'West' in Ancient Greece) with the development of early class society, and hence it will connect this development with contemporaneous ruling-class priorities, interests and ideologies, and thus with the invention of Theology and Metaphysics, which were aimed at rationalising such moves.

Alas, when scientists and amateur philosophers try to translate technical aspects of scientific theory into ordinary language, their attempts are invariably sprinkled with inappropriate (and often unacknowledged) metaphors, 'scare' quote encased words and inappropriate analogies. These are then often spruced-up with half-baked metaphysical theories, replete with specially-invented jargon and tailor-made neologisms. [Recent examples of this genre include Greene (1999, 2004), Smolin (2000), and Penrose (1989, 1995, 2004) -- but most 'popularisations' of science are equally guilty (and that comment applies to many such videos on YouTube, for instance -- as several of my comments over there seek to expose).]

Oddly enough, some scientists are perhaps beginning to recognise this 'problem' is connected with their use of language -- although, it is plain from what follows that the great physicist, Niels Bohr, was already arguing along similar lines in the 1920s and 1930s. Here, for example, is the late David Peat, writing in the New Scientist:

"It hasn't been a great couple of years for theoretical physics. Books such as Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong embody the frustration felt across the field that string theory, the brightest hope for formulating a theory that would explain the universe in one beautiful equation, has been getting nowhere. It's quite a comedown from the late 1980s and 1990s, when a grand unified theory seemed just around the corner and physicists believed they would soon, to use Stephen Hawking's words, 'know the mind of God'. New Scientist even ran an article called 'The end of physics'. So what went wrong? Why are physicists finding it so hard to make that final step? I believe part of the answer was hinted at by the great physicist Niels Bohr, when he wrote: 'It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out about nature. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.' At first sight that seems strange. What has language got to do with it? After all, we see physics as about solving equations relating to facts about the world -- predicting a comet's path, or working out how fast heat flows along an iron bar. The language we choose to convey question or answer is not supposed to fundamentally affect the nature of the result. Nonetheless, that assumption started to unravel one night in the spring of 1925, when the young Werner Heisenberg worked out the basic equations of what became known as quantum mechanics. One of the immediate consequences of these equations was that they did not permit us to know with total accuracy both the position and the velocity of an electron: there would always be a degree of irreducible uncertainty in these two values. Heisenberg needed an explanation for this. He reasoned thus: suppose a very delicate (hypothetical) microscope is used to observe the electron, one so refined that it uses only a single photon of energy to make its measurement. First it measures the electron's position, then it uses a second photon to measure the speed, or velocity. But in making this latter observation, the second photon has imparted a little kick to the electron and in the process has shifted its position. Try to measure the position again and we disturb the velocity. Uncertainty arises, Heisenberg argued, because every time we observe the universe we disturb its intrinsic properties.

"However, when Heisenberg showed his results to Bohr, his mentor, he had the ground cut from under his feet. Bohr argued that Heisenberg had made the unwarranted assumption that an electron is like a billiard ball in that it has a 'position' and possesses a 'speed'. These are classical notions, said Bohr, and do not make sense at the quantum level. The electron does not necessarily have an intrinsic position or speed, or even a particular path. Rather, when we try to make measurements, quantum nature replies in a way we interpret using these familiar concepts. This is where language comes in. While Heisenberg argued that 'the meaning of quantum theory is in the equations', Bohr pointed out that physicists still have to stand around the blackboard and discuss them in German, French or English. Whatever the language, it contains deep assumptions about space, time and causality -- assumptions that do not apply to the quantum world. Hence, wrote Bohr, 'we are suspended in language such that we don't know what is up and what is down'. Trying to talk about quantum reality generates only confusion and paradox. Unfortunately Bohr's arguments are often put aside today as some physicists discuss ever more elaborate mathematics, believing their theories to truly reflect subatomic reality. I remember a conversation with string theorist Michael Green a few years after he and John Schwartz published a paper in 1984 that was instrumental in making string theory mainstream. Green remarked that when Einstein was formulating the theory of relativity he had thought deeply about the philosophical problems involved, such as the nature of the categories of space and time. Many of the great physicists of Einstein's generation read deeply in philosophy. In contrast, Green felt, string theorists had come up with a mathematical formulation that did not have the same deep underpinning and philosophical inevitability. Although superstrings were for a time an exciting new approach, they did not break conceptual boundaries in the way that the findings of Bohr, Heisenberg and Einstein had done. The American quantum theorist David Bohm embraced Bohr's views on language, believing that at the root of Green's problem is the structure of the languages we speak. European languages, he noted, perfectly mirror the classical world of Newtonian physics. When we say 'the cat chases the mouse' we are dealing with well-defined objects (nouns), which are connected via verbs. Likewise, classical physics deals with objects that are well located in space and time, which interact via forces and fields. But if the world doesn't work the way our language does, advances are inevitably hindered. Bohm pointed out that quantum effects are much more process-based, so to describe them accurately requires a process-based language rich in verbs, and in which nouns play only a secondary role.... Physics as we know it is about equations and quantitative measurement. But what these numbers and symbols really mean is a different, more subtle matter. In interpreting the equations we must remember the limitations language places on how we can think about the world...." [Peat (2008), pp.41-43. Bold emphases and several links added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]

Except, ordinary language isn't the least bit "Newtonian", and the 'problem' isn't with language as such, but with the belief that it functions most 'naturally' (or even primarily) representationally.

[Concerning metaphor in general -- and as it features in science --, cf., White (1996), Benjamin, et al, (1987), and Guttenplan (2005). Cf., also Baake (2002) and Brown (2003). On analogical reasoning, see Bartha (2019) and White (2010) -- however, readers should make note of this caveat concerning the latter work.]

34. Of course, no one in their left mind would argue that the comprehension of an empirical proposition would automatically guarantee its truth. However, as we have seen, the metaphysical basis of traditional theories of meaning -- and that of many modern variants along the same lines -- relies on an appeal to 'necessary truths' of some sort. Either that, or they are predicated on theories expressed in a metalanguage, and even to dispositional or 'emergent' states of the 'mind'/brain, all of which presuppose, or imply, stronger (or maybe, in some cases, even weaker) versions of the same set of ideas. Since factors like these are what supposedly lend to language the sense it has (or which explain the meaning of words), this approach is implicit in traditional (and contemporary) theories of language: i.e., that, at some point, meaning is not only inseparable from truth, it depends on it.

Unfortunately for such theorists, these 'truths' also seem to 'follow' from the alleged meaning of certain words. Sometimes such 'truths' are called "analytic", sometimes "tautologious" or even described as "truisms". Alternatively, they are characterised as 'self-evident', or they are 'true' but solely in virtue of a stipulation or definition of some sort, or they are even said to depend on a rather vague set of 'intuitions'. [On this, see Baz (2012).]

Ironically, instead of meaning being dependent on truth (as the above theories sought to show), it now turns out that they themselves are dependent on a distortion of language, and hence on an altered form of meaning, at some level, just as Marx indicated:

"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.]

For further elaboration on this theme, see the later Parts of Essay Twelve (when they are published), Essay Three Part One, and Note 90. On the weaknesses of dispositional accounts of language (this links to a PDF) -- or, at least, how such theories supposedly connect with our capacity to follow rules --, see Kripke (1982), and Kusch (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006); see also Bloor (1997). [However, several of these authors mistakenly portray Wittgenstein as some sort of 'meaning sceptic', which he certainly wasn't. He would simply have pointed out that the word "meaning" has a use (in fact many). On this, see Essay Thirteen Part Three and Malcolm (1986a). On Bloor's work, see Note 35. See also Hanna and Harrison (2004), Chapter Eight.]

35. These comments should in fact be uncontroversial since they follow from a consistent acceptance of the social nature of language. Unfortunately, however, because certain "ruling ideas" have sunk so deeply into Dialectical Marxism they will (in fact) seem controversial to most DM-fans.

In Essay Thirteen Part Three I will endeavour to show how conventions (constituted by social practice) are capable of underpinning the sense of empirical propositions without compromising the social nature of language.

A recent study by David Bloor [Bloor (1997)] has succeeded in extending this approach considerably. Unfortunately, Bloor's book is a mixture of illuminating insight and profound philosophical error -- further compounded by no little confusion. Worse still, Bloor badly misinterprets the nature of Wittgenstein's method, branding it a form of LIE. That is a serious error. Wittgenstein was at pains to distance himself from all philosophical theories, depicting his method rather as a way of dissolving philosophical 'problems', arguing that they were in fact pseudo-problems and that philosophical theories in general are simply "houses of cards", based on a misunderstanding of language. [I have summarised some of his remarks in this direction, here.]

[On the question of Wittgenstein and Idealism, cf., Dilman (2002), Hutto (1996), and Malcolm (1995c). However, Dilman (2002) should be read with some care because of the incautious way the author tries to explain some of Wittgenstein's ideas. (On this topic in general, see Part Four of this Essay.)]

Bloor's approach is seriously flawed in other ways, too. That is partly because of the extreme voluntarism that appears to underlie his interpretation of rule-following, carefully disguised as a 'social interpretation' of that very practice. It is also partly because of the philosophical method Bloor employs. According to him, rule-followers just make decisions on how to proceed each time they apply a rule, even if they are acting socially, as part of a group. Misleadingly, Bloor appeals to a rhetorical point Wittgenstein advanced in the Philosophical Investigations:

"'But how can a rule show me what I have to do at this point? After all, whatever I do can, on some interpretation, be made compatible with a rule.'"

However, Bloor failed to note that in the same paragraph(!) Wittgenstein rejected this view of rules:

"No, that's not what one should say. But rather this: every interpretation hangs in the air together with what it interprets and cannot give it any support." [Wittgenstein (2009), p.86e, §198.]

"So is whatever I do compatible with the rule?" -- Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule -- say a sign-post -- got to do with my actions? What sort of connection obtains here? -- Well, this one, for example: I have been trained to react in a particular way to this sign, and now I do so react to it. But with this you have pointed out only a causal connexion; only explained how it has come about that we now go by the sign-post; not what this following-the-sign really consists in. Not so; I have further indicated that a person goes by a sign-post only in so far as there is an established usage, a custom." [Ibid. Paragraphs merged.]

So, far from endorsing the view that whatever is decided upon can be made to accord with some rule or other (on some interpretation), Wittgenstein is here directing our attention to the social nature of rule-following, and how what we do is a result of our socialisation. This isn't to give a causal, but an anthropological and normative, explanation.

However, the only constraints on rule-following Bloor seems to allow are causal in character, but given the way he depicts this entire question -- which is naturalistically --, conformity with a rule could in fact take any form whatsoever. In that case, the whole enterprise just collapses into the sort of extreme individualism and voluntarism his account was designed to counteract. Indeed, the notion of social constraint, or social norms, falls apart when extreme voluntarism like this is countenanced. [On that, see Malcolm (1986a).]

Bloor's otherwise excellent analysis is also partly undermined by his failure to take seriously the distinction Wittgenstein drew between a grammatical and an empirical investigation, as much as it is by his insistence on constructing a philosophical theory of rule-following. If Wittgenstein's work succeeded in achieving nothing else, it showed that philosophical theories are based on, and thus result in, confusion because they are motivated by, and arise out of a misuse, or a distortion, of language. And that is why Bloor himself had to alter the meaning of ordinary words like "decision", "rule" and "follow" to make his theory 'work'.

More illuminating recent accounts of rule-following can be found in Floyd (1991), Meredith Williams (1999), and especially Robinson (2003b). However, Williams's account is itself slightly spoilt by her neglect of what Wittgenstein regarded as the only legitimate method in Philosophy -- as pointed out above, this involves a grammatical investigation of our use of language. Unfortunately, there is as yet no definitive account of that method, but an excellent summary can be found in Savickey (1999). See also, Suter (1989).

However, there are encouraging signs that Wittgensteinian commentators are at last beginning to tackle this topic with the sensitivity and attention to detail it merits. Recent examples of this trend can be found in Crary and Read (2000) and in the work of Juliet Floyd, Meredith Williams, Rupert Read, Cora Diamond and James Conant, among others. Another recent publication well worth consulting is Forster (2004) -- see also Hutto (2003), Kenny (1998), Fischer (2011a, 2011b), Kuusela (2005, 2006, 2008), and O'Neill (2001). [Again, my citing these works doesn't imply I agree with everything they contain.]

As noted earlier, Bloor totally ignores Wittgenstein's explicitly stated intention, that his work was primarily an investigation into the "logical grammar of language" (which means that it was based on an appraisal of how we actually use language, how we arrive at some form of agreement (which point is often ignored by critics), how discourse features both in our social and our individual lives, all of which were set against the background of our shared "form of life".

[However, that doesn't mean Philosophy must now become a sub-branch of Linguistics. I will say more about this elsewhere; in the meantime, the reader should consult Kindi (1998).]

Finally, there is nothing in this Essay to suggest that we must accept something just because Wittgenstein said so; nor is it being denied that some of his ideas are difficult to understand. However, to implicate his work with that of 'naturalistic' sociologists -- as Bloor himself does -- amounts to a gross misrepresentation of his method, whatever else one makes of it.

36. Of course, that isn't the only consideration that recommends the adoption of an anthropological approach to language. Alternatives soon decay into incoherence, as we have seen. That, on its own, should be enough.

Incidentally, this latest point brings out the grain of truth in Lenin's comments about 'the tumbler', which we met in Essay Ten Part One. The meaning we give to a term (in our collective, practical application of it) delineates the scope of its generality, the totality of what we take to be its legitimate instances --, even if this totality has indistinct boundaries, or none at all, and even if it changes over time. That is perhaps the only way the DM-"Totality" can be given some sort of sense (in this respect) -- that is, if it is interpreted anthropologically. And that is all to the good, too, since, as we have seen, no sense can be attached to this term in the way that DM-fans intend it.

Again, it needs underlining that the comments in this Essay don't mean that scientific truth must be relativised to a "conceptual scheme" (etc.). [On that, see Sharrock and Read (2002).]

In order for truths (or, indeed, falsehoods) to be stated, confirmed or refuted, they should first make sense; they must be capable of being understood by those who use them, or who read/hear them. With respect to empirical propositions, this means that whatever constitutes their sense must be anterior to whatever determines their truth-values. If the sense of an empirical proposition is constituted, not by its actual or presumed truth-value, but by its truth conditions communication between language users (at this level, with respect to empirical propositions, indicative sentences, or sentence fragments/clauses, at least) becomes possible. With that in mind, the comprehension of an empirical proposition involves grasping the conditions under which it would be true or would be false, independently of knowing which of these is actually the case. Understanding such propositions doesn't, therefore, require knowing whether they are true, or knowing whether they are false, just what would make them true, and ipso facto what would make them false.

[These two options are both connected to the content of a given proposition. On that, see here.]

In that case, lack of knowledge of the actual truth or the actual falsehood of any sentence in question wouldn't prevent its comprehension, and so that wouldn't prevent communication. Hence, it is possible (but not necessary) for interlocutors to engage in conversation before they know whether the sentences they use are true or whether they are false; indeed, they might never find out which of these alternatives is in fact the case. For example, it is currently possible to discuss whether or not there is life on Mars (using sentences like, say, V1, but more concisely, V2) before anyone knows if there is any life there, just as it is possible to hypothesise about the whereabouts of Shergar even though we might never find out the truth about his disappearance, and so on. [That would be impossible given the referential and representational view of language.]

V1: Formations similar to Stromatolites, which are formed by microbe colonies on Earth, show there is life on Mars. [Partially quoted from here.]

Scientists can discuss, and therefore understand, V2, even before they know whether it is true (or know whether it is false). Admittedly, V1 and V2 are far more complex than M6, but that doesn't affect the point being made: which is that scientists have to understand these two sentences before they can ascertain their semantic status -- or they wouldn't know what to look for or what to investigate. Compare them with V3. [The use of an asterisk indicates a non-standard sentence -- to put it mildly!]

If this weren't the case, communication would break down. Imagine trying to grasp what someone said if, in order to do that, you had to know in advance that what they said was true, and what its actual truth consisted in. [Here, of course, I am referring to grasping the sense of a sentence, not any attempts made to ascertain speaker's meaning.]

Of course, failure to do the first of the above would make the second impossible.

It could be argued that if someone lacked knowledge of certain words (maybe they had never heard them before, or they were specialist/technical terms), then communication would be threatened (as, for example, we see in V3, or, more likely, in V1), which means that the above analysis is misguided.

But, that objection rests on another confusion. Trivially, lack of knowledge of (certain aspects of) language does indeed cripple communication, but facility with language isn't like learning ordinary empirical facts. Learning the meaning of new words is an extension to comprehension, not knowledge -- unless, of course, we mean by "knowledge", "knowing how" not "knowing that" (on that distinction, see here). It is this extension to understanding that then enables the individual concerned to access knowledge. While it might look like it is merely a fact that a word means this or that -- so, for instance, it might seem to be a fact that in English "vixen" means "female fox" --, the meaning of a word isn't based on that supposed linguistic fact but on the use to which it has been, is still being, and should be put. The import of the rules we have for the use of words is, ipso facto, part of what enables learners to continue to employ them correctly -- which use has to mesh with words they already comprehend, as well as with practices into which they have already been inducted or with which they are becoming familiar -- if words are to mean anything to them. So, learning new words doesn't amount to learning new facts, but it follows on from the acquisition of, or the extension to, certain behavioural and social skills.

it could be false. But, as we have seen, F1 can't be false without the subject of that sentence changing. In that case, F1 would then be about the meaning of a typographically similar inscription -- that is, it would concern the meaning of a different word -- "'vixen'" not "vixen". Either that, or it would represent a simple rejection or repudiation of the above rule. [On that, see Note 60.]

As we have also seen, this approach to meaning and sense re-locates this skill and this facility with language in the public domain as opposed to situating either or both in an individualised, private and uncheckable region of someone's brain, which relocation is precisely what one would expect of a social account of language.

"Meaning does not reside in the word or in the soul of the speaker or in the soul of the listener. Meaning is the effect of interaction between speaker and listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex." [Voloshinov (1973), p.102. Italic emphasis in the original.]

Unfortunately, although Voloshinov emphasised the social nature of language and communication (as opposed to its alleged individualised and representational role, at least as far as meaning is concerned), he turned out to be an unreliable ally (as we found out in Essay Thirteen Part Three).

On the non-cognitive skills upon which language mastery is based, cf., Robinson (2003b). See also Glock (2004); but, once more, this should be read in the light of Bloor (1997), and Kusch (2002, 2006). See also Hanna and Harrison (2004).

Such rules thus enable greater facility in language and hence permit wider and more effective communication.

Using Wittgenstein's terminology, among other things the meaning of words and the sense of propositions in general depend on "logical grammar" -- the manner of their construction (or in the case of words, their use) -- and the role they play in our lives. [An example of this will be given below. In the case of empirical propositions, this also includes the conditions noted in the main body of this Essay. However, readers should also take note the remarks posted here.]

[It is worth underlining the reason for an addition of the phrase "in general", used above. Without that, this would imply that language does indeed have an 'essence'.]

When coupled with the criteria we have for the application of certain words, these factors constitute what we (through inter-social agreement, in action) count as the truth conditions for the proposition in question, if those words are so used in the said proposition. [On criteria, see here.]

This might seem to make truth itself dependent on human choice/behaviour, when it is surely dependent on the way the world happens to be. Unfortunately, that approach would once again confuse the truth-value of an empirical proposition with its truth conditions. The truth-values of empirical propositions are indeed sensitive to the way the world happens to be, but that isn't the case with their truth conditions. [On that, see here and here.]

[Admittedly, the phrase "The way the world happens to be" is itself rather vague; it will be sharpened considerably later on in this Essay. Its use here shouldn't, however, be confused with its employment in the CTT.]

Because the aforementioned criteria are socially-conditioned, empirical sense is dependent on:

(ii) The material and social relations humans have with one another and with the past; and,

Since truth-values are determined by reference to the way the world happens to be, scientific knowledge (expressed in and by empirical propositions, not natural laws (which are themselves forms of representation or rules)) is also ultimately dependent on the world --, even while such knowledge isn't independent of, nor is it insensitive to, wider social forces and historical factors. It is, after all, human beings who have to decide under what conditions a proposition is or isn't to be counted as true, and because we are social beings, such decisions can't be divorced from those wider social and historical factors. But, of course, the final arbiter here (in relation to empirical propositions) will always the facts of the matter.

[Further discussion of this topic would take us too far into Wittgenstein's philosophy of language. For a brief account of some of the central issues concerned, see Glock (1996), pp.98-101, 124-29, 150-55, and 315-19. A much more detailed list of relevant references can be found in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

However, it is worth adding that most of Wittgenstein's commentators appear to have ignored the connection between the social nature of language and his method. Even those who at least make a few gestures in that direction generally fail to develop them in anything like a satisfactory manner; they certainly fail openly to acknowledge the central role social and historical factors play in Wittgenstein's work (except, perhaps, to render it lip-service). The problem with much of the writing in this genre is that even where these factors are taken into account, they are invariably given an a-historical twist. This unfortunately makes it entirely mysterious how language is connected with human beings and their historical and social development, as opposed to cardboard cut-outs-of-human-beings who have no history and don't live in class-divided societies -- almost as if the entire human race had been beamed in, en masse, from another planet. So, given the way that this topic is addressed in much of the literature it is almost as if human practice (and all that that entails) descended from the skies.

[A notable exception to that generalisation is Robinson (2003). See also his essays.]

For instance, Meredith Williams's otherwise excellent work is seriously undermined by her open and explicit rejection of HM. [Williams (1999b), pp.280-81.] Another recent example along similar lines is O'Neill (2001). However, that major gripe won't be explored any further here; it would, anyway, require the setting up of detailed interconnections with, and within, HM, a topic that is largely ignored at this site.

36a. The difference between non-sense as such and incoherent non-sense will also be explained.

we wouldn't know what to make of it (saving, of course, rather odd, unusual or special surrounding circumstances -- for example, if D1 were a code of some sort). However, if the following 'explanation' were now offered:

we would still be unable to make any sense of it. The prefixes "NN asserted that…" and "NN meant…" (or even "What I meant...") can't of itself turn babble into meaningful language any more than "MM paid...for..." can turn a bucket of cat droppings into money:

D4: MM paid for her copy of the Morning Star with a wheelbarrow of h@Yhrtuitjner.

Without the aforementioned special circumstances, D1-D4 aren't just nonsensical, they are incoherently so.

39. Issues connected with trying to make sense of the rather odd things people sometimes come out with are examined in more detail in several articles in Crary and Read (2000) -- for example, Cerbone (2000). Cf., also Conant (1991), Diamond (1991), Lippitt and Hutto (1998) and Robinson (2003).

39a. In what follows, an implicit use will be made of the LEM (as a rule of language, not as an a priori 'truth'). Dialecticians, of course, take exception to the universal application of this 'law', especially in relation to change. However, we have already seen that few, if any, of them manage to get this 'law' right, even while they themselves have to appeal to it, or even use it, repeatedly (albeit this is often done implicitly) in order to try to make their theories seem to work. For example, I can think of no sane or sober DM-fan who would argue that the sentence, "Karl Marx is the author of Das Kapital Volume One" is neither true nor false -- nor yet that it is true and false -- it is one or the other. They all choose one of these options, that it is indeed true.

So, to take another example, with respect to the theory, "Motion is the mode of the existence of matter", as far as DM-theorists view things, the only two options available are (i) true or (ii) false. Dialecticians opt for the former and reject the latter. Hence, in answer to the question: "Is motion the mode of the existence of mater or not?", not one of them will then quote Hegel:

"To the metaphysician, things and their mental reflexes, ideas, are isolated, are to be considered one after the other and apart from each other, are objects of investigation fixed, rigid, given once for all. He thinks in absolutely irreconcilable antitheses. 'His communication is "yea, yea; nay, nay"; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.' For him a thing either exists or does not exist; a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something else. Positive and negative absolutely exclude one another, cause and effect stand in a rigid antithesis one to the other. At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees." [Engels (1976), p.26. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course, for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories retain their validity." [Engels (1954), pp.212-13. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Indeed, it is perfectly clear why they wouldn't quote the above in answer to that question: if they were to do so, they would then have to admit openly that an acceptance of P4 (below) commits them to just such a "fixed and rigid", "hard and fast" line -- motion is either a mode of the existence of matter or it isn't -- but not both -- indeed, for them, it is the former.

Just as it is perfectly clear why they have to adhere -- surreptitiously -- to this "fixed and rigid", "hard and fast" line: nothing determinate about the world could be proposed (i.e., be "put forward for consideration") without accepting as valid this use of the LEM -- again, as a rule of language, not a Super-Truth about 'reality', or even a 'law' about language, logic and the world.

If and when this 'law' is applied to change, DM-theorists often assert that it breaks down. But that claim itself is what actually breaks down, as P6 clearly demonstrates:

P6: The LEM either breaks down when applied to motion and change or it doesn't.

DM-theorists opt once more for the first half of P6: that the LEM breaks down when it is used in connection with motion and change, thus applying yet another hard-and-fast line in defiance of their own criticism of just such rigid distinctions!

So, DM-qualms -- should they be aired in relation to that earlier use of the LEM -- would be, at best, irrelevant; at worst, self-refuting.

[The reader is directed to these more detailed comments about the LEM, which also highlight the serious problems that arise from the usual, tired old, shop-worn DM-criticisms of this 'law'. (The word "law" is in 'scare quotes' here since the LEM isn't a law but a rule of language -- however else it might be interpreted by some logicians.)]

40. This is the requirement of bi-polarity mentioned in the Preface to this Essay, which protocol constitutes one of the fundamental insights of Wittgenstein's Tractatus [Wittgenstein (1972)]. On this see White (1974, 2006), Moyal-Sharrock (2007), pp.33-51, and Palmer (1988, 1996, 2011).

40a. There will be more on this in Essay Three Part Four. In fact, this is the same bottomless epistemological hole Lenin dropped himself into in MEC. On that, see Essay Thirteen Part One. Indeed, this is just one of the fatal weakness of Representationalism. [On this, see Hacker (1987), (1991), 2013a).]

However, some might still wonder about the status of what are often called patent truths, such as "Water is wet", "Dogs have four legs and a tail" and "Fire burns". In such cases, truth and meaning seem to go hand-in-hand, so that, for example, knowing what the word "water" means is ipso facto to know it is wet, and anyone who didn't know that dogs have four legs and a tail would be deemed not to know what the word "dog" meant. These appear to connect meaning directly with some form of prior knowledge, contrary to much that has been argued in this Essay.

The above isn't quite right. The truth of sentences like these plainly wasn't originally established by the simple expedient of inspecting the words they contained and nothing else. Their actual truth had to be determined at some point by some sort of confirmation or interface with the world -- or, in some cases, this will have been the result of a stipulation of some sort (based largely on the same). Of course, mundane truths like these have now been, so to speak, "put in the archives" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein), and no one in their right or left mind would think to question them. But, their actual truth depends on their being confirmable, or on their having been confirmed, at some point by reference to the world not as a sole result of linguistic or conceptual analysis, or even by the operation of thought alone. For example, a child won't learn that water is wet merely by inspecting the words or concepts involved; nor will he/she learn it by simply thinking about water. At some point, that child will have to experience the wetness of water and be taught to describe it using this word and associated terms (i.e., they would have to be told that this is what "wet" means -- that can, of course, take place directly or indirectly). Naturally, having learnt when to use this particular word, a child might take on trust or accept by hearsay that other liquids are wet, too. But, no one learns such things by simple contemplation, and on that alone.

[On testimony, see Kusch (2002). For a different view, see Lackey (2008). See also Leonard (2021).]

[Compare this with Wittgenstein's remarks on The Standard Metre -- Wittgenstein (2009), p.29e, §40. On that, see Baker and Hacker (2005a), pp.189-99, Diamond (2001), Jacquette (2010), Malcolm (1995b), and Pollock (2004); a copy of the latter can be accessed here (this links to a PDF).]

Others might raise questions about the status of propositions that are unquestionably empirical, but which nonetheless express certainties (of the sort that exercised, say, George Moore) -- such as our 'knowledge' of our own names, the content of our memories, the fact that we (or most of us) have two hands, or that we all have biological parents (even if in some cases we might not know who they are), etc. However, as is the case with the previous examples, the truth of none of these was ascertained by thought alone. [On this, see Wittgenstein (1974b). See also Michael Williams (1999), Moyal-Sharrock (2007), and Moyal-Sharrock (2013), pp.362-78.]

This isn't to suggest that we can't infer from an already accepted truth, or set of truths, another empirical truth, or truths. Indeed, scientists do this all the time. But, even here, exceptional circumstances to one side, no scientist would accept propositions like "Copper conducts electricity" as true or even unquestionably true until they had been confirmed in some way, at some point, by someone, or some team of researchers, howsoever long ago that might have been.

Some might object that this can't be correct. For example, if a language-user didn't know that water was wet, we would be reluctant to credit them with understanding either of these words.

In response, it is worth directing the reader's attention to a distinction Wittgenstein drew between what he called criteria and symptoms. [This links to a PDF.] Because of that distinction what might at first sight appear to be an empirical proposition -- or, indeed, what had once been regarded as an empirical proposition --, could assume a radically different role or logical status.

Symptoms are those facts which we regard as lending support to, or which tend to confirm the truth of, say, an hypothesis or tentative statement, whereas a criterion supplies conclusive proof, or helps provide such proof, of its truth -- or, indeed, of the proper application of an expression, such as "water" (with or without the use of other relevant criteria); or criteria help determine whether a given sentence or claim can even count as true, or whether an object has been, or can be, classified correctly.

Hence, a plane figure possessing three straight intersecting edges would be a criterion for something to count as a triangle (or for calling it one), whereas a pavement being wet would merely be a symptom that supported a claim, or which lent credence to the supposition, that it had been raining in the vicinity. On the other hand, wetness would now be one of the criteria that could/would be employed in order to decide if a certain liquid was water (but it wouldn't be the only criterion, of course). However, the absence of wetness on its own would provide conclusive proof that the liquid in question wasn't water. So, for example, liquid Mercury doesn't feel wet to human skin, just cold. However, other obvious properties of Mercury would clearly distinguish it from water well before it was allowed anywhere near unprotected skin.

[Naturally, that depends on how "wet" is itself to be defined. If it is taken to mean that a certain liquid contains water, then the above criterion would more closely resemble a colloquial tautology. It should go without saying, however, that the everyday meaning of "wet" must be distinguished from the scientific term, "wetting".]

Furthermore, what had once been regarded as a symptom could later become a criterion. For example, the observation that acids turn certain substances red was once regarded by medieval dyers and painters as an interesting fact about acids. That quirk was originally viewed, therefore, as a symptom. Later, this peculiar fact about acids was employed by Robert Boyle as a way of detecting, or of deciding upon, the presence of acids. It thus became a criterion -- later used universally in connection with, for instance, Litmus Paper.

Of course, we use other pH-Indicators these days, but that just means this criterion has (or these criteria have) now become more varied and complex. The distinction itself still remains valid -- indeed, as Peter Hacker notes:

"It is true that we can, in certain cases, transform an empirical proposition into a rule or norm of representation by resolving to hold it rigid.... It was an empirical discovery that acids are proton donors, but this proposition was transformed into a rule: a scientist no longer calls something 'an acid' unless it is a proton donor, and if it is a proton donor, then it is to be called 'an acid', even if it has no effect on litmus paper. The proposition that acids are proton donors...has been 'withdrawn from being checked by experience but now serves as a paradigm for judging experience'. [This is a quotation from Wittgenstein (1978), p.325 -- RL.] Though unassailable, so-called necessary truths are not immutable; we can, other things being equal, change them if we so please.... But if we change them, we also change the meanings of their constituent expressions...". [Hacker (1996), p.215. Link added.]

None of this affects the ideas being aired in this Essay since criteria are also rules. That is, we appeal to various criteria (as rules) to decide if a substance is water, or if another is an alkali, etc. Indeed, they comprise a form/norm of representation. Each one is "So to speak an empirical proposition hardened into a rule." [Wittgenstein (1978), p.325.] I have said more about the distinction between rules and empirical propositions in Note 45a, below.

[On this, see Glock (1996), pp.93-97. More details can be found in Albritton (1959), Canfield (1981), pp.31-148, Harrison (1979), pp.49-58, Harrison (1999), Hacker (1993a), pp.243-66, Hanfling (2002), pp.38-50, Loomis (2010), McDowell (1982), Wright (1993) and Hertzberg (2022) -- the latter of which corrects several errors committed by earlier interpreters of Wittgenstein.]

This helps answer objection (1), from earlier. Owning a book can be rather vague and surrounding details may sometimes be rather complicated. In which case, M6 could be deemed true under a host of varying conditions (i.e., the criteria could be both varied and complex, just as they can differ between cultures and historical periods -- or, indeed, between diverse social groups and communities). For example, at present in the UK (and all other 'advanced economies', it seems), Blair would be deemed to own the said book, if: (i) He bought it himself, (ii) It was bought for him as a present, (iii) It was a gift from the publisher, the author or someone else, (iv) He won it in a raffle, or some other competition, or (v) He inherited it, and so on. If at least one of (i)-(v) (etc.) were the case, Blair would be credited as the owner of the said book. How he came to own it -- providing it had been 'legally obtained' -- is therefore irrelevant in this respect.

[As should seem obvious owning a book isn't the same as having that book in one's possession, either permanently or temporarily. One can own a book and not have it in one's possession -- for example, if has been loaned, confiscated, lost, stolen or partially destroyed (etc.) --, and one can have a book in one's possession without owning it -- for instance, if it has been borrowed, stolen, found, planted, or if it is being held for safe-keeping (etc.). Of course, all of these options have been complicated somewhat by the arrival of e-books.]

Let us now generalise this and suppose that there is or might be a set of situations/circumstances the obtaining or the happening of which allow us to count (or which allow some other group or culture to count) an individual (in this case, Blair) as owning a given book (that is, if they actually possess such a concept -- as noted above, these criteria can change over time and between cultures), say: S₁, S₂, S₃,..., S_n. Let us call this set, "S".

[Where S₁, S₂, S₃,..., S_n stand for situations or circumstances like those mentioned above and relate to such sentences about Blair. These alternatives could, of course, be expressed propositionally**, or left as verb or noun phrases -- but the latter will be held to be the case, or held not to be the case, if they are used in, or apply in relation to, indicative sentences like M6b or M6c, below.]

Hence, M6 would be true if at least one element of S were itself the case -- i.e., if some sentence, "W_i", expressing at least one element, "S_i", were true -- false otherwise -- and where W_i in this instance is M6b. So, if no element of S were the case, W_i would now be M6c. [But, see also here.]

Of course, this puts pressure of what might count as a "situation", but that would only serve either to lengthen or shorten the list, not eliminate it or make it irrelevant.

In that case, M6 and M6a would still be contradictories, since M6 would be true if at least one of S obtained, and M6a would be true if none did. [It is worth recalling that the quantifiers "At least one..." and "None..." are contradictory functors.] Also worth pointing out is that sentences like M6b and M6c express rules, so none of the above remarks contradict what was said earlier -- i.e., that the sense of an empirical proposition doesn't depend on the truth of any other. [Again, on this see White (1974).]

[**Incidentally, I return later to consider cases where rules can be expressed propositionally, or, indeed, with the use of indicative sentences in general.]

It could be objected that M6 and M6a could both be false (in which case they couldn't be contradictories). That would happen if, for instance, (a) The book in question had never been written and we assume no one else is, has, or ever will write a book with that title, or (b) Tony Blair has never existed and we assume no one else is, has been, or ever will be called by that name.

If either were the case, M6 and M6a would both lack a truth value, and on that basis they would cease to be propositions. On the other hand, if (a) were the case, then some might consider M6 false and M6a true -- but see my response to (vii), below. However, in such circumstances, we would say something like this: "This character 'Tony Blair' doesn't own a copy of 'The Algebra of Revolution' since no book with that title has ever been written or published and no one with that name has ever existed, as far as we know!"

However, as will be argued below, M6 and M6a would once again fail to be propositions.

Under such circumstances we would probably say something like this: "These two propositions can't be contradictories until it had been shown that there has been someone called 'Tony Blair' and that there has also been a book written (and possibly published) with the said title."

Further consideration of this particular alternative would bring us to the second objection, which was that the claim that someone owns something is itself rather vague. For example, if it were unclear what (vi) The Algebra of Revolution is or (vii) What owning something actually amounted to. [Of course, there are other possibilities here, but my answer will take care of them all.]

If (vii) were the case, then M6 and M6a would cease to be propositions, let alone empirical (since it would then be unclear what was being proposed or put forward for consideration -- that response also applies to the above objection), and so, in that case, they couldn't contradict each other -- except, perhaps, in a figurative or fictional sense. However, just as soon as these ambiguities (and any others that have yet to be, or which could possibly be, suggested) had been cleared up (by whatever means), then M6 and M6a would once again become contradictories. On the other hand, if they can't be cleared up (either in practice or in principle), then the concept of ownership might itself be thrown into question, which would mean that M6 and M6a would cease to be propositions once more -- as should seem obvious, philosophy can't legislate on such matters or determine how a given society defines ownership, or even possesses that concept) -- since, once again, it would be unclear what was being proposed. In that eventuality, I would have to come up with some new examples, maybe these two:

If anyone wants to question whether these two are contradictories, I can only wish them "Good luck!"; any such brave individuals should email me with their best shot.

Finally, if (vi) were the case, we would be back where we were earlier: M6 might be deemed false and M6a true (but my answer to Option (vii) could apply here, too).

It could be argued that the above approach falls foul of the redundancy objection, which goes something like the following, in this instance:

M6 is true if at least one (i.e., some) of S obtain[s], but it is also true if one of S obtains along with some other unrelated truth, say, T₁.

S1: Blair's legal purchase of the book and its current appearance on one of his shelves.

As pointed out above, S1 could also be expressed in propositional form, as, say, P₁.

S2: Blair legally purchased a copy of the said book and it now sits on one of his shelves.

That would make the account presented in this Essay far too generous, for M6 would then be true if:

S4: Blair legally purchased a copy of the said book and it now sits on one of his shelves and Paris is the capital of France.

This is mistaken. The above 'difficulty' might be a problem for logicians (something that can be left to them to sort out), but it certainly isn't a problem for ordinary language. It is difficult to imagine anyone in command on their senses accepting the truth of M6 on the basis of S4 being the case. So, no sensible attempt to verify M6 would involve an investigation into the status of Paris as the capital of France.

[Of course, because T₁ has itself been expressed in propositional form (as S3), we would be faced with an infinite regress here if some attempt were made to specify the situations that made it true -- that is, if any randomly-selected truth could also be tacked on to T₁, as well.]

It is important to note that the way the above has been presented seems to base this account on the nominalisation of indicative sentences -- so that "Blair legally purchased the book and it is now sat on his shelves" has been turned into the compound noun/verb phrase "Blair's legal purchase of the said book and its current appearance on his shelves". That niggling detail will be tackled in Essay Ten Part Two. For present purposes all that needs to be said is that the obtaining of the following: "Blair's legal purchase of the said book and its current appearance on his shelves" can also be expressed by an indicative sentence, namely "Blair legally purchased a copy of the said book and it now sits on one of his shelves" -- i.e., S2/P₁.

S2: Blair legally purchased a copy of the said book and it now sits on one of his shelves.

Such considerations might make this account look as if it were identical to the Redundancy and/or Deflationary Theory of Truth. It might, except I am not propounding any sort of theory, here, since my approach can't possibly cater for every eventuality. It is a defeasible Form of Representation. Moreover, the elucidatory rules I summarised above might prove to be unworkable in some cases, and would need to be revised.

As should seem plain, I haven't dealt with every conceivable possibility or objection, but then this isn't meant to be an academic exercise. A definitive treatment of just this one topic (i.e., the content of this Note!) would require an entire book devoted to it -- or, indeed, an entire PhD thesis.

However, if anyone reading this has an objection they would like me to consider, or they think my explanations above are far from clear, email me.

Finally, this account has nothing to do with the CTT, either. That topic will also be tackled in Essay Ten Part Two.

40b. A 'Super-Truth' is a sentence that superficially resembles an ordinary scientific truth (such as "Copper conducts electricity"), but is in fact nothing at all like any such ordinary truth. Super-Truths transcend anything the sciences could possibly deliver, confirm or confute. M8 and M9 from earlier are particularly good examples of this. Their alleged truth depends solely on meaning, not on the way the world happens to be. They tell us how the world, any world, must be. In this they are a core component of the RRT.

No amount of evidence can confirm or confute these two; indeed, evidence is irrelevant to both. On this, see Note 41.

41. Quite the reverse, in fact; in this case, an Ideal sort of 'reality' (or part of it) becomes in effect the projection of such a 'thought' or proposition. Hence, far from the proposition in question being a reflection of nature (as was supposed to be the case), 'reality' becomes a construct created by 'thought'. That dogmatic result is achieved by informing us what the world must be like. The logical properties of such 'thoughts', or 'propositions', thereby determine the 'logical form' of this (now) 'Ideal Reality', not the other way round. This amounts, therefore, to yet another inversion: 'thought' determines the fundamental nature of this 'Ideal World', which is, of course, why all such theories collapse into, or imply, Idealism.

In Part Four of Essay Twelve, this logical inversion (which parallels one such brought to our attention earlier) will be used to support the claim that the flip DM-fans say they have inflicted on Hegel's system (in order to obtain 'Materialist Dialectics', as 'the dialectic' was supposedly put back 'the right way up') hasn't in fact taken place, no matter what Dialectical Marxists might otherwise claim. Indeed, the projection from thought, or from language, to the world lies behind something that will later be called the "Reverse Reflection Theory" [RRT], which implies that the world is in fact thought-, or language-like -- since, on this view, key linguistic features of that theory have been reified/alienated (i.e., words have become divorced from their roots in material practice and discourse and as a result they are fetishised, turned into objects or the relations between objects), and then dogmatically projected onto the world. In relation to DM, we have seen this with words like "contradiction", "negation", "being", "consciousness", and, indeed, most of the products of 'the process of abstraction' (as demonstrated in detail in Essay Three Parts One and Two).

This traditional approach to 'philosophical knowledge' populates the Universe (or, rather, it populates the part of it that supposedly underlies 'appearances') with countless "Abstractions" and "Essences", which are little more than shadows cast on the world by distorted language. [This, of course, endorses, extends and amplifies a point made by Marx.] As we can now see, this means that these deformed aspects of discourse have been read into nature on the back of centuries of Traditional Forms of Thought (which Dialectical Marxists have only extended into revolutionary theory), not 'read from it'. Had they been derived from the world, the indicative sentences involved would be capable of being negated; but, as we will see, they can't.

[The significance of that seemingly irrelevant fact will also be explored. See also Note 43a.]

An important strand in this age-old 'logico-linguistic conjuring trick' was exposed in Essays Two and Three Part One, where contingent features of Indo-European Grammar (i.e., the subject-predicate form, coupled with a specialised use of the verb "to be" as a copula) were read into the world as fundamental logical features of 'Being', supposedly capable of revealing countless "Essences", via the mysterious process of 'abstraction'. [On that, see Kahn (2003).]

[More on this below, and in Parts Five and Six of this Essay, where we will see how Hegel further transmogrified the innocent-looking verb -- "to be" -- into an all-embracing cosmic process -- "Becoming" --, powered by the 'contradictions' he was able to magic into existence as a spin-off of an egregious and ham-fisted 'analysis' of the LOI. (A summary of these 'moves' can now be accessed here.)]

43. It could be argued that Lenin was simply ruling out the very possibility of motion without matter. End of story! Move on...

There are in fact several alternative interpretations here: Lenin could be have been rejecting:

(c) The separability of matter and motion (with "separability" itself interpreted physically or conceptually); or, indeed,

However, if Lenin was ruling out either or both of (a) and (b) he surely can't have done so without thinking the forbidden words, "motion without matter", what they implied or their content when situated in a sentential context. In that case, he must have entertained the possible truth of at least one sentence that expressed this state of affairs -- i.e., motion without matter -- while claiming no one could do what he had just done, since it was "unthinkable"!

He must have had in mind the state of affairs he said could not exist, even while he had to know what that state of affairs was, and hence what it existence looked like!

Otherwise, he would simply have been commenting on empty phrases, or using words he himself did not understand.

43a. Once more, it could be objected that it is perfectly clear what Lenin was rejecting: the immobility of matter. However, as we have just seen in the previous Note, in order to do that, Lenin would have to think the "unthinkable" by thinking about the content of the offending sentences expressing that possibility. So, if it is possible to think about the immobility of matter (even if only in order to reject it out-of-hand, which he could only do if he knew what it was he was ruling out), the immobility of matter can't be "unthinkable" -- or, rather, the content of any sentence used to assert its immobility couldn't even be entertained, even though it has just be entertained in order to do just that. If it is indeed "unthinkable", not even Lenin could think it or entertain it. He can't have it both ways.

Of course, the use of the word "thinkable" is somewhat vague and ambiguous (in such contexts). Consider one particular example: It is possible to 'think about' four-edged triangles in the sense that one intones, or entertains, those words, but since there is no such thing as a four-edged triangle, it isn't possible to think about them! There is no "them"!

T2: This plain one-dimensional manifold has four intersecting straight edges and is a triangle.

T3: A triangle is a polygon with three vertices formed from the intersection of three lines or line segments.

In this case, since nothing could count as a four-edged triangle, ruling out this combination of words amounts to the rejection of the use of the word "triangle" to describe what we would otherwise call a quadrilateral, or perhaps a reminder to a novice that "triangle" is the wrong word to use here. In that case, ruling out T2 amounts to the endorsement of a linguistic rule that instructs us how to classify three-edged polygons, as triangles -- exemplified in T3.

Now, if someone like Lenin wanted to treat T1 as a fundamental truth about reality, as opposed to an indirect expression of a rule (e.g., T3), then he would have to know what state of affairs he was ruling out, which would in turn mean that he would have to be able to think the content of T2, for example, even if only to rule it out straightaway. But, if he can't do that, he would have no idea what he was trying to rule in, either.

As we will find out later, this 'quandary' takes us to the heart of the 'problem', for we will see that such sentences (be they metaphysical or even mathematical) have no negations, even though what might look like their negations use a negative particle. This is in fact what makes M1a (and T1) problematic.

So, the real problem isn't whether M1a or T1 are or aren't 'thinkable', but whether or not they violate rules we already have for the use of certain words. In short, as Wittgenstein noted, metaphysics is based on systematic confusions like this -- the misconstrual of linguistic rules as if they expressed fundamental truths about reality. [On this, also see Note 44 and Note 43c.]

"As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is; that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions." [Alexander (1956), pp.25-26. A different and more recent edition to the one I have used in this Essay can be accessed here. (This links to a PDF.)]

43c. The argument presented in the main body of this Essay might appear to mean that no one could deny, for example, that an ordinary triangle has four edges.

Hence, if Z1 were to define a triangle then (if the argument in the main body of this Essay is to be believed), Z2 must have changed the subject and so can't be about triangles, but must be about 'triangles'. That being the case, Z2 can't be the negation of Z1, and so can't be used to reject Z1. But children are often told that triangles do not have four edges, they have three. The same goes for many other mathematical statements and denials --, for example, "Four isn't an odd number", "A hexagon doesn't have five edges", "π isn't a rational number". That means core parts of this Essay are misguided.

As will be argued later on in this Essay, mathematical propositions aren't to be compared with empirical propositions, they are in fact rules for the use of certain symbols (or in some cases, words). So, the 'negation' of a mathematical proposition is in fact the rejection of a rule.

But, Z1 isn't about triangles to begin with. It is in fact proposing a new rule for the use of a typographically identical word, 'triangle'. This means that Z2 amounts to a rejection of that rule. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for sentences like "Four isn't an odd number", and "A hexagon doesn't have five edges".

"π isn't a rational number" is, however, different. It was a mathematical discovery that what were later called "Real Numbers" -- like √2 and π -- weren't Rational. In that case, when it was determined that π wasn't a rational number, that amounted to a change in the rules governing the use of that symbol.

[Yes, I am aware that the Reals include the Integers, the Rationals and the Natural Numbers; the only point I am making above is that numbers like √2 and π (and, of course, literally countless others!) forced mathematicians to expand the concept of Number by introducing Real Numbers.]

44. In our unguarded moments, we tend to receive, or 'hear', such propositions as if they were empirical (or, rather, in relation to Metaphysics, as if they are Super-Empirical), as though they are informing us of profound truths about, or which express fundamental principles that underpin, 'reality' (albeit, in this case, where such Super-Facts are held to be far more profound than mundane, everyday facts, or even scientific facts). This is indeed why many of us slip so easily into a metaphysical or dogmatic mind-set, or allow it to shape our knowledge.

Traditional philosophical theories are supposed to express 'fundamental truths' that relate to a hidden world that lies behind, or which is anterior both to 'appearances' and the physical universe. These 'Cosmic Verities' are 'S uper-True' because they reflect this secret world (and it is a world that one that is 'more real' than the universe we see around us) -- which means they can't be false. These are principles that govern the nature and existence of any possible world, so how could they be false. They define 'Philosophical Truth' since they are Metaphysically Necessary'. Falsehood has been surgically -- definitionally -- removed from them. That is certainly how they have always been received and conceived, at least by Traditional Thinkers and those who attend to, learn from, or have been influenced by such Sages.

Hence, if and when we internalise the 'Traditional View of Reality' -- that it is hidden from us if we rely only on our senses --, or allow it to influence us, we pretend to ourselves that we can grasp the presumed sense of the indicative sentences that express Super-Truths about it, and hence (somehow) know the conditions under which they would be true. After all, that is how we have been socialised to receive ordinary empirical propositions, which these 'Super-Truths' superficially resemble. Sentences that masquerade as empirical propositions are received in like manner. Their 'truth' seems to follow from the meaning of the words they contain or the concepts they express. We can now see this is so since we tend to accept their 'truth' before we have examined any evidence. All we have to do is read a few words, a body of test, and the 'truth' of these 'Super Verities' seems to follow. At a minimum, thought alone or language alone, is all the 'evidence' we appear to need, or require, or even ask for, in such cases. That is how Traditional Thought has operated and seduced the vast majority of us since Ancient Greece (in the 'west', at least).

But, as soon as we reflect on them (in the manner illustrated in this Essay and at this site) we soon see they can't be viewed the traditional way, since one or other of their semantic options (i.e., falsehood) has been closed-down --, which, as we have also seen, has the knock-on effect of shutting both down.

And it is this that lies behind the genuine puzzlement, if not consternation, Dialectical Marxists feel (or often express) when they are told -- as they have been at this site (and by yours truly, in debate on-line or in person) -- that no one "understands" DM -- not Engels, not Plekhanov, not Lenin, not Mao, not Trotsky...

Since the supposed truth of DM-claims depends on the putative meaning of the words/concepts used to express them, no wonder DM-fans assent to their veracity as soon as they imagine they have 'understood' them and are then genuinely nonplussed (or, in many cases, angered) when they are told that they themselves don't, and can't, possibly understand their own theory, that it is incoherent non-sense.

In such cases, however, it is little use Dialectical Marxists trying to provide more evidence in order to convince doubters -- because the presumed truth of DM is independent of the evidence -- and that helps explain why they almost invariably respond with the following: "Well, you just don't understand dialectics". That, of course, gives the game away since it shows that even they (implicitly) realise that their theory is based on the comprehension of the language they have used, not on the evidence.

[And we have already seen that what little 'evidence' has already offered in support -- if such it may be called --, is more accurately to be described as Mickey Mouse Evidence.]

DM-theorists are so used to receiving and accepting their theory in the above manner -- as, indeed, tradition has taught them to do so and to process/integrate such a priori Super-Truths (i.e., as a legitimate part of 'genuine philosophy') --, that it seems perverse, if not downright offensive, to claim that they themselves don't understand it. But, since DM-sentences have no content -- merely a jargonised, ersatz sort of 'content' -- there is nothing there for them, or anyone, to understand. In that case, telling them that they don't understand their own theory isn't to malign them, isn't to question their intelligence, but to make a logical point about DM itself.

[We saw this here in relation to the idiosyncratic, 'dialectical use' of the word "change", for instance, and here in connection with their criticisms of the LOI, here in relation to their theory of motion, here and here concerning 'the process of abstraction', etc., etc. And we have witnessed it, too, in this Essay with Lenin's claims about motion and matter.]

This isn't, of course, unconnected with the continual slide into incoherence of every single DM-thesis. [On this, see also Note 45.]

45. As we will soon see, this pretence -- or, rather, charade -- often involves those who claim to 'understand' DM in spinning increasingly baroque 'elucidations', composed of little other than complex webs of jargon, stitched together in a vain attempt to 'explain' or elaborate on the last batch of jargon -- an excellent recent example of which can be found here. This process results in the creation of increasingly recondite super-webs of self-referential verbiage with nothing to ground it in ordinary language or everyday life -- Hegel's Logic, of course, being the paradigm example of this (with Heidegger's work, alongside Bhaskar (1993) and much of Zizek's recent work, on the sub's bench).

Such attempts at 'clarification' are, alas, no more illuminating than the tales spun by Christian Theologians/Mystics 'explaining', for instance, the Incarnation of Christ -- except, they are, at least, open and honest about the fact that their entire doctrine is an unfathomable "mystery". Not so our very own Dialectical Mystics and their 'theory' -- "You just don't understand it...".

Francis Bacon summed-up this mind-set admirably well (although he confined his criticism to the tangled web of 'verbal spaghetti' weaved by Medieval Schoolmen, i.e., the Scholastics, but it is just as applicable to those who try to 'explain' Hegel -- upside down or 'the 'right way up'):

"This kind of degenerate learning did chiefly reign amongst the Schoolmen: who having sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle their dictator) as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time, did out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit spin out unto those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books. For the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contemplation of the creatures of God, works according to the stuff, and is limited thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider works his web, then it is endless, and brings forth indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." [Bacon (2001), pp.25-26. Bold emphasis added; Stuart/Elizabethan English replaced by contemporary English.]

"44. Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men's minds from the various dogmas of peculiar systems of philosophy, and also from the perverted rules of demonstration, and these we denominate idols of the theatre. For we regard all the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined, as so many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and theatrical worlds...." [Novum Organum, quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

45a. Someone might object that "not true" doesn't necessarily imply "false" (nor vice versa), since the proposition in question could lack a truth-value (or it could even have a third truth-value, "neither true nor false" -- or, worse, that truth-value might be "both true and false"). But, those alternatives, if they were viable to begin with, would simply make us reconsider what we should count as a proposition, or, indeed, as an empirical proposition -- or, they might even prompt a re-classification of any indicative sentences involved that were so semantically-challenged as, perhaps, non-factual. If a proposition purports to be about the facts, the only two truth-values available are true and false, otherwise it would be entirely unclear what was being proposed or put forward for consideration, to begin with. If the fact themselves can't be used to decide if a given proposition is true or is false, then in what way could that sentence be validly described as factual?

Admittedly, it might not currently be known whether many such sentences are or aren't true, and we might never know. But that has no bearing at all on what would make them true or would make them false, which is all that is required.

This, of course, introduces controversial issues that have been raised in the Theory of Meaning, the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy of Logic for example by the late Michael Dummett and the late Donald Davidson (among others). It also introduces 'problems' highlighted by Graham Priest. [Concerning the latter, see here.]

Someone might further object that to declare an empirical proposition "not false" plainly doesn't mean it is true. For example, consider an empirical, scientific proposition, V2:

Well, that confuses a logical-, with an epistemological-point -- which is something the late Michael Dummett also tended to do -- a muddle further compounded by his conflation of meaning with sense, when he linked the meaning of a proposition with its "assertibility conditions" (on that, see Ellenbogen (2003), pp.25-58).

While we might not (currently) know whether or not V2 is false, we also don't know it is true. We are in no position to assert either of these: that V2 is false or that V2 is true. But, that doesn't affect the logical point that we can specify ahead of time (plausible) conditions that would make V2 true or that would make V2 false, if they obtained or failed to obtain, as the case may be. We would have no idea how to go about even investigating the semantic status of V2 if that weren't the case. [So, the aforementioned logical constraints draw the epistemological boundaries that were of concern to Dummett, not the other way round. Of course, that doesn't imply nature can't surprise us from time to time, only that we can now specify in advance what would make V2 true and what would make V2 false -- i.e., consistent with what we currently know about nature.]

However, at this site, an empirical proposition is taken to have a true-false polarity (and that is because of the requirement that they are capable of being understood first before their truth or their falsehood has been, or even could be, ascertained). [Again, I have said more about this in Note 53 and here.]

[As we will also see, they are in addition incoherently non-sensical. How something can be coherently non-sensical will be dealt with presently.]

It could be objected that the propositions advanced in this Essay -- such as, "Metaphysical propositions are non-sensical" -- are also self-refuting since they aren't empirical and they are also supposed to be true. If so, they can't be false, either, hence they must be non-sensical themselves -- that is, if we were to believe what this Essay has argued.

This objection is based on the idea that there are only two uses of the indicative mood: fact-stating and philosophical thesis-mongering. The conclusion seems to be that I am either stating facts -- which could be false --, or I am advancing a supposedly true philosophical theory of my own about language, etc. If that were the case, what I have to say would be no less non-sensical. Hence, I would only have succeeded in refuting myself!

But, there are other uses of the indicative mood, one of which features in the formulation of scientific theories that, in general, don't state facts but express rules scientists use to make sense of the world (at this site these are also called forms of representation; more about that presently). And rules aren't the sort of thing that can be true or false, only useful or useless, effective or ineffective, practical or impractical, followed or broken, etc. This means that such rules are coherent (or they couldn't be followed/applied) even while they can't be true and can't be false (since rules are incapable of being true or false; they can only be practical or impractical, obeyed or broken, etc.), and that in turn means rules are coherent non-sense.

So, when Newton, for example, tells us that the rate of change of momentum is proportional to the applied force, he isn't stating a fact -- otherwise it could be false. If that were so, its falsehood would change the meaning of "force". In that eventuality, what he had to say would be about something other than "force", as Newton understood the term, in the Second Law. There he was proposing, or establishing, a rule that could be used to study acceleration, among other things. That Law told us what Newton meant by "force" among other things.

[Of course, he might not have seen things this way, but that doesn't affect the point being made. Recall the comments made at the top of this page: This Essay "tackles issues that have sailed right over the heads of some of the greatest minds in history...." I will say more about why such 'Laws' are in effect rules in Essay Thirteen Part Two. (Incidentally, this approach to scientific 'Laws' helps account for the odd fact that they all appear to "tell lies about nature". On that, see Cartwright (1983). {This links to a PDF.} Why that is so will also be explained in the aforementioned Essay.)]

At this site I use several sentences (in the indicative mood) in the same way -- as interpretative, or elucidatory, rules --, except, in this case, I do so in order to show that philosophical theories themselves are both non-sensical and incoherent.

At this point, someone might now draw our attention to Wittgenstein's notorious comment:

"6.54: My propositions [Sätze -- sentences, RL] serve as elucidations in the following way: Anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical [unsinnig], when he has used them -- as steps -- to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright." [Wittgenstein (1972), p.151. Paragraphs merged. Bold emphasis added.]

They might then claim (as, indeed, many have) that he only succeeded in refuting himself.

As I explained earlier, in place of "nonsense" I prefer "non-sense", and that is clearly what Wittgenstein also intended; that is, he was referring to 'propositions' (sentences) which are incapable of expressing a sense (Sinn). [The Tractatus (i.e., Wittgenstein (1972)) pointedly contrasts Unsinnig (non-sense) with Sinnloss (senseless) sentences.]

So, Wittgenstein's own Unsinnig sentences [Sätze] express rules ("elucidations") in what appear to be propositional (or sentential) form. That is, his propositions use the indicative mood, by-and-large. He employed these "elucidations" in an endeavour make clear how it is that some of our sentences are capable of expressing a sense (Sinn), how others fail to express a sense (Sinnloss), and how some can't express a sense (Unsinnig). When that has been achieved -- or when we grasp what Wittgenstein was trying to say by these means -- we no longer need such rules and can "throw them away".

Once more, rules can't express a sense (they are Unsinnig); they aren't capable of being true or false, they can only be useful or useless, practical or impractical, obeyed or disobeyed --, but that doesn't prevent us from understanding them and the role they occupy (which we plainly do once we realise they aren't like empirical propositions -- or even metaphysical pseudo-propositions --, they are, in this case, elucidatory rules), and this we do when we see, or come to appreciate, they aren't incoherent non-sense. In that case, Wittgenstein was outlining, or proposing, a set of interpretative rules that were aimed at rendering his analysis of language clear.

Again, when Newton, for example, tells us that the rate of change of momentum is proportional to the impressed force he is (indirectly) informing us how he intends to use certain words and how he proposes to make sense of nature by means of them. His 'laws' elucidate his physics, and as such operate as rules.

But, why "throw them away"? Well, consider someone who is trying to teach a novice how to play chess, how the pieces move, how they can capture other pieces, etc., etc. In so doing they will explain the rules of chess, often employing the indicative mood: "The Queen moves like this, and this... the Rook like this...". Of course, these rules can also be expressed in the imperative mood, too -- for instance: "Move your Rook like this...", or "The King has to move this way..." --, but that isn't absolutely essential. In addition, the rules of the game can be taught by practical demonstration -- by simply playing! Novices can even learn the game simply by watching others play, asking a few questions.

The rules of chess are also Unsinnig; they can't be true or false. They aren't descriptive (they don't express facts); they are prescriptive (they express rules). If they were descriptive, they could be false. In that case, for example, some other rule -- such as, "The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag fashion" -- might then 'true'. But, "The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag fashion" isn't an alternative rule for the Bishop in chess, since the way that that piece moves defines what the word "Bishop" means in Chess. The rules of chess elucidate how that word is used and how that piece has to behave. If a 'Bishop' were to move (legitimately) in any other way, it would be part of an different game, not chess!

Some might argue that a rule in chess such as, "The Bishop moves like this..." is in fact true. That being the case, the above comments are themselves false.

And yet, if that were the case, "The Bishop moves like this..." would be descriptive, not prescriptive, making it an assertion, which could be true or could be false. But, anyone who now claimed that such rules were descriptive (and, in this case, were also true) would have no answer to someone else who retorted "Well, I'll move it any way I like!". Other than an to appeal to tradition, to how the game has always been played in the past (but given this scenario, if these rules were descriptive not prescriptive, there'd be countless rule breakers in the past which means there'd be no settled previous behaviour to which reference could be made to try to control unruly chess players), they could make no response. So, in order to proscribe the antics of such maverick chess players, "The Bishop moves like this...", and sentences like it, would have to be viewed prescriptively, and therefore as rules -- as imperatives --, not descriptions. Rules are enforced, and are enforceable, because they are prescriptive. It would make no sense to enforce a description in such circumstances -- unless it were thereby turned into a rule, and hence into a prescription.

Of course, "The Bishop moves like this..." is a correct (or true) description of, or assertion about, a rule in chess (as it is currently played), in the sense that anyone who used it would be speaking truly about the rules themselves; but, the prescriptive nature of this or any other rule doesn't depend on such truthful reports, but on the application of that rule -- the social force it carries -- in this instance a rule which defines how certain pieces must move. They delineate what are and what aren't legitimate moves in the game.

Once we have grasped these rules we can in effect "throw them away" (unless, of course, we have to explain them to someone else, or appeal to them to settle a dispute, etc.). How many times do players have to say to themselves once they have mastered the rules of chess: "The Rook moves like this, the Pawns like that..."?

Every single Wittgenstein commentator has missed these simple points and they then struggle to comprehend the Tractatus!

Now, I'm not suggesting Wittgenstein was crystal clear about this (he wasn't a systematic philosopher at any point in his life, and pointedly ignored criticism, both constructive and destructive), but it seems to me to be the only way to make the Tractatus comprehensible, so that it doesn't self-destruct or morph into something completely different (perhaps as a result of the rather extreme interpretations suggested by, for example, the 'New Wittgensteinians'). [On that, see Crary and Read (2000), and Read and Lavery (2011).]

But, even if it could be shown that Wittgenstein didn't hold this view, it certainly represents my view and my attempt to 'repair' the Tractatus.

46. Although this supposed truth, or this supposed falsehood, is a 'gift' bestowed on such Super-Truths (or Super-Falsehoods) by those who, of course, appear to comprehend the alleged meanings of the words they use, or have read, to that end. As we have seen, these 'truths' flow solely from what certain words seem to mean. But, many of the words employed by Traditional Theorists in fact belong to a rather select, specialised vocabulary, or they are simply technical terms. In many cases, they remain interminably obscure and are 'definable' only in terms of yet more specialised jargon, which never seems to 'touch the ground', as it were. And -- as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Three, as well as below and in other Essays -- they can't be expressed in ordinary terms, in ordinary language.

For Lenin, of course, the truth of M1a isn't like that of M2 or M3; he just says that motion without matter is "unthinkable". He didn't even attempt to supply evidence in support of that contention (and precious little supporting argument either!). On the contrary we have already seen that that idea (or its content) certainly is thinkable (i.e., using something like S1).

Of course, that is because, for previous generations of Philosophers and Scientists who accepted the theory expressed by S1, the word "matter" (in English, or any other language that possessed such a word) had a different meaning. But that is part of the point being made here. Any attempt to change what Lenin, or any other theorist, meant by "matter" would mean that sentences using this word in such a different way couldn't contradict those that didn't do this. So, sentences like P4 and P4a below, for instance, might look like they are contradictories, but since they represent a change of subject/meaning, they aren't. They are contentless, empty strings of words when they are interpreted as Super-Truths about 'fundamental features of reality', and not as (idiosyncratic) rules for the use of words like "motion" and "matter".

47. This 'ceremony' has typically been 'performed in the head' or 'the mind' of whomever concocts a given metaphysical fantasy. Often it is also accompanied by a 'thought experiment' of some sort (several 'classic' thought experiments are outlined here), which is partly why the 'underlying essences' beloved of Traditional Theorists are surprisingly easy to find -- but only by those with more leisure time on their hands than is good for any human being, or, of course, only for those who are capable of mentally stripping a concept down to its 'abstract' core, inventing an entire phrasebook of impenetrable jargon to that end.

Dialectical Marxists also try to tell us that these 'easily accessed abstractions' "reflect" the world, and they do so more fully and accurately after they have been tested in practice. However, as we have seen several times in this Essay (and in Essays Three Parts One and Two, and Thirteen Part Three), not only does that approach seriously compromise their (avowed) commitment the social nature of language and knowledge, 'abstractions' don't and can't 'reflect' anything in nature and society, or, indeed, anything supposedly 'lying behind appearances'. On the contrary, they are used specifically to impose a certain structure on 'reality'. [This is the RRT, again.] In this way, the world isn't reflect in or by language, the opposite happens: an artificial world is constructed by means of the philosophical jargon deliberately invented for this express purpose. Yet another inversion!

And that is, of course, why metaphysicians and dialecticians are quite happy to impose their ideas on the world, for their world is, and has always been, Ideal -- as Hegel himself acknowledged:

"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.]

48. With respect to dialecticians, since their 'thought experiments' have largely been lifted from Hegel work (and the musings of other mystics), they are all based on the his defective 'logic' and Idealist fantasies.

49. "Persuasive definition" is a term introduced into Philosophy by C L Stevenson in order to characterise attempts (made by certain thinkers) to re-define controversial words in a way that manipulates, manoeuvres and thus persuades the reader into accepting a particular moral principle or doctrine disguised in terms of what looks like a neutral definition. This is achieved by re-defining key words in ways that have implicated 'acceptable' or 'useful' connotations favoured by the definer. This can also involve replacing descriptive with emotive language aimed at swaying the reader in one particular direction. However, at this site, "persuasive definition" won't be employed in the way Stevenson himself intended; it will be used purely descriptively in relation to metaphysical theories aimed at predisposing a target audience toward accepting a particular 'view of reality'. In relation to several examples considered in these Essays we are presented with what are already biased definitions intended to persuade the reader to swallow the entire DM-enchilada.

(i) Where Engels and Lenin tell us (with no proof, and without even an attempt made at offering the reader the thinnest of supporting arguments!) that motion is the "mode of the existence of matter";

(ii) Where Lenin attempted to re-define "matter" in epistemological terms (we witnessed this in extensive detail in Essay Thirteen Part One); and,

(iii) Where Hegel and Engels tried to re-define "metaphysics" in a way that favoured their ideas and maligned ever other theory.

In other Essays we have seen DM-theorists redefine the following: "contradiction", "opposite", "negation", "logic", "motion", "place", "identity", "change", "internal", "quality", "commonsense", "appearance", "truth", etc., etc., in like manner. This is not to pick on Dialectical Marxists. All metaphysicians do this; so DM-fans are in 'good company'.

[Several more examples of this 'tactic' were given in Essay Two; another can be found in Essay Eight Part Two.]

50. The same can be said about the odd idea DM-theorists have inherited from Hegel concerning identity and change -- some things can be identical while not being the same, or some can be equal and identical or equal and not identical, and so on. Some can even change while remaining the same! [These topics are covered in detail in Essays Five and Six, where numerous examples were given.]

50a. In Essay Nine Part One we saw that the claim that certain words contained or implied their own opposites originated in Hegel's work and that of other mystics. We also saw that this idea fetishises language, transforming words into agents and their users into patients.

["Patient" here doesn't refer to those who need to see their doctor! It refers to anything that is acted upon and which isn't therefore an actor or agent in its own right -- i.e., in the linguistic sense outlined here.]

I have said more about the provenance of this 'view of reality' in Note 61 and Note 64.

51. As we will see in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve, this is precisely what motivated Ancient Greek Philosophers to engage in linguistic moves like these, and it is also what has encouraged Traditional Philosophers to do likewise ever since. [The background to these claims has been summarised here.]

52. In this particular argument, I have blurred the distinction we should normally want to draw between the meaning of a word and the sense of a proposition. A more pedantic deployment of that distinction wouldn't alter the conclusions reached in the main body of this Essay, it would merely stretch the patience of the reader even further.

[This topic has been examined at much greater length in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Nevertheless, the principles governing the sense of indicative sentences depend on the use (and hence the meaning) of words like "true" and "false". The claim in the main body of this Essay is that it is a radical misuse of such words that lends to certain metaphysical theories their seeming 'necessity'.

Of course, unless we are very careful, if we were to speak about the meaning of an indicative sentence (as opposed to its sense), we would already have begun to blur the distinction between words and sentences. That muddle caused widespread and long-lasting confusion in Traditional Philosophy (it still does, even among those who should know better). However, providing we are careful not to blur the distinction between words and sentences, there is no harm in speaking of the meaning of a sentence. In many cases, however, when we do so speak, we are often referring to speaker's meaning -- what an individual hoped to achieve by her words, but her use of that sentence. There is another danger associated with ignoring this distinction that is important to guard against: if and when we speak about the meaning of a sentence, we risk falling into the trap that vitiated much of Voloshinov's work (and that of his many DM-admirers). I have covered this topic in detail In Essay Thirteen Part Three, Sections (4)-(6).

53. The following is a continuation of the comments made earlier, and will be understood more fully by those who have read them:

Throughout this site I have taken the word "false" to mean "not true" and the word "true" to mean "not false" (at least in the sentential contexts under examination in this Essay). Or, to be more precise, I have taken "false", when used to characterise the semantic status of an empirical proposition, to imply the following in relation to the said proposition: "Operate on this empirical proposition with 'not' (or some other equivalently negative particle/phrase/inflection) to yield a truth". That is because the indicative sentence in question before it was operated on in this manner must have been false if it yields a truth when so operated on. I have also taken "true", when used to characterise the semantic status of an empirical proposition, to imply the following in relation to the said proposition: "Operate on this empirical proposition with 'not' (or some other equivalently negative particle/phrase/inflection) to yield a falsehood". That is because the indicative sentence in question before it was operated on in this manner must have been true if it yields a falsehood when so operated on. [I owe this formulation to Peter Geach (this links to a PDF).]

Of course, in some contexts the above will involve a rather more complex use of the negative particle, or its equivalent.

Unfortunately, that characterisation is (obviously) circular, and so it depends on already understanding the key words ("false" and "true") as they are used in the vernacular. So, the above merely explains the logical relation between these two terms, not what they mean.

This supposition doesn't need defending, either, since it is based on a reasonable interpretation of the ordinary use of these expressions. Hence, I am ignoring the alleged 'third semantic possibility' -- i.e., that "not true" or "not false" imply "neither true nor false" when applied to empirical propositions. Elsewhere, I hope to say a little more about why that approach has been adopted at this site, alongside a few comments about another (fourth) 'semantic possibility', "both true and false".

Also, I am ignoring other, wider uses of these words, since they don't feature in the sort of contexts examined here -- for example, the appearance of "true" or "false" in phrases like "true friend", "false lead", "true colour", "false beard", "false smile", "false laugh", etc, etc. In Part Five of this Essay, I will return to this topic, since it is connected with yet another serious (logical and linguistic) blunder Hegel committed.

If the above connections are rejected, then for an empirical proposition to be true it would have to satisfy other conditions over and above merely not being false, and vice versa. In certain specialist formal systems that might prove to be an acceptable extension to -- or, indeed, alteration of -- the meaning of "true" and "false" (and perhaps also of the meaning of "proposition" and "negation") -- although the difficulties and problems such modifications introduce don't appear to be worth the candle!

However, such profligacy in ordinary language would make communication impossible. By implication, it would also have a knock-on effect for scientific discourse, and that in turn would make scientific advance impossible.

For example, in the latter eventuality (ambiguity and rhetorical force to one side, and if it were maintained that truth and falsehood aren't mutually exclusive (or aren't always mutually exclusive) in the above manner), then, if a theory, T, predicted that event, E, would take place at time, t₁, which prediction was itself subsequently verified -- event, E, at t₁ having been observed and recorded successfully --, investigation would then have to be continued beyond that point to show that, although the earlier observation had established the truth of the prediction, it hadn't shown that it wasn't false! But, what could possibly do that that the original experiment/observation had failed to accomplish? Similarly, for the converse eventuality: if T predicts that E would take place at t₁, which prediction was itself subsequently falsified successfully -- event, E, at t₁ having failed to occur --, investigation would then have to be continued beyond that point to show that, although the earlier failure to observe E had established the falsehood of the prediction, it hadn't shown that it wasn't true! Again, what could possibly do that that the original experiment/observation had failed to achieve? It might be thought that repeated experiments could be undertaken to decide the issue in this case, but the very same problems will only recur no matter how many such trials were attempted -- that is, if "true" didn't automatically mean "not false" and vice versa. No matter how many times an experiment is conducted, if a prediction were shown to be true, but that didn't mean it wasn't false, what more could be done to rectify the situation? [Same in reverse if that prediction were continually shown to be false.]

[In this, I am not committing the fallacy of affirming the consequent, since I am not arguing that T is true based on the truth of the prediction, merely that the prediction of E will have been verified/falsified observationally, or in some other relevant and legitimate way; and, on the basis of that, asking what further could be done to resolve this manufactured 'difficulty'. I have also kept the above example very basic so that the point I am making is much easier to follow.]

Of course, in some areas of Physics it could be argued that sentences are used that have 'indeterminate' truth-values (i.e., those that are neither true nor false -- for example, in relation to so-called "Quantum Logic"). The question here, therefore, isn't whether such propositions do or do not have indeterminate truth-values, but whether they are (empirical) propositions to begin with. If they don't propose anything (factually) determinate (i.e., if what is being offered up for consideration is unclear), they can't be (factual) propositions, whatever else they might be.

Furthermore, in ordinary discourse (rhetoric to one side, again), if someone speaks the truth we assume that what is said isn't false, which we couldn't, or wouldn't, do if the truth of what was said didn't automatically imply that it was also not false.

In addition, and as indicated above, it isn't possible to separate the use of the words "true" and "false" from the role of negation in ordinary language -- which, of course, operates in complex ways itself. [Cf., Horn (1989/2001) for a detailed study.]

Another problem that has dogged much of previous thought in this area is the idea that negation is linked with falsehood, or 'privation' (i.e., with a lack of something). But, negated propositions should neither be regarded as false nor seen as expressing 'privations'. The sentence "The Thames isn't longer than the Mississippi" is true despite being the negation of "The Thames is longer than the Mississippi". Moreover, the sentence "Tony Blair isn't dead" is the equivalent of "Tony Blair is alive" (if we regard "dead" as synonymous with "not alive"), but "Tony Blair isn't dead" isn't expressing the lack of anything -- 'deadness', perhaps? But, do we all lack 'deadness' until we die, when we somehow gain it? In fact, "Tony Blair isn't dead" is expressing the exact opposite -- the presence of life!

[We will be looking at "Nothing" (and its supposed connection with 'lack of Being') in Part Five of Essay Twelve, but in the meantime, see here.]

Nor should assertion be confused with truth. If someone asserts "Thames is longer than the Mississippi!", that doesn't make it true. Moreover, denial isn't the same as negation, either, nor is assertion the opposite of negation. I can assert that the Thames isn't longer than the Mississippi just as I can assert the opposite, that the Thames is longer than the Mississippi. If assertion were the opposite of negation, these two would be the same, which they aren't. [And I can deny both, too.] Assertion and denial are what we do with sentences regardless of whether they are true or whether they are false, negated or not. This can be seen from the fact that all known (natural) languages have negative particles, but not one has a symbol for assertion that is the opposite of "not" (or its equivalent), or denial. Admittedly we can use the negative particle to deny something but we can also use it to assert something, so denial and negation aren't the same. Hence, "The Potomac isn't longer than the Nile" is as much a denial that the Potomac is longer than the Nile as it is an assertion that it isn't.

Of course, assertion and denial are often accompanied or indicated by prosody, or the use of gestures, facial expressions or even the context of the utterance itself, which make them what they are (i.e., they indicate or signal that what is said or implied is an assertion or is a denial, among other things -- although these additional considerations affect what is called speaker's meaning not word meaning; on that, see here). But that is clearly a separate issue. I won't enter into this topic in any more detail here since that will take us too far into the murky depths of Philosophical Logic, Sociolinguistics, and Psycholinguistics. [On this in general, see Horn (1989/2001) and Wansing (2001). (This links to a PDF.)]

[I have also relied on unpublished lectures given by the late Professor Geach in 1977-78. If I can obtain permission from his literary executors, I will post those detailed notes (at this site) at a later date.]

54. Commenting on a passage in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Roger White makes the following point:

"A proposition is essentially that which is true or false...; and an apparent proposition is nonsensical if you cannot give a coherent account of the conditions under which it would be true or false. In this way, the central question becomes: 'What is it for a proposition to be true or false...?' But to be true or false...is to be answerable to something that sets the standard for rightness and wrongness. The world is introduced here [by Wittgenstein] simply as the sum total of that which sets the standard for rightness and wrongness.... We thereby implicitly draw 'the limits of language', in the sense that if someone puts forward an apparent proposition, where it can be shown that they can give no coherent account of the way in which their putative proposition stands in such a relation to the world as thus conceived, then they have transgressed the limits of language and they have failed to give any meaning to their apparent proposition." [White (2006), p.23. Paragraphs merged.]

[Incidentally, the above book is easily the best (currently available) introduction to the Tractatus. I distance myself, however, from White's confusion of "sense" and "meaning" in the above, and his use of "relation" in connection with the presumed link between a proposition and the world. I also think that White has failed to distinguish different sorts of nonsense (or, non-sense, as I have characterised that neologism at this site).]

Naturally, this puts much weight on a clear account being given of what counts as a proposition, just as it requires a defence of the use of that specific expression (as opposed to the use of "sentence", à la Quine or Davidson, etc. -- or even "statement", à la Oxford Logic -- in its place); these knotty issues will be tackled elsewhere.

In the meantime, anyone who objects to the use of "proposition" can substitute for it "indicative sentence" (bearing in mind the fact that not all indicative sentences are empirical), or perhaps even "statement" -- however, in relation to "statement": same caveat. Moreover, many indicative sentences aren't actually stated (i.e., asserted) -- "statement" thus falls foul of what Professor Geach has called "the Frege point". On that, see Geach (1972b, 1972c).

Quineans will object, too -- but, since they aren't likely to have much truck with DM -- for the purposes of this Essay, they can object all they like.

On this, see Wittgenstein (1974a), p.124, and, for example, Hacker (1996), p.288, n.65 and p.318, n.13. Also see Baker and Hacker (1984), pp.168-205, and Glock (2003), pp.102-36 (especially pp.118-36). See also, White (1971).

[Again, readers shouldn't assume that I agree with everything that the above authors have to say.]

55. There is an excellent account of Wittgenstein's reasons for saying this in Baker and Hacker (2009), pp.241-370.

This doesn't in fact place a restriction on what we are capable of discovering in nature, it merely sets limits to what we can sensibly say about what we have found, or are capable of finding there, given the language we now have. Of course, what we can sensibly, or even meaningfully, say will alter as language develops (in line with social change). In addition, it reminds us of the limited extent to which we can distort language before it ceases to say anything at all comprehensible.

[It is worth pointing out that in this work, I have ignored the distinction philosophers have recently drawn between so-called de dicto and de re necessity, since it raises issues that are connected with other topics that will be discussed later (concerning LIE and the RRT). Hence, I will postpone further comment until then.]

55a. Unless, of course, we were to regard a definition, or the linguistic expression of a rule, as a 'logical truth'.

If we concentrate on a less stilted version of M21, we still obtain the same result:

We can see that M2 and M21e fail to contradict one another, since the use of the word "two" has once more changed between sentences. In addition, these earlier comments about trivial cases might also apply to M21e, M21c and M21f.

Incidentally, these facts alone refute Abstractionism -- the idea that both numbers and our number system were 'discovered' by a process of 'abstraction'. I will leave that comment in its present enigmatic form for now (but a moment's thought should make it clear why it is correct). [On this, however, see Essay Three Parts One and Two, and Frege (1953).]

However, if, as was pointed out above (i.e., in Note 53), the use of negation in ordinary language is analogous, or is closely similar, to that of a logical operator that maps truths onto falsehoods and falsehoods onto truths, then the negation of a true proposition will ipso facto produce a false one, and vice versa. If, however, it isn't possible for a sentence to be true, or it isn't possible for it to be false (if, for instance, it is 'necessarily' the one or the other, or the sentence itself is non-sensical), then, whatever might be the case in diverse logical systems, this use of the negative particle can't operate in such a straightforward way. Hence, if the putative negation of a 'necessarily true' or 'necessarily false' proposition causes it to disintegrate into incoherence (a result we have witnessed many times in these Essays with respect to DM-theories), it would appear to confirm the allegation advanced either that (i) the original sentence hadn't actually been negated (despite a negative particle having been used), or (2) it wasn't an empirical proposition, to begin with. Or, of course, (iii) both.

Admittedly, the word "incoherence" (used above) is rather vague itself. But, it is possible to form some idea of what it means in present circumstances by considering a response Lenin might have made to someone who attempted to negate the following sentence:

The only response Lenin could have made to the above would surely have been to argue that the erstwhile negator of N2 had failed to understand the use of certain words. And that response itself would be based on a prior acceptance of P4:

Either that, or Lenin would have had to admit that he himself just could not understand this new set of words (i.e., N3a or N3b), and neither could anyone else --, since he had declared them, or their content, "unthinkable" -- not just for him, but "unthinkable", period.

Now, this is all we need in the present circumstances to understand the use of the term "incoherent" (and its cognates). Because of what Lenin took the words used in N2 to mean, together or severally (as in P4), he would have declared N3a "incoherent".

Further discussion of this topic would take us too far into Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language and Mathematics. There is a useful summary of the latter in Glock (1996), pp.63-66, 150-55, 258-64, 315-19. [See also Note 45a and Note 54, above.]

There is also an excellent outline of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics online -- Rodych (2018). However, Rodych interprets Wittgenstein as a Formalist of some sort, which isn't supported by the weight of evidence. A more balanced account can be found in Shanker (1987a). See also Marion (1993, 1998), Floyd (2021) and Schroeder (2023). Other references to Wittgenstein's distinctive view of mathematics were given in Essay Four. [See also here.]

On the inapplicability of the words "true" and "false" to mathematical propositions (i.e., without change of meaning), see Baker and Hacker (2009), pp.41-67, 241-370.

56a. Employing perhaps a more familiar but simpler example: if someone were to say "The strike has been called off", and someone else denied it, "The strike hasn't been called off", the second sentence would only be taken to be the negation of the first if the same strike were being referred to in both cases. Or, to take another, if someone said "I put my wages in the bank today", and her interlocutor responded, "No you didn't; you spent all day fishing", the first wouldn't be taken to contradict the second if it were then ascertained that the original speaker had buried her wages in the river bank while fishing.

57a. I am well aware that those who have been influenced by, for example, Imre Lakatos [Lakatos (1976)], might object to this bald statement, but the kind of experiments considered in Lakatos (1976) plainly aren't like those conducted by scientists in the lab or out in the field. So, not even the most rabid Lakatosian would dream of checking M2 by observation or measurement! And the same comment probably applies to Mad Dog Quineans, too.

Some might object that M2 is utterly banal, and not at all the sort of thing Lakatos or Quine had in mind. Maybe not, but then that might be part of the problem.

58. Incidentally, this relatively simple observation provides a further clue as to how the 'problems' connected with the supposedly 'contradictory nature of motion' might be resolved. Unfortunately, that particular topic won't be explored any further in this Essay. [On that, however, see here.]

59. That contentious claim will be substantiated in Parts Two and Three of this Essay.

60. Of course, such a rejection wouldn't come without a price. I will endeavour to say more about that in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

M2 can't be false. Its 'falsehood' would amount to a change of meaning, not of fact. Hence, M2 may only be accepted or rejected as the expression of a rule of language -- or, indeed, mathematical language.

That is because it is clearly a fact that the English word for Two is "Two". So, M2 would be false if the following new fact were the case:

But, this suggested revision amounts to the adoption of a new rule. Hence, counting in English would proceed as follows: "One, Schmoo, Three, Four,..." and the supposedly 'new fact' (i.e., E1) would be parasitic on that new rule. E1 would then amount to the following:

which would, of course, express, or reflect, the termination, demise or cancellation of the old rule.

It could further be objected that it would still be a fact that English had a new name for the integer between One and Three.

Indeed, but this fact would depend on the adoption of this new rule. This novel fact about English isn't what would make E2/M2 false -- because it can't be false since it is the expression of a rule.

Despite this, it could be maintained that the following would no longer be true:

Maybe so, but it would be a fact about English that in such circumstances the word "Two" was no longer used in the old way, but it still isn't the case that what we now call Two (i.e., the number which when added to Three yields Five, etc.) isn't a number. Recall M2/E2 isn't:

[This would indeed be made false by a terminological revision of the sort rehearsed above.]

And that rule is currently still applicable no matter what we might later wish to call Two. Hence, the new fact about English would be E6:

Whatever the new word for Two happens to be, it will have to do what "Two" now does or, plainly, it won't be able to take its place in our number system. Otherwise, that would amount to changing the entire system, along with the meaning we currently attach to "number", and possibly even to "add", "subtract" "multiply" and "divide", etc. For something to count as a number (no pun intended!), it would have to slot into our number system in a rule-governed manner. It wasn't a discovery that "two" appeared in our system of numbers -- like, say, the discovery of new moons of Jupiter or a previously unknown species. Users of the English language (or whatever preceded it) didn't wake up one day to find to their surprise "two" (or whatever preceded that inscription in Latin or Arabic, etc.) following "one" where the day before there hadn't been anything. Howsoever it was that our number system originally arose, "two" (or whatever preceded it) was either stipulated to follow "one", or it had already been established as part of a normative practice.

That being the case, the above 'revision' would amount to a trivial, terminological change, as, indeed, was maintained in the main body of this Essay.

So, a trivial change like this can't affect the status of E2/M2. What we now call "Two" remains a number whatever we might later wish to call it -- and so long as it is subject to the same rules, etc.

Of course, this doesn't mean that our understanding of numbers hasn't changed or hasn't developed over the centuries. Mathematicians have a much clearer and broader concept of number than they had, say, two hundred years ago. [On this, see Grattan-Guinness (1997), Ifrah (2000), and Potter (2000).] That shouldn't be taken to mean the present author agrees with every such development (especially in relation to some of the 'numbers' aired in this video!), but this isn't the place to enter into that knotty 'problem'.

61. This is also the case with the so-called 'Laws' and 'Thoughts' of 'God' --, the verbal expression of which are themselves the result of an analogous fetishisation of alienated forms of human self-expression and self-perception (if we follow Feuerbach, here). Misconstrued rules like these, which underpin theories developed in Traditional Philosophy, carry with them a similar social or psychological force, and no little 'charm'. Metaphysical theories appear to let the reader in on a secret that few will ever appreciate or even know about, they also purport to give a 'God-like' view of reality, since they originate from a similar source: socially-alienated patterns of thought. They seem to command acceptance in like manner. Social norms, which constitute and underpin our very capacity to think, communicate and reason, spill over into these fetishised areas and lend to them an almost irresistible authority -- i.e., an alienated form of social sanction akin, indeed, to the 'Voice of God'. And in this lies their 'charm'. They appeal to those who think the material world isn't sufficient to itself and that another, hidden, world of 'immaterial beings', 'concepts' or 'objects' is required to give this world its substance or point -- a train of thought also connected with a search for 'the meaning of life'.

[This is also part of the reason for the rampant Platonism, for example, in mathematics.]

Hence, when we look into this bottomless pool of metaphysical pseudo-knowledge, all that stares back up at us are the reified, mystified and misidentified social norms invented or concocted by alienated human beings -- just as Feuerbach suggested (even though he only did so in connection with religious belief).

The above, of course, represents the beginning of an attempt to push Feuerbach's analysis much further, and in a Durkheimian direction (extending his insight by making it fully social, instead of it having to conform with an individualistic orientation we find in Feuerbach's work), something that will be explored more fully in later Parts of this Essay, but in more detail in Essay Fourteen Part Two. There, this approach will be linked to the fetishisation of language introduced into Philosophy by Ancient Greek theorists (later perfected by Hegel, among others), whose moves were a reflection of the alienated thought-forms developed and promoted by assorted ruling-class hacks and Traditional Philosophers. Also explored will be the manner in which this has seeped into Dialectical Marxist thought, and which has therefore helped cripple our movement theoretically. [Cf., Durkheim (2001).]

[That topic will also be connected with ideas floated in Stove (1991), pp.83-177, which is one of the most coherent and powerful condemnations I have ever read of such 'world-views'. Having said that, I hesitate to reference this author's work because of his objectionable and reactionary political views. I distance myself, therefore, from many of his remarks he makes, especially those found on p.96 (of the above book). On that, see also here.]

This claim about the fetishisation of linguistic rules (in Traditional Thought) is partially based on the work of David Bloor (but he doesn't quite put it like this, as far as I am aware), where distorted social norms like these indeed function like the 'Voice of God', and, because of which, words and concepts actually seem to dictate to us what we should make of them. That happens, for instance, when theorists alienate the linguistic products of social interaction and project them onto the world. The result of which is that Nature now looks as if were made in our image, pictured as 'Rational' and 'Law-governed'. [This frame-of-mind re-surfaces in DM with all those 'contradictions', 'mediations' and 'real negations', etc.] The theories that emerge as a result "weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living" (to quote Marx) as they become reified and ossified into Super-Scientific Truths about nature and society.

[On this see Bloor (1978, 1981, 1983, 1984, 1991, 1992, 1997), and Guy Robinson's Essays, published at this site.]

In relation to the principal claims made here (and other than Guy Robison; see above), few of Wittgenstein's many commentators seem to be aware of the full implications of this aspect of his work. That is possibly because this facet of his method is most forcefully represented in his early work [Wittgenstein (1972, 1979a), and Waismann, (1979)] and in the writings of his so-called "middle period" [Wittgenstein (1974a, 1975, 1979b, 1980a).] Not only are these still not widely (or fully) understood, many commentators erroneously believe he repudiated much of what they contain.

[Although, the signs are that this way of reading Wittgenstein is increasingly out of favour, certainly more so than when the above words were first written in 1998. There is an excellent recent collection of essays that strongly suggests this general picture is at last changing -- Crary and Read (2000). (That comment shouldn't be taken to mean that I fully concur with everything implied by this new direction in Wittgenstein Studies. For example, see my comments here.)]

Among the notable exceptions to this generalisation are the following: Baker (1988, 2004a), Carruthers (1989, 1990), Maury (1977) and White (1974, 2006, and forthcoming); although, it needs pointing out that White has argued against the approach adopted by the 'New Wittgensteinians' (forcefully, for instance, in White (2006, 2011)). It shouldn't be assumed, either, that every author mentioned in this paragraph is sympathetic to the views expressed by the ''New Wittgensteinians', either!

There are also many short articles in Glock (1996), which present excellent, clear summaries of Wittgenstein's main ideas. On the continuity of Wittgenstein's work, see Hilmy (1987).

Once again, there is as yet no definitive study of these key areas of Wittgenstein's early work -- although Roger White's long awaited book [White (forthcoming), if it is ever published!] should rectify the situation somewhat. [See also, Robinson (2003), and Robinson's Essays (link given earlier).]

62. That is, of course, part of what is implied by connecting meaning with use. The socially-sanctioned use of number words is our main (if not our only) guide to their meaning. Individual words don't gain their meaning as isolated units, like atoms, but holistically as part of such practices. If words gained meaning as isolated units, that would be to model all of them on the way that names supposedly gain their meaning, as atoms. But not even names gain meaning in isolation. Typically we use words in sentences, so that is what lends meaning to what we say. I have covered this topic in much greater detail throughout Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three, where it is connected with atomistic theories of human cognition, that is, with theories that try to tell us we all attach meaning to the individual 'ideas'/'representations' that are supposedly formed in our brains from the 'data' the senses send its way. This approach to meaning see us all re-inventing the meaning of words de novo, as we somehow attach or associate words with these 'ideas'/'representations'. [That would, of course, make communication impossible since we would all mean something radically different by the words we use.] In post-Renaissance thought this fed into, and was further compounded by, the increasingly dominant bourgeois individualist ideology.

[On this aspect of Wittgenstein's work (who expanded on Frege's observation not to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation but only in the context of a sentence), and the many confused ideas that have been foisted on him, see Hallett (1967). See also Baz (2012), although I distance myself from this author's 'contextualism' and his comments about Frege and Geach.]

However, this is one place where Wittgenstein's work differs from traditional Conventionalism. Philosophers working in the Logical Positivist wing of the latter 'tradition' tended to argue that it was the meaning of certain terms that enabled specific conventions to be established from them -- or which permitted the stating of certain truths -- which approach was clearly atomistic and arose out of their own avowed Empiricism.

In contrast, Wittgenstein argued that meaning is constituted by convention -- that is, it arises in and grows out of social practice, so his approach is anti-individualist; hence, it is the many and varied uses of words that express conventions that have already been adopted (in practice), and that in turn means propositions which are labelled "necessary truths", are each in many cases a confused/garbled expression of a convention already established in and by social practice.

The former approach would have words gain their meaning piecemeal, in advance of the conventions/practices in which they are subsequently embedded, while the latter holds that meaning takes shape in, and as a result of, social practice. Sentences are themselves sensitive to earlier linguistic and social interactions within which these conventions and practices have historically been rooted. [On this, see Note 64.]

The profound difference between Wittgenstein's method and the approach adopted by other Conventionalists -- alongside the important consequences this has for Philosophy in general -- is brought out in Baker (1988) and Shanker (1987a), pp.274-353. See also Glock (1996), pp.129-39, 226-28, 343-44, and Glock (2004). However, these works should be read in conjunction with Bloor (1997), Robinson (2003), pp.158-71, and Williams (1999a). Two other important studies are Kusch (2002, 2006).

A minor modern classic in this area is David Lewis's Convention. [Lewis (1969) -- this links to a PDF.] Lewis demonstrates in detail how and why conventions don't need to be based on conscious, planned decisions (or stipulations), as many suppose. They are dependent on wider social phenomena, interpersonal interaction and group dynamics. Nevertheless, Lewis's work is seriously compromised by his reliance on Game Theory, and hence on bourgeois individualism (i.e., on the theory that human beings typically confront one another as social atoms). If we restrict ourselves to the level of physical description, that is patently true (but uninformative); indeed, it is about as useful an account of human interaction as claiming that chess, for example, is simply the inter-relationship between bits of wood, a board, a clock and a set of fingers. [On this, also see von Savigny (1988).]

Quite apart from this, the conventions already expressed in ordinary language show that human beings don't regard themselves as social atoms. [That contentious claim will be defended in Part Seven of this Essay.]

Incidentally, Blackburn (1984), pp.118-42, contains a sharp but misplaced critique of Lewis. Blackburn, unfortunately, allows himself to become a little distracted from the central issue and ends up chasing to ground a Gricean hare in the mistaken belief that it is a Lewisean rabbit.

Blackburn's own brand of individualism is the subject of an effective critique in Bloor (1997). On this topic in general, see Williams (1999a), and Kusch (2006).

[Blackburn's real quarry can be found burrowing away in Grice (1989). However, on Grice, see Baz (2012).]

One of the most common criticisms of Wittgenstein's work is that even though he tells us he isn't advancing a philosophical theory, he is clearly doing just that, is refuted in and by Kuusela (2006, 2008). See also Iliescu (2000), and Baz (2012).

63. Otherwise an infinite regress would be initiated (for obvious reasons). Some claim that an infinite regress is no big deal (for example, Gaskin (2008)). To be sure, if humans were semi-divine beings, it would be no big deal. Alas we aren't, and so it is.

64. That is because, instead of social factors (i.e., the complex, historically-conditioned relationships between human agents) governing meaning, meaning would in fact be governed by factors internal to the each individual language-user -- their brain or their 'consciousness'. That approach has been the dominant paradigm in much of post-Cartesian Philosophy, which isn't, of course, un-connected with the hegemony of Bourgeois Individualism.

Given that approach, 'inner representations' individualistically dictate to each user what their words or 'concepts' mean to that user. Instead of meaning arising from the interaction between human agents it supposedly results from the interaction between that individual's inner 'representations' (often these are portrayed as the inner psychological or neurological correlates of words) and their 'consciousness'/'mind', making those 'representations' the agents of meaning, while human beings become (in effect) their puppets. Again, this isn't unconnected with the alienation of the individual from the social, a theme beloved of bourgeois ideology: the individual first, society second. Either that or "There is no such thing as society" (Margaret Thatcher).

If that were the case, there could be no shared meanings of words between users. If each language-user determined the meaning of the words they used -- or, rather, if those meanings had been determined for them by the above psychological/neurological factors --, there would be no basis for inter-communication.

Or, indeed, if -- as some Marxists (such as Voloshinov) believe -- meaning were 'occasion-sensitive', communication would also be impossible. [There is much more on that in Essay Thirteen Part Three, Sections (4)-(6).]

But, as far as the above Marxists are concerned -- so that they can at least nod in the direction of preserving their (avowed) commitment to the social nature of language --, the communal life of human beings has been alienated, or inverted, and then projected back onto the words they use (or onto the 'representations' of those words in each 'socially-atomised' head, re-configured now as the 'social life' among signs, or, indeed, as the 'communal life' of all these inner 'representations), thus fetishising them. [On this specific point, see Note 69a.] That is what actually happened to all those "signs" in Voloshinov's theory -- they become the agents, each language user the patient. The bottom line of this post-Renaissance paradigm is that, as afar as their use of words is concerned and what those words mean, each language user is a puppet, a marionette controlled by their 'inner-representations'.

[The owners of the above image -- Tourismus Salzburg GmbH -- have absolutely nothing to do with opinions and politics of the author of these Essays, nor their content.]

This explains, of course, the original motivation underlying the fetishisation of language and 'consciousness' that runs throughout Metaphysics -- and, as we have seen, throughout Dialectical Marxism, too.

[Again, there is more on this In Essays Three Part Two and Thirteen Part Three.]

65. Once more, this topic will be addressed in greater detail Essays Thirteen Part Three (link above) and Fourteen Part Two.

65a. These patterns (expressed as linguistic functions) were briefly outlined in Essay Three Part One. See also Note 70.

65b. Incidentally, and once again, the best account of this topic is to be found in Robinson (2003).

66. This is connected with an idea expressed in Wittgenstein's work, which is that language forms a Satzsysteme (a system of sentences), whereas Mathematics forms a Beweissysteme (a system of concepts). These terms are explained in detail in Shanker (1987a). That distinction began to appear in Wittgenstein's "middle period"; see, for example, Waismann (1979), pp.63-67, 87-90. It then featured throughout the rest of his work in various different forms.

66a. Plainly, that doesn't mean new terms can't be introduced into mathematics (which would be absurd!). If and when the latter takes place, novel words and concepts have to relate in some way to those already in use -- or, indeed, to practices/techniques that have already been established -- otherwise no one would understand them. [An example of this process was given here.]

67. This was covered in Essay Three Part Two (here and here), where it was shown that the mysterious 'process of abstraction' would prevent inter-communication, and that includes any such between mathematicians.

The opposite approach is, of course, what motivates, or tends to motivate, the Platonic or neo-Platonic view of mathematical objects, the latter of which is in effect a 'halfway house perspective', which views mathematical structures as 'abstract' or 'objective', but doesn't in general accept Plato's Ontology of Forms. It often now merges imperceptibly with contemporary versions of Mathematical Realism. [On this see, for example, Maddy (1992), and Hale (1986). For an opposing view, see Burgess and Rosen (1997). In general, see Brown (2008), Colyvan (2012), and Shapiro (2000); in particular, see Balaguer (1998).]

The reader should note that each of these works adopts a different approach to one promoted at this site -- and, indeed, to each other. They do, however, illustrate how sophisticated this area of Analytic Philosophy has become of late, and just how out-of-touch, obsolete and degenerate 'DM-analyses' of mathematics have become.

[See also the works listed here, as well as Benacerraf and Putnam (1964, 1983), and Jacquette (2002). On Wittgenstein's distinctive approach to mathematics, which has largely been adopted at this site, see here.]

68. On this see Note 55a, when it has been updated. Note the different use of "true" in such circumstances -- in relation to mathematics and other formal systems --, where it is synonymous with "provable within the calculus", or even, "used in a specific way within a practice". In that sense, one could say rather loosely that everyday mathematical propositions like M2 are "true", since, when they are applied as rules, they enable counting and calculation -- i.e., they work. But, I prefer not to use that word in this way since it only creates misunderstanding and increases confusion. In connection with mathematics and other formal systems, I generally put the word "truth" in 'scare quotes' -- unless, of course, I am specifically referring to ideas held by others.

69a. The terms "socially-atomised" and "isolation" are being used here to mean "cut off, abstracted, from social practice". That is, they are meant to relate to what allegedly goes on 'in the head' when individuals are said to 'abstract' numbers magically into existence, on their own, from their own experience. Only then, so the story goes, are they able to engage in calculating and counting. The general idea behind this has been destructively criticised in Essay Three Parts One and Two.

70. As noted above, while we might teach mathematics to young children by manipulating objects familiar to them (or encouraging them to do so), we establish the 'truth' of mathematical propositions by proof, not by comparing them with reality. [Which mathematician will attempt to prove, say, The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra by comparing it with anything in her, or anyone else's, experience?] Nor do we base any of this on a process of 'abstraction', or on 'objects' that supposedly exist in an invisible 'Platonic Universe'. How would an appeal to 'abstract objects' help us account for the necessity we attribute to the relation between mathematical objects or structures themselves? If material objects and structures can't account for necessity, how will a retreat into the abstract manage to do what they can't? [On this, see Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Of course, by now the vast majority of mathematical proofs have been "put in the archives" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein), so it is no longer necessary to re-prove or reproduce them (except when teaching students, etc.), so we no longer need to rehearse them each time we engage in arithmetic, etc., but that doesn't make them in any way redundant.

An example taken from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations illustrates the radical difference between number words and other terms we use (which, incidentally, also exposes one of the core confusions motivated in and by Semiotics -- that 'all words are signs', or operate as "signifiers" of the "signified"; on that see Essay Thirteen Part Three).

Wittgenstein encourages us to consider an example where a customer enters a grocery store and asks the assistant for five red apples. The assistant doesn't first go off in search of red things, nor yet collections of five things. Clearly, they will go and find apples first, or even red apples, and then count them.

This forms part of the Fregean idea that number words attach to concepts, not objects. Or, as Wittgenstein might have said, number words express operations carried out on objects of a certain sort, qualified by a count noun -- like "three apples" or "five pears" (although, as far as I am aware, Wittgenstein didn't use the phrase "count noun"; he did use a roughly equivalent term, "substantive", though).

Hence, the assistant will count apples: one apple, two apples, three apples..., and so on, as the concept expression "ξ is an apple" is successively instantiated or applied -- sometimes expressed demonstratively (typically to children) as: "That is an apple, and this is another...". Of course, that isn't to suggest these are the words that this fictional assistant will actually use, or indeed that she/he will use any words at all, but they, or words like them, will have been used in her/his childhood training, at some point. No one is just taught to count 'objects', but to count objects of a certain sort, or objects identified demonstratively, governed by the use of concept expressions (like "ξ is an apple"), or count nouns (i.e., "n apples"). Novices who can proceed along lines they have been trained are thus said to have grasped the use of number words (and, indeed, of concept expressions and/or count nouns). Subsequently, this linguistic skill becomes automatic, which is indeed part of what we mean by "knowing how to count", or even how to serve in a grocery store! [On this, see Robinson (2003b). The use of Greek symbols, like those employed above, is explained here.]

[This isn't to suggest, either, that knowing (implicitly) how to apply number words is sufficient for us to be able to credit an individual with a minimal grasp of the concept of number. As is well known (at least since Frege (1953) -- and as is implied by the above remarks), this requirement needs supplementing with what is called a "criterion of identity" (that is, the individual concerned must be able to specify whether or not, in this case, there are the same number of apples (or, indeed, red apples) each time). In order to do that successfully they must be proficient with the practical, not just verbal, application of the phrase "same apple". That is, they must know what counts as the same (sort of) apple. (Cf., Wittgenstein (2009), pp.5e-6e, §1. See also, Geach (1968), pp.39-40 -- this in fact links to a PDF of the 3^rd (1980) edition, so the page numbers are different: pp.63-64; Lowe (1989) and Noonan (2022).) For some of the complexities involved in this area, see Epstein (2012).]

Now, the whole point of that analysis is to show that (i) not all words are names, and (ii) not all words function in the same way -- and, eo ipso, that (iii) words can't be "signifiers" of the "signified" -- otherwise, the order in which the above grocer looked for the items required by this customer would be indifferent, and he/she could or would look for five things first, red things next, apples last.

In addition, it is also aimed at demonstrating that we all know this to be so (i.e., in our day-to-day practice -- in, for example, our automatic reaction to requests like the one the shop assistant faced --, but not necessarily in our deliberations about such things, where we often go astray). And, that is why -- whatever philosophical theory we might hold, whatever ideology we might assent to -- not one of us would dream of looking for something named by "five" first, or even "red", and then "apples" last. On the other hand, if all words were names, we would typically do this.

That alone shows Wittgenstein wasn't fixated on ordinary German (or even ordinary English). No human being who has ever walked the planet would dream of looking for something 'named' by "five" first, or even "red", and then "apples" last (always assuming they lived in a society with the requisite social organisation and vocabulary, etc.), whatever their language, social circumstances or ideological commitments happened to be.

Now, that is what Wittgenstein meant by "logical grammar": conceptual features expressed in language, reflected in our practices, that illustrate how we all react in social circumstances (or otherwise), no matter what ideology or theory we subscribe to, and no matter in what century we happen to live. Indeed, these are so much part of our second nature, so much part of what we do without thinking, that we often fail to spot their significance --, which is, of course, why they went unremarked upon for millennia (until Frege and Wittgenstein pointed them out).

[This also illustrates that Wittgenstein was interested in "big logical differences", rather than the minutiae that exercised much that passed off as OLP, especially as it was practiced in Oxford in the 1950s and 1960s. (I owe this point to Peter Geach.) {On that, see Baker (2004b).} This also shows that numbers can't be 'abstracted' into existence, either. I will leave that gnomic comment in this rather vague and enigmatic condition for now and return to it in a future re-write of Essay Three Part One. On this in general, see Frege (1953). Cf., also Beaney (1996), Dummett (1991), Kenny (1995), Noonan (2001), Weiner (2004). See also, Cook (2023) and Zalta (2023).]

This specific topic hasn't been covered at all well in the Wittgenstein literature (indeed, most commentators seem to miss the point of the above parable); however, see Baker and Hacker (2005b), pp.43-91, and Baker and Hacker (2005a), pp.1-28. But, and once more, the best article on this is still Robinson (2003b).

However, on this topic, Hallett refers his readers to Peter Geach's lecture notes:

"...[N]otice that the order of the operations in the grocer's shop is determinate: it would be hopeless for the grocer to...look around for red things until he found some that were also apples, and it would be still more hopeless for him to recite the numerals up to five in his language first of all -- this would be a completely idle performance. Frege said that a number attaches to a concept.... What Frege of course meant was that a number is a number of a kind of things -- a kind of things expressed by a general term; and that until you have fixed upon the kind of thing that you are counting, you can't count, you can't attach a number." [Hallett (1977), pp.74-75.]

71. Having said that, it is possible to use mathematical (and other 'necessarily true') propositions in alternative ways, some of which (ways) could be, and are, empirically-orientated, some not. For a brief summary, see Hacker (1996), pp.212-16. A more thorough account of this phenomenon can be found in Baker and Hacker (2009), pp.41-67, 241-370.

72. Recall that the words in M2 don't acquire their meaning in this way, hence the use of the word "seem".

73. This can be inferred from many of the things dialecticians say about the concepts (or words) they use, for example:

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58. Bold emphasis added.]

"Given the name lion, we need neither the actual vision of the animal, nor its image even: the name alone, if we understand it, is the unimaged simple representation. We think in names." [Hegel (1971), p.220, §462.]

Indeed, Marx made the following point quite explicitly: it is philosophers who invent abstract names for things:

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.' In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), pp.74-75. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]

So, Marx clearly contrasted the process of abstraction -- and the creation of the names of any 'abstract objects' created -- with the way that ordinary human beings talk and think.

[See Note 74a and Note 6a of Essay Three Part Two, Note 23 and Note 85 of Essay Thirteen Part Three, and Note 74a below, on this, as well as here. See also, Hacking (1975).]

For such Traditional Theorists, all words are names (the general or even the Proper Names of 'concepts', or of 'things', or 'an object'), which therefore function as linguistic atoms. Sure, many then try to tell us that all such 'concepts' are inter-linked, but as we saw in Essay Three Part Two, this broken, 'Philosophical Humpty Dumpty' can't be put back together again. 'Philosophical Atoms' like this can't be re-connected.

[There is much more on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three, Sections (4)-(6), where we will see theorists like Voloshinov argue along such traditional, by-now-all-too-familiar, lines.]

It could be argued that Dialecticians do in fact appeal to evidence to support claims like M1a.

For example, speaking about change (which includes motion), John Molyneux argued as follows:

"At the heart of dialectics is the proposition that everything changes. 'Everything' here refers to everything in the universe itself to the tiniest particle. For a start everything is in motion, the most basic form of change, but also everything is also developing, altering, evolving, coming into being and passing out of being. As Bob Dylan once put it, 'Who isn't busy being born, is busy dying.' This fundamental principle of dialectics is entirely in accord with, and confirmed by all the findings of modern science from Copernicus, through Kepler, Newton, Darwin and Einstein to quantum mechanics and big bang theory. In other words it is a well established fact." [Molyneux (2012), pp.40-41. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links and bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. Of course, Molyneux isn't alone in advancing such hyper-bold claims; scores of passages, taken from the writings of DM-classicists and more recent DM-theorists who say more-or-less the same, were quoted in Essay Two.]

As we have seen, this isn't even remotely true. There are in fact trillions of unchanging objects in every gram of matter, and there are countless trillions that don't "come into being and pass out of being", let alone "evolve". Protons, electrons and photons, as far as we know, are changeless. [On that, see here.]

But, even if what Molyneux had to say were 100% correct, its 'truth' was asserted long before any such evidence became available, having originally been promulgated by Heraclitus, who based his universally-valid claims about motion and change on what he thought was true about stepping into a river! So, as with other DM-'laws', this idea was (back then) imposed on the world and has since continued to foisted on nature by DM-fans for over 150 years. Evidence has never been central to its supposed veracity. The appeal to evidence (and not even all of it!) is little more than a recently clutched diminutive fig-leaf.

It could also be objected that no Dialectical Marxist would respond along lines suggested in the main body of this Essay -- i.e., that this is all about the meaning of certain terms. They would in fact argue that Lenin's words reflect objective reality. So, M1a, for example, is about the world, not language.

But, we have already seen that Lenin's words (and their supposed content) make no sense, so they can't be a reflection of anything other than his own confused thought.

Now, the only way to defuse that impertinent response would involve dialecticians explaining what Lenin's words in fact meant (of course, without actually using or thinking the words "motion without matter", or their content, while doing it!), so that what he said could even begin to reflect something other than contingent features of Lenin's (or Engels's own) confused musings. Clearly, that would involve a clarification of the language he (they) chose to use.

In which case, the allegations advanced in the main body of this Essay aren't wide of the mark at all. Quite the reverse, in fact; they hit bullseye every time.

74. In fact, as we have seen (especially in Essay Seven Part One), evidence is -- at best -- only ever used illustratively by DM-apologists. The sublimely amateurish approach to scientific facts displayed by DM-theorists in general was labelled Mickey Mouse Science in that Essay (specifically here) -- and for good reason, too.

[Any who remain sceptical after following the above link might like to email me with their reasons why DM shouldn't continue to be labelled Mickey Mouse Science.]

74a. Following on from Note 73: I have just received a copy of Houlgate (2006), which tries to defend Hegel's use of language. Houlgate first quotes these words of his:

"It is in names that we think." [Hegel (1971), quoted in Houlgate (2006), p.75; this author uses his own translation.]

That isn't a good start since it clearly reflects the traditional view of language that has been criticised at this site (i.e., the theory that all words are names and that thinking is an inner, private act of intellection, or 'cognition'). Hegel was a bourgeois theorist; so it is no big surprise he reasoned along these lines.

Gilbert Ryle explains why this theory can't work (although he targets more contemporary Philosophers):

"Frege, like Russell, had inherited (directly, perhaps, from Mill) the traditional belief that to ask What does the expression 'E' mean? is to ask, To what does 'E' stand in the relation in which 'Fido' stands to Fido? The significance of any expression is the thing, process, person or entity of which the expression is the proper name. This, to us, grotesque theory derives partly, presumably, from the comfortable fact that proper names are visible or audible things and are ordinarily attached in an indirect but familiar way to visible, audible and tangible things like dogs, rivers, babies, battles and constellations. This is then adopted as the model after which to describe the significance of expressions which are not proper names, and the habit is formed of treating the verb 'to signify' and the phrase 'to have a meaning' as analogous relation-stating expressions. 'What that expression means' is then construed as the description of some extra-linguistic correlate to the expression, like the dog that answers to the name 'Fido.'...

"Now a very little reflection should satisfy us that the assimilation to proper names of expressions that are not proper names breaks down from the start. (Indeed the whole point of classing some expressions as proper names is to distinguish them from the others.) No one ever asks What is the meaning of 'Robinson Crusoe'? much less Who is the meaning of 'Robinson Crusoe'? No one ever confesses that he cannot understand or has misunderstood the name 'Charles Dickens' or asks for it to be translated, defined, paraphrased or elucidated. We do not expect dictionaries to tell us who is called by what names. We do not say that the river Mississippi is so and so ex vi termini [by definition, or by implication -- RL]. A man may be described as 'the person called "Robin Hood",' but not as 'the meaning of "Robin Hood".' It would be absurd to say 'the meaning of "Robin Hood" met the meaning of "Friar Tuck".' Indeed, to put it generally, it is always nonsense to say of any thing, process or entity 'that is a meaning.' Indeed, in certain contexts we are inclined not to call proper names 'words' at all. We do not complain that the dictionary omits a lot of English words just because it omits the names of people, rivers, mountains and novels, and if someone boasts of knowing two dozen words of Russian and gives the names of that number of Russian towns, newspapers, films and generals, we think that he is cheating. Does 'Nijni Novgorod is in Russia' contain three, four or five English words?

"There are indeed some important parallels between our ways of using proper names in sentences and our ways of using some, but not many sorts of other expressions. 'Who knocked?' can be answered as well by 'Mr. Smith' as by 'the landlord'; and in 'the noise was made by Fido,' 'the noise was made by the neighbour's retriever' and 'the noise was made by him' the proper name, the substantival phrase ['Mr Smith', or 'Fido' -- RL] and the pronoun play similar grammatical roles. But this no more shows that substantival phrases and pronouns are crypto-proper names than they show that proper names are crypto-pronouns or crypto-substantival phrases.

(1) Frege saw that the phrases 'the evening star' and 'the morning star' do not have the same sense (Sinn), even if they happen to apply to or denote (bedeuten) the same planet. An astronomical ignoramus might understand the two phrases while wondering whether they are mentions of two planets or of only one. The phrase 'the first American pope' does not apply to anyone, but a person who says so shows thereby that he understands the expression. [Update May 2025: After the election of the new Pope, Leo XIV, we might need to change this example to: 'The first Chinese Pope' -- RL.] This concession seems to have been thought to be only a tiresome though necessary amendment to the 'Fido'-Fido principle. In fact it demolishes it altogether. For it shows that even in the case of that relatively small class of isolable expressions, other than proper names, which are suited to function as the nominatives of certain seeded subject-predicate sentences, knowing what the expressions mean does not entail having met any appropriate Fidos or even knowing that any such Fidos exist. The things ('entities'), if any, to which such expressions apply are not and are not parts of what the expressions mean, any more than a nail is or is part of how a hammer is used.

"(2) The traditional doctrine of terms had required (confusedly enough) the analysis of proposition-expressing sentences into two, or with heart searchings, three or more 'terms'; and these terms were (erroneously) supposed all to be correlated with entities in the 'Fido'-Fido way. But sentences are not just lists like 'Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,' or even like 'Socrates, mortality.' For they tell truths or falsehoods, which lists do not do. A sentence must include some expressions which are not terms, i.e. 'syncategorematic words' like 'is,' 'if,' 'not,' 'and,' 'all,' 'some,' 'a,' and so on. Such words are not meaningless, though they are not names, as all categorematic words were (erroneously) supposed to be. They are required for the construction of sentences. (Sometimes special grammatical constructions enable us to dispense with syncategorematic words.) Syncategorematic words were accordingly seen to be in a certain way auxiliary, somewhat like rivets which have no jobs unless there are girders to be riveted. I have not finished saying anything if I merely utter the word 'if' or 'is.' They are syntactically incomplete unless properly collocated with suitable expressions of other sorts. In contrast with them it was erroneously assumed that categorematic words are non-auxiliary or are syntactically complete without collocations with other syncategorematic or categorematic expressions, as though I have finished saying something when I say 'Fido,' 'he,' 'the first American pope' or 'jocular.'..." [Ryle (1949b), pp.226-28. (This links to a PDF.) Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original; links added.]

[I have discussed this topic at length in Essay Three Part One. I distance myself, however, from Ryle's declaration that Proper Names have no meaning, or, indeed, that they might not even be words. On the one hand, Ryle was normally very careful when it came to the complexities built into our use of language; on the other he seems to have treated "meaning" (at least here) as a rather simple term, when it isn't. In this I think Ryle was likewise misled by the very fallacy under discussion, the 'Fido-Fido Fallacy', in that he appears to regard "meaning" as having only one role to play -- that of naming something! Nor is a dictionary an arbiter of meaning, either! Having said that, his sharp criticism of the fallacy itself (that all words are Proper Names) is fully in line with the view presented at this site.]

DM-theorists have uncritically followed Hegel in this regard, so it should surprise no one that they have been accused (by me) of adopting a theory of language that is no better than those concocted by Locke and Descartes, and hence that their theory is thoroughly bourgeois, too. This approach to language and thought is atomistic, and patently misguided. When was the last time you 'thought' in names?

"We next went to the School of Languages, where three Professors sat in Consultation upon improving that of their own country. The first Project was to shorten Discourse by cutting Polysyllables into one, and leaving out Verbs and Participles, because in reality all things imaginable are but Nouns. The other, was a Scheme for entirely abolishing all Words whatsoever; and this was urged as a great Advantage in Point of Health as well as Brevity. For it is plain, that every Word we speak is in some Degree a Diminution of our Lungs by Corrosion, and consequently contributes to the shortening of our Lives. An Expedient was therefore offered, that since Words are only Names for Things, it would be more convenient for all Men to carry about them, such Things as were necessary to express the particular Business they are to discourse on. And this Invention would certainly have taken Place, to the great Ease as well as Health of the Subject, if the Women in conjunction with the Vulgar and Illiterate had not threatened to raise a Rebellion, unless they might be allowed the Liberty to speak with their Tongues, after the manner of their Ancestors; such constant irreconcilable Enemies to Science are the common People. However, many of the most Learned and Wise adhere to the New Scheme of expressing themselves by Things, which hath only this Inconvenience attending it, that if a Man's Business be very great, and of various kinds, he must be obliged in Proportion to carry a greater bundle of Things upon his Back, unless he can afford one or two strong Servants to attend him. I have often beheld two of those Sages almost sinking under the Weight of their Packs, like Pedlars among us; who, when they met in the Streets, would lay down their Loads, open their Sacks, and hold Conversation for an Hour together; then put up their Implements, help each other to resume their Burthens (sic), and take their Leave. But for short Conversations a Man may carry Implements in his Pockets and under his Arms, enough to supply him, and in his House he cannot be at a loss: Therefore the Room where Company meet who practise this Art, is full of all Things ready at Hand, requisite to furnish Matter for this kind of artificial Converse." [Gulliver's Travels, The Voyage to Balnibari, Chapter 5. Paragraphs merged. Original capitalisation left in place.]

Holding up objects, instead of using words, would make conversation and communication impossible -- unless this were part of a code or puzzle of some sort -- both of which depend on language and on the *easily confirmed) fact that not all words are names.

We have already seen that Hegel's reference to the implicit speculative nature of the German language is about as genuine as a video would be that showed Rembrandt using his Smartphone to post a list of his favourite DVDs on Facebook.

Nevertheless, Houlgate then argues that Hegel was actually using ordinary German words in his Logic, not a specialised vocabulary. He did so in order to reveal its inherently 'speculative' nature (i.e., in effect, that language was really a secret code, whose meaning (and existence!) was clear only to a very small minority; in fact, a minority of one, Hegel!). So, while English readers might (mistakenly) think that Hegel's argument is obscure, tortuous and opaque because of his convoluted use of language, apparently that isn't the case for those who can read him in the original German, according to Houlgate:

"At this point, those who know Hegel's work only through English translation may be forgiven a distinctly sceptical smile. Hegel uses ordinary vocabulary? Can that be true? Do Germans really go around talking about 'determinateness' (Bestimmtheit) and 'being in and for itself' (Anundfürsichsein)? Well perhaps not precisely in the way Hegel does, but they do use related expressions in everyday speech. Ask a German if he or she thinks national reunification was good thing and you may hear in response 'bestimmt' ('definitely'), or 'an für sich, schon' ('in principle, sure')." [Houlgate (2006), pp.76-77. Italics in the original.]

This flies in the face of the fact that other German speakers --, like, say, Schopenhauer --, find it almost impossible to work out what Hegel was banging on about, even in his day:

"If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage, I should be quite right. Further, if I were to say that this summus philosophus [...] scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that whoever could read his most eulogized work, the so-called Phenomenology of the Mind, without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate for Bedlam, I should be no less right.... At first Fichte and Schelling shine as the heroes of this epoch; to be followed by the man who is quite unworthy even of them, and greatly their inferior in point of talent -- I mean the stupid and clumsy charlatan Hegel." [Schopenhauer, quoted from here. Links added; paragraphs merged.]

"But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity." [Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume 2, p.22.]

"Fichte is the father of the sham philosophy, of the disingenuous method which, through ambiguity in the use of words, incomprehensible language, and sophistry, seeks to deceive, and tries, moreover, to make a deep impression by assuming an air of importance in a word, the philosophy which seeks to bamboozle and humbug those who desire to learn. After this method had been applied by Schelling, it reached its height, as everyone knows, in Hegel, in whose hands it developed into pure charlatanism.... In Germany it was possible to proclaim as the greatest philosopher of all ages Hegel, a repulsive, mindless charlatan, an unparalleled scribbler of nonsense.... If indeed I now chose to call to mind the way in which Hegel and his companions have abused such wide and empty abstractions, I should have to fear that both the reader and I myself would be ill; for the most nauseous tediousness hangs over the empty word-juggling of this loathsome philophaster.... It may be said in passing that one can see how important the choice of expressions in philosophy is from the fact that that inept expression condemned above, and the misunderstanding which arose from it, became the foundation of the whole Hegelian pseudo-philosophy, which has occupied the German public for twenty-five years." [Ibid., quoted from here. Link added; paragraphs merged.]

So, if Schopenhauer, a sophisticated German speaker if ever there was one, found that the language of this verbose Waffle-Meister was full of "senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses" and "empty abstractions", that it was "incomprehensible", "inept", and amounted to "empty word juggling", what price ordinary Germans?

This confirms much of what has been alleged here: metaphysicians like Hegel take ordinary words and use them in radically non-standard ways, nominalising verbs -- for example, the verb "to be" is transmogrified into "Being"; "is identical with" reified into "Identity"; the use of the negative particle morphed into "Difference"/"Negativity" --, and which also transforms general words (common nouns) into the Proper Names of abstract particulars.

And, of course, Schopenhauer's negative opinion was shared by Marx (even if he wasn't quite as harsh -- partially quoted above):

"The mystery of critical presentation…is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction…. If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….

"The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind…. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit'. The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.' In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), pp.72-75. Italic emphases in the original; several paragraphs merged.]

Any reader tempted to respond that this can't be so, since Hegel was a great philosopher, should consult Exhibit A For The Prosecution below (in fact, the English alphabet doesn't contain enough capital letters to label even a tiny fraction of the incriminating evidence Hegel very helpfully scattered throughout his Logic, let alone his other works):

"Being is the indeterminate immediate; it is free from determinateness in relation to essence and also from any which it can possess within itself. This reflectionless being is being as it is immediately in its own self alone. Because it is indeterminate being, it lacks all quality; but in itself, the character of indeterminateness attaches to it only in contrast to what is determinate or qualitative. But determinate being stands in contrast to being in general, so that the very indeterminateness of the latter constitutes its quality. It will therefore be shown that the first being is in itself determinate, and therefore, secondly, that it passes over into determinate being -- is determinate being -- but that this latter as finite being sublates itself and passes over into the infinite relation of being to its own self, that is, thirdly, into being-for-self. Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.

"Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content -- undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being. Pure Being and pure nothing are, therefore, the same. What is the truth is neither being nor nothing, but that being -- does not pass over but has passed over -- into nothing, and nothing into being. But it is equally true that they are not undistinguished from each other, that, on the contrary, they are not the same, that they are absolutely distinct, and yet that they are unseparated and inseparable and that each immediately vanishes in its opposite. Their truth is therefore, this movement of the immediate vanishing of the one into the other: becoming, a movement in which both are distinguished, but by a difference which has equally immediately resolved itself." [Hegel (1999), pp.82-83. Italic emphases in the original; several paragraphs merged.]

This is the sort of "Blaahdee Rraahbeesh" (paraphrasing Tony Cliff) that intelligent people like Houlgate uncritically swallow -- and, what is worse, try to convince the rest of us that it is in fact ordinary German, and that it makes some sort of sense!

Insults aside, has anyone ever heard a single ordinary German speaker (not the worse for drink, drugs, brain disease, or Hermetic Mysticism) misuse German in this way (i.e., in the original language of the above quotation)?

[In Parts Five and Six of Essay Twelve, this passage, and many more like it, will be dumped back in the Neoplatonic and Hermetic Swamp from which it slithered two centuries ago.]

74a1. Of course, as noted in Essay Thirteen Part Three, the word "meaning" is itself rather complex. On that, see Note 74b.

74b. We can illustrate what has gone wrong using Wittgenstein's own example:

"If a sign is possible, then it is also capable of signifying.... (The reason why 'Socrates is identical' means nothing is that there is no property called 'identical'. The proposition is nonsensical because we have failed to make an arbitrary determination, and not because of the symbol, in itself, would be illegitimate.) Thus the reason why 'Socrates is identical' says nothing is that we have not given any adjectival meaning to the word 'identical'. For when it appears as a sign for identity, it symbolizes in an entirely different way -- the signifying relation is a different one -- therefore the symbols also are entirely different in the two cases: the two symbols have only the sign in common, and that is an accident." [Wittgenstein (1972), §§5.473-5.47333, pp.95-97. Italic emphasis in the original; paragraphs merged.]

(i) The word "identical" used in the following sentence (W1) has no meaning (since we haven't given it any in such a context); or,

It could be objected that W1 is malformed -- but that is, in fact, part of the problem!

Again, it could be argued that W2 isn't at all like M9. No one would think of uttering W2, certainly not part of a philosophical theory.

Confronted with these examples, decisions would have to be made about whether we understand what look like ordinary words used in such contexts, or whether we grasp the unusual use to which they were being put, which is what creates the problem. Same with M9.

Again, it could be objected that W3-W5 aren't at all like M9, which is a scientific proposition. The others aren't.

However, as we have seen, propositions like M9 (i.e., M1a and P4) fall apart upon examination. Even so, the incoherence of M1a, for example, is less easy to see than it is in relation to W1, but it is no less true that they are incoherent.

The point underlying the last remark -- i.e., "their consistent employment of new concepts simply passes by the ordinary use -- including the standard use of technical terms -- and hence the concepts in terms of which the philosophical problems were phrased" is explained much more fully in a passage quoted earlier (albeit in connection with the Philosophy of Mind, but what it has to say is applicable more generally):

In connection with the last remark (made by Glock), if it applies to Lenin, that would mean he isn't in fact talking about motion, but about 'motion', and we are no further forward (no pun intended) -- just like W1 isn't about identity, but about 'identity'. [The other two possibilities have already been considered.] There is more on this in Note 75, below.

Finally, it is worth recalling that for Lenin M9 isn't expressing ordinary inseparability, like, say, "He is inseparable from his Teddy Bear", or "She is inseparable from her partner". More on that later, too.

Despite this, it could be argued in response to the claims advanced in this Essay about Metaphysics -- that it is incoherent non-sense, since it arises out of, and is based on, a radical misuse of language which is unconnected with wider social practices --, that if meaning is given by use, then metaphysicians certainly use words to formulate their theories. If so, that should guarantee their language has meaning. Furthermore, Traditional Philosophy is part of a social practice, as is any intellectual pursuit. Philosophers have been debating among themselves now for well over two thousand years. They share ideas, methods, and terminology; in addition they set standards for one another's work (especially these days in connection with peer reviewed books and articles). If so, their theories and their language can't be meaningless. After all, "The game is played", to paraphrase Wittgenstein.

In reply, it is worth pointing out that nowhere in this Essay have philosophical theories been described as meaningless, just non-sensical. Moreover, as I argue in Essay Thirteen Part Three, use doesn't guarantee that just any inscription will have a meaning:

Just because I have used "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" to make the point that it is meaningless that doesn't imply that "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" means "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT is meaningless". If it did then clearly "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" would mean "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT is meaningless", which in turn would mean that "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" isn't meaningless after all! In which case, "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" would imply that BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT is meaningless and BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT isn't meaningless!

Nor does it mean that just because I intended to show that "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" is meaningless that it is meaningless just because that was so intended by me. It was meaningless before I used it, and after. If we exclude the possibility that this string of letters is some sort of code, or is intended to be a code (on this, see below), intentions can't turn babble into sense, nor the other way round. But, that fact didn't prevent the present author from using "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" to point out that it was indeed meaningless. Neither does it prevent anyone else understanding the present author's (speakers') meaning to that end, even though whatever was, or could be said by using "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT" is linguistically meaningless, for all that.

[It is important to note that in the aforementioned Essay I was, at that point, temporarily ignoring the distinction between meaning and sense.]

So, the mere use of a string of letters (or sounds) doesn't imply it/they have a meaning.

It could be objected that the string of letters used above (i.e., "BBB XXX ZZZ QQQ TTT") is neither a word nor a sentence, and so it isn't relevant to the issue at hand. Philosophical language isn't constructed out of random combinations of letters or symbols.

Maybe not, but this still fails to show that philosophical words do in fact have a meaning. Of course, it all depends on what one means by "meaning".

I added the following list of that word's possible connotations to Essay Thirteen Part Three:

(2) Evaluative Import: as in "May Day means different things to different classes."

(4) Linguistic Meaning, or Synonymy: as in "'Vixen' means 'female fox'", "'Chien' means 'dog'", "Comment vous appelez-vous?" means "What's your name?", or "Recidivist" means someone who has resumed their criminal career.

(6) Implication: as in "Winning this dispute means that management won't try another wage cut again in a hurry."

(7) Indicate, Point to, or Presage: as in "Those clouds mean rain", "Those spots mean you have measles", or "That expression means she's angry".

(8) Reference: as in "I mean him over there", or "'The current president of the USA' means somebody different at most once every eight years."

(9) Artistic or Literary Import: as in "The meaning of this novel is to highlight the steep decline in political integrity."

(10) Conversational Focus: as in "I mean, why do we have to accept a measly 1% offer in the first place?"

(11) Expression of Sincerity or Determination: as in "I mean it, I do want to go on the march!", or "The demonstrators really mean to stop this war."

(12) Content of a Message, or the Import of a Sign: as in "It means the strike starts on Monday", or "It means you have to queue here."

(13) Interpretation: as in "You will need to read the author's novels if you want to give new meaning to her latest play", or "That gesture means those pickets think you are a scab."

(14) Import or Significance: as in "Part of the meaning of this play is to change our view of drama", or "The real meaning of this agreement is that the bosses have at last learnt their lesson."

(15) Speaker's Meaning: as in "When you trod on her foot and she said 'Well done!' she in fact meant the exact opposite".

(16) Communicative Meaning: as in "You get my meaning", or "My last letter should tell you what I meant", or "We have just broken the code, hence the last message meant this...."

(17) Explanation: as in "When the comrade said the strike isn't over what she meant was that we can still win!", or "What is the meaning of this? Explain yourself!"

(18) Translation, or a Request for Translation -- as in "What does 'Il pleut' mean in German?"

This isn't to suggest that these are the only meanings of "meaning", or that several of the examples listed don't overlap. [For example, items (4) and (17) intersect, as do (5) and (11), and (9) and (14), as well as (4) and (18).]

[A very useful summary of these and other senses of "meaning" can be found in Audi (1999), pp.545-50 (which entry was written by Brian Loar).]

It isn't being denied that DM-jargon possesses some sort of meaning for its acolytes, perhaps in terms of Options (1) and (2), but it hasn't any in terms of Options (4) and (8). Moreover, when an attempt is made to explain the meaning of philosophical jargon, all we end up with is yet more obscure jargon. That is also the case with DM.

In which case, very little more can be done with this part of the above objection (i.e., that if a word or an inscription has a use then it has a meaning) until we are clear which of the above connotations of "meaning" were intended.

I also argued in Essay Thirteen Part Three as follows (in relation to my claim that contextualism would imply that incidental noises would have a meaning (slightly edited) -- what the phrase "speaker's meaning" itself means is explained here):

In fact, Voloshinov's theory (that the meaning of words depends on the intention of the user and the occasion of their use) implies that a cough, for example, would actually mean the same as a sneeze if it were intended to make someone jump -- and that a child's cry was synonymous with an alarm bell if both were aimed at waking up the child-minder.

It could be objected that the above point about coughs and other incidental noises that they aren't linguistic expressions, hence they are inapt counter-examples.

However, if meaning were indeed occasion-sensitive (as opposed to it being a feature of the public use of words drawn from a finite vocabulary, etc.), then any sound or sign could count as a linguistic move. If, say, someone coughed and they meant (speaker's meaning) on that occasion: "Look out, the boss is coming!", then it seems, according to this theory that that noise would mean (linguistically) the same as: "Look out, the boss is coming!". In which case, for those who argue along these lines, that context and intention determines meaning, it looks as if a cough would be just as much a linguistic act as uttering the words: "Look out, the boss is coming!". Indeed, if that were so, the sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!" would be dispensable, and we could all use a cough from now on whenever we wanted to warn of the boss's approach --, or, indeed, to report on that possibility in this Essay.

If, say, someone coughed and they meant (speaker's meaning) on that occasion: "Look out, the boss is coming!", then it seems, according to this theory that that noise would mean (linguistically) the same as: "Look out, the boss is coming!".

Which everyone committed to this theory would understand, since the sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!" will for them mean the same as a cough, or even "cough".

In that case, the ridiculous nature of the above should now speak, or cough, for itself.

Again, it could be objected that the above response only succeeds in undermining the argument advanced in this Essay (which was that the meaning of words and the sense of sentences aren't in general dependent on contexts of utterance or the intentions of those who utter them), for if the meaning of, say, a cough is now admitted to be occasion-, and intention-sensitive, then meaning in general must be occasion-, and intention-sensitive, contrary to what had been claimed.

That objection is misguided. Given the theory under consideration, and the example used above, we would now have nothing into which we could 'translate' the said cough, since the original sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!" is dispensable (it having been replaced, along with its meaning, by a cough). If so, either (i) coughs would become meaningless by default -- they would not now be translatable because the sentence they replaced, and which could be used to translate them, has dropped from the language --, or (ii) if coughs retained some sort of a meaning, it would then be equivalent to the now unusable (or, from-now-on-and-forever-to-be-unused) sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!" -- once again, it having passed from the language. Either way, coughs would thus have taken on the role of the now defunct type sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!". As should seem clear, coughs would thus become occasion-, and intention-insensitive, since they would now have this meaning: "Look out, the boss is coming!", and no other. The whole point of the exercise would be lost and occasion-, and intention-sensitivity will have been transformed into its alter-ego: occasion-, and intention-insensitivity!

[Henceforth, to save on needless repetition, I will simply refer to occasion-sensitivity (or its opposite, occasion-insensitivity), but it should be assumed I also mean to include intention-sensitive (and its opposite, intention-insensitivity), unless otherwise stated.]

Of course, considerations like these might very well create problems for anyone who coughed because they simply had a tickle in the throat, or were suffering from a chest complaint. Otherwise, might they not risk becoming known as 'serial boss-approach-warners'? And what are we to say of patients in tuberculosis wards? Are they all continually warning one another of the imminent approach of the same or a different boss?

On the other hand, (iii) even assuming that the sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!" doesn't slip from the language in the manner suggested (or in some other way), the point at issue here would still be that whatever handle we have on occasion-sensitive acts of communication it must rely on linguistic expressions that aren't themselves constrained by occasion-sensitivity.

So, the point made in the main body of this Essay wasn't that nothing is occasion-sensitive, it was that not everything could possibly be occasion-sensitive.

If the translation into language of coughs and other assorted random noises -- so that they could be taken to mean things like "Look out, the boss is coming!" -- were itself dependent on nothing but occasion-sensitive materials (including the sentence "Look out, the boss is coming!"), we would be involved in trying to comprehend something (the cough) in terms of something else (its supposed sentential equivalent) that would itself be in need of an unravelling process all of its own. Down such a road, I fear, lies another infinite regress, in which impenetrable thicket all meaning would soon become lost.

Again, it could be objected that this still fails to address the main point at issue: coughs (etc.) are non-linguistic acts; hence, they aren't at all what this theory was adverting to.

The reason why examples involving such things as coughs and cries (etc.) have been referenced is that the aforementioned theory can't in the end distinguish between (a) the occasion-sensitivity of such sounds/events (etc.), and (b) genuine linguistic acts, which its proponents say are also affected in this way (i.e., in that they, too, are subject to the constraints of occasion-sensitivity). But, if the meaning of both is occasion-sensitive (whereas the view advanced in this Essay is that that is the case only in relation to (a) -- and even then, only when used in the manner suggested), then this theory's proponents still need other criteria to distinguish (a) from (b). If a cough could mean (speaker's meaning) the same as "Look out, the boss is coming!" (and who can doubt it could?), and any other randomly chosen sentence (such as "My gerbil is dead!") could also mean "Look out, the boss is coming!" (as it seems is possible, given the validity of the aforementioned theory; that is, if the person using "My gerbil is dead!" actually meant it, or intended it, as a coded warning: "Look out, the boss is coming!"), then the distinction between linguistic expressions and mere (or even adventitious) sounds would be lost, and the points raised in the main body of this Essay would still stand.

Despite this, it might be felt that since coughs and itinerant noises aren't part of a standardised vocabulary, they can't be interpreted along the lines outlined above. But, if a linguistic expression can be used to mean anything whatsoever (even something wildly divergent from the norm -- or to use one particular theorist's words: it could be "different in every aspect") then standardised vocabularies must surely drop out as irrelevant. For example, if the word "cough" (not the actual noise, or action, but the word itself) could mean, say, "My armadillo is sick", then any connection it once might have had with its own dictionary entry (or its established meaning) would be lost (as would those of the other four words used: "my", "armadillo", "is" and "sick"). In that case, the links that the word "cough" had with its standard meaning would be severed, too. And, if that is the case, an actual cough could then mean the same as "My armadillo is sick", or any other word or set of words in the dictionary or the language, which could in turn mean anything themselves, including coughs.

It might now be objected that an actual cough isn't a word, so it can't perform the roles assigned to it in the above paragraphs.

But, if anything can mean anything, we must surely lose touch with the meaning of the word "word" itself. On this view, the word "word" could in fact mean: "This expression actually means itinerant noises like coughs" if it were so 'intended' by deviant linguists (or if I so intend it here). If Occasionalism were true, this possibility can't be ruled out. Occasionalism permits any word to mean anything if it is so intended, or if the circumstances suggest it. And that includes words and phrases like "meaning", "sentence", "word", "cough", "and so on"..., and so on.

Perhaps more significantly, given this view, it would be possible for plain gibberish to have the same effect on an audience that a perfectly ordinary sentence had on those who heard both, and hence for the two to mean the same, if there were an intention to that effect. In which case, we should have to admit that a nonsensical string of letters, such as:

[Or, indeed, if both were intended to annoy or perplex supporters of Voloshinov's 'theory' of meaning, and succeeded in doing one or both.]

Moreover, if, as Voloshinov argues, sentence and word meaning (not speaker's meaning) were dependent on context and occasion of use, then words divorced from every context would have no meaning at all.¹⁶ So, for instance, the sentence "Voloshinov is correct about meaning and theme" would mean nothing until someone actually uttered it in a particular context with a specific intention. But, if it had no meaning, why would anyone choose to utter it? Why would anyone select such a meaningless string of words? They might just as well say something genuinely meaningless like: "BuBuBu" --, which, on this theory, should gain a sense from being uttered with a special aim in mind. But, wouldn't they rather utter "I'm hungry" in order to mean "Voloshinov is correct about meaning and theme"?

Be this as it may, as the examples of philosophical language surveyed in these Essays show -- and as this confirms -- little or no sense can be made of the words philosophers use. That being the case, metaphysical meaning is probably covered by Options (1) and (2), above, too. If, however, any attempt is made to explain the meaning of the words philosophers and/or DM-fans actually employ (i.e., along the lines of Option (4), for instance), then, as has been pointed out many times, such attempts invariably rely on yet more impenetrable jargon to 'explain' the last batch of obscure terminology --, or, indeed, the last batch of distorted ordinary words.

Hence, the closed circle of meaningless jargon, or misused/distorted words, can't be broken into at any point.

As far as the phrase "The game is played" is concerned, Wittgenstein certainly didn't mean that just anything could count as a language game. But even if he did so intend, readers will be hard pressed to find any reference to "language games" in these Essays (of course, saving isolated mentions like this). Again, as I argued in Essay Thirteen Part Three:

Wittgenstein introduced this metaphor to assist him compare and contrast the many uses there are of language, as well as to help him draw an analogy between language and rule-governed social behaviour. It wasn't meant to suggest that the use of language is merely a game, or that it is simply there for amusement or recreation, and is thus of little import. Nor yet that we play games when we use language, or even that our 'view of reality' is 'relative' to such games. [The last few words have been put 'scare quotes' partly because Wittgenstein himself would have questioned their employment in such contexts.]

So, for example, when confronted by those who use the negative particle in odd ways, he didn't say "Ok, well the game is played, after all!", he said this:

"There can be no debate about whether these or other rules are the right ones for the word 'not'.... For without these rules, the word has as yet no meaning; and if we change the rules, it now has another meaning (or none), and in that case we may just as well change the word too." [Wittgenstein (2009), §549, footnote, p.155e.]

It could be objected that Ms Lichtenstein's rejection of the usefulness of the language game metaphor in this regard doesn't mean that she is right. Independent reasons (and evidence) are required to show that if the 'Game of Metaphysics' is played, the words its adepts use are still meaningless.

[That issue will be tackled in Part Seven of Essay Twelve, when it is published.]

In advance of that, the reader is re-directed to a point Glock made earlier. Of course, if metaphysicians want to play such pointless games, which have no more significance than the nonsense rhymes of Edward Lear, that is entirely up to them (not that they need my permission!). But, as the History of Philosophy has shown, they would have been far better occupied watching someone else watch paint dry. Indeed, as far as Traditional Philosophy is concerned (if we except Theology and other forms of Mysticism), a more useless and unproductive human endeavour would be difficult to find. Again, as Peter Hacker noted (quoted earlier):

[The counter-claim that Metaphysics has played a useful role in the progress and development of Science will be tackled in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

75. If rules for the use of ordinary words (which are themselves a complex expression of social practices) help constitute their meaning, then it would seem that a misuse of language must either (a) Empty them of all meaning or, (b) Endow them with a novel/different meaning (indeed, as Glock and others quoted here pointed out). With respect to (a), that alternative would render a sentence containing any such word incapable of having a sense (i.e., incapable of being empirically true or empirically false), as opposed it not having a sense simply as a matter of fact.

Admittedly, it isn't easy to specify the precise boundaries of the above distinctions, which is no big surprise. Human beings in their ordinary discourse don't usually utter what they take to be factual sentences but which are incapable of having a sense, although they might sometimes utter those that contingently lack one. [Slips of the tongue, Spoonerisms and Malapropisms come to mind, here.]

A factual sentence that as a matter of fact lacked a sense would, for example, be one that contained terms that contingently lacked a denotation, and were thus contingently incapable of being understood. For example:

Now, the name "Woodruff Durfendorfer" might not cause too many problems for those who take it as the name of, or for, a man (even if they don't know who he is), but D1 would lack a sense (that is, it would be impossible to say if it were true or if it were false or the conditions under which either of those were the case) until the denotation of "The Happy Sailor" had been established. As soon as it had been settled that this is the name of a boat, a pub, or a book, for instance, it would gain a sense and would thus be capable of being understood.

The distinction between a name for and a name of a man/woman perhaps needs explaining. [In what follows, to save me having to keep saying this, when I use the word "name" in this specific context, what I mean is "Proper Name".] There are certain names that we automatically take to be names for human beings (which will, naturally, vary from culture to culture, era to era), and there are names that we instantly recognize can't function in this way. Concentrating on given names, first: "Fido" can't be a name for a man/woman (plainly, in English-speaking countries, it is typically a name for a dog), nor can "Tiddles" (which is typically a name for a cat), whereas, "Peter" or "Susan" are the sort of names we use for human beings. But, a name could be a name for a man/woman while not in fact being used to name any particular individual. So, "Jesus Christ" is the name for a man, but it is a pretty safe bet no one is (now) actually called by that name (saving perhaps a few 'mentally-challenged' individuals, sociopaths and/or religious con artists and grifters); same with "Adolf Hitler", "Heinrich Himmler", "Pol Pot", or even "Joseph Stalin" (although it is possible that certain Stalinophiles might change their names to "Joseph Stalin", or name their children after him -- for reasons we can pass over in silence). So, if I am right, the last five aren't currently the names of anyone. But, even if I am wrong, we can certainly think of situations in which no one would at that time actually be called by those names or, indeed, other names one could imagine, which is all we need for this distinction to hold in present circumstances. For instance, it is a safe bet that no one at present is called "Vlad the Impaler" (even though this was perhaps also a title). [I am, of course, ignoring here the use of pseudonyms on the Internet or in role-playing and acting, for example.]

So, a name of a man/woman is a name that is actually used to name someone, whereas a name for a man/woman is a name that individuals in a certain culture could use to name an individual, even if it isn't currently in use. Similarly, we have names for, and names of, rivers, mountains, horses, cars, ships, planets, stars, wars, theorems, and oceans, to mention just a few. No one would take "E-type Jaguar", the name of a classic sports car, for instance, as the name of, or the name for, a man or woman -- not even pop stars would use it as the name of one of their offspring -- or the name of, or the name for, a mountain. It is clearly the name for a car, not a human being, a mountain or a river. Same, mutatis mutandis, with "Dogger Bank", "Sargasso Sea" and "Atacama Desert".

On the other hand, sentences that are incapable of possessing a sense and are incapable of being understood --, or which are incoherent --, would, for instance, (i) Contain terms whose employment abrogated certain syntactic rules (like those we saw in Essay Three Part One, here, here, and here), or (ii) Whose combination violated other, more general logico-grammatical conventions. [Here the word "grammatical" is being used both in its Wittgensteinian and in its normal sense.] Alternatively, (iii) They could represent the linguistic expression of a rule that has been misconstrued as an empirical proposition.

Again, not much can be done with W1. The same is true of M1a (which falls foul of Option (iii)), but it takes a little more prodding before its bogus status becomes obvious.

Of course, as a matter of fact, words may be employed in any way we like. Nevertheless, we aren't free to make of the words we already have what we please without creating confusion, or without altering their meaning. For example, although this is highly unlikely, the word "identical" (in W1) might one day come to mean what we now mean by "dead". [That is, of course, just a variation of the trivial case we met earlier.] No one would count it a significant discovery about the 'real meaning' of "identical" if it came to mean what we now mean by "dead". In such an eventuality, W1 would then make sense.

Even so, it is relatively easy to confirm (a fact about life that should be as obvious as it is familiar to most speakers, anyway) that confusions occur when a speaker tries to use the vernacular in any way they like. Trivial cases aside (e.g., coded messages, experimental literature, poetry, jokes, making a grammatical or linguistic point (as here), or as entertainment, etc., etc.), any such individual would soon fail to understand even their own words, to say nothing of the puzzlement, confusion or consternation they would induce in their listeners. Again, W1 is a good example. There, "identical" can't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean (since it is part of a compound transitive verb phrase, which requires an object). On the other hand, if it is still 'meant' to be taken with its usual meaning, no sense can be made of it.

As already noted, in such cases, the sentences involved might (a) Contingently lack a sense or (b) They might be incapable of being assigned a sense (given the language we now have), and thus be rendered incoherent as a result. [But that would, of course, depend on each case in hand.] In the latter eventuality (i.e., Option (b)), for example, if a novel application a word actually violated the rules we already have for the formation and use of empirical propositions (outlined at the beginning of this Essay), then any sentence in which that word occurred -- if that sentence were still intended to be taken empirically, stating some fact or other --, would become incoherently non-sensical. That is, it would be incapable of being given an empirical sense given the meaning that the word "empirical" (or even "fact") already has.

This illustrates how and why certain sentences can be, (c) both non-sensical and comprehensible (e.g., rules), while others can be, (d) non-sensical and incoherent/incomprehensible. Metaphysical and DM-propositions fall into the latter category. That can be seen from the discussion of the bogus nature of M1a throughout this Essay, as well as other DM-theories analysed in other Essays at this site. For example, we witnessed the mess Engels got himself into when he failed to consider the obvious questions he should have asked about Zeno and Hegel's 'analysis' of motion, just as we have seen the same fate befall Trotsky and his comments about the LOI.

[Anyone who takes exception to the use of the word "empirical" can substitute for it "fact-stating" or "factual"; not much will change. (On that, see Essay Three Part Four, when it is published.) Anyway, Marx and Engels employed this word many times in the way if has been used here.]

Naturally, there is nothing to prevent language users from discovering or inventing new ways of forming sentences (etc.), or even expressing themselves and others, but novel developments like these will typically be socially-, not individually-, motivated. [That assertion is, of course, controversial, and will be addressed more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

However, should the connection that now exists between an empirical proposition and its negation be modified, the meaning of the word "empirical" (or even that of "negation") can't fail to change, too. But that would only be the case in this novel context; the wider use of the 'affected' words won't be affected. Compare that with how certain words have recently changed, without affecting their wider currency. Think of words like "sick", "woke", or "text". At worst any such 'affected' words will simply become ambiguous or even obscure, and will need to be distinguished from the current use of what appear to be typographically the same terms, even if only for clarity's sake. In that eventuality, we might have to invent new words to serve in their place, so that we would then be able to say what we used to be able to say using such terms with their older meanings before they had been 'affected'.

A recent example of such a change concerns the use of "refute", which now seems to mean the same as "reject" or "repudiate". Anyone now using "refute" (with its old meaning) will very likely be misunderstood. We either have to accept the fact that "refute" now has two different meanings or we will have to engage in paraphrase to make ourselves understood (in this case with "refute", paraphrased as "prove by the use of counter-argument or disconfirming evidence that what someone has said or written is incorrect or false"). Another, but less serious change, is the recent confusion one finds on the Internet whereby younger users tend confuse "then" with "than". (That might, of course, be a spin-off from 'texting', just as much as it might be the result of homophony.) In relation to this, even the 'prestigious', right-wing UK newspaper (ironically "conservative", with both a capital and small "c") has succumbed to this trend. Writing about the 3-0 defeat inflicted on Manchester United by their arch rivals, Manchester City, in March 2014, one of their chief sports writers had this to say:

"There was a barbed observation from one Manchester United supporter at half-time suggesting that the only reason referee Michael Oliver spared Marouane Fellaini a red card for elbowing Pablo Zabaleta was that keeping him on the pitch was actually more advantageous to Manchester City then [sic] sending him off." [Mark Ogden, quoted from here; accessed 27/03/2014.]

Another example is the almost ubiquitous use of "of" in place of "have" -- as in: "He should of..." instead of "He should have...". Yet another, is the very widespread misuse of "nothing" -- as in "I ain't done nothing", or "I don't know nothing about nobody" (a line I heard delivered on a US TV cop show a few years back).

[On this, and other similar quirks, see Fry and Kirton (2012). On linguistic innovation, see Deutscher (2006).]

But, linguistic change like this is trivial: it amounts to little more than terminological novelty, or it is just another case of plain, old fashioned confusion.

This isn't to deny that it is possible for individuals to innovate linguistically, just that, as social beings, we may do so only because of the linguistic and social space that already exists for us even to attempt to do so. The social media and the Internet have only increased the rate at which this is happening (with "clicktivism", "haterade" and "otherize" among many of the new words recently added to the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary). If and when users innovate, but their innovations fail to 'catch on', any new words, or uses of words, they might have introduced will merely form part of their own idiolect. For instance, back in 2005, when the UK-press was working itself up into a lather over the re-election of Oona King, I coined the term "Oonanism" on a discussion board to capture the state of self-induced ecstasy they, and the 'respectable left', seemed to have displayed over this MP. Needless to say, it didn't catch on. [Although, a Google search will show that this word has been used many times since -- but one suspects it has simply been confused with "Onanism".]

Other terms which do appear to have caught on (again, largely because of the Internet and social media) are the following: "Affluenza", "Brocialist", "Bromance", "Chillax", "Mansplain", "Selfie", "Screenager", "Twitterati", "Intersectionality", "Blogosphere", "blog", "vlog", and "Bling", etc. And, of course, many words have changed their meaning, or have become new words themselves in the above manner. [On this, see, for example, here.]

Of course, recent developments in connection with trans rights have only added to this, and, ever since Watergate, nearly every scandal (big or small) has had a "gate" suffix attached to it.

Nevertheless, back in the first century BC, no one would have been able to innovate using words like "cell phone", "television" or "DVD player". There was no space in the language for such words since the technology didn't exist. [Both of those factors are social in nature.] That explains why, if we found an ancient inscription that mentioned Plato's DVD collection or Archimedes cell phone records, we would either dismiss them as forgeries, fail to make sense of them --, or, if a large enough number of such awkward facts turned up, we might begin to reconsider some of our fundamental beliefs about the past -- or even our collective sanity!

A similar conceptual revolution was initiated in Palaeontology, Earth Science and Biology when enough fossils (and other assorted anomalies) turned up or were discovered a couple of centuries ago. Scientists and assorted opinion-formers had to revise more than a few fundamental ideas about the earth, science and the Bible. [On this see, Bowler (2003), Gillispie (1996), Greene (1996), Laudan (1990), and Rudwick (1985, 2007, 2010).]

Over time some words have been emptied of meaning (the technical term here is they have been "bleached"), others have taken on a new meaning but they have done in a way that makes it unclear what the user means by it (the technical term here is that these words have been "skunked"), and that can only happen socially, not individualistically or in an occasion-sensitive manner. If intention and occasion of use determined meaning, no word could lose all meaning. On this in general, see the following video which, among other things, shows how semantic slides this these arise socially not individualistically:

Of course, this greatly oversimplifies the nature and complexity of Traditional Metaphysics. It would be hard, if not impossible, to condense much of it into pithy one-liners like these. However, having said that, the vast bulk of Traditional Thought does consist of theses (sub-theses, corollaries and sub-corollaries), which each theorist spends much time and energy trying to derive or substantiate (the latter of which can sometimes spread over hundreds of pages, or across many different works). But, as noted in the main body, that is just a protracted and convoluted charade, since all that this (largely wasted) effort amounts to is the production of yet more obscure jargon aimed at 'substantiating', or elaborating upon, the last batch of similar jargon. Entire bodies of text, theses and corollaries form a self-referential set, an exercise which nevertheless still amounts to an extended attempt to derive Supertruths from language/thought alone.

The "below the surface" metaphor, which is often used to justify the search for 'underlying essence' is no less misleading. No one supposes (it is to be hoped!) that if we scratched away at the 'surface' of an object, we would eventually be able to locate its "essence", which should at least be capable of being 'observed' -- i.e., contemplated by 'consciousness'. It is almost as if we had senses that were vastly superior to those we now possess we would be able to see, or even sense, 'somehow' (with or without the aid of instruments) the 'abstractions' of Traditional Thought, or even any such "essences". But, as Leibniz pointed out, even if we were somehow capable of being shrink down to the size of atoms and were inserted into someone's head, we would still be unable to see, or sense, 'thoughts', or the 'formal properties' of bodies, nor yet the 'necessities' metaphysicians assure us are 'really' there, but which are forever mocking our feeble attempts to perceive them.

So, what does the 'Below the surface' metaphor actually mean? After 2400 years it is still far from clear.

However, in response, DM-theorists often point to the following passage from Volume Three of Das Kapital:

"Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804. Bold emphasis alone added.]

(1) First of all Marx was arguing with "vulgar economists", here -- those who fail to examine the economy beyond superficialities, neglecting the relations between the elements of production and exchange, all the while ignoring their historical development, etc., etc. [Marx's criticism of other economists won't be challenged here (or anywhere else for that matter!).]

But, in what way do such 'economic realities' lie 'under the surface', or even behind and below "outward appearances"? Anyway, didn't Marx refer to "all science" not just one branch or part of it?

Well, whatever the answer to those questions turns out to be, all that Marx did in response to his own question was to re-orientate his analysis so that it included broader social and historical factors, those which were in fact capable of being recognised by theorists who weren't ideologically biased by their adherence to privatised/individualistic theories of language, a belief in atomistically active economic units/individuals and/or their own support for class society -- had they bothered to check. In other words, Marx was proposing the use of a different/novel grammar -- or, if readers prefer, he was advocating a different theoretical framework -- in order to analyse the economy scientifically. That approach was nothing new. Every major innovation in science is a result of similar factors (albeit expressed differently in diverse Modes of Production, as we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Two). In that respect, therefore, it isn't going deeper that matters here, but going broader, going social, going historical, going public that counts -- exactly the approach promoted at this site.

[On this, see Lee Smolin's admission in Smolin (2006). To those who think the above approach threatens 'objectivity', all I can say is: suspend judgement until later. This topic will also be addressed in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

(2) Second, as a general description of science, Marx's remarks are far too sketchy and vague to be of much use. That isn't to criticise Marx, since he wasn't attempting to write a treatise on the nature of science. It is all too easy, therefore, to read too much into this passage.

(3) Finally, even if we take his words at face value, the above passage makes little sense (more on that presently). Hence, his comments are of little help in an attempt to understand this metaphor (i.e., that 'essences' lie somehow 'below the surface', or 'behind appearances') --, except we interpret them along the lines suggested in (1) above. If essence is given by grammar (as Wittgenstein argued -- he meant that the way we actually use language tells us what we count as essential, and what we regard as essential is expressed by a specific use of language) -- that orientation will provide a way of comprehending this figure of speech that doesn't slide back it back into the Idealist quagmire that has held it fast for centuries. [I have given an example of this, here.]

If the above passage is interpreted this way, it now becomes clear that Marx meant that we should locate the "essences" scientists speak about (that is, if they do!) by examining more carefully the language they use -- what Wittgenstein called "depth grammar":

"Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.... It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of proposition need not be its real one". [Wittgenstein (1972), 4.002-4.0031, pp.36-37. This links to a PDF. Paragraphs merged.]

[Wittgenstein was here referring to Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions. On that, see Ryle (1932) -- neatly summarised here -- and Baker (2001). I am not claiming that Marx himself meant that his words should be viewed this way (which would at the very least be anachronistic!), but that it is a way of re-configuring this metaphor so that we don't saddle Marx with an obscure, half-baked, Idealist theory of science.]

Nevertheless, this metaphor is clearly connected to the ancient idea that nature "hides herself", a doctrine invented, as far as we know, by that deeply confused ruling-class mystic, Heraclitus:

"The real constitution is accustomed to hide itself." [Kirk and Raven (1999), p.192.]

This idea has dominated traditional thinking ever since, as this on-line source points out:

"Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change -- the Logos -- form the essential foundation of the European world view. Every time you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos.... In reading these passages, you should be able to piece together the central components of Heraclitus's thought. What, precisely, is the Logos? Can it be comprehended or defined by human beings? What does it mean to claim that the Logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe? What is the nature of the Logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Finally, how would you compare Heraclitus's Logos to its later incarnations: in the Divided Line in Plato, in foundational and early Christianity? How would you relate Heraclitus's cryptic statements to those of Lao Tzu?" [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis and links added; paragraphs merged.]

[On this in general, see Eamonn (1994) -- although, as Eamonn points out, materialistically-orientated scientists from the Seventeenth Century onward sought to overthrow this ancient view of nature. By way of contrast, it is equally apparent that the tradition that derives from Hegelian Natürphilosophie both reacted to, and actively resisted, this modernising trend. (More on that in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here), and in later Parts of Essay Twelve.) Cf., the detailed account in Daston and Galison (2007), which traces the changes that took place (only relatively recently) in the meaning of the word "objective", which replaced the earlier phrase, "true to nature".]

Hence, it is quite clear that the usual way of (mis)reading this metaphor is based on an ancient doctrine that there is a hidden (or, as we might now say, there is an a priori) structure to reality, accessible to thought alone.

This is also connected with the 'appearance/reality' distinction, as William Blake observed:

"If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." [Quoted from here.]

"The best approach to understanding what is meant by 'metaphysics' is by way of the concepts of appearance and reality. It is a commonplace that the way things seem to be is often not the way they are, that the way things apparently are is often not the way they really are. The sun apparently moves across the sky -- but not really. The moon seems larger when it is near the horizon -- but its size never really changes. We might say that one is engaged in 'metaphysics' if one is attempting to get behind all appearances and to describe things as they really are." [Van Inwagen (1998), p.11. Bold emphasis alone added.]

We have already seen dialecticians have bought into this view, following Hegel's lead:

"1. [T]he objectivity of consideration (not examples, not divergencies (sic), but the Thing-in-itself). 2. the entire totality of the manifold relations of this thing to others. 3. the development of this thing, (phenomenon, respectively), its own movement, its own life. 4. the internally contradictory tendencies (and sides) in this thing. 5. the thing (phenomenon, etc.) as the sum and unity of opposites. 6. the struggle, respectively unfolding, of these opposites, contradictory strivings, etc. 7. the union of analysis and synthesis -- the break-down of the separate parts and the totality, the summation of these parts. 8. the relations of each thing (phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but general, universal. Each thing (phenomenon, process, etc.) is connected with every other. 9. not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]. 10. the endless process of the discovery of new sides, relations, etc. 11. the endless process of the deepening of man's knowledge of the thing, of phenomena, processes, etc., from appearance to essence and from less profound to more profound essence. 12. from co-existence to causality and from one form of connection and reciprocal dependence to another, deeper, more general form. 13. the repetition at a higher stage of certain features, properties, etc., of the lower and 14. the apparent return to the old (negation of the negation). 15. the struggle of content with form and conversely. The throwing off of the form, the transformation of the content. 16. the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa.... In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This embodies the essence of dialectics...." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22. Bold emphases alone added. Formatting modified to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other….

"Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.359-60. Bold emphases alone added.]

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

'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.]

"The first thing to note is that Hegel makes little attempt to prove this. A few lines later he says:

'With regard to the assertion that contradiction does not exist, that it is non-existent, we may disregard this statement.'

"We here meet one of the most important principles of the dialectical logic, and one that has been consistently misunderstood, vilified or lied about. Dialectic for Hegel was a strictly scientific method. He might speak of inevitable laws, but he insists from the beginning that the proof of dialectic as scientific method is that the laws prove their correspondence with reality. Marx's dialectic is of the same character. Thus he excluded what later became The Critique of Political Economy from Capital because it took for granted what only the detailed argument and logical development of Capital could prove. Still more specifically, in his famous letter to Kugelmann on the theory of value, he ridiculed the idea of having to 'prove' the labour theory of value. If the labour theory of value proved to be the means whereby the real relations of bourgeois society could be demonstrated in their movement, where they came from, what they were, and where they were going, that was the proof of the theory. Neither Hegel nor Marx understood any other scientific proof. To ask for some proof of the laws, as Burnham implied, or to prove them 'wrong' as Sidney Hook tried to do, this is to misconceive dialectical logic entirely. Hegel complicated the question by his search for a completely closed system embracing all aspects of the universe; this no Marxist ever did (sic!). The frantic shrieks that Marx's dialectic is some sort of religion or teleological construction, proving inevitably the victory of socialism, spring usually from men who are frantically defending the inevitability of bourgeois democracy against the proletarian revolution." [James (1947), quoted from here. Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

"To take each and every quality displayed by an object or even at face value would necessarily mean that neither a scientific nor a philosophic account could be given of it.

"The important thing about a Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -– thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market.... There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), pp.187-88. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

Lest some of my readers are tempted to search back through the archives to find the hundreds of container ship loads of missing evidence that Lenin (or, indeed, the rest of the DM-fraternity) had "carefully" marshalled in support of these hyper-bold claims, a consideration of the next passage will at least relieve them of that onerous and thankless task (that is, if the above passages failed to convince them that Dialectical Marxists aren't really interested in the facts!). Here, at last, Lenin is disarmingly honest about where he obtained these dogmatic generalisations:

Again, Lenin is quite open and honest about the source of his ideas in these private notebooks: dialectics derives its 'evidential support' -- not from a "patient empirical examination of the facts" -- but from studying Hegel! As far as evidence goes, that's it! That's all there is! The search for evidence begins and ends with dialecticians leafing through Hegel's Logic (just as Fundamentalist Christians rely only on the Bible and Muslims on the Koran). That is the extent of the 'evidence' Lenin offered in support of his assertions about "all notions" without exception, about "all phenomena and processes in nature", and about nature's "eternal development", its "essence", etc., etc. As we have just seen, Lenin isn't alone; DM-theorists across the board are no less secretive about the dearth of supporting evidence.

This means that the aspiring metaphysician (and now, the hyper-avid DM-fan) employs language and 'thought' to venture where their senses can't take them -- 'beneath appearances' to the heart of 'Being' in search, not of Truffles, but of all those hidden 'essences':

Figure Seven: Has Someone Found A Basket Of Essences And Mistaken Them For Truffles?

To that end they must rely on some sort of mystical 'vision', the 'light of reason', a 'law of cognition' (helpfully discovered for us by dialecticians without the use of a single consulting couch, brain scan or psychometric test) -- or, just good old-fashioned 'intuition' -- augmented by no little 'word magic' and terminally opaque jargon. Naturally, that situates this entire discipline where it belongs right in the middle of Idealist Valhalla.

I have quoted the following passage several times already, but it is worth giving it another airing:

Returning to the van Inwagen quote, is it really Metaphysics that tells us that the Sun isn't the same size as the Moon? If it were, we would have no need of science. Of course, as van Inwagen notes, the salient point here is that it is the attempt to get behind "all appearances" that is metaphysical, not just a specific optical illusion -- or even our attempt to understand it.

[Does anyone think that the Sun and the Moon in 4-space have any size at all? If they were so to think, that would make the size of the Moon dependent on a measuring system (or, indeed, on an 'Ideal Observer'), and thus on -- Shock! Horror! -- 'appearances', once more. In fact, even the 'Ideal Observer' has to rely on 'appearances'! A clue is to be found in the word "observer". On this, see Essay Thirteen Part One.]

Anyway, the question is: From a handful of perceptual oddities like these, is it really a good idea to question all appearances?

[Again, why that is so was discussed at length in Essay Three Part Two; hence no more will be said about it here. Readers are directed there for more details. Clearly this also raises complex issues connected with the nature of scientific knowledge, which will be tackled in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]

So, the best spin that can be put on Marx's use of this metaphor (if we want to absolve him of mysticism or of indulging in some form of Idealist Metaphysics) is to read it naturalistically. That is, if bourgeois economists view the world superficially and ideologically then no wonder they miss essential features of the economy. And by "essential features" I mean no more than those that are necessary in order to understand it correctly, using the concepts and "forms of representation" drawn from HM. Now, since those concepts are based on, and are consonant with, ordinary language and common understanding (on that, see below) and arise out of the study of the evolution and social development of our species (alongside its many and varied class divisions and changing relations of production, etc., etc.), this connects all of this with our materially-based, historically-conditioned "form of life". Finally, since "essence is expressed by grammar" (as Wittgenstein suggested), s long-overdue re-orientation like this will allow Marx to be defended from misguided interpretations and accusations by looking that the language he actually used, not the language some might wish he had used.

Once again, I'm not suggesting that Marx would have put things this way, or even that he would have agreed with it (but that is certainly possible); however it is the way I view this metaphor, and for the above reasons. It is a metaphor, after all, so it has no literal meaning of itself and has to be interpreted in a way that is consistent with Marx's other idea, remarks and commitments.

The following represents a reasonably accurate summary of the term "common understanding" as it is used at this site:

Clearly "common understanding" is connected with inter-communication, but it also involves what Wittgenstein called an "agreement in judgements", which is itself an expression of our shared "form of life". I will say more about both of those terms in a later re-write of this Essay.

75b. One or two readers might object that this is true of science, too --, i.e., that its practice is both individualistic and gnomic. I doubt there are any Marxists will want to avail themselves of that escape route! science is and always has been a collective enterprise. [Cf., Bernal (1939, 1969); Conner (2005).]

While this might appear to be a somewhat controversial claim, that is only the case in the opinion of some non-Marxists, and they were told to sling their hooks ages ago.

It could be argued that science has always relied on an input from Metaphysics. Again, that idea will be laid to rest in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

It could now be objected that the vast majority of us have to be informed of scientific truths; if so, that fact can't also be used against metaphysics or DM.

[I]deas like these were never based on -- nor were they even derived from -- ordinary practice and everyday language, otherwise the rest of us wouldn't need to be informed of them.

So, to repeat: science has grown out of materially-, and socially-grounded practice coupled with collective labour and the development of technology, unlike Metaphysics. That is why hundreds of millions of human beings can be given even a basic or even an advanced scientific education -- the same can't be said about Metaphysics. Furthermore, much of science (outside of theoretical physics, perhaps) can be expressed in ordinary language (at some level), even if somewhat less concisely.

While it is undeniable that many scientific facts aren't in any way obvious and that we have to be informed of them, unlike metaphysical theories, their truth doesn't follow from thought alone.

Once more, it could be countered that much of Physics, for example, openly depends on a series of 'thought experiments'. That is also undeniable, but those aspects of Physics are either confirmable by observation and/or experiment, or they remain merely theoretical and hypothetical. No one (other than closet -- or even overt -- Platonists) would accept a 'thought experiment' as true if there were no way to test it, or no way it could be confirmed empirically. Nor would the vast majority be inclined to accept a theory if the only support it enjoyed was derived from a 'thought experiment'. [Even trolls and sociopaths on the Internet find it necessary to fabricate evidence of some sort in support of their lies and smears.] Metaphysical theories on the other hand are worded so that they remain forever unconfirmable in the above way.

Of course, as Galileo showed, thought experiments might make us re-examine familiar facts and view them in a new light, but these would already be widely accepted facts. That is indeed what made his thought experiments so powerful and convincing, which isn't the case with Metaphysics. [On Galileo's thought experiments, see Palmieri (2017). (This link takes the reader to a page where the article itself can be downloaded as a PDF.)]

"It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment...." [Quoted from here.]

Others have voiced similar opinions, but then they often also say things like this:

[Further discussion of this topic will be resumed in Essay Thirteen Part Two. On the distinction between science and philosophy, see Hacker (2007b). On how physics has been led astray by a search for 'beauty', see Hossenfelder (2018).]

75c. Why that is so with respect to DM-fans is explored in Essay Nine Part Two, and why this also ensnares most educated individuals was explained over 150 years ago by Marx himself:

Anyone inclined to doubt this claim (i.e., that metaphysical theories and Idealist forms-of-thought are readily accepted, or are willingly given credence, by highly educated people) can't have studied Traditional Philosophy at College or University. The inordinate respect, deference and esteem lent to the vast majority of metaphysical obscurantists and bumblers history has inflicted on humanity is as damning as it is universal.

And that observation applies equally well not only to the almost obsequious respect DM-fans show toward this ruling-class thought-form, but also to their resolute and determined defence of this ridiculously easy way to gain 'knowledge'.

Again, anyone who still doubts this should check out the following (mercifully brief) examples of HCD-gobbledygook:

"Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucauldian strategic reversal -- of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean (sic) provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard." [Roy Bhaskar, quoted from here. Links added. In fact, I could have quoted almost any paragraph from Bhaskar (1993), a book that must surely win Gold Medal in this event.]

"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power." [(Zap! Pow! Take that ruling-class!) Judith Butler, quoted from here. Link added.]

And then we have the following from a book aimed at clarifying -- plainly with no hint of irony! -- Roy Bhaskar's tangled web of dialectical spaghetti (aka, "Critical Realism"):

"We have now considered how Bhaskar launches his dialecticisation of critical realism and his 'critical realisation' of dialectics. In terms of the MELD schema, these are essentially 2E moves based on negativity. Dialecticising critical realism by integrating absence and being, and 'critically realising' dialectic to produce a materialist conception of diffraction, both concern real determinate non-being in the world. In the process, however, both moves point beyond negativity to a third level of analysis, that of totality. Thus to think of the spatio-temporal causality of human being (sic)...is to think of the presence of the past in the present and the future, and of the relationship between identity and its outside. Similarly, to think of materialist diffraction of dialectic is to think...of how fragmentation and fracturing are ultimately the relata of a structured, contradictory whole.... 2E negativity in its various forms entails 3L totality, so in terms of the MELD schema, we move from 1M perduring non-identity to 2E real negativity, and on to 3L open totality...before moving...to 4D agency." [Norrie (2010), p.86.]

Anyone at all interested (or who is in need of a serious headache) can find page-after-page of obscure, dogmatic apriorism, expressed in 'academic gobbledygook', 'supported' and 'explained' by yet more of the same, throughout the rest of Norrie's book.

What the above odd abbreviations mean can be found in the opening pages of Hartwig (2007), which is itself a study that plumbs even greater depths of obscurity in its endeavour to confuse further those already reeling from having ploughed through Norrie (2010). Incidentally, both of these works were published by Routledge. So, it would seem that Bhaskarean 'dialectic', coupled with these brave (and successful) attempts to make his thoughts even more opaque, isn't an "abomination" for at least this publishing wing of the bourgeoisie. [Hartwig's book is available here as a downloadable PDF.] Clearly, those in charge at Routledge have concluded that if the revolution depends on philosophical goulash of this stodginess and consistency, their class has little to fear. Plainly, this Bhaskarean Spectre isn't haunting Europe; it is far too busy haunting Academic Marxism.

"The flaunting of high-sounding phrases is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals." ["Left-Wing" Childishness.]

I have added to Essay Two a series of impressively obscure passages that Žižek thought it wise to inflict on his unfortunate readers, taken from his recent attempt to redefine the word "unintelligible" -- Less Than Nothing, i.e., Žižek (2012), pp.364-67. (This links to a PDF.) He has now added to the confusion with this towering monument to obfuscation, Žižek (2015).

If comrades who dote on such material ever entertain any qualms about the 'ideas' it promotes, those reservations are often centred around their own aprioristic, idiosyncratic and similarly jargon-bound criticisms, or on their own alternative a priori theories -- or, indeed, around those of some other preferred Philosophical-, or HCD-Waffle-Meister.

An excellent example of this malaise can be found here, the Homepage of my old friend Ben Watson. [Check out, too, the Dogmafest here.] Wall-to-wall gobbledygook. Indeed, readers can generate their own impressive, left-sounding verbiage/garbage by visiting this site, repeatedly.

Here, too, is an example where I am taken to task for even suggesting that we should turn our backs on such ruling-class rubbish. (Unfortunately, that link no longer appears to work!) More of the same can be found if readers follow several of the links posted here. Much of the above material has been taken from Essay Nine Part Two, where several more examples of impressive-looking HCD gobbledygook can be found.

Not even once do these comrades ask this question: Is there adequate (or even any!) empirical evidence supporting these ideas? Have they been derived from the collective experience of the class, or even the party? Are they based on ordinary language? Do they reflect anything other than the ivory tower experience, thoughts and 'practice' of assorted HCD-'intellectuals' and de-classé professional revolutionaries?

In fact, questions like these will be enough, on their own, to elicit derision and open contempt from more than a few Dialectical Marxists (especially those drawn from the aforementioned HCD-Tendency), since it is now an automatic assumption (nay, it even seems to be an unquestioned axiom) that not only is 'genuine' Philosophy necessarily obscure, it is way, way superior to the sort of 'working class' ("workerist"!) banalities that require 'proof' (for goodness sake!), of the sort promoted at this site. And that will be an important part of the reason why the approach adopted here will continue to be dismissed out-of-hand as 'superficial' and 'simplistic' (again, mostly by HCDs and their hangers on).

You see, Ms Lichtenstein doesn't play the game, she refuses to indulge in 'proper', 'philosophical' speculation and theory-mongering. Shock horror(!), nor does Ms Lichtenstein engage with the philosophical ideas of other Marxist academics. What a charlatan!

Guilty as charged, and proud of it: I reject this entire tradition as self-important ruling-class hot air.

How impertinent of me! Have I no shame? Is there no level to which I won't sink!

As Marx noted: the ideas of the ruling-class always rule -- and they rule partly because theorists, like those mentioned above, have turned their backs on radical thought. Indeed, they have simply bent over in their eagerness to accommodate ruling-class apriorism.

As will soon become apparent, for all their claims to be radical, when it comes to Philosophy DM-theorists are surprisingly conservative -- and universally incapable of seeing this even after it has been pointed out to them!

[An excellent example of this phenomenon, and one that has been highly influential on how DM-theorists receive and then respond to such criticism, has been posted here.]

At a rhetorical level, this philosophical conservatism is camouflaged behind what at first sight appears to be a series of disarmingly modest denials --, which are then promptly flouted.

The quotations listed below (and in Note 1) show that DM-theorists are keen to deny that their system is wholly, or even partly, a priori, or that it has been dogmatically imposed on the world, not read from it. However, the way that dialecticians themselves phrase their theories contradicts these seemingly modest-looking claims, revealing that the opposite is in fact the case.

This inadvertent dialectical inversion -- whereby what DM-theorists say about what they do is the reverse of what they actually do with what they say -- neatly mirrors the distortion to which Traditional Philosophy has subjected ordinary language over the last two millennia (outlined in Essay Three Parts One and Two, and in Essay Twelve Part One), a point underlined by Marx himself:

"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.]

However, unlike dialecticians, Traditional Metaphysicians were quite open and honest about what they were doing; indeed, they brazenly imposed their a priori theories on reality and hung the consequences.

But, because dialecticians have a novel (but nonetheless defective) view of both Metaphysics and FL (on that, see here and here), they are oblivious of the fact that they are just as eager as Traditional Theorists have always been to impose their ideas on the world, and equally blind to the fact that in so-doing they are aping the alienated thought-forms of their class enemy, whose society they seek to abolish.

Naturally, this means that their 'radical' guns were spiked before they were even loaded; with such weapons, is it any wonder that DM-theorists fire nothing but philosophical blanks?

DM is a conservative theory precisely because its adherents have imported, and then adopted, the distorted methods, a priori thought-forms, theories and meaningless jargon they found in Traditional Philosophy.

"I've returned from travel-speaking, where I spend most of my life, and found a collection of messages extending the discussion about 'theory' and 'philosophy,' a debate that I find rather curious. A few reactions -- though I concede, from the start, that I may simply not understand what is going on. As far as I do think I understand it, the debate was initiated by the charge that I, Mike, and maybe others don't have 'theories' and therefore fail to give any explanation of why things are proceeding as they do. We must turn to 'theory' and 'philosophy' and 'theoretical constructs' and the like to remedy this deficiency in our efforts to understand and address what is happening in the world. I won't speak for Mike. My response so far has pretty much been to reiterate something I wrote 35 years ago, long before 'postmodernism' had erupted in the literary intellectual culture: 'if there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret,' despite much 'pseudo-scientific posturing.' To my knowledge, the statement was accurate 35 years ago, and remains so; furthermore, it extends to the study of human affairs generally, and applies in spades to what has been produced since that time. What has changed in the interim, to my knowledge, is a huge explosion of self- and mutual-admiration among those who propound what they call 'theory' and 'philosophy,' but little that I can detect beyond pseudo-scientific posturing. That little is, as I wrote, sometimes quite interesting, but lacks consequences for the real world problems that occupy my time and energies.... The proponents of 'theory' and 'philosophy' have a very easy task if they want to make their case. Simply make known to me what was and remains a 'secret' to me: I'll be happy to look. I've asked many times before, and still await an answer, which should be easy to provide: simply give some examples of 'a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to' the kinds of problems and issues that Mike, I, and many others (in fact, most of the world's population, I think, outside of narrow and remarkably self-contained intellectual circles) are or should be concerned with: the problems and issues we speak and write about, for example, and others like them. To put it differently, show that the principles of the 'theory' or 'philosophy' that we are told to study and apply lead by valid argument to conclusions that we and others had not already reached on other (and better) grounds; these 'others' include people lacking formal education, who typically seem to have no problem reaching these conclusions through mutual interactions that avoid the 'theoretical' obscurities entirely, or often on their own. Again, those are simple requests. I've made them before, and remain in my state of ignorance. I also draw certain conclusions from the fact.

As for the 'deconstruction' that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and show why they are different from, or better than, what others had been doing long before and have continued to do since without three-syllable words, incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies -- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't, a possibility to which I'll return. These are very easy requests to fulfil, if there is any basis to the claims put forth with such fervour and indignation. But instead of trying to provide an answer to this simple requests (sic), the response is cries of anger: to raise these questions shows 'elitism,' 'anti-intellectualism,' and other crimes -- though apparently it is not 'elitist' to stay within the self- and mutual-admiration societies of intellectuals who talk only to one another and (to my knowledge) don't enter into the kind of world in which I'd prefer to live. As for that world, I can reel off my speaking and writing schedule to illustrate what I mean, though I presume that most people in this discussion know, or can easily find out; and somehow I never find the 'theoreticians' there, nor do I go to their conferences and parties. In short, we seem to inhabit quite different worlds, and I find it hard to see why mine is 'elitist,' not theirs. The opposite seems to be transparently the case, though I won't amplify. To add another facet, I am absolutely deluged with requests to speak and can't possibly accept a fraction of the invitations I'd like to, so I suggest other people. But oddly, I never suggest those who propound 'theories' and 'philosophy,' nor do I come across them, or for that matter rarely even their names, in my own (fairly extensive) experience with popular and activist groups and organizations, general community, college, church, union, etc., audiences here and abroad, third world women, refugees, etc.; I can easily give examples. Why, I wonder. The whole debate, then, is an odd one. On one side, angry charges and denunciations, on the other, the request for some evidence and argument to support them, to which the response is more angry charges -- but, strikingly, no evidence or argument. Again, one is led to ask why. It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).

"Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. -- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest -- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of 'theory' that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b)...I won't spell it out. Again, I've lived for 50 years in these worlds, have done a fair amount of work of my own in fields called 'philosophy' and 'science,' as well as intellectual history, and have a fair amount of personal acquaintance with the intellectual culture in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. That has left me with my own conclusions about intellectual life, which I won't spell out. But for others, I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of 'theory' and 'philosophy' to justify their claims -- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames. Specific comment. Phetland asked who I'm referring to when I speak of 'Paris school' and 'postmodernist cults': the above is a sample.

"He then asks, reasonably, why I am 'dismissive' of it. Take, say, Derrida...one of the grand old men. I thought I ought to at least be able to understand his Grammatology, so tried to read it. I could make out some of it, for example, the critical analysis of classical texts that I knew very well and had written about years before. I found the scholarship appalling, based on pathetic misreading; and the argument, such as it was, failed to come close to the kinds of standards I've been familiar with since virtually childhood. Well, maybe I missed something: could be, but suspicions remain, as noted. Again, sorry to make unsupported comments, but I was asked, and therefore am answering. Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I've met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible -- he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven't met, because I am very remote from these circles, by choice, preferring quite different and far broader ones -- the kinds where I give talks, have interviews, take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I've dipped into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned: what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate, based on extraordinary misreading of texts that I know well (sometimes, that I have written), argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish. When I proceed as I do in other areas where I do not understand, I run into the problems mentioned in connection with (1) and (2) above. So that's who I'm referring to, and why I don't proceed very far. I can list a lot more names if it's not obvious. For those interested in a literary depiction that reflects pretty much the same perceptions (but from the inside), I'd suggest David Lodge. Pretty much on target, as far as I can judge.

"Phetland also found it 'particularly puzzling' that I am so 'curtly dismissive' of these intellectual circles while I spend a lot of time 'exposing the posturing and obfuscation of the New York Times.' So 'why not give these guys the same treatment.' Fair question. There are also simple answers. What appears in the work I do address (NYT, journals of opinion, much of scholarship, etc.) is simply written in intelligible prose and has a great impact on the world, establishing the doctrinal framework within which thought and expression are supposed to be contained, and largely are, in successful doctrinal systems such as ours. That has a huge impact on what happens to suffering people throughout the world, the ones who concern me, as distinct from those who live in the world that Lodge depicts (accurately, I think). So this work should be dealt with seriously, at least if one cares about ordinary people and their problems. The work to which Phetland refers has none of these characteristics, as far as I'm aware. It certainly has none of the impact, since it is addressed only to other intellectuals in the same circles. Furthermore, there is no effort that I am aware of to make it intelligible to the great mass of the population (say, to the people I'm constantly speaking to, meeting with, and writing letters to, and have in mind when I write, and who seem to understand what I say without any particular difficulty, though they generally seem to have the same cognitive disability I do when facing the Postmodern cults). And I'm also aware of no effort to show how it applies to anything in the world in the sense I mentioned earlier: grounding conclusions that weren't already obvious. Since I don't happen to be much interested in the ways that intellectuals inflate their reputations, gain privilege and prestige, and disengage themselves from actual participation in popular struggle, I don't spend any time on it. Phetland suggests starting with Foucault -- who, as I've written repeatedly, is somewhat apart from the others, for two reasons: I find at least some of what he writes intelligible, though generally not very interesting; second, he was not personally disengaged and did not restrict himself to interactions with others within the same highly privileged elite circles. Phetland then does exactly what I requested: he gives some illustrations of why he thinks Foucault's work is important. That's exactly the right way to proceed, and I think it helps understand why I take such a 'dismissive' attitude towards all of this -- in fact, pay no attention to it.

"What Phetland describes, accurately I'm sure, seems to me unimportant, because everyone always knew it -- apart from details of social and intellectual history, and about these, I'd suggest caution: some of these are areas I happen to have worked on fairly extensively myself, and I know that Foucault's scholarship is just not trustworthy here, so I don't trust it, without independent investigation, in areas that I don't know -- this comes up a bit in the discussion from 1972 that is in print. I think there is much better scholarship on the 17th and 18th century, and I keep to that, and my own research. But let's put aside the other historical work, and turn to the 'theoretical constructs' and the explanations: that there has been 'a great change from harsh mechanisms of repression to more subtle mechanisms by which people 'come to do' what the powerful want, even enthusiastically. That's true enough, in fact, utter truism. If that's a 'theory,' then all the criticisms of me are wrong: I have a 'theory' too, since I've been saying exactly that for years, and also giving the reasons and historical background, but without describing it as a theory (because it merits no such term), and without obfuscatory rhetoric (because it's so simple-minded), and without claiming that it is new (because it's a truism). It's been fully recognized for a long time that as the power to control and coerce has declined, it's more necessary to resort to what practitioners in the PR industry early in this century -- who understood all of this well -- called 'controlling the public mind.' The reasons, as observed by Hume in the 18th century, are that 'the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers' relies ultimately on control of opinion and attitudes. Why these truisms should suddenly become 'a theory' or 'philosophy,' others will have to explain; Hume would have laughed. Some of Foucault's particular examples (say, about 18th century techniques of punishment) look interesting, and worth investigating as to their accuracy. But the 'theory' is merely an extremely complex and inflated restatement of what many others have put very simply, and without any pretence that anything deep is involved. There's nothing in what Phetland describes that I haven't been writing about myself for 35 years, also giving plenty of documentation to show that it was always obvious, and indeed hardly departs from truism. What's interesting about these trivialities is not the principle, which is transparent, but the demonstration of how it works itself out in specific detail to cases that are important to people: like intervention and aggression, exploitation and terror, 'free market' scams, and so on. That I don't find in Foucault, though I find plenty of it by people who seem to be able to write sentences I can understand and who aren't placed in the intellectual firmament as 'theoreticians.'

"To make myself clear, Phetland is doing exactly the right thing: presenting what he sees as 'important insights and theoretical constructs' that he finds in Foucault. My problem is that the 'insights' seem to me familiar and there are no 'theoretical constructs,' except in that simple and familiar ideas have been dressed up in complicated and pretentious rhetoric. Phetland asks whether I think this is 'wrong, useless, or posturing.' No. The historical parts look interesting sometimes, though they have to be treated with caution and independent verification is even more worth undertaking than it usually is. The parts that restate what has long been obvious and put in much simpler terms are not 'useless,' but indeed useful, which is why I and others have always made the very same points. As to 'posturing,' a lot of it is that, in my opinion, though I don't particularly blame Foucault for it: it's such a deeply rooted part of the corrupt intellectual culture of Paris that he fell into it pretty naturally, though to his credit, he distanced himself from it. As for the 'corruption' of this culture particularly since World War II, that's another topic, which I've discussed elsewhere and won't go into here. Frankly, I don't see why people in this forum should be much interested, just as I am not. There are more important things to do, in my opinion, than to inquire into the traits of elite intellectuals engaged in various careerist and other pursuits in their narrow and (to me, at least) pretty uninteresting circles. That's a broad brush, and I stress again that it is unfair to make such comments without proving them: but I've been asked, and have answered the only specific point that I find raised. When asked about my general opinion, I can only give it, or if something more specific is posed, address that. I'm not going to undertake an essay on topics that don't interest me. Unless someone can answer the simple questions that immediately arise in the mind of any reasonable person when claims about 'theory' and 'philosophy' are raised, I'll keep to work that seems to me sensible and enlightening, and to people who are interested in understanding and changing the world.

"JohnB made the point that 'plain language is not enough when the frame of reference is not available to the listener'; correct and important. But the right reaction is not to resort to obscure and needlessly complex verbiage and posturing about non-existent 'theories.' Rather, it is to ask the listener to question the frame of reference that he/she is accepting, and to suggest alternatives that might be considered, all in plain language. I've never found that a problem when I speak to people lacking much or sometimes any formal education, though it's true that it tends to become harder as you move up the educational ladder, so that indoctrination is much deeper, and the self-selection for obedience that is a good part of elite education has taken its toll. JohnB says that outside of circles like this forum, 'to the rest of the country, he's incomprehensible' ('he' being me). That's absolutely counter to my rather ample experience, with all sorts of audiences. Rather, my experience is what I just described. The incomprehensibility roughly corresponds to the educational level. Take, say, talk radio. I'm on a fair amount, and it's usually pretty easy to guess from accents, etc., what kind of audience it is. I've repeatedly found that when the audience is mostly poor and less educated, I can skip lots of the background and 'frame of reference' issues because it's already obvious and taken for granted by everyone, and can proceed to matters that occupy all of us. With more educated audiences, that's much harder; it's necessary to disentangle lots of ideological constructions. It's certainly true that lots of people can't read the books I write. That's not because the ideas or language are complicated -- we have no problems in informal discussion on exactly the same points, and even in the same words. The reasons are different, maybe partly the fault of my writing style, partly the result of the need (which I feel, at least) to present pretty heavy documentation, which makes it tough reading. For these reasons, a number of people have taken pretty much the same material, often the very same words, and put them in pamphlet form and the like. No one seems to have much problem -- though again, reviewers in the Times Literary Supplement or professional academic journals don't have a clue as to what it's about, quite commonly; sometimes it's pretty comical.

"A final point, something I've written about elsewhere (e.g., in a discussion in Z papers, and the last chapter of Year 501). There has been a striking change in the behaviour of the intellectual class in recent years. The left intellectuals who 60 years ago would have been teaching in working class schools, writing books like 'mathematics for the millions' (which made mathematics intelligible to millions of people), participating in and speaking for popular organizations, etc., are now largely disengaged from such activities, and although quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou, are not to be found, it seems, when there is such an obvious and growing need and even explicit request for the work they could do out there in the world of people with live problems and concerns. That's not a small problem. This country, right now, is in a very strange and ominous state. People are frightened, angry, disillusioned, sceptical, confused. That's an organizer's dream, as I once heard Mike say. It's also fertile ground for demagogues and fanatics, who can (and in fact already do) rally substantial popular support with messages that are not unfamiliar from their predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances. We know where it has led in the past; it could again. There's a huge gap that once was at least partially filled by left intellectuals willing to engage with the general public and their problems. It has ominous implications, in my opinion. End of Reply, and (to be frank) of my personal interest in the matter, unless the obvious questions are answered." [Quoted from here. Spelling modified to UK English, formatting and quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original; links added. Several paragraphs merged.]

"Writing is an artifice in its essence; it is an art of embodiment, giving physical form to being. 'Putting it into words' means giving form to existence, and there is no omnipotent father, Big Other, or whomever, to guarantee that superiority of one form over another. The metaphysic of writing that is implied by 'plain style' zealots, however, is that wherein writing is a ‘window on reality’, with the subject neatly extruded -- and that is, lamentably, how many people are taught to write. Nancy Welsh (sic) in her very fine book on writing, Getting Restless, is scathing about the advice given to students to suppress their own role in the writing of knowledge -- 'this isn't about you, don't talk about yourself'. On the left, this has to do with a half-digested puritanism, and a degree of 'workerist' (patronisingly anti-working class) anti-intellectualism. There's almost a sense of shame at the intrinsic excess of writing, at the fact that it is never reducible to communication, that it always produces effects other than knowledge-effects. Words are aesthetic objects, erotic objects, and that produces a certain phobia in parts of the left. And, I suspect, there's a degree of aggression toward the reader among leftists who write in this 'plain' style, a desire to bore and bully readers as much as possible -- I've suffered for my vulgar exhortation, now it's your turn. This approach is giving us the worst of both worlds. People, to the extent that they go along with the idea that they can take themselves out of their writing, become bad writers, and bullshitters. They become bad writers because writing becomes yet another means of repression, rather than sublimation; it also becomes a guilt function, since having turned it into a joyless process, people can't understand why they're so bad at writing. They become bullshitters to the extent that they present a version of reality as if from a god's-eye-view, as if told by a non-desiring, Buddha-like being. Radical politics must be, if nothing else, radically de-naturalising. It must stress the art in living, the extent to which we produce and design the world we live in, even if not under circumstances and not with materials of our choosing." [Richard Seymour, quoted from here. Accessed 13/07/2017. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link and italic emphasis added; paragraphs merged]

Unfortunately, fine-sounding words like these (as well as those written by theorists who influenced Seymour's own drift into HCD-obscurantism -- many of whom were listed above) will sail right over the heads of those whom Richard seeks to champion: workers.

"They [i.e., 'people' who are 'bullshitters'] become bad writers because writing becomes yet another means of repression, rather than sublimation." [Ibid.]

"Repression"? How? And who exactly is being "repressed" by "bad writing"? Snowflakes?

Having said that, in his videos on YouTube, Seymour is almost invariably a model of clarity -- except where he tries to sell his viewers some a priori psychology (i.e., Lacanian Freudianism). For example, his videos here and here are admirably clear. Since Richard uses plain and simple English in these two videos, who exactly is he "repressing"? Who, for instance, was he "boring and bullying"? And precisely what has he to feel "guilty" about?

"And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle?" [I Corinthians 14:8.]

If there ever is a major political shift and Richard has to communicate with workers, en masse, he will find the convoluted and flowery style he employs in many of his more 'serious' pieces will go down like a lead balloon with workers, which will in turn mean he will have to adopt a 'plain style' or fail to communicate with them. or fail even to gain a hearing. The question is, will they begin to listen to a parvenu, to someone who has progressively withdrawn from the struggle, someone they don't know and hence don't trust, who writes obscure sentences and paragraphs about even greater obscurities (an excellent recent example of which can be accessed here, or even here -- which is a rather dyspeptic review of Angela Nagle's recent book, Kill All Normies)?

At such times, an "indistinct sound" could easily spell disaster. Lenin's words, quoted earlier, seem all the more apposite, therefore:

"The flaunting of high-sounding phrases is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals." ["Left-Wing" Childishness. Bold emphases added.]

Until then, of course, Richard is perfectly at liberty to indulge his own flowery style (not that he needs my permission or acquiescence), adrift in a stagnant backwater of the class war secure in his own irrelevance. Which, as noted above, is a pity since his videos on YouTube are always scripted in 'plain style' and are invariably of a very high quality -- those two facts not being unconnected, of course.

Of course, Richard has a career to pursue, where academic gobbledygook is de rigueur, but that is no reason to make a virtue out of such enforced obscurantism.

[What I mean by "enforced obscurantism" was explained across a few paragraphs, posted earlier.]

Here are the words of the late Louis Proyect on Richard's recent turn in this direction:

"At one time Richard Seymour was someone who had a penetrating class analysis. However, in recent years he writes less and less on his blog based on historical materialism and much more in the Lacanian psychoanalytic vein. I don't know how much interest there is in the Lacanian stuff given his Alexa rating of 850,507 worldwide. He has set himself up on Patreon where for $3 per month and up you can get the a-list Seymour. With articles like 'Make cry-bullying kill itself', I am not sure if $3 per month is worth it. Over on Lenin's Tomb, you can also find the same kind of article. For example, there is one titled 'On Fetish', which sounds like the kind of paper delivered at the yearly American Language Association conference:

'This estrangement of the visual order, this conversion of attention into alienated labour, is what Beller calls the 'cinematic mode of production'. True to the paranoid, psychotic structure of the theory, he can do no other than offer us a cinematic image by way of explanation. We are in The Matrix, the life-energy we put into the world converted into energy to run the image-world, "imprisoned in a malevolent bathosphere, intuiting our situation only through glitches in the programme."'

"Most of this stuff has little interest for me but recently Seymour posted a link on Facebook to a May 19th article titled 'Is Fascism on the Rise' that shows how much damage this kind of psychoanalytic Social Text malarkey can do when the matter at hand requires a sober class analysis rather than the sort of prose that Alan Sokal parodied. I hadn’t noticed the article when it first showed up but thought it was worth some commentary since Seymour has become one of antifa's PR men.

'It was the Martinican poet and anticolonial fighter, Aime Cesaire, who tried to point out to Europeans that what they called Nazism, they had been practicing with a free conscience in the colonial world for decades. And that this relationship was not incidental.

'In fact, the conscience of the European was never free. Octave Mannoni, the French psychoanalyst who famously psychoanalysed the colonial situation, once suggested that there was a surprising pervasiveness of the colonised, in the dreams of Europeans who had never left the continent and never seen such a person. Today, one wonders if provincial, sedentary English men and women dream of the Muslim.'

"Okay, spend a minute studying these paragraphs and try to figure out what is wrong. Is the minute up? I hope that you would have noticed that the word 'Europeans' is not rooted in a class analysis. Which class was practicing something like Nazism on the colonized peoples? When your unit of analysis is the nation or the continent, that goes out the window. It was the capitalist class, not the French workers, who were oppressing and exploiting Algerians. 'Today, one wonders if provincial, sedentary English men and women dream of the Muslim.' What sort of nonsense is this? Who could he possibly be writing about? Colonel Blimp? This is a reductionist attempt to characterize an entire people, something that would never appear in a serious Marxist analysis. It evokes an op-ed piece in the NY Times, where someone like Thomas Friedman would pontificate on the 'Europeans' versus the 'Asians'. What a sad decline from the sharp analysis he used to deploy....

"Explaining how conditions today can produce a new Adolph Hitler, Seymour is not exactly lucid. He writes:

'Yes, economic crisis is important, but it has to be metabolised by the state somehow. A crisis of capitalism, has to be a crisis of its political institutions and of its ideological claims. That crisis must manifest itself in a deadlock of political leadership of the ruling class. If, typically, one of its sectors leads (say, the City of London) and imposes its imperatives as being for the good of all, that leadership will come into question.'

"Does anybody understand what it means for an economic crisis to be metabolized by the state? I don’t have a clue. To metabolize means to convert food into energy in a living organism. I gave up trying to understand what this might have to do with the Trump White House except maybe that his addiction to red meat and Coca-Cola might be producing baleful psychological effects that will condemn us all to concentration camps. But is Seymour right that the fascism of today won't look anything like the Nazis?

'But the fascism of the future doesn't have to be traditional. Nor does it have to respect the sequences observed in the interwar years, or reanimate old cultures. It could even adopt a patina of edgy cool, as with the alt-right: we should never underestimate the erotic glamour of fascism and its appeal to the death-drive.'

"The erotic glamour of fascism? The appeal to the death-drive? Lacan is now in the driver’s seat, not Marx. Not being versed in Freudian psychoanalysis, I have no idea what this means. I guess I am a Marxist mouldy fig. I believe that people join fascist movements because they support a total war on the left and the creation of an absolutist state that will govern in their interests, at least based on the demagogy of the fascist leader. And primarily this meant solving the economic crisis. To the middle-class, Hitler promised eliminating the Jews who were ruining it. To the workers, it was job security and social benefits. To the bourgeoisie, it was a promise to put an end to working-class power. While Seymour's article barely mentions the USA, it does join with the leftist consensus in early 2017 that Trump was capable of imposing a fascist dictatorship: 'The attempt by Bannon and Miller to force a rupture in the American state was premature and voluntaristic. A more competent germinal fascism would take its time, patiently exploiting the fascist potential within the liberal state, to incubate and nurture the fascist monster of the future.' I generally bristle at the word 'rupture' since it smacks so much of the academic leftist prose that refuses to use a simple Anglo-Saxon word like 'break' or 'split'. What kind of split was Bannon trying to force? You'd think that Seymour regarded him as a latter-day Kurt von Schleicher who was a close adviser to Paul von Hindenberg. In 1930 he helped to topple the Social Democratic government, the first step in a series that would lead to Hitler becoming the German Chancellor. It was Schleicher who whispered in von Hindenberg's ear about the need to make Hitler Der Fuhrer. Does anybody in their right mind think that this was what Bannon was about? To whisper in Trump's ear about the need to arrest the leaders of the Democratic Party and to pare down the Republican Party to the narrow base that continues to back Trump? What then? Arrest the editors of the NY Times, Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN and put them in prison where they would be tortured or killed? What about the universities? Round up George Ciccariello-Maher, Jodi Dean and even Paul Krugman? That is what fascism would look like, after all." [Quoted from here; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added; several paragraphs merged.]

While Proyect is a little unfair to Seymour (for example Richard isn't advocating the use of "European", he is merely summarising Octave Mannoni's ideas -- albeit somewhat uncritically --, and Seymour's use of "metabolised" is a perfectly acceptable metaphor, even if Proyect failed to understand its use), it is clear that Seymour isn't the first to have had his thought processes seriously clouded by French 'Philosophy' and 'Psychoanalysis', nor will he be the last. But then he isn't the first to have had his thought processes seriously compromised by Hegel, either -- and that includes Louis Proyect himself (who booted me off Marxmail for having the temerity to question the validity DM!).

It could be objected that Ms Lichtenstein [RL] is being inconsistent -- while happy to accuse others of uncritically accepting the obscure thought-forms of Traditional Philosophy, RL seems quite content to accept Wittgenstein's work without so much as a quibble.

However, there is a world of difference between (i) Accepting the a priori theories and speculations of Traditional Philosophers and (ii) Employing a method (not a set of Superscientific Doctrines) that exposes, and thus helps terminate, this bogus ruling-class thought-form.

Others have argued that those who criticise Philosophy have to adopt (often implicitly) an alternative Philosophy. Apparently, that is because it isn't possible to avoid philosophising and hence it is impossible not to adopt a philosophical stance of some sort (the implication being that any such alternative philosophy will be tainted with ruling-class ideology, an ironic accusation coming from those who openly boast about the ruling-class origin of their own ideas).

First, that response sounds suspiciously like the allegations thrown out by Theists (especially Fundamentalists) that atheists lie when they say they don't believe in 'God'. Apparently, deep down, we all 'know' 'He' exists (since, so the fable goes, 'knowledge of God' is part of the image of 'Himself' that 'He' put in us all -- if so, why the need to keep trying to prove 'He' exists?), hence our denial is evidence of our sin and rebellion. No good emphatically denying it, either; that will only confirm the depths of your iniquity. Somewhat analogously, try telling a died-in-the-wool DM-fan (like John Molyneux, quoted below) that not only do you not have a philosophy, we (i.e., humanity) would be better off without that ruling-class thought-form, and see how far you get.

Second, even if it could be shown that many lay-philosophers (i.e., non-professionals) sometimes daydream about the nature of time travel, the 'meaning of life', or even whether any sound is made when a tree falls in a forest and there is no one around to hear it, those amateur speculations aren't to be compared with the detailed theories concocted by the likes of Aquinas, Kant, Hegel or Heidegger. At least no more than if you, dear reader, take a headache pill that makes you a doctor.

Indeed, maintaining the medical theme: the argument that we need a philosophy in order to counter the ideas of the ruling class is no more convincing than concluding doctors, for example, have to be ill in order to be able to tackle disease. Or, that in order to fight racism one has to be a racist!

Moreover, we have yet to see the proof that it is "impossible not to philosophise". [On this, also see Note 88, below.]

"It is very difficult to sustain much ongoing political work for any length of time without a coherent alternative worldview to the dominant ideology which we encounter every day in the media (at work, at school, at college, etc.). A significant role in an alternative worldview is played by questions of philosophy.

"[Added in a footnote: To attempt an exact definition of philosophy at this point would be a difficult and lengthy distraction. But what I mean by it in this book is, roughly, 'general' or 'abstract' thinking about human beings and their relations between society and nature.]" [Molyneux (2012), p.5. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis and link added.]

"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….

"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.' In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), pp.72-75. Italic emphases in the original; several paragraphs merged.]

"With the theoretical equipment inherited from Hegel it is, of course, not possible even to understand the empirical, material attitude of these people. Owing to the fact that Feuerbach showed the religious world as an illusion of the earthly world -- a world which in his writing appears merely as a phrase -- German theory too was confronted with the question which he left unanswered: how did it come about that people 'got' these illusions 'into their heads'? Even for the German theoreticians this question paved the way to the materialistic view of the world, a view which is not without premises, but which empirically observes the actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the first time, actually a critical view of the world. This path was already indicated in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher -- in the Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage. But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as 'human essence', 'species', etc., gave the German theoreticians the desired reason for misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing that here again it was a question merely of giving a new turn to their worn-out theoretical garment -- just as Dr. Arnold Ruge, the Dottore Graziano of German philosophy, imagined that he could continue as before to wave his clumsy arms about and display his pedantic-farcical mask. One has to 'leave philosophy aside' (Wigand, p.187, cf., Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p.8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers. When, after that, one again encounters people like Krummacher or 'Stirner', one finds that one has long ago left them 'behind' and below. Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love. Saint Sancho, who in spite of his absence of thought -- which was noted by us patiently and by him emphatically -- remains within the world of pure thoughts, can, of course, save himself from it only by means of a moral postulate, the postulate of 'thoughtlessness' (p.196 of 'the book'). He is a bourgeois who saves himself in the face of commerce by the banqueroute cochenne [swinish bankruptcy -- RL] whereby, of course, he becomes not a proletarian, but an impecunious, bankrupt bourgeois. He does not become a man of the world, but a bankrupt philosopher without thoughts." [Marx and Engels (1976), p.236. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added. I have posted the entire passage so that readers can see it hasn't been quoted of context.]

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." [Theses on Feuerbach.]

"It can be seen how subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity, lose their antithetical character, and hence their existence as such antitheses, only in the social condition; it can be seen how the resolution of the theoretical antitheses themselves is possible only in a practical way, only through the practical energy of man, and how their resolution is for that reason by no means only a problem of knowledge, but a real problem of life, a problem which philosophy was unable to solve precisely because it treated it as a purely theoretical problem." [Marx (1975b), p.354. Bold emphases alone added.]

Hence, according to Marx, "philosophy is nothing but religion rendered into thought" -- in other words, it is a far more abstract source of consolation. It must, therefore, be "left aside"; one has to "leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality", and that is because Philosophy stands in the same relation to the "study of the actual world" as onanism does to sexual love. Furthermore, Philosophy is based on "distorted language of the actual world", empty abstractions and invented concepts. No wonder then that Marx contrasts a desire to change the world with that empty and pointless ruling-class discipline, Philosophy.

In fact, after the mid-1840s, there are no positive, and very few even neutral comments about Philosophy in Marx's work.

[It could be objected that Marx made positive comments about dialectics all throughout his life, in published and unpublished work. I have dealt with that response in Essay Nine Part One.]

Indeed, as is well known, Marx published a book in 1847 called The Poverty of Philosophy; hardly a ringing endorsement of that class-compromised discipline! Here are a few relevant passages from it:

"If we had M. Proudhon's intrepidity in the matter of Hegelianism we should say: it is distinguished in itself from itself. What does this mean? Impersonal reason, having outside itself neither a base on which it can pose itself, nor an object to which it can oppose itself, nor a subject with which it can compose itself, is forced to turn head over heels, in posing itself, opposing itself and composing itself -- position, opposition, composition. Or, to speak Greek -- we have thesis, antithesis and synthesis. For those who do not know the Hegelian language: affirmation, negation and negation of the negation. That is what language means. It is certainly not Hebrew (with due apologies to M. Proudhon); but it is the language of this pure reason, separate from the individual. Instead of the ordinary individual with his ordinary manner of speaking and thinking we have nothing but this ordinary manner purely and simply -- without the individual.

"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 the 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 category. 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 -- these metaphysicians in turn are right in saying that things here below are embroideries of which the logical categories constitute the canvas. This is what distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the Logos; with the philosopher there is no end to incarnations. If all that exists, all that lives on land, and under water can be reduced by abstraction to a logical category -- if the whole real world can be drowned thus in a world of abstractions, in the world of logical categories -- who need be astonished at it?

"All that exists, all that lives on land and under water, exists and lives only by some kind of movement. Thus, the movement of history produces social relations; industrial movement gives us industrial products, etc. Just as by dint 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.... Up to now we have expounded only the dialectics of Hegel. We shall see later how M. Proudhon has succeeded in reducing it to the meanest proportions. Thus, for Hegel, all that has happened and is still happening is only just what is happening in his own mind. Thus the philosophy of history is nothing but the history of philosophy, of his own philosophy. There is no longer a 'history according to the order in time,' there is only 'the sequence of ideas in the understanding.' He thinks he is constructing the world by the movement of thought, whereas he is merely reconstructing systematically and classifying by the absolute method of thoughts which are in the minds of all." [Marx (1976a), pp.162-65. Italic emphases in the original. Minor typos and a few major errors corrected. (I have informed the editors at the Marxist Internet Archive about them!) Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]

Like all too many others who claim to be Marxists, Molyneux blithely ignores the above very clear statements from Marx -- not from me, Karl Korsch or James Burnham, or, indeed, anyone else -- from Marx himself!

Moreover, nowhere does Marx tell his readers that socialists need a world-view (either to keep their spirits up, provide them with an alternative world-view to counter the dominant world-views they meet every day, or for any other reason -- quite the opposite, in fact, he tells them to abandon philosophy!). As we have seen elsewhere in this Essay, since Ancient Greek times the dominant world-view in the 'West' has been based on the belief that there is a hidden, 'abstract' world, anterior to the senses that is more real than the material world we see around us. [There were also analogous developments in the 'East'.] Hence, according to this archaic tradition, it is the philosopher's job to concoct arcane theories about this invisible world, all of which ideas were to be derived from 'thought' -- or words -- alone, and then dogmatically imposed on 'reality'.

Later in Molyneux's book (as well as in his other writings on dialectics), he simply offers his readers more of the same. So, far from providing us with an alternative world-view, he simply serves up a set of his own a priori, dogmatic theories (which are really an echo of the ideas Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Trotsky also imposed on the world), which -- surprise, surprise! -- turn out to echo the dominant ruling-class forms-of-thought mentioned above.

Marx predicted these ideas will always rule, and we can now see why he was right, even in relation to his erstwhile followers. What Molyneux and the others mentioned above offer their readers is a pale reflection of this archaic world-view, only now given a left-sounding veneer!

[Exactly why Dialectical Marxists do this was exposed in Essay Nine Part Two.]

The next few pages of his book offer a clearer view of what Molyneux means by "philosophy":

"In the course of discussion with a friend or workmate they retort 'But there's one thing you've forgotten: you can't change human nature,' or 'But there's always going to be rich and poor, always has been, always will be!' In a debate in the movement someone says 'The real problem is the Tories; we must all unite to get rid of them and get in Labour. Then things will be better.' On a university sociology course the professor says, 'Of course, Marx believed that communism was inevitable, but as social scientists we have to reject such dogmatic views,' or 'Marxism reduces everything to economics and class, but sociology nowadays is more complex and sophisticated than that.' All of these statements have an immediate plausibility -- they seem to appeal to 'common sense'. This is because they rest on a worldview, a philosophy, systematically developed, perfected one might say, by our rulers, the capitalist class and its philosophical ideologues, over centuries and disseminated through innumerable channels to every corner of society. To answer them requires an equally developed and coherent philosophy from our side. Fortunately, such a philosophy exists -- Marxism!" [Molyneux (2012), pp.5-6. Bold emphasis added.]

Now, it isn't too clear how beating the Tories and voting Labour, or how the idea that Marx reduced everything to class and economics, or even how he believed that communism was inevitable, are part of 'common sense'. It is even less easy to see how the ruling-class (or, indeed, their ideologues) have been perfecting these particular ideas for centuries. But, even if all of these issues were crystal clear, and Molyneux was correct that they encapsulate 'common sense', it is still far from obvious why we need a world-view to counter them individually or even collectively. Surely, they can all be challenged by an appeal to the facts: Did Marx think communism was inevitable or did he not? Answer: "'No' and here are the reasons and the quotes...". Did he reduce everything to economics and class, or did he not? Answer: "'No', and here are the reasons and the quotes...." Is the Labour Party capable of 'making things better' or is it not? Similar response.... The other issues mentioned can surely be neutralised in much the same way: is it a historical or scientific fact whether or not human nature is fixed? Is it a historical or scientific fact whether or not poverty is inevitable?

That isn't, of course, to claim that right-wingers will accept replies like these and change their minds as a result. Far from it. Anyone who has tried to engage with one of the latter also knows they are highly allergic to facts and deaf to counter-arguments. Over the last nine years I have been arguing with well over three hundred such individuals on Quora (that figure is no exaggeration, either!), and can count on the fingers of a severely mutilated hand the number that have responded in a non-negative way, or who have actually engaged in honest debate. In the comment section under this answer on Quora alone, I have 'debated' such issues with over fifty right-wingers and every single one exhibited the above traits, and many more besides (including abuse -- in fact, uncomfortably like the response I often also receive from DM-fans -- compounded by a few threats of violence). But, arguing with right-wingers isn't the same as discussing revolutionary ideas with fellow comrades or interested 'contacts'. Does anyone seriously think that those who refuse to listen to the facts or pay heed to careful scientific arguments will be persuaded by a swift dose of dialectics?

Why then do we need a world-view? Couldn't we make do with a scientific theory? Why do we even need a philosophical theory? Exactly what has an 'abstract' system -- which is how Molyneux himself depicts Philosophy -- got to offer those who are pondering political or scientific questions like those he mentioned? Precisely which 'abstractions', which 'essences', will help persuade someone drawn into the periphery of the movement, or who joins for the first time, that the Labour Party will always fail workers, for instance? Or, that Marx didn't think communism was inevitable?

Marxists will certainly appeal to ideas drawn from HM, but not from DM, as I have argued in Essay Nine Part One (slightly modified):

[It is worth pointing out that the material below depends heavily on the evidence and argument presented in other Essays at this site, which have demonstrated time and again that DM makes not one ounce of sense, that its core ideas soon fall apart when examined closely, and, indeed, that they are far too vague and confused to be assessed even for their truth or falsehood. On this, see Essays Three Part One to Eight Part Three. That isn't the case with HM.]

It could be objected that the distinction drawn between DM and HM at this site is completely spurious; hence, the controversial claims made in this Essay are completely misguided, if not downright mendacious.

However, as will be argued in Essay Fourteen Part Two, HM contains ideas that are non-sensical only when they are translated into DM-jargon. The eminent good sense made by HM -- even as that theory is understood by workers when they encounter it (often this is in times of struggle) -- testifies to this fact.

[HM = Historical Materialism; DM = Dialectical Materialism; LOI = Law of Identity.]

The clear distinction that exists between these two theories isn't just a wild idea advanced at this site; it can be seen clearly in the day-to-day practice of revolutionaries themselves. No Marxist of any intelligence would use slogans drawn exclusively from DM to communicate with workers; indeed, few militants would even attempt to agitate strikers, for example, with the conundrums found in DM. On a picket line the alleged contradictory nature of motion or the limitations of the LOI don't often crop up. How frequently does the link between part and whole loom large in the fight against the Nazis? How many times do revolutionary socialists have to explain the distinction, or even the link, between 'quantity and quality' in the fight against, say, austerity?

Consider, for example, the following slogans: "The Law of Identity is true only within certain limits and the opposition to sanctions on Venezuela!" Or "Change in quantity leads to change in quality and the defence of pensions!"

[Excellent examples of the utter uselessness of the above 'law' can be found here and here.]

Or: "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts and the campaign to keep hospital HH open!" Or even, "Being is identical with, but at the same time different from, Nothing, the contradiction resolved by Becoming, and the fight against the deportation of Abrego Garcia!"

Slogans like these would be employed by militants of uncommon stupidity and legendary ineffectiveness.

In contrast, active revolutionaries employ ideas drawn exclusively from HM -- as that theory applies concretely to the current state of the class war -- if they want to communicate with workers. The vast majority of revolutionary papers, for example, use ordinary language coupled with concepts drawn from HM to agitate and propagandise; rarely do they employ DM-phraseology. [A handful examples of the latter have been considered here.]

"[Red] Saunders thinks that the IS [which was the forerunner of the UK-SWP -- RL] attracted the best of the 1968 generation through its politics -- 'Neither Washington nor Moscow' -- but also through the accessibility of its publications, it used ordinary language rather than the jargon of other far-left groups." [Birchall (2011), p.422.]

Only deeply sectarian rags of exemplary unpopularity and impressive lack of impact use ideas and terminology lifted from DM to try to educate or propagandise the working class. Newsline (the daily paper of the old WRP) was notorious in this regard; but like the Dinosaurs it resembled, it is no more. [The NON, it seems, took appropriate revenge.]

It could be objected that no one would actually use slogans drawn from certain areas of HM to communicate with or agitate workers. That doesn't mean HM is of no use, so the same must be true of DM. For example, who shouts slogans about "Base and Superstructure", or "Relative Surplus Value" on paper sales? Who tries to propagandise workers with facts about the role of the peasantry in the decline of feudalism? Once more, this shows the distinction drawn in this Essay is entirely bogus.

While it is true that no one shouts slogans about the relation between "Base and Superstructure" on paper sales, or prints strike leaflets reminding militants of the role of the peasantry in the decline of feudalism, they nevertheless still use slogans (often popularised versions of them) drawn exclusively from HM, or which connect with HM as it relates concretely to current events in the class war. Nearly every article, leaflet or slogan is informed by ideas drawn from HM.

To be sure, revolutionary papers in general casually employ a handful of jargonised expressions drawn from DM (in the vast majority cases, this is confined to the use of the word "contradiction") in some of their articles, but this forms only a very minor part of their output -- even though few, if any, comrades will use such terms in slogans on street sales, on demonstrations or in discussions on the picket line.

Anyway, as will be shown in Part Two of this Essay, the use of DM-terminology like this is merely a nod in the direction of tradition and orthodoxy. Indeed, we are forced to conclude this since no sense can made of such jargon -- as we have seen, for instance, here, here, here and here. Hence, the employment of DM-terminology simply amounts to a declaration, or an admission, of 'orthodoxy' on the part of the individual or group using it -- an 'in-group'/'out-group' marker, as is argued here. DM-jargon does no real work (other than negative) in such circumstances, unlike concepts drawn from HM.

So, just like Marx in Das Kapital, revolutionary papers merely "coquette" with Hegelian jargon -- and even then, only "here and there".

Hence, at least at the level of practice, where the party interfaces with the working class and the material world, DM is totally useless.

[As we will also see here, there is no evidence that DM, or any of its jargon, was actively used even by the Bolsheviks in October 1917, or, indeed, for several years after.]

Consequently, tested in practice -- or, rather, tested by being left out of practice -- the status of DM is plain for all to see: At best, it is a hindrance; at worst, it would totally isolate revolutionaries and make them look ridiculous.

This shows that the distinction drawn at this site between DM and HM isn't spurious in the least.

When they communicate with workers, militants draw this distinction all the time.

Nevertheless, it could be argued in response that this attempt to separate HM and DM would fragment and compartmentalise our knowledge of nature and society. Such an approach to knowledge would possess clear, Idealist implications, suggesting that human beings are unique by implying that mind is independent of matter. If mind is dependent on matter (howsoever that link is conceived) there must be laws that span across both of them. And this is partly where DM comes in.

But, that isn't so. As noted above, DM is far too vague and confused for it to function in that way. It is incapable of accounting for anything, social or natural (as the Essays at this site demonstrate -- indeed, as we have seen, if DM were true, change would be impossible). Hence, even if there were natural laws that governed these two spheres (and I will pass no comment on that possibility here), and an inventory were drawn up of all the viable alternative theories capable of accounting for the above hypothesised connection, DM wouldn't even make the bottom of the reserve list of likely candidates. It is far too vague and confused.

In response, it could be argued that the above counter-argument is totally unacceptable since it ignores the fact that some of the best class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it into the fabric of each and every classic, and post-classic, Marxist text. Indeed, without dialectics there would be no Marxist theory. Indeed, HM would be like "a clock without a spring":

"While polemicising against opponents who consider themselves -- without sufficient reason -- above all as proponents of 'theory,' the article deliberately did not elevate the problem to a theoretical height. It was absolutely necessary to explain why the American 'radical' intellectuals accept Marxism without the dialectic (a clock without a spring)." [Trotsky (1971), p.56. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

I have dealt with that objection in Part Two, here, so readers are directed there for more details.

The other claim (concerning matter and 'mind') was tackled in extensive detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

So, if any theory is required (to counter the ideas to which Molyneux referred), it is HM, not DM. And HM is a scientific, not a philosophical, theory.

If the above advice is ignored and those interested in Marxism were plied with dialectics, the following outcome is far more likely: they will be put off by the barrage of 'abstractions' thrown at them in answer to the sort of questions Molyneux posed, especially 'abstractions' that turn out to be far more obscure than those questions themselves.

But, even if it turns out that we do need a few 'abstractions', why can't those drawn from HM serve just as well, or even better? That is all the more especially so since the abstractions drawn from dialectics fall apart alarmingly quickly, and which, if 'true', would, once more, make change impossible.

The problem is that Molyneux's 'definition' of Philosophy is woefully inadequate (I suspect he hasn't given it much thought -- or, if he has, he should have given it a lot more), since it blurs the distinction we should normally want to draw between (i) Ordinary matters of fact, (ii) Scientific questions, theories and truths, (iii) More general, abstract areas of study (such as Mathematics, Logic, and Theoretical Physics), and (iv) Empty philosophical speculation. While it is plain that we need the first three of these, Molyneux has yet to show we need the fourth.

Another pressing question also requires an answer: Why were Molyneux's examples/questions taken from social, political and historical areas? Surely, in order to illustrate the invaluable nature of DM, one would have thought he would have also chosen a few from hardcore DM? So, in order to fight capitalism, why on earth do we need to know what happens when water boils, why the Mamelukes can't quite match Napoleon's infantry, why the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, or why Being is the same as, but different from, Nothing, the contradiction resolved in Becoming? The answer is quite plain, not only is DM useless even here, we don't need to know the answer to any of these other questions (always assuming there is anyone on the planet who actually understands the last one, about 'Being' and 'Nothing') in our struggle against the current system.

Molyneux then proceeds to argue that the more involved an individual becomes in the leadership of the movement, the more "questions of philosophy become important" (p.6). The history of out movement shows that that is undeniable, but it has, alas, proved to be detrimental to those involved -- as we have seen in Essay Nine Parts One and Two. There, it was pointed out that:

[U]nlike HM, DM can't form a theoretical foundation for the "world-view of the proletariat", and, therefore, that it has had to be imposed on what few workers Dialectical Marxism has managed to attract to its ranks over the last 150 years. What is more, this imposition runs 'against the grain' (so to speak) of workers' materialist good sense. Hence, it will be argued that DM is the ideology of substitutionist elements within Marxism. Moreover, since it is also possible to show that 'dialectics' is a total mystery -- even to DM-theorists themselves(!) --, it can't provide revolutionary socialists with a scientific or philosophical foundation for their politics or their practice. In which case, DM not only doesn't, it can't 'reflect the experience of the party or the class. [Quoted from here, slightly edited.]

[D]ialectics (in either its DM-, or its 'Materialist Dialectics' [MD-], form) [occupies], or has [occupied], [a central role] in addressing and satisfying the contingent psychological needs of prominent Dialectical Marxists. In addition, [it was shown] how and why Hegel's influence has assisted in the corruption of our movement from top to bottom (aggravating, but not causing, sectarian in-fighting, fostering splits and expulsions that often arise as a result), revealing, too, why DM has had such a deleterious and narcoleptic effect on militant minds. These untoward consequences will be linked to the class origin and current class position of leading revolutionaries -- those who have helped shape our movement's core ideas.

It [was] also...shown how and why the above comrades are particularly susceptible to ideas that have been peddled by ruling-class theorists for thousands of years -- specifically, the doctrine that there is a 'hidden world', a world of 'abstractions' and 'essences', anterior to 'appearances' that is more real than the material universe we see around us (in the sense that these 'abstractions' are somehow capable of rendering objects and processes in nature concrete, an ancient idea that implies nature is insufficient to itself, and needs 'Ideas', or 'Concepts', to make it 'Real'), which 'hidden world' can be accessed by thought alone.

In short, it [was] shown that this theory has played a key role in making Dialectical Marxism synonymous with political and theoretical impotency --, which, naturally, helps explain its long-term lack of success.

[Notice the use of the indefinite article here -- i.e., in "a key role". I am not blaming all our woes on this theory! Doubters should read this caveat on the opening page of the site, in the right hand column.] [Quoted from here, heavily edited.]

Hence, if, as Molyneux imagines, practice is to be our guide, it emphatically suggests we should ditch this ruling-class thought-form, since it has served us rather badly, if not disastrously, for over a hundred years.

Molyneux then argues that since religion is the most widespread form of philosophy, revolutionaries need to be philosophically aware, or trained to some extent, in order to counter it (pp.6-7). But, it is plain that Molyneux has run-together Theology (and possibly even Philosophical Theology) with religious belief. The latter manifestly isn't a philosophy, but an affectation and response to alienation, as Marx pointed out. Sure, it may give rise to certain philosophical ideas or questions (i.e., those expressed in Theology), but that still doesn't make it a philosophy.

Even so, anyone who thinks they can counter the arguments of sophisticated theologians with the sort of fourth-rate philosophy found in textbooks on dialectics will be sadly disappointed -- especially given the fact that dialectics is itself a version of Mystical Christian Hermeticism (both upside down and 'the right way up'). In which case, if we needed a philosophy to counter Theology and/or religious affectation, DM is the very last thing we should turn to!

Anyway, it is possible to counter Theology reasonably successfully without the use of philosophical theory. [I have done just that, here. (That link is now dead, but a more recent, much briefer version of my argument can be accessed here.)]

Molyneux also argues that activists need a solid theoretical grounding in the historical development of religion, as well as a secure understanding of the politics and social forces underlying religious movements (p.7). But, once more, he has confused History, Religious Studies, the Sociology of Religion, and Political Theory with Philosophy per se. All of these (except the last, Philosophy) are, or can easily become, part of HM. Why we need an extra input from Philosophy is still far from clear.

Finally, Molyneux also points out that Philosophy is essential for those who hope to understand the complex tactical aspects of intervention in the class struggle (p.7). Once again, that is part of HM. DM is useless in this regard. To repeat: who shouts slogans about quantity turning into quality on a demonstration? Who points out that truth is the whole at an anti-war meeting? Who even so much as mentions the alleged fact that the nature of the part is determined by its relation to the whole, and vice versa, when countering the arguments of trade union bureaucrats? Who in their left mind points out that being is identical with, but at the same time different from, nothing, the contradiction resolved in becoming, on a paper sale? Or even in an argument with reformists?

Only those the worse for drink or drugs -- or, who have perhaps slipped out of their straight-jackets --, that's who!

So, the 'Marxist case' (or, indeed, any case!) for Philosophy has yet to be made.

But even if Marxists needed a philosophy of some sort, we surely can do better than this fourth rate alternative. What an insult it is to the workers' movement promoting DM as our/their philosophy. Haven't workers suffered enough under capitalism? Why twist the knife?

Update July 2017: I have just read Andrew Collier's book on Marxism (i.e., Collier (2004)); there he attempts to minimise or explain away Marx's anti-philosophical remarks and unambiguous repudiation of that bogus discipline. He then tries to argue that not only does Marxism itself need a philosophy, he claims Marx himself possessed one, too (pp.117-30).

"Marx was, by training, a philosopher. He studied philosophy at university, and obtained a doctorate for a thesis on ancient Greek philosophy. He writes like a philosopher; the attention to the analysis of concepts and their precise use, the logical structure of his arguments, all show the methods and skills of a philosopher to a high degree. His reputation today is probably higher among philosophers than in any other academic discipline, and deservedly so: in his manner of argument, he is a philosopher, and one of the greatest." [Collier (2004), p.117.]

While Collier gives no examples of the "logical structure" of Marx's writings, or his "attention to the analysis of concepts", it is reasonably clear that in his early writings Marx was indeed a (dogmatic) philosopher of some sort, albeit in the Hegelian and Feuerbachian traditions. Even so, it is far from clear that Marx's reputation among professional philosophers is as Collier alleges -- at least, if we confine our attention to Analytic Philosophers, which is still perhaps the dominant tradition. What Collier says may still be true among 'Continental Philosophers', however. Be this as it may, if we examine Marx's later work, it is even less clear that Marx was a philosopher of any sort -- as Collier himself admits:

"Yet from 1845 on, the subject matter of his writing is not, for the most part, philosophy, but social science and political commentary. Much of what he says in 1845 gives the impression of consciously turning his back on philosophy." [Ibid., p.117.]

Collier then quotes Marx's comment that we should "leave philosophy aside", adding this thought:

"There have always been some Marxists -- and, at times, Engels comes close to being one of them -- who have proclaimed that with Marx, philosophy comes to an end, and is replaced by something else." [Ibid., p.117.]

Of course, the argument developed at this site isn't that Philosophy comes to an end with Marx; it is in fact that it never had a beginning, except as a vehicle for highly abstract forms of ruling-class ideology and the promotion of "the ideas of the ruling-class". As Marx himself points out:

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975b), p.381. Bold emphases added.]

A passage Collier doesn't quote, even once --, and it isn't hard to see why. It torpedoes his entire argument.

So, what does Collier offer in response? He argues first of all that Marx supported the aims of The Enlightenment, that it was possible for human reason to understand the world in order to help change it:

"When in his early works he first talks about an end for philosophy, he is mainly thinking of the project of emancipation by reason, and he does not mean that philosophy should be superseded by science and laid aside; he means that what philosophy has projected theoretically -- human emancipation based on reason -- should be realised in practice." [Collier (2004), pp.118-19.]

So, rather like the 'followers' of the 'Prince of Peace' -- Jesus Christ --, who told his disciples to love their enemies and do good to those who hate them, but which disciples then try to tell us that he really didn't mean this. On the contrary, we should torture, shoot, stab and bomb them. In the light of all this, Collier now tries to tell us that when Marx says that Philosophy is really a different form of religion -- and hence an expression of human alienation, equally to be condemned -- and that we should leave Philosophy and devote ourselves to the study of the actual world (i.e., that we should in fact replace Philosophy with science!), he really meant we shouldn't do it!

"One has to 'leave philosophy aside'..., one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality...." [Marx and Engels (1976), p.236.]

"When he talks about philosophy in The German Ideology, however, he is thinking of philosophy as speculation, and saying that this is no way to find out how the world works." [Collier (2004), p.118. Italic emphasis in the original.]

That is, of course, Collier's interpretation, for which he offers no textual evidence, and which, incidentally, flies in the face of what Marx actually wrote about philosophy post 1844. But, let us suppose Collier is right, what exactly will be left of this discipline if it has had its 'speculative' heart removed? Collier doesn't say.

What Collier does say is that Marx's later work did in fact have philosophical content (p.118). However, it turns out that this 'philosophical content' is confined to questions relating to methodology in the social sciences -- specifically, questions about 'abstraction'. In support, Collier (partially) quotes the following passage from the Grundrisse (which I have quoted here in full):

"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. I have analysed this passage in greater detail, here.]

Why Collier counts this as a philosophical question he leaves his readers to guess. Certainly Marx never describes it that way, nor does he even offer a hint in that direction. In fact, Marx says that this is "scientifically the correct method". It seems Collier is an expert at ignoring what Marx actually says, substituting for it what he would like him to have said!

Collier then moves off in a more traditional direction and attempts to recruit Marx's comments about 'the dialectic method' to the cause of confirming his continuing interest in philosophy -- although he also appears to deny 'the dialectic' operates throughout nature (p.125). Unfortunately, however, Collier interprets and applies this 'method' by appealing to Fichtean Triplicity, of "thesis-antithesis-synthesis", which is a serious error. [On that, see here.]

Collier also quotes a few passages from Das Kapital where Marx uses allegedly Hegelian terms like "contradiction" and "negation"; since I have dealt with that topic at length in Essay Nine Part One -- here and here -- readers are directed there for more details. Collier then veers off on a tangent and tries to saddle Marx with a 'materialist ontology' (pp.125-28), in support of which he once again offers no textual evidence.

That is it! That is the extent of the 'proof' that Marx hadn't left Philosophy, contrary to what he himself declared.

Finally, as pointed out earlier, there is a world of difference between the amateurish, disconnected and tentative musings (about time, existence, ethics, or the 'meaning of life', etc.) that ordinary humans sometimes engage in (perhaps down the pub after a few too many jars?) and the systematic theory-building of Traditional Philosophy.

[The word "amateurish" isn't being used here in a derogatory or prejudicial sense. It merely serves to contrast the thoughts of Professional Dogma-Meisters (of the sort Chomsky mentioned), who indulge in systematic philosophising and who are fully employed in the production of 'High Theory', with the impromptu, disorganised ruminations of avowed non-professionals.]

76. All this helps account for the close, almost incestuous relationship between Traditional Philosophy and Abstractionism. Without that bogus 'thought-form', Metaphysics (in Ancient Greece) would have been stillborn, as the late Professor Havelock indicated (quoted earlier). [There is more on this in Essay Three Parts One and Two -- as there will be in Part Two of Essay Twelve, when it is published.]

These days, in certain quarters, this process has disarmingly been called "designating"; new word, same implications. The idea seems to be that if, for example, predicates actually failed to "designate" something (be this a set, a property, an "essence", or a "Universal", in this or in some 'possible world') they would be empty phrases -- 'mere words' (as Roscelin would have put it) -- and would therefore be devoid of content. [On this, see Ryle (1949b). (This links to a PDF.)]

Clearly, that view of predication confuses the descriptive or attributive role it occupies with the referential role played by Proper Names and other singular terms. [There is more on this in Essay Three Part One and Ryle (1949b), link above.]

Someone might object that the above is misleading since Philosophers don't just assume there are Universals and essences, they have constructed several arguments that substantiate the theory that there are. That topic, and those 'arguments', will be examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.

78. Once more, this contentious claim will be substantiated in the next two Parts of this Essay (summarised here).

In Chomsky's case, this latest allegation might seem obviously wrong. That isn't so. On this, see Essay Thirteen Part Three.

79. For centuries, theorists have ignored, depreciated or down-played the vernacular and the communal labour and life on which it is based. [Evidence in support of that contention will be given in Part Seven of this Essay. In the meantime, the reader is referred to Conner (2005), Eamon (1994), Eco (1997) and Meiksins Wood (1988).]

However, for practically the first time in human history -- i.e., from approximately 1903 (starting with the revolt of George Moore and Bertrand Russell against Idealism) and up until the mid-1970s --, this 'time-honoured' trend in ruling-class theory was partially and temporarily halted, and even reversed for a while. [On this, see Hacker (1996).]

Of course, if we regard it as a sheer coincidence that during this period the working class entered the stage of history for the first time as an international force to be reckoned with, and if the fact that these moves against Metaphysics were prosecuted in the direction of ordinary language (and openly promoted by socialist, Marxist and left-leaning Philosophers -- in Wittgenstein's case, see here) were also glossed over, then these developments would indeed have no explanation.

[Of course, the above move had been pre-figured, if not signalled, by Marx himself at a time when the working class was just beginning to flex its muscles, and he was beginning to acknowledge that fact.]

Nevertheless, the move away from OLP began in the 1970s, with the international downturn in working class militancy, and, oddly enough, with the beginning of the Neo-liberal, Monetarist, and Conservative assault on their living-standards, organisation and culture -- the first wave of which was pioneered (again, not uncoincidentally) by philosophers, linguists, ideologues and economic theorists working in the USA, the heart of the beast. [On the background to these political, social and economic developments, see Neale (2004).]

Plainly, this doesn't constitute cast iron proof of the above claims; but in the context of these Essays, and the political points that will be made in Part Seven, it is nonetheless highly significant. Dialecticians, who claim that all things are inter-linked, have, remarkably, failed to notice these reasonably clear inter-connections.

[On this, see here, which is a much longer and more comprehensive version of Uschanov (2002), although the author puts no political spin on this phenomenon.]

81. This is one aspect of what it means to argue that language is a social phenomenon. [This topic will also be examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

[On the accusation that Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians do in fact advance philosophical theories, see here.]

Moreover, these comments are also related to Wittgenstein's analysis of rules in his "middle" and "later period". On this, see the references given in Essay Thirteen Part Three. Also see Note 36, above.

Concerning the limitations of the analogy sometimes drawn between money and language, see Jones (1991).

[That publication was originally meant to be the first of three parts, but the author has informed me that the other two will not now be published. That is a pity since the last two parts were intended be an analysis of Marx's view of language, perhaps the only one currently available. Update: Since that comment was first written there have been a several developments in this direction. One of note is Lecercle (2006), which is almost totally useless in this respect. More-or-less the same can be said about Voloshinov (1973) and Voloshinov's many subsequent commentators. These contentious remarks have been substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

"The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations. The human being is in the most literal sense a Zwon politikon not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society -- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the centre of the most modern economics by Bastiat, Carey, Proudhon etc. Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a historico-philosophic account of the source of an economic relation, of whose historic origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or Prometheus stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more dry and boring than the fantasies of a locus communis. [Marx (1973), pp.83-85. Bold emphasis and links added.]

Many fellow Marxists who have read the above still fail to notice its full significance. Is this yet another serious case of selective blindness?

[On other similarities between Marx and Wittgenstein, see Kitching and Pleasants (2002) -- see also here and here. I have covered this topic in much more detail, here.]

83. If correct, that would make words the linguistic equivalent of intelligent ideas or even agents in their own right, a topic that was examined earlier, but in more detail in Essay Three Part Two.

85. This reversal -- as a result of which each human being is now viewed as a socially-isolated and individualised abstractor, further compounded by the fetishisation of the products of social interaction (i.e., language) -- was originally motivated by clearly identifiable ideological aims and objectives established and promoted by centuries of ruling-class theorists (just as Marx pointed out). Small wonder then that this view of language and thought (i.e., that it is based on the mythical process of 'abstraction') has underpinned Traditional Thought for well over 2000 years.

[This entire issue will explored in more detail in later Parts of this Essay and in Essay Thirteen Part Three. Abstractionism was critically analysed in Essay Three Parts One and Two.]

86. But even the attempt to specify the meaning of words in such a piecemeal manner wouldn't justify the traditional inference that has generally been drawn from language to the truth of scientific or metaphysical theories, valid for all of reality, for all of time.

It is worth adding at this point that there is no suggestion here that rules must be explicit; in fact, many can't be. [Why that is so will be explained in a future re-write of this Essay. Until then, see Note 88.] In general, these rules originate in, and grow out of, social practice, which is plainly absent in this instance. [On that, see Robinson (2003b) and Kusch (2002, 2006).]

87. However, this is just another way of saying that language is a social phenomenon and that the rules of language human beings have developed over countless millennia aren't answerable to nature. Indeed, how could nature determine what our words mean? And that is the case whether or not the supposed influence by 'nature' is thought to be expressed genetically, or is motivated in some other way. For example, whether or not our grammatical or 'ontological' prejudices "carve nature at the joints", as Plato surmised. [Phaedrus 265e; i.e., Plato (1997b), p.542.] Again, on this, see Note 90.

88. This observation captures one aspect of the claim Wittgenstein made that meaning in language can't be expressed in language by means of empirical propositions.

This might be an odd thing to say, especially when it seems we can assert things like "'Vixen' means 'female fox'". However, as noted above, that isn't an empirical proposition, but the expression of a rule.

Once more, this view of language underpins the usual complaint made against Wittgenstein (and, indeed, Essays like those published at this site), which is that, despite protestations to the contrary, ideas like this do depend on some 'theory' or other. The reason for assuming/asserting this is plain enough: those who accept the traditional view of language see representation as its only legitimate function, which must mean Wittgenstein's use of language was in some way representational, too.

But, Wittgenstein's method exposes this as a misleading picture of the way language actually works, since representationalism completely undermines the role discourse plays in communication. In that case, for this and other reasons explored across all Parts of Essay Twelve, there can be no legitimate or valid philosophical theories. [On this see Kuusela (2006, 2008) and Iliescu (2000). See also, Fischer (2011a, 2011b).]

Now, responses like that often fly over the heads of those who have sold their radical souls to ruling-class forms-of-thought (like DM-theorists). Indeed, they often argue that it is inconsistent to criticise Traditional Philosophy along these lines, or attempt to end that bogus thought-form, since any attempt made in that direction must itself be philosophical -- or so they claim.

Well, that makes about as much sense as claiming that socialists who want to end Capitalism must also be Capitalists, or that in order to fight a virus one must first of all catch it! He who drives a fat ox must be fat, too, I suppose. [On this, see Note 75c, above.]

88a. It could be objected that liquidity is an inseparable property of water (and so M23a -- re-quoted below -- is always false). That is true in the sense that liquidity is an inseparable property of liquid water (which is an 'analytic truth' (i.e., it is a linguistic rule), not an empirical fact, otherwise it could be false -- and if that were so, we wouldn't be referring to liquid water!), but, since ice and steam are also water (i.e., H₂O), M23 itself is either a contingent truth about water (as H₂O), or it is now a criterion we use to decide what counts as water, even if it isn't the only one we utilise.

Of course, one could always modify M23 so that it became something like the following:

M23b: Liquidity is an inseparable property of (pure) water between 0ºC and 100ºC, at normal atmospheric pressure.

But, as noted above, that would turn M23b into a criterion for something to count as water, and hence into yet another rule!

However, if anyone still objects to this particular example, substitute the following for M23, M23a, and M24, etc.:

That having been done, not much will change -- i.e., with respect to the argument presented in this section of the Essay.

89. That was, of course, the point of calling motion "The mode of the existence of matter" (on that, see Note 89a, below).

From P4 alone it is clear that the connection between motion and matter is meant to be conceptual. Since "modes" can't be experienced, this could hardly be otherwise. As Lenin might have said, P4 is a "law of cognition".

89a. Had this been based on evidence, Lenin would have said something like the following: "Motion without matter has never been observed, but it is impossible to say if it can't exist in any other way...", or something to that effect. But, Lenin and Engels went much, much further:

"In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring (read by Marx in the manuscript): 'The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is proved...by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural science....' 'Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there be....'" [Lenin (1914), p.8. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has there been matter without motion, nor can there be. Matter without motion is just as inconceivable as motion without matter. Motion is therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself; as the older philosophy (Descartes) expressed it, the quantity of motion existing in the world is always the same. Motion therefore cannot be created; it can only be transferred. When motion is transferred from one body to another, it may be regarded, in so far as it transfers itself, is active, as the cause of motion, in so far as the latter is transferred, is passive. We call this active motion force, and the passive, the manifestation of force. Hence it is as clear as daylight that a force is as great as its manifestation, because in fact the same motion takes place in both. A motionless state of matter is therefore one of the most empty and nonsensical of ideas...." [Engels (1976), p.74. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

90. That does doesn't imply the present author accepts the CTT, or any version of the 'picture theory of representation' -- but Lenin seems to have done so.

On this basis, empirical propositions are said to "picture" certain states of affairs in the world (so that if what they say obtains they are true, and if what they say doesn't, they are false), but that is a grammatical point about how we use certain expressions (which is itself contingent on how we have developed as a species and how we communicate with one another; it isn't not a 'necessary truth about representation as such'). In which case, this is just another "form of representation", not a philosophical theory about reality -- or even about 'the nature of the proposition'. Social practices ground this rule, not a priori 'truths', 'valid in all possible worlds'.

Of course, we could always say that it is thought that connects a sentence with the world, but that would simply push the problem one stage further back.

So, if a 'thought', "T", or some other 'act of cognition' were required to connect an empirical proposition, "E", to the a specific feature of the world, "F", then an explanation would be required for what connects T to E, and then what links either or both to F, and nothing else. Clearly, an answer to that couldn't appeal to a linguistic characterisation of F (call that, "P"), or it would become circular. It takes very little thought now to see this is yet another dead end, since without P we wouldn't know precisely what T or E were in fact related to 'in reality'. So, if this theory were true, 'thought' would take precedence over 'reality', the exact opposite result to whatever it was that DM-theorists had sought, but an outcome that is itself hardly surprising given its origin in mystical Hegelianism. In addition, questions would then focus on the supposed link between F and P, which would soon spiral off into yet another infinite regress.

[Expressed differently, this was in fact one of the main themes of Wittgenstein's Tractatus [i.e., Wittgenstein (1972)]. The CTT itself flounders on this rock, too, which means that, contrary to widely held views, the Tractatus doesn't contain, or express, a version of the CTT, nor one remotely like it. Wittgenstein's concern there was to examine, and then specify, the logical principles underlying our capacity to represent the world. (There will be more on this in Essays Three Part Four and Ten Part Two. Until then, the reader is directed to White (2006) for more details.)]

Nevertheless, sentences are material objects (or 'processes') in their own right. They exist as marks on the page or as sound patterns in the air, etc. In that case, it is difficult to see what could correctly connect just this set of molecules (constituting a written expression of a particular thought, or, if spoken, just this disturbance in the air) with another set of molecules or neural processes from which its 'mental' analogue is supposed to have 'emerged'. Since the word "correctly" introduces normativity into the equation, it isn't easy to see what could possibly do this that wasn't itself the result of another damaging concession to anthropomorphism --, duplicating in the brain an analogue of the social practices that already underpin the normative use of language in everyday life.

If such a connection is to have the required normative force -- necessary in order to judge a particular use of language to be correct -- then that would appear to commit us to the odd idea that social practices must in fact take place inside the head or in 'the mind'/'consciousness'. Failing that, it might even seem to commit us to the theory that 'thoughts' enjoy a communal life of their own inside each skull. In other words, this would be tantamount to regarding words as social agents, which 'determine' their own 'correct' meaning and 'correct' application, thus dictating to us how we must employ them. As has been pointed out several times already, that would not only fetishise words, it would dehumanises us.

[That topic was explored in Essay Three Part Two; it has also been discussed more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Some might object to all this emphasis on linguistic 'correctness' since it smacks of elitism, or even of small "c" conservatism. Any who do so object should never be given a job in the proof-reading department of a revolutionary paper, or a socialist publishing house. where ordinary (and correct) use is required in order to communicate accurately and efficiently with 99% of the population.

Independently of that, the above 'elitist' jibe isn't apt -- at least, not unless we are prepared to call Lenin and Trotsky "elitists". Here is Lenin arguing that it is important to be clear about the meaning of key words:

"'Sense-perception is the reality existing outside us'!! This is just the fundamental absurdity, the fundamental muddle and falsity of Machism, from which flows all the rest of the balderdash of this philosophy and for which Mach and Avenarius have been embraced by those arrant reactionaries and preachers of priestlore, the immanentists. However much V. Bazarov wriggled, however cunning and diplomatic he was in evading ticklish points, in the end he gave himself away and betrayed his true Machian character! To say that 'sense-perception is the reality existing outside us' is to return to Humism, or even Berkeleianism, concealing itself in the fog of 'co-ordination.' This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the reality existing outside us, it is only the image of that reality. Are you trying to make capital of the ambiguous Russian word sovpadat? Are you trying to lead the unsophisticated reader to believe that sovpadat here means 'to be identical,' and not 'to correspond'? That means basing one's falsification of Engels à la Mach on a perversion of the meaning of a quotation, and nothing more. Take the German original and you will find there the words stimmen mit, which means to correspond with, 'to voice with' -- the latter translation is literal, for Stimme means voice. The words 'stimmen mit' cannot mean 'to coincide' in the sense of 'to be identical.' And even for the reader who does not know German but who reads Engels with the least bit of attention, it is perfectly clear, it cannot be otherwise than clear, that Engels throughout his whole argument treats the expression 'sense-perception' as the image (Abbild) of the reality existing outside us, and that therefore the word 'coincide' can be used in Russian exclusively in the sense of 'correspondence,' 'concurrence,' etc. To attribute to Engels the thought that 'sense-perception is the reality existing outside us' is such a pearl of Machian distortion, such a flagrant attempt to palm off agnosticism and idealism as materialism, that one must admit that Bazarov has broken all records!

"One asks, how can sane people in sound mind and judgment assert that 'sense-perception [within what limits is not important] is the reality existing outside us'? The earth is a reality existing outside us. It cannot 'coincide' (in the sense of being identical) with our sense-perception, or be in indissoluble co-ordination with it, or be a 'complex of elements' in another connection identical with sensation; for the earth existed at a time when there were no men, no sense-organs, no matter organised in that superior form in which its property of sensation is in any way clearly perceptible. That is just the point, that the tortuous theories of 'co-ordination,' 'introjection,' and the newly-discovered world elements which we analysed in Chapter I serve to cover up this idealist absurdity. Bazarov's formulation, so inadvertently and incautiously thrown off by him, is excellent in that it patently reveals that crying absurdity, which otherwise it would have been necessary to excavate from the piles of erudite, pseudo-scientific, professorial rigmarole." [Lenin (1972), pp.124-26. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases and links added. Several paragraphs merged.]

"Try for once to think over the words you use to compile your phrases, comrades!" [Lenin, 'Intellectualist Warriors Against Domination by the Intelligentsia', Nashe Ekho, No.5, March 30, 1907. Quoted from here. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Apparently, even the bourgeois press gets the point. Here is the soft left, reformist UK paper, The Daily Mirror, which knows the importance of using the correct words (in this case, appearing in an article about the difference between "migrant" and "refugee"):

"Using the right words for the right things is very important. It's how we manage to communicate across languages and borders, via keyboards and tweets and picture captions. Using the wrong words means you stop communicating -- it means that at best you begin to mislead, and at worst you lie. For example, Newton's law of gravity states that the force of attraction between two bodies is directly proportional to the products of their mass. In other words, apples fall downwards because the earth is bigger than an apple. Imagine if just one of those words meant the opposite of what we think it does. We couldn't send a lander to Mars because we wouldn't know where it was, jet engines would make no sense so there'd be no package holidays, and we'd all think dancing on the ceiling like Lionel Richie was an option. If you don't get the words right, you get everything else wrong." [The Daily Mirror, 02/09/2015. Paragraphs merged. Bold emphases and link added.]

It could now be argued that all this gets things completely the wrong way round -- material reality precedes thought. So whatever connects certain aspects of reality, such as F (from earlier) to T (also from earlier) -- or even to P (ditto) -- must be objective already. The failure to acknowledge this basic fact means the above comments are completely misguided.

The issues raised by that rejoinder are connected with the RRT, which will be examined and explained in detail in Part Four of this Essay. [Until then, follow the first of the above links.]

In advance of that, it is worth pointing out that Essays at this site have been at pains to distinguish an anthropological account of language from theories of language that descend into, are based on, or which imply some form of LIE. Indeed, it has been argued that theories of language that run contrary to the approach adopted at this site readily collapse into LIE, since, at some point, they depend on a fetishisation of language (as noted above). In so doing, they invert the products of social interaction, turning them into the real relations between things, or into those things themselves.

Furthermore, attempts to construct (associated) theories of knowledge face a similar fate; the 'truth' of any of the claims that emerge will follow solely from the supposed meaning of the words they contain, not from the way the world happens to be. That is because the expressions used won't have been derived from a material interaction with the world (in collective labour, etc.), but from a series of arcane abstractions divorced from it -- as well as from the beliefs and ideological priorities of theorists who are determined to keep them that way.

Now, this Essay and others seek to undermine the traditional view by showing that an anthropological account of language reveals how empirical propositions -- whose truth-values don't depend solely on the meanings of words, but on the way the world happens to be (and whose truth conditions are constituted by rules of grammar that are themselves based on social practices, on an interaction with the world and with other human beings) -- gain the sense they have.

It is also argued that it would be a serious error to claim that something called "the Mind"/"consciousness" (somehow) creates such truths -- which is, of course, the underlying rationale of all forms of Idealism -- and which, it seems, is also the view held by those who indulge in "subjective dialectics". [There is much more on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

"Dialectics, so-called objective dialectics, prevails throughout nature, and so-called subjective dialectics (dialectical thought), is only the reflection of the motion through opposites which asserts itself everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the opposites and their final passage into one another, or into higher forms, determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954), p.211, quoted from here. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Nevertheless, while it is human beings who form/utter empirical propositions, it is the world that distributes truth-values among them. Hence, it is what we humans say that is capable of being true or false, and even though the meanings of the words we use haven't themselves been established under conditions of our own choosing (to paraphrase Marx), it is human beings who nevertheless established those meanings -- in and by their practices, their interaction with each other and interface with the physical world, but not in general as a result of individual or collective deliberation. All this hasn't been done to us, or for, us by the universe, and that is because, of course, nature itself isn't an agent and has no social history.

In response, it could be argued that human beings are part of nature. In that case, the above comments are misguided, once more

The first of the above two sentences is undeniably correct; but the crucial point is that nature itself isn't an agent, while humanity is.

Indeed, if we were to suppose that the natural world, or parts of it, determined the conditions under which we held empirical propositions true -- perhaps as a result of the influence of an as yet unknown 'causal-', or 'dialectical-law'; i.e., if we naturalise epistemology and/or semantics -- then, in those circumstances, inferences could be made from the meaning of words to the truth-values of the propositions in which they occurred. That is because, in such circumstances, the sense of a proposition wouldn't be independent of its truth-value.

[Those who actually reason along the above lines (in favour of just such a 'naturalisation') tend to focus on sentences -- i.e., on the vocalisation or the inscription of such sentences --, and won't have anything to do with propositions. On this, see Glock (2003), pp.102-36 (especially, pp.118-36). Cf., also, White (1971).]

To see this (at least in relation to DM-theorists), let us suppose there is a (naive) theory that postulates the existence of a (dialectical?) Law, L₁, which specifies that given a certain state or process in the world, S₁, observer, O₁, would be constrained to form a true proposition, P₁, even if at present we don't know what this 'Law' is, or, indeed, even if we never actually find out what it is.

[And by "state/process in the world", we can include all the relevant neural, psychological, 'emergent' or 'dialectical' concomitants applicable in this instance, as required.]

Clearly, falsehoods can't be produced in this way since, if a sentence is false, what it says doesn't obtain. In that case, such a non-obtaining fact couldn't exercise a causal influence on anything at all, and if that is so, only true propositions (like P₁) would be causally induced in this way by such a process.

[In which case, we need a more sophisticated account of the dialectical/causal factors involved. On that see below.]

The above argument doesn't rule out 'negative causation', but it isn't easy to see how it would, or could, work in this case. [Examples of 'negative causation' were given here. See also here.]

So, while it might be false to say, for example, "There is a cat on the mat" when there is no cat on the mat, the absence of that cat on that mat can't have caused what was actually said to be false, even though what was said would be false because there was no cat on the mat. ["Because", here clearly relates to the reasons why what was said was indeed false, not the alleged cause of that falsehood. On the difference between "because" and "cause", see Essay Thirteen Part Three.]

Plainly, there would be nothing cat-like on the mat to cause this or any equivalent sentence to be uttered. A total lack of feline members of the animal kingdom, where that cat should have been, can't motivate or evince an utterance of the falsehood "There is a cat on the mat" -- unless, of course, this were some sort of secret code, uttered perhaps between spies (but cased by what we will have to pass over in silence; is there really a law that determines what spies utter? On the other hand, it might motivate or evince its (true) contradictory "The cat isn't on the mat" -- or, more likely, "There is no cat on that mat" (in contradiction to "There is a cat on that mat", where the mat in question is identified by a pointing gesture or is made perfectly clear in some other way). Nevertheless, a specific cat being on a specific mat can't have caused the utterance of the falsehood "The cat is on the mat" (jokes and playfulness to one side) -- since it wasn't there to cause anything!

[In more complicated circumstances, the causal antecedents and surroundings of the utterance "There is a cat on the mat", when there isn't one on the mat, will be far more involved than the mere fact that the said moggie was absent. (Several examples of this are given below.) This would merely complicate the picture, but not materially alter it. An absent cat, on its own, can't be part of some unknown causal law that prompts, or could prompt, the utterance of the falsehood "There is a cat on the mat", any more than it would prompt "Paris is in China".]

It might be countered that the absence of the said cat could cause, motivate, or prompt the utterance of the truth "There isn't a cat on the mat" (or, "There is no cat on the mat!"). However, not even that is plausible (except, perhaps, in special circumstances -- such as it being uttered during a search for the said cat, maybe as a way of eliminating one or more of its possible locations, or even to reassure someone who is perhaps hallucinating cats everywhere), since a cat-free-mat could evince any number of utterances, such as "This place needs hoovering!", "The dog has run off again!", "I see your father has been over today and left that awful mat in the hall again!", "Is this a non-slip mat?", "Yes, the mat is still covering that ink stain", "Oh dear, the mat salesman clearly saw you coming!", "Where are my shoes? They were on the mat a minute ago!", and so on, ad nauseam.

[It isn't to the point, either, to argue that not all of the above examples are in the indicative mood, since the whole point is to show that a cat-free-mat can evince a whole range of responses, some (possibly) predictable from the surrounding circumstances, some not, making an appeal to a causal or 'dialectical' law here seem seriously misguided in such circumstances.]

Additionally, the naive version outlined above might find it hard to account for propositions that change from true to false, and back again, regularly, or rapidly -- such as "Today is Monday", "It's raining", or "The lights are green" -- or even, "There is a cat on the mat" (if the said animal couldn't make its mind up where to sit, and soon sloped off). It might also struggle with truths about the past, such as "Julius Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March". What sort of causal/dialectical law could account for utterances like these? Or even, "Julius Caesar lived to a ripe old age"?

Hence, in such circumstances, and given the naive version outlined above, only true sentences would be causally constrained in this way, by existent states of affairs. If so, knowing what a proposition meant would be all that one would require in order to know it was true -- that it had been produced 'in the mind' by one of these (actual) states of affairs. The truth of an indicative sentence would be all of a piece with its meaning, and we could dispense with the need for supporting evidence.

In this way, it should perhaps be clear why even an (allegedly) scientific law-governed account of meaning in language (which adopted the naive version outlined above) would collapse into LIE.

Someone could object that a false belief (as opposed to an absent state of affairs) might cause the utterance/production of P₁, short-circuiting the above argument. However, as we will see in Essay Three Part Four, this theory can't even account for false beliefs, so that isn't a viable objection. Anyway, that objection will be defused below.

However, if we now try to complicate matters and move away from the naive version, not much changes.

To that end, consider a set of circumstances, "C", that is indefinitely large, which might prompt, or occasion, the utterance of a given indicative sentence. As we have seen, both "There is a cat on the mat" and "There isn't a cat on the mat" could be occasioned by a seemingly irrelevant set of circumstances or alternative motivations (call that set, "C_C"). For instance, the latter could be that it is:

(ix) An inference: "If you're right, and the cat is outside chasing birds, then the cat isn't on the mat"...,

If so, the prospects of finding a law that would cover all of these (when we don't even know which circumstances are or aren't elements of C_C, or what sentences would, or could, be evinced by a cat-free, or even a cat-occupied mat, and are never likely to find out, either) do not look at all promising. Indeed, the likelihood that there is just such a law (whether or not we know what it is) is vanishingly small. What law could possibly cause, or allow anyone to predict that you would utter these sentences (upon seeing either an empty mat or a cat-occupied mat) "Where's the dog?", "The mat is in the way again!", "I thought you said you had sold that threadbare mat!", "That reminds me, we need cat food", "I thought you promised to keep that stray cat out of the kitchen!", "Did you take the cat to the vet's?","The cat has pinched the dog's mat again!", "Where's that darned cat? I saw it on the mat a few minutes ago", "Quick take a picture. The cat has fallen asleep and it looks so cute!", "Looks like the pepper spray worked!", "Did you remember to pick up the Cats Versus Dogs DVD?", "That reminds me, is Mat still at school? Or has he come home yet?", or...? "So, what's your next line in the play? I thought it was 'The cat isn't on the mat'", but you now tell me it's been axed."

Of course, it is possible for the above conclusions to be disputed on more substantive grounds. One of these might involve the idea that there could be material principles at work here, which we do not yet understand, or about which we are now completely ignorant, and about which we might forever remain ignorant, that constitute a 'causal-', or 'dialectical-law' that governs what we say, and when we say it. Perhaps a combination of 'dialectically'-, or 'historically-conditioned-' causes could create in our brains (or could allow our minds to respond to) the neurological conditions that prompt the uttering of a given sentence. This could even be part of our evolutionary heritage, one that enables our brains to be flexible and hence capable of reacting in an open-ended manner to anything we might encounter. Clearly, that set of possibilities wouldn't be affected by our subjective understanding or knowledge -- or even our lack of subjective understanding or knowledge -- of these supposed casual laws. Speakers of a language needn't, therefore, be aware of all (or any) of the causes underlying the utterance of specific sentences, which means that the above inference from meaning to truth is invalid.

Unfortunately, that reply substitutes speculation or even science fiction, for hard science.

[I have covered the problems introduced into philosophy by science fiction in Essay Thirteen Part Three, here.]

First, in response, it is worth pointing out that the above objection ignores the point made earlier. That is, how such a law -- even if we don't currently know what it is, and might never know --, how such a law can explain, or be used to predict, the countless responses that a cat either on, or not on, a mat might evince. [This point also applies to a set of laws that might be postulated here, too.]

In addition, the formulation of any such 'dialectical-law' would itself be the result of another fetishisation of the products of the social relations among human beings. [On that, see the next two Parts of this Essay.] Hence, their re-employment here to try to argue that the products of social relations in fact actually depend on them (that is, the claim that the linguistic products of inter-personal interaction and social convention depend on such 'laws'), not the other way round, wouldn't just be circular, it would undermine the capacity language has for allowing us to say anything at all (true or false). [Why that is so will be explained below.]

Second, as noted above, that objection ignores falsehood. If there were some 'dialectical-' (or even 'non-dialectical-') law, or laws, that conditioned language in this way -- even if we were forever ignorant of it, or them -- it/they could only produce truths, hence all the earlier points still stand.

It could be argued in reply that DM postulates an array of social, economic, political and historical factors that are dialectically responsible for the production of a range of ideological concepts, so it isn't the case that dialectical-laws would only ever produce truths. However, that specific topic will be dealt with at length in Essay Three Part Four; the reader is referred to that discussion for a more detailed rebuttal (when it is finally published).

In advance of that Essay being published, the above pro-DM response, if it were ever put forward, would represent an unwise move, anyway. That is because it is based on the mistaken view that (by means of empirical propositions) we can specify what the conditions are that lend to language the sense it has. But that approach would impose a certain structure on reality -- i.e., a transcendental condition on the possibility of language --, something DM-theorists, at least, pretend to disavow.

It could now be argued that the above comments were restricted to true or false reports of the immediate surroundings or circumstances of an utterance -- sometimes called "occasion" and "observation" sentences. As such it ignores true and false utterances in general. In which case, it has failed to consider true or false propositions/sentences like these: "New Orleans is larger than Los Angeles", "US GDP rose by 1.6% in 2016", "Cats are herbivores", "Steve Bannon was fired on the 18th of August 2017", "Flu is caused by Orthomyxoviruses", or "Concentrated Sodium Hydroxide is good for the complexion".

That is a valid point, and will be considered in detail in Essay Three Part Four -- and partly below.

To those who feel that the above responses undermine materialist explanations of 'the mind', its properties or its 'linguistic output', it is worth pointing out that an anthropological account of the origin of language is thoroughly materialist. It grounds discourse in social interaction, just as it views language as a product of the interplay between human beings in cooperative labour, communal life and as they interact with the material world of everyday experience. The postulation of the existence of yet undiscovered (and what amount to anthropomorphic) 'laws' to account for language would be completely circular (for reasons outlined above and explored in more detail in Part Seven of this Essay).

In addition, supporters of Lenin's account of matter, who might object to the anthropological account promoted at this site, will need to be far clearer about what they themselves mean by "matter", "law" and "cause" before their objections merit serious consideration. As we will see in Essay Thirteen Parts One and Three, on this score at least, their ideas aren't in the game. Nor are they even on the sub's bench.

More importantly, however, the claim (advanced at this site) that the sense of a proposition is independent of its actual truth-value is just one way of making the point that language is a social, not a 'natural', product. That observation isn't dependent on speakers of the language being aware of the truths that supposedly underpin the sense of a proposition, as the counter-argument volunteered above would seem to suggest. The approach adopted here maintains that the sense of a proposition can't depend on any truths -- or even falsehoods -- let alone upon those about which we might be unaware.

[Once again it is important to distinguish the sense of a proposition from its truth-value. The truth or the falsehood of a proposition often does depend on the truth of other propositions, but as this Essay has shown that isn't the case with its sense. The argument in support of that contention is summarised below.]

Once more: Let us suppose there is a Law, L₂, about which we as yet know nothing, that specifies that given a certain state in the world, S₂, observer O₂ would be constrained to form a true proposition P₂. Again, falsehoods can't be produced in this way since, if a sentence is false then what it says doesn't obtain, and what doesn't obtain can't exercise a causal influence on anything (saving, of course, complex examples of negative causation). Hence, only true propositions like P₂ will be evinced by such a process.

Now, the fact that we can and do make false claims about nature and society is sufficient to refute this view of language and 'Law'.

So, either way, whether or not we know what any such 'Law' actually is, since only true observation sentences would be so conditioned, knowing what a proposition meant would be all that would be required to declare it true -- that is, that it had been produced 'in the mind' by an existent state of affairs. Truth would now follow from meaning, and we could dispense with the need for supporting evidence, once more. Moreover, if the truth of a proposition followed from meaning, all the problems outlined in this Essay would kick-in, and that would undermine the capacity language had of allowing us to say anything at all (true or false), as noted earlier.

It could be objected that the above response attributes a far too simplistic set of ideas to those who might disagree with the approach adopted at this site. True and false beliefs are formed in far more complex ways, and it is difficult to think of anyone who would argue that true beliefs are caused by actually existing states of affairs, at least not as supposed in this Essay.

In that case, let us now suppose there exists a complex set of laws and physical or psychological processes, C, that prompt an individual, NN, to think, formulate, consider, ponder, utter, write, or otherwise ruminate upon, say, sentence/proposition, P₃. Even then, NN will need to understand P₃ before he/she knows whether it is true or whether it is false. Hence, whatever prompts NN to think, formulate, consider, ponder, utter, write, or otherwise ruminate upon P₃ will still have to be independent of its sense. That is because the mere formulation of P₃ won't determine the conditions under which it is true. P₃'s sense is related NN's understanding what would make P₃ true or would make P₃ false. It is unrelated to what actually makes it true or actually makes it false. Whatever it was that prompted NN to think, formulate, consider, ponder, utter, write, or otherwise ruminate upon P₃ wouldn't be what makes it true, or wouldn't be what makes it false, either. In both instances, it is the world that tells NN whether P₃ is true or whether it is false. If that weren't so, events and processes internal to NN would determine the truth or the falsehood of P₃, not the external world. In that case, even if there were a complex set of laws and/or physical or psychological processes that prompted NN to think, formulate, consider, ponder, utter, write, or otherwise ruminate upon P₃, that wouldn't affect the relevant points made in this Essay.

In addition, we have seen that there are good reasons to question naturalistic accounts of meaning like this -- i.e., those that are dependent on dispositional facts about human brains. The reader is therefore referred back to that discussion.

This topic is addressed more fully in Essay Three Part Four (see below) and Essay Thirteen Part Three -- where we will see there are more cogent reasons to question whether there could be a complex set of laws and/or physical or psychological processes that prompt NN to think, formulate, consider, ponder, utter, write, or otherwise ruminate upon P₃.

Finally, it could be countered that a scientific theory that explains how human understanding works will one day show how misguided the above comments are. Quite apart from the fact that this is yet another appeal to science fiction, I have responded to that specific point in Essay Thirteen Part Three -- particularly in Section Five.

[See also Note 93. On this topic in general, however, see Shanker (1998), Kripke (1982), and Kusch (2002, 2006).]

However, here is how I will tackle the problem of falsehood in Essay Three Part Four (yet to be published -- slightly edited):

Traditional attempts to account for falsehood faltered partly because of their links with earlier versions of the CTT in Plato and Aristotle's work. The latter held that a true proposition must correspond to a fact/process/state of affairs in reality; otherwise it would be false. The CTT will be examined in more detail later (in Essay Ten Part Two, when it is published), but for present purposes it is sufficient to point out that traditional versions of the CTT made it impossible to explain what exactly it was about false propositions that made them false. If a true proposition corresponds with a fact, then presumably a false one should fail to correspond with it. But, there might not always be such a fact for a false proposition to fail to correspond with. Indeed, if there wasn't, a false proposition could hardly fail to do that since it isn't possible to fail to correspond with something that doesn't exist. In that case, paradoxically, in such circumstances it wouldn't be false. However, obvious flaws like this consistently failed to stop determined souls from inventing convoluted and baroque philosophical theories to explain away such glaring flaws. Often this amounted to explaining falsehood as some defect of the imagination, blaming it on "imaginary conceptions", but that only succeeded in undermining the CTT even further, as we are about to see.

is false, there is no fact in the world that E1 fails to match in the required manner. There is no fact anywhere in reality -- such as, "Tony Blair isn't three feet tall" -- to which E1 fails to correspond. Nor is there a non-existent fact (a 'false fact', as some have called them -- almost as if there could be 'false truths'!) , namely, "Tony Blair is three feet tall", to which it does correspond. Of course, it is a fact that Blair isn't three feet tall (just as it is a fact that he is not three feet one inch tall, or three feet two inches tall..., along with countless other facts that could be specified about his height), but there is no identifiable part of reality answering to this fact (or, indeed, the countless other facts) to which E1 also fails to correspond.^EN1

Admittedly, it could be argued that E1 fails to correspond with the true proposition that records Blair's correct height (say, "Tony Blair is six feet tall" -- assuming for the purposes of this Essay that that is his correct height at a certain specific time of the day), and in this lies its falsehood. But, E1 also fails to correspond with all of the potentially infinite number of false propositions that also record his incorrect height. Hence, E1 in general fails to correspond with the following:

And, plainly, E2 isn't a fact, either! There is no part of reality that it represents; there is no configuration of matter anywhere in the universe that E2 'reflects' (and we can say that with supreme confidence since E2 is so vague). Hence, if the falsehood of E1 results from its failure to correspond with the true proposition that records Blair's correct height (i.e., "Tony Blair is six feet tall at 12 pm on the 30th October 2007"), it must also result from its failure to match each 'concrete' instance of E2, for any value of n other than 3. So, the falsehood of E1 isn't uniquely specified by its failure to match the true proposition that records Blair's correct height, which means we are no further forward.

and with a potentially infinite number of other sentences about everything and everyone. So, the falsehood of E1 isn't to be established by its failure to match the true proposition that records George W's correct military record (whichever of the two turn out to be the case), nor with countless other truths. Hence, we are even more in the dark.

Again, it could be argued that the falsehood of E1 results from its failure to correspond with whatever height Blair actually has, recorded by the following sentence:

Since E4 does record an identifiable part of the material world, and E1 fails to match it, E1 is false.

Admittedly, E1 fails to correspond with E4, but E4 is a proposition, not an extra-linguistic feature of reality. Hence, we still don't have a 'part of reality' that E1 fails to match.

It could be argued that the above response is specious, since it is plain that what is meant is that E1 fails to match what E4 expresses.

The problem here is that it is impossible to pick out specific items in the world that propositions like E1 match or fail to match. That is because E1 also fails to match (even if it is consistent with) the following aspect of reality expressed by yet another proposition:

E5 is also true, but the failure of E1 to correspond with it can't be what makes E1 false. And if that is so, it isn't easy to say what relevance the truth of E4 plays that the truth of E5 fails to do.

As we have seen, the link between true and false propositions is partly connected with (i) what it means for a linguistic expression to be a proposition in the first place, and (ii) with the use of negation in ordinary language. As it turns out, E1 is false because it is consistent with the negation of E4 (i.e., E4a), which we are assuming is true, and because both belong to a system of propositions that are connected with the practice of measuring (among other practices), and which have logical (or 'grammatical'/rule-governed, or even pragmatic) connections with each other. Unfortunately, such an account of falsehood isn't available to DM-theorists because of their unwise acceptance of Hegel's excessive 'tenderness towards' contradictions.

However, details of previous attempts to solve this insoluble 'problem' needn't detain us.

"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions." [Rees (1998), p.131.]

It is now only natural to ask: With what do "imaginary conceptions" correspond or fail to correspond? Strangely enough, if these odd entities really are imaginary they should 'correspond' with nothing at all (but that depends on have far we are prepared to stretch the meaning of "correspond"). If so, why are abstractions (such as facts) needed if speakers are able to distinguish fantasy from "actually existing phenomena"? Do we really need an abstraction to tell us whether the Tooth Fairy is imaginary or not?

Of course, Rees was clearly aiming his remarks at ideological constructions. But, an appeal to ideology -- or even 'false consciousness' -- would be of little help in any endeavour to distinguish truth from error. That is because ideological claims are partially false themselves; hence any attempt to explain falsehood this way would plainly be circular. It is of little assistance to be informed that "imaginary conceptions" are created by a false view of reality, when an explanation of falsehood was required to begin with.

Furthermore, an appeal to the 'one-sided' or 'partial' aspects of a proposition or a theory -- as a way of explaining why they are false -- won't work, either. And that isn't just because some 'one-sided' beliefs are true -- the following for example:

E11: "No two ways about it: the emancipation of the working class is an act of the working class."

[Naturally, the truth of E6, E7 and E8 depend on the present author interpreting the term "one-sided" literally, for once.]

It is also because the alleged limitations of a claim are never sufficient to make it false. Plainly, that is because a proposition is judged true or false in accord with extra-linguistic factors, not linguistic or psychological infelicities. Admittedly, unless a proposition were well-formed it would be incapable of being true or false -- but then, if it weren't well-formed, it wouldn't be a proposition to begin with.^EN2

Perhaps we should try to locate falsehood in the erroneous way the imagination (or the "understanding" -- which is a 'faculty' that was helpfully identified for us by Hegel, but without a single fact offered in support of that 'bold conjecture') puts certain ideas or concepts together? Of course, that (traditional) answer to the 'problem' of falsehood doesn't merit our respect simply because of its longevity; indeed, it is to be rejected because it, too, locates error in the supposed shortcomings of the individual concerned, not in any failure to accord with extra-linguistic factors. If a thought is well-formed (i.e., if it is expressed as a proposition), then a decision about its veracity must surely be reality-induced, not imagination-dependent. That is, indeed, why many falsehoods can and do become true (as we can see in connection with E12, below): because things change.^EN3 Falsehoods couldn't do this if they were dependent on obscure 'internal' factors of some sort (even if we knew what they were!).

Incidentally, that is also why the 'deficiency theory' of falsehood -- as it might be called -- is often aired in Idealist circles. If truth is the 'whole', then any claim that falls short of that must surely be 'partial' -- or 'one-sided'. Error could then be located in any mind that judged rashly or prematurely. That, of course, confuses why someone might say something with why it might be false.

Unfortunately, the obverse of this is the idea that no matter how ludicrous, no proposition could be absolutely false (and for similar reasons). Small wonder then that that approach found it difficult to cope with falsehood. On this view no proposition is ever really false, it is just, "relative", "one-sided", "partial" or 'underdeveloped' (or whatever).

Anyway, whatever they might say, in practice few dialecticians accept the idea that there are no completely false theories or propositions, even if they might sometimes tell their audience the opposite. Here, for instance, is Cornforth:

"Just as truths are for the most part only approximate and contain the possibility of being converted into untruths, so are many errors found not to be absolute falsehoods but to contain a germ of truth.... We should recognise, then, that certain erroneous views, including idealist views, could represent, in their time, a contribution to truth -- since they were, perhaps, the only ways in which certain truths could first begin to come to expression...." [Cornforth (1963), pp.138-39. Paragraphs merged. Bold emphasis added.]

Despite what Cornforth says, it would be impossible to find a "germ of truth" in any of the following:

(1) Ten litres of concentrated Nitric Acid applied directly to unprotected human skin dramatically improves the complexion if left there for several hours.

(2) "Jews, Slavs, Romanies, Arabs, Asians and Africans all belong to 'inferior, sub-human races'."

(3) "Capitalism is a genuine expression of eternally unchanging human nature, which is both acquisitive and selfish."

(4) "All women are completely happy with their oppression and are keen to be reminded of it on a daily basis."

(5) "Imperialism is 100% progressive everywhere, at all times, and always will be."

(6) "The Ku Klux Klan and the alt-right are exemplary leaders in the fight for Black Liberation and full equality for Muslims."

(7) In 2002, Iraq manufactured and stored more WMD than any other country in the entire history of the planet.

(8) The earth is supported by a colossal tortoise, on top of a huge locust, on top of a giant crab, on top of a...

(11) Karl Marx was a flagrant plagiarist from Mars who copied all his best ideas from George W Bush.

(12) "Anyone who wanders about aimlessly for several hours crossing and re-crossing a busy main road during the day while blindfolded will live a long and happy life."

(14) The world was created about 6000 years ago from a bowl of custard by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I suspect that anyone who questioned the truth of, say, (1) would be hard pressed to find a single revolutionary who agreed with (2). Naturally, that means the negation of (2) is absolutely true (for all revolutionaries).

On the other hand, if they were to reject as completely false one or both of these sentences -- i.e., (1) and/or (2) -- which they should(!), they would thereby have confirmed the point at issue: that is, if either one of those sentences is completely false, then there is at least one sentence (namely (1) or (2)) that is completely false. QED.

And, just in case these remarks attract the attention of any brass-necked, died-in-the-wool, hardcore Hegel Honchos, who might claim that one or more of the above are 'partially true', 'partially false', they should perhaps be encouraged to consider the following sentence:

Again, given the account being criticised at this site, the truth-value of a concept, judgement or proposition has been de-coupled from any consideration of the facts (which have now been reduced to the status of "mental generalisations") and made to depend on 'coherence' with other 'truths', 'judgements', 'abstractions', "mental generalisations", or even 'the Whole' -- perhaps even upon the deliverances of an 'Ideal Observer' in the 'ideal limit', to put it in terms Engels and Lenin would have recognised:

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004), pp.463-64. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.234-35. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

"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.]

"Cognition is the eternal, endless approximation of thought to the object." [Lenin (1961), p.195. Bold emphasis added.]

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93.]

"Dialectical materialism insists on the approximate, relative character of every scientific theory of the structure of matter and its properties; it insists on the absence of absolute boundaries in nature, on the transformation of moving matter from one state into another." [Lenin (1972), p.312.]

"'Here once again we find the same contradiction as we found above, between the character of human thought, necessarily conceived as absolute, and its reality in individual human beings with their extremely limited thought. This is a contradiction which can only be solved in the infinite progression, or what is for us, at least from a practical standpoint, the endless succession, of generations of mankind. In this sense human thought is just as much sovereign as not sovereign, and its capacity for knowledge just as much un limited as limited. It is sovereign and unlimited in its disposition..., its vocation, its possibilities and its historical ultimate goal; it is not sovereign and it is limited in its individual expression and in its realisation at each particular moment....'

"'Truth and error, like all thought-concepts which move in polar opposites, have absolute validity only in an extremely limited field, as we have just seen, and as even Herr Dühring would realise if he had any acquaintance with the first elements of dialectics, which deal precisely with the inadequacy of all polar opposites. As soon as we apply the antithesis between truth and error outside of that narrow field which has been referred to above it becomes relative and therefore unserviceable for exact scientific modes of expression; and if we attempt to apply it as absolutely valid outside that field we really find ourselves altogether beaten: both poles of the antithesis become transformed into their opposites, truth becomes error and error truth'.... Here follows the example of Boyle's law (the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to its pressure). The 'grain of truth' contained in this law is only absolute truth within certain limits. The law, it appears, is a truth 'only approximately'.

"Human thought then by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths. Each step in the development of science adds new grains to the sum of absolute truth, but the limits of the truth of each scientific proposition are relative, now expanding, now shrinking with the growth of knowledge." [Ibid., pp.150-51, quoting Engels (1976), pp.108-09, 114. The on-line and published translations are slightly different. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and link added.]

Other DM-fans agree (and that largely because they all think 'surface appearance' is 'contradicted' by underlying 'essence', by 'abstractions'):

"A 'concrete' truth is a logical system of abstractions multilaterally reflecting the real concrete. One truth is more concrete than another to the extent to which it reflects more essential traits of the investigated object. Concrete truth like absolute truth, can only be reached asymptotically ad infinitum." [Wald (1975), p.35. Quotation marks altered to conform with conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original.]

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

"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....

"Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised....

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

"To take each and every quality displayed by an object or even at face value would necessarily mean that neither a scientific nor a philosophic account could be given of it.

Anyway, as we shall see, this view of falsehood in fact undermines the CTT. Naturally, this makes DM theorists' adherence to both theories (i.e., the CTT and the COT) problematic, to say the least.

For all that, even given the truth of this aspect of DM, it would still be impossible to say which combination of concepts or ideas are or aren't illegitimate without a reference to the syntactic preconditions a linguistic expression must fulfil in order for it to count as a proposition (or judgement), to begin with. And that would clearly make this attempt to explain falsehood susceptible to the difficulties noted above -- that is (minor typos, slips of the tongue and colloquialisms, etc., to one side) if a sentence isn't well-formed it can't be a proposition and hence it would be incapable of being true or false.

As now seem clear, traditional approaches to this 'problem' actually got things completely the wrong way round. An emphasis on concepts, ideas or abstractions as vehicles of truth (partial or otherwise) depends on a atomistic theory of language, since it holds that concepts, ideas or abstractions can be true on their own. For Idealists, at least, such a theory didn't sit well with the Holism they promoted elsewhere. But, as any competent user of the language already knows, we neither connect together first -- nor compare with the world second -- isolated ideas, concepts, or sentence fragments. As Socrates pointed out, our assent to any truth often depends on our being reminded of the obvious. In the present case, this is something that was in front of us all along: when making empirical claims we typically use sentences whose main verb is in the indicative mood. If anything is a fact, that is.

In connection with their theories of falsehood traditional philosophers completely ignored this platitude. This allowed them to forget that while the mere possibilities of truth and falsehood (as 'properties' of 'judgements', if you will) were consequent on the formation of certain kinds of indicative sentences, their truth-values were dependent on the facts (etc.) -- that is, on the way the world happens to be. Falsehood doesn't result from the comparison of concepts, ideas or mental generalisations with anything -- plainly, it isn't possible to compare a concept or idea with anything in reality. That is of course because there are no concepts or ideas in the world 'outside' of the mind for them to be so compared, nor are there concept-like 'things' in nature. It is rather odd that materialists like Engels and Lenin seemed to forget this very material fact. [Claims to the contrary were laid to rest in Essay Three Parts One and Two.]

Unfortunately, the problems facing the traditional approach to knowledge don't stop there (and that includes DM versions of this idea). If truth and falsehood are to be explicated by means of a theory aimed at relating true sentences to the facts, so that the truth predicate ("ξ is true") ends up being misinterpreted as a relational expression (i.e., one that implies or expresses a 'correspondence relation' between propositions and obscure items in 'reality'), then it is hardly surprising that it becomes impossible to specify what falsehoods could possibly relate to. On this view, there would be nothing for them to so correspond; one half of the alleged relation would be missing for each false proposition. Small wonder then that a problem like this arose out of yet another distortion of language, one that twisted the predicative use of truth into its relational misuse. [Again, this is covered in more detail in the above two Essays.]

Philosophers disposed to this way of theorising toyed with the idea that falsehoods perhaps referred to "false facts", or to "non-existent facts", but they had no clear idea what (or where) any of these 'fantastic beings' were located. Indeed, a false fact would make about as much sense as a counterfeit authentic coin, an imitation genuine Ming vase --, or even a reliable dodgy dossier. And, it would be little use anyone supposing that falsehoods correspond with the absence of whatever it was that would have made their contradictories true had they existed, since they would still correspond with nothing at all, except these 'absent facts'. And, absent facts are just as much of a liability as "imaginary conceptions" ever were.^EN4

At this point, we are no nearer understanding what it is that makes truths true or falsehoods false according to the traditional approach and the approach adopted by Dialectical Marxists, and that is independent of whether all the earlier worries about the abstract and the concrete were themselves justified, or not.

EN1. Of course, this just shows how complex our use of the word "fact" is. Even though it is a fact that Tony Blair isn't three feet tall, nothing in reality answers to it, whereas something does answer to the fact that he has two hands.

But, the CTT (as it is traditionally expressed) mentions nothing of these. And even if it did, it would be of little help: logical relationships between propositions might help us to decide which were inconsistent with which, but they can't tell us which are true and which are false (although they might inform us which must be true if others are true/false). Indeed, two or more inconsistent propositions could all be false. For example, "Blair is five feet tall" is inconsistent with "Blair is four feet tall"; both are inconsistent with E1, and all are false.

EN2. This doesn't represent a concession to the CTT since no theoretical claims are being advanced here. It simply amounts to an observation about how we (typically) use the words "true" and "false".

EN3. For example, although it is false (at the time of writing) that Theresa May is an ex-Prime Minister of the UK, mercifully one day it won't be. Now, that couldn't happen if falsehood were a mere 'failing' that was sensitive to the 'internal operations of the mind' (the 'process of cognition', etc.), the 'development of concepts', or, even if it were a consequence of 'partial'/'one-sided knowledge' (etc.).

EN4. However, if the CTT were true, it would suggest that if facts were indeed identifiable items in the world that made true sentences true (in contemporary jargon, if they were "truth-makers"), 'the presence of absent facts' should make falsehoods false. This we may (ironically) call the 'Correspondence Theory of Falsehood'. However -- and this is no accident --, the linguistic expression of such 'absent facts' turn out to be the negations of the true propositions that contradicted those very same falsehoods. So it looks like the notions of truth, falsehood and contradiction can't be prised apart, after all. In which case, we needn't appeal to correspondence relations to explain truth or falsehood: a proposition isn't false because it 'corresponds', or fails to 'correspond', with something in reality, but, at a minimum, because it is the contradictory of a true proposition. Of course, this account, which bypasses metaphysical correspondence relations, isn't available to those who cast doubt on the LOC (as a rule of language, not a 'Super-Scientific Truth' that isn't always true!).

Naturally, the above is scarcely an adequate account of truth or falsehood, but it does conform more closely to how we ordinarily understand and use these terms. Anyway, given the philosophical stance adopted at this site, not only do we have no need of a theory of truth and falsehood, none could be given -- so no attempt will be made to construct one. I will endeavour to explain more fully why that is so in Essays Ten Part Two (not yet published) and Twelve Part One.

91. This idea is elaborated on in Suter (1989), passim, and in Glock (1996), pp.261-62, 293-96. See also Baker and Hacker (2009), pp.41-67, 241-370, and Peterman (1992). However, the best recent work on this is Fischer (2011a, 2011b).

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

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

"In our eagerness to ensure the objectivity of truths of reason, their sempiternality and mind-independence, we slowly but surely transform them into truths that are no less 'brutish' than empirical, contingent truths. Why must red exclude being green? To be told that this is the essential nature of red and green merely reiterates the brutish necessity. A proof in arithmetic or geometry seems to provide an explanation, but ultimately the structure of proofs rests on axioms. Their truth is held to be self-evident, something we apprehend by means of our faculty of intuition; we must simply see that they are necessarily true…. We may analyse such ultimate truths into their constituent 'indefinables'. Yet if 'the discussion of indefinables…is the endeavour to see clearly, and to make others see clearly, the entities concerned, in order that the mind may have that kind of acquaintance with them which it has with redness or the taste of a pineapple' [Russell (1937), p.xv (this links to a PDF); again these authors record this erroneously as p.v; although in the edition to which I have linked, it is p.xliii -- RL], then the mere intellectual vision does not penetrate the logical or metaphysical that to the why or wherefore…. For if we construe necessary propositions as truths about logical, mathematical or metaphysical entities which describe their essential properties, then, of course, the final products of our analyses will be as impenetrable to reason as the final products of physical theorising, such as Planck's constant." [Baker and Hacker (1992), pp.273-75. Referencing conventions in the original have been altered to conform with those adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original; links added.]

Chomsky, N. (2009), Cartesian Linguistics. A Chapter In The History Of Rationalist Thought (Cambridge University Press, 3^rd ed.).