Organisation of work and free access

[LBird]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

If we can't get your membership, will still gladly take your money !!!

My 'money'? Whatever happened to 'Free access communism'?I know, I know… the 'objective' conditions don't yet exist… Hoisted by my own petard!

[twc]

LBird wrote:

The complete democratic control of the entire process of science, no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’.

Thought PoliceCensorship of human thought is LBird’s gross misunderstanding of Marx’s thesis III on Feuerbach.Materialist Feuerbach imagines he can change man by changing his conditions of existence, independently of [because he is ignorant of] the determinism inherent in existing social conditions.As Marx put it: Feuerbach, the philosopher, raises himself superior to [above or outside of] the actual process of society. Consequently he, and his philosophical plan, will be brought to earth by the actual social determinism he tries to flout. Marx’s charge against him is not elitism per se.LBird misreads thesis III through his anti-Leninist eyes, with vestiges of Leninism clouding his vision. He is alarmed by imaginary social determinisms in socialism that relate to actual social determinisms in a different social formation, capitalism.Consequently, despite himself, he raises himself superior to the actual process of socialist society, whose determinism he lacks confidence in. He doubts the efficacy of our Party Object to maintain socialism as socialism.Instead he insists the SPGB sign up to instituting the ultimately futile. He wants it to outlaw dangerous thought, to imprison thinking within socially-safe bounds.If the tortured history of science proves anything conclusively, it is that shackled scientific thought will burst its shackles. It cannot be tamed. Science is inherently subversive. “Eppur si muove”.LBird intends to slap social surveillance and re-education upon that part of the social superstructure that is science, in blithe ignorance of the social and scientific determined processes. By thwarting the social superstructure that spontaneously arises from the free untrammeled workings of the socialist social base, he and his imaginary plan will be brought to earth by those very processes.Of course LBird only wants an innocuous “lite” version of Torquemada’s Inquisition, Robespierre’s Terror, Stalin’s Purges. He forgets that those worthies started out thus innocently, inspired by noble intent. Paranoia has always fueled social control.He forgets that if science can subvert socialism, then so can his democracy be manipulated to distort science. In other words, if you can’t trust scientists, you can’t trust any of us under socialism. He comes with vestiges of Leninism that see only authoritarianism as the counterpoise to opposition. He is dangerous.Determinism and TruthMarx adopts the formal structure of deterministic science:  Base → Determinism → Superstructure ≡ ObservationThe base is pure abstraction from a material ensemble.The determinism is abstract formalism from that material ensemble.The superstructure is derived by formal determination from the abstract base — it is still abstract, but it purports to be a mentally concrete instance of the abstract base.The observation is a materially concrete measurement of an instance from that material ensemble.The truth of a base–superstructure deterministic science over the domain of its material ensemble consists in its ability to derive mentally concrete instances that measure in abstraction [within bounds of contingency] the same as the materially concrete instances they purport to be.The truth of a base–superstructure system, and its instances, is the only sort of truth we know. The formal determinism of the system is the only determinism we know.Crucially, base–superstructure determinism proves [or disproves] itself because of its essential feedback between theoretical determinism and practical observation.Theory ⇄ Practice.Such truth is partial. Such determinism is partial. Such base–superstructure determinism is itself a process.The material ensemble, which is only determined for us by the science, is ultimately the thing that subverts the science [by analogy with Marx’s account of social revolution in his famous Preface to the Critique] and forces scientists to rethink the scientific base and determinism.Outsiders can easily gain the false impression from reading the famous 1960s debates on scientific revolutions that science is perpetually revolutionizing itself. But the scientific process is, as Stephen Gould [following Thomas Kuhn] described for evolution, essentially one of stasis, punctuated by revolution.If it weren’t for the stasis, daily life and formal science would be impossible. The working truths and working determinisms of daily life persist, or we could not navigate their instances in our daily lives. They hold for us. Likewise, the formalized truths and formalized determinisms of science persist, or scientific research would be meaningless.It is sheer elitist blather to smear science by sneering at its partial truths instead of celebrating its working truths — the only ones we know and can ever know — that persist for us within a conditional but comprehensible stasis. We all live through such stases. Capitalism is one such.Just as we must agree on daily conventions, so too must science agree on conventions in order that its practitioners may communicate and collaborate. That is not elitism. That is spontaneous deterministic human practice.Abstraction or AssumptionIn LBird’s opinion, the scientific base is an ideological assumption, and the scientific superstructure is an ideological consequence. Presumably, the determinism [couched in mathematics and logic] is also an ideological assumption.On the contrary, the base and determinism of modern sciences have long histories of descent from precursor abstractions that were successively teased, thrashed and filtered out of experience [observation].Take Newton’s laws of motion that are so refined they no longer correspond to measurable [observable] material. Only their deterministic concrete instances do. The student who doesn’t know their history is condemned to take them on trust, or ignorantly mistake them for mere assumptions.In actuality they are distilled residues of abstractions that predate civilization, that were crystallized out by the Greeks — in particular by the anti-religious, and so socially embarrassing, particle materialists — refined by the priestly medieval Schoolmen, and mathematized by Kepler in his three “laws of planetary motion” abstracted from Tycho’s observations of the planet Mars from a Copernican moving Earth.Newton acknowledged the abstraction spadework of his predecessors: “if I have seen further than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. He also taunted philosophers who build upon formally explicit assumptions: “I make no hypotheses”.[In reference to “bourgeois science”, it might be noted that Newton entered the House of Lords, rising to Master of the Royal Mint. Not one of his precursor giants was a class-conscious proletarian.]The abstract bases [laws] and abstract determinisms [couched in mathematics and logic] of our deterministic sciences are mankind’s supreme achievements.Abstraction and determinism are the substance of our consciousness, and the secret of the efficacy of our human practice. As such, they cannot be mere assumptions.RelativityLBird proffers his account of Einstein’s thought experiment as a perfect analogy of social ideology.A physicist would recognize that LBird is merely describing the [Galilean] relativity of classical physics, that Einstein is here expressly refuting.Thanks to James Clerk Maxwell, classical physics deterministically implies a constant velocity of light — a constancy that Einstein recognizes must violate the addition of velocities of classical relativity, and so has subversive implications for the classical measurement of space and time.Einstein is primarily interested in determinism. Classical relativity stands in its way, and so ends up as determinism’s casualty. [In a very real sense, the comparison of observations across inertial frames is very special indeed, as no such inertial frames actually exist.]But in fact, LBird’s example would not defeat most mammals that navigate the world guided by stereoscopic vision. You see, the ball will never move forward from the man, only up and down beside him. Einstein’s dog would take that into account, and snatch it.Fail to see how that proves science is based on ideological assumption.[In reference to “bourgeois science”, James Clerk Maxwell, as Elder of the Church of Scotland, as avowed opponent of Darwinian evolution, and as proponent of the impossibility of scientific sociology, seems a perfect representative of this detested type. Presumably that neatly explains the elite privileged velocity he assigned to light.]Democracy of ThoughtLBird, wants to subject scientific thought to global democratic decision making lest elite scientists take over the world of socialism. That is imaginary science fiction.LBird has proven that he has no idea of the way science works. Many of his pontifications have the false emphasis of partial truths — the things he scorns.He has demonstrated that he cannot contribute at the leading edge of a specialist science. Of course, no scientist can hope to contribute at the cutting edge of all scientific knowledge as is falsely supposed possible even as recently as the Renaissance.It’s never been possible to do so. The favorite polymath Leonardo the man, not Leonardo the myth, could not have contributed to, say, then current Ptolemaic astronomy.Science is, and probably will always remain a cooperative human enterprise conducted by specialists.Science is definitely elitist in the human sense that it takes dedication, imagination, often extraordinary ability, motivation and sheer hard work to master and conduct it. Consequently it must rely on specialist division of labour, and so implicitly on scientific trust — on scientific integrity.But we have also seen that science’s base–superstructure determinism is itself self checking.Perversion of ScienceThe issue of “bourgeois science” is a complex one. Never forget that Marx [like Hegel before him] developed a theory of human consciousness: “social being determines consciousness”.Marx has explored ideology in deeper ways than just class-perverted science [which he was really the first to expose]. For him, material things like money are ultimately ideological in extraordinarily interesting ways. But such deeper matters are for another thread.I hereby oppose LBird’s insistence that the SPGB subscribe to controlling the meaning of scientific research.

[LBird]

twc wrote:

…

Since twc's post is little more than a personal attack on me, I don't consider it appropriate to respond. I'll leave any response to it to other comrades who have become interested in the issues raised on this thread.

[ALB]

twc, I thought at first that Lbird was arguing for something like that, i.e. that some meeting of "proletarian communists" should decide the "truth" of "science",  the sort of thing that happened in Russia with the Lysenko affair. but I don't think he does. In any event, I think it's unfair to suggest that he is a "Leninist" as he's made it clear that he isn't.

[Ed]

ALB wrote:

In any event, I think it's unfair to suggest that he is a "Leninist" as he's made it clear that he isn't.

That's not what he said.

Quote:

LBird misreads thesis III through his anti-Leninist eyes, with vestiges of Leninism clouding his vision.

[LBird]

For information/discussion/rejection"Knowledge élites and class war"Article by Sheila Jasanoff, Nature 401 7th October, 1999http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/44021

S. Jasanoff wrote:

The strength of the common-law system historically has been to promote the integra- tion of expert knowledge with lay perceptions of facts and values. This model of decision- making should be especially prized at a time when  our  sciences  have  made  us  sharply aware of the interconnectedness of things…it may be tempting, in the short run, for know- ledge élites to shake their heads over public ignorance and to avoid lay involvement in decisions affecting science and technology. But in the long run our hope lies in enhanc- ing,  not  curtailing,  the  opportunities  for conversation between science and society.

[my bold]

[LBird]

Jonathan Marks, Why I am not a Scientist, 2009, p. 61, wrote:

Scientists themselves are moral actors, even if they separate their subject matter from the subject matter of moralists, theologians, and politicians. Two major episodes from the mid-twentieth century established that point: the complicity of Nazi scientists in the Holocaust, and that of American scientists in the deaths of the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reflecting simply on the latter, the head of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, famously remarked, “Physicists have known sin.”

[ALB]

The same ambiguity as before seems to still exist.Nobody is arguing that in socialism only scientists should have a say in "decisions affecting science and technology". This isn't even the case today, where these are made by governments and corporations guided by profit and strategic/military considerations. By contrast, in socialism they will be subject of democratic discussion and decision-making.The ambiguity has arisen because the way you sometimes express your point of view seems to be suggesting that the findings of scientific research should be subject to validation as to whether or not they are to be regarded as "true" by some sort of democratic consultation. Which is a different proposition.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

The ambiguity has arisen because the way you sometimes express your point of view seems to be suggesting that the findings of scientific research should be subject to validation as to whether or not they are to be regarded as "true" by some sort of democratic consultation. Which is a different proposition.

I'm not sure why you keep insisting that I'm being 'ambiguous', ALB.I am suggesting, and have been right through the thread, that 'the findings of scientific research' should have their 'truth' validated by a democratic process!The ball's in the court of those who disagree, to say how the human activity of science is to be controlled, and by whom.'Truth' is a social construct.

Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, III, wrote:

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

I'm suggesting that to argue otherwise is to fall into the trap which Marx points out, and will 'divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society'.Science under communism must be a mass activity, and under our control. To leave 'science' in the hands of 'experts' is to fall for the bourgeois myth of 'neutral science'.'Science' at present is a key part of bourgeois social authority. I've even had comrades begin their comments, on other sites, 'Science tells us…'.That was also attempted at the beginning of this thread, regarding anthropological arguments against Sotionov's position, which were claimed to be 'scientific', rather than as the result of a scientific ideology which I share, but I don't pretend it's 'objective' or 'The Truth', but part of my political beliefs.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

I am suggesting, and have been right through the thread, that 'the findings of scientific research' should have their 'truth' validated by a democratic process!The ball's in the court of those who disagree, to say how the human activity of science is to be controlled, and by whom.'Truth' is a social construct.

Looks as if we've been going round in circles and are back to square one, except perhaps that it is clear that the SPGB does not favour "elite control" of scientific policy and research in socialism/communism.In one of your posts you distinguished between the theory of science (what it is) and science policy. You seem to be confusing the two. Science is a branch of "knowledge" and, as you point out, humans are inevitably involved in this because it involves humans describing and classifying their experiences with a view to predicting them. So, there can be no "knowledge" without humans as knowledge is human knowledge. Yes, "truth is a social construct" in this sense, but this is pretty trite, a bit like the character of one of Moliere's plays who suddenly realises that he has been speaking prose all his life (as if he could have avoided this).In socialism, being a democratic society, "the human activity of science" will obviously be controlled democratically, but deciding whether or not the findings of this activity are acceptable (are "valid" or "true") is something different. Why should society have to decide whether a theory of how the lesser spotted butterfly got its spots is "true" or not?  Why should "society" have the power to reject a finding a majority didn't find acceptable ("politically correct"?)? Or to decide that "2 + 2 = 5"? In fact, why should it want to have this power?

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

…but deciding whether or not the findings of this activity are acceptable (are "valid" or "true") is something different.

That's an ideological position.What's more, it's one I don't share with you.

[ALB]

Well, yes, it is a matter of opinion but I'm still not clear what is the opinion you don't share.Is it:(a) that deciding priorities and allocating resources for scientific research and deciding whether or not to accept any outcome as "true" are not something different,or(b) that deciding whether or not to accept any outcome as "true" should not be the subject of a democratic vote..

[LBird]

Thank god I don't have to write the algorithm to capture the logic of that question!I don't think I can state my position any clearer.All scientific activity must be under democratic control, however it is defined. All aspects. Science is a social activity and its truths are social truths.All. All. All. Everything. Everything. Everything.Now, if you don't agree, you hold a different ideological opinion to me.From my perspective, you are clinging on to the bourgeois notion that some parts of science are 'neutral' and thus not amenable to democratic control.

ALB wrote:

Why should society have to decide whether a theory of how the lesser spotted butterfly got its spots is "true" or not?

Because the ‘theory’ will be a socially-constructed ‘truth’!

ALB wrote:

Why should "society" have the power to reject a finding a majority didn't find acceptable ("politically correct"?)?

Because ‘society’ should ‘have the power to reject a finding a majority didn't find acceptable’. Mengele’s findings should be subject to the acceptability of the majority.

ALB wrote:

Or to decide that "2 + 2 = 5"?

Because ‘mathematics’ is a social construct. I can show that ‘2+2=11’, in base 3. Further, if we change the meanings of the symbols ‘2’ and ‘5’, then ‘2+2=5’ would be ‘true’.

ALB wrote:

In fact, why should it want to have this power?

Because if ‘society’ doesn’t ‘have this power’, someone else will have! It’s the political implications of your ‘simple, obvious questions’ that appear to escape you.If I can be frank, ALB, I think that you’re approaching this essentially philosophical question about social power and science from the perspective of ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus’, who has to deal with ‘the real world’ using ‘common sense’.I feel similar to the communist who’s explained a theory of capitalism, value and free access communism to someone in the pub at great length, who then asks ‘But will I still be able to get a packet of fags for less than a fiver under communism?’Is the SPGB a ‘Clapham omnibus’? I think we need input to this issue, other than ours… and that of Marx, Pannekoek, Dietzgen…

[LBird]

I can do no better than re-quote Anton Pannekoek, once again.

Pannekoek, Lenin as Philosopher, p. 29, wrote:

Hence Historical Materialism looks upon the works of science, the concepts, substances, natural Laws, and forces, although formed out of the stuff of nature, primarily as the creations of the mental Labour of man. Middle-class materialism, on the other hand, from the point of view of the scientific investigator, sees all this as an element of nature itself which has been discovered and brought to light by science. Natural scientists consider the immutable substances, matter, energy, electricity, gravity, the Law of entropy, etc., as the basic elements of the world, as the reality that has to be discovered. From the viewpoint of Historical Materialism they are products which creative mental activity forms out of the substance of natural phenomena.

Theories of 'butterfly spots' are a human creation, not a discovery of 'butterfly spots'.

[LBird]

More thoughts, to help explain.

LBird, post #61, wrote:

Humans actively create knowledge by their interaction with the external world.'Knowledge' of a cat is not a 'cat'. Knowledge reflects the questions we ask of reality, rather than reality itself.

To deepen this example, we can ask ‘is that ‘cat’ a ‘cat’?’.In other words, we can ask is that ‘cat’ (a really existing ‘object’ that we perceive) a ‘cat’ (a piece of ‘knowledge’ that we socially produce)?So, something is really present, but what?What if the society that asks this question is 17th century England? The ‘object’ might be ‘known’ to be a ‘witch’, rather than a mere ‘cat’.This ‘knowledge’ is ‘true’. Since ‘knowledge’ is a social creation, the knowledge, to all intents and purposes is, ‘true’. It is a ‘witch’, not a ‘cat’.The ‘scientific method’ has produced a ‘truth’. Science proceeds from social assumptions, asks questions of ‘reality’ and constructs answers based on the interaction of those assumptions with nature. The subject interrogates the object and produces knowledge.A later interrogation of the object by a society working from different assumptions will indeed conclude that the ‘cat’ is indeed a ‘cat’. The 'object' retains its existence, for later re-examination.New ‘knowledge’ has displaced earlier ‘knowledge’, so what was ‘true’ is now thought to be ‘untrue’. ‘Truth’ is social and has a history.But, of course, this is not a final truth. Given a change in the theory of categorising animals (say, due to genetics unmasking appearances), the future might go on to conclude that a ‘cat’ is actually a member of the ‘dog’ family!

[Author]

Posts