Materialism, aspects and history.
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Young Master Smeet wrote:And Stuff is shorter yet: however, I am convinced that stuff existed before consciousness, and the world is not a dream of God, and thought alone does not change the world. No amount of voting can change the timing of the tides: although ideas, like the Swansea tidal barrage can change them when turned into action.
Once again, we go through the argument that no-one argues that 'stuff' didn't exist before consciousness. But I know you don't read what I write, so it comes as no surprise whatsoever that you're merely repeating yourself in ignorance.The problem is, the relation between 'stuff' and 'consciousness', once 'consciousness' has emerged from 'stuff'.No one argues that 'the world is a dream of God', or that 'thought alone changes the world'.You must have heard of Marx, and his ideas about 'theory and practice'? No? I'm surprised, because only someone who hadn't heard of Marx would think that any socialists think that 'thought alone' will do anything.And who argues that 'tides are turned by voting'? Talk about straw men! In fact, it just shows me that you haven't got a clue what this discussion is about, but just have a vague idea that the 'mob' are going to destroy science, if that lot are allowed to discuss and vote upon knowledge!'Stuff' is your God, YMS. It's been pointed out many times by philosophers that 'materialists' of necessity must introduce a god into their thought, because they won't have human consciousness playing any part, and certainly won't have a democratic consciousness involved.Religious Materialism – Marx would be shocked at where his supposed follower have ended up. But, then again, perhaps not, given his famous rebuttal to the French 'materialists'… "All I know is that I am not a 'Marxist'!"
Quote:And who argues that 'tides are turned by voting'? Talk about straw men! In fact, it just shows me that you haven't got a clue what this discussion is about, but just have a vague idea that the 'mob' are going to destroy science, if that lot are allowed to discuss and vote upon knowledge!Last I checked, wearily, you maintain that truth is subject to consensus of the people, and by voting we can make something true. Now, we can, according to that proposition, make it tue that high tide is at noon not midnight.Consciousness is just a part of stuff, not distinct from, apart from, a pale reflection of, but an integral part of stuff. All thought is comes from stuff doing stuff.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Quote:And who argues that 'tides are turned by voting'? Talk about straw men! In fact, it just shows me that you haven't got a clue what this discussion is about, but just have a vague idea that the 'mob' are going to destroy science, if that lot are allowed to discuss and vote upon knowledge!Last I checked, wearily, you maintain that truth is subject to consensus of the people, and by voting we can make something true. Now, we can, according to that proposition, make it tue that high tide is at noon not midnight.Consciousness is just a part of stuff, not distinct from, apart from, a pale reflection of, but an integral part of stuff. All thought is comes from stuff doing stuff.
You haven't 'checked' anything, YMS, 'wearily' or otherwise.You keep saying 'by voting we can make something true'.I, like Marx, am saying that 'theory and practice' produces 'knowledge', and that the judgement of that 'product' being 'true' can only lie in a democratic vote. Science often produces 'untruths', and someone has to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of a production process ('stuff' produced by theory and practice, whether houses or knowledge).So, for us, 'making' is an active social process, controlled by the producers.For you, it is passively observing 'facts', which shall not be gainsaid. By an elite. Marx clearly warned of the dangers of materialism. It produces a two-tier society, the smaller one which 'educates' the other larger tier.As for your 'stuff' explanation, …
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I don't know if the Mod is wanting us to close this discussion (I'm really unclear where the warning is directed TBH). So, I'll risk a short reply here:
Quote:someone has to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of a production process(my bold) this proposition is false, no-one has to make any such determination, all that is necessry is to accept the veracity of a proposition before initiating action. Whether M4234 is green or blue doesn't matter, unless making a movie set there.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Quote:someone has to make a decision as to the truth or otherwise of a production process(my bold) this proposition is false, no-one has to make any such determination, all that is necessry is to accept the veracity of a proposition before initiating action.
1. Society has to make decisions all the time about 'truth'.2. Your method 'veracity then action' is not Marx's method.Marx's method is 'theory and practice'. Veracity is a product of human production. Humans determine veracity.Theory-practice-product-decision. 'Veracity' is a product of this method. This is Marx's (and we now know, science's) method.
'Acceptance' is a decision, YMS. At the very least, the decision to use passive fatalism as a 'measure'. Another example of 'Religious Materialism'.Christ, I'm having to teach English, now.We're a million miles away from Marx's social activity, theory and practice, and the democratic control of production.Are you a member of the SPGB, YMS?If you are, and you seem to be the most keen to actually, genuinely, engage, I'll stop posting on this site.I'm sure most other readers are sick of me saying the same thing and then the Religious Materialists ignoring me; and I'm sick of being banned, for trying to get the ideas of Marx better known.
You missed the verb: accept, not declare, determine, decide, but accept. Decision and determination are unnecessary, acceptance is sufficient. Through our democratically organsied society we will in practice demonstrate acceptance and utilisation of scientific products: we won't need a vote to say evolution is true or false, but we will have to vote on evolutionary medicine, and whether to permit certain treatments, etc.
Tides? What? Not by royal decree? What about King Canute?
I posted #39 to highlight the LBird techniques. He breaks most of them. Persoal abuse and the 'Straw Man' are his favourites.
When Christians start off with: "When we say God we don`t mean a man with a big white beard!", they fail to realise that that would in fact be more plausible than talk about what cannot be defined, such as "spirit.", because then they would be talking about a material entity.I see nothing wrong for materialists in speculating about "life-energy" (Shaw), "orgone" (Reich), or "ch`i" (classical Taoism), as long as such forces are comprehended – which they are by these three – as material and natural, and not "spiritual" or supernatural.To paraphrase Lafcadio Hearn, the molecules of which we consist have made up billions of living beings before us and will make up billions after us. Such materialism (vitalism – as opposed to crude 17th century mechanical materialism) has no place, obviously, for speciesism, racism or nationalism. Like Carl Sagan calling a tree "my brother, this tree", we are all cosmos, all in flux, whether alive or "dead".The monotheistic religions can thus be seen as "undeveloped" – arrestations of thought – as is understood by classical (materialist) Taoists.Any religious doctrine is a contradiction in terms when "religion" is comprehended in a Taoist way – as religion can only be speculation.Is this the "religious materialism" referred to? I don`t think most SPGB materialists go as far as vitalism philosophically. Most are old-style mechanical materialists, a la La Mettrie, Holbach, etc. (Whose materialism is equally valid, but for me, undeveloped).
John Oswald wrote:I see nothing wrong for materialists in speculating about "life-energy" (Shaw), "orgone" (Reich), or "ch`i" (classical Taoism), as long as such forces are comprehended – which they are by these three – as material and natural, and not "spiritual" or supernatural…..Is this the "religious materialism" referred to? I don`t think most SPGB materialists go as far as vitalism philosophically. Most are old-style mechanical materialists, a la La Mettrie, Holbach, etc. (Whose materialism is equally valid, but for me, undeveloped).Yes, what you're arguing, John, is the Religious Materialism that I referred to, and that Marx opposed.Any 'materialism' which separates nature into two essences (the 'material' and the 'ideal', of which only the former is regarded as 'real') is forced to bring in 'ideas' and 'consciousness' by the back door. Engels was the thinker who brought this 'old-style mechanical materialism' back into socialist thought, after Marx had attempted to unite the two in a philosophy of 'theory and practice', which by its nature requires both the 'ideal' (consciousness, spirit, geist) and 'material' (a 'material substratum' to quote Marx) to be worked upon by human labour (mental and physical).For Marx, both ideas and material form 'nature', so that both consciousness and being are always required in any account of 'reality'. The 'metabolism' between thinking, critical, creative natural consciousness (embodied in humans) and their changing of existing nature, is clearly both 'ideal' and 'material'.The 'materialists' (today, often called 'physicalists') try to reduce 'consciousness' to 'matter', rather than, like Marx and German Idealism (which he highly regarded, as well as French and English Materialism), which refused to separate out 'matter' from 'consciousness', and insisted on a unity of subject and object. This reduction of 'nature' to 'material' (which loses the 'ideal') is the route taken by bourgeois science from the 17th century, and which so influenced Engels (as it did many, by its successes in the 19th century) that he too returned to pre-Marxian thinking.Marx was an 'idealist-materialist', which can be seen if one reads, for example, his Theses on Feuerbach, or some of his other work. Even Capital contains passages which make it clear that there are things that are real and natural (like 'value', for instance) that are not 'material'.Put simply, it's the 'materialists' who are 'idealists', because they always revert to a 'consciousness' outside of 'matter', just like they always revert to a power outside of the proletariat. 'Materialism' is the philosophical basis of Leninism, not any form of Socialism/Communism, which must of course be entirely democratic.Idealism-materialism can be subject to democratic control, because human ideas are intimately involved, whereas materialism can't, because it argues that 'matter' has the final say. 'Matter', like 'God', cannot be criticised. It just 'is'.Finally, the reduction of 'nature' to 'matter' is mirrored in bourgeois society by the reduction of 'value' to 'commodity'. Both nature and value involve the ideal, but matter and commodity can be touched by individuals. Individualists, who deny democracy in science and truth production, always revert to the tangible, because it gives them succour from a society they wish to remain aloof from, and escape its democratic controls.'Matter' is the child's comfort blanket for individualists, which they can feel and hug. It is a bourgeois category.
Consciousness in my view is a property of matter, not something separate. Matter thinks, feels. Seeing functions of the material as separate is what I perceive as an illusion. A man walks: therefore walking is not material? Yes it is the function. The dolphin thinks. Therefore thinking is not material? Yes, it is the function. This boils down to us becoming deluded by language into thinking (sic!) that thought and feelings are produced by something other than matter, when they are simply functions of matter, like walking, drinking, shouting, clobbering a copper, etc.
There you go again, LBird with your straw men.A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument which was not advanced by that opponent.[1]
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