Pannekoek’s theory of science

[LBird]

If no-one's got any more contributions on the issue of the entity of 'knowledge' (within our tripartite schema of cognition), and it seems to be accepted that 'knowledge' is always 'socially produced knowledge' (as for Pannekoek) and not a 'copy of the object' (as for positivists, and the 'common-sense' view of bourgeois 'discovery' science), shall we move on?Perhaps I could give a lead on the second entity, the 'cognising subject'? Anyone still interested?

[twc]

LBird’s Parallel List Feuerbach sees subject as mentally passive-receptive; Marx sees subject as mentally active;F. sees subject as individual; M. sees subject as social;F. sees subject as contemplative; M. sees subject as actively practical;F. sees knowledge as a faithful copy of object; M. sees knowledge as a process of mental reproduction of the object.Surely Schaff Isn’t ResponsiblePoints 1, 2 and 4 are slanders against Feuerbach.False.   Marx expressly criticizes Feuerbach for seeing the subject as being exclusively mentally active.   A correct formulation is: Feuerbach sees the subject as being mentally active. Marx sees the subject as being both sensuously and mentally active. Marx does not accuse Feuerbach of mental passivity. [That would be falsely accusing Feuerbach of a backwards retreat from Hegel.]False.   Feuerbach, as Young Hegelian, accepted his master’s insight that the subject was social.   Marx’s point is that Feuerbach only saw the social as species being, mere human essence [≅ human nature].Marx rips into human essence in Thesis VI: “human essence is not an abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality it is the ensemble of our social relations.”  In case you doubt Feuerbach’s social subject, here are some of his pregnant thoughts [Essence of Christianity, Ch. 1] that seeded Marx’s materialist conception of history:

Feuerbach wrote:

“Science is the consciousness of species. In life we are concerned with individuals, but in science, with species. Only a being to whom his own species, his characteristic mode of being, is an object of thought can make the essential nature of other things and beings an object of thought.”“Man is in himself both ‘I’ and ‘You’; he can put himself in the place of another precisely because his species, his essential mode of being — not only his individuality — is an object of thought to him.”“What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being.”“Therefore, whatever the object of which we become conscious, we always become conscious of our own being; we cannot set anything in motion without setting ourselves in motion. ”

True.   Except that Marx sees the subject as contemplative as well, finding “rational solution in human practice, and the comprehension of this practice” [Thesis VIII.   comprehension of practice ≅ theoretical science.]False.   After Kant’s critical philosophy famously proclaimed the this-sidedness of the synthetic a priori, and it became an article of Kantian faith that the external object was ultimately unknowable in itself [Kant’s Ding an Sich], serious philosophers ran a mile from “knowledge as a copy of object”So initially did politician Lenin, before he plagiarized it as expedient arsenal to attack the Machist theory of knowledge.Feuerbach, as Young Hegelian, was steeped in Hegel’s critique of Kant. He knew better.

[LBird]

twc, you really must read what other posters are writing:

LBird wrote:

He spells out some similarities and differences between these two models of cognition, on pp. 60-1 (I’ll call these ‘Feuerbach’ and ‘Marx’, if it helps to simplify; please note, this is a didactic device, for those desperate to insist ‘Marx never said that!).

I was trying to contrast two ways of looking at 'cognition'.Would you like to discuss point 4, which is really about what we consider our 'knowledge' to be?That is, either a 'faithful copy' or a 'mental reproduction'.I think that point 4 is the sticking point within our discussion, on this thread.

[ALB]

Yes, I thought too that LBird was being a bit unfair to Feuerbach in suggesting that he was a "naive realist" and a "positivist". The issue between Marx and him seemed to be over who was the "subject" rather than over what the subject did (or did not do).

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

Yes, I thought too that LBird was being a bit unfair to Feuerbach in suggesting that he was a "naive realist" and a "positivist".

Oh, no, not someone else who doesn't do 'didactic devices'!Look, everybody, forget Feuerbach and Marx (for now, not 'forever', I'm not Pol Pot suggesting 'Year Zero'), just for a while, and focus on the issue, which apparently I've obscured, and discuss the nature of the entity of cognitive knowledge.'Faithful copy', or 'mental reproduction'?Can anybody else help me explain? Please.If comrades don't agree with my view of 'mental reproduction', then we can discuss it. But… I'll quote Marx and Pannekoek…

[ALB]

As far as I can see, when it comes to "faithful copy", the last man standing is Lenin but nobody here is defending him. Nobody can after Pannekoek's demolition job in Lenin As Philosopher.

[LBird]

ALB wrote:

As far as I can see, when it comes to "faithful copy", the last man standing is Lenin but nobody here is defending him. Nobody can after Pannekoek's demolition job in Lenin As Philosopher.

I agree, ALB.But the logic of this position is that 'scientific knowledge' has a human component. Thus, humans not being infallible, that 'scientific knowledge' can be wrong. If this logic is accepted, then we can see that what's 'true' for one set of humans (due to social and historical conditions) can be 'untrue' for another set.So we have our 'sun/earth' debate, Piltdown man, the 'ether', and many other examples.We can now explain why we should not regard 'science' as producing 'objective truth', which helps undermine the notion of 'scientific authority', which is used by the bourgeoisie as a central pillar of their ideological control of society, a bit like 'the market', There Is No Alternative (TINA) to following their experts.Given all this, I think we should now move onto a consideration of the 'subject' and its nature and, especially, ask is the 'subject' any individual, a special individual or genius, or a social entitiy.

[DJP]

LBird wrote:

But the logic of this position is that 'scientific knowledge' has a human component. Thus, humans not being infallible, that 'scientific knowledge' can be wrong. If this logic is accepted, then we can see that what's 'true' for one set of humans (due to social and historical conditions) can be 'untrue' for another set.

Non-sequitur. Your making a jump from 'knowledge' to truth. It has never been true for anyone that the sun revolves around the earth. The majority may have thought it at one point, but this is not how truth is tested. 

Quote:

We can now explain why we should not regard 'science' as producing 'objective truth', which helps undermine the notion of 'scientific authority', which is used by the bourgeoisie as a central pillar of their ideological control of society, a bit like 'the market', There Is No Alternative (TINA) to following their experts.

Now you'll have to explain how the scientific method is a central pillar of capitalist control. Why does science produce evidence that is favourable to socialists?Should we not be concerned with empirical evidence?Do you think astrology has the same validity as astronomy?Do you think that the origins of capitalism are tied up with the enlightenment?

[LBird]

DJP wrote:

Non-sequitur. Your making a jump from 'knowledge' to truth.

And you're still locating 'truth' in the 'object'.One can only do this if one follows Lenin and holds to a 'reflection theory of knowledge', where the 'object' and 'knowledge' are identical.One can't do this if one follows Pannekoek, where the 'object' and 'knowledge' are not identical.One has to choose.I choose Pannekoek, and see 'knowledge' as a 'mental reproduction'. This means I locate 'truth' in 'knowledge'. This means 'truth' can be wrong.

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

This means 'truth' can be wrong.

Another counter-intuitive paradox !Here's the case for being careful about using the word "truth" put forward by AJ Ayer in his 1936 manifesto for "logical positivism" Language, Truth and Logic. Yes, I know he's a "positivist" but I think you've been unfair to them as to Feuerbach. They are not "naive realists" but their basic claim is that all knowledge derives from experience (but that's another debate). But here's what Ayer wrote about "truth":

Quote:

Reverting to the analysis of truth, we find that in all sentences of the form ‘p is true’, the phrase ‘is true’ is logically superfluous. When, for example, one says that the proposition 'Queen Anne is dead' is true, all that one is saying is that Queen Anne is dead. And similarly, when one says that the proposition 'Oxford is the capital of England' is false, all that one is saying is that Oxford is not the capital of England. Thus, to say that a proposition is true is just to assert it, and to say that it is false is just to assert its contradictory. And this indicates that the terms 'true' and 'false' connote nothing, but function in the sentence simply as marks of assertion and denial. And in that case there can be no sense in asking us to analyse the concept of 'truth'.

Quote:

We conclude, then, that there is no problem of truth as it is ordinarily conceived. The traditional conception of truth as a 'real quality' or a 'real relation' is due, like most philosophical mistakes, to a failure to analyse sentences correcly. There are sentences, such as the two we have just analysed, in which the word 'truth' seems to stand for something real; and this leads the speculative philosopher to inquire what this 'something' is. Naturally he fails to obtain a satisfactory answer, since his question is illegitimate. For our analysis has shown that the word 'truth' does not stand for anything, in the way which such a question requires.It follows that if all theories of truth were theories about the 'real quality' or the 'real relation', which the word 'truth' is naively supposed to stand for, they would be all nonsense.

In other words, "truth" can't be wrong. Only assertions or denials can be. I think in fact he is saying the same thing as you: that there is no "truth" out there to be found.He concludes:

Quote:

We have now obtained the information we required in order to answer our original question, 'What is the criterion by which we test the validity of an empirical proposition?' The answer is that we test the validity of an empirical hypothesis by seeing whether it actually fulfils the function which it is designed to fulfil. And we have seen that the function of an empirical hypothesis is to enable us to anticipate experience. Accordingly, if an observation to which a given proposition is relevant conforms to our expectations, the truth of that proposition is confirmed. One cannot say that the proposition has been proved absolutely valid, because it is possible that a future observation will discredit it. But one can say that its probability is increased.

and

Quote:

We trust the methods of contemporary science because they have been succesful in practice. If in the future we were to adopt different methods, then beliefs which are now rational might become irrational from the standpoint of these new methods. But the fact that this is possible has no bearing on the fact that these beliefs are rational now.

Isn't this what you are trying to say: that by the standards of pre-1700 rationality (what the bible said) it was rational to think that the Sun moved round the Earth, but that by today's different standards it no longer is? In other words, what changed has been the standards of rationality not the truth (or otherwise) of the proposition (empirical hypothesis) that the Sun moves round the Earth.It seems that you are a bit of a "positivist" yourself without knowing it.

[LBird]

We have to decide whether to continue this debate about 'cognition', an issue which forms the basis of scientific knowledge.I'm quoting Marx, Pannekoek, Dietzgen and Schaff (all 'Marxists' of some stripe), whereas the comrades who seem to oppose the 'critical realist' position, from the standpoint of 'naive realism', quote empiricists, positivists, 'A J Ayer' (? a well known Communist???) and 'common sense'.A tip for those opposed to what Schaff argues: there is a strand of thought, originating with Engels and continuing through Lenin, which supports your view.Unless comrades produce some proper arguments from a Communist perspective, then I will move on to discussing the 'subject', and leave 'knowledge' to one side. Only those who think Pannekoek is correct about 'laws of nature' being a construct of humans, rather than a 'discovery by scientists' need continue to read, in that case.Or perhaps I'll just give up… if no-one wants this thread on Pannekoek to continue.

[ALB]

Despite what you keep asserting, nobody here is defending "naive realism" or that what scientists do is to "discover" objective nature so we will all be able join in your discussion about the nature of "subject".By the way, a comrade has drawn attention to this passage in Pannekoek's Marxism and Darwinism (which we have reproduced as a party pamphlet):

Quote:

Thus, both teachings, the teachings of Darwin and of Marx, the one in the domain of the organic world and the other upon the field of human society, raised the theory of evolution to a positive science.

This doesn't surprise me since both Ernst Mach and Richard Avenarius whose ideas he takes on board in Lenin As Philosopher, giving them a materialist spin, were "positivists". Neither were communists, so Pannekoek for one didn't agree with the silly position that if you're not a communist your views are irrelevant.Also, one of Dietzgen's works (with an introduction by Pannekoek) is entitled … The Positive Outcome of Philosophy !

[LBird]

Well, as long as everybody's happy that 'science' is an open book, and has no role to play in a discussion of Communism, that's that.I can't keep going round in circles. I've tried to explain theories of cognition. Back to my books, I suppose, as an individual.Ironic, eh?

[ALB]

LBird wrote:

Well, as long as everybody's happy that 'science' is an open book, and has no role to play in a discussion of Communism, that's that.

Nobody's said that either, but it appears you need the "didactic device" of a straw man to develop your arguments.

[DJP]

What occurs to me is that throughout this exchange no-one has defined what they mean by 'science'.Borrowing from Sokal and Bricmont I can come up with 4 definitions:1. An intellectual endeavor aimed at a rational understanding of the world2. A collection of accepted theoretical and experimental ideas3. A social community with particular mores, institutions and and links to the larger society4. Applied science and technologyAny meaningful discussion about communism and science would have to distinguish between these and make sure the meaning doesn't slip during the debate.Also I'd like to repeat my question to LBird. Do you see the enlightenment as playing a deciding factor in the rise of capitalism? It would be interesting to know as this may help us get to the heart of the matter…

[Author]

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