Pannekoek’s theory of science
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twc wrote:Surely, ALB and DJP, you must acknowledge the historical materialist content of LBird’s assertion about truth…LBird well knows my misgivings over his critical realism, but I support him on this.
I'd like to thank twc for their expressed support, on this issue of 'truth' being a dynamic social construct, and not a static 'mirror reflection' of reality.
LBird wrote:The alternative that you and DJP propose, that ‘truth’ is located in the ‘object’ and thus, once ‘known’, is a final ‘truth’, just doesn’t accord with Pannekoek’s (or indeed Dietzgen’s) expressed views.I don't recall saying that or anything like it. It is not my view. Scientific knowledge (what you call "truth") is never final. There is, however, an interesting question, which you don't face, of when can a theory be accepted as temporarily "true", i.e. accepted as the best (most adequate) description for the time being of some set of phenomena, and what are the criteria for deciding this. Why, for instance, is Darwin's theory of evolution considered more adequate than Creationism?
LBird wrote:When I say 17th century views were ‘true’ then and that now they are not, you counter that they were obviously ‘false’ then. But this depends on you believing that what we know as a ‘truth’ now is the datum point for eternity, that ‘truth’ now is the measure of ‘truth’ then.No it doesn't. It merely implies that current theories are (to use your terminology) "truer" than those current up to the 17th century, not that today's theories are eternally true. I don't see anything wrong in judging what people in the past believed by today's (temporary, partial, relative, non-absolute) understanding.
LBird wrote:This can’t be done using a Pannekoekian model of cognition. He says that our ‘conceptions’ are ‘products’, not a ‘mirror’ of ‘reality’, which they would have to be, to sustain your view of ‘truth’. He specifically says that, what you identify as ‘truth’, is an ‘unbounded stream in perpetual motion’.That's what I say too. The only "absolute truth" is the never-ending, ever-changing stream of phenomena, past, present and future. I don't know who you are arguing against but it's not me. Sounds as if it could be Comrade Strawman.
LBird wrote:I'd like to thank twc for their expressed support, on this issue of 'truth' being a dynamic social construct, and not a static 'mirror reflection' of reality.I second that vote of thanks.
ALB wrote:Scientific knowledge (what you call "truth") is never final. There is, however, an interesting question, which you don't face, of when can a theory be accepted as temporarily "true", i.e. accepted as the best (most adequate) description for the time being of some set of phenomena, and what are the criteria for deciding this.So, logically flowing from this statement, ALB, you accept that:17th century conceptions/scientific knowledge/truth of 'sun/earth' dynamics were 'true', then;but that 'truth' is not 'true', now, from 21st century conceptions/scientific knowledge/truth of 'sun/earth' dynamics;and that, in the,say, 24th century, our conceptions/scientific knowledge/truth now will potentially be 'untrue' from their conceptions/scientific knowledge/truth?Thus, 'truth' is dynamic, social and has a history.'Truth' is not a fixed, one-off, reflection of 'reality', which science produces by a neutral method.If you can agree with this clarification, ALB, I think that we've come to some point of agreement.
"True for" means what is / was perceived as true, but may be false. In other words the socially constructed 'truth' that LBird is fond of."True" or "The Truth" means something else; the absolute truth, the totality of phenomena which is always in a state of flux.
Julien Beillard wrote:I admit that I am presupposing an objectivist conception of truth, but what’s the alternative? Do we have any concept of truth that does not involve that kind of relation? To be sure, people sometimes say that a statement is true for one person but not another – meaning that the statement seems true to the first person but does not seem true to the second. But just as seeming gold is not a kind of gold, seeming truth is not a kind of truth. What is meant by this way of speaking (if anything), is simply belief. To say that it is true for some children that Santa Claus lives in the North Pole, if that means merely that to some children it seems true that he does, is really just a way of saying that they believe it. But believing doesn’t make it so. Similarly, if moral relativism is just the claim that what seems true of morality to some people (what they believe about morality) seems false to others, this is true but philosophically trivial, and consistent with objectivism about moral truth. It is also worth noting that, interpreted in this trivial way, moral relativism could not be supported by the argument from disagreement. The gist of that argument was that moral relativism is a good explanation of the moral disagreements we observe. Yet the claim that some moral statements seem true to some people and false to others merely restates the fact of moral disagreement that is supposedly explained by relativism, it cannot explain that fact. (Perhaps some things are self-explanatory, but not moral disagreement!)http://philosophynow.org/issues/97/Moral_Relativism_Is_UnintelligibleThe above is about moral relativism but hopefully helps illustrates what I'm trying to get at.I suppose I could accept Lbirds use of "truth", as meaning the socially constructed what is "true for" people in a certain period of history, but only so long as it remains in parentheses.Otherwise we're just going to end up going round in circles.
I hope someone is going to eventually explain this thread to the rest of us in an easy to understand way so we know what it's all about
DJP wrote:I suppose I could accept Lbirds use of "truth", as meaning the socially constructed what is "true for" people in a certain period of history, but only so long as it remains in parentheses.Otherwise we're just going to end up going round in circles.Yeah, 'round in circles'!But to try to get some 'common ground' between us, we have to be sure on what it is we 'agree' on. 'Suppose…could…a certain…so long…parentheses' leaves too much leeway, I'm afraid, in my humble opinion.I can only ask again, concerning a tripartite theory of cognition (object, subject, knowledge), do you agree that 'truth' pertains to 'knowledge'?One other way of conceiving 'truth' is to regard it as pertaining to 'object'. But I've argued that neither Marx, Pannekoek nor Dietzgen (or Einstein!) would agree with this way of understanding 'truth'.In fact, the notion that 'truth' is a fixed, one-off, correct-for-all-time product of a neutral scientific method, as an exact reflection of object, is a central plank of positivism, and furthermore, I would argue, remains a central plank of bourgeois ideology of 'science' as an 'authority' outside of democratic control by the proletariat/future humanity, even though recent bourgeois philosophers have themselves already undermined this outdated, 19th century, concept of 'science' and its 'method'.I've already said that, in my opinion, this shows that Marxist thinkers were up to 150 years ahead of bourgeois thinkers in reaching these conclusions.I've already also said that I share your concerns about 'relativism', 'moral relativism' and 'cultural relativism', but I think that to move onto a discussion of those valid concerns, we have to get some agreement on the process of cognition, which will affect our understanding of, and answers to, those concerns.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I hope someone is going to eventually explain this thread to the rest of us in an easy to understand way so we know what it's all aboutYeah, absolutely!If these issues, complex though they appear, can't be explained to those without the requisite detailed reading to participate in this discussion at present, then we will have failed as Communists.The use of analogies, of situations with which comrades are familiar and already understand, must be employed to make these vital issues understandable and relevant to all Communists.I've had a discussion over the weekend with my son, and we're now of the opinion that computer programming methods might make this easier to understand. Are you familiar with 'programming' in any way ajj? If not, I'll have to get my thinking cap on, again!
alanjjohnstone wrote:I hope someone is going to eventually explain this thread to the rest of us in an easy to understand way so we know what it's all aboutJust think of it as the excursions of some socialists into the domain of epistimology.http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1887/epistemology.htm
LBird wrote:I can only ask again, concerning a tripartite theory of cognition (object, subject, knowledge), do you agree that 'truth' pertains to 'knowledge'?It's actually a relation between all 3.To move things forward perhaps you can answer how you would assess the truth of a claim or theory.If I was to say that the way computers work is through little men running around inside them how would prove or disprove this statement?
LBird wrote:I've had a discussion over the weekend with my son, and we're now of the opinion that computer programming methods might make this easier to understand. Are you familiar with 'programming' in any way ajj? If not, I'll have to get my thinking cap on, again!In programming the symbols used refer to fixed things. In language the meaning of the symbols alters depending on the context. The dynamic nature of reality shows itself in language too.
I've just been having a word with old Jo, this is something he said
Dietzgen wrote:The Universe is identical with Nature, with the world and the absolute truth. Natural science divides Nature into parts, domains, branches of study, but it knows and feels that all such divisions are formal only, that Nature or Universe is in spite of all divisions undivided, – in spite of all variety and manifold natures only one indivisible, general and universal Nature, World and Truth. There is only one Existence, and all forms are modi, varieties or relative truths of one general truth which is absolute, eternal and endless at all times, in all places. Human knowledge is, like anything else, a limited portion of the unlimited, a modus, a variety of Existence or General Truth.Since the nature of truth has hitherto been regarded as purely mental, and accordingly, truth was looked upon as a thing which is only to be found in knowledge, the inquiry into human knowledge comes within the province of our subject, of our search after the absolute and relative truth and their relation.The mental world of man, that is, all we know, believe and think, forms a portion of the universal world which only in its absolute inter-relation, in its complete whole possesses an unlimited, perfect, absolute existence, a true one in the highest sense of the word. At the same time it possesses through its component parts, modi, varieties, products or phenomena an infinite number of existences of which every particular one is also true, but is as against the whole a mere relative truth.Human knowledge, itself a relative truth, is the medium between us and the other phenomena or relativities of the absolute Existence. Still the faculty of cognition, the knowing subject, must be distinguished from the object, the distinction being, however, a limited and relative one, since both the subject and the object are not only distinct, but at the same time alike in that they are parts or phenomena of the same generality called the Universe. We distinguish between Nature and parts, departments or phenomena, though these are inseparably connected with the All-Existence, emerge from it and submerge in it. There is no Nature without phenomena, her manifestations, nor phenomena without Nature, as the Absolute. It is only our knowledge which provides the separation, the mental analysis in order to form an image of the phenomena. Knowledge, conscious of its doings dealings, must know that the mentally separated, differentiated objects are indivisibly bound up with the reality of Nature.What we learn to know are truths, relative truths or natural phenomena. Nature itself, the absolute truth, cannot be known, – not directly, but only through her manifestations, the phenomena.[edit: I've added a couple more paragraphs to the quote]http://www.marxists.org/archive/dietzgen/1887/epistemology.htm
It ’s time now to move on.We socialists are daily confronted by fabricated truths [= blatant lies that prey upon the last surviving vestiges of our common sociability] as well as by the understandably-excusable socially constructed truths that emerge of necessity from our capitalist social being.Advocacy, or championing, of woolly truths quite naturally rings socialist alarm bells. We’ve all been sickened by the social democratic and the soviet thriving on woolly truths to their short-term gain and to the long-term detriment of historical-materialist socialism.We’ll never forget that it was precisely you who advocated unswerving democratic agreement by the whole community upon all social truths.The sort of people you imperiously demand here agree with you without reservation inhabit a political world that contrasts starkly with the political world of enforced truths that you [apparently] just passed through.That’s one of the reasons why I pulled you up over both your pseudo-science reference and your ignorant denigration of Feuerbach’s achievement which, you no doubt failed to notice, has the unintended effect of diminishing and trivializing Marx’s astonishing critique of Feuerbach’s astonishing position.That was not nit-picking on my part. It was keeping faith with scientific integrity — something, which you openly denigrated. Why then should anyone trust you?I may be presumptuous but, for me, it’s time to move on to other content.
DJP wrote:LBird wrote:I can only ask again, concerning a tripartite theory of cognition (object, subject, knowledge), do you agree that 'truth' pertains to 'knowledge'?It's actually a relation between all 3.To move things forward …
I'm afraid I can't 'move things forward', DJP.We disagree about 'truth'.'Truth' is not 'a relation'.'Truth' is a 'product' of a relationship between an active social subject and a really existing external object. 'Truth' is an attribute of 'knowledge'.If don't accept that 'truth' is a 'product', we can discuss it. Of course, I'll ask you to explain your view of 'truth' within a theory of cognition.
twc wrote:I may be presumptuous but, for me, it’s time to move on to other content.twc, you can move on to anything you like.I'm not engaging with you, because you are constantly rude, refuse to answer reasonable questions, and talk jibberish.I only thanked you for your support for my position through common manners.Don't bother to ask me any questions.
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