Abstractor Factory

Essay Three Part One: How 'Abstractionism' Undermines Both Science And Dialectical Materialism

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The main aims of Essay Three are outlined here. The opening sections of this Part of Essay Three are intended to motivate several of the more important ideas presented in the rest of this site. However, one or two of the things I say below might seem to some to be rather dogmatic, but they will be fully substantiated in other Essays -- for example, Essay Twelve Part One.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[**Exactly how this applies to DM will be explained later in this Essay, as well as here and here. In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the argument (but this time written for absolute beginners!), here.]

Incidentally, I have used the word "nominalisation" throughout this Essay; why I have done this is explained here.

It is also worth pointing out that a good 50% of my case against DM has been relegated to the End Notes and Appendices. That has been done to allow the main body of the Essay to flow a little more smoothly. In many cases, I have added numerous qualifications, clarifications, and considerably more detail to what I have to say in the main body. In addition, I have raised several objections to my own arguments (some of which are rather obvious, many not -- and some that will have occurred to the reader), which I have then answered. I have explained why I have adopted this tactic in Essay One.

If readers skip this material, then my response to any objections or qualms they might have will be missed, as will my expanded comments and clarifications. Since I have been debating this theory with comrades for over 30 years, I have heard all the objections there are! [Many of the more recent debates have been listed here.]

Finally, rather like Essay Twelve Part One, this Essay is in places rather repetitive. It has been my experience that if the points I wish to make aren't repeated several times (maybe from different angles or in other terms) their significance is all too easily lost. However, in future re-writes I will try to weed out any such unnecessary duplications. In the meantime, the readers' indulgence and understanding will be greatly appreciated.

As of May 2024, this Essay is just over 163,000 words long; a summary of some of its main ideas can be accessed here.

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

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

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

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

Essay Three will first of all explore several core tenets of DM-epistemology, which it will then systematically demolish.

To that end, Parts One and Two of this Essay will largely focus on a traditional philosophical 'concept' or 'method': the so-called "process of abstraction". These two Parts will show that little sense can be made either of the 'process' itself or its alleged results: the various 'abstractions' that have been conjured into existence by Traditional Philosophers and DM-theorists.

Following on from the controversial allegations advanced in Essay Two -- concerning the philosophical traditionalism promoted by every single DM-theorist and author -- Essay Three will show exactly how this ancient doctrine, Abstractionism, has been incorporated into Dialectical Marxism. As we will discover, the 'process of abstraction' is a source of much of the confusion that has in its own small way helped cripple Marxist theory, and hence much of revolutionary socialist practice for well over a century.

[Notice the use of the word "helped", here; it is not being claimed that other factors haven't also contributed to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism. Also notice my use of the term "Dialectical Marxism", which I distinguish from non-Dialectical Marxism (of the sort advanced at this site). The latter form of Marxism hasn't been road-tested anywhere yet.]

In general, DM-fans with whom I have debated Abstractionism react to my criticism of this 'concept', 'method', or 'process' with incredulity, followed by extremely negative, if not highly emotive, irrational, or hostile personal abuse -- which means they are perhaps the most fervent defenders of this ancient ruling-class approach to 'knowledge'. [See, for example, here, here and here.] Their reaction isn't all that surprising given the allegations that will be advanced both in this Essay and at this site concerning the origin of the philosophical doctrines touted by DM-fans, for instance, here and here.

In Part Two, I will examine in more detail the traditional approach to abstraction, showing that by incorporating this 'process' and its alleged 'results' into their theories, Dialectical Marxists have only succeeded in drawing a viper to their breast.

Part Three will destructively analyse the peculiar idea that certain states or processes of matter and 'Mind' "emerge" from other states or processes of matter. In Part Four, I will focus on what DM-theorists have had to say about truth and falsehood. In addition, I will consider how they think human knowledge progresses; that will also include a consideration of how they imagine their own theory has developed out of, or has progressed in line with, practice. [That will overlap with what I have to say in Essay Ten Part One.] In Part Five, I will concentrate on the 'free will' versus 'determinism' controversy, which is just another distinction dialecticians have unwisely imported into Marxism from ruling-class thought. [Two rather brief previews of the approach I will adopt can be accessed here and here.] Finally, in Part Six, I will examine the so-called 'Reflection Theory of Knowledge'.

Incidentally, when I am speaking about the 'abstractions' upon which DM-theorists have concentrated -- and those they have imported from Traditional Philosophy -- I will in general put the relevant words in double quotes (for example, the words "man" or "Being"). When I am speaking about whatever these 'abstractions' supposedly designate, refer to, or 'reflect', I will use 'scare' quotes, or no quotes at all (for example, 'man').

In addition, it is worth pointing out that since the Traditional Theorists and dialecticians I will be covering in these Essays regularly confuse linguistic expressions with the objects to which they supposedly refer (or, as I often make this point: where they conflate talk about talk with talk about the world), any attempt by me to discuss this topic will become hopelessly complicated if I have to point this confusion out over and over again. I will, however, mention this mix-up from time-to-time, but readers should remain aware of this age-old confusion all the way through this Essay. Recall, I am trying to make a terminally obscure theory clear -- or as clear as is humanly possible(!) --, so any confusions that remain are the fault of those who invented this way of talking, not the present author.

I can't guarantee I will always manage to stick to these conventions consistently since it is often unclear what DM-theorists are themselves actually saying, or even to what they are attempting to refer. [If anyone has a clearer idea what they are banging in about, please contact me. On this, see also Note 1b1.]

Finally, nothing said in this Essay (or in Part Two) is aimed at criticising the ordinary use of so-called "abstract general nouns" (such as "courage", "wisdom", "justice"), although it might affect how we interpret them. Rather, these Essays are directed at the use of the word "abstraction" (and its cognates) in both Traditional Philosophy and DM. [On this, also see Cowley (1991), pp.85-116.]

In Essay Two, we saw that dialecticians were just as ready as any randomly-selected Idealist to impose their a priori theories on reality, despite what George Novack had to say about that approach:

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

Which looks like a round-about way of saying that there is no evidence at all for much of DM -- or, at least, for the existence of all those "abstractions"! Either that, or DM itself is pure, unadulterated Idealism -- since the 'abstractions' Engels speaks about are based on "principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source."

Anyway, Engels's words sit rather awkwardly with other things that both he and Marx saw fit to commit to paper:

"The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way....

"The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will....

"In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

"This method of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts as it is with the empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of imagined subjects, as with the idealists." [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.42-48. Bold emphases added.]

"We all agree that in every field of science, in natural and historical science, one must proceed from the given facts, in natural science therefore from the various material forms of motion of matter; that therefore in theoretical natural science too the interconnections are not to be built into the facts but to be discovered in them, and when discovered to be verified as far as possible by experiment.

"Just as little can it be a question of maintaining the dogmatic content of the Hegelian system as it was preached by the Berlin Hegelians of the older and younger line." [Engels (1954), p.47. Bold emphases alone added.]

"All three are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Ibid., p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]

"Finally, for me there could be no question of superimposing the laws of dialectics on nature but of discovering them in it and developing them from it." [Engels (1976), p.13. Bold emphasis added.]

"In this way, however, the whole dogmatic content of the Hegelian system is declared to be absolute truth, in contradiction to his dialectical method, which dissolves all dogmatism...." [Engels (1888), p.589. Bold emphasis added.]

"The general results of the investigation of the world are obtained at the end of this investigation, hence are not principles, points of departure, but results, conclusions. To construct the latter in one's head, take them as the basis from which to start, and then reconstruct the world from them in one's head is ideology, an ideology which tainted every species of materialism hitherto existing.... As Dühring proceeds from 'principles' instead of facts he is an ideologist, and can screen his being one only by formulating his propositions in such general and vacuous terms that they appear axiomatic, flat. Moreover, nothing can be concluded from them; one can only read something into them...." [Marx and Engels (1987), p.597. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Well, perhaps there is some way of harmonising these passages that allows DM-supporters to come up with a convincing, or even a plausible, answer to the following questions:

(b) Exactly what do they 'represent' or 'reflect' in nature and society, and how do they do it?

Satisfactory replies to both of the above from DM-fans would lend credence to the claim that their ideas haven't been "imposed" on nature and society, after all. However, given the additional fact that DM-supporters invariably ignore such 'pedantic quibbles' (or they are hand-waved aside), readers are advised not to hold their breath waiting for an effective, or even a plausible, response. Those same readers might like to ask DM-fans themselves for a clear answer to the above two questions. They will receive no such reply.

[If, per impossible, any of my readers do manage to receive a clear answer, please contact me with the details. In that eventuality I'll be keeping watch for a few flying pigs. There should be dozens of them!]

Well, in this Essay we will find out how they manage to avoid the latter by unfortunately careering headlong into the former -- i.e., by the way they all proceed "from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source" (to quote George Novack, again), despite their frequent protestations.

In Essays Nine Parts One and Two, and Twelve Parts One to Seven, we will discover exactly why they do it.

To be sure, DM-theorists claim that their theory is thoroughly materialist and they vigorously resist any imputation to the contrary. Far from imposing their ideas on nature, dialecticians argue that scientific knowledge (like theirs) advances because of a 'dialectical interplay' between abstract knowledge on the one hand and practical activity on the other, rendering it increasingly objective (or "concrete"), over time.

And yet, as we found out in Essay Two, there is little if any truth in this self-serving myth.

To state the obvious, without minds to invent them there would be no abstractions. On the surface, therefore, it looks like any theory committed to the 'objective' existence of 'abstractions' (or, "real abstractions") must be Idealist, whatever complaints are made to the contrary. As we will see, even when we dig 'below the surface', Idealist implications like these are difficult to resist. In which case, the above phrase, "looks like", itself turns out to be far too tentative, and by a rather wide margin, too.

If 'abstractions' aren't 'objective' -- that is, if they aren't "mind-independent", or if they fail to relate to (i.e., refer to) anything that exists in "mind-independent" reality --, it is difficult to see how they could possibly assist anyone construct an accurate or truthful theory of the world, or, at least, a theory that is supposed to be 'objective'. Nor is it easy to see how scientific knowledge could advance by means of 'abstractions' if they are somehow fictional. How could fictional concepts help account for a... -- for want of a better phrase -- ...non-fictional world?

Well, perhaps there is a way of interpreting the nature of abstractions, or what they supposedly 'reflect' in 'reality' -- that is, if they actually 'reflect' anything other than what is 'in the mind' of the one who invented them -- that succeeds in rescuing them from the world of make-believe. On the other hand, could it be that their only 'legitimate' role is to help maintain the morale of scientists and philosophers -- by making it easier to sell the idea that their latest theories are valid? That is, might it not turn out that 'abstractions' simply enable those who believe in them construct grandiose theories concerning 'fundamental features reality', valid for all of space and time, in the comfort of their own heads? One suspects so. And if those suspicions bear fruit, much of Traditional Thought should then perhaps be classified as a considerably less entertaining, but far more dogmatic, version of the collected works of the Brothers Grimm -- that is, as Fantasy Fiction on steroids.

On the other hand, if abstractions are 'objective' -- but only 'minds' are capable of constructing, or even of appreciating, them --, questions would naturally arise over what they could possibly reflect in nature. Exactly what is it in 'extra-mental reality' that corresponds with an 'abstract idea'? What do they capture 'in the world' if they only exist 'in the mind'?

Of course, for non-materialists and old-fashioned Realists, quibbles like these present few problems --, except perhaps in connection with awkward questions raised about the precise meaning of the word "objective".

Indeed, for Traditional Theorists the ultimate constituents of reality were in the end often taken to be either:

(iii) "Ideas" floating about in some abstract 'mental', or even 'divine', arena.

In that case, the word "objective" -- that is, before its meaning flipped a couple of centuries ago (it used to mean what "subjective" now does, and vice versa; on this, see Daston (1994), and Daston and Galison (2007)) -- would almost be synonymous with another word frequently used these days, namely, "Ideal". In fact, at a fundamental level it isn't easy to distinguish old-fashioned Realists (i.e., Platonists and neo-Platonists) from Objective Idealists -- except, perhaps, in the way they both view logic/change --, and, truth be told, as far as the latter were concerned, the word "objective" clearly did no real work. But, the same can easily be said of "Ideal", and its close relative, "idealisation".

However, the same can't be said about dialecticians -- but only if we accept at face value their version of DM -- that is, that it represents Hegel's 'theory'/'method' put 'back on its feet', stripped of its outer 'mystical shell'. Nevertheless, and controversially, it can and will be said of them -- after the tangled undergrowth surrounding much of what they do say has been cleared, its roots in Traditional Thought exposed for all to see.

Oddly enough, we find a DM-classicist like Lenin arguing along such familiar lines, for all the world sounding like a born-again Realist with added Hegelian spin:

"Knowledge is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate, not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Ibid., p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Unfortunately, Lenin forgot to say how any of this rather ambitious project is at all possible if abstractions are nothing but the creations of the human mind. If scientific knowledge more truly reflects the world the more its abstractions are correct, or valid, how is that possible if they don't actually exist 'objectively' in the material world, in some form or other for scientists, or, indeed, for Marxist philosophers, to reflect?^1a

Once again: if abstractions don't exist in the 'outside world', what is there in nature for them to reflect, for them to represent to us, or for them to refer to in 'extra-mental reality'?

Recall that for Lenin, and those who agree with him, 'objectivity' concerns whatever exists exterior to, and independent of, the human mind, ratified by practice:

"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and that our perceptions are images of the external world...." [Lenin (1972), p.111. Bold emphasis added.]

"To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind, is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth...." [Ibid., p.148.]

"Knowledge can be useful biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid., p.157.]

"[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.]

"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.]

That can only mean DM-abstractions can't be 'objective'. Plainly, that is because they don't exist "outside our minds".

On the other hand, if we simply ignore 'annoying quibbles' like these -- and even if we were to suppose that abstractions actually exist in the 'outside world' so that abstract general words can and do refer to them, or which can and do 'reflect' them --, what form do any such 'abstractions' take? Of what are they composed? Worse still: where do they exist? And how can they possibly interact with human thought? As soon as they are capable of being experienced they become particular, not general. In that eventuality, the whole point of inventing them (i.e., to rise above the particular by ascending to the general -- as we will see below) would be lost. It seems that, because of their nature, they can't be 'objects of experience'. What then are they?

Are we somehow 'mentally linked' (or can we even be 'linked') with, or to, them? Is that the case? But, as we have just seen, there appears to be no conceivable way they could be physically connected to us, or could even physically interact with us, without automatically losing their status as abstract general 'concepts'.

Or, do we perceive them by what is in effect the equivalent of a 'non-physical' Third Eye? [As we will see in Part Two, this is indeed (roughly) how Rationalist Philosophers tended to approach this topic; readers are directed there for more details.]^1b

Perhaps so; indeed, as August Thalheimer let slip (in relation to another of this theory's core precepts):

"Only a person trained in dialectics will perceive the permeation of opposites. Of course, this does not depend only upon training in dialectics, but also upon the class viewpoint, the social viewpoint which the individual adopts." [Thalheimer (1936), p.164.]

Maybe that is also true of DM-abstractions? Only the faithful, only those with the 'eyes to see', can 'see' them.

As we will find out in Essay Nine Part Two, the above "class position" (at least in 'dialectical' philosophy) has almost exclusively been adopted by petty bourgeois and déclassé professional revolutionaries; that is, by those who imported this ruling-class theory into our movement, and who weren't workers.

Perhaps this is being a little too hasty? Maybe dialecticians are capable of seeing or apprehending 'abstractions' by a special 'act of cognition'. If so, the Idealist implications of that source of knowledge would be plain for all to see (no pun intended). Indeed, it finds immediate echo in Plato:

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

As far as Idealists are concerned, Plato's comments present few immediate difficulties -- although, Essay Three Part Two (Sections One and Two), will show this dogmatic approach to knowledge introduces serious problems of its own.

Nevertheless, this leaves dialecticians with more than a few annoying headaches, the origin and cause of which Essay Three (in all its Parts) aims to expose.

To that end, and in order to make genuine progress, we will need something a little more helpful than Lenin's enigmatic prose to light our way. Surprising as this might seem to those still living under a rock, DM-theorists have to this day remained studiously silent on these issues -- saving, of course, where they are content merely to repeat Lenin's words verbatim in the vain hope that repetition will generate clarity where enigmatic prose on its own manifestly can't.

Traditional Theorists viewed abstractions (or the 'Forms'/'Universals') as a 'reflection', or an expression, of "essential" features of the world, which, according to them, were inaccessible to the senses and lay 'behind' appearances -- with that over-used metaphor also left conveniently obscure for over two thousand years.

[Later, we will have occasion to question the aptness of these figures of speech, even when they are employed by avowed materialists -- i.e., DM-fans.]

In stark contrast to the particulars we meet in everyday life -- a table, a chair, a cat, a relative... --, abstractions aren't just universal in form, they are also supposed to be general in fact. Indeed, the use of 'abstractions', so we are told, allows human 'cognition' to rise above and beyond immediate experience, enabling it to construct an increasingly universal, law-governed picture of (underlying) reality. As the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:

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

Hence, it seemed to more than a few Traditional Thinkers that abstractions (like those 'universals') were necessary if human beings were to (a) comprehend the generality supposedly found in nature, (b) both establish and consolidate scientific knowledge, or (c) uncover a countless 'necessary truths' buried 'under the surface' or which lie 'behind 'appearances'. DM-theorists merely added an extra flourish: their theory allows them to understand the 'concrete world' more fully in order to help change it. But, as we will discover, their approach to such Cosmic Verities owes much more to early modern forms of Rationalism and those who paved the way for Hegel than it does to science itself:

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

Each (genuine) abstraction therefore seems to operate like some sort of 'conceptual key' capable of unlocking secrets that govern the 'inner workings' of the entire universe, an artefact of thought that supplies each mind prepared to indulge in this ancient sport with universally valid principles -- important components of which, oddly enough, don't actually exist anywhere in 'extra-mental reality'!

However, in order to exert a little more pressure on the opposing idea (that 'abstractions' actually do exist somehow, somewhere...), it might prove helpful to raise a handful of additional questions:

(d) If abstractions are general in form, and do in fact exist in the 'outside world', how does that 'generality' actually express itself?

(e) Is an abstraction somehow 'spread out', as it were -- like some sort of 'metaphysical liquid' or 'force field' -- in, or over, the 'concrete particulars' that supposedly instantiate it, uniting the diversity we see all around us, perhaps by a 'mysterious power'/'influence' as yet unbeknown to us?

(f) Or, are abstractions merely an aspect of the complex tales human beings tell one another? Are they simply subjective stories in pseudo-objective drag, but which are essential for the successful advancement of knowledge (even though they aren't really 'real' in themselves)?

Unfortunately, the questionable origin of the traditional approach to knowledge (in the theories developed by openly Idealist Philosophers) has done little to improve its image among materialists, nor does it inspire much confidence.^1b0 Small wonder then that consistent materialists have, in general, regarded abstract ideas as guilty until proven even more guilty.

Nevertheless, more work will need to be done before it becomes clear whether or not 'abstractions' aren't simply useful fictions, handy at least for maintaining the morale of scientists, or, indeed, for giving dialecticians something over which they can endlessly perseverate --, and, if we are brutally honest, precious little else.

Short of burying this entire topic under layers of impenetrable Hegelian jargon, dialecticians haven't advanced much beyond the 'subjective stage', if such it may be called. In fact, as we will see, the way they conceive of abstractions, and the 'process' by which they have been given life, undermines the very generality they had all along been introduced to explain.

As should now seem reasonably clear: if true, that accusation would completely undermine the DM-theory of knowledge.

This ironic 'dialectical inversion' -- whereby DM-abstractions end up killing the very theory that spawned them -- will be the subject of the rest of this Essay -- and Part Two.

Admittedly, when language is viewed in a traditional light, it appears to predispose or even motivate its users into entertaining the idea that 'abstractions' are universal in form; the words that supposedly denote them appear to be, or to express, general ideas, categories and concepts.^1b1

Even so, things are rarely this straight-forward. The problem here revolves around the fact that the terminology Traditional Theorists use to talk about abstractions turns out to be far from general. Indeed, such theorists in the end use what turn out to be the Proper Names of the aforementioned "Universals", or they are the Proper Names of the "Forms", of "Concepts", "Categories", "Essences", and "Ideas". Now, this might at first sight appear to be a relatively insignificant point, hardly worth mentioning, in fact; but this seemingly minor detail turns out to be the exact opposite. That is because this linguistic move implies that these Universals (etc.) aren't in fact general in form or content but are particulars of some sort or other, named now by abstract nouns such as "Manhood", "Cathood", or "The Population", "Being", conjured into existence by the 'process' of abstraction -- a 'process' that defies clear explanation even to this day, as the first two Parts of Essay Three will demonstrate.^1b2

(h) How is it possible for an abstraction to be both general and particular at one and the same time?

Well, are abstractions like classes? Classes are abstract particulars of a rather peculiar sort: they are singular in form, supposedly compound in nature, but no less Ideal.^1c If Universals are like classes -- which somehow seem to 'exist' anterior to material reality -- it would suggest they were ghostly containers of some sort, populated by what are supposed to be the material objects they (metaphorically) collect together.^1d But, does this intellectualist approach to reality not now commit us to the existence of classes over and above their members? Indeed, is such a 'theory' little more than bargain basement Platonism? As the late Fraser Cowley pointed out:

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

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

So, what we say about an individual of a certain sort (such as a spider), or even kinds of things (such as spiders), can't sensibly said of classes. You might find spiders in your loft, garage or bath, but you will nowhere find the class of spiders in your neighbourhood, or anywhere else, for that matter. Not even the most enthusiastic hunter will stalk the class of elks or the class of pheasants. Spiders, as a kind, are to be found dispersed across this planet, but not the class of spiders. TV documentaries will happily film spiders, but no one has ever videoed the class of these eight-legged beasties, or has even tried to do so.

And yet, what are classes apart from their members? Indeed, what were they before their members existed? Was there, for example, a class of tigers existing somewhere (maybe for billions of years), waiting for these magnificent beasts to evolve just to give that class some sort of material content --, and, perhaps, provide theoretical distraction for taxonomists? Does nature 'plan ahead' in this way? For Platonists, maybe it does; but for materialists? Surely not.

On the other hand, are classes somehow material in form, like a table, a chair, a rock, a pair of cuff links or a TV set? If they are indeed material in some way, of what are they composed? If they are made of something, why call them abstractions? That particular word doesn't even look right.

Abstractions (or abstract ideas/concepts) are constructed -- so the story goes -- either (a) By means of some sort of mental subtracting process, in the course of which theorists progressively ignore certain particular (or even general) features of material objects in their desire to ascend to something more general, or (b) By means of a law-like, generalising process, which each intrepid abstractor brings to reality, a priori -- rather like the "concrete universal" idea that Hegel borrowed from Aristotle.^1d1

"Aristotle again and again reverts to the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study.... Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused? If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars." [Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]^1e

Of course, this simply labels the problem since it is still unclear what any one of these "universals" actually is. Compare that with calling what we now know as Oxygen, "dephlogisticated air". That term simply labelled a problem in 18^th century Chemistry, which, fortunately, the scientists of the day didn't try to solve simply by inventing yet more jargon, unlike Philosophers. [I will develop that theme throughout this Essay and this site.]

Nevertheless, whichever one of (a) or (b) above is the correct approach to the invention of these 'abstractions', exactly how this highly individualised skill is mysteriously coordinated across an entire population of intrepid abstractors, and over many centuries, is an even deeper mystery. No doubt there is an abstraction covering that, too.

But, if (a) were the case, in the limit, one would expect abstractions to be more like Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, not the Old Woman's Shoe -- i.e., empty of all content. As we will see, this was indeed the 'thinking' that motivated Hegel's reduction of generality and Marx's criticism of it.

On the other hand, if (b) were the case, nature couldn't be anything other than Ideal, as Hegel himself maintained and as Marx also famously criticised.

Anyway, should dialecticians be tempted to adopt strategy (b), they won't be able to avoid imposing the resulting abstractions on reality, something they said they would never do. Indeed, that is precisely why, in these Essays, DM is accused of being a thoroughly Idealist theory; because dialecticians have in fact imposed an a priori dogma on nature and society their theory couldn't be anything other than Ideal.

Maybe these aren't even the right questions to ask? Perhaps a closer examination of the actual process of abstraction will tell us more.

Abstraction is widely held to be a process that all (or maybe most) human beings are capable of performing, accessing, or using, and which enables those so minded to extract or form 'abstract ideas' almost at will.²

One interpretation of this allegedly 'universal skill' involves the additional belief -- among Marxist dialecticians, it seems -- that abstractions already exist in reality somehow waiting for intrepid mental gymnasts to 'discover' by the operation of 'reason' alone -- otherwise they wouldn't be 'objective'. Again, as Lenin noted:

"[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.]

So, if 'abstractions' are to be considered 'objective', or are capable of reflecting 'objective' features of 'reality', they must have pre-dated human existence. There appears to be no other way of interpreting Lenin, here.

The only other alternative, it would seem, is to view these 'abstractions' in a way that would make them both 'objective' and 'mind-dependent', all in one go -- an odd combination, to be sure, but one we will find resists all serious attempts at explanation. Here is Lenin, again:

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Lenin (1961) p.208. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Good luck to anyone trying to make sense of that! One might well wonder how nature could be abstract as well as concrete. Lenin nowhere explained what he meant by this rather odd, nay, entirely puzzling, assertion. I will, however, try to make some sort of sense of it later on in this Essay.

(i) Most, if not all, 'abstractions' (or what they supposedly 'refer to' or 'reflect') pre-date human existence; but also that,

(ii) They require some mind or other to think them into existence, or, at least, 'represent' them to 'consciousness'.

Small wonder then that these 'abstractions' are the proud offspring of the hyper-ambitious thoughts and theories of the many Idealists and 'God'-botherers that the class war regurgitated and then dumped on humanity. What they are doing here in Lenin's thought is therefore something of a mystery. This is hardly the sort of metaphysical company for self-respecting materialists to keep. Unfortunately, sound advice like this has arrived on the scene far too late, for this is just the sort of intellectual company dialecticians have been frequenting for generations, as Lenin himself admitted:

"The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia." [Lenin (1947), pp.31-32. Bold emphases added.]

"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]

Nevertheless, using their 'natural' abstractive skills, intrepid abstractors are supposed to be able to do one or more of the following:

(A) Progressively ignore certain features, properties, or aspects of material objects, enabling them to form increasingly general ideas or concepts.

(B) Access 'abstract concepts' which (i) each abstracter (somehow?) already possesses, or which (ii) 'inheres' in every object of a given type. However, these mysterious 'objects'/'concepts' are only capable of being 'brought to the surface' if philosophical 'reason' is allowed free reign and given licence to speculate. And yet, by shear coincidence, these 'concepts' emerge in each mind only if exactly the same jargonised expressions (such as "Being", "Nothing", "Becoming", "Substance", "Determination", etc.) are pressed into action -- which terminology, by yet another almost miraculous coincidence, had already been dreamt up by previous generations of Philosophers, Idealists and Mystics. This might suggest to neutral observers that the intrepid abstractors mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph weren't in fact in possession of these notions before they had been talked into adopting them by a smooth-talking traditionalist.

Either way, abstract ideas appear to emerge in each individual head in miraculously the same way.

Nevertheless, whatever their provenance, these 'creatures of thought' may then be used to cast each material particular in an entirely new light.

(C) How could abstractions conjured into existence in this way be material (in any sense of that word) if adepts have to disregard (or rise above) all aspects of material reality in order to derive (or ascend to) some idea of them?

(D) How could abstractions even be materialist notions if only a select -- nay, exclusive -- class of human beings (of the 'right' sort) are capable of 'apprehending' them, or of enlisting the right a priori categories, concepts and laws to that end, which allegedly determine the nature of every material object in the entire universe, for all time? At the very least, this approach to knowledge would seem to imply that physical objects in are 'real' only because of the 'existence' of an Ideal world underpinning them, which 'world' is more 'real' than the material universe we see around us, and which 'world' is accessible to thought alone, as Plato maintained all along. As we will see, this would imply that the 'concrete' is only 'concrete' because of these 'abstractions'. In other words, only the abstract world is really real! Maybe that is what Lenin meant?

Hence, if, according to Lenin, materiality is bound up with "objective existence" outside the mind, and if it requires the exercise of specially-choreographed mental gymnastics to conjure abstractions into existence, how could a single one of them be material? More to the point: how could any of them be "objective" -- i.e., "mind independent" if they are all in fact "mind-dependent"?

Or, is this just another 'dialectical contradiction' we are supposed merely to "grasp", sweep under the non-dialectical carpet, and then continue on our merry way?

(2) The flip-side of the dialectical coin, "concrete particulars" (before and after they have been 'dialectically processed').

(4) The "dialectical relation" between the "abstract" and the "concrete", as well as that between "the knower" and "the known".

As far as (2) is concerned: if anything, 'concrete particulars' are even more difficult to comprehend. So, it is far from clear how this term helps in any way.

Consider a familiar enough example of one possible candidate: a cat. Is each of these furry mammals a concrete particular? DM-theorists would perhaps want to argue that a single cat isn't such until it has been comprehended against a background of all its interconnections, these being infinite in number. But, that would surely mean nothing could ever be viewed as a concrete particular, which in turn implies that nothing would be a concrete particular unless an Ideal Observer (or, Abstractor) viewed it against just such an infinite back-drop. This now suggests that concrete objects are only concrete in the Ideal limit. Here is Lenin again:

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world…. [I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…. [D]ialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]

If that is the case with respect to familiar feline occupants of the universe, it would seem that the more we know about them the more Ideal they should appear to be! Abstract cats; who would have thought?

That can't be right. And yet it looks like that is the clear implication of this rather odd approach to knowledge.

[There is more on this in Part Two, and in Essay Ten Part One, where we will see that this approach to knowledge soon collapses into overt scepticism, since the difference between a finite number of facts and an infinite number is itself infinite. Naturally, that implies humanity will always be infinitely ignorant about everything and anything!]

On the other hand, if this approach is correct, it looks like the class of concrete objects would: (i) Only ever have aspiring, but never successful, members, or it would (ii) Look increasingly ephemeral, resembling a metaphysical version of the Cheshire Cat -- the more we knew about this class, or this Cheshire Cat, the less substantial it would appear to be. [On that, see below.]

Furthermore, given this way of seeing things, no abstractor (novice or skilled adept alike) would ever have the remotest idea what could possibly count as the genuine article, since bona fide 'concrete particulars' will only emerge from this Ideal Dungeon at the end of an uncompletable, infinitary exercise in interconnection -- again just as Lenin argued.^2b

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004), pp.463-64.]

"Shachtman obviously does not take into account the distinction between the abstract and the concrete. Striving toward concreteness, our mind operates with abstractions. Even 'this,' 'given,' 'concrete' dog is an abstraction because it proceeds to change, for example, by dropping its tail the 'moment' we point a finger at it. Concreteness is a relative concept and not an absolute one: what is concrete in one case turns out to be abstract in another: that is, insufficiently defined for a given purpose. In order to obtain a concept 'concrete' enough for a given need it is necessary to correlate several abstractions into one -- just as in reproducing a segment of life upon the screen, which is a picture in movement, it is necessary to combine a number of still photographs.

"The concrete is a combination of abstractions -- not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon." [Trotsky (1971), p.147. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

However, if Lenin were correct, no 'concrete' dog could ever be said to walk, sit or stand in front of Trotsky until an infinite number of interconnections had been established between it and the rest of the universe. If so, the 'dog' to which Trotsky referred was always abstract. Indeed, given this approach, a fully accurate depiction of the very first 'concrete particular' in the whole of human history(!) will only ever leap from the Ideal page on 'Epistemological Judgement Day', so to speak -- at the 'end of time'! Because of this, it looks like no mortal being will ever be in a position to form a clear idea of a single 'concrete particular'. On that score, humanity is doomed never to know what the nature is of even one of these (now) obscure 'entities', these 'concrete particulars', these cats and dogs. Indeed, if Lenin is right, humanity will be infinitely ignorant of any and all of them, forever. Worse still, if we are infinitely ignorant of, say, cats and dogs, could we even say with confidence that they are in fact real cats and real dogs? And if they aren't, what the dickens are we supposed to be interconnecting here? What is there for an intrepid abstractor to work on if it isn't clear what we are supposed to begin with?

Unfortunately, this means that abstractions themselves are based on, or must be applied to, nothing at all if they are supposed to be grounded on these infinitely elusive 'concrete particulars'. Abstractions must, it seems, be applied, or constructed, in almost total ignorance, using ethereal bricks to build each ghostly building. If there are no really real concrete particulars, no real dogs and no real cats, how can a single abstraction be made of them? What exactly is being abstracted -- and of what is it being abstracted?

In that case, Lenin, Engels and Trotsky's enigmatic comments are no help at all. If we have no idea what abstractions and concrete particulars actually are, and no idea what they will ever be, then it is little use being told that "The concrete is a combination of abstractions," is it?

Indeed, Trotsky, for example, might just as well have said: "The schmoncrete is a combination of schmabstractions."

[Several objections to this unexpected turn of events have been neutralised here and here.]

To be sure, dialecticians will take exception to these controversial allegations and claim, perhaps because the above considerations ignore not only the dialectical interplay between the knower and the known, but also the link between the abstract and the concrete, and the link both have with practice. They also seem to confuse "subjective" with "objective" dialectics.

Naturally, this brings us back to items (1), (3) and (4), outlined earlier. However, further ruminations on the complex relation between these epistemological Siamese twins (i.e., the abstract and the concrete) will be left for later on in Essay -- as well as in Parts Two, Three and Six.

The question before us now is: Despite the inversion that Hegel's system is said to have undergone at the hands of dialecticians, does an acceptance of the existence of abstractions mean that DM is little more than Upside Down Idealism? Is there anything to support (or even refute) this contentious allegation?

As will soon become apparent, this infant suspicion will not only mature alarmingly, it will grow into full adulthood throughout the rest of this Essay, and this site.

[While the following section this Essay presents what might at first sight appear to be a series of unsupported assertions, allegations and inferences about the nature and provenance both of Traditional Thought and DM, they will all be fully substantiated as the rest of this Essay, and, indeed, this site, unfolds. It is also worth pointing out again that this main sub-section is a little repetitive, hence I am continually re-writing it in order to put that right. So, as noted in the Preface, the reader's indulgence is required here a little more than elsewhere.]

There is a clearly identifiable thread running through the entire history of Traditional Philosophy: the idea that substantive (i.e., non-trivial, metaphysical or necessary) truths about 'reality' can be derived from thought alone, or the meaning of a handful of specially-selected concepts, ideas or words -- indeed, as Marx himself suggested:

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

Naturally, few Traditional Theorists will be willing to admit that this is all they ever do (or all they have ever done) -- i.e., spin complex metaphysical tales solely from thought/language. Outside of the Rationalist Tradition, even fewer theorists would be willing to concede that in so doing they were in effect treating language as some sort of 'Secret Code', deeper knowledge of which allowed them to derive profound truths about fundamental features of 'Reality', valid for all of space and time -- or, indeed, sometimes reaching beyond even that, with theories about every possible world, and even of the 'mind' of the 'Deity' 'Himself', all from thought alone.

However, over the last two-and-a-half thousand years, and perhaps in order to disguise that fact, this approach to Super-Knowledge has motivated Traditional Philosophers into inventing various subterfuges, ruses and likely stories aimed at 'justifying' their semi-godlike ability to derive substantial truths about "Being" from a consideration of the supposed meaning of a few carefully chosen (and often artificially doctored) expressions.

[There is no suggestion, however, that every single one of them did this duplicitously.]

Among these are the following hardy perennials (several of the following overlap somewhat, which means that the material below will be a little more repetitive than much of the rest of this Essay):

The widely-held doctrine that the world was created by a 'Divine Being', 'Person', 'Mind', or by 'god'/'gods' 'justified' the further belief that reality has an underlying 'rational' structure, which was either a creation, a reflection or an "emanation" of one or more of those supernatural 'entities'. Classic examples of this metaphysical doctrine can be found in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm, Aquinas, Nicolas of Cusa, Descartes, Jakob Boehme, Leibniz, Kant -- and, of course, Hegel himself.

Umberto Eco points out the following (in relation to the 'western' Christian tradition):

"God spoke before all things, and said, 'Let there be light.' In this way, he created both heaven and earth; for with (sic) the utterance of the divine word, 'there was light'.... Thus Creation itself arose through an act of speech; it is only by giving things their names that he created them and gave them their ontological status....

"In Genesis..., the Lord speaks to man for the first time.... We are not told in what language God spoke to Adam. Tradition has pictured it as a sort of language of interior illumination, in which God...expresses himself....

"...Clearly we are here in the presence of a motif, common to other religions and mythologies -- that of the nomothete, the name-giver, the creator of language." [Eco (1997), pp.7-8. Bold emphasis added.]

Language was a vehicle for the "inner illumination" of the 'soul'; a hot-line to 'God'. Unsurprisingly, the theories concocted by countless generations of ruling-class hacks turned out to be those that, 'coincidentally', you understand, almost invariably rationalised or 'justified' the status quo, alongside obscene inequality and systematic oppression.

[On this, see Bono (1995). There is more on this in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

Dogma [1] above in turn implied that only those with the 'right' intellectual powers -- or, to be more honest, only those with the right social standing, adequate means, indulgent patrons, sufficient leisure time and a flair for inventing of jargon -- were capable of 'discovering' these 'Super-Truths'.

Fortunately enough for these 'intellectual hacks' their Super-Theories could be obtained by the sole exercise of the mind, as we saw Plato insist. Indeed, those capable of performing impressive verbal tricks found that they could unearth any number of 'Cosmic Verities', which will forever remain way beyond the comprehension of the great 'unwashed', by the simple expedient of unravelling the 'implications' of their own jargon. Often these verbal tricks were 'fortified' by the liberal use of stipulative and persuasive definitions.

So, in order to elaborate upon this impressive skill Traditional Thinkers invented increasingly arcane and baroque terminology, which, in the distant past, had been regarded as a gift of the 'gods' (as Umberto Eco noted), which might help explain its prolixity. 'Divinely-inspired' jargon 'naturally' gave spurious substance to the highly abstract prose these theorists continually cranked out, the allegedly superficial aspects of this material world having been peremptorily 'abstracted away', cast aside as inferior and beneath contempt by generations of boss-class Idealists and Mystics.

Clearly, there is no way that 'surgically-enhanced' jargon like this could have been the product collective labour and communal life (on that, see Essays Three Part Two, Nine Part One and Twelve Part One), nor could it have been grounded on the material world, or even have been the product of social practice. Hence, the 'verbal spaghetti' Traditional Theorists cooked up not only had a very limited sphere of influence -- stretching about as far as the ideas of other socially-isolated 'thinkers' playing the same game --, it was the sole patronage of a highly exclusive clientele. And deliberately so. Only a lexicon of 'sanctified' words with such an exclusive and elevated pedigree could possibly act as an intermediary between this self-selected group of 'superior' human beings and the 'Deity'. By such means these theorists were able to uncover with relative ease a series 'necessary truths' about "Essence", "Being", and, of course, the 'Rational Order of Reality'. It is no surprise therefore to see that this "ruling idea" idea still motivates much of 'popular science' and amateur metaphysics.

In this way, therefore, theories that explored the relationship between "Thought" and "Being" were merely an extension to Theology, as Marx himself noted:

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

"J. Dietzgen had not the slightest doubt that the 'scientific priestcraft' of idealist philosophy is simply the antechamber to open priestcraft. 'Scientific priestcraft,' he wrote, 'is seriously endeavouring to assist religious priestcraft' (op. cit., p.51). 'In particular, the sphere of epistemology, the misunderstanding of the human mind, is such a louse-hole'...in which both kinds of priests 'lay their eggs.' 'Graduated flunkeys,' who with their talk of 'ideal blessings' stultify the people by their tortuous...'idealism' (p.53) -- that is J. Dietzgen's opinion of the professors of philosophy. 'Just as the antipodes of the good God is the devil, so the professorial priest...has his opposite pole in the materialist.' The materialist theory of knowledge is 'a universal weapon against religious belief' (p.55), and not only against the 'notorious, formal and common religion of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled...idealists' (p.58).

"Dietzgen was ready to prefer 'religious honesty' to the 'half-heartedness' of freethinking professors (p.60), for 'there at least there is a system,' there we find integral people, people who do not separate theory from practice. For the Herr Professors 'philosophy is not a science, but a means of defence against Social-Democracy...' (p.107). 'All who call themselves philosophers, professors, and university lecturers are, despite their apparent freethinking, more or less immersed in superstition and mysticism...and in relation to Social-Democracy constitute a single...reactionary mass' (p.108). 'Now, in order to follow the true path, without being led astray by all the religious and philosophical gibberish..., it is necessary to study the falsest of all false paths..., philosophy' (p.103)." [Lenin (1972), pp.413-14. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Of course, it is arguable that Lenin was referring to the philosophers of his day, but, give or take a few qualifications, his comments apply equally well to the whole profession stretching (in the 'West') right back to the Ancient Greeks. Granted he would have seriously questioned that unqualified extrapolation of his words, but, Essay Twelve will show it is no less apt for all that (summary here). Just as it is no less pertinent when applied to DM itself.

Of course, the above is no mere supposition; the History of Philosophy fully supports such deflationary conclusions. [On that, see Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here, here, and here).]

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

Hence, no expensive equipment or convoluted experiments were required. In fact, no real engagement with the material world was necessary --, that is, over and above a comfortable armchair, some writing material and maybe a little too much wine. Wealth, patronage, more than your fair share of leisure-time, a lively imagination --, and, of course, a flare for inventing jargon -- are all that the aspiring Philosopher required.

This ancient and (originally) aristocratic approach to 'knowledge' has surfaced many times, in many different guises, in diverse Modes of Production that have come and gone since the Ancient World, both 'East' and 'West'. It is indeed the common thread that unites every shade of ruling-class thought, despite its re-packaging as and when the exigencies of the class war required.

Some may object that philosophical ideas can't have remained the same for thousands of years, across different Modes of Production. Surely, that idea itself runs counter to core ideas in HM? But, we don't argue the same for religious belief. Marx put no time stamp on the following, for example:

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." [Marx (1975c), p.244. Italic emphases in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]

The above remarks applied in Ancient Babylon and Egypt, just as they did in China and India, in Greece and Rome, in the Middle Ages, and they have done so right across the planet ever since. So, despite what some might conclude about the implications of HM, Marx certainly thought that certain "ruling ideas" and other thought-forms could survive such profound social transformations.

The same is the case with the core forms of thought found throughout Traditional Philosophy -- that there is an invisible, 'abstract' world, accessible to thought alone that is more real than the material world we see around us --, especially since, as we have already seen, Marx also believed that:

"[P]hilosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought...". [Marx (1975b), p.381.]

Some might argue that there have been (and still are) ancient, early modern and contemporary materialists, which fact alone undermines the above rather sweeping generalisations. However, those theorists are philosophical materialists, who also derived their ideas from thought alone, which situates them well inside the perimeter of the above generalisations. To be sure, there have been theorists who claimed to have based their ideas on scientific evidence, but their materialism has to be imposed on science, it doesn't follow from it.

Unfortunately, the theses that litter DM show similar signs of what can only be called linguistic megalomania: the belief that (i) A handful of words invented on this planet can unmask the deepest 'secrets' of 'Being' and (ii) The human brain lies at the very centre of the 'meaning universe' -- i.e., the belief that it follows somehow from the perennial desire to find meaning in a 'meaningless universe' that there must indeed be meaning 'out there', after all, and the thought of a few specialist theorists is capable of capturing and then revealing it to the rest of us. So, philosophers and amateur metaphysicians alike just have to think hard enough to access this 'Cosmic Motherlode' of meaning. Since human beings can access it, that puts us at the centre of the meaning universe; the entire shooting match was somehow intended for our benefit. The Earth might no longer be at the centre of the Universe, but our minds still are, according to this world-view. DM-theorists have clearly bought into since they have adopted the same approach to knowledge, outlined in (i) above.

Option (ii) often re-surfaces as a more secular version of Marx's famous words quoted six or seven paragraphs ago.

[On this topic, see Stove (1991), pp.83-177, which is, I think, one of the most coherent and powerful statements, and condemnations, of this world-view I have ever read. Having said that, I hesitate to reference Stove's work because of his objectionable, reactionary political opinions; I distance myself, therefore, from many of the remarks he expresses, especially those found on p.96. On that, see also here.]

The search for religious and philosophical consolation isn't, therefore, confined to the open and honest god-botherers among us.

In the 'West', since early Greek times, 'linguistic megalomania' of the sort just described has dominated the thought-processes of the elite, their hangers-on and their "prize-fighters" (as Marx termed these ideologues) -- manifesting itself in a series of interconnected philosophical theories that gave expression to the "ruling ideas" of each epoch:

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

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

Hence, this class, or their ideologues, rule as "thinkers", and they do so in "its whole range".

This 'philosophical personality disorder' is indeed part of a wider array of ruling-class, 'theoretical character traits' that have dominated all forms of what are regarded as 'acceptable' examples of philosophical thought ever since -- even by Marxists.

One of the most important implications of Traditional Thought was the idea that the Super-Truths invented by ruling-class hacks must of necessity apply to all of reality, for all of time. This doctrine has manifested itself in different forms of LIE, which include the even more ancient idea that reality is in effect merely 'condensed language', the result of the activities of the 'Word of God'.

Again, by sheer coincidence, the 'philosophical gems' mined as a result turned out to be those that 'justified' or rationalised the interests of the many and diverse ruling-classes humanity has had imposed on it.

Logic was viewed as the study of "the laws of thought", or "the science of thought/cognition" itself, which was in turn somehow capable of reflecting the 'essential nature of Being'. This time-honoured idea was augmented by the parallel belief that there were countless 'secrets' lying 'below the surface of appearances', which could be uncovered by an examination of the 'logical structure' of suitably 'doctored' sentences -- but only if they were buried beneath layers of unintelligible jargon, and packed with just enough speculative flights-of-fancy to distract and confuse the unwary. Or, these days, if they contained sufficient enough obscure terminology to impress Marxist 'intellectuals':

"Logic is the science of the thought process. Logicians investigate the activities of the though process which goes on in human heads and formulate laws , firms and interrelation of those mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.]

"Hegel insisted on a Logic which was not something separate from the reality which confronted man, a Logic which was identical with the richness and movement of all reality, a Logic which expressed the whole process of man's growing consciousness of reality, and not just a dry summary of formal principles of argument, reflecting only one brief phase in the definition of reality by thinking men." [Slaughter (1963), p.9.]

"Modern materialism is essentially dialectical.... What independently survives of all former philosophy is the science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics." [Engels (1976), p.31. Bold emphases added.]

"In every epoch, and therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields. Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an 'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels (1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

"Logic is the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge…. The laws of logic are the reflections of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.... [These] embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and developing nature." [Lenin (1961), p.182. Bold emphasis alone added..]

"Hegel himself viewed dialectics precisely as logic, as the science of the forms of human cognition.... What does logic express? The law of the external world or the law of consciousness? The question is posed dualistically [and] therefore not correctly [for] the laws of logic express the laws (rules, methods) of consciousness in its active relationship to the external world.... Thought operates by its own laws, which we can call the laws of logic...." [Trotsky (1986), pp.75, 87, 106. Trotsky is apparently referring to Hegel's Introduction to The Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999), pp.43-64. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]

So, not only were Logic and Epistemology regarded as two sides of the same bent coin, the idea prevailed that Logic was in fact a higher form of Psychology -- indeed, the study of the "laws of thought" -- a doctrine that only makes sense if 'reality' is indeed the product of 'Thought', which is why it was imagined that logic could reflect it.

And in reply to an individual who claimed he did indeed think in syllogisms, etc., I had this to say (slightly edited):

I didn't speculate whether or not there were maverick individuals on the planet who might at least claim they thought in syllogisms (a remarkably useless and inefficient way to think, anyway) or the calculi of Principia; however, I retain a healthy scepticism that you actually think using symbols like this: ~[(P → Q) v (P → R) ↔ (P → (Q v R))], or this ~[~(Ex)(Fx & ~Gx)↔(x)(Fx → Gx)], but I seriously doubt whether "people" do this, i.e., the majority of the population. And if they don't, then logic can't express 'laws of thought', otherwise we'd all be at it, and we'd have been doing it for thousands of years before Russell and/or Aristotle were thought of. [Ibid.]

[Where "P", "Q" and "R" are propositional variables, "F" and "G" are predicate letter variables, "(Ex)" is the existential quantifier (equivalent to "Some...", or "There exists..."), "~" is a negation operator (i.e., "It is not the case that..."), "v" is the disjunction sign (equivalent to the inclusive "or", i.e., "and/or"), "&" obviously stands for "and", "→" is the conditional sign (equivalent to "if...then"), and "↔" is the biconditional sign (equivalent to "if and only if" or its abbreviation, "iff").]

The theory that Logic mirrors the deep-structure of reality also motivated another widely held idea that it is some sort of Super-Code, a source of Super-Knowledge, which can be used to reveal the 'hidden secrets' of nature, way beyond the reach of the senses -- and even of the sciences proper. In one form or another, the vast majority of Traditional Thinkers accepted this dogma, for centuries viewing Logic as an expression of the Logos, or 'God's Mind Itself', and hence a reflection of the underlying 'Cosmic Order'.

As noted above, many still find it impossible to abandon the comforting idea that humanity sits at the very centre of the meaning universe, a special creation of a 'Super-Logician', a Super Mathematician^2c -- or, in its DM-form, as a special creation of the NON (with 'Being', 'Nothing' and 'Becoming' forming a sort of Logical Trinity in this Cosmic Drama) --, so that their thoughts were somehow possessed of Cosmic Significance. Few asked how it could be that human thought (on its own) might have such profound consequences, or how language might have such implications built into it, other than that it was 'the will of god'. Although that idea has largely disappeared from Philosophy, it has its left indelible mark behind. So, these days few even ask those questions let alone try to answer them.

Hence, even though science has rendered obsolete such ancient fancies, metaphysicians (and DM-fans, for whom DL actually runs the entire Universe) still imagine they can derive Super-Facts from words alone.

Again, as the late Umberto Eco noted (my words and paraphrase, not his!), Traditional Philosophers found such ideas especially appealing. For obvious reasons, this approach to Super-Knowledge invariably assumed linguistic form. Hence, if human beings are of special importance to 'Being'/'God', and if language originally constituted and now governs both nature and society, then language and thought must be interlinked with the fundamental nature of 'Being Itself'.

This view in turn 'legitimated' the authority of the State -- as a reflection of the Cosmic Order, as this commentator notes:

"Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Why? Heraclitus, like Parmenides, postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation on physics and metaphysics. The ideas that the universe is in constant change and that there is an underlying order or reason to this change -- the Logos -- form the essential foundation of the European world view. Every time you walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything you do in that class originates with Heraclitus's speculations on change and the Logos....

"In reading these passages, you should be able to piece together the central components of Heraclitus's thought. What, precisely, is the Logos? Can it be comprehended or defined by human beings? What does it mean to claim that the Logos consists of all the paired opposites in the universe? What is the nature of the Logos as the composite of all paired opposites? How does the Logos explain change? Finally, how would you compare Heraclitus's Logos to its later incarnations: in the Divided Line in Plato, in foundational and early Christianity? How would you relate Heraclitus's cryptic statements to those of Lao Tzu?" [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

[Of course, the short answer to the above questions is: The ideas of the ruling-class are always the ruling ideas! The long answer is little different.]

The specially-concocted jargon mentioned above had to fulfil another pre-condition: it must be capable of connecting 'finite minds' to the 'Ultimate Ground Of Meaning' (which is the principle aim of all mystical thought, a dogma that resurfaced as the "Subject/Object" problematic of German Idealism and later still as a central concern of 'Materialist Dialectics' -- on that, see below). As a result, a seemingly endless series of 'truths' could now 'legitimately' flow from the meaning of a handful of words. For each theorist, Super-Knowledge accessed in the comfort of their heads.

Traditional Philosophers were only too eager to latch onto the belief that human thoughts were universally significant -- i.e., that what went on in certain heads was the best, if not the only guide to 'Absolute Truth' --, and which also supplied a key to solving the very 'problems' they themselves had concocted. Keith Thomas notes a similar tactic adopted by 16^th century magicians:

"It would be tempting to explain the long survival of magical practices by pointing out that they helped provide many professional wizards with a respectable livelihood. The example of the legal profession is a reminder that it is always possible for a substantial social group to support itself by proffering solutions to problems which they themselves have helped to manufacture. The cunning men and wise women had an undoubted interest in upholding the prestige of magical diagnosis and may by their mere existence have helped to prolong a mode of thinking which was already obsolescent." [Thomas (1972), p.295.]

The bottom line was that they alone -- Traditional Theorists -- had access to the 'hidden knowledge' superhighway, a back-channel that penetrated right into the heart of 'Being', which 'enabled' them to derive necessary truths from jargon they themselves had invented for that specific purpose. This 'allowed them to generate philosophical theories that couldn't fail to be true, which, for that reason needed no evidence in support. Acting as judge and jury in their own case, these 'thinkers' declared these Super-Verities "self-evident", arguing that only "crude materialists" would think to challenge such a 'self-confirming' and self-serving approach to 'knowledge'. In which case, the history of Traditional Thought has amounted to little more than collective indulgence in protracted self-deception.

Unfortunately however, this 'highway to Super-Knowledge' was based on what was in effect a contingent feature of a minor aspect of the grammar of one particular language-group -- the Indo-European family --, in which most of these fairy-tales have been, and still are being, spun.

In Ancient Greece, "subjects" and "predicates" suddenly became cosmically significant.^2d Unfortunately, the "abstraction" of a strictly limited set of these predicate expressions -- which are supposed to express generality -- only succeeded in turning them into singular terms incapable of expressing anything, let alone generality. As this Essay unfolds we will discover that linguistic magic like this re-configured these general terms as the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. The intractable problems these moves then created were compounded by the bizarre Hegelian-, and later DM-idea that it was possible for an individual to be identical with a 'U niversal'!

But, whatever their origin or provenance happened to be, these abstract, Ideal Forms (or what they allegedly 'reflected') were supposedly more real than objects and processes in the natural and social world around us. In fact, this meant the material universe was somehow 'unreal', 'inferior', 'ephemeral', a 'mere appearance'. Those invisible, underlying 'essences' (just like the 'gods' of old) were the only really real world.

Access to nature's secret names (all those 'abstractions') 'allowed' Traditional Theorists to forge a mystical, intellectual link between their thought and the underlying, non-material 'essences' that governed all of reality, 'behind the scenes' as it were. Indeed, it was a near-universal belief that this 'secret knowledge' would help those 'in the know' gain a special sort of control over nature itself (which, of course, is one of the core principles of ancient, medieval and contemporary forms of magic and alchemy). Far more importantly, 'secret knowledge' like this helped 'rationalise' state power and hence the status quo. For if the status and power of the elite were guaranteed by -- indeed, were a reflection of -- The Cosmic Order, class division and oppression could be 'justified' as an irrevocable feature of 'Being'. Or, at least as far as Hegel was concerned, an integral component in the development of 'Being'.

In that case, theorists skilled in the art of 'jargon-juggling' and 'word magic' could accrue to themselves no little prestige -- if not power -- as skilled 'legitimators' of the ruling elite.

A metaphysical Rumplestiltskin now walked the earth, and was well paid for its services. If reality had an a priori structure, which the State also mirrored, then Philosophy and ruling-class legitimacy could be, and were, intimately inter-linked.

If religious affectation is the opiate of the oppressed, rationalising suffering in its wake, then deep-seated motivating forces behind the need to concoct metaphysical abstractions underpinned these analogous opiates of the oppressor -- 'justifying' and rationalising the power and wealth of the very class that helped create the need for such opiates in the first place.

[Concerning the consolation that Traditional Thought provides those held in its thrall, see, for example, Stove (1991), pp.83-177. A classic in this genre is perhaps Boethius's, Consolations of Philosophy, accessible here.]

As will be demonstrated in this Essay, and throughout the rest of this site (especially here), the aprioristic tradition in 'Western' Philosophy seduced Marxist dialecticians into thinking they had successfully flipped Hegelian Idealism through 180º, so that it was now the "right way up" -- allegedly transforming it into its materialist alter ego: 'Materialist Dialectics'.

A change of name, perhaps; but a ruse by any other name is still a ruse.

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

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

"Lying beyond experience", of course, implies philosophical knowledge is superior to anything science has to offer.

However, as we will see, the actual origin of these 'Cosmic Verities' was rather more mundane: 'philosophical reasoning' turns out to be little more than the creative and idiosyncratic use of a limited range of words, specially-concocted as the need arose.

Naturally, this means that Superscientific Knowledge like this can only be 'confirmed' by an appeal to Super-Evidence -- obtained, of course, Super-Naturally (i.e., not from nature) -- either by means of a series of 'thought experiments', or from yet more creative word-juggling. Unsurprisingly, as noted above, the Super-Theories that Traditional Philosophers invented also lay way beyond any possibility of empirical verification or falsification.^3a

Perversely, this is still regarded by many as one of Philosophy's greatest strengths -- as these two authors pointed out:

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

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

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

Indeed, anyone who questioned the validity of this dogmatic approach to 'ultimate truth' should rightly be classified as a "philistine", a "crude" materialist -- even an "empiricist", a "positivist" --, or they are simply dismissed out-of-hand, their ideas unworthy of comment in polite company. This is, of course, just one of the reasons why the ideas of the ruling-class always rule. Anyone who challenged such core beliefs was vilified for even so much as thinking to question this 'royal road' to 'knowledge'. Indeed, even today, anyone who questions the provenance of these Semi-Divine Verities is in danger of putting themselves beyond the pale of 'acceptable' thought. Philosophy -- genuine Philosophy -- must be prolix, baroque and, wherever possible, incomprehensible. This is one ruling-idea that still rules, and proudly so --, especially if you are a French 'Philosopher', your name is Bhaskar or Zizek.

The downside, of course, is that if, for any reason, the unique role that Philosophers have arrogated to themselves can be shown to be a complete fraud --, that is, if it can be shown that the complex, Byzantine structures Philosophers have constructed over the centuries are really "houses of cards" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) -- then the whole enterprise would cease to have a point. With no reason for its existence, Philosophy would become little more than the production of a steady stream of tortured prose, its works fit only for gathering dust in the basement stack of the local library --, or, perhaps better still, fit only for providing fuel for several large bonfires, as Hume wickedly suggested:

"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." [Quoted from here. Italic emphases in the original.]

[Some have complained that book burning is something only fascists do; I am not serious in suggesting this. The aforementioned books are fit for burning not that they should be! They should be confined to the basement stack of a library, as indicated above.]

However, few practitioners of this bogus art can afford to contemplate such an unappealing fate -- especially those whose livelihood depends on it. Closer to home, and for different reasons, the above indictment includes those Dialectical Marxists (i.e., all of them) who still refuse to see any link between the superstitious belief that there is a "rational" order to reality and the centuries-old endeavour to 'legitimate' and rationalise ruling-class power.

[As we will see in Essay Nine Parts One and Two, the above connection was patently obvious in the shape of the state ideology adopted by the ruling-classes of the 'really existing socialist' states in E Europe, the former Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and elsewhere. The "ruling ideas" promoted by that elite were plain for all to see.]

Hence, it has always been assumed that Philosophy must have a role to play in the pursuit of knowledge, even if only to provide employment for those caught up in the production of jargon-filled books and articles -- the intellectual equivalent of digging holes just to fill them in.

If the question is now put: "Why should there be a rational order to reality?", there seem to be only three possible answers: to (i) impress the superstitious, motivating, 'encouraging' and enforcing deference and subservience; (ii) legitimate the status quo; and (iii) provide a select few with good reason to continue their search for 'Superscientific Knowledge', thereby ingratiating themselves on those who hold the purse strings,

"There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market-place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies....

"The idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds. They are either names of things which do not exist (for as there are things left unnamed through lack of observation, so likewise are there names which result from fantastic suppositions and to which nothing in reality corresponds), or they are names of things which exist, but yet confused and ill-defined, and hastily and irregularly derived from realities. Of the former kind are Fortune, the Prime Mover, Planetary Orbits, Element of Fire, and like fictions which owe their origin to false and idle theories. And this class of idols is more easily expelled, because to get rid of them it is only necessary that all theories should be steadily rejected and dismissed as obsolete." [Novum Organum, quoted from here.]

Except, of course, these philosophical gems weren't invented by the "vulgar", as Bacon would have it, but by elite thinkers; the "market-place" in this case would be academia.

However, these days, if you are a DM-theorist, you just don't raise such awkward questions. You don't even allow yourself to think them.

For if you do, someone might call you a philosophical radical, and then confuse you with someone who isn't content merely to re-package in dialectical form yet another lorry load of ruling-class gobbledygook.^3b

If thought and language are intimately linked, and if ruling-class ideology dominates and shapes the former, it would seem reasonable to conclude that alienated boss-class thought would be connected somehow with the systematic and ideologically-motivated distortion of language. This is indeed the view that Marx held:

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

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

And, as Marx pointed out, distortion and alienation like this doesn't grow or develop in a social and political vacuum.

Ordinary language is a social product devised over countless centuries by those who interface daily with the material world and one another, mediated by cooperative labour; because of its 'lowly' origin, it has had to endure repeated, politically-motivated attempts at distortion, denigration and vilification. For present purposes, however, the most significant of these arose out of, and because of, the nature and origin of class society.

[The details behind the transformation of ordinary discourse (at the hands of Traditional Philosophers) into what effectively became little more than a Secret Code will be fully explored in Essays Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen (summaries here, here, and here).]

However, the point worth emphasising here is that what had originally been the product of the social relation between human beings (i.e., ordinary language) was fetishised and transformed into what were taken to be the real relations between things, or even those things themselves. In this way, discourse was endowed with 'magical' power; those in the grip of this form of linguistic megalomania (outlined in earlier sections) were by these means given a licence to speculate in 'ivory towers', free from the constraints that social life imposes on us all. [Language "went on holiday", to paraphrase Wittgenstein.]

If, according to Traditional Philosophers, the "essential" nature of 'reality' is inaccessible to experience, then they had to appeal to the "light of reason", "intuition", "transcendental arguments", "thought experiments", and, of course, a surfeit of tailor-made jargon, in order to reveal its "secrets". Fetishised in this way, language itself became a surrogate for 'objective reality' -- or, to be more honest, language was confused with 'reality' as talk about talk was systematically conflated with talk about 'things'. Language was thus transformed into an abstract, magical code; linguistic categories (i.e., all those 'abstractions') were back-projected onto the world, implying that 'reality' was now in fact a reflection of discourse rather than the other way round. Traditional Philosophy thus became the well-spring of LIE, a doctrine predicated on the idea that if language somehow contains profound truths concerning 'ultimate reality', nature must be fundamentally linguistic, constituted by the word of some 'god' or other.

[These ideas will be further developed in Part Two, but more extensively in Essay Twelve.]

The above is but a brief sketch of the nature and provenance of the most abstract forms of ruling-class ideology -- thought-forms that can be seen to a greater or lesser extent in all forms of Traditional Philosophy, 'East' and 'West'. These "ruling ideas" rule largely because they not only serve the interests of each ruling elite, they also picture the world as that class has always wanted everyone else to see it. For them, a hidden world underlying appearances, governed solely by 'rational principles', constitutes 'ultimate reality'. If the state 'reflects' this hidden world, or gains its 'legitimacy' from that source, and if the latter is in turn the creation of some 'god', then the rule of the elite will have been 'legitimated' at the highest level. Their dominion, their hegemony, is, after all, just one aspect of the 'rational order of reality', as they saw things -- indeed, as the Apostle Paul himself put it:

"Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority opposes whatever God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgement upon themselves." [Romans, 13:1-2. Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

The rise and fall of different Modes of Production has had no fundamental effect on these ruling forms-of-thought. For well over two thousand years this over-arching ideology was based on dogmatically imposed concepts and categories, which were themselves built upon abstract and increasingly baroque foundations, all of which amounted to little more than a series of linguistic tricks and dodges, the results then peremptorily imposed on reality. In fact, there was no need to impose them overtly on reality; as we will see, they constituted reality. So, instead of their ideas reflecting the world, the world reflected their ideas. Traditional Theorists dictated to reality what it must be like and what it must contain.

Despite the many changes in content these strands of ruling-class ideology has undergone as the various forms of ruling-class power rose and fell, its form has remained remarkably constant throughout. [Any who think this violates certain principles enshrined in HM should read this and then perhaps think again.]

Indeed, it will take an overthrow of ruling-class hegemony and the elimination of class rule before humanity will finally rid itself of this alien-class thought-form.

Unfortunately, the traditional approach to knowledge has found its most fervent supporters and stoutest defenders among those who should know better: Dialectical Marxists. [An example of this supine approach can be found here (unfortunately, this link is now dead!); others can be accessed here and here.]

Indeed, as we saw in Essay Two, dialecticians are only too happy to concoct a priori theories of their own, imposing them on nature just like born-again traditionalists.

Because of that, ruling-class ideas have extended their "rule", and have now come to dominate Dialectical Marxism in its entirety.

Of course, allegations like these require far more support than the flowery rhetoric rehearsed above or they would be worth considerably less than the computer screen on which you, dear reader, now view them. Fortunately, the Essays posted at this site more than take up the slack.

Be this as it may, we first of all need to: (a) Highlight what is perhaps the original and now major source of the abstract ideas found in Traditional Thought and DM, (b) Reveal exactly what motivated their invention, and (c) Expose the disastrous effect this has had on Dialectical Marxism.

"[D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract'…." [Lenin (1921), p.93.]

"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely. From living perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality." [Lenin (1961), p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]

At first sight, these passages don't appear to be consistent. In the first of them Lenin tells his readers that "all truth is concrete, never abstract"; in the second and third he argues that humanity approaches truth via increasing abstraction, and that "all scientific...abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely."

Admittedly, in the second pair of passages Lenin referred to "practice" as a key component in the "cognition of objective reality", but that doesn't explain how "all scientific…abstractions" could possibly "reflect nature more…, truly", when "truth is always concrete, never abstract" (emphases added). How can practice reconcile or harmonise a "never" with an "always"? How could an abstraction like "All truth is concrete, never abstract" (emphasis added, again) itself be true?

Of course, the epistemological theory under-pinning Lenin's thought is a little more sophisticated than these initial 'inconsistencies' might otherwise intimate. This suggests that the resolution of this 'difficulty' might require greater clarity concerning the meaning of words like "abstract” and "concrete" -- particularly as they are used by dialecticians --, at the very least. Indeed, it would be unfair to attribute to Lenin a fully-developed theory here since the above comments appeared in notebooks.

There appear to be at least two different senses of the terms "abstract" and "concrete" at work in DM.⁴

This understanding of "abstract" is somewhat analogous to the traditional, Rationalist use of the phrase "abstract universal" (more on that presently) -- but, with several major differences.⁵ Even so, in DM circles this term is clearly linked to the apprehension (by 'Reason' perhaps?) of general concepts that give expression to, or which capture and "reflect" common elements connecting, underlying, or instantiated by concrete individuals, bodies or processes. But, these general concepts aren't accidentally or 'externally'-connected with these concrete particulars. That is, there is held to be some sort of logical or 'internal' connection linking individuals with the 'concept' they supposedly instantiate, or, even the connections they enjoy with one another. [On this, and the material posted under next three sub-headings, see also Appendix B.]

This use of "abstract" emphasises the "one-sided" and "simple" nature of abstractions, how they are "removed from reality", "cut off", "separated or divorced from their interconnections", "unchanging", etc. In this case perhaps, a subtractive process (involving the mental disregard (abstraction) of particular features of each item given in experience), or maybe even a separating exercise (carried out 'in the mind') also seems to underlie the creation of abstract (general) concepts for some DM-theorists, given this understanding of the term.

This sense of "concrete" is clearly linked with AB₁ above and appears to involve objects and processes in their individuality (that is, they are viewed as individuals of a certain type), often as they are given in experience, depending on which part of the 'dialectical process of cognition' they make an appearance.

Again, this contrasts with its twin, AB₂, and emphasises the interconnectedness of objects and processes in reality (reflected in our theories about them -- these two are often run-together in DM-circle, as we will see) --, their all-round relationship with, and development alongside, other objects and processes, as opposed to their separation in non-, or pre-, dialectical, 'commonsense', 'metaphysical', or 'formal' thought.⁶

In the first of the two passages quoted above, Lenin seems to be using "abstract" in sense AB₂, but in sense AB₁ in the second. This means he must be using "concrete" in sense CON₂ in the first. These distinctions might help resolve the apparent inconsistency noted above. Anyway, a clearer picture of these terms as they appear in DM will, hopefully, emerge as this Essay proceeds.

"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Lenin (1961) p.208. Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

In this passage, Lenin appears to be using both of these terms in three of the four (or possibly even all four) ways at once.

"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science 'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the 'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998), p.131. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

[One might well wonder how it is possible to distinguish "abstractions" from "facts" if we are also told "facts" are "abstractions", let alone how a "mental generalisation" can help distinguish "actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions".]

At the beginning of this passage, Rees appears to be using "abstract" in sense AB₁, while in the second half he seems to be employing it in sense AB₂. In addition, even though he says that "facts" are "abstraction", it looks like he is using "fact" in sense CON₂ -- when, for example, he claims that that facts help us discriminate among our beliefs. They could hardly do that if they were disconnected from other facts.

But, who can say? None of these ideas have been worked out with satisfactory clarity, detail or consistency by DM-theorists, as the first two Parts of Essay Three will show.

[The above passage from Rees (1998) will be analysed in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is unpublished).]

Nevertheless, the loose and ill-defined way these terms are employed in DM-circles mirrors Hegel's own obscure and inconsistent use.⁷

For example, if abstractions are divorced from reality, cut-off and separated from other things, how might they be employed to interconnect concrete objects and processes in nature, as Lenin argued? And, if "concrete" objects and processes are interconnected with everything, what makes them anything in particular? What individuates, say, a photon? If all photons are identical (and on some accounts, they are unchanging, too), and interconnected (in the abstract?), then what right have we to label them individuals or even particulars?⁸ Depicted this way, photons (but not just photons) look pretty abstract. Moreover, they appear to refute Engels's, Trotsky's and Hegel's a priori caveats about identity, as well as their ideas about change -- if, that is, each photons is on an individual basis deemed "concrete".

Moreover, according to Lenin, objects and processes only become "concrete" when they are interconnected with everything else in existence (and then perhaps even beyond):

"The gist of his theoretical mistake in this case is substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of politics and economics (which we find in Marxism). His theoretical attitude is: 'on the one hand, and on the other', 'the one and the other'. That is eclecticism. Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development but not a patchwork of bits and pieces. I have shown this to be so on the example of politics and economics....

"A tumbler is assuredly both a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel. But there are more than these two properties, qualities or facets to it; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world.... Formal logic, which is as far as schools go (and should go, with suitable abridgements for the lower forms), deals with formal definitions, draws on what is most common, or glaring, and stops there. When two or more different definitions are taken and combined at random (a glass cylinder and a drinking vessel), the result is an eclectic definition which is indicative of different facets of the object, and nothing more.

"Dialectical logic demands that we should go further. Firstly, if we are to have a true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly, dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel...." [Lenin (1921), pp.90-93. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with conventions adopted at this site. Some paragraphs merged.]

However, if supposedly 'concrete' objects and processes are to count as "objective", or even concrete, they must already be interconnected in reality before any sentient being even attempted to so relate them. Or are we to suppose that the status of each 'concrete' object has to wait on some human being to designate them such before they are actually concrete? Does this mean that the Sun, for example, wasn't 'concrete' until a human being capable of cognising it in a dialectical sort of way decided it was 'concrete'? Perhaps there are 'subjective concrete object and processes' just as there are 'objective concrete objects and processes'? If so, one might well wonder what work the word "concrete" is actually doing. More to the point, what is there in reality that could possibly do all this relating and interconnecting, especially before sentient life evolved?^8a

Are there non-physical links of the same kind between objects that somehow unerringly manage to locate, interconnect, and then collect together every single member of a given group, category, set, or class in the entire universe, like some sort of super-efficient bloodhound? A sort of universal 'metaphysical net' that never misses, skips or omits a single one? And when an object of one category changes into another, are the inter-galactic links which that object enjoys with other objects of that kind that are altered, or maybe severed, perhaps instantaneously, which allow it to be inter-linked with all the other objects of the new kind it has now developed into, everywhere across the universe, instantaneously, too? Or, is there some sort of delay as nature 'tries to catch up'?

If none of these is the case, then by what right have we to classify such objects and processes as 'concrete' if there is no 'objective' matters-of-fact here that collect them into the correct group, category or class, in the first place? If they objectively belong to such groups, categories or classes, they must have done so before a single human being thought about them -- as indeed, Lenin opined:

So, the question returns: Exactly what was it that collected such objects and processes in the right sortal classes or groups before we evolved? No good looking to DM-fans for an answer; they haven't even asked that question, nor anything even remotely like it!

[I return to this topic in Part Two. I deal with Lenin's comments about Alizarin dye in Essay Thirteen Part One. Independently of that, although Lenin argues that the existence of this dye is "objective" he nowhere asks the above questions about it -- or even, given his own strictures, how can this dye be deemed "objective" before all its interconnections with the rest of the universe had been established? His faithful echoes also fail to consider such annoying 'pedantries', too.]

Of course, human beings might not at present know what all these interconnections are, or even be aware of most of them; but, as we have just seen, according to Lenin humanity will never know what they are. In that case, it seems that the objects they inter-link will never become either concrete or objective for us. If that is so, how can anyone conclude anything about a single one of them in the here-and-now? Whatever is said about these alleged interconnections -- as well as these supposed 'concrete' particulars -- will be infinitely far from the truth and must therefore stand almost zero probability of being correct.^8b

It could be objected that these complaints are, at best, academic, at worst, thoroughly misguided. The four senses of "abstract" and "concrete" outlined above (if there are indeed four) shouldn't be thought of as separate or distinct, as seems to be the assumption motivating this Essay. They must be understood "dialectically".

But, as with other key DM-concepts, it is difficult to make sense of what its theorists could possibly be saying here (that is, should they offer the above reply), nor is it easy to form a clear idea of what they might conceivably mean when they use words like "concrete", "abstract" and "dialectical". This isn't to suggest that DM-theorists have put little effort into writing about these terms -- far from it --, but much of what has been published by them on this issue is about as clear as the Athanasian Creed.⁹ Hence, the employment here of yet another example of quasi-Hegelian jargon (i.e., "dialectical") in no way helps. Indeed, the way it is used by DM-supporters more than suggests this word works like a magic wand; wave it about enough times and any old ideas, no matter how unclear or confused they might happen to be, can be miraculously transformed into ideas blessed with crystal clarity.

[I have quoted numerous DM-theorists heroically trying to explain their ideas on this subject in Appendix B, as well as here and here, and in Part Two (here and here).]

Anyway, one thing seems reasonably plain: the generalisations dialecticians advance (in connection with the use of these terms) aren't based on any sort of evidence. After all, to what might a single DM-fan point or appeal? Hence, what is there here for a consistent materialist to agree with? To be sure, for an Idealist, like Hegel, all this makes some sort of crazy sense, but how might we make any sort of physical sense of it?

Since these notions (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") can't be read from nature (although Hegelians and some DM-theorists might claim otherwise), the only conclusion is that they must have been foisted on it. In fact, not only were these two categories invented by non-Marxists -- and non-working class theorists, at that -- but dialecticians have been only too eager to appropriate them, selectively imposing them on reality in like manner.

[It is clearly impossible to derive either of these two notions from nature, or from any amount of evidence -- as will be argued in Part Two of this Essay (link above).]

Of course, dialecticians notionally follow Hegel, here -- but they then proceed to ignore the material flip that they say they have performed on his system (in order to put it back on its feet, or the "right way up"). This can be seen by the way that they not only view abstractions in the same rationalist light as Hegel, they employ many of the same 'arguments' he and other Idealists use.

Or to be a little more honest, they have uncritically swallowed Hegel's sub-Aristotelian logical blunders.

In the past, and even before the evidence that we now possess even existed, Traditional Philosophers made a conscious decision to invent and then use abstract concepts in order to force 'knowledge' in certain favoured directions.^9a We now know who made those choices, and they manifestly weren't individuals known for their lack of support for ruling-class priorities; indeed, they were made by Idealists, ideologues, theologians and Hermetic Mystics.

Here, for example, is Hegel (a 'theorist' not known for his socialist sympathies):

"To say 'This rose is red' involves (in virtue of the copula 'is') the coincidence of subject and predicate. The rose however is a concrete thing, and so is not red only: it has also an odour, a specific form, and many other features not implied in the predicate red. The predicate on its part is an abstract universal, and does not apply to the rose alone. There are other flowers and other objects which are red too. The subject and predicate in the immediate judgment touch, as it were, only in a single point, but do not cover each other.... In pronouncing an action to be good, we frame a notional judgment. Here, as we at once perceive, there is a closer and a more intimate relation than in the immediate judgment. The predicate in the latter is some abstract quality which may or may not be applied to the subject. In the judgment of the notion the predicate is, as it were, the soul of the subject, by which the subject, as the body of this soul, is characterised through and through." [Hegel (1975), p.237, §172. Bold emphases added.]

Naturally, this only serves to underline the claim made above (and in Essay Two) that subsequent dialecticians haven't broken with this conservative philosophical tradition. In fact, they have been only too happy to appropriate, defend and disseminate this dogmatic approach to knowledge, as well as trumpet its ruling-class origin. Here is Lenin doing just that:

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

Worse still, both of these terms (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") appear to be abstract themselves. Neither would pass, for example, TAR's 'gastronomic test': "no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard" either of these 'concepts'. [Rees (1998), p.131.] To be sure, when vocalised or committed to paper these two words are material objects in their own right, but that fact alone can't ground 'the content' of either of them in the material world, nor can it legitimate their use. If it could, we should all have to start believing in "God" just as soon as that word had been spoken aloud or written down somewhere.

Far worse than that: according to Lenin it now seems that no one could even "eat (etc.)" a single concrete object:

"But there are more than these two properties and qualities or facets to [any material object]; there are an infinite number of them, an infinite number of 'mediacies' and inter-relationships with the rest of the world…. [I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely…. [D]ialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development, in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection with the surrounding world." [Lenin (1921), pp.92-93. Italic emphases in the original; paragraphs merged.]

If not even an everyday tumbler is concrete unless it has been set against, and then interlinked with, an "infinite number of mediacies", who is there alive that could swear truthfully that a tumbler is in fact concrete? Assuming these connections are "infinite", then no matter how many interconnections we set up for it, there will always be an infinite number still left to connect, leaving any judgement we make about it stranded infinitely far from the truth with an infinitely high probability of being false.

[The response that only 'relevant' connections should be considered in this regard has been batted out of the park in Essay Ten Part One, here.]

Clearly, whatever applies to tumblers applies equally well to things we think we can eat; perhaps they aren't concrete, either? In that case, TAR's 'gastronomic, touchy-feely test' fails to pick out even concrete objects! If so, how it can be used to test whether something is 'abstract' or 'concrete', or distinguish the one from the other, is far from clear, to say the least.

Of course, it could be argued that whether we know it or not, concrete objects are still concrete for all that. But are they? Who says? And where is the infinite body of knowledge which would be needed to substantiate a 'cosmically' bold (abstract) claim such as that? Moreover, if Lenin is right that "all truth is concrete, never abstract", then the abstract claim that "whether we know it or not, concrete objects are still concrete" can't itself be true.

For example: Is, say, the apple you might pluck from a tree or buy in a shop now actually interconnected with everything in reality? Lest an impatient dialectician is tempted to snap back a hasty "Yes, of course it is!" in response to such an impertinent question, it is worth pointing out that that fact (if it is one) could never itself be confirmed, but must either be imposed on the said apple or accepted as an article of faith. In that case, whatever it is that dialecticians now claim they know about allegedly concrete objects (like that apple) must, it seems, be foisted on them, too, since no one at present would or could ever be justified in calling anything "concrete" unless they had pointed to the infinite number of "mediacies" Lenin insisted were required to that end, or had actually gathered that amount of evidence in support of such a hyper-bold contention:

Again, if Lenin were right that "all truth is concrete, never abstract", then the abstract claim that the aforementioned apple is "actually interconnected with everything in reality" can't itself be true -- whenever it is asserted this side of the completion of the above infinitary task.

[This topic is discussed in greater detail in Essays Two, Ten Part One, Eleven Parts One and Two, and Thirteen Part One.]

As has already been pointed out, both of these words (i.e., "abstract" and "concrete") are time-honoured, philosophical terms-of-art, invented by thinkers intent on 'justifying' and rationalising the status quo, or the world-view upon which their patrons' hegemony was predicated. However, it is plain that even though these two words have since become highly clichéd by their over-use, DM-theorists uncritically appropriated them simply because they found them in Hegel's work (or the work of some other Traditional Theorist), and, apparently, for no other reason. In like manner, Hegel employed them simply because of their status as entries in the Idealist Philosophers' Phrase Book.

Even worse still, and as far as can be ascertained, no attempt has ever been made by DM-theorists to show precisely how a single abstract 'concept' can be derived from, or even be seen in, concrete particulars -- or from anywhere else, for that matter -- other than, of course, by importing that idea from Hegel and Traditional Thought. Nor is this surprising; no one has been able to demonstrate how this miraculous trick is humanly possible. To be sure, theorists have dreamt-up countless abstract terms over the centuries, and muttered various incantations over them as they were recruited into Traditional Philosophical discourse, but materialists should be no more impressed with verbal gymnastics like this than they are with those that supposedly support belief in God.

[This topic will be discussed in more detail in Part Two of this Essay, where it will be shown that the above controversial claims aren't just empty rhetoric.]

And yet, for all that, it is possible to show that these mythical beasts of lore, these 'abstractions', actually emerged out of rather more mundane, historically-specific, social and political causes, not the result of an 'inner, mental process of abstraction' --, causes that were in fact motivated by the ideological priorities of our ancient class enemies.¹⁰

Anyway, and despite this, what we actually find in DM-circles in place of evidence and supporting argument are vague attempts at justification; these wafer thin DM-rationalisations will be examined extensively in what follows, and in subsequent Essays.

This means that the entire edifice of DM-epistemology has been built on alarmingly insubstantial foundations -- in fact, as we are about to find out, these 'foundations' are all sand and no concrete.¹¹

In the previous section, it was alleged that the origin and provenance of 'abstract concepts' renders them more than highly suspect. This sub-section and the rest of this Essay will examine those seemingly rash allegations a little more closely.

Consider once again Lenin's attempt to specify what our knowledge of a particular object consists in:

"[I]f we are to have true knowledge of an object we must look at and examine all its facets, its connections and 'mediacies'. That is something we cannot ever hope to achieve completely, but the rule of comprehensiveness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity…." [Lenin (1921), p.93.]

Hence, according to Lenin, a fuller and more complete understanding of any particular must involve a consideration of its wider, perhaps law-governed connections with other particulars, other processes. Unfortunately, this is a strategy we will soon find there is good reason to question.

The first serious problem this passage faces is that these ever-widening 'law-governed' connections must themselves involve the use of general terms (or "abstractions" -- in sense AB₁) right from the start. In that case, it seems that the dialectical process of cognition can't even begin.

It could be replied that the above objection is spurious, since, according to TAR knowledge actually starts with:

"…an abstraction from the inessential and accidental features of reality to grasp more clearly its key features…. Constant empirical work is therefore essential to renew both the concrete analyses and the dialectical concepts that are generalized from these analyses." [Rees (1998), p.110.]

This suggests that law-governed generalisations are themselves integral to dialectics. That is because human knowledge has:

"[Brought] to it a framework composed of our past experiences; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience…. Concepts and theories are necessary to interpret the world." [Ibid., p.63.]

As dialecticians themselves tend to argue: a reference to (and use of) general terms ('concepts'?) in the pursuit of knowledge is also required since neither science nor dialectics can rely solely on "surface appearances" or "immediate experience". The idea seems to be that while the latter might relate to, or temporarily shape, our initial view of things, philosophical and scientific knowledge both seek to locate and integrate nature's underlying law-governed "essences" by the use of further and more refined abstractions (or generalisations), subsequently tested in practice.

"[S]cience would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956.]

"It would seem right to start with the real and concrete, with the actual presupposition, e.g. in political economy to start with the population, which forms the basis and the subject of the whole social act of production. Closer consideration shows, however, that this is wrong. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn remain an empty phrase if one does not know the elements on which they are based, e.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price, etc. If one were to start with population, it would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and through closer definition one would arrive analytically at increasingly simple concepts; from the imagined concrete, one would move to more and more tenuous abstractions until one arrived at the simplest determinations. From there it would be necessary to make a return journey until one finally arrived once more at population, which this time would be not a chaotic conception of a whole, but a rich totality of many determinations and relations.

"The first course is the one taken by political economy historically at its inception. The 17th-century economists, for example, always started with the living whole, the population, the nation, the State, several States, etc., but analysis always led them in the end to the discovery of a few determining abstract, general relations, such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments were more or less clearly deduced and abstracted, economic systems were evolved which from the simple [concepts], such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, advanced to the State, international exchange and world market.

"The latter is obviously the correct scientific method. The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse. In thinking, it therefore appears as a process of summing-up, as a result, not as the starting point, although it is the real starting point, and thus also the starting point of perception and conception. The first procedure attenuates the comprehensive visualisation to abstract determinations, the second leads from abstract determinations by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete.

"Hegel accordingly arrived at the illusion that the real was the result of thinking synthesising itself within itself, delving ever deeper into itself and moving by its inner motivation; actually, the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is simply the way in which thinking assimilates the concrete and reproduces it as a mental concrete. This is, however, by no means the process by which the concrete itself originates. For example, the simplest economic category, e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, population which produces under definite conditions, as well as a distinct type of family, or community, or State, etc. Exchange value cannot exist except as an abstract, one-sided relation of an already existing concrete living whole.

"But as a category exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Hence to the kind of consciousness -- and philosophical consciousness is precisely of this kind -- which regards the comprehending mind as the real man, and only the comprehended world as such as the real world -- to this consciousness, therefore, the movement of categories appears as the real act of production -- which unfortunately receives an impulse from outside -- whose result is the world; and this (which is however again a tautology) is true in so far as the concrete totality regarded as a conceptual totality, as a mental concretum, is IN FACT a product of thinking, of comprehension; yet it is by no means a product of the self-evolving concept whose thinking proceeds outside and above perception and conception, but of the assimilation and transformation of perceptions and images into concepts. The totality as a conceptual totality seen by the mind is a product of the thinking mind, which assimilates the world in the only way open to it, a way which differs from the artistic-, religious- and practical-intellectual assimilation of this world. The real subject remains outside the mind and independent of it -- that is to say, so long as the mind adopts a purely speculative, purely theoretical attitude. Hence the subject, society, must always be envisaged as the premiss of conception even when the theoretical method is employed.

"But have not these simple categories also an independent historical or natural existence preceding that of the more concrete ones? Ça dépend. [That depends -- RL.] Hegel, for example, correctly takes possession, the simplest legal relation of the subject, as the point of departure of the philosophy of law. No possession exists, however, before the family or the relations of lord and servant are evolved, and these are much more concrete relations. It would, on the other hand, be correct to say that families and entire tribes exist which have as yet only possession and not property. The simpler category appears thus as a relation of simpler family or tribal associations with regard to property. In a society which has reached a higher stage the category appears as the simpler relation of a developed organisation. The more concrete substratum underlying the relation of possession is, however, always presupposed. One can conceive an individual savage who has possessions; possession in this case, however, is not a legal relation. It is incorrect that historically possession develops into the family. On the contrary, possession always presupposes this 'more concrete legal category'. Still, one may say that the simple categories express relations in which the less developed concrete may have realised itself without as yet having posited the more complex connection or relation which is conceptually expressed in the more concrete category; whereas the more developed concrete retains the same category as a subordinate relation.

"Money can exist and has existed in history before capital, banks, wage labour, etc., came into being. In this respect it can be said, therefore, that the simpler category can express relations predominating in a less developed whole or subordinate relations in a more developed whole, relations which already existed historically before the whole had developed the aspect expressed in a more concrete category. To that extent, the course of abstract thinking which advances from the elementary to the combined corresponds to the actual historical process." [Marx (1986), pp.37-39. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases alone added. capitals in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. This passage will be examine in more detail in Part Two.]¹²

"Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour -- or value-form of the commodity -- is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy." [Marx (1996), pp.7-8. Bold emphasis added. I have modified the first sentence to agree with the Penguin edition since it reads much better.]

This appears to mean that while scientists, and/or dialecticians, might have to begin with what look like concrete particulars given in experience (albeit understood indeterminately, at first), in order to gain genuine knowledge, or even 'relative truth', they must apply certain, perhaps specific abstract concepts to the phenomena (maybe deploying those that have been inherited from the work of previous generations -- or those that have been 'critically re-formulated' from whatever resources that are available) in order to interconnect, and hence account for, phenomena with increasing accuracy in a more all-rounded, determinate and "concrete" manner.

Or perhaps even better: scientists and dialecticians should begin with abstract concepts (or "frameworks)" and apply them to the phenomena in order to interconnect, and hence account for, objects and processes with increasing accuracy in a more all-rounded, determinate manner -- albeit, tested in practice. As Marx put it, the correct method would lead: "from abstract determinations by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete." [Marx (1986), p.38.]

Moreover, except perhaps at the very beginning of human 'consciousness', this process never actually starts from scratch (as it were); we use the gains of previous generations to assist in the advancement of knowledge. But, even this isn't sufficient; abstractions have continually to be referred back to the material world so that they can be tested against additional experience in order to be refined in practice (etc.). Even though human beings inherit generalisations, concepts and categories (abstractions) from the past, all of them are revisable in the light of novel experience, knowledge and practical activity. This process of revision constantly shapes and contours the never-ending search for understanding, achieving a different expression in each Mode of Production, but reaching its pinnacle, one presumes, in a fully socialist society.

Indeed, the above passage looks like an embellishment of Marx's own thoughts quoted a few paragraphs further back.

Again, these extra comments look as if they might help resolve the apparent inconsistency noted earlier on. Hence, it is now a little clearer what the dialectical search for knowledge (via the interplay between abstraction and practice) consists in -- it seem it must include one or more of the following considerations:

(1) The search for knowledge must begin at some point with a practical (or in some cases a theoretical) interface with the world, interpreted by means of general concepts (abstractions) inherited from previous generations, or fashioned as the need arises.

(2) From there onwards further abstract general ideas must be extracted from experience, or refined, borrowed, applied, deduced, critically constructed or modified by thought (depending on which 'dialectical' theory of abstraction one adheres to!). Used correctly, abstractions help reflect, represent and explain, with increasing accuracy, the essential features that underlie the surface appearances of nature and society --, but only if they are continually tested in practice. In order to do this, general and perhaps poorly understood abstractions must be broken down into their simpler parts, which, when they have been understood aright, must be re-combined, or re-assembled, so that the original abstraction is no longer a chaotic whole, but "a rich totality of many determinations and relations."

(3) To that end, newer abstractions must be introduced to re-interpret or theoretical process any novel processes, structures, particulars or relations (maybe as each new mode of production arises, or as the class war throws them up), which as a result will mean that the latter will be more fully understood because they will now be far richer in content since they are much more widely interconnected, and hence more concrete.

(4) Every stage must be checked against reality, as part of revolutionary and/or scientific practice; all traces of ruling-class ideology must be exposed and removed.

(5) Whatever emerges as a result must always be regarded as tentative and subject to further revision.

(6) As a result, absolute truth is only ever a theoretical goal, never an actual terminus.

Viewed in this way -- it we ignore much that has gone before in this Essay -- what Lenin said appears to be correct (in its own terms): all truth is concrete, not abstract. That is because all knowledge-claims must constantly interface with concrete reality, more and more widely understood, against an increasingly well comprehended, law-governed background.

However, further truths (or, rather, newer, more refined concepts that are closer to the truth, or even less 'relatively true', which in turn will allow further concrete truths to be discovered, developed or enriched) can only be shaped, discovered or grasped by means of wider abstractions that refine and correct previous sets of concrete concepts (by removing/resolving any contradictions, etc., that they might still contain or imply). This seemingly endless process helps reveal deeper and broader interconnections, making such truths ever more concrete, which yields a more all-round picture of objective reality (but, once again, only if the results are continually tested in practice).

In this light, it now looks as if Lenin was right (in terms of his view of 'the materialist dialectic') to emphasise both the abstract and concrete nature of scientific truth. The "dialectical interplay" between the abstract and the concrete -- here only superficially outlined (much has been omitted; more details are given in Appendix B) -- constitutes the central core of the DM-theory of knowledge, as Lenin and others see things.

The above comments seem, therefore, to resolve an apparent incongruity noted earlier.

The problem is that, despite the fanfare, the DM-juggernaut can't actually get rolling, since it soon turns out it has no engine, diesel or battery!

The reason why the dialectical juggernaut can't even begin to roll is connected with answers that might be given to the following rather surprising questions:

(a) What if it should turn out that instead of beginning with abstract general terms in order to help refine experience along the lines outlined earlier, dialecticians without exception actually start with a set of abstract particulars -- or they begin with terms that turn out to be the Proper Names of these abstract particulars?

(b) What if dialecticians then attempt to advance from there by the use of yet more abstract particulars and they only ever end up with abstract particulars?

As should seem obvious, an unhelpful answer to these four questions would only increase the suspicion that DM can't account for knowledge since generality will have been abstracted away, even destroyed, as a result; and if that is so, not only would DM-epistemology have run off the road and into a ditch, scientific knowledge would be in there with it.

[In this sub-section I first summarise the argument that attempts to show how the aforementioned "destruction of generality" came about; much of the rest of this Essay will fill in the details.]

Readers sympathetic to DM might be forgiven for thinking that the above allegations are completely misguided; dialecticians certainly do not do this. They don't remain stuck in an abstract, 'particularist' rut, as the earlier comments insinuate.^12a

Nevertheless, as will soon become apparent, the process of abstraction, far from assisting in the discovery of knowledge concerning the 'essential' features of reality that underpin 'appearances', actually prevents that search from even starting. It does this by transforming general words/concepts into singular terms -- that is, it turns them into the Proper Names of 'abstract' ideas, categories or concepts.^12b

If that is indeed so, the claim that DM begins with the general in order to interpret the particular is the opposite of the truth.

In fact, what really happens is that DM-theorists begin with the Proper Names of abstract particulars (which terms they inherited from previous generations of Traditional Theorists, like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, to name just a few); they then make a ham-fisted attempt to link these with the Proper Names of genuinely material particulars (such as that tumbler that exercised Lenin), all the while failing to notice that generality went out the non-dialectical window a couple of thousand years ago.

That initial false step finds DM-theorists -- following on Hegel's example -- re-interpreting sentences containing subject and predicate (general) terms as disguised identity statements.

Because of this, DM-apologists begin by eliminating the general terms they claimed were necessary in order to refine or interpret particulars given in experience -- which moves we were told were essential if anyone wants to loop the very first dialectical loop --, replacing them with the Proper Names of 'abstract objects'. Naturally, this just leaves them with a handful of lifeless singular terms.

Again, they do this by re-writing predicative sentences as propositions that express identity; it is this move that transforms the general terms they contain into the aforementioned Proper Names (or other singular terms).¹³ Hence, as we will soon see, "man", for instance, is turned into the Proper Name, "Man"; "is the same as" is transformed into the Proper Name, "Identity"; "is not the same as" now becomes the Proper Name, "Difference"; everyone in a given society becomes the singular term, "The Population", and so on.

The result of false steps like this doubles back, completely undermining DM-epistemology, so that instead of beginning with the general to account for the particular, DM-theorists use the Proper Names of abstract particulars (i.e., the Proper Names of abstract classes, groups, universals, categories, 'essences' or 'concepts') to account for what are supposed to be concrete particulars -- an impossible task even in its own terms.

Naturally, this explains the need for all the increasingly baroque and labyrinthine attempts to explain the "process of cognition" we find in books and articles on dialectics; they can't fail to be convoluted because of the intractable pseudo-problem with which dialecticians began. [Why it is a pseudo-problem will soon become apparent.]¹⁴

DM-theorists weren't, of course, the first to have erred in this respect; indeed, this fault runs right through Traditional Epistemology, from Ancient Greece right down to today. Its ubiquity is easily explained since it seems that these false moves and what caused them were impossibly difficult to spot.

Well..., not really: they were in fact staring us in the face -- and have been for over two thousand years!

But, for all the attention Traditional Theorists (and now dialecticians) have paid to it one would be forgiven for thinking these moves were well-hidden. In fact, DM-adepts continue to ignore them -- even after they have been brought to their attention!

As will be demonstrated presently, several familiar and everyday features of language must be wilfully ignored, distorted or reconfigured to make this traditional con-trick work. What had been in full-view all along -- the everyday use of general terms in ordinary language, invented by those who don't tend to make such crass mistakes (i.e., working people) -- highly educated individuals manage to overlook, confuse or deliberately misconstrue. And they have been doing this for over two thousand years. Indeed, the 'higher' the dialectician, the more likely they are to follow Traditional Theorists down this linguistic cul-de-sac -- and the more inured to their errors these hapless victims appear to be.

As noted above (and as will be demonstrated in Essay Twelve (summary here and here)) these moves were invented by Ancient Greek theorists. In that case, dialecticians have found themselves in bad company; and, as they should know, bad associations spoil useful epistemological habits.

It is ironic, therefore, that in order to account for concrete particulars (by the use of general terms), this inept dialectical segue has meant that general terms feature nowhere at all in their theory!

Hence, in the search for scientific knowledge, all that dialecticians have available to them are two different types of particulars (or the Proper Names thereof): 'the abstract' and 'the concrete'. Of course, the latter of the two, 'the concrete', is now left without the general background that had all along been touted for it; that is because the newly fashioned context has been transformed into a series of particulars, too.¹⁵

Hence, the DM-juggernaut not only lacks a starter motor (i.e., it is devoid of general terms), its fuel tank is empty and its way has also been blocked by a huge slab of concrete.

The rest of this Essay is aimed at explaining, and then substantiating, these seemingly wild allegations.

In order to justify the above controversial claims, it is important to see how and why such a re-write of predicative sentences goes badly wrong, and why it can't work even after running repairs have been attempted.

As we will soon find out, the answer to these and other questions is connected with:

Although DM-epistemology supposedly begins with the general in order to qualify and refine each particular, the way that dialecticians frame their theory in fact denies it the capacity to do either.

Before my entirely novel criticism of DM can begin we must once again make a slight detour, and it is one that will introduce a method of analysis that will look rather odd to those unfamiliar with Analytic Philosophy and Modern Logic. However, its superiority over traditional methods of analysis will emerge soon enough; the reader's indulgence is therefore requested, once more.

[Those not particularly interested in the minutiae of my argument might prefer to skip the next sub-section and begin again here. However, several points that will be made later on (as well as those in other Essays published at this site) might not be fully appreciated by those who take advantage of this shortcut.]

First, a brief word of explanation is required for the rather odd-looking expressions used in these Essays -- such as "ξ is a socialist", or "ξ is a supporter of the Labour Party". Sentence schemas like these help illustrate certain features of (fact-stating) language relevant to the aims of this site. In fact, these aspects of language are familiar to all language users, as will soon become apparent. That is because they shed light on our ability to form true (as well as false) indicative sentences, and then draw inferences from them. We do this when we employ singular terms (e.g., Proper Names or Definite Descriptions) to replace gap markers like, "ξ" and "ζ" (used in sentence schemas, such as, "ξ loves ζ").

[Several examples of the use of these letters will be given presently, alongside an explanation of that use.]

A gap marker like ξ is essential here, for by suitably defining it in use, or more rigorously in a formal system, legitimate substitution instances (this term will also be explained) can be clearly specified. Why it is important to be precise here will also emerge as this Essay unfolds. An actual gap -- such as this, " loves ", or even a series of dots, as in "...loves...", won't do, since, of course, gaps can't be defined. So: " is a socialist" and "...is a socialist" are no good. A gap wouldn't be any use, of course, if we wanted to distinguish between sentences like these: "Brutus killed Caesar" and "Brutus killed himself". Plainly, both would become " killed " and "...killed...", if we removed the Proper Names and simply used gaps or dots. By employing suitably defined gap markers we can distinguish those two sentence forms as follows: "ξ killed ζ" and "ξ killed ξ", respectively.

What counts as a "legitimate substitution instance" depends on whether we are speaking about, (a) he interpretation of sentence schemas in a formal language or a formal system, or whether we are, (b) Trying to make sense of the sentential patterns we use in everyday speech. As far as (a) is concerned, the formal pattern will probably be expressed in the following way: "F(ξ,ζ)" -- where "F( , )" stands for a two-place, first level (formal) linguistic function or predicate variable. [Again, these technical terms are explained in Note 15a, link above.]

An interpretation in this sense amounts to the replacement of the above schematic letters/sentences -- i.e., predicate expressions, linguistic functions (follow the link for an explanation of that term), or gap markers, for example -- with terms defined by the formal rules of the system itself (or implied by the natural language concerned) in order to form an ordinary indicative sentence. So, for example, a formal system might allow for the substitution of singular terms for the two Greek letters above, which when translated into English might yield the following sentences, or "substitution instances":

Here substituting "Mount Everest" for "ξ", "Mount McKinley" for "ζ", and "ξ is higher than ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".

[Again, an explanation for the peculiar order of the letters in F(ξ,ζ) is given in Note 15a, specifically, here.]

Substituting "Romeo" for "ξ", "Juliette" for "ζ", and "ξ loves ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".

Substituting "The River Thames" for "ξ", "Paddington Bear" for "ζ", and "ξ loves ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".

As will no doubt be appreciated, some substitution instances fail to yield sentences that make sense to English speakers. In which case, as far as Option (b) from earlier is concerned, acceptable substitution instances will depend on what is counted as a legitimate ordinary language interpretation of the schematic letters involved. Such restrictions might be waved to some extent, or even completely ignored, in a formal language. However, since English isn't a formal language (to state the obvious!), there are no formal rules to guide us with respect to the vernacular, although there are rules of thumb that can and do provide a rough guide. For example, in relation to "ξ loves ζ", acceptable substitutions would normally be limited to sentences formed by the use of the names of, or the names for, a human being. [On the distinction between a "name of" and a "name for", see here.] Largely because of that, the vast majority of English speakers (if not all of them) would recognise Y3 above as non-sensical and Y1 and Y2 as legitimate indicative sentences (even if the latter relates to two fictional characters).

[To be sure, Y3 might make sense in poetry or fantasy fiction -- or maybe even as a coded message -- which is why I made the point that there are no hard-and-fast guidelines here, just rough rules of thumb.]

Now, there is nothing in language or logic that forces the above analysis on us, it just turns out to have rather useful 'spin-off benefits', as it were, which clearly recommend it (that is, in addition to the more formal advantages it has, allowing modern logicians to study inferences more precisely). [Again, there is more on this in Note 15a.]

So, from the semi-formal schematic expression, "ξ is the capital of France", we can form the following sentences using three names successively -- "Paris", "London" and "Rome" -- to replace ξ in each case, respectively:

And so on. As noted above, some of these will be true, some false, and some might change from true to false, or vice versa, as circumstances arise. Plainly, these propositions all share a common pattern which is expressed by the semi-formal schema, "ξ is the capital of France".^15b

Now, consider an example of an object supposedly given in experience -- indeed, one to which Lenin himself referred --, a simple glass tumbler. We might want to say the following about it:

E1 appears to express a fact about a particular, this tumbler (possibly picked out by a pointing gesture or a nod), but that object isn't concrete, yet -- or not concrete in the right sort of DM-sense. Hence, so key features of the dialectical process must now be applied to it. According to the above dialectical circuit, we must interconnect this aspiring particular with other features of reality by employing (or maybe even by refining) an abstract general concept (or concepts) in relation to it.

But, E1 already contains a use of a general concept (or predicate expression) "ξ is made of glass", which, of course, isn't the name of anything, general or particular. Moreover, the sentence formed by combining the singular, demonstrative term, "This tumbler", with the concept/predicate expression, or linguistic function, "ξ is made of glass" (i.e., thereby forming E1) isn't a name, either.¹⁶

In that case, in E1 we don't seem to have a particular (or even an "individual") upon which we can begin to inflict some dialectics.

It might be wondered why these seemingly irrelevant linguistic concerns have been allowed to distract us when it is perfectly plain what is meant -- that if E1 were true, it would provide us with an example of a particular (or an individual), namely, the said tumbler, perhaps picked out by the reference of the indexical phrase: "This tumbler (here)."

Unfortunately, whether or not that is so can in no way help us make sense of the 'dialectical process' under consideration here. On its own, and without an elaborate (implied) context (and historically-conditioned social background) the phrase "This tumbler" would say nothing at all. Indeed, it only succeeds in picking out the said tumbler because of the complex social and linguistic practices surrounding its normal use -- and, of course, the significance of pointing gestures.¹⁷

On the other hand, if this phrase is meant to, and even manages to, pick out this and only this tumbler, and nothing else, it would be operating as a Proper Name, or some other singular designating expression (at best), which point isn't being contested here (at least, not yet).

Of course, the phrase itself may be used to say something when combined with a linguistic-functional expression, such as "ξ is made of glass", but that would clearly involve the use of general terms again.

However, even if DM-epistemology were 100% correct, the dialectical process can't begin with bare particulars (whatever they turn out to be!), as everyone, including DM-theorists, agrees. It requires the use of general terms. That is, the particulars DM-theorists envisage have to be particulars of a certain type. So, a tumbler isn't just a lump of glass, or a body of matter. It is an item of glassware intended for a certain purpose. It is also why this Essay takes the line it does; it is aimed at demonstrating that no matter how this 'process' is re-packaged and sold to us by DM-fans, no sense can be made of it, as we are about to find out.

In that case, perhaps the following example might succeed in picking out a particular:

However, the phrase "lump of glass" still contains a general term, namely, "glass".¹⁸

In case anyone is tempted to object that DM-theorists in fact begin with the general in order to refine the particular -- and because of that the argument in this Essay is thoroughly misconceived --, it is worth recalling that the whole point of this exercise is to show that while DM-theorists might say this is what they do, it isn't what they actually do. What they in fact do is re-interpret sentences like E1 as identity statements. This involves the re-configuration of expressions like the following:

[Where "NN" is a Proper Name and "F*" a nominalised or particularised predicate expression (like "Man", "Manhood", or "runner"). Additionally, in A2, the "=" sign is interpreted as one or more of the following: a symbol for (i) The identity relation, (ii) Class inclusion, or (iii) A part/whole attribution -- or, indeed, all three at once! (I have employed an F* here, as opposed to the more usual F to indicate that this use of a predicate letter variable is non-standard.) A word is particularised when it is changed from a general to a particular term; when, for instance, a common noun is transformed into a Proper Noun or Definite Description -- for example, "man" into "Manhood", "beauty" into "The Beautiful" -- or a general verb, such as "runs", is also converted into a Proper Noun, in this case, "Runner". These moves will be explained at length as Essay unfolds, alongside their philosophical, logical and ideological significance). However, on this see also Note 01 of Part Two.]

As we will see, it is this initial wrong-turn, or distortion, that 'allows' DM-theorists to derive several counter-intuitive conclusions from ordinary sentences that employ perfectly innocent-looking predicate expressions.

Moreover, it is this linguistic move that saves DM-apologists the job of actually having to abstract anything at all --, which is fortunate since that task is impossible to perform, let alone describe, with anything other than empty platitudes or vague and confused 'thought experiments'.

By means of that 're-analysis' of ordinary predicate expressions dialecticians imagine they can bypass the 'abstractive process', all the while claiming that it has been carried out! This motivates the belief that they can access abstractions at will, when all they have done is conjure the Proper Names of abstract particulars out of less than thin air -- such as "Man", "Consciousness", "Identity", "Difference", "The Population", "abstract labour", or "Being".

The Proper Names of these abstract particulars are then used to flank, on the right-hand side, a transmogrified "is", which now works as an identity sign, directly facing the original singular term, on the left -- as in A2:

This re-configures the hackneyed DM-sentence "John is a man" -- which we will meet later -- into "John is identical to Man", "John is identical with mankind", or even "John = Man".

In order for that to happen, the "is" of predication has been transformed into an "is" of identity --, plainly in order to hold this implausible theory together and provide some sort of 'rationale' for what supposedly follows from it.

We needn't labour the point; indeed, it is one that dialecticians themselves accept -- but, alas, only when it has been buried under a heap of obscure Hegel-speak.

There is a fundamental logical principle at stake here that can't be side-stepped, by-passed or ignored. Whatever is done to try to describe a particular, or an individual in this way, it will always involve the use of general terms.¹⁹

Against this, it could be argued that it might be possible to refer to particulars or individuals by means of an identifying indexical description, such as the following:

would be of no help. Unless Proper Names, and only Proper Names, are used to pick out such aspirant 'concrete particulars' (but on that, see below), there is no way around this obstacle. For example, no one supposes that the word "Tumbler" is the name of only that piece of glassware; i.e., that this is that particular tumbler's Proper Name!

This means we face a logical (but not an epistemological, psychological or ontological) barrier before we can even begin to loop the first dialectical loop -- a logical condition in relation to which DM-theorists at least pay lip service.

As noted above, one way to avoid this difficulty might be to be to try to represent concrete particulars by the use of Proper Names. Unfortunately, Proper Names only function as such in combination with other linguistic expressions that don't operate in that way. That is because letters or sounds on their own can't work as names without the right sort of linguistic and social context.

[Suppositions to the contrary not only fall foul of Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, but also of several comments Marx made about language.]

Some readers might find this point difficult to appreciate because, as regular language users, they automatically recognise the use of Proper Names in ordinary homophonic contexts, and hence they automatically recognise the occurrence of linguistic expressions conventionally assigned to this grammatical category -- even when they are used in isolation. Many jokes trade on that fact.²⁰

However, sounds propagated in the air, inscriptions committed to paper or printed on a screen can't count as Proper Names when they are totally divorced from the complex social and linguistic background mentioned above. Rule-governed, socially-sanctioned sentential contexts and practices are required to turn such uninterpreted marks or noises into words with a specific mode of signification, and thus into names.

["Inscription" here applies to physical marks on a page/screen/wall/blackboard/whitescreen/cavewall that aren't considered random, but are held to be the product of intentionality, part of a natural-, or even a formal-language -- or perhaps even a work of art, no matter how 'primitive'.]²¹

Indeed, uninterpreted objects or processes in nature are by themselves incapable of determining the meanings of any marks or sounds we use to talk about whatever it is we talk about.

That is, of course, because uninterpreted objects and processes lack social organisation, practical skills or intellect.

Naturally, that is just a roundabout way of saying that uninterpreted objects and processes can't determine a rule; only human beings can do that (in practice), since language is a rule-governed product of our social being, not a superficial aspect of discourse's own syntactical being.

Not even a series of Proper Names can pick out anything true or false of 'concrete particulars', or anything else for that matter. That is because such a series would, at best, constitute a list, not a sentence (still less a proposition). Consider, for example, the following:

E5: London, Lenin, Amazon, Venus, Morning Star, Coronation Street, Tony Blair, Proxima Centauri.

Lists like this say nothing -- even if they have a use, as here, to make that very point! We could, perhaps, imagine a sense for E5, but only by articulating it with general terms or with words that function other than as names.

[This "imagined sense" might involve the answer to a question like: "Which eight Proper Names and titles appear most often in the novels of Woodruff Durfendorfer?" In such circumstances, E5 would now become something like this "These eight names and titles appear most often in the novels of Woodruff Durfendorfer: London, Lenin, Amazon, Venus, Morning Star, Coronation Street, Tony Blair, Proxima Centauri."]

We can perhaps see this if instead of E5 we were confronted by this list of 'inscriptions':

If someone were to assert that these were Proper Names, much more than their say-so would be required. We would need to know in which natural language any of them are actually used, and in which viable sentences in that language. This minimal requirement is perhaps easier to see when we are confronted with inscriptions that we don't already recognise as plausible examples of Proper Names. A list of words we already recognise as Proper Names (in, say, E5) perhaps obscured that fact.

Moreover, even if a list of the Proper Names of objects or individuals were replaced by another list formed out of the words we have for concepts or abstract general terms, it would make no difference; it would still say nothing, as the next two examples illustrate:

E6: Identity, Substance, Matter, Form, Flux, Space, Time, Part, Whole, Mode, Particular, Absolute, General, Essence, Trope, Appearance, Entity, Thing-in-Itself.

E7: Female, glass, redness, anger, jealousy, knowledge, change, cause, honesty, eigenvector, humanity, justice, isomorphism.

E6 and E7 have no sense, and say nothing (in that respect), since they are also lists. To repeat, in order to gain a sense these terms would have to be articulated with expressions that don't function as names, general or Proper.^21a

At this point it could be argued that we might be able to pick out a targeted or a specific particular by the use of a Proper Name, in the following manner:

Undoubtedly, this Proper Name designates the individual Karl Marx, but that is only because of all the social and historical stage-setting which already surrounds its normal use, and the fact that it is both a name for and a name of a man. That background involves the use of countless sentences like the following:

Without this context in general, the word "Karl Marx" could be the name of the man at the delicatessen, or a new brand of Vodka, or even that of the winner of the three-thirty at Newmarket. In fact, without such a background this inscription might not even be a compound word, let alone a name, general or Proper.²²

We are now in a position to see how and why dialecticians (i) Turn all predicate expressions into the Proper Names of abstract particulars and why (ii) That transforms sentences into lists, preventing them from saying anything at all.

As Essay Twelve Part Two will show, Ancient Greek Philosophers faced a serious problem. It was abundantly clear to them that concepts (although they weren't called that then!) -- or what were presumed to be the referents of general terms -- couldn't be picked out in any straight-forward sense. That is, they weren't the sorts of things we experienced or encountered in the everyday world in the same way that the referents of the Proper Names of individuals or genuinely material objects are (again, that isn't necessarily how they would have put this point all those years ago!). For example, if you lived back then, while you could look at, meet, shake hands with, or engage in argument with Socrates, you couldn't do any of those things with justice, mortality, time -- or even 'Manhood'. You couldn't even meet or point to all dogs, cats, tables, chairs and wine bottles in existence at that point in time, let alone in the past or the future.

But, it also seemed clear to them that such general terms must represent something, otherwise their use would signify nothing at all; they would be "empty words" (Flatus vocis, as Medieval Nominalist, Roscelin maintained). When we say general things about objects in nature or society we aren't simply producing aimless sounds.

"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot." [Barnes (2001), p.81.]

"What is there to be said and thought must needs be: for it is there for being, but nothing is not." [Quoted in Kirk et al (1999), p.247.]

"Parmenides' summary...says in effect that any object of thought must be a real object, confirms despite its obscurity that his rejection of 'is not' is motivated by a concern about what is a possible content for a genuine thought." [Ibid. p.247.]

So, if someone says "Vladimir Putin is a man", while "Vladimir Putin" (at the time of writing) certainly picks out an identifiable individual in the physical universe, "man" doesn't seem to designate anything obvious. What then does it designate? It must refer to something. If so, what? According to Parmenides, what it designates must exist. But where does it exist, and in what form?^22ab

[We still do not know the answer to these questions, not because they are too difficult for our finite minds, but because they are the result of linguistic chicanery; hence they are no more legitimate than asking these questions about chess: "Ok so who gave planning (i.e., zoning) permission to build that castle over in the corner? And who actually performed the wedding ceremony for the King and Queen? While we are at it exactly where was that Bishop consecrated, and are those pawns in a union?"]

In spite of the fact that the alleged referents of general terms don't appear to exist in the everyday world for anyone to point to (or to identify in any other way),^22aa some sense had to be given to their mode of signification (i.e., the grammatical role they occupy and how they contribute to what a sentence can be used to say, truly or falsely). It seemed reasonable, or even natural, therefore, to model the denotation of general terms on something that already worked: on the direct reference achieved by the use of the Proper Names of 'concrete individuals', like Socrates or Alcibiades. Those names managed to pick out identifiable particulars in reality, so it was tempting to think that the same must be the case with general words. Hence, based on the successful 'naming relation', and despite appearances to the contrary, general words were believed to work because they actually named something. If such words were capable of representing things to us, they couldn't be the names of non-existents -- they would have to be the names of 'entities' which must exist somewhere, even if whatever that was remained invisible or inscrutable to us.

Unfortunately, this syntactical segue (i.e., regarding the designating role occupied by Proper Names as the model for all words) now initiated a completely futile and fruitless 2400-year-long search to find these newly invented entities -- the supposed referents of general terms --, soon to be given such grandiose titles as: "abstractions" (aphairesis -- Urmson (1990), p.20; Peters (1967), pp.20-21), "Concepts", "Categories", "Ideas", "Forms", and "Universals".

The following spurious questions then forced themselves on Traditional Theorists: Do these 'abstractions', or 'Universals', exist in the 'mind'? [Conceptualism.] Or in 'heaven'? [Platonic or Old-fashioned Realism.] Or in 'God's Mind'? [The theological version of Platonic Realism.] Maybe in the objects themselves? [A half-way house between Conceptualism and Realism, echoed in many forms of modern-day Scientific Realism.] Or perhaps nowhere at all? [Nominalism.] Or could they even exist in some other suitably obscure region or aspect of 'Being Itself'? [All stations between Scepticism and Platonic Realism.]

Every single one of these proposed 'solutions' appealed to something invisible, intangible, non-physical, and ultimately inscrutable as the supposed referent of such words. Just as Proper Names referred to, or could be used to refer to, identifiable individuals/objects in the world around us, so these other words did likewise with respect to these ghostly, but not at all easily identifiable, 'abstractions', 'Concepts', 'Categories', 'Ideas', 'Forms', and 'Universals'.

Fortunately for Traditional Theorists, each and every one of these abstractions was completely inaccessible to the senses (otherwise the jig would have been up on day one). Indeed, they were incapable of being accessed by any means other than by pure thought (just as Plato intimated), having long ago been emptied of all content because they had been abstracted far away from material reality by a privileged, elite group of thinkers, all of whom were nearly as cut-off from everyday life as the abstractions they so effortlessly conjured up -- just as Marx himself had pointed out (on this, see Note 3b).

[The political and ideological significance of these remarks will be explored in Essay Twelve.]

Hence, in short, because general words seemed incapable of picking out 'general objects' in nature -- there being no such thing, of course, as a 'general dog' (what would a general dog even look like?), or whatever it was that all dogs supposedly held in common, which can't exist in nature (why that is so will be explored in Part Two) -- the assumption that all words were names of some sort naturally led to the conclusion that general words must refer to, or name, otherworldly objects like this -- otherwise, of course, they would simply be vacuous.

And that is why highly influential Greek Philosophers, Logicians and Grammarians turned general words into the Proper Names of just such otherworldly 'objects'. The theories they subsequently concocted in order to 'justify' such moves were merely window-dressing.

Named objects clearly exist (if, that is, we ignore for now the names of the 'gods', mythical beasts and fictional characters, etc.) -- we see them around us all the time. Because of this seemingly incontrovertible fact, the nominalisation and particularisation of general words appeared to give them some sort of content, or substantiality ('ousia'), allowing them to represent 'things' as they are 'in-themselves' behind 'appearances' (i.e., as they are 'essentially'), but which 'essences', unfortunately, were now no longer part of the material world -- or, at least, not in any obvious way.^22a0

Hence, it seemed to such theorists that some account could be given of the meaning or the denotation of general words that feature in predicative expressions. If they were interpreted as the Proper Names of the Forms, of certain Universals -- or, in some cases, the Proper Names of Categories (later, "Concepts" or "Ideas") --, propositions that contained them could be employed to represent or reflect the 'hidden world' that these theorists now claimed lay behind 'appearances', and which gave them some sort of substantiality.

Philosophers then awarded themselves a licence to hunt down and then uncover the "essential", underlying (later a priori) structure of 'reality' (or 'Being') by means of this newly invented 'process of abstraction', which they also imagined could achieved by thought alone.

Of course, if a given theorist also believed in the existence of a supremely rational 'God' (who, so myth and fable had it, created the world by the word of 'His' 'mouth'), then the temptation became irresistible to regard the Proper Names of the 'Forms' (etc.) as the names of the corresponding 'Ideas' in 'His Mind' -- or, at least as the names of the 'Forms' that resided with 'Him' in 'Heaven' -- which 'He' had used as exemplars when creating the world. Just like 'Him', they were mysterious, obscure and far removed not only from the physical world, but they were totally immune from easy disconfirmation by those disreputable, impertinent and annoying materialists.

Subsequently, these unchanging Ideas (the referents of general words) 'came to life' in Hegel's work as he endeavoured to re-animate them in order to compensate for the fact that earlier generations of philosophers had killed them stone dead.

This accounts for Hegel's ham-fisted attempt to criticise the LOI, why the 'rational' approach he adopted was so important for him, and why this meant that his entire programme had already run off the rails long before he began to work on it. [More on that later.] Traditional Philosophers (other than the Neoplatonists and Hermetic Mystics) had left him with lifeless and changeless 'concepts', and the LOI was now seen as the main culprit -- when that 'law' in fact arrived relatively late on the scene, indeed, by many centuries. However, in his haste to rectify this pseudo-problem, Hegel only succeeded in injecting even more formalin into these moribund 'concepts', as we will soon discover.^22a

Unfortunately, the above re-configuration of predicate expressions as the Proper Names of abstract particulars destroys the capacity ordinary language has for expressing generality (why that is so will be explained below) --, or, rather, it does so with respect to the jargonised language Traditional Philosophers substituted for certain targeted words in the vernacular.

We can actually see this happening in the thought of the Early Greek Philosophers (the full details will be laid out in Essay Twelve (summary here and here)). These theorists found that there were no words available to them in the vernacular Greek of their day that allowed them to speculate about the nature of these newly invented abstractions. Hence, they simply manufactured their own terminology --, or they borrowed and then transformed jargon from earlier myths and Theogonies. Consequently, words like "Being", "Logos", "Fate", "The Unlimited", "Nous" -- and "abstraction" (aphairesis) -- were co-opted and then put to no good.

However, in order to cope with the many and varied forms of generality available in the vernacular, these thinkers found they also had to appropriate and then make use of words that were already in circulation in every day life. These they nominalised and particularised into "Justice", "Knowledge", "Beauty", "The Table", "Man", "Manhood", "The Equal", and later, "Identity" and "Difference" -- turning ordinary general words into the Proper Names of these newly minted abstract particulars.^22a1

"As long as preserved communication remained oral, the environment could be described or explained only in the guise of stories which represent it as the work of agents: that is gods. Hesiod takes the step of trying to unify those stories into one great story, which becomes a cosmic theogony. A great series of matings and births of gods is narrated to symbolise the present experience of the sky, earth, seas, mountains, storms, rivers, and stars. His poem is the first attempt we have in a style in which the resources of documentation have begun to intrude upon the manner of an acoustic composition. But his account is still a narrative of events, of 'beginnings,' that is, 'births,' as his critics the Presocratics were to put it. From the standpoint of a sophisticated philosophical language, such as was available to Aristotle, what was lacking was a set of commonplace but abstract terms which by their interrelations could describe the physical world conceptually; terms such as space, void, matter, body, element, motion, immobility, change, permanence, substratum, quantity, quality, dimension, unit, and the like. Aside altogether from the coinage of abstract nouns, the conceptual task also required the elimination of verbs of doing and acting and happening, one may even say, of living and dying, in favour of a syntax which states permanent relationships between conceptual terms systematically. For this purpose the required linguistic mechanism was furnished by the timeless present of the verb to be -- the copula of analytic statement.

"The history of early philosophy is usually written under the assumption that this kind of vocabulary was already available to the first Greek thinkers. The evidence of their own language is that it was not. They had to initiate the process of inventing it....

"Nevertheless, the Presocratics could not invent such language by an act of novel creation. They had to begin with what was available, namely, the vocabulary and syntax of orally memorised speech, in particular the language of Homer and Hesiod. What they proceeded to do was to take the language of the mythos and manipulate it, forcing its terms into fresh syntactical relationships which had the constant effect of stretching and extending their application, giving them a cosmic rather than a particular reference." [Havelock (1983), pp.13-14, 21. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links added.]

Havelock then shows in detail that this is precisely what the Presocratic Philosophers succeeded in doing: inventing abstract nouns, eliminating verbs in place of these newly-coined nouns, and transforming the verb "to be" in the required manner.

Thus was born the so-called 'problem' of Universals (the 'problem' of the "One and the Many"), a family of insoluble conundrums predicated on the above distortion of ordinary language, and nothing more -- again, just as Marx noted.

Nevertheless, these seemingly insignificant linguistic moves had profound implications for the Philosophy of Language and the Philosophy Logic that the Ancient Greeks bequeathed to later generations of ruling-class theorists. FL was now regarded as an abstract science -- perhaps even the formal wing of psychology and ontology --, whose adepts in fact studied the 'laws of thought', the language associated with which was itself a secret code that contained (and thus was capable of revealing) the very secrets of 'Being'. Here is George Novack:

"Logic is the science of the thought process. Logicians investigate the activities of the though process which goes on in human heads and formulate laws, forms and interrelation of those mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.]

Novack was simply echoing a widely-held belief among traditionalists, as was indeed Engels:

"In every epoch, and therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields. Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an 'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels (1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

This form of metaphysical, pseudo-logic cast a long shadow over much of 'western' thought (and that includes DM). The original, Ancient Greek syntactical false step outlined above (and further analysed in this Essay) exercised a profound influence on all subsequent strands in Traditional Philosophy, setting the parameters of 'acceptable' debate among 'serious thinkers', and forming the scaffolding around which the "ruling ideas" that Marx spoke about could be built. This abstract (quasi-Platonic) approach to knowledge also had a lasting effect on the way science and mathematics have been interpreted ever since.^22b

Fast forward a couple of thousand years and we can see the effect this grammatical segue has had on the philosophical 'logic' inherited by European theorists -- but more specifically by German Idealists, forcing their thought in the direction taken by Leibniz, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and especially Hegel. The bowdlerised 'logic' they inherited from Medieval and Renaissance logicians appeared to freeze-frame reality into fixed forms, logical straight-jackets comprised of the Proper Names of these Abstract Particulars. And, as we are about to see, that is what motivated Hegel's criticism of the LOI, as well as the view he took of the supposed limitations he claimed to have discovered in Aristotelian Logic. Given that general terms had been obliterated -- or rather frozen as the supposed referents of a set of Proper Names -- because of this ancient syntactical screw-up, no wonder Hegel saw in them no 'motion', no change. [On this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13. Also see the references listed here.]

Unfortunately, instead of criticising the defective logic that had created these 'changeless forms', he compounded the problem with a few novel blunders of his own!

However, as things transpired, Hegel's 'analysis' turned out to be an unintended and unwitting reductio ad absurdum of the entire 'abstractionist project' (indeed, as the young Marx and Engels saw, albeit imperfectly). Hegel thus performed a great service for humanity, albeit inadvertently: his system is so obviously based on a series of logical blunders that no one with an ounce of materialist good sense would ever take it seriously. By unintentionally pushing these errors to their limit, Hegel completely undermined the credibility of the entire genre.

Marxist Dialecticians uncritically appropriated the syntactical mess Hegel dumped on all who take him seriously -- except, of course, they imagined that in their hands it could be inverted and put back 'on its feet', revealing its inner, 'rational' core after the 'mystical shell' had been paired away. But, as should seem obvious (to those with the aforementioned ounce of materialist good sense), rotating a logical blunder through any number of degrees has absolutely no impact on its status as a blunder. Without giving careful thought (or any thought) to the syntactical origin of these sub-Aristotelian clangers, and without considering for one moment the deleterious effect this catalogue of errors might have on HM (outlined below), dialecticians have only succeeded in saddling Marxism with an unworkable 'theory of knowledge'.

Unfortunately, late in life Aristotle began to move in this direction, too, laying the foundations for the so-called Term Logic that dominated the Middle Ages, inflated into a full-blown theory by Medieval and Renaissance Logicians. A core principle of this theory came to be known as the Identity (or Essential) Theory of Predication.^22c

It is this mis-begotten theory, along with its 'philosophical' implications, which lies at the heart both of dialectics and much of Traditional Philosophy.

So, when dialecticians make use of the analysis of subject-predicate sentences developed in and by this ancient tradition they not only turn their own propositions into lists -- we will soon see exactly how this happens --, they actually prevent the names they think they are using from being general names, to begin with. That is because these moves destroy the capacity language has for expressing generality, which, as we have just seen, is essential if Proper Names are to function as names, in the first place.

Hence, given the Identity Theory Of Predication, in order to be able to refer to 'concepts', or 'abstractions', theorists found they had to turn predicate expressions themselves into the Proper Names of those Abstract Particulars.^22d

E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between these two halves] Manhood.²³

The effect of this can be seen if we examine E11a a little more closely. If both "Blair" and "Manhood" are singular terms, which they are, then despite appearances to the contrary, no predication has actually taken place. That is because individuals can't be predicated of individuals -- or, rather Proper Names can't be predicated of individuals also named by a Proper Name (why that is so is explained in Note 24a0 and Note 24ab).^24a0

Given this view of things, nothing will have been said of or about Blair. Of course, on the surface it seems that something has been said of Blair, but that is where the Identity Theory kicks in. [More on this presently.]

Now, an ordinary predication (like the one expressed in E10, which says something of a named individual), seemed to many to be all too insubstantial. As noted above, ascriptions like this don't appear to pick out anything in the world that is actually attributable to Blair -- i.e., nothing that can be pointed to or identified in any obvious way which is true of him. So, while on the one hand we have the material object named "Blair", on the other, what is said of him seems to be something altogether intangible. Since we can't point to anything in the world called "man", or "Manhood", it looks like E10 isn't really saying anything true of Blair! Ordinary language appears to be misleading us, and, therefore, seems to be defective.

In that case, sentences like E10 must be put in 'correct logical order' so that sense can be made of them. Hence, we need a new 'theory' that replaces predication with something a little more substantial. [Of course, there were other reasons for these moves; they will be examined in Part Two.]

However, it is important to remind ourselves that this 'problem' arose because of the adoption of the primitive idea that all words only gain meaning if they are names -- or, as here, Proper Names. [Why that idea was in fact adopted will be examined in Essay Twelve.]

So, the traditional account went something like this: since "...man" in E10 isn't a name of anything that can be identified in the manner described above, it can't be attributing anything to Blair -- unless, that is, it is in fact a disguised Proper Name.

Because of this seemingly innocuous syntactic segue, there was a pressing need to try to identify the 'something' that could serve as the referent of the predicate "...is a man" (or, in traditional logic, simply, "a man", or even just "man"). In order to rectify this, the general term was particularised so that it could now refer to an abstract idea, or Universal -- with each of the words "Man"/"Manhood" becoming the Proper Name of the Universal 'Man'/'Manhood'.

In this way, propositions like E10 were now held to contain two Proper Names, with an attributing or linking term that supposedly connected them -- i.e., these two Proper Names become the subject term ("Blair"), and the 'predicate name' ("a man" or "Manhood"). The copula, "is", was now recast as an "is" of identity (e.g., in E11, and E11a), and was no longer simply an "is" of predication. As a result, this analysis came to be known as the "Two-name theory of predication". [More on this presently.]

[Paradoxically, both of these terms were sometimes also viewed as predicates as well as Proper Names! An example of radical confusion of this order can be found here.]

However, in order to account for "the unity of a proposition" (more on that knotty problem later) in sentences that contain two Proper Names (so that it didn't simply collapse into a list), something a little more powerful than the copula "is" of predication (used in E10) would be required, linking both halves. In addition, this new linking term must allow propositions like E10 to say something of Blair that we could point to -- at least, internally (in 'the mind'), 'abstractly', but later perhaps as an Idea, or Concept. This new linking term must relate the subject (the Proper Name "Blair", or the man himself -- as we will see, these were often conflated) to the object (now designated by another Proper Name), to which the old predicate allegedly referred (i.e., "Man"). Failing that, this linking term must at least represent this relation -- i.e., it must represent the link between what "Blair" stood for and what "man" stood for, and it must do this in language, or, at least, it must do this in harmony with the 'laws of thought', in 'the mind'. [But, again, the two were often run together.]

In that case, E10 would be true if and only if "Blair" referred to one and the same thing as "Man" (or "Manhood"); there had to be an 'internal', non-accidental connection between these two terms that reflected a similar link between whatever it was in 'reality' they supposedly designated. Nothing less could reflect the 'essential' nature of Blair; anything else would merely reflect what was 'accidentally' true of him, which 'accidental truths' were of no interest to philosophy, or science. If these ideas were to count as a valid, 'acceptable' re-presentation of "the deity's" knowledge (the only 'true knowledge' there is, by definition, or so it was once believed), then an 'accidental relationship' would only ever be radically deficient, and certainly couldn't represent genuine knowledge, philosophical knowledge, knowledge of 'essence'. The identity relation solved this problem. As a spin-off, it indirectly identified our 'mortal minds' with the eternal 'mind of god', since those who thought this way would be in harmony with 'his' thoughts.

This notion found a clear echo in what subsequently became the main problematic of German idealism, Subject/Object Identity -- or the 'identity of thought and Being', a spurious relation that also exercised Engels.^23a

Hence, as should seem obvious, this new linking term had to be a relational expression of some sort; it had to relate one Proper Name to another Proper Name, or, at least, what they represented (as in E10b), and it had to do so "essentially".^24aa

That is because the "is" of predication in E10 is simply that -- it is just an "is" of predication, a handy linguistic devise that facilitates attempts to describe or attribute something of someone or something. But, in that case, if E10 is now held to contain two Proper Names, not one, it would seem to be asserting one individual of another (or, rather, asserting a Proper Name ("Man"/"Manhood") of an individual (Blair) -- again, in Traditional Thought, these were often run-together). That is, "a man" was now being viewed as the disguised Proper Name of an abstract particular, 'Man' or 'Manhood'. So, E10 would be 'asserting' that the object that was the referent of the old predicate (again, 'Man', or 'Manhood') was 'true' of the object that is the referent of the subject term, "Blair".

[Once more, why that is so is explained in Note 24a0 and Note 24ab (link below).]

So, this apparent predication can't be a genuine predication, it must express a disguised relation between two objects ('Manhood' and Blair, now designated by two Proper Names, not one).^24ab

The former predicate ("a man") would, under this 'analysis', vanish right before our eyes; its real, 'essential', or 'below-the-surface', nature, or logical role now having been exposed as a Proper Name, not a predicate, with the copula "is" becoming the required relational expression -- the "is" of identity.

So, even though your very own eyes or ears might tell you that "...is a man" (or "man") is a predicate expression (used to describe someone or attribute something to that individual), your mind (suitably 're-educated') tells you it is a disguised Proper Name.

However, when there is in fact a relation of identity in ordinary language, between two named objects (or between two singular terms, depending on how we read it), conjoined by an "is" (as we will see is the case in E12, below), we uncontroversially have a statement of identity, not of predication, to deal with. A false analogy drawn between these two distinct uses of "is" suggested to Traditional Logicians and Grammarians that the "is" of predication must really be an "is" of identity.

Out of twisted logic and grammar like this there arose a new 'theory' -- one that was in fact driven by a much more ancient doctrine working in the background: that all words are really names (Proper or general) by means of which we re-present, or mirror, the divine order to ourselves, and we do this by naming its contents, just like Adam named all the animals -- recorded at Genesis 2:19.

This in turn suggested to the aforementioned traditionalists that although we can't actually touch, taste, smell or see the things that these new 'predicate' Proper Names reflect, or represent to us, that doesn't in fact present a problem since these 'entities' (i.e., whatever the old predicate 'really' referred to) are hidden 'beneath' or 'behind' 'appearances'. From there it was but a short step to the idea that all true knowledge must relate to, or arise from, a relation set up between 'The Knower' and this secret, non-material world, anterior to experience -- 'The True Known' --, which is more real than the material world we see around us.

The world of secret 'essences' was conjured into existence by such verbal tricks -- and nothing more.

This hidden 'world', of course, isn't the 'proper concern' of common folk, whose 'defective' and materially-grounded language had supposedly created 'philosophical problems' like this (i.e., the 'problem' of predication), in the first place. The 'unwashed' were allegedly trapped in the world of 'appearances', lost in a fog of 'commonsense' and 'formal thinking'. In stark contrast, 'genuine philosophers' were not only highly qualified, they were capable of seeing through all this 'confusion' right into the heart of 'Being', thanks to this glitzy new 'theory'.^24a

So, following the lead given by Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern philosophers (such as John Scotus Eriugena -- but not Jean Buridan, whose theory was rather more complex -- and, of course, more overtly by Hegel himself), DM-theorists were persuaded to accept the elitist idea that the articulation of names by the use of the connective "is" (in sentences like E11, and then E11a) in fact expresses a relation between a named individual and another named abstraction, now interpreted as an abstract particular, 'Manhood'.²⁵

Now, since particulars (i.e., named objects) can stand in some sort of relation to one another, this appeared to solve the 'problem' created by the 'disappearing predicate' puzzle, mentioned earlier.

And that is why, under Hegel's influence, the "is" of predication came to be the "is" of identity in 'Materialist Dialectics'.

[As we will see, the usual justification advanced for these ancient moves is little more than an elaborate smokescreen.]

The "is" in E12 is plainly, and uncontroversially, one of identity; no problem with that.

That is, both of these seem to be instances of the relational expression "ξ is identical with ζ".

[However, the extra "is" in E12a can't itself be an "is" of identity on pain of infinite regress, but must be one of prediction. More on that below.]

Nevertheless, difficulties soon arise if this relational form is used as an archetype upon which all apparently ('philosophical') subject-predicate propositions are to be modelled.

The (alleged) identity relation between Blair and the abstract particular, 'Manhood', is now plain for all to see. The particular (Blair) is now said to be identical with the 'Universal' ('Manhood') -- which means that just as "Tully" is a Proper Name in E12, "Manhood" is the Proper Name (of an abstract particular), in E14.

In this way, abstractions could be conjured into existence to order as the other-worldly correlates of some of the common nouns used in ordinary language --, or, and far more likely, the other-worldly correlates of the jargonised expressions that Philosophers have been inventing ever since Anaximander was knee-high to baby goat.

If Proper Names designate material particulars, then certain common nouns must really be the Proper Names of abstract particulars --, which exist, well..., where?

[For Plato, they were located perhaps in 'heaven'; for dialecticians..., um..., er..., better not ask! If you do, you risk being accused of not "understanding" dialectics.]

This is the 'reasoning' that underpinned, and then initiated, the aforementioned futile two thousand five-hundred year search for these ethereal beings -- motivated, as we will see, by ruling-class priorities and interests.

However, to spoil the fun: defective reasoning like this can only be expressed in the Indo-European family of languages (but see the qualifications mentioned here), where subjects, copulas and predicates abound. Different language groups had to rely on other linguistic tricks to give life to their own, home-grown strains of parasitic, regressive ruling-class ideology.

Unfortunately, as noted above, because of this syntactic segue, generality was totally eliminated. In E14, we no longer have the general expression "ξ is a man", but the Proper Name of an abstract particular, 'Manhood'.

Indeed, this can be seen from the fact that it would make no sense at all to interpret E10 as expressing an identity relation between Blair and a predicate (or even between his name and a predicate expression).

How could Blair -- or his name (if we avoid the 'use/mention' bear trap, here) -- be identical with a rather minor grammatical feature of the Indo-European family of languages -- or what it supposedly stood for? How could Blair/"Blair" be identical with a predicate, or even with a Universal?

But, to many, it did seem to make some sort of crazy sense to see E10 as expressing an identity between Blair and an abstract concept, or an abstract particular, something for which the predicate ("a man") was now taken to be a Proper Name.²⁶

Unfortunately, our consideration of the malign consequences of the idea that all words are names hasn't yet run its full course.

If all words are indeed names, then the "is" of identity must name the identity relation, too. [We can see this move actually happening here.] That was the point of the use of the word "attribution" in E11:

That can be seen if an attempt is made to treat this controversial "is" as just such a Proper Name (of the identity relation); E12 would become:

[In E15 and E16, the "is" in E12 has been replaced in both cases by its supposed Proper Name, and the phrase "some form of attribution" with what "is" supposedly attributes; in this case, the "Identity Relation".]

As is now plain, neither E15 nor E16 is capable of saying anything (true or false), for they are both lists.²⁷

Admittedly, in many contexts the word "is" works quite happily as a relational expression for identity, as we saw in E12. But, even then, the "is" of identity names nothing, since it isn't a name, it is a verb. Treating all words as names clearly turns sentences like this into lists, and since lists say nothing, that move destroys the capacity we have in language for saying anything at all.

To sum up: in E10, where a clear predicative use of a general noun is being expressed, the misreading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity reveals that an earlier decision had already been taken to interpret predicate expressions as the Proper Names of abstract particular. Any subsequent 'grammatical adjustments', or arguments, that were advanced in support (i.e., re-configuring "is" as a relational expression of identity), were invented so that they were now 'consistent' with that earlier metaphysical move, itself made for ideological reasons.

It is this move -- not the attempt to process particulars by means of 'abstractions' given in thought, nor yet as part of an endeavour to access or use 'pure' concepts or categories of 'reason', or even re-christening the diminutive verb "is" as the name of "Being", or of "Identity" --, it is this syntactic segue which kick-started this philosophical wild goose chase, and then the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' Hegel cobbled together, unfortunately now echoed in 'Materialist Dialectics'.²⁸

So, the mythical 'process of abstraction' was motivated by the syntactically inept re-write of general terms as the Proper Names of abstract particulars, detailed above. In turn this linguistic conjuring trick was itself based on an earlier move that interpreted predicate expressions as the Proper Names of the "Forms", or of "Universals", and later "Ideas", "Categories" and "Concepts". Clearly this 'process' was based on an uncheckable, occult capacity which some claim they possess -- i.e., the 'ability' to process concepts in the privacy of their heads at the flick of a verb. These phoney moves originally arose out of the actual abstraction -- i.e., the removal, cutting-off, alienation, and thus the distortion -- of concept expressions from their usual context in ordinary sentences used in everyday life. Again, as Marx noted:

This was achieved by physically abstracting ordinary predicative expressions (out of simple propositions like E10), turning them into the Proper Names of abstract particulars, thus distorting them, Traditional Philosophers (and later, DM-theorists) were thus able to magic into existence a whole new branch of Super-Knowledge (Metaphysics and 'dialectics') out of less than thin air.

Just as scientists study the material world, so it seemed Philosophers could study this hidden world of Super-Facts, Super-Laws, 'Essences', 'abstractions', and 'necessities'.²⁹

Of course, Traditional Philosophers (and their latter-day, conservative progeny -- Marxist Dialecticians) paid no heed to the actual use of general words in everyday language. They had excellent, class-motivated reasons for ignoring the vernacular. [What these are will be explored in Essay Twelve (summary here).] Unfortunately, DM-Traditionalists also had excellent (but this time entirely petty-bourgeois) reasons for emulating this approach. [They have been exposed in Essay Nine Part Two. This ideologically-, and politically-motivated re-configuration of predicative propositions was in fact something to which the early Marx and Engels themselves drew attention (on that, see Note 30 and Part Two).]

Nevertheless, the alleged validity of moves like this were (and still are) 'justified' by the endless stream of 'philosophical knowledge' they seemed capable of generating. The fact that Traditional Theorists in effect managed to do this on the cheap, so the speak -- without having to bother with all those expensive, time-wasting experiments, or, indeed, without having to bother with prosaic facts that had been 'sullied' by their contact with vulgar "appearances", or, indeed, without having to take account of the constraints that social life places on language and communication -- was, of course, an added bonus.

The profound ramifications of this philosophical wrong-turn needn't concern us here, but it is possible to highlight the effect it has had on DM by revealing how the misconstrual of the "is" of predication as the "is" of identity expressed itself more locally, on the dogmatic theory dialecticians, en masse, then imposed on the world.

In fact, as will soon become clear: this linguistic dodge motivated, and still motivates, practically every single DM-theory.

Indeed, this move lies at the heart of the metaphysical beast, for here we have exposed the source of Dialectical Marxism's Dilithium Crystals.

First, the Identity Theory of Predication is central to Hegel's criticism of the LOI (details can be found here and in Appendix E), whereby he deliberately conflated the LOI ("stated negatively") with the truth-functional implications that hold between contradictory propositions (i.e., he intentionally confused it with the LOC). This egregious mix-up 'allowed' him to 'derive' a spurious contradiction from the 'negative form' of the LOI and that in turn 'enabled' him to galvanise and energise his Ideal Universe by means of the double negation of the results of these mix-ups. But, these moves were only possible because of the systematic confusion of predicate expressions and predicates themselves with Proper Names, relations, objects, abstractions, concepts and an entire litany of other Hegelian oddities.

[UO = Unity of Opposites; LOI = Law of Identity; LOC = Law of Non-contradiction.]

As we are about to see, Hegel, like other Traditional Theorists, confused predicate expressions (which are artefacts of language) with extra-linguistic objects, relations and concepts, thereby conflating talk about talk with talk about the world. This then 'enabled' him to think that if he was able to think something -- i.e., 'dialectically' develop certain 'concepts' via a series of 'negations' -- then the universe itself must run on those lines, too. It was but a short step from there for him to conclude that his thought processes were actually an expression of the development of 'Reality'/'Being'/'God'. That would, of course, mean he was as deluded as those poor souls who think they are 'god'.

[And we think it wise to take philosophical and logic advise from this confused individual?!]

If there is no difference between a proposition, for instance, and its supposed object -- or, rather, if there is no difference between a proposition and the Proper Name of an object -- it became 'natural' to think that a contradiction alleged to exist between two propositions also expressed a relation between two objects or processes so referenced. As a result of such false steps these objects/processes were now said to be in 'dialectical' union or 'tension' with one another. This wrong turn is indeed the source of all those DM-'contradictions', which were no longer seen as purely linguistic expressions, but as objects/processes/relation -- even opposing forces -- in their own right. Talk about talk again confused with talk about the world.

[Much of the above, and what follows, will only be fully understood by those who have read this and this, parts of which have been reproduced in Appendix E.]

Moreover, when predication is conflated with the identity relation -- or, when the "is" of predication is reconfigured as an "is" of identity --, it becomes easy to claim that an object is now only its 'essential' self when it is put into a special sort of relation with its unique Hegelian 'other' -- its internally-linked 'opposite', which 'other' often turned out to be whatever was given a Proper Name by the back end of a suitably doctored proposition -- i.e., but only after it had been 'dialectically processed' by Hegel.

(ii) Everything in existence is a UO, comprised of a given object or process and its dialectically-linked 'other',

(iii) All 'true knowledge' is of the 'infinite', expressed by whatever these doctored predicates were now supposed to 'designate'.

(vi) There are in fact no genuine falsehoods, just closer approximations to Absolute Truth,

From this seemingly insignificant logical blunder, a whole web of DM-theses were spun, which were then woven into a complex, 'mystical tapestry' by generations of diligent dialectical digits.

(ix) 'The process of abstraction' is what 'enables' each adept to make a series of surprisingly easy discoveries concerning fundamental aspects of reality -- but generated from thought alone -- without leaving the comfort of their non-dialectical armchairs.

So, the 'historic' discovery that the universe is populated with, and hence powered by, 'contradictions' wasn't based on experiment, observation, or any of the sciences -- nor yet on the practice of a revolutionary party --, but on this Hegelian logical blunder! The confusion of predicate expressions with the Proper Names of abstract particulars, and the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity, is the real source of the entire DM-menagerie.

As we have seen, the traditional approach to philosophical 'knowledge' was founded on the following four guiding ideas:

(1) Reality is populated with "essences", hidden 'beneath appearances', which underpin every material object and process in existence. Allied with this is the dogma that the universe has an underlying 'rational' structure, and that 'reality' (logically and not accidentally) depends on this structure -- something that can be apprehended by the application of thought alone.

(2) When viewed in the 'right way', general terms are in fact disguised Proper Names, of which a select sub-group designate these "essences".

(3) Ordinary words are totally unsuitable for expressing these deeper, essential, 'philosophical truths' -- even if they dimly hint at them (when they have been suitably doctored by the 'process of abstraction', a psychological faculty allegedly possessed by, or exercised in, the 'mind', and helpfully identified for us without the use of a single experiment, set of observations or even a consulting couch!). A more muscular approach to theory is therefore required so that "speculative thought" is capable of 'allowing' Traditional Theorists to gain (easy) access to the 'hidden secrets' governing and inter-linking these 'essences' -- the results of which are (miraculously) valid for all of space and time. Unfortunately, these Cosmic Verities can't be apprehended by the senses, which means that this approach to knowledge lies ways beyond inspection or confirmation, and hence it is free from democratic control. Despite this, these 'essences' definitely exist -- or, so Traditional Philosophers would have us believe -- which is a doctrine that was 'substantiated', not by scientific evidence or research, but by the use of incomprehensible jargon.

(4) Although the existence of these 'cosmic verities' can't be confirmed by any known physical means, that just shows they are more fundamental than anything accessible to the senses, and so their existence can only be 'verified' by indirect, purely 'rational' means. While we can't see them, or detect them in any way, shape or form, the logical structure of our sentences tells us they are more real than any of the material objects and processes in the world around us, or even those studied by the sciences. We know this by a 'law of cognition', or 'the light of reason'.

Naturally, this means that these "essences", these 'abstractions', have had to be imposed on nature and society.³⁰

Normally (i.e., to a normal, materially-grounded human being -- like, say, a worker) the occurrence of the word "is" in everyday sentences would usually herald an incipient description, ascription, or predication –- i.e., it would suggest to that ordinary individual that someone was about to say something about someone or something, such as: "The boss is a crook", "This strike is too passive", or "The Morning Star is out today".

Plainly, these sentences don't mean that The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today, or that the boss is identical with a crook! (Which one?) Or even that the boss is identical (or, indeed, is and is not identical) with the 'Essence of Crook'!

[For example, "The Morning Star is out today" is true under different circumstances to "The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today." The Tory Daily Telegraph is out on the same days as the Morning Star, so it too will always be "out today". And yet the Morning Star isn't identical with the Daily Telegraph. Hence, when "The Morning Star is out today" is true "The Morning Star is identical with whatever it is that is out today" will be false. So, the second sentence isn't a paraphrase of the first.]

Except under the influence of a mind-altering drug, or quart bottle of vodka, why would anyone conclude that the second example above means that the said strike was identical with too passive?!

[Resist the temptation to laugh at this point, but there is one deeply devoted dialectical disciple who does think this of the boss, that he is identical with a crook --, for example, check this out! -- and he maintained that rather odd belief even after his error had been exposed for all to see. Worse still, three years later he still thinks this! (Read the sorry tale here, along with my reply.)]

Sentences like these wouldn't be interpreted as some sort of hint that there was a profound philosophical truth hidden somewhere in the linguistic undergrowth only capable of being uncovered by a posse of suitably-trained philosophical word-jugglers and predicate-manglers.

Indeed, predication itself wouldn't normally be taken to be directed at the unearthing of a Pandora's Box of hidden "essences" that supposedly underlie appearances, and which may only be winkled-out by the use of a super-duper "is" of identity. Of course, that is plainly why no ordinary speaker would come up with such an implausible 'theory', but it is why, in its modern and most sophisticated form, only an arch Idealist and Hermetic Harebrain (Hegel) would actually do that -- and be praised for it by those who claim to be materialists!

In stark contrast, and on the basis of (1)-(4) above, only those who have a far less secure grip on material reality than ordinary humans -- i.e., ruling-class hacks, Traditional Philosophers, and, on the 'left', LCDs and HCDs -- will conclude that they alone can with ease spot such coded messages mysteriously buried in our everyday sentences. All they have to do is "reflect" on them, re-write them in their 'correct' logical form, and the need to test the resulting 'propositions' with repeatable experiments can conveniently be side-stepped.

[LCD = Low Church Dialectician; HCD = High Church Dialectician; follow the above links for an explanation.]

Of course, such easy moves were originally performed (in the Ancient World) by those who enjoyed more leisure time than is good for any human being.

In this way then, it seemed plain to this exclusive band of intrepid abstractors that each diminutive "is" always hides an identity that expressed a relation between an individual and an invisible "essence", camouflaged behind an otherwise innocent-looking outer façade -- the union of a letter "i" with a letter "s" (or other diminutive letters in different languages) --, to form the truly magical word, "is".

For ease of reference it might be helpful to call this approach to discourse and its handy connection with 'philosophical knowledge': "Language Implies Essence" -- or LIMPE, for short.³¹

The disastrous impact on dialectics of this retreat from the material-world into a LIMPE-esque, parallel universe may best be appreciated by considering the use dialecticians themselves have made of the following overworked sentence (in this case, taken from Lenin):

Given LIMPE, H1 isn't just saying something about John, as only 'vulgar materialists' would rashly conclude. Far from it; it alerts The Philosopher -- nay The Dialectician --, to a hidden relation that exists between two named entities -- John and the abstract universal, Man (Humanity, Mankind, or Manhood -- depending on which strain of Traditional Myth-making a given theorist is trying to promote). But, since it isn't possible to predicate one individual thing of another, the original predication must be reconfigured in the above manner, so that it now becomes an ascription of one or more of the following:

(A) A class membership relation between an individual and a named group, class, category, collection or set.

(B) An identity relation between a named individual and another particular, individual or 'general' concept, class, category, collection or set (picked out by a Proper Name or some other singular term).

(D) A partial or complete 'containment' relation between subject and predicate terms, or sets and elements of the same.³²

Ever since Plato and Aristotle's set this band-wagon rolling, metaphysicians of every stripe have seized on one or more of the above as the 'correct' analysis of a superficially simple sentence like H1 -- a form of words, it is worth noting, that wouldn't even puzzle a working-class child.^32a

Indeed, it takes an expensive education and years of training -- or leisure -- to misconstrue ordinary language so comprehensibly.

For DM-fans, one or more of the above alternatives also motivates the allegation that FL is based on the LOI.

[Some might object that only certain predications -- so-called 'essential predications' -- are identity statements. I have dealt with that objection below, here and here, as well as in Appendix D. The example that Hegel himself used, "The rose is red", is by no means an 'essential predication.]

(2) But, identity statements can't adequately reflect changing reality since they attribute unchanging natures to objects, or at least to the relations that exist between them. In the present case, this would involve the relation that supposedly exists between John and 'Manhood', or, indeed, the Rose and 'Redness'. So, ordinary language, 'commonsense' and 'formal thinking' plainly put objects and processes into unchanging categories.

(3) Ordinary discourse and FL are therefore defective (at least at this level of dialectical analysis, even though they are perfectly adequate in their own limited sphere, everyday life) That is because they are based on the idea that things don't change; they attribute "this" or "that" unchanging property to objects and processes, asserting, for example, that John is identical to a universal, 'Manhood'.

[Quotations from the DM-classics and 'lesser' DM-clones that express the above ideas can be accessed here.]

(5) So, a correct 'dialectical' analysis of propositions like H1 reveals the following, deeper truth: ordinary language vaguely alludes to an identity between subject and predicate names (or the objects they supposedly designate; as noted above, Hegel continually mixes the two up, and so do his latter-day groupies, DM-theorists). But, this can't be correct, because no particular can be identical to a universal. This then leads "speculative reason" 'dialectically' to the opposite conclusion that the subject of such an ascription of identity (i.e., "John"), or what its name designates (in this case, John) isn't and can't be identical with the said predicate (now interpreted as a named abstract particular). So, in reality John can't be identical with this predicate, or with what it 'names' (i.e., John isn't identical with 'Man', or 'Manhood'). 'Thought' is thus led (by Spinoza's Principle) to the negation of this putative identity (via H1a and H1b).

(6) But, this, too, can't be the entire truth, since John is essentially a man -- in which sense he is identified by his essence. This leads 'thought' back in the opposite conclusion, once more, to the negation of the former negation, yielding the final result that John is not not identical with Manhood (i.e., H1c) -- which now means that all of the concepts involved in this word-play are understood in a new and more 'determinate' light. This astounding conclusion now expresses an 'essential' truth about John -- and, indeed, about everything else in the entire universe, since a similar 'analysis' will reveal that every object and process is essentially connected with its own unique Hegelian 'other', in a negative and then in a 'doubly negative' sort of way, along similar lines. This 'liberating analysis' isn't available to those who are trapped either by 'formal thinking' or 'commonsense'. Or, of course, those who just don't 'understand' dialectics.

(7) So, not only is "thought" driven to opposite poles in its bid to differentiate an object like John from all others (and this we are told necessarily involves, in every single case, negativity -- that is because, clearly, John is not Peter, not Fred, not Tarquin…, neither is he a mountain, a planet, a coffee mug, a toilet plunger, a meteorite...), "thought" is then forced to conclude that no individual object could be identical with a universal. In that case, John is not mankind. But, as we saw, a further consideration of his 'concept', his 'essence', tells us he is also not not-mankind, which means his original identity needs revising -- or, made more 'determinate'.

(8) John is thus made 'determinate' by negation -- as is everything else. In which case, the whole determines the part and the part determines the whole, via negativity.

(9) Hey presto, it is now 'obvious' that everything in existence has negativity (or 'difference') programmed into it, simply because dialectically-'enhanced' subject-predicate propositions reveal this hidden truth to those with the eyes to see -- and it is this negativity which powers the entire universe.

Which is why this approach to 'logic' was earlier said to be the source of the Dialectical Dilithium Crystals: by these means DM-Superscience was 'powered by little other than Sloppy Syntax. No wonder then that HCDs think "negativity" has "power" -- indeed, rather like Satan, Shiva and Ahriman of Mystical Theology. This is just one more (ancient) ruling-idea that still rules.

LIMPE thus encourages dialecticians to draw the conclusion that not only do our words and concepts contain contradictions (John is identical with, not identical with, and then not not-identical with, "Manhood"), concepts themselves clearly change as a result of 'internal developments' like this -- but only if "Reason" is allowed to reprocesses them "dialectically", at a higher level. This 'logical development' reflects parallel changes in Ideal Reality. Or, even better: when this 'development' has been given a 'materialist flip', it supposedly reflects changes that take place across the entire universe independently of thought.

So, John is now not not-identical with "Manhood"; in fact John is now a NON-person; the NON powers him along -- he is a 'self-developing' being.

[On the serious, if not fatal, difficulties these ideas create for dialecticians, see Essay Eight Part One.]

This means that 'concepts' and processes not only have 'negativity', and hence "movement", built into them, they develop as "new content" emerges, courtesy of the irrepressible NON. This in turn implies that things and processes (now irrevocably confused with words) possess "identity-in-difference" [IED], instead of plain and simple material identity.

After having been suitably processed (i.e., Dialectically Mangled), all our words have dialectics built into them, or so the DM-Cliff Notes tell us. And it is this that 'allows', nay encourages, even requires dialecticians impose their doctrines on nature and society -- and then pretend they haven't done just that!

is examined in more detail, in a "speculative" sort of way, free from the usual constraints social interaction places on the use of language -- hence, if 'Reason' is alienated from social being, if language "goes on holiday" (to paraphrase Wittgenstein) -- and we re-write H1 as H1a, we may now 'rightly' conclude that John couldn't possibly be identical with all men.

From there it is but a short hop and step to the 'derivation' of the aforementioned dialectical contradiction -- for, according to H1b, John both is and isn't identical with all men, the same and yet different from the pack. But, because of the NON, he is also not not-identical with all men; he is thus identical and not identical with his own 'other' (H1c), his Ideal alter-ego --, which is an artificial abstraction that has no material correlate, conjured into existence courtesy of the garbled 'logic' imported from the scribblings of a Hare-Brained Hermetic Mystic.

This now traps the hapless John in the dialectical machinery, a super-charged contraption that also powers the rest of the universe, since he is now a UO, a unity of Identity and Difference. As a result of the logical properties LIMPE has imposed on him he must of necessity undergo dialectical change, an inter-galactic process into which he has now been press-ganged.

This is the key to understanding the self-movement of everything in existence, according to Lenin:

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing…." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Bold emphasis alone added.]

However -- and to spoil the metaphysical merriment --, the only evidential support this creative word-juggling has ever enjoyed is this ambitious re-write of ordinary language predicative sentences that use the verb "to be", the inner 'logic' of which itself depends on a crass misreading the surface grammar of a rather unimportant sub-set of sentences found only in the Indo-European family of languages -- and nothing more!

Except, you needn't bother; Hegel and his groupies have already done that for you.

Several other myth-begotten creatures of DM-lore owe their existence to this syntactical surgery -- for instance, the mysterious "Totality". A reading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity motivates the idea that everything must be interconnected.

(1) If, as in H1-H1c below, John is both identical and not identical with a universal, and this universal has the infinite built into it (otherwise it wouldn't be a universal), then John is only himself when he is viewed in infinite dialectical connection with everything else of the 'same' sort.

(2) If John is now put in a similar relation with all the predicates applicable to him (including all the negative examples expressed in propositions like "John is not Blair", or "John is not the Pope", "John is not an interstellar dust cloud", required by the SGP), then he is in fact only an individual of the sort he is because of the seemingly endless and infinite (negative or positive) connections he actually has with everything in existence (i.e., all those "mediacies" that Lenin spoke about), which connections give him his 'determinate' nature -- if we but knew what the latter was in all its infinite glory. That is why Engels said what he did about the "asymptotic" path to knowledge. Moreover, all these properties and relations are "internally related" to John -- not externally, or contingently, but 'logically' -- every last one guaranteed by the alleged import of a re-configured participle of the diminutive verb, "to be", namely "is".

(3) By these means John assumes truly cosmic significance; the whole of reality is linked to him and makes him what he is, essentially. Not only that, but everything else is conditioned in like manner by John in return. John is now at the centre of an intricate web of identities and differences spanning right across all that exists, for all of time. This unassuming individual is now situated at the very heart the meaning universe -- and so is everyone and so is everything else. All of reality defines John, all of reality is what gives meaning to his existence and substance to his nature, and he returns the favour to all that exists (the part is determined by the whole and the whole by the part). To that extent, all of 'Being' depends on him, and he depends on all of 'Being' in return. "As above, so below", as the old Hermetic saying put things. [On that, see below.]

Even so, one small step for John is a huge step for mankind. Innovative logic like this can't be confined, corralled or restricted to just one individual; it has quite expansive, if not imperialist aspirations as humanity itself now assumes universal significance. The fate of our entire species now takes centre stage in John's meaning universe (and not just his) -- the fate of every last atom of which is 'determined' by the semi-Divine Logic built into 'reality' courtesy of DL. Hence, whatever happens to John, or to humanity, is interconnected with everything in existence, and vice versa. Indeed, each of us has our cosmic role assigned to us by such linguistic flummery: as above, so below:

"This phrase comes from the beginning of The Emerald Tablet and embraces the entire system of traditional and modern magic which was inscribed upon the tablet in cryptic wording by Hermes Trismegistus. The significance of this phrase is that it is believed to hold the key to all mysteries. All systems of magic are claimed to function by this formula. 'That which is above is the same as that which is below'...Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos....

"To the magician the magical act, that of causing a transformation in a thing or things without any physical contact, is accomplished by an imaginative act accompanied by the will that the wanted change will occur. [A quintessentially Maoist idea, too -- RL.] The magical act and imaginative act becomes one and the same. The magician knows with certainty that for the change to occur he must will it to happen and firmly believe it will happen. Here it may be noted that magic and religion are akin: both require belief that a miracle will occur. [Or, indeed, a 'great leap forward' -- RL.]

"To bring about such a change the magician uses the conception of 'dynamic interconnectedness to describe the physical world as the sort of thing that imagination and desire can effect. The magician's world is an independent whole, a web of which no strand is autonomous. Mind and body, galaxy and atom, sensation and stimulus, are intimately bound. Witchcraft strongly imbues the view that all things are independent and interrelated.' These concepts pivot on the belief that all things come from the One Thing, or First Cause, and 'Its power is integrating, if it be turned into earth.'" [Quoted from here. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

"Another parallel between Hermeticism and Hegel is the doctrine of internal relations. For the Hermeticists, the cosmos is not a loosely connected, or to use Hegelian language, externally related set of particulars. Rather, everything in the cosmos is internally related, bound up with everything else.... This principle is most clearly expressed in the so-called Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, which begins with the famous lines "As above, so below." This maxim became the central tenet of Western occultism, for it laid the basis for a doctrine of the unity of the cosmos through sympathies and correspondences between its various levels. The most important implication of this doctrine is the idea that man is the microcosm, in which the whole of the macrocosm is reflected.... The universe is an internally related whole pervaded by cosmic energies." [Magee (2008), p.13. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. More on this here and here.]

[DL = Dialectical Logic; LIE = Linguistic Idealism; UO = Unity of Opposites.]

Not only is John related to the Whole, he is what he is because of that dialectically-enhanced diminutive verb, "is", which implies he both is and is not identical (and then not not-identical) with an infinite concept.³³ Indeed, and in this way, every person, atom, and microscopic speck in the entire universe, every process in nature and society, for all of time, has assigned to it its rightful, 'mediated' place in the Infinite Whole. Every single object and process is identical with, and not identical with, and then not not-identical with its unique Hegelian 'other', guaranteed by a 'logic' that smuggled identity into sentences in place of boring old predication.

"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is that each different thing, each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion....' Quite right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite." [Lenin (1961), p.260. Bold emphasis alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995a), pp.278-98; this particular quotation coming from p.285. Lenin was clearly using a slightly different translation.]

"Difference as such contains its two sides as moments; in diversity they fall indifferently apart; in opposition as such, they are sides of the difference, one being determined only by the other, and therefore only moments; but they are no less determined within themselves, mutually indifferent and mutually exclusive: the self-subsistent determinations of reflection.

"One is the positive, the other the negative, but the former as the intrinsically positive, the latter as the intrinsically negative. Each has an indifferent self-subsistence of its own through the fact that it has within itself the relation to its other moment; it is thus the whole, self-contained opposition. As this whole, each is mediated with itself by its other and contains it. But further, it is mediated with itself by the non-being of its other; thus it is a unity existing on its own and it excludes the other from itself.

"The self-subsistent determination of reflection that contains the opposite determination, and is self-subsistent in virtue of this inclusion, at the same time also excludes it; in its self-subsistence, therefore, it excludes from itself its own self-subsistence. For this consists in containing within itself its opposite determination -- through which alone it is not a relation to something external -- but no less immediately in the fact that it is itself, and also excludes from itself the determination that is negative to it. It is thus contradiction.

"Difference as such is already implicitly contradiction; for it is the unity of sides which are, only in so far as they are not one -- and it is the separation of sides which are, only as separated in the same relation. But the positive and negative are the posited contradiction because, as negative unities, they are themselves the positing of themselves, and in this positing each is the sublating of itself and the positing of its opposite. They constitute the determining reflection as exclusive; and because the excluding of the sides is a single act of distinguishing and each of the distinguished sides in excluding the other is itself the whole act of exclusion, each side in its own self excludes itself.

"If we consider the two determinations of reflection on their own, then the positive is positedness as reflected into likeness to itself, positedness that is not a relation to an other, a subsistence, therefore, in so far as positedness is sublated and excluded. But with this, the positive makes itself into the relation of a non-being -- into a positedness. It is thus the contradiction that, in positing identity with itself by excluding the negative, it makes itself into the negative of what it excludes from itself, that is, makes itself into its opposite. This, as excluded, is posited as free from that which excludes it, and therefore as reflected into itself and as itself exclusive. The exclusive reflection is thus a positing of the positive as excluding its opposite, so that this positing is immediately the positing of its opposite which it excludes.

"This is the absolute contradiction of the positive, but it is immediately the absolute contradiction of the negative; the positing of each is a single reflection. The negative, considered on its own over against the positive, is positedness as reflected into unlikeness to itself, the negative as negative. But the negative is itself the unlike, the non-being of an opposite; therefore its reflection into its unlikeness is rather its relation to itself. Negation in general is the negative as quality, or immediate determinateness; but the negative as negative, is related to the negative of itself, to its opposite. If this negative is only taken as identical with the first, then it, too, like the first, is merely immediate; and so they are not taken as mutual opposites and therefore not as negatives; the negative is not an immediate at all. But now, since it is also just as much a fact that each is the same as its opposite, this relation of the unlike is just as much their identical relation.

"This is therefore the same contradiction that the positive is, namely, positedness or negation as self-relation. But the positive is only implicitly this contradiction, whereas the negative is the contradiction posited; for the latter, in virtue of its reflection-into-self which makes it a negative in and for itself or a negative that is identical with itself, is accordingly determined as a non-identical, as excluding identity. The negative is this, to be identical with itself in opposition to identity, and consequently, through its excluding reflection to exclude itself from itself.

"The negative is, therefore, the whole opposition based, as opposition, on itself, absolute difference that is not related to an other; as opposition, it excludes identity from itself -- but in doing so excludes itself; for as self-relation it is determined as the very identity that it excludes.

"...Contradiction resolves itself. In the self-excluding reflection we have just considered, positive and negative, each in its self-subsistence, sublates itself; each is simply the transition or rather the self-transposition of itself into its opposite. This ceaseless vanishing of the opposites into themselves is the first unity resulting from contradiction...." [Hegel (1999), pp.433, §931-939. Bold emphases alone added. This continues in mind-numbing, brain-cell-crunching fashion for another ten pages! Only masochists should read any further.]

[This topic is explored more extensively in Essays Seven Part Three and Eight Part Three.]

This view of reality pictures the logical structure of sentences mirroring the logical 'essence' of 'Being'; everything is simultaneously both at the centre of an infinite web of relations and at its periphery; all are at once insignificant and all are at the same time cosmically important (a 'unity of opposites'). Part and Whole are interlinked, inter-determining and inter-defining one another.³⁴

Moreover, while John isn't all of mankind, he is somehow dialectically united with every human being by their shared 'essence'. This fact allows necessity and contingency to enter into the picture. Hence, John is contingently a man (in that he is this particular person); but he is also necessarily a man because an abstract universal so identifies him as such and constitutes his essence. John is in fact a UO -- he is both man and non-man (i.e., while he is plainly not all men, he shares an 'essence' with all men), revealing his 'essence' as identity-in-difference.

However, the essential nature of each particular (such as John) isn't immediately apparent to any of our senses. Nevertheless, while the logical properties fundamental to each individual might appear to be expressed by an "is" of predication, those with a 'dialectical third eye' can 'see' that predicative sentences are in fact identity statements -- something that 'speculative reason' alone is capable of revealing by the simple expedient of examining -- and then changing -- the logical structure of a few innocent-looking sentences. Of course, the rest of humanity -- those lost in a fog of 'formal thinking' -- well, they just don't "understand" dialectics.

This means that John is in reality other than he seems: John's material properties only appear to be contingently interrelated to those of other objects and processes around him. This misperception is either the result of a 'commonsense' failure to see things 'in the abstract' -- i.e., essentially --, or because of a failure to connect the abstract with the concrete in dialectical union/tension.^34a

But, below the surface, where neither human sight nor scientific equipment can penetrate, the necessary connections that exist between individuals and universals may easily be ascertained -- only if they are viewed in the right manner (i.e., 'essentially' and 'dialectically', but, manifestly, not materially).

Indeed, those connections are revealed to each DM-adept, not by observation and experiment, but by the 'careful' dialectical analysis of a suitably 'doctored' sentence about John!

DM-wizards, well-versed in these esoteric arts, are now uniquely placed to unmask cosmic-wide truths lying 'below the surface'; verities unavailable to lesser souls who stumble around, lost in a haze of 'static thought', whose ideas are dominated by that truly awful intellectual bully, the "abstract understanding" -- an aspect of the human psyche unknown to the psychological sciences, even to this day.

By these means, dialectical acolytes can now extrapolate from nouns to necessity, and concepts to contingency, arguing that both of these govern all of reality. That is because -- sure as eggs both are and aren't eggs -- a covert reference to the now de-personified Greek gods, Moira and Tyche (Fate and Luck, Necessity and Contingency) had all along been buried in language, had we but known it.

However, no one is quite sure who managed to hide such super-facts in the vernacular, since they have been buried so deep that only those who have quaffed the dialectical Kool Aid are capable of discovering them for the rest of humanity. Who could have guessed they could be unearthed by inspecting innocent-looking linguistic facts about 'John' and his 'Manhood', expressed in a soporifically banal sentence about 'him'? Who could have guessed that the 'logical force' of negation, which has very helpfully been revealed to us by DM-fans, controlled him and every last one of us -- as well as the most distant galaxies in the universe?

However, it isn't too clear whether or not this 'hidden force' only began to control us when some bright spark first came out with tokens of the following type-sentence: "(Insert your favourite name here) is a man" -- just as it isn't too clear if the universe is controlled in this way only if a sexist sentence that mentions John, but not Joan, is chosen -- and one of both are related to "man", but not "woman".

The conundrum that counterposes chance to necessity is, therefore, no sooner posed than solved by innovative logic like this, which is able to map-out everything in the entire universe, employing the Hermetic jargon found in a book with no maps, and even less genuine logic, written by that arch-mystic Hegel. John's local nature, and all that happens to him (and every atom in his body) throughout his life is 'determined' by these universe-wide 'essences', although he is at the same time 'free' because of his subsumption under cosmic 'law' -- this 'contradiction' paradoxically 'solved' by its merely being called a 'contradiction'!

Through all of this, dialecticians imagine they are actually examining reality itself, and not just the supposed implications of a handful of doctored sentences, or 'concepts', supposedly about seemingly insignificant parts of it. As noted earlier -- and contrary to what one might have expected of those who still claim to have the word "materialist" somewhere in their job description -- expert 'dialectical insight' like this isn't based on careful empirical work; it is the result of the exercise of a rare gift, the ability to view an ordinary indicative sentence in two distinct ways at the same time:

(a) Superficially, comprised of a subject and a predicate -- mirroring the surface appearance of things, which is adequate enough for materially-bound individuals, every day life, and those who take language at face value -- such as, say, workers -- but certainly not for 'philosophers', who know better.

(b) More profoundly, as an identity statement that reveals the underlying identity-in-difference at work in all objects and processes, and which reflects the abstract/concrete nature of reality --, 'knowledge' of which is the special preserve of our very own, self-appointed, Dialectical Superscientists (i.e., those with the dialectical equivalent of 'Second Sight').

Hence, a sort of intellectual gestalt-switch operates in each dialectically-tuned mind, which allows those suitably blessed to hop back and forth between two differing interpretations of the word "is", as it features in this tiny sub-set of sentences, found in just one family of languages.

Given the truth of LIE, language thus contains a secret code that conceals an even bigger cosmic secret -- the DM-equivalent of the Kabbalah, or even The True Bible Code.³⁵

The linguistic hocus pocus described in earlier sections of this Essay represents the real dialectical "path of cognition" -- the 'philosophical pilgrimage' toward enlightenment along which path all aspiring novices must pass at least once in their lives, the DM-equivalent of The Hajj. It has nothing to do with the mythical 'process of abstraction' touted by the official DM-brochure.

This isn't just my say-so; the above allegation is easily confirmed by a consideration of the following passages from the DM-classics:

"The identity of thinking and being, to use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004), pp.463-64. Bold emphases added.]

"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels (1954), pp.234-35. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

"Abstract identity (a=a; and negatively, a cannot be simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise inapplicable in organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every moment of its life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from itself.... The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Ibid., pp.214-15. Italic emphases in the original.]

Engels clearly saw no problem with his derivation of what look like scientific conclusions -- which apply to everything in existence -- from a re-configuration of the 'logical' structure of a handful of unrepresentative sentences: "the lily is a plant, the rose is red."

He also failed to notice that this approach conflicted with his own sharp criticism of Hegel's 'method':

"All three [laws -- RL] are developed by Hegel in his idealist fashion as mere laws of thought: the first, in the first part of his Logic, in the Doctrine of Being; the second fills the whole of the second and by far the most important part of his Logic, the Doctrine of Essence; finally the third figures as the fundamental law for the construction of the whole system. The mistake lies in the fact that these laws are foisted on nature and history as laws of thought, and not deduced from them. This is the source of the whole forced and often outrageous treatment; the universe, willy-nilly, is made out to be arranged in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought." [Engels (1954), p.62. Bold emphasis alone added.]

But this is precisely where Engels found this example of sub-Aristotelian 'logic'. There is no way he could have deduced these ideas from a scientific investigation of nature, only from an artificial 'analysis' of a tiny sub-set of sentences (the subject-copula-predicate form that takes an "is", found almost exclusively in the Indo-European family of languages), the conclusion then airily imposed on reality!

So, while Engels might have thought he was analysing nature in the raw, he was in fact reproducing Hegel's misguided interpretation of the logical properties of a un-important sub-section of Indo-European grammar. He even reproduced, unchanged, Hegel's own examples!

The fact that he was deluding himself can be seen by his use of the phrase "self-evident" in the last sentence of the second passage quoted above:

"Abstract identity (a=a; and negatively, a cannot be simultaneously equal and unequal to a) is likewise inapplicable in organic nature. The plant, the animal, every cell is at every moment of its life identical with itself and yet becoming distinct from itself.... The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Ibid., pp.214-15. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Substantive truths about the world may be evident following upon an investigation that manages to find relevant evidence, but they can't be self-evident -- not unless they can attest for themselves.

In that case, Engels's use of the phrase "self-evident" was either an inappropriate hyperbole or it was an unconscious give-away. When something is self-evident it provides evidence on its own behalf; naturally, that would make it auto-interpreting and self-authenticating, implying that it is an agent of some sort, and therefore quasi-human. In fact, the phrase "self-evidence" is only rightly applicable if a deduction has been made (by a human being) from the supposed meaning of certain words, which is why no supporting evidence would be necessary. For example, no evidence is required to establish the 'truth' of, say, "A regicide is king-killer", or "A vixen is a female fox". Hence, this give-away tells us that Engels's conclusions follow from language and thought alone, not from evidence.

If Engels were serious in his use of this term -- and it must be recalled that this passage comes from unpublished notebooks, so they might not represent his more considered thoughts --, it would reveal just how deep his Idealism had sunk into his thought, as George Novack and Maurice Cornforth pointed out:

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

"Our party philosophy, then, has a right to lay claim to truth. For it is the only philosophy which is based on a standpoint which demands that we should always seek to understand things just as they are…without disguises and without fantasy…. Marxism, therefore, seeks to base our ideas of things on nothing but the actual investigation of them, arising from and tested by experience and practice. It does not invent a 'system' as previous philosophers have done, and then try to make everything fit into it…." [Cornforth (1976), pp.14-15. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]

However, in that earlier passage, Engels appears to attribute intelligence to linguistic expressions and not just to the humans who employ them:

"The fact that identity contains difference within itself is expressed in every sentence, where the predicate is necessarily different from the subject; the lily is a plant, the rose is red, where, either in the subject or in the predicate there is something that is not covered by the predicate or the subject…. That from the outset identity with itself requires difference from everything else as its complement, is self-evident." [Engels (1954), pp.214-15. Bold emphasis alone added.]

Self-evidence, as noted above, emerges (if or when it does) from a 'conceptual' or linguistic analysis of certain words, phrases or propositions, for which extraneous evidence is irrelevant -- as our use of that term itself suggests ("self-evident"). Now this rather strict epistemological condition -- self-evidence -- could only be satisfied if the linguistic expression itself were tautological, or where, perhaps, it might even strike its appraiser as a trivial, linguistic 'truth'. So, if things were as Engels airily asserted, then nature could only contain self-evident truths if it were a huge tautology, if it had trivially-true sentences plastered all over it, or if it were itself language-, or concept-like (as indeed Ancient Theologians supposed it to be, well over two thousand years ago).

However, nature isn't made of subjects and predicates, nor has it been fly-posted with trivially-true indicative sentences by a mischievous agent acting under orders from 'Being Itself'. Engels surely knew this. The only conclusion possible, therefore, is that he, too, had been seduced by LIMPE -- as also seems to have been the case with all subsequent dialecticians.

Be this as it may, and as we will see here, the "self-evidence" to which Engels refers is in fact the exact opposite. Another rather fitting 'dialectical inversion' for readers to ponder.

Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks contain similar passages that illustrate the 'power' of 'innovative' Hegelian 'logic'. A particularly good example (and one which almost single-handedly commits all of the dialectical sins outlined earlier) is the following:

"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961), pp.359-60. Bold and italic emphases in the original; paragraphs merged.]

Admittedly, Lenin did go on to mention the general support the sciences provided for this rather odd view of language, but he failed to say how a finitely large body of evidence (even if he had produced any, which he didn't) could possibly confirm the truth of his sweeping generalisations. Nor did he even so much as try to account for the fact that his theory is based on a crass misreading of a diminutive verb found almost exclusively in the Indo-European family of languages -- which, of course, means that what he says can't be a "property of all human knowledge in general".³⁶

For example -- and linguistic juggling to one side --, what confirmatory evidence could there possibly be for the following?

"[O]pposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc…. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence…." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

We needn't bother searching through the archives for the missing evidence since Lenin was quite open and honest about the real source of this dialectical flummery, it follows from Hegel's conclusions about what he says we say; it follows from language:

"Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized)…. [F]or when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]

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

Lenin is quite clear here: dialectics follows from the logical properties built into sentences, from what we say (or, rather from what Hegel says we say) -- not from a "careful" or scientific study of the world.

But, as we can now see, what Hegel and Lenin concluded doesn't even follow from a 'careful study' of what we do in fact say!

Finally, this African America protester from the 1960s isn't pointing out that he is 'identical to a man' (why that is so is explained here):

It could be objected that propositions are quite uncontroversially used to convey information; human cognition reflects reality accurately when this information is drawn from nature and society, tested in practice. Hence, it could be argued that Lenin was simply outlining the consequences of this uncontroversial fact, pointing out that the logical structure of language couldn't fail to mirror the deep structure of reality if language is part of the world, and part of our relation to that world and to one another. That being the case, human beings may legitimately infer substantive truths about the nature of reality from language, since nature's dialectical structure will already have been 'programmed' into discourse as a result of the interplay between cognition and practice, reflected in the use of language by countless generations of human beings.

"Lenin claims that the statement 'John is a man' is already charged with contradiction. How? Here, the inclusion of mathematical symbols can assist us in understanding the scandal. Could we say that 'John is a man' translates to 'John=Man'? That would suggest that either the term 'John' or the term 'Man' really is superfluous, that it would suffice to say 'John is John' or 'Man is Man.' However, we know we are conveying something non-trivial. We are saying that John belongs to the category of man (we could use the logical symbol ϵ). Does this resolve the problem, though? From a more philosophical point of view, it is in fact correct to say that John is 'man,' for there is no 'man' in the abstract, and our abstract notion of 'man' is really only cobbled together from the common aspects of all individual men. Thus, it turns out that the simple relationship 'John is a man,' which we all understand, conveys a really complex notion: the identity of an identity (John=Man) and a non-identity (John≠Man), coexisting in contradiction. Dialectics is the appreciation that even the barest expression 'John is a man' is making an interesting argument!

"Marx says 'Capital is labour.' But, how can this be? Capital is the opposite of labour! So there Marx goes, explaining that capital is labour, via the commodity cycle. As it turns out, the mere expression of a contradictory relationship carries the implication that there exists a process whereby one can reach the other. This is how contradiction is deeply tied to change.

"The word 'change' is apt because really there are very many ways that one concept may turn into its opposite. Perspective determines whether we are still or in motion. Space determines whether a gesture is rude or polite. With time we see the living become the dying, and the dying give birth to the living." [Day (2019). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

But, if that were so, why all the pretence that DM-theses are only acceptable if they have passed rigorous empirical examination, or have to be tested in practice? If truths about nature are so easily obtained -- that is, if they can be ascertained merely by examining the structure of a few sentences --, why all the pointless rigmarole of trying to deny that DM is a "master-key" that opens all doors to knowledge?

"Dialectics and materialism comprise the basic elements of the Marxist cognition of the world. But this by no means implies that they can be applied in any field of knowledge like an ever-ready master-key. The dialectic cannot be imposed on facts, it must be derived from the facts, from their nature and their development. Only painstaking work on boundless material gave Marx the ability to erect the dialectical system of economics on the concept of value as realized labour." [Trotsky (1973), p.233. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]

"The dialectic is not a magic master key for all questions. It does not replace concrete scientific analysis. But it directs this analysis along the correct road, securing it against sterile wanderings in the desert of subjectivism and scholasticism." [Trotsky (1971), p.68.]

"[The laws of dialectics] are not, as Marx and Engels were quick to insist, a substitute for the difficult empirical task of tracing the development of real contradictions, not a suprahistorical master key whose only advantage is to turn up when no real historical knowledge is available." [Rees (1998), p.9.]

"'[The dialectic is not a] magic master key for all questions.' [Quoting Trotsky -- RL.] The dialectic is not a calculator into which it is possible to punch the problem and allow it to compute the solution. This would be an idealist method. A materialist dialectic must grow from a patient, empirical examination of the facts and not be imposed on them…." [Ibid., p.271. In all of the above, bold emphases alone added.]

"But [Marx's] way of viewing things is not a doctrine but a method. It does not provide ready-made dogmas, but criteria for further research and the method for this research." [Engels to Werner Sombart, 11/03/1895; Marx and Engels (2004), p.461. Bold emphasis added.]

"Idealism and metaphysics are the easiest things in the world, because people can talk as much nonsense as they like without basing it on objective reality or having it tested against reality. Materialism and dialectics, on the other hand, need effort. They must be based on and tested by objective reality. Unless one makes the effort, one is liable to slip into idealism and metaphysics." [Mao, quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]

"Precisely because Marx's dialectic is a materialist one, however, it does not start from intuition, preconceptions or mystifying schemes, but from a full assimilation of scientific data. The method of investigation must differ from the method of exposition. Empirical facts have to be gathered first, the given state of knowledge has to be fully grasped. Only when this is achieved can a dialectical reorganization of the material be undertaken in order to understand the given totality. If this is successful, the result is a 'reproduction' in man's thought of this material totality: the capitalist mode of production." [Mandel (1976), p19. Bold emphasis added. (This links to a PDF.)]

But, why is it that only a sub-set of all the indicative sentences that can be formed in just one family of languages contains these 'hidden clues'? And even then, why does the grammar of these sentences have to be altered (from the predicative-, to the relational-form) to make them say what Idealists, and now DM-fans, want it to say. And why do it in a way that actually destroys the capacity of language to say anything at all?

To be sure, if language does in fact contain such hidden truths about reality (programmed into its structure, say), then it could indeed serve as just such a 'master key', and there would be no quibble. We could as a result openly admit our Idealism, loud and proud -- i.e., admit that substantive truths are obtained from thought, or from language, alone. It would then at least be clear that DM is based, not on an inversion of Hegel, but on a wholesale reversion to Hegel.

Nevertheless, this picture of the relation between thought and language was in fact committed to paper (or, indeed, parchment) long before the required evidence had turned up; metaphysical chicanery like this dates back to Anaximander, reaching classical form in the writings of Greek Philosophers like Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, Pseudo-Dionysius and Iamblichus -- the original progenitors of DM. In their work, empirical evidence didn't (and couldn't) have featured, let alone have an impact. And that isn't just because there wasn't much to speak of all those years ago. Nor could evidence justify the idea that reality is mirrored in this way in or by discourse, or reveal that there are 'essences' hidden behind 'appearances', and then inform us that every object and process in the entire universe is interconnected --, or even that everything is a UO, riddled with 'contradictions'. In fact, only if language is distorted in the way indicated above can it be made to say such convenient things.^36a

However, it is now reasonably clear what it is that 'justifies' such dialectical dogmatism: a commitment to LIMPE, motivated by the idea that reality has its own logical form, and a form that just happens to mirror Ancient Greek -- and more widely, Indo-European --, grammar; and distorted grammar, at that. In which case, this whole sordid affair begins to make a little more sense. The fact that there were clear political and ideological reasons why thinkers who belonged to, or were patronised by, the various ruling-elites the class war has inflicted on humanity -- who were pre-disposed toward making such moves, and whom the dialectical-classicists were only too happy to tail-end -- only serves to underline this point.³⁷

Again, it could be argued that since human knowledge has grown over many centuries, the input from practical activity can't fail to have been reflected in language. If so, DM-theorists are only extracting from language what had already been put there.

This response has the merit of substantiating the allegations advanced above (and in Essay Twelve Part One): in common with every other metaphysical system, DM is based on the fetishisation of language. That is, it is predicated on the view that language, far from being a means of communication, is 'really' a secret code that has profound truths about nature and society encoded within it. As will be shown in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is published), this approach to knowledge is based on the RRT. [Further discussion of this topic will be postponed until then; a summary of the argument can be accessed here.]

[RRT = Reverse Reflection Theory -- this is the theory that says the world reflects language, not the other way round -- basically it denies that language reflects the world.]

Nevertheless, the situation is far worse than the above might suggest; that is because Lenin made unqualified claims about all of reality for all of time (without exception) based on an examination of a few simplistic and unrepresentative sentences --, and even then, like Hegel, he had to doctor their grammar to make these ideas 'work'.

Even if the labours of previous generations of heroic abstractors had encoded into language all they knew, or thought they knew, about anything and everything, that wouldn't be enough to substantiate this theory. Lenin's claims were meant to apply to all of reality for all of time, way beyond the meagre knowledge or intellectual powers of these plucky ancestral abstractors, even had there been any. Plainly, these brave abstractors couldn't have programmed into language anything of which they were ignorant. So, Lenin's bold, universal extrapolation of dialectics right across all of reality for all of time actually projected this theory way beyond anything our ancestors could possibly have known, which, naturally, means that his words were indeed imposed on the facts.^37a

But even worse still: How would it be possible to guarantee that the information allegedly encoded in language is correct if there is no conceivable way it could be checked? For all Lenin knew, this encoded linguistic 'data' could have been totally wrong. Indeed, given DM-epistemology, there is in fact no way to distinguish truth from error. [More on that in Part Four of this Essay.]

An appeal to practice would be no help, here; as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, practice can't distinguish truth from error, either.

But, even if practice could do all that is claimed for it, no amount of evidence would be sufficient to substantiate the sort of claims Lenin made above (or those recorded in Essay Two); the conclusions he drew about the nature of the entire universe -- from a single sentence-type! -- were of an order that puts them way beyond any conceivable body of evidence. As such, his theory could only ever have been based on a thoroughly traditional, a priori view of reality, subsequently reflected back onto nature, and with just this tiny 'linguistic fig-leaf' of an excuse for cover.

Moreover, had Lenin gone about his daily agitational business uttering the kind of sentences he considered philosophically significant (such as "John is a man"), comrades would rightly have questioned his sanity. Just why such agitationally-, and propagandistically-challenged sentences were deemed significant is, therefore, something of a dialectical mystery.³⁸

Despite this, there are other reasons beyond those aired above for rejecting this view of language. Indeed, it is instructive to compare Lenin's conclusions about "John" with the following sentences, which presumably DM-theorists will want to reject:

That repudiation might perhaps be prompted by the fact that H2 and/or H2a express an ideologically-motivated belief for which there isn't one shred of acceptable evidence (nor could there be). But, if that is so, and to be consistent, we should also repudiate the following sentences (from Lenin) for similar reasons -- i.e., for lack of evidence:

There is no evidence for the truth of either these sentences, or at least none that isn't itself based on an ancient, garbled analysis of grammar, and only that.

But, of course, a search for 'evidence', even if one had ever been attempted, wouldn't make it that far, for the above are pseudo-grammatical, or metaphysical statements, the 'truth' of which supposedly follows from the meaning of the words they contain. No wonder then that Hegel and Lenin imagined they could extrapolate from the assumed truth of H3 and H4 (or from "S is P"-type propositions/'judgements' -- where "S" stands for "Subject" and "P" for "Predicate") to a set of theses that is supposedly true everywhere and everywhen. If, however, the above combinations of words possesses no sense, then neither H3 nor H4 is capable of being true or false (or even 'dialectically' both). [Why this is so is discussed in detail in Essay Twelve Part One, summary here.]

Moreover, at this point it is worth recalling that given certain definitions of the word "God", H2/H2a are in fact a tautologies! We can be reasonably sure that this imputed 'logical status' of those two sentences wouldn't be sufficient to guarantee their acceptance by a single atheist. No dialectician in her or his left mind would accept an argument that claimed that the whole truth of theology is contained in such propositions. We surely wouldn't agree with the claim that just because assorted priests and mystery-mongers -- who might be tempted to conclude that the past endeavours of intrepid religious abstractors and grammarians had programmed into language profound truths about the nature of the 'Godhead' --, that that fact alone (not that it is one!) forces us to accept this example of Divine Logic as Super-Empirically-true.^38a

Well, the same should surely be concluded about H1, H3 and H4. In fact, DM-theorists should only feel confident about their derivation of such a priori 'truths' from such sentences if they are prepared to acknowledge, say, the validity of Anselm's infamous "Ontological Argument" for the existence of 'God', since that argument manages to wring similar Super-Cosmic Verities about 'divine reality' from equally tortured prose.

Nevertheless, there are several serious problems with Lenin's reasoning, which require resolution before questions can even be raised about the support his theory might or might not gain from what little 'evidence' there is.

Lenin clearly interpreted the "is" in H1 as an "is" of identity (and later perhaps as an "is" of class inclusion). But, because it plainly isn't one of identity in the vernacular, both Lenin and Hegel imagined they could 'derive' several counter-intuitive conclusions from the incongruity they had artificially introduced into such sentences in this way.³⁹ However, instead of concluding perhaps that Hegel's "genius" had misled him -- or that this wasn't the only way (or even the most obvious, natural, or sane way) to interpret such simple sentences -- Lenin proceeded to weave several lengths of dialectical cloth from these slender threads of woolly thought.

The fact that the "is" of H1 isn't one of identity can be seen from Lenin's own use of it. Consider one of his more 'abstract' sentences:

H5: "[T]he opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical."

However, if "is" always indicates identity -- and could be interpreted as an expression of the form "ξ is identical with ζ" -- then we should be able to re-write H4 and H6 in the following manner:

[In H7, the verb "are" (from H6), and in H8 the verb "is" (from H6), have been replaced by "are identical with" and "is identical with", respectively, on 'sound' dialectical lines. (The reason why these terms have been highlighted in bold will soon become apparent.)]

It doesn't take any dialectical logic at all (and no bourgeois prejudice whatsoever) to see what nonsense results from this 'brilliant' Hegelian insight. Nor is it difficult to foresee the infinite task Lenin's 'analysis' holds open to those who have swallowed this theory as he, or anyone else, tries to say what the meaning is of each bold "is" (or the meaning of each bold "are") that recurs in "is identical with" (or in "are identical with") in H7 and H8, respectively, now made explicit in H9 and H10:

H10: The individual is identical with identical with opposed to the universal.

Here, the bold "is" from H8 and the bold "are" from H7 have been replaced with what we are told they really mean -- namely "is identical with" and "are identical with", respectively (both highlighted in bold again) -- to yield the nonsensical result we see in H9 and H10. In turn, two more similar replacements by their supposed 'dialectical' equivalents yields these gems:

H11: The opposites are identical with identical with identical with identical.

H12: The individual is identical with identical with identical with opposed to the universal.

Lest anyone thinks this is unfair to Lenin, or even Hegel, they are invited to try to say for themselves what the "is" in "is identical with" itself means (without thereby abandoning Hegel's theory!).

Neutral onlookers can only wish such brave souls plenty of luck, and hope they are blessed with boundless patience, limitless supplies of paper and ink -- and, of course, plenty of Prozac.

It is worth recalling, though, that the above collapse into incoherence has only arisen because dialecticians insist that the "is" of predication is really an "is" of identity -- i.e., that it is the same as "is identical with". By assuming this (again, with no proof), they themselves would be forced to use another "is" to reveal this good news to the rest of us -- as in:

But the middle "is" in bold in H13 cannot -- ex hypothesi cannot! -- be one of mere predication. It, too, according the Hegel has to be one of identity (in that it tells us what is or identity 'essentially' are). In that case, we would obtain the following from H13:

As each alleged "is" of predication is suitably replaced by an "is identical with" with which it is supposed to be identical. If anyone wants to go down that route, they, too, will require an endless supply of painkillers and anti-depressants. But, more fool them; they have been warned!^39b

On the other hand, those who hold that the "is" of predication is in reality just that (i.e., an "is" of predication -- or better, that "is" is part of the predicate expression to begin with!) aren't faced with such an infinite and morale-sapping task. That is because they seek neither to revise nor re-write ordinary language in such Idealist terms, replacing an ordinary "is" with another sort of "is" -- a dodge that 'allows' metaphysicians to think they can transform predicates into the Proper Names of abstract particulars as and when it suites them.

So, when genuine materialists say things like "Blair is a warmonger", they aren't saying that Blair is identical with a warmonger (which one?), they are merely saying that the description "warmonger" applies to the individual named "Blair".

You can put the Prozac away now, comrades; that ancient philosophical pseudo-problem has been dissolved.⁴⁰

[I have dealt with the objection that since the above aren't "essential judgements" or "essential predications" this entire argument is flawed from beginning to end, here, here, and here.]

However, the morbid (if not prurient) interest in John's manhood isn't confined to Lenin. We find a similar but less cautious version of it in comrade Novack's widely circulated book:

"This law of identity of opposites, which so perplexes and horrifies addicts of formal logic, can be easily understood, not only when it is applied to actual processes of development and interrelations of events, but also when it is contrasted with the formal law of identity. It is logically true that A equals A, that John is John…. But it is far more profoundly true that A is also non-A. John is not simply John: John is a man. This correct proposition is not an affirmation of abstract identity, but an identification of opposites. The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same is far more and other than John, the individual. Mankind is at the same time identical with, yet different from John." [Novack (1971), p.92. Bold emphases added.]

Contrary to what Novack imagines will be the reaction of any "addicts of formal logic" who might stumble across his book, they will find little in this passage to worry them -- or, indeed, prompt them to kick the habit. However, they will find much to amuse and bemuse them, just as they will find even more that will put them off Marxism forever -- that is, if they conclude that this is the best example of 'advanced logic' that Marxist dialecticians can come up with!

The highly clichéd DM-version of the LOI (that Novack also employs -- i.e., "A equals A") will be examined in detail in Essay Six, but Novack's own brand of superior logic immediately changes it into "John is John" (and not even "John equals John"). Novack then reproduces his own version of Hegel's egregious confusion of the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity -- a switch that Novack nowhere even attempts to justify or defend. [On that specific confusion, see below.]

It is worth asking therefore whether Novack (or any other dialectician) would try to pull the same syntactic trick in relation to the following sentence:

N6a: John equals someone who is a centimetre taller than his brother Jim, the reader is re-directed here for my response.]

If we were to apply 'Novackian logic' to N7, we would get these misbegotten sentences:

Mischievous readers might like to suggest what dialecticians would do with the following:

N11: John is planning to go on strike this week and he has just printed the strike leaflets.

N15: John is convinced that dialectical logic is wrong about the copula "is" being an "is" of identity.

It could be objected that both Hegel and Novack are only interested in analysing "essential predications", not ordinary predictions, since the former do involve identity, while the latter don't. Again, that objection has been defused here, here, and here.

Be this as it may, Novack then pulls an unrelated schematic sentence out of thin air (i.e., "A is also non-A"), which, with respect to John, he immediately mistranslates -- recall, this is Novack's own example! Hence, instead of using "John is also non-John" --, which would have been an obvious absurdity even though it is a correct translation of his own schematic sentence (i.e., "A is also non-A") -- Novack turns his attention to a non-equivalent paraphrase of it, namely "John is not simply John" -- which, plainly, would have been a translation of "A is not simply A". So, the schematically equivalent, non-negated version of that sentence (which is the necessary logical foil that Novack needed to set up a spurious IO) should have been "A is simply A", which nowhere appears in the above passage.

Even so, based on what Novack does say, "A is simply A" -- or "John is simply John" -- must have been the version of the LOI he had in mind, given that he then went on to use "John is not simply John" to contradict it. But, who apart from John is going to get excited about that version of the LOI? Is there a formal logician this side of the Kuiper Belt who would want to defend "A is simply A" as a legitimate, even if simplistic, form of the LOI? It manifestly isn't a classical example of the LOI. It isn't even Novack's example!

As we delve deeper into the murky depths of Novackian 'logic' we find the reasoning becomes even more perplexing. How, it might be wondered, is the simple sentence "John is a man" the expression of an IO? Surely, "John is a woman" would have been a better choice? Or maybe: "John is Peter"? Or perhaps even: "John is an ape-like ancestor of the human race"?

But, given the fact that such dialectically-interconnected 'entities' are supposed to "struggle" with and then turn into their 'dialectical opposites' (witness Plekhanov's clanger, below), and the fact that opposite tendencies (in objects or processes) eventually become apparent in the changes that emerge (because of the aforementioned "struggle" that is on-going in everything, and between all things, if Lenin is to be believed), doesn't this mean that John is about to become every man -- as he too changes into his 'opposite'? If John is in fact the opposite of all men, then surely he must one day become all men -- and they must likewise become him -- that is, after struggling with each and every single one of them -- if the DM-classics are telling us the truth!

[Anyone who doubts that this universal punch-up is a direct consequence of this crazy 'theory of change' should follow the first of the three links in the previous paragraph, check out what the DM-classicists themselves had to say about 'dialectical change', and then perhaps think again.]

In this universal, futuristic John-like world -- and world-like John --, where every man (or woman?) has become John and John has morphed into them, all struggle would surely cease, for then it would be true that John is everyone and everyone is John. In this universal Johnsville, the class struggle would surely come to an end, for then nothing would be the opposite of John, and the earth would be one huge John-centred tautological love-in.

Of course, if John is to turn into everything that he is not, then the entire universe will one day become this unfortunate character; Johntology of this peculiar sort seems to be the final denouement of the Big Bang, given such 'logic'. Wags might even call this the "Johntological Argument". On the other hand, if John isn't supposed to turn into everything he is not, then the Dialectical Gospels must be wrong, for they assure us that everything in the entire universe must "inevitably" turn into its own opposite, and vice versa.

[The counter-claim that each object/process has its own 'unique dialectical opposite', and hence won't turn into 'everything that they are not', was neutralised in Essay Eight Part Three, as well as here and here.]

Alternatively, back in the real world, if John is to turn into his opposite, he must become a man (as indeed he must if he is the opposite of "a man", as Novack asserts). In that case, what the dickens is he now? Is he a non-man, a sub-human, a rodent...? It seems he must be one or more of these if he has to become his opposite -- which opposite DL assures us is "a man". So, despite appearances to the contrary, "John is a man" really means the following (i.e., as soon as we don our 'dialectical specs' and reject the prejudices of 'commonsense' and 'bourgeois formal thinking'): John is (perhaps) an untermensch, for only then would it be possible for him to turn into his opposite -- "a man"!

On the other hand, and returning to an earlier point, if John and all men are opposites and subject to inevitable struggle, then it must be the case that all men are opposing or struggling with John. Is he therefore a sort of inter-galactic Donald Trump, whom everyone despises and would gladly slap insensible if they got half a chance? Is the entire human race therefore ganging up on this hapless character?

If not, then what is the point of this Novackian 'analysis'? Even in DM-terms it makes no sense.

Of course, Novack does make some sort of an attempt to substantiate this prize specimen of Super-Duper-Dialectical 'logic' by an appeal to the principle of class inclusion (or even of class identity!), in the following manner:

N16a: John is a member of the class of men. [I.e., paraphrasing Novack's: "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]

N16b: John is identical with the class of men. [Alternative paraphrase of "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]

If, as appears to be the case, Novack really did believe that H1 meant the same as (or implied) N16b, then his understanding of English was seriously defective. Novack never seems to have questioned the sense of asserting that an individual is identical with a class; no ordinary speaker (not the worse for drink, drugs or 'dialectics') would do this -- nor would anyone still in possession of their sanity. Indeed, if someone were to claim that John (or anyone else) was identical with a class that is as large as the class of men -- if we include women and children (!!), this class so far numbers possibly in excess of 107 billion individuals! --, that might prove sufficient grounds to send this rather odd individual off to seek professional help.

Clearly, N16b could only ever be (sort of) true if John was the only man left alive (compare this with M5, below: "John is the strike committee now -- since everyone else has been arrested"). But, even if H1 could be read as a disguised class inclusion statement (i.e., as N16a above would have it), it would still be impossible to extract from it all that Novack thought he could. Even Novack seems to half-recognise this since he had to substitute the following for N16a:

N16a: John is a member of the class of men. [I.e., paraphrasing Novack's: "The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same...."]

But, the first half of this (i.e., N17a) is false -- in fact, it is so bizarre, Novack should have been advised to resume taking his medication:

Quite apart from the fact that N17a changes the subject of the sentence (from John to Mankind), it plainly isn't true that mankind is identical with John (and H1 can only be made to say so on the basis of yet more 'innovative' grammar; i.e., confusing the "is" of predication with the "is" of identity). Even a New Labour spin doctor would have had problems twisting H1 into so grotesque a shape. At the very best, Novack might have been able to argue that John and the rest of 'mankind' share their common humanity, or at least a range of genetic, psychological, and social 'properties' or characteristics, and he might then have been able to infer from this that they are all equally human. But, anyone who went down that route should rightly be awarded a prize for "Stating The Bleeding Obvious" (to paraphrase Monty Python).

On the other hand, any normal person reading H17a would surely take it to mean that John is perhaps the only survivor of a horrific worldwide catastrophe of some sort, that John was all that was left of mankind -- and that therefore John is mankind (or, humankind); i.e., he is their sole representative left alive -- The Omega Man!

Again, the (normal) way to interpret this would be to regard it as suggesting that John might not actually be human, or maybe not fully human. Perhaps he is half-animal, a clone, or maybe an alien? But if so, what is all the fuss about? Indeed, would there be such a fuss if the sentence had been "Joan is a man"?

if the "is" of N17b is replaced by "is identical with" that we are assured it should be?

if we replace the "is" with "is identical with someone who is", along the lines we will meet below? And yet, both of these are susceptible of yet another infinite regress, like the one we met here.

Be this as it may, N17 would surely be re-interpreted -- and far more honestly -- as one or more of the following:

N18: John is all that is left of humanity because he is a clone -- making him different from other men -- who, because he was a defective and resentful clone, proceeded to wipe out the entire human male population.

N19: John is the sole survivor of a nuclear war, but unfortunately the radiation neutered him, making him different from other men.

N20: John finally 'came out' and acknowledged he was gay, while the rest of the male population had sex-change operations (making John different from all other men), every one of whom died as a result.

N21: John is the only man left on earth, but he is very popular with the remaining women because of his unique sensitivity, a trait which distinguishes him from all other men, who no longer exist having been wiped out by their angry womenfolk for their sexist disregard of their feelings.

These (and possibly several other alternatives) would be the only way to interpret the odd sentences Novack thought it wise to inflict on his readers.

In that case, the only "horrifying" thing about all this is that Novack imagined such stilted English (compounded by the sort of reasoning that all but the seriously deranged would surely disown) was anything other than an insult to ordinary workers -- none of whom would ever talk this way.

Finally -– and independently of the above -- Novack failed to inform us precisely what justified him 'deriving' such profound, scientific-looking truths from a few rather odd-looking sentences. Exactly what could possibly sanction the bold theses Novack 'inferred' from this tortured prose about John's identity/sexuality -- that is, over and above an appeal to the assumed existential import of a few contingent features of a minor sub-branch of Indo-European grammar (which he misconstrued anyway)?

Has all the supporting evidence Novack insisted upon been lost in the same anti-dialectical fire that seems to have consumed Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Mao, and Trotsky's data?

So much for the use to which John's manhood is subjected by an OT of Novack's undoubted stature. However, we find John cropping up all over the place; even STDs can't resist commenting on him and his cosmically-significant sexuality. Here is a passage from a dusty old (but classic) Stalinist text from the 1930s:

"The central fallacy involved in all metaphysical reasoning is -- expressed in terms of logic -- the complete confusion of the relations between the categories of Particular and General: of Unique and 'Universal.' Thus, for instance, if I affirm: 'John is a Man' I affirm that 'John' is a particular specimen of the general (or 'universal') category 'Man'. I understand what 'John' is by subsuming him under (or 'identifying him with') the wider category 'Man'. Metaphysical reasoning proceeds on the tacit or explicit assumption that the general category 'Man' and the particular category 'John' exist independently of each other: that over and above all the Particular 'Johns' in creation (and 'Toms,' and 'Dicks' and 'Harrys' and so on) over and above all particular men, there exists somewhere -- and would exist if all particular men ceased to be, or had never been -- the general category 'Man.'...

"The dialectical method traverses this rigid metaphysic completely. The category 'Man' includes, certainly, all possible 'men.' But 'Man' and 'men', though distinct, separate, and separable logical categories, are only so as logical discriminations, as ways of looking at one and the same set of facts. 'Man' -- is -- all men, conceived from the standpoint of their generality -- that in which all men are alike. 'Men' is a conception of the same fact -- 'all men' -- but in respect of their multiplicity, the fact that no two of them are exactly alike. For dialectics, the particular and the general, the unique and the universal -- for all their logical opposition -- exist, in fact, in and by means of each other. The 'Johniness' of John does not exist, cannot possibly be conceived as existing, apart from his 'manniness'. We know 'Man' only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one group.

"It is the recognition of this 'identity of all (logical pairs of) opposites,' and in the further recognition that all categories form, logically, a series from the Absolutely Universal to the Absolutely Unique -- (in each of which opposites its other is implicit) -- that the virtue of Hegel's logic consists…. Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is -- a man. Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns) are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by observing those things in which he is not -- what the other men are. At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John (i.e. all man (sic)) in general.

"…When I affirm that 'John is a man' I postulate the oppositional contrast between John and not-John and their coexistence (the negation of their mutual negation) all at once. Certainly as the logical process is worked in my mind I distinguish first one pole, then the other of the separation and then their conjunction. But all three relations -- or better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Jackson (1936), pp.103-06. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Several paragraphs merged.]

Anyone who has struggled through to the end of this passage might emerge from that ordeal a little puzzled as to how John is actually capable of being a "particular specimen" of the general (or 'universal') category "Man" -- that worry not helped by the author's liberal and sloppy use of quotation marks.

[The single ones given in the above passage were in fact double quotes in the original; they were changed to single quotes because of the conventions governing their use adopted at this site. (See W1, below, where the originals have been restored.)] That is because, once encased in such quotes, "John" becomes a word not a man. And "Man" itself is another word, not a category, class or concept.

I have to confess, try as hard as I might, I couldn't quite see the first word ("John") physically contained in the second term ("Man"), as it seems it should, according to comrade Jackson.

W1: If I affirm: "John is a man" I affirm that "John" is a particular specimen of the general (or "universal") category "Man". I understand what "John" is by subsuming him under (or "identifying him with") the wider category "Man".

Even so, my concern has in no way been allayed by the author's casual reference to the "category 'Man'" to which "John" supposedly belongs (he being a "particular specimen" of it), since it is even more difficult to see how a word like "Man" can be both a category and a word all in one go. On the other hand, if the word "John" is in fact an example of the category named by "Man", the latter must include both men and words as exemplars -- which might help explain John's continual oscillation between the two.

And, it won't do to complain that comrade Jackson was merely summarising the traditional "metaphysical" analysis of this tediously overworked sentence, since not only do his own criticisms depend on these confusions, his subsequent 'dialectical analysis' does, too. Nor will it do to suggest that Jackson is using a different convention, which means that his use of quotation marks doesn't imply that "John" is word, but a category, as he claims. Readers can check for themselves (if they have access to Jackson's tome): there are no stated conventions anywhere in the book.

Jackson's careless use of language and quotation marks (alongside his serial confusion of use with mention) isn't of course unrelated to the innovative and rather self-important 'reasoning' the above passage exhibits, the most startling example of which is the turn toward the "concrete" near the end:

"Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is -- a man. Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns) are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by observing those things in which he is not -- what the other men are. At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John (i.e. all man) in general." [Ibid., p.105.]

[We might note in passing the bourgeois individualism obvious in this quotation; comrade Jackson seems to think he learnt all this, and did all that 'distinguishing', by himself, in the comfort of his own head! And worse, he thinks we all do likewise. Of course, as expected, he neglected to supply, quote or even reference the evidence that might substantiate such innovative psychology.]

Indeed, it might well be wondered how all men could have been successfully conjoined in, or recruited to, the one category Man? That category is surely abstract -- it doesn't walk the earth, breathe, talk, or even work for a living. And yet all men do most of these things at some point in their lives. In what sense then are all men embroiled in this peculiar abstraction?

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

In like manner, we might wonder what has become of John if he belongs to a class that is nowhere to be found anywhere on the planet.

Other questions soon force themselves on us: Is a category a sort of 'ethereal club' that all males sign up to, or into which they are inducted, at birth? Alternatively, are they all metaphysically conscripted, as it were, at the moment of conception -- their membership card perhaps taking the form of certain sets of chromosomes? Or, are they only honorary members, waiting patiently in line for recruitment until some bright spark (like comrade Jackson) helpfully remembers to abstract them into it?

If so, what were they in the meantime? 'Limbo men'? Or, just plain, unvarnished ordinary men -- i.e., males, but now without quotation marks holding them in a vice-like grip --, and hence as naked as the day before they were unceremoniously 'abstracted' without their consent?

As seems clear, comrade Jackson was relying on his own understanding of what look for all the world like ordinary words in order to derive several counter-intuitive conclusions following on from Hegel and Lenin's lead. But, if he was being sincere in what he wrote, then, like Novack, his comprehension of English looks about as reliable as his 'logic'. Are we really supposed to believe (could anyone believe -- did this comrade actually believe!?) that we may only begin to distinguish characters like John from all the "not-Johns" by observing "those things in which he is not -- what the other men are"? Imagine, then, this author meeting, say, the real John for the first time. Would he have to wait until he had considered all the "not-Johns" (who "comprise the rest of the human race") before he could distinguish John from anyone else? If so, how on earth could he even begin?

[We might well wonder exactly who comrade Jackson thought he was the first time he looked in the mirror. Perhaps this: "At least I'm not-John"?]

Until this comrade had met every other member of the human race, given this view, he wouldn't be able to tell any of these uncategorised, shapeless entities apart. But, the very same rigmarole must surely apply to all these "not-Johns", too. With respect to every single one of them, therefore, this comrade wouldn't be able to distinguish such formless shadows from the rest until they had also been distinguished them from all the "not-not-Johns". In turn, he couldn't do that until he had examined all of these amorphous spectres and distinguished them from…, well what? Even worse, he wouldn't be able to call either of these ghostly classes "the not-John group", or "the not-not-John category" until he knew who John himself was! But, ex hypothesi, he couldn't do that until all the rest had been identified..., and so on and so forth.

Neither side of this dialectically bent coin is identifiable without the other already having been; indeed, they both fall flat together. In which case, the dialectical spin into which John is now allegedly locked can't be rendered 'determinate' at any point -- despite the fact that comrade Jackson assures us that these relations are somehow objectively there before we even begin to think about them!

Lest the reader concludes that this comrade is right, and that we do indeed need to be able to distinguish John-like characters from what they are not, before we can know who or what John is, it might prove helpful to consider a slightly less pragmatically-challenged sentence about him, such as this:

Do any of us have to meet a single lottery jackpot winner in order to know what this is telling us? Do we really need to be introduced to every comrade who hasn't won a jackpot in order to do that? What about every non-comrade who has won one? Or, indeed, every non-comrade who hasn't?

Perhaps this example isn't of the 'right type' in that it doesn't use a genuine universal term. Consider then the following:

Lest again it be thought that we would have to meet every single insect before we knew who or what John is, we only need recall that according to David Attenborough's recent TV programme on these wee beasties, there are 200,000,000 of them for each one of us.

Good luck to any brave dialecticians who think they are up to that challenge!

Again it might be thought that W3 isn't a positive affirmative universal proposition. Well, putting to one side the hopelessly confused notion, "positive affirmative proposition", beloved of obsolete logic texts, consider this:

This isn't a negative proposition (or if it is, its two negatives 'cancel', to use that obsolete jargon for the moment), but it is universal. Now, just try and work out the introductory protocols one would have to observe to be able to distinguish John from all those non-mammals, if comrade Jackson is to be believed. Dialectical sleuths would have to visit the outer fringes of the universe and introduce themselves to every single proton (surely these are non-mammals?), in order to be able to figure out who John is. And that would only represent the beginning of such an Herculean, of not Sisyphean, task.

Is this proposition positive, negative, affirmative, universal, singular...? While we wait for a reply to that unanswerable question, bored readers might like to figure out who they would have to bump into in order to understand it. And then, how they would go about that unwelcome quest if they don't yet understand the sentence that prompted that aimless exercise in the first place!

[Which sentence, of course, they wouldn't yet understand since they could only grasp it at the end of that tedious time-taking task! And if they don't understand it yet, how would they know what to do in order to confirm it?]

Nevertheless, an earlier paragraph in the above passage claimed that the ability to distinguish John from other men must be understood in the following way:

"We know 'Man' only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one group." [Ibid., p.104. Bold emphasis alone added.]

W6: We know "Man" only as the common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other men -- from that generality "Man" by means of which we classify "all men" in one group. [Original quotation marks restored, again.]

Once more, the careless use of quotation marks in W6 (apparent in Jackson's use of the word "Man" to express the "common characteristic of all particular men") only succeeds in prompting the following question: Do all men actually share in common the letters "M", "a" and "n", as the emphasised clause suggests? [That is because the clause in question concerns the word "man", which is, plainly, comprised of those three letters.] Are we now to conclude that every man has a sort of metaphysical tattoo etched on them at birth -- or, maybe, at conception?

"But all three relations -- or better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Ibid., p.106. Bold emphases alone added.]

This example of 'path-breaking logic', courtesy of comrade Jackson, appears to suggest that we can infer substantive truths about reality from the logical relation (or, maybe, from that which is "presupposed in the logical act"), which appears to hold between concepts, or perhaps even between words themselves (or is it between letters?).

If so, this might help explain why this comrade thought it unnecessary to mention any of the evidence that must exist (somewhere?) that substantiates this latest example of LIE. Where, then, are the autopsy reports that confirm that all of humanity (including women) are branded with the mystic letters "M", "a", and "n"? Where, too, is the data from astronomy that verifies the fact that alongside the primeval goop that comprised the material of the Big Bang (if it contained any, and if there was one) there was indeed this Dialectical Trinity, a "whole three-fold relation" that "exist[ed] from the beginning"?

Perhaps this is all unfair parody and sarcasm at comrade Jackson's expense when he is no longer here to defend himself? Maybe the word "Man" is really meant to refer to a characteristic that all men share? But, that means "Man" must be the Proper Name of that characteristic -- so it can't be a characteristic itself. Anyway, do women possess this trait? Or, are we to suppose that the latter have "Woman" in common? What about transsexuals? Are these individuals born with some sort of spelling mistake? Indeed, if someone had a sex change operation, would this mean that the surgeons involved had to erase and then insert a few new marks into this patient's 'metaphysical bar code'?

Of course, the real reason this author had to employ such stilted and wooden English (peppered with all those incautious quotation marks) -- and which is easily lampooned as a result -- is that if he had tried to use ordinary language (as Marx suggested he should) he wouldn't have been able to serve his readers this bowl of dialectical goulash. That is why, as soon as he translated what he fancied he thought he meant into the specialised terminology he unwisely lifted from Hegel (festooned with all those quotation marks), his reasoning became incoherent.

No wonder DM has never actually seized the masses if this is the gobbledygook dialectical militants used to -- and still do -- dish up!

We encountered the following example of Dialectical Legerdemain in Essay Two, but it is worth repeating it here if only because it spares us yet more prurient gossip about John and his much ballyhooed 'Manhood':

"This law of the permeation of opposites will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given thought. Upon closer examination you will discover that you cannot utter a single meaningful sentence which does not comprehend this proposition.... Let us take a rather common sentence: 'The lion is a beast of prey.' A thing, A, the lion is equated with a thing B. At the same time a distinction is made between A and B. So far as the lion is a beast of prey, it is equated with all beasts of that kind. At the same time, in the same sentence, it is distinguished from the kind. It is impossible to utter a sentence which will not contain the formula, A equals B. All meaningful sentences have a form which is conditioned by the permeation of opposites. This contradiction [is] contained in every meaningful sentence, the equation and at the same time differentiation between subject and predicate...." [Thalheimer (1936), pp.168-69. Bold emphases added.]

Thalheimer has clearly allowed DL to corrupt his memory since it made him forget about the countless sentences that aren't of the form that he assures us we can't avoid using (i.e., "A equals B"). Fortunately, Thalheimer refuted this peculiar idea of his at the very beginning of the above paragraph: "This law of the permeation of opposites will probably be new to you, something to which you have probably not given thought." That sentence and countless others in his book manifestly aren't of the form "A equals B". This is surely logic for simpletons, not socialists.

Independently of the above, it might be interesting to consider how comrade Thalheimer would have interpreted this sentence:

Good luck to anyone who wants to translate that into dialectical gobbledygook.

Of course, the source of this comedy of errors is Hegel's Logic. Here is a passage we met earlier:

"One's first impression about the Judgment is the independence of the two extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to be a thing or term per se, and the predicate a general term outside the said subject and somewhere in our heads. The next point is for us to bring the latter into combination with the former, and in this way frame a Judgment. The copula 'is', however, enunciates the predicate of the subject, and so that external subjective subsumption is again put in abeyance, and the Judgment taken as a determination of the object itself. The etymological meaning of the Judgment (Urtheil) in German goes deeper, as it were declaring the unity of the notion to be primary, and its distinction to be the original partition. And that is what the Judgment really is.

"In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. (Propositions such as, 'The particular is the universal', and 'The individual is the particular', belong to the further specialisation of the judgment.) It shows a strange want of observation in the logic-books, that in none of them is the fact stated, that in every judgment there is still a statement made, as, the individual is the universal, or still more definitely, The subject is the predicate (e.g. God is absolute spirit). No doubt there is also a distinction between terms like individual and universal, subject and predicate: but it is none the less the universal fact, that every judgment states them to be identical.

"The copula 'is' springs from the nature of the notion, to be self-identical even in parting with its own. The individual and universal are its constituents, and therefore characters which cannot be isolated. The earlier categories (of reflection) in their correlations also refer to one another: but their interconnection is only 'having' and not 'being', i.e. it is not the identity which is realised as identity or universality. In the judgment, therefore, for the first time there is seen the genuine particularity of the notion: for it is the speciality or distinguishing of the latter, without thereby losing universality....

"The Judgment is usually taken in a subjective sense as an operation and a form, occurring merely in self-conscious thought. This distinction, however, has no existence on purely logical principles, by which the judgment is taken in the quite universal signification that all things are a judgment. That is to say, they are individuals which are a universality or inner nature in themselves -- a universal which is individualised. Their universality and individuality are distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical with the other.

"The interpretation of the judgment, according to which it is assumed to be merely subjective, as if we ascribed a predicate to a subject is contradicted by the decidedly objective expression of the judgment. The rose is red; Gold is a metal. It is not by us that something is first ascribed to them. A judgment is however distinguished from a proposition. The latter contains a statement about the subject, which does not stand to it in any universal relationship, but expresses some single action, or some state, or the like. Thus, 'Caesar was born at Rome in such and such a year waged war in Gaul for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, etc.', are propositions, but not judgments. Again it is absurd to say that such statements as 'I slept well last night' or 'Present arms!' may be turned into the form of a judgment. 'A carriage is passing by' should be a judgment, and a subjective one at best, only if it were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or whether it and not rather the point of observation was in motion: in short, only if it were desired to specify a conception which was still short of appropriate specification....

"The abstract terms of the judgement, 'The individual is the universal', present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is immediately concrete, while the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in short the universal. But the two elements are connected together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its universality) must contain the speciality of the subject, must, in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity between subject and predicate; which being thus unaffected by this difference in form, is the content." [Hegel (1975), pp.230-34, §§166-169. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

[This passage in fact continues in the same vein for several more pages, and readers keen to develop a throbbing headache are welcome to follow the above link and read it for themselves. There is a considerably more involved and convoluted passage like this in Hegel's Science of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999)) which has been reproduced in Appendix A for the benefit of those suffering from insomnia.]

As the reader will no doubt have noticed, Hegel's comments are considerably more complex than those found in the poor relation that goes by the name "materialist dialectics" -- even if it is no less incomprehensible.

At least Hegel was a competent mystic who could knit-together impenetrable jargon to compete with the best. In fact, he could have confused for his country.

Nevertheless, in the above passage Hegel appears to limit positive judgements to what others have called "universal affirmative propositions", and then restrict propositions themselves to what others have called "singular affirmative propositions". That isn't a happy distinction. [Of course, this isn't to suggest Hegel considered only positive forms of either. On that, see Inwood (1992), pp.151-53.]

Although Hegel adapted mediaeval and Kantian ideas in this area, he superimposed his own idiosyncratic constraints on the distinction between a mere "satz" (sentence/proposition) and an "urteil" (a judgement) -- which will be examined in more detail in Essay Twelve Part Five (when it is published).

However, because Hegel based his theories on these highly dubious, ancient and seriously limited logical distinctions, much of what he had to say is of little value. As we will see in Essay Twelve, these categories are of little use to scientists or mathematicians -- least of all philosophers and genuine logicians --, since they are far too crude and restrictive.

H2: Anyone who knows Marx's work will conclude that he is second to none in his analysis of the economic forces and processes operating in Capitalism as well as most of those constitutive of other Modes of Production.

H3: Any prime factor of an even number between two and one hundred is less than a composite number not equal to but greater than fifty.

H4: Most of those who admire some who do not despise themselves often avoid sitting opposite any who criticise individuals who claim membership of the minority break-away faction of the Socrates Appreciation Society.

H5: Today, Blair met several activists who think his policy on Iraq is a betrayal of his few remaining socialist principles.

Are these universal, particular, negative, or positive? Are they judgements or propositions? But, these sort of propositions (and worse!) feature in mathematics and the sciences all the time (to say nothing of everyday speech, excepting perhaps H4). Indeed, the serious limitations of the restrictive old logic, with its incapacity to handle complex sentences in mathematics, and those involving multiple generality, relations and complex forms of negation, inspired Frege to recast the entire discipline in its modern form over a hundred and thirty years ago -- breaking news of which has yet to filter through to most dialectically-addled brains. [On that, see Essay Four.]

Of course, the banal "judgements" that Hegel himself examined only serve further to confirm that conclusion. But, which scientist (for goodness sake!) is going to get excited over "The rose is red"? And although "Gold is a metal" might appear in Chemistry textbooks, only an eight year-old will learn much from it.

To be sure, some of the counter-examples considered in this Essay don't apply directly (or, at least, in any straight-forward sense) to issues of concern to Hegel, or even DM-fans, since they aren't "judgements", but propositions. And yet, what is "The rose is red"? It certainly looks like a proposition not a "judgement". However, Hegel also appears to have believed that the same set of words -- "The rose is red", for instance -- can oscillate between to apparently unstable states: being a judgement and being a proposition (see, for example, John McCumber's comment, quoted below). Nevertheless, as we will also see in Essay Twelve, the distinction Hegel drew between propositions and judgements is unsustainable, anyway. [Until that is published, the reader is directed to Rosenthal (1998), pp.111-36.]

"By virtue of this negativity which, as an extreme of the judgment, is at the same time self-related, the predicate is an abstract individual. For example, in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, the predicate enunciates only one of the many properties of the rose; it singles out this particular one which, in the subject, is a concrescence with the others; just as in the dissolution of the thing, the manifold properties which inhere in it, in acquiring self-subsistence as matters, become individualised. From this side, then, the proposition of the judgment runs thus: the universal is individual.

"In bringing together this reciprocal determination of subject and predicate in the judgment, we get a twofold result. First that immediately the subject is, indeed, something that simply is, an individual, while the predicate is the universal. But because the judgment is the relation of the two, and the subject is determined by the predicate as a universal, the subject is the universal. Secondly, the predicate is determined in the subject; for it is not a determination in general, but of the subject; in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, this fragrance is not any indeterminate fragrance, but that of the rose; the predicate is therefore an individual. Now since subject and predicate stand in the relationship of the judgment, they have to remain mutually opposed as determinations of the Notion; just as in the reciprocity of causality, before it attains its truth, the two sides have to retain their self-subsistence and mutual opposition in face of the sameness of their determination. When, therefore, the subject is determined as a universal, we must not take the predicate also in its determination of universality -- else we should not have a judgment -- but only in its determination of individuality; similarly, when the subject is determined as an individual, the predicate is to be taken as a universal....

"We have already referred above to the prevalent idea that it depends merely on the content of the judgment whether it be true or not, since logical truth concerns only the form and demands only that the said content shall not contradict itself. The form of the judgment is taken to be nothing more than the relation of two notions. But we have seen that these two notions do not have merely the relationless character of a sum, but are related to one another as individual and universal. These determinations constitute the truly logical content, and, be it noted, constitute in this abstraction the content of the positive judgment; all other content that appears in a judgment (the sun is round, Cicero was a great orator in Rome, it is day now, etc.) does not concern the judgment as such; the judgment merely enunciates that the subject is predicate, or, more definitely, since these are only names, that the individual is universal and vice versa. By virtue of this purely logical content, the positive judgment is not true, but has its truth in the negative judgment. All that is demanded of the content is that it shall not contradict itself in the judgment; but as has been shown it does contradict itself in the above judgment....

"Since the negation affects the relation of the judgment, and we are dealing with the negative judgment still as such, it is in the first place still a judgment; consequently we have here the relationship of subject and predicate, or of individuality and universality, and their relation, the form of the judgment. The subject as the immediate which forms the basis remains unaffected by the negation; it therefore retains its determination of having a predicate, or its relation to the universality. What is negated, therefore, is not the universality as such in the predicate, but the abstraction or determinateness of the latter which appeared as content in contrast to that universality. Thus the negative judgment is not total negation; the universal sphere which contains the predicate still subsists, and therefore the relation of the subject to the predicate is essentially still positive; the still remaining determination of the predicate is just as much a relation. If, for example, it is said that the rose is not red, it is only the determinateness of the predicate that is negated and separated from the universality which likewise belongs to it; the universal sphere, colour, is preserved; in saying that the rose is not red, it is assumed that it has a colour, but a different one. In respect of this universal sphere the judgment is still positive." [Hegel (1999), pp.633-40, §§1364-76. I have used the online version here. Bold emphases alone added.]

"The rose is fragrant" and "The rose is not red" don't look like 'essential' propositions, nor yet "judgements" -- although, as has have already been noted, Hegel ran these two logical categories together, depending on how the "subject" was to be understood or conceived (again, on that, see below) --, as we can see from the next paragraph:

"in which the sides of the judgment would have fallen completely asunder and only their self-relation would be expressed, while their relation to one another would be dissolved and the judgment consequently sublated." [Ibid., p.634, §1366.]

Here two propositions are also two judgements. It isn't easy to make much sense of that passage.

Nevertheless, John McCumber did make some attempt to extricate Hegel-fans from this dialectical briar patch:

"The second of them [McCumber is here responding to two objections to Hegel's ideas about belief -- RL] can be habilitated via Hegel's famous distinction between a 'judgement' (Urteil) and a 'proposition' or 'sentence' (two possible meanings of Satz; I will translate it as 'assertion' to capture both). While an 'assertion' simply unites any subject and predicate, a 'judgement' claims to present the same object twice: once under the form of an individual, and again as a universal. We may rephrase this by saying that a judgement, unlike mere assertion, claims to give a complete account of what an individual thing is. The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature.

"This completeness claim seems to make judgements bizarre creatures indeed; but Hegel explains that the completeness of the account of an individual thing offered by a 'judgement' is in fact relative to purposes at hand. Such judgements do not only occur in ordinary speech, but play a distinctive role in the fixation of belief: 'that is a wagon,' for example, is a judgement only if the nature of the thing has previously been put into doubt. That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [McCumber (1993), pp.37-38. Italic emphases in the original; bold added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

McCumber in fact admits that it will take the rest of his book to untangle this mess (p.39) -- my paraphrase, not his! Despite this, exactly how a judgement differs from an emphatic assertion still seems unclear.

The fact that Hegel considers propositions like "The rose is fragrant" and judgements like "The sun is round" (isn't it in fact spherical?) to make his point might mean that the objections to the criticisms of Hegel noted above are themselves misguided. [Again, see Inwood (1992), pp.151-53, on this.]

In response, it is worth asking: Exactly how does "The rose is red" manage to "give a complete account of what an individual thing is?" In which case, McCumber's assertion that "The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature" is far from the truth, to say the least.

In the above passage, McCumber introduces another consideration that at first sight appears to clear things up:

"Hegel explains that the completeness of the account of an individual thing offered by a 'judgement' is in fact relative to purposes at hand. Such judgements do not only occur in ordinary speech, but play a distinctive role in the fixation of belief: 'that is a wagon,' for example, is a judgement only if the nature of the thing has previously been put into doubt. That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [Ibid; bold emphases added.]

Hence, it is relative to the "purposes at hand" that a sentence like "That is a wagon" becomes a judgement, but "only if the nature of the thing has previously been put in doubt." Consequently:

"That it is in fact a wagon is then a complete account of its nature for the purposes at hand: the judgement assures us that the wagonhood of the object is all we need to know about it; acceptance of it ends our present enquiry into its nature." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]

And yet, one might well wonder how such a doubt might be expressed. Perhaps like this: "Is that a wagon? I'm not convinced." Or maybe, "I'm not too sure what counts as a wagon, can you help me out?" Or possibly even, "I can't tell whether that object in the distance is a wagon or a coach. What do you think?" In which case, "That is a wagon" would merely be an assertion, which would, hopefully, remove all reasonable doubt.

While the truth of a given proposition, p, might be challenged by asserting its negation, or merely by simply denying it is true, who expresses a doubt (as opposed to posing a challenge or raising a query, like the foregoing) in the form of an assertion?

The point of that question will become a little clearer if we consider what else McCumber had to say:

"While an 'assertion' simply unites any subject and predicate, a 'judgement' claims to present the same object twice: once under the form of an individual, and again as a universal. We may rephrase this by saying that a judgement, unlike mere assertion, claims to give a complete account of what an individual thing is. The subject presents the thing as a mere denotatum; the predicate presents its complete nature." [Ibid. Bold emphasis alone added.]

In which case, it seems that propositions and judgements are both assertions, but propositions only become judgements if they settle a doubt, or which maybe neutralise/assuage one. But, once again: How can an assertion also be an expression of doubt? How can what has already been admitted to be such and such by means of an assertion (namely, in this case, the proposition "That is a wagon" -- recall, that that set of words only becomes a judgement when those very same words settle some doubt or other, according to McCumber) -- how can it also constitute an expression of doubt?

Anyone replying with V2 in answer to V1 would be regarded as distinctly odd, at best, somewhat deranged, at worst.

Again, perhaps someone could express a doubt by asserting something like, "That isn't a wagon". But how would any of the above settle things if the object in question isn't actually a wagon, and the assertion, "That is a wagon", is what created the doubt in the first place? And what if a doubt -- such as, "Is that a wagon over there in the distance?" -- had been cleared up by the following assertion, "No, it's not a wagon, just a very good painting of a wagon", when it turns out that it wasn't a wagon after all?

But, let us suppose for the purposes of argument that "That isn't a wagon" is what created the said doubt. How does "That is a wagon" now remove the doubt? They are both assertions, and it is always open to the individual who said "That isn't a wagon" to respond, "I'm sorry, you are mistaken; it isn't a wagon, it is in fact a mock up of one made for the next scene in the film". To which the other responds "A mock up of a wagon is still a wagon!" Which one of these is the judgement and which the proposition? Neither has settled the question whether it is indeed a wagon. Do mock-up wagons count as wagons? Does a model of a wagon count as one? What about this Magritte painting? Is it correct that it isn't a pipe?

It could be replied that what matters here is which one of these sentences cleared things up in the end. In other words, a judgement is simply an assertion that turns out to be true.

Anyway, we have still failed to consider this seemingly fatal objection: How is an assertion like "That isn't a wagon" an expression of doubt as opposed to it possibly being the expression of a difference of opinion? What we lack here is a genuine assertion that is also an expression of doubt. In fact, as already noted, doubts are expressed in the manner outlined above, not by means of assertions:

And yet, one might well wonder how such a doubt might be expressed. Perhaps like this: "Is that a wagon? I'm not convinced." Or maybe "I'm not too sure what counts as a wagon, can you help me out?" Or possibly even, "I can't tell whether that object in the distance is a wagon or a coach. What do you think?" In which case, "That is a wagon" would merely be an assertion, which would, hopefully, remove all reasonable doubt.

Who in their left mind would assert something and express doubt at the same time by means of the very same words? McCumber conspicuously failed to cite even one example where an assertion can be used to express a doubt. In fact, an assertion is the exact opposite of expressing a doubt! "That is a wagon, but I doubt it" makes no sense -- nor does "That isn't a wagon, but I doubt it isn't, and so should you."^40a1

Couldn't someone assert the following "I doubt that that is a wagon!" But that is the expression of doubt not the assertion of a doubt. Who has ever said, "I assert that I doubt x, y, or z!"? Of course, someone might be quite emphatic about their doubt "No, I really do doubt that that is x, y, or z!" And yet that is just an emphatic expression of a doubt, not an assertion of one. Admittedly, someone else could assert something like this: "Look, NN doubts x, y, or z!" But that is an assertion about NN's doubt not an assertion of a doubt itself.

Furthermore, any indicative sentence can be turned into an 'essential' judgement/proposition by such means if it clears up a given doubt ("in the present circumstances", which addendum is itself so vague it looks like yet another 'get-out-of-jail-free' card), and if McCumber is to be believed.

If Q2 clears up this doubt, then it must be an 'essential' proposition/judgement, in which case the "is" here must be one of identity, and Q2 should become:

Is anyone prepared to defend that as a legitimate way to represent what Q2 is attempting to say?

Hence, in the light of the above, McCumber's attempt to explain what Hegel was banging on about is no help at all.

So, as we have just seen, Hegel calls some sentences both propositions and judgements, while some sentences (such as "The rose is fragrant") seem to oscillate between the two! Perhaps some sense can be made of this, but I'm not holding my breath, especially given the unsatisfactory attempt made by McCumber to clear things up.

Lawler (1982) is easily the best article I have so far encountered in my attempt to find out if there are any DM-theorists who know what a 'dialectical contradiction' actually is. His essay also makes some attempt to defend the reading of the "is" of predication as an "is" of identity -- for example, when that participle is used in sentences like "Socrates is mortal" and "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock".

It will soon become apparent that Lawler has himself conflated Hegel's comments about "judgements" with those about "propositions" -- but since Hegel was himself thoroughly confused in this area, as we have just seen, this is hardly Lawler's fault. Although, having said that, just like McCumber, Lawler does precious little to clear up the mess.

However, because this Essay is about "Materialist Dialectics", and not the Über-Mystical version of 'dialectics' promulgated by Hegel, I will confine my comments here to what Lawler had to say, not the linguistic spaghetti Hegel cooked up. [Nevertheless, aspects of Hegel's work that are relevant to the aims of this Essay will also be considered (and then in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six -- summaries here and here).]

Referring to Bertrand Russell's criticism of Hegel (which criticism is vaguely similar to the line adopted in these Essays), Lawler claims that:

"Russell accuses Hegel of confusing these two different uses of 'is'. It is not necessary to deny the distinction made by Russell in order to see that his argument misses the point. In the example of an identity statement, in Russell's terms, there is still the 'difference' indicated by Hegel. We do not interpret identity as requiring us to say 'Socrates is...Socrates.' To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge. In this respect there is no difference between this proposition and the other, presumably also informative, assertion that 'Socrates is mortal' -- not a Greek god, but a human being." [Lawler (1982), p.25. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Now, this 'argument' only works if it is accepted that the word "Socrates" asserts something, which Lawler simply takes for granted. If, however, the word "Socrates" asserts nothing, or can't be used on its own to assert anything, then his entire argument falls flat.

It is worth reminding ourselves that predicates are used to assert things of individuals named, or picked out, by subject terms (these typically being Proper Names or Definite Descriptions). So the Proper Name "Socrates" would be used to assert something only if it too were a predicate expression, which, I take it, everyone (other than perhaps Quine -- but even he had to re-write names as obvious predicates, which only served to underline this syntactic distinction), everyone is agreed that such names aren't predicates when they are used as subject terms. The fact that the word "Socrates" can't be used to assert anything in such sentences can be seen from the additional fact that we have to attach predicate expressions to it in order to assert something of the individual so named.

Hence, if someone just said "Socrates", they wouldn't be asserting anything (in the sense that they would be making no assertion) -- unless it was in answer to a question such as "Who was Plato's teacher?" Then it would, of course, be a contextual paraphrase for "Socrates was Plato's teacher."

Someone might object, and point out that it is possible to assert Socrates, for example, by means of the following:

Of course, even with respect to that bizarre example (and I have to say that, except in books and articles on the philosophy of logic (etc.), I have yet to read, see or hear anyone use a sentence like this), "Socrates" is no longer functioning simply as a Proper Name, it now forms part of the expression, "ξ is Socrates", and in that case, "Socrates" wouldn't be asserting "something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject", since the new subject (viz., "A man") isn't now asserting anything. That role has been devolved to the new predicate expression, "ξ is Socrates". Hence, if the "A man" isn't actually asserting anything in S1, then "ξ is Socrates" can't assert something different from it. So, Lawler's claims fail, even in this case.

In addition, Lawler completely skewed his argument by considering an example of a predicate expression that also works as an identifying (definite) description (i.e., "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock"). It won't work with sentences such as "Socrates is running after the man who gave him the hemlock", since the predicate "ξ is running after the man who gave him the hemlock" in no way identifies Socrates (indeed, if anything, it identifies his quarry); it merely says something about him.

And if, for some reason, it is still thought that "Socrates is running after the man who gave him the hemlock" does succeed in identifying Socrates, it is worth pointing out that identity and being identifiable are not at all the same. Here is what I have written about this in Essay Eight Part Three:

It is worth adding that this 'problem' has been compounded by the fact that Hegel and Lawler slide between two, dare I say it, different uses of the word "identity" and "identify" -- that is, between (a) "identity" when it is used to provide an empty (or perhaps even significant) identity statement for any given object, and (b) "identify" when it is used to speak about the capacity the vast majority of us possess of being able to discriminate, pick out, or recognise a person, property, location, smell, taste, sound, tune, process or object from moment to moment.

For example, if squaddie NN is asked whether or not he can identify Osama bin Laden in a line-up, and he replies, "Yes, Sarge! Osama is identical to Osama, Sarge!", he would risk being put on a charge. On the other hand, if he points to one of the suspects and says, "That's him, Sarge!", he wouldn't. [This was, of course, written before the US military executed Osama bin Laden extra-judicially.] So, identification isn't the same as identity (no pun intended).

Naturally, identification (i.e., use (b), above) could in some circumstances involve a capacity to differentiate among objects, but that isn't necessarily so in all cases (as was argued here).

Would, for example, the rather dim squaddie above be able to identify Osama bin Laden only if he had first learnt to distinguish the latter from everything that Osama wasn't? Upon meeting someone for the first time, and being introduced to them, which one of us even so much as thinks "Hang on! Let me first distinguish this character from a bucket of fish, a corkscrew, a Rabbit Jelly Mould, a tidal estuary, a flock of geese, your recently deceased grandmother, a rusty old car, the Andromeda Galaxy, a self-adjoint operator, a pi-Meson, a Pulsar..., before you tell me who she is, otherwise I won't know who you are talking about!"

By running these two words together, Hegel revealed once again that he was even more confused than this rather dim squaddie. Lawler might be advised, therefore, to abandon his role as Hegel's Dialectical Defence Counsel.

"Moreover, it seems that a 'predicative' relation, such as 'Socrates is mortal' can be readily turned into an 'identity' statement: 'Socrates is that particular mortal man'." [Ibid., p.25.]

[Interestingly, this is a dodge that Jean Buridan also tried out on his readers; on that, see here.]

However, even if that paraphrase were acceptable (which it isn't since the two sentences don't mean the same, and they are true/false under different circumstances; for example "Socrates is that particular mortal man" might be false if "that particular man" is, say, Alcibiades; whereas "Socrates is mortal" would still be true in such circumstances), one would want to know precisely what this identity is meant to be. Surely Lawler isn't suggesting that Socrates is identical to "that particular mortal man". If he is then the following argument would be sound:

If L1 and L2 both pick out "that particular mortal man" then Plato and Socrates must be one and the same.

Of course, it could be objected that the phrase "that particular mortal man" refers to someone different in each case, so L3 doesn't follow from L1 and L2.

The problem is that "mortal man₁" now becomes a rigid designator for Plato, no different from his name, and "mortal man₂" becomes a surrogate for "Socrates". In that case, L4 and L5 would become:

It could be objected that "mortal man₁" isn't a surrogate for the name "Plato", and "mortal man₂" isn't a surrogate for "Socrates", so the above objection is misguided.

But, the problem is that if that response were correct, "that particular mortal man₁" might in fact pick out Alcibiades. How can that be ruled out without using Plato's name to identify "that particular mortal man₁"? Which would make the whole exercise circular. [That was in fact the point of the above counter-objection that led to L4a and L5a, and the point made here.]

But Lawler's argument fails for other reasons; that is because it is still controversial whether or not L2 is an identity statement, so that alleged fact can't be used in its own support --, whereas is isn't controversial that L5/L5a are identity statements:

Lawler merely asserts that "Socrates is mortal" and "Socrates is that particular mortal man" are saying same (since L2 is an identity statement), or that one can be read from the other:

"...it seems that a 'predicative' relation, such as 'Socrates is mortal' can be readily turned into an 'identity' statement: 'Socrates is that particular mortal man'." [Ibid., p.25.]

Lawler's "it seems" here gives the game away, one feels; there is no logical route that will take us from L2 to L5/L5a -- if there were, Lawler would surely have included it in his argument. In other words, Lawler assumes L2 is an identity statement in his 'proof' that it is one -- or, at least, that it can be turned into one in some as yet unspecified way.

Which, of course, implies that it L2 isn't an identity statement, after all; otherwise an appeal to L5 would be superfluous.

But, even if the above rebuttals are rejected for some reason, Lawler's sentence presents a number of problems of its own (rather like those we have already met several times):

If the "is" here (highlighted in green) is one of identity, and stands for "is identical with", then we would be faced with yet another incipient infinite regress. Replacing the highlighted "is" in A1 with what we are told it means yields the following:

But, the same surely applies to the new "is" (highlighted in red) in A2. If we now replace it with what we are told it means (i.e., "is identical with"), we obtain this meaningless sentence:

A4: "Socrates is identical with identical with identical with that particular mortal man."

A 'sentential explosion' like this can only be halted by those who deny that "is" is always an "is" of identity in such contexts. [Objections to this particular line-of-argument -- on the grounds that Hegel was only interested in "essential" predication" -- have been neutralised here.]

Of course, it could be objected that A3 is an ill-formed sentence, so it has nothing to do with Hegel's argument. Any suggestion to the contrary is ridiculous. But, any theorist who happily countenances sentences like the following (taken directly from Lenin) has lost all right to appeal:

H5: "[T]he opposites (the individual is opposed to the universal) are identical."

"We do not interpret identity as requiring us to say 'Socrates is...Socrates.' To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge." [Ibid., p.25.]

No one doubts that predicate expressions are often physically different from Proper Names, but that difference is logically irrelevant. Nor does that alleged predicate have to say anything different.

Here the alleged predicate**, "...Socrates", isn't different from the subject in any relevant way. Naturally, it could be objected that L10 isn't informative. But, it could be. Sentences like L10 are used all the time; they tell us that the named individual is rather unique, that he or she behaves in a quirky, idiosyncratic or characteristic sort of way. This form can also be used to argue that whatever happens can't be changed, for better or worse -- for example, "Boys will be boys", "Whatever will be, will be" (which was also a Doris Day hit song in the 1950s; "Que sera, sera"). Other uses of this sentential form include, "A rose is a rose" (which was, incidentally, also the title of an episode in the US cop drama, Major Crimes (Season 4, Episode 1), as well as forming part of the title of a poem by Gertrude Stein: "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose") -- indeed, we also have a use of this locution from fifty odd years ago: "A rose is a rose", which was the title of the Donna Reed Show (Season 4, Episode 2), 21/09/1961 --, and "Business is business", which is reputed to be a Mafia cliché (often used in gangster films), as well as being the title of a play by Octave Mirbeau: Les affaires sont les affaires.

Moreover, someone could say "Best is best" (meaning that the late George Best is the best footballer), just as they could assert "Sharp is sharp" (meaning that someone called "Sharp" was quick-witted), "Blunt is blunt" (meaning that someone called "Blunt" is somewhat forthright), "Down is down" (meaning that the price of duck feathers had fallen), and "Dopey is dopey" (meaning that the famous dwarf from the film, Snow White, is slow-witted). Or, as an equine trainer said (in the run up to the 2012 London Olympics and in relation to how horses behave): "Horses are horses".

[Admittedly, the second word in each case, here, isn't a Proper Name (while it is in "Socrates is Socrates"), but these examples have only been quoted to illustrate the fact that the alleged predicate can be informative even if it doesn't look or sound different from the subject, and often 'says the same thing'. Moreover, "are" is, of course, just the plural form of "is". In Note 40a I have listed scores of additional examples of the locutions, "NN is NN" and "F is F" (where "NN" stands for a Proper Name, and "F" for a noun or verb phrase).]^40a

Moreover, dialecticians had better hope that no one is ever given, say, the name, "Arthur Man" (i.e., "A Man") -- oops, too late! --, otherwise the following thoroughly reactionary and impertinently anti-dialectical sentence could truthfully be uttered:

Lest anyone think that the capital letters make much of a difference, A1 could be a spoken sentence, or its letters could be typed or written wholly in capitals, thus:

**In the comment above about "alleged predicate", that phrase was chosen deliberately. As noted earlier, Lawler pointedly omits the copula "is" when quoting predicate expressions -- notice his reference to "the man who drank the hemlock", instead of "...is the man who drank the hemlock", for instance. The serious misuse to which truncations like this can be (and are often) put was also highlighted earlier. That is why when predicative expressions are mentioned or quoted in this Essay (and this site) they are expressed in the following way: "ξ is mortal" or "ξ is the man who drank the hemlock" -- unless, of course, Lawler's own, or someone's else's, misuse is being quoted, etc. There is no way functional expressions like these -- i.e, "ξ is the man who drank the hemlock" -- can be misconstrued as Proper Names.

There were good reasons why Traditional Theorists truncated predicate expressions; these were connected with the idea that these expressions mirrored or reflected 'concepts' in the mind of the one using them -- or, perhaps, they mirrored them in some other, 'heavenly' realm, or maybe a hidden world, anterior to experience. The clause "is mortal" doesn't even look like a name, general or Proper; but "mortal" does, so the truncated form was more appealing to those who wanted to promote traditional ideas about the alleged reference of general terms. This idea could in turn be recruited in support of the theory that concepts are 'mental constructs', or 'processes' of some sort in the 'mind' or the brain. This view of 'concepts' will be put under considerable pressure in Essay Thirteen Part Three, where it will be shown that, if true, it would render communication impossible. It is also worth pointing out that the alternative approach adopted here implies that concepts are more accurately to be characterised as linguistic rules -- or, rather, their use is an expression of such a rule --, which would indicate that the individual concerned had mastered a certain skill -- the ability to form or to generate coherent sentences of a certain sort -- by their use of such expressions. This view of concepts places them in the public domain, as opposed to burying them in a private, uncheckable part of the brain/'mind' -- the latter approach being different from bourgeois individualism and Cartesianism in name alone. [How that works out was outlined here, and in Note 16.]

It could be objected that the above sentences (i.e., "Socrates is Socrates", etc.) weren't (originally) predicative, and so don't count. But, dialecticians like Lawler turn predicative expressions into identity statements all the time, so they are hardly in a position to complain. Anyway, it isn't true that the above aren't predicative; "Best is best" is, and so are: "A Man is a man", "Business is business", "Rape is rape", and "A negro is a negro" (Marx), as, indeed, are most of the examples quoted in Note 40a.

Someone else might object that in spite of the above, "ξ is Socrates", in sentences like "Socrates is Socrates", is still predicating "Socrates" of Socrates, which contradicts something said earlier. In fact, it was merely asserted that in sentences like "Socrates is mortal" the word "Socrates" can't assert anything; that role is devolved to the predicate expression, "ξ is mortal". We can certainly regard "ξ is Socrates" as a predicate expression if we so wish, but it is perhaps better to regard it as a relational expression when it appears in sentences like "Socrates is Socrates" -- or even better: view that sentence as a substitution instance of the two-place, first level linguistic function, "F(ξ,ξ)". [For an explanation of those rather odd symbols, see here and Note 15a. On this, see Long (1984).]

Alternatively, it could be argued that in the above examples something different from the subject is being asserted from that which is being asserted in the predicate, which is all Lawler needs. But, that isn't true with respect to "Socrates is Socrates". Anyway, and more importantly, since nothing is being asserted by the word "Socrates" (in "Socrates is mortal", as we have seen) -- because it is a Proper Name, not a predicate expression that is being used to say something about some individual --, no comparison with respect to sameness or difference between what has or hasn't been asserted by "Socrates" and any predicate expression applicable to him can be sustained. Only predicates (relational expressions and assorted descriptions, etc.) can be used to assert things of named individuals or of objects, hence the above response also fails. I have also covered the objection that these are self-predications in Part Two, here.

In that case, the only distinction Lawler could conceivably be alluding to here is a physical or spatio-temporal difference between subjects and predicates, the first one of which we have just seen isn't logically significant, anyway.

Well, what about an alleged spatio-temporal difference? That is, one where the predicate and subject terms are located in slightly different places on the page/screen, or where the predicate expression has to be uttered after, or at least at a slightly different time to, the subject expression? Again, these are logically irrelevant. It would surely be confusing, but not logically impossible to reconfigure L2 to read as follows:

Where the inserted letters (coloured differently -- "Socrates" is in red, "is" is in green, and "mortal" is in blue) in L2a say the same as L2. These inserted letters represent the copula and the predicate expression all in one go, and they can all be read at the same time as the subject term. It is also possible for someone to record themselves saying "is mortal" and then replay it at the same time as saying "Socrates".

It could be objected that that isn't a serious reply since the above jumble doesn't in fact say anything; but that would be a mistake. It is only an accident of history that our written words aren't concatenated as follows:

Spoken languages regularly run words together, as do certain secret codes. In fact, Semitic languages, such as Arabic, use the device employed in L2a all the time. After noting that Arabic uses a root formed of three consonants to say something, linguist Guy Deutscher makes the following point:

"But how can a vowel-less group of three consonants ever mean anything if it cannot even stand up on its own three legs and be pronounced unaided? The answer is that such roots do not have to be spoken by themselves, because the root is an abstract notion, which comes to life only when it is superimposed on some templates: patters of (mostly) vowels, which have three empty dots for the three consonants of the root. To take one example, the Arabic template ΟaΟiΟa forms the past tense (in the third person 'he'), so if you want to say 'he was at peace', you must insert the root s-l-m ('be at peace') into that template to get:

[I have posted a photograph of Deutscher's actual diagrams in Appendix C since the above graphic isn't too clear! -- RL.]

"And if you want to form the past tense of another verb, say, 'wear', you take the root l-b-s, and insert it into the same template, to get labisa ('he wore')." [Deutscher (2006), p.37. Italic emphases in the original.]

So, the suggestion advanced in L2a isn't all that fanciful; indeed, Semitic speakers have been talking this way for centuries.

Furthermore, the same message could be communicated in several other ways; it would just take a little practice to decipher them with ease. So, we could have a code that used the following rule:

L2e: Rule: Any name that has been struck through means that the named individual is mortal.

Sure, the contingent features of the subject-predicate form make it easier for us to read or hear what is said (although that is probably a by-product of familiarity), but that fact is logically irrelevant, even if it is psychologically important (at least, for Indo-European speakers).

In that case, the same information could be conveyed in a number of different ways, many of which wouldn't fall foul of Hegel's logically irrelevant criterion (that is, if this was his criterion -- but, who can say?).

Now, if we examine a wider set of examples (i.e., one that is more inclusive than the radically impoverished set dialecticians usually consider -- which are limited to such banalities as "The rose is red" and "John is a man", etc.), the above points will become even less controversial.

In this case, the above subject/predicate sentence, employing the verb "is", is being used to say of itself what it says of itself, which isn't different from what it says of itself. Even worse: it occupies the same spatio-temporal region as it itself occupies.

Less contentious examples than the above might seem to be, which address an earlier point, include, perhaps, the following:

Here, what is being said is plainly not different from what each is about. [In fact, as has been pointed out several times already, the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' DM-fans inherited from Hegel can't cater for such sentences. Small wonder then that Hegel and his ilk failed to consider them -- and that includes the other examples given below.]

"A main cause of philosophical disease -- a one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example." [Wittgenstein (1958), §593, p.155e.]

The seemingly perverse examples listed above (which are themselves but a tiny fraction of the many that could have been chosen) -- as well as those given below --, show that Wittgenstein's comment wasn't all that wide of the mark.

So, it is what we do with our words that distinguishes predication from naming. Physical shape and spatio-temporal considerations are only of psychological, or perhaps rhetorical, importance.

However, Lawler's abbreviation (i.e., where he refers to "mortal" as the predicate instead of "...is mortal", or "the man who drank the hemlock", instead of "...is the man who drank the hemlock") 'allows' him to nominalise (or particularise) expressions as the whim takes him. In so doing he is following the same well-worn tradition examined earlier in this Essay -- indeed, the very one that Hegel turned into a test for all self-respecting idealists. This can be seen by the way he talks about the "predicative relation", above. Objects, ink marks on the page and the alleged 'referents' of nominalised expressions can certainly be put into a 'relation of sorts', but not predicates and subjects -- unless, of course, we wish to turn predicates into objects (or the names thereof), destroying not only the unity of the proposition but generality, into the bargain. A predicate can be used to say things truly or falsely of whoever or whatever it is that is designated by a subject term (or, perhaps better, predicate expressions can be used to form true or false sentences when completed with Proper Names or other singular terms). If predicate expressions are nominalised (or particularised) they can't do this (since, once again, that would turn the relevant sentence into a list, as we saw earlier). Certainly we can speak about the relation between certain inscriptions (i.e., marks on the page and pixels on a screen), or sound patterns in the air (i.e., spoken words), but to conflate these with an alleged relation between a Proper Name and a predicate expression would be to confuse the medium with the message.

[Even so, we will see below where Lawler tries to do just this, and then again later when he attempts to clarify Hegel's obscure phrase, "dialectical contradiction" -- see also, Essay Eight Part Three, where I deal at length with that specific topic alongside the rest of Lawler's article.]

We are perhaps now in a position to see the point of all the 'seemingly pedantic' detail given toward the beginning of this Essay (i.e., concerning sentences and lists (etc., etc.)), which was intended to reveal the origin of this ancient syntactic segue.

Naturally, only those still mesmerised by Hegel, or, indeed, by the sloppy 'logic' upon which his ideas are predicated (no pun intended), might perhaps fail to appreciate the above comments.

"However, this is not the meaning of 'identity' which Hegel attempted to formulate. It is not the dialectical identity which Hegel wished to contrast with 'abstract' identity. In his interpretation of Hegel, Russell mistakenly understands 'identity' only within the framework of abstract identity. If it seems reasonable to distinguish the kind of 'identity' statement which Russell described from other 'predicative' uses of the connective 'is', one would still like to understand what in fact is asserted when one predicates some general attribute or quality, such as mortality or humanity, of some individual. There seems to be some sense in calling this one of 'identity,' for Socrates' mortality is intrinsic to Socrates' being Socrates. This problem is not one resolved by asserting that Socrates is one member of the class of mortal things. But, if we interpret mortality realistically we are still faced with the ontological problem of the relation of an individual to its properties." [Lawler (1982), pp.25-26. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis added.]

Unfortunately, in the above passage we encounter one of the most common mistakes committed by Traditional Philosophers; in this instance, it concerns the spurious 'problem' of the 'relation' between a subject and its properties. If properties don't populate the world as objects (i.e., if they aren't objects, and can only be turned into 'objects' by particularising them in ways highlighted earlier), they can't stand in a relation to anything. That is, they aren't the sort of things that could stand in relation to anything, any more than a Proper Name can be a verb.

Some might object to the assertion that a Proper Name can't be a verb and point to the following as a counter-example to it (taken from one of the Essays published at this site): "Nixoning". Here the Proper Name of the 37^th President of the USA, "Richard Nixon", has been turned into a verb! Ironically, grammatical switches like this even have their own Proper Name: Anthimeria, a sub-category of which is itself called "Verbification". However, in this instance, the word "Nixoning" is no longer operating as a Proper Name (there is no one on earth called "Nixoning" -- if anyone knows differently, please let me know); it is now a verb. The assertion was that a Proper Names can't be a verb, not that they can't be turned into one.

So, this is just another classic example of a bogus 'ontological problem' conjured into existence by a clumsy distortion of language -- in this case, inflicted on predicate expressions.

Furthermore, if Socrates does indeed belong to the class of mortal beings -- and that is it, if that is all there is to him --, then comrades like Lawler will just have to get used to it. Lawler certainly can't appeal to Hegel's mutant 'logic' to bully nature or society into acceding to the demands that that Hermetic Harebrain, Hegel, tried to foist on it.

Moreover, as Hegel saw things, Socrates's mortality was considered part of his essence for theological reasons, in that it was an aspect of the latter's finitude, set over and against the 'Infinite'/the 'Absolute':

"The being of something is determinate; something has a quality and in it is not only determined but limited; its quality is its limit and, burdened with this, it remains in the first place an affirmative, stable being. But the development of this negation, so that the opposition between its determinate being and the negation as its immanent limit, is itself the being-within-self of the something, which is thus in its own self only a becoming, constitutes the finitude of something.

"When we say of things that they are finite, we understand thereby that they not only have a determinateness, that their quality is not only a reality and an intrinsic determination, that finite things are not merely limited -- as such they still have determinate being outside their limit -- but that, on the contrary, non-being constitutes their nature and being. Finite things are, but their relation to themselves is that they are negatively self-related and in this they are negatively self-related and in this very self-relation send themselves away beyond themselves, beyond their being. They are, but the truth of this being is their end.

"The finite not only alters, like something in general, but it ceases to be; and its ceasing to be is not merely a possibility, so that it could be without ceasing to be, but the being as such of finite things is to have the germ of decease as their being-within-self: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death." [Hegel (1999), p.129, §§248-49. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases added. I have used the on-line version here.]

These are surely no good reasons in the above material to persuade materialists to tail-end such a confused and bumbling mystic -- something which one would have thought should be crystal clear to any self-respecting radical, especially since 'the nature' of any human being is surely an empirical, not a logical issue.

[Naturally, we might incorporate certain facts into our use of language, along the lines discussed here, but that is a separate issue. Of course, how we employ words and how we draw inferences from the use of certain sentences is a logical issue, but that, too, is a separate matter.]

And, there is no way that this view of "finitude" can be eradicated, eliminated, or swept under the carpet by the simple expedient of putting Hegel "back on his feet". Furthermore, since "essences" like these are integral to DM, this is one aspect of the 'mystical shell' that dialectician have imported into Marxism from Traditional Thought. [On that, see Rosenthal (1998).]

At this point, some readers might object to the way that propositions have been analysed in this Essay. If so, we can put that analysis to one side. Even then, the question would still remain: How is it possible for any analysis of propositions to justify the imposition of its supposed results onto the fundamental (and hidden) 'essence' of nature and society? To be sure, that could only be justified if 'language implied essence' (LIMPE), and the 'nature of reality' was in some sense linguistic (LIE) -- and its deep structure 'fortuitously' matched contingent features of a minor sub-category of just one strand of Indo-European Grammar!

[LIE = Linguistic Idealism. This term was explained above, and will be again in more detail In Essay Twelve (summary here).]

For Lawler's theory to work it not only has to rely on a radical reconfiguration of a simple verb (i.e., "to be"), it requires the nominalisation (particularisation) of predicates, into the bargain, thereby destroying generality. Hence, even if the neo-Fregean reading of predicate expressions employed at this site were to be rejected, Lawler's account would still be unacceptable to materialists.

Frege or no Frege, predicates aren't Proper Names -- and even if they were, that alleged fact would have empirical consequences only for Idealists:

Fortunately, the neo-Fregean approach adopted at this site blocks this slide into Idealism. That consideration alone should recommend it to consistent materialists.

Finally, immediately after the passage quoted above, Lawler proceeded to argue as follows:

"There is no 'pure' individual which is not some kind of thing. There is only an individual with certain specific properties and powers, common to those of other individuals.... Russell's various attempts to solve the problem of universals and his admitted failures suggest that the real solution involves more than making a simple distinction between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication." [Ibid., p.26. Emphasis in the original. Lawler also references Fisk (1979) in support. Fisk's arguments will be discussed in Essay Twelve (summary here).]

Whatever one thinks of the claim that there are no "pure individuals", one thing is clear, the 'dialectical analysis' of predicative propositions destroys our capacity to speak in general about anything whatsoever (in what were predicative sentences), let alone about these "pure individuals" -- for, as we have seen, it reconfigures general terms as the Proper Names of abstract particulars. In that case, howsoever badly Russell did or didn't fail in his attempt to solve the spurious 'problem' of "Universals", DL fares a whole lot worse -- since it destroys fact-stating language.

Of course, if we cast our linguistic net a little wider and consider examples drawn from everyday speech (which dialecticians seldom consider because that is what Traditional Philosophers have always done: downplay, ignore or depreciate the vernacular, which naturally means that dialecticians are merely aping a well-entrenched, conservative thought-form, as Marx himself noted), Lawler's 'analysis' becomes all the more bizarre. Consider, therefore, the following example:

Diabolical Logic like this needs preserving for posterity as a warning to future generations.

they would then have to explain the role of this new is in L20a, without generating the infinite regress we have met several times already (most recently, for example, here).

Naturally, it could be argued that the last few examples are completely irrelevant since they are questions, not propositions, and still less are they Hegelian "essential judgements". Even so, they were specifically chosen to expose the narrow range of examples considered by dialecticians. But, these questions are logically linked to the type of proposition that could sensibly be offered in answer to them -- for example:

L23a is one answer that could be given to L23, in which case when it is given the Hegel-treatment, it would become:

as the is in L23a is replaced with what we are told it really means, is identical with, in L23b.

Someone might object that L23a isn't an 'essential' proposition, but Lawler himself uses a 'non-essential' proposition to make his point:

"To say that Socrates is 'the man who drank the hemlock' is to assert something different in the predicate from what was asserted in the subject. In the process of knowledge, assuming that the sentence is informative, we are told that 'Socrates,' some individual vaguely or incompletely known, is indeed 'the man who drank the hemlock.' Socrates' 'identity' is established by our being told something 'different,' and knowledge develops through a process of moving from vague, 'undifferentiated' knowledge, to more specific knowledge. In this respect there is no difference between this proposition and the other, presumably also informative, assertion that 'Socrates is mortal' -- not a Greek god, but a human being." [Lawler (1982), p.25. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]

There is no way that "Socrates is the man who drank the hemlock" is an 'essential' proposition (or judgement). [However, on such propositions/judgements, see Note 24a and here.]

So, it is quite plain what Hegel was attempting to do here -- that is, he was trying to distinguish what one might call "contingent propositions" from those that are deemed to be 'essential' -- or perhaps even 'necessary' --, when faced with the fact that discourse (or, at least, examples taken from the Indo-European family of languages) appears to use the verb "is" somewhat indiscriminately. Hegel clearly wanted to distinguish the employment of this verb when it is used in the latter sense from its role in the former. Unfortunately, he imposed a bogus metaphysic on this linguistic distinction, which only succeeded in destroying a key feature of language, and one that he himself relied upon: its capacity to express generality.

Incidentally, this reconfiguration also destroys 'essential' predication, and for the same reason.

We will examine this serious error again in Essay Twelve, where we will explore the deleterious effect it had on Hegel's thought, and hence on DM in general. [Of course, much of this will merely be a continuation and elaboration of the points made earlier in this Essay, as well as those outlined here and here.]

Unfortunately, Hegel also buried this legitimate concern under a cascade of incomprehensible terminology, and that, too, was forced on him because of the woefully inadequate resources available to him courtesy of the bowdlerised logic he inherited from previous generations of third-rate logicians and philosophical hacks, a serious drawback compounded by the ruling-class tradition within which his work had been created. As a matter of course this tradition ignored, undervalued or otherwise disparaged the rich conceptual resources ordinary language offers those who adopt a different approach (again, as Marx urged). [On this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13, and the references listed here. There is more on this in Essay Twelve, summary here. See also, here.]

And yet, as we have seen, Hegel himself uses examples like "The rose is fragrant" to make his point (which is in no way 'essential'), so the veracity of the comments expressed in the last few paragraphs is by no means certain. The confusion is, I think, all of Hegel's own making.

However, it wouldn't be difficult to find other examples that Lawler's theory can't handle:

L37: No one who wants to emulate Socrates is likely to accept the opinions of anyone who agrees with Protagoras.

If we now use an even wider range of examples drawn from the vernacular (but restricted to the use of "is"), the woeful inadequacy of Hegel's theory will become even more obvious:

L49: If this meeting is about anything, it is about the right of the majority of workers to decide who legitimately represents their interests.

This list of course could easily be extended until it contained thousands of sentences -- with which we are all familiar -- from which it would also be clear that none of the above can be re-written with an "is" of identity, à la Lawler, while remaining comprehensible. For example:

L48a: If the weather forecast says it will rain then it is identical with wrong.

Once more, it could be argued that these examples could be re-written in the following way:

We saw Lawler try to pull that dodge earlier. But, even if L46 and L46a meant the same (which they don't; for example, L46a implies that sugar could be identical with potatoes or junk food, whereas L46 doesn't), awkward questions would once again arise over the nature of this new is. That can't be an "is" of identity (we saw what supposing otherwise led to earlier), and once that is conceded, the rationale for replacing the "is" of predication in this way simply vanishes.

An exposé of the origin of this strain of "bad old logic" can be found in Peter Geach's article 'History Of The Corruptions Of Logic', in Geach (1972a), pp.44-61. See also, Geach (1968), pp.22-46. On this topic in general, see Kneale and Kneale (1962).

Benson Mates (in Mates (1979)) claims that the two main senses of "is" (i.e., predication and identity) are really one and the same. I will examine relevant aspects of his argument in a later re-write of this Essay.

[See also here, where it seems the bad old logic might be trying to make a come-back. However, I suspect that that is because Traditional Logic makes it slightly easier to defend certain forms of Christian Mysticism. In this case, it might help Roman Catholic theologians 'defend' the doctrine of transubstantiation -- which is ironic in view of these comments.]

Day (2019) presents the following reply to arguments like the above (although there is no sign the author has read my work, and every indication he hasn't) -- I have re-posted a large part of his on-line article so that no one can claim he is being quoted 'out of context':

"Let us take a step back, and think for a moment about where in our lives we might hear expressions that do not take this contradictory form. I can think of a few:

"These are all argument-enders. What all of these phrases have in common is that they have an 'atomic' quality, where by atomic we mean tight and self-contained. Tautologies. They're disconnected from the world in a very important sense. This is to say, they are not describing the world, they are asserting the world, demanding that you accept a finality. There's no argument to be had, we have simply a premise -- fixed, unchanging, universal across time and space -- being insisted upon....

"Another big enemy of dialectics is the reactionary British writer George Orwell, who in 1984 famously mocks the idea of embracing contradiction as a rhetorical tool for psychological manipulation:

"The protagonist of the novel, innocent Englishman Winston Smith, is tormented by this establishment propaganda. This establishment is represented by O'Brien, an evil and vengeful Irishman who has usurped his way into power. The world is upside-down!

"Aristocrats and conservatives despise dialectics because they feel their privileges threatened by the very notion of change. They covet a static world, which makes them heavily inclined in favor of undialectical relationships. A Roman might say 'Masters are masters, slaves are slaves' in the same way modern propaganda will suppress questioning the veracity of a claim by insisting 'Evil is evil.' This is an injunction for one to accept what they are being given.

"Rome immediately invites one to think of Christianity, which is long-lived enough that it not only offers examples of dialectical and non-dialectical thinking in its doctrine, but itself embodies the notion of a concept turning into its opposite. Roman society was ruthlessly hierarchical, with rigid hereditary castes, and their religion of eternal and whimsical gods was fit for their purposes, legitimizing a society where men did as they wished with their slaves. Though today Christianity is largely a hegemonic and reactionary force, once upon a time it was considered deeply revolutionary, and the Romans aggressively attempted to stamp it down. This is because once upon a time Christianity's creed was considered explosively dangerous on account of its dialectical proclamations ('The meek shall inherit the Earth!' 'God is Man!'). Today, however, Christianity is in power, and thus its rhetoric aims to preserve the status quo, with an emphasis on absolute obedience and non-questioning ('God is God!' 'Marriage is marriage!'). In the past Christianity was an agent of change, today it is an enemy of change....

"The aforementioned examples were chosen to illustrate the stark antagonism between the expressions of the likes of Marx and the likes of Nietzsche, but we must be aware that anti-dialectical thinking in everyday life can take subtler forms.

"In his essay on dialectics Lenin defends the theory of 'development as a unity of opposites' against those who concede change, but theorize it as mere part of 'a cycle of increase and decrease.' After all, change is observable, and it is rare for someone to be so obtuse so as to deny it outright. However, anti-dialecticians have another trick up their sleeve: a jaded and cynical attitude towards history as a 'cyclical slaughterhouse.' They concede that, yes, things change, but they change according to the whims of fate, karma, accidents, willpower, or God; in the end, in their view, everything is a wash; things never really change.

"This is the reason why Lenin argues that it is essential to grasp the source of change: the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites. If we do not, we end up among the ranks of those who are clueless about how to effect change. Lenin polemicises not only against powerful aristocrats and reactionaries, but also against all sorts of sentimental idealists (anarchists, social democrats, left-communists) who desire a better society but don't particularly care for or aren’t careful about the details or the process of how to achieve it....

"In short, he rails against those who prove incapable of carrying out 'a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.' Similarly, Marx and Engels' polemics not only target bourgeois economists, but also those within the ranks of 'the left': anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin and right-opportunists like Dühring.

"The virtue of concrete analysis is expressed in strategic creativity that at once stands out from both resignation and utopianism. In Marx and Engels the championing of the proletariat above the peasantry or lumpenproletariat; in Lenin the Party as vanguard, the system of soviets, and the NEP; in Stalin tactical diplomacy that draws gleefully spectating Western powers begrudgingly into the war; in Mao the concept of primary and secondary contradictions on the basis of the reality of imperialism justifying a pan-Chinese alliance against Japanese occupation (led by a Peasant Army but including capitalists in its ranks); in Deng irrevocable integration with the incipiently hegemonic capitalist order coupled with a fierce defense of the autonomy of the political executive; etc. The point of listing these achievements is to make it clear that it is not a question of better poetry, this is an approach that produces creative strategy that seizes victory from the jaws of defeat again and again.

"In short, it is absolutely essential to grasp not only that relationships will develop, but also that they develop because of the struggle of mutually contradictory opposites -- that the contradiction at the core of their self-identity is inescapable. This implies victories are never final: 'When a contradiction is resolved, new contradictions emerge, and competition takes place again. In this way, society constantly progresses.' This leads to a kind of pessimistic optimism: opportunities will necessarily continue to arise, and therefore we need to be organized and prepared to consistently seize these opportunities in order to effect our desired outcomes. This is the difference between rebellion and revolution." [Day (2019). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Spelling modified in line with UK English. Minor typo corrected. Links added, but I have omitted the article's own footnoted links.]

As has already been pointed out, the logical core of the above passage depends on the validity of the Identity Theory of Predication, which (just like Hegel. Engels and Lenin) comrade Day nowhere even attempts to justify or defend. In fact, in the present Essay we have seen that this Medieval theory falls apart upon close examination, which in turn means that Day's entire argument simply disintegrates.

However, Day also claims that sentences like "Socrates is Socrates", "Rome is Rome" and "rape is rape" have:

"an 'atomic' quality, where by atomic we mean tight and self-contained. Tautologies. They're disconnected from the world in a very important sense. This is to say, they are not describing the world, they are asserting the world, demanding that you accept a finality. There's no argument to be had, we have simply a premise -- fixed, unchanging, universal across time and space -- being insisted upon...." [Ibid.]

Anyone who understands how we use Proper Names to refer to individuals, objects, events and processes and who thought that a sentence like "Socrates is Socrates" implies he won't change would automatically call into question not just their comprehension of English (or whatever language had been used to express this thought) but their basic knowledge of the world. The use of sentences like "Socrates is Socrates" implies that the individual concerned behaves in a characteristic sort of way -- and, plainly, the word "behave" connotes change. Anything that "behaves" has to change in order to do just that --, it plainly doesn't mean they are frozen in time. So, this 'tautology' (if it is one; that has also been questioned in Essay Eight Part Three) isn't saying "Socrates is identical with Socrates", it is saying "Socrates behaves in a way that is characteristic of the man", which is no tautology.

And even if "Socrates is Socrates" were "atomic" (but there are reasons to doubt that, too), what is so iniquitous about "atomic" sentences? If we fail to understand their logic -- or if we misrepresent them -- our ability to comprehend non-atomic sentences stands no chance. And as for these comments: "This is to say, they are not describing the world, they are asserting the world, demanding that you accept a finality...", and "The source of change [is] the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites" we have already seen are dogmatic and that in no way "describe the world". If, per impossible, they were descriptive, they would in fact imply change is impossible.

Several Essays at this site have been devoted to showing that this theory of Lenin's collapses on close examination, and, further, that it actually implies that change can't happen (as has just been pointed out) -- on that, see Essays Seven Part Three, and Eight Parts One, Two and Three. Hence, even if Marxists needed a philosophical theory of change (which we don't!), dialectics wouldn't make the bottom of the list of viable candidates.

Furthermore, nowhere at this site has it been claimed that things change "according to the whims of fate, karma, accidents, willpower, or God; in the end...things never really change", so that unsupported rebuttal can't be used against anything argued in these Essays.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that comrade Day employs the theory of change through 'internal contradiction' to rationalise what seem to be pairs of contradictory strategies and tactics (for example, the CCP's alliance with the G uomindang, and Deng Xiaoping's "irrevocable integration with the incipiently hegemonic capitalist order coupled with a fierce defense of the autonomy of the political executive"). In Essay Nine Part Two, I expose this as one of the main reasons why opportunists and substitutionists of every stripe (within Dialectical Marxism) cling to this contradictory theory: it allows them to promote and then 'justify' whatever is politically expedient and its opposite, at the same time. Hence, the integration of a 'socialist economy' into the capitalist world market allied with the continued exploitation of the Chinese working class makes eminently sound, contradictory sense --, if you accept DM!

It could be objected that this Essay completely misses the point. It is misguided to claim that DM-theorists argue that knowledge begins with the "isolation of particulars in thought"; in the search for knowledge human beings never simply start from scratch, as the earlier sections of this Essay seem to suggest. On the contrary, as TAR notes:

"[I]t is impossible simply to stare at the world as it immediately presents itself to our eyes and hope to understand it. To make sense of the world, we must bring to it a framework composed of elements of our past experience; what we have learned of others' experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on and theories about this experience." [Rees (1998), p.63.]⁴¹

"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science 'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the 'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Ibid., p.131. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]^41a

These passages show that the criticisms of the dialectical process advanced in this Essay are flawed from beginning to end.⁴² No dialectician of any intelligence would imagine that in the search for knowledge human beings just look at objects and processes divorced from historical, political, social or linguistic contexts, and blurt a few ideas out. As Engels himself noted:

"The identity of thought and being, to express myself in Hegelian fashion, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically." [Engels to Conrad Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), p.457.]

This means that the dialectical circuit can't simply be joined at any point; cut into as if this were some sort of dance. Hence, it could be claimed that this is largely where the above analysis goes off the rails: it assumes that the DM-circuit begins at a specific place, and because it manifestly can't do that, the incorrect conclusion is then drawn that DM-epistemology is fundamentally flawed.

As a matter of fact -- as this objection might continue -- knowledge arises out of, and as a result of, a historical process. Human beings don't just go about the place "identifying particulars" (etc). They use whatever historical, social, linguistic and epistemological resources they have available to them under specific social conditions, and this they do in order to advance knowledge and refine technique. Moreover, they do this even though the entire process is continually distorted by class division and ruling-class ideology, etc., etc.

To paraphrase Marx: human beings develop their own concepts, but they don't do this under social or logical circumstances of their own choosing. DM-theorists highlight this fact; they don't ignore it or sweep it under a rug.

Unfortunately, that reply isn't strictly relevant since it confuses a logical point with what is in fact an epistemological fairytale.

The above legend arises out of the mythical nature of the 'process of abstraction', unfortunately omitted from the volunteered objection outlined in the last few paragraphs. The process of abstraction not only can't take place, its alleged results destroy generality, as we have seen. If that is so, the 'results' of that mythical process can't be passed on from one generation to the next without also transmitting that fatal defect, nor can they be built upon by later dialecticians (and for the same reason).

To put the same point differently: all that former generations of Idealists can pass on to their equally Idealist descendants is distorted grammar, impenetrably obscure jargon and unfathomable confusion.

The myth of the 'original abstraction' (on which this entire fable depends) -- like Adam's legendary fall from grace -– fails to provide DM-theorists with the explanation of the nature and source of knowledge they require, since (once again to paraphrase Marx): it itself requires explanation.

Hence, the logical points made above can't be neutralised, avoided or by-passed by a vague extrapolation back into the mists of time.

To paraphrase once more (but this time Lessing): The accidental truths of history can't provide a secure foundation for anyone who wants to ignore the rules of discursive logic.⁴³

Worse still, even if they could, the chronicles of humanity's heroic abstractions still won't pass muster. That is because this myth, like other metaphysical yarns, is devoid of sense -- as we will discover in the next Part of this Essay.

Here is Hegel's longer 'argument', which seeks to establish some of the points criticised in this Essay, and elsewhere at this site.

The Judgement

§1358

...To restore this identity of the Notion, or rather to posit it, is the goal of the movement of the judgment. What is already present in the judgment is, on the one hand, the self-subsistence of subject and predicate, but also their mutually opposed determinateness, and on the other hand their none the less abstract relation. What the judgment enunciates to start with is that the subject is the predicate; but since the predicate is supposed not to be what the subject is, we are faced with a contradiction which must resolve itself, pass over into a result. Or rather, since subject and predicate are in and for themselves the totality of the Notion, and the judgment is the reality of the Notion, its forward movement is only a development; there is already present in it what comes forth from it, so that proof is merely an exposition, a reflection as a positing of that which is already present in the extremes of the judgment; but even this positing itself is already present; it is the relation of the extremes....

(a) The Positive Judgment

§1362

1. The subject and predicate as we have remarked, are in the first instance names, which only receive their actual determination through the course of the judgment. However, as sides of the judgment, which is the posited determinate Notion, they have the determination of moments of the Notion, but by virtue of their immediacy, the determination is still quite simple: for it is not enriched by mediation, and also, in accordance with the abstract opposition, it is determined as abstract individuality and universality. The predicate, to speak of this first, is the abstract universal; since this abstract is conditioned by the mediation in which the individual or particular is sublated, this mediation is so far only presupposition. In the sphere of the Notion there can be no other immediacy than one in which mediation is essentially and explicitly a moment and which has come to be only through the sublating of that mediation, that is, the immediacy of the universal. Thus even qualitative being, too, is in its Notion a universal; but as being, the immediacy is not yet so posited; it is only as universality that it is the Notion determination in which is posited the fact that negativity essentially belongs to it. This relation is given in the judgment in which it is the predicate of a subject. Similarly, the subject is an abstract individual, or the immediate that is supposed to be as such, and therefore the individual as a something in general. Thus the subject constitutes the abstract side of the judgment according to which the Notion has in it passed over into externality. As the two Notion determinations are determined, so also is their relation, the is or copula; it too can only have the significance of an immediate, abstract being. On account of the relation which as yet contains no mediation or negation, this judgment is called the positive.

2. The immediate pure enunciation of the positive judgment is, therefore, the proposition: the individual is universal.

This enunciation must not be put in the form: A is B; for A and B are entirely formless and consequently meaningless names; the judgment as such, however, and therefore even the judgment of existence, has Notion determinations for its extremes. A is B can represent any mere proposition just as well as a judgment. But in every judgment, even in those with a more richly determined form, there is asserted the proposition having this specific content: the individual is universal; inasmuch, namely, as every judgment is also in general an abstract judgment. With the negative judgment, how far it likewise comes under this expression, we shall deal presently. If no heed is given to the fact that in every judgment -- at least, to begin with, every positive judgment, the assertion is made that the individual is a universal, this is partly because the determinate form whereby subject and predicate are distinguished is overlooked -- the judgment being supposed to be nothing but the relation of two notions -- and partly, probably, because the rest of the content of the judgment, Gaius is learned, or the rose is red, floats before the mind which is busy with the representation of Gaius, etc., and does not reflect on the form although such content at least as the logical Gaius (sic) who has usually to be dragged in as an example, is a much less interesting content and, indeed, is expressly chosen as uninteresting in order not to divert attention from the form to itself.

In its objective signification, the proposition that the individual is universal connotes, as we previously had occasion to remark, on the one hand the perishableness of individual things, and on the other hand their positive subsistence in the Notion as such. The Notion itself is imperishable, but that which comes forth from it in its partition is subject to alteration and to return into its universal nature. But conversely, the universal gives itself a determinate being. Just as essence issues into a reflected being [Schein] in its determinations, ground into the manifestation of Existence, and substance into the revelation of itself, into its accidents, so the universal resolves itself into the individual; and the judgment is this explication of the universal, the development of the negativity which it already is in itself. The latter fact is enunciated by the converse proposition, the universal is individual, which is equally enunciated in the positive judgment. The subject, which in the first instance is the immediate individual, is related in the judgment itself to its other, namely, the universal; consequently it is posited as the concrete; in the sphere of being as a something of many qualities, or as the concrete of reflection, a thing of manifold properties, an actuality of manifold possibilities, a substance of such and such accidents. Since these manifold determinations here belong to the subject, the something or the thing, etc., is reflected into itself in its qualities, properties or accidents; or it continues itself through them, maintaining itself in them and equally them in itself. The positedness or determinateness belongs to the being-in-and-for-self. The subject is, therefore, in its own self the universal. The predicate, on the other hand, as this universality which is not real or concrete but abstract, is, in contrast to the subject, the determinateness and contains only one moment of the subject's totality to the exclusion of the others. By virtue of this negativity which, as an extreme of the judgment, is at the same time self-related, the predicate is an abstract individual. For example, in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, the predicate enunciates only one of the many properties of the rose; it singles out this particular one which, in the subject, is a concrescence with the others; just as in the dissolution of the thing, the manifold properties which inhere in it, in acquiring self-subsistence as matters, become individualised. From this side, then, the proposition of the judgment runs thus: the universal is individual.

In bringing together this reciprocal determination of subject and predicate in the judgment, we get a twofold result. First that immediately the subject is, indeed, something that simply is, an individual, while the predicate is the universal. But because the judgment is the relation of the two, and the subject is determined by the predicate as a universal, the subject is the universal. Secondly, the predicate is determined in the subject; for it is not a determination in general, but of the subject; in the proposition: the rose is fragrant, this fragrance is not any indeterminate fragrance, but that of the rose; the predicate is therefore an individual. Now since subject and predicate stand in the relationship of the judgment, they have to remain mutually opposed as determinations of the Notion; just as in the reciprocity of causality, before it attains its truth, the two sides have to retain their self-subsistence and mutual opposition in face of the sameness of their determination. When, therefore, the subject is determined as a universal, we must not take the predicate also in its determination of universality -- else we should not have a judgment -- but only in its determination of individuality; similarly, when the subject is determined as an individual, the predicate is to be taken as a universal.

Reflection on the above mere identity yields the two identical propositions:

in which the sides of the judgment would have fallen completely asunder and only their self-relation would be expressed, while their relation to one another would be dissolved and the judgment consequently sublated. Of the two original propositions, one, the universal is individual, enunciates the judgment in respect of its content, which in the predicate is a singled out determination, while in the subject it is the totality of them; the other, the individual is universal, enunciates the form which is stated immediately by the proposition itself. In the immediate positive judgment the extremes are still simple: form and content are, therefore, still united. In other words, it does not consist of two propositions; the twofold relation which we found in it directly constitutes the one positive judgment. For its extremes appear as (a) self-subsistent, abstract sides of the judgment, and (b) each side is determined by the other, by virtue of the copula connecting them. But for that very reason, the difference of form and content is implicit in it, as we have seen; to wit, what is implied in the first proposition: the individual is universal, pertains to the form, because it expresses the immediate determinateness of the judgment. On the other hand, the relationship expressed by the other proposition: the universal is individual, that is to say, that the subject is determined as universal, but the predicate as particular or individual concerns the content; for the sides of the judgment arise only through the reflection-into-self whereby the immediate determinatenesses are sublated, with the result that the form converts itself into an identity that has withdrawn into itself and persists in opposition to the distinction of form: that is, it converts itself into content.

were, because they are contained in the one positive judgment, to be united, so that both subject and predicate alike were determined as unity of individuality and universality, then both subject and predicate would be the particular; and this must be recognised as implicitly their inner determination. Only, on the one hand, this combination would only have been effected by an external reflection, and, on the other hand, the resultant proposition, the particular is the particular, would no longer be a judgment, but an empty identical proposition like those already derived from the positive judgment, namely, the individual is individual, and the universal is universal. Individuality and universality cannot yet be united into particularity, because in the positive judgment they are still posited as immediate. In other words, the judgment must still be distinguished in respect of its form and content, just because subject and predicate are still distinguished as immediacy and something mediated, or because the judgment, according to its relation, is both self-subsistence of the related sides and also their reciprocal determination or mediation.

First, then, the judgment considered in respect of its form asserts that the individual is universal. But the truth is that such an immediate individual is not universal; its predicate is of wider scope and therefore does not correspond to it. The subject is an immediate being-for-self and therefore the opposite of that abstraction, of that universality posited through mediation, which was supposed to be predicated of it.

Secondly, when the judgment is considered in respect of its content, or as the proposition, the universal is individual, the subject is a universal of qualities, a concrete that is infinitely determined; and since its determinatenesses are as yet only qualities, properties or accidents, its totality is the spuriously infinite plurality of them. Such a subject therefore is, on the contrary, not a single property such as its predicate enunciates. Both propositions, therefore, must be denied and the positive judgment must be posited rather as negative.

(b) The Negative Judgment

1. We have already referred above to the prevalent idea that it depends merely on the content of the judgment whether it be true or not, since logical truth concerns only the form and demands only that the said content shall not contradict itself. The form of the judgment is taken to be nothing more than the relation of two notions. But we have seen that these two notions do not have merely the relationless character of a sum, but are related to one another as individual and universal. These determinations constitute the truly logical content, and, be it noted, constitute in this abstraction the content of the positive judgment; all other content that appears in a judgment (the sun is round, Cicero was a great orator in Rome, it is day now, etc.) does not concern the judgment as such; the judgment merely enunciates that the subject is predicate, or, more definitely, since these are only names, that the individual is universal and vice versa. By virtue of this purely logical content, the positive judgment is not true, but has its truth in the negative judgment. All that is demanded of the content is that it shall not contradict itself in the judgment; but as has been shown it does contradict itself in the above judgment. It is, however, a matter of complete indifference if the above logical content is also called form, and by content is understood merely the remaining empirical filling; in that case, the form does not imply merely an empty identity, the determinate content lying outside it. The positive judgment has, then, through its form as positive judgment no truth; whoever gives the name of truth to the correctness of an intuition or perception, or to the agreement of the picture-thought with the object, at any rate has no expression left for that which is the subject matter and aim of philosophy. We should at least have to call the latter the truth of reason; and it will surely be granted that judgments such as: Cicero was a great orator, and: it is day now, and so on, are not truths of reason. But they are not such not because they have, as it were contingently, an empirical content, but because they are merely positive judgments that can have and are supposed to have no other content than an immediate individual and an abstract determination.

The positive judgment has its proximate truth in the negative: the individual is not abstractly universal -- but on the contrary, the predicate of the individual, because it is such a predicate or taking it by itself apart from its relation to the subject -- because it is an abstract universal, is itself determinate; the individual is, therefore, in the first instance a particular. Further, in accordance with the other proposition contained in the positive judgment, the negative judgment asserts that the universal is not abstractly individual, but on the contrary, this predicate, just because it is a predicate, or because it stands in relation to a universal subject, is something wider than a mere individuality, and the universal is therefore likewise in the first instance a particular. Since this universal, as subject, is itself in the judgment determination of individuality, the two propositions reduce to one: the individual is a particular.

We may remark (a) that here the predicate proves to be in the determination of particularity of which we have already made mention; but here it is not posited by external reflection, but has arisen by means of the negative relation exhibited by the judgment. (b) This determination here results only for the predicate. In the immediate judgment, the judgment of existence, the subject is the underlying basis; the determination seems therefore to run its course at first in the predicate. But as a matter of fact this first negation cannot as yet be a determination, or strictly speaking a positing of the individual, for the individual is the second negation, the negative of the negative.

The individual is a particular, is the positive expression of the negative judgment. This expression is not itself a positive judgment, for the latter, by reason of its immediacy, has only abstractions for its extremes, while the particular, precisely through the positing of the relation of the judgment presents itself as the first mediated determination. But this determination is not to be taken only as moment of the extreme, but also -- as it really is in the first instance -- as determination of the relation; in other words, the judgment is to be regarded also as negative.

This transition is based on the relationship of the extremes and their connection generally in the judgment. The positive judgment is the relation of the immediately individual and universal, therefore the relation of things, one of which at the same time is not what the other is; the relation is, therefore, no less essentially separation or negative; that is why the positive judgment had to be posited as negative. It was, therefore, unnecessary for logicians to make such a fuss over the not of the negative judgment being attached to the copula. In the judgment, what is determination of the extreme is no less a determinate relation. The judgment's determination, or the extreme, is not the purely qualitative determination of immediate being which is supposed to confront only an other outside it. Nor is it determination of reflection, which, in accordance with its general form, has a positive and negative bearing, each being posited as exclusive, and only implicitly identical with the other. The judgment's determination, as determination of the Notion, is in its own self a universal, posited as continuing itself into its other determinations. Conversely, the relation of the judgment is the same determination as that possessed by the extremes; for it is just this universality and continuation of them into one another; in so far as these are distinguished, the relation also has negativity in it.

The above-stated transition from the form of the relation to the form of the determination has for its immediate consequence that the not of the copula must no less be attached to the predicate and the predicate determined as the not-universal. But by an equally immediate consequence the not-universal is the particular. If we stick to the negative in the completely abstract determination of immediate not-being, then the predicate is only the completely indeterminate not-universal. This determination is commonly treated in logic in connection with contradictory notions and it is inculcated as a matter of importance that in the negative of a notion one is to stick to the negative only and it is to be regarded as the merely indeterminate extent of the other of the positive notion. Thus the mere not-white would be just as much red, yellow, blue, etc., as black. But white as such is a notionless determination of intuition; the not of white is then equally notionless not-being, an abstraction that has been considered at the very beginning of the logic, where we learned that its proximate truth is becoming. To employ as examples, when treating of the terms of the judgment, such notionless contents drawn from intuition and pictorial thinking, and to take determinations of being and reflection for terms of the judgment, is the same uncritical procedure as the Kantian application of the notions of the understanding to the infinite Idea of reason or the so-called thing-in-itself; the Notion, which also includes the judgment that proceeds from it, is the veritable thing-in-itself or the rational; those other determinations, however, are proper to being or essence and have not yet been developed into forms which exhibit them as they are in their truth, in the Notion. If we stop at white and red as sensuous images, we are giving, as is commonly done, the name of Notion to what is only a determination of pictorial thinking; in that case the not-white and not-red are of course not positive predicates, just as also the not-triangular is something completely indeterminate, for a determination based on number and quantum is essentially indifferent and notionless. But this kind of sensuous content, like not-being itself, must be conceptually grasped and must lose that indifference and abstract immediacy which it has in blind, static, pictorial thinking. Already in determinate being, the meaningless nothing becomes the limit, through which something does, after all, relate to an other outside it. But in reflection, it is the negative that essentially relates to a positive and hence is determinate; a negative is already no longer that indeterminate not-being; it is posited as existing only in so far as the positive is its counterpart, the third member of the triad being their ground; the negative is thus confined within an enclosed sphere in which, what the one is not, is something determinate. But more than this, in the absolutely fluid continuity of the Notion and its determinations the not is immediately a positive, and the negation is not merely a determinateness but is taken up into the universality and posited as identical with it. The not-universal is therefore immediately the particular.

2. Since the negation affects the relation of the judgment, and we are dealing with the negative judgment still as such, it is in the first place still a judgment; consequently we have here the relationship of subject and predicate, or of individuality and universality, and their relation, the form of the judgment. The subject as the immediate which forms the basis remains unaffected by the negation; it therefore retains its determination of having a predicate, or its relation to the universality. What is negated, therefore, is not the universality as such in the predicate, but the abstraction or determinateness of the latter which appeared as content in contrast to that universality. Thus the negative judgment is not total negation; the universal sphere which contains the predicate still subsists, and therefore the relation of the subject to the predicate is essentially still positive; the still remaining determination of the predicate is just as much a relation. If, for example, it is said that the rose is not red, it is only the determinateness of the predicate that is negated and separated from the universality which likewise belongs to it; the universal sphere, colour, is preserved; in saying that the rose is not red, it is assumed that it has a colour, but a different one. In respect of this universal sphere the judgment is still positive.

The individual is a particular -- this positive form of the negative judgment enunciates immediately that the particular contains universality. But in addition it also expresses that the predicate is not merely a universal but also a determinate universal. The negative form implies the same; for though for example the rose is not red, it must not merely retain the universal sphere of colour for predicate but must also have some other specific colour; thus it is only the single determinateness of red that is negated; and not only is the universal sphere left but determinateness, too, is preserved, though converted into an indeterminate or general determinateness, that is, into particularity.

3. The particularity which we have found to be the positive determination of the negative judgment is the mediating term between individuality and universality; thus the negative judgment is now, in general, the mediating term leading to the third step, to the reflection of the judgment of existence into itself. It is, in its objective significance, merely the moment of alteration of the accidents -- or, in the sphere of existence, of the isolated properties of the concrete. Through this alteration the complete determinateness of the predicate, or the concrete, emerges as posited.

The individual is particular, according to the positive enunciation of the negative judgment. But the individual is also not a particular, for particularity is of wider extent than individuality; it is therefore a predicate that does not correspond to the subject, and in which, therefore, it does not yet possess its truth. The individual is only an individual, the negativity that relates not to an other whether positive or negative, but only to itself. The rose is not a thing of some colour or other, but has only the specific colour that is rose-colour. The individual is not an undetermined determinate, but the determined determinate.

Starting from this positive form of the negative judgment, this negation of it appears again as only a first negation. But it is not so. On the contrary, the negative judgment is already in and for itself the second negation or the negation of the negation, and what it is in and for itself must be posited. That is to say, it negates the determinateness of the predicate of the positive judgment, the predicate's abstract universality, or, regarded as content, the single quality which the predicate contains of the subject. But the negation of the determinateness is already the second negation, and therefore the infinite return of individuality into itself. With this, therefore, the restoration of the concrete totality has been achieved, or rather, the subject is now for the first time posited as an individual, for through negation and the sublating of the negation it is mediated with itself. The predicate, too, on its side, has herewith passed over from the first universality to absolute determinateness and has equated itself with the subject. Thus the judgment runs: the individual is individual. From the other side, inasmuch as the subject was equally to be taken as universal, and as the predicate (which in contrast to that determination of the subject is the individual) widened itself in the negative judgment into particularity, and as now, further, the negation of this determinateness is no less the purification of the universality contained in the predicate, this judgment also runs: the universal is the universal.

In these two judgments, which we had previously reached by external reflection, the predicate is already expressed in its positivity. But first, the negation of the negative judgment must itself appear in the form of a negative judgment. We saw that in it there still remained a positive relation of the subject to the predicate, and the universal sphere of the latter. From this side, therefore, the negative contained a universality more purged of limitation than the positive judgment, and for that reason must be all the more negated of the subject as an individual. In this manner, the whole extent of the predicate is negated and there is no longer any positive relation between it and the subject. This is the infinite judgment.

(c) The Infinite Judgment

The negative judgment is as little a true judgment as the positive. But the infinite judgment which is supposed to be its truth is, according to its negative expression, negatively infinite, a judgment in which even the form of judgment is set aside. But this is a nonsensical judgment. It is supposed to be a judgment, and consequently to contain a relation of subject and predicate; yet at the same time such a relation is supposed not to be in it. Though the name of the infinite judgment usually appears in the ordinary logics, it is not altogether clear what its nature really is. Examples of negatively infinite judgments are easily obtained: determinations are negatively connected as subject and predicate, one of which not only does not include the determinateness of the other but does not even contain its universal sphere; thus for example spirit is not red, yellow, etc., is not acid, not alkaline, etc., the rose is not an elephant, the understanding is not a table, and the like. These judgments are correct or true, as the expression goes, but in spite of such truth they are nonsensical and absurd. Or rather, they are not judgments at all. A more realistic example of the infinite judgment is the evil action. In civil litigation, something is negated only as the property of the other party, it being conceded that it should be theirs if they had the right to it; and it is only the title of right that is in dispute; the universal sphere of right is therefore recognised and maintained in that negative judgment. But crime is the infinite judgment which negates not merely the particular right, but the universal sphere as well, negates right as right. This infinite judgment does indeed possess correctness, since it is an actual deed, but it is nonsensical because it is related purely negatively to morality which constitutes its universal sphere.

The positive moment of the infinite judgment, of the negation of the negation, is the reflection of individuality into itself, whereby it is posited for the first time as a determinate determinateness. According to that reflection, the expression of the judgment was: the individual is individual In the judgment of existence, the subject appears as an immediate individual and consequently rather as a mere something in general. It is through the mediation of the negative and infinite judgments that it is for the first time posited as an individual.

The individual is hereby posited as continuing itself into its predicate, which is identical with it; consequently, too, the universality no longer appears as immediate but as a comprehension of distinct terms. The positively infinite judgment equally runs: the universal is universal, and as such is equally posited as the return into itself.

Now through this reflection of the terms of the judgment into themselves the judgment has sublated itself; in the negatively infinite judgment the difference is, so to speak, too great for it to remain a judgment; the subject and predicate have no positive relation whatever to each other; in the positively infinite judgment, on the contrary, only identity is present and owing to the complete lack of difference it is no longer a judgment.

More precisely, it is the judgment of existence that has sublated itself; hereby there is posited what the copula of the judgment contains, namely, that the qualitative extremes are sublated in this their identity. Since however this unity is the Notion, it is immediately sundered again into its extremes and appears as a judgment, whose terms however are no longer immediate but reflected into themselves. The judgment of existence has passed over into the judgment of reflection. [Hegel (1999), pp.631-43. I have used the online version here. Bold emphases alone added.]

[The above Hegelian ramble continues on for another thirty pages and should be read only by those suffering from incurable insomnia.]

In this Appendix, in addition to the passages already quoted in the main body of this Essay -- e.g., here and here, and in Part Two, here and here --, I will be posting material taken from several (hopefully representative) DM-theorists who attempt to explain what they mean by the 'process of abstraction' and its supposed 'results'.

[Several of the points I make below also apply to the first few chapters of Ilyenkov (1982). However, as noted earlier, Ilyenkov clearly failed to notice the fatal implications they had for this entire way of 'doing philosophy'.]

"One of the instruments of thought is language, and also other sign systems, such as the abstract symbols of mathematics, or the concrete images of the 'language of art'. The elements of these systems support such basic operations of thought as abstraction, generalisation and mediation. Abstraction enables us to ignore an object's inessential properties and relations and concentrate on those that are relevant to the intellectual task in question. Generalisation enables us to classify large numbers of phenomena according to certain essential attributes. For example, one can classify certain symptoms as symptoms of a certain illness. [p.220.]

"Scientific concepts reveal the profound properties, what is general, essential and law-governed in an object. Just as the whole is not merely the sum of its parts, so the concept is not merely the sum-total of certain general features. We move on from the sensuous stage of knowledge to logical thought when we proceed from perception and representation to reflection in the form of concepts and, on this basis, to judgements and inferences. Abstract thinking implies operating with concepts. It is thanks to concepts that thought becomes theoretical as well as practical, because the essence of things is perceived only in concepts. Concepts arise from the summing up of human experience, they are compressed travelogues, digests, of the road that has been travelled towards knowledge. A concept is both the sum and the means of cognitive activity. [pp.229-30.]

From the above it is plain that Spirkin's account itself lies somewhere between the Empiricist and the Rationalist versions of this mythical 'process' (more about that in Part Two):

"Abstraction enables us to ignore an object's inessential properties and relations and concentrate on those that are relevant to the intellectual task in question....

"We move on from the sensuous stage of knowledge to logical thought when we proceed from perception and representation to reflection in the form of concepts and, on this basis, to judgements and inferences. Abstract thinking implies operating with concepts. It is thanks to concepts that thought becomes theoretical as well as practical, because the essence of things is perceived only in concepts. Concepts arise from the summing up of human experience, they are compressed travelogues, digests, of the road that has been travelled towards knowledge. A concept is both the sum and the means of cognitive activity....

"Idealisation as a specific form of abstraction is an important technique in scientific cognition. Abstract objects do not exist and cannot be made to exist in reality, but they have their prototypes in the real world. Pure mathematics operates with numbers, vectors and other mathematical objects that are the result of abstraction and idealisation. Geometry, for example, is concerned with exact circles, but physical object is never exactly circular; perfect roundness is an abstraction. It cannot be found in nature. But it is an image of the real: it was brought into existence by generalisation from experience. Idealisation is a process of forming concepts, whose real prototypes can be indicated only to a certain degree of approximation. As a result of idealisation there comes into being a theoretical model in which the characteristics and aspects of the objects under investigation are not only abstracted from their actual empirical multiformity but also, by means of mental construction, are made to stand out in a sharper and more fully expressed form than in reality itself....

"The concept of 'the concrete' is used in two senses. First, in the sense of something directly given, a sensuously perceived and represented whole. In this sense the concrete is the starting point of cognition. But as soon as we treat it theoretically the concrete becomes a concept, a system of scientific definitions revealing the essential connections and relations of things and events, their unity in diversity. So the concrete appears to us first in the form of a sensuously observable image of the whole object not yet broken down and not understood in its law-governed connections and mediations, but at the level of theoretical thought it is still a whole, but internally differentiated, understood in its various intrinsic contradictions. The sensuously concrete is a poor reflection of phenomena, but the concrete in thought is a richer, more essential cognition. In contrast to the abstract the concrete is only one moment in the process of cognition, we understand it by comparing it with the abstract...." [Ibid.]

In line with the Empiricists and the Rationalists, Spirkin clearly sees 'abstraction' as a 'mental process' that takes place in 'the mind' of each individual. In other words, as is the case with other DM-fans, he is a bourgeois individualist:

"Geometry, for example, is concerned with exact circles, but physical object is never exactly circular; perfect roundness is an abstraction. It cannot be found in nature. But it is an image of the real: it was brought into existence by generalisation from experience. Idealisation is a process of forming concepts, whose real prototypes can be indicated only to a certain degree of approximation. As a result of idealisation there comes into being a theoretical model in which the characteristics and aspects of the objects under investigation are not only abstracted from their actual empirical multiformity but also, by means of mental construction, are made to stand out in a sharper and more fully expressed form than in reality itself.

"The mental transition from the more general to the less general is a process of limitation. Without generalisation there can be no theory....

"Abstractions are 'bits' of whole objects, and our thinking works with such 'bits'...." [Ibid.]

Spirkin clearly failed to notice that this approach to knowledge (or even 'cognition') completely undermines the emphasis he elsewhere placed on the social nature of knowledge and language.

Moreover, Spirkin nowhere attempts to prove, or even substantiate, any of his rather bold claims; he merely asserts them as if they were established fact. He neither cites nor quotes any scientific/psychological evidence in support of what he repeatedly claims. Nor does he so much as mention the many problems this theory faces (for example, those that have been raised in this Essay, or those advanced by earlier anti-abstractionists, such as..., er..., Marx and Engels!), let alone attempt to address them.

[In Spirkin's case, this isn't surprising. Any admission, or concession, no matter how mild or nuanced, that DM faces serious problems would probably have landed him in jail, a psychiatric 'hospital', or, at the very least, he would have suffered the Russian equivalent of 'being sent to Coventry'. The same excuse can't, however, exculpate DM-theorists writing and publishing in more 'liberal' countries.]

"Idealisation as a specific form of abstraction is an important technique in scientific cognition. Abstract objects do not exist and cannot be made to exist in reality, but they have their prototypes in the real world. Pure mathematics operates with numbers, vectors and other mathematical objects that are the result of abstraction and idealisation. Geometry, for example, is concerned with exact circles, but physical object is never exactly circular; perfect roundness is an abstraction. It cannot be found in nature. But it is an image of the real: it was brought into existence by generalisation from experience. Idealisation is a process of forming concepts, whose real prototypes can be indicated only to a certain degree of approximation. As a result of idealisation there comes into being a theoretical model in which the characteristics and aspects of the objects under investigation are not only abstracted from their actual empirical multiformity but also, by means of mental construction, are made to stand out in a sharper and more fully expressed form than in reality itself. As examples of concepts resulting from idealisation we may take such things as the 'point' (an object which has neither length, nor height, nor breadth); or 'the straight line', the 'circle', and so on." [Ibid.]

And yet, if there are no "exact" circles anywhere in the world, and if our 'thought' exists in this same world, then there can be no "exact" circles 'in thought', either! It is no use appealing to some sort of "approximation" here, since an approximation only makes sense in relation to that with which it is an approximation. But, there is nothing with which these approximations can be compared (even in theory) so that we might see, or be able to say, judge or conclude they are approximations to begin with, rather than figments of the imagination -- since "Abstract objects don't exist and can't be made to exist in reality...".

Of course, that doesn't mean we can't ascertain how accurately a given circle has been drawn, since, we don't compare such drawings with the 'perfect circle', we determine how well the rules we have for drawing circles have been observed.

So, from where do we obtain the idea of an "exact" circle? Certainly not from 'abstraction'.

[I say more about this topic in several other Essays, for example: here and here. See also here.]

"First and foremost, and stripped of all qualifications added by this or that dialectician, the subject of dialectics is change, all change, and interaction, all kinds and degrees of interaction. This is not to say that dialectical thinkers recognize the existence of change and interaction, while non-dialectical thinkers do not. That would be foolish. Everyone recognizes that everything in the world changes, somehow and to some degree, and that the same holds true for interaction. The problem is how to think adequately about them, how to capture them in thought. How, in other words, can we think about change and interaction so as not to miss or distort the real changes and interactions that we know, in a general way at least, are there (with all the implications this has for how to study them and to communicate what we find to others)? This is the key problem addressed by dialectics, this is what all dialectics is about, and it is in helping to resolve this problem that Marx turns to the process of abstraction." [Ollman (2003), pp.59-60. Bold emphasis added.]

"In his most explicit statement on the subject, Marx claims that his method starts from the 'real concrete' (the world as it presents itself to us) and proceeds through 'abstraction' (the intellectual activity of breaking this whole down into the mental units with which we think about it) to the 'thought concrete' (the reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind) (Marx (1904), pp.293-94; this is a reference to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy -- RL). The real concrete is simply the world in which we live, in all its complexity. The thought concrete is Marx's reconstruction of that world in the theories of what has come to be called 'Marxism.' The royal road to understanding is said to pass from the one to the other through the process of abstraction." [Ibid., p.60. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site, as they have been in the rest of the passages quoted from this source. Referencing conventions modified to agree with those implemented at this site, too.]

"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and communicated it must be parceled (sic) out. Our minds can no more swallow the world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere', which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart.

"We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought, and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of abstraction.

As can be seen from the above, Ollman has adopted a simplified form of the Empiricist Theory of Abstraction.

Ollman has much more to say about this topic; I have posted the relevant passages in Part Two (here), subjecting them to sustained criticism. Even so, from the sections I quoted above, it is clear that Ollman also conceives of abstraction as a 'mental process', making him a bourgeois individualist, too. In addition, he seems to think this 'process' results in the formation of the Proper Names of activities like walking, eating, and fighting. It is hard, therefore, to see how he might preserve the unity of the proposition because of his repetition of this ancient syntactical blunder.

In common with every other dialectician, Sayer also thinks that 'abstraction' is a 'mental' phenomenon or skill we are all supposed to possess, instantiate or perform; but, like them, too, he becomes rather vague when it comes to specifics:

"To be practically-adequate, knowledge must grasp the differentiations of the world: we need a way of individuating objects, and of characterising their attributes and relationships. To be adequate for a specific purpose it must 'abstract' from particular conditions, excluding those which have no significant effect in order to focus on those which do. Even where we are interested in wholes we must select and abstract their constituents.

"In many accounts of science abstraction is assumed to be so obviously necessary that little is said about how it should be done. It is a powerful tool and hence and also a dangerous one if carelessly used. Once we have become accustomed to a particular 'mode of abstraction' it is often hard to dislodge, even where it generates problems in research and applications. In contrast to some accounts, I therefore want to emphasize the importance of trying to keep in mind what we abstract from....

"In popular usage, the adjective 'abstract' often means 'vague' or 'removed from reality'. The sense in which the term is used here is different; an abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. [In a footnote, Sayer adds 'My use of "abstract" and "concrete" is, I think, equivalent to Marx's' (p.277, note 3).] What we abstract from are the many other aspects which together constitute concrete objects, such as people, economics [I'm sure Sayer means economies here -- RL], nations, institutions, activities and so on. In this sense an abstract concept can be precise rather than vague; there is nothing vague about abstractions such as 'temperature', 'valency', 'gender', 'income elasticity of demand', or 'the circuit of money capital'. And the things to which these abstractions refer need be no less real than those referred to by concrete concepts. Hence the abstract and the concrete should not be aligned with the distinction between thought and reality.

"The concept of 'concrete objects' does not merely concern 'whatever exists' but draws attention to the fact that objects are usually constituted by a combination of diverse elements or forces. As a concrete entity, a particular person, institution or whatever combines influences and properties from a wide range of sources, each of which (e.g. physique, personality, intelligence, attitudes, etc.) might be isolated in thought by means of abstraction, as a first step towards conceptualizing their combined effect.

"In other words, the understanding of concrete events or objects involves a double movement: concrete → abstract, abstract → concrete. At the outset our concepts of concrete objects are likely to be superficial or chaotic. In order to understand their diverse determinations we must first abstract them systematically. When each of the abstracted aspects has been examined it is possible to combine the abstractions so as to form concepts which grasp the concreteness of their objects.

"Before proceeding it should be noted that not all concrete objects are empirically observable, nor are all abstract aspects of objects unobservable. Concept-dependent phenomena apart, they exist regardless of whether anyone happens to be able to observe or otherwise know them. Abstractions need not be seen as 'idealizations', nor are they merely heuristic devices for ordering observations. As concepts, abstractions are obviously different from material objects to which they may refer, but this applies to empirical observations and concrete concepts no less than to abstractions: all of them can refer to real objects...". [Sayer (1992), pp.86-88. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link added. The page numbering is completely different in the Second Corrected Edition, i.e., Sayer (2010), pp.58-60.]

As part of a discussion of what he calls "contentless abstractions", he had this to say:

"There are also cases where abstractions become virtually contentless not because there is nothing they could refer to but because their sense-relations are too weakly articulated to allow unambiguous reference. An abstract concept might be denoted by the symbol p, which in turn might refer to an object P. The danger of taking abstractions to the extreme form of mere notation is that we are easily led to forget P, and what kind of thing it is, so that our manipulations of logical or mathematical formulae 'take on a life of their own' and we lose our grip on our knowledge of those material and causal (as opposed to logical) properties of P which determine what it can and cannot do.... As Marx said of Hegel, it involves the fallacy of taking 'the things of logic [or mathematics -- this is Sayer's interpolation, not mine -- RL] for the logic of things'." [Ibid., p.99. Bold emphases alone added. Sayer (2010), p.67.]

From this it is clear that Sayer, too, thinks abstractions, or the words used to express them, or by means of which we supposedly refer to them (he, too, is unclear about this distinction -- i.e., between words about abstractions and those abstractions themselves, he just runs the two together; we can see that by the way he talks about the "logical properties of P", which he has just told us in an "object") are Proper Names, or other singular referring expressions. Hence, as was the case with Ollman, it is isn't easy to see how he, too, might hope to preserve the unity of the proposition.

"By 'concrete' we mean something real, but not something which is reducible to the empirical: we mean far more than just 'factual'. The concrete object is concrete not simply because it exists, but because it is a combination of many diverse forces or processes. In contrast, an abstract concept presents a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. For example, if we conceptualise an object such as a factory simply in terms of its outward appearance, the concept will be abstract in the sense of one-sided even though it refers to something which can be empirically observed. To make this a concrete concept we would have to specify all the relationships in which the factory is involved: with its workforce; its suppliers and buyers; its creditors and competitors, etc. These diverse determinations are not simply listed and 'added up', but are synthesised; that is, their combination qualitatively modifies each constituent element. However, in order to understand this combination, we normally have to isolate each element in thought first, even though they do not and sometimes could not exist in isolation in reality. It's important to note that whether the concrete is observable (and hence an empirical object for us) is contingent (i.e., neither necessary nor impossible). The concepts 'concrete' and 'empirical' are not equivalent." [Sayer (1981), p.123. Bold emphases alone added.]

And yet, as we have seen, and as Lenin admitted, specifying "all the relationships" that anything possesses is in fact impossible. That would imply that nothing would or could ever be declared 'concrete'.

The following was taken from RIRE [i.e., Woods and Grant (1995/2007); the page references are to the First Edition]:

"The need to understand the world was closely linked to the need to survive. Those early hominids who discovered the use of stone scrapers in butchering dead animals with thick hides obtained a considerable advantage over those who were denied access to this rich supply of fats and proteins. Those who perfected their stone implements and worked out where to find the best materials stood a better chance of survival than those who did not. With the development of technique came the expansion of the mind, and the need to explain the phenomena of nature which governed their lives. Over millions of years, through trial and error, our ancestors began to establish certain relations between things. They began to make abstractions, that is, to generalise from experience and practice.

"For centuries, the central question of philosophy has been the relation of thinking to being. Most people live their lives quite happily without even considering this problem. They think and act, talk and work, with not the slightest difficulty. Moreover, it would not occur to them to regard as incompatible the two most basic human activities, which are in practice inseparably linked. Even the most elementary action, if we exclude simple biologically determined reactions, demands some thought. To a degree, this is true not only of humans but also of animals, such as a cat lying in wait for a mouse. In man, however, the kind of thought and planning has a qualitatively higher character than any of the mental activities of even the most advanced of the apes.

"This fact is inseparably linked to the capacity for abstract thought, which enables humans to go far beyond the immediate situation given to us by our senses. We can envisage situations, not just in the past (animals also have memory, as a dog which cowers at the sight of a stick) but also the future. We can anticipate complex situations, plan and thereby determine the outcome, and to some extent determine our own destinies. Although we do not normally think about it, this represents a colossal conquest which sets humankind apart from the rest of nature. 'What is distinctive of human reasoning,' says Professor Gordon Childe, 'is that it can go immensely farther from the actual present situation than any other animal's reasoning ever seems to get it.' From this capacity springs all the manifold creations of civilisation, culture, art, music, literature, science, philosophy, religion. We also take for granted that all this does not drop from the skies, but is the product of millions of years of development." [p.36.]

"Abstraction is absolutely necessary. Without it, thought in general would be impossible. The question is: what sort of abstraction? When I abstract from reality, I concentrate on some aspects of a given phenomenon, and leave the others out of account. A good mapmaker, for instance, is not someone who reproduces every detail of every house and paving-stone, and every parked car. Such an amount of detail would destroy the very purpose of the map, which is to make available a convenient scheme of a town or other geographical area. Similarly, the brain early on learns to ignore certain sounds and concentrate on others. If we were not able to do this, the amount of information reaching our ears from all sides would overwhelm the mind completely. Language itself presupposes a high level of abstraction.

"The ability to make correct abstractions, which adequately reflect the reality we wish to understand and describe, is the essential prerequisite for scientific thought. The abstractions of formal logic are adequate to express the real world only within quite narrow limits. But they are one-sided and static, and are hopelessly inadequate to deal with complex processes, particularly movement, change and contradictions. The concreteness of an object consists of the sum-total of its aspects and interrelationships, determined by its underlying laws. It is the task of science to uncover these laws, and to get as close as possible to this concrete reality. The whole purpose of cognition is to reflect the objective world and its underlying lawfulness and necessary relationships as faithfully as possible. As Hegel point [sic] out, 'the truth is always concrete.'

"But here we have a contradiction. It is not possible to arrive at an understanding of the concrete world of nature without first resorting to abstraction. The word abstract comes from the Latin 'to take from.' By a process of abstraction, we take from the object under consideration certain aspects which we consider important, leaving others to one side. Abstract knowledge is necessarily one-sided because it expresses only one particular side of the phenomenon under consideration, isolated from that which determines the specific nature of the whole. Thus, mathematics deals exclusively with quantitative relations. Since quantity is an extremely important aspect of nature, the abstractions of mathematics have provided us with a powerful instrument for probing her secrets. For this reason, it is tempting to forget their real nature and limitations. Yet they remain one-sided, like all abstractions. We forget this at our peril.

"Nature knows quality as well as quantity. To determine the precise relation between the two, and to show how, at a critical point, one turns into the other is absolutely necessary if we wish to understand one of the most fundamental processes in nature. This is one of the most basic concepts of dialectical as opposed to merely formal thought, and one of its most important contributions to science. The deep insights provided by this method, which was long decried as 'mysticism,' are only now beginning to be understood and appreciated. One-sided abstract thought, as manifested in formal logic did a colossal disservice to science by excommunicating dialectics. But the actual results of science show that, in the last analysis, dialectical thinking is far closer to the real processes of nature than the linear abstractions of formal logic....

"Without abstraction it is impossible to penetrate the object in 'depth,' to understand its essential nature and laws of motion. Through the mental work of abstraction, we are able to get beyond the immediate information provided by our senses (sense-perception), and probe deeper. We can break the object down into its constituent parts, isolate them, and study them in detail. We can arrive at an idealised, general conception of the object as a 'pure' form, stripped of all secondary features. This is the work of abstraction, an absolutely necessary stage of the process of cognition." [pp.85-87.]

"The initial process thus goes from the concrete to the abstract. The object is dismembered, analysed, in order to obtain a detailed knowledge of its parts. But there are dangers in this. The parts cannot be correctly understood apart from their relationship with the whole. It is necessary to return to the object as an integral system, and to grasp the underlying dynamics that condition it as a whole. In this way, the process of cognition moves from the abstract back to the concrete. This is the essence of the dialectical method, which combines analysis with synthesis, induction and deduction.

"The whole swindle of idealism is derived from an incorrect understanding of the nature of abstraction. Lenin pointed out that the possibility of idealism is inherent in any abstraction. The abstract concept of a thing is counterposed artificially to the thing itself. It is supposed not only to have an existence of its own, but is said to be superior to crude material reality. The concrete is portrayed as somehow defective, imperfect and impure, as opposed to the Idea which is perfect, absolute and pure. Thus reality is stood on its head.

"The ability to think in abstractions marks a colossal conquest of the human intellect. Not only 'pure' science, but also engineering would be impossible without abstract thought, which lifts us above the immediate, finite reality of the concrete example, and gives thought a universal character. The unthinking rejection of abstract thought and theory indicates the kind of narrow, Philistine mentality, which imagines itself to be 'practical,' but, in reality, is impotent. Ultimately, great advances in theory lead to great advances in practice. Nevertheless, all ideas are derived one way or another from the physical world, and, ultimately, must be applied back to it. The validity of any theory must be demonstrated, sooner or later, in practice." [pp.88-89. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

As seems plain from the above, Woods and Grant have also adopted a naive version of the Empiricist Theory Of Abstraction:

"Over millions of years, through trial and error, our ancestors began to establish certain relations between things. They began to make abstractions, that is, to generalise from experience and practice....

"When I abstract from reality, I concentrate on some aspects of a given phenomenon, and leave the others out of account....

"Through the mental work of abstraction, we are able to get beyond the immediate information provided by our senses (sense-perception), and probe deeper. We can break the object down into its constituent parts, isolate them, and study them in detail. We can arrive at an idealised, general conception of the object as a 'pure' form, stripped of all secondary features. This is the work of abstraction, an absolutely necessary stage of the process of cognition....

"The initial process thus goes from the concrete to the abstract. The object is dismembered, analysed, in order to obtain a detailed knowledge of its parts...." [ibid.]

Moreover, just like the Empiricists (and, indeed, like many Rationalists, too), they imagine this to be an individual, 'mental' or neurological(?) skill we are all supposed to possess (naturally?):

"This fact is inseparably linked to the capacity for abstract thought, which enables humans to go far beyond the immediate situation given to us by our senses....

"When I abstract from reality, I concentrate on some aspects of a given phenomenon, and leave the others out of account.... Similarly, the brain early on learns to ignore certain sounds and concentrate on others. If we were not able to do this, the amount of information reaching our ears from all sides would overwhelm the mind completely....

"Through the mental work of abstraction, we are able to get beyond the immediate information provided by our senses (sense-perception), and probe deeper.... This is the work of abstraction, an absolutely necessary stage of the process of cognition....

"The initial process thus goes from the concrete to the abstract. The object is dismembered, analysed, in order to obtain a detailed knowledge of its parts." [Ibid.]

Just like the other theorists considered above, Woods and Grant nowhere try to prove, or even superficially substantiate, anything they dogmatically assert or conclude; they seem to think that what they have to say is incontrovertible. Nor do they even so much as attempt to address the many objections raised in this Essay (or those advanced by earlier anti-abstractionists -- again, such as Marx and Engels!). Indeed, their description of the alleged 'process of abstraction' is sketchy in the extreme, to say the least. But, that is just par for the course in this area of Traditional Myth-making.

Marcuse, no stranger to dogmatic assertion himself, presents the reader with yet more of the same, in One Dimensional Man:

"Philosophy shares this abstractness with all genuine thought, for nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not -- in his mind -- undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity." [Marcuse (1968), p.112. Bold emphases added.]

Surprising as this might seem to many who lionise the thoughts of The Frankfurt School, it is plain from the above that Marcuse is also a Bourgeois Individualist, for he seems to think we all abstract in our 'minds', making this an isolated, individualised skill.

Moreover, far from it being "the very life of thought", we have seen that abstraction works more like a dose of Cyanide.

And we are still waiting for the original data sheets of the survey I am sure Marcuse conducted, or commissioned, into the abstractive skills of everyone who has ever lived, or will ever live, on this planet -- or, failing that, a representative sample of such --, that support this rather bold assertion: "for nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given...".

A few years ago, I came across a more sophisticated defence of certain aspects of Hegel's work relevant to the purposes of this Essay: Dulckeit (1989). As is the case with Lawler's attempted defence of Hegel that we met earlier much of Dulckeit's apologetic revolves around Bertrand Russell's notorious criticisms of Hegel's transformation of the "is" of predication into an "is" of identity. In addition, Dulckeit also focuses on the weaknesses, or 'perceived' weaknesses, in the Russell's Logical Atomism and his Theory of Descriptions. [This links to a PDF, and unfortunately assumes the reader is familiar with Modern Logic. A somewhat similar argument to Dulckeit's, but which doesn't specifically target Russell, can be found in Pippin (1978).]

Now, I have no wish to defend either of Russell's theories, so I will concentrate on Dulckeit's valiant attempt to make Hegel comprehensible. Having said that, I can't find anywhere in her article where she distinguishes -- as Hegel attempted to do -- between propositions and judgements (although she mentions both), and it isn't hard to see why. As has been pointed out elsewhere in this Essay, Hegel made a complete mess of this distinction, appealing to examples of propositions to make several 'logical' points about what he took to be true only of judgements (and that includes running together asserted propositions and asserted judgements). Unfortunately, this makes much of what Dulckeit has to say somewhat irrelevant. In fact, Dulckeit runs these two terms together, for example, here:

"In its most abstract terms a judgement, according to Hegel, is expressible in the proposition 'The individual is the universal' (a is F), or, more definitely, 'The subject is the predicate' (s is P). There are two terms in a judgement, then, and they are connected by the copula 'is'." [Dulckeit (1989), p.112. Italic emphases in the original, bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Putting this fatal flaw to one side, in the same passage, Dulckeit drops a logical clanger:

This might seem a minor issue, but "The individual is the universal" and "The subject is the predicate" should be "The a is the F" and "The s is the P" respectively, and not "a is F" or "s is P", as Dulckeit renders both. This isn't a trifling point since it illustrates yet again the sloppy approach to matters logical adopted by fans of that mystical bumbler, Hegel. The logical form of definite descriptions (such as "the a", "the s", "the F", or "the P") is radically different from that of "a", "s", "F", and "P" -- i.e., subject terms and predicables, respectively.

"As used in this work, the terms 'subject' and 'predicate' will always be linguistic terms. I shall never call a man a logical subject, but only the name of a man; the name 'Peter', not the Apostle, is the subject of 'Peter was an Apostle'; and not the property of being an Apostle but its verbal expression is a predicate. I shall say, however, that what the predicate in 'Peter was an Apostle' is predicated of is Peter, not his name; for it is Peter, not his name, that is being said to have been an Apostle. In saying that something is predicated of Peter, I do not mean that this predicate is true of or applies to Peter, but only that in some significant sentence, true or false, it is predicated of Peter. I shall say that a predicate is attached to a subject, is predicated of what the subject stands for, and applies to or is true of this if the statement so formed is true.

"The stipulations in the last paragraph are of course arbitrary; but it is convenient to make some such stipulations and adhere to them. For lack of this, logicians as distinguished as Aristotle and Russell have fallen into almost inextricable confusions, so that you just cannot tell whether a predicate is something within language or something represented by means of language." [Geach (1968), pp.22-23 (this links in fact to the 3^rd (1980) edition and so has different page numbers: pp.49-50. Italic emphases in the original.]

As we will see, Dulckeit also appears to be confused over whether a predicate is "something within language or something represented by means of language". In fact, it is reasonably clear that she has fallen into just such confusion since, like so many other Hegel-fans, she is clearly intent to excuse this logical incompetent for these very muddles.

"In its most abstract terms a judgement, according to Hegel, is expressible in the proposition 'The individual is the universal' (a is F), or, more definitely, 'The subject is the predicate' (s is P). There are two terms in a judgement, then, and they are connected by the copula 'is'. It follows that an adequate theory of judgement must at least account for the nature of the relationship between subject and predicate. The relation between s and P is expressed by the copula. Just what does it mean to say 'the subject "is" the predicate'? On the one hand the subject or individual seems utterly different from, even opposed to, the predicate, yet on the other hand the copula appears to assert precisely that they are one and the same. Says Hegel:

'No doubt there is...a distinction between terms like individual and universal, subject and predicate: but it is none the less the universal fact, that every judgement states them to be identical....' [Dulckeit is here quoting Hegel (1975), p.231, §166. I have corrected her quotation to conform with the published, 3^rd edition. I have also reproduced this passage in full below. Italic emphases here are Dulckeit's, not Hegel's -- RL.]

"The suggestion seems to be that, somehow, s and P are both (1) distinct from each other, and also (2) identical. Formally, that is, the judgement announces the identity of s and P, but since in fact P does not exhaust s, there is a tension between what the form of the judgement posits and what the content delivers. In fact, (1) and (2) appear to be mutually exclusive alternatives. In Hegel's words:

'What the judgment enunciates to start with is that the subject is the predicate; but since the predicate is supposed not to be what the subject is, we are faced with a contradiction which must resolve itself...'. [Dulckeit is here quoting Hegel (1999), p.630, §1358. I have used the on-line version (and have corrected a minor typo when the latter is compared with the published text). I have reproduced this passage in full in Appendix A -- RL.]

"Let us use an example. In the judgement 'The rose is red,' subject and predicate appear to be entirely independent from one another. For the subject as an object exists whether or not it possesses this particular predicate, and the universal determination exists in other subjects even if it does not belong to this one." [Dulckeit (1989), pp.112-13. Most of the italic emphases are in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Some paragraphs merged.]

First of all, as noted above, Hegel and Dulckeit run together talk about talk (i.e., language about language) with talk about 'the world', confusing the subject of a sentence with (in this case) the individual concerned, just as the latter also seems to think predicates aren't what is said about that individual (or whatever), but what a predicate expression supposedly stands for -- it is "the universal determination [that] exists in other subjects". So, "red" (to use for the moment the traditional way of alluding to predicables) presumably is this "universal determination [that] exists in other subjects" and stands for "redness", one presumes. We also see this in the next few words of the same article:

"From this subjective vantage point, says Hegel, the act of judging merely involves the reflection of whether a given predicate located 'in someone's head' ought to be attached to an object existing 'outside' that person, an object which is what it is, regardless of whether or not the judgement is made. The independence of the two extremes suggest that s and P are distinct and opposed to each other, and consequently, are related merely externally." [Ibid., p.113. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Here, it is clear that a predicate isn't just a linguistic expression, it is also something that exists somewhere -- "in the head", or in the "outside" world --, and hence that predicate expressions must refer to such things.

Admittedly, Dulckeit criticises this view on Hegel's behalf (in that it implies an 'external relation' between subject and predicate), but it is also clear that without the above characterisation, Hegel and Dulckeit would have nothing to criticise. Their mischaracterisation of predicate expressions (as referring terms) is the point of departure for these dialectical fairy tales. If predicate expressions aren't what these two say they are, then Hegel's fantasies can gain no grip -- so it is important for these two to so mischaracterise them.

It is worth examining this point a little further, since it is abundantly clear that Dulckeit does do this --, for example, when she says things like the following:

"On the one hand the subject or individual seems utterly different from, even opposed to, the predicate...." [Ibid.]

"In the judgement 'The rose is red,' subject and predicate appear to be entirely independent from one another. For the subject as an object exists whether or not it possesses this particular predicate, and the universal determination exists in other subjects even if it does not belong to this one." [Ibid. Bold italicised emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

The emphasised words clearly indicate that Dulckeit has confused what we might say about someone or something with what or whom we are talking about -- as well as conflating their names with the individuals (or the objects) concerned --, saying "the subject as an object exists whether or not it possesses this particular predicate" --, which indicates that, for her, subject and predicate aren't always linguistic expressions.

Subjects don't "possess" predicates any more than cats possess adverbs, or cell phones prepositions. So, if the subject of a sentence is crossed out -- in, say, "~~Donald Trump~~ is a racist" -- that doesn't mean that the individual, Donald Trump, has been crossed out, which it would do if the subject of a sentence were the individual concerned, not an expression employed in order to refer to him or her. One might wish that bigots and racists were quite so easily disposed of, so that striking their names out would automatically consign them to the dustbin of history, but, as the saying goes, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride". Other than in magic, what we do with subject terms no more affects the individual to whom that term refers than sticking pins in a doll harms whoever that doll is supposed to represent. Running the two together is, plainly, what magical thinking is based upon. So, the subject of a sentence isn't an "object"; it is a linguistic expression.

It might be countered that all linguistic expression are objects of one sort or another; but, in that case, if the word "subject" is also an "object" -- indicated when Dulckeit says "For the subject as an object exists whether or not it possesses this particular predicate" (bold added) -- she is asserting of the word "subject" (not what it supposedly designates, but the word itself) that it possesses a predicate. Are we really supposed to believe that the word "subject" possesses the predicate "red" (to use for the moment (again) the traditional way of alluding to predicables), so that we could truthfully assert "'Subject' is red"? That is, that the word "subject" is coloured red?

It could further be objected that it is perfectly normal to speak about, say, Socrates (the man) being the subject spoken about in or by sentences such as "Socrates is mortal", as well as being the subject of the sentence itself.

Indeed, and it is this equivocation that is part of the problem, as Geach pointed out earlier:

"As used in this work, the terms 'subject' and 'predicate' will always be linguistic terms. I shall never call a man a logical subject, but only the name of a man; the name 'Peter', not the Apostle, is the subject of 'Peter was an Apostle'; and not the property of being an Apostle but its verbal expression is a predicate. I shall say, however, that what the predicate in 'Peter was an Apostle' is predicated of is Peter, not his name; for it is Peter, not his name, that is being said to have been an Apostle.... For lack of this, logicians as distinguished as Aristotle and Russell have fallen into almost inextricable confusions, so that you just cannot tell whether a predicate is something within language or something represented by means of language." [Geach (1968), pp.22-23. Paragraphs merged.]

One minute, dialecticians like Dulckeit are talking about logical or grammatical parts of sentences, the next about whatever they are supposed to designate 'in the world', failing to distinguish between the two even while sliding effortlessly from one to the other, as if each such move creates no logical problems of its own. As noted above, they "run together talk about talk with talk about 'the world'".

This is, of course, precisely where, in Ancient Greece, Traditional Theorists began to go wrong, as we have seen throughout this Essay.

The only defence advanced in favour of this slide that I can find in Dulckeit's article is the following:

"With respect to the formulations of a judgement just given, please keep in mind that, from a Hegelian point of view, it is not only unnecessary, but impossible to distinguish strictly between these metaphysical and linguistic notions because they are, for Hegel, two expressions for the same relation." [Ibid., p.127.]

In other words, if we blindly follow Hegel into this fog of mysticism, we will see 'the truth' for ourselves and it will make us free -- free from the constraints the social nature of communication and language place on all who use it. Dulckeit offers her readers no other reason why we should allow Hegel (or her) to get away with such linguistic licence. Neither does Hegel! But much of his (and her) argument depends on this slide.

[To be sure, Dulckeit is trying to interpret Hegel, but there is nothing in her article to suggest she disagrees with him about any of this; quite the reverse in fact (no pun intended). Presently, we will see that Dulckeit (and Hegel, if she has interpreted him aright -- but, who can say?) becomes even more confused, and that is partly a result of this initial muddle.]

Second, Dulckeit simply takes Hegel at his word when he blithely assumes what is to be proved: that when we predicate something of an individual by attaching a predicate expression to a subject term, this is true:

"the copula appears to assert precisely that they are one and the same." [Ibid.]

So, Dulckeit simply asserts that the copula appears to be, or to do, whatever Hegel says it appears to be, or to do -- albeit with a cursory attempt to justify these moves a page or so later. [Her apologia will be examined presently.] This is quite apart from the fact that a copula can't assert anything, and so can't even "appear" to do it, either. Human beings assert things, and they do so using indicative sentences. At a pinch, we can assert things of an individual by attaching a predicate expression to a subject term.

A few lines later we are met with this prize example of dialectical confusion (also examined above):

"From this subjective vantage point, says Hegel, the act of judging merely involves the reflection of whether a given predicate located 'in someone's head' ought to be attached to an object existing 'outside' that person, an object which is what it is, regardless of whether or not the judgement is made. The independence of the two extremes suggest (sic) that s and P are distinct and opposed to each other, and consequently, are related to each other externally.... Just as from a grammatical point of view, the copula is a device by which two separate words are connected. Insofar as the copula asserts the nature of their relation, therefore, it at once expresses their differences." [Ibid., p.113. Italic emphases in the original.]

We saw earlier that the traditional analysis of predicate expressions encouraged theorists to conceive of them as objects, or even as 'mental' entities of some sort (alternatively as expressions, or as singular terms, referring to one or both -- this is just another consequence of the syntactic slide mentioned above), at the same time as regarding them as designating universals that exist independently of us, 'somewhere'/'who-knows-where'(?). And we can surely see the result of this slide for ourselves in the above passage. Hegel stumbled into this bear trap like a falling down drunk, and Dulckeit seems happy not only to highlight this logical blunder, but follow him into its jaws. So, on this view, predicates aren't simply linguistic expressions, they are somehow 'mental entities', as well as 'objects' exiting somewhere in 'extra-mental' reality. [Or, it is what such terms supposedly designate that so exist?] Curious readers will look long and hard for any justification for these flights-of-fancy (that is, "justification" over and above the fact that it is traditional to conceive of predicates this way, but only when they have been subjected to the syntactic segue analysed more fully elsewhere in this Essay.

They will also wonder how a minor feature of a sub-branch of the Indo-European family of languages (namely, the subject-predicate form that takes the copula "is") single-handedly manages to achieve all three things at once.

But, here we see these errors compounded, for it is now plain that not only are predicates not linguistic expressions (or they are and they aren't!), they enjoy a life of their own milling about in someone's head, helpfully identified or us by Hegel without the benefit of a single brain probe or CT scan, while whatever they "attach" to (is this "the subject"?) floats about outside that head in glorious freedom. Language and what language allegedly represents are run together shamelessly here -- indeed, as predicted.

Dulckeit also uncritically accepts what I have elsewhere called the SGP (i.e., 'Spinoza's Greedy Principle') -- "Every determination is also a negation" --, referring to it several times (but, without once even so much as attempting to justify it, an intellectually cavalier and negligent approach to logic she clearly inherited from Spinoza and Hegel) -- for example, here:

"In his [Hegel's] analysis of sense-certainty in the Phenomenology, he had already established that saying what a thing is must also involve saying what this particular thing is not." [Ibid., p.114. Italic emphases in the original.]

I outlined the fatal defects of this intellectual virus -- the SGP -- earlier in this Essay. Readers are directed there for more details. I have also analysed it more fully from a different angle, below.

[However, readers will also search long and hard in the Phenomenology for anything resembling a proof of what Dulckeit alleges, or anywhere where it is "established that saying what a thing is must also involve saying what this particular thing is not". What they will find in its place is page after page of incomprehensible gobbledygook. Of course, readers are invited to check this for themselves and not just take my word for it. If anyone thinks Hegel's words aren't gobbledygook, please contact me with a clear translation into ordinary English.]

However, it is worth pointing out that without the SGP, the entire edifice of Hegelian 'dialectics' collapses faster than a cheap deckchair. In which case, it is more than a little puzzling that this principle has never been defended -- or, rather, it has never been seriously defended -- by those whose brains have been compromised by this mystical twaddle. Rather like the countless gnomic pronouncements that litter Traditional Thought, the SGP is perhaps to be viewed as 'self-evident'.

Dulckeit now aggravates these self-inflicted wounds by once again taking Hegel at his word:

"Suppose that (1) is correct and the individual is in fact distinct from the universal, and hence s from P. On this assumption, any attempt to say what a thing is appears to lead us directly into the following contradiction: While we may correctly assert that with respect to the rose that 'The individual is the universal', or 's is P,' we would be just as correct in asserting, on the basis of (1), that 'The individual is not the universal' or 's is not P'. According to our previous example, we would then get (a) 'The rose is red' and (b) 'The rose is not red', since other things are red and are not this rose.... [U]nless it is the case that both (a) and (b) are correct, nothing informative could ever be said about what a thing is, such that alternative (2) would always yield some empty version of 's is s' or (c) 'The rose is a rose.'... Apparently, then, Hegel can avoid the empty (c) only by embracing the seemingly contradictory (a) and (b)." [Ibid., p.114. Italic emphases in the original. Quotations marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

It is here that we see the syntactic and semantic sins of yesteryear (which Hegel uncritically appropriated from the Ancient Greeks, Medieval and Renaissance Logicians) deliver their inevitable payload: total confusion.

Again, we have already noted that Traditional Theorists chose to reconfigure predicate expressions as the logical equivalent of singular terms -- the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars -- and here we witness Dulckeit inadvertently exposing Hegel's false steps in all their glory in that respect. This is perhaps most clearly seen as part of his (and her) translation of "The rose is red" into the schema "The subject/individual is the universal", but earlier as "The subject is the predicate", where what used to be a predicate expression, "...is red" (or, more traditionally just "red"), has now become a singular term, "the predicate". Now, it might make some sort of crazy, half-baked, Idealist sense to suppose there could be a relation of sorts between "red", so doctored, and "The rose", so processed --, that is, between "The predicate" and "The subject", but only if they have been surgically 'enhanced' in this way -- and, in a manner that destroys the judgement itself, turning it into a list! But, that is just about all that can be said on its behalf.

Hegel's diabolical 'logic' now stalls on the starting grid as a result of the above linguistic legerdemain, since there can be no identity between the linguistic expressions, "The rose", and, "...is red", nor yet between what they supposedly refer to. That is because "...is red" isn't a referring expression, to begin with. In that case, there can be no such identity if predicates don't designate anything that could be put into any sort of relation with anything else, let alone form part of an identity relation; indeed, they don't designate, period. If predicates were referring expressions, "The rose is red" would become a list (i.e, "The rose/identity/red") --, and, as we saw earlier, lists say nothing.

Much also appears to revolve around the rather odd and seemingly irrelevant claim that "somehow, s and P are both distinct from each other", the 'justification' for which appears to be the following:

"While we may correctly assert that with respect to the rose that 'The individual is the universal', or 's is P,' we would be just as correct in asserting, on the basis of (1), that 'The individual is not the universal' or 's is not P'. According to our previous example, we would then get (a) 'The rose is red' and (b) 'The rose is not red', since other things are red and are not this rose...." [Ibid.]

The 'justification' for concluding that "The rose is red" and "The rose is not red" -- i.e., that "other things are red and are not this rose" -- looks like a non sequitur of historic proportions.

Exactly how does the fact that roses aren't the only red flowers (or even the only red objects, simpliciter) imply that "The rose is not red"? Dulckeit doesn't say, and as far as can be determined, neither does Hegel. If you had a red rose in your hands and someone were to assert that that flower wasn't in fact red because post boxes or Manchester United football (soccer) shirts are also red, I think you'd be right to question their sanity. One thing you wouldn't do is conclude that that individual was a "genius" and had somehow unearthed the deepest secrets of "Being" as a result of the observation that there are other red objects. To be sure, had the original proposition been "Only the rose is red" -- or even "The rose is exclusively red" -- there might have been some mystical mileage, here; but it wasn't, so there isn't.

It could be objected that Dulckeit's point is that there is no internal connection between a rose and its colour, which can be seen by the fact that roses can be other colours, and there are many other objects that are red. As she noted, this connection is external. Quite apart from the additional fact that these traditional terms-of-art (i.e., "external" and "internal") are themselves as clear as mud, this objection trades on the even more obscure idea that there are such things as 'essences'. So, this response relies on the claim that the colour of a rose isn't part of that plant's 'essence', whereas the fact that the rose is a plant is part of its 'essence'.

And yet, there are plants that aren't roses, just as there are objects that aren't red. If that is enough to deny that being red is part of the 'essence' of a rose, then the fact that there are other plants which aren't roses should be enough to deny that being a plant is part of the 'essence' of a rose, too. Of course, if there are no 'essences' to begin with (or if it makes no sense to assert that there are any -- as will be demonstrated in Essay Thirteen Part Two), then this whole line of argument goes out of the window. [Until that is published, readers are directed to my remarks on this topic in Essay Eight Part Two, here. I also return to this topic below.]

The only other possible justification for concluding that there is a difference between subject terms and predicate expressions (or what they supposedly designate) is that a proposition like "The rose is red" supposedly suggests to us an identity between subject and predicate, which -- so the argument goes -- plainly isn't the case (as Hegel himself acknowledged, even if only temporarily). Hence, the conclusion is that they are obviously different. As we will see, this small and seemingly innocent step catapults us right into the middle of this Hegelian Madhouse, for these considerations re-introduce the SGP -- since, as we will also see, this somehow means that 'identity implies difference' (or it implies 'non-identity'') -- 'every determination is also a negation', or so we have been assured.

We will return to cut a path through this logical thicket below, but Dulckeit's (and Hegel's) claim that sentences like "The rose is a rose" are 'uninformative and empty tautologies' is no less misguided. First of all, it is doubtful whether such sentences are tautologies to begin with; since I have covered that point elsewhere, the reader is directed there for more details. Secondly, we have already seen that not only are such sentences not 'empty', they can be informative, too.

In the next section of her article, Dulckeit attempts to justify the above moves with a series of replies addressed to several hypothetical critics of this way of re-casting the copula "is" as one of identity. It is to this section that I now turn.

"[It] must be remembered that [Hegel's] analysis of the forms of judgment in the Logic is motivated by his interest in essential judgement. There are two conditions for such judgements. To begin with, a judgement is an essential judgement only if P tells us precisely and exclusively what s is; no less and no more. But merely predicating universals of particulars is insufficient for this, unless the term in the predicate position at once expresses the essential nature of the subject. This, in turn, argues Hegel, is possible only if the 'is' expresses some identity between s and P. For if essential determination were possible exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external. As a consequence, s would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while P would designate something distinct from s, namely a universal. But the truth of sense-certainty in the Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual, an individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals. It follows that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and P are utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because it entails the distinction between s and P which would commit us to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology." [Ibid., pp.115-16. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

So, from the above, a 'judgement' is 'essential' on two conditions: (a) "Only if P tells us precisely and exclusively what s is; no less and no more", and (b) A predicate expression must express "the essential nature of the subject", and that is possible only if the copula is an "is" of identity.

When these are coupled with what we have already learnt about Hegel's 'logic' from Dulckeit in the previous paragraphs, we can see that this argument is clearly circular: a 'judgement' is 'essential' only if it expresses the 'essential nature' of the subject, and it can only do that if the copula "is" is one of identity. But -- and here we loop the first loop -- it is one identity only if it captures that 'essence'! But, and again, what if there are no 'essences'? Hegel just assumes there are with no attempt to justify that crucial move, content merely to import the idea from the Ancient Greeks (along with the term, "universal", and a host of other obscure, jargonised expressions). Plainly, if there are no 'essences' there can be no 'essential judgements', either.

So, the argument appears to be: (i) There are only 'essential judgements' if the copula is one of identity and it captures that 'essence', (ii) 'Essences' are expressed by 'essential judgements', (iii) There are 'essential judgements' only if the copula is one of identity, (iv) The copula captures that 'essence', and (v) 'Essences' are expressed by 'essential judgements'..., and so on...

But, what is so 'essential' about the alleged 'judgement "The rose is red"? This most certainly doesn't tell us "precisely and exclusively" what a rose is. Or, rather, it doesn't do so unless we impose on that sentence the idea that the "is" here is one of identity -- which, plainly, would make the rose one with redness (such that nothing else could be red!), and that in turn would tell us, one supposes, "precisely and exclusively" what a rose is. This means, once more, that only if we accept everything Hegel says as Gospel Truth, only if we accept the doctrine that there are such things as 'essential judgements', and that the copula in these 'essential judgements' is one of identity, will we be able to conclude that are there 'essential judgements' captured by identity in the first place!

Nevertheless, according to Dulckeit, Hegel has an argument of sorts in support of all this 'circular logic':

"[I]f essential determination were possible exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external. As a consequence, s would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while P would designate something distinct from s, namely a universal." [Ibid.]

In other words, ordinary predication can't capture the 'internal' nature of 'essential judgements'! Again, we are being asked to accept the supposed conclusion here solely on Hegel's say-so, which conclusion is then re-used as a key component in its own proof!

The background argument appears to be something like this: an 'external' link between a predicate and a subject would imply that they can be separated (at least in thought), and if that were generally so we would be faced with a "bare individual" and an "abstract predicate":

"It follows that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and P are utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract...." [Ibid.]

We can perhaps now see from where the muddle has arisen for we are told that predicates "designate...a universal", that is, that predicates are the Proper Names of abstract particulars, and such particulars can enter relations with whatever it is that a subject term designates --, for example, the relations of identity and/or difference. However, only if predicates are transmogrified in this way will this Hegelian dog run. If predicates do not do this, if they don't function like Proper Names, then the idea that they can be so characterised can't arise. And if that is so, the belief that this has anything to do with 'external' links between subject and predicate gains no purchase.

It might be objected that we can surely question whether a given rose is red, or any other colour. Indeed, but that would typically be achieved by asserting "The rose isn't red", or perhaps even, "The rose is blue/pink/white...". No one is going to assert "The rose has no colour at all", which, if it were to be asserted, would be the consequence of accepting the odd idea that predicates can be separated from subjects. That in turn would imply -- so we have been told -- there are, or can be, "bare individuals". But that isn't what we would conclude about "The rose isn't red"; we would infer it was another colour not that it was colourless, nor yet that it was a "bare individual" (devoid of any properties!). Of course, philosophers entertain such weird ideas (that a given property is separable from any subject concerned, and hence all properties are separable, yielding a "bare individual"). However, to counter such flights-of-fancy by an appeal to Hegel's 'logic' isn't like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, it is more like using a nut to crack a sledgehammer. The sledgehammer here is how we use ordinary language and what that will do to such 'off-the-wall' theories, especially when we take Marx's advice --, and the nut is Hegel.

So, yes, we can certainly imagine a rose with a different colour, but not one with no colour. Ordinary language prevents us from making sense of any suggestion to the contrary.

"But the truth of sense-certainty in the Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual, an individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals. It follows that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and P are utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because it entails the distinction between s and P which would commit us to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology." [Ibid.]

For the hundredth time, we have already seen that while Hegelians might insist that "an individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals", what actually happens is that their theory transforms these 'universals' into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. All that this leaves Hegel-fans with are 'individuals' and 'abstract particulars', thrown together in a list, destroying their capacity to say anything at all!

"[A]ccording to Hegel, an essential judgement must also be informative. The 'is' of identity as Russell conceives it, however, would result in a mere tautology, since the identity it would express between the two terms of the judgement would be a merely abstract or formal identity. Hegel's whole point, then, is to show that neither the 'is' of predication nor the 'is' of identity are capable on their own to yield [sic] an informative judgement about what something is essentially. Again Hegel's own example serves to illustrate this nicely: 'The rose is red' may be informative, but fails to tell us about what it is that is red. And, according to Hegel's view, s must already be a particular before we can predicate of it a property, such as 'red'. And while 'The rose is a rose' exhibits the form of an identity statement, it hardly provides information about the essential character or nature of whatever is asserted to be identical with itself. Unless we want to deny that judgements about essences (which must express identity) can also be informative, argues Hegel, what we need is neither the 'is' of predication nor the 'is' of identity, but a dialectical unity of the two which we might call the 'is' of 'identity-in-difference.' According to Hegel, Russell's example for [sic] the 'is' of identity is really an example for [sic] the notion of identity-in-difference as Hegel conceives of it, although it does not yet constitute a perfect instance of it. The same applies to Hegel's own example. In the judgement 'The rose is red,' the difference between s and P is still very great and the 'is' only minimally mediates between the two terms. Because they depend in part on the content, the degrees of mediation cannot be spelled out explicitly. But in Hegel's view, judgements progress from this still largely 'immediate' or 'qualitative' judgement in which the 'is' closely parallels Russell's 'is' of predication, through a long series of progressively more adequate judgements in which s and P become increasingly more congruous until they are finally 'identical.' But even here, the identity retains an inner distinction and, consequently, is unlike Russell's own conception of formal identity (i.e., identity which does not consider content). It is clear, then, that for Hegel any absolute distinction between the 'is' of predication and identity ultimately vanishes. But surely, this is not to say that Hegel cannot tell the difference between them where it does exist, particularly since his entire treatment of judgement clearly consists of a careful working out of this very difference, culminating in 'identity-in-difference.' Since difference is preserved in even the most perfect case of identity, Hegel can hardly be accused of denying the distinction between s and P. Quite clearly, he insists on it. Insofar, however, as the distinction is internal, what is distinguished at once remains a unity or 'identity.' Or, to put it even more strongly, the identity is an identity only by virtue of the (internal) distinction. Surely, discovering the inadequacy of two philosophical notions in isolation (i.e., in abstraction) is not the same as overlooking their difference." [Ibid., pp.116-17. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Much of the above depends on the reader already accepting (or, rather, swallowing) the probative nature of the circular argument exposed earlier. Dulckeit never questions whether there are such things as 'essential judgements', but takes it as read that there are. However, if there aren't any, then much of the above is just philosophical hot air. Her caveat "Unless we want to deny that judgements about essences (which must express identity) can also be informative..." half acknowledges this. What she should have said is: "Unless we want to deny there are any judgements about essences...", which the reader will surely have a mind to do unless and until either she or Hegel provides a cogent argument in support of the ancient dogma that these mythical beasts of yore actually exist.

The following, then, appears to be (at least part of) the central core of her argument:

"Again Hegel's own example serves to illustrate this nicely: 'The rose is red' may be informative, but fails to tell us about what it is that is red. And, according to Hegel's view, s must already be a particular before we can predicate of it a property, such as 'red'. And while 'The rose is a rose' exhibits the form of an identity statement, it hardly provides information about the essential character or nature of whatever is asserted to be identical with itself." [Ibid.]

In fact, "The rose is red" does tell us what it is that is "red" -- namely the rose! It may omit all mention of 'particularity' (and even 'essence'), but that itself is an a priori requirement Dulckeit has cavalierly imposed on this innocent looking sentence for no good reason. Moreover, if the following were the case: "s must already be a particular before we can predicate of it a property, such as 'red'" (emphasis added), we must surely have before us a bare particular, something we were told Hegel had banished from His Ideal Kingdom for all eternity.

It could be argued that for Hegel individuals become particulars when they are conceived of as individuals of a certain sort -- that is, "an individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals." In that case, even for Hegel, there can be no such thing as particulars before we have predicated of them anything (an idea already prominent in Kant, and, in embryo form in Plato and Aristotle). To be a particular is eo ipso to be a particular of a certain sort, otherwise it can't even be a particular.

That being so, the validity of the spurious terms, 'difference' and 'identity-in-difference' evaporates about as fast as a drop of ether on a hot plate -- since, even for Hegel, there can be no dichotomy between a particular and its alleged 'essential properties'. This means that all talk about 'mediation' and 'progression' -- indeed, the rest of the above quotation -- turns out to be yet more wasted ink and effort.

Dulckeit next tackles a question that has been rumbling away in the background all along: Why should all (or any) judgements have to be 'essential'? After pointing out that Hegel doesn't deny that predication is important in ordinary language, and that he doesn't demand that all judgements be 'essential', Dulckeit adds:

"[Hegel] is simply pointing out that if one wants to know the essential nature or identity of the subject, qualitative judgements will not suffice, since even the longest list of properties will not enlighten us in that regard unless the term in the predicated place expresses the essential character of the subject. And this, he argues, is possible only if s and P are identical in their difference." [Ibid., pp.117-18. Italic emphases in the original.]

But, this just prompts us into asking once again the nagging question: what evidence is there that there are any such 'essences' for 'judgements' to be about to begin with -- that is, over and above the fact that it is traditional to suppose there are any?

Some might argue that in sentences like "John is a man", John can't fail to be man, since he is an individual of that type. It is essential to John that he is a man; change that and John would cease to be John. Hence, this is an essential property.

But, is this merely a verbal 'necessity'? Are these 'essences' simply an artefact of the way we use language? Or are they something more? Since I have covered this topic in Essay Eight Part Two (here), readers are once again directed there for more details.

However, in her next comment, Dulckeit at last homes in on the heart of the 'problem'; after pointing out that some might conclude that after all is said and done Russell and Hegel aren't really all that far apart, she argues:

"To think this way, however, would be seriously to misunderstand Hegel's central point. For identifying a thing's essence necessarily involves difference. Without difference there would only be one term, and the assertion of identity would be impossible. This means that Russell could never get an 'is' of identity from which to distinguish that of predication in the first place, unless he admits their interdependence. But this is just what he wants to deny when he asserts their radical difference." [Ibid., p.118. Italic emphasis in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Would it be out of place, if not somewhat impertinent, to ask at this point: If Hegel and Dulckeit are right that in the end (after they have been 'dialectically processed') these two forms of "is" are in fact identical, they must also be radically different? After all, as Dulckeit notes, identity implies difference. Hence, if these two forms of "is" are identical they must also be radically different, surely? Of course, this isn't my view, but that awkward realisation now undermines Dulckeit's criticism of Russell; for on the basis of her argument, Russell was right to underline their radical difference!

To be sure, the 'dialectical' reply to this annoying quibble is that according to Hegel we must accept both; that these two versions of "is" are identical and radically different. In this way, Hegel can 'have his cake and eat it', having found an easy way with any objection -- absorbing one and all into the body of confusion that is 'the dialectic', along with its opposite! Is there any arguing with such scorched-earth 'logic'?

But, and once again, dialectical chicanery like this only works if we accept the idea that Hegel's jargon makes any sense -- along with the yet-to-be-established existence of all these 'essences', as well as Hegel's lame-brained criticism of the LOI. [I have dealt with Hegel and the LOI in Essay Eight Part Three, here.]

This is quite apart from the fact that we have already seen that the alleged difference between subject terms and predicates is logically irrelevant.

Dulckeit now resurrects the SGP -- a 'principle' that provides Hegel with his only substantive support (or so it might seem):

"From this it also follows that Russell is mistaken when he thinks that 'Socrates is the philosopher who drank the hemlock' is an example of an identity statement which excludes all difference. In sense-certainty, Hegel had shown that saying what something is is possible only by saying what it is not. His point he takes to have been established both in the Phenomenology and in the Logic where he criticises the law of identity. Now he merely applies this insight to his analysis of judgements. The inadequacy of the 'is' of identity by itself stems precisely from its exclusion of difference. If all difference is eliminated the judgement will no longer be informative but tautologious, for it is the 'identity-in-difference' alone which allows identity judgements to be informative. Russell's own example of an identity statement, however, is clearly an informative judgement. Consequently, it is actually an instance of Hegel's 'identity-in-difference'." [Ibid., p.118. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Hegelians are fond of saying things like this, but when it comes to proof they all appear to have been struck dumb. They never even attempt to spell-out the details underpinning this dogma, content merely to parrot it uncritically -- which, when, you think about it, is consistent with their serially sloppy approach to logic in general (Dulckeit included). This is doubly puzzling when we consider the additional fact that they never tire of telling us that DL is vastly superior to FL!

Ok, so let us try to fill in the details these Dialectical Dupes conveniently omit. Consider a very simple identity statement/proposition:

[Where "A(1)" goes proxy for a Proper Name or some other singular term. Here, and in what follows, "P(k)" goes proxy for any predicable (expressing the 'essence' of whatever it expresses, or doesn't express). The significance of the numbers will soon become apparent.]

But, according to 'sense-certainty' and the SGP, D1a must be modified -- since we are told that "Hegel had shown that saying what something is is possible only by saying what it is not...", perhaps along the following lines:

D2: A(1) is identical to P(1) and A(1) isn't B(1), B(2), B(3),..., B(n).

[Where "B(k)" stands for a Proper Name, some other singular term or predicate expression (we can afford to be indiscriminate and profligate here, since, as we have seen, Hegelians are already World Champions in this Event), and n is indefinitely large -- and which will remain so until Hegelians tell us just how big their "Totality" is. No sign of them doing that any day soon, either!]

But, we don't yet know what B(1) is. So, if we want to know what B(1) is we can "only" do so by "saying what it is and is not". In that case, we must now modify/'develop' D2:

D3: B(1) is identical to P(2) and B(1) isn't C(1), C(2), C(3),..., C(n).

[Where, once more, "C(k)" stands for a Proper Name, some other singular term or predicate expression, and n is indefinitely large. (There will also have to be D3-type sentences for each of B(2), B(3),..., B(n). Readers so minded can while away the hours working out the details for each remaining B(k). However, in order to save on repetition, and needless complexity, I will omit this specific detail for subsequent letters.)]

But, we don't yet know what C(1) is. So, if we want to know what C(1) is we can "only" do so by "saying what it is and is not". In that case, we must now modify/'develop' D3, as follows:

D4: C(1) is identical to P(3) and C(1) isn't E(1), E(2), E(3),..., E(n).

[Where, once again, "E(k)" stands for a Proper Name, some other singular term or predicate expression, and n is indefinitely large. (I haven't used "D(1)" etc., here, to prevent confusion with lines D1 onwards.)]

But, we don't yet know what E(1) is. So, if we want to know what E(1) is we can "only" do so by "saying what it is and is not". In that case, we must now modify/'develop' D4:

D5: E(1) is identical to P(4) and E(1) isn't F(1), F(2), F(3),..., F(n).

[Where, as before, "F(k)" stands for a Proper Name, some other singular term or predicate expression, and n is indefinitely large.]

It takes very little non-dialectical logic (or even a tiny smattering of common sense) to see that with this off-the-wall approach to 'logic' we wouldn't know anything at all. Nothing would be 'informative'.

And yet, this is all so unnecessary. If we interpret the LOI, not as a comic truth (or even a cosmically (abstract) truth, according to the 'abstract understanding'), but as a badly-stated rule of language concerning the use of words we have for sameness and difference (as Wittgenstein intimated), if we do that, these pseudo-problems simply vanish.

[An opaque drop of metaphysical gobbledygook condensed out of a cloud of garbled grammar (to paraphrase Wittgenstein). I have countered the Hegelian objection that we can't just introduce negations "arbitrarily" -- which the above argument supposedly does -- here and here.]

In the third and penultimate section of her article, Dulckeit 'examines' (or, rather, simply regurgitates) Hegel's criticism of the LOI as part of her response to several objections Hegel's 'theory' might face (more specifically those on which Russell himself focused):

"The Law of Identity, which Hegel takes up in the 'Doctrine of Essence,' says that 'everything is identical with itself.'" [Ibid., p.119. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

While this might be a garbled version of the LOI that Hegel further screwed around with, Dulckeit can't be happy with this as a contemporary definition of identity -- that is, not without embarrassment, or, worse, not without revealing her ignorance. And, it is little use complaining that she is trying to defend Hegel's understanding of this 'law' since she is also attempting to analyse (albeit superficially) Gotlob Frege and Bertrand Russell's views on identity, the LEM, and Russell's theory of definite descriptions (which itself incorporates a use of identity). However, and once again, this is only to be expected of those who look to that Hermetic Harebrain, Hegel, for guidance in matters logical.

[I have covered this topic at greater length in Essays Six and Eight Part Three. The reader is directed there for more details.]

"But if we wish to express the fact that something is self-identical we must put it in the form A = A, a proposition which clearly uses two terms, not one. So while the object o [sic] is one, to understand and state that fact [sic] requires two terms 'o = o'." [Ibid., p.119. Italic emphases in the original, bold added.]

We had occasion to note earlier that those who look to Hegel for inspiration are invariably recklessly cavalier over their use of what look like logical symbols -- but which they plainly aren't. They can't be symbols since (a) we are never told what they are, and have to try to work out for ourselves from the context what they could possibly stand for, and (b) dialecticians use them inconsistently; one minute they appear to stand for Proper Names, or other singular terms, the next they designate predicate expressions (or what the latter supposedly stand for in 'extra-mental reality'), and then perhaps sentences or propositions, and, indeed, a host of other imponderables. Mercurial inscriptions -- those that change at the whim of the theorist involved, often within the same paragraph or sentence -- aren't logical symbols, whatever else they are.

Lo and behold! That is exactly what we find Dulckeit herself doing. She must know enough logic to realise that these moves are intellectually indefensible, which, of course, means it is difficult to absolve her of charlatanry here, too. Alas, the same can be said about every other Hegel-fan. We have already noted that both Dulckeit and Hegel confuse talk about talk with talk about 'the world', and here we witness another instance of the same confusion. We aren't told what the above letter "A" stands for (but it later becomes apparent that it can, and does, stand for all the things mentioned in the previous paragraph), except we are given a hint that it (or, rather, A = A) somehow represents what is supposedly expressed by the phrase "something is self-identical". So, A seems to stand for "something" -- a quantifier!

Dulckeit then changes tack and introduces a new letter, "o", which is apparently an abbreviation for "object" -- but, note: this letter is an object, it doesn't stand for an object -- it is an object. That that is the case can be seen when Dulckeit adds the following remark: "So while the object o is one..." This letter doesn't, therefore, stand for a non-descript 'object', it is this object!

Be this as it may, just after we have been apprised of this 'fact', we are then confronted with the following gem: "to understand and state that fact requires two terms 'o = o'." This mercurial letter/object/abbreviation/whatever has now been transmogrified into a "term", capable of occupying a logical role in that other ill-defined 'formula' "o = o"! But, is this o an object on either side of an "=" sign, or a singular term? Or, what? Why is it necessary for readers to have to rely on an ability to distance-read 'dialectical minds' in order to understand what Hegel-groupies are trying to tell us? Is it any wonder that Bertrand Russell asserted the following?

"This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise." [Russell (1961), p.715.]

Putting this sub-sophomoric logical gaffe to one side for now, what is the significance of the fact that we have to use two symbols (in fact, there are three -- two letter "o"s and an "=" sign -- unless we are to suppose that two occurrences of "o" counts as one symbol -- once again we are left to guess!) in order to express self-identity?

"According to Hegel, this is consistent with Leibniz's Law of the Identity of Indiscernibles. Implicit in the Law of Identity, then, is something which simply eludes the logic of the understanding: the idea that identity makes sense only as self-identity which, in turn, implies self-relation and, therefore, contains essentially the idea of difference." [Dulckeit (1989. Italic emphasis in the original. Link added.]

"Essence is mere Identity and reflection in itself only as it is self-relating negativity, and in that way self-repulsion. It contains therefore essentially the characteristic of Difference. Other-being is here no longer qualitative, taking the shape of the character or limit. It is now in essence, in self-relating essence, and therefore the negation is at the same time a relation -- is, in short, Distinction, Relativity, Mediation.

"To ask 'How Identity comes to Difference', assumes that Identity as mere abstract Identity is something of itself, and Difference also something else equally independent. This supposition renders an answer to the question impossible. If Identity is viewed as diverse from Difference, all that we have in this way is but Difference; and hence we cannot demonstrate the advance to difference, because the person who asks for the How of the progress thereby implies that for him the starting-point is non-existent. The question then when put to the test has obviously no meaning, and its proposer may be met with the question what he means by Identity; whereupon we should soon see that he attaches no idea to it at all, and that Identity is for him an empty name. As we have seen, besides, Identity is undoubtedly a negative -- not however an abstract empty Nought, but the negation of Being and its characteristics. Being so, Identity is at the same time self-relation, and, what is more, negative self-relation; in other words, it draws a distinction between it and itself." [Hegel (1975), pp.168-69; §116. Link and bold emphasis in the original; minor typo corrected. Some paragraphs merged.]

"Difference is the necessary condition for grasping (as well as expressing) the notion of identity. What is more, as is the case for all opposites for Hegel, identity and difference are interdependent, or mediated, such that either one makes sense only in terms of the other." [Dulckeit (1989), p.119.]

But, what sort of 'difference' is this, then? 'Difference' is supposed to be central to the 'inner logic' of this 'theory' (if such it might be called by the excessively charitable among us); in that case, one would have thought we would be given a clear idea -- or some idea -- what it implies. Again, it seems we are just supposed to guess, once more! Readers will search long and hard (and to no avail) for any clear idea what Hegel meant by this 'crucially important' notion. Dulckeit doesn't tell us, neither does, for example, Inwood -- i.e., Inwood (1992), pp.131-33. Incidentally, I have yet to find anything more comprehensive on the use of 'difference' in Hegel's work than Inwood's attempt to render comprehensible this example of Hegel-speak. Is it a reference to physical difference, or something more 'logical'? Since I have dealt with this topic earlier in this Essay, readers are directed there for more details.

The Marxist Internet Archive Glossary tells us the following about 'Difference':

"Difference is part of the very first stage of Essence in the genesis of a Notion in the grade of Reflection. Difference is the negation of Identity. The identity of something is defined by what is deemed to be not-equal to it, different. But Difference soon cancels itself through the discovery that 'everything is different', which is the 'maxim of Diversity' (inessential difference). Difference is only meaningful where the objects considered are also in some sense identical, and thus passes over into Opposition (essential difference) and Contradiction, the unity of identity and difference." [Quoted from here; accessed 27/03/2016. Links in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

[In fact, this passage confuses equality with identity -- or, "not-equal" with "difference" -- just as Trotsky did! If readers bother to check, the above is more-or-less the same standard-issue, high grade gobbledygook one encounters in books and articles on Hegelian Philosophy, as their authors attempt to tell us what, for example, 'difference' is, alongside a host of other Hegelian verbal monstrosities. Indeed, much of Modern French 'Philosophy' inexplicably revolves around the use of this word, which remains unexplained there, too (except, of course, where it is 'explained' in terms of yet more gobbledygook). "Understanding dialectics" appears to be the equivalent of accepting any old terminological rubbish thrown at the page or the screen, especially if the one doing the throwing has done so in the French language.]

However, from what little we are able to glean from Dulckeit's highly compressed argument, it looks like 'difference' has something to do with (i) The fact that there have to be two terms (or two As), not one, when we try to express self-identity, and (ii) The SGP.

Well, we have already seen that the SGP would imply an infinite explosion, undermining the very possibility of knowledge. In which case, I think (ii) can safely be ignored.

So, taking (i), next: What sort of 'difference' is this, then? Is it merely (a) numerical 'difference', or some sort of (b) physical 'difference' that enables us to discriminate these As, one from the other? It surely can't be physical difference, here, unless Hegel had secretly become an empiricist. [Anyway, as noted above, I have dealt with this sort of 'difference' (and Trotsky's half-baked ideas about it) in Essay Six. Readers are directed there for more details.]

The only alternative, then, is (a) numerical difference -- our capacity to count two instances of the same letter, as opposed to there being only one. The problem is, of course, that numerical difference isn't a straight-forward concept, either. Consider just one of the difficulties faced by anyone who holds a naive view of it: if asked to count, say, the number of words in this Appendix, one would have to decide what was meant by that specific request. Does it mean (i) typographically different words, or (ii) words that a printer (or even Word) would count -- i.e., total words, typographically identical inscriptions included as separate entries? So, for example, this string of words, "The the the the the", would count as one word according to (i), but five words according to (ii).

The question is, which alternative do Hegel and Dulckeit mean: (i) or (ii)? If they intend (i), then there is only one letter in A = A; if they mean (ii), then there are two. From what she says, it looks like Dulckeit thinks Hegel meant (ii). But, we can only distinguish (i) from (ii) by the location of the relevant inscriptions in space and time being detectable because their physical differences. Unfortunately, that collapses (a) above into (b), which would make Hegel an empiricist (never mind the other serious difficulties I have highlighted in Essay Six, or earlier in this Essay).

It could be objected that there is a logical sense to "difference", which means that neither (a) nor (b) are what was intended by the use of that word. Maybe there is, but after over 200 years of Hegelians not trying too hard they have failed to tell us what this 'logical' sense is. Perhaps we are being too impatient and haven't waited long enough?

Until more details are forthcoming, or these Hegel-groupies express themselves for the first time in two centuries with a modicum of clarity, little more can be made of the odd things they tend to say about the LOI and 'difference' -- or, indeed, much else they sadistically inflict on their readers.

Finally, in the above passage, Dulckeit mentions something Hegel calls "the understanding" -- which is an aspect/'module' of the human psyche that has, up to now, eluded detection by psychologists and neurologists. As far as can be ascertained from the little that Hegel-fans tell us about this feature of Hegel's a priori 'psychology', it appears to refer to the thinking habits of ordinary people (and workers) before a fast-talking Hegel Honcho sells them a lorry load of gobbledygook..., er..., sorry..., dialectics.

The next handful of paragraphs in Dulckeit's article are devoted to answering several rather tame (and lame) objections to Hegel's 'theory'. Since they aren't relevant to any of the issues raised in this Essay, or at this site, they will (mercifully) be ignored.

"Hegel's onto-logic also motivates his criticism of the Law of Excluded Middle, a law which, as Hegel puts it, 'would feign avoid contradiction, but in doing so falls into it' [Hegel (1975), p.172, §119]. As formulated in the two Logics, the law states 'Something is either A or not-A, there is no third' [Hegel (1999), p.438, §952] and 'A is B or A is not B' [Hegel (1975), p.172, §119; in fact Hegel had this to say: 'A must be either +A or -A' ; Dulckeit quotes this passage accurately on p.129 -- RL].

"The crucial point in saying that there cannot be anything that is not either A or not A, is the claim that there can be no third possibility which is indifferent to the opposition because the difference between the opposites is absolute. Thus the Law of the Excluded Middle ordinarily is taken to mean something like the following: 'Of all predicates, either this particular predicate or its "non-being" (i.e., the lack of the predicate) belongs to a thing.' More specifically, explains Hegel:

'The opposite means here merely the lack (of a predicate), or rather indeterminateness; and the proposition is so trivial that it is not worth the trouble of saying it. When the determinations sweet, green, square are taken...and then it is said that spirit is either sweet or not sweet, green or not green, and so on, this is a triviality leading nowhere [Hegel (1999), p.438, §952].'

"In abstract logic P and not-P simply cancel each other out. According to Hegel, however, true opposition should not lead from one determination to its non-being or indeterminateness, which is clear from the principle of determinate negation. After all, Hegel continues:

'The determinateness, the predicate, is referred to something; the proposition asserts that something is determined... [Hegel (1999), p.438, §952].'

"For Hegel, therefore, 'A is B or A is not-B' can be an important proposition, if and only if it is taken to express that everything must be determined either positively or negatively. Thus P and not-P do not constitute an absolute or essential difference but are opposite determinations of something; the latter being the third that the law seeks to exclude. One is invariably reminded of the Greeks here for whom the idea of change was hard to grasp until they hit upon the idea of an unchanging substratum which remained identical through the change. Hegel argues that opposite determinations presuppose a ground which is neither yet both of them, and hence contains identity as well as difference.... This ground, or essence, is the (dialectical, not abstract) unity of identity and difference.... Thus, he concludes:

'Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract "either-or" as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realise what it potentially is. [Hegel (1975), p.174, §119.]'" [Dulckeit (1989), pp.121-22. Quotation marks and referencing conventions altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Minor typo corrected.]

We saw earlier that for Hegel (and Dulckeit), the As in A = A probably stand for Proper Names (or other singular terms), but here they seem to stand for predicate expressions, noun-, or verb-phrases, or even propositions: "Something is either A or not-A..."; and later for all four at once: "A must be either +A or -A". I am assuming the "+" and the "-" signs here stand for assertion(?) and negation(?), even though assertion and negation aren't opposites -- for instance, it is easy to assert a negated sentence, as in "NN asserted, 'Hegel isn't to be trusted when it comes to Logic'". However, as usual, I am again forced to guess here, which isn't surprising. After all, a crystal clear mystic would lose his or her licence to confuse.

Unfortunately, in the face of such syntactic and semantic confusion, nothing determinate can follow (in the non-Hegelian/ordinary sense of "determinate"). However, Dulckeit did make some attempt to defend Hegel, pointing out the following:

"Note that Hegel uses the same symbols for subject and predicate because he is considering essential opposition." [Ibid., p.129, Footnote 24. Italic emphasis in the original.]

In fact, if the same inscription (for example, A or B) stands for a subject and a predicate, it is a different symbol in each of these two cases. That is because a symbol is an inscription with a specific meaning or use (it isn't just a mark on the page or screen), but here this pair has at least two meanings: subject and predicate. [In fact, as noted earlier, these hyper-plastic 'symbols' have many more than just these two meanings!]

Nevertheless, given the strictures Hegel imposes on the LOI, one wonders what Dulckeit can possibly mean by the phrase "the same symbol". If she were consistent (a problematic policy for any dialectician to have to adopt, to be sure) she can only mean by "the same symbol", "the same but different symbol". This more accurate, 'dialectical' revision of Dulckeit's words would reduce her attempted clarification to absurdity, along the following lines:

"Note that Hegel uses the same but different inscriptions for subject and predicate because he is considering essential opposition." [Corrected version of ibid., p.129, Footnote 24, replacing "the same symbol" with "the same but different symbol", which we are told is what Hegel really meant. Italic emphasis in the original.]

But, that attempt to represent Hegel would be to misrepresent him, too, since he uses the same (not different) inscriptions!

Of course, this only serves to remind us (as we have witnessed repeatedly at this site -- for example, here, here, here and again, below), it is in fact impossible to state (or even try to 'clarify') Hegel's 'theory' without descending from woolly confusion into total incoherence.

Be this as it may, it is worth pointing out once more that Hegel's quirky syntax and semantics (and Dulckeit's attempt to justify one or both) depend on the validity of the claim that there is such a thing as 'essential opposition'. As we have seen many times, Dulckeit seems content merely to accept Hegel's word as sufficient proof, which makes her rather like someone back in 2003 who affirmed there really were WMD in Iraq because George W Bush said there were.

"The only thing correct in that statement [that contradiction is unthinkable -- this is Dulckeit's gloss, not mine -- RL] is that contradiction is not the end of the matter, but cancels itself." [Hegel (1975), p.174, §119, quoted in Dulckeit (1989), p.122.]

However, contradictions don't 'cancel' anything. Here is what I have written in Essay Eight Part Three about this -- as part of my criticism of Lawler (1982):

"For our purposes, this illustration is sufficient to show that while the term 'contradiction' as used here does not have the seemingly 'full' sense of logical contradiction, nevertheless it is not reducible to some 'clash' of externally related 'positives.' Nor is it equivalent to some 'tranquil' association of mutually exclusive logical contraries, such as odd and even numbers, male and female persons, or north and south poles of a magnet -- unless these are in fact understood dialectically…. It is necessary to understand the mutual relation and opposition that constitutes the inner dynamic of the terms in opposition. This opposition may contain the possibility of developing into 'full' contradiction, i.e., into real destruction. However, the real potentiality for the development of dialectical contradiction is not to be seen in this possibility of destruction, but in a potentiality for transformation where only the 'immediate forms' of opposing phenomena are suppressed -- while other, often more developed forms are realised through essential 'internal' interconnections." [Lawler (1982), pp.37-38.]

Obscure jargon like this is standard fare in HCD texts, but that doesn't imply it makes any sense. Indeed, it is a sure sign of the opposite. [Irony intended.]

More importantly, in what way does it help to interpret, say, the relation between males and females, 'dialectically'? Do they struggle with and then change into one another, as the DM-classics assure us they must? If so, that will be news to most of us.

But, why has "full contradiction" been equated with "real destruction", here? The LOC was (and still is) connected with all manner of ideas that surfaced in the bad old logic (Lawler himself seems to think it has something to do with "cancelling out" -- although he doesn't use those exact words, as far as I can ascertain (but Hegel certainly does -- he copied this way of talking from Kant), and yet he does speak of negatives in mathematics cancelling; see below --, or as "self-nullifying", as he puts it on p.16). As we will see in Essay Twelve (and here), card-carrying HCDs also think likewise.

However, neither the contradictions of FL nor those of ordinary language have anything to do with "cancelling out", or "nullifying". If a proposition, "p", is true, its contradictory, "not p", is simply false, not "cancelled out".

This odd idea is connected with the equally bizarre notion that 'negative' propositions are all false (or are 'defective' or 'non-existent', in some unspecified way). But, 'negative' propositions can be, and often are, true. For example, "Blair isn't a socialist" is true, as is "Anyone who reads the Daily Mail and doesn't reject much of what it says is no Marxist."

Furthermore, not even the content of "not p" is "cancelled", for whatever it is that "not p" says is still up for consideration; "not p" is just false if "p" is true -- true if "p" is false. Nor is it "nullified", for (and once more) "not p" could one day become true and "p" itself false, or vice versa. For example, "Blair hasn't resigned" is the contradictory of "Blair has resigned"; the first is false, but, hopefully, it will become true one day -- it could hardly do that if it had been "cancelled", or "nullified". [Needless to say, this was written before Blair finally went!]

Moreover, every proposition is paired/pairable with its negation; does that mean that they have all been "cancelled"/"nullified"?

Anyway, what would count as the "nullification" of, say, "Blair has resigned"? One could try to nullify Blair's actual resignation (or its effects), but what could one do to nullify "Blair has resigned"? Prevent this message getting out? Silence whoever might want to utter it? [If that sentence is false, then what it says hasn't even happened, so nothing can nullify it, surely?] Even so, that proposition is still there, on your screen, annoyingly mocking any attempt to "nullify" it.

Those who talk this way have clearly confused FL-contradictions with contradictory orders or instructions, like "Open the door!"/"Close the door!", which, if acted upon, undo each other, etc. But, the propositions of FL and ordinary language are neither instructions nor orders.

It has been noted several times that when it comes to matters logical, fans of the dialectic (both the Hegelian and the 'Marxist' denominations) are consistently slap-dash, all the while proclaiming the superiority of DL over FL. Well, we can now add to the list of charges against them that even where some sense can be made of their off-the-wall claims about FL, they can't even get the basics right.

As far as Hegel's ill-advised comments about the LEM are concerned, this is what I have written in Essay Nine Part One:

Unfortunately, these terms ("either" and "or") have been lifted from ordinary language, and, as we have seen several times already, it is unwise for anyone (least of all Hegel-groupies) to criticise such words, since that tactic invariably backfires on any foolish enough to try. Admittedly, Hegel wasn't attacking the use of "either-or" in that specific area, simply the restrictive dichotomy he claimed these words introduced into thought --, one imagines by that philistine (but nonetheless mysterious), disembodied, inner alter ego, the "abstract understanding" -- very helpfully and 'scientifically' identified for us by Hegel without the use of a laboratory, any evidence whatsoever, or even so much as a consulting couch! Freud would have been most impressed:

"Instead of speaking by the maxim of Excluded Middle (which is the maxim of abstract understanding) we should rather say: Everything is opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains. Whatever exists is concrete, with difference and opposition in itself. The finitude of things will then lie in the want of correspondence between their immediate being, and what they essentially are. Thus, in inorganic nature, the acid is implicitly at the same time the base: in other words, its only being consists in its relation to its other. Hence also the acid is not something that persists quietly in the contrast: it is always in effort to realise what it potentially is." [Hegel (1975), p.174; Essence as Ground of Existence, §119. Bold emphasis added.]

Nevertheless, it is difficult to see what Hegel was trying to say here. That is because any attempt to interpret him requires the implicit or explicit use of the very terms he claims are misleading. The construal of his work requires decisions be taken about whether he meant either this or that by what he actually said. If an author always means both -- or maybe even neither -- then interpretation is rendered impossible and any attempt to unravel their meaning becomes self-defeating (as we are about to see).

So, if Hegel were right, if absolutely "everything is opposite", and there is no "either-or" anywhere in the universe, it would be impossible to disentangle what he meant from what he didn't, since we would be unable to decide whether he believed of, say, any two sentences P and Q one or more of the following:

H1: (i) Both P and Q; (ii) either P or Q; (iii) neither P nor Q; or (iv) either P or Q, but not both.

But, if, say, P and Q were inconsistent (that is, if, for instance, Q implies not P, or vice versa -- for clarity's sake an example will be given below), and we interpreted his words one way -- perhaps that he believed both P and Q, since to do otherwise would involve the implicit or explicit use of the dread 'either-or' --, then, plainly, we would have to conclude that he accepted both as part of the "unfolding of truth" (as he might have put it), which would mean by his own lights, of course, that we would be unfolding error in place of truth!

Hence, in order to reject one or other of the above options, we would be forced to appeal to the forbidden "either-or" -- that is, we would have to conclude that Hegel accepted P or he accepted Q, but not both.

On the other hand, if we were to remain true to Hegel's dictum -- that "neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains" --, then we would have to conclude he accepted both.

So, any attempt made now to specify exactly what Hegel meant would undermine what he actually said about the use of the "either-or of understanding", for we would have to accept that Hegel asserted one thing (P), or he asserted something else (Q), but not both. Without that assumption it would become impossible either comprehend or defend him. If Hegel genuinely cast doubt on the "either-or of understanding" (and he wasn't being deliberately enigmatic, disingenuous, mendacious, or merely playful) -- and assuming he was correct to do so --, then any attempt to interpret him as asserting P or asserting Q would have to conclude that he asserted both. [Again, I give a clear example of this, below.]

In that case, any determinate interpretation of Hegel would have to ignore his own advice, and reluctantly accept the deliverances of the "either-or" of ordinary language (or 'commonsense', along with its corollaries), and acknowledge that, concerning either P or Q, he believed only one, not both, and that he was a fully paid-up member of The Friends Of The Either-Or Of Abstract Understanding.

Here, truth would advance -- by means of yet another dialectical inversion and by forcing us to disregard Hegel!

"P" is: "Neither in heaven nor in Earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains",

"Q" is: "There is in fact an abstract 'either-or' somewhere in the world of mind and of nature (etc.)."

Now, either Hegel accepted P or he accepted Q -- which would, of course, imply that there is at least one 'either-or' "in heaven or in earth (etc.)" -- i.e., here, right in front of us, right here, right now!

On the other hand, if Hegel (or anyone) took his advice and accepted both P and Q, thereby rejecting this annoying "either-or", then not much sense could be made of what he was trying to say.

Incidentally, the above criticism isn't affected by Hegel's own interpretation of these controversial words, nor any technical meaning his epigones might want to attribute to them, since they, too, would have to conclude that he meant this or he meant that, not both, but solely concerns how we are to understand him now, in this world, by our consideration of those very material words (in print, or on a screen), quoted earlier.

Hence, it is beside the point whether the rationale for his own dialectical, then speculative criticism of the use of such words by the "abstract understanding" is legitimate or not (irony intended). Hegel's writings appear before us now as phenomenal objects, hence, given the additional fact that they aren't self-interpreting (especially when we recall that Hegel is no longer with us to explain himself -- but, even then we would have to accept he meant either P or Q, not both), they face the ordinary cannons we employ elsewhere to understand anyone's words. In order to read and perhaps interpret Hegel as believing this or that, but not both, we are forced to ignore his advice and employ the dread "either-or".

Naturally, this is just one more annoying reason why ordinary language can't be by-passed, or undermined, no matter which 'genius' cons some of us into thinking otherwise.

Once again, it is little use complaining that this is not how Hegel wanted his use of the "either-or" of "understanding" to be interpreted (i.e., ironically, -- that is, that we view it this way but not that), since he himself holed that complaint well below the water line when he asserted:

Hence, if "everything is opposite", and Hegel's works were written somewhere on this planet, and copies of them still take on a physical form in this universe(!), then anything he committed to paper must be its own opposite, too -- or, he was wrong.

In either case, it would be foolish to believe Hegel was serious (or, and what is far more likely, that he had thought things through with due care) when he wrote the above words, while also accepting what he said about the LEM -- the dread "either-or".

So, and following Hegel's own advice, the above passage should in fact be re-written more consistently along the following 'Hegelian', deny there is an 'either-or', lines:

"Instead of both speaking and not speaking by the maxim both of Excluded Middle and not Excluded Middle and (which is and is not the maxim of abstract understanding) we should and we shouldn't rather say: Everything is, and some things are not, opposite. Neither in heaven nor in Earth, and both in heaven and in earth, neither in the world of mind nor of nature, and both in the world of mind and of nature, is there anywhere such an abstract 'either-or' as the understanding maintains, but there is, and it is everywhere, too, while it is nowhere as well. Whatever exists is concrete, and it isn't, with difference and opposition, and also without difference or opposition, in itself, and not in itself, too. The finitude of things will and will not then lie in the want of correspondence, but also with actual correspondence, between their immediate being, and what they essentially are, or are not, and, indeed, both. Thus, in inorganic nature, and outside it, the acid is and is not implicitly at the same time, and at other times, the base, but it isn't the base, either: in other words, but also in the same words, its only being, and its many other beings, consist, and do not consist, in its relation, and absence of any relation, to its other, and whatever isn't its other. Hence also the acid is not something, and it is something, that persists quietly, and not quietly, in the contrast, or the accord: it is always, and is it is never, in effort to realise what it potentially is, and what it actually is not."

Everyday, boring old non-abstract understanding will, I think, readily see what arrant nonsense results from Hegel's 'genius' when we apply his ideas to his own words -- providing we remain in this universe.

Any who object to the above re-write can, of course, neutralise its implications by demonstrating that Hegel's work wasn't actually written in this universe, or on real paper, but was written on Ideal paper, neither in heaven nor on earth -- and that they themselves don't exist anywhere, either (or both, or neither), in order to do that (or not).

[On the 'acid and base' fiasco, even if we were to take Hegel seriously, see here.]

In a recent book [Stewart (1996)], a number of misinterpretations and misrepresentations of Hegel's work were corrected by a handful of Hegel scholars. However, there would seem to be little point to this exercise if Hegel's ideas about "either-or" are to be believed. If he were right -- that in the entire universe there is no "either-or" -- there would be some truth even in the wildest allegations about him or his work.

For instance, these: that (i) Hegel fully accepted without question the unlimited applicability of the LOI in every conceivable circumstance without any qualifications whatsoever (and this includes its use in dialectical and speculative thought as well as in relation to change, conceptual or material), and he did not; that (ii) he flatly denied that reality or thought is contradictory in any sense at all, and he did not; that (iii) he doubted the truth of every single one of his own ideas all the time, and he did not; that (iv) he wrote nothing at all in German in his entire life, and he did not; that (v) everything he wrote was actually written by Schelling -- in fact it was published only yesterday, and it wasn't --; that (vi) he was a Shape-shifting Martian, and he wasn't...

[Anyone attempting to reject one or more of the above alternatives on the grounds that Hegel must have accepted one of them, or one of them must be true, but not both -- or, indeed, that such objectors must do likewise -- will, alas, have to employ the dread LEM in order to do so, vitiating Hegel's challenge, as well as their own objections to the above argument.]

It could be objected that this completely misunderstands the nature of DL as Hegel himself conceived it. Unfortunately, even that response is framed in ordinary language -- and, it was foolishly written in this universe! --, so, since a decision has to be taken over whether or not it is valid, a quick reference to DL will indicate it is both.

This means that until DL-fans commit themselves to one or other view (but not both), it is impossible even to begin to evaluate anything they say -- and neither can they!

Unfortunately, just as soon as they actually manage to specify what they mean (i.e., that they genuinely intend this but not that), we must cease to take them seriously -- since they would then have employed the dread LEM, thereby undermining their own criticisms of it!

Either way, such defenders of Hegel may be ignored even before they decide whether they agree with the above criticisms, or not (or both).

It could be objected that the above conclusions are ridiculous and do not follow from a consistent application of the dialectical method; hence Hegel can't be saddled with any of them.

Once more, these 'ridiculous conclusions' either do or they do not follow from what Hegel wrote. If the above rebuttal is right, and they don't follow, then there is at least one either-or at work here, namely this one -- since, in that case, both options wouldn't be correct -- only one option would be the right one, namely that they don't follow. And, if that is so, these 'ridiculous conclusions' do indeed follow, after all, since Hegel would, in that case, be wrong to assert there is no either-or anywhere in existence when one such has just been used to reject one option in favour of the other!

So, taking each 'ridiculous conclusion', one at a time, if we maintain it doesn't follow, then we will have applied the LEM once more -- in that we would thereby have denied that that particular 'ridiculous conclusion' both does and does not follow, and thus that one of these either-or options must obtain. Hence, we arrive at the same result.

The problem with sweeping claims like these (which litter Traditional Philosophy, and not just Hegel's ill-considered work) -- in this case, concerning the supposed limitations of certain principles of FL (and especially those that express patterns of inference mirrored in our use of ordinary language, such as the LOI, the LOC and the LEM) -- is that they invariably collapse into incoherence, as we have just seen.

Which is why, once again, we can say with complete confidence that no one (not even Hegel) could possibly understand Hegel!

The rest of Dulckeit's article either (i) focuses on the perceived weakness of Russell's Theory of Descriptions and his Logical Atomism, which I don't propose to defend, or (ii) is a reprise of points already covered.

In conclusion, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth having to rake over issues that should have been consigned to the philosophical rubbish dump 170 or more years ago; but, for as long as philosophers and intellectuals require their own brand of consolation (which they often find in Mystical Hegelianism, Cartesianism, Kantianism, Platonism, Heideggerian 'Being-ism', a priori Lacanian 'Psychology', 'Marxist dialectics', or wherever), I suppose someone will always have to take out the trash. Too bad is has to be me.

[What I mean by "consolation" can be ascertained by reading 'Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. However, in relation to Stove's work, readers should take note of the caveats I have posted here.]

[The material below has been adapted from Essay Eight Part Three. Remember, if you are viewing this with Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have used.]

"When the principles of Essence are taken as essential principles of thought they become predicates of a presupposed subject, which, because they are essential, is 'everything'. The propositions thus arising have been stated as universal Laws of Thought. Thus the first of them, the maxim of Identity, reads: Everything is identical with itself, A = A: and negatively, A cannot at the same time be A and Not-A. This maxim, instead of being a true law of thought, is nothing but the law of abstract understanding. The propositional form itself contradicts it: for a proposition always promises a distinction between subject and predicate; while the present one does not fulfil what its form requires. But the Law is particularly set aside by the following so-called Laws of Thought, which make laws out of its opposite. It is asserted that the maxim of Identity, though it cannot be proved, regulates the procedure of every consciousness, and that experience shows it to be accepted as soon as its terms are apprehended. To this alleged experience of the logic books may be opposed the universal experience that no mind thinks or forms conceptions or speaks in accordance with this law, and that no existence of any kind whatever conforms to it." [Hegel (1975), p.167 §115. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]

[LOC = Law of Noncontradiction; LEM = Law of Excluded Middle; LOI = Law of Identity.]

Hegel nowhere tells us what these letter "A"s are. [Why that matters has been explained in detail here.] Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, let us concede that the LOI is something like the following:

[Where "p" designates a proposition, statement or spoken token, or even type, declarative/indicative sentence, (etc.), depending on one's philosophy of logic.]

[Where "∀(x)...x" is the universal quantifier, and "F(ξ)" is a one-place, first-level predicate expression (i.e., predicable, when interpreted). The other symbols I have used below are explained here.]

Incidentally, L1b is ill-formed, and roughly 'says', "Everything true of an object is identical with every truth about that object." It should, of course, be:

which roughly reads "For any object, whatever is true of it is equivalently true of that object." Indeed, a pointless 'proposition'!

Even then, neither of these would have any bearing on the relation they are supposed to have with their alleged 'dialectical negative' or 'opposite' -- as Lawler alleged. However, that might be the case with the following (we will see):

L3: One cannot assert that p is true and at the same time, and in the same respect, assert that p is false.

That is because there are no rules for deriving either L2 or L3 from L1a or L1b (or from less formal versions of either), or, indeed, from anything analogous. And it isn't hard to see why. [More about this presently.]

[Of course, L3 might itself prove to be acceptable for other reasons. Excepting the points I made above (about a similar looking sentence), I will pass no opinion on that here; but L2 and L3 certainly do not follow from L1a or L1b, or from their alleged 'dialectical-negative' versions (or even from less from formal versions of one or both, as we will soon see).]

However, as noted above, the real problem here is that if the negative particle attaches to singular terms (i.e., Proper Names and Definite Descriptions) so that it is interpreted as an operator mapping singular terms onto 'negative' singular terms (whatever that means!), it can't also be a sentential operator mapping a sentence or proposition onto its negation, which is what it has to do in relation to the LEM and the LOC.

[Where "N*" is just such a general 'negative operator' (i.e., "Neg..."), "A" is a name variable again, and "¬*" is the 'negative' particle in this modified logic. (I have used asterisks to highlight the radically non-standard nature of the symbols I have employed here.)]

Of course, given the above syntax, P1 is ill-formed, too. That is because neither N*(A) nor ¬*A are propositions, sentences, or clauses. ['Negating' a name on its own simply yields another Noun Phrase, not an indicative sentence or clause, while "º" can only operate on propositions, indicative sentences or clauses.] When actual names are inserted -- so that P1 yields, say, "Neg(Socrates) if and only if Not(Socrates)" -- it can be seen for what it is, unvarnished nonsense -- as "Neg(Socrates) is identical with Not(Socrates)" is, too.

On the other hand, if the negative particle above is a sentential operator mapping a sentence or proposition onto its negation, then it can't also be an operator mapping names in the above manner.

[Where "N" is a negative operator ("Neg..."), "A" is now a propositional variable, and "¬" is the negative particle in standard logic ("It is not the case that..."), which maps a sentence onto its negation.]

But, in this case, P4 would be ill-formed, too, since "=" can only be flanked by singular terms, not propositions. Once more, if we insert actual sentences into P4, so that it yields, for example, *"Neg(Paris is in France) is identical to it is not the case that Paris is in France" we would see just as quickly that it is no less nonsensical.

P3, on the other hand, seems alright as it is; while "Neg(Paris is in France) if and only if it is not the case that Paris is in France" is certainly odd, it isn't nonsense, but that is only because N now works as a surrogate for sentential or propositional negation.

Once again, that is why it is so important to keep track of the denotation of each letter A that Hegel and Lawler used --, or rather, mis-used -- and why much was made of it earlier. [And why it is important to be clear about the precise logical role played by the negative particle.]

Recall, Hegel thought he could derive the LOC from the LOI by claiming that the LOI "stated negatively" is, or implies, the LOC. To that end, he argued that the LOI is "A = A", and hence that (negatively) it is also "A cannot at the same time be A and not A" -- or, "¬(A & ¬A)".

[Of course, there are other ways of expressing the 'negative form' of the LOI; for example, it could be ¬[(A = A) & (A = ¬A)]. However, the latter form presents problems of its own; these are explored later on in Essay Eight Part Three and in Note 2.]

But, as far as the LOC and the LEM are concerned, A can only stand for a proposition, a declarative, an indicative sentence, or even a statement (again, depending on one's philosophical logic) -- i.e., it goes proxy for expressions that are capable of being true or false.

By way of contrast, in the LOI, A goes proxy for a singular term; it isn't a propositional, or a sentential, variable. So, for example, "Caesar" -- a singular term -- on its own isn't capable of being true or false. Hence, if "¬" is taken to be a propositional or sentential operator, again, mapping truths onto falsehoods, or vice versa, ¬A would make no sense -- "It is not the case that Caesar" is, once more, nonsensical.

Alternatively, if A is a sentential or propositional variable, ¬(A & ¬A) would become "It is not the case that Caesar is identical with Caesar and Caesar is not identical with Caesar" (where, for instance, "A" stands for "Caesar is identical with Caesar", and not just "Caesar" on its own, as would be the case in the LOI), which seems to make sense -- but only if one is thinking of questioning the LOI.

The other form mentioned above -- i.e., ¬[(A = A) & (A = ¬A)] -- fares little better (even if it isn't patent nonsense), becoming, for example: "It is not the case that ((Caesar is identical with Caesar) and (Caesar is identical with not Caesar))" -- that is, if ¬ now appears to function as both a sentential, or a propositional, operator and an operator on singular terms! Who exactly is this "not Caesar" person? [I have considered this particular topic in more detail, here. That is quite apart from the fact that this example is susceptible to the fatal objection mentioned earlier.]

On the other hand, if ¬ operates on names, or singular terms, then ¬(A & ¬A) would make no sense, either. In that case, ¬(A & ¬A) would become "Not (Caesar and not Caesar)". But, what does that mean? It isn't even a proposition. "Not Caesar" isn't an expression that is capable of being true or false, nor is "Not (Caesar and not Caesar)". In which case, given this use of ¬, ¬(A & ¬A) can't be the LOC. "Not (Caesar and not Caesar)" isn't the LOC, nor is it even a contradiction; it is either plain gibberish or it isn't a proposition.

The other form (i.e., ¬[(A = A) & (A = ¬A)]) isn't much better since it pans out as: "Not ((Caesar is identical with Caesar) and (Caesar is identical with not Caesar))".

[This isn't to suggest that the negative particle can't attach to names (on that, see here), only that when it does, it assumes an entirely different role -- and hence it takes on a new meaning -- different from the role it occupies when it operates on sentences or propositions. Indeed, as we have seen, when the negative particle attaches to a name (in what appear to be relational expressions (e.g., "Paris is no Vienna", or "Brutus is not Caesar")), its role changes dramatically. The sentences just quoted become "Brutus is other than Caesar" and "Paris can't be compared with Vienna".]

(1) If ¬ operates on names, or singular terms, and if A is a singular term variable, then A = A certainly seems to make sense. But, in that case, the 'negative form' of the LOI -- ¬(A & ¬A), or even ¬[(A = A) & (A = ¬A)] -- turns out to be plain and unvarnished nonsense when names are inserted once more: "Not (Caesar and not Caesar)", (or "Not ((Caesar is identical with Caesar) and (Caesar is identical with not Caesar))"!

(2) On the other hand, if ¬ operates on sentences or propositions, mapping them onto their negations, and if A is a sentential or propositional variable, then the LOI, (A = A), would become, for example: "Caesar is identical with Caesar is identical with Caesar is identical with Caesar" (interpreting A in "A is identical with A" as the proposition "Caesar is identical with Caesar", again, yielding "Caesar is identical with Caesar is identical with Caesar is identical with Caesar"), which isn't the LOI! Recall that in option (2), A has to go proxy for a proposition or sentence (in this case "Caesar is identical with Caesar"), not a name.

Exception might be taken to the use of A to stand for the proposition "Caesar is identical with Caesar". DM-fans can't in fact lodge this objection since, as we have seen, according to them and their sloppy syntax/semantics, these As can be anything we please!

In that case, let us take any randomly selected proposition to replace each A in the LOI. That having been done, not much changes: "Paris is in France is identical to Paris is in France". (Interpreting the A here as "Paris is in France").

Remember this doesn't yield "'Paris is in France' is identical to 'Paris is in France'", but "Paris is in France is identical to Paris is in France". Is anyone prepared to accept that as an example of the LOI?

[In case someone is so prepared, I will consider that desperate (and unwise) move presently.]

So, Hegel was only able to 'derive' the LOC from the LOI by allowing A to slide effortlessly between two radically different semantic and syntactic roles: between (i) denoting singular terms and (ii) denoting propositions, 'judgements', or sentences (and, in fact, denoting a whole host of other things besides -- such as processes, concepts, relations, relational expressions, etc., etc. -- on that, see an earlier section of Essay Eight Part Three). But, as soon that has been done, the negative particle changes its meaning in the above manner -- that is, it changes from a sentential operator to a name modifier, and we end up with unvarnished nonsense, as we have seen.

If we now choose to ignore the above fatal defects in Hegel's argument, and if L2 had have been:

[That is, if we allow the "A" above to be "p is identical with p" (or, as in the example considered earlier, we allow "A" to be something like "Paris is in France", and ¬ reverts to its role as a sentential operator, since p now goes proxy for a proposition, or indicative sentence, etc.).]

Alas, even then, the problems associated with Hegel's 'derivation' won't go away. Quantifying across propositions (if that were possible, and if we could make sense of the use of an "=" sign between propositional variables/tokens), we might be able to obtain the following:

[This says: "If a proposition is identical with itself then it is not the case that it is not identical with itself." (On a side issue, some logicians are quite happy to quantify across propositions -- or sentences/statements -- but, while this might be a handy formal device, it can't relate to anything in a natural language. On that see Glock (2003), pp.102-36, and Hacker (1996), p.288, n.65).]

But, exactly how this implies the LOC, as Lawler says Hegel maintained, is still unclear.

If we now replace (p = p) with Γ and (p ≠ p) with ¬Γ we could obtain the following from L6:

Unfortunately, we have as yet no rules for parsing the identity sign in the required manner, i.e., so that (p ≠ p) º ¬(p = p). Until we do, this derivation can't work. [There are, however, other serious problems with this 'derivation'; on that see Note 2.]

[On the rules we do have, see Bostock (1997), pp.323-33 (this links to a PDF), Lemmon (1993), pp.159-67, and Quine (1974), pp.221-26.]

But, even if we had such rules, we can see that in order to obtain L7, the alleged LOI (i.e., in this case, p = p) had to be combined with its supposed Hegelian 'other' (i.e., ¬(p = p)) [or is it (p ≠ p)?]), and then with its double negation (i.e., perhaps, ¬(p ≠ p)) in a conditional. However, as we have seen, it is far from clear how L7 can be derived from p = p on its own, or even from its alleged 'negative form'.

Even so, it is worth pointing out again that because a proposition isn't an object, it isn't the sort of thing that could either possess, or lack, identity. In that case, if it were an object (and, per impossible, lacked identity), nothing could follow from it. On the other hand, if, per impossible, it were identical with itself, it would once more be an object, not a proposition -- and, again, nothing would follow from it. Again, quite apart from this, it also suffers from the fatal objection mentioned above.²

there is an unambiguous identity sign between propositions (or between two tokens of the propositional inscription, "Fx") in L9, and an equivalence sign between Fx and Fy (in L10). If so, it could be argued that the counter-claims made earlier (against Hegel) are incorrect.

[Incidentally, L10 is otherwise known as the "Identity of Indiscernibles", which we met in Essay Six. Loosely translated it reads: "Any two objects that share every property in common are identical."]

But, logicians who use either of these signs (between propositional variables/tokens) do not imagine that inscriptions on the page are identical. They variously interpret them as expressing a truth-functional relationship between the results of applying F(ξ), for example, to names, or to objects (again, depending on the philosophy of logic to which they adhere), yielding an identity (or a stencil that expresses an equivalence relation) of some sort between abstract objects (i.e., sets, courses of values, graphs, ranges, classes, and the like), or between the truth-values of the interpreted sentences that finally emerge as a result, etc., etc.

So, these signs in effect express rules that are applicable to other signs/symbols; they don't express an identity (or an equivalence) between lifeless marks on the page, or even between propositions that exist in an ethereal realm somewhere.

[To be sure, there are, and have been, philosophers and logicians who hold, or who have held, such views, but they, too, have simply confused propositions with propositional signs, or even with objects of some sort. On this, see Glock (2003), pp.102-36, and Hacker (1996), p.288, n.65, once more. A propositional sign is constituted by the physical marks on the page or the screen. A proposition is what is expressed by the use of such a sign.]

Indeed, the second of the above (i.e., L10 -- reproduced below) shows that this is so by implicitly interpreting the equivalence sign as a symbol whose use in this particular stencil implies an identity between objects (or variables that take the names of objects, in this case x and y). In that case, schemas like L9 and L10 don't contradict what was maintained earlier, which was that where the sign for identity is used, it expresses a relation between objects (or between an object and itself -- or, between its/their names), not between concepts, predicates or propositions.

Sure, we can introduce a sign that is typographically identical to the identity sign (no pun intended), and insert it between concepts and propositions (in fact, some modern logicians and philosophers do just that, especially when they try to recruit identity to other areas of philosophy, such as the alleged identity between 'mental'/psychological events and brain processes).

But, if this new sign is the same as the identity sign already in use, that would be to treat concepts and propositions as objects, once more. On the other hand, if this new sign isn't the same as the identity sign already in use, then it can't express identity, but must express 'identity', which would, of course, mean that the 'philosophical problem of identity' would remain unaffected by these terminological manoeuvres. Unless, of course, we mean something different by "identity" in each case (irony intended). And, if that were so, we would need a different sign for each of these different meanings of "identity" -- double irony intended, too -- or risk confusion. At which point, we would have gone round in yet another circle.

Whether or not these symbols capture the full range of meanings available to us in scientific contexts -- or even in ordinary language --, I will leave to one side for the present (but, it is worth adding that Essay Six returned a negative verdict in this regard).

Of course, in schematic sentences like L1b/L9, "=" would be replaced by "º"; that is, by a biconditional or equivalence symbol (indeed, as we saw earlier). That is because "=" features in two-place linguistic functional expressions (i.e., "ξ = ζ"), which can only take names or singular terms as arguments. So, as noted earlier, L1b/L9 are ill-formed as they stand. Once more, there are and have been philosophers and logicians who hold that the identity sign can be used between non-singular terms, but they have yet to explain why this doesn't imply that this novel use of such signs, or these variables/non-singular terms, have a different meaning.

Df: "Ω ₳ Ψ", where "Ω" and "Ψ" stand for singular terms or concept expressions of any level, and "₳" expresses a general identity between them.

Even then, it would require a cogent argument to show that the equal sign, =, is identical with this new sign, ₳; and how might that be achieved, for goodness sake? This would, of course, leave it quite mysterious whether or not the word "identical" in "= is identical with ₳" is itself identical with the first or the second use of these two signs, prompting the very same question (no irony intended) about the word "identical" used to ask that very question -- and so on, ad infinitem!

Nevertheless, one thing is clear: MFL and ordinary language succeed in capturing the full range of words we have for identity (etc.) far better than the syntactic and semantic 'dialectical mess' we find in Hegel's 'Logic' and now in DL. In fact, as Essays Three through Eight show, DL can't handle the simplest of objects (such as a bag of sugar!), let alone anything more complex.

[DL = Dialectical Logic; LEM = Law of Excluded Middle. MFL = Modern Formal Logic.]

Hence, and once again, the suggested Hegelian 'derivation' of the LOC (i.e., the one expounded by Lawler) can't work if these As are read as objects, or the names of objects (since objects/names can't be true or false) -- nor, indeed, can it work if propositions are viewed as objects, either.

Once more, that is why it is so important to be clear about the denotation of symbols we use in logic -- and why such a fuss was made about this earlier.

1. Much of this Essay is a development of ideas aired in Ryle (1949, 1959), Cowley (1991), Davidson (2005), the work of the late Peter Geach, and, of course, Frege and Wittgenstein. [On that, see here.]

The importance of this subject (Abstractionism) for the history of Traditional Thought is outlined in Davidson (2005), pp.76-140. [I distance myself, however, from Davidson's neat 'solution' to this 'problem' (pp.141-63), but this isn't the place to go into that.]

Be this as it may, a perceptive critique of Davidson can be found in Ionescu (2007). This topic is also discussed in detail in Gaskin (2008) and Gibson (2004). [See also Note 15a.] In addition, cf., Professor E J Lowe's review in the Times Higher Education Supplement (partially quoted below), which also contains a short summary of the philosophical 'problems' associated with the traditional approach to the growth and nature of knowledge. I will briefly discuss Gaskin's 'solution' to the unity of the proposition conundrum in a future re-write of Part Two of this Essay.

The main areas in the philosophical and historical background to this topic are explored in Tugendhat (1982). There is an excellent survey of where the debate is now situated (i.e., concerning the 'reference of predicates') -- or, at least where it was a decade or so ago -- in MacBride (2006). Having said that, MacBride doesn't consider the effect the traditional view -- that predicates do refer -- has on the unity of the proposition. [On this, see also Essay Four Part One.]

Bertell Ollman has recently written a highly influential account of the mythical process of abstraction, arguing along more naturalistic lines in order to conceive of abstraction as a cognitive limiting, or narrowing process of some sort, in which he claims we all engage, without offering an ounce of proof from a single psychological study, experiment or survey to that effect. Of course, as we will see he isn't the only one to adopt this ancient idea, nor is he the only one who fails to provide any proof that this process even exists. His attempt to render this ancient fairytale comprehensible has been critically examined in detail in Part Two of this Essay. [Cf., Ollman (2003), pp.59-110.]

In addition, an analysis of the following will be added to the appendices at a later date: (i) Evald Ilyenkov's work [i.e., Ilyenkov (1975, 1977, 1982), for example], (ii) Alex Callinicos's analysis of Marx's use of abstraction [i.e., Callinicos (1978)], and (iii) Some thoughts on Sayer (1981, 1992) and Sayer (1988).

Finally, any revolutionaries reading this who might be tempted to criticise my reliance on Wittgenstein's work should read this and then perhaps think again.

1a. Following Plato and Aristotle, Traditional Theorists defended 'abstractions' and 'the process of abstraction' on the basis that it enabled them to construct general theories -- or even form general ideas -- about nature and society. It was claimed that sense experience could only inform us about particulars, about the immediate, about this or that object. Hence, 'the process of abstraction' was seen as both important and necessary for the development of human knowledge, a facility that takes humanity beyond the immediate and the particular to the general.

Of course, that argument in itself is rather suspect since it is possible to encounter the general in experience -- for example:

G2: As this video shows, everyone on the demonstration was chanting "Tories out!"

G11: The insurance agent has just confirmed that every stick of furniture was destroyed by the earthquake.

It could be objected that the above examples fail to cover universal generality, so they aren't relevant. Naturally, that depends on what is meant by "universal generality", here. Every one of these examples covers restricted universality (and the reader can confirm that for herself by checking every single one of them, thereby adding yet another example to the list of our capacity to 'experience the general'). While it is correct that we can't in general experience examples of the 'absolutely universally general', but, as Parts One and Two of this Essay have shown, they can't be accessed by this mythical 'process of abstraction', either. Even so, we are still able to speak about 'absolute' universal generality in ordinary language, when for example, we talk about every star in the universe, or every proton in existence. All that is required is a mastery of language, not recourse to the shadowy 'process of abstraction'.

It could be argued that this misses the point; no scientific law could be based on such limited, local generalisations.

On the contrary, they are based on them all the time. That is the point of statistical sampling. No scientist, or team of scientists, can possibly observe, collect, record and process every conceivable fact even about, say, the planet Jupiter, let alone anything else.

Re-labelling these 'abstractions', "idealisations", would be no help, either, since the same awkward questions would apply just as much to these mysterious 'entities' as they do to 'abstractions'. As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Two, the traditional view of "idealisation" is no clearer than that of "abstraction" -- except, perhaps, the word "idealisation" more obviously gives the game away, openly advertising its Idealist pedigree.

Again, some might appeal to "scientific laws" at this point to give these inchoate terms (i.e., "abstraction" and "idealisation") some sort of material/physical solidity, but, as we will also see, the word "law", as it has traditionally been used and understood, is no less Idealist, having been imported into science from the social sphere, where it relates to a series of norms enforced by the state (or some other body that has such powers delegated to it by the state), which were then projected onto nature. And that theoretical segue was itself aimed at lending credence to an even more ancient doctrine, which held that the universe is under the control of a Cosmic Will of some sort, an idea that was in turn motivated by the need to 'justify' or rationalise the status, power and authority of the State. This would then be used to support, justify, even rationalise, the idea that the state itself represents, or reflects, the 'Divine Order', the 'Will of the Gods'. So, here we have laws 'legitimately' enforced by the State mirroring 'laws' 'legitimately' enforced by 'God'. The 'law-governed', rational order 'mirroring' the law-governed state.

[On this, see Milton (1981, 1998), Needham (1951a, 1951b), Ruby (1986), Swartz (1985, 2009), and Zilsel (1942). However, this also takes us into areas which overlap with the nature and use of 'thought experiments', a topic that will be discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, when it is published.]

Finally, as this Essay unfolds we will see that this approach to 'abstract general ideas' (or 'concepts'), beloved of Traditional Philosophers and DM-theorists, only succeeds in delivering an opposite result: it destroys generality, and that in turn would completely undermine science itself.

1b. Of course, the answer to such questions has usually been that we ascertain general concepts or ideas by a 'process of abstraction' (or even by some sort of vague 'intuition', augmented, or not, by a cursory appeal to 'the light of reason'). The rest of this Part of Essay Three, and indeed Part Two, will put this 'explanation' under sustained pressure.

1b0. On this, see Cornford (1997), pp.191-97, Cowley (1991), and Lazerowitz and Ambrose (1976), pp.145-84.

1b1. In fact, according to DM-theorists, 'abstractions' are supposed to be products of the 'mind'; in which case, it is difficult to see if there is a clear distinction, or even a difference, between the use of the word "abstraction" -- in conjunction with other terms that supposedly designate abstract general ideas (such as "Manhood", "The Population", "abstract labour") -- and whatever these words supposedly refer to or 'reflect' either in 'reality' or 'the mind'. The question is: Do phrases like "Manhood", "The Population", and "abstract labour" refer to ideas 'in the mind' or to something in 'extra-mental reality'? As we will see, DM-fans run the answers to such questions together as a matter of course. One minute it is the former, the next it is the latter; sometimes it is both at the same time.

In which case, at this site -- unless I am discussing Plato's 'Forms', or I am trying to figure out what these 'abstractions' actually designate in 'the mind' (or, indeed, in 'extra-mental reality') --, I will sometimes run-together 'abstraction' and whatever it is that 'abstractions' supposedly 'reflect' or 'refer to' in 'reality' or the 'mind'. This shouldn't create too much confusion since this seems to be what most dialecticians do, anyway -- that is, they confuse talk about talk with talk about 'things'.

1c. An 'Abstract Particular' is like a genuine particular (such as the chair you are now sat in/on (if you are), the screen you are looking at -- or even, you), to which we could, if we so choose, give a Proper Name, or pick out by the use of singular terms -- such as the following definite description, "the screen you are now looking at", or even this pronoun, "I mean him over there", often accompanied by a gesture of some sort. The difference is that 'abstract particulars' don't appear to exist anywhere in the world around us. They are, however, still capable of being designated by the use of names (which turn out to be Proper Names) or other singular terms (such as "The Form of the Good", "Manhood", or "The Population").

[I am, of course, summarising my interpretation of the theory I am criticising, not outlining my own ideas!]

However, as noted in the main body of this Essay, the extension of an abstraction (to use a more contemporary buzz word) is also supposed to be general. That is, the extension of each relevant abstract term is supposedly all cats, all dogs, all men/women, the entire population, all electrons, etc.

Be that as it may, even while abstractions are supposed to do this (i.e., they supposedly designate the set of all men, or the set of all 'persons, for example), they are manifestly singular in form, since they also refer to 'Man', or 'The Population'. They appear to name a class, collection or set, and Proper Names are employed to that end. So, "Manhood" is the Proper Name of the Abstract Particular 'Manhood', since that word, "Manhood", uniquely designates 'Manhood', and nothing else.

Unfortunately, while the use of such terms is intended to help account for, or express, generality, it ends up destroying it -- plainly, since neither a singular term nor the particulars ('abstract' or 'concrete') they supposedly designate are general. The chair you are sat on isn't all chairs there are or have ever been, the screen you are now using isn't every screen there has ever been or will ever be. Nor can "the chair you are sat on" or "the screen you are now using" refer to all chairs or screens there are or have ever been. [That point will, I hope, become a little clearer as this Essay proceeds.]

It could be argued that classes, sets and collections preserve generality, they don't obliterate it. As we will soon see, the opposite is in fact the case.

1d. I am of course speaking of the sort of collections (as classes of objects) that are supposedly found in nature and society (howsoever they themselves are characterised), not of the classes or sets that are found in mathematics or any other formal discipline.

1d1. Concerning this obscure notion -- i.e., "concrete universal" --, Hegel scholar, Michael Inwood, had this to say:

"[W]hen Hegel speaks of the 'concrete concept' and of 'concrete universality' he usually has at least two points in mind: that concepts or universals are not sharply separate from the perceptible concrete -- and that they are not sharply separate from each other, that e.g., the concept of universality is not sharply distinct from those of particularity and individuality." [Inwood (1993), p.30.]

1e. Indeed, we find dialecticians talking as if the words they use for the 'abstractions' they have conjured into existence turn out to be the Proper Names of ideas, concepts, or categories --, or, they are what these names supposedly refer to or 'reflect' either in the world or in 'the mind' (often these are simply run-together). We will encounter several more examples of this 'dialectical-interpretation' as this Essay unfolds.

[In fact, Ilyenkov (1982) (inadvertently) makes several somewhat similar points without realising their significance -- or, indeed, the fatal implications this poses for this entire way of 'doing philosophy'.]

Here are a few examples, taken from several 'dialectical'-sources that argue along similar lines:

"Given the name lion, we need neither the actual vision of the animal, nor its image even: the name alone, if we understand it, is the unimaged simple representation. We think in names." [Hegel (1971), p.220, §462. Bold emphasis added.]

"To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no information about the distinction between the two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual. Thus while the same names are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes." [Hegel (1975), p.234. Bold emphasis added.]

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

"The identity of thought and being, to express myself in Hegelian fashion, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously, and even then approaching it only asymptotically." [Engels to Conrad Schmidt (12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), p.457. Bold emphasis added.]

"The concrete is a combination of abstractions -- not an arbitrary or subjective combination but one that corresponds to the laws of the movement of a given phenomenon." [Trotsky (1971), p.147. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science 'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the 'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998), p.131. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]

"This law of identity of opposites, which so perplexes and horrifies addicts of formal logic, can be easily understood, not only when it is applied to actual processes of development and interrelations of events, but also when it is contrasted with the formal law of identity. It is logically true that A equals A, that John is John…. But it is far more profoundly true that A is also non-A. John is not simply John: John is a man. This correct proposition is not an affirmation of abstract identity, but an identification of opposites. The logical category or material class, mankind, with which John is one and the same is far more and other than John, the individual. Mankind is at the same time identical with, yet different from John." [Novack (1971), p.92. Bold emphasis added.]

"In popular usage, the adjective 'abstract' often means 'vague' or 'removed from reality'. The sense in which the term is used here is different; an abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. What we abstract from are the many other aspects which together constitute concrete objects, such as people, economics [I'm sure Sayer means economies here -- RL], nations, institutions, activities and so on. In this sense an abstract concept can be precise rather than vague; there is nothing vague about abstractions such as 'temperature', 'valency', 'gender', 'income elasticity of demand', or 'the circuit of money capital'. And the things to which these abstractions refer need be no less real than those referred to by concrete concepts. Hence the abstract and the concrete should not be aligned with the distinction between thought and reality." [Sayer (1992), p.87. Bold emphasis alone added. The page numbering is completely different in the Second Corrected Edition, i.e., Sayer (2010), p.59.]

"While thought and ideas, like language, originate from labour, men likewise develop their thinking and their ideas in the course of the whole of their social activity....

"Ideas are not the products of a pure intellectual process, nor are they mere automatic responses to stimuli reaching us from external objects. They are produced by human brains in the course of human social activity. They reflect the connections of men with one another and with the external world, the real conditions of men's existence....

"The first and most elementary ideas are ideas directly derived from immediate practical intercourse with other people and surrounding objects. They are formed by giving names to the common features of things recognisable in perception....

"In such ideas are more or less directly reflected the salient features of objects and human activities as we are immediately aware of them in perception. Such ideas constitute the basic, elementary equipment of human thought and communication. They are expressed in words denoting familiar objects, and everyday activities....

"Such are our ideas of the things about us with which our normal affairs are concerned, such as men and women, tables, chairs, motor cars, trees, flowers, dogs, cats., etc., etc.; of sensible properties of things, such as red, blue, hard, soft, big, small, and so on; and of actions and relations, such as running, walking, falling, above, below, etc., etc....

"The feature of such elementary ideas is that they have a concrete, sensuous content, because to them correspond objects directly perceptible to the senses....

"Can we form ideas to which no directly perceptible object corresponds? Yes, of course, we can, and we do. For example, men are directly perceptible objects, and their properties of being tall, short, thin, fat, and so on, are directly perceptible properties. But we also think of men in terms other than these, although nothing directly evident to the senses corresponds to what we think about them....

"One needs only to point to a fat man, and someone running, and say 'I mean that a man like that is doing that'. If, on the other hand one says 'The capitalist exploits the workers', one is still referring to certain familiar sensible objects (men), but one is at the same time making a generalisation about them which refers to a relationship between them which is not open to immediate observation but which requires a very elaborate definition in terms of other relationships. One cannot explain what one means by 'capitalist' and 'exploitation' in the same way as one can explain what one means by 'fat' and 'running'....

"It is to such ideas that the term 'abstract' is commonly applied." [Cornforth (1963), pp.57-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]

Even though Cornforth gestures at accepting the social nature of language, knowledge and 'cognition', his analysis is little better than that offered by Hobbes, Locke and Descartes, which, naturally, places him in the bourgeois individualist camp -- at least as far as his theory of knowledge is concerned. [The "little better" aspect here arise from Cornforth's appeal to "practice", but, as we have seen, an appeal to practice would be to no avail.]

As noted above, for Cornforth, as for Hegel, Hobbes, Locke, Descartes and all the rest, words that supposedly give expression to our ideas and concepts are "names" (and, with respect to these 'abstractions, they are Proper Names) that "refer to" or "designate" certain objects. Hence, the naming or pointing relation is the paradigm that dominates Cornforth's thought (as it does the theories of the others mentioned or quoted above); but, because he/we can't point to something in immediate experience that answers to certain words (or is it that he/we can't point to certain ideas hidden away 'in the mind', or in a heaven with 'the gods'?), he classifies them as 'abstractions' -- which is precisely the line taken by Ancient Greek Theorists, albeit expressed in an entirely different idiom. [In relation to that, see here. On this topic in general, see Hacking (1975).]

Finally, Cornforth thinks that ostension (i.e., pointing at or to something) is a perfectly straight-forward way to explain the meaning of a word, but it isn't. On that, see Hacker (2005), pp.81-106.

Of course, Cornforth's approach to language is something Marx himself had railed against (alas, only in his early work):

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

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

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

Hence, it is quite clear that in this early work, Marx connected abstractionism with linguistic distortion -- as a result of which what was supposed to be general is particularised --, which is, of course, the line adopted at this site.

Indeed, Marx underlined this very point -- that is, that philosophers invent names for their 'abstractions' -- thereby distorting ordinary language:

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

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

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

"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), pp.57-60. Bold emphases alone added.]

From this, we can clearly see Marx explicitly contrasting the "philosopher's" approach to 'abstract knowledge' with the way that ordinary human beings think and talk. It is also worth underlining the fact that Marx points out that philosophers turn general words in to Proper Names (in this case the "Absolute Fruit", or just "Fruit"), and while the abstractions to which they supposedly refer are what is really real, the actual fruits we see around us are mere "semblances":

"I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'.... Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'....

"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc....

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

"...and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Ibid. Bold emphases alone added.]

However, as we will see when we examine the way that DM-theorists analyse predicative expressions, they too transform 'abstract general terms' (supposedly expressed by predicables -- follow the link for an explanation of that word) into the Proper Names of abstract particulars. It is here where the aforementioned distortion occurs --, which move, if valid, would destroy both generality and the capacity we have in language to say anything at all

Finally, it is instructive to find out that even right-wing ideologues like Jordan Peterson also promote 'abstractionism' (without once attempting to explain how it is logically, or even psychologically, possible):

"If you have a set of things and you abstract out from them a common element, you can make a strong case that the common element is more real than the set of things from which you abstracted it. That's the whole utility in abstraction." [Quoted from here. Bold added.]

So, according to that numpty, the world of 'abstractions' is more real than the world you see around you. This is in fact an excellent summary of 'reality' as DM-fans also see things: the universe gains its 'essence' from an Ideal world of 'abstractions'. This differs from Ancient Greek Mysticism in words alone.

On the problems this set of ideas creates, see Note Two; this topic is entered into in more detail in Part Two.

2. As we shall also see, the nature of this mysterious 'process' is difficult to describe, even if you believe in it. [Several examples of DM-theorists trying to explain this mysterious 'process' are given above and in Appendix B.]

(1) If the 'process of abstraction' is indeed a 'mental activity', how would it be possible for each abstractor to know if they had arrived at the correct abstract concept of anything at all, or, indeed, anything in particular? Indeed, the notion that there could be a 'correct' abstraction loses all meaning if there is no way to check. With what, or with whom, could any of the supposed results be checked? Since this 'process' is supposed to take place in 'the mind', no one would have access to a single 'abstraction' produced by anyone else, nor would each abstractor have access to the 'abstractions' they produced only a few moments earlier. An appeal to memory would be to no avail since memories are also supposed to make use of abstractions, which would themselves be subject to the very same doubts. There is in fact no way to break into this 'abstractive circle', no way to check.

An appeal to the existence of a public language would be to no avail, either. Again, if each abstractor 'processes' their 'abstractions' in the privacy of their own heads, no one would be able to tell whether Abstractor A meant the same as Abstractor B by his or her use of the relevant words (or the relevant 'concepts' -- like "Substance", "Being", "Nothing", "The Population", "abstract labour", etc., etc.) drawn from the vernacular, or elsewhere. Definitions would be no help, either, since, just like memory, they also employ 'abstractions' -- so, they, too, would be subject to the same awkward questions. For how could Abstractor A know what Abstractor B means by any of the abstract terms she has processed without access to her 'mind'? Abstractor B can't point to anything which is 'the meaning' of a single abstraction she might be trying to define, so she can't use an ostensive definition to help Abstractor A understand what she means (even if meanings could be established that way). No particular, or no singular term, can give the meaning of any abstraction or abstract term under scrutiny (as those who accept this theory intend, not as I have criticised it -- so I am not contradicting my claim that these abstractions are really the Proper Names of abstract particulars). That being so, the same 'difficulties' would confront the general terms supposedly employed in any definition used to that end, and so on...

And, it is even less use appealing to the 'logic of concepts', which drives 'thought' along, as, say, a staunch follower of Hegel might attempt to do. Not only is it unclear what Hegel's terminology actually means (any who doubt this might like to try to explain, say, these passages), but even if all he had ever said were crystal clear, since he was the first to concoct this 'dialectical process', 'thought' can't inevitably be driven along these lines -- otherwise we wouldn't have needed Hegel to deliver the good news to us. Of course, it could be argued that he was the first to reveal what we all somehow manage to do without realising it, or, even, that he revealed what 'the speculative philosopher' does, or should do, whether or not he realises it, too. [Or, to be more honest, this is what Hegel, or anyone else who has swallowed his ideas, gestures at doing, by producing page-after-page of obscure jargon.] Naturally, this just labels the problem, it doesn't constitute an effective response.

I will, however, postpone replying to this particular riposte until Part Two of this Essay.

Until then it is sufficient to note that 'thought' can only take this route if we are prepared to accept without question the logical, classical, and Hegelian blunders outlined in this Essay (as well as here and here); in which case, such 'thought' deserves all the confusion it attracts to itself as a result.

Moreover, even if abstractions were arrived at in a 'more law-like way' -- as the 'mind' tries to grapple with scientific knowledge, à la Hegel --, it would still be unclear how any one mind could possibly check the 'abstractive' results of any other in order to ascertain whether or not either or both of them had arrived at the same Ideal result. Indeed, how could anyone trapped in a Hegelian world of internally processed, 'Jackson Pollock-like Concepts' decide if they even meant the same by the word "same", for goodness sake!

Figure Four: Stop Press! At Last, An Accurate Representation Of Hegel's 'System'

This is an inner process which is in principle impossible to check, even by one the doing the processing!

Finally, it is even less use responding (as some have done) that we have to assume such things otherwise we would be faced with a yawning chasm of extreme scepticism. That is because the theory itself implies extreme scepticism, as Essay Ten Part One has shown.

(2) If, as some versions of this theory appear to imply, abstractions are produced by some sort of subtractive process -- as more and more specific features are disregarded, indeed, as Marx himself noted (re-posted below) -- in order to derive increasingly general terms, exactly who decides which parts should be subtracted first, second or third? For example, do we start by abstracting a cat's whiskers, its curiosity or its purr? Do we ignore its position or its number? And, if all of this is processed 'in the mind', who is to say that everyone does exactly the same things to exactly the same subtracted parts, in the same order or in the same manner as anyone else?

"Abstraction is the mental identification, singling out of some object from its connections with other objects, the separation of some attribute of an object from its other attributes, of some relation between certain objects from the objects themselves. Abstraction is a method of mental simplification, by which we consider some one aspect of the process we are studying. The scientist looks at the colourful picture which any object presents in real life through a single-colour filter and this enables him to see that object in only one, fundamentally important aspect. The picture loses many of its shades but gains in clarity. Abstraction has its limit. One cannot abstract the flame from what is burning. The sharp edge of abstraction, like the edge of a razor can be used to whittle things down until nothing is left. Abstraction can never be absolute. The existence of content shows intrinsically in every abstraction. The question of what to abstract and what to abstract from is ultimately decided by the nature of the objects under examination and the tasks confronting the investigator. Kepler, for example, was not interested in the colour of Mars or the temperature of the Sun when he sought to establish the laws of the revolution of the planets." [Spirkin (1983), p.232. Bold emphases and link added.]

But, concerning the example to which Spirkin refers, it wasn't the object (Mars) that decided "what to abstract and what to abstract from", it was Kepler who did. And, if this 'process' takes place in the 'mind' -- since it is "a method of mental simplification" -- all the problems outlined above (and below) will simply reassert themselves.

Naturally, if 'abstractions' are cobbled-together by a process of generalisation, or law-like development, then these questions will still apply, but in this case perhaps in reverse order.

(3) The actual process of mental subtraction is difficult to conceive, too. When we ignore the various parts of the objects we are supposedly performing this trick upon, is it like some sort of mental striptease? But, if we take away too much, how might we know whether the rest of this ceremony has been performed on the same 'mental' object with which we began? While we might all start with, say, a chaffinch, after its feathers, beak, claws, colour, song, wings, size and number have been stripped away, how might we distinguish the amorphous blob left behind from a similarly processed Axolotl? Or, someone's grandmother? Or, indeed, the Crab Nebula? Of course, if its number has been 'abstracted', we won't even be able to do that, will we? If we can't distinguish two such chaffinches from one such (number having been sent to the benches), we certainly won't be able to distinguish one chaffinch from two, or, indeed, one chaffinch from one Axolotl.

Of course, abstractionists are never quite this crude; they restrict themselves to rather more well-behaved "concepts", "categories" or refined "ideas", those they trust to 'reason', or better still, to 'dialectical'/'speculative' thought. But, these shadowy beings are even more obscure. Does, therefore, the 'concept' of Kermit the Frog have legs, a head and a stomach full of worms? If not, then we might wonder if this concept genuinely applies to him. If it does, we might wonder even more what the difference between him and his 'concept' is. If there is none, then Kermit would be no less Ideal. On the other hand, if there is a difference, how do we know this 'concept' belongs, or even applies, to Kermit?

Worse still, any conclusions drawn about the 'concept' of Kermit the Frog, or indeed amphibians in general, would apply to that 'concept', not to its supposed slimy external correlate. This would seem to be the case unless we are now to suppose that, just like a Black Magic Doll, whatever we do to the 'concept', we do to the real object it is said to reflect or represent. Of course, Idealists might not be able to distinguish reality from illusion, anyway, but materialists would be unwise to stumble into that dense fog alongside them -- or, indeed, adopt a 'philosophical' technique that can't in the end tell fact from fancy, or frog from fog.

And how exactly does one dissect a concept? Do concepts possess an 'objective' anatomy, which any rank amateur can slice, dice, poke or prod? Are there manuals we can consult, instruction books we can check, experts we may e-mail or engage with on Facebook?

To be sure, just like Father Christmas, and the Tooth Fairy, the Traditional Tale about 'abstraction' is deeply engrained in our (intellectual) culture -- you will even find psychologists who assure us that we can all construct or apprehend "abstractions" in the intimate confines of our skulls, even if they go rather quiet (or indulge in no little hand waving) when asked to fill in the details -- to such an extent that experience has taught me to avoid questioning this mythical 'process' in polite company or risk being treated like someone who has just confessed to murder.

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

Nevertheless, this Emperor has no clothes, abstract or concrete; indeed, there isn't even so much as a drop of blue blood in 'his' veins -- as both halves of this Essay seek to demonstrate.

This ruling idea has been sat on its Epistemological Throne for long enough; time to wheel out a very material guillotine and do 'an Oliver'.

2b. It could be argued that this confuses "individuals" with "particulars", or at least with "concrete particulars". This seemingly minor terminological wrangle is easily settled. Unless otherwise stated, I am of course using these two terms as they might be employed in ordinary speech, where, even though they have slightly different connotations, are interchangeable in most of the relevant contexts that appear in this Essay. [On this, see Note 22a0.] For Hegel, it seems that a "particular" is an "individual" of a certain type, after some ('dialectical'? or 'pre-dialectical'?) thought has been applied to it:

"To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no information about the distinction between the two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual. Thus while the same names are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes." [Hegel (1975), p.234. Bold emphasis added.]

"We have shown that the determinateness which was a result is itself, by virtue of the form of simplicity into which it has withdrawn, a fresh beginning; as this beginning is distinguished from its predecessor precisely by that determinateness, cognition rolls onwards from content to content. First of all, this advance is determined as beginning from simple determinatenesses, the succeeding ones becoming ever richer and more concrete. For the result contains its beginning and its course has enriched it by a fresh determinateness. The universal constitutes the foundation; the advance is therefore not to be taken as a flowing from one other to the next other. In the absolute method the Notion maintains itself in its otherness, the universal in its particularisation, in judgment and reality; at each stage of its further determination it raises the entire mass of its preceding content, and by its dialectical advance it not only does not lose anything or leave anything behind, but carries along with it all it has gained, and inwardly enriches and consolidates itself." [Hegel (1999), p.840. §1809. Bold emphasis alone added. I have used the on-line version here, but have corrected several minor typos. I have informed the editors over at the Marxist Internet Archive.]

Should this distinction still be unclear to the reader, they ought perhaps refer their concerns to Hegel's shade for further clarification. Or, failing that they might want to consult Inwood (1992), pp.302-05. [And good luck making sense of that!]

However, from the above we can see that Hegel runs together linguistic expressions and extra-linguistic entities (i.e., he confuses talk about talk with talk about the world), for example, when he says:

"In point of thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual." [Hegel, loc cit. Bold added.]

2c. On this, see Livio (2009). For an extreme version of this view of 'reality', see Tegmark (2008, 2015). See also here.

2d. There is more on this below. For the early history of these moves, cf., Barnes (2009) and Havelock (1983). [See also Note 29.]

3. Substantiation for these rather sweeping statements will be provided in Essay Twelve (summary here).

3a. These remarks might prompt some readers into thinking I am a Positivist, or even an Empiricist, but that would be a serious mistake; on that, see here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"With the theoretical equipment inherited from Hegel it is, of course, not possible even to understand the empirical, material attitude of these people. Owing to the fact that Feuerbach showed the religious world as an illusion of the earthly world -- a world which in his writing appears merely as a phrase -- German theory too was confronted with the question which he left unanswered: how did it come about that people 'got' these illusions 'into their heads'? Even for the German theoreticians this question paved the way to the materialistic view of the world, a view which is not without premises, but which empirically observes the actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the first time, actually a critical view of the world. This path was already indicated in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher -- in the Einleitung zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage. But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as 'human essence', 'species', etc., gave the German theoreticians the desired reason for misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing that here again it was a question merely of giving a new turn to their worn-out theoretical garment -- just as Dr. Arnold Ruge, the Dottore Graziano of German philosophy, imagined that he could continue as before to wave his clumsy arms about and display his pedantic-farcical mask. One has to 'leave philosophy aside' (Wigand, p.187, cf., Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p.8), one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers. When, after that, one again encounters people like Krummacher or 'Stirner', one finds that one has long ago left them 'behind' and below. Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and sexual love. Saint Sancho, who in spite of his absence of thought -- which was noted by us patiently and by him emphatically -- remains within the world of pure thoughts, can, of course, save himself from it only by means of a moral postulate, the postulate of 'thoughtlessness' (p.196 of 'the book'). He is a bourgeois who saves himself in the face of commerce by the banqueroute cochenne [swinish bankruptcy -- RL] whereby, of course, he becomes not a proletarian, but an impecunious, bankrupt bourgeois. He does not become a man of the world, but a bankrupt philosopher without thoughts." [Marx and Engels (1976), p.236. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

"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 alone added.]

So, for Marx, Philosophy had to be left "aside" since it was based on distorted language and is full of empty abstractions. In my experience, when DM-fans read these passages they either totally ignore them or they re-configure them to say the opposite of what they actually say -- on a par with the supposed followers of the 'Prince of Peace', who enjoined Christians to "love their enemies", but whose 'followers' then attempt to justify war and capital punishment. [For more on this, see here.]

We have already seen what Lenin thought of Philosophy -- except, of course, about his own amateur attempts to do some himself, in, for example, MEC and PN.

4. This isn't intended to be an exhaustive survey or analysis of these terms (indeed, we have yet to see just such a survey or analysis from DM-theorists themselves, who seem more content to repeat the same tired old ideas from generation to generation without subjecting them even to perfunctory critical analysis, as the many passages quoted in this Essay amply confirm. The aim here is to attempt to clarify what DM-theorists might think they mean when they employ these terms. As the reader will no doubt soon realise, this is an impossible task; that is because DM-theorists themselves don't appear to know what they mean when they use these terms -- often characterising 'concrete objects', for example, as objects of thought, as opposed to objects in 'reality', all the while imagining they mean the latter instead of the former. Spirkin, quoted below, is an excellent example of this confusion.

[However, this isn't surprising given the points raised in Note Two, above. Nor is this surprising given Hegel's own confused and confusing use of such terms. On this, see for example, Grier (1990). I will examine Grier's article in a future re-write of this Essay.]

I am in the process of adding to Appendix B passages taken from a wide range of DM-theorists, who tell us what they think they mean by "the abstract" and "the concrete". Here, for example, is what Spirkin had to say:

"The abstract and the concrete. The concept of 'the concrete' is used in two senses. First, in the sense of something directly given, a sensuously perceived and represented whole. In this sense the concrete is the starting point of cognition. But as soon as we treat it theoretically the concrete becomes a concept, a system of scientific definitions revealing the essential connections and relations of things and events, their unity in diversity. So the concrete appears to us first in the form of a sensuously observable image of the whole object not yet broken down and not understood in its law-governed connections and mediations, but at the level of theoretical thought it is still a whole, but internally differentiated, understood in its various intrinsic contradictions. The sensuously concrete is a poor reflection of phenomena, but the concrete in thought is a richer, more essential cognition. In contrast to the abstract the concrete is only one moment in the process of cognition, we understand it by comparing it with the abstract. Abstraction usually suggests to us something 'mental', 'conceptual', in contrast to the sensuously observable. The abstract is also thought of as something one-sided, poor, incomplete, separated, or as a property, a relation, a form, etc. withdrawn from its connection with the whole. And in this sense not only a concept but even an observable image, for example, a diagram, a drawing, an abstract painting, stylisation, a symbol may be abstract. The category of abstraction is contradictory. It is dead, one-sided, separated from the living phenomenon, but it is also an essential step towards the knowledge of a concrete fact brimming with life. We call knowledge abstract also in the sense that it reflects a fragment of reality, as it were, stripped down, refined and thereby impoverished.

From this it appears that Spirkin views the 'concrete' initially as an object of perception -- "something directly given, a sensuously perceived and represented whole. In this sense the concrete is the starting point of cognition." Later, when it has been 'processed' correctly, the 'concrete' becomes a more rounded or sophisticated object of thought: "The sensuously concrete is a poor reflection of phenomena, but the concrete in thought is a richer, more essential cognition."

But, it turns out that the abstract is also an object of thought -- "Abstraction usually suggests to us something 'mental', 'conceptual', in contrast to the sensuously observable." So, both 'the concrete' and 'the abstract' are for Spirkin both objects of thought; the only difference being that one is more rounded or richer while the other is "one-sided".

In which case, it is hard to see how Spirkin's theory can break out of the world of internally processed objects of thought in which he has situated it. Moreover, as we shall see in Part Two (a summary of the argument is given below), Spirkin has clearly trapped himself in a solipsistic universe, a world in which each intrepid abstractor is forever imprisoned. We shall also see that an appeal to practice -- or even social knowledge -- can't help break him out of this subjective, Idealist dungeon.

Indeed, this is the inevitable fate of all Abstractionist theories, DM or otherwise.

Since both 'the abstract' and 'the concrete' are objects of thought, Spirkin has no way of knowing whether or not the 'concrete objects' of this theory (howsoever much they have been 'internally processed') actually correspond with anything in 'extra-mental reality'. Plainly, that is because all he has available to him are yet more 'objects of thought' -- i.e., the 'concrete objects' and 'abstractions' produced by previous bouts of mental gymnastics. Indeed, he has no way of knowing there is an 'external world' for anything to correspond with. Given the fact that, for Spirkin, all knowledge is based on 'mental processing' like this, and on these mysterious abstractions, these 'objects of thought' (if his theory were true), there is no way out of this circle. Spirkin has thus entombed his knowledge in a solipsistically 'closed universe'.

It is no use appealing to practice to rescue this theory from the subjective, Idealist prison into which Spirkin has cast it. That is because, if this theory were true, all that each intrepid abstractor would have available him/her are yet more objects of thought, perhaps with an extra abstract label attached to each, such as, "produced by practice", which is about as convincing as pinning this note on an $11 bill: "This is a genuine item of currency". Each supposedly 'concrete object' met in practice will be 'reflected' in the mind of a given abstractor as an image, if Lenin is to be believed. But, we have already seen that this theory can't escape from that closed world of images. Hence, all that practice can deliver are yet more images of practice, as opposed to practice itself, locking this theory in yet another subjective circle.

Practice can't magically change these objects of thought into genuine, 'extra-mental objects', since, as we have seen, practice is itself trapped in this solipsistic world -- given that practice can only 'latch onto reality' via yet more of these 'concrete objects of thought'/'images'. Once more, there is no way out of this Idealist circle. Spirkin can't 'jump out of his head' to check that the deliverances of practice are anything other than objects of thought, or images. And, the same fate awaits all those who have unwisely followed Spirkin into this dungeon.

The same can be said about the DM-theory of knowledge in general. All that DM-theorists have are 'images', just like Lenin and Spirkin.

6. The rather schematic presentation in the main body of this Essay isn't meant to suggest that DM-theorists hold that there are no 'dialectical' interconnections between these terms, only that if there are any, they have been remarkably coy about precisely what these might be. [On this, see Essay Eleven Part One.]

8. Physicists tell us that every photon, for example, is identical to every other photon (this has been neatly illustrated here). Here is how Philosopher of Science, Steven French, put things:

"It should be emphasised, first of all, that quantal particles are indistinguishable in a much stronger sense than classical particles. It is not just that two or more electrons, say, possess all intrinsic properties in common but that -- on the standard understanding -- no measurement whatsoever could in principle determine which one is which. If the non-intrinsic, state-dependent properties are identified with all the monadic or relational properties which can be expressed in terms of physical magnitudes associated with self-adjoint operators that can be defined for the particles, then it can be shown that two bosons or two fermions in a joint symmetric or anti-symmetric state respectively have the same monadic properties and the same relational properties one to another. [French and Redhead (1988); see also Butterfield (1993).] This has immediate implications for Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles which, expressed crudely, insists that two things which are indiscernible, must be, in fact, identical."

However, the above was published in 2011, but French has has now (i.e., in 2019) re-written this follows (over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy):

"Now, of course, both quantum and classical objects of the same kind -- such as electrons, say -- are indistinguishable in the sense that they possess all intrinsic properties -- charge, spin, rest mass etc. -- in common. However, quantum objects are indistinguishable in a much stronger sense in that it is not just that two or more electrons possess the same intrinsic properties but that – on the standard understanding -- no measurement whatsoever could in principle determine which one is which. If the non-intrinsic, state-dependent properties are identified with all the monadic or relational properties which can be expressed in terms of physical magnitudes standardly associated with self-adjoint operators that can be defined for the objects, then it can be shown that two bosons or two fermions in a joint symmetric or anti-symmetric state respectively have the same monadic properties and the same relational properties one to another. [French and Redhead (1988); see also Butterfield (1993).] This has immediate implications for the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles which, expressed crudely, insists that two things which are indiscernible, must be, in fact, identical." [French (2019). Bold emphases and links added. Referencing conventions altered in line with those adopted at this site.]

The above passage has been slightly modified, again; this is the new version [i.e., French and Bigaj (2024)]:

"Now, of course, both quantum and classical objects of the same kind -- such as electrons, say -- are indistinguishable in the sense that they possess all intrinsic properties -- charge, spin, rest mass etc. -- in common. However, it may be argued that quantum objects are indistinguishable in a much stronger sense in that it is not just that two or more electrons possess the same intrinsic properties but that -- on the standard understanding -- no measurement whatsoever could in principle determine which one is which. If the non-intrinsic, state-dependent properties are identified with all the monadic or relational properties which can be expressed in terms of physical magnitudes standardly associated with self-adjoint operators that can be defined for the objects, then it can be shown that two bosons or two fermions in a joint symmetric or anti-symmetric state respectively have the same monadic properties and the same relational properties one to another. [French and Redhead (1988); see also Butterfield (1993), Dieks and Versteegh (2008).] This has immediate implications for the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles which, expressed crudely, insists that two things which are indiscernible, must be, in fact, identical." [French and Bigaj (2024). Bold emphases added. Referencing conventions altered in line with those adopted at this site.]

Of course, French offers his own solution to this 'difficulty' -- but it isn't one that challenges the identity of quantal particles, just their lack of individuality. And, Nobel Laureate, Paul Dirac, made a similar point this way:

"If a system in atomic physics contains a number of particles of the same kind, e.g., a number of electrons, the particles are absolutely indistinguishable. No observable change is made when two of them are interchanged…." [Dirac (1967), p.207.]

However, as pointed out here, one might well wonder how anyone could possibly know whether or not two particles had been interchanged if they are all indistinguishable. On the other hand, Pure Mathematician that he was, Dirac might merely be making a theoretical point on a par with the following: "If we swap one number in this equation for another (identical) number, no change will be observed: 2 + 3 = 5". We can see this perhaps more clearly with this example: "Two plus three equals five" is mathematically indistinguishable from "2 + 3 = 5" even though "2" and "Two", for instance, are plainly distinguishable.

A (relatively) recent discussion of these issues can be found in French and Krause (2006), Brading and Castellani (2003), and Castellani (1998), Hilborn and Yuca (2002), and Ladyman and Bigaj (2010). [See also the Wikipedia entry here, and the references in French and Bigaj (2024).]

8b. On this, see Part Three of this Essay (when it is published); some of this material has been posted temporarily here. See also Essay Ten Part One, where this point has been greatly expanded upon.

9. Anyone who doubts this should flip through Gerry Healy's writings -- for example, Healy (1990). For afters, try Dunayevskaya (1982, 2002), James (1980), Zizek (2012, 2015), Bhaskar (1993), or Ilyenkov (1982). Or, indeed, the Mother Lode buried in Hegel's work, which is even more 'bracing'.

9a. This allegation is substantiated in Essay Twelve (summaries here and here).

10. This theme will be explored at length in Essays Nine Part One, Twelve Part One (as well as in other Parts of Twelve), and Fourteen Part One (summaries here, here, and here).

11. This isn't strictly true. There are a handful of works in the DM-tradition that make some attempt (albeit unsuccessfully) to clarify these terms. Their relevant comments have been posted in Appendix B. See also Note 4, above.

12. In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does in this passage; he merely gestures at doing it, and his gestures are about as substantive and convincing as the hand movements of stage magicians. That isn't to disparage Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work if he had omitted what few (superficial) examples there remain of methods employed in traditional thought. There is more on this in Part Two. [Also on this, see Essay Nine Part One, especially here and here.]

And, yes, I know the passage quoted in the main body of this Essay is from the Grundrisse, but that fact doesn't affect the point being made.

I have added to Note 1e above several quotations from DM-theorists that support this contention -- i.e., that they begin, not with general ideas or concepts, but with the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars. Indeed, in Spirkin's case (as noted above), he seems to think we begin with 'concrete particulars':

Which is puzzling since, as we have seen, Lenin and Engels claimed that 'the concrete' will only emerge, or the 'objects of cognition' will only be declared 'concrete', at the end of a "infinite" epistemological journey. In which case, it isn't easy to see how 'cognition' can begin with 'the concrete'.

12b. Readers unfamiliar with the style of argument about to be developed might be tempted to respond that this is just "semantics" (or even that it is a classic example of "pedantry"); they perhaps conveniently forget that Hegel's 'pedantic' derivation of 'the dialectic' was itself based on "semantics". But, they should try that particular objection out on Marx:

"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.

As he points out, philosophers (and now dialecticians) only seem to get away with the verbal tricks about to be exposed by distorting language -- which is, clearly, a form of 'semantics'.

Independently of this, it isn't too clear how such objectors would respond to someone who claimed that, say, Marx's distinction between the "relative" and the "equivalent" form of value is "just semantics", or "arrant pedantry". Or, who said the same of Hegel's distinction between "individuals" and "particulars".

Even the soft left reformist UK paper, The Daily Mirror, knows the importance of using the right words (in this case in an article about the difference between "migrant" and "refugee"):

"Using the right words for the right things is very important. It's how we manage to communicate across languages and borders, via keyboards and tweets and picture captions. Using the wrong words means you stop communicating -- it means that at best you begin to mislead, and at worst you lie. For example, Newton's law of gravity states that the force of attraction between two bodies is directly proportional to the products of their mass. In other words, apples fall downwards because the earth is bigger than an apple. Imagine if just one of those words meant the opposite of what we think it does. We couldn't send a lander to Mars because we wouldn't know where it was, jet engines would make no sense so there'd be no package holidays, and we'd all think dancing on the ceiling like Lionel Richie was an option. If you don't get the words right, you get everything else wrong." [The Daily Mirror, 02/09/2015. Paragraphs merged. Bold emphases and link added.]

Do the above 'pedantry-hounds' take Lenin to task for writing passages like the following?

"'Sense-perception is the reality existing outside us'!! This is just the fundamental absurdity, the fundamental muddle and falsity of Machism, from which flows all the rest of the balderdash of this philosophy and for which Mach and Avenarius have been embraced by those arrant reactionaries and preachers of priestlore, the immanentists. However much V. Bazarov wriggled, however cunning and diplomatic he was in evading ticklish points, in the end he gave himself away and betrayed his true Machian character! To say that 'sense-perception is the reality existing outside us' is to return to Humism, or even Berkeleianism, concealing itself in the fog of 'co-ordination.' This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the reality existing outside us, it is only the image of that reality. Are you trying to make capital of the ambiguous Russian word sovpadat? Are you trying to lead the unsophisticated reader to believe that sovpadat here means 'to be identical,' and not 'to correspond'? That means basing one's falsification of Engels à la Mach on a perversion of the meaning of a quotation, and nothing more.

"Take the German original and you will find there the words stimmen mit, which means to correspond with, 'to voice with' -- the latter translation is literal, for Stimme means voice. The words 'stimmen mit' cannot mean 'to coincide' in the sense of 'to be identical.' And even for the reader who does not know German but who reads Engels with the least bit of attention, it is perfectly clear, it cannot be otherwise than clear, that Engels throughout his whole argument treats the expression 'sense-perception' as the image (Abbild) of the reality existing outside us, and that therefore the word 'coincide' can be used in Russian exclusively in the sense of 'correspondence,' 'concurrence,' etc. To attribute to Engels the thought that 'sense-perception is the reality existing outside us' is such a pearl of Machian distortion, such a flagrant attempt to palm off agnosticism and idealism as materialism, that one must admit that Bazarov has broken all records!

"One asks, how can sane people in sound mind and judgment assert that 'sense-perception [within what limits is not important] is the reality existing outside us'? The earth is a reality existing outside us. It cannot 'coincide' (in the sense of being identical) with our sense-perception, or be in indissoluble co-ordination with it, or be a 'complex of elements' in another connection identical with sensation; for the earth existed at a time when there were no men, no sense-organs, no matter organised in that superior form in which its property of sensation is in any way clearly perceptible.

"That is just the point, that the tortuous theories of 'co-ordination,' 'introjection,' and the newly-discovered world elements which we analysed in Chapter I serve to cover up this idealist absurdity. Bazarov's formulation, so inadvertently and incautiously thrown off by him, is excellent in that it patently reveals that crying absurdity, which otherwise it would have been necessary to excavate from the piles of erudite, pseudo-scientific, professorial rigmarole." [Lenin (1972), pp.124-26. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases and links added.]

"Try for once to think over the words you use to compile your phrases, comrades!" [Lenin, 'Intellectualist Warriors Against Domination by the Intelligentsia', Nashe Ekho, No.5, March 30, 1907. Quoted from here.]

If they have taken Lenin to task for his 'semantics', or his 'pedantry', they kept that pretty quiet! Clearly, using the right language was clearly important to Lenin.

Unsurprisingly, Trotsky concurred:

"It is necessary to call things by their right names." [Trotsky (1971), p.56.]

With such sloppy disregard for logic, disdain for 'commonsense' and ordinary language, compounded by an unwise predilection for Mickey Mouse Science, is it any wonder that genuine ruling-class theorists dismiss the work of Dialectical Marxists as unworthy even of comment -- or, indeed, view it with no little contempt --, and, more importantly, workers in their hundreds of millions ignore all they have to say?

Of course, the DM-approach to 'criticising' this doctrine (i.e., 'abstractionism') begins by taking the traditional moves themselves for granted, and ends by simply nibbling around the edges to try to show how those moves are flawed in this or that minor respect or detail -- in the end appropriating them anyway.

However, when we ignore the traditionalists and follow Marx's advice, thereby focusing our attention on "ordinary" -- or non-"distorted" -- language, we can see that it is the moves themselves that are defective. This entire way of theorising is bogus from start to finish -- upside down or 'the right way up'.

13. Why that is so will be explained presently. The locus classicus of the modern discussion of this topic is Frege (1892), upon which much of my own thinking has been based.

14. Again, on this see Part Two. Anyone who doubts the veracity of these comments (that DM-theorists have had to concoct convoluted language in order to try to fix a pseudo-problem, which they inherited from ideologues of the class enemy) should flip through Gerry Healy's writings once more -- only this time, as punishment! Failing that, they might like to try to make sense of Bhaskar's, Dialectics, Zizek's Less Than Nothing, or his Absolute Recoil, or, indeed, the work of those listed here. [May I suggest that anyone brave enough to follow these suggestions has a bottle of painkillers at the ready?]

15. One would like to be able to say what "dialectical abstractionists" could possibly mean in this context; perhaps something like: "Abstract particulars have replaced general…(?)", but language supplies us with no useable terms.

One could say that "abstract particulars" have replaced "general particulars", but only at the risk of confusing the reader even more; plainly since the phrase "general particular" is about as clear as "round square".

Even so, if any dialecticians want to "grasp" that misbegotten phrase, they are welcome to it.

[May I suggest firmly round the throat?]

15a. Or, we could use Quine's device: "➊ killed ➋" and "➊ killed ➊", respectively -- the numerals have been put in circles to distinguish them from numbers proper.

Following on from Frege, the simplest way of understanding the Greek symbols used at this site (such as "ξ") is to view them as place-holders or gap-markers (the meaning of those remarks will be explained presently).

I haven't used "x" here since it is generally taken to be a "bound quantifier variable" (i.e., as in (Ex)(Fx); e.g., in "For some x, x is a warmonger", we are here interpreting "F(ξ)" as "ξ is a warmonger". Of course, colloquially, "For some x, x is a warmonger" would translate out as, "Someone is a warmonger", or, as the next example below shows, in mathematics "x" is a functional-variable expression.

[However, on the caution required when using the word "variable", see Essay Seven Part One. The term "bound quantifier variable" is explained here. "E" is the existential quantifier, and "F" is a one-place, first-level predicate letter. (These terms are also explained below.)]

So, the mathematical rule expressed by, for instance, "f(x) = 2x + 1" (which ranges over a suitably defined domain, etc.), maps numerals (for example, "3") onto other numerals (in this case "7") -- that is, if we remain at the level of linguistic expressions. Or, if we want to speak about the mathematics involved: 3 is mapped onto 7.

In like manner, the linguistic-functional expression "ξ is a warmonger" maps ordinary Proper Names, not onto numerals, but onto indicative sentences -- which, in this instance, would yield true sentences for "Tony Blair" and "George W Bush", respectively, but a false sentence for "Noam Chomsky", if we replace the gap-marker, ξ, with each name, respectively, as here:

F1: Tony Blair is a warmonger.

F2: George W Bush is a warmonger.

F3: Noam Chomsky is a warmonger.

[This isn't to suggest that this is how Frege saw things (for example, the phrase "linguistic function" can't be found in his work, as far as I am aware). I am in fact adapting an idea that Peter Geach floated in Geach (1961). (See also Note 16, below.)]

This linguistic device represents a convenient way of expressing generality, since the term "ξ is a warmonger" can be used to map an indefinite number of Proper Names onto and indefinite number of indicative sentences, using the general noun "warmonger". This will yield both true sentences and false sentences (illustrated below). In that case, generality arises from the way we use language, not from an 'abstract' idea/term, or from some mysterious 'Form' or 'Universal'.

At a stroke this undercuts 2400 years of useless Metaphysics.

It could be objected that the term "warmonger" is vague and imprecise. Maybe so, but that doesn't affect the logical point being made. The linguistic function concerned maps Proper Names onto indicative sentences, some of which will be true and some of which will be false. [I have said more about vagueness here and here. See also Note 15b, below.]

Any who continue to object might be placated somewhat by the following examples:

F1a: The Mississippi is a river.

F2a: The Potomac is a river.

F3a: Lake Placid is a river.

Here "ξ is a river" maps "The Mississippi" and "The Potomac" onto the true sentences, F1a and F2a, respectively, but "Lake Placid" onto the false sentence, F3a.

The way we are able to use such place-holder and gap-marker letters -- like "ξ" -- express formal rules for specifying what can legitimately be substituted for them with grammatically appropriate terms taken from a formal vocabulary, or words drawn from ordinary language, depending on the circumstances. In the above examples, "ξ" holds place for, or is a gap marker to be completed by, singular terms -- such as, "Noam Chomsky", "Lake Placid", or "The 43^rd President of the United States".

One-place, first-level linguistic functions enable the mapping of singular terms -- such as "Tony Blair" or "George W Bush" -- onto sentences like F1-F3.

Two-place, first-level linguistic functions enable the mapping of two singular terms onto sentences (these will often yield what are called "relational expressions") -- for example:

F4: Romeo loves Juliette.

F5: Rome is bigger than Istanbul.

The formal expression of the linguistic function involved here is the one we met in the main body of this Essay, namely: F(ξ,ζ).

In this case: if "Romeo" and "Juliette" are substituted for "ξ" and "ζ", respectively, and "ξ loves ζ" replaces "F(ξ,ζ)", this will produce F4, above. F5 results from the substitution of "Rome" and "Istanbul" for "ξ" and "ζ", respectively, and "ξ is bigger than ζ" for "F(ξ,ζ)".

Some might wonder why we write "F(ξ,ζ)" this way when what replaces it is this: "ξ loves ζ". Why don't we write "ξFζ", which would at least mirror the order of the terms used in "ξ loves ζ"? Well, "F( , )" is a functional expression, and that is how such expressions are often characterised in mathematics, and this convention has carried over onto modern logic. It isn't hard to see why. "F(ξ,ζ)" tells us that this function operates on two singular terms, in that order and no other. "ξFζ" is a jumble, which would become even more of a mess if we moved to three-place, first-level linguistic functional expressions.

So, the expression "G(ξ,ζ,η)" might be used to express the (highlighted) pattern in this sentence:

F6: "Paris is bigger than Rome but smaller than New York",

where "ξ is bigger than ζ but smaller than η" replaces "G(ξ,ζ,η)", with "Paris", "Rome" and "New York" substituted for the three Greek place-holder letters, respectively. The order of the Greek letters inside the brackets tells us the order in which they should appear in "...is bigger than...but smaller than...", and hence where the three Proper Names of those capital cities are also to be substituted.

If we didn't do this, how would we write the above otherwise? "ξGζη", or "ξζGη"?

Readers will no doubt now be able to appreciate how much this mess would quickly worsen if we moved to 4-, 5-place, or even n-place, first-level linguistic functional expressions, where n is indefinitely large. However, using a modified version of the above, we could cope with such an eventuality relatively easily in logic -- perhaps this way: "H(μ₁, μ₂, μ₃,..., μ_k,..., μ_n)".

Try doing anything even remotely like this in, or with, Hegel-speak, or even the resources that were available in AFL!

Second-level linguistic functions involve the use of quantifier expressions -- in natural languages, these are noun or adverbial phrases, such as "Every", "Some", "Any", "Most", "Nothing", "Never", "Always", etc. Since I haven't used any second-level linguistic-functional expressions in this Essay (i.e., to make such points) I will say no more about them, here.

As far as I can determine there are as yet no articles published on the Internet that make this method of analysis clear or even easy to follow (I will, however, link to any that appear over the next few years -- or if anyone brings some to my attention). The best two that are available can be accessed here and here. [The first of these unfortunately uses blank spaces for place-holders, and so isn't entirely rigorous; the second is rather more advanced.]

Update August 2011: Alex Oliver has published an excellent article that explains this method of analysis with admirable clarity; it can be accessed as a PDF, here -- although those new to this way of analysing language won't find it easy going. [This has now been published as Oliver (2010).]

Update January 2018: In the last few years several more introductions to this sort of logic have been posted on-line, but the vast majority appear to have been produced by University Computer Science Department lecturers, who approach this topic from a totally different angle and, like so many 'introductions' to University Mathematics, they assume the reader already understands what they are trying to teach! In fact, most of them make a dog's dinner of Formal Logic.

However, the best short article on this aspect of Frege's work is still Geach (1961), which isn't easy, either, even though it is scrupulously accurate and admirably clear.

The best two introductions to this way of analysing sentences are Lemmon (1993) and Mates (1972), although the latter approaches this topic from a radically different direction, and will prove to be far more challenging to those new to modern logic. The latter might find Schumm (1979) some help, since it is a teaching aid to Lemmon's book.

To those new to the subject, it is worth pointing out that modern logic is difficult. As is the case with mathematics, one can't simply read a logic book. They have to be studied slowly and very carefully. Moreover, anyone wanting to master the subject has to do all the exercises! Anything less than that is just a waste of time and effort.

Since writing the above, I have just read a particularly lucid explanation of this way of analysing indicative sentences (although it blurs the distinction between numerals and numbers!):

"Frege's consuming interest in logic and the foundations of mathematics encouraged him to form a new and clearer view of the nature of predicates. Consider operations like that of adding. This operation is expressed by the plus sign. But a plus sign by itself has no role until numerals are placed on each side of it; then the resulting expression stands for a number, eight, for example, if the numerals are '5' and '3'. This though leads to the realisation that we should think of the plus sign as containing two spaces, one to the left and one to the right, which are really part of the expression. We can write in 'x' and 'y' to keep track of these spaces, but these letters do not name anything: they simply mark the spaces. Being clear about the spaces becomes important when we want to distinguish between, say, 'x times x' and 'x times y': the first expresses the operation of squaring, the second that of multiplication generally. The plus sign and the sign for multiplication are functional expressions, as is the sign for a negative number. The first two express the operation of mapping a number onto their sum and onto their product, and the third expresses the operation of mapping a number onto its negative. Frege called such expressions 'incomplete' or 'unsaturated.' They are incomplete in the sense that they carry blanks or empty spaces with them. They are completed by filling in the blanks.... Needless to say, there are non-mathematical functional expressions like 'the capital of x', 'the father of y', or 'the midpoint between x and y'....

"Frege noted that predicates are incomplete in much the way functional expressions are: they contain blanks to be filled in with names or quantified variables. This leads to the simplified notion of a predicate which is current in modern logic: a predicate is any expression obtained from a sentence by subtracting one or more singular terms. Thus predicates are like functional expressions; one gets a functional expression by deleting one or more singular terms from expressions like '5 + 8'. Since '5 + 8' is a complete expression obtained by filling the blanks of a plus sign (a functional expression) with names of numbers, it seemed natural to Frege to propose taking predicates as functional expressions which become complete when the blank or blanks are filled in. This move ensures the unity of the sentence...." [Davidson (2005), pp.131-32. Italic emphasis in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Davidson then highlights the serious weakness of several other things Frege went on to argue, which means that while he sees Frege's work as a major advance in our understanding of predication, in the end he rejects Frege's way of analysing predicate expressions. However, I think the modified Fregean view outlined in this Essay (but more fully in the references I have cited) succeeds in circumventing Davidson's criticisms. Having said that, it should be stressed once again that there is nothing that forces us to adopt this or any other view of predication, if they are aimed at solving the 'problem of predication' -- since it isn't a problem to begin with! Human beings have been 'predicating' for thousands of years so there can be no problem. Difficulties only arise when Traditional Philosophers (and DM-fans) try to turn predicates into the Proper Names of abstract particulars -- creating a spurious 'problem' which then needs 'solving'.

Once more, the neo-Fregean view outlined in this and other Essays at this site has the distinct advantage of preventing predicates from being interpreted as just such names, in any shape or form. [Not that ordinary language needs any assistance from this or any other approach to predication (ancient or modern).]

So, there are distinct advantages to this neo-Fregean way of analysing predication; several of them will be outlined later in this Essay. However, for present purposes, the main advantage is that it isn't possible to interpret schemas like "ξ is a warmonger" as a Proper Name of anything, least of all of an Abstract Particular -- nor yet the Proper Name of any sort of 'mental entity' -- since it isn't a name, to begin with. It expresses (in use) a linguistic function (a rule).

This approach also incorporates the word "is" into the predicate expression (or, rather, into the linguistic-functional expression), short-circuiting questions about whether or not it is an "is" of identity or an "is" of predication. [However, as we will see, there are many different ways of analysing such sentences, especially where relational expressions are under consideration.] No less important is the fact that it allows us to drop entirely from logic the words "predicate" and "predication", thereby casting into oblivion another two-and-a-half millennia of wasted effort, wrong turns and aimless metaphysics -- at the same time as completely undermining a key 'argument' in Hegel's 'Logic'. No small benefit, these!

The same can't be said about the results of subject-predicate analysis presented in Traditional Logic, which will often confuse a predicate expression with a predicate, and represent such 'predicates' in the following way: "Man", "Manhood", or "Being", making them look like Proper Names of some sort. So, the alleged predicates -- "Man", or "Manhood" -- appear to designate, or name, a class, concept, category, group, idea, 'mental construct', or Abstract Particular, all of which readings would destroy the generality captured by the original predicate expression (for reasons explored in the main body of this Essay). The post-Fregean approach using "ξ is a man" specifically avoids that bear trap.

Unfortunately, subsequent Logicians and Philosophers were only too eager to wander blindly into that trap, adopting something that later came to be called 'Term Logic', the seeds of which were originally sown in and by Aristotle's logic, which was largely based on a traditional analysis of 'predicates'. The quotations taken from several DM-sources (which were posted to Note 1e, Appendix B, and also throughout this Essay), expounding the 'process of abstraction', illustrate quite clearly how dialecticians have also wandered blindly into the same trap. George Novack (inadvertently) provided us with a particularly good example of this (but there are many others):

By concentrating on "man" as the assumed 'predicate' (instead of "ξ is a man"), Novack reduces this word to the Proper Name of an idea, category, set, concept, or class, thus destroying its generality, and thereby the unity of the proposition.

[While Novack doesn't explicitly say "man" is the Proper Name of anything specific (even though it is plain from what he does say that "man" is indeed just such a name; for example, when he says "The logical category or material class, mankind...is at the same time identical with, yet different from John" -- for Novack, "mankind" is now the Proper Name of the "logical category or material class, mankind"), other DM-theorists do. [Again, see Note 1e and Appendix B for examples.]

The traditional analysis of 'predicates' not only conflates what is said about certain "subjects" with the means by which we say it, it also predisposes theorists to think of "man" as the Proper Name of an 'object of thought' -- since the word plainly doesn't name anything in the 'outside world', as the late Fraser Cowley noted:

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

When we look at this 'problem' through 'traditional spectacles' we seem compelled to search for something that the word "man" names, just as we might look for someone called "Socrates" or "Tony Blair". The temptation then becomes irresistible to look inside ourselves in order to try to locate that supposed referent -- and from this simple error of syntax sprang the entire body of Traditional Metaphysics and Philosophy of Mind. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein: a whole cloud of metaphysics condensed in -- or, rather, distilled out of -- a drop of grammar. [Wittgenstein (2009), p.233, §315; (1958), p.222. (This links to a PDF.) The online edition has the page numbering all wrong; it puts this sentence on p.22*6 (sic!).]

However, since the use of "ξ is a man" expresses the (possible) application of a linguistic rule, the temptation to confuse it with something 'in the mind' -- or with the Proper Name of something 'internal', or even of something which is in 'heaven', perhaps residing with 'God' (etc.) -- completely vanishes. At a stoke, that removes the entire topic from its former location in a hidden, internal world of mythical and uncheckable 'mental' processes -- or, indeed, from the ghostly world of Forms, Universals, Ideas, Images, Categories and Concepts --, and lodges it squarely in the public domain. Hence, given this analysis, the mastery, or the use, of a concept is no more mysterious than the acquisition of a linguistic skill, publicly exercised and capable of being inter-subjectively taught and checked.

That represents another distinct advantage this way of analysing language offers (further outlined below). The use of Greek letters -- as in "ξ is a man" -- reminds us that that inscription is (properly) to be viewed as the expression of a rule. Unfortunately, I have yet to find a book (or article) that outlines the above points (about concepts and rules, or the topics advanced here and here), even though this is a key idea underlying both Frege and Wittgenstein's work. [However, I have access to an introduction to logic produced by my old University's Philosophy Department that goes through some of these points in detail, but I can't publish it on-line. If anyone knows of books or articles that fill this gap, I'd appreciate it if they informed me.]

For those who want to read more, some of the issues raised here are covered in Gibson (2004). Even more comprehensive is Gaskin (2008); however, I need to add that I don't accept Professor Gaskin's 'metaphysical' solution to this pseudo-problem, but this isn't the place to go into that topic. (I will say more in Part Two, though.) See also, Davidson (2005), pp.76-163, and Noonan (2001). Cf., Professor Gaskin's on-line article, here, and the review of Gaskin's book, here. The serious weaknesses and limitations of Traditional Logic are covered in Geach (1968, 1969b, 1972b). On the superiority of the 'new logic' introduced by Frege, see here.

Since writing the above, Noonan (2001) has now become available on-line; the section on linguistic functions can be accessed here -- although, the author unfortunately employs ordinary gaps (distinguished by the use of different brackets) in place of gap-markers like "ξ" and "ζ".

15b. As pointed out in Note 15a, this isn't to suggest that only Proper Names can replace "ξ".

Some readers might object that certain predicates, like "ξ is a socialist", are vague, in which case, as we saw earlier, we can easily change the predicable under consideration to "ξ is a river". That done, the exemplars would now become:

F1a: The Mississippi is a river.

F2a: The Potomac is a river.

F3a: Lake Placid is a river.

Once more: two of the above are true and one is false. Nevertheless, these propositions all share a common pattern, expressed by "ξ is a river".

Any who now worry that "river" is also vague can console themselves with the thought that just as soon as it has been decided what does or what does not count as a river, a truth-value can be assigned to the above sentences. Of course, if that can't be decided, then the above weren't propositions to begin with. But logic can't legislate on what counts as an empirical fact.

However, it is worth adding here that if it can't be decided what counts as a river, that would mean our concept of a river will have been rendered useless. Worse still, if we can't decide over something as straight-forward as this, can we even be sure we have a handle on any of our words, including "vague". If not, then the objection itself fails since it will have employed a word that no one understands -- i.e., "vague". On the other hand, if we do have a handle on "vague", then the objection will fail anyway, since we would, in that event, have a handle on "river", too -- since "vague" is a much more complicated term than "river".

[On vagueness, see here.]

16. As noted above, this analysis depends on a view of propositions I don't expect many DM-theorists -- if any -- will accept. Nevertheless, the rationale for this sort of analysis will become clearer as the argument unfolds. [On that, see above -- and below -- as well as Note 40.]

Sentences aren't names, either. That can be seen by the way we comprehend the former, which is different from the way we understand the latter. [That particular point is defended in Essays Eight Part Three and Thirteen Part Three; readers are directed there for more details See also Geach (1972c), as well as here.]

In addition, although the main body of this Essay says that "ξ is made of glass" is general in form, it would be more useful at this point to regard it as the expression of a rule whose proper application is revealed by the open-ended generation of true or false sentences by those proficient in the relevant natural language.

This comment might form part of a "form of representation". It isn't being assumed here that human beings actually proceed this way -- although it does help explain how we form certain sentences, and how we make the inferences we do from such sentences. The term "form of representation" is explained in Glock (1996), pp.129-35. It is also explained here and in Essay Eight Part Two. Its use will be further justified in Essay Thirteen Part Two. These aforementioned patterns are part of what we show by our use of language, but which can't be put into true/false indicative sentences; i.e., this is what our use of language shows but can't be said, to paraphrase Wittgenstein, again. (On this, see McGinn (2001); this links to a PDF.) It might now be wondered how it could be that we can't say any of this when it has just been said. The answer to that is quite plain; what has just been said concerns the expression of a linguistic rule, and rules can't be true or false, just practical or otherwise. (That was the point of saying "These patterns are part of what we show by our use of language, but which can't be put into true/false indicative sentences (emphases added)." That is, these rules can't be said by means of true/false indicative sentences, but they can be elucidated by means of indicative sentences.

Consider someone who is trying to teach someone else how to play chess, how the pieces move, how they can capture other pieces, etc., etc. In doing this, they will explain the rules perhaps using the indicative mood: "The Queen moves like this, and this...". Of course, the rules can also be expressed in the imperative mood, too: "Move your Rook like this...", "The King has to move this way...", but that isn't absolutely essential. In addition, the rules of the game can be taught by practical demonstration -- by simply playing! Novices can even learn by just watching others play, asking the odd question or two. But, these rules aren't descriptive (hence they can't be true or false), they are prescriptive. If, per impossible, they could be false, for example, then some other rule -- such as, "The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag fashion, like this" -- could be 'true'. But, "The Bishop doesn't move diagonally, it moves in a zig-zag fashion like this" isn't an alternative rule for the Bishop in chess, since the way that that piece moves defines what the word "Bishop" means in that game. The rules of chess elucidate how that word and others are used and how the pieces behave. If a 'Bishop' were to move (legitimately) in any other way, it would be part of an different game, not chess!

Some might argue that a rule in chess such as, "The Bishop moves like this..." is in fact true. So, the above comments are misguided. But, if that were the case, "The Bishop moves like this..." would then be descriptive not prescriptive, making this an assertion, which could be true or could be false. But, anyone who now claimed that such rules were descriptive (and, in this case, were true) would have no answer to someone else who retorted "Well, I'll move it any way I like!". Other than an to appeal to tradition, to how the game has always been played in the past, they could make no response. So, in order to proscribe the antics of such maverick chess players, "The Bishop moves like this...", and sentences like it, would have to be viewed prescriptively, and thus as rules, not descriptions. Rules are enforced because they are prescriptive. It would make no sense to enforce a description in such circumstances.

Of course, "The Bishop moves like this..." is a correct (or true) description of, or assertion about, a rule in chess in the sense that anyone who used it would be speaking truly about the rules themselves; but, the prescriptive nature of this rule doesn't depend on such truthful reports, but on the application of that rule, a rule which defines how certain pieces must move.

How this might work in a non-Indo-European language I haven't a clue, but since I am not trying to make a metaphysical point here this isn't an embarrassment for the approach adopted at this site. Unfortunately, it is for the view promoted by dialecticians, as will be made clear later on.

Once again, this way of viewing predicate expressions might cause some confusion, if not alarm. Not only will it look rather odd to those not versed in modern logic, or Analytic Philosophy, it might even seem perverse, "academic", or, indeed, thoroughly "bourgeois". Those who might be tempted to feel this way should recall that the analysis of propositions that dialecticians have adopted was invented by Medieval Theologians, and introduced into 'dialectics' itself by a quintessentially bourgeois academic, Hegel. [More on that later.]

Despite this, the strength and usefulness of the modern method of analysing indicative sentences derives from the fact that traditional ways of viewing predicates (or predicate expressions -- often these two were conflated) encouraged their confusion with Proper Names (or other singular terms), which, as we have seen, destroys the generality implicit in our use of language. In stark contrast, as noted above, it isn't possible to confuse "ξ is made of glass" with a Proper Name, still less with the name of the results of an 'internal' and uncheckable 'mental process'. Furthermore, this way of looking at predicates (which are perhaps better described as linguistic-functional expressions, which map names onto certain sentences -- on this, see Note 15a) brings out the clear connection they have with rules, and hence with the social nature of language and publicly performable and checkable verbal skills. That is because "ξ is made of glass" is clearly an incomplete expression that requires a human being to complete it with an appropriate term. The rule-governed way that this is achieved means that it is capable of being learned, and hence capable of being employed and checked in the open, as opposed to it representing a hidden process, secreted away in an uncheckable, inner world of 'the mind', as traditional ruling-class and DM-thought would have us believe (for example, in relation to the 'process of abstraction').

Nevertheless, it is important to note that this modern approach to predicate expressions is merely being advocated here as one way of seeing how we manage to generate certain sentences; no one is suggesting that this is the only way this can be comprehended or analysed, or that it gives a complete view of this skill, nor even that it is literally how we do this. This is simply a way of highlighting clear patterns in the sentences we do in fact produce, which factors also help us understand the inferences we make. This is not, therefore, to advance a theory of any sort. On the contrary It promotes an interpretative rule that assists in the elucidation of the use of certain key aspects of language. Furthermore, as an added bonus this approach doesn't destroy generality or threaten the unity of the proposition. As such, it connects our use of language with generality through the notion of repeatable rules that govern the use of what we take to be general noun-, or verb-phrases, which is capable of being taught (largely by example), and hence capable of being scrutinised and studied in social and historical contexts. Because of that alone, never mind anything else, it has everything to recommend it to any Marxists interested in challenging Idealism.

Clearly, this isn't the place to defend such a view of language in depth (however, on that see Note 28 below). Nevertheless, the core arguments developed in this Essay do not depend on this method of analysis being either correct or even apposite. Indeed, even if the latter were completely misguided, it would still be the case that dialecticians follow tradition and transform general words into the Proper Names of abstract particulars, destroying generality. Moreover, the same considerations apply to DM-theorists' use of general terms in the jargonised, ersatz 'language' they inherited from generations of mystics and boss-class hacks.

A brief account of the history of the introduction of the word "concept" (or Begriff) into Philosophy (in the 17^th century, by Leibniz), can be accessed in Caygill (1995), pp.118-21. For Hegel's use of this word and its cognates, see Inwood (1992), pp.58-61.

17. That was in fact the intention behind all the stage-setting in, for example, Sayer (1992), pp.12-117 -- concerning the 'theory-laden' nature of observation, etc. --, except in Sayer's case, it was expressed in terms that only succeed in undermining what he thought he was trying to say. That is, his analysis turns what is a socially-acquired skill (the intelligent use of general terms in ordinary language) into a privatised, internal 'process of abstraction'. [On this, see Appendix B.] [In the Second Corrected Edition the page numbering is completely different; in this case it is Sayer (2010), pp.8-79.]

18. On this, see below.

19. As noted above, DM-theorists of course appear to accept this point in principle, but in practice they do the exact opposite.

It is worth adding here that when I say the following (in the main body of this Essay):

Whatever is done to try to describe a particular, or an individual in this way, it will always involve the use of general terms.

I am not denying that ostensive definitions may be used to help identify certain particulars, in specific circumstances, but even that will only succeed if it is carried out against an already settled linguistic and social background where singular terms function in the way that has been indicated above.

That point has in fact been made in the main body, but it is worth underlining.

20. An old joke from Mad magazine comes to mind here:

Z1: He had De Gaulle to Adenauer to his time sheet.

Well, not a very good joke, but only those long enough in the tooth to know to whom these Proper Names refer will perhaps appreciate it -- or, maybe not.

On this, see Note 22, below. On Proper Names in general, see Linsky (1977), as well as Baker and Hacker (2005), pp.113-28, 227-49. See also Hanna and Harrison (2004), pp.63-158. However, I cite that work with an added caveat: its authors have adopted the misguided 'C ausal Theory' of names. In spite of that, it has many valuable things to say on this and related topics.

21. Special cases aside -- such as the reading of a roll call, the dictation of a telephone directory, or someone demonstrating a feat of memory, etc. --, the utterance of nothing but singular terms wouldn't be comprehended by anyone -- in the sense that no one would understand what the individual uttering that string of words was trying to say even though they might understand every single word uttered. That isn't because it would be too difficult for our finite minds to grasp such a list, it is because there would be nothing there to grasp.

[For more on the logic of lists, see Geach (1968), pp.168-91 (this in fact links to the 3^rd (1980) edition, so the page numbers are different: pp.191-218); and Geach (1979), pp.62-72.]

The linguistic context alluded to in the main body of this Essay needn't always be an indicative sentence. It could be a sentence fragment (clause), or, indeed, a one-word sentence. But, even there, these expressions would only make sense because of the longer sentences in which they, or their constituent parts, could be, and typically are, embedded.

For example, we would fail to understand the phrase "in Das Kapital" if no one had ever used it in a sentence before, if none of its constituent words had ever been used in that way, or if there were no place in the language that allowed for its use -- i.e., if, say, books, or the use of titles like this, had never been invented by human beings. [Again, on this see Note 22, below.]

21a. Here, I am deliberately blurring the distinction between the meaning of a word and the sense of a sentence. I say much more about this in Essay Thirteen Part Three.

22. That was, of course, the point of Eric Morecambe's joke:

Ernie: "Do you know Marjorie Proops?"

Eric: "I'm very sorry to hear that!"

[For those not in the know, the late Marjorie Proops was a UK 'agony aunt' a generation or so ago. And, for the benefit of those for whom English isn't their first language, the joke revolves around confusing the Proper Noun, "Proops", with a non-existent verb, "to proop", which, even though it isn't a word in English, suggests something uncomplimentary or defective about the individual concerned.]

It shouldn't need pointing out, but symbols don't (and can't) determine their own meaning; clearly, it is human beings who do that. We may only conclude the opposite if we are prepared to fetishise words, turning them into agents in there own right, which are not only capable of explaining themselves to us, but are, over time, able to 'recall' their own 'correct meaning' and then repeatedly impose that 'meaning' on us. In the cold light of day, while the falsehood of the idea that they can do this might seem reasonably clear, the vast majority of philosophers and DM-theorists appear to be oblivious of it and talk as if they accept this doctrine as gospel truth -- that is, that words (or 'signs', as we find in Voloshinov's theory) can indeed determine what we are constrained to say by means of them, or conclude about them. That helps explain why so many think language is a prison, or that 'it' constrains thought. That idea is, of course, just another way that idealism has dominated Traditional Thought.

[How and why traditionalists do this will be examined in Essays Nine, Twelve Parts One to Seven, Thirteen Part Three, and Fourteen Part Two.]

Knowing how to use, understand -- or, indeed, in comedy, deliberately misconstrue -- a word goes hand-in-hand with knowing what sort of expression it is -- i.e., what station it occupies in language, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. Eric Morecambe's joke above brings this point out rather well. So do these:

1) MN: "Doctor, I think I've got Addison's disease, and he's got mine!"

2) NN: "I'm going for a walk."

MM: "Ok, get me one while you're out."

3) NP: "I'm injured. Call me an ambulance!"

NM: "Ok, you're an ambulance."

4) Worker: "Boss, I deserve a rise. I do the work of two men!"

Boss: "Ok, tell me who the other guy is and I'll sack him!"

5) Question: "How do you make a Venetian Blind?"

Answer: "Poke him in the eye!"

Wittgenstein once said that a serious philosophical work could consist entirely of jokes (this aside was reported in Malcolm (2001), pp.27-28). Indeed, he went on to say this:

"The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deeply rooted in us as the forms of our language, and their significance is as great as the importance of our language -- Let's ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is what the depth of philosophy is.)" [Wittgenstein (2009), §111, pp.52e-53e; Wittgenstein (1958), §111, p.47e. Italic emphases in the original. The two translations differ only slightly.]

[On this, see Pitcher (1978); see also, here.]

Much of Traditional Philosophy is based on the misconstrual of ordinary words -- as Marx also noted -- and that is how and why much of comedy works. As this website points out, comedy is partially based on the following verbal glitches:

Misunderstanding:

Joe is holding a large girder in the round. Fred is holding a large hammer.

Joe: "When I nod my head, you hit it."

Fred nods.

Fred hits Joe over the head with the hammer.

Pun and Wordplay:

A: My dog has no nose.

B: How does he smell?

A: Awful

To which we might add:

A: Did you hear about the Judge with no thumbs -- Justice Fingers?

I have added several more jokes involved in the use of "Nothing" and related words (in order to counter the misuse of that word in Traditional Thought, and Hegel's work, as well as DM), here.

So, the compound name, "Karl Marx", only functions as a Proper Name (i.e., that is its "station" in language) because of the way we use it. It isn't a name simply because of its reference to Karl Marx. If that were the case, it would be a name before it was a name! "Karl Marx" is a Proper Name because of the way we use it in sentences to talk about him -- and because of the way it was related to Marx during his lifetime and after his death (etc.), and, of course, because of the practice we have of naming children, for instance. But, there had to be a place already in language and social practice for Proper Names to be so used, otherwise they would just be noises, or marks on the page/screen.

Incidentally, this allows an explanation to be given of how words change their meaning over time. This process wouldn't be under human control (i.e., not always under our conscious control) if the meanings of words were determined by non-social factors. In fact, the way that many theorists account for the meaning of words suggests that there is some sort of permanently fixed 'semantic halo' (as it were) surrounding each word -- perhaps called their "real meaning" --, which accompanies them wherever they go, and which asserts itself upon us whenever we employ them. Again, that would make words the agent here (fetishising them), with us the patients.

Wittgenstein used the word "Bedeutungskörper" ("meaning-body") to characterise the 'semantic halo' theory. This point is well-expressed in the following passage (taken from a review of Cultural Software, by J M Balkin):

"Balkin thinks that he has avoided metaphysical difficulties by locating cultural information at the 'subindividual' level (p.x), but in reality he reifies an entity called 'information' that has an extremely dubious ontological status. Although the author drops Ludwig Wittgenstein's name in several places, his book is a prime example of what Wittgenstein unflatteringly calls the Bedeutungskörper (meaning-body) method of philosophizing (Philosophical Grammar, edited by Rush Rhees and Anthony Kenny [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978 (referenced in this Essay as Wittgenstein (1974) -- RL)], p.54). In this method, a thinker's intelligence is held captive by the prejudice that behind each sign there must be an invisible nonlinguistic entity called its 'meaning,' even though he can offer no criteria for its existence that are independent of the criteria he uses to ascertain the existence of the sign and what people do with it." [Wolcher (1999), p.297. Quotation marks have been altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. (This links to a PDF.)]

On Proper Names in general, see Harrison (1979), and Hanna and Harrison (2004), pp.63-158 -- although, as noted earlier, the latter work makes far too many concession to the Causal Theory of Names. Hence, it should be read in conjunction with Baker and Hacker (2005), pp.227-49, and Linsky (1977). On the "semantic halo" theory, see Glock (1996), pp.239-41, Hacker (2000), pp.83-85, and Shanker (1987), pp.293-99, 316-17. On this, see also Part Two.

Finally, some readers might be tempted to conclude that the comments in the main body of this Essay depend on the so-called 'C luster Theory' of Proper Names (the main competitor to the Causal Theory, mentioned above), but that isn't so. I don't propose to substantiate that particular riposte in this Essay, except perhaps to deny that I am offering any theory at all. Why that is so is explained in Essay Twelve Part One, and here.

22ab. On this topic, see Owen (1971); also see Brown (2003), Barnes (1982), pp.155-99, Guthrie (1978), pp.1-80, Frede (1992), McDowell (1982), Mourelatos (2008), and Pelletier (1990). Also see Note 22a0 directly below, as well as Note 22a.

22aa. Of course, in a restricted sense, general terms can be used to talk about groups, complexes or collections -- which is why we have collective nouns, for instance. But, it is a moot point whether general (or common) nouns are 'referring expressions', to begin with. I hope to say more about that later in this Essay, and in Part Two.

22a0. As noted in the Introduction to this Essay, the use of the word "nominalisation" here is slightly misleading, so in many places I have used "particularisation" alongside it. Hence the traditional approach to predication either turns (i) verbs into names, or verbal nouns (nominalisation), or (ii) general names into Proper Names, thus particularising them as the names of Abstract Particulars.

So far as we know, the 'problem of predication' first emerged in Plato's work. In the Sophist (261d-264b), Plato argued that the simplest form of proposition comprised a name (onoma) and a verb (rhēma) -- such as: "Theaetetus runs". If this is put into the (traditional) subject-copula-predicate form -- perhaps as "Theaetetus is running", but far more likely as "Theaetetus is a runner" --, we can see where the nominalisation of the verb ("runs") into a verbal noun ("runner") occurs. [Plato (1997b), pp.284-88.]

However, despite what Plato said, there appear to be languages that manage to cope quite well without a copula, or even an explicit verb, and in which sentences like "Peter happy" make sense -- cf., Davidson (2005), p.76. On this, see also Note 22a, below.

Unfortunately, in the Ancient Greek of Plato's day there was no distinct word for "word"; "onoma" served doubly for "name" and "word", and "rhēma" for what we would now call a "verb". This makes it rather difficult to untangle what Plato actually meant by "names", or, indeed, whether he committed some of the errors I have actually attributed to subsequent theorists. [On this, see Fine (1977). Whether or not Fine manages to rescue Plato from the syntactical blunders I have associated with the philosophical tradition that descended with modification from Aristotle I will leave others to decide.] One thing is plain, however, Plato certainly confused describing and attributing with naming. I will deal with that particular issue in Essay Twelve Part Five.

In the Sophist, Plato outlines these ideas in a discussion between an Eleatic "Stranger" (who appears to have been a follower of Parmenides) and a character called "Theaetetus":

"Stranger. Then, as I was saying, let us first of all obtain a conception of language and opinion, in order that we may have clearer grounds for determining, whether not-being has any concern with them, or whether they are both always true, and neither of them ever false.

"Theaetetus. True.

"Stranger. Then, now, let us speak of names, as before we were speaking of ideas and letters; for that is the direction in which the answer may be expected.

"Theaetetus. And what is the question at issue about names?

"Stranger. The question at issue is whether all names may be connected with one another, or none, or only some of them.

"Theaetetus. Clearly the last is true.

"Stranger. I understand you to say that words which have a meaning when in sequence may be connected, but that words which have no meaning when in sequence cannot be connected?

"Theaetetus. What are you saying?

"Stranger. What I thought that you intended when you gave your assent; for there are two sorts of intimation of being which are given by the voice.

"Theaetetus. What are they?

"Stranger. One of them is called nouns, and the other verbs.

"Theaetetus. Describe them.

"Stranger. That which denotes action we call a verb.

"Theaetetus. True.

"Stranger. And the other, which is an articulate mark set on those who do the actions, we call a noun.

"Theaetetus. Quite true.

"Stranger. A succession of nouns only is not a sentence any more than of verbs without nouns.

"Theaetetus. I do not understand you.

"Stranger. I see that when you gave your assent you had something else in your mind. But what I intended to say was, that a mere succession of nouns or of verbs is not discourse.

"Theaetetus. What do you mean?

"Stranger. I mean that words like 'walks', 'runs,' 'sleeps,' or any other words which denote action, however many of them you string together, do not make discourse.

"Theaetetus. How can they?

"Stranger. Or, again, when you say 'lion,' 'stag,' 'horse,' or any other words which denote agents -- neither in this way of stringing words together do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression of action or inaction, or of the existence of existence [the being of something that is -- RL] or non-existence indicated by the sounds, until verbs are mingled with nouns; then the words fit, and the smallest combination of them forms language, and is the simplest and least form of discourse.

"Theaetetus. Again I ask, What do you mean?

"Stranger. When any one says 'A man learns,' should you not call this the simplest and least of sentences?

"Theaetetus. Yes.

"Stranger. Yes, for he now arrives at the point of giving an intimation about something which is, or is becoming, or has become, or will be. And he not only names, but he does something, by connecting verbs with nouns; and therefore we say that he discourses, and to this connection of words we give the name of discourse.

"Theaetetus. True.

"Stranger. And as there are some things which fit one another, and other things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and others which do not, combine and form discourse." [Plato (1997b), 261d-262d, pp.285-86; I have used the online version from here and here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

Donald Davidson informs us that in Greek the copula was often incorporated into the noun/verb phrase and counted as a verb:

"In the Sophist Plato had limited the discussion to names of human agents and verbs of action, but Aristotle explicitly broadens the scope of both names and verbs. Subject expressions for Aristotle include both common nouns like 'animal' and names like 'Philo'. In the Categories Aristotle provides a list of predicate types (κατηγορίαι -- categories, RL). These comprise the category of substance (man, horse), of quantity (four cubits long), of quality (white, grammatical), of relation (double, half, larger), of location (in the Lyceum, in the agora), of time (yesterday, last year), of posture (lying down, sitting), of dress (shod, in armour), of action (cutting, burning), and of affection (being cut, being burned).

"It is not altogether clear whether the predicate (or verb) includes what we express in English by the copula 'is' and its variants. Aristotle says that 'health' is a name, but 'is healthy' is a verb. In Greek 'is healthy' is a single word (ύγιαίνει). This would be right, but he also says verbs are names...." [Davidson (2005), p.91. Italic emphases in the original, bold emphasis added. On this, see also Note 22c, below.]

Hence, it seems Aristotle nominalised verbs, too.

Davidson then points out:

"The need to introduce an entity to explain the function of verbs or predicates has been assumed or postulated or argued for by most philosophers who have been interested in the structure of sentences and the thoughts that sentences can be used to express.... It is reasonable to ask why philosophers have not succeeded by now in solving this simple, though absolutely basic, problem." [Ibid., pp.93-94. Paragraphs merged.]

This 'problem' is now at least 2400 years old, and we are no nearer to finding solution than Plato was. Despite this, the answer to Davidson's question is reasonably clear: this 'problem' is a direct result of the syntactical wrong turn analysed in detail in this Essay, which naturally means this is a pseudo-problem. Since Hegel was one of the philosophers who was interested in "the structure of sentences" he was simply a more recent example of an ivory tower 'thinker' whose 'logic' had been thoroughly compromised by this age old error.

The untoward result of this syntactical slide was succinctly explained by Professor E J Lowe (in his review of Davidson (2005)):

"What is the problem of predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple subject-predicate sentence, such as..., 'Theaetetus sits'. How are we to understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this sentence, 'Theaetetus' and 'sits' respectively? The role of 'Theaetetus' seems straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for, a certain particular human being. But what about 'sits'? Many philosophers have been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it can be possessed by many different individuals.

"But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the sentence 'Theaetetus sits' into a mere list of (two) names, each naming something different, one a particular and one a universal: 'Theaetetus, sits.' But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that can be said to be true or false, in the way that 'Theaetetus sits' clearly can. The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, 'Theaetetus, possessing, sits.'

"Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly known as 'Bradley's regress', in recognition of its modern discoverer, the British idealist philosopher F. H. Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute idealism...." [Lowe (2006). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]

As Davidson also points out, attempts to solve this artificial problem have in different ways motivated every traditional theory of predication since Plato's day, and hence much of logic, ancient and modern -- and that includes the bowdlerised logic taught in the universities of Kant and Hegel's day, which they learnt and then put to mis-use. [On this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13. Cf., Geach (1972b), George and Van Evra (2006), and Beaney (1996).]

Having said that, Paul Redding points out (in Redding (2007), pp.85-114) that Kant had been at pains to criticise the Term Logic philosophers inherited from medieval logicians, and that he distinguished singulars from particulars. A singular is typically supposed to be something given in experience/perception (which Kant confusingly calls an "intuition") before it has been subsumed under a universal (or before it has been conceptualised -- an obscure process that later came to be called the "myth of the given" by Wilfrid Sellars). A singular is apparently therefore a bare "this". A particular, on the other hand, is always a "this such" (i.e., an individual of a certain sort), which has been subsumed under a universal and which has therefore been conceptualised. Hegel accepted this distinction but criticised Kant's mishandling of it. For Hegel, apparently, what is given in perception has already been conceptualised (so there are no 'bare particulars' (individuals) -- to use more recent jargon), rendering Kant's distinction between immediate intuition (perception) and subsequent conceptualisation (subsumption under an appropriate universal) entirely misconceived.

However, as argued in this Essay, Hegel misguided analysis of general terms -- turning them into the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars in a thoroughly traditional manner -- undercut his entire argument since it destroyed the generality he hoped to find in his appeal to 'concepts'. He also forgot that we are taught how to use words related to these 'particulars' as we are taught to speak. So, he mis-characterised these particulars as "already having been conceptualised" (my paraphrase!) not noticing, or remembering, he was also taught how to use such language when a child, he didn't teach himself. As individuals we 'conceptualise' nothing independently of having been socialised into a linguistic community. Naturally, I don't expect Idealists to accept that response, but Marxists committed to the social nature of language and knowledge should need no persuading.

[Incidentally, that undermines Redding's futile attempt to recruit Wittgenstein to Hegel's cause.]

Be this as it may, it can be shown (but I will not do so here) that modern attempts to 'solve' this 'problem' (for example, those found in Davidson (2005) or Gaskin (2008)) fall into the same trap. [More on that in Essay Twelve.]

[The historical background to all this can be found in Tugendhat (1982). So, this is one more "ruling idea" that evidently still rules!]

Of course, the point is that there is no 'problem of predication'. The generality that a sophisticated theorist like Davidson seeks can't be found in the symbols we use, for they know nothing of the world, nor of how we think, talk or are socialised. As has been pointed out several times in this Essay, and at this site: it is we humans who express generality by our open-ended use of such words. We bring life to language, not the other way round. As noted several times, to suppose otherwise would be to fetishise the products of the interaction between human beings (i.e., words) as if they were in charge, or as if they were the agents.

As we will see, this is just one implication of the ancient idea that the world has an underlying 'rational' structure, that the universe is the expression of the 'word' of some 'god', that it was created by the use of 'divine language', and hence that language can capture all of this because it, not matter, constitutes the real essence of the world. That doctrine was in turn fed by, and feeds in return, the further idea that 'rationality' properly belongs only to nature and its 'Maker' -- since the world is in effect just 'condensed language (a belief explicit in magic and the incantations of priests, implicit in Traditional Thought, for example). On this view, the world possesses a 'logic', and it is the aim of Philosophy (or even of Science) to uncover it; truth lies in, and originates with, the Whole and descends on humanity (or, rather, on a select group of human beings) in their attempt to 'reflect' it. It is also implicit in the idea that logic encapsulates the 'laws of thought' and can inform us about the 'deep structure' of 'reality'. [On that, see Essay Four Part One, here and here.] One consequence of this is the other ancient idea that the world is really a mathematical object or structure, which is an idea that underpins much of modern Physics.

The original, class-motivation for the invention of these time-worn doctrines will be explored in Essay Twelve (summary here), as will the ideology that sustains it even to this day.

As noted above, this also underpins the idea that the universe is a mathematical object. [Again, on this, see Livio (2009). For an extreme version of this view of 'reality', see Tegmark (2008, 2015). Much of Roger Penrose's popular work is also predicated on this idea; cf., Penrose (1989, 1995, 2005, 2011). That is also true of the popular work of Brian Greene, an über-guru of M-theory (formally 'String Theory'); cf., Greene (1999, 2004).

22a. On this, see Lovejoy (1964). [This links to a PDF.] The long and sorry tale is spun out in Copleston (2003), especially Volumes One to Seven. See also, Tugendhat (1982). For the early modern period, see Bono (1995). Cf., also, Gregorios (2002), Guthrie (1986a, 1986b), and Wallis (1972).

On Plato's discussion of this topic in the Sophist, see Cornforth (1935), pp.165-331, Ackrill (1997b), Brown (1994, 2003), and Davidson (2005). [Cf., Note 22a0, and Note 22ab, above.] Perhaps the best single paper on this is Owen (1966). Cf., also the detailed study in Kahn (2003). See also Pelletier (1990).

On Leibniz, see Mercer (2001), especially pp.173-78, but this theme runs right through the whole of her book. On Newton and the "Cambridge Platonists" (specifically More and Cudworth), see Koyré (1957, 1968); see also, Dobbs (2002), pp.94, et seq.

22a1. On this, see for example Havelock (1983). [See also Note 29.] These assertions will be fully substantiated in Essay Twelve (summary here).

22b. No attempt will be made here to justify this latest batch of rather bold claims (but see Note 22a); however, a detailed analysis of these and other points, and how they apply to DM, will be undertaken in the remainder of this Essay. Their ramifications will also be explored throughout the rest of this site.

Finally, the effect on science of this traditional approach to knowledge will be discussed in more detail in Part Two of this Essay, as well as in Essay Thirteen Part Two (when it is published sometime in 2022).

22c. This theory is most commonly attributed to the great Medieval Logician, Jean Buridan (1300-1358) -- and, I might add, erroneously so. As the late Peter Geach notes, Buridan certainly held the Two Name Theory of Predication; but the basic shape of The Identity Theory of Predication had in fact been sketched centuries earlier. [There is a useful article on this available as a PDF, here.]

This theory is criticised in Geach (1970), pp.22-46, and Geach (1972b), on which many of my own ideas in this area are based:

"Aristotle, like Adam, began right but soon wandered into a wrong path with disastrous consequences for his posterity.... Aristotle's [later adoption of the interchangeability thesis whereby a predicate expression could become a subject term] marks a transition from the original name-and-predicable theory to a two-term theory.... Aristotle going over to the two-term theory was a disaster....

"Aristotle's fall into the two-term theory was only the beginning of a long degeneration. Aristotle never rejected the distinction between an expression's naming an object and an expression's being truly predicated of an object, though of course his theory committed him to saying that one and the same expression could stand now in one relation, now in the other. But it is a natural further step to identify naming with being predicable of and to declare explicitly that the two terms of a categorical [proposition -- RL] are two names. So we pass from the two-term theory to the two-name theory. This two-name theory is best known in England from John Stuart Mill's Logic; Mill explicitly calls terms 'names', and speaks of many-worded names when he means syntactically complex terms. And Mill's term 'denoting' simply embodies the fundamental confusion of the two-name theory between the relations of being a name of and being predicable of.

"Mill was not a very subtle or hard-working formal logician; his main interests lay elsewhere. The two-name theory has had a long history and much stronger representatives than Mill. It was the predominant theory of the Middle Ages, and was expounded by such great men as William of Ockham and Jean Buridan; though there was a minority party of logicians who insisted that naming and predicating were radically distinct, and this minority had the support of Aquinas.... The two-name theory is like the theory that planetary motion has to be reduced to uniform circular motion. Mill's version of the theory is like a crude astronomy in which each planet moves in a simple circular orbit around the Sun; its breakdown is manifest. By increasing the number of logical devices we get something like Copernicus' astronomy, which by assuming considerable complexity of circles would fit the facts with few notable discrepancies. But just as Kepler could sweep away this complexity at the price of introducing a more sophisticated geometrical construction -- an ellipse instead of a circle -- so we get a simpler and more powerful logical theory if we distinguish names and predicables from the outset.

"Let us briefly consider some of the special troubles of the two-name theory. If what is predicated has to be a name, we get one or other of two awkward consequences. We may find ourselves recognizing as names what by any decent standard are not names, like 'on the mat', 'going to the fair'. Or we may insist that a predicate-term be properly dressed as a noun-like phrase, that it be 'put into logical form', before we will recognize it as a term, or as a predicate at all. 'Brutus stabbed Caesar' clearly says, predicates, something about Brutus and also something about Caesar. A man who has good logical perceptions will see this directly from the meaning of the sentence. But a two-namer cannot officially recognize that a predication is there at all until he has before his eyes the appropriate pair of names, say, 'Brutus' and 'stabber of Caesar' or 'Caesar' and 'one stabbed by Brutus'. Of course, he then owes us an explanation of how such many-worded names as 'stabber of Caesar' and 'one stabbed by Brutus' may be formed from 'Brutus stabbed Caesar'....

"If a proposition consists of two names, it must also contain a linking element to hold them together; remember Plato's point that a mere string of names does not make up an intelligible bit of discourse. Two-name logicians in fact assign such a linking role to the grammatical copula, in English the verb 'is' or 'are'. This was a further departure from Aristotle, who held that a proposition may consist simply of two terms. (The verb 'applies to' in the schema 'A applies to B' was meant only to give a sentence a lecturer can pronounce, not to supply a link between 'A' and 'B'.) And so there arose many perplexities as to the import of the copula.

"For the two-name theory, the copula has to be a copula of identity. For, in its pure form, the two-name theory says that an affirmative proposition is true because the subject and predicate terms name one and the same thing: 'Socrates is a philosopher' is true because one of the individuals named by the common name 'philosopher' is also named by the proper name 'Socrates'. But it is easy to slide away from this position. On the two-name theory, the common name 'philosopher' is here used as [the] name of every philosopher. But if we express this carelessly in the form

The term 'philosopher' denotes all philosophers

then it is easy to slide over to the view that what 'philosopher' denotes...is not any and every philosopher, but rather the class of all philosophers.

"By this slide the rake's progress of logic that I have described has reached its last and most degraded phase: the two-class theory of categoricals. The subject and predicate are now said to denote two classes. (The terms are also said to be two classes; for the writers who hold the two-class theory are mostly very neglectful indeed of the distinction between sign and thing signified.)...." [Geach (1972b), pp.44-53. Italic emphases in the original; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added; italic emphases in the original. There then follow several rather technical objections to this theory; anyone interested can now read these on-line, here. (This links to a PDF.)]

Incidentally, Geach uses the word "predicable". Briefly, a predicable is a predicate expression that could be employed to predicate something of someone or something. It becomes a predicate when it has been so predicated. Compare it, for example, with "breakable" and "broken".

It goes without saying that this Essay has over-simplified this complex question; it doesn't pretend to be a PhD thesis! A fuller account can be found in Geach (1968), and Davidson (2005) -- but readers must not assume that Geach and Davidson see eye-to-eye on this topic (or, indeed, on much else besides!).

[A supporter of this site -- who attended Professor Geach's lectures (entitled The Theory of Meaning) in the academic year 1977-78 -- will be publishing at this site sometime in the future the comprehensive notes he took of that series, which will perhaps explain these distinctions more fully -- that is, if permission can be obtained from Professor Geach's literary executors.]

22d. Of course, in Buridan's logic the usual sorts of abstractions make no appearance (such as "Being", etc., but his theory was far more sophisticated than this might at first sight suggest; on that, see the link in Note 22c above, and Note 25 below). However, they certainly do feature in Hegel's work, only there they have become engulfed in an impenetrable fog generated by his fondness for Hermetic jargon and obscure terminology.

23. It might be thought that this should be:

E11b: Blair is identical with Manhood.

That alternative will be considered shortly.

As we will soon see, the attributing term here in fact turns out to be 'Identity', which is itself a nominalisation of the identity relation/relational expression, in this case, supposedly, the diminutive verb "is".

E11: Blair [some form of attribution inserted between the two halves] Manhood.

23a. Here is Engels:

"The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death -- from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world. If, upon death, it took leave of the body and lived on, there was no occasion to invent yet another distinct death for it. Thus arose the idea of immortality, which at that stage of development appeared not at all as a consolation but as a fate against which it was no use fighting, and often enough, as among the Greeks, as a positive misfortune. The quandary arising from the common universal ignorance of what to do with this soul, once its existence had been accepted, after the death of the body, and not religious desire for consolation, led in a general way to the tedious notion of personal immortality. In an exactly similar manner, the first gods arose through the personification of natural forces. And these gods in the further development of religions assumed more and more extramundane form, until finally by a process of abstraction, I might almost say of distillation, occurring naturally in the course of man's intellectual development, out of the many more or less limited and mutually limiting gods there arose in the minds of men the idea of the one exclusive God of the monotheistic religions.

"Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature -- the paramount question of the whole of philosophy -- has, no less than all religion, its roots in the narrow-minded and ignorant notions of savagery. But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature — that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?

"The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other -- and among the philosophers, Hegel, for example, this creation often becomes still more intricate and impossible than in Christianity -- comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to the various schools of materialism.

"These two expressions, idealism and materialism, originally signify nothing else but this; and here too they are not used in any other sense. What confusion arises when some other meaning is put to them will be seen below.

"But the question of the relation of thinking and being had yet another side: in what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world itself? Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality? In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of thinking and being, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers give an affirmative answer to this question. With Hegel, for example, its affirmation is self-evident; for what we cognize in the real world is precisely its thought-content -- that which makes the world a gradual realization of the absolute idea, which absolute idea has existed somewhere from eternity, independent of the world and before the world. But it is manifest without further proof that thought can know a content which is from the outset a thought-content. It is equally manifest that what is to be proved here is already tacitly contained in the premises. But that in no way prevents Hegel from drawing the further conclusion from his proof of the identity of thinking and being that his philosophy, because it is correct for his thinking, is therefore the only correct one, and that the identity of thinking and being must prove its validity by mankind immediately translating his philosophy from theory into practice and transforming the whole world according to Hegelian principles. This is an illusion which he shares with well-nigh all philosophers." [Engels (1888), pp.593-95. Bold emphases added; minor typos corrected.]

24. Again, it could be argued that in a sentence like:

E12: Cicero is Tully,

one particular is being asserted of another. This claim will be dealt with in Note 24a0 and Note 24ab --, and, again, presently in the main body of this Essay. However, on this, see Professor Geach's comments in Note 22c.

24a0. It could be argued that it is possible to predicate one individual of another -- or, rather, it might be thought that Proper Names can be predicated of named individuals --, as in:

P1: James is really called Peter.

P2: K2 is really called Mount Godwin-Austen.

But, in this case, we plainly have two predicate expressions "ξ is really called Peter" and "ζ is really called Mount Godwin-Austen" applied to another named individual, not two names predicated of either.

Of course, it is possible to say things like this:

P3: K2 is Mount Godwin Austen.

But, this an identity statement. If we want to analyse it as a subject-predicate proposition, then the predicate will be "ξ is Mount Godwin Austen", which doesn't even look like a name.

To be sure, modern logicians might want analyse the logical form of P3 as follows:

P4: ξ is ζ,

that is, as a two-place **first level predicate expression, which itself might be a partial interpretation of, F(ξ,ζ), for example. Nevertheless, the word "predicate" here isn't being used in the same way in modern logic as it was in Traditional (Aristotelian) Logic. This can be seen from the fact that both of the following would be regarded as first level (one-place) predicables in modern logic:

P5: "ξ is Mount Godwin Austen."

P6: "K2 is ζ".

This sort of analysis wasn't available to Traditional Logicians.

Moreover, the "is" in P3 would be treated as an "is" of identity in the sort of Traditional 'Logic' under discussion here.

P3: K2 is Mount Godwin Austen.

So, P3 could be seen as an identity proposition or as a predication, depending on how we might want to analyse it.

Admittedly, we can reshape logic as we see fit, and agree, for example, that in P3, "Mount Godwin Austen" is being predicated of K2, and thus that a Proper Name can be predicated of a named individual -- not predicated of another Proper Name (on this, see Note 24ab) but who that name stands for. However, if we do that, we will need to distinguish between those predicates that are Proper Names and those that aren't. On the other hand, if we don't draw such a distinction, then the generality expressed by what we now call predicates would be lost, and propositions would just become lists. Moreover, the distinction between naming and describing or attributing would vanish, too.

[There are, of course, other reasons for rejecting this non-standard analysis; they were rehearsed in the main body of this Essay. See also Professor Geach's comments in Note 22c.]

**As noted earlier, a first level predicate in modern logic is one that maps a singular term (e.g., a Proper Name or Definite Description) onto a proposition; so the expression in P5 will map "K2" onto the proposition in P3.

"One/two-place" refers to the number of singular terms the predicate expression will take to form a proposition. Clearly, it is a one-place predicate in P5, but two-place in P4. [But, as pointed out in Note 15a, I prefer to call these linguistic functional expressions. More details here.]

P5: "ξ is Mount Godwin Austen."

P3: K2 is Mount Godwin Austen.

P4: "ξ is ζ".

24aa. Of course, in his original syllogistic theory, Aristotle was dealing with propositions that employed what are now called quantified expressions (e.g., those using "all", "every", "nothing", "some", etc.), which were themselves subsequently viewed as Proper Names, too! Aristotle's syllogisms didn't use Proper Names like "Socrates".

This, however, doesn't affect the points being made in this Essay since it soon became commonplace to ignore Aristotle's strictures on the nature of the syllogism and populate them with non-quantified propositions. Indeed, many today who either don't know this, or who probably don't care, quote the following hackneyed argument as a paradigm example of an Aristotelian syllogism when Aristotle himself would have repudiated it:

A1: All men are mortal.

A2: Socrates is a man.

A3: Ergo, Socrates is mortal.

[More on this in Essay Four.]

However, since the expressions used in Aristotle's syllogisms were interchangeable, with subject and predicate terms swapping places, the temptation became irresistible to regard them both as Proper Names of some sort, as Peter Geach noted earlier. With these considerations in mind, it is easy to see why many would begin to regard A1-A3 above, for instance, as an example of an Aristotelian syllogism.

24ab. The reason why one object can't be true of another, or even said to be true of another, is that -- to state the obvious --, objects aren't linguistic expressions (on that, see here). In order to see help this, the reader should look at any two objects in their surroundings -- say, a chair and a table -- and then ask: "Can a chair be true of a table?" The absurdity of thinking one object can be true of another will now become reasonably clear. Of course, it is entirely possible to say something true about the relation between objects (and processes), but that is an entirely different matter. To say that Mount Everest is taller than Denali (Mt McKinley) is not to assert the one of the other. Even to ask whether Mt Everest is true of Denali exposes the absurdity of the 'idea' itself.

Instead, consider now two Proper Names: "Tony Blair" and "Margaret Thatcher". Ask a similar question: "Can 'Margaret Thatcher' be true of 'Tony Blair'?" [Because of the conventions adopted at this site, these two names have been put in single quotes to indicate we are using Proper Names, not speaking about the individuals named by them.]

As above, the absurdity of thinking a Proper Name can be true of another Proper Name will also become apparent.

Of course, a Proper Name will apply to a given individual -- if there is someone who has that name --, but the Proper Name itself won't/can't be true of another Proper Name. Consider a sentence used earlier, "Cicero is Tully". "Tully" isn't and can't be being predicated of "Cicero"; if that were the case, then the word "Tully" would apply to the word "Cicero", not the individual, Cicero, which is absurd. In that case, in place of "Cicero is Tully", we will have been considering "'Cicero' is 'Tully'".

What is actually taking place here (i.e., with respect to "Cicero is Tully", and if we insist on viewing this as a predication, and as Professor Geach noted -- link below) is that "ξ is Tully" is being predicated of the man, Cicero, not his name!

But don't ask (or, don't confuse the above with this question): "Can what is true of Margaret Thatcher be true of Tony Blair?" since that isn't to ask whether one Proper Name can be true of another Proper Name, but whether Blair and Thatcher can have true things said in common about them, which would require the use of predicate expressions, not Proper Names as such. [Again, see Professor Geach's comments in Note 22c.]

24a. Incidentally, this theory created serious 'problems' understanding the nature of falsehood.

If, for example, it is false to say:

B1: Blair is a socialist,

then the identity this sentence is alleged to report between "Blair" and "socialist" is rather hard to explain.

And it won't do to claim that the above sentence is false simply because the following is true:

B2: Blair is not identical with a socialist.

That is because the green "is" in B2 can't be subjected to the same analysis (i.e., it isn't feasible to suggest that it, too, must be an "is" of identity) -- or it would risk becoming incomprehensible, as in:

B3: Blair is identical with not identical with a socialist,

if the green "is" in B2 were replaced with what it is supposed to mean, i.e., "is identical with" in B3.

[And, if we believe in 'essences', B2 is a much about what Blair 'essentially' is as "Blair is a man". (On that, see below.) This topic is explored further in Part Four of this Essay, where we will see that this is one source of the 'difficulties' that all forms of Idealism (and that includes DM) face when its theorists try to account for falsehood. This doctrine meant that falsehoods often came to be seen as relative truths, as we will see is the case with DM-theorists.]

This is quite apart from the fact that both B1 and B2 could both be true together. B1 would become true if say Blair became a socialist, and B2 is true since it is always the case that Blair isn't identical with someone who is a socialist --, for instance, he isn't identical with Lenin or Bernie Sanders.

B1: Blair is a socialist.

B2: Blair is not identical with a socialist.

It could be objected that B2 should be read as follows:

B4: Blair is identical with someone who is not a socialist.

But, this faces the same problems; if the two occurrences of "is" in B4 are of identity, and stand for "is identical with", we can surely form the following from it:

B5: Blair is identical with identical with someone who is identical with not a socialist.

And then:

B5: Blair is identical with identical with identical with someone who is identical with identical with not a socialist.

Or, even:

B6: Blair is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is not a socialist.

And then:

B7: Blair is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is identical with someone who is not a socialist.

As each "is" in B4 is replaced with what now seems to be the rule (that is, "is" really is the same as "is identical with someone who is", and not just "is identical with"), to give B6, and the same again with each "is" in B6, to yield B7.

And so on...

As before, only those who reject the view that the "is" of predication is always one of identity have any right to object at this point. Of course, those who hold the view that the "is" of predication is only sometimes the "is" of identity need to supply criteria that distinguish the one from the other. But even then, such criteria would have to be of the form:

B8: The criterion that distinguishes the two is X.

From which we can now obtain the following:

B9: The criterion that distinguishes the two is identical with X.

Or even:

B9: The criterion that distinguishes the two is identical with identical with X.

And so on, as each highlighted "is" is replaced by "is identical with", and we end up with the same dialectical mess.

No wonder, then, that Marx enjoined us to abandon philosophy and the distorted language it uses.

However, Hegelians might want to call propositions like the following "essential", in that they tell us what kind of being Blair is:

J1: Blair is a man.

That is, while J1-type sentences help identify an individual, that isn't the case with B1-type sentences:

B1: Blair is a socialist.

In which case, it could be maintained that one of the core counter-arguments aired in this Essay is thoroughly misguided. [But "Lenin is a socialist" does identify Lenin. Is it an "essential" judgement? On the other hand, "Blair isn't a socialist" also appears to inform is what is 'essential' to Blair.]

What, though, are we to say of J2:

J2: J1 is an essential proposition.

It, too, must be an 'essential proposition' since it tells us what kind of proposition J1 is! In that case, the "is" in J2 must also be one of identity; it must stand for "is identical with". If so, we face the same explosion as we met above, as each successive "is" is replaced with what it is supposed to be, "is identical with":

J2a: J1 is identical with an essential proposition.

J2b: J1 is identical with identical with an essential proposition.

J2c: J1 is identical with identical with identical with an essential proposition.

J2d: J1 is identical with identical with identical with identical with an essential proposition.

And so on...

Which means that anyone who accepts this theory can't actually tell us what it implies without generating such a potentially infinite series. Fortunately, this fatal defect doesn't afflict alternative accounts of predication, as we will see below.

It is also worth pointing out is the fact that Hegel actually used the sentence "The rose is red" to motivate this defective theory of his; there is no way that "The rose is red" can be viewed as an "essential" proposition. In other words, Hegel torpedoed the above DM-response nearly two centuries ago -- since it now seems that any use of "is" is 'essential'! [I return to discuss this peculiar sentence again, here.]

Of course, this isn't the only reason for rejecting this ancient theory, which is why this Essay has rather concentrated on the bogus grammatical moves that generated it over two thousand years ago.

[I have dealt with one attempt to explain what Hegel was banging on about, here.]

25. The corruptions introduced into AFL by the old 'Term Logic' are outlined in Geach (1968, 1972b) -- see above. On the Identity Theory of Predication, see here, and here. On Buridan, here.

[AFL = Aristotelian Formal Logic.]

26. It can hardly be:

E11b: Blair is man.

Unless, of course, "man" is interpreted as a shorthand for all men, the class or category Man, or 'Manhood' itself.

Anyway, this is how dialecticians actually interpret such sentences, as we shall also see.

27. Lest it be objected that:

E16: Cicero Identity Relation Tully,

means the same as:

E12: Cicero is Tully,

it is worth recalling that this would be the case only if E12 were to be read as:

E16a: There is an identity relation between Cicero and Tully.

But, E16a is a viable proposition only because of the articulation provided by words that don't function as Proper Names, as was argued earlier in the main body of this Essay. [On this, see Long (1984).]

28. Of course, this point partially relies on a fundamentally important Fregean distinction between singular terms and predicate expressions (or linguistic functions, as these were later called) -- or more generally between objects and concepts --, which I won't attempt to defend here. On this, see Note 4, above, and Essay Four Part One.

[Cf., Beaney (1996), Dummett (1981a, 1981b), Geach (1961, 1972a), Kenny (1995), Noonan (2001) and Weiner (1990, 2004). Although I have referenced Oliver (2010) above, this author makes several serious errors over his interpretation of Peter Geach's work in this area. I don't propose to defend that allegation in this Essay.]

Nevertheless, even if this 'new logic' were misguided in some way, the fundamental distinction we draw in language between naming, describing and attributing (never mind what logicians tell us) would still be valid, which more importantly motivates and informs the core ideas outlined in this Essay. [On the aforementioned distinction, see here.]

29. From what little of the record we possess, this degeneration can actually be seen taking place in the work of Ancient Greek Philosophers. On this, see Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here, here and here). Cf., Barnes (2009), Havelock (1983), Kahn (1994, 2003), Lloyd (1971), and Seligman (1962). See also, Professor Geach's comments in Note 22c.

30. We will come across this escape clause -- i.e., "their existence cannot be confirmed by any known method, so their actuality can only be verified by 'indirect means'" -- several more times in other Essays published at this site, but in more detail in Essay Three Part Four. Of course, DM-theorists use this 'get-out-of-jail-free' card in order to distinguish themselves from those disreputable "crude materialists" -- i.e., those of us who are consistent historical materialists, but who also prefer to think that science should be based on evidence not linguistic chicanery, boss-class ideology, a priori dogma, and Mystical Hermeticism.

How absolutely awful of us. We plainly have no shame...

In addition, it is worth emphasising that the import of item (3) (concerning the allegedly defective nature of ordinary language when it comes to science and philosophy) finds no support whatsoever from the following long quotation from The Holy Family -- quite the opposite in fact:

"The mystery of critical presentation…is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction….

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

"The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind…. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit'.

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

I make no apologies for quoting the above passage at length again since it almost single-handedly demolishes the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that in later life Marx and Engels seem to have lost touch with the philosophical clarity they revealed in this early work. In many respects this quotation anticipates much of Frege and Wittgenstein's approach to 'abstract ideas', even if what they had to say was expressed in a completely different philosophical idiom.

So, instead of Marx and Engels aping the methods of Traditional Thinkers, here we find them repeatedly using ordinary terms to ridicule the bizarre conclusions drawn by them. Indeed, they counterpose everyday language to the obscure terminology invented by such theorists.

This, of course, echoes another, and even more apposite passage from the German Ideology:

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

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

The example set by Marx and Engels here (when their minds were young and strong) I have tried to emulate in this Essay and at this site. In which case, any readers who find fault with my approach should rather re-direct their fire at the young Marx and Engels for their attempt to re-focus our attention on ordinary language, an away from the distorted, rarefied abstractions of boss-class Philosophers.

31. Attentive readers will no doubt have noticed that LIMPE readily collapses into LIE. More on that presently.

31a. This is an allusion to "Mitochondrial Eve", the hypothesised ancestral mother of us all. However, in this case, what we might claim to know about all that has existed, or could exist, has been spun from this mythical character, John, and his 'inner being' by the simple expedient of running a single sentence about him through a Dialectical Mangle.

John can indeed be likened to the Cosmic Egg of classical mysticism.

And so are you! So are we all! Any subject-predicate sentence about each and every one of us which uses that innocent-looking verb, "is", implies the same about any and all of humanity, and the rest of the entire universe. We are the same as Mythical John. We are all unwitting conduits for such easily-won 'Super-Knowledge'.

It is only your unwise adherence to 'commonsense', 'formal thinking' and a failure to 'understand' dialectics that prevents you, dear reader, from seeing this simple fact for yourself!

Free your mind! Bin the mescaline! The Doors of Perception are only a few mangled sentences away!

31b. Hegel in fact used the sentence: "The rose is red", among others:

"The Judgment is the notion in its particularity, as a connection which is also a distinguishing of its functions, which are put as independent and yet as identical with themselves not with one another. One's first impression about the Judgment is the independence of the two extremes, the subject and the predicate. The former we take to be a thing or term per se, and the predicate a general term outside the said subject and somewhere in our heads. The next point is for us to bring the latter into combination with the former, and in this way frame a Judgment. The copula 'is', however, enunciates the predicate of the subject, and so that external subjective subsumption is again put in abeyance, and the Judgment taken as a determination of the object itself. The etymological meaning of the Judgment (Urtheil) in German goes deeper, as it were declaring the unity of the notion to be primary, and its distinction to be the original partition. And that is what the Judgment really is.

"In its abstract terms a Judgment is expressible in the proposition: 'The individual is the universal.' These are the terms under which the subject and the predicate first confront each other, when the functions of the notion are taken in their immediate character or first abstraction. (Propositions such as, 'The particular is the universal', and 'The individual is the particular', belong to the further specialisation of the judgment.) It shows a strange want of observation in the logic-books, that in none of them is the fact stated, that in every judgment there is still a statement made, as, The individual is the universal, or still more definitely, The subject is the predicate (e.g. God is absolute spirit). No doubt there is also a distinction between terms like individual and universal, subject and predicate: but it is none the less the universal fact, that every judgment states them to be identical.

"The copula 'is' springs from the nature of the notion, to be self-identical even in parting with its own. The individual and universal are its constituents, and therefore characters which cannot be isolated. The earlier categories (of reflection) in their correlations also refer to one another: but their interconnection is only 'having' and not 'being', i.e. it is not the identity which is realised as identity or universality. In the judgment, therefore, for the first time there is seen the genuine particularity of the notion: for it is the speciality or distinguishing of the latter, without thereby losing universality.

"Judgments are generally looked upon as combinations of notions, and, be it added, of heterogeneous notions. This theory of judgment is correct, so far as it implies that it is the notion which forms the presupposition of the judgment, and which in the judgment comes up under the form of difference. But on the other hand, it is false to speak of notions differing in kind. The notion, although concrete, is still as a notion essentially one, and the functions which it contains are not different kinds of it. It is equally false to speak of a combination of the two sides in the judgment, if we understand the term 'combination' to imply the independent existence of the combining members apart from the combination. The same external view of their nature is more forcibly apparent when judgments are described as produced by the ascription of a predicate to the subject.

"Language like this looks upon the subject as self-subsistent outside, and the predicate as found somewhere in our head. Such a conception of the relation between subject and predicate however is at once contradicted by the copula 'is'. By saying 'This rose is red', or 'This picture is beautiful', we declare, that it is not we who from outside attach beauty to the picture or redness to the rose, but that these are the characteristics proper to these objects. An additional fault in the way in which Formal Logic conceives the judgment is, that it makes the judgment look as if it were something merely contingent, and does not offer any proof for the advance from notion on to judgment. For the notion does not, as understanding supposes, stand still in its own immobility. It is rather an infinite form, of boundless activity, as it were the punctum saliens of all vitality, and thereby self-differentiating.

"This disruption of the notion into the difference of its constituent functions -- a disruption imposed by the native act of the notion -- is the judgment. A judgment therefore means the particularising of the notion. No doubt the notion is implicitly the particular. But in the notion as notion the particular is not yet explicit, and still remains in transparent unity with the universal. Thus, for example, as we remarked before (§160n), the germ of a plant contains its particular, such as root, branches, leaves, etc.: but these details are at first present only potentially, and are not realised till the germ uncloses. This unclosing is, as it were, the judgment of the plant. The illustration may also serve to show how neither the notion nor the judgment are merely found in our head, or merely framed by us. The notion is the very heart of things, and makes them what they are. To form a notion of an object means therefore to become aware of its notion: and when we proceed to a criticism or judgment of the object, we are not performing a subjective act, and merely ascribing this or that predicate to the object. We are, on the contrary, observing the object in the specific character imposed by its notion.

"The Judgment is usually taken in a subjective sense as an operation and a form, occurring merely in self-conscious thought. This distinction, however, has no existence on purely logical principles, by which the judgment is taken in the quite universal signification that all things are a judgment. That is to say, they are individuals which are a universality or inner nature in themselves -- a universal which is individualised. Their universality and individuality are distinguished, but the one is at the same time identical with the other.

"The interpretation of the judgment, according to which it is assumed to be merely subjective, as if we ascribed a predicate to a subject is contradicted by the decidedly objective expression of the judgment. The rose is red; Gold is a metal. It is not by us that something is first ascribed to them. A judgment is however distinguished from a proposition. The latter contains a statement about the subject, which does not stand to it in any universal relationship, but expresses some single action, or some state, or the like. Thus, 'Caesar was born at Rome in such and such a year waged war in Gaul for ten years, crossed the Rubicon, etc.', are propositions, but not judgments. Again it is absurd to say that such statements as 'I slept well last night' or 'Present arms!' may be turned into the form of a judgment. 'A carriage is passing by' should be a judgment, and a subjective one at best, only if it were doubtful, whether the passing object was a carriage, or whether it and not rather the point of observation was in motion: in short, only if it were desired to specify a conception which was still short of appropriate specification....

"The abstract terms of the judgement, 'The individual is the universal', present the subject (as negatively self-relating) as what is immediately concrete, while the predicate is what is abstract, indeterminate, in short the universal. But the two elements are connected together by an 'is': and thus the predicate (in its universality) must also contain the speciality of the subject, must, in short, have particularity: and so is realised the identity between subject and predicate; which being thus unaffected by this difference in form, is the content." [Hegel (1975), pp.230-34, §§166-169. Italic emphasis in the original; bold emphases added. Several paragraphs merged.]

This passage will be analysed extensively in Essay Twelve. [See also below, here and here.]

I have moved a longer passage from Hegel (1999), which develops this point in more detail (that used to be here) to the Appendix. [And, good luck to anyone trying to understand it!]

32. One or more of these ideas can be found in the writings of the Scholastics, as well as the works of Leibniz, Kant and Hegel. Alas, they are still being promoted in the books and articles of rather too many modern logicians and philosophers. [On this, see Peter Geach's comments above.]

32a. On that, see here.

33. Again, that is because John is not Julius Caesar, not Ghandi, not George W Bush, not the youth at the supermarket checkout, not a vegetable, not a planet, not…

'Spinoza's Greedy Principle' (henceforth, "SGP" -- in Hegelian terms: "every determination is also a negation") is now sent in off the bench since it supposedly helps distinguish John from everything else in the universe, while at the same time connecting him with the rest of humanity. The argument appears to be that whatever identifies and differentiates humanity indirectly identifies and differentiates John, too, and vice versa. Even though he is fictional, John now comes to symbolise all that is true of human beings, and indeed, ultimately, all that is true of every last particle in the entire universe, each in its own way.

But, this 'principle' (which was in fact a throw-away line in one of Spinoza's letters!) is "greedy" since its appetite is boundless and impossible to contain. That is because John is also not Santa Claus, just as he is not the first man to eat Madagascar, not the saliva on Jabba the Hutt's chin, not the last person to see Lord Lucan alive... The SGP now allows those so minded to link John with anything that can be named or described, no matter how strange this connection might seem; it is considered a viable connection just so long as a negative particle can be attached to it in the above manner.

Clearly, this has disastrous consequences for the DM-Totality; on the basis of shaky logic like this (i.e., that every 'determination is also a negation'), the DM-Totality must contain some rather bizarre 'beings' -- in fact, it must contain every weird item imaginable, all of which supposedly define John!

It could be replied that these determinations don't imply the existence of these 'weird and wonderful' entities. However, as we will see in Essays Eight Part Three and Eleven Parts One and Two, the SGP isn't so easily tamed.

[I have also dealt with the objection that Hegel in fact argued that we can't just use negation "arbitrarily", so the above comments, and those below, are thoroughly misguided, here.]

This shows that the SGP is not just a completely useless principle, it is inimical to genuine materialism, into the bargain. No good complaining that this is ridiculous; the SGP is ravenous and will eat such complaints for breakfast -- it having been granted a stomach that can contain more than the entire universe, courtesy of the fertile imagination of a handful of Idealists and Mystics.

This is quite apart from the fact that the SGP confuses what we might be trying to say with the means by which we say it -- the message for the medium. That is, of course, about as sensible as confusing the food you eat with the frying pan you used to cook it, or with the farm that originally produced it!

Even worse, the SGP -- which neither Hegel nor Spinoza even so much as attempted to prove, justify, or defend -- falls foul of the analysis of language developed in Essay Twelve Part One, summarised here. [More about this in Essay Twelve Part Five.]

In fact, for Spinoza and for Hegel, the SGP was really about the indeterminate nature of 'God', in relation to 'whom' everything in the universe is a negation:

"How precisely is the view of infinity as negation of negation (i.e., negation of the finite) related to Spinoza's understanding of determinatio negatio est? The following passage from Hegel's 1816 review of Jacobi's Werke seems to be crucial in this context. Notice that in the second sentence of the passage Hegel points out a major shortcoming of Spinoza's formula:

'Everything depends here on the correct understanding of the status and significance of negativity. If it is taken only to be the determinateness of finite things (omnis determinatio est negatio), then we are already thinking of it outside of absolute substance and have allowed finite things to fall outside of it; our imagination maintains them outside of absolute substance. Conceived of in this way, however, negation fails to be seen as internal to the infinite or internal to substance, which is supposed rather to be the sublated being of finite things. -- Yet the manner in which negation is internal to substance has in fact thus already been said.... Substance is supposed to be the sublation of the finite, and that is just to say that it is the negation of negation, since it is precisely negation which we took to be definitive of the finite.' [The author is here quoting Hegel's Heidelberg Writings, pp.8-9 -- RL.]

"Hegel's main point seems to be that one cannot introduce negations arbitrarily into the substance, unless they are already contained in the very notion of substance (in fact, nothing should be externally introduced into substance since substance is supposed to be self-sufficient). According to Hegel's reading, Spinoza's claim that finite things are mere negations of the infinite is inexplicable since Spinoza cannot explain the origin of these negations. Hegel frequently charges Spinoza with introducing modes and attributes arbitrarily without providing any explanation how they develop from the substance. In a similar manner, Schelling argues, 'one still naturally demands to know how these limitations of being get into [Spinoza's] God.' Since negation cannot be arbitrarily (or externally) introduced into the substance, the substance must contain it in its very essence. According to Hegel, this essential negative element of the substance is the negation of finite things (as negation of negation). As a result, one must expand the domain of the 'every determination is negation' formula, and affirm that even the substance (the infinite) is also what it is by virtue of negating what it is not. In other words, negativity must not be 'taken only to be the determinateness of finite things.'" [Melamed (2015), pp.181-82. Formatting and quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added.]

As usual, much of this is as clear as mud (I am not referring here to Professor Melamed's commentary, but to the obscure ideas we find in Hegel!).

Here is Hegel himself:

"With regard to the determinate, Spinoza established this thesis: omnis determinatio est negatio [all determination is negation -- RL]. Hence only the non-particularized or the universal is. It alone is what is substantial and therefore truly actual. As a singular thing, the soul or the mind is something limited. It is by negation that a singular thing is. Therefore [the singular thing] does not have genuine actuality. This on the whole is Spinoza's idea." [Quoted in Melamed (2015), p.179. Bold emphasis alone added. Professor Melamed attributes this passage to Hegel (1995b), p.154, however I can't find it on the page he cites, nor in the section on Spinoza, pp.252-90. A Google search also failed to locate it. In an e-mail reply, Professor Melamed said that the reference in his article is slightly inaccurate. He thinks the correct reference should be to p.154 of the Oxford edition of the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 1825-26, volume III, not the University of Nebraska edition which I have referenced as Hegel (1995b). Both editions are, apparently, substantially different, having been based on separate students' lecture notes. I haven't yet been able to check the Oxford edition. If anyone knows a different source for this passage, please let me know.]

"[F]or of a truth there exists the One into which everything enters, in order to be absorbed, but out of which nothing comes. For as Spinoza has set up the great proposition, all determination implies negation (supra, p. 267), and as of everything, even of thought in contrast to extension, it may be shown that it is determined and finite, what is essential in it rests upon negation. Therefore God alone is the positive, the affirmative, and consequently the one substance; all other things, on the contrary, are only modifications of this substance, and are nothing in and for themselves. Simple determination or negation belongs only to form, but is quite another thing from absolute determinateness or negativity, which is absolute form; in this way of looking at it negation is the negation of negation, and therefore true affirmation. This negative self-conscious moment, the movement of knowledge, which pursues its way in the thought which is present before us, is however certainly lacking to the content of Spinoza's philosophy, or at least it is only externally associated with it, since it falls within self-consciousness. That is to say, thoughts form the content, but they are not self-conscious thoughts or Notions: the content signifies thought, as pure abstract self-consciousness, but an unreasoning knowledge, into which the individual does not enter: the content has not the signification of 'I.' Therefore the case is as in mathematics; a proof is certainly given, conviction must follow, but yet the matter fails to be understood. There is a rigid necessity in the proof, to which the moment of self-consciousness is lacking; the 'I' disappears, gives itself altogether up, merely withers away. Spinoza's procedure is therefore quite correct; yet the individual proposition is false, seeing that it expresses only one side of the negation. The understanding has determinations which do not contradict one another; contradiction the understanding cannot suffer. The negation of negation is, however, contradiction, for in that it negates negation as simple determination, it is on the one hand affirmation, but on the other hand also really negation; and this contradiction, which is a matter pertaining to reason, is lacking in the case of Spinoza. There is lacking the infinite form, spirituality and liberty. I have already mentioned before this (pp. 93, 94; 129-137) that Lullus [Ramon Llull -- RL] and Bruno [Giordano Bruno -- RL] attempted to draw up a system of form, which should embrace and comprehend the one substance which organizes itself into the universe; this attempt Spinoza did not make." [Hegel (1995b), pp.285-87. Links and bold emphasis added.]

Hence, the SGP has impeccable mystical credentials.

But, there are problems. For example: anyone who accepted the 'rationale' embodied in the SGP would only have succeeded in exposing their defective grasp of Proper Names -- more specifically the Proper Names for, or the Proper Names of, human beings. So, if someone (other than an infant, or perhaps a foreign-language speaker) had to be told that John wasn't the Tadpole Galaxy, wasn't a grain of sand on Coney Island beach, wasn't one of Julius Caesar's fingernails, or wasn't Tony Blair's left foot, that would raise serious doubts about their grasp of language --, or, and far more likely, their sanity. In fact, anyone who didn't know that "John" was the name of, or for, a man would struggle to comprehend "grain of sand", "Galaxy" and "left foot", let alone anything more complicated! Hence, the SGP is a doubly useless principle; anyone who applied it in order to "affirm", or "determine", anything about anything else would surely also fail to understand any of its supposed 'results'. And we can go further: anyone who didn't know that "John" was the name of, or for, a man would surely fail to grasp the SGP, itself!

In fact, anyone familiar with English, who heard the name "John" would know that it is conventionally used to name male human beings. The same applies to the use of Proper Names for human beings in German and all other Indo-European languages (and, I suspect, that is the case with all natural languages).

Furthermore, how would it be possible to 'determine' that John was a man if, first of all, it had to be determined that he wasn't, say, George W Bush, wasn't the Tower of London, wasn't the Potomac River...? The answer to that is reasonably plain: it wouldn't be possible to 'determine' that until it had already been determined who or what George W Bush, the Tower of London, the Potomac River, and a potentially infinite list of other individuals or objects that aren't John, were -- with each element in that potentially infinite set naturally attracting the very same questions. They would also need to be rendered 'determinate' with their very own potentially infinite list to keep them company, too..., and so on.

[I have expanded on this objection more fully, here. In addition, it is connected with what I have to say about 'HEX' (i.e., 'Hegelian Expansionism') in Essay Ten Part One.]

Finally, anyone who chose to traverse the 'dialectical' path to enlightenment, and who applied the SGP, obtaining "John is a non-man" at the first port of call, would also have exposed their defective grasp of language -- and that would still be the case even if they then moved onto the final denouement, that higher plane of semi-divine knowledge unavailable to mere mortals, the "John is not a non-man" epiphany, except they might be given a prize for stating the bleeding obvious as a result. What next, "Grass is green"?

It could be objected that the above comments display a serious misunderstanding of the SGP. That is because determination is an attempt to be more specific about a certain concept or object. So, calling John an animal is less determinate than calling him a man. It has nothing to do with the fantasies rehearsed above -- i.e., with determining that "John isn't the Tadpole Galaxy, isn't a grain of sand on Coney Island beach, isn't one of Julius Caesar's fingernails, or isn't Tony Blair's left foot...". When we say "John is a man" we are simply saying he isn't an animal (in the sense that he isn't just an animal).

The problem with that response is that it presupposes we already know what an animal is, and according to this theory that concept must attract its own negations, as, indeed, will anything less determinate than it -- such as John is a living organism, John is a physical object, etc. Negations associated with the latter threaten to explode in like manner until they involve the sort of negations mentioned earlier -- namely: "John isn't the Tadpole Galaxy, isn't a grain of sand on Coney Island beach, isn't one of Julius Caesar's fingernails, or isn't Tony Blair's left foot...". [I have spelled out the details here.]

It could be responded that determination applies to more general terms, using negation to render them less general and more specific. That isn't the case with lists like the above. But, once more, that assumes we already know what "more general" and "less general" mean, which, given this theory, we can't know until we have fed them into the SGP mangle. In that case, the above list still applies; this theory has no way of ruling it out -- other than by special pleading. [That appears to be the line adopted by this commentator on Hegel's work. The above comments neutralise Hegel's obscure caveat that we can't just use negation "arbitrarily", a vague term in itself.]

Moreover, the SGP is defective even before we attempt to put it to misuse: If "Every determination is also a negation" is itself a 'determination' telling us what counts as a determination), then it must surely imply its own negation, namely: "Some determinations aren't negations" (i.e., "Not every determination is a negation"). On the other hand, if it doesn't imply this, then not every 'determination' implies a negation, after all -- this one, for instance. Alternatively, if the SGP isn't itself a 'determination' (and hence in no need of a 'negation' to help it bumble along), then its implications must be unclear, and so it can't be applied until they become clear.

Either way, the SGP self-destructs.

Attempts made by dialecticians to respond to these points (not that they have responded, or even will respond, to them -- since they have clearly accepted, or swallowed uncritically, this throw-away line --, so this sentence should in fact read "Attempts that might be made by dialecticians to respond to these points...") will be considered in Essay Twelve Part Five (when it is published).

As noted earlier, the above commentator tries to makes this point:

This looks like special pleading on Hegel's part, which I covered earlier. [Hegel assumes we already understand the "notion of substance", but we can't do that unless we have already hit it with the SGP.]

I return to this theme again, below, where I deal with Hegel's lame attempt to analyse predication (here, here, here, and here).

34. Incidentally, herein lie the seeds of the DM-idea that all knowledge is only ever partial or relative, since the individual (John) is here only partially or relatively linked (at least as far as 'subjective dialectics' is concerned) with the universal, whereas the universal itself is, plainly, 'infinite', presumably because it has no empirical limitations.

The idea that there are no real or complete falsehoods -- just truths that are more-or-less partial or "relative" -- also arises from defective logic like this; for if propositions are comprised only of names conjoined by the identity sign, then such names can't fail to name some object or other, or they wouldn't be names to begin with. In that case, they can't be false, or completely false, of those objects -- to use traditional jargon for the moment.

[More details on this will be given in Part Four of this Essay. See also Note 24aa, above. However, on this see Davidson (2005), pp.76-140.]

34a. In fact, this line-of-argument 'allowed' Hegel to mount what seemed to him to be an effective reply to Hume's criticisms of rationalist theories of causation. More on that in Essay Twelve. [This is also what sinks DM -- indeed, it is its gravedigger, if you like. (Apologies for that mixed metaphor!) Another nice 'unity of opposites', one feels. (On that, see here.)]

35. In Essay Twelve it will be argued that this manoeuvre underpins both the RRT and LIE. It will also be shown in Essay Nine Part Two just why DM-theorists are especially prone to accepting, or swallowing uncritically, these esoteric dodges, tricks and ploys. [Summaries here, here, and here.]

[RRT = Reverse Reflection Theory of Knowledge; to be explained in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is published); LIE = Linguistic Idealism, also explained in Essay Twelve Part Four, and here.]

36. This topic is covered in more detail in Essays Two, Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here).

36a. Why this is so will be established in detail in Essay Twelve (summary here), and the sordid history underlying the formation and adoption of these ideas will be exposed in Essay Fourteen Part One (summary here). Even today -- never mind two-and-a half thousand years ago when these nostrums were first dreamt up and then imposed on reality -- what little evidence that DM-fans have scarped together signally fails to support their theory -- on that, see here.

37. As Lenin admitted, without even so much as a hint of irony, embarrassment, still less shame:

Once more, exactly why the DM-classicists were more than eager to appropriate and then promote these ideas will be exposed in Essay Nine Part Two.

In addition, it will be argued in detail later (and, as was pointed out in Note 33, above), the attempt to read fundamental features of reality from language alone ends up populating the world with a whole host of weird and wonderful beings, including the Tooth Fairy, the Loch Ness Monster, and Big Foot. On that basis, too, it would be possible to infer the existence of anything seemingly implied by a false proposition. [On this, see Essay Eleven Part One, and Part Four of this Essay (when it is published).]

37a. But, of course, these Intrepid Ancestral Abstractors must have been unaware of exactly what they were inserting into the grammar of Proto-Indo-European --, unless, of course, we are to suppose that ancient tribesmen and tribeswomen were also 'unconscious' dialecticians who discovered all this stuff long before Hegel began screwing around with the German language --, but which doctrines these ancient people, somewhat curiously, then encoded into a rather minor grammatical form of Indo-European, unhelpfully disguised as predicate expressions when what they 'really meant' were identity statements!

The fact that this is a minor grammatical feature of Indo-European grammar is easily confirmed by anyone who makes a note of how many times a day, week, or year they hear, utter, or read the "S is P" form (other than in books and articles on philosophy, or when speaking to a DM-fan or to an Hegelian). So, how many times in the last month have you, dear reader, said anything like this: "The rose is red", "John is a man", or "Gold is a metal"? Of course, school grammar teaches pupils to locate the "subject" and the "predicate" of certain sentences, but this isn't the same as the "S is P" form. Recall that for Hegel's trick to work there has to be an "is" of predication in there somewhere on which he can inflict some 'dialectical hocus pocus'.

Admittedly, there are many different copula expressions in Indo-European, which employ verbs other than "to be" -- such as, "to have", "to want", "to find", some of which are clearly of more recent origin --, but it is even more difficult, if not impossible, to turn these into an "is" of identity, which is what Hegel requires elsewhere. [On that, see here and here.] Hence, he has little to say about the vast bulk of the sentences we use, even in Philosophy!

In that case, as noted several times already, the "S is P" form is a relatively minor part of a sub-category of Indo-European grammar, which would be a rather odd place for intrepid Abstractors of yesteryear to bury such a profound discovery, to say the least.

[On the limitations of the "S is P" form, see Geach (1968), and Note 38.]

It could be objected that this doesn't really matter since philosophers like Hegel are only interested in the "S is P" form. Maybe so, but even then they found they had to tinker around with a participle of the copulative verb "to be" (i.e., "is") to make their theory even seem to work, and they only succeeded in doing that by destroying the capacity of language to say anything at all.

If DM-fans are happy with that, they are welcome to it.

38. Indeed, other than in books and articles about this deeply flawed area of sub-Aristotelian 'logic', when would such a sentence about John ever be used?

By way of contrast, it might be instructive to see if there are any dialecticians on this planet who can milk some dialectics out of any of the following ordinary indicative sentences:

M1: John runs the local strike committee.

M2: There is something useful to read in John's strike bulletin.

M3: Anything the bosses threaten us with, John can outmanoeuvre.

M4: Any friend of John is no friend of management.

M5: John is the strike committee now -- since everyone else has been arrested.

M6: John gave the leaflets to Ryan, who handed them to Jamaal, who posted them to Saoirse (pronounced Sorsha), who left them with Miriam on her way to work.

M7: Every strike leader like John makes mistakes.

M8: John is a real man; that's why comrades respect him.

M9: John is in fact now a trans-woman, but that shouldn't affect his/her role in the Union.

M10: The comrade who paid John is staying with my sister.

M11: Anyone who admires John despises most of those who agree with the strike committee's recommendation that union members should accept management's latest offer to all of those still on strike because they received nothing in the last pay round.

Many of these aren't of the simple subject-predicate form beloved of the fans of Dialectical/Stone Age Logic. In fact, I defy anyone enamoured even of AFL, never mind DL, to try to express M10 or M11, for example, in the logic of their choice -- and then in DL.

To be sure, M11 is a rather extreme example, but even part of it is way beyond the 'logic' Hegel put to misuse -- and, indeed, way beyond AFL, too. [Consult, for example, Mates (1972) on how to translate such sentences into MFL.] Even so, sentences of comparable complexity are used in modern mathematics and mathematical logic all the time -- cf., Mendelson (2009).

Furthermore: although the words "John...is staying with my sister" appear in M10, there is no proposition "John...is staying with my sister" anywhere in M10. Indeed, the phrase "...is staying with my sister" isn't true or false of John, but of the individual who paid John. Again, this perfectly ordinary, straightforward sentence (with an ever so slightly more complex predicate) is way beyond Traditional Logic, let alone the sub-Aristotelian 'logic' Hegel dumped on humanity. There are countless sentences like this, as anyone familiar with English well knows. The same is also true of German and French, and I am sure of many other languages, including Russian.

[DL = Dialectical Logic; AFL = Aristotelian Formal Logic; MFL = Modern Formal Logic.]

But, Lenin must have uttered sentences like these many times throughout his life (albeit, not necessarily about John, nor, perhaps, any as complex as M11). Why then did he ignore such everyday examples?

The answer is reasonably clear: he uncritically accepted the word of a card-carrying mystic.

38a. Of course, it could be argued, à la Feuerbach, that theological propositions are in fact a reflection of something -- namely the alienated view that humanity has of itself. In that case, the subject-predicate form used in H2 expresses this ideological 'view'.

H2: God is our father.

Maybe so, but no one would argue that just because of this such sentences were true, or even partially or 'relatively' true. Indeed, there would be no point in dialecticians arguing that there is no evidence for believing in the existence of 'God' if all that a 'dialectical theist' had to do in reply is point to the subject-predicate form as proof that 'He' must exist -- perhaps on the following lines: "Since sentences like H2 have had this truth programmed into them by intrepid abstractors from earlier generations, there must be a God...". Which DM-fan is going to accept that as a valid response?

39. Hegel Screws Up -- 1

[This forms part of Note 39.]

If the "is" of predication were one of identity, we would be able to argue as follows:

N1: Lenin is a man.	I.e., Lenin = Man.
N2: Trotsky is a man.	I.e., Trotsky = Man.
N3: Therefore, Lenin is Trotsky.	I.e., Lenin = Trotsky.

Of course, because Lenin isn't Trotsky, this 'contradiction' must mean that either Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov will turn into Lev Davidovich Bronstein beyond the grave, or he will be locked in eternal struggle with him in Dialectical Heaven. As Plekhanov (and several other DM-worthies) assure us:

"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…." [Plekhanov (1956), p.77. Bold emphases alone added.]

So, since Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov isn't Lev Davidovich Bronstein, he must one day turn into him. Is this not, therefore, a sound dialectical proof that there is an after-life?

Who can possibly object? It is coded into the logic of our language!

Should anyone take exception to this crazy example of sub-Aristotelian 'logic' -- as they should(!) --, the dotty nature of at least this part of DL might become clear to them.

Independently of the above, it could be argued that DL deals with named individuals in the following way:

L1: Lenin is not not-identical with mankind.

So, the above 'derivation' (i.e., N1-N3) doesn't work.

Or, so it could be claimed.

But, L1 is in fact:

L2: Lenin = not not-identical with mankind.

[Where the new "is" of predication in L1 has been replaced by its 'dialectical alter ego', the "is" of identity, again. Of course, this annoying re-write can only be neutralised by a far more sensible, if not sophisticated, analysis of propositions than is available to Stone Age Dialectical Logicians. Moreover, my use of sentences like L2 doesn't commit me to the thesis that Lenin could sensibly be equated with "not not-identical with mankind", nor does it commit me to the doctrine that a predicable like "...not not-identical with mankind" can operate as a singular term, or referring expression, and thus legitimately flank one side of an "=" sign. I am merely exposing the absurdities that flow from the 'logic' Hegel conned many of his readers into swallowing.]

Now throw in the following:

L3: Trotsky = not not-identical with mankind.

And once more we have:

L4: Lenin = Trotsky.

For those still in thrall to fractured logic like this, the few avenues available to them to try to extricate themselves from this dialectical debacle are considered below, near the end of Note 40 -- and in Essay Eight Part Three -- and then blocked.

Again, in the above 'argument', if anyone objects to the use of the present tense (in, say, N1: "Lenin is a man"), on the grounds that Lenin is now dead, then they wouldn't be able to correct the following false belief:

L5: Lenin is a mountain in Norway,

with:

L6: No, Lenin is a man, sadly now dead.

In fact, even on that basis, it could be argued that since Lenin is dead, he is an ex-man -- as, indeed, is Trotsky --; the argument would then proceed as before.

Diabolical Logic like this is not quite so easily tamed.

Consider then this version of the above 'argument':

N1a: Lenin is dead.	I.e., Lenin = Dead.
N2a: Trotsky is dead.	I.e., Trotsky = Dead.
N3: Therefore, Lenin is Trotsky.	I.e., Lenin = Trotsky.

Nevertheless, it could be objected that Plekhanov (quoted above) was in fact referring to "phenomena", not dead communists. In that case, consider the following individuals who, at the time of writing, were alive; the result will be no different:

N4: Tony Blair is a man.

N5: Bruce Willis is a man.

N6: Therefore, Tony Blair is Bruce Willis.

There are plenty more 'dialectical proofs' like these; readers are invited to wile away the hours concocting several hundred examples of their own.

I have dealt with this topic further in the main body of this Essay.

39a. It could be objected that these terms aren't being substituted salva congruitate (i.e., they aren't being substituted in a way that preserves their grammatical or syntactical role). However, the right to lodge that particular complaint was forfeited the moment predicate expressions were deliberately confused with the Proper Names of abstract particulars, and the "is" of predication was transmogrified into an "is" of identity.

But, the serious answer is, of course: that is precisely what this crazy theory implies!

Get over it.

39b. And it is to no avail to re-write H1 using an "=" sign in an endeavour to forestall this recursive use of "is identical with" in place of the original "is":

H1: John is a man.

H1a: John = man.

H1b: John equals man.

That is because the "=" sign means "is identical with" (i.e., both for Hegelians and Marxist dialecticians), which plainly contains yet another recursive "is".

Of course, reading the "=" sign as "equals" (in H1b) is far too weak, as we will discover in Essay Six. But, even if it could be read this way, that rather desperate ploy still won't work. That is because, as has already been pointed out, the "=" sign still means "is equal to" which will attract its own 'infinite' recursion.

[That thankless task is also left to the reader to undertake.]

Moreover, similar intractable problems also arise in relation to Lenin's statement:

H6: The individual is opposed to the universal.

And, by no stretch of the imagination can this be replaced with, or be read as:

H6a: The individual = opposed to the universal.

A few years ago, a dialectically-distracted comrade did try to respond to the above claims with the following 'counter-argument':

On the contradiction implied in "John is a man", we might ask is John the only man? If so, then the correct expression is "John is the man". So, if John is a man, then there are other men. Joe is a man. Jack is a man. Andrew is a man.

If John is identical with "a man", and Joe is identical with "a man", and Jack is identical with "a man", then through some kind of transitivity of identities we reach the contradiction that John is Joe. John is Jack.

Rosa L will say what is the contradiction in "John is Jack"?

It is that John is not Jack, as stipulated above when we said there are other men besides John. Jack is another man from John is identical with the expression John is not Jack. (sic) So directly the contradiction is that we have both John is Jack and John is not Jack at the same time.

I have now made the contradiction implicit in "John is a man" so explicit and patent that even contradiction-blind Rosa L. should be able to see it. But thanks to Rosa for pressing the point on this example from Lenin's philosophical notebooks, as it is only in "contradiction" with Rosa that I was moved to move the thought to full demonstration.

The contradiction inherent in the verb "to be", "is", can be seen as the same as that found in "self-reference" by modern mathematical philosophers like Russell. Russell's famous paradox derived from the self-reference of "the set of all sets that don't contain themselves". The wikipedia article on paraconsistency notes the efforts at avoiding self-reference in the logics after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic

In any sentence with a verb form of the verb "to be" makes a reference, a self-reference, of the subject of the sentence. The subject refers to itself in the predicate.

"John is a man", is a reference of John to himself as "a man", a self-reference.

So, modern mathematics rediscovered the paradoxes of self-reference that Hegel had discovered, perhaps as described in the quote of Hegel adduced on this thread by Rosa L. above. Paraconsistent logics are propositionally weaker than classical logic

"It should be emphasized that Paraconsistent logics are propositionally weaker than classical logic; that is, they deem fewer propositional inferences valid. The point is that a Paraconsistent logic can never be a propositional extension of classical logic, that is, propositionally validate everything that classical logic does. In that sense, then, Paraconsistent logic is more conservative or cautious than classical logic. It is due to such conservativeness that Paraconsistent languages can be more expressive than their classical counterparts including the hierarchy of Meta-languages due to Tarski et al. According to Feferman [1984]: '…natural language abounds with directly or indirectly self-referential...yet apparently harmless expressions -- all of which are excluded from the Tarskian framework.' This expressive limitation can be overcome in Paraconsistent logic."

[RL: I have slightly edited the above so that it conforms to the formatting principles adopted at this site, as I have also done with Mr B's other comments below. I have not altered any of his words or sentences. Links added; several paragraphs merged.]

Of course, the above isn't Hegel's argument, nor is it Lenin's, as we have seen.

Even so, the main points of my response were as follows (slightly edited):

(1) Traditional theorists treat all words as names or singular designating expressions (i.e., they are all supposed to 'refer' to this or that, and if we can't find a this or a that in this world to which they can refer, 'abstractions' -- or, these days, 'entities'/'abstract objects' from meta-theory -- are invented for them to designate). This is indeed yet another aspect of Plato's Beard, as Quine called it.

(2) Unfortunately, the traditional approach destroys the unity of the proposition, and that is because it turns propositions into lists, and lists say nothing. So, the 'propositions' that dialecticians finally end up with destroy any capacity language has for expressing, not just generality, but anything whatsoever, since this approach transforms predicate expression into the names of abstract particulars.

[Examples of the above are given below; a longer explanation can be found in Essay Three Part One.]

(3) Dialecticians in particular are guilty of doing this when, following Hegel, they transform the "is" of predication into an "is" of identity.

(4) And they do this since it is the only way they think they can 'derive' their 'contradictions'.

(5) In so doing they actively resist the conventions of ordinary language, since the vernacular actually prevents these verbal tricks from being performed.

This comrade managed to fall foul of every single one of the above. Readers will note, too, that he doesn't even attempt to justify a key component in his argument, namely, that the "is" here is one of identity, not of predication. Without this, his entire case falls apart.

Now, he asserts this:

Rosa L will say what is the contradiction in "John is Jack" ?

No I won't say that, nor anything like it. I'll merely point out that this comrade has constructed a classic Reductio ad Absurdum [RAA] here, which now allows us to discharge one of the premisses as false. Since we want to hang on to "John is a man", the premiss we must reject as false is the one hidden in here:

If John is identical with "a man", and Joe is identical with "a man", and Jack is identical with "a man", then through some kind of transitivity of identities we reach the contradiction that...

That is, we must discharge the hidden clause, "'John is a man' is an identity statement".

So, all that this comrade has in fact done is provide us with a refutation of his own 'theory'!

But, there is more. Even supposing that the "is" here is an "is" of identity, then that can only mean that this proposition:

B1: John is a man.

Should read:

B2: John = a man.

But, if John is identical to a man, which man is this? That would be the first question we would normally ask upon being informed of this startling fact. The only conceivable answer would be that this man is... John! So, this brilliant theory ends up with "John is identical with John"!

The comrade might point this out, again:

On the contradiction implied in "John is a man", we might ask is John the only man? If so, then the correct expression is "John is the man".

But, who on earth would ask "Is John the only man?" Someone with amnesia? Someone with learning difficulties? A visitor from another planet? Someone suffering from dialectics?

Nevertheless, let us suppose that we could find a benighted soul somewhere on this planet (other than this comrade) who would ask such an odd question. In that case, the natural reply would be: "No, there are plenty of other men...and, er..., do you perhaps need to see a psychiatrist?", which sentence can't be press-ganged into helping this comrade defend Hegel. Indeed, I am rather surprised that he failed to consider this more natural response to his own question. [But, then again, I'm not really.]

Unlike Marx, he clearly thinks our ordinary use of language is an impediment, not a resource.

Even so, and ignoring these relatively minor niggles, the identity relation operates between two names, singular terms or objects (depending on how we interpret it).

This forces us to conclude that for this comrade "a man" is a name (or some other singular designating expression), and that it names or designates an object, class, set, or category, etc -- as (1)-(5) above predicted. Indeed, it is quite plain that for this comrade "a man" is akin to a Proper Name. This can be seen by the ease with which he slides between "John is a man" and "John is Jack". He clearly sees no difference between a Proper Name and an indefinite description, or between a Proper Name and a predicate expression! Hence, the only conclusion possible is that for him "a man" refers to an object of some sort (or perhaps to an abstract particular), in the way that a Proper Name refers to its bearer. If so, given his 'theory', "a man" no longer functions as a general term since, manifestly, no object (abstract or concrete) or singular term can be general.

Generality is a feature of our use of language (as I argued in Part Two of Essay Three). Plainly, that is because, unlike human beings, linguistic expressions have no social life and are totally incapable of collecting things together in groups, classes or even sheep pens. To suppose otherwise would be to fetishise language, misconstruing the communal use of language as if it were a reflection the social life of words.

So, by assuming that all words are names, dialecticians end up with the following list:

B3: Name/Identity-Relation/Abstract-Noun.

Or:

B4: John/Identity/Man (Manhood, the Class of Men, etc.).

But, lists say nothing, so this comrade's theory falls apart since it is now apparent that dialectical 'propositions' like this are vacuous!

Instead of asking himself whether it makes sense to say that a name could be identical with a predicate -- or even that what it is that each word supposedly refers to or 'reflects' could be identical with one another --, this comrade has swallowed Hegel's sub-Aristotelian 'logic' whole, and without blinking!

That suspicion is amply confirmed by what follows:

The Wikipedia article on Paraconsistency notes the efforts at avoiding self-reference in the logics after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic

In any sentence with a verb form of the verb "to be" makes a reference, a self-reference, of the subject of the sentence. The subject refers to itself in the predicate.

"John is a man", is a reference of John to himself as "a man", a self-reference.

It isn't easy to see how or why Paraconsistent Logic is relevant here, but readers will no doubt notice how the word "reference" is indiscriminately thrown about the place as if all words and sentences were denoting expressions; but we are offered no reason to suppose that they can all be used referentially. Hence, we are simply told, with no argument in support, that:

In any sentence with a verb form of the verb "to be" makes a reference, a self-reference, of the subject of the sentence. The subject refers to itself in the predicate.

"John is a man", is a reference of John to himself as "a man", a self-reference. [Bold added.]

Once more, as predicted in points (1)-(5) above, we see this comrade acknowledging here that a verb actually refers, that is, that it is a Proper Name or some other singular designating expression! So, his 'propositions' have this form:

B5: Name/Singular-Term/Abstract Noun.

Or:

B6: John/Reference-to-Subject-in-Predicate/Man.

But, this is just another list!

And, of course, this isn't even remotely true:

The subject refers to itself in the predicate.

The subject in fact refers to John; that is why he was given that name! "John" doesn't refer to another symbol, but to John. Nor is there anything to which it can refer in the predicate, since the predicate isn't a container. [Of course, all this depends on what this comrade means by "subject" and "predicate" -- but, as usual, he neglected to say.]

So ends yet another rather weak attempt to defend the indefensible. [More details here. I have developed this argument further here.]

40. Hegel Screws Up -- 2

[This forms part of Note 40.]

It is worth recalling that when interpreted normally -- i.e., by normal human beings -- predication merely says something of a named (or otherwise designated) individual or object; that is, it is a description, or, in some cases, an attribution or an ascription.

[Some claim that a sentence like H1 is either an 'essential' predication, or it is a (partial) definition of the individual concerned. That claim will be examined below -- as it has also been, above.]

H1: John is a man.

So, "John is a man" just asserts (or can be used to assert) something of whoever the name "John" designates -- or, better still: "ξ is a man" can be used to form true (or false) sentences if the relevant language has available, appropriate Proper Names conventionally used to pick out men, human beings in general --, or, in the present case, this particular (fictional) character, John.

Alternatively, as Aristotle would have said, the predicate "man" applies to whomever "John" names. Looked at this way, there is no "is" anywhere in sight for dialecticians to magic into an identity.

[Other languages that lack the copula, "is", also proceed along similar lines. Of course, as with most things connected with Aristotle, his ideas on predication are much more complex than the above might suggest. Nevertheless, that doesn't affect the validity of the claim made above about Aristotle's paraphrastic use of "applies". On this, see Robin Smith's article on Aristotle's Logic published at the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy; i.e., Smith (2019), Section Seven. Since the present Essay isn't meant to be an exercise in academic philosophy, I will say no more about this topic here. On this in general, see Modrak (2001).]

Readers, however, might wonder how the genuine "is" of identity fares under such scrutiny (on this, see the previous section); must it, too, explode in infinite confusion?

So, in relation to sentences like the following:

S4: Cicero is Tully,

aren't we forced to explicate this "is" in like manner (as in S5 and S6)?

S5: Cicero is identical with Tully.

S6: Cicero is identical with identical with Tully.

[As the green "is" in S5 is replaced with what it supposedly means, "is identical with".]

And so on? If not, then this can't be a problem for dialecticians either.

Or, so a counter-claim might proceed.

However, when we say that "the 'is' that appears in S4 is one of identity", the green "is" is itself one of predication (as is the one following it (i.e., the "is" in this paragraph) -- and the same comment applies to the one in the brackets (namely, "is"), too!), which can be explicated, à la Aristotle, and thus isn't essential to predication, along the following lines:

S7: Identical with Tully applies to Cicero.

Or, perhaps more colloquially:

S7a: "Cicero" and "Tully" are two names of the same individual; or, maybe,

S7b: Cicero has two names: "Cicero" and "Tully"; or even,

S7c: Cicero's other name is "Tully".

DM-fans can't do this because they maintain that "is" is always one of identity. Hence, their theory collapses in the way I have indicated; whereas the Aristotelian/colloquial account does not.

However, Hegel thinks he has a reply to this 'Aristotelian' riposte:

"To define the subject as that of which something is said, and the predicate as what is said about it, is mere trifling. It gives no information about the distinction between the two. In point of thought, the subject is primarily the individual, and the predicate the universal. As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual. Thus while the same names are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes." [Hegel (1975), p.234. Bold emphasis added.]

So, Hegel justified his rejection of Aristotle's interpretation on the grounds that this analysis gives us no information about the distinction between a subject and a predicate. But, quite apart from the fact that this way of looking at propositions (or even "judgements") is highly limited in itself -- for example, it can't cope with complex sentences that Hegel himself used, even in the above passage, let alone throughout the rest of his work, or, indeed, in everyday life --, the supposed Aristotelian analysis tells us all we need to know. We can see this from the fact that Hegel, in common with many pre-modern theorists, readily confused talk about talk with talk about things. For instance, he tells us that "the subject is primarily the individual and the predicate the universal", whereas a predicate is a linguistic expression (predicates don't populate the world!) while a "universal" isn't, which is something the analysis to which Hegel took exception makes quite clear. And, if we say that a predicate like this refers to a universal, we will only have succeeded in transforming the general term involved into the Proper Name of an abstract particular, once more. Moreover, the subject is also linguistic expression; in this case, it is a Proper Name. As Peter Geach predicted, Hegel's adherence to the two name theory, compounded by his conflation of talk about talk with talk about the world, led him into profound confusion.

Indeed, we can see once again that Hegel has conflated names with predicates:

"Thus while the same names are given to the two terms of the judgment, their meaning passes through a series of changes." [Ibid.]

In that case, it is clear that, as confused as Aristotle was over many things, he was a model of clarity next to this Hermetic Harebrain.

Furthermore, it is this confusion of talk about talk with talk about the world that motivated Hegel into thinking that the development of his own obscure thoughts were one with development in 'reality' -- surely the philosophical equivalent of a madman who thinks he is 'God'!

Or, to put this another way: Hegel's confusion of the "is" of identity with the "is" of predication -- or, in fact, his rejection of the significance of this distinction -- only makes sense if 'reality' is indeed Ideal, where it doesn't really matter if these two verb forms are conflated, and talk about talk is 'legitimately' confused with talk about the world.

Finally, Hegel failed to justify this dubious move:

"As the judgment receives further development, the subject ceases to be merely the immediate individual, and the predicate merely the abstract universal: the former acquires the additional significations of particular and universal, the latter the additional significations of particular and individual." [Ibid.]

He nowhere explains (in a jargon-free passage) how, for example, the individual "acquires the additional significations of particular and universal", nor how the universal does something similar. The only conceivable way they could do this is if the "is" of predication is reconfigured as an "is" of identity -- but, that just assumes what was to be proved and so can't be used to criticise Aristotle. Hegel failed to show that Aristotle's analysis is defective (or even of limited use and applicability), which he needed to do before he could proceed to make this as-yet-unwarranted syntactical switch, not the other way round.

[Hegel's other comments on "individuals", "universals", and "particulars" will be destructively criticised in Essay Twelve Part Five.]

40a1. This is in fact a variant of Moore's Paradox, named after British Philosopher, George Edward Moore. Readers are directed to Marie McGinn's analysis of Wittgenstein's solution, here:

http://wittgensteinrepository.org/agora-ontos/article/download/1953/2433

40a. Of course, there is always Petula Clark's truly awful song, London is London, which also uses two names (in what follows, the video times given use 'decimalised' minutes and seconds --, so, for example, 08:12 means 8 minutes, 12 seconds into the said video; if a time of the day (in the UK) is intended, I will add "am" or "pm"; finally, calendar dates also appear as they are recorded in the UK: Day/Month/Year):

Video One: "London Is London"

Then we have Robert De Niro's comment: "Italy has changed. But Rome is Rome" -- indeed, we have also been told that "Milan is Milan". And then we find this comment on Fodor's website:

"But still, Paris is Paris, and better Paris in the winter than no Paris at all, n'est ce pas?" [Quoted from here; accessed 23/04/2014.]

During his 2012 re-election campaign, President Obama found he had to point out, rather forcefully, that "Rape is rape" in response to the Republican candidate for the Senate race in Indiana, Richard Mourdock -- who came out with the outrageous comment that he was opposed to abortion even when a woman had been raped, saying "When life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen" (quoted from here). The actor, Ashley Judd, also used the same phrase -- at approximately 08:07 in the following video:

Video Two: Ashley Judd -- "Rape Is Rape"

And here is a sign produced by those protesting the lenient sentence passed in 2016 by a US judge on a Stanford University student who sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman:

Figure Six: A 'Reactionary', Anti-DM Protest?

It would be interesting to see how many DM-fans will want follow Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and argue that since nothing is self-identical, rape both is and isn't rape, or even that "No!" does and doesn't mean "No!" [On that, see below.]

In 2012, Ched Evans, a UK football ("soccer") player, was convicted of rape. After serving half of his five year jail sentence he was released on licence. In November 2014, Stuart Gilhooly, of the Players Football Association of Ireland, published a disreputable and feeble defence of Evans. Here is an exchange taken from Jean Hatchet's deconstruction of that attempt to 'defend' Evans (published on the Ending Victimisation And Blame website; Gilhooly's words are in single quotes):

"'The difficult element of this discussion, though, is the part about the scale of the crime. There are people who will say rape is rape.' Rape is rape, and degrees shouldn't come into it." [Quoted from here. Accessed 19/11/2014. Punctuation modified; paragraphs merged.]

A few days later, a BBC radio presenter, Nick Conrad, broadcast a series of deeply offensive remarks about rape on Radio Norfolk; here is part of a reply to him written by Lucy Hunter Johnston, published in The Independent:

"Questioning the behaviour of the victim seeks to absolve the attacker of blame, but there aren't varying shades of grey here. A rapist is a rapist, whether he attacks in an alleyway, a living room or a swanky hotel room. A rapist is still a rapist if he has had sex with his victim before. Going home with someone is not consent. Being drunk is not consent. Your wardrobe choices are not consent. No woman or man is to blame for the violence committed against them; there is no right or wrong way to be raped." [Quoted from here; accessed 19/11/2014.]

One wonders how many Hegel-fans there are who might disagree with these comments on the grounds that rape also isn't rape, and a rapist also isn't a rapist, since both of these are paired with their 'dialectical opposites' ('clearly' indicated by the 'different content' supposedly expressed between subject and predicate). Again, one wonders, too, just how many DM-fans there are who might be inclined to agree with the latter about this? [Although, there might be several such individuals in the UK-SWP. Is that why there are so many rape apologists in revolutionary parties these days?]

Where and what exactly is the 'rational core' of rape-apology?

Here follows a brief conversation that took place in the NBC cop programme Life (Season 2, Episode 7, Jackpot):

Rachel: "How come don't you have a kitchen table?"

Charlie Crews: "I'm trying to lead an uncluttered life."

Rachel: "A kitchen table isn't clutter. A kitchen table is a kitchen table."

And, the following is another brief conversation (this time taken from The West Wing, Season 5, Episode 5, Constituency Of One) concerning what seemed to some to be an insignificant series of events in (fictional) US politics:

Amy: "It's nothing, Josh."

Josh: "Nothing is nothing."

Video Three: "Nothing Is Nothing"

As seems obvious, the "Nothing is nothing" comment amounts to a denial that anything in politics is insignificant, since it is arguable that these two uses of the same word, "nothing", have a different meaning. One is a quantifier, the meaning of which is rather complex, and amounts to "There isn't anything that...", while the other means something like "insignificant" or "can be ignored". So, Josh's sentence cashes out as "There isn't anything which is insignificant or can be ignored in politics."

We were even told that "Nonsense is nonsense" in the fly leaf to Floyd and Shieh (2001).

In the film, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!, one character, Rosalee Futch, wonders why Tad Hamilton shows no interest in her, so she whimpers "I'm nobody!". The reply comes back "Nobody is nobody!" By that, he manifestly didn't mean "Nobody is identical with nobody"!

Another perfectly ordinary communicative act was achieved quite efficiently by the use of a colloquial tautology: we were told that "A couple is a couple" in a discussion of gay marriage in The West Wing, Season 5, Episode 17, The Supremes.

In an earlier series of The West Wing (Season 1, Episode 20, Mandatory Minimums), during a discussion concerning whether or not drug addiction is a medical problem, we were told that "Science is science" (approximately 18:00 into the programme).

Similarly, the following conversation took place in Season 5, Episode 19, Talking Points:

Josh: "You spend your whole career trying to get in this room as if you're the one who can square every circle, and it turns out..."

CJ: "A circle is a circle."

As part of a conversation about the stalled "Santos for President" campaign, the margin for error in the polls, and the fact that the campaign seemed to be stuck on "nine points down", Josh says "Nine points is nine points" (The West Wing, Season 7, Episode 5, Here Today, approximately 10:00 into the programme).

One of the female characters in HBO's mini-series, Show Me A Hero -- aired in the UK on Sky Atlantic, 08/09/2015 --, in a discussion whether or not she should move house, said: "My home is my home" (approximately 30:00 into Episode 4). And, in the short-lived American cop show, Backstrom (Season 1, Episode 2), aired on the UK Fox Channel, 10/09/2015, we were presented with the following conversation (approximately 08:00 into the programme):

Backstrom (referring to two guys he knew as a child): "They lived across the street. They tortured me every day."

Valentine: "Um. Torture? You mean literally with a blowtorch and pliers, or metaphorically when they called you names and belittled your accomplishments?"

Backstrom: "Torture is torture, Valentine."

In the summer of 2014, James Rodriguez, the Columbian football (soccer) star, had this to say about his proposed transfer to Real Madrid, as opposed to, say, a move to Manchester United:

"I have a great deal of respect for other clubs and admire the good football they play, but ultimately Real Madrid are Real Madrid. I've always had a thing for them, like I said before." [Quoted from here. Accessed 18/07/2014.]

Indeed, during an English Premier League football (soccer) game between Arsenal FC and Burnley FC, shown on BBC TV, 02/11/2014, the commentator pointed out that despite the stolid defence mounted by Burnley, Arsenal were bound to score -- after all "Arsenal are Arsenal", he opined. [The use of a plural form of the verb "to be" here is apposite since "Arsenal" is a collective term; "Arsenal is Arsenal" would therefore be grammatically incorrect. The same also applies to "Real Madrid are Real Madrid".] And, on Sunday afternoon, 22/03/2015, ex-Arsenal and Barcelona FC footballer, Thierry Henri, commenting on a lucky goal scored by Loïc Rémy for Chelsea FC in their game with Hull City AFC, had this to say: "At the end of the day, a bit lucky, but a goal is a goal." The betting firm, Bet Victor, went one better and ran with "A goal is a gaol is a gaol!" slogan as part of their advertising campaign during the UEFA Euro 2016 Football Tournament:

Video Four: "A Goal Is A Goal Is Goal!"

Similarly, during the BBC's coverage of the match between England and Wales (during the same tournament), one of the commentators, Robbie Savage, queried the award of a free kick by the referee for a foul committed by a Wales player, claiming it wasn't really a foul. The other commentator, Martin McKeown, was heard to say "A foul is a foul, Robbie" (16/06/2016, approximately 35:00 into the game). Later in the tournament, during the match between Portugal and Croatia (25/06/2016) and near the beginning of extra time, the commentators were talking about the merits or otherwise of the Portugal footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, when one of them said to the other: "Ronaldo is Ronaldo".

In relation to a penalty awarded against a Bournemouth AFC defender, Charlie Daniels, in match against Crystal Palace FC, (27/08/2016), we were told the following on Sky Sports TV (as part of a post-match referee panel review of such decisions):

"Dermot [Gallagher -- a retired referee -- RL]: '[Charlie] Daniels pulls the shirt back. [Mike] Dean [the match referee -- RL] made a stand last week and gave penalties for the same thing. He's been consistent. It doesn't matter if he's moving away from goal, a foul is a foul.'" [Quoted from here; accessed 27/09/2016.]

Apparently, "A win is a win!", too, which we were told are "Five important words you need to take to heart" if you want to win at sweepstakes. It is also the opinion of CNN anchor, Wolf Blitzer, who, in response to the news that Donald Trump was about to win the South Carolina Republican Party Primary for the GOP nomination to run for President, concluded that "A win is a win!" (20/02/2016). This was something he repeated several times as it became clear later on in the campaign that Hillary Clinton was about to win the Kentucky Primary (in the Democratic race) by less than 2000 votes, 17/05/2016. The same sentiment was echoed on CNN by Hillary Clinton's Chief Strategist, Joel Benenson, 19/03/2016, when asked about her prospects in the New York Primary: "A win is a win!". Indeed, Trump Senior Adviser, Jack Kingston, repeated this catch-phrase on CNN (02/11/2016, at approximately 1:20 am), on Anderson Cooper 360, when asked why Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, wouldn't use Donald Trump's name: "As we would say in sports, 'A win is a win!'"

The same words were also used during a BBC programme -- Breakfast TV, 27/04/2017 -- in a conversation about the comments attributed to snooker star, Ronnie O'Sullivan, who said he would "rather lose a good match than win a bad one". The on-air talent replied: "A win is a win" (approximately 6:12 am).

In like manner, Joe Hart, ex-Manchester City FC and ex-England goalkeeper, had this to say about his team's new manager (in his interview with the BBC after their game with Sunderland AFC, 02/02/2016): "Next season is next season". And, Daniel Sturridge, an ex-Liverpool FC player, when asked about events earlier in the season, had this to say (in his after-match interview on BT TV, approximately 10:15 pm, Thursday 10/03/2016): "The past is the past". The same words, "The past is the past", were used by Australian rugby player, Kurtley Beale, on BBC Radio Five Live (30/08/2016, approximately 07:50 pm), when describing his career to date. They were used again in September 2016 -- Season 1, Episode 1 of the Netflix series, Luke Cage, approximately 09:00 into that video (Moment of Truth) --, when the main character, Cage, referring to his long lamented friend, Henry 'Pop' Hunter, replied "The past is the past". This phrase was also used in the US cop show, NCIS (Season 7, Episode 2, Reunion); one of the characters was reminiscing about her career to date, to which she added "The past is the past" (about 38:00 into the show, broadcast on the Universal Channel, 10/08/2017).

Moreover, in an episode of Russell Howard's Good News (repeated on the Dave cable channel, 22/04/2016), a member of the public was asked if it was time to forgive Ed Milliband for defeating his brother in the election to the leadership of the UK Labour Party four years earlier. Howard had this to say in response, "I don't care. Your brother is your brother."

We even learned this about the main character in the film The Legend of Billie Jean:

"The Legend of Billie Jean is about a young woman who stands up for truth and justice...has sidekicks and a nemesis and even has her own catchphrase in 'Fair is fair!'" [Quoted from here.]

And, the same phrase, "Fair is fair", was uttered by Mr Willis of Ohio in an episode of The West Wing (Mr Willis of Ohio, Season 1, Episode 6), approximately 27:00 into the programme.

Indeed, in a recent instalment of the Sky Atlantic programme, Banshee (Season 2, Episode 2, Thunder Man), one of the characters is faced with a 30-day jail sentence. Another character says that this is no big deal, "It's only 30 days", we are told; but he receives a rebuke: "Prison is prison!". Just as we were recently reminded that "Jail is jail". Moreover, the US 'legal' drama series, The Good Wife (Season 2, Episode 12, Silly Season), had the main character, Alicia Florrick, reject a request that she intervene in her husband's election campaign by saying "The campaign is the campaign". Moreover, back in 2015, in relation to the genocide of the Armenian people, The Huffington Post told us that "Truth is truth" (24/04/2015), a sentiment shared by the Director, Steve McQueen, as he was commenting about the making of 12 Years A Slave.

Also on Sky TV -- Goals on Sunday, Sunday 22/02/2015 --, Chelsea FC's former manager, José Mourinho, when asked about his team winning the English League Cup back in 2005, replied: "A final is a final...a cup is a cup". John Luther, a character in the BBC crime series, Luther (repeated on Alibi TV, 21/02/2015, approximately 33:00 into Episode 3 of Season 1), when asked about a particular murder, replied: "Murder is murder" -- as did one of the detectives on Blue Bloods (Season 6, Episode 13, Stomping Ground), aired on Sky Atlantic, 30/03/2016. We were also told that "Dirty money is dirty money" during the Sky Living cop show, Blindspot (Season 1, Episode 6, Cede Your Soul), when one of the show's regulars tried to defend another character on the show from accusations of receiving money for an alleged crime. Later in the same series (Season 1, Episode 11, Cease Forcing Enemy), after complaining that even though the main character was a qualified pilot, she couldn't fly the 'plane she happened to be on, she is then told by her FBI handler: "A plane is a plane is a plane" (about 36:00 into the programme). One of the actors in the US crime drama, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Casey Novak, in response to the rumour that she had been fired from the show, replied "Rumours are Rumours...".

Indeed, one comrade recently posted the following comment on a discussion board: "Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west...".

Which reminds one of this rather uninspiring poem by Rudyard Kipling:

"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,

"Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;

"But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,

"When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!" [Quoted from here.]

As well as the opening lines of the song, Buttons and Bows, from the film, The Paleface: "East is east and west is west, and the wrong one I have chose...". And, of course, East is East was the title of a film released back in 1999.

Toward the end of the Europa League soccer match between Chelsea FC and FC Rubin Kazan, in April 2014, a sports commentator was heard to say -- in response to an assertion that the status of the final of the Europa League isn't to be compared with that of the final of the Champions League --, "A European Final is a European Final." We all know what he meant, even if we might disagree with what he said.

Four other examples come to mind of the widespread use of this grammatical form: (i) "Enough is enough" (which forms part of the title of a song by Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer -- No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)); (ii) "A promise is a promise", (iii) "A lie is a lie", and (iv) "War is war" (which is also the title of an article by none other than Antonio Gramsci).

"Enough is enough" has now become the most widely used and sloganised version of this linguistic form. In mid-October 2016, it was also the response evinced by the Republican Governor of South Dakota, Dennis Daugaard, in reaction to the latest, and easily the worst, Donald Trump debacle -- his admission that he could grope women with impunity (warning, graphic and highly offensive language at that link). It was the response, too, echoed by a retired Ohio judge three weeks after Trump's inauguration. This sentence now crops up all over the place. Here is what Nicholas Wade -- a prospective candidate for the Hastings and Rye constituency in the 2017 UK Parliamentary Election, standing as an independent on an anti-corruption ticket -- had to say in late April of that year: "Enough is enough. There needs to be new influence in Parliament." And those words were even used on Twitter by the UK People's Assembly (11/05/2017):

"Enough is enough! After 7yrs of Austerity we simply can't afford another 5yrs of the Tories. THIS JUNE, DON'T VOTE MAY #ToriesOut #GE17." [Capitalisation in the original.]

And, here is what a football ("soccer") reporter from the Manchester Evening News wrote after Manchester United's defeat to Danish team, FC Midtjylland, in February 2016:

"I wrote 'enough is enough' after the dire display against Southampton less than a month ago believing it couldn't get any worse and it shouldn't be allowed to...but then came this joke in Jutland...." [Quoted from here. Link added.]

Then there is this:

Video Five: Enough Is Enough -- An Anti-Fascist Song

By Anarchist Group Chumbawamba

"Enough is enough" has also become a widely-used cliché, employed by anyone with a grievance, genuine or not, large or small; for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (to name just a few!); there is even a page of quotes using this locution, here. It has also been used to name a horse! Even Jeremy Corbyn employed the phrase on Twitter (22/03/2017):

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/844503552802410498

Another group, Los Bravos from the 1960s, told us back then that "Black is Black" -- and even that "Grey is grey":

Video Six: Apparently, "Black Is Black"

Update 26/07/2015: Also seen on Twitter (in relation to this story in The Daily Telegraph, for which they later had to apologise): "A lie is a lie is a lie."

Figure Seven: "A Lie Is A Lie"

Update September 2015: The following appeared in The Guardian newspaper (concerning the race to win the Democratic Party nomination to run for the White House in the 2016 US Presidential Election, and the contest between Hillary Clinton and the "democratic socialist", Bernie Sanders):

"Plenty of other candidates are making similar pitches, but few manage it as authentically as Sanders. 'Bernie is Bernie, he's down to earth and he's not for special interests,' explains Chris Uhlenhopp, a 67-year-old former labourer at the nearby Maytag appliances factory, which once employed 2,000 people." [Quoted from here; accessed 07/09/2015. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]

Even working class Americans appear to know how to refute Hegel -- albeit inadvertently.

And, Sanders himself is reported to have said the following:

"Enough is enough. This great nation and its government belong to all of the people and not to a handful of billionaires, their super PACs and their lobbyists." [Quoted from here. Accessed 09/09/2015. Link added.]

Indeed, "Enough is enough" became a campaign slogan for Sanders in the 2015/16 race for the Presidency; just as it is part of the title of an article over at the Counterfire website: "'Enough is enough': anger and escalation". And, in February 2016, we were even told by the BBC: "Enough is enough: India women fight to enter temples."

This by-now-hackneyed locution is also the title of an episode of the US 'hospital' drama, Grey's Anatomy (Season 2, Episode 2). President Barak Obama also used it after the Colorado Springs mass shooting in November 2015, and here is one of the placards supporting the (UK) National Union of Teachers strike (05/07/2016):

Figure Eight: "Enough Is Enough", Even For UK Teachers

Even UK cops have employed this catch-phrase:

Figure Nine: Even For UK Cops, "Enough Is Enough!"

A Google image search will soon reveal that countless others have made placards proclaiming "Enough is enough!" That search might even find the Anti-Capitalist website: "Enough is Enough!"

Enough is too much even for the manufacturers of Fixodent:

Video Seven: "Enough Is Enough!", Even For Fixodent

Apparently, the penny has dropped for at least one 'patriotic' Trump supporter, for whom -- yes you guessed it -- "Enough is enough":

Figure Ten: "Enough Is Enough" -- Trump Voter Wises Up

Ex-UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, used this combination of words ("Enough is enough") after the terrorist attack on London, 03/06/17 -- video here. [Apologies to readers who might feel nauseous after hearing this Tory fraud bang on about 'extremists' soon after arming to the teeth the reactionary, extremist Saudi Arabian regime.]

Update October 2015: Seen on Twitter (in relation to a petition demanding justice for Tamir Rice), "Enough is enough...when will our children matter in America?"

Trevor Noah, the current presenter of the Daily Show, thought it pertinent to remind his viewers that "A drunk is a drunk".

Figure Eleven: "A Drunk Is A Drunk"

Approximately 48:00 into the BBC/Canal+ costume drama, Versailles, which focuses on the reign of Louis XIV, we were told, rather solemnly, that "Proof is proof" (Season 1, Episode 2, I am The State).

Update February 2016: Lord Hall, Director General of the BBC -- in a press conference about the release of a report into the implication, or even the complicity, of the BBC in the serial child sex abuses committed by Jimmy Savile -- had this to say: "Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. It can never be excused." [Live on BBC Two, 25/02/2016, 11:03 am.]

If the above examples fail to convince hard-nosed DM-fans, we have this from Ai Ssu-ch'i (a prominent MIST and close collaborator of Mao):

"Unity is unity.... Centralised state power is centralised state power...." [Quoted from here.]

Another leading MIST, Kostas Mavrakis, also found it important to inform his readers that "Reactionaries are reactionaries".

Update July 2016: After the UK Euro-Referendum (23/06/2016), we were told the following (about the intentions of the leading contender for the leadership of the Tory Party):

"The front-runner, Theresa May, has stated that 'Brexit is Brexit' and will be taken at her word." [Quoted from here, although thousands have used the same words, ad nauseam, ever since. Accessed 03/07/2016.]

["Brexit" is neologism standing for "British Exit" from the European Union.]

When the BBC interviewed Jean Claude Juncker, The European Commission President, and asked him whether there was any flexibility available to the UK over the 'free movement of labour' after Brexit, he had this to say "The Treaty is the Treaty" (28/06/2016).

In the wake of the long-delayed Chilcot Report into the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, a former soldier, Steven McLaughlin, was interviewed by the BBC; after noting that even though the politicians involved wear nice suits and are represented by PR companies, he added that they should still be held accountable: "A criminal is a criminal", he said (Local BBC News Northwest, 07/07/2016, 06:26 am). During Wimbledon Fortnight, in an interview with Peter Norfolk on BBC One (08:45 am, 10/07/2016), we were told that, despite the fact that some tennis players were disabled and in wheelchairs, when they play the game, "Tennis is tennis".

Approximately 25:00 into yet anther cop show, Shades of Blue (shown on Sky Living in mid-July 2016), after trying to defend her corrupt colleagues on the grounds that crime in her Precinct was down, Jennifer Lopez's character is told by an FBI agent "Corruption is corruption". And, in an interview on UK Channel Four News (19/07/2016) concerning the US Republican Party nominee for the Presidency, Donald Trump, we were told by a US pundit "Trump is Trump" after he was asked whether Trump would moderate his tone.

Update August 2016: In a discussion on BBC One (21/08/2016, approximately 00:50 am) about the disqualification of the UK team in the Olympic Games final of the 4x400 relay race for a very minor foot violation, Michael Johnson, the US sprinter, commented "The rule is the rule".

Update September 2016: Here is the title of an open letter written by a doctor in reply to yet another bilious attack on working people, courtesy of the UK Daily Mail: "Dear Daily Mail, Enough is Enough".

And even Lindsey German employed this cliché on Twitter: "Durham Teaching Assistants: enough is enough", which is also the title of an article of hers over at the Counterfire website.

We were also told on Quora that "The facts are the facts" -- and back in 1958 there was even a film entitled "The Law is the Law". Several others have also thought it informative to tell us that "The Law is the Law". Indeed, and there is even a song with the title "Truth is Truth". Moreover, a few years back, John Dewey, the US Philosopher of Pragmatism, went so far as to inform his readers that "Morality is morality".

We even encountered the following sentence in The West Wing (Season 2, Episode 8, Shibboleth, approximately 10:00 into the film); the White House staff were discussing the fate of a container load of hidden Chinese immigrants, who were also persecuted Christians and who wanted to claim asylum. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Josh Lyman, pointed out that the US Christian lobby will want them admitted while the Chinese government will want them back, while the "INS will say 'The law is the law'".

Update October 2016: Australian actor and singer, Kylie Minogue, thought it important to tell us that "Love is love" as part of her campaign for LGBTQ marriage rights in Australia. Furthermore, "Love is love" was also one of slogans emblazoned on the placards carried by activists fighting for equal marriage rights for the LGBTQ community in Australia that same month. It also forms the title of a documentary about that very community, just as it is also the title of a book written by Shondrika Scott.

Figure Twelve: Apparently -- Love Is Love

We were even informed on the BBC News 24 Channel (08/10/2016, approximately 10:24 pm) that "Politics is politics", which was given in answer to the question why anyone could possibly support Donald Trump after his latest debacle. Indeed, one of the correspondents working for UK Channel Four News, in a report about a growing revolt in Parliament over the exact terms for Brexit, informed viewers that supporters of a break with the European Union in effect were replying that "A break is a break" (10/10/2016, approximately 07:06 pm).

Update 13/10/2016: The US First Lady, Michelle Obama, also told her audience "Enough is enough!" in response to the crude and offensive remarks uttered by Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Campaign, and earlier (approximately 11:12 into the following video):

Video Eight: Michelle Obama -- "Enough Is Enough!"

Update 04/11/2016: UK Tories have been up in arms since the High Court in London ruled that the UK Government couldn't trigger Article Fifty of the European Treaty, initiating Brexit, without a vote in Parliament. The Tory government is now planning to take this to the UK Supreme Court in order to have the judgement overturned. In an interview with the BBC, Tory MP, Bill Cash, a notorious anti-EU bloviater, had this to say: "The Supreme Court is the Supreme Court", when asked about these moves (BBC News 24, 04/11/2016, approximately 07:34 pm).

Update 02/12/2016: During a Press Conference, in answer to a question about the up-coming game against Everton FC, José Mourinho, the then manager of Manchester United, told reporters that "Everton is Everton".

Update 24/01/2017: David North, the Über-Guru of US Trotskyism, even came out with a couple of examples of his own: "A product of labour is a product of labour", and "A group of workers is a group of workers". Profound thoughts, as I am sure readers will no doubt concur.

Update 21/03/2017: In an article published in The Guardian, the Nigerian novelist, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, had this to say in a debate about gender identity: "A cis woman is a cis woman, and a trans woman is a trans woman." The day before, Michael Turner, Republican member of The House of Representatives National Security Committee, had the following to say (in a discussion about what was true or false about the FBI's investigation into President Trump), "False is false" (20/03/2017, approximately 01:10 pm, live on CNN).

Update 17/04/2017: Apparently, "Gold is gold", according to the Chairman of Orascom TMT, Naguib Sawiris, in an interview broadcast on CNN (17/04/2017, approximately 02:13 am), when he was asked about volatility in the commodities market -- a sentiment that was repeated in 2011 by Justin Rohrlich. Back in 2015, we were even told that "Silver is silver" in the comments section of an article about Sterling Silver at The Mexican Silver Store -- an opinion also posted to this Gold Forum four years earlier. Indeed, "Platinum is platinum" according to a Business Insider story (06/04/2017), concerning a Goldman Sach's report into the mining of asteroids, just as a "A ruby is a ruby", and a "Diamond is a diamond".

Author and scientist, Jeremy Bernstein, tells a story about a series of lectures on Relativity he attended back in the 1950s, delivered by the physicist, Phillip Frank. Frank had just outlined the famous Double-Slit Experiment and was attempting to describe the nature of electrons:

"What were electrons -- waves, particles, both, neither? Electrons are electrons, Professor Frank said." [Bernstein (2009), p.101. In fact the second sentence should be "Electrons, Professor Frank said, are electrons." I have rendered it the way I have so that the form "Fs are Fs" is plain for all to see.]

Update 01/06/2017: During a radio interview on BBC 5 Live (approx 09:10 pm), a woman who used to play for Arsenal "Ladies" football/soccer team had this to say about games (where her team played against less challenging sides), "Winning is winning".

Update 22/06/2017: Apparently, according to an interview about declining electric guitar sales published in the Washington Post, "Music is music".

Update 05/07/2017: The main character in the US TV series, Chance, had this to say when the value of a house he was trying to sell was questioned, "The price is the price" (Season 1, Episode 4, The Mad Doctor, approximately 07:00 into the programme).

Update 15/07/2017: In a television interview held at the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament, when asked about her tactics in the up-coming Women's Final, Spain tennis player and finalist, Garbiñe Muguruza, said "My game is my game" (approximately 01:45 pm, BBC Two).

Update 04/08/2017: We learnt today that in a conversation a few months earlier between President Donald Trump and the Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, the latter had to remind Trump -- in relation to an agreement over refugees, signed by President Barak Obama, about which Trump wasn't happy -- that "A deal is a deal". Incidentally, "A deal is a deal" is what Wyatt Price, a character in the Netflix series, The Man in the High Castle, had to say (about 03:10 into Season 3, Episode 6, History Ends).

Update 07/08/2017: On BBC One, 06/08/2017, during the Pole Vault Final of the 2017 IAAF World Championship, one of the commentators was underlining how important it is to complete a successful first attempt, with the following words: "A first time clearance is a first time clearance!" (approximately 07:35 pm).

Update 10/08/2017: BBC Radio London carried a report about the events that weekend in commemoration of The Battle of Lewisham, 13/08/1977 -- when the Nazis were stopped in their tracks by local people allied with anti-fascists. As part of that report they interviewed one of the organisers of this series of events, Dr John Price, who told a story of a local woman who back then had been very fearful of 'foreigners' moving into her neighbourhood, but who subsequently learnt to get along with them, sharing recipes and music: "People are people" she said.

Update 12/08/2017: Following on the lethal Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, Cornell Brooks, the former President of the NAACP, criticised Donald Trump for his mealy-mouthed 'condemnation', saying "The facts are the facts" (live on CNN, approximately 09:17 pm).

Update 14/08/2017: During a rather useless interview on CNN, will.i.am, when asked whether representatives of Big Business who were condemning the above display of hate and racism are to be believed, replied "Talkers are talkers" (approx 09:45 pm on Quest Means Business).

Update 29/08/2017: Don Lemon, a CNN anchor, responded to a discussion of the 2016 US Presidential election with the following comment "The results are the results" (CNN, 29/08/2017, approximately 03:45 am), and in this video he informed his viewers that "A Nazi symbol is a Nazi symbol" (approximately 02:17), in relation to CNN's firing of Republican troll, Jeffrey Lord:

Video Nine: "A Nazi Symbol Is A Nazi Symbol"

Update 22/09/2017: On the Bill Maher Show on Sky Atlantic, Bob Costas found it important to tell the audience that "Evidence is evidence", in relation to the ongoing probe into Donald Trump and his election victory, which he repeated on CNN (12/12/2017, approximately 00:38 am -- but originally broadcast in October the same year), when he was challenging the wild idea that those who claim that American Football causes irreversible brain damage are peddling a 'left-wing conspiracy to undermine America's game' -- "Evidence is evidence", he said.

The same day (22/10/2017), in an interview, we also heard Jeremy Corbyn tell us that "A wage cut is a wage cut".

Update 10/10/2017: Approximately twenty-five minutes into the new series on Sky Atlantic (The Deuce, Season 1, Episode 3, The Principle Is All), created by David Simon, the executive producer of The Wire, which seeks to expose the growth of the pornography industry in New York in the early 1970s, one character wondered if she could make sex films to sell in Europe (since they had much more relaxed censorship regulations at that time), to which another character replied, "Europe is Europe". And, in the Netflix series Shooter (Season 2, Episode 5), we were told that "Music is music" (approximately 28:30 into that episode).

Update 14/10/2017: In an interview on BBC Breakfast TV about the misuse of drugs, the interviewee told the interviewer: "Safe drugs should be safe drugs" (approximately 08:49 am) -- one supposes a modal version of the "is" of predication ("should") is no less relevant.

Update 21/10/2017: In a discussion on CNN about Donald Trump's predilection for "truthful hyperbole" (i.e., lies), Tony Schwartz (co-author with Trump of the best seller, The Art of the Deal), interjected "The truth is the truth", to which CNN anchor, John Berman, replied, "Facts are facts" (approximately 02:20 am). As if to underline this point, CNN has been running a "Facts are facts" advert several times a day for many months, aimed at countering the recent drift by the right-wing media in the USA toward the denial of facts. Of course, 'facts' have been political footballs for all ruling-classes for nearly as many years as the number of lies Donald Trump has told.

Update 29/10/2017: Again on CNN, in a programme entitled Leading Women Japan, we were told that "A sushi chef is a sushi chef" (approximately 01:45 am).

Update 07/11/2017: In a recent book about anti-fascism, the author argues that the number of active UK fascists declined steeply in the years immediately after WW2, and that was partly the result of anti-fascist action itself and partly because the UK had withdrawn from Palestine -- preventing the fascists fomenting anti-Semitism in Britain since there were now no Zionist terror bombs there aimed at the UK military. Because of this, several Mosleyite fascists swapped sides and became anti-fascists. The author adds:

"Although many of the group [presumably those who changed sides -- RL] were Zionists, the official stance of the group was 'Palestine is Palestine and Hackney is Hackney. One situation has nothing to do with the other'." [Bray (2017), p.234, footnote 145. Link added. The London Borough of Hackney had at the time, and in places still has, a large Jewish community.]

It would surely be perverse to argue that what they really meant was "Palestine is identical with Palestine, and Hackney is identical with Hackney".

Update 10/11/2017: About 29:00 into the Netflix series, Ozark (Season 1, Episode 5, Ruling Days), we were reminded that "Money is money".

Update 23/11/2017: Even 'left-wing' UK news and polemics site, The Canary, has joined in the fun (in an article about the appalling treatment of the disabled by the current Tory regime):

"I'm tired of writing about this, but I'm more tired of ignorant politicians and their supporters ignoring my friends and loved ones. Enough is enough." [Quoted from here, accessed 23/11/2017).

Again, as noted earlier, everyone with an axe to grind, or is fed up with whatever they are fed up with, now tends to use this set of words. Here are just a few more recent examples (to add to the many cited earlier): here, here, here, here and here. In fact, a Google search found over 400,000 hits for this sentence alone!

Update 13/12/2017: After the Democratic Party scored a narrow victory in the US Senate race in deep red Republican, Alabama, Donald Trump tweeted "A win is a win." [I won't post a link to Trump's Twitter feed because my computer might start oozing sewage as a result.]

Update 20/12/2017: On CNN's Don Lemon show, Kierna Mayo, the former editor of Ebony magazine, informed viewers that "News is news is news" (approx 03:40 am) in response to the claim that those who watch Fox and Friends don't know the difference between news and entertainment.

Update 23/12/2017: On MUTV (Manchester United TV, approximately 10:42 pm), José Mourinho made the following comment about a decision taken by the referee in the match against Leicester City FC -- referring to a card issued during the match -- "A red is a red", and few days later (02/01/2018), after their away win to Everton FC, he responded to questions about criticism of his players with the following comment, "The criticism is the criticism."

Update 04/01/2018: UK TV Channel Five has just aired a film called 19^th Wife, which largely concerns the murder of a 'prophet' in a polygamous Mormon community. One character, Jordan, who was investigating that murder and who was repeatedly refused access to a police report, was told to stop asking for that report by his friend, Queenie, who managed to persuade him to desist by reminding him that "No is no!" (approximately 30:00 into the film). Indeed, a few days later UK Channel, Film Four, aired the movie, Now You See Me (06/01/2018); at about 15:00 into that film one of the characters is heard to say "A promise is a promise!".

Update 23/01/2018: Apparently, once more, "Enough is enough" for the 'radical' website, The Canary, which waxed indignant, and rightly so, about excessive teacher workloads in the UK:

"Enough is enough

"The public sector pay cap means many teachers are struggling to get by. There are growing calls from teachers' unions to demand a government-funded pay rise for teachers. And there's a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention." [Quoted from here; accessed 23/01/2018. Bold emphasis and links in the original.]

Update 27/01/2018: As part of a discussion on CNN about the allegations that Nikki Haley -- the ex-US Ambassador to the United Nations and former Republican Governor of South Carolina -- is having an affair with Donald Trump, Erin Gloria Ryan, a senior editor at The Daily Beast, described this accusation as a classic example of sexism, saying "Sexism is sexism" (04:40 am).

The next day, the Talking Pictures Channel aired the Laurel and Hardy film, Block-Heads, where Stan says, after he has returned from World War One, "War is war" (at about 06:00 into the movie). BBC TV also broadcast the movie, What Doesn't Kill You; at one point in the film, two characters were shown discussing the money being offered by a third party for kidnapping a dog, when one says "5000 is 5000" (about 12:00 into the movie).

Update 03/02/2018: Near the beginning of the US cop drama, Blue Bloods (Season 8, Episode 2, Ghosts of the Past), in a discussion about local politics, one character interjected, "A politician is a politician" (approximately 06:00 into the programme), and in the excellent film, Lincoln, 'Mrs Lincoln' came out with this comment "The past is the past" (approximately 64:00 into the film).

Update 14/02/2018: UK BBC One aired the first episode of their new mini-series, Collateral (aired at 09:00 pm on Monday 12/02/2018); about 07:00 in, as part of a discussion about the UK Labour Party, one of the characters, Suki Vincent, came out with this comment: "The system is the system". A week earlier, Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN legal expert, informed their viewers that "Lying is lying" in a discussion of the Sex-Pest-in-Chief ensconced in the White House, and in Season 2, Episode 9 (Deception) of the Sky Atlantic series, House, one of the characters informed us that "Attention is attention" -- approximately 20:00 into the programme. Also seen on Twitter: "Power is power".

Update 19/02/2018: In a report about male strippers, BBC reporter, Emily Maitliss, informed viewers that one of the men involved, who had been scratched by several women, replied "A scratch is a scratch", when asked if it hurt. Two days later, on CNN, we were told that "Talk is talk" (approximately 04:34 pm), and the next day, also on CNN, viewers were informed that "A gold medal is a gold medal" (01:48 pm, during coverage of the Winter Olympics).

Update 23/02/2018: During the BBC's coverage of the Winter Olympics, we were told that "A medal is a medal" (approximately 01:58 pm, BBC One). The next day during the BBC's coverage of the Olympic Curling competition, Steve Cram informed viewers that "A bad shot is a bad shot" (approximately 00:08 pm, BBC One). The same day, during the coverage of the Bobsleigh competition in the same Olympics, one of the commentators thought it important to tell us that "The rules are the rules" (10:42 am, BBC One).

Update 03/03/2018: Approximately 34:00 into the film, The Revenant, we were told that "Business is business", and approximately 24:00 into a re-run of the ITV series, Endeavour, one of the characters, 'Inspector Thursday', found it necessary to remind us that "Sudden death is sudden death" (Girl, Season 1, Episode 1). The same day, in relation to the Mueller investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections, Republican Congressman, Tom Rooney, informed viewers that "His investigation is his investigation" (CNN, approximately 08:50 am).

Update 08/03/2018 and 21/01/2019: The Sex-Pest-in-Chief (Trump) informed us today that "Steel is steel" as he imposed a 25% tariff on imported steel. Nearly a year later, The Coiffured Carpetbagger (Trump) told Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House, that "A contract is a contract" when she suggested that the 2019 State of The Union Address be postponed because of the recent government shutdown.

And we were reminded that "An American is an America" in an article highly critical of right-wing pundit, Ann Coulter (written by Brianna Rennix and published in that excellent bi-monthly journal, Current Affairs). Even Canadian Marxist, Dave McNally found it important to point out that "A tool is a tool, a loaf of bread is a loaf of bread." [McNally (2001), p.119.]

Update 07/10/2019: US Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saw fit to tell her Twitter followers that "A cage is a cage" when referring to the high number of individuals incarcerated in the USA. Believe it or not, in a later Essay I have argued that "A soul is a soul" (but readers should also check the context(!)).

Update 20/12/2019: One blog thought it important to tell us that "A job is a job", and in response to the racism experienced by the England football (soccer) team in Bulgaria, Greg Clarke, the FA Chairman, argued that "Zero tolerance is zero tolerance" when it comes to racism (BBC News, 14/10/19, approximately 09:55 pm).

We also find this in Hamilton's Logic:

"The law of Identity, I stated, was not explicated as a coordinate principle till a comparatively recent period. The earliest author in whom I have found this done, is Antonius Andreas, a scholar of Scotus, who flourished at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century. The schoolman, in the fourth book of his Commentary of Aristotle's Metaphysics, -- a commentary which is full of the most ingenious and original views, -- not only asserts to the law of Identity a coördinate dignity with the law of Contradiction, but, against Aristotle, he maintains that the principle of Identity, and not the principle of Contradiction, is the one absolutely first. The formula in which Andreas expressed it was Ens est ens. [Being is being -- RL.] Subsequently to this author, the question concerning the relative priority of the two laws of Identity and of Contradiction became one much agitated in the schools; though there were also found some who asserted to the law of Excluded Middle this supreme rank." [Quoted from here (accessed 04/10/2014). Bold emphasis and links added.]

Which proves, if proof were needed, that this is a feature of Latin, too.

And here is veteran working class socialist, Fred Casey, from nearly a century ago using the following sentences: "A square is a square" and "Land is land".

Furthermore, according to Lauryn Hill, "Everything is everything":

Video Ten: "Everything Is Everything"

Finally, as if to cap it all, here is Marx himself:

M1: "A negro is a negro." [Marx (1968), p.79.]

This shows that in English -- and apparently in German, too -- sentences and clauses of the form "F is F" (or "Fs are Fs") and "NN is NN" can be informative (where "F" is a verb-, or noun-phrase, "NN" a Proper Name), and that they are as common as the lies emanating from the Trump White House. I suspect the same is the case with other Indo-European languages.

Indeed, this site tells us (clearly in French) that "Rome est Rome", and this one quotes Theresa May as follows: "Brexit est Brexit".

In order to preserve the reader's sanity, that is the very last example of this locution I will quote or cite in this Essay!

None of the above are telling us that, for example, "Rape is identical with rape", or "A goal is identical with a goal", "A kitchen table is identical with a kitchen table", "Power is identical with power", "No is identical with No" -- nor yet that "Enough is identical with enough"!

Update 11/07/2022: Below, I have responded to an argument in an on-line article that attempts to show that sentences like the above are all just empty tautologies, which assumed fact also (supposedly) implies change is impossible(!).

41. It isn't easy, therefore, to agree with much in this passage from TAR:

For one thing, Rees failed to explain how it is possible for later generations build a "framework" out of the experiences of earlier generations. Even if the latter were accessible to anyone else (but, are the central nervous systems of our ancestors open and available to us for inspection?), how could they build "experiences" into "frameworks"? Does this apparent skill require some sort of training -- or are we all supposed to be natural 'epistemological architects'?

Of course, it could be argued that Rees meant that later generations learn from the reported, or the recorded, experiences of previous generations, but even then we would still face the problem explaining how they can be built into "frameworks".

And, who exactly does the building? Do we all have to rebuild from scratch -- single-handedly, using the entire body of human experience -- in effect re-inventing the epistemological wheel? Or, do we accomplish this in small groups, collectively?

The last option would seem to be the one favoured by anyone committed to the social nature of language and knowledge. But, even then, how does it work even here? Do we possess a sort of collective 'consciousness' that enables us all to gain access the latest updates, examining each other's 'inner representations' so we can compare notes? Do we intuit new knowledge and install it in our brains as a group, directly, as a sort of job lot?

The above is in fact another way of expressing a point made more fully in later Parts of Essays Three, and Thirteen Part Three: DM-theorists have clearly devoted very little thought to the implications of their avowed belief in the social and historical nature of language and knowledge -- that is, over and above repeating the classic 'dialectical' formulations of either or both. Given the way dialecticians actually picture knowledge and language, it would be a minor miracle if a single one of us ever formed the same 'abstract' or 'concrete' idea as anyone else about anything whatsoever. Even worse, given the DM-view of the LOI, none of us could do this, anyway. [More on this in Part Two.]

In fact, at best, lone 'abstractors' (if these mythical beasts of lore actually exist) would be able to cobble-together concepts that only coincidentally agreed with those of anyone else -- if, that is, the 'process of abstraction' were itself viable, to begin with. And, even if there were such a coincidental overlap, it would be impossible to verify any of the supposed results, just as it would be impossible to confirm whether we all shared the same understanding of the word "confirm", let alone "same" -- or even the word "word", for goodness sake!

41a. This passage from TAR is rather odd in itself; it will be subjected to detailed analysis in Essay Twelve Part Four.

42. Admittedly, John Rees is here criticising Hegel's theoretical approach to knowledge. But, as we shall see in other Essays posted at this site, the simple inversion of Hegel's system to create 'Materialist Dialectics', its 'rational core' -- even if this were augmented by continual checks against reality, and constantly tested in practice -- can't in any way alter its Idealist form, and hence its content.

43. Lessing actually wrote the following (in connection with the controversy he had with Reimarus over the 'historical Jesus'): "Accidental truths of history can never become the proof of necessary truths of reason".

References

Several of Marx and Engels's works listed below are linked to the Marxist Internet Archive, but since Lawrence & Wishart threatened legal action over copyright infringement many of those links no longer work. However, all of those Marx and Engels's writings can now be accessed here.

Ackrill, J. (1997a), Essays On Plato And Aristotle (Oxford University Press).

--------, (1997b), 'Plato And The Copula: Sophist 251-259', in Ackrill (1997a), pp.80-92, Allen (1965), pp.207-18, and Vlastos (1971), pp.210-22.

Adelmann, F. (1975) (ed.), Philosophical Investigations In The USSR (Martinus Nijhoff).

Allen, R. (1965) (ed.), Studies In Plato's Metaphysics (Routledge).

Anscombe, G., and Geach, P. (1961), Three Philosophers (Blackwell).

Archer, M., Bhaskar, R., Collier, A., Lawson, T., and Norrie, A. (1998) (eds.), Critical Realism. Essential Readings (Routledge).

Ayer, A. (1959) (ed.), Logical Positivism (The Free Press).

Baker, G., and Hacker, P. (1988), Wittgenstein. Rules, Grammar And Necessity, Volume Two (Blackwell, 2^nd ed.).

--------, (2005), Wittgenstein: Understanding And Meaning. Volume One Of An Analytic Commentary On The Philosophical Investigations. Part One: Essays (Blackwell, 2^nd ed.).

Barnes, J. (1982), The Presocratic Philosophers (Routledge).

--------, (2001) (ed.), Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin Books).

--------, (2009), Truth, Etc. Six Lectures On Ancient Logic (Oxford University Press).

Beaney, M. (1996), Frege. Making Sense (Duckworth).

Bernstein, J. (2009), Quantum Leaps (Harvard University Press).

Bhaskar, R. (1993), Dialectic. The Pulse Of Freedom (Verso Books).

Bono, J. (1995), The Word Of God And The Language Of Men, Ficino To Descartes, Volume One: Interpreting Nature In Early Modern Science And Medicine (University of Wisconsin Press).

Brading, K., and Castellani, E. (2003) (eds.), Symmetries In Physics. Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge University Press).

Bray, M. (2017), Antifa. The Anti-Fascist Handbook (Melville House).

Brown, L. (1994), 'The Verb "To Be" In Greek Philosophy: Some Remarks', in Everson (1994), pp.212-36.

--------, (2003), 'Being In The Sophist: A Syntactical Enquiry', in Fine (2003b), pp.445-78.

Callinicos, A. (1978), The Logic Of Capital. Unpublished D.Phil. Thesis, Oxford University.

Castellani, E. (1998) (ed.), Interpreting Bodies. Classical And Quantum Objects In Modern Physics (Princeton University Press).

Caygill, H. (1995), A Kant Dictionary (Blackwell).

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Cornford, F. (1935), Plato's Theory Of Knowledge (Routledge).

--------, (1997), Plato's Cosmology. The Timaeus Of Plato (Hackett Publishing Company).

Cornforth, F. (1963), Dialectical Materialism. An Introduction. Volume Three: Theory Of Knowledge (Lawrence & Wishart, 3^rd ed.).

--------, (1976), Materialism And The Dialectical Method (Lawrence & Wishart, 5^th ed.). [A copy of the 1968 edition is available here.]

Cowley, F. (1991), Metaphysical Delusion (Prometheus Books).

Daston, L. (1994), 'Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, And The Prehistory Of Objectivity', in Megill (1994), pp.37-63.

Daston, L., and Galison, P. (2007), Objectivity (Zone Books).

Davidson, D. (2005), Truth And Predication (MIT Press).

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Dobbs, B. (2002), The Janus Face Of Genius: The Role Of Alchemy In Newton's Thought (Cambridge University Press).

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--------, (1981b), The Interpretation Of Frege's Philosophy (Duckworth).

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--------, (2002), The Power Of Negativity. Selected Writings On The Dialectic In Hegel And Marx (Lexington Books).

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Engels, F. (1888), Ludwig Feuerbach And The End Of Classical German Philosophy, reprinted in Marx and Engels (1968), pp.584-622.

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Fann, K. (1978) (ed.), Wittgenstein: The Man And His Philosophy (Harvester Press).

Fine, G. (1977), 'Plato On Naming' Philosophical Quarterly 27, pp.289-301; reprinted in Fine (2003a), pp.117-31.

--------, (2003a), Plato On Knowledge And Forms (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2003b) (ed.), Plato 1: Metaphysics And Epistemology (Oxford University Press).

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Frede, M. (1992), 'Plato's Sophist On False Statements', in Kraut (1992), pp.397-424.

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French, S., and Bigaj, T. (2024), 'Identity And Individuality In Quantum Theory', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta (Spring 2024 Edition).

French, S., and Krause, D. (2006), Identity In Physics: A Historical, Philosophical And Formal Analysis (Oxford University Press).

Garber, D., and Ayers, M. (1998) (eds.), Cambridge History Of 17^th Century Philosophy, Two Volumes (Cambridge University Press).

Gaskin, R. (2008), The Unity Of The Proposition (Oxford University Press).

Geach, P. (1961), 'Frege', in Anscombe and Geach (1961), pp.142-62.

--------, (1968), Reference And Generality (Cornell University Press, 2^nd ed.). [This links to the 3^rd (1980) edition.]

--------, (1969a), God And The Soul (Routledge).

--------, (1969b), 'Form And Existence', in Geach (1969a), pp.42-64.

--------, (1972a), Logic Matters (Blackwell).

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--------, (1972c), 'Why Sentences Are Not Names', Studia Semiotyczna 3, pp.13-21.

--------, (1979), Truth, Love And Immortality. An Introduction To McTaggart's Philosophy (University of California Press).

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George, R., and Van Evra, J. (2006), 'The Rise Of Modern Logic', in Jacquette (2006), pp.35-48.

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Gregorios, P. (2002) (ed.), Neoplatonism And Indian Philosophy (State University of New York Press).

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Greene, B. (1999), The Elegant Universe (Jonathan Cape).

--------, (2004), The Fabric Of The Cosmos. Space, Time And The Texture Of Reality (Allen Lane).

Guthrie, W. (1978), A History Of Greek Philosophy. Volume II, The Presocratic Tradition From Parmenides To Democritus (Cambridge University Press).

--------, (1986a), A History Of Greek Philosophy. Volume IV, Plato: The Man And His Dialogues (Cambridge University Press).

--------, (1986b), A History Of Greek Philosophy. Volume V: The Later Plato And The Academy (Cambridge University Press).

Hacker, P. (2000), Wittgenstein. Mind And Will. Volume Four, Part One (Blackwell, 2^nd ed.).

Hacking, I. (1975), Why Does Language Matter To Philosophy? (Cambridge University Press).

Hanna, P., and Harrison, B. (2004), Word And World. Practice And The Foundations Of Language (Cambridge University Press).

Harrison, B. (1979), An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Language (Macmillan).

Havelock, E. (1983), 'The Linguistic Task Of The Presocratics', in Robb (1982), pp.7-82.

Healy, G. (1990), Materialist Dialectics And The Political Revolution (Marxist Publishing Collective).

Hegel, G. (1971), Philosophy Of Mind, translated by William Wallace and A V Miller (Oxford University Press).

--------, (1975), Logic, translated by William Wallace (Oxford University Press, 3^rd ed.).

--------, (1995a), Lectures On The History Of Philosophy. Volume One: Greek Philosophy To Plato, translated by E. S. Haldane (University of Nebraska Press).

--------, (1995b), Lectures On The History Of Philosophy. Volume Three: Medieval And Modern Philosophy, translated by E. S. Haldane and F. Simson (University of Nebraska Press).

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James, C. (1980), Notes On Dialectics (Allison & Busby). [Selections of Part 2 have been reproduced here.]

Kahn, C. (1994), Anaximander And the Origin Of Greek Cosmology (Hackett Publishing)

--------, (2003), The Verb 'Be' In Ancient Greek (Hackett Publishing).

Kant, I. (1953), Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able To Present Itself As A Science (Manchester University Press). [This links to a PDF.]

Kenny, A. (1995), Frege (Penguin Books).

--------, (2006), A New History Of Western Philosophy, Volume Three: The Rise Of Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press).

Kirk, G., Raven, J., and Schofield, M. (1999), The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press, 2^nd ed.)

Klima, G. (No Date), 'The Essentialist Nominalism Of Jean Buridan'. [This links to a PDF.]

Kneale, K., and Kneale, M. (1962), The Development Of Logic (Oxford University Press).

Knuuttila, S., and Hintikka, J. (1986) (eds.), The Logic Of Being. Historical Studies (Reidel).

Koyré, A. (1957), From The Closed World To The Infinite Universe (The John Hopkins University Press).

--------, (1968), Newtonian Studies (University of Chicago Press).

Kraut, M. (1992) (ed.) The Cambridge Companion To Plato (Cambridge University Press).

Ladyman, J., and Bigaj, T. (2010), 'The Principle Of The Identity Of Indiscernibles And Quantum Mechanics', Philosophy of Science 77, 1, pp.117-36.

Lawler, J. (1982), 'Hegel On Logical And Dialectical Contradictions, And Misinterpretations From Bertrand Russell To Lucio Colletti', in Marquit, Moran, and Truitt (1982), pp.11-44.

Lazerowitz, M., and Ambrose, A. (1976), Philosophical Theories (Mouton).

Lemmon, E. (1993), Beginning Logic (Chapman & Hall, 2^nd ed.).

Lepore, E., and Smith, B. (2006) (eds.), The Oxford Handbook Of Philosophy Of Language (Oxford University Press).

Lenin, V. (1921), 'Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation And The Mistakes Of Comrades Trotsky And Bukharin', reprinted in Lenin (1980), pp.70-106.

--------, (1947), What Is To Be Done? (Progress Publishers).

--------, (1961), Philosophical Notebooks Collected Works Volume 38 (Progress Publishers).

--------, (1972), Materialism And Empirio-Criticism (Foreign Languages Press).

--------, (1980), On The Question Of Dialectics (Progress Publishers).

Linsky, L. (1977), Names And Descriptions (University of Chicago Press).

Livio, M. (2009), Is God A Mathematician? (Simon & Schuster).

Lloyd, G. (1971), Polarity And Analogy. Two Types Of Argument In Early Greek Thought (Cambridge University Press).

Long, P. (1984), 'Universals: Logic And Metaphor', in Dilman (1984), pp.271-89; reprinted in Long (2001), pp.93-106.

--------, (2001), Logic, Form And Grammar (Routledge).

Lovejoy, A. (1964), The Great Chain Of Being (Harvard University Press). [This links to a PDF.]

Lowe, E. (2006), 'Take A Seat, Then Consider This Simple Sentence', Times Higher Education Supplement, 07/04/06.

MacBride, F. (2006), 'Predicate Reference', in Lepore and Smith (2006), pp.422-75.

Magee, G. (2008), Hegel And The Hermetic Tradition (Cornell University Press). [The Introduction to this book can be accessed here.]

Malcolm, N. (2001), Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (Oxford University Press, 2^nd ed.).

Mandel, E. (1976), 'Introduction' to Marx (1976), pp.11-86.

Marquit, E., Moran, P., and Truitt, W. (1982) (eds.), Dialectical Contradictions And Contemporary Marxist Discussions. Studies in Marxism Volume Ten (Marxist Educational Press).

Mates, B. (1972), Elementary Logic (Oxford University Press).

--------, (1979), 'Identity And Predication In Plato', Phronesis 24, pp.211-29, reprinted in Knuuttila and Hintikka (1986), pp.29-47.

Marcuse, H. (1968), One Dimensional Man (Abacus Books).

Marx, K. (1968), Wage Labour And Capital, in Marx and Engels (1968), pp.64-93.

--------, (1973), Grundrisse (Penguin Books).

--------, (1975a), Early Writings (Penguin Books).

--------, (1975b), Economical And Philosophical Manuscripts, in Marx (1975a), pp.279-400.

--------, (1975c), A Contribution To The Critique Of Hegel's Philosophy Of Right, in Marx (1975a), pp.243-57.

--------, (1976), Capital Volume 1 (Penguin Books).

--------, (1978), The Poverty Of Philosophy (Foreign Languages Press).

--------, (1981), Capital Volume 3 (Penguin Books).

--------, (1986), Grundrisse Marx & Engels Collected Work (henceforth, MECW) Volume 28 (Lawrence & Wishart). [This links to a PDF.]

--------, (1996), Capital Volume 1, MECW Volume 35 (Lawrence & Wishart).

Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1968), Selected Works In One Volume (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (1970), The German Ideology, Students Edition, edited by Chris Arthur (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (1975a), The Holy Family, MECW Volume 4, pp.3-211 (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (1975b), Selected Correspondence (Progress Publishers, 3^rd ed.).

--------, (1976), The German Ideology, MECW Volume 5 (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (1987), MECW Volume 25 (Lawrence & Wishart).

--------, (2004), MECW Volume 50 (Lawrence & Wishart).

McCumber, J. (1993), The Company Of Words. Hegel, Language, And Systematic Philosophy (Northwestern University Press).

McDowell, J. (1982), 'Falsehood And Not-Being In Plato's Sophist', in Schofield and Nussbaum (1982), pp.115-34.

McGinn, M. (2001), 'Saying And Showing And The Continuity Of Wittgenstein's Thought', Harvard Review of Philosophy IX, pp.24-36.

McNally, D. (2001), Bodies Of Meaning. Studies On Language, Labor, And Liberation (State University of New York Press).

Megill, A. (1994) (ed.), Rethinking Objectivity (Duke University Press).

Melamed, Y. (2015), '"Omnis Determinatio Est Negatio": Determination, Negation, And Self-Negation In Spinoza, Kant, And Hegel', in Förster and Melamed (2015), pp.175-96. [A PDF of this article can be downloaded from the Academia website, after registration.]

Mendelson, E. (2009), Introduction To Mathematical Logic (Chapman & Hall, 5^th ed.).

Mepham, J., and Ruben, D-H. (1979) (eds.), Issues In Marxist Philosophy. Volume One: Dialectics And Method (Harvester).

Mercer, C. (2001), Leibniz's Metaphysics. Its Origins And Development (Cambridge University Press).

Milton, J. (1981), 'The Origin And Development Of The Concept Of The "Laws Of Nature"', Archives Europeénes De Sociologie 22, pp.173-95.

--------, (1998), 'Laws Of Nature', in Garber and Ayers, Volume One (1998), pp.680-701.

Modrak, D. (2001), Aristotle's Theory Of Language And Meaning (Cambridge University Press).

Mourelatos, P. (2008), The Route Of Parmenides (Parmenides Publishing. Revised and expanded edition.).

Needham, J. (1951a), 'Human Laws And Laws Of Nature In China And The West (1)', Journal of the History of Ideas 12, 1, pp.3-32; revised version reprinted in Needham (1979), pp.299-331.

--------, (1951b), 'Human Laws And Laws Of Nature In China And The West (2)', Journal of the History of Ideas 12, 2, pp.194-230; revised version reprinted in Needham (1979), pp.299-331.

--------, (1979), The Grand Titration. Science And Society In East And West (University of Toronto Press).

Noonan, H. (2001), Frege. A Critical Introduction (Polity Press).

Novack, G. (1965), The Origins Of Materialism (Pathfinder Press).

--------, (1971), An Introduction To The Logic Of Marxism (Pathfinder Press, 5^th ed.).

Oliver, A. (2010), What Is A Predicate?, in Potter and Ricketts (2010), pp.118-48. [This links to a PDF.]

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Owen, G. (1966), 'The Platonism Of Aristotle', Proceedings of the British Academy 51, pp.125-50; reprinted in Owen (1986), pp.200-20.

--------, (1971), 'Plato On Not-Being', in Vlastos (1971), pp.223-67, Owen (1986), pp.104-37, and Fine (2003b), pp.416-54.

--------, (1986), Logic, Science And Dialectic. Collected Papers In Greek Philosophy (Duckworth).

Pelletier, F. (1990), Parmenides, Plato And The Semantics Of Not-Being (Harvard University Press).

Penrose, R. (1989), The Emperor's New Mind. Concerning Computers, Minds, And The Laws Of Physics (Vintage Books).

--------, (1995), Shadows Of The Mind (Vintage Books).

--------, (2005), The Road To Reality. A Complete Guide To The Laws Of The Universe (Vintage Books).

--------, (2011), Cycles Of Time. An Extraordinary New View Of The Universe (Vintage Books).

Peters E. (1967), Greek Philosophical Terms. A Historical Lexicon (New York University Press).

Pippin, R. (1978), 'Hegel's Metaphysics And The Problem Of Contradiction', Journal of the History of Philosophy 16, pp.301-12; reprinted in Stewart (1996), pp.239-52.

Pitcher, G. (1978), 'Wittgenstein, Nonsense And Lewis Carroll', in Fann (1978), pp.315-35.

Plato, (1997a), Complete Works, edited by John Cooper (Hackett Publishing).

--------, (1997b), Sophist, in Plato (1997a), pp.235-93.

--------, (1997c), Timaeus, in Plato (1997a), pp.1224-91.

Plekhanov, G. (1956), The Development Of The Monist View Of History (Progress Publishers). [This is reprinted in Plekhanov (1974), pp.480-737.]

--------, (1974), Selected Philosophical Works, Volume One (Progress Publishers, 2^nd ed.).

Potter, M., and Ricketts, T. (2010) (eds.), The Cambridge Companion To Frege (Cambridge University Press).

Redding, P. (2007), Analytic Philosophy And the Return Of Hegelian Thought (Cambridge University Press).

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Robb, K. (1983) (ed.), Language And Thought In Early Greek Philosophy (Monist Library of Philosophy).

Rosenthal, J. (1998), The Myth Of Dialectics (Macmillan).

Ruby, J. (1986), 'The Origins Of Scientific Law', Journal of the History of Ideas 47, pp.341-59; reprinted in Weinert (1995), pp.289-315.

Russell, B. (1937), The Principles Of Mathematics (George Allen & Unwin, 2^nd ed.). [This links to a PDF of the Routledge 2010 edition.]

--------, (1961), History Of Western Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin).

Ryle, G. (1949), 'A Review Of Meaning And Necessity By Rudolf Carnap', Philosophy 24, pp.69-76, reprinted as 'Discussion Of Rudolf Carnap: Meaning And Necessity' in Ryle (1971a), pp.225-35.

--------, (1959), 'Philosophical Arguments', in Ayer (1959), pp.327-44, reprinted in Ryle (1971b), pp.194-211.

--------, (1971a), Collected Papers Volume One: Critical Essays (Barnes & Noble Inc.).

--------, (1971b), Collected Papers Volume Two: Collected Essays 1929-1968 (Barnes & Noble Inc.).

Sayer, A. (1981), 'Abstraction: A Realist Interpretation', Radical Philosophy 28, Summer 1981, pp.6-15; reprinted in Archer, et al (1998), pp.120-43.

--------, (1992), Method In Social Science. A Realist Approach (Routledge, 2^nd ed.).

--------, (2010), Method In Social Science. A Realist Approach (Routledge, 2^nd Revised ed.).

Sayer, D. (1987), The Violence Of Abstraction (Blackwell). [Chapters Two and Three can be accessed here and here.]

Schofield, M., and Nussbaum, M. (1982) (eds.), Language And Logos. Studies In Ancient Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press).

Schumm, G. (1979), A Teaching Companion To Lemmon's Beginning Logic (Hackett Publishing).

Seligman, P. (1962), The Apeiron Of Anaximander. A Study In The Origin And Function Of Metaphysical Ideas (The Athlone Press).

Shanker, S. (1987), Wittgenstein And The Turning-Point In The Philosophy Of Mathematics (State University of New York Press).

Slaughter, C. (1963), Lenin On Dialectics (New Park Publications).

Smith, R. (2019), 'Aristotle's Logic', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta (Summer 2019 Edition).

Spirkin, A. (1983), Dialectical Materialism (Progress Publishers).

Stewart, J. (1996) (ed.), The Hegel Myths And Legends (Northwestern University Press).

Stove, D. (1991), The Plato Cult And Other Philosophical Follies (Blackwell).

Swartz, N. (1985), The Concept Of A Physical Law (Cambridge University Press).

--------, (2009), 'Laws Of Nature', Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Sweezy, P. (1970), The Theory Of Capitalist Development (Monthly Review Press). [This links to a PDF.]

Tegmark, M. (2008), 'The Mathematical Universe', Foundations of Physics

--------, (2015). Our Mathematical Universe. My Quest For The Ultimate Nature Of Reality (Penguin Books).

Thalheimer, A. (1936), Introduction To Dialectical Materialism. The Marxist World-View (Covici Friede Publishers).

Thomas, K. (1973), Religion And The Decline Of Magic (Penguin Books).

Trotsky, L. (1971), In Defense Of Marxism (New Park Publications).

--------, (1973), Problems Of Everyday Life (Monad Press).

--------, (1986), Notebooks 1933-35 (Columbia University Press). [Parts of this book can be accessed here (this links to a PDF).]

Tugendhat, E. (1982), Traditional And Analytic Philosophy (Cambridge University Press).

Urmson, J (1990), The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary ( Duckworth).

Vlastos, G. (1971) (ed.), Plato. A Collection Of Critical Essays. Volume One: Metaphysics And Epistemology (Doubleday Anchor).

Wallis, R. (1972), NeoPlatonism (Charles Scribner's Sons).

Weiner, J. (1990), Frege In Perspective (Cornell University Press).

--------, (1999), Frege (Oxford University Press).

--------, (2004), Frege Explained. From Arithmetic To Analytic Philosophy (Open Court). [This is a revised edition of Weiner (1999).]

Weinert, F. (1995) (ed.), Laws Of Nature: Essays On The Philosophical, Scientific And Historical Dimensions (Walter de Gruyter).

White, J. (1996), Karl Marx And The Intellectual Origins Of Dialectical Materialism (Macmillan).

Wittgenstein, L. (1958), Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (Blackwell, 2^nd ed.). [This links to a PDF.]

--------, (1974), Philosophical Grammar, translated by Anthony Kenny (Blackwell).

--------, (2009), Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, revised by Peter Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Blackwell, 4^th ed.).

Wolcher, L. (1999), 'A New And Superior Theory Of Ideology?', The Independent Review 4, 2, pp.291-302. [This is available here as a PDF.]

Woods, A., and Grant, T. (1995/2007), Reason In Revolt. Marxism And Modern Science (Wellred Publications, I^st/2^nd edition). [The on-line version now appears to be the second edition.]

Zilsel, E. (1942), 'The Genesis Of The Concept Of Physical Law', Philosophical Review 51, pp.245-67; reprinted in Zilsel (2000), pp.96-122.

--------, (2000), The Social Origins Of Modern Science (Kluwer Academic Press).

Zizek, S. (2012), Less Than Nothing: Hegel And The Shadow Of Dialectical Materialism (Verso). [This links to a PDF.]

--------, (2015), Absolute Recoil. Toward A New Foundation Of Dialectical Materialism (Verso).

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