Essay Twelve: Metaphysics -- A Ruling-Class Thought-Form
Warning: Many of the links below will not work for several weeks while this site is being re-built.
Readers should make note of the fact that this Essay does not represent my final views on any of the issues raised. It is merely 'work in progress'.
If you are viewing this using Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.
This has been one of the most difficult of these Essays to write, since (1) it tackles issues that have sailed right over the heads of some of the greatest minds in history, and (2) it is not easy to expose the weaknesses of traditional philosophy in everyday language -- even though, after well over fifty re-writes (in fact, this Essay was first written in August 1998), I think I have managed to do this.
Nevertheless, the ideas presented here in no way affect the negative case I have constructed against dialectics, but they do help form the basis of my positive account of the origin of the doctrines found both in DM and traditional Metaphysics.
I claim no particular originality for what follows (except, perhaps the highly simplified mode of presentation and political slant I have placed upon these ideas); much of it has in fact been derived from Wittgenstein's work -- and less importantly, from that of several others.
Nevertheless, I have tried as far as possible to keep this Essay free of academic complexities since it is aimed at revolutionaries, not scholars. In that case, anyone who wants to read more substantial accounts of the approach to language and traditional Philosophy I have adopted here should consult the many works I have referenced in the End Notes and in later Essays on language to be published here over the coming years.
Apologies are therefore due in advance to those who know enough of Wittgenstein's work to make these ideas seem rather trite and banal -- but many Marxists are not well-versed in this area of Analytic Philosophy, and they do not find these concepts at all easy to grasp. So I have worded this Essay with them in mind, which means that I have tried to make things as simple and straight-forward as possible.
However, to save me having repeatedly to say that many of the ideas mentioned here will be developed in more detail in Essays on the nature of science, 'cognition' and language (to be published at this site over the next year or so), I will just highlight this fact with a red asterisk: *
Connected with the last point is the following word of warning: this Essay is more repetitive than most of the others published so far at this site. Experience has taught me that if the difficult ideas it contains are not repeated often they either tend not to sink in or their significance is lost -- this is especially so with regard to the Marxist readers mentioned above.
Finally, it is worth pointing out at the start that in this Essay, although I refer to the sense of a proposition as those conditions under which it is deemed true or false, this is merely a shorthand for the requirement of (true/false) bi-polarity, and has only been adopted to save on needless pedantry, in what is not meant to be an academic paper.
The subtle differences between these two ways of characterising the sense of propositions is explained in Palmer (1996).01
This Essay is over 72,500 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be found here.
Quick Links
Anyone using these links must remember that they will be skipping past supporting argument and evidence set out in earlier sections:
(b) Indicative Sentences Are Not What They Seem
(ii) Contradictory -- Or Just Unthinkable?
(3) Metaphysics And Language: 1
(a) The Conventional Nature Of Discourse
(i) Camera Obscura
(ii) Atomism Among Dialecticians
(iii) The Conventional Response From Dialecticians
(v) Avoiding An Infinite Regress
(b) The Inevitable Collapse Into Non-Sense
(i) Private Ownership In the Means Of 'Mental' Production
(ii) Semantic Suicide
(iii) Metaphysical Fiat -- Dogma On Stilts
(iv) The Evidential Pantomime -- Mickey Mouse Science Strikes Back
(v) The Descent Into Non-Sense
(ii) Dialectics Does Not
(e) Atomised Humanity Versus Socialised Language
(5) Metaphysics And Language: 2
(a) On The Impossibility Of Any Future Metaphysics
(6) Marx Anticipates Wittgenstein
(8) Notes
(9) References
Abbreviations Used At This Site
Among the aims of Essay Twelve are the following:
(1) To substantiate the claim that DM is a metaphysical theory (Part One);
(2) To show that Metaphysics and Traditional Philosophy are ruling-class forms-of-thought (Parts Two and Three);
(3) To trace the birth of the above back to the origins of certain forms of class society, link this with the world-view of various ruling elites, and connect both with the servile ideology displayed in the work of ruling-class thinkers -- and now DM-theorists (Parts Two, Three and Four);
(4) To expose the sub-logical, Hermetic ideas found in Hegel's work for what they are: incoherent babble (Parts Five and Six);
(5) To show that the defence of the vernacular is a class issue (Part Seven); and,
(6) To expose DM as a form of LIE (Part Four).
This will make Essay Twelve the longest so far published, hence its division into seven Parts.
However, many of my ideas in this area are still in the formative stage, so this Essay will be revised continuously and extensively (especially as more historical material comes to light).
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism; DM = Dialectical Materialism; MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, i.e., Lenin (1972); TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
As indicated above, each of the listed issues will be tackled in various Parts of this Essay, but to address the first we need to examine a rather odd statement made by Lenin.
Part One: Lenin And The 'Unthinkable'
In MEC, Lenin quoted the following words of Engels's:
M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]
Here, Lenin was making a typically metaphysical statement. Naturally, dialecticians will repudiate that assertion; nevertheless, it is possible to show that such a rejection would be as hasty as it is mistaken. [More on this below.]
It is worth noting at the outset that theses like M1 purport to inform us of fundamental aspects of nature, albeit in this case disguised as part of Lenin's admission of his own incredulity.
But, we are not to conclude from M1 that Lenin was merely recording his own personal views. On the contrary, he certainly believed that matter and motion were fundamental aspects of "objective reality"; that they were inseparable and that this was a scientific (or even a philosophical) fact. Moreover, like Engels, he held the view that motion was the mode of the existence of matter -– that is, he believed that matter could not exist without motion, nor vice versa. Motion was thus one of the principal ways that matter expressed itself exterior to the mind.
The metaphysical nature of Lenin's declaration can be seen by the way that it bypassed the need for any supporting evidence. It seemed to Lenin to be such an obvious 'fact' about matter and motion that to deny it was "unthinkable".1
However, if humanity had access to information about motion and matter many orders of magnitude greater than is available today, it would still not be enough to show that the separation of matter from motion is unthinkable. No amount of data could substantiate that.
Now, these assertions might strike some readers as rather difficult to swallow. Because of that, much of the rest of this Part of Essay Twelve will be aimed at undermining such reticence.
Indicative Of What?
The seemingly profound nature of theses like M1 is linked to rather more mundane features of the language in which they are expressed: that is, to the fact that the main verb they use is often in the indicative mood.
Sometimes, the latter is beefed-up with subjunctive and/or modal qualifying terms -- which, incidentally, help create even more of a false impression.
For example, we find Engels saying things like this:
"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 added.]
"The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa…[operates] in nature, in a manner fixed for each individual case, qualitative changes can only occur by the quantitative addition or quantitative subtraction of matter or motion….
"Hence, it is impossible to alter the quality of a body without addition or subtraction of matter or motion. [Engels (1954), p.63. Bold emphases added.]2
Now, this apparently superficial grammatical facade hides a deeper logical form -- several in fact. This is something which only becomes plain when such sentences are examined more closely.
As noted above, expressions like these look as if they reveal deep truths about reality since they certainly resemble empirical propositions (i.e., propositions about matters of fact). In the event, they turn out to be nothing at all like them.
This can be seen if we examine the following similar-looking indicative sentences:
M2: Two is a number.
M3: Two is greater than one.
M4: Green is a colour.
M5: "Green" is a word.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M7: A material body is extended in space.
M8: Time is a relation between events.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.3
M2-M9 appear to share the same form: "x is F" (or sometimes, "z is a f-er", or more accurately "z f-ies"). Despite this, there are profound differences between them.
[The use of such gap markers (i.e., "x" and "z") was explained in Essay Three Part One. "F(...)" is a predicate variable; "f(...)" is more general predicate variable, standing for clauses like "...owns copy of TAR", "...fibs more often than not", or "...thinks something is unthinkable", etc.]
However, the difference between, say, M6 and M2 lies largely in the fact to know that M2 is true goes hand-in-hand with understanding it -- these two conditions being inextricably linked. On the other hand, it is not necessary to know whether M6 is true or false in order to grasp its content. In other words, to understand M6 is not the same as knowing it is true. But it is essential to understanding M6 to know what would make it true or false -- even if both of these have not yet been ascertained. [The significance of this will be explored at greater length in a later section.]
In that case, it is not necessary to know whether Blair in fact owns a copy of TAR to be able to understand someone who says that he does; in contrast, comprehending that two is a number is ipso facto to know that it is true (except in trivial cases; on that see below).
M2: Two is a number.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
Now, M9 (which is a more 'objective' version of M1a) is somewhat similar to M2; comprehending it also involves automatically acknowledging its veracity, even if that is not quite as clear-cut in this case. The veracity of such propositions seems to follow from the 'concepts' they express, and that is why their truth-status can be ascertained without examining any evidence at all. That particular status seems to follow from thought alone.4
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 have been inspected, the 'truth' of both should become obvious. The source of their veracity is 'internally'-generated, as it were. Indeed, that is why the negation (or rejection) of M9, for example, was so "unthinkable" to both Engels and Lenin. All this follows from the definition that motion is the form of the existence of matter. That particular thought governs the central core of what these two had to say about matter and motion.5
Conversely, once more, it is possible to understand every word of M6 without knowing whether it is true or false. In fact, it is quite easy to suppose M6 to be false (which it probably is). But, even if M6 were true, and known to be true, it would still be possible to imagine it as false (and vice versa). Nevertheless, in order to establish its actual truth or actual falsehood, evidence would be essential; an examination of the concepts involved would not be enough. The veracity of M6 cannot be ascertained from thought alone; its truth-status is not 'internally'-generated, but 'externally'-confirmed/disconfirmed.
But, it is not possible for anyone who agrees with Lenin to regard, say, M9 as false. This clearly indicates that there is a fundamental difference between these two sorts of sentences -- one that their apparently identical grammatical outer facade conceals. As it turns out, the pseudo-scientific status and much of the 'plausibility' of metaphysical/essential 'truths' like M9 derive from just this sort of masquerade.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
So, it looks like the obviousness of M9 is what motivated the incredulity Lenin reported in M1a, for it certainly seemed to him that as soon as the expressions it contains (or their DM-equivalents) are inspected, the truth of M9 should be easy to see.
As noted above, for Lenin, the first half of M1a was "unthinkable" (i.e., the "Motion without matter..." part) -- its denial (and that of M9) would surely undermine the meaning of its terms (or the import of its concepts, given the definition that motion is the form of the existence of matter). This is why the rejection of M1a and M9 could be ruled out without the need to examine any evidence. What these two sentences say appears to gain our assent on linguistic (or conceptual) grounds alone. Hence, it 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 why theses like M1a (and M9) require no evidence in support, and why none is ever given -- and why it is hard even to imagine the sort of evidence that could possibly begin to substantiate them.5a
In this case, the actual state of the world drops out of the picture; when assessing such theses for their accuracy, or even veracity, no experiments need be carried out, no data collected, no surveys undertaken.5b
Now, that fact alone should have given someone like Lenin (who was not ignorant of the scientific method) pause for thought. Unfortunately, like so many others before him -- indeed, like the vast majority of theorists since ancient Greek times -- he failed to notice the significance of this seemingly trivial fact.6
The certainty M1a seems to induce in all who accept it as true plainly derives from what its constituent terms appear to mean; the subsequent projection onto the world of its 'content' is thus a reflection of the conviction induced in all those who assent to it. If such theses express indubitable truths, who could possibly deny that they apply to all regions of space and time?
But, the alleged truth of M1a bears no relation to the possibilities that material reality itself presents; this can be seen from that fact that if this were not so (if the truth of M1a were related to conditions might or might not obtain in nature), evidential support would have been both appropriate and imaginable. But, in this case, 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"?6a
This clearly indicates that M1a and M9 are not about the material world; they are (indirectly) about (or rather arise from) the use of certain words -- or they concern the alleged relation between the concepts they express.
Compare these two with the following:
M7: A material body is extended in space.
M8: Time is a relation between events.
Now, in connection with the theses we find in Metaphysics (like M7 and M8), this helps explain why traditional Philosophers were only too ready to project their ideas onto the world. The content of such cosmic verities seemed to them to be based on something much deeper than anything that mere empirical evidence could provide. Indeed, they appeared to express truths about "essences", features of "Being" that were prior to, but not dependent on, the deliverances of the senses. In fact, such theses looked as if they determined (or were determined by) the logical boundaries that defined reality itself -- that is, on concepts and categories that constituted not just human judgement and thought, but the logical form of the world.
In later versions of the same guiding myth, it was held that such theses depicted things that must be instantiated in -- or were based upon those that determined the structure of -- any possible world.
In short, they appeared to picture not just the logical form of any and every conceivable world, but governed every 'philosophically true' thought about them.
In previous centuries, it was believed that such theses expressed 'God's' own thoughts about reality -- or his 'laws' -- which meant that the job of Metaphysics was widely seen as an intellectual pursuit aimed at replicating in human thought such divine verities.7 Naturally, this immediately linked Metaphysics to the rationalisation of the status quo and the class structures that fed off it. [More on this in Parts Two and Three (summary here).]
This meant that such theses could safely be projected onto nature because no world was imaginable without them -- or none conceivable where such 'conceptual truths' were not applicable. If no configuration of matter and energy could fail to conform to universal truths like these, supporting evidence would naturally become irrelevant; the material world would in that case simply drop out of consideration (at least, in so far as confirmation was concerned).
To be sure, appeals to nature could be and were made in order to illustrate such truths (as we find, for example, dialecticians themselves doing with respect to Engels's Three 'Laws'), but that would be the only use to which the material world could be put.
Metaphysical 'truths' appeared to be so obvious (to those propounding them) that few were at all concerned by the fact that they had been imposed on reality. Quite the contrary; the important role each philosophical thesis was supposed to play (i.e., as a sort of "master key" capable of unlocking the inner secrets of 'Being') seemed to justify the whole sordid affair.
Of course, super-verities like these had to be distinguished from ordinary, contingent everyday material truths. Hence, because they looked as if they were part of the 'essence' underlying any and every possible world, they were later called (among other things), "necessary truths".8
However, this meant that theses like these were and are reliant on the use of a deliberately restricted set of words, and thus on a disguised or aberrant application of linguistic rules. Indeed, the projection of such theses onto any possible world is evidence enough of that. Since the veracity of such 'truths' was 'known' prior to the examination of any evidence (how, for example, could one examine the 'evidence' available in a possible world?), their alleged ('necessary') truth-values couldn't have been derived from anything other than the meanings of the words they contained, and hence on the linguistic rules supposedly governing the use of such words in these special contexts.9
In Essay Two (and in many other Essays), numerous examples were given of a priori assertions about reality of this sort, advanced by dialecticians. As we saw, these are said to be true for all of time and space, but they are in fact supported by little or no evidence --, that is, over and above a superficial analysis of a few specially chosen examples, sketchy "thought experiments", and the use of obscure terms-of-art derived from Hegel and his mystical forebears.
We are now in a position to see why this is so: DM-theses possess an a priori and universal validity because they are disguised or misconstrued rules of language.
To state the obvious: DM-theorists will not be content to view things this way -- but their opinion of what they do with their own words is at odds with how they themselves actually use them.
Once more, as noted in Essay Two, while DM-theorists constantly reassure their readers that they have not foisted their ideas on reality -- they have simply 'read them' from it, which indicates that they at least view them as empirical truths of some sort --, their practice belies this. Hence, it is clear that dialecticians en masse regard their doctrines as universal theses, true for all of space and time, and which lie way beyond confirmation by any conceivable body of evidence. So, in practice dialecticians do the 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) material evidence.
Now, M1a is just the latest example of this aprioristic trait. In common with other metaphysicians, the projection by dialecticians of DM-theses like this onto any and all possible worlds is evidence enough that they have been derived from linguistic (or conceptual) resources alone. Since these super-theses are 'known' to be valid well in advance of the examination of an adequate body of supporting evidence, their truth can't have been derived from anything other than the meanings of the words used, and thus on the linguistic rules allegedly governing this.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Moreover, the historical provenance of all DM-theses (in mystical Hegelian and Hermetic thought) lends support to the above claims. These doctrines date back to a time when there was very little or no scientific evidence at all.
Thus, the class-compromised origin of DM-theses has meant that aprioristic ruling-class ideas and patterns-of-thought have been smuggled into revolutionary theory by DM-classicists -- "from the outside".10
Unfortunately for Lenin and other DM-apologists, a priori theses are in fact incapable of reflecting reality. As we will soon see, reality cannot be as metaphysical or DM-theses supposedly depict it.11 There are features of language that prevent theorists like Lenin and Engels from saying the sorts of things they want to say about the world, which linguistic features will not allow them to 'depict' nature in ways they imagine they can.
This observation is connected with the origin of metaphysical theory. At the linguistic level (as will be shown in later parts of Essay Twelve), the latter arose out of, and because of, a determination by Greek theorists to employ certain expressions idiosyncratically (that is, in ways they would not normally be used). In its train, this involved a failure on the part of such 'innovators' to notice that it is only the misuse of language that licences the derivation of universal and necessary 'truths' of the sort found both in traditional Philosophy, and later in DM. [This was illustrated in detail, for example, in Essay Three Part One.]
As the analysis below demonstrates (once more), such a misuse of language results in the production, not of 'necessary' truths, but of unvarnished non-sense.
To see this, we need to examine Lenin's words more closely.
Now, with regard to Lenin's avowal reported in M1a, it's worth asking the following question: What is it about these five words that made their content seem so "unthinkable"?
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Curiously, however, in Lenin's case at least it is obvious that he must have thought the above words in order to declare that they were unthinkable!
In that case, the phrase "motion without matter" must have gone through his head at some point. Even if Lenin went on to think the additional words tacked on at the end (i.e., "…is unthinkable"), he must have rattled past the three offending words first (i.e., "motion without matter"). No one imagines that his brain switched his thoughts on just as they reached the relative safety of the last two terms in that sentence!
In that case, Lenin must have done what he declared could not 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 in practice Lenin contradicted himself, for he managed to do what he said could not be done. That is why in practice Lenin's thesis becomes impossible either to comprehend or even to state. If he accomplished what he said no one could do in the act of telling us just that, why can't anyone else do it? What is so special about Lenin?11a
Worse still, if the rest of us can think the three offending words ("motion without matter") whenever we read Lenin telling us that we can't do the very thing we must have done to grasp his point, we too must contradict Lenin in practice. Indeed, the very act of telling us we cannot think these words prompts us to do just that!
Even those who agree with Lenin that "motion without matter is unthinkable" must think these three illicit words. Hence, even the most slavishly obedient Lenin-groupie cannot avoid disobeying the master every time he/she reads this controversial phrase.
Have such characters not noticed that to read Lenin is to disobey him?
But, if Lenin is right, what on earth could he possibly have meant by what he said if everyone (including himself) could so easily disprove in practice this allegedly self-evident truth?
Precisely what is so unthinkable here that is also so easily thought? What is it about M1a that is supposed to command our assent, but only in the very act of undermining it?
Perhaps this is too hasty? Maybe Lenin merely meant that the truth of an indicative sentence like M1a (containing the unqualified words "motion without matter") is unthinkable?
But, is even that a viable option?
Maybe not, for when Lenin's words are examined, it actually becomes impossible to understand what it was he was trying to say, or precisely what 'truth' he was attempting to communicate to his readers. Or even if what he appears to be saying is in any way 'true'.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
Consider the following as a possible variant of M1a and M9:
M10: Motion without matter can never be thought of as true.
This looks a little awkward -- and it is not obviously correct. Indeed, it is possible to think of many examples of motion that do not involve the movement of matter as such. Several dozen were given in Essay Five. Here is another -- a few more can be found in Note 12:
M11: NN's thoughts moved to a new topic.
Now, this could be true even if no matter was relocated in the process.12
It might be objected here that this sense of "move" was not at all what Lenin had in mind. Perhaps, then, he meant the following?
M12: The occurrence of literal motion in the real world without matter can never be thought of as true.
Which appears to imply, or be implied by, the following:12a
M13: Literal motion in the real world without matter can never take place.
This seems to be closer to what Lenin might have meant, even if it still looks a little stilted. Despite that, this sentence presents problems of its own. Consider this apparent counter-example:
M14: NM moved the date of the strike from Monday to Tuesday.13
Now, this seems to depict literal movement in the real world, and yet it is not 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 to the re-arrangement of ink molecules in a diary or wall planner -- as the new date is committed to paper -- as examples of matter in motion here? But, at best, this would simply mean that motion was indirectly associated with matter, since even in a real life situation the supposed strike itself would not actually exist to be moved anywhere -- even though it has still been moved.
Again, it could be objected that in this example what has actually changed is the date -- it is this that has been moved not the strike itself. But again, if it's only a date that has been moved, it would still be unclear whether matter has to be relocated as a consequence. Once more, this date is in the future, and does not exist yet, even though it has been moved.
Now, it would be little use referring to the altered marks in a diary or on a wall-planner (or anywhere else, for that matter) as indicative of the material changes witnessed here. Certainly, such things may alter, but if anyone were to imagine that the dates of strikes, or even strikes themselves, are just marks on paper, then bosses could easily put a stop to union militancy -- by simply tippexing-out the relevant marks (or by destroying the wall-planner/diary), and be done with it. The class struggle, surely, cannot be so easily erased --, can it?
At best, therefore, the movement reported in M14 is indirectly associated with matter. Nevertheless, M14 seems to show that we can at least understand sentences where the connection between motion and matter is not obvious or clear-cut. So, perhaps we can think the unthinkable, despite what Lenin said?
This still leaves the status of M12 and M13 unresolved. Now, if we ignore awkward cases like M14 and concentrate on examples of movement situated 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 rather superfluous. I will ignore that awkward niggle here.]
M12: The occurrence of literal motion in the real world without matter can never be thought of as true.
M13: Literal motion in the real world without matter can never take place.
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 work?
M15: Literal motion in the real world without matter is unthinkable.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Of course, M15 is just a variant of M1a. But, is it true?
Maybe not.
One obvious example of literal movement in the real world that takes place without matter -- which is not only thinkable, it is actual -- is the motion of the Centre of Mass of the Galaxy [CMG]. The CMG is located in empty space, but it exerts a decisive causal influence on everything in the Galaxy while not being material itself. In its turn, it moves under the influence of something else that is not material either -- the centre of mass of the cluster of galaxies of which ours is a part, and so on.14
Perhaps we should adapt M15 to accommodate or neutralise this annoying counterexample, in the following way:
M16: Literal motion in the real world without some matter somewhere causing it is unthinkable.
Alas, M16 now concedes the point that motion can take place while spatially- (or, perhaps even temporally-) divorced from matter, since M16 is not 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 idea of matter is so vague 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 and/or ordinary facts noted above.
As pointed out earlier, Lenin must have thought the words "motion without matter" 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 said undermined the point he wished to make.
Perhaps then Lenin meant the following?
M17: The sentence: "Literal motion in the real world without matter is unthinkable" is true.
[M15: Literal motion in the real world without matter is unthinkable.]
However, this won't do either. Just as soon as the quoted sentence in M17 (i.e., M15) is entertained, that cognitive act would make M17 itself false!
This is because the embedded sentence in M17 (i.e., M15) is untrue whenever anyone thinks it. M17 becomes false as M15 is thought, and yet by thinking M17, M15 must be entertained; the only way anyone could agree with M17 is by thinking M15. Unfortunately, this just means that we may only agree with M17 by doing what M15 says cannot be done -- we have to think the unthinkable, thus making M17 false. In that case, M17 is true just in case it is false; we may assent to it only if we never allow its content to cross our minds.
It could be argued that this shows that M17 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 requires the allegedly forbidden words "matter without motion" to pass through the mind, so it is not the case that these words cannot be thought.15a
It could be objected that it is perfectly clear what Lenin meant: it is impossible to think about matter without conceiving of it as moving in some way, and vice versa.
In that case, perhaps Lenin was merely making a psychological point? Maybe he was saying that given what we know about the world (and about ourselves), we are psychologically/physically incapable of forming the thought that motion is possible without matter (and vice versa).
But, if he was saying this, he offered no evidence to substantiate what would now be a scientific claim about what human beings are capable of thinking. And, if this was his line-of-thought, it pretty clear why he would not have been able to produce such data (even had he tried), for to pose this very question is not only to think the forbidden words, it prompts others to think them too!
Moreover, there is abundant evidence to the contrary. As we know, previous generations managed to think this very thought, and for centuries; the passivity of matter is a basic principle of Aristotelian Physics.16
If this alternative interpretation of Lenin's claim is to remain viable (i.e., that which holds that his claims relate to our psychological limitations), then (at best) we would have to interpret it as a confession of Lenin's own limited powers of imagination -- even though he too was able to rise to the occasion, and think the forbidden words while casting them into outer psychological darkness in the very act of bring us this good news!
Furthermore, Lenin offered no supporting evidence concerning the relevant limits of credibility, or otherwise, of anyone else, and he mentioned only one other DM supporter who thought as he did: Engels. That being so, his confession merely records the limits of his (and Engels's) own incredulity (which, as we have seen, undermined itself in the very act of its own confession). Clearly, such asseverations (no matter how sincere -- or confused) 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? Several examples were given earlier (where it was quite natural to speak about motion without matter, or motion with no change of place, and so on). These may only be ruled out if it could be shown that they are either metaphorical or irrelevant. But, who is to say that Lenin's use of such words is literal, or that it is their only correct employment -- or even that it is the most natural? In fact, a rejection of those counter-examples could only ever be based on Lenin's own lack of imagination (or on that of his modern day epigones) -- or, perhaps, on other criteria which Lenin kept to himself.
However, as the above indicates, it is possible to form the thought that motion is possible without matter. Nothing is easier. Not only does the last sentence itself prompt such a cognitive infringement, so do the sentences Lenin himself wrote. If these sentences are objectionable, it cannot be for psychological reasons -- for, manifestly, they are easy to think. If either of M18 or M19, for instance, is to be ruled out as an example of a thought, that would have to be done on logical/linguistic grounds, not psychological ones -- especially if to read Lenin each time is to disprove him, as we have seen.
But that, of course, just takes us right back to the beginning. We are still no clearer what Lenin could possibly have meant by what he said.
M18: This particular example of motion is separated from matter.
M19: This lump of matter is motionless.
Contradictory -- Or Just Unthinkable?
At this point it is worth wondering why Lenin concluded that motion without matter was "unthinkable", as opposed to claiming it was merely contradictory. Apart from saving him the trouble of having to think the very thought he wanted to convince the rest of us was "unthinkable", it would have allowed him to make his point much more succinctly. Indeed, it would seem to be the obvious thing to say about matter and motion: that immobile matter (or mobile non-matter) was contradictory -- or, rather, that propositions asserting these things implied contradictions, given other DM-principles. They would certainly contradict the thesis that motion is the form of the existence of matter.
On the other hand, it seems pretty clear what the answer to that particular puzzle is: if Lenin had done this, it would have given the dialectical game away. This is because, if he had ruled certain things out on the basis that they were contradictory then much of DM would have gone down the tubes with it. In that event, the next question would have been: Why is it just this contradictory state of affairs that is considered so objectionable in contradistinction to all the other contradictions that DM-theorists tell us litter the entire universe?
In fact, the existence of matter without motion ought to make perfectly good 'dialectical' sense, if only because it is contradictory. 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).
As Hegel himself declared:
"[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. Bold emphasis added.]
Indeed, it would seem from this doctrine that bodies must move because mobility and passivity are a product of the internal struggle in all objects --, since they are UOs: a unity of motion and non-motion, perhaps? Anyone inclined to believe cracked logic like this should not find it too great a "leap" of imagination to derive motion from the contradictory nature of matter; the mobility of matter could thus be predicated on its lack of motion. Hence, far from immobile matter being unthinkable, the theory seems to require it! [As this suggests, too.]
[UO = Unity of Opposites.]
It could be objected here that this is ridiculous; dialecticians do not believe that motion is a UO of itself and its opposite, lack of motion. Furthermore, it could be pointed out that the above caricature is not the contradiction Hegel was referring to with respect to motion --, as was pointed out by Engels:
"[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.]
Naturally, these proffered DM-responses merely highlight the serious confusions lying at the heart of this theory of change, underlined here, here and here. The problem is that, according to what DM-theorists themselves tell us, it is unclear whether things change because of (1) their internal contradictions (and/or opposites), or (2) whether they change into these opposites, or, indeed, (3) whether they create such opposites when they change.
Hence, if all things are UOs, and can only change because of that fact, it seems that a moving body must be a dialectical union of motion and rest, otherwise it could never change.
In that case, if the above objection is ridiculous, it is only because it makes plain the incoherencies inherent in the DM-account of change.
Moreover, as we saw in Essay Five, the alleged contradiction to which Engels refers (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") cannot be what makes that object move; it is what becomes apparent as it moves.
So, if Hegel is right, and objects move because of their inherently contradictory nature, then they must be a UO of some sort. And what else could that be but a union of motion and rest; nothing else seems remotely relevant.
Alternatively, other objectors might be tempted to argue that this is precisely the point: because matter is contradictory, it is incessantly mobile.
But, once more, if matter is truly contradictory, if we accept no half measures, no "excessive tenderness" toward moving things, matter must be mobile and at rest all at once. So, resolute Hegelians must think the illegitimate words, that matter is motionless (in part).
In fact, the good news is that there is no need to speculate any further on this Hermetic conundrum, for this is precisely what we observe in reality. 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 matter can be at rest, but with respect to another it can be in motion, and these can both be true at the same time, and of the same collection of matter.
Unfortunately, however, for beleaguered dialecticians, this familiar fact does not actually imply that motion is fundamentally contradictory 'in itself' (whatever that means!), but that given diverse reference frames we can picture it in no other way: as mobile with respect one frame, at rest with respect to another, all at once. There is nothing deeply metaphysical about this; it is a spin-off of the conventions we now use to depict the world. This socially-motivated fact, though, does give sense to propositions about the mobility of matter (for we would have no other way of conceiving of movement scientifically except by this means), even if it does not actually make anything move (or sustain locomotion), as a DM/Hegelian 'contradiction' should.
Of course, the force of unhelpful conclusions like that can only be resisted on linguistic (or perhaps conventionalist) 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 merely underline the fact that Lenin's own ideas are at best creatures of convention, and are thus not the least bit "objective".
Moreover, given the fact that Lenin's ideas in this area fall apart so readily, his 'convention' is unlikely ever to be accepted by the scientific community. In fact, we should feign no surprise if they do not even make the bottom of the list of viable candidates that they might be inclined to accept.
The Conventional Nature Of Discourse
As we have seen above, and as we will see as the rest of Essay Twelve unfolds, the problems Lenin and other metaphysicians face are connected with the peculiar nature of the language they use. But, there are other aspects of language that are less well appreciated (or, rather, they are not appreciated at all) which mean that this slide into metaphysical incoherence does not just afflict DM. With respect to Metaphysics in general, this slide is universally unavoidable.
While it is true that Marxists in general hold that language is a social product, few seem to have thought through the full implications of that idea.17 On the contrary, one of its least recognised consequences is that language is in fact conventional. Indeed, if language is social, how could it be other than conventional? Human beings invented language; it wasn't bestowed on them from on high. This means that at some point in their history, they must have accepted or put into practice certain linguistic conventions.
Furthermore, an even less obvious corollary of this view of discourse is the fact that language is primarily a vehicle of communication, not of representation.18
It is undeniable that some Marxists have acknowledged the limited applicability of the former corollary (that language is conventional), but hardly any (perhaps none) have considered the full implications of the second (that language is not primarily representational). Certainly Marx and Engels did not, nor have later Marxists. Indeed, much of what they have written (especially about abstraction, 'cognition' and knowledge) suggests the opposite is the case.
In this regard, again, dialecticians are not alone. Throughout the history of Philosophy, little serious attention has been paid to the traditional philosophical theory that language is primarily representational, i.e., that it is an artefact that enables human beings re-present the world in "thought", in the "head", the "mind", "consciousness", or in "cognition" first, before communication can begin.
Hence, rarely questioned is the underlying assumption that it is only after language users have learnt to picture reality to themselves that they are then able to communicate their thoughts to others -- and this observation applies even to those who at least say they accept the idea that language is primarily communicational. Naturally, this means that the social nature of language is seen by the vast majority of Marxists as a consequence of the isolated (but later pooled) cognitive powers of individuals, an expression of their attempt to share the 'contents' of their 'minds' with others, but not the other way round.19
To many -- even on the far left --, it seems that here at least we have an example of private (mental) production linked to public gain, for on this view, the isolated activities of lone abstractors generates cognition, which helps drives the social advancement of knowledge, after it has subsequently been pooled.
This approach thus relegates meaning to the private domain of the 'mind', something that each individual brings to language --, perhaps as an expression of their biography and/or the ideological parameters that constrain us all. Alternatively, it's a consequence of the 'objective rules' that nature has supposedly hard-wired into each brain, put there perhaps by the same "invisible hand" that coincidentally also runs the market.
Whatever its aetiology, this is one idea that has ruled in one form or another since ancient times.
As we saw in Essay Three Part Two, post-Renaissance thinkers took the public domain where meaning is created, inverted it, and then projected the result back into each individual head, re-configured there as the social relations among ideas/'concepts'. The outer social world was thus re-modelled in each head, and thus seen as primary. In this way, the social was privatised, internalised, and thus neutralised.
More recently, this dominant thought-form re-surfaced in a new disguise: as the inter-relation between neurons (as they 'communicate' with one another), controlled more recently still by the oppressive power of the gene -- which now seems to operate as a sort of surrogate inner Bourgeois Legislative/Executive Authority.
Thus, on this view, human beings are born free of language, but everywhere are soon in linguistic chains to their own surrogate 'inner state machinery'.20
This inversion (whose political and social roots will be analysed briefly below, and more fully in Parts Two and Three of this Essay*) completely undermines the Marxist claim that language is a social phenomenon. And no wonder; it perfectly captures a bourgeois view of language and mind.
In fact, this is one ideological inversion that has remained upside down (but in different forms) now not just for hundreds, but for thousands of years, and it is largely the cause of the other inverted ideas concocted by traditional philosophers and dialecticians alike.
Inverted as in a camera obscura, these rotated notions cloud the thoughts of all those whose brains have been colonised by ruling ideas such as these.
Nevertheless, there seems little point arguing that language is a social phenomenon -- its main role to be found in communication -- if it is in fact primarily representational. If the latter were true, the social function of language would be anterior to -- if not parasitic upon --, its supposedly primary, private nature. No surprise either then that this view of discourse introduced its own notorious Robinsonades, analogous to the ones that Marx railed against in politics and economics --, except, in this case, these Robinsonades apply to the origin of language, and not just to the 'social contract' and to production.
As noted above, if there is a point to be made here, it is perhaps as 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 can enter the linguistic community.
But, this presents anyone adopting this stance with intractable problems. How could anyone be socialised into representing the world to themselves first as an individual, and then later use language to communicate? On this view, as far as language is concerned, each human being would first be a semantic individual, second a communicating social being. In fact, as is easy to show, given this view of language, communication would be impossible. Indeed, were this the case, we would find ourselves incapable of communicating, and humanity would be universally autistic.*
Given the representational approach, the role that communal, historically-conditioned material life plays in the shaping of language drops out as irrelevant.
Atomistic implications like these should not be lost on those cognisant of the History of Philosophy and its relation to ruling-class forms-of-thought (particularly those forms that have been dominant since the Seventeenth Century) -- even though the record shows that, among Marxists, they invariably have been.
The Conventional Response From DM-Theorists
Revolutionaries have generally resisted the idea that language is conventional because it would seem to imply that science is conventional, too, which would in turn threaten to undermine its 'objectivity'.21
In fact, as is demonstrable, revolutionaries have rejected the connection between the conventional nature of language and 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 into some form of Idealism.22 However, the truth is the exact opposite: it is the rejection of the conventional nature of language and science that compromises both. How and why this is so will be explained briefly below, and elsewhere in more detail.*
Nevertheless, in this Essay I propose only to examine the connection between the above considerations and Metaphysics.
Meaning Precedes Truth
If language is a social phenomenon, then, clearly, what human beings write or say must be guided by the normative conventions that govern discourse. That is why it is not possible to utter absolutely anything and hope to make sense. Naturally, scientific language will have its own special protocols layered on top of these, over and above the ordinary conventions underlying the vernacular. Moreover, this entire ensemble will change and develop in accord with wider social and historical forces.
But one thing is reasonably clear: if language is to be a means of communication then whatever lends sense to its empirical propositions must be independent of (and prior to) any truths they express.23
If this were not so, then in order to understand an empirical proposition language users would first have to know whether it was true or false.
Now that option is plainly incoherent, for no one could assent to the truth or falsehood of a proposition before they had comprehended it. Indeed, as seems obvious, they would not be able to ascertain whether such a proposition was true or false if they failed to grasp it.24
This, naturally, connects the social nature of language with the earlier discussion of propositions like M1-M9. There, we saw that in the case of an ordinary empirical proposition like:
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR
it is possible to understand it before its truth-status is known. In contrast, it was argued that with regard to metaphysical/DM-propositions things were radically different. Hence, to accept a proposition like
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter
as true is ipso facto to understand it.
We are now in a position to understand why all this is so.
If the sense of an empirical proposition were dependent on truth, or on still other truths (which would themselves have to be expressed in further propositions), those truths themselves would likewise have to be understood first. If not, then their truth could not be ascertained. Once again: it is not possible to ascertain the truth of a proposition before it is comprehended.
Now this cannot go on indefinitely; indeed, there appear to be only two ways that an infinite regress can be avoided here:
(1) Language users must have (programmed?) in their minds/brains a set of truths (possibly rules) not themselves expressed in, or expressible by, empirical propositions; that is, they must have direct access to 'non-linguistic' truths or rules -- perhaps written in a 'code' of some sort (which is paradoxically not a code, or the above regress would simply begin again!).25
Or:
(2) The truths on which the sense of empirical propositions depends must be 'necessary' truths whose own truth cannot be questioned, and which must follow from the meaning of the words/concepts they contain/express, and not from still further truths. But even here, truth would still be parasitic on meaning.
Unfortunately, as we will soon see, 'necessary truths' have no sense and are thus incapable of being true or false. That will, of course, rule out option (2).
But worse, as noted, option (2) concedes that meaning precedes truth anyway, for the truth of such 'necessarily true' propositions follows from the meanings of their constituent terms. In that case, there would clearly be no good reason to postulate the existence of such necessary truths in order to avoid the initial idea that meaning depends on truth, since in the end this option relies on the assumption that at some point meaning is sui generis, and not dependent on truth.
Moreover, with respect to the first alternative, the idea that there could be sets of 'non-linguistic' truths in nature that govern the sense of propositions is manifestly (and is, as we will see, surreptitiously) based on the ancient idea that nature is Mind or Thought (or that it is constituted by one or both). In this particular case, it trades on the additional belief that language is governed by nature's own 'pre-linguistic ideas', or 'laws', and that it is the allegedly intelligent/rational universe that lends to human discourse the meaning it has. As will, I hope, seem obvious, this view naturally meshes with representationalism, for given this approach we represent to ourselves meaning naturally (or 'lawfully'), and this is induced in each of us as bourgeois social atoms. In this way, meaning is a 'natural', not a social phenomenon.
[This was explored at length in Essay Three Part Two.]
In fact, the same comment could be made about the idea that language is governed by rules that are genetically programmed into the central nervous system (which would, of course, make these part of the 'rational universe' -- but, in this case, only by anthropomorphising the brain, etc.). This view would imply that language (or the rules underlying it) is an agent itself, and that in turn would be to reify and fetishise the products of social interaction (language/words) as if they were the real relation among things (or, indeed, between neurons), or were those things themselves (to paraphrase Marx).
[The liberal use of metaphor and neologisms in theories that give expression to this most recent ideological inversion, rather give the game away, one feels.]26
Naturally, philosophers of a more 'robust' theoretical temperament have rejected this sort of response (for all manner of reasons), arguing perhaps that there must be physical/causal laws governing the way human beings form true propositions, or which give meaning to the words they use --, and that our understanding of language should be 'naturalised' accordingly.
There are however several major difficulties with this approach.
[The above is a link to a PDF.]
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 in fact 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 which does not in the event anthropomorphise nature or read into it the very linguistic categories it was supposed to explain.27
Thirdly, if language is a product of causal law -- if discourse is fundamentally representational -- then reference to its social nature would be an empty gesture. As noted above, Marxists who have been all too easily seduced into accepting one or other version of this 'robust view' (as a result perhaps of their unwise adherence to concepts derived from DM, and/or from either Chomsky or Quine) have universally failed to appreciate this as one of its corollaries.28
Finally, but most importantly, another implication of the idea that understanding language is parasitic on truth (at some point) is that if this were so, paradoxically, it could not be so. This is because this way of viewing discourse gets things the wrong way round (i.e., it has once more been inverted): the establishment of the truth-value of a proposition is consequent on its already having been understood. Humans do not first appropriate truths and then proceed to comprehend them. Communication and thus representation would be impossible if that were the case.29
On the contrary, as was also noted earlier, if the sense of a proposition were not independent of the truth it expressed, then plainly the mere fact that a proposition had been understood would entail it was true. Naturally, if that were the case, linguistic or psychological factors would determine the veracity of empirical propositions, and science would become little more than a branch of hermeneutics.
Hence, given the above 'inverted' approach, as soon as a proposition had been understood its truth could be inferred automatically. Clearly, this would destroy the distinction between empirical and non-empirical propositions, for, on that basis, as soon as anyone understood M6, for example, they would know it was true.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
In this way, we can see how representationalism requires all indicative propositions to be of the same logical form (whether or not this is immediately apparent). At some point, on this view, all indicative propositions must be, or must depend on necessary truths which reflect in our minds how things must be, and cannot be thought otherwise (i.e., their opposite is "unthinkable").
And that is why this view of language, knowledge and mind so naturally fits in with apriorism, and with the idea that fundamental truths about nature are accessible to thought alone, and can be derived by thought alone --, and can thus be imposed on reality.
Hence, if in the end M6 depends on a necessary truth of some sort (or if it is a disguised necessary truth itself -- that is, in this case, Blair had no choice, his ownership of TAR was determined by the operation of a necessary law of some sort (a là DM), or by the unfolding of his 'concept' (a là Hegel), or by his implicit predicates (a là Leibniz)), then ultimately its truth can be ascertained without the need for material evidence. All one would have to do is to comprehend this sentence for it to be true.
[Naturally, that would make falsehood impossible to explain; more on that in Essay Three Part Three.]
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
As now seems plain, this would imply that scientific knowledge is itself based on yet another form of LIE: truths about the world follow from thought/linguistic principles alone. The mind, in reflecting the world, merely reflects itself in self-development, because the world is Mind.
Apriorism and LIE thus go hand-in-hand.
[Fortunately, this whole way of looking at language and knowledge is undermined by the approach adopted here.]30
In that case, whatever lends sense to empirical propositions (i.e., whatever sets the conditions under which they are true or false) cannot itself be a set of antecedent truths. Neither could it be a set of ex post facto truths.31
In contrast, since the socially-sanctioned rules governing the use of language are incapable of being either true or false, they are not subject to the above strictures.32
These considerations also apply to scientific language if it is to function as a means of communication (and derivatively of representation).33
Hence, whatever else lends sense to empirical scientific propositions, it cannot be a set of truths. If the sense of scientific propositions were dependent on such a set, scientists would only be able to understand each other after they had learnt those truths. In which case, of course, they could not be learnt. Clearly, there are no propositions by means of which this could be done that are exempt from the very same constraints.
Furthermore, if the sense of an empirical scientific proposition was dependent on certain truths about the world -- so that, for example, the comprehension of that proposition implied it was automatically true --, that would mean that scientists could abandon experimentation and simply take up linguistic analysis. Science would then become indistinguishable from Metaphysics, or from LIE, for in that case to understand a proposition would be to know it was true.34
Naturally, all this just confirms the claim that scientific language is, like the vernacular, conventional.
Admittedly, these claims are controversial.35 They appear to imply that science is not based on facts, but on conventions. However, that belief is itself based on a serious misconception.*
The above assertions are in fact a consequence of a commitment to the social nature of language; they cannot be negotiated away without seriously undermining that fundamental Marxist insight.36
The Inevitable Collapse Into Non-Sense
Private Ownership In the Means Of 'Mental' Production
We are now well placed to understand what has gone wrong with Lenin's claim (in M1a) and explain why it is that certain indicative sentences collapse so readily into incoherence.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
As we shall see, this problem is associated with the use of what appear to be empirical sentences to state necessary truths (or falsehoods) about the world, for it is this confusion which distorts fundamental features of language, rendering such sentences incomprehensible.
Because the 'truth' of metaphysical sentences seems to follow from the meaning of the words they contain, theorists claim they are capable of reflecting fundamental features of reality in the 'mind'. In this way, metaphysical theses go hand in hand with accepting representational theories of language and thought.
Moreover, as noted above (and as we saw here), this whole way of viewing language and meaning inverts, and then re-locates an externally-sanctioned social and interactive practice (i.e., comprehension and communication) so that it becomes an internal, private, individual act of intellection (immediate to 'consciousness', etc.).
On this view, meaning is not a social product but the result of the processing of ideas or 'concepts' in the 'mind', or in the 'faculties of reason' --, built up these days perhaps as part of the operation of "inner speech". This is a thoroughly bourgeois view of language and meaning, and lies behind my earlier allegation that this area of traditional (and Marxist) Philosophy has not advanced much beyond Descartes and Locke.
Marxists who argue along these lines have, unfortunately, failed to notice how such theories undermine their own belief in the social nature of language and meaning, just as they have failed to see that this alternative approach does not even deliver what had been advertised for it all along*.37
Let us recap: in trying to say what was unthinkable, Lenin attempted to inform us about what could not be thought. Unfortunately, this involved him in doing the exact opposite of what he said was impossible -- it meant he had to think the very thoughts he was trying to rule out as "unthinkable". Hence, he had to entertain an idea in order to deny that it was something that anyone could entertain. This implicated him in a radically non-standard use of language, which meant that he was unable to say what he imagined he wanted to say; in practice his words implied the opposite of what he thought he had meant.
In fact, this suggests that there wasn't actually anything there for Lenin to have intended to mean. This is because it is not possible to say (in one sense of "say") anything meaningful that is in principle incomprehensible to anyone, including the one saying it. While someone might give voice to complete babble, it is not possible for them to mean anything by it (unless, of course, it is part of some code, or it is aimed at simply creating an effect). One might intend to utter babble, but not intend to mean anything comprehensible by it (if trivial examples are put to one side).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 into less confusing terms seems to undermine them still further. In which case, it is pertinent to wonder what (if anything) Lenin could possibly have meant by what he said.39
We have already encountered similarly incoherent DM-ideas (e.g., in connection with Trotsky's attempt to 'revise' the LOI, Engels's endeavour to describe the allegedly contradictory nature of motion, and TAR's attempt to spell-out DM-Wholism). This regular slide into unintelligibility is not just bad luck; it is a direct consequence of the careless use and erroneous interpretation of certain sentences whose main verb is in the indicative mood, as if they were empirical propositions informing us about the world when they turn out to be nothing like them.
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
An empirical proposition derives its sense from the truth possibilities it appears to hold open (which options will later be decided upon one way or the other by a confrontation with the material world). That is why the actual truth-value of, say, M6 (or its contradictory, M6a) does not need to be known before it is understood, but it is also why evidence is relevant to establishing that truth-value.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M6a: Tony Blair does not own a copy of TAR.
All that is required here is some grasp of the possibilities that both of these hold open. M6 and M6a both have the same content, and are both made true or false by the same situation obtaining or not.40
It is also why it is easy to imagine M6 as true even when it is false, or false when it is true. In general, comprehension of empirical propositions involves an understanding of the conditions under which they would/could be true or false; as is well-known, these are otherwise called their truth-conditions. That, of course, allows anyone so minded to confirm their actual truth status by comparison with the world, since they would in that case know what to look for/expect.
As we saw earlier, these non-negotiable facts about language underpin the Marxist emphasis on the social -- and hence the communal and communicational -- nature of discourse, but they fly in the face of metaphysical/representational theories, which emphasise the opposite: that to understand a proposition is to know it is true (or know it is false) -- by-passing the confirmation/disconfirmation stage (reducing the usual 'truth-conditions' to only one option).40a
However, there are other serious problems this approach to language faces over and above the fact it would make knowledge un-communicable.
[For how would the 'contents' of one mind be communicated to another if there was no prior means of communication, which representational theories in fact deny or undermine? Indeed, how could anyone communicate with anyone else if they could only figure out what their interlocutors meant after they had ascertained the truth of what they said? How could they even try to ascertain such truths before they understood what was being said? More on this in Essay Three Part Two, and *.]
Intractable logical problems soon begin to emerge (with regard to such putatively empirical, but nonetheless metaphysical, sentences) if an attempt is made to restrict or eliminate one or other of the paired semantic possibilities associated with ordinary empirical propositions: i.e., truth and falsehood.
This occurs, for example, when an apparently empirical proposition is declared to be only true or only false (or, more pointedly, 'necessarily' the one or the other) -- as a "law of cognition", perhaps -- or, more likely, when a 'necessary' truth or falsehood is mis-identified as a particularly profound sort of empirical thesis.
As we will soon see, this tactic results in the automatic loss of both semantic options, and with that goes any sense that the original proposition might have had, rendering it incomprehensible.
This is because empirical propositions leave it open as to whether they are true or false; that is why their truth-values cannot simply be read-off from their content, why evidence is required in order to determine their semantic status, and why it is possible to understand them before their truth or falsehood is known. If that were not so, it would be impossible to ascertain their truth-status, as we have seen.
When this is not the case -- i.e., when either option (truth or falsehood) is closed-off, when propositions are said to be "necessarily true" or "necessarily false" -- evidence clearly becomes irrelevant. Thus, whereas the truth or falsehood of an empirical proposition cannot be ascertained on linguistic, conceptual or syntactic grounds alone, if the truth or falsehood of a proposition is capable of being established solely on the basis of such structural factors, that proposition cannot be empirical.
If, however, such propositions are still regarded (by those who propose them) as truths (or Supertruths) about the world, about its "essence", then they are plainly metaphysical.
Otherwise the truth or falsehood of such propositions would be world-sensitive, not solely meaning- or concept-dependent. And that explains why the comprehension of a metaphysical proposition appears to go hand in hand with knowing its 'truth' (or its 'falsehood') -- it is based on features of thought/language alone, and not on the material world.
Of course, it could always be claimed that such 'essentialist' thoughts 'reflect' the world, which might seem (to some) to nullify the above comments.
But, if thought 'reflects' the world, it would be possible to understand a proposition that allegedly expressed such a reflected thesis in advance of knowing whether it was true or false, otherwise confirmation in practice, or by comparing it with the world, would become an empty gesture.
And yet, on the other hand if its truth could be ascertained from that proposition/'thought' itself (i.e., if it were "self-evident"), then plainly the world drops out of the picture, which just means that that 'thought'/proposition cannot be a reflection of the world, whatever else it is.41
Furthermore, and worse, if a proposition is purported to be empirical, but which can only be false (as seems to be the case with, say, M20, below, according to Lenin) then, as we will see, paradox must ensue.
Consider the following sentence, one which Lenin would presumably have declared necessarily false (if not "unthinkable"):
M20: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.
Unfortunately for Lenin, in order to declare M20 necessarily (and always) false, the possibility of its truth must first be entertained (as we saw). Thus, if the truth of M20 is to be permanently excluded by holding it as necessarily false, then whatever would make it true has to be ruled out conclusively. But, anyone doing that would have to know what M20 rules in so that he/she could comprehend what it is that is being disqualified by its rejection as always and necessarily false. And yet, this is precisely what cannot be done if what M20 itself says is permanently ruled out on semantic/conceptual grounds.42
Consequently, if a proposition like M20 is necessarily false this charade (i.e., the permanent exclusion of its truth) cannot take place -- since it would be impossible to say (or to think) what could count as making M20 true. Indeed, Lenin himself had to declare it "unthinkable".
However, because the truth of the original proposition (M20) cannot even be conceived, Lenin was thus in no position to say what was excluded by its rejection.43
Unfortunately, this prevents any account being given of what would make M20 false, let alone 'necessarily' false. Given this twist, paradoxically, M20 would now be necessarily false if and only if it was not capable of being thought of as necessarily false!
That is: M20 could be thought of as necessarily false if and only if what would make it true could at least be entertained just in order to rule it out as necessarily false. But, according to Lenin, the conditions that would make M20 true cannot even be conceived, so this train of thought cannot be joined at any point. And, if the truth of M20 -- or the conditions under which it would be true -- cannot be conceived, then neither can its falsehood, for we would then not know what was being ruled out.
In that case, the negation of M20 can neither be accepted nor rejected by anyone, for no one would know what its content committed them to so that it could be either countenanced or repudiated. Hence, M20 would lose any sense it had, since it could not under any circumstances be either true or false.
This is in fact just another consequence of saying that an empirical proposition and its negation have the same content (more on that elsewhere*). It is also connected with the non-sensicality of all metaphysical 'propositions', for their negations do not have the same content. Indeed, because their negations do not picture anything that could be the case in any possible world, they have no content at all. That, of course, evacuates the content of the original non-negated proposition.
This means that we have to find another way of explaining the use of such non-sensical propositions. More on that presently.
As we can now see, the radical misuse of language governing the formation of what look like empirical propositions (such as M20, or M1a):
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M20: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.
M20a: Motion never occurs without matter.
involves an implicit reference to the sorts of conditions that that underlie their normal employment/reception.44 Hence, when such sentences are entertained, a pretence (often genuine) has to be maintained that they actually mean something, that they are capable of being understood.45 This is done even if certain restrictions are later placed on their further processing, as in M1a. In that case, a pretence has to be that we understand what might make such propositions true, and their 'negations' false, so that those like M20 can be declared 'necessarily' false or "unthinkable".
But, this entire exercise is an empty charade, for no content can be given to propositions like M20 (and thus to M1a, nor in fact to any metaphysical 'proposition').
With respect to motionless matter, even Lenin had to admit that!
Indeed, he it was who told us this 'idea' was "unthinkable".
Metaphysical Fiat -- Dogma on Stilts
Moreover, because the putative truth-values of such sentences are plainly not determined by the world, they have to be given a truth-value by fiat. They have to be declared "necessarily true" or "necessarily false".
Or, more grandiloquently, their opposites have to be pronounced "unthinkable" by a sage-like figure -- a Philosopher, or perhaps a Dialectical Magus of some sort.
Metaphysical decrees like this are as common as dirt in traditional thought -- and, as we can now see, in dialectics, too.
Of course, this 'ceremony' must be performed in abeyance of any evidence (indeed, none need ever be sought), since sentences like this transcend by decree the usual grubby, materialist details that govern the social practices underlying the determination of truth-values of ordinary empirical propositions.
Nevertheless, semi-divine theses like these have to be set apart, and have their exclusive, semantic pre-eminence bestowed on them as a gift; they cannot be expected -- nor must they be allowed -- to mix with vulgar empirical utterances, covered as the latter are in such worldy, working-class grime.
In the present case, it is thus impossible for anyone who agrees with Lenin to outline the material conditions under which, say, M20 would be true, so they could specify what it was that was being ruled out by the supposedly necessary status of M1a. But this just means there are no specifiably material conditions that would make M20 false. Naturally, if no such conditions can be delineated either way, the search for supporting evidence cannot even be imagined. Which is what we have found.
Indeed, M20b and M1a (etc.) do not make it that far since they have been hobbled in advance, so to speak. Born of an ideal world (i.e., in the socially-'atomised' brain of lone thinkers, as they sit and 'reflect' on the essential nature of the world), and despite appearances and the intentions of their inventors, they relate to nothing whatsoever in material reality. The ordinary conventions of materially-based language prevent this.
M20: Motion sometimes occurs without matter.
M20a: Motion never occurs without matter.
M20b: Motion can never occur without matter.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Since no one can even so much as specify what would count as evidence showing M1a was either true or false, such propositions are not materially-based (i.e., empirically sensitive to reality). In that case, they cannot be used to help understand the world, nor indeed assist in changing it. That, of course, helps explain why DM cannot be used to propagandise and agitate workers, nor can it be employed in revolutionary upheavals (like 1917), as we have seen.
Instead of reflecting the world, these sentences do the opposite; they determine the way the world must be, not the way it happens to be. This inner, jargon-based Ideal world reflects the distorted language from which it was born; this sort of language does not reflect the material world. That is why the truth or falsehood of such sentences is not decided upon by comparison with nature, but as a gift bestowed on them by the lone thinkers who dreamt them up.46 The normal cannons that determine when something is true or false must be set aside, and a spurious 'evidential' ceremony substituted for it.47
The Evidential Pantomime -- Mickey Mouse Science Strikes Back
In DM, this bogus ceremony is often carried out after the event -- that is, after such theses had been lifted from Hegel's 'Logic'. DM-theses are then only applied (or rather misapplied) to a narrow range of illustrative examples (as we found, for instance, with Trotsky's 'analysis' of the LOI and Engels's account of motion, and his so-call three 'Laws').
This charade has four inter-connected parts to it.
(1) It is performed in 'thought' as part of a hasty consideration of the 'concepts' supposedly involved. Thus, instead of being compared with material reality in order to ascertain their truth-values, DM-theses are merely compared with other related doctrines (or more often, they are compared with yet more terminologically-compromised sentences drawn from Hegel) as part of a jargon-dominated gesture at 'verification'. It is little wonder, therefore, such theses are quintessentially Ideal and thoroughly anti-materialist.48
(2) This ritual often takes the form of a series of superficial thought experiments accompanied by idiosyncratic 'logical' analyses of a few key terms, artificially boosted by a liberal use of modal/quasi-modal terms, such as "must", "inconceivable", "demand", "unthinkable", and "impossible".
(3) Almost invariably, the application of DM-verities is then illustrated by means of a hasty appeal to a few specially-selected (and endlessly repeated) 'supportive' examples -- which are themselves often mis-described.
In Essay Seven, we saw how laughably superficial the evidence is that DM-theorists offer in support of Engels's three 'Laws', and where, as a result, it was called "Mickey Mouse Science". And now we can see why; the "self-evidence" of DM-theses means that little or no empirical support is required; hence, these few trite, specially-selected examples suffice.
(4) On other occasions, this 'evidence' turns out to be the product of a superficial attempt made at some form of linguistic/'conceptual' analysis, itself based on 'persuasive definitions' and vague abstractions.49 More specifically, as we saw in Essay Three Part One, appeals are often made to nominalised predicate expressions, 'surgically enhanced' so that they now 'name' abstractions, which transformation merely succeeds in turning them into the names of abstract particulars, vitiating the whole exercise.
Whatever the legerdemain involved, reference has to be made at some point to the ordinary meaning of some of the words employed so that specific revisions can be imposed upon them. Since this opening gambit involves an initial misuse of a few selected terms, the words employed in fact no longer possess their usual connotations, which means that the whole exercise is now doubly empty.
In fact, no process of revising a word can begin if that word has been distorted already in this way; it is not possible to revise such words if they are no longer being used, but have been replaced by a typographically identical copies employed idiosyncratically. [More details here.]
Hence, in such circumstances, what seem to be ordinary words (like, "motion", "unthinkable", "without", "equal", "place", "not", and so on) put in a brief appearance. But these words cannot have the same meaning as their supposed vernacular 'equivalents' because of the extraordinary employment to which they are now being put.
This can be seen from the fact that when an actual appeal is made to the ordinary (and often diverse) meanings these words already have (as has been done on numerous occasions throughout this site --, in detail, for example here), the seemingly obvious nature of every single DM-thesis evaporates faster than a politician's 'pledge'.
Nevertheless, this is precisely what creates the spurious 'obviousness' and 'self-evidence' of such theses --, which incidentally also accounts for the consternation often created in the minds of DM-fans when they are dissected and then rejected (as they have been in these Essays). In the latter eventuality, the rationale behind any such repudiation is completely puzzling to those transfixed by this idealist pantomime; how such apparently "self-evident" sentences could fail to be true (or false) thus becomes "unthinkable".
Naturally, this incredulity is a direct consequence of the fact that the 'truth' or 'falsehood' of such theses has been deliberately built into them by linguistic fiat.
And that is also why DM-fans find it difficult to understand anyone who denies, for instance, that a moving object is in two places at once, and in one place and not in it at the same time -- even though our ordinary material use of words associated with motion shows that our ideas about locomotion and location are far more complex than this, and certainly allow for the sorts of movement that make this DM-thesis incorrect.50
This novel DM-use of ordinary words also appears to generate paradox. This is because the everyday sense of such terms seems to 'carry over' into these new contexts, bringing in its train fathomless confusion.
[A detailed example of this process was given in Essay Three Part One, in Essay Four, here and here, and throughout Essays Five and Six.]
This slide in meaning also creates this latest paradox, plaguing Lenin's talk about matter and motion, while illustrating why in his case the unthinkable is both thinkable and unthinkable!
To compound the problem, the paradox-inducing import of such distorted language is often based on what are alleged to be the real meanings of the words involved. To this end, all their other ordinary connotations are brushed aside as 'unscientific', 'un-philosophical', "only valid with certain limits" --, or as uninteresting, inessential, and plagued by banal "commonsense". For example, the real meaning of motion is supposed to imply that it is 'contradictory' and paradoxical; the real meaning of 'identity' is its opposite, and so on.
The original ordinary words are then discarded as of limited use, or as defective --, but this blame is cast upon them solely because the vernacular in fact disallows such surreal moves from being made. In that case, according to traditional theorists (and now dialecticians), if ordinary language disallows such moves, it is ordinary language that is to blame, not the moves!51
Ordinary words are thus caught in a philosophical vice, as it were: on the one hand their everyday meanings do not sanction the sort of theses metaphysicians try to wring from them, while on the other, they are deemed to be inadequate because they appear to generate paradox -- when in reality that condition was created by just such a cavalier, if not Philistine, misuse.52
The Descent Into Metaphysical Non-Sense
Nevertheless, the necessary exclusion of one of the logical 'properties' of empirical sentences completely wrecks their capacity to accommodate the working of their non-excluded, semantic twin -- truth in the case of falsehood, and falsehood in the case of truth. For, as we have just seen, if such sentences can only be false, and never true, they can't actually be false. This is because, normally, if a sentence is false, it is untrue.53 But, if we cannot say under what circumstances such sentences are true then we certainly cannot say in what way they fall short of this so that they could be untrue, and hence false. Conversely, if they can only be true, the conditions that would make them false are likewise excluded, and hence their truth (or non-falsehood) similarly falls by the wayside.
However, since our 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 --, the abrogation of such socially-sanctioned rules means that semantically-mangled sentences like these are not just senseless, they are non-sensical. That is, they are now incapable of expressing empirical truth or falsehood; incapable of expressing a sense. Whatever we try to do with them collapses into incoherence.54
For the last two and a half millennia, metaphysicians consistently overlooked this feature of empirical sentences. [DM-theorists are thus mere parvenus in this regard.]
This error has certainly fooled traditional Philosophers into thinking that the supposed 'necessity' of metaphysical 'propositions' derives from the nature of reality, not from the distorted language on which their ideas depend.
Innocent-looking linguistic infelicities like these helped motivate the invention of theses that were regarded as a 'reflection' of the essential features of reality, accessible to thought alone. But, if such 'truths' are and were based on nothing more than linguistic chicanery, then no evidence could be offered in support -- except that which is based on yet more verbal trickery.
Metaphysical 'necessity' is thus little more than a shadow cast on the world by such mis-shaped, ersatz jargon (to paraphrase Wittgenstein).
Over the centuries, metaphysical systems thus developed not by becoming empirically more refined (or materially useful, in relation to, say, technology), as is the case with science, but by becoming increasingly labyrinthine, convoluted and baroque -- as further incomprehensible layers of jargon were deposited on this ancient, linguistically deformed bedrock.
[Hegel's system alone provides ample evidence of that.]
Naturally, all this just confirms the fact that these two semantic possibilities -- truth and falsehood -- must remain as open options if a proposition is to count as empirical, subject to evidential confirmation, and thus to count as "thinkable", in this sense.
In which case, as the above shows, no sentence can express a 'necessary truth' about the world and remain empirical.55
So, despite appearances to the contrary, in reality Lenin's appeal to the 'unthinkability' of motion without matter does not in fact say anything that is empirically determinate.
While Mathematics Adds Up...
Considerations like these suggest that indicative sentences often conceal their logical form, which is why it is unwise to take the superficially similar grammatical forms of language at face value. This in turn shows that while sentences like M2-M9 might well be indicative -- with several of them also appearing to be empirical -- those among them that in fact masquerade as empirical propositions fail to express a sense. And this is a consequence of the logical conditions that ordinary users have set on empirical propositions (by their practice, but not in general by their deliberations). [More about that elsewhere.*]
Even so, not all such sentences are, or need be, metaphysical.
For example, consider the following:
M2: Two is a number.
This appears to be unconditionally true. But, its 'negation':
M21: It is not the case that two is a number.
is not false, it is incomprehensible.
M21 is not just merely false, if it is taken to be a mathematical and not merely a terminological proposition. Because it is impossible to specify (short of trivial examples -- see below) what could possibly make M21 true we are in no position to specify what it rules out, and hence are in no position to say in what way it falls short of this for it to be false.
Unlike empirical propositions, M2 and M21 do not 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 would be relevant to establishing their veracity.
M2 expresses a rule for the use of the number word "two", since it expresses the role this word occupies in mathematics; M21, at best, records the rejection of that rule.
To think otherwise of M21 would perhaps be to misidentify the use of the word "two", which would naturally alter the logical syntax of any of the equations in which this word (or its symbol) occurs.
Some might think that M21 is "logically false" (and thus that M2 is "logically true"), but to conclude that would merely attract the sort of questions posed above about "necessarily false" and "necessarily true". If it is not possible to specify conditions under which M21 would be "logically true" (trivial examples excepted), 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").
And, to take the trivial case: if it isn't possible to specify conditions under which M21 would be "logically true" -- since any attempt to do so would be to misconstrue the use of the word "two", once more --, then the typographically identical word used in any such endeavour (i.e., "two") would not be being used to express that word's normal use, whatever else it was doing. This would merely amount to a terminological revision, perhaps.
Others might want to argue that M21 is self-contradictory. In that case, when spelt-out this self-contradiction might be expressed as follows:
M21a: It is not the case that the number two is a number.
Or, perhaps more explicitly:
M21b: The number two is a number and the number two is not a number.
But, as seems plain, the use of the word "two" is not the same in each half of M21b, so it is no more self-contradictory than this would be:
M21c: George W Bush is President of the USA and George H W Bush is not President of the USA.
[M21c is not meant to be of the same logical form as M21b (plainly the former contains definite descriptions); it is merely meant to make explicit a change of denotation in both halves. Plainly, the first name is being used to refer to a different individual from the second.]
If we concentrate on a less stilted version of M21:
M21d: Two is not a number
we can see that M2 and M21d do not contradict one another, since the use of the word "two" has changed again.
[In addition, these earlier comments might apply to M21d and M21b.55a]
So, M2 would itself only become 'false' if one or more of its constituent words changed their meanings (i.e., the trivial case mentioned in the previous paragraphs). But even then, M2 would not be about what we now call two. Plainly as soon as anyone attempts to deny that number two is a number, they automatically cease to talk about the number two. [What they might in fact be doing is rejecting a rule of language, but that would not affect how the rest of us would proceed.]
M2: Two is a number.
M21: It is not the case that two is a number.
Hence, despite appearances, M21 and M2 do not in fact contradict one another. This is because M21 is either incomprehensible or it is about something else -- the trivial case, once again. In that case, M21 cannot be the negation of M2 (despite the presence of the negative particle, and the typographically similar signs they both contain --, which is of course why the word "negation" was put in 'scare quotes' earlier). Once more, negation here would merely amount to the rejection of a rule.56
To use a more ordinary analogy: if someone were to say "The strike has been called off", and someone else were to deny this "The strike has not been called off", the second 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 have put my wages in the bank today", and her interlocutor said "No you haven't; you spent all day fishing", the first clause would not be taken to contradict the previous assertion as soon as it had been ascertained that the original speaker had buried her wages in the river bank while fishing.
Ideas to the contrary may only be sustained (1) by the false belief that M2 actually stands alone as a mathematical unit -- when this is not the case -- or, (2) perhaps by the idea that it is a contingent proposition.
But, what makes M2 mathematical is the use of its terms in a system of propositions (connected by historically-situated practices), which are inter-linked by means of rule-governed operations, direct proofs and/or inductions. And M2 is not a contingent proposition (except trivially so -- i.e., in the case where we could have chosen other words or signs to advert to what we now call "two"), but the expression of a rule; it tells us how we use, and are to use, this word/symbol.
The 'truth' of M2 does not arise from the way it relates as an isolated unit to an alleged mathematical fact tucked away in some sort of Platonic heaven (or, indeed, to an abstraction in someone's head) --, but by the way it features in our use of number words in systems of propositions connected by proofs, and by the way it relates to wider material/social practices. [On this, see Note 56.]
That is why, of course, none of us would be able to comprehend an empirical investigation aimed at testing the truth of M2 against reality, on its own or in any other way. In fact, the inappropriateness of just such an empirical verification of propositions like M2 is connected with their lack of truth-conditions.57
Our use of such propositions -- which, as we can see, differs markedly from the way we use empirical propositions -- indicates that they have a radically different logical form. The failure of a proposition like M2 to correspond with anything in reality is shown by the fact that (barring trivial cases, once more) we would ordinarily fail to understand its 'negation' -- M21. Anyone who asserted M21 would not be making an ordinary sort of mistake, as they would be had they asserted: "It is not the case that Blair has resigned".
This can be seen, too, by the way mathematics is learnt: by drill, rote, repetitive calculation, practical application, and the use of proof --, but not by experiment, or by abstraction. Children are not taught to abstract, but to count -- and at some point, the penny drops, and it is impossible to stop them when they spot the pattern. Hence, understanding mathematical propositions goes hand-in-hand with mastering certain skills, in learning proofs, and in the successful completion of certain operations (perhaps on collections of material objects).57a
In that case, it would not be possible to declare M2 true because it corresponded to a fact (either in reality or in Platonic heaven) for we can form no idea of what M2 rules out, and hence what it rules in. In being 'true' itself, M2 would have to rule out the 'truth' of M21. But the 'truth' of M21 is incomprehensible; it is not possible to say in virtue of what M21 would be true, and hence in virtue of what M21 is not true. In that case, M2 is not made true by any sort of correspondence relation, nor is it true because its alleged contradictory (i.e., M21, is false, as would be the case with an ordinary empirical proposition).
All this is, of course, independent of the fact that it would not be possible to confirm M2 by comparing it with an abstract fact (even if we could make sense of the latter or the process of comparing a sentence with one of these).
In that case, the mere insertion of a negative particle into a sentence does not automatically create the negation of the original sentence (where "the negation" here means "the proposition with the opposite truth-value"), as M21 shows.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 correct use of negation, non-empirical indicative sentences may not be so paired. This is, of course, not 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 grasped only by those who know how to count and calculate, etc. In that case, the meaning of M2 must be explicated in a different way to that of, say, M6:
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M2: Two is a number.
As has already been noted, M6 can be understood well in advance of its truth-value being known, but that truth-value cannot be ascertained on linguistic or logical grounds alone. This is quite unlike, say, M2 (or even, M1a).
This means that sentences like M2 are neither empirical nor scientific. 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 delineate the normed application of the terms they contain, and because of this they are incapable of being empirically true (or false). Any attempt to regard them this way soon collapses into incoherence, as we have seen.
As it turns out, the confusion of rules like this with empirical sentences underlies a historically identifiable failure on the part of theorists to see language as a social phenomenon.59 This is because such an approach tends to view the foundations of language as solely truth-based (that is, language is thought to be reliant on empirical, or quasi-empirical factors --, such as "representing" reality, or "reflecting" it in the private arena of the 'mind'/'consciousness') rather than on socially-sanctioned practices and norms. On this view, therefore, falsehood is merely the erroneous or 'partial' concatenation of the contents of consciousness. As we will see in Essay Three Part Four, this 'explanation' of the nature of falsehood is not only circular, it too is incoherent.
This ancient approach thus misconstrues sentences that express social norms as if they were empirical, or Super-empirical propositions. In that case, normative aspects of language (i.e., rules), which have arisen from social interaction, are mistaken for an expression of the real relation between things, or for those things themselves. That is, they are misconstrued as 'necessary' truths underpinning reality, and which reflect "essences". As such, they are Super-empirical theses, in no need of evidential support. It is this ancient logical segue that expresses a pernicious (but little-recognised) fetishisation of language highlighted throughout this site (but explained in more detail in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve).
This is why the falsehood of M6, say, is not like the 'falsehood' of M2. To repeat, in order to understand M6, no one need know whether it is true or false; its falsehood does not affect the meaning of any of the terms it contains. That is not so with M2:
M2: Two is a number.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M2 cannot be false. Its 'falsehood' would amount to a change of meaning, not of fact. M2 may thus only be accepted or rejected as an expression of a rule of language.60
In fact, the modification of sentences like M2, by means of such things as analogy and metaphorical extension, underlies the many major and minor conceptual revisions that mathematical/scientific concepts regularly undergo (saving, of course, trivial examples, once more).*
In stark contrast, the rejection or modification of propositions like M6 would not herald profound change; it is unlikely that Blair's failure to own a copy of TAR will initiate a significant conceptual revolution.
The fundamental conceptual changes that are set in train by major or minor alterations of the rules governing mathematical, scientific or empirical language are also connected with factors that make metaphysical/DM-theses seem so certain, and their rejection so completely "unthinkable". In the latter case, because they relate to spurious forms of the normative use of language, and not to empirical reality as such, their alleged status is resolvable in 'thought' alone, which is precisely what induces such certitude in those who adopt this approach to language and Metaphysics.61
However, comparing now M2 and M9:
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
M2: Two is a number.
At first sight, M9 seems to resemble M2, in that its apparent truth-value (true) is given by the meaning of its constituent words.
However, M2 is not made into a rule because of the atomised meaning of the terms it contains; it is a rule because the social/historical practices upon which it is based constitute the meaning of its terms. It is how human beings have used these terms already (in this case, in counting, calculating and proof) that establishes their meaning. The rule (i.e., M2) merely expresses this already established practice.62
On the other hand, if M2 were a rule because of the (prior atomistic establishment of the) meaning of the terms it contains, then meaning would be independent of use; it would not be based on social factors but on metaphysical principles of dubious provenance (and even more dubious logical status, as we have seen).
Indeed, if that were the case, the meaning of M2's constituent terms would have to be given before they were employed in social practices like counting, calculating and proof by independent factors based on just such metaphysical principles (which are inexpressible in language), in a piecemeal, atomistic fashion.63
Each word in sentences like M2 would gain its meaning by 'naming' a 'particular' or a 'universal', or by representing this or that 'abstract' aspect of underlying reality (in the heads of their inventors). It would then be the atomised meaning of a term that would inform each user how it is to be used; this would transform each word (or its inner 'representation') into an agent and each human being in its linguistic puppet.64
Hence, the atomisation of word-meaning amounts to the fetishisation of language; it would make the 'social' interaction of words (or their inner 'representations') the determinant of how human beings are to use them. This would once more be to invert the fact that it is human agents who determine word meaning by their social interaction and by their relation to the material world.65
In that case, it is the pattern underlying the linguistic and social contexts which sentences like M2 encapsulate that gives expression to our rule-governed use of such terms, and which constitutes their meaning. This is because this pattern is based on generality of use -- i.e., the possibility and actuality of norm-governed, open-ended social employment and/or justification.
Hence, when questioned why "two" had been used in, say, "2 + 7 = 9" (contingent problems to one side) all that the one challenged could appeal to would be sentences like M2 and the operational rules of arithmetic. This equation would not be confirmed or justified by comparing it with anything in the world (or with any 'abstractions').
It might be thought that the above equation could be justified by counting objects of a certain sort; this is undeniable, but this would only work if the parties involved already understood how to use the relevant vocabulary, rules of arithmetic and counting.
This can be seen from the fact that if someone were to count two objects, and then count seven, but declare that there were in total ten objects, he or she would be accused of making a mistake. Manifestly, we use these rules to decide if such counting has been done correctly. We would not revise our rules, or our commitment to sentences like M2, if they had been 'falsified' in this way. Once more, this is entirely different from the reaction we would have if M6 were shown to be false. [Incidentally, the best account of this can be found in Robinson (2003).]
M2: Two is a number.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
These sentential contexts form part of a wider set of propositions that can be used in diverse practices, forming a system of concepts governed by the same (or analogous) patterns. The application of this rule (M2), as part of such a system of rules, reveals what its constituent terms mean, which application in turn is connected with and conditioned by the use of other related concepts, alongside their attendant patterns and practices.66
This is how mathematical words have gained their meanings as parts of systems that have grown in relation to our social development (conditioned, of course, by class division etc.) over many centuries. They have not acquired the meaning they now have in a piecemeal fashion, that is, they do not now gain a sense atomistically before they are contextually/socially employed.
Nor do mathematical propositions gain their senses from the way they correspond (or fail to correspond) to objects or structures hidden away in an ideal Platonic realm.67 This also means that mathematical propositions are not true because they are the result of a process of abstraction (which is fundamentally an atomistic and individualistic phenomenon); they are 'true' because of the proof systems to which they belong (which, once more, are themselves the development of expressions reliant on social/material practices).68
Consequently, two is not a number because of what the word "two" 'meant' on its own before it featured in mathematical propositions, or counting operations, and the like.69 In isolation, the sign "2" (or the word "two") means nothing. It is just a mark on a page. It gains its life from its use in certain rule-governed socially-conditioned surroundings. Initially, clearly, these were (and still are) everyday contexts.
More formally, a mathematical context is a system of propositions that has grown up alongside specific social practices. Hence, "two" does not receive its meaning in isolation, as appears to be the case if examples like M2 are read trivially. M2 cannot supply a meaning for "two" that was not there already in such a surrounding system of propositions and practices. Unless the 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. "Two" gains its meaning from the rule-governed or normative use it has in everyday life -- a role that creates the logical space for number words -- and in connection with our use of other number words and their associated operations, as defined in Arithmetic (etc.) --, but linked now by systems of proof, not correspondence relations. This is underlined by the way we verify mathematical propositions. We do not run empirical tests or perform experiments on them. We prove their truth within the systems and practices in which they feature by well-known techniques.70 Hence, M2 is empirically neither true nor false; it simply records a normed convention.71
Analogously, it might seem that M9 is true because of what its constituent words mean, but the status of propositions like M9 is more problematic.72 As noted above, M2 is not true because of what its words mean; it expresses a socially-sanctioned rule that constitutes their meaning -- alongside countless (no pun intended) other similar number words and operations --, and so it is incapable of being true or false. M2 is either useful or otherwise; used or not.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
M2: Two is a number.
This helps explain why any attempt made by critics to question the veracity of sentences like M9 would invariably be rebuffed (by dialecticians) with a claim that they were true because of what words or concepts like "motion" and "matter" really mean. This can be seen from the fact that if anyone were to deny M9, it would be no use dialecticians asking such a sceptic to look harder at the evidence. All that a dialectician could do in such circumstances is appeal to the words/concepts involved, and then, with Lenin, declare that "motion without matter is unthinkable" -- which, naturally, explains why Lenin did not say "motion without matter is false".
This hypothetical and proffered response is in fact itself the expression of an ancient way of viewing language, one that sees discourse as a system of labels attached to -- or representing singly -- objects and processes in the world (or in an abstract Platonic heaven/Aristotelian concept-space, or even ideas in the 'mind'),* but not as a dynamic expression of our communal and material life.73
Once more, that helps account for the proposed linguistic rejoinder (i.e., "M9 is true because of what its words/concepts mean") could only ever be the last court of appeal for a cornered DM-theorist; there is nothing more that could be said to any sceptic who doubted the 'truth' of such DM-theses. What little evidence there is that 'substantiates' DM-theses would soon prove to be of no help (as we have seen in earlier Essays); it would be no use a defender of Lenin pointing to more evidence if the meaning of his words is obscure in the extreme, as they now stand.
Hence, this hypothetical fall-back position of last resort just gives the game away. DM-theses are amenable to no other sort of defence; evidence is in the end irrelevant. DM-theses are creatures of an idiosyncratic use of language, and as such can only be defended linguistically, or 'conceptually'.74
This means that, since dialecticians too are social agents, situated in a certain class and theoretical position, their theses are little more that misconstrued or mis-applied social norms (and seriously garbled ones at that). They are not empirical theses; they are camouflaged rules for the idiosyncratic use of Hegelian/metaphysical terms-of-art, borrowed from a tradition that has provable mystical, and hence ruling-class bona fides.74a
This also helps account for the frequent use of modal expressions in certain formulations of DM-theses (for example, as in: "Motion must involve a contradiction", or "Matter without motion is impossible", "Dialectical Logic demands….", "Totality is an insistence...", etc., etc.), accompanied, or not, by an appeal to the alleged definitions of such words/concepts (e.g., "motion is the mode of the existence of matter"). Empirical truths have no need of 'modal minders' of this sort; counter-intuitive rules, on the other hand, do.
This is, of course, why the following would never be asserted:
M6a: Tony Blair must own a copy of TAR.
That is, not unless M6a itself was the conclusion of an inference, such as: "Tony Blair told me he owned a copy, so he must own one", or it was based on a direct observation statement, perhaps. But even then, the truth or falsehood of M6a would depend on an interface with material reality at some point.
In such cases, with M6a-type propositions, reality dictates to us whether what we say is true or false. Our use of such propositions means we are not dictating to nature what it must contain, or what must be true of reality --, which is contrary to the implications of the use of metaphysical and dialectical language.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
Nevertheless, despite appearances to the contrary, M9 cannot be true solely in virtue of what its words mean. Normally, the ordinary-looking words that 'truths' like M9 attempt to employ gain whatever import they have from the part they play in wider human practices, those that involve a systematic (and patterned) application in everyday material contexts. Divorced from this, the isolated use of specialised terms in sentences like M9 means that they are like fish out of water, as it were.
There are no material systems -- i.e., systems pertaining to material practice or everyday life -- in which the idiosyncratic employment of M9's constituent words has a life (hence, a meaning) other than these novel, isolated contexts. And as we saw in Essay Nine Part One, such theses play no part in the day-to-day activity of revolutionaries, nor do they feature in the agitation and propagandisation of the working class.
Indeed, metaphysical 'sound bites' like M9 provide the only semantic background to the use of such terms. These DM 'nuggets of truth' supply the sole context for the peculiar deployment of such deformed phrases, and they do so in non-practical (hence, non-material) surroundings -- quite unlike the mathematical propositions which they seem to ape. Isolated from material contexts in this way, the connections that the ordinary-looking words dialecticians use have with the typographically similar everyday words (from which they had allegedly been 'derived', or 'abstracted') have thus been severed. Because DM-jargon is not based on material practices (as was demonstrated in Essay Nine Part One), and cannot be used in connection with the working class) they either have no meaning, or their usual meaning denies any sense to sentences like M9.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
It is no surprise, therefore, that concatenating such terms in sentences like M9 results in confusion and incomprehension, or that they decay into incoherence so easily.74b
However, sentences that express (or try to express) the rules governing the use of certain words are invariably interpreted by DM-theorists (and other metaphysicians) as if they were genuine empirical propositions of a special, but more profound kind -- that is, they are regarded as superscientific truths. Again, as we have seen, because of this these sentences become non-sensical.75
Admittedly, theses like M9 tend to depend on -- or they even give birth to -- all manner of derivative 'propositions' that supposedly help explicate their import, or from which they have been 'derived'. But, as metaphysical 'statements', they stand-alone as essentialist doctrines –- that is, they confront us as atomic philosophical theses, as fundamental 'truths'.
Philosophical 'gems' like these have traditionally been mined, cleaned and polished into their glittering state by isolated thinkers. Such theorists claim to have 'discovered' these remarkable treasures lying just below the surface of ordinary language and experience --, an admission which, incidentally, prevents such theses from expressing material truths -- by the mere exercise of thought.75a
But, theses like these were never based on -- nor were they even derived from -- a collective employment of words drawn from everyday material practice, otherwise the rest of us would not need to be informed of them.75b
Indeed, if their 'discoverers' had based them on collective material practices they would not have struck them (or anyone else) as particularly 'deep' truths unearthed by their valiant efforts alone (aided or not by the metaphysical equivalent of a JCB -- Hegel's Logic).
In fact, theses like these stage a dramatic entrance into the world of learning as glittering 'linguistic jewels' (solitaire diamonds, indeed). They gain their 'meaning' -- their metaphysical sparkle -- solely from the artificial settings created by their inventors, making a dramatic debut as "news from nowhere", shafts of metaphysical light, truths written on tablets of stone.
They thus appear before humanity as if from on high.
And, surprise, surprise: the vast majority 'highly educated' people fall for this time and again.75c
Nevertheless, these 'metaphysical prophets' (almost like messengers of the gods, such as, say, Hermes), who convey to humanity these sacred truths, often imagine that the new meanings of the ordinary-looking words they contain arise from the novel role bestowed on them by their pioneering efforts in linguistic, reconstructive surgery --, creating in many cases the names of 'abstract' objects/concepts (etc.), grandiloquently re-christened: "essences".76
This supposition is encouraged by the equally erroneous idea that such names gain their meaning atomistically through a direct and unmediated link with reality. This helps explain why the novel employment of everyday words (whether these are verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or relational expressions) -- after they have been changed into the names of abstract objects (and the like) --, is as central to Metaphysics as it is to DM (as we saw in Essay Three Part One, and elsewhere).
Hence, to traditional thinkers, the assumption that names gain their meaning directly and solely from whatever they name seems eminently plausible, just as it seems equally credible to suppose that a language (i.e., a real language, a philosophical language -- not the woefully defective vernacular of the working class) that is based on just such an atomistic naming ritual can somehow manage to pick out the essence of "Being" by the mere expedient of wishing it were so.77
This, of course, is one reason why traditional Philosophers insisted that words have atomistic criteria governing their meanings -- be this the result of an 'inner act' of naming ideas in the 'mind', a process of abstraction, or a stipulative re-definition.
Furthermore, it is no accident that this approach to language not only undermines its social nature, it is based on a class-motivated renunciation of the material roots of discourse in human practice. Nor is it merely coincidental that thinkers who are/were demonstrably sympathetic toward wider ruling-class interests invariably favoured this anti-communal view of language.78
Conversely, it is even less accidental that ordinary language assumed its central role in Analytic Philosophy, among left-leaning Linguistic Philosophers, just when ordinary workers were entering the sage of history, en masse, as a political force.79
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
M8: Time is a relation between events.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Traditionally, the sense of solitary sentences (like M9) is somehow supposed to depend on the meaning of the terms they contain. However, the isolated use of words cannot determine the sense of any sentences so formed.80 Words gain their meaning from their applicability in an indefinitely large set of socially-sanctioned contexts.81 Words do not have a meaning bestowed upon them first, isolated from specific linguistic and 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 in society on its own, as an isolated 'commodity', unconnected with social organisation and labour, only to enter the economy afterwards with that unique value already attached to it, which it then retains. Meaning is no more a natural, individualistic property than is value.
This we might call "the social-labour theory of meaning".82
However, ex hypothesi, there are no other contexts in which metaphysical atoms like M1a or M9 can feature. The fundamental propositions of Metaphysics (such as, M8 or M9) stand alone as isolated nuggets of truth, foundational principles. This means that in such isolated surroundings the constituent words of M9, for example, are meaningless. This is because they possess no connection with ordinary linguistic contexts that are themselves embedded in, or related to, material practices. This is, of course, one reason why M9 is non-sensical.
In a similar vein, Gold is not just valueless in nature, it is incapable of gaining a value by itself and of its own efforts -- or, indeed, by the efforts of a lone prospector/refiner. And gold, too, would remain valueless if it had no connection with historically-conditioned material practice.
Atomised Humanity Versus Socialised Language
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 humans put them in material contexts -- is to fetishise them, as noted above.
This would be tantamount to believing that words (or their 'inner representations') enjoyed a social life of their own anterior to, and explanatory of, the linguistic communion that exists between human beings. If words (etc.) did in fact acquire their own meanings piecemeal in this fashion, and these meanings accompanied words (etc.) about the place like shadows (to paraphrase Wittgenstein, once more), then the idea that language is a social phenomenon would assume an entirely different aspect. In that case, discourse would still be social, but that would be so only because words (etc.) were themselves social beings, which would then mean that words (etc.) had passed that condition on to our use of language!83
Hence, as noted several times above, the supposition that a word (or, at least, its physical embodiment, or its 'inner representation') can dispose a human agent (causally or in any other way)84 to regard it as a repository of its own meaning -- so that inferences can be made from ink marks on the page (or from ideas or 'representations' in the mind) to super-empirical truths about 'Being', or whatever --, would be tantamount to misconstruing the products of the social relations among human beings as if they were their own autonomous semantic custodians, as creators and carriers of meaning themselves. In effect, this would be to anthropomorphise words (etc.) and to treat 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
In that case, M9 cannot be true in virtue of the meanings of any of its words, for no meaning has yet been given to this idiosyncratic use of such words by human beings engaged in any form of material practice.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
If, however, an attempt were made to specify their meaning in a piecemeal fashion, a rule would be required.86 To suppose now that there is some sort of connection between a rule and reality (determined by a physical law, perhaps) would be of no use, either. If a rule were to depend on such a connection, it would become an empirical truth, and thus cease to be a rule.87
Unfortunately, the vast majority of philosophers have overlooked this seemingly insignificant fact.88
Lenin's Rules -- Not OK
Elsewhere in MEC, Lenin went on to say:
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, when examined, once more, it turns out to be nothing of the sort. Contrast it with the following:
M23: Liquidity is an inseparable property of water.
M23a: Liquidity is not an inseparable property of water.
Here, we can imagine conditions under which M23 would be false and M23a true (think of ice or steam). But, M22 is a much stronger claim than M23, and it is clearly connected with M1a (or with M9). We can see this if we examine it more closely.
If M22 is re-written slightly and tidied up to eliminate the unnecessary detail it would become:
M24: Motion is an inseparable property of matter.
[M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.]
M24 is allegedly always true, its 'truth' clearly connected (at least) with the supposed meaning of words like "motion" and "inseparable", etc.
By asserting M24, Lenin certainly did not mean to suggest that even if we were to try to do so we would fail to separate the two words "motion" and "matter" (or what they meant) -- we can see this from the fact that his own sentence had to separate them to make sense.
Hence, Lenin was plainly not informing us that such a split was a particularly difficult physical/mental task we might make some effort to try to carry out, but which we found we could never quite manage -- like, say, trying to eat an adult Blue Whale in ten seconds.
Lenin was clearly alluding to a connection between matter and motion that was much tighter than that; he was perhaps reminding us of the futility even of the attempt -- that it was not an option --, just as it would not be an option for anyone to try to disassociate oddness from the number three, or being a king-killer from regicide, for instance.89
Hence, if we were to view M23 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 thus mean that water was the only liquid there could be, and that liquidity was the only conceivable form of water.
This is because, for Lenin, motion is not just one of the defining characteristics of matter, nothing that moves could fail to be material. Motion is, as it were, super-glued (Krazy-glued) to matter, and only to matter, according to Lenin. In that case, the same would have to be true with respect to water, if we were to read M23 as we read M24.
M23: Liquidity is an inseparable property of water.
M23a: Liquidity is not an inseparable property of water.
M24: Motion is an inseparable property of matter.
Now, the main verb in M24 is clearly in the indicative mood. But, if M24 were an empirical proposition (or even a sort of super-duper empirical thesis) its negation should make sense -- but it doesn't (for Lenin -- indeed, it is "unthinkable"), unlike that of M23 (i.e., M23a). This is because, once again, M24 holds open no truth possibilities (but only one envisaged necessity).
Lenin obviously believed that the falsehood of M24 was impossible even to think. Nevertheless, and once again, the indicative mood of its main verb hides its real nature. Only a consideration of the overall use of this thesis (that is, its role within Lenin's own 'system' of ideas) in the end reveals its actual form -- that is, as a metaphysical proposition, derived not from 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 could conceivably make it false.
Indicative sentences are normally true or false according to the way the world is, but this sentence cannot be false no matter what nature is like. So, its falsehood cannot be based on any conceivable state of the world. As noted earlier, its truth seems to arise from linguistic (or conceptual) features alone, not from reality. This can be seen not just from its putative necessity, but from the way Lenin actually established its veracity -- he simply relied on its alleged self-evidence. He did not even think to support it with any data. Its semantic status was underpinned by what Lenin took its words to mean. Its truth was internally-generated -- not 'externally' established.
Nevertheless, what could possibly make this set of words necessarily 'true' in Lenin's opinion? M24 is just a string of words; it would have to have some sort of projective relation to the real world for it to be true, for it to be a true picture of our world, and not of some alternative, parallel, or science fiction 'world'.90
Well, whatever it is that might succeed in achieving this must also make the following sentences false:
M18: This particular example of motion is separated matter.
M19: This lump of matter is motionless.
[M24: Motion is an inseparable property of matter.]
But, ex hypothesi, M18 and M19 are "unthinkable", according to Lenin; as soon as we think either of them we face the sort of problems we encountered earlier.
Such 'necessary' truths make the possibilities they rule out (such as M18 or M19) not just 'false', but Super-false, and hence "unthinkable". This they do while at the same time requiring that whatever it is that they exclude has to be thought about just so that it might be rejected. 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 cannot be done -- even in thought! Unless we could do that, we would have no idea what we were meant to rule out, and thus no grasp of what we were committing ourselves to 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. If so, in thought we would have to be able to separate these two 'concepts' -- even if only to declare they were inseparable! M24 would therefore be true if and only if it were actually false; we could agree with it only on condition that we didn't.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
This problem has again arisen from the fact that Lenin entertained a 'necessary' truth (M24) that is impossible to state (in any comprehensible form). As soon as it is formulated it implies its own truth just in case it is false. M24 would be true if every sentence like M18 and M19 were false. But, the falsehood of M18 and M19 implies that they are thinkably false. But, M1a implies that they are unthinkable tout court. So if they are "unthinkable", we may not even think M18, or M19 as false. If do, we can't rule out the possibility that one or both might be true (for we can't even entertain the thought that they are true), since the words they use are forever beyond the pale. We may never use them even to say we cannot use them in this way!
Hence, these sentences are at once above reproach and beyond exoneration.
Metaphysics consigns countless 'propositions' like M18 and M19 to metaphysical limbo in this and similar ways. By adopting this approach to 'knowledge', DM-theorists simply consign their theses to outer darkness, too.
Metaphysics And Language -- 11
As we have seen several times throughout this site, metaphysical/DM- sentences soon decay into non-sense. They cannot fail to do this; while appearing to mimic empirical sentences they turn out to be radically different from them, masquerading as ordinary but more profound declarative statements. Central to the role they adopt as especially deep 'truths' is a misapplication and distortion of language. Often they turn out to be garbled or mis-stated rules of logical grammar.91
In terms that will be explored at greater length in another Essay, many of these sentences 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 by our socially- and materially-sanctioned use of language, but in a form that makes its own 'truths' appear to be super-empirical and 'necessary', unlike ordinary mundane truths associated with everyday practice, or even genuine science. Empirical propositions hold open two possibilities: truth or falsehood. Metaphysical sentences, while purporting to be empirical, close one of these down. In doing that, they end up denying for themselves any sense whatsoever; they collapse into incoherence as non-sensical strings of words.93
On The Impossibility Of Any Future Metaphysics
Despite appearances to the contrary, the complete rejection of Metaphysics outlined here does not draw an a priori limit to the search for knowledge -- it merely reminds us that truths about nature cannot be stated by misusing language. Moreover, they can't be formulated in ways that make supporting evidence irrelevant.
Since metaphysical sentences do not present genuine empirical possibilities, their repudiation and subsequent eradication cannot adversely affect the scientific investigation of the world, nor interfere with any attempt to change it.
Metaphysical theses do not represent profound, ambitious or risky conjectures that merit our attention and respect. They contain nothing but empty phrases -- they are indeed "houses of cards" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) --, which, at best, express self-important confusion, at worst, a ruling-class view of reality. [More on this in Parts Two and Three of this Essay.]
Metaphysical sentences violate the rules governing the formation of comprehensible empirical sentences by undermining their semantic possibilities. In addition, they misuse ordinary words while pretending to extend, alter or sharpen their meaning. Allegedly providing insight into the "essential" structure of reality, metaphysical and DM-theses attempt to sanction the derivation of substantive truths about nature from words alone. They thus possess an entirely undeserved mystique, which seems to arise from their chameleonic outer facade: they resemble ordinary empirical propositions, pretending to inform us of 'necessary' features of reality, but that only hides the fact that this reduces them to non-sensicality.
As should seem clear, this set of deflationary conclusions rules out the possibility of any future Metaphysics (including that fourth-rate version called "Materialist Dialectics"): it thus ceases to be an option.
This does not mean that if we were cleverer than we now are, we would be able to ascertain such 'super-truths' --, or even that a mega-intelligent being in a 'parallel universe' could uncover analogous profundities that presently lie beyond our grasp. It is that there is nothing there (in Metaphysics) for us to be ignorant of so that we (or anyone else) might go in search of it. The language that metaphysicians/DM-theorists themselves use rules these alternatives out as viable options in the first place. They present us with no possibilities.
In that case, the search for metaphysical 'truth' is analogous to a search for off-side in tennis, or a free kick in snooker.
We should thus treat the search for metaphysical truth as we would a proposed search for the Jabberwocky.
This 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. Such truths would, a fortiori, not depend on the meanings of words, but on the way the universe happens to be. That endeavour would not be possible if science were based on Metaphysics -- in such an eventuality, its truths would be dependent on the meaning of words, not on the nature of the world.
Hence, to paraphrase Kant: it is necessary to destroy Metaphysics in order to make room for knowledge.94
01. Much of the background to this Essay can be found in Wittgenstein's work, most usefully outlined in Harrison (1979), and Hanna and Harrison (2004). See also, Baker and Hacker (1984, 1988, 2005). Indeed, much of what I have to say here coincides with the anti-metaphysical views found in Rorty (1980). I distance myself however from Rorty's anti-Realism, his attempt to delineate his own metaphysics of mind, and his equation of Philosophy with literary criticism.*
1. Some might take exception to my use of "metaphysical" to describe such sentences. If so, they can substitute the words "essentialist" or "necessitarian" for "metaphysical" in phrases like "metaphysical thesis" used throughout this Essay. That done, not much will be altered by this terminological segue. It is the use, and logical status of such sentences which is important, not what we call them. [More on this below.]
Here are a few relevant quotations from Engels and Lenin about motion and matter. First, Lenin 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.]
"[T]he sole 'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972), p.311.]
"Thus…the concept of matter…epistemologically implies nothing but objective reality existing independently of the human mind and reflected by it." [Ibid., p.312.]
"[I]t is the sole categorical, this sole unconditional recognition of nature's existence outside the mind and perception of man that distinguishes dialectical materialism from relativist agnosticism and idealism." [Ibid., p.314.]
"The fundamental characteristic of materialism is that it starts from the objectivity of science, from the recognition of objective reality reflected by science." [Ibid., pp.354-55.]
And here is 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 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.]
Nevertheless, as we shall see in Essay Thirteen Part One, even though for both of the above dialecticians, motion and matter are inseparable, Lenin's other defining criteria for materiality do not actually rule out the existence of motionless matter.
Anyway, as these passages show, Lenin characterised matter in a rather odd way: i.e., as that which exists "objectively" outside the mind and independent of it, and quoting Engels approvingly that motion is "the mode" of the existence of matter.
But, if all motion is relative to a given reference frame, then it is entirely possible to depict certain sub-sets of matter as motionless with respect to some frame or other. The contrary view may only to be maintained if space is held to be Absolute. That condition aside, this would mean that the motion of matter is in fact reference frame-sensitive. If so, motion cannot be the mode of the existence of matter, as Lenin and Engels supposed. In which case, it is more appropriate to depict motion as a form of representation of material bodies and, as such, to regard it as convention-sensitive.
["Form of representation" will be explained more fully in a later Essay. Until then, cf., Glock (1996), pp.129-35. Note: a "form of representation" of matter is not the same as a form of the existence of matter.]
[QM = Quantum Mechanics.]
Some might think that QM has shown this to be incorrect (in that it holds that all forms of matter are in ceaseless motion), but while this may be true of such matter as an aspect of theory, there is no way this universal truth could conceivably be confirmed throughout nature, and for all of time. In that case, it has to be read into nature, or imposed on it metaphysically (or perhaps used to understand nature as a "form of representation").
But, even if it could be confirmed, the depiction of motion as the "mode" of the existence of matter (rather than as a well-confirmed feature of matter) would still depend on space being viewed as Absolute. There is no conceivable observation, or body of observations that could confirm motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter. Indeed, the choice of a relevant reference frame moving at the same relative velocity as a 'particle' it was tracking would render the latter motionless in that frame (even if one or both of these were of indeterminate location, according to certain interpretations of QM).
And, even if such particles were viewed as probability waves (or the like), the framed specification of the above 'particle's' probable velocity could similarly render it zero (with location indeterminate, once more).
It would seem, therefore, that Lenin and Engels need space to be Absolute if their claim that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter is to stand.
This is apparently a consequence of the principle of equivalence, found in the TOR.
[TOR = Theory Of Relativity.]
As noted above, it could be objected that Lenin's views are not metaphysical. That objection might itself be based on Engels's own loose 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 to the conventions adopted here.]
Given this description, it could be argued that DM is not the least bit metaphysical.
However, Engels's depiction of Metaphysics would unfortunately rule out as non-metaphysical much of previous philosophy. Even Plato would have admitted that things change (albeit if only in appearances).
It could be objected that this is incorrect; only DM pictures things as fundamentally Heraclitean, and relates this to change through internal contradictions (etc.). Well, we have seen (here, here and here) that this is not really so; even in DM, some things stay the same until or unless a sufficient quantitative change induces a commensurate qualitative change -- namely to, and at least including, all those "essences" (that Hegel borrowed from Aristotle, which Engels also unwisely appropriated).
In fact, Engels view of Metaphysics is a crude version of that found in Hegel. As 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 [certain, RL] 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.]
But, as has been pointed out elsewhere at this site, this puts Hegel himself in something of a bind, for he certainly believed that metaphysics is this, but not that.
[LEM = Law Of Excluded Middle.]
Of course, it could be argued that the above observations are not "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. Indeed, even Hegel's conclusions about the content of any metaphysical 'judgement' (that it says this, but not that) would require the deployment of the LEM. And 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 once more, 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 will not.
The conventions of ordinary language (partially codified in the LEM, in this case) are not so easily by-passed, even by a thinker of "genius".
Nevertheless, this is clearly the source of Engels's own confusion, and the source of the slippery reasoning one encounters time and again in dialectical 'thought'; that is, of the sort that allows dialecticians to ignore the contradictions and equivocations in their own theses, while pointing fingers at others for the very same sins. [More on that here, and here.]
Cornforth (1950) contains a two main arguments aimed at neutralising the standard view of Metaphysics outlined here. I will examine them one by one.
1) He claims that the modern characterisation of Metaphysics derives from John Locke (p.94), when he himself had already pointed out that the term derives from Aristotle (p.93). He makes this connection because he says that modern Philosophers reject Aristotle's search for the "essential nature of the real" (p.94), deliberately running-together the Positivists he is attacking with all modern (non-Communist) Philosophers. This allows him to reject their interpretation of this word as the one held by all such thinkers.
First of all, even when Cornforth was writing (1950), only a minority of Philosophers were Positivists, so this can't be a reason to reject the standard interpretation handed down from Aristotle. And it can't be a reason either to reject the interpretation presented here, 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 Philosopher on the planet in 1950 had been a Positivist, it is clear that they rejected Metaphysics because they accepted the traditional view traced back to Aristotle, not Locke. Cornforth just asserts his claim that these Philosophers derived their understanding of this word from Locke, but he provides us with no proof whatsoever -- not even one citation. Anyone who reads the work of the Positivists, or even the Logical Positivists, will see that they are not just hung up on the nature of "substance" (which Cornforth homes in on simply because of what Locke had said), but all areas of traditional Metaphysics.
A good place to start here is Ayer (2001), which is a rather good representative publication of the Patience Strong wing of Logical Positivism; a more substantial version can be found in, say, Carnap (1950). See also Carnap (1931).
Reliable accounts of this area of Analytic Philosophy can be found in, for example: Copleston (2003b), Friedman (1999), Hacker (2000c), Hanfling (1981), Misak (1995), and Passmore (1966). See also Conant (2001).
[I'd recommend Soames (2003a, 2003b), but this work is unreliable on Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language Philosophy. On that, see Hacker (2006). That link is to a PDF.]
2) Cornforth then argues:
"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 to the conventions adopted here.]
To be sure, metaphysical ideas have dominated much of science, but that is because "the ruling ideas are always those of the ruling-class". And yet, science has progressively moved away from domination of this sort, especially in areas where an interface with material reality is paramount (in technology, for example). Why this is so will not be entered into here; it is just a fact.*
But, this is disingenuous of Cornforth, anyway, for Dialectical Materialism/Metaphysics, too, goes way beyond modern science in seeking to pontificate about motion being "the mode of the existence of matter", or about the "essence of Being", or the "interpenetration of opposites", or the "negation of the negation". These dubious 'concepts' certainly fit the traditional interpretation of Metaphysics.
Now, the demarcation between Metaphysics and Science may be hard to define, but that does not mean there is no difference --, just as there is a difference between night and day, even though the boundary between the two is not easy to draw. I will say more about this in an Essay on science to be published later in 2008.
Now, these appear to be Cornforth's only two substantive arguments for his rejection of the traditional interpretation of this word and his adoption of Engels's view of the matter (pp.95-98), and of thus Hegel's definition, too (although, oddly enough, Cornforth does not mention where Engels pinched this notion from). But, it is quite clear that Cornforth has to change the meaning of "metaphysics" to make this story stick, and in order to distinguish Metaphysics from dialectics (pp.98-101).
Be this as it may, I do not want to get hung up on a point of terminology, so I recommend to anyone who objects to the usual definition of "metaphysics" (and its cognates) used here --, perhaps, preferring Engels's own characterisation --, that they substitute for it the following:
"[T]he branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of reality, being, and the world."
This is a description of Metaphysics taken from Wikipedia, which I think is reasonably accurate. Whatever this ancient activity is finally called, it is abundantly clear that DM-theorists attempt to do some of it themselves --, i.e., they endeavour to "explain the ultimate nature of reality, being and the world" in their own idiosyncratic, sub-Hegelian manner.
It will also become apparent as this Essay unfolds that dialecticians in fact adopt the same approach to Philosophy as traditional metaphysicians have: that is, they attempt to derive fundamental features of reality from a set of jargonised expressions, which are then imposed on nature and held true for all of space and time. [This was demonstrated in detail in Essay Two.]
The approach to Metaphysics adopted here is explained in more detail in Baker (2003b), and Rorty (1980). A useful account of the nature of Metaphysics can be found in Van Inwagen (1998).
2. Again, Essay Two revealed the many occasions where modal words were used by DM-apologists in place of more tentative or reasonable summaries of the available evidence.
Here are a few such quotations from DM-classicists and lesser DM-luminaries:
"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)…." [Lenin (1921), pp.90. Bold emphases added.]
"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." [Conze (1944), pp.35-36. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"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…." [Ibid., p.36. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
"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.]
"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), pp.65-68. Bold emphases added.]
Many more passages like these can be found in Essay Two.
3. Naturally, this list is not meant to be an exhaustive compendium of typical sentences; the examples given were chosen to make a particular point about the connection between metaphysical sentences and supposedly empirical propositions.
As Glock notes:
"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.]
4. It could be objected that to acknowledge M9, say, as true does in fact involve some input from the material world.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
M6: Tony Blair owns a copy of TAR.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
Certainly, human beings have to exist in material reality to be able to assert things like M9, even if only to learn what the relevant words mean. But, as we will see later, even though ordinary-looking words are used in such sentences, they (or rather these new terms) cannot form part of the vocabulary that features in material discourse, as Glock pointed out in the previous Note.
Notwithstanding this, the fact remains that the truth-status of M9, unlike that of M6, is not ascertainable by means of a comparison with reality.
In response, it could be pointed out that M9 is general whereas M6 is particular. This is undeniable, but not relevant. Consider another general, but no less empirical proposition:
E1: All badgers living within a ten mile radius of Luton on July 25th 2007 have eaten hazel nuts at least once that day.
Now, you can reflect on E1 until the cows evolve, that will not tell you whether or not it is true --, and even though it might never fully be confirmed (although it would not have been impossible to do so (if acted upon immediately) -- it might prove easier to falsify), observation alone would be accepted as relevant to that end.
This is not so with M9.
Finally, it could be objected that M9 (and M1a) are in fact summaries of the evidence to date. This objection has already been fielded in Essay Two.
Anyway, as we will see later, M9 and M1a are not even empirically true.
[See also Note 5.]
5. As should seem obvious, M9 is on this list not just because of its connection with M1a and with other DM-theses, but because dialecticians appear to regard it as an a priori truth --, or rather: the language they use 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 in most quarters. Indeed, this was a cornerstone of Aristotelian Physics, supported by countless observations. It took a conceptual revolution to persuade post-Renaissance theorists to accept the idea that motion is a 'natural' state of material bodies. Of course, that change, too, was motivated by NeoPlatonic and Hermetic ideas popular in Europe at the time.
M9: Motion is inseparable from matter.
M1a: Motion without matter is unthinkable.
[References supporting these observations can be found here. The original idea that matter is self-moving can be found in Plato; on that see here.]
We have also seen here and here that the idea that matter is self-moving would undo much of Newtonian mechanics, and was itself based on the idea that nature is in effect a 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 it motionless.
Indeed, as noted above, if suitable changes are made to a relevant reference frame, any moving particle can be re-interpreted as stationary. Thus, not only is matter without motion 'thinkable', most people who have thought about this topic have found little difficulty in so thinking; in fact, the idea it is now theoretically respectable. Anyone who doubts this should check this and this out.
5a. Some might object that DM-theorists do in fact supply evidence to support this thesis.
But, this doctrine simply follows from the idea that motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter, hence, for dialecticians these two 'concepts' can no more be separated than "number" and "six" or "nine" can.
While evidence can and has been be used to show that matter has hitherto been observed to be in motion, no amount of evidence can show that motion is the "form of the existence of matter", that is, that matter cannot exist unless it is moving in some way.
And that is what makes this evidential charade the fraud it is. What little evidence DM-theorists bother to provide is used solely illustratively; i.e., it is used not to establish the truth of a thesis, merely to make it seem clearer (or in some cases more 'scientific'). [We saw that this was especially so earlier -- in Essay Seven.] And that observation is itself confirmed by the fact that this particular thesis is based on ideas culled from Hegel, who arrived at his conclusions before much evidence was available --, and ultimately from Heraclitus before there was any scientific data.
All DM-theses have a long and sordid a priori pedigree like this, so it is little use dialecticians pretending that this doctrine was originally motivated by evidence. [More on this in the next few Parts of this Essay, and in Essay Fourteen, Part One (summary here).]
5b. Unfortunately for dialecticians, this immediately divorces such 'truths' from a materialist account of nature. If the truth or falsehood of such theses is dependent on thought alone, how could they be anything other than Ideal? Worse, if they are indeed non-materialist theses, how can they be used to help change material reality?
Well, we saw in Essay Nine Part Two, this is not strictly true; they can be used, but only in ways that benefit the ruling class, and help in heaping ordure on Marxism itself.
Small wonder then that DM-theses have presided over 150 years of almost total failure. [More on that in Essay Ten Part One.]
6. Metaphysical statements like the following: "I think therefore I am", "To be is to be perceived", and "To be is to be the value of a bound variable" are all in the indicative mood.
To be sure, some of these pronouncements are/were the result of a series of long or short arguments aimed at 'deriving' them, but their 'truth' is not based on their relation to the world but on what their words/concepts seem to mean. They are taken to be universally/conceptually true, and thus in need of no evidential support.
The significance of those comments will be explored as this Essay unfolds.
6a. Again, it could be objected that Lenin wrote a whole section of MEC supporting this claim. Hence, the allegations paraded about in this Essay are baseless --, or so it could be claimed.
Unfortunately, Lenin devoted most of the aforementioned section to picking fights with various Idealists, which makes much of what he had to say irrelevant to the concerns of the present Essay.
However, in order to consider every conceivable avenue open to DM-fans to defend Lenin (and then block them), it is important to see whether or not his arguments hold together even on their own terms.
Lenin's opening point in MEC (I am ignoring the preamble on pp.318-19, since it seems to add nothing substantial) is this:
"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." [Lenin (1972), pp.319-20. In the above, and in what follows, the quotation marks have been altered to conform to the conventions adopted here.]As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part One, Lenin's sole tactic when confronting ideas he does not like is to caricature them --, the above being just another example. "The entire world is his sensation"?! I can think of no Idealist of note who has ever argued that.
Nevertheless, what devastating dialectical argument does Lenin 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. Emphases in the original.]
This passage more than most reveals Lenin's philosophical naivety, if not incompetence; it will be dissected in painful detail in Essay Thirteen Part One. However, for present purposes, we need note that all that the above 'argument' demonstrates is that Lenin based his own claims on the fact that he had certain 'images' of various features of reality. This he supported with a dubious claim that whatever is reflected in the mind must exist in the external world. [However, how he knew this to be true of other minds, ironically, he kept to himself.]
But, even if we are recklessly charitable, the very most that this 'argument' could establish is that Lenin's images correspond to his own image of reality, since all he has are images of reality with which to compare things. He has no way of comparing his images with anything which is not also an image. How could he jump 'out of his own head' to access the world 'directly'?
He does lay this odd argument across us however:
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imagined, 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.]
This is even clearer:
"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it 'images.'" [Ibid., p.279. Bold emphasis added.]
Now, the inference that images imply the existence of the thing imaged is manifestly unsound; if this 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 below, here, and the extended discussion here.]
But, even if Lenin were right, how does any of this show that motion without matter is inconceivable? Indeed, not only is motion without matter conceivable, it is actual. Several examples of this everyday phenomenon will be given later in this Essay.
However, Lenin has another argument up the image of his sleeve. After a detour that took him into a consideration of Bogdanov's odd ideas, he declared:
"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 to disguise old epistemological errors by a 'new' terminology." [Ibid., pp.323-24.]
This amounts to arguing against the energeticist (i.e., one who claims that matter does not exist, or that matter is simply energy) that he/she has 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 word were sufficient, this would be enough to 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 his odd re-definition of matter (which he repeats endlessly throughout MEC, without once trying to justify it):
"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." [Ibid., p.320.]
"[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.]
"[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.]
So, Lenin's only justification seems to be that to deny what he says is to brand oneself an Idealist. However, since Lenin failed to show that his own ideas (about reality reflected in the mind, etc.) do not collapse into Idealism themselves, this is no help at all.
Exactly how Lenin's ideas collapse into Idealism will be examined at length in Essay Thirteen Part One, but the argument will revolve around his only apparent argument for the existence of the external world: that an image implies the existence of the thing imaged!
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imagined, 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.]
But, as seems plain, all that Lenin had to go on here was his own image of a mirror -- assuming that this is what lay behind his use of this ancient Hermetic metaphor. This is his only guide in the use of this trope. Hence, as noted above, the very most this argument could establish was that images reflect other images!
Now, it could be argued that mirrors actually reflect the images of objects. This is undeniable; but that can only be established if Lenin's hopeless epistemology is abandoned. This is because Lenin has yet to show that there are real mirrors, as opposed to the images of mirrors. Or that these images of mirrors do not merely reflect images of images of 'objects'. His version of the traditional representative theory of knowledge, wherein we represent the world to ourselves (as 'ideas', 'concepts' or even 'images') in our heads, undercuts all talk of an 'objective' world independent of our knowledge of it, as was abundantly clear to 18th century Idealists (like Berkeley). Now Lenin might try to belittle that conclusion, as well as kick up an image of a cloud of dust (by the use of repetitive bluster) to hide the fact that his argument does not work, but the plain fact is that his 'theory' would transform the world into mere images.
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.
Indeed, to address the actual inference: images do not imply the existence of anything, since they are uninterpreted inner objects of cognition (to speak traditionally, just for now). And an act of interpretation (i.e., one that re-configures them as the image of this, or that) would have nothing but other images (interpreted or not) to assist it along the way. [And as we will see in Essay Ten, practice cannot turn an image into something it is not.]
Moreover, images cannot imply the existence of the thing imaged, otherwise the universe would contain some very odd beings. The following is a tiny part of the argument that appears in Essay Thirteen Part One devoted to this section of Lenin's book:
This seems to commit Lenin to the idea that if it is possible to form an "image" of something it must exist, since "an image cannot exist without the thing imagined, and the latter must exist independently of that which imagines it." Unfortunately, once more, Lenin forgot to say how he knew this to be so.1
In Lenin's defence, it could be argued that this fact (if fact it be) is tautological: "an image cannot exist without the thing imagined" -- if by this Lenin meant that "the thing imagined" exists in the mind of the one doing the imagining/imaging. In that case, Lenin would be pointing out the obvious but uninspiring fact that if an image exists (in the mind of the one doing the imaging) then manifestly it exists in that mind. But, it certainly isn't tautological that whatever is imagined "exists independently of that which imagines it", that is, in 'extra-mental reality'. It may or may not be true that such imagined things do exist 'outside the mind', but it certainly isn't the obvious truth that Lenin seems to think it is (that is, if we go along with this traditional/crass way of depicting things for the moment), and it certainly does not follow that images imply the independent existence of the objects we take them to reflect (if we do).
It could be argued that the word "image" implies that an image is an image of something, which is all Lenin needs. However, whether or not this word does in fact imply this we will leave to one side for now, but one thing it does not imply is that whatever it is that an image is an image of, exists in nature. If that were so, scientists could abandon research and engage in day-dreaming.
Plainly, just because Lenin imagined what he said to be true that did not make it true. In fact, Lenin's claim is far from true; as will be shown presently (here and here); there are many things which actually exist that we can imagine not to exist -- indeed, we can even form images of them being destroyed. Just as there are many things that we can imagine (or form images of) that do not and never have existed -- and which could not in fact exist....
At any rate, and despite what he thought, Lenin's 'imaginability'/'image-ability' criterion is neither necessary nor sufficient for something to count as 'objective'. This is because, as we have seen, there are countless things that exist outside the mind that are not 'objective' in any clear sense of that word (e.g., mirages, the perspectival properties of bodies, surfaces, rainbows, corners, the images in actual mirrors -- as well as averaged entities, like the average worker), and there are 'objective' things that are not external to the mind (for example, the human mind itself) -- just as there are 'objective' material entities that are dependent on the human mind, and which are constituted in and by social activity (such as money, theatre tickets and revolutionary newspapers).
And, as if to complicate matters further, there are non-existent things (such as the Ether), that Lenin imagined were otherwise.
Indeed, what are we to make of the Ether? Was Lenin (or, has anyone ever been) able to form an image of it? If he (they) could, then according to the above passage it must exist. On the other hand, if he (they) couldn't form an image of it, why did Lenin think that it existed and was 'objective'?
More to the point, does the ability to form an image really matter? Who can form an image of four dimensional Spacetime? Or of a black hole? Or of a Superstring? Or of the CMG?
In fact, if imaginability/imagability implied existence, science would be pointless; in such an eventuality we would surely rely on Hans Christian Andersen and Enid Blyton to inform us of the contents of reality, and abandon scientific research.
As is well-known, scientists were forced to conclude that the Ether does not exist, even though had it done so it would have satisfied Lenin's criterion of 'externality' (and it would have been 'objective' in that it would have existed independently of the mind). Annoyingly for Lenin-clones, some scientists still believe it exists.
Nevertheless, whatever else might be true of Lenin's thoughts about material existence, it looks like scientists themselves require there be more to something than the mere possibility of its external existence (and/or its imaginability/imagability) for it to be objective.
Unfortunately, Lenin himself failed to inform his readers exactly why his 'criterion' should be adopted as a definition of materiality (that is, if it was a definition; on that, see here) -- he just left it as a bald assertion that anything outside the mind must be material -- even when this clearly isn't a condition that only material objects satisfy. For Lenin, it seems that just because something is not inside the mind it must be material --, otherwise it cannot be. On that basis, as noted above, that would mean that the mind itself is neither 'objective' nor material. Lenin's criterion, therefore, appears to commit him to the existence of a non-material mind, since it plainly cannot exist outside itself.
Paradoxically, therefore, it looks like Lenin's materialism is committed to the existence of non-material/immaterial minds!
Additional Notes
1. (1) Contrary to what Lenin imagined, images not only can, but do exist without there being anything 'objective' corresponding to them in reality. It is easy to conjure an image of Santa, for instance, but apparently only children and foolish parents believe he exists.
The following show that this awkward example is not unique:
(a) The existence of mirages does not commit us to their 'objectivity'.
(b) It is possible to form images in the mind's eye of people who no longer exist, which fact plainly does not imply they do exist.
(c) It is easy to induce vivid but formless coloured images 'inside' the eyeball by gently pressing one or other of them with a finger. Clearly, this does not mean that these artificial images relate to anything in the 'objective' world.
(d) Again, by re-focussing, or by pressing one eye, it is possible to form two images of the same object. But, no one believes that there are in fact two identical copies of the same object in reality answering to these two images. By a similar trick, it is also possible to see a three-dimensional image in a two-dimensional "magic eye" picture. That does not mean that such an image corresponds with anything in the 'external' world.
(e) We see stars every night (or are they merely the images of stars?), ones that scientists tell us no longer exist. Does this mean that these scientists are mistaken, and these stars nonetheless do exist?
(f) A scientist photographs a bent stick in a bucket of water. Does this image of the bent stick prove that there really are bent sticks in buckets of water?
(g) Someone claims to see an image of Christ in the clouds. Should we all become Christians? [Maybe not.]
(h) Those who have lost limbs claim that they can still feel them; does this sensation (or is it an image?) prove that the surgeon who performed the amputation was incompetent?
In addition, we have already seen that Lenin's approach to knowledge implies extreme scepticism. So, far from beginning with the "naive beliefs" of ordinary folk, his theory would obliterate them!
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 show by evidence or argument that motion without matter is inconceivable.
7. Of course, it needs adding here that metaphysical beliefs are not set in concrete, they certainly change in line with the ideological needs and the novel world-views adopted by ambient ruling classes.
To be sure, the very first Greek Philosophers did not use the word "metaphysics"; this term was introduced much later. Nevertheless, the intellectual endeavour on which this form of super-knowledge depends certainly dates back (in the West) to Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes. [More on this in Note I above, and in Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve.]
8. Indeed, these days 'necessary truths' are defined extensionally as those that are true in every possible world. [Kirkham (1992).] This idea will be examined elsewhere.*
However, this is not to suggest that all metaphysicians attached such modal qualifications to the word "truth" -- certainly not in pre-modern times. However, the use here of the phrase "necessary truth" (in order to highlight the confusion that is here alleged to exist between 'necessary' and contingent truths) is a handy way of underlining a common thread running throughout Metaphysics.
Naturally, some sensitivity needs to be shown when analysing the metaphysical ideas of thinkers who wrote before this phrase entered philosophical currency. However, having said that, it is the use to which a theorist puts his/her ideas that is important. If that is no different from the use of genuinely necessary truths as they have been conceived more recently, no serious distortion of the original ideas need result.
On this, see the extended comments in "Grammar and Necessity", in Baker and Hacker (1988), pp.263-347. Much of what these two authors say is consistent with the view adopted here (but their book 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 made in this Essay.
9. The ease with which all metaphysicians perform this trick is not the only clue we have as to the real nature of their hyper-bold theses. A detailed consideration of different interpretations of the words used -- coupled with a demonstration that there are other ways of viewing such phrases, which are equally, if not more plausible -- would show that metaphysical theses depend on little more than a determination to use language idiosyncratically.
In this way, it is possible to show that these 'super-truths' decay into incoherence because they undermine key semantic features of discourse. As such, they are based on a highly specialised and implausible use of language, and not on the 'necessary' features of the world. Far from depicting the 'form of the world', they either express or depend on identifiable ruling-class assumptions about the sort of universe which is conducive to the maintenance of their power and the preservation of the current relations of exploitation.
That contention will be substantiated in the next two Parts of Essay Twelve; the other claims will be substantiated in the rest of this Essay.
10. These allegations will also be substantiated in later parts of Essay Twelve, and in Essay Fourteen, Part One (summary here).
11. This will be demonstrated presently, too. The word "cannot" here is not meant to represent a physical limit; it expresses the fact that metaphysical theses descend into non-sense, and cannot fail to do this. More on this later, too.
11a. Some might try to defend Lenin by claiming this is just an hyperbole. In that case, it could be maintained that Lenin did not think that the words "motion without matter" were literally unthinkable, merely that it made no sense to suppose there could be motion without matter. It could even be maintained that the wording of Lenin's 'controversial' sentence merely meant he was rejecting the immobility of matter out of hand, as a ridiculous notion -- or so the case for the defence might go.
If so, the section in MEC entitled "Is motion Without Matter Conceivable?" was clearly misnamed. Indeed, that is the very section in which M1 occurs; Lenin himself italicised the word "unthinkable":
M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]
The entire passage reads thus:
"Is Motion Without Matter Conceivable?
"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?" [Lenin (1972), pp.318-19.]
It is quite clear from this that Lenin is denying what "these scientists" were claiming, that motion without matter is conceivable -- or, as he puts it:
M1: "[M]otion without matter is unthinkable." [Lenin (1972), p.318. Italic emphasis in the original.]
Later he added that matter and motion were inseparable:
"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.]
M22: "[M]otion [is] an inseparable property of matter." [Lenin (1972), p.323. Emphasis added.]
And here Lenin was simply echoing Engels's equally non-hyperbolic language:
"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.]
No hyperbole here. Both Lenin and Engels meant what they said. The problem is: What on earth did they mean?
Indeed, if motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter -- its "mode of expression" -- then these two 'concepts' cannot be separated, even in thought.
At this point, someone could argue that contradictions are only to be expected; after all this is dialectics! In that case, in the very process of thinking these controversial words, thought is driven to the opposite pole and is forced to conclude that these words (or what they express) cannot be thought.
[This is in fact a variant of the Nixon defence.]
However, far more likely: those whose thought has not be compromised by studying the works of Idealists (and even worse, believing what they have read), will conclude that, in view of the fact that they have just thought those words in the very act of being told they cannot do so, motion without matter is plainly not unthinkable.
Indeed, in view of the additional fact that belief in motionless matter was part of Ancient Physics (and dominated science for nearly 2000 years), they'd be right to so conclude. Manifestly, the latter thought is in fact more thinkable than its opposite!
Hence, far from thought being driven to an "opposite pole", the above suggests it will be riveted to just the one.
12. However, if thought itself is to be identified with the motion of matter, at however deep or complex a level this 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 naturally be incorrect. Anyway, such a thesis (about "thought" and matter) seems to depend on the truth of reductive materialism, a doctrine Lenin would certainly not have accepted.
M11: His thoughts moved to a new topic.
But, even if M11 were contestable on other grounds, it would not be difficult to think of other examples not so easily dismissed. Consider, therefore, the following:
E1: The author moved his characters to a new location.
E2: The date of the Battle of Hastings moves further into the past each year.
E3: You say you will mend the fence, but that job seems to move further into the future by the week.
E4: Easter moves to a new date every year.
E5: The Prime Meridian moves with the rotation of the earth.
E6: Multiplying –2 by –3 moves it from the set of Negative Integers to the set of Positive Integers, 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.
E10: The chairperson moved to strike the objection from the record.
The above senses of "move" cannot easily be reconciled with Lenin's ideas about matter and motion.
In fact, this is how a similar point was made in Essay Five:
L55: NN was second in line when MM, who had been first in the queue, suddenly dropped out. Hence, NN moved to the front of the queue even though he remained rooted to the spot.
In L55, we have a perfectly ordinary example of a fellow human being who manages to do the 'metaphysically impossible' (without breaking into a dialectical sweat), moving while staying still (relative to some inertial frame). Clearly, it is possible to move to the front of a queue (in one sense) even without moving at all (in another sense), relative to some inertial frame.
Indeed, it is possible to think of cases of discontinuous (i.e., discrete) motion whereby, even though something once moved, nothing need now be moving -- and yet in one sense something still moves. This would also involve whatever it was that did this 'moving and not moving' all at once doing so in a different sense from that illustrated in L55. In fact, it is possible to show that some things can move (again in the discrete sense) while they occupy none of the intervening places between their successive locations. All of these possibilities are illustrated below:
L56: The footprints moved across the yard, indicating where the scabs were hiding.
L57: Easter moves to a new date each year.
L58: "See, the page numbers in this book you sold me move about erratically. The book has been printed and bound all wrong."
L59: The groundsman moved the cricket pitch to the other side of the square.
L60: The organisers of the rally moved the meeting to seven o'clock.
L61: The strobe light moved across the floor picking out each dancer.
In L56, we have something stationary (i.e., footprints created by individuals who had earlier moved across the said yard), which still moves (across the same yard) even while each item (footprint) is stationary.
In L57, nothing actually moves even while it still does! In L58, nothing moves once again, but yet something does move (namely the faulty numbering), and it does so discretely while not occupying any of the intervening spaces, which spaces do not exist either for anything to move into!
A similar picture emerges in L59, where a discrete object moves a reasonable distance, but which object does not exist while it moves, nor does it occupy any of the intervening spaces on its 'journey', but which intervening spaces do exist! Similar situations are illustrated in L60 and L61.
Not only that, but continuous, stationary things can move while remaining still:
L62: As I look down on the scene, the immobile line of pickets moves out of sight, curling right round the block; each striker holding her ground, rooted to the spot.
L63: The wire moves in a spiral around the tree. It's been in the same spot so long that the tree has partially grown around it.
In this example, it is irrelevant whether the wire has actually shifted position in the intervening years, because that particular sense of "move" is not the same as the one being used in this instance. Wires can move around trees (with no change of place) just as gaps can run through crowds, and holes through Polo Mints. Here, the wire moves around the tree (winding through the same 360 degrees of turn, perhaps several times) while not itself rotating around the tree's geometric centre (in one sense of "rotate"), whether or not the radius of each turn alters over the years. Winding around a tree is a different sort of movement to that of, say, gripping that tree more or less tightly over time -- or, indeed, of slipping down the trunk.
Finally, some things can move -- but to nowhere in particular -- and they can stay quite still while they do it:
L64: This road is going nowhere.
Such mundane examples (there are countless others), using perfectly ordinary words in situations we can all readily comprehend, demonstrate that the seemingly 'obvious' metaphysical principles that thinkers like Engels dreamt up actually depend on non-standard applications (i.e., distortions) of the vernacular.
Of course, it could be objected that these examples of 'motion' are not at all what Engels meant by "motion"; indeed, he was quite careful to emphasise that he was interested in one sort of motion only: continuous change of place with respect to time:
"[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. Italicised emphases added.]
In this passage, Engels is perfectly clear that he means "simple mechanical change of place", which is different from the non-standard senses of the word paraded above. Or, so it could be argued.
Unfortunately, however, as we have seen, it is not easy to ascertain what (if anything) Engels actually did have in mind by "simple mechanical change of place". Indeed, much of what he said is compatible with no motion having occurred, so that the supposedly contradictory aspects of an object's trajectory have nothing to do with whether that object is moving or not....
Furthermore, dialecticians can't appeal to what we 'all know' about the meaning of the word "motion", nor should they suppose we 'all know' perfectly well what Engels meant when he referred to it. As the above examples indicate, there is no one thing we all mean by this word, or its associated terms, even though we all do know what we mean by each of them individually when they feature in ordinary, material contexts (like those depicted above).
And, as far as Engels's own use is concerned, we may only agree with the claim that DM-theorists know what Engels meant by "motion" when they succeed in explaining what that is to the rest of us. Unfortunately, to date, there have been no significant moves in that direction.
In addition, the above examples were deliberately drawn from everyday situations, ones that are readily understood. It's Engels's use of the word "move" that turns out to be non-standard and incomprehensible.
It might be felt that the above emphasis on the ordinary sense of words is inappropriate in a scientific analysis of motion and change. This objection is considered in detail elsewhere on this site. Anyway, Engels himself used ordinary words to make his point -- which was that all aspects of reality are contradictory, including those parts depicted by our use of the vernacular.
Several other examples of motion that are not easy to squeeze into this 'dialectical straightjacket' include the following:
(1) Imagine a situation where the sun is shining intermittently, sometimes casting shadows, sometimes not. In such circumstances, someone could say:
M1: "An hour ago, the shadow of that telegraph pole was over there, now it's moved over here."
In this case, although it would be correct to say the shadow had moved, in the circumstances depicted that shadow's episodic existence means that there would be no continuity between its successive locations. Here, we would have something that moved, which had been in two (possibly) widely separated locations, but which had not been in any of the intermediate points between them. In this instance, therefore, we would have something that moved that did not move!
It could be objected here that since a shadow is not a moving object it is not a counter-example to Engels's claims about motion. Perhaps so, but according to Lenin a shadow only has to be objectively external to the mind for it to be material.
"[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. Italic emphasis 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. Italic emphasis in the original.]
If so, shadows would be moving material objects (in Lenin's sense). Moreover, in the above example, the shadow, while moving, was not in two places at once, nor in any between. In that case, we may rescue Engels only by contradicting Lenin -- or vice versa. [Of course, if shadows are not material, but they can move, then motion can occur without matter.]
(2) Consider the case where, say, a woman is consulting the plans for her new house, who, upon being shown the latest drawings, exclaims:
M2: "Wait a minute, you've moved the front door. We agreed it should go here next to the window, but you've put it to over there near the sink!"
Here, we would have an 'intentional object' that had been 'moved' to a new location, one represented perhaps by pencil or ink marks on a plan. Not only that, but since the original 'intentional object' does not exist in the material world (after all, in this instance there is as yet no house and so no door, merely marks on a page!), this would be a clear case of movement not involving a material object --, but which 'object' cannot have occupied two places at once (in one sense of "place", etc.), nor any in between. Naturally, this means that motion is not a sole property of matter, contrary to what Engels and Lenin believed. If intentional objects can move -- and if mind is not matter -- then not all that moves is material.
Be this as it may, even if an actual drawing of a door had been moved (as opposed to an 'intentional object' having done so), it still need not have occupied two places at one and the same time, since there might not even be two places for it to occupy.
There are a host of possibilities here: the door could now be in the 'same place' (i.e., right by the window), but in a different room (hence, it would be in one and the same place, but which place had now moved (while the object itself had not!), if the same 'intentional window' had also been re-located in a new room. So the door would still be next to the window in a new room -- and hence in the same place relative to another intentional object (the door), but in a different place relative to a third (the new room)), or in the 'same place' in a different building, or in the 'same place' with new surroundings (e.g., the walls could have been altered), and so on.
[Try saying any of that in Hegel-speak!]
Material language, and our common understanding, allows for many possibilities undreamt of in the philosophical ramblings of non-materialist bumblers like Hegel and Zeno.
Moreover, even if the drawing of the original door had been rubbed out and re-drawn elsewhere, while it would still be true to say that something had moved, it would not be true to say that whatever it was that had moved had been in these two places at the same time, nor that it had occupied an intervening location, either. Of course, no one imagines that in such cases a drawing of a door slides across the page -- even though in some cases it could do just that (if, say, it were part of a computer-aided design). But even then, this would be an example of simulated movement (that is, it would be represented by sets of pixels lit up on the screen), as was the case with the strobe example mentioned above.
(3) Another familiar example, considered earlier, concerns the different aspects a shape can assume while it is being observed -- even though nothing actually 'changes places':
M3: "The front of that Necker Cube moves to the back when I look at it for a few seconds."
Figure 1: Motion With No Movement
Here, in Figure 1, it would be odd to say that the front and back of the said cube both occupied and did not occupy the two places which they had moved into (the back and the front) at the same time, and that both were in two places at once (i.e., front or back again), even though it would be perfectly normal to say that the front and the back had moved (i.e., "changed places") as indicated.
Other examples of 'gestalt' switches (in Figures 2-5) could be described equally well in the same uncontroversial manner. [Here shapes move, or change, but it is not easy to say how they do this, or where they move to, or what 'places' they occupy!] In such cases, we would have at least two intentional objects occupying no places at all, even while they moved!
(4) Furthermore, some things can move but not change place even while they are doing so. Consider a line of soldiers marching along a road in strict order, or the numbers on the face of a watch on someone's wrist on a moving train, or the words in a book on that same train, or the numbers on the screen of a calculator (or letters on a computer screen) as they are typed in, etc. In each case, several things remain in the same place (i.e., they stay in the same order relative to one another: first, second or third (etc.) in line) even while they move (i.e., they change location relative to something else).
Hence, in the first example above, soldier NN could be second in line (and stay second) as the troops march down the road -- and remain second, even if the distance between the soldiers altered. In that case, NN would remain in the same place as he moved.
The same is true of numbers typed into a calculator (or letters on a computer screen), on a train. So, π = 3.14159265...; but as the calculator screen hurtles along at 100 mph, the "3" at the front still remains in the same place, at the front! [It is worth recalling that numerals are eminently material objects, so this is not an 'abstract' example.]
Again, the words in a book certainly remain where they are while travelling at 100 mph -- train journeys do not scramble the printed page! -–; so they too can stay in the same location and the same order while they hurtle along.
Of course, several of the above examples depend on the use of figurative (or in some cases slightly stilted) English, but Engels's own use of language in this respect is even more non-standard, and hardly less figurative (that is, where any sense can be made of it).
Anyway, the rather odd sentence constructions I have employed in several of the examples in the text (and in those above) were a direct consequence of the fact that I had to limit myself to using the word "move" (and its cognates) to make each point seem relevant. Less stilted versions could easily have been devised had a wider range of the many words that depict change in ordinary language been chosen, and which make the same points in less stylistically-challenged ways. Indeed, an example listed earlier (L64) did precisely that.
L64: This road is going nowhere.
If a more intelligent use is made of the countless words we have in English to depict motion and change, the number of 'contradictions' language appears to sanction (but only to those who insist on understanding the vernacular in a bizarre way) would multiply alarmingly. Consider the following:
(5) Coal seams can run through mountains (and they remain stationary while they do so), just as roads wind through tunnels, mountains and cliff faces; messages can run through sticks of rock, just as they can also travel down a line of stationary messengers who pass them along by word of mouth (and a stationary message can run along a line of bill boards, with one word on each board); paths can climb hills (without moving) just as easily as tracks can ascend mountains, and stairs between floors, and rows in theatres and sports stadiums.
Perfectly still wiring can coil effortlessly about inside TV sets, radios and computers; fences cemented into the ground can descend into valleys, disappear over the horizon and encircle fields; string can wrap around a parcel, and perfectly motionless moats can encircle ancient castles; buildings can rise above one another just as cliffs can tower over climbers; bandages can cover heads and towels can enclose wet bodies; stories can switch to new locations even as they repose in books that have remained on the same shelves for many years; panics can sweep through crowds, as can behaviour patterns through animal and human populations, or just as feelings of resentment can spread through a workforce sat motionless in a meeting as management reveals its latest 'last offer'.
And lists like this are extendable (but they do not apparently occupy at least two places at once -- or maybe they can if they are found in two separate copies of this Essay, say: on your computer screen and on mine).
The material language of the working-class is an amazing resource...
To be sure, some might want to dismiss one or more of the above examples by refining Lenin's 'definition' of matter and/or motion, alongside other dodges, perhaps. Alternatively, still others might point out that these examples employ the word "move" in different senses to that intended by Lenin. But, even if this were so, it would still not mean that Lenin's construal was the correct way -- or indeed, the only way -- to use such words. Clearly, what Lenin actually meant by "motion" (if anything!) must be ascertained before a decision could be made either way. And yet, Lenin's intentions are not at all easy to fathom; in fact it is difficult to make head or tail of Lenin's claims in this area, as is demonstrated in the main body of this Essay (and in Essay Thirteen, Part One).
If exception is still taken to the examples given above (which, incidentally illustrate perfectly ordinary uses 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. And we have already seen the problems that that would introduce.
Indeed, these examples represent a much wider selection of uses of this word than is generally considered in the writings of Idealists and metaphysicians (such as Lenin). As seems clear, they show how ordinary human beings regularly employ this word (and others related to it) in their interface with reality and with one another in ways undreamt of in traditional thought.
Whatever else Lenin might have imagined he meant by his use of the word "motion", it is clear that ordinary speakers do not use it in a similar way, and neither do scientists. The employment of this word by everyday materialists -- i.e., workers -- is surely a better guide to its overall import than that of inconsistent materialists and closet Idealists -- i.e., dialecticians. If Lenin's use of this word diverges from its materially-grounded employment in everyday life, then so much the worse for him.
However, it could be countered that it is perfectly clear what Lenin meant; he was alluding to the physical/literal sense of the word "move" -- that which is connected with locomotion/"change of place". Hence, the above considerations are irrelevant -- or so it could be argued.
In response to this it is worth noting that the alleged physical sense of "move" (interpreted as "change of place") is not without its own problems. Since this was discussed in detail in Essay Five, the reader is referred there for more details.
Despite this, Lenin is entirely unclear what he meant by "move" (and even less clear about what he understood "matter" to be -- on this, see here and Note One). Now, since many of the above examples relate to events outside the mind, they clearly picture material movement as defined by Lenin's externalist criterion. If they are unacceptable, then the problem lies with Lenin's 'definition', not with the examples.
[Lenin's 'theory' of matter is called "Externalism" in Essay Thirteen Part One.]
12a. Note the "appears" here.
M12: The occurrence of literal motion in the real world without matter can never be thought of as true.
Which appears to imply, or be implied by, the following:
M13: Literal motion in the real world without matter can never take place.
This is because M12 could be true and M13 false (which means that M13 cannot follow from M12).
On the other hand, M13 could follow from M12 if an extra Idealist premiss were added to the effect that thought determines the nature of reality. Since it is central to my case against DM that its theorists openly adopt this view anyway (a fact obvious from their a priori theses -- on this, see Essay Two, and Essay Thirteen, Part One), then, at least for them, M13 would follow from M12.
The reverse implication, too, is problematic, for M13 could be true and M12 false. However that invalid inference is less relevant to the aims of this Essay, and will thus be ignored.
13. Another example of the indirect connection of motion with matter is the following:
E11: The shadow moved across the surface of water.
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).
Other examples include the following:
E12: The surface of the water moved in the breeze.
E13: The hole in the crowd moved from right to left.
Surfaces are rather puzzling entities -- no one seems to be sure whether they are material or not. [Cf., Stroll (1988).] Few doubt they can move. The same goes for holes, corners, boundaries and edges [Cf., Casati and Varzi (1995, 1996, 1999), and Varzi (1997)], all of which can move (indeed, some do; e.g., in Mexican waves).
Hence, not only is motion without matter conceivable, it is actual, as many of the above show.
14. This example, of course, omits any reference to the geodesics of Spacetime as causal factors here. However, introducing that would not affect the point being made since geodesics are, of course, non-material. Arguably, they are not even 'extra-mental'.* Of course, exactly what makes matter move along geodesics is a moot point, which I will leave no less moot for now.
Despite this, it could be argued that because matter 'creates' these 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:
N1: Motion without matter causing it somewhere is unthinkable.
But, N1 might not even be true -- and that could be the case with or without any reference having been made to DM-principles. Anyway, as we saw in Note One, for dialecticians motion is the "mode" of the existence of matter; its demotion to that of playing merely a causal role in the whole affair would surely undermine yet another core DM-thesis.
More importantly, however, it is not what Lenin actually said.
[QM = Quantum Mechanics; CMG = Centre of Mass of the Galaxy.]
The reason why N1 might not be true is discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen, Part One. Briefly, this is because we do not as yet have a theory that connects QM with General Relativity, and to date the leading candidates for such a role manifestly depend on the reification of some highly abstruse mathematics, which strategy itself has serious Idealist implications for Physics (as Lenin himself observed). Such acts of reification either imply -- or are based on the unacknowledged pretence -- that mathematical entities (tensor, vector and scalar fields, and the like) can act as causal agents. Unless we subscribe to some form of mystical Platonism, this is not even plausible.
It could be argued that the CMG is external to the mind, and so the above is thus subject to the following rebuttal:
"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), pp.323-24.]
Hence, in view of the fact that scientists' ideas about the nature of matter and energy are always changing and developing, the facts of Relativity in no way embarrass DM. Whatever is objective and external to the mind is matter, and that includes the CMG.
"[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. Italic emphasis 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. Italic emphasis in the original. Available here.]
Or so it could be argued.
But, the CMG does not actually exist -- at least, no more than any other average does. How, therefore, it can be 'objective' is somewhat mysterious.
Of course, even if it did exist, Lenin's catch-all definition (that whatever has objective existence outside the mind is material) would include the CMG by definitional fiat. But, why should we accept such a definition? Lenin's continual assertion that this is what matter is, is, I am afraid, not enough reason for the rest of us to accept it -- unless, of course, he were a minor Deity of some sort.
Would we be prepared to accept a definition of "fairness" that meant it applied to everything and anything that happened inside Capitalism? I think not.
Or, one that defined 'God' as "that supreme being whose existence cannot be proven"?
Well, since 'His/Her/Its' existence cannot be proven, the sentence "God is that being whose existence cannot be proven" must be true. But to be true, 'God' must exist, or that sentence would lack a subject, and hence be devoid of sense.
But then, if 'His/Her/Its' existence can be proven, 'He/She/It' exists anyway. So, either way, 'He/She/It' must exist.
Now, it is no use pointing to the weakness of, or the 'contradictions' in the above 'argument', since the smart theologian will simply play the Nixon card (beloved of DM-fans) to silence all opposition. And if you persist, you will just be accused of not "understanding" Metaphysical Divinity (an equally loopy area of thought).
The problem, of course, began with the definition. Same with Lenin's.
Now, I do not expect the DM-fraternity to accept any of this, but when they see what odd beings Lenin's over-generous definition permits, I think they will be among the first to disown it.
The guided mystery tour around Lenin's Whacky World of Wonders will begin in Essay Thirteen, Part One.
15a. Conversely, it could be argued that this shows that M17 is false. That possibility will be tackled presently.
M17: The sentence: "Literal motion in the real world without matter is unthinkable" is true.
16. Aristotle's ideas about earthy matter are more complex than these comments might suggest. Nevertheless, it is still true that he believed that when at the centre of the universe, this form of matter would be motionless. On this see Morison (2002), Sorabji (1988), and Copleston (2003a), chapter 30.
As Aristotle himself argued:
"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.]
So, matter and lack of motion (i.e., rest) were things that Aristotle and his many followers could and did think.
Moreover, as my colleague "Babeuf" has pointed out to me, it has been possible to think of motion without matter since Biblical times:
"1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
"2. 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.]
Now it will not 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 more of these things, some human beings can think about motion without matter, and have been able to do so for at least 3000 years.
[PN = Philosophical Notebooks, i.e., Lenin (1961).]
Later, in PN, Lenin made the following comment on Feuerbach's essay on Leibniz:
"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. Italics in the original.]
This confirms, of course, the a priori nature of this particular thesis (since Leibniz manifestly did not obtain this notion from observation, and would have had a stroke at the suggestion he had done this). Also worthy of note is the fact that Leibniz was as heavily influenced by Hermeticism as Hegel. [This will be established in Essay Fourteen Part One; until then see Ross (1983, 1998).]
We will note here too that the doctrine of the inseparability of matter and motion is connected with "self-activity", which, as we have seen in Essay Eight, Part One, is linked to the contradictory nature of matter. So, this is a 'logical' notion that followed on from Engels second 'Law'. Small wonder then that Lenin found its denial "unthinkable".
But once more, why did he not merely say that immobile matter was "self-contradictory"?
17. Marx Anticipates Wittgenstein
Marx's belief in the social nature of language, and the fundamental role it plays in communication (not representation), is confirmed by the following quotations:
"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 emphases added.]
"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.]
"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.]
Here, too, is Engels:
"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.]
Elsewhere,* I will defend a particular interpretation of this general idea.
This is not to suggest that Marx and Wittgenstein's ideas mesh particularly well, or that Marx was a proto-Wittgenstein, far from it. As I note here, anyone who thinks the contrary faces severe difficulties over interpretation, to say the least.
However, having said that, there are clear indications that Wittgenstein adopted his 'anthropological' approach to language as a result of long conversations he had with Sraffa, a noted Marxist, and that he had clear sympathies with the left. [More details can be found here.]
So, far from Marx being a proto-Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein is, in some ways, a latter-day Marx. In fact, in many respects, Wittgenstein stands to Marx as Feuerbach did to Hegel.
18. The attack on the social roots of language -- replacing them with the mystical idea that language in effect contains a secret code which is capable of reflecting underlying "essences" that have somehow been stitched into the fabric of reality, but hidden from the majority, clearly helped motivate the idea that language is primarily representational. According to this view, discourse contained arcane truths that could be accessed only by an elite, or their hangers-on, but which were way beyond the grasp of ordinary humans. This code was thought to have been captured in an Ideal language, a 'primary language' given by God to Adam. Much of Hermeticism is based on this idea. On this, see Eco (1997), and Vickers (1984b). [This topic will be explored at length in Essay Fourteen, Part One (summary here).]
In addition, hidden messages were believed to be written in the stars, too, or in sacred books, or in tea leaves, or in the organs of slaughtered animals -- or, in its more recent reincarnation, in genuine code form encrypted somewhere in our central nervous system as a "generative grammar" or "language of thought".
In DM, this doctrine surfaces in the a priori dogma that thought is dialectical because reality is, and that DM can be likened to an "Algebra of Revolution", which works because dialectics is able to latch onto the "pulse of reality".
Whatever the details, this almost universally held doctrine, this ruling idea, succeeded in populating nature with invisible, immaterial rational principles, which were somehow capable of being reflected in language or in 'thought'. These occult principles were thus believed to be encoded in language in an abstract form, and hence available only to those skilled enough to perform complex feats of mental gymnastics, aggravated by an even more impressive ability to invent increasingly baroque jargon.
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
This means that the attack on the social nature of discourse (which began with the inception of class society -- details will be given in the next two Parts of this Essay) was one aspect of a class-motivated assault on ordinary language (and hence on grass-roots materialism), which soon degenerated into LIE.
As noted above, this non-materialist view of language sees it as primarily representational. However, as we will discover, instead of the language of Philosophers mirroring nature, that language actually reflected constantly changing ruling-class perceptions of the natural order, those that suited their interests. Theorists who were removed/alienated from the everyday world of work were thus, by their class position, pre-disposed into removing/abstracting ordinary words from their material base in communication. This meant that for them reality was fundamentally abstract, and that only those capable of greater and greater abstractions (based less and less on any connection with the material world) would truly appreciate such esoteric facts.
Unfortunately, as we are beginning to appreciate, metaphysical 'profundities' cannot be based on ordinary language; that is, on a form of discourse which is primarily used as a means of communication. The vernacular actually prevents such flights-of-fancy. It is for this reason that ordinary language (along with its roots in communal life), and the experience of working people, had to be denigrated and then set-aside by theorists with a pre-set, alien-class agenda, those bent on showing that the oppressive and exploitative social order was 'natural', and predicated on an underlying, 'essential' cosmic order. All of this was underpinned by the intellectual products of alienated ruling-class consciousness made 'rational' by the systematic fetishisation of language.
This means that the process of theoretical adulteration (inside the workers' movement) has been facilitated by erstwhile revolutionaries who adopt this approach to language and thus (implicitly) reject its communal roots. [More details on this are given in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, and will be in later Parts of this Essay, and in Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two.]
Finally, it's worth pointing out that neither the social nature of language nor its representational capacity is being asserted or denied as philosophical theses here. It is possible, however, to develop an understanding of the social and communicative nature of language as a "form of representation" -- indeed, as part of the science of HM, and which is consistent with ordinary material language, and thus with the experience of the working class. [That will not be attempted here.*]
Nevertheless, what is taken for granted here is the fact that ordinary material language is alright as it is (to paraphrase Wittgenstein).
19. Those who wish to emphasise the representative nature of language often see truth (or 'objectivity') as its prime feature. The ability of language to 'reflect' the 'objective' world in 'thought' (or, rather, our ability to 'reflect' the world in 'thought', mediated by language) clearly takes precedence over the input that social factors have on meaning and communication. Hence, such theorists often see the communal aspect of ordinary language as an obstacle to be overcome, or by-passed, in their quest for philosophical 'truth'. For them, it would seem that if language were social and conventional, then philosophical (and allegedly scientific) notions of 'objectivity' could gain no grip. This helps explain why 'objectivists' of every stripe make the same complaint against conventionalism and ordinary language/'commonsense': that these stand in the way of their giving just such an 'objective' account of reality.
This, of course, puts dialecticians in something of a bind: they cannot acknowledge the conventional nature of language without ditching their commitment to 'objectivity'. On the other hand, they cannot reject conventionalism without compromising their commitment to the social nature of language. This fittingly contradictory approach to discourse (along with the convoluted thinking it engenders in revolutionaries who write on this topic) will be examined elsewhere.*
The philosophical use of the word "objectivity" is subjected to destructive criticism, in Essay Thirteen Part One, here.
20. This is, of course, an echo of Rousseau:
"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.]
Dialecticians, too, it seems have accepted individualist theories of meaning grafted onto social accounts of language and "consciousness". As Meredith Williams notes of Vygotsky (a theorist who 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.]
However, Williams could in fact be talking about any randomly-selected Dialectical Marxist who has written on this subject. [I will be examining some of the most prominent of these elsewhere.*]
21. Even so, it is worth remarking here that philosophical conventionalism is not itself an entirely homogeneous doctrine. Nevertheless, what unites modern and classical versions is their proponents' determination to formulate a priori theses about the nature of Language and Science based on an interpretation of the meanings of certain words. Such theories will not be defended in this work, or anywhere else for that matter.
Despite that, there are certain grammatical features of discourse (which conventionalists have attempted to re-write as empirical truths about language and the world, etc.) that are consistent with the anthropological approach to language that has been adopted here (as a defeasible "form of representation"), which are also compatible with the fact that language is conventional (in a restricted sense). More on this below and elsewhere.*
Unfortunately, there are few convincing Marxist analyses of Science, this is despite the fact that revolutionaries hold it in such high esteem. Indeed, while Science itself has advanced dramatically since Engels's day, DM-accounts of it have largely stood still -- particularly over the last fifty years --, its theorists more content with rehashing tired old formulae lifted from the 'classics' than with keeping abreast with recent developments in the History and Philosophy of Science. The most recent attempt to squeeze scientific knowledge into a woefully undersized dialectical slipper is RIRE (which is in effect a padded-out version of Baghavan (1987), and a shorter but less hagiographical version of Gollobin (1986)); indeed, all three books read like notorious Creationist attempts to make The Book of Genesis itself appear consistent with modern science.
To compound the problem, there have been even fewer attempts to understand the History of Science from a revolutionary perspective; Phil Gasper's recent review only served to underline this fact. [Cf., Gasper (1998).] However, having said that, much of what Phil says is well worth reading.
Classical Marxist histories of science are by now badly dated. Even when new, they tended to adopt an a priori approach to the subject, wherein the constant repetition of familiar DM-clichés dominated the discussion.
Regrettably, that observation also applies to Boris Hessen's classic study of the social dimension of Newton's work [Hessen (1971)]. Despite its obvious strengths (and in spite of the fact that he was working under intolerable pressure at the time), Hessen's essay is far too insubstantial to count as a work of history or theory. No doubt had the author lived, he would have developed and substantiated his ideas. Unfortunately, however, since he wrote this article little extra evidence has emerged to support his thesis. To compound matters, Hessen's essay is fatally compromised by his reliance on Engels's views on DM. [Cf., Graham (1985); and Clark (1970).]
Bernal's classic work is more closely tied to the actual events of history, but even here the author is ideologically biased toward Stalinism. Cf., Bernal (1939, 1969). Also see, Ravetz (1981), and Swann and Aprahamian (1999). On Bernal's life, and Stalinist bias, see Brown (2005).
Other excellent historical work includes Farrington (1939, 1974a, 1947b, 2000), the classic analyses found in Caudwell (1949, 1977), Zilsel (2000) and Needham ( 1951a, 1951b, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1979), and , of course, Needham (1954-2004). However, a more recent minor classic is Conner (2005).
Other works written from a Marxist perspective (but surprisingly ignored by Gasper) are rather more successful, however. Among these are Freudenthal (1986) and Swetz (1987). Cf., also Høyrup (1994). Others omitted include: Albury and Schwartz (1982), Easlea (1973, 1980), J Jacob (1988), M Jacob (1976, 1988, 2000, 2006a, 2006b), Krige (1980), and Mason (1962). [Of course, some of these were published after Phil's article was written!]
However, by far the best work in this area is that of Richard Hadden [Hadden (1988, 1994)] --, who developed ideas originally found in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987) and Sohn-Rethel (1978). [However, Hadden's book should be read in the light of Kaye (1998).*]
Also, since writing the foregoing I have had the pleasure of reading Lerner (1992). This author is clearly a Marxist, or has been heavily influenced by Marxist thought. Whatever one thinks of his attack on the BBT, his analysis of science is excellent.
A book that readers should consult with caution is Gillott and Kumar (1995). The reason for saying this can be found here, here and here. [The latter link is now dead, since the host site has been subjected to numerous hack attacks of a rather suspicious nature, clearly because that site is one of the best resources exposing the GM industry. It is now being rebuilt, and when that link has been up-dated, I will adjust it accordingly.]
A recent addition to the literature is Mason (2007). Parts of this book are excellent, but much of it is repetitive and naive.
[BBT = Big Bang Theory.]
Incidentally, Phil Gasper's account is itself compromised by his uncritical acceptance of DM and by its extreme philosophical brevity --, which is rather odd given Phil's professional expertise in this area. For example, while he rejects "social constructivism", he does this merely on the basis of a few rather dismissive remarks, neglecting to substantiate what he says with argument or evidence. In marked contrast, Phil is quite happy to accept what Lenin and other DM-classicists write on science with scarcely a blink, when what they say is invariably supported by evidence and argument that is considerably thinner and weaker than any that can be found in the work of even the most feeble-minded and superficial of social constructivists.
Another widely respected book among revolutionaries is Helena Sheehan's badly mis-titled work: Marxism and the Philosophy of Science [Sheehan (1993)]. This study is mis-titled for the simple reason that the reader will search long and hard (and to no avail) for anything even remotely resembling the philosophy of science. What he/she will find in its place, however, is an excellent but no less depressing account of what various DM-apologists imagined was or was not the relation between Marxism and science, among many other things. However, the vast majority of these now possess only curiosity value, of interest to antiquarians and die-hard DM-fans, but few others. Even in their heyday, these views were seldom less than dogmatic and were often motivated more by sectarian point-scoring than by an honest search for the truth.
In spite of this, Sheehan's book is invaluable, partly because it exposes the monumental waste of time and energy that DM-theorists have devoted to a 'theory' which few have advanced much beyond Engels's amateurish endeavours, and partly because it also contains material of use in helping to demonstrate how this 'theory' has helped ruin Marxist theory, which was not, I think, the author's original intention.
The last comment above is also confirmed by the following studies of the relationship between Russian Marxism and science post-1920: Birstein (2001), Graham (1971, 1987, 1993), Joravsky (1961, 1970), Kojevnikov (2004), Krementsov (1997), Medvedev (1969), Soyfer (1994), and Vucinich (1980, 2001).
There are countless books on science and Marxism written by Stalinists, but few are worthy of note. The interested reader is referred to the list in the previous paragraph, and to Helena Sheehan's work for more details. Worthy of special mention, however, are Omelyanovsky (1974, 1978, 1979).
Other articles/studies I have found useful are: Gregory (1977), Little (1986), Railton (1991), Thomas (1976), Wartofsky (1968, 1979) and Young (1990).
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 Phil's article. [But not from Gasper (1990).] Another important Marxist author is Richard Boyd; cf., Boyd (1989, 1991, 1993, 1996).
22. This allegation will also be substantiated elsewhere.*
In TAR, John Rees clearly rejects conventionalism, but unfortunately he failed to explain why (cf., p.297). In MEC, Lenin himself made a rather weak attempt to refute conventionalist interpretations of science, but, as noted in Essay Thirteen Part One, to call his arguments in this area a joke would be to praise them far too highly.
Lenin almost invariably confronted each and every opinion he disliked with countless repetitions of the following theme:
"[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.]
However, Lenin's timing here 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.]
But, what was so objective about the Ether that failed to prevent its subsequent fall from scientific grace?
Clearly, the problem with the sort of 'revisionary realism' Lenin advocated in MEC is that it is constantly left with having to explain how it is possible for such formerly 'objective' entities suddenly to vanish from the universe, and worse, what on earth scientists were talking about before their ontological 'deletion' took place.*
Nevertheless, in defence of Lenin, it is worth pointing out that there are scientists around who still believe that the Ether exists; on that consult this web site, and follow the links. See also Essay Eleven Part One, where the opinions of leading scientists on this mysterious 'substance' were recorded.
Despite this, DM-theorists can take little comfort from the inability of prominent Physicists to make their minds up on so basic an issue. This is because it is quite clear that the changing concept of the Ether cannot be put down to the development of greater and greater abstractions --, those that have been applied to, or derived from nature. If this were the case in science, the Ether would hardly keep disappearing from Physics and then re-appearing again in later generations with completely different physical/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 this concept of the Ether can be equated with that of, say, Aristotle, Newton -- or even Maxwell.
Nevertheless, another of Lenin's responses might be thought by some to 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' is not undermined by the passing away of obsolescent theories which contain several soon-to-be-eliminated but still putatively 'objective' entities, since these older theories are simply deemed to be less near the truth than the theories that eventually superseded them, but which theories do not contain these formerly 'objective' objects/processes.
But, this cannot be correct; it does not even look correct.
Let us suppose that, say, theory S postulates the existence of entity E, and that DM-theorists accept this as "objectively but partially true". Suppose further that scientists later reject S along with E. It cannot now be argued that the contents of S were "objective" or "partially" true, since they were neither. If E does not exist (and never did) then any claims made about 'it' were incorrect -- in fact, they are/were neither empirically true nor false (for reasons examined elsewhere).*
Now, in the case under consideration, if there is no Ether, Physicists would not 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 of Phlogiston, or 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) that arise as a result of the assumption that entities like these actually exist. Hence, given this account, even gross errors can help science progress.
No doubt they can, but what has this to do with 'objectivity'? If the Ether, Caloric and Phlogiston do not exist, the supposition that they do takes science away from the 'truth'. Spin-off benefits (howsoever impressive) have nothing to do with 'objectivity' (which, according to Lenin, relates to the 'mind independence' of objects and processes in reality). It certainly 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 just because of that.
[On this, for example, see Hooykaas (1973).]
If the 'objective status' of the entities and processes scientists discover turn out to be irrelevant -- and only spin-off techniques really matter -- then the status of those techniques themselves must come under suspicion (especially if they continually prompt scientists into believing that certain things exist when they don't). Scientists surely trust their methodology because it produces genuine results.
Dialecticians use the word "spiral" to capture their theory of the faltering progress of knowledge (as science "spirals" in on the truth), but as the above shows, if their account were correct, a better word would be "screwy". More on this in Essay Ten Part One, and elsewhere.*
However, it is worth pointing out that Conventionalism does not face this problem (even if it suffers from other drawbacks) -- whereas all forms of Metaphysical Realism do.
Hence, Lenin's account of 'objectivity' must confront the annoying fact that today's "objective" objects and processes almost invariably become the contents of tomorrow's scientific trashcan; the history of science is littered with examples of this phenomenon. In addition to Caloric and Phlogiston, who now believes in Indivisible Atoms, Homunculi, Humours, tidal blood flows, the Fifth Element (or the other Four), the blending theory of inheritance, the inheritance of acquired characteristics, the Crystalline Spheres, Polywater, N-rays, Piltdown Man, electric fluids, mesmerism, substantial forms, effluvia, planet-like electrons, 'current bun' atoms, Steady State Cosmology, immobile continents, Preformationism, spontaneous generation, cold fusion, absolute space and time, the planet Vulcan (not the one featured in Star Trek!), the Ego, the Id and the Superego, Thanatos, antiperistalsis, entelechies, inherited insanity, Phrenology, Orgone, Bioenergy, the divine origin of fossils, the diluvial origin of rock, wandering womb hysteria -- alongside countless other defunct 'entities' and fictional processes that scientists used to believe were 'objective'. [Many more of these are listed here, in Essay Eleven Part One.]
Sure, the evidence for the 'existence' of many of the above was compelling at one time, but as 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 18th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19th 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, 2006).
It is often argued that the above were not part of "mature" scientific theories, in stark contrast with theories extant today. Anyone who thinks this should read Smolin (2006), and then think again.* [See also here.]
23. Why only empirical propositions are being discussed here is explained in Note 29.
24. It could be argued that this is not so. Someone could accept a sentence as true even before they understood it, if, say, they accepted implicitly the word of an authority on the subject, or perhaps that of a holy man/woman. [Martin (1987) takes this line.]
Consider, therefore, these examples (which were deliberately made incomprehensible to underline this very point):
L1: Professor NN said, "The admurial current in the sample of Blongit has a value of 15.542 buhrs when subjected to an Moggle Field of 1.896 galols."
L2: St. MM uttered these immortal words: "Orle Geerlty Furthir Shcmood gleebers a minnert whal replificatees."
Well, is either of these true? Would anyone accept them as such before they understood the odd words they contain? If they did, 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 mean?"
Someone could respond: "St. MM would not lie; I believe every word she says."
Putting to one side how this individual could possibly know whether or not this 'holy' woman had ever lied if everything she says is so readily believed, and the profound gullibility this expresses, such credulity is manifestly centred on the person of the Saint, not the 'content' of the words she utters.
It could be objected that the above examples are highly contentious, and thus of little relevance. Maybe so, but until such an objector produces a sentence that he/she does not understand, which he/she might hold true if uttered by a figure of authority -- 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.
On this, see Note 31, below.
25. It is here that we can see just how the 'representational/referential theory' appears to gain some grip (to some): if nature has a secret code of sorts (perhaps written in a mathematical, ideational, or structurally causal form), then our sentences about reality gain a sense by 'reflecting' that code -- in a like-represents-like sort of fashion ("as above so below", as it were).
Naturally, this raises questions about the origin of this hidden 'code', what gave it the 'sense' it has, and why it cannot itself be misinterpreted or be the subject of alternative readings. Some might point to codes already written into nature --, for example, the genetic code. But this code cannot be like the codes human beings invent, since the latter depend on the prior existence of a language into and out of which they can be translated, using an agreed and normative translation manual. But, we can only attribute this facility to nature if we are prepared to anthropomorphise it once more. So, whatever Geneticists are referring to when they speak about 'codes', they cannot be the same as the ones that we invent. [More on this in Bennett and Hacker (2003), p.167, and Bennett et al (2007), pp.146-56.]
However, as should seem obvious, we cannot solve puzzles about reality by postulating intelligent causes (howsoever these are re-packaged). As Hume noted, if socially-motivated human intelligence is to be accounted for by an exterior intelligence/rationality (of whatever sort), then an infinite regress must follow. This sceptical argument, of course, is not weakened in the slightest if the word "God" is replaced by "abstraction" -- or even by "rationally-based-and-evidentially-supported-objective-theory".
More on this in Part Four of this Essay. [Also see Essay Three Part Two.]
26. This was discussed in more detail in Essay Three Part Two, and will be addressed elsewhere.*
27. This will be tackled in Parts Two and Three of this Essay, and elsewhere, too.*
28. This will also be discussed elsewhere.*
29. This puts much weight on the word "understanding", but anyone who has problems with that is way beyond even my help.
On this, see Note 31, below.
In the analysis offered in the main body of this Essay, consideration is restricted to empirical propositions. This is not meant to denigrate other forms of discourse (e.g., the use of questions, commands, fiction, poetic and ethical language, optatives, and so on), nor is it to ignore the importance of figurative speech. The discussion here has been deliberately narrowed for two reasons:
(1) Metaphysical theses about reality purport to be expressed in specialised, but industrial strength factual propositions. However, as I have tried to show, metaphysical theories are based on a systematic failure to distinguish between different types of proposition -- that is, between 'pseudo-empirical' and empirical propositions themselves, between those that ape the indicative mood, but collapse into incoherence upon examination, and those that do not.
(2) Empirical propositions are obviously closely linked to claims made about scientific 'objectivity'.
[In addition, for the sake of simplicity, the distinction between type and token empirical propositions has been ignored. Naturally, in a comprehensive account of the linguistic phenomena under review here these issues will need to be addressed -- for all that this is inappropriate in an Essay of the present sort, and in connection with the aims of this site.]
Since these other types of sentences and propositions are not really related to the topics under discussion here, and as important as they are in themselves, an analysis of their mode of signification has been omitted.
Moreover, the idea that these Essays are fixated on single sentences (a familiar criticism of Analytic Philosophy advanced by dialecticians) is also misguided. Single sentences are quoted here merely to focus attention on particular points dialecticians miss, confuse or have copied from traditional thought. Where appropriate, wider contextual issues have been introduced. On this, see Note 31.
However, having said that, 'Contextualism' (i.e., the idea that words gain their meaning from their context of use) is criticised in detail elsewhere.* Moreover, metaphysical Holism (of the sort that dialecticians accept) is also destructively analysed in Essay Eleven Parts One and Two, as well as here.
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 elsewhere.* Until then, the reader is referred to Baker and Hacker (1984), Cowie (1997, 2002), and Sampson (2005) -- and the review here.
See also, an essay by Sampson, here. [The reader is warned that Sampson is a right-wing Tory who holds racist views, but he is right about Nativism (a doctrine that, oddly enough, underlies many forms of right-wing dogma!).]
31. On this, see Note 90 below.
Furthermore, as we will see later, only if a proposition is part of a body of propositions would it be possible to ascertain its truth-value. Empirical propositions do not face the world like isolated atoms, 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).*
If this were not so, and if sense were dependent on truth (and not the other way round), communication could only be achieved at the end of one's education -- after the mastery of all the truths necessary to understand the sense of even one of the propositions that expressed these elusive 'prior truths' -- not at the beginning, which would be absurd.
It could be objected that this all depends on an appeal to human understanding. Surely, a scientific account of language must consider only objective truths, which must be such independently of human cognition. In that case, the above comments are misguided, at best --, or so it might be argued.
This response itself is misconceived. Plainly, scientists are social beings; they can only frame theories that are expressible in some language or other. Even supposing that such theories were about a world that is independent of, and anterior to, human cognition, scientists cannot rise above -- nor abrogate -- the constraints placed on them by social interaction. As we have seen several times, the pretence that they can do this (that is, the supposition that this presents even a possibility) relies on a fetishisation of language: the reading into nature of human cognitive and social capacities. This clearly defeats the whole point of the exercise; far from avoiding LIE, it collapses right into it.*
[LIE = Linguistic Idealism.]
Nevertheless, my rejoinder might look to some like an a priori, transcendental argument, but it isn't. When spelt-out in detail it is analogous to reductio, as should be plain from all that has gone before.*
Such a reductive technique has been employed throughout this site, and it can be seen wherever metaphysical/DM-theses have been shown to be true just in case they are false (or, where they have been reduced to absurdity in some other way), meaning, of course, that they can be neither true nor false -- and are incapable of being repaired, as it were --, and thus are non-sensical.
Naturally, this sort of analysis is reactive, if not therapeutic. It is neither aimed at the derivation of new truths about language or the world, nor it is aimed at establishing an alternative set of empirical truths about anything whatsoever. It simply responds to the claims metaphysicians regularly make, and endeavours to unmask the latent non-sense they contain. Its prime objective (and main tactic) is to remind us of what we already know by constantly turning the argument back to the ordinary (material) use of language. Any technicalities and/or neologisms used to this end are dispensable; they merely serve as shorthand.
Even so, whatever its motivation, the above analysis might still appear to some to be at least factually wrong, for it is plain that when learning science, for instance, students have to master all kinds of information (that is, facts and/or empirical data) before they can begin to understand the subject matter in question. Hence, an understanding of science is manifestly based on the acquisition of a body of truths/facts -- contrary to the clams made above.
This picture is misleading. Mathematics and science are actually taught in a variety of ways, but students must first have some grasp of ordinary language, everyday concepts and practical techniques before their science or mathematics education can even begin. Understanding is then extended by means of illustrative examples, augmented by analogical and metaphorical reasoning, leading questions, amplified by the use of countless practical exercises, simple models, pictures and graded tasks, among other things. Only when extensions to their vocabulary, understanding and practical skills are in place are students capable of comprehending any of the new accounts of the phenomena offered by their teachers -- or, indeed, are they able to extrapolate beyond these into new areas of knowledge.
This means that novel truths/facts learnt by students depend on (and are sometimes coincident with) extended understanding and technique. In short, as seems obvious, unless a student understands what his/her teacher says (or, unless they grasp the import of the books and articles they study), and can carry out successfully the graded tasks set, new facts could only ever be accepted on trust or on 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. That is why, of course, the word "learning" is attached to the word "rote" only ironically.
[Although, some forms of rote learning are in fact part of the mastery of a technique; for example "Times Tables" in mathematics. If these are not leant by heart, a student's mathematical education will be crippled. However, further excursion into this area would take us too far a-field into Wittgenstein's ideas on 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, and Erneling (1993). See also Robinson (2003b).]
This is indeed partly how scientific advance is itself initiated: by an extension to the meaning of the terminology used in other -- possibly similar, maybe analogous -- contexts and practices, alongside the establishment of new relations between them, as I hope to show elsewhere.* In this way, 'old facts' are set in a new light and novel connections (impossible to achieve before) are set-up --, which, in effect, change the latter by extension. [On this, see Sharrock and Read (2002).]
[This also takes care of the objection that if this were true, speakers would not be able to understand what was said to them until they had mastered a whole language. As our education and socialisation grows, so does our comprehension of language; neither takes precedence.]
Incidentally, this helps explain why new theories often look plausible only to those prepared to move into the new conceptual landscape carved out by these novel theories, practices, grammars, and/or "world-views" (even if both are ultimately motivated by differentially-placed class-inspired/biased reactions to social change, and their associated ideologies) -- while to others not so flexible they look paradoxical, or palpably false. This also explains why older members of the scientific community find it much harder to accept new ideas -- to them, they often appear totally incomprehensible.
This fact alone would be inexplicable if science advanced by the mere accumulation facts, or was dependent on the development of greater and greater 'abstractions'.
This also helps account for the way that new theories not only change our view of the world (by changing the language we use to depict it, often feeding off discourse already altered by social and economic development), they enable new discoveries that we