Is the case for socialism, one of morality, cold logic or long term survival of our species?

[alanjjohnstone]

Is there any chance of the main participants in this thread list what they all agree upon and don't dispute. I can never be sure if there is any substance to the arguments being presented or whether it is nit-picking despite the rather extreme position of the accusations of "Leninist" and counter allegations of "anti-Marxist" (or "anti-Engels" as it may be.) As you all know i try to follow the thread and others…(come back Rosa !! )but i simply get lost, especially when the works of authorities in the field are referred to, since my reading in philosophy is very limited. Truthfully…i don't know the truth…just how i feel about what i think is true and that is i know …yup…KNOW…there is a better way of living our life…what it is i think i haveacquired the answer…anarcho-communism, free access socialism ..co-operative commonwealth and a host of other synomyns…How to get it is more of a problem and more of an argument with other people who agree on our goal but not the way to it…There i claim an agnoticism …just that the weight of evidence has determined my choice of means and the methods. I could be wrong. Sometimes in debates with StuartW i hope i am wrong and he is right but i can only act as i myself see fit now and until i am proved wrong to my own satisfaction. Events will determine that rather than persuasive explanations and astute analyses.When it comes down to philosophy…i'll have to see its worth with my own eyes…empirical evidence…tangible facts and figures …I follow Marx's motto "Doubt Everything" and of course that also means what i see with my own eyes!!! (otherwise i'd think after seeing Uri Geller he was a magician and not a conjuror trickster)  Ramble over and out

[alanjjohnstone]

Stuart, i was always facinated by Colin Turnbull's reference in the Forest People that because of their physical  environment..dense wooded jungle with few clearings, they have no sense of perspective. They have rarely seen a great distance off and their brains have never re-wired to comprehend that the mole-hills in the distance, the ant-size animals  far away are the same objects as real mountains and antelopes close up. Something we all take for granted, seeing and believing, (see my previous post)  but what the history of art can show as evolving through time as we gain knowledge and the means to see and understand. Another ramble finished

[stuartw2112]

DJP, you're right, this is no reason to accept idealism or dualism either. Why accept or believe anything? Just keep an open mind and look and think. Or, as Alan puts it, doubt everything.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

LBird wrote:

I'll just ask DJP, Vin, twc, etc., why don't you read some philosophy of science, and ask questions if something is confusing to you? Why don't you declare openly your theoretical perspective (of 'knowledge' or 'truth', for example)?

I'm with the vast majority of scientists and philosophers. Materialism or Physicalism, what ever you want to call it, is the only game in town. I could perhaps accept property-dualism but substance-dualism is a complete non-starter.Which of these would you go with:1. Although the world is constituted of just one kind of substance – the physical kind – there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties. In other words, it is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains).or2. There exist two kinds of substance: physical and non-physical (the mind), and subsequently also two kinds of properties which adhere in those respective substances.or something else?

DJP, your questions come with assumptions.This question is like asking me is your 'elephant' Indian or African, and only allowing me to answer one of those answers, so I'm forced to choose between your assumptions.The problem is SUBSTANCE.To ask the question 'is there one kind or two kinds?', requires an assumption about 'substance'.That is precisely what is at issue.

stuartw2112 wrote:

If there's one big problem with materialism, it's this: material doesn't exist. Or if it does, we're not at all sure what it is. And it moves in very mysterious ways. As LBird says, just read some science if you doubt this.

For stuart's 'material', read your 'substance'.Stuart and I will answer your question about 'substance' when you tell us what your ideology says it is.

DJP wrote:

I think this is why "physicalism" is more fashionable these days.But anyhow is this a good enough reason to adopt idealism or dualism? Don't you think these have more problems associated with them?

So for you, 'substance' is 'physical'; for Stuart, me and Marx, it isn't. Or, rather, there's more to 'reality' than the 'physical'.And we're back to your Engelsian, unexamined, ideology about only being 'materialism' and idealism'. To you, if some isn't a 'materialist', they must be an 'idealist'. This is bollocks, and even Engels, on the very next page, lists another category (agnostics)! Engels is the source of your ideology, and Engels can be proved to be wrong, by quoting Engels.His book 'Ludwig Feuerbach' is full of contradictory statements, like 'there are only two philosophies' on one page, and then gives a third. Do you want the quotes?

[alanjjohnstone]

Oh DJP has touched on this previously referring to an optical illusion website

[DJP]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Is there any chance of the main participants in this thread list what they all agree upon and don't dispute. 

Well I'm hoping no-one agrees with point 2 in my post above. But I'm prepared to be surprised.

[stuartw2112]

Alan, I've read Colin Turnbull's wonderful book, but I have no memory of that point! Very interesting, thanks.

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

DJP, you're right, this is no reason to accept idealism or dualism either. Why accept or believe anything? Just keep an open mind and look and think. Or, as Alan puts it, doubt everything.

Well we could accept radical sceptism but when it comes to acting in the world this becomes untenable. I take it like me you didn't leave the house via the top floor window this morning nor step out into the road into the path of an oncoming bus. I agree there is no such thing as absolute certain knowledge but I think we have good enough reasons to treat some things as if they where.

[LBird]

ajj wrote:

When it comes down to philosophy…i'll have to see its worth with my own eyes…empirical evidence…tangible facts and figures …I follow Marx's motto "Doubt Everything" and of course that also means what i see with my own eyes!!!

But science doesn't do this, alan."Individuals using their own eyes" is bourgeois mythology. It's individualist and empiricist. You'll never see or touch 'value'.This myth also prevents science from understanding intangibles and unobservables, which, as Einstein tells us, can only be understood by means of theory.As Albert said, it's the theory which tells us what we can observe.The key for realists is 'mechanisms', rather than 'substance'.Value has the power to compel obedience in humans. Marx detailed its mechanism in Capital.Humans create value, but value has become our master.

The monster of Mary Shelley, wrote:

You are my creator, but I am your master; — obey!"

We are Dr. Frankenstein, suffering under our own monster. That's why we humans can change our circumstances; as creators, we can also destroy our own creations.

[alanjjohnstone]

I may have paraphrased what he said and added a bit to it but in essence it is what he reports..antelopes might  have been buffalosDid a google Here confirms i never made it uphttp://www.johnchernoff.com/assets/The%20Stones%20Ethnographers%20Trip%20Over.pdfBut who knows…wasn't Margaret Mead fooled by those Pacific Islanders who told her they didn't know how babies were made and she believed them!!

[alanjjohnstone]

“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts"- Albert Einstein, LBird

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

Stuart and I will answer your question about 'substance' when you tell us what your ideology says it is.

As if I could utter a couple of words to you and then magically transfer all my knowledge and my "web of beliefs" over to you. It doesn't work like thatThe question I asked was a very basic one I hoped you could answer it without playing at silly buggers. I was trying to work out where you are coming from.I ripped that quote from wikipedia as it uses the standard (though perhaps dated) terminology.If I asked you what make your car is I want to know what make your car is, not get into a "conversation" about what a "car" is.From what you've said you're either a "property-dualist" which is fine and not incompatible with monist materialism / physicalism.Or you're an out and out (substance)-dualist which is bonkers.

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

I was trying to work out where you are coming from.

I'm coming from 'mechanism'.You're coming from 'substance'.All your attempts to categorise me and stuart are based upon your ideological belief in 'substance'.

DJP wrote:

From what you've said you're either a "property-dualist" which is fine and not incompatible with monist materialism / physicalism.Or you're an out and out (substance)-dualist which is bonkers.

You won't discuss your axiom about 'substance'.On 'mechanisms', the one Bhaskar mentions is Darwin's theory of evolution. We need the theory to explain an unobservable mechanism (unobservable because it takes place over thousands of years), and the theory seems to explain the mechanism.The religious are aware of the unobservable status of this mechanism.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

DJP wrote:

I was trying to work out where you are coming from.

I'm coming from 'mechanism'.You're coming from 'substance'.All your attempts to categorise me and stuart are based upon your ideological belief in 'substance'.

This is as garbled and nonsensical as your "idealism-materialism". Haven't you wonder why no-one else uses this term?I'm going to leave it here. A meaningful conversation requires a shared framework. You're making such a mush of catergories that it's impossible to move forward…

[stuartw2112]

But DJP, you don't need a philosophy to get out of bed and walk down the street. You don't need Newton to stop you jumping out the window. Maybe you need some kind of intuitive philosophy, but then a great deal of this is almost certainly present from birth, built into your brain (in other words, we're born idealists).

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