Internet Explorer 11 will no longer play the videos I have
embedded below. As far as I can tell, they play as intended in other browsers.
However, if you have
Privacy Badger [PB] installed, they won't play in Google Chrome unless you
disable PB for this site.
[Having said that,
I have just discovered that they will play in IE11 if you have
upgraded to Windows 10.
That is still the case with Windows 11, as far as I can determine. It looks like the problem
was with Windows 7 and earlier versions of that operating system.]
If you are using Internet Explorer 10 (or later), you might find some of the
links I have used won't work properly unless you switch to 'Compatibility View'
(in the Tools Menu); for IE11 select 'Compatibility View Settings' and add this
site (anti-dialectics.co.uk). Microsoft's browser,
Edge, automatically
renders these links compatible; Windows 10 and 11 do likewise.
However, if you are using Windows 10
and 11, IE11 and Edge
unfortunately appear to colour these links somewhat erratically. They are meant
to be mid-blue, but those two browsers
render them intermittently light blue, yellow, purple and even red!
It looks like Firefox and Chrome reproduce them correctly.
Unfortunately, several browsers also
underline these links erratically. Many are underscored boldly in black, others
in light blue! They are all meant to be underlined in the same colour as the
link itself.
Finally, if you're viewing this
with Mozilla Firefox, you might not be able to read all the symbols I have
used. Mozilla
sometimes replaces them with an "º'.
There are no such problems with Chrome, Edge or Internet Explorer, as far as I can
determine.
I don't know if that is
the case with other browsers.
This Second Part of Essay Three
has perhaps been written and re-written more times than any
other at this site (in fact well over eighty times -- which number is no
exaggeration!). That is because several sub-sections contained rather too many
mixed metaphors and stylistic monstrosities, and that was because I
originally wanted to experiment with a new way of covering a major area in the
History of Philosophy that has been
analysed and debated countless times over the last 2400 years by Traditional
Theorists -- the so-called 'Problem
of Universals' and 'the process of abstraction'.
Fortunately, as a result of those re-edits, I have managed to eliminate or tone down many
of these rhetorical
flourishes and mixed metaphors, but the
material below still requires a several more revisions before I will be completely happy with
the final version.
Hence, the reader's patience is required here perhaps more than elsewhere at
this site. Having said that, those familiar with the history of these issues will perhaps find the novel approach adopted here
rather refreshing -- and, with luck, illuminating.
Added
on Edit: October 2024: I have just spent the last seven months completely
re-structuring and re-writing this Essay (again(!)), which means I have
eliminated even more of the stylistic monstrosities referred to earlier. I have also added
a brief explanation why many of the
remaining metaphors and other 'colourful images' were originally chosen and have been left
in.
[DM = Dialectical
Materialism/Materialist, depending on the context.]
Some
readers might wonder why I have quoted extensively from a wide variety of
DM-sources throughout these Essays. In fact, a good 10-20% of the material in
many of them is comprised of just such
quotations. Apologies
are therefore owed in advance for the length and
extremely repetitive nature of most of these quoted passages. The
reason for their inclusion is that long experience has taught me that
Dialectical Marxists simply refuse to accept that the their own classicists
-- e.g., Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky and Mao -- alongside countless 'lesser' DM-theorists, actually said the things
attributed to them. That isespecially so after they are confronted
with the absurd consequences that flow from this theory -- unless they are shown chapter and verse
and in extensive detail. In debate with them, when I cite or quote only one or two passages in
support of what I allege, they simply brush them off as a "outliers"
or as "untypical". Indeed, in the
absence ofdozens of proof texts drawn from many such sources they tend to regard anything that a
particular theorist had to say -- regardless of whether they were one of the
aforementioned classicists -- as either "far too crude",
"unrepresentative" or even(!) unreliable. Failing that, they
often complain that any such quotes have been "taken out of context".
Many in fact object since -- surprising and sad though
this is to say --, they are largely ignorant of their own theory or they
simply haven't read the DM-literature with due care,or at all!
The only way to counter such attempts to deflect, reject and deny is to quote
DM-material frequentlyandat length.
In addition,
because of the highly sectarianand partisan nature of Dialectical Marxism, I have to quote a
wide range of DM-texts from across the entire spectrum.
Trotskyists object if I quote Stalin
or Mao; Maoists and Stalinists complain if I reference Trotsky -- or even
if I cite "Brezhnev era revisionists".
Non-Leninist Marxists will bemoan the fact that I haven't confined my remarks
to what Marx or Hegel had to say, advising me to ignore the confused or even
"simplistic" ideas expressed by Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao
and Trotsky! This means I often have
to quote the lot!
That itself has had the
benefit of showing how much and to what extent they (the classicists and
subsequent epigones) all largely agree with each other in the end -- at least
with respect to DM!
Several others have complained about the number of
links I have added to these Essays, because they say it makes them very difficult
to read. Of course, DM-supporters can hardly grumble about that since they
believe everything is interconnected, which must surely apply to
Essays that attempt to debunk that
very idea. However, to those who find that does make these Essays
difficult to read I say this: ignore the links(!) -- unless, of course, you want to access
further supporting evidence and argument related to a particular point, or a
specific
topic fires your interest.
Still others wonder why I have linked to familiar
subjects and topics that are part of common knowledge (such as the names of
recent US Presidents, UK Prime Ministers, the names of rivers and mountains, the titles of
popular films or the definition of certain words
in common usage). I have done so for the following reason: my Essays
are read all over the world and by people from all 'walks of life', so I can't
assume that something which is part of common knowledge in 'the west' is equally
well-known across the planet -- or, indeed, by those who haven't had the benefit
of the sort of education that is generally available in the 'advanced economies',
or any at
all. Many of my readers aren't native English speakers, either, so any help I can give them
I will continue to provide.
Finally on this specific topic, several of the aforementioned links
connect to
web-pages that regularly change their
URLs, or which even vanish from the
Internet altogether. While I try to update them when it becomes apparent
that they have changed or have disappeared, I can't possibly keep on top of
this all the time. I would greatly appreciate it, therefore, if readers
informed me
of any dead or incorrect links they happen to notice. In general, links to 'Haloscan'
no longer seem to work, so readers needn't tell me about them! Links to
RevForum, RevLeft, Socialist Unity and The North Star also appear to have died.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As is the case
with all my Essays,
nothing here should be read as an attack
either on Historical Materialism [HM] -- a scientific theory I fully accept --, or,
indeed,
on revolutionary socialism itself. I remain as committed to the self-emancipation of the
working class and the dictatorship of the proletariat as I was when I first became a revolutionary
over thirty-five years ago.
The
difference between DM and HM, as I see it, is explained
here.
It is also important to add that
phrases like "ruling-class
theory", "ruling-class view of reality", "ruling-class
thought-form", and "ruling-class ideology" (etc.), used at this site in connection with
Traditional Philosophy and DM, aren't meant to
suggest that all or even most members of various ruling-classes
invented these ways of thinking or of
seeing the world (although some of them did -- for example,
Heraclitus,
Plato,
Cicero
and
Marcus Aurelius).
They are intended to
highlight theories (or "ruling ideas") that are conducive to, or which rationalise, the
interests of the various ruling-classes history has inflicted on humanity, whoever invents them.
Up until
recently this dogmatic approach to
'knowledge' had almost invariably been promoted by thinkers who
either relied on ruling-class patronage, or who, in one capacity or another, helped run
the system
for the elite.**
However, that will become the main topic of Parts Two and Three of Essay Twelve
(when they are published); until then, readers are
directed
here,
here and
here for
further
details.
[**How
and why that accusation applies to Dialectical Marxists will, of course, be explained in the other Essays
published at this site (especially
here,
here
and here).
In addition to the three links in the previous paragraph, I have summarised the
argument in its support -- but in this instance with absolute beginners in mind
--,
here.]
It is also worth noting that at least a third of my case against DM in this
Essay has been
relegated to the
End Notes
and the Appendices.
Indeed, much of the supporting evidence is to
be found there. That approach has been adopted in order to allow the main body of the Essay to flow a
little more smoothly. This means that readers who want fully to evaluate my case
against DM should consult that material, too. In many cases, I have added
numerous qualifications and considerably more supporting evidence to what I have
said in the main body. In addition, I have raised several objections (some
obvious, many not -- and some that will doubtless have occurred to the reader) to my own
arguments and accusations, which I have then answered.
[I have explained why I structured this site that way in
Essay One.]
If readers skip this material, then my answers to any
objections or qualms they might have will be missed, as will the extra supporting
evidence
and the many qualifications I have also added. Since I have been
debating this theory with comrades for over thirty years, I have heard all the
objections there are!
[Most of the on-line debates have been listed
here.
(Unfortunately, many of the links on that page have died!)]
Two final
points: First, readers will soon notice that in what follows the word "reality"
has often been put in 'scare' quotes. That doesn't
mean I think the world doesn't exist, or that everything is just an 'illusion',
a 'simulation' or even that language actually constructs the
world. I am in fact indirectly highlighting the fact that I object to the
philosophical use of this word. I explain why that is so
here and
here -- but in more detail in Essay
Twelve Part One.
Second,
throughout this site I have used the term "Dialectical Marxism" in order to
distinguish Marxism from the 'dialectical aberration' that has completely dominated
revolutionary socialism for over 150 years. Why I distance Marx himself from
this toxic mutation has been explained
here and
here. And why this
Hegelianised Hybrid (but not Marxism itself) has been an abject failure for well over
a century is explained here and
here. [That argument has been
summarised
here
and here.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As of March 2024, this Essay was just over 124,500 words long (that figure is
now way out-of-date!); a much shorter summary of some of its main ideas can be
accessed
here.
The
material presented below does not represent my final view of any of the
issues raised; it is merely 'work in progress'.
[Latest Update: 14/08/2024.]
In fact, as noted at the top
the page, this Essay is being updated continually.
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!
This Second Part of Essay Three will continue where Part One left
off, focusing on four interrelated topics:
(i)
Traditional 'philosophical'
attempts
to solve the 'problem of generality',
which involve, inter alia,
the invention of 'Universals',
'Forms', 'Abstract
Ideas', 'Categories', 'Concepts' and 'Essences' (etc.), also covered in Part One;
(ii) The so-called 'process of abstraction'
that supposedly helped create/construct one of more of the above items;
(iii) Thenegative effect this has had on Dialectical
Marxism;
(iv) The intimate connection that exists between
the above three topics and the distinction
often drawn between "appearance" and "essence"/"reality";
and,
(v) How
this is connected with theories concerning 'the rational order of reality'.
However, it is important to state
up front that in what follows I am neither asserting nor denying
there is a 'rational order to the universe' (since both would amount
to the promotion of a metaphysical theory). That is because I
reject all forms of Metaphysics; what that is so is set out in Essay Twelve
Part One (summarised
here
and
here). What is being questioned is
an entire tradition in Metaphysics that attempts to explain the
world along lines first suggested (in 'the west') by Ancient Greek
theorists
(principally, Plato and Aristotle) -- i.e., that this 'rational order' can
be accounted for by an appeal to 'concepts' generated by what came to be known as the 'process of abstraction'.
But first, we need to outline several traditional
attempts to explain the origin and nature of generality, typically
expressed by the use of
common nouns and
ordinary adjectives.01
[Whether this also involved verbs and adverbs will
be put to one side for now. (Verbs
were partially covered in Part One.) However, in this area of Traditional
Philosophy and Logic it is all too easy to get lost in the weeds. On
that, see Note 01 (link above).]
Part Oneof this Essay
managed to show that, beyond a few superficial
differences, Dialectical Marxists have latched onto a thoroughly traditional
interpretation of the nature and origin of 'abstract general ideas' (expressed
by sub-categories of the aforementioned
common nouns and adjectives). That Essay
also revealed how the 'philosophical
problem' underlying this approach to 'knowledge' arose out of a series of ideologically-motivated, logical and
grammatical moves initiated by Ancient Greek, ruling-class theorists. This
meant all such words were transformed into Proper Nouns, which then
operated as the Proper Names of
Abstract
Particulars [APs], thus destroying generality.
Fortunately or
unfortunately, that vitiated the entire project, in which fractured state it
remains to this day.
Among other things,
this Second Part of Essay Three will further underline
how
conservative and corrosive this approach to knowledge is,
especially in the way it has negatively impacted on theories developed by Dialectical Marxists. Several
other Essays at this site will further explore these (disastrous) implications.
A
comprehensive examination of the differences between
Rationalist and
Empiricist
Epistemologies is way beyond the scope of this Essay, and this site.
But, since DM-theorists share with both of these major strands in Traditional
Thought much common ground concerning the connection that supposedly exists
between the 'process of abstraction' and our knowledge of the world, a detailed
analysis of how dialecticians have attempted to comprehend this 'process'
and its (imagined) results is central to the criticisms of Dialectical Marxism
advanced at this site.
[Also
largely omitted from this Part of Essay Three will be an analysis of the
difference between
Realist and Conceptualist theories of the
mode of signification (i.e., the
semantic status and
role) of general terms. That topic will be covered more extensively in Essay
Twelve Part Four.
Nominalism will be completely ignored -- mainly because it has had
zero influence on Dialectical Marxism.]
In rather
broad (and slightly misleading) terms, the main difference between the
above two main intellectual currents (in relation to the above remarks) is that
(a) Rationalists tended to view the 'process of
abstraction' in terms of recurrence, while, (b)
Empiricists did so it in terms of resemblance. In addition, they both (c)
Interpreted the 'process of abstraction' itself significantly differently. [More
about that presently.]
To put this
at its crudest, for something to recur it has to, (i) Exist
or be present before it is cognised (Realism), or it has to be an (ii)
Integral component in the cognitive process itself, such that
the latter couldn't take place without it (Conceptualism). By way of
contrast, since resemblance is relational (e.g., A resembles B
in such and such a respect), for some sort of resemblance to be
registered or recognised, (iii) Theprocess itself is
what creates, constructs or simply registers the said relation between the
cognised relata. Plainly, that means the said resemblance typically
doesn't need to existprior to the relevant 'cognitive act'. [Or so
an anti-Realist might claim. Realists and some Conceptualists will, of course,
resist that conclusion.]
As noted
above, these distinctions are rather crude, and as we will see throughout the
history of Traditional Thought devoted to this question there has been much
'cross-pollination' between the above two main approaches. Roughly speaking
Rationalists tend to adopt one or other of approaches (a)-(i)
and (a)-(ii), while Empiricists opt for some form of
(b)-(iii). But, as also noted earlier, this entire area of
Traditional Thought is a veritable briar patch, so the material that
follows in this Essay has had to be simplified considerably -- and that is
partly because Dialectical Marxists themselves have adopted highly simplified
theories in this area.
[Having said
that, this is only to be expected. Marxists in general have been more interested
in changing the world than in disappearing down a philosophical rabbit hole.
Revolutionary theory isn't, nor should it be, the equivalent of a post-doctoral
seminar on the scholastic distinctions that can be drawn in this area (some of
which were briefly outlined in Note 01).
The same is the case with the Essays published at this site. -- except
where lack of attention to detail has (demonstrably) led dialecticians astray.
Whenever that happens it will be pointed out. On that see the next few
paragraphs.]
As we will
discover DM-theorists have by-and-large conflated approaches (a)
and (b), which means they have ended up with a theory
that is as muddled as it is unworkable -- at any level. But, they aren't
alone in this, either; many Traditional Theorists have also conflate (a) and (b)
to a greater or lesser extent. As with much else in Traditional Thought,
systematic confusion like this has arisen directly out of a radically
distorted use of language that was already vague and ambiguous before
it was latched onto.
[Indeed,
as Marx himself pointed out.
Incidentally, the above remarks aren't meant to isn't to disparage ordinary
language; as will be argued in Essay Twelve Part Seven, vagueness and ambiguity
turn out to be two of the vernacular's many strengths. Failure to take this
aspect of language into account had led Philosophers astray for well over two
thousand years. One particularly notorious example of this -- the alleged
'contradictory nature of motion' -- has been examined in detail in
Essay Five.]
Also in what
follows, Rationalist and Empiricist 'solutions' to this pseudoproblem
have been painted in rather broad brushstrokes (since, once again, this Essay
isn't meant to be an exhaustive study of this major wrong turn in the
intellectual history of our species; it is merely a means to a specific end; the
complete demolition of DM-Epistemology).
[Why this is a pseudoproblem was explained in
Part One (on that, see for example Note 39 and Note 40), but it will
be covered again from a different angle in what follows.]
As noted
earlier, for ideological reasons (to be explored further below and in
subsequent Essays), Ancient Greek
Metaphysicians decided that our ability to express generality in language
represented a 'philosophical problem' of some sort. As a result, they initiated
what can only be described as aninterminable wild goose chase
that involved theorists across many centuries in a futile attempt
to explain the
origin, scope and nature
of generality itself -- which, more mundanely, amounted to a
distorted analysis of the
mode of signification of common nouns and ordinary adjectives,
as they operate in
indicative sentences. This entire topic was regarded as especially important
in view of the key role such diminutive words occupied in the formation
and growth of knowledge (both scientific and 'philosophical').
As with much
of 'Western Philosophy' this originated in Ancient Greece in the work of Plato:
"The essence of the theory of Ideas lay in the
conscious recognition of the fact that there is a class of entities, for which
the best name is probably 'universals', that are entirely different from
sensible things. Any use of language involves the recognition, either
conscious or unconscious, of the fact that there are such entities; for every
word used, except proper names -- every abstract noun, every general noun, every
adjective, every verb, even every pronoun and every preposition -- is a name for
something of which there are or may be instances. The first step towards the
conscious recognition of this class of entities was, if we may believe
Aristotle, taken by Socrates when he concentrated on the search for definitions;
to ask for the meaning of a general word was a step from the mere use of such
a word towards the recognition of universals as a distinct class of entities.
But Socrates seems to have been interested in the defining of one thing at a
time, and not to have seen the general significance of what he was doing;
Plato did see that what was common to all searches for definitions was the
assumption that there are such things as universals. He saw, too, that the
objective difference between universals and particulars answers to the
subjective difference between science and sense-perception. The senses present
to us a world of particular events in which qualities are present almost
inextricably conjoined and confused; if we were left to the senses alone we
should never be able to disentangle them and reach a clear understanding of the
structure of the world. But in reason we have a faculty by which we can
grasp universals in their pure form and to some extent see the relations that
necessarily exist between them." [Ross (1961), p.225. Bold emphases added.]
Rationalist Philosophers
tend to argue
that general words or 'concepts' were either anterior to experience
or they were 'applied'
to 'particulars' encountered in experience, which was itself based on,
or was the result of, some form of 'rational cognition' or 'innate intuition'. 'Particulars'
encountered in experience (such a cat, a dog, or a table) were thus understood
as individual objects of a certain kind (spoken about using so-called
'thing words' -- substantivals -- "cat",
"dog" or "table"), whose generality was either,
(A) The product of 'pure thought', (B) Pre-installed in the 'mind', or (C)
'Apprehended' in some way during experience. [Something similar, but far
less fundamental, for want of a better term, was the case with property
words (such as "red", "hard", or "hot"), and relational expressions (such as
"taller", "slower", and "more than").] As such, 'cognitive acts' like this enabled, organised or made experience
possible. The
'Concepts', 'Categories' and 'Ideas' implicated in this were supposed to
'represent', 'reflect' or even 'reveal' the 'formal', 'constitutive' or
'essential' properties belonging to each particular --, or they did so with
respect to their more ordinary properties and relations (also known as
'accidents'). The former of these made each particular what it was and not something
else. So, if some property, F, was viewed as 'essential', a particular,
A, to which it belonged would not be the individual it actually was, but
something essentially different. For instance, the 'essential' property of the
(fictional) character' John we
met in Part One was supposed to be his being a man.
[We
will have good reason to question whether there are any such 'essential
properties' in Essay Thirteen Part Two (to be published sometime on late 2025).
Until then, readers are directed to
these comments in Essay
Eight Part Two.]
So,
depending on which Rationalist was telling the tale, particulars were
either (1) Already categorised as such in 'external reality' (by 'God', or
by some sort of 'collective
intelligence' -- Realism, again), (2) Latterly categorised as such by
'the mind' as an integral component of 'cognition' (some forms of
Conceptualism), or (3) An ad-mixture of both (Realist-Conceptualism).
Either
way, a sub-set of these 'abstract general ideas' were held to be 'formal
properties' that defined the particulars that instantiated them, while others
perhaps occupied a less important role (as accidents). The former were
'apprehended' by 'rational thought', the latter often encountered in experience
(but not based on experience). As noted earlier, depending on their
precise nature and provenance, these
'abstractions' were
variously characterised as "essential",
"primary", or "secondary"
qualities that individuals (i.e., particulars of a certain sort) either instantiated or in which
they were said to "participate". So,
'universals' were either 'pure, rational concepts' or they were
'accidental'/'empirical'.
Here is the late Fraser Cowley on the origin of
this way of viewing general terms and the immediate problems it created
(readers are encouraged to keep the last sentence of Fraser Cowley's remarks in
mind as this Essay unfolds):
"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated
problem of universals was invented by
Plato.... The distinction of particulars
and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the
distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or
intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the
bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone
apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the
problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without
realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very
concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85.
Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Bold emphases added.]
"The dispute between rationalism and empiricism
concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our
effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in
which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense
experience.... Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First,
they argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge
outstrips the information that sense experience can provide. Second, they
construct accounts of how reason in some form or other provides that additional
information about the world." [Markie
(2021). Paragraphs merged. Bold
emphases added.]
[I have
explained below how this
family of theories -- which I will hereinafter call 'Abstractionism' (i.e., the
overall idea that later morphed into a doctrine that there is a 'process of abstraction'
we are all supposed to be capable of accessing or utilising (either consciously
or unconsciously), which
results in the creation of 'abstract general terms') -- in the end turns out to be a
Theory of Meaning. This isn't just an academic point; it is central to
understanding how and why DM-theorists have constructed an unworkable, if not
incoherent, theory. As such, this is therefore connected with the
contribution DM has itself made to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism.
(Note, once again, I am not claiming Marxism has been a failure, just
this 'dialectical' aberration!)]
For Rationalists in general, 'genuine'
or 'reliable knowledge' was deemed to be in some way, or in some respect, "in-born",
a consequence of 'concepts' or
'faculties' that were themselves "innate", or were in the end based on
cognitive processes and structures created and underwritten by
'God' -- or which was enabled by the very possibility of there being such a
thing as knowledge. [In support, several so-called 'Transcendental
Arguments' were invented to order.]
Here isDescartes
(expressing ideas that were typical of this sub-branch of ruling-class ideology):
"For since
God has endowed each of us with some light of reason by which to distinguish
truth from error,
I could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied
with the opinions of another, unless I had resolved to exercise my own judgment
in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the task...."
[Descartes (1997b),
Part 3,
p.88.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The
most important point is that I find in myself countless ideas of things that
can’t be called nothing,
even if they don’t exist anywhere outside me. For although I am free to think of
these ideas or not, as I choose, I
didn’t invent them:
they have their own true and immutable natures,
which are not under my control. Even if there are not and never were any
triangles outside my thought, still, when I imagine a triangle I am constrained
in how I do this, because there is a determinate nature or essence or form of triangle that
is eternal, unchanging, and independent of my mind. Consider the things that I
can prove about the triangle – that its three angles equal two right angles,
that its longest side is opposite its greatest angle, and so on. I am forced to
agree that the triangle has these properties, even if I didn’t give them a
thought when the triangle first came into my mind.
So they can’t have been invented by me."
[Descartes (1997c),
Fifth Meditation,
pp.170-71.
(This links to a different translation.) Bold emphases alone added. The clear
implication is that 'God' not only invented these 'ideas', they were implanted
by 'Him'. That is certainly how Descartes argues throughout his work.]
"The mathematical truths which you call eternal
have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest
of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to
talk of him as if he were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject him to the Styx and
the Fates. Please do not hesitate to assert and proclaim everywhere that it
is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in
his kingdom." [Descartes (1991), p.23. Letter to Mersenne,
15/04/1630. Bold emphases added.]
"As
for the eternal truths, I say once more that they are true or possible only
because God knows them as true or possible. They are not known as true by God in
any way which would imply that they are true independently of him. If men
really understood the sense of their words they could never say without
blasphemy that the truth of anything is prior to the knowledge which God has of
it. In God willing and knowing are a single thing in such a way that by the very
fact of willing something he knows it and it is only for this reason that such a
thing is true. So we must not say that if God did not exist nevertheless these
truths would be true; for the existence of God is the first and the most eternal
of all possible truths and the one from which alone all others proceed." [Ibid.,
p.24. Letter to Mersenne, 06/05/1630. Bold emphasis added.]
Naturally, this meant that objects and events
in the physical universe were somehow 'less real' than the abstractions
that supposedly lent them both their substantiality and their
'essence' -- or, indeed, which allowed them even to be experienced.
This 'hidden world of abstractions' was therefore more 'real' than the universe
we see around us.
[In Part One we saw
theorists like Engels and Lenin echo these sentiments;
here in Part Two we will witness
DM-theorists in general further promote these anti-materialist ideas.]
Partly
because of that,
in the Rationalist Tradition
the general -- i.e., the 'rational' -- came to
dominate over the particular and the 'irrational', the Ideal and the 'necessary'
over the physical and the
contingent.
Hence, as noted above,
invisible and
in principle undetectable
'essences' were regarded as
more real than the individual objects and events we encounter in the world around us.
Here is Plato (giving birth to this idea):
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I
say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and
apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in
no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted
in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by
true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in
true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.
Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is
always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a,
pp.1254-55. I have used
the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published edition translates
the third set of highlighted words as follows: "It is indivisible -- it cannot be perceived
by the senses at all -- and it is the role of the understanding to study it."
Cornford renders it: "[It is] invisible and otherwise imperceptible;
that, in fact, which thinking has for its object." (Cornford (1997), p.192.)]
And,
concerning the Rationalist Philosophers who directly influenced the DM-classicists, we read
the following:
"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
onwardswere quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the
laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. Bold
emphasis added.]
As we have seen this approach originated with
Plato. On that, see
Appendix 2b.
And here is Hegel echoing and amplifying these
ideas -- adding to it an openly theological emphasis:
"The
view that the objects of
immediate
consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances
(phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common
Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it
has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it
becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to
their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being
is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important
step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that
we know about are
to us appearances only, and we can never know their
essential
nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain
minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with
its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created
by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us
only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things,
finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in
the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist
as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however,
though it is far in advance of vulgar
realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root
of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum
total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel
(1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
"[O]nly...God is actual... He is the
supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the
logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance, and
only in part actuality." [Ibid.,
p.9, §6; bold emphasis added.]
Allen Wood neatly summarises Hegel's entire
approach:
"Hegel sees reality as structured
organically and developmentally. Things display their essential natures when
they are seen as organized wholes or systems, and as elements of larger wholes
or systems. These systems are characterized by tendencies not only to
self-harmony and self-maintenance, but also to development, both temporally and
hierarchically. Things which exist through time have essential tendencies to
develop, to unfold their natures by continually changing or revolutionizing
their organic structures. Organic structures themselves display a hierarchy,
developing or unfolding a certain abstract essence or basic principle toward its
full concreteness. A theory which captures the structure of reality must
conceive things as organized totalities. It must attend to their essential
tendencies to temporal development, and it must analyze their organic structure
through a hierarchy of concepts of or viewpoints on a whole which reveal all the
levels or stages belonging to its nature. Hegel is sure reality has this
structure on purely metaphysical grounds. Hegel believes that absolute
reality is self-positing spirit. The marks of thought and its creative
self-expression are organic interconnection and development. Consequently,
whatever appears or is actual must be an expression or manifestation of spirit,
and must display the marks of its spiritual origin. Further, the creative
activity of thought is simultaneously the activity of God's original creation;
the activity of human thought which apprehends the inherent structure of
thinking thus brings God's thoughts to self-consciousness. Since the dialectical
structure of thinking is apprehended not by the senses but by reason, our key to
the structure of reality is not casual sense observations but the necessary
movement of thought, which philosophers can produce out of their own minds. The
task of philosophy is to penetrate these observations and 'give to their
contents the essential shape of thoughts freedom
(the
a priori)'."
[Wood (2004), pp.215-16. Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged. Wood is
(partially) quoting
Hegel (1975), p.18,
§12.]
And here is Mega-DM enthusiast, George Novack,
underlining how far dialecticians like him are prepared to bend over to accommodate
the mystical ideas
they appropriated from Hegel:
"We have already seen what great measure
of truth there is in the proposition that the real is rational. We have
ascertained that all things come into existence and endure in a lawful and
necessary way. But this is not the whole and final truth about things. It is
one-sided, relative, and a passing truth. The real truth about things is that
they not only exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing
away of things, eventuating in death, is expressed in logical terminology by the
term 'negation.' The whole truth about things can be expressed
only if we take into account this opposite and negative aspect. In other words,
unless we introduce the negation of our first affirmation, we shall obtain only
a superficial and abstract inspection of reality.
"All things are limited and changing. They not
only force their way and are forced into existence and maintain themselves
there. They also develop, disintegrate and are pushed out of existence and
eventually disappear. In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They
likewise negate themselves and are negated by other things. By coming into
existence, they say: 'Yes! Here I am!' to reality and to thought engaged in
understanding reality. By developing and eventually going out of existence, they
say on the contrary: 'No, I no longer am; I cannot stay real.' If everything
that comes into existence must pass out of existence, as all of reality pounds
constantly into our brains, then every affirmation must inexorably express its
negation in logical thought. Such a movement of things and of thought is called
a dialectical movement.
"There is a fable in
The Arabian Nights
about an Oriental monarch who, early in life, asked his
wise men for the sum and substance of all learning, for the truth that would
apply to everything at all times and under all conditions, a truth which would
be as absolutely sovereign as he thought himself to be. Finally, over the king's
deathbed, his wise men supplied the following answer: 'Oh, mighty king, this one
truth will always apply to all things: "And this too shall pass away".' If
justice prevailed, the king should have bequeathed a rich reward to his wise
men, for they had disclosed to him the secret of the dialectic. This is the
power, the omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever
emerging from, annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things. This 'powerful unrest,' as
Leibnitz
(sic) called it, this quickening force and destructive action of
life -- the negative -- is everywhere at work: in the movement of things, in the
growth of living beings, in the transformations of substances, in the evolution
of society, and in the human mind which reflects all these objective processes.
"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel
drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous
aphorism: All that is rational is real. But for Hegel all that is real is not
without exception and qualification worthy of existence.
'Existence
is in part mere appearance, and only in part reality.'
(Introduction to the Shorter Logic,
§6.) [I.e.,
Hegel (1975),
p.9,
§6 -- RL.] Existence elementally
and necessarily divides itself, and the investigating mind finds it to be so
divided, into opposing aspects of appearance and essence. This disjunction
between appearance and essence is no more mysterious than the disjunction
between the inside and outside of an object. What distinguishes essence or essential reality
from mere appearance? A thing is truly real if it is necessary, if its
appearance truly corresponds to its essence, and only so long as it proves
itself to be necessary. Hegel, being the most consistent idealist, sought the
source of this necessity in the movement of the universal mind, in the Absolute
Idea. Materialists, on the other hand, locate the roots of necessity in the
objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting forces which create,
sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both
schools of philosophy agree in connecting reality with necessity. Something
acquires reality because the necessary conditions for its production and
reproduction are objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real
in accordance with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its
development. It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary
under the given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity
and its reality and dissolves into mere appearance.
"Let us consider a few illustrations of this
process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the
different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant,
seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its
existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally
necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development.
Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other
and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's
manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of
development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this
particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality,
constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance
cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that
determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational
or non-rational. Yet each in
turn becomes supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and
non-real. Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and
then is transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an
appearance. This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality
into reality and then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the
inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an
understanding of this process. It is this that determines whether any
appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational or non-rational."
[Novack
(1971), pp.84-87.
Several paragraphs merged; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. I have reproduced the version of Hegel's work used by the
editor of Novack's on-line text, Andy Blunden, not the one that appears
here. Links and bold emphases added.]
[I have subjected Novack's remarks to detailed
criticism in Note 29b.]
According to
the above, whatever
isn't 'rational' can't therefore be 'real'. So, if objects (like plants,
for instance) are to be
counted as eventemporarily real, that would only be because of the (undetectable) 'rational principles' they
supposedly instantiate.
But, where exactly are these 'rational principles', these
'abstractions', to be found? In the world or just in each head?
As we discovered in
Part One (Sections
Two and Three),
the answer to that question is neither -- 'dialectical abstractions' are nowhere
to be found in the physical universe! Even so, they are supposed to be 'more
real' than the objects and events that instantiate them.
This from a materialist!
That helps explain why DM-fans
find it impossibly difficult to tell the rest of us (or even each other, for
goodness sake!) exactly with what in 'extra-mental reality' their 'abstractions'
actually correspond. [Here
is a just recent example of this.] If therewereanything in
the physical universe for these 'abstractions', these 'rational principles', to
correspondwith, that would imply nature is 'Mind' or the product
of 'Mind'. How else could such thoroughly 'mental entities' exist in the
physical universe if the latter wasn't 'Mind' or the product of 'Mind'? If they
actually existed in 'extra-mental
reality', 'mind must precede matter', and if,
as we
will see later, matter itself is also regarded as an abstraction by
DM-theorists, 'reality' must ultimately be 'Mind' or 'Mind-like', all the way
down. On the other hand, if there isn't anything in nature or society with which
these 'mental entities'
correspond,
what possible use are they? Have they simply been invented to help boost the morale of DM-theorists?
Or perhaps give them something over which they can endlessly bicker, thus allowing them to accuse each other of 'not understanding dialectics'?
[Of course,
the answer often given is that 'abstractions' help scientists and philosophers
'understand reality', but as we are about to find out, not even that is true.]
As the Book of Genesis
would have us believe, it takes the 'Word of God' (or
something analogous to it) to give life and form to matter, creating
'everything out of nothing'. Without that, the universe would have remained
lifeless, chaotic and might even cease to exist --, or, indeed, might
never
have begun to exist:
"And the earth was
without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be
light: and there was light.... And God said, Let there be a firmament in the
midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God
called the firmament Heaven.... And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was
so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the
waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth
bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit
after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so...." [Genesis,
Chapter One, verses 2-11. Bold emphases added.]
"In the beginning was the Word [λόγος
--
logos],
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind." [John
1:1-4. Bold emphasis added.]
'Abstractions' were likewise conjured into
existence in a similar, but less overtly religious, way. They are and have
always been Ideal 'objects of thought' -- that is, they either represent a given philosopher's
'Ideas' or they
are integral to the 'thoughts' attributed to one or more of the many 'deities' humans have
dreamt up
throughout history --
and that includes Hegel's 'Absolute'.
This
is the ideological cess pit out of which DM-theorists hauled their ideas!
As I also
noted in Part One:
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 and link added; paragraphs merged.]
"Lying beyond
experience", of course, implies philosophical knowledge is superior to anything
science has to offer.
Indeed, as we also saw in Part One, in the end these
'objects of thought' turned out to be
APs (or the Proper Names
thereof). This meant that
for Rationalists, while 'reality itself' was held to be essentially Ideal, the physical universe was in effectaShadow World, not fully 'real', since it was where
contingency, brute facts, 'appearances', finitude and uncertainty reign supreme.
But, as Plato and Hegel argued, the 'rational
structure' that supposedly lay 'behind appearances' was the real world. As we saw,
for Hegel only 'God' was "truly actual", fully 'real'. In that case,
the
invisible world that supposedly underpins the material universe, which is home
to humanity's countless deities and even more 'abstractions', may be accessed b
non-physical means -- via 'thought
alone', But, it had to be 'thought' of a special kind, belonging to a select group
of socially privileged thinkers'/'ideologues', "prize-fighters" of the ruling
elite.
And now, DM-fans.
[A
brute fact is one for which no other fact is
necessary in order to explain it. So, if an object falls to the earth, that fact
needs further facts about gravity to explain it. But what explains gravity?
Well, there may be something that explains gravity. But, at some point we are
going to hit a brick wall where we have to say, "Well, that's just how nature
works!" That would be a brute fact. Of course, exactly when and where we
hit this brick wall will change over time, but even if we hit an 'ultimate fact'
-- maybe part of a
Grand Unified Theory, a GUT (which was all the rage twenty or so years ago)
that supposedly explained everything -- the next question will be "Ok, so what
explains that?" Even an appal to 'god' won't prevent this slide, since
any question about what explains why 'god' did what 'he' did will hit the
"It's all a mystery!" brick wall -- leaving us with a 'mysterious brute fact'
-- 'god'.
Which is where all 'proofs' for the existence of this imaginary 'being' end,
'mysterious brute facts'. On this, see also here.]
If
general terms
-- e.g., common nouns, such as "cat", "table", "human", "money", "value", "population", etc. --
were capable of reflecting the 'essence' of material bodies (and/or their
'accidental properties' and inter-relationships, if we now include the use of
adjectives), then, according to this approach to theory, that would be because
of the APs to which they refer or
which they instantiate. [For example, these APs would be 'The Form of the Cat', 'The Concept, Table',
'The Population', 'Redness', 'Sameness', etc., etc.]
Hence, these APs must be 'ontologically'-, and even
'epistemologically'-, anterior to the objects to which we supposedly
refer by our use of such words; so, for Rationalists, these APs exist (in some
form or other) prior to, or in conjunction with, the
objects they instantiate. This means APs underpin their limited, temporary, or 'apparent', actuality. For
other Rationalists they were merely 'mental constructs' to which reference must be made in order to understand
'extra-mental reality'.1a
We will see Engels, Lenin and other DM-theorists reach
similar conclusions, arguing that the 'concrete' only succeeds in being
concrete (or is only concrete) because of the
abstractions to which we have to appeal in order for them even to be
concrete in the first place. That clearly implies there are no concrete
objects and processes until they have been so processed! Oddly enough for those who at least claim
to be materialists
this led them into believing
matter is also an abstraction! In which case, these self-proclaimed,
'hard-headed materialists' found themselves tail-ending Idealist
Philosophers by their
adoption of at least four core principles of
Rationalism:
(i) Abstract knowledge is not only superior to empirical
knowledge, it is its necessary pre-requisite;
(ii) Matter is fundamentally abstract;
(iii) There is an 'underlying rational order to reality', accessible by thought
alone; and,
(iv) 'Appearances are
deceptive'!
It is here
where we witness (yet again) the conflation of 'talk about talk'
with 'talk about the world' -- i.e., an approach that confuses linguistic and logical
categories with reality itself; a
profound muddle analysed in
Part One. We met it,
for example, when we examined the ideas of theorists who interpreted predicates as:
(a) The referents of general terms (i.e., the objects or sets of objects
in the world supposedly designated or named by predicate expressions) --
which often also supposedly stood for the properties of objects and events; and,
(b) Linguistic expressions in their own right.
Hence, for such theorists, predicates
were both linguistic and extra-linguistic, at the same time!
A semantic
slide
like this
definitely confused Hegel; it prompted him into imagining that what went on in his head (as he juggled
with certain words/'concepts') reflected, if not constituted, objects and
processes
in the 'external' world. Hence, he thought he was free to project the contents
of his head onto 'external reality'. As should seem obvious, that is as egregious a case of
Epistemological Megalomania as one could wish to find. A sort of
cosmic version of disturbed individuals who think they are Napoleon, The
'Messiah', or even
'God'.
Figure One: Megalomania Clearly
Isn't Confined To German Mystics
Who Also Talk Boll*cks
While Descartes
imagined there were two substances -- 'Mind' and Matter --, it soon became
apparent (in the work of
Spinoza -- and in a somewhat different form in
Leibniz's
-- and later still in Hegel's 'theory',
but now on
steroids) that there is only
one 'rational', 'actual' or 'real' substance: 'Mind'. Everything else is an 'appearance',
or even an 'emanation',
and as such is 'accidental', 'ephemeral',
transient, contingent.
[Readers might now like to go back and re-check
Novak's comments to see to what
extent
ideas like these have been internalised by DM-theorists. He is typical of the genre,
too.]
The
traditional approach, which
particularises common nouns and adjectives
and
nominalises verbs, has in one form or another dominated Western Thought -- and,
currently, DM -- for the best part of 2500 years. Its 'logical apex' (if that is
the right tem) was
reached in the metaphysical systems constructed by Leibniz and Hegel, and only serves to underline the claim advanced in these
Essays that all ancient, medieval, early modern and contemporary versions of Rationalist
Philosophy are simply different forms of Idealism (and that includes DM -- as we
saw in Essays Twelve Part One and
Thirteen Part One). As we will
also see, this
approach to generality (and the meaning of general terms) has seeped into every subsequent metaphysical system, to such an extent that it is now
abundantly clear that all formsof Traditional Philosophy -- Rationalist,
Nominalist,
Realist,
Monist,
Dualist,
Empiricist
and Positivist
--
are just different forms of Idealism.
Which is one of the few things Hegel managed to get right:
"Every philosophy is
essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the
question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel
(1999), pp.154-55; §316.
Bold emphasis added.]
[Why that
seemingly controversial remark also applies to Empiricism, Nominalism and Positivism will be entered into
presently. Follow the above links for an explanation of what is meant by "particularises" and
"nominalises".]
These "ruling
ideas" -- originally concocted in 'the west' by Ancient Greek Philosophers
-- have now found a home in contemporary bourgeois thought, albeit with brand
new content that
mirrors the novel social and economic conditions in which they were conceived
and now flourish.
Even
when this 'theory' is flipped "right-side up" (or "put back on its feet" -- supposedly
by dialecticians), material reality is still regarded as secondary, derivative, dependent, not fully real. Once again, witness where we are told by erstwhile
materialists that
matter is an abstraction. The material world,
according to
DM-theorists, requires the 'rational principles' encapsulated in
DL to give it
life and form. After all, 'underlying essence contradicts appearances', and in that
'philosophical wrestling match', it is "essence"
that always ends on top.1aa
Here, for
example,
is Lenin:
"Logical concepts are
subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the
same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete
and
abstract, both phenomenon and
essence, both moment
and
relation." [Lenin (1961),
p.208. Italic
emphases in the original.]
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid.,
p.171.
Italic emphases
in the original.]
Notice that it is abstraction that drives thought closer to the truth. Moreover, as
we saw in Part One,
according to Engels and Lenin, the concrete only emerges (or can only be
appreciated as concrete) at the end of an
infiniteprocess. In that case, nothing could ever rightly be said to be concrete
until an endless task has been completed, which is clearly impossible.
[We will
also see later that Lenin is even less ambiguous concerning several other things
he had to say about the mysterious 'process of abstraction' (here
and here).]
In like
manner, again according to DM-theorists, the 'Dialectical Logos' (i.e., 'Logic') is required, not just to add form to formless
matter, but to call it into existence,
give it life, make it
move, and for all of this literally to emerge out of 'Nothing'.
Creation ex nihilo isn't just a Christian doctrine, it is also a DM-dogma, courtesy of Hegel's 'derivation' of everything from
'Being' and 'Nothing' via
'Becoming'.
Here is what
I have written
elsewhere about this 'derivation' of Hegel's (slightly edited):
One particular 'argument' is of special
interest here; it crops up in different forms in several places in Hegel's work,
and attempts to
connect "Being" with "Nothing" and then
both with "Becoming", by
magically 'deriving' all three from the verb "to be"....
Amazingly,
this 'argument' was praised by Lenin and Trotsky....
Rees summarised thus 'argument' in the
following way:
"The 'Science of Logic' begins with the most
abstract of all human ideas, Being. This is the bare notion of existence shorn
of any colour, size, shape, taste or smell. This first concept is also, in
its way, a totality. Although Being reveals no characteristics or distinguishing
marks, it does, nevertheless, include everything. After all, everything must
exist before it can take on any particular characteristics. Being is
therefore a quality that is shared by everything that exists; it is the most
common of all human ideas. Every time we say, 'This is --,' even before we say
what it is, we acknowledge the idea of pure Being…. But Being also contains its
opposite, Nothing. The reason is that Being has no qualities and no features
that define it. If we try to think about pure Being…we are forced to the
opposite conclusion, Being equals Nothing.
"But even Nothing is more than it seems. If we
are asked to define Nothing, we are forced to admit that it has at least one
property -– the lack or absence of any qualities…. This presents us with a
strange dilemma: being is Nothing and yet Nothing is something. Hegel, however,
is not so stupid as to think that there is no difference between being and
Nothing, even though this is what our logical enquiry seems to suggest. All that
this contradiction means is that we must search for a new term that…can explain
how Being and Nothing can be both equal and separate (or an 'identity of
opposites'…). Hegel's solution is the concept of Becoming." [Rees (1998),
pp.49-50. Spelling adjusted in line with UK English; quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
But, there is no way that these concepts ("Being",
"Nothing" and "Becoming") could have been derived from "careful empirical work",
nor can they be "tested in practice" -- let alone abstracted from anything
that is recognisably material.
In the end, the fact that erstwhile materialists
(like Lenin and Trotsky -- or even Rees, since he nowhere criticises this
'argument') praised this prime example of linguistic mystification isn't the least bit surprising --
when their own ideas are viewed against the
class-compromised background of Traditional Thought.
This is how Trotsky
characterised it:
"The
identity of Being (Sein) and Nothingness (Nichts), like the
contradictoriness of the concept of the Beginning, in which Nichts and Sein are
united, seems at first glance a subtle and fruitless play of ideas. In fact,
this 'game' brilliantly exposes the failure of static thinking, which at first
splits the world into motionless elements, and then seeks truth by way of a
limitless expansion [of the process]." [Trotsky (1986), p.103.]
Whereas Lenin thought it
was:
"Shrewd
and clever! Hegel analyses concepts that usually appear dead and shows that
there is movement in them."
[Lenin (1961), p.110.]
However, at no point
do Rees and other DM-fans repudiate this style of reasoning, only some of its
'Ideal' implications -- which, coupled with the praise Lenin and Trotsky heaped
upon it, indicates that, for dialecticians, the rejection of Hegelian Absolute
Idealism is purely formal,
and clearly superficial.
By no stretch of the imagination have any of the above conclusions been drawn from
"an analysis of real
material forces", or anything even
remotely like one. The fact that leading DM-classicists could claim to learn
anything about the nature of "static thinking" from such woefully defective
'logic' reveals how
superficial their frequent and vociferous rejection of Absolute Idealism really is. The
'logic' of this passage is entirely bogus and thoroughly Idealist, again, as George
Novack noted:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from
principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition,
self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms
may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken
from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...."
[Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
The concepts
Hegel employed are the result of grossly exaggerated abstractions, tortured 'logic' and terminally
dubious assertions....
In fact, this Hegelian 'derivation' has set a
new gold standard for all forms of LIE, for from it everything in existence --
every object, thought and process -- can be 'derived' miraculously from
the verb "to be"!
So, even for dialecticians, matter
isn't sufficient to itself -- indeed, as we have seen, it is an 'abstraction'. Which is, of course,
why Hegel and Dialectical Marxists found they had to appeal to a linguisticform --
i.e.,
to 'contradiction' -- to
set things in motion, keep them moving and give them life. Uncoincidentally,
as we also saw earlier, according to
the Bible, the universe, life and movement were createdby, and are
now sustained via,
language and 'logic' (i.e., the Logos). In DM, this is mirrored by
the above linguisticforms, which have been
projected onto reality. That should surprise no one given the fact that Hegel
was a Christian Mystic:
"Contradiction is the root of all movement and
life, and it is only in so far as it contains a contradiction that anything
moves and has impulse and activity."
[Hegel (1999),
p.439, §956.
Bold emphasis added.]
"So long as we consider things at rest and
lifeless, each one by itself…we do not run up against any contradictions in
them…. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in
their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we
immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a
contradiction…. [T]here is a contradiction objectively present in things and
processes themselves, a contradiction is moreover an actual force...." [Engels
(1976),
pp.152-53.
Bold emphases added.]
"Dialectics…prevails
throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself
everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the
opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954),
p.211.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The
identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of
nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the
knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of
opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?)
conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase,
as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a
unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).
"In the first conception of
motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive,
remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject,
etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to
knowledge of the source of 'self'-movement. The first conception is lifeless,
pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in
continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of
the old and the emergence of the new. The
unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Bold emphases
alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Several paragraphs merged.]
"The law of contradiction in things,
that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist
dialectics.... As opposed to the metaphysical world
outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to
understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its
relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be
seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in
its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The
fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it
lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal
contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....
"The universality or absoluteness of
contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in
the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the
process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from
beginning to end....There is nothing that does not
contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist.... Thus it is already clear that
contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the
simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or
ideological phenomena.... Contradiction is universal and
absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and
permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1937),
pp.311-18. Bold emphases added; several
paragraphs merged.]
Because
of this, it isn't possible to find -- nor even suggest there might be --
a singlephysical correlate in nature
or society for the
'abstractions' dialecticians have conjured into existence (or, to be more
honest, borrowed from Hegel and other ruling-class ideologues) to
correspond with. But, since they form the 'essential nature'
of material objects and processes, this can only mean that for DM-fans, they
must be Ideal, too.
And, in a nutshell, that is Dialectical Marxists think matter is an 'abstraction', and
hence why the aforementioned "flip"
allegedly performed on Hegel's system was
actually through the full 360º,
not the 180º
DM-theorists now try to claim
for it.
Nor is it at all surprising to find that they have had to denigrate,
or at least depreciate,
ordinary language, and with it the lives and experience of ordinary workers --
accusing them of being dominated by 'commonsense', 'formal thinking' and 'false
consciousness' (thus reprising a rhetorical flourish perfected by countless
generations of
ruling-class hacks), in order to
'justify' and rationalise the importation of Hegelian concepts into the workers'
movement.
[The above accusations will be substantiated in Essay Twelve (summary
here). They have already been covered from a different angle in Essay Nine
Part One, where the underlying motives
of DM-advocates for doing this have also been exposed.]
As we will discover throughout the rest of this site: because of their
reliance on the traditional forms-of-thought they imported into
revolutionary socialism,
dialecticians have only succeeded in saddling
themselves and our movement with a set of
insoluble 'philosophical problems'. This
also helps
explain why every single dialectician
slips into
a priori, dogmatic mode at the
drop of a
copula --, and why
they all fail to notice they have
done so even
after it has
been pointed out to them!
[The point
of the copula remark will be clear to anyone who has read
Part One of this Essay.]
Moreover,
as indicated earlier, this version of 'rotated' Idealism [i.e., DM] pictures the material
world as less 'real' than the Ideal world which lends it its
substance, its 'essence', and which in the end determines what its theorists
finally regard as "concrete".
And we can now see why that is so: for
dialecticians, material objects are only "concrete" in the
Ideal Limit, at the end
of an 'infinite journey'.
But, since that limit is forever
unattainable, it means that (for them) there are
in effect
no concrete objects or
processes whatsoever!
Almost as if to spoil the fun, Aristotle pointed out in reference to
Plato's
Theory of Forms and the so-called
"Third
Man Argument" that it is a bad idea when trying to solve a problem
to begin by
doubling it.
[Although the "Third Man Argument' first saw light of day in
Plato
(1997d), p.366, 132a-132b. (Yes, I am aware that
several commentators
have tried to argue that Plato abandoned the Theory of Forms in that dialogue,
but I don't
want to become sidetracked into a lengthy discussion of what is currently an
unanswerable question (viz.: "Did Plato abandon his Theory of Forms?"). I will,
however, assume along with other Plato scholars thathe still retained his commitment to this theory.
On this see, for example,
Meinwald (1990, 1992).)]
By this
Aristotle meant that if there is a 'difficulty' explaining the similarities that
exist between particulars given in experience (which 'problem' gave birth the
idea there must be 'Abstract Universals', or 'Forms', that accounted for these similarities,
and hence for generality itself), there
must surely be a 'difficulty' accounting for those that exist between the particulars
themselves and the 'Forms' they supposedly instantiate.
So, where
previously
there was only one 'problem', now there are two.
The problem
Plato's theory faced is explained rather well by Hilary Staniland:
"[W]hen Plato tells us that men are men in virtue of
their relation to the Form of Man, or that beautiful things are beautiful in
virtue of their relation to the Form of Beauty, he definitely does claim to be
telling us something new. And the puzzle is to understand what this new
information can possibly be. What on earth is 'imitating' or 'participating' in
the Form of Beauty, if it is not the same thing as just being beautiful? Plato
himself was seriously concerned about this problem. In one of his later
dialogues, the Parmenides, he advances arguments attacking his own theory
at precisely this point, and it has even been maintained by some commentators
that toward the end of his life he abandoned the Theory of Forms because of
these very difficulties. The two most important arguments in the Parmenides
are directed against the metaphors of 'imitation' and 'participation'
respectively.
"The argument against the metaphor of 'imitation' is
as follows. According to the 'imitation' version of the Theory of Forms, the
resemblance between particular beautiful things, in virtue of which we call them
all 'beautiful,' can be made intelligible only by postulating a Form of Beauty
which all the particular beautiful things resemble. But if the first resemblance
really stands in need of an explanation of this kind, surely the second
resemblance does too. So in order to make the resemblance between particular
beautiful things and the Form of Beauty intelligible, we shall have to postulate
a second Form which all the particular beautiful things and the Form of
Beauty resemble, and so on ad infinitum. At each stage we still have an
unexplained resemblance on our hands, and so the explanation can never be
completed. This sort of difficulty is inevitable if we assume on the one hand
that resemblances, as such, stand in need of explanation, and on the other that
they can be explained only in terms of further resemblances. (Plato himself does
not use the example of the Form of Beauty, but simply states the argument in
general terms. Later, the Form of Man came to be the standard example, and the
argument is therefore traditionally known as the 'Third Man Argument.')
"The kind of difficulties Plato found himself in
with the alternative metaphor of 'participation' may
be brought out as follows. The idea here is that the Form is somehow shared in
by the particulars. Each beautiful thing has a share of Beauty, each human being
a share of Humanity, and so on. The difficulty here is as follows. Are we to
think of the particulars as sharing in the Form in the way that several people
might share a cake? Then the Form will be divided into separate parts belonging
to different particulars. But then we have to explain how it is that all these
separate parts nevertheless constitute one thing. So we have merely replaced the
problem of explaining why this beautiful thing and that may both be called by
the same name by the problem of explaining why the beauty of this thing and the
beauty of that thing may both be called parts of the same Form, which is hardly
an advance. Should we say, then, that the whole Form is present in each of the
particulars? Then we shall have to say that the Form is in many separate places
at the same time. And even if we do not disallow this as absurd, we shall still
have to explain how 'Beauty' can be the name both of what is to be found in this
thing and of what is to be found in that thing. So again, we have only replaced
one problem by another." [Staniland (1973), pp.22-24. Several paragraphs merged;
italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site. We will have occasion to
return to this later,
where it will soon become clear that the DM-theory of 'abstraction' faces
similar problems.]
Worse still,
if the solution to this ancient conundrum implied there is a link of some sort
between particulars and a 'we-know-not-what' (i.e., a 'Form' or a 'Universal'), located
'we-know-not-where', in a
mysterious world anterior to experience, or apprehended in experience,
but accessible to thought alone),
it would be a
'solution' in name alone.
Hence, if an abstract term
is required to account for the similarities that exist between particulars (for
instance, between each man),
a third term would clearly be required to account for the similarity between that
abstraction and those particulars themselves (which is what generates the need for a
'third man' to account for that similarity). Otherwise, the supposed connection wouldn't
be rational, merely fortuitous or accidental, undermining the whole point of the
exercise.
As we saw in Part One,
that helps explain why the Medieval, 'Identity
Theory of Predication' (this
links directly to a downloadable .doc file), was
invented by Roman Catholic theologians and was subsequently adopted by Hegel
(i.e., in order to re-establish the necessary connection that was
supposed to between a subject and its
predicates, or between an object and its properties). Here is
Hegel scholar, Katharina Dulckeit (summarising this aspect of Hegel's theory
and why he argued in its favour):
"[It] must be remembered that
[Hegel's] analysis of the forms of judgment in the Logic is motivated by
his interest in essential judgement. There are two conditions for such
judgements. To begin with, a judgement is an essential judgement only if P
tells us precisely and exclusively what S is; no less and no more. But
merely predicating universals of particulars is insufficient for this, unless
the term in the predicate position at once expresses the essential nature of the
subject.This, in turn, argues Hegel, is possible only if the 'is' expresses
some identity between S and P. For if essential determination were possible
exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate
and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external.
As a consequence, S would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while
P would designate something distinct from S, namely a universal.
But the truth of
sense-certainty in the
Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual,
an
individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals.
It follows
that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a
universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if S and
P are
utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that S will
necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where
judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because
it entails the distinction between S and P which would commit us
to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology." [Dulckeit (1989), pp.115-16. Bold emphases
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site; links added. I have subjected passages like
this to sustained criticism in
Appendix D of Part One. The letter "S" has been capitalised;
it is in small case in the original. Here
"P" clearly stands for "predicate" and "S" for "subject". A "bare
particular" is one that has no properties, or one to which no predicates apply
-- which is clearly impossible. More about that later and in Essay Twelve Part
Six.]
As should
seem reasonably clear, the introduction of a third term simply reproduces the original problem.
That is because questions would now arise over the link between this new term
and the rest -- i.e., between each particular and this hypothetical
'Universal' -- which had originally been invented in order to explain the original connection
between particulars! Any attempt to undermine the 'necessary connection' Plato
sought here would introduce contingency into nature, which, for those who
thought along such lines in previous centuries, would undermine Theism and imply atheism.
Medieval theologians saw this only too clearly, which is why they invented the
'Identity Theory of Predication', that Hegel readily appropriated. [I enter into
this topic in more detail in several places below, particularly
here.]
While Abstract Universals
like this 'exist' in an 'Ideal World' anterior to the world we see around us,
they also supposedly enjoy
'connections of some sort' with particulars in this world, connections that are of a different order/kind
to those that material particulars presumably experience among themselves.
That would plainly have to be the case if these 'abstractions' don't exist in the material world
themselves.
Unfortunately, this leaves the 'abstract' side of this family of proposed 'solutions'
(and the connections they have with material particulars) forever shrouded in
mystery -- and with no hope of resolution, either. [Which is where
this 'problem' remains to this day with all the 'solutions' offered by
Traditional Philosophers and DM-theorists.]
Hence, if the introduction of a
Universal, Concept, Idea or 'abstraction' -- call it/them, "C1"
-- is required in order to account for the common features shared,
for instance, by objects A
and B, then a new Universal, Concept, Idea or 'abstraction' -- call it/them, "C2"
(a third term) -- will be required to account for the commonality between C1
and A, and between C1
and B, and so on. As noted above, the whole exercise thus threatens to generate an
infinite regress, as similar questions will be asked about the relation
between C1
and
C2,
thus requiring the introduction of a fourth term, "C3",
and so on, leaving nothing explained. [On this topic, see Passmore
(1970), Chapter 2. This is
also connected with the so-called 'Problem of Self-Predication', which I have dealt with briefly below.
On this, see Allen (1960).
(This links to a PDF.)]
"In one dialogue
or another Plato tells us that the forms are not perceived by the senses, but
are objects of the mind; that they are imperishable; that they are indivisible;
that they are superior to material objects; that they are norms by which we
judge material things; that they have a certain creative power (the form of
wisdom 'makes' Socrates wise). Material objects participate in, resemble, copy,
or are modelled by the forms. Problems arise because some of these
characteristics of the forms turn out to clash with others. If material things
resemble the forms they instantiate to various degrees, then material things
have something in common with any form they resemble. If a well-drawn circle
resembles the form of circularity, it must be because both the particular drawn
circle and the form of circularity share the property of circularity; but then
what the particular and the property share must be still another form. Scholars
of Plato have puzzled over this problem, the problem of the 'third man,' because
it seems to lead to an infinite regress." [Davidson (2005), pp.78-79. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold
emphases added.]
Of course,
Davidson goes on to argue that
Plato appears to have 'solved' this problem by arguing that it is a mistake
to think that shapes also have a shape, or that Socrates resembles the concept
of a man -- thus ruling out what has come to be known as 'self-predication',
mentioned earlier.
In some instances that might very well be the case, but it isn't easy to see how the Forms could be
exemplars of the particulars they supposedly instantiate if they share nothing with them.
Indeed, why call something the 'Form of Circularity' if there is nothing circular
about it? Or if there is nothing in common between this Form and circles that
have been drawn, or could be drawn, in this world? Otherwise why would circles
not exemplify the 'Form of
Squareness' or of 'Triangularity', with which they also share nothing? There has
to be some reason why the 'Form of Circularity' expresses what all circles have in
common that prevents the 'Form of Squareness', 'Triangularity', or even
'Happiness', from doing so. But, just as soon as it is acknowledged there is
something unique held in common between a given Form and the particulars that supposedly
fall under it (and which thereby rules out the applicability of any other Form
in that respect), the 'Third Man Argument'
will simply reassert itself.
Of course, rules (if
that is what the Forms are supposed to express or exemplify) in no obvious way
resemble the objects to which they are, or can be, applied, but
there is little in Plato that suggests he regarded his Forms as rules. Moreover,
if
the Forms are supposed to be exemplars, there would have to be a rule of some
sort that informed those who implicitly (or explicitly) used them or their
linguistic counterparts as exemplars how to apply them correctly. But, there are no
such rules,
or none that Plato ever mentioned. An
object, a Form, can't tell anyone how to use or apply it. An interpreted rule can
and does. A chess piece, for example, can't tell a novice chess
player how it should be
moved; the rules of chess, once understood, typically serve in that capacity.
But it takes a human being to do that. In which case, the Forms without rules that show how they apply or are to be used
as exemplars would be inert (for want of a better term) and therefore useless.
But no rule is self-interpreting. Again a human being is required, and human
beings are social agents.
[The
significance of that comment shouldn't be lost on fellow Marxists. It
should become even more so as this essay and others at this site unfold.
Wittgenstein
made a similar point about 'signs' and 'mental images'; on that see Note 40a, below. There is a sophisticated defence of Plato in
Meinwald (1990, 1992). The reader will have to decide for herself whether or not
it is successful. However, as we will see, this pseudo-problem is easily
resolved, as this Essay in tandem with Part One will demonstrate. Having said
that, the case against DM-Epistemology is in no way affected if Plato's theory
survives the 'Third Man Argument' or crashes and burns as a result.]
Well, this
might be to misinterpret the nature of Plato's Forms, perhaps even
anachronistically. In fact, Plato talks as if we just 'see' or 'remember' the
Forms (on that, see Note 6a),
and that that is all there is to it.
But, once more, if we are to recognise the 'Form of Circularity' and distinguish it from,
say, the
'Form of Squareness', there must be something about the former that isn't the case
with the latter, which the former shares with examples of circularity we
encounter in
this world that it doesn't share with squareness. But, what could that be? A name or label of some sort? But, names
don't seem to resemble other names, nor can they express a rule; that is also
the case with labels. Of course, we already know what circularity is so our
understanding has already been biasedin that direction (so to
speak), but just looking at the
alleged 'Form of Circularity' in Platonic Heaven before we were born (which is how
Plato apparently conceived of this pre-natal, Cosmic Drama) without knowing what it represents or how
to apply it would tell
us nothing. Maybe we were all given a guided tour or presented with an
'Empyrean
Form-User's Handbook' of some description? If so,
that would make this a
social
theory of knowledge and all the problems Plato associated with
banausic theories like that would now surely apply to every
'heavenly' version of the same.
What, for example, would be common to
'The Form of Dog',
or the 'Forms of Cat, Lion, Horse, Rat and Crocodile' that would make them all partake in the
'Form of
Vertebrate', 'Form of Animal' and 'Form of Living Organism'? Any answer
to such questions would once again re-introduce the 'Third Man Argument/Objection',
only now applied to the
Forms themselves!
Maybe
Platonic Heaven works in 'mysterious ways', and 'Cosmic Knowledge' is different
from ordinary, boring, earthy knowledge? But, that is precisely the point at
issue, for Plato's theory kicks this 'problem' off into the ethereal long
grass, a fundamentally
mysterious worldwhich is (currently) accessible to no one.
Similar 'difficulties' subsequently resurfaced in Hegel's theory, but in a different form
(no pun intended), since he had no way of knowing whether or not his apprehension of the
concepts that were of interest to him were genuine copies of those processed by
'the
Absolute Itself' --, or, for that matter, whether or not they were the same as
anyone else's 'concepts'. He certainly imagined he was investigating the
'nature of thought itself', and that peremptory
presumption 'allowed' him to credit everyone else with the content of his
thoughts -- as though we needed a Christian Mystic to tell us what
we were all (really) thinking, if we but knew it. And, of course, if we prevented ordinary
'understanding' from getting in the way! As we are about to see, there is
good reason -- beyond the ridiculous implausibility of any such
presumption -- to question Hegel's confidence in this matter. [To put it at its
mildest!] In fact, he would have no way of knowing whether or not
he had interpreted these 'concepts' correctly, or had even grasped what they
'really meant'. Having the name of a concept (such as "Being") would be of no more use to Hegel
than seeing the 'Form of Circularity' would be to our allegedly pre-existent
selves in Platonic Heaven. The name of a concept provides no clue
as to how it should be applied -- or even what it means -- certainly no more than
'the
word' "Meskonation" would help you, dear reader, if you simply stared
at it or
thought about it for weeks on end.
[Don't
bother to look
that 'word' up! I invented it, just like Philosophers invented "Being".]
Of course, it could be argued that Hegel
inherited a range of concepts from previous generations of philosophers (such
as, "Being", "Nothing", "Form" -- or even "Concept" itself), which isn't the
case with "Meskonation". That is undeniable, but it misses the point. Hegel
could stare at the word "Being" all day long and that would still fail to tell
him that what he meant by that
word was the same as, or was different from, what previous thinkers had meant by
it -- or, indeed, that the meaning of any of the words they had used in their
explanation of what they thought they meant by "Being" were the same as, or were different
from, what he now meant by those words -- without a social theory or
social explanation of meaning to assist him, or them. The fact that Hegel processed these ideas
'in the privacy of his head' undermines any attempt on his part to formulate just such a
social theory/explanation. And it is little use, either, pointing to his copious
writings, or even those of previous thinkers on whom he relied, as a way of extricating Hegel from this impasse.
That is because those ideas,
expressed in print, are neither locked inside Hegel's skull nor theirs. Those writings merely record
(on paper) the results of their private musings, they don't in any way alter their
provenance or meaning (that is, if they ever had any!), still less do they establish their legitimacy.
Someone
might object that if the aforementioned writings were examined in detail, it would be possible
to ascertain their meaning by the way each author used such words. But, if the
one reading those writings only has available to them their own private meanings
of words like "meaning", "word" and "use" -- never mind "same" -- they would
still fail to ascertain what any given author meant by their words. Even
worse, the same would apply to their own use of words; they would have no
way of knowing, from moment-to-moment, what their own words meant. Nor is it any use appealing to memory here since that word attracts the very same problems,
as do any 'internal ideas' they supposedly represent. As argued in Note 40a, 'internal' signs/ideas
can no more tell us what they mean than external ones are able. Social agents
are required to establish meaning. Indeed, as we have seen (in Part One), and will see throughout the rest of this Essay
(and this site -- especially Essay Thirteen
Part Three), it isn't possible to build a social theory of language,
meaning or
even knowledge if one starts with privately processed 'abstractions', 'ideas' or
'concepts'.
[And that is especially
the case with theories constructed by those -- like Hegel and DM-theorists --
who also believe in the Heraclitean
Flux. Why that is so is explained below.]
This is precisely where Hegel's non-social theory of knowledge
-- i.e., his bourgeois individualism
(for that is what this is; once again, Hegel worked all this out,
individualistically, in the 'privacy of his head') -- landed his theory of 'conceptual development'.
Simply grafting a temporal component onto Plato's Theory of Forms (even if
they are given an
Aristotelian veneer) is no solution. Time can't add a dimension of meaning
where there was none to begin
with. [I have said more about that here
and here.]
Any
who doubt this need only ask themselves in, say, a few months' time if "Meskonation"
now means something to them (i.e., if they constantly mull it over 'in their heads' in the
meantime), and then whether or not it means the same
to anyone else as it does to them. Then ask the same question in, say, twenty
years time.
[There
is more about
this below, too -- here and
here.]
Hegel could
assert and insist all he liked -- and could do so until his face turned blue (as,
indeed, can any of his epigones) -- that the results he had achieved were
'objective' and delineate how all thought actually proceeds, if carried out in
the way he (sort of) described, but that would simply be the philosophical
equivalent of thumping the table.
[Thumping the table carries no force philosophically, no matter how much better
it might make any given table-thumper feel.] But, because Hegel began by using the traditional concepts and methods he inherited from
previous generations of mystical day-dreamers (albeit adapted and transformed
to his own ends), and he did all this 'in his head', there is no way out of the
'subjective hole' he had dug for himself -- as the above remarks, the rest of
this Essay and much of Essay Twelve and Thirteen Part Three will substantiate.
And the
same applies to anyone foolish enough to use/adapt his method.
Be this as
it may, Davidson makes the point that even if Plato had managed to circumvent these
'difficulties', his theory falls foul of another, even more intractable infinite
regress: one involving the 'problem of predication' and the 'unity of the proposition' -- covered
in extensive detail in
Part One of this
Essay.
Plato's theorydemotes the status of any 'evidence' sense experience presents to each 'knowing subject', rendering it of secondary importance
(or even of no importance) compared to whatever is contributed by
'thought', or by 'tradition' -- as Plato's
Allegory of the Cave amply confirms. [On that, see
Appendix B of Essay Eight Part Two. Having said that, there are passages
in Plato's dialogues which seem to contradict such a negative interpretation of
his theory, but they certainly aren't decisive, and they run against the
grain of his Aristocratic contempt for anything ordinary. On that, see
Silverman (2014).]
[Indeed,
we will soon see this
Platonic, anti-scientific attitude re-surface in the ideas promoted by
several DM-theorists, who argue that facts are not only an impediment,
they are entirely misleading! After all,
facts/'appearances' 'contradict essence', according to them. In Essay Two, we
have already seen
CLR James arguing
along similar lines.]
This Aristocratic depreciation of the material world, with its 'irrational'
contingency, accompanied by an arrogant denigration of the thought, lives and
experience of ordinary human beings spilled over into subsequent
Platonic and
Neoplatonic revivals, core ideas from both of which
find
clear
echo in Hegel's work, and hence in DM.
[On that, see O'Regan (1994). In fact,
Hegel himself devoted an entire book (452 pages long!) to Plato and the Platonists;
i.e., Hegel (1995b),
and clearly saw that ancient class warrior as his intellectual mentor. On this
aspect of Plato, his trenchant opposition to democracy, see De Ste. Croix
(1981), pp.70-71, 284, 411-12. For a revisionist view of Plato and his
anti-democratic prejudices, see Monoson (2000). For a critique of the latter,
see Miller (2003), Schaeffer and Nichols (2003), and Arnhart (2001). Of course,
the classic work in this area is Popper (1966), which pushed this criticism of
Plato to the extreme, accusing Plato of supporting or promoting
totalitarianism (something that would actually have been physically
impossible in Ancient Greece), and since Popper also traduces
Marx (in Volume Two of the same work) along similar lines, it can hardly be
recommended by the present author. This theme will be explored at greater detail in Essay Twelve Parts
Two, Three and Seven, as well as Essay Fourteen Part
One (summaries here
and
here).]
In
which case,
if "What
is rational is real, and what is real is rational" [Hegel (2005), p.xix]
were the case,
both the 'real' and the 'rational' would remain forever inaccessible to the senses (and
would thus,
conveniently, lie beyond easy refutation), which meansthe outward appearance of objects and processes
will (always) fail to match their 'real form'/'essence'. That is because
only 'the Mind' is 'rational', and since material things aren't 'Mind', they
can't be 'rational'. In that case, material bodies have be 'governed' by 'rational principles'
in order to have life, move or even exist.
Or so this Mystical Tradition, and Dialectical Marxists, would have us believe:
"Matter is not the Ground of
Form, but the unity of Ground and Grounded.
Matter is the passive,
Form is the active."
[Lenin (1961), p.145.
Bold emphasis alone added. Lenin is here paraphrasing Hegel.]
[The various responses that could be made to
the
seemingly dogmatic assertions (in the previous paragraph) will be considered in Essay Twelve Part
Four. I have already covered some of the issues involved in Essay Thirteen Part
Three, here,
here and
here.]
Or, perhaps better: given this view, the 'problem' of the relation
between matter and 'mind' may only be resolved if
the material world is re-interpreted as an aspect of 'Mind', an "abstraction"
of some sort, or even
an Ideal Entity in its own right. Hence, the logical conclusion of this way
of regarding
'knowledge', as indeed Hegel seemed to believe, is that, despite appearances to
the contrary, everything must be 'Mind', an aspect of
'Mind' or a reflection/expression of 'Mind' in 'self-development'.
That helps explain why Hegel thought
every philosophy was in effect a different form of Idealism (quoted
earlier):
"Every philosophy is
essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the
question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel
(1999), pp.154-55; §316.
Bold emphasis added.]
Here, too, is Hegel
on why everything is (really) an 'abstraction' (and hence in some way, 'mental'/'mind'):
"If
abstraction is made from every determination, from all form of anything, what is
left over is indeterminate matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction.
(Matter cannot be seen, felt, and so on -- what is seen, felt, is a
determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form).
This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an
external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen,
spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity." [Hegel (1999),
pp.450-51, §979. Bold emphasis alone added.
(Typos in the on-line version
have been corrected.)]
Here is Engels faithfully parroting the
above:
"Matter as such is a
pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the
qualitative differences of things in lumping them together as corporeally
existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct
from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing."
[Engels
(1954), p.255. Bold emphases added. I
have dealt with this issue in much more detail,
here.]
Puzzled
readers who (naively) imagined Engels was a materialist might
well ask: what on
earth is an avowed materialist doing repeating such garbage!?
Not to be outdone, here is Lenin, quoting Hegel
(again!) approvingly:
"'If
abstraction is made from every determination and Form of a Something,
indeterminate Matter remains. Matter is a pure abstract. (-- Matter
cannot be seen or felt, etc. -- what is seen or felt is a determinate Matter,
that is, a unity of Matter and Form)." [Lenin
(1961), pp.144-45. Bold emphasis alone added. The original
passage Lenin is here quoting has been reposted in
Note 57
of Essay Thirteen Part One. In the same Essay,
I have also quoted
several other DM-fans who say much the same as Hegel, Engels and Lenin; see also Note 54a, Note 56a and Note 65a of that
Essay for just such DM-theorists, those who also claim matter is an 'abstraction'!]
It is worth recalling that according to
DM-theorists 'abstractions' are 'creations
of the mind', which, once more, can only mean that, for them, matter is, too!
While it might be expected that an Absolute Idealist like
Hegel (or a Subjective Idealist, like
George Berkeley)
would
consign matter to a waste bin labelled "Put Your Trash In Here Please!",
it is quite shocking to see erstwhile materialists in effect agreeing with him/them!
Indeed, we
read this about Berkeley:
"In the Three Dialogues between
Hylas and Philonous [i.e., Berkeley (2016) -- RL], George Berkeley
argues that physical matter, external to our minds, does not exist. The
objects that we perceive are physical objects, insofar as we perceive them, but
they do not exist in the absence of perception. Physical objects are only
intricate ideas of perception; i.e., they are not actual objects of matter, they
way we ordinarily think of them." [Welsh (2000), p.93. Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis
and link added; italics in the original. See also
Downing (2011).]
The reader might
perhaps be able to appreciate the pernicious influence
Hegel's ideas have had on Dialectical Marxism: the adoption of his method (upside down or 'the
right way up') has created generations of 'materialists' who think matter is
an abstraction, a 'creation of the mind'!
At best, this means that 'appearances' are in some way misleading or are to
some extent 'untrustworthy'. At worst, it suggests 'appearances' are 'contradicted' by
underlying 'essence' -- according to dialecticians.
Hence, in any such 'clash' between the 'evidence' the senses supposedly deliver,
and the rational principles upon which 'the Mind'
allegedly
relies,
Traditional Theorists have always privileged the latter over the former, as the
following authors point out:
"Empirical,contingent
truths have always struck
philosophers as being, in some sense, ultimately unintelligible. It is not that
none can be known with certainty…; nor is it that some cannot be explained….
Rather is it that all explanation of empirical truths rests ultimately on brute
contingency -- that is how the world is! Where science comes to rest in
explaining empirical facts varies from epoch to epoch, but it is in the nature
of empirical explanation that it will hit the bedrock of contingency somewhere,
e.g., in atomic theory in the nineteenth century or inquantum 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. Italic
emphases in the original; links added.]
"Already with
Fichte
the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of
finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be
based. Thinkers from
Kant
onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied
in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29.
Links added.]
But, as we will see
(in
Essays Ten Part One
and Twelve Part One), not only is
the search for a priori 'knowledge' a
pipe dream (in that it can't deliver what had been
advertised for it), it destroys the capacity we have for articulating anything
at all!
Even worse: Dialectical
Marxists have
from the beginning shown they are only too willing to appropriate this
anti-materialist, ruling-class 'view of reality'. The 'ruling
ideas' that Marx spoke about now clearly rule what were supposed to be
radical minds. The sad truth is that this 'approachto knowledge' ironically has had the
opposite effect: it delivers
no knowledge at all.
[This also helps explain why DM readily collapses
into incoherence -- as the next ten Essays
at this site will amply demonstrate.]
Davidson (from earlier) then turns our attention to Aristotle's non-solution (and since
Hegel adopted and adapted Aristotle's theory -- albeit buried under several tons
of gobbledygook --, the following remarks also apply to his version):
"Aristotle again and again reverts to
the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be
separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with
Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study....
Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not
identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by
virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If
universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the
things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make
universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused?
If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be
referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both
particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars."
[Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
The
'necessary' connection that was supposed to exist between these 'forms' and the
particulars they exemplified ends up reducing them to the
level of particularity, too, thus vitiating the whole exercise. That is because
these moves destroy generality, the very thing the 'forms' had originally been introduced to explain.
On the other
hand, if that isn't done (i.e., if the above 'necessary connection' is
rejected by denying the Identity Theory of Predication), rationality will
be threatened, since necessity is integral to it,
as we saw earlier. That would introduce contingency
into nature and society, threatening the (assumed) legitimacy of the status quo.
But as we will see, this
traditional approach to knowledge either collapses into incoherence or it only succeeds in
undermining itself.
Alternatively, if C1
(from earlier) can't connect A and B directly on its own,
what then is the point
of introducing it?
Of course, it could be
argued that C1
belongs to a different category to A and B, so the
above criticisms are misconceived.
Well,
they would be if
'Universals' hadn't already been transformed into Abstract
Particulars
-- or, rather, into the Proper Names thereof
--
as a result of the syntactical segue exposed in
Part One (also alluded to by Davidson, above). But, because Traditional Theorists have been doing
precisely that --
at least
since the heyday of the Presocratics -- Aristotle's
'Third Man Argument' (suitably adapted in each case)
applies to every
known version of this theory. In which case,
it turns out that all such
'Universals', 'Concepts', 'Ideas', 'Categories' and 'Abstractions' (as they
are employed in Traditional Thought and, alas, in
DM, too), can't be general. They are just particulars of a
rather peculiar, rather grandiose kind, ashamed, perhaps, to come out of the Idealist Closet.
The
'philosophical' question
therefore still remains: Is there a general term, or any term, that is
capable of connecting ordinary objects and processes given in experience with
the Abstract
Particulars of Traditional Lore in the
manner imagined? Is there any way of avoiding the catastrophic consequences
covered in Part One?
That is just one of the reasons why this 'problem' has addressed the way it
was in Part One. There,
the aim was both to explain and expose the bogus syntactic and semantic moves that
originally motivated
this ancient conundrum -- i.e., how generality can be
accounted for by reference to what turn out to be (invisible) Abstract Particulars,
and where
predicate expressions are transformed into the Proper Names thereof. As we
have seen, Aristotle himself half recognised this 'problem', but the logic he
(single-handedly) constructed wasn't sophisticated enough to account for it, and
so he was incapable of resolving it. That meant he ended up
promoting an early version of this logical and grammatical error -- i.e., in relation to what turned out to be a precursor of the
Identity Theory of Predication, discussed in Part One. [On that, see Geach
(1972b).]
On the
other hand, if the aforementioned "third term" (i.e.,
C2,
also
from earlier) is superfluous, if a new general term
like this isn't
needed (n order to
connect an 'abstraction' to each material particular), then it is difficult to see why particulars
themselves need a second term (i.e., C1)
to link them, in the first place. The resolution of this quandary becomes even
more urgent if it turns out that this
'general term'
(C1,
again) is incapable of doing the job imagined for it --
once more, because it has been transmogrified
into an
Abstract Particular itself, or the Proper Name thereof!
But, if
it is possible to inter-relate objects in the world without an entire hierarchy of 'abstract
intermediaries' (which after all appear to be the metaphysical equivalent of the
Epicycles of Ptolemaic Astronomy) -- or, perhaps better, if speakers manage to use general terms with ease
every day of the week without all this fuss --, what need is there for
any 'abstractions', to begin with?1bb
Alternatively, if the relation between
Universals and Particulars isn't one of resemblance (i.e., if C1
itself
fails to resembleA or B, also from earlier), then the relation between each
particular and its (invisible, Ideal) 'exemplar' -- i.e., a 'Universal'/'abstraction'
--, must remain mysterious. If Universals and
Particulars don't resemble one another, in what way can they possibly be
connected? How could any one of the factors we have so far met connect the other two
if they share
nothing in common?
Indeed,
it is far from clear what a Universal could possibly provide a particular
that our use of general words doesn't already supply. And that
worry isn't lessened when it
is recalled that, in Traditional Thought, Universals were pictured in
ways that deprived them of the capacity to fulfil the very role that had
originally been
assigned to them -- accounting for generality.1b
[The
following material is a continuation of remarks made
earlier.]
For many
logicians and Plato scholars there
seems to be a much more important logical principle
hidden behind the Third Man Argument: the 'problem
of self-predication' (which
some commentators and critics
have tried to saddle Plato with).
This 'problem' arises when it is asked whether, say, the 'Form of
the Small' is itself small, or the 'Form of the Heavy' is itself heavy.1bc
As Richard
Allen explains:
"Briefly, the problem is this: the dialogues often
use language which suggests that the Form is a universal which has itself as an
attribute and is thus a member of its own class, and, by implication, that it is
the one perfect member of that class. The language suggests that the Form has
what it is: it is self-referential, self-predicable. Now such a view is, to say
the least, peculiar. Proper universals are not instantiations of themselves,
perfect or otherwise. Oddness is not odd; Justice is not just; Equality is equal
to nothing at all. No one can curl up for a nap in the Divine Bedsteadity; not
even God can scratch Doghood behind the Ears. The view is more than peculiar; it
is absurd. As Plato knew, it implies an infinite regress, one which he doubtless
regarded as vicious. Indeed, if a recent critic, Professor
Gregory Vlastos, has
analyzed the Third Man correctly, it implies still more. We must suppose that
Plato could swallow, without gagging, a flat self-contradiction; that the reason
for this, presumably, was that the author of the Third Man -- one of the more
brilliant of philosophical demonstrations -- lacked the wit, or perhaps the
diligence, to identify the premises of his argument; that the man who first
explicitly distinguished between universals and particulars confused them; and,
finally, that a central thesis of his ontology, the doctrine of degrees of being
and reality, rests on this elementary mistake. Such thorough confusion is not
lightly to be imputed to any man, let alone to Plato." [Allen
(1960), pp.147-48. Paragraphs merged; link added. Allen is here referencing Vlastos
(1954).]
The above
two examples (of mine) are here translated into quasi-Plato-speak:
P1:
Small is small.
P2:
Heavy is heavy.
P1a:
The Form of The Small is small.
P2a:
The Form of The Heavy is heavy.
It has been
argued that in P1, for example, the predicate, "small", is predicated of the
other predicate term, "Small" (now misleadingly operating as a subject term), which results in
what is now called "the problem of self-predication". But, this is just another
pseudo-problem. That is because the first "small" in
P1 is no longer a predicate; it now functions as the Proper Name of the
abstract particular, 'Small' (again, as we saw in
Part One). Of
course, what we actually have here is a predicate expression, "ξ
is small", attached to a subject term, "Small" (the reference of which is now
entirely mysterious).
[Academic
articles on this topic -- especially those devoted to the supposed origin of this
idea in Plato's dialogue,
Parmenides (i.e., Plato (1997d); on this, see
Rickless (2020) and
Section 3 of Silverman
(2014))
-- often go astray right from the start when they try to analyse the 'logic' of
such sentences using schemas like the following: "F is F", or "The
F is F", where "F" stands for any relevant predicate
expression, such as "small". But this ignores the fact that predicate
expressions are incomplete (i.e., they require subject terms to complete
them!). At this site, that feature is indicated by the use of schematic stencils like
the following, "ξ is small", or even more generally, "ζ is F".
Plainly,
predicate expressions can't work as subject terms for that very reason. For
'self-predication' to work (at least 'in theory'), we would have to have
something like the following: "ξ is small is small" or even "ζ
is F is F". The result is just plain gibberish. As we also saw in Part One,
calling "small" (or even "...small") a predicate, as opposed to
using "ξ is small"
as a predicative expression, creates the sort of confusion that plagued Traditional
Philosophy for over two thousand years, no less so here. Unfortunately, the
aforementioned academic studies seem intent on keeping those confusions alive
for another couple of thousand! Readers are referred back to Note 15a of Part
One for more details -- a topic also briefly covered again below. (The
use of Greek letters like those above and why a predicative term is the linguistic expression
of a rule were explained in Part One of this Essay,
here and
here, where the
rationale for this way of analysing such sentences was also explained.)]
Well, this
would be a 'more important logical principle' if it
hadn't been based on
the transformation of predicate expressions into singular terms, which
in the end means
that nothing has actually been 'self-predicated', nor could it be! This ancient
pseudoproblem was conjured into existence by spurious linguistic
moves like this, and nothing more. That is because, in P1 and P2, there has been no predication applied to
a
predicate expression, and that means there has been no
'self-predication' for a single logician to worry about. What has happened is that a predicate expression has
been
attached to a singular term that is typographically identical to part of that
predicate expression itself.
P1:
Small is small.
P2:
Heavy is heavy.
In which
case, this
confusion has arisen largely because of two inter-related factors:
(i) Those
who commit this error focus on superficial linguistic factors
-- i.e., if something looks like a predicate expression, it must
be a
predicate expression --, instead of examining the logical role certain phrases occupy in
indicative sentences; and,
(ii) The adoption of an Ancient Greek interpretation of predicate expressions (again, covered in
Part One of this
Essay).
If
you regard a predicate expression (for example, "heavy" or "small", expressed in
traditional terms) as an inscription of some sort, and not the linguistic expression of a rule (for
example, "ξ is heavy", or "ξ is small",
expressed in contemporary terms),
then it will seem completely legitimate to swap their roles in indicative sentences,
inserting them into a space validly (and rightly) occupied by a subject term. That done,
putting "heavy" and "small" at the beginning of P1 and P2, for instance, will
seem perfectly acceptable, when all that that will have accomplished is to change
what had been a general noun into a singular term, meaning it can no longer
operate as a predicate expression, and, as such, it is no longer general. So, in P1, for example, the word "small" at the
beginning ceases to be a predicate expression, it is now a singular term, a Proper Noun
(which now 'names' a mythical Abstract Particular/Form, 'Small').
Hence, this means
that
self-predication is in fact impossible.
[The
word "inscription"
used above applies to physical marks (on a page, screen, poster, billboard, blackboard, whitescreen, cavewall...)
that aren't considered random or accidental, but are held to be the product of intentionality, part of a natural-, or even a formal-language -- or perhaps
even a work of
art, no matter how 'primitive'.]
On the other hand, as noted earlier, if the above were still to be regarded as examples of 'self-predication', we would have
to have something like the following:
P1b:
ξ is small is small (sic).
P2b:
ζ is heavy is heavy (sic).
In P1b and
P2b
we now have two instances of attempted 'self-predication', but all they
manage to do is
expose the hidden nonsense at work here, revealing this as obvious nonsense.
And
that is why I haven't considered this 'important logical principle' in any
of my
criticisms of Plato.
Like so much
else in Traditional Thought, 'self-predication' is a pseudoproblem.
[That isn't
to suggest this specific 'problem' is quite so easily disposed of -- especially in the
extremely brief manner attempted above. But, any further detour in that direction would
catapult us into a lengthy
consideration of this 'conundrum', which would then lead us too far away from the main aim of
this Essay.]
Unfortunately, this ancient syntactical error has been passed down the centuries
to later generations of Traditional Theorists, a fall
from linguistic grace that has
traduced the entire
family of flawed
'solutions' descending from it with modification by unnatural selection -- including
the
'poor cousin' we find in DM.
[Apologies are owed the reader for those mixed metaphors!]
Philosophers of, shall we say, a more practical, maybe even a more worldly,
Empiricist
frame-of-mind, approached this 'problem' from what seemed to be an entirely different
direction. They held that
general terms (and their meanings) were 'constructions' of some sort, cobbled together (somehow) by 'the mind'.
It is
worth
noting at this point that in general, just like the Rationalists,
Empiricists' approach to the origin and status of 'philosophical' and scientific knowledge
meant that the 'mental' side of the equation took precedence, even though they
appeal to experience. But, it is experience that is processed by 'the mind' -- that is, what
an
individual 'mind'
was capable of making of this experience held primacy. In fact, for both
traditions, each individual 'mind' is in the end the
sole arbiter,not the world -- which is, at best, either a 'mental-construct'
or the 'product of mind'.
The deciding factor in such circumstances certainly isn't how we collectively use words in
everyday life, nor is it based on any belief that language and knowledge are social products (which is how
Dialectical Marxists say they view such things, at least in their saner moments).
The difference between the
above two traditions (largely) lies in:
(a) The means by which each 'mind' supposedly arrives
any such conclusions;
(b) The emphasis placed on experience; and
on,
(c) What
assumptions a given theorist is operating with. [More about that
later.]
[The
difference between diverse traditions within Empiricism itself on this specific
topic revolved (and to a large extent still revolve) around whether
'abstraction' involved 'the mind' processing inputs directly from
experience or whether it did so indirectly via 'content already present'
(howsoever it got there, or even what exactly was mean by "content"). It will
take us too far away from the aims of this Essay and this site to enter into the
weeds on this topic (specifically in relation to the difference between Locke,
Berkeley and Hume's approach to this question -- or, indeed, the theories
promoted by contemporary Empiricists).]
Nevertheless, the 'high road' (Rationalism) and the 'low road'
(Empiricism) both channelled Traditional Theorists in the direction of one
or other form of Idealism -- indeed,
as we saw Hegel himself point out.
That is largely because, to a greater or lesser extent, post-Renaissance
Philosophers were consciously working within the confines of the
Cartesian Paradigm.
Its basis they never really questioned --, or, at least, Traditional
Philosophers didn't do so until the 19th century (and
even then that was left to among Marxists). The first major challenge had to
wait well into the 20th
century (among
professional philosophers influenced by
Wittgenstein).
"...[V]irtually no
philosopher doubted, from the time of
Locke
until roughly 1914, that, whatever concepts and ideas were, they were clearly
mental objects of some kind. And no large-scale and comprehensive demolition job
was done against this particularly wide-spread and influential philosophical
misconception untilWittgenstein produced his
Philosophical Investigations...." [Putnam (1975b), p.7. Bold
emphasis added. I return to this again
below, but in more detail in
Essay Thirteen
Part
Three.]
So,
the core Cartesian belief that knowledge begins with, and is confirmed by, each
individual 'mind' as it 'ratifies' its own 'contents' using 'principles' that
seem self-evidence to that individual, dominated 'western thought' for the best part of four
centuries. As noted above, the method of justification and background assumptions were in the end what largely distinguished
between the two main camps (i.e., whether reliance was placed on experience or on 'rational
principles'). It was no accident, therefore, that the
origin and heyday of both traditions was in early modern Europe and coincided with the rise of the Capitalist Mode of
Production. And, as we will see,
current theory remains locked in this paradigm -- even though a tiny minority of contemporary
philosophers have been brave enough to challenge it. [On that, see Bennett and Hacker (2008,
2022), Hacker (1996) and Kenny (1992). See also, Hanfling (2001).)]
While the three leading theorists in the Early
Modern Empiricist tradition (i.e., Locke,
Berkeley and
Hume) differed among
themselves over the precise details, they all held that
'the mind' was somehow capable of to 'apprehending' the 'common' features supposedly
shared, or exhibited, by each particular given in experience, which 'mental capacity' manifested itself
internally in the production, or the 'processing', of "ideas", "images",
"impressions". More recently, these have been replaced by "sense data",
and even more recently by "qualia",
"tropes", "data
inputs" or even "bits". In this tradition, the above
'psychological conjuring trick' (i.e., 'abstraction') was somehow achieved by
(i) the recognition of resemblances, (ii) a process of
'mental
subtraction' in tandem with (iii) some form of 'behavioural habituation' (described below).
[Having said
that, some philosophers (have, mysteriously, attempted to) distinguish between 'thought' and 'mind'
(I won't enter into the
byzantine reasoning offered in support; readers can check that for
themselves by following the reference I am about to give), but this has only meant their ideas
rapidly collapse into a tangled heap as a result -- as we see, for
example, in Ruben (1979),
pp.64-66, which is otherwise a thoughtful and careful consideration of the
topic. There are far better ways of distinguishing among the items
Ruben, for instance, tackled. That can be achieved by a detailed
consideration of how we use ordinary language
in this area (as Marx himself suggested)
-- to be covered in more detail Essay Three Part Six, where Ruben's
ideas will be examined at greater length. (This has also been carried out in
broader terms in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.) Suffice it to say that much of Ruben's
book was ruined as much by his failure to follow Marx's advice (about
returning to the use of ordinary language) as it is by his failure to learn anything
substantive from Wittgenstein. In what follows I won't be drawing
the above distinction (between 'thought' and 'mind'), nor will I try to show how confused it is
(on that,
check out the references listed in Note 86 of Essay
Thirteen Part Three), even if I end up referring to it from time to time.
Another dialectician who tries to defend Lenin is Sean Sayers; I have relegated
criticism of his book --
Sayers (1985) -- to Appendix
Five. Criticism of Ruben (1979) and
Althusser (2001) --
who is another theorist who tries to defend (a version of) Lenin's theory of knowledge --, have been
postponed to Part Six of Essay Three. That has been done because this Essay is already far too long!]
Theorists
working in the
Empiricist Tradition tended to disagree over whether 'Universals' were genuine features of
'reality' (i.e., whether or not they were 'extra-mental' -- this view tending to
shade off into forms of 'Philosophical
Realism') or were simply a by-product of an
overactive imagination (which is one way of characterising
Conceptualism) --, or, indeed, whether they were,
according to the
Nominalists, just 'empty terms' (flatus
vocis -- "a mere breath"), perhaps
even
"useful
fictions" (an interpretation that dominated the
Positivist wing of
this particular current). [On that in general, see
Eklund (2024).]
As soon became
obvious, such
seemingly profound differences mattered little in the end. Given this overall
approach, general words
(common nouns/adjectives) were once
again demoted, having now been transformed into the Proper Names of 'mental particulars' of one sort or
another -- i.e., they were now the Proper Names
of the 'ideas' or 'concepts' lodged in each head, or they were the Proper Names
of something-we-know-not-what in 'extra-mental reality'). Even though
Berkeley,
for example, saw
the importance of escaping the confines of this theoretical
cul-de-sac, with its obscure 'abstractions', his 'solution' only succeeded in sinking the Empiricist Tradition
even deeper
in the same Idealist quick sands.
Unfortunately, there were additional problems over
and above those bequeathed to Empiricist Philosophers as a result of the syntactical sins of their theoretical
forebears (covered in
Part One), which 'errors' also bedevilled Rationalism. That is, the 'general' ideas
'processed' by lone abstractors were particular
to each individual 'mind', which had to be the case in both
traditions. That is because (obviously!) no two individuals share the 'same mind', experience the same sensory inputs or
even drew the same conclusions from them (let alone had the same idea about
'same'!). In that case, any ideas that emerged
as a result couldn't be
general across an entire population, not just in fact but in theory, too! This
clearly meant that every 'general idea' was exclusive to each individual.
But, as Bertell Ollman
correctly pointed
out, this approach to 'abstraction' only succeeded in creating
a private language, unique to each lone abstractor. That unfortunatelyimplied
inter-subjective communication was impossible, whichin turn meant
that the status and validity of scientific
knowledge itself was now fatally undermined.
The
'process of abstraction' (as it had been conceived by these Empiricists) had simply created
EmpiricistAbstract
Particulars --, or the Proper Names thereof
--, just as earlier versions of the
'same process' had manufactured Rationalist Abstract Particulars. Different input -- same
output. But, those working in the Empiricist Tradition seemed
perfectly happy to accept, and even elaborate upon, this (Ancient Greek) wrong turn, as
well as further promote the
Epistemological Individualism it implied. This particular set of "ruling ideas" (i.e., a
commitment to 'abstractionism' alongside the existence of 'abstractions') thus succeeded
in colonising a new batch of compliant 'minds' -- those belonging to early modern,
petty-bourgeois philosophers. This antiquated ideology had now found a
fresh home
--
where it largely remains to this day.
However, the problems these moves
generated only succeeded in threatening their legitimacy from the start -- since they were
analogous those that had confronted Rationalist Metaphysics for over two thousand years.
To see this, assume thinker, T1,
has formed the 'general
idea', G1,
of whatever it supposedly 'represents' or 'reflects' (in the head, in
the world, or wherever) -- call the latter, "g1"
--; and thinker, T2,
forms the 'same general idea', G2,
of supposedly the 'same property, object or process' in 'reality' -- i.e., g1,
again.
Hence, G1
supposedly 'represents' or 'reflects' g1,
which is also supposedly
'represented' or 'reflected' by G2. Now, in order to
be able to say of these
two 'general ideas'
(G1
and G2)
that they are indeed ideas of the
'same thing' (or are even the 'same general idea'), a third term will be
required to connect them. That is because, in this case, G1
and G2
would both presumably be exemplars of the same general, general idea (that
isn't a
typo!),G, -- so that it could truly be said that G1
and G2
were
instances of the same 'concept', 'idea' or 'abstraction' (in this case,
again,
G). Of course, as noted
above, if that weren't
the case (if there were no 'general, general term', G, that linked G1
and G2),
communication would be impossible. That is because there would be no way for T1
to determine whether or not she meant the same by her use of G1
that
T2
meant by his use of G2.
Without G itself, that would be impossible. But, if there actually is a G
that manages to do all this connecting, it would now threaten to spiral off into infinity, just like the 'The Man
Argument' did. So, if G is required to connect G1
and G2,
what connects G with G1?
Or with G2?
Yet another linking term, G3, would be required, and so on ad infinitem...
Hence,
and to be a little more 'concrete', if intrepid AbstractorA,
forms what she takes to be the general
idea of green1,
encountered in experience -- call the idea she forms, "Green1"
-- based on her perception of a series of 'green1
objects', and AbstractorB,
forms
what he takes to be the general idea of
green2,
also met in experience
-- call the idea he forms, "Green2"
--, then in order to determine that these are in fact two ideas of 'green
itself' (or 'the same idea of green', whatever that means!) -- so
that Green1
and Green2
could both be said to represent the same Universal, Concept or
Abstraction (or even were the same abstraction) --, a new term would be needed to connect them, namely
"Green Itself" (or, 'Green'/'Greenness'). Without this third
term there would be no way of determining whether or not A and B had formed a common/shared idea of green, but had
instead formed two different ideas of 'green'. Worse still, if there were no third connecting term,
there would be no way of deciding they had any idea at all of green (in
any shape or form), or
even if there were two or more occurrences of what might be taken tobe
green1,
by A herself. [Recall there would have to be more than one occurrence,
instantiation or example of
green1
(registered in or by experience)
for it to be counted by A as reflected by the general term "Green1", to begin with, and for A
even to be able to call it to mind, or 'think it'.] That is,
these would have to be actual occurrences of green1,
as opposed to 'something entirely different' (otherwise A would be
'naming the wrong thing').
As should now seem clear: the same problem confronts each lone abstractor,even with respect to their own ideas (never mind what other abstractors
might have in their heads!), since they would now need a linking term connecting
the idea they had of 'green' yesterday with the one they entertained today --
call them
"GreenY"and
"GreenT",
respectively -- or even ideas from a few seconds earlier! And that would also apply to any memory they
had of any of the 'Greens' so far mentioned and not yet mentioned -- i.e., Green1,
Green2, Green3,...,
Greeni,..., Greenn-2, Greenn-1,
and Greenn.
But, without this third term (and all the rest to infinity!) no statement based on
the 'memory' of any of these 'Greens'/'greens' could truthfully
be asserted.
[In the
above I have drawn a distinction between the ideas an abstractor might
form (e.g., Green1)
and the 'extra-mental' objects or properties they supposedly 'reflect'
(e.g., green1).
However, it is my contention that no such distinction can legitimately be drawn
by Empiricists (or even by Rationalists!). The rest of this Essay will try to
explain why that is so, but in the meantime I am assuming it can be drawn
in order to test the strongest version of this current in post-Renaissance
Epistemology.]
Hence, without this third term (and all the rest to infinity!) no 'process of abstraction'
could even commence!
In other words, each abstractor must have a concept of green already
installed, or have access to an infinite set of such linking terms. Since the
latter is impossible, this
means that they would already have to have a grasp of the general terms involved,
otherwise the 'process of abstraction' (always assuming there is such a 'process'!)
couldn't even get off the ground.
But, if each prospective abstractor
already understands these general terms -- if each one already has a grasp
of green, for example -- what need is there for abstraction, in the first
place?
[For those
who think colour terms and other 'secondary
properties'/'qualities' are subjective and don't actually exist in the 'outside
world', just replace
"Green1"
and "Green2"
(etc.) with
"Table1"
and "Table2",
or
"Flat surface1"
and "Flat
surface2",
in the above.
In order to connect them (even in the memory) there would have to be a third term, such as "table
itself", "tabularity", "Tableness" -- or, "flat surface itself"
and even "Flat-Surfaceness"(!). The rest follows as before.
(I
have dealt with the confused idea that colours exist only in 'the mind' in
Essay Thirteen Part One, here.
In the meantime, readers are directed to Hacker (1987), Bennett and Hacker
(2022), pp.140-46, and Stroud (2000). To those who think we
never really communicate, anyway, I say this: "I'm sorry, are you trying to
communicate something?" I have said much more about that in Essay Thirteen Part
Three, here.]
So, for this family of theories to work,
a third linking term and all the rest 'to infinity' are required; but, given the tenets of Empiricism, where
they might come from
is a
mystery best passed over in silence (since it can't have come 'from experience'
-- or, it can't
without the very same problems arising, and so on...).
Plainly, as we have just seen, each 'new term' is susceptible to
Aristotle's objection, which means that every single 'solution' concocted by those working in the Empiricist Tradition suffered from the same
fatal defects that had blighted any dreamt up by the Rationalists.
Without these 'new linking terms' (which, once more, can't have come from experience),
all communication would cease. But, since we actually do manage to
communicate nearly every day of our lives, this approach isn't even
plausible -- never mind its other serious defects.
As we will see, this not only makes it
impossible for Traditional Theorists -- those drawn from right across the
philosophical spectrum -- to account for inter-communication,
representation and learning, it also empties generality of all content,
thus vitiating the whole exercise.
[Exactly how this approach to knowledge would make communication (etc.) impossible will be
re-examined below, and in even more detail in Essay Thirteen
Part Three. But the basic argument was set out
earlier.]
Of course, it could be objected that such
ideas had intentionalgenerality built into them --, whereby their inventors intended
they should refer to general features of reality. But, as should seem obvious,
'intentional generality' is similarly trapped in this
solipsistic
universe, since it itself is the Proper Name of yet another particular,
'Intentional Generality'.
[To see this, just replace "G1"
with "intentionally general idea, G1"
in the above argument; the rest
follows. The fact that
this approach to knowledge leads to solipsism was established in Essays Ten
Part One and
Thirteen Part One, but it will be
dealt with more fully in Essay Three Part Four. {Spoiler: If all
that a 'knowing subject' has available to them are these individually-formed ideas and
concepts, and that 'subject' has no way of checking any that they possessed
(even a
moment) earlier were of the same general type, all they can possibly 'know' is the
immediate present (and their own experience of 'it'), but with no way of determining if
such ideas represent anything
in the 'outside world' -- not least because the phrase "outside world" is subject
to the same epistemological constraints. This theory would therefore trap each
'knowing subject' in their own private, solipsistic universe, with no way out.}]
Indeed,
simply gluing the word "general" onto the word "concept" (perhaps
as part of
an 'intention' to refer to a "general concept") would merely saddle
prospective users of that phrase with a term born of the same defective logic, for
the phrase "general concept" is the Proper Name of a yet another particular.
[To see this, just replace "G1"
with
"general concept, G1"
in the above argument; the rest
follows.]
In fact,
given
this entire family of theories, any attempt to derive
generality from the atomised conceptual fragments that float into each
individual head via the senses (or which are somehow cobbled together in, or by, 'the mind') will always hit the same
unyielding brick wall:
abstraction only ever succeeds in generating the Proper Names of
abstractparticulars --, whoever
indulges in it, whenever they so indulge and with
whatever 'noble philosophical intentions' they might come up with to try to rationalise
their persistent indulgings.
Fortunately, for genuine
materialists,
the logic of predication (as it shapes our use of
such terms in
ordinary discourse) has already loaded the dice and fixed the result in their favour --, and there is
no leave to appeal its uncompromising verdict.Generality is a feature of the way we use words, not a property of those words
themselves -- nor, indeed, is it a property of the 'images', 'ideas', 'impressions' or 'signs' that supposedly
underpin, or are represented by, such words. Human beings decide what is
counted as general by their social, not their individual, behaviour, and
words aren't human beings.
[That
surprising conclusion was established in
Part One of this Essay.]
It could be
countered that
inter-communication isn't threatened by empiricist versions of abstraction,
since communication with others is not only possible, it is actual. Manifestly, people share their
thoughts and ideas.
But, quite apart from the above response
assuming what was to be proved, it runs aground almost
immediately. That is because it reproduces Aristotle's original problem --
only now greatly magnified. It is an even worse idea to multiply
one's difficulties by a factor of several billion -- right across the entire
human race -- in an attempt to account for generality by appealing to the
abstractions supposedly engineered by, and now trapped in, each socially-isolated skull. [On
that,
see the next sub-section.]
[To see this, just replace the "G1"
or "G2" with"G3
toGn",
where "n" can take any value from one to seven billion, or more, in the
above argument, and the rest will still
follow.]
In that case, we wouldn't just have the
two
theorists mentioned above -- A and
B, or even P1
and
P2
(where the latter stand for two randomly-selected Philosophers)
--, each with their individually-formed 'general' ideas of 'green' ('table' or 'flat
surface'), we would have billions of 'minds' with countless
individual ideas of 'green' ('table' or 'flat surface') to interconnect. [I.e., "G3
toGn",
above.]
And the same
difficulties confront anyone who tries to find a general solution to this
spurious problem. Attempts along such lines are doomed to fail because any explanation of how the particular ideas of
general terms located in each individual head actually resemble the same
general features of reality they supposedly express, reflect or mirror -- or even the
same particular ideas of these (allegedly) general terms located in anyone
else's head --, would require its own linking term along the lines explored
earlier. Accounting for them
would, of course, make squaring the circle
look like child's play in comparison. That
pointless task
would simply create yet more abstract
particulars locked in the individual mind of anyone foolish enough
to
wander down that blind alley.
Struggling to escape these 'metaphysical
quicksands' will only sink the trapped Philosopher ever deeper. Given
the traditional approach, Abstract Particulars are required at every turn, as yet more
of them
are required to account for the last batch that had just been hatched.
Since none of them are capable
of developing into a higher general form by their own efforts, this approach to
knowledge simply creates an endlessly ascending hierarchy of
Abstract Particulars, each even more obscure than the one below.
Just as
Rationalist ideas originally grew out of, and were inspired by, aristocratic
imperatives rationalised and promoted by Ancient Greek Philosophers -- somewhat similar developments were
taking place 'in the East', to be covered in Essay Twelve Parts Two and Three
--, concerning the 'divine' order that supposedly underpinned the Universe, motivated by
a pressing need to 'justify' ruling-class power, social stratification,
exploitation, oppression and inequality, so the origin of more recent
Empiricist theories of 'Universals' was itself connected with the novel ideological
landscape that took shape in early modern bourgeois society, with its emphasis on "possessive
individualism". [On that, see Note 2.]
If this
new social
and political order was (in the end) meant to be
'democratic' (but only "within certain limits"), founded on the presumed
psychology and self-serving 'rationality' of the fabled,
'Bourgeois Individual',
then private ownership in the means of 'mental production'also began to
make
perfectly
good sense.
The
social,
economic and political fragmentation introduced into society by the break-up of
feudal relations of production (as a result of the rise of Capitalism) mirrored an
analogous splintering of Aristotelian 'Universals' (as the old
aristocratic-slave society gave way to Feudalism). In this new ideological
landscape, 'Universals' were rebranded as
just so many 'ideas' scattered across countless epistemologically-isolated, bourgeois heads. Out of the window went the 'necessary' connection
presumed to exist
between an object and its properties, or between a subject and its predicates -- a
doctrine that was considered unquestionably true by influential Ancient
Greek and Medieval Rationalists. Out with that went the
conceptual link that was thought to exist between a general term and what it supposedly represented or reflected in
'reality' (or even what it tokened in 'the mind').
To many, moves like these seemed to threaten the 'rationality of the universe', raising
the spectre of Atomism,
and with that Republicanism, early forms of Communism and Atheism. [More on that presently.]
If
the connection between an object and its properties turns out to be merely
adventitious or accidental, then, at its deepest level, 'reality'
can't be 'rational',
and that in turn implies 'God Himself' can't be rational, either. 'Dangerous' ideas like these
began to threaten the 'legitimacy' of Kings and Queens, and, along with that,
aristocratic and priestly authority. The rapidly disappearing hierarchy that
had dominated Europe for countless centuries had always depended -- at least
ideologically -- on its 'divine
origin', which in turn was based on the presumed 'rationality of reality', with
everything in its assigned place in the 'Cosmic Pecking-Order'. If legitimacy was to
be restored, the 'necessary connections' that had just been jettisoned had to be
re-instated
-- as a
matter of some urgency, too. Revolution was now in the air in Europe (and
not just in the air, on the ground, too -- on that, see Rees (2016,
2024)). A spectre was beginning to stalk Europe, which meant an
ideological re-alignment now became essential. [More on
that presently.]
Figure Three: Medieval Hierarchy --
'Guaranteed' By Metaphysics
[I have said
more about this metaphysical aspect of Christian Theology and its
political implications,
below.]
Once again,
this
helps explain why Hegel adopted the 'Identity Theory of Predication' (mentioned
earlier), since that theory sought to
re-configure and re-establish the aforementioned
'necessary connections'. This then served as a core aspect of Hegel's
response to
Hume's sceptical criticism of
rationalist theories of causation, which had attempted irrevocably to dissolve those
'mysterious necessary connections'.
Just as capitalism increasingly 'freed' workers from the land and from feudal
ties to Lords and Ladies, so Empiricism 'freed'
bourgeois ideas from all those 'oppressive', aristocratic, Platonic 'Forms' and Aristotelian
'Universals'. The old
ontological pecking-order began to fall apart as new market conditions and
ideological priorities swept all
before them.
"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has
put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations.
It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his
'natural superiors', and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man
than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'. It has drowned the most
heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.
It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single,
unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by
religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct,
brutal exploitation....
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments
of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole
relations of society.
Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the
contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes.
Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones.
All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned,
and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of
life, and his relations with his kind.... But not only has the bourgeoisie
forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also
called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons -- the modern
working class -- the proletarians."
[Marx and Engels (1968b),
pp.38-41. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site; bold emphases added. Paragraphs merged.]
As a result, those in power, alongside their compliant ideologues, recognised
there was a pressing
need to 'justify' undemocratic,
hierarchical state power while also rationalising the newly emerging
class relations that began to crystallise in early modern Europe. This meant
that ruling-class theorists now had to find a novel way of conceptualising
'bourgeois reality', showing that it too was 'god-ordained' -- possibly even
'natural' and 'necessary'.
In this respect,
Empiricism couldn't
rise to the challenge. A fresh wave of Rationalist thought was urgently
required, in
order to:
(i) Counter
the
politically
dangerous fragmentation of knowledge threatened by the rise of Empiricism and
Atomism;
(ii)
Re-construct a new version of
Metaphysical Holism,
which was required to 'justify' the
Absolutist
Nation States that were now coalescing across Europe;1bd and,
(iii)
Rationalise 'God-given' Royal, Aristocratic, and Ecclesiastic power and wealth, alongside the newly acquired wealth and social-position of the bourgeoisie
themselves.
The theories concocted by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz,
Wolff,
Kant
and Hegel proved to be just what the bourgeois doctor ordered, as fresh waves of
Metaphysics flowed freely from the pens of this latest wave of ruling-class ideology.1c0
But, it
wasn't just workers who got screwed (in a new way) by the 'market economy'; general ideas were similarly
shafted (but in the same old way).1c
However, this hasty, of not desperate, turn to Rationalism
proved to be philosophically futile.
The fragmentation general ideas
had suffered at the hands Ancient Greek theorists can't be reversed,
whoever tries to do it. Any such attempt will always fail while the
syntactic false moves
committed by Europe's philosophical forebears remained in place.
No surprise
then that, despite countless claims to the contrary, these novel theories
found it impossible to repair what they had been invented
to fix: generality. This didn't just present problems for Philosophy; left unresolved
it threatened to undermine the nature, scope and validity of science itself. If generality was merely an aspect,
a consequence or a result of the operation of each individual 'mind' (not a genuine feature of
'things-in-themselves' -- as Rationalists would at least like to think), it was
difficult to see what could possibly remain intact of the famed 'objectivity of science'.
Associated
with this was an additional problem: what was it about
each particularidea of the general that actually made it general, or even
appear to be general (especially now that all such ideas had been moved, and
were now located in individual bourgeois heads)?2
Given this post-Renaissance approach
to knowledge, there would be
nothing but
individual ideasfloating about inepistemologically-isolatedheads,
loosely tied together in a manner that became increasingly impossible to fathom,
let alone explain.
[At this
point, it is worth reminding ourselves that it
was assumed by early-modern bourgeois theorists (drawn from both
wings, Empiricist and Rationalist) that we
all construct our 'knowledge of the world' as individuals. It isn't being
argued here that these thinkers were actually socially-isolated,
only that, as far as their theory of knowledge was concerned, they might
as well have been. More has been said about that,
here.]
Given this
family of theories, even a general idea like that
(i.e., one that is, in a vain attempt to conjure 'objectivity' out of
'subjectivity', re-labelled "Thought", "The Understanding", or even "Speculative
Reason", and which attempts to rope in "every individual" and then inform us
what must take place in every
'thinking brain' on the planet) is devoid of sense. If
philosophers couldn't account for generality -- largely because they had killed it
stone dead over two thousand years earlier (as we discovered in
Part One) --, they
had no way of accounting for its re-appearance anywhere else,
either among the general population,
or in the privacy of their own heads! How is it even possible to
speak about "the general population" or "every head"/"brain", for example, with anything
other than empty
phrases if
generality had been laid to rest long ago --, including the general
nature of words like "population", "head" and "brain", themselves?2a
Naturally, some attempt might be made
to
attachanother, yet-to-be-explained term to the word "idea" -- i.e., "general",
as in "general idea" --, but, if all
meaningful words in circulation have to be backed by genuine 'mental
bullion' (i.e., if they all have to be cashed-out in terms of 'ideas' in 'the
mind', as this family of theories consistently maintained), then a
phrase like "the general idea of..." would itself still be a
particularin 'the mind' of whomsoever invented it, and whatever
associationist or "clear and distinct" incantations had been
uttered over it.
Given the results of
Part One, it should now be reasonably clear that since traditional
theories of predication had turned general words into singular terms (i.e.,
into Proper
Names or
Definite Descriptions) each of which now denoted an
Abstract
Particular, then the sentence, "This is the general idea of F" must
face the same awkward, unanswerable questions. That is because the phrase, "The general idea of F",
is yet another singular term designating anAbstract Particular! [The definite article, of course, gives
the game away.]
So it was thatin the
Empiricist
Tradition there followed several more centuries of pretentious,
a priori 'science-on-the-cheap', via the mythical 'process of
abstraction', the results of which were backed not
even by printed currency, just more empty terms.
[Some might
object that Empiricist
Epistemology is a
posteriori, not a priori. Well, so the official brochure would have
us
believe. Nevertheless, this approach to knowledge had in fact always been predicated on
rather fanciful, a priori,Associationist Psychology, supported by what was in effect
little more than science fiction.
(I have said more about that in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.)]
To
suppose otherwise -- i.e., that the
word "general" (or any other term for that matter) is capable of creating generality
by its own efforts -- would be
tantamount to imagining words themselves are capable of determining,
and then projecting, their meanings across the whole of 'semantic space' (with this trick
perfectly coordinated
across every single epistemologically-isolated, bourgeois brain), as if words
themselves
were autonomous agents, not the individuals who use them that are. But, unaided
-- as a simple mark on the page, or
even as an "idea" in the head -- the word "general" seems
utterly incapable of rising to the challenge, creating generality out of thin
air.
Lifting
yourself by your bootstraps would be a doddle in comparison.
[As
noted earlier,
Wittgenstein made a similar point about images and signs. See also Note 40a.]
On the other hand, if general
ideas were capable of representing or "reflecting" "things-in-themselves" (that is, if there
actually are
'real universals' that exist 'somewhere', to which general words supposedly
'correspond' or 'refer') -- as the
Scientific Realist
wing of this approach to epistemology and ontology maintained -- it would prove
difficult to explain the
mode of signification of
the term, "general idea", without admitting it was no longergeneral
(as we are about to find out).
If each
general idea/noun (or adjective) successfullyrefers to
something, somewhere, 'in reality' -- in Platonic Paradise, Aristotelian
Arcadia, Hegelian Hell, Bourgeois Bliss, or, indeed,
anywhere else, for that matter -- they could only do so if they functioned as
Singular Terms.
But, as we saw in
Part One, if that
were so, neither general
ideas nor general words would actually begeneral, justsingular.2b
As Donald
Davidson remarked (with respect to Aristotle's theory -- but his words apply to
any general terms so transformed, quoted earlier):
"Aristotle again and again reverts to
the claim that if the forms are to serve as universals, then they cannot be
separate from the entities of which they are properties. Aristotle agrees with
Plato that universals, like the forms, are the objects of scientific study....
Where Aristotle differs from Plato was in holding that universals are not
identical with the things of which they are properties, they exist only by
virtue of the existence of the things of which they are properties. If
universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the
things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make
universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused?
If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be
referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both
particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars."
[Davidson (2005), pp.89-90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]2c
Even
if each individual 'bourgeois mind' had its own idea of a given 'general name'
(or what it supposedly 'reflected'), and was particular to
that 'mind', the
universality that post-Renaissance theorists sought would forever remain
elusive, fragmented as it now was in the socially-isolated skulls of all who played this
futile game.
[I have
explained what I mean by "socially-isolated",
here.]
But, don't
just take Davidson's word for it; this is something Hegel himself acknowledged:
"The spectacle of so many and so various systems of philosophy suggests the
necessity of defining more exactly the relation of Universal to Particular.
When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as
if it were on the same level, it sinks into a particular itself. Even common
sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the
particulars.
Would any one, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the
ground that they were cherries, pears, or grapes, and not fruit? But when
philosophy is in question, the excuse of many is that philosophies are so
different, and none of them is the philosophy -- that each is only a philosophy.
Such a plea is assumed to justify any amount of contempt for philosophy. And yet
cherries too are fruit.
Often, too, a system, of which the principle is the universal, is put on a level
with another of which the principle is a particular, and with theories which
deny the existence of philosophy altogether. Such systems are said to be only
different views of philosophy. With equal justice, light and darkness might be
styled different kinds of light."
[Hegel
(1975), p.19 §13.
Except for the word "besides", bold emphasis alone added.]
And, in a
roundabout way, so did the young Marx and Engels:
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real
fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative
philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary
fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds
and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in
the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind….
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond.
Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is
saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears.
But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he
says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing
the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the
speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting
universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in
reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names
of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract
formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which
he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending
Substance as Subject, as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, andthis comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975a), pp.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
As Davidson
noted (with which Hegel appeared to concur, as did Marx and Engels), if
anything that is supposed to begeneral is capable of being given a Proper Name,
or referred to by means of a singular term (e.g., a definite description, such
as "the Fruit"), it can't be
general, but must be particular.
And
generality,
like virginity, once lost can't be
restored -- or, not without radical
surgery.3
As Marx and Engels also noted:
"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…." [Ibid; bold emphasis alone added.]
Of course, Empiricists didn't just sit on their thumbs for a couple of
centuries, they made several attempts to solve these 'problems' -- doing so by
the simple expedient of diverting attention from them and onto unrelated
side-issues (to be examined presently). None of themeven so much as questioned the complex word-juggling
that had given life to this ancient pseudoproblem (again, analysed in detail in
Part One), which
meant all their efforts were in vain.
One aspect of their attempt to deflect from their (obvious) predicament involved the
invention of an irrelevant 'mental' capacity, an almost magical ability the
'mind' allegedly possessed, which 'enabled' it to 'discern' resemblances between
the various 'impressions', 'images', 'ideas' the senses sent its way, or which were
supposedly cobbled-together from them.
But, once again, Aristotle's objection reared
its ugly head, but now in a more pernicious form: if there is a problem over the 'resemblances' that exist
between objects (of a certain sort) in
'external reality', it is surely a bad idea to retreat from the Real into the Ideal
(i.e., into the 'mental') in
an attempt to address it. Indeed, if this process is hidden
away in the 'mind', the philosophical 'problem' that this new approach
sought to resolve will now re-appear in a completely intractable form. That is
because 'internal
processes' like these
are even more problematic -- clearly, because they lie beyond both objective and subjective investigation.4
Generality, driven inwards
in this way,
is even more difficult to coax out of solitary confinement.5
Platonic
Realism,
Aristotelian Conceptualism and newly-fabricated Bourgeois Empiricism -- along with a host of other metaphysical doctrines that
have since attempted to address this pseudoproblem -- all
ran aground on these unyielding rocks.
[To see this, just replace "G1"
from earlier with any of the
'abstractions'/'ideas'/'concepts'/'Universals' (etc.) concocted by the above
traditionalists and contemporary theorists; the rest
will follow as before.]
By way of contrast, ordinary language
not only enables, it allows for, the expression of generality when
left to those who employ common nouns and adjectives every day of their lives,
but with none of
the above fuss. But, these terms soon lose their
generality when they are elbowed aside, replaced by the abstractsingular terms
concocted by Traditional
Philosophers.6
However,
placing all the emphasis on an individual's apprehension of generality (howsoever that
itself was
supposedly achieved by 'the mind') meant that theorists found they could only hope to account for generality by surreptitiously
re-employing it elsewhere. This untoward turn-of-events arose largely
because they tended to conceive of this conundrum
epistemologically, perhaps even psychologistically. Unfortunately, the logical
'fall from grace' that
gave birth to the original 'problem' in Ancient Greece was consistently ignored,
buried as it was now under centuries of irrelevant psycho-babble, metaphysical gobbledygook
and pseudo-scientific jargon.
As far as
Empiricists conceived of this 'problem', if sensory experience presents the 'mind' with
particular 'impressions', generality had to be cobbled-together from whatever
'resemblances' the 'mind' (or the brain) happens to 'notice' in each exemplar ('the mind'/brain now
having replaced
the individual concerned; more about that surreptitious move
later, but in much more detail
in Essay Thirteen Part Three -- for example,
here). This made the
entire 'problem' look as if it depended on an individual mind's, or an individual brain's, internal 'recognitional capacities'
(with clear echoes of Plato evident here, but now located this side of the heavenly
veil), as if the fragmented contents of
the latter -- all those 'ideas', 'impressions', 'abstractions' and 'concepts' -- could be
inspected like the
faces of long lost friends and relatives, who had now perhaps wandered fortuitously into the same room and
in some sort of 'pre-arranged order'.
[Henceforth,
to eliminate needless repetition, I will only refer to 'the mind' from now on,
but readers should assume I also include 'the brain', unless otherwise stated.
On why the phrase "the mind" has often been put in 'scare quotes', see Essay
Thirteen Part Three.]
Friends we can
almost always
recognise,
but how
on earth is it possible to 'recognise' an idea/concept no one has ever
encountered before?
Worse still, none of these
'impressions' or 'ideas' would resemble the next in line without the use of the general terms this
'theory' was itself meant to explain. [That was
established
earlier.]
[Anyway, this takes care the reply that
all 'the mind' has to do is spot similarities between 'ideas'/'impressions' in
such circumstances, so, a given individual can recognise similarities
between 'impressions' they have never met before. Maybe so, but only if they
already have access to the right general term so they are able to conclude, "This
is the same F as that" (where "F" stands for the general term
involved). Without that there would be nothing to compare or contrast
anything with, no means by which it could be done. "This is the same...", where that empty space (marked by those
dots) is empty, itself remains empty of content, and hence is no use at all. It could
now be countered that individuals who have no language (either they are too young
or are impaired in some way) can certainly recognise similarities between
'impressions' they have never met before, as can animals. I have dealt with
replies like this immediately below, and
here.]
In which case, "Ah, here is yet
another (impression of a) cat!" could never legitimately be uttered by an
Empiricist at the beginning of their associationist career, since, at best, what they
would really mean is this: "Ah, here is yet another impression/image/sensation of something
I haven't right now got a word for...". Or even: "Ah, here is yet another
something of something (sic) I haven't right now got any words for...". And, even as that individual's
epistemological career progressed,
the very best they would be able to do is give their 'idea' of a cat -- but, where that
word had come from
is, unsurprisingly, left entirely mysterious -- the Proper Name, "CAT",
thereby neutralising its generality.
[This sorry
tale merges with recent discussions of Wittgenstein's comments about whether or
not it is possible for anyone to invent their own private language from scratch.
That topic which is far too big to enter into here, so readers are directed to
Candlish (2019) for
an overview. But,
Marx himself
argued against that possibility, in which case it is difficult to see
how anyone who agrees with him can also give credence to any theory that relies
on the 'process of abstraction', which,
as Bertell Ollman has pointed out, appears to be based on that very
possibility.]
Of course,
the usual response is that each individual learns to associate words
like "cat" with their ideas/impressions of that animal. I will return to discuss the
defunct, 'associationist psychology' that lies behind this theory
later on in this Essay. It is
sufficient to note here that any such 'associations' will also be triggered by the
word "mammal" and "animal" (or even "object") as much as they would by "cat".
[There are
similar 'triggering problems'
with other co-extensive and partially co-extensive terms. For example, "red" is co-extensive with "colour"
(whatever is red is also coloured, but not the other way round),
which associations can't discriminate between. On this see, Cowie (2002) and
Mandelbaum (2020). Also see
Laurence and Margolis
(2012), pp.1-10).]
Anyway,
given this family of theories, general terms have to be distilled painstakingly
from a finiterange of examples, those that fortuitously confront each lone abstractor, or as any given 'mind' processes them in its own unshared, and
unshareable, manner.
However, if
each socially-isolated 'mind' is supposed to extrapolate successfully from what
the few particulars they experience ('internally' or 'externally), then in order
to construct the relevant 'abstract general idea' from such meagre resources,
then each 'sensation', 'impression', 'idea', or 'quale' (singular of qualia) would
have to be given a general make-over of some sort (for want of a
better term). And, in order to do that,
the 'mind' would have to re-connect each 'epistemological atom' -- all these 'sensations', 'impressions', 'ideas'
and
'qualia' -- with others of the 'same
sort', using whatever similar features it happened to notice. But,
as we saw earlier,
not only does that make it impossible to explain how any two lone abstractors could ever form
the 'same idea' (of anything), it makes the whole process dependent on a suspiciously loose notion
of "similarity", a term whose meaning itself presupposes generality! In that
case, if
two 'impressions', a and b, are said to share a "similar"
property, designated by the use of a common noun or adjective, "F", -- so that it might
be judged that a is Fandb is F, and hence
that that was enough to decide that a is similar to b in so far as they both share
F -- that would only be possible if F were already a general term, otherwise it couldn't be shared,
nor could it collect a and b together as 'members' of its "extension".
Clearly,
this new twist only succeeds in
introducing a
generalidea through the back door while failing to explain either
the general or the particular that had earlier slipped out the front. If the two
'impressions' mentioned above are indeed similar, then that would only be so with respect to some
'feature',
F, that they
both held in common, which feature (of necessity) can't itself be
another particular (otherwise it couldn't be held in common -- or at least
couldn't apply generally).
So,
in
order to rescue generality from such radical particularisation, a new general term
will have to be smuggled in while no one is looking -- or their attention has been
diverted.7
More about that tactic presently.
[But, what about those with no language, mentioned
earlier? They can surely recognise similarities they have never experienced
before. No
doubt they can, but specifying what they register requires the use of
general terms, once more. But, doesn't this reveal that the use of language
isn't necessary, here? I.e., it shows that without language it is possible to
recognise similarities that haven't been encountered before, contrary to what
was argued earlier. A language-user might require access to general terms, but
not a languageless being, such as an animal, an infant or an impaired
individual. However, the original challenge was this:
"How
is it possible to 'recognise' an idea no one has never
encountered before?" That wasn't aimed at the ability to recognise
similarities between impressions, but the recognition of a novel
impression, never met before. In order to recognise one such it would
have to have already been 'cognised' -- otherwise it couldn't be re-cognised,
obviously. What languageless beings may or may not be able to do is hardly
relevant here, since this 'problem' revolves around the use of general terms,
which a languageless being doesn't have, by definition. In which case, such
languageless subjects can hardly be said to 'abstract' anything if that involves
the use of general nouns and adjectives, since they have no words. Hence what they are
supposed to be able to recognise -- about which we know even less than we
know about the 'mysterious process of abstraction' itself(!) --, is surely
irrelevant. If anyone still disagrees, please feel free to
email me with your best
counter-argument.]
Independently of the above, just as theologians discovered
centuries ago -- in
relation to the Doctrine of the Trinity (expressed, for example, in the
Athanasian Creed: "Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the
substance") --, Empiricists found that with regard to their fragmented ideas of
generality, it was impossible for them not to confound the particular
without dividing the Universal.6b
[Note 6b above should in fact be Note 7b,
but it would create far too many problems for other links if it were changed!
What follows is the DM-equivalent of the problem
Plato's theory faced in connection with "participation",
mentioned earlier.
On this, see Staniland (1973), pp.15-27.]
Hence, if each individual shares exactly the same universal ofresemblance (call it, "R"), then that term will be particular
and unique to that individual abstractor, too; indeed, as we found
was the case with "CAT", earlier. That is because the 'general', now faced with
vain attempts to distribute it across the entire set of novice abstractors (in order
to secure some level of agreement between them) can't escape from its already fragmented nature.
So, if "CAT" is understood differently by each lone abstractor (as it must be, given
this family of theories), it can no longer be general, but must be particular to each
'mind'. That means R will be fragmented, too. Each lone abstractor
now has their own unique, 'mental idea', 'CAT', which would resemble no one
else's idea, 'CAT', unless someone (call her, "NM") had access to the
contents of every 'mind' involved. But, NM, by some miracle, must be
able to by-pass
the entire 'abstractive process' and declare every individual exemplar, 'CAT',
is the same, and 'reflects' the same, as all the rest, with that judgement itself not
having been based on NM's
own 'ideas', but on 'reality itself' (whatever that might now mean!). Failing that, no one would be able to declare that
all these lone abstractors had the same idea/concept, 'CAT', let alone any other.
[NM
would have to by-pass these 'processes' and base her judgement on 'reality
itself' -- thereby abandoning empiricism -- otherwise her ideas would be
trapped
in the same epistemological quagmire, thus rendering it useless in
this regard.]
But, what is true of 'CAT' will be true of all other 'abstractions', and that
includes R. All will be fragmented across an entire population.
This
divides the Universal.
And, the
universal, now divided, will always be defeated.
Conversely,
if the above distribution of general ideas hadn't been carried out in a perfectly egalitarian manner, the
relevant particulars wouldn't be collected together under the same general term,
shared
equally by one and all. But, if that were the case, if Rhad been shared equally across an entire population, so that every
abstractor had exactly the same idea of 'CAT', its individuality would be lost
-- it would have been confounded, just as predicted.
So, the general,
the Universal, was either divided (and was thereby unique to each lone abstractor) or the particular
was confounded
(since any ideas held about it/them would all be identical).
If
the individual is confounded, there will be no
individuals of a given type,
there will only be one substance, one Universal, one
Abstract Idea, spread out, as it were across
every one of its apparent instances/'moments'. Each 'seeming particular' would just be a
'local appearance' or 'manifestation' of One Universal -- rather like an
emanation or instantiation of 'God' (a doctrine propounded in certain forms of Mystical Christianity),
'who' is supposed to be
everywhere all at once. So, to bring this down to earth, each 'seemingly individual' CAT
would simply be a 'manifestation' of 'CAT-in-General'. 'Appearances' would then be
misleading. While you might foolishly think you are seeing a concrete particular
(an individual cat!), in reality all you would be seeing is a 'moment' in the life of a 'Concept'
-- 'CAT'.
The cat you now think you see is but a mere 'appearance', a brief 'manifestation' of 'CATHOOD'. Its 'reality'
would be defined by the Universal, which 'shines' in your direction. We will meet this
quandary again later, as DM-theorists vainly try to explain why 'essence
contradicts appearances', and why they think 'matter' is just an 'abstraction'.
Those who know enough Hegel will
no doubt recognise where this train-of-thought is headed. (These points also depend on an
earlier argument and might not be fully
appreciated by
anyone who hasn't read it or hasn't remembered it.) The critical points raised in this
paragraph are, in effect, the same as those advanced by Marx and Engels
in a passage quoted several
times below.
In that case, the
stark choice between
confounding
the individual or dividing the substance (i.e., dividing the general)
challenged
Empiricists and Rationalists alike, just as it had the Trinitarians -- and for the same basic reason.
That is because this entire family of doctrines
had descended with modification from the same ancient
syntactic screw up we met in Part One.
All of which helps explain the
continual oscillation in Traditional
Ontology
between Monism,
Dualism and
Pluralism -- and
why Metaphysicians can't decide between Rationalism, Conceptualism and
Nominalism.
To
paraphrase Wittgenstein: and entire Metaphysic distilled out of a drop of
grammar! [Wittgenstein (2009),
p.233,
§315.]
The material below and the
next few sub-sections contain perhaps the most 'flowery' language in the
entire Essay (and possibly even the entire site!), where metaphors and other imagery seem to take over.
Mercifully, I have progressively edited much it out, but
not all!
To continue what was posted in the Preface:
the reason for all these figures of speech is that I am trying tell a very familiar story in an
entirely new way --
and with a political twist thrown in for good measure. The point is to
underline the challenge posed to Christian Theology (and hence to much of
'Western Philosophy' and Traditional Thought) by the gradual realisation that contingency
existed in nature and the
'threat' this posed for 'social order' in general. An
unruly, disorderly world, where there was no overall rationality, meant there was
either no 'God' (an idea that completely undermined Royal 'legitimacy' and hence
ruling-class
power and privilege), or 'God Himself' was disorderly (an idea that also
threatened 'established hierarchy'). The transition to capitalism across Europe led to
the replacement of Feudalism with entirely novel capitalist relations, and that brought
with it a renewed threat.
[How was (ideologically) the case will be explained in what follows and in other Essays published at
this site, but most Marxists are already aware of the factors involved --
even if they might
not be cognisant of the specific issues raised at this site.]
If order was to be restored, the
philosophical legitimacy of knowledge had to be re-established, and that
itself had to be based on three related factors:
(a) The 'rational nature' of the universe itself;
(b)
The rational nature of human cognition; and,
(c)
Justification had to begin in the individual case. That is part of what
made Descartes's philosophy so revolutionary. [Ben-Yami (2015).]
So, some way had to be found
whereby what seemed to be the disorderly or contingent way human beings
experienced the world and then formed ideas about it, didn't undermine
rational and orderly nature of the universe, but in the end 'reflected' it.
Hence, this section and those that follow add to what has
already been established above and in Part One (in this respect). As such they
are aimed at highlighting the
different ways in which the 'restoration of order' (in thought and
'reality') was attempted by post-Renaissance
Philosophers. They also show how the DM-Classicists were seduced by these new
ideas.
[Why they were so easily misled is explained in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two.]
With respect
to the aforementioned DM-Classicists, contingency also
threatened their ideas. An irrational world completely undermined Hegelian
'logic' and its associated
Teleology; that in turn
undermined the legitimacy of any challenge made to class society. If the
world was fundamentally irrational, governed by chance, what sort of
rational justification could there be for communism? What sort of guarantee
could there be that a revolution would even be successful? So, the
DM-classicists had to find a way of legitimating both their own opposition to the status quo
and the society they claimed would emerge as a result. Given the doctrinal and
intellectual tradition in which they had all been socialised (with
well-established, deeply-embedded "ruling ideas" forming a core factor -- e.g., they were all brought up as Christians, or, in
Mao's case, as a
Confucian7b), the only way that
these lofty aims could be secured was to look for 'logical
principles' that were somehow stitched into the fabric of 'reality' and
mirrored by human cognition -- which also told them change was not just a core component
in, it was a rational component of, the 'cosmic order'. Hence, the 'principles'/'laws'
they lifted from Hegel were dutifully stitched into
'reality' and imposed on the way human beings cognised. Both of these
were achieved in a way that seemed (to them) to guarantee success. After
all, if the Universe -- the 'Totality' -- runs along lines that
harmonise with our own (genuine) thought processes (but only if the latter remain faithful to
'the dialectic'), and if all things are 'inter-connected' -- how could it
possibly fail? Teleology was thereby smuggled in through the back door.
Concepts were re-connected so that the link between them was
'rational'/'logical', once more; contingency was thereby cast into outer darkness.
And that
is why the DM-classicists latched onto Hegel's system so readily and
so enthusiastically. It gave
them exactly what they were looking for (if flipped 'right-side up'). In this
way a set of ancient, anthropomorphic, quasi-religious metaphors (that pictured human knowledge
'reflecting' or 'mirroring' nature -- both of which were key components ofthe
Hermetic World-View, which
underpinned
Hegel's entire system) came to dominate their (now corrupted) version of Marxism. That is why they all see
'contradictions' and 'negations' everywhere -- as indeed anyone would whose theory had
just anthropomorphised the Universe, and who also imagined it was a
'reflection' of the wayhuman beings talk!
In this way,
an ancient
batch of "ruling ideas" were given a pseudo-materialist coat of
paint, which
is how and why ruling-class ideology found its way in to Dialectical Marxism,
where it remains to this day. [These ideas have been set out in extensive
detail in Essay Nine Parts One
and Two. This Part of Essay Three
is also aimed at exposing the intellectual forces that pushed the founders of
our movement in this direction.]
However,
in what follows there is a parallel image that I am also trying to develop,
which is explores the connection between:
(i) The
'unruly' impressions and ideas the senses (supposedly) delivered to 'the mind', and
its need to impose some sort of 'order' on them (for the above reasons);
(ii) The
(hypothesised) 'order' underlying or 'governing' the universe (required to
legitimate these moves); and,
(iii) The
'unruly' working class upon whom the ruling-class and their ideologues had
to impose some sort of order. If the world had to have order imposed on it (to
counteract contingency and atheism), so did the working class (to counteract 'lawlessness'
and, 'god'-forbid(!), revolution).
Ruling-class
theorists certainly made the following connection: if there was no underlying order to the
universe (if everything is fundamentally
adventitious and
contingent), how
would it be possible to rationalise or justify the status quo, class division,
oppression and
inequality? How would it be possible to legitimate iron-fisted control imposed on the
'disorderly', 'ignorant masses'? That message wasn't lost on Dialectical Marxists, either, who,
also,
echoed this reactionary attitude aimed at the working class. As other
Essays at this site have shown, as far as Dialectical Marxists were concerned, the working class
is
not only unruly --, which means the party must discipline it, or even substitute itself for it
-- it
is also (even worse!) ignorant of 'dialectics', and, as such, is ideologically all over the place.
That in turn is because workers have been intellectually seduced by 'formal thinking',
a debased condition
compounded by the 'banalities of common sense'. In addition, their thought has
been hobbled by their reliance on strictly 'limited
and defective' ordinary language,
which means they are lost in an epistemological fog generated by an unwise reliance on
'appearances'.
In that
case, these self-appointed, dialectical prophets are going to have to bring
the good news to them -- but "from
the outside" --, becoming 'Great Teachers' or 'Great Helmsmen' of and
for the 'ignorant
masses'. But, these self-declared prophets are going to need a philosophy of
their own that not only helps 'justify'
substitutionism, it rationalises their 'superiority' over the class. [On that, see
here,
here and
here.]
Enter DM,
courtesy of the non-working-class founders of Dialectical Marxism.
After all, if a revolutionary party
adopts, and is guided by, a core philosophy that is a pale reflection of ruling-class ideology
and Christian Mysticism,
how could anyone
realistically have expected any other outcome?
Unfortunately, the 'problems' aired in previous sections don't end there.
Nor do they become any the less intractable.
As should
now seem reasonably clear, definitive answers were required for a range of
'awkward questions', not the least of which was this: Exactly how is 'the mind'
able to sift through the 'ideas' and 'impressions' the senses supposedly send
its way? [Henceforth, these 'ideas' and 'impressions' will simply be called
'inputs'.] An effective response to such a question would have to include
convincing answers to further queries about how 'the mind' manages to sort these
'inputs' into the 'correct' 'mental boxes', with the 'right' general noun or
adjective that was either attached, associated with, or attributed to, it/them.
But, as we
have just seen, that itself would depend on the individuals concerned alreadyhaving a grasp of the relevant general
terms in order to produce the 'correct results', never mind those that
are
consistent. So, the individual in question would already have to have a
grasp of such terms (i.e., they would have to be able to use them correctly),
which, of course, means that whatever the
'mind' is supposed to be able to do must be parasitic on such publicly-acquired and
communally-performed skills, not the other way round.
[Always assuming, of course, that 'the
mind' is able to do anything at all -- on that, see the rest of this
sub-section. The reason
for all the 'scare' quotes around several of the above occurrences of words like "correct" and "right"
should become apparent reasonably soon. If not, readers might like to
skip forward to this section.]
That is
something that began to dawn on Kant (in his own confused way -- confused,
since he, too, located this 'sorting' faculty in 'the mind', unwisely ignoring
socialisation and the public use of language):
"Our cognition arises from
two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is the reception of
representations (the receptivity of impressions), the second of the faculty for
cognizing an object by means of these representations (spontaneity of concepts);
through the former an object is given to us, through the latter it is
thought in relation to that representation (as a mere determination of the
mind). Intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our
cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in
some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition.... Thoughts without content are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." [Kant (1998),
pp.193-94, A51/B75. Bold emphases in the original;
italic emphasis added.
Paragraphs merged. (By "intuition" Kant meant
something like "immediate experience" -- Caygill (1995), pp.262-66.)]
"Our knowledge springs from
two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of
receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power
of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of
conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it
is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the
mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of
all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way
corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a
cognition." [Online
version of the above. As we saw in Part One,
Hegel also made a similar point,
except he claimed that what Kant called an "intuition" was already conceptualised.
How that was even possible was left rather vague.]
But, without this necessary pre-condition (i.e., socialisation and the public use of
language), 'inter-subjective objectivity' will always remain a vacuous concept.
Indeed, this is just another way of saying that these 'inputs' can't
be expected tosortthemselves neatly into the 'right' groups -- as if
they were autonomous, self-directedagents --, since
they have neither the wit nor the intelligence to do so. Even for Kant, they
required
some form of regimentation, externally imposed on them. [That is,
this would require regimentation external to the 'inputs' themselves, and that
would supposedly be provided by 'the mind', its 'cognitive apparatus' or its 'concepts'. How
any of that worked Kant, alas, kept to
himself.]
However, in the age-old battle between the
One and
the Many, the Many have always shown themselves far too 'unruly' and
'ill-disciplined' (so to speak) to be able to regiment
themselves in the required manner, while the One was far too 'aloof', and
hence 'feeble' and 'weak' (so to speak, once more) to do any regimenting. Nevertheless, if
it were evenpossible to impose some sort of
order, 'principles'
external to these disorderly 'inputs' (the Many) had to be found -- to lend 'the mind' (the One)
a helping hand. Never was care in the Communityof Ideas more needed
than here. And yet, if such
'inputs' were to become more than mere 'heaps of
conceptual dust' (so to speak, again) -- haphazardly deposited inside each cognising skull (i.e.,
if they weren't to be left
unsorted, uncategorised, unconnected) --, some sort of 'care' was essential, which
had to be sought from somewhere, and quickly.
[Recall, these 'inputs' are the 'impressions' and
'ideas' that the senses supposedly send the 'mind'. The reason for the above
stress on urgency was explained
earlier.]
As seems
plain, 'sortal principles' -- necessary to whip all these disorderly 'inputs' into
shape -- can't be self-explanatory, nor can they be
self-regulating or even self-directing. If they were, there would seem to
be no reason why that couldn't also be the case with the 'inputs' themselves.
Or, indeed, why the latter couldn't be expected to troop unaided into the
'right' metaphysical pigeon holes, certifying their own inter-subjective
'resemblance' with others of their 'kin'. That is, there was no good reason why
any such 'inputs' couldn't just assemble themselves
under the 'correct' general term without a 'guiding hand' to do it for them.
Indeed, if
these 'inputs' werecapable of self-regulation, or could sort
themselves, that would remove the need for a 'mind' and its 'attendant
goons' (all those 'concepts' and 'categories') to whip them into shape.
Clearly, the first of the above
two options would see 'the mind', or its 'principles', as some sort of 'drill-sergeant', thus
anthropomorphising one or both. The second
would throw this 'sergeant' on the scrap heap, implying these 'inputs' were in
fact
autonomous agents -- anthropomorphising them, instead.
But several
awkward questions remained: Is 'the mind' actually in control here? Or are these
'inputs' autonomous agents, after all? Could such
questions
even
be addressed without crediting both with human characteristics?
[There are
faint echoes of both halves of the above dilemma in
contemporary
Cognitive Psychology and
Behaviourism.
The former anthropomorphises the brain (picturing it as some sort of diminutive
human being, lodged inside each skull,
an
homunculus); the latter scraps 'the mind' altogether, leaving all such
'inputs' to
fend for themselves. (There is much
more on this in Essay Thirteen Part Three
-- where an explanation is given how and why contemporary Cognitive Theory has
ended up anthropomorphising the brain.) On that, see
Kenny (1984b).]
Of course, Empiricists
also claimed that
'the
mind' was somehow capable of extrapolating way beyond the
limited
set
of 'inputs' the senses send its way, allowing it to form general ideas
themselves, which is what all those 'resemblances' supposedly implied anyway.
Unfortunately, this 'solution' left unexplained exactly how any such
'extrapolations' might be carried out without 'the mind' having a
(pre-installed) notion of the general to guide it. But that was the very thing that required explanation, to begin with!
As we saw earlier, in
order to conjure into existence even one such 'abstract general idea', 'the mind'
must already have grasped that concept itself, vitiating the whole
exercise.
As Kant
himself might well have asked: And where on earth might that have come from?
[The phrase
"circular argument" now comes to mind, for some reason. Here is another,
less abstract, way of
making the same point: sheepdogs do not spontaneously know how to herd
sheep and drill-sergeants don't grow on trees. It took countless centuries of
human social and technological progress to bring humanity to the stage where
both were able to do what they now do. If there is such a 'mind' that is capable
of regimenting the inputs it receives, it would only be able to do this as a
result of analogous forms of social conditioning, not some mythical 'process of
abstraction'. Even if there were such a 'process', it would require mastery of the very
concept it was originally introduced to explain, generality. And, that
would be the result of a socially-acquired skill, not a
privately performed trick, which is how abstractionism pictures it.]
Nevertheless, if particulars (these 'inputs') are to be marshalled, or
'cognised', into the 'correct' sortal categories by 'the mind' (or by the use of
'rational principles'), there seemed to be only two ways that that might be achieved (both of which have
already been hinted at):
(A) The first
involved reference to specific 'mental faculties' (these days re-branded as "modules")
that each novice abstractor supposedly possessed, or to which they had
automatic, even privileged, access to do all that regimenting for them -- "mental bodies of armed
men", as it were. Bourgeois Ideas, supposedly born free, would
now be clapped in chains. [This is the 'mental' equivalent, perhaps,
of the Absolutist State.]
(B) The
second appealed to the 'natural propensities'
supposedly possessed by these 'inputs', which meant that they were capable of regimenting themselves,
marching
'voluntarily' into the 'right' 'mental boxes' with no outside assistance. [This
is the 'mental equivalent', perhaps, of an
'Anarchist Utopia'.]
Taking each
in turn:
(A) One
version of this alternative postulated the existence of
"innate
ideas"/"principles" that were
somehow 'programmed into the mind', either activated, or guided, by the "laws of
thought", the "natural light of reason", or some other aspect of each
individual's 'mental architectonic'. [Caygill
(1995), pp.84-85.]
A much older
version held that 'innate
ideas' (also misleadingly labelled "clear and distinct") were, at some level, capable of guiding aspiring
thinkers, allowing
them to classify each particular under the 'correct' general term.
How that individual knew what was 'correct' and what was 'incorrect' -- and even how they
might come to some agreement with others across an entire population over this -- we must pass over in silence,
mainly because those who
(still) promote
this theory, or its modern day reincarnation, also pass over it in
silence.
Of course,
this means Option (A) sits neatly in the
Rationalist Camp, and perhaps because of this the temptation became
irresistible to bury the source of these 'innate principles' in the mists
of time -- boosted of late with a veritable barrage of
Neo-Darwinian
'just-so-stories' projected back into the
Pleistocene --
original
syntax now based on Genetics, not
'Genesis'.8
Other versions of
Option (A)
weren't even remotely Empiricist, staging their appearance in the
Cartesian-Leibnizian-Kantian-Hegelian tradition of a priori myth-making.
Nevertheless, each variant shared the same fundamental premiss: 'abstractions' were alive and well, and were
either living in a skull near you, or were perhaps camped out somewhere in
'objective reality' waiting to be enlisted to the cause -- presumably,
merely by being 'thought about' by a suitably clued-in 'abstractor' or
fast-talking Smart Alec.
Even more convenient
was the additional fact that
while 'abstract ideas' were somehow thought to be real, they were also
(somehow) capable of
transcending actual or possible experience. Indeed, in
this respect alone they bore an uncanny resemblance to the 'gods' of yore, and, as was the case with those
defunct 'divinities', these mysterious 'abstractions' underpinned, made possible, gave
substance to or
even created the material world we see around us.
This
happened, for
instance, when
some of them unceremoniously 'self-developed' while they lived, rent free, in
Hegel's head.
Unfortunately, given this approach, abstract ideas
turned out to be
more real than the material world we see around us. The latter was,
after all, crammed with lowly, debased,
contingent
objects and processes -- fit only for destruction,
according to Hegel.
So, hardly
worth mentioning in Ideal company.
Moreover, since
these abstraction
had been gifted rather
grandiose
names, that implied they
must exist...somewhere. After all, how could they fail to do so if
generation after generation of 'leading minds' and 'influential thinkers' had
not only gone to the trouble of identifying them, but had also thoughtfully named
all of them for us? Such generous acts of reification
now transformed them, making all of them not just real, but Super-Real.
That was plainly because their 'ontological status' was deemed far superior to the lowly rank
that 'unreliable
appearances' now occupied. This meant, of course, that 'abstractions' alone were capable of
generating the
Super-Scientific
Truths of Traditional Metaphysics. As James White pointed out (quoted earlier):
"Already with
Fichte
the
idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding
a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based.
Thinkers from
Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied
in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. In fact,
Rationalists since Plato was in diapers had already concluded this.]
Even better,
our ancestors had helpfully, if not mischievously, buried these 'abstractions' in
what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary and familiar grammatical feature of discourse: the subject-copula-predicate
form -- even if this supposedly important linguistic artifice onlyseemed to have advertised its presence in the
Indo-European
family of languages, rarely anywhere else. And even then (as we saw in Part
One) that turned out to be the case only when that form had been twisted way beyond the knotted pretzel stage.
As we also saw in
Part One,
such phony 'science-on-the-cheap' has dominated practically all forms of Traditional Thought since
Thales and
Anaximander
were in diapers. It is, indeed, one of the
perennial "ruling ideas":
"The ideas of the
ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the
ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual
force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has
control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby,
generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production
are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal
expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material
relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one
class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals
composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and
therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine
the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its
whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of
ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age:
thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch." [Marx and Engels
(1970), pp.64-65, quoted from
here.
Bold emphases added.]
(B) The
second of the above two Options implied that these 'inputs' somehow
congregated 'naturally',
of their own efforts, willingly trooping into the 'right mental
categories' (labelled or 'determined' by the
'correct' general
noun or adjective). But, if they were capable of
spontaneously
assembling, thereby congregating in the relevant classes, that
would suggest they possessed a 'herd instinct' of some sort.
Clearly, in
order for them to do so 'correctly', they must either:
(B2) Be capable of
'obeying', or being 'guided by', specific natural or logical 'laws' of
some description.
As far as (B1)
is concerned, these 'inputs' were not only capable of automatically
'recognising' those of 'their kind', they were sufficiently compliant and intelligent enough to be able to flock
together with no further ado. That in turn implied they
were able to:
(B1a)
'Detect' the 'resemblances' they shared with others of their ilk -- suggesting they
were
surrogate 'minds'themselves, skilled at 'correctly' and unerringly
identifying their own close 'mental relatives'. [Echoes here of Plato again.]
Alternatively, such
spontaneously gregarious
'inputs' were:
(B1b) 'Programmed' to behave
as if they
could act that way.
In short, these two sub-options
(B1a and B1b)
traded on the further belief that:
[Or, to vary
the image, this version of the theory pictured these 'inputs' as if they were analogous to
sheep, which need herding into the 'correct sheep pens'. If so, are general
terms like sheepdogs? Or is that just true of 'the intellect'?]
Video One: Is This How
'Cognition' Collects
Together General Terms?
[But, sheep
can and do spontaneously form herds, even though they need a sheep dog (or its
equivalent) to 'encourage' them into the right 'boxes'/sheep pens. Is that how
'the mind' coerces these 'inputs'? Like sheep, do they naturally congregate into
herds? Sheep have evolved
this propensity as a survival strategy. But, who or what is hunting all
these 'inputs' so that they, too, need an analogous survival instinct to drive
them into herds? And, good luck trying to train a sheepdog to do this to animals
that don't naturally form herds -- like cats! In that case, are 'inputs'
cat-like or sheep-like? More to the point: Is the 'mind' sheepdog-like? So many
questions, so few answers...]
Be this as it may, OptionB1a(i) found safe haven in Leibniz's mind -- whether this theory was his own idea or he was
programmed to think it was is somewhat unclear -- where everything in
the universe is 'really' composed of countless pre-programmed, inter-connected
'tiny minds' (i.e., all those "windowless
Monads").
["Inter-connected" here means each Monad was programmed (by 'God') to behave
as if it were reacting to all the rest, when it wasn't. So, the
'connection' was formal not physical -- rather like all those
'internal relations' Hegel invented.]
In
a much grander, if not megalomaniacaland
narcissistic form, Option B1a(ii) parasitized Hegel's brain. There,
'Mind' became self-developing 'Idea', the Supreme Controller of the
Entire Cosmic Mystery Tour. He certainly
thought he was the engineer of his own ideas, but if he were correct, he was
just theoily rag.
However, in relation to B2, the
implication seemed to be that natural 'laws' operating on the contents of 'the
mind' could account for the regimentation of any 'inputs' it received (or even created) -- a
rather odd idea that
has resurfaced more recently in several
'naturalistic' theories
of mind. Once again, this Option simply reduplicates the very problem it was
meant to address, since it implies that an external 'Will' of some sort ran both the 'inner' and the 'outer' world, as
everything in this 'Mental Cosmos' obeyed orders as if they were
law-abiding citizens. Recall what Descartes had to say about this:
"The mathematical truths which you call eternal
have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest
of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to
talk of him as if he were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject him to the Styx and
the Fates. Please do not hesitate to assert and proclaim everywhere that it
is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in
his kingdom." [Descartes (1991), p.23. Letter to Mersenne,
15/04/1630. Bold emphasis added.]
[I have covered this specific option in more detail in Essay Thirteen
Part Three --
especially in
relation to a re-branded set of neo-Hegelian theories that has recently coalesced around what has ironically been
called (by its adherents),
Critical Realism. A seriously wild misnomer if ever there was one!
See also my comments about Christian Theology,
below.]
Clearly, in order for something to be
capable of "obeying orders" it must be, in some way, or to some extent, intelligent (otherwise, the
word "obey" must have assumed a completely different meaning). Hence, B2-type 'inputs' must be,
in some way, or to some extent, intelligent. Except, now they are
'controlled' by, and obey, the 'laws of thought', which is just an updated version of the
'mental architectonic'
mentioned earlier. However, none of these 'inputs' turn out to be the passive
occupants of any of the brains they happened to colonise. Quite the reverse. They are
meant to be active agents, contributing in their unique own way to the
'internal cognitive community' in which they find themselves (aka
'consciousness'). As a result, this Inner
Microcosm
was thought capable of 'reflecting' the Outer Macrocosm -- and,
vice versa, as mystics never tire of telling anyone who will stop long
enough to listen. They reflect the world since the world reflects them, in a
'like-recognises-like' sort of way. This amounted to a re-vamped, this-worldly
version of Plato's metaphysic. In that case, a properly functioning 'mind' is well-ordered because the Cosmos
is, too -- and vice versa. Indeed,
this is where the
word "rational" originally came from. [On that, see Dodds
(1951)].
The Inner and the Outer ('Thought' and 'Being') were thus capable of knowing --
i.e., reflecting --
one another, because both were
fundamentally the same, both were 'Mind', or the product of
'Mind'.
There is a faint echo of this in Kant; a deafening
roar in Hegel.
Small wonder
then that Traditional Theories of causation (especially those that invoke
'physical law' -- more on that in Essay Three Part Five) are shot-through with
mysterious forces, anthropomorphic concepts and animistic language -- and which
can only be made 'to work' if inappropriate modal terms (like "necessary" and "must")
are pressed into service.8a
["Inappropriate" for reasons set out in Essays Twelve
Part One and Thirteen Part Three.]
That in turn
suggests these 'laws' -- and, indeed, the objects and processes that
'obey' them -- were both a reification of, and a projection
onto, 'reality' of subjective psychological/'mental' capacities and dispositions.
Philosophers who adopted this approach in effect peered down a deep well of
metaphysical fantasy and, unsurprisingly, saw their own reflection looking back
up at them.9
That might
help explain the connection Marx himself made with
Feuerbach's theory:
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof thatphilosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thoughtand expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975e), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
and link added.]
"The characteristic human mode of being, as distinct from that of the animal, is
not only the basis, but also the object of religion. But religion is the
consciousness of the infinite;
hence it is, and cannot be anything other than, man’s consciousness of his own
essential nature, understood not as a finite or limited, but as an infinite
nature.
A really finite being has not even the slightest inkling, let alone
consciousness, of what an infinite being is, for the mode of consciousness is
limited by the mode of being. The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life
is confined to a particular species of plant, does not extend beyond this
limited sphere; it is, of course, able to distinguish this plant from other
plants, but that is the entire extent of its knowledge. In a case where
consciousness is so limited but where, precisely because of this limitation, it
is also infallible and unerring, we speak of instinct rather than consciousness.
Consciousness in the strict sense, or consciousness properly speaking, and
consciousness of the infinite cannot be separated from each other; a limited
consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness is essentially infinite and
all-encompassing. The consciousness of the infinite is nothing else than the
consciousness of the infinity of consciousness. To put it in other words, in its
consciousness of infinity,
the conscious being is conscious of the infinity of its own being."
[Feuerbach (1957), pp.2-3.
The online version I have quoted here is different from the 1957 edition here
referenced. Bold emphases alone added.]
In other
words, where humans think they see 'god' they actually see themselves, writ
large. In like manner, Philosophers fool themselves, too: where, for instance, they
think they see 'Being' in fact they see themselves, writ large. No
surprise then that Hegel
found he had to re-enchant
the universe in order to make his ideas
even seem to 'work'. No surprise, either, that Empiricists had to credit 'ideas' with human
capacities, or that Rationalists transformed 'the human mind' into an homunculus,
where 'consciousness' was replaced by 'a little man' in the head. It is why
DM-fans see human conversation taking place everywhere, with all those
'contradictions' and 'negations'.
Feuerbach
was perhaps more perceptive than he, or Marx, ever suspected.
From a
different direction, such theories
also implied the
human mind was intelligent or rational simply because the universe was. That
peculiar (reversed) theory can be seen in the equally odd idea that the universe became 'self-conscious'
with the emergence of humanity -- a doctrine implicit in Hegel, but openly
promoted by
Teilhard de Chardin,
Bergson, and, perhaps even more surprisingly, by several Marxist dialecticians (Ted Grant,
for one). That inference was itself a consequence of the tortured 'logic'
that supposedly mirrored the 'self-developing concepts' of the Superhuman
(Hegelian) Alter-Ego that supposedly ran the entire show: 'The Absolute' (that
we met in
Part One), or "the Totality"
(that we will meet in Essay Eleven Part One).
Given this
overall approach, not only was the
Real Rational and the Rational Real, there was only the Rational,
only 'the Mind'.
Here is
Hegel, laying the 'blame' where it belonged:
"Plato,
who must be numbered among the Socratics, was the most renowned of the friends
and disciples of Socrates,
and
he it was who grasped in all its truth Socrates' great principle that
ultimate reality lies in consciousness, since, according to him, the absolute is
in thought, and all reality is Thought.
He does not understand by this a one-sided thought, nor what is understood by
the false idealism which makes thought once more step aside and contemplate
itself as conscious thought, and as in opposition to reality; it is the thought
which embraces in an absolute unity reality as well as thinking, the Notion and
its reality in the movement of science, as the Idea of a scientific whole. While
Socrates had comprehended the thought which is existent in and for itself, only
as an object for self-conscious will,
Plato forsook this narrow point of view, and brought the merely abstract right
of self-conscious thought, which Socrates had raised
to a principle, into the sphere of science.
By so doing he rendered it possible to interpret and apply the principle....
"Plato
is one of those world-famed individuals, his philosophy one of those
world-renowned creations, whose influence, as regards the culture and
development of the mind, has from its commencement down to the present time been
all-important.
For what is peculiar in the philosophy of Plato is its application to the
intellectual and supersensuous world,
and its elevation of consciousness into the realm of spirit. Thus the spiritual
element which belongs to thought obtains in this form an importance for
consciousness, and is brought into consciousness; just as, on the other hand,
consciousness obtains a foothold on the soil of the other. The Christian
religion has certainly adopted the lofty principle that man's inner and
spiritual nature is his true nature, and takes it as its universal principle,
though interpreting it in its own way as man's inclination for holiness;
but Plato and his philosophy had the greatest share in obtaining for
Christianity its rational organization, and in bringing it into the kingdom of
the supernatural, for it was Plato who made the first advance in this direction."
[Hegel (1995), pp.1-2.
Bold emphases added.]
No, excuses
comrades; thisis where your core ideas originated -- in the
fevered imagination of a card-carrying, ruling-class mystic called Plato.
Here is
Hegel again,
with one of the few other conclusions he managed to get right:
"Every philosophy is
essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the
question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel
(1999), pp.154-55; §316.
Bold emphasis added.]
But, as Hegel
knew full well, both options readily collapse into one or other of the Idealisms
he speaks about
-- Subjective or
Objective --
indeed, as we have just seen.10
As we are about to see, 'problems' like these turn
DM into an persistent cause of Dialectical Migraine.
Traditional
'solutions' to such spurious 'philosophical problems' -- spurious, because, in the
'West', they were originally based on a
class-motivated misconstrual of a small and unrepresentative
structural
quirk
of Indo-European grammar (as we saw in
Part OneandEssay Two).
Unfortunately, the
'solutions' offered by post-Renaissance Philosophers only
succeeded in creating
two further difficulties for Traditional
Thought to have to grapple with.11
Oddly
enough, both of these 'problems' re-surfaced in a modified form in 'the DM-theory of abstraction',
as we are about to discover.
The first of the
aforementioned 'difficulties' subsequently came to be
known as the "Problem
of Induction", which was itself based on the (presumed) theoretical possibility that
future objects, processes and events might fail to behave the way they have
always done (or seemed to have done) in the past.12
[In what follows I have deliberately ignored the
difference between
Inductive Logic and 'everyday
inductive reasoning', just as I have passed over in silence whether or not
human beings in general actually rely on inductive reasoning of any sort.
I have also ignored several specialised or highly technical areas (outwith
the sciences) where this form of reasoning is relied on as a matter of course --
for example, in opinion poll surveys, market research, census taking, betting,
non-specialised weather forecasting, popular questionnaires, entertainment,
etc., etc. Nor am I concerned here with
Mathematical Induction.
My aim is simply to look at how and why some philosophers have questioned
inductive-style reasoning, and in what way this impacts on issues that are
the main focus of Essay Three (all Parts).]
As noted
above, the
'Problem Induction' was based on the supposed fact that generalisations about the course of nature can't provide a
deductivelysound basis for any belief that objects, processes and events will
always behave 'the same way' in the future as they have in the past. Or, more generally,
that the course of nature will remain constant, or even predictable, from day-to-day
-- howsoever that
itself might be understood. So, for example, just because water has always
frozen at a certain temperature that doesn't mean it
will freeze at that temperature in future (always assuming the water concerned has the same level of purity
and is
cooled at 'normal' atmospheric pressure, etc., etc.). Or, to use David Hume's
example, just because bread has always nourished us in the
past that
doesn't mean it always will. In that case, he claimed there is no
contradiction in supposing it won't:
"All the objects of human reason or
enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and
matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and
arithmetic, and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or
demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the
square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between
these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a
relation between these numbers.
Propositions of this kind
are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is
anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle
in nature, the truths demonstrated by
Euclid would for ever retain their
certainty and evidence. Matters of fact, which are
the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor
is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the
foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it
can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same
facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun
will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no
more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise." [Hume, An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Part I. Link
and bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
The
overall idea here was brought out rather well
by the following remarks (which neatly link this topic with generality and the
(traditional) reference to 'universals'):
"But there is a price to be paid for this new
methodology. About a hundred years after
Bacon,
Hume
(1711-1776) pointed out the problem.
'The bread, which I formerly eat, nourished me;
that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that time,
endued
with such secret powers: But does it follow, that other bread must also
nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be
attended with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary.'
[This passage is taken from Part II of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding, which can be accessed
here -- RL.]
"If we want to be very careful and not lump
things into the same category, if
types are not real, if the only real things
are particular individuals, then there are no general truths about bread. We can
describe the colour, shape, texture, taste and so on of this piece of bread, but
if the general kind 'bread' isn't real, then whatever I learn about this piece
of bread won't help me learn anything about the next piece of bread. That is the
crucial usefulness of real types: if 'cat' is a real type, and not simply a
nominal
type, then whatever I learn about this particular cat will help me understand
all cats. I can learn and know something about how to cure a problem with your
cat if I have studied other cats, as long as they are identical in nature. If
there is no reality to their unity as cats, then every new particular is just a
new thing, and we can learn about it only by studying it; nothing else we study
can possibly help us.So the existence of universals turns out to have a very
profound impact on scientific methodology and epistemology." [Quoted from
here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site; spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links and bold emphases added.]
[I hasten to add that
neither the above nor what follows in the next sub-section represent
my view. Once again, my aim here is simply to underline the serious (and insoluble) problems faced
by traditional attempts to address the 'problem of induction', and, by
implication, the 'solution' offered by any form of
Essentialism.]
Of course,
where Hume went
wrong was to overlook the fact that if something that is taken to be bread
failed to nourish those who ate it (all things being equal!), we would have good reason
to question whether it was bread to begin with.
Hume's overall point
here also borders
on science fiction, the philosophical mis-use of which I have criticised in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.
However, as we have already seen several times, traditional 'answers' to the
'problem of Universals' only succeeded in transforming it into another conundrum
involving Abstract Particulars, which,
if they exist, may or may not
themselves behave the same way
tomorrow as they do today! While such Abstract Particulars might be thoroughly
Ideal -- i.e., they appear to be 'Mental' or 'Heavenly' entities of some sort -- there is no guarantee that even if they
faithfully tow the line on Wednesday, they will continue doing so one minute
past midnight, Thursday morning.
It could be
objected that we are actually dealing here with changelessabstractions
(although it isn't too clear that a DM-fan may consistently endorse that response).
Even if that
were so, the words used to express any such ideas aren't abstract (i.e.,
words are typically (and obviously!) physical objects, or form part of very real material
processes, such as speech), and, given this theory, there is no guarantee
that any such words will mean the same next week what they
mean today. Or even that any memories we have of such words and their meanings
-- or even the meaning of the 'abstractions' themselves -- will remain
fixed, either.
[If
everything does change, including these 'abstractions', do they do so
dialectically or non-dialectically? If the former, does Abstractor A's
'abstractions' change at exactly the same rate as Abstractor B's? If they
do, then we have here something that is identical, namely the rate at
which these 'abstractions' are changing, contrary to the DM-claim that nothing
is identical. On the other hand, if they change at different rates, then these
two characters must fail to communicate since they will mean something different
by their 'abstractions'. Furthermore, if this change is dialectical, what
are the 'internal contradictions' operating here?
According to the DM-classics, such change occurs when 'dialectical
opposites' struggle among themselves and then change into each other. What then
are these 'opposites'? And if abstraction, G1
(from earlier), has any such 'opposite', it
must be not-G1
(but where that has come from might be hard to explain). So, according the
aforementioned classics, G1
and not-G1
must 'struggle' with one another (but, how an 'abstraction' can struggle with
anything, let alone another 'abstraction', might be even harder to explain -- I
have said much more about questions like this in Essay Eight Part Two,
here) and
then change into their opposites. In that case, G1
must change into not-G1
and not-G1
must change into G1!
if so, what exactly is the difference here? One moment we have G1
and not-G1,
the next we still have G1
and not-G1!
It looks like we have change with no change,
a fitting 'dialectical conundrum' for those who like this way of confusing
themselves, and others, to solve. Alternatively, if this change isn't
'dialectical', then DM isn't a comprehensive theory and Engels was wrong when he
said this about it: "Dialectics, however, is nothing more than
the science of the general laws of
motion and development of nature, human societyand thought."
(Engels
(1976), p.180.
Bold added.) 'Abstractions' are part of 'thought'. Of course, if 'abstractions'
don't change, then the DM-criticism of the LOI is itself misconceived.
Either way, DM takes yet another body blow. (On this, see also my comments on
the Heraclitean Flux, below.]
[LOI = Law Of Identity.]
It is worth reminding ourselves that the whole point of inventing
'Universals' (and 'abstractions') was to apply some level of control/order -- i.e., identify,
regiment, collect-together and define -- to particulars (as the
above passage and those quoted
below remind us). But, if the general is now
particular itself (i.e., if each of these 'Universals'/'abstractions' has had generality
surgically removed -- developments that were analysed in detail in
Part One), what
could now do
all this identifying, controlling, regimenting, collecting and defining? The general was
supposed to be the exclusive purview of the 'rational intellect', along
with its 'abstractions'; sense experience only interfaced with the particular (so
we have been told). Who has ever seen a 'general cat'? What would
'one' even
look like? Who has ever eaten 'general fruit'? What would 'one' of
those look like? Or how would 'one' even taste? Who has ever smelt a general
rose or felt a general pain? That is why the formation of 'the general idea of a
cat', or 'of fruit', required the exercise of the 'mental skill' of abstraction,
or so we have been told. No one has ever even claimed to have 'abstracted'
anything using just their eyes, their ears, their nose, their finger tips or
their taste buds. In this area of 'knowledge' the senses in the end drop out as
irrelevant -- or, at best, they are merely conveyers of data, 'messengers'.
And, as history has shown, this branch of philosophy seemed only too happy to
kill the messenger.
[But, what
could possibly count as the general smell of a rose? Or even the smell of
a general rose? What could conceivably count as the general experience
of pain? Or even the experience of general pain? What actually is
a 'general pain', a 'general experience' or even a 'general rose'? Faced with such
questions, abstractionism appears to be falling apart before our eyes (no pun
intended) -- or,
rather, before our general eyes... Nevertheless, such awkward questions
will have to be passed over in silence for now. I will return to them again
later on in this Essay.]
As we have
seen, DM-theorists define the (allegedly) 'abstract' nature of facts, or even
'matter itself', along just such lines:
"[A]ll science generalizes and abstracts
from 'empirically verifiable facts.' Indeed, the very concept of 'fact' is
itself an abstraction, because no one has ever eaten, tasted, smelt, seen or
heard a 'fact,' which is a mental generalization that distinguishes actually
existing phenomena from imaginary conceptions. Similarly, all science
'deductively anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by
experimentation? The dialectic is, among other things, a way of investigating
and understanding the relationship between abstractions and reality. And the
'danger of arbitrary construction' is far greater using an empirical method
which thinks that it is dealing with facts when it is actually dealing with
abstractions than it is with a method that properly distinguishes between the
two and then seeks to explain the relationship between them." [Rees (1998),
p.131. Bold emphasis added.]
These
ideas were central to Marx and Engels's earlier criticism of Hegel's
method (whatever else they later came to believe):
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real
fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative
philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary
fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds
and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in
the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind….
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond.
Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is
saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears.
But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he
says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing
the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the
speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting
universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in
reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names
of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract
formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which
he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending
Substance as Subject, as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975a), pp.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
So,
abstractionism creates 'semblances' of fruit, not fruit, and since no one
has ever eaten the 'semblance of an apple' (to state the obvious, they just eat
apples!), this theory makes a mockery of our everyday experience of the world.
Hence, it looks like abstraction destroys the particular since it
generates, or turns them into, mere 'semblances'. The material world, which seems to
be composed only of particulars (or has anyone ever sat on a general chair,
bought a general can of beans or even walked a general dog?), has now been demoted. Given this
(Idealist) approach to 'knowledge', the physical universe isn't 'fully real', it
is a shadow world populated
by what look like ghosts. What is
really real, really substantial, is the hidden/'mental'
world of 'abstractions' that no one has ever experienced, nor could they. No
wonder then that DM-theorists distrust 'appearances' and, like Hegel, regard
'the
abstract' as the only source, or the only guarantor, of (genuine) knowledge --, even if
they then (inconsistently!) go on to declare that "truth is always concrete":
"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.]
Here is
Hegel saying just this:
"The same evolution of thought which is exhibited in the history of philosophy
is presented in the System of Philosophy itself. Here, instead of surveying the
process, as we do in history, from the outside, we see the movement of thought
clearly defined in its native medium. The thought, which is genuine and
self-supporting, must be intrinsically concrete; it must be an Idea; and when it
is viewed in the whole of its universality, it is the Idea, or the Absolute. The
science of this Idea must form a system.
For the truth is concrete;
that is, while it gives a bond and principle of unity, it also possesses an
internal source of development. Truth, then, is only possible as a universe or
totality of thought; and the freedom of the whole, as well as the necessity of
the several sub-divisions, which it implies, are only possible when these are
discriminated and defined."
[Hegel (1975), p.19, §14. Bold emphasis added.]
"In such a sentence as 'God is eternal', we begin with the conception of God,
not knowing as yet what he is: to tell us that, is the business of the
predicate. In the principles of logic, accordingly, where the terms formulating
the subject-matter are those of thought only, it is not merely superfluous to
make these categories predicates to propositions in which God, or, still vaguer,
the Absolute, is the subject, but it would also have the disadvantage of
suggesting another canon than the nature of thought. Besides, the propositional
form (and for proposition, it would be more correct to substitute judgment) is
not suited to express the concrete -- and
the true is always concrete
-- or the speculative. Every judgment is by its form one-sided and, to that
extent, false." [Ibid.,
§31,
p.51.
Bold emphasis added.]
Which conclusions Hegel, of course, connected with
his rather odd view of 'God':
"The division of Logic now given, as well as the whole of the previous
discussion on the nature of thought, is anticipatory; and the justification, or
proof of it, can only result from the detailed treatment of thought itself. For
in philosophy, to prove means to show how the subject by and from itself makes
itself what it is. The relation in which these three leading grades of thought,
or of the logical Idea, stand to each other must be conceived as follows.
Truth comes only with the notion; or, more precisely, the notion is the truth of
being and essence,
both of which, when separately maintained in their isolation, cannot but be
untrue, the former because it is exclusively immediate, the latter because it is
exclusively mediate. Why then, it may be asked, begin with false and not at once
with the true. To which we answer that truth, to deserve the name, must
authenticate its own truth: which authentication, here within the sphere of
logic, is given, when the notion demonstrates itself to be what is mediated by
and with itself, and thus at the same time to be truly immediate. This relation
between the three stages of the logical Idea appears in a real and concrete
shape thus:
God, who is the truth, is known by us in His truth, that is, as absolute spirit,
only in so far as we at the same time recognize that the world which He created,
nature and the finite spirit, are, in their difference from God, untrue."
[Ibid.,
§83,
p.122.
Bold emphases added.]
How the
apparent inconsistency between the claims
that "truth is concrete" and
knowledge depends on abstraction might be resolved was dealt with in
Part One (briefly
summarised, below). How the
other problem that has emerged (i.e., the fact that the 'process of abstraction' turns
particulars into 'semblances') is also to be resolved will have to be passed
over in silence since DM-theorists have yet to address it. [Once more, I will
return to this topic later in
this Essay, when I examine the (connected) traditional distinction between 'appearance'
and 'reality'/'essence', which DM-fans have also unwisely bought into.]
In the
meantime, here is
Hegel making the same point (about fruit), but drawing all the wrong conclusions
from it (which errors were exposed by Marx and Engels,
earlier):
"The spectacle of so many and so various systems of philosophy suggests the
necessity of defining more exactly the relation of Universal to Particular.
When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as
if it were on the same level, it sinks into a particular itself. Even common
sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the
particulars.
Would any one, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on
the ground that they were cherries, pears, or grapes, and not fruit? But when
philosophy is in question, the excuse of many is that philosophies are so
different, and none of them is the philosophy -- that each is only a philosophy.
Such a plea is assumed to justify any amount of contempt for philosophy. And yet
cherries too are fruit.
Often, too, a system, of which the principle is the universal, is put on a level
with another of which the principle is a particular, and with theories which
deny the existence of philosophy altogether. Such systems are said to be only
different views of philosophy. With equal justice, light and darkness might be
styled different kinds of light."
[Hegel
(1975), p.19 §13.
Except for the word "besides", bold emphasis alone added.]
"Essence
becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to
essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is
therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination
of being the other of form. It is consequently the real
basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the
reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element
to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence. If abstraction is made from every
determination, from all form of anything, what is left over is indeterminate
matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction. (Matter cannot be seen,
felt, and so on -- what is seen, felt, is a
determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form).
This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an
external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen,
spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity." [Hegel
(1999), pp.450-51, §§
978-979.
Bold emphasis alone added. Typos in the on-line version corrected. Paragraphs
merged.]
And yet, the
above is
exactly what Engels himself subsequently concluded (and, somewhat
fittingly, he did so by contradicting his
earlier words):
"It is the old story. First of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions
and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space.
The empiricist becomes so steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he
believes that he is still in the field of sensuous experience when he is
operating with abstractions.... The two forms of existence of matter are
naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only
in our minds. But, of course, we are supposed not to know what matter and motion
are! Of course not, for matter as such and motion as such have not yet been seen
or otherwise experienced by anyone, only the various existing material things
and forms of motions.
Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is
abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously
perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but
abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible
things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can
be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material
things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also
pro tanto
know matter and motion as such.... This is just like the difficulty
mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit,
because no one has so far eaten fruit as such." [Engels (1954),
pp.235-36. Bold emphases alone added.]
Here, too,
is Lenin, emulating both Hegel and Engels:
"If
abstraction is made from every determination and Form of a Something,
indeterminate Matter remains. Matter is a pure abstract. (--
Matter cannot be seen or felt, etc. -- what is seen or felt is a determinate
Matter, that is, a unity of Matter and Form)." [Lenin
(1961), pp.144-45. Bold
emphasis alone added. The original passage from Hegel has been reposted in
Note 10a.]10a
Subsequent
DM-theorists (including John Rees, quoted above) argued along similar lines. Here
are two more examples, but this time drawn from diametrically oppositewings of Dialectical Marxism
(both of them using the same example, fruit/cherries!):
"Engels…attacks those who fail to see
[that scientific] concepts are abstractions from real experience, and [who] ask
about what is 'matter as such' or 'motion as such'. 'Matter as such and motion
as such have not yet been seen or experienced by anyone, but only the various,
actually existing material things and forms of motion. Matter is nothing but the
totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted, and motion as
such nothing but the totality of sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words
like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many
differently sensuously perceptible things according to their common properties.
Hence matter and motion can be known in no other way than by investigation of
the separate material things and forms of motion'. Engels gives us an analogy, 'We can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit,
because no one has so far eaten fruit as such.'" [McGarr
(1994), pp.152-53; quoting Engels (1954),
pp.235-36 (reproduced above). Paragraphs merged;
bold emphases added.]
"One quite often hears people say 'all things consist of matter'. They do not
consist of matter. They are the specific, concrete forms of its
manifestation. Matter as such is an abstraction. Looking for a uniform
matter as the principle of everything is like wanting to eat not cherries but
fruit in general. But fruit is also an abstraction. Matter cannot be
contrasted to separate things as something immutable to something mutable.
Matter in general cannot be seen, touched or tasted. What people see, touch
or taste is only a certain form of matter. Matter is not something that exists
side by side with other things, inside them or at their basis. All existing
formations are matter in its various forms, kinds, properties and relations.
There is no such thing as 'unspecific' matter. Matter is not simply the real
possibility of all material forms, it is their actual existence. The only
property that is relatively separate from matter is consciousness as an ideal
and not material phenomenon." [Spirkin (1983),
p.67. Bold emphases added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Which is why
Lenin also said the following:
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961),
p.171. Bold
emphasis alone added.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
This helps resolve an (apparent) inconsistency,
noted earlier. While, for Lenin, it is still true that "all truth is concrete", it is
the abstract that (supposedly) enables a theorist to grasp the particular and
hence the concrete, even if that will only ever fully be realised at the end of
an 'infinite process'. [We will return to that aspect of the theory later, too. As noted above,
how this implies particulars cease being mere 'semblances' and become 'concrete'
is still unclear; more about that below, as well.]
So, just
like Plato and every other Rationalist, Lenin thought that genuine knowledge arose out of, or
was enabled by means of, the general, not the particular. In which case, particulars not only have to be
collected-together, or even amalgamated, under a
general concept/term, each one in the end is only a particular because of
this. Hence, each individual given in experience is anindividual of a certain type
(i.e., it instantiates a specific 'Universal', 'concept' or
'abstraction'), and that is what (supposedly) guarantees its future (law-like)
behaviour. So, particulars aren't free 'to do whatever they like'; they are born
in chains and there they remain until the day they "perish".
Hegel
scholar, Katharina Dulckeit, neatly summarised Hegel's views (quoted earlier) in
the following terms:
"[It] must be remembered that
[Hegel's] analysis of the forms of judgment in the Logic is motivated by
his interest in essential judgement. There are two conditions for such
judgements. To begin with, a judgement is an essential judgement only if P
tells us precisely and exclusively what s is; no less and no more. But
merely predicating universals of particulars is insufficient for this, unless
the term in the predicate position at once expresses the essential nature of the
subject.This, in turn, argues Hegel, is possible only if the 'is' expresses
some identity between s and P. For if essential determination were possible
exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate
and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external.
As a consequence, s would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while
P would designate something distinct from s, namely a universal.
But the truth of
sense-certainty in the
Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual,
an
individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals.
It follows
that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a
universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and
P are
utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will
necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where
judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because
it entails the distinction between s and P which would commit us
to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology."
[Dulckeit (1989), pp.115-16. Bold emphases
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site; links added. I have subjected passages like
this to sustained criticism in
Appendix D of Part One.]
Which is
a point Lenin was trying to make in the following passage:
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common,
etc., [sic] with anyproposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here
we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual
is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed
to the universal)are identical: the individual exists only in the connection
that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and
through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal.
Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual.
Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every
individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual
is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals
(things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements,
the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature,
etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and
the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes
as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and
counterpose the one to the other….
Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a
'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and
thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general."
[Lenin (1961),
pp.359-60.
Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
It is also why
Engels added this remark:
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In
fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual
thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into
universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the
eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the
eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the
infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels
(1954),
pp.234-35.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged.]
And here is
a passage from a dusty old
Stalinist
text from the 1930s that expands on these (rather odd) ideas:
"The central fallacy involved in all metaphysical
reasoning is -- expressed in terms of logic -- the complete confusion of the
relations between the categories of Particular and General: of Unique and
'Universal.' Thus, for instance, if I affirm: 'John is a Man' I affirm that
'John' is a particular specimen of the general (or 'universal') category 'Man'.
I understand what 'John' is by subsuming him under (or
'identifying him with') the wider category 'Man'. Metaphysical reasoning
proceeds on the tacit or explicit assumption that the general category 'Man' and
the particular category 'John' exist independently of each other: that over and
above all the Particular 'Johns' in creation (and 'Toms,' and 'Dicks' and
'Harrys' and so on) over and above all particular men, there exists somewhere --
and would exist if all particular men ceased to be, or had never been -- the
general category 'Man.'...
"The dialectical method traverses this rigid metaphysic
completely. The category 'Man' includes, certainly, all possible 'men.' But
'Man' and 'men', though distinct, separate, and separable logical categories,
are only so as logical discriminations, as ways of looking at one
and the same set of facts. 'Man' -- is -- all men, conceived from
the standpoint of their generality -- that in which all men are
alike. 'Men' is a conception of the same fact -- 'all men' -- but in respect
of their multiplicity, the fact that no two of them are exactly alike. For
dialectics, the particular and the general, the unique and the universal -- for
all their logical opposition -- exist, in fact, in and by means of
each other. The 'Johniness' of John does not exist, cannot possibly be
conceived as existing, apart from his 'manniness'. We know 'Man' only as the
common characteristic of all particular men; and each particular man is
identifiable, as a particular, by means of his variation from all other
men -- from that generality 'Man' by means of which we classify 'all men' in one
group.
"It is the recognition of this 'identity of all (logical
pairs of) opposites,' and in the further recognition that all categories
form, logically, a series from the Absolutely Universal to the Absolutely Unique
-- (in each of which opposites its other is implicit) -- that the virtue of
Hegel's logic consists…. Let us now translate this into concrete terms. John is
-- a man.
Man is a category in which all men (John, and all the not-Johns)
are conjoined. I begin to distinguish John from the not-Johns by
observing those things in which he is not --what the other men are.
At the same time the fact that I have to begin upon the process of
distinguishing implies…that, apart from his special distinguishing
characteristics, John is identical with all the not-Johns who comprise
the rest of the human race. Thus logically expressed, John is understood
when he is most fully conceived as the 'identity' of John-in-special and not-John
(i.e. all man (sic)) in general.
"…When I affirm that 'John is a man' I postulate the oppositional
contrast between John and not-John and their coexistence (the negation of
their mutual negation) all at once. Certainly as the logical process is
worked in my mind I distinguish first one pole, then the other of the
separation and then their conjunction. But all three relations -- or
better still, the whole three-fold relation -- exists from the
beginning and its existence is presupposed in the logical act…." [Jackson
(1936), pp.103-06. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged. Again, I
have subjected this passage to sustained criticism in
Part One. Comrade Jackson failed to notice that in speaking this way he had
only succeeded in shooting generality in the head -- indeed, as we have
seen.]
Here, too,
is Bertell Ollman (also emulating Plato) arguing that sense experience (on its own) is much too random, the
material it has to deal with far too varied, complex and dependant on the
particular to be comprehensible (as such), which is why he claims we all have to engage in
'abstraction'; we all have to 'mentally process' whatever the senses supposedly send our
brains. That is, we all allegedly focus on certain aspects of reality
and 'mentally collect together' the particulars we experience there (or, rather, their
'reflections'/'images'), but they have already somehow been grouped together under
specific concepts (since we never experience what is called 'a bare particular'. Because we don't encounter generality in experience we
have to apply generality, or general concepts, in order to be able to experience
the world and begin to comprehend
it (even if only partially/'relatively'), which, as we have seen, is a thoroughly
Kantian idea:
"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the
fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable
parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and
communicated it must be parceled (sic) out. Our minds can no more swallow the
world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just
Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her
surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing
them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere',
which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out
of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart. We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises
in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with,
and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established
and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is
relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What
caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually
see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any
subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could
be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought,
and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental
activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or
unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of
abstraction."
[Ollman (2003),
p.60. Bold emphases
alone added; paragraphs merged.]
[The only
problem here is that for Hegel (as Dulckeit pointed out), whatever is given
in experience is already a 'particular of a certain type'. (This was
integral to Hegel's criticism of Kant.) Particulars can't be
experienced in any other way. How any of this is actually supposed to work is,
alas, still a
mystery (i.e., it is if we insist on approaching this topic in the way Traditional Philosophers
have always done -- i.e., ignoring the public use of ordinary language).
Nevertheless, I will also draw a veil over this intractable 'problem' for
the present.]
We have met the following passage several times,
already, but it neatly
sums up an attitude promoted by the theorists who influenced the above DM-classicists:
"Already with Fichte
the
idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding
a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based.
Thinkers from
Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the
laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. Bold
emphasis added.]
It is also
worth noting at this point that the passages quoted above -- and this is
especially true of the ideas Plato, Hegel and Engels concocted --
directly link DM-ideas on this topic to ancient, mystical theories of knowledge,
which directly connects the latter with a given Knower's access to 'the mind of
god' (which is the 'ultimate reality' for Plato and Hegel -- and, as it turns out,
is the only 'reality'). We see this further underlined in the following:
"The
view that the objects of
immediate
consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances
(phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common
Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it
has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it
becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to
their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being
is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important
step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that
we know about are
to us appearances only, and we can never know their
essential
nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain
minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with
its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created
by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us
only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things,
finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in
the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist
as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however,
though it is far in advance of vulgar
realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root
of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum
total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel
(1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold emphases alone added.]
"The
Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection in it is the
suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which, while as
reflection-into-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form,
reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To show or
shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished from
Being -- by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when it is
developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly is not
something beyond or behind appearance, but -- just because it is the essence
which exists -- the existence is
Appearance (Forth-shining).
"Existence
stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But appearance
(forth-showing) is not to be confused with a mere show (shining). Show is the
proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The immediate, instead of being, as we
suppose, something independent, resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as
such it is packed or summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The
essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in
itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a
ground forward into existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself,
but on something else, is just appearance. In our imagination we ordinarily
combine with the term appearance or
phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things existing, the
being of which is purely
relative, and which consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own,
but are esteemed only as passing stages. But in this conception it is no less
implied that essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather
it is, we may say, the infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue
into
immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appearance
which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and has its being not in
itself but in something else. God who is the essence, when he lends existence to
the passing stages of his own show in himself, may be described as the goodness
that creates the world: but he is also the power above it, and the
righteousness, which manifests the merely phenomenal character of the content of
this existing world, whenever it tries to exist in independence." [Ibid.,
§131, pp.186-87. Links in the original; bold emphases added.]
"[W]e must presuppose
intelligence enough to know, not only that God is actual, that He is the
supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the
logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance, and
only in part actuality." Ibid.,
p.9, §6; bold emphasis added.]
"This
objective thinking then, is the content of pure science. Consequently,
far from it being formal, far from it standing in need of a matter to constitute
an actual and true cognition, it is its content alone which has absolute truth,
or, if one still wanted to employ the word matter, it is the veritable matter --
but a matter which is not external to the form, since this matter is rather pure
thought and hence the absolute form itself. Accordingly, logic is to be
understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure
thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and
in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is
the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of
nature and a finite mind. Anaxagoras
is praised as the man who first declared that
Nous,
thought, is the principle of the world, that the essence of the world is to be
defined as thought. In so doing he laid the foundation for an intellectual view
of the universe, the pure form of which must be logic. What we are dealing with in
logic is not a thinking about something which exists independently as a
base for our thinking and apart from it, nor forms which are supposed to provide
mere signs or distinguishing marks of truth; on the contrary, the necessary
forms and self-consciousness of thought are the content and the ultimate truth
itself." [Hegel (1999),
pp.50-51, §53-54.
Bold emphases alone added. Links also added; paragraphs merged.]
"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.)]
This
shows that Hegel and Plato (from whom DM-theorists ultimately derived their core
ideas, especially concerning 'abstraction' and its intimate connection with the formation of
knowledge) held these peculiar beliefs for theological reasons.This is the original inspiration for remarks like the following from Engels and Lenin
(even though they both repudiated the theism involved):
"'Fundamentally, we can know only the infinite.' In
fact all real exhaustive knowledge consists solely in raising the individual
thing in thought from individuality into particularity and from this into
universality, in seeking and establishing the infinite in the finite, the
eternal in the transitory…. All true knowledge of nature is knowledge of the
eternal, the infinite, and essentially absolute…. The cognition of the
infinite…can only take place in an infinite asymptotic progress." [Engels
(1954),
pp.234-35.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged.]
"To begin with what is the simplest, most ordinary, common,
etc., [sic] with anyproposition...: [like] John is a man…. Here
we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized): the individual
is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the individual is opposed
to the universal) are identical: the individual exists only in the connection
that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in the individual and
through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or another) a universal.
Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the essence of) an individual.
Every universal only approximately embraces all the individual objects. Every
individual enters incompletely into the universal, etc., etc. Every individual
is connected by thousands of transitions with other kinds of individuals
(things, phenomena, processes), etc. Here already we have the elements,
the germs of the concept of necessity, of objective connection in nature,
etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and
the essence; for when we say John is a man…we disregard a number of attributes
as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and
counterpose the one to the other….
Thus in any proposition we can (and must) disclose as a
'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the elements of dialectics, and
thereby show that dialectics is a property of all human knowledge in general."
[Lenin (1961),
pp.359-60.
Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
The above
remarks simply represent a non-theological way of making basically the same point
as Plato and Hegel: everything around us
-- every concrete object and process -- only exists and is
concrete
because of an invisible world of 'Universals'/'Concepts'/'abstractions' that
underpin, constitute or define them. But, these 'Universals' (etc.) can
only be ascertained via, or at the end of, an infinite epistemological
'journey', mediated by practice (which is eerily analogous to the infinite voyage every soul
supposedly has to embark upon in their return to their source in 'god' -- the ultimate form of Subject-Object
Identity). As such, for DM-theorists, these particulars can't ever
actually be
'concrete' (why that is so will be explained below), but must forever remain mere
'semblances', at some level or to some extent.
For
DM-supporters, this dalliance with Hegelian Mysticism (upside down or 'the right
way up') means there are no particulars, all are mere 'semblances'. Even
matter itself doesn't exist (having been declared an 'abstraction'); these just
particular instances of 'it' -- but what this 'it' is we are never told!
Despite this, the
use of words like "mystery", "mysterious", "mysticism" and "mystical" might cause some
offence (especially among DM-fans), but these are terms that Marx and Engels
themselves used to describe the results of the 'process of abstraction' and
the transformation of particulars into 'semblances':
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
themystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real
fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative
philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary
fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds
and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in
the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind….
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is
saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears.
But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he
says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing
the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the
speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting
universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in
reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names
of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract
formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which
he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending
Substance as Subject, as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975a), pp.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
So, readers
might
now see why words like "mystical" and "mysticism" are
both appropriate and justified. Not only is 'the process of
abstraction' a complete mystery (we have seen that no one who thinks there is
such a process has ever been able to describe it in anything other than the
vaguest of terms), but the results themselves are no less mysterious.
For example, not one single DM-fan has ever been able to explain what the 'abstractions' that emerge at the end of this 'process'
actually are. Nor can they tell us
where they supposedly exist, or even how they relate to the particulars that allegedly instantiate them.
The entire theory has been shrouded in mystery for over two thousand years --
and there it remains to this day. DM-fans don't even ask these
questions!
[Having said
this, I recently discovered an attempt made to describe the 'process of
abstraction' in some detail,
Laurence and Margolis
(2012). I will say more about this failed attempt in Interlude One.]
That should hardly surprise a single one of my
readers given the origin
of this approach to 'knowledge'
in Ancient Greek Mysticism, fortified by the infusion of a heady dose of
Christian Hermeticism, courtesy of
Hegel. But, we have here an entire metaphysic based on a 'process' that to this
day remains a total mystery.
So, the
above
'laws' (or 'principles of cognition') that the aforementioned Rationalists were
seeking involved an appeal to the general, and hence to
'Universals', in order to comprehend, or at least articulate, the particular. Paradoxically, that was also true of the Empiricists
who also had to acknowledge that 'genuine knowledge' only emerged as 'the mind' somehow
cobbled-together the general from the particular. [But, often in their
case, these were the dreaded 'bare particulars' -- involving the 'myth
of the given'. [On this, see
Sellars (1997).
(This links to a PDF.)]
But, as
we have also seen, both traditions led 'post-Renaissance 'bourgeois thought' down yet another
blind alley -- and there it, too, remains to this day.
In that
case, an appeal to 'Universals' turns out to be no help at all since they
are all particulars, too. Because of that they couldn't guarantee their
own future 'law-like' behaviour, either -- or not without another hierarchy of 'Universals' to
do that for them,
and so on ad infinitem...
Of course, any theory
(such as DM) that based itself on the
Heraclitean
Flux [HF] only succeeds in torpedoing itself even more
disastrously. That is
because, if there
is a universal HF, the future can't
resemble the past! And, what is perhaps worse, under such circumstances not
even the word "resemble" can 'resemble' itself
from moment-to-moment! If everything is always changing, that must surely apply
to words and their meanings -- and that must also apply to all these
'abstractions', too. How could it fail to be otherwise?
[The 'relative stability
of language'
response, which is often wheeled out in reply at this point, has been neutralised
here.]
This
'problem' also partly arose out of the mistaken belief that scientific theories themselves express a special
sort of truth. When that idea is questioned, a solution to the 'problem of induction' soon
suggests itself. [Notice the use of the word "theory" here. I am not impugning scientificfacts -- or even scientific theory! To state the obvious: facts aren't the same as theories.
These rather controversial claims will be expanded upon and defended in Essay Thirteen Part
Two.]
Nevertheless,
when this train-of-thought is expressed a little more, shall we say,
emphatically, pushing it much further than is usually the case, several
rather surprising
conclusions soon follow: Since both the
flow of ideas 'in the mind' (or even those 'in the brain' of an Über-Rationalist,
like Hegel), alongside any sensations that accompany (or cause) them), are also
events, 'subjective' experience itself can't avoid being thrown into
doubt, which in turn raises questions about the future behaviour even of
'mental events'.
[The reader
should keep in mind that the following comments apply only ifwe adopt the
above way of conceptualising knowledge. Again, they do not represent my views,
even though they do represent my way of challenging this age-old tradition.]
In that case, our experience of
anything that has yet to occur (which must also include our own futurethoughts
and actions) might fail to
'resemble' what they had been, or seemed to have been, in the past. Even the
nature and behaviour of our sensations and ideas could also alter from moment-to-moment, given this
approach to knowledge (and especially if we take into account the HF). If we
experience an idea now as an idea of a certain sort,
it could be experienced, thought of, or interpreted as something totally different
tomorrow, even though it might prove impossible to say right now what that
might be. That itself would either be because we don't yet possess the relevant language or because that language
might itself have changed before we succeed in uttering, or even thinking, anything at all.
[The moral
of this depressing tale is that the HF is no respecter of the ideas of those who are foolish enough to
give it any credence. It holds sway over everything they say, think or believe -- not one
atom of which is the same now as it was a fraction of a second earlier. If they
imagine otherwise, they aren't bona fideHF-ers. They're just philosophical
windbags.]
Recall,
'abstractions' were
originally invented
to provide some sort of philosophical -- or even scientific -- stability to the
deliverances of the senses. They were supposed to help provide a secure
foundation for knowledge, a basis that transcended the particular by 'ascending'
to the general -- i.e., to 'Universals', 'Concepts' and 'Categories'. They were held to be far superior to,
and more reliable than, ephemeral,
contingent, transient facts based on experience/'appearances'. That is why
Plato and his ilk invented them. It was the whole point of his
Allegory of the Cave.
[On that, see
Appendix B of Essay Eight Part Two.] It was
also the attitude motivating the German Idealists (this was quoted earlier):
"Already with
Fichte
the
idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding
a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based.
Thinkers from
Kant
onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the
laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. Bold
emphasis added.]
Here again is Hegel echoing and amplifying these
ideas:
"The
view that the objects of
immediate
consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances
(phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common
Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it
has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it
becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to
their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being
is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important
step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that
we know about are
to us appearances only, and we can never know their
essential
nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach.
"Plain
minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with
its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created
by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us
only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things,
finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in
the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist
as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however,
though it is far in advance of vulgar
realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root
of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum
total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel
(1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold emphases added.]
However,
the above approach will always prove to be futile, if not counter-productive. That is because
anyone who accepts it will now have to appeal to
'abstractions' -- i.e., 'Universals', 'Concepts', 'Categories',
'Principles' and 'Ideas', every one of which has been privately processed
and created -- in order to help guarantee that 'empirical instability', or
'variability', don't undermine the
status of philosophical/scientific knowledge. But, as we have seen, these 'abstractions' are all particulars (or
the Proper Names thereof), so theyare
absolutely no use in this respect. That is in turn because they are subject to the
very same suspicions about their own future constancy that (allegedly) confront
ordinary material particulars (such as regular sunrise or the nourishing
property of bread,
mentioned earlier). In which case,
no particular -- abstract or concrete -- proves capable of providing a secure basis for a
single general conclusion about the future constancy of nature.
There are no self-certifying ideas to be had here
-- given this self-torpedoing way
of conceiving the 'problem'.
[Once again,
this most definitely isn't the way I would tackle such 'problems'!]
Worse still: any 'solution' to this 'problem'
(should one ever be found!) will be subject to the same suspicions,
and hence could itself be experienced as a non-solution
the very next day -- especially if we were foolish enough buy into the HF.
Naturally,
expressed the way this has been done for countless generations,
any attempt to 'solve the problem of induction' -- i.e., demonstrate how the
present 'binds' the future -- has already lost its way. In fact, as should now seem
clear, phrases like "The present" and "The future" are
also particulars (or
they are singular terms that 'refer' to Abstract Particulars, alongside that other Abstract Particular,
'Time'), and as such are totally incapable of preventing the ideas
expressed by anyone who adopts this approach to knowledge from sliding off into
oblivion.
As we now
know -- mainly because it was exposed in
Part One -- the original source of these 'difficulties' was
a series ideologically-driven, linguistic dodges engineered by Ancient Greek metaphysicians, logicians and grammarians. In
which case, the dissolution of over two millennia of such class-compromised confusion recommends itself.
Or it does so to genuine materialists.
The bottom line here is the realisation that if 'the mind' is capable of experiencing only a finite number of
exemplars from which it has to piece-together (or apply) general ideas, subsequent experience could
always refuse to play ball, as it were. In that
case, given this way of picturing 'reality', the future might fail to resemble the past in any
meaningful sense. Not only might the Sun fail to rise (tomorrow), and water fail
to boil at a given temperature, but cats might refuse to walk about on mats and
Hegel might even begin to make sense.
Of
course, as already noted, it might prove possible side-step such 'difficulties' if 'the mind'
was thought capable of gaining direct
access to a 'Third Realm' where these 'abstract ideas' (i.e., Universals, General Concepts and Categories, etc.,
etc.) supposedly hang out, and which were thought capable of regimenting
whatever the senses sent its way -- or, on a good day, might even be able to
'construct reality itself'. If so, it would
mean theorists could legitimately claim the future course of events was
guaranteed to resemble the past (in the manner indicated above).
However, in order for 'the mind' to be able to control
the 'unruly inputs' the senses delivered to it, something a little more
robust
than Locke's Social
Contract or
Hume's
'habits of mind' were called for. Unfortunately, Ancient Greek theories
that spoke about, or which relied on, there being a
rational and ordered Cosmos didn't sit too well with the socially-, and politically-fragmented bourgeois world
that began to emerge in the
17th
and 18th centuries.
As already noted,
Hume
attempted to address this 'problem' by appealing to rather vague 'habits',
which amounted to an Associationist
theory of human cognition. This was (somehow) thought capable of forming a
secure basis for expectations about
the future course of events, predicated on past experience, shaped by these
'habits'. Clearly, this
nebulous theory was susceptible
to the challenges set out earlier. Because of that, any series of events
-- past, present or future -- will become the target of the same sceptical
questions. In which
case, it is difficult to see how even these 'habits of mind' will emerge unscathed. Or
must we
now appeal to a habit of the habits of the mind to guarantee
their constancy? Or are 'habits of the mind' the only processes in
the entire universe that
always behave tomorrow like they have today? So, assume that on day one, Habit1
underpins the expectation that B should follow A (where "A"
and "B" are event tokens). But, what if on day two Habit1
now registers the expectation that C should follow A instead? In that
case, might there is a second order habit, Habit2,
that underpins the expectation that Habit1
will behave itself and will underpin the expectation that B
follows A, once more? However, what is to stop Habit2
from misbehaving? What is to stop it from underpinning the expectation that
Habit1
underpins the expectation that D follows A? Maybe then there is a
third order habit, Habit3,
that rescues the day? But, what if it, too, misbehaves...?
One suspects that another infinite regress gathering in the wings, here.
The
abandonment of the 'logical', or
necessary connection between a Universal and the particulars that fall under it
-- i.e.,
between an object and its
properties (which we also met
earlier), that took place
in the High Middle Ages (with the rise of
Nominalism
-- but the cracks were already forming in the work of several post-Aristotelian
theorists; the Nominalists merely forced them wide enough for all to see),
introduced radical contingency, not just into Traditional Theories of Causation,
but 'Reality Itself'. This
development
wasn't, of course, unconnected with a decline in the power of the Papacy as
Feudalism itself began to unravel, giving way to early forms of the 'free' market economy.
[Those
tantalising threads will be pulled on in another Essay.]
Rationalist
Philosophers (like
Spinoza
and Leibniz) made
valiant attempts to repair the damage such untoward developments had
inflicted both on both the 'Rational Order of Reality' and the 'God' of Christianity
and 'His creation'. To that end, they
constructed an entirely new batch of 'necessitarian' theories that sought to
re-establish a logical connection between a given substance and its 'accidents',
a given object and its
properties. Unfortunately, these
theories were
themselves based
on the same old "ruling ideas" -- i.e., principally on:
(i) The
quasi-religious dogma that 'Reality' is 'Rational', and hence that fundamental 'truths' about 'it' may be derived from thought/language alone;
and,
[On the
general background to this, see, for example, Copleston (2003a, 2003b, 2003c),
and the references given below.]
Here is how I have made similar points in Essay Eleven
Part Two -- which formed part of
a brief consideration of certain aspects of Christian Fundamentalism and 'Intelligent
Design' that also turn out to be relevant to the above issues:
There
is an excellent summary of the two main avenues theists have taken in
their attempt to conceive of the
relationship between 'God' and 'His' creation in Osler (2004), pp.15-35. [Not
unexpectedly, these
neatly mirror the tensions that plague the DM-account of nature, too.]
Here
follows a summary of the relevant parts of Osler's thesis (with a few additional comments of
my own thrown in for good measure):
Traditionally, there were two ways of
conceiving 'God's' relation to material reality:
(a) 'He' is related to it by necessity, as an
expression of 'His' nature; or,
(b) 'He' is related to it contingently --
as an expression of 'His' 'free will'.
If (a) were the case,
there would be a logical connection between the properties of created
beings and their 'essence' -- i.e., the logical core of each being, which is either an
expression of its unique nature, or of the 'kind' to which it belongs. In turn, this
would be a consequence of the logical or conceptual links that exist between
'creation' and 'God's Nature'. If that weren't the case, it would introduce radical
contingency into creation, undermining 'God's Nature' and 'His'
control of 'Creation'. As a result language and logic must constitute
reality (why that is so is outlined
here).
[Also worth pointing out is the fact that
Super-Truths like this
-- about
fundamental aspects of 'reality' -- may only be accessed
via speculative thought.]
This means that all
that exists is either:
(i) An expression of the logical properties inherent in 'God';
or,
(ii) An emanation from 'God'.
That is, material reality
must be logically 'emergent' from, and hence connected with, the 'Deity'.
So, the universe 'issues' forth from 'His'
nature 'eternally' and a-temporally, outside of time, since that is where 'He exists'. Everything
must therefore be inter-linked by 'internal', or 'necessary', relations, all of
which are derived from, and constituted by, 'concepts' implicit in 'God',
which are consequently mirrored in fundamental aspects of
creation. This idea is prominent in
Plotinus and
subsequent
Neo-Platonists, like Hegel.
Given this approach,
it is clear that the vast majority of 'ordinary' human beings are incapable of accessing,
nor can they even comprehend, this 'rational' view of 'reality'. Their
lack of knowledge, education and 'divine
illumination' means that, at best, they
misperceive these 'logical properties' as contingentqualities. Hence, for them,
appearances fail to match underlying "essence". Naturally, this
implies that "commonsense" and ordinary language are fundamentally unreliable.
Now, where have we heard all that before? Email me if you know.
Option (b), on
the other hand, implied that 'God' acted freely when 'He' created the world.
So, if 'He' wasn't acting under any form of 'compulsion', logical or conceptual --
i.e., 'He' wasn't acting on the basis of the logical properties
inherent in 'His' nature -- then there
will be no logical or necessary connection between 'The Creator' and 'His Creation'.
Nor,
indeed, would there be such between each created being. Every object and process in reality
would therefore be genuinelycontingent, and appearances will no
longer be 'deceptive', since they can't mask the hidden, esoteric 'essences'
mentioned above -- for there are none. That being the case, there are no
synthetic a priori truths (as these later came to be known)
ascertainable by thought alone. The only path to knowledge was through observation,
experiment,
and a careful study of the 'Book
of Nature'. It is no coincidence then that the foundations of modern science were laid
in the Middle Ages largely by theorists who adopted this view of 'God' --
for example,
Jean
Buridan.
[On this, see also: Copleston (2003c), pp.153-67, Crombie (1970,
1979), Grant (1996), Hannam (2009), Lindberg (2007).]
In post-Renaissance thought, the 'necessitarian' tradition re-surfaced in the work
of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hegel; the 'voluntarist'
tradition saw the light of day in an attenuated form in the work of Newton, the Empiricists, and the so-called "mechanists".
They all tended to stress the connection between 'God's'
free will and contingency in nature, alongside the primacy of empirical
over a priori knowledge and the superiority of observation and
experiment over speculation and abstract theory.
[Admittedly, the above categories are rather crude; for example, Descartes was a
mechanist, but his theory put him on the same side of the fence as Spinoza and
Leibniz, whereas
Gassendi
was also a mechanist, but his ideas aligned him with the voluntarists. On this,
see Copleston (2003d).]
So, when Fundamentalist Christians,
for example, look at nature and see design everywhere, they
also claim to see
'irreducible complexity' -- the handiwork of 'God' -- and they either put this
down to 'His' free creation, or they see it as an expression of logical
properties imposed on nature by the Logos (depending, of course, on how they view the
nature of 'The Creator' and 'His' relation to the world).
https://tinyurl.com/m3juz9ce
Christian mechanists saw design in nature, too, but their
theories became
increasingly
deistic, and later openly atheistic. The admission of a contingent link between
'God' and nature severed the logical connection that earlier theorists had
postulated, making "the God hypothesis" seem increasingly redundant. [Laplace
-- "I
have no need of that hypothesis".]
[On this,
see
Lovejoy (1964).
[This links to a PDF.] There is also an excellent account of these developments in
Redwood (1976). Also see Dillenberger (1988). A classic expression of these developments
can be found in the debate between
Leibniz and Clarke. Cf., Alexander (1956), and Vailati (1997).]
Much of this controversy had been motivated much
earlier by the work of
the
Medieval Nominalists, whose theories also sundered the logical link between a
substance and its properties as part of a reaction to the tradition begun by
Avicenna (IbnSīnā, with his separation of 'essence' and 'existence' in created
beings), Averroës (Ibn Rushd), and the so-called "Latin Averroists" (e.g.,
Siger of
Brabant). The latter argued strongly in favour of Aristotle's doctrine of
natural necessity, thus undermining 'God's' free will -- at least, so far as the Roman
Catholic Church
saw things. This reaction was also prompted by philosophical worries about the
nature of
transubstantiation and the relation between the 'essence' of the
emblems (the bread and the wine in the
Eucharist)
and their 'accidents' (their apparent properties). Here 'appearances'
most definitely couldn't reflect 'essence' otherwise the bread would look like
human flesh and the wine would smell of blood!
The aforementioned reaction
was occasioned by the 'Condemnations
of 1277', whereby the Bishop of Paris, Étienne
Tempier,
condemned 219 propositions, among which was the Averroist interpretation of
Aristotle -- particularly the idea that the created order was governed by
logical necessity. The most important response to these condemnations appeared
in the work of
the Nominalist,
William of
Ockham, who, as a result, stressed the 'free will of God' and thus the
contingent nature of the world. For Ockham, this meant that there were no 'essences' in
nature, nor were the apparent properties of bodies (their 'accidents', again) logically
connected with their 'nominal essence' (as this later came to be called by
Locke).
In
the 18th century,
a resurgence of the
'necessitarian' tradition motivated, among other things, the "re-enchantment" of nature in
the theories concocted by the
Natürphilosophers and Hegel -- and later still in those invented by Marxist Dialecticians.
[On this, see Harrington (1996),
Lenoir (1982),
Richards (2002),
and Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two, when they are published. More details can be found in Foster (1934), Hooykaas (1973),
Lindberg (2007), and Osler (2004).
For the Hermetic background to all this, see
Magee (2008). Cf., also Essay Twelve (summary
here). At a later
date I will publish an essay on Leibniz I wrote as an undergraduate, which
anticipated some of the ideas in Osler's book, for example.]
So,
where Christians see design, DM-fans see "internal relations". Same
problematic, same tainted source, same bogus 'solution' to this set of pseudo-problems.12a
In such
inhospitable surroundings not only must the 'Concepts' and 'Abstractions' (i.e.,
those judged capable of 'guiding' 'ideas' into the 'right mental pigeonholes') be robust enough to do all this
'sorting' ('behind the backs of the producers', as it were, since no
one is normally aware this is taking place -- which is, of course, why it
took a few fast-talking philosophers to 'discover' it), they must also exist prior to, and
be independent of, experience. If that weren't so, they wouldrisk suffering the
very same
slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves. So, if experience
is incapable of delivering 'genuine
knowledge' (or so we have been told by generations of Rationalists), 'Universals', 'Principles', 'Concepts' and 'Abstractions' have to be held aloof,
elevated way beyond the contingent world of 'appearances', or suffer the same
sceptical mauling.
After all, 'bad associations' spoil
useful 'abstractions'.
Initially,
at least as far as 'crude materialists' were concerned, it wasn't easy to account for the source, or
the 'effectiveness, of these 'muscular concepts' -- i.e., all those 'mental
constructs' ('frameworks', 'principles', 'categories', and 'abstractions', etc.,
etc.), which did all the regimenting and permittedof no exceptions.
However, it turned out that this 'entirely new approach', the
aforementioned 'philosophical rescue' (for want of a better phrase), came from an unlikely and
entirely unexpected place:
German Idealism. More specifically, and even more revealingly, it
surfaced in the form of an impossibly convolutedre-vamp of
Ancient Greek
Neoplatonism, with just enough
Hermeticism
thrown in
to attract the attention of those who dote on totally incomprehensible forms of mysticism.
The
baroque systems
of thought concocted by these Teutonic Idealists saw the invention of Self-Developing, Super-'Concepts',
fortified by Industrial Strength 'Categories' that packed enough metaphysical clout to control the
'untamed' deliverances of the senses. These days such 'heavy-duty
principles' have been fortified even further by the addition of a handful of
impressive-sounding phrases -- such as, "natural necessity", "metaphysical-", and "ontological-necessity",
etc., etc. Hairy-chestedjargon like this was clearly required otherwise all these
feral 'inputs' the senses sent the mind's way might
refuse to behave and thus suggest the existence of a world where the unexpected
happened on a regular basis -- where fires
freeze water, fish break out in song, Conservatives stop lying and
Dialectical Marxism becomes a ringing success.13
Furthermore, these
testosterone-boosted 'Concepts',
'Categories' and 'Principles' had to be logical
-- indeed, 'dialectical' --, if they were to prove capable of exercising rigid control
over the future
course of events -- or even the future deliverances of the senses and the
overall direction of 'thought' --, ensuring that every single 'input' was
validly processed and locked away in the 'correct' metaphysical pigeon hole, each labelled with the
relevant general term.
[This is, of
course, where the traditional confusion of
talk about talk with talk
about the world came into its own. If you run-together the relationship
between 'concepts' and the 'particulars' they are supposed to regiment, it
becomes all the easier to imagine that objects and their properties must be
related in the same way in 'extra-mental reality'. It is but a short step from
there to imagine that the entire universe is controlled the same way --
concluding that how you happen to knit concepts and objects together in
'consciousness' is how 'reality itself' operates. Follow those steps if you
too want to become a Conceptual Megalomaniac.]
Here once
again is Hegel scholar, Katharina Dulckeit, who shows how Hegel proposed to
'repair the damage' inflicted on necessitarianism as a result of the dissolution of Feudalism
and the rise of Capitalism (philosophically epitomised by the 'English' turn to
Empiricism in the 17th
and 18th
centuries):
"[It] must be remembered that
[Hegel's] analysis of the forms of judgment in the Logic is motivated by
his interest in essential judgement. There are two conditions for such
judgements. To begin with, a judgement is an essential judgement only if P
tells us precisely and exclusively what s is; no less and no more. But
merely predicating universals of particulars is insufficient for this, unless
the term in the predicate position at once expresses the essential nature of the
subject.This, in turn, argues Hegel, is possible only if the 'is' expresses
some identity between s and P. For if essential determination were possible
exclusively via predication, the subject and the predicate would remain separate
and the relation between them expressed by the copula would remain external.
As a consequence, s would refer to one thing, namely an individual, while
P would designate something distinct from s, namely a universal.
But the truth of
sense-certainty in the
Phenomenology has already been shown that qua individual,
an
individual is grasped only through the mediation of universals.
It follows
that divorced from these, it would then have to be an individual without a
universal nature, i.e., a bare individual.... Thus, if s and
P are
utterly distinct they must be mutually exclusive, which means that s will
necessarily be bare, and P necessarily abstract.... Clearly then, where
judgements of essence are concerned, the 'is' of predication will not do because
it entails the distinction between s and P which would commit us
to a metaphysical thesis already overcome in the Phenomenology."
[Dulckeit (1989), pp.115-16. Bold emphases
alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site; links added. I have subjected passages like
this to sustained criticism in
Appendix D of Part One.]
So, bourgeois ideas (supposedly 'born free'
-- 'free' at least of archaic notions of necessity) were now clapped in
chains. The 'free market of ideas' that the 17th
and 18th century bourgeois 'revolution in the head' had
ushered in, was
now over. This Rationalist/Idealist 'rescue mission', with its industrial
strength 'concepts', began to look more like a 'mental
Thermidor' than it
did any form of liberation.14
[CNS = Central Nervous System.]
But, one
nagging question remained: How could something even as 'powerful' as a
heavy duty'Logical
Principle' (involving the supposed 'identity between a subject and a predicate') guarantee that future events, or our impressions of them, will always
behave as expected? Unfortunately for Hegel and those who paid him any heed,
these 'rational principles' turn out to be particulars themselves, no less in need of regimentation
as any other particular.
Otherwise, there would be no good reason to see why ordinary particulars needed
regimenting,
in the first place. After all, how could
an abstraction (physically-, and causally-divorced from the material world)
actually control anything? Why would something that is physical --
in 'external reality', or even in the CNS -- 'obey' an abstraction? How could
anything that lacks intelligence, or even sentience (i.e., all those 'inputs') do any
obeying,
to begin with? How could something non-material control anything material?
After
all, not even a concept-on-steroids can actually make anything happen.
[That knotty
problem -- which is similar to those that
confronted Descartes
as he tried to explain how a non-material 'soul' could affect a material body,
and those that Platonists/neo-Platonists face when they attempt to explain how
mathematical objects and
structures are capable of interacting with the world (i.e., whether or
not they are causally
efficacious) --, has yet to be solved by scientists and philosophers (and,
after well over two thousand years,
they are
not even close!) will be addressed in detail in Essay Three Part Five. Some of that
material has already been published in Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here and
here.]
The point
at issue here is in fact reasonably straightforward: logical principles per se can't create generality
out of thin air;
generality emerges
from the application of a rule, which neither words nor 'Concepts' -- nor
even 'Principles' -- can quite manage on their own. It requires human beings
(and then only when acting part of a collective) to determine what constitutes the
correct application of a rule, since, as has been
pointed out several times: words, 'Concepts', 'Abstractions' and 'Principles' have neither the wit, intelligence
nor social structure sufficient to the task.
[It is worth
reminding the reader, again, that what follows isn't simply my opinion of
bourgeois theory, it is implied by their own words.]
That was, indeed, the point of
emphasising the social and theoretical atomisation that gave birth to the bourgeois 'logical'
principles mentioned
earlier in this Essay. The
fragmentation introduced into epistemology (in both its Rationalist and Empiricist wings) meant that,
in the heads of these socially-isolated thinkers, 'Concepts'
could only operate as the Proper Names
of Abstract Particulars
-- or, indeed, as those Particulars themselves --, destroying generality and undermining the
unity of the proposition.14a0
[So,
for example, 'The concept of time' (in Kant) and 'The concept of Being' (in
Hegel) are each Abstract Particulars (or they are singular terms designating
such).]
Clearly, 'Logical Principles' like these could only succeed in regimenting any 'inputs'
delivered to them by the senses if they managed to control their future
behaviour, which implied they were intelligentagentsthemselves.
Indeed, the way they were characterised suggested they
might
actually exist in 'external reality' and were perhaps even 'Ideas in self-development'.
[That represents a classic example of the conflation of
talk about talk and talk about the
world.] Either that, or they were internal 'regulative principles' that whipped the
'raw deliverances of
the senses' into shape.
In Hegel, this
doctrine completely eroded the distinction between Mind and Matter -- which is
largely
why Engels thought he could get away with arguing that matter is just
an
abstraction, employing virtually same argument (and
even using the same example!) as Hegel:
"When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as
if it were on the same level, it sinks into the particular itself. Even common
sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the particulars. Would anyone, who wished for fruit,
reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, pears
or grapes, and not fruit?" [Hegel (1975), p.19, §13, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"It is the old story. First
of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know
them through the senses, to see time and smell space. The empiricist becomes so
steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he believes that he is still
in the field of sensuous experience when he is operating with abstractions....
The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty
concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds. But, of course, we are
supposed not to know what matter and motion are! Of course not, for matter as
such and motion as such have not yet been seen or otherwise experienced by
anyone, only the various existing material things and forms of motions.
Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is
abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously
perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but
abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible
things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can
be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material
things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also
pro tanto
know matter and motion as such.... This is just like the difficulty
mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit,
because no one has so far eaten fruit as such." [Engels (1954),
pp.235-36. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"N.B. Matter as such is a
pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the
qualitative differences of things in lumping them together as corporeally
existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct
from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing."
[Ibid.,
p.255. Bold emphasis added.]
"When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as
if it were on the same level, it sinks into the particular itself. Even common
sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal
beside the particulars. Would anyone, who wished for fruit, reject cherries,
pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, pears or grapes, and
not fruit?" [Hegel (1975), p.19, §13, quoted from
here. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"Essence
becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to
essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is
therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination
of being the other of form. It is consequently the real
basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the
reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element
to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence. If abstraction is made from every
determination, from all form of anything, what is left over is indeterminate
matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction. (Matter cannot be seen,
felt, and so on -- what is seen, felt, is a
determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form).
This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an
external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen,
spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity." [Hegel (1999),
pp.450-51, §§
978-979.
Bold emphasis alone added. Typos in the on-line version corrected. Paragraphs
merged.]
In which
case, controlling
the future behaviour of anything that seemed accidental or adventitious (in the
mind or in the world) now became a question
concerning the self-discipline of, and oversight by, a series of self-developing
'Concepts'. In fact, these 'Concepts' controlled the future
because they possessed, or even embodied, a 'revolutionary new logic', a
'dialectical logic', capable of powering the entire Cosmos. In which
case, it seemed plain that this all-conquering logic could easily take care of all
those apparent 'contingencies' (since they were now turned into necessities),
thus guaranteeing the (underlying) rational course of nature.
[This 'logic' was
itself based on a
mis-applied metaphor about how verbal and written arguments themselves 'edge toward'
a conclusion. That at least explains the presence of the word
"contradiction". There is no other reason for using it.]
This new
'logic' laid down the law, which meant that everything in nature -- Mind and Matter --
bent the knee to its Contradictory Will.
Plato's
World Soul was
given a new lease of life. It now ran the show, which meant the
future course of events was under the iron control of this bright new 'logic' --
which was just a revamped version of that Soul's 'animating
spirit'. Words, whose meaning had originally been based on the social application of linguistic rules,
were now re-configured as a universal expression of 'Self-Developing
Consciousness'. The individual 'Bourgeois Mind' was thus magnified
and projected across the universe so that it now ran the entire show.
[And if you
agree, don't forget to pick up your complementary, 'I am a Conceptual
Megalomaniac' t-shirt, designed for all who think like you, waiting in the
Idealist Gift Shop on the way out!]
As we have
also seen, Ancient and Medieval Logicians -- by their mis-characterisation of
predication, in tandem with the invention of 'abstractions' -- destroyed
any
possibility of expressing generality. In its place, an ersatz
'generality' was substituted for it (as an expression of 'God's Mind' --
conveniently working
away inside Hegel's
cranium).
Unfortunately for Dialectical Marxists, even when this fantasy is flipped and "put back on
its feet", the logical blunders on which it was based remained
locked
in place. Blunders don't cease being blunders by the simple expedient of rotating them through 180º!
Indeed, in Hegel's hands logic was fetishised
all the more,
transmogrified into a 'spirit' that animated 'inert matter'.
This now breathed life into the (moribund) concepts of matter invented by 'crude
materialists'. Indeed,
without this 'animating spirit' -- without all those 'contradictions',
'negations and 'mediations' -- matter would
remain
forever inert. 'Reality' itself would be like "a clock without a spring":
"Contradiction
is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it
contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity."
[Hegel (1999),
p.439, §956.
Bold emphasis added.]
"It was absolutely necessary to explain why the American
'radical' intellectuals accept Marxism without the dialectic (a clock without
a spring)." [Trotsky
(1971), p.56. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
Hegel's
'Self-Developing Mind' -- now "back on its feet" --, 're-animated matter',
which in effect amounted the re-enchantment of Nature. [Harrington
(1996).]14a1
Paradoxically,
but no less implausibly, the 'Iron Laws of the Cosmos' were supposed to be
wholly compatible with human freedom! These 'Self-Developing Concepts'
were, of course, 'free' because they were a law unto themselves. Indeed, they even
seemed to control 'God', who, it turned out, was actually being led
like a dog
on a leash, dragged along by 'His' very own 'self-developing Ideas', almost
as if 'He' couldn't help 'Himself'. 'He' was both 'object' and
'subject' of the all-powerful 'dialectic'. The 'Master' turned into 'Slave'
-- the 'Slave' into 'Master'.
As far as
humanity was concerned, the 'good news' turned out to be the exact opposite;
according to this theory, the more an individual subjects herself to these 'Laws', the 'freer'
she became!
So, ironically, the more that human beings were in chains, the less they were in chains!
Here is a classic statement of this
counterintuitive idea (by Engels himself):
"Another
opposition in which metaphysics is entangled is that of chance and necessity.
What can be more sharply contradictory than these two thought determinations?How is it possible that both are identical, that the accidental is necessary,
and the necessary is also accidental?Common sense, and with it the majority
of natural scientists, treats necessity and chance as determinations that
exclude each other once for all. A thing, a circumstance, a process is either
accidental or necessary, but not both. Hence both exist side by side in
nature; nature contains all sorts of objects and processes, of which some are
accidental, the others necessary, and it is only a matter of not confusing the
two sorts with each other.... And then it is declared that the necessary is the
sole thing of scientific interest and that the accidental is a matter of
indifference to science. That is to say: what can be brought under laws, hence
what one knows, is interesting; what cannot be brought under laws, and
therefore what one does not know, is a matter of indifference and can be
ignored.... That is to say: what can be brought under general laws is regarded
as necessary, and what cannot be so brought as accidental. Anyone can see that
this is the same sort of science as that which proclaims natural what it can
explain, and ascribes what it cannot explain to supernatural causes; whether I
term the cause of the inexplicable chance, or whether I term it God, is a matter
of complete indifference as far as the thing itself is concerned. Both are only
equivalents for: I do not know, and therefore do not belong to science. The
latter ceases where the requisite connection is wanting.
"In
opposition to this view there is determinism, which passed from French
materialism into natural science, and which tries to dispose of chance by
denying it altogether. According to this conception only simple, direct
necessity prevails in nature.... [T]hese are all facts which have been produced
by an irrevocable concatenation of cause and effect, by an unshatterable
necessity.... With this kind of necessity we likewise do not get away
from the theological conception of nature. Whether with
Augustine and
Calvin we call it the eternal decree of God, or
Kismet [Destiny -- RL] as the Turks do, or whether we call it necessity, is all pretty
much the same for science.There is no question of tracing the chain of
causation in any of these cases; so we are just as wise in one as in another,
the so-called necessity remains an empty phrase, and with it -- chance also
remains -- what it was before.... Hence
chance is not here explained by necessity, but rather necessity is degraded to
the production of what is merely accidental. If the fact that a particular
pea-pod contains six peas, and not five or seven, is of the same order as the
law of motion of the solar system, or the law of the transformation of energy,
then as a matter of fact chance is not elevated into necessity, but rather
necessity degraded into chance....
"In
contrast to both conceptions, Hegel came forward with the hitherto quite
unheard-of propositions that the accidental has a cause because it is
accidental, and just as much also has no cause because it is accidental; that
the accidental is necessary, that necessity determines itself as chance, and, on
the other hand, this chance is rather absolute necessity. (Logik, II, Book
III, 2: Reality.) Natural science has simply ignored these propositions as
paradoxical trifling, as self-contradictory nonsense, and, as regards theory,
has persisted on the one hand in the barrenness of thought of
Wolffian metaphysics, according to which a thing is either accidental or
necessary, but not both at once; or, on the other hand, in the hardly less
thoughtless mechanical determinism which in words denies chance in general only
to recognise it in practice in each particular case....
"The
previous idea of necessity breaks down. To retain it means dictatorially to
impose on nature as a law a human arbitrary determination that is in
contradiction to itself and to reality, it means to deny thereby all inner
necessity in living nature, it means generally to proclaim the chaotic
kingdom of chance to be the sole law of living nature.... The
evolution of a concept, or of a conceptual relation (positive and negative,
cause and effect, substance and accidency) in the history of thought, is related
to its development in the mind of the individual dialectician, just as the
evolution of an organism in palaeontology is related to its development in
embryology (or rather in history and in the single embryo). That this is so was
first discovered for concepts by Hegel. In historical development, chance
plays its part, which in dialectical thinking, as in the development of the
embryo, is summed up in necessity." [Engels (1954),
pp.217-22. Bold emphases and links alone added. Several paragraphs merged. Four minor typos corrected. (I have informed the editors over at the
Marxist Internet Archive). On this, see also
here.]
Exactly how that
settles this knotty problem Engels unfortunately neglected to say. Merely reminding
his readers
that Hegel asserted this or claimed that is no explanation if what the latter dogmatically
opined
is even more obscure than the 'problem' it was meant to solve!
No doubt we
will be told that the
answer to such questions is: 'The dialectic works in mysterious ways...'.
Rousseauthought he could justify social control somewhat similarly
(but less mysteriously):
"In
order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly
includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that
whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the
whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free;
for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures
him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the
political machine; this alone legitimises civil undertakings, which, without it,
would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses." [Rousseau
(1913), p.15; Book One, Chapter Seven. Bold emphasis added.]
But what he had in mind wasn't
the a
sort of 'Ideal
Thermidor' required to control all those (potentially) unruly 'inputs' (or what
they 'reflected'). In sharp contrast, while Hegel's 'logic' seemed to
offer real hope in this direction, he soon discovered that his Ideas controlled him,
not he them. By fetishising the thoughts he imagined were ('logically') fighting it out inside his head
he turned them into what were in effect self-directed agents, himself into their compliant stooge.
By these means he magicked the animated contents of his head into 'laws' that ran the entire show. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social
relations between human beings (language, inference, negation, contradiction) not only
ended up manipulating
his thoughts, they now powered the universe!
As noted
earlier, critics might be forgiven for labelling this, 'Ontology for
Megalomaniacs'. It is indeed the philosophical equivalent of
a seriously deranged individual claiming to be Napoleon -- or, perhaps even
worse, 'God Himself'.
According to Hegel, his crazy
Ideas
appear to have taken over the
Asylum! Instead of the
'psychologically-challenged' contradicting themselves,
Hegel's universe did that for them!
Video Two: The
Marat-Sade -- A
Fitting Dramatisation
Of The Contents Of Hegel's Head
[The full
title of this infamous play by Peter Weir is:
The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat
Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the
Marquis de Sade.]
In relation to this,
Feuerbach plainly got things
(slightly) wrong: Hegel's 'God'
in fact results from the projection of linguistic rules and human characteristicsinwards and outwards
-- onto himself and then the universe.
This should therefore be renamed, Feuerbach 2.0,
involving:
Speculation on Steroids, Metaphysics on Methadone, Anthropomorphism on Amphetamines,
Epistemology on Ecstasy, Ontology on OxyContin and Logic on LSD
[These are the 'substitute opiates'
Marx might very well have spoken about if he were alive today --
and here is why
he would have been right.]
But, it is precisely here,
over such issues, that the fetishisation
of language -- detailed in
Part One -- elbowed its way into Dialectical Philosophy, and hence
into Dialectical
Marxism.
Subsequently for DM-fans, their ideas
supposedly 'reflected' the world, but that only turns out to be the case if they allow Hegel's
'logic' to control their thoughts and lead them by the nose, too.14a2
No wonder
then that Max Eastman expressed himself as follows:
"Hegelism is like a mental
disease; you
can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know
because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22. Bold emphasis
added.]
[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max
Eastman should check this
out, and then perhaps think again.]
Which, of
course, helps explain the quasi-religious fervour with which 'The Sacred Dialectic' is protected and defended by all those
whose brains it has colonised.
As we will
see in Essay Nine Part Two,
Hegel's 'logic' turned out to be far too feeble to be able to control anything (other than,
perhaps,
the thought-processes of the unfortunates who look to him for guidance), which
has meant that leaders of Marxist parties find they have to control the ideas in
their party members' heads, externally. That is, they have to do so by force,
imposing DM-ideology undemocratically -- by means of
ostracisation
('organisational quarantine'), silencing, demotion, expulsion, (sectarian) party
fragmentation, exiling, incarceration, assassination, or even execution
('where necessary').
[How many of the above DM-inspired
tactics work has been
detailed in Essay Nine Part Two (for instance,
here and
here). In addition, the
truly disastrous effect Hegel's ideas have had on Dialectical Marxism has
been set out at length in Sections Two to Eight of the same Essay. Readers are
directed there for more information and supporting proof.]
So much, then, for 'dialectical freedom' and party
democracy...
However, Hegel's Idealist 'solution' only succeeded in creating another,
related problem: If autonomous 'concepts'/'principles' such as these were
necessary if order
were to be re-imposed on
recalcitrant reality -- or, at least, on any ideas held about it --, and
if knowledge is still
dependent on the vicissitudes of human cognition, then these DM-'principles'
end up undermining
themselves. If the 'Cosmic Order' can only be comprehended by being put into
some sort of 'order' inside each compliant skull by anthropomorphising 'reality'
via the ideas held about it, then that approach can't avoid
self-immolation. That is because, if ordinary human beings
can't be relied on (i.e., if the vernacular and 'commonsense' are
untrustworthy -- which is the
ideologically-motivated
accusation that originally helped give birth to this
family of theories), then these 'inner human beings' (these anthropomorphised,
'Self-Developing Hegelian Ideas'), and their mysterious 'internal relations', must
be equally suspect.
If
the ideas of everyday,material human beings can't be trusted
because of their reliance
on 'appearances', what confidence can be placed on the
reliability of these inner, ghostly spectres, these 'shadow human beings'?
Worries like
these are all the more problematic not just because it is
challenging enough to account for the social nature of knowledge in the
individual case, but because it becomes impossibly difficult when
generalised in order to take into account an entire community of individuals supposedly able to
perform the same trick and arrive at the same conclusions from
their limited experience and finite stock of ideas. [As we saw
earlier.]
Given this
Bourgeois Individualist approach, conceptual
coordination across the whole of humanity would surely be miraculous.
Indeed, it would be such even if it were restricted to the inhabitants of a small village, let
alone a large city or a nation state.
In fact, it
is far more likely that every member of this
self-appointedpanel of 'professional abstractors' (i.e.,
DM-theorists) -- or,
indeed, every single Hegel
scholar -- is
actually
dancing to a different 'dialectical tune' playing in each socially-atomised,
epistemologically-isolated DM-head.
[Apologies
again for all those mixed metaphors!]
The problems we met earlier (concerning
the social, psychological and epistemological fragmentation
introduced into 'western thought' by the rise of capitalism) re-surfaces precisely here.
Hence, in the realm of ideas alone,
it now proves
impossible to undo the effect that bourgeois social relations introduced into
epistemology -- i.e., if these pseudo-problems are addressed along lines criticised at
this site. The bottom line is that if every single human being (never mind every
single dialectician) has to perform these yet-to-be-described-with-any-clarity 'feats of abstraction' in their socially-isolated heads, there can be no such thing as socialised
knowledge.
[I have
explained what is meant by the term, "socially-isolated",
below.]
This helps
account for the countless
failed 'theories of knowledge' post-Renaissance Philosophy has
concocted over the last four
hundred years, to add to those that had been dreamt up over the previous two
thousand.
Nevertheless, in connection with Dialectical Marxism, the individual was
encouraged strike back, initially disguised as the
Dialectical GuruHimself -- Hegel. Only he (and perhaps his
DM-progeny) were 'licensed' to comprehend these 'self-developing concepts',
and thereby understand the course of history, generously passing the 'good news' on to the rest of
humanity (who, mysteriously, failed to pay much attention or express the
slightest
gratitude). Dialectical
Philosophers now became Dialectical Prophets -- the 'Marxist
wing' promoting what was in effect a
Substitutionist Ideology as
its
founding creed.14a
Once more,
given this approach to knowledge, no matter how robust the physical or psychological coercion involved,
coordination across an entire population (or even a significant proportion
of it -- let alone a single party!) would be nigh on miraculous. Or, it would be
unless, of course,
it had been un-democratically imposed on party members by the party Itself -- or
by the Glorious Leader, The Great Helmsman.
Hence it is that in much of contemporary Dialectical Marxism, 'logic' and
reasonableness have been replaced by the Mailed Fist of the Stalinised State
(or its less oppressive western correlate). Failing
that, in non-Stalinist parties, they are replaced by the ever watchful Guardians of Orthodoxy
-- one prize example of which has been described in detail,
here. We can now see why
this is so: the only viable way to
turn 'knowledge' based on 'abstraction' into party doctrine is by
enforced conformity and
coercion. That certainly helps explain the ideological centralisation and
the lack of internal discussion (on issues connected with 'dialectics') in all such parties -- as well as all the vitriol
directed at DM-critics by the faithful.
If DM were a valid, well-supported theory, none of this would be necessary.
That is why the
much more effective Mailed Fistof The
Dialectical Magus -- which sometimes assumes the portly shape of a
Gerry Healy,
elsewhere that of a Mao Zedong, a Castro, a Bob
Avakian, a Marlene Dixon,
an
Abimael
Guzmán, or even the Great
Teacher Himself, Stalin -- is capable of guaranteeing
'good epistemological order' inside each dialectical party and each compliant dialectical skull.
[As noted
above, exactly how 'Epistemological Stalinism' like
this has worked its way into practically
every area of Dialectical Marxism, and hence into virtually every party and tendency on
the far left, is explored in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
Despite this, the fact that, in every day life, inter-subjective agreement
actually takes place (and countless times,
24/7) suggests
the above fanciful,
bourgeois
individualist approach to knowledge is thoroughly misguided. Indeed, when the day-to-day
requirements imposed
on each active agent by the natural and social world are factored in,
that approach falls apart even faster than a
Kier Starmer 'pledge'.
The reasons for asserting this aren't hard to find, either, and they are even
more problematic than any already suggested (but, once again,
only if
we assume
'abstractionism' is a valid theory). Not only is it is highly
unlikely that each abstractor would form the same general idea of the same
objects and processes based on their limited stock of data -- which is
itself challenging enough in view of the fact that no two people share
exactly the same experiences or draw the same conclusions from them, but, the word "same" attracts
the same
difficulties (irony intended!) -- as we are about to see. If no two minds can check the
supposed 'similarities' in or between the ideas held by any other mind, there is no way that a social
process based on
abstraction could even begin to work. Questions would naturally arise whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general, or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such
'epistemologically-isolated',
'dialectical heads'. And those worries would persist until it had been
established whether or not each abstractor had the 'same' idea about the word
"same", never mind anything else.14b
And, how on earth might that be
established,
for goodness sake?
Worse still:
given the 'dialectical view of identity', the 'problem' itself can't even bestated, let alone
resolved. The
peremptory rejection of the LOI now
returns to haunt DM-epistemology, but in a novel way. By confusing a logical issue with
an epistemological
red-herring, the search for what had been touted as a superior form of 'dialectical
knowledge'/'logic' finds itself trapped in the solipsistic
dungeon mentioned in Note 15 (link below).
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
Once more, that is because it has yet to be
explained how any two 'dialectical abstractors' could form the
same general, or even the same particular, idea of anything at all --
even before
the dialectical juggernaut begins to roll --, let alone how a check might be
made whether or not either of them had managed to perform this miraculous trick correctly.
And, that isn't so much because no aspiring abstractor has access to the
'content' of the mind belonging to other abstractors, it is because it has yet to be established whether they
even have the same idea of the word
"correct"!15
Once more: how on earth might that be
established, for goodness sake?
Again, it is no use looking to practice to
rescue this ramshackle theory from itself, for it has yet to be established whether or not any
two abstractors have the same abstract (or even 'concrete') idea of practice!
Once more, how on earth might that...?
[The reader
is encouraged to finish that
sentence for herself.]
[By "socially-isolated" I don't
mean to suggest that each intrepid abstractor is literally isolated from
all the rest -- as if they all lived on separate desert islands -- only that
DM-epistemology holds that knowledge (etc.)
begins with whatever they
manage to process in their head as an individual, which must be the
case from birth onwards. Clearly, this means that as far as
language and knowledge are concerned, they might as well be literally isolated.
Given this view of abstraction it is impossible to build a workable, or even a believable,
theory of
the social nature of language and knowledge. As
Bertell
Ollman pointed out, each abstractor will have constructed what is, in all but
name, a private language, which, in tandem with Lenin's theory of knowledge, ends up
isolating every single one of them from all the rest. The final result is that
with respect to any such shared language, they all inhabit what is in effect asolipsistic universe. (I have
developed this line-of-thought more extensively in Essay Thirteen
Part One; readers are directed
there for more details. See also
Appendix Three to this Essay.)]
It is
equally unclear how even this seeminglyminor worry (about the generality of what were supposed to begeneral ideas) may be
communicated between this 'community' of lone abstractors, at least not without employing the very
concept that
originally required explanation -- generality --, along with the application of the LOI
as a
rule of language.16
Perhaps more problematic still (i.e., for those who at
least say they accept even a minimally social view of
language and knowledge) is the following: How might it be
ascertained whether or not the same
ideas of anything (abstract, concrete, general or particular) have
been inherited correctly from previous generations of intrepid abstractors?
Without access to a time machine, mind probes -- and, once more, a
pre-installed grasp of the
very things that had supposedly been bequeathed to later generations (i.e., general ideas, again!) --
no one would be in any position to determine the accuracy of a single 'concept'
allegedly belonging to,
or passed along by, this 'shared inheritance'.
Of course, given
the validity of DM-epistemology, no start could even be madeat
constructing knowledge of any description. Not only would such an 'intentional edifice' have no
secure foundation -- since its basis (i.e., supposedly inherited knowledge) has already been shown to be
no firmer than quicksand -- no two prospective 'labourers' would have the same
plot of land on which to work, nor would they have the same plan to guide them,
the same materials to work with, or the remotest idea about what could
even count as the
'same brick'!
This means that, based on the strictures
dialecticians have placed on any concrete applicationof the LOI, no two people
couldeven have the same general -- or the same particular -- idea of anything
whatsoever.
Nor could they even have the same idea about approximate identity (so that
they could begin to conclude their ideas only roughly coincided with
those held by anyone else). If the word "same" can't
be the same in any two heads (which it can't if the LOI is rejected), the phrase "approximately the same" stands no
chance.
Worse still,
if the DM-criticisms of the LOI are valid, no dialectician would or could have the same (or even approximately the same) general
(or particular) idea that they possessed about anything a few
seconds earlier, so that they could say, concerning
their own opinions, that they were even approximately
stable from moment-to-moment.
In that
case, of course, the 'process of abstraction' can't even get off the ground!
At this
stage it should hardly need pointing out that 'the process of abstraction' can make no start,
nor register any progress, where there is
nothing common to abstract, or no shared ideas, impressions or
concepts to work with from moment-to-moment -- never mind those that
can't be shared across an entire
population of
socially-isolated
dialectical abstractors.
[Once more,
the 'relative
stability of language' defence was neutralised in Essay Six -- as was the
reply that DM-theorists don't reject the LOI, they just question its
applicability, especially in relation to change.]16a
An appeal to memory
at this point would be to no
avail, either. That is because, not only are memories themselves subject
to the HF, it has yet to be established
whether or not anyone
involved in this intellectual merry-go-round has the
same memory even of the meaning of the word "memory", from
moment-to-moment, let alone the words "language" and "word"!
Once
again: how on earth might that be
established, for goodness sake?
[I
hasten to add, once again, that the above sceptical remarks do not represent my views! They
are only being aired here to expose the
yawning chasm of
scepticism and radical doubt implied both by Traditional-, and DM-Epistemology.]
In this way,
abstractionism has
not only undermined the legitimate status of every single dialectical proposition (a
result
also established in
Part One of this Essay),
the entire project has only succeeded in strangling itself evenbeforebirth, since its adherents unwisely bought into the
bourgeois doctrine that we all form these abstractions in the privacy of our own heads.
[Readers who question that assertion are encouraged to check
this and
this out, where
it has been fully substantiated.]
Of course, that is why a claim was
made at the end of
Part One
that the (hypothetical) activities of our heroic 'ancestral abstractors'
couldn't have taken
place, since no sense can be made of the supposition that they could.
The above points might be
brushed aside as
a grossly unfair misrepresentation, perhaps even a distortion, of DM, typical
of these Essays and this site.
"…[A]ll science 'deductively
anticipates' developments -- what else is an hypothesis tested by
experimentation?" [Rees (1998), p.131.]
That appears
to contradict the claim made earlier that DM-epistemology can't cope with future
contingencies. If
scientists actually use abstractions -- and legitimately so in order to predict the
future course of events, and with great accuracy -- how could it be problematic
when DM-theorists do likewise? What stops dialecticians from projecting
their ideas into the future, especially when their theories are
subject to constant check? Alas for Ms Lichtenstein, successful practice refutes
the countless negative conclusions drawn at this site.
Or, so it could be
argued...
Quite apart from the fact that practice has
actually delivered the oppositeverdict (on that, see Essay Ten
Part One), it is worth pointing
out that, based on DM's
own principles (not mine!), the above neat pro-DM picture would only work if 'reality
itself' were Ideal. That is because, even if the author of TAR were
correct that science "'deductively anticipates…' developments", that would only
be possible if reality
already had an 'underlying logical structure', was 'externalised thought'
and, as such, were no different in form from
Objective Idealism.
[The reasons for
making such bold counter-claims were given at the beginning of
Part One of Essay Three. Readers are directed there for more details. This topic will be re-examined
at greater length in Essay
Twelve (summary here).]
Among other
things, Part One showed that:
(i) Traditional Theorists,
at best,
extrapolate from a limited body of (presumed) facts -- resulting in what
they acknowledge is merely 'partial knowledge' -- to conclusions about
all of reality, for all of time; and,
(ii) This approach was motivated by an ideologically-driven, but syntactically inept
re-interpretation of
general words as the
Proper Names of Abstract
Particulars, thus destroying generality -- which, ironically, it had originally
sought to account for and explain. The serious errors generated by this
grammatical 'wrong turn' were
greatly magnified when the 'abstractions' that had just been invented were
projected onto what was in effect a 'shadow-reality' that exists anterior to
'appearances', whichsupposedly underpins the
material world. This
ersatz-reality was then regarded as 'more
real' than the physical universe we see around us. Based on this, even a 'right-way-up' version
of Hegelianism will always turn out to be just as Ideal as the parent ('upside
down') theory.
As a result of the influence that Hegel's system/method has had on founders of our
movement, Dialectical Marxists in general have bought into this unworkable
theory of knowledge (for reasons explored
in Essay Nine
Part Two), even though it
undermines their entire worldview. That is because it is
based on a
series of linguistic tricks and distortions,not on scientific evidence --
or
even on evidence drawn from everyday experience --, still less from
revolutionary practice.17
[What scientists supposedly do or do not do
will be covered later in
this Essay.]
Of course, dialecticians certainly don't see things this way.
They view DM as philosophically sound and quintessentially scientific, but the
evidence and argument presented so far (and set out in the rest of this Essay, and at
this site) throws considerable doubt on that rather
peremptory conclusion.
The second
difficulty (mentioned
earlier) isn't unconnected
with the first, but has somewhat different implications.
As we have seen,
traditional solutions to the 'problem of Universals' only appeared to
succeed because they either:
(i) Anthropomorphised the brain (along with its ideas); or they,
(ii) Fetishised language, so that the product of social interaction (language)
was
reified and transformed into the relation between objects and processes, or
it became those
objects and processes
themselves. We saw this happen throughout Part One in connection with Traditional
Theorists and dialecticians' confusion of talk about talk with talk
about the world -- for example,
here and
here.
As we have also
discovered, in order to explain the
operation of 'the mind', Empiricists found that they had to postulate the
existence of what were in effect 'intelligent ideas', which were either spontaneously gregarious or
were somehow capable of 'intelligently obeying' externally imposed rules/laws.
On the other
hand, Rationalists held that contingent objects and processes themselves couldn't
form a basis either for scientific or for philosophical knowledge.
In fact, as they reasoned, the reverse was the
case: it was the nature and development of their own ideas, or the
operation of principles hard-wired in their 'consciousness'/'mind' (by 'God' or
by 'nature'), that
explained the 'outer' world. So, 'rational thought' was the key to understanding
'reality'. Naturally, this inverted epistemology's direction and ended up
dictating to
nature what it must be like or what it must contain, as opposed to
finding out what it actually contained or what it was actually like. That in
turn implied 'reality'
was fundamentally Ideal, fundamentally 'mind-like'.
All this is
so far reasonably clear.
The next
implication isn't.
On
the basis of the entire family of rationalist 'world-views', Traditional Theorists
thought they had constructed
(or had even 'discovered') what they took to be nature's fundamental "principles"/"laws", but what they didn't
do was conclude that their theories were true merely because nature and
society were
law-governed. On the contrary, many held that the connection was much tighter
than this. They imagined they were able to read these 'laws' into nature
and society
becausethe mind
was structured in a specific way. Furthermore, the very 'possibility of experience' meant
that the
world (both natural and social) had to be structured in the same way, otherwise we couldn't experience it or know anything about it.18
This placed human rationality -- or, to be honest, the 'rationality' of the select few
who thought along these lines (and who either had sufficient leisure time to be able
to do all this 'thinking', or who enjoyed the financial backing of a rich patron;
now often replaced the tax-payer) -- right at the centre of 'the meaning'/'cognitive universe'.
So, what
was supposed to have represented a 'Copernican
Revolution' in Philosophy and Science turned out to be the exact opposite:
a
Ptolemaic reorientation. 'The human mind' now constructed the world and
as such lay at its 'cognitive centre', not the other way round. It became the
arbiter of what could exist and what couldn't, based on a
distorted view of language. Indeed, for a few hard core Rationalists, 'the mind' and its machinations actuallyconstituted the world.
And it was to these 'Mad Dog Rationalists' that early Dialectical Marxists
unwisely paid heed.
[On the pernicious nature of Idealism and why many still opt for it (several of which
motivating factors unfortunately apply with equal measure
to Marxist dialecticians), see: 'Idealism: A Victorian
Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. (However, in relation
to Stove's work, readers should take note of the caveats and warnings posted
here.)]
This also helps explain why so many DM-fans end up
as open-and-honest Mystics, or even Buddhists! Here is what I have
written about this elsewhere at this site:
Indeed, the
esoteric language Hegel himself used
suggests, to those who dote on jargon like this, that there are 'ineffable
truths' that lie beyond language, toward which Hegel and those who follow him
can only hope to grope, and which can be grasped (in howsoever an attenuated
form) by those who 'understand' dialectics -- i.e., exclusively those
capable of contemplating these 'ineffables' directly via the 'concepts' to which
Hegel alluded, as opposed to the actual words he used, but by no one else.
Of course, that is only
to be expected of
genuine
mystics, or, indeed, expected of the aspiring DM-Mystics who litter
Dialectical Marxism.
This helps
explain why so many dialecticians express a liking for
Daoism and/or
Buddhism, and why some even revert to open and honest mysticism (Michael
Kosok, Roy
Bhaskar,
Andrew Collier, Graham Priest, and
Terry Eagleton perhaps being the latest examples). Indeed, the tendency
for radicals to become mystics is what motivated Lenin to write
MEC. This also
explains why Counterfire, home of leading Dialectical Marxists and
ex-members of the UK-SWP, can publish an article extolling the virtues of
Buddhism, even roping Marx himself in this! On that, see
Ledwith (2023). It
also explains why dialectician extraordinaire,
Graham Priest, accepts
some form of Buddhism. On that, see here
and Priest (2014).
Then there is this unfortunate
video about Buddhism
and Science, by Priest. In addition, he has written about
the use of "contradictions" in Buddhism; cf., this
on-line article by Yasuo Deguchi, Jay
Garfield and Graham Priest (this links to a PDF). No wonder he also has a
penchant for Hegel and the latter's dalliance with "contradictions".
[I have said more about the connection between Daoism and 'dialectics',
especially the Maoist strain, in Note 07b. A detailed
survey of the close link that exists between Daoism and Maoist 'Dialectics' can
now be accessed here.]
If, as tradition would have it, both the world
and the human 'mind' are 'reflections' of 'God's Mind', then the 'inter-reflection' between 'mind'
and world, world and 'mind', would appear to guaranteethatphilosophical thought, left to its own devices,
was capable of penetrating beneath 'surface appearances', right
to the heart of 'Being Itself', uncovering its 'hidden essence'. General laws
thus seemed to be either the result of these 'self-directed' concepts, which
accurately captured or mirrored nature's deepest secrets, or they were in
effect their constitutive cause
(i.e., what Aristotle might have called their
material and formal cause).
Hermetic
Philosophers imagined that the
Microcosm of the human 'mind' reflected the Macrocosm of 'God's' creation
because bothwere the same 'substance', 'Mind'. As we have seen,
that idea dates back at
least to Plato:
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I
say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and
apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in
no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted
in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by
true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in
true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.
Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is
always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a,
pp.1254-55. I have used
the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published 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.) See
also Note 1b.]
And we have
already seen Descartes rehearse similar thoughts ideas:
"The mathematical truths which you call eternal
have been laid down by God and depend on him entirely no less than the rest
of his creatures. Indeed to say that these truths are independent of God is to
talk of him as if he were Jupiter or Saturn and to subject him to the Styx and
the Fates. Please do not hesitate to assert and proclaim everywhere that it
is God who has laid down these laws in nature just as a king lays down laws in
his kingdom." [Descartes (1991), p.23. Letter to Mersenne,
15/04/1630. Bold emphasis added.]
Mystical versions of this doctrine (which found
their way into
NeoPlatonism
and Christian Hermeticism) held that union with 'God' was of a
piece with union with Nature (or, rather, with its 'Essence'), which helps explain the origin of what
turned out to be the main problematic of
German
Idealism: 'Subject-Object Identity'. Here is Engels on this topic (and by
"thinking" he clearly meant "thinking subject"):
"The
great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is
that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early
times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies,
under the stimulus of dream apparitions came to believe that their thinking and
sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which
inhabits the body and leaves it at death -- from this time men have been driven
to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world....
But the question of the relation of thinking and being had yet another side: in
what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world
itself?
Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our
ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?
In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of
thinking and being, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers give an
affirmative answer to this question.... The most telling refutation of this as of all other
philosophical crotchets is practice -- namely, experiment and industry. If we
are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by
making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it
serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian
ungraspable 'thing-in-itself'.
The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained
just such 'things-in-themselves' until organic chemistry began to produce them
one after another, whereupon the 'thing-in-itself' became a thing for us...."
[Engels (1888), pp.593-95.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Paragraphs
merged.]
In Hegel's system, the union between the
'Knower and the Known' was itself guaranteed by the correct application of Divine -- aka
'Dialectical' -- 'Logic'. The
Mystical
'Rosicrucian Wedding' had finally been consummated.18a
As one
on-line commentator pointed out in relation to Engels's version of this idea
(and in response to John Rees):
"Thus our
dialectical thought process is a reflection of a material dialectic; we are able
to grasp and understand nature because we are able to understand its essential
processes. This is horribly close to Hegel's claim that the root of all being is
the Concept, and that we are able to understand the world because it is, at its
base, rational. Now, if [Engels is] saying that the mind mirrors the world
that's one thing, as the distinction between mind and matter is preserved.
But...it seems that he's in fact saying that we can grasp the world because
we think dialectically, and because the world is itself dialectical. There is
therefore an identity between the two, rather than an opposition. This would
seem to convict him of idealism, of replicating the same errors previously
identified in Hegel: namely, the transposition of human agency onto some kind of
cosmic force." [Quoted from
here, accessed
06/06/2024. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. Minor typo corrected.]
Empiricist theories arrived at
vaguely analogous conclusions, but from a completely different direction, expressed in markedly different
language.19
Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- every current, branch and form of Traditional
Philosophy sooner or later found its way back to the Ideal home from whence it
had evolved:
"Every philosophy is
essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the
question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel
(1999), pp.154-55; §316. Bold added.]20
Nevertheless, the serious problems this approach to knowledge brought in its train re-surfaced in DM, only now in a
much more
acute form. Dialecticians claim that their system somehow reverses the
above process of cognition (in order to neutralise its obvious Idealist implications, albeit after
its "mystical shell" has been removed,
leaving behind its "rational kernel" -- I am quoting Marx here, not to
censure him but to criticise the use to which his words have been put; I
have taken a completely different view of these famous words, drawn from the
Afterword to the Second
Edition of Das Kapital, in
Essay Nine Part One).
Hence, dialecticians claim their theory has rotated Hegel's system through 180º,
which means it now stands proudly on its own materialist legs -- hardly noticing that
the Ideal backside is now located where the materialist head used to be.
Well, that
at least helps account for all the 'hot air'...
However, 'logicalchicanery'
like this wasn't designed to operate in reverse, which is why Idealist forward gear
always remains engaged.
As
Essay Two has shown, dialecticians proceed as if it were quite natural,
if not completely uncontroversial, to derive universal and necessary
truths about nature and society from thought, from language
or from concepts alone. Not only do
they act
as if they think their laws and a priori
theories are applicable to all of reality, for all of time, theyhave
to talk this way. It comes with
the territory.
[Those who
think that the above allegations are wildly inaccurate are invited to check
Essay Two for themselves (link above), along with the scores of quotations from the DM-classics
(and even more
from secondary DM-theorists) posted there, which confirm their accuracy. Why
they think this way is revealed in Essay Nine
Part Two.]
Here is part
of the reason: The Dialectical Macrocosm and the Dialectical Microcosm are
two sides of the same coin. That is because this entire world-view
was inherited (in a modified form) from
Aristocratic Greek thinkers who designed it and fully intended it should
work this way. These
ancient "ruling-ideas" now rule 'radical' brains because, to DM-fans, they seem
so natural, so
quintessentially 'philosophical',
who could possibly doubt them (other than their political enemies).
If DM-theorists didn't think and talk like this, they wouldn't have a
'genuine philosophy' to call their own, certainly not one that Lenin claimed was
the final and legitimate heir of the 'very best elements' of 'western thought':
"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
added. Paragraphs merged.]20a
Hence,
DM-theorists are lapel-clutchingly desperate to be seen as the rightful
heirs of the 'western' philosophical tradition -- which is, of course,the intellectual equivalent of wanting to 'hang with the cool
kids'.
It is also
one ofthemain reasonsHCDs
dislike and disregard my Essays; my work repudiates this entire tradition and (as they
see things) it compounds that 'error' by failing
to use post-Kantian philosophical gobbledygook. In the meantime they have well
and truly 'sold their radical
souls' to these ruling-class forms-of-thought, which means they resent anyone who points this
out, or whose refusal to join in a sell-out of this magnitude exposes their inexcusable compromise and
ideological complicity with the class enemy.
Harsh
words indeed, but they are as merited as they have been well earned.
Nevertheless, if DM-abstractions provide the 'metaphysical glue' that supposedly
binds together what would otherwise be rather fragmentary, even unreliable,
knowledge -- or which even enables the development of knowledge, as Lenin argued
--, what
else could these remnants of Ancient Greek Word-Magic imply about Nature
except that it is just OneBig Idea? Our knowledge is guaranteed by
abstraction because, deep down, the world is just One Big Abstraction. .
"Logical concepts are
subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the
same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete
and
abstract, both phenomenon and
essence, both moment
and
relation." [Lenin (1961),
p.208. Italic
emphases in the original.]
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid.,
p.171.
Italic emphases
in the original.]
Perhaps we can
also now understand
why Lenin
argued this way: DM is the Ideal Offspring of an equally Ideal Family. And
this family tree stretches right back into the mists of ruling-class time.
Of course,
dialecticians never tire of telling us that their
'abstractions' have been derived from nature and society (via some sort of 'law
of cognition'), and have been "tested in practice":
"Testing by facts or by practice respectively, is to be found
here in each step
of the analysis." [Lenin
(1961), p.318.]
Unfortunately, the above
considerations cast serious doubt on the validity of Lenin's claim.
Nevertheless, as the Essays published at this site unfold, these
infant doubts will mature
quite alarmingly.
Nominalism
aside, traditional theories concerning the origin and nature of Abstract General Ideas all
shared the belief that 'the mind' was somehow capable of ascending from
particulars (given in experience) to the general (not so given) -- or, perhaps
the other way round (depending on which Idealist was telling the tale),
'the mind' was supposedly capable of 'ascertaining' general 'concepts' by unifying
particulars under an 'objective law', or by means of something called
an "apprehension". The first alternative envisioned this taking place as 'the mind' progressively disregarded
the
unique ("accidental" or "inessential") properties and predicates
(these two terms/concepts now irreversibly conflated) belonging to particulars given in
experience. The second had 'the mind' searching for wider connections in order to 'uncover',
or expose, the hidden 'essences' that
lay behind 'appearances'.21
That alone
should have prompted anyone who at least claimed to be
materialists into pausing for more than just a moment. What on earth could be so
materialist about a theory that has to withdraw from the material into the
Ideal, or which had to disregard multiple features of the material world in such an irresponsible and peremptory manner, in order to
'advance
knowledge'?
The pay-off,
so we have been led to believe, was the greater 'explanatory power and
understanding' both approaches
supposedly enabled. But, if the latter is gained at the expense of populating the world with nearly
as many 'abstractions' as there are material bodies, and which, paradoxically, turn out to be
'more real' than those material bodies themselves(!) -- since these 'abstractions' are required
in order to explain
the nature and behaviour of objects and process in 'reality', not the other way round --
one wonders what sort of victory has been won over
Idealism. One would
have thought the word "capitulation" was more appropriate, here. At best, it would represent a 'victory'
of the same order, perhaps, as that of the Church over 'sin', 'crime' and war --
or, that of Social Democracy over Capitalism. This question becomes all the
more ironic when it is recalled that dialectics is incapable of explaining
anything (which the reader will, I am sure, increasingly appreciate as the Essays
published at this site unfold), a
disconcerting outcome further compounded by the additional fact that Dialectical
Marxism has been such an abject, long-term failure.
[Those two features aren't, of course, unrelated.]
In
fact, the opposite outcome looks far more likely (yet another rather
fitting 'dialectical inversion'' for readers to ponder). That is because this entire approach
is based on the ancient, Idealist dogma that the material world is somehow insufficient to itself, that it isn't
fully real, and that it 'essentially' depends on something that is
'real', which has therefore to be immaterial for it to be 'real',
an idea that itself depends on the
mystical dogma that the universe requires an underlying superstructure of Ideal
Principles to make it work, if not even allow it to exist and keep it in
existence.
The result is that DM-theorists (would you
credit it!)
also believe that matter is far too crude and
lifeless to do anything on its own (recall:
Engels, taking his lead from Hegel, actually called matter an "abstraction"!)
-- even though this appears to be all that nature has to
offer. According to these Idealists (and their enablers in
Dialectical Marxism), nature also requires a 'Logic' of some sort to make it
tick, give it life and even lend
it 'substance'.
"Contradiction
is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it
contains a contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity."
[Hegel (1999),
p.439, §956.
Bold emphasis added.]
"So long as we consider things at rest and
lifeless, each one by itself…we do not run up against any contradictions in
them…. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in
their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we
immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a
contradiction…. [T]here is a contradiction objectively present in things and
processes themselves, a contradiction is moreover an actual force...." [Engels
(1976),
pp.152-53.
Bold emphases added.]
"Dialectics…prevails
throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself
everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the
opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954),
p.211.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The
identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of
nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the
knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of
opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?)
conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase,
as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a
unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).
"In the first conception of
motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive,
remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject,
etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to
knowledge of the source of 'self'-movement. The first conception is lifeless,
pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in
continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of
the old and the emergence of the new. The
unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Bold emphases
alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Several paragraphs merged.]
"The law of contradiction in things,
that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist
dialectics.... As opposed to the metaphysical world
outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to
understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its
relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be
seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in
its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The
fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it
lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal
contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....
"The universality or absoluteness of
contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in
the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the
process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from
beginning to end....There is nothing that does not
contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist.... Thus it is already clear that
contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the
simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or
ideological phenomena.... Contradiction is universal and
absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and
permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1937),
pp.311-18. Bold emphases added; several
paragraphs merged.]
Well, we all know which
religion is based on anthropomorphisms like these -- and, on a belief in
The Logos.
Spoiler: apparently, in one form or another, the
vast majority
are! We have already seen this from the Gospel of John:
"In the beginning was the Word [λόγος
--
logos],
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.He was with God in the beginning.Through him all things were made; without him nothing
was made that has been made.
In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind." [John
1:1-4. Bold emphasis added.]
And this
also helps explain why Lenin could declare
that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism".
Plainly, he hadn't fully shaken off the regressive influence of the sort of
Christian Mysticism that had been forced down his throat as a child (his family was
Russian Orthodox, into which faith Lenin had been baptised):
"Intelligent idealism is
closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism. Dialectical idealism instead
of intelligent; (sic) metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude, rigid instead of
stupid." [Lenin (1961),
p.274. Bold emphasis added. (I explain
why he said this, here.)]
From this, it is
quite clear that Lenin meant "Dialectical idealism is closer to
intelligent materialism than crude materialism...".22
Many other dialecticians quote this
passage, always approvingly -- for example,
here,
here,
here,
here and
here (the last of
these links to a PDF).
By nailing their colours to this (class-compromised)
mast, DM-fans have
unfortunately placed themselves
on the side
of the 'Gods'.
Diodorus
Siculus was, I think, the originator of that particular trope:
"When the
Gigantes
about
Pallene
chose to begin war against the immortals,
Herakles
fought on the side of the gods, and slaying many of the Sons of
Ge
[or Gaia, the 'Earth Goddess' -- RL]
he received the highest approbation. For
Zeus
gave the
name of
Olympian only to those gods who had fought by his side, in order that the
courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by
this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he
considered only
Dionysos
and
Herakles worthy of this name." [Diodorus
Siculus, Library of History 4.15.1.]
That
metaphor alludes to an image painted
in
Hesiod's
Theogony (links at the end),
later put to use by Plato in his dialogue,
Sophist (i.e., Plato 1997b), which is one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, the
Sophist and two of his other dialogues -- Theaetetus (Plato
(1997e)) and
Parmenides (Plato
(1997d)) -- are the principle source of much of subsequent Idealism.
The following excerpt from the Sophist reports on a conversation between an
Eleatic
"Stranger" (who appears to be a follower of
Parmenides)
and a character called "Theaetetus":
"Stranger.
We are far from
having exhausted the more exact thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But
let us be content to leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less
precisely; and we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is
quite as difficult to comprehend as that of not-being....
"...There
appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are
fighting with one another about the nature of essence.
"Theaetetus. How is that?
"Stranger.
Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to
earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and trees; of these they
lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or
handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if
any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him,
and will hear of nothing but body.
"Theaetetus. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they
are.
"Stranger.
And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from
above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of
certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists,
which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little
bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and
motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict
raging concerning these matters.
"Theaetetus. True.
"Stranger.
Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which they call
essence.
"Theaetetus. How shall we get it out of them?
"Stranger.
With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be less difficulty,
for they are civil people enough; but there will be very great difficulty, or
rather an absolute impossibility, in getting an opinion out of those who drag
everything down to matter. Shall I tell you what we must do?
"Theaetetus. What?
"Stranger.
Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not possible, let us
imagine them to be better than they are, and more willing to answer in
accordance with the rules of argument, and then their opinion will be more worth
having; for that which better men acknowledge has more weight than that which is
acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but
seekers after truth." [Plato
(1997b), pp.267-68, 246a-246d. I have used the on-line version here.
Bold emphases added.]
[As noted
earlier, this battle is described in
Hesiod's
Theogony (lines 675-715), available
here.]
Again: from this it is quite clear that
Marxist Dialecticians are far closer to the 'Idealist Gods'
than they are to the
'Materialist Giants'!23
Clearly, that
also helps explain why
DM-theorists insist matter is just an 'abstraction'.
They
are, after all, consistent team-players -- alas, for the wrong team!
Unfortunately, unlike Capitalism,
Abstractionism has attracted few effective gravediggers, and those it has managed
to accrue have proved to be even less successful at overthrowing the latter
than workers have been at toppling the former. That is largely because these
would-be-undertakers were (and still are) far more content simply to
underline the
psychological impossibility of the 'abstractionist project' than
they are to expose its logical flaws --, or, indeed, reveal its ideologically-compromised
origin and motivating
factors.
So, this "ruling
idea" lumbers on to "rule" another day and another compliant
DM-fan.
More
recently, however, Abstractionism has been subjected to a series of destructive
critiques, but still it limps along. That in turn is partly because many of those who
avowedly came to bury it -- unlike Shakespeare's
Mark Antony -- ended up praising it by emulating it. In so doing they
only succeeded in breathing new life into its moribund corpse, and that
they did by inventing
brand new
'essentialist' theories of their own.24
As
we have seen, an ability to
talk about cats and dogs, for instance, depends on an already established grasp (in use) of the relevant
general terms (otherwise, plainly, nothing could be said about these
animals). This fact
needs no explanation, nor could one be offered that didn't also have to employ
the very terms which required explaining in the
first place --, i.e., general terms.25
If the above
observations have anything going for them, it perhaps lies in the fact they
re-direct our
attention away from any attempt to investigate (obscure) 'internal processes' and 'privately executed'
capacities
-- supposedly possessed by each 'lone abstractor', and directs it toward sociallyacquired, publicly performed, checkableskills and abilities, in order to understand the
linguistic expression of generality, and
how that is connected with socially-acquired, socially-legitimated and
socially-disseminated knowledge.
Of course, only
an anti-materialist
would register a complaint at this point.
Which is why
emphasis has been placed at this site -- in accord with
Marx's advice -- on our use of ordinary language in
a public domain.
It is also why serious questions have been raised about the ability we are all
supposed to possess of being able to 'squeeze abstract epistemological juice'
out of
'desiccated discourse', in the 'privacy of our own heads'.
In contrast once more, the approach adopted
here means that human cognition is open to view,
subject to public scrutiny and inter-subjective verification, unlike the mysterious,
'internal rituals' that
supposedly constitute
the 'process of abstraction' --, which, it is worth recalling, no one seems
able to describe with any clarity and which even fails to
deliver what had all along been advertised for it.26
It has been argued at length
(both above and in
Part One) that instead of
beginning with the general as a way of advancing toward knowledge of the
particular, the DM-'process of abstraction' in fact turns general words into the
Proper Names of Abstract
Particulars -- and it then goes precisely nowhere with them. That not
only distorts the way language actually works (destroying the capacity it has
for saying anything at all along the way), it stalls the 'dialectical
juggernaut'in its tracks even before it can be tested in practice.
Much of the rest of Essay Three
is aimed at elaborating upon, and then substantiating, these
sweeping claims.
While we are at it, what exactly are the
common features that can be abstracted from (or even attributed to)
all shades of, say, the colour blue? Or, the notes played
on the trombone or a set of bagpipes? What is common to the taste of different wines
or different herbs? Or, the feel of silk,
wool and nylon? Or, even the smell of roses and honeysuckle?
Admittedly,
in relation to several of the above the
use of other general terms might come into play -- but they, too, will attract
similar questions. For instance, an appeal might be made to certain
tastes or
aromas that can be detected in different wines -- such as: "a fruity
bouquet". But, once more, what are the common features of "fruity bouquets"? One answer to that
question might involve a reference to the taste or smell of
Lychees, for
example. But, what are the common features of the taste/smell of Lychees? And so
on, ad infinitem.
[I owe this
general point to Geach (1957); on this see also Cowie (2002) and Laurence and Margolis
(2012), pp.1-10 . Of course,
considerations like these raise issues concerning the relation between science
and 'common sense', a topic entered into in more detail
below.]
As argued
earlier:
Who has ever seen a 'general cat'? What would
'one' even
look like? Who has ever eaten 'general fruit'? What would 'one' of
those look like? Or how would 'one' even taste? Who has ever smelt a general
rose or felt a general pain? That is why the formation of 'the general idea of a
cat', or 'of fruit', required the exercise of the 'mental skill' of abstraction,
or so we have been told. No one has ever even claimed to have 'abstracted'
anything using just their eyes, their ears, their nose, their finger tips or
their taste buds. In this area of 'knowledge' the senses in the end drop out as
irrelevant -- or, at best, they are merely conveyers of data, 'messengers'.
And, as history has shown, this branch of philosophy seemed only too happy to
kill the messenger.
[But, what
could possibly count as the general smell of a rose? Or even the smell of
a general rose? What could conceivably count as the general experience
of pain? Or even the experience of general pain? What actually is
a 'general pain', a 'general experience' or even a 'general rose'? Faced with such
questions, abstractionism appears to be falling apart before our eyes (no pun
intended) -- or,
rather, before our general eyes....]
That is of
course why abstractionists prefer to talk instead about "essence" -- as in, the "essence of
cat". Responses along such lines will be subjected to critical scrutiny in
Essay Thirteen Part Two. [Some of that material has already been published in Essay Eight Part Two,
in reply to an
article by Scott Meikle.] While plausible sounding answers might be
given to questions concerning the "essence" of assorted animals, plants,
compounds and elements (although the material published in Essay Eight Part Two
casts considerable doubt even on that), none at all seem possible for
many of
the items mentioned above (and others that were omitted). In that case, it is worth
asking what is the 'essence' of pain, of doubt, of hope, of love, of puzzlement, of error
or even of dust or an itch? But, the vast majority of us know how to use words associated
with these phenomena, which alone shows that their correct use doesn't require
there be an "essence" underpinning any of them -- which is probably why it
seems impossible to think of any such in each case. To that list we might well add
the following: what is the 'essence' of a word, of a comma, of a question mark or
of a pan of spaghetti? Or, even: what is the 'essence' of essence? But these
general words certainly possess a meaning, which can't be related to their
"essence" since they appear not to have one (or at least none that a
user needs to know before she is able to use the relevant words correctly). Even if there were an
'essence' of
cat, of water or of gold, human beings were using words like "cat", "water" and
"gold" for countless centuries before scientists came up with (possible) answers
to such questions. That too shows that the meaning even of these terms (which
are among the favourite examples used by essentialists) has nothing to do with any supposed
'essence'.
[I will be
dealing with recent objections to the sort of issues raised in the previous
paragraph -- such as those posed by
Hilary Putnam -- in
Essay Thirteen Part Two. Until then, readers are directed to the above Essay --
as well as Hacker (2007), pp.29-56, Dupré (1993, 2002), van Brakel (2000), and VandeWall (2006).]
Be this as it may, one of the
more bizarre aspects of the mysterious 'process of abstraction' (which is in
fact little different from the method adopted, or even advocated by, many
DM-theorists, something else that is rarely noticed, too -- one of whom is
quoted extensively in Appendix One) involves the drawing of an
inappropriate analogy between the properties an object possesses and
items of clothing. Hence, according to one version of the 'abstractive
process' (dominant in the Empiricist tradition), as each outwardly unique distinguishing feature of a
given particular is 'peeled off' (or "disregarded") by 'the intellect' the
'true general form of
the object' in question is gradually supposed to 'come into view' or 'become
apparent'. But, this peculiar disrobing ceremony takes place in the
'mind's eye', far from public scrutiny and any sort of check, uniquely accessible to those
who seem capable of 'metaphysically undressing' things like tables, chairs, cats, dogs,
planets and galaxies. Indeed, 'conceptual strippers' like this must be capable of
deciding what has to betrue, not only of all the many examples of 'the same sort' (for instance,
all
cats) that haven't yet been 'skinned' this way (by anyone at all, not just themselves), but also of the
many more (cats, again) that no human will ever experience. All this
'fantasy surgery' is supposedly based on a brief
'internal inspection' of a seriously limited sample of such ghostly
spectres, and nothing else.
[Incidentally, when it is pointed out that no one can check the 'internal
processes' supposedly going on in anyone else's head, that isn't meant to impugn
the individuals concerned or question their honesty and integrity. They could
be 100% truthful and the same constraints would still apply. The issue here
revolves around the lack of public scrutiny, not the honesty or the integrity of
the individual involved. Even they can't check and hence validate their
own 'internal processes' -- as has
already been established. The words "correct" and "right"
are no more applicable here
than they would be in relation to someone who tried to determine their own
height by simply laying the flat of their hand on the top of their head, or who
tried to measure their weight by standing on one of their hands, and nothing
more.]
However, and this should hardly need pointing out, properties don't resemble
apparel in any meaningful sense. If this had ever been an apt analogy, these
'metaphysical garments' (i.e., an object's properties) should be just as
shareable as items of clothing are. On that basis, dogs might legitimately be
expected to be capable of singing like canaries, kettles able to recite the
Gettysburg Address and dialecticians accept criticism without deflecting
or becoming abusive.
Nevertheless, the analogy with clothing is
as inapt as any could be. For one thing, it is surely a mistake to conclude
that clothing is causally related to -- or organically connected with -- the body of
its wearer. But, the properties of an object are linked (in many different ways) to its
constitution. Colour, for example, is
intimately connected with the atomic and
molecular structure of the item in question -- and, of course, the light source
-- to name just two of the relevant factors. For another, while clothing may perhaps serve to
hide, or even hinder, the
appreciation of underlying form, an object's properties advertise it, they don't mask it. They are,
so to speak, 'metaphysically transparent'.
That is a
point Hegel himself tried to make in his own obscure way. [On that,
see below.] The opposite idea, of course,
undermines the 'necessary connection' that is supposed to exist between an
'essence' and its 'accidents'/'properties' and threatens the 'rationality of
reality' (discussed earlier -- here, here
and here). It would also
completely undermine
Lenin's
attempt to incorporate
Hegel's
response to Hume's criticisms of Rationalist theories of causation, which was
an integral component of his
version of DM.
Moreover, and
perhaps more absurdly, properties
can't be peeled away from objects as part of an invisible, 'internal disrobing ceremony'. Or,
if they can, one would expect the nature of each underlying 'object' should
become clearer in all its naked glory as the proceedings unfold. In fact, we
find the opposite is the case as each 'metaphysical burlesque show'
progresses.
If, for
instance, a cat were to lose too many of its properties as it was 'mentally skinned', it would surely cease to be a cat.
Clearly, this philosophically-flayed 'ex-cat' (or, now in fact, 'non-cat') would serve rather
badly in any subsequent generalisations based on it. Indeed, strip the average moggie of
enough of its properties and it would be impossible to decide whether or not the
rest of the abstractive process had even been carried out on the same mammal,
the
same animal, or, for that matter, on the same physical object -- let
alone the 'same idea' of one or more of these.
Furthermore,
in the absence of any rules governing the 'process of abstraction' (such as
where to begin, which feature to abstract first, which second -- which
never) one person's abstractions would surely differ from those of the rest
of the 'abstractive community'. For instance, while AbstractorA
might begin by ignoring (or attributing) Tiddles's engaging purr, AbstractorB might
start with her four legs, Abstractor C might commence with her shape, while Abstractor D
might begin with her number (i.e., one). But, do we (should
they?) ignore (or attribute) first, second or third this cat's colour, fur, fleas, whiskers, tail,
intestines, shape, age...? Moreover, as part of the
'abstractive process', which
number
relevant to each cat is to be abstracted from it (or even attributed to it): the one
cat, its two ears, its four legs, its dozen or so whiskers
or the several trillion atoms of which it is composed...? [Incidentally
how is it possible to ignore or abstract number? Wouldn't that leave 'an
object' with no number, and then even rule out zero? But what do zero cats
even look like?] And where do we stop? Are we to whittle-away
from, or attribute to, this unfortunate mammal its position on the mat, the last dozen or so things it did, its
current relation to the
Crab Nebula...,
or what?
Perhaps even
worse: the 'disrobing analogy' pictures properties as objects that bodies or
processes possess. For example, it is surely only possible to 'abstract colour' if it
were
treated as an individual in its own right, rather like an organ or a limb -- or
even a hat or a coat -- that can be
removed from a given body. This is just another untoward consequence of the 'process
of abstraction' itself, whereby the general nounsand adjectives we use to speak about
such properties (colour, texture, taste -- or even items of clothing) are transformed into the Proper Names of
yet more Abstract Particulars (as we saw in
Part One). On one version of this
'process', we end up removing a series of Abstract Particulars -- not properties,
as originally intended -- from an increasing ghostly spectre. On another, we end
up with the reverse of this: attributing Abstract Particulars to what in
fact now amounts to an
Idealist Apparition.
It
could be objected that none of the above really
matter; the results will be the same. But, how do we know? Is
there a Philosophers' Rule Book to guide us? Is there an Abstractionist's
Algorithm we all
unconsciously (or even consciously) 'follow', somehow programmed into each of us at birth (or is it at
conception)? Do we have access to a set of tried-and-tested
instructions we all implicitly appear, not just to know about, but how to
use/implement? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? Are
there any YouTube videos or websites that explain this process, step-by-step?
[A comprehensive Google search will return a negative answer on both counts. If
anyone disagrees and has found one (or even several!), please
email me with the details (and links),
and I'll delete much of Parts One and Two of Essay Three! Update
October 2024:Since writing this, I have discovered one attempt
to describe the 'process of abstraction' -- Laurence and Margolis
(2012). I will say more about this failed attempt in Interlude One.] And, if it turns out
that there are metaphysical disrobing protocols that determine the order
in which Tiddles's qualities are to be removed from, or attributed to, her -- so that this
process might be executed correctly by the entire Community of Intrepid
Abstractors -- when and where did they
learn them? On the other hand, if there are none, how might
each aspiring abstractor know whether or not they had abstracted Tiddles the same way
each time?
Do we all keep a
(secret)
Abstractor's
Diary? An internal log of what we did the last time we thought about that cat --
or any cat?
Even if there were clear --
let alone plausible --
answers to such questions, another annoying 'difficulty' would soon block our
path: it
would still be impossible for anyone to check
a single one of these 'abstractions' to see if they tallied with those 'produced' by
anyone else -- or, for that matter, whether or not they had 'abstracted' them
correctly. In fact, the word "correct" can gain no grip in such
circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems
correct willbe correct. [That would be like buying two copies of the
same edition of a newspaper (on the same day) to check if the first copy had got
a certain story 'right'.] But, for something to be correct it needs to be checked against a
standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one doing the
checking, or that relies on the very same source.
And yet in relation to this 'process' and its supposed results, there is no such standard. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat
will be private to that individual. They have no way of checking
their 'abstractions' with those 'arrived at' by anyone else, which means, of course, there can
be no standard, 'abstract cat' to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means
of which anyone's 'abstractions' might be deemed 'correct'.
And those
strictures apply to the 'abstractions produced' by each individual abstracter. So,
AbstracterE will have no way of knowing whether or not her own
'abstractions' were correct, or if they were the same as, or were different from,
those 'arrived at' yesterday or even a few seconds earlier, by her! Again, it is no use
appealing to memory here, since the meaning of the word "memory" is subject to
the very same strictures.
[Of course,
for anyone who accepts the HF, no
memory could be trusted, anyway. Once again, it must be stressed that the
sceptical conclusions reached above do not represent my views. They are
only being aired to undermine abstractionism. There are far better ways of
making sense of our capacity to gain knowledge, but only if the defective and
radially confused traditional approach is completely abandoned.]
It could be
objected (indeed, it has been objected by the likes of
A. J. Ayer -- e.g.,
Ayer (1971), replied to by Rhees (1971)), that such doubts (about memory, for
example) would also apply to
any external or social check on the meaning or veracity of the words we use. If
memory in general is thrown into question, how would anyone be able to
remember the meaning of any of their words? That would appear to undermine all
social theories of language and knowledge.
That
objection misses the point. No one (other than those who accept the HF) is questioning memory, only the
theory
that there is a 'process of abstraction' which tells us what our words
(especially general words like "memory") mean. Reject that idea, along with the
traditional philosophical approach to such questions (for the reasons set out
in both Parts of Essay Three, as well as Essay Twelve
Part One), take
Marx's advice to return to
the ordinary language of the working class, and watch such
pseudoproblems simply disappear.
Later on in this Essay I
will be pointing out the following in relation to Andrew Sayer and Bertell Ollman's
'theory of abstraction':
Just like
Ollman, Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise this 'process' reveals that he,
too, thinks it is an individualised, private skill in relation to which we all
seem to be 'natural' experts:
"The sense in which the term
['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an
abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial
aspect of an object." [Sayer (1992), p.87. In a footnote, Sayer adds "My use
of 'abstract' and 'concrete' is, I think, equivalent to Marx's" (p.277, note 3). Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphasis alone added.
The page numbers are completely different in the Second Corrected Edition, i.e.,
Sayer (2010), p.59 and p.187, respectively.]
As was the
case with Ollman -- and, indeed, everyone
else who has written about this obscure 'process' (many of whom have been quoted
in both Parts of Essay Three) --, we aren't told by
Sayer how
anyone manages to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction
of a
'private language'.
Indeed,
this is something
Ollman himself has pointed out:
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it
should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely
from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot
of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a
'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would
be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be
done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal
with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003),
p.63. Bold emphasis added.]
Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can
solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, of those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!
It
is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore,
that he is at least aware of it.
In fact, Ollman is the very first
dialectician I have encountered (in nigh on thirty years) who even
acknowledges
this 'difficulty'!
[Be this as it may, I
have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three
to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more
details. Update August 2024: After
over 21 years, there is still no sign of Ollman's 'solution' to this 'problem'.
Nor is there any indication that others have taken up the challenge on his
behalf, or that a single DM-fan (since Ollman raised this issue) even regards this as a 'difficulty'
that needs addressing!]
Of course, none of this fancy footwork would
be necessary if Ollman recognised that even though Marx gestured in its
direction,
HM doesn't need this
obscure 'process' (that is, where any sense can be made of it) -- or,
indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and
language completely undercuts abstractionism.
Naturally, this means that there is no way this obscure process can form the basis of
'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we were to substitute
"idealisation" for "abstraction"). Plainly, that is because:
(i) No one has access to the
results of anyone else's 'mental machinations' (or 'idealisations');
(ii) There
appear to be no rules governing the production of these 'abstractions' --, or, indeed,
governing the entire 'process' itself; and, as we have just seen,
(iii) There
is no standard of right, here.
By
way of contrast, in the real world,
agreement is invariably achieved in and by the use of publicly accessible, general terms
that are already in
common use, words that were present in the vernacularlong before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical)
ancestral abstractors' eye.
[Note: I am
not questioning scientific idealisation, only the claim that it is a private,
internal, 'mental process'.]
One obvious
reply to the above might be that we abstract by concentrating only on those
factors that are "relevant" to the enquiry at hand. But, what are these "relevant factors"? And who decides?
How might they be
specified before any such enquiry even begins? Surely, in order to know what is
"relevant" to the successful process of, say, 'abstracting a cat', one would
already have to know how to
use the general term "cat", otherwise:
(a) The
'abstractor' involved would have no idea what the target of her intended
abstractive endeavours actually was supposed to be; and,
(b) The accuracy of any
'abstractions' that might emerge as a result would rightly be called into
question, alongside several more such concerning the competency of the abstractor
herself.
If the
abstractor in question doesn't already know how to use the word "cat", what faith can be put
in anything she subsequently 'abstracts', or even reports about these
'abstractions'? On the other hand, if each intrepid abstractor already
knows how to use the word "cat" (in order to 'abstract' the 'right' object), one
might well wonder what the point is of trying to 'abstract' that furry mammal in
the first place? It would seem to be about as pointless as checking to see if
you know your own name by looking it up in a telephone directory or on the Internet.
[Anyway, we
have already seen that the 'process of abstraction'
requires knowledge of the very concepts being 'abstracted' before they
were 'abstracted', vitiating the entire exercise.]
Again, in
response it could be argued
that past experience guides us. But, how does it do that? Can any of us recall
being asked about, or made to study, the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors from the days
of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of personal
Microsoft Office Assistant -- or these days, maybe,
Cortana -- if we hit the right internal 'Help' key? But,
what kind of explanation would that be of the supposedly intelligent 'process of
abstraction' if it requires such a guiding hand? And where on earth did this
'inner PA' receive its training?
Once more, it
could be objected that in the investigation of, say, the biology of cats, it
is important for scientists to find out what these animals have in common with
other members of the same species, family,
order,
class
and
phylum, so
that relevant generalisations might be made about them. In order to do that, zoologists
disregard (or attribute) certain features common to cats and concentrate on
those they share with other mammals, vertebrates, living organisms, and so on --,
be they morphological, ecological, behavioural, genetic or biochemical (etc.). Clearly, in
each case, and at each stage, greater abstraction is required.
Or, so a response might try to maintain...
Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction"
means, it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible and checkable set of
behavioural/linguistic skills and performances, similar in all but name to description, analysis
and classification (etc.). It has nothing to do with a 'private, internal skill'
we are all supposed not only to possess, but also to be able to utilise
effortlessly and correctly -- namely, an ability to polish rough and ready particulars
into smooth general concepts. If abstraction were an occult (i.e., a hidden), inner process, then,
as noted above, no two people would agree over the general idea of, say, a
mammal, let alone a cat. All would have their own idiosyncratic inner,
but intrinsically un-shareable and un-checkable, exemplars.
Again, one
response to this could be that while we might use language to facilitate the
transition from a private to the public arena, that doesn't impugn our
abstractive skills. Unfortunately, that objection introduces topics
discussed at length in Essay Thirteen
Part Three, so readers are directed
there for more details.
Nevertheless, a few
preliminary remarks are worth making
in response.
Human beings
have generally managed to agree on
what animals they consider belong to, say, the Class Mammalia
-- i.e., especially individuals who possess the necessary education and qualifications, who
also
show they have the required linguistic and organisational skills/competency. We might even join with
Hilary
Putnam and call this a legitimate
division of linguistic labour (although, without implying any acceptance of
his other ideas concerning 'essentialism').
However, this doesn'tinclude individuals who possess unspecified and mysterious 'abstractive powers'.
So, for example, trainee zoologists don't gain their qualifications by demonstrating to their
teachers and examiners an expertise in the 'inner dissection' or 'internal
processing' of 'mental
images', 'ideas' and 'concepts'. The same is true of qualified and practising zoologists. In
fact, and on the contrary, they
all have
to demonstrate their mastery of highly specialised techniques,
relevant terminology and current theory, which skills they are required to exhibit publicly,
showing they are capable of applying them in appropriate circumstances and in a
manner specified by, and consistent with, the standards and
expectations laid down by their teachers, their adjudicators, their colleges and their
professions. [On the ordinary and scientific use of such terms, see Dupré
(1993), pp.15-84.]
The widespread illusion that we are all
experts in the 'internal dismemberment' of images, ideas or concepts is now, and
has always been, motivated by
a further
set of confusions, which also arose out of Traditional Philosophy: the belief that the
intelligent use of general words depends on some sort of internal,
naming,
representing, 'reflecting' or processing ritual/ceremony.
[On this, see the references cited in Essay
Thirteen Part Three.] In effect, this
once more amounts to the belief that, despite appearances to the contrary, all words are
names, and that meaning something involves an 'inner act of meaning', 'naming'
or 'representing', which matches words to specific images, sensations, processes
or
ideas 'in the mind/brain'. This paradigm certainly dominated Lenin's theory in
MEC, as well as the rather fragmentary ideas Marx and Engels expressed on this
topic, and, as usual, this idea originated in Ancient Greece (this was partially
quoted earlier):
"The essence of the theory of Ideas lay in the
conscious recognition of the fact that there is a class of entities, for which
the best name is probably 'universals', that are entirely different from
sensible things. Any use of language involves the recognition, either conscious
or unconscious, of the fact that there are such entities; for every word
used, except proper names -- every abstract noun, every general noun, every
adjective, every verb, even every pronoun and every preposition -- is a name for
something of which there are or may be instances." [Ross (1961), p.225. Bold
emphasis added.]
[MEC = Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism (i.e.,
Lenin (1972).]
At work here
are several other inappropriate
metaphors, which in turn trade on the further idea that 'consciousness' functions
rather like an internal theatre, TV or computer display. The latter are now refined perhaps with analogies drawn against
Microsoft Windows or some other programme of the same sort, where 'the mind' is
often pictured as
"modular" --
operated, no doubt, by an internal analogue of a computer geek, skilled at
'clicking' on the right internal 'icons', or 'apps', at the right moment, filing items in
the right folders, setting-up useful and efficient 'networks', etc., etc. Given
this family of metaphors,
understanding is modelled on the way we ordinarily look at pictures and
computer monitors,
but now applied to 'internal
representations', with each of us employing the equivalent of an 'inner eye' to appraise
whatever is projected onto some sort of 'internal flat screen'.
[Again, this
set of wildly inappropriate metaphors underpins Pixar's recent film,
Inside Out (and again in 2024, Inside Out 2),
which is itself based on an 'Homunculus', a 'little-man-in-the-head' Theory of Mind,
briefly considered earlier, but
in more detail in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
[Of course, Plato's tropes were intended to make a
different set of points, but for present purposes his focus on vision is the relevant factor
here.]
As we have
seen, contemporary, bourgeois versions of
this (hackneyed) family of ideas regard knowledge as the passive processing of
'representations' in the 'mind' of each socially-isolated, lone abstractor --
although among Dialectical Marxists, this approach to knowledge is
further augmented by a series of gesturesmade toward practice coupled with the
active engagement of the individual 'mind' involved --
examined in Appendix Three. Nevertheless,
both views of knowledge acquisition still picture
it as a form of acquaintance, in relation to which the reasoning appears to be little more
complex than this: just as we all know our friends by personal acquaintance, or
by sight, so we all know the contents of our minds (all those 'concepts',
'images' and
'abstractions') by 'internal acquaintance' and 'inner sight'.
This
once again reminds us why Traditional Theorists argue that knowledge is some
sort of relation
between the
Knower and the Known. In this case, we are the Knowers and our own
(internal) ideas are
the Known. This has the unfortunate consequence of trapping dialecticians in
their own solipsistic dungeon!
[There
is more
on this in Essays Three Part Four,
Thirteen Part Three (here
and here), and
Six. It was also
briefly discussed
earlier.]
As seems
reasonably clear, if this privatised 'abstractive skill'
had ever been of any importance in the history of science, we would find evidence
of it in the work of thevast majority, if not every single, scientist.
Alas there is
none.
Even
an
attempt to investigate the truth of that particular claim (i.e.,
that there is no evidence that scientists indulged in the private dismemberment
of 'images', 'reflections', ideas or even 'abstractions' in their
heads/'minds') would
automatically throw into doubt the role that 'the process of abstraction' is supposed to
occupy in science itself. That is because such an inquiry would have to examine physical evidence
-- i.e., the notes, documents
and writings left behind by these scientists, not their brains. Indeed, any
recognition that what counts here as relevantevidence (i.e., the
publicly available, written records they left behind -- alongside the equipment and techniques they used
(etc.), coupled with their social surroundings, circumstances and ideological
commitments, as opposed to the
'contents
of their heads') would
confirm that in their actual practice, no historian of any
intelligence genuinely
believes that abstract ideas (understood in the traditional sense, as the
product of 'inner acts of intellection') underpin scientific knowledge,
whatever
theoretical or philosophical views they might otherwise entertain or even
rehearse in
public.
Here, as elsewhere,
actions speak louder than
abstractions.
[Again,
several examples (drawn from the work of a handful of 'great' scientists), which
disprove the contention that they were all
'abstractors extraordinaire', will be given in Essay Thirteen Part
Two. (See also below.)]
Admittedly,
there might be (several) scientists who actually disagree with this way of
characterising the methods
they employ (even if the latter are 'mental'), nevertheless their practicalactivity belies
whatever post
hoc
rationalisations or re-descriptions they care to advance concerning the nature of their work or the
procedures they follow.
Except in
certain areas of
obsolete psychology, whenever scientists endeavour to advance scientific knowledge, they
neither report on the results of their own 'internal processing of mental
entities', nor on the contents of their heads. And, they certainly don't require
the same with respect to the 'cranial contents' of others in their field. On the contrary, as far as their work is concerned they develop
novel hypotheses (at the very least) by extending the use and application
of
publicly accessiblewords, scientific techniques and, in many cases
currently established theory. And, this they do,
among other things, by employing analogy and metaphor in tandem with the
innovative
use of general terms that are already to be found the scientific lexicon or the public domain. All
of this is (often) allied with the
construction of tailor-made (mathematical, computer or even physical) models and
targeted "thought
experiments" (which also employ publicly accessible words), augmented by the
utilisation of
a range of other rhetorical devices.
[On this
in general, see the
references listed
here. Naturally,
that doesn't mean these factors aren't related to, or even constrained by, the development of
the forces and relations of production. But, as noted earlier, such issues will be
discussed in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Despite this, it could be objected that the above remarks thoroughly
misrepresent the way that knowledge advances. In fact (but edited down), an
objector might argue as follows: Ms Lichtenstein is wrong; scientists aim to
discover the underlying nature of objects and processes in order to
reveal the laws and regularities (etc.) that govern the natural and social world.
Further: if the objector is a
DM-advocate, they might even quote this famous passage from Volume Three of Das Kapital:
[I have
commented on this quotation more fully in Essay Twelve
Part One;
readers are directed there for more details. Also see my demolition of the
(connected)
'appearance'/'reality' distinction,
below.]
Just to take
just one example: let us suppose that an animal's 'essential' nature --
allegedly arrived at by the use of increasingly refined 'abstractions' -- turned
out to be its DNA (or, if not that, it turns out to be something else, call it
"EN"). Another, but more
general example might be the way that Physicists extend knowledge by developing
increasingly 'abstract' theories expressed in, or by, complex mathematical
formulae, structures, models and
laws.
But, that can't be correct.
Scientists manifestly didn't discover DNA, and then understand its role
in genetics, by the use of greater or more refined
abstractions. They used the theoretical and practical advances achieved by
both previous and contemporaneous researchers -- and those results weren't arrived
at by 'abstraction', either --, which they then augmented with their own ideas, expressed,
not in 'mental imagery', but in a public language, once more. [Even
mathematics and logic are public languages, albeit of a complex and highly
technical nature.] Such
advances might also have
been accomplished by, or have received an input from, teams of scientists working in related research traditions
or areas of investigation.
Added to this might be the results of other
innovative experiments in the same or connected fields. All of these were, and
still are, based on cooperative work, thought, communication and observation -- frequently
assisted by the use of simple of complex models and yet more 'thought experiments'.
Once again, all of which are expressed in a public language, subsequently published,
appraised and checked in the open by other qualified researchers.
Even if we
factor in the competition and secrecy enjoined or enforced by proprietary ownership and 'intellectual property
rights' under capitalism, that doesn't significantly alter this picture, it just
greatly reduces the size and scope of the social pool of those involved in this
now greatly diminished public arena. That is, such factors mean smaller
teams might end up working in specific areas of research, often connected with
defence and commercial projects/interests, less frequently elsewhere. But, even
in more restrictive and secretive environments, such as scientific and
technological research carried out in the military-industrial complex, this is still the case: work is done in the open,
in a public language, but this now takes place in highly restricted and heavily
surveilled areas.
None of
these (save, perhaps, 'thought experiments')
even remotely looks like a 'mental process', still less an example of
'abstraction' carried out in a hidden, 'inner' sanctum. And,
as far as 'thought experiments' are concerned, these, too, are typically rehearsed
in the public domainand in a public language. Any alleged 'mental processes'
that accompany them are likewise advanced by an innovative use of language
-- but, with the volume turned down.
['Thought experiments' will be discussed in
more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two; some of the relevant literature devoted
to them has been referenced in
Essay Four. See also the remarks
made about 'mental arithmetic'
below, which are highly relevant to understanding the above points
about 'thought experiments' and 'idealisation'.]
Of course,
it could be objected that no one really thinks abstraction is "done in the
head", or that scientists don't use a publicly accessible language in connection
with their work. Hence, it might be argued that scientists nevertheless
endeavour to form abstract ideas, idealisations and theories based on their use
of these and other resources. In which case, many of the above remarks, and
those in Part One, are irrelevant, if not completely misguided.
Or so it might be claimed...
First, that
isn't what DM-theorists themselves have to say about the 'process of abstraction'.
As we have already seen, DM itself grew directly out of the Rationalist Tradition in
Philosophy, whose theorists largely agreed with Plato about the source and
nature of 'reliable knowledge':
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I
say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and
apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in
no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted
in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by
true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in
true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.
Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is
always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a,
pp.1254-55. I have used
the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published 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.)]
Again, here
is what we read about the Rationalists who directly influenced dialecticians
(also quoted earlier):
"Already with
Fichte
the
idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding
a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based.
Thinkers from
Kant
onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from
experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error,
incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be
foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been
established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers
believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the
laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the
Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise
empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these
laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996a), p.29. Bold
emphasis added.]
And this is what Kant had to say about such
'knowledge':
"Our cognition arises from
two fundamental sources in the mind, the first of which is the reception of
representations (the receptivity of impressions), the second of the faculty for
cognizing an object by means of these representations (spontaneity of concepts);
through the former an object is given to us, through the latter it is
thought in relation to that representation(as a mere determination of the
mind). Intuition and concepts therefore constitute the elements of all our
cognition, so that neither concepts without intuition corresponding to them in
some way nor intuition without concepts can yield a cognition....
Thoughts without content are
empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." [Kant (1998),
pp.193-94, A51/B75. Bold emphases
added; paragraphs merged. (By "intuition" Kant meant
something like "immediate experience" -- Caygill (1995), pp.262-66.)]
"Our knowledge springs from
two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of
receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power
of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of
conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it
is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the
mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of
all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way
corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a
cognition." [Online
version of the above. As we saw in Part One
(and again, below),
Hegel also made similar points,
except he claimed what Kant called an "intuition" was already conceptualised.
How that was possible he left rather vague. Bold emphases added.]
"To reach
rational knowledge by our intelligence is the just demand of the mind which
comes to science.
For intelligence, understanding, is thinking, pure activity of the self in
general;
and what is intelligible is something from the first familiar and common to the
scientific and unscientific mind alike, enabling the unscientific mind to enter
the domain of science. (p.7, §13)
"It is this process by which science in general comes about, this
gradual development of knowing, that is set forth here in the Phenomenology
of Mind.
Knowing, as it is found at the start, mind in its immediate and primitive stage,
is without the essential nature of mind, is sense-consciousness.
To reach the stage of genuine knowledge, or produce the element where science is
found – the pure conception of science itself – a long and laborious journey
must be undertaken.
This process towards science, as regards the content it will bring to light and
the forms it will assume in the course of its progress, will not be what is
primarily imagined by leading the unscientific consciousness up to the level of
science: it will be something different, too, from establishing and laying the
foundations of science; and anyway something else than the sort of ecstatic
enthusiasm which starts straight off with absolute knowledge, as if shot out of
a pistol, and makes short work of other points of view simply by explaining that
it is to take no notice of them. (pp.15-16, §27)
"...Thoughts become fluent and interfuse [fused together -- RL],
when thinking pure and simple, this inner immediacy, knows itself as a moment,
when pure certainty of self abstracts from itself.
It does not 'abstract' in the sense of getting away from itself and setting
itself on one side, but of surrendering the fixed quality of its
self-affirmation, and giving up both the fixity of the purely concrete -- which
is the ego as contrasted with the variety of its content -- and the fixity of
all those distinctions [the various thought-functions, principles, etc.] which
are present in the element of pure thought and share that absoluteness of the
ego.
In virtue of this process pure thoughts become notions, concepts, and are then
what they are in truth, self-moving functions, circles, are what their substance
consists in, are spiritual entities.
(p.20, §33)
"Looked
at as the concatenation of their content, this movement is the necessitated
development and expansion of that content into an organic systematic whole. By
this movement, too, the road, which leads to the notion of knowledge, becomes
itself likewise a necessary and complete evolving process. This preparatory
stage thus ceases to consist of casual philosophical reflections, referring to
objects here and there, to processes and thoughts of the undeveloped mind as
chance may direct; and it does not try to establish the truth by miscellaneous
ratiocinations, inferences, and consequences drawn from circumscribed thoughts.
The road to science, by the very movement of the notion itself, will compass the
entire objective world of conscious life in its rational necessity.
(p.20, §34)
"...What
mind prepares for itself in the course of its phenomenology is the element of
true knowledge.
In this element the moments of mind are now set out in the form of thought pure
and simple,
which knows its object to be itself. They no longer involve the opposition
between being and knowing; they remain within the undivided simplicity of the
knowing function; they are the truth in the form of truth, and their diversity
is merely diversity of the content of truth.
The process by which they are developed into an organically connected whole is
Logic or Speculative Philosophy.
(pp.21-22, §37)
"Here we find contained the principle that Being is Thought: here
is exercised that insight which usually tends to deviate from the ordinary
non-conceptual way of speaking of the identity of thought and being. In virtue,
further, of the fact that
subsistence on the part of what exists is self-identity or pure abstraction,
it is the abstraction of itself from itself,
in other words, is itself its own want of identity with itself and dissolution –
its own proper inwardness and retraction into self -- its process of becoming.
(p.33, §54)
[The above were taken from the Preface
to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (also called Phenomenology of Mind)
i.e., Hegel
(1977), pp.7-33). Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site.
Had similar passages been quoted from the rest of the book (never mind other
works of Hegel's), this Essay would have been tens of thousands of words longer!]
As we have seen, this is how
Marx and Engels summed up
Hegel's method of 'abstraction':
"The mystery of critical presentation…is
the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction.… If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'…. Particular real
fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the
substance' -- 'Fruit'…. Having reduced the different real
fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction….
"The main interest for the speculative
philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary
fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds
and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in
the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind….
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond.
Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is
saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears.
But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he
says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing
the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that the
speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting
universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in
reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names
of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract
formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which
he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending
Substance as Subject, as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975a), pp.72-75. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
As their
younger selves, Marx and Engels clearly regarded 'abstraction' as a private,
individualised process, the products of which they describe as "abstract creations of the mind"
and an "unreal creation of the mind" -- just as the Essays posted at this
site have maintained.
So, it
should hardly surprise us when DM-theorists (who have in general
ignored -- and, in effect, rejected -- the above conclusions drawn by
Marx and Engels, along with
their demolition of Hegel's method and 'abstractionism' in general) emulate
Hegel and the rest of the ruling-class Rationalist Tradition stretching back at least to Plato. This has left them promoting and privileging
the 'mental processes' that supposedly give rise to all these 'abstractions', which they
then claim are necessary in order to form a secure foundation for the
advancement of knowledge.
Here
are just a few examples where DM-theorists have (perhaps inadvertently) confirmed the above
accusations
-- beginning with Lenin (followed by John Rees, Alexander Spirkin and then several
others):
"The
approach of the (human) mind to a particular thing, the taking of a copy (= a
concept) of it is not a simple, immediate act, a dead mirroring, but one
which is complex, split into two, zig-zag-like, which includes in it the
possibility of the flight of fantasy from life; more than that: the possibility
of the transformation (moreover, an unnoticeable transformation, of
which man is unaware) of the abstract concept, idea, into a fantasy....
For even in the simplest generalisation, in the most elementary general idea
('table' in general), there is a certain bit of fantasy. (Vice
versa: it would be stupid to deny the role of fantasy, even in the strictest
science...." [Lenin
(1961), pp.370-71. All but one instance of bold emphasis added. Italics
in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site.]
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely.
From living perception to abstract
thought, and from
this to practice, -- such is the dialectical path of cognition of truth,
of the cognition of objective reality." [Ibid.,
p.171. Bold emphases
alone added.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.
Bold emphases
alone 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 emphases
alone added.]
"Abstraction is the mental identification, singling out of some object from
its connections with other objects, the separation of some attribute of an
object from its other attributes, of some relation between certain objects
from the objects themselves. Abstraction is a method of mental
simplification, by which we consider some one aspect of the process we are
studying. The scientist looks at the colourful picture which any object
presents in real life through a single-colour filter and this enables him to
see that object in only one, fundamentally important aspect. The picture
loses many of its shades but gains in clarity. Abstraction has its limit.
One cannot abstract the flame from what is burning. The sharp edge of
abstraction, like the edge of a razor can be used to whittle things down
until nothing is left. Abstraction can never be absolute. The existence of
content shows intrinsically in every abstraction. The question of what to
abstract and what to abstract from is ultimately decided by the nature of
the objects under examination and the tasks confronting the investigator.
Kepler, for example, was not interested in the colour of Mars or the
temperature of the Sun when he sought to establish the laws of the
revolution of the planets. What we get as a result of the process of
abstracting is various concepts about certain objects, such as 'plant',
'animal', 'human being', ideas about the separate properties of objects and
the relations between them ('whiteness', 'volume', 'length', 'heat
capacity', etc.).
"Idealisation as a specific form of abstraction is an important technique
in scientific cognition. Abstract objects do not exist and cannot be made to
exist in reality, but they have their prototypes in the real world. Pure
mathematics operates with numbers, vectors and other mathematical objects
that are the result of abstraction and idealisation. Geometry, for example,
is concerned with exact circles, but physical object is never exactly
circular; perfect roundness is an abstraction. It cannot be found in nature.But it is an image of the real: it was brought into existence by
generalisation from experience. Idealisation is a process of forming
concepts, whose real prototypes can be indicated only to a certain degree of
approximation. As a result of idealisation there comes into being a
theoretical model in which the characteristics and aspects of the objects
under investigation are not only abstracted from their actual empirical multiformity
but also, by means of mental construction, are made to stand
out in a sharper and more fully expressed form than in reality itself. As
examples of concepts resulting from idealisation we may take such things as
the 'point' (an object which has neither length, nor height, nor breadth);
or 'the straight line', the 'circle', and so on.... The mental transition from the more general to the less general is a process
of limitation. Without generalisation there can be no theory. Theory, on the
other hand, is created so that it can be applied in practice to solve
certain specific problems. For example, when measuring objects or building
certain technical structures, we must always proceed from the more general
to the less general and the individual, there must always be a process of
limitation. The grotesque fantastic images of mythology with its gods and
monsters are closer to ordinary reality than the reality of the microworld
conceived in the form of mathematical symbols. One can see that the turn
towards the abstract is a very obvious trend of our time. Recourse to the
abstract may also be observed in art, in abstract pictures and sculptures.
"The abstract and the concrete. The concept of
'the concrete' is used
in two senses. First, in the sense of something directly given, a sensuously
perceived and represented whole. In this sense the concrete is the starting
point of cognition. But as soon as we treat it theoretically the concrete
becomes a concept, a system of scientific definitions revealing the
essential connections and relations of things and events, their unity in
diversity. So the concrete appears to us first in the form of a sensuously
observable image of the whole object not yet broken down and not understood
in its law-governed connections and mediations, but at the level of
theoretical thought it is still a whole, but internally differentiated,
understood in its various intrinsic contradictions. The sensuously concrete
is a poor reflection of phenomena, but the concrete in thought is a richer,
more essential cognition. In contrast to the abstract the concrete is only
one moment in the process of cognition, we understand it by comparing it
with the abstract. Abstraction usually suggests to us some thing 'mental',
'conceptual', in contrast to the sensuously observable. The abstract is also
thought of as something one-sided, poor, incomplete, separated, or as a
property, a relation, a form, etc. withdrawn from its connection with the
whole. And in this sense not only a concept but even an observable image,
for example, a diagram, a drawing, an abstract painting, stylisation, a
symbol may be abstract. The category of abstraction is contradictory. It is
dead, one-sided, separated from the living phenomenon, but it is also an
essential step towards the knowledge of a concrete fact brimming with life.
We call knowledge abstract also in the sense that it reflects a fragment of
reality, as it were, stripped down, refined and thereby impoverished. Abstractions are
'bits' of whole objects, and our thinking works with
such 'bits'. From separate abstractions thought constantly returns to the
restoration of concreteness, but each time on a new, higher basis. This is
the concreteness of concepts, categories, and theories reflecting unity in
diversity.
"What
do we mean by cognition as a process of ascent from the abstract to the
concrete? '...[C]ognition rolls onwards from content to
content. First of all, this advance is determined as beginning from simple
determinatenesses the succeeding ones becoming ever richer and more
concrete. For the result contains its beginning and its course has
enriched it by a fresh determinateness. The universal constitutes the
foundation; the advance is therefore not to be taken as a flowing
from one other to the next other. In the absolute method the
Notion maintains itself in its otherness. the universal in its
particularisation, in judgment and reality; at each stage of its further
determination it raises the entire mass of its preceding content, and by its
dialectical advance it not only does not lose anything or leave anything
behind, but carries along with it all it has gained, and inwardly enriches
and consolidates itself." [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel's Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe. Fünfter Band. Wissenschaft der
Logic. Berlin, 1834, Verlag von Duncker und Humblot, S.348-49. (This is in
fact
Hegel (1999), p.840. §1809.)] Seen in this light, the process of abstraction is a
realisation of the principle: one must step back in order to get a better
view. The dialectics of the cognition of reality lies in the fact that by
'flying away' from this sensuously given reality on the 'wings' of
abstraction, one may from the heights of concrete theoretical thought better
'survey' the essence of the object under investigation. Such is the history
and logic of scientific cognition. Here we have the essence of the Marxist
method of ascent from the abstract to the concrete. According to Marx, this
method is the means by which thought assimilates the concrete, reproduces it
by linking up concepts into an integrated scientific theory, which
reproduces the objective separateness of the objects and the unity of its
essential properties and relations. The concrete is concrete because it is a
synthesis of many definitions, and, consequently, a unity of the diversity.
The principle of concreteness means that we must approach facts of natural
and social life not with general formulas and diagrams but by taking into
exact account all the real conditions in which the target of our research is
located and distinguish the most important, essential properties,
connections, and tendencies that determine its other aspects." [Spirkin
(1983),
pp.232-35.
Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. I have used the translation found in Hegel
(1999), not Spirkin's version. Several paragraphs merged.]
"Abstraction -- a form of cognition based on the mental identification of
an object's essential properties and connections...a synonym of
'mental' or 'conceptual'...". [Krapivin (1985), p.278. Bold emphases
added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
"Human
thought is not only mediate; it is also an abstract and generalised
reflection of reality. The process whereby a number of properties of an
object and the relations between them are discarded, and the property or
relation we are concerned with is singled out, or identified, is called an
abstraction. Man's thought is abstract precisely because it operates with
concepts developed as a result of abstraction. Any abstraction also
contains at the same time a certain generalisation . The abstraction of
identification, for example, helped from such concepts, among others, as
'man', 'animal', 'commodity', 'revolution', 'socialism' and 'capitalism'.
The abstraction of isolation underlies such concepts as 'hardness',
'whiteness', 'kindness', 'cruelty', 'democracy', and others. So-called
idealisation is often used in scientific knowledge when an object is taken
in its 'pure form': 'a point' (i.e., an object without extension), 'line',
'ideal gas', 'ideally elastic body', etc. There are also other kinds of
abstraction. The process of abstracting and generalising is based on the
mental operations of analysis and synthesis. The former is a disjunction of
an integral object into its components-- its properties and aspects -- and
the mental singling out of its separate features. The latter is a method of
mentally combining the elements and properties of the object under scrutiny."
[Kharin (1981), pp.219-20. Bold emphases added.]
"To
abstract a phenomenon or object we must split it up mentally into its
properties, relationships, parts, stages of development, and so on."
[Konstantinov, et al (1974), p.220. Bold emphasis added.]
Here, too, is Bertell Ollman:
"The philosophy of internal relations bans
finite parts from Marx's ontology. The world, it would have us believe, is
not like that. Then, through the mental process of abstraction, Marx
draws a set of provisional boundaries in this relational world to arrive at
parts that are better suited-chiefly through the inclusion of significant
elements of change and interaction-to the particular investigation he has in
mind. [Ollman (2003),
p.5. Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics
restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the commonsense
notion of 'thing' (as something that has a history and has external
connections with other things) with notions of 'process' (which contains its
history and possible futures) and 'relation' (which contains as part of what
it is its ties with other relations). Nothing that didn't already exist has
been added here. Rather, it is a matter of where and how one draws
boundaries and establishes units (the dialectical term is 'abstracts') in
which to think about the world. The assumption is that while the
qualities we perceive with our five senses actually exist as parts of
nature, the conceptual distinctions that tell us where one thing ends and
the next one begins both in space and across time are social and mental
constructs." [Ibid.,
p.13. Bold
emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"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.
"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the
fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable
parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and
communicated it must be parceled (sic) out. Our minds can no more swallow the
world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just
Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her
surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing
them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere',
which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out
of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart. We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises
in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with,
and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established
and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is
relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What
caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually
see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any
subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could
be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought,
and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental
activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or
unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of
abstraction.
"Responding to a mixture of influences that
include the material world and our experiences in it as well as to personal
wishes, group interests, and other social constraints, it is the process
of abstraction that establishes the specificity of the objects with which we
interact. In setting boundaries, in ruling this far and no further, it is what
makes something one (or two, or more) of a kind, and lets us know where that
kind begins and ends. With this decision as to units, we also become committed
to a particular set of relations between them -- relations made possible and
even necessary by the qualities that we have included in each -- a register for
classifying them, and a mode for explaining them. In listening to a concert, for
example, we often concentrate on a single instrument or recurring theme and then
redirect our attention elsewhere. Each time this occurs, the whole music alters,
new patterns emerge, each sound takes on a different value, etc. How we
understand the music is largely determined by how we abstract it. The
same applies to what we focus on when watching a play, whether on a person, or a
combination of persons, or a section of the stage. The meaning of the play and
what more is required to explore or test that meaning alters, often
dramatically, with each new abstraction. In this way, too, how we abstract
literature, where we draw the boundaries, determines what works and what parts
of each work will be studied, with what methods, in relation to what other
subjects, in what order, and even by whom. Abstracting literature to include its
audience, for example, leads to a sociology of literature, while an abstraction
of literature that excludes everything but its forms calls forth various
structural approaches, and so on.
"From what
has been said so far, it is clear that 'abstraction' is itself an abstraction. I
have abstracted it from Marx's dialectical method, which in turn was abstracted
from his broad theories, which in turn were abstracted from his life and work.
The mental activities that we have collected and brought into focus as
'abstraction' are more often associated with the processes of perception,
conception, defining, remembering, dreaming, reasoning, and even thinking.
It is not surprising, therefore, if the process of abstraction strikes many
people as both foreign and familiar at the same time. Each of these more
familiar processes operates in part by separating out, focusing, and putting
emphasis on only some aspects of that reality with which they come into contact.
In 'abstraction' we have simply separated out, focused, and put emphasis on
certain common features of these other processes. Abstracting 'abstraction' in
this way is neither easy nor obvious, and therefore relatively few people have
done it. Consequently, though everyone abstracts, of necessity, only a few are
aware of it as such. This philosophical impoverishment is reinforced by the
fact that most people are lazy abstractors, simply and uncritically accepting
the mental units with which they think as part of their cultural inheritance.
A further complication in grasping 'abstraction' arises from the fact that Marx
uses the term in four different, though closely related, senses. First and
most important, it refers to the mental activity of subdividing the world into
the mental constructs with which we think about it, which is the process that we
have been describing. Second, it refers to the results of this process, the
actual parts into which reality has been apportioned. That is to say, for Marx,
as for Hegel before him, 'abstraction' functions as a noun as well as a verb,
the noun referring to what the verb has brought into being. In these senses,
everyone can be said to abstract (verb) and to think with abstractions (noun).
But Marx also uses 'abstraction' in a third sense, where it refers to a suborder
of particularly ill-fitting mental constructs. Whether because they are too
narrow, take in too little, focus too exclusively on appearances, or are
otherwise badly composed, these constructs do not allow an adequate grasp of
their subject matter." [Ibid.,
pp.60-62.Bold
emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Referencing conventions
modified for the same reason.]
"The process of abstraction, which we have been treating as an
undifferentiated mental act, has three main aspects or modes, which are also its functions
vis-à-vis the part abstracted on one hand and the system to which the part
belongs and which it in turn helps to shape on the other. That is, the boundary
setting and bringing into focus that lies at the core of this process occurs
simultaneously in three different, though closely related, senses. These senses
have to do with extension, level of generality, and vantage point. First, each
abstraction can be said to achieve a certain extension in the part abstracted,
and this applies both spatially and temporally. In abstracting boundaries in
space, limits are set in the mutual interaction that occurs at a given point of
time. While in abstracting boundaries in time, limits are set in the distinctive
history and potential development of any part, in what it once was and is yet to
become. Most of our examples of abstraction so far have been drawn from what we
shall now call 'abstraction of extension.'" [Ibid.,
p.74. Bold emphasis
added. All these links lead to a PDF of Ollman's book.]
Not
forgetting our old 'friends', Woods and Grant:
"Without abstraction it is impossible to penetrate the object in
'depth,' to
understand its essential nature and laws of motion. Through the mental work of
abstraction, we are able to get beyond the immediate information provided by our
senses (sense-perception), and probe deeper. We can break the object down into
its constituent parts, isolate them, and study them in detail. We can arrive at
an idealised, general conception of the object as a 'pure' form, stripped of all
secondary features. This is the work of abstraction, an absolutely necessary
stage of the process of cognition." [Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.85-87.
Bold emphases added.]
Here, too, is
Academic Marxist, Andrew Sayer:
"The sense in which the term
['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an
abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial
aspect of an object. [In a footnote, Sayer adds 'My use of "abstract" and
"concrete" is, I think, equivalent to Marx's' (p.277, note 3).]" [Sayer (1992),
p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphasis alone added. The page numbers are completely different in
the Second Corrected Edition, i.e., Sayer (2010), p.187 and p.59, respectively.]
Finally,
here is another Academic Marxist, but one with whom I engaged in discussion recently:
"Critical thought demands abstraction.
We
must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of
our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from
the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and
abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to
understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract."
[Quoted from
here. Bold emphasis added; spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
As we found
out was the
case with Ollman -- and this applies
to everyone else who has written on this topic --,
beyond a few vague gestures, accompanied by no little hand-waving, we are
never toldexactly how
the above 'process' actually works, or even why it doesn't result in the creation of a
'private language'. As we also saw, Ollman
himself pointed this out:
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it
should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely
from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot
of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a
'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would
be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be
done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal
with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003),
p.63. Bold emphasis added.]
Finally, here is Marx himself (in an
oft-quoted passage, which unfortunately contradicts
what he had to say
earlier about 'abstraction'):
"There
are characteristics which all stages of production have in common, and which are
established as general ones by the mind;
but the so-called general
preconditions of
all production are nothing more than these abstract moments with which no real
historical stage of production can be grasped....
"It seems to be correct to begin with the real and the concrete, with the
real precondition, thus to begin, in economics,
with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire
social act of production. However, on closer examination this proves false.
The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of
which it is composed.
These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements
on which they rest. E.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn
presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is
nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price etc. Thus,
if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of
the whole, and I would then, by means of further determination, move
analytically towards ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete
towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest
determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had
finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic
conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and
relations.
The former is the path historically followed by economics at the time of its
origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin with the
living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.; but they
always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of determinant,
abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As
soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly established and
abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended from the simple
relations, such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, to the
level of the state, exchange between nations and the world market. The latter is
obviously the scientifically correct method. The concrete is concrete because it
is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.
It appears in the process of thinking,
therefore, as a process of concentration,
as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of
departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation and
conception.
Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an
abstract determination; along the second,
the abstract determinations lead towards a
reproduction of the
concrete by way of thought.
In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product
of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself
out of itself, by itself,
whereas the method of rising from the
abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the
concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.
But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into
being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value,
presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific relations;
as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc. It can never
exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an already given,
concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange value leads an
antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of consciousness -- and this is
characteristic of the philosophical consciousness -- for which conceptual
thinking is the real human being, and for which the conceptual world as such is
thus the only reality, the movement of the categories appears as the real act of
production -- which only, unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside --
whose product is the world; and -- but this is again a tautology -- this is
correct in so far as the
concrete totality is a totality of thoughts,
concrete in thought,
in fact a product of thinking and comprehending;
but not in any way a product of the concept which thinks and generates itself
outside or above observation and conception; a product, rather, of the
working-up of observation and conception into concepts.
The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product
of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way
different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of
this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head
just as before; namely as long as the
head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the
theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as
the presupposition.
"But do not these simpler categories also have an independent
historical or natural existence pre-dating the more concrete ones? That depends.
Hegel, for example, correctly begins the Philosophy of Right with possession,
this being the subject's simplest juridical relation. But there is no possession
preceding the family or master-servant relations, which are far more concrete
relations. However, it would be correct to say that there are families or clan
groups which still merely possess, but
have no property. The
simple category therefore appears in relation to property as a relation of
simple families or clan groups. In the higher society it appears as the simpler
relation of a developed organization. But the concrete substratum of which
possession is a relation is always presupposed. One can imagine an individual
savage as possessing something. But in that case possession is not a juridical
relation. It is incorrect that possession develops historically into the family.
Possession, rather, always presupposes this 'more concrete juridical category.'
There would still always remain this much, however, namely that the simple
categories are the expressions of relations within which the less developed
concrete may have already realized itself before having posited the more
many-sided connection or relation which is mentally expressed in the more
concrete category;
while the more developed concrete preserves the same category as a subordinate
relation. Money may exist, and did exist historically, before capital existed,
before banks existed, before wage labour existed, etc. Thus in this respect it
may be said that the simpler category can express the dominant relations of a
less developed whole, or else those subordinate relations of a more developed
whole which already had a historic existence before this whole developed in the
direction expressed by a more concrete category.
To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from the simple to the
combined, would correspond to the real historical process."
[Marx (1986), pp.37-39.
Bold emphases alone added. The on-line translation has been quoted here -- i.e.,
Marx (1973) -- while
the page numbers are those found in the
MECW edition -- i.e.,
Marx (1986) -- which
translates the above words slightly differently but in a way that still makes the
same points. I have linked to both versions so readers can check this for
themselves.]
"As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest
possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to
all.
Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone.
On the other side, this abstraction of labour as such is not merely the mental
product of a concrete totality of labours. Indifference towards specific labours
corresponds to a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer
from one labour to another, and where the specific kind is a matter of chance
for them, hence of indifference.
Not only the category, labour, but labour in reality has here become the means
of creating wealth in general, and has ceased to be organically linked with
particular individuals in any specific form....
"In
the succession of the economic categories, as in any other historical, social
science, it must not be forgotten that their subject -- here, modern bourgeois
society -- is always what is given, in the head as well as in reality, and that
these categories therefore express the forms of being, the characteristics of
existence, and often only individual sides of this specific society, this
subject, and that therefore this society by no means begins only at the point
where one can speak of it as
such; this
holds for
science as well. This
is to be kept in mind because it will shortly be decisive for the order and
sequence of the categories....
"Every moment, in calculating, accounting etc., that we transform commodities
into value symbols, we fix them as mere exchange values, making abstraction from
the matter they are composed of and all their natural qualities. On paper, in the head, this metamorphosis proceeds by means of mere abstraction;
but in the real exchange process a real mediation is
required, a means to accomplish this abstraction."
[bid., pp.41-80.
Bold emphases alone added. Again, the on-line translation has been quoted here -- i.e.,
Marx (1973) -- while
the page numbers are those found in the
MECW edition -- i.e.,
Marx (1986) -- which
translates the above words slightly differently but in a way that still makes the
same points. I have linked to both versions so readers can check this for
themselves.]
Marx reasoned along similar lines in his early
work, too:
"The premises from which we
begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which
abstraction can only be madein the imagination. They are the real individuals,
their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those
which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These
premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way." [Marx
and Engels (1976), p.31. Bold
emphasis added.]
So, Marx clearly connects abstraction with what
goes on "in the head", processed "mentally", "by the mind"
and "in the imagination".
[Admittedly, in Marx (1986), he also says it takes place
"on paper" (and "in the head"),
but he nowhere explained how the former is actually carried out -- nor has anyone
since. I suspect Marx was referring to the writing down of results that had
been achieved 'mentally'.]
This is what Alex Callinicos had to say about the
above passage (by Marx):
"First, the process of knowledge is one that takes
place within thought. Neither its commencement nor its conclusion
involves any direct encounter with the real. To start with the 'real
precondition' involves its evaporation into 'an
abstract determination'.
And where the 'scientifically correct method' is employed its result is, not the
concrete reality itself but the 'reproduction
of the concrete by way of thought'. Marx emphasis this point...:
'The
concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in fact a
product of thinking and comprehending;...a
product...of the
working-up of
observation and conception into concepts.
The totality
as it appears in the head,
as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head,
which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the
artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The real
subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head
just as before;
namely as long asthe
head's
conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical.' [Marx (1986), loc cit.
Bold added.]
"In this way the central thesis of empiricism, that
scientific knowledge rests upon the direct access of the subject to reality, was
overturned. Instead attention was focussed upon the process of theoretical
knowledge itself, 'the
working-up of observation and conception into concepts'....
"Second, Marx advances a new theory of scientific
abstraction, which tells us something about the internal structure of the
process of knowledge. When Marx writes that:
'the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which
thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind',
[Marx (1986),
loc cit.
Bold added.].
"he is setting behind him classical epistemology's
theory of abstraction. The theory he rejects is one in which abstraction is
essentially the process whereby thought abstracts from the real the
essential relationships which it makes the first principles of the science.
Abstraction is identified analysis -- thought penetrates the real, paring away
the inessential phenomena in order to grasp the underlying essence.... The
notion of science as a process taking place within thought implies a breach with
this theory of abstraction, since any direct relation between thought and
reality is denied." [Callinicos (1978), pp.136-38. Emphases in the original,
except in place of italics Callinicos uses underlining; bold added. Several
paragraphs merged; minor typos corrected. Referencing and formatting conventions
altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]
As we have seen, Callinicos has seriously
misunderstood Empiricism -- or to be more accurate, he ignores the many ways it is
fundamentally like the Rationalist Tradition in its approach to knowledge (as earlier sections of this Part of Essay Three have
shown). As we will also see,
even Hegel rejects this way of interpreting our 'encounter with the real'.
Nevertheless, Callinicos at least underlines the connection between abstraction
and 'what goes on in the head'.
[Having said that, it isn't too clear that
Callinicos would express himself this way today, almost forty-five years later!]
Be this as it may, I have subjected much of the
above (and not just what Callinicos has to say) to detailed criticism across
Parts One and Two of this Essay.
In which case, it is now undeniable that DM-theorists
(across all wings of Dialectical Marxism) believe
the 'process of abstraction' is carried out 'in the head'/'in the mind' --
precisely as
argued at this site.
But,
as we have seen, that isn't what scientists
themselves
actually do. Nor is it what anyone does. The opposite idea is a
myth invented and promulgated by Traditional Philosophers, amateur metaphysicians and
DM-fans alike.
These somewhat controversial claims (i.e.,
those relating to what scientists do, as opposed to what they or others say they
do, or what they
or others imagine
they do --, or, indeed, what certain philosophers think they do) will be
substantiated (and illustrated) more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Two (much of
that material has been summarised and included in the last few sub-sections of this Essay,
anyway). The claim that the rest of us engage in abstraction has also been
subjected to sustained and destructive criticism throughout Parts One and Two of Essay
Three.
However, I
will say more about science, scientists and what they do (or do not do) in a later
sub-section: "Appearance and Reality".
Nevertheless,
Anti-abstractionism is
a relatively recent development. [And that is because abstractionism is one of
the "ruling ideas".] Why it is a recent development will be revealed in
Essay Twelve Part Seven (summarised
here). The first major thinker to subject the
possibility there were any 'abstract general ides' to
searching criticism (that is, outside the
Medieval Nominalist tradition) was
George Berkeley.
[Berkeley's
arguments against abstract ideas are summarised in Dancy (1987), pp.24-40; a
different approach, connected with
Berkeley's Philosophy of Mathematics, can be found in Jesseph (1993),
pp.9-43. On Berkeley in general, see
here;
his case against abstraction is expertly summarised
here.]
Berkeley's arguments
in this regard are psychologically orientated, based on the observation that it is impossible
for him to form an abstract idea of
anything whatsoever since that would require whatever it was that was (supposedly) abstracted
both possessed anddid not possess incompatible properties at one and the same time.
So, he asks whether
anyone:
"[H]as, or can attain to have,
an idea that shall correspond with the description that is here given of the
general idea of a triangle, which is, neither oblique, nor rectangle,
equilateral, equicrural (Isosceles
-- RL), nor scalenon (Scalene
-- RL), but all and none of these at once." [Berkeley (1975b),
p.81.]
Based on his
own inability to form any such 'abstract ideas', Berkeley casts serious doubt on
the capacity of others to conceive of them, either:
"I can imagine a man with two
heads or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider
the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the
rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some
particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that I frame to myself,
must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a
tall or low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive
the abstract idea above described [of a general man]. And it is equally
impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body
moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and
the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever." [Ibid.,
p.78.]
That isn't
to deny the above points might be translated into some sort of logical form,
based on what we mean by such terms. Given Berkeley's other comments about the
importance of ordinary language, it is a little surprising he didn't go
down that route.
A somewhat similar argument can be found in
Frege (in his review of
Husserl's
Philosophy of Arithmetic):
"The
author himself finds a difficulty about the abstraction that provides the
general concept of the collective. He says (p.84):
'The
peculiarities of the individual contents that are collected...must be completely
abstracted from, but at the same time their connection must be maintained. This
seems to involve a difficulty, if not a psychological impossibility. If we take
the abstraction seriously, then the individual contents vanish, and so,
naturally, does their collective unity, instead of remaining behind as a
conceptual extract. The solution is obvious. To abstract from something simply
means: not to attend to it specially.'
"The kernel of this explanation is
obviously to be found in the word 'specially'. Inattention is a very strong lye;
it must be applied at not too great a concentration, so that everything does not
dissolve, and likewise not too dilute, so that it effects a sufficient change in
the things. Thus it is a question of getting the right degree of dilution; this
is difficult to manage, and I at any rate have never succeeded....
[Detaching our attention] is particularly effective. We attend less to a
property, and it disappears. By making one characteristic
after another disappear, we get more and more abstract concepts…. Inattention is
a most efficacious logical faculty; presumably this accounts for the
absentmindedness of professors. Suppose there are a black and a white cat
sitting side by side before us. We stop attending to their colour, and they
become colourless, but are still sitting side by side. We stop attending to
their posture, and they are no longer sitting (though they have not assumed
another posture), but each one is still in its place. We stop attending to
position; they cease to have place, but still remain different. In this way,
perhaps, we obtain from each one of them a general concept of Cat. By continual
application of this procedure, we obtain from each object a more and more
bloodless phantom. Finally we thus obtain from each object a something
wholly deprived of content; but the something
obtained from one object is different from the something obtained
from another object -- though it is not easy to say how." [Frege (1980),
pp.84-85. Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged.]
Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for
contemporaneous theorists who imagined that mathematical concepts could be created, or
perhaps apprehended, by a 'process of abstraction'; in particular, the views of the 19th
century mathematician and Mystical Platonist,
Georg Cantor (and
this
also included the latter's 'followers'):
"We may begin here by
making a general observation. When negroes from the heart of Africa see a telescope or pocket watch for
the first time, they are inclined to credit these things with the most
astounding magical properties. Many
mathematicians react to
philosophical expressions in a similar manner. I am thinking in particular
here of the following: 'define' (Brahma),
'reflect' (Vishnu),
'abstract' (Shiva).
The names of the Indian gods in brackets are meant to indicate the kind of
magical effects the expressions are supposed to have. If, for instance, you find
that some property of a thing bothers you, you abstract from it. But if you want
to call a halt to this process of destruction so that the properties you want to
see retained should not be obliterated in the process, you reflect on these
properties. If, finally, you feel sorely the lack of certain properties in the
thing, you bestow them on it by definition. In your possession of these
miraculous powers you are not far removed from the Almighty. The significance
this would have is practically beyond measure. Think of how these powers could be
put to use in the classroom: the teacher has a good-natured but lazy and stupid
pupil. He will then abstract from the laziness and the stupidity, reflecting all
the while on the good-naturedness. Then by means of a definition he will confer
on him the properties of keenness and intelligence. Of course so far people have
confined themselves to mathematics. The following
dialogue may serve an illustration:
'Mathematician:
The sign
√(−1)
has the property of yielding -1 when squared.
'Layman:
This pattern of printer's ink on paper? I can't see any trace of this property.
Perhaps it has been discovered with the aid of a microscope or by some chemical
means?
'Mathematician:
It can't be arrived at by any process of sense perception. And of course
it isn't produced by the mere printer's ink either; a magic incantation, called
a definition, has first to be pronounced over it.
'Layman:
Ah, now I understand. You expressed yourself badly. You mean that a definition
is used to stipulate that this pattern is a sign for something with those
properties.
'Mathematician:
Not at all! It is a sign, but it doesn't designate or mean anything. It itself
has these properties, precisely in virtue of the definition.
'Layman:
What extraordinary people you mathematicians are, and no mistake! You don't
bother at all about the properties a thing actually has, but imagine that in
their stead you can bestow a property on it by a definition -- a property that
the thing in its innocence doesn't dream of -- and now you investigate the
property and believe in that way you can accomplish the most extraordinary
things!'
"This illustrates the might
of the mathematical Brahma. In Cantor it is Shiva and Vishnu who receive the
greater honour. Faced with a cage of mice, mathematicians react differently when
the number of them is in question. Some…include in the number the mice just as
they are, down to the last hair; others -- and I may surely count Cantor amongst
them -- find it out of place that hairs should form part of the number and so
abstract from them. They find in mice a whole host of things besides which are
out of place in number and are unworthy to be included in it. Nothing simpler:
one abstracts from the whole lot. Indeed when you get down to it everything in
the mice is out of place: the beadiness of their eyes no less than the length of
their tails and the sharpness of their teeth. So one abstracts from the nature
of the mice. But from their nature as what is not said; so one abstracts presumably
from all their properties, even from those in virtue of which we call them mice,
even from those in virtue of which we call them animals, three-dimensional
beings -- properties which distinguish them, for instance, from the number 2.
"Cantor demands more: to arrive at
cardinal numbers, we are required to abstract from the order in which they
are given. What is to be understood by this? Well, if at a certain moment we
compare the positions of the mice, we see that of any two one is further to the
north than the other, or that both are to the same distance to the north. The same
applies to east and west and above and below. But this is not all: if we compare the mice
in respect of their ages, we find likewise that of any two one is older than the
other or that both have the same age. We can go on and compare them in respect
of their length, both with and without their tails, in respect of the pitch of
their squeaks, their weight, their muscular strength, and in many other respects
besides. All these relations generate an order. We shall surely not go astray if
we take it that this is what Cantor calls the order in which things are given.
So we are meant to abstract from this order too. Now surely many people will say
'But we have already abstracted from their being in space; so ipso facto
we have already abstracted from north and south, from difference in their
lengths. We have already abstracted from the ages of the animals, and so
ipso facto from one's being older than another. So why does special mention
also have to be made of order?'
"Well, Cantor also defines what he calls an ordinal type; and in order to arrive
at this, we have, so he tells us, to stop short of abstracting from the order in
which the things are given. So presumably this will be possible too, though only
with Vishnu's help. We can hardly dispense with this in other cases too. For the
moment let us stay with the cardinal numbers.
"So let us get a number of men together
and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of
the pencil and the order in which its elements are given. After we have allowed them
sufficient time for this difficult task, we ask the first 'What general
concept…have you arrived at?' Non-mathematician that he is, he answers 'Pure
Being.' The second thinks rather 'Pure nothingness', the third -- I suspect a
pupil of Cantor's -- 'The cardinal number one.' A fourth is perhaps left with
the woeful feeling that everything has evaporated, a fifth -- surely a pupil of
Cantor's -- hears an inner voice whispering that graphite and wood, the
constituents of the pencil, are 'constitutive elements', and so arrives at the
general concept called the cardinal number two. Now why shouldn't one man come
out with the answer and the other with another? Whether in fact Cantor's
definitions have the sharpness and precision their author boasts of is
accordingly doubtful to me. But perhaps we got such varying replies because it
was a pencil we carried out our experiment with. It may be said 'But a pencil
isn't a set.' Why not? Well then, let us look at the moon. 'The moon is not a
set either!' What a pity! The cardinal number one would be only too happy to
come into existence at any place and at any time, and the moon seemed the very
thing to assist at the birth. Well then, let us take a heap of sand. Oh dear,
there's someone already trying to separate the grains. 'You are surely not going
to try and count then all! That is strictly forbidden! You have to arrive at the
number by a single act of abstraction....' 'But in order to be able to abstract
from the nature of a grain of sand, I must surely first have looked at it,
grasped it, come to know it!' 'That's quite unnecessary. What would
happen to the infinite cardinals in that case? By the time you had looked at the
last grain, you would be bound to have forgotten the first ones. I must
emphasise once more that you are meant to arrive at the number by a single act
of abstraction. Of course for that you need the help of supernatural powers.
Surely you don't imagine you can bring it off by ordinary abstraction. When you
look at books, some in
quarto, some
in octavo,
some thick, some thin, some in
Gothic type
and some in
Roman and you abstract from these properties which distinguish them, and
thus arrive at, say, the concept 'book', this, when you come down to it, is no
great feat. Allow me to clarify for you the difference between ordinary
abstraction and the higher, supernatural, kind.
"With
ordinary abstraction we start out by comparing objects a, b, c, and find
that they agree in many properties but differ in others. We abstract from the
latter and arrive at a concept Φ under which a and b and
c all fall. Now this concept has neither the properties abstracted from nor
those common to a, b and c. The concept 'book', for
instance, no more consists of printed sheets -- although the individual books we
started by comparing do consist of such -- than the concept 'female mammal'
bears young or suckles them with milk secreted from its glands; for it has no
glands. Things are quite different with supernatural abstraction. Here we have,
for instance, a heap of sand...." [Frege
(1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point.
Italic emphases in the original. Links added; quotation marks altered, and
the passage reformatted, to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
Frege's parody of Cantor here illustrates just how ridiculous it is to suppose that abstraction can create mathematical concepts out of
mere signs, or, indeed, out of anything.
[Frege's comments find an echo in the
thoughts of
the late
Fraser Cowley, quoted elsewhere
in this Essay. Frege's criticisms of Cantor are summarised
in Dauben (1979), pp.220-25. A more detailed discussion of these issues can be
found in Dummett (1991). On the mystical provenance of much of Cantor's
decidedly
odd ideas, see Aczel (2000).]
There are
several remarkably similar passages to the above in Marx's earlier work:
"Is it surprising that everything, in the final
abstraction -- for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis -- presents itself as a logical category?
Is it surprising that, if you
let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house,
leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form
that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that if you leave out
of account the limits of this body, you soon have nothing but a space -- that
if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of this space, there is
absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract
thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or
things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance
left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians, who in making these
abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach
themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the
point of penetrating to their core….
Just as by means of abstraction we have transformed
everything into a logical category, so one has only to make an abstraction of
every characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain movement in
its abstract condition -- purely formal movement, the purely logical formula of
movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one
imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute
method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the movement
of things...." [Marx (1978),
pp.99-100.
Bold emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
However, in a passage that has already been
quoted several times -- taken from The Holy Family, and which reveals Marx and Engels at the height of their philosophical powers
when young
-- we find the following acute observations (notice a similar reference to
Vishnu that we met in Frege's remarks, above):
"Now that
Critical
Criticism as the tranquillity of knowledge has 'made' all the mass-type
'antitheses its concern', has mastered all reality in the form of
categories and dissolved all human activity into speculative dialectics, we
shall see it produce the world again out of speculative dialectics. It goes
without saying that if the miracles of the Critically speculative creation of
the world are not to be 'desecrated', they can be presented to the profane mass
only in the form of mysteries. Critical Criticism therefore appears in
the incarnation of Vishnu-Szeligaas a mystery-monger.... ["Szeliga"
was thepseudonym of a young
Hegelian, Franz Zychlinski -- RL] The
mystery of the Critical presentation of the Mystéres de Paris is the
mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction. Once Herr
Szeliga has proclaimed that 'degeneracy within civilisation' and rightlessness
in the state are 'mysteries', i.e., has dissolved them in the category 'mystery',
he lets 'mystery' begin its speculative career. A few words will
suffice to characterise speculative construction in general. Herr
Szeliga's treatment of the Mystéres de Paris will give the application
in detail.
"If from real apples, pears,
strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further
and imagine
that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity
existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple,
etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring
that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the
almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the
apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence,
perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and
then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'. I therefore
declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi,
of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of
course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but
my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and
irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the
pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits
are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'. By
this method one attains no particular wealth of definition. The
mineralogist whose whole science was limited to the statement that all minerals
are really 'the Mineral' would be a mineralogist only in his
imagination. For every mineral the speculative mineralogist says 'the
Mineral', and his science is reduced to repeating this word as many times as
there are real minerals. Having reduced the different
real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -- 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as
hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is
easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to
arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the
abstraction.
"The speculative philosopher
therefore relinquishes the abstraction 'the Fruit', but in a
speculative, mystical fashion -- with the appearance of not
relinquishing it. Thus it is really only in appearance that he rises above his
abstraction. He argues somewhat as follows: If apples, pears, almonds
and strawberries are really nothing but 'the Substance', 'the
Fruit', the question arises: Why does 'the Fruit' manifest itself to me
sometimes as an apple, sometimes as a pear, sometimes as an almond? Why this
semblance of diversity which so obviously contradicts my speculative
conception of Unity, 'the Substance', 'the Fruit'?
This, answers the
speculative philosopher, is because 'the Fruit' is not dead,
undifferentiated, motionless, but a living, self-differentiating, moving
essence. The diversity of the ordinary fruits is significant not only for my
sensuous understanding, but also for 'the Fruit' itself and for
speculative reason. The different ordinary fruits are different manifestations
of the life of the 'one Fruit'; they are crystallisations of 'the
Fruit' itself. Thus in the apple 'the Fruit' gives itself an apple-like
existence, in the pear a pear-like existence. We must therefore no longer say,
as one might from the standpoint of the Substance: a pear is 'the
Fruit', an apple is 'the Fruit', an almond is 'the Fruit', but
rather 'the Fruit' presents itself as a pear, 'the Fruit'
presents itself as an apple, 'the Fruit' presents itself as an almond;
and the differences which distinguish apples, pears and almonds from one another
are the self-differentiations of 'the Fruit' and make the particular
fruits different members of the life-process of 'the Fruit'. Thus 'the
Fruit' is no longer an empty undifferentiated unity; it is oneness as
allness, as 'totality' of fruits, which constitute an 'organically
linked series of members'. In every member of that series 'the
Fruit' gives itself a more developed, more explicit existence, until finally, as
the 'summary' of all fruits, it is at the same time the living
unity which contains all those fruits dissolved in itself just as it
produces them from within itself, just as, for instance, all the limbs of the
body are constantly dissolved in and constantly produced out of the blood.
"We see that if the
Christian religion knows only one Incarnation of God, speculative
philosophy has as many incarnations as there are things, just as it has here in
every fruit an incarnation of the Substance, of the Absolute Fruit. The main
interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real
ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears,
almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we
rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples,
semblances
of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for
they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of
the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind.
Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real
fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which
have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth,
which are incarnations of 'the Fruit', of the Absolute Subject.
When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the
mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the
contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into
sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of
'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the
mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the
Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses,
for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond.
Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not
think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples
and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative
way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by
producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the
unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'. And in regard to every object the
existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation. It goes without saying that
the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by
presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist
in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the
names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to
abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by
which he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of
speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject,
as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975a), pp.54-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
This quotationalmost completely demolishes
the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that both Marx and Engels later seem
to have lost the philosophical clarity of thought they displayed in this passage.
In many respects it
anticipatesFrege's and Wittgenstein's
approach to abstract general ideas, even though it is phrased in a completely different
philosophical idiom.
It is worth underlining the fact that this
passage exposes the sham nature of the 'dialectical circuit', not just Hegel's
use of it.As Marx and Engels
point out:
"Having reduced the different
real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit',
speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow
to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the
diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc….
Indeed, it is impossibleto arrive at the opposite of an
abstraction without
relinquishing the abstraction…. When you return from the
abstraction, the
supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural
fruits, yougive on the contrary the natural fruits a
supernatural significanceand transform them into sheer abstractions.
Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit'
in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical
interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit'
realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for
instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence
the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their
natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which
gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute
Fruit.'" [Ibid., pp.58-60. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site;
paragraphs merged.]
Marx and Engels
were perfectly clear: no
amount of "careful empirical" checking can turn a creature of abstraction back
into its concrete alter ego:
"Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an
abstraction without
relinquishing the abstraction…. When you return from the
abstraction, the
supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural
fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a
supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions." [Ibid.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
It is also
worth pointing out that Marx and Engels anticipated (several aspects of) the approach adopted in these Essays -- i.e., that abstract general ideas are
the result of a syntactically inept re-configuration of ordinary general terms
(covered in detail in
Part One of this
Essay). As they themselves note:
"The
ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states
that there are apples and pears. But when the
philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says
something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the
real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'…. It goes without saying that
the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by
presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist
in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the
names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to
abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity,
by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be
the
self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Ibid., p.60.
Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
This
represents a move away from a purely psychological critique of
abstractionism. Marx and
Engels quite rightly argue that it is a distortion of language that gives
rise to these
'abstractions'. Indeed, they also underlined this approach to ordinary language (and the
distortion it suffers in the hands of Philosophers) in The German Ideology
(also partially quoted earlier):
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult
tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world.
Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers
have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into
an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which
thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of
descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the
problem of descending from language to life.
We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an
independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations
of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive,
systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and
philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence
of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a
consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only
have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is
abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and
to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of
their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases
alone added; paragraphs merged.]
The
highlighted words
above serve as one of theguiding principles of this site. Indeed,
Wittgenstein
himself could almost have written them. It directly connects
abstractionism with linguistic distortion.
In his perceptive analysis of
Metaphysics,
the late
Fraser
Cowley had this to say about 'abstract universals':
"In the traditional doctrine,
according to which one can both refer to universals and predicate them of
particulars and other universals, a general term like 'lion' would signify or
designate a universal. This universal would be predicated of a particular in
such a sentence as 'This is a lion' and referred to in such a sentence as 'The
lion is a creature of the cat family.' The lion being carnivorous and subject, I
believe, to melancholy in captivity, that universal would be carnivorous and
subject to melancholy. And just as one can point to an animal and say 'this
kind' or 'this species', so one should be able to point to one and say 'This
universal comes from East Africa'…. But clearly 'universal' is not admissible in
such contexts, and this shows that the logical syntax is quite different from
that of 'kind,' 'sort,' 'type,' 'species,' and so on…. Many people have tried in
their metaphysical performances consciously or half consciously to avoid such
nonsense by referring, for example, to the universal which is allegedly
predicated in 'This beast is a lion,' by the expression 'lionhood.' Many similar
malformations occur in philosophical writings -– doghood, thinghood,
eventhood, and so on. They are formed by mistaken analogy with manhood,
womanhood, girlhood, widowhood, bachelorhood, and of course not with
neighborhood, hardihood, falsehood, likelihood, or Little Red Riding
Hood." [Cowley (1991), p.92. Italic emphases in the original.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site;
paragraphs merged.]
Linguistic monstrosities like those above --
and worse -- positively litter the pages of books and articles written by Traditional Philosophers in their
Ancient, Medieval and Modern incarnations. For example, in a recent book on 'the
nature of Time' we find the following rather bizarre terminology:
"Any property partly composed
of presentness, apart from the two properties of pastness and futurity is not an
A-property." [Smith (1993), p.6.]
In relation
to which we note
with Frege that the powers of
certain HinduDeities have again been channelled in order to conjure
(out of thin air) the
required temporal 'properties': "pastness", "presentness" and
"futurity." There are countless pages of material like this in
contemporary Metaphysics, and not just in connection with theories concerning 'the nature of Time'.
[Sustained criticism of abstract general
concepts and ideas (as well as Essentialism, itself) can be found in the following: Hallett (1984,
1988, 1991) and Kennick (1972). A more general
refutation of abstractionism is developed in Geach (1957).
A broad attack on the nature of abstract
objects can be accessed in Teichmann (1992). See also
here.]
As noted
several times, 'abstractionism' is intimately connected with another
ancient Aristocratic distinction -- i.e., the one drawn between 'appearance' and
'reality'. The 'process of abstraction' is supposed enable philosophers to delve
beneath 'appearances' in order to access 'abstract' ideas, concepts and 'essences',
which are
somehow more real than 'surface appearances'. So, anyone who buys into this
approach to the acquisition of knowledge is also buying into the theory that 'Reality' is
in the
endIdeal.
If 'abstractions' enjoy a 'level of reality' set above that of the material objects we
meet in
the world around us -- especially if the former somehow lend 'substance' to, or
even constitute, the latter -- then how can this approach be described as
anything other than full-blooded Idealism?
One of the
more important issues in need of resolution is whether or not 'appearances' are
in some way deceptive, or even false. As we will see, DM-theorists equivocate on
this topic, mainly because Hegel did, too. However, as we will also see, what
they actually say implies they do think 'appearances' are in some sense
false or misleading. But, as with most things in this area, crystal clear
conclusions are hard to find -- and even harder to justify.
It is to
such issues and their consequences that I now turn.
A cursory
glance through the first half of this Essay might prompt the conclusion that it ignores the fact that scientistsactually use the process of abstraction in their search for knowledge, and have done so for many centuries. Hence, according to that widely held belief
-- certainly widely held among DM-fans -- they (still) do
so in order to discover, or, perhaps, 'uncover', the underlying, "objective"
or "essential" nature of 'reality'.
[The first
part of that counter-claim was in fact examined earlier,
here and
here;
both halves will be re-examined in more detail in Essay Thirteen Part Two, to be
published in late 2025.]
However, the above objection invites scrutiny of three distinctions that DM-theorists have also inherited from Traditional
Metaphysics; i.e., those between:
(i) "Appearance" and "Reality";
(ii) "Essence" and "Accident"; and,
(iii)
"Necessity" and "Contingency". [This particular topic will be covered in much more
detail in Essay Three Part Five.]
Once again dialecticians have
(unwisely)
bought into these ancient,
Aristocratic distinctions, naively accepting
what was originally a class-motivated dogma that 'appearances' aren't 'fully real', and
that 'abstraction' (or 'thought') is required if philosophers and scientists are to penetrate the outer shell of
'appearances' in order
to gain (genuine, if only partial and 'relative') knowledge of the underlying
'rational order of reality'. [And, yes, I do know that philosophy and science
weren't overtly distinguished until way into the 19th
century, but that doesn't mean no (earlier) distinction was drawn between them.
That issue will also be explored in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Earlier we saw Plato set the stage for this:
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I
say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and
apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in
no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted
in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by
true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in
true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.
Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is
always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a,
pp.1254-55. I have used
the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published 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.)]
The adoption by DM-theorists of the above (general) approach held out the prospect
that they, too, could comprehend scientifically and philosophically,
not just 'appearances', but the 'essence(s)' that supposedly underpinned each
object and process in nature and society.
Ironically,
as we are about to discover, that
is the exactopposite of what finally emerged at the end of this
(futile)
exercise.
"The important thing about a
Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and
their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena,it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical change
--
thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible
to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean
that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no
consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also
possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form
different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the
exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange
of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the
labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the
conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added.]
Other
dialecticians have expressed more-or-less the same ideas:
"But this tendency in capitalism goes even further. The fetishistic character of
economic forms, the
reification of all human relations, the constant expansion and extension of
the division of labour which subjects the process of production to an abstract,
rational analysis, without regard to the human potentialities and abilities of
the immediate producers, all these things transform the phenomena of society and
with them the way in which they are perceived. In this way arise the 'isolated'
facts, 'isolated' complexes of facts, separate, specialist disciplines
(economics, law, etc.) whose very appearance seems to have done much to pave the
way for such scientific methods. It thus appears extraordinarily 'scientific' to
think out the tendencies implicit in the facts themselves and to promote this
activity to the status of science. By contrast, in the teeth of all these isolated and isolating facts and partial
systems, dialectics insists on the concrete unity of the hole. Yet although
it exposes these appearances for the illusions they are -- albeit illusions
necessarily engendered by capitalism in this 'scientific' atmosphere it still
gives the impression of being an arbitrary construction." [Lukacs
(1971), p.6. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged. Link in the original.]
"It is because of this very sequence of the successive grades of
scientific knowledge that science can evolve. Knowledge advances by the road of
contradiction. It is accompanied by errors, by deviations from the direct
attainment of its object. The external appearance of things for a time hides
the true content of objects from the eyes of the seeker. Thus when first we look
at merchant-capitalist society the relations between people are hidden by the
relations between things. But the practical mastery of the material world tears
away the covering of appearance from the objects of investigation, rectifies
error by transforming into actuality the true objective content of knowledge,
and purges science of the illusory. Scientific experience, which is handed over
by one generation to the next, and is each time enriched by some new scientific
discovery, is all the time increasing the possibility of an adequate knowledge
of the objective world. The experience of industrial practice, the
traditions of revolution, scientific discoveries, the store of ideas, are handed
over from one epoch to the next and ever more deeply disclose the infinite
possibilities of human thought. In the unlimited advance of human history, at
every new step of its development there is a fuller, richer, more diverse
revelation of the absolute content of the material world, which content, though
confined within historically limited ideas, is nevertheless absolute truth. The
progressive advance of human thought, the law-governed connection of its
different stages, were guessed in an inspired manner by Hegel, who
criticized both the metaphysical view of knowledge (which admits only the
eternity of truths), and relativism. In his Phenomenology of Spirit he
characterizes the succession of philosophic systems in the following words:
'The more the
ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more
is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given
philosophical system, and only to see the one or the other in any explanation
about such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems
as the progressive evolution of truth; rather it sees only contradiction in that
variety. The bud disappears when the blossom breaks through, and we might say
that the former is refuted by the latter; in the same way when the fruit comes,
the blossom may be explained to be a false form of the plant’s existence, for
the fruit appears as its true nature in place of the blossom. These stages are
not merely differentiated; they supplant one another as being incompatible with
one another. But the ceaseless activity of their own inherent nature makes them
at the same time moments of an organic unity, where they not merely do not
contradict one another, but where one is as necessary as the other; and this
equal necessity of all moments constitutes from the outset the life of the
whole.' [We might note in passing the batty nature of Hegel's analogy
between budding plants and the advance of knowledge -- RL. (Bold emphasis added by RL.)]
"But, for Hegel, the inevitable development which gives rise to
these different ideas and successive systems arises from a merely logical
unfolding, so that they are revealed finally as only moments of the 'absolute
idea.' For dialectical materialists the unity of relative and absolute truth is
based on the limitless development of social-historic practice, in which the
systematic connections of the material world are disclosed." [Shirokov
(1937), pp.123-24. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Shirokov is here quoting
Hegel (1977), p.2, although that published edition differs slightly
from the version posted at the Marxist Internet Archive (to which I have linked),
and the alternative quoted by Shirokov.]
"[Appearance
is a] philosophical term concerned with the relativity of perception and the
difference between immediately given sensual knowledge and conceptual knowledge
of the lawfulness of things. Appearance is
the dialectic of Form and Content, the recognition of the difference between
them. In Hegel's Logic,
Appearance is the second grade of Essence, moving beyond the recognition of the
outer form of a thing to its lawful, inner character or content. Appearance is a
modification of Being which includes Essence
but is transient and unstable, because it is still partial or abstractly
one-sided." [Glossary
of terms at the Marxist Internet Archive. Bold emphasis alone added; link in the
original.]
"Now, if you've never thought critically
about how a capitalist economy works or never had the benefit of reading
Marx, then all of that probably sounds like some pretty crazy sh*t.
About as crazy as telling Joshua of the Hebrew Bible that the Sun is the
stationary centre of the universe (or our solar system) and the Earth
revolves around it. Only a madman would think such a thing. It is
obvious that the Sun rises in East and sets in the West. But, in
reality, the Sun rising and falling around the Earth is merely the form
of appearance that the Sun takes from our immediate experience. If
we took the Sun simply as it appears, never thought critically about its
movements or lack thereof, then we would never be able to apprehend the
nature of our solar system. Critical thought demands abstraction. We
must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of
our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from
the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and
abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to
understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract."
[Quoted from
here. Bold emphases added; spelling modified to conform with UK English.
Paragraphs merged.]
"But, as Marx
said, 'all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the
essence of things directly coincided' and the sun appears to go round the
earth but in reality, as we all now know, it is the other way round." [John
Molyneux, quoted from
here. Accessed 09/02/2018. Bold emphasis added.]
"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun
appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels
around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order
to reveal the reality that is disguised within. That is the reason for Marxist
economic theory. As the Soviet economist
Rubin
explained, 'Marx approaches human society by starting with things, and going
through labour. He starts with things which are visible and moves to phenomena
which have to be revealed by means of scientific research...'.
We must see beyond the appearance of things to the real
relationships." [Rob
Sewell, quoted from
here.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Link and bold emphases added.]
[Several more
remarks like these
-- from the likes of Herbert
Marcuse,
George Novack, Mao and others
-- have been quoted in the next main sub-section.]
But,
according to Rees -- who clearly agrees with Rubin, Shirokov, Lukacs and Hegel (at
least in this
respect) -- a commitment to
scientific knowledge also involves a belief that:
"There is a deeper reality,
but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it
appears." [Rees (1998), p.188. Bold emphases added.]
This is
apparently where the process of abstraction enters
into the
picture (no pun intended!):
"[K]nowledge requires an
active process of abstraction capable of discriminating between essence and
appearance." [Ibid., p.189. Bold added.]
"Critical thought demands abstraction.
We must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of our
minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from the complex,
concrete appearancesand start with the most simple and abstract category that
captures the phenomena we are attempting to understand." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases
added.]
Nevertheless, abstraction can't simply operate
in isolation:
"[A]bstraction can be a
method of seeing reality more clearly…[but] consciousness must issue in
practical activity, which will furnish the proof of whether or not our
conceptions of the world are accurate…. In conscious activity, human
beings overcome the abstractness of thought by integrating it with concrete,
immediate reality in all its complexity -- this is the moment when we see
whether thought really does assume an objective form, whether it really can
create the world, or whether it has mistaken the nature of reality and is
therefore unable to enter the historical chain as an objective force which, in
the case of the class struggle, seizes the masses…. [F]or Lenin practice
overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between
essence and appearance." [Rees (1998), pp.190-91. Bold emphasis added.
Paragraphs merged.]
Unfortunately, it is far
from clear what much of the above actually means (and that isn't just because of
the obscure language it uses). However, for present purposes attention will be confined to
the supposed 'contradiction' between "appearance" and "deeper reality"
(as both of these terms supposedly apply to the natural world).
["Social contradictions" will
also be examined below, but in much more detail Essay Eight Parts
Two and
Three.]
As pointed out earlier, by these
comments (and those quoted
below), DM-theorists have clearly accepted the theory that 'surface
appearances' (in nature and society) aren't 'fully real' (or might even be
illusory), compared with the hidden, 'abstract world' that lies beneath --
which is 'fully real'.
As pointed
out earlier, based on a 'process' that no one -- certainly not DM-theorists --
can explain, or even describe, Dialectical Marxists have accepted a
theory that tries to tell us that there is a hidden world underlying
'appearances', accessible to thought alone, and which is the 'real
world', not the material universe we see around us. And, as if to add insult to
injury, they declare -- alongside card-carrying Idealists and Mystics -- that matter itself
is an 'abstraction'.
By
such commitments, dialecticians reveal that they too are Idealists, whatever other
terms they might prefer to use to describe
themselves.
But why
should that surprise anyone, given the fact that dialecticians have
appropriated a theory concocted by a Christian Mystic (upside down or 'the right
way up')?
Do
'appearances' motivate false beliefs? Dialecticians appear to be rather confused about
this (irony intended).
On the other
hand, maybe
hasty remarks like these are themselves seriously misleading?
In which
case, it might be wise to back-track a little and examine in slightly more
detail what Hegel and several DM-theorists have said about the connection
between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'/'actuality', as well as any
connection it might have with the nature and origin of false beliefs.
[Having said
that, there would hardly be much point in distinguishing 'appearance' from
'essence'/'reality' if they always agreed or coincided, or both delivered the
unvarnished truth. Nor would there have been much point Marx asserting what
he did about science, namely:
"[A]ll science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of
things directly coincided." (Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804.)]
Unfortunately, trying to find a clear, joined-up or even consistent set of ideas in
anything Hegel committed to paper on this topic (and practically everything
else!) would be rather like
looking for a tiny sliver of straw-coloured cotton buried somewhere in a dozen
large haystacks
while wearing sunglasses at dusk on an overcast, late Autumn day after knocking back half a
bottle of Jim Beam!
Nevertheless,
here are some of the things he did say (migraine tablets on stand-by):
"The
view that the objects of
immediate
consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances
(phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common
Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it
has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it
becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to
their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being
is not in themselves but in something else. But then comes the important
step of defining what this something else is. According to Kant, the things that
we know about are
to us appearances only, and we can never know their
essential
nature, which belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain
minds have not unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with
its reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world, created
by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is rather as follows.
The things of which we have direct consciousness are mere phenomena, not for us
only, but in their own nature; and the true and proper case of these things,
finite as they are, is to have their existence founded not in themselves but in
the universal divine Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist
as Kant's; but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical
philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism, however,
though it is far in advance of vulgar
realism, is by no means merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root
of all religion; for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum
total of existence, to be created and governed by God." [Hegel
(1975, §45, p.73. Links in the original. Bold emphases alone added.]
"The
Essence must appear or shine forth. Its shining or reflection in it is the
suspension and translation of it to immediacy, which, while as
reflection-into-self it is matter or subsistence, is also form,
reflection-on-something-else, a subsistence which sets itself aside. To show or
shine is the characteristic by which essence is distinguished from
Being -- by which it is essence; and it is this show which, when it is
developed, shows itself, and is Appearance. Essence accordingly is not
something beyond or behind appearance, but -- just because it is the essence
which exists -- the existence is
Appearance (Forth-shining).
"Existence
stated explicitly in its contradiction is Appearance. But appearance
(forth-showing) is not to be confused with a mere show (shining). Show is the
proximate truth of Being or immediacy. The immediate, instead of being, as we
suppose, something independent, resting on its own self, is a mere show, and as
such it is packed or summed up under the simplicity of the immanent essence. The
essence is, in the first place, the sum total of the showing itself, shining in
itself (inwardly); but, far from abiding in this inwardness, it comes as a
ground forward into existence; and this existence being grounded not in itself,
but on something else, is just appearance. In our imagination we ordinarily
combine with the term appearance or
phenomenon the conception of an indefinite congeries of things existing, the
being of which is purely
relative, and which consequently do not rest on a foundation of their own,
but are esteemed only as passing stages. But in this conception it is no less
implied that essence does not linger behind or beyond appearance. Rather
it is, we may say, the infinite kindness which lets its own show freely issue
into
immediacy, and graciously allows it the joy of existence. The appearance
which is thus created does not stand on its own feet, and has its being not in
itself but in something else. God who is the essence, when he lends existence to
the passing stages of his own show in himself, may be described as the goodness
that creates the world: but he is also the power above it, and the
righteousness, which manifests the merely phenomenal character of the content of
this existing world, whenever it tries to exist in independence." [Ibid.,
§131, pp.186-87. Links in the original; bold emphases added.]
Once
more, this shows
Hegel held these peculiar ideas for theological reasons. Even so, what he
says here (e.g.,"essence does not linger behind or beyond
appearance") appears to contradict what we read
below (no pun intended).I'll
return to consider that possible interpretation presently.
"Essence
that issues from being seems to confront it as an opposite; this immediate
being is, in the first instance, the unessential.
But secondly, it is more than merely unessential being, it is essenceless being,
it is illusory being[Illusory Being,
Schein = Appearance -- RL.] Thirdly, this illusory being is not something
external to or other than essence; on the contrary, it is essence's own illusory
being. The showing of this illusory being within essence itself is
reflection." [Hegel
(1999), §818,
p.394. Bold emphases alone added.]
This clearly
implies that the opposite of 'essence' is 'illusory being' (Schein =
appearance or illusion), and that can only mean that that opposite is in 'some sense false' or
misleading. It is hard to see how anything that is "illusory" could be true,
or fail to motivate a false
belief --, or, at the very least, fail to be misleading. Indeed,
Hegel even says as much:
"The
view that the objects of
immediate
consciousness, which constitute the body of experience, are mere appearances
(phenomena) was another important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common
Sense, that mixture of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it
has knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when it
becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the
interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to them and to
their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The things immediately
known are mere appearances -- in other words, the ground of their being
is not in themselves but in something else." [Ibid., §45, p.73.
Bold emphasis added.]
Whatever is the
"very opposite" of "the truth" can hardly be anything other than false
or misleading.
[But see
below, where that remark has been qualified.]
Michael
Inwood adds the following thoughts concerning Hegel's opinions in this area:
"Essence
shows or appears (scheint), but itself
remains hidden behind a veil of Schein.... This suggests the idea of
a world that is the reverse of the world of appearances, in which everything
that has, in our world, a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the
opposite quality." [Inwood (1992), pp.39-40.
Bold emphases alone added.]
Once more,
it isn't easy to see how factors like this would fail to motivate false beliefs.
However,
Hegel's theory is rather more complex than the above brief remarks might
suggest (and why that earlier
remark about trying to find a thin sliver of cotton thread hidden in several
haystacks was apposite). It isn't as if 'essence' is 'true' and 'appearance' is 'false', to put
it at its crudest. The relation between these two is much more involved (if that,
too,
is even the correct word to use here!). The background is again supplied for us by Inwood:
"Kant held
that objects with which we are acquainted are appearances. So too does Hegel, or
at least he regards some of them as appearances. But he does not mean the same
by 'appearance' as Kant does. Kant distinguishes carefully between the words
'appearance' (Erscheinung) and 'illusion' (Schein). All phenomenal
objects are appearances, in the sense that they are merely the way in which
reality as it is in itself appears to us. But we can, nevertheless, distinguish
between the illusory and the real within our experience, within the realm of
appearances:
'When I say
that the intuition of outer objects and
the self-intuition of the mind alike represent the objects and the mind, in
space and time, as they affect our sense, that is, as they appear. I do not mean
to say that these objects are a mere illusion. For in an appearance the
objects, nay even the properties that we ascribe to them, are always regarded as
something actually given. Since, however, in the relation of the given object to
the subject, such properties depend on the mode of intuition of the subject,
this object as appearance is to be distinguished from itself as object in
itself.' [Inwood is here quoting
Kant (1998), B69, p.190, although he has employed a different
translation. Link added.]
"Hegel, too,
distinguishes between Schein and Erscheinung, but not in the same
way that Kant does. The word Schein, for example, does not mean only
'illusion', but has connotations, over and above those which Kant ascribed to
it, in virtue of its association with the verb scheinen, 'to shine'.
Moreover, unlike Kant, Hegel calls physical entities Schein at least as
often as he characterises them as Erscheinungen, though this is due in
part to his liking for the pun on Sein ['to be' -- RL]. The important
point, however, is that when Hegel claims that objects are appearances he does
not mean what Kant meant:
'The
objects of which we are immediately aware are mere appearances, i.e.,... they
have the ground of their being not in themselves but in something else. But then
the further question is how this something else is determined. According to the
Kantian philosophy the things of which we are aware are only appearances for
us, and their in-itself (Ansich) remains for us an
inaccessible beyond.... The true situation is in fact this, that the things of
which we are immediately aware are mere appearances not only for us but in
themselves (an sich) and that the very essence (Bestimmung) of
things which are thereby finite is to have the ground of their being not in
themselves but in the universal divine idea. This conception of things is then
also to be denoted as idealism, but, in contrast to that subjective idealism of
the critical philosophy, as absolute idealism. This absolute idealism,
although it goes beyond ordinary, realistic consciousness, is yet in substance
so little to be regarded as the property of philosophy that it rather forms the
basis of all religious consciousness, in so far as this too regards the sum of
everything that exists (da ist), in general the world we see, as created
and governed by God.' [Hegel
(1975), §45, p.73. (This is a different translation of a
passage
quoted earlier.)]
"We might
infer from this passage that everything except the logical idea itself is an
appearance." [Inwood (2002), pp.408-09.
Bold emphases alone added.]
Inwood then
points out that even this might be to misinterpret Hegel(!), who sometimes
distinguishes objects from appearances, although it isn't easy to
see how he can do so consistently (no irony intended). Anyone interested can read
for themselves Inwood's
valiant attempt (over the next few pages of his book) to make some sort of
coherent sense out of what Hegel was trying to say -- Inwood
(2002), pp.409-16. In the end he is forced to conclude that for Hegel everything
in the phenomenal world is an appearance, but grounded in "the logical idea", and
hence in 'God'. [Ibid., p.413.]
In that
case, comments like this are highly misleading:
"Hegel
rejects the idea that reality is something which underlies appearance. He
says that reality is manifest in appearance. Characteristics that we
normally think only apply to our representations of reality actually apply to
reality itself." [Sorensen (2003), p.304. Italics in the original.]
If 'reality'
were indeed structured as Sorensen thinks Hegel imagined they were, why would we need
philosophers to bring us the good news and open our eyes? It is precisely
because a philosopher like Hegel thought that such 'gems of wisdom' were
hidden from those who only rely on appearances -- and who are thereby
deceived into thinking that this is all there is -- that he argued the way he did. [Not
that it is quite as easy as Sorensen seems to think determining what, if
anything, Hegel was actually banging on about!] Hence, even for Sorensen's version of
Hegel, 'reality' lies behind 'appearances', although it has to 'shine' through
(whatever that means) for thinkers like him, but not the rest of us,
to see. No one before Hegel noticed all this 'shining', so for everyone else who
thinks like this, appearances act more like shutters than they do
windows.
Figure Four: Notice How The World
Just 'Shines'
Through These Shutters?
Anyway, as we are
about to see, Dialectical Marxists greatly 'simplified' this picture (in
fact they hacked it to pieces in order to try to make some sort of sense of
the tangled mess Hegel dumped on them!), which means it is more than a moot point
whether they have been faithful to the distinction between 'appearance' and
'essence'/'reality' as Hegel seemed to conceived it. [Irony and mild
sarcasm intended.]
Admittedly, it could be argued that 'Marxist dialectics' must stand or fall on
its own merits. Quite so, but since Marxists use Hegel as some sort
of philosophical Zimmer Frame, it isn't easy to see how 'Marxist
dialectics' can stand on its own two
(appearances of) feet.
Figure Five: Is This The Reliable Support Hegel
Appears
Despite the
fact that dialecticians assert that 'appearance' and 'reality' (or, 'essence'
and 'appearance', etc.) "contradict" each other, they seldom tell us with any
clarity what that means, nor do they illustrate this alleged clash with a
convincing array
examples drawn from the natural
world. [Those that supposedly arise in society will be
examined
presently.] Nevertheless, even if DM-theorists were to provide their
readers with a full and complete explanation -- and, indeed, one blessed with uncharacteristic clarity -- it would still be
difficult to see what the 'contradiction' here (between 'appearance' and
'reality') might actually be.26a
Admittedly, in
addition to the passages quoted in an
earlier sub-section
and below, Marxist dialecticians have made some attempt to explain what they mean,
albeit in manner not yet blessed with the sort of clarity intimated in the
previous paragraph. Here,
for example, is Herbert Marcuse expressing the overall idea (as best he can):
"Under the rule of formal
logic, the notion of theconflict between essence and appearanceis expendable
if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised; the principle of
identity is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are
the fault of incorrect thinking); final causes are removed from the logical
order.... Existing as the living
contradiction between essence and appearance, the objects of thought are of that
'inner negativity' which is the specific quality of their concept. The
dialectical definition defines the movement of things from that which they are
not to that which they are. The development of contradictory elements, which
determines the structure of its object, also determines the structure of
dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic is neither the abstract,
general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general form of thought -- nor
the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of
formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the
concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience
comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be,it is a
limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed
itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the
facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe,
in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.
This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of
experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends." [Marcuse
(1968), pp.114-17. Bold emphases alone
added; paragraphs merged.]
"The doctrine of Essence
seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts'and from the
scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of
knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical
evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge
deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has
an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show
themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from
one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to
quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that
permanent is in the first instance their Essence.' The knowledge that appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth.
The mark of dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential
from the apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse
(1973),
pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting
Hegel (1975), p.163,
§112. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions employed at this site. Minor typo corrected.]
[We
will see in Essay Eight Part Threehow wide of the mark the opening sentence of the first of the above two passages actually is (i.e., concerning the lack of
any connection between 'the principle of identity' and 'the principle of
contradiction'). In addition, Marcuse's risible and ill-informed attempt to criticise Wittgenstein,
Analytic Philosophyand the ordinary language of working people (in One Dimensional Man) has already been taken
apart in
Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
[FL = Formal Logic; HCD
= High Church Dialectician;
LCD
= Low Church Dialectician (follow the links for an explanation of those
terms).]
The above
passages, of course, say more-or-less the same as John Rees
(quoted earlier), but with just enough obscure jargon thrown in
to
bamboozle the 'uninitiated' -- and impress 'intellectuals'.
Even so, the reader will no doubt have noticed
that an HCD of Marcuse's undoubted stature quotes not one single FL-text, or
one single logician, in support of the following rather bold allegation:
"Under the rule of formal
logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable
if not meaningless...". [Ibid.]
Marcuse must know that there are/were
plenty of ancient
and modern logicians and philosophers who didin fact adopt this
way of talking about the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance', even
though FL itself doesn't seem to enter into any of this directly (or no more than
rocket science itself depends on cookery). On the other hand, if it does, we still await proof that "Under the rule of formal logic, the notion of
the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable if not meaningless."
Marcuse certainly offered his readers none.
However, the
next comment reveals
a
depth of confusion one normally associates with thelogically-challengedLCD-wing of Dialectical Muddle:
"...the principle of identity
is separated from the principle of contradiction (contradictions are the fault
of incorrect thinking)...". [Ibid.]
So, it seems
that HCD-honchos
like Marcuse are
just as clueless about FL as their lowly LCD-brethren appear to be. Indeed, as we have seen (here,
for example), Hegel committed several of his own egregious logical blunders,
upon which insecure foundation Marcuse unwisely based many of his own ideas.
This is quite apart from the
(easily confirmed) fact
that contradictions aren't the result of "incorrect thinking". As
Marcuse should have known, had he bothered to stay awake in any logic classes,
or lectures,
he attended as a student (if he was actually present in any!), they can be, and often are, the
result of one or more of the following:
(a) A genuine disagreement between two individuals;
[(b) and (e) are, of course, variants of one another.]
In which case, many contradictions
can be, and are, the result of an
application of 'correct' thinking. One imagines Marcuse has simply confused falsehood
with invalidity -- a 'rooky mistake', if ever there was one.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that
Marcuse admits the following:
"To the extent to which this
experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it
is a limited and even false experience." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
It seems he,
too, holds the view that appearances can be, and
(often?) are, false.
"What distinguishes essence
or essential reality from mere appearance? A thing is truly real if it is
necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence, and only so long
as it proves itself to be necessary. Hegel, being the most consistent idealist,
sought the source of this necessity in the movement of the universal mind, in
the Absolute Idea. Materialists, on the other hand, locate the roots of
necessity in the objective world, in the material conditions and conflicting
forces which create, sustain and destroy all things. But, from the purely
logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy agree in connecting reality with
necessity.
"Something acquires reality
because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are
objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance
with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development.
It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the
given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its
reality and dissolves into mere appearance. Let us consider a few
illustrations of this process, this contradiction between essence and
appearance, resulting from the different forms assumed by matter in its motion.
In the production of the plant, seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally
necessary phases or forms of its existence. Taken separately, each by itself,
they are all equally real, equally necessary, equally rational phases of the
plant's development. [Here we see Novack isn't ashamed to cite
approvingly
Hegel's batty idea
about blossoms, which we met earlier -- RL.]
"Yet each in turn becomes
supplanted by the other and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real.
Each phase of the plant's manifestation appears as a reality and then is
transformed in the course of development into an unreality or an appearance.
This movement, triadic in this particular case, from unreality into reality and
then back again to unreality, constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind
all appearance. Appearance cannot be understood without an understanding of this
process. It is this that determines whether any appearance in nature, society or
in the mind is rational or non-rational." [Novack
(1971), pp.86-87. Bold emphases added.
Several paragraphs merged.]
It isn't my
immediate concern to criticise this (almost classic) example of Mystical
Natürphilosophie
(however, it will be in a later Essay), but merely to note:
(a) The
fanciful way that the term "contradiction" has been employed (without
justification) by Novack; and,
(b) His idiosyncratic use of the word "appearance".
Exactly why
a seed turning into a plant makes the seed an "appearance" Novack failed to say
(except he seems happy to receive Hegel's word on such matters as Gospel Truth),
but why any of this is a 'contradiction' he left no less mysterious. Of course,
Novack's 'appearance' idea might be
a faint echo of a
theory Hegel aired that anything that is transient or
which lacks permanence' [Inwood (2002), pp.408-13] -- and hence anything that
does not"have
the ground of [its] being...in [itself] but in something else"-- is an
'appearance'. In
that sense, a plant (such as a tree) makes its first appearance as a seed, then
as a seedling, next as a sapling and finally as a mature tree. But how does Novack
know that something is "real" only if its "appearance" coincides with its
"essence" (always assuming that there are such things as 'essences', to begin
with)? That is, how does he know this over and above merely accepting Hegel's diktat
to that effect?
Hegel's decidedly odd theory is in turn connected with the
undeniable fact that some things 'appear'
for a short time and then disappear or fade away, like someone who:
(iii) Testifies
in court (as in "NM is appearing for the defence");
(iv) Is
famous only for
fifteen minutes; or, maybe even when we,
(v) Describes how another looks -- as in
"Her appearance gave her away; she was clearly amused", or "His appearance
changes from day-to-day; he is a master of disguise."
Except for
(v), what any of the above have to do with what appears to be the case
when we observe the rise and fall of the Sun, the behaviour of sticks in water,
or the change in size of our friends as the walk away from us is far from clear.
In which case, Hegel appears to have conflated two different senses of "appear"
(irony intended): what something looks like and transience.
In the second of the above senses (i.e., transience) we might, at a stretch, say that a plant or a flower is "an appearance".
At a stretch,
that is certainly a valid (if trivial) point, but it is still unclear what it has to do with
'essence' and 'appearance'. Originally, the point here was, of course, to contrast the
transient existence of certain phenomenal objects and processes
with those that are perhaps more permanent. For example, the play
mentioned above might only be on Broadway for a season, while Broadway will still be
there after the play is well gone. So, it looks like (no pun intended) 'essence' is somehow connected with permanence,
'appearance' (in the sense that Hegel and Novack seem to intend) with transience. And yet, do
any of these 'more permanent
features of the world' have the 'ground of
their being' within themselves (to paraphrase Hegel), or, from Hegels'
perspective, do they not also 'rely on
God'? If the latter is the case, then even 'essences' are also 'appearances',
since even for Hegel, they too depend on 'God' -- and for DM-theorists none are
permanent, either, all are subject to the HF. Will Broadway still be
there in five billion years time? Will plants and seeds? I think there is room to suppose
they might not. So, it seems they too are 'appearances', if we were to accept Hegel's
typology, his weird use of language and the HF.
Furthermore,
what connection is there between 'appearances' in the first of the two above
senses? That is in terms of what something might look like and which
might end up deceiving us -- again, like the
way that sticks appear to bend when partially immersed in water, the way the
Sun appears to rise in the East, fall in the West, or how objects seem to change
in size as they recede from us or advance toward us. What connection is there
with this sense of "appearance" and the sort of
'appearances' associated with a
lack of permanence? Presumably sticks will still look bent when partially
immersed in water in a hundred million years' time, just as the apparent motion of the
Sun will remain the same as long as the Sun, the Earth and human beings still exist.
If so, it seems these 'appearances' (connected with what something
looks like) must
also be 'essences' since they appear to bepermanent features of
the natural world.
In such
terms, examples (i)-(iv) don't seem to have anything to do with deception
(actual or potential). Or is it to be imagined that when some appears in a play
they really aren't appearing in that play and are deceiving us? Or that,
if someone appears for the defence they really appearing for the prosecution? In
addition, (ii) and (iv) also don't seem to have anything to do with deception,
with how things just appear to be but really aren't.
This means, of course, that thedistinction itself
(at least in so far as Hegel conceived it) has
now either become absurd or was based on linguistic confusion.
[Be this as it may, how
any of the above considerations are connected with 'contradiction' is still far from clear.
I say much more about this below.]
But, what
about (v) (here repeated)?
(v) [Like someone who] Describes how another looks -- as in
"Her appearance gave her away; she was clearly amused", or "His appearance
changes from day-to-day; he is a master of disguise."
In such
cases, appearances are often not only under volitional/intentional
control, they can sometimes deceive (whether or not that is itself intentional).
In addition, such appearances can change from day-to-day and in different
lighting conditions -- or even as a result of other factors (such as the age,
health, mood and physical condition of the individual concerned). So, at first
sight (no pun intended!), this set of examples seems to be the closest to those
intended by Hegel and DM-theorists (in this respect), since it combines the two
alternatives mentioned above -- i.e., the way certain things look and
their transience. But, since this particular phenomenon is clearly connected
with human behaviour (whether the latter is voluntary, involuntary,
intentional or unintentional), they can hardly be connected with what Novack
thought he meant when he spoke about plants and seeds.
Nevertheless, Option (v) does seem to offer a lifeline (of sorts) to
DM-fans. But, as we have seen several times (in other Essays -- for example,
Eight Part Two), a lifeline
like this soon turns into a noose (or something equally lethal). That is because
'appearances' like these (in relation to what human beings can or can't do
and/or what takes place in the natural world) are in no way contradictory (why
that is so will be explained in detail
presently), nor do they have anything to do with any underlying 'essences'.
So, whatever else they are, they can't be 'dialectical'.
[I return to
consider such phenomena later --
here,
here and
here.]
Having said
that, the sort of 'appearances' alluded to above aren't the same as, nor are
they even analogous to, those of interest to DM-fans. The latter relate to a
distinction drawn between how something appears to be and how it really is, its
'essence', as it is 'in-itself'. So, although sticks look like they bend when
partially immersed in water, and objects seem to grow smaller when they recede
from us, neither is actually the case. Sticks don't really bend in such
circumstances and objects don't shrink as they move away from observers. Even
with respect to capitalism, that economic and social system might look fair to
some, but no Marxist believes it really is fair. Consider another popular
example: what the Sun appears to do each morning; this phenomenon is a little
more complex and will be dealt with in much
greater detail below. But
even here, while it looks like the Sun rises in the East, it would be
false to say that that represents what really happens. As we will see,
what we conclude in such circumstances depends on the inertial frame of
reference chosen in order to depict this phenomenon. Of course, DM-fans
interpret such events in more black-and-white terms -- despite their
anathematising of such rigid dichotomies elsewhere, as 'metaphysical'.
That is, they hold that there is an absolute truth here, even if we never
actually attain it, and that, in such instances, "the thing-in-itself" or
"the-event-in-itself" exists independent of our knowledge of it/them. Not only
that, they also contrast the latter with how things appear to be (as we have
seen), and how that differs from how they 'really are'.
But there is
no such contrast to be had with Type-(v) examples. With respect to a disguise,
for instance, there is no such thing as 'how someone really looks without any
disguise'. There is no 'thing-in-itself' here. How someone looks from a certain
angle, in certain lighting conditions, as their mood changes, or as they age
(etc., etc.) is all there is. Appearances vary all the time in this and
other ways. There is no 'how-someone-looks-in-itself' independent of
lighting conditions, the age of the individual involved, their mood, their state
of health, etc., etc. As far as someone being amused is concerned, that is far
too vague a term for it to be contrasted with yet another 'thing-in-itself'.
What would it even mean to suppose there is such a thing as
'being-amused-in-itself'? In which case, there is no analogous contrast to be
drawn here between how an individual looks and what he or she really is. Hence,
there is no such thing as how someone 'really looks-in-themselves' -- if by that
we mean 'how things look below the surface' or how they 'look essentially'.
Below the surface, no one looks at all appealing, especially when their skin
has been removed! And as soon as something looks a certain way, it ceases to
be an 'essence'. The latter are creatures of thought and rationality not
direct perception. That is why Idealists (and, as we have seen,
many DM-theorists)
never tire of telling us that 'abstractions' can't be seen, felt, heard, or
tasted.
Of course,
if we now take into account
how DM-theorists
depict 'objectivity' (i.e., as that which exists independent of the 'human
mind', or independent of 'human consciousness'), how something looks
can't be independent of human awareness, and so can't be 'objective' (in
DM-terms). Looks and seemings don't exist independent of someone who experiences
or perceives them, and so looks and seemings can't be part of 'objective
reality', if we were to believe what DM-theorists have to say. So, in
this sense, in a DM-universe, there can be no 'objective' contrast
between how things look and how they really are! There might be one such for
Hegel (I will pass no comment about that possibility, in this Essay), but there
can't be for Dialectical Marxists who agree with Lenin about 'objectivity'. Just
as soon as reference is made to how something looks or seems to be, it is no
longer independent of 'the human mind', and so, according to Lenin (and
other DM-theorists), it can't be 'objective'. [On this, may I refer readers to
the comments at the end of the previous paragraph.]
[Follow the
above link for passages where Lenin defined 'objectivity'. I have covered
questions like this in much greater detail in Essay Thirteen
Part
One -- and I have also discussed the 'below the surface' metaphor more
extensively in Essay Twelve
Part One.
Readers are directed to those two Essays for more on both. However, no one
should assume from the above remarks that I accept terms like
"things-in-themselves" make any sense when used in indicative sentences. But
DM-theorists think they do, which is why I have used this term against them.
Nevertheless, once again, I have entered into this specific topic in more detail
in Note 6a.]
Finally on
this, consider another example,
The Doppler Effect,
which most people who live in one of the 'advanced economies' (and elsewhere)
will experience many times a year, and which is used by Astrophysicists in their
study of the Universe in connection with the so-called "Red
Shift", which occurs in relation to light reaching Earth from distance stars
and galaxies:
"The Doppler effect is the perceived change in frequency of sound
emitted by a source moving relative to the observer: as a plane flies overhead,
the note of the engine becomes noticeably lower, as does the siren noise from a
fast-moving emergency vehicle as it passes. The effect was first noted by
Christian Doppler in 1842. The effect is widely used to measure velocities,
usually by reflection of a transmitted wave from the moving object, ultrasound
for blood in arteries, radar for speeding cars and thunderstorms. The velocities
of distant galaxies are measured using the Doppler effect (the red shift)."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 19/10/2024.]
Is this an
'objective' feature of the universe or is it merely 'subjective'? But the
wavelength of light and sound is, presumably, what it is independent of
any observers, so, the perceived change in the frequency of light and sound
waves, for instance, is, in some sense, misleading. But instruments
register this change 'objectively' when they actually measure such changes (and
what they record is used to help explain how the Universe began, for example).
So, this phenomenon appears to be a genuine feature of the world around us
and it seems to be independent of 'human consciousness' -- but which is both
misleading and 'objective'. It is genuine since this change really exists
(as noted above, instruments record these changes independently of whether or
not humans are capable of observing/detecting them), but it tells us something
about the world that is false, if interpreted one way, true if viewed in
another.
Of course,
the above is a highly simplified description of such phenomena, which is clearly
related to relative velocities and that must involve issues connected with
Relativity Theory. But all that that does is complicate the issue, it doesn't
materially alter the points just made. The Doppler Effect is both 'real' and
an 'appearance', and so is Red Shift!
Be this as
it may, good luck trying to fit any of this into a DM-view of 'reality', or
make it consistent with Hegel's odd (and barely comprehensible) interpretation
of the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'. Here we seem to have a
'subjective' phenomenon that is also 'objective' -- as well as an 'appearance'
that also appears to be 'real'! [Irony intended.]
[Readers
should once again note that I don't accept the validity of the philosophical
use of words like "objective" and "subjective" -- for reasons set out in Essay
Thirteen Part One.
These terms are only being used here since DM-fans dote on them.]
There are
other rather strange phenomena (like the above) that also seem difficult to
squeeze into the a priori 'straightjacket' DM-theorists have imposed on
the world, which I will simply mention but not comment upon:
time dilation and
length contraction.
Are these 'objective' and 'subjective', too? Are they 'appearances' or are they
'real'?
Despite this, it might now prove opportune to contrast what Novack says above with his earlier,
unequivocal warning:
"A consistent materialism
cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason,
intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source.
Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon
evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in
practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
And yet much of what Novack has to say
about "appearance" and "reality" (and, indeed, about 'dialectical logic' in
general) is based on "abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some
other subjective or purely theoretical source". In fact, the
same might be said about every other DM-fan quoted at this site
(when they opine on such topics).
A different DM-theorist, Hyman Cohen, took great exception to 'crude' interpretations of the
'contradiction' between 'essence' and 'appearance' (when responding to an article
written by one, Mark Mussachia), in the following terms:
"Yet,
if one consults a textbook of Marxist philosophy (Fundamentals of
Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow [this appears to
be Konstantinov (1974), pp.188-92 (no pun intended!) -- RL]), it is plain to see
that essence and appearance are depicted as complex categories, correlated
categories whose oppositeness does not constitute a total negation, one of the
other, but a unity; they are characterised through one another." [Cohen (1980),
p.120. Italic emphases in the original.]
The
following
is what we find in the above textbook (attentive readers will no doubt notice the
dogmatic nature of what they are about to read (it is imposed on the facts), and
hence should ask themselves whether or not
what it says has been
"validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other
subjective or purely theoretical source",
and then perhaps note the dearth of
evidence offered in support, while also noting the fact that this is an
authoritative DM-textbook, at least as far as Marxist-Leninists are
concerned, not a fringe work):
"Essence and appearance are correlated categories. They are characterised
thorough one another. Whereas essence is something general, appearance is
individual, expressing only an element of essence; whereas essence is something
profound and intrinsic, appearance is external, yet richer and more colourful;
whereas essence is something stable and necessary, appearance is more transient,
changeable and accidental. The
difference between the essential and the unessential is not absolute but
relative. For instance, at one time it was considered that the essential
property of the chemical element was its atomic weigh. Later this essential
property turned out to be the charge of the atomic nucleus. The property of
atomic weight did not cease to be essential, however. It is still essential in
the first approximation, essential on a less profound level (sic!), and is further
explained on the basis of the charge of the atomic nucleus.
"Essence is expressed in its many outward manifestations. At the same time
essence may not only express itself in these manifestations. When we are in the
process of gaining sensory knowledge of a thing, phenomena sometimes seem to us
to be not what they are in reality. This seemingness is not generated by
our consciousness. It arises through our being influenced by real relationships
in the objective conditions of observation. Those who thought the Sun rotated
around the Earth took the seeming appearance of things for the real thing.
Under
capitalism the wages of the worker seem to be payment for all his work, but in
reality only part of his work is paid, while the rest is appropriated by the
capitalists free of charge in the form of surplus value, which constitutes the
source of their profit.
"Thus
to obtain a correct understanding of an event, to get to the bottom of it, we
must critically test the evidence of immediate observation, and make a clear
distinction between the seeming and the real, the superficial and the essential.
Knowledge of the essence of things is the fundamental task of science. Marx
wrote that if essence and appearance directly coincided, all science would be
superfluous. The history of science shows that knowledge of essence is
impossible without considering and analysing the various forms in which it is
manifest. At the same time these various forms cannot be correctly understood
without penetrating to their 'foundation', their essence." [Konstantinov (1974),
pp.191-92. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site; several paragraphs merged.]
Well, this is all rather vague and not entirely consistent (something one has
come to expect of self-respecting DM-theorists!). One minute we are told that 'essence'
is "profound" and "intrinsic", the next that it might not be
such,
but "relative" and hence not the least bit "intrinsic". At
this point, a reader might well ask, somewhat mischievously: "Is there perhaps a contradiction
between what appears to be the definition of 'essence' and what it
'really'
is?" [I am, of course, (temporarily) using "contradiction" here in the
loose and profligate way DM-fans do.] One fears the answer to that query might very well be "Yes, there is!", since the definition of "essence"
seems to contradict
its own 'essence'! And, far from being told (unequivocally) that 'essence contradicts
appearance', we find these rather sheepish words in its place:
"When
we are in the process of gaining sensory knowledge of a thing, phenomena
sometimesseem to us to be not what they are in reality." [Ibid.
Bold emphasis added.]
Only
"sometimes"? Only "seem"? How often is this "sometimes"? And how
definitive is this
"seem"? Does the Sun orbit the Earth, or not?Do sticks
really bend in water, or not? Do objects shrink as they recede from us, or not? Is the Earth
really flat, or not? Do objects appear to shrink in size as they recede from us,
or not? Are workers paid for all
the hours they work, all the value they create, or not? Or do these phenomena
only intermittently behave in the way they seem? Or, at other times do we see
them as they 'really' are (whatever that means)? On Monday do sticks appear to
bend in water but on Tuesday they don't? Do objects that recede from us shrink
on Wednesdays but remain the same size the rest of the week while they do that?
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle.]
Nevertheless, in connection with this the reader would be well advised
to ignore
DM-inspired criticisms of the "either-or" of 'commonsense' (supposedly
enshrined in the LEM), since it
looks like the above textbook has just employed it! That is because any
(clear and unambiguous)
answer to the following question, "Does the Sun orbit the Earth or does the
Earth orbit the Sun?" must respond with one or other of these options --,
either:
(a)The Sun orbits the Earth;
or,
(b) The Sun
doesn't orbit the Earth.
But not both!
The above
DM-textbook clearly chose alternative (b) (and then (c), below), not both of them. So, the innocent-looking "seem"
its author thought to use turns out to be much stronger than it appears (irony intended),
since it is clear this 'seeming' (i.e., the Sun orbiting the Earth) isn't a "real thing",
after all.
Hence, the choice made by the author of this DM-textbook constitutes a clear,
if implicit, use of the LEM.
"Those who thought the Sun rotated
around the Earth took the seeming appearance of things for the real thing."
[Ibid.]
(c) So, the Earth orbits the Sun.
(End of story.)
The 'either-or of common sense' wins
-- yet again.
In which
case, it is far from clear why Cohen thought it a good idea to reference the above textbook since we are now
no clearer than we were before about what these two (i.e., Cohen and Konstantinov) mean. Quite the
reverse in fact. What, for example, does Cohen mean by the following?
"[E]ssence and appearance are depicted as complex categories, correlated
categories whose oppositeness does not constitute a total negation, one of the
other, but a unity; they are characterised through one another." [Cohen,
loc cit.]
But, how is the correct relation (whateverit is) between the Sun and the
Earth "characterised" by the appearance that the Sun orbits the
Earth,
when we are now told that the reverse is the case? As we have just seen, there
is an unambiguous (if implicit) "either-or" at work here, which
implies that the former and the latter
aren't in the end "characterised through one another". They rule each
other out. If (a) is the case, (c) isn't, and vice versa.
(a)The Sun orbits the Earth;
or,
(c) The
Earth orbits the Sun.
Furthermore,
the following can't (surely) be true:
"The difference between the essential and the unessential is not absolute but
relative. For instance, at one time it was considered that the essential
property of the chemical element was its atomic weigh. Later this essential
property turned out to be the charge of the atomic nucleus. The property of
atomic weight did not cease to be essential, however. It is still essential in
the first approximation, essential on a less profound level, and is further
explained on the basis of the charge of the atomic nucleus." [Konstantinov,
loc cit.]
If that were the case, it would seem 'essence'
actually depends on the choices we make, not the way things
are independently of us. In that case, it is worth asking "Is 'essence' a
'social construct' or a 'real phenomenon'?
Cohen's comment is, therefore, far too brief, confused and enigmatic to be of
much use -- while the longer passage from Konstantinov is, as we have also seen, far too vague
and inconsistent to be of any use at all.
The same
confusion is apparent in the comments advanced by a fan of
Systematic Dialectics, with
whom I debated these and related issues recently:
"Now,
if you've never thought critically
about how a capitalist economy works or never had the benefit of reading
Marx, then all of that probably sounds like some pretty crazy sh*t.
About as crazy as telling Joshua of the Hebrew Bible that the Sun is the
stationary centre of the universe (or our solar system) and the Earth
revolves around it. Only a madman would think such a thing. It is
obvious that the Sun rises in East and sets in the West. But, in
reality, the Sun rising and falling around the Earth is merely the form
of appearance that the Sun takes from our immediate experience. If
we took the Sun simply as it appears, never thought critically about its
movements or lack thereof, then we would never be able to apprehend the
nature of our solar system. Critical thought demands abstraction. We
must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of
our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from
the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and
abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to
understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract."
[Quoted from
here.
Bold emphasis added; spelling modified to
agree with UK English. Paragraphs merged.]
"'[E]ssence' isn't 'in a secret
world lying behind "appearances"'. It has no reality except in its appearance.
However, taking the appearances to be exhaustive of reality is a mistake.... [E]ssence, necessarily expresses itself through the appearances."
[Quoted from
here and
here; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.
Bold emphases added.]
First, that isn't how scientific knowledge of the
Solar System developed and went through a profound series of changes in the 16th
and 17th
centuries. As we will see in Essay Thirteen Part Two,
Copernicus's ideas, for example, were motivated by two key factors: his
Hermeticism and his search for mathematical simplicity:
"At
rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For in this most
beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than
that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun
is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its
mind by others, and its ruler by still others. [Hermes] the Thrice Greatest
[Hermes
Trismegistus -- RL] labels it a visible god, and
Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as
though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving
around it. Moreover, the earth is not deprived of the moon's attendance. On the
contrary, as Aristotle says in a work on animals, the moon has the closest
kinship with the earth. Meanwhile the earth has intercourse with the sun, and is
impregnated for its yearly parturition." [Copernicus, De Revolutionibus,
Book 1, Chapter 10, partially quoted in
Kuhn (1995), p.131, using a different
translation.]
Thomas Kuhn added the following
remarks about the work of
the next
important scientist in line,
Johannes
Kepler:
"Neoplatonism is explicit in Copernicus'
attitude toward both the sun and mathematical simplicity. It is an essential
element in the intellectual climate that gave birth to his vision of the
universe. But it is often hard to tell whether any given Neoplatonic attitude is
posterior or antecedent to the invention of his new astronomy in Copernicus'
thought. No similar ambiguity exists with respect of the later Copernicans.
Kepler, for example, the man who made the Copernican system work, is quite
explicit about his reasons for preferring Copernicus' proposal, and among them
is the following:
'[The sun] is a fountain of light, rich in
fruitful heat, most fair, limpid, and pure to the sight, the source of vision,
portrayed of all colours, though himself empty of colour, called king of the
planets for his motion, heart of the world for his power, its eye for his
beauty, and which alone we should judge worthy of the Most High God, should he
be pleased with a material domicile and choose a place in which to dwell with
the blessed angels…. For if the Germans elect him as Caesar who has most power in
the whole empire, who would hesitate to confer the votes of the celestial
motions on him who already has been administering all other movements and
changes by the benefit of the light which is entirely his possession?....[Hence]
by the highest right we return to the sun, who alone appears, by virtue of his
dignity and power, suited for this motive duty and worthy to become the home of
God himself, not to say the first mover.'" [Kuhn (1995), p.131, quoting Kepler from
Burtt (1954), p.48.
Bold emphases added; spelling
modified to conform with UK English. (These link to PDFs.)]
As
Frank
Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, pointed out:
"[T]he
new theory of Nicolaus Copernicus which, while still committed to uniform
circular motion, argued that by placing the sun at the centre instead, the
apparent retrograde motion of the planets could be accounted for with
greater mathematical simplicity and elegance."
[Quoted from
here; accessed 15/09/2020.
Spelling
modified to conform with UK English; bold emphasis added.]
The next
leading scientist to advance knowledge significantly in this area,
Galileo
Galilei, didn't indulge in any heroic feats of 'mental abstraction', either
-- even though he helped hammer the last few nails in the coffin of the old
Aristotelian/Ptolemaic system. Not a bit of it; he did something overt.
He peered down a telescope and recorded the fact that several
planets had their own moons. The old system couldn't explain this and that
meant Kepler's model (which also needed revising) was at least
physically possible. [On this see, for example, Koestler (2017).]
So, 'the mental process of abstraction' (even if
we knew what it was) played no part in these
developments -- or, if they did, in support of that contention someone needs to produce Galileo's brain
scan so we might finally begin to understand his words and hence what he was
actually trying to tell us.
Second, one might well wonder how
one of
the above quoted passages might be rendered consistent
-- i.e., how, for example, the Sun's 'apparent' motion might be harmonised with
the claim that
'essence' "necessarily
expresses itself through the appearances"? If the latter were the case, why did no one
register
the (supposed) 'expression' of 'essence' involved in this phenomenon for
countless centuries? Why did it have to wait until the above scientists
and philosophers revealed it to an expectant humanity? That is, why did it take
so long before anyone claimed that the Earth moves relative to the Sun, not the
other way round? Why did it take so long for the scientific community to arrive
at this conclusion? And how does this particular 'essence' (a moving Earth) "necessarily
express itself through the appearance" of its opposite -- i.e., the fact that the
Earth appears to be stationary? It rather looks like the 'essence'
involved in this case
(whatever it is!)
failed to "express itself through the appearances". Indeed, it
induced (in
the vast majority of human observers up to that point in history) a set of false beliefs,
many of which lasted for thousands of years -- i.e., the theory that the Earth doesn't
move and sits motionless at the centre of the Universe. That is, of course, inconsistent with what we now
know to be the case, -- that the Earth does move and isn't located at the centre of the
Universe. In fact, it is now plain
that any such 'essence' was, at best, locked away in a "secret world lying behind
appearances", since it took so long for anyone to force it into the open!
After all, didn't Heraclitus himself try tell us
that "nature likes to hide"? [Kirk, et al (1999), p.192.]
That is, indeed, what Hegel himself claimed:
"The immediate Being of things is thus conceived
under the image of a rind or curtain behind which theEssence is hidden."
[Hegel (1975), p.163,
§112. Bold added.]
Hegel fans
have yet to explain how something "hidden" can
"express itself through the appearance", or
remain so well concealed that it takes a Christian Mystic to see it -- and
then only after countless thousands of years when virtually everyone else saw
the opposite!
And we have
already had occasion to quote this famous remark courtesy of Marx:
"But
all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of
things directly coincided."
[Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804.]
Not much 'shining' going on in there, it would
seem!
Why would
we need science if 'essence' shone through?
[In several
places below I return to consider the motion of the Earth, where I aim
to show
that the picture painted by DM-fans isn't quite as neat and tidy as they
would have us believe.]
On this issue
(the alleged 'contradiction' between 'appearance' and 'essence'/'reality'), here is what one commentator had to say (quoted earlier):
"Essence
shows or appears (scheint), but itself remains hidden behind a veil of
Schein (appearance -- RL).... This suggests the idea of a world that
is the reverse of the world of appearances, in which everything that has, in our
world, a certain quality, has, in the world in itself, the opposite quality."
[Inwood (1992), pp.39-40. Bold emphases alone added.]
At a time in
his life when his ideas were being heavily influenced by ruling-class forms-of-thought (like
these), Marx
also
expressed this (peculiar) idea rather forcefully, in the following terms:
"The contradiction between existence and essence, between matter and form, which
is inherent in the concept of the atom, emerges in the individual atom itself
once it is endowed with qualities. Through the quality the atom is alienated
from its concept, but at the same time is perfected in its construction. It is
from repulsion and the ensuing conglomerations of the qualified atoms that the
world of appearance now emerges. In this transition from the world of essence to the world of appearance, the
contradiction in the concept of the atom clearly reaches its harshest
realisation. For the atom is conceptually the absolute, essential form of
nature. This absolute form has now been degraded to absolute matter, to the
formless substrate of the world of appearance." [Marx
(1975b), pp.61-62. (This links to a PDF.)
Bold
emphases alone added; paragraphs merged.]
Here,
too, is Mao:
"We should draw a lesson here: Don't be
misled by false appearances. Some of our comrades are easily misled by them.
There is contradiction between appearance and essence in everything. It is
by analyzing and studying the appearance of a thing that people come to know its
essence. Hence the need for science. Otherwise, if one could get at the essence
of a thing by intuition, what would be the use of science? What would be the use
of study? Study is called for precisely because there is contradiction
between appearance and essence. There is a difference, though, between the
appearance and the false appearance of a thing, because the latter is false.
Hence we draw the lesson: Try as far as possible not to be misled by false
appearances." [Mao
(1964b), pp.165-66. Bold emphases added.]
However, in
connection with what Mao had to say one might ask: How is the following even possible?
"It is by analyzing and studying the
appearance of a thing that people come to know its essence." [Ibid.]
As should
seem clear, in order to study "the appearance of a thing" it
is necessary -- at least initially -- to rely on its appearance, which we have just been warned not to trust, since some
'appearances' (or is it all?) are "false". But, if it is only some that are false, how might we distinguish the false from the not-false
'appearances'? Unfortunately, Mao
failed to say. In this regard, it would be no use appealing to scientific observations since
they also rely on these already suspect 'appearances'. On the other hand, if
no 'appearances' can be trusted, how might they convey anything
reliable to anyone, never mind anything about 'essence'? And, what would be the
point of "analysing" such 'dubious data inputs' -- these
sketchy 'appearances'
-- if they can't
be trusted? All the data and information retrieved from telescopes, microscopes,
magnifying glasses (and eyeglasses!), compasses, computers,
cell phones, thermometers, gauges and measuring devices in general, all of it confronts us as
experiential phenomena -- as 'appearances' -- which have all just been thrown under
the bus. We have no way of
'leaping out of our heads' in order to 'intuit' nature directly (whatever
that might mean!). No good appealing to books, articles, reports, blogs,
emails or letters for any help
or guidance -- and that includes
Mao's own writings! -- since
they, too, now confront us as 'appearances'.
If appearances can't be trusted, neither can a book or article that tries to
tell us this!
[Misguided attempts to defend Mao on this issue have been
subjected to sustained criticism
elsewhere in this Essay.]
Here are
several other
Marxists who have also (unwisely) advanced similar opinions (in addition to passages
quoted earlier, here
and here):
"Whereas Kant stopped at contradiction, Kant
being paralyzed by its omnipresence where thought was concerned, Hegel presses
forward to the recognition of the profound truth of contradiction, and thus
Hegel is not trapped with an incognizable essence and a perfectly
cognizable appearance, as in Kant; since, for Hegel, reality can only present
itself by means of contradictory oppositions, such as the opposition
appearance/reality." [David DeGrood, quoted from
here; bold emphasis alone added.]
"Elsewhere, it is the contradiction between
essence and appearance that is emphasised in the dialectic approach." [Hirsch
(2004), p.8. Bold added.]
"In his Philosophical Notebooks, Lenin, after
renewed study of Hegel, explicitly breaks with reflection theory in favour of a
much more dialectical theory of cognition that emphasises the contradiction
between essence and appearance and establishes consciousness, not just as a
reflection of the world, but also as a factor capable, through practice, of
shaping it. Human knowledge, according to Lenin, depends upon an active
process of abstraction, capable of distinguishing between essence and appearance,
rather than passive reflection, an insight with profound consequences for the
theorisation of literary production." [Quoted from
here,
pp.31-32. (This links to a PDF. Unfortunately, this link is now dead!) Accessed 19/08/2020.
Bold emphasis alone added. I have examined John Rees's attempt to rescue Lenin's failed
theory of knowledge -- which was taken apart in Essay Thirteen Part One -- by
appealing to the (supposedly) more nuanced approach 'set out' in his
Philosophical Notebooks [PN], in Appendix Three. Incidentally,
the phrase
"set out" is in 'scare quotes' since what Lenin had to say in PN is far too
fragmentary, brief and obscure to characterise in any other way.]
"Essence refers to 'the negative reciprocal reflectedness of many capitals with
one another through which they themselves, in as much as they are concretely
different from one another, are posited as capitals essentially identical to one
another; that is existing values that valorise themselves…. This is their
identity within their difference.' Appearance refers to 'the reciprocal relation
of the many capitals among themselves whereby, as capitals that are different in
many concrete aspects, they oppose and compete [with each?] other in order to obtain
their greatest valorisation. This, by contrast, is their difference within their
identity.' [The author] is able to show -- through the Hegelian categories of
repulsion and attraction, quality and quantity, one and many -- that
the contradiction between essence and appearance
is mediated in a more concrete form, 'as capital in its existence
in-and-for-itself'." [Tony McKenna, quoted from
here,
accessed 19/08/2020. Bold emphases added. Tony has clearly adopted the 'bury
everything
underseveral
layers of impenetrable
gobbledygook'
writing-style
one finds all too often across much of Dialectical Marxism, but especially in theHCD-wing.]
"The
realist shares with the positivist a conception of science as an
empirically-based, rational and objective enterprise, the purpose of which is to
provide us with true explanatory and predictive knowledge of nature. But for the
realist, unlike the positivist, there is an important difference between
explanation and prediction. And it is explanation which must be pursued as the
primary objective of science. To explain phenomena is not merely to show they
are instances of well-established regularities. Instead, we must discover the
necessary connections between phenomena, by acquiring know-ledge of the
underlying structures and mechanisms at work. Often, this will mean postulating
the existence of types of unobservable entities and processes that are
unfamiliar to us: but it is only by doing this that we get beyond the 'mere
appearances' of things, to their natures and essences. Thus, for the
realist, a scientific theory is a description of structures and mechanisms which
causally generate the observable phenomena, a description which enables us to
explain them.... (p.5)
"Marx
argues that 'vulgar economics' analyses only the superficial, phenomenal or
apparent features of social and economic life, and fails to penetrate to their
deeper underlying substratum, essence or reality. Marx supports his
view that the distinction between appearance and reality is important by an
argument about science in general, and by arguments specific to political
economy. First, he says that there would be no need for scientific theories
unless the outward appearance of things and their inner essence did not coincide.
Thus while the air that we breathe appears undifferentiated, the scientific
analysis of how it is in reality shows that it is mainly comprised of nitrogen
and oxygen in pro-portions four to one. No science could proceed if it did
not attempt to explain appearances in terms of the reality, and if it did not
show how the appearances are themselves misleading. But this interpretation
of the appearance/reality distinction is fairly general and imprecise. It fails
to provide Marx with criteria specific to his approach to political economy, and
does not even clearly exclude 'vulgar economics'....
"Commodity fetishism means that reality, that is, the social relations of
production, does not appear as it is. There is a gap between the appearances
of capitalism and its essence or reality. It appears that social life is
governed by general lawful relations between things; for example, that capital
is a thing and earns its profit because of its natural productivity. However,
according to Marx, any social science which merely analyses this fetishistic
level of appearances is false and distorting. Rather we must analyse
reality, the organization of capital and labour based on the production and
appropriation of surplus value. It is this reality which differs from the
appearances of capitalism and which produces the false and distorting forms in
which capitalist society appears to its members. It is not that people simply
misperceive the nature of capitalism. Rather it is that reality presents itself
in an inverted form." [Keat and Urry (1982), pp.99-100. Bold emphases added.
Although, it is important to add that Keat and Urry say regard the visual
metaphor of 'Appearance and Reality' as "problematic", or even misleading -- so
this looks like another mismatch between 'reality' and the appearance of that
phrase! (Irony intended.)]
"'If the essence and appearance
of things directly coincided, all science would be superfluous'. Does Marx's
dictum lead to novel insights? The purpose of science is to discover the
nature of reality concealed under surface appearance. Based on this
definition, Marx makes the above assertion -- if things appeared exactly as they
are, there would be no need for science to removethe veil of appearance.
Social science, therefore, is the search for the real nature of society,
underneath all of its visible, external façades. If the reality of society is
easily observable in our everyday experience, then there is no need for
scientific reflection on society, as Marx defines science. The idea that society
has an 'appearance', which is not the same as social 'essence', forms the
starting point for the Marxist discussion of ideology. Ideology is what allows a
society to persist, even though the essence of that society may contain
contradictions.
It is important to note that
the difference between appearance and reality is not due to some form of false
belief or faulty vision on the part of the observer.
The appearances are caused by the reality. There is no 'mistake' in the
observance of society, because it is the nature of society that the essence
projects a certain appearance.
It is the nature of a mirage that it is an illusion,
it is not a case of 'faulty vision'. A person with normal vision will still see
a mirage, as it is
the very essence of the mirage which creates the illusion.
"Marx was primarily concerned with the nature of the capitalist mode of
production. The cardinal tenets of Marx's theory of the essence of capitalism
are: Only expenditure of labour creates economic value, in proportion to the
amount of labour expended; workers do not receive the whole value of what they
produce -- capitalists enjoy profits due to surplus value, for which the worker
is not paid; labour power is the only form of capital investment which creates
profit. (1) The social appearance, on the other hand is: An object is worth what
it can be exchanged for in the market, i.e. its exchange-value;
workers appear to be paid for all of their labour; capital is seen to 'create'
profit.
There is clearly a marked difference between the appearance and essence of
society.
Marx uses the idea of 'commodity fetishism' to explain this difference. 'Commodity fetishism' is the vision of objective value in
commodities especially money, as the commodity of exchange. Under a society with
exchange, the only way people can gauge value is during the exchange process.
For example, in the labour market, a worker will agree to a contract with an
employer for a certain wage per time period.
The worker feels that he is being paid for all of his work, and the employer
feels that the value of the labour-power employed is worth the wage.
The actual value of the labour is more than the wage, as the employer will
eventually extract a surplus value when the product is sold. The cause of this
commodity fetishism is the nature of the exchange process.
The result is that some aspects of the appearance of society are the 'inverse'
of its essence.
"The notion of 'inversion' is very
important to Marx, as it sums up the idea that the capitalist mode of production
contains contradictions. The contradiction is between the essence and
appearance. Marx goes so far as to say that 'everything appears as reversed
in competition'. Ideology 'conceals the contradictory essential
relations...because it is based on a sphere of reality which reveals the
contrary to its essential relations'. The role of ideology, therefore, is to
hide the essence of society as it contradicts the appearance, which is
beneficial to the ruling class at the time. As ideology is based on the
'phenomenological sphere', or the sphere of 'appearances', it fulfils its role
by reinforcing the appearances of society, thus further burying the 'essence'."
[Luis Avilés, quoted from
here.
Accessed 16/12/2016. Minor typo corrected; several paragraphs merged.
(This link now appears to be dead!)]
So, the theory that there is a 'contradiction'
between 'essence' and 'appearance' is mainstream, right across Dialectical
Marxism, and is widely accepted
by DM-theorists.
In which case, it seems
reasonably clear that for them, 'essences' are 'hidden' and 'appearances' are
in some sense, or to some extent, false or misleading.
However, in the last of the above passages,
Luis Avilés
seems
to want to have his abstract cake and eat it. On the one hand, he claims that
"the
difference between appearance and reality is not due to some form of false
belief or faulty vision on the part of the observer", on the other he then says
"It
is the nature of a mirage that it is an illusion, it is not a case of 'faulty
vision'. A person with normal vision will still see a mirage, as it is the very
essence of the mirage which creates the illusion." Other dialecticians (not
quoted here) argue along similar lines. And yet, if an observer
'sees' what she
thinks is water,
but
which
is just a mirage,
she
is
entertaining a
false belief
that there is water.
Avilés then tells us that
"workers appear to be paid for all of their labour" and the "worker
feels that he is being paid for all of his work...."
But, is that belief true or false?
[Or is it 'dialectically' both?] He adds "The
actual value of the labour is more than the wage."
If so, the aforementioned worker plainly held a false belief.
There appears to be no other way of making sense of this.
Somewhat appropriately, comrades like Avilés
and Mandel (analysed in detail in Appendix
Four)
appear to be able to hold two contradictory ideas 'in their heads' at once --
i.e., that 'appearances', or the beliefs motivated by them,
aren't
false even while they
are false!
Or, that all such ideas are false
and
true! We met
get-out-of-jail-free cards
like this
in Essay Eleven Part One, where some DM-theorists try to maintain that even in
the most blatant of falsehoods there is a grain of truth:
In addition to the above
pro-DM-avoiding tactic,
dialecticians (like, say, Lenin and Cornforth) also argue that no theory or
proposition is either absolutely true or completely false. All are in their own way
closer approximations to the truth;
or, rather, are closer approximations to 'partial' or 'relative truth',
stepping stones on the endless journey toward 'Absolute Truth'.
Quite apart from
the fact that no DM-theorist really accepts this idea (on that, see below), the
term "partial truth" is itself conveniently vague (as will be
demonstrated in
Essay Thirteen Part Two).
But, even if that weren't the case, and the
meaning of "relative truth" were crystal clear, those who say they
accept theories that are less
'partially true' (even if only provisionally) also claim that the goal should be to 'resolve' or remove
(most or all of the)
contradictions that remain so that they become evenless 'partially true' -- which means, of course, that
the above conclusions still follow.
Hence, even if the DM-view of the advance of science were acceptable, a
maximally
true theory should contain fewer contradictions, possibly even none at all.
As we have already seen,
Engels himself suggested that if we had access
to 'Absolute Truth', contradictions would completely disappear:
"If one does not loiter here needlessly, but
presses on farther into the immense building, one finds innumerable treasures
which today still possess undiminished value. With all philosophers it is
precisely the 'system' which is perishable; and for the simple reason that
it springs from an imperishable desire of the human mind -- the desire to
overcome all contradictions. But if all contradictions are once and for all
disposed of, we shall have arrived at so-called absolute truth -- world history
will be at an end. And yet it has to continue, although there is nothing left
for it to do -- hence, a new, insoluble contradiction.
As soon as we have once realized -- and in the long run no one has helped us to
realize it more than Hegel himself -- that the task of philosophy thus stated
means nothing but the task that a single philosopher should accomplish that
which can only be accomplished by the entire human race in its progressive
development -- as soon as we realize that, there is an end to all philosophy in
the hitherto accepted sense of the word.
One leaves alone 'absolute truth', which is unattainable along this path or by
any single individual; instead, one pursues attainable relative truths along the
path of the positive sciences, and the summation of their results by means of
dialectical thinking.
At any rate, with Hegel philosophy comes to an end; on the one hand, because in
his system he summed up its whole development in the most splendid fashion; and
on the other hand, because, even though unconsciously, he showed us the way out
of the labyrinth of systems to real positive knowledge of the world." [Engels
(1888), p.590. Spelling modified to agree with UK English;
quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Minor typo corrected.]
Which clearly implies that contradictions don't
really exist in 'reality'! Otherwise how could the following ever be true?
"[I]f
all contradictions are once and for all disposed of, we shall have arrived at
so-called absolute truth...." [Ibid.]
Anyway, as has already been suggested, whatever they might say,
in practice few dialecticians accept the idea that there are no completely false
theories or propositions, even if they might sometimes tell their audiences the
opposite. Here, for instance, is Cornforth:
"Just as truths are for the
most part only approximate and contain the possibility of being converted into
untruths, so are many errors found not to be absolute falsehoods but to contain
a germ of truth.... We should recognise, then,
that certain erroneous views, including idealist views, could represent, in
their time, a contribution to truth -- since they were, perhaps, the only ways
in which certain truths could first begin to come to expression...."
[Cornforth (1963), pp.138-39. Paragraphs merged. Bold emphasis added.]
Despite what Cornforth says, it would be
impossible to find a "germ of truth" in
any of the following:
(1) Ten litres of concentrated
Nitric
Acid applied directly to unprotected human skin dramatically improves the
complexion if left there for several hours.
(2) "Jews, Slavs, Romanies, Arabs, Asians and Africans
all belong to 'inferior,
sub-human races'."
(3) "Capitalism is a genuine expression of
eternally unchanging human nature, which is both acquisitive and selfish."
(4) "All women are completely happy with their oppression
and are keen to be reminded of it on a daily basis."
(5) "Imperialism is 100% progressive
everywhere, at all times, and always will be."
(6) "The
Ku Klux Klan and the
alt-right are exemplary leaders in the
fight for Black
Liberation and full equality for Muslims."
(7) In 2002, Iraq manufactured and stored more
WMD than any other country in the
entire history of the
planet.
(8) The earth is supported by a colossal tortoise,
on top of a huge locust, on top of a giant crab, on top of a...
(11) Karl Marx was a flagrant plagiarist from Mars who copied all his best ideas
from George W Bush.
(12) "Anyone who wanders about aimlessly for
several hours crossing and re-crossing a
busy main road during the day while blindfolded will live a long and happy life."
(14) The world was created about 6000 years
ago from a bowl of custard by the
Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I suspect that anyone who questioned the
truth of, say, (1) would be
hard pressed to find a single revolutionary who agreed with (2).
Naturally, that means the negation of (2) is absolutely true (for
all revolutionaries).
On
the other hand, if they were to reject as completely false one or both of these sentences --
i.e., (1) and/or (2) -- which they should(!), they would thereby
have confirmed the point at issue: that is, if either one of those sentences
is completely false,
then there is at least one sentence (namely (1) or (2)) that is completely
false.
QED.
And, just in case these remarks attract the
attention of any brass-necked, died-in-the-wool, hardcore Hegel Honchos, who might
claim that one or more of the above are 'partially true', 'partially false', they should
perhaps be encouraged to consider the following sentence:
H1: There are absolutely no partial truths,
and there never have been.
Now, is that 'partially'
true?
Or, must we
agree with the following two theorists?
"It also follows that each theory's
truth -- including that produced in Marxian theory -- is in no sense the
expression of the essence of some 'reality.' Assertions of that sort, as we
shall point out, occur outside the Marxian theory we seek to elaborate here and
in contradiction to its epistemological position. Each theory's concept of
'reality' as well as of the 'truth' about that reality is different. Their
differing concepts of reality are indexes of difference among theories, as are
their differing concepts of truth. Marxian theory, then, recognizes no single
reality or absolute truth or epistemological standard that can serve to validate
one theory as against another. For Marxian theory, validations occur within
theories as they subject various statements to their differing criteria of
truth. Marxian theory sees itself as one among many different theories, each
of which conceptualises its reality differently and tests its conceptualisations
differently. Reality for Marxian theory is a totality comprising
contradictions in theory interacting with contradictions within all the other
processes that constitute that totality. Marxian theory specifies that
interaction as
overdetermination. Marxian theory also recognizes, of course, that other
theories conceptualise all these matters differently; they take different
epistemological positions....
"Marxian theory constitutes a break
from the tradition of epistemology built around the problematic handed down from
Descartes, Locke, and Kant. That problematic posed the issue: How can philosophy
warrant the adequacy of thought as a representation of an external reality?
Philosophy, and more specifically, epistemology, was defined in terms of a task:
to establish the criteria by which it could be determined to what degree any
statement was adequately grounded or, in other words, true. Truth was understood
as a universal and absolute quality which any statement either possessed or did
not possess for all thinkers. By contrast, Marxian theory rejects that
problematic, posing the issue of epistemology altogether differently. It is
not sensible, in and for Marxian theory, to imagine or seek after any absolute
criteria of an absolute truth. Truths are intra- rather than inter-theoretic;
they are, in a very particular sense, relative to the theories in which they are
constructed." [Resnick and Wolff (1987), pp.6-7; p.32. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling adjusted
to agree with UK English. Bold emphases and link added. Several paragraphs
merged.]
But, is
that theory absolutely true? If it is, then it is false to say that
all truths are relative. In which case, the above passage can itself be
discounted/ignored. On the other hand, if it is only relatively true,
anything it says about itself can be discounted as self-serving, and anything it
says about other theories becomes irrelevant (since whatever it says is
hermetically sealed inside the theory itself -- that is what "relatively
true" implies). In that case, the above passage
can be discounted/ignored, once more.
Of course,
if it is false, it can be ignored, anyway.
Either
way, what it says can be discounted.
[The above is yet
another example of two Marxist economists stumbling about in an
discipline
well outside their area of expertise -- philosophy -- and who end up refuting themselves!]
Independently of that, what happened to
Marx,
Engels, Lenin and Mao's criterion that practice is a criterion of
truth? Is that only 'partially'/'relatively' true? But, if practice is
a criterion of truth what justifies its truth? That can't be yet more
practice, not without arguing in a circle. And if that 'something more' is a
different criterion, what is it? If there is one such, what then is the
point of referring to practice as the catch-all fall back option when it can't
be justified without going round in circles?
Finally, as we will see in Essay Ten
Part One, a desperate (but maybe by-now-tempered) appeal to
"practice" -- an attempt made perhaps in order to
help resolve these 'problems', always assuming they can be -- would still be to no avail. Practice takes place at the
level of 'appearances', and one set of 'appearances' can hardly absolve another
set -- that is, if they even needed absolving, to begin with!
Issues connected with 'commonsense'
clearly have a role to play in any discussion of the distinction between
'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'. Unfortunately, few DM-theorists bother to
inform their readers (with any consistency or
clarity -- big surprise there, then!) what they mean by "commonsense".
Lenin once claimed that "common sense = the prejudices of its time" [Lenin
(1961), p.271] whatever that means! We are never told what its core
beliefs -- or even what its
peripheral 'prejudices', are -- let alone whether there are one or many competing
ideologies/'prejudices' underpinning it. One DM-theorist
who did make some attempt to address this question is the
STD,
Teodor Oizerman.
Here he is speaking about "everyday
consciousness", which I take it is meant to be the same as "commonsense"
(but that might be a mistaken assumption, who can say?):
"Everyday consciousness is a multi-layered
complex and contradictory entity composed of a multitude of perceptions,
emotions and concepts that are generated and continuously reproduced by the
relatively constant and familiar conditions surrounding individuals.... We
encounter concepts of everyday consciousness everywhere. They are, first and
foremost, empirical notions consisting partly of relative truths and partly of
illusions and errors: water boils at 100oC;
gold does not rust; the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening; money
in a savings bank pays interest. Proverbs are classic expressions of everyday
consciousness, polished to perfection by the ages; they are the quintessence of
popular wisdom ('life is not a bed of roses'), the class instinct of the
oppressed and exploited..., popular fears and hopes." [Oizerman (1982), p.101.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Ok, well one
can almost hear the contempt and condescension in Oizerman's tone
as he wrote that. But, what evidence was offered in support of these 'widely
held, anti-working class prejudices'?
None at
all.
Is anyone
surprised? Sadly, the above in general represents the 'commonsense' of many on
the far left.
[I
have said much more about 'commonsense',
here, and more
concerning the widely held 'prejudices' on the Marxist left about workers in
Essay Nine
Part
Two (partially quoted below). However, on this in general, see Peels and
Woudenberg (2020); having said that, several of that book's
contributors also tend to confuse widely held beliefs with 'commonsense'.
Follow the last link for more about the difference between them.]
But, this is
typical of the genre. DM-theorists in general skate over this
entire topic -- except to register their (dismissive, even 'orthodox') disdain for 'commonsense', rather like Oizerman. In
this (as much as their adherence to other aspects of ruling-class ideology) they
echo and channel the condescension that has always been shown
toward 'commonsense' by the average defender of the status quo, and not
just DM-fans.
Those claims will be fully
substantiated in Essay Twelve Part Seven. However, we need look no further than
Engels himself; in his classic study, The Condition of the Working Class
in England, he devoted an entire chapter to a consideration of "The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie
Towards the Proletariat" -- i.e.,
Engels (1845), pp.562-83.
Anyone reading that today and who listens to the average right-wing UK Tory (for
example, Lee Anderson,
who has just defected to the ultra-right-wing 'Reform
Party'), or to a typical US Republican (a
Thomas Sowell or a
J D Vance, for
instance) speaking about 'the poor' or 'the working class' will see how little has
changed in the last 180 years. While dialecticians would (rightly) condemn talk like this
today, and in terms not dissimilar to those deployed by Engels, nevertheless, just like
Engels (and other DM-classicists), their denigration of the language,
thought-patterns and experience of the working class identifies them rather too
closely and uncomfortably with similar attitudes displayed by card-carrying members of the
ruling-class, their hangers-on and their hired 'prize-fighters'. As I have argued in Essay Nine
Part Two:
So,
in spite of what we might read in pro-DM-literature, it isn't Hegelian 'logic'
which has been rotated through 180º, but workers themselves.
Their thinking has been up-ended, their materialist ideas replaced by
incomprehensible Idealist gobbledygook. The
erstwhile subjects of history -- revolutionary workers -- must thereby
be transformed into passive
objects of theory. They must be intellectually neutered, theoreticallyknocked off their feet.
[Again, substitution for much of the above
can be found in
Part One.]
At this point, it is worth stressing
what is not
being maintained: that revolutionaries should adopt or develop a romantic or
naïve view of workers and the ideas they hold --, i.e., that their
thoughts aren't fragmentary or inconsistent, that racist or sexist notions can't
'enter their heads', that they unerringly know how best to further
their own cause, that they possess the organisational structures
required to promote or defend their interests -- or even that they always understand the nature and source of
their own oppression, alienation and exploitation, etc., etc.
[None of the above are cast in stone,
anyway!
How workers transform themselves in and by struggle (with or without the aid of the
revolutionary party)
is already well understood by Marxists and needs no elaboration here. Even so,
in Essay Twelve Part Seven, it will be shown how and why any successful intervention by
revolutionaries has to be expressed in the vernacular, not the
obscure jargon concocted by Hegel and other ruling-class hacks. Any who still think ordinary language is inadequate
in this respect are encouraged to read
this
and
this,
and then perhaps think again. Or, failing that, contact the editors of the vast
majority of revolutionary papers on earth and tell them to (i) Stop using the
vernacular when communicating with workers and then (ii) Sit back and watch
their circulation positively soar to record heights as a result! (Not!)]
Neither is it part of the
case being presented here that workers have no need of a revolutionary party largely drawn from their own ranks,
which has established long-term links with the proletariat forged in struggle, and which
party has in turn learnt from them. [As indeed Lenin did post-1905.]
On the other hand, because
HM represents a
generalisation of workers' experience, when it is introduced to them it
augments, clarifiesand systematises what they already know. In that case, it doesn't need to be
substituted in their heads, replacing their own ideas -- even though it
might change many of those ideas
for the better. As, noted in Essay Nine
Part One, because HM
meshes with their experience, and speaks to their exploitation,
alienation and
oppression,it is introduced,
as it were, from the 'inside'.
Nevertheless, the only issue of immediate
concern is the influence DM has had on the attitude revolutionaries
adopt toward workers and each other. Indeed, this will involve the connection between DM and the
petty-bourgeois, substitutionist mentality that is endemic among
professional revolutionaries
(because of their class position and the predilection they all seem to have for elitist,
anti-democratic, ruling-class
forms-of-thought).
Hence, in relation to strategy and tactics, and in
connection with a theoretical
understanding of the relationship between party and class, the question
posed below will be whether ideas drawn from what are demonstrably
ruling-class sources, which reflect the priorities of that class (e.g., mystification,
esotericism,
secrecy, fragmentation, control,
hierarchy, arrogance and disdain), when they have been adopted and internalised by revolutionaries, may
turn out to possess
unsuspected substitutionist implications of their own.
In short, it will be shown that, among other things,
dialectical concepts have been and still are being used in order to normalise,
rationalise and 'justify' substitutionism.
[Indeed, as Essay Nine
Part One
demonstrated, DM is theideology of substitutionist
elements in Dialectical Marxism.]
[For more on
that, readers are encouraged to check out to Essay Nine Parts One (link above)
and Two (here and
here), where
these allegations have been substantiated.]
Finally,
one of Oizerman's examples (sunrise)
will be examine later in this Essay, but if we focus on the
volunteered example given in the next sub-section, we
might be able to make a little more sense of the broaderclaim that there is some
sort of 'clash' or incongruity between the way things appearto be and what scientists and
Philosophers have so far discovered, 'hidden below the surface of
appearances' -- i.e., the supposed conflict, or 'contradiction', between 'commonsense' and 'science'.
In other words, what follows will address the
issues raised by Item (v) from earlier, but
applied more generally to the social and the natural world.
Hegel's decidedly odd theory is in turn connected with the undeniable fact that some things
'appear'
for a short time and then disappear or fade away, like someone who:...
(v) Describes how another looks -- as in
"Her appearance gave her away; she was clearly amused", or "His appearance
changes from day-to-day; he is a master of disguise."
To that end,
the next few sections will consider several examples drawn from nature and
society that raise issues about how things look (their appearance)
and whether or not they are transient to see if the distinction Hegel
tried to draw (and DM-fans have unwisely appropriated) between 'appearance' and
'reality'/'essence' is itself valid and implies any sort of
'contradiction'.
The
following case in point has been deliberately chosen for its triteness and its familiarity. A more
arcane
or complex
example
would have obscured the issues involved. As noted above, other instances of this
phenomenon (where 'appearances' appear to 'contradict' reality) will be considered as
this Essay unfolds, as well as in other Essays at this site.
This volunteered example concerns the
apparent incongruity that exists between the way that sticks look bent, and the
fact that they do not really bend, when they are partially immersed in water. Of
course, it could be objected that this phenomenon doesn't illustrate a process
in nature, and so it isn't really relevant. Nevertheless, it is relatively easy
to adapt the example so that that objection itself becomes irrelevant, as we will also see.
[On this, check out R1a, R2a, R3 and R4, below, which do
manage to illustrate a process. Other instances of this alleged clash between science and
'commonsense' can be adjusted in like manner, but I
will refrain from doing that here for
obvious reasons. As such, they should be viewed in the same way in order to help prevent
this section descending any further into
recondite, scholastic pedantry.]
Be
that as it may, this illusion, or incongruity, might be expressed as follows:
R1: This stick appears bent
in water.
R2: It isn't the case that
this stick appears bent in water.27
R1a: This stick appears to
bend when immersed in water.
R2a: It isn't the case that
this stick appears to bend when immersed in water.
R1 and R2,
and R1a and R2a, form
what appear to be
contradictory pairs, but this type of incongruity isn't the sort to
which Rees and other dialecticians are alluding: the alleged
contradiction between appearance
and reality. Plainly, R1 and R2 are both about appearances;
hence, they don't illustrate the aforementioned mis-match between appearance
and reality.
Perhaps the
next two sentences will suffice?
R3: This stick bends when put
in water.
R4: It isn't the case that
this stick bends when put in water.
Again, these two
seem to be contradictory,
but, unfortunately, once more, they aren't what Rees and other dialecticians had in mind, either, since they fail to contrast appearance
with reality. R3 and R4 merely express two contradictory propositions relating
to a possible state of affairs (the same one or different). Neither is about
appearances.
However, the following pair of sentences
does attempt to draw a contrast between appearance and reality:
R5: This stick appears bent
in water.
R6: It isn't the case that
this stick is bent in water.28
The problem
with the above two sentences is that they aren'tcontradictories since they can
be both true at
once, just asthey can both be false at once. The truth of one doesn't
imply the falsehood of the other, nor vice versa. There is therefore no
logical connection between them. Nor do they even seem to be 'dialectically' connected;
that is, they don't struggle with, and then turn into, each other (as they
should do if the
DM-classics are to be believed). Moreover, they don't imply one another (in the
way that the existence of the capitalist class supposedly implies the existence of
the proletariat, and vice
versa -- so we are told).
[At this point it is worth
reminding ourselves that two propositions are contradictory just in case they can't
both be true and they can't both be false, at once. Not only do they have
opposite truth values, the truth of one implies the falsehood of the other, and
vice versa. I only mention such salient details since most DM-fans seem
oblivious of them,
often conflating the LEM, PB (propositional bi-polarity) and
the LOC
with one another
--
and, indeed, all three of them with
opposites,
inconsistencies, absurdities, contraries, paradoxes, puzzles, quandaries, oddities, irrationalities,
oppositional processes, antagonisms,
opposing forces, unexpected events,
alongside a whole range of unrelated states of affairs, events and assorted idiosyncrasies.
(And they then imagine they are somehow uniquely qualified to pontificate about
logic! I have given ample proof of this 'Dialectical
Dunning-Kruger Effect'
in Essay Four Part
One.) In fact, they are so eager
to see contradictions everywhere that they find they have to tinker with the
meaning of the word, "contradiction" itself, so that (for them) it becomes synonymous with
"struggle", "conflict" and "opposition". I have said much more about
that confusion in
Essay Eight Parts Two and
Three.]
It could be objected that the fact
that sticks appearto bend in water prompts the naïve belief that they
actually do
bend, which contradicts the fact that they don't really
bend when partially immersed. That incongruity, or at least the realisation such
it isn't the case that sticks bend under such circumstances, could lead to the rejection of an unscientific
and/or a false belief. In that sense, therefore, it could be argued that reality does
indeed contradict appearances.
Or so it might be claimed...
[It is far from clear that anyone who accepts the
line promoted
here and here -- i.e., that appearances, or
the beliefs they motivate, aren't false or 'unreal' -- can consistently advance
the above argument.]
But, does
any of this
mean it is false
to say that sticks still look bent in water? Clearly not. A stick will still
look this way whether you're a scientist, a
water dowser, or,
indeed, anything inbetween. In which case, if these two sentences seem contradictory (recall, no two contradictory propositions can be
true together or false together) -- and given that R6 and R5 are both true
--
it would be incorrect to say
that they are contradictory:
R5: This stick appears bent
in water.
R6: It isn't the case that
this stick is bent in water.
Of course, if DM-theorists reject this
contention (as seems likely, which is highly likely), they must actually be trying to
revise
the meaning of the word "contradiction", as opposed to using that familiar term
drawn from ordinary discourse. It is worth reminding ourselves that in ordinary
language the verb form of this word (i.e., "to contradict") literally means "to
gainsay" -- i.e., to utter or write the
logical opposite
of what another utters or writes. Either that, or DM-fans are attempting to revise a
typographically similar-looking
word (which we shall label, "contradictionH") they
encountered in Hegel's writings, having confused it with a
typographically-identical word (which we shall label, "contradictionL")
used in FL, or even
the one we use in
ordinary language (which we shall label, "contradictionO"). But, since these terms are defined,
or are used, differently they can't be the same. So,
any 'theoretical/philosophical' remarks made by DM-fans about, or in relation to, "contradictionL"
and/or "contradictionO" can't be about
those terms (despite what DM-theorists clearly
think), but are about, or relate to, "contradictionH",
thus leaving both "contradictionL"
and "contradictionO" unaffected.
[The word
"appear" was deliberately used in the previous paragraph since we still await
a clear
definition of "contradictionH".]
So, dialecticians oscillate between a hybrid understanding of
"contradiction", situated
half-way between the meaning(s), or the use, it has in the vernacular and the connotations it
enjoys in FL,
all the while seeking to link it (somehow) with the maverick sense given
this word by Hegel.29
Naturally, dialecticians are at liberty to make whatever revisions they deem
necessary to any word they see fit, and
use them as they please (not that they need my permission or my
acquiescence). But
any attempt to do so in this case (as part of a 'dialectical' criticism of the alleged
deficiencies of FL) would have no more significance, or effect, than would a
similar attempt to revise the definition of, say, "relative surplus value" in
an attempt to 'prove' that because Marx ignored this 'new definition', his
analysis of value was defective.
In
connection with this, it is also worth recalling that light rays are deflected from their
path when they
pass between air and water, which creates the illusion that partially-immersed sticks
are bent. However, if sticks didn't actually look bent in water (or if it were false to
say that they appeared to bend when half immersed), that would count
toward a falsification of the scientific theory that light rays themselves deviate
from their path upon
entering or leaving the relevant media. Tinker around with beliefs like this too
much and far more serious problems will emerge that would threaten to undermine much of
contemporary Physics.
Hence, even in
this respect appearances aren't
'contradicted' by 'reality'. Far from it; they occupy an essential role in the
confirmation of scientific theory (concerning light as it passes between
different media). Consequently, the scientific truth that light
deviates from its path under such circumstances is verified by,if not
founded upon, the appearance
recorded in R5! Furthermore, this isn't even a transient appearance (as
noted above, it will presumably last at least as long as the human race exists).
In that case, given what we discovered earlier, this
can't even be an Hegelian
'appearance'.
R5: This stick appears bent
in water.
It could be
objected that the above constitutes an
entirely specious response. The plainfact is that scientific knowledge is
inconsistent with the belief that sticks bend in water. No amount of
hair-splitting, spin and 're-interpretation' can minimise or explain away its significance.
However,
that would have been an effective response if:
(i) The argument
presented above were about beliefs and not about
appearances; and,
(ii) It could be shown that anyone actually believed (or has ever
believed) that sticks really do bend when immersed in water.
["Anyone",
of course, doesn't include infants, those with psychological/psychiatric
problems, seriously impaired vision, or those who are inebriated/high on something.]
That is
because the pro-DM counter-response volunteered in the last but one paragraph
specifically mentioned what might plausibly be believed by naïve or untrained observers. Undeniably, such a belief would
be incompatible with what we know to be the case, but the DM-claim is that
appearances contradict reality. It said nothing about beliefs doing
that. [Anyway, the idea that a belief can contradict something that isn't
a belief (i.e., that beliefs can 'contradict' 'reality' or 'the facts') is
equally misguided. Beliefs can
only contradict one another -- and then only if they are expressed in or by
indicative sentences.]
Indeed, the point
being made above is that, far
from reality contradicting
appearances, scientists themselves need appearances to be correct
(or rather, for sentences expressing such beliefs to be true)
in order to confirm (in this specific case)
Snell's Law,
and hence that they have to take account of what seem to bebent sticks.
Plainly, that is
because scientists have to look at objects and processes in the world, and if they
were to see sticks that were partially immersed in
water that didn't appear to be bent, they would either question
whether the liquid concerned was evenwater or wonder if they were
hallucinating. The same can be said about objects that seem to grow smaller when
they recede from us. If they didn't appear to do that, much of the
Science of Optics would
have to be ditched. Again, scientists need appearances to be 100% correct
(or again, for sentences expressing such beliefs to be true, and not just about receding objects, but about the changing shapes of bodies,
mirages, etc., etc.), otherwise they would have to kiss goodbye to large swathes
of
current theory/knowledge.
In that case, the above pro-DM objection only seems to work by confusing appearances with
beliefs. Now, it certainly isn't being questioned here whether or not
propositions drawn from, or based upon, scientific investigation contradict certain beliefs
held
about the world (expressed in or by indicative sentences/propositions,
along lines intimated above), which humans might once have
accepted or to which some still give credence. But, to state the obvious, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.
It could be objected that the argument
presented above is inconsistent. On the one hand, it is claimed that there can be no
contradiction between appearances and reality, on the other it allows
for the fact that there can be -- indeed, there are --
contradictions between scientific propositions and certain beliefs (expressed
propositionally).
In which case, the above argument
appears to conclude that these are contradictory:
But,
it also seems to argue that these aren't contradictory:
B3: p.
B4: It appears to NN that not
p.
How can the first pair be deemed
contradictory while the second isn't?
Or, so it might be
objected...
Of course, the wording of my
earlier claim was specifically this:
B5: It
certainly isn't being questioned here whether or not propositions drawn from, or
based upon, scientific investigation contradict certain beliefs
held
about the world (expressed in or by indicative sentences/propositions,
along lines intimated above), which humans might once have
accepted or to which some still give credence. But, to state the obvious, beliefs aren't the same as appearances.
When
schematic letters (of the sort employed above) have been interpreted,
not p is most definitely the contradictory of p, but p itself isn't the contradictory
of NN believes that not p,
although it would certainly be paradoxical if NN believed that not p
were the case
while also accepting p itself as true. [Where "p" stands
for an indicative sentence with an assertable content.]29a00
[That conundrum has since come to be
known as Moore's Paradox, after British Philosopher,
G. E. Moore,
one of Wittgenstein's Cambridge tutors. I have briefly commented on this Paradox in Part One,
here.]
Nor, when
interpreted, is p
the contradictory of the back end of B4 -- i.e., p isn't the contradictory of,
*to NN that not p
(in that particular sentential
context). [The asterisk indicates a non-standard locution.]
B4: It appears to NN that not
p.
In which case, B1/B2 and B3/B4
aren't comparable.
[B4 has been
deliberately left in such a stiltedform so that the point being made is easier
to see. In addition, it
mustn't be assumed that I believe B1 and B2 are contradictories
(they aren't!); I am just seeing where a DM-counter-argument might possibly take us.]29a0
B1: p.
B2: NN believes that not p.
It could be argued that if we re-worded
the above, they might still be analogous; perhaps in the following way:
B6: p.
B7: NN has a belief that not
p.
B8: p.
B9: *NN has an appearance
that not p.
In response to this I will
merely note that these two sets of sentences can only be made toappearto be analogous (irony intended!) by a blatant misuse of language
(in B9). But, human beings can no more have appearances than they can have seemings or
lookings. Of course, if we had sentences in language like B10 (mirroring those
like B9 -- or even B11):
B10: It believes to me that
not p; or,
B11:
It appears to me that not p,
we might be able to make
some sense of this response, but we don't, and it isn't difficult to see why we
don't. We form
our beliefs based on all manner of contingencies, but appearances are things we
undergo, or experience, like it or not -- we don't form them. Moreover, we use
sentences like these: "NN believes that p", but not "NN appears that
p"; "NM believes the branch secretary", but not "NM
appears the branch secretary"; "NP believes he can win", but not "NP
appears he can win"; "MN has lost her belief in god", but
not "MN has lost her appear (sic!) in god", and so on.
[Concerning further complications involving belief sentences, see Note 29ao.]
So, appearances (still) aren't beliefs, nor
are the two even analogous.
Nevertheless, it could be objected that
while sticks might appear to bend in water, the fact is that they
don't actually do so. In that sense, subjective appearances are contradicted by
objective facts.
Or so it might once again be claimed...
However,
this latest (proffered) DM-objection itself labours under several additional misconceptions:
(1) Appearances are,
I take it, 'part of
reality' (for want of a better phrase).
No one supposes, surely, that appearances are fictional in the way
that, say, The Tooth Fairy or Pixies are, or that
they have been invented (like, for instance,
Sherlock Holmes or Darth Vader), or even fabricated (like
Fake News). It isn't
as if our ancestors made up a fable that there were such things as appearances
and several millennia later we have finally seen through the con. In that sense, appearances are just as 'real' as unbent sticks.
[Nor can an Hegelian argue that appearances are transient, while sticks aren't,
so appearances aren't 'real', but sticks are. We saw that
'conceptual-trajectory' crash and burn
earlier. Of course, the problem here centres on the word "real" and the profligate
and incautious way it is used in Traditional Thought (and by DM-fans). I will say more about
that in
Essay Twelve. In the meantime, readers should consult Moore (1953), pp.216-33,
and Austin (1964), pp.62-83.]29a
(2) Moreover,
but perhaps more importantly (and, as pointed out earlier), since neither
'appearances' nor 'reality' are propositionalas such, no contradiction is
possible between them.
It could be
countered that the issue
here is the contradiction
between essence and appearance, not between appearance and
reality, which is an invention of the present Essay. [But, from the
passages quoted earlier -- here,
here and
here -- we can see that that isn't
even remotely true.]
Nevertheless, even if
the meaning of "essence" were itself clear, it is
difficult to see how there could be any such contradiction, not unless appearances
and essences were also propositional. Hegelians might be able to get away
with that peculiar idea (but as far as I know they haven't wandered down
that
blind alley, yet),
since, for them, everything is Ideal. But materialists definitely can't.
Of course,
that comment itself depends on a view of "contradiction" I don't expect
dialecticians to accept; however, until they
tell us what they do mean by their odd use of this word, little progress can be made.
Since we have only been waiting for two hundred or so years to be informed with any clarity what dialecticians
actually mean by "contradiction", it might
perhaps be a little impatient for anyone to expect them to come up with a clear
and unambiguous answer in the next
five centuries.
[Not that
anyone in the DM-fraternity is trying all that hard, either. (This topic is discussed in more detail in
Essays
Four,
Five,
Eight Parts
One,
Two and
Three, and Eleven
Part One.)]
Moreover, it is important to remember that the
example being examined
here concerns sticks that look bent when partially immersed in water. In that case, unless dialecticians
have a theory about the 'essence' of sticks that differs from their idea/concept
-- or
any idea/concept of
'real sticks' -- this latest pro-DM objection must fail, too. After all, it was
George Novack who argued
that:
"A thing is truly real if
it is necessary, if its appearance truly corresponds to its essence....
Materialists...locate the roots of necessity in the objective world, in the
material conditions and conflicting forces which create, sustain and destroy all
things. But, from the purely logical standpoint, both schools of philosophy
[i.e., Idealism and Materialism -- RL] agree in connecting reality with
necessity.
Something acquires reality
because the necessary conditions for its production and reproduction are
objectively present and operative. It becomes more or less real in accordance
with the changes in the external and internal circumstances of its development.
It remains truly real only so long and insofar as it is necessary under the
given conditions. Then, as conditions change, it loses its necessity and its
reality and dissolves into mere appearance." [Novack
(1971), p.86.
Paragraphs merged.]29b
Which, more-or-less, settles things: appearances are just as much
'part of reality' as 'essences' are, if they coincide.
[How they
manage do that with respect to bent sticks I will leave those addicted to this
(bizarre) way of talking to figure out for themselves. I don't
prefer this (weird) use of language since, I, for one, can make
no sense of it.]
(3)
Finally, the
idea that it is
merely a 'subjective experience' that sticks appear to bend when partially
immersed in water is
itself misleading. Not only does everyone
see the same appearance (i.e., 'bent sticks' when partially immersed) -– which means it can't be
subjective (or only one person would see it) -–, but this
apparent bending of sticks forms the basis of 'objective' observations that confirm
the scientific fact that light changes its path when passing between media. If
the appearance of bent sticks weremerely subjective, what then should we make of
the claim that light alters its course like this? Is that subjective too? Is the
'objectivity' of science predicated on such tenuously weak 'subjective' foundations?
Again, exception might be taken to the
idea
that appearances are objective, since most philosophers and scientists
appear to agree
they are subjective (no irony intended). Since objectivity relates to something called
"observer independence", appearances must therefore be subjective --
or so it could be argued...
(A) First of
all, I'm not advancing any such claim here since I reject the use of
metaphysical language like this; I have already pointed out that I don't prefer
this peculiar way of talking. It is merely being employed here to assist in its
demise. Hence, the frequent use of 'scare' quotes.
(B)
Secondly, since it is also an appearance that (many) philosophers and scientists
say they believe that
appearances are subjective, it looks like that belief must itself be subjective.
It plainly isn't
"observer independent". In fact, as should seem reasonably clear, no observation
made by scientists or philosophers -- or by anyone else, for that matter --,
would or could
be "observer"/"mind independent", and therefore "objective", given
this decidedly strange way of talking. [Some authors think there is a way around this
'epistemological road block' (for want of a better term) -- for instance, Ruben (1979).
That 'escape route' will be blocked in Essay Three Part Six.]
So, if
'objectivity' is understood as "observer-", or "mind-independence", it would be
impossible to form an 'objective' opinion of anything -- even about
'subjectivity' itself – that is, while we humans unwisely possess 'minds', foolishly go about the place observing things
and unwisely express opinions about them.
Indeed, as
we will soon see, any attempt to classify appearances as 'subjective' (and hence
not fully 'real') would totally undermine not just science, but the opinion of anyone who holds such a
belief.
Hence,
if 'objectivity' is defined as
"observer-independence" (etc.), then, plainly, the notion that light bends when it
passes between media (and every other such belief) can't be
'objective'. As now seems undeniable, the truth of this and every other
(supposed) scientific fact depends on centuries ofobservation (and no little human thought,
too),
as much as it relies on beliefs held by other human beings. Exactly how
these can be independent of one another is a mystery
dialecticians have yet to explain. Eliminate the 'subjective' element from science --
if that is what it is -- and everything we believe to be
'objective' must follow it out of the window. If science dealt only with "observer-independent"
realities, we wouldn't be able to establish a single 'objective' scientific
fact!
In such circumstances, there would be no science!
Of course, all this
might be music to
dialecticians' ears, since they already accept the theory that there is a 'dialectical interplay' between
the 'objective' and the 'subjective':
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they
remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the
Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both
phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human
concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a
whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source."
[Lenin (1961),
p.208. Italic emphases in the
original.]
However, if that
were so, we
would be forced to abandon the idea that "objective" means "mind-independence",
contradicting Lenin (and those who agree with him):
"We ask, is a man given
objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or
not? This hoary philosophical query is confused by Mach. If you hold that it is
not given, you, together with Mach, inevitably sink to subjectivism and
agnosticism and deservedly fall into the embrace of the immanentists, i.e., the
philosophical Menshikovs. If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept
is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long,
long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category
denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and
which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing
independently of them. Therefore, to say that such a concept can become
'antiquated' is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments
of fashionable reactionary philosophy. Could the struggle between
materialism and idealism, the struggle between the tendencies or lines of
Plato
and
Democritus
in philosophy, the struggle between religion and science, the
denial of objective truth and its assertion, the struggle between the adherents
of supersensible knowledge and its adversaries have become antiquated during the
two thousand years of the development of philosophy?...
"As
the reader sees, all these arguments of the founders of empirio-criticism
entirely and exclusively revolve around the old epistemological question of the
relation of thinking to being, of sensation to the physical. It required the
extreme naïveté of the Russian Machians to discern anything here that is even
remotely related to 'recent science,' or 'recent positivism.' All the
philosophers mentioned by us, some frankly, others guardedly, replace the
fundamental philosophical line of materialism (from being to thinking, from
matter to sensation) by the reverse line of idealism. Their denial of matter is
the old answer to epistemological problems, which consists in denying the
existence of an external, objective source of our sensations, of an objective
reality corresponding to our sensations. On the other hand, the recognition
of the philosophical line denied by the idealists and agnostics is expressed in
the definitions: matter is that which,
acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective
reality given to us in sensation, and so forth....
"'Matter is disappearing'
means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter is vanishing and
that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are likewise
disappearing which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary
(impenetrability, inertia, mass, etc.) and which are now revealed to be relative
and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole
'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical
materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality,
of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972),
pp.144-45,
165,
311. Bold emphases alone added, quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"To be a materialist is to
acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To
acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind,
is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Ibid.,
p.148. Bold
emphasis added.]
"Knowledge can be useful
biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of
life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective
truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid.,
p.157. Bold emphasis added.]
It is
impossible to make the above comments consistent with one another.
[Anyone who
disagrees is invited to email me with
their best shot.]
However, if
dialecticians are (bravely) prepared to contradict Lenin, much of their epistemology will
go down in flames as a result,
since,
according to this latest turn-of-events, it seems that nature is 'objective'
only if we know about it, and then only if we manage to do so in certainspecific ways,
making it observer-, and thought-dependent, after all!
It could be
argued that this
misconstrues Hegel's notion of objectivity; indeed, it confuses it with a much
looser, modern concept. But, Hegel drew many of his ideas from
Kant's Critical Philosophy and
adapted them accordingly. In fact, what he says about this topic can't be
separated from his system as a whole.
Or, so it might be maintained...
Be this as
it may, since the above considerations will be examined in Essay Twelve Parts Five and Six, not much
more will be said about this topic here. But, for present purposes, it is worth pointing out that Dialectical
Marxists surely can't accept Hegel's notion of objectivity, since that would
openly concede
they are
(in fact) Objective Idealists. In that case, until we are
told exactly what they
do mean when they repeat the sort of ill-considered and obscure things about 'objectivity' that
Lenin (or even Hegel) came out with, little more can be done with anything they have so
far said about it.
[It is important to remind ourselves
that in MEC (quoted above), Lenin clearly
meant by "objectivity" the existence of objects and processes independent of,
and external to, the human mind, which doesn't appear to be what Hegel meant
by this word (no pun intended) -- that is, if it is possible to determine
what Hegel
actually meant by anything he inflicted on his readers. I have said much more about that in Essay
Thirteen Part One.]
[MEC = Materialism and Empirio-Criticism;
i.e., Lenin (1972).]
In
response it could be argued that an
objective view of nature is one which attempts to picture it as it must be
(or as it must have been) without observers, or even as it would be if
there were no 'conscious minds' to observe or interact with it. That is, it aims to depict reality
as it isin-itself (or, perhaps expressed in DM-terms, as it is in
relation to its constantly changing nature).
Of course, this take on 'objectivity' would
clearly undermine what Lenin said about it,
since "Thing-in-Itself" doesn't mean
"Thing-as-observed-by-some-mind-or-other":
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they
remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the
Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both
phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human
concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a
whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source."
[Lenin (1961),
p.208. Italic emphases in the
original.]
Here,
Lenin appears to connect 'objective reality' with what we
determine it to be (even if only partially or "relatively") when we investigate it 'dialectically' (no pun intended
again!). Unfortunately, as usual, the
pronouncements coming from DM-fans on this and other related topics are about as clear and
perspicuous as the
Nicene
Creed. Hence, I leave it to others to make what they can of this interminable dialectical
muddle. I can make no further sense of it.
Independently of that, the use of the word "picture"
itself is something of a give-away. Here is Lenin descending into even greater
confusion:
"For instance, the materialist
Frederick Engels...constantly and without exception speaks in his works of
things and their mental pictures or images, and it is obvious that these
mental images arise exclusively from sensations. (p.32/p.41)
"Anybody who reads Anti-Dühring
and Ludwig Feuerbach with the slightest care will find scores of
instances when Engels speaks of things and their reflections in the human brain,
in our consciousness, thought, etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas
are 'symbols' of things, for consistent materialism must here use 'image',
picture, or reflection instead of 'symbol', as we shall show in detail in
the proper place." (p.33/p.42)
"To say that the purpose of science
is to present a true picture of the world...means to repeat the
materialist point of view. By saying so, one is admitting the objective
reality of the world in relation to our knowledge, of the model in relation
to the picture." (p.197/p.171)
"Only when we throw out the first two
rungs, and only then, can we obtain a picture of the world that truly
corresponds to natural science and materialism. Namely: 1) the physical
world exists independently of the mind of man and existed long prior to man,
prior to any 'human experience'; 2) the psychical, the mind, etc., is the
highest product of matter (i.e., the physical), it is a function of that
particularly complex fragment of matter called the human brain." (p.270/pp.227-28)
[The first page reference is to
Lenin (1972); the
second to Lenin (1962)
(a PDF). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphases alone added.]
Puzzled readers might well wonder how a picture can be 'objective' in an
'independent-of-man' kind of way. Pictures are only such because of the observers who view them.
Eliminate the observer and the 'picturing' role of science (or, indeed,
of
anything) must go with it.
Admittedly, the physical object that constitutes a picture (i.e., in one
sense of that word: the canvas,
the frame, the paint, the paper, the ink, etc., etc.) won't immediately vanish if humanity and all sentient
life perished (or, of course, it won't do so depending on how that itself
happens!), but the verb "to picture" is
transitive.
Without
human
input, no picturing can take place. The Moon, for example, might very
well exist independent of our knowledge of it, and it certainly did so long before
all sentient life evolved on this planet, but it isn't a picture
of anything. Nor is your favourite aunt (if you have one), no matter
how many photographs you have of her. So, if Lenin
wants to use the word "picture", he must abandon 'objectivity' (as he himself
defines it), or tell us what he means by "picture" that doesn't imply
there is an observer, and hence doesn't work transitively, in the manner
indicated above, or in a way that doesn't undermine what he also says about the
'objectivity' of science.
That is, of course, why we find the 'Ideal
Observer' -- or the use of terms that imply that 'virtual observers'
exist 'somewhere' --, cropping up all over the place, supposedly witnessing events
(often those that no human could possibly experience -- I will give a few
examples of this presently).
And that would still be the case even if such an 'observer' only featured in a
'thought-experiment' -- such as, "Imagine
you are travelling on a light beam, at the speed of light"; or "Imagine
you live in two-dimensional Flatland!" -- in connection with many
erstwhile, 'objective' theories or descriptions of nature, or, at least, in relation to their
popularisations. On that basis, the term "objective"
would mean something like "observer-, but not ideal-observer-independent". In other words, science would be 'objective' only if we
conveniently forget what is meant by "observer-independent".
It could be
argued that Lenin employed the nominal form of "picture", not the verb form,
so no transitivity was implied. But the nominal form of "picture" (as Lenin used
it) is relational. Hence, "picture" used that way is a picture of
something, and it is the human observer that does the relating. A picture, as a
picture, isn't just an
inert object, so to speak. The way Lenin used this noun suggests he was fully aware of this. For
example:
"To say that the purpose of science is to present
a true picture of the world...means to repeat the materialist point of
view." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
"Anybody who reads Anti-Dühring and Ludwig
Feuerbach with the slightest care will find scores of instances when Engels
speaks of things and their reflections in the human brain, in our
consciousness, thought, etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas
are 'symbols' of things, for consistent materialism must here use 'image',
picture, or reflection instead of 'symbol'." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
"Only when we throw out the first two rungs, and
only then, can we obtain a picture of the world that truly corresponds to
natural science and materialism." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
So, to
repeat:
One might well wonder how a picture can be 'objective' in an
'independent-of-man' kind of way. Lenin certainly failed to explain how, and, as
far as can be ascertained, no DM-fan since has filled in the gaps.
[Again, if anyone
knows differently: please email me with
the details.]
It could
still be argued that the
objectivity of science is based on the following sort of counterfactual:
R7: Even if there were no
observers, light would still bend as it passed between media.
Naturally,
sentences like R7 won't be controverted at this site (or anywhere else, for that
matter) -- although it is highly questionable whether the word "objective"
is
of any real help here -- but it is worth pointing out that R7 isn't relevant to the
DM-theory
presently being questioned. That is because, if there were no observers, appearances
couldn't contradict reality -- for, in that case, there would plainly be no
'appearances' to any 'contradicting', nobody to do the
'contradicting', and no one to experience a single 'appearance' to begin with!
Eliminate human observers and out go 'appearances' with them. And if there are
none of them, they can't do any 'contradicting', either.
[I am
aware that animals can legitimately be said to 'experience appearances' (if that,
too, is the right phrase), but since we can't know anything about this (and probably
never will!), and because DM-theorists in general totally ignore what animals
experience, no more will be said about this side-issue here. I have, however, added a few comments about
animals to Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
So, 'objectively' speaking (to adopt this
confused mode of expression again, for the moment), 'appearances' can't contradict
"things-in-themselves", even ifthey were to be counterfactually depicted
in the above way. That is because neither are propositional. [On that, see
Note 30.]
It might still be felt that there
must be a contradiction between 'commonsense', 'appearances', ordinary
language
and scientific knowledge if the latter is to make any progress. We no longer
believe many things that once seemed obvious to 'commonsense', or which appeared
to be true. This clearly
means that most of our former erroneous beliefs and theories have been abandoned
or corrected by the progress of science, at some point.
Or so it might be maintained...
However, this latest attempt to rescue the
theory that 'reality contradicts appearances' labours under another confusion --
one based on the belief that 'commonsense' and ordinary language are somehow the same.
They aren't.
[This
topic is examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve (however, some of that
material has already been published
here). There,
it will become apparent that since no one seems to have a clear idea what the
term "commonsense" means (as it is used in Philosophy),
it is
difficult to make much sense of the above objection.]
It is
also worth pointing out that long before the scientific study of nature began,
human beings were well aware of the fact that sticks don't bend in water.
It hardly took a Newton, a Galileo or an Einstein to apprise humanity of that amazing fact! That
isn't to say earlier generations
were able to explain this phenomenon, but their inability to do that plainly has no bearing on the topic in hand.
[Several of the other 'corrections'
that scientific advance has allegedly forced on 'commonsense' will be examined in the
next sub-section, and then again elsewhere at this site -- particularly in Essay
Twelve Part Seven.]
As we have
just seen, this entire topic revolves around the use of two obscure
terms-of-art: "objective" and "subjective". Neither of them has a clear meaning or a fixed use
(when employed metaphysically), even
for, or by, those who think they know what they mean! Of course, that
clearly implies
the distinction between these two words must itself be 'subjective' -- again,
if, for the moment, we accept as legitimate this odd way of talking.
Be this as
it may, if the theory that 'reality contradicts appearances' actually depends on
this unintelligible pair of
terms -- "objective" and "subjective" --
it would prove impossible to determine its veracity, at least, not until those
two words have themselves been given a clear meaning, and, incidentally a 'meaning' that
doesn't itself depend on a single instance of human or observer-motivated input, for that would render
that 'meaning'
'subjective',
too!
Finally, as
noted above, this entire issue reduces discussion to a consideration of contradictory beliefs
-– the erroneous nature of which becomes increasingly obvious as science
progresses. If that is all
it means, it, too, won't be controverted
at this site, for there is nothing in the least bit puzzling about false beliefs, still
less about those that are contradictory, or even those that have been abandoned.
Indeed, and
alas, such beliefs are as common as
grains of sand on Bondi beach.30
In view of
the above, perhaps we should consider examples that illustrate the alleged
conflict between science and 'commonsense' (i.e., disparities that many think have
actually arisen as
and when scientists study nature -- which,
as we have seen, is a topic often alluded to by DM-fans), in order to
try to understand what the supposed 'contradiction' between 'appearance' and 'reality'
is meant to be. To that end, consider the following:
R8: The Sun appears to rise
each morning.
R9: It isn't the case that
the Sun appears to rise each morning.
R10: It isn't the case that
the Sun rises each morning.
Once more, while R8 and R9 might look
contradictory, they fail to match the sort of conflict we seek (or, rather, the
sort that DM-theorists require) since
they're both about appearances. not the supposed clash between
'appearance' and 'reality'. In addition, there is no obvious logical
connection between R10 and either one of R8 and R9. That is because the truth or
falsehood of R10 has no bearing on the truth or falsehood of R8 and R9, nor
vice versa. [Of course, that observation depends on what R10, for example,
itself means. On that, see Note 30a.]30a
In fact,
if the earth were stationary, and it was the Sun
that moved, there would be no difference in the way this phenomenon
manifested itself and hence appeared
to observers.
Furthermore, we
surely wouldn't conclude that R10 had been contradicted if sunrise couldn't be
seen one morning because of, say, fog or thick cloud -- that is, if the Sun didn't appear
(to any local observers) to rise. Nor would R8 become false if, in the future, scientists changed their
minds about the truth of R10 (or its corollary, the idea that the Earth revolves
around the Sun, not the other way round).31
This recurring
'roadblock' is in fact a logical barrier. Indeed, it is more like
a fatal defectin their theory that John Rees and other dialecticians have
clearly overlooked; it isn't possible to form a contradiction
when a
proposition that expresses matters of fact is conjoined with one that reports
only appearances; indeed,
as we saw earlier.
In short, the following schematic sentences:
R11: It appears to be the
case that p; and,
R12: It is not the case that
p,
can't
form a contradictory pair when interpreted in the manner specified and then
conjoined (where p is once again a
propositional variable) in R11c:
R11c:
It appears to be the case that pand it is not the case that
p.
R11 and
R12
aren't even inconsistent, since they can both be true (when they have been
interpreted). Consider the interpreted sentences
R11a and R12a (or their more colloquial equivalents, R11b and R12b):
R11a: It appears to be the
case that it is raining.
R11b: It appears to be raining. [Which
is a more colloquial version of R11a.]
R12a: It is not the case that it is
raining.
R12b: It isn't raining. [Which is,
again, a more
colloquial version of R12a.]
R12c: The
water main next door has just burst.
So, observer NN,
for instance,
might look out of the window and truthfully utter R11b, while her companion, NM,
truthfully comes out with R12b a few seconds later. Both would be speaking the truth
since, unbeknown to NN, there has just been a major fracture in a
neighbouring water pipe which is cascading what looks like rain high into the
air over their house prompting NM to utter R12c, soon after. Even then,
R11b could be true, since, in such circumstances it would still appear
to be raining even when it wasn't.
Or, think
how rain machines work in the film industry:
Video Three: How To Create The
Appearance Of Rain
[Yes, this
is yet another boringlytrite example, but it has the (not inconsiderable) merit of making
things clear enough even for befuddled DM-fans to get the point.]
Moreover, unless we subscribe to the view
that facts and appearances are intelligent, or
are perhaps both argumentative and
belligerent -– that is, we assume they are capable of arguing
among themselves or of engaging in disputation -- it would make no sense to suppose that an appearance could
literally contradict (i.e., "gainsay", "speak against") a true proposition. Not only are
appearances non-linguistic and non-sentient, but as far as propositions and
appearances are concerned, they don't seem to oppose each other
'dialectically' in any
obvious way, nor pick verbal fights with one another. They certainly don't turn into one another (which is what
'dialectical opposites' are supposed to do,
so we are told
by the DM-classics),
nor do they cause/motivate each other to change (which is, once more, what the
DM-classics tell us they all do). In addition, the existence of one doesn't imply the existence of the other (unlike the
existence of the proletariat -- which is implied by, and implies in return, the
existence of the capitalist class, or
so we are also told).
Hence, even ifthis were a
contradiction, it wouldn't be dialectical, whatever else it is.
In that case,
this supposed contradiction makes little sense, even in DM-terms!
Furthermore, the apparent motion of the Sun is the
same today (with respect to sunrise, at least) as it was thousands of years ago.
Admittedly, we might interpret it differently today, but that doesn't affect how things
stillappear to observers. So,
at best, any (possible) DM-'contradiction'
here must be
figurative if it is to apply in any meaningful way. Either that or it must
depend on some sort of terminological re-definition (that has yet to be
justified or explained with any clarity).
If this were a genuine DM-'contradiction', something should have changed at least since
Copernicus wrote what he did. That is because 'dialectical contradictions' cause change,
as already noted.
Has the apparent motion of the Sun each morning changed in all that time? Maybe
'into
its 'opposite' (whatever that is supposed to be)? But that is
again what
the
DM-classics tell us must happen with 'dialectical opposites' caught up in a
'dialectical contradiction' -- they are all supposed to change into their
'opposites' after 'struggling' with them. [Follow the previous link for
extensive textual proof.]
So, has the
apparent motion of the Sun each morning changed into its 'opposite'?
Not
that anyone has noticed.
[Please
email me with
the details if
you disagree.]
Nevertheless, it
could be argued that there are key areas of scientific knowledge that do in
fact contradict appearances, despite what has been argued above. It is
surely true that those who relied on 'commonsense' at one time imagined that the
earth was stationary, whereas scientists now know that not only does our planet rotate on its
axis and orbit the Sun, the Solar System itself orbits the centre of our
Galaxy, which in turn orbits the galactic cluster of which ours is a part. [Here
is an amazing video
of this complex motion.]
In
which case, the following pair of propositions could well illustrate the intended contradiction
here:
R13: The earth moves.
R14: It is not the case that
the earth moves.
Even though
these two sentences certainly form a contradictory pair they aren't what we are looking
for --
since neither of them is about
appearances.
So, we hit yet another non-dialectical brick wall...
In addition,
John Rees seemed to be interested in
contradictory pairs whereboth halves were true (or which reflect
'contradictory states of affairs/processes', or those that somehow coexist -- i.e., involving seemingly 'correct' appearances which are
'contradicted' by genuinely 'objective' underlying 'realities'), otherwise the alleged superiority of
DL over
FL would be
illusory. That is because, as already noted, both halves of a DM-style
contradiction must both be true together -- or, once more, they must reflect
co-existing 'contradictory states of affairs/processes', unlike their less
contentious FL-cousins.
[Henceforth,
to save on needless repetition I will simply refer to "co-existing
'contradictory states of affairs'", but it should be assumed I mean "co-existing
'contradictory states of affairs/processes'", unless stated otherwise.]
It should hardly need pointing out, but John Rees (and other DM-theorists) would
hardly be interested in pairs of supposedly contradictory propositions if they
thought
both were false, or that when one was true the other was false. [Or even
that they both failed to reflect coexistent 'contradictory states of affairs'.] But, because DM-theorists
without exception fail to specify clearly what they actually do mean by
"contradiction" in such circumstances (or, indeed, in any
circumstances), it is impossible to say whether even that supposition is
itself correct, or hopelessly wide of the mark.
In response
to what has gone before, it could be objected that
contemporary, post-Copernican Astrophysics in fact
contradicts Aristotelian and Ptolemaic
theories about the immobility of the
Earth. Of course,
that is itself a controversial interpretation of the relationship between
ancient, medieval, early modern and contemporary science -– and one that isn't obviously
correct. [I will explain why in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Be this as
it may, one clear consequence of
the TOR is that, with a suitable change of
reference frame it is
(mathematically) possible to
model the Earth as stationary while the Sun orbits it.
That done, the above 'contradiction' simply disappears. In which case,
the only necessary 'correction' to Aristotelian/Ptolemaic
Physics (in this respect) would involve the abandonment of the idea that the
Earth is situated in a unique
frame of reference. But science itself can neither confirm nor confute
that particular metaphysical (or even theological) assumption.
On this
specific topic,
physicist, Robert
Mills, had this to say:
"Another way of stating the
principle of equivalence, a way that better reflects its name, is to say
that all
reference frames, including accelerated reference frames, are equivalent, that
the laws of Physics take the same form in any reference frame…. And it is
also correct to say that the Copernican view (with the sun at the centre) and
the Ptolemaic view (with the earth at the centre) are equally valid and equally
consistent!" [Mills (1994), pp.182-83. Spelling altered to conform with UK
English. Bold emphasis and link added. Italic emphasis in the original.]
It is worth recalling that the late Professor
Mills was co-inventor of
Yang-Mills Theory in
Gauge Quantum Mechanics, and was
therefore neither a scientific
novice nor a fringe crank.
Add to that what
noted Astronomer,
Fred Hoyle,
had to say:
"Instead of adding further
support to the heliocentric picture of the planetary motions the Einstein theory
goes in the opposite direction, giving increased respectability to the
geocentric picture. The relation of the two pictures is reduced to a mere
coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that
any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a
coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of
view.... Today we cannot say that the
Copernican theory is 'right' and the Ptolemaic theory 'wrong' in any meaningful
physical sense...." [Hoyle (1973), pp.78-79. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
"We now know that the
difference between a heliocentric theory and a geocentric theory is one of
relative motion only, and that such a difference has no physical significance.
But such an understanding had to await Einstein's theory of gravitation in order
to be fully clarified." [Hoyle (1975), p.416.]
"Thus from Einstein's point
of view Ptolemy and Copernicus are equally right. What point of view is chosen
is a matter of expediency. For the mechanics of the planetary system the view of
Copernicus is certainly the more convenient. But it is meaningless to call the
gravitational fields that occur when a different system of reference is chosen
'fictitious' in contrast with the 'real' fields produced by near masses: it is
just as meaningless as the question of the 'real' length of a rod...in the
special theory of relativity. A gravitational field is neither 'real' nor
'fictitious' in itself. It has no meaning at all independent of the choice of
coordinates, just as in the case of the length of a rod." [Born (1965), p.345.
Bold emphasis added. I
owe this reference to Rosser (1967).]
However,
this particular idea pre-dates the TOR; as Robert DiSalle notes (who also
provides the background details to these and other
related theoretical
issues), it goes back at least to
Leibniz,
and maybe even Galileo:
"The term 'reference frame' was coined in the 19th century,
but it has a long prehistory, beginning, perhaps, with the emergence of the
Copernican theory. The significant point was not the replacement of the earth by
the sun as the centre of all motion in the universe, but the recognition of both
the earth and the sun as merely possible points of view from which the motions
of the celestial bodies may be described. This implied that the basic task of
Ptolemaic astronomy -- to represent the planetary motions by combinations of
circular motions -- could take any point to be fixed, without sacrificing
predictive power. Therefore, as Copernicus suggested in the opening arguments
of On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, the choice of any
particular point required some justification on grounds other than mere
successful astronomical prediction. The most persuasive grounds, seemingly, were
physical: we don't perceive the physical effects that we would expect the
earth's motion to produce. Copernicus himself noted, however, in reply, that we
can indeed undergo motions that are physically imperceptible, as on a smoothly
moving ship.... At least in some circumstances, we can easily treat our moving
point of view as if it were at rest.
"As
the basic programme of Ptolemy and Copernicus gave way to that of early
classical mechanics as developed by Galileo, this equivalence of points of view
was made more precise and explicit. Galileo was unable to present a decisive
argument for the motion of the earth around the sun. He demonstrated, however,
that the Copernican view does not contradict our experience of a seemingly
stable earth. He accomplished this through a principle that, in the precise form
that it takes in Newtonian mechanics, has become known as the 'principle of
Galilean relativity': mechanical experiments will have the same results in a
system in uniform motion that they have in a system at rest. Arguments against
the motion of the earth had typically appealed to experimental evidence -- e.g.,
that a stone dropped from a tower falls to the base of the tower, instead of
being left behind as the earth rotates during its fall. But Galileo argued
persuasively that such experiments would happen just as they do whether the
earth were moving or not, provided that the motion is sufficiently uniform....
Galileo's account of this was not precisely the principle that we call 'Galilean
relativity'; he seems to have thought that a system in uniform circular motion,
such as a frame at rest on the rotating earth, would be indistinguishable from a
frame truly at rest. The principle was named in his honour because he had
grasped the underlying idea of dynamical equivalence: he understood the
composition of motion, and understood how individual motions of bodies within a
system -- such as the fall of a stone from a tower -- are composed with the
motion of the system as a whole. This principle of composition, combined with
the idea that bodies maintain their uniform motion, formed the basis for the
idea of dynamically indistinguishable frames of reference....
"Leibniz, later, articulated a more general 'equipollence of
hypotheses':
in any system of interacting bodies, any hypothesis that any
particular body is at rest is equivalent to any other. Therefore neither
Copernicus' nor Ptolemy's view can be true -- though one may be judged simpler
than the other -- because both are merely possible hypothetical interpretations
of the same relative motions. This principle clearly defines (what we would
call) a set of reference frames. They differ in their arbitrary choices of a
resting point or origin, but agree on the relative positions of bodies at any
moment and their changing relative distances through time...." [DiSalle
(2020). Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphasis in the original,
bold emphases and link added. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
[Although,
DiSalle also points out that Leibniz's equivalence principle was actually
inconsistent with his [Leibniz's] theory of motion. It took the TOR to sort that conundrum out.]
Of course, as Leibniz argued, it could always
be claimed that Copernican theory is
simpler than the Ptolemaic system (i.e.,
thereby recommending the adoption, or the wielding, of 'Ockham's
Razor'), but until we
receive a clear sign that nature works in accordance with our notion of simplicity (or
cares a fig about it -- that is, if 'we' have any such notion), this response won't wash.
"They were so sure, they bet billions on
it. For decades physicists told us they knew where the next discoveries were
waiting. They built accelerators, shot satellites into space, and planted
detectors in underground mines. The world prepared to ramp up the physics envy.
But where physicists expected a breakthrough, the ground wouldn't give. The
experiments didn't reveal anything new. What failed physicists wasn't their
math; it was their choice of math. They believed that Mother Nature was
elegant, simple, and kind about providing clues. They thought they could
hear her whisper when they were talking to themselves. Now Nature spoke, and she
said nothing, loud and clear." [Hossenfelder (2018), p.vi. Paragraphs merged;
bold emphasis added.]
Again, this is quite apart from the fact that
'simplicity' itself is impossible to define in non-question-begging terms. For example,
which is the simpler of these two formulae?
(1) θ = Ae-kt
(2) θ = At2
+ Bt + C
Plainly, (2)
is algebraically 'simpler', but (1) is 'simpler' if we judge simplicity on the
basis of the number of terms employed. Naturally, the problem deciding which
'law' (when expressed mathematically, for example) is 'simpler' becomes all the
more difficult as the complexity level rises. [On that, see Losee (2001),
pp.228-29.] Incidentally, anyone who thinks nature always 'chooses' the simplest
option available should perhaps compare contemporary High Energy
Physics with
Aristotelian Physics. That should
disabuse them of the idea
that Ockham's Razor is a sensible method for scientists to utilise -- not
that there is much evidence they have ever done so. [A few years
ago, Marxist Philosopher of Science,
Elliott Sober, wrote
a rather complex and highly technical book entitled Simplicity -- i.e.,
Sober (1975) --, clearly failing to realise the irony involved.]
Of course,
the above interpretation of the relation between the Copernican and the
Ptolemaic systems suffers from the serious problem of trying to explain how, if
we fix the frame of reference so that the Earth is stationary while the rest of
the heavens revolve around it, the 'fixed stars' manage to travel quite so far, so fast. Indeed, if they complete one revolution per day
(as they must given this view), then they will have to travel many, many times faster
than the speed of light to allow the stars and galaxies billions of light years
distant to complete a full circuit in 24 hours. [Naturally, that assumes the 'fixed
stars' are thousands, millions or billions of light years away.] Stars in our
Galaxy would have to travel many thousands of times greater than the speed of light while
those on the outer fringes of the observable universe would have to exceed it
several billion fold.
Even more
puzzling still: if any point anywhere can
be taken as the centre of a stationary frame of reference with everything else
moving in relation
to it, then, for example,
when someone sets off for a walk, and they are still considered stationary,
while the rest of the world breezes past them (again, given this
'revised' view),
one might well wonder why
every other object,
and especially every other human being, fails to register the
acceleration that they must undergo in order to accommodate that individual's ambulatory proclivities. Or, indeed, why water in nearby canals,
rivers or lakes, for instance, doesn't
slosh about, why drinks in cups or glasses don't spill when anyone 'gets up' to 'leave' a bar
or café.
Or even why houses or flats don't collapse as if hit by an earthquake
whenever anyone sets off on a sprint. And so on...
It won't do
at this point to complain that the above aren't inertial frames of reference but
involve
accelerated (i.e., non-inertial) frames of reference. The fact
that not all of the above experience accelerations (and the 'inertial forces'
associated with them) still tells us which object(s) have changed their motion and
which haven't.
So, let us assume that the relative motion between the ground and someone who sets off
for a walk is zero before any change in motion, and that after this individual sets off it is a steady,
but not now accelerating,
4
km/hr. However, after she sets off the ground isn't moving any faster
relative to that individual (no matter what the mathematics of relative motion
might tell us -- the ground hasn't accelerated!), that individual is
moving 4 km/hr faster than before relative to the ground. In which case,
even though a mathematical description of the relative velocities here can't
discriminate between these two scenarios (i.e., between questions concerning which
one, the earth or the walker, is now moving faster relative to the other than
they were before), a physical description, and more importantly our experience
of the world, most certainly can distinguish between the two. If we were to argue
that the ground is now actually moving 4 km/hr faster relative to the walker
than it was before, we would then be forced to conclude that the earth
(not the walker) must have undergone an acceleration. But, that was actually the
case with only one of the two factors involved -- the walker herself, not the ground. That is, of course, just a roundabout way of
saying that we don't live in a mathematical universe (howsoever useful
mathematics proves to be!); or even perhaps that the world we
occupy and
experience in isn't a mathematical objector structure.
Indeed, if we were to press
such
considerations much further, they could stand as an effective 'common sense' refutation
of a core principle of Relativity Theory.
Well, we should perhaps leave such puzzles to the
experts to sort out...
[I
posted this conundrum on a physics discussion board a few years ago, but the
answers I received
were incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't think the universe is a
mathematical object of some sort. (I certainly failed to understand them, and I
have a mathematics degree!) Indeed, the ensuing discussion showed that if
you know enough technical jargon, you can make anything appear to work (rather
like the numerous word salads that were concocted by Medieval Theologians who
tried to square Roman Catholic Theology with Aristotelian Philosophy; anyone who has read enough of
that material will know
exactly what I am talking about). This also illustrates how much disagreement there is among
physicists over such basic issues as space, time and motion (indeed, as noted in
Essay Eleven Part One and
Essay Five)! A perusal of any advanced physics
discussion board or forum will amply confirm this fact. For example, I have been asking
Professors of Physics on Quora for the last eight years to explain what energy is
(for goodness sake!). They all
either ignore the question or change the subject pretty quickly. Of those who do
deign to answer, each one gives a different explanation, which soon falls
apart on further questioning.]
[On this in general, see Copleston (2003b),
pp.423-32; 559-63, Kretzmann, et al (1988), and Rubenstein (2003). See
also the comments and references listed earlier.]
Having said that, it is worth pointing out
that in relation to the relative motion of heavenly bodies, the above
local considerations don't apply (except, maybe, the one related to the
superluminal velocity of the orbiting stars). This might
now serve to illustrate
the fact that a mathematical theory could even appearto be highly successful when applied to the entire universe, and might make very accurate predictions
(which are subsequently confirmed by observation and measurement),
but when it comes to its application to the world as we know it, or as we
experience it locally, it might not seem
quite so sensible, never mind believable.
[Hossenfelder (2018).]
In which case,
the TOR makes very poor predictions about our experience of the everyday
world. [I will say much more about
that in Essay Thirteen Part
Two. In the meantime on this topic, readers might like to watch
this video which
argues (knowledgeably and convincingly!) that General Relativity implies that, contrary to appearances
and everyday experience, it is the earththat rises to meet a 'falling body'; the body itself doesn't fall to
earth! Make of that
what you can.]
Nevertheless, even if the above considerations represented an accurate
depiction of the relation between these two theories (the Ptolemaic and the
Copernican), they would
still fail to be of much use to DM-fans -– that is, not unless they abandon the
requirement that 'dialectical contradictions' should both be true (or that they
should reflect 'co-existing contradictory states of affairs'). But, as noted
earlier, both sets of propositions (concerning the Ptolemaic and the Copernican
systems) can't be true at once, given scientists' current commitment to the
superiority of the latter over the former. And should any dialecticians decide
that the Equivalence Principle vindicates their approach (since it allows us to
regard both systems as equally valid), that would be no help, either. That is
because it merely says
the validity of each system depends on the frame of reference chosen, which
in turn means
that when one frame is chosen, the other option falls by the wayside (until
a new
frame is chosen, of course). DM-fans certainly can't appeal to the alleged
contradiction between 'appearance' and 'reality' here, since there is no
'reality' for anything to contradict until a reference frame has been chosen --
which, naturally, makes each separate configuration a creature of convention and
not the least bit 'objective' (or not in the way that
Lenin defined "objectivity"). It is also worth
recalling that there aren't just two competing reference frames up for grabs
here; any point in space (and, plainly, there are countless
septillions of them!) is equally
valid in this respect.
It might,
however, be interesting to see whether or not there are any DM-theorists (who
accept the Equivalence Principle) brave enough to countenance the rather
startling consequences that follow from it (several of which were outlined above), as well astheir opposites. Would
they, therefore, be happy to accept that the stars both (really) travel many times faster than the
speed of light and that they don't, at the same time? Or that when dialectician, D(1),
for example, sets
off from her flat to join a demonstration, she in fact remains stationary
while the demonstration
actually comes to her (without anyone in that demonstration noticing
the subsequent acceleration as she 'set off from home' -- in the way
they feel such forces when sat in a car as it accelerates/decelerates) --, and it
doesn't, she moves toward it.
Or, even this puzzling conundrum: when comrade, D(1),
who is still the centre of a suitable frame of reference, dives into a swimming pool, she
remains stationary but is
immediately confronted by a wall of water accelerating upwards to meet her, but
with no distortion to its shape and with no new ripples. That is, every part of that body of water accelerates upwards at the same time and
the same rate,
behaving like a perfectly rigid body, not a liquid. Must DM-fans accept
that scenario and its opposite?
[LEM = Law of Excluded Middle;
follow the link below for more details.]
Returning to saner
questions: as I pointed out
earlier (but in more detail in
Essay Five), the only 'contradiction' that
can be cobbled-together in this specific case would involve an
undischarged ambiguity:
A1: The Earth moves.
A2: The Earth does not move.
But, this
apparent 'contradiction' would vanish just as soon as the following equivocation was resolved:
A3: In Inertial Frame, IF(1), the
Earth moves.
A4: In Inertial Frame, IF(2), the
Earth does not move.
But,
this is no more a contradiction than the following would be (which
will be
examined again, below):
R15: The strikers moved.
R16: It is not the case that
the strikers moved.
This pair of
sentences certainly looks
contradictory (especially if both relate to the same strikers at the same
time, and both wereactually true), but that would cease to be the case when it
is revealed that the said strikers were sat on a train that was travelling at
80 miles per hour. On the train, these militants could be sat perfectly still,
but to an observer on a platform they would appear to be moving at speed. Since
all motion is relative to an inertial frame (at least as far as the
mathematics is concerned), the beliefs motivated by one set of
observations would only appear to contradict those motivated by
another. Hence, as soon as different frames of reference (or, perhaps, different
background circumstances) are taken into account, the 'contradiction' simply disappears. This scenario would be deemed contradictory only by neurotic
controversialists and confused DM-fans.
[Some of the latter
might be tempted to respond that the above sort of contradiction isn't the type
they are interested in; their focus centres on 'dialectical contradictions'. I
have dealt with objections like that in Essays
Five and
Eight Parts One,
Two and
Three, where we will see that
dialecticians themselves haven't a clue what a 'dialectical contradiction' is --
or if they have, they have kept that secret to themselves remarkably well for over
200 years. (By "dialectician" here I am, of course, referring to Hegel,
subsequent Hegelians and DM-fans themselves -- but that doesn't mean
I am conflating them all, just making the point that none of them seem to be
able to say with any clarity what a 'dialectical contradiction' actually is!
Indeed, academic DM-fans become rather
abusive when that fact is pointed out to them.)]
However, if
Aristotelian/Ptolemaic astronomy [APA] is now regarded by DM-theorists as
'representing' or 'reflecting appearances' (or perhaps even expressing -- now or
in the past -- the 'commonsense view' of
the universe), and they still hold APA true, or 'partially'/'relatively true' --
whether or not
they are 'contradicted' by 'reality' -- then it seems that they must also be
prepared to accept the truth, or 'partial'/'relative truth', of any number of
fantastical, debunked, erroneous or otherwise misguided theories that were accepted in the
past. Andif that is so, they must
also be prepared to accept the truth, or 'partial'/'relative truth', of what
were once viewed as 'commonsense' ideas –- such as, say, the ancient belief that
a pregnant woman who sees
a hare will give birth to a child with a hare-lip, or, the (early modern)
'urban myth' that some women not only can, they actually have given birth to live
rabbits. [Pickover (2000).] It seems they would have to accept the truth (or
'relative truth') of fables and 'urban
myths' like these, and their negations! If not, and
they only reject (as totally false) what is considered 'weird', that
would underline, yet again, their fondness for special pleading.
[Or, once
again, they will have (surreptitiously) applied the LEM!]
If we are meant to countenance
DM-'contradictions' where both halves are 'true' (or they represent
'coexistent contradictory states of affairs'), as well as the strange idea
that there is some truth even in the most outlandish of theories (perhaps as
knowledge 'spirals' in on 'absolute truth' -- that topic has been covered
in much more detail in Essay Eleven
Part One; some of
that material was
re-posted earlier), then the above conclusions
seem unavoidable.
Here, again, is Cornforth:
"Just as truths are for the
most part only approximate and contain the possibility of being converted into
untruths, so are many errors found not to be absolute falsehoods but to contain
a germ of truth.... We should recognise, then,
that certain erroneous views, including idealist views, could represent, in
their time, a contribution to truth -- since they were, perhaps, the only ways
in which certain truths could first begin to come to expression...." [Cornforth
(1963),
pp.138-39. Bold emphasis added. Paragraphs merged.]
[Of
course, anyone tempted to cling to unvarnished Hegelianism a little too enthusiastically
will have to accept a
radically different view of
truth (i.e., they will have to regard it as the degree of conformity -- or lack of
it
-- between an 'object' and its
'concept'). But, as we saw in
Part One of this Essay, that
theory only works if another (ancient) syntactical error were (instead) correct -- i.e.,
the
belief that concepts can be treated as objects (or the Proper Names thereof) --, and hence that such
an 'object' can be put in some sort of relation with another
'object'. (More on that in
Essay Twelve (when it is
published in full). See also,
here and
here.)]
On the other hand, if an antiquated, obsolete
or debunked theory is to be rejected because it is based on 'appearances', not
'reality', then DM-style 'contradictions' can't feature in it anywhere, after all. That is because
in that case we would have alleged truths (those supposedly depicting 'reality')
facing putative falsehoods (those allegedly encapsulating 'commonsense',
ancient, or obsolete views of, or ideas about, 'reality'). We wouldn't have
two truths, still less two 'partial truths' (i.e., those belonging to an
outmoded conception confronting the less 'partially-true' ideas expressed in or
by more
recent scientific theories) confronting one another.
Howsoever
alternatives
like these are
re-shaped or reshuffled there
appear to be no winning cards in any of the hands DM-theorists have dealt, or
could have dealt, themselves.
This means that we still don't have a
DM-'contradiction', even in this relativelyclear case. Nor are we
ever likely to obtain one --, and that is so for the reasons set out above.
Even if a case could be made
in favour of the idea that scientific propositions contradict indicative sentences
that 'gave expression to
appearances', that still
wouldn't achieve all that dialecticians require of that idea. That is because (as
argued at length in
Essay Five)
propositions that might look contradictory -- and which are both
thought to be true -– would normally be disambiguated, or given a context
against which they might be understood that
resolved the apparent contradiction. [Follow the above link for several
clear examples.]
And this latest assertion is no mere 'bourgeois'
prejudice or diktat. Consider the following case, again, which is analogous
to the previous pair:
As we saw
earlier, when a frame of reference is
supplied, the 'contradiction' simply vanishes.
And it won't do to complain about the trite
nature of R15 and R16 --, that is, not unless (or until) DM-theorists tell us
what
they mean by the obscure phrase "dialectical contradiction". [Since this
topic has been dealt with more fully in Essay Eight Parts
One, Two and
Three, no more will be said about
it here.]
All this is
quite apart from the fact that the DM-literature itself contains little other than
trite examples -- e.g., boiling or freezing water, contradictory seeds,
cooks who add too much salt to
soup, characters
who speak "prose all their lives", the differential fighting ability of
Mamelukes, foxes that run away from larger animals, "cone bearings", "Yea, Yea"/"Nay, Nay", etc., etc.
The sad fact
is that DM is
Mickey Mouse Scienceon stilts, so DM-fans have no room to point their
ideologically-compromised fingers at critics like yours truly (at least in this
respect).
It is also quite apart from the fact that relative motion is hardly a "trite"
topic in Physics!
As seems
clear, 'apparent contradictions' aren't presented to us totally 'naked', as it were. They arise either from ambiguities inherent in
our use of language or from a lack of clarity (etc.) in the original 'problem' (or so it
was argued at length in
Essay Five).
In the above case (i.e., R15 and R16), the 'contradiction' plainly arose because of an
unacknowledged change of reference frame.
While this
makes such
'contradictions' sensitive to choice of reference frame, it wouldn't
automatically imply they were dependent on
'coexistent contradictory states of affairs'. However, that was certainly not the point
DM-theorists wanted to make about the 'contradictions' of interest to them. And yet, those mentioned above were
either artefacts of a
conventionalised choice of reference frame or they were a direct result of
confused thinking/ambiguous language. They were certainly not based on 'reality' (whatever that
means).33
Philosophers and scientists
often
confuse ordinary language with 'commonsense',
running the two together, or arguing that they (somehow) depend on each other. [In
relation to this
topic in general, see Peels and Woudenberg (2020).] One aspect of the (usual) complaint
here appears to be that the vernacular contains or expresses 'commonsense'.
As we have seen in previous
subsections,
the 'contradiction' between 'appearance' and 'reality' is supposedly
illustrated by the 'clash' between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican astronomical
systems (or the latter's contemporary, more sophisticated version), that is between early modern theories that the Earth isn't sat
motionless at the centre of the Universe (but rotates on its axis as it orbits the Sun), and earlier
theories that appear to assert the opposite. Currently, those who tend to
conflate the vernacular with 'commonsense', or who see the former
infused by, or even 'contaminated' with, the latter also have in mind the supposed
connection between so-called "folk theories" of nature (e.g., that the Earth is stationary while the
Sun moves), human psychology (that we have beliefs and form
intentions, etc., etc) and everyday language. Given this widely held view of
'commonsense', it would seem misguided or even mistaken to use words like
"sunrise" if the Sun doesn't actually rise. Along with other notorious examples
(some of which will be reviewed in Essay Thirteen Part Two), this is supposed to
show that ordinary language still contains words and concepts based on, or derived
from, defunct metaphysical, religious or quasi-scientific myths, fables, ideas, beliefs and
doctrines.
[At this point, Dialectical Marxists tend to add to that list ideological
factors that have also had a significant impact in this respect.] On all
sides, this is taken to mean that the vernacular is defective, at least when
used in areas that impinge on topics that are the special reserve of science, philosophy
and political theory.
[On this in
general,
see Lecercle and Riley (2004), Lecercle (2006), pp.164-72, Voloshinov (1973),
Collins (1999, 2000, 2003, 2004), Doherty (2000), Holborow (1999),
McNally (2001, 2004),
Parrington (1997), Barrett (1991). But the
literature on this is vast and includes work published by (and about)
Foucault,
Vygotsky,
Althusser,
Voloshinov, and
Orwell, among many others. I have dealt with many of
these authors and their ideas in Essay Thirteen
Part Three. It
is important to add that (at this site), use of the word "commonsense"
is restricted to its theoretical
and philosophical meaning (obscure though that is!), while the phrase
"common sense" is employed in its ordinarily sense --
as in, for example, "Use your common sense! Only an idiot would put her hand in a lion's cage!".
Whether or not there is any connection at all between these two widely differing
uses/meanings will be put to one side
for now.]
Notwithstanding the above, even if such (apparent) incongruities had anything to do with
common sense, that would still fail to show the
vernacular depended upon, or even encapsulated, outmoded scientific, metaphysical
or ideological beliefs and
theories. This can be seen from the fact that all of us (scientists included!)
still employ terms like "sunrise", despite our acceptance of
post-APA theories of the Universe. We aren't to suppose that when
scientists, for example, use the word "sunrise" they do so ignorantly, ironically,
duplicitously,
or thoughtlessly.
Moreover, unless scientists and philosophers used -- and already understood
-- terms
taken from ordinary language, they could scarcely begin to correct common sense,
always assuming that it needed correcting, or
even that that is what scientists or philosophers in fact do, or wished to do.
[On
this topic, see Baz (2012), Button, et al
(1995), Cowley (1991), Cook (1979, 1980), Ebersole (1967, 1979a, 1979b), Hacker
(1982a, 1982b, 1987), Hallett (2008), Hanfling (1984, 1989, 2000), Peels and
Woudenberg (2020), Ryle (1960),
Macdonald (1938), Stebbing (1958) and Stroud (2000). This issue will be
discussed in much greater detail in Essays Twelve Part Seven and Thirteen Part Two. Since
writing this, I have come across a somewhat similar approach to the line
promoted
at this site in
Frank (1950), Chapter Seven.]
Nevertheless, a much more revealing fact about ordinary language -– and one all
too easily
missed -- is that all of us can readily form, and utter, the negations of sentences that
contain (supposedly) obsolete notions -- like those about sunrise (illustrated
below). Consider,
for instance, the following hackneyed example (quoted earlier):
"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun
appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels
around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order
to reveal the reality that is disguised within." [Quoted from
here.]
In relation
to this we can clearly form/utter the following pair of sentences:
S1: The Sun rises in the morning.
S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises
in the morning.
First
of all, the fact that we can form the negation of every indicative empirical
sentence capable of being written or uttered (in every language on the planet
that has the relevant vocabulary), like the two illustrated above, demonstrates that the vernacular is neither a
theory nor is it dependent upon one. That is because -- to use another argument
I owe to
Peter Geach
(although I have since seen a somewhat similar remark in Keat and Urry (1982))33a
-- no viable theory could countenance the negation of all its
empirical propositions, as ordinary language readily does.
Naturally, this claim is somewhat controversial -- but,only for those intent on depreciating
or denigrating ordinary language.
[Ordinary language will be defended in depth in Essay Twelve Part Seven; some
of that material has already been posted
here.]
Second,
scientific theories extend, develop and even replace ordinary words, using
typographically similar terms that possess new meanings (such as "time", "space",
"wave", "solid" and "spin", etc.), which meanings have almost invariably been modified by
suitable re-definitions -- or they have been analogically or metaphorically re-configured. In addition, scientists
introduce technical terms
that weren't previously present in the vernacular but which subsequently make
their appearance in ordinary speech -- such as "electricity", "protein", "placebo"
and "radar" (as in "It's not even on my radar!"). Or which, in many cases, might not
translate across into the vernacular -- such as "allele",
"superposition"
and "2,4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine". But, unless revisions and innovations
like these had been, or could be, linked to
ordinary language
and practice at some point, at some levelor in some way, their meaning
would be completely unclear, if not entirely indeterminate, even to the
scientist(s) who coined them. For example, consider the etymology of
"protein":
"1844, from
French protéine, coined 1838 by Dutch chemist
Gerhard Johan Mulder (1802-1880),
perhaps on suggestion of Berzelius, from Greek prōteios 'the first
quality,' from prōtos 'first' (see proto-)
+ -ine (2).
Originally a theoretical substance thought to be a constituent of food essential
to life, further studies of the substances he was working with overthrew this,
but the words protein and proteid continued to be used in
international work on the matter and also for other organic compounds; the
modern use as a general name for a class of bodies arose in German. The
confusion became so great a committee was set up in 1907 to sort out the
nomenclature, which it did, giving protein its modern meaning ('class of
organic compounds forming an important part of all living organisms') and
banishing proteid." [Quoted from
here; accessed
28/04/2024. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Italic emphases in the original. Two links added.]
[A more
detailed history of the introduction of this term can be found in
Vickery (1950).]
Or,
"allele":
"1931 in genetics, from German allel,
abbreviation of allelomorph 'alternative
form of a gene' (1902), coined from Greek allel- 'one
another' (from allos "other;"
from PIE root *al- (1)
"beyond") + morphē "form,"
a word of uncertain etymology." [Quoted from
here; accessed
28/04/2024. Quotation marks altered
to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link and italic
emphases in the original.]
Readers will no doubt have noticed that these words
had
originally been linked with, or came from, familiar ordinary terms that were already in
common use. That
would have to be the case if the one coining them wanted to be understood.
Naturally, that doesn't imply the meaning of such terms won't or can't change over the
years -- or even perhaps immediately. An excellent example of that is how the word "electron" changed markedly
after it was coined by
George Stoney in 1891 (which topic will be considered in more detail in
Essay Thirteen Part Two); it was introduced in:
"1891 by Irish physicist George J. Stoney (1826-1911) from electric + -on,
as in ion (q.v.)."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 28/04/2024. Links and emphases in the original.]
And concerning "electric"
itself (concerning which the same comments could be made), we read:
"1640s, first used in English by physician
Sir
Thomas Browne (1605-1682), apparently coined as Modern Latin electricus (literally
'resembling amber') by English physicist
William Gilbert (1540-1603) in
treatise 'De
Magnete' (1600), from Latin electrum 'amber,'
from Greek ēlektron 'amber'
(Homer,
Hesiod,
Herodotus), also 'pale gold' (a compound of 1 part silver to 4
of gold); which is of unknown origin. Originally the word
described substances which, like amber, attract other substances when rubbed.
Meaning 'charged with electricity' is from 1670s; the physical force so called
because it first was generated by rubbing amber. In many modern instances, the
word is short for electrical.
Figurative sense is attested by 1793. Electric
light is from 1767."
[Quoted from
here; accessed
28/04/2024. Emphases in the
original; five links added.]
If that
weren't the case, it would mean theories that employed such terms would be incomprehensible. Which
might be partof
the reason why many leading scientists tell us, for instance, that no one understands
Quantum Mechanics:
"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory can't
possibly have understood it." Niels
Bohr
"If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand
it."
John
Wheeler
"Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense."
Roger
Penrose
"There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the
theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might
have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught
on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people
understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than
twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands
quantum mechanics…. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you
will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a
delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can
possibly avoid it, 'but how can it be like that?' because you will get 'down the
drain,' into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows
how it can be like that." [Feynman
(1992), p.129. Bold emphases added.]
Video Four: "Nobody
Understands Quantum Mechanics"
Clued-in physicists already seem to be fully aware of the fact that the language they use presents, or
even generates, serious problems. Here, for example, is leading Physicist, the
late
David Peat:
"It hasn't been a great couple of years for theoretical physics. Books such as
Lee Smolin's
The Trouble with Physics and
Peter Woit's
Not Even Wrong embody the frustration felt across the field that
string
theory, the brightest hope for
formulating a theory that would explain the universe in one beautiful equation,
has been getting nowhere. It's quite a comedown from the late 1980s and 1990s,
when a grand unified theory seemed just around the corner and physicists
believed they would soon, to use
Stephen
Hawking's words, 'know the mind of
God'. New Scientist even ran an article called 'The end of physics'. So what went wrong? Why are physicists finding it so hard to make that final
step? I believe part of the answer was hinted at by the great physicist
Niels Bohr, when he wrote: 'It is
wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out about nature. Physics
concerns what we can say about nature.' At first sight that seems strange.
What has language got to do with it? After all, we see physics as about
solving equations relating to facts about the world -- predicting a comet's
path, or working out how fast heat flows along an iron bar. The language we
choose to convey question or answer is not supposed to fundamentally affect the
nature of the result.
"Nonetheless, that assumption started to unravel one night in the spring of
1925, when the young
Werner
Heisenberg worked out the basic
equations of what became known as quantum mechanics. One of the immediate
consequences of these equations was that they did not permit us to know with
total accuracy both the position and the velocity of an electron: there would
always be a degree of irreducible uncertainty in these two values. Heisenberg needed an explanation for
this. He reasoned thus: suppose a very delicate (hypothetical) microscope is
used to observe the electron, one so refined that it uses only a single photon
of energy to make its measurement. First it measures the electron's position,
then it uses a second photon to measure the speed, or velocity. But in making
this latter observation, the second photon has imparted a little kick to the
electron and in the process has shifted its position. Try to measure the
position again and we disturb the velocity. Uncertainty arises, Heisenberg
argued, because every time we observe the universe we disturb its intrinsic
properties.
"However, when Heisenberg showed his
results to Bohr, his mentor, he had the ground cut from under his feet. Bohr
argued that Heisenberg had made the unwarranted assumption that an electron is
like a billiard ball in that it has a 'position' and possesses a 'speed'. These
are classical notions, said Bohr, and do not make sense at the quantum level.
The electron does not necessarily have an intrinsic position or speed, or even a
particular path. Rather, when we try to make measurements, quantum nature
replies in a way we interpret using these familiar concepts. This is where language comes in.
While Heisenberg argued that 'the meaning of quantum theory is in the
equations', Bohr pointed out that physicists still have to stand around the
blackboard and discuss them in German, French or English. Whatever the
language, it contains deep assumptions about space, time and causality --
assumptions that do not apply to the quantum world. Hence, wrote Bohr, 'we
are suspended in language such that we don't know what is up and what is down'.
Trying to talk about quantum reality generates only confusion and paradox.
Unfortunately Bohr's arguments are often put aside today as some physicists
discuss ever more elaborate mathematics, believing their theories to truly
reflect subatomic reality. I remember a conversation with string theorist
Michael Green
a few years after he and
John
Schwartz
published a paper in 1984 that was instrumental in making string theory
mainstream. Green remarked that when
Einstein
was formulating the theory of relativity he had thought deeply about the
philosophical problems involved, such as the nature of the categories of space
and time. Many of the great physicists of Einstein's generation read deeply
in philosophy.
"In contrast, Green felt, string
theorists had come up with a mathematical formulation that did not have the same
deep underpinning and philosophical inevitability. Although superstrings were
for a time an exciting new approach, they did not break conceptual boundaries in
the way that the findings of Bohr, Heisenberg and Einstein had done.
The American quantum theorist David Bohm
embraced Bohr's views on language,
believing that at the root of Green's problem is the structure of the languages
we speak. European languages, he noted, perfectly mirror the classical world of
Newtonian physics. When we say
'the cat chases the mouse' we are dealing with well-defined objects (nouns),
which are connected via verbs. Likewise, classical physics deals with objects
that are well located in space and time, which interact via forces and fields.
But if the world doesn't work the way our language does, advances are inevitably
hindered. Bohm pointed out that quantum effects
are much more process-based, so to describe them accurately requires a
process-based language rich in verbs, and in which nouns play only a secondary
role....
Physics as we know it is about equations and quantitative measurement. But
what these numbers and symbols really mean is a different, more subtle matter.
In interpreting the equations we must remember the limitations language places
on how we can think about the world...." [Peat
(2008), pp.41-43. Bold emphases
and several links added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
While I
don't want to suggest I agree with
everything Peat has to say
about the nature of language (or even scientific language!), his comments clearly
show that (some) leading scientists are at least aware
there is a problem here. [A point also brought out rather well throughout Becker (2018).]
[Admittedly, Peat concurs with Bohm when
the latter suggests that we need to learn from Native
American languages, many of which seem to have a rather peculiar grammar, but it is to be
wondered how a culture that has produced no science or technology of any note
has much (in this respect) to teach one that has. (Again, this topic will be pursued in more detail in Essay Thirteen
Part Two, to be published sometime in 2025 or 2026.) Nor is it at all clear what it
means to say that language contains certain assumptions. In fact, as this sub-section
of the present Essay aims to show, that isn't the case. Having said that, it is important to add that when I say Native
American culture has produced "no
science or technology of any note", I don't mean to disparage, demean or
depreciate that culture! Plainly, Native Americans wouldn't have
survived had they failed to develop any scientific ideas or any technology,
nor would they have flourished for centuries without sophisticated and diverse
forms of culture.
Clearly, they managed all three (and much else besides!). What I am alluding to is the vastly superior scientific
knowledge and technology that has been enabled by the growth of capitalism -- even if
the class war has greatly abused, deflected and distorted the latter --, upon which the very possibility of socialism and human
emancipation are predicated.
As impressive, amazing and unique as Native American culture (in all its
forms) was, and still is, a
socialist economy and society can't be built on it. Not that a socialist society
would eradicate that culture; in fact, it will protect,
preserve and enhance it.]
Third (returning to the case
in point), the view promoted here means that the word "sunrise" is no more
problematic than "nightfall" or "daybreak" are. No one imagines (it is to be
hoped!) that the use of "nightfall" commits anyone to a "folk theory" of the
susceptibilities of darkness to the law of gravity, or that "daybreak" suggests
mornings are brittle. Or, indeed, that the
use of such terms reflects a defunct or obsolete scientific theory, or even that
they 'encapsulate common sense'. Consider the word "solstice" (from
the Latin solstitium -- meaning "point at which the sun seems to
stand still"). Even though that word is an echo of the old Geocentric
Theory of the solar system, no one imagines that when Astronomers (currently) use
this word they are
secretly -- or inadvertently -- committed to the now defunct
Ptolemaic Theory.
Indeed, and to change the example, no one (certainly no scientist) believes that
when someone catches the 'flu (or influenza) there is some sort of cosmic influence at work, even
though, as matter of fact,
the original meaning of this word (derived from the medieval Latin,
influentia) was based on an ancient, mystical theory about there being just
such a stellar influence. Still less would anyone be willing to accept the idea that when someone is described as "hysterical",
that implies they have a wandering womb (even though this word was originally
based on an obsolete
'scientific'
theory about
'wandering
wombs' -- taken from the Greek,
hysteria, or womb, from which we also get the word "hysterectomy"). Nor do
psychologists these days believe that "lunatics"
are sensitive
to phases of
the Moon (while it is now clear that
few, if any, mental healthcare professionals currently use this term,
until recently they certainly did), or even that
phlegmatic individuals have a
superabundance
of phlegm, and so on. In fact, if the term "Big Bang" were to be understood
as carelessly as critics of common sense interpret "sunrise",
it would suggest scientists are
committed to the view that the origin of the Universe was not only rather loud,
it had been witnessed by some form of sentient life -- not to mention the
erroneous idea that
sound can travel across a vacuum! [Or even 'across' whatever the original
primordial 'atom' that gave rise to the universe was embedded in as it
'exploded'.]
[On
"influenza", type that word in
this search box. On hysteria, see
here and
here. Of course, since the 'Big Bang' is also supposed to be the
origin of space and time, there was nowhere for the sound, if there had been any,
to travel. Nor, indeed, anywhere for the bang to happen! However, if
there were no space before the 'Big Bang' (that is, if space had actually been created
by that 'Bang'), there could be no location for it either. I won't pull on
that highly controversial thread in this Essay!]
On
"lunacy", we read this (from the BBC):
"In
folklore, a full moon is associated with
insanity -- hence the word lunacy --
werewolves and all manner of unpleasant
happenings. However, when psychologists and
statisticians have looked into the matter, a
lunar influence on the human brain and
behaviour remains elusive. Overwhelmingly
they have failed to discover a correlation
between the timing of a full moon and events
such as assaults, arrests, suicides, calls
to crisis centres, psychiatric admissions,
poisonings and vehicle accidents.
Eric Chudler, who has compiled a long list
of the research says: 'Most of the data --
and there have been many studies -- find
that there is not an association between the
phase of the moon and any of those abnormal
behaviours.' Many believers of the full moon
myth work in law enforcement and health
professions. Police officers and hospital
staff frequently witness horrific and
upsetting events. Mr Chudler suggests that
when these traumatic things happen, workers
are much more likely to notice a full moon
shining in the sky than they are to register
more modest half or quarter moons.
Consequently, they only make a connection
with accidents or crimes when the moon is at
its most obvious and symbolically
significant." [Quoted from
here.
Paragraphs merged; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Link and bold emphasis added.]
But, that
doesn't stop ordinary speakers using the words "lunacy" and "lunatic" (often
colloquialised as the 'politically incorrect', "Looney"; in fact, here's a
Monty Python video
entitled "Spot the
Looney!"), and
this they do
(often or in general) while being unaware of the connection between the phases of
the Moon and madness, etc.
In addition to the terms already
mentioned, there are many scientific words in use
today that are themselves derived from what was, in each case, an unrelated or even obsolete use
of language. For example: "Oxygen"
(derived from the original Greek meaning "acid"); "Mercury"
from the Latin version of the Greek 'god' Hermes; "Quark"
(coined by
Murray
Gell-Mann from Finnegans
Wake -- and are Quarks really "coloured"?);
"Law"
("layer, measure, stroke", derived from Jurisprudence); "Atom"
(meaning "indivisible"); "Acid"
(meaning "of the taste of vinegar", "sour" or "sharp to the taste"); "Alkali"
(Arabic, "the ashes of a plant"); "Algebra"
(Arabic, "reunion of the broken parts", or "the reduction"); "Alcohol"
(Arabic, al-kuhul, "powdered antimony", or eye-makeup),
"Flow"
(Old High German,
flouwen, "to rinse"); "Force"
(Latin, "strength, courage, fortitude; violence, power, compulsion"); "Root",
used in Mathematics (part of a plant); "Matrix"
also used in mathematics (from the Latin for "mother" or "womb"); "Vector"
(again from the Latin, vehere, "to carry"); "Missing Link" (from
The Great Chain of Being), "Planet"
(late Latin,
planeta, or "wanderer"), "vaccine"
(from vacca, cow), "inoculate"
(from the Latin, inoculatus, "to graft a bud" onto a tree or shrub),
and as we have just seen, "electricity" comes from the Greek word for amber --
ἤλεκτρον
--
"electron",
but no one supposes it still carries that connotation.
And here is a video that explains the origin of the names of elements in the
Periodic Table:
Video Five: Origin Of The Names
Of Elements In
The Periodic Table
[Concerning
The Great Chain of Being, see
Lovejoy (1964). On this topic in general, see Crosland (2006) and Danziger
(1997).]
And how many
who use the titles of
days of the week, or even those of
several months of the
year (at
least in English), believe in the 'gods' and/or the 'pagan' celebrations after which
they have all been named?
Fourth, the idea that words are capable of encapsulating ancient beliefs or
defunct theories implies that 'meanings' are somehow able to track, accompany or
follow words down the centuries as if glued to them by some sort of
'semantic adhesive'. This would further imply that when a word had gained an
original, specific meaning, it would always connote that meaning no matter
when it was subsequently used or, indeed, for what it purpose was actually
employed -- even
many centuries later. But, that would also suggest words were quasi-intelligent
beings, whose denotations and connotations were hard-wired into 'their memories' and
couldn't be altered or
modified by subsequent users or uses.
[It would be decidedly odd to see DM-fans accept the theory that there are unchanging meanings
like this hard-wired into certain words,
especially since many seem to think that not even the letter "A" can
remain stable from moment-to-moment, never mind an entire word and its meaning!
(This topic was covered in Part One,
here. On those
(allegedly) morphoholic letter "A"s, see
Essay Six.)]
Howsoever these metaphors are interpreted they clearly imply that users must
have the meanings of certain words dictated to them by those words themselves, or
even that each user somehow 'catches' that meaning when young, rather like the
way they might pick up a virus from a parent, sibling, friend or carer. Given
such a scenario, each speaker would remain 'infected with these unchanging
meanings' for the rest now of their life. If that were case,
it would look like 'something' had taken over and controls that speaker's brain
and now governs her thought and speech. Learning a language
would then be more like contracting a disease, or even like being 'possessed', rather
than a socially-acquired skill. Meaning in language wouldn't be a
function of communal life, social interaction or collective labour --, or even the physical existence
of human beings and their relationship with the material world and each other. It would be a function of the
'social'/'psychological' life of words and their 'disembodied meanings'. Hence, as noted
above, the claim that words still carry their
ancient or obsolete meanings about with them would amount to their
fetishisation. In effect, that would humanisesymbols while
de-humanising humans!
So,
piled on
top of the alienation inflicted on humanity by class-division and the class war
there would be
this added
alienation of their control over their own language! Discourse and meaning would
now be the creation of
extra-human forces, echoing ancient myths
that
language and meaning were gifts of
the 'gods'. [On this novel
form of
linguistic fetishisation, see also
here.]
[The
recent widespread infatuation with
Richard
Dawkins's
'memes' also
trades on a pernicious form of the
fetishisation myth. On the serious weaknesses of this aspect of Dawkins's 'theory'
(never mind the rest of it!), see
McGrath
(2005). Cf., also Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here. Any who object to
my referencing McGrath's book -- which defends Theism -- should also point
a few fingers at DM-fans who look to Hegel, a character with a similar aim in mind. Of
course, I am only recommending McGrath's case against 'memes', which seems
to me pretty conclusive, not his Theology! Update October
2024: So, it isn't surprising to see
Dawkins now promote and
praise as "utterly superb" a book by far right Tory ideologue,
Douglas Murray, which
argues in favour of the Nazi-inspired,
Great Replacement Theory.]
Admittedly,
TAR's general point
appears to be that while science presents us with
an 'objective' view of the world, ordinary 'commonsense' operates at the level
of 'subjective appearance':
"But Hegel is also difficult for reasons
that are not the result of character and circumstance. His theories use terms
and concepts that are unfamiliar because they go beyond the understanding of
which everyday thought is capable. Ordinary language assumes that things and
ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that.' And, within strict
limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental
discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they
change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to
this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic
processes…. It is the search to resolve…contradictions that pushes thought past
commonsense definitions which see only separate stable entities." [Rees (1998),
pp.45, 50. Paragraphs merged. ]
"The important thing about a Marxist
understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and their
essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface phenomena, it is
possible to see the essential relations governing historical change -- thus
beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it is possible to
see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this does not mean that
surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no
consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also
possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form
different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the
exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange
of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the
labour market." [Ibid., p.187. Bold emphases alone added.]
In the
above, Rees argues that while 'commonsense' might be perfectly adequate when confined its own
legitimate sphere of application (one imagines this is meant to be everyday
life), it is nevertheless inadequate when it is employed in
technical areas or in circumstances that involve change (especially complex
change connected with social development of the class war).
Here
are my remarks (taken from Essay Four
Part One) about the first
of the above two passages (slightly edited):
Concerning the alleged limitations of
ordinary language, John Rees
expressed himself as follows:
"Ordinary language assumes
that things and ideas are stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that'. And,
within strict limits, these are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the
fundamental discovery of Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change….
And they change because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is
to this end that Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic
processes." [Rees (1998), p.45.]
The problem with this passage is that
it gets
things completely the wrong way round. It is in fact our use of ordinary
language that enables us to speak about change, movement and development. Complex
philosophical jargon (especially terminology invented by Hegel) is completely useless in this regard, since it
is wooden, static and of indeterminate meaning, despite what Rees asserts.
[Any who think differently are invited to reveal precisely which set
of Hegelian
terms is able do what the words listed below (or their equivalent in German)
already achieve for us, only better.]
As is well-known (at least by Marxists),
human beings managed to progress because of their interaction with nature and
their consequent development of the forces and relations of production, both constrained by the class war. In which case, ordinary language
-- the result of collective labour --
couldn't fail to
have a range of words with the logical and semantic multiplicity that
allowed its users to
speak about changes of almost limitless complexity, rapidity and duration.
This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed. Here is
a greatlyshortenedlist of ordinary words (restricted to modernEnglish, but omitting simple and complex
tensed participles and
auxiliary
verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded
complexity, swiftness and scope:
[In each case, where there is
a noun form of a word its verb form
has been listed (for instance, "object" as in "to object"). Moreover, where I
have listed the word "ring", for example, I also intend cognates of
the verb "to ring"
-- like "ringing" and "rang". I have also omitted
many nouns that imply change or development, such as "river", "runner", "wind",
"lightning", "tide", "cloud" and "fire".
Anyone who didn't know such words implied changing processes in the world --
that rivers flow, fires burn, runners run, tides ebb and flow or winds blow --
would simply have advertised their lack of comprehension of English (or whatever language theirs happened to be),
compounded by a seriously defective, possibly even dangerous, knowledge of the world. So, not knowing that fires burn or rivers flow, for example,
could endanger someone's life. In addition, several of the above also have verb forms,
such as "fired" or "winding". Other nouns also imply growth and development,
such as "tree", "flower", "mouse", "day", "human being". Anyone who
thought "human being", for instance, reflected a 'fixed and changeless' view of
the world would probably be regarded as suffering from some sort of learning
disability. Either that or they would perhaps be thought in the grip of a rather
odd
philosophical theory of some description.]
Naturally, it
wouldn't be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally thousands
of entries -- on that, see
here and
here --, all capable of depicting countless changes in
limitless detail (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from mathematics,
science and
HM).
It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by
Rees and others -- such as Woods and Grant)
that ordinary language can't depict change adequately, since it is
supposedly dominated by 'the abstract understanding', a brain module helpfully identified
for us by Hegel without a scrap of supporting evidence, a brain scan or even the
use of a consulting couch. By way of contrast,
ordinary language
performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably
obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.
Dialecticians
like Rees would have us
believe that because of the alleged shortcomings of the vernacular only the
most recondite
and abstruse terminology concocted by Hegel -- the meaning of much
of which is still unclear, even to Hegel scholars! -- is capable of telling us what
we already know, and have known for tens of thousands of years, that
things change!
Indeed, we read the following (about
ancient cosmology):
"Now, to understand the power of sacred cities and cosmic
shrines we have to understand the power of the cosmos. The ancients recognised
that there is really only one thing taking place in the universe, one expression
of transcendental power, and that is change. Day transforms into night. Each
night alters the shape of the moon. Seasons change. Seeds sprout into the light
and gradually grow into mature plants that flower and blow to seed. Through
metamorphosis, tadpoles become frogs, and caterpillars become moths. Our lives
change.... The world changes.... Everything changes, but for the ancients,
change occurred in an ordered and oriented world." [Krupp (1997), p.17.
Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
It is preposterous, therefore, to suppose that the
ability to express change hadn't been incorporated into language many thousands
of years before 'Being' inflicted Hegel and his crazy ideas on humanity.
Of course, as Rees himself implicitly concedes,
Hegel's jargon has had to be 'translated' into 'ordinary-ish' sorts of words
for the rest of us to be able to gain even a
glimmering of the obscure
message it supposedly conveys -- that was the point of Rees's précis of a
key
Hegelian 'deduction', which many other Hegel scholars have also
'translated' for us (and which will be discussed in detail Essay Twelve Part
Five, summary
here); cf., Rees (1998), pp.49-50 --, the aim of which
was, apparently, to reveal that we can't
possibly understand change without such assistance!
[Although an earlier version of this 'derivation' was
published in Hegel (1977), Hegel's more 'mature' attempt to 'obtain' 'Nothing' from 'Being',
and then 'Becoming' from the 'relation' between those two, appeared in Hegel
(1999),
pp.82-108. As noted above, just like Rees, others have tried to make this incomprehensible
derivation 'comprehensible', for example: Burbidge (1995), pp.38-45; Carlson
(2007), pp.9-53; Hartnack (1997), pp.11-19; Kaufmann (1978), pp.199-203; and
Marcuse (1973)
pp.129-34).]
But, if we already have
ordinary terms (like those listed above) that enable us to talk about and
comprehend change, what need is there for Hegel's
obscure terminology?
Conversely,
if, according to Rees, ordinary language is inadequate when it is faced with the
task of 'translating' Hegel's observations into something we can understand,
then how
would anyone be able to grasp what Hegel supposedly meant, or even
determine whether he meant anything
at all? Why translate Hegel into the vernacular if the latter can't cope?
On the other hand, if we are
capable ofcomprehending Hegel's obscure ideas only when they have been
rendered into ordinary-ish sorts of terms, why do we need his convoluted
jargon to reveal to us what it now turns out our language was quite capable of expressing
to begin with -- when (on this supposition)
it must have been adequate enough for just such a successful re-casting of
these very ideas (by commentators like Rees) for the rest of us to grasp? After all, that
is why they chose to translate it.
If ordinary language enables its users
to capture what Hegel meant, in what way is the vernacular defective? Alternatively, if it can't do this, then how might we ever understand Hegel?
In that case, if Hegel
were correct, no one (including Hegel himself!) would be able to
understand Hegel! That is because, ex hypothesi, his words would then be
incapable of being translatedin terms that anyone could comprehend.
Conversely, once
more, if Hegel's words are translatable in terms we can understand, that
must mean we
already have the linguistic resources available to us to comprehend change
perfectly well, thank you very much.
In which case, the following dilemma now
faces Hegel-fans:
(a) If we suppose Hegel were
correct (that ordinary terms can't adequately capture change), no one would be able to understand
Hegel; or,
(b) If we suppose Hegel were
mistaken -- and we are capable of understanding him enough to be able to say eventhat much --
no one need bother, since the vernacular would in that case be perfectly adequate
on its own.
Either way, Marxists
would be well-advised to avoid this obscure waffler like the plague....
Here is John Rees again:
"Hegel is also difficult for reasons that
are not the result of character and circumstance. His theories use terms and
concepts that are unfamiliar because they go beyond the understanding of which
everyday thought is capable. Ordinary language assumes that things and ideas are
stable, that they are either 'this' or 'that'. And, within strict limits, these
are perfectly reasonable assumptions. Yet the fundamental discovery of
Hegel's dialectic was that things and ideas do change…. And they change
because they embody conflicts which make them unstable…. It is to this end that
Hegel deliberately chooses words that can embody dynamic processes…. It is the
search to resolve…contradictions that pushes thought past commonsense
definitions which see only separate stable entities." [Rees (1998), pp.41-50. Bold
emphasis added.]
Contrary
to what Rees asserts, ordinary
language not only doesn't, it can't assume anything. Plainly, it is human beings who assume
things and they do so by means of the language they use. Unless language had the
capacity to allow for the possible truth or the possible falsehood of
these assumptions, and that of their negations, no assuming could even begin. That is, of course,
because assumptions can be correct as well as incorrect. [Admittedly, it could be
argued that Rees was employing
metonymy here. Maybe so, but the point still stands. Language isn't an
autonomous system; it takes human beings to give it life.]
Moreover,
the rich and diverse vocabulary available to ordinary speakers also allows for the assumption
(but it is far more than just this!)
that objects can and do change -- and in complex ways, too. Indeed, ordinary
language enables its users to speak about and study a wide variety of changes in seemingly limitless detail. A long list of just some of the words
available in the vernacular that enable this was given
earlier.
Hence, and despite what Rees says, the sophisticated nature of ordinary
language permits the formation of the following sentences that depict
change with ease:
H78:
This protest is increasing in size as we watch.
H79: That case is becoming
too heavy for the children to carry.
H80: This venue is now
too small for our meetings.
H81: This spider's web
is beginning to disintegrate.
H82: This train
is being re-painted.
H83: That light over there is
defective; it keeps flickering.
H84: This is how to
lose members rapidly: spout dialectics at them.
H85: This dispute is
no longer about working conditions.
H86: This entire continent is
moving closer to Asia.
H87: That is how to
break an egg.
H88: This is how to
change workers' minds.
H89: This
π-bond breaks
in less than 5 nanoseconds if the molecule is rapidly heated.
H90: In an instant the
pickets had re-grouped ready for the next police charge.
Many of the above sentences are somewhat stilted because they have been
deliberately tailored to use the words "this" and "that" (i.e., the form of
words that Rees employed to caricature the vernacular), in order to show that
"things and ideas" aren't "assumed" to be stable -- contrary to his assertion.
However, the above list of examples at least demonstrates that even using Rees's
implausible and highly restricted phraseology, ordinary language
is capable of expressing material changes (especially if it is augmented
with words drawn from science and mathematics), something Hegel's tortured prose
can't emulate -- that is, not without raiding the vernacular, or aping the
protocols of ordinary discourse, to assist it do just that.
Even given this highly limited and constrained form of language, the above list
of sentences can easily be extended. Of course, if the full range of words and
phrases available to ordinary speakers were called upon (H90 being just one
such
example), it would be possible to form an indefinitely large set of
sentences of far greater sophistication than anything dreamt of in Hegel's work,
picturing changes of every imaginable type.
This shows that ordinary language is capable of depicting (and thus permitting
the explanation of) change in the real world far better than any philosophical
theory yet devised.
Now, this isn't
something that a sophisticated user of English (like John Rees) should have to
have pointed out to him -- even though my having to do so is a sad reflection of
the intellectual decay that 'dialectical thought' induces in those held in its
thrall.
Hence, it is a little rich of Rees
proclaiming the superiority over the vernacular
of language
employed by Hegel -- and later, DM -- since, it now transpires that if, per
impossible, DM were 'true', change would be impossible.
[These specific claims will be examined in greater detail in Essay Twelve Part Seven;
however, as
noted above, some of that material has already been posted
here.]
Following on from what
Rees had to say about science, it could be argued
that because appearances can be and often are deceptive, scientific knowledge
has to be based on theories that go beyond, or even behind, the phenomenal world in
order to reveal its underlying "essence". These 'deeper realities' must be
capable of explaining not only why appearances are what they are but also why
they look the way they do. This once again echoes what Marx had to say:
"But all science would
be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly
coincided." [Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804.]
[I have
commented on that all-too-brief remark in Essay Twelve
Part One. ]
Be this as it may, it is undeniable that
scientists have to rely on their
activity in this world -- the world of 'appearances' -- to test, refine
and confirm their hypotheses or improve their theories. No matter how sophisticated, technical or
"elegant" a given hypothesis/theory happens to be, at some point
researchers will have to interface with the ordinary world in order to confirm,
refute, refine, test or
modify it. In which case, scientists have to do one or more (but in some instances, possibly even most)
of the following: read dials and meters, carefully mix substances, perform measurements, record and check data, design, handle or calibrate
instruments, conduct surveys, look down microscopes, telescopes or other optical
devices, collect samples, write code or programme a computer, consult a computer
screen, construct (physical or 'virtual') models, research the relevant
literature, communicate with colleagues, compose reports, formulate and use
equations, attend conferences and seminars, publish papers, articles and books, etc., etc.
These have to be carried out if a theory is to
become anything other than speculative, tentative or remain merely hypothetical, let
alone accepted as established fact or as valid by the profession as a
whole. Clearly, every single
one of these activities and performances takes place in the ordinaryphenomenal world and has to be carried out by ordinary, albeit highly
qualified and expertly trained, individuals/teams.
These are non-negotiable facts that confront every single scientist.
All such socially-conditioned, communally-sanctioned and
professionally-mandated practices take place in this world, the world of
phenomena, and it is what enables the intelligent and efficient prosecution of
scientific research, and with that the advancement of knowledge (albeit
seriously diverted, distorted and mis-used by capitalist priorities and
interests). In addition, the
vernacular not only enables the education and socialisation of aspiring
scientists, it underpins the skills necessary for the comprehension and
performance of all standardised laboratory-, field- and research-techniques,
as well as the design of surveys, questionnaires, experiments, excavations and expeditions, etc.,
etc.
This overall background even lies behind the writing of every summa vitae (résumé), job
reference, employment application, research post, transfer- and grant-request.
[With a few modifications, the same protocols will still apply in a socialist society.] While on the one hand
mundane aspects of our material and social existence like these also facilitate
successful inter-communication between scientists, on the other they provide a
readily available and fertile source of the
metaphors, analogies, figures of speech and models
that breathe life into the vast majority of scientific hypotheses, theories,
reports and
papers.
Every single
one of the above procedures and routines is constrained and regulated by the same conventions
and protocols that govern
everyday behaviour, speech and reasoning, which are in turn mediated by
familiar, mundane physical skills and practices, all of which are once
again materially-, socially-, and historically-conditioned.
Every
single one takes place in
the phenomenal world of 'appearances'.
[On
this see, Arib and Hesse (1986), Baake (2003), Brown (2003), Cantor (1987),
Fahnestock (2002), Gould (1988), Griffiths (2001), Gross (1996), Guttenplan
(2005), Hesse (1966), Keller (1995, 2002), Kuhn (1993), Leatherdale (1974),
Lynch (1996), MacCormac (1976), Polanyi (1962), Ravetz (1996), pp.69-244, Way (1994), White
(1996b), and Young (1985).]
In which
case, scientists can't afford to risk undermining the constraints imposed on
them by the
phenomenal, natural or social world, just as they can't afford to depreciate
ordinary language and everyday practice for fear that by sawing away at the
branch
upon which they are all collectively sat, they risk their own catastrophic fall.
It
could be objected at this point that Rees's account doesn't imply that
appearances can't be trusted; indeed, as noted above, he actually argued that
his own analysis:
"…does not mean that surface appearances
can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no consequence. In revealing the
essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain more fully than
before why they appear in a form different to their real nature.
To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class relations at the
point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair
day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market." [Rees (1998), p.187.
Bold emphases alone added.]
Other
dialecticians concurs. Here, for example, is Ernest Mandel:
"But for Marx, the materialist
dialectician, the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' in no sense
implies that 'appearance' is less 'real' than 'essence'. Movements of value
determine in the last analysis movements of prices; but Marx the materialist
would have laughed at any 'Marxist' who suggested that prices were 'unreal',
because in the last analysis determined by value movements." [Mandel
(1976), p.20. Bold emphasis added; minor spelling mistake corrected. Mandel's
detailed argument will be carefully dissected in Appendix
Four.]
But, as pointed out in more detail
earlier, the
second highlighted clause
in Rees's comment implies that
the surface phenomena in Capitalist society are
different from their underlying form, which, of course, means appearances
can't
be relied upon. That accounts for the use of the word "real" by both Rees
and Mandel.
Indeed,
Mandel half admits this anyway:
"For these 'appearances' themselves are neither
accidental nor self-evident. They pose problems, they have to be
explained in their turn, and this very explanation helps to pierce through new
layers of mystery and brings us again nearer to a full understanding of the
specific form of economic organization which we want to understand. To deny this
need to reintegrate 'essence' and 'appearance' is as un-dialectical and as
mystifying as
to accept 'appearances' as they are, without looking for the
basic forces and contradictions which they tend to hide from the superficial and
empiricist observer." [Ibid. Bold emphasis added.]
Why would
'appearances' pose any "problems" if they could be trusted or simply taken at face
value? Why would they need "explaining" if they were exactly as they appeared to be?
How come "empiricists" interpret 'appearances' erroneously when we
were told
'appearances' are fine just
as they are? How can prices be as "real" as value if they mislead so many?
Consequently, to return to earlier examples: the suspicion that 'appearances'
might not be
"real" (or "fully real") could motivate the belief that just as, say, the Sun
appears to rise in the morning (but doesn't really do so), just as
sticks look
as if they bend when partially immersed in water (but they don't
really deform in this way), just as objects seem
to shrink in size when they recede from us (when they don't really grow
smaller), and just as tables and chairs give the impression that
they are solid (when they are really 'composed' mostly of 'empty space'),
so the surface
appearance of Capitalism only seems to be fair when 'underneath' it
really isn't fair at all. In that case, it is clear that
evenfor those
who talk and think like the above DM-theorists, or who use similar language,'appearances' can't actually
deliver a true
or reliable picture of reality. In that case, it looks like Rees and Mandel's
own dalliance
with the word "real" itself appears to bemisleading. When we
"scratch below the surface" of what they are trying to say, we see how
misleading their words actually are! What they appear to be saying fails to match
what we know they really mean. [Heavy-handed irony intended!]
That
is why no one believes that deep down objects change their shape as they
walk round them, that the Sun is really the same size as the Moon, or that ships
slowly sink below the waves when they sail over the horizon. And, presumably, it
is also why only deeply confused or compromised (reformist?) 'socialists' believe Capitalism
reallyis fair. Or that price is a reliable and accurate expression of value.
Certainly neither Rees nor Mandel genuinely believe any of that.
Moreover, the objection that Rees doesn't really believe that appearances are
deceptive implies that his own distinction between surface phenomena and
(all those underlying) 'real essences' is itself pointless. Indeed, his overall argument would make no sense
unless he believed that appearances were
deceptive-in-themselves. Otherwise, why try to isolate or identify
underlying "essences" if surface phenomena have never, or won't ever, mislead
anybody? Why delve 'deeper' if Capitalism not only looks fair, it can also
be regarded as
essentially fair (given this way of talking)? And, why try to explain to
workers that their wages represent only a fraction of the value they produce (or
the time they have spent working) if
what they are paid actually represents a 'fair slice of the
cake'? [The same (with qualification) could also be said of Mandel's take on
this.]
Why
repeatedly quote these famous words if you think 'surface appearances' are
never 'deceptive' or are always reliable?
"But all science would
be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly
coincided." [Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804.]
[Note
that I am most decidedlynot promoting the idea that
appearances are deceptive since only human beings (or what they produce in writing, speech
or art, for example) can literally be deceptive. Quite the reverse, in fact. I
am merely drawing out the untoward consequences of this family of confused ideas,
metaphors, analogies and metaphysical fairytales that DM-theorists have unwisely imported in Marxism. However, further
consideration of this specific topic would take us too far into
HM, an area largely
avoided in these Essays (for reasons outlined in
Essay One).]
Doubtless, several of the above assertions might still attract criticism from
some quarters.
However, any such critics can console themselves with the thought that the
resolution of issues like this may only take place in the
phenomenal world -– that is, in this world of appearances, ordinary
language, written documents and everyday computer screens. Hence, if the superiority of
science and dialectics may only be established by a defence prosecuted
precisely here, in the world of 'unreliable' appearances and
'untrustworthy' ordinary language -- using books, articles,
newspapers, spoken and written words, argumentation, observation, experimentation and the like
--, then any criticisms of the points made above must surely self-destruct. If
those who advance any such criticisms are only able to convince others of the
correctness of what they have to say by arguing that no one can really trust what they
read, see or hear -- except, of course, they can trust the physical form of the
argument that had just been used to express those very doubts (and which also
appear to have
been given a convenient 'exemption certificate' in this respect) --, then
self-destruct they will.
If phenomena are untrustworthy, then any
phenomenal statement of that 'fact' must be unreliable, too.
And,
it is little use referring sceptical onlookers to the 'dialectical' interplay
between "appearance" and underlying "essence" (as we saw
Novack attempt to do earlier,
and as Mandel also intimated),
since the first half of that alleged "interplay" is defective
--
because it is
predicated on a
series of
logical blunders -- while the
second half readily self-destructs, as we have seen time and again.
That is, of
course, quite apart from the fact that the alleged 'dialectical interplay' also
takes place in 'the world of appearances', which means that it is manifestly incapable of turning
any such 'phenomenological dust' into 'epistemological gold' just
because DM-fans think it
can.
[It is worth
recalling at this point that I am employing words like "phenomena" and
"phenomenological" here to refer to the 'deliverances of the senses'. I don't prefer
this way of talking, and, once more, it is only being used here in order to
assist in its demise. Those two quoted words do not, and nor should they be taken to imply, I am promoting, advocating
or recommending
Phenomenalism, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. Again, I
reject all philosophical theories, including Phenomenalism, as
incoherent non-sense.]
Returning
to the main theme of this section of the Essay: if scientists themselves
understand the meaning of the word "rise" (in S1, for example,
repeated below), then they can't
simply re-define it to suite themselves, perhaps under the mistaken belief that
such a revision would help uncover its 'real' meaning. To see that this is indeed so,
consider again the following remark:
"As we know appearances can be deceptive. Each day the sun
appears to circumnavigate the earth, when the reality is that the earth travels
around the sun. We therefore need to penetrate the veil of appearance in order
to reveal the reality that is disguised within." [Quoted from
here.]
As well as this pair of sentences:
S1: The Sun rises in the morning.
S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises
in the morning.
If
the word "rises" in S1 or S2 doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean,
then anyone (scientist or philosopher) using sentences like these wouldn't in fact be
clarifying or correcting
ordinary language; they would be attempting to change, modify or even
replace
it.
Worse
still, if the word "rises" in S1 or S2 doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it
to mean, then those two sentences would be incomprehensible, since they would now
contain at least one word ("rise") that no one seems to understand (in this
context).
It might be
wondered how it could be true that "no one seems to understand" the verb
"rise" (in such a context)? Of course, every competent speaker of English (or, indeed, other
languages that possess an equivalent verb) knows how to use this word in
ordinary life, and hence
understands it. What is being claimed here isn't that no one understands this
word as it is used in such circumstances, only that in this case, with specific reference to S1 and S2
(but, not in relation to other, unrelated sentences),
if "rises" doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean,
here (and if no one ever succeeds in informing us what its 'alternative'/'real meaning' is in these two
sentences, in this context), then S1 and S2 must be incomprehensible, since, in this specific
instance, they would contain at least one word ("rises") that no
one understands, in this context. If so, S1 and S2 might just as
well have been:
S2a: It isn't the case that the Sun
schmises in the morning.
On
the other hand, if the word "rises" in S2 is to be understood in a new,
and
as-yet-unspecified, manner -- or even in a technical sense (indicated by
'scare' quotes in S2b) --, then S2b would
no longer be the contradictory of S1, and so couldn't be used to 'clarify' or
'correct' it. Either way, it isn't possible to correct ordinary language in this
way.
[Why this tactic will always fail, no matter how it is
spun or re-packaged, was explained in detail,
here.]
S1: The Sun rises in the morning.
S2b: It isn't the case that the Sun
'rises'
in the morning.
[S2: It isn't the case that the Sun rises
in the morning.]
It
could be argued that it is perfectly clear what "rises" means in this context:
it refers to what we see in the morning on a cloudless day, if we look to the
East.
But what we see is
also consistent with the earth being stationary
while the Sun moves (relative to it).
Again, it
could be countered that the point is that post-Renaissance science has
established that the Sun doesn't
actually rise; the horizon falls (relative to the Sun) as the Earth rotates. This means that
anyone objecting in this way clearly means by "the Sun rises in the morning"
that "the earth falls away in the morning", and hence that the "the
Sun only appears to rise in the morning".
In which case,
this use of "rise" in the clause, "appears to rise", doesn't mean what we ordinarily take it to mean, after all, and we
are back where we were a few paragraphs ago.
Rees
also claimed that underlying reality
contradicts appearances:
"There is a deeper reality, but it must
be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it appears."
[Rees (1998), p.188.]
Again, that is a clear echo of this famous comment by Marx:
"Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in
doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who
are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us,
then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward
appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and
perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more
self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it,
although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would
be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly
coincided." [Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804. Bold emphasis
alone added.]
Although Rees doesn't himself use
S1 or S2 [repeated below], they might nevertheless serve to
illustrate the alleged conflict he seems to have in mind. If so, it could be
argued that these two sentences reveal that theories concerning the apparent motion
of the Sun were in fact
contradicted by later advances in science, which therefore confirm the
limitations of 'commonsense'.
The problem
with this reading of S1 and S2 -- expressed in S3 and S4 -- is that (as noted several
times already) these two sentences don't contradict one another; nor do they even depict a
'contradictory state of affairs'. That is because, given such an interpretation, S3 reports that the Sun
appears to rise. But, if appearances were deceptive, and it appears
to be the case that the Sun rises (even if it doesn't), then both of the
following (i.e., S3 and S4) could
be true:
Perhaps the worry exercising DM-theorists might be brought out by means of the
following 'argument':
S5: The Sun appears to rise.
S6: Therefore, the Sun does rise.
S7: But, modern science shows that the
Sun does not rise.
S8: Therefore, the Sun does not rise.
S9: Hence, the Sun both rises and does
not rise. [From S6 and S8.]
S10: S9 is a contradiction, and so it is
false.
S11: If S8 is still held true, then
based on the falsehood of S9, S6 is also false.
It looks
like S9 might be the contradiction DM-theorists require. The idea
here appears to be that while phenomena might lead us to accept one set of beliefs,
the development of science has forced us to adopt an 'opposite', or
even 'contradictory', set. Once again, the conclusion seems to be that scientific
knowledge contradicts 'commonsense' and ordinary language. [I have discussed
this topic in much greater detail in
Interlude One of Essay
Eleven Part One. Readers are directed there for more details.]
Of
course, DM-theorists -- if they were to accept this line of reasoning -- will
have to abandon
one or both of the following:
(1)
Contradictions are true, or they reflect coexistent contradictory states of
affairs.
[The
(logical) opposite of (1) was used in S10 to
derive the falsehood of S6.]
(2)
Reality itself is contradictory.
On the
contrary, the
continued acceptance of (1) would mean that DM-theorists who claim that scientific knowledge
contradicts 'commonsense' also believe that
both
'incorrect' and 'correct' theories/beliefs are true. Clearly, if that
were the case, it would
completely halt the advance of scientific knowledge. If mythical tales and
supposedly erroneous 'folk' theories were all true (even though they
'contradict' fact and/or theory), then there would seem to be no point anyone bothering
with scientific research. On that basis, we would have to accept as true the
'fact' that the Earth sits stationary at the centre of the Universe and the
fact that it is in motion on the periphery of the Galaxy. Naturally, it would
then be impossible to agree that science provides an 'objective' account of
reality if the
opposite of what scientists believe to be the case is
also the case.
Some
might respond by pointing out that
earlier it was argued that the
Ptolemaic view of the universe is just as valid as the Copernican. The
above remarks now seem to suggest the opposite. Which is it to be?
In
reply, it is worth adding that wherever the truth happens to lie, no sane
individual would hold
both of the above theories true at the same time. If a scientist wants to use or
accept one approach, he or she won't use or accept the other at the same
time, otherwise irredeemable confusion would ensue. Anyway, that
specific example is somewhat unique; we certainly wouldn't be this accommodating with
other scientific theories that are (supposedly, or even genuinely) in competition with ancient beliefs/dogmas. For
example, no one -- it is to be hoped(!) -- accepts the literal
truth of the Biblical account of creation
and Darwin's theory of descent through modification and natural
selection, or the
Humoral Theory
and the Germ Theory of disease, etc., etc.
Finally, it
should to be recalled that I am not airing my views here, merely
highlighting the insurmountable obstacles that confront DM-theorists if they insist
on sticking to the ideas they inherited from Hegel (upside down or 'the right
way up') and Traditional Philosophy on this score.
Despite these 'difficulties', S5-S11 present serious problems of their own:
S5: The Sun appears to rise.
S6: Therefore, the Sun does rise.
S7: But, modern science shows that the
Sun does not rise.
S8: Therefore, the Sun does not rise.
S9: Hence, the Sun both rises and does
not rise. [From S6 and S8.]
S10: S9 is a contradiction, and so it is
false.
S11: If S8 is still held true, then
based on the falsehood of S9, S6 is also false.
There are at
least three problems with the above 'argument', namely:
[1]
S5 doesn't imply S6, which means that S9 can't be derived from S5-S8.
[2]
S9 isn't a contradiction -- it is far too
ambiguous. [Similar equivocations were highlighted,
here.]
[3]
If all phenomenal reports are to be subjected to this sort of test (or this level
of scrutiny), then it might prove impossible to show
that S7, for instance, is itself true. That is because the validation of S7 would
require extensive reliance on other phenomenological reports, all of which
would be susceptible to the same level of destructive/sceptical analysis.
[The above
considerations are quite apart from the fact that S7, for example, is a
phenomenal object itself (it is, after all, a physical object on your screen!),
and is therefore 'untrustworthy' -- or what it says is unreliable -- but only given this odd way of
characterising
'appearances'. Again: if all appearances are deceptive, so is any sentence that
attempts to assert this! On the other hand, if only some appearances
are deceptive, how do we distinguish between them without relying on
anything in the phenomenal world, and hence on appearances themselves?]
In which
case, S9-S11 can't be derived from these premisses. So, this supposed
reductio is defective from start to finish.
It could be
objected that in a perfectly ordinary sense the following two sentences are contradictory
(when they have been
interpreted):
Z1: It appears to be φ-ing.
Z2: No, it isn't φ-ing.
[Where
"φ"stands for a verb clause or phrase,
such as "rain"; so, "φ-ing" would become "raining".]
Consider this ordinary language
interpretation of Z1 and Z2:
Z1a: "It appears to be
raining."
Z2a: "No, you're mistaken, it
isn't raining." [Which is perhaps a more colloquial version.]
Or, consider this example:
Z3: "The Sun appears to be
moving."
Z4: "No, you're mistaken, the
Sun isn't moving." [Which is also perhaps a more colloquial version.]
Anyone who uttered
Z2a (or, indeed, Z4) would be
correcting (i.e., gainsaying -- speaking against) anyone who uttered Z1a (or Z3), thus contradicting them.
This shows that the
earlier claim that "It
isn't possible to form a contradiction
from a
proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports an appearance"
is itself false.
Or, so it could be argued...
Of course, Z4 is
false anyway, since the
Sun is moving relative to the Galaxy; in which case, it isn't too clear that Z3 and Z4
will be of much use to DM-apologists, especially since the obvious reply to
anyone who tried to correct Z3 by means of Z4 would be to respond as follows:
Z5: "Well, I didn't say it
was moving, only that it appears to be -- and it still appears
to be moving, despite what you say."
So, Z3 and
Z4 aren't contradictories since they can both be true (and can both be false) at
once.
That is, of course, because of the equivocal nature of verbs like "move" and "appear".
[In
Essay Five we saw that the word
"move" was rather complex and had many different meanings (even in
mathematics, science and philosophy), most of
which have been ignored by those who (still!) rashly buy into Hegel's theory that
motion is 'contradictory'.]
The same sort of response applies to
Z1a and
Z2a:
Z6: "Well, I didn't say it
was raining, only that it appears to be -- and it still
appears to be raining, despite what you say." [Compare this with what was
said earlier about rain machines.]
[Z1a: "It appears to be
raining."]
[Z2a: "No, you're mistaken, it
isn't raining."]
Hence,this still remains the case:
It
isn't possible to form a contradiction
from a
proposition that expresses matters of fact with one that reports an appearance.
[Anyone who
thinks differently is invited to email
me with their best shot.]
Putting the
natural sciences to one side for now, Rees and other DM-theorists often cite
examples drawn from (a 'dialectical' version of)
HM to illustrate the
alleged clash between "essence" and "appearance".
[Several other
such examples were
analysed in Essay Eight Part Two,
here,
here and
here.]
Perhaps an
examination of the cases they cite might help clarify the point DM-theorists are trying to make?
Rees's
argument, for instance, proceeds as follows (a similar approach to this question
by Ernest Mandel has been moved to Appendix
Four):
"The important thing about a
Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and
their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface
phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical
change -- thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction
it is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this
does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral
events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it is
also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a form
different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the
exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the exchange
of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the
labour market.... There is a deeper reality, but it must be able to account
for the contradiction between it and the way it appears." [Rees (1998), pp.187-88. Bold emphases
alone added; paragraphs merged.]
This passage makes it plain that while
Capitalism appears on the surface to be fair (but surely only to
non-Marxists and anti-socialists!), its underlying 'essence' is
exploitative, or, at least, its 'essential relations' may be described in these
terms. Hence, in that sense it could be claimed that
appearances do indeed contradict reality.
Or, so it
might be argued...
Unfortunately, Rees's example isn't even
a contradiction, howsoever much we might deplore what it seems to express. [Why
that is so has been explained more fully
here. On
the highly misleading metaphor that certain truths, or even "essences", somehow
lie "below the surface", see
here.]
Perhaps the
above remarks are a little too hasty, or even dismissive? In that case it might prove helpful
if Rees's argument were rephrased so
that the alleged contradiction he seems to see there becomes much more obvious, perhaps along the
following lines:
R17: Capitalism appears to be
fair.
R18: It isn't the case that
Capitalism appears to be fair.
This pair of
sentences certainly looks contradictory, but as we saw above, since both are about
'appearances' -- not about the alleged clash between 'reality' and
'appearances' -- they aren't what Rees intended.34
Well, maybe
then the following will do in their place?
R19: Capitalism is
exploitative.
R20: It isn't the case that
Capitalism is exploitative.
This pair
also seems contradictory, but once again, these two sentence won't do either
since they fail to counterpose 'appearance' with
'reality' -- they are both about 'reality' which isn't where Rees thought there was a contradiction.
Independently of the above, a clearer
understanding of Rees's intentions might be achieved by considering the relation he says exists between (i) "essence"
and "appearance" and (ii) "subjective" and "objective" views of
'reality':
"[F]or Lenin practice
overcomes the distinction between subjective and objective and the gap between
essence and appearance." [Ibid., pp.190-91.]
This
suggests these
rather elusive DM-'contradictions' arise between a "subjective" and
an "objective" view of the world. But, even if that were the case, what
precisely is the
contradiction, even here? And how do 'subjective contradictions' (or those that
result for a 'subjective' view if the world) power the universe, never mind the
class war?
Perhaps the
following 'argument' might help clarify Rees's intentions:
R21: Capitalism appears to be
fair.
R22: That leads
people (including workers) to think it is fair.
R23: Hence, Capitalism is
fair. [Or, so they conclude.]
R24: But, revolutionary
theory and practice convince others that Capitalism isn't fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism
isn't fair. [Or, so they conclude.]
R26: Consequently, Capitalism
is both fair and not fair. [From R23 and R25.]
R27: However, the contradiction
in R26 implies that R23 can't be true (based on the truth of R25).
Ignoring the fact that the above argument is
hopelessly invalid, its (intended) message looks reasonably clear: the 'objectivity' of
revolutionary theory (expressed in R24) 'makes plain' the contradiction in R26.
Admittedly, R26 is an incorrect statement of the results of this argument, which
should have been something like this:
R26a:
Consequently, some think capitalism is fair while others believe it isn't.
However,
even if that were the case,
the supposed contradiction here still isn't between 'appearance' and 'reality', but
between certain beliefs held about both -- or perhaps even between the inferences that could
be drawn from
either by different individuals.
Anyway, few people (and certainly
no revolutionaries) believe that capitalism is both fair and not fair at
the same time (as R26 seems to imply). Anyone who devotes some thought to
this question will either agree
with R23 or with R25, but not both at once. Indeed, that is why
R28 would be held true by socialists. However, DM requires both R23 and
R25 (and hence R26) to be true at once (or, for both to reflect 'coexistent
contradictory states of affairs'). But, we have been here several times already.36
It could be
objected that the appearances referred to above prompt the false belief that
Capitalism is fair, which is contradicted by the fact that it isn't, and that is what creates the
intended contradiction. But, no one is questioning the fact that there are all
sorts of contradictory beliefs in people's heads. What is at issue here is:
(a)
Whether R22 and R28 can both be (unequivocally and unambiguously) held true together; and,
Hence, it doesn't look like we can construct
a clear example of the sort of contradiction Rees had in mind -- even when we use his own example!
Nevertheless, this latest impasse introduces yet another, and perhaps even more
serious, problem facing
DM-theorists: if 'appearances' are finally acknowledged to be (in some respects or in some way)
deceptive --, or, at least, not entirely, or not fully, accurate (or even not fully 'real') --, or they are said to be
limited in some (as yet unspecified) way or are misleading to some extent, how can
anything of value be learnt from them, or by means of them? Worse still,
if revolutionary practice takes place at the level of 'appearances',
how could any such practice act as a test of the 'objectivity' of Marxist theory itself?
The next few
sections will attempt to resolve
these unexpected 'difficulties'.
The
contribution revolutionary practice makes to the validation (or otherwise) of DM
will be examined in greater detail in Essays Ten Part One and Nine
Part Two, but for
present purposes it is worth pointing out that practice can't in fact
test 'objectivity' in the way DM-supporters seem to imagine. Nor can it even be
'objective', and that isn't just because the word
"objective" is itself hoplessly vague.
As noted above, it is because practice clearly takes place at the level of
'appearances', which, according to dialecticians can't be anything other than
'subjective'.38
Admittedly, some Marxists claim that there is
such a thing as "theoretical
practice", but
even there, its results can only surface in the 'world of
appearances' -- not to mention the physical objects any such practice has
to utilise. Hence, in order for there to be any such 'theoretical practice', books, articles, computer screens,
sheets of paper, pens (etc., etc.)
have to be accessed, used, read or written,
all of which are 'trapped'
in the everyday 'world of appearances'. Unless we believe in
telepathy,
or are committed to the bizarre idea that theoretical propositions live in an
'abstract world', accessible to the 'mind' alone, and aren't embodied or expressed in anything material
-– that is, that they are never, and can't ever be, written down, typed or spoken about,
let alone mulled over during soliloquy -– the deflationary conclusion that theoretical
propositions are as material as sticks and stones seems undeniable.
[Of course,
if the opposite were the case (i.e., if theoretical
propositions lived an 'abstract world', accessible to the 'mind' alone, and weren't embodied or expressed in anything material),
and DM-fans were to accept such a conclusion as part of their theory, that would
make them dualists, whether they realised it or not!]
Plainly, that is because abstract objects
(and any words used to express them) must make some form of an appearance in the phenomenal world at some
point, or be forever unknown to us. In the real world, even theoretical
propositions have to be written down or uttered in a public language, and that
immediately places them in the vice-like grip of all those 'unreliable'/'deceptive' 'appearances'.
[John Rees
made some attempt to address concerns like these by arguing (correctly) that Lenin's theory had
progressed markedly (and 'dialectically') between the writing of MEC and
PN. I have critically reviewed what he (Rees) had to say in Appendix Three.]
Exception might be taken to the above
comments since
they seem to imply that dialecticians regard appearances as unreliable,
misleading or false. Some might object that that is itself highly misleading -- even though, as we are about to see,
Herbert
Marcuse, for example,
openly admits
appearances are false. Earlier, we saw other DM-supporters say more-or-less the same -- for
instance,
here and
here.
On the
contrary, it could be maintained that dialecticians (or, perhaps, the majority of them)
don't believe
this of appearances. Indeed, the following passage from TAR underlines this
(alleged) fact:
"[T]his does not mean
that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral events of no
consequence.
In revealing the essential relations in society, it is also possible to explain
more fully than before why they appear in a form different to their real
nature. To explain, for instance, why it is that the exploitative class
relations at the point of production appear as the exchange of 'a fair day's
work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of the labour market.... There is a deeper reality,
but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the way it
appears." [Rees (1998), p.187-88. Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged.]
But if, as
the aforementioned passages also say, superficial appearances aren't in fact a guide to
deeper "essences" -- indeed they "contradict" them --, then they must be
deceptive at some point or to some extent. That is especially so if the vast majority
of human beings
misread them or are misled by them and it takes 'clued-in DM-fans' to disabuse
them of their false beliefs or misguided opinions. If, as even Rees admits, the exploitative
relations in Capitalism aren't
really
as they seem, and "appear in a form different from their
real nature", then what they reveal can't be anything other than misleading (at
least to
non-Marxist observers), and hence false. There is no other way of reading this passage. [The
entire topic has been
discussed more fully
here.]
But, it is
worth asking again: In what sense do 'appearances' "contradict...deeper reality"? Do
they' struggle
with and then turn into any such "deeper reality" (which is what the
DM-classics tell us all such 'dialectical opposites' must do)? If so,
DM-theorists have been remarkably coy about the details. Furthermore, do 'appearances' and
'deeper
reality' imply one
another -- such that the existence of one implies the existence of the other
(rather like the existence of the proletariat is said to imply the existence of the
capitalist class)? That can't be correct, for if it were, it would mean that before sentient life evolved the
existence of 'deeper reality' must have implied, even back then(!), that
there were 'appearances',
somewhere, for non-sentient objects and processes to 'generate' so that
they always have, and always will, 'contradict' all these
'deeper realities'.
According to DM-theorists themselves, 'dialectical opposites' can't exist alone; they have to exist in united ('interpenetrated') pairs. Here,
for example, is
Engels:
"The law of the interpenetration of
opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites andtransformation into
each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17,
62.]
"Dialectics has proved from the results of our experience of nature so far that
all polar opposites in general are determined by the mutual action of the two
opposite poles on one another, that the separation and opposition of these poles
exists only within their unity and inter-connection, and, conversely, that their
inter-connection exists only in their separation and their unity only in their
opposition."
[Ibid.,
p.72.]
"For a stage in the outlook on nature where all
differences become merged in intermediate steps, and all opposites pass into
one another through intermediate links, the old metaphysical method of
thought no longer suffices. Dialectics, which likewise knows no hard and fast
lines, no unconditional, universally valid 'either-or' and which bridges
the fixed metaphysical differences, and besides 'either-or' recognises also in
the right place 'both this-and that' and reconciles the opposites, is the sole
method of thought appropriate in the highest degree to this stage. Of course,
for everyday use, for the small change of science, the metaphysical categories
retain their validity." [Ibid.,
pp.212-13.]
"Further, we find upon closer investigation that the two
poles of an antithesis positive and negative, e.g., are as inseparable as
they are opposed and that despite all their opposition, they mutually
interpenetrate. And we find, in like manner, that cause and effect are
conceptions which only hold good in their application to individual cases; but
as soon as we consider the individual cases in their general connection with the
universe as a whole, they run into each other, and they become confounded
when we contemplate that universal action and reaction in which causes and
effects are eternally changing places, so that what is effect here and now will
be cause there and then, and vice versa." [Engels
(1976),
p.27.]
"And it is just as impossible have one side of a
contradiction without the other, as it is to retain the whole of an apple in
one's hand after half has been eaten." [Engels (1891b), p.496. Bold
emphasis added.]
The online
version renders the above passage slightly differently:
"And one cannot have one side of this
contradiction without the other, any more than a man has a whole apple in his
hand after eating half." [Quoted from
here.]
Mao also made the same point:
"The fact is
that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite
aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one
contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist
independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would
be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below'; without 'below', there
would be no 'above'. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without
good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no
difficulty; without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords,
there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no
landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the
proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of
nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or
semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with
all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each
other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating,
interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity.
In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of
non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also
possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what
Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be
and how they become identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the
condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.
"But is it enough to say merely that each of the
contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is
identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity?
No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for
their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other.
That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a
thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its
opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.
Why is there identity here, too? You see, by
means of revolutionthe proletariat, at one time the ruled, is
transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is
transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied
by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will
take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity
of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?" [Mao
(1937), pp.337-39.
Bold emphases alone added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; several
paragraphs merged. Three minor
typos corrected; missing words "and how they become",
present in the published
version, but absent on-line, have been added. I have informed the Marxist
Internet Archive (MIA) of these errors.]
"Opposites in a thing are not only mutually
exclusive, polar, repelling, each other; they also attract and interpenetrate
each other. They begin and cease to exist together.... These dual aspects
of opposites -- conflict and unity -- are like scissor blades in cutting, jaws
in mastication, and two legs in walking. Where there is only one, the process
as such is impossible: 'all polar opposites are in general determined by the
mutual action of two opposite poles on one another, the separation and
opposition of these poles exists only within their unity and interconnection,
and, conversely, their interconnection exists only in their separation and their
unity only in their opposition.' In fact, 'where one no sooner tries to hold on
to one side alone then it is transformed unnoticed into the other....'" [Gollobin
(1986), p.113; quoting Engels (1891a),
p.414. Bold emphases added.]
In which
case, if the above theorists are to be believed, there couldn't have been a capitalist class without a proletarian
class. The one can't exist without the other. If so, how could 'appearances' exist before sentient life evolved? Or are we to suppose that
'deeper
reality' wasn't 'contradicted' until sentient life emerged? That is,
are we to imagine that 'deeper
reality' existed for countless billions of years all on its own, in a
'non-contradicted state', only to be 'contradicted' when the first sentient
organisms evolved? But, if 'deeper reality' existed alone for billions of years, that would make the relation between
it and 'appearances' non-dialectical,
and hence unchanging. Why then did it change? If all change is the result of
just such 'dialectical contradictions', and there were none in this case, how
and why the change?
While
odd ideas like this might sit well with maverick Hegelian Idealists, or even run-of-the-mill
Theists, it can't possibly do so for hard-headed
materialists. Least of all DM-fans.
Once more,
none of this makes sense, eveninDM-terms!
It could be objected that if there were
no sentient life, there would be no appearances and hence no contradiction of
the sort described above. Maybe not, but in what way does the
existence of 'underlying reality' imply the existence of 'surface appearances' so that one of them can't exist without
the other -- again, like the proletariat can't exist without the capitalist class,
nor vice versa (so we are told)? Both would have to co-exist and imply one another if this were a 'dialectical
contradiction' (and
if the DM-classics were to be believed). If
'underlying reality' existed long before sentient life evolved (or it wouldn't have
evolved!), then it plainly couldexist without there being any 'appearances' to
do all that 'contradicting'. If so, that means this 'contradiction' can't be
'dialectical', whatever else it is --, otherwise, once more, this couldn't happen. Compare
the supposed possibility that there was an 'underlying reality' before there
were any 'appearances' to 'contradict' it with the following suggestion: There was a time when there was a
proletariat but no capitalist class, or there was a capitalist class but no
proletariat. For DM-fans, is either of these even conceivable?
One suspects not.
In which case, the
anti-DM conclusions drawn above still appear to be
valid.
Again, it could be
argued that DM-theorists reject
such a simple-minded view of the relation between appearance and reality; they
hold there is a dialectical interplay between theory and practice, and
hence between appearance and reality. This means that even though thought depends on appearances for its immediate
content, it nevertheless ascends by means of abstraction, or critical
analysis/synthesis (subsequently tested and confirmed in practice) to a more adequate (less
partial or less relative),
theoretical
and concrete understanding of the world. This process is also rooted in previously
accepted, relatively true
theory, which in turn isn't set in stone. In the long-run, this method yields a more accurate
account of the real processes at work in Capitalism (and in nature). At each
stage, thought returns to the original world of experience where, after again
being tested in practice, its content may be viewed in a more all-rounded,
increasingly concrete manner. The progressive refinement of cognition along such
lines renders any conclusions that have
been drawn (and tested) in this manner,
objective --, or, at least, it means they are increasingly objective (even if such results are still
only partially or relatively true). Hence, appearances needn't be regarded as
merely
subjective, contrary to what is suggested above. Their connection with underlying reality allows
them to be viewed in a different, more complex, inter-connected, less one-sided
light, allowing revolutionaries to understand why things seem the way
they do and why most individuals view them in the manner they do.
Or, so it might be argued...
However, that doesn't explain what the 'contradiction' is
supposed to be here, even in
DM-terms!
Ignoring that rather annoying 'problem' for the present, and despite the fanfare, the
undeniable fact is
that the old conservative adage, "A fair day's pay for a fair day's work", couldn't serve as a guiding principle for
a single revolutionary writing agitational leaflets no matter how many
casuistical hoops dialectical sloganeers
might try to force it through.
That
is because at no stage in the execution of the above 'dialectical somersaults' would it be correct to say, think,
or even imply that Capitalism isn't exploitative. No matter how many
impressive or intricate 'dialectical gyrations' were expertly performed only the most naïve of militants
would automatically believe the boss of a profitable company who said that she "couldn't afford" the latest pay
demand from the strike committee.
In that
case,
and in practice once more, no
revolutionary would regard the beliefs prompted by the 'superficial appearances'
of Capitalist society as anything other than false or self-serving.
Certainly, no Marxist -- that is, this side of a major sell-out --
believes Capitalism is ultimately "fair", and then acts in accord with that belief.39
Anyway, the pro-DM-rejoinder (from a few paragraphs
back) seems to rely on the
assumption that thoughts and theories aren't themselves 'appearances' -– i.e.,
that they aren't expressed in a public language, or don't surface in an open arena in a physical
form of some sort. In fact, when reading DM-texts on the 'dialectical method' one
gets the distinct impression that each complex 'dialectical
fouetté' -- like those Rees mentions above
(and in Appendix Three; "dialectical
fouetté" is, of course, my phrase, not his!) -- takes place in a internal
'mental-', or 'psychic-sports-arena' (as it were), where concepts and abstractions are put through their paces
in private. And not just that. It very much looks like 'dialectical
moves' like these have to be performed afresh each time inside each socially-isolated, dialectical
cranium.
[That was one
of the main themes of Part One (and earlier sections of this Essay): the idea that DM-epistemology, for all its
pretensions to the contrary, is trapped in a bourgeois individualist
'isolation cell'. The general principles underlying the social nature of
language and knowledge will be addressed again in much more detail in Essays
Twelve Part
One and Thirteen Part Three.]
Hence, as
noted above, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that 'the process of
abstraction' is something that adepts learn to
perform as socially-isolated individuals, in their own private inner
sanctum, their heads. Certainly, we have yet to encounter anything in the
'abstractionist literature' that suggests the following picture is misguided: in
order for DM-fans to agree what any of their general words mean there must exist
synchronised teams of dialecticians
all chanting in unison the latest verbal application of their most recent
'dialectical conjuring trick', or the production of their latest 'abstraction'
-- perhaps under the watchful eye of a team leader in the shape of
Alan Woods,
Gerry Healy,
Bob Avakian,
Ernest Mandel, George Novack, Bertell Ollman, or even
Chris Cutrone (to name just six). How else do Dialectical Marxists imagine they are capable of coordinating
their individual 'abstractive endeavours' so they are able to decide whether or
not the 'abstractions' generated by Abstractor A are the same as those of Abstractor B,
the same as those of
Abstractor C, the same as those of Abstractor D, the same as
those of Abstractor E, the same as..?
We
are never told how any of these IntrepidAbstractors know whether
or not their 'abstractions' concur with those of the rest of the Abstractive
Community, so any such 'coordination' -- if it happens -- remains
just as mysterious as the 'process' itself. In fact, no two dialecticians would be able to
determine whether or not their socially-isolated 'feats of mental abstraction' actually
converged on the same target,
let alone the right target. [On that, see
here and
here. In fact, as we saw earlier,
in such
circumstances, there could be no
such thing as "correct" or "right".]
An
appeal to a publicly accessible language here (in order to establish some level
of shared meaning across the above Abstractors) would be to no avail, either --
as pointed out
earlier, too. Moreover,
since the use of any such language takes place in this'unreliable world of appearances',
recourse to it would be rather like trying to ascertain your correct height by placing the
flat of your hand on the
top of your
head, but doing nothing more.
[Once again:
in the above it was assumed for the purpose of argument that DM-epistemology and the 'dialectical theory of
abstraction' were both, prima facie, true
-- or even comprehensible.]
In short,
the superficial gestures DM-theorists make in the general direction of their (avowed) belief in the social nature
of language and knowledge are at
odds withtheir pronouncements on this and related topics. Given their own
theory, knowledge and language can't be social products; they are the result of
the abstractive activities of socially-, and epistemologically-isolated individuals, none of whom
would in the end mean the same by their words as anyone else involved in this 'dialectical pantomime'.
Conversely,
of course, if language and knowledge are accepted as social products, abstractionism
becomes a
non-starter. [On
that, see here.]
In both
Parts of this Essay we have witnessed several dialecticians reporting -- verbally
or in print -- on the results of their own
self-confessed, 'internal
investigations' (since they all describe, or characterise, 'abstraction'
in terms of inner 'mental processes'). Indeed, in this respect, they have no choice. They have to do one or
other of these (i.e., report on their ideas verbally or in print), or keep their
ideas to themselves. Moreover, they have to do all that reporting in this
'world of appearances', too. Short of there being a 'hot-line'
connecting one 'dialectical brain' to the next (or there exist some form of
'dialectical telepathy'), there is no way that the contents
of any one of these 'inner abstractive-gymnasiums' might be available to any
others in the same Abstractive Community forcomparisons to be
made, let alone
validation or confirmation.
So, in order to compare their
'ideas and abstractions',
dialecticians have to record or express their 'inner deliberations' in this material world,
in some form or other, where 'unreliable appearances' still reign supreme.
In
that case, and if we were to believe what we are
told about this 'untrustworthy world of appearances' and its 'subjective' nature, no DM-proposition could
ever be or become
"objective", in any sense of that word -- but, certainly not in any
way consistent with what Lenin had
to say about 'objectivity'.
Of course, it could be
countered that even if
DM-propositions surface in the world of appearances, that doesn't affect their
content, what they are about -- and hence surfacing in the world
of appearances can't affect their validity.
But, anyone
who wants to ascertain
what
any such propositions are about, or determine the validity of their content, has to rely on what appears before them,
on the page or in person (in a lecture hall, or in conversation, for example), or
while watching a video --, all of which must take place in
this 'sketchy world of appearances'. As should now seem clear, what
Dialectical Marxists claim
they can 'see', 'read' or even conclude about
such content will only appear
to be this, or only appear to be that. How could it be otherwise? Does anyone have direct access to the brain processes of a single DM-theorist? On the other hand, if
they are
somehow capable
of ascertaining what this content really is, then, if DM-epistemology is
to be believed, what this content really is must
also 'contradict' what 'appears' in front of them. If not --
i.e., if there
is no contradiction here -- i.e., between what this content really
is and what 'appears' in front of each DM-fan -- this theory must be
defective to its core. Naturally, this means no one need pay DM any heed
--, or,
even worse, try to put it into practice.
[Although
such considerations might help account for the last hundred or so years of the almost
unremitting failure of
Dialectical Marxism.]
There is no way around this major
obstacle
-- or, there is none for those who have unwisely bought into the ancient, ruling-class
distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'.
[The words
"see" and "read" above are encased in 'scare' quotes for reasons set out in detail in
Essay Thirteen Part One -- since,
if Lenin is to be believed, all that DM-fans have available to them are 'images' of
the world (and hence 'images' of books and articles about DM) -- not the world itself.
Readers are directed to that Essay for proof. In Appendix Three, I have dealt
with John Rees's unsuccessful (and surprisingly weak) attempt to rescue Lenin from the solipsistic black hole
into which
he had dropped himself in
MEC.]
Furthermore,
even if it were true that 'the
process of abstraction' takes place in 'the mind', unless DM-theorists are prepared to
accept a quasi-Cartesian account of thoughts (whereby the latter somehow
guarantee
their own veracity, as opposed to merely appearing to do so),
not even such an inner, 'dialectical detour' will succeed in grounding a single DM-abstraction in
'objectivity' (again, if we really have to use the jargon).39a Hence, without postulating
the existence of abstractions that are self-authenticating and thoughts
that are self-certifying
(which would therefore require no support from practice or evidence), these 'inner
phenomena', these 'inner representations', can't obviate or diminish the need to make a
validating entrance in the world
of suspect 'appearances'.40
Unfortunately, however, inside the alleged 'inner chamber of the mind', a
'thought' is no less an appearance than the deliverances of the
senses. Even for the most
solipsistically-incarcerated
of individuals, their thoughts only
appear to them to be thus and so.
In which case, even if such
'thoughts' were
'self-certifying', they would still only appear to be such.40a
Hence, individual dialecticians can no more certify their own ideas and
'abstractions' than they can certify their own exam results, their own
divorce or their own world record.
But, what
about the unsupported claim (above) that thoughts are also appearances?
Presumably
the following -- or what they can be used to express -- would be counted as
examples of thought, at some level:
T1: "That stick is bent in
the water", said the philosopher.
T2: NNthought a stick
was bent until she realised it was partly immersed in water.
T3: NMthought he
had won the vote until the result of the recount was announced.
On the basis of these (and countless other
examples one could think of), it would be difficult to deny that thoughts are
either 'appearances' or are part of the 'world of appearances'. In
fact, the above are not only about appearances, they are appearances
themselves.
It could be
argued that appearances are usually associated with sense perception, which is what
(fundamentally) distinguishes
them from thoughts. In response it is worth pointing out that T3, for instance, isn't about 'sensations', it is about how
things appeared to NM at a certain point during a re-count, and perhaps afterwards.
So, T3 records a reported appearance that prompted NM's thoughts, and he was wrong.
What appeared to be the case, what was thought to be true, turned out not to be so.
Of course, what has dominated
Traditional Thought is a certain paradigm/metaphor that has held Philosophers
(and amateur metaphysicians) in its grip for countless centuries. This paradigm/metaphor
is integral to an entire family of theories that
picture 'thoughts' as inner, shadowy 'mental' events, states, processes or episodes,
which somehow
represent things to us 'internally' and 'directly', or which form the basis
of our beliefs about, and our knowledge of, the world. Fundamental to this complex
paradigm is
an associated metaphor that pictures 'the mind' as a (sort of) computational device that
'processes data' sent its way by the
senses. This approach was subsequently based on (yet-to-be-indentified)
neurological or psychological structures, networks and pathways located and
operating in the
CNS. The 'output' of
these 'internal processes' is then supposed to be accessible only to the individual concerned,
who thereby has a unique perspective on, and an immediate awareness of, that 'output'.
Since Descartes introduced the term, this entire ensemble is now called "consciousness".
[I have said more about that obscure term in several places in Essay Thirteen
Part Three, but especially
here.]
This then a core belief the vast majority of contemporary theorists have inherited from
Descartes --, and, ultimately, from Plato himself:
"Descartes's view of the nature
of mind endured much longer than his view of matter. Indeed among educated
people in the West who were not professional philosophers it is still the most
widespread view of the mind. Most contemporary philosophers would disown
Cartesian dualism but even those who explicitly renounce it are often profoundly
influenced by it. Many people, for instance,
go along with Descartes in identifying the mental realm as the realm of
consciousness. They think of consciousness as an object of introspection; as
something we see when we look within ourselves. They think of it as an
inessential, contingent matter that consciousness has an expression in speech
and behaviour. Consciousness, as they conceive it, is something to which each of
us has direct access in our own case. Others, by contrast, can only infer to our
conscious states by accepting our testimony or making causal inferences from our
physical behaviour." [Kenny (1992), p.2. Bold emphases added; paragraphs
merged.]
"In philosophy, ever since
Plato, the mainstream opinion has been that the mind is the organ of thought;
thinking is what the mind is for, and we act as we do because we think what we
do." [Fodor
(2011), p.24. Bold emphasis added.]
"Philosophical
reflection on human nature, on the body and soul, goes back to the dawn of
philosophy. The polarities between which it fluctuates were set out by Plato and
Aristotle. According to Plato, and the Platonic-Christian tradition of
Augustine, the human
being is not a unified substance, but a combination of two distinct substances,
a mortal body and an immortal soul. According to Aristotle, a human being
is a unified substance, the soul (psuchē) being the form of the body.
To describe that form is to describe the characteristic powers of human beings:
in particular, the distinctive powers of intellect and will that characterize
the rational psuchē. Modern debate on this theme commences with the
heir to the Platonic-Augustinian tradition: namely, the Cartesian conception of
human beings as two one-sided things, a mind and a body. Their two-way causal
interaction was invoked to explain human experience and behaviour.
"The greatest
figures of the first two generations of twentieth-century neuroscientists, e.g.,
Sherrington,
Eccles and
Penfield, were avowed
Cartesian dualists. The third generation retained the basic Cartesian structure,
but transformed it into brain–body dualism: substance dualism was abandoned, but
structural dualism retained. For neuroscientists now ascribe much the same array
of mental predicates to the brain as Descartes ascribed to the mind, and
conceive of the relationship between thought and action, and experience and its
objects, in much the same way as Descartes -- essentially merely replacing the
mind by the brain. The central theme of our book was to demonstrate the
incoherence of brain–body dualism, and to disclose its misguided
crypto-Cartesian character. Our constructive aim was to show that an
Aristotelian account, with due emphasis on first- and second-order active and
passive abilities and their modes of behavioural manifestation, supplemented by
Wittgensteinian insights that complement Aristotle's, is necessary to do justice
to the structure of our conceptual scheme and to provide coherent descriptions
of the great discoveries of post-Sherringtonian cognitive neuroscience."
[Bennett and Hacker (2008), pp.240-41. Bold emphases and links added. Italics
in the original.]
"The second critical aspect of the Cartesian Paradigm was
the creation of the private realm of consciousness that flowed from the new
scientific withdrawal of soul from the material world.
Ideas existed in consciousness only (and animals did not and could not) have
them. Because there seemed to be a New World of consciousness, it invited
exploration and study with a special tool for making the voyage, introspection.
Thus was created the idea of a science devoted to consciousness, psyche-logos,
the science of the soul.... What I want to point out here is a more basic
problem for psychology defined according to the Cartesian framework:
It makes doing psychology as a science nearly impossible...."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 18/05/2024; bold emphases added.]
"...[V]irtually no
philosopher doubted, from the time of
Locke
until roughly 1914, that, whatever concepts and ideas were, they were clearly
mental objects of some kind. And no large-scale and comprehensive demolition job
was done against this particularly wide-spread and influential philosophical
misconception untilWittgenstein produced his
Philosophical Investigations...." [Putnam (1975b), p.7. Bold
emphasis added.]
As Essay
Thirteen Parts One and
Three show, DM-theorists have
bought into this pseudoproblem, with its associated view of 'the mind', 'consciousness',
'cognition' and 'thought'
-- they just have a
different theory that attempts to account for all four. As such, their
theory not only arose out of, it remains locked in, the
Platonic-Christian-Cartesian-Paradigm of 'the mind', 'consciousness',
'cognition' and 'thought'
--
which motivates the belief that 'thoughts' are internal, private and individually-experienced phenomena.
That explains why Traditional Theorists define 'the process of abstraction' in terms of private
mental acts (and that includes DM-theorists themselves, as we have seen,
here and
here). Indeed, it is
also why it
seems
obvious to many that since appearances arise from sensation, they can't be 'thoughts' (nor
visa versa).
Here is
Plato laying the foundations of this theory of 'the mind' -- i.e., that
'thought' is like 'the soul' in private conversation with itself (i.e., it
engages in what later came to be known as "inner
speech") -- in a conversation between Socrates and
Theaetetus:
"Soc. But must not the mind,
or thinking power, which misplaces them, have a conception either of both
objects or of one of them?
"Theaet. Certainly.
"Soc. Either together or in succession?
"Theaet. Very good.
"Soc. And do you mean by conceiving, the same which I mean?
"Theaet. What is that?
"Soc. I mean the conversation which the soul holds with herself in considering
of anything. I speak of what I scarcely understand; but the soul when thinking
appears to me to be just talking -- asking questions of herself and answering
them, affirming and denying. And when she has arrived at a decision, either
gradually or by a sudden impulse, and has at last agreed, and does not doubt,
this is called her opinion. I say, then, that to form an opinion is to speak,
and opinion is a word spoken, -- I mean, to oneself and in silence, not aloud or
to another: What think you?
"Theaet. I agree."
[Plato
(1997e), p.210. However, I have used Benjamin Jowett's on-line version, not
the one found in Plato (1997e). Bold emphases added.]
Similar ideas were expressed in another of
Plato's
dialogues,
the
Sophist (in this case, the exchange is between an
Eleatic Stranger and
Theaetetus):
"Str. And therefore thought, opinion, and imagination are
now proved to exist in our minds both as true and false.
"Theaet. How so?
"Str. You will know better if you first gain a knowledge of what they are, and
in what they severally differ from one another.
"Theaet. Give me the knowledge which you would wish me to gain.
"Str. Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that what is
called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with herself?
"Theaet. Quite true."
[Plato
(1997b), pp.287-88.
Once again, I have quoted Benjamin Jowett's on-line version, not Plato (1997b). Bold emphases added.]
[Details
concerning other Ancient Greek thinkers who adopted similar ideas can be found in
Sorabji (2004), pp.205-26. I have covered this topic more extensively in
Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here.
Readers are directed there for more details.]
But, what
takes place in this
'internal world' is uncheckable, which means that whatever each individual
experiences there (that is, if they do!) may only appear to be this or
appear to be that. They have no independent way of checking any of it. Again,
that would be like trying to establish your own truthfulness by asking
yourself a series of questions.
So, given
both the Ancient and post-Cartesian way of picturing
human cognition, 'appearances' now turn out to be shadowy, inner 'entities'
('reflections', 'images', 'impressions', etc., etc.) that can only be inspected by an 'internal eye' of some sort. If so,
sensation as such can't be what distinguishes 'appearances'
from 'thoughts'. On this view, both 'thoughts' and 'appearances' areprivately
experienced and internally processed -- interpreted as events or states hidden away in the 'recesses of the
mind'. In that case, it looks like the only difference between
'thoughts' and 'appearances' is that the latter seem to 'arrive from the outside' while the former are supposedly generated
'internally', under our control (to a limited extent). Nevertheless, given this view of
'appearances', the belief that there
is an 'outside', which is capable of acting as a source of anything, let
alone sensory 'inputs', is itself based on
another set of 'appearances', which, plainly, undermines this assumed
difference, making both 'thoughts' and 'appearances' 'internal' events,
processes and states, after all.
[Again,
I have said much more about this
in Essay Thirteen
Parts One
and Three.
Note once more: I am not reporting on my own beliefs here, merely pointing out
the absurd consequences of accepting ruling-class forms-of-thought, in this case
the distinction between 'appearance' and 'reality'/'essence'.]
Moreover, as we have also seen, the supposition that 'thoughts' are under our
(possibly limited) control trades on a further misconception: that there is
something 'internal' to each of us that is separate from our 'thoughts', which is
also independent of our conscious control and is thereby capable of
regimenting or regulating our 'thoughts' for us. Hence, given this view, our 'thoughts'
are both under our control and aren't under our control, since such
control has been has
delegated to an 'autonomous regulator' that ultimately runs the show.
We just
think what we think is under our control.
That helps explain why:
(i) Leibniz ended up with all those
autonomous Monads, which were a law unto themselves and which meant his thoughts
weren't really his, but were put there by 'God';
(ii) Hegel was led by the nose as 'God' (almost parasitically) unfolded
'His' ideas in Hegel's brain, living rent-free in his head -- or those ideas self-developed outside of
control by either of them, Hegel or 'God'; and,
(iii)
DM-theorists, caught up in the confusion they inherited from Hegel, talk the way
they do; i.e., when what they say about the 'process of abstraction' results
(somewhat fittingly) in two inconsistent interpretations: that the process
itself both is and isn't under our conscious control. [One
specific example of this Dialectical Muddle is examined in detail in Appendix One.]
This overall idea in turn trades on what has come to be called 'the
homunculus fallacy' (a caricatured version of which was recently animated in Pixar's cartoon,
Inside Out -- and again in 2024, with Inside Out 2), which is clearly no solution. Whatever
'it' supposedly is that controls our
'thoughts', 'it' must face the same insoluble problems the 'mind' and its
'thoughts' already imply, generating another
infinite regress.
Earlier, we saw this approach to knowledge is in the end predicated on two further
(implicit) assumptions; either:
(b) 'The mind' is in effect an internal,
'bourgeois individual',
different from the Christian/Cartesian 'soul' in name alone.
Without
doubt materialists will reject the dualism that underpins this way of picturing
'the mind' -- unfortunately,
however, there is no consistent way for DM-theorists to do so.
[Why that is
the case is covered in detail in
Essay Thirteen Part Three (link a few paragraphs back), where
the neo-Cartesian theory that 'mental events' are 'internal objects and processes',
upon which DM-theories of cognition depend, has been subjected
to sustained and destructive criticism.]
On the other hand,
if the existence of
self-interpreting and auto-confirming thoughts are part of DM-epistemology
(in fact, as we have seen, there is a clear echo of both in Hegel's system, but as far as I can determine, no Marxist
dialectician has gone the whole hog here in agreeing with Hegel -- although some
appear to have gone half-hog
in that direction, for example,
here and
here), and thoughts were
then considered to be no part of 'the world of appearances'
(contrary to what was concluded above), they would be no different from the
'intelligent ideas' we met
earlier in this Essay.
Furthermore,
a belated
appeal to 'inter-subjectivity' can't validate this part of DM, either. That is
because, if this theory were 'true', the reports advanced by other individuals
(about their 'internally-processed abstractions', etc.) would likewise surface in this
'unreliable world of appearances', to be promptly be 'contradicted' by
all those 'underlying essences', as, indeed, would any
opinion expressed about one or both, for or against.
Once more, until a clear
account of the nature of "thoughts" and "appearances" (as these terms are understood
by DM-theorists) is forthcoming (and which doesn't depend on the
Platonic/Christian/Cartesian 'soul', nor any 'equivalent' doctrine), it is
impossible to determine whether or not they
are the same or
different, or only appear to be the one or the other.
However, as seems
reasonably clear, if DM-theorists continue
to argue along traditional lines, and agree with Hegel about this ('whole hog' or
'half hog' -- recall that
Hegel linked both the 'contingent' and the 'ephemeral' with 'appearances', and human
'thought' is certainly 'ephemeral' and as 'contingent' as any individual who
entertains a single 'thought'), it would make a mockery of the materialist flip they
claim to have inflicted on his system, for such 'thoughts' would then be little
different from those mysterious Hegelian 'Ideas'/'Concepts'. Except they
would now be trapped in, and
defined by, a psychologically-isolated, socially-fragmented version of
Hegel's mind/concept in 'self-development'.
Hence, if dialecticians still want to distinguish 'thought' from 'appearance', there
seems to be no way of doing so that distances them from all those Platonic/Cartesian/Hegelian
'self-developing', 'self-certifying' (even 'semi-divine') 'Ideas'. And, ifthatis
the case, any subsequent referral back to the 'empirical world' for testing and
validation would be an empty gesture. Why bother to test a 'god-like' 'thought'?
Did Moses
even think to check the Ten Commandments or the creation story in the
Book of Genesis?
[Moving
even higher up the Cosmic Pecking Order:
did Gerry Healy ever substantiate a single thing he said -- except
by quoting Holy DM-writ, of course (i.e., Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky)? And, it goes
without saying, we
all know Bob Avakian doesn't need tocheck anything at all. (Perish the thought!) But, the situation is even
worse than this might
suggest, since not even 'God' can side-step how things appear to 'Him' to
be. Even
for the 'Absolute Idea', at The End of Time, as the Final Judgement-Day Bell tolls,
things will merely appear to be as history has delivered them to
'Him'/'Her'/'It'. Once again: Even if 'appearances' ever managed to coincide with 'essence' on that fateful,
Definitive Day, they would still
only appear to do so. After all, it would be
just another 'brute fact' about how
'The Absolute' so happens to string ideas together.]
Finally, we can
console ourselves with the further thought (no pun intended!) that whoever rejects the
above conclusions must do so in 'this
world of appearances', or stay forever silent. Even Hegel's system is
only accessible to those who can read, speak or hear. That is because
his writings (indeed, anyone's writings) confront us now, and always
will, as
phenomenal objects.
And, in this world,
the physical universe, 'appearances' reign supreme.
Any appearance to the contrary is,
of course,
entirely
illusory...
Furthermore,
thoughts and theories can be every bit as mistaken as beliefs based on
appearances often are (if we insist on picturing
knowledge in such a peculiar way).41
For example, the thought that sticks bend when immersed in water is no
less (potentially) misleading than is any
appearance to that effect.
[That is partly what lay behind the point made
earlier about contradictory beliefs.]
The
history of science is
littered with
erroneous
and radically false or mistaken beliefs and theories. With respect to DM, the situation is,
if anything,
far worse. Given the DM-theory that knowledge depends on an infinite,
asymptotic convergence on an ever-elusive Absolute or Ideal Limit,
it is little different from extreme scepticism. [That accusation
was substantiated in Essay Ten Part One,
here.] If so, there is an
extremely high probability that even the soundest-seeming DM-claim only
appears
to becorrect, or the very latest, 'best' and 'well-confirmed'
DM-'abstraction' only looks authentic, when neither are. That is especially
so in relation to a theory that promotes the belief that 'appearances' are deceptive
since they not only fail to
match 'reality', they somehow 'contradict' it --, as we are about to find out.42
Unfortunately, just as soon as the virus-like distinction between 'appearance'
and 'reality' is introduced into the equation, the downfall of any theory that
lays out a welcome mat for it is all but guaranteed. Indeed, for that theory, the hour of its birth is the hour of its death.
Even
more ironic: this is one idea that
actuallydoes
'self-develop', but not in a positive or encouraging direction. Nor, indeed, in a way DM-theorists
will find at all appealing. In fact, such an idea soon engages self-destruct mode. For if
nothingin epistemology is indubitable -- save we revert to those comforting
'Cartesian certainties'
(which, anyway, only seem to be secure
and only appear to be reliable to those who think that ideas are somehow
capable of interpreting and
validating themselves, when they aren't; after all, even Descartes required 'God' to validate
his 'clear and distinct' ideas!)
--, then the
superiority of 'thought' over 'sensation', 'essence' over 'accident' and 'reality' over
'appearance' turns out to be no less illusory -- but, only given this crazy way of
picturing
human cognition and the growth of knowledge.
In which case, alongside misleading
phenomena we now have to contend with even more dubious DM-theories and
their associated, uncheckable 'abstractions'. And, like it or not, these
increasingly suspect theories are totally incapable of providing a secure basis
for any attempt to explain of the "true nature" of
all those equally
shaky 'appearances'. If an apparentlycorrect -- possibly
incorrect --theory, which is
incapable of guaranteeing an accurate interpretation of
'misleading phenomena', a
demonstrably defective theory (such
as DM) stands no chance.
Oscillate dialectically as much as you like -- between 'thought' and
'appearance', 'essence' and 'accident', 'reality' and 'illusion', 'fact' and
'fantasy' -- loop the 'dialectical loop' all day
long, it matters not. Traditional concepts like these -- i.e., "essence",
"reality", "appearance", "theory", "objectivity", and their ilk -- are
forever lost in this 'shadowy world' of misleading
'semblances'.43
So, it now
clear that the 'dialectical circuit' locks DM in a steady orbit around permanently questionable 'appearances'.
Hence, for any given DM-theorist who employs
problematic concepts like these, the supposed route that leads to the formation
of abstract theory and back again (via practice),
as a way of delving behind phenomena in order to uncover hidden "essence",
is forever blocked. For
just as soon as a single DM-abstraction is penned, typed,
thought about or spoken, it enters and then remains trapped in
this world of 'faded
simulacra'.
In response, it could
be objected that, contrary to the above dialecticians locate the process of abstraction in thought.
That links it with theory
and hence (at least intentionally) with essence, not appearance.
So all those earlier, anti-DM conclusions are completely misguided.
But,
that pro-DM-rebuttal is itself misconceived, for 'thought'
(as DM-theorists themselves view it) only becomes objective in practice.
'Thought'
doesn't
become 'objective' if it remains confined to an inner, mental or 'abstract
antechamber'. It has to enter the phenomenal world via expression (in language), subsequently
confirmed in practice. Minimally, a DM-'thought' (at
the very least) has to be vocalised, typed or written down if it is to be acted upon or tested
and thereby be allowed mature into 'objectivity' (where possible sand howsoever
'relative' it is).
Unfortunately, given this way of
depicting the 'process of abstraction' and its growth into 'objectivity', it has
to manifest itself in 'extra-mental reality', in the phenomenal world we see
around us -- it has to emergeinto a world where 'appearances' are both judge and
jury. In that case, any material representation or expression of a
DM-'thought' -- and any attempt to test it in practice -- must negotiate its peace with them.
Unfortunately once more, given the traditional
approach to cognition and the growth of knowledge (outlined above), the world of
'appearances' is an unsympathetic,
unforgiving and unrelenting taskmaster.
Moreover, if
the (additional) restrictions that DM places on 'thought' are now taken into account
(i.e., the requirement that theories must be tested in practice), there turns
out to be
no way of corroborating
a single DM-proposition -- at least, none that hasn't already been compromised by the 'reality'/'appearance' distinction (briefly
described in the last few paragraphs). That would be
all the more so if
the 'asymptotic approach'
metaphor is thrown in for good measure -- which,
as we have also seen,revealsthat DM collapses into a radical form of scepticism. Furthermore, as we
also discovered was the case with
'thought',
confirmation isn't self-certifying, either. It, too, has to be carried out
in this 'vale of appearances', where practice also takes place. Hence, any test
of a theory must be carried out there, in the 'unreliable world of appearances'. If
so, practice, even if it were a test
of truth, can't provide DM-epistemology with a
'get-out-of-any-need-to-appeal-to-appearances-free' card.
Negotiate this rusty old DM-banger around as many
dialectical bends as you like, it makes no difference. It still ends-up wrapped around
the same oldpost of 'untrustworthy appearances'.
[Apologies
are owed the reader for all these mixed metaphors!]
Figure Seven: Dialectics 0 -
Reality 1
And that is just one more reason why genuine materialists
distrust the Idealist
nostrums
DM-fans have unwisely imported into Marxism, courtesy of that Hermetic
Harebrain, Hegel. Indeed, as we have discovered,
this dialectical muddle is a direct consequence of the appropriation of ideas
that grew out of
Traditional Metaphysics. In the present case, it involves ideas associated with the
'appearance'/'reality' and 'essence'/'appearance' distinctions.
Naturally,
that
doesn't mean an
HM-analysis of Capitalism, for example, is incapable of
distinguishing between genuinely exploitative relations and the false
beliefs workers (and others) form of them --, nor does it prevent a
successful explanation being given why workers form, or accept, contradictory ideas as a result.44
But, it does mean that revolutionaries may successfully do so only when the confused,
class-compromised categories of Traditional Philosophy and DM are completely abandoned.
I have
added the following extended criticism of a core section of one of
Bertell Ollman's
books -- i.e., Ollman (2003),
pp.59-112; the
material also appears in Ollman (1993), pp.23-83 -- because several comrades recommended it as an excellent exposition of the 'process of abstraction'.
[A recent
example of this can be found
here, where I have also posted
several objections. (Unfortunately, those links now appear to have died!)]
In the above book Ollman outlined his
interpretation of Marx's use of "abstraction" (and its cognates), however,
Ollman's readers will surely be forgiven their acute sense of
disappointment that, after the opening fanfare (i.e., to the effect that 'abstraction'
is a key concept in Marx's analysis of Capitalism -- in fact, the word
"abstraction" and its cognates appear over 590 times in Ollman's book alone,
which is far more times than Marx used the term in all three volumes of
Das Kapital!), no actual account is given of the 'process' itself, that
is, over and above the usual, by-now-familiar handful of
superficial gestures
and vague references to 'mental acts' and 'mental constructs'
that are somehow involved.
Here, for instance, is Ollman's opening salvo:
"First and foremost, and stripped of all
qualifications added by this or that dialectician, the subject of dialectics is
change, all change, and interaction, all kinds and degrees of interaction. This
is not to say that dialectical thinkers recognize the existence of change and
interaction, while non-dialectical thinkers do not. That would be foolish.
Everyone recognizes that everything in the world changes, somehow and to some
degree, and that the same holds true for interaction. The problem is how to
think adequately about them, how to capture them in thought. How, in other
words, can we think about change and interaction so as not to miss or distort
the real changes and interactions that we know, in a general way at least, are
there (with all the implications this has for how to study them and to
communicate what we find to others)? This is the key problem addressed by
dialectics,this is what all dialectics is about, and it is in helping to
resolve this problem that Marx turns to the process of abstraction." [Ollman
(2003),
pp.59-60. Bold emphasis added.
We also found out in Part One of Essay Three that
Andrew Sayer's
attempt to characterise the 'process of abstraction' was
no less disappointing.]
But, we have already seen that neither dialecticians nor their 'theory'
can actually explain
change. Indeed, it turns out that if DM were true, change would
be
impossible (why that is so is explained in Essays Five through Eight Part Three, but especially
here
and here). In addition, it has
also been shown (throughout much of Essay Three Parts
One and Two), that no sense can be made of the 'process of
abstraction', either (that is, what little is known about it). So, the question remains: Has Ollman anything new to add that
might turn the tide of
theory back in favour of this easily discredited intellectual fossil, this left-over from
Ancient Greek philosophical confusion?
Well,
apparently not, since all he has to offer are a few pages of trite observations
about
what he thinks we all do when we allegedly engage in 'the process of abstraction'
(supported by no evidence at all -- either quoted, cited or referenced),
allied with what he thinks scientists engage
in when they formulate their theories (again, supported, not by evidence, just
a lively imagination).
[The serious
philosophical difficulties that confront any attempt to define change in
general (let alone construct 'abstract ideas' about it) have been be
exposed
below.]
The above
remarks might appear a little hasty and unfair to Ollman, so, in response, it
would be wise to
examine in greater detail what he actually had to say about this
'process'in orderto see
if those comments are as
prejudicial and peremptory as they might seem (to some). Here, then, is part
of what he did
say:
"In his most explicit statement on the subject, Marx claims that his method
starts from the 'real concrete' (the world as it presents itself to us) and
proceeds through 'abstraction' (the intellectual activity of breaking this whole
down into the mental units with which we think about it) to the 'thought
concrete' (the reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind) (Marx
(1904), pp.293-94; this is a reference to
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
-- RL). The real
concrete is simply the world in which we live, in all its complexity. The
thought concrete is Marx's reconstruction of that world in the theories of what
has come to be called 'Marxism.' The royal road to understanding is said to pass
from the one to the other through the process of abstraction." [Ibid.,
p.60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site, as they have been in all the other passages quoted from this source.
Referencing conventions changed to agree with those adopted at this site; bold emphases added.]
He has repeated
these ideas, or something like them, more recently:
"If Marx's philosophy of internal relations provides
us with an ontology that consists of processes and relations, the epistemology
associated with it addresses the problem of how to learn about such a reality
without getting overwhelmed with our findings. Marx resolves this problem
with the process of abstraction, or way of singling out, or focusing on, and
setting up a provisional boundary around some part(s) of the processes and
relations that have come to his attention. While the qualities we perceive with
our five senses really exist as parts of nature, the conceptual distinctions
that tell us where one 'thing' ends and the next one begins, both in space and
across time, are also social and mental constructs. However great the
influence of what the world is on where we draw these boundaries, it is
ultimately we who draw them, and people in different cultures and from different
philosophical traditions, and/or with different goals in mind, will draw them
different, whether a little or a lot. There are several other senses in which
Marx uses the term 'abstraction,' but for our purposes this is the most
important one." [Ollman (2019), p.99. Bold emphases added; quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
So,
according to Ollman, abstraction is a method by means of which we aim to break down
the "real concrete" into manageable "mental units", which
can be used to "think about"
the world and then presumably theorise about it). But, howwe actually do this is passed over in
total silence.
No surprise there,
then...
If we all do
it, it should be child's play to set out how we perform this universal trick. Or
so my readers might naively think...
But,
Ollman is following a well-trodden path whereby
those who claim there is such a 'process' remain tight-lipped about how we
actually go about 'processing abstractions' in our 'minds'.
If someone
aims to tell you how to bake a cake,
assemble a bunk bed, mix a cocktail or build a house, they will also provide you with
a detailed description of the steps you need to take, in what order they
should be performed and what implements/tools/skills you will need, etc., etc. Here, for
instance, is a one such that sets out how to bake a cake, with all the steps
and ingredients in plain view. Anyone who checks the latter will see no hand-waving, no
side-stepping, no boorish attempts to deflect, no obscure jargon, in place of
actual instructions.
But, in well over two thousand years we have yet to be given even one step
(never mind a series of steps) that explains how to abstract anything 'in the
head', laid out for us by those who seem to think we are all natural
abstractors. [Added On Edit October 2024: Having said that, I
have just discovered a recent attempt made in this direction --
Laurence and Margolis
(2012). I will say more about this failed endeavour in Interlude One.] And, even if we were, it should still be possible to set out
in detail the steps taken when anything has been 'abstracted', just as, say, speech therapists
can specify in detail the steps we take when we pronounce a given phoneme
-- here are just a few
examples of
that. Again, readers will see no hand-waving or attempts to deflect. But the
'abstractionist community' is totally silent on this, and have been for
centuries. When pressed in debate to specify the steps that need to be taken we witness little other than
animated hand-waving, partisan special pleading and repeated attempts to deflect
from DM-fans.
How odd...
[Anyone who
disagrees with the above rather sweeping generalisation is invited to
email me with the contrary details.]
Interlude
One: Failed Attempt To Show There Actually Is A 'Process Of Abstraction'
Under
Construction...
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In addition,
it is difficult to see how this 'process' can begin with the "real
concrete", since anything thought to be "concrete" ("real", or otherwise)
can only be declared to be suchat the end of an
infinite epistemological journey:
"'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. Bold emphasis
alone added;
paragraphs merged.]
"The identity of thinking and being, to
use Hegelian language, everywhere coincides with your example of the circle and
the polygon. Or the two of them, the concept of a thing and its reality, run
side by side like two asymptotes, always approaching each other but never
meeting. This difference between the two is the very difference which prevents
the concept from being directly and immediately reality and reality from being
immediately its own concept. Because a concept has the essential nature of the
concept and does not therefore prima facie directly coincide with
reality, from which it had to be abstracted in the first place, it is
nevertheless more than a fiction, unless you declare that all the results of
thought are fictions because reality corresponds to them only very circuitously,
and even then approaching it only asymptotically…. In other words, the unity of
concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process, and
that is what it is, in this case as in all others." [Engels to Schmidt
(12/03/1895), in Marx and Engels (1975b), pp.457-58, and Marx and Engels (2004),
pp.463-64.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Cognition is the
eternal, endless approximation
of thought to the object." [Lenin (1961),
p.195.
Bold emphasis added.]
"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. Paragraphs merged.]
As I then
proceed to argue in Part One (slightly edited):
[Concerning concrete objects], 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 meannothing 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.]
Perhaps this is what Lenin meant when he argued as follows:
"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.]
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....
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....
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 couldeven "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.
Such are
the 'consolations' of 'dialectics'.
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:
"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…." [Ibid., bold added.]
Do we havethis much information about apples?
Could
we cope with it even if we had?
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.
If we can't even eat a 'concrete apple', how is it
possible to begin with the 'concrete'?
Only when the above 'infinite journey' has been completed (which, of course,
can't happen), will anyone be able to say with certainty that a dog, a table or even
an apple is 'concrete'. This is one of the least appreciated consequences of
trying to 'invert' Hegelian Idealism:
material reality may only be 'comprehended' by beginning
at the end!
Wherever the truth lies (and good luck trying to
extract a clear answer on this or any other issue connected with 'dialectics' from
a DM-fan!), we
have seen that the way the 'process of abstraction'
has consistently been characterised by Traditional Theorists (like Ollman) means it is an
individualised, 'mental' skill that
(as we have also shown) completely
undermines the social nature
of knowledge and
language.
Just like
Ollman,
Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise this
'process' reveals that he, too, thinks it is an individualised, private skill in relation to which we all seem to be 'natural' experts:
"The sense in which the term
['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an
abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial
aspect of an object." [Sayer (1992), p.87. In a footnote, Sayer adds "My use
of 'abstract' and 'concrete' is, I think, equivalent to Marx's" (p.277, note 3). Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this
site. Bold emphasis alone added. The page numbers are completely
different in the Second Corrected Edition, i.e., Sayer (2010), p.59 and p.187,
respectively.]
As was the
case with Ollman -- and, indeed, everyone
else who has written about this obscure 'process' (many of whom have been quoted
in both Parts of Essay Three) --, we aren't told by
Sayer how
anyone
manages to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a
'private language'.
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it
should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely
from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot
of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a
'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would
be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be
done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal
with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003),
p.63. Bold emphasis added.]
Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can
solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, of those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!
It
is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore,
that he is at least aware of it.
In fact, Ollman is the very first
dialectician I have encountered (in nigh on thirty years) who even
acknowledges
this 'difficulty'!
[Be this as it may, I
have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three
to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more
details. Update November 2024:
After
over 21 yearswaiting there is still no sign of Ollman's 'solution' to this 'problem'.
Certainly, no attempt is made in Ollman (2019) to address this 'problem',
let alone solve it. Nor is there any indication that others have risen to this challenge on his
behalf -- or that a single DM-fan (since Ollman raised this issue) regards it as a 'difficulty'
that even needs addressing! One Academic Marxist with whom I debated this very topic a
few years ago
completely
ducked the issue and showed no sign he wasaware of it, never mind how
to deal with it. Nor was he cognisant of the serious challenge 'abstractionism' poses
for anyone who at least says they accept the social nature of language and knowledge.]
Of course,
none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman acknowledged that
even though Marx gestured in its direction
HM doesn't need this
obscure 'process', and the fact that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and
language completely undercuts abstractionism.
Nevertheless, the few things Ollman
does say about this topic hardly inspire much confidence:
"In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the
fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable
parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and
communicated it must be parcelled out. Our minds can no more swallow the
world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just
Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her
surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing
them in ways deemed appropriate. 'Abstract' comes from the Latin, 'abstrahere',
which means 'to pull from.' In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out
of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart. We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises
in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with,
and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established
and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is
relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What
caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually
see?' (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any
subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could
be included -- that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought,
and may on another occasion be included in our own -- is left out. The mental
activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or
unconscious -- though it is usually an amalgam of both -- is the process of
abstraction.
"Responding to a mixture of influences that
include the material world and our experiences in it as well as to personal
wishes, group interests, and other social constraints, it is the process
of abstraction that establishes the specificity of the objects with which we
interact. In setting boundaries, in ruling this far and no further, it is what
makes something one (or two, or more) of a kind, and lets us know where that
kind begins and ends. With this decision as to units, we also become committed
to a particular set of relations between them -- relations made possible and
even necessary by the qualities that we have included in each -- a register for
classifying them, and a mode for explaining them. In listening to a concert, for example, we often
concentrate on a single instrument or recurring theme and then redirect our
attention elsewhere. Each time this occurs, the whole music alters, new patterns
emerge, each sound takes on a different value, etc. How we understand the music
is largely determined by how we abstract it. The same applies to what we
focus on when watching a play, whether on a person, or a combination of persons,
or a section of the stage. The meaning of the play and what more is required to
explore or test that meaning alters, often dramatically, with each new
abstraction. In this way, too, how we abstract literature, where we draw the
boundaries, determines what works and what parts of each work will be studied,
with what methods, in relation to what other subjects, in what order, and even
by whom. Abstracting literature to include its audience, for example, leads to a
sociology of literature, while an abstraction of literature that excludes
everything but its forms calls forth various structural approaches, and so on."
[Ollman (2003),
pp.60-61. Bold emphases added. Minor typo
corrected; several paragraphs merged.]
As far as
can be ascertained, that is all Ollman has to say about the 'process of
abstraction' as such -- as opposed to lengthy comments about how Marx (supposedly) employed it.
Now, anyone reading through
the above passage will surely conclude that Ollman has totally forgotten about the social
natureof knowledge, just as they will note he has confused paying attention, or paying heed,
with abstraction. Sure, he
gestured in the direction of acknowledging the social nature of knowledge -- for
instance, with his comment that we must factor in "group
interests, and other social constraints", but how this helps turn an
individual 'aptitude'
into a socially-conditioned skill is left entirely unclear. That isn't
at all surprising since it is impossible to pull this trick off. For example, how
would it be possible for AbstractorA to ensure that she has abstracted anything
in the same way as AbstractorB, or even had obtained the same results?
As we have just seen,
Ollman himself made a note of this 'problem' -- but failed to address, let alone
solve, it. As such then it stands in the way of any ascent from the
abstractions an individual might construct to an account being given of
the social nature and origin of knowledge. Again, this should astonish few given the additional fact
that this 'process' itself depends on a major concession to Bourgeois
Individualism, as we have also
seen. This theory implies that all that the above two abstractors have to work
with
are their own individual, subjective attempts to derive their own 'abstractions'. Indeed, all they
have is their own
private take even on "group
interests, and other social constraints", and the same goes for everyone
else in the this yet-to-be-identified social "group".
As now seems clear,
neither AbstractorA nor AbstractorB has any way of comparing
their results with those arrived at by each other, nor anyone else.
[In reply at this point it
would be no good appealing to a shared language, either, for reasons set out
here and
here. However, since this overall topic has already been covered (in detail)
here and
here, I won't rake over it
any more in this
Appendix.]
"We 'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises
in our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with,
and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established
and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is
relevant from what is not. It should be clear that 'What did you see?' (What
caught your eye?) is a different question from 'What did you actually
see?' (What came into your line of vision?)." [Ibid.]
But,
'abstraction', at least as Ollman and other DM-theorists seem to conceive it, is
supposed to be under our conscious control. It is something we not only
do, we intend
to do it. For example, as we will see,
dialecticians (en masse) tend to focus on a specific concept that Marx himself dealt
with -- "the population" -- which they also try to force
through a series of 'dialectical hoops'. But, since the above passage
deals with 'processes' that aren'talways under our conscious control, much of it
appears to have nothing to do with 'abstraction' in the 'dialectical' sense of
that word.
Of course,
it could be argued that in the last analysis the 'process of abstraction' isn't under our
conscious control (i.e., it is involuntary, rather like
belief-formation), but if that were the case, much of what Ollman and others have to say
about this 'process' would become even more obscure. The question is "Was Marx consciously
'abstracting' when he spoke about this 'process' applied to 'the
population'?" If not, what sort of 'intellectual exercise' was he describing in when
he wrote the following?
"It seems correct to begin
with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer
examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out,
for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an
empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus,
if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of
the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more
simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions
until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would
have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but
this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of
many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the
correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many
determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973),
pp.100-01.
Bold emphases added.]
It seems
impossible to interpret the above highlighted words as if they depicted an
involuntary, or non-voluntary, psychological event (i.e., one not under
his conscious control, something that just ran through Marx's mind like pain
perception, a headache, a
daydream or a hypnotic episode -- or even most emotions -- for example). If that
were so --, and it is worth underlining that the above passage is widely regarded
among dialecticians as a paradigm example of the 'process of
abstraction' in action --, the conclusion seems inescapable: this 'process' is voluntary (i.e.,
it is (supposedly) under our conscious control) and intentional (i.e., we (reputedly) know
what we are doing when we 'abstract something' and it is goal-directed --
that is, there is a (hypothetical) point to such 'mental activity', an aim we have
in mind when we so indulge).
[As noted
above, I will return to consider this passage in more detail,
later.]
None of this
should be taken to mean that we can't intentionally focus on something in our line of sight, or in our
immediate surroundings -- or that, to some extent, we can't selectively 'shut
out'/'block' certain sounds, events or 'objects' --, but when Ollman says "We
'see' only some of what lies in front of us, 'hear' only part of the noises in
our vicinity, 'feel' only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and
so on through the rest of our senses", he isn't speaking about intentional
behaviour, but about episodes that aren't, or aren't always, under
our conscious control. So, once again, it seems that what Ollman has to say
in the above passage can't be
used to illustrate 'the process of abstraction dialectically' -- or, at least,
not without undermining other things he says or implies about this
'process'.
Again, an
appeal to a public language here (as a way out of this impasse) would be to
no avail
since this theory
undermines
the very possibility that there is or could be any such language. That is because it
bases language acquisition, as well as
meaning in language, on 'the process of abstraction' itself. In which
case, anyone who accepts this theory can hardly appeal to language to
bail it out -- at least, not without arguing in a circle.
[I have
explained why the 'process of abstraction' also forms part of a (bourgeois
individualist) theory of
meaninghere,
here
and here -- and hence why it
is inconsistent with the standard Marxist theory that language and knowledge are
both
social.]
As noted
above, this entire approach is entangled in, and has been compromised by,
post-Renaissance,
bourgeois individualist theories of language,
cognition and the formation of knowledge, which picture them as dispositions, aptitudes and skills we all
activate, acquire or learn as socially-, and psychologically-isolated individuals.
Given that view,we are
later supposed to bring the results of these individually-shaped dispositions, aptitudes and skills
back into society (acting as 'social atoms') in order to compare, or
share, the 'contents of our minds' with those that others have also brought with
them into this 'market
place of ideas' in 'the same way'. Given this family of theories, the
individual is ranked first in
the epistemological pecking order (as it were), the social last.
Hence, given this approach, we act and learn as 'social atoms', first, and then attempt to transform ourselves into 'social molecules',
second.
This is the abstractionist version of Margaret
Thatcher's, "There
is no such thing as society".
No wonder Ollman expressed genuine
concerns about abstraction and the formation of a private language, since that would be a
direct result of this theory, just as it is of much else that surfaced in post-Renaissance
Epistemology.
[There is more on this in Essay Thirteen Part
Three. As we have also found out, the two major wings of post-Renaissance
thought -- Rationalism and Empiricism -- depend on and promote
Bourgeois Individualism, and thereby the formation of private languages. What was that again about the "ideas
of the ruling class"...? I keep forgetting.]
As Meredith
Williams pointed out in relation to
Vygotsky's
theory (whose ideas are, alas, highly influential among
dialecticians):
"Vygotsky attempts to combine
a social theory of cognition development with an individualistic account of
word-meaning.... [But] the social theory of development can only succeed if it
is combined with a social theory of meaning." [Williams (1999b), p.275.
Bold emphasis added.]
Williams could in fact be talking
about any randomly-selected
Dialectical
Marxist who has written on this subject (including Ollman).
Independently of this, Ollman has surely confused the capacity we have for
concentrating on certain aspects of the world and our environment with the 'process of abstraction'
itself. So, to take
his example, when we attend a concert we might indeed concentrate on the
soloist, for instance, but we don't
abstract
him or her. Concentrating on a musician doesn't result in the production of
abstract
particulars, abstract general ideas or the Proper Names thereof, which the 'process of abstraction'
is typically supposed to do. How is focussing on a soloist connected with
anything general? In fact it seems to do the opposite; it means we
concentrate on a single item in out environment, not the general. What would a
'general soloist' even look/sound like? In fact, focusing on one part or one aspect of an
orchestra seems a long way
from ascending from the particular (the 'real concrete'?) to the general (the
'thought concrete'?), which is how Ollman pictures the 'process itself, as we
saw earlier:
"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." [Ollman
(2003),
p.60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this
site; bold emphases added.]
In what way
does focusing on a soloist, for example, actually illustrate this
'process', even if we believed in it?
It might be
objected that this is precisely where abstraction kicks in.
Quite apart
from still being in the dark about this 'process' -- how
it actually works, as opposed to a few vague references to it -- what exactly is gained by saying
any of this that the word "concentrate" hasn't already achieve for us? What
extra feature does the
alleged 'process of abstraction' now add? Again, Ollman doesn't say. In fact, this 'crucially
important process' stalls at that point. It has nowhere to go and nothing
to work with (as the
earlier sections of this Essay have demonstrated). Again: does listening to a concert
produce a single abstract particular? Or one 'abstract general idea'? Or
even the
Proper Name thereof? What 'abstract general idea' has anyone ever
cobbled-together by listening to a Beethoven or a Mozart concert? If anyone
has ever managed to do this, Ollman unwisely failed to pass the details on to his readers.
This
is quite apart from the fact that even when we concentrate on the soloist, for
instance, the
rest of the orchestra doesn't become silent or disappear. But, that is the exact opposite of
what is supposed to happen when we 'succeed' in 'abstracting' something. When we
allegedly abstract the general concept, CAT, from the individual cat, Tiddles --
or from an array of cats -- what happened to its individual colour, its smell,
its fleas (if it has any)? They all vanish like an icicle in boiling water --
but not like the rest of the orchestra.
As Frege
noted (in his review of
Husserl's
Philosophy of Arithmetic -- quoted earlier):
"Abstraction
"The
author himself finds a difficulty about the abstraction that provides the
general concept of the collective. He says (p.84):
'The
peculiarities of the individual contents that are collected...must be completely
abstracted from, but at the same time their connection must be maintained. This
seems to involve a difficulty, if not a psychological impossibility. If we take
the abstraction seriously, then the individual contents vanish, and so,
naturally, does their collective unity, instead of remaining behind as a
conceptual extract. The solution is obvious. To abstract from something simply
means: not to attend to it specially.'
"The kernel of this explanation is
obviously to be found in the word 'specially'. Inattention is a very strong lye;
it must be applied at not too great a concentration, so that everything does not
dissolve, and likewise not too dilute, so that it effects a sufficient change in
the things. Thus it is a question of getting the right degree of dilution; this
is difficult to manage, and I at any rate have never succeeded....
[Detaching our attention] is particularly effective. We attend less to a
property, and it disappears. By making one characteristic
after another disappear, we get more and more abstract concepts…. Inattention is
a most efficacious logical faculty; presumably this accounts for the
absentmindedness of professors. Suppose there are a black and a white cat
sitting side by side before us. We stop attending to their colour, and they
become colourless, but are still sitting side by side. We stop attending to
their posture, and they are no longer sitting (though they have not assumed
another posture), but each one is still in its place. We stop attending to
position; they cease to have place, but still remain different. In this way,
perhaps, we obtain from each one of them a general concept of Cat. By continual
application of this procedure, we obtain from each object a more and more
bloodless phantom. Finally we thus obtain from each object a something
wholly deprived of content; but the something
obtained from one object is different from the something obtained
from another object -- though it is not easy to say how." [Frege (1980),
pp.84-85. Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged.]
Of course,
no one begins
with such skills (in this case, an ability to listen attentively to classical
music). We all have to be socialised into acquiring any such, just as we have to be taught what our words mean (or we have to be shown by
repeated use and example). We can see this from the way that individuals from other
cultures focus on different aspects of their surroundings, especially with
respect to music. [On that see, for instance,
Wong, et al (2012).
This something Ollman admits anyway --
pp.13-14.] In relation to
music we all have to develop
'trained ears'. Rather like beer and
Marmite, love of music we might never have heard before is
an acquired taste -- or in this instance, an acquired ear -- and
even then, it's not for everyone. So, even if there were such a 'process of
abstraction', it wouldn't be needed, for we already have the skills
necessary to advance knowledge using these socially-acquired,
socially-taught, socially-reinforced skills,
propensities and capacities. Moreover, the
latter possess the not inconsiderable advantage that they follow from, but do
not undermine, the social nature of language and knowledge. [In fact, they are
predicted on both.] All
are learned, developed, tested and performed in the open, in social contexts.
[Of course, after they have been acquired they can be performed in
private, just as after we all learn to speak, we can engage in private, even
silent, episodes of soliloquy -- on this, see Squires (1974).] Which means that
they can not only be checked
in the open
they can be shared. By way
of contrast, abstraction (supposedly) takes place
in a hidden, inner world where the bourgeois individual holds sway
-- and where testing has no jurisdiction and sharing thereby becomes impossible.
Someone
might object that we manage to do many things in our heads -- such as
mental arithmetic -- but that doesn't mean we
can't know or share the results or make sense of them. The same is the case with
abstraction.
[1] I
have devoted much of Essay Thirteen
Part Three [Sections (2) through (6)] to undermining the idea that we
'do'
anything at all 'in our heads'/'brains'. Readers are directed there for more
details. [That isn't to say that nothing happens in our heads, only that we
do not do anything there. When was the last time you intentionally activated a
specific brain cell or re-directed an electric impulse between neurons?
On whether or not we use our brains, see
here.]
[2]
Even if it were true that 'mental arithmetic' is performed 'in the head', it in
no way resembles the 'process of abstraction'. With 'mental arithmetic' we
aren't dealing with symbols that have been 'abstracted into existence' in the
way that supporters of abstractionism imagine is the case with the words they
use.
For example, how on
earth would it be possible to abstract into existence the number two? You
would
need to be able to count to two correctly first so that you knew you were
abstracting the right number to begin with and hadn't mistaken it for, say,
three! How would it be possible to abstract zero? Or negative numbers? Or a real number, like π? Or a
Hermite Polynomial and an
Abelian Group?
[Readers
mustn't confuse "the number zero" with "nothing", for, as
Blaise
Pascal pointed out, if "zero" meant the same as "nothing" then 1 and 10
would be the same since, on this assumption, they would both be one followed by
nothing. If so, zero can't be 'abstracted' from nothing. It can't be what every
example of nothing has in common -- since it has nothing to do with nothing
[Irony intended.] If it were what every instance of nothing had in common, one would equal ten! In fact,
if we really must talk this way, any
single (assumed) instantiation of nothing in our imagination (or wherever) would
also instantiate the number one -- in such circumstances, there would be one such
'instantiation of nothing'! For there to be zero instantiations of nothing there
would be no instantiation of it; that is, it would fail to be an
instantiation. (In the foregoing I am not conceding that it makes any sense to
say that
there can be an instantiation of nothing, only that there would have to be one
such if
nothing were to be abstracted from it! So, supporters of abstractionism would
have to countenance that possibility and then explain how 'one
instantiation' doesn't connote one, not zero. In which case, it is impossible to 'abstract nothing',
or zero!)]
[3] The meaning of the symbols used and the legitimacy of the operations employed
in mental arithmetic were established in the open long before anyone calculated anything
'in their head' (even if that is where we supposedly did it!). That isn't so with 'abstraction'. The meaning of any of the terms
that are (allegedly) handled in 'the mind'/'head' during the 'process of abstraction' (again, assuming for the
moment that that were possible) are fixed by
the
process itself., by their use. And that has already been established in and
by the community and by mathematicians, in the open. In addition, we have no clue what 'operations' are being used by
each lone abstractor (they either can't or they simply refuse to tell us!),
nor have we any idea if these
are legitimate 'operations', yield the 'right result' or even if there are any
'right' results for them to obtain, to begin with(!) --, unlike mental arithmetic.
Here is
Frege on the very idea that numbers, for example, can be abstracted (this was
also quoted earlier):
Frege's sharpest criticisms were reserved for
those of his day who imagined that mathematical concepts could be created, or
perhaps apprehended, by a 'process of abstraction'
--, in particular, the views of the 19th
century mathematician and mystical Platonist,
Georg Cantor,
and his followers:
"We may begin here by
making a general observation. When negroes from the heart of Africa see a telescope or pocket watch for
the first time, they are inclined to credit these things with the most
astounding magical properties. Many
mathematicians react to
philosophical expressions in a similar manner. I am thinking in particular
here of the following: 'define' (Brahma),
'reflect' (Vishnu),
'abstract' (Shiva).
The names of the Indian gods in brackets are meant to indicate the kind of
magical effects the expressions are supposed to have. If, for instance, you find
that some property of a thing bothers you, you abstract from it. But if you want
to call a halt to this process of destruction so that the properties you want to
see retained should not be obliterated in the process, you reflect on these
properties. If, finally, you feel sorely the lack of certain properties in the
thing, you bestow them on it by definition. In your possession of these
miraculous powers you are not far removed from the Almighty. The significance
this would have is practically beyond measure. Think of how these powers could be
put to use in the classroom: the teacher has a good-natured but lazy and stupid
pupil. He will then abstract from the laziness and the stupidity, reflecting all
the while on the good-naturedness. Then by means of a definition he will confer
on him the properties of keenness and intelligence. Of course so far people have
confined themselves to mathematics. The following
dialogue may serve an illustration:
'Mathematician:
The sign
√(−1)
has the property of yielding -1 when squared.
'Layman:
This pattern of printer's ink on paper? I can't see any trace of this property.
Perhaps it has been discovered with the aid of a microscope or by some chemical
means?
'Mathematician:
It can't be arrived at by any process of sense perception. And of course
it isn't produced by the mere printer's ink either; a magic incantation, called
a definition, has first to be pronounced over it.
'Layman:
Ah, now I understand. You expressed yourself badly. You mean that a definition
is used to stipulate that this pattern is a sign for something with those
properties.
'Mathematician:
Not at all! It is a sign, but it doesn't designate or mean anything. It itself
has these properties, precisely in virtue of the definition.
'Layman:
What extraordinary people you mathematicians are, and no mistake! You don't
bother at all about the properties a thing actually has, but imagine that in
their stead you can bestow a property on it by a definition -- a property that
the thing in its innocence doesn't dream of -- and now you investigate the
property and believe in that way you can accomplish the most extraordinary
things!'
"This illustrates the might
of the mathematical Brahma. In Cantor it is Shiva and Vishnu who receive the
greater honour. Faced with a cage of mice, mathematicians react differently when
the number of them is in question. Some…include in the number the mice just as
they are, down to the last hair; others -- and I may surely count Cantor amongst
them -- find it out of place that hairs should form part of the number and so
abstract from them. They find in mice a whole host of things besides which are
out of place in number and are unworthy to be included in it. Nothing simpler:
one abstracts from the whole lot. Indeed when you get down to it everything in
the mice is out of place: the beadiness of their eyes no less than the length of
their tails and the sharpness of their teeth. So one abstracts from the nature
of the mice. But from their nature as what is not said; so one abstracts presumably
from all their properties, even from those in virtue of which we call them mice,
even from those in virtue of which we call them animals, three-dimensional
beings -- properties which distinguish them, for instance, from the number 2.
"Cantor demands more: to arrive at
cardinal numbers, we are required to abstract from the order in which they
are given. What is to be understood by this? Well, if at a certain moment we
compare the positions of the mice, we see that of any two one is further to the
north than the other, or that both are to the same distance to the north. The same
applies to east and west and above and below. But this is not all: if we compare the mice
in respect of their ages, we find likewise that of any two one is older than the
other or that both have the same age. We can go on and compare them in respect
of their length, both with and without their tails, in respect of the pitch of
their squeaks, their weight, their muscular strength, and in many other respects
besides. All these relations generate an order. We shall surely not go astray if
we take it that this is what Cantor calls the order in which things are given.
So we are meant to abstract from this order too. Now surely many people will say
'But we have already abstracted from their being in space; so ipso facto
we have already abstracted from north and south, from difference in their
lengths. We have already abstracted from the ages of the animals, and so
ipso facto from one's being older than another. So why does special mention
also have to be made of order?'
"Well, Cantor also defines what he calls an ordinal type; and in order to arrive
at this, we have, so he tells us, to stop short of abstracting from the order in
which the things are given. So presumably this will be possible too, though only
with Vishnu's help. We can hardly dispense with this in other cases too. For the
moment let us stay with the cardinal numbers.
"So let us get a number of men together
and ask them to exert themselves to the utmost in abstracting from the nature of
the pencil and the order in which its elements are given. After we have allowed them
sufficient time for this difficult task, we ask the first 'What general
concept…have you arrived at?' Non-mathematician that he is, he answers 'Pure
Being.' The second thinks rather 'Pure nothingness', the third -- I suspect a
pupil of Cantor's -- 'The cardinal number one.' A fourth is perhaps left with
the woeful feeling that everything has evaporated, a fifth -- surely a pupil of
Cantor's -- hears an inner voice whispering that graphite and wood, the
constituents of the pencil, are 'constitutive elements', and so arrives at the
general concept called the cardinal number two. Now why shouldn't one man come
out with the answer and the other with another? Whether in fact Cantor's
definitions have the sharpness and precision their author boasts of is
accordingly doubtful to me. But perhaps we got such varying replies because it
was a pencil we carried out our experiment with. It may be said 'But a pencil
isn't a set.' Why not? Well then, let us look at the moon. 'The moon is not a
set either!' What a pity! The cardinal number one would be only too happy to
come into existence at any place and at any time, and the moon seemed the very
thing to assist at the birth. Well then, let us take a heap of sand. Oh dear,
there's someone already trying to separate the grains. 'You are surely not going
to try and count then all! That is strictly forbidden! You have to arrive at the
number by a single act of abstraction....' 'But in order to be able to abstract
from the nature of a grain of sand, I must surely first have looked at it,
grasped it, come to know it!' 'That's quite unnecessary. What would
happen to the infinite cardinals in that case? By the time you had looked at the
last grain, you would be bound to have forgotten the first ones. I must
emphasise once more that you are meant to arrive at the number by a single act
of abstraction. Of course for that you need the help of supernatural powers.
Surely you don't imagine you can bring it off by ordinary abstraction. When you
look at books, some in
quarto, some
in octavo,
some thick, some thin, some in
Gothic type
and some in
Roman and you abstract from these properties which distinguish them, and
thus arrive at, say, the concept 'book', this, when you come down to it, is no
great feat. Allow me to clarify for you the difference between ordinary
abstraction and the higher, supernatural, kind.
"With
ordinary abstraction we start out by comparing objects a, b, c, and find
that they agree in many properties but differ in others. We abstract from the
latter and arrive at a concept Φ under which a and b and
c all fall. Now this concept has neither the properties abstracted from nor
those common to a, b and c. The concept 'book', for
instance, no more consists of printed sheets -- although the individual books we
started by comparing do consist of such -- than the concept 'female mammal'
bears young or suckles them with milk secreted from its glands; for it has no
glands. Things are quite different with supernatural abstraction. Here we have,
for instance, a heap of sand...." [Frege
(1979), pp.69-71. Unfortunately, the manuscript breaks off at this point.
Italic emphases in the original. Links added; quotation marks altered and
passage reformatted to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
As I point
out below, 'the process of abstraction'
itself (supposedly) determines the
meaning of the 'abstractions' -- or the words used to represent/express any
such 'abstractions'
--, so obtained. That isn't the case with 'mental arithmetic'. [However, as we have seen, DM-theorists regularly conflate words with whatever
they are supposed to
represent.] Unless the
individual doing these calculations 'in her head' already understood the
public, shared meaning of number words, how to employ them, and had been trained
in the correct use of mathematical operations, she wouldn't be able to do any
arithmetic, let alone any 'in her head'. We don't
learn these skills individualistically, or assign our own meaning to
number words and mathematical operations, piecemeal or by our own efforts. We
are taught them, in the open, just as we are taught what they mean. In addition, we are subsequently tested in the open to see if we have
understood these terms and operations correctly, and how to use them.
[Once more,
to imagine otherwise would be to
accept some form of bourgeois
individualism, which would also, of course, undermine the social nature of
language, knowledge, and now, mathematics!]
That is why all
(who have the required arithmetical skills) are capable of comprehending the results
of 'mental arithmetic'; they already understand the
language of mathematics before anyone tries to do any. That isn't the case with
the (supposed) formation of 'abstractions'.
[4] There is no social training that enables each individual to perform successfully 'the process of abstraction'; it is a
quintessentially individualistic process that each intrepid abstractor has to
teach herself/himself -- or which they somehow engage in 'naturally'. As I have pointed out already
(slightly modified):
Is there a Philosophers' Rule Book to guide us? Is there an Abstractionist's
Algorithm we all
unconsciously (or even consciously) 'follow', somehow programmed into each of us at birth (or is it at
conception)? Do we have access to a set of tried-and-tested
instructions we all implicitly appear, not just to know about, but how to
use/implement? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? Are
there any YouTube videos or websites that explain this process, step-by-step?
[A comprehensive Google search will return a negative answer on both counts. If
anyone disagrees and has found one (or even several!), please
email me with the details (and links),
and I'll delete much of Parts One and Two of Essay Three! Update
October 2024:Since writing this, I have discovered one attempt
to describe the 'process of abstraction' -- Laurence and Margolis
(2012). I will say more about this failed attempt in Interlude One.] And, if it turns out
that there are metaphysical disrobing protocols that determine the order
in which Tiddles's qualities are to be removed from, or attributed to, her -- so that this
process might be executed correctly by the entire Community of Intrepid
Abstractors -- when and where did they
learn them? On the other hand, if there are none, how might
each aspiring abstractor know whether or not they had abstracted Tiddles the same way
each time?
Do we all keep a
(secret)
Abstractor's
Diary? An internal log of what we did the last time we thought about that cat --
or any cat?
Even if there were clear --
let alone plausible --
answers to such questions, another annoying 'difficulty' would soon block our
path: it
would still be impossible for anyone to check
a single one of these 'abstractions' to see if they tallied with those 'produced' by
anyone else -- or, for that matter, whether or not they had 'abstracted' them
correctly. In fact, the word "correct" can gain no grip in such
circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems
correct willbe correct. [That would be like buying two copies of the
same edition of a newspaper (on the same day) to check if the first copy had got
a certain story 'right'.] But, for something to be correct it needs to be checked against a
standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one doing the
checking, or that relies on the very same source.
And yet in relation to this 'process' and its supposed results, there is no such standard. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat
will be private to that individual. They have no way of checking
their 'abstractions' with those 'arrived at' by anyone else, which means, of course, there can
be no standard, 'abstract cat' to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means
of which anyone's 'abstractions' might be deemed 'correct'.
And those
strictures apply to the 'abstractions produced' by each individual abstracter. So,
AbstracterE will have no way of knowing whether or not her own
'abstractions' were correct, or if they were the same as, or were different from,
those 'arrived at' yesterday or even a few seconds earlier, by her! Again, it is no use
appealing to memory here, since the meaning of the word "memory" is subject to
the very same strictures.
[Of course,
for anyone who accepts the HF no memory could be trusted, anyway....]
It could be
objected (indeed, it has been objected by the likes of
A. J. Ayer -- e.g.,
Ayer (1971), replied to by Rhees (1971)), that such doubts (about memory, for
example) would also apply to
any external or social check on the meaning or veracity of the words we use. If
memory in general is thrown into question, how would anyone be able to
remember the meaning of any of their words? That would appear to undermine all
social theories of language and knowledge.
That
objection misses the point. No one (other than those who accept the HF) is questioning memory, only the
theory
that there is a 'process of abstraction' which tells us what our words
(especially general words like "memory") mean. Reject that idea, along with the
traditional philosophical approach to such questions (for the reasons set out
in both Parts of Essay Three, as well as Essay Twelve
Part One), take
Marx's advice to return to
the ordinary language of the working class, and watch such
pseudoproblems simply disappear....
Naturally, this means that there is no way this obscure process can form the basis of
'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we were to substitute
"idealisation" for "abstraction"). Plainly, that is because:
(i) No one has access to the
results of anyone else's 'mental machinations' (or 'idealisations');
(ii) There
appear to be no rules governing the production of these 'abstractions' --, or, indeed,
governing the entire 'process' itself; and, as we have just seen,
(iii) There
is no standard of right, here.
By
way of contrast, in the real world,
agreement is invariably achieved in and by the use of publicly accessible, general terms
that are already in
common use, words that were present in the vernacularlong before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical)
ancestral abstractors' eye.
[Note: I am
not questioning scientific idealisation, only the claim that it is a private,
internal, 'mental process'.]
One obvious
reply to the above might be that we abstract by concentrating only on those
factors that are "relevant" to the enquiry at hand. But, what are these "relevant factors"? And who decides?
How might they be
specified before any such enquiry even begins? Surely, in order to know what is
"relevant" to the successful process of, say, 'abstracting a cat', one would
already have to know how to
use the general term "cat", otherwise:
(a) The
'abstractor' involved would have no idea what the target of her intended
abstractive endeavours actually was supposed to be; and,
(b) The accuracy of any
'abstractions' that might emerge as a result would rightly be called into
question, alongside several more such concerning the competency of the abstractor
herself.
If the
abstractor in question doesn't already know how to use the word "cat", what faith can be put
in anything she subsequently 'abstracts', or even reports about these
'abstractions'? On the other hand, if each intrepid abstractor already
knows how to use the word "cat" (in order to 'abstract' the 'right' object), one
might well wonder what the point is of trying to 'abstract' that furry mammal in
the first place? It would seem to be about as pointless as checking to see if
you know your own name by looking it up in a telephone directory or on the Internet.
[Anyway, we
have already seen that the 'process of abstraction'
requires knowledge of the very concepts being 'abstracted' before they
were 'abstracted', vitiating the entire exercise.]
Again, in
response it could be argued
that past experience guides us. But, how does it do that? Can any of us recall
being asked about, or made to study, the heroic deeds of intrepid abstractors from the days
of yore? Does past experience transform itself into a sort of personal
Microsoft Office Assistant -- or these days, maybe,
Cortana -- if we hit the right internal 'Help' key? But,
what kind of explanation would that be of the supposedly intelligent 'process of
abstraction' if it requires such a guiding hand? And where on earth did this
'inner PA' receive its training?
Once more, it
could be objected that in the investigation of, say, the biology of cats, it
is important for scientists to find out what these animals have in common with
other members of the same species, family,
order,
class
and
phylum, so
that relevant generalisations might be made about them. In order to do that, zoologists
disregard (or attribute) certain features common to cats and concentrate on
those they share with other mammals, vertebrates, living organisms, and so on --,
be they morphological, ecological, behavioural, genetic or biochemical (etc.). Clearly, in
each case, and at each stage, greater abstraction is required.
Or, so a response might try to maintain...
Nevertheless, if this is what "abstraction"
means, it is surely synonymous with a publicly accessible and checkable set of
behavioural/linguistic skills and performances, similar in all but name to description, analysis
and classification (etc.). It has nothing to do with a 'private, internal skill'
we are all supposed not only to possess, but also to be able to utilise
effortlessly and correctly -- namely, an ability to polish rough and ready particulars
into smooth general concepts. If abstraction were an occult (i.e., a hidden), inner process, then,
as noted above, no two people would agree over the general idea of, say, a
mammal, let alone a cat. All would have their own idiosyncratic inner,
but intrinsically un-shareable and un-checkable, exemplars.
Again, one
response to this could be that while we might use language to facilitate the
transition from a private to the public arena, that doesn't impugn our
abstractive skills. Unfortunately, that objection introduces topics
discussed at length in Essay Thirteen
Part Three, so readers are directed
there for more details.
Nevertheless, a few
preliminary remarks are worth making
in response.
Human beings
have generally managed to agree on
what animals they consider belong to, say, the Class Mammalia
-- i.e., especially individuals who possess the necessary education and qualifications, who
also
show they have the required linguistic and organisational skills/competency. We might even join with
Hilary
Putnam and call this a legitimate
division of linguistic labour (although, without implying any acceptance of
his other ideas concerning 'essentialism').
However, this doesn'tinclude individuals who possess unspecified and mysterious 'abstractive powers'.
So, for example, trainee zoologists don't gain their qualifications by demonstrating to their
teachers and examiners an expertise in the 'inner dissection' or 'internal
processing' of 'mental
images', 'ideas' and 'concepts'. The same is true of qualified and practising zoologists. In
fact, and on the contrary, they
all have
to demonstrate their mastery of highly specialised techniques,
relevant terminology and current theory, which skills they are required to exhibit publicly,
showing they are capable of applying them in appropriate circumstances and in a
manner specified by, and consistent with, the standards and
expectations laid down by their teachers, their adjudicators, their colleges and their
professions. [On the ordinary and scientific use of such terms, see Dupré
(1993), pp.15-84.]
The widespread illusion that we are all
experts in the 'internal dismemberment' of images, ideas or concepts is now, and
has always been, motivated by
a further
set of confusions, which also arose out of Traditional Philosophy: the belief that the
intelligent use of general words depends on some sort of internal,
naming,
representing, 'reflecting' or processing ritual/ceremony.
[On this, see the references cited in Essay
Thirteen Part Three.] In effect, this
once more amounts to the belief that, despite appearances to the contrary, all words are
names, and that meaning something involves an 'inner act of meaning', 'naming'
or 'representing', which matches words to specific images, sensations, processes
or
ideas 'in the mind/brain'. This paradigm certainly dominated Lenin's theory in
MEC, as well as the rather fragmentary ideas Marx and Engels expressed on this
topic, and, as usual, this idea originated in Ancient Greece (this was partially
quoted earlier):
"The essence of the theory of Ideas lay in the
conscious recognition of the fact that there is a class of entities, for which
the best name is probably 'universals', that are entirely different from
sensible things. Any use of language involves the recognition, either conscious
or unconscious, of the fact that there are such entities; for every word
used, except proper names -- every abstract noun, every general noun, every
adjective, every verb, even every pronoun and every preposition -- is a name for
something of which there are or may be instances." [Ross (1961), p.225. Bold
emphasis added.]
[MEC = Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism (i.e.,
Lenin (1972).]
At work here
are several other inappropriate
metaphors, which in turn trade on the further idea that 'consciousness' functions
rather like an internal theatre, TV or computer display. The latter are now refined perhaps with analogies drawn against
Microsoft Windows or some other programme of the same sort, where 'the mind' is
often pictured as
"modular" --
operated, no doubt, by an internal analogue of a computer geek, skilled at
'clicking' on the right internal 'icons', or 'apps', at the right moment, filing items in
the right folders, setting-up useful and efficient 'networks', etc., etc. Given
this family of metaphors,
understanding is modelled on the way we ordinarily look at pictures and
computer monitors,
but now applied to 'internal
representations', with each of us employing the equivalent of an 'inner eye' to appraise
whatever is projected onto some sort of 'internal flat screen'.
[Again, this
set of wildly inappropriate metaphors underpins Pixar's recent film,
Inside Out (and again in 2024, Inside Out 2),
which is itself based on an 'Homunculus', a 'little-man-in-the-head' Theory of Mind,
briefly considered earlier, but
in more detail in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
[Of course, Plato's tropes were intended to make a
different set of points, but for present purposes his focus on vision is the relevant factor
here.]
As we have
seen, contemporary, bourgeois versions of
this (hackneyed) family of ideas regard knowledge as the passive processing of
'representations' in the 'mind' of each socially-isolated, lone abstractor --
although among Dialectical Marxists, this approach to knowledge is
further augmented by a series of gesturesmade toward practice coupled with the
active engagement of the individual 'mind' involved --
examined in Appendix Three. Nevertheless,
both views of knowledge acquisition still picture
it as a form of acquaintance, in relation to which the reasoning appears to be little more
complex than this: just as we all know our friends by personal acquaintance, or
by sight, so we all know the contents of our minds (all those 'concepts',
'images' and
'abstractions') by 'internal acquaintance' and 'inner sight'.
This
once again reminds us why Traditional Theorists argue that knowledge is some
sort of relation
between the
Knower and the Known. In this case, we are the Knowers and our own
(internal) ideas are
the Known. This has the unfortunate consequence of trapping dialecticians in
their own solipsistic dungeon!
[5]Once more, it is no
use referring to the existence of a public language to try to circumvent the sceptical results
obtained above, as argued in Part One:
An appeal to the existence of a public language would be to no
avail, either. Again, if each abstractor 'processes' their 'abstractions' in the
privacy of their own heads, no one would be able to tell
whether AbstractorA meant the same as AbstractorB 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 AbstractorA know what
AbstractorB
means by any of the abstract terms she has processed without access to her
'mind'? AbstractorB 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 AbstractorA 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...
Nor would it
be it any use an objector pointing to a series of correct results that might
result from an individual having 'worked something out in their head', and,
because of that arguing that the abstractive process must be valid if we are
able to obtain consistently correct solutions like this while engaging in mental
arithmetic. That is because 'correct answers' are, or have been,
declared to be such in the public domain by reference to socially-sanctioned
rules and procedures, which are also enabled by the competent use of
publicly acquired skills by those who have shown a level of mastery in
handling such communally-ratified methods and techniques. 'Correct results'
aren't certified by each individual who engages in bouts of mental arithmetic, nor are
any of the steps
used to produce correct answers. They entire system in which 'correct results' may be
ascertained has been developed, refined and authenticated over many centuries in the
above manner. So, even if there were a
'process of abstraction', and even if mental arithmetic were performed 'in
the
head', both would be predicated on publicly-acquired and
publicly-ratified skills and techniques already in use, not the other way round. So,
a stream of correct answers generated by someone engaging in mental arithmetic fails
to validate abstractionism. 'Correct answers' in fact confirm the opposite,
they underscore the social nature of mathematics and the
publicly acquired skills necessary to engage in bouts of mental arithmetic, to
begin with.
[6] Finally, in connection with
this overall topic, a few years ago I posted the following material over at the
Soviet Empire Forum (here re-written, modified and re-edited --
links added):
The
meaning
of the abstract nouns, verbs and adjectives obtained via the 'process of
abstraction' is established by the results of that process itself.
"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated
problem of universals was invented by Plato.... The distinction of particulars
and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the
distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or
intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the
bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone
apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the
problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without
realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very
concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85.
Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Bold emphasis added.]
So, for example, the word "cat" no longer relates
to
cats
in the real world but to an 'abstract particular', 'cat', that emerges as a
result of this 'process'. Sure,
given this theory,
the word "cat" is supposed to 'reflect' cats in 'reality' -- or, on
some accounts, their 'essence' -- , but
whether or not it manages to do this,
the abstract general term (or what it designates) is what gives the (real) meaning
of the word "cat".
The fury animal asleep on a mat or the one chasing a mouse outside does not. We can see
this from the fact that if and when either cat dies, the meaning of "cat" doesn't die with
them.
That would still be the case even if all cats were to die; the word "cat" would
keep its meaning
and that meaning would be given by the 'abstract concept', 'CAT', designated by the
abstract/common noun, "cat".
[I am,
of course, summarising this theory and attempting to render it plausible,
but that shouldn't be taken to imply I accept a single word of it!
The same comment applies to much of what follows.]
The same is the case with "population" and "value".
What Dialectical Marxists mean by, say, "value" is given by the process of
abstraction applied to the ordinary common noun "value", so that the 'dialectical
meaning' of the processed noun, "valueD", is no longer the same as the meaning of
its ordinary, typological twin -- the vernacular, "valueV". The 'dialectical word', "valueD", now applies to
the abstraction, 'VALUE' (which, because it is 'dialectical', has no fixed
meaning; the way
that
works has yet to be explained by DM-advocates). How this then reflects what supposedly occurs or
exists in the economy is to be determined by the 'new meaning' it has just
acquired. "Value" now becomes the Proper Name of 'VALUE',
and denotes this
novel
abstract particular,
with
"valueD" supposedly
'reflecting' this 'abstract, if changing, fact'.
[An abstract
particular is like a genuine particular (such as the chair you are now sat
on (if you are), the screen you are looking at -- or even
you),
to which we can, if we so choose, give a Proper Name or pick out by the use of a
singular term (such as a definite description -- e.g., in this case, "The screen you are now looking at"); except, 'abstract
particulars' don't exist in the world around us. They are, however, still
capable of being
designated by the use of Proper Names or other singular terms (such as "The Form of the
Good", "Cathood", "The Population", or "value").]
In Plato's theory these abstract particulars were the 'Forms'. In
Aristotle's, they were 'Universals'. In other systems they were variously 'Concepts', 'Categories' or 'Ideas'
supposedly named by abstract general nouns or adjectives (or even
nominalised verbs
-- a term to be explained presently). This helped
motivate the parallel idea that all
words are in fact names --
they name the ideas, concepts or categories we all supposedly have in our heads
(or they name objects and processes in the 'extra-mental' world), all of which we
comprehend (perhaps more fully) at the end of the hypothesised, 'process of abstraction',
and by any subsequent confirmation/revision in practice.
This means that this 'process' was a spin-off of the idea that we are only able to
understand anything if all our words
name
something
(in the world or in our heads). Given
this
theory, Proper Names/Proper Nouns (like "Plato", "Socrates", "George W Bush")
are relatively easy to grasp; they name the individual idea we supposedly have of the
person or object involved --, or, indeed, they name those individuals or objects
themselves (out there in the world). But
general words
don't seem to name anything tangible. What does "cat" name? Or "value"? "Cat"
can't name all the cats we have met, since that would mean one person's
understanding of "cat" would be different from everyone else's, and the word
would change its meaning as we met new cats. Hence, philosophers invented the
'process of abstraction' so they could explain what
all of us
name
when we talk about cats -- i.e., what the general noun "cat"
supposedly designates --, which, as we have seen,
was then taken to be the Form/Universal, 'CAT', Cathood, or the
Essence of Cat.
So, "Cat" became the Proper Name of Cathood/CATHOOD, or even its 'essence'.
Subsequently, the same became the
case with "commodity", "population" and "value", in Marx's later work.
That had to be so since their meaning can't be ascertained by actually
pointing to,
or at,
anything in society, either. These terms were now supposedly capable of depicting
something 'below the surface of appearances', something much more complex,
accessible to thought alone.
In that case, these terms (or the 'vague concepts' they supposedly stand for or
represent) have to be 'mentally processed'
by each lone
abstractor if they are to be understood more fully, or less vaguely. This meant that the 'real'
(non-vague) meaning of
these general nouns had now to be ascertained -- or, rather,
their meaning must be
fixed
-- by the 'process of abstraction' itself,
and in no other way.
With this approach, out of the window went any commitment to the social nature
of language and meaning.
So, given this view, we are all supposed to be able to discover or ascertain the 'real meaning' of
these abstractions
as individuals, by one
or other of the
following methods, depending on whether the traditional (non-Marxist) theorist
involved in spinning this yarn was an
Empiricist or a Rationalist.
(A) For Empiricists, we attain the general idea of 'cat' by a process of subtraction
(which we do 'in our heads') until we reach that general idea,
something all cats supposedly share; this is basically Locke's theory, for example. The
'process of abstraction' yields
the 'real',
or
perhaps the 'nominal', essence of the item concerned. [A
real essence
is what is supposed to exist in the outside world independently of us -- what
philosophers these days might call a de
re essence.
A
nominal essence
is just the name we supposedly give to 'things', which might or might not actually, or
fully, reflect anything in reality -- what philosophers these days would call a de
dicto essence.]
(B)
For the Rationalist, however, we arrive at our knowledge of these 'forms' or 'concepts' by the
'light of reason' (in effect, we supposedly think 'God's thoughts' after 'him') --, or,
according to Plato, we recall the
Forms we met in our earlier existence, in Heaven, which we had subsequently
forgotten about as
a result of the shock of being born. For the German Idealists, we apply general
terms
to
objects we meet in experience by a 'law of cognition', as Lenin might have put
it.
Marx described this process as follows:
"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds
I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract
idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is
indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of
speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the
pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is
not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their
real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have
abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea --
'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of
existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does
of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my
speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and
irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the
same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than
semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'."
[Marx
and Engels, The Holy Family.]
All very mysterious...
[By the way, to nominalise a verb is to turn it into a
noun. For example, in place of "Socrates runs" we would obtain "Socrates is a runner".
So, plainly, "Socrates" names Socrates, or our idea of him, and "runner" (now
a noun) names the general category or class, 'Runner', or our idea of it, to
which he supposedly belongs. 'RUNNER' is now an
abstract particular, and the
abstract noun "Runner" becomes its Proper Name, or it designates the 'class of runners'
to which Socrates is said to belong (depending, once again, on the theorist
spinning this yarn). In addition, according to the
Identity Theory of Predication (which Hegel borrowed from Medieval Roman
Catholic Theologians), the verb "is" in fact
'names' 'the identity
relation' (or it just designates 'IDENTITY'), which we are now supposed to
imagine exists between our idea of Socrates and our idea of the class or
category of runners to which we have just assigned him -- or even an identity between the actual
Socrates and that class itself. So, the sentence
"Socrates runs" has now been transformed into a
list of nouns,
"Socrates" "Identity" and "Runner" (via "Socrates is a runner"). The
significance of
that
transformation will soon emerge.]
However, the
original
generality
expressed by terms like "cat", "runner" or even "value" has now been lost
-- since
a class is a particular.
[Added
on Edit:
The above topic was covered in detail in
Part One;
the argument presented in support has been summarised
here.]
For both wings of Traditional Philosophy, howsoever
we finally arrive at these abstract terms,
the result (supposedly) defines the (real) meaning of the words we ordinarily use to describe objects and
processes -- relating to 'concepts' or 'ideas' in
our heads, in the world, in the economy, in Platonic Heaven or wherever they
might happen to be
located.
So, this
approach
became a theory
of meaning.
[Ian Hacking's book, Why
Does Language Matter To Philosophy?
-- i.e., Hacking (1975) -- describes this tradition in relatively few pages and with
admirable clarity.]
As Bertell Ollman points out, the problem with this is that the 'process of
abstraction' (howsoever
it is conceived) means we all end up constructing our own private
language.
As a result,
we
all
mean something
different
by the words we have just processed, making communication impossible. [That is
just one reason why
Wittgenstein criticised the idea of a private language, alongside the
theory that all
words are names, in his Philosophical
Investigations
(Wittgenstein (2009)).]
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's
abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not
and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then
and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed
what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him
and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this
abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are
questions I hope to deal with in a later work...."
[That comes from Ollman's The
Dance of the Dialectic,
quoted earlier.]
What Marx and Engels did (at least in some of their work) was to
invert
this picture: They argued that language is
primarily a means of
communication,
not
representation
(as philosophical tradition would have us believe -- i.e., the old theory held
that these 'abstractions' were represented in our heads and supposedly reflect
something,
somewhere,
even if it wasn't always clear what that 'something' is, or where that 'somewhere' was).
Hence, if we want to understand how language works, we must begin with
the fact that we use it to communicate, which will in turn imply our explanation of language and
meaning will have to adapt to this changed perspective.
Anything else would undermine the social nature of language and threaten human
intercommunication.
Wittgenstein picked this idea up in
his conversations with the Marxist economist, Piero Sraffa (Gramsci's
friend), and it completely revolutionised his approach to language. He adopted what he
called an 'anthropological', human-centred, social view of discourse.
According to
this new perspective we are all socialised by our carers, siblings, peers and teachers
how to use language -- largely by example, instruction and correction. We don't decide for ourselves what
the words
of our shared language mean by a 'process of abstraction',
or in any other way.
That was the 'old approach' to language acquisition which naturally appealed to
bourgeois
individualist philosophers (e.g., Descartes, Locke, Berkeley and Hume). That is still
the case; it remains the leading
theory of language, which explains the dominant influence of cognitive
psychology on contemporary theories of mind
and language. Even Chomsky has fallen into this trap, with his
openly Cartesian
approach to these topics. In
this way it is still the "ruling
idea" in the field. Marx
and Wittgenstein's approach is almost totally ignored, if not contemptuously
dismissed -- and, alas,
it is also totally disregarded by
those who claim to be Marxists!
[Of course, the above Marxists will reject that
accusation, but their theories of cognition show that, in practice, that
accusation is well-deserved -- indeed, as these two Parts of Essay Three,
alongside Essays Twelve Part One and Thirteen Part Three, amply confirm.]
So, given this novel, Marx/Wittgenstein approach to language, we
are all taught what our words mean,
we don't teach ourselves what they mean -- 'in our heads', or anywhere else, for that matter. Hence, this
change of emphasis, and perspective, begins
with the social
and proceeds from there. It doesn't begin with the individual.
At a stroke, this re-orientation eliminates all the classic problems associated
with abstractionism and representationalism....
By way of contrast, the
old approach
to language and meaning ends up completely undermining discourse, as Professor Lowe
explains:
"What is the problem of
predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple
subject-predicate sentence, such as..., 'Theaetetus sits'. How are we to
understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this
sentence, 'Theaetetus' and 'sits' respectively? The role of 'Theaetetus' seems
straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for,
a certain particular human being. But what about 'sits'? Many philosophers have
been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a
property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of
sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it
can be possessed by many different individuals.
"But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the
sentence 'Theaetetus sits' into a mere list of (two) names, each naming
something different, one a particular and one a universal: 'Theaetetus, sits.'
But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that
can be said to be true or false, in the way that 'Theaetetus sits' clearly can.
The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved
in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of
possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that
this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have
just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, 'Theaetetus,
possessing, sits.'
"Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly
known as 'Bradley's regress', in recognition of its modern discoverer, the
British idealist philosopher
F. H.
Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute
idealism...." [Lowe (2006).]
So, traditional theory reduces all words to nouns (in fact, to Proper Nouns), and hence all such sentences to lists
of names,
and lists say nothing.
[Again, I have explained in detail how that
works in Essay Three
Part One.]
This means that
my
main criticism of abstractionism is not so much that we would or wouldn't know
what our words mean...it is that it
would make it impossible for anyone to say anything at all if it were true! All
our (subject/predicate) sentences would fall apart as mere lists of names.
"We have shown that
thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the
personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent
existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these
thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the
systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and
that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German
petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers
have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it
is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual
world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a
realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [The
German Ideology, bold added.]
Note that Marx
specifically connects
the traditional theory with the
philosophically individualistic
lives of the theorists who invented it (i.e., petty-bourgeois, early modern
philosophers, from Hobbes to Hegel),
and he also links it with abstraction and that in turn with a distortion of language.
This germ of an idea was taken up by Wittgenstein and was used by him to
revolutionise philosophy, so that, if correct, his method would bring to
an end 2500 years of empty, self-important speculation. It also meant that the old 'ruling
ideas' (e.g., abstractionism and representationalism) can gain no grip and
should therefore be rejected by Marxists.
My work is (partly) aimed at bringing
this revolution
back into
Marxism
itself.
It should never have left.
[7]In which case,
an appeal to mental arithmetic would be no
help at all
in trying to make sense of the 'process of abstraction'. When we engage in
mental arithmetic we employ words and symbols that alreadyhave
a publicly
accepted and established meaning (and, as we have seen, meanings that
can't themselves
have been obtained by abstraction). In addition, we employ mathematical
operations we had already been taught how to use correctly before even attempting to work
something out 'in our heads'. So, such operations were validated before they
could even be used to do any
mental arithmetic. The 'process of abstraction' depends on the reverse of this
happening; that 'process' supposedly fixes themeaning of the terms that emerge at the end
-- but in effect it empties them
of meaning, as we have also just seen, since they are now "distorted" words,
according to Marx.
Furthermore, as we have seen, too, there is no way that a given abstractor can know that the
new meanings they have given to the terms 'abstracted into existence' are the same as, or are
different from, anyone else's --
or are the same as, or are different from, those they 'abstracted' yesterday, or even an hour earlier. Finally, unlike
the operations used in mathematics, the 'process of abstraction' and the methods
employed can't have been validated before they were used,
since, beyond a few vague gestures, no one seems to know what this 'process' actually
is.
Ollman then
informs his readers that Marx employed four different senses of "abstraction" --
for example, in relation to:
(i) The
division of the world into manageable "mental
constructs";
(ii) The
results of the process itself;
(iii) The
difference between a deficient or ideological use of certain concepts; and,
(iv) The
employment of this method in
Das Kapital. [Ollman (2003), pp.61-62.]
It is, of
course, undeniable that Marx used the word "abstract" and its cognates, and he
certainly imagined he had employed this 'process' in his later work, but there
nothing in his writings to show that he actually abstracted a single
thing. And that isn't just because the 'process' itself is impossible to
carry out -- let alone describe in detail, or with any clarity --, it is because of
what he himself had to say about it. As we are about to discover,
the passage usually quoted in support of the claim Marx used 'the process of abstraction'
actually fails to do so. Here it is:
"It seems correct to begin
with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer
examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out,
for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an
empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus,
if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of
the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more
simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions
until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would
have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but
this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of
many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the
correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many
determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973),
pp.100-01.]
In fact, Marx doesn't
actually do what he says he does in this passage; he merely gestures at
doing it, and his gestures are about as substantive and convincing as the hand
movements of stage magicians. That isn't to disparage Marx. Das Kapital
is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an
even more impressive work if he had omitted what few (superficial) examples
there remain of methods employed in traditional thought.
[Yes, I know the
first quotation above is from the
Grundrisse, not Das Kapital! The point is that he did at least
talk about abstraction in the latter, but without ever once explaining what
went on 'in his head', or how he ever managed to 'abstract' a single concept.]
What Marx actually
did was put
familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to
understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the
above passage can actually see him doing it. They don't need to perform a
brain scan on Marx (even if that were possible and he were still alive!), or
submit him to a series of psychometric tests
to follow his argument. Nor do they even have to re-create these alleged
'abstractions' -- which they would
certainly have to do if
the 'process of abstraction' were something we all do privately in our heads, or
one we should have to emulate in order to follow his 'private thoughts'.
[Earlier, I substantiated my claim Marx also believed that the 'process of
abstraction' was performed 'in the head'
with quotations from
his contemporaneous writings.] And they
definitelycan't duplicate his moves here since he
failed to say what he had actually done, privately, with the concepts/words he
targeted or used.
Nor did he specify how he had 'mentally processed' the latter -- if in
fact he had done so! Indeed, his 'instruction' how to go about 'abstracting' the
'population' are even less useful than John Lennon's famous remark that in order
to find the USA all you had to do was
turn
left at Greenland. In that case, no one who reads Marx now is in any position to
copy
him
in this respect, since he
left no usable details. That, of course, indicates Marx didn't in fact do what
he thought he had done, or proposed to do, otherwise, careful thinker that he
was,
he would have specified the required steps.
Even more significantly:
no one since has been able to reconstruct, reverse engineer or emulate these mythical 'mental moves', or show
that any of their own gestures in that direction are exactly thesameas Marx's, or even that they yield the same resultsas
those allegedly achieved by
him (indeed, as noted
earlier).
In
fact, it is quite apparent from the above passage that Marx had forgotten about his own
refutation of this very
process! [On that, see here and
the
next sub-section.] Or, if he had latterly repudiated that earlier refutation, he
nowhere explained what was wrong with it. Nor have subsequent Marxists!
Marx merely says it
"seems correct" if we begin with "the real and the concrete…with e.g. the
population...", and he notes that the latter term is abstract if we omit "the classes of
which it is composed." Marx then suggests that we proceed as follows:
"[B]egin with
the population, [but] this would be a chaotic conception of the whole,
and...then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts,
from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until [we have]
arrived at the simplest determinations." [Ibid.]
From there we
then:
"[R]etrace the journey]
until [we have] finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as
the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations
and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The
concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations,
hence the unity of the diverse." [Ibid.]
But, what
"simpler concepts" are these? Marx failed to say and no one since has filled in the
gaps. And he left it entirely mysterious exactly whatthe criterion is
here supposed to be
of a "simpler concept". Is class "simpler"
than population? Or, vice versa? In fact, and notoriously, Marx left no detailed rules informing
his readers even how he understood the word "class". Volume Three of Das Kapital
famously breaks off at that point. As I noted in Essay Eight Part Two (here),
subsequent Marxists have been struggling for over a hundred years to do what Marx failed
to do: decide exactly who belongs to the proletariat and hence
who belongs to the capitalist class (alongside other intermediate classes). If, after 150 years, we are still far
from clear about thiscore distinction, and Marx failed to describe with
any clarity what the composition of each class is (had he done so we wouldn't still be arguing over
basics a century-and-a-half later!), how can anyone claim with any confidence that Marx
had actually done what he said he had done in the above passage --, or that it
is possible
for anyone to do itin public, let alone in private, 'in their heads'?
We can't even do it in the open, for goodness sake!
And problems
like this apply in equal measure to the "thinner" abstractions Marx mentioned --
about which he was also tight lipped. What are these "thinner"
abstractions? What makes one abstraction "thinner" than the next? Is he
referring to the extension of a set? If so, is a set with fewer members
"thinner" than one with more? If that were so, "female over eighty" would have fewer
members and be "thinner" than "female under forty". Is
something like that what he meant? But
those numbers could change (and if we accept the HF, they will change!),
invalidating the 'abstraction'. In that case, "male under twenty" might have
fewer members than "male between twenty and thirty" in 1850, but more in 1870.
How are such questions to be settledifall you haveare these hidden,
'mental processes' to hand? Indeed, how would it be possible to decide which
sets have fewer, more than, or the same number as any other set just by
thinking about them? In that case, if this is what Marx meant by
"thinner", what has it got to do with the 'process of abstraction'? Do social
scientists just sit around all day forming 'mental abstractions' when they want
to determine the demographic profile of a given society? Or do they do actual
surveys, in the open? Indeed, when Marxists these days write books and
articles on the class composition of a given economy, they don't just 'retreat
into their heads' or 'mull things over in secret'. They rely on published data,
which has in turn been collected in the open, in a public arena, not
ascertained by the sort of 'mental gymnastics' described in the
above passage.
Furthermore,
what counts as the "simplest determinations"? How
on earth do we know
they are the "simplest"? Indeed, what counts as a "simplest determination"?
Worse still:
how do we know there actually are any "simplest determinations", to begin with?
What if analysis can (legitimately) proceed indefinitely? How can we rule that
possibility out? Where do we stop? And how might we ascertain, concerning any two randomly-selected abstractors,
that they
will always stop at the same point if this all takes place secretly, 'in the head'?
In the last
150 years, has a single DM-fan asked questions like these about this famous
passage, never mind bothered to answer them?
[If anyone
knows the answer to that one, please
email me with the details. I personally haven't seen anyone do this in the
thirty-seven years I have been a revolutionary socialist. DM-supporters just
quote and re-quote this passage as it if were unquestioned Holy Writ, failing to note it
appears in a manuscript Marx chose not to publish. There is nothing like it
in Das Kapital itself.]
So, as I
suggested earlier, Marx's verbal flourishes are no more substantive than the hand
gestures of stage magicians. In which case, it is difficult to understand why Dialectical
Marxists have relied quite so heavily on this particular passage, and who have
also failed to ask the sort
of questions posed above, given its lack of detail and tantalising vagueness. We aren't even told
what a "determination" is, for goodness sake! Is it the same as
an Hegelian 'determination'? Or does it have a different meaning? If so, what
is it, and where exactly does Marx explain the difference?
Of course, none of this is
even remotely surprising. As we
have repeatedly seen,
abstractionists (typically) become super-vague when it comes to specifying the details of this mysterious 'process'
-- and anyone who questions these champion DM-prevaricators can expect much hand waving and deflection
in response.
Not
even Marx, genius though he was, is clear about any of this!That
is why, after 2400 years of this Ancient Greek metaphysical fairy-tale
going nowhere -- that is, other than motivate the sort of vague gestures
that theorists like Ollman
come out with --, no one seems
quite able to say what this
'process' actually is, let alone what its results turn out to be!
By way of contrast, the actual method Marx
employed (as noted above: we can physicallysee him using it on the page
right
in front of us -- i.e., indulging
in an intelligent and novel, if imprecise, use of language) is how
the greatest scientists have always behaved. In their work they present evidence
and construct arguments in the open, in a public domain, using a public language,
even if it is accompanied by
an innovative use of words -- all of which can be checked, examined and
questioned (or built upon) by anyone who
cares to do so.
That can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".
Marx
and Engels'searlier words
are surely a more
reliable guide to
what he actually ended up doing in Das Kapital than the vague language
that appeared (the once!) in the Grundrisse (quoted
earlier):
"The
ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states
that there are apples and pears. But when the
philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says
something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the
real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
It goes without saying that
the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by
presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist
in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the
names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to
abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity,
by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be
the
self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Marx
and Engels
(1975), p.60. Bold emphases alone added.]
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult
tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world.
Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers
have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into
an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which
thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of
descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the
problem of descending from language to life.
We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an
independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations
of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive,
systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and
philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence
of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a
consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only
have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is
abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and
to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of
their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold
emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged.]
In the above
passage, the 'process of abstraction' is shown up
for what it is: a systematic capitulation to philosophical confusion based on a
distortion
of ordinary language.
Ollman now
offers his readers the following (highly clichéd, but no less vague) remarks about
'change':
"Beginning with historical movement, Marx's preoccupation with change and
development is undisputed. What is less known, chiefly because it is less clear,
is how he thought about change, how he abstracted it, and how he integrated
these abstractions into his study of a changing world. The underlying problem is
as old as philosophy itself. The ancient Greek philosopher,Heraclitus,
provides us with its classic statement when he asserts that a person cannot step
into the same river twice. Enough water has flowed between the two occasions so
that the river we step into the second time is not the same river we walked into
earlier. Yet our common sense tells us that it is, and our naming practice
reflects this view. The river is still called the 'Hudson', or the 'Rhine' or
the 'Ganges'. Heraclitus, of course, was not interested in rivers, but in
change. His point is that change goes on everywhere and all the time, but that
our manner of thinking about it is sadly inadequate. The flow, the constant
alteration of movement away from something and toward something else, is
generally missing. Usually, where change takes place very slowly or in very
small increments, its impact can be safely neglected. On the other hand,
depending on the context and on our purpose in it, even such change -- because
it occurs outside our attention -- may occasionally startle us and have grave
consequences for our lives." [Ollman (2003),
p.64.
Bold emphases and link added.]
Although Ollman
claims Marx "abstracted" change, he forgot to say exactly how or where he did
this, or even what it means to "abstract" change, in the first place. What is common to every
conceivable example of change? Ollman neglected to inform his readers about
that not insignificant detail, too.
Among
professional philosophers a perspicuous, non-trivial definition of change has yet
to be agreed upon (Mortensen
(2020)). And, after over 2400 years, we aren't even close! An appeal to something called, 'Cambridge
Change' (a term coined by
Peter Geach, in
Geach (1968) pp.13-14, reprinted in Geach (1969), pp.71-72) also proves to be a dead
end, as we are about to find out.
Despite
this, we might still try to define change in the following way (along lines
suggested by 'Cambridge Change'):
W1: Let Γ
be the set of predicates 'true of' A at t1,
where A goes proxy for a singular term designating some object (with
"object" defined
as "anything to which a singular term can legitimately be applied" --
that might sound circular, but it isn't), and tm
is a temporal variable (for m
∈
Z+).
[Z+
is the set of
Positive Integers and "∈"
stands for "belongs to".
The verb phrase "true of" has been put in scare quotes since Γ
will only be capable of being 'true of A' when both variables have been
interpreted. The same comment applies
to "false of", used below.]
W2: Let Γ
comprise the following elements: {P1,
P2,
P3..., Pi..., Pn-1, Pn}
(for n
∈
Z+).
[Where Pk
goes proxy for legitimate, distinct predicate expressions.]
W3: For A
to change, then, at a minimum:
(i) Let Pj
be 'true of' A at t2
and Pj
be 'false of' A at t1; or,
(ii) Let Pj
be 'false of' A at t2
and Pj
be
'true of' A at t1
(where t2>t1).
[Here, ">" stands for "later than",
and
Pj
∈Γ.]
[Colloquially, W3 reads as follows: At a minimum: (i) Let something be 'true of' A
at a later time that was 'false of' it earlier, or (ii) Let something be 'false of' A at a later time that was
'true of' it earlier.]
The problem
with this attempt to define change is that (what would rightly be regarded as) superficial relational predicates,
which become
'true of' A, will imply it had changed when it clearly hadn't done so.
So,
if the new predicate 'true of' A were "NN thought about
ξ",
yielding "NN thought about A" -- or the new predicate
that had been 'true of' A, but was now 'false of' A,
were "NM wrote about ζ",
yielding "NM wrote about A" --, then, while both of these would satisfy
the above definition, implying A had changed, they wouldn't actually mean A had
changed because of that. Otherwise we would have to argue that if someone began
to think about, say,
the
Crab Nebula, that would mean it had changed simply because someone on earth
had thought about it! Or that if someone else stopped writing about Engels at,
say, 12:13:27 on May 17, 2023,
when she had been writing about him a few seconds earlier, Engels himselfhad changed!
[The use of
Greek letters like those employed above was explained
here.]
Obviously, this definition of "change" is unacceptable, but no one has come up with a better,
non-question-begging or generally accepted alternative. So, despite what
dictionaries might tell you, there is currently no
(philosophical) definition of change!
[I won't enter into why we
don't actually need a philosophical definition of change -- or even why one can't be
found no matter how hard we try -- in this Essay, or at this site.]
Now, it is
reasonably clear that Marx, genius though he was, didn't solve this 'problem', which has dogged
Traditional Thought for over two thousand years, but it is even clearer still that
Ollman hasn't, nor did he point his readers to where he thinks Marx
(or anyone else) might have
done so. In that case, the question remains: how is it possible to form an 'abstract concept of change',
if, after over two thousand years, we still lack a workable, or acceptable,
definition of 'it'? What can possibly have been 'abstracted' if we have no clear
idea what we are aiming for? Or even where to begin, for goodness sake!?
With that in
mind, we might further ask: Precisely which examples of change are we to count
as relevant? Which of them will settle where we can even begin to
'abstract' the supposed 'concept of change'? Are social changes to be lumped
together with changes in nature? Are local changes on this planet to be equated
with those halfway across the universe? Are recent changes to be associated with
those that took place billions of years ago, which we will never experience (or
even know about)?
Are complex and simple changes to be compared? Are the above examples
(of 'intentional/relational change') also to be taken into account in this respect? That is, those concerning A?
If someone simply mentions a distant galaxy, have they 'magically' changed it? What about
other instances of change? Does, say, a tree in Chicago change if an apple hits
the ground in Tokyo? According to DM-fans,
everything is
interconnected, so that tree must change if an apple falls somewhere
half-way across the globe. So, does the Sun change if you scratch your head? What
about someone -- call her, "NN" -- who is second in line in a queue
on the phone -- or she is on a waiting list for
a flat, college course or organ transplant --, and NM, who was
first in line ahead of her, drops out. NN will now be first in line, but has
she actually changed just because of that?
We might be
tempted to reply with a
firm "Yes" to some, or even all, of those questions -- but what
do they have in common with, say, a leaf changing colour, a child having her hair cut
or someone just thinking about Karl Marx? If
we can't say what these and many other examples one can think of have in common
(and which don't also allow the ridiculous conclusions we met earlier in
relation to A to be drawn),
what chance is there that there is an 'abstract concept of
change' that applies to every single instance of it, past, present and future?
Or, one that we are all equally capable, not just of arriving at, but agreeing
over? And then that each of us manages to 'abstract', separately,successfully,
and correctly, 'in
our heads'?
[Bearing in
mind the fact that no sense can be made of a 'correct abstraction' in such
circumstances. (On that, see
here.) Moreover, these
problems won't go away by the simple expedient of ignoring them -- a tactic
beloved of DM-fans with whom I have debated such topics in the past. (I have covered
possibilities like these -- as well as those that involve the obscure
DM-concept, 'internal relations' --, in much more detail in Essay Eleven Parts
One and Two, here
and here.)]
Be this as it may, we
saw in
Essay Six that
Heraclitus got
himself into a terrible mess over the criteria of identity for
mass nouns
and
count
nouns in his attempt to 'show' that change was universal, based
solely on his
thoughts about stepping into a river! In relation to which we read the
following:
"Among the best-known fragments is Heraclitus' claim
usually given as 'one cannot step into the same river twice' which is actually
translated from the Greek as 'In the same river we both step and do not step, we
are and are not' meaning that, since the waters of a river are constantly in
motion, one cannot ever experience the same waters across one's feet.... In this
same way, life is also in constant motion and one should not expect any aspect
of it to remain still for one's personal pleasure." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/08/2023. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Engels
concurred:
"When we consider and reflect upon nature at large or the history of mankind or
our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an endless
entanglement of relations and reactions in which nothing remains what, where and
as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into being and passes away.
This primitive, naive but intrinsically correct conception of the world is that
of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus:
everything is and is not, for everything is
fluid, is constantly
changing, constantly coming into being and passing away."
[Engels
(1976), p.24. Bold emphasis added.]
But,
Heraclitus had a legitimate excuse. He lived at a time when little was known
(let alone had been concluded) about this terminological difference.
Indeed, I have
been told that the distinction between mass and count nouns doesn't actually
exist in the Greek language. Nevertheless, even though I have yet to verify that
supposed fact, no Greek speaker would try to count cabbage or chalk,
although they would happily
count cabbage heads or sticks of chalk. Nor would they even attempt to
weighbodies (that isn't a typo!) when asked how many supporters were sat inside a coach
on their way to a UK Premier League football (soccer) match, but they would try to count
them. [Trite examples like these illustrate the stark difference between count
and mass nouns and how we all handle them in everyday life, irrespective
of any (philosophical) theories we might hold.] That excuse is no longer available,
so Ollman's breezy
conclusions (which were clearly based on little or no awareness of
contemporary work in this area -- follow the "mass noun" link above for more
details) are far
less easy to absolve.
Now, had Heraclitus said that it was
impossible to step into the same body of flowing water twice he might
have had a point. Despite what he did say, it is quite easy to step into the
same river. [On that, see
here.] Indeed, without
that
particular
option not even Heraclitus could test his own 'theory' (or even imagine such
a test being performed in his 'mind's eye'),
for he wouldn't be able to recognise the
same
river to test it on, let alone assert anything about it! And, of course, the word
river legitimately applies to bodies of water that typically flow, so
anyone using the word "river" would already knowthat they flow,
otherwise they would be
using that word with no comprehension of its meaning. In which case, Ollman is
mistaken when he says:
"The underlying problem is as old as philosophy itself. The ancient Greek
philosopher,
Heraclitus,
provides us with its classic statement when he asserts that a person cannot step
into the same river twice. Enough water has flowed between the two occasions so
that the river we step into the second time is not the same river we walked
into earlier. Yet our common sense tells us that it is, and our naming
practice reflects this view. The river is still called the 'Hudson', or the
'Rhine' or the 'Ganges'." [Op cit., bold added.]
But, if the
above bodies of water are called rivers, that implies they change and flow, and
naming them doesn't alter that fact. As if names can't be applied to
changing objects! Who thinks that calling a hurricane "Katrina"
means it doesn't change? Who in their left mind thinks that calling a huge
conflagration, "The
Camp Fire", means that it won't kill them if they don't get out of its way?
[Ollman sort of half admits this, anyway, below.]
[The
'relative stability' of language defence was neutralised in
Essay Six,
so there is little point anyone appealing to it.]
Nevertheless, Ollman nowhere even so much as
questions Heraclitus's semi-divine ability to extrapolate froma single observation about stepping into a river
to what must be true, right
across the entire universe, for all of time!
He continues:
"In contrast to this approach, Marx set out to abstract things, in his words,
'as they really are and happen,' making how they happen part of what they are
(Marx and Engels (1964), p.57) [Ollman is here referencing the German Ideology; i.e., Marx
and Engels (1976), p.31,see below -- RL]
Hence, capital (or labour, money, etc.) is not only how capital appears and
functions, but also how it develops; or rather, how it develops, its real
history, is also part of what it is. It is also in this sense that Marx could
deny that nature and history 'are two separate things' (Marx and Engels (1964),
p.57). In the view which currently dominates the social sciences, things exist
and undergo change. The two are logically distinct. History is something
that happens to things; it is not part of their nature. Hence, the difficulty of
examining change in subjects from which it has been removed at the start.
Whereas Marx, as he tells us, abstracts 'every historical social form as in
fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not
less than its momentary existence' (My emphasis (i.e., Ollman's emphasis --
RL)) (Marx (1958), p.20) [Ollman is here referencing
Das Kapital Volume One; i.e., Marx (1996), p.20, see below -- RL]." [Ollman
(2003),
p.65. Spelling adjusted to conform with UK English. Referencing conventions
altered to agree with those adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the
original.]
But, as we have also seen (in Essay Three
Part One),
abstraction may only penetrate to the heart of things if 'reality' itself
were abstract (i.e., if it were Ideal).
The
MECW edition renders the above passages from The German Ideology as follows:
"The premises from which we
begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which
abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals,
their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those
which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These
premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way." [Marx
and Engels (1976), p.31. Bold
emphasis added.]
I
can't find the second passage to which Ollman refers onthis particular page, or on
any surrounding
pages, of The German Ideology. Here is the third, from Das Kapital:
"...[B]ecause it
regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and
therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary
existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence
critical and revolutionary." [Marx
(1996), p.20.]
Of
course, in the first passage Marx refers to abstraction that
"can only be made in the imagination", but he
pointedly failed to tell us how that might actually be done, and neither does Ollman. What is more,
Ollman's 'below the surface'
metaphor explains nothing, either (on that, see
here).
Doubtless,
social development and the growth of science might be able to tell us how things
"really are" (depending, of course, on what is meant by that phrase), or even how
they "actually change", but they certainly can't do either by means of abstraction,
for that 'process'
deprives language of
its capacity to express generality. Even if we were to assume that
'the process of abstraction' could
do all that
Ollman claims for it, DM
would be the very last theory that scientists would turn to for
assistance --, since, if it were true, change would be impossible!
So, all this labour has brought forthnot
even so much as an abstract mouse!
"The mountain labor'd,
groaning loud, on which a num'rous gaping crowd of noodles came to see the sight,
when, lo! a mouse was brought to light!" [Phaedrus,
IV, XXIV.]
Ollman
devotes the next few pages to listing, and then commenting on, several of the abstract
terms he claims Marx used (whereas Marx doesn't appear to
call them "abstract"!), in the course of which he makes the following
(more substantive)
point:
"Before concluding our discussion of the place of change in Marx's abstractions,
it is worth noting that thinking in terms of processes is not altogether alien
to common sense. It occurs in abstractions of actions, such as eating, walking,
fighting, etc., indeed whenever the gerund form of the verb is used. Likewise,
event words, such as 'war' and 'strike', indicate that to some degree at least
the processes involved have been abstracted as such. On the other hand, it is
also possible to think of war and strike as a state or condition, more like a
photo than a motion picture, or if the latter, then a single scene that gets
shown again and again, which removes or seriously underplays whatever changes
are taking place. And unfortunately, the same is true of most action verbs.
They
become action 'things.' In such cases, the real processes that go on do not get
reflected -- certainly not to any adequate degree -- in our thinking about them.
It is my impression that in the absence of any commitment to bring change itself
into focus, in the manner of Marx, this is the more typical outcome." [Ollman
(2003),
p.67.
Bold emphases added.]
Ollman is absolutely right to point out that
ordinary language
contains numerous words that can be, and typically are, used to depict change,
but he, like all
too many
others,
confuses the vernacular with "common sense". Moreover, he seems
content merely to assert that "thought" assumes or concludes many of
the words we use to speak about change actually mange to depict states or conditions
(when
no
such 'assuming' or 'concluding' takes place -- or, if it does, Ollman
failed once again to provide any
evidence or argument in support), which, if it were true, would undermine a
feature of language he had only just mentioned -- the fact that
the vernacular contains countless action words (on that, see below).
That is, of course, the problem with
abstraction and
reification; but neither of the latter two is (obviously) related to "common sense". And yet,
if what Ollman says does indeed happen (in connection with ordinary language),
that itself would be another regrettable result of the same syntactic errors
and miss-steps that
originally motivated
philosophers and grammarians in Ancient Greece, highlighted in
Part One of this
Essay, and which have now re-surfaced in 'Marxist dialectics'!
In that case, if "common sense"
is at fault, so too is DM! On the other hand, if ordinary language hadn't
been
deliberately
distorted in this way (and if we took seriously the advice Marx and Engels
offered
earlier), the action
verbs to which Ollman refers wouldn't end up being twisted and abused in such a
Philistine
way. Indeed, as pointed out in
Essay Four
(quoted earlier):
As is well-known (at least by Marxists),
human beings managed to progress because of their interaction with nature, later
constrained by the class war and the
development of the forces of and relations of production. In which case, ordinary language
-- the result of collective labour --
couldn't fail to
have invented a array of words with the logical and semantic multiplicity that
allowed its users to
speak about changes of almost limitless complexity, speed and duration.
This is no mere dogma; it is easily confirmed. Here is
a greatly shortened list of ordinary words (restricted to modernEnglish, but omitting simple and complex
tensed participles and
auxiliary
verbs) that allow speakers to talk about changes of almost unbounded
complexity, rapidity, or scope:
[In each case, where there is
a noun form of a word its verb form
has been listed (for instance, "object" as in "to object"). Moreover, where I
have listed the word "ring", for example, I also intend cognates of
the verb "to ring"
-- like "ringing" and "rang". I have also omitted
many nouns that imply change or development, such as "river", "runner", "wind",
"lightning", "tide", "cloud", and "fire". Anyone
who didn't know such words implied changing processes in the world -- that
rivers flow, fires burn, runners run, and winds blow -- would merely underline
their lack of comprehension of English (or whatever language theirs happened to be),
compounded by a dangerously
defective knowledge of the world. Not knowing that fires burn, for example,
would endanger life. In addition, several of the above also have verb forms,
such as "fired" or "winding". Other nouns also imply growth and development,
such as "tree", "flower", "mouse", "day", "human being". Anyone who
thought "human being", for example, reflected a 'fixed and changeless' view of
the world would perhaps be regarded as suffering from some form of learning
disability; either that, or they were in the grip of an off-the-wall
philosophical theory of some sort.]
Naturally, it
wouldn't be difficult to extend this list until it contained literally thousands
of entries -- on that, see
here and
here --, all capable of depicting countless changes in
limitless detail (especially if it is augmented with words drawn from mathematics,
science and
HM).
It is only a myth put about by Hegel and DM-theorists (unwisely echoed by
Rees, and others -- such as Woods and Grant)
that ordinary language can't depict change adequately, since it is
supposedly dominated by 'the abstract understanding', a brain module helpfully identified
for us by Hegel without a scrap of supporting evidence, still less a brain scan. By way of contrast,
ordinary language
performs this task far better than the incomprehensible and impenetrably
obscure jargon Hegel invented in order to fix something that wasn't broken.
If the above
verbs are put in the present continuous tense (e.g., as flowing, burning,
running, turning, organising, dissolving, crumbling..., etc.), and then placed
in a sentential context (e.g., "The cops are running away from the strikers",
"Management's resolve is crumbling", "The strike committee is still organising
the picketing", etc., etc.) -- or, indeed, more complex present tenses are used (e.g.,
the
present iterative or
frequentative) --, only those woefully ignorantof language would conclude the following
alongside Ollman:
"On the other hand, it is also possible to think of war and strike as a state or
condition, more like a photo than a motion picture, or if the latter, then a
single scene that gets shown again and again, which removes or seriously
underplays whatever changes are taking place.... And unfortunately, the same is
true of most action verbs. They become action 'things.' In such cases, the real
processes that go on do not get reflected -- certainly not to any adequate
degree -- in our thinking about them." [Ollman (2003), loc cit.]
If some
workers are striking, or a war
is being fought, who, still in command of their senses, would conclude that a "state
or condition" (and one that "removes
or seriously underplays whatever changes are taking place"),
not a process, was being described, or even implied?
Moreover, it
isn't too clear what an "action 'thing" is supposed to be. Perhaps Ollman means that most action verbs can
also be thought of as depicting states or conditions, but, since dialecticians like Ollman make
a virtue out of abstraction, a 'process' that openly freezes verbs and predicate expressions
into the Proper Names of
Abstract Particulars, we would be well advised to take such comments with
more than a pinch of non-dialectical salt.
[For a much
more nuanced, clearer and comprehensive account of state, activity and
performance verbs than the one attempted by Ollman -- which offered a decidedly amateurish and risibly superficial 'analysis' of this grammatical form
--, see,
for example, Kenny (1963),
pp.151-86, Kenny (1975), and Hacker (2007), pp.90-160.]
Ollman then veers off at a tangent and begins a consideration of "internal
relations" (a 'concept' that will be destructively analysed in Essay Four Part
Two), which 'allows' him to advance several wild and unsubstantiated claims
about Marx's method. In the course of which he made the following remark:
"The view held by most people, scholars and others, in what we've been calling
the common sense view, maintains that there are things and there are relations,
and that neither can be subsumed in the other. This position is summed up in
Bishop Butler's statement, which
G. E.
Moore
adopts as a motto: 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing,' taken in
conjunction with Hume's claim, 'All events seem entirely loose and separate'
(Moore, (1903), title page; Hume (1955) p.85 (see the
References
for further details; the first relates to Moore (1959) -- RL)). On this view, capital
may be found to have relations with labour, value, etc., and it may even be that
accounting for such relations plays an important role in explaining what capital
is; but capital is one thing, and its relations quite another. Marx, on the
other hand, following Hegel's lead in this matter, rejects what is, in essence,
a logical dichotomy. For him, as we saw, capital is itself a Relation, in which
the ties of the material means of production to labour, value, commodity, etc.,
are interiorized as parts of what capital is. Marx refers to 'things themselves'
as 'their interconnections' (Marx and Engels (1950), p.488 -- Briefwechsel
Volume 3 -- RL). Moreover, these relations extend backward and forward in time,
so that capital's conditions of existence as they have evolved over the years
and its potential for future development are also viewed as parts of what it
is." [Ollman (2003),
p.69. Spelling modified to agree
with UK English; bold emphasis alone added. Referencing conventions
altered to conform with those adopted at this site. Links added.]
So, on the basis of a
short, enigmatic quotation from
Butler (!), and a brief comment by Hume (highlighted in bold), Ollman
somehow thinks he is able to tell us what
the "common sense" view is! Are we meant to take
this seriously? Is this cutting-edge philosophy? In
Essay Seven Part One, I labelled superficial 'evidential
displays' like this -- which typically feature in all forms of Dialectical Marxism --, "Mickey
Mouse Science".
However, in that Essay I only accused LCDs of indulging in this 'sport', but here we see a
card-carrying HCD indulging, too. And Ollman isn't
alone; other HCDs do likewise. [That allegation will be substantiated in
Essay Twelve.]
[LCD
= Low Church Dialectician;
HCD
= High Church Dialectician; follow those links for an explanation. LEM = Law of
Excluded Middle.]
As we saw in
Part One, Ollman
is only able to confuse relations with "things" because of yet another linguistic
sleight-of-hand
(whereby
nominalised and particularised relational expressions have been
transformed into the Proper Names of
Abstract
Particulars). As a result, Ollman thinks he can (legitimately!) blur the distinction between "things" and "relations" -- thus perpetuating
Marx's error in this respect, one that is easily rectified if we jettison
such Hegelian gobbledygook. Hence, Ollman is simply echoing an assertion
he copied from Marx: that Capital is a relation. Of course, what Marx
means is that in order to understand Capitalism, it isn't enough just to look
at "things", but at their interconnections, their history, their
mutual development, and so on. If that is what Marx intended, I haveno problem
with it! And yet they [Marx and Ollman] fail to explain why that makes Capital arelation.
The latter is merely asserted on the basis, one assumes, that dialectics requires
the rejection of stark, black-and-white dichotomies, such as those between 'things' and
'relations'. That in turn is itself predicated on a Hegelian rejection of the
LEM. I have dealt with that peculiar, self-defeating idea in Essay Nine
Part One; readers are directed there for more details.
Independently of that, if Capital were a relation, it could have no relations of its own. On the
other hand, if it were an object or system of some sort, it could.
Here is an
example of a
relation, represented by the relational expression, "ξ
is larger than ζ":
Y1: A
is larger than B. [Where "A" and "B" stand for singular
terms -- i.e., Proper Names or
Definite Descriptions.]
Y2: Ψ(ξ,ζ).
[I have
explained the use of symbols like these,
here.]
Plainly, the
relation here is A being larger than B. It is far from clear how that relation
itself can also be comprised of relations, or how that relation
itself can be related to anything. Whatever A or B
stand for might themselves be composed of relations, or be defined in terms of
them, but how can the relation
itself -- i.e., how the verb phrase "is larger than"
expresses (when embedded in a grammatical sentence) can be composed of,
or related to, anything? A relational expression (which, as the
phrase suggests, expresses the intended relation) reflects a connection between
the relata involved, it isn't itself composed of anything. Asking what a
relation is made of is as nonsensical as asking what tallness and largeness are
composed of. Or, indeed, what either are themselves related to.
Here is
something -- a workers' picket line -- that is composed of relations (expressed by a series of relational
expressions):
Y3: The
picket was formed by w1,
stood next to w2,
stood next to w3...,
stood next to wi...,
stood next to wn-1, stood next to
wn.
[Where wk
stands for the Proper Name of a worker, one of the said pickets.]
While it
is
easy to see how Capital as an economic and social system is comprised of relations, somewhat analogous to
the situation depicted in Y3 (but in a far more complex way, obviously!), dialecticians like Ollman have yet to explain how
Capital can be a relation while also being composed of relations, like we saw with Y1-Y3.
Who, still in command of their senses, is going to ask what "stood next to" is
itself made of? Or what further relations comprise the relation "stood next to"?
Or even what "stood next to" is itself related to? But that would be the equivalent
of asking what further relations
comprise the relation that Capital is already said to be. Perhaps Ollman means
Capital
expresses a relation held between this and that? [Where the
'this' and the 'that' might themselves be complex structures or processes in
their own right, and have their own relations.] Or that Capital
began to exist when human beings entered into, set up, or established certain relations?
Again, I have no problem with that! But, even then it is still
hard to see how Capital can also be a relation. Nothing Ollman and other 'fans-of-the-dialectic' have so far said makes the supposed dual nature of Capital
(in this sense) any the clearer
-- i.e., that it is a relation and that it is comprised of
relations.
Ollman (and other HCDs) may be content with this way of talking about relational
(and/or substantival) expressions, but his (or
their) only defence would once again involve an appeal to the misguided syntactical
segue mentioned
earlier, which
reifies relational expressions so that they become objects in their own right,
or the Proper Names thereof. Sliding between these two -- for example,
between a set of relational expressions and the Proper Name, "Capital" (which
names an identifiable 'object', system or process, or even a set of relations
between such) -- 'allows'
DM-theorists to imagine Capital can be comprised of relations and be a
relation at the same time. We also
saw
(here) that this (defective) approach
to the denotation of relational and nominal/substantival expressions is what
lies behind the
verbal tricks
Hegel thought he could pull in order to befuddle his readers (and he
evidently succeeded beyond his wildest dreams!). Such verbal tricks are analogous to the equally suspect word juggling that 'underpins'
Anselm's notorious
Ontological Argument,
and are thereby no less contemptible.
It seems,
therefore, that
those who accept this
view of the nature of Capital -- the alleged 'relation', not the book(!)
-- can only appeal to the following considerations in support:
(i) A rather
simple-minded view of "common sense"; backed up by,
(ii) An
evidential display that makes Creationist propaganda look both substantial and convincing in comparison; allied with,
(iii) An idiosyncratic interpretation of the logic of relational expressions;
all of which confusions are further compounded by,
(iv) A Philistine
view language; based on,
(v) A
seriously flawed criticism of the LEM.
[The reader will no doubt have noticed that
this is precisely the accusation that was advanced at the beginning of Essay Three
Part One, and
will be repeated many times as the Essays at this site unfold. Moves like those
Ollman tries to pull are a
hallmark of ruling-class forms-of-thought -- what I have also called
Linguistic
Idealism
[LIE]. That is, a belief that theories concerning fundamental features of nature
and society (valid for all of space and time -- or, in this case, valid for at
least one Mode of Production) can be inferred from language and 'thought' alone. Such moves mean that those
who have bought into this way of reasoning
also think they need provide little or no evidence in support (after all, why look
for any of the latter if truth flows directly from language/thought?). But
that is what we have just seen Ollman
do in connection with his superficial analysis of change (and any of the verbs associated with it),
followed by his risible appeal to what Hume and Butler had to say in an attempt
to substantiate a few hasty conclusions about "common sense"! This
overall approach to language and knowledge will be criticised at length in Essay Twelve
Parts One to Seven (some of which material has already been published
here,
here and here).]
Having said
all that, it might be possible to clear up the above confusion by arguing that
there are two different meanings of the word "capital": "Capital1"
and "Capital2".
The first of these relates to Capital as a system, or part of a system, of
relations, while the second relates to Capital as a relation itself.
However, I know of no Dialectical Marxist who views this word in that way (if
anyone does, please email me the
details), so I will say no more about this or pass any opinion whether or
not it is a viable option.
This is yet
another hole DM-fans have dug themselves into; it is up to them to extricate
themselves from it.
It
could be objected that Ollman actually rejects many of the above criticisms, for
example, with words like the following:
"In order to forestall possible misunderstandings
it may be useful to assert that the philosophy of internal relations is not an
attempt to reify 'what lies between.' It is simply that the particular ways in
which things cohere become essential attributes of what they are. The philosophy
of internal relations also does not mean -- as some of its critics have charged
-- that investigating any problem can go on forever (to say that boundaries are
artificial is not to deny them an existence, and, practically speaking, it is
simply not necessary to understand everything in order to understand anything);
or that the boundaries which are established are arbitrary (what actually
influences the character of Marx's or anyone else's abstractions is another
question); or that we cannot mark or work with some of the important objective
distinctions found in reality (on the contrary, such distinctions are a major
influence on the abstractions we do make); or, finally, that the vocabulary
associated with the philosophy of internal relations -- particularly 'totality,'
'relation,' and 'identity' -- cannot also be used in subsidiary senses to refer
to the world that comes into being after the process of abstraction has done its
work." [Ollman (2003),
p.72. Bold emphasis added.]
But, that is precisely what Ollman
himself does (i.e., "attempt to reify" 'abstractions'); a few bluff denials in no way alters that
fact. Moreover, as we have seen (here
and here), it isn't
possible to halt, or even slow down, the 'dialectical juggernaut' as it careers off the road into the
infinite beyond, or neutralise the
(fatal) criticism that,
if this 'theory' were true, it would indeed be necessary to "understand everything in order
to understand anything".
If Ollman
were right (that "the
particular ways in which things cohere become essential attributes of what they
are"), he would it impossible to resist effectively the following
argument:
L1: For any given object or process, H(1), its "essential" nature
must be connected (in an as-yet-unspecified way) with some other object or process, H(2), which in turn
must likewise depend on H(3)..., which in turn must depend on H(i)...,
which in turn must depend on H(n-2), which in turn must depend on H(n-1),
which in turn must depend on H(n). [For indefinitely large n.]
L2: In that case, in order fully to
understand
H(1) it is necessary to understand H(2),
H(3)..., H(i)..., H(n-2), H(n-1) and H(n).
L3: However, ifH(n)
can't be fully understood without fully understanding H(n-1), and
H(n-1) can't be fully understood without fully understanding H(n-2),
then, by (n-1) applications of this rule, H(1) can't be fully understood
until H(2) through H(n) are fully understood.
L4: Hence, nothing can be fully understood until
everything is fully understood. QED.
In response, it won't do to try to substitute
"understood" for "fully understood", either. Or,
to be a little clearer, that ploy might have had a chance of succeeding if
the "attributes" to which Ollman refers hadn't been described as "essential". If
they are "essential", then they are
essential to understanding anything to which they supposedly belong, relate or
"cohere". Anything less than full understanding in that
case would
surely threaten their
status as "essential" factors. Indeed, how would anyone know they
are "essential" attributes
if they didn't fully understood them? Without compete knowledge (which must
surely accompany full understanding) it might turn out that what had
beendeemed "essential" wasn't "essential", after all. In
fact, we have already seen DM-theorists concede the point that what were at one
time considered "essential" properties lose that status as knowledge grows:
"Essence and appearance are correlated categories. They are characterised
thorough one another. Whereas essence is something general, appearance is
individual, expressing only an element of essence; whereas essence is something
profound and intrinsic, appearance is external, yet richer and more colourful;
whereas essence is something stable and necessary, appearance is more transient,
changeable and accidental. The
difference between the essential and the unessential is not absolute but
relative. For instance, at one time it was considered that the essential
property of the chemical element was its atomic weigh. Later this essential
property turned out to be the charge of the atomic nucleus. The property of
atomic weight did not cease to be essential, however. It is still essential in
the first approximation, essential on a less profound level (sic!), and is further
explained on the basis of the charge of the atomic nucleus." [Konstantinov (1974),
p.191. Bold emphasis added.]
The same is also true with what used to be
considered the "essential" nature of an acid. As I pointed out in Essay Twelve
Part One
(in connection with Wittgenstein's distinction between what he called "criteria"
and "symptoms"):
[At this
point] it is worth directing the reader's attention to a distinction
Wittgenstein drew between
what he called
criteria and symptoms. [This links to a PDF.] Because of that
distinction, what might
at first sight appear to be an empirical
proposition -- or, indeed, what had once been regarded as an empirical proposition --, could in fact assume a radically different
role or logical status.
Symptoms are
those facts which we regard as lending support to, or which tend to confirm the truth of, say, an hypothesis
or tentative statement, whereas a criterion supplies conclusive proof, or helps
provide such proof, of its
truth -- or, indeed, of the proper application of an expression, such as "water" (with or without the use of other relevant criteria); or
criteria help determine whether a given sentence or claim can even count
as true, or whether an object has been, or can be, classified correctly.
Hence,
a plane figure possessing three straight intersecting edges would be
a criterion for something to count as a triangle (or for calling it one), whereas a pavement being wet would
merely be a symptom that supported a claim, or which lent credence to the supposition, that it had been raining
in the vicinity. On the other
hand,
wetness would now be one of the criteria that could/would be employed in
order to decide if a certain liquid was water (but it wouldn't be the only
criterion,
of course). However, the absence of wetness on its own would provide conclusive proof that
the liquid in question wasn't water. So, for example, liquid Mercury
doesn't feel wet to human skin, just cold. However, other obvious properties of Mercury
would clearly distinguish it from water well before it was allowed anywhere near
unprotected skin.
[Naturally,
that depends on how "wet" is itself to be defined. If it is taken to mean that a
certain liquid contains water, then the above criterion would more closely
resemble a colloquial tautology. It should go without saying, however, that the everyday meaning of "wet"
must be distinguished from the scientific term, "wetting".]
Furthermore, what had once been regarded as
a symptom could later become a criterion. For example, the observation that
acids turned certain substances red was once regarded by medieval dyers
and painters as an interesting fact about acids. That
quirk was originally viewed, therefore,
as a symptom. Later, this peculiar fact about acids was employed by
Robert Boyleas a way of detecting, or of deciding upon, the presence of acids. It thus became a
criterion --
later used universally in connection with, for instance,
Litmus Paper.
Of course, we use
other pH-Indicators
these days, but that just means this criterion has (or these criteria
have) now become more
varied and complex. The distinction itself still remains valid -- indeed, as
Peter Hacker notes:
"It is
true that we can, in certain cases, transform an empirical proposition into a
rule or norm of representation by resolving to hold it rigid.... It was an
empirical discovery that
acids are proton donors, but this proposition was
transformed into a rule: a scientist no longer calls something 'an acid' unless
it is a proton donor, and if it is a proton donor, then it is to be called 'an
acid', even if it has no effect on litmus paper. The proposition that acids are
proton donors...has been 'withdrawn from being checked by experience but now
serves as a paradigm for judging experience'. [This is a quotation from
Wittgenstein (1978), p.325 -- RL.] Though unassailable, so-called necessary
truths are not immutable; we can, other things being equal, change them if we so
please.... But if we change them, we also change the meanings of their
constituent expressions...". [Hacker
(1996), p.215. Link added.]
So, the "essential" nature of an acid is no longer
taken to be the fact that it neutralises a base or changes the colour of Litmus Paper.
The following dusty old (Stalinist) DM-textbook also
defined acids in 'essentialist' terms that no longer apply:
"An acid has many properties, but the most essential is its
ability to combine with an alkali or a metal and form a salt. In a word the most
essential qualities are those which a thing manifests in relation to 'its
other,' to its opposite." [Shirokov
(1937), p.272. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site.]
But,
modern definitions
of acids don't characterise acids in such a simplistic way. The Brønsted-Lowry
definition says that acids are proton donators, while the
Lewisian
definition tells us that an acid is an electron-pair acceptor. Admittedly, bases are still defined as the 'opposite' of each of these, but acids and
alkali's are no longer defined in terms of each other, but in terms of a
third item (or, rather,
a third and a fourth term, if we lump the lot together). [On this, see
Zumdahl (1989), pp.654-56 and Shriver and Atkins (2001), pp.143-76.]
Of course, that assumes there are 'essences' to
begin with (which idea with be destructively criticised in Essay Thirteen Part
Two -- until then, the reader is directed
here for more details),
but even if 'essences' do exist (in some shape or form), it looks like they
change, or are often discarded(!) to be replaced by another 'essence',
which sometimes suffers the same fate a few years later, as we learn
more. Clearly this means the previous 'essence' wasn'tin fact
essential; it's an odd sort of 'essence' that actually turns out not
to be essential, after all!
Naturally, this means that until we have complete
knowledge/understanding we will never really know the 'essential nature'
of anything, and that in turn means:
L5: Nothing can be fully understood until everything
is fully understood.
But,
given the ephemeral nature of these 'essences', which are all too easily
'benched', this means we will never fully understand anything.
[I hasten to add once more that this isn't my view of knowledge; I am
merely drawing out the absurd
consequences of the DM-Epistemology.I have said much more about
this topic, here
and here. We have also seen that no sense can
be made of DM-theorists' own use of words such as "totality" or "identity"
-- on
that, see
here,
here and
here.]
Finally, simply denying these
implausible consequences of the neo-Hegelian Horror Show
outlined above
won't wash, either -- that is, no more than it would if
George Berkeley tried to
deny he was an Idealist.
"Once
we recognize the crucial role abstraction plays in Marx's method, how different
his own abstractions are, and how often and easily he re-abstracts, it becomes
clear that Marx constructs his subject matter as much as he finds it. This is
not to belittle the influence of natural and social (particularly capitalist)
conditions on Marx's thinking, but rather to stress how, given this influence,
the results of Marx's investigations are prescribed to a large degree by the
preliminary organization of his subject matter. Nothing is made up of whole
cloth, but at the same time Marx only finds what his abstractions have placed in
his way. These abstractions do not substitute for the facts, but give them a
form, an order, and a relative value; just as frequently changing his
abstractions does not take the place of empirical research, but does determine,
albeit in a weak sense, what he will look for, even see, and of course
emphasize. What counts as an explanation is likewise determined by the framework
of possible relationships imposed by Marx's initial abstractions. So
far we have been discussing the process of abstraction in general,our main
aim being to distinguish it from other mental activities. Marx's own
abstractions were said to stand out in so far as they invariably include
elements of change and interaction, while his practice of abstracting was found
to include more or less of each as suited his immediate purpose. Taking note of
the importance Marx gave to abstractions in his critique of ideology, we
proceeded to its underpinnings in the philosophy of internal relations,
emphasizing that it is not a matter of this philosophy making such moves
possible -- since everybody abstracts -- but of making them easier, and
enabling Marx to acquire greater control over the process. What remains is to
analyze in greater detail what actually occurs when Marx abstracts, and to trace
its results and implications for some of his major theories." [Ollman
(2003),
pp.73-74. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
But, we have
yet to be told what Marx's 'abstractions' are, or how Ollman could possibly know
anything about them if, as he says, they are "mental activities" or the
product thereof! Has he exhumed Marx's body and held a séance over what remains
of the corpse? Maybe he has access to a time machine, travelled back to the
1870s and performed a
brain scan on Marx (always assuming the relevant equipment can accompany
him on his journey, and he took a powerful enough battery with him)? But, they seem
to be the only ways he could possibly learn anything about the alleged "mental
activities" engaged in by Marx. In that case, the following words appear to
be little more than hot air:
"What remains is to
analyze in greater detail what actually occurs when Marx abstracts, and to trace
its results and implications for some of his major theories." [Ibid.]
It could be argued that we should begin with Marx's actual results on the
page and then, perhaps, 'reverse
engineer' the mental method or psychological processes by which he must have obtained the
results he did. Of course,
as with 'mental arithmetic', 'reverse
engineering' only works because engineers and scientists already understand the
processes involved, which they can specify in detail, in advance, and
they can do so
in the open, in a public language. That is what allows them to
'run the film in reverse', as it were. But, we (still) have no idea what the 'processes'
involved here are. And Ollman has been as tight-lipped about it as other
DM-theorists always have. In that case, it isn't possible to 'reverse engineer' the
production of a single 'abstraction' -- no more than we can 'reverse engineer'
something equally mysterious/fictional: telepathy.
Furthermore,
as we have also seen, it
is
little use appealing to the language Marx used since that can't tell us
anything about those hidden "mental activities", either. Nor would it show that
Marx had actually indulged in this yet-to-be-explained 'process of abstraction' -- that is, over and
above his use of the word "abstract" from time-to-time. Even he failed to tell us with any clarity
what he meant by this 'process' or what he had done 'in his head'! Without doubt, Marx must have given thought to what he was
writing about, but that has nothing to do with the 'process of abstraction', since
Marx had to use familiar words drawn from a public language in order to do
all that thinking. And the language he employed to that end already
possessed general terms
with established meanings that weren't themselves
the product of 'abstraction' -- that is, not unless they had been subjected to
the sort of distortion exposed in
Part One, and which Marxhimselfhad both criticised and condemned.
But, is it
even true that "everybody abstracts"? As this Essay
has shown, not only is there no evidence they do, no one seems to be
able to tell us what they are all supposed to be able to do while they are allegedly
involved in doing it! Which is odd in itself. If we all engage in this
'process', why
can no one tell us what it is we are all supposed to be able to do? For example, we all engage in walking
for much of our lives -- or at least those physically capable. There are expert anatomists and physiologists who can tell us in
detail what we all do when we so indulge (here,
for example, is an entire YouTube channel, with dozens of videos devoted to this
and other movements we all engage in on a daily basis). and most us
us can also give some account of what we do when we ambulate. Even robots can be
programmed to walk, too. But, not one single believer in the
'process of abstraction' (DM-fan or otherwise) in the last 2500 years seems able to say, beyond a
few vague gestures, what we are all supposed to do when we intentionally fire up
all these 'mental processes'.
[Added on Edit
October 2024:
As noted earlier, since the above was first written I have managed to locate a
relatively recent attempt to explain this 'process' --
Laurence and Margolis
(2012). I will say more about this failed attempt in Interlude One.]
Nor can anyone work
out how the heroic "mental activities" of
AbstractorA could possibly
agree with those of AbstractorB, or, indeed, how it is possible for
anyone to check even their own results.
Ollman now advances the following
remarks:
"The process of abstraction, which we have been treating as an
undifferentiated mental act, has three main aspects or modes, which are also its functions
vis-à-vis the part abstracted on one hand and the system to which the part
belongs and which it in turn helps to shape on the other. That is, the boundary
setting and bringing into focus that lies at the core of this process occurs
simultaneously in three different, though closely related, senses. These senses
have to do with extension, level of generality, and vantage point. First, each
abstraction can be said to achieve a certain extension in the part abstracted,
and this applies both spatially and temporally. In abstracting boundaries in
space, limits are set in the mutual interaction that occurs at a given point of
time. While in abstracting boundaries in time, limits are set in the distinctive
history and potential development of any part, in what it once was and is yet to
become. Most of our examples of abstraction so far have been drawn from what we
shall now call 'abstraction of extension.'
"Second, at the same time that every act of abstraction establishes an
extension, it also sets a boundary around and brings into focus a particular
level of generality for treating not only the part but the whole system to which
it belongs. The movement is from the most specific, or that which sets it apart
from everything else, to its most general characteristics, or what makes it
similar to other entities. Operating rather like a microscope that can be set at
different degrees of magnification, this mode of abstraction enables us to see
the unique qualities of any part, or the qualities associated with its function
in capitalism, or the qualities that belong to it as part of the human condition
(to give only the most important of these levels of generality). In abstracting
capital, for example, Marx gives it an extension in both space and time as well
as a level of generality such that only those qualities associated with its
appearance and functioning as a phenomenon of capitalism are highlighted (i.e.,
its production of value, its ownership by capitalists, its exploitation of
workers, etc.). The qualities a given capital may also possess as a Ford Motor
Company assembly line for making cars or as a tool in general -- that is,
qualities that it has as a unique object or as an instance of something human
beings have always used -- are not brought into the picture. They are abstracted
out. This aspect of the process of abstraction has received least attention not
only in our own discussion but in other accounts of dialectics. In what follows,
we shall refer to it as 'abstraction of level of generality.'
"Third, at the same time that abstraction establishes an extension and a level
of generality, it also sets up a vantage point or place within the relationship
from which to view, think about, and piece together the other components in the
relationship; meanwhile the sum of their ties (as determined by the abstraction
of extension) also becomes a vantage point for comprehending the larger system
to which it belongs, providing both a beginning for research and analysis and a
perspective in which to carry it out. With each new perspective, there are
significant differences in what can be perceived, a different ordering of the
parts, and a different sense of what is important. Thus, in abstracting capital,
Marx not only gives it an extension and a level of generality (that of
capitalism), he also views the interrelated elements that compose it from the
side of the material means of production and, simultaneously, transforms this
configuration itself into a vantage point for viewing the larger system in which
it is situated, providing himself with a perspective that influences how all
other parts of the system will appear (one that gives to capital the central
role). We shall refer to this aspect of abstraction as 'abstraction of vantage
point.' By manipulating extension, level of generality, and vantage point, Marx
puts things into and out of focus, into better focus, and into different kinds
of focus, enabling himself to see more clearly, investigate more accurately, and
understand more fully and more dynamically his chosen subject." [Ollman
(2003),
pp.74-75. Bold emphases added.]
But words
like this are just empty terms until we are told what this 'process' actually is
-- other
than that it is a "mental act" --, especially since we have even less of an idea what all these 'abstractions' are
supposed to be that somehow 'emerge' at the end. This of course means the distinctions Ollman
wants to draw here are about as useful as
the
intricate classification of angels concocted by Medieval Theologians.
Independently of this, how Ollman knows so much about abstraction when neither
he nor anyone else has access to the mental gyrations of other intrepid
abstractors (and who is also annoyingly vague even about what goes on 'in his own head', let
alone Marx's!), is no less of a mystery. The very best Ollman can do is tell us
about the "three main aspects or modes" of his own
abstractions (and, as we saw in a
previous sub-section, he can only tell us about the 'abstractions' he is
currently aware of, not those he held yesterday or even a few minutes earlier!), if 'abstractions' are indeed the result of these
yet-to-be-described-let-alone-identified "mental acts". Of course, it is quite clear what
Ollman is doing when he tells us about the 'abstractions' Marx supposedly
accessed and employed:
he is relying on what Marx committed to paper. He clearly isn't relying on a
single one of those (imagined) "mental
acts". In other words, he, like the rest of us, has focused on thepublicly available
writings Marx
left behind. But, what
that has to do with this 'inner process of abstraction' is still
completely unclear.
Be this as
it may, Ollman's distinctions might turn out to be of some use in an analysis
of Capitalism. I will pass no comment on that possibility, except to note that, as we saw in
Part One, the 'process of abstraction'
destroys generality,
it doesn't express it or even provide theorists with a "level of generality".
Hence, it would be wise to
maintain
healthy scepticism about that what Ollman has to say will help in any way. However, if Ollman's distinctions
do turn out to be of some use in the analysis
of Capitalism, that will
clearly be because:
(i) He
uses general terms drawn from a publicly-accessible language; he
doesn't
use abstractions as such (because their meaning is forever lost
to us since they are based on "mental acts",
about which he can know nothing); and because,
(ii) He
nowhere asks his readers to scan his brain in order to comprehend his own (or
even Marx's) 'abstractions'. In fact, Marx took care to explain what he was
trying to do
-- again, he did so in an open arena, using a public language -- in the shape of
the copious writings he
left behind. That is, of
course, what allows his readers understand (or, in some cases, try to understand)
his words, which they couldn't do if they paid attention to his 'mental
deliberations' while ignoring what he had actually committed to paper.
Once again, actions speak louder than abstractions.
Here is Ollman, once more:
"As regards the abstraction of extension. Marx's general stand in favour of
large units is evident from such statements as, 'In each historical epoch,
property has developed differently and under a set of entirely different social
relations. Thus, to define bourgeois property is nothing else than to give an
exposition of all these social relations of bourgeois production.... To try
to give a definition of property an independent relation, a category apart, an
abstraction and eternal idea, can be nothing but an illusion of metaphysics and
jurisprudence' (Marx (n.d.),
p.154;
this is a reference to The Poverty
of Philosophy -- RL). Obviously, large abstractions are needed to think
adequately about a complex, internally related world." [Ibid.,
pp.75-76. Bold emphasis added; spelling
modified to agree with UK English.
Referencing conventions altered to conform with those adopted at this site.]
But, the
passage Ollman quotes can't be about Marx's 'abstractions', and that isn't
just because it fails to mention "mental acts", it is becauseMarx himself repudiates these mythical 'objects' in the very work Ollman quoted! It is also worth recalling that Marx's rejection
agrees with what we discovered
earlier about his opinion of this backwater of Ancient Greek fantasy.
The following passage is also from The Poverty of Philosophy -- which
Ollman (mysteriously!) failed to quote:
"Is it surprising that
everything, in the final abstraction…presents itself as a logical category? Is
it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the
individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is
composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a
body; that if you leave out of account the limits of this body, you soon have
nothing but a space -- that if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions
of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical
category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents,
animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final
abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the
metaphysicians, who in making these abstractions, think they are making
analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine
themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their
core…." [Marx
(1978), p.99.]
"The specifics of Marx's position emerge from his frequent criticisms of the
political economists for offering too narrow abstractions (narrow in the double
sense of including too few connections and too short a time period) of one or
another economic form. Ricardo,
for example, is reproached for abstracting too short a period in his notions of
money and rent, and for omitting social relations in his abstraction of value
(Marx (1968), p.125; Marx (1971), p.131 -- these are references to Theories
of Surplus Value, Parts Two and Three -- RL). One of the most serious
distortions is said to arise from the tendency among political economists to
abstract processessolely in terms of their end results. Commodity
exchange, for example, gets substituted for the whole of the process by which a
product becomes a commodity and eventually available for exchange (Marx
(1973), p.198 -- this is a reference to the Grundrisse -- RL). As Amiri
Baraka so colourfully points out: 'Hunting is not those heads on the wall'
(Baraka (1966), p.73). [This is now Baraka (2009), p.200 -- RL.] By
thinking otherwise for the range of problems with which they are concerned, the
political economists avoid seeing the contradictions in the capitalist-specific processes that give rise to these results." [Ollman
(2003),
p.76. Spelling modified to conform with UK English; referencing conventions
altered to agree with those adopted at this site. Minor typos corrected; bold
emphases and link added.]
And
yet, Marx's criticisms aren't aimed at
any
supposed 'abstractions' (which, even if they did exist, would once more be the product of
hidden, unspecified "mental acts"), but at the tendency classical
economists have of concentrating on "results", in parallel with
a penchant for substituting "commodity exchange...for the
whole of the process by which a product becomes a commodity and eventually
available for exchange."
Similarly, Ricardo is taken to task for fixating on "too
short a period in his notions of money and rent, and for omitting social
relations...". In this respect, Marx plainly relied
on what these economistshad published in the open. Hedidn't oncethink to speculateabout what might have gone on in
their heads.
[Of course, it was Ollman who inserted the word
"abstracting", here, but since that 'process' is,
once again,
based on a range of nondescript
"mental acts", he (seriously)
can't have meant this, otherwise Marx couldn't have advanced the criticisms he did.
And that is because, once more, Marx didn't once attempt to 'read the minds' of other economists.]
And, as far as those alleged
"contradictions" are concerned,
until we are told what they are, Ollman
might just as well have written the following for
all the good it does:
"By thinking otherwise for the range of problems with which they are concerned,
the political economists avoid seeing the schmontradictions in the
capitalist-specific processes that give rise to these results." [Edited
misquotation of ibid.]
[As we will see in Essay Twelve, Ollman's
attempt to 'define' "contradiction" (pp.17-18) turns out to be worse
than no help at all.]
Now, other
than examine the passage quoted in the next sub-section, I don't plan to chisel
away at the other things Ollman has to say over the next thirty-five or so pages
of his book (i.e., pp.77-112), not just because that would make this Essay
tedious in the extreme, but because they add nothing substantive to his attempt
to explain what 'abstractions' actually are (although they do contain a large
amount of material about Marx's alleged use of this 'process', the nature of
which neither Marx nor Ollman cared to explain!) --
as readers are invited to check for
themselves.
There,
Ollman advances a series of familiar claims about other areas of dialectics
(which have been critically-examined elsewhere at this site, some of which
will be raked over again in Essay Twelve), but he has little more to add
concerning the nature of 'abstraction', certainly nothing which makes this
mysterious 'process' any clearer, more comprehensible or
even remotely plausible.
In which
case, the following passage is all the more unfortunate:
"Is there any part of Marxism that has received more abuse than his dialectical
method? And I am not just thinking about enemies of Marxism and socialism, but
also about scholars who are friendly to both. It is not
Karl Popper,
but
George
Sorel
in his Marxist incarnation who refers to dialectics as 'the art of
reconciling opposites through hocus pocus,' and the English socialist economist,
Joan
Robinson, who on reading Capital objects to the constant intrusion of
'Hegel's nose' between her and
Ricardo
(Sorel (1950), p.171; Robinson (1953), p.23 -- references given at the end of
this Essay -- RL).
But perhaps the classic complaint is fashioned by the American philosopher,
William
James, who compares reading about dialectics in Hegel -- it could just as
well have been Marx -- to getting sucked into a whirlpool (James (1978), p.174
-- again, reference given at the end -- RL)." [Ollman (2003),
p.59. Referencing conventions
modified
to conform with those adopted at this
site. Italic emphasis in the original; links added.]
In view of
the continual slide into confusion and error that bedevils 'dialectics' --
exposed at this site --, it is
now plain that the above
critics weren'tanywhere near harshenough!
Another
aspect of the defensive approach adopted by dialecticians is the fact that few of
them fail to point out that hostile critics of Dialectical Marxism always
seem
to attack
'the dialectic'. This then allows them to brand all such detractors
as "bourgeois
apologists", which in turn means that
whatever the latter say can safely be ignored as, 'plainly',
partisan and ideological.
But, it has surely escaped their
attention that the reason 'the dialectic' is attacked by friend and foe alike is
that it is by far-and-away the weakest and most lamentably feeble area
of traditional 'Marxist Philosophy'. Far from it being an "abomination" to the
bourgeoisie (even though the State Capitalist rulers of Eastern Europe, the
former USSR, Maoist China and North Korea are, or were, rather fond of it, as
are those sections of the bourgeoisie that publish books and articles on dialectics, or,
indeed, on
'Marxist Philosophy'), 'the dialectic' has in fact helped visit an
abomination on revolutionary
socialism.
So, our enemies attack dialectics
precisely because they think they have found our
Achilles
Heel.
Whereas, revolutionaries (like the present writer)
criticise it
for the opposite reason: to rid Marxism of its Achilles Heel.
Admittedly,
Trotsky tried to respond to general criticisms of 'the dialectic'
coming in from former believers (for
want of a better term), along the
following lines:
"Anyone acquainted with the history of the struggles of
tendencies within workers' parties knows that desertions to the camp of
opportunism and even to the camp of bourgeois reaction began not infrequently
with rejection of the dialectic. Petty-bourgeois intellectuals consider the
dialectic the most vulnerable point in Marxism and at the same time they take
advantage of the fact that it is much more difficult for workers to verify
differences on the philosophical than on the political plane. This long known
fact is backed by all the evidence of experience." [Trotsky
(1971), p.94.]
But,
Trotsky's rebuttal works both ways, for if it is difficult for workers to verify the
"differences" he mentions, then that clearly allows others (such as party
leaders, party hacks and party theorists)
to manipulate workers with ideas they don't understand (that isn't to
disparage workers -- no one
understands DM), or can't check. And, far from it
being the case that only workers find it hard to defend this 'theory'/'method' -- or even understand
it, for goodness sake(!) -- DM-theorists themselves
have shown that they, too,
don't understand it (as these Essays have also repeatedly demonstrated, particularly
this one)! That isn't because it
is a difficult theory to grasp; it is because it is based on incomprehensibleHegelian
gobbledygook
(upside down and the 'right way up').
However, as the Essays published at this site
also show, there is now no good reason to cling to these vague and confused DM-fantasies, even though there
are
easily
identifiable psychological and ideological motivating factors that help
explain why they are, have been,
and will continue to be embraced by the DM-faithful.
Hence,
the conclusion is inescapable: petty-bourgeois and de-classé revolutionaries
maintain their commitment to this
misbegotten, mystical set of ideas for contingent psychological,
opportunist and
ideological reasons,
and for no other. [Again, I have fully
substantiated those accusations in Essay Nine Parts
One and
Two.]
[The "Ah, but what about 1917?"
reply/defence has also
been neutralised,
here.]
The class origin and current class position of comrades like Trotsky
works against them, as well. After all, they, too, aren't above (i.e., they
aren't exempt from) Marx's declaration
that:
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [Marx
(1987), p.263.]
[The "Ah, but that's just crude reductionism!" riposte
has also been neutralised,
here.]
So, Ollman's attempt to explain 'the process of
abstraction' -- particularly as Marx is alleged to have used it -- was
completely wasted effort. I have absolutely no idea why I was directed to this
work,
except to conclude that those who recommended it have clearly given this
entire topic little or no critical scrutiny.
The Link Between 'The Soul', 'Rationality'
And A 'Well-Ordered' City
In his dialogue, the
Republic, Plato makes an explicit connection between the
following five
factors: the 'natural order', the 'rational order of the soul', a 'well
ordered/just city' and the class
structure of society. The following discussion takes place between Socrates, Adeimantus and
Glaucon -- Plato's
older brother--, beginning with Socrates (bold emphases added):
We will not, I said, be over-positive as yet; but if, on trial,
this conception of justice be verified in the individual as well as in the
State, there will be no longer any room for doubt; if it be not verified, we
must have a fresh enquiry. First let us complete the old investigation, which we
began, as you remember, under the impression that, if we could previously
examine justice on the larger scale, there would be less difficulty in
discerning her in the individual. That larger example appeared to be the State,
and accordingly we constructed as good a one as we could, knowing well that in
the good State justice would be found. Let the discovery which we made be now
applied to the individual -- if they agree, we shall be satisfied; or, if there
be a difference in the individual, we will come back to the State and have
another trial of the theory. The friction of the two when rubbed together may
possibly strike a light in which justice will shine forth, and the vision which
is then revealed we will fix in our souls.
That will be in regular course; let us do as you say.
I proceeded to ask: When two things, a greater and less, are
called by the same name, are they like or unlike in so far as they are called
the same?
Like, he replied.
The just man then, if we regard the idea of justice only, will be
like the just State?
He will.
And a State was thought by us to be just when the three classes
in the State severally did their own business; and also thought to be temperate
and valiant and wise by reason of certain other affections and qualities of
these same classes?
True, he said.
And so of the individual; we may assume that he has the same
three principles in his own soul which are found in the State; and he may be
rightly described in the same terms, because he is affected in the same manner?
Certainly, he said.
Once more then, O my friend, we have alighted upon an easy
question -- whether the soul has these three principles or not?
An easy question! Nay,
rather, Socrates, the proverb holds that hard is the good.
Very true, I said; and I
do not think that the method which we are employing is at all adequate to the
accurate solution of this question; the true method is another and a longer one.
Still we may arrive at a solution not below the level of the previous enquiry.
May we not be satisfied
with that? he said; -- under the circumstances, I am quite content.
I too, I replied, shall
be extremely well satisfied.
Then faint not in
pursuing the speculation, he said.
Must we not acknowledge,
I said, that in each of us there are the same principles and habits which there
are in the State; and that from the individual they pass into the State? -- how
else can they come there? Take the quality of passion or spirit; -- it would be
ridiculous to imagine that this quality, when found in States, is not derived
from the individuals who are supposed to possess it, e.g. the Thracians,
Scythians, and in general the northern nations; and the same may be said of the
love of knowledge, which is the special characteristic of our part of the world,
or of the love of money, which may, with equal truth, be attributed to the
Phoenicians and Egyptians.
Exactly so, he said....
Must we not then infer that the individual is wise in the same
way, and in virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise?
Certainly.
Also that the same quality which constitutes courage in the State
constitutes courage in the individual, and that both the State and the
individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues?
Assuredly.
And the individual will be acknowledged by us to be just in the
same way in which the State is just?
That follows, of course.
We cannot but remember that the justice of the State consisted in
each of the three classes doing the work of its own class?
We are not very likely to have forgotten, he said.
We must recollect that the individual in whom the several
qualities of his nature do their own work will be just, and will do his own
work?
Yes, he said, we must remember that too.
And ought not the rational principle, which is wise, and has the
care of the whole soul, to rule, and the passionate or spirited principle to be
the subject and ally?
Certainly.
And, as we were saying, the united influence of music and
gymnastic will bring them into accord, nerving and sustaining the reason with
noble words and lessons, and moderating and soothing and civilizing the wildness
of passion by harmony and rhythm?
Quite true, he said.
And these two, thus nurtured and educated, and having learned
truly to know their own functions, will rule over the concupiscent, which in
each of us is the largest part of the soul and by nature most insatiable of
gain; over this they will keep guard, lest, waxing great and strong with the
fullness of bodily pleasures, as they are termed, the concupiscent soul, no
longer confined to her own sphere, should attempt to enslave and rule those who
are not her natural-born subjects, and overturn the whole life of man?
Very true, he said.
Both together will they not be the best defenders of the whole
soul and the whole body against attacks from without; the one counselling, and
the other fighting under his leader, and courageously executing his commands and
counsels?
True.
And he is to be deemed courageous whose spirit retains in
pleasure and in pain the commands of reason about what he ought or ought not to
fear?
Right, he replied.
And him we call wise who has in him that little part which rules,
and which proclaims these commands; that part too being supposed to have a
knowledge of what is for the interest of each of the three parts and of the
whole?
Assuredly.
And would you not say that he is temperate who has these same
elements in friendly harmony, in whom the one ruling principle of reason, and
the two subject ones of spirit and desire are equally agreed that reason ought
to rule, and do not rebel?
Certainly, he said, that is the true account of temperance
whether in the State or individual.
And surely, I said, we have explained again and again how and by
virtue of what quality a man will be just.
That is very certain.
And is justice dimmer in the individual, and is her form
different, or is she the same which we found her to be in the State?
There is no difference in my opinion, he said.
Because, if any doubt is still lingering in our minds, a few
commonplace instances will satisfy us of the truth of what I am saying.
What sort of instances do you mean?
If the case is put to us, must we not admit that the just State,
or the man who is trained in the principles of such a State, will be less likely
than the unjust to make away with a deposit of gold or silver? Would any one
deny this?
No one, he replied.
Will the just man or citizen ever be guilty of sacrilege or
theft, or treachery either to his friends or to his country?
Never.
Neither will he ever break faith where there have been oaths or
agreements?
Impossible.
No one will be less likely to commit adultery, or to dishonour
his father and mother, or to fail in his religious duties?
No one.
And the reason is that each part of him is doing its own
business, whether in ruling or being ruled?
Exactly so.
Are you satisfied then that the quality which makes such men and
such states is justice, or do you hope to discover some other?
Not I, indeed.
Then our dream has been realized; and the suspicion which we
entertained at the beginning of our work of construction, that some divine power
must have conducted us to a primary form of justice, has now been verified?
Yes, certainly.
And the division of labour which required the carpenter and the
shoemaker and the rest of the citizens to be doing each his own business, and
not another's, was a shadow of justice, and for that reason it was of use?
Clearly.
But in reality justice was such as we were describing, being
concerned however, not with the outward man, but with the inward, which is the
true self and concernment of man: for the just man does not permit the several
elements within him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work
of others, -- he sets in order his own inner life, and is his own master and his
own law, and at peace with himself; and when he has bound together the three
principles within him, which may be compared to the higher, lower, and middle
notes of the scale, and the intermediate intervals -- when he has bound all these
together, and is no longer many, but has become one entirely temperate and
perfectly adjusted nature, then he proceeds to act, if he has to act, whether in
a matter of property, or in the treatment of the body, or in some affair of
politics or private business; always thinking and calling that which preserves
and co-operates with this harmonious condition, just and good action, and the
knowledge which presides over it, wisdom, and that which at any time impairs
this condition, he will call unjust action, and the opinion which presides over
it ignorance.
You have said the exact truth, Socrates.
Very good; and if we were to affirm that we had discovered the
just man and the just State, and the nature of justice in each of them, we
should not be telling a falsehood?
Most certainly not.
May we say so, then?
Let us say so.
And now, I said, injustice has to be considered.
Clearly.
Must notinjustice be a strife which arises among the three
principles -- a meddlesomeness, and interference, and rising up of a part of the
soul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which is made by a
rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is the natural vassal, --
what is all this confusion and delusion but injustice, and intemperance and
cowardice and ignorance, and every form of vice?
Exactly so.
And if the nature of justice and injustice be known, then the
meaning of acting unjustly and being unjust, or, again, of acting justly, will
also be perfectly clear?
What do you mean? he said.
Why, I said, they are like disease and health; being in the soul
just what disease and health are in the body.
How so? he said.
Why, I said, that which is healthy causes health, and that which
is unhealthy causes disease.
Yes.
And just actions cause justice, and unjust actions cause
injustice?
That is certain.
And the creation of health is the institution of a natural order
and government of one by another in the parts of the body; and the creation of
disease is the production of a state of things at variance with this natural
order?
True.
And is not the creation of justice the institution of a natural
order and government of one by another in the parts of the soul, and the
creation of injustice the production of a state of things at variance with the
natural order?
Exactly so, he said.
Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul,
and vice the disease and weakness and deformity of the same?
True.
And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to
vice?
Assuredly.
Still our old question of the comparative advantage of justice
and injustice has not been answered: Which is the more profitable, to be just
and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men, or
to be unjust and act unjustly, if only unpunished and unreformed?
In my judgment, Socrates, the question has now become ridiculous.
We know that, when the bodily constitution is gone, life is no longer endurable,
though pampered with all kinds of meats and drinks, and having all wealth and
all power; and shall we be told that when the very essence of the vital
principle is undermined and corrupted, life is still worth having to a man, if
only he be allowed to do whatever he likes with the single exception that he is
not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice and vice;
assuming them both to be such as we have described?
Yes, I said, the question is, as you say, ridiculous. Still, as
we are near the spot at which we may see the truth in the clearest manner with
our own eyes, let us not faint by the way.
Certainly not, he replied.
Come up hither, I said, and behold the various forms of vice,
those of them, I mean, which are worth looking at.
I am following you, he replied: proceed.
I said, The argument seems to have reached a height from which,
as from some tower of speculation, a man may look down and see that virtue is
one, but that the forms of vice are innumerable; there being four special ones
which are deserving of note.
What do you mean? he said.
I mean, I replied, that there appear to be as many forms of the
soul as there are distinct forms of the State.
How many?
There are five of the State, and five of the soul, I said.
What are they?
The first, I said, is that which we have been describing, and
which may be said to have two names, monarchy and aristocracy, accordingly as
rule is exercised by one distinguished man or by many.
True, he replied.
But I regard the two names as describing one form only; for
whether the government is in the hands of one or many, if the governors have
been trained in the manner which we have supposed, the fundamental laws of the
State will be maintained.
That is true, he replied.
Such is the good and true City or State, and the good and true
man is of the same pattern; and if this is right every other is wrong; and the
evil is one which affects not only the ordering of the State, but also the
regulation of the individual soul.... [Plato
(1997f), 435b-449a, pp.1066-77. However, I have used the on-line translation here.]
In Plato's, The Laws,
Book X, [i.e.,
Plato (1997g)], the above considerations are interlinked with piety shown
toward the 'gods' and the 'ordered nature of the Cosmos'. I won't quote that material
here; it will be posted in Essay Twelve Part Two.
Contemporary Mystics are
still referencing these Ancient Mystics -- i.e., Plato, Aristotle and Heraclitus -- in
this regard, for example:
"Greek
philosophy emerged through speculation on the cosmic myths that symbolically
revealed the divine order of the universe. From these speculations on the cosmic
order arose the various notions of the elements, the planetary motions and
mathematics, and these notions were related to the question of the human order
and the order of society. It was understood that the human order was
distinct from that of the immortal gods, yet also distinct from biological
necessity. Human nature dwelled in a region between the immortal and the mortal,
open to eternity yet projected into time, apprehending the unchanging yet
compelled to adapt to the ever-changing. In the primordial myths the order of
nature (physis) and human law (nomos) arose together and were
bound together. The order of nature and the order of the city resided in the
rule of the gods, and this order could be observed in the harmony and proportion
found throughout the Earth and the heavenly motions. The cosmos was filled
with intelligence and with reason (nous), and every part and every motion
attended the good of the whole....
"In this
way, Greek philosophy originated in meditation on cosmic myth, the primordial
apprehension of the whole, with a view to affirming its truth through reason.
And this meditation takes the form of the question: how may the human being and
society live in accord with the cosmic good? What is the appropriate life of the
human person or citizen? It is at once a rational and a religious question. For
the Greek philosophers, questions of the explanation of things are secondary to
this essential question that awakens questioning in the first place.
Philosophical enquiry is not a precursor to the scientific explanation of
things, because explanation is not a final end in itself, while the question of
how should life be lived is. And so Greek philosophy, even in its weaker or
degenerate forms, for example, with the sophists whom Plato frequently
challenges in the dialogues, always remains concerned with the relation of
the divine cosmic order and the order of society or the polis. The polis and
the cosmos are bound together, just as the polis and the soul are bound
together. Greek society drifted into political decline as it forsook these
connections.
"In their
acts of resistance to the disorder of the age, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
experienced and explored the movements of a force that structured the psyche of
man and enabled it to resist disorder. To this force, its movements, and the
resulting structure, they gave the name nous. As far as the ordering
structure of his humanity is concerned, Aristotle characterized man as the zoon
nounechon, as the living being that possesses nous.
"And it
is with a view to restoring these connections that Plato and Aristotle enquired
into the nature of the polis and the question of the relation between
nature (physis) and law (nomos). Thus Heraclitus says 'Those who
speak with understanding must hold fast to what is common to all as a city holds
fast to its law (nomos), and even more strongly. For all human laws (anthropeoi
nomoi) are fed by the one divine law (theois nomos). It prevails as
much as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare'. Hence the
nature of the polis and the divine law that sustains it cannot be separated
without causing harm." [Quoted from
here. Bold emphases alone added.]
The above remarks connect
ratio and proportion with the 'cosmic order'; i.e., with issues
concerning how, in an 'ordered cosmos', everything is held together in
proportion, in a specific ratio (from which comes our
word, "rationality" -- and on which theory was based "The
music of the spheres", a topic that will also be explored in Essay Twelve Part
Two; on that, see James (1995)).
However, in relation to this
topic in general, see Williams
(1973) and Ferrari (2005).
John Rees made a valiant attempt to resolve the serious problems
Lenin's Theory of Knowledge created, and then bequeathed to the movement in general -- at least
in so far as
it had been expounded in
MEC
--, analysed in
detail in Essay Thirteen Part One.
One of the main problems with with Lenin's (earlier) theory was his obsessive reliance on "images" as
the sole source of his (and anyone else's) knowledge of the 'outside world' (see the
proof texts quoted below). Despite several attempts made by
subsequent DM-theorists (such as Sean Sayers and David-Hillel Rubin) to defend
Lenin, this has meant his theory is no better than
those
advanced by the Subjective Idealists and Immanentists he was
criticising in the same book. His theory suffered from all their fatal defects,
but this time they were hidden behind flowery rhetoric and appeals to
authority, fortified by bombast
and no little distortion. This left Lenin in the same predicament
as the latter theorists -- as we discovered in Essay Thirteen Part One (and in Essay Ten
Part One). The result was
that his
theory either dropped Lenin into a bottomless solipsistic hole with no way out,
or it set him adrift on a trackless ocean of
extreme scepticism with no map to guide him and no engine, sail or paddle to
help him make progress.
In response it could be argued that John Rees has successfully managed to show that
Lenin's later,
more sophisticated,
'dialectical' theory (set out in
PN) carried no such
implications. Indeed, Lenin's more nuanced theory in PN might help repair the gaping holes in
his earlier theory, and hence prevent it from languishing in one or other of
the two philosophical dead ends mentioned above.
[Sayers's attempt to defend Lenin will be examined in Appendix Five and Rubin's in
Part Six of Essay Three.]
In order to show that
Rees's defence fails, it might
prove helpful to
re-cap a few of the points made in Essay Thirteen Part One:
Several critics of the claim that if Lenin were
correct, humanity would only ever have 'images', have objected that that isn't Lenin's position, nor is it
even remotely like it. However, when asked precisely what
these 'other elements of knowledge' are or might be that have been omitted or
ignored, they grow suspiciously
quiet....
In fact, Lenin had the following to say about
sensation, knowledge and 'images':
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an
image of the external world...." [Lenin (1972),
p.69. Bold emphasis added. Notice the
use of "only" here.]
"All
knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception. That is
true. But the question arises, does
objective reality 'belong to perception,' i.e., is it the source of
perception? If you answer yes, you are a materialist. If you answer no, you
are inconsistent and will inevitably arrive at subjectivism, or agnosticism,
irrespective of whether you deny the
knowability of the thing-in-itself, or the objectivity of time, space and
causality (with Kant), or whether you do not even permit the thought of a
thing-in-itself (with Hume). The inconsistency of your empiricism, of your
philosophy of experience, will in that case lie in the fact that you deny the
objective content of experience, the objective truth of experimental
knowledge...."
[Ibid.,
p.142. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at this site.]
So, Lenin has just told us that:
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world...."
[Ibid.,
p.69.
Bold emphasis added.]
And:
"All
knowledge comes from experience, from sensation, from perception." [Ibid.,
p.142.
Bold emphasis added.]
Hence, if "all knowledge comes from...sensation", and
sensation is an "image of the external world", the only conclusion possible is that,
according to Lenin, all we have as a basis for our knowledge of 'the external
world' are 'images', even if they have been derived from "perception"/"sensation".
Lenin then proceeded to underline the point:
"For instance, the materialist Frederick Engels --
the not unknown collaborator of Marx and a founder of Marxism -- constantly and
without exception speaks in his works of things and their mental pictures or
images..., and it is obvious that these mental images arise exclusively
from sensations. It would seem that this fundamental standpoint of the
'philosophy of Marxism' ought to be known to everyone who speaks of it, and
especially to anyone who comes out in print in the name of this philosophy....
Engels, we repeat, applies this 'only materialistic conception' everywhere and
without exception, relentlessly attacking Dühring for the least deviation from
materialism to idealism. Anybody who reads Anti-Dühring and Ludwig Feuerbach
with the slightest care will find scores of instances when Engels speaks of
things and their reflections in the human brain, in our consciousness, thought,
etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas are 'symbols' of things,
for consistent materialism must here use 'image,' picture, or reflection instead
of 'symbol,' as we shall show in detail in the proper place." [Ibid.,
pp.32-33.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"[S]ensation
is an image of the external world...." [Ibid.,
p.56. Bold emphasis added.]
"The doctrine of introjection is a muddle, it
smuggles in idealistic rubbish and is contradictory to natural science, which
inflexibly holds that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations,
i.e., the images of the external world, exist within us, produced by the action
of things on our sense-organs." [Ibid.,
p.95.
Bold emphasis added.]
"The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from
this -- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which
materialism deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that
outside us, and independently of us, there exist objects, things, bodies and
that our perceptions are images of the external world." [Ibid.,
p.111.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Thus, the materialist theory, the theory of the
reflection of objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity:
things exist outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images." [Ibid.,
p.119.
Bold emphasis added.]
"For the materialist the 'factually given' is the
outer world, the image of which is our sensations." [Ibid.,
p.121.
Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
"This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of
the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the reality
existing outside us, it is only the image of that reality."
[Ibid.,
p.124.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
"The fundamental
distinction between the materialist and the adherent of idealist philosophy
consists in the fact that the materialist regards sensation, perception,
idea, and the mind of man generally, as an image of objective reality."
[Ibid.,
p.320.
Bold emphasis added.]
"What has
annoyed this most worthy 'recent positivist'? Well, how could he help being
annoyed when he immediately realised that from
Haeckel's
standpoint all the great doctrines of his teacher Avenarius -- for instance,
that the brain is not the organ of thought, that sensations are not images of
the external world, that matter ('substance') or 'the thing-in-itself' is
not an objective reality, and so forth -- are nothing but sheer idealist
gibberish!?" [Ibid.,
p.428. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Link and bold emphases added.]
There doesn't appear to be much wiggle room here.
Lenin clearly believed that sensations are images of the 'external world'.
He repeatedly says things like this: "Our sensation, our consciousness is only an
image of the external world..." and
"[S]ensation
is an image of the external world...." [Both quoted above.]
[However,
it might well be wonderedhow an itch, a noise, or a smell could be an 'image',
or what they could possibly be an 'image' of --, and he is quite clear that sensation (or perception), and hence 'images',
are our only source of knowledge.]
Admittedly, Lenin did make some attempt to argue that we
validate these 'images' by means of practice:
"Verification of these images, differentiation
between true and false images, is given by practice." [Ibid.,
p.119. Bold emphasis added.]
But, as has already been pointed out, if Lenin is to
be believed, all we have are images of practice, and hence no 'objective'
way of distinguishing reliable from unreliable, valid from
invalid 'images' of the latter. Unless human beings were somehow capable of
'leaping out of their heads', 'by-passing their sensory organs', there would be no way of escaping from the
'epistemological prison' Lenin has just constructed for himself.
Others have tried to argue that Lenin believed we
have direct access to the outside world via our senses (otherwise known
as
Direct Realism -- we
see this defence attempted in, for example, Goldstick
(1980)) -- which
theory supposedly by-passes all these 'images'. Well, Lenin might or might not have
believed
this (even though there is precious little textual support for such an
interpretation; there is far more in support of the view that Lenin was a rather
confused
Representational Realist, of sorts -- but on this, see my comments
earlier in this Essay concerning
one passage from MEC some have quoted in support of the claim that Lenin
accepted this form of Realism), the question is:
how could he
possibly know we have such 'direct access' if all we have are
'images' to guide us and rely on?
Again, Lenin might have sincerely believed he possessed
eyes, ears, skin and other sense organs, and that they connected him with
'objective reality outside of himself', but, if his theory is correct, all he
actually had were
images of these organs, and hence images of the 'external world'.
Here he is
again:
"This is either an idealist lie or the subterfuge of
the agnostic, Comrade Bazarov, for sense-perception is not the
reality existing outside us, it is only the image of that
reality." [Ibid.,
p.124.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
There is no hint in the above of any such 'direct
access to reality'. Indeed, Lenin has inserted a layer of 'images' between
himself and the 'outside world', the existence of which can now only be taken as
an act of faith. Because Lenin has built a screen of 'images' between himself and the
'outside world', there is no way around, or through, this barrier. He is forever trapped
behind it.
It could be objected
that Lenin had in fact anticipated the above 'problem' since he quoted a reply
to it that had already been offered by Engels:
"Now, this line of reasoning seems undoubtedly hard to beat by
mere argumentation. But before there was argumentation there was action. Im
Anfang war die That
(sic).
And human action had solved the difficulty long before human ingenuity invented
it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
From the moment we turn to our own use these objects, according to the qualities
we perceive in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise
of our sense-perceptions.
If these perceptions have been wrong, then our estimate of the use to which an
object can be turned must also be wrong, and our attempt must fail.
But if we succeed in accomplishing our aim, if we find that the object does
agree with our idea of it, and does answer the purpose we intended it for, then
that is positive proof that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far,
agree with reality outside ourselves....
"And whenever we find ourselves face to face with a failure, then
we generally are not long in making out the cause that made us fail; we find
that the perception upon which we acted was either incomplete and superficial,
or combined with the results of other perceptions in a way not warranted by
them.... So long as we take care to train and to use our senses properly, and to
keep our action within the limits prescribed by perceptions properly made and
properly used, so long we shall find that the result of our action proves the
conformity...of our perceptions with the objective...nature of the things
perceived.
Not in one single instance, so far, have we been led to the conclusion that our
sense-perceptions, scientifically controlled, induce in our minds ideas
respecting the outer world that are, by their very nature, at variance with
reality, or that there is an inherent incompatibility between the outer world
and our sense-perceptions of it."
[Ibid.,
pp.118-20. Bold emphases alone added. Lenin is here quoting the Introduction
to the English Edition of
Engels (1892), p.381 (this links to a PDF). Bold emphases alone added.]
About which Lenin then remarked:
"Thus, the materialist theory, the theory of the reflection of
objects by our mind, is here presented with absolute clarity:
things exist
outside us. Our perceptions and ideas are their images. Verification of these
images, differentiation between true and false images, is given by practice."
[Ibid.,
p.119. Bold emphasis added.]
However, as noted above, Lenin made the mistake (which
Engels didn't) of inserting a veil of 'images' between himself and the world, which
he has yet to prove actually exists. He even reiterates the claim that
originally created this 'problem': "Our
perceptions and ideas are their images."
Admittedly he also added that
"[v]erification of these images, differentiation between true and
false images, is given by practice", but no
amount of observation, practice or science can remove this screen, since all Lenin now has are 'images' of science, 'images' of practice and
'images' of their supposed results.
How anyone is able to check and see, or otherwise
discover, whether or not
an "object [agreed] with [their] idea of it"
when all they have are 'images' of said 'object', and no way of accessing 'it'
independently of sensation (according to his own words), Lenin unwisely kept to
himself.
[The difficulties Engels's theory itself faces are different
from Lenin's,
but they are equally insurmountable; they will be exposed in Essay Three Part Six, when
it is published. Spoiler:
Just like Lenin, Engels failed to explain how anyone could possibly
find out "that the object does agree with our idea of it", so that
they were able validly to
conclude that "our perceptions...agree with reality outside ourselves". No good
appealing to further practice in support, since, even on this theory, all anyone
has are 'perceptions of practice'.
Unless there were some way to access 'reality' that bypassed all the 'perceptions'
that had just been inserted between 'the knower' and 'the known', appeal can't
be made to
"practice", "success" or even "science". They
all exist or take place in a world Engels signally failed to prove exists.
So, like Lenin, all Engels could fall back on was his unsubstantiated faith
that there is such a world. This
recurring 'problem' ought to
suggest (to Dialectical Marxists) that this entire approach to cognition and the
source of knowledge is defective from top to bottom. But, once more, this
self-imposed predicament should hardly surprise
a single DM-fan while they insist on taking philosophical advice from a Christian Mystic (upside
down or the 'right way up'!).]
In which case,
Lenin remains trapped behind a wall of 'images' all of his own
making....
One
of the few recognisablyphilosophical arguments to be found anywhere in
MEC (aimed at countering the
theories promoted by Idealists and Phenomenalists, etc.) is the following:
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external world, and it
is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged, and that the
latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism
deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its theory of
knowledge." [Ibid.,
p.69. Bold emphasis added.]
"The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of
that which it 'images.'" [Ibid.,
p.279. Bold emphasis added.]
That's it!
On the basis of this half-formed, quasi-argument Lenin hoped to counter
philosophical theories some still regard as definitive -- especially when
they are set against the sophomoric version of
naïve realism Lenin
tried to advance in MEC.
[I hasten to
add that I don't consider the aforementioned philosophical theories
in any way definitive! In fact, I regard all philosophical theories as
incoherent non-sense. Again, I am
merely drawing attention to Lenin's self-defeating approach to such
questions in MEC.]
Before we
consider whether or not Lenin's argument is successful in its own right, it is
worth pointing out (to those dialecticians who question the deliverances of
'commonsense' -- which I take to be more-or-less the same as "naïve realism"
referred to by Lenin --, and who also regale us with the 'appearance'/'reality'
distinction) that 'commonsense' can't in fact be
called into question if it is to act as a basis for Lenin's theory of
knowledge.
[Those who
think this an unfair criticism of Lenin should read on before they draw that
rather
hasty conclusion.]
Despite
this, and given the other complexities that DM introduces, Lenin's alleged
foundation stone soon starts to crumble into dust. According to DM-epistemology,
knowledge depends on the completion of an
infinite
process
before
the very first thing can be known about anything in the DM-"Totality"
with anything other than
infinite uncertainty.
As we have
seen (follow the previous link for proof), this approach to knowledge means that
nobody is in any position to determine what even a simple
tumbler is before
everything about everything is already known.
In reply,
it could be argued that the above anti-DM counter-claim is just another unfair
caricature of dialectical epistemology. But, it is worth remembering that anyone
who objects on those lines is similarly in no position to assert it
successfully until we are given a clear (and non-defective) account of
DM-epistemology. After only 150+ years, we are still waiting.
Indeed, given DM-epistemology, no one
would be in any position to assert that the above anti-DM counter-claim is unfair and know they were speaking the truth
until they too had completed
the aforementioned infinite ascent of 'Epistemological
Mount Olympus'.
This means that all forms of 'dialectical knowledge'
are permanently trapped in this sceptical quagmire -- that is, if Engels and Lenin
are to be believed.
[The above seemingly controversial
claims were fully substantiated in Essay Ten
Part One. Readers are
directed there for more details.]
Despite this, it is worth reflecting on
the sort of response that, say, a
Phenomenalist
might make to Lenin's assertion that his theory begins with the
"naïve" beliefs of ordinary folk, and builds from there:
"The 'naïve realism' of any healthy person who has not been an inmate of a
lunatic asylum or a pupil of the idealist philosophers consists in the view that
things, the environment, the world, exist independently of our
sensation, of our consciousness, of our self and of man in general.
The same experience (not in the Machian sense, but in the human sense
of the term) that has produced in us the firm conviction that independently
of us there exist other people, and not mere complexes of my sensations of high,
short, yellow, hard, etc. -- this same experience produces in us the
conviction that things, the world, the environment exist independently of us.
Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external
world, and it is obvious that an image cannot exist without the thing imaged,
and that the latter exists independently of that which images it. Materialism
deliberately makes the 'naïve' belief of mankind the foundation of its
theory of knowledge." [Ibid.,
pp.68-69. Bold emphases alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
She (the
supposed Phenomenalist) might wonder what, for instance, the word "image" is
doing in such prosaic surroundings.
Indeed, she might even suggest that if we were to ask the average human being
about their knowledge of the world,
the word "image" would appear nowhere in the reply.
Hence, not
only is the aforementioned dialectical meander through infinite epistemological
space counter-productive (since it implies infinite and permanent ignorance of
everything and anything),
it begins in the wrong place! 'Commonsense' and/or "naïve realism" -- whatever
they are -- neither start nor end with 'images'.
[Admittedly,
certain forms of phenomenalist psychology might do so, but 'commonsense' does
not. Or, if it does, we still await the proof. That 'proof' would be
worthless, anyway, since it too would merely consist of, or would be
based on, yet more 'images',if Lenin were to be believed!]
It is worth
pressing this point home: there is no evidence that the "naïve" beliefs of
anyone -- not even the naïve beliefs of Dialectical Marxists -- are
based on 'internal images', but there is much to suggest they aren't. Hence,
there is no evidence that ordinary people, or even sophisticated socialists,
believe any of the following (that is, before they had encountered the DM-classics, traditional epistemology
and/or 'pop science'):
"Our sensation, our consciousness is only an image of the external
world…." [Ibid.,
p.69. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"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 asafeguard against mistakes and rigidity. Secondly,
dialectical logic requires that an object should be taken in development,
in change, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it). This is not
immediately obvious in respect of such an object as a tumbler, but it, too, is
in flux, and this holds especially true for its purpose, use and connection
with the surrounding world. Thirdly, a full 'definition' of an object must
include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a
practical indicator of its connection with human wants. Fourthly, dialectical
logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late
Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel...." [Lenin
(1921), pp.90-93. Bold emphases alone added;
quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Several paragraphs merged.]
In order to
see this, consider the following example; suppose worker, NN, asserted
the following:
L1: "That policeman hit me over the head
with a truncheon!"
Now, only a
rather desperate
cop-defender would respond with this remark:
L2: "You are mistaken. What you
experienced was in fact only an image of a policeman assaulting you."
We can be
reasonably sure that NN doesn't need to wait for the
asymptotic-train-of-knowledge to hit the buffers-of-absolute-certainty
before she can claim to know
what happened on the said picket line as the cops attacked it. Indeed, NN
would be justifiably angry if a DM-fan tried to tell her that her knowledge of these
uniformed assailants was only relative and partial, and that she had failed
to consider all those pesky "mediacies" before arriving at such a 'rash'
conclusion. Moreover, we can be quite certain now (without the
presence of an accompanying 'image' -- and even before the epistemological train
leaves the dialectical sidings on its endless meander to nowhere-in-particular)
that NNknows she was hit on the head and who was responsible
for it.
Indeed, that would be the
line
Socialist Worker and other revolutionary papers
would (correctly) take if one of its correspondents witnessed Police violence -- in cases
like the Police riot in Chicago in
1968, or in Red Lion Square London in
1974, or in relation to the death of
Blair Peach in Southall 1979, the
UK Miners' Strike, the picketing at
Wapping in 1986, the
march against the Nazis at
Welling
a few years later, the Police riots in
Trafalgar Square in 1990, those in
London in
April 2009,
Genoa in
2001 and
2003, those in New York and
San Francisco in 2003,or even those in
2011 to clear theOccupy Movement off
the streets, etc., etc.
In fact, their readers would know precisely when they could
stop trusting Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers:
just as soon
as they began describing such events in the way that Lenin characterised
"knowledge", or if they started referring to the "images" in people's
heads, offering the latter as 'solid evidence' substantiating claims made about Police violence
--as opposed to
reporting the actual incidents themselves, referring them to video footage,
photographs, witness statements and medical reports (etc.). Or, if those
papers were
foolish enough to insist that every
"mediacy" had to be taken
into account before anyone could decide what had actually happened on a given picket line or
demonstration, and what to do aboutit.
Unsurprisingly then, in the
Miners'
Strike, for instance, the actual incidents were reported in
Socialist Worker and other Marxist papers/articles (the
same is true of
subsequent analyses
presented in their
more theoretical journals and
publications -- that also includes their
websites). All wisely omit any reference to "internal images", or even
"partial" and "relative knowledge", let alone any obvious "asymptotes"
that might otherwise
only be of interest to sundry Idealists.
Hence, in
practicenot one single revolutionary paper, book or article begins
with "internal images" when covering the class war -- nor do they bang on about concepts
eternally converging on reality.Not even the worst union bureaucrat in the history of the labour movement
would adopt such language as a way of excusing the latest sell-out! That is,
that everything that happens is just an "image"! Or that nothing
should be done to help build a given strike before the infinite asymptote of
knowledge had finally reached the safe haven of the 'x-axis'.
Update, May 1st 2024:
Here, for example, is how Socialist Worker is currently reporting the murder of
student protester, Jeffrey Miller, at Kent State University, Ohio, in May 1970
by The National Guard (in connection with Police violence on display in
connection with the pro-Palestinian protests sweeping
across the USA at present):
"Sometimes an image can capture a turning point in
history. The photograph of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey
Miller [the picture is reproduced in the report, but it has been omitted from
this quoted passage -- RL], who was shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at Kent
State University on 4 May 1970, is one of those photos. On that day 54 years
ago, national guards murdered four students who had been rallying against the
United States. extension of its war in Vietnam into Cambodia. Not two weeks
after, the police killed two students at Jackson State University, a
historically black university. Revulsion that the government had brought killing
sprees onto US soil spread across the country. It wasn't long before millions of
students were on strike and protesting on the streets. It was a disaster for the
ruling class and for president Richard Nixon, who eventually could no longer
withstand the pressure from the anti-war
movement. Finally he was forced to abandon his plans to expand the ruling
class's war in Vietnam. The students now fighting for Palestine and battling the
cops stand in the same spirit as the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 70s. And
their resistance can also help bring the ruling class to its knees. A mass
movement for Palestine that spills out of the campuses, onto the streets and
into the workplaces could make it impossible for the US
state to continue its support for Israeli slaughter in Gaza. And we have to
try to do the same in Britain."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 01/05/2024. Links in the original. Paragraphs merged.]
The only
image spoken about in fact concerns a widely circulated photograph of that poor student's
lifeless body. Readers are invited to check if the article mentions any 'images'
in people's heads. [Spoiler: it doesn't!]
Here, too,
is a report posted at the World Socialist Web Site concerning attacks
launched by New York Police on another group of pro-Palestinian protesters:
"At around 9 p.m. Tuesday night [i.e., 30/04/24 --
RL], hundreds of New York Police Department (NYPD) riot police descended on
Columbia University to conduct mass arrests of students protesting the ongoing
genocide in Gaza.
Video shared on social media shows heavily armoured police
arresting students and faculty attempting to block their access to the
university.
In
order to prevent objective documentation of their brutality, police forced legal
observers, press and medics to leave the campus area, and even public streets
nearby, before they began their assault. As of this writing it is unclear how
many protesters have been arrested and the extent of their injuries. The police
brutality witnessed at Columbia Tuesday night was replicated across the country.
At the University of South Florida in Tampa, riot police were recorded firing
tear gas and rubber bullets against unarmed and peaceful protesters.
The coordinated and violent assaults on non-violent student encampments have
been ordered from the White House. On Tuesday, the Biden administration issued a
series of statements doubling down on the lie that anti-Gaza genocide protests
continuing to spread across US university campuses are anti-Semitic, signalling
its support for stepped-up police attacks and arrests of peaceful protesters."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 01/05/2024. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Paragraphs
merged.]
Other than the video footage mentioned in this report (which film doesn't exist inside anyone's brain,
anyway), can any of my
readers spot a single mention of 'images' in anyone's head?
In fact, it
is more than a little surprising that die-hard supporters of Lenin's theory
never point out to the publishers and editors of SocialistWorker and other Marxist papers, journals, books and websites where
they are going
wrong -- i.e., when they foolishly report on actualevents in the real world
and ignore all those 'images' in diverse skulls. Why hasn't a single
admirer of MEC written to these publications to insist that reports
of, say, neo-Nazi violence be replaced with descriptions of 'images' in victims'
heads? Whatever one thinks of the far left press, none of them have ever even
hinted that their reports are
defective because they foolishly write about actual events in the real world,
recklessly and irresponsibly ignoring 'images' inside the skulls of observers and victims alike.
Or, that they failed to mention any of those pesky "mediacies" and annoying
"asymptotes".
Anyway,
despite what he said, Lenin didn't actually begin with
the "naïve" beliefs of mankind, he did the opposite: he
undermined them from the start. Indeed, he began with theories concocted
by notorious ruling-class hacks,
even if he modified and adapted them to his own
ends. This he did by reducing ordinary belief (partially or completely) to
images,
or he based such beliefs on them.
The same can be said of any socialist (reporter or otherwise) who does
likewise -- for example, by writing about the images of
Police brutality inflicted on the images of miners in an image of
1984, which images of
events occurred in their image of
Orgreave --, in their paper (or an
image of it).
[And it is
little use being told that Lenin argued that such 'images' reflect 'objective'
reality; the point at issue is whether or not he began with the naive
beliefs of ordinary people. The question whether they actually reflect
'objective' reality will be considered
below.]
In general, the actual starting point for
DM-supporters is invariably
consistent with an overt
denigration
of the vernacular. That is often accompanied by a condescending
devaluation of the lives and experience
of ordinary workers -- since it is claimed that many have been 'bought-off' by
super-profits, or have been mesmerised by the 'banalities' of
'commonsense', hypnotised by 'formal thinking'/'commodity fetishism' --, which
elitist paradigm DM-fans have in general copied from the patronising, dismissive
and belittling attitude perennially displayed toward workers by the aforementioned
ruling-class hacks.
[There is more on this in Essay Twelve (summary
here).]
Clearly,
this is the real "copy theory of knowledge":
(i) Reproduce the ideas and thought-forms of ruling-class ideologues; and,
(ii) Make sure your theories are an exact image of theirs!
Rees addressesnone of the above problems in his book (or,
indeed, anywhere else, as far as can be ascertained -- nor is there any sign
he is even aware of them!), and neither has any other DM-supporter. That isn't to say that no one has
tried to defend Lenin; far from it. I have
already
mentioned three who have -- Goldstick,
Sayers, and,
of course, Rees. [In Essay Thirteen Part One, I
briefly examined some of the arguments
advanced by another prominent defender of Lenin,
Ruben. However, Ruben's book --
i.e.,
Ruben (1979) -- will
be examined in greater detail in Essay Three Part Six. I would do so here, but
this Essay is already far too long! Sayers defence will be
addressed in Appendix Five.
Another important defender of Lenin is Althusser, in
Althusser (2001). His
defence will also be scrutinised in Part Six.] Nevertheless, none of them address the
(rather obvious) objections raised at this site, especially those aired in
Essay Thirteen Part One.
Of course, the above criticisms were first published on-line more than ten years
after
Rees's book appeared, and many more after Goldstick, Sayers and
Ruben's so it is hardly surprising they failed to address them!
[Not that Rees, for example, would even deign to read this material or
reply to it, even if he knew about it; after all, he blocked me on
Twitter (now X) a few years ago for having the temerity, the 'audacity',
toquestion, in the mildest of terms, 'the sacred dialectic'!]
But what shape does his defence of Lenin take, anyway? Here
are the relevant passages from TAR
(but, because italic and bold emphases both appear in the original, I
have had to alter the bold highlighting present in the original in order to emphasise the
words relevant
to the points I want to make; italic emphases have been left as they
appear in Rees's book):
"What does this conception of
consciousness mean for Lenin's theory of knowledge?
It required that Lenin make
a considerable, though not complete, break with the ideas contained in Materialism and Empirio-criticism.First, let's look at what did not
change. Lenin, of course, remained a materialist. He continued to insist that
material reality existed independently of human thought and, indeed, that the
very ability to think was a product of natural development: 'Concepts, and the
art of operating with concepts are not inborn, but is the result of 2,000 years
of the development of natural science and philosophy.'
Thus, 'men's ends are engendered by the
objective world and presuppose it, -- they find it as something given, present,'
consequently, 'the dialectics of things
produces the dialectics of ideas, and not vice versa.'
[The second
two passages Rees briefly quotes are:
Lenin (1961), pp.189,196.
I can't find the first one anywhere in Lenin (1961), certainly not on the page
Rees himself referenced (p.264). Minor typo corrected -- RL.]
"It is
important not to lose sight of the fact that Lenin never abandoned this
commitment to materialism. This is especially the case, because some otherwise
valuable analyses of Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, most recently Kevin
Anderson's Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism, tend to underestimate this
element of continuity in Lenin's thought. Yet
these broad statements of materialism were only the beginning of the problem,
not its solution. They could not, for instance, furnish an account of the
relationship between the dialectic of ideas and the dialectic of reality, which
Lenin obviously no longer conceived in the linear and one-dimensional pattern
outlined in Materialism and Empirio-criticism. The language of 'copies'
and 'photographs' is entirely absent from the Philosophical Notebooks. Lenin still sometimes talks of consciousness reflecting reality in a general
sense, but the term is rarely used without substantial qualification:
'The
reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not "lifelessly,"
not "abstractly," not devoid of movement,
not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of
movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.' [Rees is here
quoting Lenin (1961), p.195.
Emphases in the original -- RL.]
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality," he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.182
-- RL.] This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism. But now Lenin adds that it is
also impossible becauseknowledge requires an active process of abstraction
capable of discriminating between essence and appearance. This process is simply
not possible using a crude copy theory of consciousness. Lenin himself makes the
point:
'Logic is
the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge.
Knowledge is the
reflection of nature by man. But this is not a simple, not an immediate, not a
complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation
and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc.,…
embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law governed character
of eternally moving and developing nature.' [This is also from
Lenin
(1961), p.182 -- RL.]
"Thus,Lenin develops a more active and independent role for consciousness than the
framework of Materialism and Empirio-criticism could allow. He even went
so far as to exclaim, 'Man's consciousness not only reflects the world, but
creates it.' [Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.212
-- RL.] That sentiment could
never have found its way into Materialism
and Empirio-criticism, if only because
Bogdanov would have seized on it as contradicting Lenin's whole line of
argument. Such ideas required a dialectical theory of cognition to root them in
a marxist framework, and this was precisely what Materialism and
Empirio-criticism lacked. But
wasn't Lenin purchasing this more independent role for consciousness at the
expense of scientific precision?
How can we know that our consciousness really
corresponds to the world if it is only an 'approximate,' 'conditional,' and
abstract representation of reality? Lenin's answer has two aspects. First,
abstraction can be a method of seeing reality more clearly, as we saw in
relation to the question of essence and appearance, and, second, consciousness
must issue in practical activity, which will furnish the proof of whether or not
our conceptions of the world are accurate.
'Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract…does not get away from the
truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and
completely. From living
perception to abstract thought, and from this to practice,
-- such is the dialectical path of the cognition of truth, of the cognition of objective reality.'
[Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.171
-- RL.]
"The
second leg of this process, the movement to practice, is crucial because what is
involved is a fusion of intellectual understanding and objective existence.
Human action, in the sense that Marx understood the question in his analysis of
human labour, is not simply an extension of thought nor merely an objective
occurrence in the external world, like the wind blowing the branch of a tree. It
is a conscious act. In conscious
activity, human beings overcome the abstractness of thought by integrating it
with concrete, immediate reality in all its complexity-- this is the moment
when we see whether thought really does assume an objective form, whether it
really can create the world, or whether it has mistaken the nature of reality
and therefore is unable to enter the historical chain as an objective force
which, in the case of the class struggle, seizes the masses. This is Lenin's
meaning when he writes 'practice is higher than
(theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of
universality, but also of immediate actuality.'
[Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), p.213.
Emphasis in the original -- RL.] Or, in a slightly elaborated version of the same
point:
'The
activity of man, who has made an objective picture of the world for himself, changesexternal actuality, abolishes its determinedness (=alters some sides
or other, qualities, of it), thus removes from it the features of Semblance,
externality and nullity, and makes it as being in and for itself (=objectively
true).' [Rees is here quoting
Lenin (1961), pp.217-18.
Bold emphasis added -- RL.]
"We
can see here how for Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective
and objective and the gap between essence and appearance. The ground
for this theoretical discovery had been laid by Lenin's theory of the party,
always the most dialectical and the most important element in his marxism. The
whole conception of a party that is part of, but for long periods separated
from, the majority of the working class demands a dialectic that understands the
unity of opposites, the essential nature of practice, and the concrete
historical nature of development." [Rees (1998), pp.189-91. Spelling modified in
line with UK English; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Minor typos corrected; several paragraphs merged.]
Rees is
correct; Lenin's 'theory of knowledge' underwent significant changes
between the writing of MEC and PN, even though there were important areas he
didn't abandon (which Rees also briefly summarised). However, the phrase "theory of
knowledge" has rightly been put in 'scare' quotes since it would be stretching
the meaning of that phrase beyond breaking point to call what Lenin had to say on this topic in
PN a theory. Free of irony or even sarcasm, what Lenin had to say
in PN is far too brief, superficial, enigmatic and fragmentary for it to be so
described(with a straight face). What he had to say is perhaps
better described as 'scattered, enigmatic remarks'. It isn't easy to
cobble-together a coherent theory of knowledge, adhered to by Lenin, even if we
also focus on MEC,
for goodness sake, never mind PN!
Nevertheless, Lenin nowhere repudiates his earlier comments about the sole
source of our knowledge -- i.e., that it derives from experience/sensation
and results in 'images'. In PN he certainly qualifies those earlier ideas,
adding an active input of the intellect/'consciousness', in combination with
practice (which, as we have seen, was a factor also underlined in MEC).
In PN, there is an added emphasis on 'abstraction', which, as we
have come to expect from every single DM-theorist, Lenin nowhere even gestures at explaining.
And that can be said with equal validity about Rees's book, TAR -- he nowhere even
attempts to explain this 'process'.
We are,
however, told the following (on p.189):
"The language of 'copies'
and 'photographs' is entirely absent from the Philosophical Notebooks. Lenin still sometimes talks of consciousness reflecting reality in a general
sense, but the term is rarely used without substantial qualification:
'The
reflection of nature in man's thought must be understood not "lifelessly,"
not "abstractly," not devoid of movement,
not without contradictions, but in the eternal process of
movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution.' [Rees is here
quoting Lenin (1961), p.195. Emphases in the original
-- RL.]
But it
might well be asked: How
does 'reflection' work if it doesn't create 'images'? What does it
produce? What does 'consciousness' operate with? This, apparently:
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality,"
he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [Rees is here quotingLenin (1961), p.182
-- RL.]
This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism. But now Lenin adds that it is
also impossible becauseknowledge requires an active process of abstraction
capable of discriminating between essence and appearance. This process is simply
not possible using a crude copy theory of consciousness. Lenin himself makes the
point:
'Logic is
the science of cognition. It is the theory of knowledge. Knowledge is the
reflection of nature by man. But this is not a simple, not an immediate, not a
complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the formation
and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws, etc.,…
embrace conditionally, approximately, the universal, law governed character
of eternally moving and developing nature.' [This is also from
Lenin
(1961), p.182.]
"Thus,
Lenin develops a more active and independent role for consciousness than the
framework of Materialism and Empirio-criticism could allow."
[Rees, op cit, pp.189-90; bold emphases alone added.]
So,
from the above it is clear that knowledge is still 'produced' (directly or indirectly) by:
(1)
'Reflection', even if this is just one aspect of, or factor in, an endless, even an "infinite process";
(2)
'Reflection' (somehow) produces, or leads to the creation of, "abstractions,
concepts, laws, which are all part scientific picture of the world" (which is constantly
being revised/improved); and,
(3) The
updated, 'dialectical' theory developed in PN emphasises the active input
both of 'practice' and 'consciousness' -- although Lenin
and Rees fail to tell us if this is an individual or collective sort of
'consciousness', or even if 'consciousness' is itself an abstraction. (More on that
presently.)
As we
discovered in Part One of Essay Three, the nature of these "abstractions" is
entirely mysterious, so exactly how the introduction of this term can help
clarify anything is
far from perspicuous.
After
quoting several attempts by DM-theorists to explain the nature of an
'abstraction', I made the following points in Part One (slightly edited):
[P]erhaps there is some way of harmonising
these passages that allows
DM-supporters to come up with a convincing, or even a plausible, answer to the following questions:
(a) What is the precise nature of these
DM-"abstractions"? And,
(b)
Exactly what do they 'represent' or 'reflect' in nature and society, and how
do they do it?
Satisfactory
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!]
Be
this as it may, another question now forces itself upon us:
Well, in
[Part One of 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 allproceed "from
principles which are validated by appeal to
abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely
theoretical source" (to
quote George Novack, again),
despite their frequent protestations....
To 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") mustbe
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 whatis 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:
(i) Mind-like objects;
(ii) Non-material "concepts"; or,
(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:
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961),
p.171. Emphases in the
original.]
"Knowledge
is the reflection of nature by man. But this is not simple, not an immediate,
not a complete reflection, but the process of a series of abstractions, the
formation and development of concepts, laws, etc., and these concepts, laws,
etc., (thought, science = 'the logical Idea') embrace conditionally,
approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally moving and
developing nature." [Ibid.,
p.182. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
Unfortunately, Lenin forgot to say how
any of this rather ambitious project 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?
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.]
Lenin never once repudiated the above claims.
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.]
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....
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....
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. 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, underminesthe
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.
Readers will search long and hard, and to no avail, through Rees's
entire book (and the writings of
other DM-theorists, like those mentioned
earlier) for any answers to such questions, or even a vague recognition that they are aware of
these 'problems', still less
any sign they care to find
out. Talk about living in an epistemological bubble, something we rightly
accuse right-wingers of doing.
[Having
said that, Rees does make some attempt in TAR
to explain what the (supposed) abstract concept 'friendship' actually means.
What he had to say will be analysed in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four.]
It
therefore looks like 'abstractions' aren't supposed to be images; what then are they? Again,
as
we found out in Part One, they typically make an appearance, in physical form, as the Proper
Names of "abstract
particulars" (no pun intended), thus destroying their generality. [That was the main theme of
Part
One.]
However, Lenin also had this to say:
"Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror nature
as a whole,
in its completeness, its 'immediate totality,' he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc." [Lenin (1961), p.182.
Bold emphasis alone added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"The
activity of man, who has made an objective picture of the world for himself,
changes external actuality, abolishes its determinedness (=alters some sides
or other, qualities, of it), thus removes from it the features of Semblance,
externality and nullity, and makes it as being in and for itself (=objectively
true)." [Ibid., pp.217-18. Emphasis
partly in the
original.]
But,
what else is a picture but an image? Admittedly, Lenin calls this
both an "objective"
and a "scientific" picture, and he connects it with the "activity of man", which
looks like another nod in the direction of practice. But, as we have also seen, DM-'abstractions' are all 'mental' entities, the product of private,
'mental processes', and are thereby no less obscure. Of course, Lenin might have
meant to use the word "picture" here metaphorically, but if so, given all the
'image' talk we find in MEC, it might have been a good idea to make it clear he
wasn't trying to be literal here.
Nevertheless, the metaphorical interpretation just aired seems unlike given
other things we read. For example, Rees also points out the following:
"Indeed,
Lenin insists that, 'Man cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror natureas a whole,
in its completeness, its "immediate totality,"
he can only eternally come
closer to this creating abstractions, concepts, laws, a scientific picture of
the world, etc., etc.' [This is from
Lenin (1961), p.182.]
This is impossible
partly because gaining knowledge is an infinite process, as Lenin had already
noted in Materialism and Empiro-criticism." [Rees, loc cit. Bold
emphasis alone added.]
But
that admits knowledge is based on 'reflection' and 'mirroring', even if
that is only partial: "Man
cannot comprehend=reflect=mirror natureas a whole,
in its completeness...he can only eternally come
closer to this creating a scientific picture of
the world...." That explicitly connects any such 'picture' with
'reflection' and 'mirroring'. And what does 'reflection' produce other than
'images'? If so, it looks like Lenin didn't intend his use of "picture"
to be understood metaphorically.
Anyway,
as
we saw earlier (but in greater detail in Essay Ten
Part One), this aspect of
Lenin's theory (which he also derived from Engels) actuallyundermines knowledge, and, ironically,
implies its opposite, scepticism.
Even
though Lenin has now dropped his earlier (almost neurotic and repetitive) focus on 'images', the
'abstractions' he substituted for them -- if anything -- appear to be even more problematic. All
of us know what an image is, but no one seems to be able to say what an
'abstraction' is -- other than use words that imply they are Abstract Particulars
(or the Proper Names thereof), which are of an even more obscure nature. So,
even if the above equation of 'mirroring' and 'reflecting' with the creation of
'images' were rejected (for some reason), in place
of a screen of 'images' between each human being and the world, we now have a
layer of 'abstractions'. Given the obscure nature of the latter, that represents a major step backwards!
Once
again, it is little use Lenin or Rees appealing to practice here, since there
now exists a veil of 'abstractions', not just between each individual
involved and practice, but also between each individual and the results of
practice -- andbetween any agents involved in that practice! Once
again, this is just
bourgeois individualism
with a 'Marxist veneer' layered on top.
In
which case it is impossible to agree with Rees when he says this:
"We
can see here how for Lenin practice overcomes the distinction between subjective
and objective and the gap between essence and appearance." [Rees, loc cit.]
Exactly
how these mysterious 'abstractions' -- which seem to have elbowed aside all
those pesky 'images', and greatly complicated by the introduction of an infinitary process that
never reaches its goal -- is able to do what Rees says, he unsurprisingly passed over in
total silence.
The
bottom line therefore seems to be that Lenin's 'dialectical theory' provides no way out of the solipsistic
hole into which MEC dropped it a few years earlier -- nor, indeed,
does it rescue his ideas from the corrosive acid of scepticism.
Quite the reverse, it implies both.
Rees's rescue attempt is therefore a predictable but nonetheless total failure.
Ernest Mandel
had the following to say about abstraction and the method
Marx supposedly employed in Das Kapital:
"The purpose of Capital is
itself a clear reminder of the method of
knowledge
applied by Marx to his main work: the method of the materialist dialectic. Marx
left no doubt that this was indeed how he himself understood his labours. In a
letter sent to Maurice Lachâtre, the editor of the first French edition of
Capital Volume 1, he insisted on
the fact that he was the first person to have
applied this method to the study of economic problems. Again
in his own postface to the second German edition of
Capital Volume I,
Marx specified this use of the dialectical method as the
differentia specifica [specific difference -- RL] of Capital,
which distinguished it from all other economic analyses.
When the dialectical method is
applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed
separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as
an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of
production. This totality is analysed in all its aspects and manifestations, as
determined by certain given laws of motion, which relate also to its origins and
its inevitable disappearance. These laws of motion of the given mode of
production are discovered to be nothing but the unfolding of the inner
contradictions of that structure, which define its very nature. The given
economic structure is seen to be characterized at one and the same time by the
unity of these contradictions and by their struggle, both of which determine the
constant changes which it undergoes. The (quantitative) changes which constantly
occur in the given mode of production, through adaptation, integration of
reforms and self-defence (evolution), are distinguished from those (qualitative)
changes which, by sudden leaps, produce a different structure, a new mode of
production (revolution).
"Marx clearly opposes his own
dialectical method of investigation and knowledge to that of Hegel, although he
never hesitates to recognize his debt of gratitude to the German philosopher
who, spurred on by the French Revolution, catapulted dialectical thought back
into the modern world. Hegel's dialectics were idealist: the basic motion was
that of the Absolute Idea; material reality was only the outward appearance of
ideal essence. For Marx, on the contrary, the dialectic is materialist, 'the
ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and
translated into forms of thought'.
The
basic laws of motion of history are those of
real men, themselves producing their own material existence in a given social
framework. The development of thought corresponds in the final analysis to that
basic movement, and reflects it, albeit through many mediations. Thus the
scientific thought process through which Marx came to understand the operations
of the capitalist mode of production was itself
a
product of that mode of production, of
bourgeois society and, its contradictions. Only secondarily can it be seen as a
product of the development of many human sciences and ideologies: classical
German philosophy; English political economy; French historiography and
political science; pre-Marxian socialism. Only the
growth of bourgeois society and its contradictions, above all the struggle
between capital and labour, enabled Marx to assimilate, combine and transform
these sciences in the specific way and
the
specific direction he did. Nevertheless, while the materialist dialectic is
Hegel's (idealist) dialectic 'turned right side up again', both have basic
common traits. Dialectics as the logic of motion presupposes that
all motion, all
evolution, whether of nature, society or human
thought, adopts certain general forms which are called 'dialectical'.
Engels and Lenin both saw, in the very way in which
Capital Volume 1 was constructed, a
striking application of this general dialectical method; thus Lenin wrote that
although Marx had never written his projected short treatise on dialectics, he
had nevertheless left us Capital,
which is the application of the materialist
dialectic in the field of economic phenomena.
"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.
The main danger for any scientist
involved in the study of social phenomena is that of taking anything for
granted, of 'problem-blindness'. The distinction between appearance and essence,
which Marx inherited from Hegel
and which is part and parcel of the
dialectical method of investigation, is nothing but a constant attempt to pierce
farther and farther through successive layers of phenomena, towards laws of
motion which explain
why these phenomena evolve in a certain direction
and in certain ways. Constantly searching for
questions -- calling into question! -- where others only see ready-made answers
and vulgar 'evidence': this is certainly one of Marx's main merits as a
revolutionary innovator in economic science.
But for Marx, the materialist
dialectician, the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' in no sense
implies that 'appearance' is less 'real' than 'essence'. Movements of value
determine in the last analysis movements of prices; but Marx the materialist
would have laughed at any 'Marxist' who suggested that prices were 'unreal',
because in the last analysis determined
by
value movements. The distinction between 'essence'
and 'appearance' refers to different levels of determination, that is in the
last analysis to the process of cognition, not to different degrees of reality.
To explain the capitalist mode of production in its totality it is wholly
insufficient to understand simply the 'basic essence', the 'law of value'. It is
necessary to integrate 'essence' and 'appearance' through all their intermediate
mediating links, to explain how and why a
given' essence' appears in given concrete forms and
not in others. For these 'appearances' themselves are neither accidental nor
self-evident. They pose problems, they have to be explained in their turn, and
this very explanation helps to pierce through new layers of mystery and brings
us again nearer to a full understanding of the specific form of economic
organization which we want to understand. To deny this need to reintegrate
'essence' and 'appearance' is as un-dialectical and as mystifying as
to accept 'appearances' as they are, without looking for the
basic forces and contradictions which they tend to hide from the superficial and
empiricist observer.
"The way in which
Capital
starts with an analysis of the basic
categories of commodity production, with the 'basic unit' (fundamental cell) of
capitalist economic life, the commodity, has often been cited as a model
application of this materialist dialectic. Marx himself makes it clear that he
does not start from a basic concept value -- but from an elementary material
phenomenon -- the commodity -- which is at the basis of capitalism, as the only
economic organization based upon generalized commodity production. It is
therefore correct but incomplete, strictly speaking, to say that Marx's method
consists of 'rising from the abstract to the concrete
'. In fact, he starts from elements of the material concrete to go to the
theoretical abstract, which helps him then to reproduce the concrete totality in
his theoretical analysis. In its full richness and deployment, the concrete is
always a combination of innumerable theoretical 'abstractions'. But the material
concrete, that is, real bourgeois society, exists before this whole scientific
endeavour, determines it in the last instance, and remains a constant practical
point of reference to test the validity of the theory. Only if the reproduction
of this concrete totality in man's thought comes nearer to the real material
totality is thought really scientific. At first sight, the movement which
dominates Capital Volume 1 appears as a movement of economic
'categories', from the commodity and its inner contradictions to the
accumulation of capital and its breakdown. The question has often been asked: is
this movement just an abstract synopsis of the 'essence' of capitalism, or is it
a greatly simplified reflection of real economic development, that is, the real
history leading from the first appearance of commodity production up to
full-scale capitalist production in the West, purified of all secondary and
combined forms which would only obscure the basic nature of this movement? It is impossible to answer this
question simply with a 'yes' or a 'no'. Commodities produced accidentally in
pre-capitalist societies, at the very margin of the basic processes of
production and consumption, obviously cannot trigger off the striking and
terrifying logic of the 'law of value' which Marx majestically unfolds in
Capital. Commodity production as a basic and dominant feature of economic
life presupposes capitalism, that is a society in which labour-power and
instruments of labour have themselves become commodities. In that sense it is
true that the analysis of Volume 1 of Capital is logical (based upon
dialectical logic) and not historical.
"But dialectics imply that every
phenomenon has an origin and an end, that nothing is either eternal or finished
once and for all. Hence the historical cell of capital is at the same time the
key to the logical analysis of capital: phylogenesis and embryology cannot be
completely separated. Within capital accumulation in contemporary everyday
capitalist life, some aspects of primitive capital accumulation are reproduced:
without that primitive capital accumulation, there would be no capitalist mode
of production. So the logical analysis does reflect some basic trends of
historical development after all. The simplest forms of appearance of the
'economic categories' (which are just forms of material existence, of material
reality as perceived and simplified by the human mind) are often also their
primitive, that is their original, form. However controversial this
interpretation may be, it is difficult to deny that this unity of historical and
logical analysis is the way in which Marx and Engels understood their own
method. A whole literature has been
produced, from Bernstein to
Popper and on to contemporary academic economists,
on the subject of the 'useless', 'metaphysical ' or even 'mystifying' nature of
the dialectical method which Marx borrowed from Hegel. The positivist narrowness
of outlook of these critics themselves generally bears eloquent testimony to the
contrary, that is to the broad historical vision and the piercing lucidity which
the dialectical method helped Marx to achieve. Thanks to that method, Marx's
Capital appears as a giant compared to any subsequent or contemporary work
of economic analysis. It was never intended as a handbook to help governments to
solve such problems as balance-of-payments deficits, nor yet as a learned, if
somewhat trite, explanation of all the exciting happenings in the market place
when Mr Smith finds no buyer for the last of his I ,000 tons of iron. It was
intended as an explanation of what would happen to labour, machinery,
technology, the size of enterprises, the social structure of the population, the
discontinuity of economic growth, and the relations between workers and work, as
the capitalist mode of production unfolded all its terrifying potential. From
that point of view, the achievement is truly impressive. It is precisely because
of Marx's capacity to discover the long-term laws of motion of the capitalist
mode of production in its essence, irrespective of thousands of 'impurities' and
of secondary aspects, that his long-term predictions -- the laws of accumulation
of capital, stepped-up technological progress, accelerated increase in the
productivity and intensity of labour, growing concentration and centralization
of capital, transformation of the great majority of economically active people
into sellers of labour-power, declining rate of profit, increased rate of
surplus value, periodically recurrent recessions, inevitable class struggle
between Capital and Labour, increasing revolutionary attempts to overthrow
capitalism -- have been so strikingly confirmed by history.
"This judgement has generally been
challenged on two grounds. The easiest way out for critics of Marx is simply to
deny that the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production which he
discovered have been verified at all. This is generally done by reducing them to
a couple of misstated and oversimplified formulae (see below): 'progressive
immiseration of the working class' and 'ever-worsening economic crisis'. A more
sophisticated objection was advanced by Karl Popper, who denied the very
possibility, or rather the scientific nature, of such 'laws', calling them
'unconditional historical prophecies' to be clearly distinguished from
'scientific predictions'. 'Ordinary predictions in science,' says Popper,' are
conditional. They assert that certain changes (say, of the temperature of water
in a kettle) will be accompanied by other changes (say the boiling of the
water).' Popper denies the scientific nature of Capital by asserting
that, unlike scientific theories, its hypotheses cannot be scientifically
tested. This is obviously based upon a
misunderstanding of the very nature of the materialist dialectic, which, as
Lenin pointed out, requires constant verification through praxis to increase its
cognition content. In fact, it would be very easy to 'prove' Marx's analysis to
have been wrong, if experience had shown, for example, that the more capitalist
industry develops, the smaller and smaller the average factory becomes, the less
it depends upon new technology, the more its capital is supplied by the workers
themselves, the more workers become owners of their factories, the less the part
of wages taken by consumer goods becomes (and the greater becomes the part of
wages used for buying the workers' own means of production). If, in addition,
there had been decades without economic fluctuations and a full-scale
disappearance of trade unions and employers' associations (all flowing from the
disappearance of contradictions between Capital and Labour, in as much as
workers increasingly become the controllers of their own means and conditions of
production), then one could indeed say that Capital was so much rubbish
and had dismally failed to predict what would happen in the real capitalist
world a century after its publication. It is sufficient to compare the real
history of the period since 1867 on the one hand with what Marx predicted it
would be, and on the other with any such alternative 'laws of motion', to
understand how remarkable indeed was Marx's theoretical achievement and how
strongly it stands up against the experimental test of history." [Mandel
(1976), pp.17-25. (This links to a PDF.) Links added; several paragraphs
merged. Italic emphases in the original ]
He tackled
the 'problem'
concerning the connection between 'appearance' and 'essence' head on:
"But for Marx, the materialist dialectician,
the distinction between 'essence' and 'appearance' in no sense implies that
'appearance' is less 'real' then (sic) 'essence'. Movements of value determine in the
last analysis movements of prices; but Marx the materialist would have laughed
at any 'Marxist' who suggested that prices were 'unreal', because in the last
analysis determined by value movements. The distinction between 'essence'
and 'appearance' refers to different levels of determination, that is in the
last analysis to the process of cognition, not to different degrees of reality.
To explain the capitalist mode of production in its totality it is wholly
insufficient to understand simply the 'basic essence', the 'law of value'. It is
necessary to integrate 'essence' and 'appearance' through all their intermediate
mediating links, to explain how and why a given 'essence' appears in given
concrete forms and not in others. For these 'appearances' themselves are neither
accidental nor self-evident. They pose problems, they have to be explained in
their turn, and this very explanation helps to pierce through new layers of
mystery and brings us again nearer to a full understanding of the specific form
of economic organization which we want to understand. To deny this need to
reintegrate 'essence' and 'appearance' is as un-dialectical and as mystifying as
to accept 'appearances' as they are, without looking for the basic forces and
contradictions which they tend to hide from the superficial and empiricist
observer." [Mandel
(1976), p.20. (This links to a PDF.)
Bold emphases alone added.]
It could be argued that this shows that
Marxists don't believe that appearances are false.
First of all, it is worth noting that Mandel
focussed exclusively here on social phenomena. He would hardly suggest, for example,
that because sticks appear to be bent in water that that implies they are bent,
or that this bending is somehow "real". So, do they really bend in water?
Or would it be
false to say sticks are actually bent in water? Indeed, it would. Here
appearances taken at face value would be misleading.
Second, Mandel asserts that Marx would have
laughed at any 'Marxist' who suggested "prices were 'unreal'" simply because
prices are really determined by the movement of value. But, would it be
true to say that price is an accurate reflection of value? No, it wouldn't. So,
this appearance (that is, if it is one!) is deceptive and motivates a
false belief among (bourgeois) economists. Are there any Marxists who would
agree with them that this a
true picture of the economy? Would Marx? Would Mandel? Again, no,
neither would.
Third, Mandel then argues that:
"The distinction between 'essence' and
'appearance' refers to different levels of determination, that is in the last
analysis to the process of cognition, not to different degrees of reality."
[Ibid.]
Unfortunately, if correct, the above would suggest that Marxism
doesn't actually tell us about "reality", since, according to
Mandel, the distinction between
"appearance" and "essence" is merely a
heuristic device that no more relates to "reality" than any other
"appearance". "Essence" would now seem to be no more "real" than, say, the
shape of a table. When asked what the 'real shape' of a table is, what could
anyone say? Tables look different from different angles, as does everything else. If
someone were to insist that this is the 'real shape' of a table (when
looking at it from above, at right angles, say), would
they be stating a truth? Of course not.
Hence, Mandel's 'explanation' is no help at all. It
fails to show that 'appearances' don't motivate false beliefs -- those
held by anyone 'not in the know', for example. Nor does it demonstrate that the distinction
drawn between 'appearance' and 'essence' doesn't
invalidate the conclusion that Marxists
believe 'appearances' are in some sense false.
To be continued...
Appendix Five: Sean Sayers And The Dialectics Of Confusion
01.
As noted in the main body, it is all too
easy to get lost in the weeds on this issue, but it is important to distinguish
between different types of words in this area. Here is what I have posted to
Essay Six about (certain) philosophers and logicians' opinions concerning
the mode of signification of common nouns, beginning with the so-called "substantivals":
Asubstantival term is a common noun that in
general (but not always) admits of number (i.e., it has a plural form) --, e.g.,
three books, two people, five comrades -- and where they do admit
of number, they are often called 'count
nouns'. Their distinguishing mark centres on the criteria
of identity we use in each case. The following is what Professor
Lowe had to say about this topic:
"...[N]ot all general terms are common names -- for instance,
adjectival or characterizing general terms such as 'red' and 'circular' are not,
nor are abstract nouns such as 'redness' and 'circularity' (if indeed the latter
are deemed to be general terms, for an alternative view is that they are
singular terms referring to abstract individuals). The distinguishing feature of
common names -- sometimes also called substantival or sortal general
terms -- is that they have associated with them, as a component of their
meaning, a criterion of identity for
the individuals to which they apply (see Lowe 1989, Ch. 2). A criterion of
identity for individuals of a kind K is a principle which determines, for
any individuals x and y of kind K, whether or not x and y are
one and the same K. Thus, the criterion of identity for cities tells
us that Paris and London are different cities, since they occupy different
locations; and the criterion of identity for rivers tells us that the
Isis and the Thames are the same river, since they flow from the same
source to the same mouth. Different kinds of individuals, denoted by different
sortal terms, very often have different criteria of identity governing them --
and in some cases there is philosophical debate as to precisely what these
criteria are (for example, in the case of persons). Credit is once more
due to Frege for
recognizing the important role that criteria of identity have to play in the
semantics of sortal terms." [Lowe, Internet Resource [2].]
[This link no longer works!]
Count nouns are to be distinguished from other common nouns which don't admit of
number, e.g., mass
nouns (such as chalk, cabbage, meat, etc. -- it makes no sense to refer to
"two meat", or "three chalk". Of course, these can be converted into count
nouns, as in "two cabbages", "three chalks" or "four meats" (the latter two of
which are in general short for "three pieces or sticks of chalk" or "two
varieties, portions, slices, or cuts of meat"). However, some mass nouns are
also substantivals, e.g., gold, lead, and plastic....
The above
quoted passage has since disappeared from the Internet, but its author,
Professor Lowe, has published something similar in one of his books:
"It is a plausible contention --
although one that I shall seek to qualify shortly – that for any given sort
of individuals there is a criterion of identity for individuals of
that sort. Linguistically, the point is reflected in a distinction emphasized by
P. T. Geach between
those general terms that are and those that are not 'substantival'. For Geach,
the mark of a substantival general term is precisely that it has associated with
its use -- as indeed a component of its very sense -- a criterion of identity
for instances falling under it. By such a criterion, Geach means 'that in
accordance with which we judge whether identity holds' in assessing the truth or
falsehood of an identity statement concerning individuals. So, for instance,
'man' and 'gold' are by this account substantival general terms -- or, as I
prefer to call them, in deference to John Locke, sortal terms -- because
it seems that there are, at least in principle, ways of determining whether, if
x and y are men or quantities of gold, they are the same
man or the same gold. But a general term like 'red thing' is not for
Geach substantival, precisely because it has no such criterion of identity
associated with its use.
"A sufficient, but not necessary,
condition for a general term's being a sortal is that there should exist some
principle for counting or enumerating individual instances falling
under it. Thus, there are ways of counting the number of men or tables
or books in a given room, but no way of counting the number of red
things that there are. And this is not because there is such a
number, but one beyond our powers of determining -- as in the case of the number
of atoms in the room – but rather because it apparently does not even
make sense to speak of such a number until the sort or sorts of
red thing that one is to count have been specified. Suppose, for example, that
the room contained a red table: then that, it might be urged, is clearly one
red thing. But what about its red top and its red legs, or the red knob on
one of its red drawers? Are these to be counted as different 'red things'
in the room in addition to the red table itself? And what about, say, the
red paint covering one of the table's legs: is that also to count as a
distinct 'red thing’ in its own right? It rapidly becomes apparent that there is
no principled way of deciding these matters, until we are told what sorts
of red thing we are supposed to be counting.
"Suppose, however, that we were
instructed to count every sort of red thing in the room: would that
in principle lead us to a determinate maximal number of red things in the
room – perhaps, indeed, an infinite number, but still determinate? One
problem arising here is that of providing criteria for the identity and
diversity of sorts. Another is that of providing criteria for determining
when two distinct sorts are disjoint, since one must avoid counting the
same individual twice because, say, it is both a red φ
and a red χ. A still more fundamental problem arises, however, once we
acknowledge quantities or portions of red stuffs (such as portions of red
ink) to qualify as red things in the room, as I believe we should. For there is
clearly no principled way of determining how many such portions there are
in a given place, in view of the indeterminate extent to which any such portion
is divisible into further portions.
"For the foregoing reason, general
terms such as 'man', 'table', and 'book' (but not 'thing') have the
logical -- and not just the grammatical -- status of count nouns, and
they form, as I say, a subset of sortal terms. But, to repeat, the countability
of instances falling under it is not a necessary condition for a general term's
being a sortal, since so-called mass nouns like 'gold' and 'water'
apparently have criteria of identity associated with their use, despite the fact
that it makes no sense to ask how many instances of gold or water exist
in a certain place. Significantly, though, it does make sense to ask
how much gold or water exists in a given place. The general tenor of my
remarks is not without venerable historical precedent. If we were to ask what it
is that sortal terms denote, a plausible answer would seem to be that they
denote what Aristotle in
the Categories called secondary substances: that is, species and
genera -- or, in other words, sorts or kinds. Correspondingly,
what Aristotle called primary substanceswe may refer to as
the individuals or particulars instantiating such sorts or kinds.
But an important point to appreciate here is that the notions of individual
(or particular) and sort (or kind) are, very arguably, interdependent
and mutually irreducible. Individuals are recognizable only as individuals of
a sort, while sorts are intelligible only as sorts of individuals."
[Lowe (2015), pp.12-14. Italic emphases in the original. Links added;
several paragraphs merged.]
Exactly how
the supposed 'process of abstraction' is meant to work with the above 'sorts of
being' (expressed by substantivals, count and mass nouns, sortals and
non-substantivals) is a mystery. I have yet to see a single DM-theorist address
this; but they are in good company on this too: I have yet to encounter a single
theorist in the entire history of the misbegotten area of Traditional
Confusion address it either. [If anyone knows differently, please
email me with the details.]
The same
comment applies to the other term mentioned, adjectives (of which there are
apparently thirteen
different types!). How are they abstracted? Is it the same as, or
different from, the way that common nouns are handled?
Figure Eight: Humanity Still Awaits
The Details. We've Only Been
Waiting Now 2400 Years...
1.A
short, admirably clear (but completely traditional) introduction to the
entire topic of generality can be found in Staniland (1973) -- part of which
will be quoted in Appendix
Two. A more
comprehensive survey is given in Aaron (1967), although that book largely concentrates on Post-Renaissance
theories, and Aaron's own 'solution'. [See also, Tugendhat (1982), as well as
here, here,
here and
here.]
It is worth
adding that
DM-theorists have also adopted an
idiosyncratic, entirely self-serving, interpretation of the word
"metaphysics". I have discussed this theoretical sleight-of-hand at greater length here;
readers are
directed there for more details.
1a.As
we saw in Part One
of this Essay, and as we will also see in
Essay Four Part One,
Ancient Greek Philosophers concocted a logico-grammatical theory that in the end
actually altered the way
general words operate in
indicative sentences,
transforming noun-, and verb-phrases (employed in
predicate expressions) into the Proper Names of
APs. The artificially-constructed 'abstractions' that emerged as a
result were
read into 'reality' so that what were then claimed to be its 'essential' features
were actually a reflection of
these 'abstractions', not
the other way round. That is, these 'abstractions' were projectedonto
'reality' by 'consciousness', not reflected in 'consciousness'. I
have elsewhere called moves like this (i.e., inferences from
words to
the world), which occur throughout the entire history of Philosophy, Linguistic
Idealism. As such, and in this way, the Ideal
became the arbiter of the
'Real' for the
next 2400 years.
[That
will become a central theme of all Seven Parts of Essay Twelve.]
This
approach to generality turns
out to be
one of the "ruling ideas" Marx and Engels spoke
about:
"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.]
Of course, Marx and Engels didn't identify
(by name) this specific aspect of
Traditional Thought (although they do speak about the ruling class, or the
ideologues, controlling the production of ideas "in the whole range", so it is
difficult to see how that would fail to encompass or implicate areas of
Philosophy highlighted in this Essay and Part One), but, given its universal spread,
its longevity and its intimate
connection with the class war (covered below and in
Essay Twelve),
it is clear that it fits their description perfectly, especially when we read
what they both had to say about 'the process of abstraction' (quoted
at length later in this Essay). For example:
"The ordinary man does not
think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples
and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative
way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by
producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the
unreal
creation of the mind 'the Fruit'. And in regard to every object the
existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation. It goes without saying that
the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by
presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist
in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the
names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to
abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by
which he passes
from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity
of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
In the speculative way of
speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject,
as an
inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension
constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx
and Engels
(1975), pp.59-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted
at this site. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]
Hence, the 'rational universe' of Ancient Greek Thought
(which morphed into a family of 'world-views' that underpinned the vast
majority of subsequent metaphysical
systems) was little more than a
projection
onto the world of
systematically distorted language -- indeed, as Marx also argued:
"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.]
He and Engels also noted how these forms-of-thought
remain more-or-less the same across many centuries, or even longer -- and will
continue to do this side of the termination of class division:
"[O]ne
fact is common to all past ages, viz., the
exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the
social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it
displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot
completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms."
[Marx and Engels (1968b),
p.52.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
In that case, as noted elsewhere at this site (in
response to a question I was asked):
If I were an Idealist, I'd harbour illusions that my work could make some
difference; that is, I'd be under the illusion that Dialectical Marxists could
be argued out of their adherence to this creed. But, as a Historical
Materialist, I know that only social change will bring to an end the conditions
(and the consequent alienation) that motivates the vast majority of comrades
into looking at the world in the traditional manner
I outlined earlier. Since
fundamental social change can only come about through the revolutionary activity
of workers themselves, Dialectical Marxists of every stripe are going to need
the proletariat to 'save them from themselves'.
I stand no
chance -- I might as well be speaking Klingon to the cat! [Quoted from
here.]
Hegel
made a somewhat analogous point:
"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.]
Furthermore, the (hypothetical) capacity
fellow humans are supposed to possess of being able to 'abstract' certain
'Concepts' or 'Ideas' into existence, literallyout of thin air is also said to be innate.
We are all supposed to be natural experts, proficient abstractors from birth
onward (or at least from when we begin to speak). Of
course, hardcore Rationalists (like Descartes, Leibniz and Hegel) held that
certain 'concepts' were also innate (or they were a consequence of the architectonic (i.e., cognitive structure)
of the human 'mind'). In that case, the 'mind' was only capable of
functioning in certain ways with certain concepts and categories -- an approach to knowledge that was
up-front in
Kant, who sought to 'explain' how we are
all able to apprehend 'universals' as and when they are
instantiated in the objects we meet in experience (in some respect they
constituted our apprehension of them). This theory was, in effect, a this-worldly version of Plato's
-- which held that we are
all born with knowledge of 'the Forms' since we supposedly encountered them in our
'pre-existent
lives'. With Kant they now seem to be 'pre-installed' since we can experience
the world in no other way. As
Lenin might have made the point, this capacity was perhaps based on, or was an
expression of, a 'law
of cognition'. In
more contemporary (Kantian) terms these 'concepts'
'organise experience'; in some cases, they actually 'constitute experience', or
they 'constitute reality itself'. So, at some level, these
'abstract concepts' not only enable our experience
of the world, they actually make it possible -- or, at least, they facilitate
our comprehension of it. This line was
supposed to cut the ground from under the Empiricists since it highlighted the
(hypothetical) fact that without these concepts/'abstractions', we wouldn't be able to
apprehend anything at all via
experience. [I have quoted Kant to this effect in the
main body of this Essay.] Having
said this, Kant distinguished between two different types of concept, empirical
and a priori (which he also identified with the
Categories -- e.g., 'Quantity',
'Quality', 'Relation', etc., etc.). It is the latter that are essential to
the formation of knowledge and aren't derived by abstraction, but are somehow
'supplied' by the intellect. [On this, see
Rohlf (2020),
McLear (2015), Guyer
(1992b) and Caygill (1995), pp.39-42, 102-06, 118-21.]
What Hegel meant by "abstract" and
"concept" is more complicated than the above might suggest. I will say much more
about that in Essay Twelve Part Five. [In the meantime, cf., Inwood (1992),
pp.29-31, 58-61; and Inwood (2002), pp.1-15, 366-80.]
As we also saw in the main body of this
Essay, and as noted above, this approach is basically a re-configuration of Plato's
theory, who expressed such ideas theologically:
"If mind and true opinion are two distinct classes, then I
say that there certainly are these self-existent ideas unperceived by sense, and
apprehended only by the mind; if, however, as some say, true opinion differs in
no respect from mind, then everything that we perceive through the body is to be
regarded as most real and certain. But we must affirm that to be distinct, for
they have a distinct origin and are of a different nature; the one is implanted
in us by instruction, the other by persuasion; the one is always accompanied by
true reason, the other is without reason; the one cannot be overcome by
persuasion, but the other can: and lastly, every man may be said to share in
true opinion, but mind is the attribute of the gods and of very few men.
Wherefore also we must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is
always the same, uncreated and indestructible, never receiving anything into
itself from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." [Plato (1997c), 51e-52a,
pp.1254-55. I have used
the on-line version here. Bold emphases added. The published 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.) See
also Note 1b.]
There are also distinct reiterations of this
re-orientation in DM-epistemology, which isn't surprising given the fact
that it is touted as inverted, or 'right-way-up', Hegelianism. Indeed,
this Idealist method has been openly welcomed and endorsed by generations
of DM-theorists, as Lenin himself made abundantly clear:
"Thought proceeding from the
concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get
away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter,
the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all
scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more
deeply, truly and completely." [Lenin (1961),
p.171. Italic
emphases in the original.]
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they
remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the
Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both
phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human
concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a
whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid.,
p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]
[I have discussed the first of these two passages in more detail in
Part One of this Essay.]
Lenin is
both enthusiastic and effusive in the way he touts the ruling-class origin of
ideas he helped import into our movement:
"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), p.32. Bold emphases added.]
"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.]
Others have
concurred:
"According to Hegel, dialectics is
the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive,
and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that
life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general
any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out
of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence
and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes;
and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting
its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of
phenomena….
"At a particular moment a moving body is
at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if
it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become
motionless.
Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as
there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in
the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that
dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not
only to cognition of nature….
"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…. When you apply the dialectical method
to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change
eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….' In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit
consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from
the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin
and destruction…. [M]odern science confirms at every step
the idea expressed with such genius byHegel, that quantity passes into
quality….
[I]t will be understood without
difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical
thinking...[that]
quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to
changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps,
interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…."
[Plekhanov
(1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163.
Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged.]
"Previous chapters have shown that
dialectics has a history which embraces many thousands of years and that it has
passed through various stages of development. Disregarding the beginnings of
dialectics in Indian and Chinese philosophy, the following main stages can
be distinguished: (1) the dialectics of the old Greek philosophers of nature,
Heraclitus; (2) the second and higher stage, the dialectics of Plato and
Aristotle; (3) Hegelian dialectics; and (4) materialistic dialectics. Dialectics
itself has undergone a dialectical development. Heraclitus, representing the
first stage, develops the dialectics of one-after-the-other; Plato and
Aristotle, representing the second stage, develop the dialectics of
one-beside-the-other. The latter is in opposition to the dialectics of the first
stage, being its negation. Hegel embraces both preceding stages of development
and raises them to a higher stage. He develops the dialectics of the
one-after-the-other and the one-beside-the-other, but in an idealistic form; in
other words, he develops an historico-idealistic dialectics." [Thalheimer
(1936), pp.157-58. Bold emphases added.]
"The integrity, the wholeness, the
irrefutable logic and consistency (sic!) of Marxism-Leninism, which are
acknowledged even by its opponents (sic!), have been achieved by the application
of the unified philosophical dialectical-materialist world outlook and method.
Marxism-Leninism cannot properly be understood without its philosophical basis. The philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is a
result and the highest stage of the development of world philosophical thought.
It has assimilated al that was best ad most progressive in the centuries of
development of philosophy...." [Konstantinov (1974), p.15. Bold emphasis
added; paragraphs merged.]
"The
history of Western philosophy, however, begins not with idealism but with
materialism. This asserts...that the material world, known to us and
explored by science, is real; that the only real world is the material one; that
thoughts, ideas and sensations are the product of matter organised in a certain
way (a nervous system and a brain); that thought cannot derive its categories
from itself, but only from the objective world which makes itself known to us
through our senses. The
earliest Greek philosophers were known as 'hylozoists'
(from the Greek, meaning 'those who believe that matter is alive'). Here we have
a long line of heroes who pioneered the development of thought.... What was
startlingly new about this way of looking at the world was that it was not
religious. In complete contrast to the Egyptians and Babylonians, from whom they
had learnt a lot, the Greek thinkers did not resort to gods and goddesses to
explain natural phenomena. For the first time, men and women sought to explain
the workings of nature purely in terms of nature. This was one of the greatest
turning-points in the entire history of human thought....
"Aristotle,
the greatest of the Ancient philosophers, can be considered a materialist,
although he was not so consistent as the early hylozoists. He made a series of
important scientific discoveries which laid the basis for the great achievements
of the Alexandrine period of Greek science.... The predominant philosophical trend of the
Renaissance was materialism. In England, this took the form of
empiricism, the school of thought that states that all knowledge is derived
from the senses. The pioneers of this school were
Francis Bacon
(1561-1626),
Thomas
Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704). The materialist school passed
from England to France where it acquired a revolutionary content. In the hands
of Diderot,
Rousseau,
Holbach
and Helvetius,
philosophy became an instrument for criticising all existing society. These
great thinkers prepared the way for the revolutionary overthrow of the feudal
monarchy in 1789-93....
"Under the impact of the French revolution, the German
idealist
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) subjected all previous philosophy to a thorough
criticism. Kant made important discoveries not only in philosophy and logic but
in science.... In the field of philosophy, Kant's masterpiece The Critique
of Pure Reason was the first work to analyse the forms of logic which had
remained virtually unchanged since they were first developed by Aristotle. Kant
showed the contradictions implicit in many of the most fundamental propositions
of philosophy.... The
greatest breakthrough came in the first decades of the 19th century with George
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was a German idealist, a man of
towering intellect, who effectively summed up in his writings the whole history
of philosophy. Hegel
showed that the only way to overcome the
'Antinomies' of Kant was to accept that contradictions actually existed, not
only in thought, but in the real world. As an objective idealist, Hegel had no
time for the subjective idealist argument that the human mind cannot know the
real world. The forms of thought must reflect the objective world as closely as
possible. The process of knowledge consist of penetrating ever more deeply into
this reality, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, from the known to
the unknown, from the particular to the universal. The
dialectical method of thinking had played a great role in Antiquity,
particularly in the naïve but brilliant aphorisms of Heraclitus (c.500 B.C.),
but also in Aristotle and others. It was abandoned in the Middle Ages, when
the Church turned Aristotle's formal logic into a lifeless and rigid dogma, and
did not re-appear until Kant returned it to a place of honour. However, in Kant
the dialectic did not receive an adequate development. It fell to Hegel to
bring the science of dialectical thinking to its highest point of development.
"Hegel's
greatness is shown by the fact that he alone was prepared to challenge the
dominant philosophy of mechanism. The dialectical philosophy of Hegel deals with
processes, not isolated events. It deals with things in their life, not
their death, in their inter-relations, not isolated, one after the other. This
is a startlingly modern and scientific way of looking at the world. Indeed, in
many aspects Hegel was far in advance of his time. Yet, despite its many
brilliant insights, Hegel's philosophy was ultimately unsatisfactory. Its
principal defect was precisely Hegel's idealist standpoint, which prevented him
from applying the dialectical method to the real world in a consistently
scientific way. Instead of the material world we have the world of the Absolute
Idea, where real things, processes and people are replaced by insubstantial
shadows. In the words of Frederick Engels, the Hegelian dialectic was the most
colossal miscarriage in the whole history of philosophy. Correct ideas are here
seen standing on their head. In order to put dialectics on a sound foundation,
it was necessary to turn Hegel upside down, to transform idealist dialectics
into dialectical materialism. This was the great achievement of Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels...." [Woods and Grant (1995),
pp.40-42; pp.44-46 in the second edition. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added.
Italics in the original; several paragraphs merged.]
However,
given that DM-theorists also believe that matter is an abstraction and
abstractions are creation of the mind, Woods and Grant telling us that
dialectics began with the Greek materialists simply confirms that dialectics is
a purely 'mental construct'. Ancient Greek materialism was no less idealist than
post-Renaissance materialism has been. As we have seen it was dogmatically
imposed on 'reality', and as Essay Twelve
Part One has shown, that is a
hallmark of Idealism. [That (rather lengthy) argument is summarised
here and
here.]
Indeed, as I
pointed out earlier:
This
helps explain why Lenin could declare
that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism".
Plainly, he hadn't fully shaken off the regressive influence of the sort of Christian
Mysticism that had been forced down his throat as a child -- his family was
Russian Orthodox, into which faith Lenin had been baptised:
"Intelligent idealism is
closer to intelligent materialism than stupid materialism. Dialectical idealism instead
of intelligent; (sic) metaphysical, undeveloped, dead, crude, rigid instead of
stupid." [Lenin (1961),
p.274. (I explain
why he said this, here.)]
It is
quite clear from this that Lenin meant "Dialectical idealism is closer to
intelligent materialism than crude materialism...".
There is an illuminating
discussion of this trend in the Rationalist Tradition, alongside an exposé of its crippling
effect on Philosophy in general, in Cowie (2002), pp.1-68.
[Cowie also shows that the underlying
assumptions of Rationalism and Empiricism are remarkably similar.
More-or-less the same can also be said about the connection those two main
traditions in post-Renaissance thought enjoy with DM-epistemology. I will return
to this theme in later Parts of Essay Three. See also, Cowie (2008)
and Stich (1975). (Incidentally, I was shocked and saddened
to hear that
Fiona Cowie had passed away quite recently.)]
[On this,
see also Note 1aa, below.]
1aa.Herbert Marcuse
certainly helped underline
the Idealism implicit in the Hegelian Tradition; in fact, he openly championed
this aristocraticapproach to knowledge and seemed quite happy to see it appropriated by Marxist
Philosophers and thereby imported into the workers' movement:
"The doctrine of Essence
seeks to liberate knowledge from the worship of 'observable facts' and from the
scientific common sense that imposes this worship.... The real field of
knowledge is not the given fact about things as they are, but the critical
evaluation of them as a prelude to passing beyond their given form. Knowledge
deals with appearances in order to get beyond them. 'Everything, it is said, has
an essence, that is, things really are not what they immediately show
themselves. There is therefore something more to be done than merely rove from
one quality to another and merely to advance from one qualitative to
quantitative, and vice versa: there is a permanence in things, and that
permanent is in the first instance their Essence.'The knowledge that appearance and essence do not jibe is the beginning of truth.
The mark of dialectical thinking is the ability to distinguish the essential
from the apparent process of reality and to grasp their relation." [Marcuse
(1973),
pp.145-46. Marcuse is here quoting
Hegel (1975), p.163,
§112. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Minor typo corrected; bold
emphases added.]
"Prior
to this formalisation, the experience of the divided world finds its logic in
the Platonic dialectic. Here, the terms 'Being,' 'Non-being,' 'Movement,' 'the One
and the Many,' 'Identity,' and 'Contradiction' are methodically kept open,
ambiguous, not fully defined. They have an open horizon, an entire universe of
meaning which is gradually structured in the process of communication itself,
but which is never closed. The propositions are submitted, developed, and tested
in a dialogue, in which the partner is led to question the normally unquestioned
universe of experience and speech, and to enter a new dimension of discourse --
otherwise he is free and the discourse is addressed to his freedom. He is
supposed to go beyond that which is given to him -- as the speaker, in his
proposition, goes beyond the initial setting of the terms. These terms have many
meanings because the conditions to which they refer have many sides,
implications, and effects which cannot be insulated and stabilised. Their
logical development responds to the process of reality, or Sache selbst
['thing itself' -- RL]. The laws of thought are laws of reality, or rather
become the laws of reality if thought understands the truth of immediate
experience as the appearance of another truth, which is that of the true Forms
of reality -- of the Ideas. Thus there is contradiction rather than
correspondence between dialectical thought and the given reality; the true
judgment judges this reality not in its own terms, but in terms which envisage
its subversion. And in this subversion, reality comes into its own truth.
"In
the classical logic, the judgment which constituted the original core of
dialectical thought was formalised in the propositional form, 'S is p.' But
this form conceals rather than reveals the basic dialectical proposition, which
states the negative character of the empirical reality. Judged in the light of
their essence and idea, men and things exist as other than they are;
consequently thought contradicts that which is (given), opposes its truth to
that of the given reality. The truth envisaged by thought is the Idea. As
such it is, in terms of the given reality, 'mere' Idea, 'mere' essence --
potentiality.... This
contradictory, two-dimensional style of thought is the inner form not only of
dialectical logic but of all philosophy which comes to grips with reality.
The propositions which define reality affirm as true something that is not
(immediately) the case; thus they contradict that which is the case, and they
deny its truth. The affirmative judgment contains a negation which disappears in
the propositional form (S is p). For example, 'virtue is knowledge';
'justice is that state in which everyone performs the function for which his
nature is best suited'; 'the perfectly real is the perfectly knowable'; 'verum
est id, quod est' ['the true is that which is' -- RL]; 'man is free'; 'the
State is the reality of Reason.' If
these propositions are to be true, then the copula 'is' states an 'ought,' a
desideratum. It judges conditions in which virtue is not knowledge, in
which men do not perform the function for which their nature best suits them, in
which they are not free, etc. Or, the categorical S-p form states that (S) is
not (S); (S) is defined as other-than-itself. Verification of the
proposition involves a
process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is.
The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not
state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it
could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with
inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be, because he is free in the
eyes of God, by nature, etc....
"Under the rule of formal
logic, the notion of the conflict between essence and appearance is expendable
if not meaningless; the material content is neutralised.... Existing as the living contradiction between essence and appearance, the
objects of thought are of that 'inner negativity' which is the specific quality
of their concept. The dialectical definition defines the movement of things
from that which they are not to that which they are. The development of
contradictory elements, which determines the structure of its object, also
determines the structure of dialectical thought. The object of dialectical logic
is neither the abstract, general form of objectivity, nor the abstract, general
form of thought -- nor the data of immediate experience. Dialectical logic
undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it
also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which
this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be,
it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has
freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind
the facts -- that is, if it understands its world as a historical
universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice
of man. This practice (intellectual and material) is the reality in the data of
experience; it is also the reality which dialectical logic comprehends."
[Marcuse (1968),
pp.110-17. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling
modified to conform with
UK English. I have used the on-line text here and have corrected any
typographical errors I managed to spot. Several paragraphs merged.]
It is worth underlining the fact that,
in the above, Marcuse openly connects the subject-predicate sentential form with the
(supposed) 'contradiction'
between 'essence' and 'appearance', which neatly confirms the analysis developed
in Part One of
this Essay. [Irony intended.] This is all worryingly similar to Christian Apologists who tell us not
to trust our 'imperfect'/'sinful' reason, or even the facts
-- and is, perhaps, the 'dialectical equivalent' of the 'alternative facts'
promoted by supporters of
Donald Trump;
here are two examples of this syndrome:
"People misuse reason when they frame their
worldview apart from God's Word. This can involve either treating reason as its
own ultimate standard (in other words, a replacement for God's Word) or tossing
it aside as irrelevant to faith. Neither of these positions is biblical. We are
never to attempt to reason in opposition to the Word of God. That is to say we
are not to treat God's Word as a mere hypothesis that is subject to our fallible
understanding of the universe. This, after all, was Eve's mistake. She attempted
to use her mind and senses to judge God's Word (Genesis
3:6). This was sinful and irrational; she was trying to
use a fallible standard to judge an infallible one. We are never to 'reason' in
such an absurd, sinful way. Instead, we are supposed to reason from God's Word,
taking it as our ultimate unquestionable starting point. Any alternative is
arbitrary and self-refuting. Reason is not a substitute for God; rather, it is a
gift from God." [Quoted from
here. Accessed
18/06/2024. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site. Links in the original; paragraphs merged.]
"When we rely too much on our logic and reasoning,
we leave ourselves vulnerable to the outcome of that reasoning instead of
preparing ourselves for God's intervention. God is in control. I don't care how
things appear to you right now. I don't care what authority your boss has over
you right now. I don't care what your addiction, your mate, or your messy
situation is telling you to do. None of those people or circumstances are in
ultimate control. Yes, they may look as though they are. After all, during the
exodus, Pharaoh had every appearance of control over the Israelites as his army
chased them across the wilderness and backed them up against an enormous body of
water (see Ex. 14:5-31). But what we see is never all there is to be seen.
Sovereignty can reshape water and set souls free. Providence can pave a way
where there seems to be no way at all. God is in control.... God's vantage
point is so far above our own that when we seek to interject our logic or
rationale into the equation, it's like trying to put together a puzzle with only
a fraction of the pieces. Logically figuring out God's ways will never happen,
simply because we don’t have all the information." [Quoted from
here. Accessed
18/06/2024. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site; paragraphs merged.]
Mind control
like this, that promotes and advocates only one trusted source, where acolytes are taught to
distrust their powers of reason, and even their own eyes (i.e., the
facts), are hallmarks of
a cultic mentality (on that, see Lifton (1989, 2019)).
Be this as it may, more-or-less the same basic point
(like the one Marcuse was trying to make) was advanced
by John Rees, but, fortunately, employing much plainer language:
"The important thing about a
Marxist understanding of the distinction between the appearance of things and
their essence is twofold: 1) by delving beneath the mass of surface
phenomena, it is possible to see the essential relations governing historical
change -- thus beneath the appearance of a free and fair market transaction it
is possible to see the exploitative relations of class society, but, 2) this
does not mean that surface appearances can simply be dismissed as ephemeral
events of no consequence. In revealing the essential relations in society, it
is also possible to explain more fully than before why they appear in a
form different to their real nature. To explain, for instance, why it is
that the exploitative class relations at the point of production appear as the
exchange of 'a fair day's work for a fair day's pay' in the polished surface of
the labour market.... There is a deeper
reality, but it must be able to account for the contradiction between it and the
way it appears." [Rees (1998), pp.187-88. Bold emphases alone added. Quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs
merged.]
If we can't trust 'appearances' we need
a party to tell us in what way our eyes and brains are deceiving us. This neatly
prepares the way for a Dialectical Prophet, a 'Great Teacher', to save us from
ourselves. [More about this in Essay Nine
Part Two. We will have occasion to
return to these two passages later in this Essay,
here and
here.]
The above
remarks also align with Lenin's comments:
"To begin with what is the simplest,
most ordinary, common, etc., [sic] with any proposition...: [like]
John is a man…. Here we already have dialectics (as Hegel's genius recognized):
the
individual is the universal…. Consequently, the opposites (the
individual is opposed to the universal) are identical: the individual exists
only in the connection that leads to the universal. The universal exists only in
the individual and through the individual. Every individual is (in one way or
another) a universal. Every universal is (a fragment, or an aspect, or the
essence of) an individual. Every universal only approximately embraces all the
individual objects. Every individual enters incompletely into the universal,
etc., etc. Every individual is connected by thousands of transitions with other
kinds of individuals (things, phenomena, processes), etc.
Here already we have the elements, the germs of the concept of necessity,
of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and
the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say John is a man…we
disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence
from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other…. Thus in any proposition we
can (and must) disclose as a 'nucleus' ('cell') the germs of all the
elements of dialectics, and thereby show that dialectics is a property of all
human knowledge in general." [Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58, 359-60. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]
The Idealism implicit in both Lenin and Marcuse's
remarks was highlighted (no doubt inadvertently) by
George Novack:
"A consistent materialism cannot
proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason,
intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source.
Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon
evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in
practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
As we saw in Essay
Two, Novack's comments apply across
the board to DM-theorists in general, and that
includes Novack himself.
1bb.
It is worth underlining once again that the criticisms advanced in this Essay
aren't aimed at the
use of general/common nouns (or even 'abstract' nouns -- although I don't prefer that
description) in ordinary language,
merely the 'abstractions' invented by Traditional Philosophers and DM-fans.
However, if we
accept Plato's more considered theory (i.e., that the Forms are exemplars), then it
seems that an
anthropological/sociological account of generality might prove viable. That
is because, as
Berkeley certainly appreciated (and as
Wittgenstein argued in detail),
generality may only be accounted for on the basis of rule-governed linguistic
behaviour, rather than in terms of a mystical theory that appeals to
a set of ghostly Forms, Concepts, Categories, Ideas, 'Universals' and 'abstractions', each
one of a thoroughly obscure
nature and ideologically dubious provenance.
Despite that, serious problems remain
for those who regard Plato's Forms as exemplars: if they
end up working
like the
Standard Metre
in Paris (an idea developed below, in Note 1b), then the 'Third Man Problem'
will simply reassert
itself.
That is because even the Standard Metre shares properties or features with an
ordinary measuring rod or device. However, if the Standard Metre is regarded as
the embodiment of a rule (in which case, it becomes important how we apply
the
said rule -- and the rule itself can't legislate on that score; it takes a
human/social agent to do this), and not so much as a physical exemplar, then such 'difficulties'
vanish. It makes no sense to suppose that a rule shares anything
(relevant) with whatever it is applied to; and the Standard Metre itself can't
tell us how to apply it, either. [However, on this point, see
Note 1b, below.]
In order to
save my readers having to inform me: Yes,
I am aware that the definition of a metre has recently been changed:
"In 1960 the metre was redefined as 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of
orange-red light, in a vacuum, produced by burning the element krypton (Kr-86).
More recently (1984), the Geneva Conference on Weights and Measures has defined
the metre as the distance light travels, in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 seconds
with time measured by a cesium-133 atomic clock which emits pulses of radiation
at very rapid, regular intervals." [Quoted from
here. Accessed 30/06/2020. Spelling altered to agree with UK English.]
1b.On the "Third Man Argument",
see Allen (1960), Code (1985), Cohen (1971), Geach (1956), Meinwald (1990,
1992), Owen (1953),
Strang (1963), and Vlastos (1954, 1956). For the general background, see Crombie
(1963), pp.247-472, and Copleston (2003a), pp.163-206.
It is
important to add the following to what was said earlier:
Plato himself doesn't always make the sort of mistake I attribute to others throughout
this Essay -- except in places where he argues that the Forms also "participate"
in their own Form (when, for example, he speaks of the Form of the Beautiful
being beautiful, which implies that it, too, is an
Abstract Particular),
a move that has since been labelled 'Self Predication' (which topic I have dealt
with here). In fact, Plato
hypostatises the Forms in other ways (and not solely in order for them to
provide a referential target
for
predicate expressions), but as exemplars -- as if they were (somehow)
embodied somewhere (Platonic Heaven?). They would have to be if we were
capable of interacting with then in our supposed pre-existent form.
Exemplars (this side of the 'ethereal
veil') function rather like,
say, the
Standard Metre
in Paris (or, at least, that used to be the case). [I owe this point to
Peter Geach,
who reveals that this idea originated with Wittgenstein; on that, see Geach
(1956), pp.267, 269. There is also an
echo of this approach to Plato in Donald Davidson's comment,
above.] However, as pointed out
earlier, eventhis interpretation of the Forms runs into the
sand. On that, see Note 1bb,
above -- even an exemplar can't explain how it should be applied.
[Further discussion of this point would take us too far into Wittgenstein's
discussion of rule-following, a topic that will be examined in more detail in
Essay Twelve Part One, here.]
1bc. This 'problem' has been widely
discussed in 'the Plato literature'. However, since I regard it as a pseudo-problem I will
say no more about it here. Readers who want to dip a toe in this fathomless ocean
of confusion might
like to start with Meinwald (1992).
1c0. This isn't to suggest that there
weren't other important currents in political thought, but in this sub-section I am
concentrating on one of the main sources of 'Rationalist Theories of the
State', as well as any background assumptions/'world-views' that supposedly underpinned
them. As we will see, the universe needs to be
declared 'rational' if inequality, oppression and exploitation are to be 'justified' or granted a 'divine seal of approval'
(and in a manner that preserves the status quo). Such a universe is
declared 'rational' if it is said to work for the benefit of those in power --
anything else would (of course!) be 'irrational'. This is just one of the
reasons why atomism was anathematised for centuries, and although Einstein
wasn't a theist (but it is arguable that he was some sort of
Deistic Platonist, as
are many Mathematicians and Physicists), similar ideas also found echo in
his statement that
"God does not play dice with the universe". A universe subject to randomness
(at
a fundamental level) would be 'irrational'. [On this, see Pyle (1997).]
[Why the above is so will be
explored in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two and Three (summary
here). The short
version goes as follows: if everything (in the universe) is in its 'rightfully assigned' place, which
it will be if there is a rational order to reality, then inequality,
oppression and exploitation exist because they are an integral, even an
intended, feature of that order. Hence, any attempt to ameliorate the situation or
radically alter it will therefore be condemned as 'irrational', 'against the
natural order', 'contrary to god's will', etc., etc. Here we see a major source
of conservative ideology. (This isn't to argue that the universe
is irrational, either!)]
1c.Some might wonder if this topic is all that important. That misconception will be laid to rest in Essay Twelve (summary link
above), where philosophical moves like these will be linked to broader
ideological priorities that permeate the entire history of ruling-class
thought, later to re-surface in DM (alongside the substitutionism it served to
'rationalise'). [On the latter, see
here,
here and
here.]
2.The ideological background
to "Possessive
Individualism" is explored in
MacPherson (1964); an outline of the overall philosophical context can be
found in
Hacking (1975), with a more detailed background history in Prosch (1966),
pp.83-306.
[Unfortunately, despite its other strengths, Hacking's book is
largely a-historical --, i.e., in the sense that it fails to link changes
to, and developments in, philosophical fashion to contemporaneous social and
political forces (or even with ideological motivating factors that invariably
accompanied or underpinned both), and the rise of the bourgeois Mode of Production.
Of course, that is no big surprise since
Hacking doesn't claim to be a Marxist! More-or-less the same can be said about
Prosch (1966), too.]
A clearer Marxist account -- restricted
to philosophical theories connected with scientific change -- can be found in
Freudenthal (1986), with a more sophisticated narrative in Hadden (1994). The latter is
itself based on ideas advanced in Borkenau (1987), Grossmann (1987) and
Sohn-Rethel (1978). See also, Kaye (1998). For a
Wittgensteinian slant on all of this, see Robinson (2003), especially chapters 9, 10, 12 and 14. More details can be
accessed at Guy Robinson's
website,
here. [Unfortunately,
Guy's site is no longer available. However, many of his Essays can now be
accessed at
this site --
here (reproduced with the permission of his son). Sadly, I heard that Guy passed away in October 2011.
It is worth adding that Robinson is one of the few Marxist Philosophers whose work is actually worth
studying. In fact, I'd go further, his work should be required reading.]
2a.
The
bowdlerisedand defective 'Term
Logic' (developed by Medieval and Early Modern Logicians and Philosophers) interpreted
each of the quantifiers (such as "every", "all", "nothing", "some", etc.) as
a special sort
of name. This (serious) error wasn't corrected until Frege's
revolutionary logic was published a century-and-a-half ago.
[On
this, see Kenny (2006), pp.11-13; cf., Geach (1972b), George and Van Evra
(2006), and Beaney (1996). See also
this,
but note the caveats I have posted
here.]
This Ancient
Greek 'syntactical wrong turn' (to describe the latter in its best possible light) resurfaces
in the way that DM-theorists also interpret concepts:
linguistically, they are viewed
as Proper Names
that refer to, or "reflect", hidden (perhaps even 'mental') aspects of
'reality', and which somehow also lend to
material objects their 'substance'. [That ontological and semantic slide was covered in detail in
Part One.] Such 'concepts' are therefore capable of being true (or "relatively true") on their own,
as isolated 'linguistic atoms'. While some dialecticians will try reject
that inference, the way they themselves refer to the 'abstractions' they claim
to have unearthed gives the lie to any such repudiation. That can be seen by the
way they end
up turning these 'Concepts' (these 'abstractions') into the Proper Names of Abstract
Particulars (also demonstrated in Part One).
Unfortunately, 'dialectical moves'
like this are
based on an age-old idea that the unit of meaning, or even of truth,
is the individual word or 'concept', not
an
indicative sentence. As a result, naming, not saying, became the
dominant paradigm for
understanding (or expressing) meaning in language. [On this, see Hacking (1975).
Also see the section of this Essay dealing with theories
that portray knowledge as a relation between 'the Knower' and 'the Known', between
an 'object' and a 'cognising mind' (i.e.,Note 6a).] That is, of
course, what 'allowed' Hegel to focus on the 'self-development' of concepts as
the core of his system, ignoring how we actually use language. [On that, see
also
here. Admittedly
Hegel tried to hide this doctrine behind a confused theory about 'the Whole',
but the bottom line is the easily proved fact that the basic unit of meaning for
him was the individual 'concept' (and how it self-develops). That helps explain
why DM-theorists obsess about 'things', the 'thing-in-itself' and the
'thing-for-us' (covered in Note 6a), and how they are 'reflected' by
'images' in the CNS.
Everything is atomistic for them, despite their repeated, and unconvincing,
nods in the direction of DM-Wholism. I have
also dealt with
this topic at greater detail in Essays Thirteen Part
Three and Twelve Part Six.]
As Wittgenstein noted:
Metaphysics is simply a shadow cast on 'reality' by grammar (which is a
paraphrase of Wittgenstein (2009), p.123e, §§371-73)
-- but, in this particular case, it is a shadow cast by
distorted grammar, as, indeed, Marx himself also pointed out:
"We
have shown that thoughts and ideas
acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances
and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that
exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists
and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a
consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is
a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have
only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is
abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual
world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form
a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual
life." [Marx
and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis
alone added.]
[There will
be far more on this in Part Three of Essay Three,
as well as Parts Two to Seven of Essay Twelve (summary
here), and Essay Thirteen Part Three.
See also Hacker (1997), pp.179-214.]
2b.As we saw in Essay Three
Part One, it is human
beings who create the generality here, not words, concepts or ideas.
Plainly, that is because words, concepts and ideas have no social structure,
history, intelligence or language -- whereas we, as a species, have
all four.
2c. It might be thought Davidson is
factually wrong when he said this:
"If
universals existed independently, they would take their place alongside the
things that instantiate them. Separate existence is just what would make
universals like other particulars and thus no longer universal. But doesn't this argument show Aristotle to be confused?
If universals can be talked about, they can be referred to. Yet whatever can be
referred to is a particular. Confusion seems to have set in: universals are both
particulars and at the same time necessarily distinct from particulars."
[Davidson (2005), p.90. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
In that
case, someone could object that just because something can be referred to
doesn't automatically mean it is a particular. There are collective nouns that
name groups or classes, and hence can be used to refer to non-particulars like
these -- for example,
"the team", "the committee", "the party", "the council",
etc. None of these is a particular.
In which case, referring
to them doesn't make them particulars.
Or so it could be maintained...
I have dealt
with that counter-argument in Note 3, below.
The natural response to this would be to argue that
general names aren't like
Proper Names, they have a different "mode of signification".
That is undeniable, but while it is clear that Proper Names typically refer to,
or stand for, individuals or particulars, some refer to works of art or music,
others name mountains,
oceans,
rivers, countries, towns, forest fires, hurricanes, teams, diseases, numbers,
wines, diseases, sets, non-existent deities, fictional characters, yet-to-be
discovered particles, moves in chess (such as the
Sicilian Defense, or
the Queen's Gambit),
as well as certain processes (such as the
Haber Process or the
Krebs Cycle).
[Although, some of the latter could, at a stretch, also be
Definite Descriptions.
It could be objected that several of these
name sets or collections; for instance, the Krebs Cycle is the name of countless
examples of the same process throughout nature. This means that a Proper Name,
or even a Definite Description, does not always designate a particular. I have
dealt with that response below. As a side note, Hegel appears to deny such
subject terms refer to individuals (just particulars of a certain type);
on that, see Aquila (1973). I will examine what the latter has to say in Essay
Twelve Part Six, although I have already covered some of the background to this
in
Appendix D of Essay Three Part One.]
However, having said that, our use of such language is still rather complex
(on that see Baker and Hacker (2005, pp.227-49)), and it is far from clear what general names
actually succeed in naming. Even to raise
such a question would be to give the game away, since, obviously, it trades on
the suppressed assumption that general terms are just Proper Names writ small!
Plainly, that would be to model the denotation of
general names on the way Proper
Names refer to whatever they denote. In turn, it would suggest general names (common
nouns, etc.) should also be viewed as referring expressions, denoting an
individual of some sort -- be this a 'Form', 'Universal', 'abstraction', class, group, natural kind,
"range of values", set, Idea, 'Category' or 'Concept'. So, even though
we
use such phrases as, "the set of…", "the
class of…", or "the natural kind…", whose referents are supposedly named by a relevant
'general noun' (such as "number", "table", "animal", "planet" or "molecule"
-- as in, for example, "the class of planets" or "the set of numbers"), the use of the definite article
clearly
neutralises the generality that some imagine such terms could be used to express.
Hence, countless
abstract particulars -- such as, "the Universal", "the set of…", or "the
class of…", or "the natural kind…" -- would supposedly become the referents of these 'general names', a grammatical
slide that only succeeds in cancelling their generality.
That is because they would now operate just like Proper Names, even if their mode of
signification appears to be different or more complicated.
Of course, giving such
'abstractions' aProper Name begs the question --, i.e., that there is just one 'thing'
there to
be named, in the first place. In that case, "Table" would become the Proper
Name of the set of all tables, just as "Cat" would designate the set of all cats.
Despite the
existence of an ancient grammatical/logical
tradition that treats general nouns as general names (an approach which
is itself based on the metaphysical theories questioned in Parts
One and Two of Essay
Three), as we have
seen, we may only concur if we, too, seek to undermine the facility we have in
language for using such terms to express generality (along the lines outlined in
Part One).
It could be
objected that classes and sets, for example, aren't necessarily, or even
typically, singular, but are composite or compound in
nature, and, as such, can include or encompass an indefinite number of elements/members. In that case, when a predicate
designates the extension of a class, it is neither naming it, nor referring to
it as a single 'entity'.
[The extension of a class is every object
belonging to that class; so, the extension of the class human being is every
human being.]
Of course, it
isn't
too clear whether predicates designate anything. If someone says "The boss is a
crook", the use of "...is a crook" isn't to designate, it is to describe.
[On that, see Slater (2000).] Moreover, the Proper Names given to human beings
designate individuals who are also collections of limbs, organs,
cells and molecules. The same can be said when we name, for instance, a molecule. It
remains a particular even though it is itself compound, made of many atoms.
Hence,
that (in the main) doesn't prevent a compound individual from
being a particular. The same applies to the nouns we supposedly use to 'designate' sets, classes,
collections or 'natural kinds' -- they become Proper Names (and hence singular
terms) if we treat them as
referring expressions in this way. [That takes care of the objection aired
above, in
Note 2c, and
earlier.]
Once again, turning
description into designation
would be to repeat the errors analysed in
Part One of this
Essay; that is, it would be to model all meaningful discourse on the naming
relation, except, in this case, using
euphemisms
like "designate" as some sort of fig-leaf to hide that fact.
"The open sentence 'x is a spider' determines a class only
because 'spider' signifies a kind of thing. It is by being one of that
kind...that a value of x is a member of the class. To identify something as a
spider, one must know what a spider is, that is, what kind of thing 'spider'
signifies. Kinds of things can come to be or cease to be. The chemical elements,
kinds of substances, are believed to have evolved. The motorbike -- the kind of
vehicle known as a motorbike -- was invented about 1880. The dodo is extinct.
There is no obvious way of producing sentences equivalent to these in terms of
classes. The class of dodos and the class of dead dodos are not identical:
though all dodos are dead, a dead dodo is not a dodo.... Since a kind is to be found wherever
there are particular things of the kind, it can have various geographical
locations. The lion is found in East Africa. Lions are found in East Africa. It
makes no difference whether we say 'the lion' or whether we say 'lions': what is
meant is the kind of animal. To say that it can be seen in captivity far from
its remaining natural habitats does not contradict the statement that it is
found in East Africa. A kind is not a class: the class of lions is nowhere to be
found...." [Cowley (1991), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged. The rest of this section of Cowley's book is
highly relevant, too.]
On this,
see also, Ryle (1949). The Philosopher,
Gilbert Ryle,
labelled this widespread logical and philosophical error, the "Fido-Fido
Fallacy". That description highlighted the (unsupported) supposition that to every word there must
'correspond
something in reality' (abstract or concrete) that is designated or named by that
word -- i.e., each term was the Proper Name of a 'something', somewhere...
[Ryle's argument is
summarised
here. (This links to an article by
Yorick Wilks --
who was, at one time, a
student of Wittgenstein's -- accessible
here as a PDF.)]
5.
It is arguable that, for all
their apparent sophistication, modern 'scientific' theories of mind and
language (cybernetically-, cognitively-, physicalistically-, neurologically-,
physiologically-, or psychologically-orientated)
haven't
advanced much beyond this point. That contentious claim won't be expanded
upon or substantiated
here (it has been defended in depth in Essay Thirteen
Part Three and in the two books
mentioned below).
This entire approach to the Philosophy of
Mind has been analysed in detail (and characterised in the above terms,
too) in Bennett and Hacker (2008, 2022).
6.We saw the
life drained out of general terms in Part One of this Essay, with all those
lists.
6a0.
For instance, witness the way DM-theorists speak about logic as a study
of 'the
laws of thought', "the science of cognition" or "the science of thought".
Here are just a few examples, beginning with Engels:
"In every epoch, and
therefore also in ours, theoretical thought is a historical product, which at
different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different
contents. The science of thought is therefore, like every other, a historical
science, the science of the historical development of human thought. And this is
of importance also for the practical application of thought in empirical fields.
Because in the first place the theory of the laws of thought is by no means an
'eternal truth' established once and for all, as philistine reasoning imagines
to be the case with the word 'logic'." [Engels
(1954), p.43. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases added.]
"As soon as each special
science is bound to make clear its position in the great totality of things and
of our knowledge of things, a special science dealing with this totality is
superfluous. That which still survives, independently, of all earlier philosophy
is the science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics.
Everything else is subsumed in the positive science of nature and history." [Engels
(1976), p.31.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Logic is the science of
cognition. It is the theory of knowledge…. The laws of logic are the reflections
of the objective in the subjective consciousness of man.... [These] embrace
conditionally, approximately, the universal, law-governed character of eternally
moving and developing nature."
[Lenin (1961),
p.182. Bold emphasis
alone added.]
"Hegel himself viewed
dialectics precisely as logic, as the science of the forms of human
cognition.... What does logic express? The
law of the external world or the law of consciousness? The question is posed
dualistically [and] therefore not correctly [for] the laws of logic express the
laws (rules, methods) of consciousness in its active relationship to the
external world.... Thought operates by its own
laws, which we can call the laws of logic...." [Trotsky (1986), pp.75, 87, 106.
Trotsky is apparently referring to Hegel's Introduction to The Science
of Logic (i.e., Hegel (1999),
pp.43-64).
Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
"Modern philosophy, beginning
with Bacon of Verulam
and closing with Hegel, carries on a constant struggle with the Aristotlean
(sic) logic. The product of this struggle, the outcome of philosophy, does not
deny the old rules of traditional logic, but adds a new and decidedly higher
circle of logical perception to the former ones. For the sake of better
understanding it may be well to give to this circle a special title, the special
name of 'theory of understanding,' which is sometimes called 'dialectics.' In
order to demonstrate the essential contents of this philosophical product by an
investigation of the fundamental laws of traditional logic and to explain it
thereby, I refer once more to the teacher of elementary logic, Dittes.
"Under the caption of
'Principles of Judgment' he teaches: 'Since judging, like all thinking, aims at
the perception of truth, the rules have been sought after by which this purpose
might be accomplished. As universally applicable rules, as principles or laws of
thought, the following four have been named:
'(1) The law of uniformity (identity).
'(2) The law of contradiction.
'(3) The law of the excluded third.
'(4) The law of adequate cause.'...
"I
have just declared that logic so far did not know that the perception produced
by its principles does not offer us truth itself, but only a more or less
accurate picture of it. I have furthermore contended that the positive outcome
of philosophy has materially added to the clearness of the portrait of the human
mind.
Logic claims to be 'the doctrine of the forms and laws of thought.'
Dialectics, the product of philosophy, aims to be the same, and its first
paragraph declares: Not thought produces truth, but being, of which thought is
only that part which is engaged in securing a picture of truth. The fact
resulting from this statement may easily confuse the reader, viz., that the
philosophy which has been bequeathed to us by logical dialectics, or dialectic
logic, must explain not alone thought, but also the original of which thought is
a reflex."
[Dietzgen (1906),
pp.385-88. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at this
site; several paragraphs merged; link and bold emphases added. As I demonstrated
in Essay Four Part One, the
above comments are about as accurate as the average Tory Party election video.
Dietzgen is here quoting
a certain
Dr
Friedrich Dittes, who wasn't a logician, he was an Austro-German
educator/psychologist.]
"We
previously stressed the reactionary role of the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle. Now we shall speak of its great progressive role. This resides in the
fact that the ruling classes of Athens at that time believed the aim of the
exploitation of slave labor and their class rule to be the free development of
human capacities, above all, the development of reason. This is closely
connected with the fact that this slave production was not ultimately and
predominantly commodity production, not production for the sake of surplus value
like capitalist production. Its chief aim was production for individual use,
production of use values. From this it followed that the ruling class was not
absorbed in business or industry, but conceived its ideal to be the development
of art and of science. Thus arose the extraordinary great interest in the
investigation of human reason, in
the discovery of the laws of thought.
Through this activity the Greeks created a new epoch in the general development
of history.
As represented by Aristotle they built up the doctrine of the forms and laws of
thought, known as formal logic.
They also laid the foundation for what is called dialectics. Wherein dialectics
and formal logic differ, we shall soon see.
The science of the laws of thought, formal logic, reached its highest point with
Aristotle.
It was here developed so broadly and fully that it was not until the beginning
of the 19th century that the German philosopher, Hegel, could make a significant
and decisive advance over it.
"I will now briefly explain what formal logic is and how it differs from
dialectics.
Formal logic can be defined as the theory of the laws of thought without regard
to the content of thought.
The theory of thinking or logic describes how concepts are built and wherein the
different concepts differ from each other in regard to form. It deals with the
different kinds of propositions and, ultimately, with the different kinds and
forms of inferences, of syllogisms. Logic seeks to teach how to think
correctly."
[Thalheimer (1936), pp.87-88.
Bold emphases added. As Essay Four Part
One has also shown, the characterisation of FL (and even AFL) that
Thalheimer is about to unleash on his readers is entirely fictional.]
[FL = Formal Logic; AFL =
Aristotelian FL.]
"[T]he science of the thought
process. Logicians investigate the activities of the thought process which goes
on in human heads and formulate the laws, forms and interrelations of those
mental processes." [Novack (1971), p.17.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Whatever thoughts we think,
and whatever language they are expressed in, they must satisfy the basic
requirements of the reflection of reality in thought. These requirements give
rise to the laws of thought, to principles of logic. For thoughts are
reflections of the real world, and in the process of reflection, as Marx
said, the material world is translated into forms of thought. The process of
reflection and translation has its own laws -- the laws of thought, the
principles of logic.... Logical
principles are laws of thought, not laws of reality; they are not laws of
material processes, but the laws of the reflection of material processes."
[Cornforth (1963), pp.50-52. Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
"A view that is
often encountered among dialectical materialists is that formal logic is
applicable to static situations, but since, in reality, nothing is static,
formal logic is superseded by dialectical logic, which permits logical
contradictions. Within the framework of this view, thought is the appropriation
(in the mind) of the objectively existing material world, while dialectical
logic, that is, dialectics taken as logic, must be considered to be the laws of
thought (or correct thinking). Thus, in the approximation where things are
viewed as static, formal logic becomes the laws of
thought, equally in approximation. When, however, things are viewed in their
motion, change, and development, dialectical logic becomes properly the laws of
thought." [Marquit (1990), quoted from
here.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Formal
logic intended universal validity for the laws of thought.
And indeed, without universality, thought would be a private, non-committal
affair, incapable of understanding the smallest sector of existence. Thought is
always more and other than individual thinking; if I start thinking of
individual persons in a specific situation, I find them in a supra-individual
context of which they partake, and I think in general concepts. All objects of
thought are universals. But it is equally true that the supra-individual
meaning, the universality of a concept, is never merely a formal one; it is
constituted in the interrelationship between the (thinking and acting) subjects
and their world. Logical abstraction is also sociological abstraction. There is
a logical mimesis which formulates
the laws of thought
in protective accord with the laws of society, but it is only one mode of
thought among others. [Marcuse
(1968), p.115; bold emphases added.]
"Obviously the forms of thought are expressed (and realized) in
language, in forms of language, but the main difference between this error and
others which would be worse, but are also especially unpardonable for
specialists in logic, is overlooked. It is impossible to put the identity sign
between forms of thought and forms of expression of thought unless we put both
feet on the ground of the old philosophical prejudice according to which
language in general (in the broadest sense) is the one 'external form' in which
thought is realized, 'manifested,' 'becomes explicit,' and hence thought is also
investigated. In that case, indeed, forms and norms of 'language' would be also
uniquely accessible to observation and investigation of the 'forms of thought,'
its logical norms.
However, this prejudice, as given and well-known, is fraught with sad
consequences for the science of thought, in particular, a threat of the complete
degeneration of logic as a science investigating general and necessary forms and
laws of thought, into purely subjective 'rules,' not having and not being able
to have any objective basis and justification except that they are established
by an amicable agreement ('conventionally');
'logic' in such an interpretation is unavoidably transformed into something
resembling that convention which was previously violated by Panikovskii.
Identifying the forms of thought with forms of language, by means of the
[identity] sign whose logic was worked out by the Stoics and the Medieval
scholastics, had, finally, its historical justification, which has disappeared
into oblivion.....
Naturally, the understanding of
logic as the science of
thought,
as the science of activity which is realized not only in words, not only in
speaking and written records of this speaking, but also (and above all!) in
works, in acts of changing the external world, in experiments with fully real
things, in the process of creation of objects of labor and in changing the
relations between people, the matter begins to look essentially different from
the views of those who side with the old, pure formal logic. They are primarily
concerned not mainly with thought, but with the mode of connection of 'subject
and predicate,' with the constitution of the verbal 'definitions' of things,
with 'conjunctions of propositions,' which mutually cancel each other, and with
similar situations of a linguistic rather than logical character." [Ilyenkov
(1979), pp.123-25. Quoted from
here. Accessed
25/05/2024. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site; bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]
This mischaracterisation of logic is
disappointingly common (as a
Google search will readily confirm), so DM-supporters aren't alone in this.
On this specific topic, and why this is a serious mischaracterisation of
logic, see my comments over at Wikipedia, which
material has been re-posted
here.
But
mischaracterisations like the above don't stop there, and DM-advocates aren't alone
in this, either. As we will see in Essay Thirteen
Part Three, the vast bulk of
what passes for Cognitive Theory, Philosophy of Mind and Neuroscience these days
is locked in this neo-Cartesian Paradigm. [On that, see Bennett and Hacker (2008,
2022). See also below.]
6a.No wonderPlato had to appeal to the alleged
pre-existence of the soul to account for such 'recognitional powers'.
According to Plato, we all know (i.e., we are all not only able to identify, we
can now
(re-)cognise the Forms because we were all acquainted with them
(again on a one-to-one basis) before we were born. The shock of birth apparently resulted in our forgetting these
pre-natal encounters, which means we are no longer consciously aware
of them. Subsequently recovered, 'genuine' knowledge is
therefore a form of
recollection
-- an idea developed in detail in his dialogue, Meno (i.e.,
Plato1997h) -- on that, see
Essay Six), but (fortunately for us!) it takes a Philosopher to remind us of what we (in some
sense) already know. This is Innatism on steroids. [How onlyphilosophers are able to do this is
somewhat unclear.] In that case, our (re)cognition of the Forms --
i.e., our ability to detect/identify them in the objects that supposedly instantiate them in this world --
is rekindled because the Forms are rather like long lost
acquaintances (we had all met in our 'pre-existing life'). which we meet again this side of the
'heavenly veil'. That appears to be the case even
though these 'Forms' are 'acquaintances' of a rather peculiar sort, about which we had temporarily forgotten (or about which we had temporarily
lost all conscious awareness).
So,
Philosophy supposedly reminds us of what
we already know -- if we but knew it!
[On Platonic recollection, see the references in Note 25. There is more on this topic,
here, but especially here.
Exactly how we are supposed to be able to use general terms before we
encounter these 'illuminating Philosophers' is unclear, but Plato's famous
Allegory of the Cave is supposed to fill in some of the details. (If this Essay
were about Plato's Epistemology or his Metaphysics, I would be tempted to go
down that rabbit hole, but it isn't, so I won't.)]
It is here, in
this doctrine, that we
meet yet another pernicious corollary of Traditional Theories of Meaning:
if meaning is a function of single words, concepts, 'abstractions' or ideas, then
any such theory must be framed in terms of
one individual (or 'thing') relating anotherindividual (or
'thing') -- as one mind relates to one
concept, one idea, one 'image', one 'abstraction', one
object, one 'representation', or one 'Form' --,
just as they might do with any one of their (human) acquaintances. Knowledge and meaning
were thereby turned into, or were based on, individualrelations, relationalpowers or
inter-personal (recognitional) skills and capacities (even if it takes
philosopher to re-kindle the latter). The
Knower is somehow supposed to be connected to the Known on a one-to-one basis.
This is quintessential, bourgeois individualism
already
in Ancient Greece! And no, that isn't am egregious anachronism; it follows on from
what Marx had to say (partially quoted earlier):
"[O]ne fact is
common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite
all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms,
or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most
radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its
development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." [Marx and Engels (1968b),
p.52.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
This is a
common thread that ruins through all of Traditional Thought, and is based on the
mystical union of the Knower with the 'Mind of the Deity', later secularised and
obscured under a ton of technical jargon (if written in the 'Analytic
Tradition'), or under several tons of gobbledygook (if written in the
'Continental Philosophy'
Tradition). [Readers should check out any advanced work on Epistemology or the
Theory of Meaning for confirmation of those allegations.]
Hence, the meaning of a word
(which supposedly depicts/expresses a concept, an 'image', idea, 'universal',
'Form', or 'abstraction', or which refers to 'an object') is now related
to its intended 'target' in a way that is analogous to the
relationship that a knowing subject supposedly has with a single object.
[These days this idea is often typified by the
Signifier/Signified paradigm in
Semiotics.]
In which case, as far as 'internal cognitive
processes' are concerned, each 'Mind' is connected with its ideas or its concepts
(which, as we have seen, are all abstract objects of a rather peculiar sort) as
they individually manifest themselves to that individual. All this
allegedly takes place in the privacy
of their own 'consciousness' (especially since Descartes's ideas hit the
philosophical streets in the 17th Century). As far as 'external' connections
were concerned, cognition is supposed to deal with them -- if they exist
in the 'extra-mental world' -- by processing whatever these internal
ideas/images/abstractions are said to
'reflect in reality'. Here we find the origin of the theory that abstraction
takes place in 'the mind' of each individual as they relate to, and then
process, their own private ideas, one at a time
-- such as 'the population',
for instance.
This explains why DM-theorists repeatedly speak about 'the Knower' knowing an 'object'
-- often
using such phrases as, "things", "this thing", "thing-in-itself",
"things-in-themselves", "things-for-us", "this object",
"this body" -- and why
Engels fixated onSubject/Object
Identity and the 'identity of Thought and Being'. This spurious relation
has been fixated upon by DM-fans ever since they inherited it from the German
Idealists -- and that is because it had been as core aspect of one of the main problematics of that current in
early modern philosophy. Here is Engels (ruminating on this very 'problem'):
"The
great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is
that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early
times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies,
under the stimulus of dream apparitions came to believe that their thinking and
sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which
inhabits the body and leaves it at death -- from this time men have been driven
to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world....
But the question of the relation of thinking and being had yet another side: in
what relation do our thoughts about the world surrounding us stand to this world
itself?
Is our thinking capable of the cognition of the real world? Are we able in our
ideas and notions of the real world to produce a correct reflection of reality?
In philosophical language this question is called the question of identity of
thinking and being, and the overwhelming majority of philosophers give an
affirmative answer to this question.... The most telling refutation of this as of all other
philosophical crotchets is practice -- namely, experiment and industry. If we
are able to prove the correctness of our conception of a natural process by
making it ourselves, bringing it into being out of its conditions and making it
serve our own purposes into the bargain, then there is an end to the Kantian
ungraspable 'thing-in-itself'.
The chemical substances produced in the bodies of plants and animals remained
just such 'things-in-themselves' until organic chemistry began to produce them
one after another, whereupon the 'thing-in-itself' became a thing for us...."
[Engels (1888), pp.593-95.
Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English. Paragraphs
merged.]
"But then come the Neo-Kantian agnostics and say: We may correctly perceive the
qualities of
a thing,
but we cannot by any sensible or mental process grasp the
thing-in-itself.
This 'thing-in-itself'
is beyond our ken. To this Hegel, long since, has replied: If you know all the qualities of a thing, you know the
thing itself;
nothing remains but the fact that the said
thing
exists without us; and, when your senses have taught you that fact, you have
grasped the last remnant of the
thing-in-itself,
Kant's celebrated unknowable Ding
an sich.
To which it may be added that in Kant's time
our knowledge of natural objects
was indeed so fragmentary that he might well suspect, behind the little we knew
about each of them, a mysterious 'thing-in-itself'.
But one after another these ungraspable
things
have been grasped, analyzed, and, what is more, reproduced by
the giant progress of science; and what we can produce we certainly cannot
consider as unknowable. To the chemistry of the first half of this century,
organic substances were such mysterious
objects;
now we learn to build them up one after another from their chemical elements
without the aid of organic processes. Modern chemists declare that as soon as
the chemical constitution of no-matter-what
body
is known, it can be built up from its elements. We are still far from knowing
the constitution of the highest
organic substances,
the albuminous bodies; but there is no reason why we should not, if only after
centuries, arrive at the knowledge and, armed with it, produce artificial
albumen. But, if we arrive at that, we shall at the same time have produced
organic life, for life, from its lowest to its highest forms, is but the normal
mode of existence of albuminous bodies." [Engels
(1892). pp.381-82. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. Minor typo corrected.]
Admittedly,
Engels subjected several previous attempts to solve the 'problem of the relation of
thinking to being' to searching criticism, but he still presented his own
'solution' to it never once questioning whether it was a genuine problem -- or
if this was even an appropriate way to try to understand human cognition -- to begin
with. So, he never thought to ask whether this is a viable or
even a sensible way to approach questions concerning the nature and source of knowledge.
As such he remained trapped within the confines of a ruling-class tradition that
stretched back to the Ancient Greeks -- a one-to-one connection between the
Knower and the Known.
When knowledge
is universally seen as a relation between two 'things' -- the Knower and the
Known --, the only way that various 'solutions' to
this 'problem' could distinguish themselves from rival theories was to
(i) change the 'cast list' or (ii) modify the underlying 'mechanism', or
'process'. That is,
competitor theorists found they had to (iii) vary the interpretation
of the two 'items' either side of this relation and (iv) adjust the means by
which they were somehow
connected. So, will it be a 'mind' that is connected with its 'abstractions', 'ideas'
and 'images', or will it be a 'mind' connected with 'objects' in the world (i.e., with
'things-in-themselves')? In addition: will this be achieved by experience alone or by some
sort of 'cognitive/rational act'? Is the latter innate or learned?
Taught or self-directed? Will this be by
'intuition' or by 'association'/'constant-conjunction'/'habit'? Or will it be a combination of
several of these factors? Whatever combination finally turned out to be the one
selected by a given theorist, every solution offered throughout the history of Traditional
Thought has chosen among these elements and methods. This is the
script they all follow.
Sometimes they are
given bright and shiny new names; more recently, 'technical-sounding',
'scientific' labels (such
as, "module",
"software", "qualia", "trope", "programme", "neural net",
"byte", "meme", "codon"
or "merge").
Despite the
fanfare, every single one was connected with,
focused on, or revolved around this failed relational
paradigm invented by Plato. That is still the case.
And this also includes the theories of knowledge
concocted by Dialectical Marxists.
Here is why:
"[O]ne fact is
common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the
other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite
all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms,
or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total
disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most
radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its
development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas." [Marx and Engels (1968b),
p.52.
Bold emphasis alone added.]
Furthermore, if a theorist either accepts, appeals to,
or utilises a 'reflection theory of knowledge' (which is the case with most
DM-theorists), they will inevitably focus on 'objects'/'things' that are
'reflected' in 'consciousness'/'the mind' (perhaps in the manner described by
Cornforth, below). That is so
even if this approach to epistemology is fortified by more complex ideas about
how (correct) theories themselves 'correspond' with how things are 'in reality'
(or they so in a decreasingly 'relative' way), for example, as we see in Ruben
(1979), pp.165-99. [Ruben's attempt to rescue Lenin's epistemology will be
examined in detail in Essay Three Part Six.]
This means that 'reflection theories of
knowledge' are intimately connected with the above tradition -- i.e., that knowledge is a relation between two factors, a Knower and the
Known. Again, this will be explored in more detail in Essay Three Part Six,
where it will be shown that it undermines propositional knowledge -- and hence science
itself --, as well as throwing into doubt the social nature of
both knowledge and language. [Spoiler: that is because propositions
aren't objects. On why they aren't, see below and
here.]
Here, for example, is Lenin; in just the first one hundred-and-thirty-five pages of
MEC, he uses many of
the words and phrases mentioned above
(and this isn't an exhaustive list, either!):
"The
materialists,
we are told, recognise something unthinkable and unknowable -- 'things-in-themselves'
-- matter 'outside of experience' and outside of our knowledge. They lapse into
genuine mysticism by admitting the existence of something beyond, something
transcending the bounds of 'experience' and knowledge. When they say that
matter, by acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensations, the materialists
take as their basis the 'unknown,' nothingness; for do they not themselves
declare our sensations to be the only source of knowledge? The materialists
lapse into 'Kantianism' (Plekhanov, by recognising the existence of 'things-in-themselves,' i.e.,
things
outside of our consciousness);
they 'double' the world and preach 'dualism,' for the materialists hold that
beyond the appearance there is the
thing-in-itself;
beyond the immediate sense data there is something else, some fetish, an 'idol,'
an absolute, a source of knowledge?" [Lenin
(1972), p.10.]
"Our
Machians have written so much about the 'thing-in
itself'
that were all their writings to be collected they would result in mountains of
printed matter. The 'thing-in-itself'
is a veritable bête
noire [black
beast, something to be avoided -- RL] with
Bogdanov and Valentinov, Bazarov and Chernov, Berman and Yushkevich. There is no
abuse they have not hurled at it, there is no ridicule they have not showered on
it. And against whom are they breaking lances because of this luckless 'thing-in-itself'?
Here a division of the philosophers of Russian Machism according to political
parties begins. All the would-be Marxists among the Machians are combating Plekhanov's 'thing-in-itself';
they accuse Plekhanov of having become entangled and straying into Kantianism,
and of having forsaken Engels. (We shall discuss the first accusation in the
fourth chapter; the second accusation we shall deal with now.) The Machian Mr.
Victor Chernov, a Narodnik and a sworn enemy of Marxism, opens a direct
campaign against
Engels because
of the 'thing-in-itself.'... [I]t is not true that Engels 'is producing a refutation of the
thing-in-itself.'
Engels said explicitly and clearly that he was refuting the Kantian
ungraspable (or
unknowable)
thing-in-itself.
Mr. Chernov confuses Engels' materialist conception of the existence of
things
independently of our consciousness. In the second place, if Kant's theorem reads
that the
thing-in-itself
is unknowable, the 'converse'
theorem would be: the unknowable is
the
thing in-itself.
Mr. Chernov replaces the
unknowable by the unknown, without
realising that by such a substitution he has again confused and distorted the
materialist view of Engels!... (pp.104-09)
"Engels clearly and explicitly states that he is contesting both
Hume and Kant. Yet there is no mention whatever in Hume of 'unknowable
things-in-themselves.'
What then is there in common between these two philosophers? It is that they
both in
principle fence off 'the
appearance' from that which appears, the perception from that which is perceived
the
thing-for-us
from the 'thing-in-itself.'
Furthermore, Hume does not want to hear of the 'thing-in-itself,'
he regards the very thought of it as philosophically inadmissible, as
'metaphysics' (as the Humeans and Kantians call it); whereas Kant grants the
existence of the 'thing-in-itself,'
but declares it to be 'unknowable,' fundamentally different from the appearance,
belonging to a fundamentally different realm, the realm of the 'beyond..., inaccessible
to knowledge, but revealed to faith.... (pp.109-110)
"And if that is so, three important epistemological
conclusions follow:
1. Things exist
independently of our consciousness, independently of our perceptions, outside of
us, for it is beyond doubt that alizarin existed in coal tar yesterday and it is
equally beyond doubt that yesterday we knew nothing of the existence of this
alizarin and received no sensations from it.
2.
There is definitely no
difference in principle between the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself,
and there can be no such difference. The only difference is between what is
known and what is not yet known. And philosophical inventions of specific
boundaries between the one and the other, inventions to the effect that the
thing-in-itself is 'beyond' phenomena (Kant), or that we can and must fence
ourselves off by some philosophical partition from the problem of a world which
in one part or another is still unknown but which exists outside us (Hume) --
all this is the sheerest nonsense,..., crotchet, invention.
3. In the theory of
knowledge, as in every other branch of science, we must think dialectically,
that is, we must not regard our knowledge as ready-made and unalterable, but
must determine how knowledge emerges from ignorance, how
incomplete, inexact knowledge becomes more complete and more exact. (pp.110-11)
"Once we accept the point of view that human knowledge develops from ignorance,
we shall find millions of examples of it just as simple as the discovery of
alizarin
in coal tar, millions of observations not only in the history of science and
technology but in the everyday life of each and every one of us that illustrate
the transformation of 'things-in-themselves'
into 'things-for-us,'
the appearance of 'phenomena' when our sense-organs experience an impact from
external
objects,
the disappearance of 'phenomena' when some obstacle prevents the action upon our
sense-organs of an
object
which we know to exist. The sole and unavoidable deduction to be made from this
-- a deduction which all of us make in everyday practice and which materialism
deliberately places at the foundation of its epistemology -- is that outside us,
and independently of us,
there exist objects, things, bodies
and that our perceptions are images of the external world.... (p.111)
"What can be done with a Voroshilov whose every phrase makes
confusion worse confounded! It is sheer ignorance, Mr. Victor Chernov, not to
know that
all materialists assert the knowability of things-in-themselves.
It is ignorance, Mr. Victor Chernov, or infinite slovenliness, to skip the very
first phrase
of the thesis and not to realise that the 'objective truth'...of thinking means nothing
else than
the existence of
objects
(i.e., 'things-in-themselves') truly reflected
by thinking. It is sheer illiteracy Mr. Victor Chernov, to assert that from
Plekhanov's paraphrase (Plekhanov gave a paraphrase and not a translation) 'it
appears as though' Marx defended the other-sidedness of
thought. Because only the Humeans and the Kantians confine thought to 'this side
of phenomena.' But for all materialists, including those of the seventeenth
century whom Bishop Berkeley demolished..., 'phenomena' are 'things-for-us'
or copies of
the 'objects
in themselves.'
Of course, Plekhanov's free paraphrase is not obligatory upon those who desire
to know Marx himself, but it is obligatory to try to understand what Marx meant
and not to prance about like a Voroshilov.... Albert Lévy is a professor. And a proper professor must abuse the materialists
as being metaphysicians. For the professorial idealists, Humeans and Kantians
every kind of materialism is 'metaphysics,' because beyond the phenomenon
(appearance,
the thing-for-us)
it discerns a reality outside us. A. Lévy is therefore essentially right when he
says that in Marx's opinion there corresponds to man's 'phenomenal activity' 'an
activity of
things,'
that is to say, human practice has not only a phenomenal (in the Humean and
Kantian sense of the term), but an objectively real significance. The criterion
of practice -- as we shall show in detail in its proper place... -- has entirely
different meanings for Mach and Marx. 'Humanity partakes of the absolute' means
that human knowledge reflects absolute truth; the practice of humanity, by
verifying our ideas, corroborates what in those ideas corresponds to absolute
truth.... The reader sees that Lévy does not for a moment doubt that Marx
recognised the existence of
things-in-themselves!...
(pp.112-115)
"What two lines of philosophical tendency does Engels contrast here? One line is
that the senses give us faithful images of
things,
that we know the
things themselves, that
the outer world acts on our sense-organs. This is materialism -- with which the
agnostic is not in agreement. What then is the essence of
the agnostic's line? It is that he does
not go beyond sensations,
that he
stops on this side of phenomena, refusing
to see anything 'certain' beyond the boundary of sensations. About these
things themselves (i.e.,
about the
things-in-themselves,
the 'objects
in themselves,'
as the materialists whom Berkeley opposed called them), we can know nothing
certain -- so the agnostic categorically insists. Hence, in the controversy of
which Engels speaks the materialist affirms the
existence and knowability of
things-in-themselves.
The agnostic does
not even admit the thought of
things-in-themselves
and insists that we can know nothing certain about them.... (pp.116-17)
"To show
how absurd are the assertions of our Machians that the materialists Marx and
Engels denied the existence of
things-in-themselves
(i.e.,
things outside our sensations, perceptions,
and so forth) and the possibility of their cognition, and that they admitted the
existence of an
absolute boundary between the appearance and the
thing-in-itself,
we shall give a few more quotations from Feuerbach. The whole trouble with our
Machians is that they set about parroting the words of the reactionary
professors on dialectical materialism without themselves knowing anything either of
dialectics or of materialism....
This seems
clear enough. The world in itself is a world that exists without
us.
This materialism of Feuerbach's, like the materialism of the seventeenth century
contested by Bishop Berkeley, consisted in the recognition that 'objects
in themselves'
exist outside our mind. The an
sich (of
itself, or 'in itself') of Feuerbach is the direct opposite of the an
sich
of Kant. Let us recall the excerpt from Feuerbach already quoted, where he
rebukes Kant because for the latter the 'thing-in-itself'
is an 'abstraction without reality.' For Feuerbach the 'thing-in-itself'
is an 'abstraction with reality,'
that is, a world existing outside us, completely knowable and fundamentally not
different from 'appearance.'...
Theobjects
of our ideas are distinct from our ideas, the
thing-in-itself
is distinct from the
thing-for-us,
for the latter is only a part, or only one aspect, of the former, just as man
himself is only a fragment of the nature reflected in his ideas....
Sensation is
the result of the action of a
thing-in-itself,
existing objectively outside us, upon our sense-organs -- such is Feuerbach's
theory. Sensation is a subjective image of the objective world, of the world an
und für sich
[and also for itself -- RL]. ...All the
mysterious, sage and subtle distinctions between the phenomenon and the
thing-in-itself
are sheer philosophical balderdash. In practice each one of us has observed
times without number the simple and palpable transformation of the 'thing-in-itself'
into phenomenon, into the 'thing-for-us.'
It is precisely this transformation that is cognition. The 'doctrine' of Machism
that since we know only sensations,
we cannot know of the existence of
anything beyond the bounds of sensation, is an old sophistry of idealist and
agnostic philosophy served up with a new sauce.... (pp.129-32)
"1) The materialists of the seventeenth
century, against
whom Berkeley argues, hold that 'objects
in themselves'
are absolutely knowable, for our presentations, ideas, are only copies or
reflections of those
objects,
which exist 'outside the mind'.... 2) Feuerbach, and
J. Dietzgen after him, vigorously dispute any 'fundamental' difference between
the
thing-in-itself
and the phenomenon, and Engels disposes of this view by his brief example of the
transformation of the 'thing-in-itself'
into the 'thing-for-us.' 3) Finally, to maintain that the materialists regard
things-in-themselves
as 'always only dimly discernible in the phenomenon' is sheer nonsense, as we
have seen from Engels' refutation of the agnostic. The reason for Bogdanov's
distortion of materialism lies in his failure to understand the relation of
absolute truth to relative truth (of which we shall speak later). As regards the
'outside-of-experience'
thing-in-itself
and the 'elements of experience,' these are already the beginnings of the
Machian muddle of which we have already said enough." (pp134-35)
[The above are all from
Lenin (1972), pp.104-35. Minor typo
corrected; several paragraphs merged.
Bold emphases alone added; quotation
marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
And, here he is
in just the first half of
PN (I have omitted the scores of Hegel passages Lenin quoted -- often
approvingly -- that spoke about the "thing-in-itself", or which employed
other associated words and phrases, of the sort also mentioned
earlier):
"This is very profound: the Thing-in-itself and
its conversion into a
Thing-for-others
(cf. Engels
). The
Thing-in-itself
is altogether an
empty, lifeless abstraction. In life, in movement, each
thing
and everything is
usually both
'in
itself'
and 'for
others'
in relation to an Other, being transformed from one state to the other."
[Lenin (1961),
p.109.]
"The
Thing-in-itself
is related to Being as the essential to the non-essential?...
"Transcendental idealism...places 'all determinateness of things
(both with regard to form and to content) in consciousness...accordingly, from
this point of view, it falls within me, the subject, that I see the leaves of a
tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not as square, and taste
sugar as sweet and not as bitter; that I determine the first and second strokes
of a clock as successive and not as simultaneous, and determine the first to be
neither the cause nor the effect of the second, and so forth'.... Hegel further
makes the reservation that he has here investigated only the question of the
Thing-in-itself
and [external reflection]." [Ibid.,
pp.149-50.]
"Hegel in favour of the cognisability of the
Thing-in-itself."
[Ibid., p.173.]
"Apparently, Hegel perceives scepticism here in the fact that
Hume and Kant do not see the appearingThing-in-itself
in 'phenomena,' divorce phenomena from objective truth, doubt the objectivity of
cognition, remove, [everything empirical] from the [Thing-in-itself]...."
[Ibid., p.205.]
"Elements of dialectics.
One could perhaps present these elements in greater detail as
follows:
"1.
the objectivity of
consideration (not examples, not divergencies, but the
Thing-in-itself).
"2. the entire totality of
the manifold
relations of this thing to others.
"3. the development of
this thing, (phenomenon, respectively), its own movement, its own life.
"4. the internally contradictory tendencies (and sides)
in this thing.
"5. the thing
(phenomenon, etc.) as the sum and
unity of opposites....
"8.
the relations of
each thing
(phenomenon, etc.) are not only manifold, but general, universal.
Each thing
(phenomenon, process, etc.) is connected with every
other...
"11. the endless process of the
deepening of man's knowledge of
the thing,
of phenomena, processes, etc., from appearance to essence and from less profound
to more profound essence." [Ibid.,
pp.220-21. Bold emphases alone added; quotation marks altered to conform
with the conventions adopted at this site. I have replaced any German words
Lenin used with their English equivalents as suggested by the editors, and
indicated by the use of square brackets.]
Finally
(with respect to Lenin), we have already met these two passages:
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they
remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the
Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both
phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation. Human
concepts are subjective in their abstractness, separateness, but objective as a
whole, in the process, in the sum-total, in the tendency, in the source." [Ibid., p.208. Bold emphasis alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
"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 added;
paragraphs merged.]
"A and B, and the relations between them, are all real. The Universe is
one, and is as a whole absolutely self-determined, but no part of it is
absolutely self-determined. All that is real exists, and all that is real is
determined, that is, every part of the Universe is in mutually determining A-B
relations with the rest of the Universe. Everything therefore is knowable,
for the meaning of knowable is simply this, the possibility of expressing a
determining relation between that unknown but knowable thing, and a thing
already known. This possibility is given in our premises. This is our
premise: that the Universe is a material unity, and that this is a becoming.
"This material unity of becoming cannot be established by thought alone.
It is established by thought in unity with practice, by thought emerging
from practice and going out into practice. Phenomena are exhibited by the
thing-in-itself, and if we can by practice force the thing-in-itself to exhibit
phenomena according to our desire, then we know this much about the
thing-in-itself -- that in certain circumstances it will exhibit certain
phenomena. This is positive knowledge about the thing-in-itself. When we can in
practice achieve all possible transformations, we have all possible knowledge
about the thing-in-itself. Thus we prove that the universe is a material unity
by proving in practice the material basis of all phenomena. This material basis
is the thing-in-itself, or the like content of any phenomena exhibited by the
thing-in-itself. This proof of material unity is secured by change and is
therefore a process of becoming, of differentiation, of the emergence of the
new. But it is a proof of unity, of the sameness, likeness, or determinism in
all phenomena....
"But if the newness of quality, the unlikeness, as it emerges, is time, the
oldness, the likeness, is space. Qualities do not arrange themselves
homogeneously in space, space is the homogeneity in their qualities. Space is
quantity or known quality as it remains unchanged; it is therefore the
thing-in-itself, the material unity of the Universe. The Universe is a
spatial Universe. Space therefore is an aspect of matter, which is precisely
what relativity physics has established by practice. Mass-energy, or the
likeness in phenomena, generates space. This is established by practice.
All laws of development, of evolution, of difference, of quality, of aesthetics,
of consciousness, are temporal. All laws of conservation, of metrics, of
comparability, of universal and unchanging relations, are spatial....
"We
now see that there is a universal dialectic of reality, a mode of movement which
is prior to time, space, life and all other events and qualities. This
dialectic proceeds as follows. First we have a quality. But a quality is a
relation between subject and object, between A, subject, and not-A, the rest of
the Universe. But the rest of the Universe not-A, has as its object A, to A it
is subject and to it A is the rest of the Universe. The most 'primitive'
quality we take therefore has two terms and a relation, this relation is
involved in 'becoming' and ensures that the process of reality is open and
'infinite' at both ends. Our most infinite regress into the past brings us
therefore to a quality, to an event. We cannot imagine anything simpler, for
such a simplex one-term thing would be absolutely self-determined and could not
be known-by-us, since knowing is a mutually determining relation between us
and the thing. Any known event is already a quality, is already a
subject-object relation. It already involves within itself an antagonism which
can generate the means by which it is known.
"We may take either term as primary and the other as dependent on it. Since we
can take either term as primary, neither can be primary. They may be regarded as
simultaneous. But they are not independent terms, for they are connected by a
relation. The simplest quality therefore reveals itself as a subject-object
relation. But the process of becoming involves that a new quality emerges
(or event occurs) not by the increment of something already there, but abruptly,
exhibiting something altogether unlike. But it also involves that this new
state contains the first old quality in addition to the unlike new. This new
state or quality is also analysable as a two-term relation, and must in turn be
succeeded by a new quality....
"This
movement is not imposed on becoming by thought. It is the only way becoming can
really become, conformably to our reason and experience; and it is in our reason
because our experience is part of this becoming. This movement contains within
it time and space, memory and perception, quality and quantity, all of which
entities are abstractions from it. Time is the difference between synthesis and
the preceding relation, space is the similarity between them.The
dialectic movement of the Universe does not occur in space and time, it gives
rise to them.
The external world does not impose dialectic on thought, nor does thought
impose it on the external world. The relation between subject and object,
ego and Universe is itself dialectic. Man, when he attempts to think
metaphysically, merely contradicts himself, and meanwhile continues to live and
experience reality, dialectically." [Caudwell (1938b), quoted from
here. Bold emphases added. Several paragraphs merged; a
handful of minor typos corrected. The above continues for several more
thousand words!]
And, here is
Maurice Cornforth (in a section of his book
entitled "Things In Themselves"):
"Many philosophers have maintained
that our knowledge is limited to the appearances of things in our own
minds, and that 'things in themselves', things as they really are 'in
themselves' and independently of how they appear to us, must be unknowable.
According to such philosophers there is an impassable gulf between the data of
sense given in our consciousness on the one hand and the things existing
independently of our consciousness, things in themselves, on the other
hand. And many not only deny that we can know things in themselves but
also that such things exist at all. And yet already in judgments directly
based on perception we are gaining knowledge of things in themselves --
not in the first place complete or profound knowledge but knowledge at least of
various separate aspects and external relations of things. We gain this
knowledge precisely by means of the data of sense. And when by further
investigations and reasoning we reach conclusions about the relations of
things, their properties, the processes into which they enter and their laws
of motion, then we are gaining deeper knowledge of the very same things,
existing independently of our consciousness of them, which before we knew only
superficially.
"There is, then, no gulf between
things in themselves and their appearances or 'phenomena'. We know things
precisely by means of their appearances to us, and the more we study the
appearances the more we can find out about the things. Nor is there any
gulf between the appearances of things and their reality, since the appearance
is a manifestation of the reality, and we do not know the reality separately
from the appearance but only through it. 'If you know all the qualities of a
thing, you know the thing itself', wrote Engels in the Introduction to
Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. [Cornforth is here quoting
Engels (1892), pp.381-82,
reproduced above -- RL.] We know
about the real properties and relations of things by practice and study. By
finding out what we can do with things, and by studying the various appearances
of their various aspects under many conditions, we gain more and more knowledge
of the things themselves. Hence all our knowledge is knowledge of real things
which certainly exist independently of their appearances to us. 'The materialist
affirms the existence and knowability of things in themselves', wrote Lenin, in
Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, chapter 2. [Cornforth is here quoting
Lenin (1972), p.117,
reproduced above -- RL.] First we
know things superficially through perception, and then more deeply and
comprehensively by thought operating with the data of perception. There is, and
can be, no difference between the things known to us and things in themselves.
The only difference is between what is known and what is not yet known, and
between what is known only superficially in certain of its aspects and what is
known more thoroughly." [Cornforth (1963), pp.176-77. Bold emphases alone added.
Paragraphs merged, quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site.]
One might
well wonder how it is possible for a Marxist like Cornforth (or even Engels and
Lenin, whom he quotes) to believe that,
"There is, then, no gulf between things in
themselves and their appearances or 'phenomena'." Does this mean that if sticks
look likethey bend in water, and objects seem to shrink
when they recede from us, and the Sun appears to rise each morning, and
price looks like it is an accurate reflection of value, they must all
true? Each would seem to be the case if there is no 'gulf' between appearance and
'things-in-themselves'? [Irony intended.]
If so, why on earth did Marx say the following?
"But
all science would be superfluous if the
outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided."
[Marx
(1981), p.956; Marx (1998), p.804. Bold
emphasis added.]
[Not that I agree with Marx on this, but DM-fans
often approvingly quote this passage.]
And why would
countless other
Marxists tell us there is a 'contradiction' between the way 'things appear'
and 'essence'? Or that 'appearances' are or can be misleading?
It wouldn't
be difficult to illustrate a similar, positivelyneurotic obsession with
"things"/"objects" (etc.) -- which each Knower 'knows' by entering
onto a relation with 'it' via 'reflection' or 'sensation' (a "thing-in-itself", an
"image" of it or a 'concept' under which it supposedly falls, etc.) -- in the
work of theorists drawn from all areas of Dialectical Marxism. Or, indeed,
right across
HCD, Academic Marxist literature. Here for example is Andrew
Sayer:
"In most
discussion of this [i.e., knowledge and the relation between 'subject' and
'object' -- RL], the term 'subject' (or sometimes 'knowing-subject') refers to
the observer or investigator or simply 'thinker', while the 'object' is defined
as the thing being studied." [Sayer (1992), p.22. Bold emphasis added.
The page number is completely different in the Second Corrected Edition, i.e.,
Sayer (2010), pp.14-15.]
Although
Sayer accepts this characterisation, he advanced two qualifications: (i) He
doesn't restrict the 'knowing-subject' simply to scientists, and (ii) He also includes an older meaning of 'subject',
which implies the involvement of a creative agent (thereby rejecting the idea that knowledge is
purely passive or
contemplative). The bottom line, though, is that he too has bought into this ancient
mischaracterisation of knowledge (which sees it as a subject-object relation
between 'the knower' and 'the known'), only now with added 'dialectical spin'. He earlier rejected
a restriction of knowledge to the "knowing-that" form (which he connects with
the 'contemplative' paradigm), adding that the "knowing-how" form should also be
taken into account (p.14); a point I have also made. [On that, see Essay
Thirteen Part Three.]
Nevertheless, Sayer has both retained and bought into the old picture of knowledge as
a
relation (in the above sense), and, indeed, has directly connected it with what
has elsewhere in this Essay been called 'bourgeois
individualism', with his reference to the "knowing subject". Only this time
it is an active individual not a passive one. Big difference!
Active bourgeois individualism! Hence, Sayer remains trapped within an individualism approach to knowledge. [I have said much more about
his book in Part
One -- e.g., here
and here.]
In this
respect, Sayer isn't a lone figure in Marxist academia, either; there are
countless others. For example, the 'traditional approach to knowledge' blights an otherwise
careful, detailed and nuanced study -- Ruben (1979) -- where there are far too many references
to the relation between 'minds' and the 'objects' of knowledge, between
'things' and 'consciousness', to list here. [I
will say much more about Ruben's (untypically high quality) book in Essay Three Part Six, where the relevant
work of several other Academic Marxist will also be scrutinised.]
Finally, here are three randomly-chosen passages off the Internet (there are
scores more like it!) followed by one from the Marxist Internet Archive, that
attempt to explain Hegel's use of the word "semblance" (which we will meet
again later), in similar terms:
"Hegel
discovered the method of dialectics in which mediation between the subject or
thinking mind and the objective world takes place. Hegel describes this
whole process in great detail; in the beginning there lies an immediacy, or the
moment when the process of mediation has yet to begin between the subject and
the thing-in-itself.... Hegel explains in detail this whole process of
appropriating the object. At the end of this process the
'thing-in-itself', mediating with the subjective mind becomes the 'thing for
itself'." [Quoted from
here; accessed
25/05/2024. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged. This was taken from the
so-called 'Marxist University', which is in fact an
IMT front. The IMT
is currently in the process of rebranding itself as The Revolutionary
Communist Party. This new 'party' has zero to do with the old RCP, which broke
away from the UK-SWP back in the 1970s and later morphed into the group behind
the far right, Koch
brothers-funded, libertarian Spiked!
magazine.]
"So, as a particularly simple example, if the idea we were examining through
dialectics was temperature, then one of the contradictions that helps us better
understand temperature would be the contradiction between hot and cold (sic!).
If the idea was war, then we might examine it as a series
of advances and retreats to better grasp what happened. Things are not
things-in-themselves, they exist as a part of something else, too. The
reason we understand things as contradictions comes from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Hegel.... Remember that a contradiction is a 'unity of opposites', or
mutually antagonistic forces that drive development, yet also together comprise
a larger whole." [Quoted from
here; accessed 18/06/2021. Bold
emphasis added.]
"The Doctrine of Essence is the most important part of Hegel’s philosophy,
because it is here that he explains the dialectic in detail. Human thought does
not stop at what is immediately given in sense perception, but seeks to go
beyond it and grasp
the thing-in-itself.
The contradiction which lies at the heart of all things is expressed as the idea
of the unity of opposites.
Dialectically, what seem to be mutually exclusive phenomena are actually
inseparable." [Quoted from
here, accessed 12/01/2022. Bold emphasis added.]
"Illusory Being [or semblance] is a category
of Hegel's philosophy denoting the
sceptical moment when an object is first perceived. The Dialectic of
Reflection is the dialectic of the essential and unessential. Illusory Being is
the negative moment in this dialectic -- the unessential. Against the position
of scepticism, Hegel says that it must be recognised that the unessential is
Being's unessential, that is, the thing is expressed in the unessential as
well as in the essential, only the unessential is not yet recognised for what it
is." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/02/2017. Italic emphasis and link in the original;
bold added.]
Hence, regarding knowledge as a relation between 'the Knower and 'the Known', the latter
half of which often
takes the form of an 'idea', an 'image', an 'abstraction', a 'concept', an
object' or a 'thing'/'thing-in-itself' (which are all the result of
'reflection',
'sensation' or 'perception') is mainstream among Dialectical Marxists. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this approach
undermines propositional knowledge (which clearly has a knock-on effect,
undermining science itself), with
outright scepticism soon following in its wake.
[On the significance of
several of these observations, see
Essay Six, here. I have said
much more about 'Subject/Object Identity' in Note 18a, below; see also Note 25. The above comments in no
way minimise the importance of perception and sensation, they merely question
the role they play in traditional epistemology and the theory that knowledge is
a relation of some sort or description.]
The problem
with this ancient approach to knowledge, which the above dialecticians have
clearly failed to appreciate -- let alone notice --, is that it is
characterised in terms of the relation between an individual and an
'object'/'thing', totally undercutting the social nature of knowledge and
language, which is a (scientific) theory Marxists elsewhere at least claim to
accept. Once again, this should surprise no one since this entire family of
traditional philosophical doctrines is based on, and was motivated by, atomistic theories of language
-- covered in Essay Three Part One, Essay Twelve (across all its Parts), and
Thirteen Part Three -- that were themselves based on abstractionist theories
of cognition and meaning. Nor should it surprise anyone given the additional
fact that, in its post-Renaissance form, this approach received a major boost
from ideological currents set in motion by the rise of Capitalism, with its
attendant bourgeois individualism,
covered earlier.
Even when
the importance of propositional
knowledge is admitted by a few DM-theorists (such as David-Hillel Ruben and Alex
Callinicos), propositions are themselves reified as objects. What happens
then is that the 'knowing-subject' is put in a relation with a
'sentence-as-object', a 'fact' it is supposed to 'reflect', or even a psychological/neurological
'embodiment' of that sentence in the
CNS/'mind' (i.e., a
yet-to-be-indentified 'mental process' or 'structure').
Again, as
Meredith William pointed out in connection with Vygotsky's theory (but this
comment also applies to every DM-theorist covered in this Essay, and, indeed, at
this site who has written on this topic):
"Vygotsky attempts to combine
a social theory of cognition development with an individualistic account of
word-meaning.... [But] the social theory of development can only succeed if it
is combined with a social theory of meaning." [Williams (1999b), p.275.
Bold emphasis added.]
But,
dialecticians have only succeeded in shooting themselves in the foot over this when
they bought into the
Platonic/Christian/Cartesian Paradigm, which characterises the 'mind' as a
surrogate human being that resides inside each skull (an
homunculus, also covered
earlier), and when they accepted atomistic theories of language motivated by and based on
abstractionism. In which case, there is no chance they will ever be able to
do what Williams suggests while they remain trapped inside this ancient paradigm.
However, these
Forms, these Platonic 'acquaintances', are not only
total strangers, they are also completely featureless phantoms.
[Once more, the significance of that remark will emerge when the rest of
Essay Three has finally been published.] Furthermore, since such 'ideas' (such
'objects of knowledge') plainly don't carry a
'Metaphysical Identity Card' around with them (so to speak), how a single
Knower is
capable of
cognising, let alone (re)cognising, these formless apparitions is a
complete mystery, to say the least. Would any of my readers recognise
someone they had never seen before? Still worse would they recognise something
for which they don't even possess the words, which must be the case with these formless spectres? Anyone
who thinks they would recognise them might like to try to recognise one of the
Meskonators mentioned in
Essay Six.
[As hinted above, this 'problem'
re-surfaces in more
recent
Nativist theories of language that are based, for example, on the work of
Noam Chomsky
-- with his attempt to re-habilitate the Platonic/Cartesian Paradigm. On that, see Cowie (1997, 2002,
2008) and Sampson (2005). See also a summary of the points Sampson makes,
here. (Having
said that, I
hesitate to refer anyone to Sampson's work since he is a right-wing Tory who
holds some highly offensive beliefs about race, among several other topics. Fortunately, that doesn't appear to have affected his
work in
this area of linguistics.) Furthermore, the article by Yorick Wilks
(mentioned in Note 3, above) takes
Jerry Fodor
to task for committing somewhat similar errors.]
6b.
In fact, the insurmountable 'problems' the 'Doctrine of the
Trinity' introduced into Christian Theology arose directly out of earlier
attempts by Plato and Aristotle
to account for generality; more specifically because of the 'Forms', 'Universals' and 'Substances'
they invented. Of course,
this
fact hasn't
been
lost on
anti-TrinitarianChristians
for many centuries.
7.
This isn't to suggest that there
aren't, or haven't been, countless 'solutions' to these 'classical brainteasers', only that
they have
resisted every single one of them for nigh on 2400 years. Part of the reason for that
is summarised in Note 6a,
above.
Plainly, an entirely new approach is now long overdue.
Fortunately,
one such was suggested
a few generations ago, the central plank of which was that 'philosophical
problems' like this may be resolved by
dissolving them, by identifying the logical, syntactic and semantic errors
that originally breathed life into them -- and even now still keep them on life support.
Unsurprisingly, this new approach emphasised a return to ordinary discourse,
also recommended by Marx
himself. This novel approach possesses the following advantage (at least as far as Marxists are concerned!):
it re-situates language, science and the search for knowledge in the
public domain, and hence onhome turf for the left,
basing it on the material language and experience of the working class.
[This topic
will be examined in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two
and Seven (summary
here).]
"Mao
had to learn by rote the Confucian classics, then an essential part of education
in China, at which he was exceptionally talented.
He was known by his pupils as a diligent and smart student, gathering a good
foothold in Chinese history and learning to write legible calligraphy. Mao
absolutely adored reading, flipping through pages well into the night when the
entire village was asleep." [Quoted from
here; accessed
14/08/2024. Bold emphasis added.]
Mao had also been a student of Daoism (i.e., The
Yijing, or I Ching), which, given its similarity to DM, should hardly
surprise us.
Here are
just some of the relevant core tenets of Confucianism:
"The
dynamic and holistic perspective of the Confucian
worldview may offer significant contributions in this regard, enlarging our
sense of theethical
terrain and moral concerns, and providing a rich source for rethinking our own
relationship with nature. Confucianism's
organic holisms can give us a special appreciation for the interconnectedness of
all life forms and renew our sense of the sacredness
of this intricate web of life. Moreover, the Confucian
understanding of the dynamic vitalism underlying cosmic processes offers us a
basis for reverencing nature. From a Confucian
perspective, nature cannot be thought of as simply composed of inert, dead
matter. Rather, all life forms share the element of qi or
material force. This shared psycho-physical entity
becomes the basis for establishing a reciprocity between the human and nonhuman
worlds....
"The
Chinese have a term to describe the vibrancy
and aliveness of the universe. This is qi or ch’i,
which is translated in a variety of ways in the classical Confucian
tradition as spirit, air, or breath, and later in the Neo-Confucian
tradition as material
force, matter energy, vital force. It describes the realization that the
universe is alive with vitality and resonates with life.
What is especially remarkable about this ancient and enduring realization of the
Chinese people is that qi is
a unified field embracing both matter and energy.
It is thus a matrix containing both material and spiritual life
from the smallest particle to the largest visible reality. Qi moves
through the universe from the constituent particles of matter to mountains and
rocks, plants and trees, animals, and birds,
fish and insects. All the elements -- air, earth, fire, and water -- are
composed of qi.
We humans, too, are alive with qi.
It makes up our body and spirit as one integrated whole, and it activates our
mind-and-heart, which is
a single unified reality in Chinese thought....
"Li is
the inner ordering principle of reality that is embedded in the heart of qi.
The Chinese character for li suggests
working on the geological veins found in the mineral jade, which must first be
discovered, and then carved adeptly. Li is
comparable to the principle of logos,
whereby all of reality is imprinted with structure and intelligibility.
It is both pattern and potential pattern, and thus gives reality
its intricacy of design as well as its thrust toward directionality and purpose.
It is a revealing and concealing sensibility for human consciousness."
[Quoted from here;
accessed 14/08/2024. Bold emphases alone added.]
One of the core Daoist ideas is the following (does
this sound familiar to anyone?):
"The Yin Yang principle is 'the' preeminent ancient Chinese secret offering explanation to everything that
exists, changes or moves. Its origin comes from observing the very essence of
the Universe -- from darkness there is light. Yin Yang embodies duality or an
opposite nature with Yin tending toward passive, dark, feminine, downward
seeking and Yang tending toward active, light, masculine, upward seeking. Because we can see dark and we can see light they appear separate yet they are
connected. Everything in life has this same connective quality. However, notice
your tendency to identify Yin and Yang as separate and to judge which one you
relate to or prefer over the other. This same human tendency prevents us from
accessing the power of the principle. So to access the power of Yin Yang we must
embrace both Yin and Yang and observe without judgment. There is also a cyclical nature to Yin Yang. Everything changes into its
opposite in an ongoing cycle of reversal. Health changes to sickness and
sickness changes into health. The more you embrace Yin Yang and see your life as
one continuous flow; your experiences in life will naturally reverse or begin to
flow more easily." [China
Daily, 25/02/2011. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to
conform with the conventions adopted at this site; paragraphs merged.]
So, other than some of the words it employs, both
of the above aren't a million miles different from DM.
[For the
religious upbringing and indoctrination of the other DM-Classicists, see Essay
Nine Part Two. A detailed survey
of the close links that exist between Daoism and Maoist 'Dialectics' can be
accessed here.]
8a0. The connection between a 'rational
soul' and a well ordered city was made explicit in Plato's Republic. I
have reproduced the relevant passage in Appendix Two. [On this, see Williams
(1973) and Ferrari (2005). See also
here.]
8a. Again, this theme will be developed
and defended in Essay Three Part Five -- along lines suggested by Bertrand
Russell [in Russell (1917b)], expanded on
here
and
here; the first of these is Swartz (2009), the second, Swartz (1985).
How
Traditional Theories in general grew out of the systematic distortion of language is explored in Essay Twelve
Part One; the
'anthropomorphisation of the brain' is examined at length in Essay Thirteen
Part Three -- specifically,
here and
here. I have also
dealt with 'natural necessity' in Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here.
[More
details can be found in Price and Corry (2007). The line I will be promoting
(but given a far less theoretical spin) can be found in Hacker
(2007), pp.57-89.]
9.We will meet this particular option again in connection with the RRT in Essay
Twelve Part Four (summary
here).
[RRT
= Reverse Reflection Theory (which is perhaps better described as the Projection
Theory of 'Knowledge'). That theory will be fully explained in Essay Twelve Part Four.
Basically, the idea is that given DM, language and 'mind' do not in fact
'reflect reality' (as its proponents maintain). The reverse is the case. 'Reality' is
structured so that it conforms with how DM-theorists
think we cognise it. So, discourse doesn't reflect the world, the world
is made to conform with 'dialectical jargon'. Language and meaning are thereby projected
onto the world. Indeed, the ersatz 'reality' that results from
this 'reverse-reflection' (this projection) is
little more than a shadow cast on
the world by a systematic distortion of language, to
paraphrase Wittgenstein
(and Marx),
again. The RRT is therefore intimately connected (via Hegel and other mystics) with ancient theories about the
origin of the world via speech, a universe created by the Logos (as
illustrated in The Book of Genesis) -- a topic covered
earlier in this
Essay and in Part
One. The world is therefore regarded as ultimately discursive; it is both the product
of
language and constituted by language. This then makes it seem 'perfectly
legitimate' to impose linguistic categories onto the world, in a
'like-reflects-like' sort of way. These are just two sides of the same
coin: the world is ultimately linguistic so philosophical theories may be imposed on to it,
dogmatically. Unsurprisingly, dialecticians bought into this approach when
they began to take philosophical and logical advise from a Christian Mystic
(upside down or the 'right way up'). See also
Note 19, below.]
10.This helps explain an earlier aside: Traditional Philosophy is based on, (a)
Distorted language, (b) Ruling-class
thought-forms, and (c) The
fetishisation of
discourse. [There is more on this in Essay Twelve, summary
here.]
10a. Here is Hegel (a model of clarity, as I
am sure readers will agree):
"Essence
becomes matter in that its reflection is determined as relating itself to
essence as to the formless indeterminate. Matter is
therefore the differenceless identity which is essence, with the determination
of being the other of form. It is consequently the real
basis or substrate of form, because it constitutes the
reflection-into-self of the form-determinations, or the self-subsistent element
to which the latter are related as to their positive subsistence. If abstraction is made from every
determination, from all form of anything, what is left over is indeterminate
matter. Matter is a sheer abstraction. (Matter cannot be seen,
felt, and so on -- what is seen, felt, is a
determinate matter, that is, a unity of matter and form).
This abstraction from which matter proceeds is, however, not merely an
external removal and sublating of form, rather does form, as we have seen,
spontaneously reduce itself to this simple identity." [Hegel (1999),
pp.450-51, §§
978-979.
Bold emphasis alone added. Typos in the on-line version corrected. Paragraphs
merged. Of course, Hegel's theory of matter is far more complex that this
passage might suggest; on what sense can be made of it, see
Kabeshkin (2022).
(This links to a PDF.)]
Once again, we see
'abstractions' are required for matter itself actually to exist. Language and
concepts precede the existence of matter. [This is just the RRT again, as pointed
out in Note Nine above.]
12.
This entire 'problem' is based on what is believed to be the past
behaviour of objects and processes, reference to which is necessary in order to
determine whether or not they will behave the same way as they always have or
will do so differently. [What constitutes 'the same' or even 'different
behaviour' might be difficult to specify in non-question-begging terms -- or in
a way that isn't itself compromised by the next few points.] And yet, that
itself depends on (i) The reliability of memory and (ii) Our
ability to access, read and understand evidence (in written-, or now in
electronic-, form). But the reliability of memory and any such evidence is
itself based on induction, but if that is now questioned or thrown into
doubt, that must impact on the dependability of any reference to "processes and
events and their past behaviour". If the method used to determine the future
behaviour of objects and processes is the same as the one we use to determine
what happened in the past (which on this account it is also based on induction), and sceptical questions are raised about the
former,
they must surely also apply to the latter. In that case, the whole question collapses
for want of anything to judge it by. That is, the acid of scepticism is far too
strong, for it dissolves the means by which the question might even be asked.
If we rely on what we (think we) meant by our words in the past, and we do so by
a method that relies on any form of induction (which, as we have seen, it
does here, given this way of framing the 'problem'), then we can't even rely
on the meaning of phrases like "same way" or "different" remaining the same. In
that case, Hume's scepticism (at least in this respect) ends up torpedoing
itself.
[Once again, I am forced to
express this
'problem' employing traditional jargon, but readers mustn't assume I think any of
that obscure terminology makes the slightest sense.]
In case one or two readers wonder how it is possible to understand words that can't
be made
sense of, may I point them in
the direction of my explanation of what I mean by "sense"? So, a sentence
can fail to make sense (in the meaning of "sense" explained at the last link),
but it could use words that have a contextual meaning. For instance, few
atheists will think that a sentence like the following makes any "sense": "The
Spirit of God was hovering on the face of the waters" --
Genesis 1:2.
Nevertheless, I imagine many atheists will be able to say what (most) Christians
think they
mean by the word "God". More-or-less the same applies here, in connection with
the 'Problem of Induction', and, indeed, with other metaphysical propositions
that express the pseudo-problems that litter Traditional Philosophy (and DM).
I will say
much more about this topic in Essay Three Part Five, where I will link the above
considerations with Traditional Theories of Mind, Will, Freedom, Necessity and
Determinism. This will also connect them with the
re-enchantment of
nature at the hands of Dialectical Marxists (i.e., in Essay Fourteen
Parts One and Two (summary
here)). See
also, Note 14a1, below.
13.Anyone who objects to my use of flowery language
should rather take issue with those who concocted the theories being targeted at
this site, not those who seek to lampoon them.
"Man is born free; and
everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself master of others, and still
remains a greater slave than they. How did this come about? I do not know. What
can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer." [Rousseau (1913),
p.3;
Book One, Chapter One.]
14a0.
The phrase
"undermining the unity of the proposition" alludes to the fact that Traditional
Logic and Grammar turned propositions into lists of names. Since lists say
nothing (unless they are articulated with words that aren't names), this
destroys
the capacity language has for expressing anything at all, never mind generality. That was one of the main themes of
Part One. Readers are directed there for more details.
"What
Hegel's system promises is a transformed experience of the world, in which
we see familiar things in a new light. Science, poetry, art, religion, the
state, are all seen to be expressions or embodiments of the Absolute. Ordinary
things suddenly take on new meaning. That which had been thought to be a human
contrivance, carried out only for finite human ends, devoid of any higher
meaning, mystery or religious significance...is now suddenly imbued with
spiritual significance.... Thus, Hegel attempts to heal the rift in the modern
consciousness between thought and sensation, or thought and experience, by
giving us a new form of experience. The very modern scientific and philosophical
ideas that formerly seemed to cut us off from experience and from our intuitions
of the divine are now seen to be moments of a system of experience that
constitutes the divine itself.
Hegel's system is an attempt to 're-enchant'
the world, to re-invest nature with the experience of the
numinouslost with the death of the mythical consciousness." [Magee (2008), p.97. Bold
emphases and link added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at
this site.]
While Hegel thought he saw the 'Absolute' everywhere
he looked, DM-theorists see their "Totality"
and universal inter-connection. In that light, everything similarly "takes on a new
meaning". The Whole gives this new meaning to the parts and the parts
reciprocate with the whole:
"[W]hen we bring these terms
[belonging to the totality] into relation with each other their meaning is
transformed…. In a dialectical system, the entire nature of the part is
determined by its relationships with the other parts and so with the whole. The
part makes the whole, and the whole makes the parts. In this analysis, it is not
just the case that the whole is more than the sum of the parts but also that the
parts become more than they are individually by being part of a whole…. [F]or dialectical
materialists the whole is more than the simple sum of its parts." [Rees (1998),
pp.5, 77. Paragraphs merged; bold emphases added.]
"The last dogmatic assumption
of [mechanical materialism] to be mentioned is that each of the things or
particles, whose interactions are said to make up the totality of events in the
universe, has its own fixed nature quite independent of everything else.... Proceeding from this
assumption it follows that all relations between things are merely external
relations. That is to say, things enter into various relationships one with
another, but these relationships are accidental and make no difference to the
nature of the things related. And regarding each thing as
a separate unit entering into external relations with other things, it further
follows that [mechanical materialism] regards the whole as no more that
the sum of its separate parts.... Not one of these assumptions
is correct. Nothing exists or can exist in splendid isolation, separate from its
conditions of existence, independent of its relationships with other things....
The very nature of a thing is modified and transformed by its relationships with
other things. When things enter into such relationships that they become parts
of a whole, the whole cannot be regarded as nothing more than the sum of the
parts.... [The] mutual relations which the parts enter into in constituting the
whole modify their own properties, so that while it might be said that the whole
is determined by the parts it may equally be said that the parts are determined
by the whole." [Cornforth (1976), pp.46-47. Bold emphasis added;
paragraphs merged.]
"When we consider a
phenomenon from the point of view of its content it appears as a whole, as a
totality of all the elements and aspects that make it up and of all their
interactions. It is through this totality that content relates to form.... [The content of a part],
however, is conditioned not only by their specific nature, but also by the
general nature of the whole. For this reason they play their specific roles not
by themselves but as parts of the whole. On the other hand, the general nature
of the whole...depends on the specific nature of the parts that make it up.... The interconnection of the
whole and part, expressed in the dependence of the quality of the whole on the
specific nature of its component parts, on the one hand, and the qualities
of the parts on the specific nature of the whole, on the other, results from the
interconnection between parts within the whole, this interconnection
constituting the structure of the whole.... [T]he properties of the
elements depends on the structure of the whole they make up, whereas the
structure of the whole depends on its constituent elements, their nature and
quantity. In other words, the elements of an object and the structure of this
object (the manner of connection of the elements) are necessarily interdependent
and constitute a dialectical unity." [Sheptulin (1978), pp.227-31. Bold
emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
"In contrast, in the
dialectical world view, things are assumed from the beginning to be internally
heterogeneous at every level. And this heterogeneity does not mean that the
object or system is composed of fixed natural units. Rather the 'correct'
division of the whole into part varies, depending upon the particular aspect of
the whole that is in question.... It is a matter of simple logic that parts can
be parts only when there is a whole for them to be parts of. Part implies whole,
and whole implies part. Yet reductionist practice ignores this relationship,
isolating parts as pre-existing units of which wholes are then composed. In the
dialectical world the logical dialectical relation between part and whole is
taken seriously. Part makes whole, and whole makes part....The first principle of a
dialectical view, then, is that a whole is a relation of heterogeneous parts
that have no prior independent existence as parts. The second principle,
which flows from the first, is that, in general, the properties of parts have no
prior alienated existence but are acquired by being parts of a particular whole.
In the alienated world the intrinsic properties of alienated parts confer
properties on the whole, which may in addition take on new properties which are
not characteristic of the parts: the whole may be more than the sum of the
parts. But the ancient debate on emergence, whether indeed wholes may have
properties not intrinsic to the parts, is beside the point.
The fact is that the parts have properties that are characteristic of them only
as they are parts of wholes; the properties come into existence in the
interactions that makes the whole. A person cannot fly by flapping her arms
simultaneously. But people do fly, as a consequence of the social organisation
that has created airplanes, pilots and fuel. It is not that society flies,
however, but individuals in society, who have acquired a property they do not
have outside society. The limitations of individual physical beings are negated
by social interactions. The whole, thus, is not simply the object of interaction
of the parts but is the subject of action of the parts." [Levins and Lewontin
(1985), pp.272-73. Bold emphases added; paragraphs merged.]
"According to formal logic,
the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. On closer examination, however, this
is seen not to be true.... It is necessary to acquire a
concrete understanding of the object as an integral system, not as isolated
fragments; with all its necessary interconnections, not torn out of context,
like a butterfly pinned to a collector's board; in its life and movement, not as
something lifeless and static. Such an approach is in open conflict with the
so-called 'laws' of formal logic, the most absolute expression of dogmatic
thought ever conceived, representing a kind of mental rigor mortis. But nature
lives and breathes, and stubbornly resists the embraces of formalistic thinking.
'A' is not equal to 'A.' Subatomic particles are and are not. Linear processes
end in chaos. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Quantity changes
into quality. Evolution itself is not a gradual process, but interrupted by
sudden leaps and catastrophes. What can we do about it? Facts are stubborn
things." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.57,
82-83.
Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
[I have subjected the above ideas to detailed and
sustained criticism in Essay Eleven
Part Two.]
'Reality' ends up re-enchanted because anthropomorphic
concepts have not only been imposed on/read into it, they have also been inserted into
every pore so that nothing can escape their influence. This is why systems, processes,
'things' and
objects wind up 'contradicting' one another -- as if they were engaged in some sort of
'cosmic conversation' or argument among themselves. The world has re-animated by the operation and interaction of
these omnipresent 'contradictions', which meant everything was locked in 'struggle' with everything
else. Hence, even the class war was projected onto the universe!
"Contradiction
is the root of all movement and life, and it is only in so far as it contains a
contradiction that anything moves and has impulse and activity."
[Hegel (1999),
p.439, §956.
Bold emphasis added.]
"So long as we consider things at rest and
lifeless, each one by itself…we do not run up against any contradictions in
them…. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in
their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence. Then we
immediately become involved in contradictions. Motion itself is a
contradiction…. [T]here is a contradiction objectively present in things and
processes themselves, a contradiction is moreover an actual force...." [Engels
(1976),
pp.152-53.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics…prevails
throughout nature…. [T]he motion through opposites which asserts itself
everywhere in nature, and which by the continual conflict of the
opposites…determines the life of nature." [Engels (1954),
p.211.
Bold emphases added.]
"The
identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually
exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of
nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement,' in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the
knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of
opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?)
conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase,
as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a
unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation). In the first conception of
motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive,
remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject,
etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to
knowledge of the source of 'self'-movement. The first conception is lifeless,
pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything
existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in
continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of
the old and the emergence of the new. The
unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The
struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and
motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961),
pp.357-58. Bold emphases
alone added.
Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
Paragraphs merged.]
"The law of contradiction in things,
that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist
dialectics.... As opposed to the metaphysical world
outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to
understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its
relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be
seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in
its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The
fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it
lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal
contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development.... The universality or absoluteness of
contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in
the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the
process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from
beginning to end....There is nothing that does not
contain contradictions; without contradiction nothing would exist.... Thus it is already clear that
contradiction exists universally and is in all processes, whether in the
simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or
ideological phenomena.... Contradiction is universal and
absolute, it is present in the process of the development of all things and
permeates every process from beginning to end...." [Mao (1937),
pp.311-18. Bold emphases added;
paragraphs merged.]
Human rationality was also projected onto
'reality':
"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel
drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous
aphorism: All that is rational is real. But for Hegel all that is real is not
without exception and qualification worthy of existence.
'Existence
is in part mere appearance, and only in part reality.'
(Introduction to the Shorter Logic,
§6.) [I.e.,
Hegel (1975),
p.9,
§6 -- RL.] Existence elementally and necessarily divides
itself, and the investigating mind finds it to be so divided, into opposing
aspects of appearance and essence. This disjunction between appearance and
essence is no more mysterious than the disjunction between the inside and
outside of an object." [Novack
(1971), p.86. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. I have reproduced the edition of Hegel's work used by the
editor of Novack's on-line text, Andy Blunden, not the version that appears
here. Links and bold emphasis added.]
In sharp
contrast, while Hegel's 'logic' seemed to offer some hope in this direction, he
soon discovered that his Ideas controlled him,
not he them. By fetishising the thoughts he imagined were ('logically') fighting it out inside his head
he turned them into self-directed agents (and himself into a compliant stooge), and thereby
into 'laws' that ran the entire show. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social
relations between human beings (language, inference, negation, contradiction) not only
ended up manipulating
his thoughts, they now powered the universe!
As noted
earlier, critics might be forgiven for labelling this, 'Ontology for
Megalomaniacs'. It is indeed the philosophical equivalent of
a seriously deranged individual claiming to be Napoleon -- or, perhaps worse, even 'God Himself'.
According to Hegel, his crazy
Ideas
appear to have taken over the
Asylum! Instead of the
'psychologically-challenged' contradicting themselves,
Hegel's universe did it for them!
In relation to this,
Feuerbach plainly got things the wrong way round: Hegel's 'God'
is little more than the projection of linguistic rules and human characteristicsinwards and outwards.
So, this is Feuerbach 2.0, only now locked in reverse gear --
Speculation on Steroids, Anthropomorphism on Amphetamines,
Ontology on Opiates.
[These are the 'substitute opiates'
Marx might very well have spoken about were he alive today.
Here is why
he would have been right.]
But, it is precisely here,
over such issues, that the fetishisation
of language -- detailed in
Part One -- forced its way into Dialectical Philosophy, and hence
into Dialectical
Marxism.
Subsequently, for DM-fans, their ideas
supposedly 'reflected' the world, but that only turns out to be the case if they allow Hegel's
'logic' to control their thoughts and lead them by the nose, too.
No wonder
then that Max Eastman expressed himself as follows:
"Hegelism is like a mental
disease; you
can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know
because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max
Eastman should check this
out first and then perhaps think again.]
Which, of
course, helps explain the quasi-religious fervour with which 'The Sacred Dialectic' is protected and defended by all those
whose brains it has colonised.
14a2.
Which might help explain why
Trotsky came out with the following remark:
"Dialectic training of the
mind, as necessary to a revolutionary fighter as finger exercises to a pianist,
demands approaching all problems as processes and not as motionless categories.
Whereas vulgar evolutionists, who limit themselves generally to recognizing
evolution in only certain spheres, content themselves in all other questions
with the banalities of 'common sense.'" [Trotsky (1971),
p.70. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
As is
the case with opiate
addiction, regular hits
become necessary. Not only that, but this 'intellectual drug' seems to rob DM-junkies of
their free will (or at least their rationality in this regard), a point underlined by Max Eastman (quoted earlier):
"Hegelism is
like a mental disease; youcan't know what it is until
you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it."
[Eastman (1926), p.22.]
Some might take offence
at the analogy I have just drawn between the acceptance of DM and opiate
addiction. I have explained its relevance in Essay Nine Part Two,
here. The
short version is as follows: this analogy is connected with two of Marx's remarks (in conjunction with the
points made above, in
Note 14a1):
"Feuerbach's
great achievement is.... The proof thatphilosophy is nothing else but
religion rendered into thoughtand expounded by thought, i.e., another form
and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally
to be condemned...." [Marx
(1975e), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis
and link added.]
"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 itsuniversal 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
(1975d), p.244. Bold emphases alone added;
paragraphs merged.]
So, in relation to the above analogy, anyone who has tried to engage DM-fans in debate
concerning 'dialectics' will know
exactly what Eastman meant and what I am driving at. DM-fans won't
and for the above reasons.
Again, in Essay Nine Part
Two, it will be revealed why(otherwise)hard-headed revolutionaries (like Engels, Lenin and
Trotsky) surrendered (or "alienated") their rationality (in this
respect) to ideas that depend on or implicitly imply the existence of just such a 'Cosmic Will'
(which is, in effect, a secular version of the 'Holy
Spirit'/'the Logos'
-- on that, see Note 20, below).
14a.This also helps account for the rather peculiar fact
that the more 'dialectical' the party the more autocratic it seems to be, the
more prone it is to fragment and for its 'leaders' to 're-educate', imprison or
execute annoying critics and infidel 'Revisionists!' when in power. In such circumstances, the
'dialectical mailed fist' soon replaces the 'invisible hand' of
reasonableness, and internal fights rapidly break out. This is especially the
case with Stalinists
and Maoists (if or when they actually manage to seize power). While parties
belonging to those two political traditions don't
split or fragment nearly as much as Trotskyist parties -- who have incidentally turned
sectarianism and fragmentation
into an art form --, they are nevertheless quite prepared to turn the
level of vitriol up to eleven as they imprison, section, 're-educate', silence or
'liquidate' the ideologically recalcitrant. In which case there is no need for
such parties to fragment or
expel; after all, 'No man, no problem...'.
[Yes, I am aware Stalin probably didn't say that!
As one pro-Communist site
puts it, those words were invented by:
"Anti-Stalinist novelist
Anatoly Rybakov [who] included this phrase...in his book 'Children of the
Arbat' (1987)." (Link added.)
Nevertheless, it is certainly what happened a few generations ago in
states we can all name, and is still happening in others we can also name.
These
accusations
have been fully substantiated in Essay Nine
Part Two, which exposes the damage DM has inflicted on all forms of
Dialectical Marxism.]
14b. In the main body of this Essay, I
have shown that, given the traditional view of abstraction, it is
impossible to construct a workable, let alone a believable,
theory of the
social nature of language and knowledge. It has also been shown that this view of
abstraction (when coupled with Lenin's 'theory of knowledge', developed in
MEC), traps each
lone abstractor in their own private, solipsistic universe. As such -- and
as far as their 'knowledge' is concerned -- they are isolated
individuals, since, for all they know -- or can prove otherwise -- given the
meagre resources with which DM-epistemology has saddled them, they are alone,
trapped in
their own 'image' of 'the universe' and 'all it contains'.
[I have
developed the above claims at length in Essay Thirteen
Part One; readers are directed
there for more details. See also Note 15, below.]
15.In fact, from inside this 'bourgeois conceptual universe' --
which is an intellectual space populated by little other
particularised ideas, atomised concepts and socially-isolated thinkers
(i.e., as far as theirown theorists picture both themselves and
their 'world') -- any attempt to prove there are any other minds becomes impossible.
Some might try to argue that a
lone abstractor could extrapolate from her own experience to the conclusion that
there are others just like her, who also have minds. However, any theory based on oneobservation or one example, is no better than a guess. Worse still, since the
language used to formulate any such projection/guess can't be used this way,
since,
as we have seen, every word has been tuned into a
Proper Name. In that case, it would be impossible for a lone abstractor to be able
to specify exactly whatthe target of any such projection/guess actually
is. That is because, of course,
belief in other minds requires the use of yet more general terms, which this theory
lacks -- or, rather, which it has just vacated of their generality.
And this is quite apart
from the fact that Lenin's theory of perception would trap
him,her, and 'everyone else', in a
solipsistic dungeon from which there is no escape. [Again, on that, see Essays
Ten Part One and Thirteen
Part One.]
[The
details surrounding Wittgenstein's
dissolution of these and other 'problems' won't be entered into here. I will say more about that in Essay
Thirteen Part Three.
However, readers new to his method should perhaps begin with Kenny (1973), Glock
(1996), Hacker (1996, 1997),
and Sluga and Stern (1996); see also
here.
Concerning Wittgenstein's 'early work' there is no better introduction than White
(2006).]
16a.
Be this as it may, any attempt
to
appeal to
the 'relative stability of language' would be no help, either.
That is because, given
DM-epistemology, no two dialecticians could possibly have the
sameidea about 'relative stability' -- and worse, not even
about 'relative stability' they themselves entertained only a few moments
earlier.
And,
it is even less use replying that they would have 'relatively'
or 'approximately
the same idea' about 'relatively' or 'approximately the same idea'. That is
because the phrase,
"relatively or approximately the same" is itself subject to the same
'limitations', since it now hasno
determinate meaning. [Irony intended.] The reason for saying this is that if we have no idea what counts as 'exactly the
same this' or 'exactly the same that', we are
surely in no position to declare that something only approximates to either
option.
We may only approximate to something when we have some idea what it is we are
trying to approximate (i.e., 'absolute identity'). But we have no idea in
this case because DM-theorists tell us
there is no such thing as absolute identity.
Plainly,
if there is no such thing as absolute identitythere can be no
approximation to it.
Nor would we
even know if our idea of identity was, or wasn't, absolutely identical with
absolute identity unless we already had a grasp of the term "absolute identity".
"Approximate identity" would be no use here.
[Any who
disagree might like to tell us what an approximateMeskonator is.]
And, the same would be true of any other words thrown in for good measure
in a vain attempt to sort this out -- and that includes the word
"words".
In a 'dialectical universe', all that is solid melts
into air.
[Again, I
hasten to add that the above remarks don't represent my view! I am simply
exposing the ridiculous implications of DM-Epistemology and DL.]
[DL = Dialectical Logic.]
17.
At this pointit would be
no use appealing to the 'relative' or 'partial' nature of knowledge, since, as we saw in Essay Ten
Part One, if, per impossible,
DM were true, 'reality' would be indistinguishable from Kant's Noumenon
-- even if we could say that much about either!
18.This idea is up front in Kant, although less
sophisticated versions can be found in the
work of several earlier thinkers.
However, since Hegel (by-and-large) adopted, and then adapted, Kant's approach to suit his own ends, the
comments in
the main body of this Essay only need to be true of
post-Kantian Idealism for it to apply to DM (upside down or 'the right
way up').
Of course, these days evolution is considered by many to have
shaped the
'mind' in this and many other respects. I have devoted several sections of Essay Thirteen
Part Three to showing how misguided
that idea is, too. Readers are directed there for more details.
18a. In relation to which we read the following about this
'mystical union':
"Nature,
the real, what is perceived, is the 'Idea in apparent shape, which mind, in its
synthetic power, posits as the object opposed to itself,' as described by Hegel
(p.127). What is perceived is thus 'the determination by mind of its own
substance, its ideality and power of determination, through a process which no
doubt begins with a separation of itself into two factors which apparently
negate each other, but which, by the very activity of such negation and
separation, passes beyond the contradiction it implies to a unity which heals
the fracture.' The dialectical synthesis of the differentiation in the absolute
in the ideal constitutes the subjectivity of mind, the subjective. In subjective
mind, the real is not 'explicitly unfolded,' as it is in perception, and
complete self-consciousness. The real becomes the other to subjective mind in
its state of explication, but an other that is defined by finitude rather than
the infinity of the absolute. Mind must project itself into its other in order
to recover the infinity of the absolute in the subjective. Mind cannot recover
its subjectivity in the real through logic or discursive reason, through that
which established its finitude in the real. This can only be accomplished in the
intellectual in philosophy.
"In
perception, mind always has a sense that what is being given of the real in
perception is not being in its completion; the limitations of reason are
self-apparent in self-consciousness as well. The nature of the human mind is
to seek completion in being, whether it be reconciliation of the primordial
dehiscence, or recognition of the presence of the absolute in the ideal.
Ordinary consciousness is the 'entirely finite, temporal, contradictory, and for
that reason transitory, unsatisfied, and un-reconciled spirit' (p.128). In such
a consciousness, the satisfactions of reason can only have a 'purely relative
and isolated validity,' a condition which thought must necessarily seek to
surpass. Appearance as given by perception is seen as a finite function of
reason, and in the perception of the real, the intersection of mind and what is
external to it, 'mind grasps its finiteness as the negation of its own essential
substance, and is aware of its infinity.' In this activity mind is subjective
because it is self-determinate and the object of its own will. In this activity
mind enacts the principle of differentiation which is the essence of the
absolute; reasoning mind doubles itself in relation to the absolute, where
the knower and the known are undifferentiated. In this way the infinite
is injected into the finite, the ideal into the real, as the real is participant
in reason. In absolute mind, the intellectual of
Plotinus,
principle and activity are the same, ideal and real. In the ideal, the real is
participant in the absolute." [Hendrix (2019); quoted from
here (this links to a PDF). Bold emphases and links added. The page
references are to
Hegel (1920), Volume One, in the edition I have used.]
The details underlying Hegel's, shall we say, 'Rosicrucian leanings' can be
found in Magee
(2008), pp.35-36, 51-53, 248-57. See also Benz (1983) and O'Regan (1995). On
Rosicrucianism in general, see Yates (2004). [The Introduction to Magee (2008) can
now be
accessed
here.]
This
terminally obscure 'philosophical problem' (i.e., 'Subject/Object Identity') has dominated much of
what currently passes for theory among HCDs/'Academic Marxists', and has
formed an important strand in
Continental
Philosophy for well over two hundred years. However, its origin in 'Mystical
Systems of Thought' (in fact,
it constitutes the main 'problematic' of
Mystical Philosophy
in general) hardly raises an eyebrow in either tradition, but definitely not in ideologically-compromised HCD-circles.
In fact, I have lost count of the number of books and articles written (in both
traditions) concerning the (mystical) union between the Knower and the Known,
between 'Subject' and 'Object', the 'Subjective' and the 'Objective', or,
indeed, concerning "the thing-in-itself" and "things-for-us".
These theorists are all trapped by a picture/metaphor that depicts knowledge as a relation
between two objects, the Knower and the Known, once more. [On this, see Note 6a above, where Engels and
Lenin's
thoughts on this have been quoted (as have others), and where more
has been said about this topic.]
Of course,
HCDs will most definitely reject this way of seeing things (i.e., as a mystical union), but mystical union
is nevertheless what they (unwittingly) seek. [But, a rose by any other name...] Indeed, in some cases they are
quite open about this union (wisely using less ideologically-compromised
terminology to describe it).
[There is
more on this,
here, and another excellent example
can be found
here.
(Unfortunately that link is now as dead as the ideas it once promoted.
Added on Edit: That article has now re-surfaced
here.)]
[HCD = High Church Dialectician; that term is explained
here.]
Here
is what the Glossary at the Marxist Internet Archive had to say about this:
"'Subject' refers to the person or entity carrying out and responsible for an
action, rather than the object which is being acted upon. The term is
often used as a synonym for 'human being', or the consciousness of a human
being. In the context of history, 'subject' means the agent of history,
the people who are the conscious architects of events, rather than their
unconscious tools. The 'subject-object' problem, or the separation of subject
and object is often taken as a fundamental problem of Western thinking, ever
since
Descartes invented the 'Cartesian divide' as an
epistemological problem. [In fact this 'divide' is much older (albeit
expressed differently), as we have
seen -- RL.] For dialectics, subject and object can only be
understood as opposite aspects of the subject-object relation and thus
inseparably part of the same relation. It was Kant who defined the 'Subject' in ethical terms, as the moral agent,
having freedom and subject to moral laws. Hegel further developed the concept to
overcome the division between the individual 'Subject' or person and the
corporate or collective 'Subject,' by means of an understanding of 'Subject' as
a self-conscious system of activity, in which the Individual, Universal
and Particular aspects are coordinated. Historically, the individual subject
only gradually distinguishes herself from the social subject of which she is a
part. See 'Subjectivity.'...
The earliest recorded use of the word was in 1315 as an adjective meaning 'bound
to a superior by some obligation' and in 1340 the word was used as a noun to
mean a person under the dominion of a Monarch, as in 'a subject of King Henry.'
"In 1374,
Chaucer used the word in the sense of 'subject matter' about which
different things could be said, and in 1380 the word was used to refer to the
substance to which attributes (in the Aristotelian sense) adhered. In
this sense, the word has been generalised from being 'subject' to an obligation
to being 'subject' to any kind of attachment or property. In 1551, 'subject' was
used in the sense of something to which properties could be attributed, and in
1603,
Shakespeare used the word in the sense of
a thing having a real
independent existence, and therefore properties inhered in it, and to
which attributes could be contingently attached. By 1638 it had taken on the
modern meaning of the word 'subject' in grammar, as opposed to 'predicate' which
expresses properties of the subject. The subject is then the 'do-er' of the
verb, and we can see the beginnings of a move from the passive carrier of
attributes and obligations to the do-er of actions. With René Descartes in 1638, as the Latin subjectum, the word then
came to mean a fully conscious thinking 'subject,' in particular the mind
or ego, as the subject in which all ideas inhere, and to which all
representation and operations are to be attributed. In other words, the thinking
and cognising agent. With Descartes, the word did not have an ethical
connotation however, but is understood epistemologically. With Kant, the meaning
of the word stabilised in its modern philosophical meaning as the moral agent:
'A person is a
subject who is capable of having his actions imputed to him. Moral
personality is, therefore, nothing but the freedom of a rational being under
moral laws; and it is to be distinguished from psychological freedom as the mere
faculty by which we become conscious of ourselves in different states of the
identity of our existence. Hence it follows that a person is properly
subject to no other laws than those he lays down for himself, either alone
or in conjunction with others.' [Introduction
to the Metaphysics of Morals, 1785] [Emphases in the original -- RL.]
"With Hegel, the word takes on the broader meaning, not restricted to the
individual ego or person, but rather the self-conscious, self-legislating social
actor which is both corporate and individual, including for example, states,
families and individuals -- provided they are legally free agents (in his day,
excluding women and children, for example)." [Quoted from
here;
accessed 05/02/2017. Several paragraphs merged. Except where indicated, bold
emphases alone added;
quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.
One link added; minor typos corrected.]
"Subject and Object are crucial concepts in
Epistemology, the study of knowledge. 'Subject' refers to the active,
cognising individual or social group, with consciousness and/or will, while
'object' refers to that on which the subject's cognitive or other activity
observes. In
the dialectical theory of knowledge, the important thing is to understand the
subject and object as a unity and to see both the activity of the subject
(which had been developed by idealism -- see
Theses on Feuerbach No.1) and the independent
existence of the world of which the subject is a part (which had been emphasised
by
materialism)." [Quoted from
here; accessed 05/02/2017. Bold emphases and one
link added; paragraphs merged.]
The background to this
murky tale can be found in Beiser (1987, 2002, 2005, 2008); cf., also: Copleston (2003d, 2003f, 2003g), O'Hear (1999) and Pinkard (2002). On
this, see also David Stove's article: 'Idealism: A Victorian
Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. [However, in connection with
Stove's overall work readers should take note of the warning I have posted
here.] In relation to the words "objective" and "subjective", see
here and here.
See also the path-breaking study, Daston
and Galison (2007).
One unfortunate HCD
critic of this site has fallen under
its spell, too -- as has
another,
even more recently. See also
here;
many of the archived articles at that site were (originally) written by
Raya
Dunayevskaya, at which site it is abundantly clear that this Hermetic Creed now completely dominates
what passes for theory. The same can be said with equal force about
Andy Blunden's homepage. [See also
here. Several more examples of this HCD/LCD-affliction will be given in
Essays Twelve and Fourteen (summaries
here and
here).]
The above
article (from the Marxist Internet Archive) says that for Hegel the word
"subject":
"...takes on the broader meaning, not restricted to the
individual ego or person, but rather the self-conscious, self-legislating social
actor which is both corporate and individual, including for example, states,
families and individuals...." [Quoted from
here;
accessed 05/02/2017.]
Certainly, that might have been Hegel's intention,
but he no more proved it to be the case than he proved anything else in the tangled
mess
he inflicted on his unfortunate readers. But, even if we were to assume Hegel was 100% correct
about this,
Lenin's theory of knowledge (in MEC, which based everything on 'images')
undermines it completely. In that case, the 'knowing subject' of DM becomes the
bourgeois individual again, and is left trapped in the solipsistic
prison cellmentioned earlier, the 'object' of
knowledge having now vanished into thin air. [On this, see Essay Thirteen
Part One. See also an analogous
difficulty for Hegel analysed
earlier (applied to his use of words like "Being"). How the points made
there are relevant to the above remarks will be made fully
explicit in Essay Twelve Part Six. On a failed attempt to argue that
Lenin's later theory of knowledge (in PN) benefitted from, or was even improved
by, his engagement with Hegel, see
Appendix Three.]
19.If the 'mind' knowsonly its own 'images',
'concepts', 'ideas'
and 'impressions' (etc.), then the 'outer world' can't fail to be the result of a
back-reflection -- i.e., a projection -- of those 'contents', howsoever
it is re-packaged, spun or spruced up with complex 'theories of
cognition and objectivity'. When a theorist begins with the 'contents of the mind', there is
no escape from this philosophical strait-jacket. Indeed, since the 'world' that
supposedly results
from this projection isn't just a mere idea, but the subject's
own idea, in the end there can be no real difference (just a rhetorical
distinction) between the
'objective' and the 'subjective', given this approach to 'knowledge'.
Naturally, Empiricists
might want to deny
such implications, but if they are right, every single one of them will simply be arguing with
him/herself, not me!
Others might
object that this confuses
Empiricism with
Solipsism,
but that isn't so. In fact, it goes much further; it identifies them.
That
isn't just to pick on Empiricists; one implication of the criticisms levelled
at this site is that all metaphysical theories of knowledge collapse into some form of
Solipsism -- that is, given what little sense can be made of them, in the first
place.
That controversial claim will be
defended in Parts Four and Six of this Essay (when they are published). See
also, Note 20, below.
20.Of course, this means that this
'inverted', eviscerated, sophomoric version of Hegel's system (i.e., DM) is no less Ideal
(upside down and 'the right way up').
Hegel was quite clear: Logic and the
Divine Logos
are one, Nature is Idea and simply Logos in self-development:
"Actuality
is the unity, become
immediate, of
essence
with
existence, or of inward with outward.
The utterance of the actual is the actual itself: so that in this utterance it
remains just as essential, and only is essential, in so far as it is immediate
external existence. We
have ere this met Being and Existence as forms of the immediate. Being is, in
general, unreflected immediacy and
transition
into another. Existence is immediate unity
of being and
reflection; hence
appearance: it comes from the
ground, and falls to the ground. In
actuality this unity is explicitly put, and the two sides of the relation
identified. Hence the actual is exempted from transition, and its externality is
its energizing. In that energizing it is reflected into itself: its existence is
only the manifestation of itself, not of another.
"Actuality and thought (or Idea) are often
absurdly opposed. How commonly we hear people saying that, though no objection
can be urged against the
truth and correctness of a certain thought, there is
nothing of the kind to be seen in
actuality, or it cannot be
actually carried out! People who use such language only prove that they have not
properly apprehended the nature either of thought or of actuality. Thought in
such a case is, on the one hand, the synonym for a
subjective
conception, plan, intention, or the like,
just as actuality, on the other, is made synonymous with external and sensible
existence. This is all very well in common life, where great laxity is allowed
in the categories and the names given to them; and it may of course happen that,
e.g., the plan, or so-called idea, say, of a certain method of
taxation, is good and advisable in the abstract, but
that nothing of the sort is found in so-called actuality, or could possibly be
carried out under the given conditions. But when the abstract understanding gets
hold of these categories and exaggerates the distinction they imply into a hard
and fast line of contrast, when it tells us that in this actual world we must
knock ideas out of our heads, it is necessary energetically to protest against
these doctrines, alike in the name of science and of sound reason. For on the
one hand Ideas are not confined to our heads merely, nor is the Idea, on the
whole, so feeble as to leave the question of its actualisation or
non-actualisation dependent on our will. The Idea is rather the absolutely
active as well as actual.
And on the other hand actuality is not so bad and irrational, as purblind or
wrong-headed and muddle-brained would-be reformers imagine. So far is
actuality, as distinguished from mere appearance, and primarily presenting a
unity of inward and outward, from being in contrariety with reason, that it is
rather thoroughly reasonable, and everything which is not reasonable must on
that very ground cease to be held actual."
[Hegel (1975),
pp.200-01,
§142; I have used the on-line version here,
leaving the
MIA
links in. Minor typos
corrected. (I have informed the editors over at the MIA.) Several paragraphs
merged; bold emphases added.]
"The divine Idea is just
this: to disclose itself, to posit this Other outside itself and to take it back
again into itself, in order to be subjectivity and Spirit.... God therefore in
determining Himself, remains equal to Himself; each of these moments is itself
the whole Idea and must be posited as the divine totality. The different moments
can be grasped under three different forms: the universal, the particular and
the individual. First, the different moments remain preserved in the eternal
unity of the Idea; this is the Logos, the eternal son of God as
Philo conceived it.... The third form which concerns us here, the Idea in
the mode of particularity, is Nature.... A rational consideration of
Nature must consider how Nature is in its own self this process of becoming
Spirit, of
sublatingits otherness -- and how the Idea is present in each grade or
level of Nature itself...." [Hegel (2004), p.14, §247.
Paragraphs merged. As far as can
be ascertained,
the material published at the MIA
with this title is a different version of the same
edition. Indeed, this is what the MIA has to say about it: "From
'Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline and Critical Writings',
Edited by Ernst Behler, translated by Steven A Taubeneck from the Heidelberg
text of 1817, published by Continuum, 1990. The more widely known translation by
A V Miller (1970) -- (i.e., Hegel (2004) -- RL) -- is a translation of the late versions of
Hegel's Encyclopedia with additions by Leopold von Hemming and K L
Michelet." Bold emphasis added.]
[MIA = Marxist Internet Archive
(link above).]
Moreover, Hegel explicitly connects this
understanding of
the relation between Logic and the world with ideas originally spun by Ancient Greek
(ruling-class) ideologues:
"This
objective thinking then, is the content of pure science. Consequently,
far from it being formal, far from it standing in need of a matter to constitute
an actual and true cognition, it is its content alone which has absolute truth,
or, if one still wanted to employ the word matter, it is the veritable matter --
but a matter which is not external to the form, since this matter is rather pure
thought and hence the absolute form itself. Accordingly, logic is to be
understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure
thought. This realm is truth as it is without veil and
in its own absolute nature. It can therefore be said that this content is
the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of
nature and a finite mind. Anaxagoras
is praised as the man who first declared that
Nous,
thought, is the principle of the world, that the essence of the world is to be
defined as thought. In so doing he laid the foundation for an intellectual view
of the universe, the pure form of which must be logic. What we are dealing with in
logic is not a thinking about something which exists independently as a
base for our thinking and apart from it, nor forms which are supposed to provide
mere signs or distinguishing marks of truth; on the contrary, the necessary
forms and self-consciousness of thought are the content and the ultimate truth
itself." [Hegel (1999),
pp.50-51, §53-54.
Bold emphases alone added. Links added; paragraphs merged. See also Hegel's
extended comments on Anaxagoras in
Hegel (1995a), pp.319-49.]
20a.On this, see
Note 20, above. The entire topic will
be covered in more detail in Essay Twelve Parts Two to Four, as well as Essay Fourteen
Part One (summaries here
and here).
21.The readershouldn't conclude from these comments that
Nominalism is the
present author's preferred option, nor even that it is 'correct'. In fact, as the
Introductory Essay pointed out, I
reject all philosophical theories as incoherent
non-sense,
and that includes Nominalism. Why that is so was explained in detail in Essay Twelve
Part One (and summarised
here).
22.And we now know why Lenin meant what he said
when he wrote the following:
"Dialectical idealism is closer to intelligent materialism than crude
materialism...". The
importation into Marxism of these long-established, well-entrenched "ruling ideas"
significantly
compromised his (otherwise) materialist good sense:
"The history of philosophy and the history of
social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling
'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified
doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the
development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists
precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the
foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate
continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of
philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive
and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable
with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It
is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth
century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and
French socialism." [Lenin,
Three Sources
and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone
added; paragraphs merged.]
How
and why that happened to Lenin (indeed, as happens to all Dialectical
Marxists) -- and what ideological imperatives they underpin, express, or promote -- are the subject of Essays Nine Parts
One and
Two, Twelve Parts Two and Three (summary
here), and Fourteen Part Two.
To
be fair to John Rees, and as noted in Appendix Three, he does at least try
to defend a 'DM-view of concepts' (i.e., those that aren't somehow 'fully material'); for example, in his
brief examination of
"friendship" (pp.109-10, of TAR).
His argument will be examined in detail in Essay Twelve Part Four (when it is
published in early 2025).
24.The views of several of these will be
examined in Essay Thirteen Part Two.
"Friends, Romans, countrymen,
lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him." [Julius
Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2.]
The
material that used to be here has now been moved to the
main body of this Essay. In
addition, my criticism of Bertell Ollman's theory of abstraction, which also used to
be here, has been re-located to Appendix
One.
This seems to be the import of
a
passage from TAR, quoted earlier:
"[I]t is impossible simply to
stare at the world as it immediately presents itself to our eyes and hope to
understand it. To make sense of the world, we must bring to it a framework
composed of elements of our past experience; what we have learned of others'
experience, both in the present and in the past; and of our later reflections on
and theories about this experience." [Rees (1998), p.63.]
As will be
argued later, this is a rather odd
way of making the point that knowledge isn't solely, or maybe even directly, derived from 'experience'.
While several of the comments in the main
body of this Essay might suggest this latest objection centres on
the recognitional
powers or skills exhibited, for example, by trainee canine classifiers, it doesn't. As pointed
out in Essay Six (and Note 6a, above), this particular metaphor trades on a confusion between two
different uses of the verb "to know" introduced into Traditional Epistemology by Plato,
which he then proceeded to merge into a single concept, 'knowledge' -- or,
rather, he tried to explain 'knowledge-as-such' in terms of a relation between a
'pre-existing soul' and a Form, mediated (it seems) by sight or by acquaintance. Plato
downgraded propositional knowledge (what we might now call empirical
knowledge -- [EK]) and classified it as mere opinion or belief, but
not as 'knowledge itself'. EK was unstable, changeable, unreliable. He accepted
Heraclitus's view of universal change in the physical universe and this affected
his view of EK. The result was to identify knowledge with what has come to be
known as "knowledge by acquaintance" [AK], but this was now acquaintance
of a special sort, 'acquaintance with
the Forms' (although there are Plato scholars who question this interpretation, and argue, with
textual proof, that Plato does acknowledge the validity some forms of EK --
for instance, Gail Fine, references below). Nevertheless, the long-term effect
-- when the Forms themselves had been dropped -- was to
merge AK and EK, so that AK became the prevailing paradigm.
This paradigm, in one form or another, has come to dominate the last 2400 years
of Traditional Epistemology. [Even if it wasn't always given that title!]
Hence, for
much of subsequent Epistemology (and that includes theories developed by
Dialectical Marxists), knowledge was interpreted in terms of a relation between
an individual and an 'object', or an 'image'/'idea'/'concept' -- on a
one-to-one basis. I will say more about this in Part Six of Essay Three.
[On
this, see Copleston (2003a), pp.142-206;
Chappell (2019); Crombie (1963), pp.135-47; Fine (1978,
1990,); Frede (1992), Guthrie (1986), pp.249-77; Irwin (1999); Meinwald (1990,
1992), Miles (2003), pp.275-360;
Rickless (2020); Scott (1995);
and Silverman (2014).
More will be said about this in Appendix Two -- which is still under construction.
See also
Appendix B of Essay Eight Part Two, where I briefly deal with another
important aspect of Plato's Epistemology, expressed in and by his 'Allegory of the Cave'.]
Knowledge of a friend or
an acquaintance isn't the same as propositional knowledge; there is a difference
between "NN knows that p" and "NM knows A"
-- where "p" is a
(conformable) propositional variable,
and "A", "NN" and "NM"stand for Proper Names.
"A" might also go proxy for
a definite description, such as, "The
F that is G", or "The F of the G" -- where "F" and "G" are noun
phrases -- yielding, for example "The President of the United States".
However,
Modern English doesn't have a pair of words
that brings this distinction out very well, while French does: connaitre and savoir.
"Acquaintance" is far too weak and misleading (even if that word is
used in AK!). If NNknowsNM, then they aren't
just acquainted, even if this would still be an example of AK! So,
knowledge by acquaintance -- AK -- isn't just acquaintance, it is a specific form of
knowledge that goes beyond mere acquaintance, even if it is characterised
by it. Hence, it is necessary for NNtobe acquainted with NM
for this to count as an example of AK, but it isn't sufficient. I
will say more about what might turn mere acquaintance into AK in Essay
Three Part Six. [I have omitted that material from this Essay since it isn't integral
to points I want to make here.]
[A
"conformable" proposition would be one that makes sense in a relevant context. So
with respect to: "NN
knows that Paris is the capital of France", "Paris is the capital of
France" makes sense (independently of its use in "NN
knows that Paris is the capital of France"), so it is conformable. But, "NN knows that Julius
Caesar lives between Marx and Saturn", where "Julius Caesar lives
between Marx and Saturn" (sic) doesn't make
sense independently of anything, so it isn't conformable. How we decide what is and what isn't
conformable is far too involved a topic to enter into here; but, in most cases,
a non-conformable expression will stand out like a sore thumb (as was the case with "NN
knows that Julius Caesar lives between Marx and Saturn").]
Knowledge (connaitre) of one's friends,
for instance,
does involve recognitional capacities since it trades on an ability we are
all supposed to possess: being able to identity (over time)
specific individuals with whom we are acquainted as friends. Propositional
knowledge (savoir) isn't a relation between the Knower and the Known, unless
we regard a proposition -- or what it
supposedly refers to (i.e., a fact or a state of affairs) -- as an object of some sort.
In this specific case, that would perhaps be a set of ink marks on the page (or pixels on a screen). If that
were so, it would express an alleged relation between
the supposed Knower and that set of ink marks/pixels, which one presumes isn't what was
meant by knowing something to be the case. When we know, for instance,
that the Nile is
longer than the
Thames,
we aren't adverting to a relationship we might have with a set of
inscriptions
-- or even certain sound waves propagated through the air --, nor yet with the rivers
themselves.
This shows that we already
distinguish between the relational (transitive)
and the non-relational (intransitive) form of the verb "to know" --
"NN knows that p", being of the latter variety, and "NN knows
MM", the former.
[These
observations alone render obsolete large swathes of Ancient, Medieval and
Contemporary
Epistemology
(much of which still plagues French 'Philosophy'
-- a
rather ironic twist of fate when we remember that French does have two verbs (connaitre and savoir) that distinguish between these two forms of knowledge!
This isn't to suggest that the above are the only two forms of the verb "to
know". Clearly there are
many more (at least in English), several of which will be examined more
closely in Essay Three Part Six.]
On the other hand, if these
terms are conflated, generality will quietly exit through the back door,
as we saw in
Part One.
The same comment applies if it were concluded that knowing that the Nile is
longer than the Thames puts us in some sort of relation with one or other of these rivers.
In the
second case, it
confuses objects with states of affairs and what we might claim to know about them.
Moreover, if the successful use of general terms were based on recognitional capacities we should then have to
postulate a second order ability to recognise when a particular was an example of the
right type, as well as recognise which word correctly applied to either or
both of them -- and so on, ad infinitem. But, that just re-introduces
Aristotle's
objection through the back door, since, at a stroke, it doubles the number of 'difficulties' with
which we
began. Furthermore, and once again, it would involve the use of the very
thing that was supposed to be explained -- i.e., generality. In which case, reference would
now have to be
made to further mysterious, inner "mental acts" to buttress the public use of
words, and so on. [On this, see Note 26.]
In relation
to this topic in general, see Hacker (1987)
and Geach (1957).
Problems associated with naive accounts
of language acquisition are examined in Cowie (1997, 2002) -- who has, to her
credit (on pp.x-xi of
her (2002)), highlighted the connection between
Nativist Theories of
language and reactionary, right-wing political and social nostrums that have
become 'popular' of late in conservative and neo-fascist circles. [Although
Chomsky most definitely can't be associated with such regressive moves his theory certainly lends weight to them, and has been criticised on
these and other lines in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
26.That this is the correct approach can
be seen from the fact that Traditional Philosophers themselves have to
employ general words to account for general ideas, whatever else they
later try to transform them into.
However, the
'abstractions' they attempt to define, or construct, are (allegedly) found in
one or other of the following locations:
(i) A
yet-to-be-identified region
or 'module' of the
'mind'/brain, in some, as-yet-unspecified form (are they 'stored in the
brain/CNS'
neurologically/electrically, chemically, structurally, psychologically, or
what...?);
(ii) An
otherworldly ('heavenly'), 'Platonic'
domain
(these days, the so-called 'Third
Realm'); or,
(iii) The
actual objects from which they have supposedly been 'abstracted'
-- where, presumably, they exist 'spread out' somehow, distributed or shared equally among their
exemplars in a thoroughly mysterious manner. (On this 'possibility', readers are
referred back to an
earlier section of this Essay. I will return to consider this alternative in
more detail in
Essay Thirteen Part Two).
In the
Rationalist Tradition, these 'abstractions'/'Ideas' are
supposedly 'apprehended' by 'special acts of intellection' (also of a mysterious
nature and provenance), or
by something perhaps more enigmatic still, 'intuition' -- or even by 'the light of
reason' (which only a select few philosophers seem able to access and
activate).
Whichever of
the above alternatives is the case (if any are!), these 'abstract
particulars' may only be accessed privately,
andeventhen only by the individual abstractor concerned. Unlike objects
and events in the
natural and social world --, which are openly and publicly accessible to anyone involved in
conversation, research or collective labour --, abstract particulars
are quintessentially private and unique to each 'mind'. In that case, not only
is their nature and existence in
principle un-checkable, they can't be compared with the 'abstractions'
cognised by anyone else. No wonder then that even those who accept the validity
and viability of abstractionism have so far failed to explain with any clarity,
let alone plausibility, which of the above three alternatives is correct,
or produce a scrap of physical evidence in support of their preferred choice.
In this
respect, traditional theorists aren't even close, as Peter Hacker notes:
"For two and a half millennia some of the best minds in European culture have
wrestled with the problems of philosophy. If one were to ask what knowledge has
been achieved throughout these twenty-five centuries, what theories have been
established (on the model of well-confirmed theories in the natural sciences),
what laws have been discovered (on the model of the laws of physics and
chemistry), or where one can find the corpus of philosophical propositions known
to be true, silence must surely ensue. For there is no body of philosophical
knowledge. There are no well-established philosophical theories or laws. And
there are no philosophical handbooks on the model of handbooks of dynamics or of
biochemistry. To be sure, it is tempting for contemporary philosophers,
convinced they are hot on the trail of the truths and theories which so long
evaded the grasp of their forefathers, to claim that philosophy has only just
struggled out of its early stage into maturity.... We can at long last expect a
flood of new, startling and satisfying results -- tomorrow. One can blow the Last Trumpet once, not once a century. In the seventeenth
century Descartes thought he had discovered the definitive method for attaining
philosophical truths; in the eighteenth century Kant believed that he had set
metaphysics upon the true path of a science; in the nineteenth century Hegel
convinced himself that he had brought the history of thought to its culmination;
and Russell, early in the twentieth century, claimed that he had at last found
the correct scientific method in philosophy, which would assure the subject the
kind of steady progress that is attained by the natural sciences. One may well
harbour doubts about further millenarian promises."
[Hacker (2001), pp.322-23.
Paragraphs merged.]
Well, we
have only been waiting for 2400 years, so it might be a little impatient of me to expect a clear answer any day/year soon.
Independent
of that, the situation is even worse for Marxists, and that is because
postulating the existence of
'abstractions' (or
'abstract ideas' and/or 'concepts') only succeeds in undermining the
social nature of language and knowledge by suggesting that key linguistic
skills, performances and activities are fundamentally
private, socially-atomised or
representational in nature.
It is worth recalling, too, that what had been
advertised all along as an ontological and epistemological exercise (aimed at
tracking down these elusive 'Universals', these 'abstractions'), now turns out to be little more than a
quibble about the meaning of general nouns, only surprisingly ineptly
executed -- indeed, as
Part One of this
Essay amply demonstrated.
26a.In addition to what has already been covered (i.e., based on Hegel's work),
further 'dialectical background' can be found
here -- and good luck
to anyone trying to make sense of it!
27.
I have employed the rather stilted sentential prefixing
clause (or, as it is generally known: 'sentence-forming operator'), "It is not the
case that…", in order to avoid well-known
scope ambiguities (this links to a PDF), which often result from an incautious
use of the negative particle in certain propositional contexts.
28.R6 has
also been left somewhat
'stylistically-challenged' to minimise the differences between the stated
examples. The same applies to several other illustrative sentences employed in this
part of the Essay.
R6: It is not the case that
this stick is bent in water.
29. I
have said much more about "contradiction" -- and the many
failed attempts to explain what Hegel thought he was trying to say with, and in
relation to,
that word -- in
Essays Four, Five,
Eight Parts
One,
Two,
Three and Eleven
Part One.
What counts
as a "legitimate substitution instance" depends on whether we are speaking
about, (a) The 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 below.]
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":
[Yes, I am aware Mount
McKinley is now called Denali!]
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.]
Or:
Y2: "Romeo loves Juliette."
Substituting "Romeo" for "ξ", "Juliette"
for "ζ", and "ξ loves ζ"
for "F(ξ,ζ)".
Y3: "The River Thames loves Paddington Bear."
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).
For more details and an
explanation of the use of Greek letters like these, readers are directed to Note 15a of Part
One, where an explanation is also given why this method of analysis has much to
recommend it, despite appearances to the contrary.
29a0.
The alleged contradiction might emerge along something like the following lines (although it isn't
being suggested that this is how the argument has ever actually been
developed, or has been openly expressed, only how it might be):
C1: NN believes that p.
C2: Science has shown that
not p.
C3: Therefore, not p.
C4: NN accepts the truth of C3.
C5: Therefore, NN believes both p
and not p.
[Where "p" is a propositional variable, and "NN"
is a Proper Name surrogate.]
Of course, it is
now up to
NN to adjust her
beliefs, or otherwise (when the above variables have been
interpreted).
However, C3 doesn't follow from C2,
unless the following assumption is added:
C2a: Whatever science has
shown to be the case is true.
Or something
like that.
[Recall that
"not p" (when disquoted -- i.e., when those quotation marks have been
removed, and p has been interpreted) is just as capable of being true as
any non-negated proposition is (when
it too has been
interpreted). For
example: "The Thames is neither longer than, nor the same length as,
the Nile"
is just as true as, "The Nile is longer than the Thames", whatever
rhetorical or stylistic differences there are between them. In order to save on
needless repetition the caveat that an interpretation is required in all such
cases will be omitted, but the reader should assume one is always required
(unless stated otherwise). How observation and experiment
(but not beliefs) are capable of contradicting a given scientific theory will be examined in much more detail in Essay
Thirteen Part Two.]
It is worth
pointing out that the relation between sentences that express beliefs and their
negations isn't at all straight-forward. Here are just a few sentences that
illustrate this.
B12: MM
believes that p.
B13: MM
does not believe that p.
B14: It is
not the case that MM believes that p.
B15: MM
believes that not p.
B16: MM
disbelieves (that) p.
B17: MM
has no belief either way that p or that not p.
[In many of
the above, "that" will often be omitted in ordinary parlance. Its presence would
make many of the above rather stilted. Several of the above would also be said
rather differently; for instance B17 would probably come out as "MM
has expressed no belief either way about p or not p." And, when
interpreted, B17, or its equivalent, would probably be articulated even more
differently -- for example, as "Arthur Farfenicklehasn't expressed a
belief either way about whether or not it is raining."]
While it
looks like B12 and B13 contradict one another, that isn't at all clear since
B13 itself might mean any one of B14-B17. In fact, only B14 is the
unambiguous contradictory
of B12 (that is because it is the only one that always has an opposite
truth-value to B12). B12 and B15, as they stand, are merely inconsistent since both could be
false. That in turn would happen if B17 itself were the case -- i.e., if MM
is indifferent toward the truth or the falsehood of B12 and B15 (i.e., if MM
has no belief either way; in other words, MM would be one of the "don't
knows" that make an appearance in opinion polls all the time). In that
eventuality, B12 and B15 would both be
false.
I will say
no more about the logical connections between the above five sentences since
that would take us too far afield. Anyone interested in diving into this
extremely knotty
topic might begin with Hintikka (2005) and then the much more recent,
Rendsvig, et al
(2023).
29a.
Admittedly, it could be
argued that Hegel also appeared to believe this (i.e., that appearances were
'part of reality'
-- although he would have refrained from calling them "real" -- on that, see
Note 29b, below). In which case, it isn't too clear what the (alleged) contradiction here is supposed to be.
Alas, what little help we
get from DM-fans in trying to make sense of this turns out to be about as useful
and effective as a chocolate fire door.
Anyway, what Hegel had to say about
'appearances' is not only useless, it is as clear as mud (to vary the image). I
have said more about that,
here. [See also, the next
Note.]
"Let us consider a few illustrations of this
process, this contradiction between essence and appearance, resulting from the
different forms assumed by matter in its motion. In the production of the plant,
seed, bud, flower and fruit are all equally necessary phases or forms of its
existence. Taken separately, each by itself, they are all equally real, equally
necessary, equally rational phases of the plant's development.
Yet each in turn becomes supplanted by the other
and thereby becomes no less unnecessary and non-real. Each phase of the plant's
manifestation appears as a reality and then is transformed in the course of
development into an unreality or an appearance. This movement, triadic in this
particular case, from unreality into reality and then back again to unreality,
constitutes the essence, the inner movement behind all appearance. Appearance
cannot be understood without an understanding of this process. It is this that
determines whether any appearance in nature, society or in the mind is rational
or non-rational." [Novack
(1971), pp.86-87. Bold emphasis
added; paragraphs merged.]
Why Novack thought it wise, or even
sensible, to describe plants as
"non-real" is far from clear, to say the least! If the flowers he was
speaking about were plastic, were a decorative feature in the icing on a cake, were
represented in a painting or were part of a sculpture, he might have had a point. Perhaps
he meant the existence of such plants is
transient? Or that they can/will
at some point perish? But, how that disqualifies them from being genuine
plants (i.e., 'real') is still far from clear. Are 'real' plants supposed to be
eternal beings?
However, Novack openly agrees with
Hegel by regarding as not real, or not fully real,
whatever it is that perishes, or can
perish (a dogma typical of the Rationalist Tradition,
as we saw earlier):
"We have already seen what great measure
of truth there is in the proposition that the real is rational. We have
ascertained that all things come into existence and endure in a lawful and
necessary way. But this is not the whole and final truth about things. It is
one-sided, relative, and a passing truth. The real truth about things is that
they not only exist, persist, but they also develop and pass away. This passing
away of things, eventuating in death, is expressed in logical terminology by the
term 'negation.' The whole truth about things can be expressed
only if we take into account this opposite and negative aspect. In other words,
unless we introduce the negation of our first affirmation, we shall obtain only
a superficial and abstract inspection of reality.
"All things are limited and changing. They not
only force their way and are forced into existence and maintain themselves
there. They also develop, disintegrate and are pushed out of existence and
eventually disappear. In logical terms, they not only affirm themselves. They
likewise negate themselves and are negated by other things. By coming into
existence, they say: 'Yes! Here I am!' to reality and to thought engaged in
understanding reality. By developing and eventually going out of existence, they
say on the contrary: 'No, I no longer am; I cannot stay real.' If everything
that comes into existence must pass out of existence, as all of reality pounds
constantly into our brains, then every affirmation must inexorably express its
negation in logical thought. Such a movement of things and of thought is called
a dialectical movement.
"There is a fable in
The Arabian Nights
about an Oriental monarch who, early in life, asked his
wise men for the sum and substance of all learning, for the truth that would
apply to everything at all times and under all conditions, a truth which would
be as absolutely sovereign as he thought himself to be. Finally, over the king's
deathbed, his wise men supplied the following answer: 'Oh, mighty king, this one
truth will always apply to all things: "And this too shall pass away".' If
justice prevailed, the king should have bequeathed a rich reward to his wise
men, for they had disclosed to him the secret of the dialectic. This is the
power, the omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever
emerging from, annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things. This 'powerful unrest,' as
Leibnitz
(sic) called it, this quickening force and destructive action of
life -- the negative -- is everywhere at work: in the movement of things, in the
growth of living beings, in the transformations of substances, in the evolution
of society, and in the human mind which reflects all these objective processes.
"From this dialectical essence of reality Hegel
drew the conclusion that constitutes an indispensable part of his famous
aphorism: All that is rational is real. But for Hegel all that is real is not
without exception and qualification worthy of existence.
'Existence
is in part mere appearance, and only in part reality.'
(Introduction to the Shorter Logic,
§6.) [I.e.,
Hegel (1975),
p.9,
§6 -- RL.] Existence elementally and necessarily divides
itself, and the investigating mind finds it to be so divided, into opposing
aspects of appearance and essence. This disjunction between appearance and
essence is no more mysterious than the disjunction between the inside and
outside of an object." [Novack
(1971), pp.84-86. Quotation marks
altered to conform with the conventions
adopted at this site. I have reproduced the edition of Hegel's work used by the
editor of Novack's on-line text, Andy Blunden, not the version that appears
here. Links added; several paragraphs
merged.]
As should
seem obvious (at least to atheists), this sort of language will only make sense to
theists. It is integral to the
Platonic-, and
Christian-contempt
for the material world (which I have elsewhere linked to the ruling elite, their
fear and hatred of the 'great unwashed', the 'mob', those 'easily incited' by
some 'rabble-rouser' -- the mythical 'external agitator' --, who threaten their
wealth and power, and which right-wingers
readily connect with
'dark forces', 'the Devil', and,
these days, you guessed
it, 'the
Jews').
But, when
'God' is taken out of the picture this 'dialectical fairy tale' falls apart faster than one of
Donald Trump's policy
proposals.
That is partly because the distinction between what is and what isn't 'real' is
entirely bogus when applied in the above, careless manner. [Again on this, see
Austin (1964), pp.62-83.] As if
the difference between a 'real' and a counterfeit dollar bill lies in the fact
that the latter will perish while the former might not. Or, indeed, that there
exists somewhere a 'real dollar bill' that will never perish and which forever
stands in silent judgement on its inferior, this-worldly, material 'copy'. Anyone who
thinks that a real Van
Gogh (painting), for instance, will never fade or ever require preservation
or restoration
no matter what is done to it, whereas a fake van Gogh (i.e., one that can be
described as "not a real van Gogh") will crumble to dust if left to its own
devices, would be well advised never seek employment in the Art Industry.
As if
those charged with determining whether a certain painting is or isn't a realVermeer, for example, will do so by
hanging around for a couple of million years to see if it perishes!
Figure Nine: 'The Potato Eaters' By
Vincent Van Gogh -- Not The 'Real' Painting, Of Course,
Just A 'Perishable' Copy
Figure Ten: A "Real Vermeer"?
According To Hegel
And His Latter Day Clones, Maybe Not...
I trust readers won't mind checking on the above
Vermeer for, say, the next two hundred thousand years to see whether or not it perishes so the
above question can be answered one way or the other.
Figure Eleven: Art Experts Say This Is A
"Real Caravaggio", But Maverick Hegelians Insist On Waiting
A Few Million Years To See Whether
Or Not It Disintegrates Before They Concur
Be this as it may, except for the
use of overtly religious
language, the above passage of Novack's isn't significantly different from the
way that some
of the
Hindu faithful, for example, depict the 'god', Shiva:
"Shiva (Sanskrit: Auspicious
One), or Siva, is one of the main Deities of Hinduism, worshipped as the
paramount lord by the Saivite sects of India. Shiva is one of the most
complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is the
destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality,
the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger." [Quoted from
here.
Bold emphasis added.]
"Shiva is 'shakti' or power,
Shiva is the destroyer, the most powerful god of the Hindu pantheon and one
of the godheads in the Hindu Trinity. Known by many names -- Mahadeva,
Mahayogi, Pashupati, Nataraja, Bhairava, Vishwanath, Bhava, Bhole Nath -- Lord
Shiva is perhaps the most complex of Hindu deities. Hindus recognize this by
putting his shrine in the temple separate from those of other deities.... Shiva, in temples is usually
found as a phallic symbol of the 'linga', which represents the energies
necessary for life on both the microcosmic and the macrocosmic levels, that is,
the world in which we live and the world which constitutes the whole of the
universe. In a Shaivite temple, the 'linga' is placed in the centre
underneath the spire, where it symbolizes the naval of the earth.... Shiva is believed
to be at the core of the centrifugal force of the universe, because of his
responsibility for death and destruction. Unlike the godhead
Brahma, the Creator, or
Vishnu, the Preserver,
Shiva is the dissolving force in life. But Shiva dissolves in order to create,
since death is the medium for rebirth into a new life. So the opposites of life
and death and creation and destruction both reside in his character.... Since Shiva is
regarded as a mighty destructive power, to numb his negative potentials he is
fed with opium and is also termed as 'Bhole Shankar', one who is oblivious of
the world. Therefore, on
Maha Shivratri, the night
of Shiva worship, devotees, especially the menfolk, prepare an intoxicating
drink called 'Thandai' (made from cannabis, almonds, and milk) sing songs in
praise of the Lord and dance to the rhythm of the drums." [Quoted from
here. Spelling modified to conform with UK English. Bold emphases
added. Links in the original; paragraphs merged.]
Maybe only those who 'understand' Hindu
Dialectics will be able to answer that one...
[On that specific
topic, see Solomon (1976).]
Shiva, is also supposed to be the "most powerful
god"; compare that claim with the following:
"This is the power, the
omnipotence of the negative side of existence, which is forever emerging from,
annihilating and transcending the affirmative aspect of things." [Novack,
op
cit. Bold emphasis added.]
Or,
indeed, compare it with Raya Dunayevskaya's entire book: "The
Power of Negativity". [I.e., Dunayevskaya (2002).]
Er..., once again, what was it that someone once said about
"the ideas of the ruling class..."?
Even so, the following
question is still in want of a clear answer: Is it the "whole and final truth about things" that they
pass away, or is that itself a "one-sided, relative, and...passing truth"?
If the
latter is the case, we can ignore it (since it might not be true tomorrow). On
the other hand,
if it
isn't, then some things are permanent (namely thatspecific truth), and
the above idea (i.e., 'the "whole and final truth about things" [is] that they
pass away'), is false, which means we can ignore it.
Either way, we can ignore it.
Be this as it may once more, as we will
see in Essays
Seven Part One and
Fourteen Part One (summary
here), Novack's words express a mystical, perhaps even poetic,
view of nature, one that openly
confuses linguistic and logical categories with reality itself (i.e., it
conflates talk
about talk with talk about things, a trait we have witnessed several times
exhibited by DM-fans). It also represents a faint echo of the doctrine (which Hegel
certainly accepted) that only 'God' is fully 'Real', since 'He' alone 'exists of
necessity'. Everything else is contingent and depends on 'Him' for its
own insecure, tenuous and transient
grip on existence.
In connection with that, Novack omitted the following remarks
from the above passage, and it isn't hard to see why:
"...we must presuppose
intelligence enough to know, not only that God is actual, that He is the
supreme actuality, that He alone is truly actual; but also, as regards the
logical bearings of the question, that existence is in part mere appearance, and
only in part actuality." [Hegel
(1975),
p.9, §6; bold emphasis added.]
The only question that should now be asked is: Why
on earth has
anyone on the revolutionary left appropriated even so much as
one logical or philosophical idea from that
Christian Mystic,
Hegel? The above
quasi-Christian piffle
Novack saw fit to publish (never mind the rest of his seriously unhinged book) is surely all the
proof anyone needs that Hegelianism seriously rots the brains of those who claim
to be radical.
But, to interrupt this
Hermetic Hilarity,
it is worth reminding ourselves that
Protons, for
example, seem to have received an
exemption certificate
from all that perishing and passing away palaver,
since they don't change -- or, if they do, they don't do so as a result of their
'internal contradictions'.
As far as we know they last forever, unless they are acted upon. Left alone they appear to
be eternal beings.
Photons are no
less dialectically-uncooperative since they are as changeless as
Electrons.
[There is much more on this topic,
here.]
One
Professor of theoretical physicist had this to say about such 'particles':
"The only known stable particles in
nature are the electron (and anti-electron), the lightest of the three
types of neutrinos (and its anti-particle), and the photon and
(presumed) graviton (which are their own anti-particles). The presumed
graviton, too, is stable. The other
neutrinos,
the proton, and many atomic nuclei (and their
anti-particles.... I'm going to stop mentioning
the anti-stuff, it goes without saying) are probably not stable but are
very, very, very long-lived. Protons, for instance, are so long-lived that at
most a minuscule fraction of them have decayed since the
Big
Bang, so for all practical purposes they are probably stable. The
other rather long-lived particle is the
neutron,
which when on its own, outside an atomic nucleus, lives just 15 minutes or so.
But neutrons inside many atomic nuclei can live far longer than the age of the
universe; such nuclei provide them with a stable home. Finally, I should add
that if
dark matter is made from particles, then those particles, too, must
be stable or very, very long-lived.
"Why
are these
particles stable? It turns out that our world imposes some rules on particle
behaviour, ones not visible to us in the physics of waves and vibrations that we
encounter in daily life, that prevent some particles from decaying, either
rapidly or at all. The fundamental rules are 'conservation laws', statements
that certain quantities in the universe never change in any physical
process. (These quantities include energy, momentum, electric charge, and a few
others.) There are also some approximate conservation laws, stating that certain
quantities only change very rarely. Conservation laws do not appear from
nowhere, imposed out of thin air by theorists; they are related to other
properties of the world. For example, if the laws of nature do not change over
time, then it follows (thanks to a theorem of the mathematician Emmy
Noether) that energy is conserved. Meanwhile, the stability of the
matter out of which we are made provides strong tests of these conservation
laws, as we'll see.
"Combining these laws with the
properties of particles leads to a set of simple rules that determine when
particles simply cannot decay, or when they can at most decay very rarely. And
these rules are (almost) entirely sufficient to explain the stability of the
particles out of which we are made, and those that we interact with most often."
[Matthew
Strassler, quoted from
here; accessed 19/02/2014. Quotation marks altered to conform with
the conventions adopted at the site. Spelling adjusted to agree with UK English;
several links added. Italic emphases in the original. The professor then
proceeds to spell out those rules, which I have omitted.]
Here is an
even more recent report, published in Nature Reviews Physics, dated January 8, 2021:
"Does the proton decay? The proton could decay into a
positron and a pion and if so the predictions of some beyond standard model
grand unified theories would be confirmed. Since the 1980s underground
experiments have been looking for signs of such decay. No proton decay has
yet been spotted, but one of the experiments, the Kamioka Nucleon Decay
Experiment...detected neutrinos from the
supernova
SN1987a instead. Its successor, the Super-Kamiokande, set the best current
lower-limit for proton lifetime: 1.6 x 1034
years. Some grand unified theories predict proton lifetimes up to around 1036
years so there is still room for surprises. Upcoming neutrino experiments also
have proton decay measurements planned and are expected to push the limits on
the proton lifetime. These measurements will take place at Deep Underground
Neutrino Experiment (DUNE)
currently under construction [at the] Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory
(JUNO)
which is almost completed and Hyper-Kamiokande whose
construction received the green light last year." [Quoted from
here; accessed 09/08/2021. One link and bold emphasis added.]
[As
of August 2023, the above is still the case: Proton decay has yet to be
observed.]
So, it seems like several particles, and not just
the Proton, have been issued with a 'Perishability Exemption Certificate'. Too
bad Hegel perished long before scientists learned about such non-dialectical
sub-atomic particles.
Be this as it may a third time, anyone
familiar with the DM-literature will also know that the sort of
flowery, quasi-religious language Novack inflicts on his readers goes
down rather well in most 'dialectical circles' (and that is even more so with
characters drawn from the HCD-fraternity, where the use of such
baroque terminology
is de rigeur).
That is still the case even though
an offensive, Christian
stench (with a minor
chord whiff of Hinduism, or even
Buddhism,
wafting away in the background) permeates the genre, especially when
such quotations are viewed in all their mystical glory. As is also true of openly religious
thinkers, such ornate language clearly supplies its
hapless victims some form of consolation.
And, of course, obscure language
like this can only help hide what is going on from 'bothersome scrutiny' by the 'uneducated', the
'un-philosophical', the 'undialectical', working class.
[HCD = High Church Dialectics/Dialectician, depending on context; that term is
explained here.]
[There is more on how such language
manages to do this (i.e., provide consolation, create
obfuscation and 'ratify' exclusivity) in Essay Nine
Part Two.
Again, on this, see also David Stove's: 'Idealism: A Victorian
Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. (However, in relation
to Stove's work, readers should take note of the caveats I have posted
here.)]
The bottom line is, of course,
that DM-words like Novack's only make sense if we are prepared to
anthropomorphise 'reality' and re-enchant nature. Novack's "Here I am" and "No I am not" rather give the
game away, one feels. As far as I am aware, there's isn't a philosophical equivalent of the term, "Freudian
Slip", but in this particular case, there should be.
Last but not least: we have yet to be
told what the 'contradiction' here is actually supposed to be!
30.
There is something distinctly odd about the idea that appearances are
even capable of
'contradicting' reality, the facts, or, indeed, anything at all. That is
because, plainly, appearances can't contradict anything unless both
('appearance' and 'reality') were expressed in indicative sentences -- or,
perhaps, both induced beliefs to that end (also expressed propositionally).
Clearly, that isn't an insignificant detail to be brushed aside as 'bourgeois
prejudice' (or blamed on 'excessive
tenderness for the world', as Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three have
shown). That is because this insistence re-focuses attention on the conflict that
might or might not exist between contradictory
beliefs, something we can get a handle on. But, in that regard, and with respect to bent sticks, for
instance, who actually
believes sticks are bent in water? Perhaps even more to the point: which person of sound mind
believes that sticks are both bent and not bent in water?
If that is the sort of
confusion that scientific progress encourages us to abandon, it would be no great
loss.
Despite that, none of
it
seems to have anything to do with
the supposed 'contradiction' between appearance and reality, since
those contradictions actually occur between beliefs expressed in
language. Still less would it have anything to do with 'commonsense'.
It could be
argued that sticks actually look both bent and not bent when partially immersed in
water: the lower half in the liquid looks bent while the upper half doesn't. But not even
that
is a contradiction since what we now have here are two different propositions:
V1: The
bottom half of this stick looks bent in water. [Where a pointing gesture makes
it clear which stick and what part is meant.]
V2: The
top half of this stick doesn't look bent in water. [Where a pointing gesture
makes it clear that the same stick is meant, alongside which part.]
We would
only have a contradiction here if either of these were the case:
V3: The
bottom
half of this stick looks and does not look bent in water, at the same time. [Where
a pointing gesture makes it clear which stick and which part are meant.]
V4: The top
half of this stick does and doesn't look bent in water, at the same time. [Where,
again,
a pointing gesture makes it clear that the same stick is intended and which part
is meant.]
But they
aren't, so we don't.
30a. Clearly, R10 can be interpreted in
several different ways, each of which will affect its truth/falsehood, and hence
the logical connections it enjoys with the other two propositions (re-posted at
the end of this Note):
R10: It isn't the case that
the Sun rises each morning.
R10 would be
true if this use of "rise" implied the Earth was stationary
while the Sun orbits it (e.g., as they were represented in the old, now defunct,
Ptolemaic System). In
that case, R10 would be used to reject that System, implying it is the
Earth that rotates on its axis while it orbits the Sun. [I have in fact considered
this specific possibility, alongside one or two others, in the main body of this Essay; for
example, here.]
R10 would
also be true if any one of the following were the case:
(i) The
Earth intermittently stopped rotating (for whatever reason), or even if
it did so permanently;
(ii) The
Earth and/or the Sun were destroyed (again, for whatever reason). In that case,
it might prove difficult to explain how R10 would be a proposition, if it
were implicit that R10 relates to the rise of the Sun above the
Earth's horizon, and there were observers to witness it. In that case,
if there were no Earth, no Sun and no observers, R10 would lose its
truth-conditions; that is, it would lose its sense, making it
truth-valueless; or,
["Sense", as it is used in
(ii) above, is explained
here.]
There are
other weird and wonderful scenarios (based on science fiction/fantasy) that
might seem to make R10 true, but they too would undermine its
propositional status (for reasons explored in Essay Thirteen Part Three,
here).
In the main
body of this Essay I have discounted such considerations in so far as they
impact on the
truth-functional connections that exist, might exist, or even fail to exist,
between the following three propositions:
R8: The Sun appears to rise
each morning.
R9: It isn't the case that
the Sun appears to rise each morning.
R10: It isn't the case that
the Sun rises each morning.
If anyone
wants to make a case for their 'defence' (i.e., that the aforementioned weird
and wonderful scenarios should be taken into
consideration when assessing the above connection, they should
email me with their best shot).
31.Those who think this unlikely should follow the link in Note 32, below
-- and then check out Note 30a, above.
32.The content of Note 32 has now been moved to the main body of this Essay,
here.
33a. Here is that remark (my quoting it
doesn't imply I agree with everything it says!):
"Third, we must distinguish between concepts, and statements or propositions.
It is an important feature of any language that it is always possible to express
the negation of any statement made within it.
Thus, from the fact that a group of people, through sharing a language, share
the concepts embodied in that language, it does not follow that they must also
share the same set of beliefs. To have common concepts is not thereby to have
common beliefs, since,
for any statement made within a particular set of concepts, it is always
possible to deny the truth of that statement.
It is therefore misleading to talk of a set of beliefs as constituting a
'conceptual framework', since it may seem to follow, either that it is
impossible to reject those beliefs without also rejecting the 'conceptual
framework', or that people whose beliefs differ must therefore be operating
within different 'conceptual frameworks'. There is thus an important sense in
which concepts do not determine beliefs." [Keat and Urry (1982), pp.217-18. Bold
emphases added.]
34.Anyway, and once more, these two
sentences are far too
ambiguous even to be considered
contradictory. Furthermore, in relation to R17 and R18, it is worth asking the
following: "'Appears' to whom? And in
what way? Indeed, what is the criterion of 'fairness' being applied here?"
R17: Capitalism appears to be
fair.
R18: It isn't the case that
Capitalism appears to be fair.
35.For the sake of argument (which was also the case
here), I am
assuming this reductio
is valid (plainly, it isn't!), and that R26 is a contradiction. But,
even if, per impossible, this argument were valid, it would still be of no help to
DM-fans. If contradictory pairs of propositions can both be true at once (or
what they supposedly depict can coexist), R27
would be false, and R28 would no longer follow from R21-R27. Given DM,
therefore, the argument would then be 'valid' just in case it wasn't!
[For reasons
already specified (but repeated in Note
37), I have ignored what seems to be a valid implication of some of the sentences
present in this argument -- which is that
people (workers) can, and maybe often do, hold contradictory beliefs about Capitalism.]
For ease of reference, R21-R28 were as
follows:
R21: Capitalism appears to be
fair.
R22: That leads people
(including workers) to think it is fair.
R23: Hence, Capitalism is
fair. [Or, so they conclude.]
R24: But, revolutionary
theory and practice convince others that Capitalism isn't fair.
R25: Therefore, Capitalism
isn't fair. [Or, so they conclude.]
R26: Consequently, Capitalism
is both fair and not fair.
R27: However, the contradiction
in R26 implies that R23 can't be true (based on the truth of R25).
R28: Therefore, Capitalism
isn't fair.
36.Naturally, the way this particular point has been
developed in the main body of the Essay prejudices,
or even biases,
any conclusions that might be drawn from it. Anyway, it isn't faithful to the aim of the
re-constructed argument
(expressed in R21-R28, reproduced in
Note 35, above). But, DM-texts are themselves the source of the 'problem'. As noted earlier, since it isn't possible to form
a contradiction by conjoining a proposition just expressing an appearance with one
expressing an actual fact of the matter (but not an appearance), any attempt to do so will, not unsurprisingly,
flounder. Moreover, and for the same reason, the options available to
DM-theorists to extricate themselves from this dialectical mess are no help,
either (as I have shown elsewhere in this Essay). So, until DM-theorists clarify what they
mean by much of what they say (at least on this issue), little more can be done to make sense of anything
they have so far said.
37.The reasons for the presence -- or even for the formation
-- of contradictory beliefs
(in the
'minds' of the unwitting or even the
inattentive) won't be
entered into here since that would take us too far afield into areas covered by
HM. However,
several possible examples were covered in more detail,
here.
38.
It could be objected that this latest assertion
contends that appearances are
'subjective' when it was argued earlier that they were 'objective'.
Again: which is it
to be?
Of course,
it is the philosophicaluse of terms
like "objective" and "subjective" to which exception is
being taken.
So, this part of the
Essay is simply responding to the employment (by dialecticians) of hopelessly vague,
possibly even terminally obscure, terms such as these. DM-supporters certainly seem to believe that appearances are subjective (or, at
best, they might be inter-subjective), and it is
that assumption which is being used in order to exert pressure on the rest
of their theory. But, none of this implies I accept "subjective" and "objective"
have a clear meaning
when employed 'philosophically', or, indeed, 'dialectically'.
On
the other hand -- to continue with this hopeless idiom for a little longer --, appearances are also
'objective' in that they are (presumably) part of the real world (i.e.,
they don't belong to any other!). Even
if propositions about appearances turn out to be totally mistaken, fictional or entirely made up, they would still exist as a
brain state or process (i.e., on this view, not mine!), or they will
have 'emerged' from
some such state or process in the
CNS (again, on this view,
not mine!). Moreover, they will 'exist in each individual mind
independently of every other mind', or so it would seem. But, if your thoughts are
'external' to my 'mind', and are 'external' to every other 'mind' on the planet,
then, according to Lenin, they must be 'objective' -- that is, for everyone
else, but maybe not for you!
"We ask, is a man given
objective reality when he sees something red or feels something hard, etc., or
not? This hoary philosophical query is confused by Mach. If you hold that it is
not given, you, together with Mach, inevitably sink to subjectivism and
agnosticism and deservedly fall into the embrace of the immanentists, i.e., the
philosophical Menshikovs. If you hold that it is given, a philosophical concept
is needed for this objective reality, and this concept has been worked out long,
long ago. This concept is matter. Matter is a philosophical category
denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and
which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing
independently of them. Therefore, to say that such a concept can become
'antiquated' is childish talk, a senseless repetition of the arguments
of fashionable reactionary philosophy. Could the struggle between
materialism and idealism, the struggle between the tendencies or lines of
Plato
and
Democritus
in philosophy, the struggle between religion and science, the
denial of objective truth and its assertion, the struggle between the adherents
of supersensible knowledge and its adversaries have become antiquated during the
two thousand years of the development of philosophy?...
"As
the reader sees, all these arguments of the founders of empirio-criticism
entirely and exclusively revolve around the old epistemological question of the
relation of thinking to being, of sensation to the physical. It required the
extreme naïveté of the Russian Machians to discern anything here that is even
remotely related to 'recent science,' or 'recent positivism.' All the
philosophers mentioned by us, some frankly, others guardedly, replace the
fundamental philosophical line of materialism (from being to thinking, from
matter to sensation) by the reverse line of idealism. Their denial of matter is
the old answer to epistemological problems, which consists in denying the
existence of an external, objective source of our sensations, of an objective
reality corresponding to our sensations. On the other hand, the recognition
of the philosophical line denied by the idealists and agnostics is expressed in
the definitions: matter is that which,
acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective
reality given to us in sensation, and so forth....
"'Matter is disappearing'
means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter is vanishing and
that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are likewise
disappearing which formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary
(impenetrability, inertia, mass, etc.) and which are now revealed to be relative
and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the sole
'property' of matter with whose recognition philosophical
materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality,
of existing outside our mind." [Lenin (1972),
pp.144-45,
165,
311. Bold emphases alone added, quotation marks altered to conform with the
conventions adopted at this site.]
"To be a materialist is to
acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense-organs. To
acknowledge objective truth, i.e., truth not dependent upon man and mankind,
is, in one way or another, to recognise absolute truth." [Ibid.,
p.148. Bold
emphasis added.]
"Knowledge can be useful
biologically, useful in human practice, useful for the preservation of
life, for the preservation of the species, only when it reflects objective
truth, truth which is independent of man." [Ibid.,
p.157. Bold emphasis added.]
So, if we
were to accept what Lenin has to say about 'objectivity', then, in
relation to the minds of everyone on the planet -- other than you, dear reader
--, your thoughts are 'objective' for them, but, alas, not for you, since your thoughts are external to, and exist independently of, billions
of other minds.
[I
have said more about this little recognised, paradoxical implication of Lenin's theory, in Essay Thirteen Part One, for example,
here and
here. Also, since
Lenin's thoughts aren't independent of his mind, none of them can be
'objective'! And the same goes for every single DM-fan; none of their
thoughts can be 'objective' to them, either.]
39.Again, the circumstances which motivate members of different classes to draw true or
false conclusions about the nature of Capitalist society won't be entered
into at this site.
39a.
But, even for Descartes, his 'self-certifying ideas' only
seemed to him to be reliable. After all, he admitted he needed 'God' to ratify his
"clear and distinct" ideas if they were to be declared 'indubitable'. He
would hardly have done that if his ideas were 'self-certifying'.
"For since
God has endowed each of us with some light of reason by which to distinguish
truth from error,
I could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied
with the opinions of another, unless I had resolved to exercise my own judgment
in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the task...."
[Descartes (1997b), Part 3, p.88. Quoted from here; bold emphasis added.]
"For, in the first place even the principle which
I have already taken as a rule, viz., that all the things which we clearly and
distinctly conceive are true, is certain only because God is or exists and
because he is a Perfect Being, and because all that we possess is derived from
him: whence it follows that our ideas or notions, which to the extent of their
clearness and distinctness are real, and proceed from God, must to that extent
be true.
Accordingly, whereas we not infrequently have ideas or notions in which some
falsity is contained, this can only be the case with such as are to some extent
confused and obscure, and in this proceed from nothing (participate of
negation), that is, exist in us thus confused because we are not wholly perfect.
And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in
so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or
perfection should proceed from nothing. But if we did not know that all which we
possess of real and true proceeds from a Perfect and Infinite Being, however
clear and distinct our ideas might be, we should have no ground on that account
for the assurance that they possessed the perfection of being true." [Ibid.,
Part 4, pp.95-96;
quoted from here.
Bold emphases added. (Both of these passages link to a translation that is
different from the referenced version.)]
And yet,
evento 'God', such ideas would only be 'appearances'! Plainly, 'God' couldn't appeal to a superior 'Deity' to
ratify 'His' ideas. Even if such 'appearances' coincided with their 'essence'
(to use the jargon, once more), they would still be 'appearances', and those
'essences' would still only 'appear to be essences', just as all this
'coinciding' would only appear to do so (given this odd way of talking).
Of course,
it could be argued that 'God's perfect nature' would guarantee that 'His' ideas
shouldn't be classified as 'appearances'. But if the 'evil demon' Descartes
invented could make him question all his ideas and beliefs, then why
can't there be a 'super evil demon' that screws with 'God's mind' in the same
way? It would be no good anyone trying to argue that that is impossible with
'God' because of the possibility that this 'super evil demon' has messed with their head to make them draw
this and other false conclusions about 'God'.
Just as soon
as we admit the existence of 'god' we are in no position to deny the existence
of 'super evil demons'. Once we go
down this rabbit hole, where there are no established rules and, like Descartes, we're
free to make stuff up as we go along, how can such a 'super evil demon' be ruled out? Any
attempt to do so will just prompt the invention of a 'mega, super evil
demon' that has messed with their head, too...; rinse and repeat...
[Compare
this with what was argued in Essay Thirteen
Part Three about the
(ubiquitous) use of science fiction in Philosophy (especially the Philosophy
of Mind and the Philosophy of Time). There is a way out of this rabbit
hole (should anyone be foolish enough to go down it) -- or, better still, never
to fall down it --, but it requires the use of a method developed in Wittgenstein (1974b).]
40.As we have seen, and as we will see even more in other Essays
published at this site
unfold, dialectical thoughts arefar fromself-certifying.
In fact, many
of them self-destructwith alarming ease, while the rest are based on
one or more of the following seriously flawed factors:
Admittedly, it is controversial to claim that
thoughts are to be classified with appearances, but since these
terms-of-art (as they operate in Metaphysics) are devoid of any clear meaning to
begin with, its denial is devoid of sense, too. Either that
or the claim itself is
impossible to assess, and for the same reason. After all, the negation of
non-sense is also
non-sense.
[Follow the last link above for an explanation of the technical meaning
of "non-sense" employed at this site. On the inappropriateness of depicting
sensations and 'appearances' (etc.) in the traditional manner, see Hacker (1987).]
40a.
As Wittgenstein noted, in that case all we
would have here are
yet more
signs, and signs can't interpret themselves. Moreover, certification
and authentication have to be publicly performed -- and have to be openly
checkable -- if they are to be counted as such.
"It is indeed true that a
sign can be lifeless for one, as when one hears an alien tongue or sees an
unknown script. But it is an illusion to suppose that what animates a sign is
some immaterial thing, abstract object, mental image or hypothesised
psychic entity that can be attached to it by a process of thinking.
[Wittgenstein (1969), p.4: 'But if we had to name anything which is the life of
the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.'] One can try to rid
oneself of these nonsensical conceptions by simple manoeuvres. In the case of
the idealist conception, imagine that we replace the mental accompaniment of a
word, which allegedly gives the expression its 'life', by a physical correlate.
For example, instead of accompanying the word 'red' with a mental image of red,
one might carry around in one's pocket a small red card. So, on the idealist's
model, whenever one uses or hears the word 'red', one can look at the
card instead of conjuring up a visual image in thought. But will looking at a
red slip of paper endow the word 'red' with life? The word plus sample is no
more 'alive' than the word without the sample. For an object (a sample of red)
does not have the use of the word laid up in it, and neither does the
mental image. Neither the word and the sample nor the word and the mental
pseudo-sample dictate the use of a word or guarantee understanding.... It seemed to
Frege, Wittgenstein
claimed, that no adding of inorganic signs, as it were, can make the proposition
live, from which he concluded that [for Frege -- RL] 'What must be added is
something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs'.
[Wittgenstein (1969), p.4.] He [Frege -- RL] did not see that such an object, a
sense mysteriously grasped in thinking, as it were a picture in which all the
rules are laid up, 'would itself be another sign, or a calculus to explain the
written one to us'. [Wittgenstein (1974a), p.40.].... To understand a sign,
i.e., for it to 'live' for one, is not to grasp something other than the sign;
nor is it to accompany the sign with an inner parade of objects in thought. It
is to grasp the use of the sign itself." [Hacker (1993), pp.167-68.
Link and bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged. ]
There is an excellent account of this in Bloor
(1997). A more profound (but ultimately flawed) analysis can be found in Kripke (1982)
(a modern classic), with another
intelligent approach presented in Williams (1999a). [This topic is covered in more detail
in Essay Thirteen
Part Three.]
Bloor's book is one of the best
contributions to the debate over the nature of rule-following to have
appeared in the last twenty-five or so years; nevertheless, there are several
serious weaknesses in his overall argument. They will be discussed in more
detail a later Essay. [On this in general, see also Kusch (2006), which develops
ideas not a million miles different from Bloor's and Kripke's. Having said that,
it is also worth pointing out that these authors mistakenly portray Wittgenstein
as some sort of 'meaning sceptic', which he certainly wasn't. He would simply
have pointed out that the word "meaning" has a use (in fact
many).
On that, see Essay Thirteen
Part Three, and
Malcolm (1986b). On Bloor's work, see Essay Twelve Part
One, Note 35. See
also Hanna and Harrison (2004), Chapter Eight.]
"[C]oncepts which arise from
direct interaction with the world cannot be false." [Rees (1998), p.92.]
However, from the surrounding context it is unclear whether or not Rees
fully agrees with those sentiments. If
not, he was wise not to. Clearly, concepts themselves can't be either true
or false. It makes no sense at all to ask whether "….cat" (or even "cat") is
true or false. Hegel thought otherwise, but that idea was itself based on a
confusion between concepts, objects and propositions/indicative sentences, analysed in
Part One of this
Essay -- but in more detail in Essay Four Part One,
here
and here. I will
return to this topic again in
Part Three of this Essay, and once more, at greater length, in Essay Twelve Part Six.
42.In fact, this work is aimed at demonstrating that although DM appears
(at least to
its supporters) to be an excellent theory, in reality it is the exact opposite.
Another
rather ironic 'dialectical' inversion, one feels.
There would, of course, be no point arguing
for or against the truth of DM, or seeking to confirm any of it in practice, if
'dialectical thoughts' were self-certifying.
43.This word (i.e., "semblances")
isn't being used here in the way that Hegel employed it. This is what the Glossary
over at the Marxist Internet Archive
[MIA] has to say about the Hegelian version of
this term (and good
luck to anyone trying to make sense of it!), quoted earlier:
"Illusory Being [or semblance] is a category
of Hegel's philosophy denoting the
sceptical moment when an object is first perceived. The Dialectic of
Reflection is the dialectic of the essential and unessential. Illusory Being is
the negative moment in this dialectic -- the unessential. Against the position
of scepticism, Hegel says that it must be recognised that the unessential is
Being's unessential, that is, the thing is expressed in the unessential as
well as in the essential, only the unessential is not yet recognised for what it
is." [Quoted from
here; accessed 14/02/2017. Italic emphasis and link in the original.
Here we see yet more fluent Martian from self-proclaimed Marxists!
Is it any wonder workers ignore us in their hundreds of millions?]
Several of Marx and Engels's works listed below have
been linked to the MIA, but since Lawrence & Wishart
threatened legal action over copyright infringement many of these links no
longer work.
However, all
of their
published works can now be accessed
here.
Aaron, R. (1967),
The Theory Of Universals (Oxford University Press, 2nd
ed.).
Aczel, A. (2000), The Mystery Of The
Aleph. Mathematics, The Kabbalah, And The Search For Infinity (Simon &
Schuster).
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