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

[twc]

Yes, Stuart it was addressed to you, but Alan wants us all to respond.It’s good to get responses from you, Vin, and DJP (by the way, is that DJP as moderator in the video on economics.  If so, we met briefly at head office in 2012.  Good to put a friendly face to a name.)Alan now needs a few more contributions…

[Anonymous]

twc wrote:

Alan now needs a few more contributions…

I agree.  Obviously there are strong opinions on the subject and I am keen to see them elucidated.  Then we would all know where we we stand on this subject. 

[twc]

CredoFollowing alanjjohnstone’s request.We have a ready-made scientific theory.  I outline its form by abstracting from its content.The social process appears to us to be contingent and incomprehensible.Marx developed a scientific framework for comprehending the contingent social process.That framework is scientific because it is testable.Its foundation principles are the materialist conception of history as described in the Preface to “A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy”.These scientific principles are pure mental constructs that Marx abstracted from the contingencies of our social process.The principles are intentionally vulnerable.They intentionally do not represent the contingent social process or its subprocesses.They consequentially become powerful weapons against their own framework when they are misused to represent the contingent social process or its subprocesses.The scientific theory raised upon this foundation represents the contingent social process and its subprocesses, to within varying degrees of fidelity.Upon the above foundation Marx developed a theory of the current phase of the social process, the capitalist mode of production.

[twc]

Vin Maratty wrote:

Obviously there are strong opinions on the subject and I am keen to see them elucidated.  Then we would all know where we we stand on this subject.

Yes, excellent.

[twc]

DJP:  Darren, it’s even nicer to put the right face to the right name.  Greetings.Sorry I had only glimpsed the first 30 seconds of the video when I responded above, and mistook who was who. I will watch it in full. It must have been hard for you to fill in at the last moment.

[robbo203]

Vin Maratty wrote:

In my own words: To believe that ideas are not material is religious and/or idealistI really don’t think this is as complicated as we make it out to be. Ideas are produced by physical activity in the brain and they never leave the brain.     They are physical or material.  Collectively we think and create social structures that appear to have a non-material existence but they don’t:: they remain inside the human brain(s). Exchange value does not exist independent of human brains. . I accept that for analytic purposes these social structures including exchange value  can be studied as if they have an existence outside of our brains and it is  only in that sense that they do. However, remove the brains and the social structures no longer exist .  Exchange value has no existence outside of the human brain. Exchange value is a social structure created by brains.I have used my own words. I am not impressed by name dropping. I would rather hear criticism in your own words.

 Vin, this is absurd. If ideas are physical or material then they possess the properties of physical or material things.  Do they? Of course they don't! Or are you seriously suggesting that, in principle, a neurosurgeon might be able to extract a thought from a person's brain and place it alongside a piece of brain tissue?  Check out this little link on the "hard problem of consciousness":  http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_12/i_12_p/i_12_p_con/i_12_p_con.html What you really mean to say – surely –  is that ideas depend on brains.  That is fair enough but that does not mean ideas ARE material or physical because a brain is material or physical.  Nor does it mean that ideas or mental states can be simply reduced to brain states and there is now a huge body of research evidence that would refute that.  Rather than seeing the mind as merely the brain (identity theory) or the mind as somehow separate from the brain (dualism), there is a third approach which is now widely accepted within the cognitive sciences: Emergence theory.  Emergence theory accepts that mental functions depend on a brain but does not accept that such functions can be reduced to the brain.  Emergence theory might be called a non reductive form of materialism http://www.imprint.co.uk/books/emergence.html Talking of reductionism Im still waiting  to hear from TWC how he justifies his crude mechanical materialist perspective on the question of base and superstructure.  How does the base "determine" the superstructure, as he claims, when certain  ideas, values, beliefs etc are presupposed by any particular configuration of  production relations – what makes up the base along with the productive forces themselves.  How, for example, can private property rights be asserted or imposed without this implying an ethic that supports private property?I am also waiting for him to explain how the question  of exploitation can ever be separated from the question of values.  He claimed that exploitation is purely objective and defined "objective" as meaning "accessible" or apparent to all.  If that is true, why has 99% of the working class not come to the conclusion that workers are exploited in the specifically  Marxian sense (though they might agree that workers are exploited in the more mundane sense of being harshly treated or paid low wages).  The fact that the Marxian notion of exploitation is not readily "accessible" or apparent suggests that a process of selecting the facts is involved which presupposes a certain theoretical framework and set of values to go with that.As well as that, I am waiting to hear from TWC how he would respond  to the pro-capitalist riposte to the Marxian assertion that workers are exploited by pointing out that the value of the capitalist's contribution is exactly what he gets out of  the production process and therefore there can be no Marxian exploitation  (John Bates Clark).  If  a capitalist works for 10 minutes per day on what grounds would TWC refute his claim that that 10 minutes is worth a whole day's work by one of his employees?  Is there a purely objective basis on which one might refute such a claim, a way of weighting contributions to the social product that is purely objective?  Marx himself incidentally was quite clear that included in the value of labour-power is an historical and moral component..   People here who assert that the case for socialism is not also a moral case as well as one based on self interest might want to ponder on the implications of  that

[DJP]

Sorry Robbo the more I look into it the more I think there is no so called "hard problem" in philosophy of mind. Read the stuff by Dennett on Cartesian materialism."Emergence theory" just doesn't seem to cut it either

Keith Frankish wrote:

Emergentism was popular in the early twentieth century – its best-known advocate being the Cambridge philosopher C.D. Broad (1887–1971) – and it still has defenders. It has, however, come under extreme pressure from empirical research. There are two aspects to this. First, physics has undermined the idea that complexity generates new causal powers. The general tendency of research since the mid-nineteenth century has been to show that all changes in physical systems, from the simplest to the most complex, can be explained as the product of a few fundamental forces, which operate universally. (Modern physics postulates just four of these – the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism and gravity, though it is widely believed that the first three of these are manifestations of a single, more fundamental force.) There is simply no room in this picture for the emergence of new causal powers in the brains of living creatures. The second source of pressure has come from physiology and, in particular, neurophysiology. If consciousness does exhibit a causal influence, then it is in the brain that we should expect to detect it. We should expect to find processes occurring there – brain cells firing or neurotransmitters being released – without adequate physical causes. And there is no evidence of this at all. It is true that we are still a long way from fully understanding how the brain works. However, scientists do understand its low-level functioning very well. They understand how brain cells work, what makes them fire and how their firing affects neighbouring cells. And, so far, there is absolutely no evidence of any non-physical interventions in these processes.

[DJP]

robbo203 wrote:

Or are you seriously suggesting that, in principle, a neurosurgeon might be able to extract a thought from a person's brain and place it alongside a piece of brain tissue?  

Category error. Thoughts are dynamic brain processes not static objects. 

[DJP]

Some videos of Dennett

[stuartw2112]

I've read quite a lot of Dennett, and he writes great books and they should definitely be read. But he can't really be used as an authority to settle this dispute, because Dennett represents just one side in a hotly contested area of science and thought. Not that this dispute can be settled, at least not yet. We (humanity) don't know enough. It's an interesting dispute to have is all, at least it's interesting to me!

[Anonymous]

RobinBecause a surgeon cannot see it then it doesn't exist, it has left it's physical body? Really? And I am being absurd? Do you intend to layout in a post your own position on the subject and in your own words?Or do you intend to simply resort to vitriol and sneering at other people's declared position?  In the meantime, does your assertion that ideas exist outside of the brain apply to animals and insects. A pack of wolves for example? 

[DJP]

stuartw2112 wrote:

I've read quite a lot of Dennett, and he writes great books and they should definitely be read. But he can't really be used as an authority to settle this dispute, because Dennett represents just one side in a hotly contested area of science and thought. Not that this dispute can be settled, at least not yet. We (humanity) don't know enough. It's an interesting dispute to have is all, at least it's interesting to me!

I agree. But his stuff is definitely a good counter argument against those who recite the "hard problem" with convicted certainty.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the videos DJPStuart. It may not settle the 'dispute' but he is implying – at least I think so – that the dispute is caused by people who are looking for something 'special' and almost religious in 'consciousness' The dispute is created because some just don't want to accept that we are basically intelligent animals.

[stuartw2112]

Vin, no, not really, the dispute is caused because no one knows the answers. You'd definitely have to read Dennett if you're interested in these questions, but you'd definitely have to read his critics too (his critics are also respected philosophers and scientists, so no, it's not Dennett verus the cretins).

[DJP]

Here’s David Chalmers, who’s on the “other side” of Dennett and credited with coining the phrase “the hard problem”

[Author]

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